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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Alberto Methol Ferré and Libertine Atheism

Posted: 4/5/2014 12:18:10 PM EDT

Stumbled on something interesting here. It's a good summary on Obama's recent visit to the Vatican, but the real gem is found at the end:

In an article written shortly after the Obama/Francis meeting, veteran Vaticanista Sandro Magister shed some light on what would seem to be Pope Francis’s conviction that Satan remains busily at work in the world after the collapse of Communism, now working through the seductive power of pleasure. According to Magister, Francis’s mentor in this reading of postmodern history and culture is the Uruguayan philosopher Albert Methol Ferré, who lived in Montevideo and died in 2009.

Methol Ferré frequently visited his friend the archbishop of nearby Buenos Aires, Bergoglio. And the two, it would seem, discussed Methol Ferré’s claim that, with the demise of the messianic atheism of Communism, a new form of death-dealing atheism had emerged. Methol Ferré dubbed it “libertine atheism” and explained that it involved the “cultivation of radical hedonism,” not by a revolutionary vanguard (as in Marxism-Leninism), but as a “mass phenomenon.”

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More searching turned up some extremely interesting reading:

Methol Ferré: the philosopher who inspired Pope Francis

Preparing for the 1979 meeting of Latin American bishops, Methol Ferré advocated for popular religion, a culture centered on the Christian vision of the human person, a re-evaluation of the Church's social teaching, and the perception of “libertine atheism” as a new enemy.

Methol Ferré said in the newly-released book that atheism now “is not revolutionary in a social sense, but complicit with the status quo. It has no interest in justice, but in all that permits the cultivation of radical hedonism. It is not aristocratic, but has transformed itself into a mass phenomenon.”

He proposed that to counter such atheism, one has to find the “best of its intuitions,” and that “the deep kernel of libertine atheism is a buried need for beauty.”

While this atheism separates beauty “from truth and from goodness, and therefore from justice,” this can be countered only by practices which promote true beauty, and which make reference to truth, goodness, and justice.

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PopeWatch: Libertine Atheism

In presenting the first edition of Ferré's book in Buenos Aires, Bergoglio praised it as a text of “metaphysical profundity.” And in 2011, in the preface to another book by a close friend of both men Bergoglio once again offered his gratitude to the “brilliant thinker of the Rio de la Plata” for having laid bare the new dominant ideology after the fall of the Marxism-inspired forms of messianic atheism. It is the ideology that Methol Ferrè called “libertine atheism.” And that Bergoglio describes as follows:

"Hedonistic atheism and its neo-Gnostic trappings have become the dominant culture, with global reach and diffusion. The constitute the atmosphere of the time in which we live, the new opium of the people. The ‘sole form of thought,’ in addition to being socially and politically totalitarian, has Gnostic structures: it is not human, it recycles the different forms of absolutist rationalism with which the nihilistic hedonism described by Methol Ferré expresses itself.”

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The Pope and the Philosopher

And what is Ferré's judgment of libertine atheism?

"The truth of libertine atheism is the perception that existence has an intrinsic destination of enjoyment, that life itself is made for satisfaction. In other words: the deep kernel of libertine atheism is a buried need for beauty."

Of course, libertine atheism "perverts" beauty, because "it separates it from truth and from goodness, and therefore from justice. But - Methol Ferré warns - "one cannot redeem libertine atheism's kernel of truth with an argumentative or dialectical procedure; much less can one do so by setting up prohibitions, raising alarms, dictating abstract rules. Libertine atheism is not an ideology, it is a practice. A practice must be opposed with another practice; a self-aware practice, of course, which means one that is equipped intellectually. Historically the Church is the only subject present on the stage of the contemporary world that can confront libertine atheism. To my mind only the Church is truly post-modern."

There is a stunning harmony between this vision of Methol Ferré and the program of his disciple Bergoglio's pontificate, with his rejection of "the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be imposed with insistence" and with his insistence on a Church capable of "making the heart burn," of healing every kind of illness and injury, of restoring happiness.

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Libertine atheism

As I say, corruption I expect... Sin in secrecy is perfectly comprehensible. But when it ceases to be secret, and is flaunted without shame, well: “Houston, we have a problem.”

To Sandro Magister I send the curious reader for the best account yet of how the current Pope may, indeed, be Catholic. [Link.] At the most basic, viscerally intentional level, he, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, seems to know exactly what he is dealing with, when he is meeting with men of worldly power; who have sold their souls to the devil to obtain it; whose dishonesty extends even to denying that crimes are crimes. I am relieved to learn that Francis is a “disciple” of such a thinker as Alberto Methol Ferré, whose description of contemporary “libertine atheism” is so astute. For the prospect of the Church herself making concessions to Belial is of concern to me.

Doing wrong is common enough. We’ve been doing that since Adam. But denying that wrong is wrong — that is where we pass from the human into the metaphysical realm of evil.

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Posted: 4/5/2014 3:50:44 PM EDT

[#1]

good read

Posted: 4/6/2014 4:18:42 AM EDT

[#2]

I think we sometimes mislead ourselves as to the depth of knowledge that the pope's have. The public sees a guy in a white robe and a funny hat and nothing more. When you read something like this you realize that there is a profound intellect at work. The same sense of realization hit me when I read Theology of the Body and some of Ratzinger's writings.

That being said, I have never coddling with Jesuit philosophy, but an article like this at the very least gives me some glimmer of hope.

Posted: 4/6/2014 4:23:45 AM EDT

[#3]

I think we sometimes mislead ourselves as to the depth of knowledge that the pope's have. The public sees a guy in a white robe and a funny hat and nothing more. When you read something like this you realize that there is a profound intellect at work. The same sense of realization hit me when I read Theology of the Body and some of Ratzinger's writings.

That being said, I have never coddling with Jesuit philosophy, but an article like this at the very least gives me some glimmer of hope.

Posted: 4/6/2014 3:53:06 PM EDT

[#4]

I think I just realized why I'm still single. Too much focus on trying to find the cute girl, why I did the drugs, etc.

Thank you OP. While reading this has help me identify a new battle front, it has also graced me with a new humility.

Sed Libra Nos a malo

Posted: 4/6/2014 4:40:26 PM EDT

[#5]

I consider this same concept to have leaked into nearly all of mainstream Christianity, leading to a sense of Christian egalitarianism. Although its clearly more visible in the non-denom circles, Catholics also suffer from various manifestations of this as well.

Posted: 4/7/2014 4:02:05 AM EDT

[#6]

Another way to state the thesis is that for many, athiest or otherwise, life and quality of life has become defined by the pursuit and accumulation of "experiences". Fullfillment is measured in how many worldly experiences one can get under their belt. In this framework, the concept of denying ones self worldly experiences is tantamount to denying life. Taking issue with or interfering with anyone elses quest to accumulate these experiences, or even suggesting that such pursuit is not the road to fulfilment, is met with great hostility.

The simplest expression of its creed might be: "Deny yourself nothing"

I wouldn't drop the angst over "communism" entirely. It was never truly about Marx, but using his rhetoric to achieve supreme dominion over vast populations. That drive has not gone away, but it's form and trappings have evolved. Call it the pursuit of "the perfect system" which cares for the people through all their life, a system which takes the place of God in their heart because in it they put their trust and to it they commit their lives. It shouldn't be ignored.

Posted: 4/7/2014 2:28:11 PM EDT

[#7]

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Quoted:
Another way to state the thesis is that for many, athiest or otherwise, life and quality of life has become defined by the pursuit and accumulation of "experiences". Fullfillment is measured in how many worldly experiences one can get under their belt. In this framework, the concept of denying ones self worldly experiences is tantamount to denying life. Taking issue with or interfering with anyone elses quest to accumulate these experiences, or even suggesting that such pursuit is not the road to fulfilment, is met with great hostility.
The simplest expression of its creed might be: "Deny yourself nothing"

I wouldn't drop the angst over "communism" entirely. It was never truly about Marx, but using his rhetoric to achieve supreme dominion over vast populations. That drive has not gone away, but it's form and trappings have evolved. Call it the pursuit of "the perfect system" which cares for the people through all their life, a system which takes the place of God in their heart because in it they put their trust and to it they commit their lives. It shouldn't be ignored.

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Quoted:
Another way to state the thesis is that for many, athiest or otherwise, life and quality of life has become defined by the pursuit and accumulation of "experiences". Fullfillment is measured in how many worldly experiences one can get under their belt. In this framework, the concept of denying ones self worldly experiences is tantamount to denying life. Taking issue with or interfering with anyone elses quest to accumulate these experiences, or even suggesting that such pursuit is not the road to fulfilment, is met with great hostility.
The simplest expression of its creed might be: "Deny yourself nothing"

I wouldn't drop the angst over "communism" entirely. It was never truly about Marx, but using his rhetoric to achieve supreme dominion over vast populations. That drive has not gone away, but it's form and trappings have evolved. Call it the pursuit of "the perfect system" which cares for the people through all their life, a system which takes the place of God in their heart because in it they put their trust and to it they commit their lives. It shouldn't be ignored.

A lot to be said for this.

What makes Libertine Atheism so compelling is that it makes absolutely no demands at all, on anyone. Marxism is atheism with a vestigial form of 'conscience', at least in the sense that it drives the individual to look outside of himself. It demands sacrifices and self restraint. It at least pretends to be oriented towards something of universal appeal . And though there's plenty of coercion in communism, it prefers first to appeal to the individual to rouse the will to deny selfish desires and comforts so that other humans (perhaps yet to be born) might have a better life. Granted, its benefits are false and its method of implementation ultimately self defeating, but it at least has a certain (false) moralism to it.

Libertine Atheism seems to owe more to Nietzsche. Ever hear Nietzsche make an appeal to anything on the basis of universal benefit? Of course not. It's all about the will to power, and unrestrained impulse, a blend of solipsism and nihilism. Let the most powerful and ruthless man win. It has something in common to Epicuriamism except that Epicurianism had at least an aesthetic appreciation for morality, which modern Libertine Atheism seems to reject. It's actually not inaccurate to represent Libertine Atheism like this: "I have wants/desires which cannot be indulged with a clear conscience if God exists, therefore God does not exist."

Of course when it reaches the proportions of a mass phenomena the advocates of Libertine Atheism cannot be too careful not to preach the full gospel. There's only one possible result if libertine atheism succeeds in truly becoming a mass phenomenon: barbarism. Because it is barbarism. Look at its fruits - abortion (to the point of infanticide), the celebration of homosexuality, reveling in the destruction of the traditional family, et al. Look at the shocking level of vitriol coming from Libertine Atheists (ostensibly people who 'just want to be left alone')?

St Paul seemed to forewarned us of this (Jerusalem Translation

):

18 The retribution of God from heaven is being revealed against the ungodliness and injustice of human beings who in their injustice hold back the truth.

19 For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them, since God has made it plain to them:

20 ever since the creation of the world, the invisible existence of God and his everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind's understanding of created things. And so these people have no excuse:

21 they knew God and yet they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but their arguments became futile and their uncomprehending minds were darkened.

22 While they claimed to be wise, in fact they were growing so stupid

23 that they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an imitation, for the image of a mortal human being, or of birds, or animals, or crawling things.

24 That is why God abandoned them in their inmost cravings to filthy practices of dishonouring their own bodies-

25 because they exchanged God's truth for a lie and have worshipped and served the creature instead of the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

26 That is why God abandoned them to degrading passions:

27 why their women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural practices; and the men, in a similar fashion, too, giving up normal relations with women, are consumed with passion for each other, men doing shameful things with men and receiving in themselves due reward for their perversion.

28 In other words, since they would not consent to acknowledge God, God abandoned them to their unacceptable thoughts and indecent behaviour.

29 And so now they are steeped in all sorts of injustice, rottenness, greed and malice; full of envy, murder, wrangling, treachery and spite,

30 libellers, slanderers, enemies of God, rude, arrogant and boastful, enterprising in evil, rebellious to parents,

31 without brains, honour, love or pity.

32 They are well aware of God's ordinance: that those who behave like this deserve to die -- yet they not only do it, but even applaud others who do the same.

Romans, Chapter 1

Posted: 4/7/2014 2:41:49 PM EDT

[#8]

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I consider this same concept to have leaked into nearly all of mainstream Christianity, leading to a sense of Christian egalitarianism. Although its clearly more visible in the non-denom circles, Catholics also suffer from various manifestations of this as well.

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+1

It definitely has crept into the modern consciousness, this idea of the centrality of 'happiness'. Like you said it's more prevalent in the non-denominational/New Age circles, but even many of the Vatican II 'reforms' pay lip service to this convention (making the Mass more 'welcoming' is the usual terminology).

Perfect example, the Priest now facing the congregation during the blessing of the Host because modern people didn't like the effect of the Priest turning his back to them. There's something very narcissistic, almost infantilizing about that.

In that sense, Libertine Atheism is the perfect worldview for an infantilized people.

Posted: 4/7/2014 5:18:40 PM EDT

[#9]

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Quoted:
+1

It definitely has crept into the modern consciousness, this idea of the centrality of 'happiness'. Like you said it's more prevalent in the non-denominational/New Age circles, but even many of the Vatican II 'reforms' pay lip service to this convention (making the Mass more 'welcoming' is the usual terminology).

Perfect example, the Priest now facing the congregation during the blessing of the Host because modern people didn't like the effect of the Priest turning his back to them. There's something very narcissistic, almost infantilizing about that.

In that sense, Libertine Atheism is the perfect worldview for an infantilized people.

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Quoted:

Quoted:

I consider this same concept to have leaked into nearly all of mainstream Christianity, leading to a sense of Christian egalitarianism. Although its clearly more visible in the non-denom circles, Catholics also suffer from various manifestations of this as well.

+1

It definitely has crept into the modern consciousness, this idea of the centrality of 'happiness'. Like you said it's more prevalent in the non-denominational/New Age circles, but even many of the Vatican II 'reforms' pay lip service to this convention (making the Mass more 'welcoming' is the usual terminology).

Perfect example, the Priest now facing the congregation during the blessing of the Host because modern people didn't like the effect of the Priest turning his back to them. There's something very narcissistic, almost infantilizing about that.

In that sense, Libertine Atheism is the perfect worldview for an infantilized people.

LOL. Your not starting a novus ordo argument are you!? I agree that the some of the language in VII leans that direction. I just finished a pretty good review of most of VII last year. To my surprise, most of the things that I had always blamed VII for weren't even in the documents. I thought they were pretty tame in most places. I think the real failure was in the implementation by a clergy who thought they had license to push the envelope, i.e. the libertine constructs you mention above.

Posted: 4/8/2014 4:25:57 AM EDT

[#10]

Some relevant quotes from Pope Benedict:

There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are.

Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul.

Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi

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A new intolerance is spreading, that is quite obvious. There are well-established standards of thinking that are supposed to be imposed on everyone... In the name of tolerance, tolerance is being abolished; this is a real threat we face. The danger is that reason – so-called Western reason – claims that it has now really recognized what is right and thus makes a claim to totality that is inimical to freedom. I believe that we must very emphatically delineate this danger. No one is forced to be a Christian. But no one should be forced to live according to the "new religion" as though it alone were definitive and obligatory for all mankind.

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When you look at the strident and uncompromising nature of its advocates, Atheist Libertinism does begin to take on the characteristics of a 'new religion'.

Posted: 4/16/2014 4:13:27 AM EDT

[#11]

Another good read on the subject: Easter with Flannery O’Connor

Miss O’Connor’s sense that ours is an age of nihilism—an age suffering from by a crabbed sourness about the mystery of being itself—makes her an especially apt apologist for today: not least because she also understood the evangelical sterility of the smiley-face, cheap-grace, balloons-and-banners Catholicism that would become rampant shortly after her death. In a 1955 letter to her friend Betty Hester, Flannery O’Connor looked straight into the dark mystery of Good Friday and, in four sentences explained why the late modern world often finds it hard to believe:

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.”

That darkness is rendered darker still by late modernity’s refusal to recognize its own deepest need. For as Miss O’Connor put it in a 1957 lecture, “Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause.”

A world indifferent to its need for redemption is not indifferent to the possibility of redemption; it’s a world hostile to that possibility. Down the centuries, the mockery endured by Christ on the cross may stand as the paradigmatic expression of that hostility.

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Posted: 4/16/2014 4:23:53 AM EDT

[#12]

I consider myself reasonably well read, and I sometimes struggle with George Weigel. He dives deep and his command of language is unparalleled. I feel like I need to look up a definition or two in each paragraph. The article was great.

Posted: 4/16/2014 1:05:49 PM EDT

[#13]

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I consider myself reasonably well read, and I sometimes struggle with George Weigel. He dives deep and his command of language is unparalleled. I feel like I need to look up a definition or two in each paragraph. The article was great.

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I'm a huge fan of Flannery O'Connor.

If you can find the film John Houston made of Wise Blood, it's worth a watch. Some parts are so funny you'll cry.

Posted: 4/16/2014 1:17:36 PM EDT

[#14]

Scene starting at 6:40 here is great. "This is like one of those gory stories that people have quit doin', like boilin' in oil or bein' a Saint, Mr Motes! ...I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't some agent of the Pope, or caught up in sumthin' funny!"

Posted: 4/17/2014 10:15:02 AM EDT

[#15]

you might as well live in a monkery..

Posted: 4/19/2014 9:34:26 AM EDT

[#16]

Another good one along the same lines: What is our problem?

[Adam and Eve were] told to refrain from eating the fruit of only one tree -- and thereupon hangs a rather important tale. The tree in question is identified as the tree of "the knowledge of good and evil," which is to say, a form of knowing that is the unique prerogative of God. Since God is Himself the unconditioned good, He alone is the criterion of what is morally right and wrong. According to the semeiotics of this story, therefore, the eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree is the act of arrogating to oneself what belongs in a privileged way to God. It is to make of the human will itself the criterion of good and evil, and from this subtle move, on the Biblical reading, misery has followed as surely as night follows the day.

Notice how wickedly and cunningly the serpent tempted Eve: "God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil." The basic sin, the original sin, is precisely this self-deification, this apotheosizing of the will. Lest you think all of this is just abstract theological musing, remember the 1992 Supreme Court decision in the matter of Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Writing for the majority in that case, Justice Kennedy opined that "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, of the mystery of human life." Frankly, I can't imagine a more perfect description of what it means to grasp at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

If Justice Kennedy is right, individual freedom completely trumps objective value and becomes the indisputable criterion of right and wrong. And if the book of Genesis is right, such a move is the elemental dysfunction, the primordial mistake, the original calamity. Of course, the Supreme Court simply gave formal expression to what is generally though unthematically accepted throughout much of contemporary western culture. How many people -- especially young people -- today would casually hold that the determination of ethical rectitude is largely if not exclusively the prerogative of the individual? That's the fruit of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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