Good luck on the homework all! Three perfect definitions here we come. Meanwhile, I am posting Mr. Jim Kozin's response to the Gonzaga article that Dr. handed out a few weeks back. Enjoy. And I have posted the link to the article itself in a previous post, so you can reread it as well. I really enjoyed rereading it myself. Any other responses I would be happy to post as well, and comments are always welcome.
Remember our next class will be next week, Wednesday, February 27th, 2013.
The Logic of a Jesuit
Education
Now and Then
Now
When I was a young man there was a commercial
advertisement on television that affirmed, “You’ve come a long way Baby!” As I recall it referred to “liberated” women
smoking in public, which may give you some idea of how long ago it was that I
was a young man. Well the Jesuits,
judging by this article, certainly have come a long way…from Aristotelian Logic
and Thomistic Philosophy, the bedrock of Roman Catholic thought for over nine
hundred years, to the Neo-Pagan relativism of Gonzaga University’s Department of
Philosophy, which has as its principal goal to instill “doubt” in the minds of
its students. The author of the article
proudly proclaims that Philosophy classes at Gonzaga University are “not meant
to convey a predetermined value system.”
The phrase “predetermined value system” of course refers to the Philosophy,
Theology, and Morality formerly believed, taught, and practiced by Catholics for
the last two thousand years. How curious,
presuming that this article was reviewed by some representative of the
Philosophy Department, to use such a dismissive phrase to describe Catholic
teaching. Not so unusual though when you
understand what Dr. Theodore Di Maria considers to be one of the primary objectives
of the Department. According to Professor De Maria “The good thing about
philosophy is that it challenges your faith.” And challenge your faith it does,
at least how philosophy is taught at Gonzaga University. To be more precise philosophy courses at GU
don’t merely challenge your faith, they encourage their students to doubt
it. The article informs that philosophy
courses at GU are “meant to cause doubt” because, according to Dr. Douglas
Kries, “you should not be dogmatic about questions of faith and reason.” But the Department of Philosophy at GU is not
quite so single minded in its intellectual pursuit of doubt or in its crusade
against dogmatism in all its forms and philosophical manifestations. Readers of the article will be relieved to
know that at least one student was able to complete the program offered by the
Department of Philosophy doubt free and dogmatically unscathed. Mr. Nathan Smith rose to the challenge
presented to him by his professors at Gonzaga, discarded his former “unexamined”
beliefs and reached the conclusion that atheism was the only intellectually
valid option. The article does not
indicate if the members of the philosophy department offered any serious
challenge to Mr. Smith’s newly acquired dogmatic faith or that they were
disappointed in the philosophical conclusions he reached after completing his
studies at their feet; quite to the contrary, Mr. Smith is used as an example
of one of the programs successes. Poor Alice,
the second year engineering major who clings to her Catholic beliefs in the
hopelessly naïve assumption that her beliefs are supported by sound reasons, is
considered the stubborn, unthinking student that presents such a challenge to
the professors of the Department. There
is hope, in fact there is strong reason to suppose, that after sufficient
exposure to the courses provided by professors Kries, Di Maria et al, this
young woman will renounce her former unexamined beliefs and conclude, along
with Mr. Smith, that atheism is the more rational approach. At the Gonzaga University’s Department of
Philosophy success is measured one student at a time.
Then
Prior to the deconstruction of the Catholic
Faith in the aftermath of Vatican II and the corrosive effect of the
philosophical and theological innovations of de Chardin, Lubac, Rhaner and,
dare I mention, Josef Ratzinger, the goal of the Philosophy Department at a
Jesuit College was to remove doubt, not to encourage it, to demonstrate the
clarity of Catholic dogmatic truth by exposing each to the light of reason, not
to challenge your faith but to support it.
Logic was a tool to be used in the pursuit of truth and no one seriously
doubted the usefulness of this tool. In
Epistemology we learned that the images produced by our senses reflected a real
world that existed independent of our own minds and we explored the limits of
such knowledge. In Metaphysics we were
taught the nature of that reality and, among other important ideas, that the
existence of contingent beings implied a creator. Moral Theology examined the basic tenants of
Catholic dogma in light of the metaphysical truths we had learned in that earlier
course. Rational Psychology examined the
soul in relation to the body, especially on its relationship to the mind. Ethics provided the guidelines for leading a
moral life in view of the Philosophical and Theological truths that we had
established by all our previous studies.
At the time of my matriculation at St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia (quite a long time ago and, in view of the
radical devolution of the moral and cultural content of our society, in a
galaxy far, far away) all students were required to take at least twenty-four
credits in Philosophy along with sixteen credits in Theology. The primary and overriding goal of the entire
curricula was to form intelligent Catholic young men, proud of their faith and
equipped to defend it against attack, explain it to the doubtful, and use it to
encourage the morally weak. Apparently,
the current goal of the Jesuits of Gonzaga University is to create doubt and
disillusionment, to weaken the Faith of its students, and to add their small
contribution to the enlargement of the moral cesspool and intellectual wasteland
that Western Civilization has become.
Thank you Mr. Kozin!
See ya after!
Dani
