BIG C CATHOLICS

Optional Memorial - December 23rd  Outward appearances of failure do not always indicate an interior lack of success. In fact, precisely the opposite can be true, as it was in the case of Saint John of Kanty (otherwise known as John Kanty or John Cantius.) This patron saint of both Poland and Lithuania could also have been designated the patron of frustration and disappointment, had he been so disposed to those things and less resolute. John of Kanty was born in Oswiecim, Poland, in 1390, and at first, he appeared destined for a life of renown and accomplishment. Though raised and initially educated in a rural setting, the future saint took quickly to life in the bustling city of Krakow, becoming a brilliant scholar at the university there. A student of philosophy and theology, he earned his doctoral degree, was ordained a priest, and named professor of theology at the very institution he had graduated from. John was popular with his students, so much so that some of his col

Isn't human suffering proof that a just, all-powerful God must not exist? On the contrary, says Boston College Professor of Philosophy Dr. Peter Kreeft. How can "suffering" exist without an objective standard against which to judge it? Absent a standard, there is no justice. If there is no justice, there is no injustice. And if there is no injustice, there is no suffering. On the other hand, if a true, objective standard of justice exists, [which it does] God exists. In five minutes, learn more. From the transcript: "All good people are appalled by the sufferings of the innocent. When an innocent person is struck by a painful disease, or tortured or murdered, we naturally feel sadness, helplessness, and often rage. Many people have claimed that such suffering is a proof that God does not exist. Their argument goes like this: God is all good and all powerful. Such a God would not permit unnecessary suffering. Yet, we constantly observe unjust suffering. Th

On November 15th, the Church celebrates the optional memorial of Saint Albert the Great. The son of a German nobleman, he was studying at Padua when the Master General of the Dominicans, Jordan of Saxony, succeeded in attracting him to that Order. He was to become one of the Dominicans' greatest glories. After taking his degrees at the University of Paris, he taught philosophy and theology at Paris and then in Cologne. Saint Thomas Aquinas was among his pupils. St. Albert, the "light of Germany," called the Great because of his encyclopedic knowledge, was born in 1193 at Lauingen, Donau. He joined the newly-founded Order of Preachers in 1223. Soon he was sent to Germany where he taught in various cities. In 1248 he received the honor of Master in Sacred Theology at Paris. Throngs attended his lectures, drawn by his piety and towering intellect. In 1254, Albert was chosen provincial of his Order in Germany. For a time, he lived at the court of Pope Alexander II, who

(In 2017, this feast is superseded by the Sunday liturgy.) September 10th, is traditionally the feast of Saint Thomas of Villanova (1488-1555), the 16th century Spanish Augustinian friar, theologian and bishop. Given his habits and proclivities, some thought him "eccentric," despite his brilliance and the universal praise of his students and colleagues. Thomas’ intellectual legacy is marked by his insistence that learning be inspired by the desire for God. From his parents, he inherited a special love for the poor and deep compassion. Thomas García was born the son of a miller in Fuenllana, a village near Villanova in Spain. From a young age, he exhibited a great proclivity for personal piety and scholarship. His mother’s example of charity toward the poor inspired in him a lifelong mission to aid the needy. He studied at the University of Alcalá where he received his master’s degree in 1509, and a doctorate shortly thereafter. In 1512, he became a professor of phil

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine Logos, is the embodiment of truth, beauty, and goodness. Aristotle's insight is but a dim reflection of God's perfect wisdom and infinite love. (A version of this article was originally published in July 2016.) ____________________________________________ The brilliant Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his treatise on ethical conduct, Nicomachean Ethics , discusses the "Golden Mean." It is a way of acting that enables us to live according to our ideal nature, improve our character, and deal effectively with life's hardships while striving for the good of all. The golden mean is the desired middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. For example, to Aristotle, courage is a virtue, which if taken to its extreme is recklessness, and, in absence or insufficiency, is cowardice. Aristotle's ethics is practical and decidedly teleological. He believed the end of human life is happiness (G

WARNING :  Illogic Alert!  If you value logical, empirically based argumentation, the dignity of persons as made in the image of God, or just plain human decency, the following video will offend you in multiple ways. Viewer discretion is advised. Philosophy Time is a social media Q & A program aimed at Millennials covering everything from the nature of metaphor to the intricacies of how our society defines beauty. Here Prof. Liz Harman of Princeton University discusses the ethics of abortion with actor and director James Franco and Eliot Michaelson, a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at King’s College London. It is painful to watch. Prof. Harman employs circular reasoning, a logical fallacy in which one begins with what they are trying to end with - i.e., her premises and conclusion appear to be the same or nearly indistinguishable. Moreover, if you were to use the word "slave" instead of "fetus" in the professor's torchered argument, people

August 9th, is the feast of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. A most brilliant philosopher, she stopped believing in God when she was fourteen. Edith Stein was so captivated by reading the autobiography of Teresa of Avila; she began a spiritual journey that led to her Baptism in 1922. Twelve years later she imitated Teresa by becoming a Carmelite, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Born into a prominent Jewish family in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), Edith abandoned Judaism in her teens. As a student at the University of Gottingen, she became fascinated by phenomenology, an approach to philosophy. Excelling as a protege of Edmund Husserl, one of the leading phenomenologists, Edith earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1916. She continued as a university teacher until 1922 when she moved to a Dominican school in Speyer; her appointment as lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich ended under pressure from the Nazis. After living in the Cologne Carmel (1934-19

By Father Thomas Mattison Galileo created a new hierarchy of truths. Tradition, authority, Scripture, philosophy, theology, all the well-known sources of truth, goodness and beauty were now to be subjected to one single new criterion – scientific proof. Thus, did the good become the useful; the true, the practical; and the beautiful, the appealing. Modern science has challenged Galileo’s deductions, but modern education and, certainly, the education that many of us received, is still frozen in the icy grip of the 16th century. Which brings me to yoga. A world and culture that values nothing but its own material-based experiences cares nothing for the claims of religion or the origins of classical spiritualities and the views of God and man that underlie them. Thus, any eighth grader will tell you that he likes this part of this religion but another part of another; and the fundamental incompatibility of the religions that he has dismembered and reassembled into what he calls

It is ironic, perhaps, that it was the witness of the martyrs that helped inspire the conversion of St. Justin from paganism to the Christian faith; it was because he clung to and defended that faith that his own life would end in martyrdom in 165. Though his exact birthdate is unknown, scholars surmise that he was born into a pagan family sometime around the year 100. As a young man, he was drawn to the study of philosophy as a way of discovering truth, and he spent a great deal of time reading and contemplating the works of Plato. Still, those works did not satisfy his desire to understand the basic questions he was asking about life. It was a chance meeting on a beach that led him to the answers he was seeking. There he fell into conversation with an old man who shared with him the message of Jesus Christ. This, coupled with the witness of the Christian martyrs, convinced him that the truths he sought could be found, not in the ethereal speculations of philosophy alone, but i

According to Aristotle, man's thought entails three types of inquiry. (There may be others but none are more important.) They are making, doing, and knowing. "making" is thinking about how to make things and the actual making of those things. Aristotle calls this "productive" thinking because it is about the production of things. A second type of thinking "doing," involves how we are to act, what is right and what is wrong, vice and virtue, and how we ought to live. Aristotle calls this "practical" thinking because it concerns itself with moral choices. The third kind of thinking Aristotle highlights is "knowing" Aristotle calls this "theoretical" thinking - acquiring knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The object of productive thinking is making something that is beautiful or, at the very least, something that works well. The object of practical thinking is virtue or goodness. The object of theoretical thinking is

Tradition holds that the medieval saint Thomas Aquinas levitated and had visions of our Lord. He was greatly concerned with explaining the mind of God, and he continues to matter because he helps us with a problem which still confounds us today; how we can reconcile religion with science and faith with reason. Aquinas’ monumental contribution was to teach Western civilization that any person could have access to great truths whenever they made use of God's gift of reason. Aquinas broke a log jam in Christian thinking over the question of how non-Christians could have both wisdom and at the same time no interest in or even knowledge of Jesus. Aquinas universalized intelligence. He opened the Christian mind to the insights of all of humanity from across the ages and the continents. The modern world insofar as it insists that good ideas can come from any quarter regardless of creed or background remains hugely in Aquinas’ debt. As a young seminarian, Aquinas went to study at th

The Adoration of the Shepherds , Mattia Preti, c. 1660. George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, writes in his weekly column The Catholic Difference on December 21, 2016 about a long conversation he had with then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger weeks after 9/11. Ratzinger's observations about Christianity in Europe, moral relativism, and the dangers posed by radicalized Islamists have only grow more salient with time. In concluding, Weigel brilliantly summarizes the state of Western culture as one of loneliness, despair and alienation. Fortunately, for the Christian, the way, the truth and the life is not some abstract or sentimental aspiration. It is a person, Jesus Christ, whose birth is the reason we celebrate Christmas. Weigel writes: "Christmas reminds us what Christians have to say to this pervasive loneliness. We say 'God is with us,' as throughout the Christmas season we celebrate the divine answer to the Advent ple

December 23rd, the Church celebrates the optional memorial of St. John Cantius, (c. 1390 – 1473) otherwise called John of Kanty or John Kanty, the 15th century Polish priest and theologian whose intellectual brilliance was matched only by his personal piety and generosity toward the poor. A university professor of renown, he was sent to minister as a parish priest in a small rural Church. His parishioners, like his students held him in high regard. He is known for his honesty and humility. Cantius made numerous trips to the Holy Land and Rome, journeying by foot. According to tradition, on one pilgrimage, he was robbed. The robbers asked if he had any additional possessions. The future saint answered "No." Later, Cantius realized he had gold coins sewn into his garment. Tracking down the robbers, he presented the coins with apologies. Ashamed of their theft and astonished at his honesty, the robbers returned all they had stolen to Cantius. So great was his witness, that c

Consider the following: Our original state of grace was forfeited when our first parents rejected God's love in favor of the Devil's lies. God loves us so much that even if you were the only person to have ever lived, Christ would have suffered and died just for you. We cannot deny God's love, but we can deny, ignore and perpetuate our own sinfulness. The former is inscrutable. The later, undeniable. G. K. Chesterton (1874-1836) and C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) were not collegial contemporaries save for a brief period when their respective philosophies illuminated (to varying degrees) the firmament of modern Christian apologetics. Reputedly, when  The Times  (of London) sent out an inquiry to famous authors inquiring, "What is wrong with the world today?", Chesterton honestly replied: Dear Sirs, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton Regarding our fallen nature and propensity to sin, C. S. Lewis was equally candid. His essay. " The problem with X... " discu

A fallacy is a violation of logical principle disguised under an appearance of truth and validity. This explanation of false logic (below) is from  The Nizkor Project's page featuring 42 common logical fallacies: ______________________________________________ To understand what a fallacy is, one must understand what an argument is. An argument consists of one or more premises and a conclusion. A premise is a statement (a sentence that is either true or false) offered in support of the claim being made, which is the conclusion (also a sentence that is either true or false). There are two main types of arguments: deductive and inductive. A deductive argument is an argument such that the premises provide (or appear to provide) complete support for the conclusion. An inductive argument is an argument such that the premises provide (or appear to provide) some degree of support (but less than complete support) for the conclusion. If the premises actually provide the required deg

August 9th, is the Optional Memorial of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Edith Stein was born, October 12, 1891, in Breslau, Germany to Jewish parents. The date of her birth coincided with the celebration of Yom Kippur, the Jewish "day of atonement." The Torah states that Yom Kippur was the only time the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies and call on God's name to offer sacrifice for the people's sins. Providentially, on Easter Sunday, April 21, 1935, upon making her profession of vows as a Carmelite nun, Edith received the name "Sister Teresia Benedicta ac Cruce", literally, "Sister Teresa, blessed by the Cross". She believed God's mission for her was to suffer in atonement for man's sins. The future saint wrote: "I felt that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take [it] upon themselves on everybody's behalf," and, "to intercede with God for everyone," especially the Jewish people with who

Note: The philosophical concepts below have been greatly summarized. Christ, the Divine Logos, is the embodiment of truth, beauty and goodness. Aristotle's insight is but a reflection of the perfect knowledge and wisdom of God. The brilliant Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his treatise on ethical conduct, Nicomachean Ethics , discusses the "Golden Mean." It is a way of acting that enables us to live according to our ideal nature, improve our character, and deal effectively with life's hardships while striving for the good of all. The golden mean is the desired middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. For example, to Aristotle, courage is a virtue, which if taken to extreme is recklessness, and, in deficiency, is cowardice. Aristotle's ethics is practical and decidedly teleological. He believed the end of human life is happiness (Greek: eudaimonia ). Today, happiness is understood as the emotional state of joy, cont

The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, is considered the central figure of modern philosophy. Much like Descartes, Kant, was a pious man whose intentions seemed noble. The primary aim of his philosophical efforts was to restore human dignity to its rightful place in a world that increasingly worshipped science. Kant described his philosophy as "clearing away the pretensions of reason to make room for faith". His most important work, The Critique of Pure Reason , was dry, impenetrable and immensely influential in its assertion that reason is the source of morality (not God). In his Critique , Kant states: The conviction [of faith] is not a logical but a moral certainty; and because it rests on subjective bases (of the moral attitude), I must not even say, It is morally certain that there is a God, etc., but I must say, I am morally certain, etc. Kant’s philosophy allows individuals to choose their own visions for morality, since moral truth (according to Kant) cannot be a

(Dr. Peter Kreeft is a renowned Catholic apologists who teaches philosophy at Boston College. This is his compilation of twenty arguments for the existence of God. I have summarized the arguments below. They can be read in their entirety here .) 1. The Argument from Change  Briefly, if there is nothing outside the material universe, then there is nothing that can cause the universe to change. But it does change. Therefore there must be something in addition to the material universe. But the universe is the sum total of all matter, space and time. These three things depend on each other. Therefore this being outside the universe is outside matter, space and time. It is not a changing thing; it is the unchanging Source of change. 2. The Argument from Efficient Causality Even as you read this, you are dependent on other things; you could not, right now, exist without them. Suppose there are seven such things. If these seven things did not exist, neither would you. Now suppose t

Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God (Jn 17:3). What are the ways? In how many different ways can we know God, and thus know eternal life? When I take an inventory, I find twelve. The final, complete, definitive way, of course, is Christ, God himself in human flesh. His church is his body, so we know God also through the church. The Scriptures are the church's book. This book, like Christ himself, is called The "Word of God." Scripture also says we can know God in nature see Romans 1. This is an innate, spontaneous, natural knowledge. I think no one who lives by the sea, or by a little river, can be an atheist. Art also reveals God. I know three ex-atheists who say, "There is the music of Bach, therefore there must be a God." This too is immediate. Conscience is the voice of God. It speaks absolutely, with no ifs, ands, or buts. This too is immediate. [The last three ways of knowing God (4-6) are natural, while the first three are supernatur