Levavi oculos meos in montes

“The main purpose of Tolkien’s stories of imaginary beings in an imaginary world was to provide a better understanding of our world and the real beings who inhabit it.” In other words, by using an imaginary world – the fantastic – as a way to make familiar things strange, Tolkien is able to comment upon the state of the ‘real’ world. C. S. Lewis wrote that by embarking on the journey to Middle Earth, “we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.” Tolkien himself described his hobbit story as “a study of simple ordinary man, neither artistic nor noble and heroic” and indicated that his novels did have “applicability” to modern life.  --  sections in quotes from Devin Brown, The Christian World of the Hobbit,  in Hobbit Hermeneutics  Today's society recognizes, sometimes sophistically, the ways that narrative can influence interpretation of meaning.    Part of Tolkien's impact on literature seems due to what is described above.    It is pretty ...

 This notion of the hermeneutical circle is recent, but its roots go back to antiquity and ancient rhetoric. This is especially true of the “circle” or interplay of the whole and its parts, which was at first a requirement for the composition and writing of texts and later became one for understanding them properly. Plato already states in his Phaedrus (264 c) that every speech is constituted like a living being, with a head, feet, a center and members woven together so that they form an organic unity, an idea that Aristotle would take up in his Poetics (23, 1459 a 20). Plato expresses here a requirement that was to become an important component of ancient rhetoric: the parts of a text or speech must be conceived with a view to its whole that has to form an organic body (compare, e. g., Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, 7.10). It naturally became a hermeneutic requirement for the understanding of these texts: the parts of a text should be understood out of the whole (which can be ...

 I have often reflected on the point expressed here in an article by Shaun Blanchard called Traditionis Custodes was never merely about the liturgy:  Much more than a decree regulating liturgy, Traditionis Custodes is a decisive moment in the history of papal reception of Vatican II. No single English word encapsulates the concept I am trying to convey, but thankfully the Germans have a word for everything. I believe Pope Francis’ motu proprio is the latest in a long series of papal assertions of Deutungshoheit over the legacy of Vatican II. Literally “interpretation-sovereignty,” to have Deutungshoheit means to have sovereignty over a narrative, which is the power to control meaning.  ... Whatever discontinuities are present in the Francis pontificate, I think we should actually see a document like Traditionis Custodes primarily in continuity with an established preoccupation of the postconciliar popes: controlling the narrative about Vatican II. In fact, controlling o...

 Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.  Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. GK Chesterton , Ethics of Elfland  This is another way of saying what I was trying to say yesterday ; still another is the way Dietrich von Hildebrand says it.     I left it on an unresolved note, though.   Trying again..  People inherently stand on tradition; it's as unavoidable as time itself.    Continuity is as built into the state of material things as change is.   The Greeks pondered this extensively ...

 We can deepen our understanding of what the full implications of a doctrine are. But that deepening of understanding is completely dependent on an antecedent stability of meaning —....I hasten to add that this need for a clear meaning to words and their stability over time does not mean that doctrinal formulations cannot at times employ the rather technical language of theological discourse in the interests of greater precision. But it does mean that even such highly technical language (e.g., “consubstantial with the Father”) denotes something clear and precise, which is the original reason for using more technical forms of discourse in the first place. This is from a recent Larry Chapp article  "How to Tell Doctrinal Development from Cultural Corruption" .    This "antecedent stability of meaning" seems useful when you are talking about development of any form of language.    Of course, meanings of words themselves can change and even reverse over time....

 In Chapter 3, DVH brings up Hegelian dialectic theory of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.   He stays out of the question of whether this theory is sound from a historical point of view, though he sounds a bit skeptical.  His concern is whether this can be a way of arriving at truth.   He notes that it's thoroughly possible for thesis and antithesis (as intellectual positions) to both be wrong.  In that case, the middle way of synthesis as a compromise between the two could also be wrong.  (For the moment, we note but are not primarily concerned with the possibility that the thesis is outright wrong and the antithesis is correct.  For example, "there is no objective truth" is countered by "there is objective truth".  The synthesis between the two positions would also be wrong)  An example he uses to make the point about all three phases being wrong is that of individualism vs collectivism.   If individual liberty is overs...

Dietrich von Hildebrand calls " Ecclesiam Suam " by Pope Paul VI "luminous" and  Dogmatic Constitution on the Church  "magnificent".   He certainly wasn't targeting the Vatican Council itself in his book, but rather some of the subsequent excrudescences that took its name.  The Church is always in need of renewal, he says.   Renewal in this context means reform, restoration, elimination of worldly accretions.   Hiistorical examples he gives: The Benedictine and Franciscan reforms (Cluny and St Bernadine) The Council of Trent and other decisive councils reform of St Gregory VII Other examples could probably be added. He quotes Vatican II -- Lumen Gentium: The Council "desires now to unfold more fully to the faithful of the Church, and to the whole world its own inner nature and universal mission.  This it intends to do following faithfully the teachings of previous Councils."   On the process of renewal in the history of the Chu...

 "It is of the very nature of Catholic Christian faith to adhere to an unchanging divine revelation, to acknowledge that there is something in the Church that is above the ups and downs of cultures and the rhythm of history.... To be conservative, to be a traditionalist is in this case an essential element of the response due to the unique phenomenon of the Church.   Even a man in no way conservative in temperament and in many other respects progressive must be conservative in his relation to the infallible magisterium of the Church, if he is to remain an orthodox Catholic."  Basically, since revelation was brought to fulfillment in the Word, the progressive element in the Church is only in coming to understand and apply it more fully.   There is a process of renewal, of sloughing off worldly accretions, but the City of God and the City of Man are never going to have the same goals or methods.   I think it was in this first sense that ressourcemen...

 Throughout  Trojan Horse in the City of God , Hildebrand will oppose the enemy forces of the Horse against the features of the City of God.   Mythologically, the  Trojan Horse  was pulled into the city by the Trojans themselves and the enemy soldiers hidden inside rushed out at night and overwhelmed the city.   The  City of God  was described by St Augustine in reference to another sacking, that of Rome by the Visigoths.    Augustine contrasted it to the City of Man, the city of temporal concerns and comforts. So the title carries its share of the weight in evoking Hildebrand's concerns as a philosopher and Catholic commentator.   Remember, he had seen and personally resisted the rise and subsequent fall of Nazism and the Third Reich.    He saw the rise of Communism.  Yet he still considered, as early as 1967, that the "present crisis (is) the most serious one in the history of the Church."  ...

In the decade after the Vatican II Council, Catholic philosopher and layman Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote a pair of books not so much on the Council itself, but on the aftereffects within the Catholic Church.   His take was philosophical and specifically, personalist, for it was in phenomenology that he received his academic grounding. The books are called Trojan Horse in the City of God , published in 1967, and The Devastated Vineyard , published in 1973, which was only a few years before his death in 1977. The difference in content and tone between the two books is a kind of timelapse analysis of the chaotic decade that followed the Council.   Dietrich von Hildebrand was a layman; a philosopher, whose second spouse (after he lost his first wife) was a philosopher in her own right, Alice von Hildebrand , who spent most of the half century after she became a widow consolidating his heritage .    He wrote many, many books, mostly for a general Catholic audi...

 Now, here I observe, first of all, that, naturally as the inward idea of divine truth, such as has been described, passes into explicit form by the activity of our reflective powers, still such an actual delineation is not essential to its genuineness and perfection. A peasant may have such a true impression, yet be unable to give any intelligible account of it, as will easily be understood. But what is remarkable at first sight is this, that there is good reason for saying that the impression made upon the mind need not even be recognized by the parties possessing it. It is no proof that persons are not possessed, because they are not conscious, of an idea.... ......Now, it is important to insist on this circumstance, because it suggests the reality and permanence of inward knowledge, as distinct from explicit confession. The absence, or partial absence, or incompleteness of dogmatic statements is no proof of the absence of impressions or implicit judgments, in the mind of the Ch...