Friday, February 5, 2010

Hillary displays her gross ignorance...once again

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, displayed her ignorance yesterday when she said that organized religions around the world often get in the way of faith.

This is just one of the absurd utterances common to the two-dimensional mind of the materialistic liberal. To her, sincerity is faith's highest value and the actual teachings of the great faiths diminish that sincerity because these teachings are external and, therefore, by definition, superficial and artificial.

If that is true, if she is right, true faith, the best, most complete faith is a radically personal and private act...something like using the bathroom (or engaging in self-abuse.) Uh, I say this because most of us like to use the bathroom alone whenever possible. It's personal!

As a Catholic I understand faith to be something quite different. The Church teaches that faith is not like using the bathroom, it's like sharing a meal, a meal that commonly nourishes and benefits the lives of all who share it.

Hillary seems to be ignorant of the fact that true, meaningful faith has, of necessity, both subjective and objective dimensions. These dimensions are commonly referred to as fiduciary faith and dogmatic faith.

We see this expressed in the Great Commission of Christ at the end of Matthew. Jesus says he now has all power in heaven and earth and commands his disciples to go to the whole world and baptize in the name of the Trinity AND "teach them to obey all I have commanded you."

That is, those who believe are to have fiduciary faith in Jesus Himself. But such fiduciary faith is a means to a proximate end, and that end is to believe in what Jesus has commanded and obey it. Obviously, if you don't believe in Him you won't believe in what He teaches. This teaching aspect of faith makes up the objective content of faith. It is not a block or diminishment of faith but the object that completes and perfects it. This content makes up faith's dogmatic or "revealed" content.

These two aspects enrich one another. Faith that is sincere can be a virtue depending upon the content of that faith. For instance, one could believe in the Devil with deep sincerity, but such a content would make all that sincerity a supreme vice and evil, not a virtue.

The point here is when one's personal faith has no objective moral and dogmatic content, it is little more than a mishmash of feckless sentimentality, rooted in nothing meaningful. Such a faith is utterly incapable of meeting the difficulties the human person faces in life.

Faith is not impeded or diminished, but given substance and meaning when it includes a set of tenets and propositions which can be clearly articulated, as in the Great Credo all Catholics profess every Sabbath. This objective content makes up the teaching of the organized part of religion. This "external" content, far from being superficial or artificial, actually roots the soul in a transcendent certitude that alone can face and triumph over all the problems we face in life, whether coming to us from without or rising from within ourselves .

Such reality seems to have eluded Hillary's intellect for more than half a century. In that time she's has cobbled together her own orthodoxy from the sundry content of the leftist professors and socialist she worked with, and now makes it her object of worship. So, she knows little of what true faith is and what informs and perfects it.

I wonder how well she understands the nature of idolatry?

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