Areas of Research

If and when Catholic scientists renounce the heresy of Evolutionary Modernism, and the errors it produces in the Natural Sciences, - those below metaphysics - there are at least two very fertile areas of research awaiting them. The boundary limits between the plant or "vegetative" soul - or vital principle - and those of the animal or sensitive "soul". Both of these kinds of being are material in their ultimate principles, and I submit that they are electrical in nature. It seems they must be so - of necessity - because the criterion of the physical, is that it can be measured. It is a quantity. All the other eight categories of accidents are based on some quantity. A second, most fertile area of research awaiting Catholic scientists, is the principle or principles of order governing the inanimate realm of the elements. Another name for these principles of order is physical laws. Many of these have been - and are - still in progress of being discovered. Such are the types of electron spin.


But there is needed... more general laws - that will unify the science of physics, along with chemistry. For this, the scientist must rise to a knowledge of Metaphysics. He might well begin, since the 2013 hurricane-tornado season is upon us, with a study of Blessed Hildegarde of Bingen's - 12 Cosmic Winds, in her Geocentric Universe. (See Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett, - GALILEO WAS WRONG - THE CHURCH WAS RIGHT - in Volume Two. These ultimate principles must also be, I submit, electrical in nature, because electricity is the least material of all physical-material causes. In all of the areas mentioned above, we are searching for the material-formal causes of the created beings, from the Universe itself - down to the virus, the bacteria, the fungus, the marine plankton - in all of their marvelous geometric variety!

To The Editor of the National Catholic Register

I submit some remarks about the article by David DeCosse (National Catholic Register October 25 through November 7, 2013 - page 19-25), entitled "IMBALANCE UNDERMINES BISHOPS CAMPAIGN." What first alerted me to the key issue of "imbalance", was DeCosse's use of the term function when describing the first of the three "oddities" in the homily given by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. Instead of speaking as Mr. DeCosse thinks he should, Archbishop Chaput says that "freedom of conscience is a function of freedom of religion: the truly valuable conscience is fired with the spirit of discipleship." The word function, I submit, is entirely out of place here. It is a term very familiar to those working in the natural sciences, especially mathematics, where function is very narrowly and precisely used to refer to a specific "designated task." In fact, my QPB Science Encyclopedia, gives only the term function as used in computer science and mathematics. Is DeCosse and/or Archbishop Chaput happy with reducing essentially moral human actions to the function of an algebraic equation? Well, yes, they are speaking analogically. Okay, but I suggest that we can also use this term analogically, in metaphysics, where function is a process, necessarily performed under the direction of the Substantial Form of the being, in which that function operates as an accidental categorical form.


In this sense, the function must, of necessity, be one either of the natural order or the supernatural order of Divine Grace. In any case, this function is the act of a human being endowed by his or her Creator with the gift of freedom to choose, or "free will"." This freedom may be designated, as Mr. DeCosse does so designate it, as a moral prerogative. Now, unfortunately, I do not have a Webster's dictionary at hand here in my 1/2 nursing home room, though I do have my QPB Science Encyclopedia, as you have seen from the above. (My priorities are slightly skewed, I admit), however, I think of prerogatives as privileges. For example, and as the primary example, the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the second Eve, (with our Lord Jesus Christ the second Adam), was in a direct - corrective opposition to the punishments inflicted upon the first Eve for her sin of disobedience: her conceptions were multiplied with their sorrows - her birthings would be accompanied by pain and blood, as they are today, and her subjection to her husband was to be of an excessive kind, (Genesis 3:16). But of a moral and physical necessity - Mary's prerogatives were a miraculous, divine, single conception of the God-Man; His birth, also miraculously without any labor or shedding of the Virginal Blood and totally joyful.


Finally, Mary's relationship with St. Joseph and his with Her, were full of supernatural charity and respect - a model of spousal union. I do not see how DeCosse's use of this term, moral prerogative, can designate anything but the power we all have to choose, by the use of our free will, to do good and avoid evil. It is in this intellectual vision of what is good and what is evil, that the moral prerogative is seen in all of its privileged splendor. I submit that this hierarchical relationship of intellect and will when it comes to human actions involving contraception and all that may involve in the way of drugs - devices or elaborate keeping accounts etc., for planning - the intellect plainly shows that such actions are radical interferences in the totally natural processes of fertilization and normal gestation. So, the will chooses either to respect the natural order as God created it and mandated the natural processes when He said: "Increase and Multiply"... or the will can choose to interfere with this natural, normal process of conception and gestation and to prevent its normal operation. This latter choice is obviously a choice made against nature and a choice that the Church - as Guardian and Preserver of all natural processes known as the Natural Law, inscribed in our humanity and seen operating even in the animals below us in nature - the Church rightly warns us that when we misuse and abuse this moral prerogative, we sin gravely.


The Church, therefore, attaches penalties to sins against the natural, moral laws and also against Her own Supernatural laws and precepts, as is Her right as the Guardian and Preserver of the created goods of the Order of Creation given in Genesis One, as well as of all those Supernatural Goods stemming from the New Creation of the Order of Grace that came with the Incarnation and Redemption. In this sense, too, Mr. DeCosee, the dogmatic statement that "error has no rights", is simply one of those timeless - unchanging truths, that will always be here to remind us that, while yes, we have this freedom to commit sin and to offend God, it cannot reasonably be said that we have a right to do so. Don't you agree? I understand that you do not think you are offending God. But look at it this way - the Order of Nature is God's creation. You would be offended if someone attacked and destroyed something you had made or owned. God is very much offended by attacks upon His Creation, especially something so exquisitely designed as the process of reproduction.

Please think about this.

Transforming Union

I am hearing on EWTN, only now and then, and from persons I cannot name, what I submit may be a rather serious heresy. It concerns not only the summit of mystical theology, the transforming union, but also the effect of our reception of Holy Communion. The reality of substance is crucial. What happens when we receive our Lord, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in Holy Communion is entirely a qualitative - which is to say - accidental union and not of the substance of the soul. The same is true of the mystical-spiritual transforming union. This is in no way to minimize the degree of perfection such a union signifies. It is seen only in the canonized Saints,(generally speaking). It requires, and or presupposes, heroic virtue. The sisters of St. Therese, clearly witnessed such heroism, in the last months especially, of Therese's life.

Read the published LAST CONVERSATIONS, for very obvious examples of the heroic virtue manifest in the transforming union. But the point I wish to emphasize - and I submit all to the judgment of Holy Mother Church, is that there is no substantial change in the human soul, in this transforming union, nor in the greatest effect possible of Holy Communion. Our souls remain substantially human. We are "divinized", only accidentally, not substantially. This is not to derogate the union, but only to point out that we do not become God, which would be heresy to believe. We do become God-like, in a degree that grows with our cooperation with Divine Grace. Transforming union is the summit of the spiritual life and is open to all who are called to a life of prayer. According to many spiritual authorities, this means everyone who is baptized! Another common error, and one not unrelated to that just discussed, is what happens to the food we eat. Food is of two kinds and they are quite different! Many plants transmit the vital principle or substantial form of their being - in seeds that we eat. The cereal grains such as wheat and nuts, like walnuts pecans etc. When these seeds enter our digestive tract - they do not sprout and begin to grow - as into a bean plant or stalk of wheat

Rather, they begin to disintegrate and reduce to the nutritive elements, such as amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, sugars and minerals, that our bodies utilize as vital nourishment. The point is - that the only substantial change that takes place is in the individual plant or tree, that - (eventually with the nut tree) - dies. We can say that the seed or grain as carrier of the plant's vital principle, dies in our digestive process. There is no substantial change in our bodies as a result of eating anything - even God Himself in Holy Communion. Where ordinary food is concerned, the individual plant and/or animal dies, and that is a substantial change for the individual - but not for the species, which continues to be transmitted by reproduction. Even in human reproduction, there is no substantial change. The ovum and the sperm are both cells of the male and female bodies. They are, therefore, accidental forms - not substantial forms. If they were substantial forms, they would refuse to unite. They do unite in reproduction, which is not a substantial change, but simply or complexly - the pro-creation of a new substantial form. The human being as conceptus - when God infuses the rational human and immortal soul into that tiny conceptus.

Incidentally, all virtues of the supernatural order, because they are entirely spiritual and thus unlike those human virtues of the natural order, have no basis in quantity. They are entirely qualitative and spiritual. This is why St. Bernard could say - that the only measure of our love for God is to love Him without measure. Of course, only in God, is every attribute infinite. Many saints tell us, that our own feeble virtue is potentially infinite - in that it strives to be without measure... especially when it comes to that greatest of all virtues, charity. All physical objects are measured by the electro-magnetic spectrum and the frequency they measure - according to it. Scripture tells us that God has ordered all things in measure, number and weight. (Wisdom 11:21). That is the physical and therefore quantitative. This same book of Wisdom (8:1) - tells us that Wisdom, which is the highest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit,... reacheth.. from end to end mightily,and ordereth all things sweetly. Might and sweetness are qualities, and if supernatural, that is, of Divine Grace, they cannot be measured. The Master assures us - that His yoke is sweet and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). All the sourness and all the heaviness that irks us, comes entirely from our self-love and self-centeredness.

So there is only one kind of substantial change in the natural order, and that is the death of the individual plant, animal or man. Our individual death does effect the substantial change of separation of soul from body. Soul and body, in man, form one substantial form, - one substance. Death is an awesome change, but take comfort from the Preface for the Mass for the Dead ....that those whom the certainty of death afflicts - may be consoled by the promise of future immortality. For thy faithful, O Lord... life is changed, - not taken away. The abode of this earthly dwelling being dissolved - an eternal dwelling is prepared in heaven. All other changes are accidental - involving the actions of those wonderfully versatile elements, whose obedient operations are beyond any human imagining for marvelous design. And yet, these accidental changes are all of the natural order.

The great miracle of Transubstantiation, is entirely supernatural, for the elements are mute. For the first and only instance - of all their wondrous arrangements - with reports therof, they must remain silent, and obediently cover the most stupendous event in all of creation, as they stand guard, as it were, over the transformation of lowly bread and wine - grain of the field and fruit of the vine - into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer. This is truly a change of substance - a transubstantiation that does not issue in death, but in divine and eternal Life. For by dying, He overcame our death, and by rising again - hath restored our life. (Preface for Easter). But the wise virgins took oil in their vessels - with the lamps. (Matthew 25:4.) This singular parable is specific for the Last Days - for it begins,"Then shall the kingdom of heaven be like to ten virgins - who taking their lamps, went forth to meet the Bridegroom and the Bride." (Matthew 25:1)

It is obviously full of symbols - which it is necessary for us to know and to practice - if we are to be among the wise virgins, who were ready when the Bridegroom came and went in with Him to the Marriage. And the door was shut. Our salvation is at stake - for those foolish virgins - who had no oil for their lamps and had run off to buy oil when the Bridegroom came - so that when they finally did arrive - they found the door shut to them. Not only that the Bridegroom Himself refused to open the door to them, because He did not know them. Knowing, in Scripture, always means the deepest and most intimate knowledge... spiritual as well as carnal. For virgins, this knowledge is entirely spiritual and even abhors the merely carnal. What are the lamps... what are the vessels and what is the oil? These are most important symbols of spiritual realities and signify things necessary for salvation.

Now, please check me on the following, because I do not have access to my reference books. I think it is the consensus of Catholic commentators that the lamp, with its shape, its wick and the flame of its fire is Supernatural, that is, Baptismal - Theological Faith, Hope and Charity. These three virtues are necessary for salvation. Since it is the oil that burns.. the oil is charity. Hope is the wick- and the lamp is Faith. The three theological virtues are so closely related, as almost to be one instead of three. And yet, St. Thomas is clear that an abstract kind of Faith, yet fastened to the will, also can exist without Hope and Charity. But it is certainly a precarious kind of Faith. Some, especially men, are said to cling with a persistent Faith, to the intercessory power of our Blessed Mother Mary - and not without good reason. What are the vessels that apparently only the wise virgins carried with the lamps? The lamps of the foolish virgins went out for lack of this extra oil carried in vessels with the lamps.... that is, in addition to the lamps.

In these Last Days of Darkness, everyone will need lamps just to survive spiritually - but only the wise ones carry extra oil in vessels with the lamps. Why only 10? And why virgins? What worse fate can one imagine than to hear those awful words of our Divine Lord: " I know ye not!" Jesus, Mary, Joseph, save us for Thy Glory.

Kyrie, Eleison!

Secondary Causes

The most important thing to know about Secondary Causes, is that they cannot cause anything that was not first caused and created, ex nihilo, and in toto by the Primary Efficient and Final cause of all things during the first Six Days of the World, when God established His Order of Creation to be preserved throughout time in the Order of Generation.

It is in this Order of Generation that Secondary Causes perpetuate by physical transmission or reproduction - the Substantial Forms that God created -- as only He can, so create the original and immutable forms of all corporeal beings. Secondary causes have received the power of agency in order to transmit the Substantial Form - which Form determines all the processes or functions of that form.

Dr. Stephen M. Barr, in his 2011 pamphlet, SCIENCE AND RELIGION: THE MYTH OF CONFLICT, - page 39 quotes eminent Catholic scientist Peter E. Hodgson on the view of John Henry Newman:

... Newman believed that the Creator lets His work develop through secondary causes - which have imparted certain laws to matter... millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out.... in the course of those long ages, those effects which He, from the first, proposed... Thus, Mr. Darwin's theory need not be atheistical, be it true or not.... it may simply be suggesting a large idea of Divine Prescience and Skill. (Ignatius Press, 2011.)

The phrase "be it true or not", saves Newman from total commitment to Darwinism, but not Dr. Hodgson nor Dr. Barr, both of whom are, to all appearances from their published works, committed theistic evolutionists. But it all hinges upon a colossal error in the life sciences, leading to a very false idea, even heretical, about the nature of God. The error in the natural sciences is that functions and processes operate in search of form, as it were. But the opposite is true. It is absolutely necessary, biologically, physically, metaphysically and theologically that Form come before process and function. It is a case of Dr. Michael Behe's mouse trap. All the parts are necessary if it is to catch a mouse. Now Dr.Barr says several very good and true things in this little pamphlet - as when he defines miracles as "extraordinary events.... (that presupposes that there is a natural order that determines what is naturally possible and what is not..." (pp.10-11)

Now it is just as certain that secondary causes presuppose a first, Primary Efficient and Final Cause, as it is -- that miracles presuppose a natural order.... that a miracle temporarily suspends. Because the natural order, and its in-built laws, are but the Order of Creation described as established in the First Six Days of the World and preserved, with accidental variations, throughout time in the Order of Generation. But Dr. Barr commits a colossal error - and he certainly cannot document it when he says:

For the Catholic Church, the physical processes by which plants and animals formed, like those by which stars and planets formed, are a matter of natural "secondary causes" and for the natural sciences, not theology, to concern themselves with. (page 40.) I underlined these words because this is the crucial error: science can only see the processes that take place by and in the Forms of created beings, that is, processes that only began once the Forms had been created in toto by God, during the First Six Days of the World and then transmitted by reproduction in the Order of Generation. These original forms, the created kinds of Genesis One are immutable creations, as history proves, except for minor variations. Some variations, such as those within the canine and feline kinds, may seem more than minor...- from lion to domestic cat or from Jack London's "White Fang" - to my pet Fido - but they can interbreed, and it is for the taxonomist to discover these boundaries of the Genesis kind. But Saint Thomas is very emphatic - that while it may not be for theology to oversee the ordinary work of the scientists, it is for theology to judge of the scientists conclusions - in the light of Divine Revelation. (See question 1 of the Summa - where the sciences are all discussed in relation to Theology.)

And I must add that it is most certainly - not - "the Catholic Church" - that teaches anything remotely resembling Darwinian evolution by secondary causes. St.Thomas is equally clear and emphatic that in creation - God used no instrumental or secondary causes - because creation of all the first substantial forms was a work done by Acts of God alone. No processes at all were involved in God's Creative Acts. He spoke and they were. He commanded and they came into existence.(Psalm 32.) This evolutionism propagated by prominent men of science - like Dr.Steven Barr and Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer, is the major error of the synthesis of all heresies that Pope St. Pius X condemned as Modernism in 1907 - in his encyclical Pascendi and his syllabus Lamentabili. What scientists - like Dr.Barr observe through their high-powered telescopes is not the formation of anything -- but rather the motions of disintegration - things coming apart - not coming together to form intelligible objects. God did that in the beginning, just as Genesis One narrates. God created all things ex nihilo and in toto. The in toto means that all things issued from His Creative Word - instantaneously, fully formed, mature and ready to begin to function according to their created Forms - Substances - Natures and Kinds.

Genesis 1-3 is full of all the real, scientific knowledge - any professional scientist could possibly wish for. But he must have eyes to see and ears to hear, as Our Divine Lord so often admonishes.

(For the places in the Summa of St. Thomas, please see this writer's, THIRTY THESES AGAINST THEISTIC EVOLUTION.)

Cognition - And Other Issues - Final Part

 

What, then, finally of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars? Are they, each one, a Substantial Form? Like the Earth with its waters, the Sun, Moon and Stars fulfill the 3^rd requirement: they cannot be subsumed. They seem to be incommunicable, complete and autonomous. But are they? Do they not depend in a rather absolute way – upon the firmament in which they have been set on Day Four? The waters cannot exist without some kind of container, such as the ocean’s shores, the river’s banks, the firmament for those above? It seems to me that all of these larger parts, as well as the atomic and other particles, require a larger Substance in which they inhere as to be what they are: accidental forms, not substantial. Did not St. Thomas recognize this implicitly when he said: “The world is composed of the whole of its matter. For it is not possible for there to be another earth than this one – since every earth would naturally be carried to this central one, wherever it was. The same applies to the other bodies which are part of the world. (ST,I,q.47,a3. - See answers to all the objections. “No agent intends material plurality as the end…”)

 

My present thinking about organ donation and related topics has not changed since previous statements. All “scientific” experiments involving human body parts – I find extremely repulsive, and I truly believe they are all deeply immoral. It is agreed, I think, amongst Traditional thinkers, that “brain death” ought to be considered illegal as a test of body death. All organ transplants require a living organ. The implications are quite obvious. I even question now, the very common giving of blood. And I find the issue of frozen embryos highly questionable. If an adult human body is frozen, death certainly ensues. But embryos are routinely frozen and thawed and implanted!?! I wonder if we have the whole truth here? Maybe there is some truth in the medieval idea of the vegetative soul preceding the sensitive and the sensitive preceding the rational. Cardinal Mercier of Louvain, (and the villain in the so-called mandate to accommodate Thomism to modern science’s “method and data”). (See this writer’s “A Great Betrayal”) --- also was a proponent of the medieval embryology, as opposed to the modern pro-life consensus that at the time of conception, i.e., fertilization, the soul is present, when the genetic complement is complete. 
 

The method of modern science is the exclusion, the absolute ruthless exclusion, of any relation or reference of creatures to the Creator-God. And the “data” of modern science is the imposed ideology of evolution, which is also and just as ruthlessly, that is, categorically ruled to be the given that replaces the real and true givens of the First Principles of all knowledge. The marvel is that this great deception has succeeded for so long to convince so many people that it is the truth about reality. I think it is evidence, before all else, of the power of the authority of knowledge. This is Lucifer’s Masterpiece: the evolutionary worldview – starting with the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo. With the fixed-central Earth dislodged and sent whirling and twirling like any other planet, the entire cosmological order of reality was bound to produce a chaos in men’s minds. It could not disturb the Created Order, which continues the same as God created it and fixed it on Days One, Two, Three and Four – in preparation for Adam as the prototype of the God-Man Jesus Christ, Our Lord and His Immaculate Mother Mary, the Second Adam and Second Eve to redeem us from the ruinous fall of our first parents. It remains to demonstrate – that the elements are accidental forms, NOT substantial forms. This is best done, I believe, by showing how they operate – always – as the model properties of one or the other of Aristotle’s nine categories of accidents of some substance.

 

I think it was John Locke who first made a big To-Do over what he called Galileo’s secondary qualities, such as color and sound. This issue was also first brought into prominence for me when one of the boys I was home-schooling, one who had been through the first six grades in a public school, refused absolutely to believe that there was any objective reality to color or to sound. Color, he was convinced, and so remains to this day – I suppose – is due entirely to the rods and cones in the eye. With sound, it is entirely to the action of the apparatus in the ear. The way he put it was that if a tree fell in the forest, there was NO sound at all, if there was no one to perceive it. What must be emphasized, therefore, is the objective reality of dimensive and continuous matter or atomic motion. The particles of material forms are always in motion, and this motion, whether measured and perceived by anyone or not, takes place as a result - as an effect of the action of some material – secondary cause, created by God. The same is true of the colors generated by the photons of light in the air. It is the finite character of the Prime or Primary Matter of the Universe – what St. Thomas designates when he says that the “world, that is, the Universe, is composed of the Whole of its matter”, (ST. I, q.47, a.3) – it is the potencies contained in this immensity – the virtually infinite number of potentialities for all material-corporeal beings, including Man – that determine, in conjunction with each specific form – the essential nature of each, in the Order of Generation, but always preserving the substantial forms of the Order of Creation.

 

Agency and Passivity are the two categories that follow quantity and quality in the list of nine categories of accidental forms. And they designate the areas of secondary causality. There are two areas most clearly illustrative of secondary causality and the production of accidental forms. One is the transmission by generation of the substantial forms of each physical species. A. in plants of the cereal forms – the flowering forms and the tree forms. B. in all the marine forms and the birds. C. in all land animal forms and D. of man-kind.

 

In all of these areas, the Substantial Forms of the Order of Creation are transmitted by the male-female reproductive process which produces new Substantial Forms, without any substantial change in the parents. The same is true in the areas of making things wherein the beings who are Substantial Forms, make things of beauty and of use. They are Secondary Causes, acting under God’s primary efficient Causality. (See the 2^nd Way of St. Thomas). In the area of Art, the maker or cause is a Substantial Form, and the product or effect is an accidental form. In the Inanimate domain of the elements, we have innumerable examples of agency and passive receptivity on the part of the elements, illustrating the operations of accidental forms amongst themselves – obeying the laws of the Substance into which they have been subsumed. Here, I need the help of a physicist and chemist to illustrate the many operations of physical and chemical change on the part of the elements – especially as they climb up the ladder of the Hierarchy of Being, from one-celled plants and animals, to the human body in its fallen state, and in the perfect integral Sacred Humanity of the God-Man and His Immaculate Mother Mary. The Category of Relation is one that needs special attention. For Aristotle, it meant consanguinity. But it can be extended to designate any inter-relatedness between beings, such as our relatedness to the environment and to other human beings. The notion of value, under the new “science of aetiology, (please check me on this), is an attempt, in my opinion, to replace the notions of natural and un-natural, of virtue and vice – or sin with a notion of “value”.

 

(ST, I-II, q.31, a.7)

 

In an article “asking” whether any pleasure is not natural? St. Thomas answers that in man, what is natural can be taken in two ways: One being pleasures that are experienced when one acts in accord with reason. For instance, it is natural to man to take pleasure in contemplating the Truth and in doing works of virtue. The second being – and here I invite the reader to read for himself – what St. Thomas says and especially his use of the term – connatural, which I have seen printed as connatural and I do not think they are the same. St. Thomas relates this second kind of pleasure to an individual deviation, disorder or corruption of nature in an individual and peculiar to him as individual. Such are from the body, from some ailment, or from an evil temperament – or on the part of the soul. Thus from custom – some take pleasure in cannibalism or in the unnatural intercourse of men and beasts, or other such things, which are not in accord with human nature. (ST.I-II, q.31, a.7)

 

It is in objection (2) that the objector quotes from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, v.5 – whatever is violent causes grief, for whatever is against nature is violent. Therefore, nothing which is unnatural can give pleasure. And as noted above, St. Thomas points out that some individuals do take a kind of con-natural, or really unnatural, pleasure in certain actions related to nature, but in an improper or unnatural or con-natural way. Well, the homosexuals, lovers of animals, and other lovers of the unnatural, could take this text from St. Thomas as their basic “justification”, I suppose, as Modernists are prone to do. I prefer to use such terms as unnatural and perverse – rather than connatural or co-natural. But I see St. Thomas’ point. The Objector was simply denying that even some actions so un-natural as to be perverse and mortally sinful in God’s sight – as St. Thomas surely demonstrates in his discussions of sin in the human act – are still so close to the natural pleasure as to offer to some individuals of a corruption in their body or in their soul, a kind of substitute for the natural pleasure. And he gives example of those who in a fever, taste sweet as bitter, those of an undisciplined, evil temperament – may commit totally irrational acts, such as eating dirt or hot coals, etc. This digression was occasioned by an interested reader who asked for more on proper and improper relations.

 

In the area of the natural sciences, Aristotle’s category of relation- I have extended to designate the relatedness between the atoms that causes them to be attracted or repulsed to or by each other. I suppose it would come under the valency of the electron and the bonding conditions. Here is where so much research needs to be done by those with expertise in such fields as pure physics and all the areas of chemistry in the life sciences. Time and Place are the next two categories and I have written at length on both of these in previous works. Time, was created on Day One as it began with the first motion of a physical particle. Its measurement by man was determined by God Himself with the inauguration of Days and the movements of the Sun, Moon and Stars. Adam, and his sons, made great use of the constellations by imposing the primary figures of the Redemption on these starry configurations. See Joseph Seiss – THE GOSPEL IN THE STARS. Any attempt to replace this realistic notion of time and of time coupled with space, in some kind of continuum, is only Einstein’s mental-mathematical construct - a work of science fiction at best and at worst.

 

As for Place, the Body of the Universe is, itself, one vast, immense created place for all of God’s creatures, including the Angels! On this subject, with special reference to HEAVEN AS A PLACE, see the excellent article of that title, by Robert Siscoe, in the Catholic Family News, for September of 2013. Posture and Clothing relate specifically to those accidents or properties of human beings that are accidental in the most superficial and external sense, but could be found quite relevant to someone deeply and thoroughly versed in physics, and the differing geometric shapes that the atoms assume in their many operations. In fact, the Platonists of the Pythagorean tradition – not only discovered the “music of the spheres” – but also the (5) Platonic solids in their emphasis upon the mathematical marvels – evidenced in Creation, for we know from Divine Revelation – that God hath ordered all things by measure, number and weight….mightily and sweetly. (Wisdom 1:8 and 11:21.)

Cognition - And Other Issues - Part 2

Based on the authority of St. Thomas and the First Principles incorporated in his 5 ways of demonstrating God’s Existence, and on the experiential fact that the human mind in its very First acts of Cognition, which are non-conceptual and judgmental, that is, affirming BEING as such….maintain that the human intellect and will, is conformed by its very nature to the Reality of the extra-mental world and its existence. Then comes the affirmation of the fact that things not only exist – but exist as certain identifiable things, not only identifiable but reasonable. These First Principles have been labeled and analyzed as: 
 

The Principle of non-contradiction, or the Principle of Being as being and not non-being, which are contradictory, so that it is absolutely certain that a thing cannot be and not-be at the same time. And given all circumstances, there cannot be a horse here and now and this same animal, we are told, some millions of years ago, was a different kind of animal – that changed into its present form and is still in the process of changing into some other kind of animal in the future. In other words, all things are becoming and there is no permanent or stable form of physical being anywhere in the history of the physical world. This philosophy of becoming violates the First Principle of non-contradiction, or, to state it in more experiential terms, the evolutionary philosophy of becoming – violates the First Principle, which apprehends and affirms by an affirmative judgment of the mind, vis a vis the Real world, that some things, based on the Second First Principle of
 

Identity….that some things that are identifiable by their nature or essence – are fixed in that essence or nature and will not change over time.

 

This, in turn, is based on a third First Principle, called the Principle of Sufficient Reason or Intelligibility. It should be evident by now that the First Principles are so related, as almost to be one instead of several.

 

The Principle of Sufficient Reason or Intelligibility, immediately gives rise to the Principle of Causality, and this is where the most popular principle emerges, for example, in the famous Argument from Design, made popular by Anglican minister William Paley and his book, NATURAL THEOLOGY, (ca 1830.) Paley actually represents a kind of ragged remnant of the great medieval synthesis, and specifically the 5^th way of proving God’s existence in the Second question of the Summa of St. Thomas. But what is most enduring throughout this history of the de-constructioning of the great Medieval synthesis, is the fact that the human mind has not changed in its innate and created ability to affirm and to analyze the structures of the real world, in which we live and move and have our being – our very existence from God the Creator. I have just been reminded that action or the practical side of life, flows directly from our intellectual “vision” of what life is all about. In other words, this is why Our Divine Lord told us that we must seek First the Kingdom of God, and then, all other things will be added. (Matt 19: 16-22)

 

Yes, because our nature is wounded by the consequences of Adam’s Original Sin, we suffer from a darkening of the intellect, a weakening of the will, and a strong inclination to evil on the part of our passions or emotions. This is the life-long struggle of spiritual “warfare” – to acquire dominion over our senses and the necessary discipline of our passions. As discussed previously, the whole emphasis of Eastern Catholic spirituality is to regain the state of innocence enjoyed by Adam and Eve before the Fall. But an important point to be emphasized is that spirituality must flow from, and/or be based upon, the truths of dogmatic theology. How can there be a true spirituality based on a “synthesis” of heresies that is evolutionary modernism? One sees the disastrous results of such attempts in the degrading examples of those who emphasize human behavior patterns similar to those of animals.

 

Let me get back to my analogy of the Body of the Universe with the human body.

 

The human body is ruled by the one – substantial form of the rational-spiritual form that permeates every particle of the human body, until the separation of soul and body at death. St. Thomas says that the soul contains the body, not the body the soul, as the Platonists hold. The soul is in the body as containing it, not as contained by it. (ST,I,q52, a.1) I suggest that what takes the place of the soul in the Body of the Universe is electricity in its most refined and invisible forms. For example, the very recent observations of what is called entanglement, involves electrons “communicating” over long distances (by telephone ?!?)! -- What is between them is assumed to be a vacuum, and so, the modern scientist holds this up as an example of action at a distance. But this is a premature conclusion. Aristotle held, and it is absolutely true – that nature abhors a vacuum. There is no such thing in nature as a vacuum. What is between the electrons in “entanglement” is the potency in the Prime Matter of the Body of the Universe, because the electrons are always in motion and motion is defined by Aristotle and St. Thomas as the passage from potency to act wrought by an agent-electron in a “patient-electron” so disposed to receive such action. There is no vacuum. There is only the passage of the process involving the change from potency to act – wrought by some agent. There must always be the agent in any motion – an agent with an end or goal in view.

 

The “memory” that the moderns are attributing to the electrons is simply the manifestation of a seeming intelligence in the inanimate elements, but is the set of physical laws created for the elements, as of physics and chemistry – the laws that the empiricists discover over the years, as Boyle’s Law about gases (Boyle died in 1691) and the many laws about the elements and how they can bond, that is their valency. This is obviously what is involved in entanglement. So much for the Soul of the Body of the Universe. It has no soul, but like the plants and animals, although on a much lower, because totally inanimate level in the Hierarchy of Being, it has a material-formal principle – which I suggest is some form of electricity, permeating the Universe, as its Prime Matter and that of all Substantial and accidental forms in the processes of change that govern all things. St. Thomas’ 5^th Way explains how beings with no intellectual soul perform actions that seem to be intelligent. This applies a fortiori to the elements, particles and photons of the inanimate realm of action. Now for those parts of the Body of the Universe that most seem to be substances existing in themselves and not inhering in a larger substance: There are the Earth, Water, certain elements such as gold, and the celestial bodies of the sun, moon and stars. It seems there may be an analogy with the brain, the heart and the other “vital organs”. But though the analogy is crude, at best, there does not seem to be one.

 

Human Body ------Body of the Universe

 

Brain/Intellect – gives light ------- Sun, Moon and Stars

 

Heart – Will – circulation of blood --------- Earth and Waters

 

In both cases, the parts shown are certainly essential for the proper functioning of the Body as One system informed by one Substantial Form in the case of the human body. But is it also the case in the Body of the Universe? Is there but ONE Substantial Form – or are there several?

 

I maintain that the Earth, for example, first of all, is NOT a planet orbiting the sun, but rather, is the center of the Universe, and therefore analogous in some ways ,to the heart in the human body. But while the Earth does not move, as the human heart pumps the blood throughout the human body, the Earth is the place where all the rivers and oceans distribute the vital-for-life waters. And all the rivers flow down to some larger sea and eventually, all the rivers of a continent flow into one of the great oceans or gulfs. The analogy is even cruder with the Brain and the Sun, Moon and Stars. In fact, the analogy ends with that of light. I submit that the tendency to see gold and other elements as substances is due to the fact that objects of great beauty, or value, or use are made with them. But St. Thomas teaches quite emphatically, that all art forms are accidental forms. No matter how beautiful the cathedral’s architecture, or the sculptor’s statue, or the painter’s canvas, or the composer’s symphony – all objects and forms of artistic work are man-made. As such, the efficient cause is a man or woman – a human being acting as a secondary cause.  The first efficient cause is always God the Creator – Who created the materials used by the artist on one of the Days of Creation Week. (See this writer’s Study of Beauty.) All of technology, of which men are so proud today, is but a useful exploitation of the materials and elements God created in the beginning of time. Every so-called “substance” of human invention and artistry can be traced to something that God created on one of the First Six Days of the World.

 

But what of the Earth itself? Does it fulfill the four criteria of a Substantial Form?

 

It could be said to be complete in itself - containing all that is necessary for its earthly perfection. But does it really? Is it really complete and perfect without the Heavens that surround it, especially the Sun and Moon?

 

Is the Earth autonomous as to its existence? Again, it needs the Sun and Moon and Waters to be complete and perfect.

 

But all living things and the Earth also, do possess this requirement: the Earth cannot be subsumed by another being. We must go to the atomic elements, to the sub-atomic particles like the electrons, and to the photons of light to find created beings that can be subsumed by another being.

 

This category rightly belongs to logic and linguistic analysis – (Not necessary here. The 4^th category is that of the grammatical subject.)

Cognition- And Other Issues....Part 1

I have been asked to expand upon the processes of cognition, (knowledge=science), with direct reference to my views of cosmology, or, more specifically, what I call my Catholic cosmology, to distinguish it from that of the evolutionary Big Bang cosmology. First of all, I must beg the indulgence of anyone reading these papers. I am confined, (I won't say imprisoned) to a nursing home - with no way to document my statements, since my library is in storage. And so, because I write from memory, please check what I say with my previous papers and the reference I give there. Some readers may be familiar with the work of Bernard Lonergan. I am not at all conversant with his work, and so, I cannot speak in any way about it. I speak entirely out of the context of such Neo-Scholastics as Father Reginald Garigou-Lagrange, O.P., Brother Benignus, Father Celestine Bittle and Father Charles A. Hart. I am most indebted to the extensive work of lay Thomist historian Etienne Gilson. And finally, last but certainly not least, Dr. James Craig La Driere and Father (Dr.) William Joseph Rooney. Both R.I.P. These latter two professors were the major directors of Graduate programs in English literature at the Catholic Univ.of America in Washington DC, during the 1940's and 1950's, and well into the 1960's - when the proponents of Structuralism, based on the Thomistic principles of Matter and Form, were replaced by the De-Constructuralism of ---I cannot recall his full name - but any account of recent literary criticism will advert to this big change in literary studies world-wide.

I have also been urged recently by someone really more competent than myself when it comes to physics and especially chemistry - to demonstrate the assumed truth of my cosmology. I have just been re-reading my Litany of the Creator, and on page 86 of the handwritten copy, I have this statement: "Ultimately, all beings or physical existing entities, must come to this first Substantial Form, and the Material-Formal Cause of all material being." In this Litany, first written during the Lent and Paschaltide of the year 2010, I was still referring to the Body of the Universe as the Ethereal Substance. This term is cumbersome, but does designate the quintessence of Aristotle, which he termed the aether, anglicized as ether. And Aristotle's ether - I believe - is an essential constituent of the Body of the Universe. It is made up of those particulate entities - formerly recognized as the medium necessary for the operations of ALL physical beings - but invisible and perhaps, in Aristotle's mind, even insensible. And this reveals, indeed, the very point at which we must, of necessity, distinguish between the spiritual and the material. I based my conviction on the importance of this real distinction on the work of Henri Van Laer, a Dutch scientist, who insisted that ALL physical motion is local - because it takes place in the medium, which must also be physical in order to preserve the radical difference between the spiritual beings of God and of the Angels, and the inanimate physical beings of the atoms. There is no action at a distance, that is, there is always some physical contact between the two beings acting and reacting.

Does not the telephone prove this? There is actual, physical and successively, local contact, amounting to immediacy, much like the instantaneous "speed" of light, between the sounds of my voice and the voice of the one at the other end of the phone line, wherever that may be! Back to my quote from the Litany. What I have and had in mind, there is or was to trace the action of any atom or compound to its ultimate source in a Substantial Form, assuming, as I am, that all atomic and molecular structures are accidental forms of the Body of the Universe, which is the Substantial Form in which they necessarily inhere. The Body of the Universe is necessarily the only corporeal or physical Substantial Form that does not depend directly upon another physical being for its very physical life. I do not say existence - because God alone and directly is the Cause of every being's existence. And so it is also with the Body of the Universe. God alone maintains it in existence and in its physical being as a whole, with all of its particles, atoms, photons and larger parts. Here, I think, the analogy with the human body may be helpful.

The Medievals made much of the difference between the celestial bodies and the sub-lunar terrestrial bodies. And here in 1 Corinthians 15:38-41, there is also one of several New Testament confirmations of Genesis 1-5 and the very important distinction and immutability of the substantial forms created during Creation Week - just as narrated in Genesis One. St. Paul says: "and there are bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial. But one is the glory of the celestial and another of the terrestrial. One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars, for star differeth from star in glory. (See Dr. Jason Lisle on this.) So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption - it shall rise in incorruption...." Before these verses, St. Paul says: "....to every seed its proper body. All flesh is not the same flesh: but one is the flesh of men, another of beasts, another of birds, another of fishes...." (1 Cor.15:38-43)

I could not wish for a better verification from Holy Scripture of the radical destination of the substantial forms that God created in the plant seeds and in the flesh of men, of beasts, of birds and of fishes on Days 5 and 6 of Creation Week. And there is also an implicit, or at least, an allowance for the admission that the celestial bodies of the sun, moon and stars are of quite - radically different matter than the bodies of earth and water. There is also confirmation of a point that needs to be emphasized by Catholic scientists. I had occasion to correct a Catholic scientist who was accepting the fusion of hydrogen and helium as a process to make the heat and light of the sun. It is imperative to resist any sort of process where God's Acts of Creation and Making during the first Six Days are concerned. This is not an eccentricity of my Catholic cosmology. It is a most important point of dogmatic truth. When God created Water on Day One, hydrogen and oxygen were present in their proper quantity and ratio. The same is true of hydrogen and helium in the sun. God created these forms in toto. And it was just as necessary for the forms made of the elements in their inanimate state, in Earth, Water, Air and Fire, as it was for the Bombardier Beetle to have the Form in toto before any processes could begin. A great deceit of the evolutionists is to con the public into believing that the “pathways” --- that is, the processes going on during development in the transmission of all substantial forms, is the same as the evolutionists “pathways” in his changing of species due to the work of “natural selection” or mutations. I had occasion to see this deception in action in my analysis of The Evolution Controversy by two professors from Christendom College, and which I had the temerity to entitle – The Resolution of the Evolution Controversy. Please consult it, and be on the lookout for these deceptive “pathways” in action by the Luciferian deceits of evolutionists.

Now please allow me to draw upon the analogy of the Body of the Universe with the human body. Keeping in mind that all analogies “limp” – because there is never a perfect correspondence between forms in the different grades of the hierarchy – but only enough similarity to clarify. It may have been Blessed Hildegard of Bingen who made famous the imagery of Man as the Microcosm, but I believe it was a common theme in the earlier Fathers and Doctors of the Church. And please remember, I have no access to my usual reference books. Recall, first of all, that the Body of the Universe has no soul. The idea of a “world soul” – is Platonic or in the Platonic tradition. It is not Aristotelian or Thomistic. But this immense Body of the Universe, besides having virtually – innumerable – accidental forms in the areas of identifiable and quantifiable structures in each of the Grades of the Hierarchy of Being, also has parts that consist of a unity of particles that are strongly tempting us to label these parts as Substances. In the human body, such parts are the “vital organs” – the brain, heart, kidneys, liver and even the organs of sense, such as eyes, ears, etc. But the criteria of Substantial Form will always prove the “litmus test’ to distinguish. The current debate over brain-death in organ donation is a good example. Let us begin with Cognition and an article from the Summa (ST, I, q.47, a.3). St. Thomas says that only those can assert that many worlds exist – who do not acknowledge any ordaining wisdom, but rather believe in chance, as Democritus did, and who said that this world, besides an infinite number of other worlds, was made from a casual, i.e., concourse of atoms.

But the mind of the normal, honest man sees and affirms as a given, that is, self-evident – and therefore – undemonstrable, that this world is one by the unity of order, whereby some things are ordered to others. But St. Thomas did demonstrate that all things created by God have a relation of order to each other and to God Himself. This is his 4^th Way of proving, that in demonstrating the existence of God from the evidence of the Hierarchical Order of all things. There can be no ORDER without inequality, the differing Grades of Perfection manifest in the World of Nature.