"The highest possible society in the temporal order is the union of tribes of the same race, language, and folkway as a nation. National consciousness is rightly called the driving power of national life. Only at a certain height of inner maturity of its historical development

https://twitter.com/FeserEdward/status/2006097682507653577

can a race become conscious of its own particular character and formulate its special mission in the family of nations according to its racial gifts and geographical position. A higher and more comprehensive form of political existence does not seem possible... [T]hese separate

One of the main stumbling blocks for Catholics and our critics is a misconception of the papacy as the last device in a mechanical procedure that fabricates doctrine with a note of content-independent epistemic certainty. 'Papal positivism' is an apt description for this error.

https://twitter.com/potamopotos/status/1969439841348960467

It's an attractive picture at first glance because it's simple and elegant (deferring to a properly formulated papal pronouncement yields easy answers to any theological question) and has great polemical utility ("30,000 denominations vs. 1 'Simon says...'). But it's a caricature

The reality of American suburbia in no way resembles the ideal of small-town life, which is actually possible only through the 'dense urbanism' that conservatives denounce. Suburbia is a just a kneejerk repudiation of the city, not a genuine alternative.


Suburbia represents everything wrong with American conservatism: an obsession with the private (possible only through extensive but hidden public subsidies), a retreat from the commons toward domesticity, a crude simulation of healthy family life divorced from community.

I frequently see natalists, trads, etc. promote detached SFH at all costs, because they have negligibly higher fertility than terraced homes, as though low-density sprawl is the solution to demographic problems (and, apparently, sexual immorality). It's naive and will backfire.

https://twitter.com/FeserEdward/status/1955772998096744883

First of all, note the conspiratorial way that Feser frames the issue: there's some kind of plot from government and real estate developers to constrain the supply of single family homes (SFH) in order to drive down fertility and promote sterile sex. In reality, the vast majority

Sed contra, the infallibility of canonizations is a doubtful matter.

Against the arguments in favor of the infallibility of canonization:

1a) First, it is argued that to canonize a sinner would serve to mislead the faithful by his moral example. (Aquinas, Quodlibet IX 8ad1).

https://twitter.com/ClassicalTheis/status/1927495765066240475

This follows only if his sins are notorious. If his sins are unknown, then his example does not pose danger to the souls of the faithful. So the putative saint may be damned.

1b) Second, the dubitability of canonization may be thought to call the infallibility of the magisterium

@jasonwblakely @njhochman Gordon Wood is a competent scholar, and I have enjoyed some of his work. But he is not infallible, nor is he ideologically impartial. He doesn't stand outside of history looking in: he is part of the Revolution's contested legacy of self-interpretation. @jasonwblakely @njhochman @njhochman is noting (correctly) that modern liberals characterize the causes of the Revolution in extremely abstract terms, which establish vague associations between the political ideals of the Founders and those trafficked by progressives today. In fact, terms like "liberty"