On Apologetics

The following can be considered a trialogue. If you think "dialogue" means "duologue", which according to most it does not.

Otherwise, this is simply a dialogue. Which I imposed on a work where Mark P Shea first cites Rober Barron, and then adds his own comments.

I answered Robert Barron's cited comments in extenso, and also a few ones by Mark P Shea. Here is his blog post:

Bp. Robert Barron, as usual, makes a lot of sense to me
October 11, 2018 by Mark Shea
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2018/10/bp-robert-barron-as-usual-makes-a-lot-of-sense-to-me.html

Here are the three persons' comments, marked with each "speaker"/"writer" above his text:

Barron

What would a new apologetics look like? First, it would arise from the questions that young people spontaneously ask. It would not be imposed from above but would rather emerge organically from below, a response to the yearning of the mind and the heart. Here it would take a cue from the method of St. Thomas Aquinas. The austere texts of the great theological master in point of fact emerged from the lively give-and-take of the quaestiones disputatae that stood at the heart of the educational process in the medieval university. Thomas was deeply interested in what young people were really asking. So should we.

My comment

I agree. That's what I am doing. You have heard I was in a Goth forum, or actually two? I'm back on the latter (nearly), but its hardly active now. It was when I was thrown out for being too Christian.

Guess whose questions and objections I was meeting?

Barron

Secondly, a new apologetics should look deep and long into the question of the relationship between religion and science. For many people today, scientific and rational are simply equivalent or co-extensive terms. And therefore, since religion is obviously not science, it must be irrational. Without for a moment denigrating the sciences, we have to show that there are non-scientific and yet eminently rational paths that conduce toward knowledge of the real. Literature, drama, philosophy, the fine arts—all close cousins of religion—not only entertain and delight; they also bear truths that are unavailable in any other way. A renewed apologetics ought to cultivate these approaches.

My comment

I agree on the looking long and deep.

I most emphatically disagree on "without for a moment denigrating the sciences."

Some sciences are by now pseudo-sciences and this needs to be said.

That literature and fine arts can propose truth, I would say this is in a rhetoric way - rephrasing in more personal detail or whatever is that changes, what religion or philosophy can state in general terms.

Philosophy should not be separated from science, or from criticism of sciences.

To St Thomas Aquinas, metaphysics and physics were no more separate than say, physics of air currents and air pressure, aerodynamics, flight mechanics.

Barron

Thirdly, our apologetics and catechesis should walk the via pulchritudinis, as Pope Francis characterized it in Evangelii Gaudium. Especially in our postmodern cultural context, commencing with the true and the good—what to believe and how to behave—is often counter-indicated, since the ideology of self-invention is so firmly established. However, the third transcendental, the beautiful, often proves a more winsome, less threatening, path. And part of the genius of Catholicism is that we have so consistently embraced the beautiful—in song, poetry, architecture, painting, sculpture, and liturgy. All of this provides a powerful matrix for evangelization. And as Hans Urs von Balthasar argued, the most compelling beauty of all is that of the saints. I have found a good deal of evangelical traction in presenting the lives of these great friends of God, somewhat in the manner of a baseball coach who draws young adepts into the game by showing them the play of some of its greatest practitioners.

My comment

I have not read Evangelii Gaudium, and since I don't consider Bergoglio to be Pope, I don't know I would intend to.

Self invention does not block searching the true and the good, that much I know from my Goth forums fairly extended period. And when on a Goth forum, the good and the true will definitely be brought up by the enemies of faith, so, we just have to answer.

Those who have it, and also those who have bits and parts of it.

Barron

When Jesus explained himself to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, their hearts began to burn within them. The Church must walk with young people, listen to them with attention and love, and then be ready intelligently to give a reason for the hope that is within us. This, I trust, will set the hearts of the young on fire.

My comment

An Apologist is not Jesus.

A lay apologist is also not Jesus, and not even a consecrated icon of Him.

This puts some dampers on my or any other apologists' capacity to make hearts burn.

Nevertheless, Chesterton occasionally does so - simply when pleading we are all Roman relics. We are heirs of the Roman Empire discarding idols and discovering Christ.

And also when speaking of Jesus.

However, I guess, He was working through him, and that without him using too much technique on the question of making hearts burn.

In other words, we should not necessarily make this effect an ambition of ours, we should receive it as an occasional reward (and sometimes unknown to us).

Mark P. Shea

Most the apologetics community in the US is now consumed with the right wing culture war against Francis and with making excuses for supporting our grifting Sex Predator in Chief.

My comment

While I am against Bergoglio, I was not a quick hanger on to this culture war.

While I am less against Trump than against Obama, I am not over enthusiastic.

As to whether he is spreading a culture of sex predating, I leave that to you. Let's hope not, from across the Atlantic.

Mark P. Shea

Discussions of beauty mostly devolve into bitching about liturgy wars.

My comment

Where Novus Ordo is rejected as simply un-Catholic, there is no liturgy war about it.

Those who are attached for only personal or aesthetic reasons to Antiquior Usus as some would call it (I refuse to call it Extraordinary Form, which it is only among those accepting Novus Ordo as OF) are sometimes under attack and need a defense.

While aesthetics are not irrelevant, this line of defense can become petty, like in "oh, I think Kumbaya so cringeworthy".

I don't think Kum ba ya, which is Gullah pronunciation of Come by here, which is Gullah phraseology for Come, is something disrespectful to say to Christ. If Catholics hadn't already a liturgy, and I were given the task of making one, which is impensable, or no, not impensable, since i am "pensing" it, but impossible, I might include Kumbaya. But the Catholic Church has already a liturgy.

This is an argument against other things too, like the new offertory. And here I think it less disrespectful to personal preferences and more to the point to say, I have theological objections to it.

One can quibble about whether "work of human hands" is treated as a raw material beside the natural resource, rather than an actor under God's action, but more grating, "fruits of the earth" recall the sacrifice of Cain, right?

Problematic, because if he lived before Göbekli Tepe, he had no cultivated wheat, but some other plant. His material would not have been possible as a valid matter for the sacrament. Also, simply by association, since in fact his sacrifice was rejected. Also, very Anti-Apologetic, since Protestants (who are among the unbelievers or wrongbelievers we need to be Apologetic to) will represent Cain's rejected sacrifice as proto-type of Papist Holy Mass.

Mark P Shea

[citing fictitious or not so fictitious example of uncharitable:]

"... You’re post-abortive? You know, I think women who have abortions deserve the death penalty."

My comment

While a woman in her carreer who is married (validly or not) and has children and aborts while not wanting another one, arguably could deserve death penalty, I think some women who aborted (girls no more, since pregnancy naturally = no more maidenhood) if they are like 13 or 15 have extenuating circumstances, like pressure from parents (including in some cases from mothers who aborted).

That said, other sets of legal penalties are possible. And, sorry, if the post-abortive woman actually asks, I will of course say what she wants to know, but I would not be the one to bring it up to a depressed person.

Mark P. Shea

That is the ambient noise of the subculture that regards itself as the Defenders of the Faith.

My comment

I have been blocked from commenting under Shea's posts and from getting answers when mailing him as far back as in 2014.

In other words, while I have shared parts of my apologetics with him, I have not heard from him that he actually read it.

Update:



Yes, Mark Shea has banned me, like the Goth forums banned me.