The above either paraphrasing or quoting Nietzsche.
“World without end, Amen” It doesn’t take much effort to find the seed of untruth among the ideas of men.
I look at truth in relation to Jesus, Jesus in relation to His Church, and ideas of men in relation to the teaching of His Church. Anything less is of my own disordered will.
An act of the will evidenced by posters almost making a shipwreck of their faith by ideas not grounded in the revealed truth of the Catholic Church. Why take the chance, entertainment? to quote Nietzsche at dinner parties? Guard your faith.
npatrol:
Well put. But I think that we can read Nietzsche while still guarding our faith, and probably should. For a few reasons.
First of all, Nietzsche is highly attractive to so many people and has indelibly influenced modern thought (for good or for bad – I’d say a little of both). As such he is someone we need to understand. As long as Christianity shuts itself off to understanding that which is different, that which is Other, then it will never be able to defend its own truth nor to reach out to those people who may have strayed outside the Church. We need to “know our enemy” – not just so that we can protect ourselves, but so that we can
love our enemy as Jesus tells us to. In fact, so that we don’t view people who differ from us as these “enemies” beneath our dignity, but as fellow human beings whom we can treat with enough dignity to listen to and try to understand.
Secondly, I think it’s a mistake to claim that Nietzsche is
all bad just because he wasn’t a Christian. Non-Christians can have beautiful insights, too, and can even help to inform our faith. Pope Benedict has written about Nietzsche in his encyclicals, and while it’s true that he has usually done so critically, this represents to me the fact that seriously considering other points of view can enrich our faith: either by giving us certain good, positive things to think about,
or by showing us the kinds of sad mistakes we can make if our life isn’t rooted in Christ. (To take another example, the Holy Father at one point in one of his encyclicals commends Marx for articulating a powerful reaction against capitalism. Naturally Benedict goes on to say that Marxism is not
complete as a philosophical system, but at least he considers the guy more generously than many Catholics are willing to do, Catholics who would prefer not to touch Marx with a ten-foot pole.) The Church has never been one to stand apart from “the world,” in a kind of “we’ve found the truth and you haven’t” sort of way. It has always been deeply engaged in the attempt to understand, and influence, culture. For this, intelligent reading is vitally necessary.
As for me, I can say that I have learned a great deal from Nietzsche…in particular, the emphasis he places on the human will has gotten me to see that you can’t always just quote Aquinas and give people logical reasons not to sin – you sometimes have to treat sin, or atheism, or whatever, as a fundamental orientation of a person’s will, which you might better win over through love or demonstrations of the
beauty of goodness than through dry analytic lectures on dogmas or doctrines.
Peace,
+AMDG+
