Points To Ponder:
The critique of fundamentalists that Catholics basically appropriate pagan symbols left and right is not without merit. Catholics are supposed to have a nuanced understanding of these things not react like haughty colonizing douchebags about contemporary examples of inculturation while blindly uncritically accepting prior pagan inculturations without a second thought. After all, if they did that, they would have to jettison virtually everything about Catholicism. How do you think the Church is Catholic which means "universal" and how do you think it was able to worm its way into so many cultures? A hint: inculturation.
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Monday, October 21, 2019
Points to Ponder:
(On Dialogue)
The dialogue...supposes that one listens to the other, and in the divine sense of this word listen, as Jesus the child listened to the doctors, or the risen Christ listened to the pilgrims of Emmaus, or the man listens to Revelation, or God listens to man's prayer. Let yourself listen, I say, with the hope that the other's point of view will teach you something new, will complete your thought, or will allow you to expand it, to purify, subliminate, deepen it. An objector, contradictor, critic are unsuspecting aids, for in every objection there is a part of the truth, which allows us to better express what we think, to forestall confusion, to give relief and contour to our opinions. St. Thomas began by presenting what went against his thesis. He leaned on the obstacle, on the apparent negation he built his discreet affirmation, filtered, tested, simple, and sure. And Laecorde, in the same spirit, said: "I do not try to convince my adversary of error, but to join him in a higher truth." [Jean Guitton: Dialogues of Paul VI With Jean Guitton pg. 163 (circa 1967) as quoted in I. Shawn McElhinney's Commentary on the Intricacies of Dialogue (circa 2003)]
(On Dialogue)
The dialogue...supposes that one listens to the other, and in the divine sense of this word listen, as Jesus the child listened to the doctors, or the risen Christ listened to the pilgrims of Emmaus, or the man listens to Revelation, or God listens to man's prayer. Let yourself listen, I say, with the hope that the other's point of view will teach you something new, will complete your thought, or will allow you to expand it, to purify, subliminate, deepen it. An objector, contradictor, critic are unsuspecting aids, for in every objection there is a part of the truth, which allows us to better express what we think, to forestall confusion, to give relief and contour to our opinions. St. Thomas began by presenting what went against his thesis. He leaned on the obstacle, on the apparent negation he built his discreet affirmation, filtered, tested, simple, and sure. And Laecorde, in the same spirit, said: "I do not try to convince my adversary of error, but to join him in a higher truth." [Jean Guitton: Dialogues of Paul VI With Jean Guitton pg. 163 (circa 1967) as quoted in I. Shawn McElhinney's Commentary on the Intricacies of Dialogue (circa 2003)]
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