Discoveries or Heresies? Are you Catholics, Serviam?

Discoveries or Heresies? Are you Catholics, Serviam? · Trouble Finding Thomas Storck on FB, So Giving Reference from a Google

But politics and economics are not very much like doctrine. Nor is empirical science. They weren’t revealed from heaven. So they don’t just develop. They change. Sometimes radically. Revelation ended with the death of St. John on Patmos. Every single article of Christian faith was present, at least implicitly, among the apostles. That isn’t true of economics, politics or other fields such as natural science. Those fields find out new things and overturn false beliefs. Like the law of supply and demand. The time value of money. The centrality of individual rights. The earth revolving around the sun. Those are radical discoveries. Even innovations. In doctrine, the correct word for an innovation is a “heresy.”

The Pope Is Not an Oracle and the Church Is Not a Party
Serviam USA
http://serviamusa.org/item/393-the-pope-is-not-an-oracle-and-the-church-is-not-a-party

"Revelation ended with the death of St. John on Patmos."

St John died - if that is the right word - in Ephesus, and he wrote the Gospel after Patmos. He was freed from Patmos by Emperor Nerva, after having been banned there by Domitian, who had before that tried to boil him in oil and failed to kill him. Learn your Church history!

"Every single article of Christian faith was present, at least implicitly, among the apostles."

You might perhaps forget implicitly, unless you simply mean translating terminology. Transsubstantiation can be called implicitly present, because Apostles were not using scholastic terminology - but not because there was any real unclarity about what it meant, which was later got rid of by discussion.

"That isn’t true of economics, politics or other fields such as natural science."

Possible .....

"Those fields find out new things and overturn false beliefs."

Finding out new things, OK. Overturning false beliefs? Not having discovered a new thing does not involve being in error over what is already discovered. Not having discovered hydrogen does not mean being in error over properties of water in fluid, frozen or avaproated forms.

I begin to sense a kind of fear we could be facing some kind of heresy of novelty here.

"Like the law of supply and demand."

This supposed law was proposed as objection by some Salamanca Jesuits and answered.

If bread is very scarce, money becomes momentarily very valueless. The fact that in such times you might sell a loaf of bread for a wheelbarrow load of paper money doesn't mean you have the right to do so. And no, the Austrian school did not get Salamaca school of theology right, any more than someone would be getting St Thomas right in claiming the first words in S Th I, Q 2, A 3 prove he promoted atheism. Stork has already answered this proposition. I'll ask him about the correct reference for this.

"The time value of money."

Answered several times over. Time is the gift of God to each of us, you can't buy or sell it for money. Or, money is not a biological entity developing offspring over time. Or, in money, the use is the right to dispose of it, and therefore it is consumption goods, like food, not a productive or wear capable commidity like a tool or a room or a car or a horse.

Perhaps you would refer to "lost opportunities for gain".

Now, there is a licit argument about these. Here is how it goes. Suppose I lend you two hundred dollars over a year. In October 1:st 2018, they are up (purely fictitious, I have no 200 dollars to lend you). Suppose before the time is up, perhaps even before I lend you them, decide to participate in a business opportunity which takes place October 2:nd 2018. But you don't pay in time, I don't have the money I counted on for 2.X.2018, I can't get the offer I counted on. That would entitle me to damages, not over how long I originally lent you money, but over losing after being in my right to count on having the money again.

This does not mean that I can charge you for the year if you pay on the day or before.

"The centrality of individual rights."

The right of a community is "more divine" than the right of an individual in it - or outside it.

Also, individual rights were in fact more respected in the Middle Ages, when their centrality was not preached, than now, when it is. You own a house, the government wants to build a road or a pipeline. You are told to get out, offered damages and opportunity to resettle, if you don't, police is going after you, most places. You owned a house in Paris, 1200, the King wanted to build a Church, you could actually be blocking the completion of the Church for a while. If you were old, chances are they would arrange your sons sell it to the Church after you die.

But pretend individual rights are central, you make them a challenge, and a challenge some community organisers will want to take up.

Some pseudo-communal rights are even formulated as "individual rights", even if it means "individual duties" : like "right to school". Or to "mental health treatment."

"The earth revolving around the sun."

Not a discovery. An error.

"Those are radical discoveries. Even innovations. In doctrine, the correct word for an innovation is a 'heresy'."

Yes, the word for these things too is heresy, in some cases. Charging for contractual time of a loan is not excusable according to Ecumenical Council of Vienne in Isère. If you just do it, you sin. If you exonerate it from sin, you are committing heresy in theory.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibl. R M Rilke
St Jerome
30.IX.2017