Truth and the Culture of Distrust

Man can study the absolute WHY and never come up with a reasonable explanation. Science through various fields can ask the other question HOW. Even when when science asks WHY, it is really asking HOW as a consequence to other knowledge.
Considering the END TIMES at the end of the churches calendar. If man were to destroy the world in nucular [spelling ala Geo W] devastation and I firmly believe that God would not destroy the world.I believe that man could. Years later a few remnants could emerge from the mtns of Asia, or the forrests of Brazil,or the far reaches of Alaska. Could those remnants not relate a story of man's reaching beyond his intellect ,eating the forbidden fruit from the garden. That leads back to 'original sin' Science can't answer to WHY and the church shouldn't spend a lot of energy there either. The church should be into HOW like it is into prayer because science is a type of prayer

Sylvester, I am in the midst of a project that should keep me offline. But it's impossible to ignore anything you write. Or to say more than amen to what you write. Your point about truth and church being “green�, organic, alive, still flowering is outstanding and very compelling.

I see truth as eschatological as well, and the mission of church, from this perspective, is the ongoing pursuit of truth along with the entire human community. Truth is never complete this side of the eschaton. No one owns or possesses it, in the final and ultimate sense. Those who claim to represent and hold unilateral truth in their own handsare those who demand critique,, since that claims are always blinding. They are claims that have typically been made throughout history by those who do unutterable harm to others--often, without recognizing the demonic nature of the ideological truth that feeds their blind cruelty.

Truth is found in community. It is what we strive towards together, attain together, sacrifice and struggle to reach within community, even when it eludes us and will continue to elude us until the eschaton arrives.

Because truth is found in community, through community, and by community, every voice counts. As a community seeking eschatological truth, the church has a particular responsibility to protect and privilege voices that are trampled on by society at large. The voices of the weak, the downtrodden, the marginal have a privileged place in an eschatological community seeking the truth that lies at the consummation point of history.

Because truth is dialogical and is found within a dialogic community, there is also always an agonistic dimension to truth. We find the truth that norms all of our conversations in shared struggle. There will always be, in the history of a world moving towards the eschaton, those who seek to distort, misshape, misuse truth. As a community committed to seeking eschatological truth and to permitting the voices of the least among us to be heard, the church must take sides in battles for the truth, when such distortion and misuse of truth occur. Truth does not simply fall on us or come from above: it must be fought for, by acts of solidarity with those whose truth is trampled on by the powerful.

In the shared human pursuit of eschatological truth, all voices count, ultimately, precisely because the tendency of history is to silence all voices except those of the victor, of the strong, of the powerful and mighty. Yet the building of a world requires many other voices than those who claim to own and represent the world unilaterally--and we will see this far more clearly when the eschaton arrives than we do now, clouded as our vision is by the imperatives of surviving in a world that so often pays lip-service to truth, justice, and community, but that actually lives by quite other values.

There is also a dialectical relationship within the church between truth and remembering. Many voices that have made us who we are have not only fallen silent: they have BEEN silenced. As disciples of Jesus, we must assure that these voices remain compelling beyond death itself--that they are remembered, and not merely as historical artifacts, but as re-membered voices, voices put back together with new life, new resurrectional force. When Jesus broke the bread and offered the cup of wine, he enjoined his community to re-member. He did so envisaging the death he was about to undergo--the death of one crushed and silenced by oppressive power.

It is our responsibility as a community of constant remembrance seeking eschatological truth and seeking to permit all voices to count, to find ways to remember the voices that are silenced by oppression and by the tragedies of history itself. In remembering, we are also seeking that eschatological horizon in which every voice becomes part of the symphony of praise of a God who desires the liberation of all creation from bondage and suffering.

William D. Lindsey

The purpose of Catholic Theology is to confirm the Truth.(explain,defend)We already know that He,Christ,is Truth.He is,in fact,absolute.Nothing comes from nothing,nothing ever could.All that is in this world comes from Him.(the Creator)Science is really discovering that conditions exist,that everything exists in relationship.The story of Creation and the Fall of Man lies in the sin of Pride and the belief that one could somehow become greater than God.It appears that He decided to give us one more chance.Truth is the Word of the Father,who sent the Son and then, together, they sent the Holy Spirit.He is with us now as always through His Word,His Church and His gifts of the Sacraments.Have you forgotten that Christ said,"I Am the Truth,I am the Light(life),I am the Way?"He came to show us how to Love one another.He showed us by His Death on the Cross that to Love someone is to want Salvation for them.He came to show us the way back home to His Father in Heaven.Believe in Him. Trust in Him.He is our Hope for Salvation.

Yes! Natural Law, cosmic law at work in nature in myriad form(s) and function(s) is the "truth" paradigm for consciousness, intensional and intentional, in all life's transformational ways. I have written two trilogies (see Preview of "Green Religion" at www.secondenlightenment.org). The first book of the first trilogy, "PRIMARY SCRIPTURE, begins its introduction in presenting "Natural Law" as the premise for five books that follow. This is the introduction:

"NATURAL LAW
The premise of “Primary Scripture� is that the essential lessons edifying all consciousness are communicated uninterruptedly in Nature, and that in their natural place, humans commune with divinity — the Source. Natural reason (complexity consciousness) is a self-renewing genesis. Nature’s consciously enduring word/work is God’s.

"Introspective nature-consciousness authenticates Earthlife, but because of humankind’s ignorance, arrogance, and greed-obsession, societal sensitivity toward nature has been trashed; the poison of humankind’s self-obsessive disconnect diseases civilizations with mortal conflicts.

"The geologian Thomas Berry calls for societal awakening to an ecozoic awareness. In 'The DREAM of the EARTH', Father Berry says: 'Professional education should be based on an awareness that Earth is itself the primary physician, primary revelation of the divine, primary scientist, primary technologist, primary commercial venture, primary artist, primary educator, primary agent in whichever activity we find human affairs'. (Quoted with the author’s permission.)

"If humankind would desist from its self-undoing, it needs to recapture its naturally instinctual and sustaining consciousness, relocate its societies in harmonious relationships with global Earth life, and become a conserver of life’s diversity rather than its destroyer.

"Except for the fundamental fact of essential, codependent relationships, the physical/moral basis of vitality, of Natural Law, all other law pales in meaning and effect. Humans waste themselves and Earth life unless they conform their living to the codified scripture of the NATURALIS SACRAMENTUM ORDINIS.
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"The Very Reverend John Musinsky, S.V.D., past Superior General of the Society of the Divine Word and the onetime Theology Professor of Sylvester Steffen, is hopeful that a reconciliation of science and religion might help Church be more effective in reaching people who are now more scientifically informed, '...I would like to encourage you in your apostolate. The Church today does not know how to address modern man in such a way that she gets through to him. She will have to find new approaches. Modern man is certainly caught up in science and the approach from within his world is indeed promising.' December 5, 1999. (Quoted with permission.)"

it is precisely because we are made in God's Image that we can know truth. We can know truth. God is the Father of all and the Father of truth. We can see His truth in His creation. How we are made. I heard a priest the other day tell a story. Before he became a priest he was a member of the CIA. Part of the hiring process was a lie detector test. he explained that the physical reaction that our bodies have to lying is to raise our pulse, our heart rate, etc. We are made to be truthful and to seek the truth. And we can know it. I would find it hopeless to live in a world where we have no objective truth.

I had to read it slowly several times before I got through it. However, I agree with you. (I think!) If I had the opportunity for one more degree in theology, it would be in the area of ecclesiology. I believe that is where the core of the issues lie in the Catholic Church right now. Nothing bothers me more than when people talk about the "truth" and "Natural Law" but fail to understand the story of Creation and the Fall of Man lies precisely in his arrogance of thinking he (or she) can possess and consume it.