Mercy of God the answer to the specific problems of our times

“The Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me… which I took with me to the See of Peter and which it in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate”. Pope St. John Paul II Taken from: https://www.thedivinemercy.org/message/john-paul-ii The Great Mercy Pope It was St. Pope John Paul II who told the Marian Fathers: “Be apostles of Divine Mercy under the maternal and loving guidance of Mary.” We've been faithfully following his instructions ever since. Both in his teaching and personal life, St. Pope John Paul II strove to live and teach the message of Divine Mercy. As the great Mercy Pope, he wrote an encyclical on Divine Mercy: "The Message of Divine Mercy has always been near and dear to me… which I took with me to the See of Peter and which it in a sense forms the image of this Pontificate." In his writings and homilies, he has described Divine Mercy as the answer to the world’s problems and the message of the third millennium. He beatified and canonized Sr. Maria Faustina Kowalska, the nun associated with the message, and he did it in Rome and not in Poland to underscore that Divine Mercy is for the whole world. Establishing Divine Mercy Sunday for the Entire Church When St. Pope John Paul canonized Sr. Faustina (making her St. Faustina), he also, on the same day, surprised the entire world by establishing Divine Mercy Sunday (the feast day associated with the message) as a feast day for the entire Church. The feast day falls on the Second Sunday of the Easter season. On that day, John Paul II declared, "This is the happiest day of my life." Entrusting the World to Divine Mercy In 2002, the Pope entrusted the whole world to Divine Mercy when he consecrated the International Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Lagiewniki, a suburb of Krakow in Poland. This is where St. Faustina’s mortal remains are entombed. The saint lived in a convent nearby. The Pope himself remembers as a young man working in the Solvay Quarry, just a few meters from the present-day Shrine. He also says that he had been thinking about Sr. Faustina for a long time when he wrote his encyclical on Divine Mercy. Further, the Holy Father has frequently quoted from the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska and has prayed The Chaplet of The Divine Mercy at the saint’s tomb. Beyond the Life of John Paul II Given all these connections to Divine Mercy and St. Faustina, is it any wonder that Pope John Paul II died on the Vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday (the evening before the feast day), which fell that year on April 3? It is also no surprise that the Great Mercy Pope left us a message for Divine Mercy Sunday, which was read on the feast day by a Vatican official to the faithful in St. Peter’s after a Mass that had been celebrated for the repose of the soul of the Pope. Repeatedly Pope John Paul II has written and spoken about the need for us to turn to the mercy of God as the answer to the specific problems of our times. He has placed a strong and significant focus on the Divine Mercy message and devotion throughout his pontificate that will carry the Church long after his death.

Awe-inspiring lessons of Fatima July 13th

“Yet every pope from Pius XII to Francis has said “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” The refusal to repent — the belief that sin doesn’t really matter — is at the heart of the major moral disasters of our time, from abortion to human trafficking, from the pornography epidemic to the urban violent crime rate. Those who see no wrong do terrible things”. Tom Hoopes Taken from: https://aleteia.org/2017/07/10/fatima-how-july-13-1917-changed-the-church Fatima: How July 13, 1917 “changed” the Church Tom Hoopes - published on 07/10/17 What Our Lady of Fatima did that day inspired many to convert, but provoked others to reject the faith. This week marks the 100th anniversary of the most controversial apparition of Our Lady in Fatima, Portugal. What she did that day inspired many to convert but provoked others to reject the faith out of hand. It made some people a little nutty and won the begrudging respect of others. July 13 was the day Our Lady scared the daylights out of three shepherd children by showing them hell and sternly warning them about a second global war and a new age of martyrdom. But the surprising — and surprisingly harsh — July 13, 1917 apparition changed the faith of the Church in our time. First: July 13 returned hell to the center of Catholic consciousness. Little Lucia dos Santos was 10 when Our Lady of Fatima began to appear to her every 13th of the month starting in May, 1917, along with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 8 and 7. But in July, instead of just exhorting the children to say the Rosary and pointing them to heaven, she showed them a terrible sight. “We saw as it were a sea of fire,” Lucia wrote. “Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form … amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear.” To give Our Lady of Fatima credit, the vision of hell only happened after a year of preparation, including visits by an angel and much reassurance about heaven. But the vision so badly rattled Jacinta, especially, that it seemed to change her personality utterly. The only thing that would make this vision okay, and not an example of emotional abuse, is if hell were a real place and we were in eminent danger of ending up there if we don’t do something drastic. It is. We are. Second: She reiterated the most unpopular — and most important — message of Christianity. The messages of Jesus (Mark 1:15), John the Baptist (Matthew 3:1-2) and Peter (Acts 2:38) were all the same: “Repent!” Jesus defined the Church’s mission as preaching “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47). Yet every pope from Pius XII to Francis has said “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” The refusal to repent — the belief that sin doesn’t really matter — is at the heart of the major moral disasters of our time, from abortion to human trafficking, from the pornography epidemic to the urban violent crime rate. Those who see no wrong do terrible things. Our Lady of Fatima’s vision of hell is an absolutely necessary corrective to the presumptuous expectation that we are all going to heaven no matter what. It is true that God wants to forgive everybody. But one thing stops him: We don’t repent. Third: Our Lady of Fatima de-romanticized war. “This war will end,” Our Lady of Fatima told the children in July, “but if men do not refrain from offending God, another and more terrible war will begin.” Whatever they understood about the particulars, the general sense of this message was clear to the children: War isn’t an occasion for God to reward victors, but to punish sin. The “reward” paradigm had existed for a long time in Christian history …. Every Christian culture had their Robin Hood and King Arthur figures: Heroes of the unconventional virtues of clever violence. But Our Lady of Fatima poured cold water on all of that. Martial virtues are real, but they are an example of God bringing good out of evil — not of God’s will being won by violence. Finally, July 13 de-romanticized martyrdom. For that matter, Our Lady of Fatima also level-set our understanding of martyrdom. In the at-home movies era, many of us are only now watching Silence by Martin Scorcese, which follows a Jesuit’s disillusionment as he looks for glory in the persecutions of Japan and finds soul-numbing horror instead. Our Lady of Fatima taught that lesson 100 years ago. The children saw a vision of the pope “half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow,” praying for the corpses he stumbled past until he was himself shot. Our Lady knows that in heaven martyrdom is glorious — and that on earth, it is painful and sad. The meaning of all of this was not lost on the three shepherd children. They learned that it was absolutely urgent that they console Jesus, convert sinners and commit to Mary. July 13 is only part of their story — a story that includes far more consolation than condemnation and was meant for every generation, including ours.

Physics not a substitute for Philosophy

by Damien F. Mackey “Traditionally these are questions for philosophy,” Hawking … writes, “but philosophy is dead”. The Grand Design In my opinion, the most perceptive writer on the philosophy of the modern sciences was the Australian philosopher-scientist, Dr. Gavin Ardley: Dr. Gavin Ardley skilfully explained the modern sciences (3) Dr. Gavin Ardley skilfully explained the modern sciences | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu The true situation was also well summed up e.g. by Christopher Dawson (d. 1970): “If the laws of mathematics are simply the creation of the human mind, they are no infallible guide to the ultimate nature of things. They are a conventional technique which is no more based on the eternal laws of the universe than is the number of degrees in a circle or the number of yards in a mile”. See also my Gavin Ardley-inspired, but also somewhat different, approach to the same general subject: Hawking and Dawkins - science fiction cosmology (1) Hawking and Dawkins - science fiction cosmology | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Ideally, critiques of books such as that of Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design (2011) should be taken up by those who combine both philosophical and scientific expertise. Dr. Gavin Ardley (RIP) would have been one of those well fitted to the task. So is Dr. Wolfgang Smith, a Catholic mathematician, physicist, philosopher of science, and metaphysician, who has weighed in on the subject: “We need also to remind ourselves that following the demise of Albert Einstein, it is Stephen Hawking who has become, in the public eye, the premiere physicist: the lone figure that personifies the wizardry of mathematical physics as such". Wolfgang Smith Below I shall be following some of Dr. Wolfgang Smith’s writings on the subject to find out if he, too, has Dr. Gavin Ardley’s clear perception of the distinct bifurcation between perennial philosophy and the modern theoretical sciences (“sciences of the categorial” below). Or, is his method of approach somewhat different? As I set out in some detail in my first article above: “It is commonly stated that St. Thomas [Aquinas] showed that there is no contradiction between faith and profane science. This is true of sciences of the real. But for sciences of the categorial we must look also to Kant. It is St. Thomas and Kant between them who have shown that there is no contradiction possible between faith and any profane science”. Dr. Gavin Ardley Aquinas and Kant: The Foundations of the Modern Sciences (1950) is available on-line (for example at: https://archive.org/details/aquinasandkant032149mbp) Chapter XVIII is the crucial one, for it is there that Gavin Ardley, following an insight from Immanuel Kant, puts his finger right on the nature of the sciences, or what the modern scientist is actually doing. Whilst the precise realisation of this had escaped some of the most brilliant philosophers of science, it had not escaped Kant – who, however, then managed to bury this gem of insight under a mountain of pseudo metaphysics. Other minds went close to discovering the secret, but failed to recognize the Procrustean nature of modern science, that is, the active imposition of laws upon nature, rather than, as is generally imagined, the reading of laws in nature. Ardley will finally sum up his findings in this splendid piece (but one will definitely need to read his chapter XVIII): Chapter XXI THE END OF THE ROAD The solution to the problem is now before us. The quest of the modern cosmologist for a satisfactory harmony of Thomism with post-Galilean physical science is nearing its goal. The bifurcation made by the Procrustean interpretation of physics rescues the dualist theory from the impasse in which it has been struggling. With our discussion of voluntary active phenomenalism in Ch. XVIII in view, we can see precisely how there come to be two orders, each autonomous. The Scholastic metaphysician functions in one order, the modern physicist in the other, and there is no immediate link whatever between them. There is a clean divorce between the ontological reality, and the physical laws and properties which belong to the categorial order. The link between the physical laws and the underlying causes is no longer of the first remove but of the second. The fundamental dictum of Wittgenstein is our guide here. [See his p. 98.]: that a law of physics tells us nothing about the world, but only that it applies in the way in which in fact it does apply, tells us something about the world. This all-important consequence of the Procrustean character of modern physics provides the solution to Phillips’ difficulty. [See his p. 224. The difficulty of course arises from the failure to distinguish the physicists’ data from phenomena. We are careful to distinguish them.] It furnishes the essential supplement to the otherwise admirable doctrines of O’Rahilly and Maritain. This doctrine of the two orders, soundly based, is very much more satisfactory than such a palliative as hylosystemism. Now we can retain the Thomist doctrine in all its purity, but we have added to it another chapter, so that the post-Renaissance physical science may at last find a home in the ample structure of the philosophia perennis. It is from Immanuel Kant that this doctrine of the nature of modern physics ultimately derives. Scholastics thus owe to Kant the recognition that he, albeit unwittingly, has made one of the greatest contributions to the philosophia perennis since St. Thomas. It is commonly stated that St. Thomas showed that there is no contradiction between faith and profane science. This is true of sciences of the real. But for sciences of the categorial we must look also to Kant. It is St. Thomas and Kant between them who have shown that there is no contradiction possible between faith and any profane science. Let us now summarise the contents of these chapters. The Bellarmine dichotomy between what actually is the case, and what gives the most satisfactory empirical explanation, has all along been the basic contention of the dualist philosophers. But the absence hitherto of an adequate explanation of how there can be these two separate orders has been the great stumbling block. It has driven other Scholastic philosophers virtually to abandon the dichotomy and try to work out a unitary theory. This has led to such a scheme as hylosystemism with its fundamental distortions of Thomism. We have shown how illusory such unitary schemes must be, founded as they are on the shifting sands of current physical theories. On the other hand we have supplied the missing explanation in the dualist theory. By pointing out the Procrustean categorial nature of modern physics, we have established its autonomy on a satisfactory basis. We have shown how the two orders can exist side by side without clashing. Hence the Thomist structure needs no alterations but only the extension of a wing to the house. We have traced in outline the slow recognition by Scholastic philosophers of the part played by artifacts, or entia rationis, call them what we will, in the new physical learning which has been developing since the 17th century. The time has now come for this recognition to be extended to a wider field than merely that of modern physics. We have seen in this work how systems of artifacts are to be found in a great variety of human pursuits. In nearly all our activities we avail ourselves of their assistance; we find at almost every turn a fabric woven of myths. Such a fabric is necessary to facilitate our passage through the world. But we must never lose sight of the fact that it is only myths and phantoms. We should never allow ourselves to be enslaved by our own creations: there are no bonds more insidious than those we impose on ourselves. Behind the shadowy world we have created to be our servant, there lies the real world. A phantom is but a sorry companion to any man. It is the real world, the world which ever is, to which we must turn our eyes, and from which comes our strength. [End of quote] Let us make our way through some of what Dr. Wolfgang Smith has to say when writing for the journal, Sophia, “Response to Stephen Hawking’s Physics-as-Philosophy” (Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies, Volume 16, No 2, 2011, pp. 5-48). Dr. Wolfgang Smith commences by summarising Stephen Hawking’s book: https://traditionalhikma.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Response-to-Stephen-Hawking%E2%80%99s-Physics-as-Philosophy-by-Wolfgang-Smith.pdf The Grand Design … to be sure, is not simply another “Physics for the Millions” production, nor is Stephen Hawking, its primary author, just another scientist addressing the public at large. What stands at issue is rather to be seen as the crossing of a threshold, an event comparable, in a way, to the publication of Charles Darwin’s magnum opus a century and a half ago. There have always been physicists who make it a point, in the name of science, to dispatch the “God-hypothesis”; what confronts us, however, in The Grand Design is something more. It is the spectacle of a physics, no less, presuming to explain how the universe itself came to be: “why there is something rather than nothing” as Hawking declares. The answer to this supreme conundrum, we are told, can now be given on rigorous mathematical grounds by physics itself: such is the “breakthrough” the treatise proposes to expound in terms simple enough to fall within the purview of the non-specialist. We need also to remind ourselves that following the demise of Albert Einstein, it is Stephen Hawking who has become, in the public eye, the premiere physicist: the lone figure that personifies the wizardry of mathematical physics as such. Add this fact to the brilliance of the book itself, and one begins to sense the magnitude of its likely impact, the effect upon millions of the claim that a mathematical physics has trashed the sacred wisdom of mankind! This contention must not go unanswered. It calls for a definitive response, a rigorous refutation; and such I propose to present in the sequel with the help of Almighty God: the very God whose existence has supposedly been disproved. …. We begin with Chapter 1, entitled “The Mystery of Being,” which does in fact deal with basic ontological issues. “Traditionally these are questions for philosophy,” Hawking … writes, “but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modem developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” …. Following this opening salvo, Hawking begins to delineate the radical change in the conception of “being”- he means of course physical being - implied by the transition from classical to quantum physics. “According to the traditional conception of the universe, objects move on well-defined paths and have definite histories.” …. Not so in quantum theory. Availing himself of the fact that quantum mechanics can be formulated in a number of different ways which tum out to be mathematically equivalent, Hawking chooses the approach pioneered by the American physicist Richard Feynman as best suited to convey his thought. And whereas he postpones his presentation of quantum theory a la Feynman till Chapter 4, he forthwith makes a central point: “According to Feynman, a system has not just one history, but every possible history.” …. One sees that Hawking has started to make his case: it begins to appear that the new ontology has indeed left traditional conceptions of “being” far behind. Noting that things are not “what they seem as perceived by the senses” … Hawking announces one of his foundational innovations: the concept of “model-dependent realism,” which is “based upon the idea that our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world.” One should add that the full force of what Hawking has in mind becomes apparent in Chapter 3 with the assertion that “There is no picture- or theory-free concept of reality” … where also we are told that model-based realism is “the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations.” …. Getting back to Chapter 1: Following the announcement of this crucial conception, Hawking goes on to consider the history of human knowing, “from Plato to the classical theory of Newton to modem quantum theories” … and proceeds to pose the following question: “Will this sequence eventually reach an end point, an ultimate theory of the universe, that will include all forces and predict every observation we can make, or will we continue forever finding better theories, but never one that cannot be improved upon?” Now, it is at this juncture that Hawking breaks with his predecessor, Albert Einstein: there is no “ultimate theory” as previously conceived which covers the entire ground, he maintains. What is called for is a radically new kind of theory, something he terms “M-theory,” a notion that dovetails with the conception of “model-dependent realism”; as Hawking explains: “M-theory is not a theory in the usual sense. It is a whole family of different theories, each of which is a good description of observations only in some range of physical situations.” …. The ultimate goal of physics-a science, namely, which in principle covers the entire ground an only be realized as an M-theory; and Hawking believes that physics today is closing in upon such a final and all-inclusive formulation. This brings us to the most amazing claim of all: the notion that such an M-theory constitutes the culmination not only of physics, but of philosophy as well: that it is in fact the only kind of theory that can enlighten us regarding “the mystery of being.” And what does it reveal? It informs us, first of all, that “ours is not the only universe,” that indeed “a great many universes were created out of nothing.” But-as if this were not enough!-there is more: the final M-theory, we are told, will in principle reveal all that can be known, not only regarding our universe, but indeed regarding everything. The task of the book has now come into view: it can evidently be none other than to lead the reader, step by step, through the formulation of the ultimate M-theory, as far as Hawking can take us at this time. …. …. The logic of Hawking’s argument is crystal clear: once the single universe of bygone days has been replaced by a veritable “multiverse,” the fine-tuning of natural laws and constants can be readily explained by the weak anthropic principle, which is to say that the “apparent miracle” has disappeared: “the multiverse concept can explain the fine-tuning of physical law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the universe for our benefit.” (165) Even this “debunking of the God-hypothesis,” however, is not yet the last word: in the final chapter (entitled “The Grand Design”) Hawking proposes to answer the “why? questions” posed at the start of the book: “Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why this particular set of laws and not some other?” (171) The substance of the chapter, to which we will confine our summary, is given in the concluding paragraphs; and as might be expected, the answer to the three “why? questions” derives from M-theory and the corresponding version of the anthropic principle. “Spontaneous creation [that is to say, creation conceived a la M-theory as a quantum event] is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.” (180) This is Hawking’s answer to the first two questions; and his answer to the third is M-theoretic as well. It derives from the strong “multiverse” version of the anthropic principle, which explains why we encounter “this particular set of laws and not some other.” The answer to the ultimate questions may thus be supplied by the physics now in progress: “If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3000 years. We will have found the grand design.” (181) …. The first point to be made by way of response refers to the nature of science as distinguished from philosophy. “Philosophy is dead,” Hawking asserts, and it is now science that carries “the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” (5) Yet granting that a good deal of what passes for philosophy these days may indeed be “dead,” the fact remains that science and philosophy as such are very different disciplines, to the point that neither can fill in for the other. There is in fact a complementarity, an opposition one can say, between philosophy, properly so called, and science when the latter is shorn of its mythology … and understood for what by right it is. To indicate, however summarily, the nature of this opposition, one needs to distinguish categorically between thought and language (a distinction, incidentally, which falls into the province of philosophy alone). Briefly stated, thought is an intentional act that seeks to apprehend an object by way of a concept, which may be defined in Scholastic terms as the form of the act. Language, on the other hand, is something subsidiary to thought: it is its vehicle, which serves to express and communicate thought. Now, it can be said that for philosophy, thought has primacy over language, whereas for science it is just the other way round. Let me explain. For the philosopher, the concept is ultimately no more than a means to a trans-conceptual end, which is finally the unmediated knowledge of the object itself; as the Chinese might put it, concepts serve the philosopher as “a finger pointing to the moon.” The scientist, on the other hand, has no interest in “the moon,” nor does he know that there is such an object. For him the concept plays a very different role; for what he seeks is not a transcendent object, but “phenomena” in the contemporary sense of that ancient term. …. How these so-called phenomena, moreover, stand in relation to the transcendent object is a question which concerns the philosopher alone, inasmuch as the very idea of “object” in the philosophic sense is foreign to the scientist. So too the scientist’s modus operandi is opposed to the philosophic: instead of “opening” the concept in quest of a transcendent object, he “closes” it to consolidate his grip upon phenomena. And that is where language enters in a foundational capacity: as Jean Borella makes clear, the epistemic closure of the concept by which a science is defined is effected through a criterion of scienticity specified on the level of linguistic or formal expression. …. One sees, in light of this analysis, that Hawking is right when he speaks of reality as “model-dependent”: it is precisely the epistemic closure of the concept that makes it so. This model-dependence derives in fact from the very criterion of scienticity by which a science is defined. But what is right and proper for science is fallacy and illusion for philosophy, which by its very nature is in quest, not of a model-dependent, but of a transcendent reality. What the scientist fails perforce to understand-unless he happens to be also a philosopher-is that a model-dependent reality is not absolutely real, which is to say that the phenomena at which he arrives by way of epistemic closure of the concept are defined or conditioned by that very process of closure. As I have shown elsewhere … the history of physics, from its Galilean beginnings right up to the latest “multiverse” theories, exhibits the various stages of this progressive closure, which manifests itself in a concomitant recession of the corresponding objects from actual human experience, culminating in the conception of entities pertaining to universes other than our own. What concerns us at the moment, however, is not the truth or validity of these theories, but simply the aforesaid opposition between science and philosophy. The upshot of these summary considerations is simply this: to suggest that science can, even in principle, replace philosophy “in our quest for knowledge” is to exhibit a fundamental lack of comprehension regarding the nature and scope of either discipline. My second point of contention pertains to an aspect of Hawking’s model-dependent realism which proves to be untenable. It is to be noted, first of all, that in its recognition of “model-dependency” in regard to cosmic realities, the notion is reminiscent of a basic metaphysical principle: what in fact I have termed “anthropic realism.” …. The latter affirms that the cosmos exists, not in splendid isolation as a Kantian Ding an sich, but indeed “for us,” that is to say, as an object of human intentionality. Man and cosmos, therefore, belong together: they form a complementarity. And this is essentially what “model-dependent realism” affirms as well: here too the human observer comes into play by virtue of the fact that it is he who forges the conceptions-the “models”-in terms of which reality is apprehended. Yet there is a difference between model-dependent and anthropic realism, which proves to be crucial: for whereas Hawking regards the human observer as a component or part of the universe … anthropic realism insists that man, the authentic anthropos, transcends the cosmos, that he is literally and necessarily “not of this world.” To be sure, his physical body does evidently pertain to the cosmos, the world in which we find ourselves; the point, however, is that man as such does not reduce to that physical body: the observer or witness, in other words, proves to be transcendent. Now, it happens that even from a strictly scientific point of view, the reductionist conception of the observer turns out finally to be untenable. Take the case of visual perception: in keeping with prevailing opinion, Hawking assumes that vision reduces to brain function. We are told, for example, that the human brain “reads a two-dimensional array of data from the retina and creates from it the impression of a three-dimensional space.” (47) This tenet, however, has been critically challenged by an empirical scientist, named James Gibson, on the basis of experimental findings gathered in what is perhaps to date the most exhaustive inquiry into the nature of visual perception. What Gibson’s experiments have brought to light is the decisive fact that perception is based, not upon a retinal image (as just about everyone had assumed), but on information given in the ambient optic array, which moreover specifies, among other things, the three-dimensional structure of the environment. It appears that our visual system is designed, not simply to receive a retinal image, but to sample that ambient optic array and extract from it what Gibson terms its invariants. It is these invariants that are actually perceived, which is to say that the percept is not constructed, but objectively real: it is not simply “inside the head,” but outside, as mankind had in fact always assumed. …. [End of quotes] See also my article: Common sense philosophy of Irish Bishop George Berkeley (4) Common sense philosophy of Irish Bishop George Berkeley | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu and, too, of relevance to our subject: Scientists are generally pitifully unqualified to pontificate upon matters metaphysical (4) Scientists are generally pitifully unqualified to pontificate upon matters metaphysical | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu

The return to scientific reality

“Legendary reclusive genius Wolfgang Smith demonstrates on shockingly obvious grounds the dead end at which physics has arrived, and how we can “return, at last, to the real world”. https://philos-sophia.org/about-the-film/ THE END OF QUANTUM REALITY Mathematician-philosopher-physicist extraordinaire Wolfgang Smith has chosen to emerge now, at the summit of his life’s work, in order to prepare a new generation for what he calls “a singular moment in history.” Is the so-called “quantum reality problem” actually the sign that a four-century arc of human history—what René Guénon has called “the reign of quantity”—is reaching its end? From the creative team that brought you The Principle in 2014, The End of Quantum Reality—which also features Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Olavo de Carvalho, and narrator Richard DeLano—is now available on disc and digital streaming. Don’t miss this singular documentary designed to blow the doors off the quantum reality problem, and signal the end of the Reign of Quantity. SYNOPSIS Almost one hundred years ago, the project to reduce the world to mathematical physics failed suddenly and completely: “One of the best-kept secrets of science,” physicist Nick Herbert writes, “is that physicists have lost their grip on reality.” The world, we are now told, emerges spontaneously, out of “nothing,” and constitutes a “multiverse,” where “anything that can happen will happen, and it will happen an infinite number of times.” Legendary reclusive genius Wolfgang Smith demonstrates on shockingly obvious grounds the dead end at which physics has arrived, and how we can “return, at last, to the real world.” The End of Quantum Reality introduces this extraordinary man to a contemporary audience which has, perhaps, never encountered a true philosophos, as intimately at ease with the rigors of quantum physics as with the greatest schools of human wisdom. • “Wolfgang Smith broaches a vast range of subjects with a mastery that bespeaks an immense culture… It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of [his] work.” —Jean Borella, Professor of Philosophy, University of Nancy, France • “Here is that rare person who is equally at home with Eckhart and Einstein, Heraclitus and Heisenberg!” —Harry Oldmeadow, Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe University, Australia • “Wolfgang Smith is as important a thinker as our times boast.” —Huston Smith, Professor of Philosophy, M.I.T., and author of The World’s Religions

Common sense philosophy of Irish Bishop George Berkeley

by Damien F. Mackey In Berkeley's Renovation of Philosophy, Gavin Ardley paints an entirely different portrait of Berkeley as a most common sense and realist philosopher, “one who strove to seat philosophy once more on the broad human and common sense foundations laid by Plato and Aristotle”. The sorely misunderstood Bishop George Berkeley (2 March 1685 – 14 January 1753) is quite well represented here: https://iep.utm.edu/george-berkeley-philosophy-of-science/ George Berkeley: Philosophy of Science George Berkeley announces at the very outset of Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous that the goals of his philosophical system are to demonstrate the reality of genuine knowledge, the incorporeal nature of the soul, and the ever-present guidance and care of God for us. He will do this in opposition to skeptics and atheists. A proper understanding of science, as Berkeley sees it, will be compatible with his wider philosophy in achieving its goals. His project is not to rail against science or add to the scientific corpus. Quite to the contrary, he admires the great scientific achievements of his day. He has no quarrel with the predictive power and hence the usefulness of those theories. His project is to understand the nature of science including its limits and what it commits us to. A proper understanding of science will show, for example, that it has no commitment to material objects and efficient causation. Understanding this and other philosophical prejudices will undercut many of the assumptions leading to skepticism and atheism. In exploring the nature of science, Berkeley provides insights into several of the central topics of what is now called the philosophy of science. They include the nature of causation, the nature of scientific laws and explanation, the nature of space, time, and motion, and the ontological status of unobserved scientific entities. Berkeley concludes that causation is mere regularity; laws are descriptions of fundamental regularities; explanation consists in showing that phenomena are to be expected given the laws of nature; absolute space and time are inconceivable; and at least some of the unobserved entities in science do not exist, though they are useful to science. Each of these topics is explored in some detail in this article. …. [End of quote] But by far the best account of Berkeley has been given by Dr. Gavin Ardley, who reveals him as being a most poorly misunderstood, and wrongly classified, philosopher of science and mathematics. Some decades ago, Gavin Ardley (RIP) very kindly posted me a copy of his marvellous book, Berkeley's Renovation of Philosophy (Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), in which he turned upside down virtually everything that I had been taught about the Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher, George Berkeley (1685 -1753). Traditionally, bishop George Berkeley - who is not highly regarded at all by champions of philosophia perennis - is placed alongside such Age of Enlightenment philosophers as Locke and Hume, albeit with his own unique brand of Empiricism. For example (http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_berkeley.html): Bishop George Berkeley (1685 - 1753) was an Irish philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, best known for his theory of Immaterialism, a type of Idealism (he is sometimes considered the father of modern Idealism). Along with John Locke and David Hume, he is also a major figure in the British Empiricism movement, although his Empiricism is of a much more radical kind, arising from his mantra "to be is to be perceived". And again (http://www.iep.utm.edu/berkeley/): George Berkeley was one of the three most famous British Empiricists. (The other two are John Locke and David Hume.) Berkeley is best known for his early works on vision (An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, 1709) and metaphysics (A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 1713). …. Berkeley claimed that abstract ideas are the source of all philosophical perplexity and illusion. In his Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge he argued that, as Locke described abstract ideas (Berkeley considered Locke’s the best account of abstraction), (1) they cannot, in fact, be formed, (2) they are not needed for communication or knowledge, and (3) they are inconsistent and therefore inconceivable. In the Principles and the Three Dialogues Berkeley defends two metaphysical theses: idealism (the claim that everything that exists either is a mind or depends on a mind for its existence) and immaterialism (the claim that matter does not exist). His contention that all physical objects are composed of ideas is encapsulated in his motto esse is percipi (to be is to be perceived). …. [End of quotes] According to Gavin Ardley In Berkeley's Renovation of Philosophy, Gavin Ardley paints an entirely different portrait of Berkeley as a most common sense and realist philosopher, “one who strove to seat philosophy once more on the broad human and common sense foundations laid by Plato and Aristotle”. Berkeley, Ardley explains, has been misread, causing his actual philosophical outlook to have been quite misunderstood due to a misinterpretation of his dialectical method. For often Berkeley’s antithesis has been taken for his final synthesis, with the inevitably catastrophic result: “… they select and abstract from the totality of Berkeley, and miss the robust simplicity and universality of Berkeley’s intentions”. Ardley introduces his book as follows: In this work I have endeavoured to see Berkeley in his contemporary setting. On the principle that philosophy is ultimately about men, not about abstract problems, I have tried to see Berkeley the philosopher as an expression of Berkeley the man. When this is done, what is perennial in the philosophy may be discerned in and through what is local and temporal. Berkeley then emerges as a pioneer reformer; not so much an innovator as a renovator; one who set out to rescue philosophy from the enthusiasms of the preceding age; one who strove to seat philosophy once more on the broad human and common sense foundations laid by Plato and Aristotle. Critical studies of some of the more striking of Berkeley's epistemological arguments are legion. They commenced with the young Berkeley's first appearance in print, and have continued to this day. But whether they take the form of professions of support for Berkeley, or of bald refutations of Berkeley's supposed fallacies, or whether, like the contemporary analytical studies of Moore, Warnock, and Austin, they are subtle exposures of alleged deeply concealed logical muddles, they all tend to share one common characteristic: they select and abstract from the totality of Berkeley, and miss the robust simplicity and universality of Berkeley's intentions. It is the intentions which control the whole, and give the right perspective in which to view the various items. [End of quote] After that it is a roller coaster ride towards the discovery of an entirely new Berkeley and his vital contribution - not without Ardley’s points of criticism here and there - to the philosophy of modern science and mathematics. Not least of Gavin Ardley’s achievements here is his re-interpretation of Berkeley’s supposed principle of immaterialism, esse est percipi, along the lines of realism and common sense. Earlier we read of the standard view of Berkeley in this regard: “[Berkeley’s] immaterialism (the claim that matter does not exist). His contention that all physical objects are composed of ideas is encapsulated in his motto esse is percipi (to be is to be perceived)”. Berkeley’s true view of this famous principle is well explained also in the following review: “… everything that is perceived is truly real and existing; it is, because it is perceived, esse est percipi”. http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/MC.13.4.338?journalCode=mc George Berkeley’s common sense “The young Berkeley felt himself to be a man with a reforming mission. Philosophers of the past, and especially the mathematicians and physicists of the previous century, had, he believed, so mingled truth with error, that our educated knowledge of the world had become embarrassed with shameful contradictions …”. Gavin Ardley The following choice items from Gavin Ardley’s Berkeley’s Renovation of Philosophy (1968) have been taken from various chapters of the book as summarised at: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2107069944_Gavin_Ardley The Mysterious Universe When Berkeley admitted the relevance of common sense, he was introducing a notion of philosophical investigation diametrically opposed to the notion commonly accepted since Descartes. Under the Cartesian aegis we are directed to search for the clear and distinct, and to put aside all that is obscure, ill-defined, or in any way mysterious. Berkeley believed this search to be vain and illusory: These metaphysicians of the way of ideas and abstractions are not exploring the universe as it is; instead, they are fabricating a new universe composed of clear and distinct elements. They exclude mystery from their structure in the interest of clarity, but this clarity is worthless, and the construction a mere imposture. Berkeley observed that the quest for the clear and distinct generates its opposite: the other face of the clear and distinct is the non-entity, as witness the empty concepts of matter, absolute space, etc. A world rendered clear and distinct on the surface has, beneath that shining surface, the blankness or opacity of the irrational. The attempt to bring full light to one half of the world leaves the other in total darkness. In excluding mystery, these metaphysicians have thrust the world further away from us, rendered it paradoxical and absurd and ultimately unknowable. They have made an image of the world after their own likeness; and the image has feet of clay. …. The Two Kinds of Metaphysics From this preliminary review of Berkeley’s intentions we may better understand his words in praise of common sense. The Exact Sciences We have seen that in matters of education, pseudo-metaphysics has a positive, indeed indispensable, role in bringing our minds to maturity. The proviso being that the situation in which pseudo-metaphysics is allowed free play shall be one of antecedent strength and resilience. We have seen too that for a brief space Berkeley tacitly subscribed to this principle, as witness the dialectical composition of the body of the Principles and the Three Dialogues. But for a brief space only: elsewhere his attitude to pseudo-metaphysics tends to be simply negative and denunciatory; it is absurd and nonsensical, it encourages infidelity, it corrupts reason and common sense, and it hinders the progress of the sciences. The Analogy of the Grammar of Nature The ideas of sense, observes Berkeley, come to us with sufficient regularity to admit of an expectancy growing up by habit and custom, whereby on the occasion of one idea we anticipate another. The first idea is then the sign of the second: “Ideas which are observed to be connected with other ideas come to be considered as signs, by means whereof things not actually perceived by sense are signified or suggested to the imagination, whose objects they are, and which alone perceives them” (T.V.V. 39). If there be a great variety of such arbitrary signs, closely articulated together, they will constitute a language — artificial if it be of human devising, but if instituted by the Author of Nature, then a natural language (T.V.V. 40). The non-visual senses provide us with signs, but their variety and articulation are not (except to some degree for sound) of a sufficiently high order for the ensemble to be called a language. It is vision, above all, (and in a minor degree sound) which provides us with a natural language: “All signs are not language: not even all significant sounds, such as the natural cries of animals, or the inarticulate sounds and interjections of men. It is the articulation, combination, variety, copiousness, extensive and general use and easy application of signs (all which are commonly found in vision) that constitute the true nature of language” (Alc. iv, 12). Hence Berkeley can say boldly “Vision is the language of the Author of Nature” (T.V.V. 38), therein re-affirming the pioneer doctrine of the New Theory of Vision. “Upon the whole, I think we may fairly conclude that the proper objects of vision constitute an universal language of the Author of Nature, whereby we are instructed how to regulate our actions in order to attain those things that are necessary to the preservation and well-being of our bodies, as also to avoid whatever may be hurtful and destructive of them” (N.T.V. 147). Adding, on later reflection, sound as the junior partner of vision in this divine sensible language (T.V.V. 40). Berkeley’s Intentions The Berkeley of popular tradition, of learned jest and limerick, is an eccentric figure, a ridiculous and unworldly metaphysician. The Berkeley who emerges from his correspondence, and from a study of his adventurous career, is a very different figure; one of those rare characters of noble simplicity, such as Plato envisaged for his guardians; a robust down-to-earth man, eminently sober, practical, and judicious; an independent man, who hated cant and abject conformity; a man who delighted in the richness and variety of things, and sympathised with all sorts and conditions of men; a man of learning and piety, imbued with joyous reforming zeal and missionary enterprise; yet no visionary or anarchist, rather one who disciplined his abundant energies into the channels of enlightened common sense. The Problem of the Exact Sciences In these first chapters (I–IV) we shall be concerned for the most part with Berkeley’s critique of the exact sciences, and his reflections on human knowledge as they arose out of his reading of Locke and Newton. In fact, the young Berkeley had meditated a great deal about other philosophical issues, and had read other authors, notably Malebranche and Bayle (oblique references to these French philosophers abound in the Philosophical Commentaries, the Principles and the Three Dialogues), Nevertheless, it was on Newton’s natural philosophy that Berkeley concentrated his attention in the early published works; and to attain a conspectus of Berkeley’s endeavours it is appropriate to confine attention at first to this element. Later, we shall look at Berkeley’s work in a more ample setting. The Anthropocentric Character of Space, Time, and Motion The principle of immaterialism once established, not only are paradoxes immediately connected with the notion of matter eliminated, but many other paradoxes and distorted presentations, not at first evidently associated with matter, are found to dissolve away: “Matter being once expelled out of Nature, drags with it so many sceptical and impious notions, such an incredible number of disputes and puzzling questions —” (Pr. 96). Not least amongst these are the puzzles raised by mathematical physics regarding space, time, and motion. The Rôle of Common Sense The metaphysical extravagances of the Seventeenth Century provoked a reaction. Men such as Fenelon and Buffier in France, Berkeley in Ireland, Reid and his circle in Scotland, and, in a paradoxical way, David Hume, rose up to advance the claims of common sense.1 But they did so in radically different ways: and it soon became apparent that some of the proffered explications of common sense had within them vices similar to those which they were intended to extirpate. Berkeley’s Dialectic In a revealing jotting of his youth (apparently an addendum to the Note Books) Berkeley writes: “He that would win another over to his opinion must seem to harmonize with him at first and humour him in his own way of talking. From my childhood I had an unaccountable turn of thought that way.” (Works ix, p. 153). Mathematics and Nature The young Berkeley felt himself to be a man with a reforming mission. Philosophers of the past, and especially the mathematicians and physicists of the previous century, had, he believed, so mingled truth with error, that our educated knowledge of the world had become embarrassed with shameful contradictions (P.C. 679, Pr. Intro. 1). The problem was, how best to set it right, without incurring too much hostility and so bringing the reform to nought: “People will say, ‘I am young, I am an upstart, I am a pretender, I am vain …’” (P.C. 465). Great caution, therefore, must be exercised: “Mem.”, notes Berkeley, “Upon all occasions to use the utmost modesty. To confute the mathematicians with the utmost civility and respect. Not to style them Nihilarians, etc.” (P.C. 633). He resolved on the plan of correcting men’s mistakes without altering their language. “This makes truth glide into their souls insensibly” (P.C. 185).1 Accordingly, he adopted current popular terms such as “idea” and “in the mind,” but gave them new tacit meanings.2 The results of these tactics were not, on the whole, what the author intended. He had a few discerning readers, but for the most part he has been thought an ingenious sophist, a subjective idealist, or, latterly, a positivist and a forerunner of the positivistic interpretation of the sciences. Philosophical Scruples: Their Cause and Cure The illiterate bulk of mankind, observes Berkeley, walk the highroad of plain common sense (Pr. Intro. 1). They follow sense and instinct, and thus remain easy and undisturbed, because familiarity breeds accountability and comprehension. Illiterate men are not unreflective, but rather the reverse. They do not enjoy the benefits of literacy; but neither do they suffer from its evils. The illiterate bulk of mankind have never heard sceptical doubts voiced; or if they have so heard they shrug off such reasonings. Illiterate reflections may be eccentric; but they will not be absurd. The Potentiality of Common Sense Berkeley was not actuated by any sentimental attachment to common sense. Rather did he regard criticised common sense as something ultimately inescapable, try as we may. In men at their best the nature of common sense is most patent. But the force of common sense is most clearly exhibited at the opposite pole: that men at their worst and most perverse cannot escape it. They betray its presence at every moment in practice, (cf. VI, 3.) Long ago, Plato pointed to something analogous in his argument for the primacy of morality: robbers are immoral in their external dealings, but must perforce be moral in their internal dealings. (Rep. 351 f.) St. Augustine summed up the situation on one pungent phrase: “No vice, however unnatural, can pull nature up by the roots” (De Civ. Dei, xix, 12). The Role of Play in the Philosophy of Plato We are little accustomed in modern times to think of philosophy in terms of play. With few exceptions, philosophers in the last few centuries are conspicuous for their gravity. If a lighter touch enters their writings it is rather as a douceur with which to punctuate argument. To charge a philosopher with playing games is to condemn his activity as trivial and futile.

Pope Francis and the Vatican cautious about apparitions and weeping statues

“… [Pope] Francis has expressed skepticism about more recent events, including claims of repeated messages from Mary to “seers” at the shrine of Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina”. Nicole Winfield On the Medjugorje phenomenon, see my (Damien Mackey’s) articles: Medjugorje and the Mad Mouthings of the ‘Madonna of the Antichrist’ (1) Medjugorje and the Mad Mouthings of the 'Madonna of the Antichrist' | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu and: Medjugorje is all about the money (2) Medjugorje is all about the money | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Now, we read at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-stigmata-statues-pope-medjugorje-b2547725.html Vatican updates rules on weeping statues and stigmata amid fake news fears Apocalyptic prophesies are spreading online faster than ever before, causing confusion among the faithful Nicole Winfield …. Church figures who claimed to have experienced the stigmata wounds have inspired millions of Catholics The Catholic Church has a long and controversial history of the faithful claiming to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, of statues that purportedly wept blood tears and stigmata that erupted on hands mimicking the wounds of Christ. On Friday [17th May, 2024], the Vatican announce[d] new norms to help determine whether and when these seemingly supernatural events are authentic. It’s stepping in amid a boom in claims and concern that apocalyptic prophesies are spreading online faster than ever before, causing confusion among the faithful. When confirmed as authentic by church authorities, these otherwise inexplicable divine signs can lead to a flourishing of the faith, with new religious vocations and conversions. That has been the case for the purported apparitions of Mary that turned Fatima, Portugal and Lourdes, France into enormously popular pilgrimage destinations. Church figures who claimed to have experienced the stigmata wounds, including Padre Pio …have inspired millions of Catholics. …. But the phenomena can also become a source of scandal. That was the case when the Vatican in 2007 excommunicated the members of a Quebec-based group, the Army of Mary, after its foundress claimed to have had Marian visions and declared herself the reincarnation of the mother of Christ. Francis himself has weighed in on the phenomenon, making clear that he is devoted to the main church-approved Marian apparitions, such as … Our Lady of Fatima, who believers say appeared to three illiterate shepherd children in 1917. But Francis has expressed skepticism about more recent events, including claims of repeated messages from Mary to “seers” at the shrine of Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, even while allowing pilgrimages to take place there. “I prefer the Madonna as mother, our mother, and not a woman who’s the head of a telegraphic office, who sends a message every day at a certain time,” Francis told reporters in 2017. On Friday, the Vatican’s doctrinal office will issue a revised set of norms for discerning apparitions “and other supernatural phenomena,” updating a set of guidelines first issued in 1978. Those guidelines largely left it in the hands of the local bishop to investigate purported visions or supernatural events to determine if they were worthy of belief among the faithful, and tended to err on the side of caution. …. The Vatican has generally refrained from intervening, leaving it in the hands of local bishops and offering its approval to fewer than 20 reported apparitions over several centuries, according to Michael O’Neill, who runs the online apparition resource The Miracle Hunter. Last year however, it announced the creation of a special commission, or observatory, within the Pontifical International Marian Academy to study the phenomenon and provide consulting services to bishops. The commission is made up of a scientific committee of experts, including Fastiggi, from a variety of disciplines. Its director, Sister Daniela Del Gaudio, will join the Vatican’s doctrine czar in announcing the new norms at a news conference Friday. The observatory’s mission statement says experts will analyze and interpret apparitions, lacrimations, or weeping statues, stigmata “and other mystical phenomena that are in progress or have already occurred, but are still awaiting a pronouncement of the ecclesiastical authority on their authenticity.” “It is important to provide clarity, because often alleged messages generate confusion, spread anxious apocalyptic scenarios or even accusations against the pope and the church,” said the academy head, the Rev. Stefano Cecchin. There has been no shortage of controversy surrounding reported apparitions or other supernatural phenomena. ….

Mary, Mother of the Church

Pope Francis with an ancient icon of Mary in St. Mary Major Today (20th May, 2024) is the feast-day of Mary, Mother of the Church. How did this come about? We read back in 2018: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2018-03/pope-institutes-new-celebration-of-mary--mother-of-church.html Pope institutes new celebration of Mary, Mother of Church Pope Francis inserts the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, into the Roman Calendar on the Monday following Pentecost Sunday. By Devin Watkins Pope Francis has decreed that the ancient devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title of Mother of the Church, be inserted into the Roman Calendar. The liturgical celebration, B. Mariæ Virginis, Ecclesiæ Matris, will be celebrated annually as a Memorial on the day after Pentecost. In a decree released on Saturday by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah, its Prefect, said the Pope’s decision took account of the tradition surrounding the devotion to Mary as Mother of the Church. 03/03/2018 Cardinal Sarah: ‘New Marian memorial aid to Christian life’ He said the Holy Father wishes to promote this devotion in order to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety”. ‘Mother of the Church’ in tradition The decree reflects on the history of Marian theology in the Church’s liturgical tradition and the writings of the Church Fathers. It says Saint Augustine and Pope Saint Leo the Great both reflected on the Virgin Mary’s importance in the mystery of Christ. “In fact the former [St. Augustine] says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter [St. Leo the Great] says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church.” The decree says these reflections are a result of the “divine motherhood of Mary and from her intimate union in the work of the Redeemer”. Scripture, the decree says, depicts Mary at the foot of the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25). There she became the Mother of the Church when she “accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal.” In 1964, the decree says, Pope Paul VI “declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honoured and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles’”. Votive Mass now made a fixed celebration Then, in the Holy Year of Reconciliation in 1975, the Church inserted into the Roman Missal a votive Mass in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. With the present decree, Pope Francis inserts that celebration into the universal Church’s liturgy as a Memorial on a fixed date. The Congregation for Divine Worship has published the official liturgical texts in Latin. Translations, the decree states, are to be prepared and approved by local Bishops’ Conferences before being confirmed by the Congregation. Please find below the official English-language text of the Decree: Prot. N. 10/18 DECREE on the celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of the Church in the General Roman Calendar The joyous veneration given to the Mother of God by the contemporary Church, in light of reflection on the mystery of Christ and on his nature, cannot ignore the figure of a woman (cf. Gal 4:4), the Virgin Mary, who is both the Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church. In some ways this was already present in the mind of the Church from the premonitory words of Saint Augustine and Saint Leo the Great. In fact the former says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church. These considerations derive from the divine motherhood of Mary and from her intimate union in the work of the Redeemer, which culminated at the hour of the cross. Indeed, the Mother standing beneath the cross (cf. Jn 19:25), accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal. She thus became the tender Mother of the Church which Christ begot on the cross handing on the Spirit. Christ, in turn, in the beloved disciple, chose all disciples as ministers of his love towards his Mother, entrusting her to them so that they might welcome her with filial affection. As a caring guide to the emerging Church Mary had already begun her mission in the Upper Room, praying with the Apostles while awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14). In this sense, in the course of the centuries, Christian piety has honoured Mary with various titles, in many ways equivalent, such as Mother of Disciples, of the Faithful, of Believers, of all those who are reborn in Christ; and also as “Mother of the Church” as is used in the texts of spiritual authors as well as in the Magisterium of Popes Benedict XIV and Leo XIII. Thus the foundation is clearly established by which Blessed Paul VI, on 21 November 1964, at the conclusion of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as “Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother” and established that “the Mother of God should be further honoured and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles”. Therefore the Apostolic See on the occasion of the Holy Year of Reconciliation (1975), proposed a votive Mass in honour of Beata Maria Ecclesiæ Matre, which was subsequently inserted into the Roman Missal. The Holy See also granted the faculty to add the invocation of this title in the Litany of Loreto (1980) and published other formularies in the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1986). Some countries, dioceses and religious families who petitioned the Holy See were allowed to add this celebration to their particular calendars. Having attentively considered how greatly the promotion of this devotion might encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety, Pope Francis has decreed that the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, should be inscribed in the Roman Calendar on the Monday after Pentecost and be now celebrated every year. This celebration will help us to remember that growth in the Christian life must be anchored to the Mystery of the Cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic Banquet and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the Redeemed, the Virgin who makes her offering to God. The Memorial therefore is to appear in all Calendars and liturgical books for the celebration of Mass and of the Liturgy of the Hours. The relative liturgical texts are attached to this decree and their translations, prepared and approved by the Episcopal Conferences, will be published after confirmation by this Dicastery. Where the celebration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, is already celebrated on a day with a higher liturgical rank, approved according to the norm of particular law, in the future it may continue to be celebrated in the same way. Anything to the contrary notwithstanding. From the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, 11 February 2018, the memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lourdes. - Robert Card. Sarah, Prefect - Arthur Roche, Archbishop Secretary