Posted on 03/23/2011 7:02:13 AM PDT by marshmallow
There was a most interesting press conference today at the Vatican on a new decree that has been published by the Congregation for Catholic Education concerning the reform of philosophical studies. You can read an English summary at the Vatican Information Service. Cardinal Grocholewski said that the Decree was occasioned by the problems of philosophy in the secular world and within the Church where, as Pope Benedict said, "The crisis of the post-Vatican II theology is largely a crisis of its philosophical foundations."
Essentially, the Decree tightens up on philosophical studies, adding a year to the requirements for the Bachelor of Philosophy degree at Pontifical universities. This in fact also accords with the Bologna process which requires three years of study for a Bachelor level degree. According to Mgr Brugues, the Decree also places a particular emphasis on the role of metaphysics. In the case of ecclesiastical faculties of theology, and seminaries associated with them, 60% of the first two years' course should be in philosophy. Mgr Brugues emphasised the importance of systematic philosophy as opposed to the study simply of the history of philosophy or currents of thought. As he said, "information is not formation."
Fr. Charles Morerod OP, Rector the Angelicum, spoke particularly about the importance of metaphysics, quoting St Thomas to the effect that error concerning created things can lead to error concerning the things of God. He focussed especially on the importance of affirming the ability of the human mind to know the truth and to state it. In a striking comment, he said:
"Above all, our words need to be able to say something true about reality, otherwise the very Bible itself would not affirm anything."
As St Thomas wrote in the Summa Contra Gentiles: "agere sequitur ad esse in actu often shortened to agere sequitur esse or "action follows being". Applied to a press conference about a new Decree, it could perhaps be stretched to say that the existence of a new Decree about which various important people are speaking, should be followed (that is, in principle, not with any necessary interval of time) by the action of making the Decree available for people to read.
It has in fact been published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana and is available by post from the usual distributor Paxbook at a price of 3 euro. I haven't been able to identify whether it is also available by carrier pigeon or whether you could listen to it using cocoa tins tied together with a piece of string.
---kind of like a computer illiterate studying icons on a computer screen wondering what they mean, and proposing his pet theories as to what he thinks they are and what caused them.
“What is “metaphysics”? I have heard it used with new agey BS, but I don’t think i have heard it involved with Christianity.” ~ nerdwithagun
This may help:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2687844/posts?page=110#110
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2687844/posts?page=130#130
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2687844/posts?page=190#190
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2687844/posts?page=313#313
“Metaphysics is the study of comic books that have no speech bubbles, writing, nor captions-— kind of like a computer illiterate studying icons on a computer screen wondering what they mean, and proposing his pet theories as to what he thinks they are and what caused them.” ~ bunkerhill7
You’ve been reading too many comic books. See my previous post and stop embarrassing yourself.
Proper metaphysics is the study of the existence and knowledge. Unfortunately the term has been usurped by the occult to mean the study of the supernatural. The two uses of the term should not be confused.
This is what it adds up to: logical guesses at glimpses of the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, or like I said, reading a comic book that has only pictures and no text-
you have to guess the text.
And if you're a "flat-lander" merely living in the horizontal world, you'll never arrive a a fruitful "guess".
As is in my first link above:
You are not alone in your “hearings”. Scarcely anyone today knows anything about metaphysics, so, the New Agers take Aristotle's metaphysics and invent their own Gnosis.
All modern philosophies have in common the rejection of metaphysics. Therefore, stressing the teaching of metaphysics (that is, ONLY the perfected metaphysics of St Thomas Aquinas)is a rejection of all the modern philosophies. Which are the root cause of all our problems today!
It comes from Aristotle in it's origins. Plato was the philosopher who ennobled the search for truth, Aristotle FOUND truth, AND of course St. Thomas much more, he was able to perfect the metaphysics of Aristotle under the light of Faith. Unfortunately, today there are few good Thomists around, all of the people calling themselves Thomists today, are infected with “Darwinish evolution of truth”. Foretunately, one can just read St. Thomas’s Summa Theologica, in it's pre- 1950’s editions, and find it unadulterated by erroneous comments. Forget about all the translations, and “concise editions” of the Summa after like 1950, they are all polluted with modern errors.
From “My Life with St. Thomas” by Carol Robinson:
Now it has been said again and again that the greatness of the Summa of St. Thomas depends a lot on his method, and his method is his format. It has also been said that the Summa is the very model of concision and so cannot be compressed.
The Summa is divided into three parts; it is about God first of all, and then about all other things insofar as they are related to God, either as coming forth from Him by way of creation, or as returning to Him byway of redemption. So it is about everything, because everything is either God or related to God, and it treats everything on that level, using metaphysics. There is absolutely no secularism in the Summa, so this work is an automatic corrective of our secular society. The only thing that is not related to God is prime matter, which does not exist of itself. Modern physical science is all about matter considered in isolation from form, and so easily is the basis of atheism. In our day almost everything besides matter has been considered in this same isolated way and the consequence is that what we consider about it is its material cause alone.
Within his general framework, appropriately sub-divided, St. Thomas proceeds in an orderly way by asking questions. But in every case, having raised the question, he examines it first instead of giving categorical answers. He raises difficulties which will be dealt with after he has made the main point clear, so that he not only answers the question but he clears up a lot of objections which stand in the way of our accepting his answers. That's why he always convinces his sincere opponents.
St. Thomas really has to be studied in the manner in which he wrote it, because it is packed with wisdom, and answers to nagging questions are found in unexpected places, sometimes almost in passing. Let me give you an example:
In the course of his treatise on Sin, he asks “Whether the gravity of a sin is affected by the amount of harm it does?” The reader of this piece ought to know that there is a moral theory going around learned Catholics circles which espouses something called Consequentialism. Explanations of this position are murky, but I suppose it is simply pragmatism under an assumed name. Pragmatism says that a deed is to be judged entirely by the amount of harm it does, whereas St. Thomas is asking only if a sin gets worse by doing more harm. In his Objections he raises this difficulty, that the Church considers sins against God more grave than those against one’s neighbor, yet it is evident that sins against our neighbor generally do more harm than sins against God; for instance, it is worse to kill a woman (whereby she loses her very life) than to seduce her (in the course of which she falls from grace). Therefore it would seem that sins against our neighbor are worse than sins against God, contrary to the Church's teaching.
In his answer to this objection St. Thomas grants it is worse to murder a woman than to seduce her; but then he yanks us back from this “consequentialism” by reminding us that this is not the only or even the main way of judging the gravity of sin. It only adds to the gravity determined otherwise. Sin is essentially a spiritual disorder in the sinner, and the more disordered his conduct is, the graver the sin. “Inordinate” is a word frequently found in St. Thomas’s moral theology. It means a straying from the right order of conduct set by God. Fornication is an inordinate use of sex (not in marriage) and adultery is still more inordinate (and therefore more grave) because it adds an element of injustice to a rightful spouse. Homosexuality adds a qualitative leap to sexual disorder because it is not only against God's moral law but also against nature. But frigidity is inordinate too, by defect. Note that in all these distinctions of gravity St. Thomas never says that sex in itself is bad. So it is with all the sins, St. Thomas preserves the goodness of life and nature while condemning their abuse. Stealing is bad because it means taking something (something good) which belongs to another, without his permission.
So the more inordinate a sin is, the graver it is; but the order it violates is an order laid down by God; so all sins are against God and the worse the disorder, the more against God. They are also against ourselves and our neighbors, but subordinately.
St. Thomas simply will not let us fall into secularism, humanism and materialism.
If sinful acts are not inherently disordered in the persons who commit them, then there is no other place or consideration for condemning them. One watches prominent people struggle to condemn sin, and a sorry spectacle it is. A sin is any word, deed, thought, or omission against the Eternal Law of God, but nobody wants now to say that homosexuality is an unnatural sin or that blasphemy is a sacrilege or that pornography is a diseased use of sexuality. Recently there has been a furor over an art exhibit which includes paintings by a homosexual man of pornographic homosexual acts, and some shockingly blasphemous pictures to boot. No public figure wanted to say that this filth came from hellish sinfulness and could cause people to go to hell, and that it was sinful even to look at it. Instead we heard person after person complain about the fact that it was our tax money that was funding the exhibition. “You can do what you want with your own money, but it is an outrage that you are using our tax money to put on this show!”
It is not true that we can do what we want with our own money. We are morally obliged to use it in right ways, and forbidden to use it for sinful purposes….
Would you be so kind as to remove my posting #9.
Thanks and God Bless
Nobody can know what this article means, just like everything that comes from Rome for the last 50 years. The good will use it to teach the Summa as it was written. The bad will use it to confuse things further, just adding a Thomist cage to their Zoo of hundreds of philosophies.
blepomen gar arti di esoptrou en ainigmati, tote de prosopon, arti gignosko ek merous, tote de epignosomai. kathos kai epegnosthan.
If “theology” has philosophical foundations, then it is not theology. To be of any value, theology must be a positive science founded on the experience of God, both as reported in the Scriptures and the Lives of the Saints and as experience by those who through prayer and ascesis have attained purity of heart so that as Our Lord promised they might see God.
Affirming metaphysics as a “foundation” of theology is a grievous mistake that pushes unity the between the Latina and the Orthodox further away.
When commenting in a foreign language - or quoting the Bible - be sure to include an English translation or Chapter/verse reference.
Adults speaking as children may not want to expose themselves. :)
Excerpt from: MY LIFE WITH THOMAS AQUINAS, by Carol Robinson - Article from Integrity Magazine January 1947, “A Christian Abnormal Psychology”, by Carol Robinson:
A. Differences in Intellectual Capacity.
All things being equal, the simple minded and the very intelligent men are the most easily unbalanced. A simple intellect cannot handle complex and subtle ideas because it is unable to resolve seeming contraries and make subtle distinctions. There are quite a few simple people in the world. For their own happiness, sanity and sanctity, they should lead simple, peaceful ordered lives according to truths all authoritatively given them by others. The Catholic Church has ways guarded the simple, and the near simple. She has protected them when she could from religious controversy (while the wise could debate about such matters publicly), from reading harmful books, and even from the mental and moral tangles of Hollywood. When she made a society the simple were mostly on the land, close to animals and fields, folk music and dancing, and their guardian the Church. Even today the mildly demented among them can occasionally find sanctuary working in peace, silence, and simplicity for a monastery or convent.
Heaven help the simple today! The schools want them to make up their own minds about the gravest problems of life and eternity. The newspapers and radio invite them to consider matters too difficult for international statesmen to settle. Everyone has to have an opinion about everything, whether or not it is within his province or competence.
The very intelligent have a different problem, peculiar to societies like ours. Intelligence drives the mind to the discovery of basic principles, to correlating, comparing, weighing, testing. A philosophical genius could easily go mad in Harvard or Yale, where every professor consciously or unconsciously contradicts his colleagues, to say nothing of the internal inconsistencies in his own theories. In a world devoid of fundamental certainties, and even implicitly denying the possibility of discovering truth, its best brains are tempted to blow themselves out. When high intellectual quality is combined, as it often soon is, with escape via the sense pleasures, the hazards are even greater. Again it is the Church which could have saved them, and would have in another age. The mind driven to distraction by Nietzsche and Hegel would have found rest, joy and adventure in the certainty of the Faith and the lucidity of the Summa Theologica.
Physics is the study of what is real. Metaphysics is the study of what is real beyond what can be instrumentally measured and experimentally tested. (Yes, there is a complaint that modern Physics is veering into Metaphysics.) As such, questions of a transcendent nature, the soul, God, etc., are the domain of metaphysics. Unfortunately, “metaphysics” is also the word applied to things which cannot be instrumentally measured of experimentally tested because it’s pure nonsense: ghosts, psychics, monsters, UFOs, alternate dimensions, etc.
I prefer physics.
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