classics digests, reflections and reviews
The Question of Infallibility In a previous post, I asked the question, “How do we know that (the magisterium of) the Church is infallible?” Nothing in my Catholic interlocutor’s response addresses my question. In fact, I get the impression time and time again that he is not aiming at dialogue, but using my posts as a launchpad of canned responses of the Catholic Church.[1] However, we agree on one thing: […]
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Background and Disclaimer Catholic blogger Eamonn Clark wrote that I was “intellectually lazy”, because I didn’t address his arguments made in response to my defense of sola sriptura. Although his criticism of my laziness is valid in general, it is invalid, not to mention uncharitable, in this particular case. I would be more than happy to engage further, as long and hard as necessary, if I believed that this type […]
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A Personal Backstory When I was a child, I used to asked my mother, Why do women willingly go through the troubles of pregnancy, the agony of birth pangs, only to give birth to a child at the risk of their own lives? I asked because the only idea I had of childbirth came from the movies, where childbirth was almost always the cause of pain and death for women. […]
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Last week, a Catholic blogger Eamonn Clark responded to my blogpost titled “In Defense of Sola Scriptura”, which I wrote five years ago to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. At the end of his post, Clark wrote, “I remain unconvinced”. I can only smile and say that the feeling is mutual. Clark quoted my arguments at length and responded to them point by point. For that I’m grateful. […]
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The Case of Socrates It is a historical fact that Socrates was convicted of impiety and sentenced to death by an Athenian court in 399 BC. It is a matter of dispute whether the verdict was just and whether Socrates was right to submit to the State of Athens and not escape with the aid of his friends. In a recent blogpost, a Thomist philosopher stated that Socrates went too […]
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I’ve been extremely busy in the past months, and had no time to write a proper blogpost. But a recent event has obliged me to speak up, for “silence gives consent”, and I do not think it right to give consent to a comment made by a pubic health officer concerning my colleagues. “If people are in our healthcare system and not recognizing the importance of vaccination, then this is […]
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Preface To paraphrase Plato, the price we pay for indifference to reason is to be ruled by unreasonable people. On a personal level, I seek to understand the laws that affect or govern my life. If I cannot understand the laws, but am forced to abide by them, I’m no different from a slave; On a societal level, true democracy depends on reason. A democratic society is healthy only so […]
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