Catholic Intelligent Design – “In my experience, Catholics face many challenges when it comes to thinking about evolution and intelligent design. Many of us somewhere along the way had a priest or teacher tell us not to trouble ourselves about this issue; whatever ‘science’ says is fine.” Understanding Design Arguments: An Introduction for Catholics (Evolution News)
Barbarians at the Gates – “The spiritual crisis afflicting contemporary America has ancient and enduring roots—and so does the cure…” The Return of Paganism (Commentary)
Processing the Synodal Process – “What is synodality? Can you provide a somewhat concise, fairly precise definition off the top of your head?” Ambiguity and Clarity in the Age of Synodality (What We Need Now)
Religious Discrimination – “As gender ideology continues its destructive parade through public and private institutions, including K-12 schools, a few individuals are courageously refusing to submit—and being punished for it.” Gender Ideology and the Religious Freedom Trap (Word on Fire)
Standard of Dress – “Fashion also often operates, however, as a mechanism of inclusion. Put on the prescribed uniform every day—be it coveralls or a pinstriped suit—and you become part of a team.” The Fast Casual Society (City Journal)
The Real Jesus – “The current image of the Jesus of endless self-affirmation promoted in some circles is not the Jesus of the Gospels.” Christ Crucified and Resurrected vs. ‘The Therapeutic Jesus’ (National Catholic Register)
Adultery of the Heart – “Prager not only gives men permission to use porn but implies their wives should be glad their husbands consume it.” Dennis Prager Is Dead Wrong About Pornography: It’s Adultery, Not Adultery Prevention (The Federalist)
Getting Better – “Thanks to God for his nearness and blessings in the midst of this. I’m especially grateful for the healing process that he built into our bodies on the day when he made us male and female.” Two Weeks Later: Update on my Knee Progress (Defender of the Catholic Faith)
A Humble Giant – Dr. Kevin Vost “is rightly beloved by every editor who worked with him, including me. He was a kindly giant in both the physical and intellectual sense.” In Memoriam: Kevin Vost (Catholic Exchange)
Destruction of the Past – “History is a record of the past. History matters for a nation in the same way memory matters for a person.” Men Without Memories (First Things)
Doctrines and Creeds – “I received a letter from a man who was raised as a Catholic in the 1960s and who stated that the Catholic Church was ‘unable to meet’ his ‘spiritual needs,’ because, in his opinion, ‘it was all rules, doctrine and religion’ without the ‘power to deliver or save.'” On Former Catholics & Why They Left the Church (Biblical Evidence for Catholicism)
Pope’s Vision in Architecture – Commemorating 10 years since the election of Pope Francis, the Vatican will physically represent the teachings of his encyclicals at the Venice Biennale international architecture exhibition May 20 to Nov. 26. Vatican to bring pope’s encyclicals to life in architecture exhibit (Catholic Review)
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Why people leave the Church. I will give my opinion based on a clean joke. Here yu go. So the President needs to hire a replacement for the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He interviews 3 people: The best Accountant in the country, the best Physicist, and Best Economist. He ask only 1 question, what’s 2+2. The Accountant stunned at the simple question says simply its “4”. The Physicist wanting to impress the Pres. says “it’s the square root of 16”. The ever thoughtful, bright, prize winning economist ponders the question, then he whispers in ear of the Pres. and says “what do you want it to be?”. So there yu go I think many leave because the Church is not what they want it to be.
Agree. I also think many leave because at some point we are all asked to at some point choose between the Church and her teachings, or the world. I can count countless committed Catholics who left when their kids wanted to contract a gay marriage, or have an abortion, or…..fill in the blank.
Count countless?…hmmm that didn’t come out right. 😉
@ Destruction of the Past
Memory is the foundation of identity (Francis X Maier). Christ speaking to Catherine of Siena in her Dialogues on memory, I gave him [man] memory to give thanks for all the good I’ve given him. Anthropologically our history speaks to what makes for humanness, and what our teleological end is.
Cancel culture reverses the order of knowledge of self, what is good in our institutions, regulations. It’s man seeking to recreate himself on his own terms independent of any and all knowledge of good and evil making himself his own god. And with that excision of the past it includes an intentional rejection of what is experienced, revealed as good in favor of what is contrary for sake of experiencing individual freedom.
Thus Spake Zarathustra thus gender ideology, destruction of the traditional family, medical assisted suicide all the ills that presently afflict Church and culture. Return to revelation the exclusive remedy.
@ Destruction of the Past
Return to revelation the exclusive remedy, the finale of my initial comment is piercingly relevant as fruit trees outside the house blossom. Fragrant beauty symbol of life, purity in its magnificence. Thoughts flow, if only his children turn to the source rather than cancel all that reflects his beauty in nature, and in the human spirit when free of vanity.
Beautiflly expressed. Yes, when free of vanity, we naturally give God His due. As a convert from atheism—and I was originally going to comment on the fine piece on intelligent design, reminding me of the wonder and amazement that fascinated me as a physicist—I did not know what it is like to be told to trust in God when I was very young, but I had enough philosophical sense to always pose, when I got a little older, the questions, If God exists, then He would have to be like…., and I would fill in the appropriate contingencies of what a benevolent God would have to be, while trying to be humble. In due course, with help from the inspiration of good souls like my late wife, I discovered Him.
With revelation we find the drama of His direct actions in history. With common sense and a heart stripped of vanity, we find simple immutable truth, a value made all the more critical as it is currently assaulted mercilessly in the Church He created.
One quick comment on intelligent design. There are a lot of ridiculous speculations about the implications of Quantum physics by those with little understanding. Yet, more sober assessments are starting to provide evidence that, given the dire times in which we live, similar to the comforting assurances of NDE testimony of the honest and non-exploitative variety, God may be allowing us to peel back the layers between the natural and the supernatural. Why I, and others, believe this is for another forum.
Your thoughts are appreciated.
@ Processing the Synodal Process
In search for a short definition for sinodality, how about this: “synodality is a shark”?
Sharks lack a backbone (only half-formed cartilage), and are known to swallow just about anything. Tiger Sharks are even known as “garbage cans of the Sea [or See?].”
@Destruction of the Past
In 1940 Winston Churchill posed this to the House of Commons: “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”
John Allen is less than accurate here. I would like to say also that in general he is hit-and-miss; it can sometimes be clear-headed and then other times, dishy.
So in this report, the issue cast as conservative-or-liberal, is misleading. The people named are inclusivists who won’t – can’t – define what they mean by it.
It’s that word again, process. Allen invites the reader to do the needed construing.
‘ Once again, this is hardly an all-star team of liberal Catholics.
Of course we’re talking apples and oranges here, since the Synod of Bishops is a very different animal from the Dicastery for Evangelization.
Still, under the heading of keeping the record straight, it’s nevertheless striking that just 24 hours before rules changes were unveiled which sparked accusations in some circles of stifling conservative voices, Pope Francis tapped a number of individuals who typically would be perceived as “conservatives” to a Vatican department.
Construe that fact as you will, naturally, but a fact it remains nonetheless. ‘
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2023/05/a-note-of-caution-about-deck-stacking-charges-against-pope-francis
There are two groups of catholics/christians wrt evolution:
1. Those who accept the evidence but claim that evolution is compatible with catholicism (it’s not compatible)
2. Those who reject the evidence entirely (there is no basis for rejection of the evidence)
What’s funny is that group 2 agrees that evolution is incompatible, hence their denial in the first place; it becomes much easier for them to construct a facade of coherency and rationality in their minds. “God did NOT create man out of monkeys!!” hahahahah ya think? You should explain that to the crazies in group 1.
Are you aware that the evidence now precludes Darwinian evolution?
@ Catholic Intelligent Design–Only “two groups”? Here are two more:
FIRST, regardless of whether physical design is “intelligent” or not, the metaphysician Thomas Aquinas (instead) was mostly about neither. His key insight was about basic existence rather than intelligibility (or design). Or, as Leibniz (discoverer of The Calculus) also phrased it, “Why should there be something rather than nothing?” The absolute (!) distance between existence and non-existence of, say, what we call the “universe.”
SECOND, regarding monkeys on steroids, this from St. John Paul II, who noted that evolution of natural systems in some bounded sense (that is, not pretending to explain politics, economics, sociology, or especially philosophy, theology, etc.), is more than a hypothesis. Of an additional and categorically different “ontological leap” (sometimes witlessly worded as only an evolutionary leap), he clarifies:
“The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation [meaning natural science], which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again of aesthetic and religious experience, fall within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator’s plans” (“Message on Evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,” October 23, 1996, nn. 4, 6).
you can subdivide if you like but I’m organizing into two groups. it’s always entertaining to see people pretending like evolution and the Adam & Eve story can be reconciled.
you can’t “but it was a metaphor” your way out of that problem because if Adam & Eve didn’t exist literally, where did we get “the fall of man” and “original sin” from?
What is your reasoning that demonstrates evolution cannot be reconciled with the appearance of rational man? While evolution may well have led to the existence of rational man it cannot explain a change that is different in kind from intelligent to rational. That event requires intervention extraneous to the process.
@Fr Peter Morello, PhD
The incompatibility is first and foremost intuitive, but if you don’t have a sense of the severity and breadth of the conflict, unlike those catholics in group 2, I can elaborate:
1. Story of Adam & Eve can ONLY be interpreted literally. This is where original sin comes from. This is where the need for Jesus sacrificing himself to another facet of himself (not that that makes any sense whatsoever) comes from. But as evolution shows us, we modern humans DID NOT and COULD NOT have descended from a mere two persons. So wait a minute then, where did original sin come from? I dunno… what, we just have to guess as to the cause/reason and assume it’s true no matter what? We just assume that “somehow it just WAS a thing for real and all is coherent magically”? At that point, what use is ANY of the Bible if even the very start of it is so profoundly murky and of course FALSE?
2. Assuming God created man via evolution, from inorganic matter to organic to single cellular to multi cellular to complex to mammalian to bipedal to primate to man, we eventually come to a very important question… at what point did God “inject” the soul into these lifeforms? Because of course, we know these lifeforms couldn’t have possibly had souls PRIOR to brains; in fact they couldn’t have had souls prior to their even somewhat remotely resembling man as we know him today. We can at least start there as a hard cutoff. But so where in the timeline then? It’s quite a bizarre situation. So we have a generation which is “not quite God’s children” and then the very next generation one which is? It’s now human enough to warrant the injection of a soul? Sucks to be the off-by-one who missed out on an afterlife, right? That’s because the way evolution works is that in between any two generations, the two are so so so similar. (And btw, we are still at a loss for the cause of original sin here.)
3. The combination of issues 1 and 2 creates a third dilemma, if God had indeed chosen to implement such a strange and circuitous route for man’s creation, why wouldn’t this have been spelled out in the Bible? On that note, why aren’t ANY of the biological realities spelled out in the Bible? DNA? Nothing. Viruses/disease? Nothing. It calls into to question the utility of the entire tome and makes it seem no more valuable than random childish guesses from prehistoric man, which sounds nothing like divine inspiration and everything like primitive ignorance.
Now, to address your “evolution can lead to intelligence but not rationality” concern…
First of all I would dispute that there is a difference. I see these things as synonymous in a way, so I disagree. Everything living today is not an accident. Such traits began as accidental mutations, but survived and persisted for a very good reason, which is that they offered some kind of survival advantage. Design is therefore an illusion. Your statement about rationality is just another variation of the “the eye is too complex to have evolved” fallacy.
Lastly, to better understand evolution, and make it more intuitive, consider a simple scenario:
If a ship with many people onboard capsizes, it is only the people who didn’t drown who are left swimming at the surface.
Oh and one other thing, I just realized that you just twisted my words slightly, and I’m now going to clarify:
“What is your reasoning that demonstrates evolution cannot be reconciled with the appearance of rational man?”
Evolution CAN be reconciled with the appearance of rational man. The contrary is NOT what I said. What I said is that evolution cannot be reconciled with Adam & Eve. Re-read please.
Andrew, you’re addressing a reality entirely from the perspective of evolutionary theory, whereas I address the reality inclusive of God’s creation.
Insofar as time periods you place yourself in an unknown era prior to Man’s appearance questioning time intervals. There were no time intervals because there was no one present to determine time. God is pure act and in creating doesn’t act in intervals. Nor can he be constrained by his own creation. If you agree man could have appeared in the process of evolution, when it occurred is an irrelevant question. How he appeared is relevant, although he could not be the effect of evolution, as if the physical world possesses an intelligence, creative and intentional. You displace the reality of God, assigning the divinity to the physical.
There is of course a correspondence between God and the created physical world. For example, the analogy of an infant life progressing to full intelligence. It appears feasible, although when and how God infused the soul is unknown [placing the infusion of the soul in a fragmented time frame is solipsistically preconceived and imaginative], except that it was done when and how in our universe at his determination and command.
You haven’t provided any scientific evidence, incontrovertible findings by credentialed scientists that support your opinions. For example, whether there was one genetic source or multiple. DNA studies show a common African origin [Leakey discovered homo erectus at the Olduvai Gorge] that spread outwardly. Some genetic studies to the contrary remain theoretical. Turn to the truth evident in the physical world. Accidental survival as the means for the fittest to advance intellectually and morally is not worthy of someone possessing intelligence Andrew. You’re better than that.
Man is distinguished from all physical creatures in his inherent ability to apprehend the difference between good and evil. That identifies him with God, who created man in his own image.
you’re doing that thing where the believer speakers matter-of-factly about something unverifiable and not auditable. I’ll unpack your statements and find the issues shortly…
“If you agree man could have appeared in the process of evolution, when it occurred is an irrelevant question.”
No, not irrelevant. Like I posed, when was the “soul” installed (infused)? Instead of calling it irrelevant, please humor me and grapple with the dilemma? In particular, grapple with the issue I describe where gen X does’t have a soul but then gen X+1 suddenly does. This isn’t a theory, this is a CONSEQUENCE of the belief that creation-via-evolution was an actual thing that happened.
Aside from that, you keep speaking matter-of-factly about something nobody can detect. That doesn’t get you very far. God said blah, Thing X has cause-effect relationship with God, God said blah, God did blah. None of this makes any sense whatsoever.
“There is of course a correspondence between God and the created physical world.”
“You displace the reality of God, assigning the divinity to the physical.”
These statements aren’t coherent, they just start out with the God theory assumed to be true, without indicating the reasoning. “created physical world” is an assumption.
“Accidental survival as the means for the fittest to advance intellectually and morally is not worthy of someone possessing intelligence Andrew.”
But that’s precisely what the theory of evolution predicts. We could essentially paraphrase your sentence as “evolution is not compatible with christianity” which is the exact thing I said from the beginning. The original mutation was an accident, whereas the advantage that was lent by it and subsequent edge in survival was not an accident.
@ Andrew Williams APRIL 30, 2023 AT 4:45 PM
Sequence is required, not time. Sequence may occur void of the means of measurement contrary to the laws of physics. It occurs in nature contrary to the sequential law of cause and effect when two causal effects occur simultaneously countless light years distant.
Certainly the divinity who creates on his own terms can create [infuse the soul] at a sequential phase in our time outside of measurement in time. When something is transformed instantaneously.
Science demonstrates the multiplicity of genetic change makes it virtually impossible to determine a two person beginning, whereas the same conclusion demonstrates it cannot be disproved.
Where are your citations? Which experts do you reference?
On the Olduvai proposition:
“Central to the debate over the origin of modern Homo sapiens are arguments over the mode, location, and timing of the transition from large-brained “archaic humans” to anatomically modern human form. Some argue for an African replacement model, where modern Homo sapiens arose as a new species in Africa roughly 150–200 thousand years ago (ka), followed by their dispersal throughout the Old World replacing archaic human groups (including the Neandertals). Others argue for a multiregional interpretation, where the transition from archaic to modern humans took place within a single evolutionary lineage extending back as far as 2 million years ago (1, 2). Some variants of multiregional evolution suggest that the transition to modernity first occurred in Africa and was then shared across the Old World through gene flow, while others argue that modern traits appeared in different times and places, such that modern humans evolved through the coalescence of these changes (3). The basic difference between African replacement and multiregional evolution advocates is between those favoring speciation and replacement and those favoring evolution within a single species (John H Relethford National Library of Medicine).
On DNA and common ancestry:
“Matrilineal most recent common ancestor of all living humans In human genetics , the Mitochondrial Eve (also mt-Eve, mt-MRCA ) is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all living humans. In other words, she is defined as the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman. In terms of mitochondrial haplogroups , the mt-MRCA is situated at the divergence of macro-haplogroup L into L0 and L1–6 . As of 2013, estimates on the age of this split ranged at around 155,000 years ago, [note 3] consistent with a date later than the speciation of Homo sapiens but earlier than the recent out-of-Africa dispersal . [4] [1] [5] The male analog to the “Mitochondrial Eve” is the ” Y-chromosomal Adam ” (or Y-MRCA), the individual from whom all living humans are patrilineally descended. As the identity of both matrilineal and patrilineal MRCAs is dependent on genealogical history ( pedigree collapse ), they need not have lived at the same time. As of 2013, estimates for the age Y-MRCA are subject to substantial uncertainty, with a wide range of times from 180,000 to 580,000 years ago [6] [7] [8] (with an estimated age of between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago, roughly consistent with the estimate for mt-MRCA” (Christian Pierce Mitochondrial Eve).
Scientific evidence shows that the possibility not the impossibility exists. Do some actual research and when assured of your opinion come back. Until then reconsider you entire self imposed restrictions on finding the truth.
@ Andrew Williams APRIL 30, 2023 AT 4:45 PM
Also: “The original mutation was an accident, whereas the advantage that was lent by it and subsequent edge in survival was not an accident”. Andrew, when did imaginative self reference [the advantage that was lent by it] become scientific evidence?
There are layers of fallacies in your contentions starting with a blind faith in the discredited theory of Darwinian evolution to the notion that original sin needs to be episodic rather than a truism about the inevitabilities of a human condition flawed by self-worshiping tendencies we’re all capable of even in discussing the subject, not to mention a lack of imagination to think beyond biblical literalism, a characteristic most common among religion deriders.
Even the days of creation were recognized by the ancients as lengthy epochs of many interventions of creation and not days. As a scientist, I can assure you that ideology rather than objectivity exists among scientists as much as anyone else, but from an honest scientific understanding, biological evolution through natural selection, presuming useful mutational benefits, simply does not exist despite its substitute religious status among those without religion. Even the instance of life is no self-organizing accident. Every living cell is more complex than all the machinery conceived and implemented by the whole of humanity combined.
The complexity and functionality of biochemical structures at the cellular level, a knowledge greatly advanced in recent decades with electron micrographs, clearly illustrate the impossibility of random mutational evolution, a prerequisite to natural selection. Molecular biologist Michael Behe has long advanced the commonsense example of the mechanism of the bacterial flagellum as one of many irreducibly complex systems, a kind of intelligently engineered machine, much like an outboard motor. Of the flagellum’s more than 40 different protein parts, all are necessary for functionality. Without a single one, it cannot work, and it could not have accidentally come into existence and then be favored by natural selection. It is impossible for it to come together gradually. Applying Darwin’s own stated criterion, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modification, my theory would absolutely break down.”
We can consider at length dozens of other objections, such as the counter evidentiary implications from thousands of excavation sites around the world, where no transitory fossils preceding the Cambrian explosion of complex life have ever been found, but it is more important that Catholics, whose self-esteem seems to value a willingness to hastily appease the anti-religious world, might want to examine more soberly what they are endorsing. If they acknowledge God is involved in the process of creation, an idea that many irrational scientists mindlessly reject, why not intelligent, continuous, and purposely discreet creative events over time? In allowing a scientific fraud to last for a hundred and fifty years, perhaps God is giving large parts of humanity yet another opportunity to overcome a massive episode of sinful pride.
The exact moment of man’s creation no one knows but only religion haters obsess over. And the evidence for original sin is as pervasive as human conversation and is even illustrated during occasions of mocking it.
From the evolutionary side, what are we to make of the genetic DNA-based finding that “strengthened the claim that all humans alive today are descended from a single African woman” who lived perhaps 140,000 years ago (DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid: the complex key to heredity and physical life).
(Source: Thomas Maugh II, “Out of Africa: New Evidence One Woman is ‘Mother of us All’,” Los Angeles Times, October 5, 1989, summarizing molecular biologist Allan Wilson, University of California, at an international genetics conference.)
And, from the biblical side, which is touched/inspired by the “hand” of God, there’s the perspective that in the single moment of His eternity (!), God creates all of us simultaneously (experienced by us as drawn out within historical time). From this vantage point, especially, moral evil in “the world” is original to ourselves (original sin), rather than caused by God (which would be very close to the heresy of Manichaeism). But is also embedded intergenerationally and parentally in time as from “the beginning.” Inclusivity!
To go with evolution alone is to say that radical evil can be outgrown biologically and societally, and this is the heresy of Pelagianism. I guess we’re just stuck with nature and grace, both! And, to say otherwise is the capital sin of bipedal pride in the face of the mystery of God and even the mystery of the human person.
Dear Andrew:
So your back at the ranch! This is good as it shows you are considering matters that you pondered while on the trail.
We use our five senses to discern our way. The brain facilitates our decisions and so it goes. Yet, there is a spiritual sense as well. In the world there is the spirt of evil and the spirit of good. Which is the better choice for man?
John 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
John 15:26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
Luke 24:39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
It has been said that we are spirits who live in bodies that have a soul! The soul is the essence of who we are. We have an idea of who we are as we know something of our body. The spirit is more difficult to discern. Two people speaking in foreign tongues have trouble, to communicate with God we need humility and to listen to what He says.
God chooses man and we need to ask ourselves, do we want to be chosen by Him? Some detest God or the very idea of Him. It grieves Him and yet, He respects the choice of man.
Ephesians 1:4 Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
Romans 9:18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
Romans 8:29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
John 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
1 Peter 1:2 According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
A good number of the commenters at CWR are godly and have fine intellect. Though I don’t include myself, it would be a pleasure to help as I can. To mention a few, Fr Peter Morello PhD, Edward Baker, Martin James Rice or Steven Merton would be of aid in your search. If the “moderator” feels the foregoing sentence is not appropriate, please delete it!
God bless you, your servant in Christ,
Brian
@ Religious Discrimination
“However, the belief in biological reality and parental rights is not religious dogma”, essayist Petrusek, is right, although the genetically, natural law, common sense liberated have convinced themselves that we’re evolving, becoming intellectually, scientifically, morally superior to ethically intransigent Neanderthals.
Jessica Tapia fired for refusing to submit to CA gender ideology imposition is defending her case as a religious exemption privilege, whereas the merits of the case are better defined as a justice issue based on science, biology and natural law. Although Petrusek may be missing the point that Ms Tapia is confronted by a culture [what was once thought crazy a CA prerogative is now a nationwide phenomenon] that really believes we evolve mentally, that is, it’s the mind that determines evolution. So the logical conclusion is that the crazier a culture becomes the more advanced. How else do we explain expulsion from teaching positions from grammar schools to first rate universities for refusing to use the correctly accepted pronouns, that determined by whatever the student chooses?
So Ms Tapia may have better results in sticking with the religious discrimination argument. Unfortunately, even there the fascism of gender ideology is increasingly hostile to traditional religious beliefs condemning, for example, traditional Catholics as terrorists.Can the defense just say, Look! Your equating reality with what is conjured in the mind is the definition of crazy? Unfortunately, our culture has been doing just that since Emmanuel Kant.
It seems the situation of the LCWR as brought up-to-date in WIKIPEDIA, totally inverts the history of the affair, emphasizing/de-emphasizing Doctrines and Creeds according to a preferred fashion. The quotation is from the BRITANNICA article.
‘ The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office responsible for upholding doctrinal discipline within the church, released a report that found discrepancies between basic Catholic doctrine and the teaching and actions of the LCWR, particularly on the issues of same-sex marriage and abortion, and ordered the LCWR to revise its statutes. Campbell rejected the report and argued that the sisters’ work for social justice actually manifested their fidelity to the gospel. She characterized the disagreement between the Vatican and the sisters as a divergence of political culture rather than of faith. ‘
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sister-Simone-Campbell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_Conference_of_Women_Religious
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2013/04/15/pope-francis-reaffirms-the-cdfs-assessment-of-the-lcwr/
By my reading of the reported events, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru went through an opposite process.
Yes, that word, process.
But perhaps I’m wrong?
‘ Whether similar approaches will be applied to other rebel universities under Francis’ papacy remains to be seen.
The success of the solution reached will depend on the faithfulness and creativity of Catholics involved in PUCP’s daily activities. According to Cardinal Versaldi, if this is done correctly, “then you see the ice melt, the walls come down.” ‘
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/10/24/the-holy-see-and-the-catholic-university-of-peru-reach-an-agreement/
Will PCUP be true to faith or will it go the way of so many “land’o’lakes” organizations?
Flannery O’Connor discusses in Mystery and Manners how it is claimed that the Catholic writer’s beliefs, handicap his work and make it less than plausible. I thought these remarks of hers are well formed as she captures meaning beyond fiction writing while keeping to the discipline of her subject. She is astonishingly brilliant.
‘ A belief in a fixed dogma can not fix what goes on in life nor blind the believer to it. It will of course add a dimension to the writer’s observation which many cannot, in conscience, acknowledge exists; but as long as what they can acknowledge is present in the work, they can not claim that any freedom has been denied the artist. A dimension taken away is one thing, a dimension added is another; and what the Catholic writer and reader will have to remember is that the reality of the added dimension in a work of fiction will be judged by the truthfulness and wholeness of the natural events presented.
If the Catholic writer hopes to reveal mysteries, he will have to do it by describing truthfully what he sees from where he is. An affirmative vision cannot be demanded of him without limiting his freedom to observe what man has done with the things of God. ‘
– Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners, Pt. V, The Church & the Fiction Writer (ed. S. & R. Fitzgerald, NY, NY 1970, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux)
Andrew Williams I am forever glad I am not in your shoes. You want to convince me of questions for which you have no answers. Those are your riddles making you think that others’ answers come from false questions and everything is false but your quandaries.
Keep it up you’ll be diffing in that quarry pit forever; stygian mess will invade and you’ll still be digging convinced it’s heading somewhere. Good for you.
I believe the gentleman is incorrect about a number of things, but we can’t condescend to any level of presumption. He seems to be a sincere product of today’s conventional miseducation. One of the strongest arguments against evolution and proofs of original sin is the massive evidence of how groups within humanity willingly collectivize their delusions about their personal moral innocence and perpetually contrive ways to explain evil in the world in terms that project and identify evil with other groups. It only becomes more intense over time in direct proportion to how forcefully we delude ourselves that we will inevitably find or create utopia on earth once the elites reform or eliminate the troublemakers.
I would avoid a university like this.
‘ If joy attracts to such an extent that it silences the voice of pain from near and far (or sometimes even one’s own, the joy that anesthetizes!), it is only euphoria, it has no reach. It doesn’t heal wounds, that joy doesn’t heal, it covers them, and covered wounds become infected. On the contrary, if attention to one’s own pain and that of others consumes the energies of hope, it becomes the excuse to avoid risk and the necessary will to bet on life again, even if it has disappointed us. Pain becomes an excuse to despise the daily bread of consolation, which the Lord does not let go even on the hardest day. ‘
https://es.zenit.org/2023/05/04/como-debe-ser-el-investigador-y-que-debe-formar-una-universidad-catolica-en-latinoamerica-papa-francisco-contesta/
Francis is the last person on earth I would send a young person to for wisdom.