Catholic authors general

bump

Most people are Catholic on this board.

Sad, really.

>innate struggles

Totally unrelated to Catholicism.

Why is that sad?

Aye, but you must distinguish between the "culturally" Catholic and the serious ones.

Still, I think a big chunk of the board if not the majority are atheists/agnostics

There are at least a few genuine believers on here. Some Catholic, some Orthodox. I think we even have a few Protestants.

In that particular case it was pretty fucking related.
Every time there was a survey, the Christian part was 25% at most.

Shusako Endo's Silence deals with all of the hard questions with none of the answers.

I'm sure the American movie coming out this year will be terrible since burgerpeople are incapable of subtlety and nuances.

Yeah, wtf.

What book is that image from?

You're obviously interested in philosophy, so:

Etienne Gilson

Josef Pieper

Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

John Senior

>Catholicism is "innate"

Catholics are very sad and guilt-ridden people.

Just an empirical observation.

To be fair, I don't think anyone on Veeky Forums has all their ducks in a row.

And yet suicide was almost non-existent in the Middle Ages. Hmmm.

Guilt for Catholics is something you can get rid off, you go to confession and you are done.
Although a lot of women confess the same abortion(s) for decades, it's a pretty specific case.
The struggle with devicancy for a pious Catholic is.
Tell me more about them. I've read Leisure by Pieper and was hardly impressed, it was just mediocre.
For others here I'll highly recommend Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine by John Henry Newman and THE work on historical development of theology.
I found it here and use it as a desktop, I otherwise known nothing about it.
Well it is Scorsese, so you can expect a good, albeit blasphemous movie.
The novel was fantastic, if anything it's a fascinating historical period.

>you go to confession and you are done.

No, you sin again and go back.

Mathematically more time is spent with guilt than absolution.

>The struggle with devicancy for a pious Catholic is.

You don't understand the word, "innate."

I'm not sure of your psychological qualifications to equate guilt with suicide, but okay.

>No, you sin again and go back.
Yes but that's the thing. Confession is cathartic. It prevents excessive and unhealthy rumination, and helps to allow freedom from the sin rather than being tied to the act by guilt.

Freedom to sin again.

It makes the sinning more fun, tbqhf.

>Freedom to sin again.
Not to sin also.
>It makes the sinning more fun, tbqhf.
I've never had an experience where sin made me feel good long term.

That's why you go back to confession. I thought we went over this--your hamster wheel.

Cormac McCarthy, on confession

youtube.com/watch?v=pWVQPID58pM

That wasn't "on confession," it wasn't "on anything" other than establishing character traits.

I wasn't equating guilt with suicide, in fact I agree with you, Catholics do indeed feel more guilt than other people (though less shame). However, what does it say that that guilt seems to result in less unhappiness?

YOU'RE mediocre! In all seriousness though, I thought "The Christian Idea of Man" and "Only the Lover Sings" were quite good. Pieper is German though, so don't expect British style analytic philosophy.

Gilson does a lot of history of philosophy, but meaning the tracing of ideas, not biographical histories. I thought "The Unity of the Philosophical Experience" was excellent.

Garrigou-Lagrange I admit I don't personally know that well, other than by reputation. However he is one of the most respected Thomists there is, so you can look up what others have said about him if you'd like.

Feser is the only one on this list who is currently alive (and relatively young, even). He's an American philosopher who converted to Thomism (and Catholicism) so he's very well versed in contemporary analytic philosophy, and is great at explaining Aquinas to those unfamiliar with him. He also has a blog which he updates frequently.
edwardfeser.blogspot.com/

I've only read one of his works, I don't doubt he wrote some better works. Leisure was picked for a short lived reading club as something for people who never read any philosophy and they might have found it more interesting.
I do have to admit I am leaning towards analytic philosophy that doesn't go full autism, as you say, Feser fits that really well. I've read 4 or so of his works, will read his Scholastic Metaphisics by the end of the year, after finishing the actual Aquinas past his political writings which were phenomenal (I postponed it because it isn't easy to carry around, A4 paper and 900 pages, hard cover).
I've read some Peter Kreeft who is also a contemporary author, but he is not terribly interesting, he takes a simplistic approach to Aquians and makes him seem banal.
I looked for Gilson and G-L, but didn't find any. In any case, I'm a long way form getting to them, Geach and his wife seem really interesting.
>As a young philosophy don, Anscombe acquired a reputation as a formidable debater. In 1948, she presented a paper at a meeting of Oxford's Socratic Club in which she disputed C. S. Lewis's argument that naturalism was self-refuting (found in the third chapter of the original publication of his book Miracles). Some associates of Lewis, primarily George Sayer and Derek Brewer, have remarked that Lewis lost the subsequent debate on her paper and that this loss was so humiliating that he abandoned theological argument and turned entirely to devotional writing and children's literature

>Catholicism
>Claim to hold the keys of Peter here on earth
>Ignores the first two commandments
Nice try, Satan.

>Exodus 20:1-6
>And God spake all these words, saying,
>2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
>3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
>4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
>5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

In that same Exodus God commands the Hebrews to make sculptures of cherubim for the Ark of the Covenant.

Didn't go to Medjugorje in a few years, should arrange it somehow soon.
I converted there.

>derailing OP's thread

Please, don't let every thread about something in any way religious transform into a discussion about shades of christianity or the existence of god.

Good point user, that happens too often.

Exodus 25 at no point even implies that the statues are for the purpose of worshipping or grovelling.

Idolatry is absolutely forbidden.

I am a the op lad.
Pic related, this and the cross are in a 14th century monastery.
The new mass kind of made this altar pointless, it's not made for it.

Well it is the topic of Newman's best work, Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine.

Anscombe also had a really interesting friendship with Wittgenstein. She was one of the only women he actually liked, and he would come over to their house a lot.

>Ray Monk wrote that Anscombe was “…one of Wittgenstein's closest friends and one of his most trusted students, an exception to his general dislike of academic women and especially of female philosophers. She became, in fact, an honorary male, addressed by him affectionately as ‘old man’.”

Wittgenstein also apparently started meeting with a Dominican priest Anscombe introduced him to by his request before he died.

if you want some OG great christan philosophy and teachings I recommend Saint Augustine's City of God and his Confessions.

City being more a gigantic Q&A on his take on the religion (and his influence was huge in later centuries) and Confessions being more personal about his journey to becoming a Christian.

Check him out if you have the time, good reads

>guilt-ridden
Yes, I'll own to that

>sad
Now hold on there fella

>guilt seems to result in less unhappiness

youtube.com/watch?v=qDii69YCh_Q

I remember reading here something alongside those lines, Witty getting all sad about not having faith and trying desperatly to find it.

Nobody in reality gets sad about having faith.

They'd have to pretend they had it in the first place, then feel like they "lost" it.

That's fine. Dramatic entertainment is an understandable need to fill.

Le edgy troll man

hi meme

>Nobody in reality gets sad about having faith.
You mean not having it?
>They'd have to pretend they had it in the first place, then feel like they "lost" it.
How do you know they didn't? Faith is a sort of a deep worldview, which can change.
>That's fine. Dramatic entertainment is an understandable need to fill.
This isn't entertaining.

Evelyn Waugh was a Catholic. Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite books.

People find quests for faith entertaining. Not me, but I don't judge other people's different tastes. That's petty.

Quests for faith are rarely sought due to a need for entertainment.
In any case, which author do you know who wrote about seeking faith as entertainment? Or rather which can be seen as such.

It's considered dramatic. If it was dull, why bother? To find salvation in the one true God--sounds exciting to some.

All activity in life is escapism, except for the basic biological needs to stay alive.

>It certainly isn't common, I've never come across it

Ever heard of Rabelais?

Plus literally anything written in the west between 500 and 1500 was written by a Catholic, there's lots of more or less deviant stuff out there, like De planctu naturae, or Roman de la Rose, or the Canterbury Tales

But of course these writers aren't just "deviants" any more than Pynchon is a "deviant". They wrote deviant things for a lot of reasons, not least to criticize and satirize the societies they lived in. But also certainly for the sake of lulz.

Catholics: It's better to say things that aren't deviant than abstain from doing them.

I love you guys.

Anything not of Catholic morale is suspect to deviancy and should be avoided.

I'm not into censorship, or even book-burning--just common sense.

>It's considered dramatic. If it was dull, why bother? To find salvation in the one true God--sounds exciting to some.
War is also dramatic, so is death and so is marriage and the history of medieval metaphysics. That doesn't mean it's done to escape anything, or rather that it's done for a banal reason such as escapism.
There are also dull things which people do also regardless of biological needs or a dramatic interest.

Catholic here but confession can definitely cause excessive ruminating where you want to confess every sin and spend most of your time monitoring yourself for any vestige of sin, etc. It's called scrupulosity and all the great divines have written on how to deal with/avoid it.

Tbh I must have missed it in all of those writings. Maybe because I've had the opposite problem tho.

Excitement, entertainment, level of escapism--it's all relative. Comfort itself, while not having emotions that explode like fireworks, is a form of escapism. Those things are outside the necessities of staying alive.

The best way to look at it, is abstaining from sin makes your inevitable sinning more delicious.

You know when you don't eat for too long, then the food is extra delicious?

You know when you stop masturbating for a long period then it feels extra fantastic?

It's just like that. Then you can feel all the guilt you want, go to confession and say and do what you're supposed to do...until the next delicious bite of sin. And so on, and so forth.

It's a workable system that I kind of agree with.

I don't know, I'm a practicing Catholic, and as much it can feel enjoyable to sin, it feels even more enjoyable to be absolved. It's really a physical sensation of relief, of joy and brightness flooding through your entire body. That's my experience, anyway. It makes me love God that much more.

Sure, to each their own. But you wouldn't have that joy without the sin to release from, would you.

Ergo, your sinning is a necessary element toward your enjoyment of life.

oops.

Catholicism is comforting because it let's you outsource your guilt and also despair towards the fate of the world.

It's a workable system, for sure.

Doesn't mean it doesn't break a few peripheral eggs in the process.

Not necessarily, you can get the same joy not sinning and just going to Mass. Not everything that makes you happy is necessarily sinful, that's just kind of a shitty idea proffered by modern culture.

I've felt more joy listening to a hymn at Easter than I've ever felt jerking off to porn.

The whole carton I'd say.

I was trying to go easy on them. They're very sensitive.

I'd say that relegating sexual peasure almost completely is a terrible way to enjoy life.

Ah, so you take back your statement about the enjoyableness of absolution from sin.

Okay.

This has to stop, user. Religion musn't be given a free pass that other sets of ideas don't enjoy.

That's their whole game plan, though.

Every religion's, really.

I just don't think it's my place to say "no" to religion. It's obviously fulfilling a need that the bulk of the world's population has.

They like it better than video games.

Don't put words in my mouth.

Absolution from sin is enjoyable precisely because it returns one to the state of grace one most feels in Mass, or at prayer. Being in a state of sin--or, at least, mortal sin--is contrary to God's intention for humanity. To return to a state of grace, and to be in a state of grace, is, in essence, to be ordered, as opposed to being disordered. It's bad to be out of it and good to be in it. So returning to it and actively being in it are both pleasant.

m'boy Fesey

There's also the small matter of it being completely real.

It's your place to state your opinion of it and debate with evidence in hand and good arguments.
Nothing should be free of criticism.

The need it fulfils is self-created. The good it does doesn't balance against the bad and certainly doesn't give any credit to its veracity.

Indeed. Some more than others. That's why a good part of middle easterns are hostages to Islam.

You wouldn't have absolution without sin. That's a fact.

Now, this makes one less analytical about the elimination of sin.

Provide evidence.

Denying reality can be fun.

You just responded to my opinion.

My criticism of all religions shouldn't equate my didactic need to stamp out all other opinions and religion itself.

I enjoy conversation, and without disagreement, I would have no fun.

Without discord, no concourse.

It's explained by the slogans attached to the end of the plumes,. One is the free city of Brandenburg and one is the margraviate of Brandenburg. Those are two different entities with the same coat of arms.

Tag along with an exorcist for a day. Visit a Catholic hospital. Or just, you know, actually go looking for it.

Nobody has to, though. For some of the purest and most high-minded individuals, there is celibacy, but the rest of us are allowed to marry.

Yes, that's why I wrote «debate with evidence in hand and good arguments», which means not relying on mere opinions, but in facts and logic.

It could be argued that religion should become extinct with facts and logic. Even if you don't succeed and your argument is refuted.

>inevitable sinning
>inevitable

this is a heresy

>mfw nobody on this board knows that you cant actually sin

Generally what one looks for, they can find.

Yet your sexual pleasure is extremely limited, you cannot perform certain acts, unless you're willing to sin. You have to wait until you get married, which is a choice not everyone makes. Marriage is not a need in life for everyone.

And if you're anything other than heterosexual or asexual you're life has to be completely without sexual pleasure, unless you're willing to sin.

>For some of the purest and most high-minded individuals, there is celibacy.

That's amazing that you're keeping track of these individuals sex lives. Thanks for informing us.

It's at least very interesting that as Schizophrenia and other psychoactive illnesses have been understood more in depth, the instances of demonic possessions have lowered dramatically.

I've been to a Catholic hospital and don't see the point you're trying to make. Charitable actions are not a monopoly of Christianity.

Thank you for the boring demonstration of your shit logic.

your* my mistake

YES!

>Medjugorje
Shit place, mate. It feels like the most fucking touristic, plastic church ever. Even the fucking Vatican is more touristic than Medjugorje, yet it feels authentic. That shit place is nothing but a scam to sell trinkets.

Provide a counter argument.