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So given that today is the Feast of St. Sylvester which also coincides with New Year’s Eve, your humble blogger was going to prepare a Year in Review post. Yet the most important OCCURENCE of 2018 is so YUGE, that this humble blogger will put it in its own separate post and do a Year in Review at a later date.

The occurence that appeared in 2018 which the Deus ex Machina’s Pierce/Ockham pragmatic model indicated was of major significance can be summed up as the:

Rise of the Ontological Man

So let’s begin…

As my long time readers know, this blog has focused on ONTOLOGY, which is the study of the nature of being, i.e. reality and EPISTEMOLOGY which is the study of the nature of truth. These two disciplines are very closely related since through the study of what constitutes something that is TRUE, we can then understand that which is REAL.

So a person who speaks that which appears to be objectively true is in fact defining that which is real.

Let’s call this our: ONTOLOGICAL MAN.

So how does one recognize an ontological man when one spots him?

I will allow Dr Jordan Peterson to give us some pointers:

Two aspects of the above video which are of major significance are as follows:

The first aspect is an approximation of what constitutes our ontological man. (Emphasis added)

Now, Western culture is phalogo-centric, let’s say it. So let’s say that’s fine. That’s exactly what it is, predicated on the idea of the Logos. That the Logos is the sacred element of Western culture.

Nota bene: What we have in the above is what we call a RECONCILIATION moment between the Natural and the Supernatural sides of reality (ontology). Dr. Peterson explains the Natural significance of the “Logos”, or the Word, while in the post titled (If you are looking for a place to comment, leave citations, etc,…) (see here) Ann Barnhardt explains the Supernatural significance of that same reality. This humble blogger suggests you dear and loyal reader follow Ann’s lead.

As for the Holy Roman Catholic Church, in Her infinate wisdom the Church recognized the significance of the Logos by introducing the Prologue of St. John long before the 16th Century (see here), thereby beating Dr. Peterson to the punch by more than 500 years.

Back to the matter at hand and how the Petersonians see the significance of the Logos:

And what does that mean? It means that your capacity for speech is divine. It’s the thing that generates order from chaos. And then sometimes turns pathological order into chaos when it has to. Don’t underestimate the power of truth. There’s nothing more powerful.

And then Dr Peterson goes on to explain what in our parlance constitutes an ontological man:

Now in order to speak what you might regard as the truth, you have to let go of the outcome. You have to think: “ok, I’m going to say what I think. Stupid as I am, biased as I am, ignorant as I am, I’m going to state what I think clearly as I can and I’m going to live with the consequences no matter what they are. Now the reason you think that, that’s an element of faith.  The idea is that nothing brings a better world into being than the stated truth. Now you might have to pay a price for that. But that’s fine. You’re going to pay a price for everything you bloody well do. And everything you don’t do. You don’t get to chose to not pay a price. You get to chose which poison you’re going to take. That’s it.

Yep, that’s it…

And how is this manner of “speaking the truth” working out for Dr. Peterson, you might as dear and loyal reader?

Well, it has made him the most widely know intellectual globally in under two years time. In 2018 he has spoken in front of over 250,000 people in sold out venues on three continents. He has become a best selling author whose latest book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, has sold over 2 million copies to date. And he has become wealthy in the process, just to add that little bit of a capitalist punch to the summation.

Oh, and Dr. Peterson is responsible for an upspring of “Free Speech” clubs sprouting up on the North American college campuses, as per video here. Aside, notice how he starts the lecture by defining terms, a la St Thomas Aquinas? With post-Modernists, you have to always define terms! But I digress…

Which brings us to Ann Barnhardt and an insight into how this ONTOLOGICAL MAN phenomenon is manifesting itself in the ECCLESIASTICAL sub-set of the Visibilium Omnium.

Two websites are especially worthy of mention here at this point. One is Ann Barnhardt’s blog and the other is the Non Veni Pacem blog. These two blogs have taken the observable reality of what can be called the “Two Popes” Dilemma by the horns and have been… well… used the Petersonian suggestion of SPEAKING THE TRUTH.

The “Two Popes” Dilemma can be summarized as follows:

Specifically, it is visibly observable that there are two individuals who live inside the Sacred Vatican Walls. Further, Pope Benedict continues to wear the white tunic, continues to sign himself “Benedictus XVI, pope emeritus,” continues to live “in the enclosure of Saint Peter,” continues to have himself called “Holiness” and “Holy Father.” And finally, Pope Benedict claims that he and Francis, the bishop of Rome “share” the PONTIFICAL OFFICE, “One “Active” and One “Contemplative”. (See here)

So Ann Barnhardt, observing the “Two-Popes” Dilemma, has taken it into her sights and produced this seminal video explaining the essence of what is at the root of the “Two Popes” Dilemma.

And hilarity ensued… -> see HERE.

Once this video became widely disseminated over the internet, the proprietor of the Non Veni Pacem blog went even higher resolution and drilled further into the “resignation language issue”. The road so far has led to a doctoral thesis and one Abp Miller who’s major contribution to this entire debate is in his use of the word: ONTOLOGY.

In other words, the lineage of the ROOT CAUSE of the “Two Popes” Dilemma is now officially mapped back to and tied to the issue of what constitutes ontological reality.

Now not surprisingly, the folks propping up the “Two Popes” Dilemma will hint that it is the “ontological issue” that is at the base of the problem, but they will not dare name it.

Why would that be?

Hold that thought…

Case in point, here is the translation of a recent Abp Gänswein’s speech. The relevent passage of interest to us is as follows:

Indeed, I must admit that perhaps it is impossible to sum up the pontificate of Benedict XVI in a more concise manner. And the one who says it, over the years, has had the privilege of experiencing this Pope up close as a “homo historicus,” the Western man par excellence who has embodied the wealth of Catholic tradition as no other; and — at the same time — has been daring enough to open the door to a new phase, to that historical turning point which no one five years ago could have ever imagined. Since then, we live in an historic era which in the 2,000-year history of the Church is without precedent.

Now, one way to interpret the sentence “has been daring enough to open the door to a new phase, to that historical turning point which no one five years ago could have ever imagined” is to suggest that what the good Archbishop has in mind something of an ‘ontological’ nature.

Yet we know that, Abp  Gänswein knows, that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI knows that: ontology is not something that a mere mortal can alter.

Yes?

“BEING” is something that IS!

Yes?

So unless Abp Gänswein has created a new definition for what constitutes ontology, he is obviously speaking of something quite different.

Yet he is clearly saying that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has somehow created a “fragmented Papacy” and somehow something has changed since the “resignation that wasn’t”, yet that this something has not contradicted the NATURE (ONTOLOGY) OF THE PAPACY.

So what we have is: CONFUSION!

And this confusion has been picked up on Oakes Spalding’s blog, Mahound’s Paradise. In a recent post, which contains the results of a poll as to who Catholics think is the REAL POPE, the following results have been obtained:

Twitter Poll Result: Majority of Traditionalist Catholics Not Certain Francis is Pope

Concluding, what appears to be the case is that there are parallel processes at play in both the Natural and Supernatural components of ontological reality that are converging.

The Natural process, as exhibited through the work of Dr Jordan Peterson is bringing ontological reality to bear on explaining the situation of a vast population of citizenry of Western societies.

The Supernatural process, as exhibited through the work of bloggers such as Ann Barnhardt, the proprietor of the Non Veni Pacem blog and Oakes Spalding, among others, are illuminating the ontological reality behind the Francis bishopric of Rome and now more widely on its root cause, the situation in the wider post-conciliar church.

Both these process can be seen as two parts of one whole. The reason why they are transpiring is most likely due to a tipping point being reached among the populations of Western societies.

On the one hand, the secular society is being expropriated of its material means of survival, through high levels of taxation. Case in point are the Yellow Vest protests in France, which are now spreading to the other Western European countries.

On the other hand, the Faithful are being expropriated of their spiritual means of salvation. Case in point are continuous letter from the Faithful to Francis asking to be provided with clarity of post-conciliar church teachings.

And in both case, the individuals are realizing that the secular and ecclesiastical institutions and ruling elites are either indifferent or unresponsive, and usually both. So in order to make sense of that which is happening to them, they need to return to the basics, and those basics are speaking the Truth in order to better define the objective reality of their current existence.

They need to define the objective reality of their existence in order to take the appropriate corrective actions.

So the RISE OF ONTOLOGICAL MAN appears to be a corrective measure to offset the current situation of an ontological existence that has become unstable, as if it was built on sand…