I've missed your comments.
You flatter me. Please,,,,,,,,,, Don't! Stop! Don't! Stop!
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Don't laugh, [sorry, my bad] but objectivism [it always cracks me up when the CI system underlines "objectivism" with a red squiggle like it's misspelled or something. HAHAHAHA] epistemology laid basic groundwork for my ease in converting back to the Faith, from novus ordo to tradition.
Could have been the same for me - but I'm not so sure which came first, the chicken or the chicken-eater. HAHAHA
I had the inestimable blessing of a mother who had been trained by nuns, the Sisters of St. Joseph. Old doctrine never dies and the Modernists of Vat.II despite their
animus dilendi, were unable to squelch the solid Catholicism of the world's convents overnight. But her tutelage was in the late 30's and early 40's, before the devastation of the vineyard was in
full 'bloom', or, should I say,
" f u l l k a - b l o o m ? "I'm convinced that the absence of teaching objective thought processes is the lynchpin of modernist success. We Catholics know best that dispassionate analysis is necessary to reason. But the world is awash in numbed skulls via state (and dare I say most private) schools and media/entertainment.
I think you're really touching a nerve here.
Just yesterday I had the pleasure of interacting with a retired physician during his volunteer duty at a county nature center. He was lecturing on Arthropods, using PowerPoint, a red laser pointer, and an impeccable OUTLINE stapled and passed out to the whole classroom of eager listeners. (Arthropods includes butterflies AND spiders, but his 'specialty' is butterflies.) My several factoids regarding arachnids in various veins subtly seemed to put him off
emotionally, even though he hid it well. He seems to have an aversion to spiders but treats them in a clinical, arm's length manner. We took a nature hike after the lecture, in a small group of 5 or 6 adults. It was very nice. Along the way, he enthusiastically exclaimed that the yucca tree and a particular insect have a symbiotic relationship, for the insect lays its eggs in the maturing flower of the plant, without which the eggs could not mature or hatch, and without which the yucca seeds would never mature and germinate. Therefore, the very existence of both these insects and the yucca plants are mutually interdependent on each other. My immediate query was as follows: "Oh, symbiotic. I see. So how could they ever have EVOLVED independently?" I said this in a soft tone such that others wouldn't hear us, and I said it quite casually, in an offhand manner. His immediate reaction was a shrug of his shoulders, and a wave of his hands, and I timed my gentle chuckle very well, if I dare say so myself. It was hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!!
Scientists who would seem to think so clearly about certain things have selectively agreed somehow to SWITCH OFF their thinking caps when it comes to other certain things these days, and it centers on the very existence of God and the truth of God's revelation. Only the devil could have done this. It is the cockle sown among the wheat.
In ancient times, aka
saner times, those who developed philosophy were aware of epistemology as a category of knowledge and as a necessary increment in the field of man's thinking about thought and knowledge, but they did not develop epistemology because for them, in their saner time, it was a foregone conclusion that man's knowledge comes from outside of man, and man knows things by becoming informed of them from without. The very notion that man's thought could be the CAUSE of reality was to them next to insanity.
There is one other thing that we find in rampant practice today which the ancients unanimously regarded as utter foolishness and recognized it as a lethal contagion to the very structure of man's thought, and that is the denial of the principle of non-contradiction. For example, we have seen, written by the hand of a recent pope, in his "hermeneutic of continuity" (which is a lie) this very denial, that is, that a thing can both be and not be at the same time. More specifically, that a thing can both exist in and of itself, while simultaneously its contradictory can also exist along with it. That is, something can be true on the one hand and false on the other, and both hands can be just fine regarding the inherent contradiction. It is a DISCONTINUITY of right reason, and therefore its title "continuity" is a lie.
We live in a time when not only we see this insanity dished out for public consumption at the highest levels, but we also have reactionary extremists coming out in growing numbers, pronouncing judgment on authority to the effect that their office would be (or so they would lead you to believe!) invalid
as such, because of their
malfeasance.Not even Our Lord Jesus Christ denounced the validity of the offices held by the very men who killed Him.
There is a thought for Lent, this year!!!!!!!!
.