(MAIN PROJECT):

The Development of Development: Documenting Theological Methodology at the Intersection of Polemical Historiography and Fundamental Ecclesiology, (1574-1878)

Here, I look at Newman's theoretical intervention as one of articulation, not novelty, building upon pre-theoretical practices rooted in traditional approaches to ecclesiastical historiography, while assessing contemporary resistance to Newman's theory as theologically interesting if ultimately untenable given how systematic theology stands upon (historical) testimony of the Faith and the Church's continued witness.  Despite all of the controversies of the 20th century, few if any serious theologians questioned Newman's theory of development in priniciple.  This understated basis of consensus is interesting.

Particular care towards the conclusion is how Newman's high premium on the study of history for the understanding of *theological meaning* came to be reconciled within the logico-deductive framework of scholastic system builders throughout the course of the 20th century in ways that, rightly or wrongly, responsed to perceived excesses or deficits of concern regarding "modernism".

 

Other Undertakings:

(1) Scribblings of a Graveyard Humorist - Collected Writings on Genealogy, Family, Folk and Traditional Religion, Debates on Nationalism-Patriotism, and the Devotions to the Holy Dead

• Genealogy Research to Family and Parish History, the Ethnography of Filial Piety, An Ecumenical History of the United States, Its Peoples, and Its Christianities, History of Funerary Rites (and modern industries of desecration/bodily commodification), and Theology of the Holy Souls of Purgatory
• Americana and Material Culture of the Dead
• Local History of Rapid City & the Black Hills and Regional History of the American Heartland
• STYLE: research notes, logs/journals, historical essays, etymological explorations in arcane topics, etc. but with dollops of humor and reassurance that you don't have to be perfect to eventually meet Perfection Himself.  You merely have to be sincere, authentic, and of good will while incorporated into His Mystical Body.

 

(2) The Advent Cycle of the Four Last Things:

1. Book on Death --- Specifically, on the Separation of Soul and Body and the Immortal Hylomorphism that is the Human Condition
2. Book on Judgement - Specifically, On Private v. Public Judgement in the History of Dogmatic Theology and what that means for a Liberal Society that has placed a high premium on privacy, freedom of conscience, and moral relativism.
3. Book on Heaven - Specifically, on Eternity, Aeviternity, and Epektasis [The New Creation is Quite Literally a Place, not a psychological "state"]
4. Book on Hell - Specifically, on the Physicality of Hellfire [Damnation as an Embodied Reality] and the All-Inclusive LCD of the Spiritual Life

* STYLE --- OSCILLATING BETWEEN A SERMON & "TABLE TALK", depending on the moment...

 

(3) In Media Res Poems -- On Revelation & Poesy [Theophanies in the Bible: Where God is *PRESENT* to Mankind] & the Literary History of the Catholic Religion [including Holy Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and Sacred Chant], but also the major Catholic poets and how their religion shaped their verse [DEEP REFLECTIONS ON VICO & JOYCE].  I AM MOST INTERESTED IN DIVINE HIDDENESS.

WHAT ARE THE GREAT FEASTS OF THEOPANY:

Historically, during the first few centuries of Christianity, Theophany (also called Ta Phota, the Feast of Lights) was a single, massive season that encompassed multiple divine manifestations before it was split into separate calendar days:

• The Nativity of Christ (Christmas)

• The Adoration of the Magi (the revelation to the Gentiles)

• The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan

• Christ’s first miracle at the Wedding at Cana

Over time, the Church separated Christmas (December 25) to celebrate the Incarnation, leaving January 6 primarily focused on Christ's baptism and the revelation of the Trinity.

 

(4) Literary Investigations in Marian Miracles for Assumptiontide up through the Feast of Christ the King and the Allhallowtide

• "Miracle of the Sun" and Its Source Documents
• The History of Kibeho, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Sorrowful Mother
• Our Lady of Zeitoun (1968–1971): The Document Trail
• The Tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe
• The Incorruptibility of St. Bernadette
• The Healing Waters of Lourdes
• The Testimony of the Miraculous Medal

HERE, I COMPILE DOCUMENTS AND PLACE COMMENTARIES/SCHOLIA ON THEM (!)

 

(5) Lenten Reflections on Ascetic Theology [Theogony and the Man of Sorrows]:: CHRIST'S SUFFERING DID NOT BEGIN AT THE PASSION; AND WE HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE, THAT THE DEATH OF JOSEPH OF NAZARETH IS WHAT PROMPTED CHRIST'S JOURNEY TO THE JORDAN.  WE CONSIDER CHRIST'S HYPOSTASTIC UNION OF GOD AND MAN IN RELATION TO HIS EARTHLY FOSTER FATHER ON THE ONE HAND AND HIS DIVINE BEGOTTENNESS IN GOD THE FATHER ON THE OTHER.  WE CONSIDER JOSEPH'S OWN HIDDEN SUFFERING AND CHRIST'S WITNESS TO IT IN THE "HIDDEN YEARS" OF NAZARETH BETWEEN CHRIST'S DISCOVERY IN THE TEMPLE AT 12 YEARS OLD AND THE START OF CHRIST'S MINISTRIES AT 30 YEARS OLD.  BETWEEN 10 AD AND 30 AD, MORE OR LESS, WHAT OCCURED IN GALILEE DURING THIS TIME AS JESUS WAS RAISED UP AS A FAITHFUL JEW?  OVER THE YEARS OF LENT, I STUDY MORE AND MORE SOURCE MATERIAL AND REFLECT ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF "JOSEPHOLOGY" AND HIS TITLE AS "PATRON SAINT OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH."

*INTENSE REFLECTION FROM THE FIRST SUNDAY OF SEPTUAGESIMA UP THROUGH SHROVETIDE AND PASSIONTIDE (!).  DURING THIS TIME, WE ALSO PERFORM THE SEVEN SUNDAYS DEVOTION OF ST. JOSEPH, the 30 DAY NOVENA, AND REFLECT ON THE SEVEN SORROWS AND JOYS OF ST. JOSEPH.

 

(6) Eastertide Letters* [Private Letters to Friends and Family, Redacted & Reflected Upon, and then studies of the Stoics against those of the Christians in the Epistolary Form].

*GENRE --- Epistles & the Epistolary Novel

 

(7) Historical Essays on First Things of Catholic Cosmology:: 

(a) Actual Infinity and Its Impossibility: A Mathematical and Philosophical Defense of Transcendent Necessary Being, the PSR, and Classical Theism

PURPOSE: God created the Cosmos out of nothing.  This mystery is supported (albeit not "proven") in so far as actual infinity is impossible.  It is far more unreasonable and a token of "magical thinking" to believe in "multiverses" than the Godhead.

 

(b) Monogenesis, Theological (Paleo-)Anthropology of the Fall and the Real Sacrifice of the Divine Logos

PURPOSE: It is a stumbling block for many, if not most, that evolutionary and biblical accounts could be equally true in the same sense.  While opened up by St. Augustine from the days of early Christianity, the symbolic account of Genesis and the difficulties of the literal sense took on particular assault by the dawn of the Scientific Revolution that led up into the Neo-Darwinian synthesis. 

What the increasing evidentiary weight and persuasiveness of evolutionary biology has done is push the biblical account of the Fall from one of historical explanation for suffering and death to one of mere symbolism about humanity's unique predicament.  This relegation to the "symbolic" robbed Christianity, many assert, of its basis in hard reality as a necessary account for the world.  Christianity became one of many alternative ways to live a richly poetic life.  It thus became optional. To be sure, many of the most successful Christian apologists of the modern centuries approach by the aesthetic and moral considerations of the faith as too beautiful and valuable to be anything but true.  But that is not the same as arguing that something is true by virtue of certain incontestable facts and probable inferences from those facts.   No, this is not how Christian apologetics worked in the days of St. Justin Martyr where the terrain remained firmly that of metaphysics as "first philosophy." 

A merely symbolic "Fall" is a problem.  If such an event was not historical (in some sense), then does the meaning of Christ's death not validate the Pelagian hypothesis of Christ as mere teacher of how to do better?  Was His death then avoidable? And thus no different from Socrates' death?  Does this not make Christ somewhat redundant as the modern world seems to strongly imply? This account says human beings can learn from Christ and do the same and much of what became known as "humanism" inherited this heresy in increasingly non-Christian terms. 

Such a question is at the divide within Catholicism as practiced (albeit not as magisterially taught): Does Christ's blood in such a world of mere symbolism have no sacramental value that effects what it represents?  We consider evolutionary humanism (i.e. "Progressivism") as quite at home with certain pelagianist flavors of "Social Gospel" Protestantism (from which it emerged) but not with Catholicism at all: With the Sacraments and their spiritual efficacy in mind, we are forced to consider just what precisely we inherit from our First Ancestors such that every human being (with two exceptions and one highly qualified at that) have this condition and why it is so bad, in fact, that "salvation" from a unique person who is neither simply divine nor simply human is totally warranted.  If Anselm were to write Cur Deus Homo? in today's climate, how would he have adjusted his treatise?  Or, far more likely, are we missing something so glaringly obvious that it is likely of Demonic provenance as a "problem" where our senses again override our rationality?  Does God expect us to jump through loops, or does He simply expect us to have Faith in Him as rooted in certain inescapable metaphysical grounds not only for this or that historical event but every conceivable event?   Here we explore why Christian revelation and its truths is to be grounded in something even harder than the natural sciences: that is, the first science of metaphysics.

(c) Original Sin, the Cosmic Messiah & Apocalypticism from Second Temple Judaism through the Church Fathers

PURPOSE: "Original Sin" is not of late Antiquity's formulation following St. Augustine but precedes Christianity proper.  Similar to the Trinity, "Original Sin" as an organizing concept proceeds well before the doctrine became terminologically defined as such.].  This exploration of Second Temple Judaic sects and their beliefs then reencounter the distinction between Original Sin and Particular Sin in the History of Christian Theology by emphasizing the former's relation to human nature and the latter's relation to particular human souls.

(d) The Resurrection of the Dead, Its Historical Origins in the East, and the Speculative Meaning of the Epiphany of the Magi

PURPOSE: the hypothetical origins of the Resurrection during the Babylonian Exile is taken as proof that Judaism "evolved" through a post-colonial syncretism of Zoroastrian beliefs fused with Jewish tribal memory just as any other ancient ritual system in the face of imperial cosmopolitanism.  But this natural fallacy that its origins disprove its prophetic authenticity must not be too swiftly dismissed as this assertion (quite tendentious but plausible) actually offers food for thought: Is the Resurrection of the Dead a perfect revelation by prophetic tradition?  Or, does it follow from two conclusions rooted in the use of reason: first, the immortality of the soul; and second, the hylomorphic nature of embodied humanity.  Is the Resurrection of the Dead thus something that can be prefigured in its vague outlined shape by natural theology?  If so, how should we understand the Feast of the Epiphany and the tendency to recharacterize by the Middle Ages the Magi more often as Kings than priest-astrologists?

(E) ON THE KINGDOM OF THE SACRED HEART, the New Adam and the New Eve, and the New Creation (!)

OTHERS IN DEVELOPMENT...

 

Militia Immaculata (VILLAGE MINUTES) - To the Assisted Living Communities, to the Jails of the County, to the Hospice Homes, to the Public Square and the Streets, to the Universities and Colleges & Vocational Schools, to the Air Waves, to the Internet & Social Media...   HERE, WE WILL DOCUMENT OUR EFFORTS SIMILAR TO HOW KOLBE WROTE OF HIS MINISTRIES (!)

BUILDING UP COMMUNITY:

(1) RUMMAGE SALES (COMBINED) DURING EARLY ADVENT (ORGANIZED IN THE CATHEDRAL) WHERE MONEY IS DONATED TO A CAUSE [Encourage Detachment from Material Things and the Spirit of Poverty]; (2) CHRISTMAS CAROLS (FROM DEC. 17 THROUGH JAN. 6) TO VARIOUS LOCATIONS [PRACTICE BEGINS LEADING UP TO GAUDETE SUNDAY]; (3) INFANT OF PRAGUE NOVENA IN THE CHAPEL FROM JAN. 5 through 14 [w/ REFLECTIONS ON THE TWO THERESA'S ON CHRIST'S HUMILITY IN CHILDLIKE FORM]; (4) LENTEN FRIDAY SUPPERS TOGETHER (W/ SECTIONS OF CONFERENCES THAT ARE READ ALOUD WHILE EATING); (5) TRIDUUM DIVINE MERCY NOVENA in Silence (from GOOD FRIDAY @ 9PM, through HOLY SATURDAY @ DAY BREAK; TO EASTER SUNDAY @ DUSK; THEN FROM EASTER MONDAY THROUGH THE OCTAVE @ 7 PM; THEN THE DMC AFTER HOLY MASS ON "LOW SUNDAY"); (6) LENTEN FRIDAY STATIONS OF THE CROSS & HOLY MASS (!); (7) HOLY FACE NOVENA -  CHAPLET & DEVOTIONAL PRAYERS FROM THE MONDAY BEFORE SHROVETIDE UP THROUGH SHROVE TUESDAY (!) IS A PRAYER FOR PREPARATION FOR LENT & AN ACT OF REPARATION FOR ATHEISM & SECULARISM (ESPECIALLY IN ITS MORE PUBLIC AND SCANDALOUS FORMS) as well as encouragement of enrollment in the Archconfraternity for daily reparations (!); (8) SORROWFUL MOTHER NOVENAS [Sept. 7 - 15; & 9 Days Before Passion Friday]; (9) NOVENA FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY (9 DAYS w/ DIFFERENT MEDITATIONS & GROUPS OF PEOPLE); (10) Public Rosaries on Memorial Day, 4th of July (Morning), Labor Day (for Workers & Common Good) also combined with May 1 of St. Joseph the Worker (!), Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day (to celebrate Christianity in the Americas and a Land without Serfdom), Veterans' Day, Presidents' Day (EVE AT MOUNT RUSHMORE to pray for the moral guidance of the Executive Branch), Inauguration Day, MLK DAY FOR Racial Healing and End of Inherited Hatreds, etc.; also, on the historic rulings on social issues of abortion, sanctity of marriage, and the sexual person, etc.

AT THESE PUBLIC ROSARIES, WE PASS OUT MIRACULOUS MEDALS...