Ipsissima Verba is currently the first result for a Google search for “Dylan Schrader”.

You know, I actually don’t search Google for my name very often.

If you’ve been following Nancy Pelosi’s comments lately and the subsequent remarks by bishops and those in the blogosphere, you may have seen that the blog “Aliens in this World” has posted a translation of what St Augustine said.

A friend sent the Latin to me:

Utrum quod in utero formatum adhuc est, animatum posset intellegi.

80. (21, 22–25) Si autem litigabunt duo viri, et percusserint mulierem in utero habentem, et exierit infans eius nondum formatus; detrimentum patietur, quantum indixerit vir mulieris, et dabit cum postulatione.

Mihi videtur significationis alicuius causa dici haec, magis quam Scripturam circa huiusmodi facta occupatam. Nam si illud attenderet, ne praegnans mulier percussa in abortum compelleretur, non poneret duos litigantes viros, cum possit et ab uno hoc admitti, qui cum ipsa muliere litigaverit, vel etiam non litigaverit, sed alienae posteritati nocere volendo id fecerit. Quod vero non formatum puerperium noluit ad homicidium pertinere, profecto nec hominem deputavit quod tale in utero geritur.

Hic de anima quaestio solet agitari, utrum quod formatum non est, ne animatum quidem possit intellegi, et ideo non sit homicidium, quia nec examinatum dici potest, si adhuc animam non habebat.

Sequitur enim et dicit: Si autem formatum fuerit, dabit animam pro anima. Ubi quid aliud intellegitur, nisi, et ipse morietur? Nam hoc et in caeteris ex hac occasione iam praecipit: Oculum pro oculo, dentem pro dente, manum pro manu, pedem pro pede, combustionem pro combustione, vulnus pro vulnere, livorem pro livore: talionis videlicet aequitate. Quae Lex ideo constituit, ut demonstraret quae vindicta debeatur. Nisi enim per Legem sciretur quid vindictae deberetur, unde sciretur quid venia relaxaret, ut dici posset: Dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris? Debitores igitur Lege monstrantur, ut quando ignoscitur appareat quid dimittatur. Neque enim debita dimitteremus, nisi quid nobis deberetur Lege indice disceremus. Si ergo illud informe puerperium iam quidem fuerit, sed adhuc quodammodo informiter animatum (quoniam magna de anima quaestio non est praecipitanda indiscussae temeritate sententiae), ideo Lex noluit ad homicidium pertinere, quia nondum dici potest anima viva in eo corpore quod sensu caret, si talis est in carne nondum formata, et ideo nondum sensibus praedita. Quod autem dixit: Et dabit cum postulatione quod maritus mulieris, informi excluso, dandum constituerit, non est in promptu intellegere: quippe, quod graecus habet, pluribus modis intellegitur, et tolerabilius cum postulatione dictum est, quam si aliud diceretur. Fortassis enim postulabit ut det, ut eo modo satis Deo faciat, etiamsi maritus mulierve non expetat.

This is my own rendering:

Whether what is not yet formed in the womb can be understood as being ensouled.

80. (21, 22-25) “If two men quarrel and strike a pregnant woman, and the child (infans) that is not yet formed is expelled … he will pay whatever penalty the woman’s husband declares, and he will render it upon request.”

It seems to me that this is said for the sake of signifying something rather than that Scripture is concerned about deeds of this kind. For if did address it, so that a pregnant woman who has been struck would not be forced to miscarry, it would not suppose that there were two men fighting since this could also be perpetrated by one, who fought with the woman herself, or even if he did not fight with her, still willingly acted to harm another’s offspring. But it did not wish to regard the death of an unformed child as homicide, nor did it think what is borne in the womb to be a man.

Here the question regarding the soul usually comes up, whether what is not formed cannot be understood as ensouled, and therefore it would not be homicide since it cannot be said to be determined, if it still did not have a soul.

For it goes on to say: “If it was been formed, he will give a life for a life.” What else then should be understood except that he also should die? For it has established this already in the other cases of this type: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a would for a wound, a bruise for a bruise”: namely the justice of retribution. So the law established it to show what retributions would be owed. For unless it is known by the Law what retributions are owed, how would it be known what a pardon looses, as can be said: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those in debt to us”? Debtors, therefore, are shown by the Law, as when it is not known it would be apparent what would be forgiven. For we would not forgive debts unless we had learned what is owed to us as the Law indicates. If therefore the offspring was unformed, but still in a certain way formlessly ensouled (since the great question concerning the soul must not be bound by the fear of an untested opinion), therefore the Law has did not wish to regard it as homicide, because it cannot yet be said that there is a living soul in a body that lacks sense, if it is such, not yet formed in the flesh, and therefore not yet provided with the senses. But, however, it said: “And he will render upon request what the woman’s husband established would be given for the expelled unformed offspring.” It is not easy to understand: naturally “Asioma,” what the Greek holds, is understood in several ways, and “upon request” is said to be more tolerable, than if it were said to be something else. For perhaps he would offer to render something, in order to satisfy God in this way, even if the husband or the woman did not ask.

I didn’t have a lot of time, so there may be errors.

You can submit a sample to the “Gender Genie” and find out. The observations in the article are pretty interesting as well.

By the way, my writing is characteristically male, though it was honestly a close call.

America magazine had a contest awhile ago to write an essay on the theme “the case for God.” I thought about entering it, but I had plenty of things that I was obliged to write, and I didn’t think my chances of winning were that good.

Now, if the theme is simply about proving God’s existence, that’s not exactly fresh. It’s been done. Also, once we come to know that God exists, what are we supposed to do? Walk away from the chalkboard, brush off our hands, and call it a day? The choice of legal vocabulary for the theme, however, seemed to me to imply something more than proving God’s existence; it seemed to presume God’s existence but without regarding his authority. It seemed to beg whether man needed God anymore. Not just atheism, but God-is-dead-and-we-killed-him nihilism.

My entry would have put the theme on trial, so to speak. Honestly, “the case for God”? Are we, his creatures, judges while the onus lies on God to prove himself to us? Read Job. How prideful can we be?

After debunking the theme, my essay would have gone on to discuss the time when God really was on trial and we really were the judges. Remember that? Even Pilate said, “I find no case against him.” God did die, and we killed him.

In the end, the essay would have been about our pride and God’s humility.

Well, if all goes well, I’ll have a new laptop before too long. I really like the extensibility/cheapness/do-it-yourself factor of desktops. For some reason, I also like the quasi-retro “computers must be large and boxy” feeling of desktop computers. Nevertheless, I’ve been convinced by two years of sitting by the lion¹ and not working, paying attention in class, taking notes by hand, and several days of laptop-less thesis work in the library that a laptop is the way to go. As added motivation, the Fox Box² is just getting slower and some of the sounds it makes are getting worse. I would fix it (because it’s a desktop) like I have in the past, but it needs new parts, and it’s just not worth it to upgrade this thing anymore because technology has improved so much.

Anyway, the laptop also comes with a mission: Get a refund for the copy of Microsoft Windows(r)(tm) that comes with it.

That’s right, I’m going to attempt to get reimbursed for the Microsoft tax. My plan consists of: filming (if possible) or at least photographing myself opening the box and not agreeing to the EULA, calling customer service, and taking it from there.

No matter what happens, I’ll definitely chronicle the experience here.

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1 The lounge on the second floor of Kenrick has a lion statue in it. The lion, in fact, has his own web page.

2 My computer’s name is “The Fox Box.” I’ve started retro-nyming it “The Fox Box version 1.0.”

Some of you may know how fond I am of the ancient and medieval bestiaries. From Aristotle to Isidore of Seville to Aberdeen, I love reading the ancient descriptions of animals, seeing the illustrations in the manuscripts, and reading the allegorical Christian interpretation. The Christian bestiaries give such a great sense of the awareness the ancients and medievals had of Christ being the center of cosmology. That awareness is closer to reality. After all, he is the first born of all creation.

I found online today a project which reproduces online the Physiologus among other works. The Physiologus is a very ancient bestiary from which many medieval bestiaries drew. It’s definitely worth it to check out the facsimile of the Physiologus.

Vatican: It’s OK to believe in aliens.

Once again, the AP is treating not-news as if it were news.

Catholics have always believed that human beings are not the only intelligent creatures. In fact, human beings are not even the majority. There are many more angels than there are human beings.

Regarding corporeal intelligent creatures, read the Baltimore Catechism No. 2, St. Joseph Edition. It says right in there that it’s possible for there to be intelligent creatures on other planets because God has infinite power. Read C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Read Miracles, which talks about alternate universes.

The real question would be whether other corporeal species would have original sin (since they would not have inherited it from us). If so, what kind of redemption (if any) would be possible for them? Would they be in a state of pure nature?

“[...] once the child is grown, he may look back and feel, ‘I would have preferred nonexistence.’”

In this letter to Since You Asked by Cary Tennis (Warning: Some foul language), a couple considers it wrong to have a child because any harm that comes to the child would then be their fault and the child may end up preferring non-existence. I doubt that they are actually trying to make (or looking for) a moral argument, but we do encounter something of the same kind of thought in a broader sense, namely, “Is it always better for a person to exist than not to exist?”

To the ancient (and Christian) mind, this question is absolutely absurd because existence is good. This is a self-evident principle, and it used to be recognized as such. Today, we’re a little more confused, but still no one can really deny that it is better to be than not to be. After all, how can not-being be good for the thing that is not? Existence is good, plain and simple.

In fact, existence is participation in God’s Being, which He is and which is his Goodness. God is, and God is Good. As they say, God’s essence and existence are identical. So, for God what he is and that he is are the same thing. Being itself cannot not be.

For creatures, however, essence and existence are not identical. I can to some degree talk about what a unicorn is, but there are, in fact, no unicorns. Still, a tree can exist at one time and then exist no more at another time. Since the existence of creatures is a priori dependent on God, he himself maintains their existence. Creatures have no existence on their own; it is always God who keeps them existing. This brings us back to the point: existence is always good. Being is good. Evil, in fact, is a lack of being. It’s the lack of a good that should be present, a corruption in the order of good beings.

Perhaps many of us are “still thinking that evil is a substance,” as Augustine says. Perhaps not quite. I think the problem is deeper. At least a dualist or a Manichee thinks that good and evil are real things. The question from Since You Asked betrays a graver fault: a doubt about the quality of goodness as a reality. In fact, the question is only following relativism to its quasi-logical conclusion. If I decide what is good and bad for me, then I can’t decide what is good and bad for others. If I can’t decide what is good and bad for others, then if another decides that it’s bad that he exists, it would be blameworthy for me to have contributed to his existence.

The question is perhaps a species of man’s basic question about morality: “What do I have to do?” This question depends on the answers of two others: “Where am I?” and “Where am I going?” In terms of morality, these questions are basically anthropological: What am I? What is my end? How do I achieve my end? These questions presume the goodness of existence. It makes no sense for the end (purpose, goal) of human existence to be in any way non-existence. This would not be an end at all because it would, in fact, be the annihilation of the I.

If being ain’t good, ain’t nothing good.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you may want to check out Garfield Minus Garfield, a website that a friend of mine pointed out to me today.

The Winter 2007 issue of Sacred Music from the Church Music Association of America is now available online. This issue contains my article that is a re-working of this blog post on Christ, the Sacraments, and Gregorian Chant as art.