Over the past several weeks, I’ve watched a number of video presentations given by highly credible physicians and scientists who, using the government’s own data and guidelines, are calling into question the wisdom of implementing COVID-19 lockdowns.
The gatekeepers of information responded by banning many of them, forcing those who still value the scientific method – the accumulation of objective data through observation; the formulation of hypotheses; the conducting of experiments; the weighing of results and, based on these, the drawing of conclusions – to retreat to alternative platforms.
It occurs to me that these videos are very much like those detailing the disgusting reality of the genocidal procedure known as abortion. In other words, it seems rather plain that fear mongering corona-nazis and their supporters are no more willing to consider a genuine scientific explanation of virology and immunology than a radical pro-abortionist is willing to view the horrors of an actual abortion.
When this COVID-19 nightmare began, there were many in the “pro-life” community who, having succumbed to fear of the unknown and the media’s nonstop predictions of doom, were very much in favor of closing businesses, suspending recreational and religious activities, sheltering in place, etc.
As time has passed and the reality of the situation has become clearer, however, that number appears to have dwindled considerably.
As more time goes by, it seems reasonable to expect that, eventually, practically every single corona-nazi will also be a card carrying supporter of Planned Parenthood and other such operations; i.e., the two sides will more closely come to be identified along strict political party lines. In fact, we’re very close to that being the situation right now.
And what is the common thread shared by the corona-nazi/pro-abortion positions?
We can name many, but at the heart of each of these positions lies a willful refusal to even consider the truth that is readily perceptible to the intellect, a posture that necessarily includes an unwillingness to conform one’s opinions and actions in accord with said truth using the gift of reason.
In other words, in spite of any claims to the contrary, the corona-nazis among us reject the one true God who, in Christ Jesus, is Truth and Logos incarnate.
Sure, there are exceptions, like those who are at genuinely high risk from COVID-19 and may be overzealous in foisting their fears and concerns upon the broader society, but it appears to me that this is largely how things are shaking out.
But, but, religion and politics are two separate things!
To imagine that religion should, or even possibly can, be removed from politics is utterly laughable. It’s a position derived directly from the notion that “the State must be separated from the Church,” a thesis that Pope St. Pius X called, “absolutely false, a most pernicious error.” (Vehementer Nos 3)
Bottom line, folks, COVID-19, real though it is, is being leveraged by the ruling class as an excuse for tightening its grip on nearly every aspect of their subjects’ lives – public, private, economic, recreational and religious, with the latter being ground zero. (And you thought it was Wuhan or New York City!)
Truly, this is a battle between the godly and the godless; it is a precursor to the end times, even if only a dry run for that which will usher in the days of the Antichrist, a man understood by Saints and Doctors of the Church as a tyrannical figure who will demand to be worshiped as God.
St. John Damascene described the days of the Antichrist as follows:
During the first part of his reign — of his tyranny rather — he plays more the part of sanctity; but when he gains complete control, he persecutes the Church of God and reveals all his wickedness.
St. Hildegard von Bingen said of the Antichrist:
He will ally himself with the kings, the princes and the powerful ones of the earth.
St. Thomas Aquinas said:
As in Christ dwells the fullness of the Godhead, so in Antichrist the fullness of all wickedness.
These reflections suggest that the Antichrist will be an inversion Our Lord, Christ the King. He will present himself as the real “King of kings,” a sovereign imbued with evil to whom the rulers of the earth will be subject, a tyrant who exercises control over the nations through them, deceiving the masses, persecuting the Church and her faithful, and demanding the worship that is due to God alone.
His coming to power will force men to take a stand; either to suffer the cost of remaining in truth, or to acquiesce to the demands of evil by accepting the mark of the beast.
One of the takeaways from this dreadful COVID-19 exercise is just how ripe the world appears to be for the coming of the Antichrist:
– Look at just how easily the forces of evil acting in the world today have managed to exercise near total control of the narrative in order to deceive the nations.
– See how quickly so many of the world’s rulers fell in line, consenting to the demands of self-proclaimed authorities – some eagerly, others more reluctantly.
– Consider how the lockdown was sanctimoniously sold to the naive as a life-affirming “We’re all in this together” initiative, only to be revealed plainly for the weapon against both God and humanity that it is.
– Witness how clearly the battle lines have been drawn between the godly and the godless as circumstances have forced everyone to choose a side.
– Note how swiftly the ruling class was able to separate the people from the Mass, from the Sacraments and from one another – all with barely a whimper from even so-called “traditionalist” churchmen.
It’s enough to make one wonder if the fulness of Antichrist’s time is come.
Hello Louie, it is I, Vermeullarmine, supreme Caudillo of the Ministry of Catholic Affairs for the great nation of Vermeullarminia. As Supreme Mediator of Church-State relations, Most Serene Inquisitor and August Enforcer of religious orthodoxy in the secular realm, I must object to the politically inconvenient facts you put forth in your post, which have put you automatically under the ban of the Vermeullarminian empire. As you must see, even the quietest heterodoxy poses a grave threat to the common good as defined by the high statesmen of Vermeullarminia. Therefore the Church, that most loyal branch of our enlightened Caesaropapist government, sees no choice but to hand you over to the pious civil authorities of our glorious civil empire. Fear not, for you will be subjected to an impartial show trial under the watchful eyes of the only slightly overzealous jury, themselves bribed only mildly by the solemn agents of our illustrious and beautiful empire. As a side note, it goes without saying that sedevacantism, which we ideocrats deem to be a most nefarious poison in the Church, will be utterly extirpated for the common good of our naive sheeple.
“It’s enough to make one wonder if the fulness of Antichrist’s time is come.“
Long and short and answer: we know neither the day nor the hour. Jesus said so. Why worry and perseverate about possible “signs of the end times”?
The devil has literally no power over each of us -come what may- unless we willingly, knowingly reject God. None whatsoever. Zero. Evil isn’t some dualistic, inexorable supervillain bogeyman comic book sort of figure. It’s a not a “corruption of nature” which we inherit e.g. original sin. It’s not even a person, much less a thing at all. Rather is it fundamentally non-being, and moreover a willful, choosing of it in lieu of Being Himself. When it comes to knowing one’s enemy, we’re our own worst enemies. Not so much the devil.
JRR Tolkien understood and expressed this in his characterization of Sauron and other evil characters in “The Hobbit” and LOTR, as did CS Lewis in his own figurative manner at the conclusion of “The Great Divorce” in his description of hell.
It is far better to get one’s own household in order and maintain it- living a life in line with the natural law coupled with faith (which is to say actually living one’s reasoned belief) in God’s Revelation of Himself in Jesus -than speculating aloud about signs of the end times and The Antichrist. It’s all too often a willful distraction from doing just that. It is also fodder for all sorts of wild flights of fancy, it often desperately lacks historical perspective (“these are the worst/best of times”), and I dare say it’s often a manifest indication of weak or corrupt faith.
“a posture that necessarily includes an unwillingness to conform one’s opinions and actions in accord with said truth using the gift of reason.”
Actually, truth is in the mind. It is a correspondence of the mind with the reality external to it. So properly speaking we don’t conform ourselves to truth unless we’re talking about Jesus who is The Truth of God: God’s perfect Knowledge of Himself. That’s what He meant when He said He is “The Truth”- not the truth about bicycles, grasshoppers, and vacuum cleaners. All other truth is analogous to That Truth, just as all actual beings are analogous To Being Himself (God The Father).
Sorry, but I get a little annoyed when ardent Catholics insist upon “conforming to truth” with regard to every sort of trivial issue. It’s a poor use of language which ultimately is ignorant of or confuses the analogy of being.
The devil has literally no power over each of us …
The devil can take possession of a person, even a person who has the Faith once delivered even though the person possessed is the same before and after possession
It’s not even a person,
Even Pope Paul VI was not as dismissively cavalier as are you:
Evil is not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting. A terrible reality. Mysterious and frightening.
It is contrary to the teaching of the Bible and the Church to refuse to recognize the existence of such a reality, or to regard it as a principle itself which does not draw its origin from God like every other creature; or to explain it as a pseudo-reality, a conceptual and fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortune
As to you assertion that it is wrong to speculate about the AntiChrist, take it up with Saint John, Jesus, and The Apocalypse
The Master explicitly told us to watch, and spoke at length about what to watch for. You align yourself with the devil in discouraging this vigilance. You do so under the cloak of sanctity, of course.
The neurotic pusillanimity of clerics (even “traditionalist” clerics) has been the most disgusting, and revealing, part of this Kung Flu madness. It isn’t surprising when those of the world act precisely like those of the world. But how nauseating it is when clerics reveal themselves as quivering hirelings.
Meditate on this:
http://drbo.org/chapter/31034.htm
Don’t worry, everything would be fine if Supreme Caudillo Vermeullarmine appointed you PuppetPope for the right price.
There isn’t a shred of wit in your response here or in your post above. Learn your limitations.
Looks like someone’s furious he isn’t even coming close to the “vacant” papal throne
What I disdain and discourage, rather, is idle speculation.
It’s one thing to be watchful. It’s quite another to do that.
NQP: “It is far better to get one’s own household in order and maintain it- living a life in line with the natural law coupled with faith (which is to say actually living one’s reasoned belief) in God’s Revelation of Himself in Jesus -than speculating aloud about signs of the end times and The Antichrist. It’s all too often a willful distraction from doing just that. It is also fodder for all sorts of wild flights of fancy, it often desperately lacks historical perspective (“these are the worst/best of times”), and I dare say it’s often a manifest indication of weak or corrupt faith.”
How do you know that Louie isn’t doing both? Your posts sounds like rash judgment to me.
Your post is silly — bizarre, even — given the unprecedented nature of our current time. Virtually everyone in every developed nation has been ordered to stop going to work, school, and Mass; our economies are in free-fall; and most of our bishops are in cahoots with those who want this lock-down to go on forever. Finally, the Pope has brazenly repudiated the Catholic faith and is trying to transform the Church into and NGO with a patina of religiosity. Yet you tsk-tsk because Louie wonders if the Antichrist’s time be drawing close?
Evidently ole Scratch found a willing soul in you ABS , as you have attacked a solid priest who blew the whistle on a fellow sodomite cleric grooming a 14 yr old with pornography here in Florida. You disgust any Catholic who longs for purity in Christ’s Church.
Nah, it’s just you not sounding as clever as you might think you do.
Excuse me for saying this, but your comment reminds me of the warning that Satan’s best lie is to convince us that he does not exist.
I don’t know how anyone as a believer could live through these days and not often wonder about the end times and the Antichrist. Scripture as well as Marian apparitions often point to what we are seeing. It’s all right there, in front of us. In real time we are observing the destruction of Catholicism as it has been lived and known for almost 2000 years. Why would we not read signs in light of this. Scripture confirms we should, and believers often discern it now.
“a willful refusal to even consider the truth that is readily perceptible to the intellect, a posture that necessarily includes an unwillingness to conform one’s opinions and actions in accord with said truth using the gift of reason.”
Because this describes Catholics today, it’s as they say “as the Church goes, so goes the world!”
Evangeline wrote: “…Marian apparitions…”
Suspicious at best, I think. All of them.
It’s as if Jesus is saying: “Oh, by the way I forgot to reveal some vital things to you all while I was here on earth. Here’s my mother to reveal some new dogmas to you by way of a private locution. Because, you know, I just so happened to realize that my very public, historical revelation of my Father, myself, my founding my church, my redeeming sacrifice, and finally sending the Holy Ghost wasn’t enough.”
Since commentor AlphonsusJr has offered some Old Testamenf to meditate upon, I’ll offer a little to chew upon likewise. There’s a particular parallel and analogy found in this passage here to the more extreme sorts of Marian devotion and preoccupation with supposed apparitions, I’d say:
Jeremiah 44:15-30 (CEV)
“A large number of Jews from both northern and southern Egypt listened to me as I told them what the LORD had said. Most of the men in the crowd knew that their wives often burned incense to other gods. So they and their wives shouted:
‘Jeremiah, what do we care if you speak in the LORD’s name? We refuse to listen! We have promised to worship the goddess Astarte, the Queen of Heaven, and that is exactly what we are going to do. We will burn incense and offer sacrifices of wine to her, just as we, our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders did when we lived in Jerusalem and the other towns of Judah. We had plenty of food back then. We were well off, and nothing bad ever happened to us. But since the time we stopped burning incense and offering wine sacrifices to her, we have been dying from war and hunger.’
Then the women said, ‘When we lived in Judah, we worshiped the Queen of Heaven and offered sacrifices of wine and special loaves of bread shaped like her. Our husbands knew what we were doing, and they approved of it.’
Then I told the crowd:
Don’t you think the LORD knew that you and your ancestors, your leaders and kings, and the rest of the people were burning incense to other gods in Jerusalem and everywhere else in Judah? And when he could no longer put up with your disgusting sins, he placed a curse on your land and turned it into a desert, as it is today. This disaster happened because you worshiped other gods and rebelled against the LORD by refusing to obey him or follow his laws and teachings.
Then I told the men and their wives, that the LORD All-Powerful, the God of Israel, had said:
Here in Egypt you still keep your promises to burn incense and offer sacrifices of wine to the so-called Queen of Heaven. Keep these promises! But let me tell you what will happen. As surely as I am the LORD God, I swear that I will never again accept any promises you make in my name. Instead of watching over you, I will watch for chances to harm you. Some of you will die in war, and others will starve to death. Only a few will escape and return to Judah. Then everyone who went to live in Egypt will know that when I say something will happen, it will—no matter what you say.
And here is how you will know that I will keep my threats to punish you in Egypt. I will hand over King Hophra of Egypt to those who want to kill him, just as I handed Zedekiah over to Nebuchadnezzar, who wanted to kill him.”
“The devil can take possession of a person…”
Actually the devil doesn’t possess a person per se. Rather he can acquire varying degrees of control over of one or more of a person’s bodily powers/functions. This includes the interior functions of memory and imagination.
The spiritual intelligence and will which compromise the core of our personhood- which are distinct from the body though both dependent upon it to function -remain sovereign and intact. Even if they, respectively, become clouded and manifestly suppressed because of demonic possession.
BTW, no offense to you, but Montini/Paul VI was an idiot.
“…you tsk-tsk because Louie wonders if the Antichrist’s time be drawing close?”
Yeah because publicly doing so, especially on the internet where virtually anyone and everyone could come across it, provides fodder for the sorts of people who thrive on this sort of mindset and likewise indulge heavily in this sort of speculation.
These days, largely because of the internet, I believe, there are loads of people out there in the world of this sort.
BTW I would suggest that it is just those sorts of people whom I mentioned in my above comment who will be ripe for the picking by false teachers, performers of “signs and wonders”, or anti-Christ himself: those who dwell and thrive in their own speculations and preconceived notions rather than those who strive to accept reality, use their reason, and accept the truth drawn from right reasoning even when it’s unpalatable or not what they once thought it to be.
NQP: “BTW I would suggest that it is just those sorts of people whom I mentioned in my above comment who will be ripe for the picking by false teachers, performers of “signs and wonders”, or anti-Christ himself: those who dwell and thrive in their own speculations and preconceived notions rather than those who strive to accept reality, use their reason, and accept the truth drawn from right reasoning even when it’s unpalatable or not what they once thought it to be.”
This post is ironic at best.
Agreed. The cowardly reaction by so-called traditionalist clerics has been quite revealing and the most tragic to witness. We see who their masters are. Now we know. Time to plan accordingly.
“…Marian apparitions…Suspicious at best, I think. All of them. ”
I suppose this means you suspect the Holy Rosary, given to St. Dominic during an apparition of Our Lady?
Comprise, not compromise.
Dear NQP. Possession of a person occurs because God permits it and the person possessed does not have control of his natural faculties because he is under the power of a higher being.
Corona-Nazis—-sad, but true.
“ Actually, truth is in the mind. It is a correspondence of the mind with the reality external to it.”
Wow! Truth exists whether the mind corresponds or not.
Maybe what we should be wondering is if the prophesy of Blessed Anna Katherine Emmerich was fulfilled in this in that about 200 priests were not deceived and actually kept offering public Masses? I wonder how many priests in the world did actually keep offering public Masses?
The Dominican rosary had precedents in history. It’s ahistorical and pious sentimentality to suggest that it was delivered in full to St. Dominic from heaven without precedent.
Furthermore, all of the events which constitute the 15 mysteries of the rosary, with the exception of the “Coronation” and the possible exception of the Assumption (it may very well be historical) are part of Apostolic Tradition.
Tom. A: I say that actual, real beings exists whether there is a (created) mind to perceive it.
Now of course a being may have potential existence, but that’s solely in the mind and not external to it. This is to say that such a being is potentially true.
Other things, such as numbers (mathematics), have logical existence. You’ll never find the number “65” or the ratio of pi, for example, in the real world apart from an actual existent being. You’ll only ever find “65 of this or that being” or the ratio pi to constituting the form of every being which we call “a perfect circle”.
That’s the foundation of any philosophy such as a Thomist one founded upon the commonsense (not to be confused with “havin’ basic common sense, y’all”). It places beings- especially actually existing real beings external to the mind and particularly the One Who IS/Being Itself -in a place of paramount importance.
You’re confusing truth per se with what constitutes truth: beings+mind. Truth is the correspondence of the mind with beings, whether actual or potential (e.g. a real 50 story building which I live in contrasted with another 50 story building which is still in the mind of its architect or on a drafting table).
Thank you for bearing with my typos.
For the benefit of all:
No approved Marian apparitions have ever attempted to add new Dogma or Doctrine. Informed Catholics know the difference between Divine Revelation, which ended with St. John, and true prophecy, which comes from God whenever He wills it.
Scripture tells of prophets yet to be sent, in the book of Revelations, chapter 11, and warns against rejecting prophecy outrightly, while instructing that all spirits be tested. (1 Thes. 5; 20-21)
The O.T. rightly condemns the worship of an idol called the “Queen of Heaven” [the name given to the moon in that case] because only one person will ever be deserving of that God-given title, more fully described as Dogma in AD CAELI REGINAM ENCYCLICAL OF POPE PIUS XII ON PROCLAIMING THE QUEENSHIP OF MARY
http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_11101954_ad-caeli-reginam.html
Its first line states: “From the earliest ages of the Catholic Church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph, or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven”.
No one is required by the Church to believe the prophecies contained in the approved Marian apparitions, but all are obliged to believe the Dogmas to which they point. And frankly, anyone who looks into them would have to be blind not to see how they are all being perfectly fulfilled before our eyes today. Anyone who denigrates them, just makes it easy to tell the Catholics from the trolls.
Speaking of prophecy , here’s one from Mother Angelica for what it is worth to each individual reading this. FYI EWTN removed this from their online audio library replacing it with Hispanic music as it first aired as a surprise ending on the Feast of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe in 2000 Dec 12th.
I saw it in rerun 2002 late at night, called my full service Catholic curriculum provider to see if any other home school parents called in having seen it too. The answer was “no” and the suggestion was made to call a Fr Joseph the head of her Order. He said”, “It sounds familiar, look in our online library.”
Hello? When I finally found it because it was mentioned on a blog site also, it was replaced by music. Now if YOUR Order’s Foundress had said something this remarkable ,would you just say , “It sounds familiar”??????
…………..at the very end of the pre recorded so called “Mother Angelica Live Show”,
Mother drove in from Henceville to Birmingham Al. to get face time .
I had just finished saying my Rosary and turned on the tele and their she was……..
Paraphrasing here to the best of my memory…………..” I am going to tell you what is going to happen. The economy is going to get very bad. Many of you will not even be able to afford a banana. After that many will die ( cannot recall if she said 1/2 or 2/3 of the world’s population,) But if you manage to live through all of that ,the world will be better than even the Garden of Eden in many ways. “Then she held up her Rosary and said,”Stay close to Our mother and Pray the Rosary.”
Her face faded away………….end of show.
Mike wrote: “No one is required by the Church to believe the prophecies contained in the approved Marian apparitions…”
This is very true
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“…but all are obliged to believe the Dogmas to which they point.”
If you are referring to the Immaculate Conception, that doctrine itself is founded upon the doctrine of original sin- a very dubious notion which was really fleshed out by Augustine (his reading of Jerome’s mistranslation of Romans 5:12 is key here), but had some precedent in the writings of guys like Origen and Irenaeus. All of them were influence by neo-Platonic ideas which were floating around at those times.
Neo-Platonism really has nothing to do with either a genuinely Christian or mature Jewish Temple religion metaphysic (philosophy). Nor does it have any common currency with God’s self-revelation in Jesus which we find in the Gospels. It was co-opted, not necessarily with ill intent, to try to “explain” mysteries of revelation.
If you mean the Assumption, there’s no reason God could not have assumed Mary bodily into heaven. It may very well have happened (though there is no historical record which I am aware of that corroborates it). But if it did, it’s hard to see how it rises to the level of a dogma essential to faith in Jesus.
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“And frankly, anyone who looks into them would have to be blind not to see how they are all being perfectly fulfilled before our eyes today.”
Perfectly fulfilled? That’s pretty dubious at best, assuming they even happened in the first place.
A word of caution in charity to those unfortunate enough to read the comments of NobisQuoquePeccatoribus who wrote:
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“Furthermore, all of the events which constitute the 15 [M]ysteries of the [R]osary, with the exception of the “Coronation” and the possible exception of the Assumption (it may very well be historical) are part of Apostolic Tradition.”
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In previous posts, NobisQuoquePeccatoribus has stated that he rejects papal infallibility, which is why he casts doubt on the Assumption, since this was declared dogmatic and binding by a Pope through the authority of his office. While there was a time when the Assumption of Our Lady was open to debate by theologians, the Church has rendered her judgement. In order to be saved, all men must give the assent of their intellect to this truth (and all truths) which God has affirmed through His Church: at the end of her earthly life, Our Lady was assumed into Heaven by Christ, body and soul. One is also not at liberty to deny the Coronation of Mary which is a part of Apostolic Tradition, contrary to NQP’s statement above.
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To publicly cast doubt on this by saying “it may very well be historical” and to insinuate that Apostolic Tradition may contain beliefs that are historically untrue is both scandalous and sinful. It is sinful because it is tantamount to rejecting the authority and indefectibility of the Church; since these come directly from God Himself, this is ultimately to blaspheme G-d as a liar. To reject any dogma privately is mortally sinful, but to do so publicly is to put oneself outside the Church and to endanger souls.
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Furthermore, to cynically dismiss all prophesies and Marian apparitions, is imprudent, even if the acquiescence of the intellect to Church approved apparitions is not binding on pain of sin. To conflate private revelation as being an afterthought or addition to Divine Revelation rather than as charitable messages from God intended for particular faithful to warn and assist them during particular historical events is ignorant. To go further and callously deride approved apparitions of Our Lady by attributing sarcastic self-derisive words to Our Lord is irreverent, blasphemous, and indicative of bad will. God will not be mocked.
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Don’t reply to trolls, such as this, since what they want is a response, and don’t fall prey to the errors they present under the guise of a false piety.
KyleofCanada:
1. What evidence is there that the Assumption is historical? Moreover, where is it found in the New Testament?
Even if sufficient evidence is found to corroborate that it actually happened, it is at best it part of “pious tradition”, not a core dogma of faith found in Apostolic Tradition. And in that case, it would simply be stupid to deny it. Stupidity isn’t a sin.
So I ask you: explain how “assenting” to The Assumption has any bearing upon one’s salvation. In other words how is equivalent to/part of God’s Self-Revelation in Jesus?
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KyleofCanada wrote:” …the Church has rendered her judgement…”
But what if the church is wrong? Apropos, I’d argue that Pius XII abused his authority by formally declaring the Assumption a core dogma of faith back in 1950. Much more so did Pius IX in 1854 by formally declaring the Immaculate Conception to be one – which has exactly zero basis in Apostolic Tradition, and what’s worse that it doesn’t even have a basis within a truly Christian metaphysic of being (once one gets to its Augustinian in original sin).
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KyleofCanada wrote: ‘To conflate private revelation as being an afterthought or addition to Divine Revelation rather than as charitable messages from God intended for particular faithful to warn and assist them during particular historical events is ignorant.”
Why do we even truly need private revelation if Christ has given us all which we need- Himself? I mean, He’s God. And he revealed Himself publicly, not through locutions or apparitions. Think about it.
Mary is a creature- one with a utterly unique vocation, mind you – but a creature nonetheless. She can’t give us what Her Son has given us. We can honor her faithfulness and great trust and love for God, and the title of “Theotokos” is just fine. But beyond that, why add all the extraneous honorifics or pay much attention to supposed private locutions and apparitions? Once one starts down the path of adding honorifics, titles, wildly speculative attributes, hanging on supposed apparitions and locutions and “prophecies” about future events, etc…..where does it end? How far does it all go?
Why not just stick with the New Testament, the Roman Canon, the Our Father, the sacraments, etc.? Why get tangled up in stuff which has little or nothing to do with that.
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KyleOfCanada wrote: “One is also not at liberty to deny the Coronation of Mary which is a part of Apostolic Tradition, contrary to NQP’s statement above.”
I’m guessing you’re basing that statement upon the figure of the woman in St. John’s Apocalypse. It’s true that an allusion or analogy to Mary has been drawn to the figure in that text many times by many people. But an analogy or simple allusion is not a historical, literal thing. G.K. Chesterton put it very well in his own typical paradoxical manner in “The Everlasting Man” when he said that to say one thing is LIKE another thing is to say it is also completely different from it. Consider that when claiming without reservation that the woman in John’s Apocalypse is Mary.
It’s worth mentioning also that there is nothing about Mary being named “Queen of Heaven” found anywhere in any of the Gospels. One would think that if it were so vital to salvation, as you seem to purport it to be, Jesus would have made mention of it. But He doesn’t. Nor is it mentioned in any of the other books of the NT. It’s a much later novel development.
Typo- “…Augustinian…”= “…ultimate Augustinian origins…”
“…under the power of a higher being…”
But only to a certain extent: in terms of the body, not the spiritual intellect and will. Just to be clear.
Well said KyleOfCanada. While I understand that there will naturally be divergences of opinion in a public forum like this, at the end of the day AKACatholic, as its name suggests, is an ostensibly Catholic blog and there should be no room for spreading literal heresies and denying dogmatic tenets of the Faith. Perhaps a little policing of demonstrably unCatholic voices like NQP’s is in order.
The game is up NQP. As a Catholic, you’re bound to accept the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption on pain of the mortal sin of heresy precisely because their place in the deposit of Faith has been codified by dogmatic pronouncements of the popes. Of course you reject papal infallibility so this is all a moot point to you. But can you at least stop spreading your heretical propaganda on a Catholic site?
Vermeullarmine wrote: “…you’re bound to accept the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption…because their place in the deposit of Faith”
I’ve taken the time on here to argue that this is far from certain and quite likely not so.
I’ll be happy to hear and address any counter-arguments to this which don’t rely on either the argument from authority- unless that Authority is God’s Self-Revelation in Jesus as recorded in Apostolic Tradition- or outright theological speculation.
Thus far, those are the only sort of counterpoints I’ve received.
“…your comment reminds me of the warning that Satan’s best lie is to convince us that he does not exist…”
The other side of that coin is the the devil also tries to make people neurotic and infer his presence everywhere and in everything.
Fr. Chad Ripperger put it well when he said (I’m paraphrasing) that the devil isn’t under every rock; he’s under every other rock, and if you return to the rock where wasn’t present and lift it, he’ll be there.
He has a point. One which I agree with and was trying to make here.
The arguments i am reading above echo the difference between the Orthodox and the
Roman Catholic churches.
They were political discords which turned into doctrinal and dogmatic arguments, all to insure the separation of the Church Jesus Christ founded on earth.
Immaculate Conception Our Lady born without the stain of Original Sin on Her soul.
The Orthodox position is that it is no Scriptural.
They do not believe in stains on souls as St Augustine did.
They believe that the Mother of God conformed Her Will perfectly to God’s and therefore by Her own efforts in prayer and obedience was Filled with God’s Grace.
They believe in the fall of which we all partake because of the sins of our first parents.
Neither do they believe in the Assumption per say. They call it the Dormition which means the Falling Asleep.
They do have a Rosary based on St Sirov of Moscow’s devotion to the Rule of the Virgin Mary. The Theotokas which means The Mother of God.
They do not consider the Bishop of Rome a Pope , but the Roman Catholic Bishop of Rome . For about three decades the Bishop of Rome was called The “First Among Many” and designated as the one who settled split differences at Synod meetings.
You have to choose whether you are Orthodox or Roman Catholic and believe and worship accordingly. Otherwise, you are just arguing the differences of the ages.
you’re so invested in the intellectual side of the Faith (not in itself a bad thing) that you’ve lost your Catholic common sense. So you’ve rationalized your way out of the validity of the post-V2 popes, several Mariological dogmas of the Faith, and the infallibility of even the pre-V2 popes. Where is the childlike trust in Christ’s church, against which He promised not even the gates of Hell would prevail, if you decide – on the basis of your own personal theological assumptions of what is and by is not acceptable material for dogmatization – that even the Extraordinary Magisterium of the Church can err? I suspect you might be seriously deficient in the virtue of Faith – mystical, supernatural Faith that only God can bestow on men – and have opted for a dry, fruitless, rationalistic view of the Catholic Faith, one that is pitifully insufficient for the salvation of souls. People like you are extremely dangerous because you craftily appeal to the intellect of imperfect men to demolish the Faith from under their feet, putting souls in jeopardy by slowly chipping away at their faith. If you’ve already gotten this far, what’s to stop you from coming up with some clever argument against the Resurrection, transsubstantiation, even the Trinity? I doubt you’ll have much trouble arguing against the virtue of humility, the fountainhead of obedience, since you have no desire to obey the Church in her most unequivocally solemn pronouncements.
Vermeullarmine wrote: “…if you decide…that even the Extraordinary Magisterium of the Church can err?
I’m certain that I’ve mentioned elsewhere, maybe in a reply to the colorful character utilizing the name “in caritas”, that I’m not fond of the word or the notion of “Magisterium”. Magisterium as a formal concept in ecclesiology was defined by Leo XIII in “Satis Cognitum” in the wake of the formal defining of papal infallibility- 26 years later. One has to read the encyclical in that context.
That said, “magisterium” is an otherwise vague concept which in practice has been distorted and abused since it was defined. Pius XII’s elevation of the Assumption to a matter of divine faith aside, consider Bergoglio and how he overtly abuses it on a regular basis, or some of the meandering, wordy encyclicals that John Paul II wrote which many people consider to be “magisterial”.
Better to stick simply with Apostolic Tradition and the natural law as the ultimate magisterial redoubts.
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Vermeullarmine wrote: “I suspect you might be seriously deficient in the virtue of Faith – mystical, supernatural Faith that only God can bestow on men – and have opted for a dry, fruitless, rationalistic view of the Catholic Faith…”
The notion of faith you’re referring to is an Augustinian one- which I’d argue has twin roots in both neo-Platonism and gnosticism- in which God “infuses” knowledge of Himself into the intellect directly.
I find no basis for that notion of faith in either Apostolic Tradition or any sort of commonsense-based philosophy grounded in being such as Thomism.
As far as your accusation of being “rationalistic”, I’ve addressed the difference between “rationality/reason” and “rationalism” in a reply to Tom A. under this same blog post. I hold that “faith” in the truly Christian sense, far from being some supernatural thing per se, simply has as its object a supernatural thing: God. It is reasoned belief based upon the testimony of God about Himself, not a quasi-magical gift bestowed by God at his pleasure.
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Vermeullarmine wrote: “what’s to stop you from coming up with some…argument against the Resurrection…”
The Resurrection was witnessed by many people and has a firm historical basis in Scripture. Furthermore, there is an actual artifact of it: The Shroud of Turin. Maybe you’re aware of the exhaustive and continuing research done upon it. Everything I’ve read about it seems pretty conclusive and convincing to me.
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Vermeullarmine wrote: “…transubstantiation…”
Already have in other comments.
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Vermeullarmine wrote: “…even the Trinity?”
Belief in the Trinity is fundamentally based upon the testimony of Jesus as recorded in Scripture. That’s evidence enough for any Christian.
Folks, it’s beyond obvious that ‘NobisQuoquePeccatoribus’ is a modernist par excellence.
That he never replied to me about where he stands on Genesis and the heresy of heliocentrism, and open admits to doubting the validity of Old Testament Scripture and categorizes it as something myth-infested, and by myth he certainly means ‘made-up bullshit’ rather than in the classical sense of a founding narrative, goes to show that he obviously subscribes to something on par with the heresy of Marcionism, which much of liberal protestantism also adopts because they can’t reconcile Christ with God’s actions in the Old Testament, but really they hold modern science and establishment history as a greater authority than even the New Testament.
There’s nothing ‘orthodox’ about his crap. His arguments against any recognition of Mary and revelation outside of Scripture is quintessentially Protestant because for him all supernatural revelation ceased, and God is taking a vacation until He decides to come back. That’s what Nobis is saying covered up by large quantities of intellectual-sounding sophistry.
You’re essentially getting a little taste of what debating with the Anti-Christ is going to be like. Little wonder Nobis is so desperately hard at work telling you not to bother reading Louie’s article, and pooh-poohing any possibility of you using your brains to discern the times. Only Nobis, apparently, is allowed to use his brain to think of absolutely anything else except that point, where he takes the Lord’s words about not knowing the exact hour hyperliterally, when all Christ is saying is that nobody can prophesy it far in advance, NOT that you can’t tell the Anti-Christ when you literally live in his time and see him, or simply discern how the world is OBVIOUSLY building itself closer to the description of Anti-Christ’s moment, which is really all Louie is saying, but Nobis suspiciously got all paranoid to the point of pulling the fire alarm and yelling at everyone to vacate the premises.
Nobis is the type who’s so caught up in his cleverness that he misses the fact that in Anti-Christ’s time, there is a minority who reject him and are the hold-outs. And if only the Father knows, then neither would the angels, nor would St. Michael, who has the honour of kicking his ass. This would not be possible if as Nobis hilariously imagines, Christ said absolutely nobody could ever identify him or even discern the times they were living in. Much the same for how he ties himself up in knots to escape Mary’s titles, the Papacy and other Papal established dogmas via literalist appeals to the texts of Scripture that he selectively chooses are authentic.
“…by myth he certainly means ‘made-up bullshit’ rather than in the classical sense of a founding narrative…”
Actually I meant “myth” in the latter sense which you mention, which is the same sense Chesterton uses in his masterful work “The Everlasting Man”.
Hope that clarifies things.
Johnno wrote: “That he never replied to me about where he stands on Genesis…”
Since you’re insisting…
I would say that it is part of the foundational myth, of a particular culture, which contains two important insights based upon reasoning: God as Creator, the imperfect nature of human beings.
Is the account of creation and “the fall” historical or completely literal? Of course not.
Johnno wrote: “…and the heresy of heliocentrism…”
First, all credible scientific inquiry disproves Ptolematic astronomy and its ever-increasing epicycles. No chronological snobbery here, just scientific observation.
As far as it being a heresy, that’s an improper usage of the term “heresy”…both by you and by the pope whom Galileo fell out of favor with by provoking him- which was uncalled for on Galileo’s part, I think.
One also has to consider the times: the Counter-Reformation was in full swing at this point, so the Holy See was tightening the screws and asserting its authority more than ever before into order to curb the spread of Lutheranism, Reformed Calvinism, etc.. It was on the warpath against anything which suggested of dissent or heresy. Consider that.
That aside, look at it this way: what real difference does it make to having faith in Jesus whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa? Is that something which is truly critical to faith? Did Jesus come to proclaim astronomical truths?
When the higher being causes the pacific prudent possessed person to curse is that cursing congruent with that person’s will?
Dear NQP. Can it be aid that God loved Mary more than any other created person?
Amateur Brain Surgeon wrote:
In a comment which was a reply to a comment which commentor Evangeline posted, I wrote the following.
I’m reposting here because I believe it addresses your question:
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Evangeline wrote: “…your comment reminds me of the warning that Satan’s best lie is to convince us that he does not exist…”
I wrote: “The other side of that coin is the the devil also tries to make people neurotic and infer his presence everywhere and in everything.
Fr. Chad Ripperger put it well when he said (I’m paraphrasing) that the devil isn’t under every rock; he’s under every other rock, and if you return to the rock where wasn’t present and lift it, he’ll be there.
He has a point. One which I agree with and was trying to make here.”
NobisQuoquePeccatoribus has indeed revealed himself as a blasted heretic, certainly a puffed up windbag, most likely a stinking sodomite, and definitely a smoldering gamma. Just pitiful. He’s henceforth to be entirely spurned.
Speaking of gammas, see:
https://youtu.be/vhTFkUpB8zc
Johnno wrote: “ he obviously subscribes to something on par with the heresy of Marcionism…they can’t reconcile Christ with God’s actions in the Old Testament…”
While I’m certainly not a Marcionist, I think that it suffices to say that it is difficult to consistently reconcile the figure of Yahweh (the LORD/Adonai) in the OT with the account of God’s Self-Revelation in The Person of Jesus found in the New Testament.
Monotheism really didn’t become a solid thing in Israel until shortly before the coming of Christ. It’s both a complex and complicated story, but suffice to say the Jewish Temple priests/theologians/philosophers post-exile both read back and rewrote that monotheism into many of the books of the OT well after they were written.
To say that ancient Israel and its temple religion was a sort of proto-Church which always and consistently had a sort of monotheism based on the understanding of One God Who IS is an ahistorical assumption at best.
AlphonsusJr,
Accusations of heresy aside (which I think there’s plenty of ground for), you undercut your entire criticism of NQP with needless ad hominems like windbag, gamma, and, most bizarrely of all, sodomite (seriously, what’s your evidence for that accusation)?
Look it up: St. Thomas defines truth as the correspondence of the intellect with reality.
So–truth requires an intellect.
What exists independent of the intellect is reality.
So, you deny that the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption are dogmas of the Catholic Faith? Thanks for the clarity.
You came here to remind everyone that you are more spiritually mature and balanced than most people–especially Louie V. Everyone is entitled to make a judgment about whether that is true.
and a sodomite ,which apparently ABS likes to defend and cover up for.
Ridiculous as usual ABS !
It can be said that She loved God more than any other human as she perfectly conformed Her freewill to His.
Ad hominems are vastly underrated, and are indeed the most rational and effective tactic against heretical windbag sodomite gamma poseurs like NQP. To attempt to engage in actual debate with such degenerates is the height of folly.
They must at least be founded in accurate data.
As such, to call NQP a heretic is not truly an ad hominem, because there’s been enough data provided by him to say that it’s an accurate description.
To call NQP a windbag (or long-winded) is subject to interpretation. Likewise with poseur.
But to call him a sodomite and a gamma? Those came out of left field altogether.
The overall effect, in total, makes you come off as unnecessarily juvenile and childish.
Just my honest opinion.
ABS and sweepoutthefilth-
IMO it’s very like that she did, and does. But quite literally, only God knows.
Therefore it’s a matter of pious tradition, not a matter of divine revelation. As is the The Assumption, I’d argue.
Best not to confuse pious tradition and outright novel speculations (such as the Immaculate Conception) with divine revelation found in Apostolic Tradition.
NQP, I actually agree with you on many aspects of thought , but why don’t you admit you are Orthodox ?
There’s nothing in this world more rational, or more mature, than calling the likes of NQP not only heretical windbag poseurs, but also sodomite gammas.
With every wall of text you produce, you succeed only in further proving your status as a heretical windbag sodomite gamma. Pitiful. Just plain pitiful.
Dear NQP. Since God’s love is the cause of all goodness it follows that one thing/person would not be better than another if God did not will greater good for one than the other.
That is Thomism but what you assert doesn’t even rise to the level of Molinism.
What you and others assert is that it is the person who determines the effect of grace, not God.
Many wrongly believe that God gives Grace in equal amounts so that, for instance, God gives the same amount of Grace to Peter and Judas and what happened to each is owing to what Peter did in cooperatng with the grace that made him different than Judas.
But that that is contrary to the doctrine of Predestination of both Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Many are infected with the pelagian and semipleagian heresy and so it makes sense to take some time to do some more investigating of the sources of true doctrine and to study and think about them.
Any man who doesn’t think God loved Mary far more than He loved any person ever created is a material heretic. Many is who she is because Gd loved her far more than He loved, say, Saint Elizabeth Seton
AlphonsusJr,
Without any positive evidence to support your claim, continuing to call NQP a “sodomite gamma” not only discredits any arguments you care to bring in the eyes of an outside observer, but it also renders you as someone who is needlessly petty and puerile.
Amateur Brain Surgeon-
The entire concept of grace as is understood in Western Christianity has its origin in Augustine’s fight against Pelagianism.
I’d argue that this Augustine concept of grace is an attempt to explain in “clear and distinct ideas”- not unlike Plato’s Forms priot and centuries later Cartesian rationalism -how the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary applies to individuals. As I’ve said previously, in principle I oppose attempts to “explain” God’s Self-Revelation in Jesus by way of theologization/novel doctrine because the human intellect, and in turn human language, is incapable of fully expressing the infinite God.
When one tries to render faith- reasoned belief in God’s Self-Revelation in Jesus- into a set of clear, distinct, logical “ideas” which fit together like Lego bricks or puzzle pieces, the trajectory more often than not is to try to render it and eventually all reality into a set of these sorts of “ideas”. This in turn leads to rationalism, idealism, universal skepticism, subjectivism, atheism, existentialism, nihilism etc.. In other words- the prevailing state of the intellectual/philosophical/theological world we find today.
ABS wrote: “God gives the same amount of Grace to…”
Consider what’s being said when one refers to “grace” in terms of quantity: one is trying to apply a distinct idea pertaining to matter- number -to an immaterial and therefore unquantifiable thing. It doesn’t make any sense.
It’s just rationalism leading to a sort of gnosticism, I think.
Dear NQP. You appear not to know what you are talking about when you effectively deny that God loved Mary more than any created person.
You have no knowledge of the doctrine of predestination of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
For some reason you have come here thinking that your personal options (heretical as they are) are normative and ought to be binding for real Christians when the fact is your personal opinions are as confused as they are absurd.
Bye, Bye..NQP
Much evidence. For example, incessant walls of text are characteristically gamma.
AlphonsusJr,
If you think NQP’s posts qualify as “incessant walls of text”, then you have very low standards for such things.
Amateur Brain Surgeon: “…the doctrine of predestination of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas…”
Honestly I have neither the inclination, much less the time, to do an exhaustive treatment of the Augustinian notion of predestination or Aquinas’ “sort-of” defense of it in the Summa Theo.. And this isn’t the best venue to dissect a massive piece of theology like that. Plus, there are some here who apparently don’t like walls of tl;dr. Nor do I, so I’ll take an indefinite rain check.
Suffice to say though, predestination has its foundation in Augustine’s theologizations of grace and original sin (all of which were, in turn, were to a great degree his own “spins” on theology found in Paul’s epistles). Put this way- the Augustinian notions of grace and sin attempt to take what goes above and beyond human reason- Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice on Calvary -and “quantify” it into discreet intellectual boxes of clear, distinct and quantifiable ideas called called “original sin” and “grace”. Not to mention the notion of an inherited “original” sin has more in common with gnosticism, Manicheanism and various and sundry dualistic Eastern religions than it does with any truly Christian philosophy and anthropology.
Attempting to “quantify” God and spiritual things in general almost inevitably ends up, sooner or later, causing all hell to break loose intellectually, spiritually and socially. Not necessarily in that order.
That is why faith- genuinely Christian faith -can only be reasoned belief in God’s Self-Revelation in Jesus as preserved in Apostolic Tradition.
And reasoned belief, as I’ve said before elsewhere on here, entails some degree of both uncertainty and unknowing. Otherwise it wouldn’t be faith- it would be metaphysical/absolute certitude. We have no metaphysical certitude in this life because we’re neither Almighty God Himself nor are we angelic (and I doubt that they have it either, but that’s pure speculation on my part).
Instead, we’re rational animals- whose power of reasoning is totally dependent on input from the bodily sense experience, imagination and memory. The most we can strive for in this life, therefore, is moral and quantitative certitude.
That is why The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us- so that each of us could have that moral and quantitative certitude of the fact of His Self-Revelation to mankind, His Redemptive Self-Offering to His Father, and His infinite Love for each of us- individually.
typos- discreet=discrete.
correction for grammar- “…the Augustinian notions of grace and sin…” should read “…the Augustinian theology…”
Yet another convulsive gamma sperg wall of text. Sad.
AlphonsusJr,
Your critiques continue to devolve in quality. (Seriously, in what universe does NQP’s posts qualify as a “tl;dr” wall of text? They take less than 2 minutes to read, if that.)
Ironically, I find your use of a term invented within the last decade (as the socio-sexual hierarchy terminology you reference was invented and defined by Vox Day, at least as far as the Internet is concerneed) to be rather interesting. Ask yourself this: regardless of whatever practical use it may hold, is Vox Day’s socio-sexual hierarchy a genuinely **Catholic** view of male sexuality and hierarchy in Western society? (And I specify Western society, because I doubt his particular hierarchy would apply at all places and all times.)
Fascinating that you’ve appointed yourself as this convulsive gamma sperg’s public defender, especially since he’s revealed himself beyond any reasonable doubt as a stinking heretic. Is NQP your sock puppet, or are you just engaging in pitiful white knightery?
Less trying to defend NQP (because I don’t know the guy, I think he’s a material heretic at the very least based on what he’s posted, and I don’t have the time or inclination to utilize sock puppet accounts as you so easily seem to believe), and more trying to keep you from acting like a fool.
But if you’re that determined to act so petulantly, then please feel free to continue your self-immolation. All you’re doing is rendering yourself as someone who shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Not a decision I would make, but I certainly can’t stop you.
(And my question for you was an honest one: is Vox Day’s socio-sexual hierarchy a categorization or model that a Catholic can honestly hold?)
It surely is. But what Catholics can’t hold to are NQP’s vile heresies. A shame that you’re not more concerned about the filth he’s spewing here.
ABS, You have your nerve saying someone else does not know what they are talking about .Especially after your loathsome posts defending a Bishop who does not bat an eyelash when hiring proven pedophiles to work in his parishes!
Then condemning a good priest who does the right thing.
Shame on you!
Alphonsus,
To anyone reading this from the outside looking in, NQP may appear reasonable in what he’s saying. I (and others) have at least asked questions to try and clarify exactly where he stands, thus unveiling more and more of his material heresies (which is why I haven’t followed up on other questions).
However. your continual defaulting to simply calling him a “sodomite gamma” discredits arguments against his position by association of nothing else, because it’s an exceedingly weak and puerile criticism, befitting a child.
If you have positive evidence that NQP is a sodomite, then make your case.
NQP is indeed most likely a stinking sodomite, and is definitely a windbag gamma sperg blasted heretic. Probably a cross-dresser as well.
Do these words offend your delicate cuckservative sensibilities? I just don’t care.
AlphonsusJr,
If you’re going to accuse someone of committing one of the sins that cry out to Heaven for *vengeance* (of which not even heresy is considered one, as horrid as it is!), then you **should** have something a lot more concrete than “just because I think so.”
It doesn’t matter what particular terms or videos you’ve imbibed from some Internet personality who’s chosen nom de plume is a play on words of “Vox Dei”, the Voice of God (which is a rather arrogant title for any self-professed Christian to claim as their username); you’re still committing libel, and doing needless damage **to your own credibility**.
Lightly tossing out “cuckservative” is just another demonstration of how cavalier you are about something which is very serious. The other crack about NQP being a probable cross-dresser is just icing on the proverbial cake. What evidence do you have? What possible motivation is there, other than wanton defamation?
If you want to indulge in calumny, you’re certainly free to continue on. But don’t say you weren’t warned.
So very earnest in your virtue-signaling. Lighten up, cuck!
AlphonsusJr,
Well, I can’t say I tried.
Continue being a boor to your own discredit.
You tried valiantly. As a typical cuckservative who dutifully punches right in accord with his programmed obedience and unquenchable lust for mainstream respectability, you exhibited far more concern for my lack of decorum than for the likely sodomite cross-dresser definitely windbag gamma sperg NQP’s filthy heresies. Mount your lusty steed anew, good knight. Be not discouraged. More battles await you!
AlphonsusJr,
In all honesty, consider this entire thread from the eyes of an outside observer: despite NQP being a material heretic at minimum, there stands the possibility of convincing him to eventually retract his errors.
However, not only are your responses puerile and vulgar, they do nothing to actually rebutt his ideas. In the eyes of any outside observer who may not know any better, your entire demeanor is an **instant** turn-off, notwithstanding your blatant calumny (because, again, you have demonstrated **no evidence whatsoever** that NQP is a sodomite, and that’s a serious accusation).
I don’t know why you can’t grasp this, but you’re apparently determined to act with all the gracelessness of a witless teenager, with tactics befitting an SJW.
NQP,
Since you’ve said that an exhaustive treatment regarding why you disagree with St. Augustine’s doctrine is (apparently) not befitting a combox, could you point out a particular site or book that illustrates precisely what you *do* believe with regards to grace, faith, and Christ’s redemption?
Because I have a feeling that the Church has already dealt with it in the past.
ASM, you make the fundamental error of believing that internet comment boxes are fora for rational discussion. They are not. They are madhouses. Thus, to attempt to engage in exquisitely decorous discussion here exhibits a great failure of understanding. This is especially the case when dealing with the likely sodomite cross-dresser definitely windbag gamma sperg filthy heretic likes of NQP. He’ll be convinced by none of your decorum or reason, no matter how good you feel about yourself for engaging in it.
Finally, you once again show great concern for the perceptions of the outsider mob who may drop in here. This is a typical preoccupation of cuckservatives, burning with lust as they are for the maintenance of mainstream respectability. If they had it their way, cuckservatives would bowdlerize Sacred Scripture itself of all of the many hard sayings of the Master Himself. Way too “offensive” and “graceless”! Concern yourself no longer with the opinions of the mad mob. Why do you seek the applause of the mad mob? Are you not also mad?
Stop reading your cuckservative websites such as Gateway Pundit and Red State. Get really real and start reading sites like Unz and Vdare. Purge yourself of your very cucky, very modern sensitivities.
I leave you to give the last word.
AlphonsusJr,
Your ability to divine the motives or habits of others isn’t as good as you think they are, because I don’t read Gateway Pundit or Red State.
My motive was very simple: to get you to stop committing calumny. Because our Lord certainly didn’t do so, for all His words were Truth.
Nothing “cucky” about that, despite whatever you may believe.
(Still haven’t gotten an answer as to whether Vox Day’s socio-sexual hierarchy is a legitimately Catholic way of categorizing men. I doubt I’ll get one.)
And then Nobis goes on to completely contradict himself by saying…
“Is the account of creation and “the fall” historical or completely literal? Of course not.”
In other words, for Nobis, it means ‘made-up bullshit.’ Isn’t it amazing? How Nobis can openly lie to himself and simultaneously believe otherwise?
That’s the only thing that’s clarified here, that Nobis, like a great many others fed on a diet of Darwin’s evolutionary bullshit must then magically attempt to engage in Double-Think so that they can simultaneously hold two contradictory ideas, which they pave over by appeals to some gnostic unknowable spiritist mystical bullshit that God’s Revelations are Riddles not to be understood literally, but according to whatever they personally feel it means which must also accommodate heretical nonsense without end.
Funny, given that even the New Testament that they hold to be ‘not-bullshit’ clearly has characters, references and even Our own Lord’s words testifying that what Nobis believes to be bullshit is actually literally and historically true.
But I guess our Lord didn’t have an Apple Computer in his day, otherwise He would’ve studied whatever sources Nobis takes as his authority, who are essentially contemporary materialists literally making up bullshit about a past they cannot see, when they are simultaneously making up bullshit about the present, and predicting bullshit about the future, using the same computers.
Wow… you really have gone far off the deep end here.
The only thing hard to reconcile here is that you possess any of the Catholic faith at all, which clearly you do not.
There is no issue whatsoever seeing that the Christ of the New Testament is the same God of the Old Testament. This is only something you convince yourself otherwise because you have trouble reconciling your mysticism and likely liberal views of morality with the facts about Who God actually is and what God has in store for anyone who wants to invent his or her own religion apart from what He has revealed and carries out through His only Church.
No need to get into any half-baked bullshit historical revisionism of yours about the past, when you can’t even demonstrate what is so irreconcilable between the OT and NT. One only needs to turn to the Revelation to John to find Christ exercising all the power and might and judging nature of the OT God. Just because for a period of time, Christ as the Incarnation approached mankind in a gentler fashion, something the OT God did just as well, doesn’t mean they’re not the same person.
Once again it’s clear that for Nobis, actual Christianity comes in last place, and modernist historical revisionism and hostile liberal scholarship comes first, to which the Church must bend over for.
“First, all credible scientific inquiry disproves Ptolematic astronomy and its ever-increasing epicycles. No chronological snobbery here, just scientific observation.”
Now, for the record, I am not going to completely blame Nobis here for something that the vast majority of mankind have been conned into believing, including myself, as this is not unique, but once again, for everyone else’s sake here, please note that – THIS – is one of the reasons why I harp on so much that this topic as well as its bastard children – Darwin, Descartes etc. is SO IMPORTANT for Catholic to recognize, and once you understand it, then so much falls into place and you avoid the bottom of the pit into which fellows like Nobis have fallen so far down into that getting them out requires nothing less than the complete shattering of every stupid edifice they subscribe to.
First, Nobis, all credible science has NOT disproved Ptolematic astronomy. What you were taught was one-sided half-baked rubbish. Because Copernicus had FAR MORE epicycles than Ptolemy did. Ptolemy’s only issue was that he didn’t know the precise distances of the planets, which he left in as variables for future astronomers to correct, which they did, and which amazing line up with observations today. Just a little something your propagandistic school textbooks never touch upon. Furthermore, Tycho Brahe perfected the Geocentric System, something you’ll never read about either, from which Kepler, his student, stole his work for and retrofitted it to a heliocentric system.
What Nobis and many of us are never taught is that, practically all systems from Ptolemy’s to Tycho’s to Kepler’s work, and you can even superimpose one on top of the other, epicycles or ellipses and all, and the observations line up. So as the Church knew very well back then – under what is commonly referred to as Galilean Relativity – that you could literally invent any system you like, with the Earth or Sun or Moon or Mars or Jupiter as the center of the universe, and via the magic of mathematics and geometry, create a perfectly working system that accounts for all the observations.
So, which was true? That’s where we come into the Galileo controversy. And while it did involve the Protestant brouhaha, it was so much more than that, which multiple Popes recognized, including the esteemed St. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, whose task it was to take the Protestant arguments out back and have them shot.
Bellarmine did not make the argument dependent on scientific merits, which nobody at his time could prove, and for which he also knew philosophically that much of what passes around as ‘science’ is so much religious bullshit and superstition that even folks like Nobis drink up today, and which the world is locked down upon due to more soothsaying computer models that predictably fail to match up with reality.
What Bellarmine did was go back and look into Tradition – and – this is important – INFALLIBLE Papal decrees and Dogmatic Councils. Especially when looking back at the Old Testament which was considered INERRANT and HISTORICALLY FACTUAL – something dopes like Nobis deny. There Bellarmine used this to demonstrate that the Old Testament is reliable, that the texts do speak with a Geocentric framework, that Joshua did stop the Sun and Moon’s movements equally, and NOT the Earth’s. That the entirety of the Jewish and Christian Tradition was Geocentric, even in the face of competing models from other cultures, and that the Church Fathers had overwhelmingly all without deviation sided with Geocentrism and interpreted the Scriptures in that way, and that Dogmatic Councils – precisely for the purposes of combating heresies, including Protestantism – RULED and made it BINDING DOGMA – that NOBODY could interpret the Scriptures apart from the CONSENSUS of the Fathers – upon which the Tradition of the Church is maintained and protected and passed down, and which all contradicts every Protestant claim. Therefore upon grounds of Tradition and Scriptural Inerrancy and the Consensus of the Fathers and dogma – Bellarmine, and the infallible Papal decrees backing his conclusions and made binding upon the entirety of Christendom under several pontiffs – defined, declared and condemned Galileo’s propositions, and then declared him guilty of adhering to them, form which Galileo then recanted, and later in his life even upheld in the face of those looking to use him as a symbol of resistance, like morons continue doing today.
And as for credible scientific inquiries even into our time – here’s the dirty little secret – Science has NEVER proven the Church wrong. Science could never demonstrate the Earth’s movement through space, and has in fact always only found the opposite. And they really need to do this in order to distinguish which system, Tycho’s or Kepler’s is true, because otherwise you simply have two different perspectives that all match the observational phenomena. Instead, the most famous interferometer experiments concluded that they could only measure a daily rotation but no revolution of the Earth against the Aether. Heliocentrism needs both. Geocentrism only needs one – rotation, this being the universe’s around the Earth.
To cover this up, a fellow by the name of Albert Einstein, was hailed as the new prophet, who would initially declare the aether didn’t exist, but failing this as it was demonstrated that it was, he had to then take physics and turn it into modernist mumbo-jumbo by declaring that the reason the Earth’s velocity was zero and that we couldn’t ever measure it was because of his new special theory of Relativity, where the measuring apparatus was shrinking in the direction of the Earth’s movement, and thus was recording zero, and as an artifact to cover up the rest of the fudged math, its mass must also as a consequent be increasing, and time itself was a physical substance that was dilating, and in this hall of mirrors, and a gigantic marketing campaign, Einstein’s bullshit, was made the standard. But it got worse as when further experiments demonstrated that the aether was detectable alongside many of things Einstein’s Relativity failed to account for such as gravity and electromagnetics, Einstein had to revise the whole thing into the General Theory, and according to Einstein’s General Relativity, Geocentrism is viable again and an equally valid coordinate system, thus in his own words, Ptolemy was back and equally valid.
So even the scientific consensus today, admits Geocentrism is entirely possible, something Nobis is never told, and the only reason it is pooh-poohed is on democratic grounds, not evidence, and the democratic grounds rest entirely upon the presupposition that Geocentrism is unlikely because they believe the universe came about by random chance processes, and therefore Geocentrism was more statistically unlikely, and to believe in it would be akin to admitting Intelligent Design – aka – that God exists – or, which some physicists alternatively believe – Geocentrism is true, especially after the findings of the PLANCK and KOBLE satellites measuring the universe’s background radiation and noticing that its poles line up with the Earth as the center – but we just inhabit one of many multi-universes and we happen to be in the one where -horror of horrors – the Catholic Church was right and the infallibility of the Pope’s and Old Testament are demonstrably true in the face of the entire world’s scientific might.
Even John Paul II’s speech, prepared by Cardinal Poupard, used the Relativity escape hatch to tell the Academy that they never demostrated that the Church was proven wrong, but he apologized anyway for any heavy handed-ness imposed upon Galileo, and even Cardinal Ratzinger admitted in his book that there was no difference between Ptolemy and the presently adopted system.
So as Nobis asks : “what real difference does it make to having faith in Jesus whether the sun revolves around the earth or vice versa? Is that something which is truly critical to faith? Did Jesus come to proclaim astronomical truths?”
The difference is that one faith accepts the Old Testament, the Church Fathers, Dogmatic Councils, and Papal Infallibility as true and reliable.
The other subscribes to made-up bullshit and has no leg to stand on and is utterly worthless to converting people to believing in Jesus Christ.
It was Jesus Christ speaking through the Old Testament writers and people, speaking under guidance of the Holy Spirit, Who is ALSO GOD, in case Nobis rejects that too. And therefore ALL of it DEMANDS our intellectual assent, because to reject it is to slide into heresy and error, and we end up with a confused mess of ideas like Nobis’. And considering it’s Nobis’ messy ideas that have been responsible for undermining and destroying the faith throughout the ages and all proper morality, yes, it DOERS MATTER.
*Please excuse my typos.* KOBLE = KOLBE, DOERS MATTER = DOES MATTER. etc.
Johno,
For what it’s worth, the Tychonic geocentric model (and geocentric models in general) is untenable given that it is contradicted by observations of stellar parallax and stellar aberration.
Johnno, while very sympathetic to the geocentrist position, the fact is it was never defined as a dogma. Nor was it taught all places by all the church at all times. It certainly is not part of the extraordinary magisterium, nor was it ever considered part of the ordinary magisterium.
A Simple Man, that is false.
Stellar parallax and stellar aberration are perfeftly accounted for and work in both models.
You’re simply parroting what are essentially fake science talking points that we’ve all been fed with in our godless schools, and repeating without ever being shown the alternative. It’s not just an oversight, it is DELIBERATE indoctrination.
Consult the portion of this video here:
https://youtu.be/a_D936vSshQ?list=PLtUQV8psCfGhTOhiJIqnRkojEAGG1qBFo&t=4094
The whole thing is worth watching for the full context, but that bit starts off at the parallax issue.
It has never been defined as a dogma necessary for belief for salvation, yes. But by that argument, neither is it dogma to believe the Aaron had 4 sons, but as the Church well understood, anyone saying otherwise was obviously trying to destroy the faith by undermining the reliability of Scripture or of Tradition.
What has been done is that it HAS been formally condemned and upheld but several papacies with the FULL FORCE of their Authority as FORMAL HERESY.
I’ve already been over these points here before.
To deny the rationale behind why the Church condemned it is essentially to argue in favour of Protestantism – that we can ignore the clear words of Scripture, ignore the entirety of Tradition, and ignore the Church Fathers, which means the councils that declared DOGMATICALLY that the Fathers had to be believed are wrong and therefore Dogmatic Church Councils are a sham. This is why Bellarmine and the Popes could not act otherwise and had to formally define and condemn Galileo’s propositions, and naturally this is binding upon all the faithful.
Since this has never been revoked, you can no more believe otherwise than you might believe any other condemned proposition of Protestantism, and be happy with yourself.
Either way, you are forbidden by the Church to state that the Sun doesn’t move, or that the Earth moves through space. That the majority of Catholics may innocently subscribe to these errors as they might any other misconception or heresy about the faith through no fault of their own, not possessing theological nor scientific degrees about complex topics, is not going to affect one’s salvation, but it is a stumbling block that if left unchecked can lead them into error and apostasy, and is why this episode is #1 about why the world rejects the authority of the Catholic Church and the Bible.
Here is the full animation for parallax comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stIDO8QBhww
What is conveniently left out of most critiques of geocentrism is that nobody touches Tycho’s system, including specifically the neo-tychonian model, where it is NOT just the sun planets and stars revolving around the Earth. It is the planets revolving around the Sun, which revolves around the Earth, and this includes the entire star field.
The Earth occupies the center of the entire universe’s mass, which is why it doesn’t move, as demonstrated by Mach, and which even Einstein recognized. This set-up is IMPOSSIBLE as a product of random chance, which is why they didn’t like it, especially because it not only pointed to God, but also historic precedent has made it such that the PAPACY itself ruled against them and was therefore vindicated. Both the interferometer experiments and the findings of CMB satellites confirm this as the only interpretation that takes into account all the data, which is why you are now seeing movements towards multi-verses and holographic universes where these morons effectively must destroy all of science and the ability to know what is real in order to run as far away from the obvious conclusion as possible.
A Simple Man wrote- “…could you point out a particular site or book that illustrates precisely what *do* believe with regards to grace, faith, and Christ’s redemption.”
No not one book or website. But I can try to express more or less precisely what I think about those things. Just for the record here.
As a preface. I believe that the entire Augustinian theological structure superimposed upon Scripture/Apostolic Tradition is profoundly flawed. I believe its essential flaw is that it is based upon a metaphysic (i.e. philosophy) of “clear and distinct ideas” rather than one of actual Being. It cannot be overstated just how important it is to recognize and understand that.
Now specifically, as per the items you mention:
****”Grace” is an attempt to conceptualize that which goes beyond conception- The Infinite God. It is simply not possible to do this apart from analogizing God with something else. As G.K. Chesterton said, to say one thing is like another is also to say that it is completely different from it. In other words, don’t confuse the analogy for the reality.
Therefore, I’d argue that the entire Augustinian construct of grace is essentially null- it isn’t real. Likewise is the entire hesychastic sort of theology involving “divine energies” found in the Greek rites. While the latter seems to have ultimate origins with some of the Greek hermits and fathers rather than Augustine, it’s essentially just another variation of the same theme found in the Latin West. (and it even shares a common origin with it in sorts of neo-Platonism!).
****Regarding faith: it is nothing more and nothing less than reasoned belief founded in credible testimony and eyewitness- especially the direct testimony Jesus as preserved in Apostolic Tradition and the testimony and eyewitness of those who actually were there with Him. It is not a “supernatural gift” which is “infused” at whim and pleasure of God. Similarly it isn’t a “system” of ”clear and distinct ideas” which give one absolute, metaphysical certitude. Belief, by definition, entails a degree of uncertainty and unknowing. Moreover our reasoned belief rests in a real historical Person- not in an “idea”, or “grace”, or “energy” much less any tome of theology or scripture. Jesus Himself IS God’s Self-Revelation. So when we speak of “divine revelation” in a genuinely Christian sense, I’d argue that it is restricted to that: Who Jesus IS and what He did and said.
****Christ’s Redemption: John 3:16 is a good summary.
Pitiful. Just plain pitiful.
“I believe its essential flaw is that it is based upon a metaphysic (i.e. philosophy) of “clear and distinct ideas” rather than one of actual Being.”
Let’s translate this into what it really means –
Objective truth doesn’t exist. I, Nobis, reject this because clear and distinct ideas aka Truth with a capital T, especially Revealed Truth, is antithetical to things that I, Nobis, prefer to believe in, because that is more comfortable for me. Maybe there are particular sins that I like to engage in without feeling guilty. Or maybe I just like to curry favour with groups who reject the Christian faith as superstition and I want to pioneer a half-way house and be the prophet of my own new religion where I pick and choose what I like from two opposing sides and harmonize them into something new.
That’s what ‘Being’ refers to, and why people like Francis, Kasper and every modernist, maybe even sodomite, looking for nouvelle theology ideas and one world religionism like this concept of ‘being’ very much. because it’s a bullshit word that means nothing at all, and means everything all at once, simultaneously. It is like pointing to a bag full of air. It’s contents can be anything. It could be oxygen. It could be a clear poisonous gas. You don’t know. But that’s the beauty of it. The only thing that matters is that the bag is full of ‘being.’ And ‘being’ can be anything that you want it to be, depending on the weather conditions.
Nobis wants to convince you that the thing he is attacking isn’t ‘real’, despite how much it requires grounding it that which he admits is “clear and distinct ideas.” And tries a bait’n’switch for his ‘being’ which is patently not real, because he needs a theology built on something that must, by his objection to Augustine, NOT be clear or distinct. It must be entirely malleable to match whatever is convenient for Nobis.
As Pius X stated, modernists like him, deny what they affirm and affirm what they deny. All they are good at doing is talking themselves as far away from something distinct, so that they can win you over with completely indistinct phraseology.
That’s Nobis’ real objection to Augustine. Don’t be fooled by him casually referring to Chesterton or anyone else without providing any “clear and distinct” quotations and references to demonstrate that they are somehow on his side. They’d laugh in his face. He is the one confusing their analogies in order to fit his argument, and thus doesn’t realize that he contradicts himself. It is Nobis who has made analogy, reality. Or rather denies reality altogether, in favour of indistinct morph-able analogy. Thus it is the height of irony that Nobis uses Chesterton to berate Augustine and us that we “confuse the analogy for the reality.” This coming from a guy who denies reality itself. And he’ll likely simultaneously deny that he denies reality. This is why the poor soul is confused as a result of much reading, but no comprehension.
Here is example #2 of Nobis directly contradicting himself in his very own statements.
On faith, Nobis starts by saying “this is reasoned faith”, “not supernatural.”
Then he goes on to state “it isn’t a “system” of ”clear and distinct ideas” which give one absolute, metaphysical certitude”
WHAT? Which is it? If you don’t have any clear or distinct criteria, then just what the heck is your rational intellect working with?
Oh, I guess it is some “being” composed in flesh. This is what Nobis is “restricting” this to. But the Incarnation IS a clear and distinct idea. And that Very clear and distinct idea, which Nobis says is all he restricts himself to taking at face value, goes around saying things at odds with Nobis – ALL THE TIME, to the point where even His own disciples have trouble grasping it, and to the point that Christ tells Simon Peter, that his profession of faith, was NOT revealed by flesh and blood, but by the Father in Heaven. In other words – NOT BY HUMAN REASON. And upon this Rock, Christ would build His Church. The basis for the Papacy and where the concept of Papal infallibility comes from, binding things on Earth and in Heaven, something Nobis would understand if he took the Old Testament and the Davidic kingdom seriously, which he says is mixed up with bullshit myths and Jewish retconning. Why the Jews should retcon anything to sound more Christian is a mystery.
Well, how does this work then, according to Nobis, who clearly is trying to eat from both ends? Clearly Simon didn’t reason his way there, and yet God somehow inspired him to say something. And that something was the Truth – a Truth with a very “clear and distinct” idea, “You are Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Which encapsulates Who Jesus IS, and What Jesus would DO and DID, and backed up by what Jesus SAID – which in this case, isn’t what Jesus said, but what Peter said, and the source from where it came from, to which Jesus in His own words said He recognized.
So was God overriding Peter’s Free Will or whatever bullshit Nobis is trying to read out of it? This misconception comes as a consequence to what many common heretics and outright atheists believe in. Like arguing that the fact that God didn’t grant us wings like He did birds, or made us dependent on food and air, means He has restricted us, and we are therefore not truly free, because we can’t be as independent and all powerful as God is. Rather all it means is that human beings are limited beings constrained by reality, and must make their choices within this framework. And just as air enters our nostrils and we breathe, so too does inspiration by the spirit of God and we can freely choose to cooperate with it just as we can also be free to hold our breath. But naturally just as holding ones breath doesn’t last for long unless he does something severe to permanently end his breathing apparatus, so too, the Truth, via inspiration, must burst forth eventually from the mouth of a man, whether motivated by fidelity to the Truth, or by a guilty conscience or even pride.
Thus Peter and his successors the Popes are compelled to speak and teach infallibly via cooperation with the same Holy Spirit when it impels them, just as the Pharaoh hardened his heart because his pride and arrogance would not accept God as his competitor. In Both cases, it is God who inspires, working with whatever the subject himself in both cases is prepared to give, to his benefit or detriment. Much the same for the writers of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Fathers of every valid Church Council.
The same is true for Grace. It’s there, offered to you like the air. You cooperate with it. It is something that is mysterious in its nature beyond our human comprehension, but we have a very clear and distinct idea about what it can do for us and do to us, and we make the decision to make use of it or cast it away. It’s ‘being’ is more accurately ‘potential.’ And sometimes that potential is gentle, and sometimes it is more forceful depending on the circumstances that a man can be compelled to operate under it. And in that latter case, it is certainly a more powerful thing, and therefore why God has limited it to ONE man who acts as His representative on this Earth, requiring very specific criteria to which that ONE man must by virtue of the Office and Oath he takes, intellectually assent to taking it upon himself of his own Free Will. And that alone makes it IMPOSSIBLE for a wilful formal HERETIC to hold that office. Because the formal Heretic must by nature of his heresy, with full intellect deny the power of that Office and its consequences entirely in order to hold what he knows has been ruled against it by the same authority of that very Office.
Johnno wrote: “Objective truth doesn’t exist…”
Respectfully sir, like Tom A. earlier you’re apparently confusing truth with what constitutes truth: reality external to the mind.
Truth requires a mind and an object external to it. That is why Christ referred to Himself as “The Truth”; because He IS God’s Idea/Word/Truth of Himself. That’s what He meant when He said that.
All truth, therefore, is analogous to the Truth (Word) God Has Of Himself.
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Johnno wrote: “…this concept of ‘being’…That’s what ‘Being’ refers to.”
“Being”, in the sense I mean, refers to actually existent objective things external to the mind (aka “beings”). Especially Being Itself: HE WHO IS/GOD.
It most definitely does NOT refer to ideas or things which could potentially exist.
All beings, therefore, are analogous to Being Itself: HE WHO IS/GOD. I suggest you research “the analogy of being” and review the previous comments I’ve made under this blog post. I think this will serve to clear up your apparent confusion.
NQP,
Beyond what Johnno wrote (which was quite thorough), your definition of what faith is explicitly contradicted by, among other things, the story of Abram/Abraham.
What credible testimony or eyewitnesses prompted him to obey God when He told him to leave his native country of Ur? What credible testimony or eyewitnesses prompted him to believe God when it came to His promise that He would bring forth an entire nation from Abram (who, at this time, was 75 years of age, and still childless)?
Johnno wrote: “On faith, Nobis starts by saying ‘this is reasoned faith’, ‘not supernatural.'”
Actually I defined faith itself as “reasoned belief”.
Belief, by definition, means an assent to something which we do not have a clear and distinct idea (which is to say “understanding”) of because we have empirical, objective evidence that the person or thing is believable.
In the case of faith in Jesus, the object is utterly supernatural because Jesus is God Incarnate. Our assent is simply our natural powers of reasoning and will.
That’s all.
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Johnno wrote: “Then he goes on to state “it isn’t a “system” of ”clear and distinct ideas” which give one absolute, metaphysical certitude”.
Indeed. We can only have moral and quantifiable certitude of God’s (Self-)
Revelation based upon witness and testimony. We are incapable of the absolute certitude that God has in and about Himself. We’re finite creatures, whereas He is the infinite God.
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“If you don’t have any clear or distinct criteria, then just what the heck is your rational intellect working with?”
Basically the human intellect works with ideas that have varying degrees of clarity and distinction; not all ideas are equally clear or distinct.
That was Descartes’ great foible: he desired….quite literally…to run all reality, including divine revelation, through a mathematical grid. Plato made a similar mistake (absent divine revelation since he lived before Christ) albeit expressed in a different manner (“Forms” aka “Ideas”) which was more wrapped up with mythical tropes and such.
Most of the history of philosophy is a testament to this fundamental error- trying to form a clear and distinct idea of Being AS Being. This inevitably leads to general skepticism and much worse.
Think of it this way: there is a difference between know that something there is an apple on the desk and knowing its final cause where the apple came from (what caused it). When it comes to God, that’s impossible because He is Un-Caused. He simply IS. We can only know Him, when left unaided by His real Self-Revelation in Jesus, indirectly and by analogy.
You all realize that you are wasting your time, right? NQP is a heretic troll. Stop responding to/feeding him.
A Simple Man:
The story of Abraham is part of a larger foundational narrative. It is not and should not e considered an historical account of God revealing Himself. Furthermore, later meanings and contexts were “read back” into that and other OT narratives. It’s quite complex, really.
Every culture has origin legends involving gods and sacred ancestors. Israel is no different. It is an attempt by a people to find meaning in history and their place in the world.
In a word, it’s quite “human”.
I should add that the greatest value of the OT, rather than being “the inspired, inerrant word of God” is that it places Jesus into context: in His humanity He was a product of a particular culture in a particular time who found meaning in the world and in history through the lense of particular narrative and mythos.
The books of the OT provide that context, as well as that of His Apostles and most of His early disciples. They were Jews with a particular worldview.
Allegedly to Bernadette Soubirous ,
“I am the Immaculate Conception”
Malachi Martin told me the Possessed always “invites” the evil being in.
A word about Descartes: when one tries to render all being into “clear and distinct ideas” it inevitably renders reasoning into “rationalism” and faith into “fideism” or even simple “emotivism”.
That’s large part (but not completely) why we find this false dichotomy between “faith” and “reason” nowadays. Subjective ideas have taken precedence over actual objective beings apprehended through the commonsense (five external senses, imagination, memory). Aquinas argued tirelessly for the precedence of actual beings over ideas, and that is the greatest value of his philosophy.
Put simply- genuine Christian faith in Jesus inextricably involves reasoning. It is not simply assenting to something because it “feels” right or because of some subjective interior “infusion” or “enlightenment” disconnected from the commonsense.
No he is not Johnno, He is of the Eastern Orthodox thought.
You need to study the Christian Faith from a neutral historical perspective. The excommunications were lifted and hopefully what was once ONE as Our Lord Jesus Christ prayed it would remain on His Cross, will once again be One and provide the Grace filled battering ram of Faith that once inspired the Christian Martyrs in the Roman arenas.
I edited my last paragraph because I think it needed a little clarification/copyediting/amending:
“Think of it this way: there is a difference between know that there is an apple on the desk and knowing its final cause- where the apple came from (what caused it). When it comes to God, that’s impossible to know this because He is Un-Caused; in other words there is NO difference between Him and (so to speak) His Cause. God simply IS. We can only know Him therefore, when left unaided by His real Self-Revelation in Jesus, indirectly and by analogy. And even with the aid of Revelation, we are still very limited due to the fact that we are finite and imperfect.”
John wrote: “…some gnostic, spiritist mystical bullshit…”
Very respectfully, that’s precisely the sort of thing that I’ve been arguing against.
That is why I argue in favor of a genuinely Christian faith- reasoned belief.
That is why I argue in favor of a philosophy grounded in actual Being and beings rather than ideas.
Johnno wrote: “…God’s Revelations…”
I hold that there is but one divine Revelation, not revelations plural as you put here, which is nothing more and nothing less than God’s Revelation of Himself.
This Revelation is literally a Person: Jesus. He very literally IS God’s Self-Revelation to mankind.
John wrote: “And that something was the Truth – a Truth with a very “clear and distinct” idea, “You are Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Which encapsulates Who Jesus IS, and What Jesus would DO and DID, and backed up by what Jesus SAID – which in this case, isn’t what Jesus said, but what Peter said, and the source from where it came from, to which Jesus in His own words said He recognized.”
None of what transpired in the account found in Matthew’s Gospel entails a direct, much less sudden, “infusion” of “clear and distinct” knowledge into Peter of Who Jesus is. Even less does it suggest a sort of divine conferral of mystical powers into Peter and those who would succeed him later after he established a church at Rome.
Consider that this episode occurred about a week or so prior to Jesus’ betrayal and death.
By that time Peter and the other Apostles, of whom Simon was their spokesperson and a kind of natural leader, had been with Jesus for three years following Him everywhere and witnessing what He said and did.
Recall too that Jesus asks not Peter individually but ALL of His Apostles “but Who do YOU (plural) say I am?”. He was testing not merely Simon’s faith, but each of their individual faith.
Peter, being a sort of NATURAL leader and spokesperson, made the reply.
All Jesus meant by “flesh and blood” was from Whom He was sent- His Father…who obviously isn’t mere flesh and blood but “The Living God”/“Yahweh”. That’s how to understand that episode in Matthew and how to understand the word “revealed”. It isn’t a sort lightning bolt directly from God zapped into Peter (or any of the other Apostles for that matter).
The long and short of this is: Simon Peter manifested his reasoned belief in Jesus as the Son of God. And Jesus, in return, stated that this faith- this reasoned belief- would be the foundation upon which His church would be built.
You have to keep in mind that Jesus didn’t simply “reveal things”. Anyone can purport to do that. Rather He IS Revelation- God’s Self-Revelation. And only He can BE that because He is God’s Self-Knowledge…i.e. Word/Logos.
BTW, one can use “Truth” interchangeable with “Word” and “Logos” when it comes to describing Jesus.
So again, you are apparently confusing truth with reality.
Likewise you’re conflating God’s Truth/Word/Logos About Himself with “truth” in respectively both the more everyday human and the more abstract senses of the word. As I said/implied earlier, truth in those senses is analogous to God’s Own Truth About Himself.
John wrote: “…human beings are limited beings constrained by reality…”
I’m not sure that’s a good choice of words.
To say something is “constrained” here in this context suggests that it is being forcibly prevented from achieving its full absolute potential- which is the sense I believe you mean here. In the most absolute sense, nothing truly forcibly constrains our intellect or free will. Otherwise we wouldn’t be human.
Look at it this way: if I lose a leg in a car accident, that’s a relative constraint. But I’m still a human being, albeit one who is missing a leg.
As far as “reality” limiting us in an absolute sense, reality is simply an abstract notion (which is to varying degrees clear and distinct, mind you) of the totality of all individual beings. It therefore doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to say that reality “constrains” us in any absolute sense. Reality simply is what it is.
The blogger Ann Barnhardt tends get a bit confused about “reality” as well. She has stated on her blog recently (and I believe in the past) that “When we receive Holy Communion, we receive REALITY HIMSELF.”. This is a well-intentioned but sloppy sort of theologizing. In fact, we commune with Jesus, who is God’s Self-Knowledge and Revelation and, being God from God, the source of all things real (reality).
So, full circle…
We’re “limited” in any absolute sense by virtue of the fact that we’re not God. That’s the long and short of any sort “limited creature”, in particular human persons.
NQP speaks like a modernist. Lots of big ideas that sound deep and insightful. Frankly, I have no idea what he is talking about and have stopped reading his posts. But at least he has manners unlike some others who recently commented in this combox.
Dear Louie, this is the chastisement that is to come, before the anti-Christ. In Portugal the dogma of the Faith…”Outside of the Catholic Church, there is no salvation. When JPII went to Assisi in 1986, he lost the Faith and the Papacy. Ditto with Ratzinger and Bergolio. John XXIII and Paul VI were not Catholic to begin with.
The SSPX is the only Latin Rite order with Bishops that posses apostolic succession. If you are a Sedevacantist, you’d better be going to an SSPX chapel or you’re lost too!
Johnno,
Just to cover several points:
– Regarding Tycho’s geocentric system: regardless of the accuracy of its calculations with regards to planetary motion, it provides no predictive or physical explanation as to **why** the planets and stars move the way they do (for what reason does the Sun revolve around the Earth, while the planets revolve around the Sun instead of all objects revolving around the Earth? Why do certain moons orbit other planets instead of orbiting the Sun or the Earth? Etcetera), and it would fly in the face of other observations that we know regarding how mass and energy interact with spacetime. The Earth would have to be far more massive than measured to be absolutely stationary.
– Regarding Galilean Relativity: of course you can create a coordinate system that describes motion based on a particular frame of reference. A geocentric reference frame is useful for stuff done on Earth; a heliocentric frame is more useful for calculating interplanetary travel and determining voyage paths for probes within the Solar System; a galactocentric frame is more useful for analyzing satellite imagery of deep space; however, to say that there is a valid geocentric reference frame is a far cry from saying that the Geocentric model is the **only** valid reference frame, which is a different claim altogether. Of course modern astrophysics admits of a geocentric reference frame; however, that is not the same thing as claiming that the universe **absolutely** revolves around the Earth.
– Regarding the doctrinal status of geocentrism: if the Holy Office of Pope Pius VII held that no obstacles exist for a Catholic to hold that the Earth moves, then it follows that geocentrism is not a matter which must be held as “de Fide”.
– Regarding Earth’s movement through space not being scientifically proven: among many many many MANY observations to the contrary, the current and historical existence of various probes maintaining stable positions at the Lagrangian points of the Sun-Earth two-body system in space completely contradicts the notion that Earth is stationary.
– Regarding the aether and Earth’s motion: notwithstanding how many times I see these various late 19th to early 20th century experiments misunderstood (or used in isolation; for example, the Sagnac effect measured by the 1925 Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment could be reconciled with both special relativity or stationary aether, but the experiment **presupposes** that the Earth is rotating, and thus cannot be used as support for a motionless Earth), our observational evidence (from satellites, deep space probes, and the people who’ve been sent out into space) have pretty much clearly confirmed that there is no medium beyond our atmosphere that fits the classical qualities of the luminiferous aether.
– Regarding your stellar aberration video: this is a fallacious comparison, because even though on the outset it would appear to result in the same vision that we see on Earth, the motion of the stars in the Geocentric model presented to would result in much more severe Doppler shift (by orders of magnitude!) of the light than what we actually observe (since the source of the starlight in question would actually be moving relative to Earth, instead of Earth moving relative to the light source). The lack of observed Doppler shift would have to be countered by assuming the light sources were not only much smaller, but also much much **closer** (like, within the Kuiper Belt close) to the Earth, but this is *also* contradicted by physical observations of the objects found within our Solar System, which shows no such stars besides the Sun. There are manifold other physical observations that contradict this Geocentric model for stellar parallax and aberration, but this was the first one that popped into my head. (This, incidentally, is another reason why Robert Sungenis should stop talking about astronomy, because he keeps getting stuff wrong.)
– Regarding your point about Mach: notwithstanding that his principle (which was so imprecisely described in our existing accounts of it that there exist several different formulations of what it actually is supposed to say) was a conjecture that the distribution of the universe’s mass effects an observer’s inertia, it can’t be used to support Tycho’s Geocentric model, because Mach **opposed** the concept of space being absolute, whereas the latter explicitly affirms the notion of an absolute space (because Earth is the stationary object around which the Sun revolves, while everything else rotates around the Sun). A more detailed paper from 2014 regarding this can be read here: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1406/1406.5434.pdf
In summary: geocentrism can provide a useful reference frame depending on what you’re doing. But the Geocentric model that claims Earth is the stationary center of the universe is contradicted by empirical observations from so many different angles that it’s honestly not even funny.
I will leave you St. Augustine’s venerable advice, from Chapter 19 of Book 1 of “The Literal Meaning of Genesis”:
xxx
“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”
No Tom he speaks like a Christian from the East .
Modernist he is not . Perhaps Western Christians have been so overwrought criticizing their own Prelates and labeling all they say and do as “Modernism” ,they cannot recognize what is being held onto as part of ancient catholic Apostolic Tradition from the beginnings of Christ’s Church itself. The Church in the Latin West was itself considered heretically innovative by declaring doctrine and dogma without the Eastern Prelates present at their Councils as it had been in the beginnings. When Pope John Paul 2 returned a tiny few of the relics stolen from the East during the sham Fourth Crusade, he was even criticized by “traditional ” Catholic periodicals, as i recall.
Indeed, we are all sinners.
Yes, I have detected elements of eastern thought in his comments too. I use “modernism” because his posts obfuscate the issue. It is one of the modernist tactics to sow doubt where there was once clarity.
sweepoutthefilth and Tom A.-
You both have brought up Modernism.
I’d say that Pius X’s encyclical “Pascendi…”- the text which formally defined and condemned Modernism (for the sake of those who aren’t aware) -is not above reproach. Not because Modernism isn’t a heresy, but because I don’t believe Pius X really dug deep enough and got to the root of the problem.
Traditionalists like to use “Pascendi…” as a sort of redoubt and a proof text in their criticism and fight against the manifest changes in doctrine which came with the Second Vatican Council and the changes to liturgy which were both concurrent with it and followed it. While I sympathize with them and I whole-heartedly believe that all of that signified the Roman Catholic Church discarding Apostolic Tradition in favor of…god-knows-what…I don’t believe “Pascendi…” is the solution to this.
I would offer that Modernism has its true origin in the thought of Augustine and ultimately the neo-Platonism which had such a great influence upon his thought. Pius X does not even remotely draw this connection in “Pascendi…” and as far as I know no one out there with a significant public voice has either.
Augustine is a sacred cow in Western Christianity. I believe that the time has come, indeed it is long overdue, to take a hard, critical and objective look at his influence and the damage it has wrought to faith and Tradition.
Why doesn’t he admit to being Eastern Orthodox then? I’ve asked him point blank before, and he would not answer. Regardless, if he is, then he is a schismatic troll. He is certainly teaching against the Holy Catholic Faith here, and he will continue as long as folks interact with him.
He may come from one of the Eastern Catholic Rites that are in “union” with the NO V2 false church. I have encountered his understanding of the papacy before in their circles. Like the SSPX, they make a head nod to Rome but then go about their own version of Tradition.
Regardless, he doesn’t profess the Catholic Faith.
A Simple Man.
“The Earth would have to be far more massive than measured to be absolutely stationary.”
This is a common misconception. The Earth’s size has nothing to do with it. It is the entire Mass of the Universe that is at play here. This universe, with all the stars and planets is rotating and carrying them within it, like passengers in an airplane. A rotating system has a center of Mass around which everything goes. Anything located within the center of Mass will remain static – in this case, the Earth. This can only be accomplished by deliberate design – NOT random chance. certainly not anything contemporary Godless cosmological theories can explain.
And this gets into the matter of the ‘two-body’ system as regards the Sun and the Earth. Your argument would only be correct if the universe was reduced to JUST the Sun and the Earth. In which case, both will revolve around the center of Mass between the Sun and the Earth, where the center would be closer to the Sun and in appearance the Earth would be seen to go around the Sun. But again, you failed to understand the Geocentric system as explained by the neo-Tychonic model, which takes into account the ACTUAL Universe with all the other bodies, and is NOT just limited to a hypothetical imaginary universe where there is only the Sun and the Earth. Thus your arguments using the two-body system and Langrangian points doesn’t work. The stable positions of satellites will also remain in place in a rotating universe around a fixed Earth, as the forces work out to be the exactly the same because you are essentially just dealing with inverse mathematics.
Tycho didn’t have the explanation for ‘why,’ he merely showed that the appearances worked out within a geocentric framework. Newton and Mach eventually did, and both testify that this is possible. This is further proven by the observations of the Earth alignment with the Cosmic Microwave Background as well as every interferometer experiment failing to measure the Earth’s assumed velocity through space, but finding a precise 24 hour rotation period between the Earth and the aether. Even according to Einstein’s General Relavtivity, the Earth can be at the center, but this possibility is rejected by the consensus on ideological grounds. Therefore the geocentric frame is the ONLY one that accounts for all this data and NOT simply just as another means of mathematically calculating frames of reference.
I never said that Geocentrism is a de fide matter. However the propositions that the Sun does not move and that the Earth moves akin to the Sun and with diurnal rotation is condemned as FORMAL HERESY and backed by the full weight of Papal authority. A Catholic’s salvation doesn’t rest on adherence to knowing every detail of every heresy or innocently believing a condemned heresy. The same is true for the knowledge of the universe’s movements just as it is for what the Trinity analogously is not. Complicated matters that are only of concern to the theologians and scientists for which the common man has no obligation to know, and yet, it is not as if the world that the common man exists in is not affected in a significant way by these errors which can be stumbling blocks that if left unchecked can and have demonstrably grown to destroy the faith of the common man.
Furthermore the existence of the aether is a proven fact. Einstein and others tried to claim that Michelson Morley couldn’t measure the movement of the Earth because there was no aether. They claimed it demonstrated a null result. This is false, because Michelson Morley did detect a positive result, it just happened to be nowhere near the velocity needed to demonstrate the Earth’s movement of 30km/sec. But it did detect something. Michelson didn’t buy Einstein’s explanation, thus he then checked for Earth’s rotation of a 24 hour period in the Michelson/Gale experiments. This returned a 100% detection and accuracy. Thus proving that there is in fact an aether measurement. And it matched the 24 hour period of rotation, but there could be no finding of the Earth’s assumed revolution around the Sun. This completely destroyed the argument that there was no aether, yet this was ignored. Then we also have the experiments by by Sagnac for the effect where something travelling in one direction is slowed down versus the other on a rotating plane. This is NOT compatible with Special Relativity. It IS compatible with General Relativity. But the General theory is NOT the Special Theory. They are both incompatible with each other because one accounts for things that the other does not. And the General Theory allows for Geocentrism. But it has been a common tactic to perform a bait and switch between one and the other, using the special theory to deny the aether’s existence, then using the general theory to account for the aether’s effect. It’s classic sleight of hand.
Also regarding Gale, there is no ‘presupposing’ the Earth’s rotation. You’ve completely misunderstood the experiment’s purpose. Michelson and Gale were checking to see whether they could detect aether using rotation rather than revolution. They detected it. Meaning it was there. And as regarding presupposing the Earth’s rotation, that was simply the initial bias, and the Geocentric view would interpret the experiment as equally describing the rotation of the aether around a fixed Earth. Naturally Michelson was not a Geocentrist, however he was committed to the facts and the data. And Gale demonstrated that Einstein was completely wrong that the aether could not be detected, because Michelson knew for a fact that the Morley experiments returned a positive detection result, but was a result essentially saying the Earth wasn’t moving. So why could he detect a rotation period against the aether, but not a revolution around the Sun against the same aether? Heliocentrism requires BOTH. Geocentrism needs only one – rotation against the aether, which describes a fixed Earth not going anywhere and a universe rotating around it.
Regarding aberration, it is not fallacious. You casually brought it up, and regarding the appearances, as you yourself admit, it works out. So the observation of aberration is therefore not an argument on its face for one system or the other.
Thus your argument shifts to the nature of how light travels and doppler shifts, and the arguments over the precise distance of the stars from us. This is something that is in active debate today. Your attempt to make it seem as if it is just something Dr. Sungenis is arguing is what is fallacious, when he can easily quote for you numerous sources that back up his statements and with no dog in the theological fight. It is a legitimate point of contestation
This gets into a very complicated topic, and I’d link you to what Sungenis says, but you already claim familiarity with his work, though you sidestepped the obvious fact that he actually quotes the literature of numerous others. I know we all like to imagine that ‘science’ has locked into place numerous things taken for granted and broadcast to us on the Discovery Channel, but the sad fact is that it just ain’t so. Hell, today people are debating the necessity of freaking medical masks and their necessity looks to largely matter or not matter depending on what political side of the aisle you fall on. Welcome to the real world.
Needless to say, the most charitable way to put this is that we do not fundamentally understand the nature of what causes redshifts and doppler effects because we are making presumptions on the nature of how light is travelling through space, and this too based on assumptions about what model of the universe we subscribe to, which is then based on assumptions of how old we want the universe to be, none of which can be proven and working on scales that even assuming smaller stars and a closer universe are still much to far from us to even get there, and we’re arguing based on pins of light.
But even on the face of that, to claim there are no other observations we can rely on, is false. Other than the CMB which is the biggest smoking gun and even has outright atheists like Lawrence Krauss and others befuddled because it completely violates the assumption of a non-central Earth, even Hubble’s observations of redshifts scared him because he saw redshift everywhere he looked, which even according to what you might believe, this indicated a central Earth. Thus came the invention of the balloon-universe, where our common understanding of three dimensional space had to be warped to put everything on the surface of an expanding ball alongside more tricks of warping space and time and gravity and throwing in black, and brown holes so that the phenomena could be explained from absolutely anything other than a geocentric framework.
Science is full of these things, and much the same goes for interpretations and explanations of doppler and red shifts etc. The fact remains that there is an explanation in a Geocentric framework, which you’ve also briefly detailed, and which is just as valid considering that at this stage, NOBODY really knows.
Regarding Mach, regardless of what he personally believed, Mach was essentially a Relativist – and General Relativity MUST allow for Geocentrism, because to claim there is no absolute space in the end simply is another way of saying that both systems work because they are just two different ways of looking at things. So once again, this doesn’t get away from the fact that machian physics can demonstrate the viability of both systems just as Newton could show. Machian physics have been developed on by plenty of others, including Barbour and Bertotti to demonstrate precisely this. And is ironically held as proof of Relativity. So whether you want absolute space or relativity, you can’t escape Geocentrism. Naturally the Geocentrists argue that there is an absolute frame of reference, and thus the same mathematics are applicable to this in an absolute frame because it makes no difference.
Thus the only thing funny are the lengths people go to escape the obvious evidence of Geocentrism, and fail to understand the literature, as Sungenis demonstrated via numerous quotations from the very people used to deny Geocentrism as all admitting that Geocentrism is completely viable, who fail to understand the fundamental principle of Relativity MUST allow for Geocentrism, who fail to understand the actual results of Michaelson/Morley and Michelson/Gale and the motivations behind what they were actually looking for rather then the historical revisionism presented in the textbooks, as well as running away from the most recent Scientific probes from WMAP to KOBE, to PLANCK to the Galaxy surveys etc. that are simply brushed off in the hopes that yet another probe or mathematical adjustment will somehow find the opposite of what they continually demonstrate.
As for St. Augustine – fun fact (which you no doubt know), he is a geocentrist, as are all the fathers. Because, to put it very simply, the Scriptures described exactly that from inference in plain language. Thus Augustine could not deny geocentrism, any more than that he could get away from the number of 6 Days in Genesis, despite applying a hypothetical reinterpretation for illustrative purposes regarding Scriptural interpretation, but the key is that he still had to be constrained by the plain language of 6 Days. So the quote you provide is entirely meaningless to the discussion other than as a flourish, and one could just as easily quote Augustine upbraiding the foolish for ignoring what is plainly demonstrated in Scripture but recourse to contemporary fads about the universe or the nature of gods.
Johnno, theologically it seems logical that the place where Christ were to incarnate Himself would be in the center of physical universe and not some far flung corner.
In other words, Tom prefers filthy heresy and lies spoken with manners rather than unvarnished truth. So cucky.
Nobis –
“None of what transpired in the account found in Matthew’s Gospel entails a direct, much less sudden, “infusion” of “clear and distinct” knowledge into Peter of Who Jesus is. Even less does it suggest a sort of divine conferral of mystical powers into Peter and those who would succeed him later after he established a church at Rome.”
What it does demonstrate is that God can by such means inspire Truth and Revelation through men, which forms the basis of Papal infallibility.
Thus Peter can choose to work with it, or to deny it three times. Free Will is operative, and therefore contrary to what you were declaring, God can inspire infallible pronouncements through a man, and this does not make of him a robotic puppet or violate his free will as you seemed to be painting.
At the end of the day, only Peter made that reply, and Christ therefore ‘rewarded’ him by setting him aside from the other Apostles; either because God specifically chose to inspire Peter, or God was trying to inspire all the Apostles, but at this crucial moment, only Peter accepted the grace to speak. As other Old Testament types demonstrate – this willingness with faith to cooperate with God, even when one does not fully comprehend it in its entirety, always leads to the escalation of ones status, and honour, reward and recognition by God. Even more strongly emphasized by Christ renaming Peter, an act on par with Jacob being renamed to Israel. God doesn’t just do this stuff lightly.
In this case, Christ also confers the Keys of Authority, a reference to the Israelite Monarchy, where the King – Christ- has a prime minister of His household to whom he confers the keys of authority to open and shut the doors of his house and make decisions in the absence of the King. This also prophetically was said would be taken away from the Jews and be granted to another who would be put firmly in place like a peg. See Isaiah 22:22. This is what Christ is directly referencing here. Peter is given leadership over the rest. And that is a result of what he cooperated with – revelation from God the Father. Thus his authority granted is a direct consequence of this.
As for flesh and blood, I was referring to that something ‘concrete and distinct’, which you were trying to get away from while simultaneously claiming is necessary regarding critiquing Augustine. We may never know precisely what grace is. But we do have a concrete and distinct idea of what it can do and does with anyone who fully cooperates with it. And that is all Augustine needs to detail his theology, which can be rationally explained from things that are not comprehensible in nature to human knowledge, but which produces concrete and distinct effects.
As regarding ‘Truth’, Truth does not contradict Truth. Thus the things we know concretely and distinctly are not opposed to those mysteries beyond us that are also Truth. It is as simple as that, and to divorce one from the other, or argue that one cannot rationally draw concrete and distinct Truths stemming from the other, or come to understand the other based on the objectivity of concrete and distinct matter or the natural law, is foolishness.
By ‘constrained’ I obviously mean that humans are not infinite and we have limitations due to our nature, both physical and spiritual. But Reality is not an ‘abstract notion,’ Reality is composed of things both objectively knowable as well as abstract ideas, the latter only being due to our limitations. But even abstract ideas produce real and lasting effects, as any philosophy does, and this results in tangible changes to people and actions in the real world. Thus abstract ideas are not to be underestimated. But it is false to claim that a metaphysics based on clear and distinct ideas is flawed, this would only be true of absolute materialism that denies any recourse to the abstract, which is certainly not what Augustine does. Nor is it what Augustine makes of Grace. For again, we KNOW with certainty what Grace DOES, even while not knowing what Grace IS. The former is enough to develop a perfectly consistent and rational theology around.
And despite all your objections to the ‘clear and distinct’, for some reason you turn the opposite tail by throwing away the Old Testament as mythical Jewish retconning, while arbitrarily holding the New Testament up as the only ‘concrete and distinct’ thing to believe in, and you consider this MORE viable of belief than the Old Testament which you reduce to some abstract myth. Hence the inherent contradiction even according to your own take and nonsense that faith and belief cannot be comprised of things that are knowable and certain. Thus the recourse to the classic liberal position of ‘Jesus as a person’ which just means – hey, maybe we should ignore some of the things concretely written about Jesus, because a person is so much more, so therefore, we should legalize abortion and sodomy, or consider Jesus as a transexual gay character because despite what clear and distinct things written about him, we’re likely missing so much more about this hypothetical ‘person.’
So effectively by directly ignoring all that IS clear and Distinct, you essentially make Jesus a mould into which any moron can imagine him to be. Maybe Even Jesus, the person, might evolve on some ideas about marriage like Barack Obama did.
That right there is the trap. So to avoid this nonsense is exactly why Augustine, the Church and the Vicars of Christ, had to constrain fallen human stupidity by clear and distinct ideas – that binding and loosing that those who reject the authority of the Papacy hate so much, because then they won’t be able to invent any infinite number of Jesus-Persons to match their proclivities.
Yet more filthy gamma sperg walls of text. Sad.
Speaking of which, see:
The Secret Triumph of the Gamma
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-secret-triumph-of-gamma.html
‘Reality external to the mind’ would still not contradict reality on the ground.
An apple remains an apple, even if an arrow through the head prevents you from seeing it.
This is objective Truth. Not just a category of the mind interpreting it. The real concept of the apple supersedes anybody else determining it for themselves. This is naturally because God Himself created it, and did so before He made man, who came after the fact, and the universe didn’t need man around to exist as an actual fact.
As regards ‘being’, my objection is not with how this describes God. My objection is certain modernists denying the objective ‘clear and distinct’ ideas that God has revealed about Himself, in favour of obsession only on our abstract comprehensions of His ‘being’ as a means to read into His being, whatever we want, that contradicts ‘clear and distinct’ revelation that God has provided, a lot of it contained in the Old Testament that you want to reinterpret away from the ‘clear and distinct’ into the category of ‘abstract myth’ so that rather than accept the things God does and says in it, you can ignore it completely in favour of the gentler God of the New Testament, which you arbitrarily consider more real.
You’re playing fast and hard with whatever you consider distinct and clear versus abstract and person and being divorced from the former, so that you can paint an image of God different from Revelation and the Tradition of the Church, with a human head who can exercise infallible power.
There is no problem with any of this.
So then, why is it that you object to Augustine’s theology of ‘clear and distinct’ ideas’ when obviously, like Aquinas, he isn’t ruling out those ideas too large for us to reduce to concrete terms?
Obviously no one will claim that Augustine’s work is the complete encapsulation of the faith. But you dismissed him based on grounds that you now reiterate here as being perfectly sound.
Thus why we suspect you of modernism, because you are contradicting yourself when it suits you – such as in your earlier rejection of Augustine and dismissal of rational ideas as somehow being antithetical to the abstract.
Perhaps you didn’t explain yourself well. But this is unlikely considering much of the other stuff you’ve openly said you believe here, views I insist are coloured by poor scholarship based on a dismissal of the literal intent and reliability of the Old Testament, where the character of God is somehow unreconcilable to you with Jesus Christ, Who was the Same then, is the same now, and will be the same forever, and whose will is directly united with God the Father.
“I would offer that Modernism has its true origin in the thought of Augustine and ultimately the neo-Platonism which had such a great influence upon his thought. Pius X does not even remotely draw this connection in “Pascendi…” and as far as I know no one out there with a significant public voice has either.
Augustine is a sacred cow in Western Christianity. I believe that the time has come, indeed it is long overdue, to take a hard, critical and objective look at his influence and the damage it has wrought to faith and Tradition.”
Uh… huh… and Copernicus, Descartes, Darwin, Luther, the Eastern Orthodox schismatics and adulterers, Marx, Engels, have absolutely nothing to do with the turmoil today.
Because all those lefties were busy reading Augustine, someone all their heroes went out of their way to critique and reject… right…
But let’s play along… I would like more detail on your train of thought as to how you came to this conclusion that Augustine is at the root of all of Modernism’s problems. Something that you’ve routinely failed to provide outside of that Augustine was too wedded to ‘clear and distinct’ ideas…
Give us then, a sample of this hard critique you think is long overdue.
“It is not and should not e considered an historical account of God revealing Himself.”
And right here we once again come to Nobis’ bullshit.
Nobis, you can’t prove any of this other than to just admit you rely on bullshit liberal scholarship, with the intent to find disconnect, so that it might cast off the entire Church.
Just asserting things here is not going to help your case. I’d ask you to provide sources, but given we already know from the most ancient copies of scrolls that there is no deviation, and that you’re just falling upon the gross assumption that “Every culture has origin legends involving gods and sacred ancestors.” and that therefore Israel must have too, because they were not in any way special, despite that the blessed Jesus as a Person of the NT you hold as authentic explicitly denies your bullshit, just goes to prove you are what we can all see you are, a modernist heretic who does not hold the Christian faith. You just happen to like a guy, called Christ, in the Bible, whom you believe to be the incarnation of ‘God’ but that God and the Church he built are not reliable and must be considered only ‘abstract’ ideas that are ‘real’ but ‘abstract’ but are ‘real’ but ‘abstract’ and you’ll bounce back and forth on this until you mangle out of it whatever can placate both your personal feelings about who you think God ought to be, along with what you have an absolute ‘real’ and not ‘abstract’ belief in anti-Christian liberal scholarship, where everything Christian is a copy/paste from pagan sources, who were also just some guys making stuff up, because… ‘humanity’, am I right, fellas?
“places Jesus into context: in His humanity He was a product of a particular culture in a particular time who found meaning in the world and in history through the lense of particular narrative and mythos.”
DING DING DING! And here we have another infamous modernist talking point! Verbatim!
This folks is why, modernists like Nobis, do not like the Papacy, and all that infallibility stuff.
It heavily restricts their imaginations about Jesus Christ and Scripture.
If any of you still somehow think that Nobis is expressing classical Eastern thought, please apologize to the schismatic Orthodox, now. Because at least they try to justify themselves on grounds of consistent orthodoxy.
Nobis makes it up as he goes. As Nobis himself describes Christ – whom you must remember, he, at least in clear and distinct words, still considers Him to be God incarnate – the INFINITE ABSTRACT ™ GOD OF ALL TIME AND ETERNITY AND ALL POWERFUL CREATOR – had to constrain Himself to conform to being “a product of a particular culture in a particular time who found meaning in the world and in history through the lense of particular narrative and mythos.”
Yeah… it’s not like God providentially led them there all this time or something. That God in their old texts was a fake. The real God just decided one day without any accuracy or planning to pick and choose some random tribe and retconning scribes making up myths about their old men, and decided, “You know what? I, God, am going to just incarnate myself here play along! Thereby perpetuating their made-up myths as a basis for my coming on to the scene for millennia to come, therefore making it as hard as conceivably possible for anyone else to take My existence here seriously, or avail themselves of My Salvation, which I’m going to suffer and die for quite horribly. I dunno, maybe I, God, am not omniscient and all-knowing about the future as I claim to be. Because I hadn’t the foresight to correct any of those unreliable texts in the face of skeptics who would obviously see through the sham that it is!”
This is the NONSENSE that Nobis subscribes to, even if he hasn’t realized it, because he’s too busy gazing into the abstract to make any rational sense!
With that, I can say we’re safely done here giving him any of the benefit of the doubt. You can all now see that the ‘Jesus was a Person!’ crowd believes in the end.
Johnno wrote: “Descartes, Darwin, Luther…Marx, Engels, have absolutely nothing to do with the turmoil today.”
Johnno, the thought of each of these figures all have their root in Plato and Augustine placing “ideas” above actual Being (God) and actual, real beings. There is a sort of intellectual lineage that can be traced back to them.
I’ll leave it up you to do your own research as to this fact.
Johnno wrote: “…God can by such means inspire Truth and Revelation through men…”
Answer me this: how would we able to objectively verify that these “Truths” and “Revelations” channeled through men are real? What would be the criteria?
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Johnno wrote: “…infallible pronouncement…”
The very notion of an “infallible pronouncement” makes no sense. Fallibility applies to an agent, not an idea (which words- i.e. “pronouncements” are expressions of). Ideas aren’t agents- persons are. And the only absolutely infallible agent is God. And God is the furthest thing- infinitely so -from a mere idea.
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“As regarding ‘Truth’, Truth does not contradict Truth. Thus the things we know concretely and distinctly are not opposed to those mysteries beyond us that are also Truth.”
Once again, you’re conflating truth with reality and ignoring the how all truth is analogous to The Truth God Has Of Himself In His Word.
God’s Knowledge (Truth) of Himself, as well as His creation, is absolutely perfect and infinite. Our knowledge (“truth”) on the other hand, certainly of God but also of His Creation, will always be imperfect and finite. Therefore “Truth” can only be analogous to ‘truth”, all the while there being no contradiction or conflict between the two.
Johnno wrote: “…we KNOW with certainty what Grace DOES, even while not knowing what Grace IS…”
What you’re effectively saying here is that “grace” is a vaguely understood sort of mediator allowing God to accomplish His Will though mankind and reveal all sorts of secrets directly to us and “inspire” us. A quasi-magical, mysterious “Force”, practically.
But Isn’t that Who Jesus is: A Mediator? Isn’t He THE Mediator between God and Man?
What need is there to conjure up theological notions like “grace” when we have Jesus- the real Person Who IS God’s Self-Revelation, Mankind’s Mediator and Redeemer? Where does “grace” fit into it? The Holy Spirit, perhaps you’d say? Christ said that we would send the Holy Spirit to REMIND His Apostles of all which they actually witness Him say and do. NO new “revelations”, no sort of “grace” in the sense you mean, no nothing of any of that sort.
Johnno wrote: “…and that therefore Israel must have too, because they were not in any way special, despite that the blessed Jesus as a Person of the NT you hold as authentic explicitly denies your bullshit…”
Sir, Jesus related to people in a way in which they could understand what He was trying get across to them through word and deed. That’s how we humans operate, and He knew that- both as God and as man.
Therefore, He used their (and His, in His very real humanity) own cultural and historical vocabulary: that of 1st century-era Judaea/Palestine. Likewise when His Apostles later began to build an institutional structure for the church, they modeled it very much after what they knew and understood: 1) the synagogue and 2) the Sacrificing Temple religion of Yahweh.
What He was trying to express to them- The Reality of He HIMSELF Being God’s Self-Revelation and mankind’s Redemption from sin, has no precedent in the OT or the Temple. Even if he used imagery and gestures which He took from both.
Jesus was, to put it this way, a “totally new thing” in the most literal sense one can possibly mean it. And all the reading back of meaning into OT texts will never change this fact. God didn’t reveal Himself in the OT. Rather, the OT is a complex and complicated human tale- or rather bundle of tales and so forth -found in that compilation of texts. And it served to give a particular people meaning and place in both the world and in history. And not all of it is historical- any scholar of scripture worth his weight- whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or even a non-believer- will more or less concur on this point.
I mean, do you think God ordered the Israelites to commit genocide as we find on more than one episode in the OT? Putting aside the question of their historical veracity for a moment, do you accept those accounts as divine revelation? Because if God speaks directly to mankind as He purportedly did in those episodes, it is by definition a matter of divine revelation and God is a cruel, bloodthirsty tyrant who orders indiscriminate murder.
Dear brother in Christ, God bless your continuing efforts on this and other matters, for the glory of God and salvation of souls. If persons wish to refute the various proofs in Sungenis’s, Galileo was Wrong, the Church was Right, they would do well to set the refutations out in a clear methodical manner that can be readily understood. Are you aware of anyone who has presented such?
Like a “sociologist”, perhaps! Look where the “historico-critical” method takes one . . .
Yes I agree concerning Augustine. I must be a “modernist” too.
The “stain on the soul” thing to be washed away with Baptism left me wondering even in my youth.
It sounds too made up to appeal to the childish ….us.. The nature of mankind changed due to the Fall for which Our Lord came to save us from ourselves and bondage to Satan and sin.
“Eastern Orthodox schismatics”
You know NOTHING about the History of the Faith or the Early Church Fathers !
Humbert, the Legate, arrived in Constantinople demanding the Patriarch of the East stop in the middle of the Divine Liturgy and speak with him. Of course he did cease the celebration of the liturgy ( hmmm I believe Borgoglio did the same and the priest ceased celebrating the Mass so as to not offend the “pope”????
Anyway Humbert slapped the papers of excommunication down thus , renting the Church Jesus and His Apostles established, in two.
BTW………..St Peter Damian warned the Pope at the time that Cardinal Humbert and some other French Cardinals were “Dangerous”. But alas,
It is glaringly stupid to call Eastern Catholic Christians
“schismatics” especially since Roman Catholics practice
and have been practicing Papolatry while the Orthodox always recognized the Bishop of Rome as The First Among Many.
It was and is a terrible thing when Christianity got all bogged down in politics and greed. Exactly what Our Beloved Jesus warned us not to do.
BTW , I was being sarcastic above. The Eastern Patriarch had his mitre on correctly and did NOT stop the celebration of the Divine Liturgy to speak to the Pope’s Rep.
Satan’s power on Earth has to be near its zenith. Dear God, sustain us in Holy Faith, let us not comply with his evil minions who have all the temporal power and persecute those who hold to the truth. None of the almost-complete anti-God world dictatorship could have come to be without the Great Apostasy “from the top down”. Those posing as leaders of the Catholic Church are colluding (lately, more openly) in the persecution of Catholics or those who uphold even the Natural Law. Lord, have mercy on us, your orphaned sinful children. Viva Cristo Rey!
No, AlphonsusJr.
Tom A.. apparently prefers that people show a modicum of common decency and civility and exhibit a semblance of maturity to one another even when they are in disagreement. I happen to share his preference, for whatever disagreements I have with Tom A.. or anyone else posting comments on this blog.
All of these things, apparently, you have yet to learn or acquire.
So please do everyone here a favor- especially yourself -and give your ridiculously juvenile color commentary a rest while you still have a strand of self-respect remaining.
And if nothing else, please dial back your apparent obsession with cuckoldry. I don’t presume to know where it comes from, but it comes across as really creepy and weird.
That’s all.
“It was and is a terrible thing when Christianity got all bogged down in politics and greed. Exactly what Our Beloved Jesus warned us not to do.”
Indeed it is. He did. And I agree.
But one could easily argue, historically, that the rift between the Greek East and the Latin West really began when Constantine moved the capital of the Empire and his court to Constantinople, and not too long after the patriarchs of the much newer see located there began to claim an authority equal, if not higher, than that of the Apostolic see at Rome.
I’m not suggesting I necessarily agree with this argument, mind you. I’m merely suggesting that it’s a very complex story, and neither the Latin West nor the Greek East comes out totally clean or beyond reproach.
NQP,
As I recall ( and I really should go research this again) It was Pope Sylvester who first saw an expansion of his power and See through worldly power………….
I also read the Christians in Jerusalem begged for a Bishop , many of them were even Christ’s relatives , but none was forthcoming and named by the Pope.
Consecutive Roman Bishops , not titled Pope till around the sixth century,
spoke only Latin and did not care to learn Greek, thus leaving communications between the East and Western Church to others who did not have merely the Spiritual well being of Believers in mind.
I recommend reading
https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Roman-Church/dp/0399126651
And for a real eye opener Vatican Secret Archive employee Barbara Frale’s
Books . The ancient letters she discovered from the Eastern Patriarchs to the Popes tell some very important truths about the so called “schismatics”, as referred to here and their counterparts in the West.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=barbara+frales+books&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
Recent martyrs for the Faith….Coptic Orthodox Believers many of whom could not read or write but all could recite the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom as prayed in the three hour Divine Liturgy of the Copts.
All of them commended their souls to Jesus Christ , including on black man who converted being with these True Believers who in word and deed died for Jesus Christ.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/february-web-only/isis-martyrs-coptic-christians-five-year-anniversary.html
They didn’t die for the Holy Catholic Faith; therefore, they are not martyrs for the True Faith. Read up on what the Catholic Church teaches about the Eastern schismatics, not your Vatican II sect.
They died because they are TRUE Christians and Isis knew it.
I recall during our brief stay in the SSPX, two boys drowned at a Boy’s Camp. one belonged to the SSPX, the other was his friend and the “pious” adherents spread the word that the drowned member was himself a martyr while his drowned friend was just a kid who drowned. Brainwashing at it’s finest.
2V, Read upon the History of the Church from a neutral source .
Malachi Martin’s book is a good place to start. As the one time Biblical scholar for the Vatican, your eyes might get opened and btw , Vennari of Catholic Family News ( RIP) was is friend who encouraged me to speak with MM. So please go choke on your V2 sect comment.
Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907:
“There is not really any question of doctrine involved. It is not a heresy, but a schism. The Decree of Florence made every possible concession to their feelings. There is no real reason why they should not sign that Decree now. They deny papal infallibility and the Immaculate Conception, they quarrel over purgatory, consecration by the words of institution, the procession of the Holy Ghost, in each case misrepresenting the dogma to which they object. It is not difficult to show that on all these points their own Fathers are with those of the Latin Church, which asks them only to return to the old teaching of their own Church.
That is the right attitude towards the Orthodox always. They have a horror of being latinized, of betraying the old Faith. One must always insist that there is no idea of latinizing them, that the old Faith is not incompatible with, but rather demands union with the chief see which their Fathers obeyed. In canon law they have nothing to change except such abuses as the sale of bishoprics and the Erastianism that their own better theologians deplore. Celibacy, azyme bread, and so on are Latin customs that no one thinks of forcing on them. They need not add the Filioque to the Creed; they will always keep their venerable rite untouched. Not a bishop need be moved, hardly a feast (except that of St. Photius on 6 Feb.) altered. All that is asked of them is to come back to where their Fathers stood, to treat Rome as Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom treated her. IT IS NOT LATINS, IT IS THEY WHO HAVE LEFT THE FAITH of their Fathers. There is no humiliation in retracing one’s steps when one has wandered down a mistaken road because of long-forgotten personal quarrels. They too must see how disastrous to the common cause is the scandal of the division. They too must wish to put an end to so crying an evil. And if they really wish it the way need not be difficult. For, indeed, after nine centuries of schism we may realize on both sides that it is not only the greatest it is also the most superfluous evil in Christendom.”
2Verm……!907 Catholic Encyclopedia?
A tad too MODERN for me.
A quote from a poster who studied in a Trad RC Monastery to discern his vocation posted on a “Catholic” blog………aside from detecting the undercurrent of sodomites he states.”Study history. In the first centuries the bishop of Rome has absolute control of only Rome itself and then the surrounding districts. Bishops were selected, in the East and North Africa, by the local churches. Divisions arose, sometimes violent, when the bishop of Rome tried to override actions of the local churches. Read about the history of the filioque. The abuse of power by the bishop of Rome ultimately led to the break between the East and West.”
Ahhh yes the Filioque change decided by mainly Spanish RC Bishops at one of the Councils of Toledo and ratified by the then current Pope……..
Hitherto , changes of either Doctrines or Dogma were decided at Councils which included members representing both the East and West catholic ( universal )and orthodox ( true) Church.
What do you think the Eastern part of the One True Church thought then 2Verm?
Try the “Schismatic” hat on for size………….
Good job 2VT, you just outed another schismatic. It became obvious the other day that NQP was also a schismatic. The issue is always the papacy with these heretics and schismatics. In a recent post Sweep used the word “papalotry. As soon as I saw that my radar went off. Only enemies of the Church accuse Catholics of “papolatry.”
Actually the formal split really occurred after the Fourth Crusade when the Venetian army, rather than going to Palestine decided to sack Constantinople and slaughter their fellow Christians and steal their relics and wealth. The bishops of Rome and Constantinople made four attempts to Unify again after that but the people of the Eastern churches could not forget the desecration of Hagia San Sophia and the massive murders committed of their own people.
Flip the coin and take a peek Verm remembering that the Catholic Church did NOT begin or end with the Council of Trent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6zXs_cUSjQ
I guess you’re right Tom. Time to sweepoutthefilth so to speak.
Tom A ,
Regarding the word “Papolatry”.
“Editor’s note: This is edited transcript of a portion of the speech “Alternative to Schism” given at the Roman Forum Conference in August, 1995. In this presentation, Dr. Marra presents a clarification that will help Catholics to think critically and correctly, when confusing and contradictory statements emanate from even the highest authorities in the Church. ”
http://www.romanforum.org/
http://brizek.com/fandm/papalotry.htm
Was Dr Marra a schismatic too? I think not ,especially since I knew him well enough to have him invite me personally to attend The Roman Forum.
The Roman Forum is a den of neo-Gallicans.
A worthless comment .
Sweep, your Dr Marra link is nothing but a strawman fallacy. The issue isn’t whether the election of a Pope is protected by the Holy Ghost. The issue is that once elected, the Pope, no matter his morals and competence to govern, is protected by Divine Assistance not to err when teaching on matters of faith and morals. The link sets up the premise that “papolaters” believe that the Holy Ghost picks the Popes. He the goes on to prove rightly that this is false. But by setting up the strawman first he leaves simple readers with the impression that he has successfully debunked papolatry. It is very telling who falls for such fallacies. And the Roman Forum is a bunch of neo-Gallicans who do not quite accept Vatican I as it was taught by all the post Vatican I Popes up until 1958.
My takeaway was clearly a caution concerning the Papolatry over JP2 at the time. John Vennari made a point of printing this article in CFN for the same reason.
Von Hildebrand’s husband was a Theologian for Pope Pius the 12th as i recall.”Hildebrand was called “the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church”[1] by Pope Pius XII”
“And the Roman Forum is a bunch of neo-Gallicans who do not quite accept Vatican I as it was taught by all the post Vatican I Popes up until 1958.”
Those Neo Gallicans as you put it, were studying much of his writings……..you have zero idea of what you’re blustering about on here.