Ahab Posted March 24, 2021 Posted March 24, 2021 16 hours ago, mfbukowski said: So all that separates us is words Well, those things, but also what those things represent, too. I'm glad you know what you know now and I hope you keep learning until you know and experience everything that is good that you are able to know and experience. 1
MiserereNobis Posted March 24, 2021 Posted March 24, 2021 17 hours ago, mfbukowski said: Thanks! 36 miles, and I would love to attend and want to take on a two hour drive, one hour each way, I might do it, but I am not ever leaving the LDS church unless it disappears. Very ironic that you bring up praying about vocations. When I was in a In 8th grade we had a 2 day weekend trip to Saint Anthony seminary in Santa Barbara. 1962, Franciscan. The goal was to recruit us into going there for high school and college and of course later becoming a priest, in a boarding school type of environment. I was about ready to do it A couple of hours before it was time to leave I went back in to that church by myself. No human to influence me. SHOULD I become a priest or get married? It was the strongest prayer I had experienced as well as the first time I think I did not pray a memorized "Our Father" or "Hail Mary " etc. I poured my heart out to the Lord. And then I felt like I had been immersed into a warm bath of pure love. The tears came. I was enveloped in God's love. I felt God was speaking to me. He was saying "BOTH". IT didn't make sense- priesthood meant celibacy! But He was saying "Both!" God wanted me to be a priest AND be married! I went home very confused. Catholic High School. Learned Doctrine. It was a tough school, all boys, and most were there so "the priests " would straighten them out. I didn't belong there Switched to a good public HS. Girls!! Non-Catholic ideas! Dating! Then UCLA. 1967-68 Yippies, hippies, SDS, Mao, Angela Davis was my professor, philosophy major philosophy minor, magna cum laude, atheism. Grad school, philosophy. Is there ANY logical basis for religion? Of course not!! Wait a minute. Kierkegaard. Heidegger. James. Dewey. Whitehead. Wittgenstein and scores of others say yes. Somebody gives me a Book of Mormon. SHOCK MORONI 10:4-5! All those philosophers affirm the role of private, even religious experience!! I had to ponder this thing. Took a drive. Is it even philosophically POSSIBLE to have God, if he exists, answer an individual ?? Went over Marx mentally. Of course not. But then Kierkegaard. Fideism. What about James? Fideism. And religious experience. Dewey same thing. Wittgenstein. Whitehead and process philosophy. It might be logically possible! Drove for hours. Crap! Time to go home! Where am I anyway? SANTA BARBARA? Got off the freeway. How to go south, now. Missed the turn. If I just go here a ways.. Got lost. Curvy roads, not like LA. I made a turn, and Before me was St. Anthony's Seminary! 🤯😱🥴 How could that BE? The place where I prayed as a kid about my vocation?? It was locked. Next door was the SB mission, the old one, founded by Father Serra himself!. I went inside. I prayed mightily. He answered mightily. I KNOW God answers prayers. I know now that my first prayer about my vocation was correct- I have the Priesthood, I am married, BOTH, I have "pastored" a Ward as bishop, and in other callings. I have had children and grandchildren and my life is full of love for God and my family, and others. And it all started with praying about my vocation and that showed me that you do not need others to intercede for you, you don't need memorized prayers, God knows your personal needs and he CAN and WILL answer you personally. You don't need complicated theology to understand all we need to know to live with Our Father again. Of course that does NOT mean that God is not infinitely more than we can fully comprehend, either. But his path is easy, and his burden is light. I just don't think the Benedictines would be a great match for me right now. But I love you Catholics. My genealogical family has been 100% Catholic for hundreds of years. I love your faith and devotion, and I find your liturgy hugely inspiring. I love latin because it escapes presentism and takes you straight back to the origins of the church. I love your belief in the necessity for correct authority for the priesthood. I love the rosary and the mystical union it can engender. I love your devotion to Mary and the understanding of the Divine Feminine and think we could use a lot more of that in our church. But I cannot accept the words you use to make theological descriptions Words on one hand are important, in one sense and totally unimportant on the other In matters of the heart, they are nothing. In describing theology, they are everything. So all that separates us is words Mark, thank you for sharing your spiritual journey. Your old UCLA philosophy department probably considers you the black sheep We both came to God from unusual places, but I'm glad we're both here and brothers in Christ. God bless! Jesse 2
MiserereNobis Posted March 24, 2021 Posted March 24, 2021 17 hours ago, mfbukowski said: So all that separates us is words Rosencrantz and Guildenstern playing questions: 3
mfbukowski Posted March 24, 2021 Posted March 24, 2021 4 hours ago, 3DOP said: Dear Mark, Thank you. Of course, with my Catholic friends here, I would rather you be Catholic like us. But given the times and places God put you, you have probably been a better Catholic as an LDS to this point, than if you had experienced Catholic seminary and been ordained in the 70's. Mystery upon mystery. We know so little of what there is to know... Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. I do not question your experience. I do not say it was the devil. I am agnostic. (I don't know how to explain it. Be assured of my prayers. Can we be in heaven together? I do not know. Will I be in heaven? Same answer. I hope. I do know that this is my prayer and wish: All the best to you and yours, now and forever. Rory Same to you, kind sir- I have no doubt that we will be together. I hope that will be ok for you. When you hear a knock at the door of your 'mansion on-high' it might be me. And yes, I understand your point about the '70's Satan really seems to be active during these times- going straight for the juglar even within the walls sacred spaces. I think we can create a vocabulary that secular folks can understand to bring them to God- right in the heart of Humanism. If Satan can come to our sacred spaces, we can go to their agnostic organizations and teach them, as Paul taught the intellectuals on Mars Hill, about the "Unknown God" He most certainly is Unknown today and they most certainly need us. I can't just sit back and wring our hands, I have been there and see my path as a way to reach out. But in my heart I am a complete mystic. That's why I get so frustrated with all doctrine and terminology- yours AND ours! The only direct evidence there is - is in our hearts. Love you, bro! 1
mfbukowski Posted March 24, 2021 Posted March 24, 2021 3 hours ago, MiserereNobis said: Mark, thank you for sharing your spiritual journey. Your old UCLA philosophy department probably considers you the black sheep We both came to God from unusual places, but I'm glad we're both here and brothers in Christ. God bless! Jesse Well I didn't really get into the details, but actually- yes UCLA might see me as having gone back to ignorance, but my gradschool, CUNY is still teaching the same stuff as far as I can tell. I highly recommend you look up books by Eugene Fontinell from CUNY- one is "Toward a Reconstuction of Religion" and the other is "SELF GOD AND IMMORTALITY - A JAMESIAN INVESTIGATION". He was my thesis guy until I decided Wittgenstein made philosophy obsolete. He was a Catholic- a Fordham guy - I think one book might be on Kindle. He changed my life. I use Rorty as the poster boy, because I suppose Fontinell is too technical at times- but he was the main influence besides James himself. 1
MiserereNobis Posted March 25, 2021 Posted March 25, 2021 50 minutes ago, mfbukowski said: Well I didn't really get into the details, but actually- yes UCLA might see me as having gone back to ignorance, but my gradschool, CUNY is still teaching the same stuff as far as I can tell. I highly recommend you look up books by Eugene Fontinell from CUNY- one is "Toward a Reconstuction of Religion" and the other is "SELF GOD AND IMMORTALITY - A JAMESIAN INVESTIGATION". He was my thesis guy until I decided Wittgenstein made philosophy obsolete. He was a Catholic- a Fordham guy - I think one book might be on Kindle. He changed my life. I use Rorty as the poster boy, because I suppose Fontinell is too technical at times- but he was the main influence besides James himself. Thanks for the recommendations. I'm sure I mentioned before that philosophy was one of my double majors. I majored in it more to know the history of philosophy than to actually engage in contemporary philosophical arguments. I wanted the knowledge to help me with my primary major, English literature. I love how Wittgenstein solved philosophy and quit it.... but then came back to it later. I'm not sure he'd agree with you that philosophy is obsolete
mfbukowski Posted March 25, 2021 Posted March 25, 2021 (edited) 44 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said: Thanks for the recommendations. I'm sure I mentioned before that philosophy was one of my double majors. I majored in it more to know the history of philosophy than to actually engage in contemporary philosophical arguments. I wanted the knowledge to help me with my primary major, English literature. I love how Wittgenstein solved philosophy and quit it.... but then came back to it later. I'm not sure he'd agree with you that philosophy is obsolete Not so! He came to the decision through his later work which remained unpublished until after his death- what remained were hand written notebooks- the blue and brown books- and varoius other notes. The Blue and Brown books were then published after his death- AFTER he realized philosophy was a bust- and long after he quit publishing, as "Philosophical Investigations". The only book he published BEFORE his death was Principia Mathematica with what's his name, I think it was somebody named "Russ" or someting like that- which was the foundation for positivism. So essentially he founded two of the most important movements in 20th Century philosophy- what became positivism and then after his death- "ordinary language philosopy" which was destined (imo) to be responsible for the eventual destruction of positivism itself! Gosh what a mind!! So actually his life was one straight progression from mathematical logic and positivism TOWARD giving up his early positions - but those were never published by him! So he never "went back to it later" and never diverted from the notion that philosophy was obselete- he simply continued to prove that idea again and again throughout the rest of his life. Straight line and logical progression all the way! All that remains is talking about how language remains the mess that it always have been! The Tower of Babel still reigns supreme! You can't get to God by building a tower of verbal evidence and alleged documentation of alleged verbal evidence! And he remained very spiritual through the journey- raised Jewish but often attended Catholic masses. He viewed Christianity - especially Christ- as a kind of allegory for Everyman. That's one of the several paradigms I could accept also. But paradigms are words, so fergitaboutit- they are all wrong anyway! Rorty himself said that he could accept a Human Christ who was a Friend of mankind instead of what he saw as the "dead god" sending people to hell for wrong opinions. But of course that is neither Catholicism nor the CoJCLDS. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ Quote Described by Wittgenstein, it should be the philosopher’s routine activity: to react or respond to the traditional philosophers’ musings by showing them where they go wrong, using the tools provided by logical analysis. In other words, by showing them that (some of) their propositions are nonsense. I'm doing my best.... Edited March 25, 2021 by mfbukowski 1
MiserereNobis Posted March 25, 2021 Posted March 25, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, mfbukowski said: Not so! I was referring to how he quit philosophy after the Tractatus and became a teacher, gardner, architect, etc, and then a few years later returned to Cambridge to start philosophy again (if my memory serves me right). Didn't he declare that the Tractatus solved philosophy because it solved what philosophy could and couldn't do? It's been a good 20 years since I read it. 1 hour ago, mfbukowski said: Quote Described by Wittgenstein, it should be the philosopher’s routine activity: to react or respond to the traditional philosophers’ musings by showing them where they go wrong, using the tools provided by logical analysis. In other words, by showing them that (some of) their propositions are nonsense. Expand I'm doing my best.... Stay the course! Edited March 25, 2021 by MiserereNobis 1
mfbukowski Posted March 25, 2021 Posted March 25, 2021 2 hours ago, MiserereNobis said: I was referring to how he quit philosophy after the Tractatus and became a teacher, gardner, architect, etc, and then a few years later returned to Cambridge to start philosophy again (if my memory serves me right). Didn't he declare that the Tractatus solved philosophy because it solved what philosophy could and couldn't do? It's been a good 20 years since I read it. Oh man I must be getting old. In my previous post I said "Principia" instead of "Tractatus". And what you post above is right I think- but my interpretation is that he went back to Cambridge to essentially lecture about his new direction. But you could be right! I'll have to actually READ the Encyclopedia article I sent to you to decide what IT says. 🤨 1
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