Development and Newman

 http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2018/08/development-and-newman.html

19 August 2018

Development and Newman

Every time the current regime has yet another doctrinal accident, 'developmemt' is invoked. The Graf von Schoenborn did it at the News Conference after Amoris laetitia when Diane Montagna asked whether that document contradicted Familiaris consortio. Leering down at her, he even had the condescending impertinence to mention Blessed John Henry Newman. During the Deathgate scandal, the same naughty little word has again been bobbing around in the troubled waters.

What few commentators appear to have pointed out is that Newman, when wrote his celebrated essay, had no intention of providing a blue-print to be cunningly used by future jesuitical pontiffs to disguise the reality of doctrinal change. He was describing what had happened in the past. And he was doing it as an Anglican to satisfy himself that the Catholic Church which he was on the point of joining had never changed its doctrine.

I do not recollect that during the Arian Controversy, or the Reformation disorders, either side ever justified the positions they tenaciously held by invoking Development. My impression is that each side simply bandied Scripture and Tradition cheerfully around so as to show that what they held was the truth "clearly" shown forth in Scripture and Tradition.

Bergoglianism has been encapsulated in an even more extreme form than this by the cynically blasphemous observation of the jesuit "General" that the Lord's Words were not captured on camera, and by Fr Rosica's boastfully candid admission that the Church is now entirely at the mercy of a pope to whom neither Scripture nor Tradition are prescriptive. Such exponents appear to offer a model of Christian teaching ministry unknown even to the heretics of earlier ages. Here we have not a heresy, but the supraheresy. Earlier heresiarchs may have monkeyed around with, and perverted the sense of, both Scripture and Tradition, but, I think, never before have we had the diabolical claim that a major heretical teacher is quite simply free from any control whatsoever within the Word of God whether written or orally transmitted. When I use the term 'diabolical', I mean it in the fullest possible sense. The fingerprints all over these preposterous claims are unmistakeable.

Some celebrated words in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I admirably taught that the Successor of S Peter was not promised the inspiration of the Spirit so that he could teach new doctrine, but so that by His help he could guard and faithfully set forth the Deposit of Faith handed down through the Apostles.

There is not, I think, any suggestion in this that he should energetically engage in "developing" it; still less, that he is totally free from its constraints.

 

Jeffrey C. Kalb, Jr. Thomism, Mathematics and Science

 

Jeffrey C. Kalb, Jr.
Thomism, Mathematics and Science

https://www.innerexplorations.com/philtext/jeffkalb.htm By detailing some of my interests and writings, I hope to hear from those whose interests bear some resemblance to my own. I wish to thank Dr. Arraj for his kindness in giving individuals such as myself a forum for our ideas. My Road to Thomism I was born July 7, 1966. I studied materials science and electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. I graduated with a B.S. in materials science in 1988 and then received a M.S. in materials science and a M.S. in electrical engineering in 1989 while studying under a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Somewhat disappointed with the state of modern physics, increasingly hostile to its foundations, and lacking the patience of a good experimentalist, I elected to terminate my fellowship and take employment as an engineer in the semiconductor industry. In 2001 I enrolled at the University of Arizona, where I am pursuing an M.A. in classics with a philology concentration. As regards my work in philosophy I have no properly academic credentials, so my writing will have to speak for itself. I began to study natural philosophy in response to an insight that both quantum and statistical mechanics are ultimately unverifiable in the empirical sense. For the last twelve years I have expanded my study, branching into many other areas, primarily within the triangle defined by metaphysics, mathematics, and natural philosophy. My mathematical considerations led me to conclude to the existence of form, which is implicitly denied by Cartesian mathematical analysis and its progeny. As I was at the same time rediscovering and deepening my Catholic faith, I was led to St. Thomas as the Church’s doctrinal norm. I was fortunate in having picked up a copy of Etienne Gilson’s "The Christian Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas." It was difficult for me at first. The terms were opaque after the first reading: substance, accident, essence, quiddity, prime matter, substantial form, act-of-existence, etc. But I gradually absorbed this previously alien perspective, only to find that my own speculations shed some light on contemporary thomistic philosophy. I consider myself to be part of a wider movement to restore the cultural and liturgical patrimony of the Catholic Church, especially the Tridentine Latin Rite. This extends to political reform to curb personal license in view of the true liberty described by Leo XIII, and includes a ressourcement of traditional mores, art, and architecture. This is primarily a movement of young intellectuals today, but it will make itself felt as these enter into positions of influence and authority. My Interests My thinking is influenced by Etienne Gilson, Jacob Klein, David Rapport Lachterman, St. Bonaventure, Jacques Maritain, St. Augustine, Plato, Blessed John Duns Scotus, Proclus Diadochus, Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, and Gregory Palamas. However, I try to judge all in the light of St. Thomas. My interests include: The Trinity, the Incarnation and Redemption, the theory of universals, the analogy of being, points of debate between Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology, the liberal arts, the theory of color, the ontological and epistemological foundations of geometry, music, and arithmetic, and Marian theology. Some Characteristic Views of Mine The importance of mathematical study: Traditionally, the liberal arts were the portals to philosophy, and in the Theaetetus Plato goes so far as to call geometry a form of philosophy. It was the corruption of the mathematical arts that infected physics, and this in turn corrupted modern philosophy. St. Thomas spoke very little about mathematics, and it is an area that is ripe for development. One of my projects is to introduce a new Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Planimetry, Music, and the study of the Form of Corporeity, a Scotistic borrowing reconciled to Thomism. This would replace the mathesis universalis of Descartes, which poses as metaphysics, but is in truth a confused theory of music. There is much to be learned from modern mathematics. But there is also much that must be altered or rejected. The order of mathematical intentionality recapitulates the order of corporeality. – The totality of mathematical forms is of itself sufficient to describe body as body. It is insufficient to study body as living body or body as sensible body, but in its own domain it is perfectly competent. It is a terrible mistake to effect an artificial separation between mathematical physics and natural philosophy. Mathematical physics is a part of natural philosophy; it is simply not the whole of it. If, as St. Thomas teaches, mathematicals have both an intelligible matter and form, then there is no reason to exclude mathematical physics from natural philosophy on the basis of its dealing with "mere quantity." (It might be claimed that only a distinction has been made, but in practice it has been a separation. Natural philosophy was redefined as the branch of metaphysics that defines motion generically, and the metaphysician was thereafter free to philosophize without an eye toward mathematical physics.) By distinguishing the various intentional forms proper to each branch of mathematics and ordering them into a whole, it is possible to constitute the intelligible analogue of body. Hence my claim at the head of this paragraph. Occasional Causality – I take this to be the most general structure of efficient causality. The form is: "The coincidence of A and B is the occasion for C to exercise its efficiency in act D." Do not confuse this with Occasionalism, which treats the coincidence of two causal chains (i.e. chance) as though the act in one chain were in some way the cause of the coincident act in the other chain. What is being said here is that a coincidence of acts is the sine qua non of the exercise of an agent’s efficiency. Through this structure of causation, I believe it possible to demonstrate the necessity of a first cause in any chain of efficient causes. The traditional statement is that as every effect requires a cause, so there must be a first cause for the subsequent ones to be actuated and the final effect produced. But this is merely to state the conclusion, not to demonstrate it. A very special logic is required to demonstrate that there must be a first cause. Not every causal scheme admits such a demonstration. The simple "A is the efficient cause of B" does not. In order to demonstrate this, it must be shown that every infinite chain of causes implies the existence of a cause prior to them all, taken in toto. This can be done, but it requires both an extrinsic formal cause (efficient cause) and an extrinsic material cause (occasion). I call the first formal because, like the intrinsic formal cause, it is the principle of determination. And I call the second material because, like the intrinsic material cause, although necessary, it does not supply a determination. This scheme answers in a broad sense to the mediaeval distinction between essential causes and accidental causes. Apprehension versus Intuition – It is sometimes said that we have an intuition of being (Maritain) or an innate intuition of the idea of being (Rosmini). I do not subscribe to these views. The agent intellect (intellectus agens) possesses an innate formality for apprehension prior to judgment, and this is the formality of being. It must be presupposed for the very possibility of a judgment reaching out to the act-of-existence (esse). The attributes that Rosmini attaches to the "idea of being" really apply to this formality of being. Apprehension, or laying hold of a thing, is different than intuition. Intuition often follows upon and perfects apprehension, as in the case of corporeal vision, but this does not apply to being according to our natural mode of knowing. As Saint Thomas says, knowledge begins in apprehension and concludes in judgment. Transcendentals – There are many subsequent formalities that determine the intellectual apprehension of an object. Some of these, such as those of geometry, determine the apprehension to a particular form. Those that transcend the categories are called transcendentals. These include Unity, Goodness, Truth, and Thing (Res). Every judgment presupposes the innate formality of being. So we say: "It is one. It is good. It is true. It is a thing." Whereas the absolute judgment of existence says merely: "It is." One can see that the transcendental formalities add something to the innate formality of being, and that this is reflected in our language. There is a logic, in the wide sense of the word, corresponding to each transcendental formality, which serves to distinguish the several adjunct sciences. Esse et ordo convertuntur. – The transcendentals can be defined as notions that transcend the Aristotelian categories. The study of order holds a pivotal position in any doctrine of the transcendentals, particularly in the Trinity, where there is no distinction in the order of act and potency, but a real distinction of divine Persons founded on the order of origin. One may legitimately ask: How are esse, essentia, forma, suppositum, and potentia activa, convertible with ordo? Further, how does their convertibility with order determine their mutual relations and therefore a coherent metaphysics? I have developed a theory of order, a taxology of being, that in turn yields a taxonomy of being in remarkable conformity with the metaphysics of St. Thomas. I have found this approach more fruitful than the application of Aristotle’s Organon. By elaborating the Trinity in this manner, created being can in turn be elucidated and the causal structure of creation uncovered. The real relation of creature to God is found to be threefold, not as three relations to the three divine Persons, but as three different ways of relating to the unique divine Essence: a vestige of the Trinity in the creative act. More recently, I have found that this New Organon shows clearly the real foundation of ens commune – without overturning the analogy of being – and answers in detail Heidegger’s critique of onto-theo-logy from within a thomistic framework. Completed Writings I retain copyright over this material, but I extend complete license to reproduce and circulate it. A Short Treatise on the Mathematical Principles of Harmony (22 pages) – This is a preliminary work addressed primarily to mathematicians and physicists. The central premise is that music has been ill defined. It is the science of the measurable. It thus stands mid-way between arithmetic (the science of the countable) and geometry (the science of the extended). I divide music into two parts, meter and harmony. Meter treats measurable quantity by means of number. Harmony treats measurable quantity through species of numbers (e.g. the odd). Therefore, I call the theory of harmony eidetic. The first part of the work investigates the foundations of harmony, deriving the unison, octave, perfect fifth and fourth, and major and minor thirds and sixths from infinite ensembles of natural numbers. An ordering principle holds such that the inclusion of one species within another yields harmonious ratios. It explains such interesting qualitative features as the "sameness" of tones separated by an octave, and the distinction between major and minor intervals. And it predicts new, as yet unexplored, intervals. The second part of the work traces the connections between music and fractal geometry, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and the psychophysical function. A complete understanding requires knowledge of infinite series, least common multiples, and some basic limit theory of the sort used in differential calculus. Rhetoric and the Language of Nature (6 pages) – This short essay investigates the consequences of the ubiquitous modern expression, "The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics." If mathematics does not concern form, but rather language, if it belongs not to the Quadrivium, but to the Trivium, what are the implications for subsequent philosophy? The essay traces in outline those consequences. Writings in Progress Mathesis, Self-Knowledge and Apodictic Certainty – This work will examine the views of both ancient and modern philosophers about the origin and mode of universals, using planimetry as a test case. It will propose a new kind of abstraction that can account for the necessity intrinsic to mathematical reasoning, overcoming the critique of induction. And it will show how mathematics, studied properly, leads to self-knowledge. It will also defend the epistemic credentials of Euclid’s fifth postulate in view of this new manner of abstraction. Finally, it makes a preliminary enquiry into the role of sentiment as a mediator between will and appetite. An Enquiry into Metaphysics – The work will begin by investigating the analogy of being in the light of being’s convertibility with order. It will examine the real foundation for analogy and show in what limited sense analogy admits a kind of univocity. It will examine the role of the supposit (hypostasis) in creation metaphysics, and the nature of communicativity and receptivity. Using angels and material being as test cases, it will use the thomistic metaphysics of participation to elucidate and confirm the "uncreated energy" of God as posited by the Greek Fathers and Orthodox theologians, taking Gregory Palamas as the foremost proponent of this doctrine. It will examine the manner in which prime matter shares in existence through substantial form. Finally, it will investigate divine grace and the beatific vision in relation to these previous topics.   For copies of manuscripts or to express comments, I can be reached by email at: jckalb@email.arizona.edu

 

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Gluttony Thicket

Gluttony Thicket

 Gluttony Thicket

As we drew nearer to our bus stop, the brush seemed to grow denser and taller the further we drove in. It was darker here, because the dense brush blocked much of the sunlight from passing through and where it was able to permeate, it cause patchy bright spots surrounded by crowds of overlapping shadows. A feeling of butterflies in the pits of our stomachs started welling up inside of us as we began to to imagine what was awaiting us here, but we didn’t let that feeling get the best of us because we had many things to feel reassured by and secure about. First of all, Father Wolfergger would still be able to remain with us but he had explained well that the trial was still ours and the obstacles and set backs made purely because of our vice and attachments, would be up to us to work through. He would serve as spiritual director and guide, but progress otherwise was up to us. 

 

Just before Anita was glancing at Fred, he saw a sign that read Gluttony Thicket and immediately he had an almost uncontrollable urge to eat a whole lemon margarine pie as he had done many times in his youth then he started to feel itchy.

When the bus reaches our drop off point and we stepped off of the bus, in a passing glance I noticed my uncle seemed a little uncomfortable, I saw him scratching around his neck. He didn’t mention anything though so I decided not say anything. Anyhow, I was starting to feel a bit worn out with a slight headache setting in. A little achey too. “That’s strange” I thought. “I was feeling fine on the bus.”

 

As Anita was glanced at her uncle a second time, he looked all puffed up like the Pillsbury Doughboy including a Doughboy ridiculous smile.

 

chap 6 Benedict, Gilson and the "fideistic, subjectivist Christian."

Restating what was said in the last chapter:

The deceptive Gilson who is called by many "the chief scholar of Aquinas in the 20th century" not only apparently mislead John Paul II, but most of the orthodox conservatives (even seemingly some traditionalists) Catholics and Pope Benedict XVI to accept the equally dishonest or simply poor scholar Henri de Lubac who made the false claim that Thomas Aquinas didn't make a distinction between nature and the supernatural grace. 

As one reads the scholar McInerny's "praeambula fidei" it is obvious that he considers Gilson a real scholar who was dishonest in his discourses on Cajetan and Aquinas while he doesn't, it seems, appear to consider de Lubac "orthodox" or much of a scholar:

"'Supernatural' brought de Lubac... silenced... eventually De Lubac learned that it had been other Jesuits, not Dominicans, who had questioned the the orthodoxy of his views... If de Lubac got Cajetan's reading of St. Thomas wrong, what is to be said of De Lubac's own understanding of Thomas." ("praeambula fidei," Pages 70, 84)

The point is, as McInerny shows in his book, that Gilson and de Lubac were a team who worked to discredit Cajetan and ultimately St. Thomas' real teachings. The poor scholar de Lubac needed Gilson's reputation as a honest scholar to cover for his "question[able]... orthodoxy" and dishonest or poor scholarship. [https://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/09/was-pope-john-paul-ii-thomist-or.html]

It can be argued that part of what the nouvelle theologian de Lubac's teaching has done is replace the infallible teachings of the Church with Kantian teaching in which all human experience (pagan, heretical, mundane, etc...) is equal to the redemption, grace and teachings given to us by Jesus Christ's Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection as taught and administered through the Sacraments by the Church He established:

"The rejection of the proportionate human nature separate de Lubac more decisively from St. Thomas than anything else, doubtless because this rejection is at the basis of his thought... Grace, as the words suggests, is gratuitous, unowed, above and beyond what our nature is naturally ordered to. The supernatural, as the word suggests, is added onto natural... In de Lubac's account... [it] is almost as if for him the supernatural replaces the natural." ( "praeambula fidei," Pages 85-86)

The Feser and McInerny scholarship appear to show that the Gilson/de Lubac philosophy leads to the "fideistic, subjectivist" Christianity.

It appears that Benedict"s approach was in line with the Gilson/de Lubac philosophy which leads to the "fideistic, subjectivist" Christianity. Theologian Tracey Rowland wrote:

 "Far from wanting to keep philosophy and theology chastely separate, Ratzinger's often drew faith and reason into a symbiotic or intrinsic relationship. In this context it is said his approach accorded more with the Thomism of Josef Pieper and Etienne Gilson than with the so-called Aristotelian Thomism." (Newman Rambler Vatican II Special Edition No , Church & World, "Joseph Ratzinger in the era of Vatican II: A very German conversation in the European world of letters," Page 2)

 But it as we have seen the real Thomism is Aristotelian and not the so-called Gilson/de Lubac Thomism.

 

Footprints

 

As we finally approached land, we could get a clearer image of what awaited us at the shore. The beach was lined with sandy shores, and not too far off from that shoreline were steep soaring cliffs and mountainous terrain, similar in a degree, to the shores which we had fled. Clearly there was a vast difference here, such that, in contrast to the dark, putrid, mire-like setting of our previous location, here it was bright, fresh, green, with vibrant, bold colors and gem-like shining water, reflecting the beautiful array of colors from a sunrise that seemed to never fade away. The water gently swayed our boat, thrusting and laping against that smooth, fine, ivory colored seashore. 

As Anita watched the water and stared out at the shoreline, it brought to mind one of her favorite poems, called “Footprints in the Sand”. 

One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
"Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You'd walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."

He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,

It was then that I carried you."

She then thought back to one specific scene she had seen in her book of life, recalling what was undoubtedly the most painful time in her life, it was just after she'd had a third miscarriage, her health had been deteriorating, her marriage strained and only being held together by a thread. Now mourning a third child that she would never be able to meet, to hold, to baptize, haunted by what could have been, and filled with regret and guilt, wondering if the miscarriages had somehow been her fault. Despite fervent prayers and steadfast fidelity to her marriage and to the will of God, she had sunken into a deep depression and a time of spiritual desolation. She'd felt so alone, abandoned, and lost, but thinking back, Our Lord has been with her the entire time, carrying her through that dark period. Using her faith and the people in her life to lead her though. At that time she couldn't see His hand working, but holding on to faith and hope, now years later things were better than she could have ever hoped for. 

Her marriage was now a beautiful example of what married life should and could be, still on a path of growth, but now centered on mutual self-giving,  self-sacrifice, and a less selfish kind of love. She had now learned to cherish each day of pregnancy, like it could be the last, not facing it in a cynical or morbid way, but rather appreciating each day with the growing child in her womb, loving them, knowing them in that special way that only a mother can, and giving them the greatest gift possible in this life by taking them to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion every day, when possible. There would be no more room for regret or guilt, when that child was known and loved each and every day in the womb, and was able to know our Lord trough Holy Communion, through his mother. One more heartbreaking miscarriage had followed those first three, but what also followed in the coming years were three healthy pregnancies, three beautiful children. Healing and closure had also come, coming to trust in God's divine providence, and knowing that he uses all our suffering and pain for our ultimate good. Also, because of Fred's diligent and loving research into limbo, and the impact of ones parent's intent to baptize their child, she had peace and hope that she would meet her children in the afterlife. 

Teary eyed and a bit choked up, Anita looked over at Fred and asked, "Do you remember the Footprints in the Sand poem, the one about only one set of footprints in the sand during our most troubled times, but not because we are alone during those times, but because thats when Jesus carries us? Looking at that shoreline got me thinking about it. Do you know which one I'm taking about?"

 

Fred, holding back crying, but tearing, said, "I remember when my wife died crying as I walked around praying my Rosary. I would think of Him on the cross. I felt so alone," as he fall into tears and restrained crying, he whispered "but, in those moments when I felt like I would have a nervous breakdown, I felt united with Him."

......................

Suddenly, two angelic soldiers appeared on the boat, and one of them, with a robust, and commanding tone, spoke. “We are here for the travelers. They will not exit with the others on the boat, as those souls, only by the great mercy of God have made it to these shores. The souls arriving here must remain in this region of purgatory, as they are not ready to move beyond, but the travelers are permitted to proceed further.”

The other angel then added, “There is a bus waiting, the only means to exit this region, and it will deliver them to their next destination.” ...

Chapter 5b, too? Was Pope John Paul II mislead by Vatican II Theologians "Fideistic" Gilson & de Lubac?

 - "...Gilson makes his own the position of Kant that existence is not a predicate... Gilson wrote...'Being,' Kant says 'is evidently not a predicate or a concept of  something that can be added to a thing'... What is the Thomististicity of Gilson's claim..."   

"... [W]hat he [Gilson] is attributing to Thomas is not found in Thomas... 'No Thomist,' Gilson concedes, 'aiming to express it, should write that existence (esse) is not known by a concept.' Coming from a historian [Gilson] who has been so severe on other interpreters of Thomas [such as Cajetan and Garrigou-Lagrange], it is somewhat disarming to be told that 'historically speaking, our [Gilson's] formulas are inaccurate' and that he should have made clear that he was not using the language of Saint Thomas." - Thomist Ralph McInerny, "praeambula fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers"

- "Father Wojtyla lived at the Belgian college in Rome and the center for... Transcendental Thomism... so called because its approach to the thought of St. Thomas is influenced by the transcendental system of philosophy of Immanuel Kant..."

" ... After earning a second doctorate with a thesis on the ethics of the [Kantian] phenomenologist Max Scheler, Father Wojtyla was appointed in 1954 to the philosophy department of the Catholic University of Lublin..." [https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8105]

Scholar Douglas Flippen gives an exact time when Wojtyla (the future Pope John Paul II) started thinking that Kantian subjectivistic philosophy became possibly as important as Thomism. He thought that Scheler's Kantian thought could make up for "a certain lack in the approach of " Thomism. The supposedly solid Thomist Etienne Gilson so-called "historic or existential Thomis[m]," it appears, may have helped turned him towards Kant through Scheler:

"It seems likely that at this time Father Wojtyla would have become more aware of different approaches to the thought of St. Thomas. The reason for this is not only the fact that he was studying at the Angelicum with Father Garrigou-Lagrange, called a traditionalist Thomist for his approach to Thomas through the tradition of the commentaries of Cajetan and John of St. Thomas, but also because Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson, the two most famous [supposed] Thomists of the twentieth century, had been active in promoting the thought of Thomas since the 1920s, and this would hardly have escaped notice at the Angelicum. Both Gilson and Maritain, but especially Gilson, could be called historic or existential Thomists because of their interest in recovering the authentic thought of Thomas and because of their conviction that the historic thought of Thomas centered itself on the act of existing as being at the heart of reality..."

"... Father, and then Bishop, Wojtyla lectured at Lublin from 1954 until 1961. In this period of time his understanding and appreciation of the metaphysical approach of St. Thomas increased. This was due not only to his own continuing work on St. Thomas, but also to his interaction with a colleague named Stefan Swiezawski. As George Weigel notes in his biography of John Paul II, "Through faculty colleagues at KUL, and especially Stefan Swiezawski, Wojtyla had his first serious encounter with Etienne Gilson's historical rereading of Thomas Aquinas and with Jacques Maritain's modern Thomistic reading of Catholic social ethics."⁸ During this period, Father Wojtyla published a number of essays, many of them taking into account the thought of St. Thomas and comparing it favorably with modern thinkers. And yet there is a change of tone in his treatment of the thought of St. Thomas during this period. In the beginning, his praise of Thomas seems unqualified. Toward the end we find criticisms of a certain lack in the approach of Thomas and an emphasis on a positive contribution coming from the phenomenological movement. [Was John Paul II a Thomist or a Phenomenologist?: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8105] - Catholic Monitor

In my opinion, one of intellectual giants in the Catholic Church in the United States is philosopher Edward Feser.

I have seen Feser totally destroy, with a devastating intellectual knock out Mark Shea (which is pretty easy), theologian Massimo Faggioli (a bit harder) and on YouTube win an impressive victory over a very intelligent Atheist scholar.

Feser apparently affirms Thomist Ralph McInerny's scholarship which shows the wrongheadedness of the seemingly dishonest Etienne Gilson’s endorsement Pope John Paul II's collaborator Henri de Lubac who the pope honored by making him into a cardinal after Vatican II. 

  

The deceptive Gilson who is called by many "the chief scholar of Aquinas in the 20th century" not only apparently mislead John Paul II, but most of the orthodox conservatives (even seemingly some traditionalists) Catholics to accept the equally dishonest or simply poor scholar Henri de Lubac who made the false claim that Thomas Aquinas didn't make a distinction between nature and the supernatural grace. 

As one reads the scholar McInerny's "praeambula fidei" it is obvious that he considers Gilson a real scholar who was dishonest in his discourses on Cajetan and Aquinas while he doesn't, it seems, appear to consider de Lubac "orthodox" or much of a scholar:

"'Supernatural' brought de Lubac... silenced... eventually De Lubac learned that it had been other Jesuits, not Dominicans, who had questioned the the orthodoxy of his views... If de Lubac got Cajetan's reading of St. Thomas wrong, what is to be said of De Lubac's own understanding of Thomas." ("praeambula fidei," Pages 70, 84)

The point is, as McInerny shows in his book, that Gilson and de Lubac were a team who worked to discredit Cajetan and ultimately St. Thomas' real teachings. The poor scholar de Lubac needed Gilson's reputation as a honest scholar to cover for his "question[able]... orthodoxy" and dishonest or poor scholarship. [https://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/09/was-pope-john-paul-ii-thomist-or.html]

It can be argued that part of what the nouvelle theologian de Lubac's teaching has done is replace the infallible teachings of the Church with Kantian teaching in which all human experience (pagan, heretical, mundane, etc...) is equal to the redemption, grace and teachings given to us by Jesus Christ's Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection as taught and administered through the Sacraments by the Church He established:

"The rejection of the proportionate human nature separate de Lubac more decisively from St. Thomas than anything else, doubtless because this rejection is at the basis of his thought... Grace, as the words suggests, is gratuitous, unowed, above and beyond what our nature is naturally ordered to. The supernatural, as the word suggests, is added onto natural... In de Lubac's account... [it] is almost as if for him the supernatural replaces the natural." ( "praeambula fidei," Pages 85-86)

Below, Feser seemingly affirms McInerny's scholarship against the Gilson/de Lubac philosophy which leads to the "fideistic, subjectivist Christian who would dismiss the atheist’s demand that faith be given an objective, rational defense, and who thereby makes of Christianity a laughingstock":

Hans Urs von Balthasar sought to meet Barth halfway by rejecting the conception of man’s natural state developed within the Thomistic tradition and central to the Neo-Scholasticism fostered by Leo’s Aeterni Patris (a conception which I described in a recent post on original sin).  On this traditional view, the natural end of human beings is to know God, but only in a limited way.  The intimate, “face to face” knowledge of the divine nature that constitutes the beatific vision is something we are not destined for by nature, but is an entirely supernatural gift made available to us only through Christ.  In place of this doctrine, Balthasar put the teaching of his fellow Nouvelle Théologie proponent Henri de Lubac, who held that this supernatural end is something toward which we are ordered by nature.  Whether it is even coherent to maintain that a supernatural gift can be our natural end, and whether de Lubac’s teaching can ultimately be reconciled with the traditional Catholic doctrine of the “gratuity of the supernatural order” reasserted by Pius XII, have for several decades now been matters of fierce controversy.  But the apparent (even if unintended) implication of the position staked out by de Lubac and Balthasar is that there is no such thing as a human nature intelligible apart from grace and apart from Christian revelation.  And it is in that case hard to see how there could be a natural theology and natural law intelligible to someone not already convinced of the truth of that revelation.

Related to this is Etienne Gilson’s tendency to deemphasize the Aristotelian core of Aquinas’s system and to present it instead as a distinctively “Christian philosophy.”  As Ralph McInerny argued in Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers, Gilson’s position, like de Lubac’s, threatens to undermine the traditional Thomistic view that philosophy must be clearly distinguished from theology and can arrive at knowledge of God apart from revelation.  Such views thereby “unwittingly [erode] the notion of praeambula fidei” and “lead us along paths that end in something akin to fideism” (p. ix).  

McInerny’s book, along with other recent works like Lawrence Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters and Steven A. Long’s Natura Pura, mark a long-overdue recovery within mainstream Catholic thought of an understanding of nature and grace that was once common coin, and apart from which the possibility of natural theology and natural law cannot properly be understood.  Nor, I would say, can other crucial matters properly be understood apart from it (such as original sin, as I argue in the post linked to above).  The blurring of the natural and the supernatural may also lie behind a tendency in some contemporary Catholic writing to overemphasize the distinctively theological aspects of some moral issues.  For example, an exposition of traditional sexual morality that appeals primarily to the Book of Genesis, the analogy of Christ’s love for the Church, or the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity may seem more profound than an appeal to (say) the natural end of our sexual faculties.  But the result of such a lopsided theological emphasis is that to the non-believer, Catholic morality can (again to use Bruce Charlton’s words) falsely “seem to rely on diktat of scripture and the Church” and thus appeal only to the relatively “tiny, shrinking realm” of those willing to accept such diktat.  It will fail adequately to explain to those who do not already accept the biblical presuppositions of Pope John Paul II’s “theology of the body” or of a “covenant theology of human sexuality,” their merits notwithstanding, exactly how Catholic teaching is rationally grounded in human nature rather than in arbitrary divine or ecclesiastical command.  Grace doesn’t replace nature but builds on it; and an account which heavily emphasizes the former over the latter is bound to seem ungrounded.

The late pope himself realized this, whether or not all of his expositors do.  In Memory and Identity he says:

If we wish to speak rationally about good and evil, we have to return to Saint Thomas Aquinas, that is, to the philosophy of being [i.e. traditional metaphysics].  With the phenomenological method, for example, we can study experiences of morality, religion, or simply what it is to be human, and draw from them a significant enrichment of our knowledge.  Yet we must not forget that all these analyses implicitly presuppose the reality of the Absolute Being and also the reality of being human, that is, being a creature.  If we do not set out from such “realist” presuppositions, we end up in a vacuum. (p. 12)

And in Chapter V of Fides et Ratio he warned:

There are also signs [today] of a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God.  One currently widespread symptom of this fideistic tendency is a “biblicism” which tends to make the reading and exegesis of Sacred Scripture the sole criterion of truth…

Other modes of latent fideism appear in the scant consideration accorded to speculative theology, and in disdain for the classical philosophy from which the terms of both the understanding of faith and the actual formulation of dogma have been drawn.  My revered Predecessor Pope Pius XII warned against such neglect of the philosophical tradition and against abandonment of the traditional terminology.

And the Catechism promulgated by Pope John Paul II, citing Pius XII, affirmed that:

human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator… (par 37)

There is a reason why the first Vatican Council, while insisting that divine revelation teaches us things that cannot be known by natural reason alone, also taught that:

The same Holy mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason…

and

Not only can faith and reason never be at odds with one another but they mutually support each other, for on the one hand right reason established the foundations of the faith and, illuminated by its light, develops the science of divine things…

and

If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.

and

If anyone says that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs, and that therefore men and women ought to be moved to faith only by each one's internal experience or private inspiration: let him be anathema.

and

If anyone says… that miracles can never be known with certainty, nor can the divine origin of the Christian religion be proved from them: let him be anathema.

The point of such anathemas is not to settle by fiat the question of whether God exists or whether miracles have actually occurred; obviously, a skeptic will be moved, if at all, only by being given actual arguments for these claims, not by the mere insistence that there are such arguments.  The anathemas are directed at the fideistic, subjectivist Christian who would dismiss the atheist’s demand that faith be given an objective, rational defense, and who thereby makes of Christianity a laughingstock. [http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/01/point-of-contact.html?m=1]

  

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Mass and the Church as well as for the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Thomist Antidote, Scotus, de Lubac's Christ's Redemption by His crucifixion and resurrection are rendered meaningless

On Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 10:28 PM mrtnzfred@aol.com <mrtnzfred@aol.com> wrote:

Jim,

Sorry it took so long to get bank. Went on vacation. 

Your life story was a real eye opener.

How do you explain your tempation to desire (or will) non existence as against Thomistic teaching as you mentioned?

Any books you recommend on Thomistic metaphysics on what constitutes substance?

I have been researching Scotus who was deeply intelligent, but in my opinion he went wrong, if I am getting him correctly and if the scholars I listened to are conveying him correctly, by placing will over intellect and his strange idea against Thomistic viva negativa and rejecting we know God by analogy but somehow can know God directly in some way. 

It almost resembles Nietzsche's will to power except Scotus accepts reason and de Lubac's everything is grace thereby reducing everything to nature so grace is not a gift but a necessity of nature in which the Catholic Church and Christ's Redemption by His crucifixion and resurrection are rendered meaningless or as one of many ways to God except Scotus would reject those things because his accepted the faith. Unfortunately, I think his ideas had consequences which may have lead to this ideas. 

I did find his proof of God interesting.

Merry Christmas,

Fred

Sent from my MetroPCS 4G LTE Android device

------ Original message------

From: James Larson

Date: Wed, Dec 11, 2019 6:49 AM

To: mrtnzfred@aol.com;

Cc:

Subject:Re:

Fred,

This article (except probably for the introductory note, added in order to make it relevant to what is now occurring) was written over a decade ago. It was the backbone of what I was trying to do with the War Against Being website.

No, regrettably, I have not put anything together for children, although I have taught it somewhat to a few homes-schoolers in the past. 

I read Chesterton's The Dumb Ox years ago, along with his book on St. Francis. I remember thinking that some of his insights were good. I haven't read much of Chesterton, but in what I have read I usually come away irritated and unsatisfied. His insights, while being piquant and often touching on the surface of profound truths, yet seem to me to be established in cleverness of expression (often paradoxical) and frustratingly lacking in depth. His obvious ability to use the English language may convince for a while, but his lack of metaphysical depth does not fully convinces,or provide the clarity of intellectual vision  in order to truly perceive the depths of reality. Ultimately, I believe that in the intellectual realm,this vision can only be obtained through understanding the depths of Thomistic metaphysics, and especially what constitutes the substance of any created thing. Once this is understand, the human mind and heart are completely liberated from any false thinking or philosophy which seeks to capture the mind to reductive science. It restores everything to God. It restores divine poetry to all of God's creation. There is no poetry which can compete with Thomistic metaphysics actually seen, understood, and incorporated fully into an integral vision of all of reality. 

The strange part is that I was given a gift to see this, at least in seed form, even before I knew anything about Thomistic metaphysics. It came to me in the process of my own conversion, and through the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation. I don't know if you ever read my autobiographical article titled Beauty (on the War Against Being website). It deals with this subject, and is found here: http://waragainstbeing.com/partviii/

                                                                                                                                                           God Bless, Jim

On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 11:15 PM mrtnzfred@aol.com <mrtnzfred@aol.com> wrote:

Hi Jim,

Going through your antidote post. It is extremely important. Have you done child version of it yet. As you see below I want to print it out and slowly hopefully summarize it and keep its essence while writing something that can get the average reader to read it and understand it with some help maybe from my niece. It will probably take a while. Have you read GK Chesterton's Dumb Ox? Would you say it is an attempt at this. Are there any authors you recommend in fiction or poetry or prose that get this across.Thanks for all.

In JMJ,

Fred

Sent from my MetroPCS 4G LTE Android device

------ Original message------

From: +14086609352@mymetropcs.com

Date: Tue, Dec 10, 2019 9:00 PM

To: +18583371464@tmomail.net;mrtnzfred@aol.com;

Cc:

Subject:

Anita,

This is deep and slow reading but very important from a scholar friend of mine. Can you read and have Diego read? I want attempt to summarize and make readable by children and average reader. Thanks
http://rosarytotheinterior.com/the-antidote-to-teilhardian-evolution-the-restoration-of-the-supernatural-in-accord-with-the-teachings-of-st-thomas-aquinas/

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