Heroes and Villains of Traditional Catholicism - Part B

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JMJ

Introduction

So we pick our heroes and villains. Necessarily there are fewer heroes than villains.  In order to stand above a crowd we put heroes on a pedestal as an example to follow. Unfortunately, when they fall from the pedestal, there is no middle ground, they become villains. That doesn't mean that they are everyone's hero's because we say so, they are our heroes. Just as those who fall out of favour are are our villains.

So these heroes and villains are subject to the whims and fancies of their followers.

I don't think this is a good way to select heroes and villains. I think that a better standard is to select them based on their virtues (for heros) and vices (for villains), their adherence to Catholic Truth and in the sacrifices that they make to defend that Truth.

Our Heroes

Hitler was both a hero and villain to Germans.  It just depended on who you asked.  The reality is that he sought to exterminate those of Jewish descent as well as those who didn't fit in with his vision.  Added to this was his desire to dominate much of the world.

Steeped in the vice of pride, he was attempting to usurp God, deciding who were the sheep and who were the goats.

But he isn't alone, history is full of people who make this fatal mistake, I have encountered Catholics (Traditional and otherwise) who pass judgement on the actions of others, believing they know their most secret intentions.  I find it highly unlikely that God has granted them the gift of reading hearts, so they only believe that they know what the other is thinking.  In this they mistake belief for knowledge and create a fantasy.

In my personal experience when their fantasies run into reality, they will do mental gymnastics and contortions to defend their fantasies.

Fantasy:A pleasant situation that you enjoy thinking about but is unlikely to happen, or the activity of imagining things. A pleasant but unlikely situation that you enjoy thinking about. (Cambridge Dictionary)

I have encountered many who try to bend reality to match their will:

• Psychiatric patients
• Narcisstic-sociopaths
  
• Benny-Vacantists
• Ecclesia-Vacantists
• Sede-Vacantists

When confronted with a reality that disagrees with your beliefs,  you have three choices:

1. Change your belief
2. Change the reality
3. Change your perception of reality

I have personally witnessed people changing their perception of reality and falling into error. Some are still in psychiatric facilities, other still roam the streets looking, for all intensive purposes, like normal people. 😆

How do you handle reality?

The ultimate 'subjectivism', is to seek to bend reality to our will. This is simply playing God, refusing to accept reality and the personal need to align our thoughts with reality. This refusal of an objective reality reeks of Liberalism and taken to its extreme it is a mental illness and in some cases the person affected doesn't realize that they've tricked themselves and last what psychologists call 'Insight'.

In psychology and psychiatry, insight can mean the ability to recognize one's own mental illness. ... This form of insight has multiple dimensions, such as recognizing the need for treatment, and recognizing consequences of one's behavior as stemming from an illness.A person with very poor recognition or acknowledgment is referred to as having "poor insight" or "lack of insight". The most extreme form is anosognosia, the total absence of insight into one's own mental illness.(Wikipedia)

In the absence of a mental illness, the Catholic Church has referred to this as 'blindness' or 'hardness of the heart'.

Humans are complicated beings and exceptionally creative when trying to find ways to justify their actions.  So losing insight is just an extreme example. Other examples are projecting our faults onto others and side stepping the reality (think beam and mote Luke 6:42).

Criteria for Selecting Our Heroes

Since Liberalism is BAD, I think that there must be a better way to select our heroes and villains.

My thought is that a hero should be defined by their adherence to Truth. At the same time we need to understand that heroes are human and therefore metaphorically speckled covered with black and white specks.

They are fallible, just a we are.

Truth is embodied in various forms and rests on various authorities.  The highest of these are the Dogmas of the Catholic Faith.  These rest on the authority of God.  The next would be the Doctrines of the Catholic Church that rest on various authorities of the Church (Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Religious, and Theologians). These are put into practice via Catholic Virtues and Principles.

Tradicat: Dogmatic Fact or Fancy
Tradicat: Dogmatic Fact or Fancy II
Tradicat: Yes Sally, Pope Francis is Pope

Beyond these reliable Truths and Principles, we have facts (historical, scientific etc), in other words reality as observed by ourselves and others. In the situation where we haven't observed an event ourselves we must trust the 'authority' of someone else. Examples of this include experimental results supporting the Theory of Relativity, the Gravitational Constant, and who won the 2019 world series.

It seems to me that we accept 'observations' as facts as along as the trust in the observer exceeds the importance of the fact to our perspective of reality. 

Hence the reason for conspiracy theories and cult leaders.

When presented with a public figure, the questions we need to ask ourselves are:

Is the person:

1. Contradicting or placing in jeopardy any Catholic Dogmas or Doctrines?
2. Practicing virtue?
3. Departing from Catholic Principles?

If you checked off any of these you need to consider whether or not their actions are worthy of emulation.

P^3