For more than a century, the teaching authority of the Catholic Church has attempted to walk along with the modern world, criticizing what is bad and praising what is good. Counsels of Imperfection described the current state of that fairly bumpy journey. The book is divided into 11 chapters. First comes an introduction to ever-changing modernity and the unchanging Christian understanding of human nature and society. Then come two chapters on economics, including a careful delineation of the Catholic response, past and present, to socialism and capitalism. The next topic is government, with one chapter on Church and State, another on War, and a third that runs quickly through democracy, human rights, the welfare state, crimes and punishments (including the death penalty), anti-Semitism, and migration. Counsels of Imperfection then dedicates two chapters on ecology, including an enthusiastic analysis of Francis’s “technocratic paradigm”. The last topic is the family teaching, which presents the social aspects of the Church’s sexual teaching. A brief concluding chapter looks at the teaching’s changing response to the modern world, and at the ambiguous Catholic appreciation of the modern idea of progress. For each topic, Counsels of Imperfection provides biblical, historical and a broad philosophical background. Thomas Aquinas appears often, but so does G. W. F Hegel. The goal is not only to explain what the Church really says, but also how it got to its current position and who it is arguing with. In the spirit of a doctrine that is always in development, Counsels of Imperfection points out both strong-points and imperfections in the teaching. The book should be of interest to specialists in Catholic Social Teaching, but its main audience is curious newcomers, especially people who do not want to be told that there are simple Catholic answers to the complicated problems of the modern world.

Discover the innermost thoughts and reflections of Samuel Butler, a prominent figure in English literature, through his personal notebooks. Edited by Henry Festing Jones, this collection offers a rare glimpse into Butler's creative process, musings, and observations on life. From philosophical ponderings to candid insights, these pages reveal the mind of a literary genius, making it an invaluable resource for scholars and fans of Butler's work.

Olivier-Thomas Venard's Thomas d'Aquin poète théologien trilogy, an in depth analysis of the scripture of St. Thomas Aquinas, is translated for a new audience in this streamlined anthology. Featuring selections from all three books in the trilogy, chosen in accordance with Venard's direction and discernment, it introduces not only arguments pertinent to the theme of this volume, but an invitation to explore the full breadth of Venard's work. Concentrating on the subjects of scripture, theology and literature, language as a theological question and the word of God, Murphy and Oakes capture the scope and energy of Venard's trilogy while collating many of its key passages. Ranging from the themes of a poetic gospel and Christology to the Thomist theories of semiology and the metaphysics of the Word, this volume sets scholars on the path to a deeper understanding of Aquinas's systematic theology.

Jovinianus, about whom little more is known than what is to be found in Jerome's treatise, published a Latin treatise outlining several opinions: That a virgin is no better, as such, than a wife in the sight of God. Abstinence from food is no better than a thankful partaking of food. A person baptized with the Spirit as well as with water cannot sin. All sins are equal. There is but one grade of punishment and one of reward in the future state. In addition to this, he held the birth of Jesus Christ to have been by a "true parturition," and was thus refuting the orthodoxy of the time, according to which, the infant Jesus passed through the walls of the womb as his Resurrection body afterwards did, out of the tomb or through closed doors.