Not that I remember her in great detail, but I know enough that she was a spectacular athlete. Now she publicly reveals that she was using performance enhancing drugs and she willfully presents herself to return it all. Maybe she had no other choice but to come out with the truth, but her public confession is pretty impressive. She wept and begged for forgiveness and even stated:
“I have asked Almighty God for forgiveness . . . because of my actions, I am retiring from the sport of track and field, a sport that I deeply love,”.
This line about asking God forgiveness was left in most of the European weeklies and some were deeply cynical about her confession.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Colloque sur la sécularisation: Prêtres séculiers dans une société sécularisée
Mardi le 6 novembre 2007
Fr. Thomas Dowd
Office for Pastoral Per-sonnel of the Archdio-cese of Montreal
Fr. Thomas Dowd
Office for Pastoral Per-sonnel of the Archdio-cese of Montreal
Mgr Mariano Fazio, recteur de l’Université pontifi-cale de la Sainte Croix, Rome
"Sécularisation et christianisme : défis et possibilités" par Mgr Mariano Fazio
"The Priest in a Secularized Society" by Fr. Thomas Dowd
Horaire du mardi le 6 novembre 2007
• 10 h arrivée
• 10 h 30 conférence par Mgr Mariano Fazio
• 11 h 30 conférence par Father Thomas Dowd
• 12 h 30 dîner, échanges, temps libre
• 15 h 30 deuxième conférence par Mgr Mariano Fazio
• 17 h prière du soir
• 18 h souper, échanges, départ
Frais d’inscription 65$
Le Cercle sacerdotal de Montréal est une initiative des prêtres du clergé séculier appartenant à la Société sacerdotale de la Sainte Croix. Son but consiste à encourager et à promouvoir la vie spirituelle et la formation permanente de prêtres et séminar-istes, par des conférences, séminaires et retraites spirituelles.
Le Manoir de Beaujeu se trouve au 508, Chemin du Fleuve, Coteau-du-Lac (Qc) J0P 1B0 (Sortie 19 de l’autoroute 20 ouest).
www.cerclesacerdotal.ca
Informations: 514-289-9362
"Sécularisation et christianisme : défis et possibilités" par Mgr Mariano Fazio
"The Priest in a Secularized Society" by Fr. Thomas Dowd
Horaire du mardi le 6 novembre 2007
• 10 h arrivée
• 10 h 30 conférence par Mgr Mariano Fazio
• 11 h 30 conférence par Father Thomas Dowd
• 12 h 30 dîner, échanges, temps libre
• 15 h 30 deuxième conférence par Mgr Mariano Fazio
• 17 h prière du soir
• 18 h souper, échanges, départ
Frais d’inscription 65$
Le Cercle sacerdotal de Montréal est une initiative des prêtres du clergé séculier appartenant à la Société sacerdotale de la Sainte Croix. Son but consiste à encourager et à promouvoir la vie spirituelle et la formation permanente de prêtres et séminar-istes, par des conférences, séminaires et retraites spirituelles.
Le Manoir de Beaujeu se trouve au 508, Chemin du Fleuve, Coteau-du-Lac (Qc) J0P 1B0 (Sortie 19 de l’autoroute 20 ouest).
www.cerclesacerdotal.ca
Informations: 514-289-9362
Sunday, September 23, 2007
The Temperament God gave you
Imagine, sirens begin to whirl behind you and you realise that a police car is pulling you over. You think:
-His radar gun couldn't possibly be correct. I was hardly going over the speed limit. The cars in front of me were speeding.
-Oh, no! I've heard of people getting arrested for this!
-Was I driving fast? What's the speed limit on this road, anyway?
-Do I have my wallet? And where did I put the car registration!?
Different responses to the same situation; the first is typical of the choleric temperament, the second of the melancholic, the third the sanguine, and the fourth, the phlegmatic. Now which one do you fit in?
Here is a book that can be a huge help to figure this out in yourself and in others. Art and Larrain Bennett provide a fascinating outline of the four classic temperments already identified centuries ago by Aristotle: choleric, sanguine, melancholic and phlegmatic. Everyone is born with one of these basic tendencies, and will always react in accord with this hard-wired disposition. Though one can change and acquire dominion over oneself, that basic tendency will always be there, ingrained in us like our DNA. I found the descriptions of each temperament very illuminating; one can see that the book is clearly the result of many years of thought and experience. I highly recommend this work to anyone involved in the spiritual direction of souls or anybody who wants to come to have more dominion over his own temperament. Which is everybody. There is a great test at the end to help you figure out your own temperament. It is published by Sophia Press
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Aquinas Talks About Being
For a first post I'm going to have to give you a long and tough one, but think about it, if you make it through this, there will be nothing that can stop you in the future... Teaching a metaphysics course this summer at the Manoir de Beaujeu forced me to think seriously about being and the transcendentals hovering around it. Metaphysics is the ground on which any philosophical inquiry rests. If this ground is not stable, the whole building will totter, no matter how beautifully it might be adorned. Here is an essential text that can solidify your foundations.
Thomas Aquinas: On Being and Essence
(DE ENTE Et ESSENTIA)
Prologue
A small error at the outset can lead to great errors in the final conclusions, as the Philosopher says in I De Caelo et Mundo cap. 5 (271b8-13), and thus, since being and essence are the things first conceived of by the intellect, as Avicenna says in Metaphysicae I, cap. 6, in order to avoid errors arising from ignorance about these two things, we should resolve the difficulties surrounding them by explaining what the terms being and essence each signify and by showing how each may be found in various things and how each is related to the logical intentions of genus, species, and difference.
Since we ought to acquire knowledge of simple things from composite ones and come to know the prior from the posterior, in instructing beginners we should begin with what is easier, and so we shall begin with the signification of being and proceed from there to the signification of essence.
Chapter 1
As the Philosopher says in V Metaphysicae cap. 7 (1017a22-35), being has two senses. In one sense, being signifies that which is divided into the ten categories; in another sense, that which signifies the truth of propositions. The difference between these is that, in the second sense, anything can be called a being about which an affirmative proposition can be formed, even if the thing posits nothing in reality. In this way, privations and negations are called beings, as when we say that affirmation is opposed to negation, or that blindness is in the eye. But in the first sense, nothing can be called a being unless it posits something in reality, and thus in this first sense blindness and similar things are not beings.
The term essence is not taken from being in the second sense, for in this sense some things are called beings that have no essence, as is clear with privations. Rather, the term essence is taken from being in the first sense. Thus in Metaphysicae V, com. 14, the Commentator explains the cited text from Aristotle by saying that being, in the first sense, is what signifies the essence of a thing. And since, as said above, being in this sense is divided into the ten categories, essence signifies something common to all natures through which the various beings are placed in the various genera and species, as humanity is the essence of man, and so on.
Since that through which a thing is constituted in its proper genus or species is what is signified by the definition indicating what the thing is, philosophers introduced the term quiddity to mean the same as the term essence; and this is the same thing that the Philosopher frequently terms what it is to be a thing, that is, that through which something has being as a particular kind of thing. Essence is also called form, for the certitude of every thing is signified through its form, as Avicenna says in his Metaphysicae I, cap. 6. The same thing is also called nature, taking nature in the first of the four senses that Boethius distinguishes in his book De Persona et Duabus Naturis cap. 1 (PL 64, 1341B), in the sense, in other words, that nature is what we call everything that can in any way be captured by the intellect, for a thing is not intelligible except through its definition and essence. And so the Philosopher says in V Metaphysicae cap. 4 (1014b36) that every substance is a nature. But the term nature used in this way seems to signify the essence of a thing as it is ordered to the proper operation of the thing, for no thing is without its proper operation. The term quiddity, surely, is taken from the fact that this is what is signified by the definition. But the same thing is called essence because the being has existence through it and in it.
But because being is absolutely and primarily said of substances, and only secondarily and in a certain sense said of accidents, essence too is properly and truly in substances and is in accidents only in a certain way and in a certain sense. Now some substances are simple and some are composite, and essence is in both, though in the simple substances in a truer and more noble way, as these have existence in a nobler way: indeed, the simple substances are the cause of the composite ones, or at least this is true with respect to the first simple substance, which is God. But because the essences of these substances are more hidden from us, we ought to begin with the essences of composite substances, as learning is easier when we begin with the easier things.
This text is part of the Internet Medieval Source Book. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history.
The rest of this text can be found
here.
Translation © 1997 by Robert T. Miller
Paul Halsall October 1997 halsall@murray.fordham.edu
Thomas Aquinas: On Being and Essence
(DE ENTE Et ESSENTIA)
Prologue
A small error at the outset can lead to great errors in the final conclusions, as the Philosopher says in I De Caelo et Mundo cap. 5 (271b8-13), and thus, since being and essence are the things first conceived of by the intellect, as Avicenna says in Metaphysicae I, cap. 6, in order to avoid errors arising from ignorance about these two things, we should resolve the difficulties surrounding them by explaining what the terms being and essence each signify and by showing how each may be found in various things and how each is related to the logical intentions of genus, species, and difference.
Since we ought to acquire knowledge of simple things from composite ones and come to know the prior from the posterior, in instructing beginners we should begin with what is easier, and so we shall begin with the signification of being and proceed from there to the signification of essence.
Chapter 1
As the Philosopher says in V Metaphysicae cap. 7 (1017a22-35), being has two senses. In one sense, being signifies that which is divided into the ten categories; in another sense, that which signifies the truth of propositions. The difference between these is that, in the second sense, anything can be called a being about which an affirmative proposition can be formed, even if the thing posits nothing in reality. In this way, privations and negations are called beings, as when we say that affirmation is opposed to negation, or that blindness is in the eye. But in the first sense, nothing can be called a being unless it posits something in reality, and thus in this first sense blindness and similar things are not beings.
The term essence is not taken from being in the second sense, for in this sense some things are called beings that have no essence, as is clear with privations. Rather, the term essence is taken from being in the first sense. Thus in Metaphysicae V, com. 14, the Commentator explains the cited text from Aristotle by saying that being, in the first sense, is what signifies the essence of a thing. And since, as said above, being in this sense is divided into the ten categories, essence signifies something common to all natures through which the various beings are placed in the various genera and species, as humanity is the essence of man, and so on.
Since that through which a thing is constituted in its proper genus or species is what is signified by the definition indicating what the thing is, philosophers introduced the term quiddity to mean the same as the term essence; and this is the same thing that the Philosopher frequently terms what it is to be a thing, that is, that through which something has being as a particular kind of thing. Essence is also called form, for the certitude of every thing is signified through its form, as Avicenna says in his Metaphysicae I, cap. 6. The same thing is also called nature, taking nature in the first of the four senses that Boethius distinguishes in his book De Persona et Duabus Naturis cap. 1 (PL 64, 1341B), in the sense, in other words, that nature is what we call everything that can in any way be captured by the intellect, for a thing is not intelligible except through its definition and essence. And so the Philosopher says in V Metaphysicae cap. 4 (1014b36) that every substance is a nature. But the term nature used in this way seems to signify the essence of a thing as it is ordered to the proper operation of the thing, for no thing is without its proper operation. The term quiddity, surely, is taken from the fact that this is what is signified by the definition. But the same thing is called essence because the being has existence through it and in it.
But because being is absolutely and primarily said of substances, and only secondarily and in a certain sense said of accidents, essence too is properly and truly in substances and is in accidents only in a certain way and in a certain sense. Now some substances are simple and some are composite, and essence is in both, though in the simple substances in a truer and more noble way, as these have existence in a nobler way: indeed, the simple substances are the cause of the composite ones, or at least this is true with respect to the first simple substance, which is God. But because the essences of these substances are more hidden from us, we ought to begin with the essences of composite substances, as learning is easier when we begin with the easier things.
This text is part of the Internet Medieval Source Book. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history.
The rest of this text can be found
here.
Translation © 1997 by Robert T. Miller
Paul Halsall October 1997 halsall@murray.fordham.edu
Cool books on metaphysics
LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P., Form and Being. Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy vol. 45, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 2006.
KENNETH DOUGHERTY, Metaphysics. An introduction to the Philosophy of Being, Graymoor Press, Peekskill, New York, 1965.
AVERY DULLES, S.J., JAMES DEMSKE, S.J., ROBERT O’OCONNELL, S.J., Introduction to Metaphysics. A Course Combining matter Treated in Ontology, Cosmology, and natural Theology, Sheed and Ward, New York, 1955.
TOMAS ALVIRA, LUIS CLAVELL, TOMAS MELENDO, Metaphysics, Sinag-Tala, Manila. (original 1982, English translation 1991)
PAUL-BERNARD GRENET, Ontologie. Analyse spectrale de la Réalité, Beauchesne et Fils (Cours de Philosophie Thomiste), Paris, 1959.
H.-D. GARDEIL, Initiation a la philosophie de S. Thomas D’Aquin. Vol. IV: Métaphysique, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1960.
KENNETH DOUGHERTY, Metaphysics. An introduction to the Philosophy of Being, Graymoor Press, Peekskill, New York, 1965.
AVERY DULLES, S.J., JAMES DEMSKE, S.J., ROBERT O’OCONNELL, S.J., Introduction to Metaphysics. A Course Combining matter Treated in Ontology, Cosmology, and natural Theology, Sheed and Ward, New York, 1955.
TOMAS ALVIRA, LUIS CLAVELL, TOMAS MELENDO, Metaphysics, Sinag-Tala, Manila. (original 1982, English translation 1991)
PAUL-BERNARD GRENET, Ontologie. Analyse spectrale de la Réalité, Beauchesne et Fils (Cours de Philosophie Thomiste), Paris, 1959.
H.-D. GARDEIL, Initiation a la philosophie de S. Thomas D’Aquin. Vol. IV: Métaphysique, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 1960.
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