A Catholic philosophy profile · East and West
Which Catholic thinker
are you?
62 disputes in 7 branches, from the knowability of God to the Filioque. Answer, and see which saints, Doctors, philosophers and rulers think as you do, where your views sit within the settled teaching of the Church, which named errors lie nearest to you, and what to read next, on your own or with a book-study group.
An axis, at a glance
Who can be saved?
Green is the range of settled Catholic teaching, the gold line its center. Red hatching marks the condemned errors at either end: here, Feeneyism on one side and indifferentism on the other. The plain track between goes further than the Church does, but is not condemned. Your marker lands where your answers put you.
Example only. Your answers place the marker.
How it works
Each of the 62 disputes is a real disagreement in Catholic philosophy or theology, with a position at each end. The questions you answer place you on the disputes they touch, and the longer the test the more of them it reaches; your profile is then compared with the documented views of each thinker, drawn from their own works and the standard histories. Each next question is chosen from your answers so far: the one the thinkers still in the running most disagree on.
Measured against the Church
For every dispute the site records where the Magisterium's settled teaching sits, how much room it leaves for legitimate difference, and which condemned propositions lie beyond it, with the council, encyclical or decree that drew the line. That runs from Trent to the disputes of our own day, such as the Council, the papacy, the two forms of the Roman Rite, marriage and Holy Orders, with the errors on both sides named.
Two lungs
Byzantine, Syriac, Armenian and other Eastern Catholic traditions are the Church's own patrimony. The disputes include the essence–energies distinction, hesychasm, icons, the Filioque and synodality, and the thinkers include the Fathers and saints of the East.
If you are not Catholic
Seven of the disputes are the ones over which the Reformation broke apart. Your results say which of them you already hold with the Church and which still stand between you and full communion, with reading for each, written for someone on the way in.
Read together
A book-study group that knows its members
Start a group for your parish, your friends or your family, say what kind of reading you want, and list the books you have already read. Invite the others by email or by link. Each next book is suggested from what the group asked for, the books it liked and the ones it did not, and where its members stand, with the reasons given for every suggestion.
After each book, every member can leave private thoughts on it. They shape the next suggestion together with everyone else's, but no one in the group ever sees another's results, journal or notes.
Start or join a groupWhat a group can ask for
- Casual, approachable reads
- Spiritual reading
- Deep theology
- Philosophy
- Faith in everyday life
- Lives of saints, novels and history
- Church documents
Your results also name a saint for you: the holy man or woman, of your own sex if you say it, whose mind is nearest yours.
A word of caution
This is a way to examine your own mind and to find good reading, not a tribunal. A high match means your answers are close to a thinker's documented views, not that you share all of them; a "caution" means you affirmed a proposition the Church has rejected, which is a reason to read the source, not a verdict on your soul. Nothing is flagged from the strength of an answer alone. The thinkers take no part in this site and do not endorse it.