Xavier's M.O.

[Quaremerepulisti]

The minute you reject a religious authority, you become your own religious authority, as does everyone who decides to. 

The rejection of authority is the key to the so-called "Enlightenment" and, in turn, modernism.  It is the antithesis of traditional Catholicism.

It is essential to traditional Catholicism to recognize that one's intellect is limited and to accept the authority of the Church.

Except you don't practice what you preach, which is the paradox of traditional Catholicism.

Do you accept, on authority, Pope Francis' teaching on the death penalty?  Or any of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar Magisterium?

No, you reject that authority using your reason, in the very name of being anti-Modernist and anti-Enlightenment and not preferring conclusions of reason to authority.

[Greg]

I'd consider being excommunicated by Jayne better than a plenary indulgence.

Like being awarded a brown scapular of the Westboro Baptist Church.

I might even get a tattoo to celebrate it and forgive all the people who ever worked at the HSBC call centre.

[Greg]

But my point is that if you make rational thought the sole compass of your religion.

It's not the sole compass.  Just the primary one.  The first one.

I don't like clerical poofters but if the new springtime, introduced and run by poofters, actually produced successful outcomes like a growing church of people who actually knew what they believed, large families, less abortion a more stable and contented society, then I would have to rationally conclude that the modern church architecture, the lame masses and shitty hymns and limp wristed clergy had actually delivered a better outcome.

Results matter and there is no argument against a fact.

But there are things that I know I don't know and can reasonably conclude that I will never know, this side of death.  That is where faith comes in.

[Jayne]

The rejection of authority is the key to the so-called "Enlightenment" and, in turn, modernism.  It is the antithesis of traditional Catholicism.

It is essential to traditional Catholicism to recognize that one's intellect is limited and to accept the authority of the Church.

I agree with you for the most part.  How can someone be a traditional Catholic if they're effectively saying "F.U." to the Syllabus of Errors?  And yet, as the existence of Greg proves, you can be a traditional Catholic and do that.  Unless you want to personally excommunicate him.  Get out the white soutane ...

I do not consider Greg a traditional Catholic and he does not identify himself as one.

[Greg]

I'm just glad you consider me a male Jayne.

You're learnin!

[Jayne]

The minute you reject a religious authority, you become your own religious authority, as does everyone who decides to. 

The rejection of authority is the key to the so-called "Enlightenment" and, in turn, modernism.  It is the antithesis of traditional Catholicism.

It is essential to traditional Catholicism to recognize that one's intellect is limited and to accept the authority of the Church.

Except you don't practice what you preach, which is the paradox of traditional Catholicism.

Do you accept, on authority, Pope Francis' teaching on the death penalty?  Or any of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar Magisterium?

No, you reject that authority using your reason, in the very name of being anti-Modernist and anti-Enlightenment and not preferring conclusions of reason to authority.

I accept all of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar Magisterium to the extent that it is consistent with pre-conciliear teaching.  When it appears to be inconsistent, I have a problem that can not be solved by merely by following authority.  At no point do I reject authority.  I say that I do not understand how both can be true.  I wait for the answer to become clear.

[Jayne]

I'm just glad you consider me a male Jayne.

Actually, I prefer to think of you as a non-corporeal being that communicates through a computer, perhaps an advanced form of virus.

[Greg]

In that case you are using the wrong gender pronoun.

[Jayne]

In that case you are using the wrong gender pronoun.

You just never stop complaining about that.

[GloriaPatri]

I can only judge ANY claim or creed by my own intellect.  Rational thought MUST be at the root of ANY belief for that belief to be any more than an emotional response or desire for something to be true.

Cogito, ergo sum

Make rational thought play second-fiddle and you can be led to believe any old nonsense; simply with the carrot of 72 virgins or eternal bliss or drinking and whoring in Valhalla.  We know, there is AMPLE evidence, that humans are very susceptible to confirmation bias.

I completely concur.  With your thought experiment of the time machine, you're quite right, a believing Catholic would have to consider that their own first-hand experience of a faked Resurrection must've been a demonic deception of some sort, because their faith would have to take precedence.  I'm sure you could imagine the familiar objections: allegations pertaining to scientific elites, virtual reality, holograms, Satan, Jews, the Antichrist, TPTB, and everything but the kitchen sink would be hurled at the phenomenon of time machines.  "We're definitely in the end times now," they'd say, until another forty years passed and something else became the signifier of the apocalypse, which always remains tantalizingly right around the corner.  "The future's uncertain and the end is always near."

But my point is that if you make rational thought the sole compass of your religion, how do you expect other people to remain Catholic at all?  What if they read Hume's essay Of Miracles and rationally conclude that the likelihood of the Resurrection itself being false is greater than the likelihood of its being true?  It's like the young man in The Way of All Flesh, when some old clockmaker tells him to go read all four gospel accounts of the Resurrection and see if they cohere.  I don't know if it's a spoiler to say this, but he loses his faith.  For those who don't lose their faith entirely, they basically end up with a checkerboard of doctrines, some of which they decide they can't believe in any more, and others which they can.  The minute you reject a religious authority, you become your own religious authority, as does everyone who decides to.  The endless splintering of Protestantism into myriad sects demonstrates where all this ends—with everyone becoming their own pope.  As I think you yourself once joked, "maybe I should go into the business of selling white soutanes."

So I don't disagree with your decision to go by your rational thought.  I just don't know how you (generic you) retain a coherent religion in that paradigm.  If everything is subject to reason, then anything can get jettisoned the minute it does.  As I've said, it would be a religion the truths of which are only provisionally true.  They would cease to be ultimately or irrevocably true.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, makes a judgement of reason when he submits to the conclusions of a given religion or philosophy. We are, by nature, rational animals. It's impossible for us to make true leaps of faith, in so much as faith is considered to be the absence of reason. We may not be truly conscious of the reasoning we make, but our minds still create a rational argument to itself whenever it accepts anything as true or false.

[Quaremerepulisti]

I accept all of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar Magisterium to the extent that it is consistent with pre-conciliear teaching.  When it appears to be inconsistent, I have a problem that can not be solved by merely by following authority.  At no point do I reject authority.  I say that I do not understand how both can be true.  I wait for the answer to become clear.

But you have to use your reason to determine what is and what is not consistent with pre-Conciliar teaching, and therefore to what extent you accept, and to what extent you do not.  If you really preferred authority to reason, you would accept it all simpliciter.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, makes a judgement of reason when he submits to the conclusions of a given religion or philosophy. We are, by nature, rational animals. It's impossible for us to make true leaps of faith, in so much as faith is considered to be the absence of reason. We may not be truly conscious of the reasoning we make, but our minds still create a rational argument to itself whenever it accepts anything as true or false.

Hallelujah, brother, Praise the Lord!  Feel the spirit's presence among us!  Let's first praise the Lord for the beautiful weather He sent us today!  Then yes, yes, Nicholas here in the first row has a message from the Spirit to share with us!  What's He saying to us today, Nick?

Are you sure this is true?

[Jayne]

I accept all of Vatican II and the post-Conciliar Magisterium to the extent that it is consistent with pre-conciliear teaching.  When it appears to be inconsistent, I have a problem that can not be solved by merely by following authority.  At no point do I reject authority.  I say that I do not understand how both can be true.  I wait for the answer to become clear.

But you have to use your reason to determine what is and what is not consistent with pre-Conciliar teaching, and therefore to what extent you accept, and to what extent you do not.  If you really preferred authority to reason, you would accept it all simpliciter.

Everybody who accepts teaching on authority does so through use of his reason.  The process of understanding what is taught by authority necessarily involves reason.  It is not possible to accept any teaching without it being mediated by reason.

When a person is unaware of a teaching, that is not a rejection of the authority.  Similarly, when a person cannot understand a teaching, that is not a rejection of the authority nor is it placing reason above authority. 

A person who cannot understand how two different teachings can both be true is "on hold" until he can resolve the question.  He has made no decision to reject authority and is accepting it to the best of his ability.

If I really preferred reason to authority, I would ascribe my inability to understand to a defect in the teaching and decide to reject it.

[Jayne]

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, makes a judgement of reason when he submits to the conclusions of a given religion or philosophy. We are, by nature, rational animals. It's impossible for us to make true leaps of faith, in so much as faith is considered to be the absence of reason. We may not be truly conscious of the reasoning we make, but our minds still create a rational argument to itself whenever it accepts anything as true or false.

Hallelujah, brother, Praise the Lord!  Feel the spirit's presence among us!  Let's first praise the Lord for the beautiful weather He sent us today!  Then yes, yes, Nicholas here in the first row has a message from the Spirit to share with us!  What's He saying to us today, Nick?

Are you sure this is true?

I used reason (among other things) when I decided to become a Catholic.  I am not going to keep second guessing that decision.  I accept the teaching authority of the Church.

[Greg]