"It’s our very sleepiness to the presence of God that renders us insensitive to evil: we don’t hear God because we don’t want to be disturbed, and so we remain indifferent to evil…"
—POPE BENEDICT XVI (Apr 20, 2011)
Early on in his pontificate, he went back to Germany and in a homily he said the following: "There is not only a physical deafness which largely cuts people off from social life; there is also a 'hardness of hearing' where God is concerned, and this is something from which we particularly suffer in our own time. Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God -- there are too many different frequencies filling our ears. What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited to our age. Along with this hardness of hearing or outright deafness where God is concerned, we naturally lose our ability to speak with him and to him. And so we end up losing a decisive capacity for perception. We risk losing our inner senses. This weakening of our capacity for perception drastically and dangerously curtails the range of our relationship with reality. The horizon of our life is disturbingly foreshortened."
That hardness of hearing is sometimes created because of we don´t know where God is concerned. Sometimes, we preach our own thoughts, instead of what the people wants to learn.
Russ: that sounds exactly like what Teilhard de Chardin diagnosed, except that he prescribed as a cure to eat again of the Tree of Knowledge and to collectivize so we evolve ourselves right in to the New Jerusalem.
But however much heresy he wrote, his intent was clear: to make as much of God and of Christian doctrine as could fit in to the modern, evolution-materialist, scientific worldview as acceptable and necessary as possible.
I suppose if the Pope and Chardin both agree on something, it likely is true. I never understood that kind of approach, but I've always had an appreciation for philosophy, and esteemed the truths of philosophy as greater than those of observation.
It may be better said that anything not amenable to empirical observation - materialism - is considered pre-scientific today, even if deduced by syllogism using formal logic.
Who was it who said, "When the practice of metaphysics is banned, it is always invariably so that metaphysics does not disappear, but that an unknown and naive metaphysics slips in unannounced through the back door"?
It's not the progress of science - it's the abandonment of metaphysics. Returning to Teilhard de Chardin, when "up" (metaphysics, vertical religion) is closed off, the only way to go is "forward" (evolution, collectivization, the so-called "noosphere", the Omega point, utopianism).
The priesthood of scientism has done a good job of closing off the vertical for all who accept their word as truth - and that is a not-insignificant portion of people.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the parable of the good samaritan.
best regards.
Early on in his pontificate, he went back to Germany and in a homily he said the following: "There is not only a physical deafness which largely cuts people off from social life; there is also a 'hardness of hearing' where God is concerned, and this is something from which we particularly suffer in our own time. Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God -- there are too many different frequencies filling our ears. What is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited to our age. Along with this hardness of hearing or outright deafness where God is concerned, we naturally lose our ability to speak with him and to him. And so we end up losing a decisive capacity for perception. We risk losing our inner senses. This weakening of our capacity for perception drastically and dangerously curtails the range of our relationship with reality. The horizon of our life is disturbingly foreshortened."
ReplyDeleteHi.
ReplyDeleteThat hardness of hearing is sometimes created because of we don´t know where God is concerned. Sometimes, we preach our own thoughts, instead of what the people wants to learn.
Best regards.
Russ: that sounds exactly like what Teilhard de Chardin diagnosed, except that he prescribed as a cure to eat again of the Tree of Knowledge and to collectivize so we evolve ourselves right in to the New Jerusalem.
ReplyDeleteBut however much heresy he wrote, his intent was clear: to make as much of God and of Christian doctrine as could fit in to the modern, evolution-materialist, scientific worldview as acceptable and necessary as possible.
I suppose if the Pope and Chardin both agree on something, it likely is true. I never understood that kind of approach, but I've always had an appreciation for philosophy, and esteemed the truths of philosophy as greater than those of observation.
It may be better said that anything not amenable to empirical observation - materialism - is considered pre-scientific today, even if deduced by syllogism using formal logic.
Who was it who said, "When the practice of metaphysics is banned, it is always invariably so that metaphysics does not disappear, but that an unknown and naive metaphysics slips in unannounced through the back door"?
It's not the progress of science - it's the abandonment of metaphysics. Returning to Teilhard de Chardin, when "up" (metaphysics, vertical religion) is closed off, the only way to go is "forward" (evolution, collectivization, the so-called "noosphere", the Omega point, utopianism).
The priesthood of scientism has done a good job of closing off the vertical for all who accept their word as truth - and that is a not-insignificant portion of people.