Ave Maria! Draft

Ave Maria!

The Council of Ephesus (431) officially bestowed upon the Blessed Virgin Mary the glorious title of theotokos, Mother of God, which was already well used, in an effort to combat the heresy of Nestorius who taught that Christ had two distinct natures that were only loosely united, contrary to the Nicene Creed, written a century earlier. Christians today universally recognize the error of Nestorius, but few recognize the sublime tactic by which it was crushed. Keep in mind that Mary had nothing to do with the debate at hand, and yet the Council’s teaching wonderfully addresses the problem at hand, for in declaring Mary, an ordinary human, to be the Mother of God, it made Christ the product of human generation, no different than you and me, but in making Mary the Mother of God it reasserted His divinity. Because Christ was born from Mary, He was human, but because He was also fully God, Mary was the Mother of God. She is surely not the mother of divinity, that is the nature of the Trinity before the beginning of time, but the true Mother, by means of human generation, of Jesus Christ, true God and true man. The Council could have just as easily reasserted the Nicene Creed’s almost obnoxious list of attributes concerning Christ’s nature: “the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. ”, but enlightened by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit they chose to use Mary as the vehicle of squishing Christ’s two natures into one person.

Through Mary Christianity becomes a human creed, one that embraces every facet of our humanity from our anxieties and fears, to our happiness and joy, for it is through Mary that the incomparably sublime fact of God made man was made reality. The Incarnation was not necessary for God to accomplish man’s salvation “for God with His omnipotent power could have restored human nature in many other ways”, says St. Thomas Aquinas (ST: III, 1, 2), and yet St. Augustine also affirms that, “there was not a more fitting way of healing our misery” (De Trin. Xii, 10). With all of creation subject to his almighty reign, the Father chose to Incarnation not out of necessity, but because of the incomprehensible beauty of this plan of salvation, by which, “the only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in His divinity, assumed our nature, so that He, made man, might make us gods” (Opusc. 57:1-4).

The first words of the glorious salvation given to us were, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women” (Lk 1:28). God Himself saw the Incarnation in the womb of the Blessed Virgin to be the most fitting method of our salvation, and through the mediation of the angel Gabriel He commenced salvation by saluting the Virgin. What the Council of Ephesus realized was that our salvation was not a matter of metaphysics or scriptural interpretation, but a matter of God made man in the person of Christ and imitation God’s plan, the Council reaffirmed that one of the most proper way to honor our Savior and to thank him for the humiliation He endured for our salvation is to honor His Holy Mother. In fact, when we fail to honor the Mother of Jesus, we fail to honor the Father, for we reject His plan of salvation and substitute our own. When we fail to give Mary the pride of place in salvation history God gave her we fail to love the effects of God, and in so doing fail to love God Himself.

In fact, failure to adore the entirety of God’s plan for the salvation of man, Holy Scripture gives us reason to believe, was the reason for the downfall of Lucifer and his followers. The 12th chapter of Revelation has “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars: and being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered”, representing the Blessed Virgin Mary and the twelve Apostles, the means through which Christ would be brought into the world. St. John continues, “and behold a great red dragon... that stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered; that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son,” representing Satan who, with malice directed towards God, rejected the idea that God should humiliate Himself to be born of a woman, and further that the faithful would have to give this woman the honor due to a mother of God. The woman brings forth the child and then, “there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil”. The chapter tells us that rejecting and despising the Incarnation, which by Divine decree exalts the Mother of God, is the great sin of the devil and his followers.

Yet the Christian life is never about fear, as St. John reminds us in his first letter, but about love, and we need not fear damnation from our lack of honoring the Blessed Virgin in the past, but rather fly to her now and give ourselves to her completely, for she is not only the Mother of Christ, but Our Mother. While all of the Apostles are certainly unworthy of the duties Christ entrusts them with, John shines above the rest as the most worthy of the disciples, for not only was he the beloved disciple, but he was also the only disciple to remain with Jesus under the Cross. As a final gift to the disciple who He loved, Jesus gave His own mother, entrusting her to John and John to her with the words “woman, behold your son” and “son, behold your mother” (19: 26-27). Further, let us realize that the Evangelist does not use his name in this passage, but rather refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, assuring us that Jesus gives His mother to all of His disciples whom He loves. To the disciple who remains loyal to Jesus He gives the most precious gift of His Mother and therefore, let us not despise the gifts of Christ, but rather beg him to grant them to us, make a feeble attempt to be found more worthy of them, and embrace them when we receive them!

The most appropriate devotion of often addressing ourselves to Mary as our Mother, imploring her to plead our cause with our Father as all mothers plead their child’s cause with their fathers, reaches its perfection in the recitation of the Most Holy Rosary. In this devotion, given to the faithful by the Virgin herself in the 13th century in an apparition to St. Dominic, one meditates on the mysteries of Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection, while reciting the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be. As with all Marian devotion, the Rosary’s ultimate focus is not on Mary, but rather it uses the Hail Mary as a means for meditating on Christ. This is most appropriate, for Mary knew her Son far better than any of His disciples from whom we get the Holy Scriptures, and her love for Him was far greater than any man’s. And far from being exhaustingly long or repetitious, for one who immerses himself in it, the Rosary truly is the rose garden that its name means, for not only does it inundate one with the sweetness of divine grace and mystery, but it offers the thorn-less and most fragrant rose of love to the Blessed Virgin and her Son.

So pleasing is this devotion to Almighty God that in all modern apparitions the Blessed Virgin has implored the faithful to pray the Rosary every day. In the 1917 apparitions at Fatima, 3 weeks before the October Revolution in Russia, the Blessed Virgin urged the three children present to consecrate Russia to her, lest its evils spread throughout the world and God is truly the only one who knows what great service these three children’s prayer provided for our world today. We see that the Rosary is a most powerful tool against the activities of evil in the world, which the faithful have a duty to make frequent use of for the good of their neighbors. Not only is the Rosary a powerful means for by which the whole world is aided, but through the Rosary the Blessed Virgin promises to lead us in a life of true virtue and good works and to obtain for us from God the grace of final perseverance.

So, like the Council of Ephesus, yes, like the Father Himself, let us Christians cast aside our arguments which so quickly descend into a loveless pedantry and embrace the love of the Virgin Mary. Let us sing her praises loudly, for in so doing we sing the praises of Our Glorious God, and the marvelous salvation which He wrought for us!

Ave Maria!

The Purpose and Nature of Divine Revelation

After a good long period of not having time to formally expound upon the thoughts of my day, at least for the next month or so, I thought I would begin doing so again. Recently I encountered an interesting argument: God is at the top of things, and He created the Bible. Man got their hands on the Bible and set to work trying to understand the thing. This is of course a formidable task, and one that man is incapable of doing wholly correctly, so you get Church A which has 95% of the things write, Church B which has 85% of the things right, etc. Note that Church B is likely to get right some of Church A's incorrect 5%. The logical result seems to be that the rational man's job is to see which Church has 95% right, and hop into that boat.

The fundamental flaw in this line of reasoning stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of divine revelation. The theory does not allow for any solid intent on God's part when He brought about the creation of the Bible, because He let it sit there and have man quarrel over it when He was done. A failure to follow through always indicates a disinterest in the whole process. And the underinvestment the theory supposes is not a small matter, it is crucial to note: these are issues of eternal salvation. Jesus has several “unless” phrases in the Gospels, these are a few:

· For I tell you that unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharasees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 5:20)

· Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 18:3)

· No, I say to you: but unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish (Luke 13:3)

· Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:5)

Now, if I went up to a very young child and told them to “be just”, they would have no idea how to act. In fact, ask an American what “justice” is, and you will get wildly varying answers. The point is, not only is justice not an innate faculty of being human, neither does it infallibly come with age (and even a generous degree of education). Even among Christian denominations, what is just is disagreed upon. The Catholic Church teaches that contraception, abortion and euthanasia are all intrinsically unjust, while many other denominations would hold that one, two, or three of these are just acts. It seems petty to make matters of social teaching matters of salvation, but that is what Christ did in His Divine wisdom, and that is what Christians also must do. What exactly being a “little child” means (is it being obedient to Holy Mother Church?), how we ought to do penance (must we follow the mandated days of abstinence and fasting, at a minimum?) and what being born again of water and the Holy Ghost is (are only baptized souls brought to Heaven?) are matters of eternal importance. These are issues that denominations disagree upon, and they are matters of salvation. If God gave us the Bible and let us figure it out, He is no better than a parent who lets his kid play with hand grenades: a certain number will keep the pin in, and a certain number will not.

If we hold that God actively wants us to be in Heaven with Him, He did not leave the interpretation of the Bible in matters of salvation (which is far reaching) up to chance. Rather, He gave the world Holy Scripture inside of and through the mediation of the Roman Church that God’s involvement in the world might be active and continuous. God does this through the Holy Spirit, which was promised by Jesus to the Apostles at the Last Supper: “But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who procedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me (John 15:26). The Holy Spirit continues to give testimony to Jesus through the Gospel and the continued study of its interpretation.

Further, the Spirit is the “Spirit of truth”. As St John’s First Epistle reminds us, “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness” (1 John 1:5). Here “light” and “darkness” symbolize truth/falsity (as the subsequent verses state explicitly), good/evil, justice/wrong, etc. Thus, in the Spirit of Truth (who is a member of the Trinity), there is no falsity. One of the truly wonderful presuppositions to theology is that “God is light”. Wherever He is, truth is, and a complete truth. The mystery of the Incarnation which we are still celebrating assures us that God did not will to give himself partially to mankind, but He gave Himself fully. Jesus' entire divinity was joined to an entire human nature. Man saw Jesus, the Word Incarnate, in His entirety, though plenty of heresies were propagated to the contrary in the first centuries of Christianity. The marvelous character or our salvation lies in this fact: not only did God promise us truth, but truth in it's entirety. Not only did God promise us truth, but He promised us the Spirit of Truth.

The Spirit is not something that we can commune with infallibly on our own. This is not to deny that the Spirit plays an active role in each individual Christian’s life, but we must also realize that contradictory positions both claim the Spirit as their source. Further, this is not to say that God couldn’t have chosen to save us through this exclusively personal relationship with Him: He can do whatever He wants. But the glorious salvation which our Savior has wrought does not consist in this, and we see this simply by noticing that “the Spirit” is invoked as the source and justification of contradictory opinions. Of course the Spirit cannot contradict itself, so one and only one of the parties (perhaps one among thousands) is right. Knowing that it is a slippery slope to go about interpreting scripture and seeking the Spirit on your own (and we don’t even know when we fall in the mud), we must look to something beyond our self, and truly beyond man. If I, a man, am incapable of interpreting scripture infallibly, where does a bunch of guys dressed in red with one in the center in white derive the authority. It is most certainly not from their humanity.

It is rather from the Spirit itself. God, not willing our salvation to be exclusively personal but rather to have the corporate nature of a community established the Church to be the mediator between Himself and mankind, through the Holy Spirit. When we look to find God in and through the Spirit, we are given the wonderful assurance that the Church is spotless in her teachings. To seek the truth elsewhere yields uncertainty and doubt, which are not the effects of the loving and true God, but of a God who distances Himself from His people. But if "God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son" He surely loves us enough to give us the entirety of truth, which is found in the Spirit through the Church. This for the simple fact that the Spirit has elevated mankind to such a level as to be the means through which He communicates Himself to others for, "Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world" (St. Theresa).

An Essay Prompt

This is the first sentence to the essay prompt I was given for English 250, The Novel:

All the novels we have read consider the opposition between logical, scientific liberalism (industrialization/technology) and religious, emotional conservatism (imagination/mythology).

You cannot write the essay without re-writing the prompt! Just obnoxious...

An Essay

St. Paul the Apostle, upon arriving in Athens as part of his missionary journeys after the Death of Christ remarks, “you Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious”. Paul continues, “For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, 'To an Unknown God.' What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you” (Acts 17: 19-20, NAB). Paul sees himself as able to satisfy a yearning in the Athenians that they are acutely aware of, but do not know how to satisfy. Because they lacked a solution to the insufficiencies of the world, the Greeks accepted living in a world they rejected because what small fleeting happiness the world could provide was their only hope. This paradoxically two-fold morality is seen in their gods, most prominently in the supreme deity of Zeus, who is both the epitome of law and order, yet is notoriously sexually promiscuous. The Greeks did not conceive of a god in whom law and order existed in totality because they could not accept this burden themselves.
That the Greeks had a keen sense of the misery in human existence is irrefutable. While the philosophy of Antisthenes, Diogenes and others may have escaped popular understanding (Socrates did, and he didn’t embrace living like dogs), the plays of Homer and Herodotus provided a clear-cut rejection of the world in popular form. Homer voices his opinion in stunningly eloquent terms through Achilles in the last book of the Iliad, “no [human] action is without chilling grief” (MLS, 504). The defeated Croesus likewise admits, “that the words of Solon had been spoken under god’s inspiration: ‘No one of the living is happy!’” (MLS, 149, lines 20-21) in Herodotus’ History of the Persian Wars. And yet, the Greeks had no way to end their misery but to die, but even in death misery was present. Achilles’, who is visited in the underworld by Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, laments, “I should prefer as a slave to serve another man, even if he had no property and little to live on, than to rule all those dead who have done with life”, (MLS, 141). Life was insufficient, and death was no solution.
The Greeks resorted to awkwardly straddling this philosophical (and emotional) asceticism and worldly indulgence. We see this solution in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle takes a markedly different opinion than Homer and Herodotus on the one hand, in that he claims that happiness is the end of man, thereby positing that it is achievable in the first place. In his search for what happiness consists in, he rigorously debunks the theories of those who believe that happiness can be found in any created good, and yet in the end he concludes, “happiness seems to require this sort of prosperity too [good fortune/luck]” (The Nicomachean Ethics, 1099b, 7-9, trans. Thomson). It would have been irrational to throw away all things, because whatever form of fleeting happiness man had on earth came from the created goods prosperity provides. While the Greeks knew that a good meal wasn’t going to make you happy (the meal is a means to happiness, not happiness itself), they couldn’t deny the benefits of feeling full rather than hungry. To abandon all things, while it may have been philosophically correct, also took away the promise of any form of happiness. This awkward situation is not seen in Christianity, and consequently Western morality, which has no problem with totality, asking men to abandon all things, and importantly promising that then they might receive all things. The Greeks did not have the promise of receiving, so abandoning all things was irrational.
The totality seen in Christian spirituality is likewise seen in the Christian God. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the very first parts of the Summa, at the beginning of his attempt to outline the Divine Essence proves God’s simplicity, that is, that there are no parts in God (see 1a. 3, especially article 7). In its most obvious application this means that God does not have arms or legs, or any sort of physical being, but more subtly, it also means that God’s various attributes, including love, justice, power, knowledge, etc. are all contained in one higher, incomprehensible principle. While men can act out of justice while neglecting love, God cannot. Rather the two are both simultaneously (and not exhaustively) descriptions of God’s action.
The Greeks did not, and could not have this type of god. Totality was irrational, and they certainly could not have irrational gods. Thus, their gods were multifaceted to accommodate the multi-faceted nature that Greek life of necessity took on. As a result, justice and love could exist separately in the Greek deities. Even more, justice and injustice could exist simultaneously. For a god to be wholly and irrevocably just inculcates man in a similar quest, but the Greeks could not accept this totality. They had to choose between death and the awkwardness of a miserable worldly existence, and did not have that third option of life, both now and eternally which Christianity offers. Zeus then, in compliance with the requirements of Greek philosophy, was put in that same awkward straddle. His upholding of law and order had to be colored with sexual escapades to allow Greek law and order to be colored with the same regrettable though necessary conduct.
Zeus’ paradoxical nature results from the paradoxical nature of Greek life, one that understood the miseries of the created world, and yet had not other options at hand. The Greeks knew a complete rejection of the world to be irrational, and so that accepted the world and its miseries, straddling the ascetic and the worldly. Zeus too is enveloped in this multi-faceted existence.

Happiness and Sacrifice

Recently I heard two very different nuns criticize a mentality that masquerades itself as Christian. The first was a habit-less Dominican who wondered quite explicitly where we ever got the idea that “if it hurts it’s good”. The second was Mother Mary Francis, the acclaimed author and, by today’s estimation, “radical” Poor Clare nun. Mother Francis had the same sentiments though, despite her life of seemingly extreme penance. We have two nuns who live out religious life in two totally different ways, one living penitently, and the other not, both saying that something isn’t good just because it hurts. What gives?

We must always come back to the fact that Christianity is Love, because God is Love. And while it seems rather cliché to comment on the sacrificial nature of love, it is the core of the subject. But I’m not talking here about radical sacrifices – they are never remotely sacrificial... The sacrifices necessary for love are simple and small, but cut to the core. They are the sorts of sacrifices you feel in your whole body. Any red blooded human can’t help but know exactly what I’m talking about. They are patiently dealing with the walking ashtray that sits next to you in economics. “Patiently dealing with” is even the wrong term. The sacrifice of love is utterly ignoring the fact; being so overwhelmed in the fact that the ashtray is a person that you can love that the very real possibility of asphyxiation can escape your mind. In a speech I gave at my high school graduation I claimed that my classmates loved each other by borrowing (in reality “giving”) a pencil to the same kids every day. It is much easier to deny ourselves food and rest than to continue to pull the pencil out of our pocket day after day knowing it will never come back.

And yet even more than these penances for the sake out outsiders, we have the greatest opportunity to love those we live with. Mother Francis points out that the loss of sleep, lack of food and other material penances are nothing like the penance involved with living in a small convent with 15 other nuns. Imagine it! I live in a house with three stories with 3 other people, each with a well-fortified barricade of computers, TVs and headphones such that no one need ever bother anyone else. You’d never just happen to be in the same room as somebody else. Then consider these nuns. They have a cell which houses a bed, a crucifix, and maybe a desk – that is the only thing that is their own. When they are not in their cell, they are around other nuns. These are not people they have known and loved since birth, or have any remote excuse to have an enjoyable disposition towards. Their fellow nuns are complete strangers: consider how many strangers you meet that you instinctively like, much less would live the rest of your life with. I would find it difficult to live with my own family in such tight quarters, much less live with 15 strangers. By the world’s standards, convents should implode!

It doesn’t, because of love. Love is what holds the convent together. The inconsequential humming of my sister sends me into a rampage, while these nuns vow the rest of their lives to a convent full of clattering rosary beads. The inattentiveness of the families cleaning is sure to frustrate my mom, and yet these nuns, who could surely do a better job themselves, live in a convent cleaned by other nuns. Not only that, but every other chore involved with running a house (cooking, washing, and sewing) is done by somebody else. And the nuns just live with it! They put up with a dirty floor. They put up with cold potatoes. They put up with every annoyance 15 strangers could throw at them. That is the sacrifice that Christianity demands!
These nuns don’t voluntarily accept the spine-tingling pain of clattering rosary beads simply because it hurts! What stupidity! They do it because it gives all the more life! They can love their sister if they put up with the noise. They can embrace the very nature of Christianity if they put up with it. But if they do not, what come of it? Nothing but teeth-gritting and tongue biting! Christian sacrifice is not about hurting yourself, it is about living all the more. These nuns are faced with a choice: either they put up with the annoyances their sisters pose them, or they put up with the pains of a lack of love. They always choose to put up with the annoyances, because the stakes are so high.

Sacrifice is most truly encapsulated in these mundane aspects of life we are inclined to forget, and it necessarily permeates every aspect of life. Up until now the two nuns, the habit-less Dominican and the “strict” Poor Clare have been in perfect agreement, but on this they disagree. The Poor Clare wakes up at midnight to pray Matins, never (ever) eats meat, and voluntarily undertakes countless other penances, where as the Dominican lives a fairly comfortable life by most standards. Is the Poor Clare’s radical life necessary if in the least profitable? Yes, it is both, but every so subtly.

No future-alcoholic begins drinking immoderately, in truth and in self-opinion. Slowly though the distance between the two becomes greater and greater, until he finds himself moderate, but is wildly immoderate. The only hope for him is misery. Misery breaks down the walls of self-opinion we build up and forces us to realize what we truly are. The alcoholic who becomes miserable is truly lucky! He realizes the drinking will never satisfy him, that the more he drinks the less happy he is, and if he were to give it all up happiness would be his. That deserves repeating: the more he drinks, the less happy he is. O, if only we all had a healthy dose of misery to show us the truth! The more we do anything, the less happy we are. The less we do it, the happier we are. The world and happiness are inversely related.

And the reason is quite simple: the more of this world we have, the less we have of Heaven. It’s not that happiness is fleeting because nothing in this life will make us happy. Rather, happiness is found in God. Simply, exclusively, and wholly in God. The greatest evil the devil has promulgated is that Heaven is a distant reality which is inherited in an instant at the time of death. Nope: Heaven is here! Heaven is now! Well, I cannot say that in complete honesty, but that is a far more comfortable extreme than the one we are inclined to fall into. In truth this world can only be a veiled reflection of Heaven, like the Moon is to the Sun. We can gaze at the Moon, but the Sun is too much for our earthly eyes. Either way, do not fall into the trap of thinking that Heaven is anywhere but here. Every moment of the day is an opportunity to win Heaven, and to experience it. And that is why we must sacrifice the world too. Just as sacrificing the annoyances of others lets us love them, sacrificing insignificant pleasures lets us experience Heaven here and now.

On this, the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, a 14th century mystic, we are reminded of this even more: St. Catherine was given the extraordinary grace of not receiving any food but the Eucharist for 7 years prior to her death. She was allowed to live Heaven in a far fuller sense than most are. We are always that beginning alcoholic who flirts with immoderation, and only with grave self-reflection can he see himself for what he truly is. But St. Catherine was exempt from those troubles for a time. She was allowed to live wholly on Christ, and that is what we all must strive to do. We should long to live without a dinner and without sleep – we eat and sleep only out of obedience to God who made them necessary. Were we given the slightest indication that we were exempt from these human responsibilities, we’d rejoice! We would be able to live wholly for God, no longer delicately observing the needs of this world while longing for the totality of Heaven.

Now, pay attention to the point of this whole conversation. We didn’t endure any of these sacrifices for any reason but a greater joy. Happiness is the goal, not pain! You’d be insane, not Christian, to think that pain is an acceptable end. Happiness is most assuredly the end, but pain is that unavoidable, but incredibly brief middle step which gets us there. And I don’t claim that we can understand this fully. As with all of Christianity, you have to throw your hands up when you confront the paradoxes and put forward for no reason at all.

A Thesis

St. Augustine of Hippo, the early Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church wrote in his City of God that, “some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing”, and reports personal knowledge of “a man who was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished” (City of God, XIV, xxiv). According to the Doctor, it was the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, the Original Sin, which has impaired man’s ability to control his own body, and thus only a select few are so “gifted”. In short, prior to the infamous ancestral sin it was natural for all men to be able to act in this way, and what was natural for all men is no longer an attainable act for many of them. Augustine’s major theological counterpart St. Thomas Aquinas defines evil in a related, though not wholly similar way in his Summa Theologica, repeating the teaching of Augustine a century earlier, known as the doctrine of “privatio boni”. The Angelic doctor say, "For evil is the absence of the good, which is natural and due to a thing. (Summa, II-I, Q.75, art.1)." Some have seen the doctrine as elaborate theological squirming when the seemingly contradictory doctrines of a God who can do all things but cannot sin, a Good God who created an evil world, a human free will and all-knowing God. The problem of the three O’s as it has been dubbed, namely ‘omnipotence’, ‘omnibenevolence’ and ‘omniscience’, has posed problems for theological abstraction for centuries. Yet, a proper understanding of the nature of evil resolves these mystifying paradoxes.

Holy Water

Fr. Z over at What Does The Prayer Really Say? has talked extensively about the fallacy of a holy water drought during Lent. The erroneous practice feigns piety: when you walk into a church you are ripped away from your instincts and pushed into the desert which is Lent. What they forget is that holy water is just that, holy.

St. Theresa humorously recounts a story of the devil appearing to her. She made the sign of the cross in front of it, and it disappeared, but reappeared. She repeated the cross, and he disappeared momentarily again. But then she flung some holy water at him, and he disappeared for good.

Not that we have to worry about demonic apparitions... the point is that blessed objects, whatever they may be, are of a spiritual importance over everyday things. Holy water bears the mark of God. We can hardly give up God's blessings during Lent.

We could hardly give up the Eucharist for Lent. The Church, in Her infinite wisdom, takes away The Blessed Eucharist but 3 days a year. How could man survive without this Source of Life! We stand in complete need of God at all times, utterly unable to go at the world by ourselves. Taking away holy water during Lent takes away that very efficacious way of obtaining God's assistance. To remove it during Lent speaks more of our pride and supposed self-sufficiency than our piety.

Waste of a night

While I was over here a young man came in on the phone:

"I wasn't even drinking... so it was a waste of a night"


--Orate fratres.

An Essay on Morality

My professor recently asked me if I was "trained by Jesuits". I told him that I was not (unfortunately, I now add). At any rate, without further adu, this is my attempt to contort Nietzsche into Christianity. Having read 10 pages of Nietzsche for the class and not much else on my own time I think "contort" is the most proper word...

St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrated in his vast body of work that the pre-Christian philosophy of Aristotle and the philosophical and theological thinking of the Catholic Church can often be seamlessly integrated. However, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche seems to stand in stark contrast to these two beacons of Western thought. Yet, despite many fundamental differences in their philosophies, Nietzsche and Aristotle share a common understanding of virtue which is in harmony with the teachings of the Church.
A cursory study suggests that the three do not even agree on the nature of virtue. For Aristotle, virtue is defined in his Nichomachian Ethics as “a state of deliberate moral purpose consisting in a mean that is relative to ourselves, the mean being determined by reason”. His definition has three fundamental parts. Firstly, Aristotle’s virtue is determined by reason. Nietzsche acknowledges his belief in a reasoned morality by criticizing Christian morality saying, “after all, the first church, as is well known, fought against the ‘intelligent’ in favor of the ‘poor in spirit.’ How could one expect form it an intelligent war against passion”. Secondly, virtue is a relative mean. Nietzsche applies Aristotle’s principle in his critique: neither the destruction of the passions nor indulgence in them is appropriate. Nietzsche promotes moderation, which is the mean of the passions. Thirdly, virtue is described by Aristotle as a state of character. He goes so far as to claim that “none of man’s functions is so permanent as his virtuous activities”, and he reports that it is even believed by some to outlast knowledge. Virtue is in its first stages “deliberate” and “determined by reason”, but becomes habitual and thoughtless. Nietzsche even more fully agrees that virtue is a state of character claiming that the happy human being “must perform certain actions and shrinks instinctively from other actions”. Free will or not the outcome is little different: virtue is an abiding characteristic of man that operates almost thoughtlessly. The two philosophers agree on three major qualities of virtue, namely that it is determined by reason, that it consists in a mean, and that it is a state of character in virtuous men.
The Catholic Church is in agreement also. Jesus seemingly manipulatively proclaims, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments”. Yet, the Church does promulgate laws out of love. God is metaphorically referred to as ‘Father’, and the Church as a mother. Just as parents ask their children to follow their rules simply out of love when all logic fails, God asks his people to do the same. Neither wishes to replace moral inquiry, in fact rules serve as its foundation. Furthermore, the Christian God is the very perfection and essence of reason. His mandates cannot be anything but reasonable, though they may escape the human mind at times. The Church wishes to save Her children from the initial stupidity of the passions which arises from a lack of knowledge, and in so doing preserves their childhood purity. The Church has no desire to suffocate their adult life though, and expects its followers to go beyond the rules, never subverting them, but pursuing them to their essence. Virtuous actions then become true virtue as the individual makes them his own. In reality the Church’s rules serve as a foundation for true virtue.
Nietzsche further criticizes the promises traditional Western morality has made to its followers. He and Aristotle agree that the practice of virtue is fundamental to human life. Nietzsche condemns anti-natural morality as being the enemy of life - natural morality is then the fulfillment of life. He voices this saying, “life itself values through us when we posit values [virtues]”. While Nietzsche cannot say that virtue causes life, instead saying that life causes virtue, the inseparability of the two makes cause and effect secondary. Aristotle arrives at the same conclusion teaching that virtue causes happiness: “happiness is a certain activity of the soul in accordance with virtue”. For both, happiness is the highest good of man, and even the purpose of his life. Furthermore, both men claim that the virtuous man embraces his own humanity, while the vicious man stifles and chokes it. Nietzsche says that he and his followers, “make it a point of honor to be affirmers”, accepting of others. He does not mean that natural morality demands acceptance of non-virtuous actions, because he agrees that morality is a reasonable field, so internal contradiction cannot persist – a man acting one way and a man acting oppositely cannot both be virtuous. Rather, by ‘accepting’ Nietzsche means that virtue accepts who man really is, and not the illusions which vice embraces. Aristotle agrees, teaching that virtue is man’s proper and highest function. Lastly, both thinkers agree that virtue is of intrinsic worth, quite apart from material promises. Nietzsche wrote about morality without stock in Heaven. Rather, the virtuous man is preferable on those terms alone. Aristotle promised happiness as a result of virtue, but virtue is not simply a means to happiness, but the two are inseparable. For example, the student cannot regard learning as an inconsequential step to knowledge, but must pursue it of its own accord if true progress is to be made. Nietzsche and Aristotle agree that virtue is a good in and of itself which is by nature connected to happiness and life.

Jesus promised eternal happiness several times throughout the Gospel. The Church therefore extends the greatest promise man could conceive of in return for, as Nietzsche sees it, submitting to their tyranny. Yet Heaven is in line with the common understanding reached above, as both teach that virtue and happiness are one in the same. The only aspect of the doctrine of Heaven that Nietzsche could consistently disagree with, and he certainly did, is the existence of an eternal afterlife. Heaven for the Church is simply an eternal and perfect enjoyment of the rewards of virtue we get a glimpse of on Earth. Furthermore, the Christian God is Virtue itself, and it is certainly reasonable that the enacting of virtue leads to its source and perfection. It cannot go without saying that heaven being eternal happiness and hell eternal misery is a wildly revolutionary concept that is far more in line with the common understanding of the philosophers treated above than many other heavens. The Christian Heaven is not sought after for its material or sensual pleasures, in fact anybody searching for those pleasures would find a hell in Heaven. This is in stark contrast to heavens where virtue leads not to the happiness Aristotle describes in detail, but a happiness based on material possession. The Christian Heaven is radically philosophical. But do those who inherit heaven merit it? Is it not liable that non-virtuous men will simply act virtuously without allowing it to become their character, in the interests of ‘meriting’ college? In reality that is an attempt to ‘trick’ God, which cannot occur. Instead the Church teaches a God who judges the heart. It is clear that the Church’s Heaven is philosophically in line with Nietzsche and Aristotle’s common understanding.
The weight of Nietzsche’s argumentation relies on the fact that the Church and all of Western philosophy has preached a false morality. To equate his ideas with his adversaries seems to be in direct contradiction to what he actually says, yet, when one analyzes Nietzsche’s critiques of false morality, one realizes that traditional Aristotelian morality does not subscribe to Nietzsche’s doctrine of anti-life morality. Nietzsche says that false morality operates by, “destroying the passions and cravings”, and in turn this destruction of the passions destroys life. Aristotle retorts, “man’s good would seem to lie in the function of man”, and virtue is this function and consists in man embracing himself and his very nature. Aristotle’s virtue stems from a self-reflective man who understands himself, an idea he borrowed from ancient Greeks a hundred years before him who coined the aphorism, “know thyself”. Understanding this aspect of Aristotle’s virtue also puts to rest Nietzsche’s claim that the false morality promulgated by the West is a morality that forces man to change himself. For Aristotle, and those who posit a free will, a vicious man who chooses to act virtuously will certainly have to change his actions, but on a far more significant level he is not changing himself, rather he is becoming more fully who he is. In denying a free will Nietzsche doesn’t allow discussions of such a choice, but even then he can only fault moral promulgators for wasting their breath on those who are irreversibly not inclined to virtue. But perhaps Nietzsche’s most compelling critique of Western morality is that it is based on feelings. This strikes to the very core of morality, denying it the essential nature of rationality which was essential to commencing discussion of virtue to begin with. Yet we see that Aristotle’s virtue is final in nature, and is not subject to the ancient wheel of fortune. Rather, happiness is a quality of the soul which exists apart from the temporal world. Nietzsche’s critiques illustrate true problems with morality, though he reveals a misunderstanding of Western morality, and his critiques are not applicable to it. These critiques of false morality are understood and avoided by Aristotle.
To begin addressing the Church’s morality, one must consider its remarkably high opinion of mankind. First, it claims that Jesus was both truly God and truly man. Logistics aside, to claim that these two natures are compatible is revolutionary. Secondly, the Church teaches that the man himself goes to heaven; it is not his soul, or a perfectly recreated body, but the same body which inhabited earth. If the Church thought that something other than the man himself went to heaven, we would have reason to doubt if virtue was in fact a self-embracing, but everlasting virtue, that is heaven, is inhabited by men – the two are compatible. The Church does not preach a morality which seeks to deny men themselves, or to change his nature but rather it teaches that his nature is fit for God – to neglect or even misrepresent such a nature would be the most unfortunate heresy. And lastly, the Church teaches that God is eternal. It follows that embracing him is not something based on passing trends or feelings, since he is not properly found in those, but outside of them in a timeless eternity. Theology seeks to understand timeless truths with a time-bound intellect, and is therefore subject to errors. But the theological truths which the Church proclaims as true cannot, on account of their veracity, be time-bound, and certainly could not vacillate with the frequency of feelings. The Church’s morality free from Nietzsche’s critiques when one considers its exalted status of man and eternal God.
Nietzsche, Aristotle and The Catholic Church are in agreement concerning virtue, despite the very real differences in their understanding of the Universe. While Nietzsche explicitly attacks the other two, his attacks are improperly applied, despite being valid ideas in and of themselves. In reality neither’s understanding of morality falls victim to the falsities which Nietzsche condemns, in fact each embraces his teachings.

Week End Observations

Don't you hate it when you take the time (10 hours) to delicately show how Aristotle, Nietzsche and The Catholic Church share common ground in their understanding of virtue (you no doubt understand the need for delicacy), and you find yourself having to pinch words to make 2,400 words into 1,600?

Isn't it odd that I had a pulled pork sandwich, chicken wings, rice and beans and potatoes in celebration of black history month? We've gone full circle... And who knew that shredded squid is a sort of beef jerky in China and that soy milk was preferred?