Recents commentary on SG has revived some chatter about Bruce Charlton, which, I personally concluded is an intellectual coward; something I have trouble making any allowance for, and hence, I have largely ignored Bruce since late 2022.
Bruce has undeniably some positives here and there, his short pamphlet available on the internet entitled addicted to distraction is quite brilliant and I suggest everyone reads it.
That said, the man is completely incoherent despite his claims of Christianity being a net positive and true, he persists in polluting it with essentially utterly heretical, illogical and nonsensical fluctuating positions.
My last blog post on it was this one, to which he later responded with a comment on his site thus:
@Gf – Fine, that’s good. Those Roman Catholics who disagree with your assumptions can now see more clearly where their assumptions differ, and whether they personally regard their different assumptions as correct, or not.
I must say, though, it’s a bit childish – because clearly false – to assert in your Headline that I don’t understand Roman Catholicism At All; simply because we disagree about the institutions essential actuality!
Ummm… except he goes on to totally prove he really has no clue in the very next paragraph.
That aside; in particular I disagree 100% and with absolute personal certainty with your first and foundational assumption “1. The Catholic Church is the one and ONLY Church instituted on Earth by God.”- and by its implication (I presume) that you assume there is no salvation outside of (whatever you define as) the RCC.
He states this is my personal certainty, which is true enough, and I mentioned it in that post as one of the baseline assumptions of Catholicism (Sedevacantism being the only Catholicism left). I had assumed that Bruce understood the baseline reason why this is axiomatic for anyone who considers themselves Catholic, since it is simple enough a child understands it.
Either Christianity is true or it is not, there is no grey area here. And if Christianity is true, God is a loving God who doesn’t lie, which means He would leave a Way for the truth to be known and followed and remain infallible and uncorrupted, despite humans being all flawed, until the end of days, that is, His return, as stated quite clearly in the Bible. So… IF like Bruce pretends to do, you accept Christianity is true, and given that for over a thousand years there was no other Christianity but Catholicism, complete with Popes and so on, you can only reasonably conclude that Catholicism MUST have been true. At least for at least 1054 years. After that you might be excused if you erroneously think the Eastern “Orthodox” carried on the One True Church. Well… if you are absolutely lazy and intentionally remain ignorant of all history for the last nearly 1000 years. Because the Eastern “Orthodox” did not proselytise, made deals with the Muslims, retreated in the face of conquest, asked for help from the Catholics AFTER their schism and then backstabbed the crusaders who came to help them repeatedly, right up to teaming up with the Muslims to kill them; not once, not twice, but three crusades in a row. Then whined and bitched like victims for the next 900 years when the fourth crusade sacked Constantinople. They even refused to simply take over the fortresses that the Catholics built and maintained in the Outremer for two centuries, when the European resources were finally drying up. They didn’t stop the invasion of Malta, and in any case, they have their own, insular, almost Jewish factions, and currently various splits too.
So you’d be foolish at beat to think the Eastern “Orthodox” are where the infallible Church of God resides. And the very idea that another sect, that promptly split into thousands of factions of Protestantism, 500 years later still is the true Church is clearly ridiculous. Particularly since it was started by an ethnically Jewish theological hitman called Martin, with gluttony, vulgarity and rape of maids and a fetish for sex with nuns as his main personality traits, who ultimately hung himself from his bedpost (possibly in erotic auto-asphyxiation gone wrong).
Given the above, it really does not take Sherlock Holmes powers of reasoning to conclude that Catholicism is it. At which point, you need to familiarise yourself with what Catholicism is, and what its rules are.
And when you do, you realise that by those very rules, two things become immediately clear:
1. Catholicism creates the best society possible for human beings.
2. The Vatican II abomination and its resulting Novus Ordo “Church” are clearly the antithesis of Catholicism.
Given these readily provable and knowable facts, and the level of logic even a child can grasp, since what is true cannot be false, and vice versa, if you accept Christianity as being true, then:
1. Catholicism is Christianity
2. Catholicism is true
3. All that is not Catholicism is false
4. Catholicism is the only way to salvation
There are some nuances, but in broad terms this is it. So, pretending that the axiomatic point that Catholicism is the ONLY true Church, is merely a personal choice is either utterly ignorant, or the conclusion of someone too stupid to do basic research and basic logic, or, the intentional lie of a gnostic deceiver.
You’ll see that I assumed (as charity dictates) that Bruce is merely an ignorant, and a hit and miss thinker. This despite his clearly gnostic tendencies, not to mention absurdist notions of Mormonism being in any way valid. Truly, if you don’t know the story of Mormonism I suggest you go to the theatre and watch the Book of Mormon, it’s not historically perfect, but it is hilarious and effectively points out some of the complete nonsense of that made up cult.
My conviction is rooted in a primary understanding of God the Creator as our Heavenly Father who Loves us all as His individual children – and the utter inconceivability that such a personage would set-up mortal life on this earth (and all its incredible variety of situations through persons, time and place) – and with this mortal life being directed-at salvation – to have such absolute dependence on the contingencies of any possible human institution.
What did I say? The man is either supremely ignorant of Christianity as a whole, or pretending to be. The Catholic Church has human servants in it, from the Pope (currently not present since 1958) to the last layman, none of which are infallible. The Church, and the Pope, when there is one and he is speaking ex cathedra only, are infallible not because of any human attributes, but because it is supernaturally protected from error by God Himself. As a Loving God would. The Church is not a human institution at all, it is a divine one, populated by humans here on Earth, and infallible through God’s Grace and nothing else!
But apparently Bruce, in Bruce-logic land, thinks a loving omnipotent God would set up a flawed, corruptible, “Church”.
No, Bruce. No. God gave us free will, so we are free to ignore Him and His Church, but if we but choose to look and investigate, it becomes clear very fast what the DEMONSTRABLE FACTS are.
I can understand that – in earlier eras and places – Men did not distinguish the individual from the group in the way that we now cannot help doing.
What a lot of unsubstantiated nonsense. Pure invention with millions of counter examples to discredit it all over the place at all times of history.
Each Man experienced himself in terms of the groups to which he belonged – mostly by birth. To be separated was not to be himself.
Again, what utter rubbish. Scouts existed at all periods of history. They mixed with other tribes and races and cultures.
Therefore life and salvation used to be (necessarily) conceptualized in terms of groups. men were (mostly unconsciously, unaware of any alternatives) immersed in the groups into which they were born and grew. The religions that grew were spontaneously church-based and church-led – nothing else was even possible; and that was good and right for those times and places.
And here we see the modernist, secular, gnostic, nonsense raise its beastly head. There are plenty of communities where the truth binds them as a people of one faith, without wiping out their individuality, in fact, Catholicism has always done this. And continues to do so.
But now, especially in The West, almost the opposite is the case. We find it difficult or impossible to consider ourselves primarily in terms of our group membership;
Don’t judge the world by your own measure, Bruce.
and confront an alienated world, cut off inside our own consciousness – and often seeking escape from this alienation by distraction and drugs.
Again, speak for yourself. While distraction (in all its forms, pornography, wealth, drugs, materialism in general, entertainment, etc) is pervasive, it has always existed. Is it more prevalent today? Sure. But being “cut off” from “others” cannot be done unless you are first “cut off” from your own inner self and inner nature. In short, only those who do not know themselves fall so easily to it all. And the primary culprit for this lack of self-awareness is lack of hardship.
We must now (and indeed do, in practice) accept own our ultimate responsibility for our personal salvation;
It was always this way, Bruce. There has never been a magical group discount to salvation!
Where do you even come up with such specious nonsense?
and I think it is unhelpful to pretend otherwise;
No one here is “pretending” anything, except you Bruce; making up weird “psychological” theories that would have that other fantasist, Freud, blush.
and try (but fail) to make ‘obedience’ primary – when what the ancients considered obedience is literally impossible in a situation when we Must *choose* who exactly to believe and obey; and must choose frequently.
Seriously, are you this dimwitted or are you in fact an intentional deceiver?
Are you implying, with a straight face, that salvation was, or is, or can be, achieved by forcing obedience on people?!? Really Bruce? Are you sure you’re not a closet Muslim? They believe that shit. Christians sure don’t.
The obedience is self imposed, dummy.
No one forced me to become Catholic. Or to go to Mass. Or to confess. Or to believe Catholic dogma. I choose it. As does every Catholic. We choose to obey. It is the paramount dogma of Catholicism that no one can be forced to become a Catholic, it must be freely chosen, without any coercion at all, by anyone!
It might be said that our great task nowadays is to become conscious of (and understand) much that was previously unconscious (and implicit); and then to take responsibility for our choices.
Again, pure psychobabble nonsense. Every man, in every age, in every culture, since the very first man, and until the very last one, has had to, does now, and always will in the future, have to learn as much as he can about himself and the world, and whether he knows it or not, likes it or not, wants to or not, always, will, take responsibility (willingly or not) for his choices. Because that is how reality works Bruce.
And that is why at best Bruce is evasive (cowardly) in his thinking. And I’ve not even brought up his “Mormonism Lite” here.
I hope that clarifies things for all the SG denizens.
It was all the Rudolf Steiner stuff that did it for me.
As you say, gnosticism.
He is slave to the sin of intellectual pride and has not repented and he does not want to repent.
He thinks Christianity is what he says it is because he has direct access to the Most High and his opinions are dogmas of faith.
This is really an absurd position and he knows it deep inside. So he engages in all kind of rationalizations to justify it before himself and before others. He is never satisfied, this is like an itch he cannot suppress. So it is post after post of rationalizations and fallacies.
It is really sad how a bright mind follows the wrong path like this. He is bright but he is not God. He should submit to the Truth but he wants the Truth to submit to him. Non serviam!
Pretty good and concise analysis.
It has always struck me as nonesence when people refer to humans in the past as vastly different than at the current time, likening them to some kind of unevolved morons. It supposes that we are currently better, which is not readily apparent. Evolution is a lie. It’s all about hou you use your freewill.
I do think that our ancient ancestors were a little different from us. For a start they were not such whiny, weak, sophists; and secondly, they were far more likely to take a stick and beat whiny, weak, sophists about the head until they stopped talking nonsense.
[…] Bruce is an intellectual coward. Something I have evidenced before, and his net effect is to create only more despair and fear and weakness in all those who listen to […]