The Christian Vanguard

Years ago, when I was still a Protestant, I attended a panel discussion at my school on the topic of homosexuality. One woman, a mother of a lesbian, and a professed Catholic, said that a topic that the Catholic Church does not like to bring up concerning homosexuality is that of conscience. Since the Church teaches that we should obey our conscience, and for some, and participating in the homosexual lifestyle is in accord to ones conscience, one should continue being homosexual. This clearly would make some Catholics uncomfortable. So, what's going on here? First, terms. Conscience is our judgment of what is right and wrong, and it is our only contact with the moral realm. This is why we must always obey our conscience, because to disobey our conscience is to disobey what we judge to be right. It is saying that we will to do evil, and we should never will to do evil. If conscience is a judgment of what is right and wrong, it is possible that our judgments can be incorrect. It ...

We have all been, or know someone who has been, "emotional." What does this mean? That they have some strong emotions, yes, but that alone cannot be a good answer. When a groom cries when he sees his bride walk down the aisle has some strong emotions, but we wouldn't say he is "being emotional." When a parents loses their child, she may cry but we wouldn't say that she should stop "being emotional." Contrast this with the interchangeable phrase "be rational." Likewise, we do not say that one ought not have emotions and be nothing but rational. This is an even worse mistake. So what do we mean?  Observe what happens when someone is "being emotional." Say Eve breaks up with Adam. Adam doesn't like this, so what Adam does is lash out. He lashes out in anger because it feels right to him. But is lashing out the correct thing to do? Ask Adam, and he will do one of two things: he will say admit that it is not the right thing,...

Here is an argument for Molinism and Divine Simplicity being incompatible.  Divine Simplicity posits that in God there are no parts and no proper distinctions. Further, God has no potency and is Pure Act. Molinism posits that in God's knowledge, there are distinctions, most importantly the distinction of Middle Knowledge. Molinists further posit that God can actualize a world from an ensemble of possible worlds, thus changing his knowledge to and from Middle Knowledge. But change in God is impossible on Divine Simplicity, so the two are incompatible.  This doesn't say which of the two is true, only that they cannot both be true. But I think it is clear when you weigh the importance of the doctrines and how it relates to God, that we should abandon Molinism and keep Divine Simplicity. 

If A and B share the same essences, like "Being" and "Goodness" share the same essence, does that mean that the terms we use for A and B respectively are synonymous? This question was brought up to me in the context of a discussion had on the Trinity and Divine Simplicity. If all three persons of the Trinity share in the same essence, then the terms would be synonymous, which is absurd. Obviously The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit do not refer to the same person and are not interchangeable.  But it doesn't follow that if something shares in the same essence that the terms must be synonymous, and this is illustrated when we think about the convertibility thesis, which is what my last few posts have been touching on. Though being and goodness are convertible and the same, they are not synonymous terms. They refer to the same thing, but differ in thought. “Good” expresses the idea of desirability, which the term “being” does not express. “Good” adds the ...

Probably the most well known objection to St. Anselm's Ontological argument, usually attributed to Kant, says that existence is not a predicate. When we inquire into the nature of things, we say that it is this shape and that color, and these statements have some meaningful content to them because we are able to predicate something to them. They tell us something about the object. However, saying that X exists tells us nothing about the nature of the object. So being is not a predicate.  This is not the view of the scholastics, and definitely not the view of St. Thomas Aquinas, who does say being (or existence) is a predicate. So how then do we deal with the above objection? Let's look at the mode of inquiry. When we ask what something is, we answer by giving a more common term to which we add a specific difference. So when we ask what a cat is, we say it is a mammal that has this or that distinguishing feature. We may ask what this more common thing is as well, and we ...

In the last few weeks, my social media accounts have been abuzz with the topic of abortion. One common defense of it has been something like, "Since unwanted children will not be aborted, they will most likely end up in the foster care system, where they will probably be abused and raped. So abortion is a better option." After I asked whether they would apply this logic to a two year old, they said they would. In the eyes of my interlocutors, death was a better option. This isn't an uncommon view. I would think most, if not all, persons who committed suicide thought the exact same thing and this motivated their suicide. So, is death better an abused life? In light of the convertibility thesis, it is not.  The convertibility thesis states that "being" and "good" are basically the same thing, just considered differently. Where there is being, there is goodness coextensive with it. If being alive is participating in being, and death is not participat...

We read in Matthew 13:55-56 Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things? Protestants will point to this verse and say that this proves that the Perpetual Virginity of Mary is false. Is that so? It is true that the most natural reading of the Greek word for "brothers" and "sisters" is read to mean blood brothers. As many good Catholics have already pointed out, while the word does encompass the blood brother understanding, it is by no means limited to it. And plenty of early church witnesses testify that they are his cousins. The early church is by no means unanimous, some think they are his blood brothers, others think they are cousins, while some others think they are St. Joseph's children from a previous marriage before he married Mary. But my point is that the early church does provide precedent for the be...