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irenaeus1
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Quite sad actually
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irenaeus1
Guest
Have you investigated the fundamental tenets with which you have difficulty? Or does study not interest you? Just curious.
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Nohome
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I’m always seeking, who doesn’t? When it comes to matters of faith, at some point, you have to just believe. There is no course of study that can make one believe.
For me, it comes down to the efforts of St. Thomas Aquinas to reconcile aristotelian metaphysics with church teachings. The church continues to embrace his work, but science has disproved and dismissed aristotelian metaphysics. So I’m left with the option to “just believe” or keep on seeking.
Nohome
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Michaeljc4
Guest
Well…for what it’s worth, here’s how it works for me: I took Catholicism out of my life, completely. Then I realized I missed it. Identifying what I missed has been a huge help to me in practicing my Catholic faith. Perhaps you could focus on the parts of Catholicism that you find meaningful, or powerful, or inspirational…if any? Surely there is something you respond to. If so…what, and why?
Just a thought from a guy who has struggled mightily with his Catholicsm. Eventually I just gave up, and God brought me back.
He’s cool like that.
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HollyDolly
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Michaeljc4, My dad was like your grandfather too.In his case it was he told his aunt a nun,it was seeing a poor Italian woman carrying her dead child in her arms,crying and screaming, and part of the poor kids head,shot off.That really affected him.The child did nothing wrong,why did the little one have to die like that? So while my dad believed in God, he just couldn’t reconcile the Church’s teachings on suffering and other things to the horrors he saw,especially to innocent people like that child.
Oh,daddy would pray whenever he’d visist momma’s grave at Fort Sam Houston.And he did come back to the church when he was going to have an operation to remove to tumors on his colon.
It doesn’t surprise me that the makeup in the Church in the US anyways would change since there are so many hispanics here.
Never been to a charismatic mass.
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irenaeus1
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I never meant to imply that study will make you believe, but it certainly can persuade you if the preponderance of evidence supports the Church’s position.
It has?
But you said, “I just don’t believe some of the fundamental tenets of the faith.” This is different than “just believe” or keep on seeking.
Nohome
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JonW
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This may be steering the thread off track for a moment, but science has had zero effect on Aristotelian metaphysics. There is absolutely no contradiction in adhering to both. Now Aristotle’s Physics on the other hand is a different story. There are many scientifically-minded philosophers who have abandoned traditional Aristotelian metaphysics in one way or another, but the advancement of science itself has no bearing on Aquinas’ or Aristotle’s metaphysics. About 70 years ago it was even fashionable to pretend that science, together with what turned out to be some shoddy philosophy, had eliminated the possibility of meaningfulness in much of traditional metaphysics. This has since been out of fashion though, for quite a while, and for very good reason. The principle on which the notion was built, the positivist’s verifiability criterion of meaning, was conclusively demolished from within by, in large part, Quine, among others. I’d be interested to hear you elaborate on your point. In math, for example, we abandoned Aristotelian logic a long time ago (actually not so long ago if we’re being honest with ourselves: about 130 years ago), but that doesn’t refute it in any way. It’s just that we came up with a more elaborate and mathematical logic which has proven very useful. Besides which, some mathematicians and philosophers are still showing very interesting results when we use modern modal logic (which comes from Aristotle) together with Aristotelian deductive and syllogistic logic. My advice would be to not let your faith be determined by philosophical or quasi-philosophical fashion. That’s not much of a faith. If this were 1930 and I believed the verifiability criterion of meaning and allowed philosophical fashion to determine my faith, but I still stubbornly insisted that I love my fiance, I might be in trouble. God is love. Don’t worry about reductionist nonsense. God wants a relationship with you. Friendships, love and faith do not go the way of dusty, crusty, silly old philosophical fashion.
God Bless
Jon Winterburn
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mlchance
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Science has done no such thing, and any scientist who says otherwise is at best being silly.
– Mark L. Chance.
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