Faith & Reason: The Rejection of Worldly Stupidity

I must admit that I am rather uncomfortable about using the word “stupidity”. Nonetheless, its presence surrounds me and I cannot deny that I am more than occasionally afflicted by it. 

Saint Thomas Aquinas used the word at least once and Albert Einstein employed it several times. “Two things are infinite,” he once said, “the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe”. Trying to outdo Einstein, Frank Zappa complained that “there is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” On another occasion, Einstein stated that “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits”. To his credit, however, he was not averse to applying the condition to himself: “Don’t be too hard on me.  Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time”. After all, he added, “Stupidity is a personal achievement which transcends national boundaries”.

Among the writings of Annie Kraus is a treatise entitled On Stupidity. She regards it as a vice not of the intellect but of the will, not part of man’s natural endowment but a consequence of the Fall.  To be stupid, according to her view, is to be deaf and dumb toward being, to refuse to do justice to reality.  It is a withdrawing into the self and failing to acknowledge the wide world that stubbornly exists beyond the ego.

Reason is the universal faculty through which we make contact with reality.  We are free, as Mortimer Adler has reminded us, in How to Read a Book, not when we are from reason, but when we are free through reason. Some people refuse to suppress reason and are willing to look at reality the way it is rather than the way they would prefer it to be. Such individuals, we may say, possess a philosophical temperament. The Catholic Church has always been insistent on the use of reason in order to better appreciate God’s creation. This fact is nowhere better illustrated than in the Church’s founding of the university. Therefore, the Church has always been attractive to those who want to engage reason in order to improve their understanding of reality. 

It should not be surprising, then, that the Church has attracted a significant number of philosophers who have made important contributions to their new home. The conversion list is quite impressive: Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Alasdair MacIntyre, Max Scheler, Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Elizabeth Anscombe and so on. Added to this list are converts who made philosophical contributions though from fields other than philosophy. Let us mention Christopher Dawson, G. K. Chesterton, Marshall McLuhan, Karl Stern, and F. F. Schumacher.

Divine grace, it must be emphasized, is essential for any conversion to the Church.  Nevertheless, a proper disposition must be in place for God’s grace to take root.  This disposition is an awareness and reverence for God’s creation and an eagerness to explore it to greater lengths.  This attitude is the very antithesis of being stupid.  Einstein may have had his brief moments of stupidity, but for the most part, he was deeply involved with the universe about him.  Aquinas was consistently open to the truth of things.  G. K. Chesterton put it nicely when he said, “All my mental doors open outwards into a world I have not made.  My last door of liberty opens upon a world of sun and solid things, of objective adventures.  The post in the garden; the thing I could neither create nor expect; strong plain daylight on stiff upstanding wood; it is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

We need not look very far in today’s world to find evidence of stupidity.  There are politicians among us who seem to thrive on it. Napoleon had advised us that “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap”. One current presidential hopeful promises, if elected, to promote abortion “fiercely” and do what he can to suppress religion. Here we may cite Catholic convert Christopher Dawson who, as an astute historian, has pointed out in his book, Progress and Religion, that “A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture.”

Meditating on the reality that God has created may be the surest way of cutting down on stupidity.  It is an impairment, we should remember, that is more easily spotted in others than in one’s self.  In the final analysis, the harmony between faith and reason is of invaluable assistance in helping us to remain sane and productive.

https://catholicexchange.com/faith-reason-the-rejection-of-worldly-stupidity

Dr. Donald DeMarco — Prof. Emeritus/St. Jerome’s University, Adjunct Prof./Holy Apostles College & Seminary.  He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review.  His latest books, How to Navigate through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life are posted on amazon.com 

FROM THE PASTOR February 5, 2017 by Fr. George W. Rutler

FROM THE PASTOR
February 5, 2017
by Fr. George W. Rutler

In the margin of a public speaker’s manuscript was the notation: “Weak point. Shout.” Such is the rhetoric of those who place emotion over logic and make policy through gangs rather than parliaments. In Athens 2,400 years ago, Aristophanes described the demagogue as having “a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, cross-grained nature and the language of the marketplace.” That marketplace today includes the biased media and the universities that have become daycare centers.

   The recent action of our government’s executive branch to protect our borders and enforce national security is based on Constitutional obligations (Art. 1 sec 10 and Art. 4 sec 4). It is a practical protection of the tranquility of order explained by Saint Augustine when he saw the tranquillitas ordinis of Roman civilization threatened. Saint Thomas Aquinas sanctioned border control (S. Th. I-II, Q. 105, Art. 3). No mobs shouted in the marketplace two years ago when the Terrorist Travel Prevention Act restricted visa waivers for Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. The present ban continues that, and only for a stipulated ninety days, save for Syria. There is no “Muslim ban” as should be obvious from the fact that the restrictions do not apply to other countries with Muslim majorities, such as Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Turkey.

   These are facts ignored by demagogues who speak of tears running down the face of the Statue of Liberty. At issue is not immigration, but illegal immigration. It is certainly manipulative of reason to justify uncontrolled immigration by citing previous generations of immigrants to our shores, all of whom went through the legal process, mostly in the halls of Ellis Island. And it is close to blasphemy to invoke the Holy Family as antinomian refugees, for they went to Bethlehem in obedience to a civil decree requiring tax registration, and they violated no statutes when they sought protection in Egypt. Then there was Saint Paul, who worked within the legal system, and invoked his Roman citizenship through privileges granted to his native Tarsus in 66 B.C. (Acts 16:35-38; 22:25-29; 25:11-12) He followed ordered procedure, probably with the status of civis Romanus non optimo jure—a legal citizen, but not allowed to act as a magistrate.

   It is obvious that the indignant demonstrators against the new Executive Orders are funded in no little part by wealthy interests who would provoke agitation. These same people have not shown any concern about the neglected Christians seeking refuge from persecution in the Middle East. In 2016 there was a 675% increase in the number of Syrian refugees over the previous year, but while 10% of the Syrian population is Christian, only one-half of one percent of the Syrian Christians were granted asylum. It is thankworthy that our changed government now wants to redress that. The logic of that policy must not be shouted down by those who screech rather than reason. 
         

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Father Rutler’s book, The Stories of Hymns – The History Behind 100 of Christianity’s Greatest Hymns, is available through Sophia Institute Press (Paperback or eBook) and Amazon (Paperback or Kindle). 

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Righteousness Exalts a Nation

Karl Marx thought of culture as the superstructure of economics. He was, of course, mistaken. I think, though, that we can use his observation in a different, and helpful, manner. Politics is the superstructure of culture. A good political order follows from a virtuous foundation in the lives of the people. (Proverbs 14:34, 29:18).

As the American Founders understood, we cannot reasonably expect “good politics” (which is the wedding of justice with power) unless there is a strong moral sense in the people. The Catechism puts it succinctly: “The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. . . .Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies.” (#2105) A Catholic theory of politics is simply stated: We do not wish to control the apparatus of the State, but we must invariably and insistently speak truth to power.

There’s a reason that the First Commandment comes first. Abjure God, and we abjure sound teaching. (Psalms 111:10) The Church has the overarching duty of anamnesis – of constantly reminding us of supernatural reality. 

Deference to that reality is the hallmark of the good political order.

In Veritatis Splendor, St. John Paul II wrote that “only a morality which acknowledges certain norms as valid always and for everyone, with no exception, can guarantee the ethical foundation of social existence.” The defense of that absolute truth must begin with real education – with learned, orthodox, and engaging professors at genuinely Catholic institutions. We know that good education is not itself sufficient to ensure a life of virtue; but without it, virtue is lost and with it the prospect of a good political order. We get the institutions, the representatives in Congress, and the political prospects we deserve.

Pope Leo XIII

Our politics is often deranged because so is our education. Therein lies the root of the crisis: we cannot have good politics until we have wise and virtuous citizens, and the Church must be instrumental in producing them. After four years of learning at a Catholic college, the graduate ought to be able to call what is good, good; and what is evil, evil. Fail in that regard and very little else truly matters.

One of the great questions of political science is: Who will guard the guardians? With equal urgency we must ask, Who will catechize the catechists? Our education and formation are too often rooted in the poisoned soil of the profane culture around us. We have heard lies so often that we have difficulty in hearing the still, small voice of Truth.

In 1959, St. John XXIII saw the emerging problem: “All the evils which poison men and nations and trouble so many hearts have a single cause and a single source: ignorance of the truth – and at times even more than ignorance, a contempt for truth and a reckless rejection of it. Thus arise all manner of errors, which enter the recesses of men’s hearts and the bloodstream of human society as would a plague. These errors turn everything upside down: they menace individuals and society itself.”

This “contempt for truth” has only worsened in the past half-century, and it has wormed its way into the minds of too many who are charged with speaking with and for the Church and of teaching wisely and well. With the ignorant teaching the ignorant, how are we to do what Pope Leo XIII called us to in his efforts to develop modern Catholic social teaching: The Church, he said, must “make strong endeavor that the power of the Gospel may pervade the law and institutions of the nations.”

When we reform our “Catholic” institutions, we may, please God, then be able to hold our self-proclaimed Catholic politicians to account. (cf. Wisdom 6:8) With restored Catholic education, we may begin to build a culture which can spawn a good and even noble political order. Such a political order, at the behest of its citizens, calls good, good; it calls evil, evil.

Marx, indeed, was wrong, for politics emerges, not from high finance, but, rather, from the womb of what we cherish – or of what we reject; of what we hold sacred – or of what we substitute for the sacred. We will not have moral politics until we have a culture in which the good, the true, and the beautiful are known, defended, instilled.

“Catholic education” will be a chimera until our students hear the truth that will set them free. When we truly educate, we form consciences. We will then be developing citizens who can render to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s.

We will then know what freedom truly is (cf. Evangelium Vitae #96) – and we may, with restored purpose, pray that it will long reign in the land that we love.

© 2017 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/01/15/righteousness-exalts-a-nation/

Kellyanne Conway

Monday, January 2, 2017

Kellyanne Conway: Feminism's Nightmare^Featured

Written by  The Remnant Newspaper

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As President-elect Donald Trump's campaign manager, Mrs. Kellyanne Conway helped pull off one of the most stunning political victories in U.S. history. So, why do the feminists hate her? Why isn't she being praised as a feminist icon by CNN or the gals from The View? Could it be because Kellyanne Conway is outspokenly pro-life?

And here's another hopeful sign:  President Donald Trump's top advisor will be an Irish-American, happily married Catholic mother of four who makes breakfast every morning for her kids and then goes to Mass. She's a daily communicant! 

And there's more: Kellyanne Conway reportedly took Donald Trump to meet Father George Rutler, the Anglican convert priest and pastor of the Church of St. Michael in Mahattan, who blessed the future president just days before his election.

Who knows how this is all going to play out but, for the moment, it's nice to know that a faithful Catholic is to become chief advisor to the next President of the United States. May God help her remain true to the promises of her baptism as she takes on this crucial position. 

http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/remnant-television/item/2967-kellyanne-conway-feminisms-nightmare
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McNeil Island -- costs taxpayer $160,000 per year per person

Monday, March 15, 2010  -  Last updated 6:23 p.m. PT
Sex, drugs and child porn at McNeil Island
full text  http://www.seattlepi.com/local/416372_predatorporn15.html
Internal documents show staff-offender relationships, drug smuggling
By LEVI PULKKINEN  -  SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

That Donald Gamer would want photos of child sex is no surprise.

A convicted sex offender, the wheelchair-bound old man was locked away with 291 others at the state's Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island. There they were in September, Gamer and six other offenders, when FBI agents arrived to take them into federal custody. Five of the seven men have since admitted to obtaining digital copies of photos and films showing children being raped or put on display.

That men inside the facility would do so was also no surprise. It had happened before and, apparently, has happened since.

How they managed to sneak child porn into a semi-secure facility, though, remains a mystery.

Internal reports show the facility -- an un-prison designed to house sex criminals who've served their prison but are deemed too dangerous to be released -- has suffered from contraband problems often associated with penal institutions.

Documents obtained by seattlepi.com show should that in the past five years child pornography has been found at the center on at least 16 occasions. The total number of incidents is likely higher, due in part to redactions of information related to ongoing criminal investigations.

Beyond the residents' behavior, disciplinary files show that several Department of Social and Health Services employees hired to manage the facility apparently broke or bent rules of conduct.

In one case, an ex-employee attempted to smuggle a package to a sex predator residing at the center. In another, a female employee was found, her clothing in disarray, at a private home in the company of an offender she was supposed to be escorting.

Another former employee is under federal indictment following allegations he conspired with a Special Commitment Center resident to smuggle crack cocaine into the facility. The pair were handed over to federal authorities by the sex offender's girlfriend, a former nurse at the center.

Not prison, not hospital  http://www.seattlepi.com/local/416372_predatorporn15.html