In-der-Blog-sein

Catholic Herald on localism versus universalism.

Take a word like Geworfenheit. Not one, I admit, that you will ever overhear in a supermarket queue, even in Berlin or Cologne, but a key existential concept that greatly informs the current debate on marriage (or should). Geworfenheit means the state of being thrown, or “thrown-ness”. It was coined by Martin Heidegger who was, as every one knows, a very bad man; but though he had all the wrong answers, he did ask some very interesting questions. And then there is Angst, and Sorge… deep down this marriage debate is about these existential concepts. I believe in Geworfenheit: we need to live with, and embrace the fact that there is a great gap between ourselves and the truth of Christ; and we need to hold to that truth at all costs, lest we drown in a sea of cares.

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The relationship between particular and universal, local Church and the See of Peter, is a symbiotic union that is to the enrichment of both. Communion with Peter remains a safeguard against seeing local custom as normative, when local custom has to be evaluated through the prism of the universal nature of revelation and the universal nature of morality. Put bluntly, you cannot insist that “this is our way of doing things here, and we don’t care about what others do in other countries”.

Cosmopolitan nomads make better Daseins, as their opposite exemplifies (ob. cit., Überlegungen).   ¶ 9:40 AM