What Kennedy Hall is effectively saying is that the SSPX question is only answerable by an essentially inscrutable act of what Newman calls the illative sense. (His merely derisive final sentence mars an otherwise serious essay.)
But then charity and consistency and honesty dictate that we apply the same understanding of our cognitive situation (our intellectual-cognitive bind) as appropriate -- consistently, charitably, honestly. So Delia Gallagher writes: "The Bergoglian/Fernandez approach involves a competition between love and truth wherein truth has played a divisive and damaging role and love is the answer." But what Fernandez should be rightly be understood to be saying is rather that there is a competition between love and (false) subjective certitude, and that love must play a role in healing the division and damage arising from such (false) subjective certitude.
Similarly, Kmita's abstract distinction between tradition and treason is fine as far as it goes. But it begs the question as to how to distinguish in concreto between what is actually traditional and what treasonous, what is a development of doctrine and what a corruption, and again we are thrown back on the inscrutable (and fallible) judgment of the illative sense.
Yes, I agree with your overview; and I will admit that this is a question I wrestle with a lot. For there is no simple guaranteed mechanism for knowing the truth in difficult matters, as millennia of fundamental disagreements among both philosophers and Christians indicate. That is not to say we have no help, no "leg up," but it is to say that a simplistic "method" (a la Descartes) is not to hand.
If we honestly apply Newman's development of the concept of the illative sense, then I think we must admit that Descartes' method should be rightly understood as a kind of illative illumination -- no less than those Newman descries in Bacon, Locke, Newton, Butler, etc. -- not mere simplistic and dismissible sophistry. Certain passages in Newman's Grammar of Assent strike me as entirely congenial to Descartes' critique of the infirmity of rational demonstration.
"Oh my God! I’ve just been listening to a man raving endlessly about the need for a greater 'unity among Spaniards.' What rubbish! I mean, unity, unity… for what? Tell us for what in the first place…"
If the statement was made in the 1940s, I think that Spaniards who had just suffered through a brutal civil war might reasonably want unity so that Spain wouldn't be torn apart by another one.
Yes, but it's in precisely such circumstances that one has to be clear what KIND of unity one needs, and why. Otherwise, one sows the seeds for future discontent and violence.
What Kennedy Hall is effectively saying is that the SSPX question is only answerable by an essentially inscrutable act of what Newman calls the illative sense. (His merely derisive final sentence mars an otherwise serious essay.)
But then charity and consistency and honesty dictate that we apply the same understanding of our cognitive situation (our intellectual-cognitive bind) as appropriate -- consistently, charitably, honestly. So Delia Gallagher writes: "The Bergoglian/Fernandez approach involves a competition between love and truth wherein truth has played a divisive and damaging role and love is the answer." But what Fernandez should be rightly be understood to be saying is rather that there is a competition between love and (false) subjective certitude, and that love must play a role in healing the division and damage arising from such (false) subjective certitude.
Similarly, Kmita's abstract distinction between tradition and treason is fine as far as it goes. But it begs the question as to how to distinguish in concreto between what is actually traditional and what treasonous, what is a development of doctrine and what a corruption, and again we are thrown back on the inscrutable (and fallible) judgment of the illative sense.
Yes, I agree with your overview; and I will admit that this is a question I wrestle with a lot. For there is no simple guaranteed mechanism for knowing the truth in difficult matters, as millennia of fundamental disagreements among both philosophers and Christians indicate. That is not to say we have no help, no "leg up," but it is to say that a simplistic "method" (a la Descartes) is not to hand.
If we honestly apply Newman's development of the concept of the illative sense, then I think we must admit that Descartes' method should be rightly understood as a kind of illative illumination -- no less than those Newman descries in Bacon, Locke, Newton, Butler, etc. -- not mere simplistic and dismissible sophistry. Certain passages in Newman's Grammar of Assent strike me as entirely congenial to Descartes' critique of the infirmity of rational demonstration.
"Oh my God! I’ve just been listening to a man raving endlessly about the need for a greater 'unity among Spaniards.' What rubbish! I mean, unity, unity… for what? Tell us for what in the first place…"
If the statement was made in the 1940s, I think that Spaniards who had just suffered through a brutal civil war might reasonably want unity so that Spain wouldn't be torn apart by another one.
Yes, but it's in precisely such circumstances that one has to be clear what KIND of unity one needs, and why. Otherwise, one sows the seeds for future discontent and violence.