🇻🇦 🇧🇷 🇭🇺 SilentGhost

Both @Acts17David and @needGod_net offer a dilemma that is false because they confuse authenticity with the fact of inspiration. We do not believe we can attain to an entitatively supernatural act of God (supernatural in what it is, not just how we know it), such as the fact of inspiration, via natural reason alone. There is no scientific evidence, whether that be in historical analysis or manuscript evidence that could arrive at “this is divinely inspired”. Those would be evidences proper to natural objects which is fine to establish authenticity (eg. an apostle wrote it). But it is NOT proportionate to the supernatural objects like inspiration. What is proportionate to it is the testimony of a Divine Legate authenticated by motives of credibility (miracles, the Resurrection, the Church’s marks, the moral transformation of the apostles, the spread of the faith). The fact of inspiration is believed through this Divine Witness given to the Church and assented to by Supernatural Faith on the basis of God revealing. I think it’s helpful for them to realize that inspiration isn’t a publicly observable past event. It’s an interior act of God in the intellect of the human author at the moment of composition. There are no physical traces of it because it has no physical character to it. And there’s no external testimony to it except the author’s own and even his testimony reports an interior fact that the hearer cannot independently verify by the same method. This is the same epistemic situation as the Trinity. Nobody thinks historical analysis can establish that God is three Persons in one nature, because the object is supernatural and interior to the divine life itself. Inspiration sits in the same category because it’s an interior supernatural fact, knowable only through Divine testimony and not mere external investigation. So they equivocate on inspiration. They take “authentic apostolic teaching” or “early reception” which can be attained using tools in the natural order to mean that they’ve reached the fact of inspiration. But even still the very evidence they will receive as establishing this are the very things they reject (church councils, early church fathers). So they’re left with some authentic and even infallible witnesses, but never a canon of inspired books because the canon isn’t a historical conclusion. It’s a supernatural fact received by faith on the testimony of an authenticated witness.

I'm actually quite surprised at how much of an audience there is for meditations on technology and theology. I never thought that my hot takes on the encyclical would reach so many people. I've even had a couple of people reach out to me and tell me that they intend on reading it for themselves which is magnificent. God works in such mysterious ways and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Call me a raging antisemite but I just don't think the only country to ever use nuclear weapons and the only country lying about having nuclear weapons should be the ones deciding who gets nuclear weapons

@ChaoLiu24399552 @BrettErickson28 "Occupation"? It's their freaking coast!

@BrettErickson28 I could be wrong but my understanding is: if we’re negotiating, we need leverage. The blockade alone is not enough, so adding military pressure, such as attempting to reopen the strait by force, even we fail to fully open the strait, it could make Iran’s occupation unsustainable.

A major struggle inside the Trump Administration right now lies in the incompatibility between ideology and reality. For many, getting the United States to launch a war against Iran was their single most important ambition. Wipe out the regime, strengthen Israel, eliminate those that despise America. And it became everything to them. Then, their dreams came true on February 28th when Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury. But it quickly fell apart after the Minab bombing that killed more than a hundred schoolchildren, and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Now, almost three months later, the writing is on the wall. The United States is cornered, with no viable pathways to victory. No military options exist, blockade has failed disastrously, and Trump is staring down the barrel of legacy defining failure alongside his closest advisors. Trump, and those around him that built their entire careers dreaming of toppling the Iranian regime, are now doomed to hand them their greatest victory, and that is something that they are unwilling to accept. But it’s the reality they are faced with. With the Trump Administration desperately grasping at straws and clinging to pipe dreams, it is time that they do what is right for the United States, and right for the world. Cut a deal. It will be a bad deal. It will destroy many people’s careers, and it will destroy the legacy of Donald Trump. But not every movie is Rudy. Sometimes the movie is Cool Runnings. A great story that ends in defeat. The Trump Administration needs to understand that their ideology and reality are incompatible with one another. There are no viable pathways to victory. There are no sweetheart deals. There are only concessions that will destroy the administration. But for the sake of the world, the Trump Administration needs to make these concessions.

Ever notice how a single word can reframe an entire narrative? In the feeding of the 5,000, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) simply mention "loaves" (artous). But in John 6:9, John drops a highly deliberate, granular detail: they were specifically barley loaves (κριθίνους). This isn't just a casual culinary note. By specifying barley, John is triggering a massive typographic resonance with the Old Testament prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42–44: The Gift: A man brings Elisha loaves of barley (artous krithinous in the LXX). The Doubt: Elisha’s servant objects: "What, should I set this before a hundred men?" (A perfect match to Andrew’s "What are these for so many / εἰς τοσούτους?"). The Miracle: The crowd eats with leftovers to spare. By anchoring his account with κριθίνους, John avoids a lengthy explanation and lets the historical weight of the language do the heavy lifting. He signals to a scripturally saturated reader that Jesus isn't just duplicating an old miracle—He is vastly outclassing it. Where Elisha fed 100 men with 20 barley loaves, Jesus feeds 5,000 with just 5. It’s a masterclass in Johannine narrative design: a tiny lexical thread woven deeply into Israel's prophetic history. #KoineGreek #NewTestament #GospelOfJohn #BiblicalLanguages #TextualCriticism

The question Protestants never ask: "Why did Catholics ADD 7 books to the Bible?" Wrong frame. Completely wrong. The real question is: why did Luther REMOVE them in the 1500s? A thread.

Padre Pio bore the visible stigmata for 50 years, a wound that bled every Friday and baffled physicians. Not one physician. Not one examination. Multiple doctors, across decades, examined the wounds on his hands, feet, and side. They could not explain the source. They could not explain why the wounds did not become infected. They could not explain why they bled on a weekly pattern tied to the Passion. He received the stigmata in 1918. They did not disappear until shortly before his death in 1968. Fifty years. The wounds attracted hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to San Giovanni Rotondo. People came not for a relic or a ceremony. They came because a living man bore the marks of the Crucifixion in his body. Paul wrote in Galatians 6:17: "I bear on my body the marks of Jesus." The Church does not require Catholics to believe in private mystical phenomena. But the Church did investigate Padre Pio thoroughly. It was not credulous acceptance. It was scrutiny spanning decades. And the conclusion was beatification in 1999, canonization in 2002. There is a tendency in modern culture to explain away everything supernatural. To assume that if science cannot measure it, it did not happen. Padre Pio did not argue with that tendency. He simply bled every Friday for fifty years. What do you do with a fact that doesn't fit your framework?

Micheal roasting Americans is next level 😂

Protestants get so mad when you point out that Luther removed 7 books from Scripture. I can't tell if they get madder when you do that, or pray for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen

This video still cracks me up every single time 😭😂😂😂

The U.S. Constitution is a brilliant piece of engineering. It is also philosophically incompatible with Catholic natural law. This is not a political claim. It is a metaphysical one. A thread.

John Mearsheimer: "It's not just Israeli leaders who support the genocide. You don't see any protest among the Israeli public. It's shocking. It's sickening. You have to file all this under the Nazification of Israel. They are like the Germans under Hitler."

Em um ano, o Papa Leão XIV recolocou a Igreja nas principais discussões do mundo contemporâneo, da geopolítica às novas tecnologias, sem nenhuma concessão às ideologias políticas liberais, progressistas ou conservadoras. Não vemos um Papa tão habilidoso nesse quesito desde os primeiros anos do pontificado de São João Paulo II, há quase cinquenta anos.

New: Pope Leo XIV condemns European countries for "exalting abortion as a right".

In 96 AD, Clement of Rome, bishop of a church over 600 miles away, commanded the Corinthians to cease their sedition. Not requested. Not suggested. Commanded. The Corinthian church had a dispute. Younger members had removed the established elders. Clement wrote from Rome to correct this, with the full weight of apostolic authority behind every line. Here is what makes this historically remarkable. The New Testament canon as we recognize it would not be formally settled for another three centuries. There was no printed Bible. No agreed-upon list of authoritative texts. And yet a bishop in Rome felt entirely entitled to exercise doctrinal correction over a congregation in Greece. The Corinthians did not tell him to mind his own business. They kept the letter. Read it publicly in their liturgy for generations. Clement's epistle was treated in some early communities with a reverence approaching Scripture itself. This is not a medieval invention. This is 96 AD, within living memory of the Apostles. Clement almost certainly knew Peter and Paul personally. The structure being exercised here, one church exercising authority over another, was not controversial. It was assumed. Sola Scriptura tells us the Bible alone governs Christian life. But the Christians who received and preserved the New Testament already operated inside a structure of authoritative teaching that preceded the canon. The question Protestants rarely answer directly: if the early Church didn't need a finalized canon to exercise doctrinal authority, what exactly does that tell us about where authority actually resided?

Pope Leo appealing to the principle of Subsidiarity to speak against the welfare state

Thoughts inspired by the Church’s Social Doctrine, and Pope Leo’s latest encyclical (where he proposed better measures than just GDP for evaluating the health of our societies and economies): What if instead of GDP, we had a “Family Formation and Prosperity Index” by which to gauge the health of our economy? Our reading on that “FFPI” measure would improve based on things like: —The ability of families to provide for themselves with one stream of income (yes, prioritizing men as the primary earners, and empowering wives to be mothers), including the ability to completely refrain from work at least one day per week (for worship, rest, etc.) —The ability of families to purchase homes of modest and sufficient size for raising children (and also to own them outright, not subject to ongoing “leasing” from the government via property tax) —The ability of families to afford healthcare costs, particularly as they have more children —The ratio between the average pay of CEOs and workers (thus making it possible to evaluate individual corporations for the “FFPI”). —The ability of families to find employment opportunities as close to their own extended families as possible (prioritizing the ability to build long-term in particular places) —The marriage rate + birthrate —The longevity of marriages once established (less divorce, adjusted for situations like death, which “artificially” bring marriages to an end) Etc. These are just some of the ideas I’ve had for how we should TRULY evaluate our society and economy.

@realDrTT @FeserEdward @imetatronink @MearsheimerJ @raymcgovern @DougAMacgregor @TuckerCarlson I'd like to add that my observation here in Twitter that the overwhelming majority of political conservatives - in the US and even more outside it - are against the Iran War, especially Catholic conservatives and traditionalists (exception: neocons and evangelical zionists)

@realDrTT About consciousness, you may follow @FeserEdward About Iran, the same Feser plus @imetatronink @MearsheimerJ @raymcgovern @DougAMacgregor Jeffrey Sachs and - obviously - @TuckerCarlson

Some final notes on #MagnificaHumanitas Just a few quick reflections before I start wrapping things up into a nice bow. This was the first encyclical that I have ever actually read, and I went into it with a lot of excitement, a lot of hope, and quite frankly, a bit of nervous caution. I was very pleasantly surprised, particularly about the summary of the church teachings in the first couple of chapters. The overview of artificial intelligence and some of the questions that it poses was fairly comprehensive, although there are a few outstanding questions that I still have — and I'm not sure if the Holy Father is in a position to comment on said questions. These questions pertain to the nature of consciousness and how a Catholic understanding of consciousness fits in with what might succeed large language models. However, I think that there is more to unpack from the large language model portions than I was able to do in one evening. I certainly need to go back and revisit it and meditate on it more, so that's something that I will do. I think that parts of it will be rather difficult for political conservatives like myself, particularly those who are in support of the conflict in Iran. That was certainly something that I had to think about. I'm also not sure what to make of the criteria that was outlined for the use of artificial intelligence when it comes to armed conflict and how that relates directly to the proclamation that just war theory is outdated. And then finally, I just wanted to say I'm going to need to read it a second time, maybe even a third time before I can truly grasp the depth of it. I really hope that those of you who read what I wrote don't take it as anything other than primary remarks, some of which were written at a very late hour under abnormal circumstances, i.e. severe lack of sleep, but hopefully some of it gives you insight into at least my thought process, which absolutely needs refining. I very much welcome your input and would ask you to please just remain respectful. God bless you all.

🚨 Pope Leo XIV has delivered a hard hitting speech to EU leaders, calling out the 'rejection of the Christian inspiration of the founding fathers of the EU' He also said that Europe is facing 'DRASTIC STERILITY' because 'too many have been deprived of the right to be born' and 'because there has been a failure to pass on the material and cultural tools that young people need to face the future'