The USU Religious Studies Club is hosting a presentation by Dr. Sherlock about his recent conversion from Mormonism to Catholicism. For those who are not familiar with him, Dr. Sherlock is a philosophy professor at USU. His conversion to Catholicism is notable because he has long been an important (though some think heretical) Mormon intellectual.
The presentation is this Wednesday, March 2, at 4:00 PM in Old Main 121. You won’t want to miss it. But if you cannot make it, I’ll likely post a recording of the talk later this week.
Wow didn’t see that coming, hope you are able to record would like to attend, but alas i’m a few to many miles away lol
James, you know 30 is the new 20, and cars are getting faster all the time…:)
Please do record it! I would love to be there, but I’ll be taking a midterm a good many miles away
Uuuh… I saw it coming. Actually I’m surprised it took this long, and even more surprised this was a conversion from Mormonism to Catholicism. Certainly would have thought he would have gone to secular humanism, agnosticism or atheism a long time ago.
Perhaps you know a different Sherlock than the one I know, but I cannot imagine Sherlock embracing atheism or secular humanism. Why not? Philosophical Eros. To find out what I mean, read Josef Pieper’s short (60 pages or so) and delightful book: “Divine Madness: Plato’s Case Against Secular Humanism”
http://www.amazon.com/22Divine-Madness-22-Against-Secular-Humanism/dp/0898705576
I would have been absolutely stunned had Sherlock moved to secular humanism or atheism. Becoming Catholic? … not that surprising.
I have been asked by a number of students what role I played in Sherlock’s conversion. I thought it worth addressing here in public forums where my Catholicism has been on full display.
Sherlock and I are friends, and we talk philosophy and theology quite frequently. Still, the reality is that I did not play much of a role at all in his conversion. To start, I am not much of an evangelizer. I know that other friends of Sherlock played a much larger role in his conversion.
Looking back, I don’t think I ever changed his mind about anything. From the moment I came here, Sherlock never believed that the standard mormon metaphysics (physical god, a god that develops over time after starting off like us) made sense. I don’t know if he has ever believed that standard party line, and in fact I don’t think he has ever believed it. Sherlock has always said that the business about physical gods is incoherent, he has always been seriously critical of “McConkie Mormonism.” What is interesting is that he does not think that any of those views are really in the Book of Mormon. Rather, he says (I take his word for it, he knows better than I) that it all comes from later writings and other later theological developments (Doctrine and Covenants, King Follett Discourse, etc). Sherlock, for whatever reason, always felt that he could be a believing Mormon in good stead while rejecting all that stuff. I never quite saw it myself.
One of the few motivating philosophical reasons that Sherlock had, over the years, for being Mormon was his commitment to metaphysical pluralism. Sherlock has long been committed to a libertarian conception of freedom. And he think he is right, true libertarian freedom requires absolute autonomy on the part of the subject, and absolute autonomy of the subject requires that the subject not be created and hence dependent on something else (God). So Sherlock was attracted to the metaphysical pluralism of Mormonism. Its view that man is uncreated and somehow “eternal” gave him a metaphysical ground for his view of freedom.
Why did he shift gears on this? I really don’t know. Over the last few years, Sherlock has been returning to Aristotle through his work in the new natural law. Aristotle does not have a libertarian conception of freedom. Aristotle denies that you can always choose otherwise (rather, every act and every choice aim at the good). Aristotle denies that you can knowingly choose the bad, rather he thinks everyone always chooses the apparently good (whether it is actually good being another question). Anyway, perhaps Sherlock’s rather robust commitment to libertarian freedom was weakened some, and that eroded really the only decent philosophical reason he had for being a Mormon. Given his conversion to Catholicism, he has to have abandoned metaphysical pluralism (you have to reject that to be in line with Catholic creeds), so I am guessing he has also stepped back from a libertarian conception of freedom (it is not that you can’t have a more libertarian conception of freedom and be Catholic, but that view of freedom and subjectivity does not fit well at all with Catholic moral and social theology).
I don’t find Sherlock’s conversion much of a surprise. He has never been a very “mormon Mormon”. You sort of get the feeling that Sherlock was the last to know that he was much more Catholic than Mormon. Sherlock taught moral theology at a Catholic university (Fordham) before coming here. He’s always been involved in Catholic thought and “perennial philosophy” like Aristotle and Aquinas. His late wife was raised in Catholic schools (though I think she was of notable lds heritage). Some years ago when we held an LDS-Catholic debate, all the students got on Sherlock for “giving too much up” in the debate with me. This was 4 years ago, and he essentially ceded the entire argument to me (I was presenting a Thomistic position) and made his case on the fact that Mormons “really shouldn’t believe” all of the business about physical gods and humans becoming gods.
To me, the question is this: After years of thinking he could reject the “party line” while still being a member of the party, what made him finally decide or see that if you reject the party line you are not in the party?
It will be interesting to hear his story tonight, and I do hope he sheds some light on that question. I think there are a great number of educated Mormons who set aside or don’t really believe certain claims. Since the question of orthodoxy is so difficult to sort out in Mormonism, it is difficult to sort out which beliefs are essential and which can be discarded while remaining in the fold.
Yes, Professor Kleiner, I believe I do know a different Dr. Sherlock than you do. The man you know has likely been more personal with you than the man I know has been with me; therefore, one could easily make the assumption that the Dr. Sherlock you know is closer to the real Dr. Sherlock than the Dr. Sherlock I know. If you are interested, I have explained below (in brief) the Dr. Sherlock I know and why I came to the conclusions about him that I did.
I have known Dr. Sherlock for every waking year of my life and know him only through loose associations and many childhood memories, memories of riding in the Old Main elevator with him as he spoke to himself (later my father tells me, “His name is Dr. Sherlock and he is not crazy; he is practicing his lectures”) . And parts of me coming to know Dr. Sherlock came from peeking my eyes through the crack a door hinge and a door frame make into a classroom, a place where I hid and listened to more bits and pieces of his lectures. I came to knowledge of the man I know in bits and pieces and through that childlike vision where the question of the existence of God was answered by “Yes,” “No,” or “I don’t know,” and not a question of what religion, sect, or spirituality had the correct “Yes.” The result for me was I found Dr. Sherlock to be a man who very much questioned everything, a man who bucked tradition in the name of practicality, and a man who became a surprise to me when I found out he subscribed to religious belief.
Ah, the power of schemas. Thank you for the resource.
Hayley – Thank you for sharing such a wonderful story about your childhood encounters with Sherlock. Delightful!
Much of what you apprehended about him was dead on. Sherlock does question everything and bucks tradition. And he refuses to let students stand pat with easy answers. In short, Sherlock swims upstream. So you got him right on all of that, so I can see how you might have thought he’d really go rogue (by going atheist).