As we move closer to the Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension, the Church invites us to identify with the sentiments of the Apostles as they faced the eventuality of Christ’s departure from them in a definitive way as He returned to His Heavenly Father. Not surprisingly, the predominant emotion is one of sorrow. However, Jesus leads them to view the situation from a divine and eternal perspective, rather than from an earthbound and time-conditioned perspective.
And so, we hear Our Lord console them with the assurance that, contrary to appearances, it is really better for them that He go, instead of stay—because He can only give them the ultimate gift—the Gift of the Paraclete—once He leaves.
The word “Paraclete” in Greek can mean “defense attorney” or “advocate.” In point of fact, for those who need an advocate, the Holy Spirit acts accordingly; for those who need to be challenged, He presents the unvarnished truth of the Gospel because He is—first and foremost—“the Advocate of truth,” “the Spirit of truth”—the One to lead the Apostles and their descendants in the Faith into “all truth.”
Therefore, a disciple of Christ can never echo the cynical question of Pontius Pilate, “Quid est veritas?” (“What is truth?”). The greatest thinkers from Socrates to Plato to Aristotle all acknowledged the existence of truth—objective, absolute truth, knowable to every human being. Indeed, they saw philosophy—which means precisely the love of wisdom—carried forward by the enterprise of the pursuit of truth.
The First Vatican Council, following the trajectory of Church teaching from time immemorial, taught in a solemn fashion that man—by means of unaided human reason—could come to a knowledge of truth and even to an awareness of the existence of God. What a lofty view of the human person and what a lofty vocation! By the middle of the twentieth century, however, under the influence of the Age of Enlightenment (so-called) come to full bloom and with the active assistance of the Existentialists, efforts were abroad to convince us both that objective, immutable truth does not exist and that even if it did exist, it was not accessible to us. How depressing and how dehumanizing! Of course, this line of thinking was not advanced for its own sake; it was designed to bring about a state of moral relativism, whereby each person would be free to create his own version of truth with its own unique code of behavior.
This approach to life is rather odd for a supposedly “scientific” era. After all, science is based on objective facts, independent of anyone’s wishing or willing. Two plus two equals four, regardless of whether or not I find that appealing—although Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro (a member of the Pope’s “magic circle”) did suggest it could equal five! Of course, my opinion counts for nothing in the world of true science. Ironically, though, we are led to believe that that principle does not hold for philosophy and theology, where the name of the game is “erector-set” truth, usually grounded in nothing more than personal feeling and whim.
How deeply ingrained that now is struck me as I was dining at restaurant a few weeks ago. It was a very hot and humid day; the air-conditioning was not running, so someone thoughtfully opened a nearby door. A few minutes later, a waiter started to close the door, causing me to ask, “Could you please keep that open? The breeze feels good.” Without batting an eyelash, the fellow responded, “Well, if it feels good, it must be right!” Truth had been reduced to emotion—moral relativism conveyed in a slogan.
And where does that lead? To media transmission of distressing occurrences of “wilding” rampages destroying property and endangering lives; a high school wrestler sucker-punching his opponent who beat him in the match; six innocents murdered by a woman who thought she was a man. Why such occurrences? Because it “felt” good, so it must have been right.
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes foresaw this development as they warned: “Without the Creator, the creature vanishes.” We can smirk at the ancient Greeks and Romans with their thousands of little gods and goddesses, but at least they operated from a transcendental perspective. When man becomes the measure of all things, no holds are barred. Which, of course, is why the last century—with the first organized social and political programs in history predicated on atheistic principles—has become known as the “century of blood.”
So, then, how does one arrive at the truth? Saint John Paul II taught us in Fides et Ratio:
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know Himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.
Reason can lead us rather far, enabling us to realize that a Supreme Being exists and created everything. Some truths, however, require divine assistance. Enter: The Holy Spirit, whose task it is, says Our Lord, to “teach [us] all truth.” Notice that this is a process; it is not a one-shot deal. The Apostles didn’t have it all figured out by the time of Christ’s Ascension; they had to think, pray, reflect, study—all under the sweet, guiding light of the Holy Spirit.
That process of thinking, praying, reflecting, and studying did not end with the Apostles; it is a process destined to continue until Christ comes again in glory as growth in understanding increases. Consider a very human example of what I am trying to describe: We expect that a married couple will know one another better on their fiftieth anniversary than they did on the day they met. In a similar way, the Church—living with and loving her Lord, her Spouse—comes to ever-deeper grasps of the truths of the Faith with the passage of time.
Perhaps the most significant theological contribution of Saint John Henry Newman was his identification of this process as “the development of doctrine,” which strikes against two opposing approaches to the truth, both erroneous.
The first error is a kind of fundamentalism, which suggests, for instance, that Peter, James and John could have composed the Nicene Creed in 35 A.D. No, it took the Church almost three more centuries to be able to present and explain the basics of the Christian Faith in such a refined form. The Church needed to be led to “all truth.” To be sure, if Peter, James or John were given the text of the Nicene Creed, they would apprehend in it the fullness of truth, which they intuited but could not articulate in their own time.
The second error is that of liberalism, which Cardinal Newman castigated in his biglietto speech as he prepared to receive the red hat. He declared:
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.
In other words, everything is up for grabs. The mantra of liberalism’s proponents is, “Dogmatisms must go.” Strangely, such people fail to see that their own mantra is itself a dogmatism!
Sometimes we hear people of good will assert that there is no biblical basis for many Catholic teachings. Our first response, needless to say, is that the Church has never believed that all her wisdom comes exclusively from the Scriptures; after all, the Church was in the business of preaching and teaching the truth for seventy years before the last word of the New Testament was written and for nearly 300 years before the canon of the Bible was first defined. We do say, however, that no teaching of the Church may ever contradict a teaching of the written Word of God.
That said, how does one explain (or defend) a Marian doctrine like that of the Immaculate Conception of Mary? Clearly, it is not found in any definitive fashion in the Bible and was not explicitly taught for a long time. But it was there in seed-form, found in passages like the Angel Gabriel’s salutation of the Virgin as “full of grace.” And here we find great help in Cardinal Newman’s notion of the development of doctrine, which he likens to phenomena in nature as we consider the relationship between an acorn and an oak tree. Who, looking at a tiny acorn, could ever imagine that it could become a mighty oak? Or, conversely, looking at a mighty oak, who could suppose its humble origins as an acorn? Men like Cardinals McElroy and Hollerich, appealing to doctrinal development, don’t seem to understand development is organic, which is why, for instance, a tadpole can never develop into a cow.
In like manner, the Church—guided by “the Spirit of truth”—comes to ever-deeper apprehensions of the truth, even to the fullness of truth. And so, we sons and daughters of the Church have no truck with a cynicism that questions the existence of truth, or with a naive fundamentalism that would argue for a pre-packaged carton of truth, or with a destructive liberalism in religion that reduces everything to mere opinion and fancy. On the contrary, we believe that as the Lord Jesus prepared to leave this earth, He gave to His Church the seeds of truth and a teaching authority responsive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the responsibility of which Magisterium would be to water and nurture those seeds, so that they would blossom as so many beautiful flowers of life-giving truth.
As Catholics, we do not arrogantly assert that we possess the truth, but that the truth possesses us. For which we need to thank unceasingly Christ’s Spirit, asking always for the grace to hear and respond to that Spirit’s guiding light. The epitaph on Cardinal Newman’s tombstone read: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (“From shadows and images into the truth”)—which summed up his entire life of truth-seeking, truth-teaching, and truth-preaching—entirely appropriate for the man who had prayed, “Lead, Kindly Light, lead Thou me on.”
The only alternative to upholding objective truth is eschewing it. And here the warning of G. K. Chesterton should give us pause: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing—they believe in anything.”
(Editor’s note: This homily was preached for the Third Sunday after Easter (Extraordinary Form), April 30, 2023, at the Church of the Holy Innocents, New York City.)
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I recently had a conversation with a man in his eighties who, after I had identified myself as Catholic, responded, “I used to be Catholic.” I suppose I could have then asked him, “Where now do you find your truth?”. I just didn’t think fast enough. The premise being that all rational men will seek out truth somewhere or, not finding it, will create their own version.
We read: “Men like Cardinals McElroy and Hollerich, appealing to doctrinal development, don’t seem to understand development is organic, which is why, for instance, a tadpole can never develop into a cow.”
The thing about McElroy and Hollerich is that for them “organic” means compost in a big-tent…
They proposed that a long-dead cow in the swamp might someday feed tadpoles. They look at things backward through the wrong end of the telescope. Something like championing the homosexual act by those who also can’t tell the front from the back.
Of such theologically extravagance—and commenting on the doctrine of papal infallibility (and that permanent and coherent truth exists!)—Cardinal Newman observed that the effect of the definition is “not to enfeeble the freedom or vigour of human thought in religious speculation, but to resist and control its extravagance” (John Henry Cardinal Newman, “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” Image, 1962).
The modernday McElroy and Hollerich, extravagantly positioned court jesters from yesteryear.
“They proposed that a long-dead cow in the swamp might someday feed tadpoles. They look at things backward through the wrong end of the telescope.”
Bravo! A succinct analysis of what happens when we “progress” from the medieval view (which begins with God) to the modern view (which begins with man). Compost indeed.
“Of course, this line of thinking was not advanced for its own sake; it was designed to bring about a state of moral relativism, whereby each person would be free to create his own version of truth with its own unique code of behavior. This approach to life is rather odd for a supposedly “scientific” era. After all, science is based on objective facts, independent of anyone’s wishing or willing.”
Hello Fr. Straviskas,
Wonderful article!
Albert Einstein, “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it”. This statement by Albert Einstein is a ‘If it feels good, do it’, scientific relativism. Science took the same path as morality in the last century. What is truth and what is scientifically Real, have both been exchanged for what ‘feels good’.
Neils Bohr, “It is meaningless to assign Reality to the universe in the absence of observation; in the intervals between measurement, quantum systems truly exist as a fuzzy mixture of all possible properties.”
PBS Space Time, The Great Bohr – Einstein Debate
https://youtu.be/tafGL02EUOA
Proven Science tells us that our Reality, even when looking at a star 13.8 billion years into our past, only comes into existence from the present. When you are no longer looking at the star, the star and its past, no longer exist. What this means is that there was no physical 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang; There was no physical evolution; There was no physical Jurassic Period. Ect. Ect. Ect. Well that does not ‘feel very good’ if you are a big shot scientist like Albert Einstein and others. What is even the sense of studying dinosaurs if they never even physically existed, and only exist as a part of our present Multiverse Reality past. This Truth in Science haunted Albert Einstein all his life.
In the 1970’s and 80s, all science majors had to first take a class which indoctrinated them into believing that the universe still exists even when you are not looking at it. Well, that does not sound like science is very open to truth, and scientific reality. Science wants to go with the ‘what feels good’, which is the thinking that the moon does still exist when you are not looking at it, and there was a 13.8 billion year creation, and that there really were dinosaurs roaming the earth hundreds of millions of years ago.
I just wanted to give you an eye opener on just how big this denial of truth, for the sake of what feels good, goes.
Hello again Fr. Stravinskas,
I have even heard Catholic Priest homilies which buy in, and promote, the big deception of Atheist Scientists. One homily went, “What is man in the massive expanse of the universe? A universe with hundreds of billions of stars and has existed for eons. Humans are just an miniscule and almost nothing compared to all of God’s Creation……..”. The Priest did not clarify that no Multiverse can exist before Conscious Man, Adam, opened his eyes to look at the universe. And that when Adam went to sleep at night, the whole expanse of the universe no longer exists, until Conscious man Adam wakes up the next morning. If the Priest had made this clarification of truth in science, it would have blown his whole philosophical theologian homily. So even Catholic Priests proliferate the “what feels good” scientific deception from the truth in science as to how our Realities truly work.
As of 2019, scientists have mimicked the Fatima Miracle of the Sun. Two different groups of conscious observers, observed two different Realities. It is only when the two groups describe to each other what they observe, that the two different Realities collapse into one common Reality. Meaning, God gives all individual conscious observers their own individual unique universe, which only collapses into one common shared Reality, when humans interact with one another. So, the Miracle of the Sun, was God simply overriding this, auto collapse into one common shared Reality, so that the conscious observers in Fatima had one Reality, and the rest of the world had our sun in its usual position.
The Miracle of the Sun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4IbOzuNlmE
The experiment which accomplished dual realities in the scientific lab, concluded, “A Quantum Experiment suggests there is No such thing as objective reality.” Meaning, Eve, and all Adam and Eve’s descendants, receive their own Realities of the universe, out of all possible Realities of the universe, which only collapse into one common, shared Reality of the universe, when they interact with one another. We are even talking about our 13.8 billion year creation Reality of the universe. Our sun dancing freely in the sky, and its billions of years of past Reality, comes from a whole different Multiverse Reality, with far different scientific laws of nature.
A Quantum Experiment suggests there is No such thing as objective reality.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/
DR. Quantum is an introduction to what proven science is talking about. Subatomic particles only coming into physical existence when a conscious observer looks at them, is really God physically waving (wave collapse) to scientists, and explaining to them as to how it is God who chooses what unique Reality of the universe, each individual person will receive, every millisecond of the day.
Dr. Quantum Explains Double Slit Experiment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q4_nl0ICao
Humans are not some small inconsequential spec in the universe. Our unique, different from all other people’s, Reality of the universe is our unique personal relationship with God. And even Catholic Priest homilies deceive us away from this scientific truth, because “it feels good” to do so.
Albert Einstein (Determinism) says, “God does not throw dice!”
Neils Bohr (Chance) replies, “Nor is it our business to prescribe to God how He should run the world.”
Does everyone understand that Neils Bohr’s relentless battle to stand with the Truth in proven science, actually proves there is a God? While Albert Einstein’s life battle was to find another way, other than Neils Bohr’s Truth in science, is the foundation on which today’s scientific Atheism, and all Atheism, stands. Science is dominated by Atheist scientists who focus the world’s attention on Albert Einstein’s “it feels good” scientific philosophy that someone smarter than him will eventually find a way, other than God, to prove why the Quantum world is the way that it is.
Albert Einstein hated the scientifically proven fact that, if Quantum Mechanics sees everything in the quantum world, (subatomic particles), as totally ‘chance’, ‘weird’, ‘indeterminant’, and yet we get high precision at our macro level of the world we observe, this is because God is controlling everything, at the Quantum level, every millisecond of the day.
It just cannot be total chance, that the correct property, location, and path of travel, of every subatomic particle in the universe, is chosen, out of all possible properties, locations and paths of travel, to go back in physical time and wave collapse into our physical universe, from nothing, every time a person in the present looks at our universe. When man is not experiencing the universe, then all subatomic particles revert back to a wave state of all possible properties, locations, and paths of travel. It is not by ‘chance’ that the world is the way that it is; It is God very actively making the world the way that it is, every millisecond of the day.
Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein were actually good friends and colleagues. Niels Bohr just accepted proven science at the subatomic level, and then used this knowledge to go to bank on inventions and discoveries, like computers, x-ray machines, and presently even successes in teleportation. While Albert Einstein fought God, at the subatomic level, all the years of his life, in order to keep Atheism afloat. Niels Bohr felt bad for his good friend Albert Einstein, who wasted his later decades of life, focused on trying to ‘debunk’ proven science Truth that the universe does not exist when man is not looking at it, which meant that there is a God controlling everything in the universe.
Battle Over Quantum Mechanics Albert Einstein VS Neils Bohr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBgC0PyIomU
BBC Quantum Mechanics DOCUMENTARY – The Search For Reality (2000) – Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj7jd7opGOQ
Albert Einstein could not think of a way to actually prove that the universe still exists even when conscious observer mankind is not looking at it, so he did the next best thing. Einstein developed the EPR experiment. The laws of science state that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. So a star, billions of light years away, cannot know when man is looking at it and thus wave collapse into a physical star. It has now been proven, through entangled particles, that stars do know when man is looking at them and thus wave collapse into a physical star. Niels Bohr’s Truth in science, and God, win yet again. Imagine that!
PBS Space Time, The Great Bohr – Einstein Debate
https://youtu.be/tafGL02EUOA
Last time I checked, Science was up to sending 800 atom molecules through the double slit experiment. Scientists observe the 800 atom molecule coming out of the gun. Scientists see an 800 atom molecule land on the far screen. If scientists observe the 800 atom molecule going through the double slit, it goes through as an 800 atom molecule. If scientists do not observe the double slit, all that goes through is a wave of all possible properties, in all possible locations, traveling in all possible paths. There are a great many subatomic particles making up an 800 atom molecule. There is no universe when man is not looking at it.
God is in full control of all individual’s Realities from Adam to the last person on earth. God can control all the interactions between all individual human’s Realities. Because God is Eternal Now, Omni-Present to all of physical time, our choices today, and throughout all of physical time, can have a direct effect on what God will make even Fallen State Adam’s Reality be. The choices of all the people, of the whole of physical time, affect what God will make the individual Realities of all the people of the whole of physical time be.
Does this not sound more like our Omni-Potent God than a pile of dirt at the ‘big bang’, which is destroyed at the end of time?
Hello Fr. Stravinskas,
I hope you do not mind if I go on one more time. I sense that small urge that I have learned to follow, which I accept as the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
God controls all individual’s, individual Realities. God also controls all interaction between individual’s differing Realities. God controls what the shared, common, Reality will be on earth. So, when God offered to the Catholic Church, the Second Secret of Fatima Promise, that if the Catholic Church gets mankind to repent of all their massive sins, and the Catholic Church Consecrates Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, there would be no WWII, God can make this happen on earth, through His Control of all Realities. God can make this happen, even if it is only one Pope, acting like Moses, faithfully trying with all his heart to accept God’s offer for world Peace, even if no one else on earth responds to God, or to a faithful Pope repeating the Will of God.
The Catholic Church responded to God’s offer for World Peace rather than WWII with the secular world thinking that, God dropped off a ‘big bang’ load of dirt upon Creation, and God will return to destroy the load of dirt upon the end of time, and we will just have to fend for ourselves in the interim. The Catholic Church did not want to upset Stalin or billions of unrepentant sinners on earth; So the Catholic Church rejected God’s offer for Peace on Earth rather than WWII, and decided to do the secular thinking best they could without God’s help.
Jesus is now offering His Church, the Catholic Church, His Kingdom Come of Messianic Reign on free-willed earth, where there will be Peace on Earth for Christ’s Church. Let us faithfully focus on accepting Jesus’ present Marriage Proposal to His Church, the Catholic Church, which will bring Peace on Earth for Christ’s faithful; Rather than thinking secularly and focusing only on all the present tribulation around us, like the fall of morality in the secular world, which we know will come to earth upon Christ’s Second Coming. Our present shared Reality of all the tribulation of immorality on earth could actually be God’s Will, to push His Catholic Church out of Her present nest on earth, to rise to become His Kingdom Come of Messianic Reign on earth.
It was God who made the Pharaoh’s heart fight God during the Exodus. The same could be true now. Apocalyptic Scriptures indicate a huge battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan (‘Satan’ represents the secular world) upon Christ’s Kingdom Come to earth.
Divine Mercy in My Soul, 429
I heard these words spoken distinctly and forcefully within my soul, You will prepare the world for My final coming.
Jesus is Getting Married!
http://www.apocalypseangel.com/married.html