Catholic Monitor
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/11/is-francis-nihilistic-total-relativist.html?m=1
Friday, November 15, 2019
Is Francis a Nihilistic Total Relativist who doesn’t believe in Truth?
The Catholic Thing wrote that “Francis made a startling claim” that appears to deny objective truth:
“We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths.”
[https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/04/21/of-truth-and-idols/]
Francis apparently got this terminology about “abstract truths” from a Jesuit theologian Michael de Certeau who wrote:
“In history everything begins with the gesture of setting aside, of putting together, of transforming certain classified objects… It exiles them from practice [praxis] in order to confer upon them the status of “abstract” objects of knowledge…”
“… [T]he historical discipline… designate[s] the “that” as a “fact” is only a way of naming what cannot be understood.”
( Michael de Certeau’s book: The Writing of History, pages 72-73 and 84)
De Certeau is a nihilist who Francis considers to “be the greatest theologian for today.” This theologian believes that there is no “possibility of an objective basis for truth” and that there is no objective meaning or reality. (Dictionary.com definitions of nihilism)
In simple words, de Certeau’s theology denies objective truth and objective Catholic truth.
The present Pope considers him the most eminent modern theologian. Francis said:
“For me, de Certeau is still the greatest theologian for today.” (onepeterfive.com, March 8, 2016, “Pope Francis Reveals His Mind to Private Audience”)
Rev. Dr. Federico Colautti, ITI, in a talk titled “Pope Francis: Understanding His Language and Mission (1-10-2015),” shows that de Certeau had “a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… [n]ot making faith of a museum”:
In the “discourse, a video message that the Pope send the Catholic University of Buenos Aires… I discovered that one of the few quotes he makes is from a theologian… a certain Michael de Certeau… I can imagine that this author had a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… Not making faith of a museum… This preference for the periphery could have a relationship with this theologian Michael de Certeau.”
De Certeau in his greatest book “Heterologies” said:
“It is not Mr. Foucault who is making fun of domains of knowledge… It is history that is laughing at them. It plays tricks on the teleologists who take themselves to be the lieutenants of meaning. A meaninglessness of history.” (“Heterologogies,” Pages 195-196)
Historian Keith Windschuttle shows that the Pope’s favorite modern theologian is a radical who thinks that there is no “access” to outside reality. Windschuttle wrote:
“Of all the French theorists… de Certeau is the most radical. He is critical of the poststructuralist Foucault for his use of documentary evidence and of Derrida for the way he privileges the practice of writing. For de Certeau, writing is a form of oppression… he argues… writing itself constitutes the act of colonisation…”
“Like both structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, de Certeau subscribes to the thesis that we have access only to our language and not to any real, outside world…”
“De Certeau claims that writing can never be objective. Its status is no different from that of fiction. So, because history is a form of writing, all history is also fiction.” (“The Killing of History,” Pages 31-34)
By Francis’s greatest modern theologian’s logic then Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who walked the earth during the reign of Pontius Pilate, is fiction.
The central doctrine of Catholism, the Incarnation, is fiction.
Post Structuralists like de Certeau, more widely known as Postmodernists, believe all reality is fiction or “narrative.”
They change the “narrative” or story usually to compile with their leftist or liberal views on politics, sexual morality or whatever their pet project happens to be.
They rarely use scholarship to backup their “narrative” point of view, only mind numbing long confusing writing that obscures instead of clarifying.
The Postmodernists in the media are one exception to the obscurantism of non-clarity.
Their “narratives” are clear and well written, but again rarely is there scholarship or strong evidence to backup their stories. They use spin to obscure.
Media spin “narrative” is “news and information that is manipulated or slanted to affect its interpretation and influence public opinion.” (Dictionary.com)
They usually use their “narratives” in history, news, the Bible and any writing as a vehicle to promote their ideological ideas.
With that background, here is the Pope’s favorite theologian’s central religious ideas. The de Certeau Scholar Johannes Hoff wrote:
“According to this new approach to the Biblical narrative, the focal event of Christianity is not the incarnation, the crucifixion, or the resurrection of Christ, but the empty tomb. The Christian form of life is no longer associated with a place, a body, or an institution, but with a quest for a missing body: the missing body of the people of Israel, and mutatis mutandis the missing body of Jesus.”
(Article by Johannes Hoff, “Mysticism, Ecclesiology And The Body Christ: Certeau’s (Mis-) Reading of Corpus Mystium and the Legacy of Henri de Lubac” Page 87, Titus Brandsma Institute Studies In Spirituality, Supplement 24, “Spiritual Spaces: History and Mysticism in Michel De Certeau”)
The nihilist theologian believes that the central truths of Christianity are about “absence” or nonexistence. De Certeau scholar Graham Ward wrote:
“For de Lubac the… Eucharist is not a sign of the presence of Christ’s body, it is Christ’s body… And yet Certeau… makes the Eucharist (as later the church and body of mystical text he treats) into substitutes, acts of bereavement, signs of absence.” (“Michel de Certeau – in the Plural, ” Page 511)
In other words, Francis’s greatest modern theologian believes that the Eucharist is not the body of Christ present, he doesn’t even believe it is a sign of the presence of Christ’s body like some Protestants, but a sign of “absence.”
Might de Certeau’s influence on Francis be the reason he never kneels before the Eucharist, but kneels to wash the feet of those he like Certeau might consider oppressed?
De Certeau’s influence on Francis may be the reason he reportedly said:
“It is not excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church.” (Der Spiegel magazine, December, 23, 2016)
De Certeau scholar Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt wrote:
“Certeau… came increasingly to stress the clash of interpretation, the “law of conflict,” that applies even to the church. Under the pressure of this clash, the ecclesial/eucharistic body is “shattered.” (“Michael de Certeau – in the Plural”, Page 359)
Francis’s greatest modern theologian doesn’t believe in the central truths of the Catholic Church.
The Pope’s most eminent modern theologian doesn’t even believe in objective truth.
Does Francis believe in the central doctrines of the Catholic Church or in objective truth?
The question needs to be asked:
If Francis is a disciple of de Certeau and Postmodernism, then what ultimately do he and these thinkers believe in?
Philosopher Stephen Hicks said:
The “Left thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s… Confronted by the continued poverty and brutality of socialism, they could either go with the evidence and reject their most cherish ideals – or stick by their ideals and attack the whole idea that evidence and logic matter…”
“Postmodernism is born of the marriage of Left politics and skeptical epistemology…”
“Then, strikingly, postmodernism turns out not to be relativistic at all. Relativism becomes part of a rhetorical political strategy, some Machiavellian realpolitik employed to throw the opposition off track…”
“Here it is useful to recall Derrida: ‘deconstruction never had any meaning… than as a radicalization… within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.'” (“Explaining Postmodernism,” Page 90, 186)
For Postmodernists like de Certeau, Derrida, Foucault and it appears Francis, if he is their disciple, falsehood or truth doesn’t matter.
The only thing that matters is achieving power for their liberal ideology or group.
Instead of economic Marxism, the post-modernist in the 1970’s focused on Cultural Marxism which de Certeau and other post-modernists termed “oppression” of groups.
Power not truth for groups such as women, gays, transexauls, workers and any sub-category of minorities was the new goal to achieving control.
An example is abortion: women had to have power over their bodies so the truth that the unborn baby is human must be denied and politically incorrect.
Another example is homosexual acts: gays had to have power over their bodies so the truth that it is was a sin and led to disease and a early death had to be denied and politically incorrect.
Remember that liberals, who never use Marxist words, are nothing but post-modernist who use words like equality and compassion as masks for raw power.
Venezuela is another example.
The liberals from Fr. James Martin to Francis will not lift a finger or say a word to stop the Venezuelan people from being starved and brutalized because the country’s dictator is part of their liberal group.
The liberals means to achieve power in the Church is praxis theology.
Internationally renowned theologian Dr. Tracey Rowland said Francis’s “decision – making process” outlined in Evangelii Gaudium is “the tendency to give priority to praxis over theory.”
She states that chapter eight of Amoris Laetitia “might be described as the praxis chapter rather than a theory chapter.” Theory meaning Catholic doctrine.
The renowned theologian asks:
How can footnote 351 of Amoris Laetitia “be consistent with paragraph eighty-four of John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio and paragraph twenty-nine of Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis? A pastoral crisis may arise if the lay faithful and their priests have to choose between… two Popes (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) on one side, and a third Pope (Pope Francis) on the other.” (“Catholic Theology,” Page 192, 198, 199)
The choice appears to be between the infallible doctrines of the Catholic Church or praxis theology.
Rowland says “praxis types agree in rejecting classical metaphysics.” She then explains praxis ideology or “theology”:
“Doctrinal theory is at best extrinsic and secondary. The reflex character of theory-praxis tends toward a reduction of theory to reflection on praxis as variously understood. The normativity tends toward an identification of Christianity with modern, secular (liberal or Marxist) process.” (“Catholic Theology,” Page174)
If what the internationally renowned theologian is saying is true of Francis and praxis “theology,” then the Church is in the greatest crisis in history.
The Church has a Bishop in Rome who has betrayed Jesus Christ and His Gospel for the world.
It appears that Francis has exchanged the Gospel of Jesus Christ for “secular (liberal or Marxist)” ideology which denies objective truth.
Francis in Amoris Laetitia and back on Holy Thursday appeared to be denying objective truth. Canon lawyer Fr. Gerald E. Murray, in The Catholic Thing, wrote at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday morning “Francis made a startling claim” when he called truth an idol:
“We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths. They can be comfortable idols, always within easy reach; they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern. Because the “truth-idol” imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart. Much worse, it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.”
Fr. Murray then defines truth as the Catholic Church and St. Thomas Aquinas teaches and shows that apparently Francis denies truth and makes“erroneous opinion into an idol”:
“Truth is the conformity of mind and reality. The truth about God is understood when we accurately grasp the nature and purpose of His creation (natural theology), and when we believe in any supernatural revelation He may make. Jesus told us that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All truths have their origin in the Truth who is God made man. The Christian understands that the truth is a Person.”
“… Pope Francis states that “the ‘truth-idol’ imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart.” Is the Gospel obscured or falsified by truths taught by the Magisterium of the Church – which are drawn from that Gospel?
“If the truth could be an idol, then naturally any use of the Scriptures to illustrate that particular truth would be a charade. But the truth of God cannot be an idol because what God has made known to us is our means of entering into His reality – the goal of our existence.”
“Francis states that this ‘truth-idolatry’ in fact ‘distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.’”
“Here we have the interpretative key to what I think he is getting at. He is defending his decision in Amoris Laetitia to allow some people who are living in adulterous unions to receive the sacraments of penance and the Holy Eucharistic while intending to continue to engage in adulterous relations.”
“… The truth will set you free, it will not enslave you in error and darkness. Those who seek to be healed by coming close to Christ in his sacraments will only realize that goal by knowing and doing what Jesus asks of them. To reject in practice his words about the permanence of marriage and the obligation to avoid adultery, and then assert a right to receive the sacraments risks making an erroneous opinion into an idol.” [https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/04/21/of-truth-and-idols/]
Francis because of his apparent denial of truth appears to be denying objective morality and intrinsically evil acts. Professor Claudio Pierantoni, a Patristic Scholar of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Chile and Member of JAHLF (John Paul II Academy for Human Life and Family), said that Francis’s Gaudete et Exsultate appears to deny “the existence of intrinsically evil acts” and is promoting “situation ethics”:
“[T]he document is read within the context of the present controversies in the Church, especially that about Amoris Laetitia and situation ethics, one gets the strong impression that many passages are directly aimed at harshly rebuking all those people (cardinals, scholars, journalists and simple laypeople writing on blogs) that have opposed the papal agenda about giving Communion to the divorced and remarried, Communion to Protestants, permitting contraception in certain cases, too mild opposition or silence in the face of anti-family and anti-life legislation (pro-abortion, pro-birth control pro-euthanasia and pro same-sex marriage). In this sense, the document brings no progress or clarity in any of the most controversial and anti-doctrinal stances of Pope Francis. Quite to the contrary, it seems to represent one more step towards giving a kind of official approval to situation ethics.”
“So, the reading of this document should once more to urge us to plead before the Pope for an answer to the dubia, and in particular to dubium no. 2 about the existence of intrinsically evil acts, which are not justifiable in any situation. We should not forget that to deny this doctrine, or sow doubts about it, in any field of ethics, is the principal heresy of our times and the most dangerous enemy of sanctity.” [http://m.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/professor-pierantoni-gaudete-et-exsultate-supports-error-of-situational-eth#.WuLDtN9lDqC]
Why does Francis deny truth which has led to his promoting situation ethics?
Francis expert Austen Ivereigh points to how this happened:
“Bergoglio’s fascination with polarities began in the 1960s, when he first began exploring as a Jesuit via Gaston Fessard’s 1956 monumental anti-Hegelian work on the dialectics of grace and freedom in St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Fessard,Francis tells Borghesi, ‘gave me so many of the elements that later got mixed in.’”
“Fessard was one of a 1950s group of Lyons-based jésuites blondéliens – that is, Jesuits inspired by Maurice Blondel – that included Henri de Lubac, Gaston Fessardand Michel de Certeau.” [https://cruxnow.com/book-review/2017/11/18/new-book-looks-intellectual-history-francis-pope-polarity/]
Ivereigh’s claim that Fessard is “anti-Hegelian” is wrong.
Back in 1950, scholar Jules “Isaac [O.P.] was accusing Fessard of identifying this quasi-science of thought with the science of the real order, or metaphysics. That is what Hegel does.”
“The executive function of the dialectic, as Isaac interpreted Aquinas, uses the law of thought in a concrete instance of thinking or arguing. Because Fessard used these laws not as laws of arguing, but as laws of the development of historical events, he is again accused of Hegelianism.” (“Gaston Fessard S.J., His Work Toward A Theology of History,” by Mary Alice Muir, 1970, page 25-26)
Francis theological advisor Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone connects the final dots of the close connection of Francis’s thinking with Fessard and Blondel’s Hegelian teachings which explains why the Pope does not apparently believe in truth and promotes situation ethics:
“Between Blondel’s philosophy of action and Pope Francis’ pastoral action, there are significant coincidences, probably because they both draw from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. However, indirect links between the two should not be excluded, for example, through the relationship between Gaston Fessard (strongly influenced by Blondel) and Miguel Ángel Fiorito, much appreciated by Bergoglio. This article focuses first on the convergences regarding action; then it compares the coincidences between the two authors regarding the overcoming of social and existential conflicts. Finally, it studies the parallelism between the «logic of love», nominated and applied by the Pope, and the «logic of a moral life» by Blondel, focused on charity. ( La Civiltà Cattolica 2015 III / www.laciviltacattolica.it )” [https://m.facebook.com/civiltacattolica/photos/a.10150836993325245.745627.379688310244/10242607255245/?type=3]
Scannone connecting the Pope’s thinking to Blondel is very important because he is one of “Francis’ closest theological advisors” according to an expert on Latin America and Francis’s theology, Claudio Remeseira:
“In the almost fifty years since its appearance, the Theology of the People has become the Argentine theological school by default. The generation of its founders was followed by a second generation of disseminators, the most prolific of whom is father Scannone… Scannone, Galli, and Fernández are among Francis’ closest theological advisors. [“https://medium.com/@hispanicnewyork/pope-francis-per%C3%B3n-and-god-s-people-the-political-religion-of-jorge-mario-bergoglio-2a85787e7abe ]
Theologian John Lamont explains what Blondel taught:
“The neomodernists, due to their historical perspectivism, did not think that the theology and dogma of previous epochs could satisfy this understanding, but they did not want to dismiss them as false. They accordingly held that dogma was true, but that its truth could not be understood in Aristotle’s sense. Garrigou-Lagrange saw them as reviving the philosopher Maurice Blondel’s rejection of the traditional definition of truth as bringing the mind into conformity with reality (‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’) in favour of an account of truth as bringing thought into line with life (‘adaequatio realis mentis et vitae’). While this definition of truth was not explicitly stated by the neomodernists, the importance of Blondel for their thought makes this interpretation a plausible one; Bouillard, for example, wrote extensively and approvingly on Blondel.12 What they did explicitly assert was that the truth of past dogmatic pronouncements does not consist in their being an accurate description of reality, and that a theology that was not relevant to the present day (‘actuel’) was untrue.” [https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-christmastide-gift-for-our-readers.html?m=1]
Even liberal neo-modernist philosophy writer Anthony Carroll wrote:
“Conscious of the challenge to the traditional Thomist theory of knowledge that had been ushered in by modern philosophy, Blondel, for example, sought to identify the practical level of human action as the place where one might find a new apologetic for the Christian faith. In his L’Action (1893), he analyses the dynamics of human action and argues that the distance between what we desire and what we actually realise in our actions indicates that what we truly desire lies always beyond the particular object that we are momentarily fixed upon. This transcendental horizon of desire draws the mind and heart towards God as the only One who can satisfy truly our infinite longings. For Blondel, it is this Augustinian unrest that leaves a trace of the divine in our human experience. Such a turn to the interiority of human experience as grounds for the proof of God’s existence is what is meant by immanentism in Pascendi.”
“Rather than pointing towards the historical existence of Jesus, the factual occurrence of miracles and the fulfilment of earlier prophecies for proof of God’s existence, the Blondelian schema holds that justification for the faith is to be found by turning inwards to the personal experience of the human subject. This turn to the subject is characteristic of modern philosophy, from Descartes right up to the Idealism of Kant and Hegel and beyond, and presented a major challenge to the traditional Catholic apologetics of the time, which had been constructed on the basis that external revelation could be taken for granted. With this turn to the interior experience of the human subject, more than simply philosophical questions were raised. If it were the case that inner experience justified the faith, if each person was to find the proof of God’s existence within their own life, then what would be the basis for the teaching authority of the Church?” [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20090724_1.htm]
Finally, the great theologian and teacher of Pope John Paul II, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., wrote about Blondel and why anyone who was influenced by his teachings, directly or indirectly, would deny truth, as apparently Francis is influenced according one of his closest advisor’s Scannone:
“One sees the danger of the new definition of
truth, no longer the adequation of intellect and reality
but the conformity of mind and life.™ When Maurice
Blondel in 1906 proposed this substitution, he did not
foresee all of the consequences for the faith. Would he
himself not be terrified, or at least very troubled?
What life” is meant in this definition of: “conformity
of mind and life”? It means human life. And so then,
how can one avoid the modernist definition: “Truth is
no more immutable than man himself inasmuch as it
is evolved with him, in him and through him. (Denz.
2058) One understands why Pius X said of the
modernists: “they pervert the eternal concept of truth. 11
(Denz. 2080) ” [https://archive.org/stream/Garrigou-LagrangeEnglish/_Where%20is%20the%20New%20Theology%20Leading%20Us__%20-%20Garrigou-Lagrange%2C%20Reginald%2C%20O.P__djvu.txt]
Blondel’s modernist theology came from “the Idealism of Kant and Hegel.” Hegel leads to the “Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida” where de Certeau got most of his philosophy.
Did Francis’s theology of the periphery come from the “Prophets of Extremity”?
The definition of extremity is “the furthest point or limit of something.”
The definition of periphery is “the outer limit or edge of an area or object.”
Remember what Francis expert Rev. Dr. Colautti said:
In the “discourse, a video message that the Pope send the Catholic University of Buenos Aires… I discovered that one of the few quotes he makes is from a theologian… a certain Michael de Certeau… I can imagine that this author had a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… Not making faith of a museum… This preference for the periphery could have a relationship with this theologian Michael de Certeau.”
Francis’s favorite theologian de Certeau’s key ideas are oppression of groups and the deconstruction of meaning for the most part. De Certeau got these ideas from most of the same sources as Derrida who, like Fessard, had as his starting point Hegel. Remember that much of Francis’s thinking comes not only from de Certeau, but from Fessard who was a Hegelian.
Derrida scholar Allan Megill on the Hegelian influence wrote:
He “sees no possibility of ever “escaping” Hegel… every attempt to state a truth is already a reintegration into the dialectic… A key term for Derrida is “dissemination”… a kind of anti-dialectic, going against the dialectical rule of three… The fourth moment of the dialectic is the deconstruction moment: position, negation, negation of the negation, deconstruction (or Nietzsche… Derrida).”
(“Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida,” Pages 271, 273-274)
The fourth moment or the deconstruction of meaning for Derrida and de Certeau is the Nietzschean relativism moment.
Francis’s favorite theologian de Certeau ultimately leads him to Friedrick Nietzsche and the Nietzschean relativism moment.
De Certeau apparently made Francis a Nietzschean.
Nietzsche scholar Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote a book that shows Hegel leads to Nietzsche:
Nietzsche said the “‘dialectical principles with which Hegel assisted the German spirit to gain its victory over Europe- ‘contradiction moves the world, all things are contradictory to themselves.'”
(“From Hegel to Nietzsche,” Page 180)
Professor Allan Bloom, author of “The Closing of the American Mind thought that the only virtue 50 years of Nietzsche’s influenceon public education – and he could have said 50 years of Catholic education – has achieved is relativity of truth.
Bloom said relativism “is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society.”
The move away from objective truth leads to universal rights being replaced by Nietzsche’s will to power. Bloom, for example, showed how the old civil rights movement “relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” But the new Black Power movement considered the Constitution “corrupt” and demanded a “black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted.”
The liberal “Catholics” speak the jargon of the Catholic while following Nietzsche’s will to power. They understand power and hold most of the power positions in the infrastructure of the American Church.
According to Catholic scholar James Hitchcock, the leftist “clerical homosexual network” extends to “bishops, seminary rectors, chancery officials, [and] superiors of religious orders.”
The faithful Catholics, the ones not infected with relativism and will to power, not realizing that their opponents use words as ploys to attain power, still use logic in an attempt to reason them back into objective truth. So they control many traditional and conservative publications, as well as the EWTN Cable Network, but they have power over only a few dioceses, colleges and high schools, where the real power is.
Meanwhile, the Nietzschean “Catholics” are going for the throat by going after the young. They control the American Catholic high school system, which is pro-homosexual, and filter out Roman Church documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered … [and] under no circumstances can they be approved.”
That the Catholic schools are not teaching the Catechism of the Catholic Church is shown by recent polls which found that the vast majority of Catholic high school students are pro-gay. That is, they buy the whole gay agenda and even have gay clubs at their Catholic schools.
Norman Mailer, in his book “Prisoner of Sex,” shows why this relativism and moving away from natural objective truths such as heterosexual sex can lead to will to power:
“So, yes, [homosexuals] in prison strive to become part of the male population, and indeed – it is the irony of homosexuality – try to take on the masculine powers of the man who enters them, even as the studs, if Genet is our accurate guide, become effeminate over the years. … Homosexuality is not heterosexuality. There is no conception possible, no, no inner space, no damnable spongy pool of a womb … no hint remains of the awe that a life in these circumstances can be conceived. Heterosexual sex with contraception is become by this logic a form of sexual currency closer to the homosexual than the heterosexual, a clearinghouse for power, a market for psychic power in which the stronger will use the weaker, and the female in the act, whether possessed of a vagina or phallus, will look to ingest or steal the masculine qualities of the dominator.”
This is the end result when universal truths and responsibility toward those truths are denied. The only “currency” left to the left is stealing of power, because they are insecure in any truth including their own objective masculinity.
Unsure of their own objective masculinity – or any objective truth, for that matter – they will not tolerate truth, calling it intolerance. They will not tolerate the truth of the purpose of sex, which is married love, with the creation of a secure family for the children of that love.
Leftists replace the traditional family with sexual power struggles that lead to the death mills of the abortion industry and the graveyards of AIDS and the abandonment of children and women at the altar of free sex.
Sex is not free. It was once a responsibility that a mature man entered into for life, for the security of his beloved children and wife.
Likewise, liberals replace the Constitution with gay, gender, group and ethnic power struggles that lead to the breaking of the rule of law.
If a president can sexually abuse women and possibly even rape them, then obstruct justice and lie under oath, are we under the rule of law?
If our society will not tolerate truth, then men and women are not secure in their “inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society,” as Bloom said.
If we reject the rule of law and natural rights, our society will progress toward the Clintonian and homosexual power tactics of prison inmates.
The leftists in the Church and the media rejecting objective truth no longer want to be identified as men of objective faith and reason, but rather as Nietzschean post-modernists to be identified with the “culture” of the gay and Clintonian playboy slogans of the media elite.
The media elite uses management tactics on anyone who wants to be identified as a man of objective morals, faith and reason. They redefine the meaning of words like morals, faith and reason through association and repetition, then isolate those who don’t accept the new definitions, after which they ostracize the good name of any person or group that doesn’t accept the new “culture” and isn’t a “team player.”
The very respected scholar Edgar H. Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management explains the process in “Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited”:
“It may seem absurd to the reader to draw an analogy between the coercive persuasion in political prisons and a new leader announcing that he or she is going ‘to change the culture.’
“However, if the leader really means it, if the change will really affect fundamental assumptions and values, one can anticipate levels of anxiety and resistance quite comparable to those one would see in prisons. The coercive element is not as strong. More people will simply leave before they change their cognitive structures, but if they have a financial stake or a career investment in the organization, they face the same pressure to ‘convert’ that the prisoner did. … Consider, for example, what it means to impose a ‘culture of teamwork’ based on ‘openness and mutual trust’ in an individualistic society.”
By using this process, the leftists with the media’s marketing ability learned they could create massive peer pressure – some would call it a “mob mentality,” which changes the worldview of people with weak morals, weak faith or the Judas mentality. These types of people see themselves as the “elite” because they accept the “culture of teamwork” and have “openness” to the new definitions.
These persons wishing to be part of the “culture” or “team” are open to cognitive re-definition. Schein explains how the process works:
“‘Cognitive redefinition’ involved two different processes. First, concepts like crime and espionage had to be semantically redefined. Crime is an abstraction that can mean different things in different conceptual systems when one makes it concrete. Second, standards of judgment had to be altered. Even within the western concept of crime, what was previously regarded as trivial was now seen to be serious. The anchors by which judgments are made are shifted and the point of neutrality is moved. Behavior that was previously judged to be neutral or of no consequence became criminal, once the anchor of what was a minimum crime was shifted. These two processes, semantic re-definition and changing one’s anchors for what is good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, are the essence of cognitive re-definition.”
Professor Bloom thought that Nietzsche was the father of the modern American culture with it’s “semantic re-definition and changing one’s anchors for what is good or bad.” He said, “Words such as ‘charisma,’ ‘lifestyle,’ ‘commitment,’ ‘identity,’ and many others, all of which can easily be traced to Nietzsche … are now practically American slang.”
But the most important Nietzschean slang word is “values.”
“Values” are the death of Christian morality because values simply mean opinions. If opinion is how things are decided, then might makes right.
One must remember that whenever someone talks about values in modern America – family values or religious values or place-the-blank-in-front-of values – they are saying there is no real or objective right or wrong – only opinions of the self and its will to power.
Nietzsche’s philosophy is summed up by Bloom as:
“Commitment values the values and makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark of the authentic will is consulting one’s oracle while facing up to what one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not, deliberations, are the movers of deeds. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.”
As a philologist, Nietzsche believed there was no original text and transferred this belief to reality, which he thought was only pure chaos. He proposed will to power in which one imposes or “posits” one’s values on a meaningless world.
Previous to Freud’s psychoanalysis, Nietzsche’s writings spoke of the unconscious and destructive side of the self. In fact, Freud wrote that Nietzsche “had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live.”
Max Weber and Sigmund Freud are the two writers most responsible for Nietzschean language in America. Few know that Freud was ” profoundly influenced by Nietzsche,” according to Bloom. Freud, much more than Weber, profoundly changed America from a Christian culture to a therapeutic or self-centered culture.
The therapeutic approaches, which started with Freud, have a basic assumption that is not Christian. The starting point is not the Christian worldview, which is summed up in the parable of the prodigal son: a fallen and sinful world with persons needing God the Father to forgive them so they can return to be His sons and daughters.
Unlike the Christian worldview, the therapeutic starting point is that the individual must overcome personal unconscious forces, in Freud, and in Carl Jung the person must unite to the collective unconscious, which is shared by all humans.
In both cases, the therapist assists his client to change himself to ‘become his real self.’ Forgiveness and returning to God are not needed. What is needed are not God and His Forgiveness, but a therapist assisting a self to reach the fullness of its self.
Freud, under the influence of Nietzsche, moved psychiatry away from the mechanistic and biological to the previously “unscientific” model of the “symbolic language of the unconscious.”
Freud’s pupil Carl Jung took the symbolic language of the unconscious a step further. Unlike his mentor, Jung’s unconscious theory is not just about making conscious sexually repressed or forgotten memories. His symbolic therapy used what he called the “active imagination” to incorporate split-off parts of the unconscious (complexes) into the conscious mind.
He believed with Freud that dreams and symbols are means to the unconscious, but for Jung the dream and symbol are not repressed lusts from stages of development. They are a way to unite with the collective unconsciousness.
Many Christians thought this “language of the soul” was a step forward from what they considered the cramped scientific reality of modernity. What they didn’t understand was that Jung’s theory was part of a movement that led to the rejection of objective morality and truth.
Jungian (and Freudian) psychoanalysis reduces Christian concepts such as God, free will and intelligence to blind reactions, unconscious urges and uncontrollable acts. Even more disastrous, Jung inverted Christian worship.
Leanne Payne, a Christian therapist, considers Jung “not a scientist, but a post-modernist subjectivist. Jung’s active imagination therapy is hostile not only to the Judeo-Christian worldview, but to all systems containing objective moral and spiritual value. Within this world the unconscious urge becomes god. What the unconscious urge wants is what is finally right or moral. These psychic personae [complexes] are literally called ‘gods’ (archetypes),’ and so an overt idolatry of self follows quickly.”
It seems to me that within the modern French Nietzschean schools of thought of Foucault, Derrida and Francis’s favorite theologian de Certeau a type of Jungian unconscious urge is replacing the old existential conscious self who chooses. The post-modernist and all Nietzschean secularists are moving from the idolatry of self to the idolatry of autonomous inner “beings” that, according to Payne, are similar to pagan “gods.”
Sadly, these pagan “gods” appear to be the “spirits” that guide those who are disciples of de Certeau and the French Postmodernists who can be called Marxist “Materialist Magicians.”
Are they the “spirit” that guide the Pope’s synods? Francis has said of his synods:
They are “the outcome of the working of the Spirit.”
(Fatima Perspectives, “The ‘Synodality’ Scam,” November 20, 2018)
As C.S. Lewis predicted in “The Screwtape Letters,” we are moving to a “scientific” paganism. C.S. Lewis’ name for the “scientific” pagan was the Materialist Magician and the name of the autonomous inner “beings” was the “Forces.”
In “The Screwtape Letters,” his character who is a senior evil spirit said:
I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The “Life Force,” the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our prefect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war will be in sight.
Some of the largest audiences for this “scientific” paganism with its inversion of worship and the Judeo-Christian worldview are followers of Christ. By using Christian symbols and terminology, Jungian spirituality has infiltrated to a large extent Christian publishers, seminaries, even convents and monasteries.
Many Christians are using Jung’s active imagination as a method of prayer. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., thinks this is dangerous “because this fantasy life has no moral underpinnings, because it helps to reinforce an experience of autonomous inner ‘beings’ accessible via the imagination, and because it is a defense against redemptive suffering, it easily allies with and quickly becomes a Gnostic form of spiritually with powerfully occult overtones.”
If one is under the influence of the autonomous inner “beings,” uncontrollable urges can overpower the self. One can go temporarily or permanently insane. And in the Christian worldview, the autonomous inner “being” is not always just an imaginary being, but can be a personal being, which then makes possession a rare, but not impossible, occurrence.
In fact, according to one Jungian therapist, Nietzsche himself went insane permanently when an autonomous inner “being” (archetype) overpowered him. So, unfortunately with the widespread acceptance of Jungian spirituality, mainstream Christianity seems to be moving to post-modern Nietzschean insanity and possibly, in some cases, possession.
Jung’s autobiography is full of insane or occult experiences. He was continually hearing ‘voices.’ In his autobiography he said his home was “… crammed full of spirits … they were packed deep right up to the front door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe.”
During the Hitler regime, which itself was obsessed with the occult, Jung edited a Nazi psychotherapeutic journal where he said, “The ‘Aryan’ unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish.” Keep that word “potential” in your mind. It will be used by American psychology.
Once opinion is master, then might makes right. In “Beyond Good and Evil,” Nietzsche proclaimed a new morality, “Master morality,” which was different from Christian morality – or “slave morality,” as he called it. He thought the weak have the morality of obedience and conformity to the master. Masters have a right to do whatever they want; since there is no God, everything is permissible.
In what Nietzsche considered his masterpiece, “Zarathustra,” he said the new masters would replace the dead God. The masters were to be called Supermen, or the superior men.
After Freud and Jung came Alfred Adler, also a follower of Nietzsche, with “Individual psychology,” which maintains that the individual strives for what he called “superiority” but now is called “self-realization” or “self-actualization,” and which came from Nietzsche’s ideas of striving and self-creation.
The “human potential movement” and humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are imbedded with these types of ideas. The psychologists of “potential” teach the superior man.
Edvard Munch said:
“Alfred Adler translated Nietzsche’s philosophical idea of ‘will to power’ into the psychological concept of self-actualization.”
“Thus, Nietzschean thought forms the foundation for and permeates Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology, Abraham Maslow’s Humanistic Biology, Carl Rogers’s Person-Centered Psychology, and has influenced many other psychological ideas and systems. … Alfred Adler was the first psychologist to borrow directly from Nietzsche, making numerous references to the philosopher throughout his works. Adler took Nietzsche’s idea of “will to power” and transformed it into the psychological concept of self-actualization, in which an individual strives to realize his potential.”
Mary Kearns, in an address to the Catholic Head Teachers Association of Scotland, spoke of the Nietzschean ideas now being taught in Catholic schools in the name of “scientific” psychology. Kearns said:
“The methods are based on ‘the group therapy technique’ first developed in America in the 1970’s by two psychologists, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. They described how emotional conditioning should be carried out by a group ‘facilitator.’ The facilitator does not impart knowledge like the old fashioned teacher. Instead he/she initiates discussions encouraging children to reveal their personal views and feelings. The facilitator’s approach is ‘value free.’ There is no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question. Each person discloses what is right or wrong for them. All choices are equally valid even if they are opposites. Everything depends on feelings or emotions. Reason and conscience are discouraged. If anyone attempts objective evaluation, they are to be treated as an ‘outsider’ and there will be a strong emotional reaction against such judgemental intolerance'”.
If it is true that Catholic education now uses these techniques in “teaching religious and moral education,” then the Catholic education system has entered into the Nietzschean insanity. If these are the techniques being used in education and in the seminaries, then sexual misconduct charges against priests are a symptom of “scientific” paganism replacing Christianity.
Santa Rosa priest Don Kimball, who is charged with sexual misconduct, is an example of someone whose “approach” was “value free” – that is, there was “no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question.”
In 1996, Karyn Wolfe and Mark Spaulding of Pacific Church News said, “THE WEDGE! You can’t do youth ministry (any ministry for that matter) without it. … Basing his theory on psychologist Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, the Rev. Don Kimball developed this model for the growth and maturity process of a group.”
Another example of the value-free approach is Thomas Zanzig, a major leader in the Catholic Church for youth ministry, plus an editor and writer of Catholic textbooks.
According to Marks S. Winward, Zanzig, in a book on youth ministry, “bases his ‘Wedge Model’ on a similar model developed by Fr. Don Kimble.” Homeschool leader Marianna Bartold said, “Sharing the Christian Message by Thomas Zanzig has students come up with as many slang or street words as possible for penis and vagina in three or four minutes.”
Now, many might say these are only isolated cases of misuses of Maslow and Adler until one reads the original text. According to William Coulson, a former collaborator of Carl Rogers, Maslow was always a revolutionary. … In 1965, working a radical idea about children and adult sex into his book about management, “In Eupsychian Management: A Journal,” [Maslow said]: “I remember talking with Alfred Adler about this in a kind of joking way, but then we both got quite serious about it, and Adler thought that this sexual therapy at various ages was certainly a very fine thing. As we both played with the thought, we envisioned a kind of social worker … as a psychotherapist in giving therapy literally on the couch.”
As one can see, the basic therapeutic assumption leads to certain results in the real world. These thinkers don’t believe in the basic Christian assumption that there is a need for forgiveness from God. Instead, they believe there is no sin, only selves needing to reach the fullness of themselves.
It is understandable that Nietzschean atheists such as Maslow, Adler and gay activists could hold these basic assumptions that sexually abusing children is okay, just as Hitler thought killing Jews was okay since he had the basic assumption that there is no right or wrong only relativism and will to power disguised in Nazi pagan religious and “National Socialist” language.
It would not be understandable and would be a disgrace if Francis holds these Nietzschean assumptions. Relativism with its implicit denial of original sin and personal sin is, in large part, behind the sex-abuse headlines of Chile, Pennsylvania and those around the globe.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church.
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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