Do You Possess a Catholic Analogical Imagination?

Do you believe, with Albert Camus, that there is more to admire in human beings than to despise?

Do you find with Erasmus and Francis of Assisi that in spite of all folly, stupidity, illusion, and even sin, reality at its final moment is trustworthy?

Do you find in yourself a belief with Aquinas and Thomas More that reason is to be trusted for finding the order of things; that faith transforms but does not destroy reason?

Is your final image of God one like John's gospel of love, not fear; of Christ as fundamentally a community of hope, not a ghetto of escape and fear?

Does your image of society include a trust that it can be somehow ordered short of radical disjunction?

Does your image of the cosmos itself include a trust that it too is somehow ordered by relationships established by God for all reality; and that reality itself—in spite of all serious,
sometimes overwhelming evidence to the contrary—is finally benign?

Then you possess, I believe, a Catholic analogical imagination.

AI

Analogical imagination is
a cognitive and theological approach that understands new, complex, or divine concepts by drawing parallels to familiar, earthly experiences, recognizing "similarities-in-difference". Popularized by theologian David Tracy, it uses existing knowledge and cultural "classics" to interpret reality, preventing thought from collapsing into strict, rigid definitions or chaotic confusion.