Nature, Person Essence, Existence

Recently, I posted a small bit on "how a Catholic must think" and hopefully those who were able to read it were able to let it sink in a little, perhaps reading it more than once. You can reveiw that here.

I know that sort of information is dense, but it is vital for improving ones understanding of theology and  how better to defend the Catholic faith. Believe it or not, the Church Fathers didn't just make these things up and they didn't become popular because of their persecutions or their outspoken ways or their great sermons. The early fathers were educated very well. They debated other religious leaders (mohamadans, pagans, etc). They knew properly how to take information and assimilate it, synthesize it, or cast it out. They did it right, not because of their authority in the Church but because their teachings and marks have stood the tests of time. In philosophy we call this the Epistological problem, or the Ontological problem - which is the problem of knowledge. How do we come to know things? THAT, my friends, was the entire point of that blog entry; was to better learn, in 800 words or less, how we as people have come to have our minds formed - how we have come to learn. We now know that our knowledge MUST start with sense knowledge. This doesn't mean we know with our feelings (that would be Romanticism), but that the world can be known through the senses (after abstraction takes place).

This lesson hopefully will futher that piece, and offer some insight into gaining better ways to understand our faith, doctrine, and so-on. We need next to understand what a person and nature is, and how they relate to essence and existence. Here we go.



Okay, that was deep and complicated so let me now put it into example with Mary as the "Mother of God". God is said to be three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I said that no person is their nature with the exception of God because God is his nature (which is existence) because he is always existing. Some people dispute that Mary is not the mother of God, but the mother of Christ's human nature.  But philosophy disputes this because mother's give birth to PERSONS, not NATURE.  She is not the mother of human nature or any other nature. In other words, because Jesus is a person of the Trinity - God - and Mary gave birth to Jesus, she is rightfully called the Mother of God, theotokos (God -bearer).

"Unborn, unwanted" by Cynthia Toolin, Ph.D

I found this while searching for information about one of my professors next semester. I had heard this woman was well learned, but I did not expect anything this good. Her story is one of courage, love, and forgiveness.

 

Unborn, unwanted

By Cynthia Toolin, Ph.D

My life story is unremarkable other than the fact that I’m alive. Now 60 years old, I’m the only child of parents who neither planned for wanted a child. The family doctor prescribed a newly available medicine to my mother, then 40, to increase mobility and alleviate pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis. One side effect, he neglected to inform her, was increased fertility.
Unwelcome news
When my mother became pregnant, she thought she was entering early menopause. In the more than 20 years of her marriage, she had never been pregnant and had only rarely used birth control, because she thought she or my father was sterile. However, the family doctor informed her she was, in fact, pregnant
     As soon as my mother came home with the “bad” news, she told her father she didn’t want the baby. From a friend who was a pharmacist, he obtained an oral medicine that would probably cause her to abort. With my father’s consent, she eagerly drank the liquid and, within a day, started to bleed. But, afraid she might die too, she stopped taking the medicine and thus spared me a very premature death. Once she recovered from her scare, she resumed her usual lifestyle: drinking and smoking with my father.
A shocking revelation
I was 11 years old when my mother sat me on a kitchen chair, stood in front of me and told me that story. Her self-revelation changed my feelings for her and the rest of my family forever. Almost instantly, I felt nothing for her. To this day, I remember quietly thinking, “She tried to kill me.”
     My father, who had been a serial adulterer since my parents got married, was now openly unfaithful. He disgusted me so much I never confronted him. I never confronted my mother, either. To the best of my knowledge, she never understood why I stopped caring about her, and I never had the emotional energy to explain the reason to her.

On my own 

My mother grew to be a bitter, meanspirited old woman. Too many years of drinking, smoking and living with an openly adulterous husband, combined with the ravages of advanced rheumatoid arthritis and emphysema, had destroyed her beauty. I left her care as soon as I legally could at age 18.
    After I married and had children of my own, my parents fell on hard times. They came to live with us for nine years. I tried to do my duty to them according to God’s law. They had given me life, begrudgingly, and I tried to preserve theirs. In 1984, my parents died within eight weeks of each other, and I never shed a tear for them.
Reflections on childhood
Before my mother told me that story, I had assumed my family loved me as I loved them. My parents were always very generous, showering me with gifts and toys. And they allowed me the independence I needed to grow and develop.
     But as an adult, a parent and a grandparent, I see this very differently. I reinterpret the gifts and toys as, at worst, a guilt offering and, at best, a way to keep me occupied and out of my parents’ way. Pictures of me as a child show a disgusting, dirty little girl. I never brushed my teeth; my hair was usually washed once a year and combed once a week. I never took a bath or shower, but only weekly sponge baths. I wasn’t loved; I was neglected.
     I don’t know and can’t prove the cause of my numerous skeletal problems, but they might have resulted from the abortion medicine combined with my mother’s drinking and smoking. The joints in my left hip and left jaw are too small. My head isn’t in proportion to my body. My lower jaw (later corrected by surgery I paid for as an adult) never grew properly, so my lower face was deformed. Part of my spine never grew; my doctor told me I could have been born with spina bifida. Psychologically, the neglect and knowledge that my parents tried to kill me haunted me for years and made me into a woman with many regrets.
Gifts from God
Two years after my parents’ death, my husband and I took his extended family to Rome for his mother’s 75th birthday. As a cradle Catholic, this was the ideal destination for the biggest trip of her life. As a nonCatholic, I was “along for the ride.” We ate breakfast and dinner together every day, but in between, we separated so the family could visit churches and religious sites while I went shopping and visited the sites of ancient pagan Rome.
     On our last day there, we took a bus tour together outside of Rome. The only religious site on the itinerary was the catacombs. I joined the rest of the family to view them only because the bus had no air conditioning. But deep underground in the catacombs, I had a religious experience. As a result, on February 22, 1988, I was received into the Catholic Church.
     Since that day, reflection on my life and examination of my conscience have forced me to take another look at my family, particularly my mother. God has given me many gifts since 1988, but three in particular relate to her attempted abortion.
     The first gift is a growth in my understanding of my birth family. I had assumed everyone involved my parents and maternal grandfather, probably my maternal grandmother, and perhaps my great aunt and great uncle had easily decided to kill me. I thought of the decision as a murderous conspiracy. But I came to realize I could be wrong. Some family members may not have been pleased with my mother’s decision. And maybe it wasn’t an easy decision for her.
     Once I was born, these familial relationships may have changed. Some family members may have felt guilt or regret for their part in the attempted abortion or acceptance of it; some may have been glad that I was born. Maybe even my mother was sorry for her attempted abortion.
     I’ll never know what happened in my family, but God has helped me understand, to some degree, that relationships are extremely complex. I’m now at peace with my lack of information about what might have happened in my family prior to my birth and during my childhood.
     The second gift is the gift of compassion. I can never condone my mother’s deliberate attempt to kill me, but I’m aware she didn’t have an easy life, which may have impacted her decision. She’d already been suffering with arthritis for some time when she became pregnant, so perhaps her health was a concern. She may have been afraid of losing my adulterous father due to her pregnancy or inability to keep an eye on him in the bars while she would be home with me, a new infant. Her sad and hard life wasn’t an excuse to try to abort her baby, but it might explain why she was tempted to do it. Through God’s gift of compassion, I’ve been able to forgive my poor, unhappy, miserable mother.
     The third gift is the gift of life and the love of it. I thank God for my life daily. I’ve had a fulfilling life a wonderful family, good friends, a challenging job, a love of theology. Most importantly, I have an interior life. I’ve grown to know and love God, and be in an intimate relationship with my Creator, my Savior and my Sanctifier. I hope one day to see Him face to face and enjoy the beatific vision for all eternity.
     I’m most grateful to our good God, Who has led me to His Church and given me these three gifts. Through them, I’ve been able to finally find peace. I pray that this story will help others in similar situations to find our God of peace.

---

Dr. Cynthia Toolin lives in Connecticut near oneof her two daughters and two of her five livinggrandchildren. She is a professor of dogmaticand moral theology at Holy Apostles Collegeand Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut. She hastaught in the seminary and the college’s distancelearning program for 14 years.

http://www.clmagazine.org/article/index/id/ODkyNw

800 words on how the Catholic MUST think

 The following Q&A was an assignment I recently completed in my Philosophy course. This is an IMPORTANT subject in battling the bad philosophy and theology of the world. Read this more than once!

Why is the affirmation that there are real objective metaphysical ideas so important as a basis for understanding the theology of the Catholic Church?

In order to discuss this question it is important to bring up who contributed to the rejection of real metaphysical ideas. There is first Rene Descartes who rejected the lack of certainty in sense experience. His beliefs on what existed divorced all spiritual knowledge from physical and objective experience. The origin of bad physics was Descartes. David Hume held a quite opposite philosophy and that was the rejection of any real knowledge beyond sense experience, going so far as to reject causality completely. According to Hume, God was an emotional projection, and no metaphysics is possible with his philosophy. Jean Jacques Rousseau led Romanticism in which the full use of feeling alone to discover truth was the only possible means of attaining real knowledge clearly no metaphysics here. Finally there is Immanuel Kant who is the link between rationalism and romanticism, and is still an influence today. Previously, truth was when the concept in the mind conforms to the objective thing outside the mind. With Kant this was reversed in which truth become the conformity of things in the mind. This philosophy divorced metaphysics and an objective God.

Pope Benedict XVI addressed this problem, referring to it as a “dictatorship of relativism”. The problem with the world not having an objective metaphysics in their philosophy is that secularism and dualism become dominant schools of thought. How can one maintain there are absolute truths in religion if the whole idea of absolute truth is denied or considered absurd in reason? If one does not think one can arrive at real metaphysical truths through the senses (something denied by Descartes, Hume and Kant) how can one maintain there are such truths in theology without absurdity?

The Catholic Church embraces the teachings of Thomas Aquinas which is based on Aristotle. In this, knowledge is always based on sense knowledge. Through the power of intellect the specific qualities are able to be filtered out of the object at hand. Man can separate the accidentals and then understand the nature of things. This is a metaphysical idea. With this comes the need for abstraction, which Aristotle and Aquinas embraced and developed. Abstraction refers to the mental separation of things not always separated in reality. Most important to this is the separation of the idea in the mind from the details taken in sense experience. Thus, in man, as opposed to the angels, all knowledge begins in the experience of the five senses and through abstraction from singular things arrives at definition. This is how knowledge is properly gained; a means at odds with the world. Without this how can one study a spiritual God, and if one cannot arrive at objective ideas of a spiritual God, how will skepticism be dealt with?

This is the problem of knowledge, the epistemological problem, and the Catholic must be concerned. This Catholic theologian cannot be an ancient materialist, or a platonic spiritualist.  If we cannot truth the certainty and objectivity of knowledge of the natural world, how can we truth the same in revelation or the spiritual world. The Church professes objective knowledge for physics, and this we the Church also confirms that with revelation that there is an objective metaphysics. Otherwise we end up with the desire for God being a need that begins in the subject (person), rather than the need for God (and grace) perfecting and completing man’s nature.

Pope Leo XIII addressed this problem, recommending the return to the Aquinas and Aristotle on the study of epistemology. “We exhort you, venerable brethren, in all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences”.[1] A realistic and objective metaphysics based on abstraction in Aristotle, advanced by Thomas Aquinas is the only way to overcome this.

In Catholic theology, what we know starts with the senses and by the power of the spiritual intellect we can know things of spiritual nature – metaphysical things and natures. Through the knowledge gained by the senses, our intellect can discover by the power of reason these metaphysical ideas.

This week’s mass reading contained a verse that the Catholic theologian must consider in this subject: “For in him were created all things in heaven and one earth, visible and invisible” (Col 1:16). For the Catholic theologian, with this philosophy we are able to understand the Eucharist and its accidents; the Eucharist has accidents but it is not its accidents which are its nature. Just as well, we are able to understand God and his nature; God and his nature are one.

---

[1]Aeterni Patris, Leo XIII, 31.

Facebook - a rant

Many of us have Facebook profiles and if you don’t; good on you. You’re not missing out on anything. Many people would argue that Facebook is a tool that allows us to keep contact and up-to-date on our friends, relatives, and such. No objection there. But I wouldn’t place money on anyone ever saying that Facebook has enriched their life, because it hasn’t.

Facebook might be a convenient tool for keeping up with people but it actually diminishes the value and depth of our relationships. It actually reduces our ability to communicate effectively. It also makes cowards of most of us. We either say too much and hide behind our computer screens, or we say too little because it all becomes a news source and proper discussion manners have become seemingly lost or forbidden. We have grown into this online world in which our lives are virtual. It’s all an intellectual train wreck if you ask me. But I will digress and discuss something I saw today.

It didn’t disgust me. I pitied it at first. It didn’t make me happy either. I reminded myself that people have free will. Okay, here it is, this picture:

Please tell me I’m not the only one who immediately grows sad when I see this. Does anyone else see the problem? The bass-ackwards philosophy that Facebook has created? That “likes” are akin to prayers. That the votes some picture gets will determine someone’s personal decisions about their spiritual life? Where is the freedom in that? Where is the heart yearning for God or his Church? Going back to church is about more than sitting in a pew, smiling and acting like a good person. It’s about seeking God as a community of believers.

The problem is this: Going back to church is great, and there is no set template or diagram to show the proper way to get there. Neither is there with God. But one part of the equation must be ones heart and ones will. What is the worth of a decision that had no intention of being made without force of personal discretion. Legally, if someone else held my hand while I held the pen, and proceeded to mark my identical signature on a check, it would appear I did it. But that’s still not good enough. It’s not my intention to make that commitment. And in this case it appears to the entire audience that it is not the intention anyhow. But let me bring in an example we all might remember.

Angels in the Outfield.

Remember the plot? The family was broken up and the son asked his dad if/when they ever would get back together. The dad, said “when the Angels win the Pennant.” Now, the dad might have meant that. He certainly did not know when the Angels would, and from the story, it seemed clear that it was not going to happen soon if ever, and the team was so pitiful it needed divine intervention to occur. So the kid prayed. It happened. The Angels won despite the odds. His dad made a deal and even thought he probably didn’t think it would happen, he intended to keep his end of the bargain. But you see, it was his dad’s wish that things could work out in a way to make it happen, but cited an improbable narrative in order to stress the unlikelihood of it occurring.

What’s the point? The point is, the son in this case ought to have a real desire in his heart if/when he comes back. If the dad is doing it as a way to coax his son into making a decision against his will this will have very ill consequences. The individual needs to have personal freedom in order to love and believe in God, or not. “Likes” are not prayers. Prayers are prayers. If someone says “I will pray one rosary for every like” that is quite different. But let me say that the “like” is still a dull means of supporting someone in spiritual growth. They don’t need likes alone – they need prayer too. If you choose to like something like this I urge you to pray for it too.

It’s like the chain emails that guilt you into sending. I see it all the time but these days it’s on Facebook. A picture will be there with something like “if you love Jesus, share this” or “I am not afraid to say I love Jesus,  like if you agree.”

No thanks. God doesn’t need to see that I shared something in order to see that I am contrite and acknowledge his dominance over my life.

Preachy enough? Hope so. Kidding. Now share this blog or suffer the consequences!