RE: What Can We Believe, Then?
September 7, 2011 at 4:17 pm
(This post was last modified: September 7, 2011 at 5:16 pm by QuestingHound08.)
Of course you've hit me where it hurts--the only reason to be hurt by someone not agreeing with you, is if there's something going on that can legitimately distract them from agreeing with you, and you feel guilty for it (for myself, it's not living my own creed as well as I should--I'm also aware that it's happened with other Catholics)...that distraction is that people are not living their faith. Seeing that failure in Catholics, other people may assume either that the non-faithful Catholics are representative of all Catholicism, or else that Catholicism has no power to change a persons' life by bringing them in touch with the Truth. Neither of those options are the case.
it's true that specific disobedient priests have abused people, and specific other disobedient bishops or higher-ups have covered it up. And they're being called to account for it, as they should be. But those abuses and cover-ups and scandals are never what the Church stands for. They're stupid decisions, at best--Watergate moments within the history of the Church. You can indict Nixon--but you don't indict the US government, or the office of the Presidency. Individuals committed a crime--and other individuals coverd it up.
And no amount of other abuse by other groups of people can make it less of a crime than it is. I agree with you and applaud you for seeing that statement through. I think you also see that your view on the Catholic Church is an inability to get over that statistic, and a willing to use that particular scandal as the face or facade of what the Catholic Church is, or an aggravator of other issues on which you think you disagree with them--at least, in your post, that's how it seemed to me.
So yes--I don't overlook anyone's crimes. I also don't impute those crimes to anyone who didn't commit them. Any Church lasting 2000 years and including most of the Western World necessarily has sins committed by people who claim to belong to it, or even to administrate it. But that doesn't falsify what the institution is, any more than it would discredit, say, the Green Movement if Ralph Nader picked up a shotgun and started blowing people away or doing sick things...it would just get a lot of bad mileage for the party, in the public press. I'm not some rabid conservative who believes everything that EVERYONE claiming to belong to my pet party does is correct--but I'm asking you, if you really want to relate to or even to justly criticize what the Church is, to look at what her actual doctrines and teachings are...look at the planks she's laid down for a vision of reality. If you disagree with those, there's capacity for arguing and for dialoguing about why. If I just react to an impression of a group, culled from its sickest members, then I'm never going to be open to actually saying the truth about it.
I'd just be running off of my own fumes.
You're right, Rhiz.
I guess the answer I would give so far is this: certainty is never ultimately possible, unless there's some type of Beatific Vision where Ultimate Reality directly feeds it into you. We can always doubt that our faculties are gathering objective information.
So, to have stable knowledge, you have to start somewhere--first your experience (or you have nothing to start with), then a willingness to post-pone judgment, or to be persuaded by what you experience (or else you STILL have nothing to use). Then, an attempt to consistently analyze that material you've accepted. Then, ability to grasp it in its entirety, parts-and-whole. At least, that's the four levels of knowledge the Greeks taught--Poetic Intuition, Rhetorical Persuasion, Analytical Dialectic, and Contemplative Scientia (seeing things directly in their essence).
The fact that we need to accept SOMETHING more or less blindly, doesn't mean that we need to, as some commented "insert an imaginary architect" into the process as a Deus Ex Machina, or cheap shortcut to have things make sense...but we need to be open to EXPLORING the phenomena of a seemingly ordered universe, or that we have the desire to know. That means, if one wants to reject God conclusively, but to do it with integrity like a good existentialist (Nietzsche, one of the most intriguing authors I have ever heard of, had moments where he felt this attraction to the world's intelligibility)--that person first must be willing to explore the idea that a Person-al Being could be behind this order that speaks to us so powerfully as persons. If one is ever fully seeking the truth, that person ought to be willing to find it anywhere. To say 'I'll search anywhere--but just not there!' is a forfeiture.
Violence and disorder within the human experience certainly exists--but that is not as remarkable as the fact that, with all the limited vision we have, and all the turbulence we experience, we act as if we're made for understanding, and we desire to understand.
it's true that specific disobedient priests have abused people, and specific other disobedient bishops or higher-ups have covered it up. And they're being called to account for it, as they should be. But those abuses and cover-ups and scandals are never what the Church stands for. They're stupid decisions, at best--Watergate moments within the history of the Church. You can indict Nixon--but you don't indict the US government, or the office of the Presidency. Individuals committed a crime--and other individuals coverd it up.
And no amount of other abuse by other groups of people can make it less of a crime than it is. I agree with you and applaud you for seeing that statement through. I think you also see that your view on the Catholic Church is an inability to get over that statistic, and a willing to use that particular scandal as the face or facade of what the Catholic Church is, or an aggravator of other issues on which you think you disagree with them--at least, in your post, that's how it seemed to me.
So yes--I don't overlook anyone's crimes. I also don't impute those crimes to anyone who didn't commit them. Any Church lasting 2000 years and including most of the Western World necessarily has sins committed by people who claim to belong to it, or even to administrate it. But that doesn't falsify what the institution is, any more than it would discredit, say, the Green Movement if Ralph Nader picked up a shotgun and started blowing people away or doing sick things...it would just get a lot of bad mileage for the party, in the public press. I'm not some rabid conservative who believes everything that EVERYONE claiming to belong to my pet party does is correct--but I'm asking you, if you really want to relate to or even to justly criticize what the Church is, to look at what her actual doctrines and teachings are...look at the planks she's laid down for a vision of reality. If you disagree with those, there's capacity for arguing and for dialoguing about why. If I just react to an impression of a group, culled from its sickest members, then I'm never going to be open to actually saying the truth about it.
I'd just be running off of my own fumes.
(September 6, 2011 at 1:12 pm)Rhizomorph13 Wrote: So, why would you focus on Min's post when there are people who actually answered your question and not just attack your character?
You're right, Rhiz.
I guess the answer I would give so far is this: certainty is never ultimately possible, unless there's some type of Beatific Vision where Ultimate Reality directly feeds it into you. We can always doubt that our faculties are gathering objective information.
So, to have stable knowledge, you have to start somewhere--first your experience (or you have nothing to start with), then a willingness to post-pone judgment, or to be persuaded by what you experience (or else you STILL have nothing to use). Then, an attempt to consistently analyze that material you've accepted. Then, ability to grasp it in its entirety, parts-and-whole. At least, that's the four levels of knowledge the Greeks taught--Poetic Intuition, Rhetorical Persuasion, Analytical Dialectic, and Contemplative Scientia (seeing things directly in their essence).
The fact that we need to accept SOMETHING more or less blindly, doesn't mean that we need to, as some commented "insert an imaginary architect" into the process as a Deus Ex Machina, or cheap shortcut to have things make sense...but we need to be open to EXPLORING the phenomena of a seemingly ordered universe, or that we have the desire to know. That means, if one wants to reject God conclusively, but to do it with integrity like a good existentialist (Nietzsche, one of the most intriguing authors I have ever heard of, had moments where he felt this attraction to the world's intelligibility)--that person first must be willing to explore the idea that a Person-al Being could be behind this order that speaks to us so powerfully as persons. If one is ever fully seeking the truth, that person ought to be willing to find it anywhere. To say 'I'll search anywhere--but just not there!' is a forfeiture.
Violence and disorder within the human experience certainly exists--but that is not as remarkable as the fact that, with all the limited vision we have, and all the turbulence we experience, we act as if we're made for understanding, and we desire to understand.
