RadTrad Thomist

On April 7, 2009, upon the initiative of the leader of the Green Party of the Paris City Council, the Socialist mayor of the 18th Section of Paris, and the Minister of Interior Affairs, the Paris City Council voted in favor of a request to the Chief Mayor of Paris to forbid the Traditional Latin Mass celebrated each year for twenty years on Montmartre Hill on Pentecost Monday as the final event of the Chartres-Paris Pilgrimage. This pilgrimage was organized by Archbishop Lefebvre, Founder of the Society of St. Pius X, in 1970. A decree from Bertrand Delance, the Chief Mayor of Paris, is expected soon. On the vote the Rightist Party abstained, and the Centre split. The arguments presented before the vote challenged the holding of the event because "this Christian sect preaches the return of Christ the King."

WORK AND PROPERTY An Afterword to Quadragesimo Anno By: John Sharpe Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists. —G. K. Chesterton The Uses of Diversity, 1921 THOSE FORTUNATE ENOUGH to be acquainted with the work of Southern Catholic novelist Walker Percy might be surprised to learn that it was not for his novels that Percy thought he would be most remembered. It was rather for his “semiotics”: his philosophical and scientific work on man’s language and use of symbols, not only in mundane communication, but also in the most profound intellectual acts of comprehension that have as their object the deepest realities of the universe. At its most radical, Percy’s work on language and symbolism deals with the essential nature of the created human intellect’s ability to penetrate – in however limited a way – to the depths of metaphysical reality. It is due to the profound significance of this question for all of reality as man confronts it that Catholics r...

Rendering Unto Caesar by Patrick J. Buchanan April 17, 2009 At the request of the White House, Georgetown University covered up all the symbols in Gaston Hall, before the Great Man spoke, including IHS, the millennia-old monogram for the name of Jesus Christ. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, had adopted the monogram in his seal and it became an emblem of the Jesuit order. When it comes to rendering unto Caesar, Georgetown is not going to be outshone by Notre Dame, which stole a march by offering the nation's avatar of abortion a doctorate of laws degree, honoris causa. Actually, it is regrettable the IHS in Gaston Hall was not covered up in shame the first week of Lent. For that week Georgetown's feminist and homosexual clubs, such as GU Pride, put on a Gomorrah festival about alternative lifestyles called "Sex Positive Week." Monday, according to The Newman Club, featured a speaker for Black Rose, which "provides a forum for many different ex...

Book Review of Amintore Fanfani’s Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism Publisher: I.H.S. Press Reviewed by: Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski “The present capitalist system is an immense cosmos, into which the individual is born and which is presented to him, at least in so far as he is an individual, as an immutable environment in which he must live.” This quotation from Max Weber’s highly acclaimed book The Protestant Work Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism, is fittingly cited prior to any discussion of the, newly republished, book by Amintore Fanfani entitled Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism. In the above quotation, Weber recognized the totalitarian nature of Capitalism and the social, economic, and ideological absolute, which Capitalism is. During the 1930s, when Fanfani, an internationally acclaimed Italian Catholic economist, wrote his work, Capitalism was recognized as such, therefore, provoking a good or bad absolute response on the part of those who wished to challenge thi...