Apologia

I was asked by a news columnist to give a response concerning the recent Church document, Instruction concerning the criteria of vocational discernment regarding persons with homosexual tendencies, considering their admission to seminary and to Holy Orders.

Being very suspicious of news reporters, I requested that the interview be conducted via e-mail so that I could make my answers more deliberate and reasoned. The reporter obliged, although she later informed me that she was changing the story altogether and did not have direct use for my response. However, it did spark a conversation that resulted (as things typically do with me) in this lengthy defense of the document.

Her questions:

What do you think of the document? If you want to be honest about your sexual orientation, that would be good, as well. Are gay seminarians more of a "problem" in seminary than the straight guys? i.e., do they dismiss the chastity rules more easily? Do you think the document would make gay priests feel dehumanized? Why do you think the document is necessary, if you think it is necessary? Do you think it will actually make a difference?

My initial response:

I think the document is very moderate. Bishops seem to have a lot of freedom to work pastorally with their seminarians and seminaries. I do not know any seminarians who openly admit they are gay--at least, not to other seminarians (if seminarians hide their homosexuality, it would be nothing new). But people are never a "problem"--that is dehumanizing language. The document would only offend those gay priests who do not already understand or remember the Church's wider teaching which affirms everyone's sacred dignity as a person. I think the document is necessary, even though seminaries have already been implementing similar practices in the last five years.

A lengthier, 'off-the-record' addressing of the questions:

First, the notion that the document is merely a reaction to the sex abuse scandal is only very marginally correct. Church teaching is always related to what is important to people. But to say that the document is based on a false correlation between homosexuality and child abuse is just silly. There is nothing in the document that wasn't already taught by John XXIII back when clerical abuse of minors wasn't even on the radar. Also, in seminaries, there is workshop after workshop geared toward preventing sexual abuse that have nothing to do with homosexuality. In other words, even if there was absolutely zero correlation between homosexuality and ephebophilia--and the jury's still out on that one--the document would be justified by older principles (which I'll get to). Arguments against the correlation between homosexuality and abuse don't get at why the document was written.

Nor, secondly, do arguments about how good and beloved are many gay priests. Nobody reasonably argues, in the face of obvious exceptions, that a homosexual orientation alone (even a permanent one) is going to make a priest deficient. If a man is taught that his homosexuality is an impediment to entering the seminary, it need not be because the Church has indisputable proof that he would not succeed in a material way (even including fidelity to her teachings in sexual morality). It may also be only because the Church makes the common-sense judgment that seminary life would be especially *difficult* for him, and poses a special risk to him and others. In this sense the instruction is not unique from other mundane, morally neutral reasons men are declined from entering the seminary--struggles with alcohol, or celiac disease for example, or anything that impairs one's freedom for study in a seminary environment, or to exercise ministry. Obviously there are counter-examples to these--I know a few wonderful priests that are sober alchoholics. But in the best centuries of the Church's history, the prerequisites for men entering formation for priesthood were very strict, and one's not qualifying for priesthood was never meant to imply he or she had a defect that affected his or her personal dignity or journey to salvation.

Third, there is the issue of being "called". People are quoted in news articles saying that, since God has called priests who are gay (as evidenced by their good fruits), therefore a general policy of non-admission is a direct affront to God's will in certain matters. I see two things wrong with this.

First is the easy and often unqualified statement that all the fruits are good. Certainly a priest can be talented and beloved. However, from a faith perspective (and "faith matters," [as the column is called]), if a priest purveys moral indifference regarding homosexual lifestyles, this could never be regarded by the Church as a good fruit, no matter if he was very popular and lauded by several members of the community. Now, if he were a loving and compassionate priest, who made the Gospel beautiful to his people and taught the fear of God and universal, self-sacrificing love--those are good fruits, but not necessarily evidence of a real vocation, especially if they are mixed with one big, obnoxiously bad fruit: fostering dischord and disunity by obstinate teaching against the Church. There are authentic calls, and then there are times when God is bringing great good out of human error.

Second, Christianity has never understood a call from God as a private thing that "I" can hold against others who disagree with "me". Way back in the early Church, (a) your call to priesthood was more or less determined by outside forces--i.e., the whole Church, and (b) your status as a Christian in good standing was validated by your unity in belief with the bishop. In other words, there is a distinction, but not a separation between a call from the Church (the whole Christian community), and a call from God. That is not to say that a call isn't personal (we so love to confound the words "personal" and "private"). But it is also, always both public and ecclesial, too.

Fourth and final big point: before I was accepted into the seminary, I was already very conscious of the fact that everything depended on God's will; not my own. I knew that if I were not called to be a priest, and I became one, I would not be a happy one; and that if I were called, and tried to run away, God would find me and get me anyway. I knew that, at any time, I could be asked to leave for some reason not in my control. So--very early--I promised myself that I would accept as pleasantly as possible whatever God put in front of me. If, by some freak accident I lose a hand and cannot elevate the Eucharist, or whatever, I will leave, find a way to pay my debt to the Diocese, and seek God's call elsewhere (but always in the Catholic faith). If I did not make that promise to myself, I would not really be trusting God, would I?

The last letter:

You asked why I consider the homosexuality document to be necessary. Well, it only makes sense if we grant that the Church at least has the right to have a priestly formation program consistent her teachings, though they are often rejected by society at large. We have to bracket that more fundamental impasse if we want to talk about the document.

Suppose the document wasn't released, and as a result some seminaries were disinclined to be attentive to "those who practice homosexuality, show profoundly deep-rooted homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture." One consequence of that negligence would be the actual development of that bugbear of conservatives, the "gay subculture" within seminaries. Now, that phrase has all kinds of sinister and clandestine implications that I'm not sure are true--so far I haven't attended a seminary where I personally observed a "gay subculture," and I've been to three.

Yet one of those three--St. John's Seminary in Camarillo--at one time at least had one, not too long before I was there. I learned this in a conversation with a chance aquaintance, a former St. John's seminarian and homosexual, who was quite open about the whole thing. He told me that he and others would find ways to 'hook up' and that they were quick to find out who was gay so that they could part of the group (thus adding, in my view, a deliberate obstacle of seduction even for well-intentioned gay seminarians). It was almost like a trade union. And though they were basically secretive, the presence of this 'subculture' was generally known, though people generally did not ask questions or confront anyone about it. Now, I don't know about how that situation affected the campus at large. I have read Fr. Cozzens' book, but he has very little credibility with me as a serious authority on such matters.

But I also know, per an instructional account by a professor here at Mundelein, that sometimes an active homosexual does obstinantly remain in the seminary, in spite of being urged by his spiritual director to leave until he can develop the virtue of chastity. In one anecdotal case, the man believed that he could change his behavior after he was ordained; that turned out finally not to be true, and he left the priesthood. Of course, such cases are not unique to homosexuals--any actively heterosexual man would be just as equally urged to leave, and just as equally naive if he did not.

Finally, I like the simple analogy, used by some commentators, of any boarding school for men or for women. A school wishing to maintain a Christian virtue of chastity within the rule of community life would be bonkers to have a co-ed residence hall; the case of a women's dorm with only a few men, or vice-versa, would be fostering dramatic and unnecessary sexual tension.

I know it is a scandal for many moderns that such "pragmatic" considerations should have the force of law, especially within a Catholic theology of "calling". Again, the notion that God can and does work *in* such pragmatic considerations is totally offensive to the basic conviction that God calls people in some wierd, random, private way that has no correlation to structures or institutions or factual circumstances. Obviously there is something deeply attractive and satisfying about God's ways being "not our ways" and the (very Christian) theme of God's action being opposed to 'man-made' conventions and mores (an important part of any preacher's repertoire). Except that the *exclusive* emphasis on this theme does two very bad things.

First, it ignores the Incarnation, where God took human flesh and did lots of things "in our way" in order to save us; not to mention St. Paul's theology that the Church is Christ's body, a sort of 'double incarnation', with the entailment that the Church is not a 'mere' institution that God stomps on just like he offends all others. Indeed, it should be telling that the Church herself, with her controversial teachings, a scandal to so many other worldly institutions, whether her doctrine and action falls scandalously to the left or to the right of worldly convention, or cannot even be categorized as either.

The second bad result of emphasizing the total non-participation of God in any visible institution, is that it tends to fall right into the hands of boring, agnostic relativism, which is ironic, because this state of thinking is not without its own instutitions, authorities, and structures. It becomes a kind of despair at being able to participate at all in God's action in history, and is only part and parcel of the modern prejudice that God does not reveal himself nor is truly active in history.

So, in summary, the document is necessary to prevent the appearance of gay subcultures in seminaries, to minimize the risk of ordaining obstinant sexually active homosexuals to the priesthood, and as a common-sense measure of preventing a situation of a student being surrounded by people he is sexually attracted to across a time span of up to eight years.

God's love (It's not what you think)

Since I wrote yesterday morning's reflection, I tried to put it unto practice as much as I could. Frequently, I let my thoughts rest on other people, and I continually thought to myself about God's love for them. I had to do the same thing for myself as well, but as I wrote, not on myself as me, but myself as though I were other--simply another individual, like the rest, unknown to me, but loved ridiculously, absurdly, and totally irrespectively of anything good he ever did, or will every do.

But this practice was joined with another insight--the insights of the Council of Trent, regarding the judgment of God. And so I began to reflect on the very old question: how does God's absurd love coincide with his terrible judgment? And so comes the conclusion, not far off: the Love of God is a terrifying thing. It is a furnace of judgment, and not everyone can survive the Love of God.

It is not often that I hear this notion, that God's love and his judgment are not separate from one another, nor do they compete, but in fact the latter is the consequent of the former. That is because, as much as God loves each of us individually, that is as much power he grants us to throw ourselves into an everlasting fire. You see, God freely elected to give us this terrifying power: to resist him, to say no to God. And so one may say that all sins which condemn take ultimately the shape of theft. We steal ourselves away from God. And this is the true origin of divine wrath.

Consider for a moment the parable of the woman and her lost coin, one of ten (Luke 15:8-10). Consider that the coin, having been lost (or perhaps hiding itself), stirs the woman into a fit. She turns the house upside down looking for it. However much joy she had in finding it--imagine her wrath if it were not found! If she damaged goods in seeking it, imagine the destruction if she despaired of its return! If you had a winning lottery ticket, but lost it and, though you searched your house (and your neighbor's houses) madly, overturning furniture and hiring detectives, did not find it again until one day, the date its validity had past, you discover it hiding under the couch? Would you not tear this now worthless ticket into shreds?

These are natural analogies, and while helpful, they fail on multiple levels. On the one hand, it is true, God does not experience anguish, loss, grief, anger, or rage in the pedestrian sense that we do. Yet neither does he experience love in the pedestrian sense that we do. I have called his love absurd, whose etymological meaning--out of tune--comes from the sound made by someone who is surdus--tone deaf. In that respect God's love is absurd, because it is a love come from One who is utterly deaf and impassive to our squeamish complaints for autonomy and "balance." This terrifying love has as its direct consequence, and not as a consequence of a separate "emotion" of God, such as anger, the pains of eternal damnation proportionate only to the negation of its immeasurable self.

I think of the description of infinity lifted out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the BBC article I linked to... "Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real 'wow, that's big' time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here."

Such is the love and the judgment of God alike.

But do not be afraid. I am not finished with this topic. :)

Little morning thought...

So often I am told to reflect on God's love for me. Although there is some consolation in that, I have recently discovered that there is a much more amazing experience to be had in meditating upon God's love for someone else. The results are far richer: God loves this man standing in front of me; God loves that woman, over there. God loves him, or her, deeper than I ever have, and absolutely independently of anything good this man, or that woman, has ever done.

For someone whose self-image is twisted by the wierd mixture of pride and low self-esteem common to moderns, meditating on God's love for a friend or a stranger put a stunning perspective on things. Here is this person! This fellow, who I do not know all that well. And God loves him dearly! Like an only child, only more. And God wants to take this person into his arms, to give him eternal life, to make him like an angel... this fellow, who stands before me, who may be a hard worker or lazy, who might be kind or mean, handsome or hideous, brilliant or dense, healthy or maimed. This fellow is an apple of the Lord's eye! And his story, which I do not know--it must be full of the work of God, the struggle of this will with God, the joy of this person's finding God, and the sadness of this man's not seeing God from time to time. And God's almost insane affection for him hasn't changed a wink!

Fine, true, there is an inward turn with this reflection. Yes, God's love for me is no different. But more interesting, more exciting than this is: Hey, I want the same thing for this other fellow. And I want this man to be perfectly happy, totally irrespective of anything good that he has done. And I want this because God wants it. I want this, because God has permitted me, and given to me, the ability to want it.

And then, only then, is the inward turn interesting. Coming out of myself, I see this skinny, white, slightly pimply-faced kid, and I think, hey, I want this guy to be happy, too. Real happiness; laughter in the innocent friendship with God. And I want it totally irrespective of anything this skinny kid has accomplished, or anything he ever will.

Dear God, save us poor skinny pimply kids.

Where there's a 'What', there's a Will. (What?)

My buddy Jacob combed over the argument from the earlier post, and critiqued some of the points (in a snazzy commented PDF document, no less). Per his request, I have clarified the points, and reworked the whole thing into a coherent whole (without, as yet, getting to #10, heh).

1. There is being. Stuff exists. We see things. There is something. You know, all that jazz.

2. Nothing is infinite. The atheists should be totally with me on this one. The believers will just have to trust me--after all, if God does exist, and he is infinite, he cannot be considered any thing, can he? Perhaps it will be argued that space and time (as commonly, i.e. Newtonianly conceived) are infinite. My response is, first, that the scientific jury is still out on that one, thanks to relativity and quantum physics and string theory and all that; and second, that even if they were, they would only be infinitely extended, not sheerly infinite. After all, space would be limited to its definition as space (or space-time, as the case may be) and not as anything else. Anything with a definition is thereby limited. The fact that we can mentally distinguish between space and time; or between these two things and the objects which are in them, but are not them, shows their limits. We can even conceive mathematically of non-space; we have given it a name: the point; and so with time--the instant. And though a point as no actual being in space, nor the instant in time (as Aristotle proved), we would not go very far without these things. Thus space and time must share the reality pie with the point and the instant.

3. (Rewritten) Every limit implies what is beyond itself. Therefore, every limit also implies a substratum, an underlying something, that spans whatever is inside the limit and outside it in order to make the limit itself intelligible. The easiest example is spatial. You have a balloon, and an intelligent ant inside the baloon. The ant would be conscious of a world outside the balloon because it understands space. Space is the substratum underneath the limits of extended matter. Inside the balloon, outside the balloon, and the space that encompasses both. A non-spatial example: logical validity. The logical validity of a modus ponens (If P then Q) syllogism can be breached--just like the rubbery skin of a balloon--when the terms P and Q are reversed. There exists a limit between validity and invalidity which is grounded by thought as its substratum. So the argument here is, wherever there is a limit, there is a substratum 'beneath' and 'beyond' the limit.

[Segue, formally point #4]. Let's be reductionists. Everything boils down to... whatever you want. Quarks? Fine. How about strings? Or maybe, let's say, dreams and illusions. Berkeley's spirits and ideas! Matter in motion? OK. Phonotic energy of the Big Bang? I'm right there with you. Point is that, it is always possible for the human mind to think of the whole world as being just one kind of thing. But what it comes down to, when we have a one thing that is, and the story ends, is the last limited thing! But whatever that thing is, we can make one critical observation of it: it's limited! But what about time and space? I have not forgotten those either. Supposing they discover that this "last thing," and time, and space, are all actually the same thing, (which is the familiar pattern of the physical sciences, after all) but even then this great 'Thing' would still be limited.

4 [formerly 5]. There is necessary being. You all saw that coming. The atheists may still be with me, too. Nothing inherently offensive about necessary being. All it is, really, the unintelligible 'What' which is behind, not merely being, but the very distinction between being and nothing. Underneath the limit between the only thing that is, and its opposite, is the ground of the possibility of them both. Thus, unintelligible as it is, we can make certain conclusions about it. For example, it can have no limits, either outside or inside of itself. That means it is infinite, eternal, one, undifferentiated, unchanging, unaffectable, undetectable, self-subsisting, etc. and so on. [This 'What' is the Last Substratum, when reductionism has brought the thinkable universe down to its barest limit: that which is, and that which is not.]

It came to me, writing #8, that some will say that this 'What' is in fact "nothing;" total non-being. Yet finally this option looks plainly impossible, because it is the equivalent of saying that the beings which "rest on" this "nothing" are self-subsistent--except that they have limits. The difficulty here is that these well-meaning opponents might be restricting themselves to the spatial analogy here. Why can't you have the ultimate substratum be simply "nothing"? First, because the "nothing" they are thinking of is not really "nothing"--it's empty space, and empty space is a "something". But empty space still cannot be the last substrata; it itself is constituted, limited, and circumscribed by a deeper 'What'. Second, consider the phenomena in #3 that every limit implies a triad. Inside the Balloon-Outside the Balloon-Space; Validity-Invalidity-Thought. You can not make a balloon out of empty space, and you cannot form arguments out of pure invalidity. Therefore, "nothing" cannot be the ground of limits, but merely the second term in a penultimate triad. (I call it 'penultimate' not to confuse it with the Trinity)

5 [formerly 6]. This "what" is constituitive or generative of everything that is. Beings--whether big beings or little beings or mental beings or the quarks, strings (whatever), are always and only ever interiorly constituted by something. In the ultimate fringes of our thinking, the only thing possibly constitutive of all those quarks-or-whatever, is the 'What' itself. Now, I included two possible choices of words here: "constitutes" and "generates." If I know my theists and atheists well enough, I can bet dollars to donuts that the atheists are going to gravitate to "constitutes" and the theists are going to prefer "generates." For the moment it doesn't matter; I just wanted everyone to know I was thinking of them. Aren't I nice?

6. This is a new premise. If this 'What' has no will, then its generation/constitution of other being is simple, total, and uniform.

7. (rewritten) If there is Necessary Being, i.e. a 'What', that is infinite, eternal, one, undifferentiated, unchanging, unaffectable, undetectable, self-subsisting, etc. and so on (see #4), and this 'What' is simply, totally, and uniformally generative/constitutive of all other being (see #5 & 6), then finite being is impossible. What I am describing here is a consequence of the assumption that the generation is simple, total, and uniform. The point that I am actually trying to make is that there is an unbearable contradiction here. Premise #7 appears to contradict premise #2. But since the progression from #2 to #5 appears to be deductively valid, then to avoid coming to #7, we will have to question whether this generation/constitution is simple and uniform. Until we do that, we must plow forward to the further consequences of #6.

8. (rewritten) If finite being is impossible, then all is one, and all is the 'What'. It is the simple question of what do you get when you add two infinities together (or rather, two infinite infinities, heh). There is no non-being, and therefore no difference--only the One. Just as colors are the result of the deprivation of light of some of its frequencies, so our fun worldly plurality is the result of finitude and limits. And without non-being, there is nothing to distinguish anything from anything else. Now, I know that some well-meaning folks of a Bhuddist or pantheistic disposition will be quite happy with this conclusion. Mysticism always tends toward monism. The problem is that, if this were true, there would be no mystics or Bhuddists around to discover it. The true Zen insight, however, is that 'I' do not actually exist... even I am an illusion, along with everything else. Yet this begs the question: whence the illusion? The One has no business with dreams. But going further, we must observe that, if there is no non-being, then there are no beings. In fact, there is nothing. We have contradicted our first premise.

9. If premises #1-#5 are all true, then the 'What' must have a will. Look again at #6. It is a conditional statement. Now let's make it into a modus tollens argument: If the 'What's' generation/constitution of being is not simple, total, and uniform, then the 'What' has a will.

To make everyone certain that I am not doing any mental jujitsu here, I will be more explicit, with a classic example.

P1: If it is raining, the streets get wet.
P2: The streets are not wet.
C: Therefore, it is not raining.

This is a valid argument, but it is possible for either of the first two premises to be wrong. For example, if the streets were covered, the first premise would be wrong, because it could rain and the streets would remain dry. Let us look at my argument:

P1: If the 'What' has no will, then its generation/constitution is simple, total, and uniform.
P2: The 'What's' generation/constitution of being is not simple, total, and uniform.
C: The 'What' has a will.

The most persuasive attack here will focus on the first premise. If there is a way for the streets to remain dry, even though the rain is falling, then first argument is false. Similarly, if there is a way for an absolutely unlimited non-concious undifferentiated ultimate substratum to constitute/generate finite being, then my argument is false.

Thus I place the field of argument as what the 'What' actually consists in. Yet it seems that this three-millenia old question. The very object of classical philosophy seems to have been the struggle to reconcile the Many with the One, finitude with infinity, and so on. Plato's The Good and Aristotle's Unmoved Mover are both attempts to reconceive the 'What' in a form conducive to generating/constituting, or explaining in some way, finite being. Yet they both say things about these "deities" that preclude them from being truly unlimited. They turn the 'What' into a thing.

But why will? In the previous draft of this argument, I said that we can know that the notion of will is the only possible imaginable phenomenon that can account for finite being, by process of elimination. I do not retract this statement, but I will suggest that there are other ways to know that it is will, too. But more later. I must pray, and sleep.

A little proof of a personal God.

This is an excersize in one of the most reviled activities of either philosophers or theologians, atheists, agnostics, Catholics, whatever. Inevitably, the very words, "I think I may have a good argument for God," are bound to arouse reactions ranging from amused 'knowing' skepticism to open hostility--in the former case, when one, not having listened to a word of the argument, responds with, "My friend, as interesting as that was, you should know that we're long beyond that fad now; your argument is full of fallacies, and anyways wouldn't convince anyone" or in the latter case, when one prohibits any discussion, interjects, "You can't do that; why are you even trying?"


We have done such a good job of proving the impossibility of a "proof" of God that it has become a 1st Commandment of rational discourse. Whatever one may say about God--so long as he says it only amid his personal choir of agreeable friends--he may not suggest that anything could compell anyone to agree. And this is true totally of the orthodox Catholic, as well as the postmodern agnostic camp. The businesses of the sheer rational knowability of God's existence has been so long dominated by two full rows of immobile chess pawns, that for someone to break the ranks with a knight, he had better be a genius, or else sit the game out and let the greater minds defend the stalemate.

That. is. why. I. write. very. cautiously.

This is an argument. I doubt it is original; it certainly didn't come from nowhere. It's a barely empirical adaptation of Anselm, combining one single empirical observation with all of the rational deductions and necessities that Anselm implied with his ontological argument. It doesn't try to say very much--only that there is something (from here on, a 'What') which is necessary; and that this 'what', whatever its other qualities, has a free will.

I do believe that this argument is rationally valid, and that the premises are universally recognizeable to be true. To that extent, I am forwarding this argument--with every bit of expectation that it could be ripped to shreds by a smart atheist (or a smart Christian)--suggesting that those who bother to read it and understand it, may come to agree based on the force of the arguments alone.

Now. On with the premises.

1. There is being. This argument could take other grammatical forms: stuff exists; there are things; Being is, and so on and so forth. It's not too controversial.

2. Nothing is infinite. The atheists should be totally with me on this one. The believers will just have to trust me--after all, if God does exist, and he is infinite, he cannot be considered any thing, can he? Perhaps it will be argued that space and time (as commonly, i.e. Newtonianly conceived) are infinite. My response is, first, that the scientific jury is still out on that one, thanks to relativity and quantum physics and string theory and all that; and second, that even if they were, they would only be infinitely extended, not sheerly infinite. After all, space would be limited to its definition as space and not as anything else. Anything with a definition is thereby limited. The fact that we can mentally distinguish between space and time; or between these two things and the objects which are in them, but are not them, shows their limits. We can even conceive mathematically of non-space; we have given it a name: the point; and so with time--the instant. And though a point as no actual being in space, nor the instant in time (as Aristotle proved), we would not go very far without these things. Thus space and time must share the reality pie with the point and the instant.

3. Every limit implies what is beyond itself. Therefore, every limit logically requires something 'underneath' it in order to be intelligible, something that makes real both the 'inside' and 'outside' of the limit (even if the 'outside' is 'nothing'--after all, there is space, right?). Every orange circle requires paper (or something) underneath to see its edges, and the blank white beyond. This is true both of physical and extra-physical realities, as well as perceptual and unperceived realities. Every limit is unthinkable without something which makes the beyond thinkable. Every difference; which is to say, every physical travel, every moment in time, every mathematical formula, and every logical thought that follows the pattern of "not this, but that!"--or moreover, "not that, but nothing at all!" always and inescapably points down, down to the ground, the ground if this, that, or the other thing, or even the nothing. Something has to hold the something and the nothing together, so that a limit can exist.

4. Let's be reductionists. Everything boils down to... whatever you want. Quarks? Fine. How about strings? Or maybe, let's say, dreams and illusions. Berkeley's spirits and ideas! Matter in motion? OK. Phonotic energy of the Big Bang? I'm right there with you. Point is that, it is always possible for the human mind to think of everything as being just one kind of thing--the thing that is. You don't have to be very subtle or particular about it. But what it comes down to, when we have a one thing that is, and the story ends, is the last limited thing! This is the object of the feverish (and one suspects, Sisyphusian) quest of the physical sciences. But whatever that thing is, we can make one critical observation of it: it's limited! But what about time and space? I have not forgotten those either. Supposing they discover that this "last thing," and time, and space, are all actually the same thing, then that's great... but it will still be limited. Therefore...

5. There is necessary being. You all saw that coming. The atheists may still be with me, too. Nothing inherently offensive about necessary being. All it is, really, the unintelligible "what" which is behind, not merely being, but the very distinction between being and nothing. Underneath the limit between the only thing that is, and its opposite, is the ground of the possibility of them both. Thus, unintelligible as it is, we can make certain conclusions about it. For example, it can have no limits, either outside or inside of itself. That means it is infinite, eternal, one, undifferentiated, unchanging, unaffectable, undetectable, self-subsisting, etc. and so on. Of course, if these are all that it is, very few people are going to want to build churches about it and worship it.

6. This "what" is constituitive or generative of everything that is. Perhaps some people were tempted to consider this "what" to be just like a little table that everything else sat on. That's the problem with "ground of being" language--"yeah, sure, just the ground of all being, and the beings, co-existing for all eternity, happy together". Now that would be truly incomprehensible. Because beings--whether big beings or little beings or mental beings or the quarks, strings (whatever), are always and only ever interiorly constituted by something. In the ultimately fringes of our thinking, the only thing possibly constitutive of all those quarks-or-whatever, is the "what" itself. Now, I included two possible choices of words here: "constitutes" and "generates." If I know my theists and atheists well enough, I can bet dollars to donuts that the atheists are going to gravitate to "constitutes" and the theists are going to prefer "generates." For the moment it doesn't matter; I just wanted everyone to know I was thinking of them. Aren't I nice?

7. Limits are impossible.

8. [Woah, wait, hold on there!]

7. Limits are impossible. Yeah. It is kind of a necessary consequence of points #5 and #6. The 'what' generates/constitutes all being; but the 'what' itself is infinite, unbounded, necessary, and interally undifferentiated. Given this, how does one account for finite being? Is there a part of the 'what' which is not constituting other beings? Did it start to generate and then run out of steam? Who can figure out the fact that necessary being is infinite, but contingent being is not? If only some of the 'what' was constitutive/generative of being, then this would differentiate it from the rest of the 'what'; but this difference would necessitate a deeper 'what' to the two differently-behaving 'whats'. Let us be good Ockhamists--there is only one 'what'. And if it is unlimited, it can only generate/constitute unlimited being.

8. Being is impossible. Yeah. So how did we go from unlimited being to impossible being? The unlimited 'what' continuously constitutes/generates unlimited being. Yet this second unlimited being--unlimited as it is--in fact is always and everywhere equivalent to the first. The two are one--one 'what'. This might be very appealing to the mystical types. All is one. Everything is an illusion. We discover in spiritual mastery that, in fact, we are nothing, or we are I, the One. Yet there is one difficulty: there is no room for illusions anymore. Even illusions have their own being, but if illusions can be dissipated by meditation, then illusions have limits. Besides, illusions are always illusions of something, which raises the question of what an unlimited 'what' constituting/generating unlimited oneness has any business with dreams and illusions. Without limits, there is no plurality, no otherness, no difference, no-thing. In truth, there is no Being.

9. Because there is being, and there are limits, it follows that the necessary 'what' does not constitute/generate unlimited being. Rather, it constitutes/generates finite being. There is no logical explanation for this. By process of elimination, There is only one phenomenon accessible to us in all the possible rational, logical, empirical world we inhabit that could possibly account for finite being. Will.

10. To be completed at another time...

Dear Sweet, Tolerant, Secular Europe

I told you so.


Love, your Mother,

The Catholic Church