Soaring in these heights...

the great bird of prey looks down beneath him at the swine wallowing in the muck of sense-mongering modernity.  We eagles, and we hawks, and various other majestic soaring creatures -- various only to the degree that have received grace -- look down upon the moderns; down upon the pigs; down upon "fashionable" men and women; down upon 'natural' men with their blood lust, their sex lust, their power mongering and gluttonous filth.

As they roll in their own waste; we who have, with the aid of grace, reached the ethereal heights of reason; we who have attempted to break free from the chains of concupiscence; we who will not bend to lower desires; we have become outcasts in this ether.  What is worse?  They are telling us, from ground level with feces in their eyes, how to see!  They are telling us, the birds of the sky!

Unlike other birds of prey, we pity the swine but do not hunt them.  No, we swoop near them only to provide a breeze to eliminate the stench; to eliminate their pungent ideas.  Unfortunately, attaining these heights is impossible without zephyrs and north winds -- without sacraments.  And even we, the majestic pursuers of virtue, do what we do not want to do.  What chains are these!  What chains are these that force us, the regal birds, to roll in the mire?  One mind, one body -- two warring natures.

Reason is quickened by these chains, but breaking them is impossible without the Cross.  The cool air heights are there for the taking, but let us beg for the winds!

Clear, distinct, and succinct...

As modern philosophers we have demanded, along with Descartes, absolute mathematical clarity for our ideas.  They must be absolutely clear, with no room for interpretation.  Furthermore they must be distinct -- like the mathematical (conceptual) triangle -- they must exclude what their definitions do not include.  That is, they must be really distinct.  Then and only then are they positively true.

I was reflecting today on the Aristotelian ethical schema with its sophisticated philosophical language and its terse linguistic exactitude.  As a Thomist we might call the lingo "simple," (as no philosopher since Aquinas has matched his "simple" principled approach, the strict technical usage of words; no one can or could match his simplicity.)  Nonetheless, the question dawned on me, if we were to escape the stupidity of demanding mathematical certitude in the realm of sense knowledge, how could we spread the rebirth of virtue to the masses?  After all, not everyone is trained in philosophy; not everyone has the ability; not everyone has the time.  So how could we share the only real example of ethical philosophy -- Aristotle and Plato and Aquinas -- with people who have not the time nor the effort to learn it?

We could, of course, perform a coup of modern media and start producing works of art -- cultural works -- that put to route the Nietzchean existential world we live in.  That would certainly turn hearts back to virtue.  Nonetheless, that  would take a revolution.  The drones who rule us in the media, and the robots who follow their "wills" (in reality Americans do not deliberate, they simply follow concupiscence and irascibility to sense satisfaction), will never seek to conquer their own members.  That would take strength; that would take effort; that would take responsibility; that would take Christianity!

Which brings me to the way in which to simplify classical philosophy -- the Golden Rule.  One simple phrase, "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you."  In this phrase is summed up the Judaic law, the Christian ethos, and the classical tradition of philosophy!  How do you live justly?  Do unto others as you would have them to unto you.  Prudently? Courageously? Temperately? Need I repeat the phrase?

The amazing compatibility of the Christian ethos and the classical one has been noted by many scholars -- including the enemies of the Church.  But it is more than genius to sum up so many traditions in one phrase -- it is divine.  It is divine simplicity!  And yes, even the untrained can grasp it without a vast philosophical lingo.  How divine!

So the rebirth of virtue requires the seeking of grace.  Only grace is the vehicle of real strength; the efficient cause of the triumph of reason in the moral sphere.  Have you asked for your's lately?

Down with the system...

That was built to support secular humanist initiatives.  The hatred and hate speech that is spewed day in and day out by the establishment "media" -- (read every major network and almost all television and news outlets) -- under the guise of "objective" is sickening.  The system is rigged and its constant pounding is deafening.  Down with the system!

That is why it was refreshing to hear that a top Vatican official today expressed that there is a definite link between homosexuality and child abuse in the Church, and no link between celibacy and abuse.  Alas! One ship is firmly anchored in face of the onslaught of the torrents of custom!

The derogatory euphemisms that floated off the page of the AP story could hardly mask the disdain -- the hate -- of the sophist penning the words; of the slave treading in slave morality; of the weak one prerusing in the veil of the immediate; of the hater pushing ignorance rather than truth.

Smelling salts are direly needed!  A culture has never thought itself so sophisticated that was so ignorant!  A culture has never been so self-absorbed and blind!  A culture has never gasped its last breath in such a silent whimper!  Silent because it has been blinded by its own liberalism into thinking it has no perspective.  When the blind lead the blind, as the saying goes.

Thank God for the Church and its advocation of the triumph of reason where it really matters -- in human action.  How long will ignorance reign?  How long will hatred of Catholicity pass for sophistication when it is nothing but ignorance?  How long will concupiscence rule reason?  How long will the drones power monger over the wise?

Thank God it will never reign!  The magisterium does not bend its knee except to primordial Priest.  So AP and establishment, put away your megaphones.  The louder you cry, the guiltier you become.  Christ bows to no one.  The Magisterium bows to only One.

Is holiness temporary loneliness?

Did not Christ tell us we must give up even mother, father, and friends?  It is temporary loneliness because as Christians; as attempters of virtue, we are alone in a world of natural men; in a world of slaves to baseness.

How many lived the disciplined life?  How many even attempt it?  How many have the will for it?  How many are able to avoid, have the strength, to disallow the boozy, gluttonous stench of modernity to seep into their pours?

None. Not one.

Christianity demands perfection -- a final cause that self-creators are incapable of -- and few have the strength to even attempt to live it.

The further I get in the spirtual life; the more I follow the One True example of Humanity; the more human I become, the lonelier I get.  The more I let the Spirit dominate the flesh, the less I have in common with my old friends; with my old ways; with natural men.

Out here on this perimeter there are few animals.  Out here there is the One.  Out here, there is temporary loneliness.  Loneliness until we realize the thing that is magis intimum.

I have not the strength for virtue, but He has it to give.  I need merely ask.  The road is rough and lonely, but the lashings are but temporary.  Tomorrow shall be ours.  Tomorrow shall be mine.  Look to that dawn; Ecce Homo!  Ecce Deus in essentia ipsius!

Knowledge may be temporary solitude; philosophy isolates those who think; Catholic theology puts the active follower on an island. It is temporary, though, as ours is a comedy.

We know the champion.  Ecce Homo! Behold Christ!

If ignorance is bliss...

then I no longer wish to smile.  Today while at work I had a taste of modern stupidity in all its glory.  While preparing my truck to go out on deliveries, I caught the tail end of some anti-Catholic bigotry; I caught wind of the popular nihilism of our day; I caught wind of the stench of modernity in all its cess pool glory.

A Protestant worker made some anti-Catholic claim, which unfortunately I missed.  All I heard was, "Just kidding, a lot of the best people I know were Catholics."  Then, a scrawny "rock 'n' roll" looking person, who wears Satanic rock shirts on the job, said, "Some of the worst people I know were Catholics."  Ha!  Stupidity in its pomp!  Nothing could be more ignorant, more vain, more self-aggrandizing, more idiotic, more trendy; nothing is more fashionable.  John Paul II and Mother Theresa were such horrible people!

As I pondered the conversation, the thought crossed my mind that these poor ignoramus'; these poor slaves; these poor unthinking dogmatists are only haters because they've never open their mind's to a contemplative outlook.  They worry themselves with sex slavery, food slavery, desire slavery, hunger slavery; God hands them over to punishment in their own members.  The thought crossed my mind that the modern hater, so conditioned by the torrents of custom, has not the strength for Christianity.

Obeying our lower desires because some self-made god, uneducated rock star, claims that anti-Christianity; anti-Catholicity, is a means to strength and power.  What pretenders!  What phonies!  How long must cowardice parade as strength?  How long must slavery parade as freedom?

Fools!  The rebirth of virtue; the rebirth of reason; the rebirth of a contemplative outlook is strength.  It is freedom!  Listen, then, to the uneducated elite who have never taken the time to think; listen and follow them into the pit.  When the blind lead the blind, the end is always the same.

We prefer to be dust chasing dust than to be the eternal beings we are.  Ignorance is sadness!  Ignorance is death!  Our lack of contemplation is our nihilism; our lack of God is our lack of humanity. 

Wake up to the new dawn!  The dawn of reason and the dawn of the resurrection.  Look to the horizon for the daybreak of life and forget the nihilist haters who prefer the slavery of ignorance to Christ; who prefer ignorance to Truth;  who prefer to march ignorantly to their own death.

A new breed of philosopher...

...needs to be called forth!  The modern intellectual has become nothing else than a "natural" man, having no knowledge because he has failed to look through the prism of God's love.

How many times have we seen 'elites' advocate reformulated pagan ideologies in the guise of progress?  How often have we heard that man's existence must be limited because of a chimera of "overpopulation"?  How often have these 'elites' advocated nihilism and death because they fail to recognize the principle of life in the High Priest of creation?  Anyone else tired of worrying about Fido and would prefer to worry about the millions of aborted human children?

We now have -- unfortunately because of the death of philosophy -- a positivist world that champions ignorance!  The genius stroke of the Enlightenment was to paint itself anti-dogmatic, and the most dogmatic moral neutralists have convinced us that they aren't dogmatists!  What a noble lie! 

The ignorance of God has left us in a world of Kantian metaphysics.  Our intellectuals, long ago, took their hands out of the dirt, and now they are proving and disproving everything because most have never walked a day in practical reality.  Give me a philosopher trained in philosophy, but with real world experience.  Then you will see a true philosopher; a new philosopher -- only new because he's so old -- who looks around and names things as he knows them rather than knowing them as he names them.

The modern intellectual is problematic because his speculations are impractical -- completely divorced from reality -- and so we get 'elites' who think of humans as monsters and dogs as kings. 

Ultimately, the divorce from reality is caused because they fail to know Being.  They fail to know Him because they've outlawed philosophy and theology at the hands of bad philosophers.

So, I hereby call forth a new breed of philosopher; new because he's old; a real Aristotelian; a real Thomist; someone that does not dress up ignorance in the guise of sophistication; someone who has actually lived life; someone who keeps reality real; someone who fears God.

Dusk has now settled in on the West.  My God!  My God!  I cry in the face of the impending darkness!  How long until the new dark ages end?  How long until reason reconquers the members?  How long until the rebirth of wisdom?  How long until we know and fear our God?  How long, my Lord, until daybreak?

Whom is it safe to call tyrants?

The new ignorers of the Constitution?  The somehow "new" followers of a 200 year old political philosophy that has proven to be nothing but nihilism?

As Catholics we ought ask one simple question of our politicians.  What is the status of the embryo?  What is the status of the fertilized egg?

Whether Republican or Democrat, if you cannot afford the embryo -- the weakest of humanity -- the dignity of personhood, you fail the litmus test of those who seek to preserve democracy.  As John Paul II made clear in Evanglium Vitae, the underlying  values of democracy are undermined if we deny human dignity to any member of the human family.  Democracy rests upon the recognition of the dignity of the individual, and this is denied by any politician who denies the personhood of the unborn and aged.

No politician should receive a Catholic vote if they are willing to allow the destruction of our country's weakest members.  So as we gear up for the "tea party express," we must ask one question of all those who would represent us: is the embryo a person?  If the answer is no, then they are unworthy of democracy.  The freedom such individuals represent is the tyranny of the strong over the weak; this is not freedom, but the whisper of tyrants.

So we must question with boldness our politicians.  Indeed, our president is a tyrant.  When politicians fail the fundamental question about the value of the human being, they fail absolutely on all questions of the common good.  Do not let the lying progressives fool you; it is not okay to overlook the grave injustice of abortion and claim you are democratic.  Personhood of every individual is the basis of democracy; anyone who claims differently is a tyrant.  We have been ruled by the tyrants for too long!  Let us eliminate the pollution; let us put our heels to the heads of the serpents within the Church and without; let us demand the recognition of personhood before democracy dies the death it has been slowly dying.

Looking for the dawn of a new day...

...when the accuser becomes the accused; when the hunter becomes the hunted.  That day, is nearly upon us.  The liars and their lies; the haters and their hate, are slowly witnessing thier demise.
I once sat in a classroom and listened to the dribble of a openly gay "feminist" explain that gender was a social construction.  Really?  I quietly thought to myself, "Should I raise my hand and ask her if she and I should look betwen our legs at the 'social construction' we were each born with?"  The Nietzsche haters because of his male chauvenism are really Nietzcheans they simply reversed the genders.  They are just as big of haters with thier hate pointed in the other direction.

So let us call forth a new dawn where the powerful become the weak.  Where the liars with influence (why is it that those with influence are all liars? Could it be that this is the devil's world?  That it has been handed over to him?)

The blindness that we are all affected by -- we sense mongers and gluttons -- is the tragedy of the fall.  Sin is attractive, but he who sins is a slave.  We are a slavish bunch really.  And the elites who have been lying to us for years are the worst of the slaves, who herd the rest of we cows.  We would be better off as cows as then we would at the very least ruminate.

We aren't even allowed to do that.  So let us ride the new momentum to a new era; an era of life and being; an era of truth and existence; an era where real weakness is truly understood; an era where virtue is reborn.  That is the dawn on the horizon if we would collectively think.  Sadly, we'd rather just sense.  So the boozy halo of modernity will drown us.

Always or for the most part...

...things take place in nature.  Aquinas relates that it is the business of the wise man to order, which says something about modern man and his sponteneous panegyric; about his self with the status as changeling.  We are fundamentally unwise.

Reason has four ordering qualities according to Aquinas (Proemium to the Commentary on the Ethics.)

1) Order that reason examines in nature: why does every squirrel collect nuts for the winter?
2) Order of its concepts: why does a subject require a predicate?
3) Order of ethics: why do we have theories of action?
4) Order of mechanics: why does a house not collapse when we put the form of the house as it exists in our minds into the matter of exterior reality?

(1) and (4) are simply devastating to atheism.  We can, like the modern who prefers unintelligible ignorance to truth because alas, ignorance frees the intellectual will, deny both of these.  But mechanism is simply devastating to the atheistic view.  Indeed, mechanism needs to be denied if we want God not to exist.  Simply answer this: If the order reason examines in exterior things is simply the human mind imposing the linkage of sequences on exterior reality, then why does that exterior reality conform to our whims?

If my mind was the creator of order in the abyss of the changeling chaos of exterior reality, then planes, trains, and automobiles would be impossible. If that very order were not "out there," it would not conform to what is "in here."

We could, of course, claim that matter is simply pure potency waiting for the imposition of some form from some being with reason.  That would be too Aristotelian; indeed, that would be too metaphysical for the modern philosopher who has chosen ignorance; who has chosen to cut himself off from paths to knowledge because by legitimately seeking knowledge one is ultimately confronted with immaterial first causes.  So we ought, with the moderns, choose ignorance so as to deny immaterial realities; then we will be big minded; then we will be great souls; then we will be an accepted intellectual.  The toxicity of the modern intelligentia is choking!

Science opposed to wisdom; anti-religion is anti-knowledge; anti-religion, anti-Christ, is the death nail to science.  Indeed, it is the death nail to humanity with real blood in its train.

Answer me this, my modern hater friends:  Why does exterior reality conform to reason's order?  If it does, then we are on the brink of the metaphysical principles of act and potency.  Oh no!  Not the precipice of religion!  No, no, we shall not go!  No, let us stay here exulting our wills and slaying our humanity.  Let us perpetuate the lie that Christ is anti-knowledge!  And with our self-deception let us, the slayers of knowledge, assume the role of open minded knowers.  Meanwhile, with our fascism, we will make Christ the fascist; we will silence and call Him the silencer.  So noble we are!  We, the noble, scientific liars!

Comfortably numb...

Out on this perimeter I walk alone.  Lonely.  The spookiness of the invading real.  These objects arrive unannounced, uninvited, unplanned for, this strange otherness.

After all experience, after sense realism, the wonders of this life come alive.  Yet we are always alone no matter how conjoined we are.  Alone except for the objects that are always there while we wake -- looking, smelling, seeing, touching, sensing.

Never have I felt so alone as now.  Never have I failed so often.  Never have I been a real father.  Not real because I am powerless.  Not real because I have always failed.  Not real because success escapes.  Not real because I cannot provide.

I have been given a nature.  A strong desire to provide.  A strong desire to philosophize.  A strong desire for wisdom.  A strong desire to please my God.  This nature I have failed.  This life I have failed.  Misery.  Is it simple tragedy?  this existence?

How long, my God, must I wait?  How long, my God, must this perimeter be mine alone?  How long must I be jobless, homeless, hopeless?

"Blessed are the poor."  Not here, not now, not this.

Why have You foresaken me?

Powerless.

I wish for no numbness, but if I must be numbed, I wish for comfortable numbness.

The invasion of the real is suffocating.  Only the God fearing always have oxygen in the face of discomfort.

Hope.

He shall rule over you...

"Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you..." I have written in the past about the radical feminist's masculization of women.  For real feminism we have to attune ourselves to nature.  The modern "feminist" reflects an instantiation of the biblical principle of male rulership. 

By poisoning herself with an anti-fertility pill; by seeking to work to the chagrin of the noble feminine quality of nurturing care; by acquiescing to male sexuality; indeed, by embracing male promiscuous sexuality as opposed to gatekeeping, the modern "feminist" has sought to be ruled by male nature by becoming male herself.  Modern woman, in losing her feminine sexuality, has enslaved herself to male domination.  Of course, the result is unhappiness for all.  Men are slaves to pornographic machines and naked women; women are slaves to abiding by male nature; and once again the proponents of freedom are discovered to be advocates of slave morality.

Who are these "feminists" who have exploded female slavery?  Who are these "feminists" who have indulged male self-indulgence?  Who are these "feminists" who have made the porno nation?  Who are these "feminists" who have increased female abuse?  Who are these "feminists" who have turned women against their children?  Who are these "feminists" who have defeminized women?  What kind of woman, except one who hates her own nature -- who wishes to recreate her own nature -- would destroy motherhood?  That sounds anything but feminine.

"Feminists" themselves, with their will to power, have become men.  The so called free thinking intellectual "feminist" is in reality a proponent of the real slave morality...of Nietzschean morality.  Their will to power has blinded them to real injury; to the creation of real victims. 

Happiness and freedom are in tuning our radio dials to our natures.  When we deviate and become self-creators, the result is static.  The result is misery.  The result is modernity.  The result is an inside out reality.  The result is masculine femininity.

The astute atheist...

is forever a silencer of metaphysics.  Whenever you confront a philosophical atheist, not an atheist-so-that-I-can-have-self-glorification hater of God, their main objection to theism is that there is no testable proof of metaphysical objects.  That is, one by one, they tend to deny all that cannot be seen.  A suitable threat, indeed.

Newman once stated that the world is quickly careening toward two real ideas, those of Catholicism and those of atheism.  Bravo! for that perceptive mind; for that greatest of the modern theologians.  Really, there seem to be only two ideas worthy of our rational assent -- atheism and Catholicism.  Only those two have sufficient rational justifications for their claims, although I am convinced of Catholicism's truth because it seems more rational.

I have only ever found one atheist that I found intellectually satisfiying, and that is Friedrich Nietzsche.  Of course, I find him less satisfying than Thomas Aquinas, who puts to route every error that could ever be.  Nietzsche was an astute atheist because he knew there were two fundamental principles that were the foundation of metaphysics -- logic (it's primary instrument) and what the medievals called "demonstration quia."  That is, the ability to reason from effect to cause.  If we are going to undermine metaphysics, these are the two places to attack.  Only Nietzsche was enough of a philosopher to perceive this -- most atheists tend to be willfully ignorant through a lack of humility in the face of rational evidence.  They tend to cut themselves off from inquiry because they presuppose certain things about reality like, if something cannot be seen it doesn't exist.  What about intellectual concepts?  They have to exist somewhere.  

Aquinas sets up what is needed to find metaphysical objects in his Commentary on the De Trinitate.  We need to be able to reason from effects to cause, and we need the instruments of logic.  Now modern "scientific" atheists fail to see where there principles lead.  They want to affirm, via necessary scientific laws, that causality is essentially linked.  But in affirming an effect's essential link to a cause, they wind up affirming God's existence (which was made ever so evident by Ben Stein in his documentary Expelled.)

So the first option is to deny causality -- but then atheists are faced with some difficult logical pills to swallow like: Why is it that the human mind can recognize intentions in nature?  Why can we derive laws from experience?  Why are events able to be linked in sequence?  Indeed, why does it seem that things take place in nature almost always or for the most part?  If we deny causality its essentiality we should expect the unexpected.  Unless we deny logic too.

So, what we must do is deny that logic in some ways corresponds to reality -- we must deny that there are subject and predicates.  If we do this, then the logical conclusions that we derive from experience can also be denied.  Simply put, we can, for instance, deny the idea of a First Mover because having denied the inner logic of movement, that it must be reduced to one if causality is essentially linked, we can deny God.

What it comes down to is that reality must be unintelligible for the atheist worldview to be correct.  Nietzsche is the only atheist I've encountered to recognize this.  Nonetheless, he violates non-contradiction because to destroy logic and causality he had to employ them.  We should expect nonsense if atheism is true, but everything seems to make sense.

So the next time you encounter an atheist make sure he is astute before talking to him.

Free thinkers are dangerous...

...because they don't exist!  One of the most noble lies of our epoch, perhaps even an artistic lie, is that there is such a thing as a "free thinker."  At most, this lie is a psuedonym for anarchy, but then the phrase "free thinker" is only half right.  An anarchist is certainly "free" in an of this world, Hobbesian sense.  We would, however, be remiss if we were dumb enough to call an anarchist a "thinker."

Nietzsche, who if you haven't notice is my favorite philosopher to hate, mostly because he is liberalism's philosopher par excellence, took to calling the instinct of the weak the "herd intinct."  No poet has ever been as masterful regarding style than was Nietzsche.  Few philosophers have been as masterful, either.  Nonetheless, as Augustine tells us, inimitable style does not constitute truth.  What of this herd instinct?

The lie of individualism, of radical individualism as envisaged by the existentialists, is that we can somehow escape the herd.  We have heard it said that there are free thinkers among us; those who can assume the heights of humanity by separating from the general herd; those who can escape their narrative; those who have no material cause.  The prophets who tell us that we are self-creators are the blindest of all because, alas, they fall into a tradition without knowing it!

The key to being a real free thinker is not in becoming a self-creator because we all follow the lead of others as social animals.  The key is knowing who your shepherd is.  The self-proclaimed free thinkers do not realize their shepherd is providence punishing them in their own members.  Let them dream of being those who have separated from the herd; let them dream of living on their isolated island; while they dream, we will watch them follow the beckoning of their lower desires; we will watch them become slaves to the real slave morality.

A free thinker then, knows his shepherd, knows his narrative, and is conscious to who he is.  With Socrates we can say that self-knowledge is the key to free thought.  This, of course, puts the 8% of Catholics who submit to the total authority of the Magisterium square in the category of free thinkers.  Free because they submit to authority -- such strange paradoxes arise for we the godliest of all animials!  Free, because they do not succumb to the torrents of custom; free because they do not offer psuedo-demonstrations for their mere appetites; free because they know they follow.

Tell me of a political party, or a radical individualist, who does all of the following: opposed to abortion, opposed to contraception, opposed to the death penalty, opposed to homelessness, opposed to active euthanasia, opposed to hate in all its guises.  8%, that is all.  They follow, but in following the way, the truth, and the life, they are free.  Free because they are conscious of their tradition. Free because grace sets them free.

Incidentally, Plato warned us of unapologetic poetry and the dangers it posed for animals that seek to live in society.  Plato understood well that we are all part of some herd.  He also understood that we needed the right people shepherding us.  When we listen to the pope, we listen to the one voice of sanity in an insane world; we listen to the voice of reason in the malaise of unreason; we listen to humanity in the onslaught of inhumanity; we listen to the only true voice of freedom.

So, you would be "free thinkers," remember you are part of a tradition.  Remember that you cannot escape your narrative or get out your walking stick for you will be the blind leading the blind.  When the blind lead, we know where we end up -- the pit.

MTV Pedophiles...

I have recently been flirting with the idea that the executive board of most television giants are made up of a bunch of desiring beasts and pedophiles.  In Plato's Republic he makes the interesting claim that the "man of the people" in democratic regimes is the tyrant who promises the rabble -- those who follow their base desires their whole lives -- largesse from the public coffers.  Not only that, but the man of the people himself has a tyrannical soul, where the lower desires rule the other powers of soul.  No amount of blood lust, rape, sexual gratification; indeed, no crime is off limits to the "man of the people."

Aristotle had a similar understanding, most likely because Plato was his teacher, in that he felt most men never refined their tastes and so were dragged about by their lower desires; dragged about by the desires of the flesh.  Strangely enough, if as modern "scientists," we hadn't arrogantly shunned our predecessors, we might learn something from them.

We now have a situation where the rabble as Plato and Aristotle understood them are in control of the media.  The moral self-creators who are nothing but slaves to desire, have siezed control of television, music, and cinema to the impending destruction of America.  In one sense they are clever; it is true that most human beings are dragged about by their lower desires -- as alluded to as punishment for the Fall -- and they tend to make a lot of money by showing meida prostitutes and whores scantily clad for a buck.  Would that we gain the whole world and lose our souls?

As a simpleton critic of art, I have become sick with this "market driven" or should I say, "beast driven" art, and the silent tyranny it is imposing on our youth.  They are clever in that they start us young.  Turn on MTV if you want to see half-naked teens slobbering over each other, most likely spreading disease.  I wouldn't be in the least surprised if these execs were pedophiles.  We at least know they are the left arm of Planned Parenthood, who in their "compassion" are undermining parental control.  The tyrants that they are, they realize that the last stand against the tyranny of the lower desires is moral education by parents.  They know that the last fortress to be overcome is the family.  If they conquer there, then the idol state will have total control.

I have always wondered, when I was growing up, why the old white guy Bill Clinton was cool, and the old white guy George Bush was a square? If you asked me, I would say they are both square. I was taught from the beginning by the pedophile execs at MTV that the tryants, those who love making us slaves to lower desires; slaves to the existentialist narrative; would promote one party over another?  It dawned on me as I gained in wisdom that they loved the "men of the people," the tyrants who said anything goes.

Someone needs to tell these peddlers of teen smut, of stupidity parading as intelligence, that they need a new modus operandi.  Of course, they will always have viewers because of man's fallen state, but someone needs to tell them that the "irresponsible" rock star characters are archaic.  For an institution that is supposed to be cutting edge, the "shock value" of "shock rock" is as tired as Elvis' hip wiggle.  We ought to beware of the avant garde, because it really is a pseudonym for irrational smut pretending to be art with no meaning.  It intrigues because we want meaning as seekers of knowledge, but it typically is not art. 

For an industry that thrives on being new, their methods are as old as rock n roll itself.  American music and art is stale!  And the pedophile peddlers of teen porn and of the youthful in character need to wake up.  They won't though, because gaining the whole world is worth more than their souls.  So they will peddle Planned Parenthood's hate, make slaves, and hope for the day when they can silence any and all opposition to their desires.  They cannot wait until the day when dreams uncontrolled by reason become reality; they cannot wait to sink their fangs into all of humanity.  We should wake the drones up to this reality, for rock stars of the existentialist ilk seem to be, when the one swallow of the summer expires, the most miserable of people.  I hope for our sake we wake up, so we ourselves don't become the power-mongering slaves to lower desire.  We won't though, and it will continue to be cool to be irresponsible.  Modernity's worst of foes, responsibility.  We can probably sum up modern culture with the simple phrase -- "Aversion to responsibility." 

Thank you MTV and Planned Parenthood, for teaching us not to think.  Thank you for making us slaves. Thank you for your blind Nietzschean views, and for hearkening the day of the ubermensch.  On that day, when we are herded to the slaughter, I will thank thee for your irrationality.  (Luckily there is still hope for the American people, as they are finally starting to think.  I hope we are not too late.)

The Fall

What precisely happened at the Fall? If we are to believe moderns, it is simply a myth that archaic Christians like myself tend to buy into. Rabble like myself, who do not have any intellectual sophistication about them, accept these myths as a way to deal with the cold tragedy that is reality. Sophistry has never been so loud as today; or is it that in arrogance it has always been dropping sonic booms?


At any rate, in a book I've been composing I have highlighted the two laws that St. Paul tells us about in his letter to the Romans. He gives us the example of the law of the Spirit and the law of the flesh. The one is affirmation and life, and the other is bound to decay. This is one of those passages where I cannot help but see Plato shining through in Paul's doctrine.

Indeed, following John Paul II's catechesis on the Theology of the Body, I started to really recognize what precisely happened at that Fall. He mentions primordial shame, and says that when Adam and Eve hid themsleves from each other, it was because they realized they were subjects with inherent dignity, but at the Fall they started looking upon each other as objects for mere utilitarian gratification.

After having studied classical philosophy, the conclusion dawned on me that we have a way of understanding what took place at the Fall.  Of course, if we ask sophisticated moderns with their "open minds" they will tell us we need to put away the children's stories and start approaching things scientifically.  As if the scientific method, to which we are all now slaves, can tell us the cause of evil in the world?  So let us be unsophisiticated  biblicists and try to find answers wherever they may be, rather than prima facie shutting off avenues to truth based on a hubristic pseudo-sophistication.

In the book that I hope to publish I make the claim that Aristotle's ethics are a philosophic roadmap to reorienting ourselves -- when supplemented by the Gospel virtues -- back to our primordial state.  You see, the classical philosophers dissected the powers of the human soul into three (Plato) or four (Aristotle) parts.  For Plato, there were the reason, spirited, and desiring elements.  For Aristotle there were the intellect, the will, the irascible (responsible for anger and like emotions,) and the concupiscible (desiring) elements of the soul.  Aristotle most blatantly -- without revelation -- suggests what happened at the Fall.  Indeed, the correlation of his statements on the way each of the powers rule, if they have charge of the soul, and what things were probably like before the Fall, should make all of us marvel at Providence.  He says that when reason rules, it rules like a monarch; when the sense powers rule, they rule as tyrants. (See the first book of his Politics.)

This is, then, precisely what happened at the Fall.  Augustine, following Paul, tells us that our disordered desires are providential punishment for our first parent's sin.  So what happened?  Quite simply, it used to be that the intellect and will reigned supreme, properly measuring the lower sense powers so that they could reach their ultimate perfection.  At the Fall, the lower powers rebelled and alas, Eve started looking like a mere body to Adam and vice versa.  Sin, quite simply, in its principle is a disorder of the proper ordering of the soul; it is a lack of perfection of being.

Our Lord tells us "Blessed are the meek" and He means that those who properly measure their passions are happy.  Sounds very compatible to Aristotle, right?  Nietzsche thought so, which led him to lump classical philosphy together with Christianity in his "ascetic ideal."  The greatest atheist there ever was recognized the compatibility -- we should too.

So when we start hearing terms like "slave morality" bantered about, we ought to ask, "Who really is the slave?" The person who allows his reason to self-determine his activity, or the person who is determined by the pull of the passions.  Who is a slave?  The one who can say, "No," or the one who cannot?

So let us be archaic and buy into the so called "myth."  Let us open our minds, instead of pretending to be big minded while cutting off pursuit of the truth.  If the real haters would only allow us to hunt, we might find answers.  They tell us not to join the tourney because it is the activity of simpletons.  I say, let us rise and be on our way.  If you will not look, do not blame me for your blindness.  How the silencers came to be called open has always baffled me? 

Psuedo-sophistication and supposed objectivity of method have silenced a world burgeoning with answers; a poetic world; a plethora of life; a manifold of being; all this blindness in the name of method and a poor one at that!  I mean poor in the true sense of poverty: we are an intellectually starved race with our "science."How long shall we choose to live in the dungy ghetto of a world without God?  How long should we allow these pretenders to cut us off from being?  How long should we continue in our slavery?

Trust is an amazing thing.  Knock and the door will be opened.  We are no longer allowed to even knock.  Indeed, we cannot find the door.  Let us, then, ignore the slave moralists, and be free to be human; be free to live our humanity!  No longer shall the darkness abound. No more silence!

Arguing with atheists...

How often, in this anti-intellectual culture of ours do we really set out about debeting the things that really matter?  As rich aesthetes, I pointed out in my previous post that we do anything and everything to avoid any and all discomfort.  What is worse, as a culture we tend to shy away from intellectual controversies as the real haters have convinced us that silence is better than argument.

On the Catholic Answers Forum there is the real possibility to debate questions of substance.  Indeed, the arguments over there are a breath of fresh air in this silent culture of ours.  At any rate, I have found it interesting as of late that when I argue with atheists, it is much like banging your head against the wall.  It is as if we brow beat one another with neither side budging on their worldviews.

I have become convinced that faith is indeed a theological virtue.  Reason can only take one so far before faith is necessary.  The problem I have with atheists is their dishonesty with themselves.  While they are quick to point out that approaching questions in a philosophical manner from the perspective of there actually being a God produces bias, they are quite blind to their own dogmatism and the conclusions that result from them clouding their reasoning.

Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, raised a few eyebrows in his Introduction to Christianity when he wrote that the ontological status of the category of relation ought to be something scholars start to consider.  Of course he was approaching the question from the perspective of a theologian -- since God Himself is three in one, and there are relations between the three persons of the Trinity -- it follows that relation might mean more than previously thought.  This is not surprising to semioticians or followers of John of St.Thomas, who drew what laid hidden about relation from the depths of Aquinas' writings.  Indeed, if we look around us it is quite easy to see relation as having some substantial role in existence; children are born from relation; ideas are discovered via relation, the theory of realitvity, etc.  We cannot take the scientist out of the science, and he relates to the questions he inquires about.

This idea of relation being fundamental to human understanding seems to get lost on most atheists.  They seem to think the only persons blinded by perspective are those with a theistic viewpoint.  What self-deception! 

The claim goes something like this: "As an atheist, I only trust what I can see.  Since I cannot see God, it follows that I am right in concluding that he does not exist.  You Christians, on the other hand, claim that there is a God and you aim in this direction even though the evidence doesn't support what you claim.  You are reaching for a conclusion that is predetermined.  Whereas we have no predetermined ends, and therefore our reasoning is less biased than yours; indeed, we have no bias at all."

This is rather problematic because they fail to see their own perspectivism, and nine out of ten times, they are hubristic in claiming that only their reasoning is valid.  I have no problem with initiating a study without the supposed bias of God existing.  In philosophy, we look at things in themselves, and follow them where they lead us.  We make our mind's commensurate with the objects in the environment and then judge the conclusions from there.  We move from premise to conclusion based upon experience.

So what do our atheist friends do to allow perspective into their thinking?  They claim only they approach questions of truth with unbiased standards.  The trouble is, they do not follow their premises to the rightful conclusions.  Their assumptions are that "if it cannot be seen, it does not exist."  What do we make of things like the triangle in itself?  or the perfect circle?  or double? or infinity? or a chiliagon (as Descartes says)? or the infinite range of human understanding? or universal concepts? or mathematical concepts? These things do not exist except as mathematical formulations; except as beings of reason.  They cannot be seen.  Sure, we can draw a triangle on the board, but that is not a triangle in itself as it lacks the exact precision of the mathematical formula for a triangle.  Yet we can say that the triangle exists.  We know it exists because of independent verification -- because of relation.  On the atheist view, if it cannot be seen, it does not exist.  So the thinking gets clouded as soon as we reach sciences that are abstracted from matter; as soon as we reach sciences that traverse in both the ens rationis and ens reale categories. 

So the most noble lie invented by modern skeptics and empiricists is that their method is the only method that is not blinded by perspective.  Indeed, we all relate to objects in our environment, and thus perspective can never be removed from questions of truth.  If Christian theologians, and I do not deny that they have, have reached biased conclusions based on a worldview, so have atheists.  Let us put to rest, then, this chimera of absolute objectivity and the hubris of approaching questions without perspective.  Christian realists and atheists realists begin in the same place -- sensible experience -- but the Christian follows the premises it presents to their proper logical (immaterial) conclusions.  The atheist, to uphold his worldview, must deny logical conclusions that are based on things as we experience them. (He will say, for instance, that things have no substances, which ultimately means existence is either monistic or that nothing exists as these are the logical conclusions of such assumptions.  The first is contrary to experience, which is supposedly the atheist trump card, and the latter is simply nonsense. Or he will say all is disorder and chaos, but physical laws in nature testify to the contrary.)  So his method tends to operate on more damaging assumptions.

Faith, then, is a theological virtue.  No amount of brow beating will ever convince an atheist.  The Sedes Sapientiae, however, will.  A Rosary here for our hard hearted brethren will pay many more dividends than some esoteric philosophical debate.  Both are necessary, but reason only carries one so far.  Reason will wade you into the water.  Only grace will allow you to swim.

Sperm donors...

I want to talk a little today about what modern fatherhood has become.  For some reason, in our Nietzschean world, manhood has come to be represented as aversion to responsibility.  We, the rich modern aesthetes, have turned men into cowards and our women into whores.

Ultimately, we can thank a number of cultural streams for the predicament the modern family is in.  As all good Aristotlians know, if we destroy the family we destroy the fundamental unit of society and alas, we ultimately destroy society.  If only we blind knowers; if only we haters of responsibility, would recognize our cowardice, we might come to preserve virtue in this dying culture of ours.

John Paul II, in his last book Memory and Identity  suggested that perhaps the new "ideologies of evil" were more sinister than the old because they covertly attack the very foundation of society.  It used to be that the true pushers of slave morality attacked social institutions such as government bureaucracies and parliaments leveling their hate mongering from the top down.  Remember how when the USSR fell Americans were surprised that the Soviet people were not the problem, but that their leaders were?  The old ideologies of evil attacked men openly via their societal nature.  Not the new snakes; no, their forked tongues whisper to men where they are weakest; their forked tongues whisper while their reason sleeps.  They attack in the concupiscible power -- the power most distorted at the Fall.

Today, fatherhood is treated as a weakness; it is treated as an afterthought.  The new cowards who call themselves strong, have taken to womanizing; to using women and abadoning their children.  What strength!  We, the rich aesthetes will do anything to avoid any and all discomfort, including making cowardice manly.

Let us inquire about the modern "cool" man.  He has multiple sex partners.  He -- with the great strength of a coward -- asks his utilitarian self-gratifying female ornament to destroy his offspring.  He contracepts.  He wills nothingness and brags that he is strong.  We are terrified of life!  We rich aesthetes; we prefer to avoid our natures all while being subject to it.  We are slaves!

What has happened because of our aversion to life?  We have created real criminals; the great majority of those in prison come from single mother households.  We have created real victims; I needn't mention the silent Holocaust.  And the slave feminist moralists who have succeeded with a syncophantic media in convincing us that marriage is prison and bondage.  These drones have herded us into believing that the seat of society is prison and in so doing they have created real abuse.  Shall we ask them why it is that domestic abuse increases amongst non-married cohabiting couples?  Shall we ask them why it is that children in such arrangements are more likely to be abused?  Shall we ask them why abortion increases wherever contraception increases?  Shall we ask them why divorce has skyrocketed since the invention of their "freedom pill?"

No, no, let us be silent.  Let us be quiet in the face of the real slave morality because alas, it allows us to be determined rather than self-determined; because it allows us to be animals instead of rational.  No, let us be silent because we might offend the sensibilities of someone who dreamt that marriage was bad for society.  Let's not let facts get in the way of our shepherding to the slaughter.

And so, I salute the modern sperm donors who call themselves fathers -- way to live nihilism.  Way to cower in the face of life.  What is even greater, is that you've succeeded in convincing us that weakness is strength.  Enough of this toxic air!  To end the real slave morality we must drive it into the light.  Question with boldness the false dreams and lies of these slave moralists before you yourself become their slave.

We ought all take time to read the prophecy of Humanae Vitae, as then we might open our eyes to the true shepherd; the shepherd of freedom.  Then we might gain true personality, and truly walk alone, by following the true.

Let me tell you about heartache...

...at the loss of gods. Alas! It has finally happened. Public education has been dumbed down enough that we are finally ignorant enough to worship idols! The Protestant narrative has come to its existentialist conclusions; we have become self-makers!

The gods I refer to, of course, are the modern blaspheming politicians -- the parasite Obama being the worst of the worst. This last presidential election we essentially handed the keys to the US Kingdom to a stranger. What is worse, he's a Marxist stranger. A phony Christian, murdering innocents (it is not a human being in th womb), and destroying the greatest Christian kingdom that ever arose. It is no question that, like all the idiotic Marxists before him, Obama thinks the Keynsian system will bring about "fairness" and some kind of panacea on earth. I wonder, have our tyrant politicians ever question the possibility of heaven on earth? Have they ever wondered about human freedom and its limitless possibilities for evil? As men are free, so earthly paradises are impossible. Don't tell this to the self-made, supposed to be public servant, arrogant idols that are now running this country.

It is no wonder millions of Americans have become parasites, as we are now ruled by them. Political parties have destroyed this nation. The new self-made, self-proclaimed royalty (who really deserve to be called prostitutes at best) have gerrymandered their way into arrogant blindness. And we the sheep, being uneducated, swallow the dungwater so as to become parasites ourselves. Bad air!

The last presidential cycle our choices were between the Devil and Beezlebub; thank you for representing the 'will of the people' Democrats and Republicans.

So now, in the interests of fairness, the idol Obama (who else was frightened by the frothing crowds at his inauguration? Who else was frightened by the fawning, idiotic, self-proclaimed intelligentia, drooling over an unknown Marxist?) is creating a parasitical nation, and ruining our children's future. Enough! Academia for too long has barred freedom of thought! Media has for too long silenced opposition voices! Ignorance has become our bliss and we are now ruled by tyrants.

Let me tell you about heartache, as a soon to be father of two, who holds two Masters Degrees, who cannot find work because of some false dream of an ideologue; let me tell you about being a father who cannot provide for his family; let me tell you about false hope in the idol state. Wake up! These liars who make themselves royalty have never walked a day in your shoes; they have never walked in the small one's shoes; they have never treaded where peons tread; they are royalty, these prostitutes and parasites. Wake up! To Obama, Reed, Pelosi, and their ilk, we are but pawns and idiotic rabble, who would be better off if they directed our lives. Tyrants! Destroyers! Haters!

Awake me from this nightmare. Plato's drones now run this country, and the suffering has only just begun.

Phonies...

In honor of Salinger, who with Holden Caufield created one of the greatest social critics in modern America, I would like to take the time to point out America's "phonies." How long will we swallow the dungwater of modern elite culture?

Let us today focus on a particular manifestation of our existential narrative; America's High School Royalty. How long must we digest the rancid meat of the modern slave drivers in the music and movie industries?

Last night, while prerusing through some photos of the Grammy awards I became aware of another manifestation of the modern herd morality. Showiness; attention mongering; all done to uphold an 'image' whatever each star or starlet wishes to put out there. Hollywood is the epicenter of Goffman's theory that we put on our persona for different people on different occasions. I am certainly okay with eccentricity -- no one wants a dull Marxist atheist world -- except for the very Hollywood uneducated elite.

This is the rub, they think that personality is outward eccentricity; they think that to be someone, you have to be the show. I can appreciate art, where artists have a public persona, but only when they are up front about who they really are. The slave morality peddlers in Hollywood and music, one by one, try to blur the line between reality and art; they make themselves the art in their High School drama. For some reason, as herd members, we inbibe the pretended eccentricity; the phoniness of these "individuals" that are the weakest of the herd. It is but one more example that we live in an existentialist era; our royalty are self-creators of personality seeking to "look" eccentric so as to win praise.

I am willing to admit it is artistic and even intriguing. It wouldn't be problemetic if they actually had to make an apology -- if they weren't such herd members to the latest fashion and trend. The Hollywood eccentric are really peddlers of the Nietzschean slave morality and they don't even know it. Following the latest trend and the latest religion that will die with them. History will see them as the phonies they are; as the slaves they are; as the self-creators they are. We need merely wait.

The problem with modernity is we are all great artists, but we've confused art with life -- just like Nietzsche.

Offering worship to demons...

In the last post, I suggested that I might give details of my own experience of offering worship to demons via pseudo-religion; via personal-preference religion; via my own privatized religion. This modern phenomena of privatized religion, of course, is a result of the Protestant narrative, of which I am firmly rooted in.

Nonetheless, I am probably going to hold off on my own living of the existentialist narrative until the Spirit strengthens me. For now, I have not the courage nor humility to bring my crimes to the light; to bring my slavery to the light. I also find it a waste of time until people are actually reading my blog.

So, today, I offer an anecdote on our modern skeptical culture offering worship to demons through ignorance of God. We are nihilists because of our anti-religion -- the fate of all idolatrous ignorers of God.

I was recently reading here about modern physicists attempting to locate consciousness both within the brain and exterior to it. There hope is to prove the material instantiation of concsiousness, in case the possibility exists of "non-local" consciousness. The language in such documents is technical and one may need a PhD, or at least seminal knowledge of physical terminology as it exists on the quantum level in order to understand this article, and others like it. Indeed, I am no physicist and had my own difficulty deciphering the lingo. In reading it, though, I was struck by the predetermined materialism; by the deafness to Spirit.

So far, the blind materialists have been unable to discover energy consciousness. I cannot say for certain, but I would be willing to guess that they will never "locate" it, and that they are stuck in a vicious circle of "Soctratic optimism". The simpleton nun, or the pious, uneducated farmer, through a humble act of faith, has more knowledge than these PhD's because their humility opens them to the transcendent. They accept the Christian claim on faith!

However, the Christian claim -- indeed the Hellenic western claim -- of the immateriality of the soul is not some simplistic fideism. The Dumb Ox of those stupid "dark ages" (what a noble lie our Enlightenment philosophers taught us) offers a number of logical critiques of the idea that immaterial beings must have material or "energy" components. (I will spare you the arguments here, but check out Caput 49).

Quite simply, what has happened in our skeptical age; in our intellectually defeated age, is that we have let our predetermined outlook on the world determine our scientific inquiry. In some sense, this is unavoidable as we all relate to our world according to our own narratives. Nonetheless, the demons are all too happy when we become ignorers of God because when we do that we become blind followers of them. We turn into animals, which is right where they want us -- the devil would not worship God as man, so he seeks to animalize us. These physicists have reached the limits of their science, and so they posit "conciousness in dark matter," a philosophical speculation indeed, but an illogical one.

I once heard a scientist say, "If we cannot test something, then it is philosophy, not science," What hubris! He said it in a tone insulting of philosophy. It's amazing, though, how these scientists quickly become philosophers when they cannot test their conclusions. Furthermore, they insult philosophy while using it!

Long story short, our skepticism of immateriality has blinded us to our own ignorance. In seeking knowledge without God we become ignorant and in our ignorance we offer worship to demons. The less intelligible the world is, the less intelligence there is to be recognized within it. Without God we become beasts. The devil is wise; but vanquished. We need merely open our eyes.

This is me and what I am...

For fear of being accused of being like many modern Pharisaical Christians; for fear of being the splinter recongizer in ignorance of my own beam, I will take the next few blogs to give my story. I write against the real slave morality of 'will to power' relativism, not merely as accuser but as its victim. I was once a slave, but with Christ and His Church, I have begun the journey toward freedom.

In contemplating writing about myself a few flurries went through my head. 1) Who wants to hear my story? What gives me the presumption? and 2) Fear, as it will take great humility to dispose my inner web of relations to the world. As a once reveler in Nietzschean relativism, strangely, I am now more afraid to expose my virtuous self rather than my vicious self. How great of down goers we are! When I lived the will to power relativism, I would boast of my faults -- intimidating others with my own slavery. Now that I have seen the light; now that I have been given the light; I am more afraid to talk about the grace I've been given than when I was wicked. What a herd member I am! No more of these chains! No more will the torrents of custom swallow and drown me!

As victim, then, I write. Not as accuser. In my next entry, I'll tell you about my association with dope dealers and tyrant slaves; about my own slavery. (Tyrants, are as Plato relates, the greatest slaves because they can satisfy the beast within without limits.) When I was a member of the modern herd -- the Nietzschean herd -- I was a slave to the pride of life; I was a real slave moralist. Perhaps my story will break someone else's chains.

This, I hope, will put to rest the demonic venom of the haters of real free thinking Catholics. Free thinking because their shepherd is the Spirit of Freedom. Submission to the right authority is freedom. Let my story bring freedom!

It is time for the sword to be unsheathed.

Anti-feminine feminists at it again...

Perhaps the greatest college football player in the history of the game is making waves this week because he and his mother are telling their story in an ad taking place during the Super Bowl. The ad is pro-life, about how Tebow's mother chose life. As an avid college football fan, and someone who is not a big Florida fan, I do have to say that Tebow is a great human being.

Nonetheless, it did not take the modern feminist haters long to spout their usual venom towards anyone who is not a nihilist like themselves. The anti-feminine feminists, the ones who are power-mongers, liars, and silencers were quick to state that Tebow and his family were infringing upon a "woman's right to choose." Interesting how they always shroud their murderous ways in the guise of freedom.

Let us ask these wannabe men, these nurture despisers, nature haters, and women hurters (yes, they do hurt women by discouraging marriage which increase abuse, by forcing abortion on them when over 90% of women regret them) what 'freedom' actually means, shall we? If we needn't worry about the objects of our acts (i.e. what we intend and the outcome) then we are all free to do whatever we please. Here we confront Nietzsche all over again -- freedom in the feminist mindset is domination of the weak by the strong. Freedom is doing what we are capable of; doing what we have the potency for. Let us tangle them in their own web of inconsistency, shall we?

A feminist would rightly be opposed to a man's right to choose to abuse his wife? Correct? A feminist would rightly be opposed to a man's right to choose to rape a woman? Correct? A feminist would rightly be opposed to a man's right to victimize a female child? Correct? "Wait!" shout the nihilists, " Those are not rights! It is not a man's body that he damages in committing those crimes. When a woman has an abortion it's her rights over her own body." Really?

So different blood types, different heart rates, and even different sexes, makes the fetus "the same body"? The real issue is one of the ontological status of the embryo. We can say de facto that it is a human being simply by genetic testing. The difference between a feline embryo and a human embryo is testable. Whether or not an intellectual -- rational soul -- is present is not testable. To make the claim that the human being is not a "person" in vitro is to make a metaphysical claim. Alas! Our materialists are at last view metaphysicians! The God and spirit deniers are actually spiritualists!

Anything genetically human is per se rational irrespective of it functional capabilities based on the rational telos of its nature. So the anti-feminine feminist claim that it is a woman's right to choose is simply a relativist claim to freedom. If we needn't worry about the objects of our acts as the feminists claim with abortion, then the feminists cannot make moral claims anywhere else. At bottom, the justification for morality becomes power. Do only that which you are powerful enough to do. Sound familiar? The feminists are Nietzscheans. If a woman has the freedom to choose to abort, then the murderer has the freedom to choose to kill a prostitute, simply because she is weaker than him. Will the anti-feminine feminists want to approve such a position? If not, then we must ask them to be silent about their misguided freedom.

Bravo, Tim Tebow, Bravo! You made the snakes writhe, which makes me smile.

A Little More on Why I am Here...

Walking away from my two previous posts I realized there was a deficiency in introduction. Why the title "warrior"? Why defend the Magisterium? Why?

First of all, my own dream has always been to be a professional writer. While adoring the Eucharist as a guardian five or six years ago, in my head as an elocution I got the message "Write of me," and the words were imprinted in such a way that I thought they could not have come from me. Nevertheless, always skeptical, I thought maybe I was simply projecting my own dreams onto my meditation that day.

Now, today, as somewhat of an outcast -- not successful in the political arena (where I thought I wanted to work until I met blood sucking politicians behind the scenes), not successful in academia, where I realized the pride of life parades with fangs and claws, and now unemployed (of course, unlike our non-self reliant parasite anti-American ideal culture, I am seeking employment rather than the opiate governmental handout).

As an outcast, like my Lord Himself, I have decided to follow those words that were either my imagination or the Pantocrater Himself, and write. Together on this journey, we shall see whether it was internal desire or not.

As a child, I was enamored with poets and poetry. Half of the time I had no clue what poets were writing about, but I loved the esoteric nature of modern poetic verse. It was like pursuing some lost treasure in some far off sea; it was the beginning of wonder. I became enamored with an "American poet" who was the lead singer of the rock band, The Doors. This group, after having studied philosophy, was a manifestation -- the near perfect manifestation -- of Nietzschean existentialism. They would often play rythmic tunes while the singer, Morrison, would spout off "spontaneous panagyrics" as the Greek poets themselves used to do. All in all, it made for quite an artistic expression, but I realized in following these false idols, and I did, I had followed them right into the slavery of Nietzschean morality. Everything from my sophomore year of High School, until I was about 26 years old became a boozy halo.

Enough about me, but I realized that slavery was in the self-creative morality; in moral neutrality; in the "dictatorship of relativism." On my journey home to the Church, and for me it was merely an intellectual journey; I sought truth with an open heart and mind and landed squarely back in the Church that I was raised in; thanks, in part, to both of my mothers. That is, thanks to my biological mother who was constantly on her knees begging the Lord for my return, and the mother who she was praying to, the sedes sapientiae or Theotokos -- Mary, the serpent crusher. Personally, I have never had any mystical experiences, just practical advancements. The slavery's that I was accustomed to indulging -- for me they mostly related to the concupiscible power or pleasures of the touch (food, alcohol, sex) -- Confession has eliminated even the desire for inordinate use of this power. Of course, I still struggle, and will until the day that I die, but the devil indeed has been vanquished, if we only ask our Mediator for help.

In pursuing graduate studies, I was able to live in different locations throughout the country. What I found was that, in many instances, dioceses had non-ordained people working within diocesan walls who were living the Nietzschean relativism, unconciously, and directing the eyes and the ears of the bishops. Whenever I've seen or heard bishops speak, I am always delighted with the orthodoxy of their words. But their actions, in many instances, do not match their words. I am convinced this is for two reasons, 1) the people advising them are imbued with the Leftist doctrines of modernity, or 2) a problem of courage.

The second of the two is all our problems. The good people, because of the Halinksi model of intimidation, have been far too silent for far too long. I have been a coward, many laypeople have been cowards, priests and deacons have been cowards, and unfortunately so have bishops. Let us, together, with this blog, end this fear. If we had been more vocal, so would our bishops. If we swear allegiance to our Pope and defend his cause vocally, we can end our slavery.

As to number 1, it is a problem that is not easily overcome. I'll give a few examples of what I mean from personal experience. I currently live in a diocese where much attention is focussed on an immigration raid that happened nearby a few years ago. The United States Government busted up a plant in our diocese that was hosting illlegal aliens. The fallout was indeed tragic. Children were orphaned, families were separated. But this has been at the attention of our bishop, meanwhile Planned Parenthood has moved into our backyard, and the bishop has done nothing. What should get more attention? The murder of innocents, or the sorrow of families who are in their situation because they broke the law? Both deserve consideration, but one deserves priority. I do not suspect that it is the bishop's fault entirely. I suspect that those advising him are telling him that the immigration problem needs his attention more than abortion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In this diocese, as well, the ethics committees are made up of people who have feminist histories (feminist in the modern sense of that term which should really be masculinist). They look for loopholes whenever contoversies come up regarding moral issues; for instance, the rubella vaccine that was cultivated from an aborted fetus was given a pass in our diocese because the Church had said in instances of pandemic, where the only way to stop the disease was with this vaccine, then it could be used. In our diocese, where there certainly was not a pandemic, it was allowed. Bad air!

I have even heard that they would eliminate jobs of those who didn't by into their political ideals. I know of at least one instance where an orthodox Catholic had her job taken away because she didn't toe the 'social justice' line. The couragous priests in our diocese, who remain faithful to the Pope vocally, are kept under a watchful eye with suspicion because of their orthodoxy. I saw this everywhere. It is not limited to my current home.

And so, the tea partiers gave me hope once again. If we, as lay people, can be courageous and bring to light happenings of the nature I have described, corruption within the Church, heterodoxy within the walls, can be eliminated. The sorrow of living this relativism, this cafeteria Catholicism, this cafeteria morality, is that it creates real victims along the way.

Perhaps I need to be clearer as I could be accused of being "cafeteria" myself for looking at abortion above and beyond caring for the poor, or diversity, etc. If you need to discuss diversity, then you might as well not be Catholic. We hold that every human being is of dignity in the image of God, so it is a distraction to have to keep coming back to this. It is the creeping secular death within the walls of the Church.

I simply see that there are a hierarchy of violations of justice. There is no question that nothing is more serious than abortion. Any crime that takes the lives of innocents is more serious than a crime that harms them. It would be as if the US soldiers, upon arriving at Auschwitz, went and arrested the petty theif who stole fruit from the market, instead of apprehending the murderers in the death camp. All crimes are crimes, but some are more serious than others. Our attention has for too long been in the wrong place, mostly because we have been intimidated by a beast press that herds us like sheep and frightens us like the wolves that they are. I am here to say, "No more!"

Enough of this false compassion! Enough of the deceit! Enough of the silencing! Enough of the real haters! Enough of the existentialist morality; the creeping death! Enough of political ideology replacing Catholic orthodoxy! If you are sick of it, like myself, then come with me and expose it to the light. Let us cut out the disease, and live long and prosper.

Diagnosis...

While completing my philosophical studies, I used to imagine myself pushing the "Dumb Ox" (Thomas Aquinas) carrying a large shield in front of me, warding off the arrows of modern philosophers. Indeed, the image was generated because of the famous words of Leo XIII who said that Aquinas wrote in such a principled manner that he effectively put to route every error that could come before him or after him. (See the encyclical Aeterne Patris). Leo XIII, like Chesterton would just a few years later realize, the problem of modernity was a thinking problem, not a moral one. The two, however, are inseparably linked. Truth, as we Thomists are taught, is simply the adeqatio mentis rei -- making the mind commensurate with the thing. Truth is the recognition, as we relate to the outer world, (ens reale in Thomistic terms) of being in its essential order. In order to do the good, we must first know it; we must first recognize the order that actually exists in the outer world (ens reale). For human beings, this order was apply described by Thomas in what is probably his most famous ethical passage on the natural law. (I-II q.94 a.2) Of course, he borrowed a lot from Cicero, but nevertheless in the typically precise Thomistic way, he refined and purified.

Nonetheless, at this point I am not here to discuss the natural law. We need merely make mention of it because it represents an adequate case of a philosopher naming things as he knew them, rather than knowing them as he named them, which incidentally is the problem with all of modern philosophy and its solipsistic tendencies post-Descartes. To develop an ethic, there must be knowable being, and that being must be intelligible. When you destroy metaphysics, ethics quickly follows. As moderns and even post moderns, we have destroyed metaphysics, which is why we find ourselves in the ethical malaise of Nietzschean relativism.

If we are going to root out the enemy, if we are going to diagnose post-modernity, we must first recognize the poison by its symptoms. Then we must catch the snake in order to provide the antidote. Finally, we must administer the antidote. Fortunately for us, 27 years ago a Scottish analytic philosopher diagnosed our modern culture, and his name was Alasdair MacIntyre. After Virtue is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand our modern ethical landscape and how to deal with nihilism in its true form.

MacIntyre demonstrates that the world has fallen into 'emotovist' morality because of losing the common language provided by the Aristotelian philosophical corpus. In moral controversies today, MacIntyre argues that our argumentation, indeed even our words, come from disparate traditions and as a result of having no common foundation upon which to argue, we talk past each other. After Descartes convinced his contemporaries to jettison Aristotle, the Enlightenment philosophers, one by one, attempted justifications for morality without recourse to any form of teleology (purpose) in nature. He says that, in order to have a rationally justified ethics, there needs to be consideration of 1) man as he is in an imperfect state, 2) man as he can be when perfected, and 3) rational justification for getting from point 1 to point 2.

Hidden in what MacIntyre claims is an idea that Catholic thinkers for the last 100 or so years have alluded to, and that is that religion is the basis of culture. Christopher Dawson is the first that I am aware of to promote this thesis, and he does it everywhere, but the best example comes from his Progress and Religion. Chesterton is perhaps the most famous proponent of this thesis. Nonetheless, this idea is echoed in MacIntyre because he says that following Protestant and Jansenist theologies, each of the Enlightenment philosophers abandoned the notion of purpose in ethics. For Kant, following the categorical imperative was the cold answer to ethical dillemas (ultimately for him happiness was beyond our reach and provided to telos for human action); for Hume, the emotions led the way, and on and on.

So there was an "Enlightenment project" of justifying morality, but on MacIntyre's account it failed. Indeed, on Nietzsche's account, it failed. And so, MacIntyre rightly relates that Nietzsche was the first philosopher to recognize the failure and that he took that as a failure of morality as such, and so he ushered in the age of personal preference morality.

In a book that I have been writing, I trace the fundaments of our culture ultimately to the Protestant religious narrative, as that provided the framework for liberalism (in the classical sense of that term), and that Nietzsche's philosophy represents the most radical extension, the place where liberalism without proper relations to any kind of truth, will extend. Indeed, Nietzsche's philosophy is the fate of all liberalism if it ignores metaphysical and religious truth. Nietzsche is liberalism without truth. It may, prima facie, seem a mischaracterization because the fundaments of liberalism are the dignity of each human being; they are democracy and freedom without interference. Democracy without orientation to truth represents nothing but a will to power. When the blathering politician argues on the evening news that 'we have to agree to disagree' he recommends Nietzschean relativism. The dialectic, without any bearing on truth, simply becomes a clash of competing wills where the most powerful is the winner. Truth, in this situation, is self-created. Democracy lends itself to the domination of the weak by the strong when there is no orientation to the truth of the human person. Following Nietzsche, we have all become self-creators of our own natures, which entails self-creators of our own morality; we have become natureless. Without nature; without internally directed order to our beings; without the natural law; personal preference morality becomes the only philosophical orientation we can have.

The question of whether Nietzsche was that influential, or if the state of our western cultural ethic is the result the natural progression of liberalism, we may never know. Nietzsche, the greatest atheist genius there ever was, certainly has readers. Nonetheless, most people are unconscious to the fact that they are living his ethic.

So let us take this as the diagnosis. What is Nietzsche's philosophy? In a nutshell, being is unintelligible; there is no metaphysical truth because there exist no metaphysical objects; metaphysics is but a chimera of the human imagination. All existence is merely a haphazard becoming, a burgeoning of a more powerful thing overcoming a weaker thing. It is the human mind that imposes order on reality, but in actuality, there is no order. Seeking to know for human beings is a "Socratic optimism.' That is, all intellectual pursuits are merely a game because existence is unintelligible outside of a will to power. He is known as the inverted Platonist -- I would call him the inverted Christian.

In his ethics, there is a dialectic battle between the golden aristocrat and the beastly slave. The slave morality on Nietzsche's account is that of the priestly castes, and those who are simply weak. The slaves invent things like justice and truth, only to hold the true aristocrat down. The aristocrat is the man who lives for action, the hunt, the prowl, the orgies; in short, he is the person who does that for which he is strong enough. He is a 'happening.'

What it really comes down to, though, is that a person is free to choose to do whatever they want with the only limitation being their own weakness. With Nietzsche and the other existentialists, order is merely imposed by the human mind on what is ultimately a haphazard becoming in reality. As such, there are no "natures" in reality. As human beings, we are only what we make ourselves. We are self-creators. This ethic is the foundation of personal preference morality; a emotivist morality; a selfish-relativism. This I argue, along with MacIntyre, is western humanities modern common cultural ethos. This, unbeknownst to Nietzsche, is the real nihilism.

We have heard the term "cafeteria Catholic," but what modernity is really facing is "cafeteria morality." This plague; this disease; this inhuman scourge has reached even into the depths of the Catholic Church. This "will to power" liberalism, seeks to intimidate our shepherds. As someone with dyspepsia over the haters, blind to their own Nietzchean outlook, have taken seats of power, whispering with their forked tongues into the ears of our bishops and priests. They have taken over, in many instances, the institutions of culture. Knowing that human beings are great imitators, the beast was wise in taking over diocesan Catholic newspapers, Catholic colleges, and in some cases even archdioceses. The makers of our culture are moral self-creators, and these liars have taken some of the seats of power even in the Catholic Church.

I have often dreamt of starting this "Soldiers of the Magisterium" as a press organization for the orthodox. I have dreamt of being the eyes and the ears of the bishops from an orthodox perspective. In order to do this, though, is to be soldiers of the First among equals. That is why I propose and organization of Catholics who are tired of the power brokers of our day silencing dissent for anti-Catholic behavior in Catholic institutions. The dream may never be realized, but let us hope; let us dream.