This is the latest incarnation of a blogging project that has labored, off and on, over the past six years. It has been many things during that time; but after surveying the particular region of the blogosphere wherein it is situated, it seems to have matured and settled into a niche covering Catholicism, politics, philosophy, and America, in roughly that order. Unlike a good number of the larger blogs in that microcosm - many of which are linked to in the blogroll here - this blog endeavors to approach the subject from a more naïve perspective. In other words, we like our Catholicism devoid of ideology; our politics about the polity and not about the party; our philosophy honest and unobscure; and America treated with both respect and candor.
Labels may be thrown about here, seemingly like those other venues, but the only label we will tolerate for our Catholicity is "orthodox." "Left," "right," and "moderate," insofar as they apply to holistic political creeds, will be treated as synonymous with "wrong"; rather, for us "politics" is, as for the Greeks, the study of human society and its orientation toward the common good. As far as philosophy goes, I think the easiest way to put it is that whether you are a strict Platonist, Thomist, Cartesian, Hegelian, or adhere to the system of some other thinker, you will not like what we do here. If you're more interested in finding the best parts of past thinkers and then moving on, then you'll feel more at home.
America is a more complicated proposition. A number of blogs seem to have fallen into the trap of adhering to their nationalism and party lines as tenaciously - more or less, depending - as their Catholicism. Sometimes, they seem to get the two mixed up, or out of order. For our purposes, when discussing America, the following will be assumed as given:
1) America is a nation, one among many on the earth.
2) America is not a chosen people, divinely protected or endowed.
3) Our system of government is but one of many on the earth, better than some and worse than others.
4) What works for America in terms of political order does not necessarily work well for another people, or for mankind generally.
All that being said, America is our country, and we are called to love it and respect it. We may speak despairingly, harshly, and forcefully about one or another item in the polity, but that abstract reality that is the nation itself, that we shall not assault.
So, there you have it. If this mission statement meets with your approval, then by all means, subscribe, read, comment, and tell your friends.
