New Modern Defenses for the Catholic Faith Based in the Understanding of St. Thomas Aquinas
Methodology
Our exclusion of other feasible worldviews includes a three-step process. Following the thomistic framework, articles of faith divinely revealed serve as necessary conclusions. We can then use reason to support our necessary conclusions, or our "givens." This fundamental principle is founded on the fact that the divine is exhaustive in its comprehension of true knowledge while men are limited in their comprehension of knowledge and can have falsity in that comprehension. This first step of the process, applying reasoning to divinely revealed truth, we can call theology. The second step in the process is verifying that the theology as it is understood has been accurately analyzed by comparing it with the theology of those who were less further removed from from the revelatory truths themselves. This principle is founded on the propositions that those who knew Christ and those who knew those who knew Christ would have better theology than subsequent generations. In other words, chronological proximity to those Christ Himself is correlated to purity of theology due to the fact that there is less time for the possibility of corruption. This can be called tradition. The third step in the process is the application of verified theology in modern or unprecedented circumstances. For this reason, theology is adaptable. The truths themselves are immutable but they are further developed as the truths themselves face new objections are placed in different scenarios. It is the responsibility of those who are in possession of verified theology, or true doctrine, to foster, guard and expand those truths in their application. This can be called magisterial (authoritative teaching). The cycle repeats itself as magisterial teaching transitions into revelatory truth. So, the doctrines of theology are threefold: they are found in scripture, tradition, and magisterial teaching.
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In trying to prove the Catholic worldview as true, we must rule out alternative worldviews. The first distinction that we can make is between those beliefs which positively affirm that man's telos (natural end/goal), or the attainment of optimal happiness, is some real object and between those beliefs that negate or deny that man's telos is found in some real object. The former we call theists and the latter we call skeptics (includes atheists and agnostics). The second distinction, or more accurately distinctions (plural), is between the conception of the object of worship itself. This dispute over who or what God is. Since Christianity is the largest and most rigorously defended religion, we will treat other religions separately. The next distinction is an epistemological difference among Christians, or contrasting methods of ordering the approach of the object of worship. Since the primary belief of Christianity is that God communicated Himself to us through a man called Christ, there is a fundamental disagreement about whether God chooses to communicates Himself to us indirectly or through instruments external to Himself. Protestants, to varying degrees dependent on the sect, deny that He does. The final distinction among non-Protestant Christians is not epistemological, but doctrinal. Some subject themselves to a "Pope" who serves a prime minister-like role on behalf of Christ who is bodily absent in his proper form. Those who do not subject themselves to the Pope, or the Vicar of Christ, also disagree about some intricate technicalities of the divine nature. Orthodox Christians reject the idea of this authoritative role given to the Bishop of Rome. By the excluded possibility of each distinction in worldview, we draw nearer to truth. Each distinction in worldview has several consequences to its principle falsity.