I'm wondering if anybody else...
has read the book Turmoil and Truth: the Historical Roots of the Modern Crisis in the Catholic Church, by Philip Trower ? I'm more than halfway through, and it is quite good. Here's a quote...
"Part of the mystery of the Church is that, in arranging how His truth is to be handed on, God made Greek philosophers, or anyone resembling them, subordinate to Galilean fishermen. The three wise men kneeling before Dvine Wisdom made visible as a baby provides a prototype. A Pope or a bishop may be personally learned, but his learning does not add anything to his authority as pope or bishop. His authority to pass judgement on the ideas of even the most brilliant thinker, where those ideas touch faith or morals, comes solely form the fact that he is a sucessor of one of Our Lord's little-educated working-class apostles. St. Paul the brilliant 'university type', was brought in later, but only after a big dose of humiliation.
For Catholics, the purpose behind this plan is not difficult to see. Everything in God's designs is directed to keeping us small in our own esteem, since this is the only way into the kingdom of Heaven, and no one needs more help in this matter than clever men and women. (Over the entrance to every Catholic university could well be carved St. Therese of Lisieux's words: "God has no need of any human instrument, least of all me.")
But this ultimate subordination of 'philosophers' to 'fishermen' is not something the clever find naturally easy to accept. With a strong sense of the supernatural they will. But if faith starts to decline it starts to stick in the throat. Then, instead of seeing themselves as servants of Christ and his Church, they become, without realizing it, servants of worldly powers- like William of Ockham in the 14th century when he fled from Avignon to the copurt of Louis of Bavaria- of the spirit of the times, or of their own opinions and ambitions.
One of the most revealing things about some of the theologians who have come to fame since the Council is their apparent indifference to the confusion into which they have plunged the simple and lowly. As long as they can write what they please, they do not seem to care what the consequences are. If doctors had acted like this, leaving behind a trail of corpses and invalids, they would have earned not reputations but infamy."
has read the book Turmoil and Truth: the Historical Roots of the Modern Crisis in the Catholic Church, by Philip Trower ? I'm more than halfway through, and it is quite good. Here's a quote...
"Part of the mystery of the Church is that, in arranging how His truth is to be handed on, God made Greek philosophers, or anyone resembling them, subordinate to Galilean fishermen. The three wise men kneeling before Dvine Wisdom made visible as a baby provides a prototype. A Pope or a bishop may be personally learned, but his learning does not add anything to his authority as pope or bishop. His authority to pass judgement on the ideas of even the most brilliant thinker, where those ideas touch faith or morals, comes solely form the fact that he is a sucessor of one of Our Lord's little-educated working-class apostles. St. Paul the brilliant 'university type', was brought in later, but only after a big dose of humiliation.
For Catholics, the purpose behind this plan is not difficult to see. Everything in God's designs is directed to keeping us small in our own esteem, since this is the only way into the kingdom of Heaven, and no one needs more help in this matter than clever men and women. (Over the entrance to every Catholic university could well be carved St. Therese of Lisieux's words: "God has no need of any human instrument, least of all me.")
But this ultimate subordination of 'philosophers' to 'fishermen' is not something the clever find naturally easy to accept. With a strong sense of the supernatural they will. But if faith starts to decline it starts to stick in the throat. Then, instead of seeing themselves as servants of Christ and his Church, they become, without realizing it, servants of worldly powers- like William of Ockham in the 14th century when he fled from Avignon to the copurt of Louis of Bavaria- of the spirit of the times, or of their own opinions and ambitions.
One of the most revealing things about some of the theologians who have come to fame since the Council is their apparent indifference to the confusion into which they have plunged the simple and lowly. As long as they can write what they please, they do not seem to care what the consequences are. If doctors had acted like this, leaving behind a trail of corpses and invalids, they would have earned not reputations but infamy."
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