Easter Eggs

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Easter Eggs

An 'Easter Egg' is a programmers' term for a little surprise that you get when you perform a (usually unlikely) series of actions. Commonly, what you get when you open one is some kind of self-indulgent, trivial, and self-glorifying display, which may nonetheless be mildly amusing. Here are some papers, or excerpts, written over many years and lightly edited, that still stick in my mind because

they are radical
they are about the sheer physicality of everything, including ideas; the inexorable fallenness wrought by the Fall; the 'groan' of all Creation for the transcendent and metaphysical; and its true availability, but solely within the free (gratuitous) sacramental/covenantal/Eucharistic reality within which we live and breathe and have our being
they implicitly ask the question, what if we're not toward the end of history, as we implicitly assume, but still toward its very, very beginning? What if we're not yet even imagining, not even yet speculating about, let alone working toward, aspects of what we have been given all along?

Big Warning

These writings may not be sophisticated, but they are not simple. You're welcome to read them, but they are very demanding. For example, if you're the kind of person who doesn't know that the modern university as a project (particularly outside the natural sciences) is in chaos, unable to resolve its disputes or even (including the natural sciences) to find a coherent reason for its existence (cf. MacIntyre, Whose Justice?, Which Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry); or if the names de Lubac or von Balthasar are unknown to you; or if for you, there is nothing cognitive psychology might discover about how the human mind works and what it means to 'know' something that would overturn common sense and Aristotle (and/or Plato); or if for you 'strong' versions of evolutionary theory are de facto incompatible with the worship and profession of the Roman Catholic Church; or if for you the existence of an argument pro or con in Aquinas, or in some Papal Bull (cf. de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, "Ebb and Flow in Theology"), ends the matter; then it would probably not be a good idea for you to venture forth here.

Happy hunting.

(In alphabetical - and no other - order):

A 'Non-Material' Dimension To Human Thought Is Not Needed For The Rational Adequacy Of The Catholic Faith

Catholic Social Thought: The Reboot

'Divine Reason', 'Skyhooks', and Their Refutation by the Worship of the Roman Catholic Church

Exercising Moral Agency Within 'Complex' Socio-Cultural Ecologies

Feastdays: displays several movable feast days of any given year

It's Devil's Advocate Time! Today's subject: free will.

Malevolent Design

Note on the Subject Matter Chosen for the Course, The Old Testament in the Heart of the Catholic Church

Postmodernism + Catholic

Praying is Singing 0.5 Times