Quaerimus VI: In what sense is the distinction between "the form of a [woman's] life" and "the substance of her virtues"?

In a document entitled Duties of a Wife and Mother, distributed at a recent mission on the topics of Our Lady of Lourdes and piety, the author sets forth one of the principles of motherhood as the following:

The service a woman renders her loved ones will become for her the form of her life, the substance and center of her virtues, the rule of piety set by God for her sanctification.

— From Duties of a Wife and Mother, p.2. (Emphases in context.)

He goes on to explain in what ways the "service to her family becomes the form of her life" and "the substance of her virtues."

The service of her family becomes the form of her life when she surrenders herself to its tasks.

— From Duties of a Wife and Mother, p.2. (Emphases in context.)

The service of her family becomes the substance of her virtues when she recognizes that God has provided the grace and all that is required for the highest perfection in every state of life.

— From Duties of a Wife and Mother, p.2. (Emphases in context.)

To understand the distinction he is making here, it seems to me necessary to understand in what sense he is using the terms "form" and "substance." While it is possible that he is using them informally, I think that, given the fundamental importance of the terms in Aristotelian thought, Thomism, and Catholic teaching in general, it is worth at least entertaining the possibility that he is using them in their formal senses.

As a bit of an aside, even if we are to assume that he is using them informally, the question still remains: what really is the distinction he's making here? It appears to be an important distinction, and therefore an important question.

Since assuming an informal use of the terms does not immediately offer a clear answer, let's consider what he might mean if he is indeed using the terms formally. In any case, what we are looking for are definitions of the terms "form" and "substance" in the context of Catholic teaching.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an article entitled "Substance" which includes a section on "Aristotle's account of substance." This section contains two subsections, "Categories" and "Metaphysics." Given that the entire article is on "Substance" itself, one would hope that each section on the topic might begin with a definition of what it is. So let's begin at the beginning of the section on "Aristotle's account of substance."

Aristotle's account in Categories can, with some oversimplification, be expressed as follows. The primary substances are individual objects, and they can be contrasted with everything else—secondary substances and all other predicables—because they are not predicable of or attributable to anything else. Thus, Fido is a primary substance, and dog—the secondary substance—can be predicated of him. Fat, brown, and taller than Rover are also predicable of him, but in a rather different way from that in which dog is. Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of predicables, namely those which are ‘said of’ objects and those which are ‘in’ objects. The interpretation of these expressions is, as usually with Aristotelian cruxes, very controversial...

— Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Aristotle's account of substance".

Although I can't speak for the average reader, this introductory content here is less than reassuring for me. What I set out looking for was a statement looking something like, "Substance is ____," and instead it appears that what I am getting is a discussion on "primary substances" and "secondary substances," with a little bit of controversy in the mix for good measure.

The section on "Metaphysics" offers a little clarification on this point. We read:

The Categories sets out important logical distinctions between different kinds of attribute, but it does not enter into a metaphysical analysis of substance itself. This takes place mainly in Metaphysics, Book Z.

— Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Aristotle's account of substance".

So, at last, what the article seems to be telling us is that, although Aristotle went into a discussion of substance in the Categories, he doesn't really get around to defining it until the Metaphysics. We read on:

In [Metaphysics], the analysis of substances in terms of form and matter is developed, whereas these notions have no place in Categories. The distinction has led some commentators to talk of Aristotle's ‘two systems’, containing two radically different conceptions of substance.

— Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Aristotle's account of substance".

"Two radically different conceptions of substance"? Well, ask a simple question, get a not-so-simple answer.

At this point, I have to take a step back and consider whether there might be a resource on the subject that is a bit more accessible and better-suited for our purposes. Although (good quality) material on the internet appears to be limited, I was able to find a document from a somewhat reputable source.

In Book V, Lesson 10 of the document, entitled Commentary on the Metaphysics, Thomas addresses exactly the question with which we are dealing, namely, "What are the meanings of substance?"

Aristotle now explains the various senses in which the term substance is used; and in regard to this he does two things. First, he gives the various senses in which the term substance is used. Second (903), he reduces all of these to two (“It follows”).

In treating the first part he gives four senses of the term substance.

— Commentary on the Metaphysics, "Meanings of Substance", St. Thomas Aquinas.

Although it appears that we are still dealing here with a potentially complex definition, at least we have a trustworthy guide. He begins by quoting the relevant sections from Aristotle's Metaphysics:

440. The term substance (substantia) means the simple bodies, such as earth, fire, water and the like; and in general bodies and the things composed of them, both animals and demons and their parts. All of these are called substances because they are not predicated of a subject, but other things are predicated of them.

441. In another sense substance means that which, being present in such things as are not predicated of a subject, is the cause of their being, as the soul in an animal.

442. Again, substance means those parts which, being present in such things, limit them and designate them as individuals and as a result of whose destruction the whole is destroyed; for example, body is destroyed when surface is, as some say, and surface when line is. And in general it seems to some that number is of this nature; for [according to them] if it is destroyed, nothing will exist, and it limits all things.

443. Again, the quiddity of a thing, whose intelligible expression is the definition, also seems to be the substance of each thing.

444. It follows, then, that the term substance is used in two senses. It means the ultimate subject, which is not further predicated of something else; and it means anything which is a particular being and capable of existing apart. The form and species of each thing is said to be of this nature.

— Metaphysics, Book VIII, Aristotle.

He then goes into a not-so-brief discussion of what all this means. Most relevant for our purposes is the concluding part, in which he gives the final definitions of the term, along with a definition of the term "form" and how it is distinct from "essence":

903. It follows (444).

Then he reduces the foregoing senses of substance to two. He says that from the above-mentioned ways in which the term substance is used we can understand that it has two meanings. (1) It means the ultimate subject in propositions, and thus is not predicated of something else. This is first substance, which means a particular thing which exists of itself and is capable of existing apart because it is distinct from everything else and cannot be common to many. (2) And a particular substance differs from universal substance in these three respects: first, a particular substance is not predicated of inferiors, whereas a universal substance is; second, universal substance subsists only by reason of a particular substance, which subsists of itself; and third, universal substance is present in many things, whereas a particular substance is not but is distinct from everything else and capable of existing apart.

904. And the form and species of a thing also “is said to be of this nature,” i.e., substance. In this he includes the second and fourth senses of substance; for essence and form have this note in common that both are said to be that by which something is. However, form, which causes a thing to be actual, is related to matter, whereas quiddity or essence is related to the supposit, which is signified as having such and such an essence. Hence “the form and species” are comprehended under one thing—a being’s essence.

905. He omits the third sense of substance because it is a false one, or because it is reducible to form, which has the character of a limit. And he omits matter, which is called substance, because it is not substance actually. However, it is included in the first sense of substance, because a particular substance is a substance and is individuated in the world of material things only by means of matter.

— Commentary on the Metaphysics, "Meanings of Substance", St. Thomas Aquinas.

Clear enough?

I might have to spend an afternoon (or a few afternoons) on that excerpt and get back with you.

In the meantime, I leave the question outstanding as Quaerimus VI.

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On the Traditional Calendar, April 26th is the Feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel. On the New Calendar, it is Good Shepherd Sunday.

Mater Boni Consilii, ora pro nobis.

Lord Jesus, Author and Dispenser of all good, Who in becoming incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin has communicated to her lights above those of all the heavenly intelligences, grant that in honoring her under the title of Our Lady of Good Counsel, we may merit always to receive from her goodness, counsels of wisdom and salvation, which will conduct us to the port of a blessed eternity. Amen.

— From the Our Lady of Good Counsel Litany, courtesy EWTN.

Sheen and Pacwa on Angels, the Intellect, and the Body

Although some seem to have suggested otherwise to me, the writing of Ven. Fulton Sheen can be somewhat challenging, in my opinion. In what I've read of his book Three to Get Married, there are a few cases in which he challenges the reader with material that can be fairly deep for one who does not have a solid background in certain subject matters. A case in point is the following passage in which he discusses the relationship between the mind and the body.

It is a basic principle of philosophy that there is nothing in the mind which was not previously in the senses. All our knowledge comes from the body. We have a body, St. Thomas tells us, because of the weakness of our intellect.

— Ven. Fulton Sheen, from Three to Get Married.

While it may be common sense to some that our bodies result from the weakness of our intellects, this is not exactly the most intuitive point for me. Consequently, this passage (along with the encompassing paragraph) has caused me a bit of trouble.

Much to my delight, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. - who, on his program Threshold of Hope, is currently working through the encyclical of Pope St. John Paul II entitled Fides et Ratio - recently had an individual call in to ask about a topic related to the above passage. Although the question does not deal directly with the point regarding the weakness of the intellect being the cause of the body, Fr. Pacwa offers, in his usual way, a clear response to a closely related question with a practical example which most will find accessible. The question and answer can be found in the video below from 39:40-42:26.



Caller: "...on page 290 in the Magnificat, it says that the Devil is God's creature - the very first line. Why don't we pray for the conversion of the Devil like we do for the conversion of Russia and other sinners and people that commit violence?"

Great question, Amy, and what you are dealing with here is the difference between the nature of an angel and the nature of human beings. Let me give you a couple of ways to look at it. First of all, let's take a look at human beings. We are spirit and body, right? Now, have any of you here in the audience ever tried to lose a little weight? All right, I did too. So, as a result, [did] you say, "Ok, I'm going to lose some weight, so I'll stop eating all the bad stuff." Did that work? Not for me! You know, when I see a homemade apple pie, or something like that, I say, "Oh, this can't be that fattening!" And so here's the thing, because we have a body with its different desires as well as a mind and spirit, we can say in our mind, "This is what I want to do," but my body says, "Apple pie! ... With a lard crust!" (Cause those are the good ones.) So we can go back and forth. Angels, on the other hand, don't have bodies that contradict what's in their spirit. They are pure spirit. And when an angel makes a decision, it is permanent. So, you and I, as human beings, are compared in the Bible to clay, and we keep getting molded throughout life. Angels are like fast-setting concrete. They make a decision - boom, that's it. They can't change. That's why we don't pray for the evil angels to change, and that's also why the good angels cannot go back and start over and say, "Maybe I'd like to try being evil." They make their decision, it's permanent. That's the nature of being pure spirit versus body and soul.

— Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., from Threshold of Hope, 22 July 2014.

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August 6 is the Feast of the Transfiguration (both calendars). The Collect for today is discussed on a post at Fr. Z's blog.

O God, who in the glorious Transfiguration
of your Only Begotten Son
confirmed the mysteries of faith by the witness of the Fathers
and wonderfully prefigured our full adoption to sonship,
grant, we pray, to your servants,
that, listening to the voice of your beloved Son,
we may merit to become co-heirs with him.

— Collect for the Feast of the Transfiguration.

The Problem of Reconciling Evil as Nothingness and Being in Hell: Fr. John Hardon Answers (Quaerimus IV)

"...seek and you will find..."

— Matthew 7:7, Luke 11:9.

An ongoing search has been underway since last October when I posed the question dealing with the notion of evil as nothingness - famously proposed by St. Augustine - and the problem to which this leads given that Hell and the beings in it exist. I posted the original question here and offered some thoughts on a reader's response here. In listening to a series of talks by Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., I have been fortunate enough to come across a lecture in which he addresses this question explicitly, referencing Sacred Scripture as well as teachings from the Church's Sacred Tradition in his response.

He begins with an enumeration of the three senses in which God is omnipresent found in Church teachings:

Before we go into the closer meaning of God's omnipresence, I think we should know something about the world in which God, as we say, is omnipresent. The first way that God is present is called "natural." By the very nature, whatever exists, exists only because God is present to that creature sustaining it in its existence. It is also called "ominipresence." This is called God's "universal presence." In all creatures - both rational and irrational - in Heaven, on Earth, in the center regions, is God - even present in Hell. We must say "yes." If that's the fundamental way in which God is present, we ask, is God also present in a supernatural way? Yes. More properly called, "the divine indwelling." The way that God is present in the souls of those who are in the state of grace. Oh, what a difference between God being present in every creature and God's unique presence in those who possess His grace. Finally as our Faith tells us, God is also present in what we call His "Real Presence," where God is present, not only as God, but as the God who became man. In His Real Presence, God is present, as we say, "corporeally." He is present in the Holy Eucharist for all eternity...

— Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., from Our Spiritual Life – Men’s Retreat, Lecture 23: Omnipresence of God, 1978-9. (Emphasis added.)

The next writings he cites on the topic come from the Old Testament, namely Psalms 139 and Jeremiah 23:24:

What is the revelation of God on His omnipresence? Both Sacred Scripture and what we call "Sacred Tradition": they are filled with professions of faith in God's omnipresence. Just to read one short passage from one of the Psalms: "Where shall I go before your spirit?" the psalmist prays to the Lord. "Where can I flee before your face? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there. If I descend into Hell, you are there. If I take my wings and fly to the outermost parts of the sea..." even there, you, my Lord, are there. You are everywhere. You are always near me with your omnipresence. Then, the Lord says to the prophet Jeremiah, "Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?" The answer is, God fills every creature that exists. Unless God were present, nothing else would be there.

— Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., from Our Spiritual Life – Men’s Retreat, Lecture 23: Omnipresence of God, 1978-9. (Emphasis added.)

Finally, I think that the post would not be complete without a quotation giving what Fr. Hardon refers to as "the most detailed profession of faith in God's omnipresence from the Scriptures," found in Acts 27:

St. Paul is speaking to the pagan Greeks of Athens. He tells them that the God who created the world is everywhere. This gave St. Paul the occasion for explaining that this "unknown God" - as the pagan Greeks called Him - this "unknown God" is not far from any human being. In fact, unless God were present, there would not be a human being. Says Paul, "In him we live, and move, and have our being." (Acts chapter 17, verses 27 and 28.) Now we ask, how is God present everywhere? Given the revealed fact that God is omnipresent everywhere, the Church has, over the centuries, gone on to explain...

— Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., from Our Spiritual Life – Men’s Retreat, Lecture 23: Omnipresence of God, 1978-9.

Servant of God Fr. John Hardon (†2000), pray for us.

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On the traditional calendar, today is the feast of St. Basil the Great (†379), bishop and Doctor of the Church.

Sancte Basili Magne, ora pro nobis.

The Problem of Reconciling Evil as Nothingness and Being in Hell:An Anonymous Reader Responds (Quaerimus IV)

Earlier I wrote evil does not exist, so what then is in Hell? Angels and the souls of man who have deprived themselves so much of God’s Goodness that they could not bear to be in His light. When we say Hell is an eternal fire, it could be taken that God’s holding them into existence is the fire that burns them for eternity. This fire is only stoked more and more from their more deprived state.

— An Anonymous Reader, in response to QUAERIMUS III, IV, V: The Authority of Thomas Aquinas, The Problem of Evil, and The Nature of Time - Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J. Weighs In.

An anonymous reader has responded to the section of my previous post dealing with the problem of reconciling St. Augustine's conception of evil as nothingness and Hell as a place in which beings are separated completely from God. He writes:

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"After thinking about your question on evil, I think there may be a misunderstanding of God's essence/existence and the essence/existence of things that are not of God which may be applied to the question of evil.

God's existence is his essence. God is to be. We get this from Thomas' Summa Theologica Q. 3, Art. 4. This is because God's essence would either have to be from an outside source which we know is impossible due to the demonstration in the first three of the five ways or his essence would come from a principle of his essence. This is also impossible as we can see that a human does not come from a tooth.

Existence is to act as essence is to potentiality. From Q. 2, Art. 3 of the ST we see that act must come prior to potentiality. Thus, existence in all things, that are not of God must come prior to its essence.

Something which exists but did not cause its own existence must have a prior cause. There must always be a first in the line of movers, actuality must always come prior to potentiality, contingent beings must necessarily come from a necessary being.

God must then be pure act. Must be the first, the unmoved mover. His existence must be his essence. What must be remembered is that when speaking of God we always speak through analogy and that speaking in terms of essence and existence is the closest man can come to speak of God.

Now for everything else that is not God must be thought of in a matter of degrees of being. God is being, Angels are more perfect beings than humans for they are pure intellect without body. Humans are more perfect than animals because of intellect but less than angels because humans have bodies and so on.

What does this have to do with the problem of evil?

The problem of evil comes from the idea of an all perfect and all good God accepting evil into the world. Evil, as you know is not a thing. Evil in itself does not exist. Rather, evil is the decision of an existing being, one who must possess intellect, in order to not choose good. The idea of evil is a turning away from the Creator, when one chooses that which is not God they become less themselves and the larger the separation the less angelic or the less human they become. God sets angels and man into existence and holds them there because of his eternal love for them. Even if they commit evil and more and more atrocities are committed God will not take man out of existence because of his eternal love for God set man into existence out of his own free gift.

God created man and angel in order for man and angels to love him. In order for there to be love there must be a freedom of choice from his creatures and thus we are made with freewill.

In a perfect setting, The Garden of Eden, freewill is used to make a choice between one good and another using a degree of goodness. Once man became selfish and wished to be his own God, out of his own choice, man could no longer handle being in the perfect garden and thus was cast out. In this casting out all things were changed and privation entered the entire world. Evil then is a privation of a good. In the case of the squirrel outside of my window, it is an evil that this squirrel lacks a tail. The squirrel is deprived of its tail and thus there is an evil.

I think a problem we, as humans, have with the notion of evil is that we cannot speak of evil truly as it is. We do not know what Heaven or Hell is like. We do not know, nor can we speak, of God perfectly for we are imperfect beings. Man participates in being for man is not being in and of himself, whereas God is being itself. We must speak from analogy and from here is where we have trouble for we can never get an exacted notion. Who is to say that Aquinas or Augustine or the many other thinkers are correct in their ideas on the concept of evil? Whenever we say the word evil there is a connotation that evil exists and so we come to the crux of the matter.

I think from now on when I speak of evil I will define it as nothingness. Evil has no actuality and thus there is no potentiality. When creatures were created by God the act of going from being to being allowed for there to be an imperfection. This is because God, who is absolutely perfect, first cause, first unmoved mover, etc, cannot create Himself. God cannot create God for one would have to come prior and thus the made 'God' would be existing in potentiality. Once potentiality comes into the picture there allows a lack of perfection for only God can be truly perfect in every way." ~An Anonymous Reader, in response to QUAERIMUS III, IV, V: The Authority of Thomas Aquinas, The Problem of Evil, and The Nature of Time - Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J. Weighs In.

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I responded with the following:

"Thank you for your thoughts. ... one point ... is curious to me: how can we speak about God through analogy if we do not know Him? We cannot know God in His fullness, so we must know Him partially. But what does it mean to know God partially?

I am still a bit confused about Hell. From what you've said, a being in Hell is held in existence by God, but by that being's will he is eternally separated from God. But because the being is held in existence by God, it seems that he still has some connection to God. So his will itself must be held in existence by God (because all things are held in existence by God), but I guess the will is permanently in some sort of disordered state. But it seems that there must be some definite line between the perfect order (God) and the disorder. But the disorder exists also to some extent in purgatory. It is hard to fathom that the disorder will exist for all eternity, even though God is not willing it. But, if by the "disorder," we are referring to evil, then perhaps the disorder itself doesn't exist. But it seems that we can say that there is something in Hell and that something exists, no? So what is it? And how is it separated from God?

Anyhow, I appreciate your comment that "...a problem we, as humans, have with the notion of evil is that we cannot speak of evil truly as it is." It is just a bit confounding to me that we have some notion of good and evil, but not a perfect notion of them. I guess an analogy could be that we sort of know a right triangle indirectly. We can draw something that resembles a right triangle, but we can't ever see it. Only by reason do we know about it. Even this seems inaccurate, though, because I think someone could make a case that we do know a right triangle in its fullness - even if we can't see it." ~My Response to the Anonymous Reader.

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The reader answered with the following:

"If we take this thought beyond Natural Theology and into Theology, involving revelation, then we can say we know God for Christ came into this world for us to know God. If we are sticking with Natural Theology then the only way to understand God is through analogy. This is because there are no words that we have that can describe God. We can go by way of the via negativa and see that God is not finite and so must be infinite, finite things participate in time and so God must be outside of time, finite things move by way of locomotion and so God must be unmoved but how can these words actually speak of God in His fullest? So far we have only covered small aspects of God. How then can we speak of God in His full nature? Coming by way of Natural Theology we cannot express God’s fullest nature. Even entering Theology we cannot. Yes, God is Unity and within this Unity there are three Persons but does this even capture the fullness of God? No, it is possible to capture the fullness of God for if we could fully understand God it would not be the real God for we would be creating this God. God is so far beyond understanding that saying I fully understand God means I created this God in which I understand. The best analogy for God is mathematics. We can have a triangle in which I understand fully the idea of a triangle in my mind and yet when I go to draw a triangle, even using the best measurements, I fail because the lines which make the triangle have width and the lines which make up a true triangle do not. God is similar in that we can have concepts of God and understand facets of who He is yet we will never know Him in fullness. It is also not a waste of time to study who God is for in studying about Him we are praying to Him and in doing so we will inevitably be drawn closer to Him.

When God creates us He automatically will Himself to hold our souls in existence. ... A soul in going to hell is said to perpetually blaspheme the name of God and this is because in going to hell there is the knowledge that God holds them in existence while the souls in hell would rather hold themselves in existence. These souls have made themselves their own God and thus are no longer perfect for they are no longer human. To be human is to fully recognize that we are subordinate to our Creator.

Hell:
When we are created we are given an eternal soul in a mortal body. Therefore, from the moment of conception the soul is to live forever and our earthly body is to perish until we are given our glorified bodies at the end of time. When God creates us He automatically will Himself to hold our souls in existence, not our will or our intellect but our soul, which some may equate with the will but is not the will. When a soul goes to hell it is an eternal act by which the person decides to be as far from God as possible. A soul in going to hell is said to perpetually blaspheme the name of God and this is because in going to hell there is the knowledge that God holds them in existence while the souls in hell would rather hold themselves in existence. These souls have made themselves their own God and thus are no longer perfect for they are no longer human. To be human is to fully recognize that we are subordinate to our Creator. An example of this thought comes from St. John of the Cross’s book the Ascent to Mount Carmel where he writes, “It ought to be kept in mind that an attachment to a creature makes a person equal to that creature; the stronger the attachment, the closer is the likeness to the creature and the greater the equality, for love effects a likeness between the lover and the loved.” Thus, when we make ourselves God we become less human for we are not to make ourselves God but rather we are to be in the likeness of God. That distinction separates the Saint from those most vile in hell. The Saint conforms his will to God’s and so becomes like him, the one in hell conforms his will to himself and thus distances himself from God in a very sad event.

Thus, when we make ourselves God we become less human for we are not to make ourselves God but rather we are to be in the likeness of God. That distinction separates the Saint from those most vile in hell. The Saint conforms his will to God’s and so becomes like him, the one in hell conforms his will to himself and thus distances himself from God in a very sad event.

Earlier I wrote evil does not exist, so what then is in Hell? Angels and the souls of man who have deprived themselves so much of God’s Goodness that they could not bear to be in His light. When we say Hell is an eternal fire it could be taken that God’s holding them into existence is the fire that burns them for eternity. This fire is only stoked more and more from their more deprived state.

For one in Purgatory it is a similar idea. God’s Goodness is so “bright” that it burns and this burning heals the soul so it can be purified and perfected so to enter eternal glory." ~The Anonymous Reader.

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Thank you to the readers who have responded to me with very helpful thoughts on this topic which I find quite difficult.

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December 7 is the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Feast of St. Ambrose (✝ 397) (both calendars).

Regina sine labe originali concepta et Sancte Ambrósi, orate pro nobis.

QUAERIMUS III, IV, V: The Authority of Thomas Aquinas, The Problem of Evil, and The Nature of Time - Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J. Weighs In

Three topics on which I am quite interested in gathering the various thoughts of great Catholic thinkers are the determination of authority in the formulation of Catholic doctrine, the problem of evil, and the nature of time. I was pleased to come across a lecture by Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J. in which he speaks on all three of these topics in a span of nine minutes. An audio recording of the complete lecture can be found on this page at therealpresence.org. It is the fourth lecture, entitled Review of Creation and Beginning of Providence, in a series on the Catholic Faith.

Two years ago, soon after the founding of the DCMission blog, I had written a post in which I alluded to a question of great interest to me: What weight do the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas hold in the formulation of Catholic doctrines? Given the arguably unparalleled genius of Thomas, does the Church accept everything that he wrote as true?

Fr. Hardon, in the lecture mentioned above, states the following on this subject and its relevance to the Society of Jesus during its early years, around the end of the 16th century:

...a number of our theologians were wondering how literally we must follow Aquinas.

— Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., from A Course on the Catholic Faith, Lecture 4: Review of Creation and Beginning of Providence, 1978-9.

In the context of this passage, he addresses the question of whether everything that Thomas taught is necessarily accepted as true by Church authorities. Fr. Hardon's statements may surprise you. In two specific cases he mentions, he goes so far as to say that Thomas, in spite of his "towering genius," was wrong.

There is a controverted question in theology over the possibility of an eternal creation of the world. First, let's be clear. The world had a beginning. That is an article of the Faith. The world - and not merely the world of space and time - but the world of spirit, too - whether angelic or our own souls - began. That's number one. The world had a beginning. Secondly, it is therefore erroneous to say that the world is de facto eternal. Because if it began in time, it could not have been timeless in having always existed. But thirdly, can we prove from reason alone that the world began? Yes. A fourth question: Can we hold that the world might have existed from all eternity? Among the persons who held this was Thomas Aquinas. At least, he said, you could not disprove from reason the impossibility of an eternal world. This, among other things that Thomas taught, he was wrong in. And, sometime after St. Ignatius prescribed on the Society of Jesus that we follow the teaching of Thomas Aquinas - it is part of our constitution in our teaching - a number of our theologians were wondering how literally we must follow Aquinas. So our then-Father General commissioned Robert Bellarmine, a great Saint and now since a Doctor of the Church, to examine the writings of Thomas Aquinas - who by that time had already been canonized - and which things that Thomas taught, in his judgment, Jesuits would not be bound to hold. He ended up with twenty-four things in Thomas that Jesuits need not folow. This is one. And as I'm sure you all know, another is that Mary was not immaculately conceived. Thomas held it: he was wrong. Which indicates why we need an infallible teaching authority to stand judgment even on a towering genius like Aquinas.

— Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., from A Course on the Catholic Faith, Lecture 4: Review of Creation and Beginning of Providence, 1978-9.

The next question, on the problem of evil, is much more difficult for me personally. St. Augustine in his Confessions famously cast the problem and subsequently addressed it. Here is the problem in simplistic terms: if God is perfectly good and created everything, and evil exists, then how did God create it? Augustine addresses the problem by saying that evil is not itself a created thing. It is, rather, the lack of something: the lack of being. I've heard an analogy given between this proposed model and the familiar phenomena of light and darkness. Darkness is not something in and of itself, the analogy states. It is, rather, our perception of the absence of light. (As a bit of a digression, I recall a series of lectures at Notre Dame in which the late Prof. Michael Sain proposed a compelling case for a correlation between this model of evil and the nature of the Ringwraiths in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.)

While somewhat satisfying at first, this solution seems to create problems with respect to some aspects of the Faith. For example, if Hell entails complete separation from God, and God is necessary for an entity's existence, then how can Hell exist?

Fr. Hardon addresses the problem of evil as follows:

...what God created is good. Why is it good? Because God made it. Well, that's not really maybe answering the question. What is good that God created is such because it corresponds perfectly to what His will wanted to make. And, therefore, in Genesis when we read that God saw what He made and it was not just good but, remember, "very good." Is there evil in the world? You better believe it. Let me ask this: why is there evil in the world? Is it because of God? It must be because of what? Creatures. So whatever is good in the world is the result of God's will. Whatever is evil in the world is the result of created will. And can we ever produce evil things. If I further ask: what makes what man creates - if it's evil - evil? It's because it is contrary to the will of God. The essence of goodness is that it conforms to the divine will. The essence of evil is that it conforms to the created will and contrary to the divine will. And you don't push beyond that. You believe it.

— Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., from A Course on the Catholic Faith, Lecture 4: Review of Creation and Beginning of Providence, 1978-9.

This response is, admittedly, a bit problematic for me. With his mandate, "you don't push beyond that," I gather that Fr. Hardon is suggesting here that we forgo our reason and accept the claims given regarding the nature of evil. However, we've been taught through documents such as Bl. John Paul II's Fides et Ratio and Pope Emeritus Benedict's Regensburg Lecture not to accept the contemporary narrative that faith and reason work contrary to one another. Rather, the Church has proposed in such documents that faith and reason complement one another. They are "like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." This being the case, why does it seem that we are being asked here on the problem of evil to forgo reason? Should not the use of reason, in general, be commended? I can't say that I understand Fr. Hardon's "you don't push beyond that" against the backdrop of the narrative of the complementary nature of faith and reason given to us by Church authorities in recent decades.

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Finally, Fr. Hardon offers some brief thoughts on a topic that is dear to me: the nature of time. My inclusion of this excerpt here entails less of a question for addition to the list of Quaerimus posts, and more of a point of interest to me that I serendipitously found addressed in media res.

Then he created in time. ... Consequently, the world had a beginning in time. Or, more accurately, it began with time. What is time? Somebody? [Change.] ... Change. Well, change is part of time. Time is, rather, the measure of change. You've got to have things changing to have time. That's why God, in an absolute sense, is timeless. And the fewer changes or the less aware you are of those changes, the more swiftly the time passes, right? It's when you're watching that clock - and it never moves more slowly than when you watch it - because you're conscious of the change - whatever you're expecting or looking forward to seems to be so slow in coming. In other words, there was no time before creation. Why? Because the only being that existed was a changeless being. Since time is the measure of change - sometimes called the "measure of motion," which is the more philosophical definition but less intelligible because the word "motion" in philosophy corresponds to "change" in more popular language. Now the motion or the movement may be through space, and that's a change. Or the motion may be inside my head, and that's a change. For example, I hope in the last five minutes, you've learned something ... Whatever change took place - and we can measure the change that took place, whether in body or in spirit - can be measured. Therefore, you have time. The moment God created anything, at that moment, time began.

— Servant of God Fr. John Hardon, S.J., from A Course on the Catholic Faith, Lecture 4: Review of Creation and Beginning of Providence, 1978-9.

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On the Traditional Calendar, today is Solemnity of Christ the King.

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

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Update: I noticed a possible problem in the first excerpt above. Fr. Hardon states that, "At least, [Thomas] said, you could not disprove from reason the impossibility of an eternal world." This is a bit of a difficult statement to parse with all the negatives (i.e. "...could not disprove ... the impossibility..."). However, we understand the intended message: the Church teaching is that the world is not eternal and that we can prove this from reason, but Thomas said otherwise. However, I believe the way in which Fr. Hardon formulates this has one-too-many negatives. I believe what he meant to say was either that Thomas said that "you could not prove from reason the impossibility of an eternal world" or "you could not disprove from reason the possibility of an eternal world." Feel free to check me on this.

Suffering and Forgiveness: Finding God when Light Deceives Us

Fr. Wade Menezes, C.P.M. has presented in a homily a list of salvific aspects of suffering given by Bl. Pope John Paul II in his apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris ("On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering"):



1. Suffering strengthens character.
2. Suffering helps us to be sympathetic toward others who are suffering.
3. Suffering helps us to make up for past forgiven sins already confessed in the confessional.
4. Suffering unites the sufferer with Jesus Christ.
5. Suffering can be offered up for the benefit of others.
6. Suffering benefits the caregiver(s).

Here, we will be considering one aspect of number 4.

Let us return to this point later. If we are to step back for a moment and take a close look at 14th-century France, we will come to find the bishop of Lisieux, Nicole Oresme, gazing at the stars and studying an effect for which scientists and engineers still account in their work today. A DCMission video presents briefly some basic details regarding Oresme's dealings with this problem called atmospheric refraction, which can cause a star at a distant location in the cosmos to appear at a different position than it actually is.



Now, it just so happens that my coworkers and I encounter this problem quite frequently in our daily work. With long-range radars, when an object resides in a different layer of the atmosphere than the radar itself, the varying conditions of the atmosphere (e.g. pressure, temperature, moisture) cause the electromagnetic impulses to travel a bent path and make that object appear in a different location that it actually is. Going by the labels in the figure below, the bending of the light can in fact make the object appear at distance d1+d2. Through a closer look and a more thorough analysis - a more logical analysis - one will come to find that the object is actually at distance d0 from the radar. The light has deceived us. Our object is actually closer to us than we had first thought.


Now, when others cause us to suffer unjustly, we are presented with an occasion to allow God's forgiveness to work through us. This forgiveness means no less than that all of our efforts - including both our prayers and our actions - are directed toward that person's eternal salvation. But realize that what we can see of God's forgiveness flowing through us for the other person is only a dim reflection of Christ's forgiveness of us - which is infinitely more - for our offenses against Him and others. The suffering, then, when integrated with this glimpse of God's forgiveness, affords us the opportunity to form an enhanced rendering of the nature of Christ Himself. By this sharper vision, might we be so bold as to wager that He may be closer to us than we might have estimated at first glance?

I just might.

An Open Letter to Friends of the Dominicans: On Aristotle and Induction

I was recently conversing with a friend who was telling me about her current enrollment in a class covering Aristotle. Given that it is all too easy to dismiss such course material as simply a dull and pedantic undertaking, I wanted to offer some thoughts that emphasize the importance of his role in the history of thought: particularly in the intellectual tradition of the Dominicans. As it turns out, I was visiting with this friend and others in the company of two Dominican sisters recently, and a conversation came up in which there arose a question regarding the distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning.

Well, I was listening to a lecture series by Prof. Daniel Robinson the other day, and by a seeming coincidence, he discussed both of these topics in a single lecture. Here is an open letter to friends of the Dominicans regarding what I learned -- and found quite interesting. I hope that you will, too.

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Dear Friends of the Dominicans,

Regarding our recent conversations on various interesting topics -- particularly Aristotle, deduction versus induction, and those amidst ongoing discussions about the Dominicans -- I wanted to share with you my recent discoveries on these topics contained within some enlightening lectures by Prof. Daniel Robinson. Upon reading this letter, I hope that you will come to see the following:

1. The significance of Aristotle, which cannot be overstated -- particularly within the intellectual tradition of the Dominican Order.
2. Evidence to support the rejection of the Conflict Thesis, widely promoted by Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918).
3. The emphasis placed on inductive reasoning by Christian thinkers in the High Middle Ages, in anticipation of the founding of modern science.

Before we begin, a few words are in order about Prof. Daniel Robinson, whom I will be citing in this letter. He taught at Georgetown University for 30 years and is currently a philosophy professor at Oxford, where he has been on the faculty since 1991. Within the lectures I'll be referencing, he associates himself with no particular religion. At times, he gives comments that would likely be taken by the general public to be praiseworthy of various religious figures in history. At other times, he gives scathing criticisms of certain religious groups. With regard to the Catholic Church in particular, it is worth noting that he devotes an entire lecture to excoriating the Catholic Church for Her dealings with the Malleus Maleficarum in the fifteenth century. Hence, I consider him to be a neutral source when it comes to the area of religion.

Two of the lectures focus on some of the great thinkers of the Scholastic tradition during the High Middle Ages. Prof. Robinson begins with Peter Abelard (1079–21 April 1142) and continues on to cover to varying degrees Robert Grosseteste (1175–9 October 1253), Roger Bacon (ca.1214–1294), John Duns Scotus (ca.1266–8 November 1308), Albert the Great (1193/1206–November 15, 1280), and Thomas Aquinas (1225–7 March 1274). Over the course of the discussions of these figures, we can see the intellectual foundations being laid for the great achievements to come in the following centuries. And whom do we meet at each step along the way, playing a vital role in guiding each of these important thinkers? None other than our dear friend, Aristotle. We begin with Peter Abelard.


Peter Abelard (1079-1142)

Click Here to Play Audio Clip

Consider Peter Abelard whose life stretches from 1079 to 1142 and whose celebrated teaching earned him the title of ... Peripateticus Palatinus. A "palatine" here suggests a form of lordship, and the "peripatetics": that was a term historically assigned to the school of Aristotle. So here you have a "lordship" in the domain of Aristotelian thought. Abelard's own teacher was the philosophically acute Anselm whose instruction was a staple in Roman Catholic higher education...

— Prof. Daniel Robinson, from The Reappearance of Experimental Science

Note that the Anselm mentioned above is not St. Anslem (ca.1033-21 April, 1109), the Benedictine monk and Doctor of the Church.

From Abelard, we move on to Robert Grosseteste, who served as Bishop of Lincoln and was influential as a scholar in the fields of philosophy and theology. In a DCMission video (available here), we have presented a brief consideration of his accomplishments in the field of natural philosophy. Grosseteste leads us then to his student Roger Bacon, a Franciscan whose Opus Majus covered a wide range of topics, including the Scriptures, moral philosophy, mathematics, optics, and others.

Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253)

Roger Bacon (1214-1294): Statue at the Oxford University Museum

Click Here to Play Audio Clip

Let me return to the thirteenth century when, again, thanks very much to Islamic commentaries on Hellenic texts, the West begins to recover Aristotle the natural scientist and sees in these Aristotelian works the possibility for genuinely progressive knowledge. Two figures of immense importance are found at the already thriving University of Oxford: both members of the Catholic clergy and both among the most instructed minds of their century. In Robert Grosseteste, the bishop of Lincoln, we find a scholar as much at home with optics as with theology. His dates are 1175 to 1253. His commentaries on Aristotle were authoritative well into the sixteenth century. Significantly, in addition to commentaries on the ethical treatises, he also studied and wrote on Aristotle's Physics. And by the time of his death, he had created at Oxford an interest in science in which his young student, Roger Bacon, would come to call experimental science. Now, Roger Bacon's great work, his Opus Majus, is one of the foundational works in the modern scientific movement.

— Prof. Daniel Robinson, from The Reappearance of Experimental Science

Robinson's mention here of the Islamic philosophers' roles in the study of the ancient Greeks is worth highlighting, as such points in the history of philosophy indicate the importance of Islamic thinkers oppose popular trends among Christians that attempt to cast Islam as an intrinsically anti-intellectual religion. The works of such Islamic thinkers such as Avicenna and Averroes are discussed briefly by Fr. Frederick Copleston, S.J. in Volume 2 of his well-known series, A History of Philosophy. Note that these Islamic figures by themselves offer evidence against the Conflict Thesis, in that thinkers such as a Avicenna and Averroes, while not Christian, are reported to have conducted studies into the natural sciences, while at the same time being religious men.

Robinson goes on to quote an excerpt from Roger Bacon's Opus Majus which highlights the fundamental importance of experience in the pursuit of Truth. We see here that the foundations for the experimental study of nature are being further developed. Note well that, although he lived 1600 years before, we see the influence of Aristotle at play here as Bacon is laying these foundations.


Click Here to Play Audio Clip

Aristotle had taught that "proof is reasoning that causes us to know," and Bacon understood that this required as a proviso that the proof is accompanied by its appropriate experience and is not to be understood as the bare proof of a syllogism. Thus he says, "He, therefore, who wishes to rejoice without doubt in regard to the truth's underlying phenomenon must know how to devote himself to experiment." What an incredible statement of purpose. What a pedagogically rich, instructive, guiding precept [from Roger Bacon's Opus Majus, ca. 1267]."

— Prof. Daniel Robinson, from The Reappearance of Experimental Science

Following Roger Bacon, we encounter Duns Scotus (ca.1266-1308). Scotus was born around the time that Bacon's Opus Majus was authored, and we see that he picks up where Bacon left off in the emphasis of the role of experience in the acquisition of knowledge. As a component of Scotus's contributions, Robinson mentions his recognition of the use of inductive reasoning in the process of cultivating order within experience-based knowledge.


Bl. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308)
It is worth noting that, within Catholic contexts, I suspect that one is more likely to hear the name of Bl. John Duns Scotus, O.F.M. (beatified by Bl. John Paul II in 1993) mentioned not as a precursor to modern experimental inquiry, but rather for this Franciscan's indispensable contributions to Catholic Mariology. On this point, the Catholic Encyclopedia at NewAdvent.org states the following:

The famous Duns Scotus (d. 1308) at last (in III Sent., dist. iii, in both commentaries) laid the foundations of the true doctrine so solidly and dispelled the objections in a manner so satisfactory, that from that time onward the doctrine prevailed. He showed that the sanctification after animation — sanctificatio post animationem — demanded that it should follow in the order of nature (naturae) not of time (temporis); he removed the great difficulty of St. Thomas showing that, so far from being excluded from redemption, the Blessed Virgin obtained of her Divine Son the greatest of redemptions through the mystery of her preservation from all sin.

— Catholic Encyclopedia, from the article "Immaculate Conception"

Returning to Robinson and his thoughts on Scotus:


Click Here to Play Audio Clip

The great medieval Christian philosopher Duns Scotus put the case in yet another way. "As for what is known by experience, I have this to say. Even though a person does not experience every single individual, but only a great many - nor does he experience them at all times, but only frequently - still, he knows infallibly that it is always this way and holds for all instances." Now, you know what he's getting at here, don't you? This is a forerunner of what is now called the "frequentest probability approach (probabilistic knowledge)," establishing an inductive inference as a permissible mode of knowledge. Once you've sampled a number of cases and you see that things work out - remember Aristotle's hôs epi to poly: "by and large," "for the most part," "in general" - well, you don't have to wait for an infinite time to consult every single instance. By inference - by logical inference - by a plausible, rational mode of thought - you can lay claim to understanding how this will be under all circumstances, no matter how many times it's sampled.

— Prof. Daniel Robinson, from The Reappearance of Experimental Science

Robinson goes on to explicate how Scotus's emphasis on inductive reasoning played such an important role in the intellectual developments within the studies of nature in the following centuries. He goes so far as to say that we are seeing through Scotus an "actual philosophy of science" beginning to appear, along with a "justification for experimental science itself."


Click Here to Play Audio Clip

Put another way, in the words of Duns Scotus again, "Whatever occurs in a great many instances by a cause that is not free is the natural effect of that cause. This proposition is known to the intellect even if derived from erring senses." You see what's going on here. There is an actual philosophy of science being developed in these texts. Here's a justification for experimental science itself - a justification if I ever saw one. What the proposition is is this. You take a fairly large sample. You see what the general pattern of outcomes is. You have every right to conclude by inference that there is a general law controlling these things. You know that you can't observe every event for all time to come. Nonetheless, your knowledge is infallible when the pattern is so securely repeated a given number of times.

— Prof. Daniel Robinson, from The Reappearance of Experimental Science

To conclude his thoughts on these men, Robinson ends with a point that, to many today, could very well come as a bit shocking. This work by the Christian Scholastics -- which prefigured the experimental sciences -- at this time in history did not occur in spite of their faith, but because of it. The reasons for this takes us all the way back to beginning of Genesis itself. The creation gives insight into the creator. The depths of the mysteries within the natural world are seemingly impenetrable, but the intelligibility of these mysteries tell man something about himself and his own rationality. Through an increase in his knowledge about the natural world and the resulting increase in knowledge of his own nature, man - being made in God's image - discovers something about God Himself.

Click Here to Play Audio Clip

Duns Scotus, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon: they're defending a mode of thought in the Scholastic period that is characteristic of that period, though also original and groundbreaking. There's something quite commonsensical about it all, even amidst the analytical rigor and the formal arguments. This comes about, in a very considerable measure, as a result of Christian teaching itself: the requirement that we know God through His creation; an inquiry into our own nature, because by way of imago dei, to know oneself is to know something of God. So, again, this is not an age hostile to the senses, indifferent to experimental modes of inquiry.

— Prof. Daniel Robinson, from The Reappearance of Experimental Science

Now, lest Christians become too proud of this heritage, it is important to note that the aforementioned Islamic thinker Averroes in the 12th century is reported to have held an interest in the sciences, such as astronomy, for example. And of Avicenna before him, even in the first millennium, it has been said that "before he was sixteen he had mastered what was to be learned of physics, mathematics, logic, and metaphysics; at the age of sixteen he began the study and practice of medicine..." (from the Catholic Encyclopedia article "Avicenna"). Having been men with interests also in theology, it would seem to make sense to speculate that they understood this connection between inquiry into the natural world and knowledge of the Creator. Here we have further evidence which works contrary to the anti-religious sentiments expressed by those subscribing to the Conflict Thesis.

Avicenna (980-1037)

Averroes (1126-1198): Pictured reading over the shoulder of Pythagoras (ca.570 - ca.495 B.C.) in Raphael's The School of Athens (1511)

Born around the same time as Roger Bacon was a man who was to become one of the greatest minds in history, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a Dominican and Doctor of the Church. His teacher, St. Albert the Great (ca.1206-1280) - also a Dominican Doctor of the Church - was a great thinker in his own right. His Opera Omnia (available online here), which is a compilation of his written works, consists, in one translation, of thirty-eight volumes and covers a multitude of topics including theology, philosophy, the physical sciences, psychology, anthropology, and many others. In Prof. Robinson's lecture, Scholasticism and the Theory of Natural Law, he offers us an eloquent introduction to Thomas and Albert.

Click Here to Play Audio Clip

Thomas Aquinas, Tommaso d'Aquino, the famous and great Doctor of the Church. The great thirteenth-century Dominican figure whose Scholastic philosophy continues to dominate thought within the overall religious philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. He was a prolific writer. He was not, however, the most promising of students. At least legend has it that he was a large and rather lumbering chap called by his classmates, "the Dumb Ox," and his celebrated teacher, Albertus Magnus, was persuaded that when that ox started making sounds, the entire world would quake. And in this, Albertus Magnus was correct - in this and in many other things.

— Prof. Daniel Robinson, from Scholasticism and the Theory of Natural Law

St. Albertus Magnus (1193/1206–1280)
It is worth noting that when one looks a bit deeper into Albert's works, he might come to see an influence from none other than Avicenna, the Islamic polymath mentioned earlier. The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us:

A favourite principle of Avicenna, which is quoted not only by Averroes but also by the Schoolmen [i.e. the Scholastics], and especially by St. Albert the Great, was intellectus in formis agit universalitatem, that is, the universality of our ideas is the result of the activity of the mind itself.

— Catholic Encyclopedia, from the article "Avicenna"

This brings us, then, to St. Thomas Aquinas himself. Allow me to illustrate the supreme dignity of St. Thomas anecdotally. I was visiting a Dominican convent recently, and I noticed a painting of a Dominican standing at the foot of the Cross. I asked one of the sisters, "Is that St. Thomas?" She responded, "No, it is St. Dominic [i.e. the founder of the Dominican Order] -- but he would have no problem with you mistaking him for St. Thomas." Hence, one cannot overestimate the rank of St. Thomas within the Dominican tradition. What Robinson will illustrate to us now is that neither can one overestimate the rank of Aristotle within the works of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Click Here to Play Audio Clip

Now, Thomas Aquinas's deep and enduring respect for Aristotle has him invariably referring to Aristotle not by name, but simply as "the philosopher": Aristotle as a philosophical guide and often, but not always, a philosophical authority. Recall that Thomas Aquinas is going to become Saint Thomas Aquinas. He's a Dominican priest. His mission in life is service to the Church. What he's attempting to get right is the spiritual dimension of human life; the obligations we have to God: conducting our lives in such way as to be worthy of the salvation secured through the death of Jesus Christ. So this is not someone seeking tenure in a philosophy department, and he certainly isn't going to settle, once and for all, for the philosophical musings - no matter how deep and penetrating they might be - of a pagan philosopher who died in the fourth century BC. To make the point briefly, then, I should say, we don't want to read Thomistic philosophy as a gloss on Aristotelianism. The stakes are different, and the stakes - at least for Thomas Aquinas - are much higher.

— Prof. Daniel Robinson, from Scholasticism and the Theory of Natural Law

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.): As depicted in Raphael's The School of Athens

And this brings us to the end of our journey through the High Middle Ages. We've met several monumental minds from Christianity and Islam who were forerunners to the great founders of modern science. All along the way, we've seen the influence of a man who, although he lived about 1500 years earlier, played an undeniable role in the intellectual lives of each of these men. The spirit of each is, in a real sense, present with us today in a world enriched with scientific inquiry. But the question for us remains: how will Aristotle, the great "philosophical guide," affect each of our lives?

Pax Christi Vobiscum,
Patrick
Laetare Sunday
Dominica IV in Quadragesima
Feast of the Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste
On the Date of the Dedication of Our Lady, Help of Christians Parish in Huntsville, Alabama, by Most Rev. Robert Baker, Bishop of Birmingham



My Meeting with Dominican Sisters at the
2012 March for Life, Washington, D.C.

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Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste († 320).

According to St. Basil [ca.329-379], forty soldiers who had openly confessed themselves Christians were condemned by the prefect to be exposed naked upon a frozen pond near Sebaste on a bitterly cold night, that they might freeze to death.

Domina Nostra, Auxilium Christianorum
et Quadrāgintā Sānctī Martyrēs, orate pro nobis.

A Secular Interpretation of Thomas's "Palea"

Nov. 15 will be the feast of St. Albert the Great: Bishop, Doctor of the Church, and patron of scientists. Of all the monumental achievements of Albertus Magnus, arguably one of the greatest was his mentorship of St. Thomas Aquinas, another Dominican Doctor who has been described as one of the greatest minds in the history of the Church.

It is perhaps worth the time of every individual interested in the pursuit of the examined life to reflect on one oft-told story of Thomas regarding an event near the end of his life. It is said that, following a profound interior experience, he stepped away from his authorship of the Summa Theologica. When asked to continue his work, he refused, replying to his comrade, "I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me" ("mihi videtur ut palea"). His life on Earth would expire without his ever completing the Summa.

In my experience, two interpretations of Thomas's statement seem most prominent. The first might be called the skeptic's interpretation. This interpretation suggests that through his experience, Thomas somehow came to the realization of the truth that the god on which all of his writings were founded was, in fact, non-existent. Hence, his statement that his writings were "straw" is taken by the skeptic to mean that all of his efforts had been completely in vain.

The next interpretation might be called the interpretation of the faithful Catholic. This interpretation states that in his experience, Thomas caught for just a brief instant the image of God with whom he was destined to dwell upon passing to eternal life. Just this brief glimpse of God was enough to reveal to him that his works - monumental as they were - were, in comparison to this glimpse, nothing more than "straw."

I surmise that many men of much greater erudition than I have supported one or the other of these interpretations, so I will not try to make a case here for either. However, recently, I came across a third interpretation by Prof. Daniel Robinson that is worth considering. I've listened to many lectures by Prof. Robinson, and in none of them does he affiliate himself with any religion. He has, in fact, directed harsh criticisms toward Catholicism in particular: perhaps the most stern criticism being that of Her dealings with the Malleus Maleficarum in the fifteenth century. Anyhow, in what might be called the secular interpretation, Robinson asks us to "step out of the context of religion itself and just consider the man Thomas Aquinas." This perspective affords Robinson the opportunity to provide a reflection that will likely be edifying for proponents of either of the previous interpretations.


"Well, never before or since would there be so complete a faith in an age hosting such extraordinary intellects. It is quite remarkable, I mean, if you step back, and, in fact, step out of the context of religion itself and just consider the man Thomas Aquinas. This is a towering intellect: the author of still-to-be-translated hundreds of thousands of words of rich philosophy, logic, ethics, etc. An instructed mind, a mind fashioned by the best productions of the classical world, and a mind that, at the end of the day, turns itself away from scholarship, from writing - comes out of a chapel toward the end of his life, reflecting on everything he had put in print or put to paper, saying that, 'It was pointless - it was just like sand, do you see?' That is, one who thinks so deeply and so persistently on the meaning of life: a life - an examined life, and examined at such depth and with such sincerety and purpose and gratitude as to find words incapable of expressing truths that somehow and otherwise are known by the grace of God. This is a tradition put in place where the intellectual foundations of the faith are thick and firm and, I should say, even into the twenty-first century, durable. A great figure in a great age: Thomas Aquinas.

...not a bad lawyer, either." ~Daniel Robinson.

Sancte Alberte Magne (c.1206-1280) et Sancte Thoma de Aquino (c.1227-1274), orate pro nobis.

DCMission Video: Liberation from Ignorance: Science vs. Religion, Nicole Oresme

The Problems with Ecclesio-Nihilism

"He must increase, I must decrease." ~St. John the Baptist.

One may come to the arguably reasonable conclusion that our existence in this world is really nothing. This is not to say that each of us is merely a grain of sand in the seemingly infinite cosmos - but that we really are nothing. However, in disagreement with this, one could with good reason present his successful career, his stellar academic record, or the endearing words of his significant other as clear evidence of the meaningfulness of his life. But when gazing in adoration at our Lord during the elevation, contemplating the prayers of St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many others over the centuries in their preparation for receiving Him, whom could we convince that we really are something? It would seem to me easy to convince ourselves that we are, in truth, nothing.

One might then convince himself that his being misled into believing that he was something is primarily the fault of the secular culture. It is the fault, he might say, of those in the mainstream of society who, in rejection of the transcendent, portray happiness as something attained through egocentrism and rebellion against any system of morality imposed upon them, who are guilty of fooling us into thinking that we could find meaning in our lives completely on our own.

There are two problems I see with the nihilistic view and this claim regarding its roots. The first is that it is clear that our society - which would include those groups who adhere to no particular religion - is not completely devoid of the sense that we really are in need of something outside of ourselves - namely, something other than nutritional sustenance. A faculty member at Wellesley High, a public school in Massachusetts, recently gave an address that expressed clearly the importance of our acknowledging our minuteness in the grand scheme (link). We can also see an acknowledgement of this truth clearly in the lives of countless other individuals: in the soldier who gives his life for his nation, in the parent who lives out his entire life in the service of his family, and in the mother who carries and sustains her child for nine months in her womb.

So, it would be a caricature to say that the secular society is completely out of touch. To address society in such a way would be a distortion of the truth of the situation. To gain perspective, we could consider that there may be a number of statue-worshipping, pagan individuals who claim to be Christian, but it is obvious that it would be unfair for anyone to speak as if all Christians were this way. In reality, there are competing, mutually exclusive worldviews that are subsisting within society. No one group of people embodies perfectly one or another of these worldviews. Here, we are perhaps getting at what people speak of when they talk of spiritual warfare. It is a battle taking place within and outside each one of us, and the only reasonable response to such a dire situation is a life of prayer, seeking mercy, and repentance from sin.

The next problem with the nihilistic view is that, strictly speaking, we aren't really nothing. After all, we exist, don't we? To speak more precisely, we should instead say, then, that we are just virtually nothing. However, to ensure an accurate perspective on this, let us imagine a picture of all people who have ever lived, are now living, and ever will live, appearing on a standard 1680x1050 monitor. If one were to look for himself in such an image, he could realize in short time that he is much smaller than even a single pixel. Hence, we are virtually nothing. So close to nothing we are, in fact, that one might even be justified in making the claim that we are nothing. The more that one grasps this and attempts to deal with it on his own, the more he might be drawn to self-destructive habits. Do we have the courage to place instead our trust in our Lord, and turn to him during the great "Hoc est enim corpus meum"? How does one find the courage to approach Him in whom we find all that sustains us? We find part of the answer by looking around at our fellow congregants in the Mass and thanking God for them: the parents, the children, the religious, etc. Their very presence might speak to us, "We know. We are virtually nothing. It is only by receiving Him into our lives that we have hope." We look to the priest: at his life and in his prayers. It may seem impossible to approach our Lord, but we don't have to ask the priest the question, "How?" He tells us in the thrice-spoken "Domine non sum dignus." We listen also to the voices of the Saints, echoing throughout the centuries:

"He must increase, I must decrease."

June 24 is the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, prophet and martyr.