Thought Chaos...

'God come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me.'  The opening line from morning Prayer, whether you are a machine and pray 'Matins' or just begin with 'Laudes.'  It seems that I repeat this line often throughout the day without recourse to any Psalm.  The reason?  More often than not I meditate upon my potential impending priesthood and society's current 'metaphysical crisis.'

I have blogged before about 'Truth.'  What is Truth?  To paraphrase Pontius Pilate's words to Christ.  Yet, today nobody seems to want to search for Truth anymore.  Well a ray of light happened this morning, that before training, myself and two of my teammates had a conversation regarding Philosophy, from the pre Socratics, to the Greeks (Plato and Aristotle) to Aquinas (Woohoo!)  all the way to the so-called modern era, as in Descartes, Spinoza right up to contemporary, Heidegger and Schelling.   As I've mentioned before, (you can search the archives..) I have always divided thinkers into those seeking objective Truth and those who look at things through their own particular lenses, subjectivists and phenomenologists.  Whether or not we agree is a different story, but the fact is that the conversation took place outside of a traditional intellectual arena, but three guys about ready to train chokes, armlocks, and other takedowns.

Leaving Gracie Barra, and assisting at Mass, saw me especially meditate upon today's First Reading. (2 Corinthians 11: 1-11)  St Paul speaks and warns again of how easy it is for people to preach another 'Jesus.'   The Holy Spirit has a habit of sometimes winking at me, (in my case smacking me upside the head..)  This new 'Jesus' is the result of subjectivist thought.  How many of our generation grew up in the 1980s?  Our experience in the Parish was at times painful, Fr 'Nice' talked about how 'nice' Jesus is and that He is our friend, and we love crayons and bunnies and blah blah blah,.. The other type of priest was the so-called 'social justice' (closet marxist) preaching a false liberation theology turning Jesus into a revolutionary.  Their formation reflected the times, so they were taught Karl Marx, Fuerbach,..etc,.but Maritain?  Nooo, that's too rigid!  Today's heresy is more along the lines of rehashed gnosticism, and voila!  Oprah's Jesus, (who I believe is a creation of satan.)  The problem through all of this was that there was no anchor.  Meaning that these false 'Jesus's' and false Gospels are due to lack of proper intellectual training.  So us, the younger guys are called 'rigid' and 'Traditionalist' and all sorts of buzz words because in the end, we believe that objective Truth does exist and that reason can lead you there!  (Aristotle, Aquinas, Maritain, Gilson...)  Philosophy properly ordered will always be the handmaid of Theology.

Our generation drank the kool aid, and we have been in recovery since.  It is by Grace that I can make it through the day.  I am a sinner, a sex addict, a drunkard and tempermental, yet through it all it is Jesus who Redeems me.  If I fall, I get back up and frequent the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  I will not however let my experience override Truth!  Truth just is!  We don't make it up.  We can't decide that gravity doesn't exist because we (our ego) possess a desire to fly on our own.

My ADD kicked in, so I'll stop writing for now.


St Thomas Aquinas,...........................ora pro nobis!

God Bless Idiots,..

Maybe that's a little harsh,. but,..

A short post today, a little anecdote,………….Ahhh,…So it happened again, calm, cool, and collected Marco turned into Optimusmastro  and needed to cut a WWE style promo on the Jack T Chick fanclub.   I recently bought Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating, (Again) and low and behold inside the book was inserted a little comic book by these Chick devotees. 

My friends, Christian formation begins when one encounters the Risen Christ, and then seeks to understand Reason in the light of Faith and vice versa.  What that means is that your brain isn’t handicapped by refusing to search through the natural order of reason why things are the way they are!  I know that there are many a good Fundamentalist with a sincere Faith in Christ and God bless them!  We have some differences, but ultimately we pray that they search for Truth.  Some as well meaning Christians do more with less!  

As a Catholic, our formation begins with philosophy, and proper understanding of what we can know about things in nature.  Revelation builds upon philosophy.  My dear protestant friends, kindly keep an open mind, remember any authentic dialogue, we need FUNdamentalists who are cool, not fundaMENTALists who are completely insane and devoid of any coherence!

St Thomas Aquinas,……………………………..ora pro nobis!

Yet Another 'Nerd' Posting...

Recent news developments have seen what even the mainstream media is calling an unusual conversion.  An atheist blogger, a well known one at that, has converted to Catholicism.  That's right, Leah Libresco, known widely for her writings in Atheist circles has converted and embraced Jesus in His One True Faith.  (See here) .  For the mass media and secular society, the so-called progressives(Bill Maher,), this is seen as an assault upon the intellect.  For us, though as Catholics, this is nothing new. 

Now I'm not about to go off on a typical 'Optimusmastro' rant with regards to this subject, but I will call upon the need to truly investigate the claims of the Catholic Church.  I've been called too philosophical by some protestants, yet I firmly hold to the notion that Faith and Reason are two sides of the same coin.  My own conversion was not the 'Paul falling off the horse event,' instead it was a long drawn out process(St Augustine) which is still ongoing.  I thought I knew philosophy back in university, especially coming from the political science backround.  Rene DesCartes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Heigel, Marx, etc, etc...Then from the religious side, there was Kung, and Richard McBrien representing this 'evolving' catholicism... My meeting with this dude right here Bishop Dowd sent me away humble, but very curious.  Intellectually starved, and knocked silly by an all out nuclear assault on my intelligence by this bearded little priest, I was introduced to Plato, Aristotle and finally Aquinas!  (I've often found it funny, that they both have the same first name...).  From there, I dove back into the Bible, started praying and went back to reading GK Chesterton, Jacques Maritain, and anything authored by Peter Kreeft. From there discovery after discovery,..

The Catholic Church developed the scientific method.
The Catholic Church put forth the theory of the 'Big Bang.'
The Catholic Church invented hospitals
The Catholic Church invented University,..

You could go on and on,...

Truth is one, it just IS.  Whether you ascend to it by way of intellectual discovery or by Faith, it is from the same Divine wellspring.  The key is to integrate the Truth of the Faith so that it penetrates the heart.  The 'atheist logic' of 'nothing' magically exploding one day producing 'something' is just plain absurd.  Why Christianity gets a bad rep intellectually you ask?  Simply put because of protestantism, specifically fideism...scholars and 'PHds' such as Jack Van Impe, Benny Hinn, Hal Lindsey,..God bless them all, I do not doubt the sincerity of their heart, but you can't be afraid of knowledge.  What God uncovers, man discovers!   Sorry for being blunt, but the truth must be said.  You can't proove the Bible by the Bible,.. Like the atheist logic, it just doesn't work.  My protestant friends, you lose nothing by becoming Catholic, but you will gain The Most Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Mother, and an intellectual tradition so rich and so steeped, you could spend a lifetime learning it all...(and then some!..)

St Thomas Aquinas,..................ora pro nobis.

Philosophy Bedtime Story for Dummies,..

So it finally happened this past week!  I was called an 'idiot' for being Christian aaaand 'if I would open my eyes to the great scientists and thinkers' of today's modern era, I would see that God doesn't exist, it was all just a fancy made up story!  Weeell, all I can say is WOW!!!!!!!  Where do I begin?   A couple of weeks ago I was in the whore of Babylon by a well meaning evangelical who sincerely thought I over-intellectualized my Faith, and now,..according to this one person, I happen to be a well meaning 'idiot' for believing in God!  Talk about extremes!   'Can you demonstrate in a simple way,..the rationality of God?'  Here goes,..

So okay kiddies,..one day, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away,.(Earth) there was this dude named 'Thales' who came from Miletus(Turkey..).  He sat up and said to himself,..what caused me?  hmmm,..after speculation he concluded, 'Water!'  Up to bat next and from the same part of town was another guy named Anaximander, this dude was taught by that Thales guy, but he disagreed that water was the cause of all things, because well,.water itself must be caused so he(Anaximander,..don't wanna lose you now,..) proposed the idea that everything stems from a 'boundless infinite.'  Now Anaximander had his own pupils, who's names were Anaximenes and another super ultra cool guy named named 'Pythagoras.'  (At this point there eyes lite up because that name sounds kinda mathematical..)  Anaximenes, differed from his teacher again and concluded that 'air' is the cause of everything!   These guys are called the pre-socratics and they were searching for the 'Arche' or material cause of everything, because, well simply put, the greeks couldn't put up with babylonian mythology anymore, the idea that its raining so the 'gods' must be crying didn't fly..Now of course there were others, Heracletes, Herodotus and Xenophanes to name a few..  Okay kiddies, time to go for a peepee break!

So now that these people had tried to use their brains to figure out just what the hell caused us, there came this guy, and we can call him the Vincent K. McMahon of Philosophy!  His name was Socrates!   This dude was an Athenian and is largely credited as the father of western philosophy!  The thing is, he didn't write anything but instead relied on his star pupil Plato,..(you heard of him?  good job!) to write his thoughts down.  The Socratic dialogue or 'conversation was born whereby an athenian stranger would ask, object and inquire about life, the pursuit of happiness and justice and virtue!  It was sooo cool because well, all the objections were laid out, and Socrates would answer them!  His desire for a just society though, led him into what we call today Socratic paradoxes, namely that no one desires or does 'evil' willingly yet we are almost pre programmed to do so! (At this point flashbulbs should be going off,..'original sin' anybody?)  The end of life saw him accused by his society of corrupting the youth and blasphemy by introducing false 'gods.'  Socrates did not fear death, and instead drank the elixir of poison after delivering his apology.

Plato.  The man,..whooo!  If Socrates is the Vince McMahon, then Plato is the Hulk Hogan of western thought!  Plato's relationship to Socrates was that he was Socrates's student and it is alleged, one of the youths that Socrates corrupted.  He was a wrestler(woohoo) and proposed theories on Mathematics, ethics, logic as well as superb metaphysics.  Plato's philosophy proposed a 'world of universals' or 'forms.'  He argued that there must exist two worlds, one of 'form' so that we, being rational thinkers(unlike a dog or a cat) already have an understanding of 'things' as they are in perception.  To see a chair, I already have an understanding of 'chairness' or 'sitting' from the world of 'forms.'  (Uh oh,..remember these Greeks didn't have the Revelation of God yet, but already our minds are being 'lifted up shall we say?) Plato believed that it was not rational to not believe in an immortal soul, because of the whole idea of the body as we see it.  A great insight into his thought process, is the 'Cave,' whereby he illustrates man's prison inside the cave only seeing what perception allows him to but the, once he gets outside,..the real world, 'forms' become truly present!!!  The 'sun' representing the ideal of the 'good.'   Okay,..peepee break number two!,..

Now on to the next dude,..Hey all you tired atheists, have you figured it out yet, that in fact it actually takes more 'faith' to be an atheist than to have a belief in Go--(oops, not there yet,..) a 'higher life power force, Vector sigma, the Matrix,..whatever you want to call 'it.'  Now as much as Plato concerned himself with the world of 'forms' or 'ideas' in the end he was a dualist,..remember the cave analogy, well, he also applied it to the human body, that the soul was trapped in it, thus the body was a 'prison.'  Okay, enough about that Plato guy,..let's turn our attention to his student,..Aristototle!!!!!!! (Glass breaks,..hit the music,..)  Aristotle, (The Stone Cold Steve Austin of Philosophy) rejected his master's universe of ideas, and instead declared that all truth can be perceptively grasped in the now, and 'things' are the in themselves there own reason for existing!  Four elements made up everything and they were earth, water, fire and wind!  (The fifth one he proposed was Aether, which he claimed that the stars were made up of,..and thus incorruptible,..Hey!  No one ever said he was perfect right?)   He, obeserved that these earthly elements were corruptible and thus subject to 'change' sooooo,.he declared 'mobile being' as divisible by substance and accident, matter and form, essence and exostance and finally potential and actual!  Ex,..I,.Marco am going to a big room.  "I' the substance,.(Me) and in potential (going) to a big (accidental) room, (actual,..but always in potential,..).  So,..Plato concerned himself with the heav--(oops,..'other world',..) and Aristototle concerned himself with temperal things.  Now if everything is cause and effect,..this can't go on forever, right?  He proposed 55 levels each attracted to the other and ultimately a final/first cause as the immobile motor!  What was that???  Logic, Thought, les Pensees!  Boooyaaaa!!  (is this all making a little sense to you??)   Not for anything,..but the Gospel of Saint John and the 'LOGOS' should be firing off in your head right about,.......NOW!

Now, throughout salvation history, God decides to reveal Himself to Moses on the mountain,..What is His name?  'I AM WHO AM'  Perfect pure Act, Pure being, no Potential,..this puzzle should be comin' together for ya,..right?  So now, Jesus comes and completely reveals God to man, reconciling ourselves to Him,..remember that predetermined 'original sin' nugget from earlier?  There were other thinkers along the way, including Epicurus, Augustine and the reigning heavyweight champion, St Thomas Aquinas!  His Summa Theoligica, although never finished, perfectly synthesized thought, creating the Catholic school of thinking known as Aristotelico-Thomist.  Truth is Truth!  Plain and simple, whether you get there by Faith or by reason, we are all going to the same beginning.

I realize that this blog post was superficial and condescending, but I believe it needed to be done in order to serve a purpose.  St Paul cites,.(Romans 2:14)   (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law,)...I think every human being on the planet longs for God,..whether they know it or not.  Again, I didn't expand on the idea, of souls being vegetative, sensitive or rational but I believe the Atheist really has no grounding whatsoever.  As far as his great scientists go,..Hawking, Dawkins,..they all propose theories rooted in subjectivist thinking!  A base philosophical precept states that 'something must come from something, something cannot come from nothing.'  The product of the enlightenment simply divorced reason from Faith,..and is a direct result of the protestant revolt,..(sorry prots, but it is the Truth!)  To the dude who called me an idiot,..remember as Catholics we are the ones responsible for the very idea of the university,..I'm not exactly Kirk Cameron trying to proove God using the banana, as well meaning as he is,..

God Bless,..sorry,.may the 'force' be with you.

Working out the Math,..the 'Why' of Catholicism.

Well yesterday was my first day of school since graduating Concordia University in 2004.  What to make of it?  Well,.for one, I am what you call an external student at L'Institution de Formation Theologique de Montreal or by its more common name Le Grand Seminaire.  The courses in question are the Philosophy of Man and Greek Philosophy.  Why philosophy?  Well in order to properly understand theology, we need to first of all rationally understand ourselves, our very 'being.'  Although I've only had one class,..I can see that this is truly where I belong and thus Spiritual Direction and the will of God be done, should He decide that I should be called to 'ontological' change!  lol!!!!

Last night upon my return to the gym,..I was met with a very honest question from a protestant adherent,..the 'born-again' kind,..not the 'Everything in the Bible is symbolic kind.'  This person was a former Catholic,.(way to go social justice catechists,..you lost another one!) and was curious as to why I was taking Philosophy instead of not just studying the BiiiiBULL!  Indeed a fair question and one that needs to be reflected upon with some critical thinking.  Philosophy is a metaphysical science studying things that are not necessarily perceptible to the sense, none the less we can 'know' of their existence by rationalizing backwards.  St Thomas Aquinas noted in his arguments, that God can be seen through the lens of reason by working 'a posteriori.'  (Studying a series of 'effects' back to its 'cause.')  The Bible is the product of the Church and thus to begin with an absolute premise that the Bible is automatically to be accepted would not bear much fruit in speaking with a non-believer!  So what do we do?  We start by establishing universal absolutes that can be known by the faculty of reason alone. 

The atheist as well as the protestant must believe that everything in motion has been put into motion by something already in motion.  (We don't stop at train tracks and watch a box car go by,..it has to be pulled by a locomotive.)  Now this can't go on forever,..so it would necessitate an unmoved 'mover.'  Using Aristototle, we have already stimulated the atheist into thinking that this makes sense.  Their arguments based on 'chance' simply do not hold water!  Why?  Because not only are we in motion, but we are also 'rightly ordered.'  When a man's sperm meets a woman's egg, she can become pregnant.  As rational persons,.it is safe to assume that a human being will be born.  By the atheists' logic,..it might as well be a giraffe, or maybe even a mailbox?  (There's a visual for ya!)  So now we can safely declare to the atheist,..that it requires more blind faith to actually be an atheist!  Chaos theory simply doesn't work,.it must be a reorganization of matter.  Simply put, something cannot come from nothing,..something MUST come from something.

Next up,..the followers of Eastern Religions or Philosophies. Before we begin, it must be noted that as Catholics, we reject nothing which is Holy and True in these religions.  Our atheist friend has now become a Hindu.  Once again, we are asked why we don't believe Hinduism is true.  Well, we can once again go back to our metaphysical reasoning,..that an unmoved mover must exist pressing 'play' on the eternal DVD player setting us in motion.  Hinduism,.(as well as Buddhism, of which sprang out of Hinduism) has a particular cosmology whereby their 'gods' Brahman, Vishnu, and Shiva spring forth or are 'created' out of the Brahma (which can be compared to an impersonal 'force.')   Thus their 'gods' themselves are created,..so they can't be infinite and are subject to potential,..ie 'change.'

Islam.  Please see my archives,.as I did a small series on Islam which can be found here .  This was part two, a brief explanation on the Muslim concept of God.

Judaism.  In Judaism,.we have the first of the Abrahamic Faith Traditions with a great intellectual anchor.  Maimonides, the great Jewish thinker for instance, of whom Aquinas was also influenced.   Traditional Judaism stresses the monotheistic absolute that God is One and that He is Truth!  They also knew of what philosophers called the human condition, or a conflict between the intellect and the will.  God,.reveals Himself to Moses in the Old Testament and pretty much validates what the rational mind conceives of God.  That is One and Truth with no creator.  Thus revealing His name,.'I AM WHO AM' becomes significant as we can confidently say that God is the very same as His essence (substance.)  Test it,..I can ask you two questions, who are you and what are you?  Inevitably, unless you have serious psychological deficiencies, you should answer I am Sally or John or whatever proper name you have,..to the second question you would answer that you are human.  Now ask the same two questions to God,.."I AM WHO AM."  Awesome isn't it? ;)  The rest becomes a series of questions and ways to atone for God by offering sacrifices and observing a prescribed Divine Law,.(10 commandments.)  The issue of  who Jesus is what divides us.  (I will be writing some posts on the Trinity in the very near future...)

Jesus.  Two summers ago,..as I was getting into my thinking,.a person got into my car and noticed a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror.  'For me,..Jesus was an incredible person, an ethical man..'  That line for whatever reason would haunt me as I was unable to turn off my philosophical 'Thomistic' brain sense that he may as well have told me that Jesus disturbed man!  You can't have it both ways.  (CS Lewis, used that line of thinking..)  Now,..along with the historical stuff (of which I haven't even really touched upon..) we have ample evidence!  An empty tomb,.Pontius Pilate, the testimony of Flavius Josephus, Lucian the Greek, not to mention the martyrdom of nearly all of Jesus's Apostles!  Had the story not been true, it would be highly unlikely that people would freely let themselves be eaten by lions instead of recanting.

So now we have come full circle into Christianity!  We have already 'proven' Christianity true,.so why Catholicism?  I am currently working on a post whereby I'll be examining all the different denominations, sects, schisms and movements.  But for argument's sake,.I'll use reason to prove my point.  The Bible which is revered by all baptized, acts as point of supreme authority within protestantism.  Two movements have since been birthed.  The liberal movement, which taken to its natural conclusion will empty Christianity out of its Divinity.  It will be a Christless Christianity.  Not only the mainstream protestant communities, but also some of the so-called social justice liberation theologian type 'catholikkk' stuff can begin to have that appearance.  The other extreme is the crowd which literalistically interprets Scripture!  They subscribe to Fideism (a suspicion of reason) and tend to shun higher education.  These are usually the 'I don't believe in dinosaurs' crowd.   They keep schism(ing) and splintering with each 'pastor' claiming his interpretation is right!  The right interpretation belongs to the Catholic Magisterium,..it alone through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit discerned the books of the Bible and later ratifyed them.  See the Councils of Hippo and Carthage.

To conclude,..Why I am Catholic?  Well because it is true.  All other faiths are related to the Church in 'potencia' which means potential or degrees.  The degrees we speak about show how much truth these other faiths contain.  The goal of interfaith dialogue and ecumenism is that one day,..all people come home to the Eucharist!

St Thomas Aquinas,.........Ora pro nobis.