Friday, August 31, 2007

Neat Conversian Story

Frank came across this link recently.

Longish, but worth the read.

Cardinal Dougherty

Dennis Joseph Cardinal Dougherty (August 16, 1865 - May 31, 1951) was the 5th Bishop of Buffalo, New York and the Archbishop of Philadelphia and ranking prelate of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the U.S.

His years in office in Philadelphia were marked by the greatest increase in diocesan schools in the history of the diocese. After his death in 1951, the largest Catholic high school in the world was built and named in Cardinal Dougherty's honor. Finished in 1956, Cardinal Dougherty High School was the first school of its kind.

Pretty cool, eh?

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Have a blessed feast!





The doctrine of the Assumption of Mary was once a huge obstacle to converting. I kept asking myself "But what is the evidence for it." Of course, that's a perfectly good question, but I was ignoring the evidence. What I was really asking myself was "What is the evidence outside of the Magisterium for the doctrine?"

But that the Magisterium teaches it is evidence! All the evidence I had for the identity of the Church *was* evidence for the doctrine. Since I had good evidence for that and no good evidence against the doctrine, it ceased to be a problem.

Consider this analogy. Some evils seem utterly unredeemable: we just can't imagine how good could come of them. What's the evidence that the will be redeemed?

All the evidence for a just God *is* evidence that all evils will be redeemed.

This is just an application of what epistemologists call epistemic closure. I wish I would have realized that sooner.



Friday, August 03, 2007

SCP at the ACPA: Virtue and Value

John Greco (now at SLU don't forget) is currently putting together a session for the Society of Christian Philosophers at the American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting. Jason Baehr will give a paper on open mindedness as an intellectual virtue and Stephen Grimm will give a paper on epistemic value. Daniel Breyer (Fordham) will comment on Jason's paper and I'll be commenting on Stephen's paper.

Call for Papers