Saturday, January 8, 2011

Seeing the world through Catholic eyes

Is no different than seeing the world through the eyes of common sense. For Catholics, the world is as we actually perceive it, not as some would theorize we perceive it. What I mean by common sense, is how we actually live our daily lives, see the world, and interact with each other.

For instance, we don’t step in front of a moving bus because we know with certitude the bus actually does exist, and that the bus would actually squish us like a bug.

Or when we see a red rose, we know the rose is actually red just as we perceive it to be red. The red exists in the rose just as its shape exists in the rose. We see the colour and the shape, we don't cause the colour and shape to exist.

Or how we live and act really is how we live and act. When we choose right from wrong we are actually doing the choosing just as we think of ourselves as doing the choosing, and our choosing is justly rewarded or punished based on the choice we make.

Catholic thought is justice and fair play as opposed to the Calvinist God creating men as vessels of wrath damned for hell, Or the virtual opposite universalism where everyone goes to heaven no matter how evil they choose to be on earth, because both those extremes violate common sense.

As Catholics, we think tables really do exist in exactly the same way as we see, touch, and use them. And it’s one of the means we can use to test if some hypothesis is Catholic. If it doesn’t meet the level of common sense, then it isn’t Catholic.

That may not seem remarkable, but it is, because all others in one way or another hold a position which denies what is commonly seen and understood, we don't need to take the red pill.

Sometimes it may not be obvious that a particular tenet is common sense, such as usury, but it is if we look at what usury is. Because what it finally is, is selling nothing as if it was something like the flim-flam music man who sells nothing, which common sense tells us is theft.

Common sense is why the Faith is understandable to even the most simple of us, because it is what we actually are, and God made us so that we can actually similarly understand it. Because God gives each of use similar faculties which we can trust and use to understand by.

3 comments:

  1. Aren't 'Catholic eyes' more like the eyes of tradition, authority, and healthy well-formed prejudice--not 'common,' individualistic 'sense' that is uninformed by the majority and irrespective of authority figures?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mr. Detwiler,

    No. Your example would be akin to those who are formed by culture, where as I am referring to that which is more akin to the natural law.

    The two are not in conflict, but neither are they the same.

    What I am referring to as common sense is more akin to what St Paul references in Romans 1:19-20

    "Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. [20] For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alas, knowledge of the particulars of the natural law requires authority, not individualism.

    ReplyDelete