Commentary

Commentary by Alex

January 15, 2012

Renee Descartes (1596 to 1650), the influential French philosopher famous for doubting all his ideas and then realizing, “I am thinking” about ideas, which lead him to conclude that he, indeed existed. Cogito ergo sum – I think, therefore I am. He is less famous for declining a bottle of wine with the phrase: “I think not,” at which point legend has it he promptly disappeared.

December 19, 2011

Saint Thomas Aquinas’ ideas – Scholasticism - led to the Catholic Church’s basic belief that there is no conflict between faith and reason, since they both rest on a single truth – that God exists.

October 23, 2011

A sublime character of Catholicism is that it is Christ’s attempt to seek apostles on this earth. To be an apostle is to be interiorly ordered – at peace with oneself in a state of grace – and to be externally ordered – at peace with others and with God.

October 16, 2011

Won’t they ever learn? Although presumed innocent, things do not look good for Catholic Bishop Robert W. Finn and the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. Despite having an ample number of examples of cover-up by bishops in the recent past, he learned nothing, and has been indicted by a grand jury on a charge of failure to report suspected child abuse by a priest. Prosecutors said Friday (10/14/11) in Missouri that Bishop Finn "had reasonable cause to suspect a child may be subjected to abuse by Father Shawn Ratigan, a priest from Independence, Missouri, who was indicted in August on 13 counts related to child pornography.” According to prosecutors, Finn "had reasonable cause to suspect a child may be subjected to abuse due to previous knowledge of concerns about Father Ratigan and children. That reasonable cause included the discovery of hundreds of photographs on the priest's laptop – child pornography - and violations of restrictions that were placed on Father Ratigan."

So, that’s why Cardinal Bernard Law, the erstwhile Archbishop of Boston and serial coverer-up is now safely beyond the reach of the FBI. Episodes like this shook my faith and I am sure that Finn’s behavior will shake the faith of many more. I wrote about it as a way to find my way back.

October 10, 2011

Displaying once more that he has a sense of humor God flummoxed scientists in a really big way, not once but twice, during the week ending September 25^th 2011.

First, it has been understood ever since Einstein’s general theory of relativity was proposed over a century ago, that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Well results just in from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN have now confounded that theory. It has been reported that puzzled physicists watched as subatomic particles seem to have beaten the speed of light. Neutrinos sent through the ground from CERN toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early. Oops!

Second, scientists' predictions about the mysterious Dark Matter purported to make up 21% of the mass of the Universe may have to be revised. Research on dwarf galaxies suggests they cannot form in the way they do if dark matter exists in the form that the most common model requires it to. That may mean that the Large Hadron Collider will not be able to spot it.

Leading cosmologist Carlos Frenk spoke of these "disturbing" developments at the British Science Festival.

October 2, 2011

Scientists and theologians have one thing in common: they both seek the truth. We have two gifts with which to accomplish this: faith and reason. This must mean that scientists seek the truth with one arm tied behind their back.

September 17, 2011

If there is a God then he must want us to find him, and he also must be the source of both faith and reason. Why then would he forbid us from using reason as well as faith to find him? I agree with Galileo Galilei who said to his inquisitors: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with a sense of reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use.”

Alex Terego.com