Catholic society is grounded in practical experience

Which in turn means Catholic society is grounded in wisdom. Because wisdom is the practical application of universal principles to our daily lives.

Universal principles which include those principles that have been codified in the encyclicals, the catechism, and similar; and that we know to be true relative to the authority giving them to us. Some universals are likewise self evident, while others are within us such as the natural law. All having in common that they are true guides to how we should live in society.

Practical experience is required because the difficulty for us is understanding how the universal principles should be applied to each given particular circumstance. We can't just take the universal principles by themselves separated from practical experience and apply them because they are finally only understandable in the context of our daily lives.

For instance, scrupulosity is the error of rigid application of universal principle without making allowance for practical experience. In contrast, wisdom is specifically the application of those principles understood and moderated by practical experience. Which is why scrupulosity occurs in the young and inexperienced, and why wisdom occurs in the old and experienced.

It is also why cultural formation is so important, because it grounds the young in the experience of the old; so that while the young may not understand why this or that is the proper way to act in society, they will at least know that it is the proper way to act in society.

Culture forms us into a cohesive whole where we can have confidence that each one of us will act in a certain manner.

Similarly in the catechism :
2469 : "Men could not live with one another if there were not mutual confidence that they were being truthful to one another."

A reasonable argument; but which also can applied unreasonably when not understood and moderated by practical experience. Because as with every other universal principle, it must finally be understood and used in a practical manner. Which in turn requires wisdom. Which in turn requires experience.

An experience which tells us that we are not required to be truthful in every instance, and that in fact men could not live with one another if we were rigidly required to be truthful to one another in every instance.

What is required is to know when truth is required and when it is not required. Because not making that distinction, but instead rigidly applying the principle without exception leads to the exact confusion the catechism uses to make it argument against lying.

Because we do lie in everyday life, but our doing it does not in itself sow discord, but is done to the contrary to sow social harmony.

For instance:
Social harmony is playing hide and seek with our toddlers :
"Where is Veronica? I can't find her."
But of course I can find her since she's 12 inches away from me with her hands over her eyes.

Social discord is the scrupulous reading Cardianal Newman without qualification:
"is better for the Sun and Moon to drop from Heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremist agony … than" that one willful untruth should ever be told.

And that is just what I did, I told a willful untruth when I told my two year old daughter that I could not find her.

What my example tells us is that Cardinal Newman's comment when unqualified, so as to also include my willful untruth to my daughter, is sheer nonsense because the example of my daughter is at the level of the self evident where it's perfectly obvious that it is moral, and good, to tell her a willful untruth.

What it also tells us is that we can tell willful untruths. And that telling willful untruths does not sow social discord.

But yet we commonly find among the Catholic blogs those who do scrupulously arguing against any willful untruth even though it is at the level of the self evident.

A scrupulosity which shows us just how far removed we are from a Catholic society grounded in wisdom, because we are instead a Catholic society which ignores experience, and the self evident, in preference for a scrupulous unthinking reading of the universal principles.

A self evidence no different than that it's self evident that rocks really do exists just as we see them, touch them, and get squished by them when really big ones fall down on top of us. A self evidence Dr. Johnson appealed to in his rebuttal to the empiricist Berkeley when Dr. Johnson said "kick a rock".

Of course Dr. Johnson's rebuttal wouldn't convince an empiricist because he would simply reply that is how the illusion manifests itself. Once we deny the self evident, (which is what sight, touch, hearing etc. are), then it's Katy bar the door because there is not limit to that rabbit hole.

And of course, no one actually lives their daily lives as if rocks don't actually exist. Because everyone jumps out of the way of when a really big rock is about to fall down on top of us. Or more commonly, everyone jumps out of the way when some bus or train is about to occupy the same space on the street they're standing on.

Likewise, we don't actually live as if we think all willful untruths are a moral evil, because we all play hide and seek with our toddlers, and no one afterwards goes to confession and tells the priest he sinned by telling his toddler that he couldn't find her.

What is striking though, is how many of our common modern assumptions are a violation of the self evident we actually live by. Assumptions we don't live by, but which do influence us.

Assumptions which likewise violate the self evident law of noncontradiction because our assumptions are in contradiction to the self evident.

For instance, as I've mentioned previously, it's self evident that colour actually exists in the objects we look at, i.e. it's self evident that rose petals really are red. While at the same time we assume modern light theory is also correct which specifically denies that colour does exist in objects, i.e. we think we see red but we really only see it in our imagination as an effect of light rays.

According to modern physics what we think we see is illusory; but of course no one actually lives their daily lives as if the colour is illusory, no one who picks a rose considers its color to be anywhere but in the rose itself.

We don't give illusions as tokens of our affection, we give concrete reality as a sign reflecting the more hidden reality of our affection. In turn, an illusory rose would reflect as sign an illusory affection.

As creatures created by God, we naturally know the self evident because God gave us the capacity to know. And so in turn we see roses as red, and we see buses as fully capable of squishing us like bugs if we step in front of them, and we see that not all lies are a moral evil.

We also live in a secular society which forms us according to its image and so we in turn take on its secular assumptions.

We also live in a fragmented Catholic society separated from each other where our social formation has become little better than books on shelves which we read in hope of being formed by them into Catholics.

Each Catholic reads different books, and belongs to different organizations and different personal parishes and are immersed in and accept the assumptions of secular society in different ways. And so in turn we don't have a Catholic culture forming us into a cohesive whole, but instead have a hodgepodge of conflicting understandings of what it means to be Catholic.

A hodgepodge because some, for instance, read the Catechism on lying while simultaneously rejecting personal experience and the self evident, in hopes that their rejection will make them more purely Catholic, while other do not make that error.

A hodgepodge which by its very discord gives us the Catholic society the catechism warms us against where it says : "where men could not live with one another if there were not mutual confidence that they were being truthful to one another."

A hodgepodge exacerbated by the Catholic intellectual class who are invariably and frighteningly clueless regarding anything practical, but who are completely full of themselves thinking they have not only answers but should likewise be leaders guiding us to the promised land, when all they have to give is dystopian insanity

A hodgepodge which is not going away anytime soon, but whose discord we can reduce as a first step by not denying the self evident and our practical experience. Because those books on our shelves which we read in hope of being formed by them into Catholics are as universal principles, which in turn can only be understood when moderated by practical experience.

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[for a more detailed article on deception, please go here]