vol VII: Notes

1999

Notes

[Sunday 11 July 1999 - Saturday 17 July 1999]

[Notebook MA, DB 51]

Sunday 11 July 1999

Monday 12 July 1999

Tuesday 13 July 1999

Wednesday 14 July 1999

Thursday 15 July 1999

Friday 16 July 1999

[page 163]

Saturday 17 July 1999

. . .

[page 164]

I am intensely conscious of the immense mass of the Church, so immense that it has acted rather like a classical black hole in the Universe, taking in everything within its field and giving nothing out. But now I feel that I can move it. NO. Not academic. Instead I feel that it is moving.

. . .

Since I left the Church I have been a builder, trade that often involved the movement and placement of objects that are too heavy to lift by hand in places that cannot be reached form the ground. In such situations, the answer is some combination of temporary structure and lifting machinery. The energy source for the lifting machinery will be an engine, physical or biological.

I can now envision the structure necessary to set the Roman Catholic Church on a new course, and it is the purpose of this [project] to outline both the change of state proposed

[page 165]

and a scheme for bringing it about.

I document the change of course through my own experience. To change the course of the church is simply to change the course of a set of individuals within the church. At present the cardinal number of the set is one. To increase it, I must communicate my change of course to you. What Christians might call witness.

My starting point is the Dominican Order and the writings of Aristotle and Thomas of Aquino.

Witnesses are expected to restrain themselves to recounting their own definite experience and to avoid hearsay. The gossip channel is to be shut down.

Christianity is founded in the Bible, and believes that the Bible is a credible record of the intervention of god in the affairs of people.

[page 166]

When we begin to look at the Bible through the eyes of modern scholarship, the foundations of this belief are tested and sometimes found wanting. In particular, in my youth, I acquired the conviction that Jesus really did die on the cross as a result of his respiratory and circulatory systems [being disabled]. That his mangled body was really buried and a few days later came alive again, healed except for the wound that Thomas experienced.

. . .

Ecumenism is a subset of Ecclesiology.

Ecclesiology is in effect a theory of management: how to get a group of people to work together for a goal,

Essay: [topic 9] 'Critically outline a pneumatology of church for a united christian church. Show how this theology will be acceptable to a number of denominations . [ie symmetry arguments].

[page 167]

. . .

Each action is a reflection or transform and we look for thins that are not altered by the transform and call these symmetry.

SYMMETRY ==> SAMENESS + DIFFERENCE

. . .

Why Christianity must change or die. Spong Spong

[page 168]

NO Why Christianity must die and change.

CHURCH = INTERWITNESSING = HONEST WITH ONE ANOTHER GROUP

CHURCH = COOPERATION = EMBODIMENT

Church is [a] corporation subject to written and unwritten contracts between the members eg support of pastors and teachers, acquisition of spatial structure, etc etc,

Christology is fundamentally an epistemological question. What was / is / will be Jesus? Like other scientific questions, the search for the answer is a matter of putting up models and fitting them (or failing to fit them) to the evidence.

. . .

[page 169]

Text as a differential equation, constraining but not constricting the meaning, allowing, often for a virtual infinity of solution.

. . .

Ecclesiology

Every corporation is the embodiment of a plan to modify the environment in some way.

. . .

Inherent in almost all christian conceptions is the idea of exiles / outcasts / etc. I felt very strongly my expulsion from the Dominican Order. After a year or two in mourning, I went on with

[page 170]

my life

NATURE vs NURTURE

We have a common nature. Religion is a matter of nurture, that is of environment. Let us consider our physical being to be that specified by our genetic code studied by the more molecular end of biology.

. . .

VISIBLE UNION / INVISIBLE

The spirit moves: the building moves must all be precise, adequate and connected. At every point both the force and the control necessary for a safe and effective move must be present. It is not suitable to have a step in the protocol and then what? We explode the bolts, hit the starter and pray. This sounds altogether too gung

[page 171]

ho for a builder.

The fundamental structural secret is that there are a large number of ways of realizing a given structure, and these can be sorted by the amount of resources each structure takes to realize.

A I KHINCHIN Mathematical foundations of quantum statistics Dover Khinchin

People of God P = {p}, as a corporate whole, rather similar to the mystical body of Christ.

We can name each person p_i , i is a natural number N. Although the natural numbers are ordered, people are not ordered. To avoid any chance of low numbers lording it over high numbers etc etc, we instead represent people by complex numbers z such that |z | = 1. People are then imagined as distinct points in the unit circle in the complex plane. Rotational symmetry. Permutation of points.

[page 172]

CONTROL = MASTERY

. . .

Trying to dissect the christian message out of the multitude of particular encodings (faiths, sects, cultures, churches, etc etc)

Similar to dissecting the Christian message out of Judaism.

SPIRIT = INVISIBLE FORCE

 

Copyright:

You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.

---

Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Currie, Edwina, A Parliamentary Affair, Hodder and Stoughton: Coronet 1994 Jacket: 'Value for money . . . Currie recounts the vicissitudes of a whole gallery of characters. The book is permeated by (entirely justified) complaints against the barriers encountered by women in parliament: a male MP could not hope to get away with writing a novel like A PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIR' Gerald Kauffman The Times  Amazon   back

Dawkins, Richard, Climbing Mount Improbable, W. W. Norton & Company 1997 Amazon editorial review: 'How do species evolve? Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most eminent zoologists, likens the process to scaling a huge, Himalaya-size peak, the Mount Improbable of his title. An alpinist does not leap from sea level to the summit; neither does a species utterly change forms overnight, but instead follows a course of "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time, non-random survival of random variants" -- a course that Charles Darwin, Dawkins's great hero, called natural selection. Illustrating his arguments with case studies from the natural world, such as the evolution of the eye and the lung, and the coevolution of certain kinds of figs and wasps, Dawkins provides a vigorous, entertaining defense of key Darwinian ideas.'  Amazon   back

Heinlein, Robert A, Stranger in a Strange Land, New English Library: Hodder and Stoughton 1985 'Stranger in a Strange Land, winner of the 1962 Hugo Award, is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, born during, and the only survivor of, the first manned mission to Mars. Michael is raised by Martians, and he arrives on Earth as a true innocent: he has never seen a woman and has no knowledge of Earth's cultures or religions. But he brings turmoil with him, as he is the legal heir to an enormous financial empire, not to mention de facto owner of the planet Mars. With the irascible popular author Jubal Harshaw to protect him, Michael explores human morality and the meanings of love. He founds his own church, preaching free love and disseminating the psychic talents taught him by the Martians. Ultimately, he confronts the fate reserved for all messiahs. The impact of Stranger in a Strange Land was considerable, leading many children of the 60's to set up households based on Michael's water-brother nests. Heinlein loved to pontificate through the mouths of his characters, so modern readers must be willing to overlook the occasional sour note ("Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's partly her fault."). That aside, Stranger in a Strange Land is one of the master's best entertainments, provocative as he always loved to be. Can you grok it? --Brooks Peck'  Amazon   back

Khinchin, A Y, The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Statistics, Dover 1998 'In the area of quantum statistics, I show that a rigorous mathematical basis of the computational formulas of statistical physics ... may be obtained from an elementary application of the well-developed limit theorems of the theory of probability'  Amazon   back

Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight : A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '... Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding'  Amazon   back

Melville, Herman, and Robert Milder (editor), Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales (Oxford Worlds Classics), Oxford University Press 2009 Product Description 'Billy Budd is among the greatest of Melville's works and, in its richness and ambiguity, among the most problematic. Outwardly a compelling narrative of events aboard a British man-of-war during the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, Billy Budd, Sailor is a nautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three extraordinary men. In this edition are also eight shorter tales, reprinted from the most authoritative recent editions and are supplemented by a penetrating introduction and full notes.'  Amazon   back

Nichols, Peter, The Pope's Divisions: The Roman Catholic Church Today, Henry Holt & Co ISBN-13: 978-0030475764 1984 Jacket: 'About eighteen percent of the world's population is Roman Catholic, and there is no bigger or more influential religious body that the Catholic Church. . . . Rome correspondent of The Times of London for more than twenty years, sympathetic to the Church although not himself a Catholic, Peter Nichols is closely familiar with the Curia and its functionaries and an absorbed observer of recent Popes and Papal elections. ... '  Amazon   back

Pauly, Daniel, Darwin's Fishes: An Encyclopaedia of Ichthyology, Ecology and Evolution, Cambridge University Press 2004 Amazon Book Description: 'Presenting everything Charles Darwin ever wrote about fishes and many more topics, the entries in this encyclopedia are arranged alphabetically and extracted from Darwin's books, short publications, notebooks and correspondence. Readers can start wherever they like and are then led by a series of cross-references directly or indirectly to Darwin's original writings. The material is interpreted in the context of Darwin's time as well as of contemporary biology.'   Amazon   back

Russell, Bertrand, A History of Western Philosophy, and its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from Earliest Times to the Present Day, Simon & Schuster 1945 Amazon ditorial reviews: Ray Monk: 'A History of Western Philosophy remains unchallenged as the perfect introduction to its subject. Russell . . . writes with the kind of verve, freshness and personal engagement that lesser spirits would never have permitted themselves. This boldness, together with the astonishing breadth of his general historical knowledge, allows him to put philosophers into their social and cultural context . . . The result is exactly the kind of philosophy that most people would like to read, but which only Russell could possibly have written.'   Amazon   back

Scott, Robert A, Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimages and the Healing Powers of Belief, University of California Press 2010 'Product Description Iconic images of medieval pilgrims, such as Chaucer's making their laborious way to Canterbury, conjure a distant time when faith was the only refuge of the ill and infirm, and thousands traveled great distances to pray for healing. Why, then, in an age of advanced biotechnology and medicine, do millions still go on pilgrimages? Why do journeys to important religious shrines--such as Lourdes, Compostela, Fátima, and Medjugorje--constitute a major industry? In Miracle Cures, Robert A. Scott explores these provocative questions and finds that pilgrimage continues to offer answers for many. Its benefits can range from a demonstrable improvement in health to complete recovery. Using research in biomedical and behavioral science, Scott examines accounts of miracle cures at medieval, early modern, and contemporary shrines. He inquires into the power of relics, apparitions, and the transformative nature of sacred journeying and shines new light on the roles belief, hope, and emotion can play in healing.'  Amazon   back

Spong, John Shelby, Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile., HarperCollinsPublishers 1998 Jacket: 'Spong demolishes the stifling dogma of traditional Christianity in search of the inner core of truth. It is a courageous, passionate attempt to build a credible theology for a skeptical, scientific age.' Paul Davies.  Amazon   back

Papers

Jones, Dan, "A WEIRD View of Human Nature Skews Psychologist's Studies", Science, 328, 5986, 25 June 2010, page 1627. '. . . although undergrads from wealthy nations are numerous and willing subjects, psychologists are beginning to realize that they have a drawback: They are WEIRDos. That is, they are people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic cultures. In a provocative review paper published online in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) last week, anthropologist Joseph Henrich and psychologists Steven Heine and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia in Canada argue that WEIRDos aren't representative of humans as a whole and that psychologists routinely use them to make broad, and quite likely false, claims about what drives human behavior.'. back

Sternberg, Esther M, "Paths Out of Illness via Faith", Science, 328, 5986, 25 June 2010, page 1636-1637. Review of Miracle Cures: Saints, Pilgrimages and the Healing Powers of Belief by Robert A Scott.. back

Links

America Magazine, 'America' on the Abuse Crisis, 'From the Boston Globe's first reports of episcopal cover-up in 2002, through the sexual abuse crisis roiling the church in Europe today, America has provided balanced and thoughful commentary on the unfolding events. Here is a selection of our coverage from the last ten years. back

Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada, Catholic Press Association, 'Founded in 1911, the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada offers all who work in the Catholic media field the opportunity to be part of something bigger than their own communication vehicle. With more than 600 member organizations, the CPA reaches over 26 million people, giving voice to the church and witness to the presence of God in the 21st century. back

Eternal sin - Wikipedia, Eternal sin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Eternal sins or unforgivable sins or unpardonable sins are part of Christian hamartiology, which is the Christian theology of sins. These are sins which will not be forgiven by God whereby salvation becomes impossible. One eternal or unforgiveable sin is specified in several passages of the Synoptic Gospels.[1] Verse 29 in Mark 3 states that there is one sin considered "eternal" and that is "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit"; however this verse is rarely taken literally except by biblical literalists. Some other sins that are sometimes considered eternal or unforgivable include impenitence (refusing to accept the Mercy of God by repenting) as in the Catholic Catechism #1864 or ascribing the work of the Holy Spirit to the Devil.' back

Isaiah Berlin, Positive versus Negative Liberty, From Two Concepts of Liberty, a lecture delivered in 1958 at Oxford University] 'One belief, more than any other, is responsible for the slaughter of individuals on the altars of the great historical ideals -- justice or progress or the happiness of future generations, or the sacred mission of emancipation of a nation or race or class, or even liberty itself, which demands the sacrifice of individuals for the freedom of society. This is the belief that somewhere, in the past or in the future, in divine revelation or in the mind of an individual thinker, in the pronouncements of history or science, or in the simple heart of an uncorrupted good man, there is a final solution.' back

James J Fox, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) / Good, ' . . . The moral good (bonum honestum) consists in the due ordering of free action or conduct according to the norm of reason, the highest faculty, to which it is to conform. This is the good which determines the true valuation of all other goods sought by the activities which make up conduct. Any lower good acquired to the detriment of this one is really but a loss (bonum apparens). While all other kinds of good may, in turn, be viewed as means, themorla good is good as an end and is not a mere means to other goods. . . . ' back

Oneida Community - Wikipedia, Oneida Community - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Oneida Community was a utopian commune founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848 in Oneida, New York. The community believed that Jesus Christ had already returned in the year 70, making it possible for them to bring about Christ's millennial kingdom themselves, and be free of sin and perfect in this world, not just Heaven (a belief called Perfectionism).' back

Pride - Wikipedia, Pride - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Pride is, depending on the interactional and cultural context, either a high sense of one's personal status (i.e., leading to judgements of personality and character) or the specific mostly positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection. Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion which requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions (e.g., that pride is distinct from happiness and joy) through language-based interaction with others[1]. Some social psychologists identify it as linked to a signal of high social status.[2] One definition of pride in the first sense comes from St. Augustine: "the love of one's own excellence".[3] In this sense, the opposite of pride is humility. Pride is sometimes viewed as excessive or as a vice, sometimes as proper or as a virtue. While some philosophers such as Aristotle (and George Bernard Shaw) consider pride a profound virtue, most world religions consider it a sin.' back

S-L-M - Wikipedia, S-L-M - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Shin-Lamedh-Mem (Arabic: س ل م‎ S-L-M; Hebrew: שלם‎ Š-L-M; Maltese: S-L-M) is the triconsonantal root of many Semitic words, and many of those words are used as names. The root itself translates as "whole, safe, intact"' back

The Gates of Hell - Wikipedia, The Gates of Hell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Gates of Hell (French: ''La Porte de l'Enfer'') is a monumental sculptural group work by French artist Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from "The Inferno", the first section of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It stands at 6 m high, 4 m wide and 1 m deep (19.69'H × 13.12'W × 3.29'D) and contains 180 figures. The figures range from 15 cm high up to more than one metre. Several of the figures were also cast independently by Rodin.' back

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Office of the General Counsel, 'The Office of General Counsel acts as the source of legal advice to the USCCB and its Committees. It also supports the work of diocesan attorneys, State Catholic Conferences, and other national, regional, and local Catholic entities by providing uniform assistance on constitutional, tax, (including the administration of the Group Ruling), litigation and other matters. OGC attorneys have special expertise in tax exemption and associated lobbying and political activity restrictions, Church-related social security and pension plan issues, immigration, international aspects of Church interests, education, civil rights, pro-life, and communications. These areas are practiced in the context of church-state relations, and with particular attention to their impact on not-for-profit entities. OGC assists the USCCB in its legislative activities (by analyzing and drafting legislation, and preparing testimony), and participates in rulemaking and other federal agency proceedings. OGC also represents USCCB in litigation as a party or as amicus curiae and coordinates and supports the efforts of diocesan counsel in matters potentially affecting the Church. OGC attorneys also publish scholarly works and engage in public speaking on issues of law and policy. Finally, OGC provides a framework for direct information, a series of regional consultations with these attorneys, and a national meeting for continuing education and discussion on the legal affairs of the Church.' back