Maverick Philosopher

"How I Joined the Resistance"

J. D. Vance on becoming Catholic.  I wonder if David French has read this.

An Argument for the Preservation of the Latin Rite

Étienne Gilson, writing in 1962:

Latin is the language of the Church. The sorry degradation of the liturgical texts by their translation into a gradually deteriorating vernacular emphasizes the need for the preservation of a sacred language whose very immutability protects them from the decay of taste. (The Philosopher and Theology, Cluny Media, 2020, p. 6)

Now why hadn't that argument occurred to me? It is so plainly cogent, and more apropos now than it was at the beginning of Vatican II.

'Thanks' to the internet, the degeneration of the various vernaculars is accelerating.  Attempts to hold the line are rear-guard actions in the main. There is need of a dead language to offset the liturgy's slide into the morass of leftist cultural crapola.

Death renders  immutable what was.

The Treason of the Clerics

Rod Dreher:

It’s a hell of a thing to realize that the leader of the one institution responsible more than any other for creating Western civilization — the Roman Catholic Church — is now actively working to dismantle that very civilization by opening the city gates, so to speak, wide to the invaders.

What do you even do with that if you are a Christian, Catholic or otherwise? German Reader is right. Do these sentimental clerics really think that life will go well for European Christians once the descendants of these migrants take power? How is life going for Christians in the Muslim world, eh? And even if they were to be religiously tolerant, there is still the matter of the erasure of distinct European cultures. The Great Replacement. And for what?

Mysticism with Monica

Top o' the Stack.

Philosophy and Christianity

Substack latest

Ruminations on Ratzinger 

Franz Brentano, The Teaching of Jesus and its Enduring Significance

An old book recently translated. Reviewed here.

No Church for Old Men?

Good news, if true:

The American Catholic Church is seeing a prolonged surge of conservative young priests, leaving the aging and far more liberal Vatican II generation with no replacements.

According to a nationally representative survey conducted by the Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America, of 3,500 priests ordained since 2020, “More than 80 percent of priests ordained since 2020 describe themselves as theologically ‘conservative/orthodox’ or ‘very conservative/orthodox.'” Foreign-born priests in the United States, a significant contingent due to the overall low number of ordinations in the U.S., were found to be significantly more liberal than their American counterparts.

However, perhaps most revealing, the study found that no priest ordained since 2020 described himself as “very progressive.” In addition, nearly all priests ordained in 2020 and afterward described themselves as politically moderate or conservative.

Is the fumigation of the RCC finally upon us? As I recall my pal Catacomb Joe saying back in the day, fumus sanctus!

An RCC that degenerates into just another piece of leftist cultural junk needs to be defunded and ignored.

Am I an Intellectual Glutton? Evdokimov, Jackson, Precepts, and Counsels

Study everything! proclaims the first half of my masthead motto.  I live by it. Am I an intellectual glutton? The self-critical and conflicted Tom Merton asked himself that very question in a journal entry. I put the question to myself.

Example. I am up from a nap and enjoying an iced coffee. I will soon be banging on all eight. As part of the afternoon start-up I am reading back-to-back, and back-and-forth, Paul Evdokimov (The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Orthodox Tradition, St. Vladimir's Press, 1985, orig. published in 1980 as Sacrement de L'Amour), and the Blake Bailey biography of Charles Jackson, the alcoholic, married-to-woman,  homosexual who achieved minor literary fame as the author of the thinly-veiled autobiographical booze novel, The Lost Weekend (1944).  Jackson died at age 65 having destroyed himself with drugs and alcohol.

I have long been fascinated by the utterly wild diversity of human types. There is nothing like it it the animal world, and yet we too are animals. We are in continuity with the animals but an incomprehensible rupture, saltation, jump, metabasis eis allo genos, occurred at some point in the evolutionary process that gave rise to man who is, paradoxically, both an animal and not an animal. Heidegger is right; there is an abysmal/abyssal (abgruendig) difference between man and animal. An abyss yawns between the two. Heidegger  is echoing Genesis but going deeper, and some would say, off the deep end, with his talk of man as Dasein, the Da of Sein/Seyn. More on Heidegger when I dig into Dugin.

And then there is Paul Evdokimov (1901-1970). I have Merton to thank for bringing him to my attention. Here is a passage that struck me:

There is no reason . . . to call one path [the marital state] or the other [the monastic state] the preeminent Christianity, since what is valid for all of Christendom is thereby valid for each of the two states. The East [unlike the RCC] has never made the distinction between the "precepts" and the "evangelical counsels." The Gospel in its totality is addressed to each person; everyone in his own situation is called to the absolute of the Gospel. Trying to prove the superiority of the one state over the other is therefore useless . . . The renunciation at work in both cases is as good as the positive content that the human being brings to it: the intensity of the love of God. (Evdokimov, p. 65)

For the Roman Catholic distinction between precepts and counsels of perfection that Evdokimov is rejecting, see here. "It has been denied by heretics in all ages, and especially by many Protestants in the sixteenth and following centuries . . . "

Novus Ordo?

Giving a  Latin name to the destruction of the ancient Latin rite smacks of mockery.

Trads on Offense

I especially liked the section on the Boomer nuns of Benedictine College who were not happy with the Butker speech and are described as crotchety farbissinas.

A farbissina, I take it, is  a person who is farbissiner, a Yiddish word that means sullen, mean, embittered, of a sour disposition.

Is Hegel the Protestant Aquinas?

Substack latest.

UPDATE (5/8/2024).  This from Kai Frederick Lorentzen:

You write:

" . . . It does annoy  me, however, that  Kainz doesn't supply any references.  For example, we read:

Hegel was critical of Catholicism at times, in his writings and lectures. For example, he once made a scurrilous remark about the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist . . . .

Very interesting, but what exactly does he say and where does he say it?  Inquiring minds want to know . . . . " 

That's from § 552 of the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften where it says in context of the thought that religion is for the Selbstbewußtsein [self-consciousness] the basis of ethics and the state:

Es kann aber das Verhältnis der Unfreiheit [of the Selbstbewußtsein on the one and the content of truth on the other side - kfl] der Form nach stattfinden, obgleich der an sich seiende Inhalt der Religion der absolute Geist ist. Dieser große Unterschied, um das Bestimmtere anzugeben, findet sich innerhalb der christlichen Religion selbst, in welcher nicht das Naturelement den Inhalt des Gottes macht, noch auch ein solches in den Gehalt desselben als Moment eintritt, sondern Gott, der im Geist und in der Wahrheit gewußt wird, der Inhalt ist. Und doch wird in der katholischen Religion dieser Geist in der Wirklichkeit dem selbstbewußten Geist starr gegenübergestellt. Zunächst wird in der Hostie Gott als äußerliches Ding der religiösen Anbetung präsentiert (wogegen in der lutherischen Kirche die Hostie als solche erst und nur allein im Genusse, d.i. in der Vernichtung der Äußerlichkeit derselben, und im Glauben, d.i. in dem zugleich freien, seiner selbst gewissen Geiste, konsekriert und zum gegenwärtigen Gotte erhoben wird). Aus jenem ersten und höchsten Verhältnis der Äußerlichkeit fließen alle die anderen äußerlichen, damit unfreien, ungeistigen und abergläubischen Verhältnisse; namentlich ein Laienstand, der das Wissen der göttlichen Wahrheit wie die Direktion des Willens und Gewissens von außen her und von einem anderen Stande empfängt, welcher selbst zum Besitze jenes Wissens nicht auf geistige Weise allein gelangt, sondern wesentlich dafür einer äußerlichen Konsekration bedarf. Weiteres, die teils nur für sich die Lippen bewegende, teils darin geistlose Weise des Betens, daß das Subjekt auf die direkte Richtung zu Gott Verzicht leistet  und andere um das Beten bittet, - die Richtung der Andacht an wundertätige Bilder, ja selbst an Knochen, und die Erwartung von Wundern durch sie, - überhaupt, die Gerechtigkeit durch äußerliche Werke, ein Verdienst, das durch die Handlungen soll erworben, ja sogar auf andere übertragen werden können, usf., - alles dieses bindet den Geist unter ein Außersichsein, wodurch sein Begriff im Innersten verkannt und verkehrt und Recht und Gerechtigkeit, Sittlichkeit und Gewissen, Zurechnungsfähigkeit und Pflicht in ihrer Wurzel verdorben sind. 

(G.W.F. Hegel, Werke 10, Frankfurt a.M. 1986, pp. 356-357)

Here it is in  English:

As the inseparability of the two sides has been indicated, it may be worth while to note the separation as it appears on the side of religion. It is primarily a point of form: the attitude which self-consciousness takes to the body of truth. So long as this body of truth is the very substance or indwelling spirit of self-consciousness in its actuality, then self-consciousness in this content has the certainty of itself and is free. But if this present self-consciousness is lacking, then there may be created, in point of form, a condition of spiritual slavery, even though the implicit content of religion is absolute spirit. This great difference (to cite a specific case) comes out within the Christian religion itself, even though here it is not the nature-element in which the idea of God is embodied, and though nothing of the sort even enters as a factor into its central dogma and sole theme of a God who is known in spirit and in truth. And yet in Catholicism this spirit of all truth is in actuality set in rigid opposition to the self-conscious spirit. And, first of all, God is in the ‘host’ presented to religious adoration as an external thing. (In the Lutheran Church, on the contrary, the host as such is not at first consecrated, but in the moment of enjoyment, i.e. in the annihilation of its externality. and in the act of faith, i.e. in the free self-certain spirit: only then is it consecrated and exalted to be present God.) From that first and supreme status of externalization flows every other phase of externality - of bondage, non-spirituality, and superstition. It leads to a laity, receiving its knowledge of divine truth, as well as the direction of its will and conscience from without and from another order - which order again does not get possession of that knowledge in a spiritual way only, but to that end essentially requires an external consecration. It leads to the non-spiritual style of praying - partly as mere moving of the lips, partly in the way that the subject foregoes his right of directly addressing God, and prays others to pray - addressing his devotion to miracle- working images, even to bones, and expecting miracles from them. It leads, generally, to justification by external works, a merit which is supposed to be gained by acts, and even to be capable of being transferred to others. All this binds the spirit under an externalism by which the very meaning of spirit is perverted and misconceived at its source, and law and justice, morality and conscience, responsibility and duty are corrupted at their root.

BV: I see no reason to think that Kainz is to referring to the above passage from Hegel's Encyclopedia. In a later article I just now found, Corpus Christi and Reality, Kainz writes,

My reference was to one of Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of religion, in which he criticized the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, causing a Catholic student to report him to the authorities. Hegel had attempted what we might call a sick joke: he asked whether, if a mouse had come across a consecrated Host and eaten it, Catholics might be obliged to act worshipfully to the mouse, and so forth.

But again Kainz gives no reference! So I consulted Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827), but found no reference to any host-eating mouse in the passage in which Hegel refers to communion, which he calls Genuss which means enjoyment but also partaking of  as in the eating or drinking of something. (In some contexts, geniesßar has the connotation, edible.) 

Back to Lorentzen:

Heavy stuff, no? Well, with a little stretch you could say that Hegel is more Lutheran here than Martin Luther himself. Luther's theological approach, as I recently learned from Volker Leppin's brilliant study Die fremde Reformation: Luthers mystische Wurzeln (München 2016: C.H. Beck), was rooted in medieval mysticism in the line of Johannes Tauler and Meister Eckhart, whose idea to give birth to an inner divine child was strongly appreciated by Luther. Regarding extensive philosophical framing of the religious practice he became more and more critical. Here Luther's negative view of the traditional doctrine of the Eucharist finds its place: It's the Scholastics with their detailed Aristotelian understanding of the Eucharist that Luther has a problem with. The flesh and the blood of Christ is absolutely real, but no philosopher can prove how! Instead, the affection of the baptized members of the community validates the ritual. Same problem in the other direction with the merely symbolic understanding of bread and wine, as we find it expressed by Zwingli and his successors like Calvin. Here Luther suspects Neo-Platonist hubris against God.    

Lorentzen's take strikes me as basically correct. Here is a  little under four minutes of  Volker Leppin.

In his 1827 lectures on the philosophy of religion Hegel mentions three views about the host or communion wafer:

According to the first, the host -- this external, sensible thing -- becomes by consecration the present God, God as a thing in the manner of an empirical 'thing.' The second view is the Lutheran one . . . here there is no transubstantiation . . . the presence of God is utterly a spiritual presence -- the consecration takes place in the faith of the subject. The third view is that the present God exists only in representation, in memory, and to this extent he does not have this immediate subjective presence. (Hodgson one-volume edition, U. of Cal Press, 1988, 480-481.)

Alles klar? 

This may help: Transubstantion, Consubstantiation, or Something Else?

Also of interest: Must Catholics Hate Hegel?

Herr Lorentzen signs off:

With best wishes!
Ex toto corde

Kai (who likes your recent Sunday meditation - Hyperkinetic and Hyperconnected - a lot!)

Two Termites: Bergoglio and Biden

I sometimes refer to the current pope as Bergoglio the Termite to underscore the destructive effect he is having on a once-great institution. Early this morning it occurred to me that I might write a post comparing the various termites undermining our institutions. Of course 'President' Joe Biden immediately came to mind. Just now, an e-mail crossed the transom pointing me to an article in which William Kilpatrick, whom I have often approvingly quoted,  does part of the job for me, comparing the termitic attributes of Bergoglio and Biden. I recommend it for your perusal.

Needless to say, when I refer to Bergoglio as a termite, that is a figurative use of language: I am not suggesting that he is literally an insect or ought to be 'rubbed out' by chemical or other means.  People who cannot distinguish between the literal and the figurative show a lack of intelligence. Most recently, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC and others of his scrofulous ilk have shown this lack of intelligence when they failed to grasp  that Donald Trump's recent use of 'bloodbath' was figurative, not literal.* 

Joey B struggles with the distinction as well. Remember his  “The American people literally stood on the brink of a new Depression”?  That was around 2013 if memory serves. 

It is worth noting that not every term of abuse is purely abusive: 'termite' as applied to Jorge and Joseph (both of whose initials are 'J. B.') is not purely abusive in that it contains a factual core: both of these clowns are in fact working to destroy  their respective institutions.  Wittingly or unwittingly? I am inclined to say wittingly in the case of Bergoglio, unwittingly in the case of the demented Biden.  

There is of course a serious moral question connected to the use of abusive language meant to express contempt for fellow human beings.  But in a war against such anti-civilizational forces as we now face, different rules of engagement are permissible. Or so it seems. A hard nut to crack.

___________________

*You could of course respond to me that Scarborough and Co. understand the literal-figurative distinction and also understand that context is crucial in the interpretation of anyone's oral or written remark.  They probably do. But then it is even worse for them: they are trying to bamboozle the American people.  This is a moral defect, which is worse than a failure of understanding. Dripping with intellectual dishonesty and disregard for truth, these people warrant our contempt 

Legutko on Entertainment

Legutko tends to exaggerate, as witness the final sentence in the following quotation, but the point he is making is true and important.

In today’s world entertainment is not just a pastime or a style, but a substance that permeates everything: schools and universities, upbringing of children, intellectual life, art, morality, and religion. It has become dear to the hearts of students, professors, entrepreneurs, journalists, engineers, scientists, writers, even priests. Entertainment imposes itself psychologically, intellectually, socially, and also, strange as it might sound, spiritually. A failure to provide human endeavors—even the most noble ones—with an entertaining wrapping is today unthinkable and borders on sin.

― Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

Yes, even priests. The Catholic priest who during a supposed 'sermon' goes on about the Stupor Bowl. And then there is Bergoglio the Clown:

Read all about it.

A Quasi-Kierkegaardian Poke at Paglia, Catholic Pagan

This Stack leader has her stuck at the aesthetic stage.

I'm on a Kierkegaard jag again. I've been reading him all my philosophical life ever since my undergraduate teacher, Ronda Chervin, introduced him to me.  

For an easy introduction to the Danish Socrates, I recommend Clare Carlisle, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019). Well done and heart-felt as only the female heart can feel.

Wikipedia:

Søren (Danish: [ˈsœːɐ̯n̩], Norwegian: [ˈsøːəɳ]) or Sören (Swedish: [ˈsœ̌ːrɛn], German: [ˈzøːʁən]) is a Scandinavian given name that is sometimes Anglicized as Soren. The name is derived from that of the 4th-century Christian saint Severin of Cologne,^[1] ultimately derived from the Latinseverus ("severe, strict, serious"). Its feminine form is Sørine, though its use is uncommon. The patronymic surname Sørensen is derived from Søren.

Nomen est omen?

I am also on a Hannah Arendt kick. I've got four of her books in my library. Her The Human Condition has been languishing on my shelves since aught-six, with only a few pages showing marks of attention, but now I am diving deep into its labyrinthine riches. An astonishing product of wide-ranging erudition, it is packed with insights and intriguing suggestions.

It's long on Teutonic Tiefsinn and somewhat short on Anglo-Angularity, if you catch my drift, but I've done my time on both sides of the Continental Divide and frequently wander back and forth as is the wont of a maverick. The maverick schtick is supposed to convey that philosophical bipolarity, or, to try a different metaphor, my philosophical amphibiousness: I am at home on the dry and dusty desert  ground of nuts-and-bolts analysis, but also, though in lesser measure in my later phase, in the muddy waters and murky fluidity of Continental currents, not to mention the oft-neglected backwaters of Scholasticism. 

The Human Condition show unmistakable signs of Heidegger's influence, but the man is not mentioned even once, for reasons I suspect but will keep to myself for the time being. And while classifiable as a work in political philosophy, in THC there is no mention of, nor Auseindandersetzungen with, either Leo Strauss or Carl Schmitt, again for reasons I suspect but will keep under my hat.

A 5 February 2024 memo to self reads:

Compare Arendt to Schmitt on the nature of the political. Arendt: action (praxis) constitutes the political realm. Action (vita activa) is acting together, the sharing of words and deeds, and thus co-operation (HC 198). For Schmitt, by contrast, the Freund-Feind opposition defines the political. 

More grist for the mill.  

Thomas Merton on the Destruction of the Liturgy

It was with no excess of charity that I described Merton the other day as "a flabby liberal both politically and theologically." So let me balance that out a bit with a quotation from Volume Five (1963 - 1965) of his Journal. Here is an excerpt from the entry of 13 April 1965, Tuesday in Holy Week, p. 227:

On Palm Sunday everything was going well and I was getting into the chants of the Mass when suddenly the Passion, instead of being solemnly sung on the ancient tone in Latin, was read in the extremely trite and pedestrian English version that has been approved by the American bishops. The effect was, to my mind, disastrous. Total lack of nobility, solemnity, or even of any style whatever. A trivial act -- liturgical vaudeville. I could not get away from the impression of a blasphemous comedy.  

What was going on in the Church in those days? The Second Vatican Council. It ran from October 1962 to December 1965.  Merton's attitude toward Vatican II was ambivalent as you might expect, but above he strikes a traditionalist note.

I myself would like to return of a Sunday morning to the piety of my pre-Vatican II boyhood and a Latin mass with my wife, a good Catholic girl, but the RCC seems bent on reducing itself to a pile of leftist junk, secular and useless.  A comparison of the RCC with Budweiser seems fitting.

They have this much in common: they don't understand their respective clienteles. 

Who drinks Budweiser? Connoisseurs of the brewer's art? No. Different sorts, but mainly country folk, rednecks, Hillary's deplorables, and Barack Hussein Obama's "clingers" to guns and Bibles.  So what were the head honchos thinking when they enlisted Dylan Mulvaney to promote their swill?  You know, that cute little narcissistic sweetie-pie who wants to grow up to be a girly-girl.

Beats me.  Apparently, drinking Bud makes you none the wiser. The 'suits' seemed shocked by the predictable boycott and backlash and have reversed course with an appeal to Harley riders. They should have gone 'whole hog' with  an appeal to outlaw bikers.

As for the RCC,   I have vented my spleen and blown my stack over at the Stack:

People who take religion seriously tend to be conservatives and traditionalists; they are not change-for-the-sake-of-change leftist utopians out to submerge the Transcendent in the secular.  The stupidity of the Vatican II 'reforms,' therefore, consists in estranging its very clientele, the conservatives and traditionalists.  

The church should be a 'liberal'-free zone.

John Henry Newman and the Problem of Private Judgment

Onsi A. Kamel (First Things, October 2019):

The issue of ecclesiastical authority was trickier for me. I recognized the absurdity of a twenty-year-old presuming to adjudicate claims about the Scriptures and two thousand years of history. Newman’s arguments against private judgment therefore had a prima facie plausibility for me. In his Apologia, Newman argues that man’s rebellion against God introduced an “anarchical condition of things,” leading human thought toward “suicidal excesses.” Hence, the fittingness of a divinely established living voice infallibly proclaiming supernatural truths. In his discourse on “Faith and Private Judgment,” Newman castigates Protestants for refusing to “surrender” reason in matters religious. The implication is that reason is unreliable in matters of revelation. Faith is assent to the incontestable, self-evident truth of God’s revelation, and reasoning becomes an excuse to refuse to bend the knee.

The more I internalized ­Newman’s claims about private judgment, however, the more I descended into skepticism. I could not reliably interpret the Scriptures, history, or God’s Word preached and given in the sacraments. But if I could not do these things, if my reason was unfit in matters religious, how was I to assess Newman’s arguments for Roman Catholicism? Newman himself had once recognized this dilemma, writing in a pre-conversion letter, “We have too great a horror of the principle of private judgment to trust it in so immense a matter as that of changing from one communion to another.” Did he expect me to forfeit the faculty by which I adjudicate truth claims, because that faculty is fallible? My ­conversion would have to be rooted in my private ­judgment—but, because of Rome’s claim of infallibility, conversion would forbid me from exercising that faculty ever again on doctrinal questions.

MavPhil comment: Here is one problem. I must exercise my private judgment in order to decide whether to accept Rome's authority and thereby surrender my private judgment. But if my private judgment is trustworthy up to that point, then it will be trustworthy beyond that point in the evaluation of the pronouncements of say, Pope Francis.  It is also important to note that my private judgment is not merely private inasmuch as it is informed and tempered and corrected by a lifetime of  wide and diligent study and by the opinions of many others who have exercised their private judgments carefully and responsibly.

A second problem is that it is the private judgments  of powerful and influential intellects driven by resolute commitment  that have shaped Rome's teaching. St. Augustine is a prime example. Imagine being at a theological conference or council and squaring off with the formidable Augustinus. Whom do you think would carry the day? The magisterial teaching does not come directly from the Holy Spirit but is mediated by these intellectually powerful and willful drivers of doctrine. They were not mere conduits even if they were divinely inspired.

Finally, the infighting among traditionalist, conservative, and liberal Catholics made plain that Catholics did not gain by their magisterium a clear, living voice of divine authority. They received from the past a set of magisterial documents that had to be weighed and interpreted, often over against living prelates. The ­magisterium of prior ages only multiplied the texts one had to interpret for oneself, for living bishops, it turns out, are as bad at reading as the rest of us.

At the San Gabriel Mission

Catacomb Joe and I grew up near the San Gabriel Mission. He sends the following as a visual comment on a couple of recent entries:

Rod Dreher on Bergoglio's Latest Termitic Outrage

Decline and fall is the way of the world. It's our turn now as institution after institution is captured by wokeassery and termitry. Sodomy in the Senate and among prelates. The presidency of a 'wokified' but unqualified plagiarist at Harvard. The huge numbers of destructive leftists and their usefully idiotic fellow travellers who support a demented traitor in plain dereliction of duty for POTUS.  And that just for a start. Is consolation to be had? Well, the religionist can look beyond the passing scene, and the philosopher can take comfort in the thought that the owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk.

Here is Hegel in the penultimate paragraph of the preface to  The Philosophy of Right:

When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old.  By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.  The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at the falling of the dusk.

Daughter of Jupiter, Minerva in the mythology of the Greeks is the goddess of wisdom.  And the nocturnal owl is one of its ancient symbols.  The meaning of the Hegelian trope is that understanding, insight, and wisdom arise when the object to be understood has played itself out, when it has actualized and thus exhausted its potentialities, and now faces only decline.

When a shape of life has grown old, philosophy paints its grey on grey.  The allusion is to Goethe's Faust wherein Mephisto says

Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, 
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Grey, dear friend, is all theory
And green the golden tree of life.

Dreher's piece is long but good. I've been called a writing machine but I can't hold a candle to Dreher in terms of sheer output. There is one thing I can't stomach about him, though: his mindless anti-Trumpery. But we all have our follies, fatuities, failings, and blind spots. 

It Used to be Hard to be a Good Catholic

Substack latest. Another taste of John Fante with a bit of commentary.

Tony Flood comments, "A priest is now authorized to bless the fornicating couple who recently befouled a Senate hearing room." 

Why Swim the Tiber?

A philosophy colleague I thought was Protestant has unbeknownst to me swum the Tiber. I asked him why. Here is part of his response, slightly redacted:

My story is rather boring, I’d wager. Since my late teen years I was nonplussed with the lack of intellectual vigor in most Protestant denominations (Baptist, Methodist, etc.) I began to hear the call of Rome in graduate school. My study of Aquinas, Scotus, Suarez, et al.  had an effect. But for whatever reason I simply couldn’t make the move  at the time; the blame may have been on Mary’s status, perhaps even the idea of a Pope’s (seemingly) radical authority. Ergo my move to Lutheranism.

 

But as I continued my studies both philosophical and theological, I began to call into question the ardent “individualism” at the heart of  Protestantism. Indeed, I’m not sure there would have been a Hobbes or a Locke without a Luther . . . and while my respect for the latter waned (though surely did not disappear), I began to see the need -- if you can call it that -- for authority, for something or someone who stands above all the rest, who makes the contested call. I suppose that amount of Hobbesianism stayed with me.  While in politics perhaps individual freedom (“rights”, if you will) trumps all, I’m just not so sure that’s the case when it comes to eternity, to salvation. Maybe the stakes are too high, I’m not sure. But I can’t stand on my own. 

 

My colleague has more to say and in a later entry  I may address it; the issue of teaching authority, however, is an important one that merits discussion. I will have my say and I invite others to do the same.

One who refuses to accept, or questions, a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) may be accused of reliance upon private judgment and failure to submit to the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church.  Two observations on this accusation.

First, for many of us private judgment is not merely private, based as it is on consultation with many, many public sources.  It is as public as private. Everything I've read over the years from Parmenides on down in the West, the Bible on down in the Near East, and the Upanishads on down in the Far East feeds into my 'private' judgment.  So my 'private' judgment is not merely mine as to content inasmuch as it is a collective cultural upshot, albeit processed through my admittedly fallible and limited pate. Though collective as to content, its acceptance by me is of course my sole responsibility.  My first point, then, is that we ought to distinguish wider and narrower senses of 'private' and realize that a 'private' judgment might not be merely private.

Second, the party line or official doctrine of any institution is profoundly influenced by the private judgments of individuals. Think of the profound role that St. Augustine played in the development of Roman Catholic doctrine.  He was a man of powerful will, penetrating intellect, and great personal presence.  He was trained in rhetoric in Carthage and in Rome. Imagine going up against him at a theological conference or council!   

Summing up the two points, the private is not merely private, and the official is not merely official.

Of course, part of the official doctrine of the Roman church is that its pronunciamenti anent faith and morals are guided and directed by the Holy Ghost. (Use of the old phrase, besides chiming nicely with der Heilige Geist, is a way for this conservative to thumb his nose at Vatican II-type innovations which, though some of them may have had some sense, tended to be deleterious in the long run.  A meatier question which I ought to take up at some time is the one concerning the upsurge of priestly paederasty after Vatican II: post hoc ergo propter hoc? That should give pause to any one thinking of swimming the Tiber. Rod Dreher, who took the plunge, kept swimming, eastward. We could say he swam the Tiber first, and then the Bosporus, when, disgusted by priestly paedophilia, and the RCC's mafia-like protection of their own, he embraced Eastern Orthodoxy.)

What I have just written may sound as if I am hostile to the Roman Church. I am not. Nor have I ever had any negative experiences with priests, except, perhaps to have been bored by their sermons. All of the ones I have known have been upright, and some exemplars of the virtues they profess.  In the main they were manly and admirable men.  But then I'm an old man, and I am thinking mainly of the pre-Vatican II priests of my youth. 

I have no time now to discuss the Church's guidance by the third person of the Trinity, except to express some skepticism: if that is so, how could the estimable Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) be followed by the benighted Bergoglio? (Yes, I am aware that there were far, far worse popes than the current one, and I am aware of  the theme of Satan's grip on the sublunary.)

Of course, I have just, once again, delivered my private judgment. But, once again, it is not merely private inasmuch as it is based on evidence and argument: I am not merely emoting in the manner of a 'liberal' such as Bergoglio when he emoted, in response to the proposed Great Wall of Trump, that nations need bridges, not walls. What an unspeakably stupid thing to say! Well, then, Vatican City needs bridges not walls the better to allow jihadis easy access for their destructive purposes. Mercy and appeasement must be granted even unto those who would wipe Christianity from the face of the earth, and are in process of doing so.

But how can my judgment, even if not merely private, carry any weight, even for me, when it contradicts the Magisterium, the Church's teaching authority, when we understand the source and nature of this authority? ('Magisterium' from L. magister, teacher, master.)

By the Magisterium we mean the teaching office of the Church. It consists of the Pope and Bishops. Christ promised to protect the teaching of the Church : "He who hears you, hears me; he who rejects you rejects me, he who rejects me, rejects Him who sent me" (Luke 10. 16). Now of course the promise of Christ cannot fail: hence when the Church presents some doctrine as definitive or final, it comes under this protection, it cannot be in error; in other words, it is infallible. 

In a nutshell: God in Christ founded the Roman church upon St. Peter, the first pope, as upon a rock. The legitimate succession culminates in Pope Francis. The Roman church as the one true holy catholic and apostolic church therefore teaches with divine authority and thus infallibly. Hence its teaching on indulgences not only cannot be incorrect, it cannot even be reasonably questioned. So who am I to -- in effect -- question God himself?

Well, it is obvious that if I disagree with God, then I am wrong.  But if a human being, or a group of human beings, no matter how learned, no matter how saintly, claims to be speaking with divine authority, and thus infallibly, then I have excellent reason to be skeptical. How do I know that they are not, in a minor or major way, schismatics diverging from the true teaching, the one Christ promised to protect?  Maybe it was some version of Eastern Orthodoxy that Christ had in mind as warranting his protection.

These and other questions legitimately arise in the vicinity of what Josiah Royce calls the Religious Paradox. 

One last point for today. My friend and colleague questions above "the ardent 'individualism' at the heart of  Protestantism." This point, however, needs some qualification inasmuch as Martin Luther, while anti-Rome, was not anti-Church.  He was certainly no maverick theologian preaching his own 'personal,' 'individualistic' truth. In his battle with the Anabaptists, Luther is decidedly anti-papist, but not anti-Church. Luther thought that the Anabaptists, Zwinglians, Schwenckelfeldians, et al. ". . . threatened the Reformation cause because  together they formed a common front repudiating Church and society." (Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, Yale UP, 2006, p. 229)

If what Protestants want is a reformed church, then they want a church, which will have its 'confession,' its compendium of defining doctrines and prescribed and proscribed practices that would be binding upon and thus authoritative for anyone who wanted to belong to that church.   If so, the issue should not be framed as one between individualism and church authority, but as between one church authority versus another, for example Calvinists versus 'papists,' 'Romanists.'

Not the Least of Bergoglio's Sins

He's destroyed the reply, "Is the Pope Catholic?"

More on the Politics of Abortion: Ron Paul and Subsidiarity

Ron Paul. M.  D.:

I strongly believe that the more difficult the issue is, the more local should be its solution. That is the real success of the Dobbs decision, because abortion should have never been a federal issue in the first place. Overturning Roe v Wade returned us to where we belonged, with state and local laws governing all issues not Constitutionally reserved for the Federal Government.

Bigger problems are best decided closest to home. Look for example at what happened when parents started going to school board meetings and demanding accountability on everything from Covid restrictions to transgenders in school bathrooms. Parents were extremely effective because they only had to travel to the local school board meeting to demand – and get – results. Does anyone think they would have been able to get the same results at the Department of Education in Washington DC?

Similarly, immigration is much better handled by those closer to the action. Ideally it would be a property rights issue, but at the least states like Texas should be taking an active role in preventing a foreign invasion into its borders rather than waiting for Washington to make a move.

Ron Paul is urging something very much like the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity. David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the manifest drift of recent Democrat administrations, on the one hand,  and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme, on the other.  

Subsidiarity also fits well with federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Democrats.  'Federalism' is  one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead.  Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Whether or not you are Catholic, if you accept the principle of subsidiarity, then you have yet another reason to oppose the Left.  The argument is this:

1. The Left encroaches upon civil society, weakening it and limiting it, and correspondingly expanding the power and the reach of the state.  (For example, the closure of Catholic Charities in Illinois because of an Obama administration adoption rule.)

2. Subsidiarity helps maintain civil society as a buffer zone and intermediate sector between the purely private (the individual and the familial) and the state.

Therefore

3. If you value the autonomy and robustness of civil society, then you ought to oppose  the Left (and the Democrat Party which is now hard-leftist to the core.)

The truth of the second premise is self-evident.  If you wonder whether the Left does in fact encroach upon civil society, then see my post Obama's Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society.

How to Tell the Impostor RCC from the Real Thing

The Roman Catholic Church with Bergoglio at its head is an impostor church. So William Kilpatrick asks:

. . . how can one tell the imposter Church from the Church established by Christ?

Although there are several indicators, the main giveaway, I believe, can be found in differing attitudes toward sin. The true Church takes sin very seriously and warns about it constantly. Indeed, the main mission of the Church is to save us from our sins. On the other hand, one of the main goals of the Church which Francis and his followers are building is to diminish the importance of sin.

On several occasions, Francis has belittled sexual sins, referring to them as the “lightest of sins” or jokingly as “sins below the waist.” He reportedly told a group of Spanish seminarians that they must absolve all sins in the confessional, even if there is no sign of repentance. On one occasion, when asked about the exploits of a homosexual priest, Francis replied, “Who am I to judge?” But—with the exception of sins against the environment and “sins” of rigidity—he seems to take a “Who-am-I-to-judge” attitude toward almost all sins.

In a Substack article from a couple of years ago, I  explore the real root of the rot in the Roman church. See The Role of Concupiscence in the Decline of the Catholic Church. 

Related

Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained: Why do the powerful arguments against abortion have such little effect?

Performative Catholicism

Opening:

Performative Catholicism has become the norm today, and the Rosary is the primary tool in the performance. President Joe Biden loves to show off his rosary, such as during a virtual conversation with Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador. Claiming his devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe—despite the fact that President Biden has promoted the most extreme pro-abortion policies in history—Biden told Obrador that he had visited Mexico four times as vice president and during his visits he “paid his respects to the Virgin of Guadalupe.”  

Which Side Are You On?

A video to help you decide.

So a group of climate protesters decided to block a two-lane road in Nevada, but got a different response than usual from law enforcement. The best part of this X-File from “Climate Defiance” is the number of words that follow “words fail,” not to mention the irony of people usurping the “monopoly on the use of force” using force themselves to disrupt the peaceful mobility of their fellow citizens.

The next best part is the person wailing in the background, “We’re not criminals; we’re environmental protestors!” I say let them savor a new title: inmate.

In other news, Pope Francis is doing his termitic best to destroy the RCC. If you want to be set straight on these matters, Ed Feser is the man to do it.

How is Such Moral Heroism Possible?

The example of Maximilian Kolbe

The Destructive Bergoglio

At a time when we need our most venerable institutions to stand as bulwarks against the rising tide of wokery, what we find instead is capitulation.  When the head of the ancient Roman church abdicates, we are surely in for it. Corruptio optimi pessima.

Cardinal Pell vents his righteous fury at the Vatican's theological direction here.

What explains the stampede toward wokery? One causal factor is groupthink.

Horribile dictu: the Girl Scouts have joined the mad rush, offering a merit badge for LGBTQ+ awareness. 

'Wokeassery,' a coinage of mine, is another word for wokery, a word to be found in reputable dictionaries. It brings in the donkey theme, the jackass being the symbol of the Dementocrats.

Related: Heather Mac Donald on cultural survival and the Left's new default setting. Brilliant and deep analysis. But again just more analysis with nary a concrete suggestion as to what to do to restore sanity.

UPDATE (7/13)

Rod Dreher on Bergoglio's consolidation of his 'progressive' revolution.

Why Shouldn't the Vatican Go 'Woke'?

The RCC is already a joke with a clown at its head; why then should it not go 'woke'?  It has needed defunding for a long time now. It is up to us to make it true that 'go woke, go broke.' Story here:

VATICAN CITY — An unprecedented global canvassing of Catholics has called for the church to take concrete steps to promote women to decision-making roles, for a "radical inclusion" of the LGBTQ+ community . . . .

The document also asked what concrete steps the church can take to better welcome LGBTQ+ people and others who have felt marginalized and unrecognized by the church so that they don't feel judged: the poor, migrants, the elderly and disabled, as well as those who by tribal or caste feel excluded.

Perhaps most significantly, the document used the terminology "LGBTQ+ persons" rather than the Vatican's traditional "persons with homosexual tendencies," suggesting a level of acceptance that Francis ushered in a decade ago with his famous "Who am I to judge" comment.

Satanists must feel terribly marginalized by the RCC even at this late date. They need to be recognized so that they don't feel judged.  'Catholic' means universal; so shouldn't everyone be included?  Diversity, equity, inclusion!  In fact, Satanists are more worthy of inclusion than New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris, et al.) because the former, unlike the latter, believe in the super-natural, the meta-physical.  In any case, the New Atheism is so passé! Hell, nobody knows what it is is anymore. Satanism is the current thing and must be honored as such. Diversity demands the inclusion of Satanists! And (superlunary) equity, equality of soteriological outcome, for all, regardless of merit or demerit!

Moral judgment must be avoided at all costs since, as we all know now, there is no difference between making moral judgments and being judgmental, and no bien-pensant wokester wants to be perceived as judgmental.

"LGBTQ+ persons" absolutely must replace the Vatican's traditional "persons with homosexual tendencies," because of the latter's implied distinction of tendency/disposition and exercise.  It was traditionally held that there is no sin in having the innate homosexual tendency or disposition; the sin consists in exercising or acting upon it. But this distinction is quite obviously homophobic and hateful because it marginalizes those who act upon their inherent homosexual desires. Besides, it's a bogus distinction; it sounds like some dusty punctilio from some superannuated scholastic manual of the sort the beatific Bergoglio rightly excoriated.   Both disposition and exercise are to be, not tolerated, but celebrated.  By her own astute admission, Karine Jean-Pierre, as the first black, female, lesbian WH press secretary, is a historic figure.  No doubt about it, and qualifications for the job have nothing to do with it.

See? I'm a clown! Who am I to judge?

Budweiser and the Roman Catholic Church

They have this much in common: they don't understand their respective clienteles. 

Who drinks Budweiser? Connoisseurs of the brewer's art? No. Different sorts, but mainly country folk, rednecks, Hillary's deplorables, and Barack Hussein Obama's "clingers" to guns and Bibles.  So what were the head honchos thinking when they enlisted Dylan Mulvaney to promote their swill?  You know, that cute little narcissistic sweetie-pie who wants to grow up to be a girly-girl.

Beats me.  Apparently, drinking Bud makes you none the wiser. The 'suits' seemed shocked by the predictable boycott and backlash and have reversed course with an appeal to Harley riders. They should have gone 'whole hog' with  an appeal to outlaw bikers.

As for the RCC,   I have vented my spleen and blown my stack over at the Stack:

People who take religion seriously tend to be conservatives and traditionalists; they are not change-for-the-sake-of-change leftist utopians out to submerge the Transcendent in the secular.  The stupidity of the Vatican II 'reforms,' therefore, consists in estranging its very clientele, the conservatives and traditionalists.  

The church should be a 'liberal'-free zone.

Vatican II 'Reforms' Disastrous . . .

. . . even from a purely immanent, sociological point of view. Top o' the Stack.

On Her Deathbed

Substack latest.

"I fear that there is nothing on the other side."

Genuine Inquiry and Two Forms of Pseudo-Inquiry: Sham Reasoning and Fake Reasoning

Steven Nemes sent me to his Substack site where he has an article entitled Theology and Philosophy in Roman Catholicism. His way of thinking reminds me of my younger self. What follows is a revised re-posting of an article of mine from September 2014 which explores similar themes. At the end of the re-posting I offer some comments on Nemes' article.

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

In Philosophers Who Compartmentalize and Those Who Don't,  I drew a distinction between

1. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extra-philosophical

and

2. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (by generating) a thesis or worldview that is not antecedently held but arrived at by philosophical inquiry.  

But we need to nuance this a bit inasmuch as (1) conflates the distinction between

1a. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extra-philosophical, a thesis or worldview that will continue to be maintained whether or not the defensive and justificatory operations are successful

and

1b. Philosophical inquiry pursued in order to support (defend and rationally justify) an antecedently held thesis or worldview whose source is extra-philosophical, a thesis or worldview that will continue to be maintained only if the defensive and justificatory operations are successful.

Alvin Plantinga may serve as a contemporary example of (1a). I think it is fair  to say that his commitment to his  Dutch Reformed Christian worldview is such that  he would continue to adhere to it whether or not his technical philosophical work is judged successful in defending and rationally justifying it.  For a classical example of (1a), we may turn to Thomas Aquinas.  His commitment to the doctrine of the Incarnation does not depend on the success of his attempt at showing the doctrine to be rationally acceptable. (Don't confuse rational acceptability with rational provability.  The Incarnation cannot of course be rationally demonstrated. At best it can be shown to be rationally acceptable.)  Had his amanuensis Reginald convinced him that his defensive strategy in terms of reduplicatives was a non-starter, Thomas would not have suspended his acceptance of the doctrine in question; he would have looked for a  defense immune to objections.

There are of course atheists and materialists who also exemplify (1a).  Suppose a typical materialist about the mind proffers a theory that attempts to account for qualia and intentionality in purely naturalistic terms, and I succeed in showing him that his theory is untenable. Will he then reject his materialism about the mind or suspend judgment with respect to it?  Of course not.  He will 'go back to the drawing board' and try to develop a naturalistic theory immune to my objections. 

The same thing goes on in the sciences.  There are climate scientists who are ideologically committed to the thesis that anthropogenic global warming is taking place to such a degree that it poses an imminent threat to life on Earth.  They then look for evidence to buttress this conviction. If they find it, well and good; if they don't, they keep looking or adjust their thesis by shifting from the species to the genus, from global warming to climate change.  Clearly, the ideological commitment drives the well-funded research, and raises doubts about whether the science itself is more ideology than science.

According to Susan Haack, following C. S. Peirce, the four examples above (which are mine, not hers) are examples of pseudo-inquiry:

The distinguishing feature of genuine inquiry is that what the inquirer wants is to find the truth of some question. [. . .] The distinguishing feature of pseudo-inquiry is that what the 'inquirer' wants is not to discover the truth of some question but to make a case for some proposition determined in advance. (Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 8)

Haack, again following Peirce, distinguishes within pseudo-inquiry sham inquiry and sham reasoning from fake inquiry and fake reasoning.  You engage in sham reasoning when you make  "a case for the truth of some proposition your commitment to which is already evidence- and argument-proof."  (8) Characteristic of the sham 'inquirer' is a "prior and unbudgeable commitment to the proposition for which he tries to make a case." (9)

There are also those who are indifferent to the truth-value of the thesis they urge, but argue for it anyway to make a name for themselves and advance their careers.  Their reasoning is not sham but fake.  The sham reasoner is committed to the truth of the thesis he urges; the fake reasoner isn't: he is a bullshitter in Harry Frankfurt's sense.  I will not be concerned with fake inquiry in this post.

The question I need to decide is, first of all,  whether every case of (1a) is sham inquiry.  And the answer to that is No.  That consciousness exists, for example, is something I know to be true, and indeed from an extra-philosophical source, namely, introspection or inner sense.  Those who claim that consciousness is an illusion are frightfully mistaken.  I would be within my epistemic rights in simply dismissing their absurd claim as a bit of sophistry.   But suppose I give an argument why consciousness cannot be an illusion.  Such an argument would not count as sham reasoning despite my mind's being made up before I start my arguing, despite my "prior and unbudgeable commitment to the proposition" for which I argue.

Nothing is more evident that that consciousness, in my own case at least, exists.  Consider a somewhat different case, that of other minds, other consciousnesses.  Other minds are not given to me in the way my own mind is given to me.  Yet when I converse with a fellow human being, and succeed in communicating with him more or less satisfactorily, I am unshakably convinced that I am in the presence of an other mind: I KNOW that my interlocutor is an other mind.  And in the case of my cats, despite the fact that our communication does not rise to a very high level, I am unbudgingly convinced that they too  are subjects of consciousness, other minds. As a philosopher I want to know how it is that I have knowledge of other minds; I seek a justification of my belief in them.  Whether I come up with a decent justification or not, I hold fast to my belief.  I want to know how knowledge of other minds is possible, but I would never take my inability to demonstrate possibility as entailing that the knowledge in question is not actual.  The reasoning I engage in is genuine, not sham, despite the fact that there is no way I am going to abandon my conviction.

Suppose an eliminative materialist claims that there are no beliefs or desires.  I might simply dismiss his foolish assertion or I might argue against it.  If I do the latter, my reasoning is surely not sham despite my prior and unbudgeable commitment to my thesis.

Suppose David Lewis comes along and asserts that unrealized possibilities are physical objects.  I know that that is false.  Suppose a student doesn't see right off the bat that the claim is false and demands an argument.  I supply one.  Is my reasoning sham because there is no chance that I will change my view?  I don't think so.

Suppose someone denies the law of non-contradiction . . . .

There is no need to multiply examples: not every case of (1a) is sham inquiry.  Those who claim that consciousness is an illusion or that there are no beliefs and desires can, and perhaps ought to be, simply dismissed as sophists or bullshitters.  "Never argue with a sophist!" is a good maxim.  But deniers of God, the soul, the divinity of Christ, and the like cannot be simply dismissed as sophists or bullshitters.

So now we come to the hard cases, the interesting cases.

Consider the unshakable belief held by some that there is what William James calls an "unseen order." (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 53)  Some of those who have this belief claim to have glimpsed the unseen order via mystical experience.  They claim that it lies beyond the senses, outer and inner, and that is also lies beyond what discursive reason can grasp.  And yet they reason about it, not to prove its existence, but to show how it, though supra-rational, is yet rationally acceptable.  Is their reasoning sham because they will hold to their conviction whether or not they succeed in showing that the conviction is rationally acceptable? 

I don't think so.  Seeing is believing, and mystical experience is a kind of seeing. Why trust abstract reasoning over direct experience? If you found a way out of Plato's Cave, then you know there is a way out, and all the abstract reasoning of all the benighted troglodytes counts for nothing at all in the teeth of that experience of liberation.  But rather than pursue a discussion of mystical experience, let's think about (propositional) revelation.

Consider Aquinas again.  There are things he thinks he can rationally demonstrate such as the existence of God.  The existence of God is a philosophically demonstrable preamble of faith, but not an article of faith. And there are things such as the Incarnation he thinks cannot be rationally demonstrated, but can be known to be true on the basis of revelation as mediated by the church's teaching authority. But while not provable (rationally demonstrable), the Incarnation is rationally acceptable.  Or so Thomas argues.  Is either sort of reasoning sham given that Aquinas would not abandon belief in God or in the Incarnation even if his reasoning in either case was shown to be faulty?  Bertrand Russell would say yes:

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.  (Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, p. 463)

It is easy to see that Haack is a sort of philosophical granddaughter of Russell at least on this point.

In correspondence Dennis Monokroussos points out that "Anthony Kenny had a nice quip in reply to the Russell quotation. On page 2 of his edited work, Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essays (London, 1969) (cited in Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 19), he says that the remark “comes oddly from a philosopher who took three hundred and sixty dense pages to offer a proof that 1 + 1 = 2.”

Exactly right.  This is yet another proof that not every instance of (1a) above is an instance of sham reasoning or sham inquiry. 

It is certainly false to say that, in general, it is unphilosophical or special pleading or an abuse of reason to seek arguments for a proposition antecedently accepted, a proposition the continuing acceptance of which does not depend on whether or not good arguments for it can be produced.  But if we are to be charitable to Lord Russell we should read his assertion as restricted to propositions, theological and otherwise, that are manifestly controversial.  So restricted, Russell's asseveration cannot be easily refuted by counterexample, which is not to say that it is obviously true.

Thus I cannot simply cite the Incarnation doctrine and announce that we know this from revelation and are justified in accepting it whether or not we are able to show that it is rationally acceptable.  For if it really is logically impossible then it cannot be true.  If you say that it is actually true, hence possibly true whether or not we can explain how it is possible for it to be true, then you beg the question by assuming that it is actually true despite the opponent's arguments that it is logically contradictory.

It looks to be a stand-off.

One can imagine a Thomist giving the following speech. 

My reasoning in defense of the Incarnation and other such doctrines as the Trinity is not sham despite the fact that I am irrevocably committed to these doctrines.  It is a question of faith seeking understanding.  I am trying to understand what I accept as true, analogously as Russell tried to understand in terms of logic and set theory what he accepted as true in mathematics.   I am not trying to decide whether what I accept is true since I know it it to be true via an extra-philosophical source of knowledge.  I am trying to understand how it could be true.  I am trying to integrate faith with reason in a manner analogous to the way Russell sought to integrate arithmetic and logic.  One can reason to find out new truths, but one can also reason, and reason legitimately, to penetrate intellectually truths one already possesses, truths the ongoing acceptance of which does not depend on one's penetrating them intellectually.

What then does the Russell-Haack objection  amount to?  It appears to amount to a rejection of certain extra-philosophical sources of knowledge/truth such as mystical experience, authority, and revelation.  I have shown that Russell and his epigones cannot reject every extra-philosophical source of knowledge, else they would have to reject inner and outer sense.  Can they prove that there cannot be any such thing as divine revelation?  And if they cannot prove that, then their rejection of the possibility is arbitrary.  If they say that any putative divine revelation has to validate itself by our lights, in our terms, to our logic, then that is just to reject divine revelation.

It looks to be a stand-off, then.  Russell and his epigones are within their  rights to remain within the sphere of immanence and not admit as true or real anything that cannot be certified or validated within that sphere by the satisfaction of the criteria human reason imposes.  And their opponents are free to make the opposite decision: to open themselves to a source of insight ab extra.

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

Nemes mentions a "fundamental asymmetry." "Theology takes itself for granted and makes use of philosophy only to the extent that it is useful for furthering theology’s own purposes. Theology is never really critiqued or corrected by philosophy per se." That's right: philosophia ancilla theologiae. But secular ideologies do the same thing.  Metaphysical naturalism and its epistemology, scientism, do not allow themselves to be "critiqued or corrected by philosophy per se." Philosophia ancilla scientiae.

Where is the asymmetry? The situation is symmetrical: both magisteria put philosophy to work to shore up their respective worldviews.  Atheists and mortalists, as a group, never admit defeat.  Corner a naturalist and he'll go eliminativist or mysterian on you.  Show Dennett that consciousness has no naturalist explanation, and he'll just deny its existence and pronounce it an illusion.  We don't explain illusions; we explain them away. Drive McGinn to the wall and he will tell you that it's a mystery.  How is that different from the orthodox Chalcedonian incarnationalist's claim that Christ is fully human and fully divine, one suppositum supporting two natures? Each side is committed to its 'truths' come hell or high water.

Is Political Catholicism the Only Genuinely Political American Intellectual Movement?

In Liberalism's Good and Faithful Servants, Adrian Vermeule spends eight long paragraphs out of ten explaining why "What passes for the American intellectual right is a sorry thing." He's a clever writer and his catalog of the varieties of epicene political quietism is of some interest. Only in the last two paragraphs, however, does he get to the point and tell us what he is for. Would that he had announced that at the outset, to save our time and patience. The heart of the article is in the ninth paragraph:

The only intellectual movement on the American scene that is genuinely political is so-called integralism or, as I think a more accurate term, political Catholicism. This political Catholicism is frequently accused by critics of a will to power (or, more pompously, a libido dominandi). In a certain sense, the accusation is true. Indeed, it is far more true than the critics, whose horizons are truncated by the basic compromise with liberalism, can begin to understand. The political Catholic looks at the series of false alternatives offered by the localists, the free-marketers, the cheerleaders of martyrdom—national or local action? state or market? Rome or the catacombs? —and says, “Yes, both/and; I will take them all.” The political Catholic wants to order the nation and its state to the natural and divine law, the tranquility of order, precisely because doing so is the best way to protect and shelter the localities in which genuinely human community, imbued with grace, can flourish. Conversely, those localities are to be protected as the best way to generate well-formed persons, who can rightly order the nation and the world towards truth, beauty, and goodness, rooted in the divine. Not everyone must engage in politics in the everyday sense, but some should make a vocation of political action in the highest sense. The political Catholic thinks that not even the smallest particle of creation is off-limits to grace, which can perfect and elevate any part of nature, even the state and even the market.

Well, why not be an integralist?  My answer is over at Substack. 

Related: Does Classical Liberalism Destroy Itself?

If White Supremacy is Everywhere . . .

. . . why is it so hard to find a Latin mass?

Who Could Deny that the Latin Mass is White-Supremacist?

It is perfectly obvious, and here is the proof:

1) Blacks don't know Latin
2) What blacks don't know is white-supremacist; therefore
3) Latin is white-supremacist.
4) The Latin mass is in Latin; therefore:
5) The Latin mass is white-supremacist.

Quod erat demonstrandum! 

Vide hic et hic. (Am I writing in 'code'?)

Another Good Dementocratic Reason to Keep the Southern Border Wide Open

Here:

Between 2018 and 2022, seven Catholic priests were murdered in Mexico. There has been an increase in the kidnapping of religious, as well as 800 reports of “collection” of derecho de piso by organized crime: an extortion “fee” demanded to keep Catholic churches open.

 

Pope Benedict XVI Dead at 95

I was mightily impressed with the power of Joseph Ratzinger's intellect when I first read his Introduction to Christianity in 2016. I have been recently re-reading it. Ratzinger makes quite the contrast with the benighted Bergoglio.

How do we best honor a thinker? By re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically yet critically, appropriating and developing what stands up to scrutiny.  One attempt on my part is my Substack article, Ratzinger on the Resurrection of the Body. Another is The Ultimate Paradox of Divine Creation. A third is my defense of the controversial Regensburg speech.

Other minor pieces are collected in my Ratzinger category.   Here is an excerpt from one of them:

Jerusalem needs Athens if theism is not to degenerate into a tribal mythology. (That Athens needs Jerusalem is also true, but not my present theme.)

I don't believe I am saying anything different from what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict  XVI) says in his Introduction to Christianity (Ignatius, 2004, orig. publ. in German in 1968).  Here is one relevant quotation among several:

The Christian faith opted, we have seen, against the gods of the various religions and in favor of the God of the philosophers, that is, against the myth of custom and in favor of the truth of Being itself and nothing else. (142) 

Writing of the unity of belief and thought, Ratzinger tells us that

. . . the Fathers of the Church believed that they had discovered here the deepest unity between philosophy and faith, Plato and Moses, the Greek mind and the biblical mind. (118)

Plato and Moses!  The God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are one and the same.

The problematic is rich and many-sided. More later. 

Dreher on Douthat on the Curse of Vatican II

Excellent. And here is the internal reference to Peter Hitchens. 

Can One Copulate One's Way to Chastity?

John B. writes,

I'm a regular reader of your blog and I've written very occasionally, but not for a few years.  Here's another comment. 

 

I enjoy your periodic return to the question of whether one can philosophize one's way to a release from philosophy.  But I think that, to split hairs, you're wrong to say that one can't copulate one's way to chastity.  After a manner of speaking, one can.  It's true that one can't copulate one's way to virginity . . . . But isn't "copulating one's way to chastity" at the heart of marriage as the remedium concupiscentiae?  When the Apostle Paul tells his readers that it is better to marry than to burn with lust, he seems to have in mind something like copulating one's way to chastity.

 

Think of a bachelor who has unruly sexual desires, some of which he may act on.  He then falls in love and gets married, agreeing to an exclusive sexual relationship with his wife.  Over the course of his marriage, his inclinations are tamed and re-structured so that, while he may still experience fleeting moments where, sure, he notices that another woman is very pretty, his sexual desire as such is exclusively, or nearly exclusively, for his wife, whom he loves more and more.  Actually having frequent sexual intercourse with his wife is part of this transformation, since having sex with the same partner, in the context of a loving relationship, has powerful psychological effects.  It might be an oversimplification to say that the man in question "copulated his way to chastity," but it would also be an oversimplification to say that he didn't.

 

Take that for whatever it's worth, and keep up the good work.

 

I see your point, John, but if the question is whether one can achieve chastity by sexual intercourse, I would say no.  One cannot copulate one's way to chastity either in marriage or outside of marriage. But if the question is whether being married helps one avoid unchastity, the answer is a resounding yes.  And that, I take it, is the point you succeeded in making.  Marriage channels and directs sexual energy in a licit and productive way even if no procreation results.  It is therefore indeed remedium concupiscentiae. We need the remedy and the mitigation. We are naturally concupiscent from the ground up, and the decadent, sex-saturated society we live in exacerbates the natural tendency,  pouring gasoline on the "fire down below." 

 

The logically prior question is: what is chastity?  "Chastity is the virtue which [either] excludes or moderates the indulgence of the sexual appetite." (Catholic Encyclopedia, here.) It is a form of temperance, one of the four cardinal virtues. Chastity is either absolute or relative depending on whether it excludes indulgence in the sexual appetite or merely moderates it.  Absolute chastity is called continence and is classed as a "counsel of perfection." As such, it is not morally obligatory but supererogatory. The supererogatory is that which is good but above and beyond what is morally required.  Absolute chastity is not required of those in the marital state; relative chastity is.  So the exercise of the virtue of chastity is compatible with at least some forms of the indulgence of sexual appetite in marriage.

 

Chastity in marriage is extremely difficult to achieve. Who would have the temerity to claim that he has achieved it on a regular basis? It is obviously not enough to refrain from sexual relations with partners other than one's spouse.  Suppose you are having sexual intercourse with your wife while thinking lustful thoughts about your neighbor's wife.  That would count as a violation of chastity in marriage. Am I right about that, John?

 

Moral collapse has proceeded so far that discussions such as the above will strike the majority as quaint and absurd and out of all relation to anything 'real.' When the Pope allows a 'devout Catholic' supporter of abortion on demand for any reason at any stage of fetal development to receive Holy Communion in Rome, then we are fast approaching the end.

 

Related: Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained

Bergoglio and Biden

They are alike in that neither understands the principles, values, and purposes of the organizations of which they are the heads. Given the termitic nature of the dope pope, the following did not surprise me in the least:

Pope Francis is famous for his tendency to shoot from the hip, which is unfortunate for someone whose every word is watched for significant and authoritative pronouncements. His bad habit was on full display Friday; in expressing sympathy with Ukrainians, the pope declared: “There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist!” In that single sentence, the pontiff swept aside centuries of Catholic teaching and even undercut the ground for the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion. All in a day’s work for the Marxist who warns against Marxism.

The RCC in its current degeneracy desperately needs defunding along with every other leftist outfit. I say that as a cradle Catholic with much residual affection for the church of my childhood.

Integralism in Three Sentences

Substack latest.

Here are the three sentences:

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.

'Post-liberalism' is gaining ground. Integralism is one form of it. I am against both the species and the genus.

Dust and Ashes

"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

Luther's German:  Im Schweiße deines Angesichts sollst du dein Brot essen, bis daß du wieder zu Erde werdest, davon du genommen bist. Denn du bist Erde und sollst zu Erde werden.

Douay-Rheims: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return."

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence.  This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are meaningful even though he knows, at a level deeper than his self-deception,  that he won't and that they aren't.  If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist.  That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.

More here.

You Are Going to Die.

Christopher Hitchens has been dead for over ten years now.  In Platonic perspective, what no longer exists never truly existed.  So here we have a man who never truly existed but who denied the existence of the self-existent Source of his own ephemeral quasi-existence. Curious.

On the still life: A meatless skull in the gathering darkness, the candle having just gone out, life's flame having gone to smoke, unable to read, with no need for food. The globe perhaps signifies the universality of the skull owner's predicament and fate.

What the Hell?

Just as Biden and his supporters are disasters for the USA, Bergoglio and his supporters are disasters for the RCC. 'Twould appear that all of the institutions of the West are in dire need of fumigation. See here:

But Pope Francis appears to have scotched that possibility. “No one can exclude themselves from the Church,” he insisted, “we are all saved sinners.” Even those, he adds, “who have denied the faith, who are apostates, who are the persecutors of the Church, who have denied their baptism.  

Yes, these too. All of them. The blasphemers, all of them. We are brothers. This is the communion of saints. The communion of saints holds together the community of believers on earth and in heaven…the saints, the sinners, all.

What are we to make of this? Surely, one asks, he cannot have meant to include unrepentant sinners in the Kingdom of Heaven? That those who deliberately take themselves to Hell, choosing an eternity of loss rather than the joys of Heaven, are nevertheless still members of the Communion of Saints? This is not Catholic doctrine, and no one, not even the Pope of Rome, can make it so by saying so.

Religion Under Assault

Religions are under assault from without, but they also undermine themselves from within. To put it sarcastically, the Roman Catholic Church has worked hard and successfully at destroying its own credibility by refusing (not just failing) to rein in priestly misconduct. Not all, but too many leaders of the RCC from the Pope on down have placed the survival of the temporal institution. the protection of its clerics,  and the preservation of its wealth and privileges above its divine mandate. For too many, the  hustle is the thing, and the noble aims a sham. The ancient edifice is in dire need of fumigation.  To the extent that the RCC has become just another hunk of leftist junk, it should be defunded. 

But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6, Douay Rheims)

Are Atheists Vincibly Ignorant? (2021 Version)

In Catholic thought there is what is called vincible ignorance. Here is a definition:

Lack of knowledge for which a person is morally responsible. It is culpable ignorance because it could be cleared up if the person used sufficient diligence. One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant if one fails to make enough effort to learn what should be known; guilt then depends on one's lack of effort to clear up the ignorance.

For present purposes, it suffices to say that 'God' refers to the supreme being of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that an atheist is one who denies the existence of God.

I hold that there is vincible ignorance on various matters. But I deny that atheists qua atheists are vincibly ignorant.  Whether or not God exists, one is not morally culpable for denying the existence of God.* Nor do I think one is morally culpable if one doubts the existence of God.

If God exists, and one is an atheist, then one is ignorant of God, but it does not follow that one is culpably ignorant. This commits me to saying that the atheist is invincibly ignorant of God. He is invincibly ignorant of God because God cannot be known to exist. If I cannot know that such-and-such, then I cannot be morally culpable for not knowing it.  If I ought to X, then I am capable of X-ing. And so, by contraposition, if I am not capable of X-ing, then I am not morally obliged to X, whence it follows that I am not morally culpable for not  X-ing.

If the atheist is invincibly ignorant of God, then so is the theist, whence it follows that I am not morally praiseworthy for being a theist.

This puts me at odds with St. Paul, at least on one interpretation of what he is saying at Romans 1: 18-20.

_______________

*Why not?  Because it is not clear that God exists. There are powerful albeit uncompelling arguments against the existence of God, chiefly, arguments from natural and moral evil, and, while there is plenty of evidence of the existence of God, the evidence does not entail the existence of God.  Will you tell me that the evidence renders the existence of God more probable than not?  I will respond by asking what probability has to do with it. Either God exists or he does not. If he does, then he is a necessary being. If he does not, then he is impossible.   I will demand of you that you attach sense to the claim that such a being -- one that is either necessary or impossible-- can have its probability raised or lowered by evidence.  This is a huge and controversial topic. No more can be said about it now.

Kadın erkeğin şeytanıdır

"Woman is man's devil." (Turkish proverb)

Never underestimate the power of concupiscence to derange, disorient, and delude.

When Spanish bishop Xavier Novell resigned last month, the Roman Catholic Church cited strictly personal reasons without going into detail.

It has now emerged in Spanish media that he fell in love with a woman who writes Satanic-tinged erotic fiction.

In 2010 at the age of 41, he became Spain's youngest bishop, in Solsona in the north-eastern region of Catalonia.

[. . .]

It came as a shock when Religión Digital reported that he had fallen for divorcee Silvia Caballol, a psychologist and erotic novelist. The news site said that the former bishop was now looking for a job in the Barcelona area as an agronomist.

Caballol's books include titles such as The Hell of Gabriel's Lust and the trilogy Amnesia. In the blurb for one of her works, the reader is promised a journey into sadism, madness and lust and a struggle between good and evil, God and Satan with a plot to shake one's values and religious beliefs.

Story here.

An Ecclesiological Contretemps: Edward Feser versus Rod Dreher

Start here with Dreher.  Feser's response to Dreher. Dreher's reply (scroll down). Feser again.

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

Addendum 5/31. Dr. Vito Caiati, historian, comments (minor edits added by BV):

With regard to the exchange between Edward Feser and Rod Dreher on the latter’s rationale for leaving Roman Catholicism for Orthodoxy, which I too have been closely following, I have an observation that may be worthy of your notice.

While I believe that Feser exposes the non-rational and hence inadequate motivation for Dreher’s apostasy (and Skojec’s crise de foi), he advances an argument regarding the present theological and ecclesial crisis of the Catholic Church that is not at all cogent or convincing. This is evident [from the] the essential equivalence he draws between it and earlier disputes and conflicts in the Church’s distant history. He writes:

Skojec is scandalized by the fact that the confusion and heterodoxy fostered by Pope Francis’s many doctrinally problematic statements have not yet been remedied despite his having been in office for eight years.  This is quite ridiculous.  Eight years is nothing in terms of Church history.  The utter chaos introduced into the governance of the Church by Pope Stephen VI’s lunatic Cadaver Synod lasted for decades.  So did the chaos of the Great Western Schism.  Pope Honorius’s errors were not condemned until forty years after his death.  Further examples could easily be given.  Few people remember these events now, because things eventually worked themselves out so completely that they now look like blips.  If the world is still here centuries from now, Pope Francis’s chaotic reign will look the same way to Catholics of the future. 

Leaving aside the question of whether relevant “further examples [that] could easily be given,” is it in fact the case that the nature of the contemporary crisis in the Church is essentially of a kind with the three cited medieval crises? In other words, is something going on at the present moment, under the present pope, and more broadly in the decades that stretch back well into the last century that indicates some fundamental rupture with traditional Roman Catholic thought and practice? Are we indeed simply witnessing events that, like those of the past, will “look like blips” in time, or are we, undergoing a unique crisis that, in the words of historian Roberto Pertricci, “segna il tramonto di quell’imponente realtà storica definibile come ‘cattolicesimo romano’” [‘marks the sunset of that imposing historical reality that can be defined as Roman Catholicism’]?

The histories of the three medieval crises mentioned by Feser are highly [complicated?]and resistant to rapid summary. Suffice it to say, that two of these, the Cadaver Synod of 897 [and] Great Western Schism (1378-1417) were the offshoots of political and dynastic conflicts among orthodox members of the Catholic household of Europe. Neither involved questions of dogma or doctrine, and if the latter was troubling for papal power and prestige, encouraging the conciliarism of the 15^th century and the graver Protestant challenge of the 16^th, its more long-term [effects?] were not. The case of Pope Honorius I (625-38) involves a letter written in 635 by this early medieval pontiff to Sergius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who successfully solicited Honorius’ support for the conciliatory position that he, following the Emperor Heraclitus, had adopted toward monothelitism to promote unity among his flock. Honorius was condemned by the Third Council of Constantinople (680-81) not for heresy but for allowing its propagation. Here, although the dispute was doctrinal in nature, touching on the Chalcedonian understanding of Christ’s two natures and two wills, we are dealing with an isolated, although fundamental doctrinal misjudgment, expressed in a letter that is otherwise orthodox, of a pope who was highly regarded during his reign and who manifested no other signs of heterodoxy.

I think that even this highly unsatisfactory summary of these distant events in the life of the Church is sufficient to set them apart from the events of our own time and particularly those under the present pope. There is no need to catalogue the questionable if not heretical statements and judgments of Bergoglio, all designed to encourage confusion and heterodoxy in the Church; his scandalous actions paying homage to pagan idols; his  protection and advancement of sexual predators and sodomites; his purges of orthodox prelates and laymen from important Vatican positions and commissions; his undermining of Church unity to the extent that the German Church is in actual, if not declared schism; his collaboration in the destruction of the loyal Catholic Church in China; his incessant attacks on orthodox Catholics; and his substitution of left wing politics for the Gospel. But more beyond the actions of this pope we have to take note of the systemic rot throughout so much of the Church that has made him and those of his ilk possible; everything from the protection of sexual predators, to the abandonment of Catholic teaching in the Church’s schools and universities, to the passivity of most bishops when confronted with heresy in the Church or public scandal (communion for those who advocate and advance abortion, for instance), and so on.  

What is going on now, right before our eyes will never become some historical “blip.” The magisterium, both ordinary and extraordinary, may still stand, but how long will this be the case if it is increasingly ignored, subverted, and questioned? If the words of the Pater Noster, which are clear in both Greek and Latin, can be altered at will to make them more theologically acceptable to the bien pensant, what is beyond the reach of “reform”? Thus, those who remain loyal to the Church should have no illusions about the uniquely destructive nature of this crisis. It is being advanced by dangerous “progressive” forces, increasingly aligned with the global Left, that have taken control of the leading institutions of the Church and whose objective is the eradication of the very core of traditional Roman Catholic thought and practice.

On the Role of Concupiscence in the Decline of the Catholic Church

Substack latest.

Sacramental Efficacy Despite the Corruption of the Church?

Here:

Therefore, the serious believer is thrown back upon his or her own inner resources. Thankfully, the Sacraments are still efficacious despite the corruption of the Church . . . .

Suppose I go to what used to be called Confession, but is now foolishly called Reconciliation. The priest, I have reason to believe, is a  practicing homosexual, a sodomite, a child molester, and doesn't believe a word of traditional doctrine. The Roman Catholic Church is his mafia, his hustle, except that he lacks the honesty of the mafioso who in private will admit that  he is a criminal out for self and pelf.  We all know that there are plenty of priests like this. 

Forgive me, father, if I can no longer bring myself to accept the doctrine of sacramental efficacy given the deep moral corruption of you and your church. I grant the abstract logical possibility that the efficacy of sacraments is untouched by the corruption of their ministers.  But how, in your presence, could  I achieve the heart-felt compunction necessary for true confession knowing that you are a moral fraud? Would the achievement of that state of compunction not be more likely in the  depths of my privacy in claustro?

Steven Nemes' Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's Ethics: Some Questions

The review is a well written and very fair summary of von Hildebrand's book. (I read portions of the latter in graduate school days but I do not currently have it in my library.)  Here is the review's main critical passage together with my remarks.

[Von] Hildebrand’s arguments for the objectivity of value therefore seem unsuccessful. It is true that one experiences an object as possessing some value which motivates a particular form of response to it. But it is another matter whether one has grasped a value in the object on its own or in the object as it is related to oneself in experience. Food is experienced as delicious, but there is no property of gustatory value inhering objectively in chicken tikka masala. It can be appetizing to one but not to another. Or consider that human beings love fruit, but dogs and cats generally do not.

BV: Nemes invokes the fact that for beings capable of gustatory experience, what is appetizing/delicious/tasty can vary across individuals in a species, and across species.  This is because the property of being appetizing is not an intrinsic property of the edible or potable item, but involves a relation to the consumer.  I have been called 'Old Asbestos Tongue' on account of the pleasure I derive from fiery comestibles.  The positive or negative gustatory value resides not in the comestible itself, but in the relation between consumer and comestible between, say, 'Old Asbestos Tongue' and the jalapeno pepper.  My constitution is such as to allow for the enjoyment of what others will find highly disagreeable. Hence, de gustibus non est disputandum. There is nothing to dispute since there is no fact of the matter.  It is 'subjective' in one sense of this polysemous term.

But how negotiate the inferential move from

1) That which has the value of tasting good often varies from individual to individual and from species to species

to

2) The value of tasting good is subjective, not objective.

This looks to be an illicit slide. (1), which is plainly true, is consistent with the negation of (2).  For it could be that the value of tasting good is objectively the same for all despite different edibles being tasty to different people or animals.

That is to say: tasting good could be an objective value despite the fact that different edible items have this value for different people.  The perceiver-relativity of taste, which makes taste subjective, is consistent with the objectivity of gustatory values.

If values are essences and essences are ideal objects that subsist independently of our value responses (Wertantworten), as von Hildebrand maintains, then, while different perceivers find different things appetizing/delicious/tasty, this needn't affect the value itself.  The tasting of an incendiary comestible involves a physical transaction; the intellectual intuition of the value does not. One does not taste the value, one tastes the jalapeno-laden enchilada; and one does not intellectually intuit  the enchilada, one tastes it.

SN: Similarly, a purported moral value can be “noble” in the eyes of the “virtuous” but repellent to the “profligate.” It could well be that the difference in perception is accounted for merely in terms of the different structures of the persons involved.

BV:  It is not the value as ideal object that is noble, but a person who has the value.  The person is noble in virtue of instantiating the value. The base are value-blind (wertblind):  they cannot 'see' or appreciate the value that noble people instantiate.  But that fact is consistent with the value's objective existence in itself apart both from anyone's appreciating it and anything's instantiating it.

My point is that von Hildebrand has the resources to turn aside Nemes' objections. The latter are not rationally compelling. Give von Hildebrand's Platonism about values, Nemes' arguments are non sequiturs.  This is not to say that von Hildebrand's axiology is true; it is to say that Nemes hasn't refuted it.

His review raises for me a fascinating question: does phenomenology by its very nature, and given that intentionality is its central motif, support realism or idealism?  For von Hildebrand and J-P Sartre the former; for Husserl the latter.  I should take this up in a separate entry.

For now I recommend that Nemes study chapter V, "Objectivity and Independence," in von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?