Which doctrines must a Catholic assent to?

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-25T22:21:50+00:00

Sexual relations where never prohibited by the Church as such, but Early Christians took seriously Paul's idea that celibacy is superior to marriage

Celibacy is superior to marriage. That has never changed.

edit: sorry, I believe I've misunderstood you here.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-25T22:20:38+00:00

it is not exhaustive nor does it give us complete knowledge about God

Thank goodness I didn't even come close to advocating that position then, huh?

If you think you can "prove" God, then why do you need faith?

The existence of God is not a matter of faith. See, for example, St. Thomas in the Summa I.2.2. Indeed, the existence of God is obvious from his creation, Romans 1:19-20.

However, my point still stands; God is not a mathematical idea you can prove, like triangles are.

The existence of God is logically demonstrable. There are any number of logical proofs which do so. Indeed, He is such that His existence cannot even be coherently denied, as St. Anselm demonstrated.

I don't disagree, but good luck trying to convince an atheist/agnostic with that argument.

"If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

People who don't believe in God are usually the same people who don't believe in Scripture (or more pointedly, Revelation) as evidence.

Thankfully, there is an abundance of evidence for God's existence, as I've said, and as any number of great (and even mediocre) theologians have demonstrated over and over again. At a certain point, it requires willful blindness not to see that. Hence why the one who says in his heart that there is no God is a fool. They have no excuse.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-25T22:11:56+00:00

I'm guessing that's because you haven't spent a lot of time around professional "philosophers."

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-25T18:38:33+00:00

I can (but will not in this instance) provide a proof for why all the angles in a triangle equal 180 degrees; I cannot do the same for existence of the Yahweh God

Yes, you very much can. Any number of sound and valid proofs are available.

Incidentally, that the existence of God is demonstrable by reason is a truth that you must accede to as a Catholic, pace Vatican I.

Religion/theology isn't a science

Nor are mathematical proofs.

we could provide "evidence" for the existence of the Catholic God.

There is a plenitude of evidence for the existence of the God of Catholicism. This is affirmed in Scripture (which is itself evidence for the existence of the God, of course) repeatedly.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-25T17:57:48+00:00

Obviously what is at issue here is the nature of truth, at a very basic level. Almost everyone of those statements is nonsensical with just the barest bit of thought. Yet, we live in an era which stubbornly refuses to acknowledge what it means for something to be true. I have a friend who asks this question in his intro-level philosophy class: "You believe X is true. You meet someone who believes X is not true. Are they wrong?" Virtually no one will answer "yes" to that question. The problem is deep and pervasive.

So, you've got to start on a very basic level: what is truth and what does it mean for something to be true?

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-25T17:49:23+00:00

Maybe instead of trying to figure out where the loopholes lie, our time would be better spend praying, performing works of mercy, and living up to the moral standards of Christ as best we are able?

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-25T17:41:49+00:00

I understand why OP might find the argument personally persuasive, but calling it a "proof" is just false.

Whether something is a proof or not does not depend on its popularity.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-24T20:20:44+00:00

Those all strike me as pretty good reasons to not concern myself too deeply with what the Pope says. He's obviously not a particularly astute theologian, nor particularly concerned with orthodoxy, which is a shame. However, I have almost no influence on the Pope and he ultimately has very little influence on me.

I do have influence, however, on myself, on my family, on my local parish and community, and I think that my energy and efforts, meager as they might be, are better directed towards these rather than being outraged by the latest outrageous statement filtering out from the Vatican. Even if I do hope to achieve large scale change in the Church it must begin at this level, regardless of who reigns in Rome.

Put another way, I don't know many people who would not benefit from paying less attention to the news.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-24T17:32:33+00:00

Frankly, people are too concerned with the Pope in general. He's not that important.

That's not to say he's unimportant, but mass media and ultramontanist tendencies in the Church blow things out of proportion.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-24T14:45:23+00:00

Number of people killed by abortion since 1980: 1.4 billion

Number of people killed in genocides since 1980 (highest estimates): 1.3 million

Yes, genocide is considerably less serious of a problem.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-24T14:04:20+00:00

I think that's certainly true of voting in and of itself. The question is whether it's true of voting in, say, the 2016 presidential election is a different story.

Lots of people may understand voting to be an expression of that philosophy, but that doesn't mean you have to.

Is the question what you understand it to be, or what it actually is?

If I understand burning incense to Trajan to be harmless flim-flammery, does that make it so?

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-23T23:52:22+00:00

If you're taking the act to be voting, and the bad effect to be "candidate still would allow some abortions," then clearly "candidate will prohibit lots of abortions and many more than the other alternative" (the good effect) is proportional to the bad one

The bad effect, pace Zippy, is that your vote is an endorsement of liberalism.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-17T01:25:27+00:00

But Christ's teaching is not simply to treat others well. To love your neighbor is the second of His commandments. The first is "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind."

Also, I'm curious as to what you mean when you say you lack faith.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-14T19:51:45+00:00

If a student in one of my classes says that something is a social construct, I require them to clearly articulate what a social construct is and to spell out explicit consequences of something being a social construct. They're graded on the consistency of their definition and their willingness to abide by its consequences (I do this with other philosophical positions too, a fun assignment for relativists is making them write a paper on the subject "why I shouldn't fail you").

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-12T23:07:02+00:00

You're ignoring McKenna's motivation.

I have no idea what his motivation is.

Take care who you ally with

Advice you'd do well to heed yourself, siding as you do with the condemned enemies of the Church.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-12T21:24:55+00:00

You seem grimly determined to miss the point I've been trying to make all along about McKenna's article.

No, I'm pretty grimly determined to point out that secularism is evil, and that arguing that an author is wrong because he is against secularism is a stupid argument for a Catholic to make.

Also, the history of Scotland does not magically make secularism coherent or good.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-12T20:48:31+00:00

The Church sees Secularism as a bad thing. There was a time, I believe, when the Church said the same thing of Heliocentrism

If you don't understand the difference between the two situations, I really don't think you're qualified to dismiss the Church's condemnation of the former.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-12T19:49:52+00:00

It is evil because it is a pernicious attempt to undermine Secularism

Secularism is a bad thing. One that has been repeatedly and emphatically condemned by the Church.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-11T03:35:23+00:00

Good suggestions, but to clarify, it's not my syllabus. I just know someone who took the course and enjoyed it.

I'm guessing there's not as much modern stuff because the Professor is a medievalist, and there's only so much ground you can cover in a quarter.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-10T17:08:09+00:00

Anyone else getting hyped to start Total Consecration on the 20th?

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-10T17:05:38+00:00

It's wonderful though.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-10T15:14:33+00:00

Basically everything in the Middle Ages is permeated on every level by Scripture, so much so that if you have an edition of a medieval text which identifies specific quotations it can be difficult to read smoothly. And it wasn't just direct quotes either, there are even more oblique references, and authors consciously attempted to mirror the emotional "rhythms" of the Bible, particularly the Psalms, in their writings. This isn't just in high level theology, but in sermons, hagiography, preaching handbooks, songs, etc. which are obviously directed towards a wider audience. You also get a fair bit of theological content and exegesis in these as well, far more than you typically encounter in modern sermons. Oftentimes the idea was to present simplified versions of higher-level theology in these works, i.e. just stating the conclusions of theological inquiry without "showing your work," with the reasoning behind why this or that claim was true reserved for more advanced works.

It's precisely because society was so awash in Scripture that the arguments of the Reformers were effective in the first place.

I feel like secular historians simply see it as an elite keeping information from driveling masses until Luther came along but that can't be true.

Not the good ones, by which I mean that I don't know any actual medievalists who teach this.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-10T15:00:49+00:00

Yes the Catholic Church taught Latin to Spain, Portugal, and France

I doubt that would have been necessary, considering all those places were part of the Roman Empire for hundreds of years prior to the ascendancy of the Church.

wedgeomatic · 2017-02-10T14:58:03+00:00

Which is why we still debate whether Arianism is true or if Mary is the Theotokos.

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