The Dark Side of Political Philosophy, and How it Led to the Growth and Development of Today’s “Political Left” Movement

(Updated August 30, 2020): On the topic of why I think that the Roman Catholic Church is a problem with respect to the “wokism” situation we see today, it is not simply that I think things like “the Mass”, the priesthood, the saints, had anything (or much) to do with it. Roman Catholicism is NOT just its religious trappings. It is not just its history. It is not just “the evils that it has done in history”. It is also a thought system of its own. It has adopted “philosophies” over time. It is in fact a collection of these things. More, as well, it was a “cause” against certain “effects” reacted. Today we see some “effects” in the form of the so-called “academic subject” called “intersectionalism” that reacts against “White European Males”. There is so much more.

In this article, originally dated February 2019, I began to make the philosophical connection.

I’ve been asked many times, “why do you think it’s the intellectuals who convert to Roman Catholicism, while many of those who don’t approach the topic from a so-called intellectual viewpoint tend in large measure to convert the other way, from Roman Catholicism to evangelicalism?”

It seems to me that the “intellectuals” (or those who would think of themselves in that way) are more philosophically savvy, and they tend toward logical and ordered systems such as Aristotelianism (and derivatively, Thomism). That is a definite draw.

However, I think that is wrong-headed in several important ways. To take just one example, in his “Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction”, Edward Feser outlines Kant’s “naturalist” assumptions and decides simply to ignore all of Kant (and what followed). He says (and I’ve added paragraph breaks to enhance readability):

Feser on simplicity

Ed Feser has responded to a critique of divine simplicity. It's useful to see how a Thomist  of his caliber fields objections:

https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/simply-irresistible/

Take the latter point first. Though its critics often treat the notion of divine simplicity as an unimportant curiosity, there are good reasons why the Church Fathers, the medieval Doctors, and two ecclesiastical councils regarded it as essential to orthodoxy. For one thing, it is a consequence of God’s ultimacy. For anything composed of parts is ontologically posterior to those parts, and can exist only if something causes the parts to be combined. Hence if God were composed of parts, there would have to be something ontologically prior to him and something which combines those parts, thereby causing him to exist. But there is nothing ontologically prior to or more ultimate than God, and nothing that causes him. To be the uncaused cause of everything other than himself is just part of what it is to be God. Hence God cannot be composed of parts but must be absolutely simple.[1]