Friday, June 08, 2018

"One From the Vault" Dept.

The following is a flashback to the archives of this website from 2008...

"...To really take this to brass tacks, faith is something that we give assent to that we cannot prove. I am referring in those words to how we have no way to verify emperically that the rules required to utilize reason and logic actually exist but we must presuppose them in order to reason at all. And even that statement itself embodies an often unrealized element so I will briefly note it at this time.

All presuppositions to some extent require a degree of faith when they are not grounded on proven or otherwise provable tenets. And those who lionize empiricism as the be-all and end-all of verification are involving themselves in a double standard on the laws of utilizing logic and reason that they would never accept in other contexts. Ergo, they inexorably deny the law of non-contradiction by failing to require empirical evidences for the laws of logic and reason the way they would other empirically unverifiable presuppositions. (Such as the existence of God.)

So at bottom, as the existence of the rules required to utilize logic cannot be proven in a fashion that does not presuppose them, they cannot be proven logically. They have to be taken as presuppositions and thus they are taken on a kind of faith. And for this reason, the atheists who mock religious people for believing in something they cannot empirically verify are hypocritical for doing the exact same thing themselves..." [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa October 23, 2008)]




Thursday, June 07, 2018

Points to Ponder:

"Washington [DC] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable." [Horace Greeley (circa 1865)]
How to spin an NFL offseason “grade” into anything you want it to be

Wednesday, June 06, 2018

Points to Ponder:

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. [Abraham Lincoln]
What are your memories of the 2008 Seahawks season?

I remember the 2008 and 2009 seasons as being downright awful. 2008 was the last year of the Holmgren regime and much as I loved the way Mike Holmgren brought the Seahawks back to respectability again for the first time since the Chuck Knox days; at the same time, there was a need for massive sweeping change and 2009 continued the same rot under Jim Mora before the Seahawks ownership cleaned house and hired Pete Carroll who along with John Schneider ushered in the third and greatest period of Seahawks football history.

We are now in a similar state as we were in 2007 except I do not foresee any more fall. Pete and John are reloading now and the Seahawks should be primed for another playoffs trip and a return to respectability next year after a disappointing injury plagued 2017 season.


Tuesday, June 05, 2018

Seahawks offensive line will instantly improve under Mike Solari

The news of Kate Spade's suicide is so sad.

For people feeling like they have no one, remember you're not alone. People do care. And people will listen.

The National Suicide Prevention Hotline can be reached by calling 1-800-273-8255.
Parkland Students To Announce Nationwide Gun Control Tour

Perhaps they can title said tour the "Ensuring Republicans Keep the House in 2018 Tour" because this little stunt has backfire written all over it.

Monday, June 04, 2018

OPCW: Call Us Crazy, But Maybe Syria Didn’t Give Up Their Chemical Weapons After All
On the Popes, Heresy, Etc:

This material was occasioned on another media source from my words as quoted in purple font below. My interlocuters words will be in dark green font. Without further ado...

If we go by the long established understanding of the term heresy, neither Honorius nor John XXII were heretics.

The Holy Spirit prevents popes from being heretics, schismatics, or apostates and to claim otherwise is to deny the doctrine of indefectibility of the Church of which the pope is the visible head as well as the guarantor of ecclesial communion.


False.

Actually, everything I said above is true.

There is a difference between objective material heresy... And the sin of formal heresy. of which we've had several popes

We are talking about the promulgation of heresy. While there are a lot of material heretics about (and I can guarantee that you are a material heretic!), the Holy Spirit even protects the pope from promulgating material heresy. Its part of the whole "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail" prayer of Jesus to Peter. Or at least that is how the Popes themselves have seen it:

"Peter, and like him all his successors and heads of the Church, has the mission of encouraging the faithful to put all their trust in Christ and the power of his grace, which Peter personally experienced. This is what Innocent III wrote in the Letter Apostolicae Sedis Primatus (November 12, 1199), citing the text of Luke 22:32 and commenting on it as follows: ‘The Lord clearly intimates that Peter’s successors will never at any time deviate from the Catholic faith, but will instead recall the others and strengthen the hesitant’ (DS 775). That medieval Pope felt that Jesus’ statement to Simon Peter was confirmed by the experience of 1,000 years." [Pope John Paul II] 

But hey, what do they know right?

The inability to distinguish this difference is the error common to both papolitors and sedevacantists.

And now we have the smart aleck so-called "traditionalist" engaging in calumny. To take the position that the pope cannot be a heretic, schismatic, or apostate is to take seriously the doctrines of Church indefectibility, the promise of Jesus Christ, the belief that his prayer for Peter's unfailing faith would be granted, etc. But why listen to me when Vatican I is so clear on this:

“Indeed, their Apostolic teaching was embraced by all the venerable fathers, and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Savior to the prince of his disciples: ‘I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren’ [Lk 22:32].

This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this See so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all, and so that the whole flock of Christ might be kept away by them from the poisonous food of error and be nourished with the sustenance of heavenly doctrine. [First Vatican Council: Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus]


You either believe this or you do not. And how the gift of truth and never-failing faith could possibly be conferred on Peter and his successors where they either apostasize{1}, are a schismatic{2}, or are heretical{3} is something you will twist yourself into pretzels trying to excuse it away in the sort of disingenuous fashion not uncommon to many who call themselves "traditionalists."

There is a reason why you will not find any Saints or Doctors who have publicly proclaimed any popes were heretics with even eminent Doctors like Francisco Suarez who though they argued hypotheses of popes possibly being heretical, personally believed that God's "sweet providence" would not allow the pope to either teach or fall into error. (Based again on Luke 22:32.) The same position was espoused by St. Alphonsus Ligouri who said "We ought rightly to presume as Cardinal Bellarmine declares, that God will never let it happen that a Roman Pontiff, even as a private person, becomes a public heretic or an occult heretic.’ ” 

Now we cannot read souls so whether there is private material heresy in anyone is not something we can determine. However, public actions and statements are another matter. If at any point in history a pope was a public heretic in any manner whatsoever (formal or material), a schismatic, or an apostate then they have deviated from the faith and there is no coherent way around this.

What would such an event mean? Simply, this would mean that the prayer of Jesus failed, the promise of Matthew 16:18 was false, the 519 Formula of Hormisdas{4} was a lie, St. Agatho I, Innocent III, St. John Paul II and other popes who spoke of the See of Peter being always preserved from blemish were all to a man delusional liars. This does not mean the popes are impeccable of course or that they cannot make limited errors.{5} However, it does mean that they cannot in any respect deny the faith (heresy), deviate from ecclesial communion (schism), or renounce the faith (apostasy). If they could do any of these things then this whole notion of the Holy Spirit protecting Peter and his successors is a giant farce. And that is the bottom line really.

Notes:

{1} Read: renounce the faith.

{2} Read: are separated from the communion of the Church.

{3} Read: denying dogmas of the faith or doctrines proximate to them.

{4} Required for reunion in the sixth century and promulgated to the whole church by the Fourth General Council of Contantinople IV in 869 and the First General Council of the Vatican in 1870.

{5} Or that they will always make the best decisions in a given situation involving matters of discipline, church government, etc.