Modernism and Metaphysics

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For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.                      Romans 15:4-6

The problem of modernism , especially in light of the methodology employed in the Thomistic metaphysics employed in the Catholic Church, is modernism's representation of the internal experience of the individual as the foundation of reality, raising the practical sciences above the speculative sciences or doing away with the speculative sciences all together, denying anything other than the "knowable" as relevant for study, and claiming the material world as all that matters. In limiting what can be known and how it can be known to such a degree, modernism eradicates metaphysics and theology and in so doing renders it impossible for anyone to study or advance the faith.

Without metaphysics and theology, faith loses its anchor and compass and becomes a free-for-all in which each person can believe as he wishes and, according to modernism, has every right to do so. Today's Christianity, wherein approximately 38,000 non-Catholic Christian denominations exist, seems to attest to modernism's anarchy, an anarchy which may be leading to atheism.

Modernism's easy willingness to exchange the God-Man for the self-identification of Man as god is chilling. Without God, the divine, miracles, the sacraments, and the Church, faith reduces down to paranoid and self-centered hallucinations, a conclusion that divides rather than unites us.

In the midst of this collapse post-modernism, like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, unwilling to acknowledge the failings of its antecedent's philosophy, throws everything out of the window and declares there is no reality nor any standards, but mine. We now watch this petulant and ignorant child trash the house in which we all live and act as though there is nothing we can do about it. Let's pray that we take some action sooner than later.