Correspondence with Ken Miller (part 4 of Staying with Father Murphy's God)

1) New blog on the kid : Responding to Miller, Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 1, 2) part 2, 3) Correspondence of Hans-Georg Lundahl : Staying with Father Murphy's God, part 3 - Correspondence with Ken Miller, 4) Correspondence with Ken Miller (part 4 of Staying with Father Murphy's God)

KM to HGL

17/02/14 à 20h14

Re: One AronRa described you as a "Traditional Catholic"

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 10:19 AM, HGL wrote:

Father Cekada and Bishop Dolan would very much disagree with your criterium.

Perhaps. But it is worth noting that the great Catholic Universities in Cardinal Dolan's own archdiocese teach evolution and write about its compatibility with Catholic teachings. See, for example, "Darwin's Tree of Life," Commonweal magazine, January 24, 2014. Its author, Elizabeth A. Johnson CSJ is professor of Theology at Fordham University.

But will you for the moment leave me an hour or two to write the response (it is a detailed essay, link will be sent), and if later you wish to excommunicate me, I fear the wrath of Father Murphy more than yours, ecclesiastically speaking./HGL

I am not the sort of Catholic who wishes to excommunicate anyone. But I sense that you are. Perhaps I am wrong about that, but I will hold judgment until I see what you write about.

Sincerely,

Ken

HGL to KM

17/02/14 à 21h29

Re: One AronRa described you as a "Traditional Catholic"

Withholding judgement about persons is a good thing, here is anyway my three part essay, including with our correspondence.

http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2014/02/responding-to-miller-staying-with.html

HGL to KM (again, after checking a fact)

18/02/14 à 11h27

I was not referring to Cardinal Dolan

I was - in context of Fr Cekada more naturally so - referring to Bishop Daniel Dolan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dolan

KM to HGL

18/02/14 à 12h26

Re: I was not referring to Cardinal Dolan

Thanks for the clarification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedevacantism

So you align yourselves with those who call themselves "Catholic" but deny the authority of the Pope.

Very revealing.

HGL to KM

18/02/14 à 13h14

Re: I was not referring to Cardinal Dolan

Align is, if you like, a word with more than one shade.

I was in connection with validity of your parish priest's ordination (if he was ordained by a bishop consecrated after the change of Episcopal Consecrations in connection with New Liturgy overall) at the very least suspecting they might be right.

Now, "denying the authority of the Pope" and "Catholic" is also a pair of not quite so simple phrases. Are Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox "Greek Catholics" or are they "Grecoslavonic Schismatics" or perhaps even "Photian Heretics"? If you can agree with them on married clergy (one Sedisvacantist Pope, Michael I, actually does so too, by now, he reopened the way for married men not widowed to be priests in exchange - if you want to be cynic about it - for sacerdotal ordination and day after, Gaudete [Sunday] of 2011, episcopal consecration, from a bishop of a line that went in schism against Pius XII in the fifties.

I am nowhere near denying the authority of the episcopacy over the centuries. Of course, at a given set of decades, the majority of bishops may have apostasised into some heresy (as with Arian heresy for at least those in the East). A position of Traditional Catholics any shade (between Extraordinary form or Opus Dei to Sedisvacantist) is that this is true of bishops such as get creationism branded as heresy. In other words those that agree with your God and say Father Murphy was mistaken.

And "denying the authority of the Pope" supposes the man whose authority I deny is really Pope. It also supposes I am actually denying his papacy rather than just wavering about it. With Bergoglio, I am pretty clear, as to Ratzinger I wanted to give him a chance.

But obviously NOT because agreeing with him on 15 billion years.

When Session such and such (four or five) of Council of Trent requires faithful to agree with the "sensus" that the Catholic Church "tenet", this "tenet" in the present form cannot be translated which the Church "holds right now". It is rather idiomatic Latin for what the Trentine confession clarified for Germans and English and Swedes as "tenuit atque tenet" meaning which the Church "hath held and still holds".

It is very revealing that a man who has been described - perhaps in the context of the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial, I think I heard you were involved in that one, but I might have been mistaken thereon - should have what amounts to very obvious difficulties about the sense of Genesis which the CHurch very clearly "tenuit" and therefore logically still "tenet".

Now, I am not really into throwing pies around the room about ecclesiastical authority, but I would prefer, whichever you prefer, to either discuss no more or to discuss evidence, whether it be about the sense which the Church "tenuit" through Church Fathers, or whether it be which way the evidence is showing. Obviously not accepting on my part the evolutionist and these days larger community of scientists as referees, and not expecting you to accept the creationist and these days smaller group of them as referees either. I think, first of all, that you are unduly preoccupied with the question of "who or what is refereeing" and secondly, that you showed it just now by your indignation about a people wanting to be Catholic without accepting the living referees you accept.

Do you accept the "dead referees" that I accept? Meaning that St Augustine, St Jerome, plus quite a few more, are not dead since they are alive in Christ.

And meaning that if fossils do not speak, some things can really be gleaned from these really dead things. Do you accept that kind of dead referees?

And, obviously a discussion dependent on neither of our paradigms, but rather between them and depending on logic (like in the formal logic taught by Aristotle in Organum)?

If you do so, you have from my essay now a few answers to be getting ahead of./HGL