A man decking a woman in "sports"?! How the heck did we get here?!

A man decking a woman in "sports"?! How the heck did we get here?!

A man decking a woman didn’t just come out of nowhere! This article will argue that it has been basically some 1700 years in the making.

Toward that end, okay, I don't mean to be mean, but this is a partial rant, okay? Once again, a major publisher rejected my article when it completely explains what’s been going on for 1700 years. How so? Well, let us just look at the big spiritual picture, shall we? When we do this, the following is just plainly clear if we are honest with ourselves and use common sense. Here goes.

The devil , in a supreme sense , has been attacking the five great sources of Catholic truth from top to bottom, which is to say, from the most reliable by itself down to the least reliable by itself. And also, this is concurrently in the same order as the least evident sources of truth down to the most evident sources of Truth. In other words, an astounding logical phenomenon can be shown later in terms of the analogy of the crucified feet of Christ, and that is that , effectively, there is a one-to-one inverse proportional relationship of each source of truth between its degree of reliability by itself and the evidence to support its legitimacy.

 We can work through this as we go thourgh Church history. For now, let us give a cursory analysis.

Before we look at the entire panaroma of doctrinal attacks over the last 2000 years or so, a big look into the last 500 years is quite easy to see, which we can undertake first. Toward that end, I saw an EWTN scholar many yeaers ago reference what could be easily seen as the great epic loss of Catholic Christendom over the last five centuries. It is straghtforward. And how? Well, let us just start with today and back up:

Firstly, there is no need to inform the reader of the awful tragedy and sorrowful offense that stands before us in this current time of our Church, the terrible and despicable crimes committed against children, adolescents, and young persons as a result of an infusion of enemies into our Divine Community beginning many decades ago. We are in pain, hurt, anguish, anger, and helplessness. To be sure, in part, it seems all that we can do for now is abandon ourselves and the tainted, wounded Church into God’s hands and pray that some sense of justice and healing can come to the poor and scarred victims, their loved ones, and all those who weep with and for them, saying, “Why?!”

Sadly, too, one the great tragedies that emanates from the horror of scandal is not merely the possible loss of salvation (or derivative ages in purgatory) of those giving scandal, but also loss of faith in the scandalized. Indeed, scandal is one of the most potent and powerful weapons at the disposal of the apocalyptic dragon: make the legitimate shepherds look bad, or actually bad; that is, gravely disfigure and distort the image of authentic and loving mediated fatherhood in the clergy of the Church so as to cause a rejection of their authority.

This, in fact, forms the historical basis out of which a parallel epic challenge to the Church exists today. More specifically, for about the same time that this most diabolical activity of scandal in modern times has been assailing the Bride of Christ, the same Church has had to face a world that largely regards her as dead, a world of the irrational and godless atheism, nihilism and relativism. It is a dark time indeed. And the root of this historical trajectory into the effectively minor apostasy that we now dwell in, once again, goes back to, in any serious inquiry, scandal.

Frankly, the analysis is not difficult. Firstly, in secularism, man is estranged from God, and so has not peace with Him. Yet, man has not peace with God to the degree that he does not accept the Gospel. But, how does man lose the Gospel? Alas, the answer comes forth per the mystical words of the Sacred and Eucharistic Heart of Our Lord, according to the loving witness of his beloved disciple, Saint John:

John 17:

And for them do I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in me; That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. ...that they may be made perfect in one: and the world may know that thou hast sent me.

Behold, this mystical text reveals a central mystery of the Eucharist, of communion, of unity: the efficacy of the Gospel in the world is intrinsically bound up with Christian unity. That is, to the degree that Christian unity is ruptured, the world will have difficulty believing on the Son; and to the degree that the world has difficulty believing on the Son, humanity's peace with God will be ruptured; and to the degree that humanity’s peace with God is ruptured, secularism and spiritual darkness engulf the world.

And yet, now, we ask once again, what holds back the serious division of Christians? Alas, none other than the Apostolic College. The binding element that withholds the flood gates of Christian confounding of the message of Christ is the college of bishops, the legitimate successors of the Apostles, those men who succeed the perennial and original witnesses to the life and teachings of Our Divine and Loving Savior. For, herein is Christian stability, the guidance of the Spirit into all truth, and the sure mode of interpretation of Scripture and Sacred Tradition, which those same Bishops preserve by the self-same Divine Spirit. Hence, the devil must tear through this great wall of solid veracity to let loose the flurry of locusts that will go out and torture innocent non-Catholic souls with countless and fiery competing doctrines and factions, somehow reminiscent of the fifth trumpet of Apocalypse (Apoc 9, beginning sections), which has been seen by some Catholic scholars as Protestantism. (The Book of Destiny, Fr Kramer, Tan Books, Commentary on Apocalypse 9). And from there, all else follows.

Hence, the great moral laxity and scandal of Catholic leadership in the late Middle Ages paved the way for the wholesale rejection of such college’s authority and burst forth into the incomprehensible Christian disunity that became the unfathomable catastrophe that was Protestantism. Subsequently, the aftermath of this avalanche corroborates our previous discussion above: the prima causa of the world’s descent away from Christendom and toward the modern age of near total godlessness in the former Christian lands has been, clearly, disillusionment with Christian division. For, when a message is unbelievably confused, as it was in Protestantis—myriads of competing factions in mass, mutually-conflicting interpretations, hating and betraying one another’s theologies and universally excommunicating one another to perdition—what can we say except that the message will be rejected, or at least the Messenger.

The process continues as this excerpt from a previous article explains [Armageddon and the Kings from the East]:

Moving on, if it was true that there were practically as many forms of Protestantism as there were Protestants, it is equally safe to say that there were practically as many forms of supernaturally dead infidelity as there were supernaturally dead infidels (deists and rationalists) [Tan Books, Church History]. Hence, merely natural religion according to reason, confounded ad infinitum like Protestantism, gave rise to a rejection of even religion itself, and a descent into merely worldly reason, an attempt to find the meaning and solution to human problems purely with reason apart from religious considerations. This eventually paved the way for ideologies and systems of thought that, especially in politics, utterly betrayed even reason and became dark, particularly the diabolical left and right.
More specifically, communism, based on atheism, denied God’s very existence itself, contrary to Vatican I that asserted that reason testifies to God’s existence, and, in addition, proposed a hyper-corporal-works-of-mercy solution to poverty, except one that forcefully and viciously used the state as the instrument of “mercy,” like Judas, who complains that the expensive jar could have been sold for much and given to the poor, yet himself ultimately planning to betray all that is of God, yes, the God-man, in exchange for mere money.
Secondly, Fascism and Nazism seemed to swing to the contrasting scene of the woman with the alabaster jar, the Pharisaical episode, where instead of Judas, a Pharisee complains,judges persons: what kind of persons they are, who they are, and that they are sinners, unworthy of mercy. This implies bigotry, superiority complexes, and judgmentalism. Nazism was very much a twisted, secular perversion of Pharisaicalism.
Certainly, too, out of these depraved systems of secularism of the early twentieth century, which a pope at the time was lamenting and warning against as a rising threat, two world wars ascended, which were minimally minor Armageddons: in the introductory portion of the film The 13th Day, the narrator, taking on the voice of a young Sister Lucia (eldest Fatima visionary), says mystically of World War I, “the innocence of the world was spent” [i]

Aimless History?

In light of this discourse, we can remind ourselves that liberals tend to believe that history is aimless and without form or structure, for whatever reasons, but this religious process above, this fall from grace in human history as it were, most certainly shines with psychological theology on a macro-scale. No doubt, it shews forth that, at least here, history is not random but follows a spiritual trajectory that is logical, rational, and sensible. Yes, this is true if only because even though evil is chaotic like the roaring sea—with its insatiable passions and arrogant and brute ambitions—nevertheless, when the devil acts, he cannot be creative, only plagiarizing, as in taking what God has already made good and twisting it, negating it, or mutating it into a false, deceptive caricature of what the thing really is, or is supposed to be. Toward this end, we will see momentarily that if there is an order or structure to some dimension of God’s truth, grace, or other good essence, then the devil, if seeking to derail it, may have to work with that model in some sense in order to attain his goals, hence showing, again, that evil may be forced to move in history with a certain structure at times to attain the destruction of such most efficaciously.

Now, what do we mean, specifically in this case, by structure or model?  Let us probe it. To reiterate the theology of the movement of this history we have considered thus far, we have:

• 
  Magisterium: instill scandal within
• 
  Magisterium and Tradition: reject completely, retaining only Scripture and Reason
• 
  Scripture: supremely confound, then reject, retention of only Reason
• 
  Reason: confound in worldly religion, reject, full apostasy

So the process is coming together: we have

Magisterium and Tradition -> Scripture -> Reason -> Apostasy, or godlessness.

Yes! This is a structure! How?  Well, the dragon is descending “sources of Catholic truth” in order of reliability. This can be seen briefly by starting at the top:  the Magisterium is the supremely reliable source of truth on earth, since it compiles and interprets the Scripture and Tradition into doctrine.

Admittedly, it is the servant of these and not the master, and yet, as the slave, ends up working out the doctrine that is served to the faithful at table.  With further consideration, the Sacred Tradition, rejected midway along with the Magisterium as a whole, is seated in degree of reliability just beneath the Sacred College and above Scripture, since the Tradition is far more explicit about truth than Scripture, which, without that same Tradition, is highly susceptible to misunderstanding.  

Finally, it is clear that Reason lies below Scripture [Scripture at least has a plethora of implied Divine Revelation, whereas Reason has merely natural truth, as in, mainly, monotheism and some essence of natural moral law].

This is indeed pushing us in the right direction. Now, I would like to ask the reader to pause and, if it were possible, “back up” in history from our beginning to see if a further digression might be possible, in order that we might quite possibly frustrate the liberal bias to a greater extent.

Here, I would say that if we confine ourselves to the big picture, and noting of course that the age immediately prior to the Protestant Rebellion is the Middle Ages, we can argue that the preceding great assault was the Great Schism between East and West.  We are able to argue this by considering, firstly, that as for the Middle Ages, Albigensianism or Catharism were minor and non-persisting compared to what was the clear continuing trajectory of the opposition to the Church, which was, again, the growing laxity in the Catholic hierarchy, a laxity that was even beginning to spawn proto-forms of Protestantism (Wycliff, Hussites, Waldenses). 

One would interject, what about Islam, as we have the mega development of the Crusades?   Here, we must clarify that we wish to confine ourselves to events that originate the disturbance to the Church, so that the Crusades do not count since Islam came into being 400 plus years before (and, moreover, in a moment, we will deal with Islam and its precursor heresies against the Trinity and Incarnation, but let us not get ahead of ourselves.)  Hence, we can make the case that the Great Schism between East and West is the preceding epic doctrinal affront to the Church to the Protestant Rebellion.  

The liberal will start to get agitated, since it only further supports our suspicions: if it is true that Protestantism was a whole-scale rejection of the entire Magisterium, that of Pope and Bishops alike, Orthodoxy is only a partial slight against the College; it jabs at Peter but not his general brothers, which is to say, Orthodoxy’s main beef with us is not bishops in general, which they have [along with Tradition], but just Peter, the supreme Bishop, the highest and most binding component of the leadership of Christ’s Kingdom on earth.   Hence, now we have

Supreme Apostolic Successor -> General Apostolic Successors and Tradition -> Scripture -> Reason -> Godlessness.  

We are done, right?  Well, maybe not yet; first of all, we are in the midst of a period of light [with a lot of gray and clouds and rain, but still light compared to pagan Rome] that began with Constantine, more or less, so it questionable whether the dragon started attacking the Church’s doctrine in a primary way only some 700 years after the darkness of pagan Rome gave way to the Church’s epic freedom to begin practicing and working out doctrine unrestrained by fear of a total annihilation of the self-same Magisterium [by Roman soldiers, should they gather together as a near whole].

But someone will now say, what can we do?  There is no one above Peter. The buck stops with Peter.  There are no other sources other than Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, and Peter rules the Magisterium.  Well, all this is true of EARTH.  But in heaven, Peter has met his match in his Triune and Incarnate Maker! And God IS the supreme source of truth, in fact, the ultimate source.  All others are effectively mediated (saving Reason, which is naturally intrinsic to the human person). Moreover, the Church has taught from time immemorial that the doctrines and nature of God as a Trinity and Incarnation in the Second Person are themselves the central mysteries of faith! And as hinted above, this puts the final and first piece of the puzzle in place. How so?

Well, let us just go for it.  Let us assess, what are the primary heresies from the Apostolic Age down to the Schism, non-inclusive, which is to say, roughly the first Millennium? In short, they are, in majority, assaulting God in His Nature, whether starting largely with dualism [which assaults the Incarnation because of its pitting the spirit against matter, as well its clear assault on God by asserting a dual war within God, one a good god of the spirit, and the other, a bad god, of the material order], or developing into the Trinitarian and Christological heresies.  For brevity and for illustration, let us delineate first the main dualistic heresies, or at least ones that have dualistic elements, and their approximate times of origin [so that we can follow, at least approximately, the historical trajectory], and then the Trinitarian and Incarnational ones.

Dualistic Heresies:

Gnosticism: Apostolic Age
Docetism: A.D. first century (part Incarnational, part Gnostic)
Naassenses: A. D. 100
Marcionism: A.D. 144
Valentianism: A.D. second century
Manichaeism: A. D. 210 - 276

Trinitarian and Christological Heresies:

Docetism: A.D. first century (part Incarnational, part Gnostic)
Monarchianism: A.D. 2nd century
Adoptionism: A.D. 190
Arianism: A.D. fourth century
Macedonians: A.D. 4th century
Nestorianism: A.D. 5th century
Monophysitism : A.D. 5th century
Tritheism: A. D. 6th century?
Monotheltism: A.D. 7th century
*Islam: A. D. 630~, supreme anti-Trinitarian and Incarnational religion that places the last straw on the camel’s back, claiming a surpassing revelation to Christ, the Quran and Muhammed
Iconoclasm: A. D. 8th century (the Logos has made God visible, and we are divinized by grace, hence, to deny sacred images is an affront to the Incarnation and our participation in the divine by the same sanctifying presence of God)

These heresies conglomerately span, dare we say, the primary spaces of error from St John to the Schism, non-inclusive. Residual heresies are present, including, for the main portion: Antinomianism, Audianism (which is actually especially an affront to the divine since it ascribes a human form to God), Novatianism, Donatism [possibly only schism], Ebionites, Montanism, and Pelagianism and Semipelagianism, but the main brunt are an assault on God.

Consequently, having made a good case for this, the full picture now backs up with God as One, Trinity and Incarnate seated above Peter in our path of doctrinal attack:

God as One, Triune, and Incarnate -> Supreme Apostolic Successor -> General Apostolic Successors and Tradition -> Scripture -> Reason -> Godlessness

Now, finally, we come to the thesis of the article, to look deeper into this trajectory for a more profound probing of meaning and structure. Subsequently, we ask, is it possible that this historical path of the Church’s doctrinal development has, in fact, a form or structure according to a theological model and an analysis of the very sources of Catholic truth themselves that we see above? I certainly believe so and would like to present the evidence forthcoming. Where would we start? Well, allow me to introduce the primary mystical imagery that will form our backdrop, the Catholic “pyramid”!

The Pyramid of the Catholic Sources of Truth

In antiquity, the pyramid was an ominous sign. It shewed forth the continuation of Babel, that blasphemous materialistic grandeur pursued in the place of God and ascending to God that the Lord had vanquished temporarily by confounding the human tongue. More specifically, Egypt, a beast as it were, simply picked up where Babel had left off, only in the form of a single nation and a single tongue, rather than the whole of humanity under one universal language. The great worldly wonder and spectacle symbolized the tyranny of pagan man: selfish, polytheistic, and self-deifying, then using God’s only Chosen Ones to build their magnificent edifices, and oppressing them in slavery, much like the renewed Babel of Pagan Rome, who persecuted God’s Chosen Ones in the Incarnate One’s Covenant.

Yet, the beauty of God is that He can take the things that pagans distort and use them for His own holy purposes. Toward that end, what we will now probe is that this frightening spectacle of arrogant materialism has a profound analogy for a great holy reality: a theology of the hierarchy of sources of Catholic truth above; here, we will observe two key characteristics of a source: on the one hand, the degree of truth and reliability of the source and, on the other hand, the evidence for the source as legitimate. This mystical pyramid will involve a probe of the sources of Catholic truth that partially differs from the traditional way, yet retaining all truth intact. It will be necessary to establish this hierarchy first before forming the spiritual pyramid. For this, we must revisit the historical summary we have.

The Hierarchical Descent

Firstly, the history we have just discussed; the process went like this, in brief:

• Dualistic Heresies: attack the nature of God as one and the Incarnation as validating the goodness of the material order.
• Trinity and Incarnation: attack the nature of God as Trinity and Incarnation in the first heresies from approximately 300 - 600 AD, and then supremely in Islam, ~650~ AD
• Supreme Bishop: attack Peter in the Great Schism
• Bishops and Sacred Tradition: make them look bad, scandal
• Bishops and Sacred Tradition: completely reject them, clinging only to Scripture, Protestantism
• Sacred Scripture: reject it and all supernatural religion because they are confounded: age of solo-ratio, Enlightenment, Deism, Rationalism, French Revolution, Masonry, and so forth, clinging only to Reason
• Reason: Reject reason and all religious truth, 20th century apostasies: atheism in East, relativism in West, and  materialism in both

This of course leads to the hierarchy we have:

1. Trinity and Incarnation
2. Supreme Apostolic Successor
3. General Apostolic Successors and Sacred Tradition
4. Sacred Scripture
5. Reason

Now, how might we realize this five-fold list above as an alternative the extant three? As follows; when speaking of the sources of Catholic truth, we traditionally think of, again, three sources of truth:

• Scripture
• Tradition
• Magisterium

However, we have, again, seen that God Himself as Trinity and Incarnation is a source, too, His elusive Essence being the central mysteries of our faith. Additionally, as we have seen, Reason is a source of truth, since even from natural wisdom, we can know monotheism and natural law in some sense, if even with difficulty in some cases.

Moreover, the Magisterium has two degrees to it: general Apostolic Succession, or the collection of regular Bishops, and then the supreme Apostolic Successor, Peter. Also, Tradition never exists apart from a valid Bishop. Where the valid Bishop is, there also is Tradition. And Tradition is the property of the Bishops, who are its custodian. Therefore, Bishops and Tradition go together always. Hence, a more accurate rendering of the sources of truth, is, as we conjectured, not merely three but five:

1. Trinity and Incarnation
2. Supreme Apostolic Successor
3. General Apostolic Successors and Sacred Tradition
4. Sacred Scripture
5. Reason

This renewed list of five sources rather than merely three, the Traditional way, enables the major steps of doctrinal history to be placed in perspective, and, as well, provides the theological order to correlate to our pyramid.

Having established this hierarchy of sources, let us review once again the historical trajectory to provide backdrop substance for our model. The journey of doctrine in the Church bears this out completely, descending the list perfectly!

After Pagan Rome, the majority of the primary heresies afflicting the Church until the Schism were mainly attacking God in His special nature as Triune and Incarnate: Arianism, Monophysitism, Monothelytism, Nestorianism, Apollinarism, Pneumatomachianism, Tritheism, and so forth. Too, Islam culminated these: it totally denied the Trinity and Incarnation and, if that were not enough, went on to suggest a revelation beyond Jesus, the Quran, which Arianism, while also denying the Trinity and Incarnation, did not. Too, even the Iconoclastic heresy is an affront to the Incarnate God, since, it involves the interpretation of the First Commandment which is to have no other gods before Him; more specifically, because saints possess the presence of deifying sanctifying grace, saints are in fact divinized, so that sacred images, even images of the saints, are images of Christ, and hence of God, an Incarnational mystery.

Then, as we saw, the next great attack was clearly the Great Schism of the East, which assaulted Peter, the supreme Apostolic Successor, just underneath God.

As for the next great attack, really, in the Middle Ages, Albigensianism or Catharism were minor compared to what was the clear continuing trajectory of the opposition to the Church, the moral fall of the clergy in the late Middle Ages, paving the way for the great assault, the Protestant Rebellion; and lo and behold, the ultimate thing that all Protestants have in common is in contesting the general Apostolic Successors and Sacred Tradition, which are just beneath Peter, the supreme Apostolic Successor.

It just keeps going: the Protestants’ confounding of the Scriptures only served to make humanity doubt the veracity of the Bible itself and, in fact, all Divine Revelation, which gave rise to a general climate of solo-ratio, or faith in Reason alone, the natural digression from the Protestants’ counterpart rallying-cry, sola-scriptura (Enlightenment, French Revolution, Masonry, and so forth).

Finally, in the 20th century, even Reason dies, and we have total apostasy, as in atheism in the East [which is irrational since it denies God, who can be known from Reason alone, Vatican I] and relativism in the West [which is irrational since it denies objective truth].

A Structural and Theological Nature

Finally, let us progress to the pyramid. So we have a source hierarchy and a historical analysis. How can it correlate? Well, look closer! A definitive decline subsists. In short, each of these steps is rejecting the associated source of Catholic truth, and the sources are decreasing in reliability of truth. That is, as we descend the list from top to bottom, the sources of truth in bold become less reliable in truth as a source when taken by themselves than the ones above. Yet, on the other hand, as we likewise descend, the sources become more evident as legitimate. This will mean that if these sources are arranged on a pyramid, height on the pyramid will represent degree of truth, and width will represent evidence that the source is legitimate. Hence, in lesser terms, as you ascend the pyramid, truth increases, but the evidence for the source of truth becomes narrower. The arguments are straightforward. We will start from the bottom and work upward:

Reason: The weakest source in terms of truth is Reason, the bottom of our pyramid.  Unaided philosophy only gives foundational truth, as in basic monotheism and natural law; but it is the most evident source; all men have reason and can plainly see it. No man may excuse himself from seeking out truth with reason. "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God." (Ps 14:1)

Scripture: Scripture is less evident than Reason in the world, since only Christians have it in full. For example, the New World Indians only had reason before Europe came to them. Before the Spaniards came to the Aztecs, they did not have Scripture. No savage can ever have Scripture unless it is brought to him. So, again, whereas all men have reason, not all men have Scripture. Scripture is less evident. Yet Scripture is much greater in truth than merely Reason.  Immensely greater.  For from Scripture comes the story of salvation history, the innumerable characters, players, times, places, miracles, lessons, and so forth.  What other writings can compare to the Bible?   None!  In another dimension, however, mainly to confine ourselves to Divine Revelation, Scripture is now the most evident source of Revelation. All three forms of Christendom accept the Scriptures. BUT, the Scriptures are also the least reliable source of Revelation by themselves, since they are highly susceptible to misinterpretation without Tradition and Bishops. Protestants only have Scripture, but they are all over the board on truth.

Tradition and Bishops: the evidence for general Apostolic Succession and Oral Tradition is less in the writings of the Fathers than for Scripture. The vast majority of early church father testimony is clearly citing Scripture. Quotes that argue for valid Tradition and Succession from the Apostles are much less. So, again, Tradition and authoritative Apostolic Succession are less evident to humanity than Scripture. But Tradition is far more reliable than Scripture, since it gives the right interpretation. With only Tradition, the Orthodox would still have all their dogmas, even without Scripture. But again, the evidence for Tradition is less than Scripture, hence why only two of the three forms of Christendom accept Tradition, Orthodox and Catholic.

Peter: Quotes in antiquity that speak of Peter's special office of infallibility are far less than quotes about general Apostolic Succession. Therefore, Peter's special role in Apostolic Succession is less evident than general Bishops, hence why the Orthodox do not accept him. But Peter is even stronger in truth than his other brothers combined, since with Peter, the fullness of truth on earth is known in Catholicism. Hence why the Orthodox are a little bit in error and debate a thousand years of what we know to be certain as dogma.

Finally, the Trinity and Incarnation lies even above Peter, since God is the ultimate source of truth, but those mysteries are so elusive, so hidden!
What we have shown is that as you ascend the pyramid of sources, the truth increases but the evidence for reliability decreases, and down the pyramid, vice versa.

Finally, in light of this, since God’s sources of truth are ordered theologically, and since the devil must necessarily work with reality as it is, it is no surprise thatthe devil is taking pot shots at the lesser evident sources of Catholic truth and moving down to the most evident sources, and, derivatively, at the most reliable sources in terms of truth, down to the least reliable. In that way, truth peels off little by little, like knocking off layers of a pyramid.

OK!! That was a hell of lot of theology, and what the heck happened to the subject of a guy who decks a woman in the Olympics, and they call it legitimate sports?!

IT HAS EVERTHING TO DO WITH, AS WE WILL NOW ARGUE!!

Again, let us summarize what happened over the last 1700 years or so:

The top source is God Himself in his ultimate mystery as a Trinity and Incarnation. About 300 -700 (Islam is the primary culmination and ultimate attack on God in this mystery)

The next great source is Peter, who is the greatest source on earth, the infallible guardian of the faith , 1000, great schism

The next greater source of truth by themselves are the bishops and the sacred tradition which they guard, and this is because the general magisterium and tradition are far greater than scripture by themselves because they give the proper interpretation. These were supremely attacked in protestantism in 1500 to 1700+ roughly.

After bishops and sacred tradition comes scripture,.  The Protestants only accepted scripture and confounded it at infinity without the church, which, again, flows naturally from the fact that without, as we saw above, the bishops and tradition, the true interpretation of scripture is absent and not available.

Because Protestantism led to an apocalyptic division and confusion in Christianity, it scandalized the world's faith and supernaturally inclined religion and gave birth to something that could be called a supernatural death of the world.

Beginning in 1700~, the world started to reject supernaturally inclined organized religion and accepted only a natural conception of reality. Consequently, it rejected any supernatural element to scripture and only reduced into raw history and moral lessons. Therefore, since scripture, which is the last source of divine revelation, was rejected, the only source of truth left was reason, which was therefore the only source of truth that the supernaturally dead age accepted.

At first it had some religious conceptions, as in the supernaturally dead ideology of the enlightenment so-called.  Such as deism and rationalism.

In this view, again,  the supernatural essence of mysticism and sacred history of the scriptures were rejected in favor of raw historical facts and moral lessons.

Eventually, however, reason was directed away from religion and towards mere worldly philosophy like psychology, science,  economics, worldly philosophy, etc.

In this great age, just as the Protestants only accepted scripture, in this supernatural death age, they only accepted reason.

And now in the 20th to 21st centuries, even reason has been rejected, which means we have the full darkness.

Now,  reason is the last source of truth in Catholicism and isn't even Revelation itself but is merely natural.

All that it really gives you is a basic monotheism and the pure basics of natural law.

Hence, reason gives the most pathetic degree of truth, the very basic.

But know that reason , on the other hand, is the most evident source of truth of all because every human being, at least every normal human person , has the use of reason and can therefore rationally distinguish between things that seem to be more true than others,  that are logically true or false , if they are looked at with critical thinking.

Atheism is a supreme rejection of reason because , as Vatican I testified, the existence of the Creator can be known by the things he has made, which means that no human being needs divine revelation to know there’s a God;  it is plainly evident from his mind and the things that he can see.

Hence,  atheism completely rejects reason. Atheism was primarily the horror that took over much of the Eastern portion of the world in the Communist terror.

In the west , reason has become  completely rejected by relativism, which totally  denies an objective reality by stating that you can have two opposing beliefs, and they can both be true at the same time relative to the individuals.

Gender dysphoria is now one of the ultimate fruits of relativism: That simply because the person considers an insane and irrational thing to be reality, that it becomes reality for him, and that everyone must recognize the absurdities or else be punished or persecuted.

This irrational world now, which violates almost all of the natural law, is also irrational, since the catechism testifies that the natural law is written on the heart of every human being by virtue of his very capacity to use his intellect.

And so today’s world is irrational in belief either by atheism or by relativism, and it is irrational in its rejection of natural law, including but not limited to, treating human sexuality like a playground, abortion, euthanasia, sexual deviancies, greed, disrespect of parents and all forms of authority above one , etc

I’m sorry but I don’t care how wise a theologian comes up to me, but I am not cherry picking Catholic history,.

The reality is when you look at these five great sources of Catholic truth, which in the big picture are the only great sources of Truth that put an umbrella over any other sources that exist (and these are big sources by the way,….)

...when you look at the supreme assaults on these sources, they have not randomly popped up here and there little by little; the devil has gone down the pyramid one by one without exception in the big picture.

Yes , there are other historical things that happen in terms of temporal events and minor heretical things that make exceptions to the phases.

But, in the big picture, and since we must consider that salvation history is based on beliefs and morals in the big picture, and not on petty physical details which are simply symptoms of the spiritual problems,

Then this is an adequate pyramid of the history of salvation of the Catholic Church beginning with the beginning of her doctrinal development after Constantine.

So again, I’m not cherry picking and I suppose then that I was rejected by the publication because it’s not quote on quote pastoral,.

Perhaps it isn’t pastoral , but people need to know how to answer why history is what it is and to ask themselves where did we get to a position in the Olympics when a man decks a woman simply because he thinks that he’s a woman and that half the world thinks this is all right?

Again, this has all come about by a 1700 year process.

Today, gender dysphoria is really one of the last nails in the coffin of the sexual revolution, and the rebellion against human sexuality basically annihilates all morality as Saint Paul the 6th talked about, and that JPII the great expounded on exponentially in TOTB; this is the rebellion and the destruction of natural law which was one of the first things we saw attack reason.

 Relativism is what we have gotten, especially according to benedict.

 Relativism is completely irrational and has now led to the insanities of the thing that a person can quote on quote consider something to be true that is blatantly contrary to reality and yet we must consider it to be true simply because they consider it to be true.

 I rest my case , okay I'm done with being mean!