Re Religious
Association with Heretics,
Marital
Relations, Geocentrism, & Etc.
13 August 2009
Dear Mr. X,
Thank you for your email of 21 April 2009, and thank you for
looking closely at The Epistemologic Works. I’m sorry for taking so long
to get back to you. Aside from my many secular & religious duties (family
to support & govern, prayers & sacred studies to pursue, etc.), I have
been much occupied with a very serious rebuttal to the publicly-issued
accusation that an early 20th century Bishop of Rome was a formal
& manifest heretic. This has become a new book, Was Benedict XV an Antipope?, in the B&A section of my website.
In the meantime, given the number of questions you asked and how
serious they are, I wanted to answer them carefully without giving them
short-shrift. (In case you’ve forgotten what you wrote or haven’t
kept a record, I’ve attached it to this email.) Little ‘yes’
or ‘no’ responses didn’t seem to cut it. On the other hand,
should you literally have no spare time to read my responses --- they amount to
a few pages --- or if you truly can’t understand what I’m saying,
then tell me and I’ll be glad to do whatever I can to make things easier
for you. But assuming that’s not the case, then please read them
carefully. I’ve run into people who aren’t willing to spend a few
minutes doing this and they strike me as being impatient, not to mention
know-it-alls who think it’s not worth their time examining something
that, they’re convinced, they couldn’t possibly
be wrong about.
Maybe you do already know everything I’m about to say and
will agree with it; in which case, who doesn’t like finding someone else
who’s on the same ‘wavelength’? Or maybe you’ll find
one or two or more things that you disagree with. In which case, perhaps my
responses will convince you that I’m right. And if a man loves the truth
--- especially truth that can save one’s soul --- who
could rationally argue against that? Or maybe you’ll see where I’m
wrong about something and be able to convince me of the correct position to
take. Again… what rational man who loves the truth could argue with that?
What charitable man in this situation could fail to take the time to help
another to figure out where he’s mistaken, and what he needs to change in
order to save his soul?
Which is why I’m taking the time to answer at
some length. If we agree on everything, we just might be Catholic brothers
(although even then it’d probably take some more effort at communicating
to be sure). If we disagree, the one who’s right has a chance to convince
the other of his error. In either case, the cause of Saving Truth is served or,
at least, not disregarded. Shall we, then, tackle your handful of observations
and eighteen questions?
To start with, you observe that I hold both the baptism &
salvation dogmas. By this I assume you mean that I consider the Sacrament of
Baptism --- and not a mere ‘intention’ or ‘desire’ ---
to be absolutely necessary to enter the Body of Jesus, which is the Roman
Catholic Church. This is correct. I do hold this position. Too, I assume you to
mean that I profess that there is there is absolutely no Salvation outside the
Catholic Church: extra Eccesiam nulla Salus. This is also
correct. This is my position. In fact, it is the denial of this infallible
doctrine that is at the root of the world’s troubles today. People have
never much wanted to admit that the Catholic Religion is the only way to save a
man’s soul; but in the last few centuries more-and-more Catholics came to
deny this dogma, falling out of the Church because of it. This mass betrayal
& willful blindness is the cause of the Great Apostasy, which is what St.
Paul the Apostle foretold by the Holy Ghost in many of his epistles in the
Bible and which is the tragedy that we’re living through right now. (1
Thessalonians 5:1-3, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-11, 1 Timothy
4:1-3, 2 Timothy 3:1-9)
As well, you observe that I say specific abjuration is needed. This
is correct. If a man has been validly baptized --- not the fake kind that some
Protestants dispense, wherein the form is not observed properly (for instance,
saying all of the words first and then dunk into water, after all the
words have been said) --- yet professes false religion, then he must, to enter
(or re-enter, as the case might be) the Catholic Church, repudiate his
religious falsehoods in order to be a member of Jesus’ Ecclesial Body.
You observe that I say there are no Catholic priests. This is
correct. Realize, though, how I do not say that there are no priests at
all, only that, as far as I can tell at this point, there are no Catholic
priests. A man can be validly (truly) ordained as a priest while not practicing
licitly (legally) as a priest. To be an illicit priest is to break the law of
the Church. Professing heresy is one of those things that causes
a validly ordained priest to break the Church’s law. Because if a priest
fails to profess the Catholic Faith whole & undefiled, how can he be
Catholic? Yet if not Catholic, then how can the Catholic Church
allow him to practice within the Church as if he were a Catholic
priest? This makes no sense and would permit heresy to run rampant amongst
those who are real Catholics, destroying the visibility of the Body of Christ,
including eternally murdering the souls who die believing this priest’s
religious lies against the truth of Catholic dogma.
You observe that I do not attend
But then you came to a series of questions for me. I answer them in
the same order that you proffered them:
1.) Do
I believe Pius XII was a true pope (and died a true pope)?
To the best of my ability to know & comprehend, he began as a
true pope in 1939, lost his papacy in 1951 due to public approval of a form of
so-called ‘birth control’ (avoidance of children) within marriage,
and died an antipope in 1958.
There are some who think he was an antipope from the start. I have not
seen evidence yet, or logic, that demands this to be so. There are others who,
near as I can tell, suppose him to have held the papacy till 1958. This seems
dubious to me.
Should you wonder what criteria I use to determine this sort of
thing, you can get a good idea by reading the aforementioned book, Was Benedict XV an Antipope? Or
should you think differently from me about Pius the Twelfth and claim to be
Roman Catholic (which I presume you claim to be), then you are welcome to send
me evidence & logic which might persuade me to your position.
2.) Do
I believe canonizations are infallible?
No, I do not… no more than I believe papal elections to be
infallible. That is to say, that there are popes on earth and that there
are saints in Heaven are matters of irreformable
dogma. Yet as far as exactly which individual Catholic may actually be
a pope on earth or may actually be a saint in Heaven is a matter of hard
evidence & solid logic. That this is so when it comes to canonizations is
simple to see. For how is it the Church can forbid the veneration of a
purported saint when later evidence & logic shows the person to have been
unworthy of the honor or, at least, not certainly worth the honor? This would
be impossible if a canonization was infallible and hence irreformable!
3.) Do
I believe Catholics can reject canonizations if the evidence shows the person
was a heretic or immoral?
To be sure. I would only caution Catholics
not to go haywire and behave like Protestants. During the Great Apostasy when a
functioning hierarchy is temporarily absent, members of Jesus’ Catholic
Body --- layman though he be --- might have to examine
the evidence & reasoning very carefully to decide if a purported saint was
elevated mistakenly, or elevated wickedly to the altar. The key word is carefully.
This takes patience and it demands that a man lay
aside his prejudice in the matter to judge impartially. Too, Catholics in such
a situation must
examine all of the evidence, for both sides.
4.) Do
I believe one may, when in danger of death, receive sacraments from notoriously
heretical priests?
Absolutely not! I cannot stress this enough. Catholics are
forbidden to worship with notorious & pertinacious rebels against the
Catholic Faith. Therefore, how could a Roman Catholic man think it acceptable
to receive the sacraments from such a priest? It gets confusing for some
people, however, due to Benedict XV being, at a bare minimum in my opinion, a
bad & careless pope. During his reign a newly organized system of Canon Law
was issued in 1917. This Canon Law, while admirable in many ways, holds several
bad laws, one of which is permission for Catholics, in danger of imminent
death, to receive the last rites from a heretical or schismatic priest. This
was a novelty and never before permitted till around this point in time,
whereupon the novelty was then enshrined in the 1917 Code of Canon Law. To be
fair to Benedict XV, perhaps he did not know that this and other bad laws were
hidden in the Canon Law of 1917. But if not, he would seem to have been
careless. On the other hand, the work on the 1917 Canon Law commenced, if
I’ve got my facts straight, prior to the beginning of
Benedict’s reign in 1914. As a result, Pius the Tenth may have much to
bear of the blame.
Whatever the case, while bad canon law may mislead
many Catholics innocently, a Catholic cannot be excused completely for being
misled. Just the sheer fact that some have recognized various canon laws
to be bad --- and have demonstrated with good logic, founded in infallible dogmas
or perpetual practices, that it is so --- is proof that men are not entirely
excusable, especially now that the knowledge of these laws’ badness is
available for anyone of reasonable intelligence to discover.
Nevertheless, in the case of participating regularly in Mass or
going to the confessional booth, there is not even the rather lousy
justification of ‘danger of imminent death’. So how can a Catholic
possibly conclude that receiving the Eucharist or Penance is permissible from
the hands of a notoriously & pertinaciously heretical priest?
5.) Do
I believe that Catholics may passively attend non-Catholic funerals, weddings
& other ceremonies?
No, I do not.
I was not alive in the 1950s or earlier, so I cannot speak from
eyewitness. Nor have I been Catholic for more than twelve years.
Notwithstanding, I have spoken at length with many who were alive back
then, and who did claim to practice the Catholic Faith at that time. And
from their testimony I can glean that priests in the U.S. of A. were apparently
telling their flocks that they could ‘passively attend’ such
ceremonies if there was an ‘important’ social, business or
political reason for doing so.
This seems to me to be diabolic. Catholics from earliest centuries
were forbidden to attend the ceremonies of false religion for
whatever reason, period. This is because the private intent of your heart
(maybe you don’t believe in the false religion and don’t want to
condone it publicly) is nonetheless belied by your public appearance at this
ceremony of the false religion, leading anyone who witnesses your
attendance to conclude, naturally, that you must condone it. Yet if a
Catholic were to protest that he could attend such a ceremony while making it
utterly & publicly plain that he disapproves of --- and even condemns ---
this false religion, then what’s the difference between doing this and
simply going all the way and not attending? What have you to
‘lose’ that you haven’t ‘lost’ already by making
your disapproval plain & public?
The conclusion is clear. Catholics are forbidden both by Divine
& Ecclesial Law from willingly & knowingly participating in the
services or ceremonies of false religions. The idea of ‘passive’
attendance is a ruse. One’s presence itself at the ceremony or service is
an active thing, a deed that the Catholic must actively pursue for it to be
accomplished. Yet to do so is to break the First Commandment, which states that
a man is to have no false gods or false religions in place of the True God
& His One True Religion.
Period.
6.) Do
I reject the secrets of La Salette?
I assume you to mean, by the ‘secrets’ of La Salette, that particular message & warning of the
Blessed Virgin later made public, with the approval of her local bishop, by
Melanie (one of the two seers of the apparition) in 1879. If this is true, then
my answer is this:
No, I do not reject the secrets of La Salette.
People have tried to say that Melanie was delusional, forgetful or
influenced by ‘apocalyptic’ literature. I find these reasons themselves
to be delusional & ignorant --- not backed up by hard evidence or reliable
eyewitness testimony --- and thus curiously plucked out of thin air by armchair
‘psychologists’ or really bad ‘historians’. Or they
have slandered her with being filled with grandiose dreams or unable to succeed
at a religious vocation. Now, these latter accusations may be true, yet how is
one to know without a careful, studious & patient investigation of her
life? And how is one to rightly judge her lack of ‘success’ at a
religious vocation, even given that the charge is true, without knowing
everything behind the lack of ‘success’? Maybe there has been such
an investigation and maybe it is available for the public to examine, but I
have never yet found such a thing. Hence, I must suspend judgment in the matter
in the meantime.
Or people say that the
The Great Apostasy, that’s what. It’s obvious that
Catholics are in an emergency situation where the hierarchy is non-existent and
not functioning. Ergo, one must look at Melanie’s secret anew with
unbiased eyes even if her secret was rightly & legitimately suppressed by
the
This cannot be explained by chance or luck. And those who first
discounted her at the end of the 19th century as a well-meaning
‘lunatic’ overly influenced by ‘apocalyptic’ literature
are themselves the lunatics were they able to be alive today while tossing out
the same slander that they dished out back then.
For either Melanie’s prophetic foresight is of the Devil or
it is of the Triune Catholic God. There is no in-between. And yet I find no
heresy in her secret. Therefore --- and particularly given that the Apparition
of La Salette was approved by the Church --- I must
conclude that her secret comes from Heaven, from the lips of the Celestial
Queen Herself.
7.) Do
I believe it is permissible to use NFP or the Rhythm Method?
As you may surmise from what I said above about Pius XII, no, I do
not. It is not natural for a fertile married couple to avoid bearing fruit in
the womb of a wife. No matter what the ‘method’, if the purpose of
the method is to avoid having children, then the purpose confounds the design
for Holy Matrimony, which is, under normal conditions, to procreate in the
Image of God and raise up these children in the
Catholic Religion.
8.) Do
I believe it is permissible for married couples to engage in [perverted &
shameful acts during marital intimacy]?
Absolutely not. These things defeat the purpose
of Holy Matrimony. The purpose of a man & woman coming together as one
flesh is for the man to plant his seed within the womb of his wife so that her
womb might bear fruit, which fruit is in the Invaluable Image of God Almighty
in the form of a child, a mere human being.
End of sentence.
9.) Do
I believe it is permissible for spouses to engage in [marital intimacy] solely
for pleasure?
No, I do not. It is tolerable in God’s Sight --- and the
Church has never, to my knowledge, officially taught otherwise --- for a man
& his wife to enjoy the carnal pleasure that comes along with the act of
marital intimacy. Howsobeit, there is a huge difference between enjoying this
tolerable pleasure as a result of marital intimacy for the primary sake
of procreating children and coveting this carnal pleasure as the
sole purpose of coming together in marital intimacy.
The former is permissible. The latter is mortal sin of impurity and
leads to further sins of murder & perversion, as well as even more
unspeakably hideous crimes against nature.
10.) Do I believe
it is permissible, within marriage, to seek [carnal] pleasure?
It depends on what you mean by “pleasure”. If the
pleasure of the flesh during marital intimacy is subordinate to --- i.e., in
subjection to --- the primary purpose of the husband planting his seed within
the womb of his wife, neither frustrating this primary purpose nor wasting the
effort made on behalf of fulfilling this primary purpose, then the carnal
pleasure is probably permissible. If, though, the pleasure of the flesh during
marital intimacy overrides the primary purpose of the husband planting his seed
within the womb of his wife, causing the purpose to be subverted or the effort
made on behalf of fulfilling the purpose to be wasted, then it is almost
certainly forbidden. Impure & perverted acts of intimacy do not
uphold the primary purpose of Holy Matrimony, which is to bear the fruit of
children, or they wantonly waste the efforts made by husband & wife to
accomplish this primary purpose of bearing children.
There are things which are able to go either way. For instance,
kissing is permissible since it leads naturally to the primary act of marital
intimacy and is symbolic of the union of the man & wife into one flesh,
representing the deeper mystery of Christ & His Holy Church. However, if
the kissing becomes excessive --- either of endless duration or of beast-like
passion --- then a Catholic must ask himself if he rules over the passions of
his flesh or if, instead, the passions of his flesh rule over him. For as any man can see, the passions of his unruly flesh are not
exclusive to his wife. That is to say, his carnal passions do not
typically become aroused only for the person of his wife; they are able to be
aroused by any beautiful & alluring woman, whether or not that woman is his
wife! Hence, if he is so ruled by his carnal passions that he indulges, for
example, excessive kissing --- either of endless duration or of beast-like
expression in its passion --- then what in the world makes him think that he
will be able to control this fleshly passion in the presence of any woman other
than his wife? At the very least, such an impure man will give himself
over, in the privacy of his mind, to impure thoughts about another woman who
attracts him, which is the mortal sin of adultery.
This is what I mean by ‘able to go either way’. It is
something the man & his wife themselves must judge rightly & govern
personally. There is almost no circumstance where another, even an authority,
could impose himself and know the facts well enough to dictate to the couple
that they are crossing that perilous line. The closest person to be able to do
this rightly would be a spiritual director, i.e., a priest to whom the man
& his wife confess regularly over the years. Yet Catholics are without such
an aid in these times. Ergo, a Catholic man & his Catholic wife must
mortify their flesh and seek Heaven’s Will in earnest prayer, avidly
seeking the wisdom necessary to distinguish between right & wrong in these
cases. Above all, be humble and willing to acknowledge that one’s
self is utterly sinful in God’s Sight, and that without His Mercy &
Grace, all men --- even Catholics --- are doomed to die forever. Such humility
wins from God His assistance toward those who are seeking it in such matters,
striving to save their immortal souls, which is only possible within the
confines of the Roman Catholic Church.
11.) Do I believe
that unbaptized infants suffer hellfire?
It would seem so. The Council of Florence, if I am not mistaken and
I am comprehending its words correctly, appears to
directly imply so. On the other hand, Church leaders have made statements to
the effect that there is a difference between the punishment of loss (no
beatific vision, depriving the lost soul of God’s Presence forever) and
the punishment of sense (fire that burns & tortures). Consequently, if an
unbaptized child is so young that he dies without committing by his own act
any sin at all --- not even venial --- then one can understand why some have
concluded that the punishment for them must be the loss of the beatific vision
alone. The original sin into which he is conceived is mortal, yet it is by
the act of another… not his own deed. He did not commit
original sin himself, he merely inherited it.
The thing to remember is that the loss of the beatific vision is greater
by far than the torture of fire itself. I know this sounds ridiculous
to the worldly mind, but it is true nonetheless. All of the holy saints, of
whom I am aware, say that it is so. Thus, even if an unbaptized child suffers
nothing except this, then he suffers more horrendously than anything we can
usually imagine on this earth. All the same, fire is certainly not ruled out.
Some saints have held this position, that unbaptized babes suffer the fire of
Hell, too. If you, Mr. X, have compelling evidence & logic that shows
unbaptized babes must indeed suffer fire no matter what, then please send this
my way. I would be extremely interested.
12.) Do I believe
that the unbaptized are naturally happy and united to God?
You probably already know my answer to this based on what I said
above:
No, the unbaptized babe (for this is what I presume you to mean) cannot
be ‘naturally happy’ or united to God. Absolutely
no way. Nor can any unbaptized soul be ‘naturally happy’ or
united to God. It is positively impossible in the hereafter.
13.) Do I believe
Jews are guilty of deicide?
Yes, they are. No individual Jew alive today, or alive after
Jesus’ Death but before today, can bear a personal guilt for the Crucifixion,
nor could the individual Jew at the time not involved in His Crucifixion bear
personal guilt, yet there is such a thing as collective guilt. That is to say,
the Jews collectively murdered Christ upon the Cross. And unless a Jewish man
converts to the Roman Catholic Church, then he bears, in conjunction with his
people by inherited blood (and, truly, by virtue of Jesus’ Blood being
upon his head!), the guilt of deicide due to this collective responsibility of
the Jews. This is a divine principle.
Should Jews protest this (and they do), then they should ask why
they expected Germans to pay, as a nation, reparations for the so-called
‘Holocaust’ after World War II when not even they dare to accuse
the vast majority of German individuals of personally jailing or killing a Jew
during World War II. What is this if not an acknowledgement of the principle
of collective guilt of an entire people? For whether or not someone
chooses to believe in a purported ‘Holocaust’, why would Jews
expect all Germans as a nation to pay them back for their
suffering when, in fact, most Germans did not imprison or execute
a Jew personally?
14.) Do I believe
Mary is Co-Redemptrix?
Yes, I do. If I have my facts straight, no pope has ever solemnly
affirmed that it is so. Hence, a Catholic could refuse to use this term and not
commit heresy or mortal sin in doing so. Nevertheless, I don’t think it
wise to take such a position. Theologically speaking, most, if not all, of the
rational objections to such a title have been soundly rejoindered.
In simple terms, calling the Blessed Ever-Virgin Mary the Co-Redemptrix is really no different than stating, as a
Catholic, “Ad Jesum per Mariam.”
(“To Jesus through Mary.”) No real
Catholic by saying She is the Co-Redemptrix
intends to equate Her to Her Son, as if She is equal to Him. He is the One
Mediator between God & men; She is simply the
Greatest Sub-Mediator between He & men.
Understood thusly, there is nothing wrong with the title of Co-Redemptrix. It is proper to Her,
and only fitting that She be honored as such. How glorious is the Queen of
Highest Heaven!
[WEBMASTER’S NOTE: The
term ‘Co-Redemptress’ --- or ‘Co-Redemptrix’
--- is defended at much greater, though still modest, length in the webpage
entitled
The Term ‘Co-Redemptress’
for the Blessed Virgin Mary Is Neither Heretical Nor Scandalous to the Catholic
Faith. You may link directly to this webpage via the title just given, or
go to the Letters & Admonishments section where all titles are listed
together, including this one. Should you have doubts about this title for the
Virgin Mary, dear reader, or if you oppose it violently, then you are morally obligated to read
this much more detailed & powerful defense on behalf of Her God-Given
Celestial Privileges.]
15.) Do I believe
God created the world in 6 days?
Yes, I do. Precisely speaking, a Catholic does not now --- at this
point in time --- have to believe that the days spoken of in Genesis are
24-hour days, or even days of a little lesser or greater duration (there is at
least one early Church Father, apparently, who thought the days of creation
represented eras of long duration). Where a Catholic crosses the line into
heresy, however, is to dare to say (or even think privately!) that God did not
make His creatures, and especially human beings, according to a purposeful
design. To wit, any kind of notion based on random chance or chaos, wherein
creation & creatures ‘evolved’ into what they are out of
disorder and via an ultimate lack of intelligent direction.
16.) Do I believe
God created Adam from the dust of the earth, and Eve from Adam’s rib?
Yes, I do. The first (Adam from dust) is beyond contesting. Eve
from St. Adam’s rib could be taken to be a ‘metaphor’ for
Adam’s side, near his heart, if a Catholic insisted on seeing it this
way, but there is absolutely no reason why it couldn’t be that God
formed St. Eve literally from Adam’s rib. He’s God, Who made
everything out of nothing, so what’s the big problem with Him forming
woman from the rib?
Nothing at all. Only foolish prejudice would
demand otherwise.
17.) Do I believe
in Copernicanism or Geocentrism?
Geocentrism. Or, to be really exact, Geocentricity (or, if
you prefer, Tychonian Geocentrism). Classic Geocentrism posits that everything in the heavens rotates
around the earth in a simple circle. Tychonian Geocentrism
posits that everything in the heavens rotates around the sun, which in turn
rotates around the earth. (There is a logical reason for this distinction,
which I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say, though, that in either
case, everything in the heavens goes ultimately around the earth, not
the earth rotating around its own axis.)
This is not a holy dogma of the Catholic Church, although it ought
to be in my opinion. In other words, since the Church has not infallibly
defined the matter yet, then Catholics can choose to think that the earth is
not physically at the center of creation. When first grappling with this notion
at the time of Galileo, the beef of Catholic leaders with the new idea was not
that it opposed an infallible doctrine of the Church, but that it seemed to
contradict the statements of Sacred Scripture and the common consensus of
all men since ancient times, not just the widespread sentiment of Catholics. It
was still allowed to be proposed as a system for convenient calculation of the
mathematics involved in celestial mechanics. That is to say, if it simplified
calculations for finding the position of, say, Venus in the night sky, then the
leaders of the Church had no problem with the Copernican system being used as
such --- provided it wasn’t presented as a proven certainty. And, in
fact, Galileo’s much ballyhooed recanting amounted to exactly that: that
he pulled back from presenting it in his book or writings as a certainty and
merely proposed it as a convenient means of calculating the movement of the
heavenly bodies in the skies.
Later, when heliocentrism had won the
battle for hearts & minds by the 19th century, even amongst
Catholics, the leadership of the Church backed away from not letting it be
taught as a certainty, the thinking being that it had been ‘proven’
beyond reasonable doubt. This was not the case since the logic used to ‘prove’
heliocentrism is poor logic in many cases, nonetheless, this is what transpired. Which was
unfortunate, because the enemies of the Church then wielded this capitulation,
upon the part of the world as a whole and on the part of Catholics, too, against
the Catholic Church, making it look like the Church had infallibly
condemned heliocentrism (which they hadn’t) and
had suppressed heliocentrism entirely (which they
didn’t, instead allowing Catholics to entertain heliocentrism
as a convenient system for celestial calculations all over the place). This, of
course, then paved the way for acceptance of Darwinism amongst academia, those
most disposed by human pride to fight against the Roman Catholic Church &
Her Infallible Dogmas.
The point is, X, if you or another were to try to say that a
Catholic is automatically a formal heretic by dint of believing in Copernicanism, then the Church has not had a pope since at
least the early 1800s. Because it is plain that every pope
since then, if not even earlier in the 1700s, has accepted heliocentrism
as a physically proven fact. But if those who call themselves Catholic
are not willing to go this far, then they must concede --- especially in light
of the fact that the Church never infallibly condemned Copernicanism
(leastwise, not that I have been able to tell thus far) or solemnly defined
some form of Geocentrism as an infallible truth ---
that Catholics are not bound as of yet by the infallible teaching of the Church
to reject heliocentrism & embrace its opposite.
The danger, though, is still there. Accepting Copernicus’
theory as a fact is the first step on a road that eventually can lead to
heresy. A Catholic needn’t end up taking this road all the way; but given
that he takes the first step, he is that much closer to taking the rest of the
steps. Which is what, naturally, Catholics of worldly education by the 19th
century were doing, taking those perilous steps the rest of the way. Now that
we are in the Great Apostasy, it is a little bit easier to see how this happened
and where the fatal flaws in our forefathers’ thinking lay. Therefore, if
truly Catholic, then a thinking man’s job is clear today… to expose
those fatal flaws, undo those perilous steps, and take away obstacles that keep
modern minds from leaving the errors that they so naively believe when it comes
to the movement of the heavens.
18.) Do I believe
the world could have always existed?
No. The world was created out of nothing --- ex nihilo --- by the Almighty Triune Catholic God. Ergo, if
created out of nothing, then there was a beginning. And if a beginning, then
there was a ‘time’ when the world did not exist.
Case closed.
To posit that the world has always existed is to posit, sooner or
later, pantheism. Or, if not pantheism outright, then a lesser form of
pantheism like monism. There is no way around it.
Either God is eternal or the world is eternal. Rationally speaking, eternity is
inescapable. To assume that everything which exists, whether God or
world, began suddenly at a certain point of ‘time’ is absurd, like
picking fruit out of nothing or solid objects out of thin air. Only an Eternal
God can pick fruit out of nothing since He is the primal & ultimate cause
of all that exists, there being nothing ‘before’ Him
since He is Eternal and nothing can come before Eternity, by logical
definition. What is even more ridiculous, however, logically speaking, is to
presume an eternal world, which is a world without a God. Because how can
something that is not conscious pick anything at all? Yet if a man were to
claim that the world is conscious, then what is the difference
between this and God? Except that in this conception of things, his
‘god’ makes everything out of himself and not out of nothing. Although even this philosophical limitation is
under attack since, in the latest quantum mechanical hypothesizing of so-called
‘scientists’, the world does create out of nothing via
‘virtual particles’ that blip into existence for no apparent reason
at all. When scholarly yet modernistic minds get the two together
(self-conscious world plus creation out-of-nothing), then all Hell breaks
loose.
Literally.
Well, my dear sir, I hope this answers your questions about me
adequately. If you are satisfied with what I have said, then please let me know
and allow me the chance, if you would, to question you, too. Or, if you have a
serious difficulty with something I have said, then please calmly explain your
concern and I will do my best to think it through, seeing if you might be
right. Meanwhile, be you truly Catholic, then I pray for the graces that you
might work out your salvation with fear & trembling, dying a good death in
the Mercy of Christ and with the Intercession of His Blessed Mother. Or, if you
are not truly Catholic, then I beg for the graces that you will search for,
find, acknowledge & profess all of the core dogmas of
Yours sincerely in the Charity of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus &
Mary,
-Paul
Doughton
P.S.: Thank you for the thoughtfulness of your
words, both in terms of courtesy expressed and in terms of apologizing for the
explicitness of some of your questions. I appreciate this kindness.
+
+ +
Pilate’s
query met:
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