I know the history. Very well. I know the philosophical history and the denominational history. Why would you say I don’t appear to know something?

You said, “I now see that Mike Mc is trying the gambit of claiming that all real reason is essentially Catholic reason, so whatever anyone else does right, the Catholics get credit for it. That can only be asserted by defining all terms conveniently.”

1. I don’t do gambits. This is not a gambit.

2. I said that all real Reason (today) is Catholic, but because the Catholic is the only believer in Reason and defender of Reason, and subscriber to reason. I made it clear in my first reply that I took Chesterton’s view that the collective view was probably the best way to look at it. There is, without doubt, a collective Catholic view of a defense of and argument for Reason that goes back 2000 years, and which the two most recent Popes and most Popes for the last 300 years at least, and more than even them, have made explicitly, consciously, conscientiously, wholeheartedly and with full vigor.

There is, practically speaking, no other player on that field today. Everyone else has abandoned the field. When you or some other individual says that you believe in Reason, it is therefore the Catholic view you hold to, whether you are Catholic or not, since there is no other view.

If there is, why don’t you name it?

There is no Lutheran view. No Calivinist view. No secularist view. No Darwininan view. There is neither Muslim nor Maoist not Mugabean view of Reason. There is no “scientific” or even “mathematical” view of it. Or perhaps the better terms would be belief in it, or justification of it.

None.

Actually, there is one vocal exception. Sort of. Chuck Colson has been saying for years now from the evangelical side that Christians need to get back to the use of and defense of Reason. And the model and source he uses for this? Catholicism. He says loudly words to the effect of, ‘We must do what the Catholics are doing and have always been doing!’ Check it out.

If there is some other player in the game, I’d like to hear what you’d say they are.

This is a huge problem, an enormous issue. Bit like many things, Rome is way ahead of its time. Because it is not subject to fad and fashion like the others; it will appear to be a new and novel thing, like a miracle, when the fads show themselves to be destructive rather than constructive.

I now see that Mike Mc is trying the gambit of claiming that all real reason is essentially Catholic reason, so whatever anyone else does right, the Catholics get credit for it. That can only be asserted by defining all terms conveniently.

As to the inadequacy of logical foundation by the other Christian groups, except insofar as they have borrowed from Catholics, I will note that you don’t seem to understand the foundations of these lines of thought very well, relying on scraps of information about them and assuming you’ve got them pegged.

For example, Luther quotes: “I read in this way I evaluate what they say, not on the basis that they themselves believe that a thing is true, but only insofar as they are able to convince me by the authority of the canonical books or by clear reason.” Or “Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason — I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other — my conscience is captive to the Word of God. ”

I would say that “reason” figures rather prominently in his thought. You may disagree with him about popes and councils, but his reliance on reason as part of the picture doesn’t seem deniable.

If you look at the derivation of the word “Yankee,” it originally meant New Englanders of English origin.

Hmmm—I may write a post about this some time.

Sure, liberation theology came from Catholics, but the Vatican answered with theological and philosophical arguments. There were lots of young people who had to deal with these arguments to maintain or give up their identity as Catholics. (And of course, birth control, abortion and similar issues did the same thing.) So you had a generation of people educated in traditional Catholic theology and philosophy who were forced to stand up to conventional wisdom to remain Catholic. That a certain number of these percolated to the top in a field where a grasp of principles is crucial doesn’t surprise me, nor does it say that Catholics are destined to be better legal minds.

I don’t think the situation is the same today. Many people of other faiths are now saying that while they don’t agree with all the Catholic positions, there was something in the arguments. Catholics don’t have to be so defensive. There are plenty of examples for them of people who have left the faith. But in the 60s and 70s, being a Catholic was a bit like being a Tea Party supporter today. If you wanted to survive, you had to hone your thinking skills. You had to convince yourself and others that there was more to Catholicism than just dunking your fingers in the holy water font. Today, young people are in a similar situation, but the identity they need to defend is their American one. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I forgot to add earlier that the word “Catholic” really has a double or triple sense. It really only has one sense, but three different ways in which it is sometimes used or taken. They rightly all belong together.

1. The first and primary sense is what it means in Greek: Universal. The Catholic view = the Universal view of reality held and maintained by the Church around the whole world.

2. The secondary sense is of the Church of Rome headed by the Pope (Bishop of Rome; Peter; Head of the ‘Universal’ Church).

3. The third sense is that broad view of things held by reasonable people about themselves and the word they inhabit and all of its parts and all of its relations.

The Catholic view is all of those all-inclusively and yet sharply defined and delineated from any other competing views which are not Catholic (ex Darwinian, Lutheran, Muslim, Agnostic, etc.). The Catholic accepts everything good and true, and rejects everything else.

Who gets to say what is true and good? For the Catholic, Catholicism does; the shorthand of that being that Rome gets to say it. But Rome is the collective experience of 2000 years. That mind is smarter than even Obama and pelosi and Reid. They are welcome to ransack its riches any time. The doors are wide open.

But people like that know better than Rome.

Right.

Anyway, this whole discussion started with the question about SC Justices. My theory from the start was that the irrational world of craziness incarnated in postmodern liberalism and tyrants like Obama and all Dems really needs reasonable people and reason and sound justice. Even they know, deep down, that their way is chaos and mayhem. But they don’t know how to be reasonable so they hire out the Catholics and Jews do do that for them.

Of course, once people discover this they will demand affirmative action for the unreasonable to be hired out as reasonable. That is the corner we are just about to turn, and it is really a re-turn – to paganism and barbarism and we are very nearly there already.

At this point people like Alito, Thomas and Scalia are the only things between civilization and Hell.

(Okay, maybe some hyperbole but even exaggeration is reasonable if it is used to make the point.)

I noted that anyone who believes in Reason either believes in the Catholic view of it, or does not really believe in Reason.

I accept that many non-Catholics believe in Reason; but there is no more a Lutheran, to pick one example at random, belief in Reason than there is a Darwinian view of Reason. For both, there is no such thing that is Real. For the Catholic, it is not only real but very close to the ultimate reality.

I was not saying that the individual Catholic or more reasonable than some individual non-Catholic (of any faith or none). I am saying that insofar as anyone believes in Reason, it is Catholic Reason because the Catholic is is only creature left who even has a reasonable theory about Reason.

The Lutheran has no reasonable theory about Reason. He finally says ‘sola fides’. His theory is ‘sola scriptura’ – in other words, he’s the same as the Islamist only his scriptura is in a different language.

The Darwinian has no reasonable theory about Reason. His is a total contradiction – that he reasons that reason is only a survival mechanism for the continued living of living things for no reason at all except that molecules have energy. Even the observation that there is energy cannot be made from this theory. The Darwinian view of reason is that it does not exist, and so how can the Darwinian say that he is arguing about anything reasonably?

Darwin was right about one thing – that the fit survive. In this case, the only survivor in the Reason sweepstakes is the Catholic since there are no other contestants, unless you want to say you are something like a pagan Aristotelian but not Catholic in any way. That’s possible I guess, but it’s close to saying you believe in the religion of ancient Egypt but not any religion since then. It’s more like an oddity and not something you’d expect to see these days.