Last & Similar Thoughts On The Material-Soul Form of the Body of the Universe

  

In order to avoid all types of Pantheism, New Age Monism and Neo-Gnosticism, it is necessary to emphasize the purely and strictly material-physical nature of the inanimate form of the Body of the Universe and the material physical nature of the animate, vegetative plant and sensitive animal "souls" or principles, especially as contrasting with the rational-spiritual-immortal human soul of man.

 

 

Perhaps the best way to approach this subject is in connection with the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The substance of any being is that which causes it to exist. Another word for substance is form. In fact, it is the substantial form that is changed in the Consecration of the Mass. Bread and wine - in their very substance are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. But substances have accidents, or properties, perceived by our five senses. These properties of color, taste, texture (feeling), smell and sound are not changed in the Consecration, and this is what makes transubstantiation a miracle.....something that temporarily suspends the Created Order of Nature. Therefore, even though the substance of the bread and wine have been changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the glorified but also the immolated God-Man and even though our senses still perceive only the accidental properties of white bread and red or white wine, faith tells us that this bread and wine are really and truly, thus substantially, the whole Being of the Divine Person, Our Lord Jesus Christ!

 

 

We cannot go beyond this kind of explanation, and most of us do not need to go even this far. On the other hand, however, today we live in an age of domination by technology and the wonders performed by the sciences of chemistry and physics. Any high school teacher of chemistry could give us the chemical formula for the bread and the wine. It is precisely these chemical elements in their form as bread and wine, that are changed - not in their formulas - because these are the accidents, but in their invisible form of substance. The great difference between this substantial change of transubstantiation in the Consecration of the Mass, is that this is the one and only substantial change that issues in life instead of death. This difference cannot be emphasized too much. It involves the great error - approaching heresy - of the Neo-Scholastic, every single one of them, even the greatest one, Rev. Reginald Garigou-Lagrange, O.P.

 

 

The mistake they all made was to assert that the atomic elements, such as hydrogen and oxygen, were subsstances; whereas actually they are accidents of the greater substance, which is the Body of the Universe, created ex nihilo and in toto on Day One of the First Week of the World. This they did not see! This writer did a thorough study of this subject in response to a challenge by Dr. Dennis McInerny some years ago. My conclusions were rejected by him but he has never, to my knowledge, put forth any kind of objections to my work. He has only rejected it as of no account. It is therefore up to the church, in the person of her theologians yet to be, to settle this problem which is of paramount importance for theology and all the lower sciences.
 

All changes in atomic structure, - changes going on constantly in all areas of inanimate and animate being, are changes in the accidental properties of the greatest substance, which is the Body of the Universe - a body with no "soul", but with material-formal causes or principles, which determine both the possibilities and the limitations of all changes in the universe. One can hardly overestimate the importance of the correct identification of this first of all substantial forms and also, the first of all secondary causes created on Day One. Only when an individual plant, or animal, or human being dies, does a substantial change take place. Even when individual plants, animals and humans reproduce their kind in the Order of Generation, there is no substantial nor accidental change, but a pro-creation or re-production by means of the secondary causes given their powers of agency with their substantial forms in the Order of Creation.

 

 

All of this greatly highlights and enhances our appreciation in contemplation of the one unique and only substantial change that produces life instead of death - the reproduction and representation of the Sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross and its repitition in the Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Mass. Let the theologians and mystics elaborate upon this unique salvific event!!

 

More Thoughts on the Material "Soul-Form" of the Body of the Universe

 

In order to avoid all types of Pantheism and New Age Monism and Gnosticism, it is necessary to emphasize the purely and strictly material-physical nature of the inanimate form of the Body of the Universe and the material-physical nature of the animate vegetative plant and sensitive animal "souls" or principles - especially as contrasting with the rational-spiritual-immortal human soul of man.

 

The modern physicist has always made a distinction between the material-physical "stuff" of its universe and light - just as Genesis One does. Today, the types of material forms are divided into Hadrons, (Fermions and Bosons) and Photons. Most recently, some physicists have gone back to the Aristotelian, Medieval distinction of continuous and/or discrete/particulate matter. Continous matter is the ultimate state of constituent matter, constituting the formerly termed "ether" or universal medium absolutely necessary for all beings in motion. Discrete, particulate matter consists of all the known atoms - their material and formal structures. I submit that what is known as the "electromagnetic spectrum", is the continuous medium in which and from which all the atomic forms take place. It is ordered, distributed and diffused throughout the Body of the Universe as the quantitative medium and basis of all atomic forms.

 

St. Thomas defines light as the quality - or a quality of the First sensible Body. Every word here is significant. First of all, does St. Thomas mean to single out light as a quality somehow separable, as well as distinct, from the quantitative constituency of all matter as corporeal and therefore measureable? Measureability, remember, is the essential criterion of the matter in any form. (There is no matter apart from form in existence. Matter, as apart from form, is a purely and merely logical entity, a mental abstraction that does not and cannot exist in reality.) Light is definitely measurable in relation to the quantitative degree of its intensity at any given time and/or place.

 

I suggest that the electro-magnetic spectrum as the quantitative constituency in all of its potentiality as the Prime Matter of the Universal Bodily Form, was simply dark until God said "Be light made!" (Gen.1:3) At that moment in time, the created spheres of the Universal Body began to rotate around the fixed central earth, and to cause the sequence of Night and Day, just as described in Genesis 1:3-5. This Evening and Morning, the First in all time, ended the Work of God that He did on Day One.

 

Modern science is extremely fragmented and compartmentalized. It is for the higher science of Metaphysics, with its integrative Principles, to supply what is lacking in the lower sciences. Here, what is needed, is the connection between matter as the principle of potency for form, and the qualitative nature of light as emanating from the constituent nature of the electromagnetic complex of quantitative relations. Since light is physical and not spiritual in itself, it must be measurable. And so it is. Its measurability needs to be described in greater detail. This greater detail will enhance the spiritual analogies of light with God, especially with the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who became Man and proclaimed Himself as the Light of the World.

 

The life principles of plants and animals, spoken of by St. Thomas and the Medievals as the vegetative or nutritive souls of plants and the sensitive souls of animals, are life principles or causes so immersed in the physical structures, as of the DNA, as to be themselves entirely and purely material. There is, therefore, no basis in true science and especially not in true theology, for any trace of Pantheism. God is present only by His infinite power to sustain all things in existence. This concurrence or concursus of God's Primary Causality and Governing Power over all things, precludes any trace of Pantheism or Neo-Gnosticism. The presence of God that we see manifested in the lives of the Saints stems from the Order of Divine Grace, the Supernatural Order of Grace received in Baptism and increased by the sacramental life of the Church as Her members grow in their union with God through the life of Divine Grace.

 

These are the Orders or Dimensions of Reality, within which, the modern physicist finds the formal object of his studies. There is also the entire Order of the Angelic Beings, purely spiritual substances of intellect and will. They are now divided into the good and the bad angels. I once did a lengthy study entitled: Fairyland is Hell and Magic is Demon Power, in which I investigated the influences of the occult powers or demonic presences - especially in children's literature. A more recent and more competent, objective study of this subject is that of Joan Carroll Cruz' Angels and Devils, (Tan, 1999). This is where the real Neo-Gnosticism and New Age Pantheism enter the modern world. Demonic, Luciferian influence, however, is much more extensive and pervasive than these labels would indicate. A better designation is that of Pope St. Pius the X, who emphasized Modernism as the "synthesis of all heresies." He described this pervasive evil in his encyclical Pascendi and his Syllabus Lamentabili, both in 1907.

 

He pointed to three false philosophies as the sources of modernism: Agnosticism, Immanentism, and Radical Evolutionism. It is this third one that I have worked to expose and the one that is most clearly manifest in modern life, that is dominated by the myth of pre-history and molecules to man, as well as by a de-humanizing and naturally destructive technology.

 

Traditionalists spend all their energies and material resources in exposing the evils of Vatican Council Two and its primary authors, the Masons and the Jews. All the while, they allow themselves, by their silence and often open espousal, to be deeply complicit in the evil influence of an evolutionary worldview that continues to corrupt the minds of all people subject to the modern cultural milieu by way of education and the media primarily . May God have mercy on us all!

 

The Material "Soul" of the Elements, Plants & Animals

In order to avoid all forms of Pantheism and New Age Gnosticism, it is necessary to understand that the Substance, better termed the Substantial Form of the elements, of plants and of animals, is each one entirely material, physical and in no way spiritual. Perhaps this is best understood today by Catholics in connection with the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body-Blood-Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The substance of the bread and wine is material and specifically elemental, or of the material elements. To be more specific, I would need the chemical formula for the bread and wine. Any high school teacher of chemistry can provide these formulas. And it is these chemical elements that change their invisible, but material substantial form, from bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the God-Man.


The substance of God's Body & Blood is entirely spiritual. This is the one exception in the non-human domain, because the soul of man is spiritual. The eucharistic transubstantiation alone is from inanimate-physical-elemental to divinely spiritual and immaterial substance. The elements in transubstantiation retain their accidental-physical properties of visibility, taste, etc. but have transferred their elemental obedience from the inanimate body of the universe to the sacred humanity of the God-Man in His Glorified, but also still-and-ever immolated state of the slain Lamb of the Apocalypse. 
 

The real miracle is that these elements - (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc.) in their very specific arrangement/form/structure, do not burst forth out of their physical-material forms and manifest the glorified Humanity of the God-Man. Their change of obedience from the physical-elemental to the Divine Form remains hidden from the human senses. Even in those "miraculous" occurrences wherein the Body & Blood are seen, their form is not glorified as it should be in reality. God is simply allowing the senses to receive some sort of satisfaction when confronted with the real miracle of tran-substance or change of substantial form. To understand this in the most elementary way, one must understand that the substance or substantial form is that cause which guarantees that the being of a thing is one-good-true to its created nature. Everything presupposes Creation.

 

God created the form (formula) for the bread and for the wine on Day Three of Creation Week. These two formulas, spiritually merging into One Form for the Consecration/Transubstantiation, remain with their physical manifestations perceived by our senses, BUT, the substance underlying these physical properties and giving them their Form or Being, has changed from that of the bread and wine to that of the Glorified-Immolated Humanity of Jesus Christ. We cannot go beyond that and most need not go even that far!

 

"Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All - How Can I Love Thee As I Ought, - And How Revere This Wondrous Gift, - So Far Surpassing Hope or Thought? Sweet Sacrament - We Thee Adore! Oh Make Us Love Thee More and More - Oh Make us Love Thee More and More!

  

 

More From Scientific American

There are some Traditionalists and perhaps even some Novus Ordoites, who believe that all modern science is evil, especially in its purposes, which are conceived to be the control of the world by Luciferian agents. Probably so. But I believe this may often be a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water. I believe that just as God did not allow our nature to be fatally wounded by the Original Sin of Adam, (we are not Calvinists), so too, He is not allowing the pursuits of the atheistic modern scientists, even those most deeply immersed in evil intent -- God allows even these people, oftentimes, to discover real properties and capacities of the material and the physical world. One more distinction before going to the latest in physics from Scientific American, the January 2013 issue. 


This same issue contains a real challenge that I fear and suspect most Catholics will ignore. It is a short article by a teacher of science in the 4th and 5th grades, entitled: "Creation, Evolution and Indisputable Facts", by Jacob Tanenbaum. He reveals that more than 40 percent of U.S. adults believe that the book of Genesis teaches us literal truth, namely, that the earth and the universe were created in six days, about 6,000 years ago! Hooray for 40 plus percent! Now that is encouraging! However, and alas!, I suspect the great majority of these bible believing adults are Protestants! The creationists are making an impact! They have Mr. Jacob Tanenbaum quite worried! Well, he should be! But what is really his main argument in favor of evolution is a blatant falsehood. He is claiming that the benefits of fossil fuels and electricity, airplanes, hot showers, central heating in homes, automobiles, television and texting, etc..- all these are due to evolution! But obviously, it is not so! Technological development is just what the term itself indicates: the art of logic applied to the useful ends of techne': craft. Just what Francis Bacon defined as the one and only purpose of science in his new Utopian Atlantis! What benefits mankind! But this kind of development is entirely the external improvement of an original model or invention. As from the gliders of the Wright Brothers to the Concorde Jet liner, etc. From the Model-T Ford to the latest - whatever!


This is truly, as the Greek word indicates, useful art, techne'. But what is equally disturbing is the failure to distinguish between the interior-biological evolution of species, (kinds), and technological development by the scientists themselves! An article entitled "Starship Humanity" is listed under technology (pg.1) but Cameron M. Smith, the author, confidently asserts that by means of, and because of our "inevitable" space colonization, Mars being the first only, "the clearest fact of all regarding living things, that they change through time, by evolution..." and so will the men and women, plants and animals taken to other planets, so adapt as to change accordingly. These changes are described in detail as "space-based selection" and finally "the rise of homo extraterrestrials", (Pg.43).

Consider how this confidence that space colonization is feasible is based on the entirely fallacious assumption that the human body has evolved on earth. Mr. Smith says: ...consider that the human body has evolved close to sea level under an atmospheric pressure of roughly 15 pounds per square inch. Fair enough - Apollo astronauts survived just fine at 5 psi...(pg.41)

Well, you get the point. Amazing also, is the number of private companies ready to embark. For.....as the extinction of the dinosaurs allowed early mammals to flourish, retiring the (space shuttle Atlantis) signals the opening of far grander opportunities for space exploration....by private companies, etc..(pg.39).

One would think plain, old common sense would be enough to deter such fantastic plans! God, in his manifest wisdom and knowledge of all things, foresaw man's modern ambitions and warned him, in the person of Adam, that man's dominion extended "over the whole earth", (Gen. 1:26, 28) period. Catholic Tradition, based on other passages in Scripture, recognizes the celestial realms as belonging to the angels. (1 Cor.15: 39-41.)


Another article in this same Jan. 2013 issue, confirms again my suggestions about the Body of the Universe and its material constituents. 
   

"The Metaphysics of Evolution", by Fr.Chad Ripperger, Ph.D., FSSP

First of all, the title is misleading. There is no such thing as a "metaphysics of evolution", because evolution and its cosmic worldview are nothing but an ideology, "a fairy tale for adults", as some Frenchman rightly characterized it. It is truly science-fiction and mocking true science that glorifies God the Creator. There is only one metaphysics. It is the metaphysics of Aristotle that St. Thomas Aquinas used to help him explain the truths, both of natural reason and of faith. Metaphysics is not, therefore, something one can separate out from the other sciences as an "ontology" for use by anyone. No, metaphysics is a very precise - and the only true explanation of how and what we know as reality. In Chapter One, Father Ripperger repeatedly contradicts himself by saying that some people never heard of, or even thought of, the First Principles and yet he insists that apprehension of them is natural and immediate, belonging to the very structure of human reason! And for this reason, "many aspects of evolution are simply compatible with first principles". (pg.14) - (Please refer to this writer's Textbook for the Sciences, available upon request.)

 

When I was studying at Catholic University in the early 1950's, I took all the courses offered in philosophy, or audited them, even though philosophy was only my second minor. My major was literary theory. I was immensely privileged to study metaphysics under Father Charles A. Hart. I also took the course in Logic offered by Father Joseph McAllister. Well, I tell you, going from Father Hart to Fr. McAllister was like coming down ecstasy, the ecstatic experience of the metaphysical intuitive-judgmental acceptance of Being - even as my individual existence, (forget essence for a moment) - coming down from this natural but real contemplation to the drudgery of constructing syllogisms in all their modes!! The difference between metaphysics and logic is also plainly seen in the textbooks of these two excellent professors. However, sad to say, I soon discovered that I was in the midst of a real war: Father McAllister, a much younger man than Father Hart, really believed that metaphysics was only logic in language; whereas Father Hart was holding out for metaphysics as a higher science, a science of Being as such, and the First Principle of all other sciences; principles which must guide them or they go astray from Truth. This is because Truth is the conformity of the mind, the natural reason, with reality. Logic, on the other hand, is completely focused on how we express our thoughts in language, specifically in the language of propositions, so arranged as to come to a logical conclusion. Logic is therefore a tool of all the sciences. It is really an art, not a science at all, except insofar as it focuses on the syllogism. It developed into the science of Dialectics in the Middle Ages.

Witness the debates between Abelard and St. Bernard. You can see that Abelard was the logician, whereas St. Bernard was in the rhetorical tradition of St. Augustine. What is involved here is the exercise of the differing modes of discourse. (See this writer's textbook). And so I must disagree with Fr. Ripperger on the nature of metaphysics as a true science, the highest of the natural sciences, and quite distinct from logic as an art focused on the language of propositions. Metaphysics transcends logic by far and even logic must be guided by the first principles or it goes astray. Witness the disastrous philosophical debris of symbolic logic, logical positivism and Bertrand Russell's logical idealism. He went where even Plato and the Neo-Platonists would never have gone. At least they stayed in touch with geometry and the five Platonic solids. Platonism and its emphasis on mathematics always runs the danger of losing contact with reality. We see this in Einsteinean relativity. It is nothing but the tyrannical domination of the sciences by the mathematical equation.

 

The first principles keep us firmly in the tradition of Aristotelian-Thomistic realism, Fr. Ripperger's book must be recommended for its emphasis upon the first principles. He has greatly extended them by making extended use of the dictionary of scholastic philosophy, which to my mind, complicates rather than clarifies the essence of the first principles. There is also, throughout the booklet (only 71 pages), a constant confusion of existence and essence. This really amounts to a major flaw, because the real distinction between existence and essence not only defines metaphysics as focusing on the first principles - that is the affirmative judgement of the human mind in its very earliest apprehensions of reality, that things exist outside his own mind. This is the foundation of all realisms and the central insight of Gilson's "critical realism." From this central intuitive first principle, one proceeds to essence, the principle of potency which receives the act of existence. In Chapter Two, Fr. Ripperger misses a key opportunity to connect with the life sciences. The scholastic axiom, "existence precedes essence", just as act must come before matter, and substance before accidents, emphasizes the fact - to put it as concisely as possible - the chicken comes before the egg. In fact, we must have two chickens, a rooster and a hen, before we can have fertile eggs. 
 

All this gives the lie to evolution which is forever seeking "pathways" from non-life to life and from simple life to complex life. It never happened!! It is impossible!! Michael Behe's "rreducible complexity" points inevitably to the fact that we must have a fully formed and functional being first and foremost. To have form - absolutely requires a Creator who is all act. Existence = Act = Form = Substance. God is all of these attributes in the most perfect, spiritual and transcendent way. This is absolutely of necessity. (See the Five Ways.)

 

I must fault Fr. Ripperger for excusing the atheists, as he does in Chapter One. St. Paul did not excuse them in Romans 1:20. He told them plainly that they were without excuse if they denied a Creator-God from the evidence of the "things that are made." Before I attempt to expose Fr. Ripperger's really major flaw, let me commend him for exposing the flaws in so-called "theistic evolution." This last chapter, namely Chapter Three is fine indeed. He did miss, however, the 1907 Biblical Commission's ruling on the word yom, Day in Genesis One. Fr. Ripperger opts for "a certain length of time" as opposed to the literal day marked by an "evening" and a "morning". The Fathers and Doctors of the Church were faced with no such choice! They saw the plain literal meaning of Day and wrote their Hexaemera accordingly, and so will I. And so I have. (See this writer's Litany and Textbook.) I suggest that it was not the Church ruling on Day, but the infiltrating modernists.

 

Finally, Fr. Ripperger deliberately skims over the most crucial question of all facing theologians today. That is the metaphysical question as to whether the elements of the Periodic Table are substances or accidents of some larger,

substantial form. On page 39, Fr. Ripperger aligns himself with Dr. Denis McInerny, Jacques Maritain, Fr. Celestine Bittle, Brother Benignus and yes, even my beloved Father Hart and the saintly Dominican, Fr. Garigou-Lagrange in holding that the elements are substantial forms. He says: "hydrogen as an independently existing substance can only have a specific set of accidents..." (Page 39) Again, on page 32, Fr. Ripperger speaks of lead and gold, both elements of the Periodic Table, as having different accidents because they are themselves essentially different. In the first instance of hydrogen, this element cannot be a substance because it freely intermingles with other elements, most commonly with oxygen to form water (H2O). Fr. Hart (on pages 200-201) in his textbook lists form criteria of substance. They can be reduced to two or three , avoiding the grammatical subject which belongs to logic.

 

These criteria are, as Fr. Ripperger repeatedly asserts, substantial-existential independence. This, as I show in my textbook, is but a relative independence because of our dependence, and that of all living forms, upon the Earth and the Air and Fire (light and heat from the Sun), for our very existence, bodily, that is. For we literally cannot live without sustenance....constant sustenance from these precious elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Father Hart lists two other metaphysical criteria that do hold for all living, substantial forms and they are, with reference especially to the Hierarchy of Being, that substantial forms absolutely do not and cannot intermingle with one another. This is where the science of Taxonomy is most important as it seeks to define the physical boundary lines between the Genesis kinds, the baramin.

 

The Grades of Perfection illustrated by the Hierarchy of Being, insofar as they concern the various kinds of beings that God created during the Six Days of the First Week of the World, are absolute and immutable both as to the Order of Creation and the Order of Generation. There are no substantial changes in the Order of Generation (history, time), except the death of each individual being. In the Order of Generation, concerning the transmission of the substantial form of each kind, there is no substantial change, but only re-production and pro-creation. The gametes or cells of reproduction, are accidental forms of each parent's body. There was much discussion about generational transmission in the early Church. Do the research!! In human re-production, the cells carrying the DNA and all else necessary for a new human being are present, except for the rational soul which only God can provide. The plant and animal life forms are so immersed in the material-cause of the matter-form composite, as to die with the individual plant or animal. The DNA of each kind, apparently serves to preserve throughout time, the immutable baramin of Genesis One that only God can create. These are the main metaphysical principles that must guide the natural scientist - the scientist who studies all the substantial forms created by God during the first Six Days of the world.

 

There is so much work to be done in order to replace the fictional, evolutionary worldview, and Fr. Ripperger's booklet is but a first baby-step. Furthermore, the fact that Fr. Ripperger makes no mention at all of the tremendous work of Father Victor Wurkecietz on the Biblical and Patristic foundations of Genesis 1-11, - nor to the monumental work of Robert Sungenis' Galileo Was Wrong, The Church Was Right; the omission of any reference to these two seminal works, manifests, and indeed, weeps out loud that there is something terribly wrong in a church so divided!!

 

Kyrie, Eleison!

To The Editor of The New Oxford Review

February 8, 2013

 

Dear Editor,

 

I am so thrilled with the article on philosophy by Thomas Storck (NOR, Jan.-Feb. of 2013) - that I can hardly contain my desire to congratulate you and him! But why must there always be the proverbial "fly in the ointment"? It can only be a part of God's plan, and I suspect that it may have something to do with the Third Secret of Fatima. However that may be, I refer to Dr. Storck's repeated linking of the work of "evangelical protestants", with the notoriously heretical "fundamentalism" of Islam. This link is never discussed nor specified, but left to the fertile imagination of the public and its readers. Such treatment really constitutes a gross injustice when one considers objectively and fairly, what the evangelical protestant creationists have done and continue to do to defend the Catholic traditional view of Genesis 1-3 against the currently dominating evolutionary worldview.

I refer especially to the Hexaemeral works of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church from the proto-typical Hexaemeron of St. Basil in the 4th century, up to and including treatises on the Six Days of Creation by Frances Suarez and St. Lawrence Brindisi in the 16th and 17th centuries. It would not be too much of a stretch to include the History by Sir Walter Raleigh and the great literary epic, Paradise Lost by John Milton, in this Hexaemeral tradition. When the current modernist rejection of this tradition is taken into account as an essential part of the crisis infecting the Church, it will be seen, I fear, that most if not all traditionalist and conservative Catholics are deeply complicit in this modernist heresy. Yes, Dr. Storck is absolutely correct when he concludes his excellent article on philosophy with the assertion that a return to St. Thomas is really the only way to escape the present perversity. But this return MUST, of necessity, include a return to and a continuation of the Hexaemeral tradition of the Fathers and Doctors. St. Thomas' own contribution is in the Summa, Part I, questions 45 through 75, et passim.

Post Script:

Allow me a few Thomistic comments on Dr. Alice von Hildebrand's article on the dualism of the human person. Although he does not have the last word, which is only God's, the explanation of our dualism by St. Thomas Aquinas is surely the most satisfying. According to St. Thomas, the human person, as person, ceases to exist after death. This is because the human being as a composite of soul and body, is united by one substantial form, the soul. This also constitutes the hierarchical relationships of soul to body, of "spirit" to "matter", of man to woman, of church to state, etc. For this reason, the state of the separated soul, or the soul after the death of the body, is that of an incomplete substance. The separated soul, therefore, is not completely happy, until it is reunited to the body at the general resurrection. This is what C.S. Lewis undoubtedly intuited when he saw a "proof" of the general resurrection, even in natural reason. There is also much to be said about the gravity of the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and the exalted height of the state of original innocence from which they fell, to merit such a severe punishment as the death we all justly fear. I cannot help but see a kind of unreal romanticization of Mrs. Von Hildebrand's concept of human marital love as exemplified by Jacob and Ellcanah of Old Testament history. If Jacob's love for Rachael had been of the ideal kind that Mrs. von Hildebrand imagines, I feel certain he would have recognized Leah as the blear-eyed unbeautiful sister that she was. Similarly, Hannah's real desire was not for the "authentic" love of her husband, which she was assured of having, but for children, especially a son. God finally rewarded her authentic desire of all women by giving her Samuel. Kudos, too, to Dr. DeMarco, for exposing the phoney Aristotelianism of Ayn Rand. More good Aristotelian Thomism, please!!

G.K. Chesterton - Random Notes

I think G.K. Chesterton got it wrong in his drama "The Surprise." It was played several times during advent on EWTN. I found it so terribly boring and I only got the real surprise when Mr. Alquist explained it at the end of one of the post-Christmas showings. If I heard and interpreted it correctly, the King and the Prince fighting over two "princesses" - represent mankind's perpetual state of warfare until the Incarnation and the coming of the Prince of Peace. Chesterton's drama is pure fantasy. All of the Old Testament, while it is true that it is a history of the Israelites' repeated fidelity, falling away, and return --- is predominantly a time of preparation for the coming of the Messiah or Savior. It is the sin of Adam and the sins of his descendants. King David's great psalm, the Miserere (Ps.50), could be seen as a kind of centerpiece, around which all the typologies and prophetic utterances revolve as a longing and fulfillment of God's promise in Genesis 3:15. 
 

But horizontally - linearly - historically and vertically, the Old Testament is one long sigh of a yearning need for the redemption promised and to come. It can also be seen as divided into two quite distinct eras or periods of which the age of the Church provides the third and fulfillment. There is from Adam to the flood, the First Age. From the flood to the Incarnation, the second age. The third and last age is that of the Church. Some Catholic prophecies divide history into Six Ages, typified by the Six Days of Creation, following St. Irenaeus. This making of the days of creation to be ages does not preclude their literal sense, and may even be stretched to interpret the two options of the 1907 biblical commission on the word "yom" in Genesis One, even though this is obviously not what the PBC intended. What they intended was a compromising concession to the modernist critics then growing in power and influence. The time of the Great Eastern Schism of 1053 is one period demarcation for the ages of the Church. The time of the Reformation/Renaissance is another. Then there is the Western, Avignon schism. Bishop Richard Williamson of the SSPX sees our times as typified by the Maccabees; a time just some two hundred years before the First Coming, the Incarnation, during which the faithful Israelites were reduced to a remnant. But the remnant of the Maccabees were noted for their militancy. This can hardly be said of those who today think of themselves as a remnant. Most notably, they fail to fight the major heresy of our time, namely - evolutionary modernism. This evolutionism has become a worldview and cannot be reconciled with the traditional teaching of the Church on the origin and history of mankind as revealed in Genesis 1-11. 

 

Yet this so-called Catholic remnant is completely silent on this issue of human origins as well as of cosmic origins and creation as specifically revealed in Genesis with its literal Six Day Creation Week. As with so many brilliant people - most of the world's geniuses in all fields - their brilliance is superficial, on the surfaces of reality. Usually such people have not or cannot find the time to probe more deeply into the subject at hand. This is definitely the case with G.K. Chesterton. In his classic, Everlasting Man, he gave himself the opportunity to investigate in some depth – the subject of human evolution, but he passed it up with the very superficial generalization that since caves contained very beautiful paintings, mankind must have at one time – lived in caves. It took time for him to evolve from the cave-dwelling – “primitive”state to a more advanced urban civilization ….pure fantasy!! 

 

The protestant creationists have given us the real historical context of the cave paintings. After the dispersion from Babel about 100 years after the flood, many small groups of people became isolated from the mainstream. (See this writer's From the Beginning, volume 2). When small groups are isolated geographically, and they inter-breed, certain characteristics become dominant. In Africa, certain tribes became noted for their unusual height, whereas others for the opposite. The Australian Aborigines developed certain features - while at the other geographical extreme, as in the Arctic regions of North America and Europe, the Laplanders are still noted for their very fair coloring, etc.

Only some few families took to living in caves and obviously only temporarily. However, people like the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest, seem to have found such cave dwellings amenable enough. This is a subject to be studied in depth by anthropologists, so that hasty generalizations by brilliant writers like Chesterton, may be corrected. 

 

But let's not throw out the Chesterton baby with the bath water! It was he who, with remarkable intuitive insight, dubbed St. Thomas Aquinas, "Thomas of the Creator."

To The Editor of the "Four Marks"

I would like to offer a meditation in Counterpoint to Griff Ruby's "A Meditation About Money" - the Four Marks, December 2012.

Mr. Ruby says that "in a perfect society, each person is paid in proportion to the value of the work they do." But the value of any work is completely relative to the kind of society in which one must work. However, there is also an absolute scale of values reflecting the degree of being each one possesses. A plant possesses a degree or grade of perfection bestowed upon the intrinsic nature of its plantness. The same with animals. A plant never covets the higher degree of being.... in an animal. The plant is perfectly happy being a plant - from lowly violet to soaring redwood. The same with animals. No animal covets the higher perfection in being a man. Your dog is too happy just being your "best friend"...to covet even your intellect!   I challenge any human being to admit he envies the angels. Are we not perfectly happy with our composite nature despite the consequences of Original Sin, disease and death! St. Thomas asserts we will not be perfectly happy after death in heaven until we get our bodies back at the general resurrection - so wedded, so intimately united is this composite of body and soul.


How does all this relate to work? In this way. Given the hierarchical diversity amongst human beings, reflecting the general grades of perfection (see the 4th way of St. Thomas for proving God's existence) - given the inequality of talents amongst human beings, not to mention men and women, a person's work ought to correspond to that kind of work for which he is most fitted by his individual nature. Because the value of his work - being the quality of its goodness, or excellence, will correspond to the kind of work he most loves to do, because it is what he was made to do, so to speak, or what he was born to do. The popular EWTN Irish singer, Dana, has a song that repeats "I must sing!" It is wonderful that she apparently can make a living doing what she loves to do! (Although one would hope that as a woman, her first vocation was to wife and motherhood.)


In ancient Greek society, the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, was so highly esteemed that the state supported such men and assured their livelihood. Much the same was true in the middle ages when the intellectual life was most highly esteemed and masters of their schools were assured a livelihood. But came the industrial revolution and the agrarian society was disrupted. Although it is the lowliest kind of work, farming is also the most necessary. Note that Adam and his descendants all cultivated the land and their society remained agrarian, even while some sought wisdom as doctors of thinking and contemplation.  It was the urban Canaanites who provoked the flood! Perhaps the most striking example of reflection in our personal lives of this hierarchy of being that is reality, is the fact that the Church has always graded the states of life accordingly. The priesthod for men and religious; conventual life for women are intrinsically higher than the married state. Similarly, the cloistered, contemplative, monastic life is higher than an active life for religious. I remember being taught at some time by someone that there is no such thing as a "single" state of life. Persons living in the world and not married, must live chastely, obey a spiritual director and for their salvation's sake, avoid "worldliness". In other words, they must follow the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.


All this relates essentially to the value of the work people do. When I worked as a nurse's aide in a big hospital, I soon discovered that such work for me was emotionally exhausting. I was not encouraged to continue. Did I get paid well? Yes, for a time, but what was the real value of my work? I did much better as a teacher in a homeschool, and even better in retirement with freedom to study and write. This tells you plainly enough, the relation of money to the value of the work. Nil. I received very little, indeed, as a teacher and have lived solely on social security supplement since. I did work for some years as a librarian, giving me a basis for my social security. Go figure.


In conclusion, and with all due respect, I found Griff Ruby's article on money a bit like trying to work one's way out and up from the bottom of a landfill. I guess all of the elements are there, but they are scarcely discernible. It is embarrassing to see Father Oswald speak of idles, when he obviously means idols. To such dumbed-down depths has traditional - intellectual life sunk? Is it too much to ask that Mr. Ruby give some sources for his meditation? I have referred to St. Thomas' Summa, ST,I, Q.2, a.3. Is a "meditation" a license for free-thinking? John Lane's scholarship is quite a contrast with this essay by Griff Ruby, but John Lane is evasive. Incidentally, I read the magazine Culture Wars and recommend it as offering the beginning of an education in theories of government, economics and the current chaos. E. Michael Jones always documents his facts and lists his sources. He has gone far towards covering the landfill with a village based on distributist economics. The Remnant's star writer is Christopher Ferrera. If editor Michael Matt would only let Dr. Fog go and give Brian Cahill more space. John Vennari needs to use the principles of Dr. Raphael Waters in more concrete applications such as the current runaway biological species and the evolutionists' abuse of language. By species they really mean variety within the immutable, substantial form or kind created by God on the literal Days of Creation Week. See a recent article in the New Oxford Review. Also send comments to Jake Tannenbaum at ScientificAmerican.com/jan 2013 about his article "Creation, Evolution and Indisputable Facts." Contrary to what Mr. Tannenbaum asserts, a literal interpretation of Genesis can be reconciled with real science. See this writer's Catholic Creation Cosmology Blog!


We need more communication between Catholic periodicals and their writers. I welcome corrections as well as comments. I write from a nursing home without access to my library and sorely need an editor. There was great communication among Catholic writers in the 19th and early 20th centuries - and across continents! Can't we revive some of that? It was an age of Polemic and had an impact on the whole Church. A united front on the part of traditionalists, especially concerning the sciences and their impact on the education of children, could certainly go far towards influencing the Home Schoolers, at least. It might even influence a bishop or two!

 

Garrick Small's Adjectives, Nouns & New Churches in Culture Wars - Dec. 2012

  

"The true Church cannot be a new Church. It will never shy away away from its past. It will always grow from the root of what has grown before.." 

 

"It only takes one mortal sin to get one into hell.."

"Rather than being shy of our Faith and conforming it to the world, (as EWTN seems in the process of doing with its imitations), we need to showcase it and its unique ability to solve the world's problems. Nowhere is this more evident at the present time, than in the field of cosmology, Page 39.

I hasten to qualify that my designation of that "one mortal sin" intends no personal judgments, but rather speaks from within the tradition that Garrick Small so beautifully describes in his penultimate paragraph. If Pope Benedict were true to the entire "worldview" of St. Bonaventure, he would find the meeting point, the common ground between St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas - the Franciscans and the Dominicans, in the one mortal sin, which they both most clearly avoided and that is the mortal sin for which Galileo was vehemently suspected (of heresy): the denial of the inspiration, inerrancy and infallibility of the God-dictated (see Prov.Deus) Holy Scriptures on the subject of the World's Earth-centered structure. (See R. Sungenis, Galileo Was Wrong, The Church Was Right).

In the hierarchy of the sciences - reflecting the hierarchy of being, of reality - cosmology is a higher science than politics or economics. In fact, Aristotle, followed by all the scholastics, including St. Bonaventure, agreed that political economy is not a science at all, containing no certitudes in itself or a priori absolutes, but rather an art - the art of the possible or what works best for the common good, all of which the art relates to and so is relative, rather than absolute. Those sciences are highest that come closest to manifesting the higher metaphysical principles -- and the highest, the transcendent principles of divine Catholic Faith which are supernatural and necessary for salvation, at least in some degree. (See St. Thomas, DeVeritate, quoted on p.10 of this writer's book of Conversations with the Followers of Father Feeney, the Chapter on Invincible Ignorance.)

I must only correct Mr. Garrick Small's assessment of the time it has taken the New Church to come to full power. Five hundred years is a much more accurate number than the mere fifty that Mr. Small proposes. The date for the beginning is not the French or English Enlightenment, but the rejection of Holy Scripture as providing the guiding lights for all human thinking. Our entire intellectual tradition is rooted in the Scriptures, from the Hexaemera of St. Basil and St. Augustine to the political treatises of Gerson and Nicholas of Cusa, though he veered off into heresy. The history of modernism has yet to be written, but Sungenis, in his monumental two volume work, has the best beginning. Supplement it with Gilson's History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, the last chapters with what was  going on in the 14th century at Oxford with John Duns Scotus, John Buridan and the Anti-Aristotelian emperical schools of thought, plus the very anti-Catholic Baconian Utopia of Atlantis, (and others equally anti-Catholic) and the Cartesian split in epistemology - all of these anti-Catholic, anti-scholastic movements converged in the 17th century "Renaissance" and grew until the masons could conveniently use their Kantian and modernist Darwinian results to capture the Vatican and base their entire motivation for calling a pastoral council on an evolutionary worldview: "change or die!" This is abundantly proven by the collection of quotations and their analysis by Atila Guimaeres, published by Tradition in Action in many volumes. What a resource this is!  

 

Our entire intellectual tradition has been subverted and replaced by an evolutionary - Hegelian worldview compatible with the Big Bang cosmology of Jesuit physicist Father Robert Spitzer.  But is this false cosmology compatible with the intellectual tradition of the one true Church?  Is this "synthesis of all heresies" with which it fits, capable of solving all the world's problems?  Perhaps this cosmology, as radically contrasting with that tradtional one - built on a literal Six-Day Creation Week, is able to solve all the world's problems.  I maintain it cannot.  Cosmology is too important a science and a false cosmology will not fit in with the sythesis of truth that is the deposit of faith.

 

Catholics, especially those engaged in the sciences, as of physics and chemistry, are faced with a crucial choice:  A big bang cosmology, even though it requires a beginning, or a geocentric cosmology with its beginning clearly outlined in the Divine Revelation of the first chapter of Genesis.  We cannot settle for bits and pieces of the synthesis of truth.  All things are intrinsically related in the hierarchy.  See the 4th way of St. Thomas's 5 ways for demonstrating God's existence.  The 4th way is based in the intrinsic inequality of things. 

 

 

But evolutionary science (which is false) - is attempting to make all things equal.  This is a vain attempt to change reality.  Obviously, it will not work!  But it seems we are doomed to learn only the hard way - and many souls will be lost that might otherwise be saved. 

 

 

Kyrie, Eleison!

The Historical Importance of Genesis and the Catholic Contribution

John Vennari has done us the inestimable favor of reprinting in the January 2013 issue of Catholic Family News, an article by the late Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton. The article is entitled: "The Meaning of the Name - 'Church'." This article was originally published in the American Ecclessiastical Review of October, 1954. It may not have seemed terribly relevant to most priests and bishops at that time in the "golden age" of the Church in Hollywood, especially, but it is mind-shatteringly relevant today when the Jewish people of Old Testament times - who were fully intended by God to be the Catholic Christians of today. Yes, they still are the Chosen People, but no longer as they. Now it is we Catholic Christians - who alone of all so-called Christians are the elect, the Chosen People of God, continuing but also fulfilling all the prophecies of the Old Law. As Our Divine Lord said of Himself, "I came not to destroy but to fulfill...that having life they may have it more abundantly..."
 

What I find most intriguing about Msgr. Fenton's analysis of the name Church - (ecclesia, social unit) is the fact, historically documented, that the designation of Church as a social unit is continuous throughout the Old Testament and the New. Here is a quotation from Msgr. Fenton: "It is because of the nature of the "Church" or the ecclesia, as a social unit, which has been in existence since the days of our first parents as the congregatio fidelium in Christo, that we hail the Macabees and the other heroes of the Old Testament as our brethren. The Israel of God is and has been the ecclesia, the Church. The Church of the New Testament is the continuation of the Israel of the Old Testament. It is the religious unit to which the prophets and the patriarchs of the Old Testament belonged. Their exploits belong to the history of the Church..." Elsewhere in this article, Msgr. Fenton alludes to the four marks of the Church that are named in the Nicene Creed - Et Unam Sanctam, Catholicam et Apostolicam, Ecclesiam. Msgr. Fenton affirms that the intention of those early theologians who composed the Nicene Creed was to designate this One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic organization as the actual object of faith - the true ecclesia, the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God on earth according to the new dispensation and the necessity of the Church for salvation...the one and only supernatural kingdom of God on this earth....


Msgr. Fenton's point is that any number of souls in the state of grace said to constitute an "invisible church" cannot be the means of salvation founded by Jesus Christ. This one and only supernatural social unit in existence since Adam and Eve, although in an incomplete and imperfect state, is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church - present in the world today as the fulfillment and continuation of the Israel, the chosen, the elect of God - constituting His Kingdom on this earth, there is no other!

What this doctrinal-dogmatic identification of the Church accomplishes is not only the exaltation of the truly supernatural nature of the types, such as Abel, Abraham and Melchisdech, as figured in the prayer Supra quae propitio after the Consecration of the Mass, not to mention Deborah, Judith and Queen Esther as types of Mary Immaculate, conquerer of all heresies - but it most emphatically confirms the historical veracity of the biblical chronology of not more than 10,000 years and even more precisely - the traditional 6,000 years.  This chronological accuracy obviously obliterates the long ages of uniformitarian geology and its fictional "fossil record" of evolution. It also vindicates the literal Six Days of Genesis One - which are necessary to be consistent with the Six Days of the 10 commandments given in Exodus 20. This doctrinal-dogmatic "proof" is of the highest degree of certitude - even higher than the empirical evidences of C14 dating! Believe it or not!

 

As for the Catholic contribution today, in the presence of the domination of the synthesis of all heresies that is evolutionary modernism - it seems quite obvious to me that the Church militant is either dormant or dead in the tomb with the Sacred Body of Christ still substantially united to the Word of God in the Most Blessed Trinity. Yes, Our Lord is with us, but are we with Him? Who, besides a few isolated individuals, is fighting the heresy of evolutionism in the empirical sciences? Who, besides the Protestant "fundamentalist" creationists? The burden has fallen upon them because God's Word does not return to Him void (Isaiah 50). The Catholic contribution resides mainly in our exceedingly rich tradition of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, which in the medieval sythesis of theological doctrine sheds light on the lower empirical data accumulating rapidly since the 16th century, and at the same time gave the necessary natural support to the supernatural order of Divine Grace and theology which draws its doctrines directly and indirectly from the words of Holy Scripture.

 

Certain presumptious theologians of today hailing mostly from the Franciscan tradition boast of some fictional - newly discovered - "biblical" theology! May God have mercy on their vanity in such a vain and empty boast that implicitly betrays their own inheritance. For how can a Theological Summa such as that of St. Thomas, fail to recognize fully the legacy of Platonism that came into the church with the immensely rich theology of St. Augustine? Any reading of the Summa cannot fail to recognize St. Thomas' devotion to St. Augustine. Indeed it could be demonstrated that the Summa of St. Thomas is the best place to find a truly Catholic interpretation of the Platonism of St. Augustine.

 

But the real Catholic contribution required today by the corrosive domination of evolutionary modernism consists not only in the specific doctrines of the metaphysics of being, as opposed to becoming, but also and even more importantly, I believe in the cosmic vision of the entire universe in its hierarchical and material-formal shape - which is spherical, with earth the one body at rest in the center, while all else, from the physical, inanimate Kingdom of the Elements to the Nine Choirs of purely spiritual substances, the angels, with all forms of plant, animal and human beings in between, stable and thriving in and around the ever nourishing elemental constituents of the earth.   All of this is revealed in ever increasing detail as the Holy Spirit gives light to those who seek in Truth, in the narration of Genesis 1-3, and then in Genesis 6-11.  These chapters reveal the Creation in perfection of a world that suffered disaster when Adam fell and an even more geophysical and cosmic catastrophe when God sent the universal deluge as a punishment for the sins of the Canaanites and the pride they had taken in their technology, which they put to the most cruel usages, as Genesis 6, verses 5-13 clearly indicates.  Some translations use the term violence while the Douay-Rheims reiterates iniquity. 

 

 

 The parallel with today is inescapable.  Pope Pius the XII noted it.  And yet, most Catholics seem quite ignorant of the historical events of Genesis 1-11 and their importance for us today.  Herein resides the yet to be Catholic contribution. 

 

 

It is all too often objected that the bible is not a textbook of science! Of course not! The mode of discourse of Holy Scripture is that of a Divine Rhetoric. This is asserted by St. Peter (or St. Paul) when he said that all scripture is given to us for our instruction. That is a rhetorical purpose. And so it works out in practice. We interpret the words of Holy Scripture because they are not written in the mode of scientific discourse but of Divine Rhetoric - always directed to our minds and hearts to enlighten our intellect and direct and strengthen our wills. Our minds to see the truth and our wills to act accordingly. Even the so-called wisdom and "poetic" books have a rhetorical purpose in our practical lives. I believe the narration of the Creation of all things in Six Literal Days just as revealed in Genesis 1-3, is given to us specifically as a shield of truth against the gross heresy of evolutionary modernism that would have us to be made in the image of the Beast - rather than of our infinitely good and merciful Triune God.

The Catholic cosmology and anthropology revealed to us in the first five books of the bible - known as the Pentateuch, are certainly intended by God to be our special protection against the "operation of error" spoken of by St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians, chapter two. This operation of error is being sent by God upon those who have not loved the Truth of God's Divine Revelation, but accepted instead the fabulous fictions of a false science of molecules to man's.

Where are the apostles of Creation? I believe they must be reserved for the Age of Mary. Today we have only apostles of division!

 

 

Kyrie Eleison

 

Satan's Secret Weapon - And Sedevacantism

I prefer to call him by his first name, Lucifer, so it is "Lucifer's Secret Weapon", but the alliteration is appealing to a literary person. Lucifer's secret weapon is not secret at all - except as a weapon for killing souls by way of the perversion of the intellect as soon as children come to "school" at about the age of four and on. The weapon is not secret at all - except as a weapon for evil. It is seen as the true story of humankind and our origins. It is all false! This is the ultimate triumph of Lucifer: successfully to use evil that people think is really good and true - to tell lies that people believe are true. This is what St. Paul says of this "operation of error" - that people will "believe lying."


So the weapon is secret only because it is not seen for what it really is: an evil - and lying instead of truth! For example:

There is the great myth of Pre-Historic life. History means the life of creatures on earth as recorded by witnesses or those who can remember the significant events. This is precisely what we have recorded in the first book and first chapters of Genesis. There is no such thing as history before history or time before time. Pre-history is a lie. There was no pre-history. Pictures depicting life on earth in "pre-historic times" are purely fictional. They are science fiction and must be exposed as such - they are purely imaginary!

The very first Days of the Earth were quite different. The wonderful truth is that God has revealed a great deal about this earliest of historic times. He has revealed to us exactly what and how He created all things in a series of a-temporal Creative Acts on each of the Six Days of the First Week of the World. It is human reason that protests the Days of Genesis One - must have been much longer than a 24 hour day bounded by an evening and a morning. As St. Thomas frequently replies to such objections: "The authority of scripture is sufficient." When we consider that the Action of God is not bound by temporal processes but completely transcends time, the objections of human reasoning are quieted - because it sees that God's Act of creation issues in a temporal effect - a form that begins to function in time - according to its substantial nature as cosmos, plant, animal or human being. 

I mention cosmos first because I believe that on Day One of Creation Week, God brought into existence - ex nihilo and in toto - the entire spherical cosmic Body of the Universe. All that it lacked were the Distinctions of Day Two and the Adornments of the other Six Days. These are terms the earliest Fathers and Medieval Doctors - including St. Thomas used when speaking of these Six Days. St Thomas even goes on to say that Day Two corresponds to Day Five in the distribution of the Waters -- Day One with Day Four because of the light and so on. These are purely literary distinctions. (ST, I, Q.71, 72)

 

What is necessary today, I submit, is to meditate prayerfully on Genesis One and see God's transcendent Acts as issuing in the created Forms of the Cosmos and its inhabitants. I made a beginning of this attempt in my Litany of the Creator. I have tried to develop and expand with clarifications what I began in the litany. I am still very much compelled, somehow, to make reparation to God for the terrible mockery that the evolutionary worldview makes of His Creation. Think of the implications for the Incarnation!! The evolutionary worldview makes a blasphemous parody of the main truths of our Faith - as they are based in Holy Scripture. The most powerfully effective use of this secret weapon is manifested, I respectfully submit, by a fine scholar such as John Lane who writes for the paper - The Four Marks. John Lane makes, in my opinion, the perfect case for sedevacantism. The most amazing fact about it is that he makes this air-tight case for sedevacantism, without ever mentioning, beyond the general concept of Modernism, the specific heresy which makes Benedict the XVI a heretic!

 

I suspect that this omission is successful because most Catholics, even the most unlearned, have at least an inkling of at least one of the heresies for which the term modernism stands. This can happen because, after all, modernism is the synthesis of all heresies, as Pope St. Pius X named it in Pascendi. And I submit, also, that much of the current confusion regarding modernism, is due to the fact that more than one theologian and prelate of the church has openly accepted and taught one or more of the tenets of modernism. Perhaps one can see the first crack in the dike or the first sign of a real weakness of faith in the dogmatic truth that Holy Scripture is verbally inerrant and that the literal sense is the basis of all other senses, when Pope Benedict XIV in the 1740's and 1750's, allowed the Copernican hypothesis to be taught, though yet as a hypothesis. Much is to be said for and against such a permission, and the consequences are not in favor of the Pope's liberalism.

 

By the 1830's, Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman, basing his "Lectures on Science", given in Rome, on the rising science of geology openly accepted and taught the "Gap Theory" which allowed for the long ages and eons of cosmic and earth history, thus abandoning the literal Six Days of Genesis One. The Cardinal's lectures were accepted without any adverse comment that I was able to find in my study of his work. By the 1920's, we find another Cardinal of the Church, Ernesto Cardinal Ruffini, strongly protesting the thesis of human evolution, but allowing for the long ages supposedly required by the science of geology. The literature on these developments and the lack of a total and reasoned resistance to cosmic evolutionism is abundant. The reader may consult my earlier writings on Cardinal Wiseman and especially on Father John Zahm of Notre Dame's Canonized Heresies.

All such failures of the theologians of the Church to see where it all was leading, belong, of course, to the history of Modernism - a history that has yet to be written, if one is looking for such a history that recognizes the essential part played by men, such as the Comte de Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Jean Lemarck, and many others, in forming the worldview that now dominates global society.

 

And so, when John Lane, in all of his excellent and admirably, scholarly work in defining Sedevacantism, fails to mention the essential and specific roles played by the sciences of astronomy, geology and biology in the "synthesis of all heresies" we term Modernism, as Benedict XVI's special heresy, perhaps there is some excuse for the omission. I, for one, find the specific heresy affecting the Papacy today to be a sort of Teilhardian Hegelianism, or perhaps a Hegelian historianism stretched to the cosmic limits as in the pseudo-mysticism of the French Jesuit.

 

In any case, we are definitely at the mercy of a ruthless philosophy of becoming. Such a philosophy, when seen in its physical manifestations, especially in the political and economic spheres, is more properly termed an ideology than a philosophy. This is really because, in the concensus of history, there is but one philosophy, the perennial philosophy of Being that finds its origin in Aristotle and its incorporation into Catholic Theology by St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church's preferred theologian and Angelic Doctor.