Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2018! As we start this (extremely cold) New Year, let's make a resolution: Let's resolve to work especially hard in this New Year to end the many, many myths about Catholicism left over from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

Now, I'm not saying all criticisms of the Catholic Church and Catholics are invalid--far from it! The truth is the truth. Where sins have been committed, we must acknowledge them, and repent, and resolve never to repeat them. I say as much in How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question.

But there are a great many crimes, sins, and scandals that common knowledge and "everybody" indicts the Church with that simply didn't happen, that have no connection to fact, and that simply are myths and "mythconceptions" that have been floating around for centuries. In the name of truth, honesty, and an end to "fake news" of all kinds, we owe it to ourselves and to the common good to get rid of those myths as yesterday's rubbish. Let's start fresh in this New Year. Let's start with a clean slate, with a mind freed of falsehood and a clearer view of history and the world.


Let's start with this one:

The medievals knew perfectly well that the earth was round. Heck, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) repeated the common consensus bluntly and casually in his Summa Theologiae:

The astronomer and the natural philosopher both conclude that the earth is round, but the astronomer does this through a mathematical middle that is abstracted from matter, whereas the natural philosopher considers a middle lodged in matter.

The myth of the medieval belief in the flat earth arises from a few sources:

• The nigh-impregnable modern belief in medieval backwardness, ignorance, and refusal to use reason, and
• Mythmaking around Christopher Columbus (c. 1451 – 1506), especially from the writer Washington Irving (1783 – 1859).

And more, of course—the workings of memory are rarely simple. But there’s a start to getting rid of some of the old, false baggage of the past, pursuing a truer perspective on one of the world’s most enduring institutions, and allowing us a better understanding of where we come from in order to better decide where we’re going.

Happy New Year!

International Theological Commission

Their documents are all online! And most in English (haven't checked all of them).

Here.

The Problems with "Cosmos"

A run down of reactions here, with the concluding comment:

Ironically, if the writers of “Cosmos” had handled the Bruno segment a little differently, by also profiling others like Copernicus, Galileo and the above-mentioned Digges with the honesty and complexity their stories demand, they would have found allies instead of antagonism in the Catholic community who simply want their history told fairly, the good along with the bad. That shouldn’t be too much to ask from those who say they’re committed to verifiable truth.

Another response here. A sampling:

We’re barely seconds into this farrago and we have our first lie. “Everyone” knew the earth was the center of the universe? Wow, who’s going to tell Copernicus? Kepler? Stigliola? Diggs? Maestlin? Rothmann? Brahe? All of them believed in models of the cosmos that were not considered orthodox, and lived at the time of Bruno. All of them escaped the fire, and indeed weren’t even pursued by the Inquisition. Right here we have the major lie at the heart of modern anti-religious scientific propaganda: the war between faith and science. We’re supposed to just assume this ignorant backwards world of the past hates smart people. Tyson himself says it matter-of-factly: “How was [Bruno] spending New Year’s Eve [in 1599]? In prison, of course.” Of course! Because that’s what the Church does to smart people! Bad church! Bad!

Links and a lot more in the original.

What's His Line? The Miraculous

Archbishop Fulton Sheen may well have his beatification miracle! Excerpts:

...The reputed miracle involves the unexplained recovery of James Fulton Engstrom, a boy born apparently stillborn in September 2010 to Bonnie and Travis Engstrom of the Peoria-area town of Goodfield. He showed no signs of life as medical professionals tried to revive him. The child’s mother and father prayed to Archbishop Sheen to heal their son.

Although the baby showed no pulse for an hour after his birth, his heart started beating again and he escaped serious medical problems.

The Vatican’s medical advisory panel ruled that there is no medical explanation for the healing of the baby. The ruling means that a board of theologians will now review the case. If they approve the case, its consideration could pass to the cardinals and bishops who advise Pope Francis on beatifications.

If the case reaches Pope Francis, his approval would recognize Archbishop Sheen as “blessed,” the final stage before possible canonization as a saint...

Want to see him in person?.

On the Unity of Christians

I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, 3striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.--Ephesians 4:1-6

John Paul II (soon to be canonized a saint) reiterated the Gospel call for the unity of Christians in his encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint. Excerpts:

Ut unum sint! (May they be one)...The courageous witness of so many martyrs of our century, including members of Churches and Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church, gives new vigour to the Council's call and reminds us of our duty to listen to and put into practice its exhortation. These brothers and sisters of ours, united in the selfless offering of their lives for the Kingdom of God, are the most powerful proof that every factor of division can be transcended and overcome in the total gift of self for the sake of the Gospel.

Christ calls all his disciples to unity. My earnest desire is to renew this call today, to propose it once more with determination, repeating what I said at the Roman Colosseum on Good Friday 1994, at the end of the meditation on the Via Crucis prepared by my Venerable Brother Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. There I stated that believers in Christ, united in following in the footsteps of the martyrs, cannot remain divided. If they wish truly and effectively to oppose the world's tendency to reduce to powerlessness the Mystery of Redemption, they must profess together the same truth about the Cross.1 The Cross! An anti-Christian outlook seeks to minimize the Cross, to empty it of its meaning, and to deny that in it man has the source of his new life. It claims that the Cross is unable to provide either vision or hope. Man, it says, is nothing but an earthly being, who must live as if God did not exist.

And Pope Francis had some rather poignant words to speak on the same subject. Excerpts:

...Is Christian unity a priority for you?

Pope Francis: Yes, for me ecumenism is a priority. Today there is an ecumenism of blood. In some countries they kill Christians for wearing a cross or having a Bible and before they kill them they do not ask them whether they are Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic or Orthodox. Their blood is mixed. To those who kill we are Christians. We are united in blood, even though we have not yet managed to take necessary steps towards unity between us and perhaps the time has not yet come. Unity is a gift that we need to ask for.

I knew a parish priest in Hamburg who was dealing with the beatification cause of a Catholic priest guillotined by the Nazis for teaching children the catechism.  After him, in the list of condemned individuals, was a Lutheran pastor who was killed for the same reason. Their blood was mixed. The parish priest told me he had gone to the bishop and said to him: "I will continue to deal with the cause, but both of their causes, not just the Catholic priest's." This is what ecumenism of blood is. It still exists today; you just need to read the newspapers. Those who kill Christians don't ask for your identity card to see which Church you were baptized in. We need to take these facts into consideration...

The martyrs, the greatest Christian witnesses to the faith and the truth of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, challenge their brethren, separated and divided in the face of tremendous challenges from the world, the flesh, and the devil these days. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, as Tertullian wrote, and perhaps also the bond of charity which holds the whole together, mediating the Holy Spirit, opening a door through their sacrifice as Jesus did.

Shopkeeper Refuses Service Over Gay Marriage

Huh.  Elizabeth Scalia has the story (from over a year ago). Excerpts:

So, you know all this brouhaha, all these hysterics about how bakers, and photographers, and other service-providers who routinely work for gay clientele (but draw a line at serving gay weddings because they feel it imperils their souls) are horrible people?

And you know the whole “if you think that way, then you’re a bigot,” thing, because governments and pundits have taken it into their heads that it is their job to define “sin” to another person?

And you know that whole, “refusing to serve someone because they think differently than you is all Jim Crow-y and immoral?”

Yeah, well…so much for that.

A gay stylist in Santa Fe refused to cut New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez’s hair due to her stance on same-sex marriage. KOB-TV’s Stuart Dyson reports.

A Santa Fe hairdresser is waging his own boycott of sorts: He is denying service to the governor of New Mexico because she opposes gay marriage.

Antonio Darden, who has been with his partner for 15 years, said he made his views clear the last time Gov. Susana Martinez’s office called to make an appointment.

“The governor’s aides called not too long ago wanting another appointment to come in,” Darden told KOB.com. “Because of her stances and her views on this, I told her aides, ‘no.’ They called the next day asking if I’d changed my mind about taking the governor in, and I said ‘no’ again.”

Martinez has said marriage should be between a man and a woman. Darden, who said he has cut the governor’s hair three times, said he won’t serve her unless she changes her mind about gay marriage.

Darden apparently feels that it would go against his own personal moral code — his individual conscience — to cut the governor’s hair. He does not see this decision as an act of “intolerance.” In his mind, he believes that to cut her hair would be to co-operate with evil — a kind of sin, if not against God, then against his own reason and beliefs. He may fear that serving to the governor could be misconstrued as an affirmation of her views.

And no one in the press is arguing differently on the governor’s behalf...

Links in the original.

Project: Sowing Seeds

For new blog posts, scroll down.  This one's staying up till the Feast of Christ the King, the end of the Year of Faith..

If we want to really succeed in the New Evangelization, we have to go where the people are.

Pope Francis on Abortion, Gay Marriage

On abortion: In Italian, unfortunately.  But you can get the gist from other sources.

John Allen:

...Francis delivered an address to a group of Catholic gynecologists in which he strongly affirmed the right to life as a “primary value and primordial right of every human person.”

In that address, the pope also called on Catholics to defend a “culture of life” that begins “from the first instant of conception...”

Lifenews:

“Every unborn child, though unjustly condemned to be aborted, has the face of the Lord, who even before his birth, and then as soon as he was born, experienced the rejection of the world,” he said.

Pope Francis condemned the “throwaway culture” abortion promotes, saying, “Our response to this mentality is a ‘yes’ to life, decisive and without hesitation. ‘The first right of the human person is his life. He has other goods and some are precious, but this one is fundamental –- the condition for all the others’”.

The leader of the Catholic Church described a contradiction whereby scientists pursue cures for diseases but snuff out human life in abortion.

“On the one hand we see progress in the field of medicine, thanks to the work of scientists who passionately and unreservedly dedicate themselves to the search for new cures,” he said. “On the other hand, however, we also encounter the risk that doctors lose sight of their identity in the service of life.”

“While new rights are attributed to or indeed almost presumed by the individual, life is not always protected as the primary value and the primordial right of every human being,” he continued. “The ultimate aim of medicine remains the defense and promotion of life...”

Related: on Rachel's Vineyard.

On gay marriage: the Telegraph:

Dissident priest Greg Reynolds has bee

n both defrocked and excommunicated over his support for women priests and gays - the first person ever excommunicated in Melbourne, he believes.

''...I've come to this position because I've followed my conscience on women's ordination and gay marriage.''

According to church teaching, excommunication is the strongest sanction and means one can not hold any office or receive any sacraments. Being laicised means one is no longer a priest.

Fairfax Media understands that the only other Melbourne priests laicised against their will have been notorious paedophiles...

Edward Pentin on Francis and gay marriage:

According to an article in tomorrow’s L’Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Primate of Argentina, has said that if a proposed bill giving same-sex couples the opportunity to marry and adopt children should be approved, it will “seriously damage the family.”

He made the statement in a letter addressed to each of the four monasteries in Argentina, asking the contemplatives to pray “fervently” that legislators be strengthened to do the right thing.

He wrote: “In the coming weeks, the Argentine people will face a situation whose outcome can seriously harm the family…At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children. At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God. At stake is the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts.”

Cardinal Bergoglio continued: “Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is not just a bill (a mere instrument) but a ‘move’ of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”
The cardinal also noted that “today the country, in this particular situation, needs the special assistance of the Holy Spirit to bring the light of truth on to the darkness of error, it need this advocate to defend us from being enchanted by many fallacies that are tried at all costs to justify this bill and to confuse and deceive the people of good will.”

The cardinal explained why he has called on the nation’s Carmelites for “their prayers and sacrifice, the two invincible weapons of Santa Teresa.”
“I invoke the Lord to send his Spirit on senators who will be voting, that they do not act in error or out of expediency, but according to what the natural law and the law of God shows them,” he said. Addressing the contemplatives, he called on them to pray for the legislators and their families, “that the Lord visit, strengthen and console them. Pray for the senators to do good for their country.”

Cardinal Bergoglio said the bill will be discussed in the Senate after July 13. “We look to Saint Joseph, Mary and the Child Jesus and ask that they fervently defend the family in Argentina at this particular time,” he said. “We remember what God said to his people in a moment of great anguish: ‘This war is not yours, but God’s’: defend us, then, in this war of God.”

Jimmy Akin has quotes on both issues:

The moral problem of abortion is pre-religious in nature because the genetic code of the person happens in the moment of conception.

A human being is already there. I separate the topic of abortion from any religious concept. It is a scientific problem.

To not let the development continue of a being who already has all the genetic code of a human being is not ethical.

The right to life is the first of human rights.

To abort is to kill someone who cannot defend himself [On Heaven and Earth]....

And, of course, the papal interview on the plane coming back from World Youth Day in Brazil:

...Patricia Zorzan:

Speaking on behalf of the Brazilians: society has changed, young people have changed, and in Brazil we have seen a great many young people. You did not speak about abortion, about same-sex marriage. In Brazil a law has been approved which widens the right to abortion and permits marriage between people of the same sex. Why did you not speak about this?

Pope Francis:

The Church has already spoken quite clearly on this. It was unnecessary to return to it, just as I didn’t speak about cheating, lying, or other matters on which the Church has a clear teaching!

Patricia Zorzan:

But the young are interested in this ...

Pope Francis:

Yes, though it wasn’t necessary to speak of it, but rather of the positive things that open up the path to young people. Isn’t that right! Besides, young people know perfectly well what the Church’s position is.

Patricia Zorzan:

What is Your Holiness’ position, if we may ask?

Pope Francis:

The position of the Church. I am a son of the Church...

Philosophers With Pistols

He just Kant stand it!

But the key question, Gonzaga grads, is this: Was Wayne Pomerleau at the scene of the crime?

...A police spokeswoman in Rostov-on Don, Viktoria Safarova, said two men in their 20s were discussing Kant as they stood in line to buy beer at a small store on Sunday. The discussion deteriorated into a fistfight and one participant pulled out a small nonlethal pistol and fired repeatedly.

The victim was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening. Neither person was identified.

It was not clear which of Kant's ideas may have triggered the violence.

This all begs for a Chesterton quote or three.

“We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.” – The Quotable Chesterton

“When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any.” – ILN, 11-7-08

“Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of ‘touching’ a man’s heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.” – Charles II, Twelve Types

The God Who Wasn't There...Until He Was

So I've been asked to watch the following films and comment.  Having intermittent internet access, I'm going to post them here to keep track of them:

And then:

So comments to follow.  Feel free to respond to them in the comments below. 

It's worth noting that one of the people involved in it later came to a rather different place. Completely opposite, in fact. Excerpts:

...Despite this evidence I maintained a lingering intellectual attachment to atheism. In late 2004 I organized a blog interview with the bestselling atheist author Sam Harris (The End of Faith). Assisting in the questioning was filmmaker Brian Flemming. This association led both me and Harris to appear the next year in Flemming's anti-Christian documentary, The God Who Wasn't There.

I attended the documentary's New York premiere. At the end of a subsequent summertime showing in the city, however, I found my atheistic enthusiasm waning. The appearance of my pseudonym in the credits inspired less pride than I had expected. As the lights turned on, I felt alienated from the audience and its contemptuous, antireligious laughter.

I briefly considered joining a small group that had formed to discuss the film over dinner. In fact I followed them for several blocks while debating whether to invite myself. But halfway across a darkened midtown street, I walked away...

In time I found it impossible to believe that the universe was created out of nothing. There was order, direction, and love. Those things all pointed to some larger, unfathomable consciousness. I realized I could not believe that human hearts and minds came into being randomly.

My eyes were also opened to the core truth of Christianity. Whereas I had formerly concurred with Nietzsche's appraisal of the faith as a "slave's philosophy," a cruel celebration of senseless suffering, I saw that his experiences had brought even him to appreciate the nobility of sacrifices made for the sake of life...

It's worth noting that the man isn't precise in his writing--he says, "In time I found it impossible to believe that the universe was created out of nothing." Yet that's the Christian belief. I think what he meant was "In time I found it impossible to believe that the universe came into being out of nothing without some creating agent, some independent being--without God."

For more on the evidence for the existence of Jesus and of God:

• Why Believe God Exists? Why Believe Jesus Exists?
• Discrepancies in the Gospels
• Further Evidence for God the Father
• God, Miracles, and Belief
• John Wright's Conversion: The First Post 
• "...making sacred wounds blossom..."
• A Good God is Everywhere — And Provides for Everything with Love
• The Dangers of Giving the Catholic Church a Fair Hearing
  

New Evangelization in France

Awesome.  Excerpts:

...Deconstructing this article has proven to be a hard task. On the surface the story of the Cathos 2.0 generation is so strong that it cannot be killed by a skeptical or hostile presentation. It is a French man bites dog story — student revolutionaries in Paris as ultramontane Catholics.

On the surface Le Nouvel Obs seems to have framed the story against the interest of the subject. While it allows the young Catholics to tell their own story, the analysis and commentary is drawn from the left — academics and liberal Catholics who bemoan the conservative political and doctrinal views of Cathos 2.0. Nor do we hear from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in France. This packaging should have made the issues unattractive and painted the subjects in an unsympathetic light. But  by the end of the story these young people come off well. You like them...

The presentation and the structure the first three quarters the story follows the conventional secular thinking of the French elites. Yet by the end of the piece you’re hooked by these kids – – their enthusiasm, their excitement, their faith. I cannot tell whether this was an accident or was calculated move to bring the reader on board. Perhaps what we are seeing here is a conscious bait and switch.

How do you get a middle-aged left-liberal secular audience to read a story about a youth movement that detests the values and agenda of the ’68 generation now in power? You do it by couching the story in tropes and phrases that are comfortable to the audience — and then you slip them a story about young attractive — chic — students at elite universities whose faith is changing France and shaking up the church...

This might explain this.

The Dangers of Giving the Catholic Church a Fair Hearing

A former atheist, now a Catholic, bears witness. Excerpts:

...As a teenager, I realised that I needed to read beyond my staple polemicists, as well as start researching the ideas of the most egregious enemies of reason, such as Catholics, to properly defend my world view. It was here, ironically, that the problems began.

I started by reading Pope Benedict’s Regensburg address, aware that it had generated controversy at the time and was some sort of attempt –futile, of course – to reconcile faith and reason. I also read the shortest book of his I could find, On Conscience. I expected – and wanted – to find bigotry and illogicality that would vindicate my atheism. Instead, I was presented with a God who was the Logos: not a supernatural dictator crushing human reason, but the self-expressing standard of goodness and objective truth towards which our reason is oriented, and in which it is fulfilled, an entity that does not robotically control our morality, but is rather the source of our capacity for moral perception, a perception that requires development and formation through the conscientious exercise of free will.

It was a far more subtle, humane and, yes, credible perception of faith than I had expected. It didn’t lead to any dramatic spiritual epiphany, but did spur me to look further into Catholicism, and to re-examine some of the problems I had with atheism with a more critical eye.

First, morality. Non-theistic morality, to my mind, tended towards two equally problematic camps: either it was subjective to the point of meaninglessness or, when followed logically, entailed intuitively repulsive outcomes, such as Sam Harris’s stance on torture. But the most appealing theories which could circumvent these problems, like virtue ethics, often did so by presupposing the existence of God. Before, with my caricatured understanding of theism, I’d considered that nonsensical. Now, with the more detailed understanding I was starting to develop, I wasn’t so sure.

Next, metaphysics. I soon realised that relying on the New Atheists for my counter-arguments to the existence of God had been a mistake: Dawkins, for instance, gives a disingenuously cursory treatment of St Thomas Aquinas in The God Delusion, engaging only with the summary of Aquinas’s proofs in the Five Ways – and misunderstanding those summarised proofs to boot. Acquainting myself fully with Thomistic-Aristotelian ideas, I found them to be a valid explanation of the natural world, and one on which atheist philosophers had failed to make a coherent assault.

What I still did not understand was how a theology that operated in harmony with human reason could simultaneously be, in Benedict XVI’s words, “a theology grounded in biblical faith”. I’d always assumed that sola scriptura (“scripture alone”), with its evident shortcomings and fallacies, was how all consistent, believing Christians read the Bible. So I was surprised to discover that this view could be refuted just as robustly from a Catholic standpoint – reading the Bible through the Church and its history, in light of Tradition – as from an atheist one.

I looked for absurdities and inconsistencies in the Catholic faith that would derail my thoughts from the unnerving conclusion I was heading towards, but the infuriating thing about Catholicism is its coherency: once you accept the basic conceptual structure, things fall into place with terrifying speed. “The Christian mysteries are an indivisible whole,” wrote Edith Stein in The Science of the Cross: “If we become immersed in one, we are led to all the others.” The beauty and authenticity of even the most ostensibly difficult parts of Catholicism, such as the sexual ethics, became clear once they were viewed not as a decontextualised list of prohibitions, but as essential components in the intricate body of the Church’s teaching...

Why, yes, the Body of Christ is clothed in a seamless garment, and not one of his bones will be broken.

 It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment a man ceases to pull against it he feels a tug towards it. The moment he ceases to shout it down he begins to listen to it with pleasure. The moment he tries to be fair to it he begins to be fond of it.--G. K. Chesterton, The Catholic Church and Conversion

'29 Signs You Attended a Catholic University'

Heh. Yes. Yes, in so many ways, especially 3, 20, 28, and probably 29.

Catholic Memes

Pope Francis, Atheists, and Redemption

So here's the Huffington Post headline for a piece on the Pope: Pope Francis Says Atheists Who Do Good Are Redeemed, Not Just Catholics

Huffington Post's headline is incredibly misleading. Here's what the Pope said:

...Wednesday’s Gospel speaks to us about the disciples who prevented a person from outside their group from doing good. “They complain,” the Pope said in his homily, because they say, “If he is not one of us, he cannot do good. If he is not of our party, he cannot do good.” And Jesus corrects them: “Do not hinder him, he says, let him do good.” The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of ​​possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.” “This was wrong . . . Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation”:

"The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

“Doing good” the Pope explained, is not a matter of faith: “It is a duty, it is an identity card that our Father has given to all of us, because He has made us in His image and likeness. And He does good, always...”

Read the whole thing. Essentially--God's law is written on all of our hearts because we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We are all capable, then, of knowing and doing the good. Christ comes to redeem all of humanity. Though right now some humans believe and others do not, we can love each other as brothers and sisters by all trying to do good and come to encounter each other in our common humanity. This is the first step towards reunion and peace.

Or look at C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength for an example of an atheist doing good (MacPhee) and so being on the side of the angels.

For more, see:

• Yes, Pope Francis said: All are ‘redeemed!’ Is that news?
• Friends Don’t Let HuffPo Writers Do Theology

God, Miracles, and Belief

The logical positivists show up in Mark Shea's comboxes:

...You cannot prove or demonstrate the existence of a thing by slipping it in through a philosophical back-door, because philosophy is only a self-referential logic game. You need observation...

Plenty of other commentators respond with philosophical reason, but we can answer the second part of the challenge as well as refuting the premises of the first.  You want observation? We've had observation. Will it prove anything to you? Not necessarily. Why? Because they are not your personal observations; because it is possible to doubt anything one is presented with, even an appearance of God himself right in front of you; because the inquiry must be an honest one, made with an open mind, before one can permit oneself to see what's right in front of them. But if you truly want to know when God or his supernatural agents have been observed, here--I give you a small smackeral:

John Wright's Conversion
The Apparitions at Fatima
The Apparitions at Kibeho
Conversion of Roy Schoeman
Conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne
Apparitions to St. Faustina
The Christian mystical tradition
Lourdes

And there's lots more where that came from. But again, as C. S. Lewis portrayed with the dwarves of the Last Battle in Narnia, people could be in paradise and refuse to accept the evidence of the world around them, of God at their back and imperishable heaven at their feet.  John Wright summed it up best:

...You might wonder why, if God can convince atheists to worship Him merely by dropping by for a visit, He does not do it more often. The reason is that it does not help, not at all, not a bit. When I suffer doubts, when my faith gets weak, my faith in my memory gets weak too. Faith and faithlessness have NOTHING TO DO with evidence presented to reason or senses. It has to do with a humble will and an upright heart. If God presented evidence to skeptics, all that would happen is that skeptics would doubt their evidence. If God gave a logical argument to prove His own existence, all that would happen is that skeptics would doubt the power of logic to prove anything.

Skepticism pretends it is all about open-mindedness and evidence. Not so. Skepticism is about suspicion and pride and self-will. It is about pretending you are smarter than people who, if you only knew, are actually wiser than you and your sneering questions and foolish word-tricks. The only place we ever see a humble skeptic is in the physical sciences, because scientists are willing to let their conclusions be ruled on by nature...

And finally, there's the argument laid out throughout Scripture (alongside, of course, all those accounts of people observing God):

For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them.  Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse...--Romans 1:19-20

The world exists--blessed be the One at the back of all things! For more, see New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith.

Beauty, Truth, and Education

The importance of an education into the true, the good and the beautiful. Excerpts:

..."Dale," I said, "My actress is driving me crazy.  No matter what we've seen on this trip, she can't appreciate it.  She's either itching for a smoke or on the phone with somebody.  She's not a bad person, and she has a sensitive soul, but she simply can't appreciate beauty - natural or man-made.  She can't see it.  She's blind to it.  She's constantly bored.

"It's a problem of education," I went on, "No one has ever bothered to instill in her anything that would allow her to receive and understand the things around her.  It's like a child that no one ever speaks to, and who never learns a language - like a kid who's been raised by wolves..."

Fromm, who apparently knew my actress and my tutoring student personally, though he died before they were born, continues ...

Many of the younger generation tend to have no character at all. By that I do not mean that they are dishonest; on the contrary, one of the few enjoyable things in the modern world is the honesty of a great part of the younger generation. What I mean is that they live, emotionally and intellectually speaking, from hand to mouth. They satisfy every need immediately, have little patience to learn, cannot easily endure frustration, and have no center within themselves, no sense of identity. They suffer from this and question themselves, their identity, and the meaning of life ...

And they can't tell a beautiful lighthouse from an ugly water tower.

It's a problem of education...

Ayn Rand Sounds Like Marx

Or so the following would seem to indicate:

...Cardinal Ratzinger, in his homilies on creation, talked about a "change of paradigm in our understanding of the commission to exercise dominion" delivered to man:

How did the mentality of power and activity, which threatens us all today, ever come to be? One of the first indications of a new way of looking at things appeared about the time of the Renaissance with Galileo, when he said that if nature did not voluntarily answer our questions but hid her secrets from us, then we would submit her to torture and in a wracking inquisition extract the answers from her that she would otherwise not give. The construction of the instruments of the natural sciences was for him as it were a readying of this torture, whereby the human person, despot-like, gets the answer that he wants to have from the accused.--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,, "In The Beginning...", p. 49.

At that time, a new kind of knowledge was being sought--not what things are, what constitutes their "nature", or, to put it another way, what their "logos" is, the divine idea that is being expressed in them--but rather what we can make out of them for ourselves. This approach to reality is called "power knowledge."...

In order to establish this kind of "power knowledge", the idea of a Creator had to be set aside. It had to be made possible as a "hypothesis", to dispense with him.  It was a matter of eliminating any "language of creation", and thereby any message from the Creator, so that sheer utility, with no limitations or handicaps, becomes the model that determines everything.  The question regarding a Creator had to be declared meaningless, as did the question of his commission to us in creation.  In its place a different basic commission for man had to be formulated: "This is the source of the change in humanity's fundamental direction vis-a-vis the world; it was at this point that progress became the real truth and matter became the material out of which human beings would create a world that was worth being lived in."(Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,, "In The Beginning...", pg. 50)

The two ideologies that this "power knowledge", dissociated from the Creator and the creation, brought into a largely dominant position during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were Marxism and Darwinism (to be distinguished, once again as an ideological trend, from Darwin's scientific theory). The young Karl Marx drew up the following basic outline:

A being cannot call itself independent until it can stand on its own feet; and it stands on its own feet when it owes its existence to itself.  A man who lives by the grace of someone else regards himself as a dependent being.  And yet I live entirely by someone else's grace if I owe to him not only the sustenance of my life, but if besides that he has created my life; if he is the source of my life--and my life necessarily has such a basis outside itself, if it is not my own creation.  Creation is thus a concept that is difficult to drive out of the consciousness of ordinary people.--Karl Marx, translated from Nationalokonomie und Philosophie.  Fruhschriften [National economy and philosophy: early writings]  (Stuttgart, 1955), p. 246, cited in Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith (Ignatius Press, 2007), 156

Not to owe one's existence to anyone else is certainly the presupposition for empowering oneself to be one's own Creator. It is certainly no accident that Friedrich Engels, after reading Darwin's Origin of Species, wrote enthusiastically to Marx that here they had found the scientific basis for their theory...

The era of ideologies is at an end. However, the paradigm of "power knowledge", the ideology of the domination of nature as mere matter for our scientific/technical/economic will to power to work on--a domination dissociated from belief in creation, and the responsibility for creation that is founded on it--has not yet perished. Now, as in the past, our culture is dominated by a way of thinking that sees the world as a product of chance and necessity rather than as the utterance and the challenge of the Creator. Now, as in the past, the idea of utility is largely dominant within the ethical debates about whether what we can do is permissible...--Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith (Ignatius Press, 2007), 156

Catholic Identity in Institutions

An interesting perspective.

...The battle against parochial schools began to be waged. The still existing bond between school and Church was now to be dissolved, and the school’s spiritual foundation was no longer to be the Christian faith but the ideology of the Führer. With great intensity the bishops led the battle for the preservation of parochial schools and for the upholding of the concordat, and the pastoral letters on this subject that our pastor read in church made a deep impression on me. Already then it dawned on me that, with their insistence on preserving institutions, these letters in part misread the reality. I mean that merely to guarantee institutions is useless if there are no people to support those institutions from inner conviction .....To be sure, teachers could be found…who had deep convictions of faith ..... But in the older generations there existed an anti-clerical resentment [and] in the younger generation there were convinced Nazis. So in both these cases it was inane to insist on an institutionally guaranteed Christianity...--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977 (Ignatius Press, 1998), p.15

For a present day application of this principle, see Dr. Freddoso's paper on the Notre Dame controversy of 2009.

The Authority of Catholic Social Teaching

Interesting series of qualifications in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. Excerpts:

...The Church's social doctrine was not initially thought of as an organic system but was formed over the course of time, through the numerous interventions of the Magisterium on social issues. The fact that it came about in this manner makes it understandable that certain changes may have taken place with regard to its nature, method and epistemological structure. With significant allusions already being made in Laborem Exercens[100], a decisive clarification in this regard was made in the Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: the Church's social doctrine “belongs to the field, not of ideology, but of theology and particularly of moral theology”[101]. It cannot be defined according to socio-economic parameters. It is not an ideological or pragmatic system intended to define and generate economic, political and social relationships, but is a category unto itself. It is “the accurate formulation of the results of a careful reflection on the complex realities of human existence, in society and in the international order, in the light of faith and of the Church's tradition. Its main aim is to interpret these realities, determining their conformity with or divergence from the lines of the Gospel teaching on man and his vocation, a vocation which is at once earthly and transcendent; its aim is thus to guide Christian behaviour”[102]

The Church's social doctrine is therefore of a theological nature, specifically theological-moral, “since it is a doctrine aimed at guiding people's behaviour”[103]. “This teaching ... is to be found at the crossroads where Christian life and conscience come into contact with the real world. [It] is seen in the efforts of individuals, families, people involved in cultural and social life, as well as politicians and statesmen to give it a concrete form and application in history”[104]. In fact, this social doctrine reflects three levels of theological-moral teaching: the foundational level of motivations; the directive level of norms for life in society; the deliberative level of consciences, called to mediate objective and general norms in concrete and particular social situations. These three levels implicitly define also the proper method and specific epistemological structure of the social doctrine of the Church.

The Church's social doctrine finds its essential foundation in biblical revelation and in the tradition of the Church. From this source, which comes from above, it draws inspiration and light to understand, judge and guide human experience and history. Before anything else and above everything else is God's plan for the created world and, in particular, for the life and destiny of men and women, called to Trinitarian communion.

Faith, which receives the divine word and puts it into practice, effectively interacts with reason. The understanding of faith, especially faith leading to practical action, is structured by reason and makes use of every contribution that reason has to offer. Social doctrine too, insofar as it is knowledge applied to the circumstantial and historical aspects of praxis, brings “fides et ratio” [105] together and is an eloquent expression of that rich relationship.

Faith and reason represent the two cognitive paths of the Church's social doctrine: Revelation and human nature. The “knowing” of faith understands and directs the life of men and women according to the light of the historical-salvific mystery, God's revelation and gift of himself to us in Christ. This understanding of faith includes reason, by means of which — insofar as possible — it unravels and comprehends revealed truth and integrates it with the truth of human nature, found in the divine plan expressed in creation[106]. This is the integral truth of the human person as a spiritual and corporeal being, in relationship with God, with other human beings and with other creatures[107].

Being centred on the mystery of Christ, moreover, does not weaken or exclude the role of reason and hence does not deprive the Church's social doctrine of rationality or, therefore, of universal applicability. Since the mystery of Christ illuminates the mystery of man, it gives fullness of meaning to human dignity and to the ethical requirements which defend it. The Church's social doctrine is knowledge enlightened by faith, which, as such, is the expression of a greater capacity for knowledge. It explains to all people the truths that it affirms and the duties that it demands; it can be accepted and shared by all...

In the Church's social doctrine the Magisterium is at work in all its various components and expressions. Of primary importance is the universal Magisterium of the Pope and the Council: this is the Magisterium that determines the direction and gives marks of the development of this social doctrine. This doctrine in turn is integrated into the Magisterium of the Bishops who, in the concrete and particular situations of the many different local circumstances, give precise definition to this teaching, translating it and putting it into practice[114]. The social teaching of the Bishops offers valid contributions and impetus to the Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff. In this way, there is a circulating at work that in fact expresses the collegiality of the Church's Pastors united to the Pope in the Church's social teaching. The doctrinal body that emerges includes and integrates in this fashion the universal teaching of the Popes and the particular teaching of the Bishops...(articles 72-75, 80)

For more on the relationship between faith and reason, see Fides et Ratio. For more on the nature and content of divine revelation, see Dei Verbum.

On Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King Day

First of all, then, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.  This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as ransom for all. This was the testimony at the proper time.  For this I was appointed preacher and apostle (I am speaking the truth, I am not lying), teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.--1 Timothy 2:1-8

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and sojourners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against the soul.  Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, so that if they speak of you as evildoers, they may observe your good works and glorify God on the day of visitation.  Be subject to every human institution for the Lord’s sake, whether it be to the king as supreme or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the approval of those who do good. For it is the will of God that by doing good you may silence the ignorance of foolish people. Be free, yet without using freedom as a pretext for evil, but as slaves of God.  Give honor to all, love the community, fear God, honor the king.--1 Peter 2:11-17

They sent some Pharisees and Herodians to him to ensnare him in his speech.  They came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion. You do not regard a person’s status but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?”  Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.”  They brought one to him and he said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They replied to him, “Caesar’s.”  So Jesus said to them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” They were utterly amazed at him.--Mark 12:13-17

God bless the President of the United States, his family, and all his administration.