A Catholic philosophy profile · East and West
Which Catholic thinker
are you?
62 questions 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.
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 question is a real dispute in Catholic philosophy or theology, with a position at each end. Your answers place you on every one; 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 question the app records where the Magisterium's settled teaching sits, how wide the room for legitimate difference is, and which condemned propositions lie beyond it, with the council, encyclical or decree that drew the line, from Trent to the disputes of our own day: the Council, the papacy, marriage, 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 questions 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 questions 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.
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.