Suscipe Domine Traditional Catholic Forum

From: https://ccatholicism.wordpress.com/2019/08/30/why-i-converted-from-orthodoxy/

(https://ccatholicism.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/ukranian-final.jpg)

By Gideon Lazar, The Catholic University of America (Above: Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family, the church where Gideon was received)

The day this was posted, I was received into the Catholic Church. Many of my Orthodox friends are likely shocked at my decision, so I wrote this article to explain my reasoning.

First some background on myself. I was raised in a non-religious Jewish family. I considered myself an atheist for as long as I can remember. In my Junior year of high school, I looked into the evidence for Christianity, looking to refute it. I walked away from that endeavor becoming a believer in Jesus and firmly convinced by the evidence. I began to read about the early Christians, and then look at modern denominations. I was convinced that the Orthodox Church was the true Church, and so I became a catechumen. After two years as a catechumen I was baptized into the Orthodox Church. Many of my friends are Catholic, so I went to go research Orthodox apologetics against Catholicism in an effort to prove that the Orthodox Church is the true Church. While at first it seemed obvious that the Orthodox Church was right, the more I studied, the more I realized I was missing a lot of nuance. I ultimately ended up being convinced by the evidence for the Catholic Church, and so I had no choice but to convert. So now, a little over a year after my baptism, I am being received into the Catholic Church. I ask readers to please read the entire article (I know it's long) before rushing to judgement as I may respond to your points later in the article. If you feel as though I did not address something important, please comment below about it. Because of the length of the article, I could not put as much detail to every section as I would have liked and so I may write more on these topics in the future.

Fatima

The thing that initially triggered my move towards Catholicism is Our Lady of Fatima. One of my friends was telling me about the fruits Fatima had on her own life. She read what the Theotokos had said to the children about modesty, and it caused her to become more modest in her dress. She also told me about how her priest had visited Fatima and when he came back, he preached a fiery sermon about the reality of hell. I had been told by my fellow Orthodox Christians that Fatima was at best a hoax and at worst demonic, so I decided to investigate Fatima for myself.

The view that Fatima is simply a hoax cannot be the case. It has a miracle connected with it that was witnessed by thousands of people, many of whom were atheists who came to the event specifically to refute what the children were saying. Skeptics have argued that it was simply a mass hallucination, but Christians should be skeptical of this argument. Skeptics of the resurrection of Jesus often respond to the fact that there were 500 witnesses by pointing to Fatima. If Fatima was a mass hallucination, so could the resurrection of Jesus have been. No other mass hallucination has ever been recorded though. In reality, Fatima was actually the most seen public miracle since the time of the exodus about 3500 years ago.

The other objection to Fatima is that it is demonic. However, the vision doesn't sound like Satan at all. Would Satan command people to pray 53 Hail Marys and 6 Our Fathers, both fully Orthodox prayers, every single day? Would Satan command people to pray that Jesus "lead all souls to heaven" 5 times every day? Would Satan remind people about the reality of hell in a time when even the Church is forgetting about it? Would Satan seal all of this through a public miracle witnessed by thousands of atheists, causing many to convert and dedicate their lives to Christ? If this is Satan's plan, it isn't a very good one.

I did find one way to stay Orthodox after discovering this. Fatima was true and Orthodoxy is true. After all, the message of Fatima seems entirely Orthodox. There are some major problems with this though. First, Our Lady said that "in Portugal the dogma of the faith will always be preserved." Portugal has remained Catholic, with only a tiny Orthodox minority. If Orthodoxy is true, the dogma of the faith has not been preserved in Portugal. In addition, Our Lady requested that Russia, the largest Orthodox country, be consecrated by the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, to the immaculate heart (a Catholic devotion rejected by many Orthodox as heretical) so that it will be converted. I reconciled this by saying that it needed to be converted from communism back to Orthodoxy. However, why would God request Catholics to do this in a very Catholic way? One Orthodox priest I read tried to fix this by saying that the "Holy Father" was actually the Patriarch of Moscow. This is already a stretch because the Patriarch is not called by this title while the Pope is. He goes even further by claiming that "the immaculate heart of Mary" is actually the true teachings of the Orthodox Church but the Theotokos needed a way to communicate this to peasant children. At this point this is such a stretch that it's just easier to draw the obvious conclusion, if Fatima is true then Catholicism is true.

Missionary Work
The other major event that triggered my shift towards Catholicism was reading about the history of Catholic missionary work. In Orthodoxy, there are a few saints that are famous for missions: Sts. Cyril and Methodius (who were before the schism), St. Nicholas of Japan, and St. Herman of Alaska. In fact, if you discuss missionary work with anyone who is Orthodox, they will probably bring up St. Herman of Alaska. There is a reason he is brought up again, and again, and again. He is essentially the only successful Orthodox missionary since the schism. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it's mostly true. He converted a few hundred natives in Alaska, and that's basically it. St. Nicholas' mission in Japan now numbers less than 10,000 people, less than 0.01% of the population of Japan. Orthodox report large missions currently in Africa and Latin America, but the numbers are highly exaggerated and are often self-reported to be 10 or 100 times larger than what is recorded on official censuses by the government or third parties.

On the other hand, Catholics have a long and glorious history of missionary work. I used to assume this was simply because of colonial empires, but this is false. Catholic missionary work continued after the schism. Missionaries went as far as China and India before the age of sail, despite the fact that the Orthodox were closer to these lands and didn't go. During the crusades, St. Francis of Assisi went to the Sultan himself and tried to convert him.

Then, during the age of sail Catholic missionaries went to places where there weren't colonial interests. Catholics went to places in India where there were no Portuguese settlements. They went to Japan and continued to sneak in even after they were expelled. They went deep into forests and mountains in Latin America beyond Spanish and Portuguese settlements. Priests often stood up the colonial authorities to defend the natives, one of the main factors that eventually lead to the suppression of the Jesuits by the Pope under pressure from colonial empires. On the other hand, Orthodox missionary work before the 20th century was pretty much exclusively limited to the land of the Russian empire.

The Eastern Catholic Churches

Catholics also did missionary work for the Eastern Christians. This created the Eastern Catholics, known also as the Uniates. The first major group of these is the Maronites. Since the Maronites were under Muslim rule, they had no contact with Rome for hundreds of years. When they finally got contact during the crusades and learned of the schism, they quickly sided with Rome. The other Eastern Catholics came later. There is a myth in Orthodoxy that people only became Eastern Catholics under force by Catholic kings. This has some truth to it, but is mostly false. These groups mostly came over willingly. While some did come over by force, the Orthodox also forcibly converted large numbers of Eastern Catholics Orthodoxy. This objection by Orthodox is really just an appeal to enlightenment ideas of freedom of religion that have not been historically held by Orthodoxy or Catholicism.

It's also notable that there are large numbers of Eastern Catholics, but very few Western Rite Orthodox. Since the schism, the West has sought unity such as at 2 Lyons and Florence. While these were mostly failures, they were rooted in a desire for unity. After the schism, there were large amounts of Jesuit missions to Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Rome also sought union with all the East. The Catholic Church has within it all 6 rites of the Church: Latin, Byzantine, East Syriac, West Syriac, Alexandrian, and Armenian. The Eastern Orthodox Church has only the Byzantine rite, while the Oriental Orthodox Church has the West Syriac, Alexandrian, and Armenian rites and the Assyrian Church of the East has the East Syriac rite. The Eastern Orthodox have done much ecumenical dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox, but right now any Oriental Orthodox priest who were to convert would have to change to the Byzantine rite. There are a small number of Latin rite Orthodox, but they have only 2 or 3 dozen parishes in the whole world and did not start until the 20th century. They are also highly Byzantinized, worse than most of the Latinization of the Eastern Catholics. The Western Rite Orthodox are also seen as not really being "truly" Orthodox by many Orthodox who know of them, and most Orthodox don't know they exist.

There is a common accusation by Orthodox against Catholics that Eastern Catholics are treated like second class citizens. There is some truth to this. However, it is highly exaggerated. Latinization of Eastern Catholics was usually done only by local bishops and opposed by Rome. Leo XIII wrote an encyclical against the Latinization of Eastern Catholics. Latinization was also usually self-imposed in order to prove their unity to Rome and to differentiate themselves from the Orthodox.

The most famous incidents of Latinization are limited to America where local bishops treated Eastern Catholics horribly. One famous case was Fr. Alexis Toth. Toth was a Greek Catholic priest from Slovakia who came to Minneapolis to minister to Eastern Catholic immigrants. He was opposed by the local bishop, John Ireland, who refused to let him serve. Furious, Toth became Orthodox and brought with him around 10 thousand Eastern Catholics. Toth was later canonized by the Orthodox Church. Orthodox often appeal to this to prove that Rome is just power hungry. However, this is not an isolated incident for Bishop Ireland. Ireland hated immigrant communities and tried to get them to integrate with America. He caused thousands of Poles to leave the Catholic Church as well and form the Polish National Catholic Church. He was also well known as a modernist. Toth left the Church because of one bishop who was not in line with what Rome was saying. Toth is not a great saint who exposed the entire plot of the Catholic Church.

Many Orthodox also accuse Eastern Catholics of being inconsistent. After all, Eastern Catholics venerate many post-schism Orthodox saints such as Gregory Palamas and Seraphim of Sarov. These saints are venerated for their clear holiness. I had heard all the time when I was Orthodox that Eastern Catholics venerate strongly anti-Roman saints like Mark of Ephesus and Alexis Toth, but this is mostly not true I discovered. There is a movement among Eastern Catholics called the Zoghby Initiative, started by Melkite Catholic Archbishop Elias Zoghby. Zoghby wanted to reject all post-schism councils and enter into communion with the Orthodox, while at the same time remaining in communion with Rome. This is usually what Orthodox think of when they think of Eastern Catholics. The Zoghby Initiative, while popular among many Melkites and some other Byzantine Catholics, has been rejected by Rome. Eastern Catholics are still bound to all Roman dogmas but are encouraged to express these dogmas in their own theological language.

The Holiness of Western Saints

While Catholics can acknowledge the holiness of those Orthodox who did not cause the schism and were merely born into it, the Orthodox are unusually not so charitable in return. Besides a few voices, almost all Orthodox, even the more ecumenical ones, agree that Catholic saints cannot be venerated.

Some Orthodox accuse Catholics saints of prelest, spiritual delusion. One of the most commonly accused is St. Francis of Assisi. Since St. Francis wrote a new rule of life for his friars, he must have not been truly rooted with the patristic tradition and he was actually just prideful. This accusation is highly problematic. For one, St. Francis' rule is 95% in line with tradition. He focused on fasting, prayer, and spiritual ministry. He renounced all worldly possessions; just as Orthodox monks do. Some elements of his rule were different, but many Orthodox saints such as Paisius Velichkovsky modified monastic life as well. Every incident in Francis' life that is supposedly prelest has an equivalent moment in the life of an Orthodox saint. When I read The Life of St. Francis by St. Bonaventure, I found nothing but a very saintly man, just like all the Orthodox saints I had read about. It is also not just random people accusing St. Francis of prelest. The famous Orthodox saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, as well as the widely venerated Fr. Seraphim Rose, accuse St. Francis of preslest.

Orthodox Sacramental Theology

Some Orthodox go even further. They claim that all Catholic sacraments are invalid (they say "graceless") and so Catholics are identical to unbaptized pagans.  They insist that any Catholic who converts must be rebaptised. Some of these people are about as anti-Catholic as some of the extremes of Protestantism. These people are also not a vocal minority. They are very loud and include among their ranks bishops and patriarchs. This view is essentially just a renewal of the heresy of Donatism.

Many Orthodox are more moderate. They insist only that Catholics be received into Orthodoxy by the sacrament of Chrismation (known in the West as Confirmation). However, this introduces far more ecclesiological problems than it solves. It confuses the nature of a sacrament itself. A sacrament leaves an indelible mark on the soul. If Catholic Confirmations are valid, then they cannot receive the sacrament again when they come into Orthodoxy.

This practice of reception by chrismation is also at clear odds with the practice of reception by baptism. In order to reconcile these differing practices, the concept of oikonomia has been applied to the reception of converts. Oikonomia is the loosening of the canons in order to meet someone where they are at in their fallen state. In the West, this is called a dispensation. The belief here is that what was lacking in the first baptism (grace) is filled in the chrismation. They had only the outward form of Baptism, not inward grace. This is problematic on a number of levels. First, it once again attacks the nature of sacraments themselves. Sacraments are by their very nature outward signs of inward grace. The grace and the form cannot be received at different times. Secondly, it isn't oikonomia. Oikonomia is a loosening of the canons, but the canons do not proscribe that heretics who are trinitarian be rebaptized. It is actually the reception by baptism which is an abuse of the canons. Finally, it is simply a way for converts received by chrismation to still be seen as Orthodox by those who rebaptize.

For some this is not enough, however. Some Orthodox priests, such as many monks on Mt. Athos or even many priests in ROCOR, will insist that those who have been received only by chrismation must receive baptism, but not chrismation again. This just ruins sacramental theology even further. One cannot receive the sacrament of Chrismation before one has received the sacrament of Baptism. Additionally, this is essentially a denial of the theory of reception of oikonomia. If they are really denying this theory, then why are they still willing to commune people who have been received only by chrismation? They are giving communion to people who are still catechumens. Also, why do they venerate saints who were only received by chrismation, such as Elizabeth the New Martyr? If they do accept the theory, then why do they repeat baptism on an already baptized person, which according to the Fathers is to crucify Christ again.

This disagreement over the validity of heretical baptisms is not a new problem. In his book Russia and the Universal church published in 1889, Vladimir Soloviev relays this story:

William Palmer, a distinguished member of the Anglican Church and of the University of Oxford, wished to join the Orthodox Church. He went to Russia and Turkey to study the contemporary situation in the Christian East and to find out on what conditions he would be admitted to the communion of the Eastern Orthodox. At St. Petersburg and at Moscow he was told that he had only to abjure the errors of Protestantism before a priest, who would thereupon administer to him the sacrament of Holy Chrism or Confirmation. But at Constantinople he found that he must be baptized afresh. As he knew himself to be a Christian and saw no reason to suspect the validity of his baptism (which incidentally was admitted without question by the Orthodox Russian Church), he considered that a second baptism would be a sacrilege. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to accept Orthodoxy according to the local rules of the Russian Church, since he would then become Orthodox only in Russia while remaining a heathen in the eyes of the Greeks; and he had no wish to join a national Church but to join the universal Orthodox Church. No one could solve his dilemma, and so he became a Roman Catholic.

This same problem continues with clergy. Some Orthodox Churches will receive Catholic priests by a ceremony of vesting. Other Orthodox Churches will insist this priest be baptized again. While one can argue that the form of baptism was still correct while it lacked grace, the same cannot be done with ordination. If Catholic holy orders are invalid, then that means all Catholic bishops are really unbaptized pagans. Can an unbaptized pagan perform the whole ceremony of ordination, and then an Orthodox bishop steps in afterwards to fill in the grace? This is essentially a way to avoid the fact that these Orthodox sacramental rigorists would have to think that there are large numbers of lay people running around the Church thinking they are clergy. In the case of the Carpatho-Russian Archdiocese, the entire archdiocese was received into the Orthodox Church from the Catholic Church by a mere telegram. Can a telegram convey sacramental grace with the same efficacy of a bishop?

The Disunity of Orthodoxy

This lack of consistency in sacramental practice highlights a fundamental problem of Orthodoxy: it is not united. As I write this article, the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Church, and the most powerful one, the Constantinople, are not in communion with one another. In addition, for the past five years, Antioch and Jerusalem have not been in communion. These constant schisms are usually over minor territorial disputes, but effect hundreds of millions of lay people. These schisms are also not a new thing. Back in 1996, there was a break in communion between Moscow and Constantinople over jurisdiction over Estonia. From 1872-1945, Bulgaria and Constantinople were not in communion.

To confuse things even more, in 1917, ROCOR broke away from ROCOR was in communion with Jerusalem and Serbia, but not the rest of the Orthodox Church because they had all adopted the Gregorian calendar (since a calendar made a pagan king is obviously Christian while one made by a Pope is heretical). During this period between 1917 and 2007 when they reunited with Moscow, ROCOR also entered into and broke communion with various Greek Old Calendarist groups who were not even in communion with one another. Finally, in 2007 they reunited with Moscow without actually resolving which one of them was right. To this day no one agrees whether or not they were canonical during this time. ROCOR also holds strictly that there are no sacraments outside the Church. (One priest who played a major role in my conversion to Catholicism got defrocked by ROCOR for thinking otherwise.) Are the sacraments of the Greek Old Calendarists valid since ROCOR was in communion with them? Were the sacraments of all the Orthodox Churches following the Gregorian calendar valid from 1917-2007?

This disunity is not just in communion. The Churches do not act like one Church in missionary work. In every country outside Eastern Europe and the Middle East, one will find parishes under Moscow and Constantinople. They will both claim jurisdiction over these lands. In many cases, there are also many other jurisdictions, most commonly Antioch.

One could argue that it is hypocritical to point out, as many places have overlapping Latin and Eastern Catholic bishops. This however is because these are actually different traditions. A Byzantine and a Latin live different spiritual lives. Many of these Churches are also the result of healed schisms and the old hierarchy remained. The key difference though is that there is a clear system canonically as to how this all works. In Orthodoxy, everyone is implicitly saying that everyone else's jurisdictions are illicit by placing overlapping bishops abroad. In Catholicism, this is all worked out and is not an abuse of the canons.

This disunity of jurisdictions in Orthodoxy manifests further disunity, such as how to grant autocephaly. In an attempt to unify all Orthodox Christians in North America, the Patriarch of Moscow granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in America. However, basically no one recognized the OCA and overlapping parishes remain. Moscow sees the OCA as autocephalous, but everyone else sees the OCA as under Moscow. Moscow also contradicts their own claims of the OCA's autocephaly by setting up bishops in America and by allowing ROCOR to have bishops in America. This dispute over whether it is the sole prerogative of Constantinople to give autocephaly is the cause of the current schism in Ukraine.

This disunity is also not a new problem. Vladimir Soloviev felt many of the same issues in his own day, which he voiced in his book Russia and the Universal Church. He pointed out that if Moscow and Constantinople had any real relationship with one another, there would likely very quickly be a schism. Historically, Moscow and Constantinople alomst never talked. Now that they have been talking regularly since the fall of communism in 1991, there have been two schisms and one failed pan-Orthodox synod. What Soloviev saw in his own day just took 100 years to finally bubble to the surface. This disunity is not the fruits of communism, but communism actually delayed the disunity from manifesting outwardly.

The Papacy

I eventually came to realize that this disunity has a solution. "And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Before considering the theological and historical issues at play in the papacy, we must first consider the practical ones. The papacy provides a very real unity to Catholicism. It is very clear who is Catholic and who is not. If you are in communion with the Pope you are Catholic, if you are not in communion with the Pope you are not. There are sometimes some gray areas, but these are much rarer. The papacy also allows the calling of councils as there is a clear status to councils. Orthodox still cannot agree if councils from all the way before the schism (such as fourth Constantinople) are ecumenical or not. The Pope as a final arbiter is necessary for the unity of the Church.

Moving onto theological objections, one of the most common Orthodox objections to the papacy is that the rock was Peter's confession of faith, not Peter himself. Others will say that the rock is actually Christ. However, this is a false dichotomy. Christ is the rock, and Peter is also the rock through being the Vicar of Christ. If Christ is the chief cornerstone, Peter is the second stone. Christ explicitly renames Peter from Simon to Peter, and then repeats his name right next to mentioning the rock. Peter is also the rock through his profession of faith. Peter is the one who knew who Christ was, and so he is the one to guide all Christians to the identity of Christ through his authority over doctrine. You can find Fathers who say the rock was Christ, ones who say the rock was the confession of faith, and ones who say it was Peter himself. The Fathers should be read in light of one another, not as opponents. They point to one shared truth. This connection is made clear in the Odes of Matins for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. Peter is repeatedly called the rock, and many of these times he is called the rock of faith. His confession of faith cannot be separated from his person who is to keep the purity of the faith.

That Peter is the point of unity of the Church is clear elsewhere in Matthew 16. The only time in the entirety of the gospels when Christ says he will build the Church is when he says he will build it on Peter. This is to make it clear that the point of unity of the Church is Peter. The other key part of this passage is verse 19, where Peter receives the keys. He is the only one to explicitly receive the keys. While the other apostles do in some sense receive the keys in Matthew 18 and John 20, they possess the keys through Peter as it is Peter who receives them explicitly. This is why in Catholic theology, jurisdiction given by the Pope is necessary for the liceity of the sacraments, but not their validity the bishops receive their holy orders from the apostles, not from the Pope.

Finally, moving onto the historical objections, there are too many passages to walk through one by one. Part of the problem is that the Orthodox have no unified view of how papal authority should be exercised in the Church. Some say that the Pope is merely another bishop, others say he exercises a high authority over the West as he is the Patriarch of that Church, and others say he does in fact possess an authority over the entire Church, but it is not as strong as it came to be.

It is clear from the Fathers that the Pope does indeed have this third kind of authority. This is clear in the canons of Sardica, which allows the Pope to mediate between two bishops in the case of a dispute according to canons 3, 4, and 7. This jurisdiction extended beyond the West and allowed the Pope to have authority over the Eastern bishops as well. This made the Pope an archbishop over the entire world essentially. This is why Pope St. Leo was called the "Archbishop of all the Churches" at Chalcedon.

Some Orthodox will object though that this only proves that the Pope held an appellate jurisdiction, not the immediate ordinary jurisdiction ascribed to the Pope at Vatican I. Already though, this places them out of line with most Orthodox, especially the Russians. However, I think this is a fair objection which I myself used to use frequently. If the Pope holds the final appellate jurisdiction, then it follows logically that he holds an immediate jurisdiction as well as no one can object to the actions of the Pope.

Much more could be said on the topic of the papacy. It is a very nuanced topic which most people don't give enough fair attention. Orthodoxy very clearly fails on every other theological ground though, so I'll move onto these other theological problems.

Original Sin

One of the most common Orthodox arguments these days is that one of the chief heresies of Rome is original sin. Orthodox supposedly do not believe in original sin, but ancestral sin. Augustine supposedly corrupted the faith using a mistranslation of Romans 5:12.

Anyone who makes this argument however is a heretic by Orthodox standards. One of the chief heresies of Pelagius is his denial of original sin. This is why the Council of Carthage placed an anathema against anyone who denies original sin, and this canon was accepted ecumenically by the seventh ecumenical council. Canon 110 of Carthage states that,

whosoever denies that infants newly from their mother's wombs should be baptized, or says that baptism is for remission of sins, but that they derive from Adam no original sin, which needs to be removed by the laver of regeneration, from whence the conclusion follows, that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins, is to be understood as false and not true, let him be anathema.

Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain included this canon in the Rudder and added commentary stating that,

This view too was a product of the heretical insanity of the Pelagians: this refers to their saying that newly begotten infants are not baptized for the remission of sins, as the Orthodox Church believes and maintains, but, instead... the infants themselves have not incurred any taint from the original sin of Adam.

St. Augustine was also declared as a father of the Church at the fifth ecumenical council, while Pelagius is universally recognized as a heretic. The idea that original sin is passed down from one generation to the next is also present in St. Maximus the Confessor and in St. Gregory Palamas (as part of his defense of the immaculate conception).

The idea that St. Augustine's doctrine of original sin is heretical is in part due to a misunderstanding of the doctrine. St. Augustine's theology is not that infants are personally guilty of the sin of Adam, but that they receive the effects of it. Sin is not merely about guilt but is about an ontological reality like a disease. This stain of original sin prevents us from seeing God. This is why St. Gregory the Theologian says that,

those who fail to receive the gift [of baptism]...perhaps on account of infancy, or some perfectly involuntary circumstance through which they are prevented from receiving it, even if they wish...will be neither glorified nor punished by the righteous Judge, as unsealed [by baptism] and yet not wicked, but persons who have suffered rather than done wrong. For not everyone who is not bad enough to be punished is good enough to be honored; just as not everyone who is not good enough to be honored is bad enough to be punished.

This is what the West would later come to call limbo, but it is clearly here taught by one of the greatest Eastern saints. It is also taught at the Synod of Jerusalem in response to Protestant missionaries in the Ottoman Empire.

This theological heresy is quite new in Orthodoxy, having been invented by Fr. John Romanides in the 20th century. It is also considered heresy by many Orthodox Christians as well but is now accepted by most Orthodox Christians.

Two excellent treatments of this issue that go into more detail can be found here and here.

The Immaculate Conception

Another common Orthodox objection to Catholicism is the immaculate conception. This is supposedly a novel teaching invented by western medieval theologians. This could not be further from the truth. The immaculate conception is clearly taught by the Fathers of the Church, who teach that she was without sin. If she had original sin, she would not be sinless. Even after the schism, many great Orthodox theologians such as St. Gregory Palamas, Mark of Ephesus, and Dimitry of Rostov. Generally, Orthodox are forced to appeal to western scholastics to argue against the Immaculate Conception. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas rejected the Immaculate Conception. However, he instead thought that Mary had original sin for only about a second, a far cry from the view that she had original sin her whole life.

Orthodox objections to the Immaculate Conception only came about in reaction to the use of Papal infallibility to promulgate the doctrine. The most common objections are drawn from the writings of John Maximovitch. Maximovitch was clearly a holy man, but he is a heretic because of his writing on this. He clearly says that Mary actually committed sin, which is contrary to the nearly universal witness of the Fathers and the liturgical texts of the Byzantine rite.

The Filioque

The filioque is an objection that goes back to before the schism. There are really two questions bound up in the filioque. First is the liceity of its addition to the creed, and the second is that actual theological issue itself. Regarding the liceity of its issue to the creed, this is really an issue of papal authority which I already addressed. It was initially added to the creed in portions of Spain at the Third Council of Toledo, which was attended over by multiple Orthodox saints. It was done to combat Arianism. This was seen as fine in the West, because the creed was simply a profession of faith and nothing heretical had been added. However, in the Byzantine Empire, the creed was seen as a sign of imperial unity. A change in the creed was seen as treason, and so this is why the Byzantines reacted sharply against the filioque.

Onto theological issues, part of the problem is that the Orthodox once again are theologically disunited. Some say that the Spirit proceeds only temporally from the Son, while others say he proceeds energetically and eternally, but not hypostatically. The former view is easy to refute. The Fathers clearly state that the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Son. In order to distinguish the procession of the Spirit from begetting of the Son, there must be some way to distinguish procession from begetting. According to the Fathers, this is the procession of the Spirit from the Father to the Son. David Bently Hart in his article "The Myth of the Schism," showed that the St. Gregory of Nyssa makes this exact argument. St. Gregory says,

... while confessing the immutability of the [divine] nature, we do not deny difference in regard to cause and that which is caused, by which alone we discern the difference of each Person from the other, in that we believe one to be the cause and another to be from the cause; and again we conceive of another difference within that which is from the cause: between the one who, on the one hand, comes directly from the principle and the one who, on the other, comes from the principle through the one who arises directly; thus it unquestionably remains peculiar to the Son to be the Only Begotten, while at the same time it is not to be doubted that the Spirit is of the Father, by virtue of the mediation of the Son that safeguards the Son's character as Only Begotten, and thus the Spirit is not excluded from his natural relation to the Father (Ad Ablabium 55-56).

This passage sounds like something directly from Augustine's De Trinitate that many Orthodox try to argue is heretical. St. John of Damascus says something similar when he says that,

Likewise we believe also in one Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life: Who proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son... proceeding from the Father and communicated through the Son (De Fide Orthodoxia 1.8).

This is in the context of St. John defending the ultimate monarchy of the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father in order to rest in the Son, so that the Son can communicate the Spirit t creation.

St. Gregory Palamas moves even closer to St. Augustine's trinitarian theology when he says,

Since the goodness which proceeds by generation from intellectual goodness as from a source is the Word, and since no intelligent person could conceive of a word without spirit, for this reason the Word, God from God, possesses also the Holy Spirit proceeding together with him from the Father. But this is spirit not in the sense of the breath which accompanies the word passing through our lips (for this is a body and is adapted to our word through bodily organs); nor is it spirit in the sense of that which accompanies the immanent and the discursive word within us, even though it does so incorporeally, for that too entails a certain motion of the mind which involves a temporal extension in conjunction with our word and requires the same intervals and proceeds from incompletion to completion. But that Spirit of the supreme Word is like an ineffable love of the Begetter towards the ineffably begotten Word himself. The beloved Word and Son of the Father also experiences this love towards the Begetter, but he does so inasmuch as he possesses this love as proceeding from the Father together with him and as resting connaturally in him. From the Word who held concourse with us through the flesh we have learned also the name of the Spirit's distinct mode of coming to be from the Father, and that the Spirit belongs not only to the Father but also to the Son. For he says, "The Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father," in order that we may recognize not a Word alone but also a Spirit from the Father, who is not begotten but who proceeds, but he belongs also to the Son who possesses him from the Father as Spirit of truth, wisdom and word. For truth and wisdom constitute a word appropriate to the Begetter, a Word which rejoices together with the Father who rejoices in him, according to what he said through Solomon, "I was the one [i.e., Wisdom] who rejoiced together with him." He did not say "rejoiced" but "rejoiced together with," for this pre-eternal joy of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit in that he is common to them by mutual intimacy. Therefore, he is sent to the worthy from both, but in his coming to be he belongs to the Father alone and thus he also proceeds from him alone in his manner of coming to be (150 Chapters 36).

Since St. Gregory is after the schism, he is very careful to deny the filioque here. I quoted the entire chapter, so it is clear I am not taking anything out of context. However, his logic here is the same as St. Augustine, that the Spirit is the love of the Father towards the Son. St. Gregory's critique of the filioque here is based on a misunderstanding of the filioque, that it teaches a double procession of the Spirit. However, 2 Lyons and Florence deny this and instead teach a single procession of the Spirit from the Father through the Son.

St. Gregory Palamas' trinitarian theology is repeated by Orthodox theologian Fr. Dimitru Staniloae in his book The Holy Trinity: In the Beginning There was Love. He shows from the Fathers that the Spirit proceeds from the Father in order to rest in the Son. This is not something that the Holy Spirit happens to do, but it is necessary to his being. This refutes any Orthodox argument that the procession of the Spirit is not hypostatic, as the hypostasis of the Son is necessary for the procession of the Spirit. Fr. Staniloae argues against the filioque in his book with the weak argument (in an otherwise excellent book) that the Son also is begotten in order that the Spirit might rest in him. While this is certainly true, the Spirit's procession to the Son is obviously secondary to the Son's begetting in order that he might have the Spirit rest in him.

This entire objection of the filioque originated because of Photius. St. Ignatius was deposed from being Patriarch of Constantinople for opposing Emperor Michael III's blasphemous activities. A politician, Photius, was elected in his place. Photius was pushed through the holy orders from monk to lector to sub-deacon to deacon to priest to patriarch in the course of five days. St. Ignatius followed the canons of Sardica (cited earlier in this article) and appealed to the bishop of Rome, who at this time was Pope St. Nicholas the Great. Pope Nicholas called an ecumenical council which sided with St. Ignatius. Photius however refused to comply, causing a four year schism between Rome and Constantinople. Photius stirred up controversy by accusing the West of heresy for the filioque and claiming that this was a Frankish conspiracy (an argument still made by many Orthodox). Near his death St. Ignatius saw the problems the schism was causing and recognized Photius as the legitimate patriarch out of charity. After St. Ignatius died, Pope John VIII ended the schism by recognizing Photius under the agreement that Photius publicly admit his error and acknowledge the primacy of Rome, although Photius never did this.

Much more could be written on the filioque. However, I will end on this quote from St. Maximus the Confessor. St. Maximus was the greatest Byzantine theologian of his day, giving up his own hand and tongue for refusing to commune with heretical bishops. St. Maximus was asked by his fellow Byzantines about the fact that the West had started saying that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. This objection was raised by heretical monothelites and is the first time anyone from the East objected to the filioque. St. Maximus responded that,

Those of the Queen of cities have attacked the synodal letter of the present very holy Pope (Martin I), not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to theology, because it says he says that 'the Holy Spirit proceeds (????????????) also from the Son... With regard to the first matter, they [the Romans] have produced the unanimous documentary evidence of the Latin fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the sacred commentary he composed on the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit — they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession; but in order to manifest the Spirit's coming-forth (????????) through him and, in this way, to make clear the unity and identity of the essence.... The Romans have therefore been accused of things of which it is wrong to accuse them, whereas of the things of which the Byzantines have quite rightly been accused [monothelitism], they have, to date, made no self-defense, because neither have they gotten rid of the things introduced by them (Letter to Marinus).

Essence and Energies

While it has medieval roots, this issue raised to prominence in the 20th century. Many Orthodox theologians argued that Palamas' distinction between essence and "energies" (although a better translation of ????????? is operations so I will use that here) was incompatible with Aquinas' understanding of divine simplicity. Many Thomists likewise argued the same. Some Orthodox theologians went so far as to say that St. Thomas' understanding of divine simplicity is responsible for atheism.

While I don't think that Palamas and Aquinas are saying the same thing, this question is much more nuanced than many on both sides are willing to admit. First, we need to acknowledge the proper contexts of Aquinas and Palamas.

Divine simplicity was dogmatized in the West at Lateran IV, before St. Thomas Aquinas was even born. Aquinas starts the Summa Theologiae by discussing how we know things. He then moves on to proofs for the existence of God from natural reason. Divine simplicity follows from these proofs. While Aquinas extensively cites scripture and the Fathers in defense of his understanding of divine simplicity, for Aquinas it is a logical necessity that God is absolutely simple.

Aquinas moves from here to what we can know about God. An Orthodox reader familiar with St. Dionysius the Areopagite would recognize St. Thomas' approach. Aquinas uses an apophatic theology in which we know about God through negation and through what He causes. This approach is very Byzantine.

Ultimately for Aquinas, the purpose of our lives is the beatific vision. We come to see the essence of God as it really is. We are divinized (what the East calls theosis) through grace which creates an effect in us.

St. Gregory Palamas is concerned with an entirely different set of issues. He got into a debate with Barlaam regarding monastic practice. He and other monks claimed to have truly seen God as he is. Barlaam objected, arguing that according to St. Dionysius, God is unknowable. St. Gregory responded by arguing that there is a distinction in the Fathers between God's unknowable essence and his operations.

At first glance it seems like Barlaam is a Thomist and Palamas is critiquing Thomism. Thomists will argue that Palamas denied the beatific vision by saying that God's essence is unknowable. However, it is actually Barlaam that denied the beatific vision, starting this whole controversy.

Palamas' distinction is actually very similar to the formal distinction of another famous scholastic, Blessed John Duns Scotus. According to earlier commentators upon Aquinas, there were two types of distinctions, real and virtual. A real distinction meant that things were separable in reality, while a virtual (also called rational or nominal) distinction was distinct only in the mind. So, for example, two Lego blocks are really distinct from one another because they can be separated, while a shirt and what I am wearing are only virtually distinct because they cannot be separated except in the mind. Scotus argued that there was a third kind of distinction which was not accounted for in which there is not separability, but the distinction is in the thing itself and not merely in the mind. For example, the fact that I am the son of my father cannot be separated from the fact that I am the grandson of my grandfather, but my sonship and grandsonship are not separable.

Palamas seems to be making a formal distinction. According to Palamas, the distinction between God's essence and operations is not merely a mental construct. However, it is through God's operations that we come to know his essence. This is drawn from St. Maximus the Confessor and the Cappadocian Fathers. Palamas says that God's essence is present fully in each of his operations. A good discussion on this issue to listen to is this interview with Dr. Jared Goff. This synthesis of Palamas and Scotus is also not a modern product. It was first argued for in the 15th century by Gennadius Scholarius, the first Patriarch of Constantinople under the Turks, a student of Mark of Ephesus, and the bishop who caused the union with Rome at Florence to be broken. He was also a great fan of Thomas Aquinas.

Ultimately, this issue is not dogma among Catholics so long as one affirms divine simplicity (which St. Gregory Palamas clearly does). Unfortunately, many Orthodox theologians do in fact make real distinctions in God apart from those of relation, which is heretical and contrary to Palamas himself.

Confirmation and Communion for Infants

Many Orthodox object to the Latin practice of delaying confirmation and communion for infants until the age of reason. This will be a short apologetic for the Latin practice. The Catholic Church allows the Easterners to keep their own traditions of communing infants. All Trent condemns is that this practice is necessary. Many Eastern Catholics did begin to introduce a first communion, but this has been reversed in most places since Vatican II.

The Western practice is actually a historical accident. In the early Church, only a bishop could chrismate someone and communion could not be received until after chrismation. As the Church grew, it became harder for the bishop to chrismate every newborn. The West kept the ancient practice, but this meant that chrismation was delayed. Communion was also delayed as a result. The East began allowing the priests to administer chrismation, so long as the chrism was consecrated by a bishop. This practice in the East became so regular that the East forgot their ancient practice. By the 9th century, Photius was accusing the West of having stripped the priesthood of the power to chrismate.

The Western practice got exaggerated over time and as a result, children were not being confirmed until around seven. This caused the theological development of the age of reason. Since chrismation and the eucharist were not necessary for salvation but simply provided extra graces for one to live, it is not until a child is old enough to discern between good and evil that they absolutely need to have these sacraments. Baptism has provided them enough grace for salvtion before then. This practice sadly got abused over time and children were not being confirmed until they were teenagers. Pope St. Pius X reversed this abuse, lowering first communion to the age of seven (as the Council of Trent had encouraged). Unfortunately, he did not also lower the age of confirmation, causing these graces to often still be delayed. This also changed the historical order of the sacraments. Many today recognize this is a problem which needs to be fixed.

The age of reason is not absent from Orthodox theology. Infants do not go to confession. Most children do not go to confession until around seven. It is simply the Byzantine practice to give infants extra grace from the sacraments at a younger age than Latins. Ultimately, neither of these practices are heretical, although the common abuses that are occurring in the West of delaying confirmation until 15 or 16 should stop.

The Epiclesis

It is the contention of many Orthodox theologians that the bread and wine are not consecrated at the words of institution, but at the epiclesis when the Holy Spirit is called down upon the gifts. However, this is quite problematic since the epiclesis is not present in the Latin Rite. In fact, the Orthodox force their Western Rite to add the epiclesis to the Mass, despite the fact that there is no historical evidence it was ever there. Other Orthodox theologians simply state that the time of consecration is a mystery.

The Catholic doctrine is that the words of institution alone are sufficient to consecrate the eucharist. This is the teaching of the author of the Byzantine liturgy, St. John Chrysostom, who said, "that saying, 'This is my body', once uttered, from that time to the present day, and even until Christ's coming, makes the sacrifice complete at every table in the churches" (Homily on the Betrayal of Judas). St. Gregory of Nyssa said the same when he says that, "not through its being eaten does it advance to become the Body of the Word, but it is made over immediately into the Body by means of the word, just as was stated by the Word, 'This is my body'" (The Great Catechism 37). Likewise, the West held the same understanding as is evidenced by Jerome when he speaks of, "clergy who, in succession from the Apostles, confect by their sacred word the Body of Christ" (Letter to Heliodorus). It is worth noting that most of the Fathers are ambiguous about the moment of consecration, but many are explicit that it is the words of institution. We ought to interpret the unclear passages in the Fathers in light of the clear ones.

Divorce

Many Orthodox argue that their practice of allowing divorce and remarriage up to three times is traditional. This practice is usually drawn from the canons of St. Basil. However, this is not actually accurate to what St. Basil says. Erick Ybarra has written a very good article on what St. Basil actually thought on this issue. I'm just going to copy it below (with his permission).

"The sentence of the Lord that it is unlawful to withdraw from wedlock, save on account of fornication, applies, according to the argument, to men and women alike. Custom, however, does not so obtain. Yet, in relation with women, very strict expressions are to be found; as, for instance, the words of the apostle 'He which is joined to a harlot is one body' and of Jeremiah, 'If a wife become another man's shall he return unto her again? Shall not that land be greatly polluted?' And again, 'He that has an adulteress is a fool and impious'. Yet custom ordains that men who commit adultery and are in fornication be retained by their wives. Consequently I do not know if the woman who lives with the man who has been dismissed can properly be called an adulteress; the charge in this case attaches to the woman who has put away her husband, and depends upon the cause for which she withdrew from wedlock. In the case of her being beaten, and refusing to submit, it would be better for her to endure than to be separated from her husband; in the case of her objecting to pecuniary loss, even here she would not have sufficient ground. If her reason is his living in fornication we do not find this in the custom of the church; but from an unbelieving husband a wife is commanded not to depart, but to remain, on account of the uncertainty of the issue. For what do you know, O wife, whether you shall save your husband? Here then the wife, if she leaves her husband and goes to another, is an adulteress. But the man who has been abandoned is pardonable, and the woman who lives with such a man is not condemned. But if the man who has deserted his wife goes to another, he is himself an adulterer because he makes her commit adultery; and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has caused another woman's husband to come over to her." (St. Basil the Great, Letter 188 to To Amphilochius, Canon IX )

This is an immensely dense piece of literature, and the thought is not very forthright, clear, nor satisfying. If read carefully, St. Basil seems to open up with a point which gets contradicted in the rest of his teaching. He says, on one hand, that "the sentence of the Lord" that makes it unlawful to divorce one's spouse, except on account of fornication, applies equally to men and woman, which would seem to allow divorce in the case of fornication. But then, St. Basil seems to content to go with "custom", which, does not fully apply this to both husbands and wives, for he eventually argues that a wife, even if victim of adultery by her husband, cannot depart from him and be with another. In fact, he appears to imply that if a wife were to leave her adulterous and fornicating husband to marry another, she would be committed the sin of adultery. How could that be if the bond was broken by her husband's adultery in the first place? The implication would be that the bond prohibiting the victim-wife to re-marry is indissoluble even in the event of adultery. Even in the case of a husband who deserts his wife to be with be with another, this husband is committing adultery because the spouse he left is forced to "remarry", and thus commit adultery. And the the new woman to which this husband turns to is also committing adultery because, says Basil, she causes that husband to come over to her, breaking his obligatory bond with the wife he deserted. All of this strongly implies that mere fornication does not break the marital bond. And yet, one could argue that Basil, at the same time, supports the idea of a husband, but not the wife, withdrawing from wedlock and who is permitted to continue on with another woman who is not his first wife. The condition states is that his wife deserted him. This man is to be "pardoned" and the new woman he is with is "not condemned". If the separation of these two are not to be read into the text, it sounds like these two get the benefit of living out their new relationship in peace. And yet, even so, the wife who deserted the husband who entered into this second "marriage" is still held to the marital bond which she has with that husband, which means the marital bond is not truly and fully broken, at least for both sides. One could hardly figure how it is broken only for one side, the husband, but it seems like one could argue that St. Basil supports the idea that this victim-husband is not bound by the obligations of that continually existing bond until his first spouse dies.

Now, after reading this, can we say that St. Basil is grounds for modern Protestant or Eastern Orthodox (cf. here , here, and here) practices?  I would first say that the very opening statement of St. Basil's canon above would preclude both practices (i.e. "unlawful to withdraw from wedlock,save on account of fornication"). Is it truly the case that either Orthodox or Protestant polities strictly forbid re-marriage unless it is a case of proven fornication/adultery? I'd welcome any reader to inform me where I have been misled, but my resources have it that this is not the case. I understand there are Protestant groups which strictly forbid re-marriage (cf. here and here) . The Russian Orthodox Church's Department for External Church Relations, whose Chairman is Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, himself directly appointed by Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow as Vicar to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, came out with the following statements with respect to re-marriage, and you'll see the reference to St. Basil towards the end:

"according to the canon law, after a legitimate church divorce, a second marriage is allowed to the innocent spouse. Those whose first marriage was dissolved through their own fault a second marriage is allowed only after repentance and penance imposed in accordance with the canons. According to the rules of St. Basil the Great, in exceptional cases where a third marriage is allowed, the duration of the penance shall be prolonged." (Personal, Family, and Public Morality)

Whatever might be right about this above, it seems to clear that St. Basil is being stretched beyond his own boundaries.

Let's continue to see what St. Basil has to say:

"If a man living with a wife is not satisfied with his marriage and falls into fornication, I account him a fornicator, and prolong his period of punishment. Nevertheless, we have no canon subjecting him to the charge of adultery, if the sin be committed against an unmarried woman. For the adulteress, it is said, being polluted shall be polluted, and she shall not return to her husband: and He that keeps an adulteress is a fool and impious. He, however, who has committed fornication is not to be cut off from the society of his own wife. So the wife will receive the husband on his return from fornication, but the husband will expel the polluted woman from his house. The argument here is not easy, but the custom has so obtained." (Letter 199, Canon XXI)

Once again, we have anything but equity being supported by St. Basil, who himself attempted to exhort otherwise (cf. Canon IX above). A husband who decides to live in fornication can demand both a new woman in fornication, and then also demand his abandoned wife to uphold her obligation to the marital bond forbidding her from being released to re-marry. And yet, the wife who commits adultery is not to be received by the husband ever again, in order to avoid the inevitable pollution of uniting with a harlot. One may ask if, in the beginning of this canon of Letter 199, St. Basil is envisioning a fornicating husband being ale to persist in his fornication, complete penance all throughout, and then be received into communion while persisting in the same indefinitely. The text doesn't make clear, but I strongly urge one to hesitate before they take the affirmative in light of the ambiguity....

St. Basil here seems to imply that if either husband or wife commit adultery or forces their spouse to commit adultery are disallowed from re-marriage. There is only one problem, however. Above St. Basil says that the man who has been deserted by his wife, if he were to go to another woman, is to be "pardoned", but yet in this last citation, the woman deserted by her husband is not pardoned? What does St. Basil mean when he says the fornicating man is pardoned? Does he presume that such a one repents and separates? I think the ambiguity makes it difficult to say one way or the other.

Lastly, in St. Basil's Ascetical Works, "On Morals", there is once again a repetition that spouses may not separate (not to be identified with freedom to remarry) from each other unless the condition of adultery , but also adds that if one spouse is so much a hindrance to the worship of God, said separation may lawfully occur:

"That a husband must not separate from his wife, nor a wife from her husband unless one of them be taken in adultery or is a hindrance to the other in the devout service to God" (Rule Seventy Three).

The rest of the article where Ybarra looks at many other Fathers can be found here.

Mysticism vs Reason

Perhaps the biggest false dichotomy drawn these days between the West and the East is that the West is rational while the East is mystical. Mysticism is highly present in the West. The Carmelite tradition is especially known for its mystic saints, such as St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, known for rational theology, was also a great mystic. In the East, the Church Fathers often used logic in debate. If you read St. Athanasius or the Cappadocian Fathers, you'll see that most of their arguments against the Arians are using logic. Even Palamas extensively employed complex metaphysical arguments against the Barlaamites. In order to know God in a personal manner, we need mysticism. However, in order to prove the truth to unbelievers and to show that our Church is the true Church, we need logical arguments. God is the Logos and so he created a world that is knowable through logos, reason, as St. Maximus the Confessor taught.

Really the number one reason why people leave Rome for Orthodoxy is Vatican II and liturgical abuse. These other theological arguments are really just an excuse to join a communion with less liturgical abuse.

Vatican II
Really the number one reason why people leave Rome for Orthodoxy is Vatican II and liturgical abuse. These other theological arguments are really just an excuse to join a communion with less liturgical abuse.

I sympathize with this a lot. Many of the liturgical changes that were implemented after Vatican II, such as communion in the hand, extraordinary eucharistic ministers, the suppression of the minor orders, female altar servers, among many other things, are unacceptable to me and, in my opinion, need to be reversed. There are many faithful voices in the Church saying just that, including many cardinals. None of these change concern dogma and are just liturgical practice, so they can still be reversed ...

Ultimately, John XXIII was clear when he opened the council that none of the documents of Vatican II are infallible and the council was merely pastoral. Paul VI repeated this when he closed the council. A Catholic is free to agree or disagree with the council ...

Conclusion

Thank you to all who read the full article. Much more could be said about every one of these topics. I did try and address every theological controversy I could think of. I will likely write more on some of these topics in the future. In the meanwhile, please keep me in your prayers.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!"

Well that was good!

By coincidence, I got into it with several Orthodox who were trolling Morher Miriam's site. I told them not to insult RC Catholics and stop proselytizing. I pointed out how the OCA website admits membership fell precipitously in 20 years, and their only gain is during a RC scandal.

I argued that the Orthodox are chronically disorganized due to lack of papal leadership and their ministries around the world are woefully lacking. I also disparaged them for pride in not heeding BVM's apparitions calling for rosaries, prayers and fasting. They think a weekly Marian veneration that nobody attends but a handful of clerics is sufficient. They won't adopt this tradition asked for by Mother. Selective theology. Disdain for papal rule. I said these are serious deficiencies and I asked RC Catholics viewing this exchange to stay, fast and pray.

Your OP was excellent but very long. I could not read all of it.

One request: please scrap the "Theotokos" language the heretics use. Mater Dei, BVM, or simply Blessed Mother will do.

The Council of Ephesus and many Western and Eastern Church Fathers are heretics?

QuoteHe says, on one hand, that "the sentence of the Lord" that makes it unlawful to divorce one's spouse, except on account of fornication, applies equally to men and woman, which would seem to allow divorce in the case of fornication.

Yes, divorce is allowed in the case of fornication.  But fornication is sex between unmarried people.  If the people, or one of them, were married, we'd call it adultery.  And note, both words "fornication" and "adultery" are used in the cite.  So we have 2 possible interpretation, either one is Catholic:

1.  The Lord is referencing the virginity test that is described in I believe Numbers.  If the woman fails, then a divorce is granted due to fornication.  I personally believe this interpretation.

2.  The Lord is talking about a more general case where there was no marriage, so sex between the "spouses" is in reality fornication.  This is the basis for annulment.  Note case 1 is a particular case of annulment, but the jews referred to it as granting a bill of divorce.

Quote from: james03 on December 02, 2019, 08:19:42 PM
But fornication is sex between unmarried people.

Porneia is the word in question. In Matthew 19:9 the clause reads ?? ??? ???????. Except through porneia.

The meaning of this word in the Scriptures includes all illicit sexual intercourse, it is not limited to a legal act between unmarried couples. The Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament states:

Quote from: Balz and Schneider, Exegetical Dictionary of the New TestamentPORNEIA means "prostitution, unchastity, fornication," and is used "of every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse" (BAGD s.v.). . . . Since in Rom. 1:26f. Paul clearly alludes to homosexuality as sexual immorality, PORNEIA can also refer to homosexuality as sexual immorality

Or if you want to check the Online Greek Bible (http://www.greekbible.com/), another great resource, it reads:

Quote???????, \{por-ni'-ah} 1) illicit sexual intercourse 1a) adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, intercourse with animals etc. 1b) sexual intercourse with close relatives; Lev. 18 1c) sexual intercourse with a divorced man or woman; Mk. 10:11,12 2) metaph. the worship of idols 2a) of the defilement of idolatry, as incurred by eating the sacrifices offered to idols

Quote from: lauermar on December 02, 2019, 05:24:35 AM
By coincidence, I got into it with several Orthodox who were trolling Morher Miriam's site. I told them not to insult RC Catholics and stop proselytizing. I pointed out how the OCA website admits membership fell precipitously in 20 years, and their only gain is during a RC scandal.

I argued that the Orthodox are chronically disorganized due to lack of papal leadership and their ministries around the world are woefully lacking. I also disparaged them for pride in not heeding BVM's apparitions calling for rosaries, prayers and fasting. They think a weekly Marian veneration that nobody attends but a handful of clerics is sufficient. They won't adopt this tradition asked for by Mother. Selective theology. Disdain for papal rule. I said these are serious deficiencies and I asked RC Catholics viewing this exchange to stay, fast and pray.

Your OP was excellent but very long. I could not read all of it.

One request: please scrap the "Theotokos" language the heretics use. Mater Dei, BVM, or simply Blessed Mother will do.

Regardless of whatever your religious belief is, this comment is absolutely stupid.

1. No private devotions or revelations can be mandatorily binding on any Catholic. A Catholic is not mandated to pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus or pray using the Divine Mercy devotion, or even the Rosary itself. Nor are they required to wear a Brown Scapular, a Green Scapular, a Blue Scapular, or even a Red Scapular.

2. As Gardener rightly points out, there is nothing but pure irony in calling "Theotokos" the title of heretics, because this exact issue - calling "Theotokos" heretical - is what kickstarted the entire Nestorain controversy. Nestorius believed that "Theotokos" was a heretical term, and said so during a sermon, which so scandalized the laity that it led to a massive theological controversy. By rejecting the title, you are more in line with Nestorius than Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Make sure that what you are calling "heretical" actually is heretical before calling it.

3. The Eastern Orthodox fast more than Roman Catholics do. It's just an objective fact; every Wednesday and Friday, Orthodox have to abstain from meat, dairy products, and olive oil, and during penitential periods (such as Lent or Advent), that becomes a daily obligation.


Don't you think the Latin Rite has enough trouble that needs to be fixed, ESPECIALLY under Francis? Why do you think it's necessary to b*tch about how the Eastern Rites doesn't regularly use optional devotions and how members of your own organization are disobedient to God because of it? Are you seriously going to condemn all those devout Eastern-Rite Catholics as "disobedient" to God because they don't use optional devotions? Including members of this very forum?

You tell me which liturgy needs to be fixed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH_RU7FuGFQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYITFFVyLbA

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 02, 2019, 10:21:49 PM

Quote from: lauermar on December 02, 2019, 05:24:35 AM
By coincidence, I got into it with several Orthodox who were trolling Morher Miriam's site. I told them not to insult RC Catholics and stop proselytizing. I pointed out how the OCA website admits membership fell precipitously in 20 years, and their only gain is during a RC scandal.

I argued that the Orthodox are chronically disorganized due to lack of papal leadership and their ministries around the world are woefully lacking. I also disparaged them for pride in not heeding BVM's apparitions calling for rosaries, prayers and fasting. They think a weekly Marian veneration that nobody attends but a handful of clerics is sufficient. They won't adopt this tradition asked for by Mother. Selective theology. Disdain for papal rule. I said these are serious deficiencies and I asked RC Catholics viewing this exchange to stay, fast and pray.

Your OP was excellent but very long. I could not read all of it.

One request: please scrap the "Theotokos" language the heretics use. Mater Dei, BVM, or simply Blessed Mother will do.

Regardless of whatever your religious belief is, this comment is absolutely stupid.

1. No private devotions or revelations can be mandatorily binding on any Catholic. A Catholic is not mandated to pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus or pray using the Divine Mercy devotion, or even the Rosary itself. Nor are they required to wear a Brown Scapular, a Green Scapular, a Blue Scapular, or even a Red Scapular.

2. As Gardener rightly points out, there is nothing but pure irony in calling "Theotokos" the title of heretics, because this exact issue - calling "Theotokos" heretical - is what kickstarted the entire Nestorain controversy. Nestorius believed that "Theotokos" was a heretical term, and said so during a sermon, which so scandalized the laity that it led to a massive theological controversy. By rejecting the title, you are more in line with Nestorius than Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Make sure that what you are calling "heretical" actually is heretical before calling it.

3. The Eastern Orthodox fast more than Roman Catholics do. It's just an objective fact; every Wednesday and Friday, Orthodox have to abstain from meat, dairy products, and olive oil, and during penitential periods (such as Lent or Advent), that becomes a daily obligation.


Don't you think the Latin Rite has enough trouble that needs to be fixed, ESPECIALLY under Francis? Why do you think it's necessary to b*tch about how the Eastern Rites doesn't regularly use optional devotions and how members of your own organization are disobedient to God because of it? Are you seriously going to condemn all those devout Eastern-Rite Catholics as "disobedient" to God because they don't use optional devotions? Including members of this very forum?

You tell me which liturgy needs to be fixed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH_RU7FuGFQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYITFFVyLbA

What's actually stupid is a russian orthodox apostate who is addicted to posting on a traditional catholic forum.

I'd rather Laurermar learn the history of major heresies and TRoL return home.

I know of 6 local trads here who went Orthodox, 3 who were SSPX.  It's understandable to me, but very sad.  That said, even since the death of the RC priest who celebrated here the Byzantine Liturgy (Fr. Sherman, RIP), to my knowledge the Byzantine Chapel is still set up in all its splendor in the basement chapel of the church formerly used by FSSP-Tulsa.   Just needs a priest to say it and a few to start it up.  At the very least to prevent the opposite of the OP's topic, RC's going Orthodox.

My thoughts on the subject:

http://okietraditionalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-allure-and-danger-of-eastern.html

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 10:20:58 AM
I know of 6 local trads here who went Orthodox, 3 who were SSPX.  It's understandable to me, but very sad.  That said, even since the death of the RC priest who celebrated here the Byzantine Liturgy (Fr. Sherman, RIP), to my knowledge the Byzantine Chapel is still set up in all its splendor in the basement chapel of the church formerly used by FSSP-Tulsa.   Just needs a priest to say it and a few to start it up.  At the very least to prevent the opposite of the OP's topic, RC's going Orthodox.

My thoughts on the subject:

http://okietraditionalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-allure-and-danger-of-eastern.html

It's good to get a reality check like this.

I don't like articles such as the one in the O.P. because it is so similar to the EWTN constant flow of blah-blah-blah about "Coming Home" when the reality is that tens of thousands of Catholics are voting with their feet and streaming out the doors, either to Evangelical churches or to staying home on Sunday.

This ability to look reality in the face and just totally deny it reminds me of the Cold War when the left-wing media would trumpet some high-profile person who became Communist at the same time that thousands of people were risking their lives to try to cross the Iron Curtain.

There are positive trends like a fair few conservative NOMers opted substantially or even wholly for the TLM. However, I suspect that Orthodox is a stronger draw for many who are sensible enough to see Francis as a repellent, morally deviant (leaving aside all the help he gives to pervert friends, accusing sincere journalists of coprophilia with variously less foul but equally wicked insults for sincere Catholics has severe defects of character), dishonest (his aid and comfort to various clerical thieves), big corporation puppet and scold, and wonder how he can be seen as a spiritual leader, and in fact cannot see him as one. Some might become sedevacantist, some Home Alone, but that cannot work for most. Ignoring him is probably what a good many traditional Latin or traditional minded Greek Rite Catholics try to do, but the Pope (or someone taken by most as that) is seen as Mr Catholicism nowadays. I think there would be more example of the reverse and that won't change until Francis is history.

Quote from: Graham on December 03, 2019, 06:50:31 AM

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 02, 2019, 10:21:49 PM

Quote from: lauermar on December 02, 2019, 05:24:35 AM
By coincidence, I got into it with several Orthodox who were trolling Morher Miriam's site. I told them not to insult RC Catholics and stop proselytizing. I pointed out how the OCA website admits membership fell precipitously in 20 years, and their only gain is during a RC scandal.

I argued that the Orthodox are chronically disorganized due to lack of papal leadership and their ministries around the world are woefully lacking. I also disparaged them for pride in not heeding BVM's apparitions calling for rosaries, prayers and fasting. They think a weekly Marian veneration that nobody attends but a handful of clerics is sufficient. They won't adopt this tradition asked for by Mother. Selective theology. Disdain for papal rule. I said these are serious deficiencies and I asked RC Catholics viewing this exchange to stay, fast and pray.

Your OP was excellent but very long. I could not read all of it.

One request: please scrap the "Theotokos" language the heretics use. Mater Dei, BVM, or simply Blessed Mother will do.

Regardless of whatever your religious belief is, this comment is absolutely stupid.

1. No private devotions or revelations can be mandatorily binding on any Catholic. A Catholic is not mandated to pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus or pray using the Divine Mercy devotion, or even the Rosary itself. Nor are they required to wear a Brown Scapular, a Green Scapular, a Blue Scapular, or even a Red Scapular.

2. As Gardener rightly points out, there is nothing but pure irony in calling "Theotokos" the title of heretics, because this exact issue - calling "Theotokos" heretical - is what kickstarted the entire Nestorain controversy. Nestorius believed that "Theotokos" was a heretical term, and said so during a sermon, which so scandalized the laity that it led to a massive theological controversy. By rejecting the title, you are more in line with Nestorius than Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Make sure that what you are calling "heretical" actually is heretical before calling it.

3. The Eastern Orthodox fast more than Roman Catholics do. It's just an objective fact; every Wednesday and Friday, Orthodox have to abstain from meat, dairy products, and olive oil, and during penitential periods (such as Lent or Advent), that becomes a daily obligation.


Don't you think the Latin Rite has enough trouble that needs to be fixed, ESPECIALLY under Francis? Why do you think it's necessary to b*tch about how the Eastern Rites doesn't regularly use optional devotions and how members of your own organization are disobedient to God because of it? Are you seriously going to condemn all those devout Eastern-Rite Catholics as "disobedient" to God because they don't use optional devotions? Including members of this very forum?

You tell me which liturgy needs to be fixed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH_RU7FuGFQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYITFFVyLbA

What's actually stupid is a russian orthodox apostate who is addicted to posting on a traditional catholic forum.

Yeah. Doesn't make lauermar's post less stupid and less blatantly offensive to devout Eastern-Rite Catholics.

QuotePorneia is the word in question.

As I stated BOTH words (fornication and adultery) were used in the same sentence.  So this defense fails.

Furthermore I'll take St. Jerome, who had all the texts and understood these languages far better than anyone today's translation:

QuoteEgo autem dico vobis : quia omnis qui dimiserit uxorem suam, excepta fornicationis causa, facit eam moechari : et qui dimissam duxerit, adulterat.

Again, granting a bill of divorce for the case of fornication is legit.  But that's it, as the Lord says.

Re Orthodoxy and the divorce issue, following James' argument, the person flirting with Orthodoxy should find it telling that the Protestant reformers themselves made the same argument for divorce (vs annulment)--in the sense of dissolving the marital bond--based on their unhistorical distortion of the meaning of "porneia."   

Surely the Orthodox accept St. Jerome as a Father of the Church, and at the very least the interpretation of all Eastern Bishops for the first 1000 years (!).  I mean, if they follow the Fathers and first Councils, then on what authority from the Early Church do they base their interpretation of the Scriptures?  Answer: they don't   Except their own!  It is the Catholic Church alone whose Tradition shows continuity going back to the Apostles themselves.

Quote from: james03 on December 03, 2019, 05:43:46 PM
As I stated BOTH words (fornication and adultery) were used in the same sentence.  So this defense fails.

Okay. Let's recapitulate. You stated that fornication is sex between unmarried people. If the people, or one of them, were married, we'd call it adultery. And note, both words "fornication" and "adultery" are used in the cite. While fornication has acquired the specific meaning of sex between unmarried people in English, this was a recent development. Both fornication and adultery generally meant illicit or unlawful sexual immorality.

More importantly, though, the NT Greek text in Matthew 19:9 reads: ???? ?? ???? ??? ?? ?? ??????? ??? ??????? ????? ?? ??? ??????? ??? ?????? ????? ????????. The words in question are porneia, that means sexual immorality of all kinds in Greek according to reputable lexicons, and moichatai which is the 3rd person singular of moichaomai that means to commit adultery. So the meaning is pretty straightforward: to divorce one's wife and to marry another is to commit adultery (moichatai), except in the case of sexual immorality of any kind (porneia), since sexual immorality obviously defiles the marital bed.

By the way, since you quoted the Vulgate, keep in mind that fornicatio in Latin has the general meaning of whoredom, to consort with protistutes, sexual immorality, etc. In translating porneia as fornication, St. Jerome was not giving it a more specific meaning than it has in Greek.

Not to mention that the Orthodox also frequently grant divorce (up to 3 times!) for non-sexual reasons besides fornication or adultery, which is absurd since there is nothing in Scripture, whether in Greek, Latin, or English, to justify that.   I don't recall Christ saying "whoever divorces his wife--except if your wife gains weight, develops a mood disorder, or just gets on your nerves--commits adultery??   Is that in the Orthodox bible???    :o    This same pattern actually plays out with the other Orthodox heresies, like birth control.  Except maybe in the rare Old Calendar Orthodox churches (we actually have one here in the Tulsa area that meets in a priest's tiny house chapel), the mainstream Orthodox churches tolerate even unbridled birth control. 

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 07:31:42 PM
Not to mention that the Orthodox also frequently grant divorce (up to 3 times!) for non-sexual reasons besides fornication or adultery, which is absurd since there is nothing in Scripture, whether in Greek, Latin, or English, to justify that.   I don't recall Christ saying "whoever divorces his wife--except if your wife gains weight, develops a mood disorder, or just gets on your nerves--commits adultery??   Is that in the Orthodox bible???    :o    This same pattern actually plays out with the other Orthodox heresies, like birth control.  Except maybe in the rare Old Calendar Orthodox churches (we actually have one here in the Tulsa area that meets in a priest's tiny house chapel), the mainstream Orthodox churches tolerate even unbridled birth control.

https://archatl.com/offices/metropolitan-tribunal/grounds-of-marriage-nullity/

https://www.hbgdiocese.org/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/myths-and-realities-about-nfp/

Which includes these wonderful quotes:

"Myth #5: Couples who use NFP have less sex than the average American.

REALITY: Most people most of the time are not engaged in sexual activity (see table). If couples who practice NFP were to engage in intercourse on all the days when abstinence is not required for spacing births, they would be doing so at a rate almost twice the national average!"


"Myth #8: The Church does not want couples to have sex for pleasure's sake.

REALITY: The Church wants married couples to have the best sex possible! Remember, there is a difference between simply "having sex," which includes actions directed towards the self, and "making love," which requires the giving of self to the other. Only in a lifelong, committed, loving relationship, centered in Christ, can couples hope to fully experience the sacrament of life and love, i.e., marriage.
Current studies confirm what the Church has always taught: married sex is more fulfilling and enjoyable than uncommitted sex. People who "use" sex only for their own pleasure end up using other people–and they lose the real joy of sexuality. Unconditional love is what marriage is all about. That love is a real source of joy in the lives of married couples!"




Is there a real, substantive moral difference between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy on this issue, when the substantive means and ends are the same (just with different methodologies)?

Both are looked down upon as immoral, there are exceptions in some form due to pastoral reasons, and these exceptions become normative due to compromisers who don't actually believe in God or the Bible, but are just there because they are Italian or Greek.

My mother's friend wanted to get an annulment, and the Priest said "No." So she just went to a more Liberal priest and got an annulment anyway.


Eastern Orthodoxy uses "economy" to justify these exceptions, which are sometimes necessary. Roman Catholicism uses other means like "natural means" or "invalidity of the Sacrament" to justify these exceptions.

And these exceptions are certainly morally justified, insofar as they are exceptions, not the norm.

Quote from: Vetus Ordo on December 03, 2019, 06:26:54 PM

Quote from: james03 on December 03, 2019, 05:43:46 PM
As I stated BOTH words (fornication and adultery) were used in the same sentence.  So this defense fails.

Okay. Let's recapitulate. You stated that fornication is sex between unmarried people. If the people, or one of them, were married, we'd call it adultery. And note, both words "fornication" and "adultery" are used in the cite. While fornication has acquired the specific meaning of sex between unmarried people in English, this was a recent development. Both fornication and adultery generally meant illicit or unlawful sexual immorality.

More importantly, though, the NT Greek text in Matthew 19:9 reads: ???? ?? ???? ??? ?? ?? ??????? ??? ??????? ????? ?? ??? ??????? ??? ?????? ????? ????????. The words in question are porneia, that means sexual immorality of all kinds in Greek according to reputable lexicons, and moichatai which is the 3rd person singular of moichaomai that means to commit adultery. So the meaning is pretty straightforward: to divorce one's wife and to marry another is to commit adultery (moichatai), except in the case of sexual immorality of any kind (porneia), since sexual immorality obviously defiles the marital bed.

By the way, since you quoted the Vulgate, keep in mind that fornicatio in Latin has the general meaning of whoredom, to consort with protistutes, sexual immorality, etc. In translating porneia as fornication, St. Jerome was not giving it a more specific meaning than it has in Greek.

Christ did not allow divorce for "sexual immorality of all kinds."  If He did, then if a man glanced at a porn site his wife would have grounds to divorce him.  If a woman dressed sexually immodest by showing some cleavage, her husband could divorce her.  That is an absurd interpretation.  Otherwise there is no point for the Son of God to become man and change Old Testament teaching on divorce.  Otherwise you'd have to limit your interpretation of "porneia" to adultery inside a valid marriage.  This isn't rocket science.   It's as plain as the fact that marriage validly contracted, even according to the Natural Law, is absolutely indissoluble except by death.  Reason alone proves that.

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 03, 2019, 07:56:53 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 07:31:42 PM
Not to mention that the Orthodox also frequently grant divorce (up to 3 times!) for non-sexual reasons besides fornication or adultery, which is absurd since there is nothing in Scripture, whether in Greek, Latin, or English, to justify that.   I don't recall Christ saying "whoever divorces his wife--except if your wife gains weight, develops a mood disorder, or just gets on your nerves--commits adultery??   Is that in the Orthodox bible???    :o    This same pattern actually plays out with the other Orthodox heresies, like birth control.  Except maybe in the rare Old Calendar Orthodox churches (we actually have one here in the Tulsa area that meets in a priest's tiny house chapel), the mainstream Orthodox churches tolerate even unbridled birth control.

https://archatl.com/offices/metropolitan-tribunal/grounds-of-marriage-nullity/

https://www.hbgdiocese.org/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/myths-and-realities-about-nfp/

Which includes these wonderful quotes:

"Myth #5: Couples who use NFP have less sex than the average American.

REALITY: Most people most of the time are not engaged in sexual activity (see table). If couples who practice NFP were to engage in intercourse on all the days when abstinence is not required for spacing births, they would be doing so at a rate almost twice the national average!"


"Myth #8: The Church does not want couples to have sex for pleasure's sake.

REALITY: The Church wants married couples to have the best sex possible! Remember, there is a difference between simply "having sex," which includes actions directed towards the self, and "making love," which requires the giving of self to the other. Only in a lifelong, committed, loving relationship, centered in Christ, can couples hope to fully experience the sacrament of life and love, i.e., marriage.
Current studies confirm what the Church has always taught: married sex is more fulfilling and enjoyable than uncommitted sex. People who "use" sex only for their own pleasure end up using other people–and they lose the real joy of sexuality. Unconditional love is what marriage is all about. That love is a real source of joy in the lives of married couples!"


You got that? Sex is always good as long as it's about "love," and the more sex the better!

Yes, I got that.  Thanks.  But that, I'm afraid, is what logicians call a red herring.  No one here is suggesting the Orthodox do not teach the use of NFP.  Different subject.

Do you get that the Orthodox allow unbridled ARTIFICIAL birth control?  Condoms, abortifacients, etc.   The average Orthodox priest (and bishop) personally and institutionally actively permits their parishioners using birth control.  Not just tolerates it.  PERMITS it.  There are very few RC diocese's that go even that far.  Think about it, there are millions of embryos being killed by Eastern Orthodox women alone, through the PILL, with the full, public support of their hierarchy!   Show me otherwise and I'll edit this.   Unless you are okay with abortion by means of the pill?? 

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 08:06:23 PM

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 03, 2019, 07:56:53 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 07:31:42 PM
Not to mention that the Orthodox also frequently grant divorce (up to 3 times!) for non-sexual reasons besides fornication or adultery, which is absurd since there is nothing in Scripture, whether in Greek, Latin, or English, to justify that.   I don't recall Christ saying "whoever divorces his wife--except if your wife gains weight, develops a mood disorder, or just gets on your nerves--commits adultery??   Is that in the Orthodox bible???    :o    This same pattern actually plays out with the other Orthodox heresies, like birth control.  Except maybe in the rare Old Calendar Orthodox churches (we actually have one here in the Tulsa area that meets in a priest's tiny house chapel), the mainstream Orthodox churches tolerate even unbridled birth control.

https://archatl.com/offices/metropolitan-tribunal/grounds-of-marriage-nullity/

https://www.hbgdiocese.org/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/myths-and-realities-about-nfp/

Which includes these wonderful quotes:

"Myth #5: Couples who use NFP have less sex than the average American.

REALITY: Most people most of the time are not engaged in sexual activity (see table). If couples who practice NFP were to engage in intercourse on all the days when abstinence is not required for spacing births, they would be doing so at a rate almost twice the national average!"


"Myth #8: The Church does not want couples to have sex for pleasure's sake.

REALITY: The Church wants married couples to have the best sex possible! Remember, there is a difference between simply "having sex," which includes actions directed towards the self, and "making love," which requires the giving of self to the other. Only in a lifelong, committed, loving relationship, centered in Christ, can couples hope to fully experience the sacrament of life and love, i.e., marriage.
Current studies confirm what the Church has always taught: married sex is more fulfilling and enjoyable than uncommitted sex. People who "use" sex only for their own pleasure end up using other people–and they lose the real joy of sexuality. Unconditional love is what marriage is all about. That love is a real source of joy in the lives of married couples!"


You got that? Sex is always good as long as it's about "love," and the more sex the better!

Yes, I got that.  Thanks.  But that, I'm afraid, is what logicians call a red herring.  No one here is suggesting the Orthodox do not teach the use of NFP.  Different subject.

Do you get that the Orthodox allow unbridled ARTIFICIAL birth control?  Condoms, abortifacients, etc.   The average Orthodox priest (and bishop) personally and institutionally actively permits with their parishioners using birth control.  Not just tolerates it.  PERMITS it.  There are very few RC diocese's that go that even go that far.  Think about it, there are millions of embryos being killed by Eastern Orthodox women alone, through the PILL, with the full, public support of their hierarchy!   Show me otherwise and I'll edit this.   Unless you are okay with abortion by means of the pill??

No Orthodox Priest would allow abortifacients, because Orthodox believe life begins at conception.

But what is the difference between using NFP to have sex for fun, and using non-abortifacient birth control? Nothing really, which is why Saint Clement of Alexandria and Saint Augustine condemned it.

Saint Clement:
"Let the Educator (Christ) put us to shame with the word of Ezekiel: 'Put away your fornications' [Eze. 43:9]. Why, even unreasoning beasts know enough not to mate at certain times. To indulge in intercourse without intending children is to outrage nature, whom we should take as our instructor"

Saint Augustine to the Manicheans:
"Is it not you who used to counsel us to observe as much as possible the time when a woman, after her purification, is most likely to conceive, and to abstain from cohabitation at that time...?"


I know I've distrusted "Orthodox Wiki" in the past, but here, there are actual citations:

"The dominant view, represented by the Church of Moscow[3], the Greek Archdiocese, the Orthodox Church in America[4], and by the bioethicists Engelhardt and Stanley S. Harakas, may be fairly described as the teaching that non-abortifacient contraception is acceptable if it is used with the blessing of one's spiritual father, and if it is not used to avoid having children for purely selfish reasons."

https://orthodoxwiki.org/Birth_Control_and_Contraception


Now, I'm not saying that a Priest allowing NFP or even artificial contraception in certain circumstances is a bad thing. But for it to be used for purely selfish reasons is clearly wrong. And the methodology to have sex for purely selfish reasons isn't relevant if the mental intent is identical.

OrthodoxWiki?  Really??  Therein lies the problem with Orthodoxy.  There is no central authority to even explain the definitive teaching to be held by all Orthodox Christians about the use of abortifacient contraception.  Sure you may find publications condemning it, in this or that diocese, but if you can show where the main EO Churches have come out condemning it, where most or all Orthodox are taught this is the binding policy, I'll correct myself and literally do a somersault in my living room, which would be quite the site considering my size and that we have wooden floors.  It's a common sense conclusion. Either the EOC as a whole condemns the use of the pill or it doesn't.  If it does, show me.  If it doesn't, and surely most EO bishops know by now after decades of research that the pill will cause abortion, then they too share the blame for mass abortion!  By not condemning abortificatients.   

The plain fact is most if not all Orthodox priests and bishops in the last several decades have NOW officially said in publication and from the pulpit that believers can contracept, WITHOUT laying out the distinction between condoms and baby-killing pills.  If they were, there would be an official record of that policy.  So the average couple in the pew, who already are following the contraceptive culture not to mention the active permission to contracept, are of course using the PILL.  Why wouldn't they?   In large part because the EOC has not taught them it is illicit.   Most married couples contracept, and most who do will use the PILL.  Millions of Eastern Orthodox babies down the toilet.  Just stating facts, unless it can be shown otherwise.

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 08:42:43 PM
The plain fact is most if not all Orthodox priests and bishops have officially said in publication and from the pulpit that believers can contracept, WITHOUT laying out the distinction between condoms and baby-killing pills.  If they were, there would be an official record of that policy.  So the average couple in the pew, who already are following the contraceptive culture not to mention the active permission to contracept, are of course using the PILL.  In large part because the EOC has not taught them it is illicit.   Most married couples contracept, and most who do will use the PILL.  Millions of Eastern Orthodox babies down the toilet.  Just stating facts, unless it can be shown otherwise.

You can't argue that an institution secretly teaches something based on silence. By that logic, we could agree with the Protestants that Catholics are secretly pagan worshippers who worship the sun god.

Even then, all of these articles are from canonical Orthodox websites, that all say that life begins at conception, with all except the Greek Orthodox explicitly saying that abortifacient drugs are immoral.   

https://www.goarch.org/-/the-stand-of-the-orthodox-church-on-controversial-issues
https://www.oca.org/the-hub/the-church-on-current-issues/orthodox-christians-and-abortion
http://ww1.antiochian.org/node/16945
https://mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/xii/

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 03, 2019, 09:00:04 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 08:42:43 PM
The plain fact is most if not all Orthodox priests and bishops have officially said in publication and from the pulpit that believers can contracept, WITHOUT laying out the distinction between condoms and baby-killing pills.  If they were, there would be an official record of that policy.  So the average couple in the pew, who already are following the contraceptive culture not to mention the active permission to contracept, are of course using the PILL.  In large part because the EOC has not taught them it is illicit.   Most married couples contracept, and most who do will use the PILL.  Millions of Eastern Orthodox babies down the toilet.  Just stating facts, unless it can be shown otherwise.

You can't argue that an institution secretly teaches something based on silence. By that logic, we could agree with the Protestants that Catholics are secretly pagan worshippers who worship the sun god.

Even then, all of these articles are from canonical Orthodox websites, that all say that life begins at conception, with all except the Greek Orthodox explicitly saying that abortifacient drugs are immoral.   

https://www.goarch.org/-/the-stand-of-the-orthodox-church-on-controversial-issues
https://www.oca.org/the-hub/the-church-on-current-issues/orthodox-christians-and-abortion
http://ww1.antiochian.org/node/16945
https://mospat.ru/en/documents/social-concepts/xii/

I can argue that an institution PUBLICLY teaches something based on facts, common sense, and simple deduction.  Looking at your links, none except the last even mentions abortifacients, and that is just by one particular EOC so, according to the standards explained in the first link, that would not be binding on the rest of the EO throughout the world, besides that last link does not specifically forbid the use of abortifacients directly. 

Therefore, from these "canonical" sources themselves, the EOC as an institution a) allows birth control, but b) does not forbid the pill. 

Follow the logic.  The EOC PUBLICLY teaches that its members can use artificial birth control, without making any distinction in any universally binding way about whether or not it is licit to use ABORTIFACIENT birth control.  Therefore, on a practical level, most of their bishops by remaining silent without making the distinction, are complicit.   We are talking about laws binding church members, and there are three forms of law:  to command, forbid, and permit.  Permission itself is either be passive or active.  A bishop who permits birth control publicly is ACTIVELY permitting it.  It becomes effectively the law.  If he gives a blanket, general permission without restricting the use of the pill, that is at least passive permission if not active permission.   And most if not all EO bishops are doing this, except maybe some ultra-conservative bishop in the forests of Siberia who really cares enough that the pill causes abortion to condemn it outright.

Let me know when you find the citation, and I'll up it to two somersaults.......

This makes no sense whatsoever, and isn't betoken to common sense.

1. You haven't established by fact that a single bishop has ever proclaimed that abortifacients are morally acceptable, and I have produced two documents from two different Orthodox jurisdictions that have all demonstrated that the use of abortifacients is murder, with one implicitly suggesting that it is - Even though you pretended not to read it, it doesn't change the fact that it's still there, and four documents which say life begins at conception.

2. If a Church professes that begins at conception, how would it ever be logically moral to use contraception which destroys life after conception?

3. Even if there was a single bishop who was heretical and taught from the pulpit heresy, why would this mean that that single bishop would be a binding, mandatory authority that the rest of the Church follows? Certainly Nestorius didn't render the Church back then as a Nestorian institution.

It's also a backwards paradigm, because if what a single Bishop speaks and does is betoken to what the institution actually believes in, you should set up a shrine to Pachamama because the Pope, your source of authority, has done so.

Yet you won't.

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 07:58:57 PMIt's as plain as the fact that marriage validly contracted, even according to the Natural Law, is absolutely indissoluble except by death.  Reason alone proves that.

Let's see you "prove" it then.

Natural law marriages can be dissolved by Pauline privilege (2 non-baptized, one converting) or Petrine privilege (1 baptized and one not at the time of the marriage).

Quote from: james03 on December 03, 2019, 05:43:46 PM
Furthermore I'll take St. Jerome, who had all the texts and understood these languages far better than anyone today's translation:

Jerome lost every right to speak on anything concerning marriage by calling it and the sexual act evil. That is diabolical. Blasphemous, even.

QuoteWhen you are discussing continence and virginity you say, "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." And, "It is good for them if they abide even as I." And, "I think that this is good by reason of the present distress." And, "That it is good for a man so to be." When you come to marriage, you do not say it is good to marry, because you cannot then add "than to burn;" but you say, "It is better to marry than to burn." If marriage in itself be good, do not compare it with fire, but simply say" It is good to marry." I suspect the goodness of that thing which is forced into the position of being only the lesser of two evils. What I want is not a smaller evil, but a thing absolutely good.

Quote"It is good," he (Paul) says, "for a man not to touch a woman." If it is not good for a man not to touch a woman, it is bad to touch: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil. But surely a which is allowed because there may be something worse has only a slight degree of goodness."

Quote
And as regards Adam and Eve we must maintain that before the fall they were virgins in Paradise: but after they sinned, and were cast out of Paradise, they were immediately married.

QuoteThe truth is that, in view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean.

Quote from:  Sex, Law and Christian Society In Medieval EuropeSince sex was a usual (and, in his view, a regrettable) feature of most marriages, Jerome and like-minded writers argued that couples had a moral obligation to limit marital relations to an absolute minimum. Jerome was bitterly critical of married men who loved their wives excessively. This was a "deformity," Jerome believed, and he cited with approval the Stoic writers Seneca and Sextus, who had declared that "A man who loves his wife too much is an adulterer." There can be little doubt in this context that Jerome identified love with sexual relations and that what he attacked so fiercely was immoderate indulgence in sex by married persons. Marital sex, Jerome thought, should be indulged in only very infrequently and then with sober calculation, not with hot desire. "Nothing," he asserted at one point, "is filthier than to have sex with your wife as you might do with another woman."

Men like Lactantius, Jerome and even Augustine infected theology at a very early date with Stoicism. Remember both Jerome and Augustine believed in the forged correspondences between St. Paul and Seneca. To take them as representing Apostolic teaching on these questions is tenuous when we know how much they were influenced by and regurgitated Stoic ideology.

however, here is Jerome on St. Fabiola:

Quote"And because at the very outset there is a rock in the path and she is overwhelmed by a storm of censure, for having forsaken her first husband and having taken a second, I will not praise her for her conversion till I have first cleared her of this charge. So terrible then were the faults imputed to her former husband that not even a prostitute or a common slave could have put up with them. If I were to recount them, I should undo the heroism of the wife who chose to bear the blame of a separation rather than to blacken the character and expose the stains of him who was one body with her. I will only urge this one plea which is sufficient to exonerate a chaste matron and a Christian woman. The Lord has given commandment that a wife must not be put away except it be for fornication, and that, if put away, she must remain unmarried. Now a commandment which is given to men logically applies to women also. For it cannot be that, while an adulterous wife is to be put away, an incontinent husband is to be retained. The apostle says: he which is joined to an harlot is one body. Therefore she also who is joined to a whoremonger and unchaste person is made one body with him. The laws of Cæsar are different, it is true, from the laws of Christ: Papinianus commands one thing; our own Paul another. Earthly laws give a free rein to the unchastity of men, merely condemning seduction and adultery; lust is allowed to range unrestrained among brothels and slave girls, as if the guilt were constituted by the rank of the person assailed and not by the purpose of the assailant. But with us Christians what is unlawful for women is equally unlawful for men, and as both serve the same God both are bound by the same obligations. Fabiola then has put away — they are quite right — a husband that was a sinner, guilty of this and that crime, sins— I have almost mentioned their names (i.e. adultery/fornication)— with which the whole neighbourhood resounded but which the wife alone refused to disclose"

he goes on

Quote"If however it is made a charge against her that after repudiating her husband she did not continue unmarried, I readily admit this to have been a fault, but at the same time declare that it may have been a case of necessity. It is better, the apostle tells us, to marry than to burn. She was quite a young woman, she was not able to continue in widowhood. In the words of the apostle she saw another law in her members warring against the law of her mind;  she felt herself dragged in chains as a captive towards the indulgences of wedlock. Therefore she thought it better openly to confess her weakness and to accept the semblance of an unhappy marriage than, with the name of a monogamist, to ply the trade of a courtesan. The same apostle wills that the younger widows should marry, bear children, and give no occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. And he at once goes on to explain his wish: for some are already turned aside after Satan.  Fabiola therefore was fully persuaded in her own mind: she thought she had acted legitimately in putting away her husband, and that when she had done so she was free to marry again. She did not know that the rigor of the gospel takes away from women all pretexts for re-marriage so long as their former husbands are alive; and not knowing this, though she contrived to evade other assaults of the devil, she at this point unwittingly exposed herself to a wound from him."

Remember this woman is a saint.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 08:03:08 AM

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 07:58:57 PMIt's as plain as the fact that marriage validly contracted, even according to the Natural Law, is absolutely indissoluble except by death.  Reason alone proves that.

Let's see you "prove" it then.

1. The pope's have taught that marriage is of the natural law, including its permanence and indissolubility, of course if you are a member of this forum who is doubting the Catholic faith you wouldn't accept this "proof from church authority."  Usually for Catholics, proof in a theological argument begins with the authority.

2. Children by nature need two parents committed for life, to each other and to them, for the good of their soul, the family which is the foundation of society, and for social order.

3. Male and female are by biological and psychological design sexual and monogamous, with exceptions deviations from that law of nature found in polygamous or promiscuous cultures.  It is an undeniable fact that according to nature itself human beings are driven to marry for life.  It is social custom, religion, and law that ratifies that.

But none of that may make sense to you if you are a skeptic about Catholicism in the first place, because it is Catholicism that makes these natural law arguments in the first place.

Quote from: Gardener on December 04, 2019, 08:27:02 AM
Natural law marriages can be dissolved by Pauline privilege (2 non-baptized, one converting) or Petrine privilege (1 baptized and one not at the time of the marriage).

Well except for that of course.

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 09:14:16 AM

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 08:03:08 AM

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 07:58:57 PMIt's as plain as the fact that marriage validly contracted, even according to the Natural Law, is absolutely indissoluble except by death.  Reason alone proves that.

Let's see you "prove" it then.

1. The pope's have taught that marriage is of the natural law, including its permanence and indissolubility, of course if you are a member of this forum who is doubting the Catholic faith you wouldn't accept this "proof from church authority."  Usually for Catholics, proof in a theological argument begins with the authority.

2. Children by nature need two parents committed for life, to each other and to them, for the good of their soul, the family which is the foundation of society, and for social order.

3. Male and female are by biological and psychological design sexual and monogamous, with exceptions deviations from that law of nature found in polygamous or promiscuous culture's.  It is an undeniable fact that according to nature itself human beings are driven to marry for life.  It is social custom, religion, and law that ratifies that.

But none of that may make sense to you if you are a skeptic about Catholicism in the first place, because it is Catholicism that makes these natural law arguments in the first place.

You said  reason alone proves that. Nothing you've said above demonstrates this.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 09:27:25 AM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 09:14:16 AM

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 08:03:08 AM

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 07:58:57 PMIt's as plain as the fact that marriage validly contracted, even according to the Natural Law, is absolutely indissoluble except by death.  Reason alone proves that.

Let's see you "prove" it then.

1. The pope's have taught that marriage is of the natural law, including its permanence and indissolubility, of course if you are a member of this forum who is doubting the Catholic faith you wouldn't accept this "proof from church authority."  Usually for Catholics, proof in a theological argument begins with the authority.

2. Children by nature need two parents committed for life, to each other and to them, for the good of their soul, the family which is the foundation of society, and for social order.

3. Male and female are by biological and psychological design sexual and monogamous, with exceptions deviations from that law of nature found in polygamous or promiscuous culture's.  It is an undeniable fact that according to nature itself human beings are driven to marry for life.  It is social custom, religion, and law that ratifies that.

But none of that may make sense to you if you are a skeptic about Catholicism in the first place, because it is Catholicism that makes these natural law arguments in the first place.

You said  reason alone proves that. Nothing you've said above demonstrates this.

Well then you are not in full possession of the faculty of reason.   Even a pagan with normal cognition would be able to follow the standard natural law arguments.   This isn't exactly quantum physics.  An illiterate peasant wife cooking the morning pot of porridge in her hut would understand it.

Perhaps he would be satisfied with a syllogism.

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 09:36:19 AM

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 09:27:25 AM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 09:14:16 AM

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 08:03:08 AM

Quote from: christulsa on December 03, 2019, 07:58:57 PMIt's as plain as the fact that marriage validly contracted, even according to the Natural Law, is absolutely indissoluble except by death.  Reason alone proves that.

Let's see you "prove" it then.

1. The pope's have taught that marriage is of the natural law, including its permanence and indissolubility, of course if you are a member of this forum who is doubting the Catholic faith you wouldn't accept this "proof from church authority."  Usually for Catholics, proof in a theological argument begins with the authority.

2. Children by nature need two parents committed for life, to each other and to them, for the good of their soul, the family which is the foundation of society, and for social order.

3. Male and female are by biological and psychological design sexual and monogamous, with exceptions deviations from that law of nature found in polygamous or promiscuous culture's.  It is an undeniable fact that according to nature itself human beings are driven to marry for life.  It is social custom, religion, and law that ratifies that.

But none of that may make sense to you if you are a skeptic about Catholicism in the first place, because it is Catholicism that makes these natural law arguments in the first place.

You said  reason alone proves that. Nothing you've said above demonstrates this.

Well then you are not in full possession of the faculty of reason.   Even a pagan with normal cognition would be able to follow the standard natural law arguments.   This isn't exactly quantum physics.  An illiterate peasant wife cooking the morning pot of porridge in her hut would understand it.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DvYYLqwVsAE9h-T.jpg)

Quote from: Gardener on December 04, 2019, 09:52:46 AM
Perhaps he would be satisfied with a syllogism.

Ok lets use a simple syllogism!  If A=B, B=C, then A=C. 


If (A) Kreutzitter is (B) rejecting the basic natural law argument against divorce (as expressed by me or anyone else)

And (B) if to reject the basic natural law arguments against divorce is (C) to act like a fool (objectively).

Then (A) Kreutzitter is (C) acting like a fool (objectively, no offense Kreut).


Or did we need a syllogism to break down the NL argument itself?   ;)  If so, I'll require a donation via paypal for my time!   

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 11:12:36 AM

Quote from: Gardener on December 04, 2019, 09:52:46 AM
Perhaps he would be satisfied with a syllogism.

Ok lets use a simple syllogism!  If A=B, B=C, then A=C. 


If (A) Kreutzitter is (B) rejecting the basic natural law argument against divorce (as expressed by me or anyone else)

And (B) if to reject the basic natural law arguments against divorce is (C) to act like a fool (objectively).

Then (A) Kreutzitter is (C) acting like a fool (objectively, no offense Kreut).

Oh, I reject the very concept of "natural law" and dismiss "natural law theory" in toto as demonstrably false, besides being a pagan invention of pagan philosophers transplanted into Catholic theology via Hellenizers obsessed with Stoicism. That's beside the point. You've done nothing to "prove" by "reason alone" that "marriage is for life".

Quote1. The pope's have taught that marriage is of the natural law, including its permanence and indissolubility, of course if you are a member of this forum who is doubting the Catholic faith you wouldn't accept this "proof from church authority."  Usually for Catholics, proof in a theological argument begins with the authority.

The moment you invoke the authority of papal teaching you have left the realm of "by reason alone".

Quote2. Children by nature need two parents committed for life, to each other and to them, for the good of their soul, the family which is the foundation of society, and for social order.

Children don't take a lifetime to mature, and women aren't fertile for life, so this premise is deficient right off the bat. Even then, you do nothing to show how the conclusion "marriage is for life" can be drawn from it as a truth. At most it would imply that marriage for the lifetime of the child is better for the child. But even that is patently untrue, contradicted by, say, the case of a violent, abusive husband.

Quote3. Male and female are by biological and psychological design sexual and monogamous, with exceptions deviations from that law of nature found in polygamous or promiscuous culture's.  It is an undeniable fact that according to nature itself human beings are driven to marry for life.  It is social custom, religion, and law that ratifies that.

Yes. The old Stoic canard. "Natural law" can be known without divine revelation by "reason". "It's an undeniable fact", except in those cases where this "nature" is individually or socially contradicted by human action, in which case it's a "deviation". Of course what is "natural" always happens to fall in lien with the philosopher's own moral prejudices or cultural conventions.

Here's a natural law "argument" for polygamy in the same form as yours, to show just what a load of presuppositional bunkum "natural law" is. Men are by nature fertile for decades more than women. It's patently obvious to every washerwoman that this implies that, by nature, man is supposed to take a second, younger wife when his first one hits menopause. Why else would he still be able to produce offspring while she cannot? Waiting until he is older to take a much younger first wife also doesn't make sense by nature, because he'd be wasting the most fertile period of his life. Q.E.D. Polygamy is clearly natural.

Marriage for life is not a law of nature; it's a law of supernature, of supernatural grace infused in man to bring forth the divine virtue of charity it takes to sacrifice of oneself for another in this way. It comes from the transformed heart, not from the passions and not from the mind.

Just passing through for now. The Council of Florence had said, "The seventh is the sacrament of matrimony, which is a sign of the union of Christ and the church according to the words of the apostle: This sacrament is a great one, but I speak in Christ and in the church. [quoting Ephesians 5:32] The efficient cause of matrimony is usually mutual consent expressed in words about the present. A threefold good is attributed to matrimony. The first is the procreation and bringing up of children for the worship of God. The second is the mutual faithfulness of the spouses towards each other. The third is the indissolubility of marriage, since it signifies the indivisible union of Christ and the church. Although separation of bed is lawful on account of fornication, it is not lawful to contract another marriage, since the bond of a legitimately contracted marriage  is perpetual." As the union between Christ and His Church is indissoluble (and they who deny this are in danger of being rejected by Jesus Christ), so also a sacramental marriage is indissoluble.

That a Sacramental Marriage is indissoluble can also easily be proven from our Liturgical Tradition, for each partner says, "I, N. N., take thee, N. N., for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."  From which it necessarily follows, that sacramental marriage is lifelong.

4 passages from Sacred Scripture: "But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery." (Mat 5:32)

Mark 10:11 "So He told them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her."

Luke 16:18 "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

Comment: Notice that St. Mark and St. Luke report the same prohibition absolutely. That is because an unlawful union is not a marriage.

Hence, for e.g. if a man elopes with and claims to "marry" his first cousin, the attempted union is unlawful and void ab initio. But every true Catholic marriage, like the Union between Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church, cannot ever legitimately be dissolved by anyone.

1 Cor 7:11 "And if she depart, that she remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife."

"Before the legalization of Christianity, the Council of Elvira made several declarations in AD 309. It declared in its eighth canon that women who leave their husbands and live with another are not to be given communion, even at the end of their lives." https://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/tradition-speaks-one-voice-divorce-remarriage

Also, contrary to the pagans and worldlings of today, it is the greatest Mercy of all, shown toward the offended party, by Christ and the Church, not to permit an adulterous husband, for e.g. to pretend he has now lawfully married a "second wife" (both of them commit adultery in doing this, according to the Word of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels) of his; it is Mercy toward the abandoned wife, for it alone safeguards the hope that she may be re-united with her truly married husband one day, and it is also Mercy even toward the soul of the very adulterous partner himself, for it draws him back to repentance. Even in Protestant Bibles God says, "I hate divorce" but they don't. Henry VIII wanted his divorce, just as he wanted England's rebellious divorce from Christ's Church.

And in a similar way in the Photian Schism - when those God-forsaken and terribly wicked madmen, the politician Photius, and that blasphemous, insane, wicked devil sent from hell named Michael Caerularius who had the Holy Eucharist in Azyme Bread trampled under feet - having wickedly rent the Sacred Unity of the Body of Christ, and themselves having become divorced from Christ's Church and cut off from all hope of salvation, the falsehoods of additional marriages were invented, until these abuses were corrected by the Ecumenical Council of Florence. Florence is an Ecumenical Council and was practically very widely accepted, even despite Turkish influence, until about 1484. Eastern Catholics rightly still accept it together with us. Eastern Orthodox unhappily and vainly try to contest its Ecumenical decisions, which are nevertheless infallible and eternally binding.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 11:29:57 AM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 11:12:36 AM

Quote from: Gardener on December 04, 2019, 09:52:46 AM
Perhaps he would be satisfied with a syllogism.

Ok lets use a simple syllogism!  If A=B, B=C, then A=C. 


If (A) Kreutzitter is (B) rejecting the basic natural law argument against divorce (as expressed by me or anyone else)

And (B) if to reject the basic natural law arguments against divorce is (C) to act like a fool (objectively).

Then (A) Kreutzitter is (C) acting like a fool (objectively, no offense Kreut).

Oh, I reject the very concept of "natural law" and dismiss "natural law theory" in toto as demonstrably false, besides being a pagan invention of pagan philosophers transplanted into Catholic theology via Hellenizers obsessed with Stoicism. That's beside the point. You've done nothing to "prove" by "reason alone" that "marriage is for life".

Quote1. The pope's have taught that marriage is of the natural law, including its permanence and indissolubility, of course if you are a member of this forum who is doubting the Catholic faith you wouldn't accept this "proof from church authority."  Usually for Catholics, proof in a theological argument begins with the authority.

The moment you invoke the authority of papal teaching you have left the realm of "by reason alone".

Quote2. Children by nature need two parents committed for life, to each other and to them, for the good of their soul, the family which is the foundation of society, and for social order.

Children don't take a lifetime to mature, and women aren't fertile for life, so this premise is deficient right off the bat. Even then, you do nothing to show how the conclusion "marriage is for life" can be drawn from it as a truth. At most it would imply that marriage for the lifetime of the child is better for the child. But even that is patently untrue, contradicted by, say, the case of a violent, abusive husband.

Quote3. Male and female are by biological and psychological design sexual and monogamous, with exceptions deviations from that law of nature found in polygamous or promiscuous culture's.  It is an undeniable fact that according to nature itself human beings are driven to marry for life.  It is social custom, religion, and law that ratifies that.

Yes. The old Stoic canard. "Natural law" can be known without divine revelation by "reason". "It's an undeniable fact", except in those cases where this "nature" is individually or socially contradicted by human action, in which case it's a "deviation". Of course what is "natural" always happens to fall in lien with the philosopher's own moral prejudices or cultural conventions.

Here is how I would answer.   The Popes have consistently taught at least since Trent that natural law ethics is sound Catholic philosophy, AND that Catholic philosophy is integral to understanding questions of Catholic faith and morals.  Even the Early Church Fathers (of the West and East) often embraced philosophy, especially of the Greeks.  Pope John Paul II, for all his progressive orientations, taught in Fides et Ratio what Pope Leo XIII taught in Aeternae Patris:  that the sphere of faith and the sphere of reason, by divine design, are to be in harmony;  that the basic "preambles of faith," ie the basic moral teachings, can be proven by reason itself.   By "reason alone" I was not meaning "reason separate from faith," but "reason standing on its own, enlightened by faith."   The Popes taught this too, that fundamental moral doctrines can be proven by reason itself, even within the context of the Church.  Regardless of your opinion about scholasticism, that is what Tradition and the Magisterium teaches. 

Answering your objections:

1.  The "realm of reason" is not something separate from the authority of the pope (or Church for that matter).  The pope has the authority to teach the veracity of the natural law, and recommend it.  That is the point.   That is where we Catholics should begin

2.  a) Adults are always maturing spiritually and morally, needing on occasion the counsel of their parents, which is why by natural design marriage is for lie  b)  The primary purpose of marriage is actually not mere biological procreation, but the moral education of their offspring, and that education does not end when the child becomes an adult;  c) grave abuse of a spouse is grounds for separation, not divorce.

3. See what I wrote above about natural law/philosophy.

Conclusion:  if you are biased against the natural law and philosophy, then there is no argument with you from reason itself.   Hence the sarcasm of my syllogism.  You're not being intelligent or logical here about a serious Catholic subject.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 11:44:55 AM
Marriage for life is not a law of nature; it's a law of supernature, of supernatural grace infused in man to bring forth the divine virtue of charity it takes to sacrifice of oneself for another in this way. It comes from the transformed heart, not from the passions and not from the mind.

bingo.  Which is the whole point of the argument.  We're not just spinning our wheels for the kick of it.   If marriage for life is a "law of supernature" then the Eastern Orthodox Church is violating a divine, supernatural revelation by allowing divorce and remarriage (Without annulment).   You've just proven that they are in a state of doctrinal contradiction! well done!   you can have the last word...

The article from Crisis Magazine is so good that it is worth posting here nearly in its entirety. All who desire to gain Christ's Wisdom on the subject should kindly read it very carefully: https://www.crisismagazine.com/2016/tradition-speaks-one-voice-divorce-remarriage

"What should be particularly noted in the following examples is the solicitude of the Roman Church for the maintenance of the bond.

• Indissolubility is presumed throughout the entirety of the subapostolic Fathers. The Shepherd of Hermas, St. Justin Martyr, and Athenagoras clearly reaffirm Christ's command that marriage be indissoluble. Hermas is representative: "What then, sir, is the husband to do, if his wife continue in her vicious practices? And he said, The husband should put her away, and remain by himself. But if he put his wife away and marry another, he also commits adultery."
• The subapostolic Church was so concerned for the indissolubility and sanctity of the marriage bond, that doubts were raised as to whether a second marriage was possible, even after the first spouse died. Indeed even in the Post Nicene period, penance was still imposed upon men who remarried after their wife's death. (St. Basil ep. 188.4, PG 32, 673a) While the Church gradually discerned the liceity of such marriages, it offers startling testimony to the early Church's commitment to the bond. Not only that, but such second marriages were distinguished from those who divorced and civilly remarried, who were never permitted to be readmitted to communion.
• The great theologian Origen mentioned that he had heard that some bishops allowed communion after remarriage, and then proceeds to condemn the practice no fewer than three times (In evang. Mt. 14:23-24). Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Augustine too mention such practices, and denounce them in no uncertain terms.
• Pope Callistus I (r. 218-222) effectively made an ecclesiastical "declaration of independence" regarding marriage and, in contravention to civil law, determined that Christians were free to marry across social classes. This established the principle that the laws of God were above those of the state, especially those that contradicted the divine law regarding marriage.
• Before the legalization of Christianity, the Council of Elvira made several declarations in AD 309. It declared in its eighth canon that women who leave their husbands and live with another are not to be given communion, even at the end of their lives. Canon 9 further comments that a woman who leaves her adulterous husband may not receive communion while he lives. Such a one may however be given last rites. These decisions appear repeatedly in the local councils of the first millennium.

...

• Pope Siricius (r. 384-399) took indissolubility so seriously that he prohibited even those who were solemnly betrothed to marry someone other than their intended. (Epist. Ad Himerium, 5)
• Innocent I (r. 401-417) was most clear "In respect to all cases the rule is kept that whoever marries another man, while her husband is still alive, must be held to be an adulteress, and must be granted no leave to do penance unless one of the men shall have died." (Ep. ad Victricius, bishop of Rouen, PL 20, 479) Innocent agreed with St. Basil, that women who were remarried were not even to be given permission to do public penance, because in the Church permission for penance was always intended to come after the renunciation of the sin to be atoned.
• Gregory the Great (r. 590-604) spoke of the dissolution of marriage for the ostensibly good reason to enter the religious life. He wrote to his friend Theoctista, the sister of the Byzantine emperor: "And such both I, and all Catholic bishops, and the universal Church, anathematize, because they think what is contrary to the truth, and speak what is contrary. For, if they say that marriages should be dissolved for the sake of religion, be it known that, though human law has conceded this, yet divine law has forbidden it. For the Truth in person says, 'What God has joined together let not man put asunder' (Mt. 19:6). He says also, 'It is not lawful for a man to put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication (Mt. 16:9).' Who then may contradict this heavenly legislator?" (PL 77, 1161, Epistolae, Bk. 11, Ep. 45) Even for the sake of entering religious life, no one could leave their spouse. This became the common teaching in the west. A couple could mutually choose to enter the religious life, but they were still married to one another, they simply chose a life of celibacy.
  The Church had to confront new challenges in the period of the barbarian migrations. These new groups brought with them laxer customs regarding marriage, so the papacy had to reinforce indissolubility in a new context, knowing that the moral commands of God transcend cultural differences. Pope Zachary I declared to Pepin in 747 "If any layman shall put away his own wife and marry another, or if he shall marry a woman who has been put away by another man, let him be deprived of communion." (MGH ep. III. Ep. Merov. Et. Karol. Aevi I, 482) Adrian I reinforced this in a letter to the Spanish bishops in the 780s.
• Even with such fulminations the successor states continued to do much as they pleased. A salient example was the defense of Theutberga by Pope St. Nicholas the Great (r. 859-867). Lothair II decided he did not like his new wife, and decided to put her away to marry his mistress Waldrada. Nicholas contradicted this, and held out even under threat of invasion from Lothair, all to maintain the rights of the wife Theutberga. At length in 865, Nicholas triumphed, and Theutberga was returned to Lothair, and he was deprived of his bigamous second wife. It was a sterling example of the defense of the popes in favor of the indissolubility of marriage.
• When Gratian completed his mighty compilation of Canon Law in the 1140s, the Decretum (destined to remain the book of Church law until 1917), he was absolutely certain on the normative and infallible dogma of indissolubility. Indeed the canonical praxis of the Middle Ages was so fixed that women could (and did) sue in Church courts for their husbands to be forcibly remanded to their common home, there ordered by the Church to treat their legitimate wives with "marital affection."
• Following the Decretum the popes continued to add laws to strengthen and undergird the tradition (called Decretals). Alexander III (r. 1159-1181) interprets the "fornication" exception of Matthew 19 as one of permission to separate, not remarry. He further specifies that "perfect divorce," which is the dissolution of an existing bond, can only be of a ratified, non-consummated marriage, that is, one in which the vows have been exchanged, but has not yet resulted in sexual union, and only with the express permission of the pope himself. By Alexander's time, it had become the prevalent opinion that the exchange of vows plus sex made a marriage absolutely indivisible, no power on earth, not even the pope's could dissolve it. (Liber Extra, 32.2, 32.7)
• Innocent III (r. 1198-1216) one of the most innovative pontiffs in history, not only wrote a beautiful book on marriage, but also canonized the first non-royal married saint, Omobono of Cremona. He too makes clear the absolute indissolubility of marriage in his profession of faith for Waldensian heretics. In his reconciliation of Durand of Huesca, the Waldensian was compelled to confess that, "We do not deny that carnal marriage may be contracted as the Apostle says, and we utterly forbid that those united in lawful fashion shall separate." (PL 216, 289ff)
• Innocent III put his words into action when the powerful French King Philip II attempted to put away his Danish wife Ingeborg. Philip ignored papal commands and attempted to marry again. So concerned with the bond of marriage was Innocent, that in 1200 he placed the entire French kingdom under an interdict (i.e. the Church was shut for business, except baptism and last rites in emergencies). After 13 years of resisting, Philip finally relented and Innocent had the pleasure of seeing Ingeborg restored to her proper rights. The papacy had again sacrificed much for the defense of marriage.
• At the ecumenical council of Florence in 1439, the first of a series of reunions were decreed between the Roman church and various separated Churches of the east. The Armenians were required to confess the Augustinian goods of marriage: offspring, faith, and indissolubility. They were required to hold that, while a separation may be effected for causes of sexual immorality, remarriage was never to be permitted as long as the spouse lived. (Mansi, 31, 1054ff) Such a profession was required in nearly every case of eastern Christians returning to communion. (See Benedict XIV's reconciliation of the Maronites in 1743.)"

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 12:06:45 PM
bingo.  Which is the whole point of the argument.  We're not just spinning our wheels for the kick of it.   If marriage for life is a "law of supernature" then the Eastern Orthodox Church is violating a divine, supernatural revelation by allowing divorce and remarriage (Without annulment).   You've just proven that they are in a state of doctrinal contradiction! well done!   you can have the last word...

No, that doesn't follow, and no, I haven't.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 12:29:04 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 12:06:45 PM
bingo.  Which is the whole point of the argument.  We're not just spinning our wheels for the kick of it.   If marriage for life is a "law of supernature" then the Eastern Orthodox Church is violating a divine, supernatural revelation by allowing divorce and remarriage (Without annulment).   You've just proven that they are in a state of doctrinal contradiction! well done!   you can have the last word...

No, that doesn't follow, and no, I haven't.

::)

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 12:01:50 PM
Here is how I would answer.   The Popes have consistently taught at least since Trent

Indeed. All the more reason to suspect them. No pope can bind me to the tenets of a pagan philosophy.

Quotethat natural law ethics is sound Catholic philosophy

Am I supposed to be awed by this when these same popes were raised and educated in that Hellenised philosophy?

QuoteAND that Catholic philosophy is integral to understanding questions of Catholic faith and morals. 

1,000 years of Christianity without Scholasticism ...

QuoteEven the Early Church Fathers (of the West and East) often embraced philosophy, especially of the Greeks. 

I know. I already gave the crypto-Stoic Jerome as just one such example, a Helleniser par excellence who regarded marriage as an evil and all sex as defilement.

QuotePope John Paul II, for all his progressive orientations, taught in Fides et Ratio what Pope Leo XIII taught in Aeternae Patris:  that the sphere of faith and the sphere of reason, by divine design, are to be in harmony;  that the basic "preambles of faith," ie the basic moral teachings, can be proven by reason itself.   

Scholastic "proofs" of moral propositions by "natural law" theory are demonstrably unsound; derivation of moral imperatives from these is demonstrably impossible.

QuoteBy "reason alone" I was not meaning "reason separate from faith," but "reason standing on its own, enlightened by faith."   The Popes taught this too, that fundamental moral doctrines can be proven by reason itself, even within the context of the Church.  Regardless of your opinion about scholasticism, that is what Tradition and the Magisterium teaches. 

"Can be". Even if they "can be", they never have been.

QuoteAnswering your objections:

1.  The "realm of reason" is not something separate from the authority of the pope (or Church for that matter).  The pope has the authority to teach the veracity of the natural law, and recommend it.  That is the point.   That is where we Catholics should begin

If you have to appeal to papal teaching to establish your claim, you are not demonstrating it "by reason alone". You are depending upon an alleged fact of divine revelation. It was your own contention that marriage being indissoluble by nature can be proved "by reason alone", and this point does not do that.

Quote2.  a) Adults are always maturing spiritually and morally, needing on occasion the counsel of their parents, which is why by natural design marriage is for lie 

Adults do not need married parents for this.

Quoteb)  The primary purpose of marriage is actually not mere biological procreation, but the moral education of their offspring, and that education does not end when the child becomes an adult; 

Which does not require married parents.

Quotec) grave abuse of a spouse is grounds for separation, not divorce.

This assertion doesn't change my point. Divorce of parents can, depending on circumstances, be more beneficial to a child than their remaining married.

And still, regardless of any of these points being true or not, they do not "prove" that marriage is "indissoluble" by "natural law".

More ironically, Catholic tradition and historical practice flatly contradicts this, that it is "indissoluble".

Quote
3. See what I wrote above about natural law/philosophy.

There is no response to my point in it.

QuoteConclusion:  if you are biased against the natural law and philosophy,

I am not "biased" against it any more than I am "biased" against metaphysical naturalism or flat earth theory; it is demonstrably false and fails to meet its stated objective.

Quotethen there is no argument with you from reason itself.   Hence the sarcasm of my syllogism.  You're not being intelligent or logical here about a serious Catholic subject.

I see. If you don't accept Stoic philosophy and Scholastic language games, you're not being "logical" or "intelligent"; that is the beginning and end of your argument.

There are of course two camps here: those Roman Catholics who knowingly embrace Greek pagan philosophy and those who are unaware of the degree to which Western theology, mainly from the Middle Ages, but already in Patristic times, was shaped by it. It shocked me when I had understood the extent of it, how much of Rome's theology is transplanted Greek philosophy, and how much it radically diverges from the world view of the ancient Hebrew.

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 12:47:01 PM

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 04, 2019, 12:29:04 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 12:06:45 PM
bingo.  Which is the whole point of the argument.  We're not just spinning our wheels for the kick of it.   If marriage for life is a "law of supernature" then the Eastern Orthodox Church is violating a divine, supernatural revelation by allowing divorce and remarriage (Without annulment).   You've just proven that they are in a state of doctrinal contradiction! well done!   you can have the last word...

No, that doesn't follow, and no, I haven't.

::)

No, it doesn't. I didn't propose this as a "moral" law but as a supernatural reality: it is a "divine law" in the sense that the nature of the divine energies infused in the sanctified man enable and drive him toward such having such love and commitment. It doesn't follow from my willing, by divine grace, to commit to someone in that manner, that this is under all circumstances indissoluble. It only follows that, insofar as I remain in this grace, that impetus for dissolution should not come from me. If the bond is shattered from the other side, and shattered it then is, how should this fact bind me to marriage any more than Christ's love binds him to save a reprobate from hellfire?

Yeah, I suppose I'm to,say, watch a sociopathic spouse I wed out of naivety and ignorance wantonly destroy a marriage and then go on to remarry and lead the life of a sodomite, and I will have to live the rest of my life as a monk in a vow of chastity out of some pointless loyalty to a reprobate. The traditional Orthodox perspective of Oikonomia makes more sense and makes more sense of the Gospel of Matthew (i.e., it doesn't flatly contradict it).

Sins against the marrriage bed should be forgiven; but sometimes forgiveness is not even WANTED. Sometimes mercy is FLATLY REJECTED. Sometimes the offender WANTS destruction. Applied to his own mercy, God calls it  an unpardonable sin. Why should he hold man to a higher standard?

I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is a sad trend for me to witness year after year, trad Catholics going Orthodox.   It seems as the OP said largely because of the liturgical abuse, but also getting burnt out on traditionalism and yearning for the spiritual simplicity that Orthodoxy seems to offer.  I don't know your reasons, if its because you are divorced and want to remarry and still receive the sacraments, or because you're more a right-brained, mystical kind of thinker than the more left-brained, analytical, Thomistic kind of thinkers.   But I would warn you not to be bitter against the Catholic Church as the impulse of leaving it.  I hope that's not the direction you're headed.

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 01:50:04 PM
I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Thank you. I assure you, I am not. I am not looking to or considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy

QuoteI don't know your reasons, if its because you are divorced and want to remarry

No.

St Augustine is my favourite. I wonder whats wrong with him..

Yes, trads lapsing into the Greek Schism of Photian so-called "Orthodoxy" is a real problem, and we've seen some go on to become faithless Protestant heretics, and others secularist pagan apostates, right here on this very forum. It shows the wicked fruits of neglecting Marian Devotion, Devotion to Christ in the Eucharist, other necessary Catholic Devotions, and also due respect and reverence to the Successors of the Apostles. The Catholic Church is the only Universal Church, the only Church that fulfills the prophesy of Mal 1:11 on the Universal Sacrifice of Holy Mass - the Church alone that offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from sunrise to sunset, Mal 1:[11] "For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts." [11] "A clean oblation": Viz., the Precious Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. http://www.drbo.org/chapter/44001.htm

""Did you ever think that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is being offered in some part of the world every hour of your life? When it is midnight in New York, Masses are beginning in the churches of Italy. There ancient altars, at which Saints have knelt, are lit up with tapers, and the Vicar of Christ and thousands of priests are lifting holy hands up to Heaven. A little later and the bells of a thousand towers of France begin to sprinkle the air with holy sounds; and in every city, town and hamlet, kneeling crowds adore the chastening hand of God and pray for sinners who despise His ordinances ... "When midnight sounds again in New York, the silver bells are tinkling again in every chancel in Rome. And so it goes on; the divine Host is constantly rising like the sun in its course around the earth. Thus are fulfilled the words of the prophet Malachias [1:11]: 'From the rising of the sun even to the going down thereof, My name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a clean oblation: for My name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts." "Not an instant of time passes that Mass is not offered, and the Host not adored. Talk of an Empire on which the sun never sets, of the British reveille drum ever beating as our planet revolves on its axis and the day chases night around the globe; what is that to the unending oblation of the Catholic Church?" http://slatts.blogspot.com/2008/06/in-every-place-there-is-sacrifice.html

I wrote an article on the Filioque to help address the problem of trads lapsing into Orthodoxy, and already 2 Orthodox I'm aware of happily returned to the Catholic Church after reading it. That's online here: https://onepeterfive.com/filioque-separated-east/

"Orthodoxy" was always about Photius, and Photius' heretical denial of a foundational Dogma of Catholic Faith, already taught in the Athanasian Creed, and in 5 Ecumenical Councils, several centuries before the great heresiarch. If Catholics are properly catechized about this heresy and the strict need to avoid it all costs, they would be much better equipped not to fall prey to its modern proponents.

"[1] Five Ecumenical Councils approved a letter of Patriarch St. Cyril of Alexandria that taught the Dogma of the Filioque!

Cardinal St. Robert Bellarmine gives a manifest proof establishing the doctrine from the authority of five ecumenical councils:

Omitting these things, then, let us bring forward the Councils that testify the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. First the Council celebrated at Alexandria, from which Council Cyril writes a letter to Nestorius in which are these words, 'The Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth, and Christ is Truth, and so He proceeds from Him likewise as from the Father.' This letter was read in the Council of Ephesus and was approved both by the Council of Ephesus itself and by the fourth Synod, and by the fifth Synod and by the sixth and seventh Synods. We have therefore five general Councils celebrated among the Greeks which receive the most open and clear opinion that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as from the Father. What then do they now seek? What do they demand?"

St. Robert's excellent work is on Catholic Apologetics here: http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/procession.htm

1. More from St. Robert: "Ninth [of Fifteen Latin Fathers, beside Fifteen Greek Fathers, and the Five Ecumenical Councils we saw above] Blessed Leo, "There is one who generates; another who is generated; another who proceeds from both." And this is that Leo the Great whom in the fourth Synod 630 Bishops, almost all Oriental, extolled with the greatest praise, and about whom they repeated again and again that as Leo believes so also do we believe ...

The Disputation is Concluded with a Divine Testimony

At the end of the whole disputation it has been pleasing now to note a divine judgment or testimony. For God has shown in many ways after the rise of the schism who is in error, the Greeks or the Latins. For up to the time of the schism Greece flourished with learned and holy men, so that all the general Councils were celebrated among the Greeks; but after the schism for almost 800 years they have had no Council, no holy man famous for miracles, very few learned men. But the Latins at this time have had twelve general Councils and innumerable particular ones. Again in each age there have been men very famous for miracles, new orders of religious, many learned men ... "

2. Conclusion from St. Alphonsus: "he was anathematized [at the Eighth General Council] in these words : "Anathema to Photius the invader, the schismatical tyrant, the new Judas, the inventor of perverse dogmas." In these and such like terms was he condemned, and, together with him, Gregory of Syracuse, and all their followers, who persevered in their obstinacy (4). Twenty-seven Canons were promulgated in this the Eighth General Council ... https://sensusfidelium.us/apologetics/history-of-heresies-their-refutation-st-alphonsus/the-errors-of-the-greeks-condemned-in-three-general-councils/

St. Robert and St. Alphonsus prove that Photius' Heresy was not some small matter, but a very grave form of crypto-Macedonianism. Those who want to safeguard their Faith and save their souls will steer well clear of such dangerous errors and the eternally harmful consequences of falling into it.

QuoteOkay. Let's recapitulate. You stated that fornication is sex between unmarried people. If the people, or one of them, were married, we'd call it adultery. And note, both words "fornication" and "adultery" are used in the cite. While fornication has acquired the specific meaning of sex between unmarried people in English, this was a recent development. Both fornication and adultery generally meant illicit or unlawful sexual immorality.

No.  Fornication is sex outside of marriage.  Adultery is sex outside of marriage by at least one married person.  Jesus switches terms to make His point.  In the case of fornication you can grant a bill of divorce.  This is referring to the virginity test in jewish law.  This comment only appears in the jewish gospel of Matthew.

Even if we grant that fornication is some sort of other morality for the sake of argument, you still arrive at annulment.  Husband forgot to tell his fiancee he was a closet homosexual.  Wife forgot to tell her fiancee she was a prostitute.  Constitutes deception and fraud, and thus grounds for annulment.  And this is taking your interpretation.

But your argument still eventually fails as the orthodox don't limit divorce to adultery.  Which itself would be absurd as if you wanted to divorce your wife and stay in the Church, just rent a prostitute one night.

QuoteJerome lost every right to speak on anything concerning marriage by calling it and the sexual act evil.

Except Jerome wasn't speaking on anything.  He was translating.  And he was the best translator the Church has ever had merely for the reason that he was working circa 400 A.D. when many more texts were available to him and Koine Greek was still a common tongue.

Quote from: james03 on December 04, 2019, 06:23:08 PM

QuoteOkay. Let's recapitulate. You stated that fornication is sex between unmarried people. If the people, or one of them, were married, we'd call it adultery. And note, both words "fornication" and "adultery" are used in the cite. While fornication has acquired the specific meaning of sex between unmarried people in English, this was a recent development. Both fornication and adultery generally meant illicit or unlawful sexual immorality.

No.  Fornication is sex outside of marriage.  Adultery is sex outside of marriage by at least one married person.  Jesus switches terms to make His point.  In the case of fornication you can grant a bill of divorce.  This is referring to the virginity test in jewish law.  This comment only appears in the jewish gospel of Matthew.

Even if we grant that fornication is some sort of other morality for the sake of argument, you still arrive at annulment.  Husband forgot to tell his fiancee he was a closet homosexual.  Wife forgot to tell her fiancee she was a prostitute.  Constitutes deception and fraud, and thus grounds for annulment.  And this is taking your interpretation.

But your argument still eventually fails as the orthodox don't limit divorce to adultery.  Which itself would be absurd as if you wanted to divorce your wife and stay in the Church, just rent a prostitute one night.

I'll put to you another case James, for which I would imagine the EO would have their own particular answer.  I've actually known of several couples in this situation.

Two Catholics get married in the Catholic Church.  Both tell each other and the priest before taking their vows that they intend to be open to life, to render the marriage debt to each other (except for grave reasons), to act in conformity with the Church's teaching about the purposes of marriage, especially the procreation of children.  Nothing else is said before the ceremony to the contrary.

But then weeks and months after the wedding the man (let's say its the man in this example though I can easily imagine this being more likely on the part of the wife) starts refusing the marriage debt to his wife, showing no willingness or interest in his wife sexually or in other physically intimate ways.   The reasons he gives can be shown not to even remotely constitute a grave reason.  And this pattern continues for years even, with little or no sexual relations/sexual intimacy with the same excuse and behavior.  From the beginning even he acts distant to her, spends a lot of time with friends outside of the home.  In this scenario the wife is at least basically doing her duties and is living consistent with a Catholic life as a person and as a wife.  Taking of courses consideration of the complexities of personality differences, biological issues, hardships, etc.

Besides common sense, could we prove that is grounds for a declaration of nullity, that the relationship at least up until that time does not constitute a valid, sacramental marriage?

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 01:50:04 PM
I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is a sad trend for me to witness year after year, trad Catholics going Orthodox. 

Has anybody seen a single case of this in the real world, or is it purely a "forum" phenomenon (you know, yet another variety of vanity, as if the Devil had not already invented enough of them).

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 04, 2019, 07:15:17 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 01:50:04 PM
I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is a sad trend for me to witness year after year, trad Catholics going Orthodox. 

Has anybody seen a single case of this in the real world, or is it purely a "forum" phenomenon (you know, yet another variety of vanity, as if the Devil had not already invented enough of them).

A family who attended our local SSPX chapel left the Church and converted to Orthodoxy through an Old Calendar Russian Orthodox chapel which is about ten miles from my house.  Right before they left, the husband was questioning a lot the scandals surrounding Francis and doubts about the Catholic teachings on the papacy because of it.  They were hard core trads for years.  Its as if the Francis Effect is bringing conservative Catholics back to Tradition en masse, while on the other end it (he) is driving many trads into Orthodoxy.   

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 07:19:00 PM

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 04, 2019, 07:15:17 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 01:50:04 PM
I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is a sad trend for me to witness year after year, trad Catholics going Orthodox. 

Has anybody seen a single case of this in the real world, or is it purely a "forum" phenomenon (you know, yet another variety of vanity, as if the Devil had not already invented enough of them).

OK, so not "theological" but "practical."

Reminds me of Fulton Sheen's comment - nobody awakes one morning with sudden doubts about the mystery of the Trinity; what actually happens, is a man wants to marry his neighbour's wife, and doubts about the Trinity are summoned to pave the way.

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 04, 2019, 07:48:48 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 07:19:00 PM

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 04, 2019, 07:15:17 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 01:50:04 PM
I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is a sad trend for me to witness year after year, trad Catholics going Orthodox. 

Has anybody seen a single case of this in the real world, or is it purely a "forum" phenomenon (you know, yet another variety of vanity, as if the Devil had not already invented enough of them).

OK, so not "theological" but "practical."

Reminds me of Fulton Sheen's comment - nobody awakes one morning with sudden doubts about the mystery of the Trinity; what actually happens, is a man wants to marry his neighbour's wife, and doubts about the Trinity are summoned to pave the way.

Exactly.  We were actually friends w them outside of church.  The husband thought Francis, the NO, and most trads (including the locals) were not conservative enough in their lifestyle choices.  It was a pattern that kept coming up in our conversations.  Then one day they were gone.  When I finally was able to get a hold of him, he gave a short explanation, that he no longer believed in the claims of Rome and the papacy and they were going Orthodox.  Despite future efforts, we never heard from them again.  I concluded that they left the chapel and Church for personal reasons, needing to fit in with a traditional liturgy church where the people seemed to them more conservative, and for that reason mainly they started to doubt the papacy.  It was convenient for them, at least at that moment in their lives.   It was a sad loss too on a personal level.  So yeah, I think this is more than what goes down in the forums.  These trads that come here bitter at the Church, flirting w Orthodoxy, I'm afraid are following the same trend out there in the "real world."

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 04, 2019, 07:15:17 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 01:50:04 PM
I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is a sad trend for me to witness year after year, trad Catholics going Orthodox. 

Has anybody seen a single case of this in the real world, or is it purely a "forum" phenomenon (you know, yet another variety of vanity, as if the Devil had not already invented enough of them).

I knew a family in Colorado. "Model" family: a lot of kids. All boys served Mass. etc.. They moved out of state and then went Orthodox. The husband is now an Orthodox Deacon. Unsure if he will be going for the priesthood. Needless to say, I found it quite shocking given how "TLM" they were.

Quote from: Gardener on December 04, 2019, 08:34:16 PM

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 04, 2019, 07:15:17 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 01:50:04 PM
I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is a sad trend for me to witness year after year, trad Catholics going Orthodox. 

Has anybody seen a single case of this in the real world, or is it purely a "forum" phenomenon (you know, yet another variety of vanity, as if the Devil had not already invented enough of them).

I knew a family in Colorado. "Model" family: a lot of kids. All boys served Mass. etc.. They moved out of state and then went Orthodox. The husband is now an Orthodox Deacon. Unsure if he will be going for the priesthood. Needless to say, I found it quite shocking given how "TLM" they were.

At the Greek Orthodox Festival in Tulsa, in September, we were treated to their Deacon telling a group for fifteen long minutes about his personal journey to the diaconate.  He was giving "life lessons" that had little to do with explaining their Church.   If it wasn't for the fact I was sitting towards the front of the crowd, I would've ducked out.  He did get in a couple jabs towards the RCs, but considering I had already challenged their priest to the group on the same points, made in the same exact presentation at the 2018 festival, I thought I'd go eat a lamb kabob instead.  Tasty!

Most of the Catholics-turned-Orthodox I know were NO Catholics for whom Orthodoxy seemed more serious. Given what's found in most NO parishes, that's fairly undebatable. I am unaware of any for whom the ability to divorce was a reason.

QuoteTaking of courses consideration of the complexities of personality differences, biological issues, hardships, etc.

Besides common sense, could we prove that is grounds for a declaration of nullity, that the relationship at least up until that time does not constitute a valid, sacramental marriage?

It's a complex case but shows why the Church talks about nullity.  The easy answer is if the man had some sort of frigidity before the marriage and didn't disclose this, then this is a case of fraud.  The priest would have to determine this, but that would be a case for annulment, especially since the end of marriage is supposed to be kids.

Now going over your initial cavaets, then that is still a marriage:  the guy got into porn and his wife didn't "measure up", she started dressing like crap, or her personality changed so she was no longer attractive to him or she got out of shape.  In that case, you have a marriage, but it needs work.

One thing on personality, suppose he was sexually abused as a kid, and found out in marriage he couldn't connect with his wife or some other weird personality "ailment".  That might be grounds for annulment.  Again a priest would have to look into it.

The divorce thing with the Orthodox is depressing.  To be honest if they believed properly on the matter I'd have no problem going to their Divine Liturgy since I don't believe Francis is the Pope.  So no matter where I'd go there would be no Pope, so you just look for valid sacraments.  Instead now I'm rejecting Francis because of his teachings on divorce to go to ...... the Orthodox?

Trad Mass and Trad sacraments is where it is at.

Quote from: james03 on December 04, 2019, 08:53:23 PM

QuoteTaking of courses consideration of the complexities of personality differences, biological issues, hardships, etc.

Besides common sense, could we prove that is grounds for a declaration of nullity, that the relationship at least up until that time does not constitute a valid, sacramental marriage?

It's a complex case but shows why the Church talks about nullity.  The easy answer is if the man had some sort of frigidity before the marriage and didn't disclose this, then this is a case of fraud.  The priest would have to determine this, but that would be a case for annulment, especially since the end of marriage is supposed to be kids.

Now going over your initial cavaets, then that is still a marriage:  the guy got into porn and his wife didn't "measure up", she started dressing like crap, or her personality changed so she was no longer attractive to him or she got out of shape.  In that case, you have a marriage, but it needs work.

One thing on personality, suppose he was sexually abused as a kid, and found out in marriage he couldn't connect with his wife or some other weird personality "ailment".  That might be grounds for annulment.  Again a priest would have to look into it.

I would think that if the man was so frigid (perhaps due to some past abuse as you mention)--or some other similar reason--that he could not or would not have sex with his newly wedded wife, the fact that he kept denying her requests or consistently would not attempt himself to have a conjugal life, would objectively prove fraud, if not an overtly intentional lie, then at least an implicit failure to consent to the purpose of marriage when taking the vow.  But I am not a canon lawyer, so that is just my common sensical deduction.   If a person makes a promise to do a such-and-such action as a life long commitment, and then shortly after making that promise shows a permanent pattern of refusing to do that action or even try to orient themselves to it, I would think that alone would prove beyond reasonable doubt there was objective fraud (apart from the internal forum of the spouse in question).   

Quote from: james03 on December 04, 2019, 08:57:54 PM
The divorce thing with the Orthodox is depressing.  To be honest if they believed properly on the matter I'd have no problem going to their Divine Liturgy since I don't believe Francis is the Pope.  So no matter where I'd go there would be no Pope, so you just look for valid sacraments.  Instead now I'm rejecting Francis because of his teachings on divorce to go to ...... the Orthodox?

Trad Mass and Trad sacraments is where it is at.

That Old Calendar RO chapel near Owasso might be against divorce!   8)   They're basically trads protesting the Orthodox mainstream like us RC trads.   We'd fit right in!  But I think they'd require conversion first.

That or we start a trad chapel of our own, bring in the SSPX again, or for now a good independent priest.  I can serve Low Mass, and as I can testify 03 serves well a High Mass.  Pick someone's garage and start small and simple.  Might be an option down the line.   :cheeseheadbeer:

Ask a orthodox what they think of St Francis and you will realize they are not our "friends"

Quote from: james03 on December 04, 2019, 06:23:55 PM

QuoteJerome lost every right to speak on anything concerning marriage by calling it and the sexual act evil.

Except Jerome wasn't speaking on anything.  He was translating.  And he was the best translator the Church has ever had merely for the reason that he was working circa 400 A.D. when many more texts were available to him and Koine Greek was still a common tongue.

fornic?ti? f (genitive fornic?ti?nis); third declension

fornication
whoredom, prostitution

Literally coming from the Latin for brothel.

fornix m (genitive fornicis); third declension

arch, vault
brothel (in a cellar)


fornication (countable and uncountable, plural fornications)

Sexual intercourse, especially on the part of an unmarried person.
(law) The act of such illicit sexual intercourse between a man and a woman which does not by law amount to adultery.

Even fornicatio didn't mean what you claim it only means, and neither did fornication.

Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. But FORNICATION, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks." Ephesian 5:1-4

KR, could I ask you to please explain your alternative to natural law theory in a bit of detail? The way people sometimes talk about natural law, it sounds as if they believe that nature contains precise verbal propositions about morality that can be ascertained by sitting down and rigorously pondering it all. That does seem completely wrong to me. At the same time it seems self-evident that nature provides humanity with a pretty rigorous emotional education in morality, which is where feelings of loyalty, honesty, fairness, honour, etc. come from. And that thinking about these feelings to refine our sense of them can be morally profitable. And that to me seems similar to the idea of natural law. What do you think of that? Where do you think natural morals come from?

Quote from: Graham on December 05, 2019, 08:00:41 AM
KR, could I ask you to please explain your alternative to natural law theory in a bit of detail? The way people sometimes talk about natural law, it sounds as if they believe that nature contains precise verbal propositions about morality that can be ascertained by sitting down and rigorously pondering it all. That does seem completely wrong to me. At the same time it seems self-evident that nature provides humanity with a pretty rigorous emotional education in morality, which is where feelings of loyalty, honesty, fairness, honour, etc. come from. And that thinking about these feelings to refine our sense of them can be morally profitable. And that to me seems similar to the idea of natural law. What do you think of that? Where do you think natural morals come from?

You don't have to reference scholasticism to understand the natural law.  Scripture describes it as the laws of God "written on the human heart."   Every human being has access by reason to its basic principles and by design the capacity to apply them in the complex world to arrive at moral certainties that often are not explicitly found in Scripture.  The natural law is not same as the laws of physics or biology.  They go beyond a simple force-effect relationship, because it instead is acting on the soul, especially the practical intellect and free will.  And St Thomas didn't invent it either, he mainly laid out so well what the Fathers and Doctors taught before him.

(A note on those who dislike scholasticism:  it is the intellectual and the educational system of the Catholic Church going back before the errors of neo-Thomism, before St Thomas himself, to St Augustine and even before him, and not limited to the Western Church.  In fact it is the fabric of the intellectual life of the Church, for us all, including in a proper Catholic education)

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 08:03:15 PM

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 04, 2019, 07:48:48 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 07:19:00 PM

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 04, 2019, 07:15:17 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 04, 2019, 01:50:04 PM
I won't argue anymore about the divorce question, but I will say from reading the forums the last year you seem to be considering converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.  This is a sad trend for me to witness year after year, trad Catholics going Orthodox. 

Has anybody seen a single case of this in the real world, or is it purely a "forum" phenomenon (you know, yet another variety of vanity, as if the Devil had not already invented enough of them).

OK, so not "theological" but "practical."

Reminds me of Fulton Sheen's comment - nobody awakes one morning with sudden doubts about the mystery of the Trinity; what actually happens, is a man wants to marry his neighbour's wife, and doubts about the Trinity are summoned to pave the way.

Exactly.  We were actually friends w them outside of church.  The husband thought Francis, the NO, and most trads (including the locals) were not conservative enough in their lifestyle choices.  It was a pattern that kept coming up in our conversations.  Then one day they were gone.  When I finally was able to get a hold of him, he gave a short explanation, that he no longer believed in the claims of Rome and the papacy and they were going Orthodox.  Despite future efforts, we never heard from them again.  I concluded that they left the chapel and Church for personal reasons, needing to fit in with a traditional liturgy church where the people seemed to them more conservative, and for that reason mainly they started to doubt the papacy.  It was convenient for them, at least at that moment in their lives.   It was a sad loss too on a personal level.  So yeah, I think this is more than what goes down in the forums.  These trads that come here bitter at the Church, flirting w Orthodoxy, I'm afraid are following the same trend out there in the "real world."

The 'lifestyle choices' of the friends of Francis (more like friends of Dorothy, if Anne Barnhardt (https://www.barnhardt.biz/) is even quarter credible) Francis too, and worse still his Open Border mania politics and tolerance of peculation, are extraordinarily scandalous. A Catholic would have to go back to the pontificate of Julius III, for the sheer gayness of it all, and Julius did no harm in the realm of religion and politics. It also isn't clear that Francis holds the Petrine Office as Julius III undoubtedly did, except possibly in the sedeprivationist scenario outlined by Guérard des Lauriers, O.P.  And the Cassianicum Thesis appeared in the context of Conciliar Popes like John XXIII, Paul VI and JP2, who, for all their flaws, still had a notable measure of personal holiness. I cannot see any public holiness in someone who glares at Our Lord on the altar yet has this thing for kissing the feet of Moslem men. Maybe he's secretly Catholic, but it's well hidden.

I would say that the families at the diocesan TLM appear less traditional than those at the FSSPX chapel. It would well irk a family man who is trying his hardest, and cannot see how Francis could possibly be one asked by our Saviour to 'feed my sheep.' Anyhow, R & R involves the sort of mental gymnastics that really doesn't work (a medieval Pope, for example, waging a dubious vendetta against the Hohenstaufens under the guise of a Crusade, still did his duty as Pope). Benedict maybe could be Pope, if he did botch his resignation, but not Francis, yet Benedict had no issue with the yearly Assisi sacrilege and in his writing suggested parts of Matthew where Jews call a curse on themselves during the appearance of Jesus before Pilate, is not really historical (I'll doublecheck that, but it sounds plausible for a Modernist to say that).

:(

 

QuoteThe act of such illicit sexual intercourse between a man and a woman which does not by law amount to adultery.

Yeah, so that creates a huge stinking mess for the Orthodox.

Quote from: Graham on December 05, 2019, 08:00:41 AM
KR, could I ask you to please explain your alternative to natural law theory in a bit of detail? The way people sometimes talk about natural law, it sounds as if they believe that nature contains precise verbal propositions about morality that can be ascertained by sitting down and rigorously pondering it all. That does seem completely wrong to me. At the same time it seems self-evident that nature provides humanity with a pretty rigorous emotional education in morality, which is where feelings of loyalty, honesty, fairness, honour, etc. come from. And that thinking about these feelings to refine our sense of them can be morally profitable. And that to me seems similar to the idea of natural law. What do you think of that? Where do you think natural morals come from?

Let's clear something up. I don't have an alternative to "natural law theory". I'm neither a deontologist nor a consequentialist. I reject ethical systems outright and any attempt to intellectually systematise moral propositions and their derivations, as much as I dismiss the approach of concocting out of these lists of rules to govern every conceivable aspect of life. I don't believe in any "objective moral obligation". I don't believe moral imperatives can be derived from facts or have truth values. My approach to life is entirely ontological, centered on the reality of good and evil as cosmic essences and the free choice of the human subject to side with one of the other and suffer the consequences of that choice. God has renewed our hearts, sent his Holy Spirit and revealed his commandments as guidance, not just to what he wants of us, but to what he is. That should be enough for us, especially considering that a subject of such supposed import, ethics, is not discussed anywhere in his scriptures. God is completely silent on it. Jesus nowhere makes a "natural law" argument or cites Aristotle and the Stoics. The Pharisees, the great scholars of the Mosaic law, ethical pedants all, Jesus scoffs at, calling them whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones.

To show the contrast, consider that every intellectualisation of "moral law" to discover it by way of "reason" will lead to the following question: what if I am mistaken and think that something is good when it is evil or evil when it is good. For me, this question is absurd: a man could never mistake the nature of the divine, the essence of good, for that of its enemy, evil, both of which are experienced in the soul.

Ethics and the "moral approach" also go hand-in-hand with legalist understanding of sin, damnation, atonement and salvation that has always, to the detriment of souls, been dominant in the West. You see this same thing in the Western take on merit, penitential acts and "indulgences"; where in the approach of theosis, the notion of good acts "meriting" something for the sanctified man makes perfect sense, in that the acts themselves are transformative, just like those which form part of penance or gain "indulgences"; but in the West, these have been turned into something resembling a teacher handing out rewards to school children for good behaviour or giving black marks for not following the rules. No wonder the Protties rejected these when that's how they understood them. Purgation, again, would make perfect sense in the Eastern Orthodox view of salvation as theosis, but given the naive storybook view of Purgatory, spun by artists, folklore and hysterical women (the endless prelest of these female Catholics!), it's no wonder it's rejected by them.

KR, St Thomas explains natural law best:

"Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law."

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2094.htm (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2094.htm)

The natural law as taught is basically the moral law of God written in our human nature--which Scripture teaches--accessible even to the person ignorant of Scripture or Christ, or to divine commandments like worshiping on the sabbath.     It is is not a legalist dictate from God.  It is a fundamental order in our soul, as part of our created nature, to seek the good and avoid evil, to act in accord with reason.  Those are the fundamental principles which make the natural law what it is in the first place.  It is not a naturalistic, rationalistic dictate over every micro-moral situation we encounter daily.  It is an over-arching principle in our soul that guides us.  And I think you can actually agree with everything I'm saying.  And I guarantee the Eastern Orthodox, or even Protestants, depend at times on ethics and the natural law.  Even an uneducated Pentecostal preacher in the boondocks.  Not every moral situation can be helped by referring to what is explicitly written in Scripture alone.  Hence the need to understand the first principle of morality in our very nature.

Quote from: christulsa on December 06, 2019, 11:18:31 AM
"Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law."

There's nothing Biblical or Apostolic about these claims. It is word-for-word Stoicism. It's lifted straight from this pagan philosophy and its concept of an entirely rational cosmos running on laws of reason. It's also an absurd proposition within a Biblical framework, given the Fall, to attempt to derive divinely-intended purposes for man from the apparent nature of things in this world.

QuoteThe natural law as taught is basically the moral law of God written in our human nature--which Scripture teaches --accessible even to the person ignorant of Scripture or Christ, or to divine commandments like worshiping on the sabbath.

Scripture, Romans 2:15, teaches that the work of the law is written on the heart. The work. On the heart. It says nothing about a "natural law" apprehend by the intellect through "reason" that is "in accord" with or following its dictates.

QuoteIt is is not a legalist dictate from God.

No, it's not a dictate from God, because God has never taught or dictated "natural law" theory.

QuoteIt is a fundamental order in our soul, as part of our created nature, to seek the good and avoid evil,

This is ultimately pure Stoicism, and the necessary correlate of it is the absurd story that wicked acts are but a case of men chosing a lesser over a greater good. The Bible recognises the existence of wicked men who seek evil and want to do evil for evil's sake, sons of the Devil, vessels of wrath. If our nature were just to seek the good, rather than being free to make a choice, Adam could never have fallen.

Quoteto act in accord with reason.

Good acts have nothing essential to do with "reason". The essence of good acts is love, not "being" and much less "reason".

QuoteThose are the fundamental principles which make the natural law what it is in the first place. 

There is no "natural law" as conceived by Stoicism and Western philosophy.

QuoteIt is not a naturalistic, rationalistic dictate over every micro-moral situation we encounter daily.

The Scholastic-inspired debates which continue to this day say otherwise of the fruit of "ethics", as does a look at the contents of the Code of Canon Law and CCC. Jots and tittles. It's as bad as the rabbis with their Talmud.

QuoteIt is an over-arching principle in our soul that guides us.

Willing good comes the heart, not from the intellect. It is attained through drawing close to God, not through the application of reason. Reason can only help in knowing the consequences of our actions are in accord with the desires of our heart.

Here are actually 112 quotes (!) from the Old and New Testament which clearly show God revealed the truth of the "natural law" in Scripture itself:

https://www.openbible.info/topics/natural_law

St. John Chrysostom's (Early Church Father from the East) teaching on the subject: "when God formed man, he implanted within him from the beginning a natural law.  And what then was this natural law?  He gave utterance to conscience within us; and made the knowledge of good things, and of those which are the contrary, to be self-taught."   (Source:  article explains how even in the East natural law [or whatever other name you want to give it] is part of the Tradition: https://blog.acton.org/archives/56420-fr-michael-butler-orthodoxy-and-natural-law.html).

So your argument against NL from Scripture/Tradition falls flat.  Natural law in the Jewish and Christian tradition actually is more from the Hebrew understanding of morality (based on Revelation), than that of the stoics.  Those OT books actually pre-date stoicism by centuries.  Genesis itself (many NL quotes found there) pre-dates stoicism by 7 centuries (!).   

Yes, natural law is implanted in the heart, ie the Will, but that is not separate from or exclusive of Reason.   Here again is what St. John Chrysostom said:  "And what then was this natural law?  He gave utterance to conscience within us; and made the knowledge of good things, and of those which are the contrary, to be self-taught."   

Do you also cast doubt on this Father of the Church?  I would agree that "neo-Thomism" has muddied the waters of scholasticism (which goes back to the Early Church, btw), but no need to throw the baby out with the bath water.   Otherwise you just make an argument for private interpretation like Luther, or even modernism.

Quote from: christulsa on December 06, 2019, 01:02:06 PM
Here are actually 112 quotes (!) from the Old and New Testament which clearly show God revealed the truth of the "natural law" in Scripture itself:

https://www.openbible.info/topics/natural_law

Pure eisegesis. There is zero, zip, nothing in there of "natural law theory".

QuoteSt. John Chrysostom's (Early Church Father from the East) teaching on the subject: "when God formed man, he implanted within him from the beginning a natural law.  And what then was this natural law?  He gave utterance to conscience within us; and made the knowledge of good things, and of those which are the contrary, to be self-taught."   (Source:  article explains how even in the East natural law [or whatever other name you want to give it] is part of the Tradition: https://blog.acton.org/archives/56420-fr-michael-butler-orthodoxy-and-natural-law.html).

That's not an explication of what Scholasticism means by its theories of "natural law". Nobody is disputing God placed a "knowledge" in the "heart". And it's 4th century. Hellenization had already occurred by then, as I've already stated in this very thread regarding Jerome etc., so bear that in mind, though nothign like what happened in the Middle Ages.

QuoteSo your argument against NL from Scripture/Tradition falls flat. 

No.

QuoteNatural law in the Jewish and Christian tradition actually is more from the Hebrew understanding of morality (based on Revelation), than that of the stoics. 

No. Go read the Stoics and you'll see. The very term and concept is taken from Greek philosophy. And there is no "natural law" in Hebrew tradition. There is no "science of ethics" in Hebrew tradition.

QuoteThose OT books actually pre-date stoicism by centuries.  Genesis itself (many NL quotes found there) pre-dates stoicism by 7 centuries (!).   

And they contain no Stoic ideas, the very ideas repeated in the Hellenised philosophy of Catholicism.

QuoteYes, natural law is implanted in the heart, ie the Will, but that is not separate from or exclusive of Reason.   Here again is what St. John Chrysostom said:  "And what then was this natural law?  He gave utterance to conscience within us; and made the knowledge of good things, and of those which are the contrary, to be self-taught."   

Yeah, conflating KNOWLEDGE with REASON is just wrong. The knowledge of the heart is not that of the intellect, the knowledge of the noetic vision not that of reason.

QuoteDo you also cast doubt on this Father of the Church? 

I cast doubt on your reading into his words there, for one.

Quote
Otherwise you just make an argument for private interpretation like Luther, or even modernism.

No, I make an argument for reasoned study of intellectual history to know the origin of ideas and also study of the ancient Hebrew context of the faith, it's cosmology, thought, and culture without which its impossible to come to a proper understanding, either of the fullness of scripture or of the early Fathers. Consider the issue of Genesis 6:1–4: this has a clear answer in the context of the world view in which it was written, and it unquestionably involves the bene ha'elohim, who are not human, having fleshly existence and mating with human women; and that itself ties into a metaphysics (consider: there is no ancient Hebrew word for "body" in contrast with "soul") that is nothing like our conception of the world, whether we are physicalists or accept some form of phsyicalism with a dualistic spiritual world over it. Hebraeising? is not Judaising. If Protestans actually did this they would never deny the Eucharist and the sacramental nature of the religion.

Fair enough.

Well, I mean, some Hellenization must have been inspired.

After all, how does one reconcile Hebrew cosmology, something verifiably false, with our current knowledge of the Solar System?

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/34/7f/83347f9a491d1ed85506d1fee72ee370.png)

(unless we are stuck with Descartes's demon deluding every single one of our perceptions)

Actually, I read recently (several months ago) that some scientists say there's some evidence for a firmament-like arrangement in the heavens. (A secular rag, not a religious one.)  I just forget where I read it.

i have merged towards kreuz in my thoughts too over time if i understand him correctly
to be saved you must literally have jesus christ as king of your soul and not reject any truth
its the only way to explain no salvation outside the church correctly that aligns with the gospels and the deposit of the faith
the catholic church is the same thing and equal to the mystical body of christ
clearly that person who has jesus christ as his king would not commit a mortal sin
the good thief was saved by an act of faith
the bad thief wanted scientific observable proof and to be healed and perished

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 06, 2019, 09:11:38 AM

Quote from: Graham on December 05, 2019, 08:00:41 AM
KR, could I ask you to please explain your alternative to natural law theory in a bit of detail? The way people sometimes talk about natural law, it sounds as if they believe that nature contains precise verbal propositions about morality that can be ascertained by sitting down and rigorously pondering it all. That does seem completely wrong to me. At the same time it seems self-evident that nature provides humanity with a pretty rigorous emotional education in morality, which is where feelings of loyalty, honesty, fairness, honour, etc. come from. And that thinking about these feelings to refine our sense of them can be morally profitable. And that to me seems similar to the idea of natural law. What do you think of that? Where do you think natural morals come from?

Let's clear something up. I don't have an alternative to "natural law theory". I'm neither a deontologist nor a consequentialist. I reject ethical systems outright and any attempt to intellectually systematise moral propositions and their derivations, as much as I dismiss the approach of concocting out of these lists of rules to govern every conceivable aspect of life. I don't believe in any "objective moral obligation". I don't believe moral imperatives can be derived from facts or have truth values. My approach to life is entirely ontological, centered on the reality of good and evil as cosmic essences and the free choice of the human subject to side with one of the other and suffer the consequences of that choice. God has renewed our hearts, sent his Holy Spirit and revealed his commandments as guidance, not just to what he wants of us, but to what he is. That should be enough for us, especially considering that a subject of such supposed import, ethics, is not discussed anywhere in his scriptures. God is completely silent on it. Jesus nowhere makes a "natural law" argument or cites Aristotle and the Stoics. The Pharisees, the great scholars of the Mosaic law, ethical pedants all, Jesus scoffs at, calling them whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones.

Part of what I asked is where you think natural, non-revealed, non-sacramentally generated morality comes from. Would it also be from a perception of moral essences, albeit blunted or limited?

What seems to be missing from that picture is any acknowledgment of the roles of family, community, and external nature in the formation of morals, especially in childhood.

Take a specific virtue like courage. Yes, perhaps it can be experienced as a cosmic essence. At the same time, it is the structure of external nature that creates an incessant and very practical need for it. The need to perservere through natural adversities in order to survive and provide, or else give up and die. This seems like a perfectly concrete example of nature instructing us in virtue in a way that your picture doesnt convey.

Feral children are interesting here. Not because they represent any so-called state of nature but because simply reading about them and imagining their situation helps us understand how important close contact with family and human society is for developing moral intuitions about purity, moderation, generosity, and the like. Again, while these may be experienced on a noetic level, it's the perennial and natural structure of human community that teaches them.

Quote from: Graham on December 07, 2019, 08:00:32 AM
Part of what I asked is where you think natural, non-revealed, non-sacramentally generated morality comes from. Would it also be from a perception of moral essences, albeit blunted or limited?

Yes, of course. Man has the natural capacity know these, also if it is good and well-formed his conscience to guide him, but that does not mean that he has a natural capacity to know he's objectively "obliged" to act one way or another. As I've indicated, God does oblige, but that has to be learned through knowledge of him, either by experience which even the pagan has some access to, or by his written revelation. But there are other "obligations" which man can feel, such as ones inculcated by society and culture, and these are not necessarily good. Drives, inclinations, functions and practical "necessities" however, are not a reliable thing to look at because of the cursed nature of the world we inhabit. This world is at least as painful, brutal and cruel as it is anything good, and looking at what appears as "nature" and "natural function" would, if looked at wholly and honestly, never lead by a "natural law" theory to the Christian moral order.

QuoteWhat seems to be missing from that picture is any acknowledgment of the roles of family, community, and external nature in the formation of morals, especially in childhood.

I'm not sure we actually disagree on anything here. But that does not and cannot tell us that anything taught in this manner is "good" and willed by God. It certainly forms thought and behaviour, and it can transmit and teach a system of rules, but in and of itself it tells us nothing about what is good or evil. For this can instil anything, not necessarily a morality whose object is good. Take, for instance, the practice of slavery in the ancient world or of the "social justice" of today. On the other hand, of course virtuous behaviour is developed through experience of good and evil, and for human life this occurs in these contexts.

QuoteTake a specific virtue like courage. Yes, perhaps it can be experienced as a cosmic essence. At the same time, it is the structure of external nature that creates an incessant and very practical need for it. The need to perservere through natural adversities in order to survive and provide, or else give up and die.

That's not a just a "need" though; it's a need towards an end. And this "external nature" can create all sorts of such incessant and practical "needs", some of which are plainly evil.

QuoteThis seems like a perfectly concrete example of nature instructing us in virtue in a way that your picture doesnt convey.

Does the function of physical strength instruct us that such strength is a moral virtue? That of cunning, of shrewdness, of beauty, of charisma, even of rage and anger, that these are moral virtues? Utility for an end does not equal goodness.

QuoteFeral children are interesting here. Not because they represent any so-called state of nature but because simply reading about them and imagining their situation helps us understand how important close contact with family and human society is for developing moral intuitions about purity, moderation, generosity, and the like. Again, while these may be experienced on a noetic level, it's the perennial and natural structure of human community that teaches them.

But, beside education, a feral child does not even grow up in an environment in which it could come to know the reality of such things by experiencing them and develop his virtues. I'm sure some children will develop these these things even without being taught they "should" or "shouldn't", even good people raised by horrible parents, while others who outwardly obey every rule can be inwardly rotten. You can see this in another form in criminals. Some have genuine contrition for their actions, because they're basically people who went astray or made mistakes, the kind of person who tells his "Jesus saved me" story and goes on to do good things in life; others just delight in evil. Even if they're not the psychotic criminal, they might be the sociopathic CEO who knows to follow the writ of law for his own benefit, but inside he's just as much a murderer as they are.

I think that's another difference I'd highlight: the difference between doing what one does out of an instilled sense of "obligation" and doing what one does out of the sense of love. The Pharisees did the former, but it was meaningless. Hence Paul says as much, that it's all meaningless unless one has love, unless it proceeds from love, because God is going to judge us by our hearts, not so much the external deed.

Quote from: Miriam_M on December 06, 2019, 11:26:36 PM
Actually, I read recently (several months ago) that some scientists say there's some evidence for a firmament-like arrangement in the heavens. (A secular rag, not a religious one.)  I just forget where I read it.

I searched on 'scientific evidence for firmament' and found this.

https://www.creationevidence.org/evidence/crystillane_canopy_theory.php

Quote
Scientific Feasibility of Canopy Model

Our discussions here will encompass the universal expanse and the canopy above the Earth, both entailed in the Hebrew use of raqiya.

FIRMAMENT AS THE UNIVERSAL EXPANSE...

The definition of raqiya and the Hebrew concept of its substance involve the total expanse of the heavens. In keeping with this concept, the expanse of space fabric and the mass within its construct are, in fact, now perceived by astrophysicists to be an all-encompassing cosmic web. Science reports that "[R]esearchers now realize that [the stars] are embedded in a filamentary structure of matter both dark and visible, called the cosmic web...Galaxies are distributed not randomly but along the tendrils of the cosmic web." "The universe is permeated by a network of filaments, sheets, and knots collectively forming a 'cosmic web.' "

Actually, the vacuum of space is not empty, but is a seething sea of virtual particles. The space vacuum influences the atom, and the expanse is a "single seamless whole." In this expanse of influencing energies a consistent structure has emerged:

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 06, 2019, 08:30:32 PM
Well, I mean, some Hellenization must have been inspired.

After all, how does one reconcile Hebrew cosmology, something verifiably false, with our current knowledge of the Solar System?

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/34/7f/83347f9a491d1ed85506d1fee72ee370.png)

That's not Hebrew cosmology. It's an naive superimposition of a modern materialist's view of the world onto ancient writings made from the perspective of a radically different metaphysics. It belongs in the same category as thinking Heraclitus was talking about the fire burning in your fireplace ( which he also was).

Quote(unless we are stuck with Descartes's demon deluding every single one of our perceptions)

You don't have perception of most of the "objective reality" taught by modern cosmological science.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 07, 2019, 11:06:21 AM

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 06, 2019, 08:30:32 PM
Well, I mean, some Hellenization must have been inspired.

After all, how does one reconcile Hebrew cosmology, something verifiably false, with our current knowledge of the Solar System?

(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/34/7f/83347f9a491d1ed85506d1fee72ee370.png)

That's not Hebrew cosmology. It's an naive superimposition of a modern materialist's view of the world onto ancient writings made from the perspective of a radically different metaphysics. It belongs in the same category as thinking Heraclitus was talking about the fire burning in your fireplace ( which he also was).

Quote(unless we are stuck with Descartes's demon deluding every single one of our perceptions)

You don't have perception of most of the "objective reality" taught by modern cosmological science.

I don't know about that KR. I had a Jewish patient once who I'd discuss Jewish cosmology with between exercises, besides Jewish recipes.  She pretty much described their worldview like that picture, except maybe for water being above the stars.   ;).  But she was a retired chemist so I'm thinking she wouldn't buy into the Heraclitian view of the "four elements."

There is much though in our own heliocentric and even Hawking-esque view of the cosmos that is rightfully founded on the natural philosophy and cosmology of the ancients, whether from Athens or Jerusalem.  SL Jaki, SJ in The Savior of Science , and W Wallace, OP in The Modeling of Nature, go into this.   Which you may find interesting reads.

Quote from: christulsa on December 07, 2019, 01:41:29 PM
I don't know about that KR. I had a Jewish patient once who I'd discuss Jewish cosmology with between exercises, besides Jewish recipes.  She pretty much described their worldview like that picture, except maybe for water being above the stars.   ;).

Yes, but what does the view of a 21st century Jewish lady with all the metaphysical sophistication of a chemist have to do with the wisdom of ancient Israel?

You're dealing with a world view in which everything is continuously interwoven, concrete and living symbol, like a fractal of flowers unfolding from themselves. If you don't understand this, consider "the Word". God creates through speaking words, symbols of things. But the letters and sounds are themselves symbolic of powers and essences. However, the sounds are these powers again. But again the Word is the Wisdom of God, and Wisdom operates through thought, and thought through words, and these words shape the cosmos, the metaphorical book of creation, just as they shape the written book. Then you take the first chapters of Genesis and its cosmos and see how they reveal the structure and ritual of the Solomonic Temple, but the Temple reflects the structure of Heavenly temple, up to the throne of God in the Holy of Holies, seated upon the Cherubim. And again the story of these chapters of Genesis can be seen as a narrative of the building of the Temple and its subsequent history, right up to the exile of the Jews.

It is just like the Sacraments. We wash in water and are washed in Christ's blood; we are submerged and lifted out as we symbolically die and rise again, and we mentally die to the world and enter into the Church's life, but we also really undergo a kind of spiritual death and rebirth in a new order of being. The Eucharist, it's bread and wine, and leaving Thomistic babble aside, you can touch it, taste it, break it apart and materially encounter bread and wine, but that bread and wine is really the flesh and blood of Christ. All attempts to explain the meaning and reality of this in philosophies increasingly alien to the Hebrew mind, where the Platonic is superior to the Aristotelian and the dominant modern one can't even allow it,  are flawed and futile.

QuoteThere is much though in our own heliocentric and even Hawking-esque view of the cosmos that is rightfully founded on the natural philosophy and cosmology of the ancients, whether from Athens or Jerusalem.  SL Jaki, SJ in The Savior of Science , and W Wallace, OP in The Modeling of Nature, go into this.   Which you may find interesting reads.

It breaks down at the most basic level when to Hawking's view a star is a dead intelligible object consisting of fundamental physical particles.

Quotecentered on the reality of good and evil as cosmic essences and the free choice of the human subject to side with one of the other and suffer the consequences of that choice.

KR, this is something I've been meaning to look into at some point.  I've always had a problem with the definition of evil as "an absence of good".  Even defining evil as a "rejection of good", while better, leaves the question of WHAT is rejecting.

Minor point, but when you see the absolute evil going on in DC where the dems are destroying people and lying daily, it is impossible to describe this merely as "lacking good".  Evil is an abyss of infinite hatred.

Quote from: lauermar on December 02, 2019, 05:24:35 AM
One request: please scrap the "Theotokos" language the heretics use. Mater Dei, BVM, or simply Blessed Mother will do.

Theotokos was defined by a pre-schism ecumenical council.  It's perfectly acceptable to use and, for us Easterners, more appropriate than MD, BVM or BM.  In fact, Mater Dei is just Latin for Theotokos.

Quote from: james03 on December 08, 2019, 03:44:19 PM

Quotecentered on the reality of good and evil as cosmic essences and the free choice of the human subject to side with one of the other and suffer the consequences of that choice.

KR, this is something I've been meaning to look into at some point.  I've always had a problem with the definition of evil as "an absence of good".  Even defining evil as a "rejection of good", while better, leaves the question of WHAT is rejecting.

Absence of good wouldn't be much of anything at all. I can only speak from experience, but from that experience I can't accept it. In my encounters with various demonic forces, there's a tangible sense of their nature. It permeates the fabric of reality around them and pierces the soul. And I can't call it a mere absence. Indeed, their natures were not all identical. Though the worst was like a sucking black hole of malicious nothingness and infinite despair in an eternal experience of that nothingness. Evil needs good. Evil is a negation of good. It has to pervert and destroy what good has wrought. It's fundamentally vampiric.

I don't know. It's a mystery. But it's not something one should meditate on too much because of the forces it invokes. You can't even come into contact with them without being poisoned in some way.

Quote
Minor point, but when you see the absolute evil going on in DC where the dems are destroying people and lying daily, it is impossible to describe this merely as "lacking good".  Evil is an abyss of infinite hatred.

^this

KR, I would argue if a star is a "dead unintelligible object of physical particles" those particles correspond to what ancient cosmologists (not just Aristotle) viewed as prime matter.   The most raw basic matter from which forms arise.  Even w Einstein and Hawking we see at least an implicit search for a cosmology that explains the formal organization of the cosmos in terms of efficient, material, formal, and final causes.  Not just material.   They are relying just as much on fundamental principes of natural philosophy as they are empirical and theoretical science, at least implicitly w Einstein.

Another good read showing how Christian philosophy/theology plays out in positive ways in contemporary astrophysics, a fascinating read:   Alpha and Omega.   It was required reading (per the headmaster) for all my ninth grade science students.  Way over most of their heads, including mine, but maybe not for you!   ;)

Quote from: christulsa on December 08, 2019, 05:25:17 PM
KR, I would argue "dead unintelligible physical particles" in a sun corresponds to what ancient cosmologists (not just Aristotle) viewed as prime matter.

These physical particles are abstracta from mechanical properties of mere attendant phenomena to the realities for which they are supposed to form the ontological foundation. And the notion that these invisible bits of nothingness, whose sole substantial content is to serve as placeholders for mechanical forces that have have mechanical effects, can be formed, arranged and tweaked to yield the living world of our senses, this is just plain nonsense. Moreover, this atomism of is not even compatible with the Aristotelian concept of prima materia as pure potency; it consists of differentiated objects that possess form.

QuoteThe most raw basic matter from which forms arise.  Even w Einstein and Hawking we see at least an implicit search for a cosmology that explains the formal organization of the cosmos in terms of efficient, material, formal, and final causes.  Not just material.   They are relying just as much on fundamental principes of natural philosophy as they are empirical and theoretical science, at least implicitly w Einstein.

Einstein and Hawking cannot even begin to explain, no, they cannot even begin to formulate what an explanation would look like of how the objects represented and described by something like this ?(x,t) give rise to this (https://www.americasfinestlabels.com/includes/work/image_cache/4b4f4b63cc837b5f01ce2d718b0f9be2.thumb.jpg) or even what "giving rise to" means here. Metaphysical reductionism is stupid, and it's stupid whether it's maquerading under modern science or ancient metaphysics.

Evil is not the absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 08, 2019, 08:24:48 AM

Quote from: christulsa on December 07, 2019, 01:41:29 PM
I don't know about that KR. I had a Jewish patient once who I'd discuss Jewish cosmology with between exercises, besides Jewish recipes.  She pretty much described their worldview like that picture, except maybe for water being above the stars.   ;).

Yes, but what does the view of a 21st century Jewish lady with all the metaphysical sophistication of a chemist have to do with the wisdom of ancient Israel?

You're dealing with a world view in which everything is continuously interwoven, concrete and living symbol, like a fractal of flowers unfolding from themselves. If you don't understand this, consider "the Word". God creates through speaking words, symbols of things. But the letters and sounds are themselves symbolic of powers and essences. However, the sounds are these powers again. But again the Word is the Wisdom of God, and Wisdom operates through thought, and thought through words, and these words shape the cosmos, the metaphorical book of creation, just as they shape the written book. Then you take the first chapters of Genesis and its cosmos and see how they reveal the structure and ritual of the Solomonic Temple, but the Temple reflects the structure of Heavenly temple, up to the throne of God in the Holy of Holies, seated upon the Cherubim. And again the story of these chapters of Genesis can be seen as a narrative of the building of the Temple and its subsequent history, right up to the exile of the Jews.

But the Bible is very clear about what it says. My picture has all the citations of what forms the picture. The fact that the Catholic Church, which adopted Hellenic / Ptolemic models of Geocentrism, still believed that Geocentrism was a part of the Deposit of the Faith, exclusively based on the Bible, should indicate that many of these elements are just fundamentally false.

1. That there exists "waters of chaos" which God uses to form things today
2. That the Earth is flat
3. That the Earth does not move
4. That there is water that separates Upper Heaven from material creation (unless we cannot see it, and it's so distant from where we are in the universe; but why would materiality separate immateriality?)
5. That rain comes from breaches in what amounts to a glass barrier in the sky

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 08, 2019, 08:09:53 PM
Evil is not the absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

This changes nothing about the discussion or the objections.

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 08, 2019, 08:10:34 PMemple and its subsequent history, right up to the exile of the Jews.
But the Bible is very clear about what it says.

No offence, but that's ludicrous. The Hebrew of the Torah is many things, but clear is not one of them. Translators can't even agree on its opening clause, no, on its opening word. Watch out, because we're approaching "The Bible calls bats birds" levels of argument when we read the Torah like this. You're a 21st century Anglophone reading in translation a 3,000-year-old text through the lense of an understanding of the world shaped by Western culture that, even in its theistic form, is radically different from that of its authors and fundamentally, when dealing with the natural world, physicalistic. How radically different is evident from how you still don't get what I'm even alluding to.

QuoteMy picture has all the citations of what forms the picture.

Your picture is precisely what I said it is.

QuoteThe fact that the Catholic Church, which adopted Hellenic / Ptolemic models of Geocentrism, still believed that Geocentrism was a part of the Deposit of the Faith, exclusively based on the Bible, should indicate that many of these elements are just fundamentally false.

First you're going to have to define "Geocentrism" as the Church intended it and, to test it, translate that into the terms of the science you believe falsifies it. That's likely impossible, as you're going to find that your science cannot even assign an absolute meaning to its terms of "stationary" and "in motion". The most you can do is attempt to falsify the proposition that the Earth is, in the Einsteinian or Newtonian model, an inertial frame of reference. But all inertial means here is that Newton's force law holds. Did the Church ever assert that? You don't get to replace the sense of words with new definitions of physics and then state that propositions made in the old sense are falsified by physics. That's a fallacy of equivocation of monumental stupidity. And the Ptolemaic model is phenomenological and doesn't even include the notion of forces and the F=dp/dt equation. But then look at the Neoplatonists and Hermetic tradition, even at Dante's Paradiso, to see just how badly the true sense of this model, which was in reality God-centric not geocentric, was misunderstood and is misunderstood by modern man.

But this is again just evidence of an implicit physicalism.

Quote1. That there exists "waters of chaos" which God uses to form things today

Meaning what? What do you think the ????? of the ??????? in Genesis 1 is? H2O? I suppose you also think the theoretical abstractions from effects on measuring instruments subjectively accessed through the objects of our consciousness provide a picture of the structure of the cosmos? That the world is made up of physical atoms? That there are two layers of natural reality, an objective physical world accessed by physics and the epiphenomenological experience of it by the subject? No wonder you've said you've abandoned God with this nonsense filling your head.

Quote2. That the Earth is flat

Is not stated anywhere in the Biblical text.

Quote3. That the Earth does not move

A point you cannot dispute with the science of physics. Hebrew, by the way, is person-centered and phenomenological, so that's exactly what we would except it to say, being that's exactly what is experienced.

Quote4. That there is water that separates Upper Heaven from material creation (unless we cannot see it, and it's so distant from where we are in the universe; but why would materiality separate immateriality?)

Prove that ????????, particularly as it appears in Genesis 1, means our concept of physical water and H2O.

Quote5. That rain comes from breaches in what amounts to a glass barrier in the sky

You haven't paid attention to a word I said, have you? The ancient Hebrew language is fundamentally symbolic and process-oriented, being subjective and personal, concrete and image-laden and descriptive by function. Even its nouns are denotive of actions. It stands in total contrast to Greek and Indo-European languages and how they shape our way of thinking. It doesn't say things like we say things as it doesn't see things as we see things, making the two in some ways incommensurable. All languages imply some kind of metaphysical structure and presuppositions embedded in their nature and structure, but ancient Hebrew, in a way marvellously coherent with its symbolic world view, presents a world view to us in a way no Western language does.

Genesis 7:11 is written as one would expect it to be written. But even in this the argument is fundamentally stupid and unrealistic: that it denies everyday metaphorical language to the authors of the Bible; that's only made worse by the fact that the Hebrew language cannot avoid it.

Well, hope everyone had a happy feast of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception yesterday. I missed to respond to Lauermar's post earlier, so I'm going to do that now.

QuoteBy coincidence, I got into it with several Orthodox who were trolling Morher Miriam's site. I told them not to insult RC Catholics and stop proselytizing. I pointed out how the OCA website admits membership fell precipitously in 20 years, and their only gain is during a RC scandal.

I argued that the Orthodox are chronically disorganized due to lack of papal leadership and their ministries around the world are woefully lacking. I also disparaged them for pride in not heeding BVM's apparitions calling for rosaries, prayers and fasting. They think a weekly Marian veneration that nobody attends but a handful of clerics is sufficient. They won't adopt this tradition asked for by Mother. Selective theology. Disdain for papal rule. I said these are serious deficiencies and I asked RC Catholics viewing this exchange to stay, fast and pray.

Your OP was excellent but very long. I could not read all of it.

One request: please scrap the "Theotokos" language the heretics use. is simply the Greek translation/transliteration of our Latin, Mater Dei, BVM, or simply Blessed Mother will do. [Theotokos just means Mother of God, and was used against Nestorius]

Thanks for the response. I agree with most of it, except the last part; which is based on a slight linguistic misunderstanding. Theo-Tokos simply means Mother of God/Birth-Giver of God, equivalent to our Mater Dei or even Dei Genetrix. So, hope that clears it up.

Anyway, on the Immaculata, Orthodox Priest Fr. Laurent Cleenewerck mentions the Eastern Liturgical texts for Dec. 9th. The Blessed Virgin is also called Prokathartheisa, the Sole Pre-Purified One and Panagia, the All-Immaculate One, in Eastern Tradition. The below Liturgical texts, which Eastern Catholics understand rightly thanks to the Papacy, express and teach the Catholic Faith, that Mary Prokathartheisa, the Panagia and All-Immaculate, was already the sole pre-sanctified and All-Immaculate on the Day of Her Conception.

Fr. Cleenewerck: "6. Liturgical Expressions: The Eastern Tradition has always considered the Conception of the Theotokos to be a miraculous event. Joachim and Anna, elderly and barren were given by the power of God's blessings on account of their prayers. The Orthodox Churches celebrate Her Nativity on the 8th of September, but the Feast of Mary's Conception was advanced to 9th December. If the principle of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi is to be applied to this issue, it seems that Orthodox Hymnography presents Mary as Truly Panagia (All-Holy) entirely free from sin and stain ("Immaculate") from the point of Her Conception. The Liturgical Texts for December 9th exclaim,

This Day, O Faithful, from saintly parents begins to take being the Spotless Lamb, the Most Pure Tabernacle, Mary.

Having conceived the Most-Pure Dove ...

The Unique All-Immaculate [Mary] is today made manifest to the Just by the Angel. He who announced the Conception of the All-Immaculate Virgin gave our human race news of great joy. The prelude of God's Grace falls today [on the day of the Theotokos' Conception by St. Anne] in the Conception of the All-Immaculate" (Excerpted From the Book, His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches: https://www.amazon.com/His-Broken-Body-Understanding-Catholic/dp/0615183611)

Patriarch St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, for e.g. says of Mary Prokathartheisa, or Immaculata, "Many Saints appeared before You [Mary] But none was filled with grace as You. No one has been purified in advance as You have been." Another clear testimony that Mary the Sole Immaculate One was "Prepurified in Advance" (Prokathartheisa), as the Greek Fathers like to say. Also the expression "full of Grace", directly from Sacred Scripture, is transliterated, kecharitomene, from the Greek, and it means One Completely Endowed with Grace. In other words, an Immaculate One, just as Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself is called Full of Grace and without sin by St. John. In Latin, that is rendered, Gratia Plena or Plenum Gratiae (see Luk 1:28; Jn 1:14)

The next decade before Jun 13, 2029, the 100th anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima's request for the Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, must be dedicated to the work of trying to bring our Eastern Orthodox brethren safely back home to the Catholic Church. Some 300-350 million Christians, owing to the wickedness of Photius and Caerularius, unhappily live in this schism to this day.

What an unthinkably great Triumph it will be for the Catholic Church and for the Immaculata when Russia returns to our Mother Church!

Let's get down to it: 1. A Theology Journal reviews recent research by Eastern Catholic Priest Rev. Fr. Christian Kappes, "Thanks to the correct interpretation of the Greek roots of the doctrine in Nazianzus and Damascene, the East consistently viewed the prepurification at the Annunciation as ... a superaddition of grace that prepared the Theotokos for the incarnation.  Her sinlessness from birth, conversely, is designated under expressions like "all-holy," "ever-blameless," and "all-immaculate."  The evidence of this Eastern Tradition is an unbroken theological and liturgical transmission of this idea well beyond John Damascene's time "https://hortulus-journal.com/journal/volume-13-number-1-2017/cuff/

St. John of Damascene had said in praise of the Blessed Mother, and Her holy parents: "O most blessed loins of Joachim from which came forth a spotless seed! Oh glorious womb of Anne in which a most holy offspring grew!"

Similarly. Eastern Orthodox Priest Rev. Fr. A.F. Kimel writes, in reviewing this work, "This belief is encapsulated in the title given to her by St Gregory the Theologian: prokathartheisa (prepurified) ... [St. Gregory says] "He approaches his own image and bears flesh because of my flesh and mingles himself with a rational soul because of my soul, purifying like by like. And in all things he becomes a human being, except sin. He was conceived by the Virgin, who was purified beforehand in both soul and flesh by the Spirit, for it was necessary that procreation be honored and that virginity be honored more. (p. 71)

Fr. Kappes notes that when Rufinus translated the Nativity oration into Latin in the late 4th century, he rendered the Greek word prokathartheisa by the Latin word Immaculata." From: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/mary-prokathartheisa-and-the-immaculate-conception/

2. Rev. Fr. Lev Gillet has documented for us, "The Academy of Kiev, with Peter Moghila, Stephen Gavorsky and many others, taught the Immaculate Conception in terms of Latin theology. A confraternity of the Immaculate Conception was established at Polotsk in 1651. The Orthodox members of the confraternity promised to honour the Immaculate Conception of Mary all the days of their life. The Council of Moscow of 1666 approved Simeon Polotsky's book called The Rod of Direction, in which he said: "Mary was exempt from original sin from the moment of her conception". (12) https://eirenikon.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/the-immaculate-conception-and-the-orthodox-church-3/

And so, the authentic Eastern Tradition, which is preserved faithfully by Eastern Catholics, together with us Roman Catholics, but denied by Eastern Orthodox, is that the Holy Theotokos is the Immaculate Conception. When they begin again to study Marian Tradition seriously, whether Latin or the authentic Greek Tradition, Grace will lead them back to the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 09, 2019, 07:47:36 AM

Quote from: TheReturnofLive on December 08, 2019, 08:10:34 PMemple and its subsequent history, right up to the exile of the Jews.
But the Bible is very clear about what it says.

No offence, but that's ludicrous. The Hebrew of the Torah is many things, but clear is not one of them. Translators can't even agree on its opening clause, no, on its opening word. Watch out, because we're approaching "The Bible calls bats birds" levels of argument when we read the Torah like this. You're a 21st century Anglophone reading in translation a 3,000-year-old text through the lense of an understanding of the world shaped by Western culture that, even in its theistic form, is radically different from that of its authors and fundamentally, when dealing with the natural world, physicalistic. How radically different is evident from how you still don't get what I'm even alluding to.

QuoteMy picture has all the citations of what forms the picture.

Your picture is precisely what I said it is.

QuoteThe fact that the Catholic Church, which adopted Hellenic / Ptolemic models of Geocentrism, still believed that Geocentrism was a part of the Deposit of the Faith, exclusively based on the Bible, should indicate that many of these elements are just fundamentally false.

First you're going to have to define "Geocentrism" as the Church intended it and, to test it, translate that into the terms of the science you believe falsifies it. That's likely impossible, as you're going to find that your science cannot even assign an absolute meaning to its terms of "stationary" and "in motion". The most you can do is attempt to falsify the proposition that the Earth is, in the Einsteinian or Newtonian model, an inertial frame of reference. But all inertial means here is that Newton's force law holds. Did the Church ever assert that? You don't get to replace the sense of words with new definitions of physics and then state that propositions made in the old sense are falsified by physics. That's a fallacy of equivocation of monumental stupidity. And the Ptolemaic model is phenomenological and doesn't even include the notion of forces and the F=dp/dt equation. But then look at the Neoplatonists and Hermetic tradition, even at Dante's Paradiso, to see just how badly the true sense of this model, which was in reality God-centric not geocentric, was misunderstood and is misunderstood by modern man.

But this is again just evidence of an implicit physicalism.

Quote1. That there exists "waters of chaos" which God uses to form things today

Meaning what? What do you think the ????? of the ??????? in Genesis 1 is? H2O? I suppose you also think the theoretical abstractions from effects on measuring instruments subjectively accessed through the objects of our consciousness provide a picture of the structure of the cosmos? That the world is made up of physical atoms? That there are two layers of natural reality, an objective physical world accessed by physics and the epiphenomenological experience of it by the subject? No wonder you've said you've abandoned God with this nonsense filling your head.

Quote2. That the Earth is flat

Is not stated anywhere in the Biblical text.

Quote3. That the Earth does not move

A point you cannot dispute with the science of physics. Hebrew, by the way, is person-centered and phenomenological, so that's exactly what we would except it to say, being that's exactly what is experienced.

Quote4. That there is water that separates Upper Heaven from material creation (unless we cannot see it, and it's so distant from where we are in the universe; but why would materiality separate immateriality?)

Prove that ????????, particularly as it appears in Genesis 1, means our concept of physical water and H2O.

Quote5. That rain comes from breaches in what amounts to a glass barrier in the sky

You haven't paid attention to a word I said, have you? The ancient Hebrew language is fundamentally symbolic and process-oriented, being subjective and personal, concrete and image-laden and descriptive by function. Even its nouns are denotive of actions. It stands in total contrast to Greek and Indo-European languages and how they shape our way of thinking. It doesn't say things like we say things as it doesn't see things as we see things, making the two in some ways incommensurable. All languages imply some kind of metaphysical structure and presuppositions embedded in their nature and structure, but ancient Hebrew, in a way marvellously coherent with its symbolic world view, presents a world view to us in a way no Western language does.

Genesis 7:11 is written as one would expect it to be written. But even in this the argument is fundamentally stupid and unrealistic: that it denies everyday metaphorical language to the authors of the Bible; that's only made worse by the fact that the Hebrew language cannot avoid it.

Okay, what would the result be if the Hellenisation of Catholicism that you claim has happened,  hadn't happened.  You have argued here and elsewhere against the influence of the Scholastics who you claim have helped steer the Church away from the Hebrews and towards the Greeks.

I have been reading your posts with interest, but am having trouble imagining how the experience of being a Catholic would be different if the Hellenising corruption hadn't happened.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 08, 2019, 05:47:50 PM

Quote from: christulsa on December 08, 2019, 05:25:17 PM
KR, I would argue "dead unintelligible physical particles" in a sun corresponds to what ancient cosmologists (not just Aristotle) viewed as prime matter.

These physical particles are abstracta from mechanical properties of mere attendant phenomena to the realities for which they are supposed to form the ontological foundation. And the notion that these invisible bits of nothingness, whose sole substantial content is to serve as placeholders for mechanical forces that have have mechanical effects, can be formed, arranged and tweaked to yield the living world of our senses, this is just plain nonsense. Moreover, this atomism of is not even compatible with the Aristotelian concept of prima materia as pure potency; it consists of differentiated objects that possess form.

QuoteThe most raw basic matter from which forms arise.  Even w Einstein and Hawking we see at least an implicit search for a cosmology that explains the formal organization of the cosmos in terms of efficient, material, formal, and final causes.  Not just material.   They are relying just as much on fundamental principes of natural philosophy as they are empirical and theoretical science, at least implicitly w Einstein.

Einstein and Hawking cannot even begin to explain, no, they cannot even begin to formulate what an explanation would look like of how the objects represented and described by something like this ?(x,t) give rise to this (https://www.americasfinestlabels.com/includes/work/image_cache/4b4f4b63cc837b5f01ce2d718b0f9be2.thumb.jpg) or even what "giving rise to" means here. Metaphysical reductionism is stupid, and it's stupid whether it's maquerading under modern science or ancient metaphysics.

Well I am sure you would agree the elements and sub-atomic particles are not "bits of nothingness" or mere abstractions of phenomena, but that they exist.  That God created them.  That we can study them, know their existence, and describe what they are.  That however the mechanism or however we describe that mechanism, this most basic prime matter (not just potency) is the physical and material basis for the visible world of real natural objects around us.  Sub-atomic particles make up protons/neutrons/electrons, which compose atoms, which give rise to compounds, which compose natural objects like stars, planets, trees, or dogs.   You surely wouldn't judge this as "pure nonsense." 

But part of natural science is cosmology itself (which you conflated with metaphysics) to describe and visualize this organization in the cosmos.   Unless you deny the relevance of doing so, in favor of a pure spiritualism or even materialism in describing creation.   And I don't think you do from your background.  I'll rephrase my point, which is relevant to the discussion in this thread:  ancient natural philosophy, as we see in cosmology, with philosophers like Aristotle, has an integral, vital, and useful place not only in the life of theological considerations, but in the study of creation through modern science.  The point is to appeal to your obvious science background to make that argument.   

And again my assertion, let's not throw the baby (scholasticism) out with the bath water (the problems of "neo-Thomists").

That Our Lady of Fatima has caused many Orthodox Christians to begin inquiring into the Catholic Faith and ultimately enter the Catholic Church should also cause those who oppose Our Lady of Fatima and private revelation in general to think twice about such serious mistakes. Here's some wonderful recent news in that connection, "Our Lady of Fatima Taking Her Place in St. Petersburg
About 40 bishops and ordinaries of sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches gathered at the Vatican from September 12-14, 2019. Received in audience by the Supreme Pontiff, approved a project to construct the first official sanctuary dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima in St. Petersburg, in the heart of Russia." https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/our-lady-fatima-taking-her-place-st-petersburg-51110

"Surprising as it may seem from a Catholic view, "the Orthodox confessions are not opposed to this project. Many Russians have a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, who interceded for the conversion of Russia during the Communist persecution," as Fr. Alejandro Burgos, a Spanish priest exercising his apostolate in St. Petersburg."

(https://fsspx.news/sites/sspx/files/styles/dici_image_full_width/public/media/dici/new-news/fatima_sanctuaire_russie.jpg?itok=6Tg_Vq1D)

Our Lady of Fatima, may Your Immaculate Heart Triumph soon! Pray for the re-union and return of Russia and the Orthodox to the fold!

As the SSPX link puts it, "To promote the devotion to Our Lady of Fatima to the Easterners, Fr. Burgos had an icon depicting the Virgin made with the quotation: "It is in You that Unity is realized." May the Virgin of Fatima indeed hasten the return of the Eastern Orthodox to Catholic Unity, in the same Faith and the one Church founded on Peter"...

The Society of Saint Pius X has a regular apostolate in Russia: a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima exists in St. Petersburg, while another, under the patronage of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, regularly opens its doors to the Latin Rite faithful in the Russian capital"

His Excellency Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox Church (do pray for him, as well as for all other Eastern Orthodox dignitaries, particularly Patriarch Kirill and Patriarch Bartholomew, that the Good Lord and our Immaculate Lady may give them all the light and strength to do all that is necessary to re-unite the Churches under the Catholic Church) has also described Fatima as "a place of peace" by his experience there. The signs are clearer than ever that Our Lady of Fatima, the Immaculata, will do what a thousand years of the best and brightest men in Christendom could not do - namely to happily re-unite East and West in Catholic Christendom! What a glorious day that will be, and how many non-Christians it will help come to Christ!

"Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the number two cleric in the Russian Orthodox Church who is responsible for external affairs and dialogue with the Catholic Church, visited the Shrine of Fatima earlier this month ...

Hilarion was welcomed by Cardinal António Marto, Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, who thanked the Metropolitan for the "testimony that the Russian Orthodox Church has given to foster good relations between the two Churches".

Cardinal Marto said that he is "always interested in the relationship between the Patriarchal Church of Moscow and the Holy See, especially when Metropolitan Hilarion visits Pope Francis"...

I know that there has been a flourishing of Christianity in the Russian Orthodox Church, and in this way we are living a moment of important collaboration between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church in Europe to defend the great Christian values," Cardinal Marto told Hilarion at Fatima. He asked Hilarion to convey "cordial greetings" to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

For his part, Hilarion said that when the programme for his two days in Portugal was outlined, the request to visit Fatima was a priority for him personally because he wanted to see this "place of peace". In the Chapel of the Apparitions he prayed in silence, and asked to place a candle there.

Whether or not Russia has been consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in accordance with the expressed wish of the Virgin Mary is a matter of some dispute.Pope Saint John Paul II consecrated the world, including Russia, to Mary's Immaculate Heart on 25 March 1984, seven years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, speaking on 13 May 2017, Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, former president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, recalled his conversation with Pope John Paul II after the 1984 consecration, when the statue of Our Lady of Fatima was in Rome. "Obviously, for a long time [the pope] had dealt with that significant mission which the Mother of God had given to the seer children there," Cardinal Cordes said. "However, he held back to mention Russia explicitly, because the Vatican diplomats had urgently asked him not to mention this country because otherwise political conflicts might perhaps arise." From: https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/10796/cardinal-bishop-of-leiria-fatima-welcomes-hilarion-to-marian-shrine

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilarion_Kapral

Metropolitan Hilarion: (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Hilarion_%28Kapral%29.jpg/220px-Hilarion_%28Kapral%29.jpg)
with Patriarch Kirill:(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/%D0%92%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%B0_%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B8%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%85%D0%B0_%D1%81_%D0%9F%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%BC.jpg/200px-%D0%92%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%B0_%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B8%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%85%D0%B0_%D1%81_%D0%9F%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%BC.jpg)

Quote from: christulsa on December 09, 2019, 10:55:29 AM
Well I am sure you would agree the elements and sub-atomic particles are not "bits of nothingness"

No, I don't agree that they "exist".  And yes, they are bits of nothingness. Classically their function is ultimately nothing more than as the theoretical centre of the mathematical equation of a field or fields: they have no other cognitive content. And the formalism of quantum mechanics is quite decisive on this: the "particle" doesn't even come into play before the appearance of a macroscopic phenomenon taken to be its "effect" in the "collapse" of the wave function; instead we have only a wave function that is essentially a probability distribution.

Quoteor mere abstractions of phenomena, but that they exist.

No, that's what they are. The phenomena exist. This physicalist metaphysical substrate is a theoretical construct. And I'll go further: insofar as they relate to something having real existence and causal power, that something is decidely not material. The ancients agree: physical laws are the effect of spiritual powers. The planets follow their course by the power of intelligences.

QuoteThat God created them. 

Man concocted them. God created what they are concocted to model and "explain".

QuoteThat we can study them, know their existence, and describe what they are. 

No, we can't on all counts. We can only study their alleged effects, we cannot know they exist, and we cannot describe what they are but can only model those alleged effects.

QuoteThat however the mechanism or however we describe that mechanism, this most basic prime matter (not just potency) is the physical and material basis for the visible world of real natural objects around us.

This is nonsense. No colour, sounds, smell, etc. can be constructed from the objects of physics. Nothing whatsoever of the essence of the former is contained in the latter, and no combination of the latter in whatever form, under whatever mechanistic scheme will ever lead to the former. I can't obtain the image of red from the brain, from neurons firing, from electrochemical schemes, from compounds, atoms, bosons, wave functions or anything "physical".  It is pure Einbildung, a linguistic conceit. Nothing of its reality is contained in them, but there is merely some informational - not ontological! - relationship between hue, intensity, etc. and certain measurable mechanical properties.

QuoteSub-atomic particles make up protons/neutrons/electrons, which compose atoms,

This building block model you have in mind is nonsense. And if you were a consistent believer in "prima materia", you would at the very least see the inescapable conundrum you've gotten yourself into with this atomism of distinct types of "particles", because it begs the question of what constitutes these particles, what they are made of. If anything, these "particles" are nothing more than particular forms of deformation of a physical materia. Einstein saw as much in how he approached gravity as a deformation, a property of the geometric structure, of a quasi-substantial space.

Quotewhich give rise to compounds, which compose natural objects like stars, planets, trees, or dogs.   You surely wouldn't judge this as "pure nonsense." 

I do judge this building-block physicalist reductionism as nonsense. If anything, this waking reality is a filtering out from above, not a construction from below, a subtractive, not an additive, synthesis.

QuoteBut part of natural science is cosmology itself (which you conflated with metaphysics) to describe and visualize this organization in the cosmos.   

No. If you're talking about invisible entities giving rise to the phenomenological world, you're talking metaphysics.

QuoteUnless you deny the relevance of doing so, in favor of a pure spiritualism or even materialism in describing creation.   And I don't think you do from your background.  I'll rephrase my point, which is relevant to the discussion in this thread:  ancient natural philosophy, as we see in cosmology, with philosophers like Aristotle, has an integral, vital, and useful place not only in the life of theological considerations, but in the study of creation through modern science. 

Yes, and usually in distorting it. Because the science itself, as it regards the revelation of nature, is viewed, as is the written revelation, through a false paradigm. None of these people, creatonists, theistic evolutionists, Darwinists, the lot, have made or can make sense of Genesis. To invoke a term from the Orient, they don't understand the Twilight Language. Remember, the Torah did not even have vowel points in its Fist Temple form. That alone would render it ambiguous to the uninitiated. By tradition, in its original form it did not even have spaces between words, and that would render it incomprehensible. But even with these in place, one would not understand the deeper intention of the words without knowing the paradigmatic key to reading them.

QuoteThe point is to appeal to your obvious science background to make that argument.

Again I point to the problem of interpretation,and this even extends to investigation. There is no scienctific activity without philosophical activity, no science without an attendant philosophy. We need to start with the correct philosophy, the right paradigm, or we will land ourselves in trouble.

QuoteAnd again my assertion, let's not throw the baby (scholasticism) out with the bath water (the problems of "neo-Thomists").

I'm not asking it to be thrown out.

One last note: the replacement of the traditional and phenomenological idea of matter with the concepts of physics and its "matter", or "particles", eventually leads to the denial of materiality and corporeality as real when the classical picture is discarded. Now everything is abstract "probability waves" or "information", or even "we're living in a holographic simulation". That's what you get when you replace reality, the phenomenological reality that is immediately experienced, with concoctions of the mind and play the game of pretending that the latter are more fundamental and responsible for the existence of the former. The root of the programme is a frightful nihilism that is worse than any so-called "materialism".

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 09, 2019, 06:29:52 AM

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 08, 2019, 08:09:53 PM
Evil is not the absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

This changes nothing about the discussion or the objections.

Well, it should.

It's an opportunity to retreat to an orthodox position.

God created all things.  That is a dogma.  All that God made is good.  That is a dogma too.

Evil therefore cannot be something created, but rather it must be explained as a lack.

I do not say this isn't mysterious, because it is, but it's also necessary.

So, evil is not the mere absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

QuoteThe Hebrew of the Torah is many things, but clear is not one of them. Translators can't even agree on its opening clause, no, on its opening word. Watch out, because we're approaching "The Bible calls bats birds" levels of argument when we read the Torah like this. You're a 21st century Anglophone reading in translation a 3,000-year-old text through the lense of an understanding of the world shaped by Western culture that, even in its theistic form, is radically different from that of its authors and fundamentally, when dealing with the natural world, physicalistic. How radically different is evident from how you still don't get what I'm even alluding to.

QuoteThe ancient Hebrew language is fundamentally symbolic and process-oriented, being subjective and personal, concrete and image-laden and descriptive by function. Even its nouns are denotive of actions. It stands in total contrast to Greek and Indo-European languages and how they shape our way of thinking. It doesn't say things like we say things as it doesn't see things as we see things, making the two in some ways incommensurable. All languages imply some kind of metaphysical structure and presuppositions embedded in their nature and structure, but ancient Hebrew, in a way marvellously coherent with its symbolic world view, presents a world view to us in a way no Western language does.

This a thousand times over.

Even within the same contemporary language there are a million complexities and misunderstandings.  Which is why we have lawyers endlessly battling over what some sentence in a contract means.

Your point about the "Hebrew" view of cosmology is also almost certainly correct.  Again, even within English, is it not unlikely that in centuries later people will claim that we believed the sun rotated around the Earth since the sun sets in the west?  We all project onto others our own mental frameworks.

It is enormously difficult, if not impossible on this side of the veil, for two minds to meet in complete understanding of one another.

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 10, 2019, 06:36:52 PM

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 09, 2019, 06:29:52 AM

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 08, 2019, 08:09:53 PM
Evil is not the absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

The absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

This changes nothing about the discussion or the objections.

Well, it should.

But it doesn't. It doesn't change that "evils" are experienced as possessing their own unique essence, not as a reduction from something else. Hell, even something as natural and mundane as pain, in all its horror, is not in itself a lack of something or arrived at by depriving something of a good but is what it is, something having a positive existence. Encountering the nature of an evil, of a sin, especially in its unmasked demonic form, is much the same. And it doesn't change that the Stoic-derived Thomistic dictum, that evil acts are an erroneous choice of a lesser good over a greater good and that it is not a choice of evil over good as such, is rationalistic bunkum. Human beings do not generally think and act that way.

QuoteIt's an opportunity to retreat to an orthodox position.

God created all things.  That is a dogma.  All that God made is good.  That is a dogma too.

God didn't create this computer. God didn't create the thoughts I'm having now. Your claim is patently false as it regards "all things".

QuoteEvil therefore cannot be something created, but rather it must be explained as a lack.

I do not say this isn't mysterious, because it is, but it's also necessary.

So, evil is not the mere absence of good, it's the absence of a due good.

This is ultimately reductionistic thought that explains nothing. And even if we posit a lack of good, or a lack of "due good" in something, it doesn't at all follow that this something would, rather than becoming neutral, become destructive and be perverted! It doesn't at all follow that by just depriving a an agent of "good" that he would become hateful, malicious and twisted, directing all his energies toward opposing God and negating the good!

What it is is not arrived at by taking something away. One doesn't fix an act or phenomenon of sodomy by adding something to it. It's not fixable. And thus the phenomenon itself, as actually existing as what it is and as it is, is not "explained" by a mere absence of something. One could get rid of it if the would-be-perpetrator weren't lacking in some good, but that doesn't change what the act itself is and that something like this exists, that its very substance and energy exists. Even if it arises through a lack, that doesn't explain its existence as what it is.

QuoteThe absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

This explains nothing. One might remove the oxygen from H2O to yield hydrogen, but hydrogen isn't equivalent to "H2O lacking oxygen", and taking oxygen away from hydrogen does not account for what hydrogen is.

Quote from: james03 on December 04, 2019, 08:57:54 PM
The divorce thing with the Orthodox is depressing.  To be honest if they believed properly on the matter I'd have no problem going to their Divine Liturgy since I don't believe Francis is the Pope.  So no matter where I'd go there would be no Pope, so you just look for valid sacraments.  Instead now I'm rejecting Francis because of his teachings on divorce to go to ...... the Orthodox?

Trad Mass and Trad sacraments is where it is at.

Yeah since my days going to the Byzantine rite in Tulsa, I've sometimes missed it and even wondered if it could ever be justifiable to participate in local EO liturgies.  Canon law says we can if there is no other Catholic Mass we can get to, so the Church would be supplying jurisdiction in that case to the EO priest.   In the Tulsa area I can only imagine two possibilities, that are interesting to consider, that could apply similarly to some people in other dioceses.  That is, if there is no Catholic Mass within reasonable driving distance (say 30 miles)--and that would arguably exclude most if not all Novus Ordo Masses in so far as they are not offered typically in a Catholic way--but there is an EO Liturgy within driving distance.  One can't make it to a Catholic Mass nearby, or at least one reverent enough to require attending, so they can go to the EO. 

Google map Eastern Orthodox churches in the Tulsa area.  Catholics south/southeast/or southwest of the EO church in Bixby more than say 30 miles could go, for example if they live in Okmulgee.   Catholics north/northeast/northwest of the two EO churches in Owasso could go if they lived 30+ minutes from either of the 2 trad Masses in the city, in say Bartlesville.  Of course the possibilities become more restricted if you believe you are morally required to attend at least the average Novus Ordo Mass Protestant service.   According to traditional Roman rite discipline at least.   But at this point all things considered, I think KR or RofL would agree we start to split hairs.

(there is one local, relatively traditional alternative though I've on occasion partaken of:  the Maronite rite!)

Here is the Russian Orthodox chapel (Old Calendarists) in Owasso, OK just north of Tulsa.    Justifiable for the northerners perhaps, at least to attend.  I bet they're (mostly) against divorce.  Named after St. James!  Looks like a nice little community.

http://www.stjamesok.org/

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 11, 2019, 08:35:07 AM
But it doesn't. It doesn't change that "evils" are experienced as possessing their own unique essence, not as a reduction from something else.

You're making it up as you go along.  E.g. - "their own unique essence" - what do those words mean, I wonder, when you employ them?  Do you define "essence" as the Scholastics do, and if so, why would you qualify it with "their own" or "unique", the first of which is a redundancy, and the second a contradiction of the very notion of essence?

And if you don't define "essence" as a Scholastic does, then why not give your (own, unique) definition, so that the reader can understand you?

Do you not know that you are writing incomprehensibly, or does it suit you to do so?

Anybody who can describe the doctrine of St. Thomas as "rationalistic bunkum" is in serious intellectual trouble.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 11, 2019, 08:35:07 AM

QuoteThe absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

This explains nothing. One might remove the oxygen from H2O to yield hydrogen, but hydrogen isn't equivalent to "H2O lacking oxygen", and taking oxygen away from hydrogen does not account for what hydrogen is.

Oh my.  Hydrogen isn't due oxygen, is it?  So there's no lack of oxygen when hydrogen is isolated.

But all of this is pointless, given that you don't even take Aquinas seriously. 

I suspect that what is really going on is that your hyperventilating and almost superstitious notion of "evil" derives from the more general notion that if such a thing exists, then any sins you yourself commit are in a different genre, not "evil" in the same way, etc.

But that isn't true.  Your sins are exactly like those of Antichrist himself.  Get used to it.

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris: "17. Among the Scholastic Doctors, the chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas, who, as Cajetan observes, because "he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all."(34) The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching. Philosophy has no part which he did not touch finely at once and thoroughly; on the laws of reasoning, on God and incorporeal substances, on man and other sensible things, on human actions and their principles, he reasoned in such a manner that in him there is wanting neither a full array of questions, nor an apt disposal of the various parts, nor the best method of proceeding, nor soundness of principles or strength of argument, nor clearness and elegance of style, nor a facility for explaining what is abstruse.

18. Moreover, the Angelic Doctor pushed his philosophic inquiry into the reasons and principles of things, which because they are most comprehensive and contain in their bosom, so to say, the seeds of almost infinite truths, were to be unfolded in good time by later masters and with a goodly yield. And as he also used this philosophic method in the refutation of error, he won this title to distinction for himself: that, single-handed, he victoriously combated the errors of former times, and supplied invincible arms to put those to rout which might in after-times spring up. Again, clearly distinguishing, as is fitting, reason from faith, while happily associating the one with the other, he both preserved the rights and had regard for the dignity of each; so much so, indeed, that reason, borne on the wings of Thomas to its human height, can scarcely rise higher, while faith could scarcely expect more or stronger aids from reason than those which she has already obtained through Thomas...

Z 1. But, furthermore, Our predecessors in the Roman pontificate have celebrated the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas by exceptional tributes of praise and the most ample testimonials. Clement VI in the bull In Ordine; Nicholas V in his brief to the friars of the Order of Preachers, 1451; Benedict XIII in the bull Pretiosus, and others bear witness that the universal Church borrows lustre from his admirable teaching; while St. Pius V declares in the bull Mirabilis that heresies, confounded and convicted by the same teaching, were dissipated, and the whole world daily freed from fatal errors; others, such as Clement XII in the bull Verbo Dei, affirm that most fruitful blessings have spread abroad from his writings over the whole Church, and that he is worthy of the honor which is bestowed on the greatest Doctors of the Church, on Gregory and Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome; while others have not hesitated to propose St. Thomas for the exemplar and master of the universities and great centers of learning whom they may follow with unfaltering feet. On which point the words of Blessed Urban V to the University of Toulouse are worthy of recall: "It is our will, which We hereby enjoin upon you, that ye follow the teaching of Blessed Thomas as the true and Catholic doctrine and that ye labor with all your force to profit by the same."(35) Innocent XII, followed the example of Urban in the case of the University of Louvain, in the letter in the form of a brief addressed to that university on February 6, 1694, and Benedict XIV in the letter in the form of a brief addressed on August 26, 1752, to the Dionysian College in Granada; while to these judgments of great Pontiffs on Thomas Aquinas comes the crowning testimony of Innocent VI: "His teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be suspected of error."(36)" http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html

Pope St. Pius X, Doctoris Angelici: "Now because the word We used in the text of that letter recommending the philosophy of Aquinas was 'particularly,' and not 'exclusively,' certain persons persuaded themselves that they were acting in conformity to Our Will or at any rate not actively opposing it, in adopting indiscriminately and adhering to the philosophical opinions of any other Doctor of the School, even though such opinions were contrary to the principles of St. Thomas. They were greatly deceived. In recommending St. Thomas to Our subjects as supreme guide in the Scholastic philosophy, it goes without saying that Our intention was to be understood as referring above all to those principles upon which that philosophy is based as its foundation. For just as the opinion of certain ancients is to be rejected which maintains that it makes no difference to the truth of the Faith what any man thinks about the nature of creation, provided his opinions on the nature of God be sound, because error with regard to the nature of creation begets a false knowledge of God; so the principles of philosophy laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas are to be religiously and inviolably observed, because they are the means of acquiring such a knowledge of creation as is most congruent with the Faith (Contra Gentiles, II, 2, 3); of refuting all the errors of all the ages, and of enabling man to distinguish clearly what things are to be attributed to God and to God alone (ibid., iii; and Sum. Theol., 1, xii, 4: and liv, 1). They also marvellously illustrate the diversity and analogy between God and His works, a diversity and analogy admirably expressed by the Fourth Lateran Council as follows: "The resemblance between the Creator and the creature is such that their still greater dissimilarity cannot fail to be observed" (Decretalis iii, Damnamus ergo, etc. Cf. St. Thomas, Quaest, disp. De Scientia Dei, a. 11). --For the rest, the principles of St. Thomas, considered generally and as a whole, contain nothing but what the most eminent philosophers and doctors of the Church have discovered after prolonged reflection and discussion in regard to the particular reasons determining human knowledge, the nature of God and creation, the moral order and the ultimate end to be pursued in life ...

St. Thomas perfected and augmented still further by the almost angelic quality of his intellect all this superb patrimony of wisdom which he inherited from his predecessors and applied it to prepare, illustrate and protect sacred doctrine in the minds of men (In Librum Boethii de Trinitate, quaest, ii, 3). Sound reason suggests that it would be foolish to neglect it and religion will not suffer it to be in any way attenuated. And rightly, because, if Catholic doctrine is once deprived of this strong bulwark, it is useless to seek the slightest assistance for its defence in a philosophy whose principles are either common to the errors of materialism, monism, pantheism, socialism and modernism, or certainly not opposed to such systems. The reason is that the capital theses in the philosophy of St. Thomas are not to be placed in the category of opinions capable of being debated one way or another, but are to be considered as the foundations upon which the whole science of natural and divine things is based; if such principles are once removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily follow that students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the Magistracy [Magisterium] of the Church." From: http://iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2010/06/pope-st-pius-x-on-thomistic-philosophy.htmls

QuoteAbsence of good wouldn't be much of anything at all. I can only speak from experience, but from that experience I can't accept it. In my encounters with various demonic forces, there's a tangible sense of their nature. It permeates the fabric of reality around them and pierces the soul. And I can't call it a mere absence. Indeed, their natures were not all identical. Though the worst was like a sucking black hole of malicious nothingness and infinite despair in an eternal experience of that nothingness.

The black thing.  You can't see it, but you can.  It's just there, an infinite abyss.

QuoteI don't know. It's a mystery. But it's not something one should meditate on too much because of the forces it invokes. You can't even come into contact with them without being poisoned in some way.

That's why the best advice is to drop the curiosity.  When the black thing comes around, yawn, and turn your back to it.

QuoteEvil needs good. Evil is a negation of good. It has to pervert and destroy what good has wrought. It's fundamentally vampiric.

I think it needs good to feed its hatred.  In hell, cut off from good, they must truly suffer.

QuoteThese physical particles are abstracta from mechanical properties of mere attendant phenomena to the realities for which they are supposed to form the ontological foundation. And the notion that these invisible bits of nothingness, whose sole substantial content is to serve as placeholders for mechanical forces that have have mechanical effects, can be formed, arranged and tweaked to yield the living world of our senses, this is just plain nonsense. Moreover, this atomism of is not even compatible with the Aristotelian concept of prima materia as pure potency; it consists of differentiated objects that possess form.

I've been thinking about something I'm now terming "immaterial realism".  A few aspects:

1.  It is real, as in, there is a world outside of us.
2.  It is immaterial because it denies Prime Matter, or what we conventionally think of matter at all.
3.  As a result, there is no interface problem, which is fatal to atheistic materialism.  How does a muscle move?  Ultimately due to fields.  Describe a field materially.  We can't.  For the theist, you could hold on to matter and just use a literal Deus ex machina.  While I don't accept that, it is at least coherent vs. atheistic materialism.
4.  Since it is realism, much of Greek realism is retained, with a few caveats.
5.  In summary, the world is just information (Truth) and rules (described by mathematics).
6.  An analogy comparing this to The Matrix fails.  The Matrix is based on using material computers to program a material brain.

QuoteI suspect that what is really going on is that your hyperventilating and almost superstitious notion of "evil"

I'll put money that he doesn't have a superstitious notion of evil.

Where I differ from KR is with regards to Greek Realism.  I find it explains a lot and has a lot of truth to it.  Also I've been quite interested lately in information theory and recasting a form as information about something, and then using Greek Realism with this change.  Stephen Myers uses "information" to show the glaring problems in evolution, but I digress.  In short, I find Greek Realism attractive, so I'm not throwing darts, which you may suspect K. of doing (I don't).  Besides the question on evil, I have 2 other main problems with Greek Realism, or at best to show where it is incomplete:

1.  I can't find any Greek Realistic explanation of the interface problem.  This doesn't challenge my Faith as the interface problem is absolutely fatal to atheists.  In short, a greek realist easily demonstrates that the immaterial interacts with the immaterial (think of a triangle) and will wait for the atheist to materially explain how a field interacts with "matter".  The theist can then at least posit an existence theory for interface, but only after the atheist gets back to us, which he can't.  So my Faith is actually strengthened by the interface problem.  But I'm still left with no explanation of how the interface can work if I stick strictly to Greek Realism.

2.  Perception.  I guess you could say perception is part of the form of a human (and likely animals), but that leaves us feeling cheated.  What is perception?  The best I can come up with is a kernel to it: I exist, and I know existence is True.  Or something to that effect.

So at best Greek Realism needs some work.

Maybe try running your ideas past Ed Feser, James.  If you can get him interested in grappling with them, then maybe your problems do need addressing.  If not, then maybe you just need to be better educated?

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 11, 2019, 09:01:57 PM

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 11, 2019, 08:35:07 AM
But it doesn't. It doesn't change that "evils" are experienced as possessing their own unique essence, not as a reduction from something else.

You're making it up as you go along.  E.g. - "their own unique essence" - what do those words mean, I wonder, when you employ them?

He's sperging out now because he's on the back-pedal. I'm not making it up as I go along, and both philosophy and language exist outside the bubble of your Scholastic religion.   

QuoteDo you define "essence" as the Scholastics do, and if so, why would you qualify it with "their own" or "unique", the first of which is a redundancy, and the second a contradiction of the very notion of essence?

He's really sperging out. This is nonsense on the same level as his autistic attack on my use of "epistemological certainty" in another thread. I see your modus operandi now. Whenever something doesn't conform to your Scholastic notions and can't be processed by them you adopt the haughty and patronising attitude and go after a person's language, first maligning it and then throwing up your hands like a Socrates crying "I don't understand!". Right, you don't understand, and you can't understand.

QuoteAnd if you don't define "essence" as a Scholastic does, then why not give your (own, unique) definition, so that the reader can understand you?

Others seem to be understanding me just fine.

QuoteDo you not know that you are writing incomprehensibly, or does it suit you to do so?

No, any brick layer, washerwoman or school child can understand my language here. Your blinding your intellect by means of the Thomistic language game has rendered you incapable of seeing reality, having entered with it into a pretend world of concepts and the rules governing them, mostly devoid of phenomenological content and having no real referent, similarly to how the reductionists of scientific materialism have lost their own grasp on reality.

QuoteAnybody who can describe the doctrine of St. Thomas as "rationalistic bunkum" is in serious intellectual trouble.

No, anyone who has moulded his mind to use the Thomistic language game as the foundation of his thought and to see the world in its terms has put himself in serious trouble and a trouble he will have great difficulty in getting himself out of.

Quote

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 11, 2019, 08:35:07 AM

QuoteThe absence of just any good is mere limitation, which is a necessary condition of any created being; whereas the absence of a due good is an actual defect.  Something is lacking which ought to be present.

This explains nothing. One might remove the oxygen from H2O to yield hydrogen, but hydrogen isn't equivalent to "H2O lacking oxygen", and taking oxygen away from hydrogen does not account for what hydrogen is.

Oh my.  Hydrogen isn't due oxygen, is it?  So there's no lack of oxygen when hydrogen is isolated.

It's irrelevant. The example is illustrative of how your verbal reductionism doesn't work. It's a silly word game. A phenomenon is precisely what it is, and it isn't what it is, ontologically, because of a lack of anything, and is even less what it is because of a lack of something that is morally "due" to it (assuming you can even define these words "due" and "ought") The phenomenological reality of  a child being tortured to death, and of the demonic lusts driving the perpetrator to do it, are not what they are because of the lack of something they "ought" to have; even on the level of the efficient cause of the agent's act, the lack of some "due good" is not sufficient to account for a choice that is not merely to do nothing at all but one that is actively destructive, but we're not even talking about that; we're talking about a living reality, a reality as it is experienced, and something which, like the vision of a red colour that appears to me, is no more reducible by means of your Thomistic scheme to Thomistic concepts than that vision is reducible by means of the schemes of scientistic reductionism to the concepts of physicalism. You and they are, more than you're capable of realising, kindred spirits in your blindness to and denial of reality in favour of your self-glorifying intellectual schemes.

QuoteBut all of this is pointless, given that you don't even take Aquinas seriously.

It is pointless when your religion is Thomism and Thomism is there while reality is here.

Quote
I suspect that what is really going on is that your hyperventilating and almost superstitious notion of "evil"

Ah, that favourite word of all idolaters of "reason", from the Scholastic hellenizers right on down to the modern atheists: "superstition". As I said: kindred spirits. The programme is the same. One has just replaced the abstract "God" concept of Scholasticism's "Being itself" twaddle with another abstract concept as "cause". The irony of someone who believes in the reality of Scholastic babble calling another's ideas "superstitious".

Quote
derives from the more general notion that if such a thing exists, then any sins you yourself commit are in a different genre, not "evil" in the same way, etc.

Here it comes, the old "Your heresies are motivated by you desire to excuse your sin" line. The sperg now fancies a game of armchair psychology too.

QuoteBut that isn't true.  Your sins are exactly like those of Antichrist himself.  Get used to it.

No two things in the world are identical. That would contradict the very possibility of distinction which is essential to the idea of there being two things. Get over it.

Well here is what I can say (no darts).   Greek realism is best found in Aristotelian epistemology (later developed by St. Thomas), which helps answer the atheist materialist and interface problem.   Aristotle observed that all knowledge begins in the senses, with induction.  Humans first observe sensory data (necessarily coming from both matter and physical energy - example photons), forming perceptions which are still partly material.  Then the power of imagination and memory work on those perceptions to form abstractions which themselves are purely immaterial (example triangle).   The mind then proceeds through deductive logic examining abstract truth claims and how certain new truths can be derived from what is already known (example the length of the hypotenuse).  (sources:  Aristotle's Posteriori Analytics, Priori Analytics, De Anima;  St. Thomas' Treatise on Man).   Hope that helps.

A couple of things: Anyone who has read even the slightest part of St. Chrysostom's commentaries on the Gospel of St. Matthew (which St. Thomas once famously said were preferable to all the glories of Paris) knows the Saint often spoke of how, in the age before the written law (from B.C. 5200 to about 1500) given to the Prophet Moses, all men everywhere were bound by, and able to follow, what is called the law of nature. This natural law is discernible through human conscience. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church correctly puts it, "1776 "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."47". From moral conscience, it also follows that Our Good Lord, Almighty God, is Supreme Goodness.

When we look at poor secularists today and their weak and struggling faith, we see that even some who are ready to believe in God's Existence and Power, yet struggle to admit and believe His Goodness and His Love. Some even, especially when they see evil going on, presume rashly and foolishly to attack Him - but they do not understand that the God Who gave them their conscience, which urges them to do good, and avoid what is evil, is known by that very fact to be necessarily Good and source of all Goodness.

First Consideration: I. Man is able by his conscience to know good and evil, and is furthermore urged by the law on his heart to do good and avoid evil. II. Just as the existence of man and all things requires a first and ultimate cause, as can be proven separately, so also the existence of good and evil, and the obligation impelling us to do good, requires an ultimate first cause of goodness. III. Therefore, God is not only our Supreme Creator, but also Absolute Goodness.

A Second Consideration: Also, from the nature of the law, some of God's Attributes or Properties as source of all Goodness can be confirmed by reason. For, it is plain that the law we discern on our conscience is necessary, eternal and immutable, for we can clearly perceive, as truly as we can perceive by natural sight that light and darkness differ, that some things are always evil, such as blasphemy and perjury for e.g. and others will always be good, such as the two great commandments of Love for e.g.

But, the effect cannot be greater than the cause. And therefore, the cause of a law that is eternal and immutable can only be He Who by Nature is Eternally and Immutably Good, and is Supreme Goodness in Himself and of Himself, what Our Lord Jesus means by saying "None is Good but One, that is God."

That should do for now. Another thing, the Truth of natural law was taught by the Holy Spirit to St. Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit Apostle who won for Christ and baptized some 3 million souls. By it, St. Francis Xavier answered an objection, and those for whom he answered it were so happy by his answer, that they happily accepted the Catholic Faith, became Christians and were baptized. Having 2000 years of a glorious Catholic Tradition that is often envied by serious non-Catholics, Catholic Christians don't need to be afraid of any pagan secularist and their false objections. And we have seen for ourselves where modernistic anti-Thomistic actions and behavior lead these last 60 odd years - to unbelief.

Moreover, the Church has also seen by so many centuries of long and glorious experience how many and how great are the fruits of sound Thomistic Theology, as in the lives of St. Francis Xavier itself, and of other great missionary Saints, in helping all souls come to faith in Jesus Christ.

Finally, since this thread is about Orthodoxy, it may be interesting to some readers to know that, at one time, the teaching of the Angelic Doctor was held in the highest esteem in seminaries of the Greek Church. The final schism, to many Catholic writers, dates not so much to 1054 as to 1484. Before that, there were many sentiments in the Greek Church that were truly Catholic and representative of the Universal Church. The last Patriarch of the Byzantine empire, Gennadius Scholarios, said of St. Thomas,"we love this divinely-inspired and wise man." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennadius_Scholarius Elsewhere, he said wistfully, "O most excellent Thomas! Why did Heaven give you birth in the West!"

Orthodox Wiki: "Orthodox theology has had a complex relationship with Aquinas' work. For a long time, Aquinas and scholastic or schoolbook theology was a standard part of the education of Orthodox seminarians. His philosophy found a strong advocate in the person of at least one Patriarch of Constantinople, Gennadius Scholarius." https://orthodoxwiki.org/Thomas_Aquinas

We cannot here forget that, as Pope Leo XIII remarks almost in amazement, "23. A last triumph was reserved for this incomparable man-namely, to compel the homage, praise, and admiration of even the very enemies of the Catholic name. For it has come to light that there were not lacking among the leaders of heretical sects some who openly declared that, if the teaching of Thomas Aquinas were only taken away, they could easily battle with all Catholic teachers, gain the victory, and abolish the Church.(37) A vain hope, indeed, but no vain testimony." the enemies of the Catholic Church always found in St. Thomas an immovable bulwark of Catholic Faith. It was only because Mark of Ephesus, the third cause of the Greek Schism after Photius and Caerularius, perceived more clearly than any other before him, that the teachings and proofs St. Thomas gave of the dogma of the Filioque (that had been ably defended by St. Albert the Great, and St. Bonaventure, in Lyons II itself) etc would ultimately prove fatal to "Orthodoxy" or the Photian Schism in the long run, that they finally rejected the Summa of the Angelic Doctor. Nevertheless, in other respects, they continued to make use of his theology, e.g. in discussions with Muslims etc. If anyone reads Summa Contra Gentiles carefully, he will see that St. Thomas himself very much follows the methodology of St. John Damascene, and other Fathers, Eastern and Western alike. That even serious non-Catholics have admired and praised St. Thomas Aquinas as a man of deep faith, a brilliant thinker, a lofty philosopher, and a great theologian, should give professing Catholics who disrespect him cause to pause their invective against a man from whom the Catholic Church has received many benefits. Even if individuals want to be ungrateful, the Catholic Church will always honor great Saints who devoted their lives to Her and to strengthening the holy Catholic Faith.

As Pope Leo rightly recalls, "20. And, here, how pleasantly one's thoughts fly back to those celebrated schools and universities which flourished of old in Europe - to Paris, Salamanca, Alcalá, to Douay, Toulouse, and Louvain, to Padua and Bologna, to Naples and Coimbra, and to many another! All know how the fame of these seats of learning grew with their years, and that their judgment, often asked in matters of grave moment, held great weight everywhere. And we know how in those great homes of human wisdom, as in his own kingdom, Thomas reigned supreme; and that the minds of all, of teachers as well as of taught, rested in wonderful harmony under the shield and authority of the Angelic Doctor ...

22. The ecumenical councils, also, where blossoms the flower of all earthly wisdom, have always been careful to hold Thomas Aquinas in singular honor. In the Councils of Lyons, Vienna, Florence, and the Vatican one might almost say that Thomas took part and presided over the deliberations and decrees of the Fathers, contending against the errors of the Greeks, of heretics and rationalists, with invincible force and with the happiest results. But the chief and special glory of Thomas, one which he has shared with none of the Catholic Doctors, is that the Fathers of Trent made it part of the order of conclave to lay upon the altar, together with sacred Scripture and the decrees of the supreme Pontiffs, the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, whence to seek counsel, reason, and inspiration."

Quote from: christulsa on December 13, 2019, 01:29:11 AM
Well here is what I can say (no darts).   Greek realism is best found in Aristotelian epistemology (later developed by St. Thomas), which helps answer the atheist materialist and interface problem.   Aristotle observed that all knowledge begins in the senses, with induction.  Humans first observe sensory data (necessarily coming from both matter and physical energy - example photons), forming perceptions which are still partly material.  Then the power of imagination and memory work on those perceptions to form abstractions which themselves are purely immaterial (example triangle).   The mind then proceeds through deductive logic examining abstract truth claims and how certain new truths can be derived from what is already known (example the length of the hypotenuse).  (sources:  Aristotle's Posteriori Analytics, Priori Analytics, De Anima;  St. Thomas' Treatise on Man).   Hope that helps.

You will never bridge the gap between photons and a brain conceived as being constituted by similar objects, on the one hand, and the reality of seeing and what is seen, on the other.

The "interface problem" only exists on the basis of a particular metaphysical view, and the demand for it to have a mechanical solution from cause to effect is itself a presupposition, whether it ends in Thomism, Cartesianism, Kantianism or Scientific Materialism. They are all kindred philosophies and all play the same game. This self-imposed, and in my view ultimately nonsensical problem, does not exist for me.

All of this begins with a denial, for whatever personal reasons, of fundamental reality to the phenomenological world and that the subject's interaction with it is identical with his experience of that interaction. Kant drew the right conclusion that his "noumena" were utterly unknowable, though not that they were mere artefacts of his thought process, Descartes drew the right conclusion that interaction between the material and mental is mechanistically inconceivable and inexplicable, though not that his categories and concept of mechanical interaction were wrong and misplaced, and the Scientific Materialists, despite attempts to materialise experiences, overlook that their "real" objects are as abstract and divorced from material reality as any Scholastic "substance" and that his causal scheme from physical object to phenomenological object, indeed his use of the word "cause" here, has no meaning.

Quote from: james03 on December 12, 2019, 11:04:12 PM

QuoteThese physical particles are abstracta from mechanical properties of mere attendant phenomena to the realities for which they are supposed to form the ontological foundation. And the notion that these invisible bits of nothingness, whose sole substantial content is to serve as placeholders for mechanical forces that have have mechanical effects, can be formed, arranged and tweaked to yield the living world of our senses, this is just plain nonsense. Moreover, this atomism of is not even compatible with the Aristotelian concept of prima materia as pure potency; it consists of differentiated objects that possess form.

I've been thinking about something I'm now terming "immaterial realism".  A few aspects:

1.  It is real, as in, there is a world outside of us.
2.  It is immaterial because it denies Prime Matter, or what we conventionally think of matter at all.
3.  As a result, there is no interface problem, which is fatal to atheistic materialism.  How does a muscle move?  Ultimately due to fields.  Describe a field materially.  We can't.  For the theist, you could hold on to matter and just use a literal Deus ex machina.  While I don't accept that, it is at least coherent vs. atheistic materialism.
4.  Since it is realism, much of Greek realism is retained, with a few caveats.
5.  In summary, the world is just information (Truth) and rules (described by mathematics).
6.  An analogy comparing this to The Matrix fails.  The Matrix is based on using material computers to program a material brain.

To borrow from christulsa, no darts, but this is just where this line of thinking, which you all have in common, ends: denial of reality to what is real. Nobody will ever get from "information" and "rules" to the least experience of life, the least vision of a drop of dew falling from a green leaf and and touching ones skin with a cold splash. And what's offered in its place is a fevered hellscape, a colourless, joyless delirium of bits and mathematical laws locked in an eternal silence. Not even Lovecraft conceived, in his crawling chaos, of something so awful, so bleak, so lacking in reality, a great abstract and rule-bound machine.

The world isn't "really just" anything; it is precisely what it is.

Quote from: Kreuzritter on December 13, 2019, 01:13:21 AM


He's sperging out now because he's on the back-pedal. I'm not making it up as I go along, and both philosophy and language exist outside the bubble of your Scholastic religion.   

...  and go after a person's language, first maligning it and then throwing up your hands like a Socrates crying "I don't understand!". Right, you don't understand, and you can't understand.

...
Others seem to be understanding me just fine.

QuoteDo you not know that you are writing incomprehensibly, or does it suit you to do so?

No, any brick layer, washerwoman or school child can understand my language here. Your blinding your intellect by means of the Thomistic language game ...

He who proves too much proves nothing.

You're the guy who is always going on about how impossibly different other cultures' languages are - indeed, the very structure of their language and thought- so that we poor boobs who haven't spent our youth immersed in philology and comparative religion are just so far from understanding anything...

So which is it, do human beings understand each other, or is human misunderstanding the default (absent arcane erudition possessed only by you, of course)?

Enquiring minds are wanting to know.  (However, we are aware that we will only be deemed to have understood the answer when you declare that we do.  Otherwise we will continue to sit in our no doubt deserved darkness.)

In the Immaculate,
Nazianzen.

P.S.  what is "sperging"?

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 13, 2019, 07:48:57 AM
P.S.  what is "sperging"?

Short for aspergers. Engaging in the behavior of one with Asperger's Syndrome.

Quote from: Gardener on December 13, 2019, 03:09:09 PM

Quote from: Nazianzen on December 13, 2019, 07:48:57 AM
P.S.  what is "sperging"?

Short for aspergers. Engaging in the behavior of one with Asperger's Syndrome.

OK, now I need to go look up Asperger's Syndrome.  Could explain a few things.  :)