This is really well done. And amazingly, Mario Derksen is a very young guy, possibly still in his early twenties, or not much older. Many in the younger generation are starting to wake up. A good friend of mine is a young man in his early twenties who left a New Mass seminary and moved over to traditional Catholicism. Like Mario Derksen, he was not raised in a traditional Catholic family, or even a practicing Catholic family at all. I am astounded when I realize how much they have learned in so short a time.
This article is a good short summary of the effect that false modern philosophies have had on JPII's theology. Everyone can agree that what we get from the Vatican today is "phenomenological personalism," even if some disagree whether it is good or bad. Fr. Richard Hogan, the big defender of the "theology of the body," admits the same but says that it is a good thing. I agree with Mario Derksen that it is ultimately incompatible with Catholicism. And I especially agree that the role of the supreme pontiff is NOT to propose speculative philosophical theories to the faithful, but rather to guard and protect the deposit of the Catholic faith.
It's these kind of dismissive and inaccurate comments that really raise my hackles.
This is an incredibly sloppy statement.
Christ came to reveal all truth.
Any truth about God and about salvation that we did not know before has a profound and transformative effect on our conception of man.
It is Christ who reveals to us that our bodies are temples the Holy Ghost.
It is Christ who reveals to us that marriage is a Sacrament and not merely a contract.
It is Christ who reveals to us the true meaning of clean and unclean behavior that was hinted at in the Old Testament.
It is Christ who came to make all things new, including our fallen human nature.
I find it hard to believe that someone who claims to have so firm a grasp of Thomistic realism can forget that Thomas devoted a substantial portion of his Summa purely to theological anthropology.
Derksen's notion that Christ teaches us nothing new about ourselves and our nature is a frighteningly ignorant comment.
This is a mind who takes upon himself the authority to judge Popes?
I'm just wondering what the Holy Father would have said to Jesus when He made the Fig Tree wither? (Mathew 21: 19)
Unprecedented? At the council of Ephesus, Mary was proclaimed to be the Theotokos -- the Birthgiver of God.
...for instance, the subtitle that begins paragraph 25 is "Mystery of Christ, mystery of man." He then says that the Rosary has "anthropological significance," and he claims, as he already did at the very beginning of his pontificate in his first encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, that Christ's life reveals "the truth about man."
Well if Christ is not the truth about man, then there is no truth. Christ explains man's existence, his purpose, his end. Christ is man's destiny because Christ is not only Alpha but Omega, and man's sole hope for survival is in the Logos Who imparts meaning to creation.
"It was Athanasius, echoed by Aquinas, who said that "God became man so that man might become God."
We see this everyday right here on FR.
Do you get to choose whether or not 14-year old cheap tricks hawk for the FReepathon on your threads or are the more tasteless adverts simply the luck of the draw?
Excellent article.
=== When we look at John Paul II's philosophical interests and upbringing, we see that he admired and/or was influenced by Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Jacques Maritain, Henri de Lubac, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Though his first love was theatre, no?