Month: March 2026

Conscience and Truth: The Reality of Goodness

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized , , , ,

Conscience is a Window to Truth, More on Pope Benedict’s work and its reception by Gen Z by D. W. Pasulka

  • My Non-Denominational Christian, Catholic Experience.  Is Christian Life Based on Belief in Things Unseen and only Hoped For? Actually, No. by D. W. Pasulka
    • “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1 NRSV
    • Spe Salvi (In Hope We are Saved), BENEDICT XVI
      • “Benedict says that faith is not merely subjective conviction, but the real presence of what is hoped for. And not just that, but more precisely, through faith, what is hoped for is already present “in embryo”… as substance within us. “
      • He reveals how Martin Luther’s translation shifted the meaning in a way that was not authentic to the early Church. Benedict’s translation is from the original Greek: “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen.

Excerpts

Ratzinger describes conscience as a window, an opening through which the human person encounters a truth that is not self-generated. Conscience is a “window through which one can see outward to that common truth which founds and sustains us all, and so makes possible through the common recognition of truth, the community of needs and responsibilities.” It thus establishes one’s obligations and duties.

Ratzinger taps into the tradition that holds that conscience is not something we invent; it is something we discover. He retrieves Socratic anamnesis—that there is in the human being a memory of the good and an orientation toward truth that precedes conscious reasoning. We recognize truth, he suggests, not because we create it, but because something in us resonates with it. This is why conscience can accuse us, disturb us, even wound us. Ratzinger says that the feeling of guilt is not a defect but a sign of health—the signal that we are still in contact with reality. When that signal disappears, when a person no longer feels guilt, this is not moral maturity but a kind of spiritual deadness.

This portion of Ratzinger’s essay reminds me of the work of philosopher Hannah Arendt, especially her book The Life of the Mind. Arendt was Jewish and had escaped Nazi occupied France in 1940 and eventually became a professor of philosophy in the United States. In The Life of the Mind, published posthumously (she was working on it when she died), her central question is: why do some people choose to do evil? One of the answers (there are a few) she arrives at is based on her observation that good people have regrets. Evil people do not. “The most dangerous people are not those who choose evil with anguish, but those who do not think, and therefore are not disturbed by what they do.” Evil people sleep well at night, she writes, and they do not have what good people have, which is an inner conversation about their actions in the world.

Guilt, or, having a guilty conscience, is a step toward the recognition of, and what Ratzinger calls us to see—the reality of goodness. Goodness calls us to align ourselves with it.

Love, Chapter 13, I Corinthians

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized

Teachings Of The Monk Of Skye. And: America Learns Its War Lesson, Again; Thank God For White Liberals  by Rod Dreher

Excerpts

This, I think, is what St. Paul meant in the famous chapter 13 from I Corinthians. You probably know this chapter, but to read it after reading McGilchrist opens it up in new ways:

If I speak in the tonguesof men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

In the interview, Iain discusses how the most profound things cannot be known directly, but indirectly. This is why poetry matters more than prose. He speaks of how “extraordinarily important” the liturgy is, and why it’s a very big mistake to muck about with changing the liturgy.

Moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD)

Tim J. Clark Uncategorized , , , ,

The ‘Me Generation’, Fifty Years On, And: Dreading Sundown; Trump & Civil War; UK Submission; Clergy Family, Rod Dreher, Mar 23, 2026

We now know that religious belief and practice peaked in America in 1991, and has been declining ever since. In 2004, sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton published their findings about the de facto religious and spiritual beliefs of the first generation raised after the Third Great Awakening had become cultural orthodoxy. They found that Christianity had been replaced by what they called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, a badly watered down form of Christianity perfectly suited for the Me Generation and its progeny. In 2011, after further studies, Smith glumly concluded that for the Millennials, “all that society is, apparently, is a collection of autonomous individuals out to enjoy life.”

Wikipedia

Moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD) is a term that was first introduced in the 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by the sociologist Christian Smith[1] with Melinda Lundquist Denton.[2] The term is used to describe the generalized monotheistic beliefs they consider to be common among young people in the United States.[3][4][5] The book is the result of the research project the National Study of Youth and Religion.[6]

Definition

The authors’ study found that many young people believe in several moral statutes not exclusive to any of the major world religions. It is not a new religion or theology as such, but identified as a set of commonly held spiritual beliefs. It is this combination of beliefs that they label moralistic therapeutic deism:

  1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
  2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
  3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
  4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
  5. Good people go to heaven when they die.[7]

These points of belief were compiled from interviews with approximately 3,000 teenagers.[8]