The Philosophical Approach – They don’t teach existentialist philosophy at music school, but if they did. . . Advice to Musicians from Martin Heidegger (Ted Gioia)
Raised as a Boy – The only long-term study done on post-operative trans-sexuals found a higher risk of suicide. Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideation Among Trans-Identifying Kids (National Review)
God’s Will through History – Butterfield did not offer us Christian apologetics, but he did offer a Christian understanding of history far more appealing than Lewis’s dismissal of the project. C.S. Lewis Was Wrong on History (Providence Magazine)
Red Hat McElroy – “Although much has already been written concerning Pope Francis’s elevating Bishop Robert McElroy to the College of Cardinals, I believe a critical aspect of Bishop McElroy’s appointment is missing.” The American Catholic Church: A Defense (The Catholic Thing)
Second Amendment Deniers – Unlike committing an abortion or pumping your child full of hormones, the legal purchase or ownership of a gun does not cause anyone harm. Democrats Think Teens Can Kill Babies And Sterilize Themselves But 18 Is Too Young For Self Defense (The Federalist)
Burned-Out Parents – For years, evangelical Christians were enthusiastic supporters of adoption by sponsoring conferences, targeting adoption-friendly Sundays and staging adoption fairs in parish halls. Evangelical Christian Adoption Movement Hit by “Tsunami” of Mentally Ill Children (Newsweek)
No Man Is an Island – Stanford dismantled its famously spontaneous campus life. The cost may be what made it great: cultivating free, independent agency in its students. Stanford’s War on Social Life (Palladium Magazine)
Abortion Perpetrator – The speaker of the House now faces perhaps the most important choice of her career: party platform or life and human dignity. Nancy Pelosi Faces a Choice (First Things)
Seeking God – It is something we all must do, set out to find ultimate reality, truths, and the Truth itself if we have any designs on lasting happiness and fulfillment. Why Catholic Art–Literature in Particular–Matters, Especially Today (Catholic Stand)
The Color of Life – “As I scoped the scenery for reference photos or places to paint on location, I found myself looking for and noticing more colors than just gray and brown.” Finding God in the Ordinary (Catholic Exchange)
Queen Elizabeth II – In the aftermath of the Jubilee celebrations, here’s a response to those who wonder why a Catholic would love the British sovereign. I’m Catholic and I love Queen Elizabeth II — here’s why (Aleteia)
Eucharistic Revival – It is in faithful Catholic education that young people learn not to separate their lives and their knowledge from Christ, who enters into every study and every activity. We Need ‘Eucharistic Education’ (National Catholic Register)
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Regarding “Red Hat McElroy” (fourth on the list), of the actually qualified candidates for the red hat (like Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles), compared to the selected McElroy of San Diego, we read: “The question arises: Why were none of these [qualified] men chosen by Pope Francis?”
To more fully answer this question, we must dig not only into the trajectory of ideological progressivism, but also multicultural (!) clues from yesteryear. Of one early tradition (!), Wes Roberts sleuths the wisdom of Attila the Hun: “A king with chieftains who always agree with him reaps the counsel of mediocrity.” (Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, Warner Books, 1985).
But, the hope, still, is that most of the new and non-Western conclave-cardinals will have the same wisdom, and will not be dragged down by the mediocrities—and worse—of the post-Christian West. That is, will not vote for a possible Francis designee as his successor. Ironically, and maybe not, in Pope Francis’ internationalization of the cardinalate, it yet might be that the whispered counsel of the Holy Spirit—rather than the St. Gallen Mafia and their camp followers—will be followed instead.
(Recommended reading: the nineteen profiles of the most likely papabili, in Edward Pentin (editor), “The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates,” Sophia Institute Press, 2020).
“We don’t need a revolution. We simply need a song” (Martin Heidegger in Ted Gioia’s The Philosophical Approach). Gioia continues to explain how advanced tech is destined to dominate presumably culture itself . The mind, which is exactly what’s occurred [I meet persons who can hardly put a sentence together yet are brilliant media techs].
Heidegger usually gets bad press here and elsewhere, except by Thomistic philosophers I’ve known, Quentin Lauer SJ Fordham, Dr E Carlo [Ottawa U], staff at the Angelicum. One reason is that the so called existentialist realized that we cannot conceptualize Being as Being. Heidegger took the alternate route in Being and Time and settled with Being most pronouncedly expressed in the caring person. Historically Heidegger was associated with the Gottingen group of existentialists primarily Husserl, who sought to reestablish the primacy of being by existentially bracketing the question and explore sans preconceived prejudices. Attached to this group was Max Scheller, Edith Stein. All Jews who became Christian, Husserl Lutheranism, Scheler and Stein Catholicism. Heidegger was born a German Lutheran. His career is marred by his Nazi membership, though his defenders claim he joined to keep his position as lecturer.
We should keep in mind the young Fr Karol Wojtyla’s avid interest in the group seeking to present a comprehensive analysis of existentialism and value in modern thought [Wojtyla defended Max Scheler in his second doctoral dissertation, canonized Edith Stein]. Heidegger remained an anomaly to most except the more astute Thomists who realized the brilliance of Heidegger.
Ted Gioia’s article is a wonderful take on the much misunderstood and pilloried Heidegger. A musician who finds the intellectually melodic in the philosopher who made that important observation that being as being is existentially, most excellently pronounced in concern for the other.
Note: Gioia continues to explain [Heidegger’s conviction] that advanced tech is destined to dominate presumably culture itself .
The conundrum being that Heidegger was a Nazi and a convert from Catholicism to Lutheranism, another conundrum being that most people experience music through technology, is that being a fullness of being, more a noth’s nothing, or music in between?
Romano Guardini, priest and professor of philosophy and theology at U. Munich, penned “The End of the Modern World” in 1950. He renders a terrible jolt through depicting modernity’s ‘mass man’ under the influence of ‘mass production, mass communication, mass marketing.’ The ISI book contains another lengthy essay, “Power and Responsibility.” Neuhaus in 1998 wrote the Foreword, describing the work as “personally disruptive; intellectually and spiritually disruptive.”
From p. 111 of Guardini’s lengthy chapter, ‘The Dissolution of the Modern World,’ we read: “The crucial events of the life of man–conception, birth, sickness, death–have lost their mystery. They have become biological or social phenomena dealt with more and more by a medical science or by a series of techniques which claim an increasing confidence in their own efficacy. Insofar as the great crises in human life could reveal truths which cannot be mastered by modern techniques, they are “anaesthetized” and thus rendered irrelevant. In this connection, we cannot avoid thinking of those auxiliary techniques…which appear today not only at the horizons of our culture but also at its very center, techniques which would remove lives no longer of service to ‘life’ itself, no longer corresponding to the ends of the state.”
He asks: “Is it possible to build a life for man or for society upon exclusively empirical grounds, a life which could…remain truly human?”
P. 115: “Without religion life becomes like a machine without oil; it runs hot; even if it functions, some part of it is always burning out….Finally, the engine of society breaks down,….man today frantically hunts for a way out of his own social breakdown.”
Read it and weep at the prophecy.
A benefit of a commentary response forum is expanding our knowledge. Wasn’t aware Heidegger was Catholic, that he abandoned his faith after reader Calvin, Luther, and others. That puts a shade of difference in his Nazi membership.
I do think he foresaw the overreliance on technical learning and communication leaving many bereft of intellectual skills, contemplation of truth, the liberal arts. Your quote of Guardini on the issue is excellent.
Wasn’t aware of Heidegger’s disavowal of Catholicism. Researched after reading your reply he allegedly was influenced by Calvin and Luther becoming flummoxed and departed.
It appears Heidegger had in mind the descendency into virtual reality tech becoming a new dimension of life people vastly ignorant outside their intellectually enclosed bubble.
I’ll second (again) Mr. Beaulieu’s recommendation of Mr. Pentin’s book, The Next Pope.
P.S. The African bishop of the St. Francis church area, in his articulate response to the Irish president’s musings re climate change as the cause of the massacre, gives me hope that not all the peripheries will be meekly subservient in the next conclave.
I’m Catholic (German/Irish, more specifically) and I don’t love the British monarch (who must profess the Protestant religion by British law).
Elizabeth II (Last?) may well be a fine lady, but her Hanoverian (Saxe-Coburg/Windsor) heritage is, if I must say so, illegitimate.
The Hanoverian succession represents the triumph of Protestantism over the legitimate Catholic Stuart sovereigns. England, Ireland and all of the West have paid a terrible price for the ascendancy of Elizabeth’s “dynasty”.