I guess I kind of thought a synod would be at least somewhat interesting

The Statues of the First Synod of the Archdiocese of Washington is a stultifying document, but I kind of like that the first entry in the Policy Index is "Bartending Certification Courses."

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A just question

If the Church is right in teaching that excess wealth belongs to those who do not have what they need -- in St. Ambrose's words,

It is the bread of the hungry you cling to, it is the clothing of the naked you lock up; the money you bury is the redemption of the poor.

-- then by the definition of justice (giving to others what is due them), giving excess wealth to the poor is a matter of justice.

That much is well known, but Daniel Schwindt draws an unnerving conclusion:

Charity... has little place in secular law.

Justice is a different story: human law has every business enforcing justice to the best of its ability. Justice does not have to be left to work itself out in the heart of each individual.

If someone owes me a thousand dollars, has it to spare, but refuses to pay it, I sure would want there to be a judge who will force him to pay me. And, strictly speaking, I don't even need a thousand dollars right now (though I could certainly use it).

How then can I object to the principle of a judge who would force someone, who has the means but does not act on them, to give clean drinking water to those who don't have it?


Granted, figuring out who is owed what is a lot more straightforward with written contracts and the like than with the rich, collectively, and the poor, collectively (though it's not always just to enforce a written contract). Any particular attempt to enforce the justice of a rich man meeting a poor man's needs -- I might as well call it what it is: redistrubution -- may itself fall short of justice, in all sorts of ways. It might even be the case that, given the condition of a particular society, attempting to make or enforce redistrubution laws would be contrary to the public good.

Still, it seems that one of the following must be true:

• The Church is wrong to teach that excess wealth belongs in justice to the poor.
• A concern that justice be done by and to the members of a society is outside the legitimate scope of human law.
• Laws governing the redistribution of wealth are, in principle, within the legitimate scope of human law.

(Link to David Schwindt's article via Catholic and Enjoying It!)

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Wisdom and counsel

A while back I wrote about how the charism of wisdom relates to the gift of wisdom, which in turn presupposes the virtue of charity.

Now I'm going to write about how the charism of wisdom relates to the gift of counsel, which in turn presupposes the virtue of prudence.

As it happens, St. Thomas mentions both a charism of wisdom and a charism of counsel, considered as extensions of the respective gifts, in the Summa Theologiae's Treatise on Virtues. (His (somewhat inelegant) term for "charism" is "gratuitous grace," which is distinct from the sanctifying grace that makes the recipient holy.^**)

In the article, "Whether wisdom is in all who have grace?", after explaining that yes, the gift of wisdom "is wanting to none who is without mortal sin through having sanctifying grace," St. Thomas adds:

Some, however, receive a higher degree of the gift of wisdom, both as to the contemplation of Divine things (by both knowing more exalted mysteries and being able to impart this knowledge to others) and as to the direction of human affairs according to Divine rules (by being able to direct not only themselves but also others according to those rules). This degree of wisdom is not common to all that have sanctifying grace, but belongs rather to the gratuitous graces, which the Holy Ghost dispenses as He will, according to 1 Corinthians 12:8: "To one indeed by the Spirit is given the word of wisdom," etc.

In considering "Whether counsel should be reckoned among the gifts of the Holy Ghost? " he counters the objection that "counsel seems to be one of those things which are given by the Holy Ghost specially to certain persons":

That a man be of such good counsel as to counsel others, may be due to a gratuitous grace; but that a man be counselled by God as to what he ought to do in matters necessary for salvation is common to all holy persons.

In both cases, then, the charism given only to some extends the gift given to all by enabling the one who has received the charism to benefit others. (Perhaps if everyone fully developed their gifts of wisdom and counsel, there'd be no need for the charisms.)

Okay, so for St. Thomas the charism of wisdom consists of:

• knowing particularly exalted mysteries
• being able to impart knowledge of particularly exalted mysteries to others
• being able to direct others according to Divine rules

And the charism of counsel consists of

• being able to counsel others

But how is "being able to direct others according to Divine riles" different than "being able to counsel others"? Wouldn't you counsel them according to Divine rules, if you're counseling them as directed by God?

I think the distinction is suggested by St. Thomas's explanation of how wisdom, which is about Divine things that are eternal and necessary, can nevertheless be practical, even though practicality is about contingent things (i.e., things that don't have to be as they are):

Divine things are indeed necessary and eternal in themselves, yet they are the rules of the contingent things which are the subject-matter of human actions.

Wisdom, then, gives you the rules by which you judge contingent things.

Counsel, on the other hand, helps you decide among contingent things:

Since, however, human reason is unable to grasp the singular and contingent things which may occur, the result is that "the thoughts of mortal men are fearful, and our counsels uncertain" (Wisdom 9:14). Hence in the research of counsel, man requires to be directed by God who comprehends all things: and this is done through the gift of counsel --

 -- or the charism of counsel, if one person is counseling another.

Wisdom provides the higher level direction -- "Go this way. Don't go that way." Counsel gets down into the details, "Go ahead and take the job. Don't be afraid to trust her."

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** "[T]here is a twofold grace: one whereby man himself is united to God, and this is called 'sanctifying grace'; the other is that whereby one man cooperates with another in leading him to God, and this gift is called 'gratuitous grace,' since it is bestowed on a man beyond the capability of nature, and beyond the merit of the person. But whereas it is bestowed on a man, not to justify him, but rather that he may cooperate in the justification of another, it is not called sanctifying grace. And it is of this that the Apostle says (1 Corinthians 12:7): 'And the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man unto utility,' i.e. of others."

Labels: Charisms and Gifts

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Inspired writing

T.S. O'Rama quotes Shelby Foote from a 1997 interview:

Good writing doesn’t come from inspiration. It may spark you, set you off, but if you write under the influence of inspiration, you will write very badly—probably sentimentally, which is even worse.

This caught my attention for a couple of reasons.

First, as an anti-sentimentalist myself, I am all for preventing sentimental writing, and I applaud Foote for striking this blow. I take him to mean, more or less, that someone writing under the influence of inspiration, in trying to inspire readers in much the same way, is likely to fall into sentimentalism as the easiest way to get a response.

Foote's concern is the quality of writing itself; as he says earlier in the interview:

As I get older, I care less and less what happens in a book. What I care about is the writing—how it’s told. I read words and I don’t see a scene going on as if I were at a movie; I want to see how these words are shaped and how they intertwine and what the sounds are next to each other, how they rub up against each other, along with the distribution of commas and semicolons.

To the extent writing under the influence of inspiration is hasty writing -- inspiration is fleeting, so you need to write quickly -- the way the words are shaped and intertwine is haphazard. Apart from the rare genius, good hasty writing is likely to be derivative, since the writer will be using whatever words come most quickly to mind. And someone who cares about writing isn't likely to think derivative is good.

All sentimental writing is derivative, at least in the sense that it follows well-worn paths to well known emotional responses. It's manipulative, so if it fails to manipulate -- as it will, if the reader cares about the writing and not what happens -- it fails as writing. Sentimental writing that fails to evoke sentiment is like the illogical logic puzzle detective novel Raymond Chandler criticized in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder": "If it is not that, it is nothing at all. There is nothing else for it to be."

Having said all that, I'm also interested in Foote's comment because I'm interested in the idea of writing as a charism. I can dress that up as a special docility toward the movement of the Holy Spirit in building up Christ's Church through the written word, but it comes down to writing under the influence of inspiration.

Granted, Foote wasn't talking about that kind of inspiration. But the idea of a writing charism does make me think about Foote's distinction quoted above, between "what happens" and "how it's told." Art is right reasoning about a thing to be made, and you have to think the Holy Spirit reasons rightly about the writing He inspires, which suggests that it will be artful writing. Both what happens and how it's told ought to be exceptional.

And yet, the purpose of a charism is to have an effect on others, and I'd bet there aren't a lot of readers as discriminating as the elderly Shelby Foote. For that matter, a lot of readers might well be put off by writing that's too well written. So we might think the Holy Spirit isn't too concerned with words being artfully arranged as long as the meaning He intends is conveyed. But does that really make sense? We wouldn't say that someone with the charism of painting might paint ugly pictures as long as you could tell what they were paintings of.

We could distinguish between writing and writing down. Writing is a creative act, the art of making a piece of writing intended to be read. Writing down is an act of recording spoken or thought words, to convey the intelligible ideas written down to others who weren't there to hear them spoken. The Holy Spirit can inspire either act, right? The writing down of words, so that others can know what the writer-down wants them to know, need not be particularly artistic.

If the Holy Spirit inspires a writer, though, then surely the work that gets written gets written well. And that should make it easy for a writer to know whether he has the charism of writing, since writing well without God as your co-author is hard work.

Labels: Charisms and Gifts

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