“Orthodoxy” doesn’t matter. And it hasn’t for decades. It has become a word foreign to modern ears, an idea meaningless to modern minds, a body of practical ideas and principles with no real practicality or significance, except as a predictable means of inciting controversy and conflict or fostering intolerance and bigotry. Such is our time.

So, too, with “heresy.” It is a rare word and an even rarer idea. It is an obsolete word to our modern way of thinking, except perhaps as an anachronistic artifact from a darker, simpler, more ignorant and naïve time long ago, before the advent of color television or the convening of the Second Vatican Council.

And the only way for “orthodoxy” and “heresy” to matter again to anyone but the truly faithful is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Truth, beyond the basic laws of physics and chemistry, actually and factually exists. A simple example can be found in a quick look at the “Big Bang Theory,” the pre-eminent explanation of how the universe came to exist from the explosive expansion of the “singularity” at the beginning of space and time.  Moderns tend to use this theory to prove not just the beginning of the universe, which is science’s most accepted theory about the origin of the universe, but also to prove that the idea of a Creator God is just a myth, nothing more.

But, when we apply the primary principles of reason to the scientific data and this theory, we see an unavoidable truth about the origin of the universe. When moderns, with their bias about physical science as the sole source of truth,  look at this long chain of causes and effects extending back to the beginning of space and time, somehow they miss this “singularity” had to come from some prior cause. 

But who or what caused the “singularity?” Reason and science tell us the “singularity” is an effect caused by something outside time, space and physical existence.

Some “uncaused causer,” some intangible, immaterial being or force had to create this singularity, its order, its structure and its activity. And this “uncaused causer” is what we call God, an intangible, all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal Being. Despite the necessary logical truth of an “uncaused causer,” proving truths beyond the basic physical laws can seem like a tall order. But not for the difficulty inherent to proving the existence of actual and factual truth. It is difficult because most people already believe “reason” is just manipulation, rhetoric or sophistry. It is difficult because most people think only physical principles are true, because science is our only way to know objective fact, to prove anything is true.

Most people don’t believe a right use of reason can actually prove things to be factually true. Like the example above, the factual existence of the universe requires something to have caused it to exist. It requires something that caused the “singularity” and “space” and “time” to come into existence.

This makes an “uncaused causer” absolutely necessary, rationally necessary and scientifically necessary.

And all this shouldn’t surprise or unsettle us. For the very nature of “orthodoxy” or “heresy” is a conclusion, an assertion about the ways things are, not as we prefer them or  choose them to be. And it is there orthodoxy crosses the line of modern thinking. To our modern way of thinking, asserting a body of ideas is actually and factually true is an act of revolution or provocation. Expressing the objective truth of orthodoxy as not merely a personal or creedal body of ideas, but as actual and factual truth, is a modern heresy, an act of prejudice. And you can test this in a rather simple way.

Just tell any modern person Catholic orthodoxy is true — objectively, factually, rationally and scientifically true. They will either be incredulous that you could be so naive or stupid to think the Catholic faith is actually true or they will be angry that you could be so arrogant as to believe Catholic orthodoxy is actually true.  

In fact, to moderns, all orthodoxies are acts of bigotry by virtue of the simple act of asserting a claim of objective truth. For actual and factual truth is inherent to the very idea of real orthodoxy. And all that type of thinking and the very content of “orthodox” thought itself is outside our modern truth paradigm.

Our modern way of thinking presumes there are no real right answers. Modern minds perceive any and all such orthodoxies as merely claims, beliefs and nothing more. 

Yet all claims to orthodoxy are just that — beliefs and nothing more, unless there is some way to prove such  ideas are actually true, things beyond the scientific method and the limited number of physical laws and facts we observe, know and use. Thankfully, there is. And it is a way — a tool — we use all the time. We can prove things as conclusively as any scientist or mathematician by using our reason rigorously and rightly. By a right use of reason, we can prove truth exists and what those truths are. And it is far simpler than you may imagine.

Let’s take a couple of examples to show just how easily the existence of truth can be demonstrated. Let’s use the modern mind’s first principle — the truth that there is no truth; that all truths are mere claims. Let’s just look at this assertion a little closer: “The truth about truth is that there is no truth.”

Think about that for just a second. Can you see the contradiction? Well, it is a flagrant contradiction of logic to assert the truth that there is no truth. Such an assertion is nonsense and wrong, for it fails to meet the demands of the rule of non-contradiction. Its conclusion claims it is true, while simultaneously asserting truth does not exist. This is a fatal error in logic. It’s just wrong. So the next appeal moderns must make to hold onto their belief in the absence of truth is to data and practicalities, especially when logic makes their argument look like the fool’s mate in chess. They typically look at all the many truth claims and point out how all these differ in their beliefs and how they often contradict one another. And then they make a fatal error arising from their belief that there is no truth. 

They mistakenly conclude two things and manage to miss the point about truth entirely. Mistake one: They conclude the number of contradictory assertions proves there are no right answers. Mistake two: Their foundational contradiction about truth is actually right and reason is actually wrong, or at least impotent, when it comes to discovering actual truth. It never dawns on them that in this range of contradictory truth claims lies the actual truth. For if the claims include all the possible answers to the question raised, then the truth must be on that list. If all the real possibilities are presented, one of them must be true. One must be true because reality must conform to one of the real, factual possibilities. But this is only the beginning of a long litany of errors in judgment and thinking inherent in modern assumptions about knowledge and truth.

Francis X. Cronin is a writer, educator and administrator

at Aquinas College and Overbrook School in Nashville, Tennessee.