Friday, March 29, AD 2024 2:13am

Bear Growls: Truth

 

Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me.

John 14:6

 

 

Our bruin friend at Saint Corbinian’s Bear is in an ironic mood:

 

We will probably never know what Pilate meant when he asked Christ, “What is truth?” Sarcasm? The world-weary cynicism of a Roman official with one of the most difficult jobs of Rome? Or perhaps the echo of a genuine question from a decent young man long ago ground down by his responsibilities to a brutal empire?

In any case, it is the wrong question for our time and is causing Catholics far too much anguish and contention.
The question is not “what is truth,” and we betray our naïveté when we ask and our disloyalty to the Church when we complain. The legitimate question is “what does the Church now say the truth is?” In fact, the second question always answers the first, because of the inerrant truth-knowing feature built into the Church as an institution and the Pope in his office.

“Truth” is nothing more or less than what the Church, through its many channels, but in our day, primarily the Pope, says it is. We now understand that truth is a construct that is contingent upon the matrix in which we live. This matrix is comprised of our evolving language; our behavior; and the changing moral consensus of our culture as expressed in many different ways, ranging from our laws to popular entertainment. The truth is to be found in the current teachings of the Church.

The Church reflects the culture, and perhaps has done so for most of its existence, although we can only speak certainly of our own time.

It is irrelevant whether Church teachings are formal or not. Indeed, the less formal teachings of the Pope with a microphone in his hand loom larger in both the culture and the minds of individual Catholics. It is the informal teachings which are seized by the news gatekeepers, massaged, and then proclaimed in partnership with the Church – not merely reported, it is important to note.

“What is truth?” is not some great mystery. One of the main purposes of the Church is to be the authority that tells us what the truth is for our generation. The power of the keys means that the truth is whatever the Church – ultimately Peter – says it is. The Church is trusted with not just proclaiming the truth, but creating it.

It must be so.

The Bible is understood by all but the most conservative Protestant scholars as a collection of tales edited long after the events it relates by men who wished to promote different and sometimes conflicting agendas. It is certainly not historically reliable, according to the very best scholarship. Read the notes to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Bible, the New American Bible, Revised Edition if you have any doubts. They will quickly disabuse you of any lingering Protestant tendency toward bibliolatry.

Only a fundamentalist would today hold up the Bible as containing “the truth.”

Only the most naive traditionalist would look to the teachings of the brutal, superstitious and exclusivist past of the Church to find the truth for today’s world.

Neither Holy Scripture nor poking around in the Museum of Church History can be the source of truth today. No, the truth is what the Church says it is, most immediately and importantly through the Pope when he utters his oracles to the interpretive priestly class of reporters.

Let go of the irrelevant past and embrace the truth as it has evolved right up to this second and is proclaimed by the Pope: Peter, upon whom the Church was built and to whom the Keys of Binding and Loosing were given in perpetuity. Yesterday’s Catholics owed the same duty to yesterday’s Church. Why would some of you, today, presume to be less faithful and arrogate to yourselves the authority to decide “what is truth?”

Do you imagine for an instant that the Pope himself could (if he would even think of such a crime, which he could not, protected from error as he is) weave a carpet of lies to spread beneath the Bride of Christ without an army of brave and faithful bishops rising up to challenge him? The teachings of the Pope are confirmed by the agreement of the clergy, the acceptance of the people, and his personal popularity with the entire world. You may trust him without question and to question him is to place oneself outside the Church.

What is truth? The answer is simple:

Go here to comment.  Christ is of course the Way, the Truth and the Life.  The Vicar of Christ only has the authority of his office, and that authority does not include contradicting the teachings of Christ.

 

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Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Wednesday, June 7, AD 2017 9:57pm

We are not left orphans but, Lord, this is hard!
Is the pope antichrist? Are we?
Lord, who can accept this!?
Does the Church teach Truth? Are we the Church?
Save us from apostasy. Holy Spirit fill us so that we can trust in the Love and nearness of the Holy Spirit.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Thursday, June 8, AD 2017 3:00am

Evidently, the Bear has had enough of the Bergoglio nonsense. What he is saying sounds a little like a swan song. Hope not. We need the Bear on that wall that separates truth from fiction.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Thursday, June 8, AD 2017 3:26am

Bear-ing it together.

I feel his pain, our bruin friend.
In the examination of modern Truth a clarity flawed by magnification is my humble take. That being the glass used to examine Truth. Mercy is the magnifier.
If mercy itself is myopic then the Truth is perceived in narrow terms only, the focus is lost in distance. The application of mercy becomes troublesome because blurred vision will not allow one to see the path ahead…only the culture in the face is in complete focus.

Truth of course is neither modern nor ancient.

Like the foundations of Mt. Tabor it is the same yesterday today and tomorrow.

God have mercy on us.
Correct our sight. Clarity of vision is rooted in the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Mary De Voe
Thursday, June 8, AD 2017 5:07am

Jesus Christ is the Revelation of God in Truth. The Vicar of Christ is Truth only when the Vicar of Christ is the Vicar of Christ. Man, in his sovereign personhood, must pursue his destiny and Happiness to attain his original innocence as was done by Saint Augustine. The Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ is the Way to attain our original innocence into which our rational, immortal, human souls were created and endowed by “their Creator” and the discipline over our fallen nature. The TRUTH is the perfection of Jesus Christ in his obedience to His Father in heaven. What is bound on earth cannot be unbound in heaven. God does not contradict Himself. God does not revoke free will. What is bound on earth by man’s free will is bound in heaven by God’s gift of free will. God does not reject man’s free will choices but stamps man’s free will choices eternal. God’s mercy gives man the manhood and courage to live by his own choices…the alternative is to become a liar and go to hell.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, June 8, AD 2017 5:15am

I have worked in nuclear power for about 40 years since as a late teenager I got qualified to operate a nuclear reactor on a submarine beneath the ocean’s surface back in 79 or so. Science – the laws of physics, chemistry and math – governed everything I did. Not once did God change physical law for my convenience. Not once did the Regulator change regulation so I could do things in my own way instead of the safe way.

Why the freaking frack does this Jorge Bergoglio think God would do ANY differently with spiritual and moral laws?

God does not change. He is Truth. That’s it. We need to repent or we shall surely perish. God always wins in the end, not some geriatric senile Latin American Marxist Peronist.

PS, what is worse – liberals really believe what Bear wrote is literally true with this Pope. They wouldn’t be able to see the sarcasm and irony and paraody. They believe truth changes. This is why they make horrible nukes. They should never be trusted to operate reactors because they can’t accept truth is immutable. They are always trying to work around regulations. Then they crash against the inevitable laws of physics as their stupid dumb-idiot ideas don’t work.

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