Friday, November 9, 2012

“The Final Gladness,”

The Cardinal Newman Society has been informed that Father James V. Schall, S.J., one of the leading lights at Georgetown, is set to retire at the end of the calendar year. In honor of this momentous occasion, the author of such classics as Another Sort of Learning and What Is God Like?: Philosophers and ‘Hereticks’ on the Triune God: The Sundry Paths of Orthodoxy from Plato, Augustine, Samuel Johnson, Nietzsche, Camus, and Flannery O’Connor, even unto Charlie Brown and the Wodehouse Clergy, will be giving a final lecture, entitled “The Final Gladness,” at Georgetown on December 7, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. in Gaston Hall. People who intend to go are asked to reply to Utraque.Unum@gmail.com. They are, we are told, looking for “as many people as possible to give him a proper sendoff.”
Link (here) to the Cardinal Newman Society

2 comments:

TonyD said...

Curious about Fr. Schall, I just read his "Natural Law and Economics". It was an interesting, if disappointing, read. (http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-3-number-3/natural-law-and-economics)

His article makes many valid points. It's true that free market exchange is not necessarily unjust, and it's true that free market is best if the market price is a "just" price based on the agreement of buyers and sellers. And it's also true that the price requires no consideration of wider interests beyond those of buyers, sellers, and perhaps a judge applying "morality".

But we have much better alternatives. And the nonsensical application of natural law to this discussion is unhelpful. Economics is not human designed - it is God designed for us. We can and should make judgments about how to execute economic decisions in the construct that God has provided.

There is a strong preference for a more "simple" structure. We should be strongly against globalization - it creates a fragile economy that no one can control. Instead, we should have a small number of well considered bilateral trade agreements. Those bilateral agreements may be for very specific products that are difficult produce by the trading entities, or perhaps be carefully created to infuse cash into other economies that need help. (Yes, it will take oversight to prevent abuse and harm to our citizens.(Such as is being done now.) But such systems can be created.)

We have the ability for everyone here to have a good life. We just have to become a people who want that and are willing to support a government that constrains free market in the interest of more important values.

Anonymous said...

I read your assertions and at first thought there might follow some rationale. Nope. Just assertions.