toldailytopic: What do you suppose God thinks of the Catholic Church?

[Nick M]

The contrast is definitely stark enough to raise the suspicion that their both having used Abraham to make opposite points was intentionally done.

That is the other part. I realized it about 15 years ago when user Saul2Paul here pointed it out that James refers to Abraham in circumcision, and Paul explicitly states while not circumcised.

 

[Clete]

That is the other part. I realized it about 15 years ago when user Saul2Paul here pointed it out that James refers to Abraham in circumcision, and Paul explicitly states while not circumcised.

I remember the first time I heard Bob Enyart talk about it. It was at one of his seminars. It has to have been the seminar he did on The Plot. I remember being simultaneously astounded by the contrast and annoyed that I had been a christian for so many years without it having ever been pointed out before. It seems like such an obvious point and yet I had never heard of it before Enyart's ministry.

Knowing what I know now about the churches that I was raised in, it's hardly surprising. The knowledge bank in such churches is neither deep nor wide. I can't image what they spend four years teaching people in their seminaries. ANYONE who has read through The Plot, even if they don't buy into the doctrine therein, has a more substantial depth of biblical knowledge than almost any professional minister in those churches.

 

[Nick M]

James 22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect?

Paul 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

 

[Idolater]

Interesting history, thanks. You have to be one of the earliest members.

I wasn't one of the earliest members, I was just one of the earliest members in August 2001 to reestablish his user account after the catastrophic and total outage that happened at TOL back then. I was late to the game, I didn't arrive until 1998 at the earliest, 1999 at the latest, but well after TOL began.

I don't recall reading about your conversion, do you have any threads from that time? I may have read them, but I just don't remember.

It didn't happen publicly. My posts just shifted from ecclesiologically Catholic to bodily Catholic, subtly.

I came here in Jan. 2009

OK. So I preceded you by 10 years minimum then, because 100% I was already active by January 1999.

, mostly to talk religion. I ended up talking mostly about politics. I'd spent the previous years, since right after 9/11, at a different forum, very hard right. Quite the bubble. Found TOL and never went back to the other forum. Interesting that TOL played a role in your leaving evangelicalism, and TOL played a role in my leaving conservatism.

I don't really think you've left conservatism, not based on what I know now. Leftism is against conservatism primarily, and this is based on Rorty who is a noted Leftist academic thinker, primarily over humiliation. Leftists think Rightists or conservatives are cruel, and so, not wanting to be cruel, they disaffiliate with conservatives, but the fact is that Leftism itself is flamboyantly cruel to certain groups (like, white Christian men for example), because of ideological commitments that wind up humiliating certain groups who are disfavored by Leftist ideology. This is exactly what Leftists who leave conservatism say about why they're leaving, it's because conservative ideological commitment winds up humiliating certain groups who are disfavored by conservative ideology (like, LGBTQ, or Blacks, or Womxn/women). Well, Leftism is a morally lateral move then.

If you want to say, "Well, the people Leftism humiliates are the oppressor class," it's like, "OK but that's just begging the question." And nobody knows what that means except autist philosophers and logicians who can't politically (cf. Overton Window) persuade anybody. So conservatives and Leftists continue to bicker and fight over who's more cruel, when it's clearly, Leftists.

I have a couple other forums I visit regularly still, but I never went back to that hard right forum.

I think it's Jake Munro. He's a white supremacist. There's a lot of overlap between white supremacy and CATHOLIC supremacy. White supremacists just don't see it, they don't see for example how Taiwan and South Korea and JAPAN are very Western in their values, even though they aren't Catholic in the slightest—it's because we pumped Catholic¹ values into them (through our occupation of Japan for 50 years after WWII), without pumping in explicit Catholicity. There aren't a lot of Catholics in that part of the World iow, but there are a lot of Japanese, South Koreans and Taiwanese with largely Catholic values. That is why their societies are so successful, because they are implicitly Catholic, and that's what people like Jake Munro miss, he just misses the overlap between Catholicity and whiteness.² There's a lot of it. But Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are examples of where the characteristic signatures of white supremacy appear where there's no white culture; but it is still CATHOLIC, even though it's only implicitly Catholic (because there aren't a lot of Catholic Japanese, Taiwanese, or South Koreans).


¹ - Why 'Catholic'? Why not just 'Christian'? After all, we were Americans who occupied Japan, not predominantly Catholics, but Protestants, and maybe especially Evangelical Protestants, but Protestants regardless and nonetheless. So why say we pumped 'Catholic' values into Japan? Because 'Christian' in the West means Catholic, in contrast with Eastern Orthodox, which is the other trunk of the ancient Christian tree. The tree split in two, and the West is the Catholic Church, excepting anything the Reformation branches independently produced, and when it comes to norms of justice, which is really what makes a Western nation, the Reformation did not change the Catholic Western Church's norms of justice. So Western norms of justice, which make Western nations what they are (Western), are Catholic.

² - Russia is ofc another problem for Jake Munro and white supremacy. Justice doesn't work in Russia. And it's because Russia, while obv 100% white, is not Catholic. Russians are Eastern Orthodox Christian, rather than Catholic Christians like the United States, the anglosphere, and Western Europe.

 

[Clete]

I think it's Jake Munro. He's a white supremacist. There's a lot of overlap between white supremacy and CATHOLIC supremacy. White supremacists just don't see it, they don't see for example how Taiwan and South Korea and JAPAN are very Western in their values, even though they aren't Catholic in the slightest—it's because we pumped Catholic¹ values into them (through our occupation of Japan for 50 years after WWII), without pumping in explicit Catholicity. There aren't a lot of Catholics in that part of the World iow, but there are a lot of Japanese, South Koreans and Taiwanese with largely Catholic values. That is why their societies are so successful, because they are implicitly Catholic, and that's what people like Jake Munro miss, he just misses the overlap between Catholicity and whiteness.² There's a lot of it. But Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are examples of where the characteristic signatures of white supremacy appear where there's no white culture; but it is still CATHOLIC, even though it's only implicitly Catholic (because there aren't a lot of Catholic Japanese, Taiwanese, or South Koreans).


¹ - Why 'Catholic'? Why not just 'Christian'? After all, we were Americans who occupied Japan, not predominantly Catholics, but Protestants, and maybe especially Evangelical Protestants, but Protestants regardless and nonetheless. So why say we pumped 'Catholic' values into Japan? Because 'Christian' in the West means Catholic, in contrast with Eastern Orthodox, which is the other trunk of the ancient Christian tree. The tree split in two, and the West is the Catholic Church, excepting anything the Reformation branches independently produced, and when it comes to norms of justice, which is really what makes a Western nation, the Reformation did not change the Catholic Western Church's norms of justice. So Western norms of justice, which make Western nations what they are (Western), are Catholic.

² - Russia is ofc another problem for Jake Munro and white supremacy. Justice doesn't work in Russia. And it's because Russia, while obv 100% white, is not Catholic. Russians are Eastern Orthodox Christian, rather than Catholic Christians like the United States, the anglosphere, and Western Europe.

Idolater has the thickest pair of Catholic-colored glasses I’ve ever seen. Next we’ll be hearing that both the wheel and hard candy were Catholic inventions.

Ignoring the goofy comments about white supremacy completely…

Idolater’s “argument” only works by defining “Catholic” so broadly that the word eventually loses any useful meaning.

He starts with the undeniable fact that medieval Western civilization was heavily shaped by the Catholic Church, then converts that into the claim that Western values are therefore Catholic values. That simply does not follow, neither rationally nor historically. The West was shaped by Greek philosophy, Roman law, medieval Catholicism, Germanic law, the Protestant Reformation, English common law, Renaissance thought, Enlightenment political philosophy, republicanism, constitutionalism, liberalism, and a great deal more. You can’t just gather all of that under the heading “Catholic” because Catholicism happened to be a major part of the West’s ancestry.

The claim that the Reformation did not meaningfully alter Western norms of justice can’t be taken seriously either. Protestant thought had enormous effects on Western ideas about conscience, religious liberty, civil authority, resistance to tyranny, covenant, education, vocation, individual responsibility, and the relationship between church and state. Whether you agree with every Protestant development is beside the point. Historically, they happened, they mattered, and they became part of the Western tradition.

So when Idolater says America “pumped Catholic values” into Japan after WWII, what he actually means is that America imposed or encouraged certain Western political and legal institutions. Those are not the same thing.

There’s also a basic factual problem. The American occupation of Japan did not last fifty years. It lasted from 1945 to 1952. And the values and institutions the occupation authorities deliberately promoted were things like representative government, constitutionalism, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, women’s political participation, land reform, and demilitarization. Calling all of that “Catholic” requires you to first define virtually the entire Western political inheritance as Catholic. At that point the conclusion is guaranteed. In other words, Idolater’s comments (and whatever Catholic propaganda he’s been reading) are guilty of classic question-begging.

Japan is also a particularly poor example for the larger claim. Japan was already a highly organized, literate, industrialized, technologically sophisticated major power before the United States ever occupied it. America did not teach the Japanese how to value discipline, education, social order, family obligation, administrative competence, or hard work. Japan had a thriving civilization of its own long before Douglas MacArthur arrived.

The same problem applies to South Korea and Taiwan. These societies have deep cultural traditions of their own, particularly Confucian ones, and very different histories from one another. If they display certain virtues that also exist in Western societies, you don’t get to simply rename those virtues “Catholic” and then use their presence as evidence that these countries are “implicitly Catholic.” That is not an argument. It is a labeling exercise.

It’s the equivalent of saying golf balls and eyeballs are both white and round, therefore golf balls are biologically derived. Nonsense. The same method could just as easily “prove” that America is implicitly Confucian. Confucian societies have historically emphasized education, family obligation, social order, discipline, respect for authority, and personal responsibility. America values many of those things too. Therefore America is implicitly Confucian. Obviously that’s absurd. Shared virtues do not establish cultural dependence, much less religious identity.

The Russia argument is no better. Russia is Orthodox rather than Catholic and has serious problems with corruption, law, and political institutions. That tells us essentially nothing by itself about what caused those problems. Russia also has a history of Mongol domination, Muscovite autocracy, serfdom, imperial absolutism, revolution, Communist dictatorship, Stalinism, the deliberate destruction of independent institutions, and post-Soviet oligarchy. To brush all of that aside and conclude that “justice doesn’t work in Russia because Russia isn’t Catholic” is not historical analysis. It’s pure propaganda of a magnitude that would make Stalin blush.

The underlying error throughout is the same. Idolater has identified Western civilization with Catholicism so completely that whatever good he finds in the West becomes Catholic by definition. Then, whenever similar traits appear somewhere else, those societies get labeled “implicitly Catholic.” That is circular reasoning at best, and more likely simple self-delusion.

There is a perfectly defensible claim available: Christianity had an enormous influence on Western civilization, medieval Catholicism was a major part of that influence, and Western political institutions later had a substantial influence on postwar East Asia. But that is very different from saying Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan succeed because they are secretly or implicitly Catholic. That conclusion isn’t based on anything rational. It’s just a Catholic seeing Catholicism everywhere he looks.

 

[Right Divider]

Idolater has the thickest pair of Catholic-colored glasses I’ve ever seen.

Big time!

 

[annabenedetti]

It didn't happen publicly. My posts just shifted from ecclesiologically Catholic to bodily Catholic, subtly.

Okay.

I don't really think you've left conservatism, not based on what I know now.

I have. But contrary to the fever dreams of some, I'm not on the far left, just left of center. I'm not an anarchist, nor do I want leftist authoritarianism any more than I want rightist authoritarianism. I want our government to adhere to the Constitution, rather than exploit every weakness and loophole in it as it's doing right now.

Leftism is against conservatism primarily, and this is based on Rorty who is a noted Leftist academic thinker, primarily over humiliation. Leftists think Rightists or conservatives are cruel, and so, not wanting to be cruel, they disaffiliate with conservatives, but the fact is that Leftism itself is flamboyantly cruel to certain groups (like, white Christian men for example), because of ideological commitments that wind up humiliating certain groups who are disfavored by Leftist ideology. This is exactly what Leftists who leave conservatism say about why they're leaving, it's because conservative ideological commitment winds up humiliating certain groups who are disfavored by conservative ideology (like, LGBTQ, or Blacks, or Womxn/women). Well, Leftism is a morally lateral move then.

Not sure what you're trying to say here, or what it has to do with TOL's role in my leaving conservatism. I see you're talking about white grievance, and about the people the far right want to disenfranchise (haha I accidentally typed "far white," maybe I'm onto something there).

But I see nothing "morally lateral" about it at all.

If you want to say, "Well, the people Leftism humiliates are the oppressor class," it's like, "OK but that's just begging the question." And nobody knows what that means except autist philosophers and logicians who can't politically (cf. Overton Window) persuade anybody. So conservatives and Leftists continue to bicker and fight over who's more cruel, when it's clearly, Leftists.

I don't want to say that.

I think it's Jake Munro. He's a white supremacist.

Never heard of him. At this moment of reading it, I don't recognize that name. If I've come across it in passing, I don't remember it.

Anyway, you think it's Jake Munro... what? What's your completed thought?

There's a lot of overlap between white supremacy and CATHOLIC supremacy.

Only if a Catholic is also white supremacist (which is quite possible, particularly in trad circles).

White supremacists just don't see it, they don't see for example how Taiwan and South Korea and JAPAN are very Western in their values, even though they aren't Catholic in the slightest—it's because we pumped Catholic¹ values into them (through our occupation of Japan for 50 years after WWII), without pumping in explicit Catholicity. There aren't a lot of Catholics in that part of the World iow, but there are a lot of Japanese, South Koreans and Taiwanese with largely Catholic values. That is why their societies are so successful, because they are implicitly Catholic, and that's what people like Jake Munro miss, he just misses the overlap between Catholicity and whiteness.² There's a lot of it. But Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are examples of where the characteristic signatures of white supremacy appear where there's no white culture; but it is still CATHOLIC, even though it's only implicitly Catholic (because there aren't a lot of Catholic Japanese, Taiwanese, or South Koreans).

Catholicity and whiteness? Cardinals Sarah and Turkson would like a word with you.

How did my post compel you to launch into a discussion of Catholicity and whiteness?

² - Russia is ofc another problem for Jake Munro and white supremacy. Justice doesn't work in Russia. And it's because Russia, while obv 100% white, is not Catholic. Russians are Eastern Orthodox Christian, rather than Catholic Christians like the United States, the anglosphere, and Western Europe.

Justice doesn't work in Russia for many reasons, but it's not because it's Eastern Orthodox.

 

[Idolater]

Idolater has the thickest pair of Catholic-colored glasses I’ve ever seen. Next we’ll be hearing that both the wheel and hard candy were Catholic inventions.

I have receipts Clete. Yours is an untenable position.

Ignoring the goofy comments about white supremacy completely…

Idolater’s “argument” only works by defining “Catholic” so broadly that the word eventually loses any useful meaning.

I'm just stating history.

He starts with the undeniable fact that medieval Western civilization was heavily shaped by the Catholic Church

This is no way to start if you disagree with me. This is basically all I'm saying.

, then converts that into the claim that Western values are therefore Catholic values.

It's just direct inference.

That simply does not follow, neither rationally nor historically.

It follows both rationally and historically.

The West was shaped by Greek philosophy, Roman law, medieval Catholicism, Germanic law, the Protestant Reformation, English common law, Renaissance thought, Enlightenment political philosophy, republicanism, constitutionalism, liberalism, and a great deal more. You can’t just gather all of that under the heading “Catholic” because Catholicism happened to be a major part of the West’s ancestry.

I made bold the things I know for certain are genealogically Catholic. (idk about Germanic law but I wonder if it is influenced by Catholicism, as I half-suspect; but again idk for sure. And as far as Roman law goes, I'm assuming you don't mean Justinian's civil law, but more ancient Roman law? since Justinian's Roman civil law was already influenced by ancient Catholicism, I'm assuming you don't mean that. And even then idk why you would list Roman law before Levitical law.)

Greek philosophy (pre-Christian ofc, not including Christian Platonism that was influenced a bit by Catholicism) did have independent influence on Westernism, although it was filtered through the Church, especially by the Church fathers, and then later on in a big way by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s (again, after the East-West Schism).

The claim that the Reformation did not meaningfully alter Western norms of justice can’t be taken seriously either. Protestant thought had enormous effects on Western ideas about conscience, religious liberty, civil authority, resistance to tyranny, covenant, education, vocation, individual responsibility, and the relationship between church and state. Whether you agree with every Protestant development is beside the point. Historically, they happened, they mattered, and they became part of the Western tradition.

It's genealogically the same family tree, the Protestants rebelled against Church pastors over a matter of emphasis; they didn't introduce any new ideas, they just emphasized what the Church already taught and believed differently, ofc therefore freedom of conscience and religious liberty and faith alone should come from such a change in emphasis, but these values were all already in Catholicism; as I'm saying, this is all downstream of Catholicism.

So when Idolater says America “pumped Catholic values” into Japan after WWII, what he actually means is that America imposed or encouraged certain Western political and legal institutions. Those are not the same thing.

The political and legal institutions are distinctively Catholic (and not Eastern Orthodox) all the way down.

There’s also a basic factual problem. The American occupation of Japan did not last fifty years. It lasted from 1945 to 1952. And the values and institutions the occupation authorities deliberately promoted were things like representative government, constitutionalism, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, women’s political participation, land reform, and demilitarization. Calling all of that “Catholic” requires you to first define virtually the entire Western political inheritance as Catholic. At that point the conclusion is guaranteed. In other words, Idolater’s comments (and whatever Catholic propaganda he’s been reading) are guilty of classic question-begging.

I'm just stating history. Confer the Meiji period, where Japan adopted Western ideals, values, and institutions, well before WWI and WWII. Also re the occupation, I did mix up my terminology, I was talking about the US military bases and presence in Japan, not the formal occupation. I stand corrected.

Japan is also a particularly poor example for the larger claim. Japan was already a highly organized, literate, industrialized, technologically sophisticated major power before the United States ever occupied it.

In part, that's because Japan had already adopted some Western, liberal, political institutions like the separation of powers.

America did not teach the Japanese how to value discipline, education, social order, family obligation, administrative competence, or hard work. Japan had a thriving civilization of its own long before Douglas MacArthur arrived.

See above. Also don't forget Western Christians, explicit Catholics and Protestants (implicitly Catholic) had found Japan by the early 1500s by the latest.

The same problem applies to South Korea and Taiwan. These societies have deep cultural traditions of their own, particularly Confucian ones, and very different histories from one another. If they display certain virtues that also exist in Western societies, you don’t get to simply rename those virtues “Catholic” and then use their presence as evidence that these countries are “implicitly Catholic.” That is not an argument. It is a labeling exercise.

This works unless the biggest glut of southeast Asians (the Chinese) are also similarly Western, but they're not. The Chinese have the most non-Western cultural momentum in that same part of the World, and they are not Western implicitly or otherwise.

It’s the equivalent of saying golf balls and eyeballs are both white and round, therefore golf balls are biologically derived. Nonsense. The same method could just as easily “prove” that America is implicitly Confucian. Confucian societies have historically emphasized education, family obligation, social order, discipline, respect for authority, and personal responsibility. America values many of those things too. Therefore America is implicitly Confucian. Obviously that’s absurd. Shared virtues do not establish cultural dependence, much less religious identity.

The Western sense of and norms of justice, including but not limited to the rule of law, constitutionalism, and universal human rights, are signatures of Western Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, and not of Eastern Christianity. You admit that these are Christian, and since they come from Western Christianity before the Reformation, they are just neutrally Catholic. If Protestants appropriate or inherit distinctive Catholic values and conventions, they remain Catholic genealogically. You can't scrub history of this juridical fact.

The Russia argument is no better. Russia is Orthodox rather than Catholic and has serious problems with corruption, law, and political institutions.

You're making my point for me. Eastern Orthodoxy missed the boat on the Catholic discovery that centuries of Church teachings all implied things like the equality of all humans (being made in the image of God), of individual and universal rights and dignity, of justice, of the rule of law and constitutionalism, etc.

That tells us essentially nothing by itself about what caused those problems. Russia also has a history of Mongol domination, Muscovite autocracy, serfdom, imperial absolutism, revolution, Communist dictatorship, Stalinism, the deliberate destruction of independent institutions, and post-Soviet oligarchy. To brush all of that aside and conclude that “justice doesn’t work in Russia because Russia isn’t Catholic” is not historical analysis. It’s pure propaganda of a magnitude that would make Stalin blush.

Doubt. Stalin once said that the reason why the state under Marxism hadn't withered away yet, was because they needed one last big push where the state was actually intensified, in order to do away with it. And people actually bought it. "That makes sense," they thought. After this brash claim the Soviet regime ofc went on the become probably the most totalitarian and dictatorial and arbitrary state the World's ever seen.

My claim in contrast, is that all the good things about Western culture and society that we all enjoy, are all inherited from Western Christianity, which up until 500 years ago, which is from where all these values and ideas of justice emanate, was Catholic.

The underlying error throughout is the same. Idolater has identified Western civilization with Catholicism so completely that whatever good he finds in the West becomes Catholic by definition. Then, whenever similar traits appear somewhere else, those societies get labeled “implicitly Catholic.” That is circular reasoning at best, and more likely simple self-delusion.

I know these guys aren't gears-level historians (who are all nonetheless all saying the same thing as I'm saying), they are populizers, but if you have not, check out Tom Holland's Dominion, Larry Siedentop's Inventing the Individual, and Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. Or ask your AI what they wrote about. You paint me as a Catholic extremist or a parochial apologist, but I'm being modest and neutral. Holland and Siedentop aren't and weren't Catholic at all.

There is a perfectly defensible claim available: Christianity had an enormous influence on Western civilization ...

I rest my case. By admitting this, you've given away the farm. Every objection you raised in this otherwise thoughtful retort is undermined by this admission.

Now this admission is honest, and I appreciate that about you. You do honestly want to believe and support what's true, and I appreciate that about you.

, medieval Catholicism was a major part of that influence

Really? you don't say? Again, this is almost literally just agreeing with me, and undermining your whole post. And it's honest. "Medieval" Catholicism was an enormous part of that influence (since you just admitted "Christianity" had an enormous influence). Because there's just two kinds of Christianity: Eastern (Orthodoxy) and (Western) Catholic. It was certainly not Eastern Christianity that had any influence at all on Western norms (and the Western sense) of justice, and while you protest it, all the values and institutions you chalk up to other sources within the West, in truth are downstream of the Catholic Church's canon law, which was systematized by Gratian sometime in the 1100s (notably, after the East-West Schism). This is just neutrally genealogical, not partisan.

, and Western political institutions later had a substantial influence on postwar East Asia. But that is very different from saying Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan succeed because they are secretly or implicitly Catholic. That conclusion isn’t based on anything rational. It’s just a Catholic seeing Catholicism everywhere he looks.

And that all is just declaratory hand-waving. The secular governments implemented by the named nations here are shot through with Catholic assumptions and seek to defend Catholic values, namely about justice, in a word.