Blog Owner's note: This is a guest post by a good friend of mine, Micah Espiritu. Hope you enjoy reading this fine reflection essay. By: Ma. Roxanne Micah Espiritu St. Thomas Aquinas, adapting Aristotelian realism, analyzes all material objects, including humans, in terms of being composed of form and matter. This is the doctrine of Hylomorphism (from two greek words “Hyle”, meaning “form”, and “Morphe”, which means “matter”). In Thomistic analysis, however, the human person is a special case of this ontological composition. For instance, in Quaestiones disputatae de anima XIV , Aquinas argues that since the intellect grasps universals which is abstracted from individual particulars, a capacity that cannot be done vie pure material processes, the rational aspect of man, therefore, is immaterial. This gives us humans a higher spot in the hierarchy of beings. Looking at it carefully: unlike the inanimate objects in the cosmos, vegetative life, and the other animals, not only  are

“[T]he idea of formulated rights comes…not from John Locke and Thomas Jefferson—as many might assume—but from the Canon law of the Catholic Church.” – Thomas Woods Only fools will deny that our country is in shambles. Politicians are corrupt, innocent people are dying, and the poor remain at the bottom of society. We have to ask: what has caused all of these? Why is the Philippines suffering? What can we do to restore this broken nation? I have an answer to these questions, although I must admit that this is an answer you won’t hear often: the Philippines is falling because it has rejected the Catholic intellectual tradition that has built it, and the only way to fix everything is to return to it. Allow me to explain what I mean by “the Catholic intellectual tradition”. I don’t mean “what the Bible says” nor am I referring to the Church’s sacraments or anything related to the Catholic devotional life. Also, I do not mean the teachings and pastoral exhortations of the Cath