Heresy

...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:27:56 +0100

Before Breivik was identified, some media reflexively suggested an Islamic attack. The heresy you define is prejudice, drawn from centuries of Reformist propaganda. Sadly, freethought unorthodoxy is also defined as heresy, as in the case of Teilhard de Chardin. What is the position on liberation theology, which involved religious in Latin American political action? The notion of heresy belongs in the medieval court that tried Joan of Arc. Magisterium can do better. - Alan bec

...

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:01:56 +0100

Well Thomas the tone of the entire piece is the paradoxical attitude of smug victimization. i.e. that thoughtful Christians like the author are being abused and maligned by dimwitted atheists who misunderstand and mischaracterize their beliefs at every turn. My point is that one problem is that such authors actually create problems for themselves sometimes by exaggerating what they do understand and by being too dismissive of the significance of what they don't. To treat the problem of evil as "solved" from the point of view of Christianity and only a problem for chuckleheaded agnostics is naive to say the least. I think many Christians make this mistake, but this piece is unusually obtuse where the problem of evil is concerned. Only a person who lives a comfortable Western existence,with no real prospect of material deprivation, with few natural disasters, no memory of major wars on the homefront, tyranny or civil disturbances could so blithely dismiss evil as a problem for theodicy. Evil does not destroy the basis for faith of course. But Christians would be more effective in communicating their faith to others if they took the first step by acknowledging that evil as humans experience it (and atheists have often experienced it) is a very terrible thing. - jsmitty

...

Fri, 18 May 2012 06:01:05 +0100

@jsmiitty: Who is claiming to be victimized over the question of evil? When people like Mark Twain and Voltaire mock our attempts to expalin the existetnce of evil we not do not play the vicitm but just as oftne as not join in the fun, for many of us can do so without ceding an inch of ground. After al, crying "why me, Lord?" is our natureal response as fallen beings. It has never occurred to to blame Adam for anything, since, for one thing I might have done the smae thing. I do not think that I can change the mind of anyone for whom the problem of evil is still a problem, but I hope I c na share at least of glimpse of why for some it is not a problem to bleief both that God is almighty and that He does not cause either floods of birth defects. My own inablity to understand things is so limited that I canot fathom why you took myadmission concerning the limits of human knowledge to be smug. Now, THAT is a real problem with which I sahll struggle with for days, which will make my wife happy beucase it will keep out of the kitchen and away from the piano. - Thomas C. Coleman, Jr.

...

Thu, 17 May 2012 17:30:24 +0100

That's a nice trick Thomas to bring up original sin to explain it all, and then throwing in a bunch of non-sequiturs to boot and attributing to me all sorts of things that I didn't say and don't beleive. Yeah, I could buy original sin explaining human evil. But tsunami's??? that's a bit of a stretch no? When a volcano erupts in a densely populated area and kills thousands and maims hundreds of thousands the volcano is behaving according natural laws created by God. TO what extent can Adam and Eve be implicated in this? As Aquinas might say, a volcano is seeking its own perfection by doing what volcanoes do naturally. When a drought hits and human beings starve to what extent is Adam to blame for this? Human beings need to eat as do all things with a body (wasn't that part of the original creation). What I am trying to get to is that there is a great deal about the world that we really don't understand (as your post smugly admits). But this silly apologetic, intellectually overconfident mindset that pervades this site, keeps people from acknowledging our limits here. We treat things that are truly mysterious as intellectual problems of others that we've "solved" and when people point out that we really haven't solved them then we claim were being victimized. - jsmitty

...

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:05:48 +0100

Point very well made, Dr. Esolen. But I would expect nothing less from you. Now Jsmitty, really, Old Boy. We Christians have alwayy held that the world as it is a fallen world since the sin of Adam. Now you might not beleieve in Oringinal Sin, or the Creator of Adma and Eve for that matter, butn that should not get the way of understadning how our ounderstanding of how the fallen nature not only of man but of all creation is the source of all imperfection and suffering. Also, we do not presume to be albe to fit the Amighty into a box in which He can be understood according our limited understanding of even those basic aspects of the world that God has made for us. Who among us knows the true nature of matter and energy and time? Of course you have read Job. Please do so again. Another problem that th athiest has with any of this is that of establishing a basis for dinstinguishing between good and evil. If God did not create us why should we reckon human consciouness any more valuable that the speed of a cheetah or the ablity of a falcon to distinguish color at mcuh greater variations than we can. If we are really but products of thoughtelss radnom chemical changes, then the most you can say to the worst criminal is the equivalent of pointing out that people in your country club just don't wear white shoes after Labor Day. But God did make us, adn good and evil are real. - Thomas C. Coleman< jr.

...

Thu, 17 May 2012 14:27:45 +0100

Thank you, Michael. Alas, Christians sometimes behave no better than pagans, but it surely is a left-handed tribute to Christianity that even the pagans among us expect Christians to be perfect or nearly so, while they make all kinds of excuses for the indiscretions of Stalin, Mao, Lenin, Hitler, Margaret Sanger, Jack Kevorkian, Alfred Kinsey, etc. Sure, Stalin slaughtered many millions of his own people -- just ask the Ukrainians -- but the Catholic Church sent Galileo to live in a villa in Florence. - Tony Esolen

...

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:55:10 +0100

"Not only do bad things happen to good people, but – just as annoying – good things happen to bad people. But this is a problem for the atheist, not the believer." Frankly your grasp of theology/theodicy is very shallow if you think this. (which might, also I might add, be tied into the problems you're having getting your message across in the public square to people who don't already share your premises.) The problem of evil is a much more serious one for believers as well. Ancient minds such as Augustine and Aquinas knew that the hardest problem for theodicy was the problem of evil, especially physical evil–earthquakes, tsunamis, mud slides that strike and kill thousands of people with no warning. Did God have to make the world this way? Why couldn't he be a bit less haphazard in ensuring that genuinely wicked people bear the brunt of the tragedies? Aquinas and Augustine both surmised ways in which God's goodness could be undiminished in the face of evil. But they did not (and could not) explain the existential horror of evil as people experience it, and why the world is so constituted. My friendly advice to you then is, before writing your next book, don't "shout louder" but, get into the rich tradition and think deeper! - jsmitty

...

Thu, 17 May 2012 08:12:10 +0100

Thank you very much, Manfred. Many of us can tell horror storeis about absolute heresy being taught from the pulpit and of people receiving Confirmation without even knowing what Purgatory is. Now is the time for the leaders to gird themselves for battle and insisit that every priest tell people exactly what Holy Mother Chruches inerrantly teaches. I hope you can bear an anecdote I believe illustrative of our current situation: Recently at a large KofC event I was speaking with a memeber who, like myself, had graduated froma Jesiuit college decades ago. When I decried the pro-sodomy activites being carried at one Jesuit college, my new aquaintence angrily asked me where my charity was. I asked him if he thought it charitable to confimr people in thier sinfulness and to misrepresent the immuyabel Teachings of HOly Mother Church, to which he simply repeated his question about my charity. I have no doubt that this poor fellow sincerely believd that it is charitiable to tell people who suffer from that disorder to act on their urges. Back to the Balitmore Catechism! - Thomas C. Coleman, Jr.

...

Thu, 17 May 2012 07:04:30 +0100

"This all is true but it is also true that racial slavery in America was justified on the basis of biblical story of Noah cursing his son Ham." And the abolitionists were secular humanists? - Brian English

...

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:22:52 +0100

You make excellent points, Mr. Coren. There are 183 Ordinaries (heads of dioceses) in this Country and I hope you get a copy of your book to each of them. You see, Cdl Dolan, the president of the USCCB, just admitted that there has been no catechetics taught in this Country for forty years and as a result, there are millions of Catholics, many considering themselves loyal and true, WHO DO NOT KNOW WHAT CATHOLICISM TEACHES. They vote, they serve on parish councils, they even agree to serve as commencement speakers at what were formerly "Catholic" colleges and universities. For them Catholicism has become merely Social Justice. Your books should be quite helpful. - Manfred

...

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:13:19 +0100

This all is true but it is also true that racial slavery in America was justified on the basis of biblical story of Noah cursing his son Ham. The Catholic Church too had a complicated relationship with slavery in Latin America. - Gian