Homo capax pulchritudinis est

Let me revisit the idea of beauty as holy sadness.

As I wrote below, beauty itself can't make us sad, because we can only be sad at an evil, and beauty is per se good. The "holy sadness" that people do, in fact, feel upon apprehending beauty is not caused by the beauty itself, but by the awareness this apprehension causes in them that there is beauty they cannot now apprehend.

In what sense, though, is the existence of beauty we can't apprehend an evil? In a comment, I repeated a formula from St. Thomas that evil is a privation of a good that is due, the lack of a good where a good ought to be. Does this mean that apprehension of beauty is "a right, or privilege, something that we are 'due'"?

Well... yes, I suppose it does. But it's something due us, not in the sense that things are due a person in justice, but in the sense that human nature is imperfect when that beauty is not present.

I'm hashing through this idea, and so making a hash of it, but to put it briefly: There are experiences of beauty that make us aware that we, as human beings, are capable of beauty, and that we ourselves are unfulfilled as long as that capacity for apprehending beauty is unfulfilled.

It's only through faith that we come to realize the full Beauty of which we are capable is nothing less than God. I don't think, though, that we need Christian faith to realize that other things in creation -- primarily other humans -- also fall short of their own capacity of being beautiful. Such a realization, which is also a cause of sorrow since it's a recognition of the absence of a good where a good ought to be, is a powerful natural spur toward a faith of beauty.

The various ways in which this natural capax pulchritudinis can be perverted are demonstrated in no subtle fashion in our culture. Still, my guess is that the natural capacity for beauty is less debased than the natural capability for truth -- in no small part because the capacity for beauty is barely recognized. If that's the case, then evangelization through beauty will, for many people, prove more fruitful than evangelization through truth.

In the end, it must all draw together, of course, because Beauty and Truth are One, but we time-bound creatures can only take each step in sequence.

Link | John da Fiesole
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A beautiful post

Barbara Nicolosi's notes on a talk she gave about art to people who work with seminarians has so many good points, I can almost forgive her for using "artisthood" as a word.

She suggests:

Beauty makes us homesick for heaven. It is a "holy sadness."

What's odd about this is that, though the claim is true, the actual words used mean the exact opposite. Beauty is pleasure, not sadness; it puts us in contact with heaven (at least analogically), it doesn't distance us from it. What makes us sad is that, having experienced beauty, we can recognize where it ought to be and isn't. It's the lack of beauty that makes us homesick. We can only sorrow at evil, and beauty is necessarily good.

Conversations on beauty often wander in entertaining directions about personal taste, but for starters I think a conscious desire for beauty -- as beauty, as something to rest and delight in, not as a utilitarian means to some further end -- puts a person ahead of large numbers of his fellow citizens today.

Link | John da Fiesole
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An uncooperative conclusion

This is the last of a series of posts, in which you might expect to find some sort of conclusion to my thoughts on voting as cooperation with evil, and in particular on how proximate the cooperation is -- or, equivalently, what proportions are we talking about when we speak of "proportionate reasons" for voting?

Sorry. I don't have any conclusions. The most I can say is, I suspect it's not as remote as most folks say, but not as proximate as some folks say.

Oh, and I do think Steven makes an excellent point in saying this debate "is a sign of the struggle against the culture of Death." If representative democracy is a newfangled thing for the Church to consider, so much more so is representative democracy in which objective evil is so brazenly advocated.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Cooperating with your candidate

We'll assume you're a good person with a well-formed conscience, and so are opposed to all immoral policies a candidate advocates. That means your vote for him would constitute only material cooperation in his advocacy.

Would it be immediate cooperation, and therefore immoral per se, or mediate cooperation, and therefore potentially licit?

If it be immediate cooperation, the object of your vote cannot be distinguished from the object of the candidate's advocacy (assuming he wins). I'm inclined to think the object of voting can be distinguished from the object of enacting a particular policy of an elected official, particularly if the enactment of the policy is not morally certain to follow his election. Though voting isn't perfectly fungible -- a vote has an objective meaning independent of what the voter says it means -- I think the distinction between "having this person hold this office" and "having this person as office-holder enact these policies" is sufficient that voting for a candidate is mediate cooperation in whatever policies the candidate (if he wins) enacts.

(This is more of an assertion than an argument, as Zippy will probably have noticed, but that's what I got today.)

Link | John da Fiesole
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No sale

Steven Riddle doesn't buy

the Ratzinger argument or any other that state that we may in good conscience vote for those who hold morally repugnant views about what policy should be. There is no proportionate reason for direct support (through voting) of evil.

In a follow-up comment, Zippy suggests voting is unlikely to be an act of only mediate material cooperation in the evil the candidate promises to do if elected.

My perspective: Either I missed an encyclical, or the Church is still in a period of discernment regarding this whole representative democracy wheeze. So when, for example, Cardinal Ratzinger writes that voting for a candidate despite his immoral policies is remote material cooperation, I take it to be a well-reasoned but somewhat ad hoc application of the cooperation-with-evil theory to representational elections.

Now, the CWE theory describes the relationship between two specific, discrete acts. One of these acts is, of course, the act of voting for a candidate who advocates immoral policies. But... what is the other act?

I think a lot of people assume the other act is an instance of the root evil that makes the policy immoral -- a procured abortion, say, or a killing during an unjust war. Being the root evil, such an act is as remote from voting as possible. "All I did was vote for the guy with the best health care plan," the reasoning might go, "I didn't make anyone get an abortion."

Between these two acts, though, lies the act of the legislator voting for (or the executive enforcing) an immoral law or action. It isn't always appreciated that -- despite the special pleading of many politicians who claim their actions are justified -- voting for or enforcing an immoral law is an immoral act, and not just by cooperation!

Remember, cooperation relates two discrete acts. Voting for an immoral law is immoral because it is a corruption of the very nature of human law. Even if there is no root evil act with which a legislator is cooperating, voting for an immoral law is immoral. (This can be seen clearly, I think, in the case of a vote on an immoral law that fails. If a proposed law never gets approved, there won't be any "root evil acts" performed because of it, but it's still immoral to vote for it.)

So I think the question is, is Cardinal Ratzinger right to say the relationship between a citizen's vote for a legislator and a legislator's vote for an immoral law is one of remote material cooperation?

Link | John da Fiesole
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Accomplicements

For my own future reference as much as anything else.

Based on the discussion found here, this is a diagram of the different sorts of cooperation with evil Catholic moral theology recognizes:



The terms in red represent immoral forms of cooperation. The terms in blue represent forms of cooperation that may be moral.

Types of Cooperation

• Formal: "a willing participation on the part of the cooperative agent in the sinful act of the principal agent"
• Explicit Formal: the cooperative agent expresses his willingness
• Implicit Formal: "even though the cooperator denies intending the wrongdoer's object, no other explanation can distinguish the cooperator's object from the wrongdoer's object"
• Material: participation in a sinful act without sharing in the intent of the principal agent
• Immediate Material: "the object of the moral act of the cooperator is indistinguishable from that of the principal agent;" considered morally equivalent to implicit formal cooperation
• Mediate Material: "the moral object of the cooperator's act is not that of the wrongdoer's"
• Proximate [Mediate] Material: the action of the cooperator is closely related to the action of the wrongdoer
• Remote [Mediate] Material: the action of the cooperator is not closely related to the action of the wrongdoer

Mediate material cooperation is morally licit when there is a proportionate reason for cooperating. As I wrote below, the more proximate the cooperation, the stronger the reason must be to be proportionate.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Mercy and forgiveness

Notice the exchange that follows Jesus' telling of the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

"Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers' victim?"
He answered, "The one who treated him with mercy."
Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

The Samaritan treated the robbers' victim with mercy.

Too often, I think, mercy is confused with forgiveness. It's a natural enough confusion, since as sinners we experience God's mercy in large part through His forgiveness.

But mercy itself is a kind of compassion or pity, "a fellow-feeling for another's misery, which prompts us to help him if we can," as St. Augustine puts it. So while God helps us by forgiving our sins, He also helps us in countless other ways that no less than forgiving our sins manifests His mercy toward us.

How can we show mercy to each other? For starters, we can forgive each other such debts as are owed to us, as God forgives us.

Forgiving each other doesn't exhaust the ways we can be merciful -- but if we don't distinguish between mercy and forgiveness, we might think it does. We might, for example, feel we're being perfectly good Christians by forgiving someone who has wronged us, yet leaving him in a wretched state we could ease if we chose to.

We might also show no mercy at all toward someone who has not wronged us personally. After all, if "Be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful" means only "Be forgiving," then we have no duty toward those who have done nothing we can forgive. Perhaps that's what the priest and the Levite told each other in the Jericho inn that night.

How can we be merciful? According to St. Thomas, "a defect is always the reason for taking pity, either because one looks upon another's defect as one's own, through being united to him by love, or on account of the possibility of suffering in the same way." If we are to be merciful as the impassible Father is merciful, it must be by being united to others by love.

I'm no expert at being merciful, but I think it's safe to say you aren't perfectly united to another in love if you catch yourself asking, "Haven't I helped him enough yet?"

Link | John da Fiesole
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Proportionate to what?

Jamie Blosser considers the meaning of Cardinal Ratzinger's statement:

"When a Catholic does not share a candidate's stand in favour of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons."

The question is, what would such proportionate reasons look like?

And since the purpose of Ratzinger's memo is to explicitly highlight the relative gravity of abortion/euthanasia vis-a-vis other concerns, the burden seems to be squarely on the shoulders of those who would propose that any other concerns -- those, I mean, which are 'on the table' in the upcoming American elections -- are genuinely equal to the moral gravity of these fundamental matters, literally, of life and death.

My understanding is that the reasons whose presence permit remote material cooperation must be proportionate, not to the evil act itself, but to the degree of cooperation involved. If that's the case, there need not be "on the table" concerns equal to the moral gravity of abortion to vote for a pro-abortion candidate.

So, taking an example Jamie mentions, to licitly use a product made by a company that donates money to Planned Parenthood, you don't need a reason proportionate to the abortions Planned Parenthood performs, but one merely proportionate to the level of cooperation in donating money to Planned Parenthood that using the product constitutes.

This raises the question, what level of cooperation in legal abortions does voting for a pro-abortion candidate constitute? The answer is, "It depends."

Some people think the answer is, "The level of cooperation is miniscule, at least for any candidate I want to vote for." The problem with this, it seems to me, is that voting for a candidate constitutes equal cooperation with every policy a candidate holds. Yes, if you vote for someone because of a policy, you are formally cooperating with that policy, while if you vote despite a policy, you are only materially cooperating with it. But the effect of your vote is the same either way. If the remoteness of cooperation with unfavored policies is the same as the remoteness of cooperation with favored policies, in evaluating them for proportionality you must consider the policies in themselves.

The Church has been absolutely clear that human life issues are the most important political issues of our time. (And, for that matter, that there is a difference between "human life issues" and "quality of life issues," despite the efforts of many politically liberal Catholics to fuse them.)

Yet I think the Church has also been clear that human life issues exist on a continuum, that though they are far more important than all other issues, they are comparable. If so, then it is possible for the difference on human life issues between candidates to be less than the difference on other issues, in which case proportionate reasons for voting for a pro-abortion candidate would exist.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Don't read good posts, read great posts

Karen Marie Knapp posts an article on forgiveness in a communist prison that is more worth reading than anything I'm going to write.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Get your act together

Yesterday, the Dominican homilist pointed out all the verbs in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan

approached the victim,
poured oil and wine over his wounds and
bandaged them. Then he
lifted him up on his own animal,
took him to an inn, and
cared for him. The next day he
took out two silver coins and
gave them to the innkeeper....

But before all this action, he

was moved with compassion....

The first movement was interior; the Samaritan traveler was the receiver of the movement.

The priest and the Levite did a lot of moving, too. In fact, they never stopped. Whatever was moving them wasn't compassion, mercy, and love. What was it, then? It could have been all sorts of laudable virtues: piety or chastity or counsel or prayer or honesty.

Jesus doesn't say. It doesn't matter. If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity....

Link | John da Fiesole
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The effect of exegesis

Jamie Blosser of Ad Limina Apostolorum is doing us all the favor of offering summaries of St. Augustine's commentaries on the Sunday Gospel readings. Coming up: the parable of the Good Samaritan, for which St. Augustine offers a mystical exegesis:

The 'man' for St. Augustine is none other than Adam, representative of all of humanity; 'Jerusalem' is the heavenly city, representing his original state of justice and free-will; his falling into the hands of robbers represents his falling into sin, under the persuasion of the devil, and his resulting forfeiture of immortality and condemnation to death. The priest and Levite represent the priesthood and ministry of the old covenant, which proved unable to remedy his fallen condition. The Good Samaritan, of course, is Christ Himself, who alone is able to save: His binding of the wounds, the forgiveness of sin; the oil and wine, the comfort of hope and the encouragement to work. The beast upon which man is hoisted is the Incarnation, the enfleshment of the Word, by which man is raised up to share in the divine nature. The inn - you guessed it - is the Church where man recovers from the sickness of sin under the influence of the medicine of grace, and the innkeeper is - you didn't guess this - the Apostle Paul. The two silver coins are the dual commandments of love of God and neighbor (which Christ affirmed immediately before giving this parable) (cf., Quaest. Evan. 2.19; Hom. 31; Hom. 81).

I love this sort of stuff. It hints at the bottomless depths of meaning in Scripture.

The human response to Revelation is not memorization but creative engagement. If you meet someone who tells you, "I grew up on a farm," you don't reply, "You grew up on a farm," you ask, "What was that like?" And you know that what it meant for him to have grown up on a farm will not be exhausted in a two or three minute answer.

But did Jesus "really" intend the donkey of the parable to signify the Incarnation? That's probably not a well-formed question. Jamie explains St. Augustine's approach to exegesis:

The ultimate standard for such interpretation, for St. Augustine, is once again the law of charity. An interpretation is useful (n.b. he does not say 'correct,' but 'useful') inasmuch as it inclines the reader to the love of God and neighbor.

"Useful" is the strongest claim I should make about any commenting I do on Scripture, which isn't exegesis so much as conversation sparked by reading a passage from the Bible.

In any case, if Scripture is God's revelation to man, it necessarily contains an infinite meaning, and in reading it we should feel free to let our conversation with God wander where it will, knowing that when we wander from charity we are no longer speaking with God.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Pictorial Predestination

An email conversation has prompted me to do something I've been meaning to do for some time.

The dogma of predestination is very delicate and difficult to get just right. A step too far in one direction, and you slide into Semi-Pelagianism. A step too far in the other direction, and you're into Calvinism. And even within the legitimate bounds of the Church's teaching, there are various swamps, thickets, and blind canyons.

I've come up with what I believe is an original contribution to the question: a simple, easily remembered pictorial representation of the various schools of thought on predestination, in the form of a Venn diagram.

Visualizing the Dogma of Predestination

I don't have time to post the key right now -- which, if you've done any reading at all on the subject, should be relatively self-evident -- but I wanted to put up the drawing itself while I was thinking of it.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Love 'em all, and let God sort 'em out

In the Scriptural verses I've been writing about -- "If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you"; "love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father"; "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head" -- I detect some hints about Christian communion.

In the first quotation, Jesus tells His disciples they needn't worry about their peace resting on those who aren't fit for it. In the second, He tells them to be like God in showering love upon everyone, regardless of their fitness. The proverb can (I think) be read as teaching that loving your enemy is a means of inviting him into the New Covenant.

In each case, there is at least an implicit concern that a Christian might be too free with the gifts Christ has given him to distribute. In each case, there is reassurance that he needn't worry, that he is to give freely and leave the bookkeeping to God.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus prefaces His call to love our enemies with the words, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'" Under the Mosaic Law, the distinction between who was under the Law and who wasn't was clear. A Jew, at least at the time of Jesus, was required to treat Gentiles in a markedly different way than other Jews. Whether someone was a neighbor, whether someone was Jewish, was critical knowledge. For a Jew to cast pearls before swine was not only to waste the pearls, but to become unclean himself.

In the fulfillment of the Law, though, such concerns are all but eliminated. No act of love can be misdirected, and if the distinction between believer and non-believer is still important, it is not the cause of anxious separation it was under Moses. It seems to me the concern is more to avoid the company of sinners than of non-believers -- and, for that matter, an evangelizing faith can hardly counsel avoiding non-believers generally.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The rain falls on the just and the unjust

When Jesus was preaching the fulfillment of the Law in the Sermon on the Mount, He explained that we are to love our enemies that we may be children of our heavenly Father, Who "makes His sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust." If we do so, we will be perfect, just as our heavenly Father is perfect.

Okay, but what does making His sun rise on the bad and the good have to do with the Father being perfect?

For one thing, I suppose, it is a mark of His justice. In Psalm 51, David sings to God: "You are just in Your sentence, blameless when You condemn." The criticisms against God for being somehow unfair to His creatures is unfounded.

Moreover, without the sun and the rain man cannot live. By blessing the unjust with these gifts, God gives them time to repent -- time that will count against them in judgment should they fail to repent.

So perhaps loving your enemies that you may be a child of your heavenly Father is not so different from loving them that burning coals may be heaped upon their heads.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Burning coals

Camassia points out a difference between how Jesus and St. Paul taught charity toward enemies. She refers to these two passages:

But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

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Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." Rather, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head."

Camassia comments:

They seem to be arguing for pacifism from opposite directions. Paul is saying, don't crush your enemies because God will crush them for you. Jesus seems to be saying, God doesn't crush your enemies, therefore you shouldn't either. Paul's reasoning is more in line with the Old Testament theme that Yoder points out, though Jesus' point is not without foundation. Particularly apposite is the book of Jonah, where the hero explains why he wouldn't preach to the evil Ninevites: "I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity." (The fact that Jesus refers to his three-day entombment as "the sign of Jonah" may be for more reason than the fish episode.)

St. Paul's "burning coals" bit was lifted from Proverbs:

If your enemy be hungry, give him food to eat, if he be thirsty, give him to drink; For live coals you will heap on his head, and the LORD will vindicate you.

The NAB has this note on "live coals": "either remorse and embarrassment for the harm done, or increased punishment for refusing reconciliation."

I'd always thought of the coals as a psychological punishment for your enemy and a psychological reward for yourself. But as the NAB note suggests, burning coals can also signify divine punishment (in, for example, Ezekiel 10).

So the proverb (and St. Paul's use of it) can be understood as meaning that if you love your enemies, you place them under divine judgment. If they accept and reciprocate your love (as the Ninevites accepted and acted upon Jonah's prophecy), then they are saved. If not, not.

On this reading (well, maybe "accommodation"), loving your enemies is a way of extending the New Covenant to them. If they love you back, then they are keeping Christ's commandment to love their enemies, and He and His Father will come and dwell with them. If they don't love you back, the LORD will still vindicate you (and perhaps we could say your love will return to you).

Link | John da Fiesole
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Not just one friar,

but a whole batch of them have been accepted to take vows in a certain Dominican Province. Congratulations to Brother Andrew et al.!

Link | John da Fiesole
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V. Pax vobiscum.
R. Right back at you.

Hernan puzzles over a couple of verses from Sunday's Gospel that has always rolled right past me:

"Into whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this household.' If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on him; but if not, it will return to you."

Hernan muses:

What is the sense of the warning, "but if the house is not worthy, your peace will return to you", like calming the disciples so that they do not fear to waste it, as if peace were a thing one could lose when giving it? ...

A possible answer came to me now. Indeed, because when "giving peace" we are not giving a material thing, because peace is one of those goods that can only be increased when shared: it was not necessary to give to warnings or consolations for the successful case (to give peace and that the other receives it). It is clear that in this case we do not lose peace, but that we gained it. Yes perhaps for the failures: because it is then when we felt that the peace got "lost" .... But it sounds a little too spiritual to me, a little rationalist even; and that does not line up absolutely with the literal text (Jesus speech of peace that "goes" and that "returns").

I certainly can't speak for how the disciples understood Jesus' words. For me, they call to mind the words of Isaiah:

For just as from the heavens the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth, making it fertile and fruitful, giving seed to him who sows and bread to him who eats, so shall My Word be that goes forth from My Mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but shall do My will, achieving the end for which I sent it.

In a sense, the disciples' blessing is a sacrament, a verbal sign that effects what it signifies: the conferral of peace upon a household. But what if the household is not worthy, or those who live there are not peaceful? Then they refuse the grace and peace is not conferred upon them.

Jesus is explicit, though, that this is the nature of this "sacrament" of peace. It is a gift that can be refused, but the refusal in no way debases the gift. Nor does it return to the disciples void; it serves as a condemnation of those who refuse, and "it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment" than for them.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Thank God!

The thought occurs that thankfulness would make an excellent self-measure of sanctity.

Being thankful at all is a great way to start. I don't think a person can be both thankful and covetous at the same time; you can't really hold what you have and what you want together in your mind. Thankfulness implies a kind of restfulness, a pause (however temporary) in concern for tomorrow, and as we know tomorrow is God's concern, not ours.

Being thankful for what's good in bad situations is even better. Nobody likes a Pollyanna showing up to spoil their misery, but the truth is, if things could be worse (and for most of us most of the time, they could be (and often enough will be)), then there is some good for which we ought to be thankful. Genuinely thankful, too; there's no such thing as being thankful grudgingly.

There is such a thing as giving thanks grudgingly, though. This is fortunate, since giving thanks grudgingly is how a lot of us learn to give thanks, as a few minutes in the presence of a child being taught manners will show. Thankfulness is a virtue, a habitual disposition of soul that can be developed through acts of thankfulness, just like the disposition to kindness can be developed through acts of kindness.

The highest form of thankfulness, found among the great saints and not much looked for by the rest of us, is being thankful for the bad things that happen. Not because the saint is wicked and deserves punishment, but because he knows "that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose." Suffering has been sanctified by Christ on the Cross; Christians know, and Christian saints believe, that our suffering is an evil permitted by Providence to draw us closer to Jesus and therefore deeper into participation in the Divine Life.

Though you may not do moral evil that good may result, you certainly may endure natural evil in the Christian hope of the good that will result. In fact, that's by far the most sensible reaction to the natural evils we necessarily face, but few of us are holy enough to be that sensible.

Link | John da Fiesole
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His love must be perceived

Being on the receiving end of a correction can be painful. The best way to avoid it is to be free of moral and intellectual faults.

But if one who would admonish his brother in fraternal charity must be sure his authority will be recognized and his love perceived, one who would be admonished -- which is to say, one who is not certain he has no faults -- must recognize authority and perceive love.

Recognizing authority is a snap, since every Christian has made himself a servant of all, so all have authority over him.

Perceiving love can be more difficult; admonishers often betray no sign of the love with which they act. However, the Christian who has made himself docile to the will of God will know, even if he cannot articulate, the Divine love illuminating everything that happens to him, and so will be open to the correction given him.

Just because admonishment is a form of correction doesn't mean all admonishment is correct. Still, I think we can say as a general guideline that all admonishment should be accepted with gratitude -- toward God, at least -- and honestly evaluated. We are, after all, called to perfection, not adequacy, and it may be that even a completely wrong-headed attempt at correction leads you to see some fault you've missed before (like, for starters, dismissing out-of-hand completely wrong-headed attempts at correction).

Link | John da Fiesole
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Corrections

Comments on yesterday's "This love must be perceived" post point out that there are several different forms of correction, which, since they differ in the end sought, may also differ in the means used.

Admonishment, which I usually have in mind when speaking of "fraternal correction," seeks the elimination (or at least reduction) of a moral fault. The Church has a lot in Her treasuries that deals with admonishment of sinners, from Jesus' observation about the speck and the plank to St. Ignatius' comments and beyond. It's a spiritual work of mercy, but a particularly dicey one to do properly.

Instruction, another spiritual work of mercy, has as its end the correction of an intellectual fault. Where you admonish the sinner for doing something wrong, you instruct the ignorant for thinking something wrong -- or, perhaps more commonly, for not thinking something right. In a comment below, Christine brought up the example of correcting an untruth being spread by another, where you're not so much concerned with instructing the person teaching the untruth as with instructing those who might come to believe it.

Kathy pointed out another form of correction, "intended to change a wrong course of action." Here the end sought is purely external, and I'm sure there's a better term than resistance.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The major problem

Here is a valid syllogism; if the two premises are true, then the conclusion is true:

1. Most Democratic candidates are pro-abortion.
2. You should not vote for a pro-abortion candidate.
3. Therefore, you should not vote for most Democratic candidates.

Catholic bishops are getting increasingly explicit in their teachings that one or another form of the minor premise -- "you should not vote for a pro-abortion candidate" -- is true, and many lay Catholics are responding in anger to the implication that the conclusion -- "you should not vote for most Democratic candidates" -- is true.

They are right to be angry. It should not be true that you shouldn't vote for most Democrats.

What doesn't make sense to me is why they're angry at the bishops, for teaching that the minor premise is true, and not (as far as I can tell) particularly angry at a major political party for teaching that abortion is a public good. I can't think of a flattering explanation for the selective indignation.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The extra step

In a prayer written down by her companions, St. Catherine of Siena developed the image of mankind as fruit trees grafted onto Jesus through our shared humanity. At one point, she pondered the problem of evil:

And if, God eternal, You made us into trees of life again when we were trees of death by engrafting Yourself, Life, into us
(though many because of their sins produce only fruits of death because they do not engraft themselves into You, eternal Life),
then You can provide as well for the salvation of everyone I see refusing to engraft themselves into You today.
In fact, most of them are persisting in their death of selfish sensuality,
and none of them comes to the fountain where they could find the Blood to water their trees.

I come across such sentiments all the time, if not usually expressed in so relentless a metaphor. Even the allowance that God can provide for the salvation of all the louts we run into today is something plenty of folks will grant if asked.

But then St. Catherine takes her prayer in a direction most of us don't:

Oh, within us is eternal life, and we do not know it!
Oh my poor blind soul, where is your crying?
Where are the tears you ought to be shedding in the sight of your God Who is constantly inviting you?
Where is your heartfelt sorrow for the trees who remain planted in death;
where are your anguished desires in the presence of divine compassion?
These things are not in me because I still have not lost myself.
For if I had lost myself and had sought only God and the glory and praise of His name,
my heart would pour itself out in my voice and my bones would weep out their marrow.
But I have never produced anything but the fruit of death because I have not engrafted myself into You.

If I had sought only God, my bones would weep out their marrow.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The Extra Plate

Enbrethiliel quotes a story told by Bl. Teresa of Calcutta:

Not so long ago, a very wealthy Hindu lady came to see me. She sat down and told me, "I would like to share in your work." ... It occurred to me to say to her, "I would start with the saris. The next time you go buy one, instead of paying 800 rupies, buy one that costs five hundred. Then with the extra 300 rupies, buy saris for the poor."

Simplicity itself: give to the hungry some of your bread and to the naked some of your clothing.

For the most part, I am something of a tight-fisted cheeseparer, and the only time I buy clothes is when I go somewhere and forget to pack enough to wear, so the poor would notice little benefit if I gave them a 38% cut of my clothing budget.

On the giving to the hungry some of your bread angle, though, I recently thought of an even simpler idea, based on the custom of setting an extra plate at the dinner table for an unexpected guest: You divide your monthly food budget by the size of your family, then give that amount to a food shelter. In effect, you're spending enough money on food to feed one extra person the same stuff you're feeding yourself.

I haven't yet screwed up my courage to estimate my family's monthly food budget, so I mention this not to lecture anyone on the proper way of charitable giving, but just as a suggestion for whoever has the means and interest to give it a try.

Link | John da Fiesole
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This love must be perceived

Steve Bogner quotes St. Ignatius of Loyola on the question of correcting others:

An important factor in doing this successfully is the authority enjoyed by the person giving the correction, or his love - and this love must be perceived. Lacking either of these, the correction will be ineffective; there will be no amendment. Hence correcting others is not for everyone.

Let me rewind St. Ignatius's words: Correcting others isn't for everyone, because it isn't always effective, because the one being corrected doesn't always perceive the love and grant the authority of the corrector.

If the correction will be ineffective, don't do it. You can't get much more effect-oriented than that.

I see many, many attempts at correction that appear to be cause-oriented, along the lines of, "But what that guy's doing is wrong! I've got to say something!" That's a mechanical response, and humans (as reason and faith together proclaim) are more than machines. If the effect you want is to release the emotions what that guy's doing causes in you, then go into a deserted place and reel off an imprecatory psalm or two. If the effect you want is for that guy to stop doing something wrong, then first ask yourself whether he will acknowledge your authority and perceive your love if you say something to him.

See how subjective this is? It's all well and good if you act out of love, but if he can't see that, it won't do any good. And since love is desire for another's good, acting in a such a way that he can't perceive your love may well not be acting out of love after all.

But even if I have a friend who I know is willing to accept correction from me, I still need to be very careful about correcting him. If he is very sensitive to mockery, for example, then I shouldn't use mockery while correcting him. If his eyes glaze over at the sight of a syllogism, then I shouldn't use syllogisms.

Put this way, it sounds obvious, but in practice I find it's hard not to leave it up to others to find the love in the way I express myself. That, of course, is to put love of myself ahead of love of others, and who would fault the other for not doing the work to perceive my love for him buried under my love for myself?

Link | John da Fiesole
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The yoke of slavery

Perhaps because the Gospel reading was too challenging, the words from Sunday's Mass that stuck with me are from Galatians 5:1:

Do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

There's a lot going on in these few words.

• Do not submit: Most of the English translations are along the lines of "be not held" or "be not entangled." Each variation implies that we have a choice in the matter. Submission is an act of the will. We may, if we choose, accept the yoke of slavery, but it cannot be forced on us, since Christ Himself has set us free.
  
• again: The yoke of slavery is known to all. Each of us has worn it. Many of us, I suspect, have submitted to it again and again throughout our lives.
  
  Now, why would anyone do this, submit again to slavery? St. Paul goes on to suggest a reason:

  For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want.

  Not only may we prefer the usual desires of the flesh to those of the Spirit, but it's entirely possible for us to confuse the two, to -- if you'll pardon the overextended metaphor -- unhitch the yoke of slavery from the plow of carnal pleasures, say, only to hitch it to the plow of self-righteousness, without noticing that we're still yoked to slavery.
  
• to the yoke of slavery: We must not think that to be free in Christ is to be free of all burdens, to be out from under all yokes. Jesus Himself promises us a yoke in on of the tenderest passages in Matthew:

  "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, 16 and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

  And a few verses after St. Paul warns the Galatians against submitting again to the yoke of slavery, he orders them to serve each other:

  For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love.

  In both cases, there is servitude: the old servitude is enforced by a yoke, the new servitude is given in love. Or, if you like, in both cases there is a yoke: the old yoke is of slavery, the new yoke is of love.
  
  The human spirit chafes against its fallen nature, and the unwise interpret this as a sign that servitude of any sort is contrary to human perfection. The fool thinks he can only achieve freedom by refusing to serve, but those given the wisdom of the Holy Spirit know the freedom they were called for, the only true human freedom, is a freedom of love, and to love is to serve.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Who knew?

I am told I am an SEDF-- Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes me an evil genius. I am extremely focused and difficult to distract from my tasks. With luck, I have learned to channel my energies into improving my intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

My friends may find me remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of my peers know me very well--even those I have known a long time--because I have expert control of the face I put forth to the world. I prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. My decisions are final, and my desire to be right is impenetrable.

I am not to be messed with. I may explode.

(Link via Sister Christer. Image from the Portrait Illustration Maker.)

Link | John da Fiesole
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It never comes bad to resume

I don't have much of an ear for poetry (in the same way that I don't have much of a shot at becoming Queen of England), but I will admit that I've missed reading this sort of stuff over the past half year:

Good, Greene and Bloy also are of those friends who one has, and that one had wished to amigar to each other... And if in this case my friendship by Bloy almost made forget me to the other, perhaps this discovery does not come badly. It never comes bad to resume friendships.

And here I thought I'd never remove fotos del apocalipsis from my blogroll.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Great mind thinks; I like

Bill White links to a page of nuggets from the writings of Fr. James V. Schall, SJ. The full collection begins here, and repays browsing.

One nugget in particular has caught my eye. In a 1984 article in The Thomist, Fr. Schall wrote of St. Albert the Great:

Albert ... realized the wonderful paradox that the human and political life, to remain human and political, somehow must recognize the place of the contemplative order, that politics without metaphysics and theology, in its own fashion, becomes itself a metaphysics and a theology, becomes an attempt to create what is, but by criteria other than the what is of primary being.

I think it is tremendously important that any proposal to order human life -- be it at the individual, family, or social level -- accurately account for what is.

It's an obvious enough principle when applied to something like cooking. I doubt my family is unusual in having stories of someone using salt instead of sugar in a holiday pie or trying to eat biscuits made without the requisite baking powder. If you make a mistake about what is in the kitchen, people will notice. In the old Scholastic formulation, the proof is in the pudding.

And yet in politics, metaphysical mistakes are made all the time. We either assert that what isn't is, or that what is isn't, and for some reason we believe the fact of the assertion establishes the truth of the assertion.

I'm not thinking of Big Lie policies, of repeating an untruth until people believe it. I'm thinking of people who believe, for example, that "I am a victim" is necessarily an objectively true statement if it is stated with sincerity.

Human words, it shouldn't need pointing out, don't work that way. In the real world, my saying "I have an apple on my desk" doesn't cause there to be an apple on my desk, any more than my saying "I am adding salt to the eggs" makes it metaphysically impossible that I am adding sugar by mistake.

As you know, though, God's words do work that way. "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." And I don't think it's entirely coincidental that, in today's "politics without metaphysics and theology," we try to do ourselves what only God can do. Nor is creation ex nihilo the only Divine power we seem to think we possess.

Link | John da Fiesole
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God's way different

Why isn't the dogma of predestination a prescription for indifference?

It's a tough question, because predestination is a mystery of the Divine Will, but various ways of addressing it have been attempted.

There's the pragmatic, "ours is not to reason why" approach, which points out that Scripture tells us to choose good and avoid evil if we want to be saved, not if we know we are going to be saved. We follow Christ's commandments because following His commandments is our job; worrying about how what we do meshes with Divine predestination is above our pay grade.

This suggests the "if it quacks like a duck" approach, which looks at something like Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange's "signs of predestination" and reasons, "If you bring about these signs in your life, you're doing a good job keeping up your end of the Covenant." Jesus did, after all, make various promises He will certainly fulfill, but these promises all require us to do something. (This is not salvation by works, but salvation following upon faith, which can be shown to exist through works.)

But I think there's also a metaphysical reason why predestination doesn't imply indifference.

Scripture tells us God's ways are not our ways, but do we see what this really means? It's not merely that God's ways and our ways are disjoint subsets of some set of all possible ways -- as we might say "Russian ways are not Algerian ways" -- but that God's ways and our ways cannot possibly be classified in the same set. "God's thoughts are not our thoughts" doesn't mean that, of all possible thoughts, God thinks some of them and we think different ones, like "My thoughts are not Bishop Griswold's thoughts," or even, "My thoughts are not a fly's thoughts." It means that what we call "God's thoughts" are not of the same order of being as our thoughts, that though we can speak of God's thoughts analogically, the differences between His and our's are greater than the similarities.

This means that predestination and human freedom are not contradictory -- in fact, they can't be contradictory, because they are in no way comparable. It's like the way a musical note can't contradict a tree; if anything, saying, "Middle C contradicts that oak tree," makes more sense than saying "predestination contradicts human freedom," because notes and trees are at least both elements of Creation.

Now, we are saved by God's sovereign will and our faith in His Son, but the "and" here is not additive, because God's will and our faith are not commensurate. It's a bit like saying a mother is pleased on Mother's Day by her daughter's cookies and her son's song. The baking adds nothing to the singing, and the singing nothing to the baking, but together they result in the mother's pleasure.

(It's a weak simile, admittedly, since the mother would presumably be pleased with either one by itself, and our faith depends on God's grace in a way the singing does not depend on the baking, but it's the best I can think of right now.)

In short (if it's not too late to be short), predestination doesn't mean God is "doing" something for our salvation, so we don't have to. God's doings are not our doings, as you might say; His will for our salvation operates on a different order of existence than our own, and our salvation depends on operations in both the Divine order and the created order.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The most happy dogma

A lot of people seem to find the idea of predestination oppressive. Isn't it fundamentally contrary to any notion of human freedom? Even in its most passive form, where God (so to speak) has merely peeked at the last page in the book of our lives, doesn't it mean that there is a book of our lives, and we're doomed to follow the plot automatically and wind up, blessed or damned, as chance or fate or Divine whimsy or... well, something, anything other than us, decides?

Looked at with less petulance, though, predesination is positively liberating -- at least for moral indolents like myself. Jesus promised:

Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day.

What this means is I can't screw up God's plan!

Now, it doesn't mean I can't screw up myself, or that I can't cause other people to screw up. But it does mean that I can't spoil what God wills for Creation from eternity, that whatever else might be said of me on the Last Day, it won't be, "If only he had done this rather than that, God's Spirit would not have returned empty."

In particular, if the Father has given those in my care to the care of His Son, then His Son will care for them, regardless of the terrible mistakes, or even gross evils, I might commit.

This isn't a prescription for indifference, but an aspect of the dogma of predestination that eases anxiety. In the end, I can no more cost someone their predestined salvation than I can save them myself. My failures should no more cause me to despair than my successes should cause me to hope -- because again, our hope is in God, not ourselves.

Link | John da Fiesole
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The Divine Bookie

St. Thomas More's speech (posted below) came to mind as I read Camassia's post about the problem of a paralyzing fear of hell some people have, not on their own account, but on account of their loved ones who are not Christian:

But I can't imagine that Jesus meant for his apocalyptic talk to drive nice Christian women sick with worry that God will torture their beloved relations, or to encourage the attitude that I often hear that everyone makes his or her own choice, so you just have to deal. (Not to mention the "abominable fancy" that part of the fun of heaven will be watching the torments of the damned.) Many people I know, including myself for a long time, dismiss Christianity out of hand because they find hell so immoral.

... I do think that if my creator cares about morals at all, he could hardly have created a being more moral than himself. If human compassion spills unruly once it is released, what must the compassion of God do?

Here's how I reply to such questions these days: Everyone whom God can bring to heaven is brought to heaven.

This isn't the first part of a syllogism that concludes, "Therefore, everyone is brought to heaven." The "can" in "whom God can bring to heaven" doesn't refer to God's sovereign and unlimited power. In that sense, God "can" raise up children of Abraham from stones and God "can" bring everyone to heaven.

What I have in mind is something different. I don't see Creation as an exercise in divine power so much as an exercise in, shall we say, communication of divine freedom. Yes, God "can" bring me to heaven by binding my will and dragging me along. But the "me" who would be saved through binding and dragging is not the "me" whom God wills to be saved, any more than the "lion" that has edible leaves and a yellow flower is the "lion" that roams the African plains and eats wildebeests. The freedom to choose between good and evil is a sine qua non of human nature, and it is free humans that God created to be saved. God can't save free humans by making them bound humans, any more than He can create a spherical cube.

And this reassures nice Christian women who are sick with worry that God will torture their beloved relations how?

Well, why aren't these nice Christian women sick with worry that God will torture them? (Some nice Christian women are, no doubt, but that's another post.) They aren't worried about themselves because they hope in God. They hope in His promises, those same promises that make them worry about their beloved relations.

If God is trustworthy enough to have such hope in Him -- and in particular, to base that hope in the love God showed mortal man by sending His Son into the world to die on a cross -- then He is trustworthy enough to have hope that, indeed, mercy will triumph over judgment, that the promises of Christ are not carefully worded legalities but a covenential offer of eternal love. That, in short, Christian hope is based, not in human technicalities, but in Love Itself, in Goodness and Truth and Beauty.

We hope, then, that our beloved relations will be saved with the same hope with which we believe we will be saved. Moreover, if we don't hope for others with the same hope we hope for ourselves, then the hope for ourselves is not Christian hope, but some sort of natural expectation. We would be serving as our own bookmaker, laying odds on our own salvation -- and, by extension, on the salvation of others.

As the gospel says, though, "Bet not, lest ye be bet against." Or again, "Hope in God, I will praise Him still, and put my little all into His hands for all parlays."

Link | John da Fiesole
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To our everlasting salvation

"More have I not to say (my Lords) but like as the blessed Apostle St. Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was present, and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now both twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends for ever, so I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your Lordships have now in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation." - St. Thomas More to the commissioners who had just condemned him to death

For a lawyer who would side with the devil ("his cause being good") over his own father to respond in this way after being sentened to death based on testimony everyone in the room knew everyone in the room knew was perjury -- that's what I call heroic virtue. In particular, the virtue of charity: the habit of loving others through loving God.

I think it's fair to say that if you don't habitually love other people, you are not going to actually love them at the moment when, say, they shoot a nasty look at your tie, or wrongly order your hanging, drawing, and quartering. Or even when they insult your child.

Link | John da Fiesole
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Sacred housekeeping

If I'm thinking at all about the purification of the sacred vessels during Mass, odds are I'm thinking about ways it could be done a little faster. With due reverence, of course, but faster.

Yesterday, though, it occurred to me that the act of purifying the vessels -- of cleaning with water and a cloth the vessels that held the Body and Blood of Christ -- effects a tremendously important change in the vessels. Before they are washed, they are in contact with God Himself in a very particular way. Afterward, though, they are just objects; still sacred, still reserved for holy use, but no longer do they contain Christ's Real Presence. They go back into the sacristy until the next Mass.

The Real Presence has been transferred from these sacred vessels to the congregation, which a few minutes later is sent out into the world.

Link | John da Fiesole
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