Once upon a time, the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, said to Christ,
Our Lord, who is King, what is truth?
With man's fallen nature comes a certain...
duplicity. When dealing with this duplicity over a long period of time and in a position
like Pilate's, where it seems to come out more than ever, one can easily start to wonder
what truth really is.
How many times have we been left wondering what to believe or who to believe?
We don't have that problem today, right?
One can see how someone in the position of pilot might despair and exclaim,
Truth? What is truth?
Today, in this lecture, I hope to present to you an understanding of truth.
It's very common-sensical in many ways, but also I want to eliminate the frustration experienced
by Pontius Pilate.
And to do this, we must first realize the essential mark of all truth is conformity.
No matter how you define truth, it must have that word in it.
conformity, that notion. Now conformity we mean the correspondence between two
different things.
A simple example, when building houses the builder has to check frequently to
see if the various parts are true
or not.
By true he means it corresponds to his level or his ruler.
Thus a floor or a wall is true when it is level and flat.
If it does not conform to the straightness or the flatness of the ruler and level, we say it is warped or twisted.
With this essential notion of truth in mind, we can now consider the various types of truth
that exist by considering what conforms to what.
Keep in mind that our understanding of truth is fundamental, fundamental to our knowledge
and understanding of God and everything in the world around us.
It's fundamental to the good working of any society.
It touches on every aspect of our lives.
What we know, how we think, how we perceive the world, the universe around us, how we
behave towards others, who our friends are.
Do you want a friend that's a liar?
How we live our lives and how we die all depend on our understanding of the truth.
And I hope to show this with some important examples a little later.
So what is of prime importance is this.
If we get the fundamentals of truth wrong, it can lead to some pretty serious problems later.
As all of us should know by now, a small error in the premises can lead to a bigger problem in the conclusion.
A problem in the foundation of a house is much more serious than a problem with the exterior.
You have to turn the whole house down, if you've got a foundation problem.
You've got to do minor repairs if you've got an exterior problem.
The types of truth can be determined by reflecting on what conforms to what.
Let's start with a traditional understanding of truth, according to St. Thomas Aquinas.
He's not the source of this information, he just articulated it well.
He articulated most things very well.
That's why he's our common doctor of the Church.
He's the angelic doctor.
He had a clear angelic mind.
And then we can look at a more modern view later, okay?
Now in the traditional understanding of truth,
so we're going to start with St. Thomas,
then we're going to come to a more modern view
and you're going to see there's a real battle going on.
And that battle is inside of us.
In the traditional understanding of truth, let us begin at the highest level and work
our way down.
So truth has levels.
Different kinds of truth are based on what conforms to what?
Different kinds of truth means there are levels of truth.
And different levels of truth mean truth is hierarchical.
Now using an analogy, if I were giving you instructions
on how to use a piece of equipment,
the most important truths I should communicate first
and then move to lesser things.
Thus, those things that could endanger your life are more important than those things
that might just cause a little discomfort.
And I'd be obliged to tell you those things first, so you don't kill yourself.
using this piece of equipment otherwise we'd be in court
So the first and highest truth
is found in the highest being, who is God, who is the first truth. He said,
I am who am. And the truth in God is found between the infinitely perfect
conformity between
God knowing himself and God as known. Who does God know? He knows himself. So God
knowing is the Father and what he knows is the Son or the Word and between the
knower and the known
Between the Father and the Son, there is infinitely complete and perfect conformity or correspondence.
So in God, the knower and the known are persons.
So, truth then, is somebody. Truth is personal. I am the truth, Jesus said in St. John's Gospel.
This is also why any violation of the truth, no matter how small, some kind of a lie or fabrication is always offensive to God.
So, we may think that this little lie won't hurt anyone, but that is incorrect.
It hurts God, who is truth.
Now in a moment I hope to indicate that it also hurts us as well.
Since God created the universe, then all that is true flows from Him, the one truth.
As we read in the prologue of St. John's Gospel, it was through the word that all things were
created and without Him nothing was created.
By the words of the Lord are His works.
Now this brings us to the next level of truth.
How things in creation conform.
Two things.
There's God in creation.
How things in creation are going to conform to God's mind.
Word of the Creator.
Now, both Aristotle and Plato, a couple hundred years before Jesus, they had an understanding
of this.
They didn't have divine revelation, folks.
They figured it out on their own.
God is the first cause, the uncaused cause. In other words, it's the same as saying He
caused all things or created all things. He's the uncaused cause. Nobody causes God, but
He causes everything else.
Now, Plato, he understood that things in this world had to be, well, they had to conform
to these ideas, he called them forms.
So up in heaven there's these forms, so to speak, and then things on earth, he called
them exemplars or forms, and then we have to conform to them to become more perfect.
Because those forms could be, as it were, in the mind of God.
But for him, to be human, we had to participate in the form of humanity.
The more we participate, the more human we become.
But you see the idea that he understood there was a correspondence between two things that
were necessary.
Neither of these men worked from divine revelation, naturally knowable.
The next level of truth created things that conform to God's idea of them is what St.
Thomas Aquinas and others called ontological truth.
Okay, so there's God, He's the highest truth.
Now, He's going to create things and they're going to conform to His mind.
That's called ontological truth.
Things outside conform to ideas inside.
For those theology buffs here,
truth in God is odd intra, truth outside, odd extra.
Now, that's just a fancy word ontological, it's just a fancy word for saying that things made by God are true
inasmuch as they conform to His idea of them.
Note the direction of conformity.
It is the thing outside conforming to an idea inside.
The direction is going out.
The idea or form precedes the thing made.
Now, there's two kinds of ontological truth.
You can figure this out on your own, probably.
The first kind of truth is creation.
Created things conform to God's idea of them.
So there's creatures.
But then there's also a second kind of ontological truth which has to do with us human beings
as people who make things.
We make artifacts.
We take existing things, we put them together, and make something from them.
So an example would be an architect, had an idea of a building in his mind, he sets about
making of the available materials, conformed to his idea of them.
Michelangelo had the statue of the Pietà in his mind and sets about making the marble to conform to it.
The more these things conform to his idea of it, the more true they are.
Okay, that's ontological truth. Haven't you ever made something and it didn't conform to what you wanted it?
And you're like, ah, there's something not true about this thing.
Now, here we should pause for a moment and reflect that divine revelation has told us
that God made the world perfect, perfect, perfectly true to begin with.
But we also know that he placed the ability to choose freely in certain creatures, namely in angels and men.
So he hath made nothing defective.
So when God created this universe, it conformed to his idea.
It's very important, especially in today's environment, when we're told that things evolved
over all these millions of years, and defection, and all these terrible things happened.
Now God put free will into the world to choose, now the devil and his companions, about a
third of all the angels, chose not to serve God.
Free choice of the will brought, you know, perversions into creation.
Okay, so He's the first liar, right? He's the father of lies.
He stood not in the truth because the truth is not in Him.
When He speaketh a lie, He speaketh of His own.
For He is a liar and the father thereof.
The truth is not in Him. He speaketh on His own lies.
So there's a river of revolution that flows forth from his mouth.
Apocalypse 12 talks about that.
So out of the mouth of the God comes truth, creation, good things.
Out of the mouth of the devil comes lies, deformity, perversion, evil.
Adam and Eve embrace his lie, and now man becomes divided.
Adam and Eve become divided between themselves, all kinds of divisions enter the world.
This brought lying into the heart of man such that duplicity is a part of our daily life,
such that people like Pilate can explain what is truth.
Thus, our Lord exclaims, the things which proceed out of the mouth
come forth from the heart, and those things defile a man.
For from the heart come forth evil, thoughts, murderers,
adulteries, fornication, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies,
and these things are the things that defile a man.
Now,
As a consequence of this lie, entering into our hearts from the very beginning,
three images of man produced, that which we have of ourselves, which is flawed.
All of you have some idea of yourself, and you think of this about yourself.
If I said, what do you think about yourself, and you describe yourself?
Now, you have something wrong with how you see yourself.
That's a fact.
And everybody knows it, except you, maybe.
All the people you live with know yourself.
Your faults.
Okay, now that which God has of us, He sees you as you are.
He sees through every bit of you, every cell, all your defaults and all your faults and
defects.
He sees everything.
You think they're the same, what you see of yourself and what God sees you, they are very
different.
Okay, so that's two images.
Now God's got an image of what He wants you to be, ultimately in heaven.
What's our job? We take the first two, we get to know ourselves perfectly as God knows ourselves,
and it's going to be hard, and it's very hard.
And if we don't get to know ourselves now, there's purgatory, if we make it there.
And then you bring those two first ones together.
Bang! Now you've got two images, what God wants of you and what you really are.
And now you work with God to bring them all three into one. That's a saint.
There's one more point we should make on this kind of truth.
Most Bibles wrongly translate the words of the Archangel Gabriel to Blessed Mary at the
Annunciation by saying,
Nothing is impossible for God.
Now is that so?
Is that right? Does that sound right to you?
No, it's not right. The true translation is
no word, no word
will be impossible for God. This is very significant because the word here
hearkens back to the truth, the one truth
who is the Word of God. Remember that conformity between Father and Son?
That's the word.
nothing is impossible for God when it flows from God knowing himself perfectly
okay so God let's look at truth precedes power and love is very important
God cannot love what is not true
There are things of possible for God.
He cannot love a lie. He cannot tell a lie. That's impossible for God.
But there's more than that. God cannot make or do something that contradicts Himself.
That contradicts His Word. He cannot make another God.
If power and love are not based on truth, they lose their foundation and become arbitrary,
leading to might makes right.
This, by the way,
is where Islam, one of the places where Islam fails, because Islam holds that God's omnipotence
takes precedence in God.
But truth receives power in God.
You know, its Father, Son, and from the Father and the Son, flows the Holy Ghost.
Father, Son, that's truth. Holy Ghost, that's love and power. Jesus said the power of the
Holy Ghost, the finger of God, cast out demons, etc, etc. Truth precedes power in God. God
cannot exercise the power that contradicts the truth.
Using our Trinitarian theology, which flows from divine revelation, we know that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, and that this Spirit is the power of God and the love of God.
Now this means that truth in God proceeds power in love.
Now for us, this means that power must always be based on what is true.
When it is not true, tyranny results.
Also it means that the first duty of love is truth.
You cannot say you love someone while lying to them.
Now Islam will say that power takes precedence in God
God will do what he wants because he wants to because he's got the power to
He wants to lie he can lie that's Islam
The next level of truth, St. Thomas, discusses is more common to our daily life because it touches on how we know things because we're not all makers.
We don't go out and make things every day.
Usually we're dealing with creation as it is presented to us and we work with it.
So we're being presented with many things, okay?
These images tonight.
The conformity here is between our intellects or minds and the things known outside of us
or between things in our thoughts.
St. Thomas calls this logical truth.
The mind conforms to things outside of itself.
Okay, note the direction is the reverse of what we saw in the ontological truth.
The direction is there was going out.
The direction here is going in.
The thing known proceeds or is prior to knowing it, so conformity is our mind conforming to the thing known.
So we can wrap our minds around something.
The more we know it as it truly is, the more we can understand it.
The more information we can gather about something, the more we can conform our minds to it.
So, we also work inside of our brains.
So we're looking at this tree.
We say, this is a tree.
Now we start thinking about it.
Well, it's not mineral.
It's not animal, et cetera, et cetera.
This is a tree.
Then we look at the leaves.
Oh, this is an oak tree.
This is not a fruit tree, an evergreen tree, et cetera.
That's called logical truth in our abstract thinking.
The last kind of truth we need to discuss is a virtue. St. Thomas mentions it's very
important, namely the virtue of truthfulness. This virtue inclines man to manifest himself
in his life, in his speech, and in his dress according to the conviction of his mind.
I can tell what people are on the inside, at least a little bit, by what they say, by
how they dress, by how they act.
It seeks to perfect man's ability to communicate outwardly whether by word or action what he
holds to be true in his mind and heart.
The conformity is between the interior and the exterior of man.
This is why our Lord said let what you say be simply yes or no anything more than this comes from the evil one
Now this is essential for our whole society.
It is this kind of truth that most people think of when lies are mentioned.
So let us reflect a moment here on the fact that lying is not only offensive to God,
it also hurts the individual who lies.
The lack of conformity between what we believe and hold to be right and how we act and behave
causes much unrest and discord in a soul.
It is duplicity.
You cannot live long and with that duplicity the inside and the outside you're playing a game
You're miserable.
It's a virtue of truth in us is very important.
Such behavior is also damaging to society as a whole.
If men will not truthfully communicate with each other, they will not believe each other.
Imagine that.
We don't have that problem today, right?
Making it more and more difficult to live together.
Would you like to live in a house filled with liars?
A sort of tribal mentality begins to form more and more.
In any community the need for the virtue of truthfulness is essential.
Think of a marriage, a family, any sort of team.
What happens when we find out someone is lying to us?
We are wary of that person and avoid dealing with them.
Think of our country.
What happens when we find out that we've been lied to by the media?
Unfortunately, people stilter on the TV and watch them. I don't know why, but they're constantly
lying to us.
By government officials, once people lose their trust in those above them to take care of
them, they become what? Grasping, causing society to break down. They look out for who?
Number one, instead of the good of the whole.
It causes unrest and can lead to grave evils, including revolution and wars.
For example, not long ago, Rwanda, the mass media, was used to propagate lies and
to stir up the people to the point that genocidal war took the lives of nearly
a million people in less than a month's time.
They even used machetes on each other.
They were neighbors.
They lived right next to each other.
The media stirred them up.
And they really went at it.
So truth is essential for unity and peace.
There can be no real unity without building on the foundation of truth.
There's no true charity.
as a foundation. So keep in mind the only truth that really hurts is a twisted truth.
That's what's going to hurt people. Tell the truth. Be bold. Don't be afraid.
That's review. Traditional levels. Kind of truth. God as the highest truth.
Number one. Ontological truth. How things conform to the ideas we have and how ideas
God has. Logical truth, how we can form to the things in the world around us.
And truthfulness, how we ourselves present ourselves on the outside as we really are on the inside,
not playing some kind of a charade.
Now before we move on to the more modern view of truth,
we need to reflect on a few more important points.
Very important if you want to get your mind around this.
So we need to look at a more modern view.
Before we look at the more modern view of truth,
we need to reflect on a few more important points
that follow from this traditional view.
Okay, first.
even the ancient Greeks recognized that sciences were distinguished by the level of truth they
saw it.
So the higher the truth, the higher the science, sciences are hierarchically organized.
Heart of the truth, heart of the science.
The higher the science is, they correct the ones that are lower.
and provide principles for them.
So the more universal, more truthful, the higher.
They have a higher vantage point from which they can see, not less.
There is a hierarchy of the sciences presented by the ancients.
The highest science is that which studies the highest truth, namely, God, is a body
of knowledge, is divine revelation, it's truly a science, it's a sacred science.
Recall that science is the study of some field of knowledge.
This is the sacred science of theology.
It's word, notice logos, the all logos,
lo-g, all-o-g, study of God.
The Word of God. Logos. Okay. Next we have metaphysics and philosophy, the study of natural truths that are more universal, more abstract.
So metaphysics studies the essence of things.
And by psychology there, I'm not talking about the modern notion of psychology that you'll find in the universities.
I'm talking about the true study of the soul.
This is the intellect, this is the will, because psych means soul and Greek.
study the soul. Then comes physics. Physics has underneath it physiology, zoology,
biology, etc. Then comes mathematics. Now in modern times mathematics tries to
tell us what to believe. If I can make a mathematical equation to prove something
then therefore it must be.
Now, look at the practical sciences as doing something, politics is the study of right and
wrong, human action in society, ethics, right and wrong of human action as an individual.
See how it's going from a more universal to a more particular to a more particular logic,
is study of right and wrong human judgment.
We finally got rhetoric, which we're doing tonight, so to speak.
Productive sciences, making, building, art, poetry, engineering, drama, et cetera.
All that are lower borrow from those that are above.
So example, engineering borrows from physics, ethics, needs metaphysics.
Poetry needs mathematics.
Music needs mathematics.
Hang on, it's going to get really interesting in a few minutes.
This is heavy duty stuff, but it's so important.
Okay, very, very important.
According to this understanding of truth, man ultimately strives to know God as the Supreme
Being.
So what's object-based? It's an object.
Man strives to know something of God of the Creator through his creation.
Man humbly accepts that God made things from the beginning in a certain way.
Thus he seeks to know the objects of creation in themselves,
as well as something of the Creator who made them.
Man seeks to imitate his Creator by making things and doing things according to the truth.
So man humbly accepts creation and all his objects around him as coming from God.
Conforming between thought and thing, that's the object is to be known in his sound.
So you're like an, you know, there's objects being...
this building, the plants, we look at them and we try to grasp them. They exist of
themselves. On, let's have a summary, I think here, let's see.
summary of traditional understanding of truth then traditional understanding is
what
Timeless, since it starts with God Himself and flows from His creating all things through the eternal Word.
It's vertical, very important, in that it seeks to elevate man's mind upward to the Creator.
It's clear, it's ordered, it's hierarchical, it's object-based.
Is of the rational part of man? Notice we haven't even touched on the passions the emotions the body of man
We're up in the intellectual part of man. Very important
It's unchanging and permanent in that it depends upon the essences God placed in things from the beginning
God made these objects trees dogs cats
rivers
water
Then we're humbly, we accept it, who are we, we're humbled.
This is the traditional view of truth.
All right.
On the other hand, there is more recent view of truth that comes from modernity and the
enlightenment.
It seems to me that one who captures the more modern approach is famous French philosopher
René Descartes, dubbed the father of modern philosophy.
Now René Descartes rightly perceived that all truth were linked to one another.
So he understood at least there was, as it were, one truth.
He thought they were all linked together, but for him he wanted to find out that truth
such that it could not be doubted.
You wanted to find the fundamental truth that could not be doubted and proceed with logic
to open the way to all science.
Now seeking this one fundamental truth, Descartes took a little journey of doubting.
I can't tell you how important this is when I'm telling you now.
If you can get your mind around this, believe me, you will understand what's happening to
you and the world around us.
This is very serious.
So he's seeking this one fundamental truth. He takes a little journey of doubting.
Haven't you ever doubted? Haven't you ever seen a paddle in water?
So instead of seeing reality around him as certain and real, he doubted it since he had been wrong at least once before.
He's seen a paddle in water and it looked broken and it wasn't.
Therefore, I could be wrong on everything.
And so he doubted and he doubted and he doubted until he realized that he was now deep
He doubted that the sky was blue. He doubted that his hand was in front of him
He doubted that he felt any pain, but then when he said I doubt I can't doubt that I'm doubting
Well, well there it is
Because I think I am.
He proceeded to build his entire philosophical system on man's rational powers alone.
He based even his existence on his I think, therefore I am.
Wow, this is huge.
Perhaps Descartes famously said we say I think therefore I am, perhaps he more fittingly
might have said I think therefore I am who am.
The devil said to Eve, you will be like God,
snowing good from evil.
Descartes effectively made man the arbiter of all
that is true and false.
Now, all through the 19th century,
they're saying things like this.
Well, if God didn't exist, we just have to invent him.
because we are the ones who think and know.
I'll decide if there's a God, and if we need a God, I'll invent him.
You can read Duchayevsky in many works of the 19th century and you'll find that thought.
It made it all the way into communism.
They just made God to keep people on the right track.
Made him up. We had to do it.
Now we come to another modern thinker that adopts Descartes.
They all adopted him in some way.
And this one's very important because he's deeply influenced us today, deeply.
deeply. We are suffering terribly from this one. Emmanuel Khan, he said, have courage to
use your own understanding that was his motto, the motto of the enlightenment. Man is his
own supreme God. Don't follow that superstition or one of those churches where someone tells
you what to do.
be courageous. Use your own understanding. You don't need them.
Now this leads to a near complete reversal of everything, traditional, classical understanding
of truth. No longer do we have an object-based reality, but now we have a subject-based reality
all depends on the thinking and experiences of man.
Man himself becomes the highest truth.
Man becomes the source of truth.
Man has taken the place of God, as I said.
Descartes resurrects the ancient Patagoras, Greek Patagoras.
Man is the measure of all things.
Don't we have another saying?
Mind over matter.
Man becomes the source of all ontological truth now.
New truth involves motion.
This is very important to understand the whole thing.
It's a little tricky here that don't get too concerned.
Turn up the mode.
The major point on a make is becoming, underlying that word, becoming, becoming, becoming.
To understand the modern notion of truth, we need to factor in the contributions of
men like Newton.
What's Newton?
Laws of physics, right?
Everything's in motion, right?
Hegel, Marx, and Darwin. What's Darwin's struggle, evolution? They saw the world under
the aspect of motion, strife, and struggle. Newton spoke of forces, Darwin of natural
selection and evolution.
while Hegel and Marx used the notion of a dialectic.
So the key contribution is becoming, becoming, becoming.
Nothing is this way made by God is still becoming.
certain monism they call it. In other words, all living things came from one
little organism and we're all the same in its speciesism to discriminate between
us and some animal or even some insect.
It all came from the same thing.
We're all in a state of a coming.
It's all coming from this sort of thinking.
Okay, modern philosophers such as Hegel propose,
Hegel proposes dialectics.
So dialectic, you probably hear that word before.
What's a dialectic?
It took me a long time to figure that out.
Okay, dialectics means you have a thesis.
You have some opposing idea over here.
It's an antithesis.
Then they come together.
They oppose each other like vinegar and water.
And they...
fight it out and you get a synthesis. But then, well, once you've got the synthesis, it's got another
antithesis over here and they come together and they fight it out. And then another antithesis
and it keeps going on and on and on. You get this continual evolution.
Okay, that's a dialectic. This is communism. This is how communism works.
They want to put war struggle so they can bring out a synthesis.
Okay, so let's say now I want a gun control.
So I'll give the warlords in Mexico a whole bunch of automatic weapons.
And then I can cause a struggle. Hey, we need gun control.
That's a dialectic. You get it?
That's how it works.
So from Hegel's logic of science, now this is really weird.
If you don't get it, good, because it doesn't make any sense.
Now I want to show you how stupid, now use that work on purpose,
how utterly stupid these men can be, but they have deeply
influenced us, and it shows you how dumb we are for following them.
But okay, first he says, this is his dialectic of whatever logic of science makes no logic
involved here, okay?
But anyway, he says, first, existence must be positive as pure being.
That pure being is God, okay?
But pure being, pure being, pure act, perfectly being, okay, upon examination is found to
be indistinguishable from nothing!
See, he doesn't mind thinking in two totally different ways that are totally opposing.
This is a weird idea, this is a dialectic.
Okay, so then he says when it is realized that what is coming into being is that the same time also returning to nothing in life
For example one's living is also to dying
Both being and nothing are united as becoming now his mistake is putting our bodies are dying our souls are not
See he puts them all together. There's this problem, but my point in showing you this is not just
they're illogical, but it just they come up with this idea of constant becoming. So a pitfall
that no truth, this new idea.
true. The rule of non-contradiction basically states that one cannot, one thing cannot be
another at the same time and it's the same way. So you can't have something being pure
being and nothing. It's impossible. That breaks the rule of non-contradiction. You can't do that.
Well, with this thesis and synthesis, synthesis dialectic, modern man does not always abide
by the rule of non-contradiction, but allows contradictory and duplicitous situation to
develop and even coexist, hoping some synthesis may come.
So you may get one thing out of a spokesman one day, next day you don't mind saying the
exact opposite, doesn't bother him a bit, because he's a galleon.
He's not being truthful, but they don't hold to the truth.
Okay, this leads to many instabilities in the life of the people and the working of a nation.
St. Paul said, there shall come dangerous times, folks.
Men shall be ever learning and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth.
2 Timothy 3.7.
The new truth as embraced today, using these contributions, the new understanding of
truth can be captured as the conformity between mind and life.
Conformity between mind and life.
This is a total reversal of the established order of truth as conforming
between the thought and the things that are fixed in their essence. In other words,
I look at something and I conform myself to it and say, this is God's tree.
This means that if life changes, so their way of thinking, this means that life
changes. So what I believe as true, guess what? That's going to change with it.
The truth is no longer what that which is, but that which is becoming, and is constantly
and always changing.
Another pitfall then of the new truth is relativism.
Since ontological truth, based on God as Creator, is effectively eliminated, man becomes the
measure of all things, not the unchanging Son of God, the Eternal Word.
Thus relativism becomes a problem.
Each man has his own rational ability in his own life experiences.
Thus, each man will have a different view on what is true and what is not true.
That's what you think is true. That's fine. That's not what I think is true.
There's no objective truth. You can have that. I got mine. I'm happy. You're happy
Wait a minute. There's objective truth. There is not
See that's where we're at
Potentially each man can make his own little world
It's our own little ethical system and everything else.
We've got to go to the occult real quick here to understand that this is from the mouth of the devil.
This is Madam Palan Blaravatski.
She's a Russian occultist. She paved the way for the Russian Revolution.
You can look on her finger and you can see a snake ring, and she's giving you the evil eye, practically, even when she's looking at you.
She's the founder of Theosophy. She could turn the lights off like that just by calling on the demons that hang around her.
Very powerful woman. She was seeking ways to liberate the human mind.
See, she wanted to get away from that objective, traditional truth.
When asked, is there such a thing as absolute truth in the hands of any party or one man?
She answers, there cannot be.
There is no room for absolute truth upon any subject whatsoever.
But there are relative truths and we have to make the best use of them we can.
One of her life's goals was to encourage the study of comparative religion,
philosophy and science as if they're all equal.
She held that truth is the substratum and the basis of all the world religions and philosophy.
Does this sound familiar, weak as Catholics?
We can go find truth and learn from our fellow religionists, something new.
We can.
We can't?
I thought we had divine revelation.
We have the word of God made flesh.
We have everything.
We lack nothing. We have the perfect society in the church.
So, relativism, believe me folks, this is no joke. This is very serious.
It is a cult based. It's a cult based. It's firing it from below.
It flows out of the mouth of the devil, the first liar apocalypse chapter 12 and it flows
out to attack the woman who is the church.
And it's hurting us.
Okay, let's summarize.
We're going to get the fun part here pretty quick.
Whereas the tradition of view of truth is God-centered, the latter is what? It's man-centered, isn't it?
It's all about man.
The one is vertical, since it looks up, leads one up, while the other is horizontal, since it looks out, and even down.
So one, when you look at the creation, what are you doing?
You're going to be led to the creator.
Okay, when you got the other one, you decide it's all horizontal.
I'm determining what's true and what's not true.
Whereas the one was our article, all this flatten now, and even inverted, it's e-galitarian.
Tends in that direction.
Whereas the traditional view of truth is timeless, this one is temporal,
since it's based on man's view of life, which is always what?
Becoming.
Whereas the traditional view was more defined, clear, linted. This one tends to
be confused and chaotic since it is always developing and changing. It is
unstable. It is revolutionary. It's progressive.
How many times have you heard that? We're progressives. We're for progress. Progress. Progress in what?
I'll tell you what, in trying to destroy the Catholic Church. Period.
Whereas, the traditional form of truth operates from the rational part of man, this form of
truth, the new form quickly becomes charismatic, since it easily falls prey to man's emotions,
affections, feelings, and imagination.
It depends on how I'm feeling today.
All this side was true today. It might be different than yesterday.
The traditional view is humble in that it accepts things the way God made them
and seeks to use them according to their natures.
In the new way, it manipulates the natures of things to conform to his own ideas.
Now there's a battle going on here. I hope you can see it traditional versus
modern. Let's consider how this battles played out in a few categories. This is
where the fun comes is where the rub is. This is the rub. Food, nutrition. Now
traditional we accept the way God made the food supply and the works.
and works accordingly. So, in other words, we work with what God gave us, the genetic codes placed in things.
We can make hybrids, you know, we can cross a donkey with an ass and get a meal.
I mean, we can do things like that.
But modern does not accept these things
Seeks to modify things to fit modern man's needs by stripping them of things so we have refining and processing or by modifying them GMOs
That is revolutionary. Oh God
You didn't know what you're doing when you put all these genes in his food
I'm just gonna strip those in and put in what I want and they put some pretty weird stuff in some of those things
Nature is biting back. Are we surprised? All kinds of health problems and cancer
because truth is being violated. That's why. How about art?
Traditional art, well, it's vertical, it's meditative, it's detailed, it's ordered.
You ever go to the Art Museum, I encourage you to do this, it's great.
Go to the Art Museum and look around, just watch people.
People gather around the traditional medieval art and they think about higher things.
They're all standing around, oh, hey, oh, hey, what's that?
You know, and I've done this in Chicago a couple of times.
Now, to go to the modern art, people are like,
it just breathes right through that place.
They don't feel a little comfortable with this stuff, you know.
But modern is flat, it's confused, it's mushy,
it's unsettled, people pass by them.
You want to see what I'm teaching you tonight. Go to the Art Museum here in Cincinnati and just
go through the whole timeline and see the change in art. It starts out very truthful and it gets
super mushy by the time you get to the end. You can see the progress and man's understanding of truth.
So undefined amorphous art equals undefined and amorphous truth.
Art that is so formless it could mean anything equals truth that is formless
and could mean whatever people want it to mean.
That's why they paint it.
Here I want people to come up with what they think it is.
And they get paid how much to do this nonsense.
Let me see here. It's a modern motion picture industry. The biggest sellers are usually those that have the most action-packed drama. All is motion, right?
No time for meditation and reflection.
Staying glass, in modern art, becomes just broken pieces of glass haphazardly together, thrown together in some strange or distorted symbols, or even arcane and esoteric symbols put in there.
Scary.
The truth they represent is confused, it's changing, it's evolving, it's deformed.
I like to sing a G. K. Chesterton. He said well first there was art for God's sake. In other words
we painted many beautiful paintings about God and his creation and his mysteries. Then well
There was art for man's sake. So when you go through the art museum, you'll see there's all kinds of art for man's sake
There's all kinds of portraits of man and and and scenery pictures and whatnot. Then there's art for art's sake
And then he said, now there's no art for God's sake.
Communist goals for America continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression.
An American Communist cell must be told to eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings,
substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.
That hasn't happened to us, has it?
Control art critics and directors of art museums are planning to promote ugliness to policy of meaningless art.
That's the Naked Communist interesting book.
How about architecture?
Like art, the traditional understanding of truth inspires buildings that are vertical,
meditative and uplifting.
It builds churches that are Christocentric or cross-shaped.
They were the highest buildings in town.
Nothing was allowed higher.
Next slide.
That's sharp in France.
Now working from the latter truth, man builds churches that are round, flat, man-centered,
no one knows for sure whether they're a church or not.
Now a man builds skyscrapers, modern towers of Babel to look down on churches.
They're St. Patrick's in New York.
kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
It's supposed to be inspiring to lift you up and you sit in the middle of all these buildings like man
You look down on it. They love that
Churches of old were built permanent. St. John Lateran in Rome was built to last at the end of the world.
Well, new ones are temporary, not built to last very long.
Early churches were like sharks, cathedral, and Notre Dame.
their symbols leave nothing to be just, or rather they are beautiful puzzles to be worked out.
They were hierarchically arranged, one had to climb stairs to enter them,
and the sanctuaries and altars were elevated.
That's the church I went to at Oregon State University where I got one of my
degrees. Now churches are built and more in accord with the needs of man.
They're like auditoriums and that one's a big one where the most important are
the sound system. That's the most important thing in these churches.
The sound system, the heating system, the lighting system, heating and cooling and lighting.
There are rarely anything about them that lifts the soul heavenward or rather they're
flat or even worse.
Some have the sanctuary and alter you have to go down to them.
We don't go up to God, we go down.
Purposely arrange in an asymmetrical manner to give the feeling of uneasiness that one's in motion.
When you go into church, if you're uneasy, there's something not right.
You're supposed to feel at home.
Traditional music is ordered, it's vertical, it's humble, it's rational, it elevates the
heart and mind upwards without focusing in on any one man involved.
So you've got Gregorian chant, when you chant, you're supposed to be able to hear the person
on your left, the person on your right, and you harmonize with them so your voice doesn't
overpower them or under, it's together.
It's not about you. It's about the glory of God and polyphony is
No particular one voice stands out, but yet they're coming in and out. It's very beautiful
They strike us in the rational part, in the spiritual part of our souls, and they kind of fail to down.
They are enduring and are still inspiring people to this day.
And they work.
I know that I was once at a time.
secular nursing home, run by non-Catholics, and their people were sick, they had a certain
problem, they would get up and couldn't stop walking, they played Gregorian chant, they
would be calm and they would stay sitting.
Yet, as time progressed, other truths began to take precedence in the formation of music.
That is, it began to conform to man's new way of thinking soon operas became famous,
where a soloist was highlighted.
They're beautiful, yes, but notice that man all of a sudden becomes of the focus.
20th century gave birth to all sorts of jumpy, passionate, and emotional music.
That hits low.
Such music rarely appeals to the rational part of man, but always starts at the emotional or lower part of man.
Many of the lyrics are more or less confused and even dangerous. Major themes of rock and roll.
What are they? Lies, Sanchez, drugs, violence, rebellion, dangerous.
Why are my teenagers rebelling? Are they listening to rock and roll music? Yeah!
The word being repeated over and over again, the brain washes or hypnotizes us into thinking
a certain way.
I remember Stevie Nix telling me lies, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
She just kept saying over and over again, tell lies, you know.
Maybe silly what she's referring to, but still, it gets in your mind.
Furthermore, the music is mutty, moody, and people often choose pieces of music at mood
music, you know.
feel a certain way, match particular mood.
Certain military and policemen have been known to listen to certain kinds of heavy metal music
to, as it were, pump themselves up to do a certain thing that's not so good.
It's facts.
modern music. We've lost our sense of truth. It's about here and now becoming
government. Ooh, this sensitive issue today. It is a hierarchical, traditional
hierarchical. So naturally tends toward monarchical types of government,
ultimately seeking Christ as the universal king of creation. Now these forms are more
or less enduring, so we have the Pope,
We have bishops, abbents, they rule their whole life, kings.
It is often, what they're supposed to do, is often spiritually based ordination for holy
orders in the church and the ritual for crowning for kings, so it's spiritually based.
It's vertical, in other words.
Once again, since this view of truth is hierarchical, it requires submission to the hierarchical
nature of things, thus, just as we cannot choose our fathers.
And they remain our fathers until death, whether we like them or not.
So there is not a necessity to choose our leaders. They can be hereditary.
When the leader abides by the truth, he only uses power in accord with what is true,
what is for the common good, common wealth of the people.
That's a traditional view of government.
Now, the government modern, being more horizontal, it tends toward democracy and socialism.
Now, I don't want to make an exact conformity between or exact identification with modern notion of truth and democracy.
I'm just trying to say it's going to tend in that direction.
It does not like monarchy.
The modern notion of truth hates, that's a right word, hates monarchy.
And that's why there are no monarchs left in the world hardly.
Based on becoming, it also tends to change all the time.
Thus, there are frequent elections that are extremely expensive and a multiplicity of
offices to conform to the new situations in which we find ourselves within never get rid
of those offices when they're done with them and those situations go away.
So we're deeper and deeper in debt.
Now it relies on consensus and committees and councils often ending in the lowest common denominator.
So no longer is the commonwealth a concern, but rather the state is emphasized,
and at least national nationalism or even tribalism because the truth becomes whatever people and groups decide it is.
We'll decide, we'll vote on it, what's true and what's not.
Eventually becomes, might, makes right, so we got all this with the same-sex situation
going on in our country today.
We'll decide, we'll vote on it, not objective truth.
Morality, huge, traditional, what's the additional object-based morality?
What is right and wrong is clear and objective, as summarized by the Ten Commandments.
This is what the stone tablets symbolize.
They're stone.
They're engraved in the stone of this universe.
What is wrong is always wrong, and everywhere wrong.
They are timeless.
God is saying, I made you this way.
You're not becoming.
I started out with Adam and Eve.
Now intentions, although good,
cannot change the goodness or the badness of an object.
That is what was done.
So the object is, what did you do?
Okay.
Even though you had a good intention,
the object remains object-based morality.
Very important to keep your sanity.
Man must work according to the nature of things that God made.
Okay, now we can go forward. So we've got to work with way God made things.
That's the way it is. Now, let's look at the modern morality.
Since man is always becoming so to his morality, okay?
Producing a subject-based morality that ends up being relative.
What was wrong for me yesterday may not be wrong for tomorrow.
When I was in high school, we had values clarification.
The teacher came in and government class.
He wrote on the board.
This is a Catholic school, mind you.
He wrote on the board.
He said, abortion is legal.
Put a line down the road.
Then he said, is it right or wrong?
And then we had to break up into little groups.
Are you surprised?
And then we had to discuss this.
And then for a song, well, it was yes, it should be wrong all the time.
Others know you could have abortion for certain situations and then they would debate the certain situations.
Only, I think, if I remember right, two or three in the entire class of like 20 said it was always wrong.
Catholic school and it never corrected us never said now by the way this is all
wrong Catholic church says boom and this wide boom boom boom nope he was just
there to help us clarify our values
are morals. That's a modern way of understanding.
It's an intention-based morality. It's an intention-based morality, okay?
God will understand. I had a good intention. That's good enough.
So, the first understanding of truth affects morality by pointing to God, and that sins
hurt him.
The latter is more concerned with how sins hurt man and his environment.
Thus, we have new sins against the environment and the earth being stressed.
The new morality seeks to bring God down to our level, and the office says, well, God
will understand.
The new morality tends to say things like, if it feels good, do it.
If it can be thought of, do it, everyone's doing it.
Animals do this.
Why can't I?
We're all evolved.
We all came from lower species.
So the rights of man are given precedence over the rights of God if his rights are even
recognized at all.
Man makes things fit his own perceptions.
He will not accept natures as given by God.
I don't accept the natures given by God that they are male and female.
They're made a certain way.
What happens? Various perversions arise and are considered okay. So nature bites back.
We get disease, divorce, depression, all kinds of strange things they may take place.
Will is the supreme freedom of choice.
from the viewpoint of a priest in previous times, one made the confession in clear terms based upon object morality.
He would say, I did this so many times since my last confession.
Yet, now, when people make their confession in these times, because they're imbued with
this whole way of thinking, they come in and talk about how they're hurt from this or
that situation, which may be true, and that needs to be addressed.
But that's not a confession of sin.
Supposed to confess your sins and kind a number not how much someone hurt you are you're hurting
We can talk about that and hopefully we can find a way to help solve your problem, but that's not confession
So a good confessor has like a scruple
I got to get some sins out of this person if I can give an absolution because I can't give you up dilution
unless you confess an actual sin and
You're supposed to confess all your sins in kind a number
to have an integral confession if they're mortal.
See, that's what this does. It messes up the confessional.
Devil loves that language.
Well, traditional seeks to fix language. That is not easily manipulated.
Imagine that. I wonder what that is.
Language that will convey truths down through time.
Anybody know a dead language?
When I was growing up, they said,
Latin is a dead language. I thought, well, who would want to use that?
It's dead.
We want to use it because no one can fiddle with it.
No one can play with it. No one can manipulate it. And what it said a long
ago, it says the same today. Imagine that. And it's not becoming.
Eat Latin, get rid of Latin.
It likes to use a language that varies.
Modern wants a language that evolves.
It's flexible and adaptable.
Wants to use the same words but with new and different meanings.
Once the minute belay be able to get around it, languages to inform the mind to convey
the truth as clear to life as manner as possible for all time, thus it's not wordy and does
not seek flowery languages much.
It does not seek slang or colloquialism.
That's truth.
That's true truth.
This is why St. Thomas is rather concise and dry if you ever read him because he's trying
to convey the truth to you in the most economic manner possible.
It's not appealing to your emotions.
But the new understanding of truth wants to change as we and the world changes.
It wants language that's flexible.
And English is rapidly becoming the world's language.
Because it is easily adaptable and manipulated.
Thus ambassadors and even presidents can deny things and use language to lie.
All depends what you mean by is.
Communism developed a sort of double speak where things did not mean what they
said in Johnstown. Jim Jones you know drink the Kool-Aid. He said he had this
this is unbelievable. He had this this group of people and they were called the
Board of Education. They were to help to educate people and they were a
mistaken but he literally took a stick to beat people with he called it the
Board of Education.
That was a plank, spank people, right in front of everybody.
Stay away from personality cults. Stay Catholic and you'll be safe. Now,
recall George Orwell's double-think. This is what he says. He says, to know and not
to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully
constructed lies. Now this is extremely important folks. Let me repeat this. To
know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness, well,
telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which
cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them,
to use logic against logic to repudiate morality while laying claim to it.
Does it sound like somebody you know?
To repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the party was the guardian of democracy.
To forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, I can't remember, right?
Did I say that? Then all of a sudden, did it draw it back to memory again at the moment when it is needed?
And then promptly to forget it again.
That's from George Orwell's Double Think, which is very much used by communism today.
A flexible language is very helpful in accomplishing this.
Now, new truth will undermine the new idea of truth undermines our language, our ability
to communicate.
Okay, now traditional man, traditional man is the rational part of man and his highest truth
as his ultimate goal.
Okay, so it seeks what is above and mortifies the body whatever gets in the way from below.
It has the truth himself as his goal.
This was Aristotle and many like him, not just those of the faith.
Now, the new understanding of truth, what does it do?
It has man as a focus, thus it tends to drop down to the meat it needs of the body, avoiding
what is painful as a general rule, man conforms to the needs of the body first and foremost
because they are most immediate.
Thus tenence and mortification are things of the past.
Doctors and chiropractors are seen without hesitation and often.
People are quick to medicate and soothe the body.
They will tend to turn things to comfort such as comfort foods, sleep, alcohol, TV, movies,
traveling, gambling.
The path is more of the senses imagination and affections, whereas the other is more of the
intellect and the will.
So the other one is saying, no, I'm in control, I'm not going to give way to my body for
everything.
The other one is like, oh, I need this, I'm going to do it, I need it.
It gives way to the body.
Because it sees no hierarchy in truth, it sees no reason to suffer in the body for a heart
truth or a heart good, say?
Because the new truth tends toward living more in the body than in the rational part
of man.
It can easily tend towards instability of mind on neurosis.
Once again, nature bites back.
There's duplicity inside that will cause a neurosis.
It can lead to all sorts of duplicity situations like passive aggressive behavior and pitting
people against each other.
Imagine that.
They use Hegelian dialectics in workplaces now.
They get people against each other.
Such behavior destroys the virtue of truthfulness and the ability of people to live in
a community with some stability and peace.
I'm sure you have experienced any of those things.
Natural sciences now are in charge, hmm, hierarchy of sciences breaks down, since theology
is not something of man, but of God. Therefore, Kant, use your own understanding. Don't
go with that superstition. It's gone. It's removed as the legitimate science. No one
considers it as a real science, which it is. It's more real than anything else.
Metaphysics is doubted, since it's not sensible, there's no such thing as metaphysics.
Kant! Thus, physics keeps the top science.
And really, the whole hierarchy of sciences is leveled.
So the higher truths that unified all are gone, and now we got all the kind of disparity.
In any case, the natural sciences will tell us what is true.
We'll decide what yours to believe.
The model from the 1933 Chicago century of progress,
world's fair, captures this well.
Science, science, industry applies, man conforms.
So either man is going to go out and make the world conform
to him, man's measure of all things, mind of a matter,
or he just gives in and he conforms to the world
as it's presented to himself.
The devil loves that.
In other words, you just float downstream like a dead body.
And what's the true, traditional, minded, Catholic do?
He's swimming against the tide, if necessary.
I'm not giving in.
This is wrong, and he's fighting because that's wrong to give in.
You don't want to just float and conform to the world.
You fight the world of flesh and the devil.
Now there are many more examples last slide.
There's many more examples that we could go through and examine, but I think you see the
point.
There's a battle going on in the world at a fundamental level, and it can cause, or it's
cause, can be captured by two understandings of truth, okay?
We can see what the battle going on in our definitions of truth.
If you reflect on what is going on in your own life, you will see that this is the case.
So, modern notion has led to the trials we're experiencing in such an extensive way today.
Until we get back to the proper order, God centered understanding of truth in a hierarchical way,
these trials will only continue.
So, how we understand truth and false effects, how we think,
What we know, how we perceive the world in the universe, how we behave towards others,
who our friends are, how we live our lives, and how we die.