This article defends the modal collapse objection to the doctrine of divine simplicity. Brian Bosse asked me about this. Here is my answer. Put on your thinking caps, boys and girls. (Hey Joe, who was it who used to say that back at STS, Sr. Ann Miriam in the first grade?)
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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.
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.
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)
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.
The Veep's performance was impressive. The man has excellent public speaking skills, is considerably more articulate than his boss, and displays natural political talent. He will make a fine successor. On the down side, he, unlike Trump, is a professional politician. I don't have to explain what that means. Trump's astonishing effectiveness is in large part due to the fact that the man does not need the job and can't be bought. The same goes for his right-hand man, Elon Musk. Contrary to the filthy slandering of him by our political enemies, he is not in this for the money. (As if to mock these moral and intellectual incompetents, Elon has given new life to the Hitler salute by introducing the chainsaw variant. I call it 'blue-baiting.')
Vance was right to point out the blow Trump has struck for religious liberty for all faiths. He didn't mention Executive Order 14182 of 25 January, but I will. Enforcing the Hyde Amendment is an effective counterpunch against the corrupt and self-serving Joe Biden who, you will recall, reversed himself on his quondam support for the amendment:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1 . Purpose and Policy. For nearly five decades, the Congress has annually enacted the Hyde Amendment and similar laws that prevent Federal funding of elective abortion, reflecting a longstanding consensus that American taxpayers should not be forced to pay for that practice. However, the previous administration disregarded this established, commonsense policy by embedding forced taxpayer funding of elective abortions in a wide variety of Federal programs.
It is the policy of the United States, consistent with the Hyde Amendment, to end the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.
Now unless you are morally obtuse, or a Democrat (whichever comes first), you should be able to see right away that it is wrong for the federal government to force roughly half the taxpayers to support what they consider to be a moral outrage. It is wrong even if abortion right up to the moment of birth ought to be legal. I am not saying that it ought to be legal. I am saying that, even if it ought to be legal, and becomes legal, it would be wrong to compel taxpayers to pay for it. For that compulsion violates their conscience and moral judgment, a judgment that has the support of a battery of powerful arguments. (That the average Joe and Jane lack the intellectual 'chops' to produce these arguments, arguments which, by the way, needn't rely on any specifically religious premises, is not to the point; some of us can. Do you remember that RINO mediocrity George W. Bush? He would often say, in his flat-footed way, that "Marriage is between a man and a woman." He was right, but that's all he could muster: he lacked the mental equipment to defend his position in an articulate manner. He reminded me of the affable jocks I'd have in my logic classes. In this respect Bush was like too many conservatives. They have sound intuitions but cannot rise to their argumentative defense.)
In roughly the second half of his speech, Vice President Vance became repetitive, and what is worse, 'squishy' in the style of the 'liberal,' in his positive statements about the current pope. It is too bad that the man is dying, and perhaps we should pray for the man. But should we pray that his papacy continue? That is not obvious. I'd say it is the exact opposite of obvious. I don't believe I am very far off if I say that Bergoglio is to the RCC what Biden was to the USA, a disaster.
It follows that if you pray for the man, you should not pray that he continue to live. For if he continues to live, his destructive papacy will continue. His papacy ought to end, which is not to say that the papacy ought to end. You should pray that Bergoglio get his spiritual affairs in order, admit the damage he has done, confess his sins of omission and commission, and ask for forgiveness, lest he end up in hell, or in purgatory for a hell of a long time.
Here is the Veep's speech.
Elsewhere in the epistle, Francis implicitly condemns Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, for misunderstanding the Church’s teaching on ordo amoris—the order of love. Vance, a convert who was catechized by two of the most intelligent Dominican priests in America (I introduced him personally to his first teacher), had defended the administration’s tough migration policy by referring to St. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching that the order of love requires us to love those closest to us first—not exclusively, but primarily, as God has given us the duty to care for them.
It turns out that JD Vance really is more Catholic than the pope. The Catechism teaches that the moral duty towards foreign refugees must be balanced by duties to the common good of the people within one’s own country. Yes, wealthy countries do have a moral responsibility to be generous in welcoming distressed foreigners, but they have the right to set limits on migration, and to refuse it when they judge that it harms the common good. The official Catholic teaching balances charity with common sense.
JD Vance understands that; Pope Francis does not. The pope, in his teaching, has sanctified open borders—even, as in Europe, when those ungated frontiers allow the migration into the Christian lands of Europe of millions of Muslims who at minimum do not share the ancestral faith of Europeans, and no small number of whom are militantly hostile to it. If Francis had lived in the time of Pius V, Europe would be Islamic today.
What better way to spend one's last days than by deep inquiry into the Last Things?
Would that not be a better use of time than gambling and fox hunting, and the other examples of Pascalian divertissement?
You will soon be embarking nolens volens for a permanent stay in a foreign destination, departure date unknown. Are your affairs in order?
For a good old introduction to the traditional Roman Catholic doctrine on death, the intermediate state, resurrection, judgment, and eternity, see Romano Guardini, The Last Things.
What a hypocrite this guy is! You can 'migrate' anywhere, just not into the Vatican.
Don't you love that word 'migrate'? Its use manages to elide two important distinctions in one fell swoop: the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and that between immigration and emigration. A worthy addition to the lexicon of the Left.
A very good First Things article by Mary Eberstadt. I have only one comment. She reports, "The nation’s Catholic voters split 56 to 41 in favor of Donald Trump."
41 % against?
Why such a large percentage? Are they 'devout Catholics' in the style of Joe Dementia and Nancy the Shredder?
The Democrat Party, besides being anti-democratic, is anti-liberty, and in particular anti-religious liberty. If you haven't noticed that yet, then you are in need of a proctologist who specializes in self-induced head injuries.
Would you like to join my old friend Joe in his catacomb? Or perhaps you are eager for martyrdom.
One of the more interesting blog posts I have run across recently.
J. D. Vance on becoming Catholic. I wonder if David French has read this.
Étienne Gilson, writing in 1962:
Latin is the language of the Church. The sorry degradation of the liturgical texts by their translation into a gradually deteriorating vernacular emphasizes the need for the preservation of a sacred language whose very immutability protects them from the decay of taste. (The Philosopher and Theology, Cluny Media, 2020, p. 6)
Now why hadn't that argument occurred to me? It is so plainly cogent, and more apropos now than it was at the beginning of Vatican II.
'Thanks' to the internet, the degeneration of the various vernaculars is accelerating. Attempts to hold the line are rear-guard actions in the main. There is need of a dead language to offset the liturgy's slide into the morass of leftist cultural crapola.
Death renders immutable what was.
It’s a hell of a thing to realize that the leader of the one institution responsible more than any other for creating Western civilization — the Roman Catholic Church — is now actively working to dismantle that very civilization by opening the city gates, so to speak, wide to the invaders.
What do you even do with that if you are a Christian, Catholic or otherwise? German Reader is right. Do these sentimental clerics really think that life will go well for European Christians once the descendants of these migrants take power? How is life going for Christians in the Muslim world, eh? And even if they were to be religiously tolerant, there is still the matter of the erasure of distinct European cultures. The Great Replacement. And for what?
Top o' the Stack.
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Ruminations on Ratzinger
An old book recently translated. Reviewed here.
Good news, if true:
The American Catholic Church is seeing a prolonged surge of conservative young priests, leaving the aging and far more liberal Vatican II generation with no replacements.
According to a nationally representative survey conducted by the Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America, of 3,500 priests ordained since 2020, “More than 80 percent of priests ordained since 2020 describe themselves as theologically ‘conservative/orthodox’ or ‘very conservative/orthodox.'” Foreign-born priests in the United States, a significant contingent due to the overall low number of ordinations in the U.S., were found to be significantly more liberal than their American counterparts.
However, perhaps most revealing, the study found that no priest ordained since 2020 described himself as “very progressive.” In addition, nearly all priests ordained in 2020 and afterward described themselves as politically moderate or conservative.
Is the fumigation of the RCC finally upon us? As I recall my pal Catacomb Joe saying back in the day, fumus sanctus!
An RCC that degenerates into just another piece of leftist cultural junk needs to be defunded and ignored.
