“Liberalism deprives us of the joy that can only come from the obedience of faith”
As you can see I have changed the name of my blog. I changed it due to the article below (and to a lack of being clever enough to come up with something on my own). I believe it describes clearly what drives me most. The quest for truth. And that is primarily what this blog of mine goes through.
Click link above for the full article by George Weigel over at Pontifications
Newman was no romantic about the Catholic Church; he knew all about its weaknesses and flaws, and he suffered repeatedly at the hands of Catholic incompetents and heresy hunters. But he read his own life, and his journey into Catholicism, in the terms he asked to have inscribed on his tombstone: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (From shadows and appearances into truth).
Catholicism, he insisted, is not a matter of opinion but truth. “Liberal” Catholicism, like every other form of “liberal” Christianity, was its own worst enemy, in Newman’s view. “Liberal” religion had no internal brake, no way of saying, “Here is where opinion stops and truth begins.” It had no mechanism to keep itself from unraveling, from changing itself to the point where there was no self left. “Liberal” religion couldn’t tell the difference between appearances and reality, shadows and the truth of things.
That’s as true today as it was in Newman’s day. And it’s just as hard a saying today as it was then—perhaps harder.
We live in a culture saturated by what Newman called “liberalism”—a culture in which about all that can be conceded is that there may be your truth and my truth, what’s good for you and what’s good for me. To assert that there might be something properly described as the truth is not only considered odd, it’s usually considered intolerant. In a culture that values “tolerance” (or what it imagines to be tolerance) above all else, to be called “intolerant” is about as bad as it gets. Newman’s life and work suggest it’s a risk worth taking—if you understand that genuine tolerance means engaging differences with respect and civility, not in avoiding differences as if they made no difference; if you’re interested in traveling ex umbris et imaginibus—from shadows and appearances—into the light. Newman’s life and work remind us that the quest for truth is one of the greatest of human quests—if we understand that the purpose of the journey is not the journey itself but getting to the destination, which is the light….
Click link above for the full article by George Weigel over at Pontifications
Newman was no romantic about the Catholic Church; he knew all about its weaknesses and flaws, and he suffered repeatedly at the hands of Catholic incompetents and heresy hunters. But he read his own life, and his journey into Catholicism, in the terms he asked to have inscribed on his tombstone: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (From shadows and appearances into truth).
Catholicism, he insisted, is not a matter of opinion but truth. “Liberal” Catholicism, like every other form of “liberal” Christianity, was its own worst enemy, in Newman’s view. “Liberal” religion had no internal brake, no way of saying, “Here is where opinion stops and truth begins.” It had no mechanism to keep itself from unraveling, from changing itself to the point where there was no self left. “Liberal” religion couldn’t tell the difference between appearances and reality, shadows and the truth of things.
That’s as true today as it was in Newman’s day. And it’s just as hard a saying today as it was then—perhaps harder.
We live in a culture saturated by what Newman called “liberalism”—a culture in which about all that can be conceded is that there may be your truth and my truth, what’s good for you and what’s good for me. To assert that there might be something properly described as the truth is not only considered odd, it’s usually considered intolerant. In a culture that values “tolerance” (or what it imagines to be tolerance) above all else, to be called “intolerant” is about as bad as it gets. Newman’s life and work suggest it’s a risk worth taking—if you understand that genuine tolerance means engaging differences with respect and civility, not in avoiding differences as if they made no difference; if you’re interested in traveling ex umbris et imaginibus—from shadows and appearances—into the light. Newman’s life and work remind us that the quest for truth is one of the greatest of human quests—if we understand that the purpose of the journey is not the journey itself but getting to the destination, which is the light….
posted by Sean at 3/16/2006 01:07:00 PM
1 Comments:
Very nice quote. This is a recurrent issue of our Pope Ratzinger, and never as today it is an assumption hard to find in the mass media or even in our friend´s meetings.
Thanks, greetings.
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