Editors' introduction: Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, the respected thomist theologian of the twentieth century, needs little introduction. He addresses an extraordinary range of topics in his writings. He was a teacher at the Angelicum university in Rome, where his students included two very different figures: Mgr Joseph Clifford Fenton and Karol Józef Wojtyła, later John …
Continue reading Garrigou-Lagrange on the study of theology and the interior life
Introduction In the first three parts of this series, we have seen that: The Catholic Church is a perpetually visible society which must therefore consist of members whose identity is discernible by the senses;The sacrament of baptism is necessary and sufficient for constituting an individual as both a subject and a member of the Catholic …
Continue reading Membership of the Church: Part IV – Schism & Excommunication
“Have they forgotten who these Romans are, whose faith was praised by the Apostle himself, and in whom 'error cannot find access’?”St Cyprian [1] This essay continues my response to Professor Roberto de Mattei’s call for the Catholic world to “unite […] on the basis of the Tradition of the Church.”[2] Throughout this series I …
Continue reading Pope Honorius and Roberto de Mattei IIIb: Magisterial Heresy? Trust in the Church
"Il n’est pas possible que l’Église perde l’une de ses quatre marques. L’Église Catholique Romaine existera jusqu’à la fin du monde, en gardant sa nature essentielle et sa constitution, y compris son unité." Nous sommes heureux de présenter à nos lecteurs la version française de la première partie de notre Étude sur l'Unité visible de …
“How many examples are there in theology of problems that seem unsolvable, simply because they start from badly-posed questions.” Dom Paul Nau OSB[1] This essay continues my response to Professor Roberto de Mattei’s call for Catholics to rally around the Church’s tradition and to form a “new more compact front for orthodoxy.”[2] To this end, …
Continue reading Pope Honorius and Roberto de Mattei IIIa: Magisterial Heresy? The Rule of Faith
Chapter III of Vacant's work is long, and so the WM Review is publishing it in two parts. This first part addresses the express teaching of the ordinary magisterium, and the second will consider its implicit and tacit teaching acts. This part also describes the ways in which the Church makes use of natural sciences …
In this part we will examine the second condition of membership, that of public profession of the true faith. In the part one of this series, we saw that the Catholic Church could be defined as: “The society of men who, by their profession of the same faith, and by their partaking of the same sacraments, make …
Continue reading Membership of the Church: Part III – public profession of the true faith