Books Available For Purchase

Being and Knowing: Reflections of a Thomist
– Introduction by W. H. Marshner
Available on Amazon

Reasons for Hope
– Contributed to by W. H. Marshner
Available on Amazon

Defending the Faith: An Anti-Modernist Anthology
– Translated and edited by W. H. Marshner
Available on Amazon

Pre-Modern Philosophy Defended
– Translated by W. H. Marshner
Available on Amazon

Cultural Conservatism: Theory and Practice
– Contributed to and edited by W. H. Marshner
Available on Amazon

Cultural Conservatism: Toward a New National Agenda
– Contributed to and edited by W. H. Marshner
Available on Amazon

Church Teaching Against Contraception Prior To 1054

Church Teaching against Contraception prior to 1054

W. H. Marshner

1. General comment.

People do not receive moral instruction about things that hardly anyone tries to do. And people do not try to do what they do not believe they can do.

It must be hard for modern Americans to believe it, but there was a time when “birth control” was not a thing commonly attempted by people, nor a frequent topic in Christian instruction. In fact, that time lasted from antiquity to the end of the 19th century. Continue reading “Church Teaching Against Contraception Prior To 1054”

The Structure Of Platonism And The Dogma Of The Trinity: Some General Considerations

The Structure of Platonism and the Dogma of the Trinity: Some General Considerations

WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

FAITH AND REASON
Vol. XI, Nos. 3, 4
1985
Christendom College

For centuries the philosophy of Plato has deeply attracted religious thinkers. William H. Marshner offers here a fine analysis of the structure of Platonic thought. Mr. Marshner probes the difficulties raised by the Platonic doctrine of participation and Oneness when applied to the relations existing between Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinitarian dogma.
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On The Implicit

Abstract

Every theory of doctrinal development makes some appeal to the concept of implicit information. But no theologian or Church historian has bothered to explore this concept philosophically with the contemporary tools for doing so. I refer to tools such as an up-to-date philosophy of language and an up-to-date logic of significance and context. It was to fill this lack that “On the Implicit” was written in the mid-1980s. Continue reading “On The Implicit”

Dignitatis Humanae And Traditional Teaching On Church And State

Faith and Reason (Fall 1983): 222-248.

Vatican II clearly holds that there is a rightful religious liberty which, within “due limits,” even objectively false religions ought to enjoy vis-à-vis the State. In what follows, I shall refer to this claim as the “basic holding” of the Declaration Dignitatis humanae, whose title I shall shorten to DH.^[1]
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The Case For A Two Amendment Strategy

THE CASE FOR A TWO-AMENDMENT STRATEGY

W. H. Marshner

Abortion and slavery, Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade: how many times have we used that analogy? We have used it for the moral light it sheds on the pro-life cause. May I suggest that it also sheds historical light?

I think it illuminates our political position.

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March For Life A Massive Success

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
Our Second Century of Lay Apostolate
January 30, 1975

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More of everything — more people, more roses, more eminent speakers — marked the second “March for Life,” Jan. 22nd, 1975, as a massive success. On the western steps of the U.S. Capitol, it was part politics, part revival, and part hootenanny, as an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people sang, clapped, and shouted this single message: “Give Life a Chance.”

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Saginaw: Portrait Of A Collapsing Diocese (Part III)

Saginaw: Portrait Of A Collapsing Diocese

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
September 19, 1974

PART III

Saginaw, Mich., is a place where pastors, parents, children, even teachers (and maybe even the bishop) have to be “managed” to make them accept an utterly unnatural idea, namely, that the diocesan school system does not exist to teach the Catholic Faith but to inculcate “human values.” This amounts to saying that the diocese’s largest bloc of personnel (429 full-time, salaried teachers — almost four times the number of diocesan priests) is paid every year a giant share of the laity’s total contributions in order to do something at best — at best — tangentially related to the Catholic religion. So outlandish, in fact, is this idea that various disguises have had to be invented for it. Such as:

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Saginaw: Portrait Of A Collapsing Diocese (Part II)

Saginaw: Portrait Of A Collapsing Diocese

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
September 12, 1974

PART II

On Aug. 21st, 1968, the Saginaw News, a secular paper, carried a lengthy attack on the encyclical Humanae Vitae. That fact in itself was not remarkable, since newspapers all over America that Summer were pouring out a torrent of contempt for the Roman Catholic Church. What made the Saginaw publication special, rather, was the fact that the attack was endorsed and signed by eighteen priests active in the diocese. Perhaps on account of this treachery, their bishop, Stephen S. Woznicki, suffered a heart attack.

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Saginaw: Portrait Of A Collapsing Dioscese

Saginaw: Portrait Of A Collapsing Diocese

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
September 5, 1974

PART I

In the rich farm country of central and eastern Michigan, graced with a vacationer’s paradise on the shores of Lake Huron, the Holy See erected the Diocese of Saginaw in 1938. Under two bishops — William F. Murphy (1938-50) and Stephen S. Woznicki (1950-68) — the young diocese grew and prospered. Then came a third bishop, Francis F. Reh, followed by ruin.

Catholic laypeople bombarded this reporter with invitations to come to Saginaw, to their living rooms and club basements, to hear the tales of

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Politique d’Abord

W. H. MARSHNER

Triumph
Vol. VII No. 9
November 1972

Lest the reader head for his dictionary, let me clarify at once that the title means “politics first.” Then let me qualify the translation by pointing out that politique does not mean to a literate Frenchman exactly what “politics” means to the speakers of Amer-English. But thereby hangs a good part of my tale; so let me postpone further explanation of that point for just a bit.

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