About fifty professors, writers, priests,
and noted Catholic leaders from Europe and the United
States met in Gardone Riviera back in July for
the Roman Forum's 2011 Summer Institute. Headed up by
the president of the Roman Forum, Dr. John Rao, the
theme was New Beginnings and False
Starts Catholics, Change,
Tradition, and Customs.
Of course,
says Rao, the Catholic Church
recognizes the reality of individual human freedom and
the new situations that its proper and improper use must
continually create. "But fallible
Catholics are not themselves the Catholic Church. They
have been tempted either enthusiastically to accept
fraudulent and manipulative changes as unquestionable
goods or to deny the reality of the twists and turns of
history, confuse the Tradition with merely familiar
custom, and thereby hinder the advance of the Faith."
Catholic leaders met in
Italy to address these issues and to answer
pressing questions such as: What are the real as opposed to the
contrived changes of our age? How are Catholics loyal to
Tradition to respond to them? What are the merely
customary, conservative chains hindering proper response
to the strange new world around us?
RemnantOnline posted updates on the
Symposium throughout the week. We also offered video snippets from the lectures on the
same day they are delivered. All the
lectures are available for sale through The Remnant.
Best Buy!
The complete Symposium is
now available on one MP3 CD for just $25.
(Playable on any computer, DVD player or
MP3 CD player.)
Order your set
today:
Dr Rao delivered four lectures. Each
is available for $8 (p&h included), and the entire set
of 4 is available on 2 CDs for $20. (Please allow
2 weeks for delivery).
Lecture 1
Lecture 2
Lecture 3
Lecture 4
Entire Set of 4 on 2 CDs
Prof. Patrick
Brennan Speaks
On Day 4 of
The Roman Forum here in Italy, Prof. Patrick
McKinley Brennan delivered an address on
competing theories of law, ranging
from sheer legal positivism the law is
(whatever the sovereign promulgates
and backs by post modern theory of law) as
rules with some sort of ontological basis,
to the classical conception defended by St.
Thomas of positive law being rooted in the
natural law which is mass participation in
the eternal law of God. Brennan gave
practical indications of how the Thomistic
conception of law might find an application
in the present juridical environment.
Brennan has been a
professor at Villanova
University since 2004 as the inaugural holder of
the John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal
Studies and now also serves as the Associate
Dean for Academic Affairs. Professor
Brennan works in the tradition of reflection
on natural law and natural rights to examine
a wide range of questions in jurisprudence
and public law, including sovereignty,
equality authority, the rule of law,
constitutionalism, the family, and
punishment and forgiveness, as well as
topics in administrative law, constitutional
law, federal jurisdiction, religious liberty
and the liberty of the church, and criminal
law. He regularly teaches constitutional
law, administrative law, federal courts,
criminal law, and a range of courses in
jurisprudence.
Professor
Brennan has published some fifty articles
and book chapters. His most recent book,
The Sovereignty of the Good: An Essay on
Law, Authority, and the Church, will be
published by Oxford University Press. He
has also published By Nature Equal: The
Anatomy of a Western Insight (Princeton
University Press 1999) (with John Coons),
Civilizing Authority: Society, State, and
Church (Lexington 2007), and the Vocation of
the Child (W.B. Eeerdmans 2008). He
currently co-authoring Christian
Perspectives on Law: Cases and Materials
(with William Brewbaker III).
On this the third day of
the Roman Forum's Summer Institute here in Gardone
Riviera, pro-life lawyer and leading traditional
Catholic commentator Christopher Ferrara delivered a
powerful address on the futility of modern democracy
which separates itself from Almighty God and His Church.
His lecture included a stunning presentation of primary
source historical material from the proceedings
of the National Reform Association (NRA), a movement of
conservative Protestant jurists, theologians, lawyers
and politicians that attempted in vain during the 1860s
to have the Preamble of the Constitution amended to
acknowledge the "Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among
the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the
land..." Ferrara quoted explicit prophecies of national
apostasy by NRA members on account of what their
proceedings described as "the original sin of the
nation" in adopting a Constitution devoid of any mention
of God or the divine and natural law.
The presentation
was a preview of Ferrara's new book, Liberty: the God
That Failed (available from Remnant Press September 15).
The book, said Ferrara, employs "the admission against
interest method," proving the Catholic
"counter-narrative of the history of Liberty" entirely
from non-Catholic sources, "bringing in the Catholic
perspective once its opponents themselves have provided
the grounds for its acceptance."
This lecture is
available on CD. Please allow 3 weeks for
delivery.
A
speakers' roundtable took place today at The
Roman Forum's leadership conference here in
Italy. Representing Spain was
Dr. Miguel Ayuso-Torres, (University of Madrid), France
was
Bernard Dumont (editor, Catholica), Italy
Dr. Danilo Castellano (University of Udine), and
Austria Dr. Thomas Stark,
(Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule). The
discussion included a wide range of
commentary on the political situation here
in Europe, especially over the past century.
The Catholic Church is suffering a great
deal in Europe, of course. And yet the
Church is Europe's only hope, both
temporally and spiritually. Representing
Catholic movements in four of Europe's most
important Catholic countries, this
roundtable revealed a great deal about the
state of affairs in the EU and especially
the extent to which a Catholic resistance to
the forces of Godlessness may still have
some chance of bringing about if not actual
political change, at least survival of the
Christian people in a ruthless secularist
regime.
This lecture is
available on CD. Please allow 3 weeks for
delivery.
Dr. Thomas Stark
Speaks
On Day
5 of The Roman Forum here in Italy, Dr.
Thomas Stark addressed the gathering of 50 or so
intellectuals and Catholic leaders from
Europe, the United States and South America.
A philosopher theologian from Hochschule,
Austria, Dr. Stark delivered a lecture on
what could certainly be termed the
philosophical roots of the New World Order,
with special emphasis on Gnosticism vs.
Christianity. The Gnostic vision of
the universe and of God as Creator,
argued Stark, has inspired, among many other evildoers
in history, the
mass murders of the last century as well as
countless anti-God, anti-Christian forces
throughout the
post-Christian world. It is that same
Gnosticism which also forms the corner stone of
the New World Order, if you will--that vehicle by
which the Anti-Christ will rise to dominate
the world in the Last Days.
This lecture is
available on CD. Please allow 3 weeks for
delivery.
VIDEOS
On Day 4 of
The Roman Forum here in Italy, Prof. Patrick
McKinley Brennan delivered an address on
competing theories of law, ranging
from sheer legal positivism the law is
(whatever the sovereign promulgates
and backs by post modern theory of law) as
rules with some sort of ontological basis,
to the classical conception defended by St.
Thomas of positive law being rooted in the
natural law which is mass participation in
the eternal law of God. Brennan gave
practical indications of how the Thomistic
conception of law might find an application
in the present juridical environment. 
A
speakers' roundtable took place today at The
Roman Forum's leadership conference here in
Italy. Representing Spain was
Dr. Miguel Ayuso-Torres, (University of Madrid), France
was
Bernard Dumont (editor, Catholica), Italy
Dr. Danilo Castellano (University of Udine), and
Austria Dr. Thomas Stark,
(Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule). The
discussion included a wide range of
commentary on the political situation here
in Europe, especially over the past century. 
On Day
5 of The Roman Forum here in Italy, Dr.
Thomas Stark addressed the gathering of 50 or so
intellectuals and Catholic leaders from
Europe, the United States and South America. 
Some
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