Just War?

 The Bishop of Rome has been quoted as:

Asked whether there is a "just war" in Iran, he replied: "I believe this has already been made very clear: in Iran, the criteria for a just war are not present. The theory of the just war dates back to centuries when it was impossible to imagine the weapons and the destructive capacity available to humanity today." 

As we have noted previously, under the Catechetical Canons the current situation with Iran is a country who had repeatedly  stated "Death to America". who has developed and has putatively deployable nuclear weapons, who has demonstrated clear intent to kill those they consider enemies, as well as all other elements required for "Just War" elements. The Bishop has failed to demonstrate his understanding of a lack of concordance whereas we have presented them in detail.

Ockham would be having a field day with this.  

Patents and Vaccines

 A  patent is akin to a book and its copyright. If I have a book on neurosurgery I frankly would not dare operate on someone, even if I knew every page in the book. On the other-hand the experienced surgeon may not know every detail in the book but the surgeon has done the operation successfully a thousand times.

Thus destroying patent protection means nothing unless one knows the details, the problems, the remedies. The Guardian notes:

Pope Francis has given his backing to the campaign calling for the suspension of coronavirus vaccine patents to boost supplies to poorer countries. In a video message to the Vax Live event, Francis backed “universal access to the vaccine and the temporary suspension of intellectual property rights”. And he added his condemnation of the “virus of individualism” that “makes us indifferent to the suffering of others”. “A variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines,” he told Vax Live, an online charity concert, which was aired this weekend in aid of the international Covid vaccination effort.

 Yes the Bishop of Rome is at some rock concert event prognosticating on what will cure the world's ills. Using what is in a patent will not likely produce a viable result. One need look no further than the J&J experience in Baltimore! They had everything but still managed to mess up millions of life saving doses.

The Bishop of Rome perhaps is best kept focusing on religion and avoid stating how to make vaccines.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Now if anyone has ventured to some European church one will find bones, skin, vials of blood, and various body parts from Saints. They are relics. Even parts of these things hang around necks, in scapulas, etc.

Today the Vatican ruled that ashes cannot be scattered about or kept say on you bedside. As the Guardian reports:

Catholics are forbidden from keeping the ashes of cremated loved ones at home, scattering them, dividing them between family members or turning them into mementoes, the Vatican has ruled. Ashes must be stored in a sacred place, such as a cemetery, according to instructions disclosed at a press conference in Rome on Tuesday.

So what does one do with all those loose body parts floating around? If one is turned into basic chemicals why no fertilize the lilies in the field? What of say Joan of Arc, ashes scattered by the English.

Where is Ockham When Needed?

It has not been since 1328 that we have seen Papal injunctions of this kind. Perhaps we should make Ockham's "Ninety Days", Opus nonaginta dierum, mandatory reading in the Vatican.

As the NY Times reports:

Inserting himself into the Republican presidential race, Pope Francis on Wednesday suggested that Donald J. Trump “is not Christian” because of the harshness of his campaign promises to deport more immigrants and force Mexico to pay for a wall along the border. “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” Francis said when a reporter asked him about Mr. Trump on the papal airliner as he returned to Rome after his six-day visit to Mexico.

 As this Bishop of Rome had previously said about those with a different orientation that he could not see into their souls, so should he say about any person. This statement is a clear interference into the politics of a country and sets a dangerous precedent. It is for this reason that John Paul II was almost at the point of disbanding the Jesuits. 

There is a long and not very praiseworthy history of the Bishop of Rome wandering into politics. This may very well be another such path. Whatever a candidates views, they should be considered by the public voting, those of all religions, at least in a democracy. Papal interference is a double edged sword.

There is an excellent review by Reid at the Cornell site on the book by Tierney and Ockham. It is truly worth the read. He notes:

Tierney's treatment of Ockham on political rights is similarly original and provocative. He shows that Ockham argued that both the emperor and the pope were obliged to respect the rights of their
subjects. Ockham maintained that the emperor derived his power from the people, who "could not confer more power than it actually possessed." A provision of the canon law of corporations, Ockham continued, limited this power, holding that a governing majorityand, by extension, the emperor-could infringe on the rights of the other members only in the case of "necessary actions. The pope, furthermore, was limited by the canonistic maxim that no one was to be deprived of rights "without fault" (sine culpa), and the fundamental principle of evangelical liberty...

Definitely worth the read. Now Reid quotes Tierney in the same page:

Ockham's favorite way of proving [the restraints on papal power] was to argue that the evangelical liberty proclaimed in scripture limited papal power by safeguarding the natural and civil rights
of the pope's subjects.... Christian law was a law of liberty, indeed, "a law of perfect liberty" according to the Epistle of James. Paul too wrote of "the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus" and declared that "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." But, if the pope could command anything not contrary to divine and natural law, then Christian law would be a law of most horrid servitude. All Christians would be made slaves of the supreme pontiff, for to command anything not forbidden by divine and natural law was precisely the kind of power that a master held over his slaves.... The proper limits to papal power were set by the liberties and temporal rights of emperors, kings, princes and other persons, rights that came to them from natural law or the law of nations or civil law.

Thus there was indeed a well understood separation of Church and State. Ockham battled John XXII who as a Canon Lawyer by training was now dealing the the Theologian. But clearly the almost century spent in Avignon was a turning point for what was formerly the Bishop of Rome. In a sense, one can agree with Tierney and see in Ockham the foundations of modern day political theory and understanding. I would further argue that the Nominalism of Ockham is also key but Tierney may not. Notwithstanding this battle spans centuries.