Catholic Corner – Maverick Philosopher

A Buddhist Scholar Swims the Tiber

Dmitri writes,

Hope all is well. I am reading yet another book of a convert to Catholicism. This one is written by a British professor Paul Williams who is a scholar of Buddhism. Besides the interesting personal story the book contains a few interesting arguments with a few fundamental Buddhist conceptions such as rebirth. Williams states that his return to Christianity and conversion to Catholicism was rational and in part based on the incoherence of the Buddhist concept of rebirth. There is a short chapter dedicated to this topic at the end of the book that can be read standalone. An online religious community shared a copy of Williams’ book if you would want to preview before deciding whether it is worth your time and money.

Great to hear from you, my friend. Conversions (22 entries) and deconversions fascinate me. I ‘ve read a bit of the pdf you’ve kindly sent: the book is engaging from the start. Amazon wants 79 USD which is a bit steep. I’ll read more. These days, the problem’s not lack of loot but of space. Italian frugality has paid off. And while books can burn in a fire, they are less fragile all things considered than online materials.

After what I said yesterday about the left-ward transmogrification unto insipidity of the RCC, a process that began with Vatican II (1962-1965), as Dr. Caiati documents in a comment below, it is somewhat strange that anyone should still want to swim the Tiber. Buddhism has its problems, but Christianity does not? Is Williams serious?

Buddhism, Suffering, and One Reason I am not a Buddhist

People convert and deconvert to and from the strangest things:

Harry Binswanger’s Conversion

Son of Atheist Neo-Positivist David Stove Converts to Catholicism

Sometimes the apple falls very far from the tree.

The Stove ‘Dilemma’ and the Lewis ‘Trilemma’

No Ammo to the Enemy: Defund the Left — and the RCC

Here:

“For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 [the older Latin Mass] should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one trust her at present if things are that way?”

Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), p. 416.

This is precisely right.

However, there are bishops who do despise the Church’s whole past. They want the past erased and buried. They want a new morality, especially. That way they can be popular.

Bowman also quotes Edward Feser:

Preference for the Traditional Latin Mass is massively correlated with orthodoxy. This is precisely why certain people want it suppressed. They call the TLM “divisive” but the reality is, it’s TLM ‘s opponents who want to divide the Church from her liturgical and doctrinal past.

Unlike my friend Feser, I have serious reservations about elements of traditional RCC doctrine. But I have far stronger reservations and outright objections to the destructive Left, in particular, to their trademark erasure of the historical record. Pedant that I am, I will point out once again that the past cannot be erased or buried, for it remains, tenselessly, what it was. But the past can be sent into oblivion which is, practically speaking, the same thing: what has been sent down the memory hole can no longer inform or guide our action in the present.

The RCC should stand as a bulwark against the leftist insanity all around us. So, to the extent that it becomes just another piece of leftist cultural junk, the RCC must be defunded. You are therefore a fool complicit with the forces of the anti-civilizational Left to the extent that you contribute to the RCC monetarily, in the same way that you are complicit fool and a useful idiot if you continue to contribute to those of your alma maters who refuse to renounce publicly the destructive DEI agenda.

But what if the particular church you attend needs repairs, a new roof say, and a collection is taken up within that church for the funds needed. Go ahead, make a contribution despite the theological ignorance of the priests, their homosexual vibe, and the defective Novus Ordo liturgy. If you need services on Sundays, Novus Ordo is better than nothing. If you take a harder line, and shun Novus Ordo, you may convince me.

Whatever Happened to Unconditional “Welcome the Stranger?”

Vatican City has one of the strictest immigration laws in the whole world. I seem to recall the Bergoglio-Prevost tag team — now known as BergoLEO — going on and on about unconditional “Welcome the Stranger.” Suicidal leftist folly on stilts.

I am all for welcoming the stranger, but only under certain conditions. Immigration must be to the benefit of the host country. The depredatory Dems refuse to countenance that simple truth. Interesting to speculate why. Vatican City's immigration law, one of the strictest in Europe - ZENIT - English

Europe in Trouble

Malcolm Pollack, back from Britain, reports:

I have to say, though, that the trip was ultimately rather depressing: it would be hard to overstate how utterly doomed the ancient British nation and people are. Among the staff of the shops, hotels, and restaurants we visited, we hardly ever even heard a British accent. (In particular, I’d been looking forward to hearing Scottish accents in Edinburgh, and hardly heard a one.)

In London, the cab drivers were still mostly English, and to a one they asked me what I thought about Trump; once I said that I was glad he’d won the election, and that he was a necessary correction to the damage that had been done over the past few decades, they felt free to unburden themselves about the moribund state of England. The tone was unvarying: weary, hopeless resignation, and mourning for the homeland they had lost.

The British people have annihilated not only their own future, but also the magnificent, thousand-year legacy that all of their ancestors had bequeathed to them as stewards for generations yet unborn. All of it is just gone, destroyed. In a generation or two, Britain will be an Islamic nation; the only thing that can possibly prevent this is a furious awakening of the virile and indomitable spirit that once ruled the world, and it would have to happen now.

But it won’t. The only ones who seem to care enough, or even to realize what has been lost, are now too old — and as far as I can tell, they’ve already given up.

The West seems bent on destroying itself, with the RCC under the ‘leadership’ of BergoLEO in the lead. (I owe the clever coinage to Vito Caiati.) Rod Dreher:

De Montbrial has a new book coming out in France next week, about what he regards as his country’s “emergency” situation. I suppose the talk he gave yesterday, in English, is part of it. He warned that western Europeans should prepare themselves for mass violence at the level the continent (minus the 1990s Balkans) hasn’t seen since the end of World War II. That is to say (though he didn’t use this term), civil wars. If you see this man’s Wikipedia page, you realize that he is in a position to know what he is talking about. He explained that Islamists have managed to infiltrate both public and private institutions all over Europe, and are using it to their advantage.

How did all this happen? De Montbrial, a practicing Catholic, said that the core of the problem is cultural — namely, that France (and Europe) has lost all sense of who and what it is. It has forgotten its past, and any sense of connection to it, and has lost its identity. (This is what Renaud Camus calls “The Great Deculturation”). How do you expect young people to resist people (Muslims) who are hostile to Western civilization, and who have a strong culture, if you have produced a generation, or generations, of people who have no culture? He said that in France, Muslim activists are even succeeding in winning over the hearts and minds of no small number of native-born French, by telling them, basically: “Look around you at what a nihilistic, pornified disaster modern Europe has become. Is that really what you want? Convert, join the ummah, and gain a story. Become part of the glorious march through history of the sons and daughters of the Prophet.”

Pope Leo XIV, Fetal Rights, and the Death Penalty

I thought Leo might be an improvement over Francis. I’m having serious doubts.

Substack latest.

Who’s Hell Bound?

Just over the transom from Derwood:

Help me understand something. When Jesus died, the vast percentage of humanity had and would never hear of the Jewish messiah/god.

True. And that would seem to include all sorts of righteous Old Testament individuals, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Surely, the latter three are not in hell. As I understand traditional RCC theology, Abraham & Co. upon their deaths were sent to the "limbo of the fathers" (limbus patrum), a 'place' distinct from both hell and purgatory wherein the Old Testament righteous enjoyed a natural happiness, but did not partake of the Beatific Vision (visio beata). This, I take it, is the 'place' Christ visited after his crucifixion when he "descended into hell' (as we read in the NT) before rising on the third day. He went there to release the OT saints from their 'holding pen' and bring them to the Father in heaven. It follows that the hell into which Christ descended is not hell as a 'place' of everlasting/eternal damnation and torment.

Does that mean that the vast majority of humanity, men, women and children, were hell-bound heathens?

The problem of unbaptized children motivated a nuancing of the limbo concept by Albertus Magnus: there is not only the limbus patrum but also the limbus infantium/limbus puerorum, the limbo of children. Surely a just and benevolent deity would not send them to hell, sensu stricto.

How does a just and benevolent deity allow that? That persists today, doesn't it? How much of the world knows about, much less worships, Jesus? All hell-bound?

The topic of limbo is not currently discussed. If I'm not mistaken, the 1992 RCC catechism makes no reference to it. Theology ain't what it used to be What a degeneration from Ratzinger to Bergoglio! The German has a first-rate theological head. I recommend his books. It should noted, however, that Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) considered limbo a doctrine it was not necessary for a Catholic to believe. See our friend Michael Liccione's First Things article on the topic, A Doctrine in Limbo.

I am just scratching the surface, and in any case I am not a theologian. This fact does not dissuade me from 'pontificating' on this and plenty of other theological matters! Here are three good sources for anyone interested in this topic: an article from The Thomist; a Britannica article; and one from the Catholic Encyclopedia.

At some point I want to discuss purgatory. Calvin rejects the notion. Surely that is a theological error of major proportions! (I'm baiting my Calvinist friends.)

Edith Stein: Faith, Reason, and Method

August 9th is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy. She is better known to philosophers as Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher in her own right, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic Church. One best honors a philosopher by re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically but critically. Herewith, a bit of critical re-enactment.

In the 1920s Stein composed an imaginary dialogue between her two philosophical masters, Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas. Part of what she has them discussing is the nature of faith.

Read the rest at Substack.

The piece concludes:

So there you have it. There are two opposing conceptions of philosophy, one based on the autonomy of reason, and with it the exclusively internal validation of all knowledge claims, the other willing to sacrifice the autonomy of reason for the sake of truths which cannot be certified by reason or subjectively validated but which are provided by faith in revelation, a revelation that must simply be accepted in humility and obedience. It looks as if one must simply decide which of these two conceptions to adopt, and accept that the decision cannot be justified by (natural) reason.

Addenda (8/9/2025)

I say above that there are two opposing conceptions of philosophy, but is that right? Perhaps not. It might be closer to the truth to say that philosophy by its very nature rests on the autonomy of reason, and that the "other conception" is not philosophy sensu stricto but a worldview. If so, any view according to which "faith is its own guarantee" is not philosophy or a philosophy, but beyond philosophy.
Thomas wears at least four 'hats.' He is a philosopher, a Christian, a Christian theologian, and a mystic. You could be any one of these without being any one of the others. He plays the philosopher in the praeambula fidei of the Summa Theologica wherein he attempts to demonstrate the existence of God in his quinque viae or Five Ways. These proofs make no appeal to divine revelation via Scripture nor do they rest on the personal deliverances of mystical experience. They proceed by discursive reason alone on the basis of sense experience.
So you could say to me that Thomas's theistic worldview is not beyond philosophy inasmuch as the philosophy of the praeambula is an integral part of his defense of the Christian worldview. My response will be that the Five Ways do not conclusively prove the existence of God, let alone provide any support for such specifically Christian doctrines as Trinity and Incarnation (which of course they were not intended to do). So in the end, a will-driven leap of faith is required to arrive at Thomas's theistic worldview. So at best, the Five Ways are arguments (not proofs) that render rationally acceptable Christian belief. Rationally acceptable, but not rationally mandatory. In the end you must decide what to believe and how you will live. My concluding sentence, "the decision cannot be justified by (natural) reason" is not quite right. I should have written: the decision to accept the Christian worldview, while neither it, nor the generic theism at its base, can be proven from natural reason operating upon the deliverances of the sense, can nonetheless be rendered rationally acceptable.
"Go ahead, believe!" Thus spoke Wittgenstein. "What harm can it do?" I add: you won't be flouting any canons of rationality.

Julien Green’s Diary, 1928-1957

It arrived yesterday evening, and I am already 32 pages into it. Why keep a journal? Green gives an answer on page one in the entry from 4 December 1928. He tells of "the incomprehensible desire to bring the past to a standstill that makes one keep a diary." Reading that, I knew I would read the whole 306 page translation of selections from this author's sprawling diary. He nailed it.

In '66 I started my journal scribbling. I didn't want that summer to pass away unrecorded. A life unrecorded, like a life unexamined, is not worth living. So I felt then, so I feel now. Such a life lacks diachronic unity and internal cohesion. I love cats, but a man is not cat, nor should he live like one.

I'll pull some quotations from Green's diary as the spirit moves me.

This First Things article will provide some background on Green and includes translations of some journal entries written around the time of, and about, the 'reforms' of Vatican II.

Are Catholics Christians?

A fellow philosopher writes,

While reading Clarence Thomas’s opinion in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services (2025), I came across this sentence: “Americans have different views, for example, on whether Catholics are Christians.” I’ve heard it said, before, that Catholics aren’t Christians, but never knew what to make of it. (The same thing is said about Mormons.) Have you written about this (about whether Catholics are Christians)? What must one think Christianity is in order to believe that Catholics aren’t Christians? Strange.

I haven't written about this topic because it is perfectly obvious that (Roman) Catholics are Christians. Proof: The Catholic Apostle's Creed. Every Catholic is a Christian, but not conversely. Calvinists, for example are Christians but not Catholics. Similarly for all the other Protestant sects. No Protestant is a Catholic. That too is obvious.

Did Justice Thomas, for whom I have great respect by the way, cite anyone who claimed that Catholics are not Christians? Who would say such a thing?

People say the damndest things. There are people who say that math is racist. Now that does not even begin to make sense, involving as it does a Rylean category mistake. Not making sense, it cannot have a truth value, that is, it cannot be either true or false. Mathematics does not belong to the category of items that could sensibly be said to be either racist or non-racist. Compare: 'How prevalent is anorexia nervosa among basketballs? More prevalent than among footballs?' Those questions involve category mistakes. Other examples: What is the volume of the average thought? What is the chemical composition of the number nine? What size shoes does God wear?

People who assertively utter 'Math is racist' are using those words to say something else, although it is not clear what. Perhaps they mean to say that since blacks as a group are not good at mathematics, giving them math tests is a way of demeaning or oppressing them and can have no other purpose. Or something. Speaker's meaning in this case strongly diverges from sentence meaning.

Can this distinction help us explain what people mean when they say that Catholics are not Christians? Going by sentence meaning, the claim is obviously false. But one might use those words to express the proposition that Catholics are not true Christians, where a true Christian is defined in some narrow and tendentious way, as, for example, someone who refuses to accept the Hellenically-tainted doctrines emanating from a magisterium (teaching authority) that interposes itself between the individual soul and God as revealed in Holy Writ.

We are now in the vicinity of No True Scotsman. Among the so-called informal fallacies is Antony Flew's No True Scotsman. Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A responds, "Your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!"

Similarly, A says, "No Christian is a Roman Catholic." B replies, "But my Uncle Patrick is a Roman Catholic." A responds, "Your Uncle Patrick is no true Christian!"

Vito Caiati on Pope Leo XIV: An Initial Assessment

The following just over the transom from Dr. Vito Caiati, posted verbatim with a few minor edits and additions of hyperlinks. Asterisks refer to footnotes.

…………………………

Taking a hard look at the composition of the electors, 81 percent of whom were chosen by Bergoglio; the rapid elevation of Prevost by him*; and the gauchiste content of this cardinal’s posts and re-posts on X,** I wrote the following on that site on May 19^th: "Too many people [i.e., the conservative and traditional critics of Bergoglio] are swayed by liturgical gestures and nods in the direction of tradition, rather than objectively judging who elected this man and waiting to see over the coming months if he will acknowledge and undo the evils of the Bergoglian regime. So far little to cheer."

Prevost’s words and actions until the present time confirm this judgment. Thus, on two occasions, he has assured the faithful that the “beloved” Bergoglio, against Church teaching, is CERTAINLY in Heaven (“He accompanies us and prays for the Church from Heaven”). In a meeting with the representatives of other religions, he has also endorsed the Abu Dabhi declaration that Bergoglio signed in 2019, which contains the heretical statement that “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed [thus DESIRED rather than permitted or tolerated] by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings,” as well as the ideologically related encyclical Fratelli Tutti. Furthering Bergoglio’s globalist political vision, Leo has similarly "urged Catholic university leaders to back the United Nations climate agenda, calling participants to ‘build bridges,’ and encouraging them in their ‘synodal work of discernment’ in preparation for COP30.” *** We can add to this troubling list his favorable references to the synodal path, which, of course, is inimical to the unity of the Church and the orthodoxy of its doctrine. Finally, his first appointments, in keeping with the disruptive and heterodox intentions of the late pope, are deeply troubling,; for instance, he appointed a priest who supports women priests and LGBT rights as bishop of St. Gallen, Switzerland; an auxiliary bishop tied to the left-wing, scandal laden Cardinal McElroy, as archbishop of San Diego; and another nun [of the pants-suit variety] to a key leadership position in the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, thus following Bergoglio in giving, as never before, un-ordained women authority over religious orders and congregations.

The pattern here is evident, and with the May 22 report of Austen Ivereigh, the late pope’s biographer and confidant, we now know that the election of Prevost, which came so quickly, was essentially orchestrated by Bergoglio, who along with packing the College of Cardinals, was engaged in a constant dialogue with the rapidly advanced Prevost in the final years of his life, meeting with him every week.**** So, I expect that while perhaps certain concessions might be granted to traditional Catholics on liturgy and the brutal rule of Bergoglio will be softened (although as of now the repression of the TLM [traditional Latin mass] continues (Detroit, Charlotte, NC, and France, notably restrictions on the Chartres Pilgrimage), the modernist capture of the RCC remains unchallenged. Unfortunately, so far, too many take the wearing of the mozzetta and a smiling face as substance rather than form. Rather, let’s see what the coming months reveal, allowing history rather than mere hope to be our guide.

_______________________

*September 2015: Appointed Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru by Bergoglio

January 2023: Prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops (responsible for naming bishops throughout the world and hence determining the direction of Church policy; Prevost was, for instance, responsible, under orders from Bergoglio in removing the orthodox Bishop Strickland, who rightly criticized Bergoglio for not protecting the Deposit of Faith.

September 2023: Made Cardinal Priest by Bergoglio

February 2025: Made Cardinal Bishop by Bergoglio (one of 12 of 253 cardinals)

**These include (1) re-posts of harsh criticisms of the Trump administration policy on immigration, including support for the gangbanger and wife beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14693013/pope-robert-prevost-tweets-donald-trump-jd-vance-maga.html); (2) a post harshly objecting to J.D. Vance’s orthodox understanding of ordo amoris as a hierarchy of love and responsibility; and (3) a repost asking for prayer for the criminal George Floyd and his family! (https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-leo-xiv-posted-george-220216069.html).

*** https://www.wmreview.org/p/leo-xiv-cop30

****https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ivereigh-prevost-francis-pope-leo-austen

Rogues in Bergoglio’s Footsteps

The truth is too magnificent a thing to be the the property of any one religious institution. Too magnificent a thing, and too elusive a thing to be owned or housed or patented or reduced to the formulas of a sect or finitized or fought over.

Institutions too often value their own perpetuation over the fulfillment of their legitimate mandates. Examples are legion. This observation occurred to me last year as I watched Representative Chip Roy's grilling of the prevaricating FBI director Christopher Wray. It is especially pertinent to churches of whatever stripe.

Idolatry is ubiquitous. Bibliolatry and ecclesiolatry are species thereof, not that 'Romanists' could be accused of the former.

Things are not looking good for the RCC. Jim Bowman reports.

Such a Wonderful Pope!

Simon Caldwell via Jim Bowman:

He [Pope Francis] used his authority to protect sinister friends from justice, such as Father Marko Rupnik, a fellow Jesuit who was accused of the serial rape of more than a dozen nuns, sometimes in quasi-satanic rituals. Rupnik was excommunicated latae sententiae (automatically) after he granted absolution in the confessional to a woman with whom he was having sex. This was an offence of such enormity under the Code of Canon Law that only the Pope could lift the sentence. Rupnik was rehabilitated and to this day is a priest in good standing who is living in a convent (where else?). It is good to have friends in high places.

This is hard to believe. Can you corroborate the above from your sources, Vito?

De mortuis nil nisi bonum has an expiration date, and in the case of some it comes up quick.

Pope Francis Dead at 88

I have issued some trenchant statements over the years about the late Pope Francis, but for now my watchword is: de mortuis nil nisi bonum. I will only add that in the wee hours of yesterday's vigil, before I became aware of Francis's passing, I was re-reading Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's 1968 Introduction to Christianity in pursuit of the question lately raised about the meaning of "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36) I was once again impressed by the power and penetration of the thinking of the man who later became Pope Benedict XVI. As I was admiring Ratzinger's philosophical and theological 'chops,' I thought disparagingly of the pope now passed.

Our friend Vito Caiati sent me this morning a rather more incisive take on the late pope.

I would like to share my thoughts on the current reaction to the death of Pope Francis, which I find worrisome and which reminded me of some advice of Montaigne on speaking of the powerful after death.

He writes:

“Among the laws that relate to the dead, it seems to me very sound those by which the actions of princes are to be examined after their decease. They are equals with, if not masters of the laws, and what justice could not inflict upon their heads [persons], it is reason that it should be executed upon their reputations and the estates of their successors—things that we often value above life itself” (Les essais de Montaigne, v.1, c 3 [my translation]).

All over X, yesterday and this morning, the whitewashing of Pope Francis, by his ideological allies and his “conservative” critics alike, continues unabated. Very few voices—most notably that of Archbishop Viganò*—dare to speak the truth, for self-interest and cowardice continue to rule. So, I ask: After twelve years of deceit, heresy, repression, and scandal, must we now also bear this mindless outpouring of fallacious sentiment, much of it nothing but deception, about this malevolent and destructive man? Rather on these days of all days, must we not, if “justice” is to be served, speak the truth about the grave harms he inflicted on the faithful and the Church? If truth is not told, the current wave of historical eradication, both that purposely propagated by the leftist, doctrinally tainted episcopate installed by Bergoglio and that arising from the unreflective sentimentality of the masses, may well result in the irredeemable upending of the RCC, which is already in a perilous state of decline.

Vito

* https://x.com/CarloMVigano/status/1914273114587824193

On Swimming the Tiber: Reasons for Leaving Protestantism

I had put the question to Russell B, "What were your reasons for becoming a Protestant in the first place and then leaving Protestantism, apart from acceptance of DDS? [The doctrine of Divine Simplicity?] And what sect did you leave? Here is his response; I have intercalated some comments of my own.

1) The reason I became a Protestant was due to poor catechesis, unfortunately. I went to Biola as an undergrad where I attended an Anglo-Catholic church in Newport Beach (Still a great and lively one). Unsurprisingly, my metaphysics class (which was actually labeled as an ontology class) just presupposed the thin theory of existence.

Then you probably did not take that class from J. P. Moreland, who very favorably reviewed my A Paradigm Theory of Existence.

My primary reasons for leaving Protestantism:

A) One has to admit the Church was fundamentally wrong for 1500 years until Luther came around (an impossible pill to swallow)

B) Unification of the church: you need a ‘head’ to settle disputes (much like a Supreme Court). I think orthodoxy struggles with this as well: they are seemingly split too.

C) I am a big-time social conservative (I would say I am slightly ‘left’ leaning economically) and couldn’t square most Protestant churches caving to the cultural winds of secularism. The Catholic Church has problems, of course, but not compromising on things like abortion and homosexuality, for example, struck me as very attractive. I also read portions of Alex Pruss’ One Body which sealed the deal.

D) The lives of the Saints especially Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, Anselm, Francis and St John of the Cross.

Now, I don’t want to knock Protestantism too hard. Of course one can be a Protestant and subscribe to DDS and endorse a thick conception of Existence.

2) The two upward paths, that of religion and that of philosophy, come together as one at the apex of the ascent in the divine simplicity. The ascent to the Absolute is thus onto-theological.

Beautifully written. I also want to thank you for your clear prose. I love Barry Miller and his work but at points he was a little sloppy and difficult to understand. I didn’t encounter that with your work.

PS:

1) I was recently listening to your episode on Dale Tuggy’s podcast. I hate recommending podcasts but I think my friend Pat Flynn—podcast called Philosophy for the People—reached out to you. If you have time, you should definitely consider going on it. His podcast is the only one that I am aware of that consistently talks about DDS, thin/thick existence, analytic philosophy’s dismissal of existence, etc.—basically everything that would appear on your blog. (Feser, Koons, Dolezal have all had appearances)

Russell's (B) above raises questions about the pros and cons of a teaching authority to unify doctrine and settle disputes.

One who refuses to accept, or questions, a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) may be accused of reliance upon private judgment and failure to submit to the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church. Two observations on this accusation.

First, for many of us private judgment is not merely private, based as it is on consultation with many, many public sources. It is as public as private. Everything I've read over the years from Parmenides on down in the West, the Bible on down in the Near East, and the Upanishads on down in the Far East feeds into my 'private' judgment. So my 'private' judgment is not merely mine as to content inasmuch as it is a collective cultural upshot, albeit processed through my admittedly fallible and limited pate. Though collective as to content, its acceptance by me is of course my sole responsibility. My first point, then, is that we ought to distinguish wider and narrower senses of 'private' and realize that a 'private' judgment might not be merely private.

Second, the party line or official doctrine of any institution is profoundly influenced by the private judgments of individuals. Think of the profound role that St. Augustine played in the development of Roman Catholic doctrine. He was a man of powerful will, penetrating intellect, and great personal presence. He was trained in rhetoric in Carthage and in Rome. Imagine going up against him at a theological conference or council!

Summing up the two points, the private is not merely private, and the official is not merely official.

Of course, part of the official doctrine of the Roman church is that its pronunciamenti anent faith and morals are guided and directed by the Holy Ghost. (Use of the old phrase, besides chiming nicely with der Heilige Geist, is a way for this conservative to thumb his nose at Vatican II-type innovations which, though some of them may have had some sense, tended to be deleterious in the long run. A meatier question which I ought to take up at some time is the one concerning the upsurge of priestly paederasty after Vatican II: post hoc ergo propter hoc? That should give pause to any one thinking of swimming the Tiber. Rod Dreher, who took the plunge, kept swimming, eastward. We could say he swam the Tiber first, and then the Bosporus, when, disgusted by priestly paedophilia, and the RCC's mafia-like protection of their own, he embraced Eastern Orthodoxy.)

What I have just written may sound as if I am hostile to the Roman Church. I am not. Nor have I ever had any negative experiences with priests, except, perhaps to have been bored by their sermons. All of the ones I have known have been upright, and some exemplars of the virtues they profess. In the main they were manly and admirable men. But then I'm an old man, and I am thinking mainly of the pre-Vatican II priests of my youth.

I have no time now to discuss the Church's guidance by the third person of the Trinity, except to express some skepticism: if that is so, how could the estimable Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) be followed by the benighted Bergoglio? (Yes, I am aware that there were far, far worse popes than the current one, and I am aware of the theme of Satan's grip on the sublunary.)

Of course, I have just, once again, delivered my private judgment. But, once again, it is not merely private inasmuch as it is based on evidence and argument: I am not merely emoting in the manner of a 'liberal' such as Bergoglio when he emoted, in response to the proposed Great Wall of Trump, that nations need bridges, not walls. What an unspeakably stupid thing to say! Well, then, Vatican City needs bridges not walls the better to allow jihadis easy access for their destructive purposes. Mercy and appeasement must be granted even unto those who would wipe Christianity from the face of the earth, and are in process of doing so.

But how can my judgment, even if not merely private, carry any weight, even for me, when it contradicts the Magisterium, the Church's teaching authority, when we understand the source and nature of this authority? ('Magisterium' from L. magister, teacher, master.)

By the Magisterium we mean the teaching office of the Church. It consists of the Pope and Bishops. Christ promised to protect the teaching of the Church : "He who hears you, hears me; he who rejects you rejects me, he who rejects me, rejects Him who sent me" (Luke 10. 16). Now of course the promise of Christ cannot fail: hence when the Church presents some doctrine as definitive or final, it comes under this protection, it cannot be in error; in other words, it is infallible.

In a nutshell: God in Christ founded the Roman church upon St. Peter, the first pope, as upon a rock. The legitimate succession culminates in Pope Francis. The Roman church as the one true holy catholic and apostolic church therefore teaches with divine authority and thus infallibly. Hence its teaching on indulgences not only cannot be incorrect, it cannot even be reasonably questioned. So who am I to — in effect — question God himself?

Well, it is obvious that if I disagree with God, then I am wrong. But if a human being, or a group of human beings, no matter how learned, no matter how saintly, claims to be speaking with divine authority, and thus infallibly, then I have excellent reason to be skeptical. How do I know that they are not, in a minor or major way, schismatics diverging from the true teaching, the one Christ promised to protect? Maybe it was some version of Eastern Orthodoxy that Christ had in mind as warranting his protection.

These and other questions legitimately arise in the vicinity of what Josiah Royce calls the Religious Paradox.