Info on the "Faith Movement"?

[MulusChristi]

Greetings All,
I have recently been doing some (largely unsuccessful) web searches on Thomistic Theology and the Philosophy of Science. I ran across a UK website for the “Faith Movement”, which appears to be Catholic and seeks to build a new synthesis of faith and reason. It appears orthodox, but does anyone have any experience with it? Here is the web address: faith.org.uk/index.htm

 

[JM3]

From the website:

Inspiration and identity of the Faith Movement

1. The essential mark of the Faith Movement is a new synthesis of contemporary Science and divine Revelation which re-vindicates the primacy of Jesus Christ over all creation, throughout history, culture and society, and within the individual mind, heart and body. This new synthesis arises out of the principles outlined by Agnes Holloway (in her book God’s Master Key: The Law of Control and Direction) and more fully elaborated by her son Fr. Edward Holloway (in his book Catholicism a New Synthesis and other writings).

From a blog:

exlaodicea.wordpress.com/2007/09/01/gods-master-key-%E2%80%93-the-law-of-control-and-direction-by-agnes-holloway/

“Fortunately, the book isn’t very long which is a great mercy as I really didn’t want to have to secrete any more electrons over it than absolutely necessary. I have already posted the extract in which Mrs Holloway outlines her conception of the real presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist. I recommend anyone to read it. It sums up in one passage much of what is going wrong in the book generally. It principally teaches an obscure heresy from the early Middle Ages known as Impanation, but because of her unorthodox account of the soul it also involves a form of pre-natal Adoptionism.”

It is not orthodox, as far as I can tell (just my opinion).

 

[MulusChristi]

Hello JM3,

Thanks so much for the blog reference.  Of course, one has to wonder about the catholic bona fides of "laodicea", but the concerns and objections expressed there look orthodox to me.  Of course, the Eucharist is particularly difficult to explore rationally.  The harder one works at it the more one bumps into a variety of heresies.  I guess that's why it is called a mystery.  :)

I have done a little googling on Agnes Holloway and ran across a number of references in a blog entitled “The hermeneutic of continuity”, which I associate with orthodoxy. Here is a link from that blog on the Faith Movement (the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2006/10/faith-movement-and-evolution.html) and the first paragraph:

"An anonymous commenter has asked about the Faith Movement and its position on evolution. The first thing to say is that in teaching theology, the Faith Movement is known for remaining fully in accord with the Church’s Magisterium, and explicitly subject to the judgement of the same Magisterium. Partly because of this, the Tablet, for example, always refers to Faith as a “traditionalist” movement.

At the same time, the Faith Movement tries to promote an understanding of science and religion that will help with our apologetics. "

This sounds more promising.

 

[MulusChristi]

Maybe at this point I’m just addressing myself. At any rate, I found another thread from the hermeneutics blog from 2007. Apparently there was a major flame war in then between ExLaodicea and the hermeneutic blog on whether the Faith Movement was modernist. the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2007/08/is-faith-movement-modernist-because-it.html The reference JM3 found was one of the salvos in this war.

The comment box for this hermeneutics entry is very interesting and there is a lot of debate there about the status of the 24 theses of the Thomistic philosophy promulgated in 1917. A link to these is here: vaxxine.com/hyoomik/aquinas/theses.eht Unless you are well grounded in Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophy, most of it will be barely intelligible (even the english translation(!)). I’ve only just read my first real book on Thomistic philosophy, so it is pretty much beyond me.

The objections of the ExLaodicea faction sound very reminiscent of things I’ve read in ultraconservative sedevacantist “Catholic” blogs. So I’m still not sure about the Faith Movement.

 

[honestquestions]

Faith and reason seem to be oxymorons. If you have reason for believing something, you don’t need faith. Do you think I am setting up a false dichotomy here? You either believe something based on reason or not.