@FeserEdward.."[Pico’s] word dignity can of course be interpreted as..inverting the relation between man and God"..Barzun..be cautious..accent on the divine dignity rather than on our dignity..sticking a word like 'infinite' in front of the latter accomplishes the reverse of this"
Some reminders for readers of Dignitas Infinita that words and concepts have histories:
“The very expression dignity of man, even when Pico della Mirandola coined it in the fifteenth century, had a blasphemous ring to it” Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 180
“[Pico’s] word dignity can of course be interpreted as flouting the gospel’s call to humility and denying the reality of sin. Humanism is accordingly charged with inverting the relation between man and God” Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, p. 60
When responding, please don’t say something stupid like “But the Declaration is obviously not a manifesto for Renaissance humanism!!” Yes, I know that. That’s not the point. The point is that modern people, from the Renaissance onward, have gotten progressively more drunk on the idea of their own dignity – and, correspondingly, less and less cognizant of the fact that what is most grave about sin is not that it dishonors us, but that it dishonors God.
This, and not their own dignity, is what they most need reminding of. Hence, while it is not wrong to speak of human dignity, one must be cautious and always put the accent on the divine dignity rather than on our dignity. I submit that sticking a word like “infinite” in front of the latter accomplishes the reverse of this.
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This was the cause of the lack of interest in this topic among the Catholics at the time in my country.
Today, these classes by this Brazilian of Italian origin on the study of Gnosis have become important for me as a discernment. And they show today what this Church is, by fitting the pieces of an illegitimate pontificate according to the canonical teachings of the Church and other sources, which today is far worse than the forty antipopes in its ecclesial history.
Fedeli says:
"[...] it is known that the tree of the forbidden fruit of Eden was exactly the tree of the knowledge or knowledge of good and evil (Gen. II, 10). Thus, gnosis would have been Adam's temptation. In fact, the serpent promised our first parents that if they ate the forbidden fruit, "they would be like gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen., III, 5). Adam and Eve's temptation was to become gods. This is the great temptation of man, who, driven by pride, like Lucifer, does not admit his finitude, does not accept its contingency."
The word finitude above comes from finite and means the human condition of being limited, that is, having an end.
In modern times they call the man with this behavior is self-centered or narcissistic; The triumph in the serpent's deception is thus made possible by blindness to his own reality: he is contingent, that is, uncertain in his works through his own fault for the original sin he has committed, because he is proud.
Divine grace vanishes in him, and he will never alone comprehend this truth.
That is why the magisterium of Bergoglio's Church is always turned to impenitence, to arrogantly believing the lie about the divine seed. The man of impenitence believes in himself only as if he were god; The condemnation of hell is inaccessible to him for this reason.
True God for him is evil, and this also becomes a false justification for not serving Him.
Pope Francis is the head of the Church, but of sin because it is turned in the same pride as Lucifer.
https://www.montfort.org.br/bra/veritas/religiao/gnose/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Fedeli