Podcasts for Young Philosophers and IB Theory of Knowledge Students

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_401homosexualitydemands.html

Deacon Doug McManaman

Many of the articles coming out against Fiducia Supplicans are interesting to read, but most of them seem to assume the point the author needs to prove in the first place–the fallacy of begging the question. Moreover, what they all seem to have in common is a complaint of ambiguity. I am going to argue that when dealing with pastoral matters, ambiguity is inevitable. The reason is that the more general the level of discussion, the greater the clarity; but as one moves towards a more concrete or less abstract level of discourse, things become rather murky, because they have become more complicated. 

This is a basic philosophical principle. For example, I can estimate the height of the tree in my neighbor’s front yard: between 1 inch and 300 meters. That estimate enjoys the benefit of absolute certainty. I can estimate the price of the house that’s for sale across the street: I’d say it is between $100 and 10 million. Very broad, very general, but certain. My estimates, however, are also relatively useless; they are useless to a tree cutter (in terms of what tools he’s going to need), and they are useless to a potential buyer of the house. To make the estimates more useful, I have to become more precise. However, there is a trade-off; the greater the precision, the more vulnerable to error my estimates become. So, let me say that the house across the street is $950,000. That’s a more useful estimate, but it is much less certain, for it is more vulnerable to error—the house may just as well be $900,000, or $875,000, etc.

We have a great deal of clarity in the Church when it comes to certain theological and moral questions, but pastoral questions bearing upon individual persons are full of ambiguity, unlike general moral questions like abortion or euthanasia. The Church is clear that sexual activity outside of marriage, that is, sexual activity that is not an expression of marital union, is morally deficient. It’s not terribly difficult to show that. But that really doesn’t help me much when I am dealing with someone struggling with loneliness, sexual passion, self-acceptance, addictive propensities, doubts about faith, etc. It’s not enough to simply say: “Sex between two people of the same sex is a sin! Can’t bless sin!  Have a good day!” 

There is a myriad of factors outside of a free-will that account for a person’s character traits, foibles and idiosyncrasies, factors that mitigate a person’s degree of responsibility and which demand from a counselor a certain course of action, tone of voice, things to say and not say, etc., and a good pastor must be able to intuit this rapidly. It is supernatural charity and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as counsel, as well as the charism of discernment, that enable him to achieve this to some degree. Adults should have far more patience and typically provide more room for error for children than for their fellow adults. Similarly in the spiritual life, but very few adults have reached spiritual adulthood, and a pastor who consistently fails in such discernment and treats a person accordingly gives rise to needless suffering and conflict, like a bad parent would. 

The spiritual life of a person is a movement, a process, and a good pastor is in many ways like a good teacher who is able to determine students’ various learning styles and the level at which they currently operate, in order to begin at that point. The problem with education in former times was that this preliminary determination was for the most part neglected; for it was assumed that everyone learns the same way, so those who fell behind were simply regarded as less intelligent–these latter were left to deal with confusing and painful emotions to which this isolating state of affairs gave rise. All such students really needed were teachers who understood that not everyone learns the same way, at the same pace, nor begins with the necessary conditions for success at the expected time. Teaching is an art, and so too is the work of a genuine pastor, and it requires much more than the knowledge of general principles.

There are priests–and Pope Francis is fully aware of this–who have as much pastoral sense as a monkey wrench and seem to think pastoral counsel is all about issues, doctrine, teachings, sections of the Catechism, etc., and that once we have clear answers to general moral questions, dealing with people is a straightforward and easy matter. But life is full of ambiguity, precisely because it is so complex. Papal critics are demanding certainty and lucidity on a level at which certainty and lucidity are not possible. Fiducia is without a doubt vulnerable to abuse and misinterpretation, because the discussion takes place on a lower level of abstraction, as pastoral questions always do. But there’s no getting away from that. I bless prospective married couples all the time, most of whom are living together. Am I blessing their sin? No. Am I condoning their living together? No. Should I pry into their lives to get details regarding their living arrangements, before giving them a blessing? No. If two men or two women approach me for a blessing, I have to be able to determine what it is they want from me, without prying, without turning them off completely, and I have to make them feel welcome, etc. If I know they are gay, do I assume they are having sex? Perhaps it is more likely than not, but I don’t think I should assume anything; for there are chaste gay couples whose relationships are not principally about sex. And what do I say in my prayer of blessing? I can ask the Lord to grant them the grace to live in a way that is pleasing to God, among other things. Fiducia is clear that this should not take place in a liturgical or formal setting, since that would lend the impression that we see this as akin to marriage, and we do not. So, what should we do when two people of the same sex approach for a blessing? Do we just say no? It seems to me that a good pastoral approach will for the most part consist in blessing both persons, blessing their friendship, their commitment to one another, calling upon God to impart to them the grace to want to do what God wants them to do, and leave it at that.

A Church that operates on a very general level in order to avoid ambiguity becomes relatively useless (like the useless estimates of the tree height or housing prices). If the Church is to become more useful to the faithful in the modern world, ready to deal with new matters that are of importance to people today, she’ll have to take risks and pronounce on such matters, knowing that given the ambiguity that is part and parcel of this level of discussion, her teaching will be subject to abuse and misinterpretation, sort of like the aftermath of Vatican II. We are dealing here with a trade-off. Would it have been better had the Second Vatican Council not happened, keeping things “simple, clear and unambiguous” as things apparently were prior to 1962? Many traditionalists think so, but how can we know what the Church today would look like had that been the case? Perhaps society would be paying as much attention to the Catholic Church as they do now to the Amish. 

There is no doubt that there are legitimate arguments on all sides of this debate, but I always thought there is an advantage to being a Catholic–we don’t have to spend our days studying all the arguments to determine the right course of action, for we have a Magisterium that has a teaching charism and we are called to be loyal to the Holy Father:

This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given in a special way to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra, in such wise, indeed, that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect, and that one sincerely adhere to the decisions made by him, conformably with his manifest mind and intention, which is made known principally either by the character of the documents in question, or by the frequency with which. a certain doctrine is proposed, or by the manner in which the doctrine is formulated. (LG 25)

Many liberal Catholic moralists had no use for this section of the Lumen Gentium; today it seems the tables have turned–it is conservatives who seem to be tossing this out the window when the Pope begins to take us down a road that is new and uncomfortable. I’ve been told that obedience is the hardest counsel of the three, and rightly so. Bishops typically demand obedience and deference from the faithful and their priests, but how can those who have shown anything but loyal submission of mind and heart in recent months evade the charge of hypocrisy? They can dissent, but I can’t? 

I’ve been asked how necessary Fiducia was at this time, that is, just before Christmas (2023). I have no idea, but how necessary is all this fuss about it? I have faithfully taught Catholic sexual ethics for close to 40 years, but I don’t particularly understand the current preoccupation with this issue. I’m not gay, and so I don’t see things from that perspective, but if I were gay and trying to be a faithful Catholic, I might be rejoicing over this document and might take it as a great Christmas gift. Basically, I have to trust that the Holy Father has the charism of office and is moved by the Holy Spirit to address what needs to be addressed in this highly complex world whose complexity escapes the comprehension of any individual as such, including an individual pope–which is precisely why he requires a charism that I simply don’t have. 

(400th article on Lifeissues.net)

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_400praywithoutceasing.html

Deacon Doug McManaman

We’ve heard so much recently about Advent being a preparation for the Second Coming of Christ, and the readings throughout the season certainly reflect that. But how do we prepare for Christ’s Second Coming? What is Advent preparation? The answer to that question is in the Second Reading, in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.”

How does one do that? How do we pray without ceasing? We understand what it means to pray before Mass, or pray before meals, or pray before we go to bed, but how does one pray without ceasing? The great spiritual classic The Way of a Pilgrim, written by an unknown 19th century Russian peasant, tackles that very question. This work focuses on the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”. Those in the Eastern rite say this repeatedly using a prayer rope, which is like a rosary, but it has 100 or 200 knots, some have 300 knots. Obviously, one cannot be constantly saying that prayer, when we are talking to someone, or in a meeting, or working on some project, etc. So how does this work? The purpose behind this constant repetition of that prayer is to create a habit in the soul, a disposition. Let me compare it to someone who has a musical disposition; those who are musically gifted almost always have a song playing in the back of their minds, perhaps a song they’ve heard on the radio, or a song they’re working on, if they are musicians. The song is not at the forefront of their minds, but at the back.

Similarly, to pray without ceasing is to pray in the back of one’s mind, constantly. A proclivity to prayer has been developed as a result of the constant repetition of this prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. But the same thing can occur for those who pray the rosary very often. What happens is that eventually the actual words are no longer necessary because the very meaning that the words express have become a habit imprinted in the subconscious, and so although the mind may be preoccupied with some matter, such as paying a phone bill or shopping or taking an important phone call, the soul is praying in the background, without words, like a candle that is burning constantly. That’s when we have begun to pray without ceasing. We begin with words, but eventually we go beyond words.

There are different kinds of prayer: the prayer of petition, prayer of intercession, prayer of thanksgiving, prayer of praise, and prayer of adoration. The highest kind of prayer that each one of us is called to achieve is the prayer of adoration. In the words of Father Gerald Vann, this is the “prayer of wonder: the still, wordless gaze of Adoration, which is proper to the lover. You are not talking, not busy, not worried or agitated; you’re not asking for anything: you are quiet, you are just being with, and there is love and wonder in your heart.”

This prayer is much more difficult than we might tend to believe. It is about placing oneself in the presence of God, in silence, focusing all our attention on God. This is difficult, because what soon happens is that we are distracted by all kinds of thoughts, and our attention will be pulled this way and that way, without our being aware of it. Once we do become aware of it, however, we just have to refocus our attention on God, dwelling in his presence. But, within a minute, the mind will be drawn away again, distracted by thoughts. This is where short prayers are so important and helpful, like the Jesus prayer, or a short phrase from the psalms, like “God come to my assistance, Lord make haste to help me”, or “Into your hands I commend my spirit”. These short phrases repeated will help us to return to that interior dwelling place within. With constant practice, one eventually is able to dwell in silence, in the presence of God within, for a long time without distraction. This is also a kind of prayer that brings tremendous healing to the subconscious. Many of the thoughts that come to the surface during this time are often unhealed memories that have been stored in the subconscious, and learning to leave them behind brings about profound healing and peace; for much of our day to day lives is driven by these unhealed memories in the unconscious, which is why there is typically a great deal of turmoil in the interior lives of the faithful. 

There are two types of people in this world: those who believe that this life is a preparation for eternal life, and those who believe that this life is all there is and that everything we do is only a preparation for life in this world. I’ve seen a lot of people in the hospital these past few months, people who have lost their mobility, who have had to spend months in a hospital bed, many of whom died after a long period, especially within these past 3 weeks. For those who do not have an interior life, who have not cultivated the habit of prayer throughout their lives, these final years and months are often very painful, very unpleasant, which is why euthanasia is becoming more popular. But those who have a rich interior life, those who have used the time in their lives to prepare for eternal life by learning to pray without ceasing, their final months or years, perhaps in a hospital bed, are not unbearable, and visiting these people is often a joy, because there is a deeper peace within them, and they are thankful. And the wonderful thing about them is that they are not asking to be euthanized. Instead of making their final act an act of rebellion and murder, their death becomes their final prayer, a final offering, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for all they’ve received throughout their lives.

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_398divinegraceforteachers.html

Deacon Doug McManaman

One of the most important concepts in Catholic theology, without which the Catholic faith will make very little sense to our students, is divine grace. Although the religion curriculums I worked with over the years certainly covered many important topics, I did not think they covered the subject of grace adequately, which to a certain degree would keep students from seeing the faith as a coherent and interrelated whole. What follows is a concise treatment of the fundamental idea of divine grace.

This topic begins with the distinction between nature and grace. To understand this more fully, consider that science is the study of the nature of things, i.e., the nature of inorganic substances (inorganic chemistry), or the nature of living things (biology), or the nature of the human person (psychology), etc. Philosophy too is the study of the nature of things, but philosophy pursues the “ultimate” nature of things, for it deals with questions that science cannot answer, questions that cannot be resolved empirically, but through reason alone, such as: “What is time?”, or “What does it mean to be a human being?” or “What does it mean to exist?”, or “What are the properties of being?”, etc. In short, the object of human intelligence is the natures of material things. 

The next point I’d like to stress is that we really only come to understand the nature of a thing through its activity. Hence, the nature of a living thing is essentially different from the nature of a non-living thing in that living things are capable of self-motion (i.e., growth, reproduction, and nutrition), while non-living things (such as a rock) are moved by virtue of an extrinsic cause (i.e., a person throwing the rock). Also, we know that both animals and plants are living, but animals are essentially different from plants in that animals are capable of an activity that plants are not capable of, namely sense perception. A rose bush cannot see or hear anything outside of itself, but a cat is able to see, smell, hear, taste, and touch things. Human beings, on the other hand, have much in common with plants and animals, for human beings grow, reproduce, eat and drink as plants do, and they see and hear things outside of themselves, but human beings are essentially different from animals and plants in so far as they can reason and make free choices–as opposed to being simply governed by instinct, as animals are. Hence, human nature is essentially different from canine nature, which is in turn different from feline nature, etc. There are a number of powers (faculties) that belong to human nature, two of which do not belong to the nature of a cat or dog or any other brute animal, namely intellect and will. 

A power is really a potentiality to a specific activity. We infer the existence of these powers by observing the specific activity. For example, we infer that plants have the power to grow because we observe that plants actually grow (activity). We infer that the human person has the power to imagine, because the person imagines (activity); it is evident that many animals too have this power of imagination. Moreover, each of these powers or faculties has an immediate object. For example, the immediate object of the sense of sight is color, whereas the immediate object of the sense of hearing is sound, etc. The object of the imagination is the image, which is a material singular, such as the concrete image of an apple or triangle, etc., in the imagination. The object of the human intellect, on the other hand, is the universal idea, which exceeds the power of the imagination. For example, the idea of truth, or the concept of goodness, or the idea of “architecture”, or the idea of “biology”, etc., cannot be pictured in the imagination, and yet each of us knows what is meant by “biology”, “architecture”, “goodness” or “truth”. But an idea or concept is not an image in the imagination; for what does the idea of truth look like? What color or shape is the idea of architecture? They don’t have sensible qualities; ideas don’t look like anything, for they are not sensible, rather, they are intelligible.[1]

Our knowledge begins with sensation, and following upon sense perception is sense appetite, for example the desire for the apple we perceive. Our knowledge, however, is not limited to sense perception, nor are our appetites limited to sense appetites-there is also an intellectual appetite (the will). Intellectual knowledge exceeds the limits of sense perception, and so the will (intellectual appetite) is a different power than the sense appetites; for example, although I desire to eat a tasty meal (sense appetite), I can choose to fast for 12 hours or more for the sake of a blood test. In this case, my sense appetite inclines me to eat, but my will can rise above that sense appetite so that I actually will (intend) to fast for health reasons. 

Human nature, however, is limited. We can only know the natures of material things; for our knowledge begins with sensation and observation of a thing’s activity. It is true, however, that we can reason to the existence of a being that we cannot perceive, a being that is not material, namely God.[2] However, we cannot know the nature of God directly and immediately, as we know material things. We can know, through reason, that there exists an absolutely first cause of all that has existence, that such a being is the Necessary Being that cannot not exist, that always existed, and is unchanging and eternal, supremely good, etc., but we cannot directly know the nature of God–for we only know the natures of material substances, and that knowledge, as we said above, begins with sense perception and observation of their activities, and God is not a material substance that can be perceived and observed. Indeed, it is truly exhilarating to reason to the existence of a first existential cause, but the knowledge we are left with is very abstract and indirect. 

The bottom line is that the divine nature is beyond the capacity of the human mind to apprehend; all we can know naturally are material substances. Now, it is true that we have a natural and preconscious knowledge of God, which is the reason why we are forever searching for the causes of things and why we desire perfect happiness, but demonstrating that we have this knowledge is not easy, and this natural but preconscious knowledge of God is just that, natural, not supernatural, and very limited.[3] 

The only way the human person can know God directly and immediately, that is, to know something of God that exceeds his natural limits, is through the power of the divine nature itself. God must grant the human person a share in his divine nature, thereby elevating the human being so that he or she becomes more than human without ceasing to be human. Only then are we able to believe what God has revealed about himself, for what he has revealed about himself will “ring true”, for it will be congruent with something within us. And this is precisely what divine grace is: a sharing in the divine nature. 

Consider the following analogy. You have a dog, which has a canine nature with very specific powers, i.e., five external senses, internal sensation such as instinct, imagination, sense memory, etc., as well as sense appetites, such as desire, aversion, pleasure, sorrow, anger, hope, daring, etc. Imagine you had the power to infuse your human life into your dog, so that the dog becomes more than canine without ceasing to be canine–hence, your dog, participating in your human nature, is both canine and human simultaneously. Your dog would then have certain capacities that it otherwise would not possess, powers that exceed the limits of canine nature, such as the capacity to possess universal ideas, carry on a conversation with you, and choose an intelligible course of action (fast for 24 hours). This of course is pure fiction, but this is what happens with divine grace. God infuses his divine life into the soul, granting it a sharing in the divine nature. The result is “deification”, as the Greek fathers would say. A human being in a state of grace is more than human without ceasing to be human. 

By virtue of that union between human nature and divine grace, the human person has capacities that exceed the limits of human nature. For example, God knows himself naturally, and so with the infusion of divine grace, which is a participation in the divine nature, the human person knows God with the very knowledge of God himself (the divine light), that is, he or she knows God supernaturally. Of course, this supernatural knowledge is not the fullness of the divine light, but is analogous to the light of the sun at dawn–although one cannot see the sun yet, one can see the rays of sunlight on the horizon as the sun slowly begins to rise. The light of those rays is the same as the light of the sun that is still hidden but rising. Similarly, the light that results from the state of grace is the very same light of glory that will enable the human being to see God as he is in himself, in the beatific vision. This light is the theological virtue of faith-the saints, such as St. Catherine of Siena, speak of the light of faith. Faith is a theological virtue, not a natural virtue. What this means is that one cannot give oneself faith; it is a gift. Although a person can cultivate natural virtues such as patience, honesty, or temperance, one cannot cultivate the supernatural virtue of faith. That is a gift, a grace. One must possess a degree of divine light in order to genuinely believe truths that exceed the capacity of human reason to determine, such as: God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons in one divine nature, or that Jesus is the incarnation of God the Son and that he came to save us from eternal death, that his death on the cross reconciles humanity to God, that he rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, that through baptism we enter into his death and rise to the new life of grace, that in consuming the Eucharist, we consume his body, blood, soul and divinity, not symbolically but really and truly, etc. That light of faith exceeds the limits of natural human knowing; the knowledge that faith imparts is dark and obscure, but it is a real sharing in the divine self-knowledge and thus has to be freely given by God. Similarly, grace imparts a certain hopeful confidence in God and his promises, such as “…everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6, 40). This is a real hope that is grounded in that dark but supernatural knowledge that is the light of faith. And finally, God loves what he knows, namely himself, and so a sharing in the divine nature includes a sharing in that supernatural love of God, which is the theological virtue of charity.

Now, activity implies power, for example, if I am thinking, then I have the power to think. A power that belongs to the nature of a thing is a faculty (i.e., intellectual activity in man implies an intellectual faculty, which in turn belongs to the nature of the human person). So too, the supernatural activities of faith in what God has revealed about himself and hope in the promises that God has made in his historical relationship with Israel as well as in the Person of Christ, and the intimate love and friendship of God, imply supernatural faculties rooted in “supernature”. 

Sanctifying Grace and Actual Graces

The more we think about grace, the more we realize how very mysterious it is. For example, we cannot procure grace on our own power; it is given gratuitously, without our having earned it; to earn grace would require that one perform a supernatural act that has supernatural merit, but one must be elevated by grace first in order to perform such an act. However, God does not compel. Grace saves, but we are not saved without our consent, that is, without our cooperation. However, my free cooperation with the movement of God’s grace is itself a grace. Although I cannot do anything to earn grace, I am capable of rejecting the impetus of divine grace. This means that if I make it to heaven, it is by virtue of God’s grace; if I do not make it to heaven, it is as a result of my own choosing, my own refusal to cooperate with the movement of grace. 

Sanctifying grace is the state of grace; it is habitual. A habit is an enduring quality, an enduring disposition. Thus, sanctifying grace is a habitual and interior state of supernature. But to get to this point, however, requires my cooperation, and yet I cannot cooperate without grace, as we said above. And so there must be a grace that precedes sanctifying grace, what the Church refers to as prevenient grace. Section 2001 of the Catholic Catechism puts it this way: 

The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, “since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it” (St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17: PL 44, 901).

Another important point is the distinction between sanctifying grace and actual graces. Actual graces are divine interventions, or momentary helps that precede conversion or are offered throughout the course of one’s spiritual life. These graces are a supernatural impetus that allows us to avoid sin or inspires us in some way; they could be a source of strength, or an illumination of some sort. Prevenient grace is an actual grace that is an impetus towards conversion, but it is not habitual grace. It is possible for the human person to shatter this divine impetus, sort of like a child that refuses to allow himself to be moved in a certain direction and so chooses to sit dead weight on the ground. Another term to become familiar with is sufficient grace. The latter is available to everyone, for it is a general term that refers to actual grace that is offered to everyone to a sufficient degree, that is, sufficient for a person to choose in a way that leads to the state of sanctifying grace.

Further Implications 

Parents and children are always of the same nature. The divine nature, however, is infinitely different from human nature. It follows that human beings are not, by nature, related to God as a child is related to a parent. In other words, although human beings are creatures of God, created in the image of God (the image of mind and heart), they are not naturally “children” of God. Sanctifying grace, however, elevates human nature to participate in the divine nature; thus, sanctifying grace makes us sons and daughters, sharers in the sonship of Christ; for he referred to God as “Abba” (Father), for the Son is of the same nature as the Father (divine nature).

Furthermore, children possess a right of inheritance. Similarly, in a state of grace, there is a right to inheritance; what belongs to God becomes ours. To die in a state of grace is to die saved–we inherit eternal life. In a state of grace, one inherits supernatural gifts, namely, the gifts of the Holy Spirit–one shares to a certain degree in the divine wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. One also receives the gift of counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear. These gifts are a sharing in the sonship of Christ himself: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord” (Is 11, 2).

We also distinguish between mortal and venial sin. Mortal sin kills the grace of God within the soul, while venial sin only weakens the effects of divine grace in the soul. Grace, like fire, illuminates and exudes warmth, but venial sin dims that interior illumination, as a cover placed over a fire diminishes its light and warmth. 

Although we cannot merit divine grace, a person in a state of grace can merit an increase in grace. Hence, the more one prays with faith, hope, and supernatural charity, and the more one engages in works of mercy rooted in that charity, etc., the more one merits an increase in grace. As we can see, however, this is a matter of cooperation with the movement of divine grace, which is itself a grace. In other words, no matter which way we look at it, no credit or glory is ours, but all is his. Section 2008 of the Catechism puts it this way: 

The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit. 

Christ, who is the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, is the source of grace for humanity. He is God the Son who joined a human nature, and in doing so, he has joined himself to every man and woman. This does not mean that everyone is in a state of sanctifying grace; that requires cooperation with sufficient grace, and not everyone cooperates, that is, not everyone allows Christ the king to reign within and have dominion over his or her life, but that is what we pray for in the Our Father: “…who art in heaven, may your name be made holy. May your kingdom come, may your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. In Christ, heaven and earth are joined; hence, the kingdom of God is among us (Lk 17, 21), but we pray for the fullness of the kingdom, when God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15, 28). 

Notes

1. The object of the intellect is also the very act of existence of a thing, which is distinct from a thing’s nature, but unpacking this would take us too far afield at this point. 

2. There are elaborate philosophical proofs, but the shortest and simplest is that offered by G. W. Leibniz: “If the Necessary Being is possible, then the Necessary Being exists”. 

3. The following is my own attempt to account for our natural and pre-conscious knowledge of God: consider that each person experiences his or her own contingency–that I exist, but I need not exist; my existence is not necessary, that is, I need not be here. This experience is one of radical dependency. I am aware that I am not sufficient unto myself, that I depend radically on someone or something; my whole existence depends not on me, but on someone or something ‘other’. I recognize my finitude and limited capacity, and I recognize the finitude of others, including my parents on whom I depend in many ways. Everyone and everything in my experience is limited and dependent. I also know intuitively and pre-consciously that an infinite regress of dependents is unintelligible and cognitively insufficient. In other words, I intuit an “Independent” upon which all contingent things depend. And if I intuit my own finitude, I also intuit in some way, simultaneously, “infinitude”. Moreover, if I experience my own contingency, I intuit “necessity” (non-contingency) as a backdrop, so to speak. I know, at some level, that all contingent things depend on a non-contingent, that is, “the Necessary being” that is without limits, who is absolutely independent. This Necessary being that is independent and first, and absolutely without limits, without beginning and without end, is unknown to me; it is intelligible as a complete and utter darkness, one that is real and knowable nonetheless, as a condition for the possibility of knowing my own finitude and contingency. I only know it, however, as yet unknown. But the entire universe proceeds from that Necessary being, because the universe is the sum of the contingencies (beings, events, activities, changes, etc.) that make it up. There is also a sense in which the universe reflects the Necessary being in some way, is an image of it, a distant image (because everything in the universe is contingent and finite), but the universe as a whole is experienced by me as inconceivably larger than me and without spatial limits, and has secrets that are revealed to me only gradually. 

Some of us experience a certain awe before this mystery. There is an “Other” that is totally unlike me upon whom we all depend. It is large, infinitely so, it is unknown, mysterious, necessary, and eternal. I am naturally inclined to seek relationship with this mystery, just as I naturally seek relationship with other human beings and other things in my environment. In fact, the drive for science may very well be a fundamentally religious quest. 

To continue this from a slightly different angle, I know from within that I have a desire for completion; thus, I experience my incompleteness and finitude. I desire happiness, or fulfillment. Specifically, I desire a happiness that endures, that does not come to an end, one that is complete, and one that is independent or sufficient unto itself, that is, a happiness that is not precarious, not dependent upon unforeseeable and contingent factors. But there is nothing in my direct experience that answers to this desire. Moreover, I cannot desire what I do not know. It follows that at some level at least, I know that there is an “Other” that answers to this desire, otherwise I would not desire it, for I cannot desire what I do not know. In other words, there is a “self-sufficient” (independent), an eternal, and there is a completeness that completes me, which is why I look outside of myself for completeness. Now, when I say I look outside of myself, I do not mean spatially outside. I look to something “other than” myself, but that “Other” is not me but is within me in some way, because I know it at some pre-conscious level, and knowledge is “in me”. It is within me and at the same time other than me.  

(Talk given to the Catholic Teachers Guild Teacher Formation Series, De La Salle College, Toronto, Ontario, Nov. 2023)

Deacon Douglas P. McManaman 

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_397virtueofprudence.html

Prudence is an interesting virtue; it is both an intellectual virtue and a moral virtue. Typically, the intellectual virtues can be possessed without the moral virtues. A person can have philosophical wisdom without being morally virtuous, or the virtue of science, even moral science, without being morally good – knowing the good does not guarantee that you’ll do the good. One cannot have prudence, however, without being morally good. If you are prudent, you are morally good.

Prudence is the mother of virtue, or the form of the moral virtues. The form in classical philosophy is that which determines a thing to be what it is (the form of chair determines the wood to be a chair). Prudence determines the virtues, i.e., temperance, fortitude, justice, etc., to be what they are, namely virtues, that is, habits that make their possessor good. 

What’s interesting about this is that 1) one cannot be good without prudence, and 2) one cannot have prudence without being good. So, there’s an interesting circularity here. It’s an interesting problem. Is this a vicious circle? One needs the moral virtues to be prudent, but one needs prudence to be morally virtuous. How does that work?

Perhaps we can come back to this later. I think I really began to understand prudence after watching a friend of mine who was our vice principal and later, our principal at a school I taught at for many years. It was actually when she became principal that things began to click into place for me. She often encouraged me to take the principal’s course in order to become an administrator (a vice-principal), but I resisted that. The reason is that I love ideas; I love learning new things and bringing them into the classroom to discuss with students. I don’t believe I have a mind for administration. She would argue with me, reminding me that “You have to train your mind for that”, and I’m sure she was right, but I didn’t really want to train my mind for administration, to re-dispose my mind away from contemplation towards a more concrete level, which is what I think it would involve. But what really impressed me about this woman was precisely the kind of mind she had. She had very good foresight. I’d bring up an idea to implement, and she would immediately see the many possible repercussions of that idea. And of course, the word prudence is related to foresight, from the Latin prudentia, which means “a foreseeing, foresight, practical judgment.” The word is a contraction of providentia from which is derived the word ‘providence’ (foresight). Her foresight was a result of a great deal of experience. My mind operated on a more general level, while she operated on a less abstract and more concrete level. 

The virtue of prudence is a very complex virtue, because it includes both levels: the universal and the concrete. It is defined as “the intellectual virtue that rightly directs particular human acts, through rectitude of the appetite, towards a good end.” And of course, here’s that interesting circularity again. You need rectitude of appetite in order to have prudence, but how does one know what constitutes right appetite without prudence? In any case, the bottom line is that one may be brilliant and learned without being morally good–because one does not have a good will, or one has disordered appetites–, but it is not possible to be prudent and not morally good. The prudent man is one who does the good, as opposed to one who merely talks about virtue, perhaps writes eloquently about virtue. I know some who write brilliantly and eloquently about virtue, but I’m not entirely sure I’d say they are virtuous, at least not to the extraordinary level of their writing abilities. Can one be virtuous without humility? Not at all, and humility is a matter of appetite (the moderate love of one’s own excellence). Excessive love of one’s excellence is pride, which is a vice. A proud man is not a prudent man. So it is very important that we not identify being a good moral philosopher or good moral theologian with prudence. He may not be prudent, but only a good moral problem solver, that is, good at solving moral dilemmas, or good at dealing with relatively abstract moral problems, but prudence is a different thing altogether. It is far more complex, and the reason it is far more complex is that it presupposes right appetite, which means a rightly ordered will and rightly ordered sensitive appetites, from which the eleven basic emotions proceed. Hence, emotional well-being or emotional stability is a pre-condition for prudence, and of course having a good will, a just will, is a necessary condition for prudence. 

Prudence is also complex in that it bears upon not merely general actions, but actions in the here and now, that is, the realm of the contingent, the concrete, the variable. This is where things become interesting. Prudence is the ability to apply universal principles to particular situations, and because it deals in both universal matters and particular, concrete, contingent matters, a number of other virtues that make up the integral parts of prudence are required, not just the general science of ethics. 

And so, in order to apply universal principles, one must have an understanding of universal moral principles, the first principles of natural law, the precepts of natural law and the more specific moral principles, like the principle of double effect, for example. And because prudence is an intellectual virtue, one must be able to reason soundly, which implies the ability to think logically. Aquinas includes conjecture as part of prudence. What we are dealing with here is inductive reasoning or plausible reasoning, which is a form of reasoning that was not very developed in the High Middle Ages. Being able to reason with plausible data is going to become a very important part of prudence. I will return to these towards the end.

Let’s turn now to the parts of prudence that bear upon contingencies, concrete circumstances that vary. These are the following:

Memory
Docility
Foresight
Shrewdness
Caution
Circumspection. 

For me, it is these integral parts that make prudence so interesting. Moreover, you can’t acquire these virtues in a classroom. You can’t really teach them like you can mathematics or logic, or universal moral principles. You can teach ethical theory, but you can’t teach foresight, caution, shrewdness, for example. These come with experience.

Memory

Memory is really experience. You have to have something to remember, and so the more experience you have, the more a good memory will be useful to you, especially in practical matters. The object of memory is past experience, and experience is information. The more you’ve traveled, the more information you have. The more diversified your experience, for example, the more varied your experiences in the schools, the more information you have. The more diversified your positions in the schools over the years (teacher, vice-principal, principal, superintendent), the more information you will have at your disposal. 

But this is the problem with being young. Young people typically make imprudent decisions. The reason is that they lack experience. They don’t have the information. Part of the vocation of those who have retired, those who have the gift of years, is to reflect upon their rich experience over the years, experience that young people just don’t have. Those in their 90s, or 80s, even 70s, have a vast reservoir of experience, and because they are retired, they have the time to reflect upon that vast experience, which is why spending time in silence and reflection, especially before the Blessed Sacrament, is so important. Those who are young are acquiring experience every day that is very important, but they don’t have the time to reflect upon it, and what they reflect upon is typically a very limited selection. It’s sort of like reading Scripture. When you read Scripture in your 20s, you pick up certain things, but when you read it in your 30s, or 40s, or 50s, you notice things that you missed when you were 20, because you now read it in a new light, in light of two or three decades more of experience, or more information. That new information allows us to revise certain conclusions we held earlier, the result of having a larger picture, so to speak. It’s very much like an adolescent who can’t stand his parents and thinks they are just not too bright and have no clue about parenting, until years later he becomes a parent and is making the same decisions that he condemned years before in his adolescence. He begins to realize that they are not so dumb after all. Experience, which brings new information, allows us to see things we couldn’t see earlier. 

I’m reminded of my friend Major General JR Bernier. He was the former surgeon general of Canada and NATO. His special area is public health, infectious disease management, etc. During the pandemic, I would try to get him to respond to all sorts of conspiracy claims that friends of mine were making. At one point, he wrote this to me: “When I commanded a hospital, I ascribed conspiratorial motivations to many decisions and policies from Ottawa that I considered incompetent or sinister. When I later had to make those decisions myself or advise Cabinet or other authorities in their decision-making (with the benefit of knowing all the relevant factors and information), they were usually the same decisions that I had previously condemned in my ignorance.”

What I also found interesting – and very relevant for a discussion on prudence – was his refusal to evaluate the decisions made by the Ford government with respect to the pandemic. The reason is that the information that experience provides and that prudence requires is very specific, and not general. He said: “I’ve studied and worked in infectious disease, immunology, vaccinology, epidemiology, public health, etc. most of my life, led infectious outbreak investigations and managements, led Canada’s most complex public health agency, was one of the 16 national governors of health research in Canada, was chair of the health research committee of the world’s largest research network, was the chief medical adviser to the alliance of western nations, led development projects all the way to licensure for vaccines and other infectious disease pharmaceuticals, and am now one of the governors of Ontario’s health system. Despite that (or because of that), I know how many thousands of situation-specific medical, epidemiological, treatment capacity, economic, political, financial, etc. factors that must be considered and balanced in local/regional decision-making, hundreds of which change day to day. Not knowing the status of each of these thousands of factors for each locality, I know that I’m consequently completely unqualified (despite my background) to second-guess the region-specific decisions of those who do know this information. I would, of course, be free to confidently express dogmatic opinions with great certainty if I knew nothing about the subject.”

I’ve seen a similar pattern in education over the years. When a teacher becomes a vice principal, they are suddenly opened up to a vast amount of information, the result of the new position, they are given a new perspective, and that new perspective provides a truckload of new information which they previously did not have of course. Those who are honest and reflective enough regret the arrogance of their youth. 

Docility

Docility is the ability to be taught. It describes a readiness to learn. Docility requires a degree of openness, that is, a degree of humility. And of course, this above all means the ability and willingness to learn from those with more experience, who have been down a certain road before and are more familiar with the territory. 

What’s interesting about experience is that we can only take away from it very limited content. Let me try to explain it this way. Think of the taxonomy of the sciences, the various branches of a science that there are, i.e., branches of chemistry, such as biochemistry, organic chemistry, synthetic organic chemistry, or branches of psychology, such as cognitive psychology, environmental psychology, humanistic psychology, etc. In 1911, there were only two branches of Astronomy, and two branches of Optics. In 1970, however, that grew to 10 specialties of Optics, and 26 specialties of Astronomy. And currently, there are so many more branches of psychology than there were when I began to study: social psychology, forensic psychology, clinical neuropsychology, positive psychology, abnormal psychology, clinical psychology, evolutionary psychology, industrial psychology, and the list goes on.

How does this happen? How is it that the sciences become increasingly complex, with more and more branches and specialties? I think it all begins with the kinds of questions we are inclined to ask. The word question comes from the Latin querrere, which means to quest, or to journey. To pose a question is to position oneself for a journey, an avenue of inquiry. If I decide to go down this avenue rather than that avenue, I will discover things, houses, types of trees perhaps, whatever, that I would not have discovered had I taken a different avenue. What happens in the sciences is that an individual scientist asks a different kind of question, because he’s interested in a different problem to solve, perhaps as a result of the situation he finds himself in. And posing a different question takes one down a different avenue of inquiry, and that opens up a whole new world to discover. And so, we have forensic psychology as well as positive psychology, both rooted in two different problems that two different psychologists wanted to solve: the criminal mind for one of them, the problem of happiness for the other. What we are interested in determines what it is we notice. For an everyday example of this, I think of the times my daughter and I walk through a shopping mall together. At the end of that hour or two, she will have noticed things that I had no clue about. She’ll say that she saw this many people with a Louis Vuitton purse, and that lady is wearing very expensive high-end shoes, and that parishioner we met is rich, because that sweater she is wearing is high-end, etc. I’ve noticed nothing like that – I noticed there’s a new bakery in the Mall. Interest plays a similar role in the sciences. One physicist is interested in solving certain problems, and so asks different questions, which lead to a whole new branch of that science.

That is why docility is so important. Our experience is not universal, but very circumscribed. There’s more data in our experience than we are able to process; we process what is relevant for us, and what is relevant has everything to do with what you are interested in, the problems you want to solve in your life. And so, you have insights that I don’t have, and so I need to learn from you. There’s no doubt in my mind that there is something to Immanuel Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena, that reality as it appears to us is, to some degree at least, determined by something in us. 

Getting back to docility, if I lack it, I will make mistakes, the same mistakes that others have made in the past. I repeated them only because I was ignorant, and I was ignorant because I did not open myself to learning from others. And that too is often rooted in disordered passion – impatience, or perhaps pride, which is excessive love of one’s own excellence.

Foresight

As I mentioned, this was the quality that a friend of mine possessed that helped me to begin to understand prudence. Foresight is not about making predictions, like political talking heads. It’s interesting to study predictions made in the past and how wrong they always are, and yet it does not stop these people from continuing to make predictions with the same level of confidence and certainty. James Fallows, the national correspondent for The Atlantic, wrote: “Donald Trump will not be the 45th president of the United States. Nor the 46th, nor any other number you might name. The chance of his winning the nomination and election is exactly zero.” That’s prediction, not foresight. 

Foresight is certainly a kind of prediction, but it involves thinking about what’s in place now, and anticipating problems, difficulties, quagmires, that are likely to occur. It is practical, not speculative, so it requires experience, and it involves effort and moral concern. And so, the lazy minded tend to lack foresight. I wanted to have a certain comedian come to our school to entertain the students, but my friend got me to consider how many Asian students we have and what the chances are that he will perform that routine in which he speaks in that Asian accent; all we need is one student to feel shame about his own cultural identity. Do we want that? Are we willing to accept that? Although he may be funnier and more popular than the other guy who is available, we can foresee potential problems.

Shrewdness

The shrewd can size up a situation rather quickly. They are able to rapidly determine the best means to achieve their end. A shrewd person is also highly intuitive with respect to the reading of people’s character. Intuition is, I am convinced, a matter of rapid inference, as a result of experience. The Parable of the Dishonest Steward is an illustration of shrewdness (Lk 16): 

A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’

The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.

I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.’

He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’

Then to another he said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’

And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.

Verse 8 of this chapter is also very interesting: “The children of darkness are more shrewd than are the children of light”. My spiritual director would often repeat that verse. I think he meant that we are not strategic, as are the children of darkness, who plan strategically and patiently. We’re kind of reckless in our inactivity and complacency. Although we have the light, the enemies of the Church have the heat. They are prepared to wait and to act, and the result is that they’ve gained tremendous ground over the past 50 years. We haven’t really taught goodness. It’s as if we’ve forgotten that there’s an enemy out there and that we have to make sure that young people and the faithful in general understand goodness. Forgiveness is one thing, but it seems we did not want to pursue the rigorous teaching of goodness, because we were afraid that someone was going to be offended by that. And so we fell asleep, while the enemies of the Church worked diligently and patiently, sowing darnel. 

The situation today is that Catholic teachers are afraid to teach certain things, because they are afraid to offend: “What parent is going to come after me if I say this or that?” How did we get to that point? Our lack of careful assessment of the situation within these past 40 years, not to mention a lack of foresight. 

Now, however, we find ourselves in a very different situation. We have to re-strategize, and a shrewd strategy will look very different than it would have 50 years ago. This is not the 1960s or 70s, so how do we achieve our goal in this situation? How do we teach morality in the schools without getting canceled? Or better yet, without having the students tune us out completely. I have friends who would adopt what I would argue is a reckless and imprudent approach: just go in and hit them over the head with a dogmatic two by four, and let the chips fall where they may. I would argue, instead, that we need to begin with a thorough discussion of divine grace. Never begin with law, the law does not save; begin with divine grace. Students need to see the entire picture, from creation, the fall of man, the covenant with Abraham, to the Incarnation and the divinization or deification that results from grace. What does it mean to be a new creation, to share in the divine nature. Without that background, Catholic morality will only leave a very bad taste in their mouths.  

Circumspection

Circumspection involves being wary and unwilling to take unnecessary risks. It involves a careful consideration of all circumstances and possible consequences, so it includes foresight, as well as caution, which is also an integral part of prudence. 

I remember walking into Costco and seeing a stack of computer printers for $60, on sale. I bought one, thinking what a deal. Until a few months later when it was time to replace the ink cartridges. They are more expensive than the printer. After 2 years, you’ve paid out what it would have cost you to buy a laser printer in the first place, and the ink on a laser printer does not dry out if you don’t use it for a few months. This was a lack of circumspection on my part. I should have asked the right questions: “Why are these printers so cheap?” “Isn’t this too good to be true?” But once again, all this comes with experience.

Conjecture (Inductive reasoning) 

A very important part of prudence is the ability to reason on the basis of plausible data. What we are referring to here is the process of drawing conclusions on the basis of incomplete information. In short, inductive reasoning. The old Aristotelian deductive logic that we were brought up on is fine as far as it goes, but if any of you studied it, you remember that the premises were not that important. 

All men are rational
John is a man
Therefore, John is rational.

No one argues with the premises. The point of this logic was to become familiar with the valid form of the argument. 

All animals are sentient
Fido is an animal
Therefore, Fido is sentient.

In real life, however, the premises that we have to manage are rarely quite as certain and easy to agree on. It is evident to everyone that a dog is an animal, but what about the claim that Tiger Woods is the all-time greatest golfer (many would say Jack Nicholas), or Bobby Orr is the all-time greatest hockey player (some would say Wayne Gretzky). Or Mark Furman planted evidence to convict OJ Simpson – how plausible is that, given his background in the LAPD?. These claims have a degree of plausibility, either minimally plausible, somewhat plausible, moderately plausible, or highly plausible. The information or data that we have to support our claims are incomplete. How then do we draw out the maximally consistent and most plausible conclusion on the basis of plausible and incomplete data? That’s what plausible reasoning is about (See my Introduction to Plausible Reasoning). 

Now, what often happens is that when young people become more familiar with the process of plausible reasoning, they tend to become a bit more cautious in terms of their conclusions. In other words, they are more tentative and less certain, that is, less dogmatic. When we study the history of science, for example, we see plausible reasoning in action. On the basis of the information we have, we draw the most plausible conclusion on the basis of the most consistent set of data we have in our possession at the time, but with more information, that conclusion is typically revised. What can often happen is that a conclusion that was earlier based on a set of data that had much less plausibility is suddenly raised to the level of maximum plausibility, and what was held to be the most plausible conclusion on the basis of the information we had at the time is now relegated to a very low position of plausibility.

We see this when we follow an investigation of a crime, such as a murder. Sometimes all the evidence points to a particular suspect, and we are convinced of his guilt. But as new information comes forth, that person is removed from the pool of suspects, and a new person comes to the fore. 

Years ago, I saw an interview with Prosecutor Sam Millsap Jr., former Bexar County district attorney who charged Ruben Cantu with capital murder, who was eventually executed by lethal injection for a crime he did not commit. Journalist Lisa Olson years later confronted Millsap with the evidence, fully expecting Millsap to defend himself at all costs. But he did not. He readily acknowledged his mistake. He said: “I was always proud of the fact that I was a district attorney when I was 35 years old, but the thing that I realized was that there was value to experience. I didn’t know enough to realize that you shouldn’t place the kind of weight that we placed on the testimony of a single eye-witness.” 

When we become familiar with plausible reasoning, it soon becomes evident how much of our day-to-day reasoning is a matter of reasoning on the basis of plausible data, and the more we become familiar with that, the less dogmatic we become. One of my favorite lines about epistemic overconfidence is from Bertrand Russell: “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt”.  It is very important to teach our students the importance of epistemic humility – and of course we do that by example. The arrogance of youth is almost impossible to uproot; only time and hope will achieve that, but we need to at least remind them that in the end, we really know very little. When I was in my early 50s, I would often tell my students that I have 53 years of experience in being wrong, while you have only 17 years, and in those 17 years, you have not paid too much attention to those times you were wrong; it feels much better to discover you are right than discovering that you were wrong. And the only reason I started paying close attention to my mistaken inferences is that I would use them as examples in my theory of knowledge course. 

There’s so much to do in this area, and so much has been written on this. Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow is a classic. Moreover, becoming familiar with basic induction biases goes a long way, such as the availability heuristic bias, confirmation bias, belief perseverance, base rate neglect, the narrative fallacy, etc. 

Understanding Universal Moral Principles

Universal moral principles can be taught, unlike circumspection, caution, docility, or memory – all we can do is hope that a person eventually acquires the latter. But teaching moral principles is the easy part in all of this; it is easy because it is more general, that is, we are operating on a higher level of abstraction, and on this level, it is much easier to achieve certainty. It is like estimating the height of a tree; the broader the estimate, the more certainty we enjoy. I can say that oak tree outside is between a foot and a mile high; we can all be quite certain that this is the case, but the more precise – and more useful – the estimate, the more vulnerable it is to error: “The tree outside is 38 ft high”. It’s likely wrong, for it could be 37 ft, or 40 ft. Mathematics has greater certainty than does history, for example, because mathematics operates on a high level of abstraction. The more we descend to the level of the contingent, the more uncertainty there is. 

So very general moral principles are easy to agree on and they are easy to teach. And this is why it is very imprudent to get into moral issues at the start of a course. Always begin with the general, always begin with universal principles. It is much easier to come to an agreement on these. But if we begin with moral issues, students will certainly get excited and jump right into the discussion, and that’s fun, but they will lack the principles, and so they will take a position on issues that are relatively unprincipled, and once that happens and they make their views public, they will often just dig in their heels all the more so afterwards when their position is challenged. General principles must be laid down first, and from that foundation we should carefully construct the edifice. For example:

• Good must be done, evil must be avoided
• One ought not to harm anyone.
• One ought not to treat human persons as a means to an end (persons must be loved, not used).
• One ought not to destroy a basic intelligible human good for the sake of other basic human good.
• One ought not to treat anyone with a preference, unless the preference is required by basic human goods.
• In order for an action to be good, each element of the human act (moral object, motive, circumstances) must be good. If one element is evil, the entire act is evil.
• Etc.

Of course, not all precepts are absolute. Consider some very specific precept, such as: One ought to keep one’s promises. This is a precept based on the more general precept of fairness: One ought not to treat others with a preference, unless that preference is required by basic human goods. If I am an unfair person, I treat myself with a preference. My will has primacy. If I am a just person, then I will see that I do not like it when others fail to keep their promises to me, so I will to keep my promises to them, because I refuse to treat myself with a preference. However, sometimes preferences are required by basic human goods, such as human life or health. Should I keep my promise to my friend to come over and watch the baseball game next Friday night? I have come down with the flu. I decide to break my promise, but I do so on the basis of the more fundamental precept of justice: the golden rule: I would not want my friend, who has the flu, to come over and give me the flu. 

Breaking my promise does not constitute a violation of the more general precept that I ought not to act with a preference, unless the preference is required by basic human goods (in this case the human good being my own health and well-being, as well as my friend’s health and wellbeing). Aborting a child, however, or actively euthanizing a patient, does involve the violation of a basic precept. I am willingly destroying a basic human good, for the sake of some other state of affairs. 

Consider the more specific moral principle of double effect. There are situations in which performing a certain action will result in an undesirable side effect. The principle of double effect is a more specific principle that allows us to navigate through these situations in order to determine whether or not the act is permissible. The important point about this principle is that a true double effect scenario allows us to perform a certain action without positively willing evil. 

And so, there are indeed intrinsically evil actions that are never permitted, but sometimes there are situations that change the nature of the action. Willingly destroying a developing fetus cannot be justified, because it involves the violation of a basic precept of natural law: One ought not to willingly destroy a basic intelligible human good for the sake of some other state of affairs or some other human good. But performing a genuinely medical action that results in the death of the fetus may possibly be justified, depending on how the conditions attached to the principle of double effect fare in this regard. One of the conditions is that one may not will or intend the evil effect, only permit it. The surgeon removed the fallopian tube to prevent hemorrhage, but he did not will or intend the death of the embryo, he merely permitted it. And the fourth condition is that the good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the evil effect. 

Active euthanasia is intrinsically evil. One may not adopt a proposal that includes the death of the patient. To do so involves me in willing the death of the patient. Of course, I can reject a seriously burdensome treatment and accept my death, but this is morally different from willing my death, or intending it.

All this can be taught. However, there is a danger in teaching morality from an exclusively natural law point of view that focuses on moral issues and problems. Early on in my teaching career I had spent a great deal of time teaching the fundamentals of natural law, universal moral principles, and applying them to specific moral issues. At the end of a semester, a student asked: “Is there anything we are allowed to do?”

I was very frustrated with that question. I became angry, in part I think because I knew his question revealed a deficiency in my approach. The study of Ethics should be a study in the good life, that is, how to achieve the good life. That’s what Aristotle’s ethics is primarily about. It is really the study of what we ought to be doing, not just avoiding. Knowing what to avoid – what not to do – is very important, however. But we have to know the destination. I’m going to Florida, and I have my directions, and I’m looking forward to getting there. But part of my instructions should include: Do not turn off at this exit, and stay on 75 when you are in this or that area, it is easy to find yourself on the wrong highway heading west, etc. But these negative directions only make sense when you know where you are going. Our destiny is heaven. Our fundamental purpose is to know God, love God, and serve God. Our fundamental obligation is to grow in divine grace, to grow in supernatural charity. We have to discern our vocation and discover the charisms that God has given us for the sake of that vocation. As a teacher, God is calling me to cultivate patience, justice, compassion for my students, and prudence in the life of a teacher is going to be a matter of knowing the best means to fulfill the obligations of a teacher – how to draw the best out of my students, how to speak to them, how to look at them, how to relate to my colleagues and to administration, how to become a better teacher for the sake of my students. So, the moral life is primarily about “what to do” in the context of my vocation as a teacher. 

It is possible to be so focused on moral issues, moral problems, on what not to do – why we should not fornicate, or contracept, or abort, or artificially inseminate – and pay little attention to what we ought to do every day at school and how we ought to relate to others. 

Concluding Thoughts

So, prudence is not a matter of simple calculation. One has to grow in prudence, and one cannot do so alone. Prudence is communal and historical. Some moral decisions are easy, while some are more difficult to determine. This is not to suggest that truth in prudential matters is relative or purely subjective. Knowledge of the moral truth in these cases is a real possibility because truth is real, but it is more often than not difficult to achieve and requires input from others with experience, docility, listening, openness, caution and learning from experience (time), and a profound understanding of moral principles.

But how does one resolve the apparent circular nature of our claims about prudence? My best response is the following. The first choices that we make in our lives are the more general or universal choices (just as the first truths we apprehend are the most universal or general), and it is in the context of these universal choices that we make more particular choices, as a novelist conceives the whole novel very generally, and only later begins to fill in the particular parts, chapters, paragraphs, and sentences, that give expression to the original idea. The writer knows where he is going from the start. In other words, the whole is prior to its parts. Now the more universal the decision, the less motivated it is by sensible goods, and thus the more free and self-determined it is. But particular decisions motivated by strong passion can mitigate personal responsibility. For example, place a Hershey bar and a carrot in front of a young boy with a sweet tooth and ask him to make a choice. It is more likely than not that he will choose the Hershey bar. But the more universal an idea is, the more abstracted it is from matter. So too, the more universal the choice, the more it exceeds the influence of matter.

Now, at some point or within a certain period of time in our lives, we make a very general choice about ourselves. We choose to be a certain kind of person. This choice does not take place in a vacuum, but within an environment containing many different kinds of people. Very early on we choose to be like him, or like her, or not like this person or that person. The actions that we choose constitute that certain way of being. For example, a child might want to be a person who is always kind, who cares for people, seniors for example, tends to their needs, etc. It is on the basis of this more general decision that other alternatives become more appealing, that is, in accordance with the kind of character that I originally chose for myself. Conversely, certain alternatives drop out of consideration because they are inconsistent with the kind of character I have chosen for myself (I do not choose this action, because I don’t want to be that kind of person). It is possible for a person to choose to always look out for himself first, to make himself the very center around which his life will revolve; in other words, my own well-being is more important to me than the well-being and rights of others. In this case, I accept that this is the kind of person I have become, that is, one with a less noble identity than that of a person who has made a more generous choice. There are certain choices that are consistent with that general decision of mine, and there are choices that are inconsistent with it, and these latter tend to lose their appeal, such as doing volunteer work or giving generously to charitable causes, or watching certain kinds of shows or applying for certain courses of study, etc. 

It is not necessarily possible for us to determine exactly when this very general choice was made by a particular person, but some of us remember moments in our own childhood when we became conscious of having made a simple and general decision to be “like this person” or to strive to be “like that person”, or to be “a good person”, or “a more powerful person than all others”. There is no need to attempt to search for the cause of this decision. The choice is self-determined, or self-caused. The power to choose freely is really the power to “make oneself”. And what is made is more intimately yours than anything else that you might own. You are the kind of person that you are because you willed that to be. 

So, a certain kind of appetite, referring to the will or the rational appetite, is established, and thus a person who has a right appetite can grow in prudence, in moral wisdom. He or she has the beginnings of a connatural knowledge of what is right and wrong, as a musically talented child will quickly learn how to play the piano or some other musical instrument. A person who has not established a very general appetite in the right direction will not grow in a knowledge of what is morally good, but instead a knowledge of how best to achieve his ends, which are ultimately ordered to himself. 

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_396dawkinssimplicitycomplexity.html

D. McManaman

Recently I watched part of Piers Morgan’s 2023 discussion with Richard Dawkins on Piers Morgan Uncensored. There wasn’t much that was new in Dawkins’ presentation, but he did introduce an idea that I’d never heard him articulate before. At around the 6 minute mark, Dawkins says: “…it doesn’t help to postulate something very complicated at the outset, because what we’ve got is primeval simplicity, and from that stems everything; and what science does is it starts with simplicity, which is relatively easy to understand, and from that it develops into the whole of the universe and the whole of life. It doesn’t help to start with complexity, and a creator has to be complex.”

This is very interesting, and it is probably the most philosophical claim I’ve ever heard Dawkins make. There is a sense in which he is entirely right about this, but the principle is not inconsistent with the notion of a divine creator, but entirely consistent with it. I believe the reason Dawkins cannot see it is that the conceptual framework in which he operates is fundamentally empirical or empirio-metric. He has a mind for science. The evidence we need to grasp this point is not empirical evidence, but rational data, that is, rational evidence that is gathered as we move the discussion to the level of the philosophy of being, which is the only level on which we can talk rationally and meaningfully about God, unaided by faith, that is. 

Basically, God is entirely, completely, and utterly simple. Every being other than God has a degree of complexity. But understanding this depends on an understanding of the real distinction between essence and existence. A being is a habens esse (that which has an act of existing), and any being whose essence and existence are distinct is a contingent being (a being that may or may not be, that is, need not be). But a being whose essence is its existence, that is, identical to its act of existing, is completely and utterly simple, for such a being is Being Itself. It does not “have” being, but it is its own “act of being”, and there is nothing simpler than “being”.

The things around us have a degree of intelligibility. They can be known to some degree or another. In fact, their intelligibility always seems to exceed what we currently know about them–there’s always more to know about the phenomenon in question. But the scientific endeavor begins with the desire to know “what something is”, that is, the nature of the thing. However, there is an intelligibility that is distinct from the intelligibility of a being’s nature, and that is the intelligibility of its very “existence”. I can know “what” something is, without knowing whether or not it is. Of course, in order to really grasp something of the nature of a thing, it must first exist; but the being before me–whatever it is–has a two-fold intelligibility. I grasp its “whatness” (what it is), at least to some degree, but I also apprehend that “it is”. My apprehension involves two distinct acts of the intellect. The reason is that existence does not belong to the nature of any material thing; for what belongs to the nature of a thing belongs to it necessarily, and so if “existence” belongs to the nature of a being, then that being exists necessarily, not contingently–that being would be “the necessary being”, which is a being that “cannot not be”, and therefore always is. 

After 30 years of teaching, I came to more fully appreciate the simplicity and soundness of Leibniz’ modal argument for the existence of God: “If the Necessary being is possible, then the Necessary being exists” (If MLp, then Lp). Those who attempt to refute the argument always seem to indirectly assert the distinction between essence and existence. It is typically pointed out that because the very idea of something (i.e., the necessary being) is possible, it does not follow that it actually exists. Of course, that is true in the case of contingent beings (one cannot establish the existence of a unicorn, or a flying horse, etc., on the basis of its definition, which expresses or attempts to express what the thing is essentially). However, there is only one case in which one can posit the existence of a being on the basis of the definition or idea, and that is the case of God, who is the Necessary being, who cannot not exist, but who exists necessarily. If such a being is possible (namely, the Necessary being), then such a being exists, and the reason is that such a being is necessary and cannot not exist. 

Not everyone is convinced by the argument, and the reason seems to be traced back to an understanding that “essence and existence” are not the same, that one cannot go from an apprehension of “what” something is to the conclusion “that it is”. 

There’s no need to defend Leibniz’s argument here. The point is that those who take issue with it typically end up distinguishing between “what a thing is” (essence) and “whether or not it is” (esse). Each contingent being is a composite, which is a degree of complexity, namely a composite of potentiality and actuality (essence and existence). An existing contingent being is a potential being that is actual–but it need not exist, that is, it can “not exist”. A human person, such as Abraham Lincoln, is a contingent being, a mosquito is a contingent being, a carbon atom is a contingent being or thing, etc. 

The argument for the existence of God that starts with contingent beings–as opposed to beginning with the very idea of a Necessary being–will begin by pointing out that no contingent being contains within itself the sufficient reason for its own act of existing. A thing cannot give what it does not have, thus an existing nature cannot receive its act of being from its own nature, which is distinct from its being, because contingent beings do not contain existence by nature–otherwise that contingent being would be the Necessary being. Nor can a contingent being receive its own act of existence from another contingent being, because a contingent being can only act within the limits of its nature, and existence is outside the nature of a contingent being–that is why we cannot bring something into being from nothing, only from already existing things. Hence, the cause of the received act of existence of a contingent being is a non-contingent being, that is, the Necessary being. And this is what we mean by God, namely, that Being that is Being Itself, or pure Act of Existence–demonstrating that there is and can only be one Necessary being would take us too far afield at this point.

God, who is pure Act of Existence, is not complex. The reason is that outside of being is non-being, or nothing, therefore whatever is in God is identical to God’s act of existence. Whatever perfections we find within the realm of contingent beings exist in God, but differently. In God, they are identical to “his” act of existence. Hence, knowledge in God is not distinct from his being, but is his being. Thus, God is his knowledge, and his knowledge cannot not be, but is eternal and unchanging. Also, good is a property of being (whatever is, is good insofar as it is), and so God is Goodness Itself–he does not “have” goodness as one property among other properties. So too, beauty is a property of being, and so God is Beauty Itself, and truth is a property of being (a being is true insofar as it is), and thus God is Truth Itself. 

And so Richard Dawkins is correct: “…it doesn’t help to postulate something very complicated at the outset, because what we’ve got is primeval simplicity, and from that stems everything”. God is that simplicity, and nothing in the universe can be that simple without being God. What Dawkins overlooks here is that science begins with a different kind of simplicity, a very impoverished kind of simplicity–for example, the electron is simpler than the atom, the atom is simpler than the molecule, the molecule is simpler than the organism, etc. The simpler something is from this angle, the poorer it is–a human being is richer in intelligibility than a molecule, and a molecule is richer in intelligibility than is an electron, etc., just as an automobile is richer in intelligibility than a gasket. The simplicity of God is not the simplicity of a material substance or its smallest part; it is the simplicity of Being Itself. Such a simplicity is inexhaustibly rich in intelligibility–not complexity–, and the variety and diversity and complexity of contingent beings that make up the universe is a parable that speaks of the inexhaustible beauty, goodness, and intelligibility of God, who is absolutely simple, because he is pure Being Itself. 

But,” said Moses to God, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?”

God replied to Moses: I am who I am. Then he added: This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.

(Exodus 3, 13-14)

Homily for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Deacon Doug McManaman

“The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.”

This is an interesting passage from today’s gospel reading; what it shows is that Jesus makes a distinction between what the scribes and Pharisees teach, and the example they set before us. Embrace and observe what they tell you, but do not follow their example. The reason is that they are hypocrites, they are egoists. Their religious leadership is all about them and how they appear. 

The reason this reading is so relevant can be summed up in that old expression: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Hypocrisy has not died out; it’s still here in the Church, there are still clerics who are opportunists, who think priesthood is about them, who are envious and love to be the center of attention, and so on and so forth. Jesus established a Church on the twelve apostles, choosing Peter as the head of the Apostles, and yet he knew they would scatter and that Peter would deny knowing him. But he chose them anyway.

That’s the humility of Christ. He continues to be present among us, to forgive our sins and to give himself to us in the flesh, through the unworthy hands of sinful human beings. There’s no getting around that. Catholicism is not about us; it is about Christ.

Christ’s directive here can be very difficult to live out: do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. Even among the clerical ranks, there are some who are somewhat pharisaical. So if you encounter a priest or bishop who is annoying, immature, perhaps thinks it is all about him, when you are stuck with a cleric who has as much compassion and diplomacy as a steak knife, the temptation can be to walk out, turn your back on the Church and never look back. Some people have done so. But it is at this point where we have to keep our eyes on Christ, not his instruments. 

The fact is we are all hypocrites. None of us really practice what we preach, at least not perfectly. I don’t know about you, but whenever I look back at my own life, when I see old pictures or videos of myself and am reminded of things I did or said that are now forgotten, I often don’t like what I see. I often say to myself: “Gosh, I can’t believe I said that back then, or I can’t believe I did that. What an idiot I was”. And although we may not see anything wrong with us now, 20 years from now we may look back at this time and shake our heads at what we can’t see now, but will see later. And yet Christ still works through us. He still gives us a sharing in his divine nature, even though we are very imperfect and unworthy vessels. We still have charisms that he has given to us for the building up of the Body of Christ, and yet we remain defective vessels. 

So when a person turns his back in anger at the Church for some clerical imperfection–and I am excluding criminal behavior here, that’s a different matter altogether –, when it is merely a matter of annoyance or something he said or his personality, or something more serious such as genuine egoism or condescending moralizing, one is cutting oneself off from the sacraments, which are channels of divine grace. It’s what the expression “cutting off your nose to spite your face” means in this context. 

This life is about learning to forgive one another, and all those who refuse to forgive, who choose to harbor unforgiveness against the Church as a whole or against another person, really end up condemning themselves. In the Our Father, we pray: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. We are instructing God to forgive us only to the degree that we forgive others. If we don’t forgive, we block God’s forgiveness of our sins. And so we need to pray that God will give us the strength to get past whatever wounds we carry, and this could take a long time for some of us to get to that point, but if we hope for the Lord’s forgiveness, we have to be willing to forgive all those in our lives who need to be forgiven. 

Deacon Doug McManaman

When I was teaching, I would often tell my students that there are two subjects that should be mandatory for all high school students in the province of Ontario, and both begin with the letter “E”: ethics, and economics, neither of which are mandatory in the public schools. Economic illiteracy has rather serious repercussions, not to mention ignorance of the fundamentals of ethics. 

One thing that economists will often point out is that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. Well, I love economics, but the gospel reading (the Parable of the Wedding Banquet) suggests that there is one important exception to that principle, namely the kingdom of God, the fundamental content of Christ’s proclamation, the subject matter of almost all the parables. It is more than a free lunch; it is a free and eternal banquet. All are invited to this eternal banquet, without exception, but mysteriously, not everyone accepts the invitation. 

Now there’s a very subtle but important point to this parable, and it is something that many religious people can often forget. The point is this: There is nothing that anyone has done to earn an invitation to this banquet. It is pure gift; pure grace. This is an eternal banquet, a banquet not of this world, but of the “other world” (aionios), and the joy of that feast is beyond our ability to conceive. And it is a banquet that will last forever, but it begins in this world. We begin the feast here, and the joy of that feast is also to begin in this world. It is sheer gift. 

But we have a hard time accepting that which is given gratuitously, without our having earned it in some way. A neighbor of mine is an electrician, and I asked him if he has time to look at an electrical outlet for me. After a long day, he came over, looked at the problem, got it working again, but it took some work. He even put in new parts. I asked him how much I owe him, but he wouldn’t accept any payment. I insisted. He just wouldn’t do it. I found that difficult, and I thought about that difficulty of accepting what is offered as a pure gift. There seems to be a need to earn it in some way, a need to pay for it, to balance the scales. This can be transferred to the sphere of religion. When this happens, what we end up doing is very subtly we make our religion a matter of law. We reduce it to a morality, a set of precepts and rules to follow, that is, we reduce our religion to a conditional: “If, then”: “If you do this, then reward will follow”, “If you do not do this, that, and the other thing, then you won’t get this…etc.”. We develop a legalistic mindset. 

St. Paul battled this mindset in his letters, especially Romans. We are not saved by the law, but by grace. We are saved by the grace of faith. Our invitation to the eternal wedding banquet was not conditional: “…invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet. …they gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests”. All we have to do is believe that this gift is ours, offered to us, and is ours for the taking. Just accept this gift.

Law and morality come after, and they do so out of gratitude for this sheer gift. A good illustration of this is the story of Zacchaeus, who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus passing by. He was a hated tax collector, which means he was considered a traitor. What happens? Jesus approaches him, calls him by name, and says: Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house. He came down quickly and received him with joy. That’s it. What took place afterwards? Zacchaeus said: “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.”

Jesus didn’t tell him to do that. That certainly was not a condition for Jesus staying at his house. That was the result of Jesus approaching him, calling him by name, and actually intruding on him so to speak. “Today I must stay at your house”. Why? Sheer gift. Zacchaeus received that gift with great joy, and what followed was a moral transformation. Sort of like heliotropic plants, such as the sunflower, that move in the direction of the sun. The sunflower was not told from outside to move in that direction, rather, the sun shines on it first, and in response it moves. People were scandalized when they witnessed this—”he’s staying at the house of a tax collector”, they said. 

Devoutly religious people have a tendency to put morality first as a condition. Perhaps in this way we feel that we have earned our salvation in some way, that the Lord has entered into my life because of something that I have done, some good that the Lord sees in me. Far from it; there is nothing we can do to merit the kingdom of God, nothing we can do to earn an invitation to the wedding banquet. It is pure grace. And that eternal wedding banquet begins now, in this life. The invitation is, here and now, offered to each person, good and bad. All we have to do is receive it, accept it, say yes to it, and the joy of that banquet will begin today. 

The first letter of John, 4, 10, says the following: “This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might have life through Him. And love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And St. Paul says the same thing in his letter to the Romans: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

It’s not about us. We don’t have to earn it, nor pay for it; Christ paid the debt already, a debt we were unable to pay, and his blood was the means of exchange. All we have to do is believe him and allow ourselves to be loved by God, and then our life will change, but it will be a joyful change. A good number of Catholics see the Church’s moral teachings as a burden, and they resent the imposition of that burden. And yet, when law is placed first, it is indeed a burden, too heavy to carry; for we are inclined to sin, and we cannot rise above that inclination without his grace. But he said: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy, my burden light”. The yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two oxen. Christ invites us to be attached to him by his yoke. Plowing is much easier when there are two oxen pulling instead of one. Yoked to Christ, living morally virtuous lives is no longer burdensome, but a joy, even if it is a struggle. I remember after my return to the Church when I was 17 years old, one thing I could no longer do was to take the Lord’s name in vain. Swearing in the true sense of the word–not foul language, but taking God’s name in vain in situations of anger. That, I noticed, was the first change that took place in my life. Other things took a bit more work to reform, but I was determined to correct them in my life, out of gratitude to God for intervening in my life. 

Grace must always be first, and then the moral life follows afterwards. And that’s why the gospel must never be reduced to a morality, not even a social justice morality. The good news of the gospel is that Christ died and rose from the dead, he died for you and for me, and eternal life is yours and mine for the taking, no need to earn it, we can’t. All we have to do is believe it. Faith, and then the joy of new life in Christ will change us in this world, as it did Zacchaeus. And then we will see that nothing in this world compares to being in a state of divine grace. Everything in this world comes to an end, fizzles out, our money, our property, our business, our health, it’s all temporary. But the life of divine grace, symbolized by the wedding garment, is a sharing in the divine nature, and that divine nature does not come to an end, and as long as we are clothed in it, it will blossom into unimaginable joy in eternity.