1/7 Some papal statements on the death penalty across two millennia. Pope St. Innocent I: “For [the forefathers] had remembered that these powers had been granted by God and that for the sake of punishing harm-doers the sword had been allowed; in this way a minister of God, an avenger, has been given. How therefore would they criticize something which they see to have been granted through the authority of God? About these matters, therefore, we hold to what has been observed hitherto, lest we may seem either to overturn sound order or go against the authority of the Lord” (Epistle VI, to Exsuperium) 2/7 Pope Innocent III: “We declare that the secular power can without mortal sin impose a judgment of blood provided the punishment is carried out not in hatred but with good judgment, not inconsiderately but after mature deliberation” (from the Profession of Faith required of Waldensian heretics as a condition on their return to the Church)

1/5 🧵for those interested in what I’ve written on the classical natural law approach to sexual morality. “The Metaphysical Foundations of Sexual Morality,” from The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics (pp. 19-35), via Google Books: google.com/books/edition/… 2/5 “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” from my collection Neo-Scholastic Essays: drive.google.com/file/d/0B4SjM0…

1/9 A common error in Catholic circles today is to suppose that the literal meaning and strict logical implications of a formula are alone relevant to upholding orthodoxy. This evinces a naïveté and wishful thinking on the part of the orthodox that is exploited by the heterodox. 2/9 It is also contrary to the traditional practice of the Church, which has condemned not only formulations that are clearly and explicitly heretical, but also those that are “proximate to heresy,” “rash,” “ambiguous,” “offensive to pious ears,” “dangerous to morals,” and so on.

1/10 Annett’s position has nothing to do with either natural law or Catholic moral theology & in fact is contrary to both. His view of possession is essentially liberal individualist, and his view about the use of property is essentially socialist. He misses the middle ground

https://twitter.com/tonyannett/status/1670434814111916032

2/10 perspective of natural law and Catholicism, which is that property exists first and foremost for (and thus is held by and used for) the family, not the individual and not society as a whole. Hence, consider pp. 145-47 of vol. 2 of Michael Cronin’s The Science of Ethics, a

1/15 Whether the ideology represented by the pride flag counts as a religion (by some plausible philosophical or legal definition of “religion”) is one question, and an important one. But there is another, more fundamental issue too often ignored by those focused on that one.

https://twitter.com/USConst_Amend_I/status/1668042303636754433

2/15 The reason liberalism opposes establishing a religion is that it holds this threatens the realization of a just peace. Fellow citizens of a pluralistic society, says liberalism, can’t agree to abide by legislation, election results, legal decrees, etc. they dislike unless

1/5 Aristotle famously distinguishes the weak-willed man (the akrates), who regrets his wrongdoing and can reform, from the licentious man (the akolastos), who is so thoroughly in love with immoral pleasures that he is incapable of perceiving, much less willing, what is good. 2/5 Aquinas modifies this distinction insofar as he takes even the latter to be capable of repentance before death. All the same, he notes that the sins of the licentious man are more grave than those of the weak-willed man, & that his repentance is more difficult and less likely

1/5 Depends on the nature of the premises a particular argument appeals to. For example, suppose a premise was “Such-and-such a study shows that second hand smoke poses no serious health risk,” and it turned out that the study was funded by the tobacco industry.

https://twitter.com/rightscholar/status/1667358552329994240

2/5 Then I’d say that it would of course be reasonable to take the study with a grain of salt until it could be established that it met the usual scientific standards, that other studies were considered to see if they were consistent with this result, etc.

1/10 Here’s another case of someone actually trying to defend the circumstantial ad hominem fallacy (also known as the appeal to motive). It’s a fine example of irrationality masquerading as sophistication, containing several errors worth unpacking. 2/10 Notice first that, like so many other kinds of fallacious reasoning, it can easily be turned against the person who appeals to it. In particular, the tactic of claiming that others are guilty of motivated reasoning can *itself* be dismissed as a kind of motivated reasoning,

1/12 The ignorance of basic logic is breathtaking (and note that here too at least one of these people somehow got a PhD). The answer is: No, when evaluating an *argument*, motives are completely irrelevant. What motives are relevant to is *testimony*. These are often confused. 2/12 Hence, suppose the only evidence that some suspect committed a crime is the testimony of an alleged eyewitness, but you have evidence that that eyewitness has a personal grudge against the suspect. Then you have good reason to doubt the testimony. No fallacy there.

1/18 A false dichotomy. For one thing, recognizing the economic problem does not entail denying the cultural problem (and @SohrabAhmari did not say that it does). Both must be addressed. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. But there’s also a much deeper point

https://twitter.com/AdrianPabst1/status/1661824169946783750

2/18 which is that cultural assumptions always inform how economic matters are described & evaluated. E.g. if the issue is wages, is the problem that they are not sufficient to allow a father to support a family (as Catholic social teaching a la Pope Leo XIII would emphasize)?

1/14 I appreciate this civil and constructive thread from @mfjlewis (which I’ve posted screenshots of here to make it easier to refer to and respond to as a whole). First, no, I don’t question your motivations, Mike. I’m certain you’re sincere and intend merely to defend what 2/14 you take to be binding teaching. I just think your zeal sometimes gets the better of you and that you can be unfair to loyal Catholics who disagree with you in good faith. But I don’t deny that you have the right to defend the position you do on this issue.

1/6 No, there’s no conundrum at all unless one is a Modernist. For what generates the problem is novelty, not continuity. The Modernist wants to use the Church’s magisterium to support novelty, but the very attempt casts doubt on the magisterium’s credibility. THAT is the dilemma

https://twitter.com/rightscholar/status/1647750416405262337

2/6 The defender of continuity faces no such problem. If the magisterium teaches contrary to scripture or 2000 years of tradition in a *non-ex cathedra* act, it is in error & that is that. The Church herself acknowledges that that can happen, & it has happened a handful of times

1/10 This falsehood has become a favorite dodge of Catholics opposed to capital punishment. The reference here is to a memorandum that then-Cardinal Ratzinger (later pope) wrote to then-Cardinal McCarrick (later defrocked): ewtn.com/catholicism/li…

https://twitter.com/tonyannett/status/1647378432097959936

2/10 The truth is that Ratzinger was writing, not as a private theologian, but precisely in his official capacity as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. And he was writing to a bishop precisely to clarify for him a matter of Church doctrine and discipline.

1/5 Sentimentality, on Roger Scruton’s analysis, is the vice of letting a certain sort of emotional reaction become an end in itself rather than a prompt to behaving in a manner appropriate to the circumstances that triggered the emotion. 2/5 For example, a person who is sentimental in this sense may luxuriate in the feelings of benevolence that arise in him when considering homelessness, but doesn’t trouble himself to find out what actually causes it or how it might be effectively remedied.

1/7 Some topics of their nature generate strong emotional reactions in people. But it doesn’t follow that to raise these topics is rhetorically to play on people’s emotions or to commit a fallacy of “appeal to emotion.” An emotional response may be likely but still unintended. 2/7 For example, when considering the question of what sorts of punishments would be proportionate to the offenses of a serial killer or a Nazi war criminal, one has, naturally, to consider the nature and details of the offenses they committed.

1/9 If @mfjlewis wants me to stop responding to him, then I do wish he would stop tweeting things that need responding to. By my count, in the less than 24 hours since he claimed I was “obsessed” with *him*, he’s sent out no fewer than 17 (!) tweets about *me*! 2/9 Most of them I will ignore, but here are a few I think it worthwhile clearing the air about. (Yes, I’m posting screencaps. Mike always complains about that too, but he’s blocked me, so how else am I supposed to respond?)

1/9 Remarks like these illustrate the difficulty of attempting a substantive engagement with @mfjlewis, and his lack of basic competence vis-à-vis the theological issues about which he routinely pronounces with unearned confidence 2/9 It is true that I hold that there are only these two alternative interpretations. But I do not merely assert or assume that there are. I provide arguments that claim to establish this, arguments Lewis has never responded to. (See e.g. this article: catholicworldreport.com/2020/10/07/thr…

1/4 The tactics of Martin and his ilk are not clever or subtle but transparent dime-store modernist shtick. As Pope St. Pius X noted of modernists in Pascendi, “in their writings and addresses they seem not unfrequently to advocate doctrines which are contrary one to the other…” 2/4 This is done deliberately and advisedly… Thus in their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic, but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist" (end quote)

1/5 With all due respect, the phrase “the God hypothesis” gets my hackles up. If X is something on which the world might merely “hypothetically” depend then X isn’t God. An argument gets to God only if it establishes the reality of an X on which the world couldn’t fail to depend.

https://twitter.com/d_klinghoffer/status/1597657451532517376

2/5 Hence arguments that present theism as a “hypothesis” are – qua arguments for theism – time-wasters at best and indeed cause positive harm insofar as they yield a distorted conception of God and his relation to the world.

1/15 Yet more incoherence from @mfjlewis, the self-appointed inquisitor who edits Where Peter Is and objects to all “dissent” from Church teaching, except when he doesn’t. 2/15 Here, when asked whether Catholics must simply assent to Church teaching, he answers “No” & says that to “struggle with,” & indeed “challenging,” such teaching is OK since “if the teachings can’t withstand questions and challenges in every age, what does that say about them”

1/15 More foolishness from Ivereigh, which implies that tradition answers to whatever the current pope happens to say, rather than the other way around. And with an Orwellian flourish he labels the opposite view “modernist”! The man has no shame. But what does the Church teach? 2/15 Vatican I: “The HS was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard & faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles”