tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47320730284301513652024-03-13T04:06:26.058-07:00St. Thomas Aquinas"The pursuit of wisdom especially joins man to God in friendship."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger383125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-27792107945214415002019-06-22T01:13:00.001-07:002019-06-22T01:15:35.637-07:00Dawson: Humanism and the New Order<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
(The eminent historian Christopher H. Dawson's explanation of humanisn adds further light to Maritain's view in the previous post.)<br />
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"THE Renaissance has its beginnings in the self-discovery, the self-realization and self-exaltation of Man. Medieval man had attempted to base his life on the supernatural. His ideal of knowledge was not the adventurous quest of the human mind exploring its own kingdom; it was an intuition of the eternal verities which is itself an emanation from the Divine Intellect─<i>irradiatio et participatio primae lucis.</i> The men of the Renaissance, on the other hand, turned away from the eternal and the absolute to the world of nature and human experience. They rejected their dependence on the supernatural, and vindicated their independence and supremacy in the temporal order. But thereby they were gradually led by an internal process of logic to criticize the principles of their own knowledge and to lose confidence in their own freedom. The self-affirmation of man gradually led to the denial of the spiritual foundations of his freedom and knowledge. This tendency shows itself in every department of modern thought. In philosophy, it leads from the dogmatic rationalism of Descartes and the dogmatic empiricism of Locke to the radical skepticism of Hume and the subjectivism of later German thought. Reason is gradually stripped of its prerogatives until nothing is left to it but the bare "as if" of Vaihinger."<br />
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~Christopher H. Dawson: <i>Christianity and the New Age,</i> Chap. I ─ Humanism and the New Order. (1931)<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-87286229049640408462019-06-22T01:00:00.003-07:002019-06-22T01:00:28.688-07:00Maritain: Humanisn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"THE DEBATE that divides our contemporaries and that compels us all to make an election is between two conceptions of humanism: a "theocentric" conception, which is the Christian conception; and an "anthropocentric" conception, which has its first origins in the Spirit of the Renaissance. The first conception may be described as authentic humanism; the second conception may be called inhuman humanism."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~Jacques Maritain: <i>Freedom in the Modern World.</i></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-71883732194489198362019-06-10T21:49:00.001-07:002019-06-10T21:49:17.880-07:00The Holy Ghost Himself is Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"The Holy Ghost is said to be the bond of the Father and Son, inasmuch as He is Love; because, since the Father loves Himself and the Son with one Love, and conversely, there is expressed in the Holy Ghost, as Love, the relation of the Father to the Son, and conversely, as that of the lover to the beloved. But from the fact that the Father and the Son mutually love one another, it necessarily follows that this mutual Love, the Holy Ghost, proceeds from both. As regards origin, therefore, the Holy Ghost is not the medium, but the third person in the Trinity; whereas as regards the aforesaid relation He is the bond between the two persons, as proceeding from both."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: "Summa Theologica," I, q. 37, a. 1, ad 3.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-50342928989241598632019-06-10T21:42:00.002-07:002019-06-10T21:42:48.385-07:00Blessed Trinity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">℘ "The manner whereby God is in Himself as known in knower is described by the terms "generation," "father," "son," "word," all of which imply a special likeness. But the manner whereby God is in Himself as beloved in lover is described by the terms "breath" or "spirit": in this sense the Creed bids us believe in the Spirit."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">─ "Compendium of Theology," 46.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">℘ "The term "procession" within the Blessed Trinity signifies a coming forth from a principle and not necessarily a going out to an object, though the coming forth of the Holy Spirit, a coming forth of love, does imply a going out to another, namely to the beloved. And because the eternal comings forth are the cause and type of all creation, so it is that the begetting of the Son is the exemplar of all making, and the Father's loving of the Son is the exemplar of all granting of love to creatures. Hence the Holy Spirit Who is the love whereby the Father loves the Son, is also the love whereby the Father loves creatures and imparts to them his goodness."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">─ "Commentary on the Sentences," 1, 14, 1, 1.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">℘ "The divine nature is really and entirely identical with each of the three persons, all of whom can therefore be called one: 'I and the Father are one' (Jn. 10:30)."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">─ "Disputations concerning the Union of the Word Incarnate," 2.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~St. Thomas Aquinas</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Artwork: Disputation on the Trinity, by Andrea del Sarto. Oil on wood, A.D. 1517; Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence)</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-19853929890618589682019-05-19T03:55:00.001-07:002019-05-19T04:01:11.917-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
GOD AND SCIENCE<br />
Jacques Maritain<br />
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Preliminary Remarks<br />
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In the realm of culture science now holds sway over human civilization. But at the same time science has, in the realm of the mind, entered a period of deep and fecund trouble and self-examination. Scientists have to face the problem of over-specialization, and a general condition of permanent crisis which stems from an extraordinarily fast swarming of discoveries and theoretical renewals, and perhaps from the very approach peculiar to modern science. They have, in general, got rid of the idea that it is up to science to organize human life and society, and to supersede ethics and religion by providing men with the standards and values on which their destiny depends. Finally—and this is the point with which I am especially concerned in this essay—the cast of mind of scientists regarding religion and philosophy, as it appeared in the majority of them a century ago, has now profoundly changed.<br />
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There are, no doubt, atheists among scientists, as there are in any other category of people; but atheism is not regarded by them as required by science. The old notion of a basic opposition between science and religion is progressively passing away. No conflict between them is possible, Robert Williken declared. In many scientists there is an urge either toward more or less vague religiosity or toward definite religious faith; and there in an urge, too, toward philosophical unification of knowledge. But the latter urge still remains, more often than not, imbued with a kind of intellectual ambiguity.<br />
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No wonder, then, that the subject with which we are dealing—what is the relation of modern science to man's knowledge of God—demands a rather delicate, sometime complicated, analysis. In order to clear the ground, I shall begin with a few observations concerning the characteristic approach and way of knowledge peculiar to science as it has developed since post-Renaissance and post-Cartesian times, and become in our day, through an effort of reflection upon its own procedures, more and more explicitly aware of itself.<br />
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I don't disregard the differences in nature which separate physics from other sciences like biology or anthropology for instance. Yet physics is the queen of modern sciences, which, even when they cannot be perfectly mathematized, tend to resemble physics to one degree or another. So it is that for the sake of brevity I shall, while speaking of modern science, have modern physics especially in view.<br />
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Modern science has progressively "freed" or separated itself from philosophy (more specifically from the philosophy of nature) thanks to mathematics—that is to say by becoming a particular type of knowledge whose data are facts drawn by our senses or instruments from the world of nature, but whose intelligibility is mathematical intelligibility. As a result, the primary characteristic of the approach to reality peculiar to science may therefore be described in the following way: that which can be observed and measured, and the ways through which observation and measurement are to be achieved, and the more or less unified mathematical reconstruction of such data, these things alone have a meaning for the scientist as such.<br />
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The field of knowledge particular to science is therefore limited to experience (as Kant understood the word). And when the basic notions that science uses derive from concepts traditionally used by common sense and philosophy, such as the notions of nature, matter, or causality, these basic notions are recast and restricted by science, so as to apply only to the field of experience and observable phenomena, understood and expressed in a certain set of mathematical signs. Thus it is that physicists may construct the concept of antimatter, for example, which has a meaning for them, but neither for the layman nor for the philosopher.<br />
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The expression "science of phenomena" is currently employed to designate our modern sciences. Such an expression is valid only if we realize, on the one hand, that the phenomena in question are (especially as far as physics is concerned) mathematized phenomena, and, on the other hand, that they are not an object separate from, but an aspect of that reality in se which is Nature. Let us say that science is a genuine, though oblique, knowledge of nature; it attains reality, but in its phenomenal aspect (in other words, in the aspect of reality which is definable through observation and measurement), and by the instrumentality of entities, especially mathematical entities, which may be "real" and relate to what Aristotelian realism called "quantity" as an accident of material substance, or may be purely ideal entities (entia rationis) and mere symbols grounded on data of observation and measurement.<br />
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Such ideal entities are the price paid for a tremendous privilege, namely the mathematical reconstruction of the data of experience. I observed a moment ago that modern science has freed itself from philosophy thanks to mathematics. At first mathematics were used by the sciences of nature in the framework of sense experience only. It has happened, however, that for more than a century mathematics themselves, starting with non-Euclidian geometries, have been breaking loose, more definitely and more completely than before, from the world of experience, and insisting on the possibility of developing—in the realm of merely logical or ideal being (ens rationis)—an infinite multiplicity of demonstrably consistent systems based on freely chosen and utterly opposed "axioms" or postulates. Consequently the science of phenomena (particularly physics) became able to pick out among various possible mathematical languages or conceptualizations, which make sense only to the mathematician, and deal with entities existing only within the mind, the one most appropriate to a given set of phenomena (while other sets of phenomena may be made mathematically intelligible through quite another conceptualization). So it is that from the point of view of common sense everything in the world capsizes in the highest and most comprehensive theories of contemporary physics as in Chagall's pictures. Modern science of phenomena has its feet on earth and uses its hands to gather not only correctly observed and measured facts, but also a great many notions and explanations which offer our minds real entities; yet it has its head in a mathematical heaven, populated with various crowds or signs and merely ideal, even not intuitively thinkable entities.<br />
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These ideal entities constructed by the mind are symbols which enable science to manipulate the world while knowing it as unknown, for then, in those higher regions where creative imagination is more at work than classical induction, science is only intent on translating the multifarious observable aspects of the world into coherent systems of signs.<br />
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The fact remains that the prime incentive of the scientist is the urge to know reality. Belief in the existence of the mysterious reality of the universe precedes scientific inquiry in the scientist's mind; and a longing (possibly more or less repressed) to attain this reality in its inner depths is naturally latent in him.<br />
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But as a scientist his knowledge is limited to a mathematical (or quasi-mathematical) understanding and reconstruction of the observable and measurable aspects of nature taken in their inexhaustible detail.<br />
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"Exclusive" scientists and "liberal" scientists<br />
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Now a distinction must be made between two categories of scientists, whom I would like to call, on the one hand, exclusive scientists, and, on the other hand, liberal scientists. This distinction has nothing to do with science itself, for in both categories men endowed with the highest scientific capacities can be found; but it is quite important from the point of view of culture.<br />
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"Exclusive" scientists are systematically convinced that science is the only kind of genuine rational knowledge of which man is capable. For them nothing can be known to human reason except through the means and intellectual equipment of science. Exclusive scientists may be of positivist persuasion, and consequently reject any religious belief, save perhaps some kind of mythically constructed atheistic religion, like Auguste Comte's religion of humanity, which its high priest conceived of as a "positive regeneration of fetishism," or like Julian Huxley's "religion without revelation," which mistakes itself for a product of the "scientific method." Or they may shun positivist prohibitions, and superadd to scientific knowledge of a genuine, even deep religious faith, but which supposedly belongs to the world of feeling and pure irrationality. In no case is it possible, in their eyes, to establish the existence of God with rational certainty.<br />
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To tell the truth, the assertion that there is no valid rational knowledge except that of observable and measurable phenomena is self-destructive (it itself is quite another thing than a mere expression of inter-related phenomena). No wonder, consequently, that in contradistinction to exclusive scientists, "liberal" scientists are ready to look for a rational grasping of things which passes beyond phenomena, and even (when they are perfectly liberal scientists—I think for instance of an eminent chemist like Sir Hugh Taylor, or an eminent physicist like Leon Brillouin) to admit the necessity of philosophy and of a properly philosophical equipment in order to make such grasping feasible, and so to complement the knowledge of nature provided by the sciences.<br />
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Nothing is more rational than the kind of extension of Niels Bohr's "principle of complementarity" implied by the cast of mind of these scientists. For, thus extended, this principle means simply that in two different fields of knowledge, or at two specifically distinct levels in our approach to reality, two different aspects in existing things (the phenomenal and the ontological aspect) call for two different explanations (for instance "Man's cerebral activity is stimulated by such or such chemical" and "Man has a spiritual soul")—which are moreover perfectly compatible, wince they have to do with two essentially diverse objects to be grasped in things (so the medical approach to a person as a patient and the aesthetic approach to the same person as a poet are both distinct and compatible).<br />
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Einstein belonged to the category of liberal scientists. For many years his notion of God was akin to that of Spinoza. Yet, as recent studies on him have shown, he came, with the progress of age and reflection, to consider the existence of that personal God whom he first doubted as required by the way in which nature lends itself to the rationalization of phenomena operated by science. As he said in an interview in 1950, far from being an atheist he "believed on the contrary in a personal God." Such a conviction meant in no way that the existence of God was supposedly a conclusion established by science, or a principle of explanation used by it. It meant that the existence of God is a conclusion philosophically established with regard to the very possibility of science.<br />
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Heisenberg and Oppenheimer are also liberal scientists. And so was, at least virtually, Max Planck, though it was under the cloak of science that every bit of philosophizing effort in him was concealed. He believed in an "all-powerful intelligence which governs the universe," but not in a personal God, and he thought that we could and should "identify with each other . . . the order<br />
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of the universe which is implied by the sciences of nature and the God whom religion holds to exist." Such statements definitely transcend the field of experience and measurable data, though they remain inherently ambiguous: for how could an all-powerful reason govern the universe if it were not personal? And the God whom religion holds to exist is a transcendent God, who causes the order of the universe, but his philosophical "identification" with this order would make him co-substantial with the world, as the God of the Stoics was.<br />
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Such intellectual ambiguity is not infrequent, I have already mentioned the fact. Let us consider it now a little more closely. I would say that the ambiguity In question is essential in exclusive scientists so far as they take a stop outside science itself. They emphatically deny the validity of any kind of rational knowledge of reality which is not science itself. As a result, if they are not of positivist persuasion, and do not think that all we can know is phenomena alone, in other words, if, recognising that phenomena are but an aspect of a deeper reality, they endeavor to go beyond phenomena, they do so through an extrapolation of scientific notions which, brilliant as it may be, is essentially arbitrary; or looking for a "noetic-integrator" they borrow it from some kind of metaphysics unaware of itself and disguised as science—and there is no worse metaphysics than disguised metaphysics.<br />
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As regards liberal scientists the picture is basically different. I would say that the ambiguity we are discussing can still most often be found in them, but as something accidental, not essential to their cast of mind; so that, as a matter of fact, there are good grounds to hope that more and more of them will, in the process of time, free themselves from it—when philosophers will become more intent on meditating on the sciences and learning their languages, and scientists more familiar with the approach and language of philosophy (each one realizing at the same time that the language or languages of the others are valid instruments only for the others' work).<br />
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If a liberal scientist undertakes to go beyond the horizons of science and tackle the philosophical aspects of reality, he too is liable to yield to the temptation of making the concepts worked out by science into the very components of his meta-scientific enterprise. The trouble is that one can no more philosophize with non-philosophical instruments than paint with a flute or a piano.<br />
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But such a state of affairs is only a side-effect of the fact that scientists, however liberal, are prone,, as everybody is, to overvalue the intellectual equipment they have tested in their particular field, and in the handling of which they have full competence. Liberal scientists do not, for all that, systematically deny the validity of another, perhaps more appropriate intellectual equipment; they are aware, moreover of the philosophical nature of their own effort of reflection upon science and its procedures; and by the very fact they are, at least implicitly, prepared to recognize the rights of that purely or genuinely philosophical approach in which they, still often hesitate to put their own trust. That is why the ambiguity of the way in which many of them go in for philosophy is accidental ambiguity.<br />
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Furthermore, being accidental, such ambiguity can be removed; the best proof of this is the fact that in actual existence it has been most explicitly removed in some scientists who, when it comes to philosophical matters, do not mind using themselves the strict philosophical approach. At this point I am thinking in particular of the Epilogue which the distinguished physiologist Andrew Ivy wrote for the book "the Evidence of God," in which he insists that God's existence can be rationally demonstrated with absolute certainty. Though a professional philosopher would probably have added a few considerations on knowledge through analogy and the non-restricted value of the notion of cause, these pages written by a scientist are, as they stand, a remarkable piece of philosophy which enters with perfect intellectual frankness and with the appropriate intellectual equipment a sphere inaccessible to the instruments of science, and which gives to a truth intuitively known to the intellect like the principle of causality its full ontological bearing, so as to recognize the necessity of a Prime Cause that absolutely transcends the whole field of experience.<br />
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The crucial question<br />
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The crucial question for our age of culture is, thus, whether reality can be approached and known, not only "phenomenally" by science, but also "ontologically" by philosophy.<br />
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This question is still more crucial for the common man than for the scientist. For the impact of the habits of thinking prevalent in an industrial civilization, in which manipulation of the world through science and technique plays the chief part, results in a loss of the sense of being in the minds of a large number of people, who are not scientists but grant rational value to facts and figures only. Whereas exclusive scientists know at least what science is and what its limitations are, the people of whom I an speaking have no experience of science, and they believe all the more naively that science is the only valid rational approach to reality, nay more, that science has all the rational answers which human life can need.<br />
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Consequently, any rational knowledge of God's existence—either pre-philosophical (by the simple natural use of reason) or philosophical (by the use of reason trained in philosophical disciplines)—is a dead letter as far an they are concerned.<br />
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Persons whose intellect has shrunk in this way may adhere to some religious creed and have a religious belief in God—either as a gift of divine grace, or as a response to irrational needs or as a result of their adjustment to a given environment. But they are atheists as far as reason in concerned.<br />
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Such a situation is utterly abnormal. Religious faith is above reason, but normally presupposed the rational conviction of God's existence.<br />
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At this point we must lay stress on the nature of philosophy an contra-distinguished from sciences, and insist that philosophy is an autonomous discipline, which has its own instruments; so that it is not enough to add to scientific knowledge even a most intelligent philosophical reflection; the proper philosophical training and proper philosophical equipment are necessary.<br />
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Let us say that whereas science, or phenomenal knowledge, offers us, with wonderful richness paid for by revolutionary changes, coded maps of what matter and nature are as to the multifarious observable and measurable interactions which occur in them,—philosophy makes us grasp, with greater stability paid for by limitation to essentials, what things are in the intrinsic reality of their being. Though carrying common sense and the natural language to an essentially higher level, philosophy is in continuity with them, and is based on the perceptive (not only constructive) power of the intellect as well as on sense experience. In other words, being is the primary object of philosophy, as it in of human reason; and all notions worked out by philosophy are intelligible in terms of being not of observation and measurement.<br />
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As a result, we have to realize that in the very universe of experience philosophy (the philosophy of nature) deals with aspects and explanations in which science is not interested. Thus matter (that is, material substances) is composed in the eyes of old but still valid Aristotelian hylomorphism, of two elemental pure and indetermined potentiality (materia prima), and determinative form or entelechy (which, in man, is spiritual soul); whereas for science matter (or mass, that is, a given set of measurable data expressed in mathematical equations) is composed of certain particles, most of them impermanent, scrutinized by nuclear physics. And it is up to philosophy to try to bring into some sort of unity our knowledge of nature, not by making science's explanations parts of its own explanations, but by interpreting them in its own light, whether it sorts out what pertains to real though phenomenal entities from what pertains to ideal entities in scientific explanatory theories, or points out the philosophical truths (sometimes to be improved and readjusted) which have some connection with these theories, and especially with all the treasure of facts and factual assertions which is mustered and continually increased by science.<br />
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Now being is not limited to the field of sense experience; it goes beyond. And the basic concepts of reason which deal with being as such, even though they apply first to the realm of experience, can apply too—in an "analogical" manner—to realities which transcend experience. As a result philosophy (this time I don't mean the philosophy of nature, I mean metaphysics) can attain to realities which escape sense experience and sense verification, in other words which belong to the spiritual or "supra-sensible" order.<br />
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Let us remember at this point that philosophy is but a superior stage in the natural use of reason, at the level of a knowledge which is not only knowledge but wisdom, and which (in contradistinction to common sense) is critically elaborated and completely articulated. Prior to philosophy, the natural use of reason is natural in an additional sense (in the sense of untrained and merely spontaneous); with philosophy it is perfected by reflectivity, fully mature, and capable of explicit demonstration, aware of its own validity.<br />
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It is by virtue of the very nature of human reason—either untrained or philosophically perfected—that the concept of cause and the principle of causality can lead us beyond the field of experience. As Dr. Ivy has rightly pointed out, if the child uses the principle of causality in asking why things exist, he does so not by reason of the transitory peculiarities of "childish mentality," but on the contrary, because he is awakening to genuine intellectual life.<br />
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There is, thus, a pre-philosophical, simply natural knowledge of God's existence. It can be described as starting from the primordial intuition of existence, and immediately perceiving that Being-with-nothingness, or things which could possibly not be—my own being, which is liable to death—necessarily presuppose Being-without-nothingness, that is, absolute or self-subsisting Being, which causes and activates all beings. This pre-philosophical knowledge can also be described as a spontaneous application of the principle: no artifact is possible without a maker.<br />
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And there is, in the realm of metaphysical wisdom, a philosophical knowledge of God's existence, which is able fully to justify itself and uses ways of arguing that proceed with full rational rigor.<br />
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The philosophical proofs of God's existence<br />
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The "five ways" of Thomas Aquinas are the classical example of the philosophical approach to God of which I just spoke. It seems relevant to give at this point some idea of them, at least of the first and the last two.<br />
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The first way proceeds from Motion or Change, There is no fact more obvious here below than the fact of change, through which a thing becomes what it was not. But one thing can give to itself what it does not have, at least in potency, and potency cannot pass to actuation by itself alone. Everywhere where there is motion or change (even if it is self-motion as in living beings), there is something else which is causing, the change. Now if the cause in question is itself subject to change, then it in moved or activated by another agent. But it is impossible to regress from agent to agent without end; if there were not a First Agent, the reason for the action of all others would never be posited in existence. So it is necessary to stop at a Prime Cause, itself uncaused, absolutely exempt from any change for it is absolutely perfect.<br />
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In the same manner the second way, which proceeds from Efficient Causes at work in the world, and the third way, which proceeds from Contingency and Necessity in things, lead to a Prime Cause without which all other causes would neither be nor act, and which exists with absolute necessity, in the infinite transcendence of the very esse subsisting by itself.<br />
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The fourth way proceeds from the Degrees which are in things. It is a fact that there are degrees of value or perfection in things. But on the one hand wherever there are degrees it is necessary that there exist, somewhere, a supreme degree; and on the other hand one thing is good and another is better, but there can always be another still better, so that there is no supreme degree in the possible degrees of goodness or beauty, or finally being, of which things are capable. Goodness, beauty, being are not in their fulness in any one of the things we touch and see. The supreme degree of goodness of beauty, of being, exists elsewhere in a Prime Being which causes all that there is of goodness, beauty and being in things, a First Cause which does not have goodness, beauty and being, but is self-subsisting Being, Goodness and Beauty.<br />
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The fifth way proceeds from the intrinsic Order and purposeful Governance of the world. The very fact that in the material universe things are engaged in a system of stable relations and that a certain order among them exists and endures shows that they do not result from chance. A purpose in at work in that republic of natures which is the world. But such purpose cannot proceed from the things which compose the world of matter, and which are devoid of understanding. This purpose or intention must exist in an intellect on which things depend in their very essence and natural activities. Thus in the last analysis it is necessary to recognize the existence of a transcendent Intelligence, the existing of which is its very intellection, and which is the Cause of all beings.<br />
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I just summarized these ways to God in my own language and in the briefest possible fashion, leaving aside all particular examples, accidental to the demonstration, which were part of the imagery provided to Thomas Aquinas by the physics of his time.<br />
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The ways in question pertain to the philosophical order. The notion of cause has here its full ontological import, which connotes productivity in being, in contradistinction to the mere relationships between phenomena which science considers and in which a given phenomenon is a dependent variable of another. Furthermore, we are led by rational argumentation to a Prime Cause which in absolutely and infinitely transcendent, and which the very concept of cause, like that of being, of goodness, of intelligence, etc., attain only "by analogy" or in the mirror of things: what they mean in God has a proportion with respect to God similar to the proportion which what they mean in things has with respect to things; but we don't grasp it in itself. God exists as no other being exists, He is good as no other being is good, He knows and loves as no other being does...<br />
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It must be noted that considered in their very substance the "five ways' of Thomas Aquinas stand fast against any criticism. Modern philosophy has been in this connection the victim of a tragic misunderstanding. Descartes believed that from the sole idea of an infinitely, perfect being the existence of this being necessarily followed (the so-called "ontological argument"). Kant rightly stated that such "proof" was no proof at all. But he also stated—quite mistakenly—that all other proofs of God's existence implied the validity of the ontological argument and rested on it; as a result, no valid proof was possible. And Kant's successors followed on Kant's heels. Yet it is crystal clear that Thomas Aquinas' five ways do not start from the idea of an infinitely perfect being; they proceed in the opposite manner; they start from certain facts, quite general and quite undeniable; and from these facts they infer the necessary existence of a First Cause—which is infinitely perfect. Infinite perfection is at the end, not at the beginning of the demonstration.<br />
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Finally let us add that there are other ways, too, than the classical five ways. I myself have proposed a "sixth way." As a matter of fact there are for men as many ways of knowing that God exists as there are steps he may take on the earth or paths to his own heart. For all our perishable treasures of being and beauty are besieged on all sides by the immensity and eternity of the One Who Is.<br />
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Sciences as witnessing to God's existence<br />
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Among all these approaches to God, one particularly significant for the man of our present civilization is provided by science itself. The sciences of phenomena—though they remain enclosed in the field of experience—bear testimony to the existence of God in a double manner. Here, as I previously noted, it is not a question of what science itself tells us, but of the very existence and possibility of science.<br />
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In the first place: if nature were not intelligible there would be no science. Nature is not perfectly and absolutely intelligible; and the sciences do not try to come to grips with nature's intelligibility taken in itself (that's the job of philosophy). They rather reach for it in an oblique fashion, dealing with it only insofar as it is steeped in, and masked by, the observable and measurable data of the world of experience, and can be translated into mathematical intelligibility. Yet the intelligibility of nature is the very ground of those relational constancies which are the "laws"—including that category of laws which deal only with probabilities—to which science seen phenomena submitted; and it is the very ground, in particular, of the highest explanatory systems, with all the symbols, ideal entities, and code languages they employ (and with all that in them which is still incomplete, arbitrary, and puzzlingly lacking in harmony) that science constructs on observation and measurement.<br />
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Now how would things be intelligible if they did not proceed from an intelligence? In the last analysis a Prime Intelligence must exist, which is itself Intellection and Intelligibility in pure act, and which is the first principle of the intelligibility and essences of things, and causes order to exist in them, as well as an infinitely complex network of regular relationships, whose fundamental mysterious unity our reason dreams of rediscovering in its own way.<br />
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Such an approach to God's to existence is a variant of Thomas Aquinas' fifth way. Its impact was secretly present in Einstein's famous saying: "God does not play dice," which, no doubt, used the word God in a merely figurative sense, and meant only: "nature does not result from a throw of the dice," yet by the very fact implicitly postulated the existence of the divine Intellect.<br />
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But science offers us a second philosophical approach, which, this time, relates to man's intellect. The sciences of phenomena, and the manner in which they contrive ways of knowing and mastering nature—ceaselessly inveigling it into more and more precise observations and measurements, and finally catching it in sets of more and more perfectly systematized signs—give evidence, in a particularly striking manner, of the power that human intelligence puts to work in the very universe of sense experience. Now the intelligence of man—imperfect as it is, and obliged to use an irreducible multiplicity of types and perspectives of knowledge—is a spiritual activity which can neither proceed from matter nor be self-subsisting, and therefore limitless and all-knowing. It has a higher source, a certain participation in which it is. In other words, it necessarily requires the existence of a Prime, transcendent and absolutely perfect Intellige, which is pure Intellection in act and whose being is its very Intellection.<br />
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This second approach is a variant of Thomas Aquinas' fourth way.<br />
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To conclude, let us remark that our knowledge of the created world naturally reverberates in the very reverence and awe with which our reason knows the Creator, and on the very notion, deficient as it is and will ever be, that we have of His ways.<br />
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By the very fact that science enlarges our horizons with respect to this world, and makes us know better—though in an oblique way—that created reality which is the mirror in which God's perfections are analogically known, science helps our minds to pay tribute to God's grandeur.<br />
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A number of the most basic notions and explanatory theories of modern science, especially of modern physics, recoil from being translated into natural languages or from being represented in terms of the imagination. Nevertheless a certain picture of the world emerge from modern science; and this picture (unification of matter and energy, physical indeterminism, a space-time continuum which implies that space and time are not empty pre-existing forms but come to existence with things and through things; gravitational fields which by reason of the curvation of space exempt gravitation from requiring any particular force, and outwit ether and attraction; a cosmos of electrons and stars in which the stars are the heavenly laboratories of elements, a universe which is finite but whose limits cannot be attained, and which dynamically evolves toward higher forms of individuation and concentration... ) constitutes a kind of framework or imagery more suited to many positions of a sound philosophy of nature than that which was provided by Newtonian science.<br />
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Furthermore, at the core of this imagery there are a few fundamental concepts which, inherent in modern science and essential to it, have a direct impact on our philosophical view of nature.<br />
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In the first place I shall mention all the complex regularities (presupposed by statistical laws themselves), and the mixture of organization and chance, resulting in a kind of elusive, imperfectly knowable and still more striking order, that matter reveals in the world of microphysics. It make our idea of the order of nature exceedingly more refined and more astonishing. And it makes us look at the author of this order with still more admiration and natural reverence. In the Book of Job Behemoth and Leviathan were called to witness to divine omnipotence. One single atom may be called to witness too, as well as the hippopotamus and the crocodile. If the heavens declare the glory of God, so does the world of micro-particles and micro-waves.<br />
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In the second place comes the notion of evolution of the whole universe of matter, and, in particular, evolution of living organisms. Like certain most general tenets of science, evolution is less a demonstrated conclusion than a kind of primary concept which has such power in making phenomena decipherable that once expressed it became almost impossible for the scientific mind to do without it. Now if it is true that in opposition to the immobile archetypes and ever-recurrent cycles of Pagan antiquity Christianity taught men to conceive history both an irreversible and as running in a definite direction, then it may be said that by integrating in science the dimension of time and history, the idea of evolution has given to our knowledge of nature a certain affinity with what the Christian view of things is on a quite different plane. In any case, the genesis of elements and the various phases of the history of the heavens, and, in the realm of life, the historical development of an immense diversity of evolutive branches ("phyla"), all this, if it is understood in the proper philosophical perspective, presupposes the transcendent God as the prime cause of evolution,—preserving in existence created things and the impetus present in them, moving them from above so that superior forms may emerge from inferior ones, and, when man is to appear at the peak of the series of vertebrates, intervening in a special way and creating ex nihilo the spiritual and immortal soul of the first man and of every individual of the new species. Thus evolution correctly understood offers us a spectacle whose greatness and universality make the activating omnipresence of God only more tellingly sensed by our minds.<br />
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I do not believe, moreover, that science fosters a particularly optimistic view of nature. Every progress in evolution is dearly paid for; miscarried attempts, merciless struggle everywhere. The more detailed our knowledge of nature becomes, the more we see, together with the element of generosity and progression which radiates from being, the law of degradation, the powers of destruction and death, the implacable voracity which are also inherent in the world of matter. And when it comes to man, surrounded and invaded as he is by a host of warping forces, psychology and anthropology are but an account of the fact that, while being essentially superior to all of them, he is the most unfortunate of animals. So it is that when its vision of the world is enlightened by science, the intellect which religious faith perfects realizes still better that nature, however good in its own order, does not suffice, and that if the deepest hopes of mankind are not destined to turn to mockery, it is because a God-given energy better than nature is at work in us.<br />
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References<br />
<br />
Maritain, Jacques. The Degrees of Knowledge. New translation, New York: Scribner, 1959.<br />
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Schauder, Karlheinz. Weltbild und Religion bei Albert Einstein, in Frankfurter Hefte, June 1959. (Quotation taken from p. 426).<br />
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George, Andre. Autobiographie scientifique de Max Planck. Paris: Albin Michel, 1960. (Quotations taken from pp. 14, 122, 215, 217).<br />
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Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy. New York: Harper, 1958.<br />
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Oppenheimer, Robert. "The Mystery of Matter," in Adventures of the Mind. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.<br />
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The Evidence of God in an Expanding Universe, edited by John Glover Monsma, by forty American scientists (with an Epilogue by Dr. Andrew Ivy). New York: Putnam, 1958.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-59206626737038945462019-05-06T05:52:00.001-07:002019-05-06T05:56:04.706-07:00Religion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"NOW the human mind needs─if it would be united to God─the guidance of the things of sense; for as the apostle says to the Romans (1:20): "The invisible things of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." Hence in divine worship it is necessary to make use of certain corporal acts, so that by their means, as by certain signs, man's mind may be stirred up to those spiritual acts whereby it is knit to God. Consequently religion has certain interior acts which are its chief ones and which essentially belong to it; but it has also external which are secondary and which are subordinated to the interior acts."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: <i>Summa Theologica</i>, II-II, 81, 7.</span><br />
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<span style="text-align: left;">(Artwork: The Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas, by Francisco de Zurbarán. Oil on canvas, A.D. 1631; The Museum of Fine Arts, Seville.)</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-46113312655264685542019-04-10T22:54:00.002-07:002019-04-10T22:55:47.201-07:00"Is one morally obliged to pay all the taxes imposed?"<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-941240aa-7fff-393d-118c-4cd28313053c" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TAXATION</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Fr. Austin Fagothey, S.J.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE STATE has from the natural law the right to the means necessary to accomplish it's end. One of these means is revenue, and the ordinary way of raising revenue is by taxes. The state has therefore the right to tax it's citizens. But this right is not unlimited. The state has the right only to the taxes it needs or forecasts that it will need, and acts against justice by demanding more. Legislators have a strict moral obligation not to impose too heavy a tax burden on the people, and those in charge of public funds are morally accountable for their use.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is also a moral obligation to distribute the tax load as justly as possible. The only practical method is to make the taxes proportionate to the citizen's ability to pay, since there are many who not only cannot give anything but actually need help from the state. How the taxes ought to be arranged so as to fulfill the end of distributive justice is a matter for political and financial experts, and is beyond the scope of ethics as such.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the state has the right to impose taxes, the citizen has the duty to pay taxes. In exercising it's right the state must observe distributive justice; conversely, the citizen's duty to pay taxes is one of legal justice. One who is not too poor to pay some taxes yet pays none whatever is plainly failing in an important duty concerning the common good. But there are so many indirect taxes today that no one could avoid paying some taxes. Whether a man could fulfill his whole tax obligation in this way would depend on the amount and kind of his wealth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is one morally obliged to pay all the taxes imposed? If the tax is clearly unjust, there can be no moral obligation. The judgment that taxes are unjust must not be made hastily; people are always complaining about taxes even when there is no doubt of their necessity. On the other hand, the complete lack of conscience shown by too many public officials in spending the people's money makes the conviction all but inevitable that the state has not the right to all the revenue it asks. We must therefore distinguish between the duty of paying taxes in general, a real moral obligation, and the duty of paying this or that particular tax, a duty that is often not at all clear.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Are particular tax laws, then, purely penal laws? Those who reject the term entirely must give a negative answer. But those who admit purely penal laws in some sense, whether they mean only so-called laws that are mere directives or whether they mean real laws with a disjunctive obligation, consider it a solidly probable opinion that some particular tax laws are purely penal. Taxes have become too numerous and complicated for the ordinary citizen to handle, are accompanied by disproportionate penalties, and are often deducted at the source so that the citizen is not even trusted to do his duty; the state shows that it simply wants it's money and makes no appeal to the public conscience. It is therefore difficult to see a moral fault in a man who in general meets his tax obligation and supports the state, but occasionally evades a tax here and there, provided that in doing so he does not resort to such practices as lying and bribery. Conduct of this kind is certainly not recommended and a truly upright man would despise such pettifoggery.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">─<i><a href="https://amzn.to/2VGtcxS" target="_blank">Right and Reason: Ethics in Theory and Practice Based on the Teachings of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas,</a></i> Chap. 26─Civil Law. (2nd Ed. 1959. TAN Books)</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-92137834097455126742019-01-11T22:44:00.004-08:002019-01-11T22:44:35.034-08:00BLOG UPDATEREGULAR POSTING TO THIS BOG WILL RESUME WITHIN A FEW WEEKS.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-22408501203431799952018-11-20T21:51:00.004-08:002018-11-20T21:51:55.039-08:00The heretic<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"... a heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things. But if he is not obstinate, he is no longer in heresy but only in error. Therefore it is clear that such a heretic with regard to one article of faith has no faith in the other articles, but only a kind of opinion in accordance with his own will."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: <i>Summa Theologica</i>, II-II, q. 5, a. 3.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read more <u><a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3005.htm#article3" target="_blank">here</a></u></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-25010251600031266292018-11-20T21:49:00.000-08:002018-11-20T21:49:09.542-08:00"Unnatural vice"<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Whether the unnatural vice is a species of lust?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"... WHEREVER there occurs a special kind of deformity whereby the venereal act is rendered unbecoming, there is a determinate species of lust. This may occur in two ways: First, through being contrary to right reason, and this is common to all lustful vices; secondly, because, in addition, it is contrary to the natural order of the venereal act as becoming to the human race: and this is called "the unnatural vice." This may happen in several ways. First, by procuring pollution, without any copulation, for the sake of venereal pleasure: this pertains to the sin of "uncleanness" which some call "effeminacy." Secondly, by copulation with a thing of undue species, and this is called "bestiality." Thirdly, by copulation with an undue sex, male with male, or female with female, as the Apostle states (Romans 1:27): and this is called the "vice of sodomy." Fourthly, by not observing the natural manner of copulation, either as to undue means, or as to other monstrous and bestial manners of copulation."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: <i>Summa Theologica</i>, II-II, Q. 154, Art. 11.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* Read more <u><a href="http://newadvent.org/summa/3154.htm" target="_blank">here</a></u></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-68459526272766185692018-11-15T02:34:00.002-08:002018-11-15T02:34:32.271-08:00Pieper: "The wonder of this world"<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"In Hans Reichenbach's programmatic book, <i>Aufstieg der wissenschaftlichen Philosophie</i> ["The Rise of Scientific Philosophy"], we read: "The philosopher seems incapable of controlling his craving for knowledge." But is this not, we may say, an entirely appropriate observation? Our longing for knowledge is indeed beyond our control. Is this not what Plato had in mind when he compared the philosopher to the lover? The philosopher, too, is "beside himself" because he is moved to the core by the <i>mirandum</i>, the wonder of this world. We can wholeheartedly agree. What bedevils this insight, however, is the fact that Plato praises what the "scientific philosophy" rejects and disqualifies without feeling the need for further arguments: it shows a lack of discipline even to talk about things beyond our understanding!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Regarding the nature of the so-called "scientific philosophy", Pieper explains that "The most direct formulation is found in the positivist manifesto, <i>Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung</i> ["The Scientific World View"], of the early Vienna Circle: "What is, is on the surface; everything is accessible to human perception." Thus it is nonsensical so much as to search for a "root" of all things or for their "ultimate reasons". In short, that mysterious object of philosophy is nonexistent. Only the objects of science are real; they are, in strict sense and without exception, the objects of perception."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~Josef Pieper: <i>In Defense of Philosophy</i>, Ch. 1. (Ignatius Press) </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-62248784136943243022018-08-31T00:14:00.003-07:002018-08-31T00:14:35.620-07:00"An educated man"<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“EVERY systematic science, the humblest and the noblest alike, seems to admit of two kinds of proficiency; one of which may be properly called scientific knowledge of the subject, while the other is a kind of educational acquaintance with it. For an educated man should be able to form a fair off-hand judgement as to the goodness or badness of the method used by a professor in his exposition. To be educated is in fact to be able to do this; and even the man of universal education we deem to be such in virtue of his having this ability. It will, however, of course, be understood that we only ascribe universal education to one who in his own individual person is thus critical in all or nearly all branches of knowledge, and not to one who has a like ability merely in some special subject. For it is possible for a man to have this competence in some one branch of knowledge without having it in all.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~Aristotle: <i>On the Parts of Animals</i>, Book I. (639a)</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-54713550841662231862018-08-06T22:51:00.001-07:002018-08-06T22:51:24.554-07:00The problem of evil<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“NO EVIL as such can be desirable, either by natural appetite or by conscious will. It is sought indirectly, namely because it is a consequence of some good. This is the rule for every type of appetite. A natural force works for a form, not the absence of form. Yet one form may extrude another. A lion kills for food, that means the death of the deer; a fornicator wants pleasure, and incurs the deformity of sin.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: <i>Summa Theologica</i>, I, q. 19, a. 9.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Thomas Gilby's translation)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-13455278943781717722018-07-31T22:53:00.005-07:002018-07-31T22:54:43.006-07:00Friendship<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“NOT every love has the quality of friendship. In the first place it is reserved to that love for another which wills his well-being. When what we will is not the other’s good for his sake, but the desire of it as it affects us, that is not friendship, but self-regarding love and some sort of concupiscence. Neither does benevolence suffice for friendship; in addition a mutual loving is required, for a friend is friend to friend. This interplay of well-wishing is founded on companionship.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: <i>Summa Theologica</i>, II-II, q. 23, a. 4.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(Thomas Gilby's translation)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-48751748081304752692018-07-02T22:55:00.001-07:002018-07-02T22:55:31.587-07:00Maritain: The Rights of the Person<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“EVERY human person has the right to make his own decisions with regard to his personal destiny, whether it be a question of choosing one’s work, of marrying the man or woman of one’s choice, or of pursuing a religious vocation. In the case of extreme peril and for the safety of the community, the State can forcibly requisition the services of each of us and demand that each risk his life in a just war; it can also deprive criminals of certain of their rights (or rather sanction the fact that they themselves forfeited them); for example, men judged unworthy of exercising parental authority. But the State becomes iniquitous and tyrannical if it claims to base the functioning of civil life on forced labor, or if it tries to violate the rights of the family in order to become master of men’s souls. For just as man is constituted a person, made for God and for a life superior to time, before being constituted a part of the political community, so too man is constituted a part of family society before being constituted a part of political society. The end for which the family exists is to produce and bring up human persons and prepare them to fulfill their total destiny. And if the State too has an educative function, if education is not outside its sphere, this function is to help the family fulfill its mission and to complement this mission, not to efface in the child his vocation as a human person and replace it by that of a living tool and material for the State. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To sum up, the fundamental rights, like the right to existence and life; the right to personal freedom or to conduct one’s own life as master of oneself and of one’s acts, responsible for them before God and the law of the community; the right to the pursuit of the perfection of moral and rational life;* the right to keeps one’s body whole; the right to private ownership of material goods, which is the safeguard of the liberties of the individual; the right to marry according to one’s choice and to raise a family which will be assured of the liberties due it; the right of association, the respect for human dignity in each individual, whether or not he represents an economic value for society—all these rights are rooted in the vocation of the person (a spiritual and free agent) to the order of absolute values and a destiny superior to time. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man framed these rights in the altogether rationalist point of view of the Enlightenment and the Encyclopedists and to that extent enveloped them in ambiguity. The American Declaration of Independence, however marked by the influence of Locke and “natural religion”, adhered more closely to the originally Christian character of human rights.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~Jacques Maritain: <i>Christianity and Democracy & The Rights of Man and Natural Law. </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* In this above all consists the pursuit of happiness: the pursuit of happiness here on earth in the pursuit, not of material advantages, but of moral righteousness, of the strength and perfection of the soul, with the material and social conditions thereby implied.</span><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-85611443614361659962018-06-23T23:40:00.001-07:002018-06-23T23:40:19.603-07:00Structure of the Summa<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The structure of the <i>Summa theologiae</i> is beautifully described by the Cambridge theologian Nicholas Lash, who writes:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“We might almost say that, for Aquinas, the ‘soundness’ of his ‘educational method’ depended upon the extent to which the movement of his exposition reflected the rhythm of God’s own act and movement: that self-movement ‘outwards’ from divine simplicity to the utterance of the Word and breathing of the Gift which God is, to the ‘overflowing’ of God’s goodness in the work of his creation (‘Prima pars’); the ‘return’ to God along that one way of the world’s healing which is Christ (‘Tertia pars’); and, because there lies across this movement the shadow of the mystery of sin, we find, between his treatment of the whence and whither, the ‘outgoing’ and ‘return’ of creaturely existence, the drama of conversion, of sin and virtue, of rejection or acceptance of God’s grace (‘Secunda pars’). And this by way of explanation of how in a summary of <i>Christian</i> theology, Christ can make a central appearance only towards the end.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">—<i>The Beginning and End of Religion</i>. (Quoted by Aidan Nichols in <i>Discovering Aquinas</i>)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-40418808498760718562018-06-23T23:37:00.001-07:002018-06-23T23:37:08.721-07:00Faith, Hope & Charity<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“ST. PAUL instructs us that our entire perfection is contained at present under three concise headings: and now there remain faith, hope, charity, these three (1 Cor. 13, 13). Such is the apostle’s order, such the order of reason, for we cannot love unless we have good reason to hope, and we cannot hope unless we have knowledge.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: <i>Compendium of Theology</i>, 1.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-11202758654740582892018-05-25T17:14:00.001-07:002018-05-25T17:17:02.138-07:00The enduring originality of the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">43. A quite special place in this long development belongs to Saint Thomas, not only because of what he taught but also because of the dialogue which he undertook with the Arab and Jewish thought of his time. In an age when Christian thinkers were rediscovering the treasures of ancient philosophy, and more particularly of Aristotle, Thomas had the great merit of giving pride of place to the harmony which exists between faith and reason. Both the light of reason and the light of faith come from God, he argued; hence there can be no contradiction between them.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[44]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">More radically, Thomas recognized that nature, philosophy's proper concern, could contribute to the understanding of divine Revelation. Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfilment,<span style="font-size: x-small;">[45]</span> so faith builds upon and perfects reason. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. Although he made much of the supernatural character of faith, the Angelic Doctor did not overlook the importance of its reasonableness; indeed he was able to plumb the depths and explain the meaning of this reasonableness. Faith is in a sense an “exercise of thought”; and human reason is neither annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith, which are in any case attained by way of free and informed choice.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[46]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This is why the Church has been justified in consistently proposing Saint Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology. In this connection, I would recall what my Predecessor, the Servant of God Paul VI, wrote on the occasion of the seventh centenary of the death of the Angelic Doctor: “Without doubt, Thomas possessed supremely the courage of the truth, a freedom of spirit in confronting new problems, the intellectual honesty of those who allow Christianity to be contaminated neither by secular philosophy nor by a prejudiced rejection of it. He passed therefore into the history of Christian thought as a pioneer of the new path of philosophy and universal culture. The key point and almost the kernel of the solution which, with all the brilliance of his prophetic intuition, he gave to the new encounter of faith and reason was a reconciliation between the secularity of the world and the radicality of the Gospel, thus avoiding the unnatural tendency to negate the world and its values while at the same time keeping faith with the supreme and inexorable demands of the supernatural order”.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[47]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">44. Another of the great insights of Saint Thomas was his perception of the role of the Holy Spirit in the process by which knowledge matures into wisdom. From the first pages of his <i>Summa Theologiae</i>,<span style="font-size: x-small;">[48]</span> Aquinas was keen to show the primacy of the wisdom which is the gift of the Holy Spirit and which opens the way to a knowledge of divine realities. His theology allows us to understand what is distinctive of wisdom in its close link with faith and knowledge of the divine. This wisdom comes to know by way of connaturality; it presupposes faith and eventually formulates its right judgement on the basis of the truth of faith itself: “The wisdom named among the gifts of the Holy Spirit is distinct from the wisdom found among the intellectual virtues. This second wisdom is acquired through study, but the first 'comes from on high', as Saint James puts it. This also distinguishes it from faith, since faith accepts divine truth as it is. But the gift of wisdom enables judgement according to divine truth”.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[49]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yet the priority accorded this wisdom does not lead the Angelic Doctor to overlook the presence of two other complementary forms of wisdom—<i>philosophical</i> wisdom, which is based upon the capacity of the intellect, for all its natural limitations, to explore reality, and <i>theological</i> wisdom, which is based upon Revelation and which explores the contents of faith, entering the very mystery of God.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Profoundly convinced that “whatever its source, truth is of the Holy Spirit” (<i>omne verum a quocumque dicatur a Spiritu Sancto est</i>)<span style="font-size: x-small;">[50]</span> Saint Thomas was impartial in his love of truth. He sought truth wherever it might be found and gave consummate demonstration of its universality. In him, the Church's Magisterium has seen and recognized the passion for truth; and, precisely because it stays consistently within the horizon of universal, objective and transcendent truth, his thought scales “heights unthinkable to human intelligence”.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[51]</span> Rightly, then, he may be called an “apostle of the truth”.<span style="font-size: x-small;">[52]</span> Looking unreservedly to truth, the realism of Thomas could recognize the objectivity of truth and produce not merely a philosophy of “what seems to be” but a philosophy of “what is”.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">—Excerpt from Encyclical Letter <i><u><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html" target="_blank">Fides et Ratio</a></u></i>, by Pope John Paul II.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-77798216373859270582018-04-23T02:24:00.002-07:002018-04-23T02:24:51.101-07:00Maritain: "A new Christian era"<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"THE hope of the coming of a new Christian era in our civilization is to my mind a hope for a distant future, a very distant future."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~Jacques Maritain: <i><u><a href="https://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/range.htm" target="_blank">The Range of Reason</a></u></i>. (1952)</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-57209420464543769452018-04-21T16:03:00.001-07:002018-04-23T01:59:20.458-07:00Maritain: "A free people needs a free press"<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“WHAT CAN BE the weapons of the people to protect themselves and the body politic either against false servants of the people and the spurious shock-minorities or against the corruption of true servants of the people and genuine prophetic shock-minorities shifting from the struggle for freedom to the struggle for domination? Nothing can replace in this connection the strength of the common ethos, the inner energy of democratic faith and civil morality in the people themselves, the enjoyment by them of real freedom in their everyday life and of a truly human standard of living, and the active participation of them in political life from the bottom up. If these conditions are lacking, the door is open to deception.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“Yet there is in any case a weapon which they should particularly treasure as a bulwark of their political liberties. Namely the freedom of expression and criticism. That’s a new reason to confirm what has been said in this chapter about the freedom of the press and of the means of expression of thought, even at the price of great risks,—still less great than the loss of liberty. A free people needs a free press, I mean free from the State, and free from economic bondage and the power of money.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">* * *</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“I have said that democracy cannot do without the prophetic element; that it is a sad necessity; or, rather, that in a democracy which has come of age, in a society of free men, expert in the virtues of freedom and just in its fundamental structures, the prophetic function would be integrated in the normal and regular life of the body politic, and issue from the people themselves. In such a society inspiration would rise from the free common activity of the people in their most elementary, most humble communities. By choosing their leaders, at this most elementary , through a natural and experiential process, as fellow-men personally known to them and deserving their trust in the minor affairs of the community, the people would grow more and more conscious of political realities and more ready to choose their leaders, at the level of the common good of the body politic, with true political awareness, as genuine deputies for them.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">~Jacques Maritain: Excerpt from <i>Man and the State</i>, Chap. V.—The Democratic Charter.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-36343234820374748322018-04-13T23:50:00.000-07:002018-04-13T23:50:08.450-07:00Love trumps Hate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Love is absolutely stronger than hate."</div>
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~St. Thomas Aquinas: <a href="http://newadvent.org/summa/2029.htm" target="_blank"><i>Summa Theologica</i> I-II, q. 29, a. 3.</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-15671764126541688192018-04-05T04:28:00.000-07:002018-04-21T16:06:31.972-07:00"What is the "esse" a thing possesses?"<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">By Armand Maurer<br /><br />PROPERLY speaking, being (<i>esse</i>) belongs only to those things that are truly beings (<i>entia</i>), namely substances or subsistent things. Being can be attributed to non-subsistent items, such as accidents, forms, and parts, but strictly speaking these do not have being, being is ascribed to them because through them or because of them substances have being in some special way, as for example a man is wise through the quality of wisdom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">The notion of <i>esse</i> does not emerge very clearly from St. Thomas’ analysis of metaphysical terms in chapter one. The word appears several times in its technical sense, but it is left unexplained. Attention is focused on the notion of <i>ens</i> (‘a being’), from whose analysis the notion of essence is then disengaged as that in which and through which a thing possesses being (<i>esse</i>); but what is the <i>esse</i> a thing possesses?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Later chapters make it clear that <i>esse</i> is an actuality received by a thing’s essence, which in turn is potential to it. It is outside the definition of the essence and it forms a composition with the essence. In God, <i>esse</i> is his essence; he does not possess <i>esse</i> but is <i>esse</i> itself. <i>Esse</i>, understood purely and simply, contains all perfections. Thus as we read <i>On Being and Essence</i> we come to realize that its most important term is <i>esse</i>. A being is a being only because it has <i>esse</i>; an essence is an only through the <i>esse</i> that posits it in reality. But what is <i>esse</i>? This is the question that plagues the reader throughout the treatise and which no clear answer is given. But at least we are told the direction in which to look: the mystery of being <i>esse</i> is identical with God; if we knew what <i>esse</i> is, we would know the essence of God, for only in him is <i>esse</i> an essence or nature. In creatures <i>esse</i> does not have the status of an essence; they have essences which are other than <i>esse</i> and which exists by participating in the divine <i>esse</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">The identification of God with pure <i>esse</i> warns us that for St. Thomas being is not the mere fact that a thing exists, or is present in the world. If this were the meaning of <i>esse</i>, it would hardly make sense to call God <i>esse tantum</i>: nothing but being, or pure being. In fact, <i>esse</i> is dynamic and energizing act, as Gerald B. Phelan well describes it: “Things which ‘have being’ are not ‘just there’ (Dasein) like lumps of static essence, inert, immovable, unprogressive and unchanging. The act of existence (<i>esse</i>) is not a state, it is an act, the act of all acts, and, therefore, must be understood as act and not as any static and definable object of conception. <i>Esse</i> is dynamic impulse, energy, act – the first, the most persistent and enduring of all dynamisms, all energies, all acts. In all things on earth the act of being (<i>esse</i>) is the consubstantial urge of nature, a restless, striving force, carrying each being (<i>ens</i>) onward, from within the depths of its own reality to its full self-achievement, i.e., fully to be what by its nature it is apt to become.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">—Excerpt from </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Armand Maurer's introduction to</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0888442505/philosophynot-20/" target="_blank">Thomas Aquinas On Being and Essence</a></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-61140601142034547722018-04-04T22:15:00.003-07:002018-04-04T22:15:49.632-07:00"Truth is a divine thing"<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"THAT truth should be preferred to friends he [Aristotle] proves in this way. He is the greater friend for whom we ought to have the greater consideration. Although we should have friendship for both truth and our fellow man, we ought rather to love truth because we should love our fellow man especially on account of truth and virtue, as will be shown in the eighth book (1575-1577). Now truth is a most excellent friend of the sort to whom the homage of honor is due. Besides, truth is a divine thing, for it is found first and chiefly in God. He concludes, therefore, that it is virtuous to honor truth above friends."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: <i>Commentary on the 'Nicomachean Ethics'</i>, Book I, lect. 6.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">● Read more from St. Thomas' <i><a href="http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/Ethics.htm" target="_blank">Commentary</a></i></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Aristotle" by Enea Vico. <br />Engraving, A.D. 1546; British Museum, London</td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-51069637234620554742018-04-04T22:05:00.003-07:002018-04-04T22:06:47.612-07:00"The passion and death of the Son of God"<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">“<i>Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.</i>”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"IT IS just as necessary for the Christian to believe in the passion and death of the Son of God as it is to believe in His Incarnation. For, as St. Gregory says, “there would have been no advantage in His having been born for us unless we had profited by His Redemption.” That Christ died for us is so tremendous a fact that our intellect can scarcely grasp it; for in no way does it fall in the natural way of our understanding. This is what the Apostle says: “I work in your days, a work which you will not believe, if any man shall tell it to you” [Acts 13:41, from Hab 1:5]. The grace of God is so great and His love for us is such that we cannot understand what He has done for us. Now, we must believe that, although Christ suffered death, yet His Godhead did not die; it was the human nature in Christ that died. For He did not die as God, but as man."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">~St. Thomas Aquinas: <i>The Apostles' Creed</i>, Art. 4. (excerpt)<br /><br />● Continue reading </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><a href="http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/Creed.htm" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">The Apostles' Creed</span></a></i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crucifixion with Mourners and Sts Dominic and Thomas Aquinas,<br />
by Fra Angelico. <br />
Fresco, A.D. 1441-42; Convento di San Marco, Florence.</td></tr>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732073028430151365.post-29552665540007684932018-03-11T11:18:00.000-07:002018-03-11T11:20:31.264-07:00BENEDICT XVI: Saint Thomas Aquinas (3)<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">BENEDICT XVI</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">GENERAL AUDIENCE</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Paul VI Hall</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Wednesday, 23 June 2010</span><br />
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Saint Thomas Aquinas (3)</span></i></b><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Dear Brothers and Sisters,</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Today I would like to complete, with a third instalment, my Catecheses on St Thomas Aquinas. Even more than 700 years after his death we can learn much from him. My Predecessor, <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en.html" target="_blank">Pope Paul VI</a>, also said this, in a Discourse he gave at Fossanova on 14 September 1974 on the occasion of the seventh centenary of St Thomas' death. He asked himself: "Thomas, our Teacher, what lesson can you give us?". And he answered with these words: "trust in the truth of Catholic religious thought, as defended, expounded and offered by him to the capacities of the human mind" (<i>Address in honour of St Thomas Aquinas in the Basilica</i>, 14 September 1974; L'Osservatore Romano English edition, [<i>ore</i>], 26 September 1974, p. 4). In Aquino moreover, on that same day, again with reference to St Thomas, Paul VI said, "all of us who are faithful sons and daughters of the Church can and must be his disciples, at least to some extent!" (<i>Address to people in the Square at Aquino</i>, 14 September 1974; <i>ORE</i>, p. 5).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Let us too, therefore, learn from the teaching of St Thomas and from his masterpiece, the <i>Summa Theologiae</i>. It was left unfinished, yet it is a monumental work: it contains 512 questions and 2,669 articles. It consists of concentrated reasoning in which the human mind is applied to the mysteries of faith, with clarity and depth to the mysteries of faith, alternating questions with answers in which St Thomas deepens the teaching that comes from Sacred Scripture and from the Fathers of the Church, especially St Augustine. In this reflection, in meeting the true questions of his time, that are also often our own questions, St Thomas, also by employing the method and thought of the ancient philosophers, and of Aristotle in particular, thus arrives at precise, lucid and pertinent formulations of the truths of faith in which truth is a gift of faith, shines out and becomes accessible to us, for our reflection. However, this effort of the human mind Aquinas reminds us with his own life is always illumined by prayer, by the light that comes from on high. Only those who live with God and with his mysteries can also understand what they say to us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the <i>Summa</i> of theology, St Thomas starts from the fact that God has three different ways of being and existing: God exists in himself, he is the beginning and end of all things, which is why all creatures proceed from him and depend on him: then God is present through his Grace in the life and activity of the Christian, of the saints; lastly, God is present in an altogether special way in the Person of Christ, here truly united to the man Jesus, and active in the Sacraments that derive from his work of redemption. Therefore, the structure of this monumental work (cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, <i>La "Summa" di San Tommaso</i>, Milan 2003, pp. 29-75), a quest with "a theological vision" for the fullness of God (cf. <i>Summa Theologiae</i>, Ia q. 1, a. 7), is divided into three parts and is illustrated by the <i>Doctor Communis</i> himself St Thomas with these words: "Because the chief aim of sacred doctrine is to teach the knowledge of God, not only as he is in himself, but also as he is the beginning of things and their last end, and especially of rational creatures, as is clear from what has already been said, therefore, we shall treat: (1) Of God; (2) Of the rational creature's advance towards God; (3) Of Christ, Who as man, is our way to God" (<i>ibid</i>.,I, q. 2). It is a circle: God in himself, who comes out of himself and takes us by the hand, in such a way that with Christ we return to God, we are united to God, and God will be all things to all people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The First Part of the <i>Summa Theologiae</i> thus investigates God in himself, the mystery of the Trinity and of the creative activity of God. In this part we also find a profound reflection on the authentic reality of the human being, inasmuch as he has emerged from the creative hands of God as the fruit of his love. On the one hand we are dependent created beings, we do not come from ourselves; yet, on the other, we have a true autonomy so that we are not only something apparent as certain Platonic philosophers say but a reality desired by God as such and possessing an inherent value.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the Second Part St Thomas considers man, impelled by Grace, in his aspiration to know and love God in order to be happy in time and in eternity. First of all the Author presents the theological principles of moral action, studying how, in the free choice of the human being to do good acts, reason, will and passions are integrated, to which is added the power given by God's Grace through the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as the help offered by moral law. Hence the human being is a dynamic being who seeks himself, seeks to become himself, and, in this regard, seeks to do actions that build him up, that make him truly man; and here the moral law comes into it. Grace and reason itself, the will and the passions enter too. On this basis St Thomas describes the profile of the man who lives in accordance with the Spirit and thus becomes an image of God. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Here Aquinas pauses to study the three theological virtues faith, hope and charity followed by a critical examination of more than 50 moral virtues, organized around the four cardinal virtues prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. He then ends with a reflection on the different vocations in the Church.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the Third Part of the <i>Summa</i>, St Thomas studies the Mystery of Christ the way and the truth through which we can reach God the Father. In this section he writes almost unparalleled pages on the Mystery of Jesus' Incarnation and Passion, adding a broad treatise on the seven sacraments, for it is in them that the Divine Word Incarnate extends the benefits of the Incarnation for our salvation, for our journey of faith towards God and eternal life. He is, as it were, materially present with the realities of creation, and thus touches us in our inmost depths.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In speaking of the sacraments, St Thomas reflects in a special way on the Mystery of the Eucharist, for which he had such great devotion, the early biographers claim, that he would lean his head against the Tabernacle, as if to feel the throbbing of Jesus' divine and human heart. In one of his works, commenting on Scripture, St Thomas helps us to understand the excellence of the sacrament of the Eucharist, when he writes: "Since this [the Eucharist] is the sacrament of Our Lord's Passion, it contains in itself the Jesus Christ who suffered for us. Thus, whatever is an effect of Our Lord's Passion is also an effect of this sacrament. For this sacrament is nothing other than the application of Our Lord's Passion to us" (cf. <i>Commentary on John</i>, chapter 6, lecture 6, n. 963). We clearly understand why St Thomas and other Saints celebrated Holy Mass shedding tears of compassion for the Lord who gave himself as a sacrifice for us, tears of joy and gratitude.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Dear brothers and sisters, at the school of the Saints, let us fall in love with this sacrament! Let us participate in Holy Mass with recollection, to obtain its spiritual fruits, let us nourish ourselves with this Body and Blood of Our Lord, to be ceaselessly fed by divine Grace! Let us willingly and frequently linger in the company of the Blessed Sacrament in heart-to-heart conversation!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">All that St Thomas described with scientific rigour in his major theological works, such as, precisely, the <i>Summa Theologiae</i>, and the <i>Summa contra gentiles</i>, was also explained in his preaching, both to his students and to the faithful. In 1273, a year before he died, he preached throughout Lent in the Church of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples. The content of those sermons was gathered and preserved: they are the <i>Opuscoli</i> in which he explains the <i>Apostles' Creed</i>, interprets the Prayer of the <i>Our Father</i>, explains the <i>Ten Commandments</i> and comments on the <i>Hail Mary</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The content of the <i>Doctor Angelicus'</i> preaching corresponds with virtually the whole structure of the <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM" target="_blank">Catechism of the Catholic Church</a>. Actually, in catechesis and preaching, in a time like ours of renewed commitment to evangelization, these fundamental subjects should never be lacking: what <i>we believe</i>, and here is the Creed of the faith; what <i>we pray</i>, and here is the <i>Our Father</i> and the <i>Hail Mary</i>; and what <i>we live</i>, as we are taught by biblical Revelation, and here is the law of the love of God and neighbour and the <i>Ten Commandments</i>, as an explanation of this mandate of love.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I would like to propose some simple, essential and convincing examples of the content of St Thomas' teaching. In his booklet on <i>The Apostles' Creed</i> he explains the value of faith. Through it, he says, the soul is united to God and produces, as it were, a shot of eternal life; life receives a reliable orientation and we overcome temptations with ease. To those who object that faith is foolishness because it leads to belief in something that does not come within the experience of the senses, St Thomas gives a very articulate answer and recalls that this is an inconsistent doubt, for human intelligence is limited and cannot know everything. Only if we were able to know all visible and invisible things perfectly would it be genuinely foolish to accept truths out of pure faith. Moreover, it is impossible to live, St Thomas observes, without trusting in the experience of others, wherever one's own knowledge falls short. It is thus reasonable to believe in God, who reveals himself, and to the testimony of the Apostles: they were few, simple and poor, grief-stricken by the Crucifixion of their Teacher. Yet many wise, noble and rich people converted very soon after hearing their preaching. In fact this is a miraculous phenomenon of history, to which it is far from easy to give a convincing answer other than that of the Apostle's encounter with the Risen Lord.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In commenting on the article of the Creed on the Incarnation of the divine Word St Thomas makes a few reflections. He says that the Christian faith is strengthened in considering the mystery of the Incarnation; hope is strengthened at the thought that the Son of God came among us, as one of us, to communicate his own divinity to human beings; charity is revived because there is no more obvious sign of God's love for us than the sight of the Creator of the universe making himself a creature, one of us. Finally, in contemplating the mystery of God's Incarnation, we feel kindled within us our desire to reach Christ in glory. Using a simple and effective comparison, St Thomas remarks: "If the brother of a king were to be far away, he would certainly long to live beside him. Well, Christ is a brother to us; we must therefore long for his company and become of one heart with him" (<i>Opuscoli teologico-spirituali</i>, Rome 1976, p. 64).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In presenting the prayer of the <i>Our Father</i>, St Thomas shows that it is perfect in itself, since it has all five of the characteristics that a well-made prayer must possess: trusting, calm abandonment; a fitting content because, St Thomas observes, "it is quite difficult to know exactly what it is appropriate and inappropriate to ask for, since choosing among our wishes puts us in difficulty" (<i>ibid</i>., p. 120); and then an appropriate order of requests, the fervour of love and the sincerity of humility.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Like all the Saints, St Thomas had a great devotion to Our Lady. He described her with a wonderful title: <i>Triclinium totius Trinitatis; triclinium</i>, that is, a place where the Trinity finds rest since, because of the Incarnation, in no creature as in her do the three divine Persons dwell and feel delight and joy at dwelling in her soul full of Grace. Through her intercession we may obtain every help.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">With a prayer that is traditionally attributed to St Thomas and that in any case reflects the elements of his profound Marian devotion we too say: "O most Blessed and sweet Virgin Mary, Mother of God... I entrust to your merciful heart... my entire life.... Obtain for me as well, O most sweet Lady, true charity with which from the depths of my heart I may love your most Holy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and, after him, love you above all other things... and my neighbour, in God and for God".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Text source: <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100623.html" target="_blank">Vatican</a></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas" by Benozzo Gozzoli. <br />
Tempera on panel, 1471; Musée du Louvre, Paris.</td></tr>
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