Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton



I never finished this--it was written two years ago--but here it is.   I have no idea where I was going with the last sentence.


Prior to reading Orthodoxy the first time, my expectation was that it would be a grand apologetics for Catholicism and Christianity, and I was greatly disappointed.  But near the end of that first reading, however, I had read somewhere that G.K. Chesterton had never intended to write an all-encompassing apologetics but rather to simply explain why Catholicism appealed to him. That is, it was his personal witness to the faith and to the truth. After that first reading, I accept and respect that.

Reading the text was like sailing to a far-off corner of the world and then going on an extended journey through an unfamiliar jungle--it was vast and strange.  The first reading was just an immersion.  The logic overwhelmed and drowned me.  For sure, his criticisms of evolution are obsolete.  He criticizes evolution from a philosophical viewpoint, and he seems to conflate science and philosophy.  When I finished, I knew that I would have to read the book again to understand it.

In the chapter, "Maniacs," Chesterton destroys the idea that people who are absolutely sure of themselves carry authority, are necessarily credible, or are otherwise to be trusted.   His analogy of the lunatic reminds me Luigi Giussani's statement that logic can be configured to prove anything.   He mentions religious thinkers who, in an effort to deal with the issue of sin, decided that the concept should be eliminated altogether.  That reminds me of the quote from Reinhold Neibuhr, often by Giussani that, "Nothing is so incredible as the answer to a question that is not asked."

The chapter afterwards is "The Suicide of Thought,"  but I think he already proved that in the previous chapter.

Christianity--Not a Doctrine but an Adventure

“However that may be, the present situation is characterized by a strong polarization in the Church, so much so that a dialogue between 'progressives' and 'traditionalists' succeeds only rarely. The camp of the progressives seeks to conquer the center; that of the traditionalists holds the fortress tenaciously as if it defended the center. Both sides distance themselves from the men in office and the small number of theologians who seek to maintain the true center. Where should one look to see a dawn? One should look to where in the tradition of the Church something truly spiritual appears, where Christianity does not seem a laboriously repeated doctrine but a breathtaking adventure.”

― Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Short Primer for Unsettled Laymen, 1956

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Saint Thomas Knanaya Church

Sunday Mass: Since my wife was in Hong Kong, I decided to go to Mass at the Saint Thomas Knanaya Church which is next door to my apartment complex (I wouldn't drag my wife on a field trip like this). The Internet said they were Jewish-Christians from Syria who migrated to India in 310 AD, and they were in union with the Pope of Rome. They have one peculiar practice which if a member marries outside of the sect, they are excommunicated, and the Pope was trying to get them to get rid of that rule. I asked some Catholic friends from India about this sect, and they gave me the impression that they are considered a funky bunch, even in the Catholic community in India.
When I walked in the vestibule, I saw pairs of shoes on the floor. I asked a man at the door if I needed to take my shoes off, and he said, not really. But I felt kind of oafish after I went in because almost everyone had removed their shoes.
I sat in an empty pew in the middle of the church. Less than a minute later, a woman from a pew behind me scooted into my pew and told me that I had to move to the other side of the aisle, that the sexes were separated. All of the women in the church were in native Indian dress. Almost all were veiled.
It turned out this community was Eastern Orthodox, and the Mass was 2 hours and 15 minutes long, with most of it sung. The Mass was said mostly in the Malayalam language, some ancient Syrian, and a tiny bit in English. At least some of the homily was in English. I have never been to an Orthodox Mass before, and that this was an Indian cultural experience made it very exotic. I chose not to receive communion. After not taking my shoes off and sitting on the wrong side, I decided to receive Communion, in order to not risk offending anybody or drawing too much attention to myself. I felt self-conscious enough as it was.
After Mass, I joined the congregation for coffee and doughnuts in the parish hall. They said it would have been O.K. if I received communion. According to them, there is a branch of the Knanaya which is Eastern Orthodox and a branch which is Western, and some decades ago, the Pope of Rome, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Western rite Knanaya agreed on mutual communion. At coffee time, I was obviously an outsider, and people came up and introduced themselves to me. I did speak with one of the priests, and I thought was a bit smug and aloof. But the lay people were very friendly, very Christian.

Monday, November 12, 2018

Christianity as an Announcement

(After reading the Communion and Liberation movement's Beginning Day text, titled, "Alive Means Present! from Sept. 29, 2018)

Referencing the beginning chapters of Luke's gospel:

The angel Gabriel made an announcement to Zechariah.

The same angel then made an announcement to Mary.

The Holy Spirit inspired John the Baptist to begin his public ministry--an interior announcement of sorts. 

As John the Baptist baptized Jesus, God the Father announced, "You are my own dear son.  I am pleased with you."

In the synagogue in Nazareth, after Jesus read from the book of Isaiah, He announced, "This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read." 

And after this cascading series of announcements, Jesus begins his public ministry.

The Beginning Day text speaks of, "living the announcement." 

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Monday, August 20, 2018

J.D. Vance and Jordon Peterson

The reason J.D. Vance (author of Hillybilly Elegy) overcame his childhood obstacles and became a successful human being is due to following the very same values that Jordon Peterson advocates.  Granted, it was not J.D. doing this entirely on his own, but in a context of unconditional love, J.D.'s grandparents always insisted on personal responsibility and integrity.    And the U.S. Marines were his finishing school.

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Quote of the Day

Concepts create idols.  Only wonder comprehends anything.

- St. Gregory of Nyssa

PTSD

When I was a child, the Morgans lived three doors down from us.  Mr. Morgan had white hair, a white beard, and was older than my grandfather.  The few times I saw him, he was either just sitting on his front porch or tending to the flowers in his front yard.  My mother told me Mr. Morgan had been a veteran of World War I and had shell shock, which she explained resulted from experiencing the traumatic horrors of war. She explained that some people didn't believe in shell shock, that they believed that victims faked the symptoms because they were looking for attention or special treatment.  My mother said this to me with a look on her face and a tone in her voice that conveyed the utmost compassion for Mr. Morgan.  My mother's compassion taught me that shell shock was real, that it was serious, and that victims deserved our utmost compassion.

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Quote of the Day

"We are given mathematics, by which to know the universe, language, by which to know one another, and love, by which to know God." 

- @akenoTenshi

Monday, July 23, 2018

Why Study History? - Gordon S. Wood

To possess a historical sense does not mean simply to possess information about the past. It means to have a different consciousness, a historical consciousness, to have incorporated into our minds a mode of understanding that profoundly influences the way we look at the world. History adds another dimension to our view of the world and enriches our experience. Someone with a historical sense sees reality differently; in four dimensions.

-  Gordon S. Wood, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (New York: Penguin, 2008), 11.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Reality: A Quote from Simone Weil

"One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world." 

- Simone Weil

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Pope Francis Quoting Thomas Merton

“I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God, and yet hating him; born to love him, living instead in fear of hopeless self-contradictory hungers”. 

- Thomas Merton, quoted by Pope Francis in his address to the U.S. Congress

Thursday, April 5, 2018

The Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas

When I was in Catholic grammar school, one of the parish priests, Fr. Joyce, would visit our classroom periodically and teach for an hour.  He had no prepared lesson plans that I knew of, but he loved philosophy and would sometimes teach us simplified bits of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.  In the sixth grade, he told us that Aquinas had written five proofs of the existence of God which he wrote on the blackboard.   When I read the proofs on the board, I said to myself, "No, they don't prove the existence of God to me."   I believed in the existence of God without question, but these proofs didn't persuade me.

Note that Aquinas lived in the 1200s and wrote in Latin.  When I was in my fifties, I had read an article that pointed out that the Latin word for proof was "prober," which means. "to probe."  Aquinas was not so much as proving the existence of God but probing, that is, seeking.  That insight makes all the difference.  Aquinas was not attempting to "prove" the existence of God in a mathematically logical or scientific sense.  In fact,  Aquinas says that we cannot know God without Revelation. The same article claimed that the modern usage of the word "proof" was not used, or at least was not in common usage, until after Descartes and the Enlightenment in the late 1600s.  As well, note that Aquinas did not call them Five Proofs but rather Five Ways.  The Encyclopedia Britannica does not call them proofs but rather, demonstrations.  The traditional Catholic claim of Aquinas "proving" the existence of God was an attempt to impose a post-Cartesian way of thinking on pre-Cartesian ideas.

I now appreciate the genius--the mystical genius--of Aquinas!  He was exploring the Religious Sense.  He was probing the infinite, the mysterious infinite.  Suddenly,  a doctrine which I first experienced as oppressive and authoritarian became a principle of light and freedom.  

Of course, I have had no formal education in theology, much less Aquinas.  The Wikipedia page (2018) for The Five Ways says, "Many scholars and commenters caution in treating the Five Ways as if they were modern logical proofs."  It also says, "Aquinas did not think the finite human mind could know what God is directly; therefore, God's existence is not self-evident to us.  So instead the proposition God exists must be "demonstrated"from God's effects, which are more known to us."  This is not to say that examining them in that light is not academically interesting."

The Five Ways
1. the argument from motion
2. the argument from causation
3. the argument from contingency
4. the argument from degree

5. the argument from final cause or ends

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Cobbling Together a Few Thoughts on Meaning and Purpose in Life

I always struggled to understand what "they" meant by meaning and purpose in life, and I always lost the struggle.  It always sounded like, once we find our purpose, we find meaning.   But the concepts always bewildered me.   How do we find our purpose?  What does "meaning" mean?   I had always thought of purpose in a somewhat mechanical way, as in, the purpose of a car is for transportation.   And I always thought of "meaning" in a somewhat mathematical way, as in an "A" means "B."

However, the below link, to a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article (of all things!), clarified these concepts for me.  By meaning they do not mean meaning but meaningful--that is satisfying and fulfilling--something entirely unmechanical and unmathematical in concept.  Furthermore, we do not arrive at meaning as a result of pursuing and discovering our purpose.  Rather, when we discover that which is meaningful and therein we find our purpose--I had it backward. Now it all makes sense!

This understanding makes sense of all the Communion and Liberation expression of the topic.  It also dovetails with what the church and C/L teaches about our desires.   Desire is very close to what is meaningful.  We desire things that our hearts see as potentially meaningful.  This understanding also underscores the importance of experience, since we really need to experience things before we can truly say they are meaningful (or not).

It has taken me 62 years to figure this out.  I feel like I can now consider myself a mature fellow traveler of  C/L (a flip comment of course).  I also feel relaxed and happy as a result of this epiphany about meaning and purpose.  And funny (charming that is) that I had this epiphany on the Feast of the Epiphany.

I've understood for a while that I've always overthought things.   And I do realize that some people might consider me an idiot--low emotional intelligence or something like that--for not previously understanding meaning and purpose.  I realize that many people have got this figured out, at least intuitively, by age 8!   I just wasn't built that way.

From the Harvard Business Review:
You Don't Find Your Purpose--You Build It, by John Coleman, Oct. 20, 2017

As an aside, I do realize that many people in the contemporary culture passively accept the notion that life has no meaning.   However, I believe that the human need for a sense of meaning and purpose in life is innate.  I wonder if at least some of the culture's talk of purpose/meaning (this HBR, for example) is actually a backlash against, at worst, the nihilistic tendencies in the culture or, at least, of extreme materialistic utilitarian tendencies.   It is significant that HBR and Psychology Today are talking about this.  I think that people in jobs like teachers, nurses, social workers, and police find meaningfulness in their work without even trying and even taking it for granted.  But while the world of business, especially at the elite level, which HBR represents, seems to be increasingly in-human and utilitarian, I contend that so many of the people working in those kinds of environments are eventually confronted by their innate need for meaning and purpose.

As well, Psychology Today has this, on meaning in the world of work:
Can You Help Others Find Meaning in Their Work, by Michelle McQuaid, Jan. 8, 2016