I have written on this theme before, but the point bears repeating.
The Seven Deadly Sins refers to a specific idea in Christian tradition with a specific meaning. They are ‘deadly’ because they lead to other sins.
In order: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust. There is a reason for this order.
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When I converted to Christianity, I had to select a denomination. “Mere” Christians have no place to go on Sunday.
Naturally, I did not want to re-litigate the theological intricacies of the Albigensian Heresy, the Photian Schism, or Hussite, or Lollard or Lutheran. So I began at a simpler step.
As an atheist, I knew enough to know that Christians have always preached against divorce, contraception, sodomy. I took as an axiom that eternal God does not change His teaching to follow the fashions of the world.
If divorce is against Christian teaching, Anglicans are unfaithful. If contraception, Protestants, including Greek and Russian orthodox. If sodomy, Episcopalians.
This filter eliminates all denominations but one.
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March 9, 2025 AD
Feast Day of St. Cunegundes
Dear Godson,
On this day we celebrate St. Cunegundes, who was crowned Empress by Pope Benedict VIII when her husband St. Henry, Duke of Bavaria and King of the Romans, was crowned Emperor. She was avowed to virginity, and, with his consent, lived in continence with him. Calumny accused her of adultery, but she was vindicated by a miraculous sign: walking across flaming iron ploughshares without injury. She ruled as regent in the interregnum after Henry’s death in 1024. Thereafter, she became a nun, entering a convent she herself had built, and turning from a life of pomp and power to prayer and humble labor.
In addition to walking across flaming hot iron without hurt, the story is told that when her maid fell asleep one night, an unwatched candle lit the bed afire. Waking up in the midst of the blaze, the Cunegundes made the sign of the cross and the flames immediately disappeared.
It is often argued by atheists that reports of miracles must be false, because miracles abridge the laws of nature; and because the laws of nature cannot be abridged by definition, miracles do not exist.
This argument is circular.
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05 March 2025 AD
Ash Wednesday
Dear Godson,
Ash Wednesday opens Lent, a season of repentance and fasting. The rite of placing ashes on the brow has it roots in the ancient Jewish practice of mourning and humility, and, earlier, the reminder from the days of Adam that man is risen from dust and returns to dust.
The beasts of the field, as best we know, have no forethought of their mortal span nor any craving for eternal life. Devising memorials is no part of their lives, nor any admiration of beauty for its own sake.
Man gets a glimpse of eternity when his eye falls on beauty in nature, seeing star or diamond, moonrise or mountain, geyser, pine forest, rushing rill, rearing stallion, bright flower, sleek cat, beetle or butterfly or gurgling babe in joy, a damsel seen by candlelight turning her head just so, dark eyes softly gleaming.
Beauty reflects eternity, hence springs from God and leads back to Him.
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9 Feb AD 2025
Feast Day of Saint Cuaran the Wise
Dear Godson,
Today is the feast day of St Cuaran the Wise, also known as Curvinus or Cronan, and Irish Bishop of the Eight Century. When the press of bishopric work crowded out his prayer life, Cuaran fled to Iona, hid his name, and became a monk. However, he was found and recognized by St Columba and returned to his duty. He was called wise for his wide knowledge of canon law, but perhaps his flight from worldly offices to pursue intimate prayer with heaven was the better part of wisdom.
We can ask St. Cuaran to pray for the wisdom we need to face the question of man’s moral nature. If conscience is indeed the still, small voice of God within us, if it is supernatural, then God is known to us through the conscience: His voice reveals Him.
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26 Jan 2025 AD
Feast Day of Sts Timothy and Titus
Dear Godson,
Today we celebrate Saints Timothy and Titus, first bishops of Ephesus and Crete, who followed Saint Paul on his apostolic journeys. One was a Jew, the other Greek, one was circumcised according to the Law of Moses, and the other not, which was a matter of stark controversy in the Church in first years after the Ascension. Despite any differences, both followed Christ faithfully to sainthood, and are among the very earliest number of saints assuming the thrones vacated by the fallen angels in heaven.
The verse from scripture, “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom” distinguishes traditional Jewish and Greek approaches. Jews rely on the revelation of sacred books, whereas Greeks follow philosophy and science — the love of wisdom and knowledge — to discover what human reason can reveal.
And yet both paths, properly followed, lead to Christ hence to God. One might use Timothy and Titus as symbols of this twofold brotherhood of faith and reason. There is no war between them.
Today, we follow the Greek way. Reason brings forth proofs for God, especially these seven: the argument from design; from the nature of being; from the nature of reason; from free will; from first causes; from beauty; from conscience. My two previous letters addressed these first two. Here we turn to the argument from the nature of reason.
The “Argument from Reason” is not an argument merely saying it is reasonable to believe in God. Belief in God is reasonable, to be sure, for it is backed by historical and physical evidence, intuition and common sense.
But here we are offering a more abstract argument, namely, that without God, reason is unreasonable.
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15 December AD 2024,
Gaudete Sunday
Dear Godson,
On Gaudete Sunday, we light the rose candle of rejoicing, and give thanks in the midst of our season of penitential waiting. The coming joy of the birth of Our Lord awaits us.
In lesser matters, we can also take joy, in that the Lord made knowledge of Him open not just to the spirit of faith, but also to the eyes of reason. He could have arranges the world otherwise, but, in His mercy, the Lord saw fit to give mortal man just enough power of reason for philosophy to reach the pearly gate of heaven, but not enough to enter the throneroom. Reason can tell us that the Lord is real, and worthy of glory and worship, but more than that, must be revealed by a grace, or remain hidden.
But to know God exists is no more impossible than to know reality is real. Indeed, from the fact that reality it real, that being has being, is one way to know God exists.
The Church teaches, and reason confirms, that the Supreme Being is and must be the ground of being: and this all men know to be God.
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2 December AD 2024,
First Sunday in Advent
Dear Godson,
Today is the onset of Advent, the season of penitential waiting, filled with sorrow for our sins but overfilled with joyful hope in the coming of the Lord.
We have lit the first candle of the Advent wreath, named the prophecy candle and which stands for hope. So it behooves us to stand ready to answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you.
The main criticism by atheists is that our hope in based on faith, that all faith in supernatural things is blind faith, merely a misplaced trust in tale too fantastic and silly to be true, like belief in the Tooth Fairy, or in UFOs.
In a prior letter, we have seen that faith is a cure for undue doubt, for irrational doubt.
We have seen that faith is not merely a mood or sentiment where one treats something as certain which the reason says is uncertain: faith is an act of the will to put aside doubts the reason says are doubtful doubts, irrational doubts, night-terrors or childish fears, or, in the case of the atheist, and irrational argument against the self-evident prompted by pride, or some other human weakness.
Faith is sticking to your guns once you have already been convinced by reason and experience.
Reasonable doubts can be answered with reason.
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24 November AD 2024,
Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe
Dear Godson,
Today is the last day of the Liturgical Calendar, which differs from the Gregorian Calendar used by the world. This worldly calendar, as is fitting, begins and ends in the fortnight of the Winter Solstice, when, daylight hours cease to dwindle, light returns, and longer days begin again. But the Liturgical Calendar takes Christ as our Sun, and so we begin the year with the advent of his birth, and end with his triumphant Second Coming.
Today is a celebration of Doomsday. This Doomsday is the celebration of our salvation, and our resurrection, and of the salvation of the world, and the renewal of the world.
What is salvation?
From what are we being saved?
The word “Doomsday” has a dreadful sound to modern ears, but originally the “doom” proclaimed by a king included indeed the downfalls and punishments owed to the disloyal and wicked, but also the promotions and rewards owed to the loyal and righteous.
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28 July AD 2024, Feast of Saint Innocent I
Dear Godson,
These letters shall discuss why we believe, what we believe, and how we are to live our belief.
Today is the Feast of Innocent I, who is remembered for having condemned Pelagianism, a heresy that denied the doctrine of Original Sin. Pelagianism held that a man by his own efforts, unaided by divine grace, could avoid sin and earn a place in paradise.
The Church teaches otherwise.
Even the most dark-minded cynic ever to despair at the woe of the human condition does not paint a scene as dark as this: we are all born to die, all condemned to hellfire and damnation eternally, merely for the sin of being born human.
The sin of our nature is built into human nature, and no human effort can efface this sin, nor even mitigate it. You cannot climb out of the grave under your own power. You cannot climb out of hell.
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Our own VicRuiz writes:
I have heard fine-tuning advocates argue that a physical universe would be impossible for which (for example) the gravitational constant was not identical or near-identical to the extant value we observe. Therefore our universe bespeaks creation by someone or something capable of selecting that value.
This causes me to consider that something vaguely analogical to the Euthypro dilemma could be in play.
Is God constrained by the value of G if his intent is to create a universe with living, corporeal beings?
If yes, then God’s choice is limited by something beyond God’s control.
If no, then that phrasing of the fine-tuning argument does not seem particularly strong.
My comment:
Your thoughts run parallel with mine. When I was an atheist, the fine tuning argument did not strike me as particularly strong, nor now when I am faithful Catholic.
The Fine Tuning argument makes the informal fallacy of ambiguity, using the word “impossible” both to mean logically impossible and statistically impossible.
The Fine Tuning argument also makes the formal fallacy of irrelevance. The conclusion that if an event is unlikely, therefore it is deliberate, does not follow. If an event is unlikely, all that means is that it is unlikely.
If we compare it to other events that happened under similar circumstances then we can determine the unlikelihood, and this indeed can rouse our suspicion that the matter was deliberate, but it does not prove it so.
And these suspicions can only land in cases where we see parallel cases.
If I live in a world where monsters rarely eat cookies and children often do, and I enter the kitchen to find the cookie jar raided and junior with crumbs on his cheeks, practical wisdom tells me to disbelieve his tale that a monster ate the cookie and slapped his face.
If, on the other hand, I live on Sesame Street, and the only cookies I ever saw eaten were by a cookie monster, and no good little boy nor girl ever tells a fib, my wisdom would urge the opposite conclusion.
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May longtime readers forgive me, for this a topic previously discussed, ad nauseam. But, given recent events, perhaps a repetition is in order.
Marxism is a religion, as it has the properties all religions have in common: (1) an explanation or myth to explain the human condition (2) which imposes moral duties on its adherents (3) which, at times, are paramount above all worldly duties.
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Part of an ongoing conversation:
The “One God Less” argument says that Christians, by not worshipping the 4,000 other gods worshipped by pagans of East and West, are atheists toward all gods but one. Atheists merely worship one fewer god out of all the unworshipped gods than Christians.
A wry reply would be to say all men are theists, and that monotheists merely worship one god more than an atheist.
A sharper argument would be to note the false equivalence being assumed.
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Men from earliest times like to pigeonhole other men.
The Gnostics of ancient times divided men into three kinds: those ruled entirely by desires of the flesh (hylics); those ruled by the mind (psychics) who are confused but questioning; and finally those ruled by the spirit (pneumatics) who have achieved enlightenment. The carnal men were born damned with no hope of salvation; the mental men were Catholics and mainstream Christian, who have hope of being enlightened if they foreswear ancient teachings and convert to Gnosticism; and the Gnostics were enlightened and elect, and could not lose salvation, which was certain and sure.
The Calvinists, if I understand that odd heresy, were akin to Gnostics, but having only two types: the reprobate, born to inevitable damnation, and the elect, born to inevitable salvation.
Me, I have never liked categorizing men into such easy categories. Such activities always seems presumptuous. How odd to think one knows one’s brother better than he knows himself. The idea that we know where personality traits come from is an idea that any father who has raised children should regard with suspicion.
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The core secular reason for the success of Christianity can only be that Christianity portrays and accurate model, and accurate account, an accurate representation, of human life and its place in the universe.
The Gnostic model, like the Marxist model, portrays all life as a darwinian struggle between the enlightened and the benighted. There is nothing but a struggle for power. There’s no love between husband and wife, no mutual self-interest between employer and employee, no possibility of Amity between the races. There’s no justice between high and low, rich and poor. That’s not accurate.
Gnosticism says truth as a private matter, esoteric, not open to public debate or verification. That’s not accurate.
Marxism portrays man as collective. That’s not accurate.
Christianity says the first shall be last and the last shall be first. In other words the humble view is the wise and honest view. That is accurate. Read any history book.
Christianity says self-sacrificing love is more satisfying than selfishness. That is accurate. Read any primer on psychology.
Christianity says that what the world calls torture, death, defeat is glory and triumph. That is accurate. Read any dialogue of philosophy. And so on and so on.
