The Need For Truth

" If I ask 'what is truth?' I either expect an answer or I do not. Pilate did not. Yet his belief that the question did not require an answer was itself his answer. He thought the question could not be answered. In other words, he thought it was true to say that the question 'what is truth?' had no satisfactory answer. If , in thinking that, he thought there was no truth, he clearly disproved his own proposition by his very thought of it. So, even in his denial, Pilate confessed his need for truth. No man can avoid doing the same in one way or another, because our need for truth is inescapable." (1)


It could seem that the attitude of Pilate is manifest in our culture in that many have given up in despair any hope of coming to truth while at the same time living as there is. But that is what we are as human beings.
It is the duty of every person to seek and find truth and live it. It is in the very nature of humanity and we stop that search to the detriment of our souls. It states in the Vatican II document Dignitas Humanae, :

It is in accordance with their dignity that all human beings, because they are person's, that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore bearing personal responsibility, are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and to direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth."(2)


We are constructed as entities that can not exist unless there were some truth that must be embraced and made the foundation of our existence. Without this intuition of a transcendent foundation for all that human existence above the ethos of nature red in tooth and claw , human existence is an absurdity that is not in line with the rest of the universe as perceived by secular science. While many thinkers have indeed said this on paper, by and large people don't accept this, even , ESPECIALLY , in their despair.

This is why dogma, a dirty word in today's zeitgeist, is so important. If people are to come to truth there must be a truth for them to come to. Truth by definition is something which the human conscience perceives when seeking, not something defined or decided by the conscience to satisfy one's whims.

1. Merton, Thomas, A Thomas Merton Reader, Image Books, Doubleday, New York, 1974, p. 120

2. Vatican II Council, Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations, Costello Publishing Company, Northport New York, 1996, p. 553

Note

This will be my last post for a while. This may seem like a joke considering that My posts are few and far between to begin with but that's just it, I have trouble posting consistently. I started this blog when I wasn't quite ready. I have not much time right now to give this much attention. I have many questions and conflicts I have to sort out and I defintily have to get my spiritual life back in gear.
I have alot on my plate right now. When the Pope visits the U.S. and I don't write about it it is certain that I have to straithten some things out.
I will definitly resume. It may be days, months, weeks, years, I don't know. but when I am ready I will be posting again.

Yours in Christ

Frank J. Capone