"the loss of a geocentric cosmology of nested crystalline spheres was not in any intrinsic way a fundamental break in human self-understanding"

     "The interesting and complex story that runs through the lives of Bruno, Galileo, and their learned contemporaries is not, as Rowland commendably knows, some science-versus-religion showdown still asserted today among historically ignorant scientistic ideologues.  But neither is it her repression-versus-liberation dichotomy.  It is rather the widespread inability of deeply Aristotelianized contemporaries, simultaneously aghast at the doctrinal, social, and political divisions within Christendom, to grasp the independence of traditional Christian theology from cosmology as such, and thus the compatibility of that theology with different cosmological models.  This is evident from the ways in which later Christians have grasped this distinction:  the universe's infinite spaces may have terrified Pascal in the mid-17th century, but they did not inhibit his ardent faith and devotion.  Nor do they prevent anyone today from accepting all of the Catholic Church's teachings, along with all scientific findings, provided one holds a traditional theology of creation.  God is love whether the universe is Ptolemaic or infinite.  It turns out that Bruno's moral and theological assertions are entirely independent of the vast universe he posited.  And that means that the loss of a geocentric cosmology of nested crystalline spheres was not in any intrinsic way a fundamental break in human self-understanding, whatever its continuing convenience for Western Civ lecturers."

     Brad S. Gregory, reviewing Giordano Bruno:  philosopher/heretic, by Ingrid D. Rowland, in "Giordano Bruno Superstar," Books and culture:  a Christian review 18, no. 2 (March/April 2012):   21 (19-21).  The reference to God's being love is a second slap at Rowland's comment that "[i]t would take another four hundred years for a pope to issue an encyclical that began with the words 'Deus caritas est'".

"How is it that a Jewish atheist is not thought to have left the Jewish people, but the Jewish Catholic has?"

     Hadley Arkes, in Marcia Segelstein, "Courage and conversion:  an interview with Hadley Arkes," Touchstone 24, no. 2 (March/April 2011).

"although they had borrowed the letter of the law, they could not carry over the spirit that gives it life."

     "The Constitution of the United States resembles those fine creations of human industry which ensure wealth and renown to their inventors, but which are profitless in other hands.  This truth is exemplified by the condition of Mexico at the present time.  The Mexicans were desirous of establishing a federal system, and they took the Federal Constitution of their neighbors, the Anglo-Americans, as their model and copied it almost entirely.  But although they had borrowed the letter of the law, they could not carry over the spirit that gives it life.  They were involved in ceaseless embarrassments by the mechanism of their dual government; the sovereignty of the states and that of the Union perpetually exceeded their respective privileges and came into collision; and to the present day Mexico is alternately the victim of anarchy and the slave of military despotism."

     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I (1835).I.VIII.22 ("Why the federal system is not practicable for all nations, and how the Anglo-Americans were enabled to adopt it"), trans. Henry Reeve, with revisions by Francis Bowen and Phillips Bradley ((New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), vol. 1, p. 167; Œuvres, ed. André Jardin (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), II (De la démocratie en Amérique), ed. Jean-Claude Lamberti and James T. Schleifer (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1992), 186-187.  This, however, would not be true today, or at least certainly not of me:

"I have never been more struck by the good sense and the practical judgment of the Americans than in the manner in which they elude the numberless difficulties resulting from their Federal Constitution.  I scarcely ever met with a plain American citizen who could not distinguish with surprising facility the obligations created by the laws of Congress from those created by the laws of his own state, and who, after having discriminated between the matters that come under the cognizance of the Union and those which the local legislature is competent to regulate, could not point out the exact limit of the separate jurisdictions of the Federal courts and the tribunals of the state" (167).

"A false notion which is clear and precise will always have more power in the world than a true principle which is obscure or involved."

     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I (1835).I.VIII.22 ("Why the federal system is not practicable for all nations, and how the Anglo-Americans were enabled to adopt it"), trans. Henry Reeve, with revisions by Francis Bowen and Phillips Bradley ((New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), vol. 1, p. 166; Œuvres, ed. André Jardin (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), II (De la démocratie en Amérique), ed. Jean-Claude Lamberti and James T. Schleifer (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1992), 185.

"Great wealth and extreme poverty, capital cities of large size, a lax morality, selfishness, and antagonism of interests are the dangers which almost inevitably arise from the magnitude of states."

     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I (1835).I.VIII.21 ("Advantages of the federal system in general, and its special utility in America"), trans. Henry Reeve, with revisions by Francis Bowen and Phillips Bradley ((New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), vol. 1, p. 161); Œuvres, ed. André Jardin (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), II (De la démocratie en Amérique), ed. Jean-Claude Lamberti and James T. Schleifer (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1992), 179-180.

The "conclusion that [the] death [penalty] is irrelevant to rehabilitation . . . stems from changes in our understanding of rehabilitation."

     "Courts and scholars have long concluded that [rehabilitation] does not [apply in the capital context] — that death is completely irrelevant to rehabilitation. Yet, historically, the death penalty in this country has been imposed in large part to induce the rehabilitation of offenders’ characters. Additionally, there are tales of the worst offenders transforming their characters when they are facing death, and several legal doctrines are based on the idea that death spurs rehabilitation.
     "Courts’ and scholars’ conclusion that death is irrelevant to rehabilitation likely stems from changes in our understanding of rehabilitation. While it was once understood as referring to an offender’s character transformation, references to rehabilitation now often focus on offenders’ direct impacts on society. This has the effect, though, of distracting from the humanness of the worst offenders and consequently not providing them with true opportunities to transform their characters — a denial which challenges the Eighth Amendment’s focus on respecting the human dignity of the condemned."

     Meghan J. Ryan, Abstract to "Death and rehabilitation" (August 11, 2012). SMU Dedman School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2128175.  Hat tip:  Marc DeGirolami at Mirror of justice.  I have not read the paper itself.

Be not afraid!

"Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power[!]  Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ's power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind[!]  Do not be afraid[!]  Open wide the doors for Christ[!] To his saving power open the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid.[!]  Christ knows 'what is in man'. He alone knows it[!]"

     Pope John Paul II, "Homily of His Holiness John Paul II for the inauguration of his pontificate" 5, St. Peter's Square, Sunday, 22 October 1978.

     "Non abbiate paura!"