Podcasts for Young Philosophers and IB Theory of Knowledge Students

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Also published at Where Peter is: https://wherepeteris.com/the-myth-of-the-ontological-superiority-of-the-priest/

The priest is not an angel sent from heaven. He is a man, a member of the Church, a Christian. Remaining man and Christian, he begins to speak to you the word of God. This word is not his own. No, he comes to you because God has told him to proclaim God’s word. Perhaps he has not entirely understood it himself. Perhaps he adulterates it. Perhaps he falters and stammers. How else could he speak God’s Word, ordinary man that he is? But must not some one of us say something about God, about eternal life, about the majesty of grace in our sanctified being; must not some one of us speak of sin, the judgement and mercy of God?  
Karl Rahner

Anyone familiar with Pope Francis is aware that a recurring theme of his papacy is his challenge of clericalism in its varied forms—I.e., seminarians purchasing cassocks, lace, and birettas, even well before the day of ordination, the pastor as “little monster”, the dictatorial and know-it-all posture, treating the parish as his own little kingdom, the sanctuary as stage, little sense of the priestly and consecrated role of the laity, the elite clerical boys club, etc. I often wonder whether the necessary conditions are there for some clergy in particular to understand just what it is he is talking about. Some do, but there are more than a few who have no clue. 

It would be interesting indeed to study the rise of this particular phenomenon in the Latin West, to attempt to account for the factors that gave rise to it and that make it such a difficult disease to eradicate. But one idea that I do believe might very well be a factor in the institutionalization of clericalism is the notion that the priest is ontologically superior to the faithful. 

I am going to argue that the notion of priest as ontologically superior to the rest of the faithful is a myth. The word “ontological” refers to that branch of philosophy that studies being not insofar as it is physical, or psychological, or logical, etc., but being insofar as it exists. The principles of this science are essence and existence. An animal, such as a dog or a horse, is ontologically superior to a rosebush or a watermelon. The reason is that animals have superior faculties that plants lack. A human being is ontologically superior to a brute animal; for the human person is capable of an activity that transcends sense perception, namely intellectual activity. Moreover, an angel is ontologically superior to a human being, and of course God is ontologically perfect (His nature is to exist). 

Now, the argument for the ontological superiority of the priest is grounded in the principle that agere sequitur esse, that is, action follows upon being. Activity is the realization of a potentiality or power, and we only come to understand the nature of a thing through its activity, for a being acts according to its nature: plants grow and reproduce; animals enjoy the specific powers of external and internal sensation which plants lack; human beings possess all of these but they are able to think and choose freely. At ordination, a person is given the power to transubstantiate, that is, to change ordinary bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood, an act that is outside the natural capacity of a human being as such. Hence, it is argued that the priest is ontologically different from–and superior to, since it is a superior action–those who are not priests.

But this is not quite right. For it is Christ who transubstantiates, for the priest is acting in persona Christi, and for the same reason it is Christ who forgives sins, just as it is Christ, not the charismatic healer, who heals: “Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed.” He got up at once (Acts 9, 34; cf. Ps 44, 4-9). The priest remains ontologically a human being, of the same nature as every other human being. He is ordained to a specific end, marked for that end, but he is not ontologically different, much less superior. Acting in persona Christi does not render him ontologically superior to the faithful; for he depends entirely on Christ’s action. But an ontologically superior creature does not depend on any being in order to exercise his essentially superior faculty, like sense perception, imagination, or intelligence as in the case of man. As St. Thomas points out: “…the nature of an instrument as such is to be moved by another, but not to move itself” (ST, III, q. 63, a. 5, ad 2.). The priest depends on Christ as an instrument depends on the agent in order to carry out what it was recruited to carry out. In section 1551 of the Catechism, we read: 

This priesthood is ministerial. “That office . . . which the Lord committed to the pastors of his people, is in the strict sense of the term a service.” It is entirely related to Christ and to men. It depends entirely on Christ and on his unique priesthood; it has been instituted for the good of men and the communion of the Church. The sacrament of Holy Orders communicates a “sacred power” which is none other than that of Christ.

The language around the discussion of priesthood is instrumental and functional, and higher or lower function does not necessarily amount to ontological difference. In other words, although ontological difference implies an essentially different function, it does not follow that an essentially different function implies ontological difference (all a is b, but it does not follow that all b is a). For example, a human being can carry a heavy load and walk a number of miles down a long and winding road that requires familiarity with the terrain and an ability to reason by inference. However, he can also recruit a donkey to carry that same load for him and walk the same number of miles in the same direction, under the necessary guidance of his intelligence. The donkey does not thereby become ontologically superior to his fellow donkeys–he’s still a jackass. One could say that its actions are ennobled, for they require a faculty the animal lacks, namely the ability to inference, but properly speaking, its acts on the whole are the acts of the human being that owns, recruits, governs, and employs the donkey as an instrument. 

The charismatic healer does not know whether or how a miraculous healing has taken place, nor is she aware that she is the agent of such healing–because she isn’t the agent, but the instrument through whom Christ, the agent, heals. She simply believes that her prayer is being heard, but she cannot account for the healing. Similarly, the priest cannot in any way account for what we believe is happening on the altar (the changing of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood). He is not even aware that it has happened, because he is not the agent of the change; rather, he believes, like everyone else, that what he is distributing is in fact Christ’s body and blood. The artist knows precisely how to paint or sculpt; and she is aware of what is happening through her hands, for the work is unfolding through her own agency. But transubstantiation does not occur through the agency of the priest as such, but through the agency of Christ, just as my sins are forgiven not through the agency of the priest as such, but through Christ, whose visible instrument the priest is. The priest is no greater, ontologically speaking, than any other human being. That his unworthy hands are used by Christ is a sign of Christ’s humility, not the cleric’s supposed ontological superiority. 

It is Christ who is ontologically superior, because Christ is both human and divine, in one hypostasis, that is, one Person, the Person of God the Son. Jesus is not a human person, although he has a human nature; he is not two persons, but One, the Person of the Son. The ministerial priest is an instrument, Christ’s instrument, who in very specific situations acts not in his own person, but in the person of Christ (in persona Christi). Christ is both priest and victim in the Mass; not the ministerial priest. In other words, it is Christ who offers himself (Priest), and it is Christ who is offered (Victim). What takes place in the Mass is happening by virtue of the agency of Christ and through the instrumentality of the ministerial priest (CCC sec. 1548). 

The sacramental character conferred in Baptism and Confirmation does not “ontologically” change the baptized or the confirmand, rendering him or her ontologically superior to the unbaptized. The baptized are indeed changed, elevated, made children of God, because parent and child have the same nature, and a baptized child is filled with divine grace, which is a sharing in the divine nature. But, as Father Pieter Fransen writes: “grace sets our deepest humanity free, precisely because it restores our most authentic humanity to us and by this means humanizes us to an eminent degree” (Divine Grace and Man, 173). Later scholasticism began to give the sacramental character an ontological status, but no counsel has ever affirmed that theology. He writes:  

There is no common doctrine of the character in theology. The most restrictive definition makes it simply the impossibility of re-ordination, while the tendency to enhance it has produced a sort of complex metaphysical superstructure, due, as we think, to a very jejune theology of grace….The tendency in question has promoted a mythic theology of the priesthood which places it on a higher level of being than the rest of the faithful, a metaphysical clericalism which is responsible for barring the way to many reforms at the present time….The character is a “signum quoddam spiritale et indelebile; unde ea iterari non possunt” [a certain spiritual and indelible sign; hence they cannot be repeated] (DS 1609; cf. 1313; D 852, 695). But the scope of Trent’s definition is different from that of Florence, though the enunciation is the same. Trent was concerned above all with defending the reality of the ministry against certain reformers who wished to suppress the distinction between the community and the minister. But it would be an abuse of the text and a disregard of the intentions of the Council to take this definition as a dogmatic crystallization of scholastic speculation. (Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi. S.v. Orders and Ordination, p. 1146-1147).

The word Aquinas employs within this discussion is “deputed” (deputamur), which means to appoint, to delegate, which includes the conferral of a degree of authority. It is by these sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordination) that a person is delegated, and they are given the power to carry out what they have been delegated to carry out. 

Aquinas writes: 

The sacraments of the New Law produce a character, in so far as by them we are deputed to the worship of God according to the rite of the Christian religion. …Now the worship of God consists either in receiving Divine gifts, or in bestowing them on others. And for both these purposes some power is needed; for to bestow something on others, active power is necessary; and in order to receive, we need a passive power. Consequently, a character signifies a certain spiritual power ordained unto things pertaining to the Divine worship (ST, III, q. 63. A. 2.).

This character, whether conferred in Baptism, Confirmation, or Holy Orders, is instrumental. As Aquinas writes: “… it must be observed that this spiritual power is instrumental of the virtue which is in the sacraments. For to have a sacramental character belongs to God’s ministers: and a minister is a kind of instrument, …” (ST, III, q. 63, a. 2). Those who are marked by the sacramental character (of Baptism, Confirmation, or Holy Orders) are marked as being ordained to some particular end, as “soldiers are marked with a character as being deputed to military service”. A soldier marked with a character as being deputed to military service is changed not ontologically, but accidentally. These characters are essentially participations in Christ’s Priesthood, and so the supernatural actions made possible by them arise not from the very being or nature of the baptized, confirmand, or ordained minister, but they flow from Christ Himself: Aquinas writes: 

…each of the faithful is deputed to receive, or to bestow on others, things pertaining to the worship of God. And this, properly speaking, is the purpose of the sacramental character. Now the whole rite of the Christian religion is derived from Christ’s priesthood. Consequently, it is clear that the sacramental character is specially the character of Christ, to whose character the faithful are likened by reason of the sacramental characters, which are nothing else than certain participations of Christ’s Priesthood, flowing from Christ Himself (ST, III, q. 63, a. 3).

Again, the principal agent of the instrumental power is not the official priest. If it were, he would indeed be ontologically different and thus superior: “But an instrumental power follows rather the condition of the principal agent: and consequently a character exists in the soul in an indelible manner, not from any perfection of its own, but from the perfection of Christ’s Priesthood, from which the character flows like an instrumental power” (ST, III, q. 63, a. 5, ad. 1). 

Those who hold that the priest is ontologically superior are careful to stress that the state of priesthood does not justify clericalism. The obvious question, however, is why not? Clericalism is its logical outcome, if it were true that the rite of ordination renders him ontologically superior. The notion is fraught with dangers on all sides. There is no justification for putting in the minds of young men studying for the priesthood the notion that upon their ordination they will be rendered ontologically special, especially if we do not wish to see a return of the old clericalism. The result cannot be anything but an intolerable Phariseeism so contrary to the movement of the spiritual life, which is always a movement towards a deeper recognition that “I am no better than anyone else”. To be fair, it is argued that “better” and “ontological superiority” are distinct and that the one does not imply the other–i.e., Mary is “better”, that is, holier than the angels, who are ontologically superior. But let us grant this for the sake of argument; that would mean that although a scandalously sinful priest is ontologically superior to Mary, she is superior in her very moral identity (character), for she possesses superior holiness, superior humility and charity, and a superior place in heaven. What, then, does ontological superiority mean in the end? That he is used by Christ to make present the sacrifice of the cross? But it is far from clear how this implies a superiority that is ontological as such, especially if ontologically he is a human being, but less humanized by virtue of his sinful lifestyle (i.e., a double life, a sexual predator, etc.). If it does not indicate essential superiority, nor existential superiority, nor moral and spiritual superiority, then what does it mean? The sacramental character means that he underwent the rite of ordination, an unrepeatable rite, and has become an instrument “set apart” for a specific end. The sacramental character means, as Cardinal Louis Billot pointed out, “the right to the actual graces proper to the sacrament” (Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi. S.v. Orders and Ordination, p.1147)  

The enduring nature of the sacramental character is interesting to consider. Aquinas writes: 

Although external worship does not last after this life, yet its end remains. Consequently, after this life the character remains, both in the good as adding to their glory, and in the wicked as increasing their shame: just as the character of the military service remains in the soldiers after the victory, as the boast of the conquerors, and the disgrace of the conquered (ST, III, q. 63, a. 5, ad. 3).

It is hard to conceive how something that renders a person ontologically superior can in the end be a source of shame, for the devil is not ashamed of his ontological superiority; but it would be a source of shame in that he is not at all ontologically superior to anyone, but was freely chosen by God for a highly noble service, given the actual graces and charisms to fulfill that end, of which he fell short.  

If Aquinas is correct, it would appear then that the sacramental character does not remain qua instrument; for it endures differently in the end than it does “on the way” to the end. On the way, it is an instrumental power dependent upon Christ the agent; afterwards, it endures as an identity, like the identity of a parent which can never be erased, or the identity of a soldier long after the war is over. 

In no other case does a being, ontologically determinate (human) act in the Person of some other ontologically superior being (the Person of the Son), such that it is the latter who is acting (is the agent), not the former. Appealing to agere sequitur esse to argue for superiority leaves too much out of the discussion. In that light, I believe it is safe to conclude that there is simply no reason not to jettison this rather dubious–not to mention dangerous–idea of an alleged clerical superiority. The line that should always be at the forefront of the mind of the cleric is John the Baptist’s “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3, 30).

Or, Read this version from Where Peter Is

Deacon Doug McManaman

Recently while visiting the sick I spent some time in a section of the hospital for dementia patients waiting to be transferred to a nursing home. It is one of my favorite sections to visit. On this particular day, a group of nurses were gathered around talking to one patient with a heavy British accent, while I began to chat with an older man from Iran, using my newly downloaded google translate. Suddenly, the British lady leans over, looks at me and says “Father, do you realize how much damage your Church has done over the centuries?” Why she referred to me as “Father” is uncertain–for I was not wearing any kind of clerical attire. But I said to her: “I certainly do”. She immediately replied: “Well, I’m glad to hear you agree with me on that one”. 

I was immediately reminded of the time my priest friend asked me to speak to his RCIA group on Church history. I said I would, but that I’d have to prepare, which I did, over the Christmas holidays of that year, doing my best to include the most important aspects of that history. But I did eventually ask him: “Father, are you sure you want me to do this? There’s a lot of sin in our history; there’s no hiding it. I’m afraid I might scare someone away from becoming a Catholic”. But he insisted. 

Studying Church history can make a person dizzy, because of how often we find ourselves shaking our heads at the sin and stupidity that we find therein. And of course, things have changed, but in some ways they have not–we’ve all heard the old adage: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Since ordination to the diaconate, I’ve been shaking my head more than I did prior to that, because I see more than I otherwise would have seen–bad behavior from clerics who should know better; nothing criminal, mind you, but rather profound immaturity, clerical envy and jealousy, inordinate need for control, a sense of self-importance, stubbornness, condescension, audacity, and an inability to engage in healthy conflict resolution, etc. I’ve always said to my students that Catholicism is not about us, it is about the Person of Christ. Unfortunately, not every cleric really believes this, at least not on a practical level. 

There is no doubt in my mind that things have improved tremendously since the 1950s and 60s, but I’ve been reading Med Kissinger’s While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence, which also gives us a peek here and there into the Church of the early 60s, and there is a great deal in this book that has me wondering once again what factors account for some of the behavior that drove so many people away from the Church. She writes:  

“My father, Bill Kissinger (we called him Holmer), sold advertising space to companies that manufactured tranquilizers and other so-called ethical pharmaceuticals to harried mothers of the baby boom. Business was brisk, especially in our North Shore Chicago neighborhood, where women, a great number of them Irish Catholics like my mother, were expected to fill the pews with as many children as they could bear, whether they had the stamina or not. “Something is definitely wrong when the best that the average American couple can do over a fertile period of twenty-five years is to give only two or three children to the Kingdom of God,” Monsignor John Knott of the National Catholic Welfare Conference said in his directive to the faithful. The Catholic Marriage Manual that my mother and her friends read religiously cautioned, “When parents consciously choose the small family as their way of life, they are expressing their ambition for material luxury as opposed to the spiritual pleasures which child rearing can give. It is no coincidence that the ‘spoiled little brat’—the selfish monster of popular fiction and newspaper comic strips—is usually an only child.””

Reflecting on the night her sister jumped in front of a train, Meg recalls her father’s fear that the bishop would not allow the family to have a funeral Mass for her or bury her in the family’s Catholic cemetery plot. She writes: “His best friend’s son had died by suicide the year before, and the family was heartbroken when the pastor refused to allow the boy’s body inside their church. On the night of Nancy’s wake, a nun from our school walked into the funeral parlor, pointed to my sister’s casket and croaked, “She’s going to Hell, you know.”” (When my siblings died by suicide, the church failed us. Now, it’s finally listening).

Thankfully, very few clerics think or talk like this anymore. Nonetheless, one has to wonder what it is that accounts for such audacity, such overconfident boldness that has not entirely disappeared. I know enough about investigative reasoning to know that the causes are far too complex to be reduced to a single factor, but I can think of two factors that are an integral part of the equation. The first is prosperity. Human beings are at their moral worst in times of prosperity. We see this repeatedly throughout the Old Testament, as well as in the history of any nation. When times are prosperous, we gradually become cocky, ungrateful, and we forget the limitations that constrain us, both moral and cognitive. The 1950s and 60s were a very prosperous time in the Church’s history. On the other hand, human beings, individually and collectively, are at their best in times of suffering, difficulty, and adversity. Perhaps things are somewhat better today because for the Church at least, times are not as prosperous. Difficulties, adversity, struggles, persecution, conflict, etc., cause a person to face his or her own limitations, the limits of his patience, the limits of his own knowledge and ability to acquire knowledge, his moral limitations and the delusions he’s harbored about himself over the years, his limited ability to relate to others in a way that does not put them off, etc., and so the easier life is, the less likely it is that a person will acquire the skills to be a perceptive, prudent, and compassionate pastor who relates well to the average person, especially those not so well off financially or psychologically.

The other factor is ignorance. There is not a great deal that can be done about this, because all of us suffer from deficient information. There is always so much we don’t know at each moment of our existence, and this was especially the case in the 1950s and 60s when it came to mental illness, among many other things. And so, although there isn’t much we can do about the fact that we are always information deficient, a deeper appreciation for the tentative nature of truth and the difficulties of acquiring knowledge can help us to learn to speak with less of a rhetoric of certainty and confidence. As Bertrand Russell once said: “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt”. A more updated epistemology and an appreciation for plausibility theory will go a long way to help young clerics not to fall into the same mistakes that were made decades earlier, when it was much easier to believe that one’s understanding of the world was far more comprehensive than it actually was in reality. The fact is our grasp on things is tiny and narrow, for our conclusions are formed on the basis of very limited data, but everyday brings new experiences that translate into new data, which, if we are reflective enough, cause us to make revisions to the views we held onto at one time. When we become more explicitly aware of how often this happens, it is much easier to see that there is a significant difference between speaking in a spirit of fearlessness, which is rooted in perfect love and humility (1 Jn, 4, 18), and audacity rooted in a condescending spirit made possible by an inordinately comfortable existence with very little opposition.

It should also be said that there is a glorious thread running through our history, and that is the history of the lives of the saints. But these are who they are in part by virtue of great suffering. When we immerse ourselves in this history, our head indeed spins, but with exhilaration and inspiration. In short, ours is a fully inclusive Church in that it contains saints and sinners, and everything else in between. 

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_403homily1.29.2024ordinarytime4.html

Deacon Doug McManaman

It was very difficult to discern an underlying thread in the readings for the 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, so I will settle upon making just two points. The first point bears upon the second reading taken from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 7: “Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction” (32-35). Because it is a small portion of the entire chapter, taken out of its larger context, it is very easy to misinterpret; one can easily come away with the impression that the celibate life or the consecrated life is genuinely religious, while the married state is not. Such an interpretation, however, would be contrary to Paul’s overall teaching on marriage, not to mention all the developments in the theology of marriage over the centuries, especially the more recent theology of the body of Pope John Paul II. In the larger context of this chapter, we see that Paul believes we are in the last period of salvation history. He refers to his own time as a time of distress, which in apocalyptic literature, is said to precede the time of the Second Coming of Christ. Paul writes: “So this is what I think best because of the present distress: that it is a good thing for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek a separation. Are you free of a wife? Then do not look for a wife…. I tell you, brothers, the time is running out” (26-27; 29). What he says about those who are married and those who are not must be read in this context, otherwise we come away with the impression that marriage has nothing to do with serving the Lord. And of course, that would contradict what Paul teaches in his letter to the Ephesians, where he speaks of marriage as a sign of the love that Christ has for his Bride, the Church. 

Christ’s love for his Bride is a conjugal love, and the love of a baptized husband for his baptized wife is that very same love, and vice versa. This is what we try to get across to couples in Marriage Prep classes, namely, that marriage is just as religious a vocation as is the priesthood and consecrated life. It hasn’t always been understood that way, unfortunately, due to a kind of clericalism that Pope Francis has spoken out against so often in his papacy. But marriage is a sacrament, a sacred sign that contains what it signifies, and it signifies the paschal mystery. For just as God called Abraham to leave the land of Ur and go to the land that He will lead him to, and just as God called Israel to leave Egypt behind with its pantheon of false gods, and just as Jesus leaves this world behind in order to go to the Father (Jn 17), so too in matrimony, two people are called to leave behind a world closed in upon itself; they are consecrated, that is, set apart, for they are called to leave behind their comfortable world of independence and self-sufficiency, to be given over to another, to belong completely to one another, in order to become part of something larger than their own individual selves, namely, the one flesh institution that is their marriage. The couple relinquish their individual lives; they are no longer two individuals with their own independent existence; rather, they have become one body, a symbol of the Church, who is one body with Christ the Bridegroom. The lives of a married couple are a witness of the Church’s response to Christ’s love for his Bride; they witness that love in their sacrificial love for one another, and for the children who are the fruit of that marriage–and raising children well demands a tremendously sacrificial love. In giving themselves irrevocably and exclusively to one another, without knowing what lies ahead, a young couple die to their own individual plans, they die to a life directed by their own individual wills. In doing so, they find life; for they have become a larger reality. 

The second point I’d like to make has to do with the Authority of Christ in the gospels: the people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. I am reminded of a former principal of mine. She retired, but she has been called a number of times to take over a few schools when the principal was off for whatever reason. I know the staff morale at one school in particular was quite low, due to a lack of good leadership, which students perceive quite readily. My friend was called to that school to take over for a few weeks. I asked a former colleague at that school: “How did the students receive her?” My colleague replied: “Instant respect”. And this is just what I expected; she walks and talks with authority. But what does that mean exactly? It means she is a person that the students respect, because she is respectable. Just having a position of authority does not mean a person speaks or acts with authority; most people in positions of authority today, including ecclesiastical positions of authority, have very little authority; they’ve lost a great deal of their credibility and moral authority. Authority comes from within; it has to do with the kind of person that you are, and young people can discern rather quickly what kind of person that is. Authority comes from a spirit of charity, holiness, humility, and perfect love casts out all fear, so it involves a spirit of fearlessness, which is very different from a spirit of audacity or boldness. Boldness is rooted in arrogance, in a condescending spirit, but fearlessness is rooted in holiness and charity. The holier a person is, the greater is their authority, and it is an authority that others recognize. And by holy I do not mean sanctimonious. Jesus was the “Holy One of God”, the Scribes and the Pharisees were not holy, which is why they taught without authority. They were sanctimonious, that is, hypocrites, which in Greek means “actor”. For them it was about appearances and having others fawn all over them, lording it over others, but as Christ said, they neglected the poor and the suffering. The demons were terrified of Christ because he came with the authority of God the Son, who humbled himself and came among us, to deliver us from the Satan’s dominion. The more we grow in true holiness, in the power of charity and humility, the more we will be empowered by his authority. 

Homily for the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

Deacon Doug McManaman
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_402marytheotokos.html

As I was going over the gospel reading (Lk 2:16-21), I was struck by one thing in particular, namely, Mary says nothing. She just listens. She listens to the Shepherds, who “made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”

Mary was one of those who was amazed at what had been told by the Shepherds. You would think that the Mother of God would be the one with the words to amaze them, to enlighten them, that she would be one or two steps ahead of them such that their message would be superfluous. But this is not the case. The good news was told to the shepherds, and what was proclaimed to them was proclaimed to the one who conceived the good news himself, in her womb. She was not eager to speak; rather she listens, and ponders all that was said to her, reflecting on them. 

Mary is theotokos, which means “God-bearer”. And our purpose in this life is to become a theotokos, a God-bearer. And we know through Mary’s example what it means to be a theotokos, at least in part. It means first and foremost to be full of God, pregnant with God. The result of bearing the mystery of God within is that we become disposed to listen; we become disposed to ponder, to reflect upon what is happening both within us and around us. When we are filled with God within, everything around us appears in a new light. The world becomes more beautiful and mysterious. 

Everything is subject to the providence of God, but the entire meaning of the events of providence, all that God permits to happen in this world, is always beyond us. Our understanding of what is going on in our world is always deficient; there’s always more to know. I am generally wary of people who offer grand and comprehensive explanations of the state of the world in which we are living, because this world is just far too large and complex for us to understand adequately as a whole. But this point is hard to appreciate when we are young. Everything seems clear when we are young, and the result is we tend to speak a lot, and we speak with a rhetoric of confidence. But as time goes on, experience provides us with much more information, and that new information allows us to see that things were not as simple as they once appeared–but this will happen to the degree that we are silent and reflective, and we will only be silent and reflective to the degree that we allow ourselves to become a theotokos, a God bearer.  

The life of John the Baptist holds some clues as to what it means to become what we are called to become, namely a theotokos. He refers to himself as the best man at a wedding, “who stands and listens to the bridegroom, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice”. The bridegroom of course is Christ. John says: “This joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase, I must decrease”. This life is about learning to listen to Christ the Bridegroom and getting to that point where his voice becomes our joy. And that joy moves us to want to decrease so that he may increase. We no longer want to increase in the eyes of others. Our joy, our deepest desire, is that he, Christ himself, increase—and that we get out of the way. 

But it all begins when we learn to listen to the Lord who dwells in our deepest interior. And that’s the highest kind of prayer: the prayer of quiet listening to God. Not saying anything. Just adoring the Lord in silence. The Lord that we adore is the Word, the Logos. The Word eternally spoken by the Father is noiseless; it is full and inexhaustible, because the Word is everything that the Father can say about himself. That spoken Word, uttered eternally, is silent, and that silence speaks and is inexhaustible in content. The highest kind of prayer is listening to the Father’s silent Word, and listening to the Word breathe his eternal love for the Father. 

This may sound rather easy, but it is very difficult to get to this point in our prayer life; for there are many distractions that occur when we spend time, in the presence of God, in silence. Our mind is like an untrained dog that pulls this way and that. But when this happens, all we have to do is bring ourselves back to the presence of God and leave these thoughts behind. 

This kind of prayer brings real joy and healing to the unconscious mind, because many of the thoughts that come to the surface during this time of silence are often unhealed memories that have been stored in the subconscious. Learning to leave them behind eventually brings about profound healing and peace. 

As I mentioned last week, for those who do not have an interior life, who have not cultivated the habit of prayer throughout their lives, old age will slowly and inevitably become a very unpleasant ordeal, for our ability to cover up our own spiritual emptiness becomes increasingly difficult as the body deteriorates and circumstances change. But for those who have a rich interior life, those who pray and who know the joy of the Bridegroom’s voice, who know the rich and subtle joy of hearing that eternal silence of the Word, growing old only creates the conditions for this joy to increase.

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.