The Medieval Mystical Concept of “Natur Naturans”

 

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

In the 13th century, Latin translations of Aristotle flooded European universities. Aristotle wrote extensively about physis (nature) as an intrinsic, active principle of motion and change within the material world. The idea was, broadly, that the physical world was not inert or lifeless. Each natural thing possesses an internal principle governing its characteristic movement and development.

Going back to the simple little grazing rabbit or the bird tending its nest, according to Aristotle’s physis, natural things possess their own principles of movement and development. And you can see this principle at work. An acorn looks nothing like an oak tree, but it grows into an oak because it contains the principle of “oakness” and its nature is to grow into the fulfilment of that principle.

When Aristotle became the foundation of Christian philosophy, thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure had to find a way to understand this in a way that did not end in Pantheism. The obvious question had to have a coherent Christian answer: If nature itself is imbued with an active energetic force that creates, shapes and moves things, does that mean nature has its own independent power separate from God? If nature does all the work, does that mean God is relegated to being a passive bystander, perhaps something like what later thinkers would call the “watchmaker” deity who made everything like a machine that runs on its own, and then left?

The solution was obvious: God’s power of creation is combined with His will to sustain everything that exists in existence from moment to moment. And everything He created is endowed with an inherent nature and functions according to that nature. Everything has characteristic powers, activities or behaviours and ways of developing inherent to it. The rabbit grazes and burrows; the bird builds its nest and sings; the acorn develops into an oak because they were all created with those powers and instincts. (Read more.)

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Trump Has Delivered on the Economy, the Drive-By Media Simply Won't Report on It

 From The Enterprise:

Trump’s policies give manufacturers reasons to build here. Tariffs make domestic production more attractive relative to shipping goods into the country, while the tax law restored 100% expensing for equipment and extended it to new factory construction. Expensing lets a business deduct qualifying costs upfront rather than spread the deduction over time. That changes the calculation for a company deciding where to put its next plant.

A chip fab takes four years from permit to wafer; a petrochemical plant takes five. The wait is real, and a pledge is no guarantee of completion. Yet the same reporters who dismiss Trump’s commitments as vapor celebrated every Biden CHIPS Act press release as a manufacturing renaissance, including projects since shelved. Apply the same scrutiny to both. One-directional skepticism is partisanship with a notebook.

The habit predates the factory announcements. In 2021 and 2022, the Biden administration called inflation “transitory,” and the drive-by media repeated it for most of a year as inflation climbed from 5% to 9%. When a Fox reporter asked Biden about inflation in January 2022, the president answered with an obscenity on a hot mic and the press corps chuckled. When gasoline crossed $5, CNN supplied silver linings. When two consecutive quarters of negative growth arrived that summer, the White House redefined recession and the networks adopted the definition within a news cycle. (Read more.)

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The Making of Alfred the Great

From Historical Chronicles:

At the time of the Great Heathen Army's Invasion of England in AD 865, Alfred was a young, quite unassuming, prince (Atheling) of Wessex.

He was studious and interested in religious matters, and when he was just a boy, he undertook a pilgrimage to Rome and met with the Pope. Because Alfred had four older brothers and was therefore well down the royal pecking order, this may have been intended to prepare him for a life of the cloth.

However, any hopes of a peaceful monastic life were dashed in late 870 when the Viking menace turned its furious gaze to Wessex.

By this time, only Alfred and his older brother, King Aethelred, remained. The pair rose to the occasion and marched out to meet the Great Heathen Army at Reading, but here they were taught a brutal lesson, and both were rather lucky to escape with their lives.

Alfred’s first major bout with the Vikings ended in disaster. It was, in fact, very nearly his last. Yet, in what would become the defining pattern of his reign, Alfred refused to stay down. (Read more.)

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Characteristics of Baroque Architecture

 From My Modern Met:

It is difficult to separate Baroque architecture from art and sculpture. Since ornamentation was such a critical component to this architectural style, these buildings also introduce us to other mediums that follow the same ideals. Grandeur, or drama, is probably the most obvious characteristic of Baroque architecture. This theme is also the reason for other characteristics like ornamentation or curves. In churches, the grandeur of the architecture was used to inspire awe that made visitors feel connected to God or to feel small in comparison to the size of God—and the church. Grandeur, in this sense, often means size—both in height and in the sheer size of the building—but grandeur can also be applied to the amount of ornamentation and decoration. It makes sense that Baroque architecture would feature unexpected curves and organic shapes considering the term is roughly translated to “irregularly shaped.” These movements regularly occur in grand façades and are often concave entrances or places of statues. However, these organic design moves can be found anywhere in Baroque architecture, especially in the domed roofs of cathedrals or churches. (Read more.)

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Trump’s Next Two Years Can Be His Greatest

 From The Enterprise:

Donald Trump should enter January ready to govern with confidence. Last Tuesday the Democrat Party captured both the House and the Senate, then joined its willing accomplices in the drive-by media in spending the week composing his political obituary. They mistake a congressional majority for control of the presidency. Chuck Schumer will run the Senate calendar and Hakeem Jeffries will hold the House gavel. Neither will inherit the executive branch, its lawful authority, or the money already appropriated for Trump’s priorities.

His agenda never depended on a Republican Congress that, for most of two years, acted like an obstacle wearing an ally’s uniform. Chasing 218 House votes and 60 Senate votes for bills that never arrived consumed attention better spent governing. Victor Davis Hanson identified the opportunity within days of the results: a nominal majority of 53 senators can mean 53 private vetoes. Divided government can strip those vetoes of their bargaining value. (Read more.)

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The Sun Also Rises Over the Young Adult Group

The cultural and sexual revolutions have destroyed the old boundaries as well as the old codes of chivalry and etiquette, leaving so many young people rudderless. For centuries the parish church was the center of social integration; it is now another place of social isolation for some young believers. From To the Ends of the Earth:

In this way, Catholic social life risks becoming yet another extension of the broader status economy, subtly reinforcing the very hierarchies it claims to transcend. Cliques form. Certain people become the people you need to know. Certain events become the events you need to attend. Certain friend groups somehow begin functioning like a small country club with a rosary attached. Suddenly, a ministry designed to foster unity and belonging begins, paradoxically, to generate its own factions and divisions.

That is where Hemingway becomes useful. The characters in The Sun Also Rises are constantly together, but togetherness does not necessarily mean communion. They eat together, drink together, travel together, gossip about one another, become jealous of one another, sleep with one another, and repeatedly injure one another. Their social life is incredibly busy. Yet for all their activity, their lives remain marked by a profound emptiness.

Brett is perhaps the clearest example: she is beautiful, magnetic, desired by almost every man around her, and almost incapable of remaining still. There is always another romance, another city, another party, another possibility.

Jake loves her, but because of the wound he suffered in the war, their relationship can never become what either of them wants it to be, so their longing remains unresolved.

That ache sits underneath the entire novel. While our circumstances differ dramatically, the ache of unresolved longing is strikingly familiar. Modern Catholic young adults talk constantly about vocation, dating, marriage, community, intentionality, and discernment. Beneath all that language is often an extraordinarily simple desire: I want to be known. I want friends who actually know me; I want someone to love; I want my life to mean something; I want to know that I am not wasting these years.

There is nothing pathetic about these desires; they are, in fact, profoundly human. Yet when we fail to acknowledge these desires honestly, we begin to perform them instead, enacting a script rather than living a reality. (Read more.)

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The Body Is Not a Prison: Franciscan Spirituality and Modern Neo-Catharism

 

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

I was thinking about it all again today while looking at some of the Franciscan artworks from the 13th century. These are in a form that is thought by some art historians to have been popularised by the Church as an answer to the Catharist1 heresy, that was gaining ground in some parts of Italy at the time. Once you learn something about Catharism, you start to see similarities happening all around us, and you start to wonder what part of that Franciscan spirituality might be useful to us now.

It’s a popular pastime of revisionist modern historians to cast the Cathars and other medieval heretical movements as innocent, hobbitish hippies who just wanted to do their thing and be left alone by the wicked patriarchal oppressors in the Catholic Church. It can be eye-opening to learn what they were up to, the extreme consequences of Bad Ideas.

How could a good God have made a world containing suffering, decay and cruelty? The Cathars answered this ancient problem by reviving Dualism, separating God from creation and attributing the material world to an evil power. Some Cathar groups taught there were two eternal principles, two equal and opposed “gods”. Others said the evil creator of material reality was subordinate to the good, spiritual God. Either way, the main point is that material creation, including our bodies, are evil, stopping us having union with God.

This created the idea of a radical separation within man, between the material, bodily self and the spiritual self or soul. The spiritual element in the human person, they said, belonged to the higher, spiritual realm and salvation meant liberation from the captivity of material physicality. All sorts of things follow logically from this starting point. (Read more.)

 

My novel on the Cathars, HERE. How it was stolen and made into a film, HERE.

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The Perfect President Who Never Existed

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

President Reagan is considered by many to be the patron saint of modern American conservatism. Reagan believed in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. He also raised taxes, signed an immigration amnesty (he believed the Democrats were honorable), negotiated compromises on Social Security, presided over substantial increases in the national debt, and accepted government policies that would send some of today’s self-described constitutional conservatives into fits of apoplexy.

By the standards of ideological purity some demand of Trump, Reagan himself might be dismissed as insufficiently conservative. Apparently, the only acceptable conservative president is one who has never occupied the Oval Office.

Reagan also enjoyed a political advantage that no longer exists in any meaningful form. During the 1980s, conservative Democrats, particularly those from the South and rural America, frequently crossed party lines to support his agenda. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, yet he accomplished much of his legislative program through coalitions with Democrats who shared enough of his principles to recognize common objectives.

Those Reagan era conservative Democrats have largely disappeared from Congress, victims of the ideological sorting that has transformed both parties into increasingly homogeneous political organizations. Reagan governed in a political environment where disagreement did not automatically constitute treason against one’s party.

This brings us to Trump and the curious phenomenon of conservatives who appear to measure him against a president assembled entirely from their own political preferences. This imaginary president never compromises, never makes an unfortunate appointment, never says anything embarrassing, never signs imperfect legislation, and never exercises executive authority in a manner that offends their particular interpretation of constitutional government. He also never has to negotiate with Congress, deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, confront hostile courts, or win an election. Governing is remarkably easy when your presidency exists entirely between your ears.

President Reagan is considered by many to be the patron saint of modern American conservatism. Reagan believed in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. He also raised taxes, signed an immigration amnesty (he believed the Democrats were honorable), negotiated compromises on Social Security, presided over substantial increases in the national debt, and accepted government policies that would send some of today’s self-described constitutional conservatives into fits of apoplexy.

By the standards of ideological purity some demand of Trump, Reagan himself might be dismissed as insufficiently conservative. Apparently, the only acceptable conservative president is one who has never occupied the Oval Office.

Reagan also enjoyed a political advantage that no longer exists in any meaningful form. During the 1980s, conservative Democrats, particularly those from the South and rural America, frequently crossed party lines to support his agenda. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, yet he accomplished much of his legislative program through coalitions with Democrats who shared enough of his principles to recognize common objectives.

Those Reagan era conservative Democrats have largely disappeared from Congress, victims of the ideological sorting that has transformed both parties into increasingly homogeneous political organizations. Reagan governed in a political environment where disagreement did not automatically constitute treason against one’s party.

This brings us to Trump and the curious phenomenon of conservatives who appear to measure him against a president assembled entirely from their own political preferences. This imaginary president never compromises, never makes an unfortunate appointment, never says anything embarrassing, never signs imperfect legislation, and never exercises executive authority in a manner that offends their particular interpretation of constitutional government. He also never has to negotiate with Congress, deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, confront hostile courts, or win an election. Governing is remarkably easy when your presidency exists entirely between your ears.

President Reagan is considered by many to be the patron saint of modern American conservatism. Reagan believed in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. He also raised taxes, signed an immigration amnesty (he believed the Democrats were honorable), negotiated compromises on Social Security, presided over substantial increases in the national debt, and accepted government policies that would send some of today’s self-described constitutional conservatives into fits of apoplexy.

By the standards of ideological purity some demand of Trump, Reagan himself might be dismissed as insufficiently conservative. Apparently, the only acceptable conservative president is one who has never occupied the Oval Office.

Reagan also enjoyed a political advantage that no longer exists in any meaningful form. During the 1980s, conservative Democrats, particularly those from the South and rural America, frequently crossed party lines to support his agenda. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, yet he accomplished much of his legislative program through coalitions with Democrats who shared enough of his principles to recognize common objectives.

Those Reagan era conservative Democrats have largely disappeared from Congress, victims of the ideological sorting that has transformed both parties into increasingly homogeneous political organizations. Reagan governed in a political environment where disagreement did not automatically constitute treason against one’s party.

This brings us to Trump and the curious phenomenon of conservatives who appear to measure him against a president assembled entirely from their own political preferences. This imaginary president never compromises, never makes an unfortunate appointment, never says anything embarrassing, never signs imperfect legislation, and never exercises executive authority in a manner that offends their particular interpretation of constitutional government. He also never has to negotiate with Congress, deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, confront hostile courts, or win an election. Governing is remarkably easy when your presidency exists entirely between your ears.

President Reagan is considered by many to be the patron saint of modern American conservatism. Reagan believed in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. He also raised taxes, signed an immigration amnesty (he believed the Democrats were honorable), negotiated compromises on Social Security, presided over substantial increases in the national debt, and accepted government policies that would send some of today’s self-described constitutional conservatives into fits of apoplexy.

By the standards of ideological purity some demand of Trump, Reagan himself might be dismissed as insufficiently conservative. Apparently, the only acceptable conservative president is one who has never occupied the Oval Office.

Reagan also enjoyed a political advantage that no longer exists in any meaningful form. During the 1980s, conservative Democrats, particularly those from the South and rural America, frequently crossed party lines to support his agenda. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, yet he accomplished much of his legislative program through coalitions with Democrats who shared enough of his principles to recognize common objectives.

Those Reagan era conservative Democrats have largely disappeared from Congress, victims of the ideological sorting that has transformed both parties into increasingly homogeneous political organizations. Reagan governed in a political environment where disagreement did not automatically constitute treason against one’s party.

This brings us to Trump and the curious phenomenon of conservatives who appear to measure him against a president assembled entirely from their own political preferences. This imaginary president never compromises, never makes an unfortunate appointment, never says anything embarrassing, never signs imperfect legislation, and never exercises executive authority in a manner that offends their particular interpretation of constitutional government. He also never has to negotiate with Congress, deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, confront hostile courts, or win an election. Governing is remarkably easy when your presidency exists entirely between your ears. (Read more.)

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UK Cathedral Could Be First to Shut in Church of England’s history - Opened in 1108

 From Express:

A UK cathedral dating back to 1108 is at risk of closure due to financial challenges. The cathedral's dean has warned it will run out of money next year and faces becoming the first to shut in the Church of England's 492-year history. He admitted that if "something major doesn't change", it will be forced to close due to a funding deficit required for urgent structural repairs. Southwell Minster, built during the reign of Henry I, serves as the cathedral church for the Anglican Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. It is known for its Norman and Gothic architecture, as well as its world-renowned Leaves of Southwell, which are detailed 13th-century stone carvings located in its Chapter House. (Read more.)

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