Well, save for Catholicism, which has been carefully constructed over 2000 years to be self-consistent and rational. Sadly, we Catholics are still rationalizing beings, so while the faith is rational, we are not.
Just what am I on about now? Well, I'm working my way through St. Augustine's The City of God, a book of luminous genius wherein Augie takes the pagans out into the alley behind the bar and beats the tar out of them.
The book, originally published in 426 AD, is primarily a response to accusations from non-Christian Romans who blamed the Christians for the fall of Rome. They claimed that had the Empire continued to worship the gods, the Gauls would never have triumphed. St. Augustine's book is a total dissection of the nonsense of paganism. Here's a tiny portion of it.
Who, then, is Janus, with whom Varro commences? He is the world. Certainly a very brief and unambiguous reply. Why, then, do they say that the beginnings of things pertain to him, but the ends to another whom they call Terminus? For they say that two months have been dedicated to these two gods, with reference to beginnings and ends—January to Janus, and February to Terminus—over and above those ten months which commence with March and end with December. And they say that that is the reason why the Terminalia are celebrated in the month of February, the same month in which the sacred purification is made which they call Februum, and from which the month derives its name. Do the beginnings of things, therefore, pertain to the world, which is Janus, and not also the ends, since another god has been placed over them? Do they not own that all things which they say begin in this world also come to an end in this world? What folly it is, to give him only half power in work, when in his image they give him two faces!It goes on and on and on like this.
What strikes you is not just the silliness of the pagans, but how long it lasted, how pervasive it was and how applicable it is today. Rome, one of the greatest empires in the history of Mankind, adhered to a belief system that was obviously false. It's kind of like the socialists of today. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spouts gibberish and there are plenty who go along with her.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
What that passage shows is how they kept creating new gods and goddesses to perform different tasks in order to make their model of the world work. It's like the way the Secular Left is continually adding regulations and mandates to the Rube Goldberg machine it's had to create to replace the traditional family.
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| The voice of reason? |
1 comment:
"Catholicism, which has been carefully constructed over 2000 years to be self-consistent and rational."
So, you've said variations of this many times over the years, to the point that I've been browsing through St. Thomas from time to time, and in the last month or so decided to have a look at the Catechism, to see what it is that you find so compelling.
Arguing the point with you at length would serve no particular purpose, since your mind is made up and I doubt you want to hear it. But I would like to point out that the attitude above sums up a big part of the reason why so many people wander away from the Church. It is constructed around big, grandiose claims like that, and the doctrine is expressed in masses of flowery language and assertions from authority. But after wading through all the obfuscation and hand-waving and poetry-by-committee, I am mainly seeing a massive exercise in trying to actually say as little of importance as possible, in so many words that hopefully nobody notices.
I find these writings to be frustrating, needlessly opaque, and almost aggressively unhelpful. They appear to me to be exercises in not actually answering the questions that anyone actually asks. Maybe they do something for you, but I am not you, and not everyone needs the same things.
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