Talk:Fall 2009 Philosophy Proseminar Faith & Reason Seminar

Let's try using this talk page for pre-seminar discussion and sharing of additional resources. Alfino 17:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Fideism rejected by the Roman Catholic Church

[This section of the wikipedia "Fideism" article looked good. Might want to read the first part of the article as well. Alfino 17:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)]

Some theologies strongly reject fideism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, representing Roman Catholicism's great regard for Thomism, the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, affirms that it is a doctrine of Roman Catholicism that God's existence can indeed be demonstrated by reason. Aquinas' rationalism has deep roots in Western Christianity; it goes back to St. Anselm of Canterbury's observation that the role of reason was to explain faith more fully: fides quaerens intellectum, "faith seeking understanding," is his formula.

The official position of Roman Catholicism is that while the existence of the one God can in fact be demonstrated by reason, men can nevertheless be deluded by their sinful natures to deny the claims of reason that demonstrate God's existence. The Anti-Modernist oath promulgated by Pope Pius X required Roman Catholics to affirm that:

:... God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world (cf. Rom. 1:20), that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from its effects, and that, therefore, his existence can also be demonstrated...

Similarly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that:

:Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.
     — Catechism of the Catholic Church, ss. 37.

Pope John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio also affirms that God's existence is in fact demonstrable by reason, and that attempts to reason otherwise are the results of sin. In the encyclical, John Paul II warned against "a resurgence of fideism, which fails to recognize the importance of rational knowledge and philosophical discourse for the understanding of faith, indeed for the very possibility of belief in God."

Fideist currents in Roman Catholic thought

Historically, there have been a number of fideist strains within the Roman Catholic orbit. Catholic traditionalism, exemplified in the nineteenth century by Joseph de Maistre, emphasized faith in tradition as the means of divine revelation. The claims of reason are multiple, and various people have argued rationally for several contradictory things: in this environment, the safest course is to hold true to the faith that has been preserved through tradition, and to resolve to accept what the Church has historically taught. In his essay Du pape ("On the Pope"), de Maistre argued that it was historically inevitable that all of the Protestant churches would eventually seek reunification and refuge in the Roman Catholic Church: science was the greater threat, it threatened all religious faith, and "no religion can resist science, except one."

Another refuge of fideist thinking within the Roman Catholic Church is the concept of "signs of contradiction". <ref>John Paul II, Sign of contradiction, St. Paul Publications 1979, p. 8.</ref> According to this belief, the holiness of certain people and institutions is confirmed by the fact that other people contest their claims: this opposition is held to be worthy of comparison to the opposition met by Jesus Christ himself. The fact that the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is widely disbelieved, for example, is thought to confirm its authenticity under this belief; the same has been claimed for the doctrine of the real presence of the Eucharist, or the spiritual merits of the Opus Dei organization and its discipline.