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Arguing Well by Avoiding the Genetic Fallacy

Arguing Well by Avoiding the Genetic Fallacy | Mark P. Shea | CWR

Fixating on who uttered an idea or argument can distract us from whether or not it is true or false.

It is often said that faith (and, if comes to that, culture) is “caught, not taught.”  A massive amount of what we believe most deeply comes to us, not from engagement in abstract arguments about ethics, philosophy, or theology, but from somebody we love.  Indeed, the inadequacy of the mere intellect against the volcanic forces of the heart is a well-known principle we all understand in practice.  As C.S. Lewis said:

No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that “a gentleman does not cheat,” than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.

We are social animals and our habit of imprinting on somebody we trust, of forming tribal bonds, of having faith in those we love and distrust of those we dislike is an enormously powerful feature built-in at the baby factory.  Before you ever learn about abstract ethics at school, you know in your bones that you’d trust your Uncle George with your life, that the Hatfields are dirty lying cheats that decent people don’t trust as far they can throw them, that Mama has never lied to you and that Father Malone may be a gruff old coot but he’s a saint and the salt of the earth.  We learn what we love and hate in very large measure from the fact that people we love find certain things lovable and other things loathsome.

Those people, by the way, need not be real.  Fictional characters from Mr. Micawber to Innocent Smith to Frodo Baggins to Captain Kirk can be deep taproots of moral formation for us.  Ronald Moore, a writer who created the Battlestar Galactica reboot, remarks that in growing up watching Star Trek, he deeply internalized the conviction that Kirk, Bones, and Spock were simply what decent people look like as they go about meeting and overcoming challenges.  Similarly, I sometimes tell people that about 95 percent of my Catholic moral formation came, not from the Catechism or from homilies or teachings on doctrine, but from two hugely important sources that I think every parent should steep their children in: Twilight Zone re-runs and The Lord of the Rings.  Both deeply ingrained in my bones the conviction that however tempting it may be, nothing good can come of doing evil in order to try to achieve some good and that faithfulness in the face of such temptation is rewarded.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

An Argument for Arguing Well

An Argument for Arguing Well | Mark Shea | Catholic World Report

The case against ad hominem arguments, the first of three very popular argumentative blunders

As humans made in the image and likeness of God, we have a built-in desire to know what’s really going on and to trace all the little discoveries of what is really going on right back to the source, who is Truth Himself.  We all live out Augustine’s reality in that God has made us for himself and our hearts are restless till they rest in him.

The problem is, as sinners, we also have a very powerful urge to do what Adam and Eve did: hide from Truth when he starts calling our name, since Truth—for fallen creatures—involves death by crucifixion. We know this because when Truth was made flesh and dwelt among us, that is what we did to him.  Our tendency to be leery of Truth in that weird love/hate way is what the Church calls “concupiscence”, a three dollar word that refers to the weakened will, disordered appetites and, most especially, a darkened intellect that afflict us.  It’s that last point that concerns us here, because it means that sin makes us stupid.

Sin makes us stupid in two ways.  It does so passively, by immersing us in lies and age-old “structures of sin” that cause us to take a ridiculously long time to figure out obvious moral intuitions and do something about them.  Take slavery. It’s easy for us today to say, “Slavery is bad.”  But for approximately the first, oh, forever of human existence on Planet Earth it was not at all obvious that slavery was that bad. It took two thousand years of kneading Christianity and its vision of the dignity of the human person into Western culture before slavery could become unthinkable and seen as the obvious evil it always was.  Why so long?  Because our darkened intellects make us stupid and we take a long time to figure things out even when the mission of Moses is all about leading slaves out of bondage, and Isaiah praises the work of the Messiah as one of striking off chains and freeing slaves, and Jesus speaks of the truth setting us free and Paul says that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Sin makes us slow on the uptake.  So we had to argue (and fight) it out before the obvious evil of slavery could be (precariously) driven from western civilization.

This brings us to our second point: sin also makes us fight the light as well. 

Continue reading on the CWR site.

So Many Jesuses, So Little Time

So Many Jesuses, So Little Time | John Buescher | Catholic World Report

Countless attempts to rewrite and revise the life of Christ aim at destroying belief in objective truth

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31)

This scripture passage, I think, contains a hint:  What you need to know about Jesus is in the Gospels.  If you find them or what the Church says about them unsatisfying or in need of much supplement in order to sufficiently understand or appreciate Him, it is a probably sign that you are chafing under His yoke, and that you are itching to throw it off altogether.  Your newly-found “background” and “context” for Jesus will color Him, until He will fade away and disappear.

Lew Wallace once commented on writing his 1880 novel, Ben-Hur: 

I first determined to withhold the reappearance of the Savior until the last hour.  I would have him always on the point of coming, that His appearance might be looked for, to-day just over the hills, to-morrow at the summit, with the hosts looking for him, tearfully yearning for his presence.  My next resolve was that He should not actually figure in any scene, and my only violation of this was when the cup of water was given to Ben Hur at Nazareth.  A third purpose was to have every word which he supposedly uttered, the exact words of sainted biographers.

Why was he so wary about portraying Jesus?  Because, as he explained, “The Christian world would not tolerate a novel with Christ as its hero.”  Such a world would not tolerate endangering the sacred by shading it with profane colors.  So he wrote a novel about the world around Jesus, but left Jesus himself as the mysterious untouched center.

The Many Lost Lives of Jesus

But whether Wallace was right about the Christian world of the time is more difficult to say.  In a sense, this had already been done to wide acclaim by Ernest Renan in his 1863 sentimentalized Life of Jesus, although Renan and most of his readers would not have recognized it as fiction but simply as a colorful retelling of the Savior’s life.

As Albert Schweitzer wrote about Renan in The Quest for the Historical Jesus:

Continue reading on the CWR site.

"The Trinity: Three Persons in One Nature" by Frank Sheed

 

The Trinity: Three Persons in One Nature | Frank Sheed | From Theology and Sanity | Ignatius Insight 

The notion is unfortunately widespread that the mystery of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery of mathematics, that is to say, of how one can equal three. The plain Christian accepts the doctrine of the Trinity; the "advanced" Christian rejects it; but too often what is being accepted by the one and rejected by the other is that one equals three. The believer argues that God has said it, therefore it must be true; the rejecter argues it cannot be true, therefore God has not said it. A learned non-Catholic divine, being asked if he believed in the Trinity, answered, "I must confess that the arithmetical aspect of the Deity does not greatly interest me"; and if the learned can think that there is some question of arithmetic involved, the ordinary person can hardly be expected to know any better. 

(i) Importance of the doctrine of the Trinity

Consider what happens when a believer in the doctrine is suddenly called upon to explain it — and note that unless he is forced to, he will not talk about it at all: there is no likelihood of his being so much in love with the principal doctrine of his Faith that he will want to tell people about it. Anyhow, here he is: he has been challenged, and must say something. The dialogue runs something like this:

Believer: "Well, you see, there are three persons in one nature."
Questioner: "Tell me more."
Believer: "Well, there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit."
Questioner: "Ah, I see, three gods."
Believer (shocked): "Oh, no! Only one God."
Questioner: "But you said three: you called the Father God, which is one; and you called the Son God, which makes two; and you called the Holy Spirit God, which makes three."

Here the dialogue form breaks down. From the believer's mouth there emerges what can only be called a soup of words, sentences that begin and do not end, words that change into something else halfway. This goes on for a longer or shorter time. But finally there comes something like: "Thus, you see, three is one and one is three." The questioner not unnaturally retorts that three is not one nor one three. Then comes the believer's great moment. With his eyes fairly gleaming he cries: "Ah, that is the mystery. You have to have faith."

Now it is true that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is a mystery, and that we can know it only by faith. But what we have just been hearing is not the mystery of the Trinity; it is not the mystery of anything, it is wretched nonsense. It may be heroic faith to believe it, like the man who

Wished there were four of 'em
That he might believe more of 'em

or it may be total intellectual unconcern - God has revealed certain things about Himself, we accept the fact that He has done so, but find in ourselves no particular inclination to follow it up. God has told us that He is three persons in one Divine nature, and we say "Quite so", and proceed to think of other matters - last week's Retreat or next week's Confession or Lent or Lourdes or the Church's social teaching or foreign missions. All these are vital things, but compared with God Himself, they are as nothing: and the Trinity is God Himself. These other things must be thought about, but to think about them exclusively and about the Trinity not at all is plain folly. And not only folly, but a kind of insensitiveness, almost a callousness, to the love of God. For the doctrine of the Trinity is the inner, the innermost, life of God, His profoundest secret. He did not have to reveal it to us. We could have been saved without knowing that ultimate truth. In the strictest sense it is His business, not ours. He revealed it to us because He loves men and so wants not only to be served by them but truly known. The revelation of the Trinity was in one sense an even more certain proof than Calvary that God loves mankind. To accept it politely and think no more of it is an insensitiveness beyond comprehension in those who quite certainly love God: as many certainly do who could give no better statement of the doctrine than the believer in the dialogue we have just been considering.

Catholics, Atheists, and the “Digital Areopagus”

 

Catholics, Atheists, and the “Digital Areopagus” | CWR Staff | Catholic World Report

An interview with author and blogger Brandon Vogt about StrangeNotions.com

Brandon Vogt apparently does not sleep very much. He is an author, blogger, and speaker, as well as an engineer, husband, and father. His first book was titled The Church and New Media: Blogging Converts, Online Activists, and Bishops Who Tweet (Our Sunday Visitor, 2011), and included a Foreword by Cardinal Sean O'Malley and an Afterword by Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

Brandon’s most recent project is the site, StrangeNotions.com, which is “designed to be the central place of dialogue online between Catholics and atheists. Its implicit goal is to bring non-Catholics to faith--especially followers of the so-called New Atheism. As a 'digital Areopagus', the site will include intelligent articles, compelling video, and rich discussion through its comment boxes.” It is, Brandon says, “the first English apostolate dedicated solely to reaching atheists and agnostics.” He recently answered some questions put to him by Catholic World Report. 

CWR: There are countless Catholic websites, many of them dedicated to apologetics and evangelization. What is unique about StrangeNotions.com?

Brandon Vogt: Well, first the aim. Few other sites exclusively engage atheists. Most focus on Protestant apologetics, which is certainly needed, but the issues there are quite different than those relevant to non-believers. For example, at Strange Notions we don't really focus on Marian dogmas, purgatory, or the liturgy. We're concerned with more basic questions about God's existence, cosmology, morality, miracles, science, and the reliability of the Gospels. We must solidify these foundational issues before the second-level issues become important.

Second, the tone. We're all familiar with the typical online religious discussion. If not, just visit any secular newspaper site and scroll down to the comments. They're full of snark, shallowness, and slander. But Strange Notions is not like that. We've done several things to ensure the dialogue remains serious and charitable, and in the site's first weeks it seems to have worked. Our tight comment policy and several moderators have kept the discussions fair and on point.

Third, the contributors really differentiate this site from others. I've gathered the best-of-the-best Catholic intellects to contribute content including Dr. Peter Kreeft, Dr. Edward Feser, Fr. Robert Barron, Fr. Robert Spitzer, Dr. Benjamin Wiker, Dr. Christopher Kaczor, Dr. Janet Smith, Dr. Kevin Vost, Christopher West,  Jimmy Akin, Jennifer Fulwiler, Marc Barnes, Leah Libresco, Stacy Trascanos, Mark Shea, Tim Staples, Carl Olson, and many more. Right now we have over thirty contributors and we're continuing to add more. The hope is that this website becomes the definitive Catholic response to atheism--the best of our rich theological and philosophical tradition.

Finally, we have some exciting plans in the works to set the site apart, including interactive YouTube debates and video interviews with popular atheists and Catholics. So stay tuned!

CWR: Why the specific focus on atheism?

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

 







Falsely Accused, Wrongly Imprisoned, Truly Set Free

Falsely Accused, Wrongly Imprisoned, Truly Set Free | CWR Staff | Catholic World Report

An interview with author, apologist, evangelist, convert, and former prisoner Russell Ford

Russell Ford’s testimony is captivating, surprising, sobering, and, at times, rather humorous. The following interview is much longer than most CWR features, but we think readers will find his story, perspective, and insights both challenging and encouraging. Also, Russell's recent appearance on EWTN's "The Journey Home" can be viewed on the EWTN website.

CWR: For those who might not be familiar with your background, let’s go back to the mid-1980s. Prior to going to prison, were you a Catholic? What were you doing prior to being imprisoned?

Ford: No, I wasn’t a Catholic. I hunted bounty after I got out of the army. Between my time in the military and as a bounty hunter (the more politically correct term these days being “independent fugitive recovery agent”), I was shot twice, stabbed twice, poisoned, run over by a car, fell off the side of a car at 70 miles per hour, and beaten almost to death. So when I got tired of being other people’s punching bag, I left bounty work to get into the slower life of business. I eventually made some major errors, because I’d gotten too big for my britches, and lost everything. I decided to go to Alabama, where I’d done part of my military training, because I recalled how well I was treated there. I came to realize quickly, however, that I’d been treated well before because I was in the military. What I discovered was that anyone who was from any place other than Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, or Louisiana was considered to be a Yankee… and Yankees are hated there. I’d only lived in Alabama for a few months when I found myself in a mess of trouble.

CWR: Why were you arrested and sentenced to prison? And when were you released from prison? How did that come about?

Ford: This series of questions are considered a major social blunder in the joint. Indeed, for a convict to ask these questions it is potentially deadly. You never ask a convict why he’s in prison, how much time he has to build, or when he gets out. However, this may be an opportunity to finally explain things fully and correctly.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Menace of the Herd

by Thomas M. Doran | Catholic World Report

“Alice came to a fork in the road. 'Which road do I take?' she asked.

‘Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat.


'I don't know,' Alice answered.

'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter’.”
— Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

A long time ago, my dad told all of us in the car to beware of the menace of the herd. My dad happened to be a blue-collar philosopher, if not a prophet, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

The common wisdom, what the smart set is apt to tell us, is that religious believers don’t think, don’t question, don’t challenge. Believers are the herd in the worst sense, a herd of stupid, blind sheep. But how often is rigorous reason applied to this assertion, an assertion that is now conventional wisdom, an assertion that troubles and intimidates many believers?

A black hole is defined by physicists as a region of space-time from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping, a speck of space containing unimaginable mass. The smart set and their disciples are certain (one might say, they have faith) that black holes exist, but try to find a smart setter who understands and can delineate the quantum physics that underlies this concept.

Evolution is defined as the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. The smart set and their disciples are certain (one might say, they have faith) that evolution is occurring, but try to find a smart setter who understands the genetics and biochemistry that underlie evolutionary processes.

And then there’s string theory. Particles that are waves and waves that are particles. Dimensions exceeding those we can measure. Fundamental particles. The smart set accepts all of it because science proclaims it, but is clueless as to the theoretical physics and mathematics that predict these phenomena.

That’s not to say that black holes, as understood by modern science, don’t exist, or that an evolutionary process isn’t contributing to change in species, or that string theory is a wayward explanation of reality, but only to point out that many put faith in scientific concepts they cannot themselves comprehend. In this sense, they are no different than the “herd of religious believers” they so often ridicule.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Hysterical Hatred and the Halls of History

Hysterical Hatred and the Halls of History | Michael Coren | Catholic World Report

Both are plain to see and ever with us, but only one has lessons worth learning.

I write this column while looking out onto Westminster Bridge, Britain’s Houses of Parliament, and a London still pulsating with news of the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Pulsating indeed, because she changed the beat, the rhythm, and the pace of this country, and fundamentally and irreversibly transformed the nature and style of the United Kingdom. As such, she is revered as well as reviled, and that polarization extends to the Catholic reaction to her passing. There are Catholics here in Britain who believe she was one of the last political leaders to properly appreciate the link between Europe, democracy, and Christianity. Others, especially in Ulster and northern England, can barely contain their anger at a woman they believe destroyed their way of life.

The truth about Margaret Thatcher reflects a greater truth about how the world approaches history, facts, and downright hysteria and propaganda, and reflects directly to the Church and how it is treated in the popular imagination

Much, if not most, of what Mrs. Thatcher has been accused of is pure fantasy, and the reaction to that campaign of disinformation has been downright obscene: street parties celebrating her death; the singing of “Ding dong the witch is dead” (with “b” replacing “w”); the public announcement that people will urinate on her grave. Many of these malicious idiots weren’t even born when she was in office, and those who were have little to complain about, if truth be told. But it is the extent and excess that is so repugnant. There are numerous politicians whom I loathe, but not one whose death would lead me to rejoice.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Revisiting Joseph Smith’s Novel History

Revisiting Joseph Smith’s Novel History | Joseph F. Martin | Catholic World Report

The underestimation of the divide between Mormonism and mainstream Christianity

It is safe to say that when the Mormons built a fantastic, six-spired, gleaming Mormon Temple outside of Washington, DC in 1974, not too many East Coasters were familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) story. I recall gawking at the temple during a drive, as my brother’s Catholic friend knowingly intoned that the gold figure topping the tallest spire represented the angel Gabriel blowing his trumpet at the end of the world. To my then-Methodist ears that sounded appealingly Evangelical. And of course it was entirely wrong. But it was typical of how most people approached Mormonism, interpreting their encounters with LDS believers with the assumption that they shared a common Christian vocabulary and frame of reference with the group, which, while maybe a bit separatist, had to be essentially like all the other “denominations.”

In the years since, thanks to Mormonism’s exponential growth and our accelerated media culture, the LDS church has become far less of a mystery in many ways. Stories of Joseph Smith’s vision and his digging up golden plates from which he translated The Book of Mormon—essentially an Incan reimagining of the New Testament—as well as Brigham Young’s trek across the Rockies have become just another chapter in American lore. Mormons tend to be outstanding people, salt of the earth—and with Western culture rapidly secularizing, many Christians now are advocating that the LDS are actually separated, albeit peculiarly so, brethren.

This seems to be the take of Stephen Webb. In a fascinating piece for First Things (Feb. 2012), titled “Mormonism Obsessed with Christ,” he says that for a large part of his teaching career, he did not try to hide his condescension towards Mormonism. But, Webb writes, “I have come to repent of this view, and not just because I came to my senses about how wrong it is to be rude toward somebody else’s faith. I changed my mind because I came to realize just how deeply Christ-centered Mormonism is.” Concerning The Book of Mormon, he says that while it is “lackluster,”

it is dull precisely because it is all about Jesus. There are many characters in this book, but they change as little as the plot. Nobody stands out but him. “And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins” (2 Nephi 25:26). … Every page of the book prepares the way for its stunning climax, which is a literal appearance of Jesus to the ancient peoples of America.

He concludes: “The Book of Mormon raises a question for Christians. Can you believe too much about Jesus? Can you go too far in conceiving his glory? Let me answer that question by posing another. Isn’t the whole point of affirming his divinity the idea that one can never say enough about him? And if Smith’s stories are not true, aren’t they more like exaggerations or embellishments than outright slander and deceit?”

Continue reading on the CWR site.

New: "Jacob's Ladder: Ten Steps to Truth" by Peter Kreeft

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Jacob's Ladder: Ten Steps to Truth

by Peter Kreeft

There are ten important questions everyone should ask; and the answers to these questions, which lead to ultimate truth, are a matter of reason, not of faith.

Well-known Catholic philosopher and writer Peter Kreeft tackles each of these questions in a logical step-by-step way, like climbing the rungs of a ladder. Because questions are best answered by dialogue, Kreeft answers these fundamental questions in an imaginary conversation between two very different people who meet at the beach. 

Kreeft's characters begin at the beginning, at the bottom of the ladder, which is the passion for truth. When it comes to the most important questions a person can ask, no mere interest in philosophical dabbling will do. The passion for truth does not stop there, however, but carries the reader from one page to the next in this thought-provoking adventure of the mind.

Among the topics, or "steps", that Kreeft's characters delve into include:

• Do you have the passion to know?
• Does truth exist?
• What is the meaning of life?
• What is love, and why is it so important for our lives?
• If there is a God, what proof is there for his existence?
• Has God revealed himself to us in a personal way?

And many other important questions and topics to help climb the ladder to the truth about life.

Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., a Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, is one of the most widely read Christian authors of our time. His many bestselling books include Back to Virtue, Because God is Real, You Can Understand the Bible, Angels and Demons, Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing, Fundamentals of the Faith, and A Summa of the Summa.

"When I was coming into the Catholic Church 25 years ago, the voice that stood out for me more than any other on the contemporary scene as an oasis of clear and accessible sanity was Peter Kreeft's. Jacob's Ladder shows that a mind, heart and soul filled with Catholic teaching only becomes richer, deeper and more beautiful with time. Lift this joyous chalice to the lips of your soul and drink deeply. It is satisfying indeed!"
- Mark Shea, author, By What Authority?

"Peter Kreeft is our generation's C.S. Lewis, as this brilliant new book of his further demonstrates. The genius of Jacob's Ladder lies in Kreeft's canny ability to capture the imagination with vivid and arresting prose while simultaneously leading the reader, step by step, above and beyond the cramped limitations of the imagination into the spacious and lofty heights of reason, reality, and truth."
- Patrick Madrid, author, Where is That in the Bible?

"In Jacob's Ladder, Peter Kreeft offers a wonderful book for someone genuinely interested in asking profound questions and seeking profound answers. With clarity, wit, and insight, the characters of his dialogue consider some the most central questions in human life-including truth, meaning, love, God and Jesus-in a way both entertaining and accessible. The first chapter especially, considering and refuting various forms of relativism and subjectivism, is a necessary preamble to any serious discussion of anything."
- Christopher Kaczor, Author, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church

"In this delightful and ingenious guidebook for living Catholic faith, Peter Kreeft removes most contemporary popular objections to embracing God, Jesus, and the Catholic Church. Using two characters, Mother, an imposing beach-going philosopher of life, and Libby, a 23-year old former journalist who has naively adopted the culture's critique of religion, Kreeft exposes the many fallacies in contemporary moral and philosophical relativism. By imparting a deeper insight into the ideal of passion, truth, meaning and love, Mother creates a light to shine upon the true, good, and beautiful character of principles, God, Jesus, and Catholicism. This is a "must read" for those seeking a way out of our cultural malaise."
- Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Author, Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life

Video Trailer for the book:

Piers, Penn, and the Essence of Catholicism

by Brian Jones | CWR blog

At the end of a Wednesday evening class last semester, one of my students approached me to ask a question. After hesitating somewhat, he proceeded in the following manner: “Professor, I really have enjoyed your class, but you always teach as though Catholicism is true. You rarely talk about other religions, of which I was actually hoping to learn more about.” I reminded the troubled young man that he should re-read the syllabus, since “Teachings of the Catholic Church” is actually the official course title. The humorous encounter reminded me of Walker Percy’s response to the question of why he became a Catholic: “What else is there?” How ironic, yet typical of most university students, that someone would be taking a course on Catholicism and simultaneously be disgruntled that this is precisely what he is getting. 

The history of Catholicism has thankfully shown us that there is a tremendous pedagogical character regarding the nature of error: it helps us achieve greater clarity on a particular matter that may have, up to that point, been otherwise. Moreover, error also helps us to see whether or not the one committing it has willfully chosen it. It would be safe to say that the latter is a hallmark of many post-modern Catholics. The student mentioned in the beginning was, in my estimation, suffering from a high degree of excusable ignorance; he did not have a full grasp of what he was asking, and seemed more the result of a cultural that had groomed him to accept relativism a priori. Others, have fallen away from the faith, not by an excusable ignorance or happenstance, but by a mode of living that refuses to conform itself to the demands of the faith.  

These preliminary points came to mind last week as I watched the brief exchange between Piers Morgan and Penn Jillette (easily accessible on YouTube). 

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome

St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome | Stephen K. Ray | From Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church

There is little in the history of the Church that has been more heatedly contested than the primacy of Peter and the See of Rome. History is replete with examples of authority spurned, and the history of the Church is no different. As we proceed with this overview of history, we will allow the Scriptures, the voice of the apostles, and the testimony of the early centuries of the Christian community to speak for themselves. In many quarters, over the last few centuries, the din of opposition and uninformed dissent has drowned out the voices of these ancient witnesses. Novel ideas, like a voracious flood, have tried to erode the foundations and the clear historical precedents provided by the Holy Spirit's work in the primitive Church.

History has a clear and distinct voice, but it does not force itself upon us uninvited. History is prudent and waits quietly to be discovered. Conversely, the ingenious inventions of recent theologians and innovators are loud and demanding, bursting upon our ears and minds, our lives and hearts, demanding our immediate attention and loyalties. The riches of history fall quietly aside as the prattling innovators blast their trumpets and loudly parade their followers through new streets, trampling the knowledge of the ages under their cumulative feet.

Here we will allow the voices of the past to speak again--for themselves. And what the reader will find is that the utterances of the past still resound with one voice, with clarity and force. To study those who have gone before us, following in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus, his apostles, and our Fathers in the faith is to lose interest in much of the clamor of modern notions. We find these theological innovations and ecclesiastical groups poorly devised, if not disingenuous. This is what John Henry Newman, a Protestant clergyman at the time, found as he studied the primitive Church. He concluded: "To be deep in history is to cease being a Protestant." [1] As the Protestant churches continue to fragment and lose the fervor and orthodoxy of their past reform efforts, many Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are looking to the past to hear what the early Fathers have to say today. They are beginning to listen to the unobtrusive voice of the early Church, and they are finding it is quite different from what they have been taught. Reading the writings of the early Church allows us to tap into the very heartbeat of the apostolic teaching and tradition of the primitive Church--the very Church bequeathed to us by the apostles.

Sometimes silence is more eloquent than words. This is especially true in Church history. We hear so much about what the Fathers say and so little about what they do not say. This is revealing and should play a significant role in our research. William Webster has written a book that we will refer to several times in our study. Webster is an ex-Catholic who decided to abandon the Church and cast his lot with the Fundamentalist Protestants. His book is entitled Peter and the Rock and asserts that, as the blurb on the back of the book says, "The contemporary Roman Catholic interpretation [of Peter and the rock] had no place in the biblical understanding of the early church doctors." To ascertain whether or not such an assertion is true is one of the main goals of this book. But along with what the Fathers say, we need to hear their silence as well.

Peter Kreeft's Foreword to F.J. Sheed's "Society and Sanity"

The Foreword to F. J. Sheed's Society and Sanity: How to Live Well Together (Ignatius Press, 2013) | Peter Kreeft

It is a great honor to be asked to write a foreword to a masterpiece.

The book you hold in your hands is, I firmly believe, the single most useful and important book (outside of the Church’s own official teachings in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the papal encyclicals) that we can possibly read about the single most important field of conflict between the Catholic Church and the increasingly de-Christianized Western world today.

Frank Sheed was one of the three best Catholic apologists of the twentieth century, the others being G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis (a Catholic who thought he was an Anglican). Just as Sheed’s Theology and Sanity remains the very best introduction to Catholic theology, Society and Sanity remains the very best introduction to Catholic social and political philosophy, even now, sixty years later. Like Huxley’s preternaturally prophetic Brave NewWorld, it is astonishingly current, though it was published in 1953.

The Church and the world both face exactly the same most basic problems and issues today as then. These issues are not only the perennial, unchanging ones that are many millennia old (good and evil, God and man, sin and salvation, life and death), but are even the new, distinctively modern ones that are only a century or two old, the new crises.

What are these current civilizational crises? For many centuries the issues that divided the Church and the world were theological issues. But today they are all “social issues”. All the “hot-button” controversies today are about man and marriage and sex and society. This is why the greatest philosopher of modern times, John Paul the Great, focused on anthropology; what C. S. Lewis called “the abolition of man” follows necessarily upon the abolition of God from any area of life—not only theology but also society, both private (sex, marriage, and family) and the “public square”. The greatest war today is not in the Middle East but in the Middle Earth of Europe and North America. It is a war between two world and life views, especially views of man and society. The new view was summarized most candidly by Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court in his support of abortion in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” In other words, “Move over, God; you’re sitting in my seat.”

Celebrating the 125th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Knox

Celebrating the 125th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Knox

Offer ends February 26th, 2013 at 12:00 midnight EST.
These prices are available online only through Ignatius.com

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, both as an Anglican and as a Roman Catholic, Ronald Knox was a well-known part of the English literary landscape. He was a favored preacher for occasions great and small; his articles on a host of topics found a place in the newspapers and monthly literary magazines; his voice was heard often on the BBC.  February 17th marked the 125th anniversary of his birth, which is cause for celebration! Enjoy titles starting at 20% off either by or about the great Ronald Knox.

Join Ignatius Press on a Saint Paul & Bible Lands Pilgrimage Cruise with Steve and Janet Ray

Ignatius Press with President Mark Brumley and Father Mark Mary invite you on a Saint Paul & Biblical Lands Mediterranean Cruise and Pilgrimage led by Steve and Janet Ray. For more information about this exciting two week pilgrimage, click here.




 

The Latest From the “Pius Wars” Front

The Latest From the “Pius Wars” Front | Michael Coren | Catholic World Report

The new book, Soldier of Christ, published by Harvard University Press, is a definitive biography of Pope Pius XII

There’s a running joke in Canada about our charming sense of delicate hubris. A Toronto newspaper headline wryly proclaims: “Man Lands on Moon. Boots made in Montreal!” In other words, we’re only 30 million strong and we’re invariably mistaken for quiet Americans, and so when we do achieve something remarkable, even of a minimal variety, we like people to know.

Which is why the world needs to know that what will now be the standard life of Pope Pius XII—the definitive biography of the wartime pontiff at least for the present—has just appeared. And it was written by a Canadian academic. It’s true that Harvard University Press published the book, but Robert A. Ventresca is a professor at King’s College at Western University in London, Ontario. And his new volume, Soldier of Christ: The Life of Pope Pius XII is a splendid work.

It won’t be the last word in the “Pius wars”, of course, but it is one of the best. It depicts a profoundly good and devout man who, contrary to what the critics have claimed, had absolutely no personal animus against Jewish people, was active in the struggle against Nazism, and was clearly and transparently the victim of a concerted attempt to libel him and by extension the Papacy, the Church, and serious Catholicism. Ventresca does agree that were times, both before and during the war, when Pius could have been more specific in mentioning Jewish targets of Nazi eugenics and oppression, but that’s about as severe as the censorship goes.

I’ve obsessed about this issue for some years, partly out of familial and emotional necessity, in that I am a Catholic whose father was Jewish. He was not only Jewish but also from a Polish family.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

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The Tale of Two Religions

New: "History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium"

Why Do We Believe?

Why Do We Believe? | Stephen J. Morrissey | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

The dynamics of Catholic faith-building are thus severely attacked today by many in the sciences who quite glibly point out that the evidence of science trumps the evidence of religion.

The Year of Faith is a most appropriate time to address a significant problem that many Catholics wrestle with:  Why do we believe in a beneficent God and the doctrines of the Catholic Church?  “Faith” is the common response to that question, but faith in what?   What is the evidence upon which that faith rests, and is it reliable?  Does the Church ask for blind, unreasoned faith?  Amidst the current onslaught of atheistic claims that the “hard” evidence from science has solved the mystery of the universe’s origin and that God had nothing to do with it, the challenge before us is whether Catholics are clinging to outmoded thoughts, lingering from a primitive past, with no provable evidence.

Even if these challenges do not lead to an outright rejection of religious belief among the faithful, their constant assertions in the culture certainly engender doubt and indifference among many.  They probably account for much of the notoriously large number of Catholic adults, especially the younger ones, who no longer practice their faith.

The dynamics of Catholic faith-building are thus severely attacked today by many in the sciences who quite glibly point out that the evidence of science trumps the evidence of religion.   At a time when the hard evidence of “wonder science” is increasingly seen as supporting atheism, and obviating the “delusions” of religion, people will naturally question the “softer” evidential foundations of Catholic faith.

Therefore, it is essential to remind people, now and then, of the genius of the human mind for wrapping itself around abstract, philosophical evidence to arrive at truth.

We are physical, sensing creatures, and so to prove something, we naturally opt for hard physical evidence when we can get it.  It is usually clear and inarguable.  Consider that in a court of law, murder suspects are rarely found guilty on the basis of circumstantial evidence, but rather on direct, physical evidence such as surveillance camera photos, tape recordings, eye witness reports, signed confessions, DNA samples, fingerprints, a murder weapon, a dead body.  Therefore, theories, pre-conceived notions, innuendoes, hunches, hearsay, and philosophy have no place here.

But, we are also thinking, reasoning human beings.  It is the human mind that has historically kept humanity from extinction.  Given the proven capabilities of this brain, and the immateriality of religious issues, wouldn’t use of intellectual, philosophical evidence alone have the advantage over physical data in the search for God?  This is the central issue here: the nature of the evidence for God.  If we rely solely on empirical evidence—as atheism would have us do—then, we will never find God, and never honor the real superiority of the human mind.

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

Atheist A.C. Grayling is a meretricious thinker, but a marvelous comedian

by Carl E. Olson | Catholic World Report blog

Here is the deep, philosophical question of the week: What is more annoying, insufferable, and unintentionally hilarious than the pontifications of atheist, "humanist", and "free thinker" A. C. Grayling?

Yes, I know, it's a tough one. I won't keep you in suspense.

Answer: The fawning, embarrassing adoration of an eighteen-year-old English student who interviews Grayling and acts as if the impressively maned Englishman's empty pontifications are rhetorical gold nuggets. That the interview is published in The Humanist is cause for the stones to cry out: "Oh, the inhumanity! Stop! Cease!"

But, to be honest, we can at least admit how fun it is to read this sort of nonsense and think, "And atheists think Christians are stupid? Goodness. I weep for them." No need to waste time with the entire train wreck of an interview, but a few pieces of broken thinking and confused stereotypes are worth kicking about for a moment. First, from the opening:

Philosophy is a rather strange business in the modern world of consumerism and commerce, I suppose. We’re so used to being force-fed ideas these days that we rarely, if ever, stop and think for ourselves.

Uh, speak for yourself, young man, speak for yourself.

And that’s where Grayling bucks the trend.

I think a gallon of coffee just shot out my nose. That is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. Mind you, I've crossed cyber swords with Dr. Grayling in the past, over the matter of his ridiculous—nay, farcical—take on Christianity and the "Dark Ages". How shall I put this? Grayling isn't about bucking trends, but making bucks out of trends—in this case, the whole "new atheists" vehicle, to which he has hitched his modest bag of philosophical agitprop and public relations handles. A few years ago, an acquaintance who earned his doctorate in London and is now an atheist (we attended Bible college together 20 years ago as young Evangelicals), smirked at the mention of Grayling, saying, "He's all about fame and money." True enough.

But there is also the fact that Grayling acts as if his thinking is fresh and his perspective is daring, when both are actually decades out of dates. As I wrote six years ago: "He is an heir to the Enlightenment and thrives on the sort of anti-Christian polemics and dubious historical assertions that became the rage among many intellectuals during the Enlightenment era, so much so that he seems to be nearly entombed in a dusty (dare I say 'old-fashioned') form of simplistic skepticism that was in style many decades ago." Carry on.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

"Sanity and Society" by Frank Sheed

Sanity and Society | Frank Sheed | From Knowing God: God and the Human Condition (Ignatius Press, 2012; originally 1966. Also available in electronic book format)

Insanity is all about us. I do not mean that men individually are madmen, but they add up to a society which is not truly sane. Sanity means seeing what’s there and planning life accordingly. And as a society ours does not see the major part of reality at all, therefore does not see aright the minor part that it is aware of, shapes its activities as though the mis-seen fraction of reality were the whole of it. Secular ethics means deciding our actions as though there were no God, while not settling the question whether there is or not. I do not mean that men of this mind are acting evilly; they may act nobly (as believers may act appallingly).

But they would add a fuller rationality to their nobility if they knew the true order of reality. To act without full vision is a formula for chaos. And in a chaos we live, exhibited to us by every newspaper we read, yet disguised from us by the care and intelligence and goodwill expended upon the understanding and ordering of the fraction—disguised again by the mental muscularity, the almost blinding scientific and technological brilliance, with which the seen part of reality is analyzed, is formulated and systematized, packaged, and offered for acceptance. The chaos is amiable so far; but chaos cannot be relied on to stay amiable—there are parts of the world in which it has not.

Even short of some such catastrophe befalling our own part of the world, it is not good to be the sane minority in a society that has lost contact with God. We hold our own mental health precariously when sanity so partial and defective is accepted as the norm. Insanity is catching: we grow uncertain of the cadences of normal speech when all around us men are gibbering, and gibbering so learnedly and so gravely and so confidently. Our world at its best has all the airs and graces, the rationalizations and courtesies and card indexes of sanity, so that the notion that it might not be sane may not occur to us. The card indexes especially, so tidy, so efficient, so inclusive—only a fanatic would question the rationality of the mind that produces them.

“Fanatic” is the word. We can frighten ourselves with it. I have talked of assumptions and seepage that we are mystery unaware of. But there is something else: the Catholic can be consciously embarrassed at his difference. There are those who feel out of step, self-conscious because out of step, self-questioning because out of step. If they have not made the mysteries of revelation truly their own, they may see life fluid and free, theology all bones. There is great psychological value in a strong affirmation, said Hilaire Belloc. No affirmation was ever stronger than our world makes of its own rightness.

The temptation is to try to get into step with everybody else, while somehow hanging on to the truths. Short of denying them, there is a kind of scaling down and shading off, a resolute switching of the mind away from doctrines at which the world would raise an eyebrow. At all costs, one must not be a fanatic. Saint Paul had met this attitude, right at our beginnings: “Be not conformed to this world, but be re-formed in the newness of your mind” (Rom 12:2).

It is not only faith that demands this, but sheerest common sense. One remembers a stock joke of the last fifty years—the old lady watching a line of soldiers on parade and saying proudly, “They’re all out of step except my George.” We all smile, we all assume without the shadow of a second thought that it is George who is out of step. But if everybody else in the battalion happened to be deaf, then George might well be the only one marching in time to the music of the band.

The parallel is exact. The follower of Christ does hear a music which does not reach the ears of other men; he is bound to be out of step with them, for they are out of step with it. But in our world we must listen to that music with unflagging attention—partly that it may not be drowned out of our own ears by all the tom-toms of chaos, partly that others may begin to catch from us first some hint of the rhythm, then some hint of the tune. Unflagging attention, I say. Few of us can give it that. We catch strains of the music tossed on the winds of the spirit—but how fitfully that wind can blow for us, how fitfully we listen for it.

Not Your Mother: An Autopsy on "The Testament of Mary

Not Your Mother: An Autopsy on The Testament of Mary | Mark P. Shea | Catholic World Report

Colm Tóibín’s book won’t tell you anything about Mary. It will tell you plenty about its very sad and very angry author.

With zombies all the rage (pardon the pun, 28 Days Later fans) there are all sorts of helpful instructions out there for dealing with them. One illustration of sundry methods for dispatching zombies pictures a man with a gun pointed at a drooling old woman shuffling toward him. His hand covers his face as he weeps in grief and hesitation. The caption reads, “Shoot, you fool! She’s not your mother anymore!”

I think of this as I contemplate the latest piece of Catholic-hating detritus to wash up on our shores from the Emerald Isle. The past 20 years have not been good to Irish Catholicism. The Isle of Saints and Scholars, having withstood Viking hordes and centuries of English oppression and sectarian strife, could not withstand the most insidious attack the devil has sent against the Irish: economic prosperity. Has corruption in the Church aided and abetted the vicious turn against the Faith there? Sure. Abusive and corrupt clerics bear very serious responsibility for the hostility to the Church in large measure.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Sin—very serious sin—has always been present in the Church, and Catholics who knew and understood their Faith did not therefore abandon it. Still less did they try to solve the problem of human corruption by telling lies about God, Jesus, and Mary. Time was when Irish Catholics knew that God, Jesus, and Mary were their best friends in a mad world.

That’s gone now. Ireland sold its soul for a brief period of Celtic Tiger prosperity and got two things in return: a media class that is now totally cloned from post-Christian England’s culture of casual anti-Catholic blasphemy, followed by a bursting economic bubble that has left it with neither man’s friendship nor God’s consolations. All it has left is spite, blasphemy—and profound sadness.

Into the midst of this devolution of the Country That Used to Be Ireland comes Colm Tóibín, the issues-filled author of (ahem) New Ways to Kill Your Mother, to deliver unto us what NPR breathlessly calls “A New ‘Testament’ Told From Mary’s Point of View”: his novella The Testament of Mary. It’s a book that fills a profound void—in the twice-annual need of God-haters in corporate publishing to find some sort of media phenomenon that will insult and blaspheme Christianity for Easter and Christmas.

Tóibín is the man of the hour, doing for Mary what Dan Brown did for Jesus: turning her into a blank screen upon which the author can project current cultural and personal obsessions for 30 pieces of silver. Tóibín, it will shock no one to know, is an ex-Catholic homosexual who “once contemplated the priesthood” (that clause is mandated in the standard corporate biosketch of every embittered ex-Catholic screed writer), but jettisoned his faith when he went to college and came out as gay.

In terms of content, the book is a by-the-numbers hatchet job written in sensitive, spare, and poetic diction for the delectation of UK and New York Chattering Classes and dipped in a bath of relentless, willful sadness and bitterness.

Read the entire review at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

New: "Knowing God: God and the Human Condition" by Frank Sheed

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Knowing God: God and the Human Condition

by Frank Sheed

Atheists deny we can know God because they deny there is a God to know. But even believers who affirm God's existence sometimes don't know him. They don't know much about God because they neglect to think much about God and what God has revealed about himself. They accept that there is a God but they don't give much thought to what God is like. And even if they know a great deal about God in the sense of being able to state truths about him, they don't necessarily know him personally and intimately.

In Knowing God (previously titled God and the Human Mind) the great Catholic writer, teacher, and publisher Frank Sheed helps readers to know that God exists, to think about who and what God is, and to know God personally. He clears away popular misunderstandings of God, often held by otherwise knowledgeable people. A masterful, lucid writer, Sheed is not timid about tackling the most challenging questions the human mind can pose about God, yet he does not reduce divine mystery to dry propositions or neglect the necessity of faith.

Sheed acknowledges the limits of human words and human minds when it comes to God. At the same time, he carefully explains the meaning of Spirit, the role of theology and revelation, including the place of the Bible in the Church, and the experience of God in mysticism. In the final section, Sheed goes into the heart of the mystery of God, exploring God as the Trinity and the difference the Trinity should make in understanding God and ourselves.

Frank Sheed had a very distinguished career as a publisher, lecturer, street-corner evangelist, and popular writer. He and his wife Maisie Ward were the founders of the major publishing house Sheed & Ward. His many popular books include To Know Christ Jesus, Theology and Sanity, Society and Sanity, and A Map of Life.

"This book is vintage Sheed: clear, commonsensical, and convincing. This is the Sheed of the two masterpieces of apologetics Theology and Sanity and Society and Sanity. But this is also a new Sheed: older and wiser, more practical and human--the post-Vatican II Sheed. I mean this in all the good senses, the John Paul II senses: he is sensitive to the dangers of "the good old days": verbalism, "dead orthodoxy," rationalism, deism, what Sheed calls "theometry" instead of theology: an abstract, formal theological geometry that only wants to define terms and win debating points. Instead, this book is a kind of theological midrash, a deepening, a spelunking in the caves of the deepest mysteries with the clear light of honest words--honest with heart as well as head. It unites dogmatic theology with lived religion. It is precisely the breath of fresh air that Pope John XXIII opened the windows for, and in terms the layman can clearly grasp.
- Peter Kreeft, Author, Because God is Real