Lord, have mercy

"suppose a Catholic puts such an emphasis on Christ’s mercy that he takes it to imply that someone in an adulterous second 'marriage' can be absolved and receive Holy Communion despite having no intention of refraining from adulterous acts in the future.  This would manifestly be a heresy in the original sense cited by the Dictionary, and in the sense explained by Belloc.  For it would both be an obvious departure from two millennia of common doctrine, and would involve a distortion of the notion of mercy, turning it into a kind of license to sin.
     "Indeed, it would be an especially perverse distortion, since it would, in the name of Christ’s teaching on mercy, reverse Christ’s teaching against divorce and remarriage – a teaching that Christ enjoined on his disciples precisely in the name of mercy!  For it was, Christ said, only because of their 'hardness of heart' that the Israelites were permitted by Moses to divorce, a permission he explicitly cancelled.  So, a permissive attitude toward divorce and remarriage is the very last thing one could justify in the name of Christ’s understanding of mercy."

     Edward Feser, "Popes, heresy, and papal heresy," Edward Feser, Saturday, May 25, 2019.

Finitude gives us time to think

     "In transhumanism as we experience it and as it continues to emerge [(se profile)], the notion of time is turned upside down.  Longevity, i.e. the promised 'immortality', causes the horizon of death to recede or modifies it.  That much is obvious.  Now, death and suffering are essential to [the abundance of] life:  addressing our finitude clearly forces us to live and to choose, [and] therefore, for lack of time [(par manque de temps)], to optimize our life-choices.  This same lack of time is what makes it possible for us to avoid ennui and monotony, and, in the end, give meaning to life.  One can transcend death by leaving something to others, by giving life, or by enjoying [(vivant)] an experience. . . .  In transhumanism death is no longer seen as a natural event, but is medicalized, seen as an illness to be vanquished.  It’s the same with senescence.  These questions are typical of the singularity and of the reification of the human.
     "Paradoxically, faced with the promised eternity, transhumanism lacks time, lives in [a kind of] immediacy [(l'immédiateté)], and pursues it [(et la course, i.e. this immediacy)] via [constant] innovation [(aux innovations)].  Time is literally crushed [(écrasé) down into the immediacy of the present moment].  In fact, the finitude of the human being forces him to manage the time that he has to live, [and] the choices imposed on him cannot be made without a minimum of [critical] distance [(recul)] and reflection.  Finitude gives us time to think [(La finitude nous donne le temps de penser)].  Eternity, in the sense of [mere] longevity [(ou la longévité)], doesn’t have this capacity, for it is lived in [a kind of] immediacy.  Consumerism and ennui are accentuated in a roboticized society in which the human being is increasingly deprived of his capacity for meaningful action [(d’agir et de faire, to act and to do)]."

     Vincens Hubac, "Science sans conscience:  le transhumanisme est-il un humanism?," Foi et vie 114, no. 4 (décembre 2014):  23 (9-26).

An intellectual (and spiritual) apprenticeship

     "Much of the work of post-Cartesian, modern philosophers in epistemology was driven by worries about skeptical objections that we do not know much, or most, or even all of what we think we know. . . .  some of these philosophers formulated a foundationalist theory of justification which could, they hoped, overcome skeptical worries by admitting as foundational only beliefs which were indubitable, or at least sufficiently obvious and secure, so they could withstand skeptical objections, and other beliefs could be justified on the basis of these.  A characteristic of these sorts of views was the stipulation that the foundational beliefs be evident to the autonomous investigation of the rational subject, for any reliance on authority or other mediating presuppositions, they believed, would be open to skeptical challenge, and assent to them would not be fully rational.
". . . some have interpreted . . . Aquinas’s foundationalism along the lines of this modern tradition.  But although Aquinas recognizes that certain truths may be per se nota ('known of themselves,' i.e. self-evident) to us, the goal of inquiry is that we may come to grasp what is per se notum in itself, and reason to conclusions from these truths.  We can only do this, however, by undertaking a period of training and discipline under the guidance of those more accomplished with the field, so that we may acquire the intellectual habits to apprehend what is per se notum as such.  The concern here is not with skeptical worries and the focus is not on autonomous, individualistic investigation; it is rather with the sort of intellectual formation required so that what is most intelligible in itself becomes most intelligible to us.
     "Central to our interpretation of Aquinas is [therefore] the notion of apprenticeship. . . ."

     John I. Jenkins, Knowledge and faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1997), 49.  I have not read this book, but rather stumbled on this passage while spot-checking the claim that "what is the most intelligible in itself is also what is the least [intelligible] for us" (Philippe-Marie Margelidon, "Questions de Christologie en théologie Thomiste au XXIe siècle," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 119, no. 1 (Jan-Mar 2018), 103n30 (91-124)), which didn't seem quite right taken in isolation.

The logos asarkos is none other than the logos incarnandus

"But that then also means that there is no Logos as such, no Logos in and for himself.  An 'in and for himself' which lacks the determination for incarnation is simply a myth.  But here I must immediately add [that] to say this much is not to reject the concept of a logos asarkos.  The Logos is united to a human person in time, and in fact 'late in time', as Charles Wesley so nicely put it.  And he does not bring his humanity into this world, he does not bring his body down from heaven.  The man Jesus is conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin precisely for the union.  Or, better, to borrow I. A. Dorner’s phrase, 'for this uniting'.  So, yes, the Logos is asarkos before he is made by the Holy Spirit to be ensarkos.  Moreover, one cannot erase the concept of a logos asarkos without completely collapsing God into the history of the man Jesus, without erasing the Creator-creature distinction, without surrendering the otherness of God from the world.  I mention all of this because I have, on a number of occasions, been accused of rejecting the concept of a logos asarkos. . . .  But that is a charge that is completely without foundation.  I have from the beginning of the debate . . . quite explicitly affirmed the existence of a logos asarkos.  But I have done so, please note, in the form of a logos incarnandus, by which I mean the Logos who is eternally determined for incarnation, but who has yet to be united to the man Jesus in the womb of the Virgin.  Thus, the issue for me has never been whether, prior to incarnation, there is such a thing as the logos asarkos.  The issue has always had to do with his identity. . . . his identity in eternity and his identity in time are the same:  Jesus Christ."

     Bruce Lindley McCormack, "The processions contain the missions:  reconstructing the doctrine of an immanent Trinity," Kantzer Lecture no. 6, Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 3 October 2011, 37:43 and following.  There is much more of significance after this point.  (I'm not yet taking a side in this debate, by the way; just noting the precision here.)

'You attacked reason. . . . It's bad theology.'

     'How in blazes do you know all these horrors?' cried Flambeau.
     The shadow of a smile crossed the round, simple face of his clerical opponent.
     'Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose,' he said.  'Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?  But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest.'
     'What?' asked the thief, almost gaping.
     'You attacked reason,' said Father Brown.  'It's bad theology.'

     G. K. Chesterton, "The blue cross," The innocence of Father Brown (1910), Penguin complete Father Brown (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England:  Penguin Books Ltd, 1981), 23.

“a humanity that no longer dares to believe that there is anyone who is mindful of it.”

"une humanité qui n’ose plus croire que quelqu’un pense à elle."

     Bishop Jean-Pierrre Batut, alluding to Ps 8, in his Postface to «Qu’est ce que l’homme ? Éléments d’anthropologie catholique», a document promulgated by the bishops of the Conseil permanent of the Catholic Church in France on [date].

"Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night": Augustine or Pseudo-Augustine?

Koninlijk Bibliotheek,
76 F5 fol. 12v sc. 2B:
The temptation of Christ:
four angels minister to Christ

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for thy love’s sake.  Amen.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.  Amen.

     Book of common prayer (New York:  Church Publishing Inc., 1979), 71, 124, 134.  According to Hatchett, "Saint Augustine of Hippo is the source for [this,] which is also the first of the intercessions of Compline (p. 134)" (Commentary on the American prayer book (The Seabury Press, 1980), 143).  And that is who Fox attributes it to on p. 161 of her Chain of prayer across the ages (Toronto:  Bell and Cockburn, 1913- ), behind which I have yet to find it, though the phrase "wake, or watch, or weep" does occur here in 1906.  Fox:

Watch, Thou, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep to-night, and give Thine angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend Thy sick ones, O Lord Christ.  Rest Thy weary ones.  Bless Thy dying ones.  Soothe Thy suffering ones.  Pity Thine afflicted ones.  Shield Thy joyous ones.  And all, for Thy Love’s sake.  Amen.

But:  I have yet to find it in St. Augustine, having searched both the 3rd (and therefore admittedly incomplete) edition of the Works of Saint Augustine (WSA) in Past Masters on those terms least likely to vary in translation (weep, angels, sleep, sick, dying, suffering, afflicted, etc., and variants), and CAG (which should be complete), also in Past Masters, on angel* within 20 words of (dormi* (dormiunt, dormien*, etc.) OR quiesc*), and variants on that (Ps 90:11-12 Vulgate (though St. Augustine may have used the Old Latin), by the way:  "angelis suis mandabit de te ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis in manibus portabunt te ne forte offendat ad lapidem pes tuus"; so angelis tuis, angelos tuos, etc.).

     If memory serves, this is the first time I've ever encountered something iffy in Hatchett.

     In 1919 it appeared as an element in a Church of England (?) litany as follows:

     Watch, dear Lord, with those who watch, or wake, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, rest the weary, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, bless the dying\

(The order of divine service for public worship: the administration of the sacraments and other rites and ceremonies and a selection from the daily offices compiled from ancient and modern devotions ; together with an abridged and revised Psalter and canticles pointed for chanting, ed. W. E. Orchard (London:  Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1919), 54, whose "Sources and Acknowledgements" cites Fox (above), among others).