SPEAKER_01 0:08

Good morning, boys and girls. Good morning, brothers. Okay. In the name of the Father, of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, from the hearts of your faithful, heal them the Father of your love, send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and thou shalt redo the face of the earth. Let us pray. God struck the hearts of the faithful. By the light of the Holy Spirit, grant us in the same spirit to be truly wise and ever to rejoice in his consolation through Christ our Lord. Amen. Our Lady see the wisdom in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So I'm going to take a little detour off the book. Don't you menfer? What are you doing? Well, the next little section is on grace, and then I was thinking about that. I was like, you know, before we do grace, and I don't mean grace before meals, because you know how to do that, right? Um what I wanted to talk about was sort of uh, I know there's this, there's gonna be a section on natural revelation coming up in the other chapter. But I think just talking a little bit, maybe maybe today and next week, talk about philosophy. Because I think that's an important uh issue. Um because when we talk about, if we're gonna talk about being Catholic, I think we also need to talk about the idea of um the importance of human wisdom and the importance of the correct kind of philosophy, because if we what I'll go through that in our our slideshow, my little notes here today. So I think because philosophy is a very important thing, and I think what's happening, oh we've got a little fly here. I go by the fly. Shoe fly, okay. Anybody in the shoe fly pie? Because maybe it'll make the fly go to pine. Okay. So that because I I because that we have such a real problem in our in our culture and society with the issue of just simply what is real. Okay, so let's let's sort of dive into that right now. So I'm quoting here, this is Pope John Paul II. He wrote an encyclopedical called Fides Ed Ratio and Faith and Reason. Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth. And God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth, in a word, to know himself, so that by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. One of the things that many people have a misconception is that somehow that faith, religion, is against reason. That somehow our Christian faith is sort of an attack on our humanity, an attack on our reason, or it's it's sort of that faith is not something which is unreasonable. We want to be able to make the claim that faith is not something which is sort of against human fulfillment that is somehow against who we are as human beings. Because what we want, we what we want to discover is that our faith is something that is reasonable. You know, there are things that are beyond reason. There are things that are revealed that are beyond reason. We'll later get to that in another class. But the idea is that the created world, right, the the reality in which we live, and having a life of faith are not incompatible. In fact, the argument is going to be that faith will enliven and uplift creation, uplift our nature, to fulfill our nature. But I think we need to we want to start with some understanding of the world, how we relate to it on the basis of human reason, and looking to, especially our ancient philosophers, especially Plato, Aristotle, and of course uh St. Thomas Aquinas, who's like the best theologian known to man. He's like number one on the chart of theologian list, right? No one's been able to surpass it. Okay? But this is a great encyclical. Um I would highly recommend Phoenix and Ratio. That might be a good read. There's also another one called Veritati's Splendor, um, the splendor of truth. Okay. So philosophy is the study of human reason, wisdom. Theology is the study of God as revelation. So, of course, St. Thomas Aquinas will say that this theology is the highest science because of its object, because the object is God. So the study of theology, we're talking about the study of God, presumes that the theologian is investigating and deepening our understanding of the truth of divine revelation. This presupposes that we can know the truth and therefore live our lives in accordance with it. So this is a big claim. That we can know the truth. You know, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. That's in John's Gospel. So the idea is that we can know the truth. And now that, there, because we as we know, that is a real concern that's going on in the minds of most people. Especially when you're you're speaking for, you know, you might be speaking to a younger crowd, and you know, they might have, you know, they think that, well, these people, these people over here, they have their thing, and we have our thing. You ever hear that you do you thing? No. Don't do you, okay? Yeah. Because if you're not following Christ, right, you're not following the truth, and if you're just doing your own thing, you're on an island, right? You're doing you and you you're you have no guide. There's no guide. You're just lost. You're just trying, you're just searching without, you know, we need a reliable guide, right, as human beings. So in John 18, 38, you know, just this is John has this, you know, records this dialogue between Jesus and Pontius Pilate. So Jesus says, You say, I am a king, for this I was born, and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. And then what does Pilate? Pilate says, What is truth? That is a very interesting question that he asks. You know, in the moment, he might be thinking that maybe only in a sort of a cynical kind of sense. Because remember, Pontus Pilate is in the in the service of the Roman Empire. It's a dog eat dog world, of course. You know, he's the governor of Judea. And anyone who's in Roman politics at that time, under, you know, that of course he would have been under Tiberius, I believe, the Emperor Tiberius at that time. So there's a, you know, that that was it was survival of the fittest when it came to holding on to any kind of sliver of power in the Roman Empire. So for somebody like Pontius Pilate, who hears a truth claim, is like, well, what is truth? Because all he knows is power. And holding on to power. And, you know, getting so anything that serves him, and serves his power, that's going to be truth for him. So by saying this, this question is actually very profound, even though he's not saying, probably thinking it's profound, but for you know, that that question for us is very important. It's important for every human person to ask this question, and I think everyone does, at some level, even if it's not a conscious decision, is a question we all ask. What is truth? How do I live my life? How do I find happiness? How do I know what's the right thing to do? What's going to make me happy? And we know that happiness, that word can mean different. What is being happy? So we could keep going down these Socratic questions, and you know, and we could go all day long talking about just what happiness is if we just ask questions. You know, then you'll get bored and you'll want to leave. But anyway, that's another thing. So I took this from uh Dr. Peter Creft, uh, I think at least at Boston College. There's a book called Summa, the Summa. It's like a uh a shorter, uh he takes sort of time Thomas Aquinas and kind of boils things down and kind of makes commentaries really, really I use that as a resource here. And to the beginning, it has a little glossary, it has like a truth is a conformity of the mind to real things. And say the problems we're facing as a size our understanding of truth. So the claim is that we can actually that that our senses, our intellect, right, that our so our being able to see, hear, feel, right, um, our senses, that we can connect with reality, and that our mind conforms to what is actual. And that that's an issue. You know, because in the you know, when Descartes came along, you know, you know the joke about Descartes, right? No. You know, no, this is a good one. So Descartes walks into a bar, and the bartender, you know, the bartender, you know, says, uh, would you like something to drink? And he says, I don't think so, and he disappears. Because you know, he thinks, I think, therefore I am, right? So that the that's called the so for Descartes, the turn of the subject, his whole thing is about, you know, he can't get out, so the philosophy after him, like can't get inside the head of the human person, the struggling with understanding, how do we know things? How do we correspond to what's actually real in the world? And that's where philosophy kind of goes off, kind of goes off in a different direction. Because prior to that, in the scholastic philosophy and the ancient philosophers, right, there's a correlation between our ability to know the world, like this presumed that there's a connection between our ability to think, to know, and to sense, like that all that is connecting to what is actual in the world. Because we couldn't do science otherwise. Because there would only be something out there we couldn't account for, because if somehow there was a disconnect between our senses and our and our reality to what is actual really, there would be some kind of disconnect. So we couldn't actually live in the world. It's kind of interesting how that works. So philosophical relativism is problematic. Abandoning the investigation of being, modern philosophical research is concentrate instead upon human knowing. And we're going to talk about that in a second. Rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy is accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned. That is a skepticism about our ability to know the truth. That skepticism, right, that can lead you to different conclusions. So that's where we get into this problem of well, you have your truth and I have mine. John Paul II continues. This has given rise to different forms of agnosticism, which means which means you believe in a higher power, but you're not so sure that that higher power has revealed himself to us. So there's you may have some, or even atheism, which is a complete rejection of even the existence of any kind of higher power. Agnosticism and relativism, which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sand of widespread skepticism. Recent times have seen the rise to prominence of various doctrines which tend to devalue even the truths which had been judged certain. So, for example, the Ten Commandments. A legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism based on the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence and truth. So, because when you have competing truth claims, eventually they come in conflict with one another. Now, I like to use this example, you know, is um is you know, people will talk about what makes them happy, which makes them fulfilled. So that's just an absurd idea. So if a person moves into your house next door and you're having a conversation with them, you introduce yourself. If you do like one of those old 1950 things, you bring a pie to the door, welcome to the neighborhood, right? And they say, you know what really makes me happy? You know, I really enjoy stealing people's color televisions. It really makes me happy. I love the thrill, it's really great. I have a whole bunch of them in the back. You want one, right? And you're like, I just moved into this person. How can you live next to this person? You know, because they are, they're they're saying that their truth is I enjoy stealing, you know, LCD, stealing, you know, their televisions, and I really enjoy doing that, and you're like, ah, I just moved into this person, I just, you know, got my subscription to Netflix or something, and like, oh, I'm gonna lose that. So you're gonna be like, alright, well, you know, I'm gonna build a higher fence on my property, right? So we have these conflict, you have conflicting, we have these conflicting truth claims, you end up with these, you know, we have people in conflict with one another. I think we're seeing we're seeing evidence of that right now, I think. So a legitimate plurality of positions has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism based upon the assumption all positions are equally valid, which is one of the widespread symptoms of lack of confidence in truth. So if you say, well, I can't know the truth, then the thing is, well, there's the you-do you thing. Uh and that can have that can have a lot of consequences. How do I live a moral life? This can lead to, you know, when you think about this, because this is the kind of things that of course are are flooding universities right now. A lot of this is flooding of universities. Um the for for young people, what this can lead to like forms of hedonism. Right? So that you, you know, the drinking and the whole thing, like, why is it that you go to a you know you go to a college dormitory on a on a and you and it's like and I remember this was, I mean, in the 19 in the late 1980s when I went to college, I was my first experience was being in a dorm of a thousand people co-ed by room, and it was like we had a week-long orientation. That was a mistake. Because it was like, it was, you're in a cesspool of sin. Like, what am I doing here? You know, that's a whole that's a whole journey of faith I don't know what I'm talking about, right? You know, part of the bad old days, that kind of thing, okay? So but that's but that's that's that that's I mean, if you think that was that's still probably the case today. It's not hasn't changed, I think. That we we this that skepticism, we say, what do I do? Well, you know, I'll just do whatever I want. Because there's nobody can tell me what, you know, because then nobody can make a truth claim. When you can't tell me what to do, that's your truth. You see, that's that's what happens. It's an undermining of authority, legitimate authority. Because we don't have authority in its in its best form is a guide, right? Authority is a guide. And you know, that's the one thing that about American culture, it's good and bad at the same time, is that since we threw off King George III as our sovereign, um King George III, you know, it was the third. Um, so King George III he was the sovereign, right? We kicked him off. You know, and so we have this culture of rebellion, right? Which in some ways is good, sometimes is bad. So there's some things about that which I um, you know, because I I think in some ways, one reason why American Catholicism is so much more vibrant than I think in Europe is because there's that sense of we're, you know, we're American. We we're more, you know, we we don't have to, we don't succumb to all the changes that happen in the world, right? We're like, because we're we have our own thing on. So so here's Cardinal Ratzinger before he was elected Pope, that he addressed the College of Cardinals. This is probably what caused, maybe caused his election. How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades? How many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking? The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves, flung from one extreme to another. From Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism, that means like hedonism. From collectivism to radical individualism, from atheism to a vague religious mysticism, from agnosticism to sync syncretism, which is religions that are mixing together. Like you're Catholic, but then you're reading a horoscope. It's like, what are you doing, right? Every day new sects spring up, and what St. Paul says about human deception and the tricky that strives to entice people from error comes true. Today, having a clear faith based on the creed of the church is often labeled as fundamentalism. You know, so if you you, when you talk about fundamentalism, it's kind of like a is almost like a negative word, right? It's like, you know, you're you're a crazy person, you're a radical, right? Whereas relativism, that is letting oneself be tossed here and there, carried about by everyone's doctrine, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We're building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires. So that's where, with relativism, every person becomes their own arbiter of truth. And that's where this dictate, and then we get the dictatorship of relativism, where someone says, Well, again, you can't tell me what to do. Why? Because, well, you have your truth and I have mine. So I can go ahead and make my own truth claims, and it doesn't matter whom I'm affecting, but I'm gonna make my own truth claim. And sometimes what that results in is I'm gonna impose my truth claim as long as I have power, I can impose that on as many people as I want. And in order to combat those who would tell me that I'm wrong, so you can't tell me what to do, because you have your truth and I have mine. I just have more power than you. You see, that's the danger of relativism, is that you can be that power becomes the issue. Then it's all about if I have enough power, I can impose what I believe on as many people as I want. But I'm insulated from criticism because you can't tell me what to do. Does that make sense? Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Okay. So I love this phrase, dictatorship of relativism. Because what happens is that we then are imposing, even though we're saying we're not imposing our view on other people, we we are. We're doing that. You know, it's one of the things, it's it's and it's a tautology, it's a circular, circular reasoning, to say that, okay, relativism is true. How can you say that there is no truth is actually truth? On its face, that you can't, it makes no sense. But this is what people have automatically bought into. A lot of young people buy into it, and the reason why they buy into it is because we don't want to offend. Like we have this thing about, there's this thing about tolerance, and there's a sub-there's a sense of tolerance which makes sense. We respect the dignity of every person. But there is a sense where we're we don't want to, now we we we're afraid of offending people. Right? We're afraid of offending when we're making by making truth claims. So for example, now when I was at All Saints Church, um at we had a youth group meeting, and we brought in one of the sisters from John Paul the Great High School, and she gave a presentation on relativism, and the room just blew up. It was kind of fun. These kids were trying to. She was just like calm. But she was throwing these things, she was very calm, cool, collected. She was not, you know, she wasn't at a she wasn't arguing, she wasn't like yelling or anything. She was just making it because you know, people would say, Well, my Hindu friend, are they gonna go to heaven? And she's like, Well, you know, she needs to believe in the gospel, and this is the truth, and they're not living in accordance with the truth, right? And they're like, Oh, it's a whole thing. Because what we're afraid to offend people is that, hey, you're not on the right path. You're afraid of not offending people. Well, if you're not, what happens is the more you're afraid of offending people, the more that you're just conceding the truth to or conceding what is right to others who are willing to oppose it based on their power. Okay. So, symptoms of relativistic philosophy. Sexual revolution, for example, late 60s, early so good. Abortion on demand. Is the embryo a bunch of cells or a human person? It can't be both. What is it? Tell me what that is, right? Same-sex unions, right? So-called same-sex marriage, right? Um, transgender audiology. These are symptoms of this thing. What is the civil society? What does that mean? Okay, can we have does does law matter? And we have lawyers in the room, right? If you live in northern Virginia, you spit in any direction, you'll hit an attorney, right? So, I used to live in McLean, Virginia, so I know what that's like. Okay. I have a lot of lawyer friends who say that. They're very nice people, trust me, okay? So does law matter, right? What kind of like how do we but how can you have a civil society if nobody agrees on the say on how to live together? How can you have a civil society like this? We're having this, you know, um we have this immigration debate. Now, whether it's, you know, there's a lot of things you can argue about. Um, but one thing that is an issue is there are laws on the books. And we have to, there's laws that need to be enforced. Well, all right, how do we have that conversation? What laws, because if there's law, then does this law need to be enforced? And where are those laws based on? Are they based on the truth? Like there's a whole conversation there. But what are we agreeing about what law is? That's the thing's a question, right? Are there universal principles that all should live by that produce human flourishing and fulfillment? And this is kind of my own definition. So you I have woke is search for a just society based on philosophical relativism. Because what people want is justice, right? Justice is to give what is due. So, but if you don't have a concept of truth that undergirds that, then you go, you're, you can get, you can go in any direction. And people get, for example, you know, the people who are the transgender activists, right? They go say, well, these people need to be respected, they need to be loved, and they need to be supported, and other than that. There's a lot of truth to we want to respect every person to be supported. But do we need to agree that what they're doing to themselves is the right thing for their human flourishing? That's a big question. What is that a thing? Is transgenderism real? Because we're arguing in that by according to science, it's not. You're either a man or a woman. And what you're doing is not good for you. So we're making these claims about the human person, about creation, all those things. Right? So those are those, that's where this relativistic philosophy, how it gets into society and how it gets into relationships, it gets into our views of the human person, and how this can become distorted. Right? I can get to a whole thing about why that's that's also there's more to it than that. So here's that, so I'm setting up the problem. So I'm gonna start today and then next week we'll get into a little more, but I want to get into some basic philosophical principles. Where have we talked about Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote the Summa Theologiae, Summa Constituentiles, right? He's the most brilliant theologian in the church's history, Barnon. Okay. So he's like the Wayne Gretzky of philosophers, okay? He's the Bay Ruth, you know, of philosoph of theology. So there's there's two things we're we metaphysics is the philosophy of reality. Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge. How do we know things? Those are two very important doctr uh you know uh wings of philosophy that are that are important for our discussion. And here is the good big thing: the principle of non-contradiction. Something cannot be and not be at the same time. So I have here an embryo cannot be a clump of cells and a human being at the same time. Either it's a human being or it's not. You can't see because what we're just saying is that the argument would be, well, you know, it's a human being if if some if the mother says it is. Okay? How can that be? Either it had, either it is a human being or it's not a human being. You know, it's not going to become a rabbit if you decide it's not gonna be a human being, right? Okay, say, you know, it's one thing, it has to be, it's it cannot be two things at the same time, right? It's the same thing. A woman cannot, man cannot be a woman at the same time. This is the symptoms of the of this the this problem of not understanding this principle of non-contradiction. You can't be one thing and another thing at the same time. Right? You can't play for the Washington Capitals and the Pittsburgh Penguins, okay? You cannot do that. Does not work. Doesn't you know doesn't cohere, right? You can't wear both jerseys, okay?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

So all things exist, have form and matter. We're talking about the nature of things. Everything has a nature, right? So the form, so a form is essential, nature of a thing that's which is specifies to be this rather than that. So, for example, a chair. A chair is not a table. You know, there's this thing, a form of a chair. We all can think of a form of a, you know, we think in our head, what's a chair? We know exactly what a chair look, the form that is. It's kind of, we kind of, we know that there's four legs, there's a there's a horizontal thing and a vertical thing. And that's in our mind. That's a chair. And there's different kinds of chairs, right? There's a sofa chair, you know, there's a chair that gives you the massage thing, right? And there's different, you know, there's there, there's a, you know, are they there's different kinds of chairs, right? But there's a form of a chair or a table, right? I was, you ever I love that kind of um uh makeup scene that that uh uh Mel Gibson put in The Passion of Christ, where Jesus is the carpenter and makes a table and Mary's looking this over. She's like, this will never catch on that's a little funny. That's kind of funny. And I don't think that actually happened. I don't know. That's a nice joke, but I don't know. That's not in the scripture, so that's not, we don't have to believe in that, okay? But that's kind of funny. You do have to admit the joke.

unknown 27:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Matter, the principle and the things being by which it is able to be determined by form, potency versus actuality. So we know that there's a potential for the form of a chair, and then the the wood, right, that is put into that structure makes a chair. So we need to have that physical reality that the form, now it's it's it's form, right? We know when a human being has a form in a nature, right? Table, you know, an automobile, you know, four wheels, right, an engine, you know, a roof, retractable or not, right? You know, depending on kind of you know, fast or slow, but you know. But we know what a car looks like we go from Model T to Maserati, you know, that could those both cohere to the form of automobile, even though they have different capacities but in different structures, but sim but similar look. There's four wheels, an engine, a steering column, you know, a seat for the driver, that kind of thing.

unknown 28:45

Let's see.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

So what we what we're claiming is called a realistic epistemology. Epistemology, again, is the study of knowing. The five senses enable the intellect to perceive and understand reality through the use of reason, our ability to make logic, to understand premises and conclusions, right? To use the data that comes to us and be able to make conclusions based on the data. Humans can understand reality in order to make conclusions enable human flourishing. So, for example, you know, we we can reason to what is good to eat, for example, right? What's good to eat? You know, uh we we know that, okay, you know, vegetables, carrots, you know, grilled chicken, that's good to eat, that will help you be healthy. Right? Having a burger and fries, that will not be healthy. Might be satisfying, it might be tasty, but five guys will not make you healthy. Especially if you go to five guys five days a week. That's not good. So I don't endorse five guys by five, right? That's not a thing. Right? Or you'll you'll be in the you'll be in the Fairfax Hospital cardiac unit, okay? So it's important. If humans can understand reality to the use of the senses and the use of reason, therefore humans can understand truth, have the ability to pursue what is fulfilling for human nature. Because that's that we're that's these two things, right? There's something called reality, and that we can know it, we can understand it, and we can reason ourselves to what is truly good based on what we can use, you know, by taking in information and eventually being able to process. Because you know, it's taken centuries to figure out what's actually healthy for us. When you think about that. Because you know how every year the FDA says that something else is not good for you? You're like, well, what's not good for me? Okay, well, you know, because they just say, well, they say, well, we eat this and this is good for you. And then the next thing they say this, no, it's not good for you. Stop eating that. It's like, well, you told me last week not to eat it. Now you tell me not to eat it. It's like, what's going on here, right? So we have this, we have this, but we have now kind of a hope on that, I hope, right? So the study of theology, the study of God Himself, is the pursuit of the understanding of spiritual reality which undergirds the physical reality. This enables us to understand ourselves in relationship to the Lord more profoundly, inspire us to deepen our faith through reflection of the revealed word of God. Because what we're saying is there is one truth. That the world we have is created by God, and that if He's created this world, it's we are through the use of the intellectual powers of our powers of our soul, we can comprehend the world, because we are part of this creation, and that spiritual reality, of course, is also one truth, and that if we can understand this world, we can also have a spiritual world. So we can say there are definitive ways of living that give us natural and through divine revelation, supernatural fulfillment. If you live in accordance with that church. Now, saying fulfillment also doesn't mean that, you know, it means doesn't mean everything's gonna be happy and glowy. We're not the Joel Osteen people, right? If you just follow the church's teaching, you're gonna be happy and glowy all the time, make lots of money and all that. No. It means that whatever, whatever God, you know, whatever suffering might come our way, that we understand it, we can comprehend it, and we understand it in the light of revelation and the reality in which we live. Alright, so that's the end of the end of that part for now. But I know that I know made your brains hurt, but that's good. Okay? Made your brains hurt. So um, you know, it if anybody has any thinking leaking out of their ear, let me know. Okay. Um, I think we have uh did we get we bring the earplugs this week? Okay, no. Um questions on that? No, uh, yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 32:48

Christ is both God and man. Uh-huh. A unique situation. Yeah, we'll yeah. And in physics, light is both a particle and a wave, depending on how you view the experiment. Right.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Those are conjugated. Yeah, well, those are that's not, I would say that's a good analogy in a sense. Okay because we'll get into the incarnation later, but the because Jesus is it's not because what you're talking about is there's a heresy called modalism, or in the sense where, you know, is is or docetism where is he just seen appear human? Right? He doesn't just appear human, he actually is human. So we're gonna say that his divinity is united to his to a uh a body and soul. Okay, so there's a divine person, the second person of the Holy Trinity, right? That's this one person that has that that is united to a body and soul. Right? So there's one person, but there to that, there's a whole bunch of concepts, but we're seeing that Jesus is 100% human, 100% divine. So it's not like, oh, uh he's uh he's a the he just shows his humanity, or just appears to be human. Right? So there's a little it's a little I gotta be sorry. Yeah, it's this is a different it's a different thing. So we'll and we'll be covering that more later, okay?

SPEAKER_05 34:07

He's asking about the law of non-contradiction. Yeah. The law of non-contradiction is you cannot be and not be at the same time. So you can't be God and not God. Or man and not man. Right. So it's not just not that you can't be two things. Like I'm a mother and a daughter.

SPEAKER_08 34:25

Oh, you can have two natures, but you Yeah, I'm a mother and a daughter.

SPEAKER_05 34:28

I'm not a mother and a non-mother. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah, so the thing is with um with our Lord is um the um the the the nature of divinity is is above our human is a is a is a different nature than reality than than humanity. Is it different? Oh, I will get into that, okay? All right. All right, yeah, okay. Is this the is this the uh Associated Press? Okay, the summary of Thomas Aquinas, St.

unknown 34:54

Thomas Aquinas.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

What's that?

SPEAKER_07 34:56

You had mentioned the summary of St. Thomas Aquinas.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

You mean a Summa? Yeah, that's a Summa theologian. Peter Creet, yeah. Peter Creet is Summa of the Summa, is the book.

SPEAKER_06 35:07

What's the author?

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yeah, Peter Creet, K-R-E-E-F-T. He's written a number of different works. He's a he's yeah, Summa of the Summa. So just look up Peter Creet and you'll see it. Yeah. Right. So freedom um is rooted in uh see you, thanks for coming. Okay. Uh freedom is remember, freedom is true freedom is freedom to do what's good. Okay, so there's a difference between license and freedom. License is do whatever you want. Right? The free true freedom is freedom to choose the good. So if you're prevented from choosing the good, then you have a society which isn't just. You see what I'm saying? So, yeah, from a political, from a political science point of view, I have a political science degree, watch out. Okay. You have to get a support group and a sponsor. Um political society, but then but a good, you know, if we're talking about a society that flourishes, it's going to be having the ability to choose a good. That's why we have law, right? Because law, which should be rooted in the eternal, divine, and eternal law of God, right? If there's no law, right, then you're not guided to pursue what is good. So that's why you need to have law in a free in a so a free society is one in which a true free society is when everyone is guided towards choosing the good, if that makes sense. Yeah, we we could talk about the good as a transcendental another time, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

Well, uh, just to add to that in terms of the basis for freedom. That was God and he's right, so we should have to have a responsibility to go back to college to figure out what we are.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Yeah, so that's a whole, there's a whole, and we're gonna have a whole chapter later on. I mean, there's a whole chapter on the civil society actually in the book. So if you want to read ahead, feel free. You're a free people, you can do that, right? I'm not telling you not to. You can read as much as the book as you like, okay? No restriction on my part, okay? We have a lot of questions on the book.

SPEAKER_04 37:58

This isn't really a question, but I just thought of this as all these smart people in here. Um, my uh my children are part of a homeschool public speaking club, and they have competitions where they they learn, like even as middle schoolers and high schoolers, about some of these things, um, and to discuss them and make coherent arguments and things. And they're having a speech competition in November, and we need community judges. So if anyone would be interested in doing that in November 19th, this is a paid advertisement. If you'd be interested in that, so you can contact the Go Hello and the information and I can send you an advice if you'd be interested in doing that. Yeah, there we go.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Okay, we got a right commercial for the day. Um, yeah, go ahead, one last. I mean, this is probably the last one, right?

SPEAKER_07 38:42

So one of the dangers of relativism is if you look at slavery, why do we have slaves? Because they weren't human. My truth was we're not mine, but people's truth at the time was black people were not human, therefore they're animals, so we had slaves. Am I not right?

unknown 39:00

That's my truth.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Yeah, it's it's definitely, yeah, I guess there's something that plays into that. I'd I'd have to I'd have to think about the historical reality because that's a whole different um time period we're talking about. Now you're talking about the 19th century, and we could talk, I mean, you could go, but if we have any ancient history experts, you could talk about slavery in the Roman Empire, things like that. Because there's there are two different so yes, but slavery is is is a form of subjugation, is a form of seeing someone as lower than yourself. So, yeah, that's yeah, that's a that there's there's gotta be something at play there, but I I don't I right now I'm not I don't want to wander into historical claims that I'm not sure I have the I have the information on because priests are not omniscient, so if you didn't know that, okay. So okay. Alright, so what I'll do, let's wrap up in prayer. Anybody wants to come up and say hello, ask questions, you know. I do have to help up Father Luke out with uh communion at some point. He could his mask, he doesn't preach long, so I can make sure it's on. Sometimes it's like, he's already done over get over there, okay? We have a little squawk box in the rectory, that's how we know to come over. You didn't know that, yeah. Like I had the wicked here, the father of hair radio show or the father positive radio show. So in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, of our angels intercede for us, amen. Name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. Have a happy Sunday. Cafe is still open, I think, right? Lots of goodies away. That is not a payout.