There Is A Serious Conflict Brewing Within the Vatican. Catholicism Is Certainly At Risk. Yet, I Think This Conflict Should Worry Everyone, Both The Secular And The Religious.
Specifically, the ideological war within the west (politically) shares the same underlying cause/motivation as the battle within the Vatican. People are deeply and irreconcilably divided. Left uncorrected, a horrible conflict could result.
We should all be concerned.
There is a simple cause, however. This conflict has to do with how humanity finds the truth. Western civilization has become a 21st-century Tower of Babel.
The Vatican War
Contents
Is A Fear of Vatican/Societal War Hyperbole? — Sidebar
‘There is a war inside the Vatican’: Glenn Beck on his 2012 visit to Rome
Reliance On Traditional Sources of Truth Has Declined as the Number of Sources For “Truth” Has Grown
Ideally, free individuals should not seek “truth” from any individual or group. Instead, it is everyone’s duty to seek the truth themselves, even paradoxically, in matters of faith. A free society demands it, and civilization depends upon it. Though sometimes shortcuts are taken (accepting some truths of others), there is always a cost. Blindly adopting the views of others will progressively undermine an individual’s capacity to think for themselves and simultaneously empower others with corrupting power over them. Over time, society will become unstable as various dysrational authoritarians rise to fight for control of the uncontested and “controllable” minds. Ultimately, weak minds make fertile fields for social conflict.
Church Disharmony
Church scandals have concurrently taken a toll on the Church’s authority. There was a time when the Church heavily controlled the thinking of Western Civilization. No more. Now, as far as the war in the Vatican goes (#1 above), both sides, Benedict and Francis, perceive that the survival of the Church is now at stake. This is likely true too. The Vatican war specifically centers on how this low Church participation problem should be remedied. Francis believes the Church should go to the people to get truth–postmodernism style. In other words, the Church should seek parishioner buy-in. Benedict (now deceased) has made clear that he believed that this is relativism–i.e., no objective truth. Benedict further claimed that relativism necessarily leads to might makes right (the truth) and authoritarianism. And, of course, it does. Benedict and others have alternatively argued that the Church must be, and is, “the truth.” For his part, Pope Francis seems to believe that this particular horse has already escaped the “Church barn.” Obviously, this is true too. And likely, there is no going back to the early days of the Church with its uncontested dominion over truth. This metaphorical truth “horse” escaped during the reformation when Protestantism was created from Catholicism, producing two battling truths and the thirty years’ war. Therefore, I say both Popes are correct in their respective assessments of one another’s position. That is, both Benedict’s and Francis’s solutions are flawed. So now a war brews, and if either Benedict’s or Francis’s side achieves total victory, the Church will decline further. This is not a good outcome for anyone, even the secular.
Parishioner Participation Decline is Motivating Change / Conflict
But the Roman Catholic Church is presently undergoing a catastrophic loss of parishioners. The Vatican is alarmed.
Secular Social Disharmony
As far as the current ruling elite are concerned (the secular example above, #2), it is the ruling elite’s power to control that is at stake. When societies maintain a vibrant middle class, the authoritarian “ruling” elite possess a tenuous grasp on power. Free citizens are not ruled; they are represented. The middle class is the problem-solver class with the corresponding God-given power to seek the truth themselves. The middle-class are self-reliant and self-governing class, and they do not need or want rulers. Therefore, in a self-serving reaction, the “elite” always endeavor to create dependency. This is how the “elite” entrap and enslave the masses. Think socialism.
Today, elite fear is palpable. Yet, the “ruling elite” increasingly lack the ability to think rationally; universities have devolved (failing to develop critical thinking) and now simply indoctrinate–yes, just like the Church. Also, civilization is no longer societally homogeneous. With the internet, truth has thus become necessarily more organic and egalitarian. This is a good thing if none have the power to decide for all. Free people must never rely on “elites.” Ideally, the elite concept should be completely discarded. So, regaining control of truth is a matter of survival for the elites. And herein lies the secular conflict.
Presently, the ruling “elite” are agitating that the Capitalist system is threatening the survival of the planet through the exhaustion of its resources–a reminder, the elites need us to need them. But civilization works when the people themselves identify and solve problems. I.e., capitalism. Here, the elite are thus merely self-servingly Malthusian. Think Davos and the World Economic Forum. While environmental collapse can happen, free-thinking people will, when fully informed with objectively true data, correct and both adjust and conserve. That is, only irrational and dysrational people are suicidal; rational people are not. Therefore, this “inescapable” resource collapse claim may or may not be true, as always. If “ruling” elite disempowerment comes at the hands of an engaged, diversified, and rational middle-class and small business community, civilization is right to cheer, and elites are right to fear. Here, societal survival is more likely assured.
The Church’s History On The Control Of Truth Has Made Its Decline Worse
Roughly two thousand years ago1Emperor Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity in 313., the Catholic Church assumed the role of finding and asserting the truth for the citizens of the Holy Roman Empire (circa 476 CE). After the destruction of the Roman Empire2The fall of the earlier ancient Western Roman Empire occurred in 476 CE., the Church argued (see master theologian St. Augustine of Hippo) that humans were hopelessly flawed (fallen) and that the Church was needed to help humanity find its way in life. Augustine drew heavily on the fall of Rome for his hypotheses. Church foundations like the doctrine of “original sin” arose from this thinking. Augustine asserted that because of human original sin (in the Garden of Eden), humans were unable to find a just and moral way through life. Humans are just born broken, he concluded. Interact with a narcissist for even a brief period of time, and most individuals would readily agree. Yet, St. Augustine’s analysis was incomplete. This resulted in a critical Church-harming error.
Since the time of Moses, the Church has deployed afterlife reward and punishment to motivate good behavior in the faithful. Though this works, it is a short-sighted strategy. Now, the Catholic Church teeters because potential parishioners have drifted away from the Church owing to the ever-widening number of temptations of life. Yet, without their own well-developed capacity to seek the truth, parishioners are limited to their evolutionary learning system. This learning system is irrational (i.e., without reason) and self-serving. Christians understand this self-serving human characteristic as our fallen nature. And while reward and punishment are effective tools to govern the irrational, an adult (intellectually mature) presence is always required to point the way. This is not always possible. The Church’s solution, the Magisterium, works, but ever fewer remain in the orbit of the Church. Also, it is nearly impossible to constrain a free mind,
Moses observed the following of his people:
For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the LORD while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die!
Deuteronomy 31:27 (5th book of the old testament)
This observation was made many years before the birth of Christ.
Maybe the Church can be a little stiff-necked (rigid) itself. The Church should not attempt to control what a perfect God created. God no doubt has a reason for the form of human design. The question is, WHY are people always rebellious? And they are, oft times maddeningly so. Maybe this is why Benedict and Francis cannot find agreement. St. Augustine concluded that humans are simply broken. But a perfect God does not make broken things. Both Benedict and Francis, it appears to me, have failed to seek God’s reason for what appears to them to be broken. Maybe it is human civilization itself that is broken. Man, after all, produces it. I think a proper search for understanding is in order. Not conflict. You see, a claim to truth can be a prison of thinking–even for a Church.
The gift of understanding is all that is needed to motivate the rational to grace (reason). And critically, understanding never relies on a claim of truth. Again, it appears like the Church has undermined itself with a focus on truth and its dissemination. Understanding (enlightenment) is a much better incentive for the rational than a beautiful church (representing the peace and perfection of the afterlife). The Church should have spent some of the last 2000 years developing a critical-thinking catechism for the faithful instead of applying its unbounded wealth to the adornment of churches across Christendom. Perfection of the mind is a more sustainable, tolerant, and forgiving goal. I think civilization would benefit from this alternative focus. It would also address Benedict’s and Francis’s parishioner engagement problem. Apparently, St. Augustine couldn’t see that human improvement was possible. That’s his error. Because for many, improvement is possible. And, Church control of truth works so long as the Church can control the truth. Now, it can’t. That’s the problem.
In the larger picture, St. Augustine’s error is plain. Humans can improve themselves justly. They do this with reason. But access to reason is hard. Humans are usually trapped in habit (irrationality and dysrationality), and habit is self-serving. This is why they are, in their intellectual immaturity, fallen. But they are not broken.
How Are the Battle Lines Drawn?
In free societies, it begins with disputes over the control of “truth.” The control of truth is used to control the people.
1 – The Vatican “war” turns on the following:
- Either (A) there is objective truth, and the Church is its sole source (primarily on matters of morality and faith), though God, after the individual’s death, is his judge –
- A position held by Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul, and many others;
- It is authoritarianism achieved through Papal Infallibility (on matters of faith and morality)3The use of this power (Papal Infallibility) is referred to as speaking ex-cathedra.;
- Or, IN OPPOSITION (B), that each individual is a valid source of “truth” on matters vis-à-vis the Church (i.e., moral relativism), though God, after the individual’s death, is still his judge –
- A position held loosely by Pope Francis and others.
Catholic church participation is in decline. The current Pope, Pope Francis, plans to remedy the situation by involving the wider Church community in Church decision/policy-making. The prior Popes, Pope Benedict and John Paul, see this new effort as the acceptance of relativism. Pope Benedict argued that relativism creates the conditions for Antichrist. This was not emotional hyperbole by Benedict.
Vatican War – External Link Sidebar
German Archbishop Georg Gänswein: An Insider Tell-All Is About to Rip Pope Francis a New One
Benedict XVI: It Is The Time Of Antichrist
‘Gay clubs’ run in seminaries, says Pope Benedict in posthumous attack on Francis
Conservative Catholics accuse Pope Francis of being idolatrous over indigenous Amazon symbols
‘What is Christianity’: A reader’s guide to Benedict XVI’s last book
2 – The secular variation of this Vatican-like ideological battle is …
- Either (A) there is objective truth, and the STATE is its sole source, and the authoritarian is its righteous arbiter –
- A position held by the ruling elite, progressives, the CCP, and many others (leftists, the woke, and Marxists);
- State authoritarians are ipso facto irrational and thus dangerous and oppressive. Authoritarianism is dysrational and self-serving. Therefore, as it relates to civilization, it is suicidal;
- Or, IN OPPOSITION (B) that each individual is free to hold and pursue “their own truth” through freedom/reason so long as they do not harm others (i.e., a Constitutional Republic) –
- A position held by authentic liberal individuals and conservatives in part (i.e., excluding matters of faith and morality which they conserve);
- NOTE: If the holders of this approach do not undertake this approach with reason, they will, in their irrationality, become the authoritarians of the bulleted section immediately above (in 2A). This is how liberal democracies have descended into increasingly authoritarian systems. In their entitlement, people have become dysrational. Dysrational leaders are always authoritarian.
Only individuals who think for themselves can deny the accumulation of power by others’ attempts to control truth.
Secular War – External Link Sidebar
The ‘Twitter Files’ has opened the company’s censorship decisions to public scrutiny.
Democracy under Siege – the growth of authoritarianism
Vanderbilt Education Professor Says College Math is ‘White,’ ‘Cisheteropatriarchal’
Yet, How Does One Personally Establish TRUTH?
Isn’t it simply …
- For a hypothesis (idea, belief, view, theory, etc.) to be true, the “hypothesis” must accurately explain the observed (the data, circumstances, problem, situation, etc.). However, this is only the SUBJECTIVE truth. (see also Forms of truth here). There are often several valid explanations for the observed.
- To establish OBJECTIVE truth, one and only one hypothesis must accurately explain the observed.
- To find the ABSOLUTE truth, the pursuit of truth must disprove, as yet, unknown hypotheses. Note especially, because the “unknown” is a placeholder representing the unknown generally, the unknown remains always unknown. Therefore, ABSOLUTE truth remains always unknowable.
If not the above definition, what are the alternatives? Is it postmodernism’s we all have our own truth? Or, is it truth from experts? (and where do the experts get their truth?) The following 4 square chart represents all the possibilities.
The Rational Truth Definition Above (depicted now in quadrant #3 below) Is Set With Other Possible Truth Setting Scenarios In The Four Quadrants of Truth
Consider …
The above 2×2 matrix is constructed by graphically contemplating:
- Either that there is absolute truth, or …
- that there is no single and absolute truth (resulting in 2 columns), and …
- Either the absolute truth is ascertainable, or …
- absolute truth is not ascertainable (resulting in 2 rows). Note, in this case, objective truth is ascertainable. (See forms of truth here).
Humanity tends to conclude that knowledge of truth is essential. It is not. Instead, the pursuit of truth is essential. Yet, once a person decides they have discovered THE truth, their pursuit of truth ends. That is the first problem. But there is another.
The postmodernists, because they reject Church truth, make, by extension, another mistake: they reject, reflexively, the existence of absolute truth. This happens because postmodernists and atheists often reject the related possibility of a creator.
Unfortunately, either error leads to dysrationality, and dysrationality produces civilizational collapse–guaranteed.
Humans Are Born Neither Broken (Fallen) Nor Perfect.
Human thinking is conceptually divided between two principle processes: reason and habit (irrationality). Habit serves the self. Well, actually, because of how neural networks work, habit is the SELF. Habit makes what is ordinarily perceived to be our fallen nature. Yet, to me, the term “fallen” is misleading and unhelpful. Habit is not necessarily bad; habit is merely action or thought in the service of the self, drawing upon what the person knows or thinks they know. Sometimes habits produce horrible outcomes. Yet, outside the direction of another or reason, 100% of our actions are habits. Why are habits bad sometimes? Because both absolute truth and objective truth have no role in habit. Habit uses subjective truth (what we know or think we know). If a person acquires a bad habit from life or another, they will follow and optimize that bad habit with potentially terrible outcomes. Sometimes, like with the Nazis, habit-thinking is abominable. Habit, without reason, good parents, or a Church, is behaviorally broken. However, begin with good habits (a good family and community), and a great and just life can be lived.
Conversely, it is impossible for reason the be self-serving. Reason is purely the pursuit of understanding. Reason is not specifically good, but the reasoning process can never be corrupted by the needs of the self. WHY? Because within reason, one only disproves (“one and only one hypothesis must accurately explain the observed”). Also, absolute truth plays a central and motivating role. In contrast, habit is proof by drawing on what you already know or think you know (“the ‘hypothesis’ must accurately explain the observed”). Thus, reason is NEVER bad. Yet critically, reason can never produce perfection (absolute truth). Thus, master theologian St. Augustine was both right and wrong. Humans are not perfectible. This is how St. Augustine was, in part, right and why humans will never compete with God. However, humans with reason are not fallen. This is how St. Augustine’s analysis of humanity was incomplete. This is also why humans might, on their own, find their own way through life righteously. This is also how the supporters of Francis and Benedict might find common ground. In reason (or grace), synodality among them is possible.
Referring to figure 1 above and the definitions below, rationality (reason) and irrationality are explicitly understood as follows:
Early on, humans are irrational.
At birth, it is obvious that humans are intellectually immature. But what does this mean?
If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain
Edmund Burke – Anselme Batbie – Victor Hugo – King Oscar II of Sweden – George Bernard Shaw – François Guizot – Jules Claretie – Georges Clemenceau – Benjamin Disraeli – Winston Churchill … or common sense?
St. Augustine, for his (original sin/fallen) hypotheses, likely saw people only from quadrants 1 and 2 (figure 1 above). Even if he himself operated using reason, St. Augustine apparently did not contemplate that humans were capable of sustained quadrant three behavior. And many are not. I am therefore not surprised that St. Augustine concluded that people are fallen. This is because disrational people, that is, pathologically intellectually immature people, are, in fact, broken. They no doubt require Church or societal management.
Humans begin life with their evolutionary brains. This is habit as motivated by the brain’s amygdala. At this developmental point, human consciousness is merely a passive observer. Evolutionary thinking is instead driven by habit and a process called operant conditioning. Operant conditioning exists to improve habit action or thought based on sensory feedback. Our habits (existing neural networks) are refined this way. The starting habits were acquired from others–i.e., family or one’s “tribe.” Individual operant conditioning action makes them better. The amygdala is also the source of human emotion. Emotions steer behavior in conjunction with immediate sensory feedback. Emotions (fear, anger, etc.) are essential because they provide “the SELF” critical evolutionary context for its operant conditioning habit improvements (i.e., poisonous snakes are dangerous, always).
In time and with intellectual maturity, humans learn SELF-control. Self-control is how humans acquire mastery over their habits and emotions. Specifically, self-control is the gateway to conscious control over one’s behavior. The resulting process is developmental and is known as reason. Interestingly, self (or habit)-control is also our singular act of free will. Yet, regrettably, not everyone develops self-control. These pathologically habit-driven individuals are disrational (i.e., without rationality)–they are not merely irrational (i.e., not rational). People acting or thinking in habit are found in quadrants 1 and 2 of Figure 1 above (row depicting that Truth is knowable or known). Quadrant 2 is unique in that it includes absolute truth. Knowledge of absolute truth produces the authoritarian.
Thinking – External Link Sidebar
Functional primer:
Habit: acting without thinking:
When the conditions are right, the individual acquires reason.
When our minds struggle with reality, we suffer. Buddha described this. Here, operant conditioning in irrationality offers no remedy. In other words, one’s habits produce poor results. Eventually, the receptive mind, after much time and misery, asks why? Why does the SELF suffer? Here, reality itself has forced a cessation of habit because the outcomes are unacceptable. It’s as if God himself creates the conditions for the development of reason. If the individual humbly relents and accepts that the SELF might not possess the absolute truth and that there may be a wider truth, reason may finally emerge. Eventually, this SELF-aware individual accepts that they do not, and in truth ideally cannot, possess the absolute truth. Only then can they seek understanding under the guiding light of absolute truth. In time, the rational person understands that a creator is the only entity that can safely know the absolute truth.
The many hardships overcome, therefore, produce reason. Whereas the entitled and the victims never develop their reason. They are trapped in and by their misery.
Grace Is Reason–but only in Part
Christians have a model for the process of reason defined above. They/we call it Grace. The following paragraph is often cited by theologians for grace.
Moses said to the LORD, “You have been telling me, `Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, `I know you by name and you have found favor with me. ‘ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you.
Exodus 33, (2nd book of the old testament)
Reason is, in part, the conscious and conscientious subordination to greater wisdom. Call this thinking a perpetual state of WHY … in humility — not as a potential victim of reality, but rather, as a humble and grateful student. However, in reason, there is also a process to develop objective truth in the pursuit of absolute truth. That is, reason is Grace + curiosity.
Intelligent design? (the concept of absolute truth applied)
Given that the creator jealously holds the knowledge of the absolute truth for our rational benefit, what would that design be? In other words, if we mortals think we see (or KNOW) “the design,” then we think in habit. Here, reasoning (and Grace) are undone.
With Truth Properly Defined, The Critical Question Becomes, Who Controls Truth?
Because, in truth (absolute truth), no human can:
When humans try, it’s either authoritarianism (Q2) or narcissism (Q1). Again …
- To find the ABSOLUTE truth, the pursuit of truth must disprove, as yet, unknown hypotheses. Note especially, because the “unknown” is a placeholder representing the unknown generally, the unknown remains always unknown. Therefore, ABSOLUTE truth remains always unknowable (well, specifically human claimable).
This is the context for quadrant 3–reason. By comparison, quadrants 1 and 2 represent the context for the truth held irrationally by humans. These three are interesting, but quadrant 0 is not so much because no truth is recognized there. I can think of only one scenario where the human mind operates this way: Anterograde Amnesia (Maybe (unable to form memories). It is possible neural networks are still formed yet remain consciously inaccessible). In any event, this is an illness.
Quadrant 3, requiring creator control of truth for reason, is circumstantial evidence of a creator.
In quadrant 3, no “human” controls truth (the absolute truth). Not even the Church Magisterium or the Pope may claim knowledge of absolute truth. To claim otherwise would halt their capacity to reason. Absolute truth, definitively, is known only to the creator. Therefore, the creator alone controls it.
Nevertheless, by engaging in reason, the Pope, Magisterium, and others might discover, under rational synodal circumstances, objective truth. This is usually enough. Still, it is always important to preserve an open mind.
Civilization Produces Narcissists, Yet Narcissists End Civilization
When the individual controls truth, society gets a narcissist. By contrast, if the individual is in contact with reality, like on the plains of Africa as a hunter-gatherer, because of their immediate proximity to reality, their mind will be properly shaped by it. Their narcissism would be minimized. On the plains in small tribes, this learning process is not reason. It is natural selection. Only subjective truths with a basis in reality are formed there, and likely little more. Unfortunately, subjective truths do not produce civilization; only objective truths formed in reason do. Eventually, problem-solving (reason) is developed in a few as they learn to overcome their suffering more systematically. Their solutions comprise the elements of civilization.
However, the point of civilization is to compassionately insulate the individual from the misery of reality. Therefore, the ideal development conditions for reason are eliminated. Thus, individuals in a successful society without some alternative reason-producing force are again at risk of unchecked narcissism and self-serving delusion. Actually, successful civilizations reward habit. Yet, this is how civilizations become vulnerable and eventually fall. The new citizens of flourishing civilizations fail to acquire the capacity to reason. In time, their society, writ large, is unable to problem-solve. Citizens may know how to run it (habit), but they no longer have the capacity to repair or enhance it. In time, the machine of their civilization slowly disintegrates because there is no longer anyone capable of sustaining it when something unforeseen, like a drought, earthquake, or another catastrophe, disrupts it. The cycle has been repeated many times before.
Thus they [societies] are always descending from good to bad and rising from bad to good. For virtue gives birth to quiet, quiet to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin; and similarly, from ruin, order is born, from order, virtue; and from virtue, glory and good fortune.
Machiavelli, Fear and Virtue (Chapter 3)
The asphyxiating grasp of kings and rulers
Authoritarians can also fill the truth gap for the irrational: Quadrant 2. Unable to discover truth alone, intellectually immature individuals might gratefully seek truth from others. At the beginning of a new civilization, this authoritarian will likely possess the necessary rationality tools to make civilization. This is true because the rational leader possesses the thinking skills to compartmentalize society so that economies of scale might be realized and thereby shared and enjoyed. The resulting excess wealth draws more individuals into the civilization. As individuals join, they inescapably do so in dependence. But this is societal poison. Dependency derails individual critical thinking and problem-solving. So again, the fuse has been lit for that society’s decline. Unless and until citizens learn to develop the human capacity to reason outside of hardship, the rise-collapse cycle is all but guaranteed.
Eventually, the civilization-producing rational leader perishes or is otherwise eliminated. Unfortunately, a kingdom is not designed to produce new rational leaders. To accomplish this task, the rational leader must develop rationality in the ruled. But rational subjects question and think for themselves, and kingdoms need unquestioning, dependent, and obedient subjects. Consequently, the kingdom’s residents remain irrational (unquestioning) and reflexively seek truth only from their leader. Irrational or dysrational individuals, because this is all there are, eventually rise to leadership, and the kingdom necessarily weakens and courts its eventual failure. Irrational and dysrational civilizations are ALWAYS suicidal. Dishearteningly, no civilization has yet developed a consistently rational foundation. The constitutional republic was humanity’s last and best attempt. However, the constitutional republic needs a critical mass of individually rational (self-governing and self-reliant) citizens to work. This was enabled, in part, by faith–recognizing absolute truth. Faith is in decline, and the constitutional republic will correspondingly falter.
For virtue gives birth to quiet, quiet to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin.
Machiavelli, Fear and Virtue (Chapter 3)
Yet, humans, by God’s will, are more than mere unthinking laborers or obedient soldiers.
The human brain can’t help itself, it desires to think for itself. It is our inalienable (i.e., God-given) right. Humans don’t just act with habit; they think. It is only the intellectually immature that welcome dependency. Inevitably, however, even in intellectual immaturity, some self-centered ruler eventually attempts an action that disadvantages the ruled, the erstwhile individual suffers, and the process of reason becomes a possibility for them. The problem is always that the individual’s irrationality is not concurrently disabled. The individual, therefore, tends to react the way they would have always reacted and thus before the process of reason can get rolling. Bad thinking may occur. However, imperfectly managed habit is only evidence of intellectual immaturity. It does not mean the person is broken. Yet, the Church takes unmanaged habit and occasional bad thinking as proof that people should be ruled, that they are broken. But the Church is wrong. The individual wishes to think. Their habit merely gets in the way.
Tower of Babel
The Church, from my perspective, has not always understood humanity. For example, in the Book of Genesis, the story of the Tower of Babel is presented as an origin story. It purports to explain why, early on, humanity was diversified (in language) and disbursed across the continents. Humanity, the Church alleged, had grown full of itself and believed it could compete with God. From the Church’s perspective, God imposed language diversification on the people to hamper their self-serving projects–the tower specifically.
While I see the bible’s historical account as likely true, I do not think that the various scholarly interpretations of its meaning are. Babel, instead, represents another kind of cautionary tale. As I see it, reason alone produces civilization, and hardship produces reason. Conversely, great civilizational success leads almost inescapably to irrationality (i.e., decadence and selfishness), and irrationality leads to eventual societal disintegration. This is what happened to Babylon. The tell was that self-serving narcissists rose to power.
Economies of scale are only achieved through thoughtful leadership. At least at one point, the population of Babylon was a remarkable 200,000 people4It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world c. 1770 – c. 1670 BC, and again c. 612 – c. 320 BC. It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000. Estimates for the maximum extent of its area range from 890 to 900 hectares (2,200 acres). — Wikipedia (Babylon). This is no trivial accomplishment, and the leaders of Babylon almost certainly thought of themselves as quite talented–individually. The author(s) of the Book of Genesis apparently agreed:
Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that humankind was building. And Yahweh said, ‘Behold, they are one people with one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. So now nothing that they intend to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand each other’s language.’ So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, for there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth, and there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
Genesis 11:5-6
So says the Church: “So now nothing that they intend to do will be impossible for them.” With reason, this might be true. But, as shown above, humans cannot ever claim to KNOW the absolute truth, and still remain reasonable. Thus, humans can never arrive at perfection and achieve equality with God. That, from my perspective, is intelligent design. They cannot become God. Without the proper definitions for reason above, the Church could not see this critical detail. In other words, God has no earthly reason to be threatened. Yet, there is a problem. Babylon’s leaders were still convinced it was about them. This would be their civilization’s undoing.
The Tower of Babel is thus a great and meaningful historical lesson. My alternative analysis is this. Narcissism is evidence of irrationality. The leadership of Babylon was narcissistic:
Come,” they said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:4
I observed instead that humanity was behaving as it always does: with habit (irrationality). Nimrod, the self-serving King of Babylon, rather than maintaining humility before absolute truth, sought to capture the authentic success of Babylon in his name with the construction of the Tower of Babylon. Nimrod hoped to use the Tower to cement his legacy. Yet, this apparently contributed to Babalon’s decline. Selfish leaders serve themselves. Reason is never about the leader and their personal “truth.” With reason, civilization’s good leaders ensure that its citizens are “one people with one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. So now nothing that they intend to do will be impossible for them.” This is how a great city like Babylon was built.
In irrationality, people are nevertheless confused and disorderly in their thoughts. It is difficult for them to think together, let alone work together. Narcissists serve themselves, by definition. Yet, it might appear to the faithful as if God has “confuse[d] their language there, so that they will not understand each other’s language.’” Then, and consequently, it will appear as though “Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city.” You see, without a common (objective) truth, civilization is impossible. People isolate themselves. Yet, God did not impose this result on the Babylonians directly. The leaders did this in their success by unconsciously moving from quadrant 3 (rationality) of the truth chart to quadrant 2 (irrationality). The Babylonians thereby abandoned God’s Grace a succumbed to their habit and narcissism. Again, civilizational development is possible only with reason, where irrationality, by contrast, inescapably dismantles. This is another moment to pause and reflect upon the premise of intelligent design. I would not think God would prefer that irrational people not acquire control of the earth. Irrational thinking always destroys order. The faithful might even declare this behavior satanic.
Tower of Babel of Another Kind — The Holy Roman Empire
If the diversification of thinking and truth is evidence of arrogant and irrational leadership, maybe there is another more contemporaneous example. The Catholic Church:
An entity, any entity, that claims absolute truth sews the seeds of its decline. The Catholic Church is no exception. If an entity can claim truth, in the words of the Bible, they become “one people with one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. So now nothing that they intend to do will be impossible for them.” Yet, this is not a good thing. This means, that they will attempt the control of everything … until they can control nothing.
The World Economic Forum
Rather than think of Babylon in a religious context, try to imagine it in a 21st-century context.
The World Economic Forum at Davos Switzerland is a conference of billionaires and others organized, in their minds alone, to save the world. They have come together, ostensibly, to speak with one voice. But they represent no one. Yet they represent wealth that can be used to undo it all.
Now, Specifically, To The Division/War Within The Vatican
You cannot jump in front of truth (claim absolute truth) to capture leadership;
NOR, can you accept a world of popular subjective truths in order to capture followers.
It seems to me that the Church has already tried the former (the early Church). Now, Pope Francis desires to pursue the latter with the Synod 2023. Both result in authoritarianism, and neither can/will work. The Bible’s “Tower of Babel” narrative and the rebellious history of the church’s adherents provide compelling evidence for both.
Yet, we should give the Church its due; the Catholic Church developed an objective process to find truth.
Amazingly, the Church, to its great credit, established a process through which objective truth may be identified. This truth discovery process is undertaken by a group within the Roman Catholic Church called the magisterium:
The magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church is the church’s authority or office to give authentic interpretation of the Word of God, “whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition.”[1][2][3] According to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, the task of interpretation is vested uniquely in the Pope and the bishops,[4] though the concept has a complex history of development.
Wikipedia – Magisterium
This process worked so long as the Church was the single source of truth for all of civilization. That ended with Martin Luther and the protestant reformation.
But-for the the American Constitutional Republic and the rule of law, i.e., “[a] government of the people, by the people, for the people,“ secular governing systems have no objective truth discovery process
Authoritarian governments do not seek truth in any objective way.
Instead, the authoritarian serves himself, though they always profess otherwise. In authoritarian systems (like the CCP, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Soviet Union, Third Reich, etc.), TRUTH originates unwaveringly within the mind of the authoritarian. Critically, competing views, especially alternative rationally developed ones, are an intolerable threat to the authoritarian. They are not reasoning. They will not reason. The authoritarian is dysrational. Dysrational behavior invariably enables the manifestation of “EVIL.” In these systems, people suffer and are oppressed. Moreover, if an authoritarian could garner power over all of civilization, in ignorance, the authoritarian might blindly and inadvertently end it. This is the so-called antichrist.
The Synod on Synodality
Unaware of the proper definitions for reason, Pope Francis desires to unite Christendom with synodality (collegiality) among the faithful. Pope Benedict is right, however. Synodalism cannot be achieved by acquiring truth from the broader Church population. Moreover, wherever one obtains truth, authoritarianism will surely follow.
The problem that neither Pope seems to grasp is that truth cannot be claimed by mortals. The creator controls truth. All attempts to approach ownership of truth otherwise will consequently fail, as has happened over and over again across history.
Since the Magesterium acquired objective truth authentically, it developed a meaningful platform for the Church that has endured for centuries. However, then, the platform was disseminated in authoritarianism. The parishioners, because they are free-thinking individuals, might hold other subjective truths. This does not mean they are right; it just means that the Church, for this wider audience, does not possess objective truth. Free-thinking people will sometimes drift away. They rebel–as Moses observed thousands of years ago. Yet, this approach can still work because, in time, individuals, if the Magisterium did a good job, come to see the wisdom of Church truth. So then, they come back. But the Church will be small. Critically, the Church must not water down its thinking to bring people back prematurely. This is Pope Benedict’s strategy.
In the alternative, the Church adapts to embrace the population’s thinking. This is relativism. This is objective truth poison. No formal process will survive to produce objective truth. Yet, parishioners will sense what is closer to objective truth than not. Reality (the creator) will inform them. Moreover, the synod, because it will involve a larger population, will become necessarily democratic and then catastrophically political. In truth, it already has. Objective truth will be the victim. As a result, members will drift away from the Church when it no longer represents perceived objective truth. In time, the Church will possess no objective truth. It might even collapse entirely.
The Key and Unfulfilled Church Task
Develop reason: acquisition of truth From the creator (in part grace)
The Church must move the irrational to rational or from narcissism to grace.
There is no real opportunity to enforce some set of truths on the people, even if they are helpful and representative of absolute truth. In time, an individual will always rebel. It’s his nature. Reality does not build the exact tree over and over. Nature, that is to say, the tree’s environment uniquely shapes it. Life always goes its unique way, even if the underlying genetics is the same. So do people. But there are rules, and we should struggle to understand them. This is reason. As we do, humanity can find ways to make life better for itself. This is civilization. The creator created the rules, but we can create within them.
Yet, as smart as the greatest leader thinks that they are, they will never know the absolute truth. And, if things don’t change, societal leaders in successful societies will always create the conditions for civilizational failure. Because of this, one day, our civilization will be at risk. This is because civilization is a man-made system, and man is decidedly not perfect. This last point is the only absolute truth you can know absolutely. No human can know what God knows.
Reason – St. Thomas Aquinas and his proof for the existence of God
Speaking from across the centuries, St Thoman Aquinas discovered the proper definition of reason almost 1000 years ago. It appears to be an achievement of which he was unaware. Since he could not know what God was, he declared you proved God by establishing what God is not. This is true also of absolute truth too. We eliminate what absolute truth is not. In other words, we eliminate false hypotheses.
Remotion
Because we cannot know what God is, but only what He is not, we cannot consider how He is but only how He is not.
Aquinas
Yes. According to the definition for reason below, and since truth cannot be claimed, confidence in one’s hypothesis is achieved through disproof—remotion.
According to Aquinas; “the most perfect [state] to which we can attain in this life in our knowledge of God is that he transcends all that can be conceived by us, and the naming of God through remotion (per remotionem) is most proper …
The primary mode of naming God is through the negation of all things, since he is beyond all, and whatever is signifid by any name whatsoever is less than which God is”
AQUINAS ON WHAT GOD IS NOT on JSTOR
Aquinas endeavors to use reason to prove the existence of God: disproof of hypotheses theorizing what God could be. This is reason as defined below. But for God, Aquinas also understood that God is beyond reality. This thinking is also in the above definition for reason. I.e., the divine is not disprovable (see the definition for reason below). Therefore, God is always beyond the consideration of reason, whereas his creation is not.
The Church must move the irrational to rational or from narcissism to grace.
The Church must focus on the development of reason. In time, the Church will grow. But they will do so through their rebellion — independent thinking.
Civilization depends upon it.
Proper Definitions
Rational
- a – A Rational Person:
- : A Person Who Reasons Using A Rational Process –
- Reason is, effectively, the search for understanding;
- Reason is specifically the PURSUIT of absolute truth, but absolute truth cannot be claimed (see the test for sufficiency in “b” below), so the process produces understanding;
- Reason is NOT the acquisition of ABSOLUTE Truth;
- : A Person Who Reasons Using A Rational Process –
- b – A Rational Process:
- : A process using the scientific method and a testable hypothesis meeting both the necessary and sufficient conditions –
- A hypothesis meets the necessary condition when the observed is explained by the hypothesis;
- A hypothesis meets the sufficient condition when all other known and unknown hypotheses have been proven false.
- : A process using the scientific method and a testable hypothesis meeting both the necessary and sufficient conditions –
Irrational
- a –
- : Not rational, but possessing the capacity to reason;
- b – also seen as …
- An Otherwise RATIONAL Person in Not Rational Acts, or …
- : Habitual Action;
- : Subconscious Action;
- : Gut Instinct;
Dysrational
- a –
- : Not rational while unable to, or rejecting reason;
- b – also seen as …
- Unable to, or rejecting reason and …
- : Habitual Action;
- : Subconscious Action;
- : Gut Instinct +
- 1Emperor Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity in 313.
- 2The fall of the earlier ancient Western Roman Empire occurred in 476 CE.
- 3The use of this power (Papal Infallibility) is referred to as speaking ex-cathedra.
- 4It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world c. 1770 – c. 1670 BC, and again c. 612 – c. 320 BC. It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000. Estimates for the maximum extent of its area range from 890 to 900 hectares (2,200 acres). — Wikipedia (Babylon)