Thomas Steven Molnar

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Thomas Steven Molnar


Born
in Budapest, Hungary
July 26, 1921

Died
July 20, 2010


Thomas Steven Molnar (Hungarian: Molnár Tamás) was a Catholic philosopher, historian and political theorist.

Molnar completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Brussels in Belgium and received his Ph.D. in philosophy and history from Columbia University in New York City.

He was visiting professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Budapest. As author of over forty books in French and English he published on a variety of subjects including religion, politics, and education. He emigrated to the United States, where he taught for many years at Brooklyn College. Molnar said he was inspired by Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind . Like Kirk, he wrote a good deal for the magazine National Review. In addition, Kirk and
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Utopia, The Perennial Heresy

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Authority and its Enemies

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Twin Powers: Politics and t...

4.25 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 1988 — 5 editions
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The Church and the State

4.25 avg rating — 4 ratings
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Archetypes of Thought

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 1995 — 5 editions
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God and the Knowledge of Re...

3.67 avg rating — 3 ratings3 editions
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moi, symmaque/l'ame et la m...

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Quotes by Thomas Steven Molnar  (?)
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“The religious utopian hides his pride behind the mask of humility; he recognizes God alone; he does not recognize ministers or sacraments since he puts himself in place of both. He ministers his own religious needs and he consecrates his inner self as a place of worship more worthy of receiving God than the churches. He substitutes his own sentiments and emotions for doctrine, because doctrines are man-made speculations unable to comprehend God's essence. He considers the sacramental, ceremonial and generally institutional aspects of religion as rigid and expendable molds which are adequate for the unthinking who need strong sensations and impressions to sustain their faith. He, on the other hand, puts his trust in his own individual inspiration, strengthens his faith through direct and permanent contact with the divine and so rises as a pure spirit to the level of a "truer" religion.

The secular utopian also displays excessive pride. He believes that societies of the past were based on error since they yielded to the political principle of organization and hierarchy. The goal of the utopian is to create a society in its pristine purity, as it were, unsullied by laws and magistrates, functioning through its members' natural good will and cooperativeness. Laws, institutions, symbols, flags, armies, disciplines, patriotic encouragement and the like will all be abolished because, for pure social beings, their inner motivation of social living - togetherness - is quite sufficient and because they would serve to anchor the citizens, bodily and emotionally, in the soil and reality of the State just as pomp and ceremony, rules and institutions anchor the faithful in religion.”
Thomas Molnar, Utopia, The Perennial Heresy

“Teilhard merely seems to set the problem of man, as the utopian sees it, on lofty heights; yet, hi terminology, which mixes archeology, sociology, biology, astronomy, and a vulgarized theology, can, in fact, be translated at every turn into the language of collectivism and of totalitarian polices.”
Thomas Molnar, Utopia, The Perennial Heresy