Let’s define some terms. “Epistemic” means “relating to knowledge or the degree of its validation”. So, “epistemic humility” is a six dollar term for declaring that we can’t really know anything. The truth is, today the term “epistemic humility” almost always refers to FALSE epistemic humility – for example, when grown adults declare that they have no idea what a “woman” is, or what sex a person is by, say, observing their genitalia or even observing their 23rd chromosome pair. Or in this case, the identity of the Vicar of Christ on Earth.
Further, “Knowledge” is the Fifth of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord). Whereas wisdom is the mere desire to judge all things through the lens of the One True Faith, knowledge is the ability to concretely do so – in other words, TAKING A STAND. Checking your brain at the door under the guise of “epistemic humility” is just another way of effeminately shirking your responsibility as a Catholic and as a human being.
Agnosticism is defined as the belief in the unknowability of the very existence of God, or even about nature and the existence of things in themselves. It is a dark and slippery slope that leads to radical materialism and the “Heresy of Oprah-ism” of “MY truth” and “YOUR truth”, which is, at its root, satanism, the credo of which is: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”
Folks, Our Lord makes it VERY clear, repeatedly, in scripture that we are all expected to TAKE A STAND. No fence-sitting. No false epistemic humility.
Jesus saith to them: But whom do you say that I AM?
Dicit illis Jesus : Vos autem, quem me esse dicitis?
Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.
Respondens Simon Petrus dixit : Tu es Christus, Filius Dei vivi.
Matthew 16: 15-16
Do you believe that Simon Bar Jonah, in this moment, put directly on the spot by Our Lord, should have declared that his dazzling epistemic humility prevented him from answering Our Lord’s question?
What about Our Lord’s words to the disciples of John the Baptist? Why didn’t He tell them to go ask the High Priests in the Temple who He was? Why didn’t John’s disciples report back that “we can’t possibly know who He is, no matter how much objective evidence is right before our eyes”?
And Jesus making answer said to them: Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen.
Et respondens Jesus ait illis : Euntes renuntiate Joanni quae audistis, et vidistis.
The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the gospel preached to them.
Caeci vident, claudi ambulant, leprosi mundantur, surdi audiunt, mortui resurgunt, pauperes evangelizantur.
Matthew 11: 4-5
And let us not forget the Good Shepherd Discourse, wherein Our Lord makes it perfectly clear that the SHEEP MUST DISCERN FOR THEMSELVES THE VOICE OF THE SHEPHERD AND FOLLOW ONLY HIM, shunning even the Faithless Hirelings who have putative authority over the flock, lest the Faithless Hirelings abandon or even actively deliver the sheep into the gaping jaws of the wolves. No amount of bleating, “BAAA! Muh epistemic humility! BAAAA!” whilst being devoured by wolves will save the sheep. Only the sheep that clock the situation, discern properly given the objective dataset, and then ACT accordingly IN THE MOMENT (aka “knowledge”) will live eternally with The Good Shepherd.
Amen, amen I say to you: He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up another way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he hath let out his own sheep, he goeth before them: and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. But a stranger they follow not, but fly from him, because they know not the voice of strangers.
John 10: 1-5
And then, of course, the Lukewarm Vomit Discourse…
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold, nor hot. I would thou wert cold, or hot.
Scio opera tua : quia neque frigidus es, neque calidus : utinam frigidus esses, aut calidus :
But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of My mouth.
sed quia tepidus es, et nec frigidus, nec calidus, incipiam te evomere ex ore meo.
Revelation 3: 15-16
NOW, after that ambling preamble, let’s look at what spurred all of this. From over my transom:
Hi, Ann.
In one of your recent posts, you write: “So, now that Trad, Inc. has pretty much fully embraced the Freemasonic agenda to discredit and destroy the Papacy in their own minds and the minds of the faithful, the next step, which one can see coming like a freight train across the Western Kansas plains, will be to start going after SCRIPTURE ITSELF, declaring certain passages and eventually entire books of the Bible to be wrong, useless, and to be ignored or disregarded.”You’re exactly correct, and, in fact, it’s already here. Exhibit A is Tim Gordon’s recent podcast at the 18:43 timestamp, wherein he proclaims, as a direct conclusion based on his false premise that Francis is pope, that Matthew 16:18 can no longer be understood to mean what the Church has always taught that it means.
It’s truly astounding to see otherwise smart and faithful Catholics falling all over themselves to abandon both Tradition and Scriptures . . . rather than consider the overwhelming evidence that Bergoglio is an antipope.
Thanks for all you do.
In Christ,
Mr. B
In fairness, Gordon hedges HEAVILY. Here is the transcript of what he says, with every hedge in italics:
“Nevertheless, ‘the Gates of hell shan’t prevail against the Church’ does not mean that this guy [Bergoglio], assuming that he’s Pope – which, shave a point of my certainty off the proposition every week or so – assuming he’s Pope, it means we can’t rest fastly on the presumption that Matthew chapter 18 [Gordon misspeaks here – he meant Matthew chapter 16, verse 18] means that doctrine’s untouchable, or that we can’t go back and will have to tweak it some. Okay? I don’t know what it all means. I say epistemic humility, epistemic humility, epistemic humility. Don’t pretend you know what’s happening. The Church was not equipped for Francis… Now, if Francis turns out to be an Antipope, which is a distinct possibility – I’m not declaring it – then we’ll have a Cadaver Synod….”
And then it gets silly from there talking about the Cadaver Synod in which Antipope Formosus’ dead body was exhumed, etc. No dead bodies are going to be put on trial, obviously, but what this also perpetuates is the lie that the Bergoglian Antipapacy can only be ended and declared null AFTER Bergoglio is dead. This is patently false, but Trad Inc. has been pushing this lie AGGRESSIVELY for many years, in an effeminate attempt to kick the can down the road and dispense themselves from any personal responsibility as outlined in the scripture citations of Our Lord’s clear words above. In fact, it is profoundly unhistorical: almost every one of the several dozen anti-papacies in the 2000 year history of the Church have been resolved WHILE THE ANTIPOPE WAS STILL ALIVE, precisely so that he might be able to REPENT and die reconciled to Our Lord and His Holy Church. Throwing up one’s hands and declaring a man – ANY MAN – beyond hope in this life is so utterly antithetical to Christianity that there aren’t even words to describe it. In fact, it flirts with being a denial of Our Lord’s Divinity and the infinite salvific value of His Passion and Death on the Cross. See where these false base premises swiftly lead?
Here’s what blows my mind. Gordon publicly declares that IF Bergoglio is Pope, then doctrine is NOT immutable, and that THE HOLY GOSPELS are either in error in and of themselves OR have been wildly misinterpreted by Holy Mother Church – every saint, every Doctor of the Church, EVERYONE for 2000 years has been wrong. And this doesn’t INSTANTLY inform him that the base premise that Bergoglio is Pope MUST be wrong??
I seriously cannot comprehend what Godon and all others in this general line of thinking are… thinking. This is such an obvious, no-brainer logical progression, so obvious and easily KNOWABLE, that I just can’t even begin to put myself in their shoes and say, “Okay, I see what the confusion is here.” No. This is the OPPOSITE of confusing. This is being beaten over the head with the two-by-four of logic. IF YOUR BASE PREMISE (that Bergoglio is Pope) HAS YOU PUBLICLY DECLARING THAT THE HOLY GOSPELS AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN TOTO ARE WRONG, IT’S PATENTLY OBVIOUS THAT YOUR BASE PREMISE IS FALSE.
To then thrice declare, “Epistemic humility! Epistemic humility! Epistemic humility!” as justification for publicly trashing the entire Faith like this is some sort of virtuous act is CRINGE, as the young people say. So very, very CRINGE.
I’d also like to address Gordon’s line, “The Church wasn’t equipped for Francis.” This is completely bass-ackwards WRONG. The Church was and is TOTALLY prepared for the Bergoglian Antipapacy. How many prophecies of “Apostasy from the top”, how many apparitions and warnings by The Mother of God of the same, Pope Leo XIII hearing the exchange between Lucifer and Our Lord, Vatican I dogmatically defining Papal Infallibility PRECISELY so that we could know with total certainty that something was horrifically, horrifically wrong with Bergoglio, and, of course, THE CODE OF CANON LAW which clearly shows us that Pope Benedict’s attempted partial resignation of only the active ministries of the Papacy while retaining the Office of the Papacy was totally invalid by the law itself? How about the stunning advance of technology so that neither Pope Benedict in his obvious Substantial Error, nor Antipope Bergoglio could hide, invisible to the world, behind the Vatican Walls, unobserved by the entire Church Militant, so that this entire train wreck was mercifully VISIBLE to the entire planet, and so that unlettered lay nothings like me could sit in a proverbial Van Down By the River, read the Code of Canon Law in my mother tongue, and shout this information to the four corners of the earth INSTANTANEOUSLY. Tell me more about how the Triune Godhead got caught unprepared and left humanity blind and in the lurch, such that it constitutes some sort of sin of pride for anyone to know what’s going on. Tell me more about that. I’m all ears.
Finally, to Timothy Gordon, I would conclude by saying, I’m not PRETENDING to know what’s happening, sir. I DO know what is happening, because what is happening is, by the loving perfection of the Divine Providence, visible, observable, confirmable, and thus KNOWABLE, and I, you, and everyone else are called to not just collect the data, but to ACT and take an intellectual stand after judging said data.
Bergoglio is clearly an Antipope, enabled by a revolting cabal of Faithless Hirelings. I flee, I SPRINT away from the Vocem Alienorum, the Voice of the Stranger, Jorge Bergoglio and the Antichurch which he fronts. If you want to play patty cake with the Wolves like it’s some sort of virtue flex, hedging your bets in the lukewarm pool of false epistemic humility, don’t be surprised if you get your throat ripped out by a large, red-eyed canid.
I hope this helps.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and on Your Holy Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.