Books - St. Augustine

Secondary

The Baylor Project: [T]he earlier and much-anticipated version [of this book], entitled Baylor Beyond the Crossroads: An Interpretive History, 1985–2005, was in the printing process when its publication was cancelled. The first several hundred copies of the book were then destroyed. The earlier version was cancelled because the new administration at Baylor believed the publication of the book under the Baylor name would unnecessarily involve it, the administration, in the prolonged controversy that had enveloped Baylor at least since the 2001 adoption of Baylor 2012 – Baylor’s sweeping vision to be a Christian research university.

Where Did I Come From? Where Am I Going? How Do I Get There?: Where Did I Come From? Where Am I Going? How Do I Get There? is a complete course on Catholicism, featuring concise, reader-friendly, relevant prose. Straight answers are tailored for today’s generation. Topics addressed include: Can I know anything? Can I know what God is like? How am I really in the image and likeness of God? What about my conscience? Am I a gift to others? What about my freedom? Is any sexual activity OK before marriage? Do we have to keep Grandma on a feeding tube forever?

What Happened to Notre Dame?: When the University of Notre Dame announced that President Barack Obama would speak at its 2009 Commencement and would receive an honorary doctor of laws degree, the reaction was more than anyone expected. Students, faculty, alumni, and friends of Notre Dame denounced the honoring of Obama, who is the most relentlessly pro-abortion public official in the world. Beyond abortion, Obama has taken steps to withdraw from health-care professionals the right of conscientious objection. Among them are thousands of Notre Dame alumni who will be forced to choose between continuing their profession and participating in activities they view as immoral, including the execution of the unborn. And they will be forced to that choice by the politician upon whom their alma mater confers its highest honors. (Mary Ann Glendon, distinguished Harvard law professor and former ambassador to the Vatican, felt obliged to turn down the prestigious Laetare Medal because of this.)

Treatise on Law: This is a new English translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law, found in Questions 90–108 of the First Part of the Second Part of the Summa Theologiae. In fact, it is the only free-standing English translation of the entire Treatise, which includes both a general account of law (Questions 90–92) and also specific treatments of what St. Thomas identifies as the five kinds of law: the eternal law (Question 93), the natural law (Question 94), human law (Questions 95–97), the Old Law (Questions 98–105), and the New Law (Questions 106–108). All other extant editions of Treatise on Law stop with the human law, and are thus approximately one-third the size of the full Treatise.

Is Notre Dame Still Catholic?: On March 25, 2009, Notre Dame was embroiled in the biggest controversy to hit the campus since the performance of The Vagina Monologues. A few days earlier, Notre Dame president John Jenkins, C.S.C., had announced that the university planned to give President Barack Obama an honorary doctorate. Within hours of the announcement a storm of protest erupted which showed no sign of dying down any time soon. Citing the statement of the U.S. Catholic Bishops in 2004, “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions,” the ordinary of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, John M. D’Arcy, announced that, for the first time in 25 years, he would not be attending graduation ceremonies at Notre Dame, because “President Obama has recently affirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred.”