It's smut, not art, Loveland protesters say

[spinoza1111]

I agree with you in this. A person’s right to create and exhibit “art” in a publicly funded museum shouldn’t trump the right of a normal person to visit that museum without being subjected to alarmingly blasphemous images. Especially when children will be exposed to this type of “art”. I appreciate your attitude on the anti-Catholic bashing that goes on in modern society.
What I’m curious about, and I don’t mean any offense by this, is why do you refer to yourself as Catholic if you are non-practicing?

Because people can be culturally Catholic, especially if they studied in Catholic schools prior to Vatican II. They are subject in some measure to the same type of “bashing”.

Some examples include the Puritan sexual bullying that goes on in US society, which dialectically switches between two extremes: hatred of the body and licentiousness (Las Vegas style). Catholics often have a better balance between the two extremes, whether they are observant or not.

Another example would be the way in which Jesuit education fostered in its better students a high degree of literacy as opposed to public schooling. The poor literacy of public schooling has normalized a (deviant) expectation that only Ivy League elite people can write, and the Catholic graduate student, for example, finds her usage called “verbose” when in fact the reviewer is looking for stupid errors of grammar and usage, and finds few, thereby making him feel rather useless, as a reviewer.

A third would be the fact that many Catholics, despite what the hierarchy and Catholic politicians might say, took the social Gospel seriously: “there is neither man nor woman, Jew nor Greek”: “it is easier for a camel”, “woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees”, “what you do for the least of you you do for Me”, etc. This includes the “worker priests” of “liberation theology” in Latin America, the Berrigan brothers, two Jesuit priests who destroyed draft records, and Dorothy Day.

A sort of Kulturkampf (culture war) was unleashed upon them and Latin America under Reagan and it has not ceased. Basically, it would be vastly more convenient for the United States to have, like Russia has, a “national church”, but of course our tradition of religious freedom makes this difficult to accomplish.

But, post 9-11, the Kulturkampf has centered around Samuel Huntington’s claim that world history today is a “clash of civilizations” in which the United States must define itself as white and broadly Protestant. That is, while we have no one national church, our politicians expect us to defer to Protestant ways of thinking, notably the (heretical to the Catholic) belief that worldly success indicates spiritual election.

I cannot take Catholicism seriously as theology, which would implicitly replace philosophy, and I regard the European Enlightenment of the 18th century (along with other Enlightenments such as the wising-up which appeared more or less simultaneously in China and in Greece in the sixth century BC, under Plato and Confucius) as part of an evolving God’s message.

Which would get me thrown out of church faster than you can say Ticonderoga. Nonetheless I am content to have a spiritual and non-religious life, to treat texts such as Tolstoy as worthy of attention more than the Bible (a collection, sad to say, of noble but corrupt texts), and to realize than one needs (cf Kant) no spiritual justification for right action.

Don’t bother calling Security. If people want me out of this newsgroup I shall leave.
:whackadoo:

 

[livnlern]

I cannot take Catholicism seriously as theology, which would implicitly replace philosophy, and I regard the European Enlightenment of the 18th century (along with other Enlightenments such as the wising-up which appeared more or less simultaneously in China and in Greece in the sixth century BC, under Plato and Confucius) as part of an evolving God’s message.

Which would get me thrown out of church faster than you can say Ticonderoga. Nonetheless I am content to have a spiritual and non-religious life, to treat texts such as Tolstoy as worthy of attention more than the Bible (a collection, sad to say, of noble but corrupt texts), and to realize than one needs (cf Kant) no spiritual justification for right action.

Don’t bother calling Security. If people want me out of this newsgroup I shall leave.
:whackadoo:

I was just curious. I’m not trying to get you thrown out.
You’re obviously very intelligent and I can’t even begin to debate philosophies with you since you’ve studied some very deep and very thick (!) books and other writings. All I can do is quote these lines from Matthew 18: "And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
So, I think if we can have faith like a little child and believe in the Gospel, Jesus will lead us to faith.

 

[spinoza1111]

I was just curious. I’m not trying to get you thrown out.
You’re obviously very intelligent and I can’t even begin to debate philosophies with you since you’ve studied some very deep and very thick (!) books and other writings. All I can do is quote these lines from Matthew 18: "And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
So, I think if we can have faith like a little child and believe in the Gospel, Jesus will lead us to faith.

Children are in fact brutally honest and unwilling to be led unless they have reason to trust. They trusted Jesus because children bond to adults that are able to love, and whoever Jesus was, he had this ability. Children fight back instinctively against untruth.

And this is what Jesus told his disciples (Matt. 10:16): Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

So perhaps what Jesus meant about being as children was to be as them when they trust the trustworthy, and learn, as they grow older, to mistrust the untrustworthy.

Many Catholics mistrust intellectuals, for most intellectuals are either non-believers, or, like Spinoza, evolve their own beliefs. Still others, like Descartes, give what they consider a firm intellectual foundation to their Catholic belief, only to find themselves mistrusted (and their books placed, in the case of Descartes on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, or “index of forbidden books” which before Vatican II Catholics were not permitted to read without their bishop’s permission.

However, I’m afraid I find these exhortations to be falsely humble, saying like Galileo that you recant (whether or not you say, under your breath as did Galileo, “it still moves”, refusing to recant in his heart), to be a trusting child, have been misused for social control purposes. In my view, after Constantine, Christianity became a tool of social control.

(Galileo proved to his own satisfaction that the earth revolves around the sun and this was considered heresy in his time. It was not intellectual pride that made him state his belief, nor was it humility that caused Galileo to recant: it was fear.)

The mathematician and scientist, like the child, humbles herself, but before the facts. For theistic (especially pantheistic) scientists, those facts are what they were for “Blessed” Spinoza: they are an immanent God.

All this is heresy by Catholic standards and must not be taken any other way lest it mislead casual readers.

 

[livnlern]

Children are in fact brutally honest and unwilling to be led unless they have reason to trust. They trusted Jesus because children bond to adults that are able to love, and whoever Jesus was, he had this ability. Children fight back instinctively against untruth.
And this is what Jesus told his disciples (Matt. 10:16): Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
So perhaps what Jesus meant about being as children was to be as them when they trust the trustworthy, and learn, as they grow older, to mistrust the untrustworthy.
However, I’m afraid I find these exhortations to be falsely humble, saying like Galileo that you recant (whether or not you say, under your breath as did Galileo, “it still moves”, refusing to recant in his heart), to be a trusting child, have been misused for social control purposes. In my view, after Constantine, Christianity became a tool of social control.

Christianity has had a HUGE effect on society. Sometimes in negative ways, but mostly positive. The negatives have come about because society is run by human beings who have a tendency to mess things up. But, if you take the words of Jesus seriously and in all their purity and truthfulness you can live the life of a Christian, regardless of what society does. It’s not easy to do, but it wasn’t meant to be easy. And it all comes down to what each individual person is willing to do to follow Jesus.
Sorry, I’m really off topic here, but wanted to answer your post.