So I checked Fr Z's blog. Since September 10, there've been multiple posts on ham radio, sonnets, one on what's going on in Mexico City -- but nothing about the developments above, which ought to be major events for Catholics. I checked Lifesite News. In a summary of the past week's artiles there, other than a belated story on Cdl Sarah's letter, zilch. Church Militant does the best, with a story on the Stickman decision and another on the San Francisco eucharistic procession, but Traditional Latin Mass Comes to Jamaica gets much bigger play.
It seems to me that, although the major events in recent religioius news have come from California Evangelical churches, there have been significant Catholic intellectual developments. These invlude Edward Feser's essay The rule of lawlessness, in which Feser argues via Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas that the "blue" civil authorities that are imposing lockdowns while tacitly encouraging riots and looting are tyrants in the classical definition.
During a speech for Hillsdale College Wednesday night, Attorney General William Barr compared lockdowns being enforced due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to slavery, according to the Associated Press.Barr is Catholic. But beyond that, he delivered these remarks at Hillsdale College, which I've begun to understand is a key locus of intellectual regeneration in the US. I've taken many of their online courses, and the equivalent courses in philosopy, English lit, and history that I had at an elite undergraduate school decades ago simply aren't comparable.“Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,” Barr said.
Barr was been critical of lockdown orders across the U.S. as the country continues to adapt to reopening various sectors of society. Barr has previously compared the orders to a form of house arrest.
A current course, Introduction to Aristotle's Ethics, is a video of a seminar which the institution's president, Larry Arnn, conducts with what appear to be a group of the school's most promisnig students. Beyond the course content, I've got to say that the students themselves, judging from their class participation, are in quality far beyond the students I knew in the Ivy League back in the day -- and those I knew have been cabinet ministers, New York Times reporters, white-shoe law partners, elite professors, and corporate media commentators. I highly recommend any of the free Hillsdale on line courses.
But this all says to me that the important new things are not emerging from Anglicanorum coetibus or Summorum Pontificum. From what I understand, Larry Arnn is a "continuing" Anglican, though I assume whatever flavor of "continuing" he is, it doesn't much resemble what we normally see. Clearly the curriculum at Hillsdale is not specific to any denomination, though it's clearly Catholic-friendly, and it stresses Plato and Aristotle and includes Aquinas.
And key intelleftual figures aren't necessarily associated with Hillsdale. Edward Feser's PhD is from UC Santa Barbara of all places, and he teaches at Pasadena City College. But he's aligned with Bp Barron, who is not a lightweight intellectually himself. The important new things are coming from unexpected places.
I started this blog when I began to realize that important new things, which i'd initially expected from Anglicanorum coetibus, weren't going to come from there. I had that one figured out by mid-2012. But it looks like Bp Barron, who probably knew this all along, is finally losing public patience with the traddies.
Their inability to address, or even to recognize, the major crisis we currently face is an indicatoin they're a backwater.
