The Meaning and Purpose of Life, IV: The Maker’s Answer

In the first and third parts of this article we — or rather our guest blogger Guy Stevenson — asked questions.  In Part I the question was, “Why do I exist?”  In Part III, the question was, “What is social justice?”  Today Guy gives Fulton Sheen’s version of “The Maker’s Answer.”

The Meaning and Purpose of Life, III: What is Social Justice?

 Last week we looked at the question of “justice as love.”  This week we look at the question of “social justice”.  This will baffle many people today, because they think they have already answered the question, and the answer they have is that something called “social justice” replaces and transcends both justice and charity as traditionally understood.

The Meaning and Purpose of Life, II: Justice as Love

In Part I of this article, we looked at the question, “Why do I exist?” as answered by the legendary Fulton Sheen.  Admittedly, Sheen’s answer was framed within a specific philosophy and religious faith, but that takes nothing away from its universality.  To summarize, the meaning and purpose of life is to become more fully human by conforming yourself to human nature.

The Meaning and Purpose of Life, I: The Burning Question

If we believe media hype and the typical behavior of other people, the answer to the question as to the meaning and purpose of life is to be better, have more, or do more than someone else.  If we believe philosophers and spiritual leaders, however, we tend to come up with a different response, and one that argues a fundamentally different orientation than treating other people as either competition or accomplices.

The Blind Leading the Blinder

We may have mentioned one or two dozen (or hundred) times how much we like it when people ask us questions we can answer and then use as a posting on this blog.  What we like even better is when someone takes the bull between the teeth or the bit by the horns and writes the entire blog posting for us, with only a little bit of editing and formatting to make it fit our needs.

The Trumpet Must Sound

 Today we have a guest blog from Mr. G.C. Stevenson, a regular reader who was the “prime mover” behind the republication of Fulton Sheen’s “long lost” classic, Freedom Under God.

Fulton Sheen’s Warning for a Nation in Moral Freefall

By G.C. Stevenson

Some Thoughts for the Present and Future

 Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected leader of the Catholic Church, faces many challenges in applying Catholic social doctrine to solving today’s problems such as the growing wealth, income and power gap in every nation; widespread poverty; destruction of the environment; conflict-driven immigration; growth of State power; the decay of families, and many others.

Fulton Sheen, Social Justice, Solidarism, and Economic Personalism

There has been a spate of memes in the social media recently ostensibly quoting the late Fulton Sheen to the effect that Judas is the patron saint of social justice.  This does not ring true for a couple of reasons. Most obviously, Sheen, “the American Chesterton,” was a master of language and witty repartee, skilled at making an otherwise subtle nuance plain, albeit in a clever manner.  The statement is just too crude and blunt; it is not Sheen’s style.

An Unexpected Christmas Message

No, really, it’s still Christmas.  Despite the common belief that “the Christmas Season” starts the day after Thanksgiving (or, for some, after Independence Day) and runs until 9:00 am on December 25, Christmas actually begins at sundown on December 24 and runs for the next dozen days . . . although we’re off the hook regarding gifts, unless you include or hold off until January 6.

Ryan v. Sheen

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, through some very skillful salesmanship and philosophical sleight-of-hand, the whole understanding of “natural law” in the western tradition was overthrown in many circles through the efforts of the Fabian socialists and Msgr. John A. Ryan of the Catholic University of America in the first half of the twentieth century.  Nor did matters stop at mere theorizing.

The Three Types of Liberal Democracy

       In the previous posting on this subject, we promised (or threatened, depending on your point of view) on the meaning of “liberal democracy.”  It turns out that there are three (at least) different meanings of the term, depending on whether you’re a collectivist, an individualist, or a personalist.

The Obtuseness of Father Brownians

In addition to writing epic poems about Lepanto (the 450^th anniversary of which is coming up next week on October 7, read all about it in this book), G.K. Chesterton wrote a series of short stories about “Father Brown” (no first name), a “priest detective,” who appears to have been the first in a more or less illustrious line of amateur clerical sleuths.

The Expanded Ownership Revolution

One of the many paradoxes involved in the Great Reset and similar proposals has to do with human nature and the natural law.  As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, despite centuries of failure adherents insist that the abolition of private property and redistribution will work if we just manage to change human nature, try harder, and commit sufficient resources to the effort.

Improvising History

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council in economic terms was intended to solidify and carry out the program that had been developed to counter socialism: foster a state of society characterized by widespread capital ownership.  Socialism had by the time of the Council so permeated understanding of the Church’s natural law social teachings, however, that the “modernists,” as they were inappropriately called, were able to turn an administrative event into a revolution.

Not Really About Religion

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, private property is so important to a just society that it was included in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 17), for which Pope Pius XII had been pushing and was joined by none other than Eleanor Roosevelt.

Sabotaging Solidarism

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Fulton J. Sheen in the United States, and G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc in the United Kingdom locked horns early on with the forces of socialism and moral relativism, and were in many respects neutralized.  If you asked most people what it was that the American Chesterton and the English Sheen were most concerned with, you would very likely get quite a number of answers, few of which would mention socialism or moral relativism.

The Attack on Fulton Sheen

In the previous posting on this subject, we related how Fulton Sheen was called to the Catholic University of America to deal with the problem of socialism and moral relativism that had taken over the university.  The problem was that Bishop Shahan, who brought Sheen in to fix the problem, retired in 1927, and the situation quickly degenerated.

Defending Natural Law

 

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at how Msgr. John A. Ryan, the Fabians, and other heirs to the mantle of Henry George worked to extend George’s thought from land to all forms of capital, and from George’s focus on the United States and Ireland to the world.  In addition, Émile Durkheim captured sociology and invented solidarism to oppose Although the victory of socialism seemed inevitable, however, it did not go unchallenged.

What is the “Theory of Certitude”?

 When we last wrote on this subject (yesterday), we introduced (again) the “unhealthy, unkempt little bourgeois,” l’Abbé Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais, whom Charles Périn, a professor at the University of Louvain who appears to have been the first to define modernism in today’s Catholic sense, regarded as the first modernist. (Le Modernisme dans l’Église d’après les lettres inédites de Lamennais, Paris, 1881.)

The “Unhealthy, Unkempt Little Bourgeois”

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, it was pretty obvious from the very beginning that in most cases what became known as socialism was being presented as an alternative to traditional Christianity.  The problem was with those that, intending to or not, concealed the socialism under the guise of orthodoxy.  This was the case with l’Abbé Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais.