This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written ten books and each one of my books is a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

________

This is why I collect Catholic Bible translations.

From the Knox Translation, a favorite of Bishop Sheen, Pope Benedict XVI and many others, to the New American; from portents and signs, to nothing.

That should not be happening in Holy Scripture, that something in there for millenia, (which appears to support some form of divination by the stars and I’ve also included St. Aquinas’ take) is just suddenly deleted.

From the Knox Translation:

[Genesis 1: 14] Next, God said, Let there be luminaries in the vault of the sky, to divide the spheres of day and night; let them give portents, and be the measures of time, to mark out the day and the year;

Retrieved August 25, 2015 from http://www.newadvent.org/bible/gen001.htm

From the Douay Rheims:

[Genesis 1:14] And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: Retrieved August 25, 2015 from http://www.drbo.org/chapter/01001.htm

And here is the Haydock Commentary on the verse:

Ver. 14. For signs. Not to countenance the delusive observations of astrologers, but to give notice of rain, of the proper seasons for sowing, &c. (Menochius) — If the sun was made on the first day, as some assert, there is nothing new created on this fourth day. By specifying the use and creation of these heavenly bodies, Moses shows the folly of the Gentiles, who adored them as gods, and the impiety of those who pretend that human affairs are under the fatal influence of the planets. See St. Augustine, Confessions iv. 3. The Hebrew term mohadim, which is here rendered seasons, may signify either months, or the times for assembling to worship God; (Calmet) a practice, no doubt, established from the beginning every week, and probably also the first day of the new moon, a day which the Jews afterwards religiously observed. Plato calls the sun and planets the organs of time, of which, independently of their stated revolutions, man could have formed no conception. The day is completed in twenty-four hours, during which space the earth moves round its axis, and exposes successively different parts of its surface to the sun. It goes at a rate of fifty-eight thousand miles an hour, and completes its orbit in the course of a year. (Haydock)

Retrieved August 25, 2015 from http://haydock1859.tripod.com/id327.html

From the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition:

[Genesis 1:14] And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years,

Retrieved August 25, 2015 from http://jmom.honlam.org/rsvce/

From the New American:

[Genesis 1:14] Then God said: Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the seasons, the days and the years,

Retrieved August 25, 2015 from http://usccb.org/bible/genesis/1

Here is St. Thomas Aquinas on divinations by the stars.

Summa Theologica: Second Part of the Second Part

Question 95. Superstition in divinations

Article 5. Whether divination by the stars is unlawful?

Objection 1. It would seem that divination by the stars is not unlawful. It is lawful to foretell effects by observing their causes: thus a physician foretells death from the disposition of the disease. Now the heavenly bodies are the cause of what takes place in the world, according to Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv). Therefore divination by the stars is not unlawful.

Objection 2. Further, human science originates from experiments, according to the Philosopher (Metaph. i, 1). Now it has been discovered through many experiments that the observation of the stars is a means whereby some future events may be known beforehand. Therefore it would seem not unlawful to make use of this kind of divination.

Objection 3. Further, divination is declared to be unlawful in so far as it is based on a compact made with the demons. But divination by the stars contains nothing of the kind, but merely an observation of God’s creatures. Therefore it would seem that this species of divination is not unlawful.

On the contrary, Augustine says (Confess. iv, 3): “Those astrologers whom they call mathematicians, I consulted without scruple; because they seemed to use no sacrifice, nor to pray to any spirit for their divinations which art, however, Christian and true piety rejects and condemns.”

I answer that, As stated above (1 and 2), the operation of the demon thrusts itself into those divinations which are based on false and vain opinions, in order that man’s mind may become entangled in vanity and falsehood. Now one makes use of a vain and false opinion if, by observing the stars, one desires to foreknow the future that cannot be forecast by their means. Wherefore we must consider what things can be foreknown by observing the stars: and it is evident that those things which happen of necessity can be foreknown by this mean,: even so astrologers forecast a future eclipse.

However, with regard to the foreknowledge of future events acquired by observing the stars there have been various opinions. For some have stated that the stars signify rather than cause the things foretold by means of their observation. But this is an unreasonable statement: since every corporeal sign is either the effect of that for which it stands (thus smoke signifies fire whereby it is caused), or it proceeds from the same cause, so that by signifying the cause, in consequence it signifies the effect (thus a rainbow is sometimes a sign of fair weather, in so far as its cause is the cause of fair weather). Now it cannot be said that the dispositions and movements of the heavenly bodies are the effect of future events; nor again can they be ascribed to some common higher cause of a corporeal nature, although they are referable to a common higher cause, which is divine providence. on the contrary the appointment of the movements and positions of the heavenly bodies by divine providence is on a different principle from the appointment of the occurrence of future contingencies, because the former are appointed on a principle of necessity, so that they always occur in the same way, whereas the latter are appointed on a principle of contingency, so that the manner of their occurrence is variable. Consequently it is impossible to acquire foreknowledge of the future from an observation of the stars, except in so far as effects can be foreknown from their causes.

Now two kinds of effects escape the causality of heavenly bodies. On the first place all effects that occur accidentally, whether in human affairs or in the natural order, since, as it is proved in Metaph. vi [Ed. Did. v, 3, an accidental being has no cause, least of all a natural cause, such as is the power of a heavenly body, because what occurs accidentally, neither is a “being” properly speaking, nor is “one”–for instance, that an earthquake occur when a stone falls, or that a treasure be discovered when a man digs a grave–for these and like occurrences are not one thing, but are simply several things. Whereas the operation of nature has always some one thing for its term, just as it proceeds from some one principle, which is the form of a natural thing.

In the second place, acts of the free-will, which is the faculty of will and reason, escape the causality of heavenly bodies. For the intellect or reason is not a body, nor the act of a bodily organ, and consequently neither is the will, since it is in the reason, as the Philosopher shows (De Anima iii, 4,9). Now no body can make an impression on an incorporeal body. Wherefore it is impossible for heavenly bodies to make a direct impression on the intellect and will: for this would be to deny the difference between intellect and sense, with which position Aristotle reproaches (De Anima iii, 3) those who held that “such is the will of man, as is the day which the father of men and of gods,” i.e. the sun or the heavens, “brings on” [Odyssey xviii, 135].

Hence the heavenly bodies cannot be the direct cause of the free-will’s operations. Nevertheless they can be a dispositive cause of an inclination to those operations, in so far as they make an impression on the human body, and consequently on the sensitive powers which are acts of bodily organs having an inclination for human acts. Since, however, the sensitive powers obey reason, as the Philosopher shows (De Anima iii, 11; Ethic. i, 13), this does not impose any necessity on the free-will, and man is able, by his reason, to act counter to the inclination of the heavenly bodies.

Accordingly if anyone take observation of the stars in order to foreknow casual or fortuitous future events, or to know with certitude future human actions, his conduct is based on a false and vain opinion; and so the operation of the demon introduces itself therein, wherefore it will be a superstitious and unlawful divination. On the other hand if one were to apply the observation of the stars in order to foreknow those future things that are caused by heavenly bodies, for instance, drought or rain and so forth, it will be neither an unlawful nor a superstitious divination.

Wherefore the Reply to the First Objection is evident.

Reply to Objection 2. That astrologers not unfrequently forecast the truth by observing the stars may be explained in two ways. First, because a great number of men follow their bodily passions, so that their actions are for the most part disposed in accordance with the inclination of the heavenly bodies: while there are few, namely, the wise alone, who moderate these inclinations by their reason. The result is that astrologers in many cases foretell the truth, especially in public occurrences which depend on the multitude. Secondly, because of the interference of the demons. Hence Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. ii, 17): “When astrologers tell the truth, it must be allowed that this is due to an instinct that, unknown to man, lies hidden in his mind. And since this happens through the action of unclean and lying spirits who desire to deceive man for they are permitted to know certain things about temporal affairs.” Wherefore he concludes: “Thus a good Christian should beware of astrologers, and of all impious diviners, especially of those who tell the truth, lest his soul become the dupe of the demons and by making a compact of partnership with them enmesh itself in their fellowship.”

This suffices for the Reply to the Third Objection.

Retrieved August 25, 2015 from http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3095.htm#article5

This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written ten books and each one of my books is a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to succeed, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

________

The Descent of Aquinas & Ascent of Teilhard

During the early half of the 20^th Century there was a deep renewal of Thomism—the foundational and intellectual floor of Catholicism for centuries—led by the papal magisterium and lay Catholic thinkers like Jacques & Raissa Maritain, whose work had a great impact on my conversion and Catholic becoming; and during the same period, a great wave of deep, foundational shaking and mystical theology emanated from the Jesuit Father Teilhard de Chardin which so confused the Vatican that the Church restricted his writings.

Sometime after, the bottom dropped out for Thomism as noted by D.Q. McInerny (2015).

By the mid-twentieth century, Thomism could be said to be the defining philosophy — the “official” philosophy, if you will — of well-nigh all the major Catholic seminaries and Catholic colleges and universities in the U.S. While the quality of the Thomism being taught varied, sometimes widely, from institution to institution, every institution, even the smaller ones with limited resources and sparse philosophical talent, could be said to be making earnest efforts to respond productively to Aeterni Patris. On an autobiographical note, the college in this country where I did my undergraduate work — an all-male institution named after St. Thomas Aquinas with some two thousand students — had a philosophy department that was unambiguously Thomistic in orientation and commitment, a goodly portion of whose members had received their doctorates from Laval. Students who majored in philosophy there received a good grounding in Thomistic thought and were well prepared for graduates studies, should they choose to pursue them. But all students at the college, whatever their major field, got a significant taste of Thomism, for they were required to take at least four courses in philosophy: logic, philosophical psychology, metaphysics, and ethics. By comparison, students at most of the country’s twenty-eight Jesuit institutions, no matter what their major field, had as part of their academic credentials what was effectively a minor in philosophy.

The Jesuits, it should be recognized, played a major role in the Thomistic renewal, and some of the best Thomists of the twentieth century were members of the Society of Jesus. This is to take nothing away from the Dominicans, who, needless to say, also made large contributions to the cause. In addition, there were a number of individuals from various other orders and congregations who figured prominently in the movement, such as Fr. Joseph Owens, a Redemptorist, Fr. Henry Koren of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, and Br. Benignus of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Lay philosophers, however, arguably made the greatest contribution to the Thomistic renewal, perhaps in good part simply on account of their numbers. Well-schooled and dedicated scholars, many of them were also outstanding teachers. And there were also many accomplished writers among them, to whom we credit many books of lasting quality; they published articles in reputable journals like The Thomist, The New Scholasticism, and The Modern Schoolman. A plethora of good to very good textbooks in Scholastic philosophy were readily available when the renewal was at its height, and many were published by major houses such as Macmillan, Prentice-Hall, and Harper & Brothers. This was also the heyday of Catholic publishing, led by houses like Herder in St. Louis and The Bruce Publishing Company in Milwaukee, both of which had impressive lists. Among the happier “problems” for philosophy teachers in those days was settling on a textbook for a particular course, say in ethics or metaphysics, when there were a half dozen, if not more, inviting titles from which to choose. Authors like Msgr. Paul J. Glenn and Fr. Celestine Bittle, O.F.M. Cap., produced entire series of textbooks in Scholastic philosophy. In all, it was an exciting time. Thomism seemed to be vibrantly alive, and the future looked quite bright.

And then the Thomistic renewal collapsed. To speak of a collapse is not to indulge in hyperbole, for the term is just the one needed to convey the sense of what actually happened — the astonishing suddenness with which Thomism ceased to be the governing and guiding philosophy in Catholic higher education. It was as if, overnight, the bottom had dropped out. So, we return to the question posed earlier: How to explain this extraordinary event of recent Church history? I offer the following: First, the collapse was a particular expression of a larger phenomenon of which it was but a part; second, it was the result of a pervasive mania for change; third, it was the targeted victim of a resurgent modernism.

Retrieved July 22, 2015 from http://perennis.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-rise-fall-of-thomistic-renewal-part.html

He goes on to write that though the collapse was significant, there is also, still, a percolating Thomism as represented by Thomist inspired educational institutions and books.

About a hundred years ago a French Jesuit, Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, began thinking and writing about a grand vision he had regarding Christ and Evolution; a vision so advanced that the Vatican theologians of the time could scarcely understand nor embrace it and forbade him from publishing his writing during his lifetime; he died in 1955.

Slowly however, after his death, as his work began to see the light of day, the Catholic theologians caught up and eventually even the popes realized how profound his work was and how much it would change the mind of the Church.

For a time, his actual faith was questioned through the complexity and speculative nature of his work, but as Cardinal De Lubac (1967) makes clear, this concern was unnecessary:

Pere Teilhard’s faith was as complete as it was ardent and firm. If he seemed to go beyond some positions generally adopted in the Church, he would never have been willing to lag behind any one of them. It was simply that it fell to him to explore truths which, without being new, stretched out like continents untrodden by man. “St. Paul and the Greek Fathers speak of a cosmic function of Christ: the exact content o that phrase has never been brought out.” That was precisely what he would have liked to find in the theology of his time—more light on the ‘organic and cosmic splendours contained in the Pauline doctrine of Chris gathering up all things.’ The least, then, we can do is to recognize that he will have done more than any other man of our time to open up a vast field of inquiry for theologians, and that they must make it their business to apply themselves to it. (p. 203)

Cardinal Henri De Lubac. (1967). The religion of Teilhard de Chardin. (R. Hague, Trans.) New York: Desclee Company

The ascent of Teilhardism has actually been going on for some time, sometimes even when the Catholic theologian is unaware of it, as this excerpt from Jacques Maritain’s final book:

The “ontosophic” truth at stake when it is a question of the world taken in itself, is that, in spite of the evil that is present in it—sometimes so great as to be intolerable not only to man’s sensibility but to his very mind—the good, all things considered, is there, much greater, deeper and more fundamental. The world is good in its structures and in its natural ends. As stagnant, even as regressive as the world can seem at certain times and in certain places of the earth, its historic development, seen in its entirety, advances toward better and more elevated states. In spite of everything, we ought to have confidence in the world because, if evil grows in it along with good (and in what a way!—one would have to be one of the new Pharisees intoxicated by the three “cosmological,” not theological, virtues not to see that) there is, nevertheless, in the world a greater growth of good. (p. 39)

Jacques Maritain. (1968). The Peasant of the Garonne: An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

And, then, of course, in the just published encyclical of the Jesuit Pope Francis—who mentions Teilhard in the note #53 in this passage, first time he is mentioned in an encyclical—we find:

83. The ultimate destiny of the universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been attained by the risen Christ, the measure of the maturity of all things.[53] Here we can add yet another argument for rejecting every tyrannical and irresponsible domination of human beings over other creatures. The ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us. Rather, all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. Human beings, endowed with intelligence and love, and drawn by the fullness of Christ, are called to lead all creatures back to their Creator.

Pope Francis. (2015). Laudato Si. #83. Retrieved July 13, 2015 from http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

The central element in Teilhard’s thought, in my understanding of it, is the evolutionary growth, of the entire universe from the Universal Alpha Christ—spiritual and material—towards the ultimate end, the Universal Omega Christ, when the love that defines God, infuses all, and all are conscious of it, all are conscious of being part of everything, yet still singular, still individual.

Fr. Teilhard, writing in his book, Science and Christ, Chapter II, Note on the Universal Christ:

By the Universal Christ, I mean Christ the organic centre of the entire universe.

Organic Center: that is to say the centre on which every even natural development is ultimately physically dependent.

Of the entire universe: that is to say, the centre not only of the earth and mankind, but of Sirius and Andromeda, of the angels, whether in a close or a distant relationship (and that, in all probability, means the centre of all participated being.)

Of the entire universe, again, that is to say, the centre not only of moral and religious effort, but also of all that that effort implies—in other words of all physical and spiritual growth.

This Universal Christ is the Christ presented to us in the Gospels, and more particularly by St. Paul and St. John. It is the Christ by whom the great mystics lived: but nevertheless not the Christ with whom theology has been most concerned.

The purpose of this note is to bring to the notice of my friends, more skilled than I am in sacred science and better placed to exert intellectual influence, how necessary, how vitally necessary, it now is that we should make plain this eminently Catholic notion of Christ as Alpha and Omega.

• In the first place, as I have explained elsewhere, the present history of religious sentiment in man, whoever they may be, seems to me to be dominated by a sort of revelation, emerging in human consciousness, of the one great universe.

 

1.  Faced by the physical immensity that is thus revealed to our generation, some (the unbelievers) turn away from Christ a priori, because an image of him is often presented to them that is manifestly more insignificant than the world. [so, so, true and a reason criminals do not respond to traditional evangelization, DHL] Others, better informed (and this includes many believers), nevertheless feel that a fight to the death is going on within them. Which will be the greater they will have to face, and which, therefore, will command their worship—Christ or the universe? The latter is continually growing greater, beyond all measure. It is absolutely essential that the former should be officially, and explicitly, set above all measure.

If the unbelievers are to begin to believe, and the believers to continue to do so, we must hold up before men the figure of the Universal Christ. (pp. 14-15)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. (1968). Science and Christ. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

Within the Church, this spiritual evolution is recorded within the magisterium, primarily that of Peter and the saints, where we see the halting—sometimes two steps backwards for each forward—progress of the Pilgrim Church as she struggles through time and space, struggles with the world and the kingdom of heaven, each joined to one another, each evolving and adding to the consciousness of humans and God, within which we grow upward towards convergence.

Teilhard’s vision first entranced me in prison over 50 years ago, and Teilhard’s Catholicism was immaterial against the solidity of his vision. When I became Catholic and studied Aquinas, it all came together, for Aquinas, in his synthesizing of the science of Aristotle with second millennium Catholicism was a necessary prelude to Teilhard and his synthesizing of evolutionary science and third millennium Catholicism.

Philip Sherrard writes in Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 4, No. 3. (Summer, 1970):

The conflict between religion and science, though it may seem to have become particularly acute during the last century, is not new in our culture. In its modern form it goes back at least to the Latin Averroists, who radically severed the connection between faith and reason, theology and philosophy, and asserted that philosophical thinking must be independent of faith and theology. It is in this secularization of thought that modern philosophy and modern science in general have their basis. Briefly, at the beginning of this process of secularization is the assumption that there are two orders or levels of knowledge…It was this split between two levels or orders of knowledge that St. Thomas Aquinas sought to heal….Teilhard de Chardin saw it as his task to embrace the new vistas of man’s history exposed by science and to seek to resolve the conflict between science and religion in terms of a new synthesis….

Retrieved July 23, 2015 from

http://www.studiesincomparativereligion.com/Public/articles/Teilhard_De_Chardin_and_the_Christian_Vision-by_Philip_Sherrard.aspx

So what appears to be a descent and ascent is just a continuation, an evolution, of Catholic consciousness.