Man and Woman

A few months ago I was talking to one of the Senior guys at TMC. The conversation came to be about boyhood and manhood. He said that he thought that manhood was about Gentle Strength. He said he thought that Jesus' Crowning with Thorns was an example of this~ Jesus possessing the power of God, yet allowing Himself be treated like scum. His strength was not so shallow that it exploded constantly from Him, like a tyrant. And He was not so weak that He could not have defended Himself.

I suggested that maybe womanhood is about Strong Gentleness. Mary, for example, is incredibly strong, the way she handles all that she must suffer. But her strength is never without gentleness. She is never pushy, never demanding of people. But neither is her gentleness, which defines her as being feminine, without strength. Consider her conversation with Christ, when she spoke with gentleness fortified with strength.

Man and Woman: Each is beautiful; each is powerful; neither can survive without the other.

Fight for Premicy

So I was thinking while enjoying the first few days of summer vacation~ philosophers, particularly ones like Seneca, say a lot about thought ruling emotion. And if you talk to just aobut any TMC student on the topic, they will say that yes, reason is supposed to rule over reason. And it makes sense, but WHY?
I mean, why is the ideal not to have emotions rule thought? And it occured to me while cleaming up campus for the seniors' graduation tomorrow afternoon that it is because the universal is supposed to rule over the particular.
This pattern of universal over particular is everywhere that is orderly. Consider the universe. The universal laws of nature and motion rule, and each particular case follows those rules, though with some exceptions. Or in art, ther are universal prinicples, and each peice of true and real art follows those principles, with some exceptions. That is why whenever we want to learn something, we start by observation of the immediate particulars which we sense. But we always move on to the universal principle, so that we can apply our knowledge about what we sense even to things which we have not sensed.
Thought and emotion follow in this pattern in that by thought we perceive and come to understand the universal principles. Emotions, on the other hand, are what make us alive in a particularly human way to each particular situation.
So thoughts, well reasoned thought, ought to be the guiding principle. By thought we understand a situation, analyze it, classify it and so discover how to handle it according to the modes of acting appropriate to the categoryunder which it falls.
Emotions are much more particular to the situation and personality of each person. They fluxuate with the slightest of details, so they do not have the same semi-reliable reliability that thought has. Emotions, rather, make us acutely aware and alive to what is going on around us in each particular situation, but they cannot guide us to the ruling universal principle as thought can.
So that, at least, is my theory as to Why it is better, in the fight for primacy, for thought to win over emotion.

What is Wisdom?

A priest at my church gave a homily several weeks ago in which he said that someone had said wisdom was the taste for goodness. That phrase got locked in my brain and now I'm searching for the original definition and who originally said it.
What I have found is Old Testament-St. David, St. Augustine, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and a lot of common sense wisdom from my mother. You can read the full article here. The specific words I googled are high-lighted.
St. David says in Psalm 118:66: "Teach me goodness and discipline and knowledge." After reading the book of Wisdom by David's son Solomon, I think those three things pretty much sum up what wisdom is. Wisdom, being a good thing, naturally has goodness as a part of it. Discipline, as is explained in chapter 6 of the Book of Wisdom, leads to Wisdom and it helps us to be willing to follow Wisdom's laws, which leads us to heaven, our final destination. From the beginning of recorded thought, with Socrates and Aristotle and what not, Wisdom has been seen as a step up from knowledge, thought different philosophers have defined this 'step up' differently. My mother has said that the step up is the ability to use knowledge for the good of other people. I think my mother is very close to the truth; her idea combines all three elements stated by David: knowledge- a thing of our intellects, put into our action- that would entail discipline, for the good of others.
St. Augustine and St. Bernard of Clairvaux give some sensory language to their understanding of what wisdom is. The version of the Bible which St. Augustine used had the word 'sweetness' instead of 'goodness' in Psalm 118:66. So St. Augustine read 'Teach me sweetness...' From this he realized the necessity of experiencing the sweetness of Christ before being able to handle the hardships of following Christ. My mother often compared the spiritual adventure to God handing us a bowl of candy. Day by day He removes more of the candy till there is an empty bowl; that is when He asks us to follow Him for His sake, that our love be purely centered on Him and not on anything else. St. Bernard of Clairvaux adds to this concept when he says, "where there is love there is found not labor but flavor." St. Bernard sees wisdom as that which makes the journey sweet and makes the soul able to taste what it is meant to taste. "When wisdom enters it renders dull the carnal sense, purifies the intellect, heals and restores the palate of the heart. So that now, having a healthy palate, it has a taste for the good." This makes a tone of sense when considered in the light of how Christ compared heaven to a feast and in the light of the Eucharist.

"To taste and see that the Lord is sweet- that is wisdom." So wrote St. Bernard. So wisdom then is a taste for what is good (for the Lord is the ultimate good) (When Plato wrote of The Good, he had a beginning grip of the concept of one, benevolent God.) Let us complete this view of wisdom, which looks on wisdom in terms of taste, by seeing how knowledge and discipline fit in.
Knowledge fits in if it is the right kind of knowledge. The right kind would be that which leads us to the Lord and so helps us to reach that for which we hunger and thirst. In the Litany of the Holy Spirit, one line is "Holy Spirit, grant us the only necessary knowledge." (Wisdom, btw, is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.) St. Bernard wrote: "[The milk of contemplative prayer is better] than the wine of worldly knowledge which, to be sure, is inebriating, but with curiosity, not with charity. It fills us up but does not nourish; it puffs up but does not edify, it replenishes but gives no strength."
Discipline fits in because it is through discipline that we persevere and trust in our spiritual adventure. Discipline gives us the strength to keep going and to realize, beyond our pain, that it is sweet to seek for the Lord. Discipline gives us the ability to not question but to trust the Lord to lead us to Himself. If we can discipline our rebellion and our impatience and our curiosity to know about everything now, then we can persevere till death.

Truth 2- Post in progress

1 Two types of truth and their relation to each other:
In a post I did back on December 2, 2009, I talked about how truth is the correspondence of reason and reality. There 2 types of truth: truths of reason and truths of faith. Both are reasonable. The difference is that the first WE can figure out with our reasons, the second we can't figure out with our reasons, so we have to take them by faith. They follow God's reasoning. Also, one helps the other. The Catechism talks about the relationship between these types of truth in paragraph #158:

"Faith seeks understanding":³³ it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith, and to understand better what He has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love. The grace of faith opens "the eyes of your hearts"³⁴ to a lively understanding of the contents of Revelation: that is, of the totality of God's plan and the mysteries of faith, of their connection with each other and with Christ, the center of the revealed mystery. "The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood."³⁵ In the words of St. Augustine, "I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe."36

33 St. Anselm, Prosl. prooem.:PL 153,225A.
34 Eph 1:18.
35 DV 5.
36 St. Augustine, Sermo 43,7,9:PL 38,257-258.

So reason helps faith and faith helps reason.
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2 Difficulty of Finding Truths of Reason
(This is from Humanis Generis by Pope Pius x11 which is quoted in the Catechism here.)
Truths of Reason are not easy to discover. The Truths of reason that have to do with God and His relationship to us are particularly hard for three main reasons, as Pope Pius XII says in his encyclical Humani Generis:

"Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things."

1. These truths cannot be sensed. Jesus was present on earth about 2000 years ago, and the Eucharist is present with us now, but none of this makes any sense (no pun intended) if you do not even believe in a God. And the existence of God and His relationship to us is not something we can sense.

"If they [these truths of reason about God and His relation to us] are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation."

2. They demand self-surrender and self-sacrifice. Having a God means having someone you have to bow to. And many if not all people do not like, in fact, detest, bowing to anyone (Example #1: me).

"The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin."

3. Senses, imagination, and evil passions have a tendency to get in the way of the reason. An example of how the senses get in the way is the man in Letter 1 of Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. On the verge of a spiritual discovery, the man is driven by 'his demon' and hunger out of where he thinking into the street, where he sets aside his thoughts as silly compared to what he senses, which he calls "real life". An example of imagination getting in the way is me during Speech class last semester. An example of evil passions getting in the way is how sins against purity especially cloud the mind. "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God." ~St. Matthew 5:8 (Douay-Rheims Bible)

"So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful."

3 Truth and Truthfulness
Truth, in the strict sense, is a concept in our intellects. We can't see it or hear it or taste truth (We can see and hear things which are true, for example, reading the Bible or catechism, and we can taste something that is true, for example, the Eucharist, but we can not see, hear, or taste truth, just things that are true.). Rather than sensing truth, we understand truth with our intellects via reason and faith. 'God is the Truth' refers to truth's utter source Who IS the very things of which He is the source. For example, "My words are true."
Truthfulness is the quality of being true. It is when one's actions, especially one's words, line up with what is true. For example, "I am being truthful."

"To be truthful is to act and think in agreement with what is reasonable and real, especially by not misrepresenting reality in our words."~ From the essay I wrote- 'Rediscovering Love' for TMC's Faith and Reason Essay Scholarship.

Our understanding of truth has meaning and fulfillment when our lives are truthful.
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4 Relationship of Truth and Intellect
While part 1 classified 2 types of truth by their source, there are three ways to classify truth by its relationship to the intellect. The intellect is the reason. It is the faculty of the mind which thinks; it is the part I am using now, even though it is 12:30 am. So, the three types of truth according to relationship to intellect (quotes from Pocket Catholic Dictionary by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., definition of Truth):

Logical Truth:

"In logical truth, the mind is conformed or in agreement with things outside of the mind, either in assenting to what is or in denying what is not. Its opposite is error."

When the mind is in tune with what is outside of it. When we know what is and know what isn't and accept that as true. The opposite is error, when a person is mistaken about what is or isn't. For Example, it is logically true that you are reading this. It is an error that you are not on a computer.

Metaphysical Truth:

In metaphysical or ontological truth, things conform with the mind. This in primary conformity, when something corresponds to the idea of its maker, and it is secondary conformity when something in intelligible and therefore true to anyone who knows it.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with first causes and sources. So metaphysical truth has to to do with things according tot heir source. When the things outside of the mind conform to the mind. This happens on two levels: 1) When something matches up to the idea of its maker (its maker is its source). 2) When something is understandable, so it is true to anyone who knows it. When the reality of what is made makes sense to someone's reason: a correspondence of reality and reason. For Example, this post is metaphysically true because it is turning out according to my plan. It is metaphysically true to you if you can understand it.

Moral Truth:

In moral truth, what is said conforms with what is on one's mind. This is truthfulness and its opposite is falsehood.

When what we say matches what we are thinking. This is truthfulness. the opposite is falsehood, when you tell a lie. For Example, this post is morally true because it aligns with what I believe.

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5 Two Properties/Qualities of Truth:
(I think 'properties' is the right word).
Truth is Universal. That means that no matter where you are, from on the computer reading this post to on the 10,056th planet, what's true is true.
Truth is Eternal. That means that no matter when you lived, from today to the year 10,056, what's true is true.
These properties are a big help when it comes to sharing the truth. The truth is the easiest thing to communicate because while things like status and historical era and culture are different for people, the truth is not different and it does not change.
These properties of universal and eternal are evident in this quote:

"Truth, by enabling men and women to let go of their subjective opinions and impressions, allows them to move beyond cultural and historical limitations to come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things. Truth opens and unites our minds in the 'logos' of love: this is the Christian proclamation and testimony of charity." ~Introduction to 'Caritas in Veritate' by Pope Benedict XVI

Truth allows us to move beyond cultural and historical limitations. Because Truth is beyond those limitations. Because truth is not a human invention. It is divine. God is the Truth.
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6 Truth's Universality and Eternity as shown by the Intellect
In other words, the relationship between the two properties of truth and the strict sense of truth as a concept in the intellect (which we know via faith and reason).

So the concept of truth is in our intellects, and with that in mind we can see that if there seems to be change in truth, it is not in the truth itself, but in the intellect.
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the Summa Theologica, in answer to the question



7 Relativity and Truth
Now, there is a screwy idea out there that truth is when two people agree on something. That is watering truth down so that it is the slave of perception. Say two color- blind people looked at my blog and thought the themes were pink or green, but the truth would be that it's mostly brown. Or consider back when people thought the world was flat. Plenty of people agreed that it was flat, but that didn't make it true that it was flat. The world is round is round is round. Truth doesn't change just because we don't know what is true.
Truth doesn't change? Really? Well, what about the truth that I'm typing right now. In half an hour that will change to I am eating dinner. But it is still and will always be true for all people in all ages that at 7:37pm on April 26 2010 the person known as philosopher was typing a brainstorm post about truth on her blog, 'Cogito et Scribo'.

ART IV ~ The Problem of the Artist

So far I have stupidly left out a huge piece of art: the artist. So, I shall discuss the artist, using the Catechism of the Catholic Church as my guide. So, once again, let's read CCC 2501:

Created "in the image of God," man also expresses the truth of his relationship with God the Creator by the beauty of his artistic works. Indeed, art is a distinctively human form of expression; beyond the search for the necessities of life which is common to all living creatures, art is a freely given superabundance of the human being's inner riches. Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man's own effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill, to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing. To the extent that it is inspired by truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God's activity in what he has created. Like any other human activity, art is not an absolute end in itself, but is ordered to and ennobled by the ultimate end of man.

Let's analyze this, breaking it down sentence by sentence...
1. Man is created in God's image; he expresses that in the beauty of art.
2. Art is specifically a human endeavor; it is a generous expression of the riches in a human.
3. Art arises from talent and effort, and it unites knowledge and skill in a form of practical wisdom for the purpose of giving form to the truth of reality in languages that we can see and hear.
4. As it is inspired by truth and love of beings, it is like God's creating.
5. Like anything else human, it is not an end, but it has order and nobleness from the end of man.

As you can see, there are some very important connections being formed here. First let's consider the one stated in sentences One and Four: 1. That man's making art is like God's creating man 2. because both are inspired by truth and love of beings, and 3. that this relationship is expressed in the beauty of art.

Adam in the Garden of Eden

1. Man's making art is like God's creating man- we are created in God's image, and the art that we make somehow reflects us. An effect always is similar to its source, or cause, because it has nothing of its own but what came from the cause. Even when an artist says a painting took on a life of its own, the painting is still coming form the artist, just in very unexpected and surprising ways.

Painting by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, showing God creating Adam

2. Both God's creating and man's making art are inspired by truth and love of beings- Love naturally spreads to include more and more people, which is evident in how a family begins as man and wife and spreads to include children. God did not need to create anything, but being love, He wanted to extend love to more beings. as the Catechism says in paragraph 1, "God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life." God's love for us, and the truth of His love, and the Truth which God gives us because He loves us continues and will continue for all time; that is "God's activity in what He has created." Art comes, more or less, from the artist's observation of truth within or outside of himself, and for love of some being. This calls to mind two quotes from the Introduction of Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI: 1. "love and truth never abandon them (all people) completely, because these are the vocation planned by God in the heart and mind of every human person." 2. "Truth should be loved and demonstrated."

Painting by Jack Hayes of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel

3. This relation is expressed by the beauty of art- As we said in 'ART III~ The Problem of Beauty', the more a things is beautiful, whether in a sensual or intellectual way, the more a thing is like God, who is the most beautiful. So it is in the beautifulness of art that the viewer, or audience, can grasp the profound relationship he, the artist, and all people have with God. It is through beauty that lies one of the clearest ways of leading our thoughts to God. God directly manifests Himself in the beauty of creation (also discussed in 'The Problem of Beauty'). People directly and indirectly, intentionally and unintentionally, manifest their Creator and their relationship to Him in art.
Then it seems that when art does not reflect this relationship in a good way, but rather distorts it and mocks it, it is a great sin. For the relationship between man and God is sacred.

Lucifer by Jackson Pollock

Further posts concerning sentences 2, 3, and 5 are on the way!

ART III ~The Problem of Beauty

There are two posts already on my blog that deal directly with art: 'What is Art?' and 'Art Is.....?' I am now going to continue my discussions of art, dealing with this question: in the first post I said, "Beauty and Truth are far from always agreeing. But in art they are shown as sisters." Then, in my second post I had a huge quote from the CCC, and one of the things it says is: "Truth is beautiful in itself." The problem is, are truth and beauty opposed or is truth beautiful in itself?
As always, the best place to start is to define our terms. Truth is a correspondence of reason and reality. Beauty is... And this is where we run into problems. As we all may attest, I am sure, the wonders of creation lead us to consider the greater wondrousness of the Creator.

3 [...]let them know how much the Lord of them (fire, wind, stars, the sun, etc.) is more beautiful than they: for the first author of beauty made all those things. 4 Or if they admired their power and their effects, let them understand by them, that he that made them, is mightier than they: 5 For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby. ~Wisdom 13:3-5

And that is the closest thing I know to an actual definition of 'beauty'.
So, beauty was made by God with the purpose of showing by it His own beauty, and so reveal Himself. In human works, beauty has the mission of showing some truth. In creation, beauty has the mission of showing the Truth.
We observe beauty through two things: the mind and the senses. As it says in the definition of beauty at dictionary.com, 'The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality.' (emphasis added) This is where the whole problem of defining beauty comes up, I think. Because when we think of what is beautiful, we tend to think of things like this:


Or like this: Rapsodia Romania (op.2) by George Enescu
These are all beauties that reach to the senses, and can lead us higher than the senses ever will be able to. It was in thinking of these sensual beauties only that I wrote that beauty and truth were often opposed. I was thinking along the lines of, 'A lie may sound perfectly marvelous, but it isn't true. It may be true that someone is dead, but that isn't beautiful.' And so I cam e to the conclusion that beauty and truth are often opposed. If the only sort of beauties that existed were the sensual kind, then I am right.
However, there are also things which are beautiful, and whose beauty only the intellect can grasp, things which may even repel the senses. For example, suffering and death. How can they beautiful? Although it seems almost impossible to see these as beautiful, they are, because they can lead one closer to God.
As the senses have 5 faculties, so the mind has 5. One of these is the intellect, which has the ability to sense what is beautiful, even of the senses cannot or will not. Consider again the definition from dictionary.com: 'The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality.' (emphasis added) One cannot see, hear, taste, feel, or smell truthfulness. But one can sense when what they see, hear, or feel is true- with the intellect's sense for what is good, true and beautiful.
So, now that we have explored what beauty is and how truth and beauty can be opposed of one is only thinking of sensual beauties, let us find how they correspond, when thinking of both sensual and intellectual beauties.
As Wisdom 13:3-5 shows us, sensual beauties that are created by God, such as fire,wind, stars, and the sun, can and should lead us to God. Thus they correspond to Truth. Sensual beauties made by man- clothes, paintings, sculptures- are an imitations of the created; others like photos and videos are ways of holding the created from the changes of time. These can lead us, indirectly, to the Creator. The purer they are of sin, the more they do this.
Intellectual beauties, both created and made, correspond with truth and the Truth because God is beautiful. We know God is beautiful because, as said in Wisdom 13:3-5, the beauties of earth reflect that. If He were not beautiful, He would not be able to have made anything beautiful. Also, all that is the best is in Him, so if there is beauty in creation (there is), then He is the most beautiful (He is). (There is a slight distinction I will make before going on: the beauties of the earth are a means for us to reach Him, mentally and actually. The beauty of God is an end to be contemplated and enjoyed here and forever in heaven.)
Now, God is beautiful and God is Truth. As He is all perfect, there cannot be anything contradicting in Him, so his beauty and Truth must perfectly be in agreement. Thus, the Truth is in itself beautiful. Going down now in thought, from greatest to least, we may conclude that the more a thing is like God, the more it is true, the more it is beautiful, and the more these two qualities agree and compliment each other. And the less a thing is like God, the more sinful and low, the less it is true and beautiful, and the less these agree.
Specifically, on the example I gave of an intellectual beauty- death. Death is the way that, because of sin, we have to pass through to get to heaven. But the end of all things, God, has purified and made holy our only means of actually reaching and being with Him eternally in His full glory. So, death not only has beauty in that is a way to the greatest beauty; it now is a beauty in itself, a sanctified way, and when we go through it we are following in the footsteps of God.
Finally, if even death, the greatest effect of sin- ugliness and lies- can and has been sanctified and so made good and holy and true and beautiful, then we can know that truth and beauty are not opposed. When they seem opposed, it is probably because one of them is either lacking or impure, or our senses intellects are dulled and warped by sin and so we cannot see or think correctly.
And now, I big thanks to you, my reader, for having read that humongously long post!

Divine Love

"To every existing thing God wills some good. Hence, since to love any thing is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists" ~St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

.......As Fr. Hardon puts is, love is "to will good to someone." (Pocket Catholic Dictionary, definition of 'Love')
.......Pope Benedict elaborates further as he says in the Introduction of Caritas in Veritate, "To love someone is to desire that person's good and to take effective steps to secure it."
.......So God loves us and thus wills good to us and wants to give us that good. What is the best for us? Nothing less than God's love. Because God loves us he wants what is best for us, and what is best for us is His love, so He loves us, so He wants the best for us... Divine love is both the gift and the reason for giving. Moreover, it is the giver Himself.
.......In the light of this, all love between humans falls into place as a reflection of God's love. Human love is inspired by Divine love. "All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically." (Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction to Caritas in Veritate). Not only do people naturally want to love in response to the love of God, it is our mission to love. "As the objects of God's love, men and women become subjects of charity; they are called to make themselves instruments of grace so as to pour forth God's charity and to weave networks of charity." (Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction to Caritas in Veritate)
.......A proverb states, "Love elicits a response." So God's love elicits two responses: the one above, that we love one another and that we love Him. It is only by loving God and being open to the love He wishes to pour upon us (and that we need) that we are able to fully love others. For often, our love falls short. It is not enough. By opening ourselves to God's love, we can think, say, and do what is needed with love, though it is not our own. Consider this passage from The Jeweler's Shop by Pope John Paul II in which one of the characters is speaking of the marriage of a friend which had almost completely broken and is now slowly recovering:

"The cause lies in the past. The error resides simply there . The thing is that love carries people away like an absolute, although it lacks absolute dimensions. But acting under illusion, they do not try to connect that love with the Love that has such dimensions. They do not even feel the need, blinded as they are not so much by the force of their emotions as by lack of humility. They lack humility toward what love must be in its true essence. The more aware they are of it, the smaller the danger. Otherwise the danger is great: love will not stand the pressure of reality."

And the more we are open to God's love, the more our own grows. Because of God's love, we can transcend our weaknesses. God's love gives us the opportunity for an eternity in heaven, so it gives us a purpose for living now. "Love is God's greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope" (Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction to Caritas in Veritate)

"Charity is love received and given. It is "grace" (charis). Its source is the wellspring of the Father's love for the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Love comes down to us from the Son. it is Creative love, through which we have our being; it is redemptive love, through which we are recreated. Love is revealed and made present by Christ (cf. John 13:1) and "poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit" (Rom 5:5)."
(Pope Benedict XVI, Introduction to Caritas in Veritate)

.......To consider further what love is, I have compiled this list of what charity is and is not, according to Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's' essay entitled Charity:

Charity
IS NOT...........................................IS
In emotions.................................In the will
Spasmodic....................Habit, Commandable
Contract..................................Relationship
From man or ................Supernatural, from God
anything sensual.........................................................
Picky about who ........................Wills to love
deserves to be loved...........everyone for God's sake
Isolated, countable acts................................Good habit
Occasionally good..................Growing and eternal virtue
A contract.............................A supernatural relationship
.......................................with God and neighbor
According to merit.................Loves the sinner,
..........................................hates the sin
Changed by ...........................................Eternal
and with time............................................................

.......The best place to learn what Love is is in the Bible, especially St. Paul's passage in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. My advice when you read it is, 'Since you have probably heard this a hundred times before, try to read it now with fresh ears and an inquisitive mind.'
.......Let us now conclude this discussion of Divine Love with another quote from The Jeweler's Shop:

...."Sometimes human love seems too short for love. At other times it is, however, the other way around: human love seems too short in relation to existence-or rather, too trivial. At any rate, every person has at his disposal an existance and a Love. The problem is: Hos to build a sensible structuree from it?
....But this structure must never be inward-looking. It must be open in such a way that on the one hand it embraces other people, whole on the other it always reflects the absolute Existence and Love; it must always, in some way, reflect them."

All Virtues Essentially Come From Love

All virtues come from love. We can know this for two reasons:
1. God is Love, and God is the source of all things. Everything which comes directly from Him thus directly comes from love.
2. Goodness is a reflection of the ultimate good being, who is God. Virtues are good habits- that is, they are a way of acting, thinking, and speaking in a way that consistently reflects God. And since God is love, then reflecting God consistently is loving.

Descartes III - Radical Doubt and Faith

Descartes (1596-1650) invented and used a method called 'Radical Doubt' with the goal of finding 'true ideas', or clear truths. The rules of this method are:
1. Never immediately accept anything as true. Question all ideas.
2. Break ideas down into smaller pieces.
3. Do all reasoning in order, from simplest to most complex.
4. Omit no ideas. Take everything into consideration and enumerate everything.

Lately I've been talking to one of the librarians at the public library, and she is Jewish. I've also been communicating to a fellow blogger who is Jewish. They both say that the central core premise of their beliefs is to not accept anything anyone tells you until you have questioned it, analyzed it, thought about it, and were sure it made sense.

Sound similar, don't they? And it sounds like a great way of going about things and shifting out the truth from all the lies we get shoved in our face every day. But, if reason is all there is to finding the truth, why does the Catholic Church put so much emphasis on faith? If we can use our reasons well, what need have we of faith? God gave us brains, didn't He? Are we supposed to just let ourselves be spoon fed what a bunch of priests and bishops and the Pope say? And then believe it just because they said it?

This is my answer to those questions:
If I try to reach the truth, and I decide to take this premise of always questioning everything before accepting anything as true and of using only my reason, I am putting faith in my reason. I am putting immense trust in one, limited faculty of my mind that is just as fallen as my every other faculty because I am human. And on what grounds? What reason have I to put faith in my reason? My reason can even tell me that since it is limited it cannot take me unguided and alone to the truth which we all seek.

Consider what would happen if everyone used only their own reasoning to find the truth: no one would agree or come to any conclusions. Everyone would have pieces of the truth, arguments would constantly break out, and everything- morals, principles, etc.- would become relative. (sounds sort of like today, doesn't it?) Truth, however, by its very nature, is universal and eternal.

Furthermore, I can use my reason to find that God is so beyond my comprehension that I cannot reach Him through human reason alone. Then, I can use my reason to find that since He is all-loving, He would not have abandoned His creatures on earth with nothing but their reasons to guide them to Him. God would reveal truths about Himself, truths which help us reach Him by believing in them, though such truths surpass our reason's ability to comprehend.

The more our reason is lit by the light of faith, the more we may understand what we believe in, and the more we understand, the more deeply we believe and love what we know by faith. And what we know by reason and believe in by faith become tightly and wondrously bound.

Finally, belief is not based on how much sense the believed-in thing makes. Rather, we believe in truths beyond our comprehension beyond God told us. We believe for the authority of the person (or Divine Person) who told us.

Once again I refer to my favorite source:

156 What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe "because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived".28 So "that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit."²⁹ Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church's growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability "are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all"; they are "motives of credibility" (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is "by no means a blind impulse of the mind".³⁰

157 Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives."³¹ "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt."³²

158 "Faith seeks understanding":³³ it is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know better the One in whom he has put his faith, and to understand better what He has revealed; a more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love. The grace of faith opens "the eyes of your hearts"³⁴ to a lively understanding of the contents of Revelation: that is, of the totality of God's plan and the mysteries of faith, of their connection with each other and with Christ, the center of the revealed mystery. "The same Holy Spirit constantly perfects faith by his gifts, so that Revelation may be more and more profoundly understood."³⁵ In the words of St. Augustine, "I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe."³⁶

159 Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."³⁷ "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."³⁸

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28 Dei Filius 3:DS 3008.
29 Dei Filius 3:DS 3009.
30 Dei Filius 3:DS 3008-3010; Cf. Mk 16 20; Heb 2:4.
31 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,171,5,obj.3.
32 John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia pro vita sua (London: Longman, 1878) 239.
33 St. Anselm, Prosl. prooem.:PL 153,225A.
34 Eph 1:18.
35 DV 5.
36 St. Augustine, Sermo 43,7,9:PL 38,257-258.
37 Dei Filius 4:DS 3017.
38 GS 36 § 1.

Hume and Is It All about Pleasure?

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher who thought all ideas came form experience, none from reason. I can't stand him, but I bring him up to refute his central claim that everybody does everything because they are seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. When we act in front of others, we act to seek praise and avoid blame, according to Hume.
This idea has been bouncing around in my head for quite some time. Between my uncle, two friends, my dad, and two priests, I've accumulated several reasons that it is wrong.

1. That's how two year olds act, and the whole point of growing up and being raised by your parents is to grow strong enough to break out of that selfish mode of behavior.



2. There is no way we could possibly know if everyone always acts like that. I might find that I do, but I will never know more than that for sure, and assuming others do because I do is a fallacy. (Incidentally, I don't always act for those motives.)


3. To disprove such a statement, we have only to find one person in one situation. That alone would show that such a statement isn't true. The Martyrs are examples of this; they offered their lives because of belief, not for anything less, not for the happiness of heaven; they died because they loved God and His truth and wanted to obey Him for His pure goodness.





4. We obey God because He is our maker, not because He will reward us. That is the call of every Christian, and every person really: to obey God, not for our own gain, but because it is the will of God who is all goodness, all truth, all love.



5. Pleasure, essentially, is the satisfying of the lower urges and passions: hunger, thirst, wanting to be warm and comfortable, have the admiration of your friends (or maybe the whole world), etc. etc. etc. Pain, then, is when these desires are not fulfilled and/or denied. People do not always operate on such lowly motives. Sometimes we are actually capable of doing something for the goodness of the act and the joy of the person who will benefit. We are more than animals. We have higher faculties and aspirations. We can go beyond these lower urges by using these higher faculties to strive for these higher aspirations, which take us beyond our falleness into the fullness of who God calls us to be and do.



6. Our own pleasure may somehow be involved, like as an encouragement or incentive to push yourself with when you want to give up, but that doesn't make it the motive. Take the task of fighting sin to reach heaven, or any other such high mission. They are all about someone else, some good and truth of God. We fight temptations because they are wrong and we do good because it is right; that in itself is the reason. When it gets hard, the pleasure of heaven is an encouragement, but it is not our motive for fighting evil and doing good. The pleasure of heaven, though great, is not enough to inspire such martyrs and saints and missionaries as there are in the world.



7. Consider the nature of temptation. I've been tempted (and fallen) enough times to know that temptations often appeal to the pleasures. Pride appeals to the pleasure of thinking you are great; Gluttony appeals to the pleasure of taste and eating; Hate appeals to the pleasure of not sacrificing for anyone or doing anything selfless, and instead being consumed with yourself; Envy appeals to the pleasure of thinking you deserve things and feeling angry and revengeful to those who have what you think you deserve. The list goes on for miles. The urge to do good deeds, on the other hand, comes from knowing something is good, someone needs something done for them, etc. Virtues all come from love, and love... Love gives pleasure, but the main point of love is the sacrificing for another, for their sake. I shall paraphrase Pope Benedict XVI: Love is wanting the best for someone and taking efficacious steps to provide what is best to the beloved. Since love, the root of all good (because God is Love), is not about satisfying your own pleasures, than neither are all things which come, purely, from love. Sins, however, are very driven by seeking pleasure and avoiding pain for oneself.



8. And last but not least, the argument by my very own dad: If all actions are based on seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, then morality becomes nothing. There is nothing wrong with killing your nasty neighbor if it gives you the pleasure of blasting his head to smithereens and knowing you'll never be bothered by him again. Of course, you are forfeiting the pleasure of heaven, but if you don't believe in an afterlife, or can convince yourself that sinning won't be an obstacle, you are all set to do the most horrific nasty pleasurable things you can imagine.


In conclusion, let us consider the prayer the Church instructs her members to say in the repentance from their sins: "...I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because I have offended Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love..."
The first motive for hating the faults one has committed is the loss of heaven and the pains of hell; this is a pleasure vs. pain motive, but it is not the only motive. Nor is it the main motive, or the strongest motive. It is surpassed by far by the regret of having offended God. Notice how the attention goes from oneself to something other than and beyond oneself. The motives for which people do truly great things are other-centered. Notice also the reasons for regretting having offended God: it is for no other reason than that God is good and deserves our love. He deserves not all only our love, but all our love, once again showing that great deeds are other-centered while sins and lowly behavior are self-centered.
Hume may think we always operate in self-centered ways, but if the Church instructs us to act in other-centered ways, then it is possible. Moreover, the Church gives us examples of such behavior in the saints and drives us to do likewise, for we are all called to be saints.

TRUTH

Truth is the correspondence of Reason and Reality. God is Absolute Truth, and with our reason and what God has revealed to us -Divine Revelation- we can reach truths about God and His creation.

There are two Kinds of Truth:
Truths of Reason These truths are learned by our reason and observations. They lead us to know that there is a First Cause, a source of all that exist.
Truths of Faith These truths are the truths we learn from God because we are not capable of learning them through our own reason and observation. They lead us to know who the First Cause is. They deal with realities we could never learn of by our human reason. They are based on God's reason.

The authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, is why we believe. With God's aid, we believe. This believing is faith. Further, we naturally search for more understanding of what we believe in; the more we understand, the more clearly and firmly we believe.
This is a sketch of the relation between reason and faith.

Diagram of the Soul

I was talking a couple of nights ago to a very close friend, and the topic of the soul came up. A little over a year ago I came up with a diagram of the soul, as below.Central Circle: Place of inner peace and integrity, love; Where God is when the soul is in a state of Sanctifying grace; commonly called the "heart"
Middle Circle: Place of chaos, confusion, inner war, temptation from within
Outer Circle: What others see first; facade; reputation
Central Stripe: Existence; essence of your being and personality
Middle Right Stripe: Thoughts; opinions; philosophies
Middle Left Stripe: Feelings; emotions; passions
Outer Right Stripe: Talents; skills; hobbies; interests
Outer Left Stripe: Senses; how we perceive the things and people around us

ART II ~Art is..........?

Thanks to Tolstoy's What is Art? I've been thinking about art a lot lately, and I've come up with this theory:

Essentially, art is the portrayal of truth through beauty; by doing this, it can reflect the goodness of God and lead to contemplation of things eternal.

I have charted out the components of Art in this way:


In art, beauty serves truth, but the relationship between truth and beauty do not have to be 50/50. Still, every component has to be there for it the work to merit the name 'Art'. art also has a relativity in that what some people call art others call junk. This is because what appeals to some people's senses is repulsive to others, what some people consider reasonable others think is stupid and nonsensical. I think people can pretty much agree on what reflects reality and what is orderly.
Notice that Order and Reason are more internal and mental qualities. Reason is an action of the mind, and order is something perceived by the mind. Meanwhile, appeal to the Senses and Reality are more physical and external qualities which we learn through our senses and through experience.
Now, I said in my theory that art can lead to the contemplation of the eternal. This ability and its effectiveness depend on two things: 1. the artist(s)' intention and his/her/their ability to fulfill the intention 2. the mental capacities of the audience.
Considering the first, no mater how much a person has a good intention, if they can't portray it, the art is stuck in their heads. This is why talent is such a huge thing to be an artist. As my friend pointed out, you can fix technique, but not talent. The talent of art is a God-given gift, and those with it have the ability to communicate well their intentions, to lead to truths beyond the senses by appealing to the sensible. The problem is when the intention is wicked and sinful. I cannot think of any situation when such an 'art' would lead beyond the sensible. Moreover, truth is a good thing even when it is far from beautiful. When exposed to such 'art', which I cannot quite consider merits the term 'art', the right thing to do is to avoid it and all temptations it will give.
Considering the second, no matter how simply the artist portrays the truth, if the audience is hopelessly or obstinately stupid, they won't understand, and again the art will by stuck in the head of the artist. So when viewing or listening or watching art, one should try to hear what the artist is saying, no matter how hard. If there is no message, mere beauty, then it is not art but mere beauty. Remember, however, that one person may get nothing from a work of art while others get very much, and so what may be mere beauty to one might be art to another.
To summarize, let's read one of my very, very, very favorite passages from one of my very, very, very favorite books:

2500 The practice of goodness is accompanied by spontaneous spiritual joy and moral beauty. Likewise, truth carries with it the joy and splendor of spiritual beauty. Truth is beautiful in itself. Truth in words, the rational expression of the knowledge of created and uncreated reality, is necessary to man, who is endowed with intellect. But truth can also find other complementary forms of human expression, above all when it is a matter of evoking what is beyond words: the depths of the human heart, the exaltations of the soul, the mystery of God. Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom: the order and harmony of the cosmos-which both the child and the scientist discover-"from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator," "for the author of beauty created them."²⁹⁰

[Wisdom] is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.²⁹¹ For [wisdom] is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light she is found to be superior, for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail.²⁹² I became enamored of her beauty.²⁹³

2501 Created "in the image of God,"²⁹⁴ man also expresses the truth of his relationship with God the Creator by the beauty of his artistic works. Indeed, art is a distinctively human form of expression; beyond the search for the necessities of life which is common to all living creatures, art is a freely given superabundance of the human being's inner riches. Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man's own effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill,²⁹⁵ to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing. To the extent that it is inspired by truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God's activity in what he has created. Like any other human activity, art is not an absolute end in itself, but is ordered to and ennobled by the ultimate end of man.²⁹⁶