Feser now recommends defence of Jansenism as bedtime reading.
In the reading material recommended by Feser's blog on 3/1/2020 were two articles excusing Jansenism and attacking the post-Tridentine Church. There was a mention of how anti-modernists today have falsely been labelled Jansenists, but the gist of articles is to excuse Jansenism (in other words, to employ the dishonest defence of the Jansenists themselves).
Jansenism is a heresy says our Mother the Church, but the bedtime reading proposed by Dr. Feser states: "The fact that Jansenism is such a dirty word among Catholics is due to a tradition of historiography written by ultramontanes and 19th century Jesuits" (Richard Yoder). He suggests the Jansenists are a model of ‘what to do’ when there seem to be doctrinal problems with the ‘institutional Church’. Why not put up the fifteenth century conciliarist error as a model? The article by Shaun Blanchard speaks of it favourably. Not surprisingly, this blog, with its partiality for impeach-the-Pope machinations, would smile on such notions. Dr. Feser, the model of what to do when the Church is in crisis is NOT to support new models of Church structure or legitimise things the Church tells you that you must believe are heresies, or teach non-Catholics what you call your personal view on original sin.
But so much is under a question mark in Feserland. Jansenists are now ‘Augustinian Catholics’.
Blanchard describes the Jansenists as traditionalists, but they could only be seen as such in the sense in which Lutherans see themselves. Yoder states that perhaps the Jansenists may have been right about frequent communion, attributing the attitudes of many today to this practice. Can’t you find anyone a bit more Catholic than this?
Blanchard’s article is a shameless defence of an old heresy, and rehashes its tired old arguments. No wonder he doesn’t like the Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08285a.htm.
So little by little the non-traditional basis for your worldview is coming out Dr. Feser: ‘personal’ views on Church structure, what is no longer heresy, the bad old post-Tridentine Church, original sin etc. You are not a theologian or an authority. By all means hold any views you wish, but if you are going to instruct non-Catholics in the faith as you do on this blog, your views have no place whatsoever. Put up or shut up, as the saying goes. Don’t wait till it’s too late, like old Cornelius. Publish ‘your’ astounding truth in its entirety for us all now. Or else stick to boring old bread and butter things like the Catholic faith the way we have always understood it.
(24/1/2020)Amid comical outburst Feser explains: "it entails exactly nothing", taking the Fifth.
30/12/2019In response to a post on his comments section, Edward Feser stated that his refusal (we are talking about articles which detail the effects of original sin, written years apart and totaling thousands of words) to mention concupiscence or its relation to what he calls "the limitations of the state of nature", "entail exactly nothing".
His carrying on, which you can read for yourselves below, seems to indicate that it entails rather a lot. This blog details some of that, but judge for yourselves. He deleted the exchange after some time. It's very odd. If all of this is so glaringly obvious that a philosophy professor is reduced to pouting and calling people stupid, why has nobody bothered to point out how the issues have been misread on this publication. As for being boring and not up to his intellectual level (on display here), well it's not the end of the world. Oddly, Feser seems to think this is all about the right to comment on his comments section, and that by pressing his delete button, the questions raised automatically vanish. They are important questions; if they are imagined ones, it wouldn't take long to clarify it. If they are real, then it's a serious matter concerning the Faith and his forum is just one of many places where it can and should be brought to his attention.
The Church doesn't need someone's personal "understanding" of how it understands or ought to understand original sin; at least not on a blog which advertises itself as promoting traditional Catholic teaching. It's perhaps time he changed his mission statement or packed up his "entailments" and put them away out of sight, because they are very visible. What would have entailed exactly nothing would have been the non-existence of articles published by Feser containing glaring omissions and obvious tendencies concerning something as important as original sin. His delete button is better employed removing these articles than in attempting to silence the criticism and dispel reality.
Comment on Feser post from 29/12/2019 ("Overestimating human responsibility" half of which detailing the effects of original sin).
"It’s true that conservatism starts from the basis that man needs political society for protection from himself. Francisco Suarez, on the other hand, had a very Catholic view. He maintained that political society was not justified as a remedy for original sin but above all because it ‘suits man in any state (whether of innocence or malice) and pertains to his perfection’.
Concerning the Faith, this post, even with the introductory ‘what I think is the correct way to understand the doctrine of original sin’, is the last thing the Church needs in these times of crisis. It does not mention those aspects of standard Catholic understanding of the doctrine (concupiscence, disorder, wounding, and inclination to sin) which have been jettisoned, let alone justify such a change, even in the name of personal opinion. To say that concupiscence etc., is the equivalent of being in the state of nature with its ‘limitations’ is not something found in traditional teaching, but the post doesn’t attempt to demonstrate it. Needless to say, the ‘limitations’ of nature mentioned on this post do not correspond to what St. Thomas Aquinas had to say about the effects of original sin.
This post references an earlier one in which it is maintained that the effect of original sin was merely a return to the state of nature in which man was created. Therefore those assumptions are still part of the Newspeak original sin notion. Where in traditional Catholic teaching are we taught this? The implications are ugly. Have Catholics had their minds deformed for hundreds of years by terms like concupiscence? Were we all in a state of profound ignorance to have believed man was created in the state of justice?
Yes, of course there’s a lot that can be said. But for now, can public writers stick to the standard Catholic approach to this doctrine, otherwise we Catholic peasants will reach for our pitchforks
Feser reply.
December 29, 2019 at 12:56 PM
"Miguel Cervantes,"
The post is not primarily about original sin, and so the fact that I do not mention concupiscence entails exactly nothing. In particular, in no way does it imply that I reject anything in Catholic or Thomistic teaching about original sin (which, of course, I don't).
Anyone with minimal reasoning ability or fair-mindedness would realize this. You have neither, which is why you don't. Your comments here, as elsewhere, are entirely devoid of value, interest, or reasonableness. You are only ever on the lookout for confirmation of this pathological bias and animus which for some reason you have against me, the depths and psychosis of which most readers of this blog are probably not aware of.
Go away and stay away, and take your fantasy army of peasants with pitchforks with you. I have banned you before, but have tolerated your occasional comment in the spirit of giving you a chance to show that you can reform. But you cannot. So, no more tolerance for you.
You are not welcome here. You are an irrational, ignorant, boring, tiresome pest, and only serve as a temptation to others to waste their time responding to your drivel and thereby destroy comment threads. Any further comments from you will be deleted. Get lost.
The post is not primarily about original sin, and so the fact that I do not mention concupiscence entails exactly nothing. In particular, in no way does it imply that I reject anything in Catholic or Thomistic teaching about original sin (which, of course, I don't).
Anyone with minimal reasoning ability or fair-mindedness would realize this. You have neither, which is why you don't. Your comments here, as elsewhere, are entirely devoid of value, interest, or reasonableness. You are only ever on the lookout for confirmation of this pathological bias and animus which for some reason you have against me, the depths and psychosis of which most readers of this blog are probably not aware of.
Go away and stay away, and take your fantasy army of peasants with pitchforks with you. I have banned you before, but have tolerated your occasional comment in the spirit of giving you a chance to show that you can reform. But you cannot. So, no more tolerance for you.
You are not welcome here. You are an irrational, ignorant, boring, tiresome pest, and only serve as a temptation to others to waste their time responding to your drivel and thereby destroy comment threads. Any further comments from you will be deleted. Get lost.
Reply to the reply.
I refer to your words in the post: "… original sin. Elsewhere I’ve discussed what I think is the correct way to understand the doctrine." The article you mention does not talk about concupiscence either. When is the right time to mention it then? Not an attack of shyness surely? You say that of course you accept Catholic and Thomistic teaching on the subject, yet your understanding of what that is in what you've published has led to these questions and criticisms. Are you too important to clarify it? You are in control.
Have I imagined your support for the idea of man having been created in the ‘state of nature’? Or your envisaging of the first men and women breeding on a large scale with animals, and your other signature theses? I would be only too happy for you to say it wasn’t so. You are in control.
Claiming someone has no ideas, only "pathological bias and animus" against you isn't just a matter of big-noting yourself, playing the victim and demeaning others, it's also the standard liberal, PC way of avoiding an issue. I don't much like some of your ideas (I don't need to speak for others here) and being insulted is not exactly demotivating, but I know almost nothing about you, hence it would be difficult to hate you actually.
I think you understand perfectly well that the reason you are being criticised is because you have chosen to market your views as traditional Catholic. Honestly, how on earth did you expect to get away with that? So someone of no importance doesn’t feel like shutting up and letting you get on with this impossible marketing exercise? Tough.
Your being right is not de fide. In this matter and others, you are wrong, and your blustering and deafening silences do not say much about your own ability to reform.
If this blog is a Catholic place then it's my place. By all means keep the delete button close to hand. And learn some manners. If, instead of those insults and claims of hatred, you had simply reaffirmed the traditional teaching, it would have been much more productive and Thomistic. You have a keyboard.
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Feser's Anglo-Conservatism is not Thomism.
Since the days of Edmund Burke, English speaking conservatism has been dominated by his ideology. It is one which values religion because of its social benefits, not because of any attachment to doctrine. Indeed, Burke stresses that doctrines are a matter of preference. For him, truth is expressed through tradition seen as a kind of social evolutionism, a conformity with national history which relativises and instrumentalises religion completely It is the attitude of the pagans of late antiquity towards religion. Like them, Burke shared a dislike of dogmas. Like that of the revolutionaries he opposes, Burke's world is man-centred and naturalistic. The only difference is his insistence on evolutionary gradualism. His worldview is historicist and man is in reality independent in practice of the supernatural order.
The results of Feser's bedrock anglo-conservative creed are fatal for his Thomism. He tries to create a naturalist, non-theological St. Thomas, ending up with something which simply cannot be called Thomism because of its approach and conclusions. He also devotes much time trying to combine Thomism with analytical philosophy and the political concerns of anglo-conservatism, both aims being repugnant to Thomism. The main unfortunate consequences of this are:
1 A dislike of all personal God terminology. Ostensibly this is in order to oppose the views of philosophers like William Craig (he is correct to criticise Craig for his anthropomorphism of course), but the real basis of his dislike of such terminology is an overly naturalistic view in general. His writing represents theistic personalism as a hate term, yet St. Thomas Aquinas and the Church always defended a personal God. If Feser's position is just semantics, it is of a dangerous kind for our times. St. Thomas Aquinas was able to use terms compatible with the God of Abraham, who reveals, speaks, and writes on stone.
2 Non-traditional ideas on original sin. He equates the consequences of original sin to the "return" to the state of nature which he claims man was created in. At least this is what he seems to write in the article below. The traditional view (and emphatically that of St. Thomas) is that man was created in original justice, as he ought to know. As for concupiscence and the consequences which St. Thomas and tradition distinguish from the privative effects of original sin? Reduced to nothing more than the "limitations of the state of nature" apparently, for Feser won't mention them anywhere in his article cited below.
3 He envisages a version of evolution where the first men and women bred with non-human apes in order to satisfy modern genetic science which he says demonstrates that we descend from a group of several thousand ancestors, not just a single pair. He says this can be reconciled with the faith because although we would be mostly (99.9%) descended from couplings with these animals, we could still have Adam as an ancestor.
4 Natural theology is raised to a kind of natural religion in Feser's writings. He moves from the possibility of man being able to establish God's existence rationally, to declaring that is was very easy, then to claiming that a kind a natural worship or religion was quite possible - though he does not seem to want to specify where this occurred. Natural Law, by all means; natural theology is great too. Natural religion? No thanks! In recent times, too many of the Church's enemies have talked of such a thing.
5 Following on from the last point, Dr. Feser provides us with this awful naturalistic definition of "Faith" (in his book The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism): "For Faith, properly understood, does not contradict reason in the least; indeed... it is nothing less than the will to keep one's mind fixed precisely on what reason has discovered to it". Faith is not less that this, but it is certainly much more. Is this the definition of a philosopher's faith? Such a thing doesn't exist.
6 Feser's anglo-conservative views are incompatible with Thomism. They include support for the non-confessional state as in the U.S. model, the notion of judeo-Christianity (invented in that country in the 1950s as a kind of non-Christian civic religion), and the current economic system as understood by anglo-conservatives (he praises Novak's pseudo-Catholic approach, which was just a surrender of the social teaching of the Church).
7. Support for a right based on human nature for man to profess a false religion. Incredible. Man's nature gives him the ability to choose one thing or another. However, he does not have an innate right to choose falsehood any more than he does to choose anything else that is wrong. This basic fact is independent of how different social contexts might treat such a matter: religious diversity is based on many factors, but cannot be justified by human nature.
8 His history of Thomism leaves very little space for the Neo-Thomistic revival and gives more importance to a blending of Thomism with analytical philosophy. He claims that analytical philosophy is simply a neutral system that will improve logic, and that he has the right to do what St. Thomas did in appropriating the philosophy of Aristotle. However, at the same time he states that he also takes on board the concerns and ideals of analytical philosophy, which are often radically unthomistic and uncatholic
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The Feser slide on Original Sin.
2/01/2020
On his old post (http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-ii.html), which he has recently reconfirmed, Feser writes: the "... penalty of Original Sin was a privation, not a positive harm inflicted on human beings, but rather the absence of a benefit they never had a right or strict need for in the first place... The penalty was the loss of the supernatural gifts they had been given, and that their descendants would have been given, and a fall back into their merely natural state, with all its limitations..." "This is the situation that Adam, Eve and their descendants would have been had God left the human race in its purely natural state."
In a long post concerning original sin and its effects, no mention is made of what St. Thomas calls the state of corrupted nature, of concupiscence and wounds of nature. To gloss over all this as a simple "return" or "falling back" into a state of pure nature may be intended to show that no positive harm has been done to Adam's descendants, but the Feser's personal view raises a host of new problems instead.
The standard traditional acceptation is that Man was created in the state of Justice. This is the state to which the consequences of original sin have traditionally been related. The consequences have been likened to wounds, corresponding to the preternatural gifts lost. None of this is present in Feser's description. This is truly bizarre, and is one of the reasons this blog was set up: the Church's way of dealing with this matter should not be abandoned, chopped up or compartmentalised. When big chunks of it go missing people will be justified in pointing to what it entails - in this case, an exaggerated naturalism coupled with a liberal application of the Fifth Amendment. These posts on original sin were clearly directed at non-Catholics. Why refuse to provide a proper explanation of the topic?
Man wasn't created in any "state of pure nature". He is not in the "state of pure nature" now. However, if these things make up someone's "personal view", then he might well have no liking for the notion of fallen state. After all, in this view, the whole journey is really just a round-trip.
St. Thomas taught that man was created in the state of justice:
“…we must observe that the form of man which is the rational soul, in respect of its incorruptibility is adapted to its end, which is everlasting happiness: whereas the human body, which is corruptible, considered in respect of its nature, is, in a way, adapted to its form, and, in another way, it is not…” “But God, to Whom every nature is subject, in forming man supplied the defect of nature, and by the gift of original justice, gave the body a certain incorruptibility, as was stated in the FP, Q[97], A[1]. It is in this sense that it is said that “God made not death,” and that death is the punishment of sin.”.
In fact, according to the traditional view, the state of man after the Fall cannot be made equivalent to any fictitious state of nature. The central plank in the view put forward in Feser's posts thus collapses. We are entitled to ask, since he has apparently taken on the task of instructing people in the Faith via such posts, that he return to the complete and traditional treatment of original sin and its consequences. Alternatively, he should provide a proper justification for his claims and omissions.
A good summing up, and one which dismisses Feser's views on this matter, is provided by this article by Y. E. Masson (Nature - the states of, Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique XI, 1931):
"Most Thomists think... that man, in his state of unrestored degeneration, has less strength for doing what is morally good than he would have had in the state of pure nature - not that his natural powers have been lessened intrinsically... but extrinsically... that is to say, as the result of an obstacle to their exercise which would not have existed in the state of pure nature. (Billart, Capreolus, Sylvestre de Ferrara, Konrad Kollin, Alvarez, Juan de Santo Tomas, Salmanticenses, Hugon, Garrigou-Lagrange...)
In the state of degeneration, they say, man is born with a will which is, because of original sin, turned from God, aversa a Deo, whereas in the purely natural state, he would have been born with a will which could either direct itself towards God, or prefer him to a created good, but which would not have been turned from him.
This doctrine conforms to the teaching of St. Thomas...In Ia IIae, q cix, a.3, speaking of the state of pure nature in which man might have been created, he says: "Man with his natural powers alone can love God (author of nature) more than himself and above all things. [Sed sontra] But [in corp.] in the state of corrupted nature, he cannot because, resulting from the corruption of nature, the will is directed towards its own good, unless it is healed by the grace of God.".
The holy doctor speaks in the same way in many other places." (Listed)
Dangerous views on the origin of Man.
2/01/2020
In two articles posted on his blog (Knowing Ape from Adam, and Modern Biology and Original Sin http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-i.html) Feser outlines his view on the origins of man and evolution. Here is his depiction of our first parents and their activities:
”…the earliest true humans would not have had anything like the modern civilizational accompaniments of sexual activity, especially given the effects of original sin. Obviously it would be absurd to think of their liaisons as involving smooth techniques of romantic seduction, contemporary standards of personal hygiene, etc. So, the cultural “distance” between primitive true human beings and the sub-rational creatures in question need not have been so great as to make the sexual temptation psychologically implausible. It might have been comparable to a very uncultured and unsophisticated person taking sexual advantage of an even more unsophisticated and indeed very stupid person…The point is that the situation could have been psychologically close enough to that for the temptation to be real.” (Knowing an ape from Adam)
Perhaps Hollywood can make a film of it: "Genesis, The Untold Story". The first men and women (Adam and Eve are not mentioned by name but the awful description fully applies to them) are depicted breeding with animals. Feser says such meditations are justified because certain biologists' theories claim the initial human population cannot have been less than 10,000 individuals. Feser suggests that this population was genetically humanoid but lacking souls, that our first parents bred with them and their descendants, being the progeny of Adam, were human. So 99.9 of our genetic make-up would be the result of bestiality.
Adam is imagined to be so close psychologically to animals that breeding with them is not only possible but normal. The problem is not just the raising of animal hominids to a state resembling ours. It’s the lowering of Adam to an almost animal state. This does not show that science and the faith are not incompatible; it is Feser trying to squeeze the glass slipper of the Faith onto the misshapen feet of the ugly stepsisters of scientific fashion. Any child can tell us how the story ends.
Aristotle’s definition of man is the truth but not the whole truth. Men are not only rational animals; all are descendants of Adam. In Genesis, God didn’t create an abstraction, He created Adam. Someone in a coma or with severely limited brain development, or even the brutish primate speculated upon can be a rational animal, but he can’t be Adam, because he was a person, Adam. Before inventing an Adam that could never have existed, to accommodate theories that are notoriously unstable, let us look at what is stable, and what Catholics know about him:
"In the same way that the first man was created perfectly in body, in order to be at once able to propagate human nature, he was formed perfectly in soul, so as to instruct and govern others" (St. Thomas Aquinas). Theologians debate to what degree he lost the knowledge which had been infused, but he did not become the creature outlined by Feser above. It is also the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and theologians throughout history that our first parents were created in the adult state. The Pontifical Biblical Commission, June 27 1906 (ratified by Pope St. Pius X) had this to say concerning the first three chapter of Genesis:
"In particular may the literal historical sense be called into doubt in the case of facts narrated in the same chapters which touch the foundations of the Christian religion: as are, among others, the creation of all things by God in the beginning of time; the special creation of man; the formation of the first woman from the first man; the unity of the human race; the original felicity of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity and immortality; the command given by God to test his obedience; the transgression of the divine command at the instigation of the devil under the form of a serpent; the degradation of our first parents from that primeval state of innocence; and the promise of a future Redeemer?
Answer: In the negative."
As St. Thomas states, Adam was created so as to be able to father the human race. He had what was necessary (genetically also) to engender this race, of which there is only one.
By the Faith we know enough about his personality to know that he and Eve were not the creatures described by Feser. Even a rather intelligent serpent watching the goings-on in Dr Feser’s million year Eden would barely have noticed the ”creation” of man. Presented with this "Eden without Effort" doctrine, will the irreligious evolutionist now believe? Or will he conclude that it looks so much like what he has always thought that it’s hardly worth taking up the Faith? The other option is adopting a faith that is tailored to one's own ideas. ”Knowing an Ape from Adam” is a case of the ugly stepsister giving up and going off to have a slipper made that will fit her feet.
In Humani Generis Pius XII did not give approval to evolution as a source of matter for the human body. Nor was the document a kind of "permission" for Catholics to believe the doctrine. It simply envisaged individuals experienced in science and theology researching and discussing the possibilities ”with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter”. Edward Feser’s blog is not an example of this. Instead, he states that he can conceive of no counter to the idea that Adam (or his children) mated with a group of highly evolved animals, to account for the theories of geneticists.
Dr. Feser says he is no expert in theology or science, leaving us at the mercy of scientific consensus. However, it is naïve in the extreme to believe that science on this subject is objective. When Pope Pius XII said there should be co-operation on the issue between scientists and theologians he did not have in mind the jacobinists who dominate scientific fashion today.
Evolution, unlike the movement of the planets around the sun, has a direct bearing on the Faith, and is indeed the religion of all those who reject religion. The fancy of dealing the master-stroke of ”disarming” evolution and making it the servant of the faith rather than its opponent is mistaken and ineffective here, for the simple reason that science is not objective today, quite the contrary. By adopting part of the evolutionary mistake, and combining it with impious speculations concerning our first parents, the Faith is not served.
01/01/2020
The Anglo-conservative Impeach The Pope brigade loses steam.
On this blog there has been a lot to say about these matters. Thankfully, the Impeach The Pope brigade has been left high and dry, and isolated. As it should be.
We aren't great fans of this Pope but no Catholic can support the crazy schemes being talked about by some of these groups to depose him. The Church has no mechanism for this, and rejects it in principle. We cannot transpose the U.S. impeachment process to the Church because this would be the return of the conciliarist plague, and a hundred times worse than anything going on now. It would wreck the Church's divine constitution, which is why it won't happen of course.
Those who had signed up to the venture were, of course, well-meaning. They were also largely Anglo-conservatives, and the now moribund push never really succeed in breaking out of that sector and those sympathetic to it. This also reflects the weight of those who defend the Faith against ideas and attitudes that are opposed to it, and are not tempted by "solutions" which come from the same quarters as some of these ideas themselves.
Feser blew up when this was posted on his blog (see below), yet how symbolic was the name of Steve Bannon, thoroughly mixed up in these machinations after the Vigano affair. Cardinal Burke had the Catholic sense to tell Bannon where to go and what to do with his ideology. Now everybody knows that Bannon and other Anglo-conservatives tried to manipulate affairs in the Church. Anglo-conservatism exists. The fact that some of its sympathisers are believers (the majority are not) is not enough to make this leopard change its spots. Do we want it influencing the Church?
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Cardinal Burke rejects errors concerning religious liberty.
There's great news. In the "Declaration of truths" (31/5/2019) signed by several cardinals and bishops one finds the following points:
"11 The gift of free will with which God the Creator endowed the human person grants man the
natural right to choose only the good and the true. No human person has, therefore, a natural right to offend God in choosing the moral evil of sin, the religious error of idolatry, blasphemy,
or a false religion.
9 The religion born of faith in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God and the only Savior of
humankind, is the only religion positively willed by God."
Cardinal Burke signed the document. Together with his disowning of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute as well as Steve Bannon the other day, it represents a wonderful clarification of his position. It rejects any basis in human nature for the liberty to profess or propagate religious falsehood.
natural right to choose only the good and the true. No human person has, therefore, a natural right to offend God in choosing the moral evil of sin, the religious error of idolatry, blasphemy,
or a false religion.
9 The religion born of faith in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God and the only Savior of
humankind, is the only religion positively willed by God."
Cardinal Burke signed the document. Together with his disowning of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute as well as Steve Bannon the other day, it represents a wonderful clarification of his position. It rejects any basis in human nature for the liberty to profess or propagate religious falsehood.
Bannon has praised to the sky the letter to Catholic Bishops accusing the Pope of heresy. He also supported Martel's characterization of the Vatican as controlled by a homosexual cabal, "with no accountability to the laity". This fellow's use of "cultural Catholicism" and talk of a Tea-Party Papal "impeachment" to manipulate the problems in the Church to the political advantage of anglo-conservatism obviously became too much for the cardinal. We are thankful he has abandoned the DH Institute which, as a non-confessional organaisation run by anglo-conservatives for political and ideological ends at odds with Church teaching, was not the place for him.
(1/7/2019)Feser Supports Religious Liberty Error rejected by Cardinal Burke and other prelates.
Unfortunately, Edward Feser has decided to support the thesis of Thomas Storck, which defends a right based on human nature to profess and promote false religion (on his blog post of 7/6/2019). He also supports Thomas Pink's thesis, which likewise accepts out of hand some kind of right based on human nature to profess false religion. This new notion makes a catholic state very difficult if not impossible. It is also at odds with traditional Church teaching. His mistake here doesn't come out of nowhere however. From his post we read:
" Many people also seem to think that Vatican II’s teaching on religious liberty abandoned the idea that religion should have any influence on politics. But all of that is incorrect... No one can justify a complete separation of religion and politics on the basis of Vatican II. The most one could argue for (whether correctly or incorrectly) is that Vatican II abandoned the ideal of a specifically Catholic state..."
It would be very problematic if Vat II had abandoned the notion of the state confessing the Catholic Faith, because this is indistinguishable from the confession of religion. From our point of view, there is only one religion to be considered, and it can't be marketed in subsections. A state that likes natural law but not the Religion established by God is not a religious state. Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas demands Christ and his Church be given recognition by society and Governments; he doesn't envisage the observation of natural law as fulfilling this requirement. Indeed he specifically rejects a "natural religion" set up in place of "God's religion". Quas Primas makes it clear that a state which puts other religions on the same level as the religion of God is attacking the Kingship of Christ. Whether or not it observed all or part of natural law would not alter this.
Pius XI, when speaking of the Reign of Christ the King, did not have in mind merely the recognition of natural law in society, but of Christ and His Church. A society which only recognised the first, while deliberately refusing the second, emphatically is not a religious society from a Catholic point of view. Religion is one. Picking out a "bit" of the Faith and using that, is not a case of Religion influencing society. However, Edward Feser would disagree, as he argued that the Second Vatican Council's possible abandonment of the ideal of a specifically Catholic state does not mean it supported separation of religion and politics. Is there some other religion to which the state can legitimately be united? Yes, apparently:
"... there is no question that natural theology and natural law must inform politics, what one says about specifically Catholic theology" "... even a non-integralist Catholic could and should hold that at least a generic theism should be affirmed by the state and that government policy should be consistent with the principles of natural law. For these are matters of philosophy, not divine revelation" (from the same post). What next, obligatory worship at the temple of the Great Architect for all politicians? Or perhaps the non-confessional "Judeo-Christian" civic religion favoured by anglo-conservatism invented in the 1950s with the specific purpose of avoiding any Christian confession?
Only one religion is spoken of in traditional teaching on the obligations of the state and society towards religion. It might contain doctrines that can't be discovered by reason alone and others that can. However, this religion is not just a body of ideas of doctrines; it is the subjection of men to God, and a personal relation to Him.
This relation is socialised too, as the Papal encyclicals made clear, by society recognising God and his Church. It's not simply social adherence to a body of propositions, or observance of natural law per se.
There is no "natural religion" option in Papal teaching about these matters. The first people in history received their religion through revelation. Garbled memories of it certainly existed in false religions. In pagan times, men might have done what they could to live well according to their lights, but we all know the result. Even Aristotle did not try to talk to God, nor did he think God could hear him.
It's just not possible to split religion up into a natural one for political purposes, and another one reflecting "theology", for private purposes. Evidently the "theological" religion isn't seriously expected to inform any society or be recognized by one; there is no insistence in this post of such a necessity (beyond the obvious point that it depends on circumstances). What a different approach to that of Pius XI who made demands on the state and society. God's religion has always done so.
Of course it's right to use arguments from natural law when debating social issues. But the question of the confessional state and its rejection has nothing to do with this. Religion is to be lived as God wants, through his Church. We are NOT in the condition of ignorance that was Aristotle's, and therefore any talk of promoting natural religion as an alternative (for political purposes), or as a sub-section of the true religion is more than schizophrenic. This is simply NOT the way the question is dealt with in Church teaching. It is also rejected in point 9 of the declaration on religious truths published by the cardinals and bishops mentioned above, from which Dr. Feser cherrypicked the point concerning the death penalty (which interests anglo-conservatism more than anything else).
(1/7/2019)
Faulty definition of the Faith follows from naturalism.
In his work, The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism) Dr. Feser declares: "For Faith, properly understood, does not contradict reason in the least; indeed... it is nothing less than the will to keep one's mind fixed precisely on what reason has discovered to it". The definition is not qualified. Many pages later, the necessity of grace and the nature of what is believed are mentioned, but this simply is not serious as a treatment of the subject. His definition of Faith as it stands, cannot stand.
Faith is not comparable to scientific knowledge, as his "definition" insinuates. The certitude of Faith is the greatest, higher than that of any natural science including metaphysics, as St. Thomas Aquinas makes clear in the Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Q I, Art. v. Faith is by definition a submission of the will and the intellect to God who reveals (the First Council of the Vatican). Of course it is a rational action, but by definition, it is not the mere assent to things discovered by one's reason.
Does Dr. Feser believe Catholic Faith to have greater certitude than metaphysical certitude? The indications are that he does not, contradicting St. Thomas here, but it would be good to be shown this is not so.
20/5/2019
Professor at Pasadena City College throws a tantrum.
Edward Feser spends a lot energy denying there is any link between Anglo-conservatism and elements within the Church who obsess about impeaching and defenestrating Pope Francis. Perhaps we ought to paraphrase Shakespeare's The lady doth protest too much, methinks:
Edward FeserMay 26, 2019 at 3:51 PM
"'It is no coincidence that the signatories to the letter almost all believe in conservative political ideology.. ' [blah blah blah]
And there it is, the predictable Miguel Cervantes hobbyhorse. You're insane, a nutter, a monomaniac. I could write a blog post about poached eggs or knitting and you'd try to find a way to tie it in to "Anglo-Conservatism," Steve Bannon, etc.
Any further comments from you along these lines will be deleted. Either cut it out or go away.
Or better, since I know from experience that you won't cut it out, let's not make it a disjunction: Just go away, period."
(From a letter posted in reply)
"You have your own hobby horses. Korey D. Maas pointed out your own double standard over the death penalty (with your dire warnings concerning the catholicity of our Pope should he tread on something that just happens to be an obsession of Anglo-conservatism) and Religious liberty, which he considered of greater importance. He also makes the anathematised link between adherence to conservatism and a double standard in dealing with post-Vatican II issues. Perhaps he's crazy too..." https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/08/39343/
The issue is precisely that Feser's own blog mission statement states that is it not about poached eggs or knitting, but a combination of writing on something he calls traditional Catholic religion and Conservatism. If the connection between the two things is so unimportant or non-existent that only a madman would entertain it, for the sake of everyone's peace of mind he might consider cleaning up the mountains of evidence his writing continuously generates. All the same, these silly exchanges on his blog have been useful in bringing out a bit of the truth. It's odd that debating the influence of an ideology in the Church should be such a big taboo. After all, people freely attack or support the influence wielded by leftist ideologies in the Church without much fuss. Is Anglo-conservatism such a sacred cow that it must become the elephant in the room? No chance.
It's not the connection between the two, but criticism of it that makes Feser explode. But we make no apologies. Anglo-conservatism may appear to be metaphysically certain for Edward Feser, but for Catholicism it now represents an ideological threat. Cardinal Burke [Happily, since this post was written, the Cardinal has disowned Bannon and the institute. However the nexus between some Catholics and Anglo-conservatism continues to exist] jointly presides a non-confessional Institute with esoterist-conservative Steve Bannon that makes no secret of its intention of influencing the Church through politics. Highjacking is a better description. Feser's writings are just another reflection of this dangerous tendency which is trying to pass itself off as the answer to the plague of liberalism in the Church. The answer of course, is our religion, not ideology.
The authors and their motives and methods define this event.
Last year lot of hysteria was generated over Archbishop Vigano's actions. This is when the "Impeach the Pope" brigade first surfaced. However, at the time it was much larger and far more "ecumenical". Bringing down the Pope was on the lips of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Breitbart, Church Militant, The Washington Post, Rorate Caeli, Steve Bannon, feminists, all baying for the Pope's blood. Dr. Feser seemed to believe the Bergoglio Barque was going down (see this blog below). As we predicted - not to be.
This blog commented at the time on the unholy alliance between the barbarians outside the gates and so-called conservatives within the Church. Look at this awful article published by Rorate Caeli at the time, gleefully speculating about the Vicar of Christ being placed in the dock of a United States courtroom on criminal charges (large photograph of the dock provided so these low-on-Catholic spirit people can enjoy the fantasy even more):
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2018/08/downfall-not-so-hypothetical-legal.html
Rorate Caeli also published an anti-Roman article by John Zmirak (who defends a very sickly Anglo-conservatism). In it he approvingly envisaged action against United States bishops under RICO laws - to see the Church of Christ prosecuted as a criminal organization. On his blog he published a demand by colleague Austin Rose that the U.S. ambassador "march" into the Vatican and demand documents relating to Vigano, in the name of "Putting America First" by protecting young Americans from "princes of the Church" in Rome.
It says it all. It's not just that this is wrong theologically - the Pope cannot be judged by any state. It assumes that the Pope and the Church can be made to submit to the United States and all it represents. No real Catholic can think or act in this way. These are the barbarians. This is how Luther "fixed" the Church.
The Letter to Bishops is the same mentality on a smaller scale, in the context of doctrinal integrity. Unfortunately, many of the signatories have problems in that area, as has been noted.
It is supposed to be the preamble to an impeachment of our Roman "President" by the foremost citizens of the church, It imagines a Papal presidency that has to "respond" to the "congress" of the episcopacy. It has grafted-on talk from the dusty treatises of theological opinion concerning the possibility of a heretical Pope, but the mentality is the same: Impeach the Pope. It seems even the US government, for all its faults, hasn't yet got to the stage (but not for lack of prayers by some from the look of things) of overthrowing the papacy and imprisoning the Pope, like old Bonaparte. Barbarian invasion not forthcoming, we are left with democratic revolution. It's hard to see how moonshiners in Kentucky will have much effect in Rome or the Catholic world.
The issues raised by the Open Letter are real, but they didn't start with Pope Francis. The method and mentality behind the production of the Letter drastically separate what has been (and will continue to be) a preoccupation of large sectors of the Church from what can now be seen by all to be a foolish and ineffective action.
1/6/2019
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Bishop Athanasius Schneider abandons the Anglo-conservative posse to its fate.
On 20/3/19 Bishop Schneider had his declaration against Papal deposition published on the Rorate Caeli blog. His action cut loose the Anglo-conservative Impeach-the-Pope Posse in the US. They will continue down the path of isolation and ideological innovation to which they are determined by their Americanist ideas. Bishop Schneider's position is clear: we are going to remain loyal to the see of St. Peter. The crackpots in the US conservative posse can't count on him. Rorate Caeli quickly followed up the declaration with an article by a pro-US conservative (De Mattei) voicing disapproval of Bishop Schneider's line. Since then the Blog has shut up on the matter but there is no doubt that Anglo-conservatives have got the mail.
The issue of papal deposition is one for theologians and canon lawyers, but one thing shows up the hypocrisy of the Anglo-conservatives: if the errors of which Pope Francis is accused justify deposition, then the same argument could have been used with equal force against all the Popes since the Second Council of the Vatican. Yet these same conservatives were silent all those years. The same goes for the scandals of immorality, which were just as bad, if not worse, during the two previous pontificates.
Anglo-conservatives go from bad to worse.
Pope Francis seems to have committed one unforgivable error that is unprecedented and justifies the Church being torn to pieces: he is not a conservative imbued with Americanist ideas (see Leo XIII's writings on the subject). On this blog we are more than ambivalent about his ideas on many issues, but our task concerns Anglo-conservatism, which in its obsessive desire to "get" Pope Francis, has revealed what really motivates it and why it is a great danger for the Church.
It's not just that the conservatives are weak in dealing with doctrinal issues; they confuse and disarm men of good will. For example, Cardinal Burke, speaking at the Roman Life Forum in 2018, managed to give a forty minute address on the Encyclical of Pope Pius XI establishing the Feast of Christ the King without mentioning once the duty of states to recognise the Church. In case there is any doubt of his deliberate omission, watching the speech in its entirety is instructive. He analyses Pope Leo's text paragraph by paragraph and carefully skirts around the "offending" (from an Americanist point of view) sentences demanding a confessional state, while getting very wordy commenting on sentences just before and after.
Anglo-conservatism isn't just old fashioned Catholicism in a "light" serving for our early 21st century. Its lifeforce isn't the Roman Catholic Church but the Americanism condemned long ago. Now it is adding to these errors and meddling with the Church at its very centre. Nominal Catholic Steve Bannon (from the anti-Catholic Americanist Breatbart news crowd) has teamed up with Cardinal Burke to lead the non-confessional Dignitatis Humanae Institute in Latio, Italy, the intention being to apply his tactical abilities to manipulating the entire Church. It is not just that the Institute declares its commitment to our "Judaeo-Christian foundations", employing from the top down the post-War Americanist formula for a civil religion (Judaeo-Christian) which was specifically designed to eradicate any reference to a Christian society.
The Institute also declares that Christian culture includes "a belief that God's fullest revelation to Mankind was in the person of Jesus Christ". This is not the clear language required for these times. Is there a "lesser" revelation (in some other religion?) we don't know about?
There's worse yet. Bannon is a Traditionalist (with a capital T). That is to say he has not only read the occultists Geunon and Evola, but applies their logic to the current crisis. For the practitioners of philosophical traditionalism (condemned by the Church), people who believe, Religion itself, and its customs and practices, are all positive. Not because they might be true; truth is not the point. The only thing that is true is each people practicing whatever is historically traditional for it. So Italians should continue to practice Catholicism, dear things, but the Indians and Chinese should continue with their own "traditions" and of course, the US with its tradition of professing nothing. How can Burke and the Anglo-conservatives continue to work with someone who will not renounce authors like Guenon and Evola and their occultist and anti-Catholic diatribes?!
Because they themselves are a philosophical sect that believes in national Churches (whenever there is a real crisis in the Church, these old errors of national Churches - "traditions", smells and bells etc - plus attempts to weaken the papacy return. Steve Bannon has boasted that the Church is in a terminal crisis because the US Church may become bankrupt, claiming the US Church finances most of the universal Church. The poor free-marketer still doesn't know what a religion is. The Anglo-conservatives must be packed off back to the US where they belong. They have made their bed. Let them lie in it. The rest of the Church has enough problems already.
Thank you Bishop Schneider for helping to make it clear that, whatever the problems in the Church, the Anglo-conservatives and their Papal coup d'etat via Breatbart are not the answer.
Anglo-conservatism isn't just old fashioned Catholicism in a "light" serving for our early 21st century. Its lifeforce isn't the Roman Catholic Church but the Americanism condemned long ago. Now it is adding to these errors and meddling with the Church at its very centre. Nominal Catholic Steve Bannon (from the anti-Catholic Americanist Breatbart news crowd) has teamed up with Cardinal Burke to lead the non-confessional Dignitatis Humanae Institute in Latio, Italy, the intention being to apply his tactical abilities to manipulating the entire Church. It is not just that the Institute declares its commitment to our "Judaeo-Christian foundations", employing from the top down the post-War Americanist formula for a civil religion (Judaeo-Christian) which was specifically designed to eradicate any reference to a Christian society.
The Institute also declares that Christian culture includes "a belief that God's fullest revelation to Mankind was in the person of Jesus Christ". This is not the clear language required for these times. Is there a "lesser" revelation (in some other religion?) we don't know about?
There's worse yet. Bannon is a Traditionalist (with a capital T). That is to say he has not only read the occultists Geunon and Evola, but applies their logic to the current crisis. For the practitioners of philosophical traditionalism (condemned by the Church), people who believe, Religion itself, and its customs and practices, are all positive. Not because they might be true; truth is not the point. The only thing that is true is each people practicing whatever is historically traditional for it. So Italians should continue to practice Catholicism, dear things, but the Indians and Chinese should continue with their own "traditions" and of course, the US with its tradition of professing nothing. How can Burke and the Anglo-conservatives continue to work with someone who will not renounce authors like Guenon and Evola and their occultist and anti-Catholic diatribes?!
Because they themselves are a philosophical sect that believes in national Churches (whenever there is a real crisis in the Church, these old errors of national Churches - "traditions", smells and bells etc - plus attempts to weaken the papacy return. Steve Bannon has boasted that the Church is in a terminal crisis because the US Church may become bankrupt, claiming the US Church finances most of the universal Church. The poor free-marketer still doesn't know what a religion is. The Anglo-conservatives must be packed off back to the US where they belong. They have made their bed. Let them lie in it. The rest of the Church has enough problems already.
Thank you Bishop Schneider for helping to make it clear that, whatever the problems in the Church, the Anglo-conservatives and their Papal coup d'etat via Breatbart are not the answer.
21/4/2019
Anglo-Conservative US bishops in the fast lane out of the Church after trying to cash in on Anti-Catholic campaign?
Now that the dust has settled over the first skirmish, things are a little clearer. There is no Catholic “civil war” or splitting “apart” of the Church, as Feser excitedly and hopefully speculates on his blog (5/9/2018) - at least none apart from the long crisis resulting from the Second Vatican Council. The civil war is that within the US Church, which has been for decades the worst example of depravity of any country in the Church. Despite this, the Anglo-conservatives there are blaming the rest of the Church and siding with its traditional enemies (the left, the Anglo-conservative political and philosophical tradition itself, and all the rest) in order to wage a political war that has its origins and supporters far indeed from the Catholic Church. Their marketing strategy has them label themselves as doctrinal conservatives but the truth is that they and the modernists deserve each other. While the world and the Church’s enemies love what they have done, the Anglo-Conservative US bishops who have stabbed the Church in the back have been outwitted and isolated by their opponents.
Vigano is now hiding so as not to have to provide any more explanations. He has performed his task and nobody was expecting any impressive leadership from that quarter. But without leadership, the Anglo-conservatives have massive problems keeping Vigano’s document afloat. Feser tries: the Pope must respond to the charges he says. But Vigano failed to establish even a prima facie case for investigation. Judge Judy even on a bad day would throw it out. Nobody has to prove that Vigano has committed perjury, or isn’t nice. If Vigano wants to play the prosecutor he needs to provide evidence.
Vigano is now hiding so as not to have to provide any more explanations. He has performed his task and nobody was expecting any impressive leadership from that quarter. But without leadership, the Anglo-conservatives have massive problems keeping Vigano’s document afloat. Feser tries: the Pope must respond to the charges he says. But Vigano failed to establish even a prima facie case for investigation. Judge Judy even on a bad day would throw it out. Nobody has to prove that Vigano has committed perjury, or isn’t nice. If Vigano wants to play the prosecutor he needs to provide evidence.
Instead his parting shot at the Vatican is fatally flawed: There are several falsehoods in his statement (i.e. John Paull II being incapacitated in 2000, his account of his first audience with Pope Francis etc.); there is a lot based on hearsay that either doesn’t stand up or leads to both himself and the two previous Popes being put in the dock (the whole question of the “sanctions” on McCarrick); finally there is the scanty personal “evidence” that he provides in his bizarre accounts of conversations with Pope Francis which really do reflect more on himself. These bits of chitchat which Feser terms evidence indicate nothing and the Pope doesn’t have to respond or do anything other than punish this man for his dereliction of duty in subverting the Church. Media stunts at the behest of the enemies of the Church are not the way reforms are conducted. Benedict’s support for the document was described by the Pope Emeritus as “a lie”.
Instrumentalisation of scandals by Anglo-Conservatives
All this does not mean there is not a terrible problem in the US Church. The question here is not whether Vigano is a liar or even whether there are high ranking networks of immorality in the Church – few doubt that this is the case. Nor is the matter about doctrinal conservatism, for this is only relative among the various currents that exist in the post-Vatican II Church. This relative conservatism has not kept scandals of immorality at a distance either, as the prosecutions against certain bishops today and the Maciel case demonstrate. Of course the Church needs reform, but heaven help anyone who thinks he can do that by joining in an anti-Catholic crusade with a host of Church enemies, which is what is happening in the US today. This is the Lutheran response, and it is the fast track out of the Church.
All this does not mean there is not a terrible problem in the US Church. The question here is not whether Vigano is a liar or even whether there are high ranking networks of immorality in the Church – few doubt that this is the case. Nor is the matter about doctrinal conservatism, for this is only relative among the various currents that exist in the post-Vatican II Church. This relative conservatism has not kept scandals of immorality at a distance either, as the prosecutions against certain bishops today and the Maciel case demonstrate. Of course the Church needs reform, but heaven help anyone who thinks he can do that by joining in an anti-Catholic crusade with a host of Church enemies, which is what is happening in the US today. This is the Lutheran response, and it is the fast track out of the Church.
Unnatural Acts in Feser’s Garden of Eden? Is this what theological conservatism is?
The term theological conservative is used liberally by the modernists who have trouble getting on with the US Anglo-Conservatives. Feser likes it too. However, given that much of this debate concerns unnatural acts perpetrated by US clergymen, can he seriously claim to be a conservative himself when he postulates that the first men and women practiced bestiality on such a scale that most of our genetic makeup is the result of copulation with non-human primates? Could this really have been God’s plan for mankind? And his modernist position on the Doctrine of Original Sin? And the other unorthodox theses of feserism detailed on this blog? He is nobody to throw stones at the Pope on the subject of theological orthodoxy.
The term theological conservative is used liberally by the modernists who have trouble getting on with the US Anglo-Conservatives. Feser likes it too. However, given that much of this debate concerns unnatural acts perpetrated by US clergymen, can he seriously claim to be a conservative himself when he postulates that the first men and women practiced bestiality on such a scale that most of our genetic makeup is the result of copulation with non-human primates? Could this really have been God’s plan for mankind? And his modernist position on the Doctrine of Original Sin? And the other unorthodox theses of feserism detailed on this blog? He is nobody to throw stones at the Pope on the subject of theological orthodoxy.
Towards the American Patriotic Catholic Association?
It will be much smaller than the Chinese equivalent. Anglo-American Catholics of all tendencies are only 2% of the worldwide faithful. They seem to make up for it in wealth and scandal. The isolation of the Anglo-Conservatives is growing. The momentum of events, being motivated by forces from outside the Church in the US, will push them further and further away. This is a pity because they might have helped with some kind of reform of the US Church. Now, even if they do not end up officially outside the Church, they will be too smeared by association to help. Cui Bono? It could be embarrassing if at a future date the self righteous find themselves outside the Church and people like McCarrick within, albeit wearing sackcloth. It’s not out of the question because sin and even heretical ideas are not always the fastest ways to fall out of the Church. Schism is the fast lane; it works every time.
It will be much smaller than the Chinese equivalent. Anglo-American Catholics of all tendencies are only 2% of the worldwide faithful. They seem to make up for it in wealth and scandal. The isolation of the Anglo-Conservatives is growing. The momentum of events, being motivated by forces from outside the Church in the US, will push them further and further away. This is a pity because they might have helped with some kind of reform of the US Church. Now, even if they do not end up officially outside the Church, they will be too smeared by association to help. Cui Bono? It could be embarrassing if at a future date the self righteous find themselves outside the Church and people like McCarrick within, albeit wearing sackcloth. It’s not out of the question because sin and even heretical ideas are not always the fastest ways to fall out of the Church. Schism is the fast lane; it works every time.
The scenario of schism may seem farfetched however it is on the cards. The abandonment of all Catholic spirit in the general belief of Anglo-Conservative US Catholics that the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, can be made answerable to the US government or any of its agencies makes it obvious that something has snapped. The national will has triumphed in their minds over the Church. Doctrine is instrumental. Nobody there will remember the doctrinal issues, or even the scandals, once things have settled down and we have yet another tin pot schismatic Church, complete with Apostolic succession, as is only proper. What a joke. The rest of the Church may well respond: Amerexit? Bring it on.
Spirit of Martin Luther lives again in the Feser Posse.
Like the Church of the Renaissance, today’s is in bad shape. Anyone who reads a detailed account of the City of Rome up to 1527 (when the party came to an end) cannot fail to see clear parallels. What to do? As then there are those who continue to lead the best lives possible. There are new religious congregations to help the Church reform itself yet again.
As then, there are the enemies of the Church who see its faults as avenues for attack. As then, there are scandalized people who throw the baby out with the bathwater, seeking the solution in false new ideas. Such a one was Martin Luther, expressing the nationalist outrage of many in German-speaking countries at the decadence of Rome. He demanded a return to the purity of the primitive Church, and many followed his inventions.
Archbishop Vigano’s letter does indeed speak for itself, as someone has well said. We all want to see the freak networks kicked out. By all means have McCarrick and the rest sent off to the Amazon to seek out uncontacted tribes. But Feser cannot describe Vigano’s letter as serious (Feser blog 28/8.2018) and his endorsement displays a total blindness as to the consequences.
Firstly, Vigano’s demand that Pope Francis resign, based on the information he supplies, would apply a fortiori to Popes Benedict and John Paul II, as well as to the Archbishop himself. If there was already information floating about in Rome concerning McCarrick, why did Pope John Paul II make him Archbishop of Washington and Cardinal in 2001? Vigano says he was already too ill to be responsible. It isn’t true; this was five years before his death. He was responsible. If not, then his entourage was responsible, in which case he would still have to resign “along with the rest of them” if one uses Vigano’s reasoning against Pope Francis.
Vigano says Pope Benedict imposed sanctions on McCarrick “similar” to those imposed by Pope Francis. But this is not true. As soon the allegations against McCarrick concerning abuse of minors surfaced, Pope Francis had him removed from the college of Cardinals (unheard of for the last hundred years) and placed under a kind of house arrest. Under Pope Benedict, McCarrick was busy with many public appearances, several visits to Rome to see the Pope and was praised by Vigano himself at a prize-giving ceremony. The sanctions would have to have been very mild indeed. Vigano says that McCarrick was disobeying Pope Benedict, but that he had no authority over him. Why didn’t he ask the Pope’s to take action?
Vigano says that Pope Benedict’s mild character made it impossible for him to publicly upbraid McCarrick for turning up to see him in Rome, but what did the Pope do about this overt disobedience, if indeed it was? What did Vigano do about it? The usual modernist suspects are making silly criticisms of Vigano but they are right on one thing: the motivation of the Vigano letter is a desire to get rid of Pope Francis that is based on many factors and not principally this one.
Impeach the Pope says Americanist coalition.
Vigano’s letter is not credible, but the posse that has formed to lynch the Pope is truly something. First we have Edward Feser who has nailed his theses to blogsphere. It hasn’t got to 95 yet, but with his modernist version of original sin, squirming away from personal God terminology, his Garden of Eden where Adam and the first men (and women) mate with animals, craving for natural religion and Americanist beliefs on Church-State relations, he is well on the way. Just like Luther, he responds to the chaos in the Church with ideological positions he claims are based on traditional religion, but which were unheard of before Vatican II.
He joins the chorus of Anglo-conservatives like his friends at Rorate Coeli and others like Church Militant who want to “impeach” the Pope. He claims (on his blog 28/8/2018) that an “open investigation” of all these matters will solve things. Does he really want to see Popes Benedict and John Paul II dragged though the mud? It would certainly happen as all these problems were well and truly there during their pontificates.
The unrepentant Americanism displayed by conservatives in the US is incredible. Church Militant reads like a sedevacantist blog, but much worse because they say they want to see the Pope in a US court of Law; the head of the Church humbled before the American Way of Life. Even Bonaparte the monster didn’t get to this.
A photograph posted by Rorate Coeli shows a US courtroom, where they think the reform of the Church will come from and where they want to see the Pope – an uncatholic dream: the US government cannot rule the Church. One conservative site even speculated that Pope Benedict might be brought back, after the US has kickstarted our reform by impeaching our Pope. Church Militant is currently wagging its tail in delight in its hope that the Church in the US might be Investigated by the Federal Government under the RICO Act; that is to say, the Church would be considered an association for the purpose of organizing crime. What kind of Catholics are these Anglo-conservatives?! They had better pray very hard that such a thing does not happen, because if the Mystical Body of Christ is attacked in such a way by the US Federal Government, those same conservatives will have to fight their own precious government if they are to have any possibility of calling themselves Catholic.
These conservatives, who have spent so much of their time looking down their noses at traditionalists who say clearly that the crisis in the Church comes from Vatican II, are now in the fast lane out of the Church. It was nice to see them argue against many of the abuses in the Church, yet they could never really solve these problems. For example, they rightly criticize the German Bishops’ statement on communion for non-Catholics. But they do not dare attack the basis for that statement which was the botched definition of Church membership produced at Vatican II.
After a career spent playing the diplomat and apparently not being aware of what just about everybody in Curia knows concerning the immorality that goes on, Archbishop Vigano now wants to take his bat and ball and go home. It’s very late in life to play the whistleblower but the real question is why he has never uttered a squeak about the real culprit, Vatican II?
Where is this leading? Not to “impeachment”. The conservatives have gone hysterical because they had succeeded in getting a bit of influence and not a few careers, especially during the last pontificate. Now their wings are being clipped. Do they really think that justifies trying to pull the whole Church down? They’re mad, and very silly: Pope Francis has their measure many times over. The modernists exist. Today they are laughing because a stone has been thrown into a pond and the conservative fish are all in view – but they’ve backed the wrong horse in this document full of holes. Now unfortunately there will be much more than the clipping of wings, and little sympathy.
There have been joint declarations from the Catholic bishops of Spain, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Honduras. Venezuela, and from the cardinal Primate of Mexico declaring their support for the Pope. Other countries will follow. The Church in the US has massive problems, but should the 85% of Catholics who live in places like the Philippines, or Mexico, or Africa, where this culture of clerical immorality is barely present, have their faith weakened?
Will the Anglo-conservatives reconsider, or will they seek security in their ungodly alliance with every anti-Catholic force, from the Washington Post, Breitbart and the left, to Federal Prosecutors and all the rest, who use immorality as an excuse to attack the Church? It doesn’t take a genius to see where it will end. Dr. Feser, please don’t fall out of the Catholic Church!
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Papal Deposition via Breitbart?
The Church is under attack from outside and from within. The faithful soldier on under woeful leadership but now they are offered a light at the end of the tunnel: Open the gates to the barbarians demanding our blood; they will liquidate our mediocre leaders and things will get better.
This is the logic behind Archbishop Vigano’s letter, in which he enlists himself in the campaign that has been waged for decades by forces outside the Church intent on its destruction. The immorality of much of the clergy is a terrible scandal but one that cannot be separated from the crisis of Faith that came after Vatican II (or, more particularly, from the social environment of the US in which it seems to have thrived). In his letter, Vigano does not mention this. Nor does he state how, after his anti-papal coalition that ranges from the leftist press to Breitbart (not to mention the four hysterical Vatican “insider” journalists) and The Washington Post have deposed Pope Francis, a better Pope would necessarily result.
This is because his letter is designed to curry favour with those who hate the Church the most. Those bishops in the United States who support the letter know very well that they will never suffer for it. The anti-Catholic media will praise them to the skies. The so-called conservatives apparently wish to remove a Pope on this issue, just as the liberal press has longed for. Breitbart and the Anglo-conservatives are setting the agenda. What have they to lose? Their ideological pedigree is anti-Catholic. Yes of course, like all conservatives they think religion does more good than harm but most of them don’t believe, and all of them despise the teaching of Church before Vatican II that they worked so hard to get rid of:
“it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced… [the Church] would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.” Pope Leo XIII, Longinqua, 1895.
At Vatican II, US Jesuit Fr. John Courtney Murray, supported by Cardinal Spellman, carefully foisted the change on Church teaching concerning religious liberty, thereby imposing an Americanist model on the whole Church. The result has been the almost complete elimination of states that officially confess God and the Church. It is not the least of the factors causing a crisis of faith among part of the clergy, and immorality is a consequence of this weakening of its faith. The immorality which is the subject of so much attention is mainly (but not exclusively) a phenomenon of the English-speaking Church.
Breitbart News particularly hates the Pope because he is not pro-American or pro-Capitalist, a communist they call him. But only an ignoramus could mistake Peronism for Communism. The attitude of our Pope to the US and Capitalism is among the most Catholic things about him.
The Church in the United States reminds one of Germany at the time of the Protestant Reformation: full of holier than thou operetta stars who are themselves immersed in a slavish nationalism that betrays their dislike of Rome and the Catholic world. Rome looks a lot like it did at the Renaissance, and our shepherds, as then, profoundly influenced by the world and its ideas. But anyone who openly joins the enemy in its assault upon the Holy City deserves to be thrown off the walls. Smells and bells cannot hide this grubby political exercise that only looks smart in the eyes of the world. American conservatives: you will fail.
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Feser Puts His Foot In It.
On 18/8/18 in the comments section on his blog article An Open Appeal to the Cardinals of the Church, Dr. Feser made a statement which was quickly deleted. Denying the claim by a reader that his position of firm opposition to recent Church attitudes concerning the death penalty was inconsistent with his lack of position on Dignitatis Humanae and religious liberty he said that he merely did not have time to deal with the question and referred readers to authors like Pink, Stork and Fr. Harrison. However none of these authors argue that there is a fundamental problem with the position at Vatican II. Therefore his stance has nothing to do with “not having enough time”; his position on the two issues is indeed fundamentally different.
Korey D. Maas in a recent article in Public Discourse (7/8/18) says as much: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/08/22310/
As Feser again summoned all his Thomistic training and expertise in the deleted post to call the author of Edward Feser's March From Thomism an “idiot”, perhaps his readers would prefer to believe Maas. Feser’s friends, some of whom we know, would be advised to help him through this issue and others on this blog. They won’t be conjured away by insults and deletions!
In his blog article Liberalism and Islam of 7/1/16 http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/01/liberalism-and-islam.html, Dr. Feser says that the position of Vatican II on religious liberty is a question but one that does not need to be answered now – again referring us to those same authors who argue that its text is not a problem.
The real question that he does not want answered is the one raised by Maas: why is the death penalty fundamental for him but not religious liberty. But we know the answer and he more than lets the cat out of the bag in his article on Liberalism and Islam:
For of course, it could have turned out that there was no divine supernatural offer to us at all, and thus no Church at all, but in which the natural law, and thus the state, still existed. And of course, there were states in existence before the Church existed, and they weren’t per se unjust merely because there wasn’t yet any Church around for them to recognize and assist.
Poor Dr. Feser, always hypothesizing and apparently wishing for a purely natural world which has never existed for man. Of course the Church does exist and since it began there has been the need for what we all aspire to (as the Church asks us to on the Feast of Christ the King): that the state recognize and assist the Church.
For a Thomist this question is vital. For an Anglo-conservative it is definitely to be forgotten, wished away and discouraged – the “old view” was poison; for Anglo-conservatism the death penalty is the important issue. After all, American priests immersed in their own flawed society were responsible for the Vatican II changes on religious liberty…
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Where Dr. Feser’s ideas on creation can lead us. Here is an article along the same lines by his friend Michael Flynn. Have a look at the beautiful illustration “Adam and his friends”. Time for the Church to update its illustrated catechisms for children it seems.
http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/09/adam-and-eve-and-ted-and-alice.html
His history of the Thomistic Tradition is really a history of Edward Feser.
In Part II of his The Thomist Tradition, Dr Feser devotes as much time to something he calls Analytical Thomism as he does to the rest of the long history of the Thomism. How can this be? Very easily unfortunately; just as so-called Thomistic hate-terms like theistic personalism can be invented and others, like a personal God, can disappear without a trace, whole histories nobody had suspected existed can sprout into being.
Quoting Haldane, who apparently coined the term, analytical Thomism is defined as: “a broad philosophical approach that brings into mutual relationship the styles and preoccupations of recent English-speaking philosophy and the concepts and concerns shared by Aquinas and his followers” – but the styles and preoccupations of recent English-speaking philosophy have little to do with Thomism and elephantine chunks of it are squarely against the concerns and beliefs of St. Thomas. Where does this lead? Dialogue? By all means. Let us also dialogue with Marxists and Islamists. However, we need to know who we are before there can be any meaningful dialogue with anybody. Analytical Thomism is a contradiction in terms.
What is astounding here is an article entitled The Thomistic Tradition, half of which concerns something which is not Thomism while at no stage is the reader informed that this is only the opinion of Dr. Feser. His rewriting of history goes on as if it were a scientific fact like the sun rising in the East. This is the sort of thing that prompted this blog. Like the dropping of personal God terminology; like the unthomistic treatment of Original Sin, the reader is NOWHERE even informed that there has been a change, let alone why. Perhaps a teacher of philosophy can get away with this approach with first year university students but in the real world, anyone with a dash of Thomistic realism knows it is impossible. That Dr. Feser is not aware of these changes is beyond belief. His silence is the pachyderm in the room.
Clearly one of the main motivations for the embrace of such philosophy and its preoccupations is that these "preoccupations" (in economics and politics) are also those of Edward Feser. We will examine these views later on. Perhaps such ideas were his first love, but such baggage from the past needs to be discarded if he has embraced Thomism; we ought not to be dragged into his own personal history. Try telling us that the Thomistic tradition is a bit stale but a shotgun marriage with an extraterrestrial like analytical philosophy is not the answer.
Feser response needs to be more philosophical.
Dr. Edward Feser has responded to those who point out how far he is out of step with Thomism: moronic and untruthful he says. he first used the term moronic when complaining that this blog claimed he denied God was personal. When it was pointed out to him that he was about building straw men as the blog does not allege this, he offered no explanation but repeated his belief that we are morons and liars because we claim that he has associated Bertrand Russell with Thomism (comments on his blog 14/15-02-2018).
This blog will provide a section on the strange history of Thomism according to Feserism, but readers can see for themselves in Feser’s History of Thomism Part II. If he can include within the Thomistic tradition analytical philosophers who merely like certain features of Thomism while rejecting other aspects (all the while rejecting the Thomist label he gives them), Russell, one of the founders of this definitely non-Thomistic philosophy, would by definition swell the ranks of bogus Thomism. In the article Feser dismisses as mere Thomists of ”other” schools the real Thomists who reject the inclusion of analytical philosophy in the Thomist tradition. Very strange views indeed. Shouting liar and moron at those who disagree only proves there not even a scrap of Thomistic method in this madness.
Some kind of answer to the content on this site would be in order.
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Initial Statement.
I Big Problems with a Personal God.
We live in an age where the main anti-religious tendency is the denial of a personal God, which comes about for all sorts of reasons – but the result is immediate: God is reduced to some kind of ”force”, good of course, why not – but something that has almost no effect on the way people behave. It is the death of religion.
However it now seems that the Church and the world is besieged by ”theistic personalism”. In a post on his blog concerning William Craig, Edward Feser’s concerns are far from Thomist. While Craig’s view is mistaken, it is surely enough to point out why. Instead, ”Thomists” are marshalled into a ”classical theism” versus ”theistic personalism” war without end. The terminology is misleading. Feser himself admits that the term theistic personalism seems to have been invented a few years ago. Of course Thomists can and do engage in debates that may not have been news when St. Thomas was alive but presumably they should do so using his ideas and not contradicting them.
In his post, Feser displays his discomfort with the term personal God. It was unpleasant to see the use of the ”God is not a (one)person because there are three persons in the Trinity” argument. Yes of course, but how does the Trinity diminish personality? As he admits, personality used of God is done analogically (Craig tended not to see this entirely) just as causality is also analogical when applied to God.
It goes against the emphasis which Thomas Aquinas gives to a personal God, affirming that not only is He personal, but the perfection of personality. It isn’t necessary to provide quotes and links here to the Summa but it can be done many times over. Here he is (pp, q 29), basing himself on venerable Church use:
On the contrary, In the Creed of Athanasius we say: “One is the person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost.”
I answer that, “Person” signifies what is most perfect in all nature—that is, a subsistent individual of a rational nature. Hence, since everything that is perfect must be attributed to God, forasmuch as His essence contains every perfection, this name “person” is fittingly applied to God; not, however, as it is applied to creatures, but in a more excellent way; as other names also, which, while giving them to creatures, we attribute to God; as we showed above when treating of the names of God”
Bernard Boedder S.J. whose work on natural theology is recommended by Edward Feser says it is centred on ”One first intelligent and infinitely perfect Cause of
all things, that is to say, One personal God of infinite perfection, Creator of the world” He makes a very large number of references to a personal God. Yet now the term is to be banned apparently; but on whose authority? What is the agenda here?
all things, that is to say, One personal God of infinite perfection, Creator of the world” He makes a very large number of references to a personal God. Yet now the term is to be banned apparently; but on whose authority? What is the agenda here?
St. Thomas never limited himself to the God that Aristotle had been able to sense, who of course was famously lacking in personality. He always defended the God of revelation, the God of Abraham, God as He showed Himself to be. I’m not sure who these ”classical theists” are who dislike the term personal God, but if you exclude the Catholics, Muslims, Jews etc there won’t be many ”theists” of any kind left.
It’s the difference between saying that a mother is something that gives birth to you or saying, here is your mother. Religion is not knowing that God exists, it’s a relation of worship and love. It is truly bizarre to see this distaste for the personality of God when the term has been used from earliest times in the Church in definitions of the Faith and in the liturgy. It’s time for Dr Feser to enthusiastically use the term personal God in the positive light which the Church and St. Thomas always gave to it.
In his post Classical Theism Roundup, Feser relativises God in history:
”Classical theism is the conception of God that has prevailed historically within Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Western philosophical theism generally. Its religious roots are biblical, and its philosophical roots are to be found in the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian traditions.” But there is no separate classical theism God, only the God that has revealed Himself from the Garden of Eden onwards, and the arguments of natural theology are directed towards Him. There are also varyingly true or complete notions of God among some pagan philosophers, and religions apart from the Catholic Church. St Thomas Aquinas does not make it his business to promote ”Classical theism”, only the God of Abraham, basing his discussion on arguments derived from revelation and philosophy mingled together. God cannot be split up in the way Feser does, by making God just a denominational RC subsection historically of ”classical theism”. This is not true historically and it is not Thomism. Historically Thomists believe things happened the other way around, with philosophers groping for the God of revelation who has spoken and made himself known in a certain way that cannot be mistaken or confused, which is why there is religion on this earth.
Lately, Dr. Feser has renewed his efforts to create a civilisational war between ”classical theists” and ”personal theists”. Obviously, St. Thomas Aquinas was never perturbed by this, limiting himself to wonderfully explaining why our words and thoughts are indeed to be applied analogically to God. Why the feserist sense of crisis? Today, the world and the Church are not any more in danger of being destroyed by anthropomorphism when it comes to God that they were in the 13th century. Feser cites as evidence three writers on philosophy from North America who write in English. But this little circle is not the world, and it certainly is not the Church. A dose of thomistic realism please! OK he says, but what about atheists who hold up a caricature of God for refutation. Well the Church seems to have done a good job of refuting atheism without running away from the idea and terminology of a personal God and without ever coming near the adoption of the caricature held up by some atheists. It is curious that this same strategy of change in terminology and even substance is adopted by Dr. Feser apparently to oppose the caricaturization of the doctrine of Original Sin by the Church’s critics. This is not good strategy or even transparent, given that we were never given notification let alone an explanation for these changes.
The attitude of ridiculing and being disgusted by man’s efforts to worship and come closer to God by every form of visible and human depiction will produce a self-appointed caste of Calvinist-hearted ”theists”. Should this mentality get beyond the group of US based enthusiasts which believes itself able to define thomism, the Church and just about everything, one can easily see them whitewashing the churches burning all those anthropomorphic images and statues, starting with the Sacred Heart. But no. God as He has revealed Himself and as He has been worshipped at all times is not some barely-to-be tolerated subsection of the wider history of ”classical theism”. Ditch this invented and non-Thomistic splitting up of God Dr. Feser
In.
Elevation of Natural Theology to Natural Religion.
Natural theology is a hypothesis; the Church has always insisted that man is able to arrive at a number of truths about God by the use of reason. However, not only is this potential not realised universally, it is a rare occurrence. St. Thomas Aquinas says that it is for few men, after much effort and with an admixture of error. In short, for Thomism, natural theology is not like growing tomatoes. But Dr. Feser says it is!:
”As with other creatures, nature provides human beings with what they need in order to realize these goods, at least in a general way. For example, we need food, and nature is set up in such a way that we can acquire it – by hunting and gathering, through basic farming, and also by the more sophisticated agricultural methods and economic institutions familiar from modern life, which our natural rational capacities have made possible. We need knowledge of God, and philosophical investigation gives us such knowledge. But as with other creatures, while nature provides the means to our ends, she doesn’t guarantee that every one of us will in fact realize those ends. Due to misfortune, some of us sometimes go hungry. Due to intellectual error and the complexity of the philosophical issues, some of us sometimes fail properly to understand the main arguments for God’s existence, or mix all sorts of errors into whatever knowledge of God we do have.’
To compare man’s success with natural theology to his success in feeding himself is incredible. The truth is that if mankind was as bad at providing for its material necessities as it is at natural theology, humans would have starved to death weeks after leaving the Garden of Eden. This unfounded and bizarre belief places the inability through misfortune of some to feed themselves properly on the same level as those who fail to attain knowledge of God through philosophy. On one hand we have history’s billions of humans successfully feeding themselves from cradle to grave. On the other, a handful. Even the great Aristotle’s limited vision of God resulted in no religious consequences for him (just as his notion of an undying human intelligence was not linked to any religious finality for mankind) and it was left to St. Thomas to demonstrate that Aristotle’s God was not deaf and dumb. There is no comparison. Being able to grow tomatoes or catch rabbits is the norm; knowing a number of truths about God by the use of reason is, the Church absolutely insists, a possibility.
However, if natural theology is as easy and natural as growing radishes, there must be some evidence of this massive intellectual harvest throughout history. Most men are not hermits. Social systems ought to have been impregnated with natural theology, even if mixed with a few errors. Could Dr. Feser tell us of one civilization that was? But perhaps we Catholics are not yet ready to hear the whole truth. He will let us know in due course. This is a serious prediction. Based on his beliefs, there can be little doubt he has some definite ideas on the subject. Some of his acolytes have already made the extrapolation (or perhaps been confirmed in their previous errors by Feser’s notions), believing Confucianism to be one such natural religion. It’s a very slippery slope once the path of Thomism is left behind.
27/9/2017
27/9/2017