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Category Archives: Christendom

Why study anything but Scholastic Theology?

04 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by Editor in Christendom, Editorial, St Bonaventure

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Scholastic, Scholastic Theology, Scholasticism, Theology

To understand how important it is to support The Scholasticum — the only institute in all the world and all the Church dedicated to reviving the study of Scholastic Theology — take a moment to hear what Pope Sixtus V said of them, in his Decretal Letters of March 14, 1588, entitled, Triumphantis Hierusalem, § 10.:

For with the divine gift of Him, Who alone gives the spirit of knowledge and wisdom and understanding, and Who furnishes His Church throughout the lifetimes of generations with new benefits, as is needed, and Who provides Her with new supports, there has been discovered by Our ancestors, most wise men, Scholastic Theology, which two Doctors glorious above all, the angelic Saint Thomas, and the seraphic Saint Bonaventure, most brilliant professors in this capacity, and first among those, who have been registered among the number of the Saints, with excellent genius, assiduous study, great labors and vigils have refined and decorated, and have passed on to those who would come after, optimally arranged and in many ways very clearly explained. And, indeed, such a salutary understanding and practice of this science, which spread abroad from the richest sources of divine letters, of the Roman Pontiffs, of holy Fathers and Councils, could certainly always bring the greatest assistance to the Church, either to understand and interpret, truly and sensibly, the Scriptures themselves, or to read through and explain the Fathers more securely and usefully, or to detect and refute the various errors and heresies. Truly in these last days, in which there has already arrived those dangerous times described by the Apostle, and the blasphemous, proud, (and) seductive men who advance to what is worse still, erring and sending others into error, this (kind of theology) is necessary to sensibly confirm the dogmas of the Catholic Faith and to confute heresies. And the state of affairs is such, that the judges are the very enemies themselves of the truth, by whom Scholastic Theology has become dreadful to the greatest degree, who scarcely understand, by that apt and inner-connected coherence of things and causes, in that order and arrangement, as by the training of soldiers in fighting, with those lucid definitions and distinctions, by that firmness of arguments and the sharpest disputations, light is distinguished from shadows, and the true from the false, and their mendacity, involuted with many deceptions and fallacies, like a vestment borne away, is brought to light and stripped bare. Therefore, inasmuch as these men undertake to fight and overturn this most fortified citadel of Scholastic Theology, so much more does it befit us to defend this unconquered bulwark of the Faith, both to conserve and keep safe the inheritance of Our fathers, and to embellish, as much as we can, the keenest defenders of the truth with merited honors.

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The Scholasticum

25 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by Editor in Christendom, St Bonaventure

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Roma, Scholastic Philosophy, Scholastic Theology, The Scholasticum

Reblogged from www.studium-scholasticum.org

frontpage-image-289x300October 25, 2015:  An international association of scholars announced today its intention to work for the establishment of a new institute of medieval studies dedicated to reviving the study of Scholastic Theology and Philosophy. The institute will have as its goal the formation of a new generation of faithful Catholic theologians and philosophers according to the method of study employed by Sts. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure. (See our About page for more information), and will bear the name, “The Scholasticum”. Its website will be http://www.studium-scholasticum.org

The institute will offer courses to students physically present at its headquarters in Rome and by video-conferencing to those throughout the world.

To accomplish this goal, they are launching a fundraising campaign to meet the expenses of founding the institute, with the aim to open for the 2016/2017 academic year in Rome, Italy.  In addition, they are inviting scholars throughout the world who are interested in supporting the project to contact them (See Faculty page).

To help reach these goals, please consider making a generous donation via the Donation page, and let your friends and colleagues know about this endeavor in person and by electronic means.

Read more at their website:  www.studium-scholasticum.org

What a true Franciscan Pope would say to America, today!

02 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by Editor in Christendom, Foundations of Christian Living

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Communium Rerum, Liberty, Saint Pius X

Pius-X-tiara

Pope Saint Pius X, from his Encyclical, Communium Rerum, 1909 A. D.

…For you are aware, Venerable Brothers, and you have often lamented it with us, how evil are the days on which we have fallen, and how iniquitous the conditions that have been forced upon us… efforts of all kinds are being made to supplant the kingdom of God by a reign of license under the lying name of liberty. And to bring about by the rule of vices and lusts the triumph of the worst of all slaveries and bring the people headlong to their ruin-“for sin makes peoples wretched (Prov. xiv., 34)… thus the ministers of religion have been despised and mocked, and, wherever that was possible, reduced to powerlessness and inertia…distinguished laymen who openly profess their Catholic faith have been turned into ridicule, persecuted, kept in the background as belonging to an inferior and outcast class, until the coming of the day, which is being hastened by ever more iniquitous laws, when they are to be utterly ostracized from public affairs.

And the authors of this war, cunning and pitiless as it is, boast that they are waging it through love of liberty, civilization and progress, and, were you to believe them, through a spirit of patriotism-in this lie, too, resembling their father, who “was a murderer from the beginning,” and “when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar” (Igan., viii., 44), and raging with hate insatiable against God and the human race. Brazen-faced men these, seeking to create confusion by their words and to lay snares for the ears of the simple. No, it is not patriotism, or zealous care for the people, or any other noble aim, or desire to promote good of any kind, that incites them to this bitter war, but blind hatred which feeds their mad plan to weaken the Church and exclude her from social life, which makes them proclaim her as dead, while they never cease to attack her-nay, after having despoiled her of all liberty, they do not hesitate in their brazen folly to taunt her with her powerlessness to do anything for the benefit of mankind or human government.

…But with no less severity and sorrow have we been obliged to denounce and to put down another species of war, intestine and domestic, and all the more disastrous the more hidden it is. Waged by unnatural children, nestling in the very bosom of the Church in order to rend it in silence, this war aims more directly at the very root and the soul of the Church. They are trying to corrupt the springs of Christian life and teaching, to scatter the sacred deposit of the faith, to overthrow the foundations of the divine constitution by their contempt for all authority, pontifical as well as episcopal, to put a new form on the Church, new laws, new principles, according to the tenets of monstrous systems ; in short, to deface all the beauty of the Spouse of Christ for the empty glamor of a new culture…against which the Apostle frequently puts ;us on our guard: “Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit, according to the traditions of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ.” ( Colos. ii., 8.)

By this figment of false philosophy and this shallow and fallacious erudition, joined with a most audacious system of criticism, some have been seduced and “become vain in their thoughts” (Rom. i., 21), “having rejected good conscience, they have made shipwreck concerning the faith” (1. Tim. i., 19) ; they are being tossed about miserably on the waves of doubt, knowing not themselves at what port they must land; others, wasting both time and study, lose themselves in the investigation of abstruse trifling, and thus grow estranged from the study of divine things and of the real springs of doctrine. This hotbed of error and perdition (which has come to be known commonly as modernism from its craving for unhealthy novelty), although denounced several times and unmasked by the very excesses of its adepts, continues to be a most grave and deep evil. It lurks like poison in the vitals of modern society, estranged as this is from God and His Church, and it is especially eating its way like a cancer among the young generations, which are naturally the most inexperienced and heedless. 

It is not the result of solid study and true knowledge, for there can be no real conflict between reason and faith. ( Concil. Vatic., Cons tit. Dei filius, capo 4·) But it is the result of intellectual pride and of the pestiferous atmosphere that prevails of ignorance or confused knowledge of the things of religion, united with the stupid presumption of speaking about and discussing them. And this deadly infection is further fomented by a spirit of incredulity and of rebellion against God, so that those who are seized by the blind frenzy for novelty consider that they are all sufficient for themselves, and that they are at liberty to throw off either openly or by subterfuge the entire yoke of divine authority, fashioning for themselves according to their own caprice a vague, naturalistic individual religiosity, borrowing the name and some semblance of Christianity, but with none of its life and truth. 

Now in all this it is not difficult to recognize one of the many forms of the eternal war waged against divine truth, and one that is all the more dangerous from the fact that its weapons are craftily concealed with a covering of fictitious piety, ingenuous candor and earnestness, in the hands of factious men who use them to reconcile things that are absolutely irreconcilable, viz., the extravagances of a fickle human science with divine faith, and the spirit of a frivolous world with the dignity and constancy of the Church.

But if you see all this, Venerable Brothers, and deplore it bitterly with us, you are not therefore cast down or without all hope. You know of the great conflicts that other times have brought upon the Christian people, very different though they were from our own days. We have but to turn again to the age in which Anselm lived, so full of difficulties as it appears in the annals of the Church. Then, indeed, was it necessary to fight for the altar and the home, for the sanctity of public law, for liberty, civilization, sound doctrine, of all of which the Church alone was the teacher and the defender among the nations, to curb the violence of Princes who arrogated to themselves the right of treading upon the most sacred liberties, to eradicate the vices, ignorance and uncouthness of the people, not yet entirely stripped of their old barbarism and often enough refractory to the educating influence of the Church, to rouse a part of the clergy who had grown lax or lawless in their conduct…

…To us, as you know well, Venerable Brothers, are especially addressed the words of the Lord: “Cry out, give yourself no rest, raise your voice like a trumpet” ( Isai. lviii., :t.), and all the more that “the Most High has made His voice heard” (Psalms xvii., 14), in the trembling nature and in tremendous calamities, “the voice of the Lord shaking the earth,” ringing in our ears a terrible warning and bringing home to us the hard lesson that all but the eternal is vanity, that “we have nowhere a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come” ( Hebr. xiii., 14), but also a voice not only of justice, but of mercy and of wholesome reminder to the erring nations. In the midst of these public calamities it behooves us to cry aloud and make known the great truths of the faith not only to the people, to the humble, the afflicted, but to the powerful and the rich, to them that decide and govern the policy of nations, to make known to all the great truths which history confirms by its great and disastrous lessons, such as that “sin makes the nations miserable” (Prov. xiv., 34), “that a most severe judgment shall be for them that bear rule” (Sap. vi., 7), with the admonition of Psalm ii.: “And now, ye Kings, understand; receive instruction, you that judge the earth. Serve the Lord with fear . . . embrace discipline lest at any time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the just way.” More bitter shall be the consequences of these threats when the vices of society are being multiplied, when the sin of rulers and of the people consists especially in the exclusion of God and in rebellion against the Church of Christ-that double social apostasy which is the deplorable fount of anarchy, corruption and endless misery for the individual and for society.

And since silence or indolence on our part, as unfortunately is not unfrequently the case among the good, would incriminate us, too, let every one of the sacred pastors take as said to himself for the defense of his flock, and bring home to others in due season, Anselm’s words to the mighty Prince of Flanders: “As you are my Lord and truly beloved by me in God, I pray, conjure, admonish and counsel you, as the guardian of your soul, not to believe that your lofty dignity is diminished if you love and defend the liberty of the Spouse of God and your Mother, the Church, not to think that you abase yourself when you exalt her, not to believe that you weaken yourself when you strengthen her. Look round you and see; the examples are before you ; consider the princes that attack and maltreat her. What do they gain by it, what do they attain? It is so clear that there is no need to say it.” (Epist., lib. IV., ep. 12.) …

But there is comfort for us ; the Lord liveth and “He will make all things work together unto good to them that love God.” (Rom. viii., 28.) Even from these evils He will bring good, and above all the obstacles devised by human perversity He will make more splendid the triumph of His work and of His Church. Such is the wonderful design of the Divine Wisdom and such “His unsearchable ways” (Rom., xi., 33) in the present order of Providence, “for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor my ways your ways, saith the Lord” (Isai. lv., 8), that the Church of Christ is destined ever to renew in herself the life of her Divine Founder, who suffered so much, and in a manner to “fill up what is wanting of the sufferings of Christ.” (Coloss. i., 24.) Hence her condition as militant on earth divinely constrains her to live in the midst of contentions, troubles and difficulties, that thus “through many tribulations she may enter into the kingdom of God” (Act. xiv., 21) and at last be united with the Church triumphant in heaven…

They err greatly, therefore, who lose faith during the storm, wishing for themselves and the Church a permanent state of perfect tranquility, universal prosperity and practical, unanimous and uncontrasted recognition of her sacred authority. But the error is worse when men deceive themselves with the idea of gaining an ephemeral peace by cloaking the rights and interests of the Church, by sacrificing them to private interests, by minimizing them unjustly, by truckling to the world, “the whole of which is seated in wickedness” (I. loan. v., 19), on the pretext of reconciling the followers of novelties and bringing them back to the Church, as though any composition were possible between light and darkness, between Christ and Belial. This hallucination is as old as the world, but it is alwaysmodem and always present in the world so long as there are soldierswho are timid or treacherous and at the first onset ready to throwdown their arms or open negotiations with the enemy, who is the irreconcilable enemy of God and man.

It is for you, therefore, Venerable Brothers, whom Divine Providence has constituted to be the pastors and leaders of the Christian people, to resist with all your strength this most fatal tendency of modern society to lull itself in a shameful indolence while war is being waged against religion, seeking a cowardly neutrality made up of weak schemes and compromises to the injury of divine and human rights, to the oblivion of Christ’s clear sentence: “He that is not with Me is against Me.” (I. Cor. ix., 22.) …

This effort is necessary not only to oppose the assaults from without of those who fight openly against the liberty and the rights of the Church, but also in order to meet the dangers from within, arising from that second kind of war which we deplored above when we made mention of those misguided persons who are trying by their cunning systems to overthrow from the foundations the very institution and essence of the Church, to stain the purity of her doctrine and destroy her entire discipline. For even still there continues to circulate that poison which has been inoculated into many even among the clergy, and especially the young clergy, who have, as we have said, become infected by the pestilential atmosphere in their unbridled craving for novelty which is drawing them to the abyss and drowning them.

Then, again, by a deplorable aberration the very progress, good in itself, of positive science and material prosperity gives occasion and pretext for a display of intolerable arrogance towards divinely revealed truth on the part of many weak and intemperate minds. But these should rather remember the many mistakes and the frequent contradictions made by the followers of rash novelties in those questions of a speculative and practical order most vital for man, and realize that human pride is punished by never being able to be coherent with itself and by suffering shipwreck without ever sighting the port of truth. They are not able to profit by their own -experience to humble themselves and “to destroy the counsels and every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every understanding even unto the obedience of Christ.” (II. Cor. X., 4. s.)

Nay, their very arrogance has led them into the other extreme, and their philosophy, throwing doubt on everything in darkness, has involved them ; hence the present profession of agnosticism with other absurd doctrines springing from an infinite series of systems in discord with one another and with right reason; so that “they have become vain in their thoughts . . . for professing themselves to be wise they became fools.” (Rom. i., 21, 22.) But unfortunately their grandiloquent phrases and their promises of a new wisdom, fallen as it were from heaven, and of new methods of thought, have found favor with many young men, as those of the Manicheans found favor with Augustine, and have returned these aside, more or less unconsciously, from the right road. But concerning such pernicious masters of an insane knowledge, of their aims, their illusions, their erroneous and disastrous system, we have spoken at great length in our encyclical letter “Pascendi dominici gregis.”…

But if the erring continue obstinately to scatter the seeds of dissension and error, to waste the patrimony of the sacred doctrine of the Church, to attack discipline, to heap contempt on venerated customs, “to destroy which is a species of heresy” (S. Anselm., De nuptiis consanguineorum, cap. 1), in the phrase of St. Anselm, and to destroy the constitution of the Church in its very foundations, then all the more strictly must we watch, Venerable Brothers, and keep away from our flock, and especially from youth, which is the most tender part of it, so deadly a pest.

This grace we implore of God with incessant prayers, interposing the most powerful patronage of the August Mother of God and the intercession of the blessed citizens of the Church triumphant, St. Anselm especially, shining light of Christian wisdom, incorrupt guardian and valiant defender of all the sacred rights of the Church, to whom we would here, in conclusion, address the same words that our holy predecessor, Gregory VII., wrote to him during his lifetime: “Since the sweet odor of your good works has reached us, we return due thanks for them to God, and we embrace you heartily in the love of Christ, holding it for certain that by your example the Church of God has been greatly benefited, and that by your prayers and those of men like you she may even be liberated from the dangers that hang over her, with the mercy of Christ to succor us.” Hence we beg your fraternity to implore God assiduously to relieve the Church and us who govern it, albeit unworthily, from the pressing assaults of the heretics and lead these from their errors to the way of truth.” (In libro II., Epist. S. Anselmi, ep. 31.)

Catholic Civilization: Its Essence and Goal

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by Editor in Christendom

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A Meditation for the Vigil of the Incoronation
of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Coronation-Pater

Often one encounters a problem, the solution to which is not easy to see, precisely because the understanding necessary to solve it can only be had by comprehending many causes and their interrelationships.

Take, for example, the problem of driving from home to a place you have never been.  Before the invention of geo-mapping applications on cell-phones or portable GPS systems, as were very popular in cars just a few years ago, you had either to take counsel from someone who had been to your destination, or ask those along the road.  If you knew how to read a map, you could also use that.

Such a problem, that is, of traveling to an unfamiliar destination, was so complex of a problem, that for ages there have every been those who would prefer never to go beyond the world they knew, even if that self imposed restriction kept them from visiting the town next to their home town.

A similar problem exists when one confronts the problem of the de-Christianization of civilization, and considers just what has happened to Western Civilization since the time of the rise of Nominalism in the 13th century, the Protestant Revolt of the 16th century and the French Revolution.

This cultural transformation has effected every aspect of human endeavor and self-expression, which as a collective are termed “culture” by material Anthropologists.

When I went to University back in the 80’s, as I was considering becoming a missionary, I was counseled to obtain a B. A. in Anthropology to enable me to understand the different cultures of the third world.  While I never went to the third world, I learned much about the developments in the science of Anthropology which have lead to a greater understanding of the material aspects of human culture, in different world civilizations throughout the centuries.

While I found the materialism of my professors to be laughably ignorant, there were some observations which they made which, extracted from their de facto atheism, were valid objective considerations.

Being nearly 50 years of age, I have come to that point in my life where I am taking stock in the great panorama of experience and study I have had during my life, and considering more carefully just what this world, in which I live is about.  Being a man whose faith is central to his heart and mind, I have sought in such considerations some clues about just what is fundamentally wrong with modern culture, and why it is that Christianity in the West, since the end of the Second World War, has so visibly and manifestly disintegrated, inasmuch as so many who call themselves “Christian” and so many institutions officially recognized by society  as “Christian” have departed from fidelity to Christ Jesus and have abandoned their loyalty to Jesus Christ.

There are several aspects of what constitute a culture which make the culture itself incapable of being comprehended.

First of all, a culture is the entire ensemble or complex of human expression or achievements which are used by the human persons who live in that culture.  A Culture, such as Western Civilization, is thus something too large to see all at once, and too extensive to experience fully by any single person who lives in that culture.

To that extent, a single culture is a kind of sea in which one has always swam, or land in which one has never left.  For this reason, just as it is that one who always lives in the same town, but who never leaves to visit another, conceives his world more by the limitations he unconsciously has about what is important in the world, so one who lives within a culture and never considers the causes which brought it in to being or the paths along which it is wandering, lacks an objective basis upon which to base sound objective judgements about the value of such changes.

This lack of objective orientation leads necessarily to a certain sort of despair.  Because the man who despairs of something that can be achieved, does so first of all because he no longer holds that it can be achieved.  And just as the prejudice which holds that my town is so self sufficient for me, that I need never travel to another, leads a man to preclude the consideration of just where he is in the world, since he cares not to compare his town to another, and thus excludes himself from the experiences which would enable him to have the information necessary to make some such sort of judgment, so the man who lives immersed in a culture all of his life, necessarily accepts the changing values of that culture, when that culture changes.

Even those Westerners who attempt to gain some sort of objective conception of Western Civilization by means of traveling to other parts of the globe, so as to experience other cultures, never obtain a truly objective view of Western Culture, merely for the fact that all other cultures dispose a man, at the material level, to the same sort of “I am the center of the world” mentality.  And thus every human culture en-captures and entraps the human individual in a psychological environment which enables and facilitates the acceptance of the values that culture propagates in food, dress, language, arts, sciences, social organization, etc.

The only truly objective view of a human culture, therefore, can come from some sort of knowledge or experience which descends from a level of being which is above and outside of every human culture.  If man were but to have such knowledge and experience, then he would be able to form objectively sound and universally valid estimations of the value of any particular culture or of all human cultures.

For man, this is impossible; but for God all things are possible. And this great knowledge or wisdom which enables the human person to transcend the material aspects of the culture in which he lives was in fact given to man by God.  It is called the Catholic Faith.

This is because the Catholic Faith is nothing other than the knowledge the Eternal Son of God has in Heaven, which He has made known to us, His disciples with absolute sincerity and veracity, just as He said, “All that I have from the Father I have made known to you!”

Any culture, then, which would take the Catholic Faith as its highest and most fundamental principle for development, would, thus, be objectively the best of cultures and the most human and humane of cultures.  It would also be the culture capable of understanding what is good and evil in all cultures and how all cultures can progress to a greater and more morally upright way of life.

The Catholic Faith does this in 2 fundamental ways:  by imparting to believers the knowledge of Divine and human truths, which man could either never know by his own powers of reason, or which man could only know with difficulty.  In this first way, man has exact and authentic knowledge coming from His Creator about the origin and nature of this world, of himself, and the purpose both have in time and eternity.  With such knowledge believers are capable of forging a new civilization which is founded on eternally valid truths, and thus to establish a stable way of life which can endure the vicissitudes of the ages, despite whatever the passing of time might bring.

The second way the Catholic Faith enables a truly better human civilization is that it gives us certain knowledge of moral truths whereby man can govern his relationships with other men and with nature itself, so that his society be a truly honest and just one.

A Catholic Civilization, therefore, is something valid for the ages, and the greatest boon for mankind, because it ensures in the fundamental values and manner of ordering society a stability, the only stability, that can weather the centuries of time and enable every person in that society, both believer and unbeliever alike, access and the benefits of the greatest common good:  to believers the facility to live their faith, to unbelievers the facility to come to the faith; to both, a manner of life which is harmonious with the natural, moral and divine laws, upon which God Our Creator and Savior has established the universe.

Such a civilization by giving man true knowledge of the world and of himself, frees him from an infinite variety of errors which might deceive him about what constitutes authentic progress in society, science, art, religion, economics, etc..  It saves him from despair, when in the sufferings of life he is confronted with the seeming mysteries of suffering and death.  It ennobles him to strive to ever be a being which is faithful to the spiritual values which mere animals can never appreciate.

In this way, Christ Jesus, not only merited the salvation of each and every human person who would ever live, He also, through the Apostles and Sacred Tradition, bequeathed to the human race a deposit of knowledge which would serve and can serve as the foundation of a human civilization which would be fit to be a dwelling for those called to eternal life.

This is the nature, the form, and the end of a Catholic Civilization.

However, when I consider the problems which have overwhelmed the West since the end of the Second World War, when applying this vision of Catholic Civilization, I see more clearly that many in the West are profoundly disoriented by a superficial consideration of their place in history, and limited by their all to facile reaction to certain challenges of their age.

The first consequence of this superficiality, is the loss of a proper sense of what constitutes human dignity, for we cannot lose the proper sense of where we are in history, unless we have first lost a proper sense of who we are.  There is a widespread error that human dignity is by nature “sacred”.  While it is true that the human life of a Baptized Catholic is sacred, in the sense that by means of Baptism that human life is consecrated to God as an adopted son of the Eternal Father, yet human life itself, before being Baptized is not sacred at all.  In fact, in our conception we are conceived slaves of the Devil and are his property inasmuch as we are conceived in original sin and under the dominion of vice, sin and death.

If we say that all human life is sacred, we implicitly deny that the moral qualities of good and evil are the fundamental distinction between human persons, and thus are led to sacralize mere matter, without any consideration of its relation to God.

But matter is sanctified or consecrated only because it is made conform to God’s Will or dedicated to His service.  And this requires the intervention of grace; nature of itself cannot achieve it.  Therefore, if we were to take the oft-requoted phrase, “Human life is sacred”, in the strict literal sense, we would be lead into the error and heresy of Pelagius, the 4th century monk who believed the salvation and grace offered by Christ were helpful, but not necessary for human salvation.

We, Catholics, however, have always believed, and this truth resounds in the pages of the New Testament, that this world, by the sin of Adam, is a fallen world, and though by nature is good in the sense that God made it, morally speaking it has been turned to evil, inasmuch as it has been turned away from God.

Thus, for all those who believe in Christ, it is not only necessary to believe that He is Our Lord and Savior, but that we, sinners, were in need of salvation even before He came; and this, because of the original downfall of our race.  If man’s problem was strictly personal, it would have been sufficient for Him to send us each an Angelic revelation; it would not have required the Incarnation and Crucifixion!

Man’s proper sense of where he is in history, then, is ontologically entwined with his origin, his One and Only Savior, and how he lives in accord with these.  And just as this is true of the individual human being, so, consequently, it must be true of human society as a whole, since, in this case, the adage is true: the whole is the sum of its parts.

Hence, a true and just estimation of human cultures must contain and start upon the consideration of whether they are founded upon the truths of the Catholic Faith, obey the natural, moral and divine laws established by God, and live in an honest and morally upright manner in fidelity to these, for in this, the culture would be subordinated to the 3 great laws of the cosmos:  The Divine Law, the Moral Law, and the Rule of the Faith.

A culture or society which stood in rebellion with any part of any one of these laws, then, would be doomed, for the mere fact that it was not in harmony with the Manufacturer’s instructions for humanity.  Misused, man breaks; misconstructed, human society breaks apart.

From this point of view, we can see that there can be no toleration in principle of the validity of a culture or civilization which disagrees with any point of the Catholic Faith.  While it is just as true that in practice we must tolerate in every human civilization something awry, that is, not in harmony with the Catholic Faith (for perfection in every aspect is only found in the Civilization of Heaven), this does not mean that we can become complacent with these deviations, or worse, devote our efforts to propagating what is incompatible with the Faith.

In this light, we have a theology of culture by which we can easily see that there is only a very limited reason for praising any human culture, and that the form of culture in which we live becomes less and less Christian the more and more it departs from basic Christian values and teachings.

For this reason, any effort or endeavor to promote the Faith must include a cultural aspect of implementing in human daily life, the truths of the Faith which are under attack or opposed by Godless forces in contemporary society.

Second, in any effort to promote the Faith we must be careful not to fall into the error of thinking that by employing errors or immoral practices we can succeed.

Third, we must take care not to react so quickly to problems, that our reactions themselves incorporate some of the errors of the Godless forces at work in our world today.

In a word, we must have a heart totally dedicated, out of love for Christ, to fidelity to Him; and thus, an intellect moved by love and faith, ever seeking the understanding we need to remain faithful.  If we do this, we open the door to the possibility of becoming and remaining co-workers with Christ in the Church Militant, and merit His remembrance, at the hour of our death, in His Eternal Kingdom. Once opened, it remains only for us to step through.

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  • Dear Cardinals and Bishops: Let me explain to you the nature and effects of Substantial Error in the Feb. 11, 2013 Discourse of Pope Benedict XVI November 22, 2018
  • Saint Francis still calls men to true Penance August 18, 2018
  • The Restoration of the Eremitorio de San Bartolomé Begins! August 1, 2016
  • Fare Frate tradizionale! July 23, 2016
  • Why study anything but Scholastic Theology? April 4, 2016
  • The Scholasticum October 25, 2015
  • Torniamo a seguire le orme del nostro Serafico Padre September 3, 2015
  • What a true Franciscan Pope would say to America, today! July 2, 2015
  • « Laudato Sie, mi Signore… » — The Encyclical which needs to be written June 20, 2015
  • The Serra Option June 15, 2015
  • Letter to a prospective vocation of the Ancient Observance May 30, 2015

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Recent Posts

  • True blindness and true Sight
  • Dear Cardinals and Bishops: Let me explain to you the nature and effects of Substantial Error in the Feb. 11, 2013 Discourse of Pope Benedict XVI
  • Saint Francis still calls men to true Penance
  • The Restoration of the Eremitorio de San Bartolomé Begins!
  • Fare Frate tradizionale!
  • Why study anything but Scholastic Theology?
  • The Scholasticum

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  • News about The Franciscan Archive (7)
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