At Padre's
Politics • Spirituality/Belief • Culture
Your Digitial Neighborhood - A place on connection, community and conversation. Come listen, laugh and join us for random discussions, cultural issues, personal stories. pets, cooking, politics and just about anything else. ALWAYS INVITED - NEVER EXPECTED!
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
November 22, 2024
Voltaire's birthday 11-21-1694 - A brief essay by Steve Weidenkopf

Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).

Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.

Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by historian Will Durant as “the most brilliant writer that ever lived,” Voltaire produced novels, plays, and histories. His first love was theater, a passion he cultivated during a stay in England with exposure to Shakespeare’s works, but he is mostly known for his satirical, witty, and critical commentaries on politics and religion. His satirical novel and philosophical fantasy Candide is still read and admired nearly three centuries after its publication in 1758.

Voltaire may have remained just a gifted French writer of the eighteenth century if not for his association with the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment came to the forefront of European life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and comprised numerous philosophes, who contributed to the so-called “Age of Reason.”

Enlightenment intellectuals were not a monolithic group, but they shared a general critical and even inimical attitude toward organized religion. Voltaire, and other philosophes, condemned organized religion generally and the Catholic Church particularly. They believed that society was happier without the influence of the Church, which they argued contained selfish, ruthless clerics who demanded unconditional obedience from the superstitious multitude and enforced societal conformity through violent persecution. Faith enslaved the mind, and it was only reason that could “enlighten” the intellect and free it from the darkness of faith.

Enlightened thinkers examined other topics besides religion and questioned nearly every aspect of society, including humanity in general. Many Enlightenment intellectuals viewed humans in different groups and advocated that some ethnic groups were different species and less human than others, especially the natives of America and Africa. Voltaire delved into these discussions and argued that Africans were a completely different species of humans, destined for slavery.

Enlightenment intellectuals were not content just to discuss their ideas. They desired radical change in society, where “reason” reigned supreme and political, economic, and moral actions were unencumbered by Christian influence. The achievement of that goal depended on controlling the institutions of higher learning in Europe, which required weakening the Catholic Church’s role in society in general and the eradication of the Society of Jesus in particular.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits controlled hundreds of universities and seminaries in Europe. Enlightened philosophes embarked on a campaign to expel the Jesuits from European countries so that royal and secular control of their institutions of higher learning could occur, which would allow the cult of reason to become dominant.

Voltaire led the charge against the Church and the Jesuits by actively campaigning for their suppression. He recognized that if secular rulers could be convinced to expel the Society and confiscate their colleges and universities, it would be an easier task to convince those same rulers to suppress the Church and its influence in society. In 1773, he wrote, “Once we have destroyed the Jesuits, we shall have our own way with the infamous thing [l’infâme — i.e., the Church].” Once the Jesuits were suppressed, Voltaire wrote, “in twenty years there will be nothing left of the Church.” And indeed, Voltaire’s dream was realized twenty years later in his homeland, when the French revolutionary government persecuted Catholics, confiscated the property of the Church, and suppressed it.

The Enlightenment attack against the Jesuits began in Portugal, when King Joseph I (r. 1750-1777) signed a decree ordering their expulsion from Portugal and Brazil in 1755. A few years later, in 1764, King Louis XV (r. 1715-1774) expelled the Jesuits from France and all its dominions. The Spanish king Charles III (r. 1759-1788) followed suit and in 1767 ejected the Society from Spain and its territories.

Pope Clement XIV (r. 1769-1774) was under intense political pressure from the leading monarchs of Europe to enact ecclesiastical penalties against the Jesuits. The pontiff acquiesced on July 21, 1773 in the bull Dominus ac Redemptor, which suppressed the Society of Jesus after 239 years of faithful service to the Church. Although the pope did not pass judgment on the Society in terms of the charges brought against it by secular rulers, his shameful surrendering to political pressure caused the Jesuits to cease existing for a generation, until the Society was re-established by Pope Pius VII (r. 1800-1823) in 1814.

Freed from the “clutches” of the Jesuits, the colleges and universities of Europe were ripe for the influence and control of Enlightenment thinkers to take root. The age of faith had succumbed to the “age of reason,” which produced skepticism, moral relativism, and secular humanism.

Although many Enlightenment thinkers focused their attack mainly on the Church, they also sought the re-interpretation of academic subjects, including history. History, for the philosophes, provided an example of the barbarity and cruelty of humanity influenced by religion. Voltaire utilized historical events and persons as weapons against the Church by re-interpreting them through a lens of negativity and cynicism. He wrote that the Crusades were “marked by every cruelty, every perfidy, every debauchery, and every folly of which human nature is capable.” The Spanish Inquisition was the ultimate expression of religious intolerance; in the 1764 Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire described one inquisitor as the “embodiment of fanaticism.” And perhaps no greater martyr of intellectual freedom existed than the seventeenth-century Italian mathematician Galileo, who, according to Voltaire, “groaned away his days in the dungeons of the Inquisition, because he had demonstrated by irrefutable proofs the motion of the earth.” Apparently, the fact that Galileo’s most strident critics were fellow scientists, and that he did not irrefutably scientifically prove the earth’s motion, did not sway Voltaire from championing Galileo’s cause in his efforts to discredit the Church.

Interestingly, Voltaire’s public vitriol for the Church did not correlate to his private life. He built a chapel on Ferney, his estate; asked the pope to send relics for the altar; and etched the inscription, “Voltaire erected this to God” on the façade. Voltaire allowed his estate workers to attend Mass and provided instruction in the Catholic faith for their children. He expressed deep admiration for the Sisters of Charity and their work.

Toward the end of his life, Voltaire stated his desire for Christian burial upon his death, which was granted. Although he worked for the eradication of the Church’s dominance in political affairs, he appreciated the contribution of individual Christians to society and the necessity of personal faith in a Supreme Being for the general welfare.

Voltaire died a decade before the beginning of the French Revolution, but many contemporaries, along with modern scholars, credit his political and philosophical works for laying the foundation for that cataclysmic event and its catastrophic impact on the Catholic Church. However, those who ascribe credit to Voltaire for the Revolution fail to recognize that he would not have supported the radical elements who overthrew the monarchy and the Church. Voltaire desired an intelligentsia free from the supposed suffocation of the Church, but he certainly did not subscribe to the notions of democracy and rule by the common people.

Nonetheless, the Revolutionary government disinterred his remains from the Abbey of Selliéres in July 1791 and brought them to Paris in a wagon train, where they were interred in the Panthéon for veneration of the masses and the ultimate expression of gratitude from the “democratic” government. It is an ironic end to the story of one of the most indefatigable enemies of the Church.

Voltaire's birthday 11-21-1694 - A brief essay by Steve Weidenkopf
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
Articles
MOTW 150 something I think, I am no longer certain of the count
00:00:26
April 19, 2025
"Astronauts" 🙄
00:01:26
April 15, 2025
Erm... 😳
00:00:29
January 01, 2025
Local's Lounge - All are welcome

Padre - Tom Miller invited you to a Microsoft Teams Meeting series:

The Local's Lounge with the ADD Irregulars - Home of Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.

Coffee Talk - 6:00 AM Central - Daily
Afternoon Chats - Tuesdays, Friday & Sundays at 2:00 PM Central
Other Chats as scheduled by the community.

Please look for notifications for Speakeasies, Tea Times, Schmoozes & Afterhours for gatherings of the gang. New comers welcome, become an Irregular today!!

Wednesday, January 1, 2025
6:00 AM - 8:00 AM (CST)
Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31

Meeting link: https://teams.live.com/meet/9392334144614?p=4Lr3AcWswEWjbzgHsZ

post photo preview
11 hours ago
post photo preview
post photo preview
post photo preview
Practice Gratitude - A reprint and expanded post
Gratitude changes everything

Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Wednesday Friends & Refugees, Early Birds and Later Dayers, Conversants and Lurkers, Phamily & Misfits, ADD Irregulars, WSN Curators, and Curmudgeons!  Today's reflection is one of my favorite ones from the past.  David Whyte's wonderful book Consolations - The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.  It is a treasure trove of reflection on the gift of language and the power of words.  His reflection on gratitude is outstanding.

GRATITUDE is not a passive response to something we have been given; gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event; it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege, that we are miraculously part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the colour blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

To see the full, miraculous essentiality of the colour blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully the beauty of a daughter’s face is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions; to intuit inner lives beneath surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore to make a conversation without saying a word, is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us, that we are participant and witness all at once.

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort; this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.

Paying attention- LOVE IT. One of my most frequent reminders in my preaching. We get more out of life by paying attention and not simply existing. a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life. The gifted nature of life- hold on to that thought, the gifted nature of life makes all the difference in what we think about our story.

that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege - EVERY SINGLE PERSON IS PRIVILEGED - some more than others, but every single one of us. A personal philosophy built on the dialectic of privilege & victimology will lead to legions of unhappy and resentful souls, and not because they lack privilege, but because they lack the appreciation of the gift of living. To focus on what you lack will never help you discover what you possess and what is unique about you. To be a someone amongst all other someones - welcome to LIFE, Digital Neighbor. 😁 The people I love the most and care for the least are still someone amongst someones. It is not always easy to remember that when thinking ill of those you care for the least.

We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort; this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Amen.

Thank you all for allowing me to sit and share at your table.  I have been so blessed by the people God or fate has placed on my life path and I have been delighted that these digital paths have opened up my horizon so wonderfully.  I greatly appreciate the personal sharing, the cultural commentary, the political ranting and wrangling, and above all the shared laughter and memes.

Read full Article
Gratitude for freedom
Gratitude changes everything

Easter Monday – Gratitude for Freedom

Good morning, Digital Neighbors!  Happy Monday and Blessed Easter Friends to all you good souls on Locals and Substack.   Yesterday ended up being a catch-up day after Mass and brunch with my sister’s family. It was a great day to celebrate the joy of the Risen Lord.   I caught up on some sleep and some of the issues I missed while away from the time drain that was my typical internet habit.  I am sure I will return to some active consumption, hopefully with a more intentional attitude than I had before my Lenten media abstinence.

I caught up on some of the Douglas Murray – Dave Smith JRE and much of the debate that followed on it.  I have read a couple of Douglas Murray books, and I watched many hours of his interviews and appreciate his common sense and insightful commentary.   The internet, as divisive and drama driven as it I always is, seems to have fallen into the Dave Smith is dunce and Douglas is right or Murray is an elitist and credentialist who doesn’t believe in free speech.

I will still have to take some time before I have a more comprehensive understanding of this, but I tend to tilt towards free speech absolutism in the arena of public discourse and debate.  I am a fan of self-determined groups deciding among themselves the degree of free speech that they want to share within their group.  After all it is a voluntary group, and one is free to leave the group if you disagree.  If you don’t have freedom of association then you have even bigger problems than lack of freedom of speech. *cough* *cough* All the proponents of groupthink and herd feel demand conformity of thought or silence of opinion.

I have added this clip from the Darkhorse Podcast which has always remained one of my favorites for honest and critical thought.

I think Brett and Heather are very fair minded in this clip.  Can one admit they are ever wrong, mistaken or ignorant on a topic?   Brett and Heather fall into the circle of based conversationalists like Gad Saad, Scott Adams, and our gracious hosts at RR and Phetasy. Each has their own style but are all directionally pointed towards freedom rather than compulsion.  There are many others, but Scott is an adamant critic of calling out the arrogance of the experts. Some experts are reliable because they keep asking questions and offering critical thought. They are not only knowledgeable about their subject, but they are also capable of self-criticism and humble admission of error. It makes one more credible, not damaged goods. If someone has repeated and consistent errors most of us will stop listening to them. Some experts are not reliable because their commitment is to their preconceived and pre-committed ideas.  Such idealogues can be charismatic and convincing, but in the end, they champion a cause and not the honest discussion of the topic. It happens in every field. It used to just be religious institutions that compelled thought and behavior for centuries, now it can be any group with real or perceived authority and power. Just ask the Enemedia and Academia.

Arriving at approximate truths in public discourse takes time, is messy and requires some humility to admit when you went down the wrong path and committed too much energy to being in error.  I don’t know that most of humanity can embrace such raw honesty and humility. Imagine spending years on a particular cause to find out you are wrong? It is too easy to think that one has wasted their time and effort, but if you are honestly seeking is it ever a waste of time?  I don’t think so.   5 years down the road and I am happy that I asked questions during Covid. It opened the door to more questions and patience.  

·       I appreciate experts, but I don’t take their opinions as Gospel.

·       I appreciate questions asked in a critical manner.

·       No one and no idea are above question or criticism.

·       Yes, even dumbasses can ask critical questions of experts and should not be dismissed because they are a dumbass.  One can acknowledge their history of error, incompetency or ignorance, but if they have an honest question, its dismissal reveals the dishonesty of the expert.

·       Experts can be blind to their bias just like any of us. Experts can lie just like any of us.  Experts can be joyfully mistaken.

·       Arriving at the shores of understanding and approximate truth/testable reality takes time.  I am suspicious of anyone demanding immediate compulsion of thought and subsequent behavior.

Sorry, more than I wanted to write on a Monday morning.  Thank you if you took the time to real. Comment always welcome.  

Read full Article
post photo preview
Easter Sunday - Morning Light
Gratitude changes everything

Easter Sunday

Good morning, Digital Neighbors!  Happy Sunday and blessed Easter Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Phamily and Misfits, ADD Irregulars and WSN Curators & Contributors!    I have been mostly off-line during Lent and I had gotten out of the habit of daily posting on the Report and on Phetasy prior to Lent. I still lurked about but was not very engaged in posting or even liking posts.  Most of my focus had been on Padre’s and sharing my thoughts and various posts there.  Over these next 49 days between this Sunday and Pentecost I hope to share some thoughts and musings on gratitude and thanksgiving.  We will see where the Spirit leads me in my morning rambles but know that I come back to one of my on-line homes at the Report and at Phetasy and I am thankful for the hospitality and leadership of Dave Rubin & Bridget Phetasy. 

During 2020 and all of its madness the communities of the Rubin Report and Phetasy became places of connection, community and healthy conversation (sometimes laced with a bit of ranting and fist shaking at the absurdities of the Covid Czars and flunkies) apart from the constant compelling and compliant droning of the Enemedia.  Demanding conformity in thought & behavior while preaching “diversity” seems about as hypocritical as one can get. The Cabal is all about hypocrisy and completely blind to it.

I think back over these five years and I am thankful for all the fine souls I met through Locals and its various communities.  Some of these people I have had the chance of talking to in real life and meeting. It has been a profound blessing to me. Locals became the home of free speech and common sense.  Those two issues go along way towards good conversations and even meaningful disagreement or variances of opinion.  The maturity level attracted to Locals is a real blessing. I am not talking about the humor and the memes, but rather about no one losing their SH over disagreements or other emotional implosions that I have seen in other communities in the past. I know these communities are not perfect, but Locals was a vast upgrade from FB and other social sites.  If there were people I didn’t care to read I either ignored them or simply blocked them and it was without the drama that became so commonplace on other platforms prior to Locals.

Living in the heart of gratitude means taking nothing for granted. I do my best to remember and practice the giftedness of each day and not forget the blessing and joys that come from that attitude.  I am far from succeeding but I do see progress when I let go of my expectations and begin trusting and accepting more of life as it unfolds.  It is not easy to work on serenity, I am tempted to spend too much time trying to control things I can’t and too little effort ignoring things I can change.  But no matter what, I am blessed and thankful for another opportunity to take a swing at living and loving.  Have a great Sunday Digital Neighbors!  Know of my prayers, appreciation and love even if I don’t visit as much as I used to and spend too much time tending my home community @ Padre’s.

 

MORNING LIGHT

Each day the soul decides whether or not

to enter yet one more time into this carousel,

blinks open the body’s eyes to nearly morning light,

lifts the head in glory to God’s vast sky,

climbs the legs out of bed to keep moving

on this journey to understanding the mystery

and beauty of being alive.   – Barbara Schmitz

 

Gratitude Prayers: Prayers, Poems, and Prose for Everyday Thankfulness (p. 33). Andrews McMeel Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Read full Article
See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals