tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6312447.post7619569627048582469..comments2024-03-28T16:16:51.062-04:00Comments on Musings of a Pertinacious Papist: Charles James' critique of Bernard LonerganUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6312447.post-69323247390472937712015-11-07T17:46:17.833-05:002015-11-07T17:46:17.833-05:00Julian says that this is way above "my paygra...Julian says that this is way above "my paygrade." Depending on what one meant, one might suppose that Bob could say the same with regard to James's critique as well.<br /><br />I don't know anyone who would dismiss Lonergan as a fool. Certainly his <i>Insight</i> is chock full of insight.<br /><br />But there is something nevertheless wrong with the tenor of one's work somewhere when every major disciple of his has drifted one way or other into personal commitments of dissent from Church teaching and embraced revisionist positions inimical to it. And it could just as well have to do with the German idealism of Hegel as with the residue of Kant's critical turn in the history of ideas.Williamnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6312447.post-8589154890774948102015-11-07T15:49:39.599-05:002015-11-07T15:49:39.599-05:00It is extraordinary, really, that a person so obvi...It is extraordinary, really, that a person so obviously intelligent as James could draw such stupid conclusions about the philosophical position of Bernard Lonergan. One is inclined to conclude that James' show of apparent 'scholarship' is just a show designed to mask an effort to defend at all costs a viewpoint he presumes, with some arrogance, to be unassailable and absolutely correct. There is little point in arguing with someone like this. So I recommend merely that James go back and read Lonergan's remarks on Kant in INSIGHT and elsewhere which, inexplicably, escaped his attention. Most ironic about James' critique of Lonergan's position is this: it is precisely because James, not Lonergan, shares Kant's "knowing as looking" epistemology that he cannot understand how Lonergan could take subjectivity seriously and not end up a subjective idealist. If James would read Lonergan's actual critique of Kant, he would discover that Lonergan, like Hegel, does not think Kant critiqued the human mind. Rather, Lonergan, like Hegel, believes that Kant -- while believing he was critiquing the human mind -- was in fact critiquing an historical conception of the human mind which is, in fact, mistaken (In Lonergan's view, this conception is Scotist.) This complicates the reception of Kant quite a lot, and perhaps so much that James just cannot grasp the implications. In short, if James is really interested in truth -- and, surely, a good Thomist must be interested in the truth -- then he will know that, before you undertake critique, you are obligated to ensure that you understand the position you are critiquing. James problem with Lonergan arises, not from the supposed heretical 'modernism' of Lonergan's position, but from James' own scholarly neglect. Read carefully, Mr. James, and then we'll take your 'critiques' seriously. Until then, what you've said about Lonergan's position is justly regarded as an attack on a position of your own invention. You are in fact just one more in a long line of traditional Thomists who misattribute to Aquinas their own naive realism and then condemn anyone who reads Aquinas with a bit more accuracy and depth and discovers that Aquinas wasn't as naive as all that.TThttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05809299895453177237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6312447.post-37957714442675283322014-09-07T00:59:41.464-04:002014-09-07T00:59:41.464-04:00"one morning when I spotted Father Lonergan a..."one morning when I spotted Father Lonergan approaching, head down. My heart jumped as I instantly grabbed the opportunity, cut off his path, and asked, "Father Lonergan?"<br /><br />"He looked up, his eyes friendly from behind clear plastic eyeglass frames of the Anglo-American sort, and, breaking into a smile (one could see tobacco stains on his teeth), said something like "Hi there!" – altogether down-to-earth and familiar. . . .<br /><br />"Breathlessly I rattled out my message: I was at Holy Cross College where he had a lot of admirers, and I had just finished his Verbum and De Gratia articles, and they were terrific, just what I had been looking for. . . . "<br /><br />Novak. Yecccch. A groupie of every pop theologian to come down the pike. A weathervane for the sweetest new breezes of progressivism among theological issues and personalities, and also a courtier alert to shifts in status among the power brokers of the faith. So his characteristically teenage girl squeals of pantsloading delight were are directed at Bernard Lonergan? What a surprise!! <br /><br />Lonergan is a "transcendental thomist" on the order of Joseph Marechal, whose ambition it was to scrape away the aristotelian foundation in Aquinas and replace it with what Fergus Kerr drolly terms "modern philosophical considerations" ("After Aquinas," p. 208). In Marechal's case the "consideration" was Kant's radical subjectivism, and his enterprise resulted in three volumes of high fiber silverfish food. Lonergan's "modern philosophical consideration" of Aquinas was achieved by a less direct route, and as a result, his collected works, published by that great center of Catholic ferment, the University of Toronto, now numbers over twenty volumes (not all of them on theological topics). My familiarity with these is limited to one volume, a key one, entitled "Insight," of which I found little. Charles James seems to have a good measure of it (as did Kerr in "Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians"), and sensible Catholics will be content to leave it at that.<br />Ralph Roister-Doisternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6312447.post-5496209094453998842014-09-07T00:15:12.736-04:002014-09-07T00:15:12.736-04:00Thank you for posting. I look forward to reading t...Thank you for posting. I look forward to reading this carefully and posting further comments in defense of Lonergan. <br /><br />First thoughts: <br /><br />1) Lonergan's Verbum--with 1500 references from Aquinas--forces one to take a philosophical stand on the nature of written words (which are shown to be symbols for spoken words, whose immediate reference are inner words, which are distinct from acts of understanding--forcing the reader to replicate acts of understanding, which are not themselves on the page). Using Aquinas against Fr Lonergan would require one to give an account of what it means to read the words of Aquinas. Verbum is invaluable for grasping the contrast between Plato and Aristotle; Scotus and Aquinas; subsistent Ideas versus intelligible species abstracted from material things.<br /><br />2) Insight does not mean intuition. And intelligible forms shining forth in phantasm is affirmed with direct quotations from both Aristotle and Aquinas.<br /><br />3) Lonergan's virtually unconditioned is not "foggy." If anything, it explains Newman's notions of assent and certainty. The question, Quid sit, pertains to grasping form in material things and phantasms. The question, An sit, is of existence (act). And Lonergan says this last points to a correct meaning of syllogism. If A, then B; but A, therefore B: when we can affirm this, we've reached a "virtually" unconditioned. God is the formally unconditioned.<br /><br />4) Lonergan explains in myriad works the contribution of 'esse' by Aquinas. Reality proportionate to man is not just matter and form, but potency, form, and act (existence). Lonergan uses this to handle theological difficulties with the Incarnation, such as the two natures in Christ.<br /><br />Again, thank you for posting this, Dr. Blosser. Oh, and since this piece was written, the icon, Theologian Bernard Lonergan in the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, has appeared in the first pages of Lonergan's De Deo Trino, Pars systematica.<br /><br />Doge of Venicehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02823808883626426373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6312447.post-86554670290923429232014-09-06T22:38:10.557-04:002014-09-06T22:38:10.557-04:00This is way above my paygrade, never having studie...This is way above my paygrade, never having studied philosophy at any level or high-level theology. <br /><br />However, I will give this straight up from a layman's perspective: Lonergan Theology is damaging to the faith, and a sorry excuse for its practitioners to legally be "Catholic" without formal excommunication. <br /><br />In my time in my former parish's youth minsitry, the head of the organization is (was?) a doctrinal student at my local university studying this stuff. Biggest contrary point to the Catholic faith is that under Lonergan Theology, there is no gradation of sin. It twists the Catechism's definition of "turning away to God" whereby only the most extreme actions constitute it, while other actions once deemed mortal aren't. That or venial sin is ignored. I even had one of his priest buddies in confession who also studied Lonergan say the same line of no gradation of sin. <br /><br />Further, while doing a service trip we got into a discussion about doctrine. Under his Lonergan system, if the majority of the Church rejects doctrine or something major from the Pope (e.g. Humanae Vitae), then it is not formal doctrine to be adhered to. <br /><br />While I do credit the youth ministry being started under its leader, and I came back to my faith under that youth ministry, sadly these people are gaining access to innocent or weakly catechized lay people in parishes and our academic institutions and are passing on their moral and theological poison to willing minds. Lonergan Theology is a threat to the sanctity of the souls of the faithful. <br /><br />This is a straight up, layman's perspective of Lonergan. You don't even need all this philosophical/theological mumbo jumbo to know it's wrong. If it violates the CCC, and it promotes disobedience to the Magisterium, it's heresy!Servimus Unum Deumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12521042317656015840noreply@blogger.com