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  1. Thomas Aquinas

Doubting Thomas

H. L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Puritans, and Calvinists more generally, have a reputation for harboring an ungenerous suspicion of even the most innocent delights as sinfulness in disguise. Though this reputation is not . . . . Continue Reading »

Thomistic Economics

Economists make a point of speaking in conditionals, not categoricals. They never just say: “Do this!” They say: “Do this, if you want that. If these are your ends, this is what you must do to secure them. As for those ends themselves, they’re up to you.” This modesty is, paradoxically, . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

In The River of the Immaculate Conception, James Matthew Wilson confirms his vocation as a public poet. Commissioned by the Benedict XVI Institute, this poem sequence of seven parts leads us through the lives of St. Juan Diego, St. ­Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Père Marquette, with interludes on . . . . Continue Reading »

Soul Proprietor

In the history of Western thought, two conceptions of the soul have competed for dominance, one associated with Plato and the other with Aristotle. For the Platonist, your soul is the real you, and your body merely a vehicle to which it is temporarily attached—indeed, your body is a kind of . . . . Continue Reading »

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