The “belief in” — which I’d prefer to state as “the understanding of” — the supernatural [hence
supernatural realness] involves a whole, interconnected set of notions that, in my present view, opens one to, avails one, of an entire range of mental, intellectual, spiritual and lived possibilities that in my view cannot be understood except in terms of
realness.
The purpose of referring to
realness is to defend this view or understanding from the assertion of
unrealness. Which is the chief assertion, the foundation it seems to me, of
a-theism. The heaviest arguments are brought out through this assertion of
irreality.
In my view, the following articulation can be looked at as a
conceptual map that allows an
opening to a different sort of order that is, well, distinct and different from the mundane natural order. To say that the world that is opened to is “unreal” (or
invented) simply cannot be a true term. It has
realness —and this is unquestionable — though its reality is
intangible.
Briefly, the history [of the supernatural order] is this:
From the beginning, man was raised, far above the claims of his nature, to a life which made him, even here below, the adopted child of God, and to a destiny which entitled him to the beatific vision and love of God in heaven. To these strictly supernatural gifts by which man was truly made partaker of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) were added preternatural endowments, that is immunity from ignorance, passion, suffering and death, which left him "little lower than the angels" (Psalm 8:6; Hebrews 2:7).
Through their own fault, our first parents forfeited for themselves and their race both the God-like life and destiny and the angel-like endowments. In His mercy God promised a Redeemer who, heralded by ages of prophecy, came in the fulness of time in the person of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. By His Incarnation, labours, passion, and death, Jesus Christ restored mankind to its former Divine sonship and heavenly inheritance, if not to its quasi-angelic prerogatives, the virtue of Redemption being applied to us through the joint ministrations of the inner Spirit, and of the visible Church, in the form of actual helps, habitual sanctity, and the power of meriting Heaven.
An analysis of the supernatural order, barely inaugurated by the Fathers, but brought to a point of great perfection by the Schoolmen and post-Tridentine theologians, discloses the various elements that make up order, that is an end, means, and laws. The end is man's destination to see God face to face and to love Him correspondingly. If, as will be shown, the intuitive vision of God is our true destiny and moreover transcends our highest natural powers, then we must be given means capable of attaining that end, that is supernatural.
Those means can be no other than our own actions, but invested with a higher power that makes them meritorious of Heaven. Grace, both actual and habitual, is the source of that meriting power: while habitual grace, with its train of infused virtues or faculties raises our mode of being and operating to a sphere which is God's own, actual grace spurs us on to justification and, once we stand justified, sets in motion our supernatural powers causing them to yield good and meritorious works.
In the supernatural order, as in all others, there are also specific laws. The work of man's sanctification depends in a manner on the general laws of the universe and most certainly upon the carrying out of all the moral precepts written in our hearts. Besides these laws which Christ came not to abolish, there are positive or freely established enactments ranging all the way from the Divinely appointed conditions of salvation to the revealed obligations and even the rules governing our growth in holiness. Glory and grace, being the central features of the supernatural order, special reference will be made to them both in the exposition of errors and the establishment of the Catholic doctrine.
Then either they did not join the other major news outlets in their common mendacity, or you cannot be convinced, perhaps.
