On the first Saturday of Advent,
the Church chooses as the gospel Matthew’s account of the commissioning of the
Apostles. After taking to heart the lost
souls around Him, He demands that His disciples beg God to send more laborers into
the fields. He then empowers the Apostles
and commands them to go out into the world to continue His mission of
redemption (c.f. Mt 8:35-10:3). The implications
are obvious. There are many lost souls
that can only be saved through the continuing authoritative mission of the
Apostles. But this mission only
continues through the prayers of all Christ’s disciples for more Bishops and
Priests.
This interpretation is by no
means novel. The Church has always
understood what Our Lord was telling us to do.
Nevertheless, in times of vocational crisis, there is a tendency, rather
than trusting in God’s way of doing things, to look for human solutions. Thus, we find ourselves discussing doing away
with celibacy or adding women to the ranks of the ordained as human solutions
to the problem. But ultimately the “vocations
crisis” is a crisis of faith in that we do not trust in God’s promise to send faithful
Bishops and Priests. We do not have them
because we do not ask.
One might immediately object to what I just said. There are plenty of people who pray for vocations. While it is true that I have no idea how many people pray for vocations regularly, I do know that the Church has official periods of supplication for Priests that practically go unnoticed. I am, of course, speaking of Ember Days. Ember Days are the ways in which the Church fulfills Our Lord’s command to pray for more harvesters.
The
Ember Days
The Quatuor Tempora or Ember Days, are four periods of prayer and fasting (if you want to know how to fast, read this previous entry) that the Church has set aside for each of the four Ecclesiastical seasons. Ember Days begin are marked by three days (Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday) of penance by which the Church, especially through fasting, consecrates to God each of the Seasons of the Year. The practice sprung out of the habit of Israel to fast in the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth month (c.f. Zech 8:18-19). The practice, at least according to Pope St. Leo the Great, has been a part of the Church’s year since the times of the Apostles.
The Advent Ember Days, like
each of the other three, have as their object gratitude and supplication for
the harvest. According to Leo the Great,
the Advent Ember Days, falling in the time of the year where all the fruits of
the earth had been collected, would mark a time of “joyful fasting” (Zech 9:19)
in thanksgiving for the harvest.
The connection to the earthly
harvest also has a further meaning connected to Our Lord’s mention of the great
harvest of souls. The Church through an
act of penance would pray the Lord of the harvest to send worthy Ministers who
are holy and true Shepherds during the Ember Days. The faithful would join the Church in her intention
by offering their own acts fasting. In
short then the Ember Days are special days in which the Church as a whole fasts
and prays together for vocations.
The fall into disuse of the
Ember Days and the current vocation crisis are hardly coincidental. The prayer of the Church is always far more
pleasing and efficacious than individual prayer. As the Ember Days of Advent come upon us
tomorrow, let us join the Church in this act of gratitude for the faithful Shepherds
among us and beg the Lord to send us more.
As Dom Prosper Gueranger exhorts us, the Ember Days are a great way to “keep
within ourselves the zeal of our forefathers for this holy season of
Advent. We must never forget, that
although the interior preparation is what is absolutely essential for our
profiting by the Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet this preparation could
scarcely be real, unless it manifested itself by exterior practices of religion
and penance.” Individually chastened by
our fasts, let us then join the Church in these Ember Days and implore the Lord
of the Harvest to send out more laborers.
In the thirteenth chapter of
St. Matthew’s Gospel, Our Lord gives us the Parable of the Sower. He speaks of a farmer who indiscriminately spreads
seeds over a variety of soil types.
Despite the farmer’s prodigality, the seed only produces a yield in the
rich soil. The implication is obvious:
to produce the great yield of holiness, we must become rich soil. What is not immediately obvious, however, is how
one becomes the rich soil.
One might be tempted to
think that the solution is to be a “good” person. When you are nice to other people and try not
to sin, you become rich soil. The
problem with this viewpoint however is that soil cannot make itself rich. It must be made rich by having things added
to it. Clearly then, the answer is to
receive the Sacraments. The Sacraments
are like a strong fertilizer producing rich, dark soil. But this interpretation is problematic as
well. While the Sacraments are, at least
objectively speaking, like spiritual fertilizer, their effect depends upon the
subjective disposition of the soil in which they land. Even the Sacraments will have no effect upon
a hardened heart. Instead, the Fathers
of the Church all thought the key to becoming rich soil was to become men and women
of prayer.
But prayer is anything but a
simple solution, especially living in the grasp of a ubiquitous
technocracy. Within its grasp, we have
grown accustomed to thinking that all of reality can be controlled and
manipulated by technique, our spiritual lives not excepted. The technocratic mindset has led modern men
and women to search for human techniques, usually repurposed from Eastern
Religions, to solve the problem of prayer.
Rather than solving the problem, these techniques often lead us away
from God because they are not in accord with human nature itself.
The
Myth of Technique
Let’s suppose that we want
to pray, but St. Paul is right when he says that “we do not know how to pray as
we ought” (Romans 8:26). It is normal to
then think we must investigate various techniques to find out which one works
best for us. The problem with this
mindset is that it is a subtle form of Gnosticism. The knowledge of how to pray becomes some
secret knowledge that we must discover.
The conclusion, one that a lot of people draw, is that a life of true
prayer is not open to everyone and is reserved for a select few who somehow
figure it out.
We must hear St. Paul
out. While it is true that “we do not
know how to pray as we ought ,” the Apostle reminds us that “the Spirit Himself
intercedes with inexpressible groanings” (Romans 8:26). Prayer is, first a foremost a gift. It is a gift, but it is a gift that we are
naturally inclined to receive. As St.
Thomas repeatedly says, whatever is given is received according to the mode of
the receiver. There is a natural way
then to receive the gift of prayer.
Why it is Necessary
St. Alphonsus Liguori in his
treatise on prayer said that “all the saints have become saints by mental
prayer.” The saint is telling us that in
order to become rich soil, we must practice mental prayer. He is not alone in this assessment as all of
the saints say something similar.
Understanding why mental prayer is the entry point into a life of
holiness will enable us to rely more fully on this method.
Our supernatural destiny is the Beatific Vision by which we will see God face to face. What this means is that we will know Him directly and this knowledge will lead to an eternity of loving Him. Prayer ought to in some way mimic this. In this life we can only know Him by way of intermediaries, “in a mirror darkly” if you will. But this knowledge is still real knowledge even if it is only by way of reflection. We can know the sun directly by looking at it, but even a man who has only seen the moon still knows the sun. Mental prayer is the means, in this life, by which we come to knowledge of God through discursive reasoning upon both Revelation and Creation. But in order to be a true preparation for our eternal destiny, it must not just be intellectual musings, but must consist in acts of the will as well. In fact true prayer must always find its terminus in movements of love.
St. John of the Cross
demonstrates these movements in his Spiritual Canticle. He begins by meditating
upon creation:
O woods and thickets, planted by the hand of my Beloved! O green meadow, coated, bright, with flowers, tell me, has he passed by you?”
Pouring out a thousand graces, he passed these groves in haste; and having looked at them, with his image alone, clothed them in beauty.
Ah, who has the power to heal me? now wholly surrender yourself! Do not send me any more messengers, they cannot tell me what I must hear.
Spiritual Canticle 4-6
Seeing God’s presence in a
simple meadow that has been clothed with beauty, He is moved to wonder and then
pleads for God to heal him and surrender Himself to John. His musings have moved from the intellect to
the will, from the head to the heart.
Mental prayer is the entry
point to deeper level of infused prayer because it is the only truly human way
of praying. Because it is in accord with
human nature, it is also the means by which prayer purifies us. Through the power of abstraction, we can say
that the “thing known is in the knower.”
This means that the thing known becomes a part of the knower. When the thing known, is the One Thing that
Needs to Be Known, then He necessarily becomes a part of the knower. This is why those who truly pray are never
heretics. But it is also why not only our
thoughts are purified, but our desires too.
Setting
Our Expectations
If God wills all men to be
saved and prayer, as we have shown, is absolutely necessary for salvation, then
all men are given the grace to pray. God
not only wills our salvation but also provides all that is needed to make that
happen. What this means is that we
should expect the grace of prayer because God has promised it. God desires that we pray and if we remain
open to it, He will provide us with all the necessary graces to reach levels of
prayer that we thought only possible for great mystics. This is for everyone. We need only to beg Him for the grace of
perseverance and then show up day after day.
At the outset we said that
there are few among us that are immune to the effects of living in a
technocracy. Those few, if St. Alphonsus
is to be believed, are the future saints who practice mental prayer. Rather than trying to manipulate God through
technique, they set themselves up to receive the gift of prayer and God
delivers by raising up saints so desperately needed in our times.
In a previous post, we mentioned how St. John
gives us all we need to make the dogma of the Assumption of Our Lady explicit. But this is not the only dogma that he gives
us the foundation for. He also helps us
to ground the other controversial Marian dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
One of the things that makes
Christianity unique among all the world religions is that it is grounded in
history. Its central premise is that the
eternal and transcendent God took human flesh in a specific time and place and
effected our salvation. The Incarnation
is a historic event that, because it occurred in the “fullness of time”, was
not some haphazardly chosen moment, but one providentially decreed from the
foundation of the world. The events
leading up to the Incarnation were meant to reveal God’s plan and toe prepare
the way for it. This means that these
events, especially those detailed in the Old Testament, are charged with
prophetic and theological meaning. From
this emerges the principle of typology which reveals the unity of salvation by
moving from “type” to fulfillment in the “antitype”. Because the movement is from prophecy to
fulfillment it is always from lesser to greater.
Typology is not a trick biblical scholars
apply to the bible but instead is a principle that is applied in the Bible
itself. The New Testament abounds in
examples, but one in particular, because of its relationship at hand bears
special mention—Christ as the New Adam (c.f. 1 Cor 15:45, Rom 5:12-21). St. Paul is essentially alluding to the fact
that Christ is the new and greater Adam, serving as a counter-image our first
father in the flesh. Although created by
the infusion of God’s breath (i.e. the Holy Spirit), the first man failed in
his test and brought sin and death into the world. The Second Adam, who also was made flesh by
the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit did not fail the test and defeated sin and
death.
The New Eve
In a very real sense this type-antitype
relationship is the most fundamental of all because it is the first one used in
the Bible. The first thing that God does
after the Fall, is to promise a New Adam, one who would crush the head of the
serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed
and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gn
3:15). This promise however is not just
for a New Adam, but also another “Woman” (Eve’s name given by Adam) who would
serve as a New Eve. The New Adam would
be born of this woman’s seed (an allusion to the Virgin Birth since, biblically
speaking, the seed always came from the man) and she and the Serpent would have
a relationship of enmity.
This New Eve is revealed to us by
St. John in his gospel, a theme that he makes rather explicit. The beginning of John’s gospel would
immediately evoke the beginning of Genesis as if what he is about to write
about fulfills the Creation account found in Genesis. Both open with “in the beginning” and both go
on to depict days of creation and re-creation.
In John’s account we find the use of “next day” twice and then skips two
days and starts again “on the third day”.
If you are counting, that gives us six days—“the beginning” (1), “the
next day” (2), “the next day” (3) and “on the third day” (6). And just like on the sixth day of creation,
we are told on the sixth day of re-creation there is a marriage taking
place. We are told nothing about the
bride and groom of that wedding, but only that Our Lord and His Mother are
there (John 2:1). We are then told of a
conversation between the Mother and her Son in which He addresses her in a
rather strange way—as “Woman”. This
address, combined with the parallels to Genesis, would call to mind both Eve
and the promise of the New Eve. This New
Eve would, by her words, overturn the damage done by the words of the first Eve
and set in motion the work of the New Adam in defeating the Serpent.
This connection would already be
pretty clear, but Our Lord wanted to make sure it was crystal clear when,
hanging on the Cross, He once again addresses her as Woman (John 19:42). This time He makes both the image and the
vocation clear. Just as Eve of old was
the mother of all the living according to the flesh, the New Eve was to be the
mother of all the living according to the Spirit.
Mary as the New Eve was not
something hidden away in the Scriptures or a product of popular piety but
something that dates back to the Apostolic age.
We find this as the first title that the Church Fathers gave her. For example, St. Irenaeus whose favorite
theme was re-creation or recapitulation used that title when he made account of
the Apostolic preaching saying,
“And just as through a disobedient virgin man was stricken down and fell into death, so through the Virgin who was obedient to the Word of God man was reanimated and received life… For it was necessary that Adam should be recapitulated in Christ, that mortality might be swallowed up and overwhelmed by immortality; and Eve recapitulated in Mary, that a virgin should be a virgin’s intercessor, and by a virgin’s obedience undo and put away the disobedience of a virgin.”
Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching, 33
St. Irenaeus most certainly was
qualified to give account of Apostolic preaching for he was a disciple of St.
Polycarp who was a disciple of St. John.
Typology and the Immaculate
Conception
With the type-antitype relationship
firmly established we can make the link to the Immaculate Conception more explicit. Recall that this relationship implies that
the privileges given to Eve must in no way exceed the privileges given to
Mary. Eve was conceived without the
stain of Original Sin, that is, she was conceived with the gift of sanctifying
grace. Mary then too must be conceived,
at the very least, with the same privilege or else the type-antitype relationship
falls apart. St. John in canonizing Mary
as the New Eve also, even if only in an implicit manner, declared the Dogma of
the Immaculate Conception.
Using typology we can even go
further when we factor in the revelation that the New Eve will be at enmity
with the Serpent. This term, enmity,
means that the hatred will be so deeply seeded that she will never fall into
his power. And just as Eve received
grace consonant with her mission to battle the Serpent and make her a “helper
suitable” to the first Adam, so too the New Eve would receive a plentitude of
grace to make her a suitable helper to the New Adam and His battle against the
Serpent by making her immune to his weapon of sin. The Hebrew term ezer kenegdo that we translate as “helpmate”
or “helper suitable to him” implies both a similarity and a
complementarity. And just as God gave to
Eve a share in Adam’s humanity, so God gives to the New Eve a share in His
divinity, which we call sanctifying grace and a complentarity by which the New
Eve gives her seed to His humanity. She
is to be a helpmate suitable to His mission as Redeemer by being like Him in a
unique share in His divinity but still subject to His redemptive (or
pre-demptive) act. In short, the New Eve
would need to be not only conceived in grace, but also to never have lost it
through sin.
We can do no better than to conclude by quoting Saint John Henry Newman’s lucid summary of the connection between Eve and the Immaculate Conception:
“She [Mary] holds, as the Fathers teach us, that office in our restoration which Eve held in our fall:—now, in the first place, what were Eve’s endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace…Now, taking this for granted, . . . I ask you, have you any intention to deny that Mary was as fully endowed as Eve? …If Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had even a greater grace? …And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the first moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference:—well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.”
Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching
Having stood the test of time,
St. Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways remain a reliable means by which to prove the
existence of God. The problem,
especially in an age steeped in scientistic thinking, is that most people are
metaphysically illiterate and unable to really capture the genius behind them
and see their great evidentiary power. This
calls for those who can understand the proofs to summarize them in such a
manner that even the metaphysical novice can understand. Better yet, in a sound-bite culture, it is invaluable
to provide a single argument that combines all five into one. Thankfully, there are Thomists in our own age
who have done the legwork on this (Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s God His
Existence and His Nature and Edward Feser, Five Proofs for God) but
their work remains inaccessible to those unschooled in Scholastic
Philosophy. It is in this spirit, that
this essay tries to translate St. Thomas’ work into a language that can be readily
understood, and more important, presented to unbelievers.
The great 20th
Century Thomist, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange summarized the arguments like
this:
“All these arguments can be summed up in a more general one, based on the principle of causality, which may be stated as follows: That which does not exist by itself, can exist only by another, which is self-existent. Now, experience shows that there are beings endowed with activity, life, and intelligence, which do not exist of and by themselves, since they are born and die. Therefore, they received their existence from another, who must be existence, life, and intelligence itself. If such were not the case, we should have to say that the greater comes from the less, the higher form of life from the lower, and that the plurality of beings comes from a primary being less perfect than all the others taken together.”
God: His Existence and His Nature Volume I
An Important Distinction
At the heart of each of the Five Ways is the distinction
between what a thing is or its essence and that a thing is or its
existence. Once we grasp this
distinction, the existence of God logically follows. Everywhere we look we find things that have
not always existed. No visible being has
as part of its nature, existence. Each
being requires that existence be given it by another being. We call these existence-dependent beings,
contingent beings.
One of the common mistakes we make in interpreting these
arguments is to look at them as proving a First Cause in time. But that is not what they do. They set out to show a First Cause in
existence. Contingent beings, beings who
do not have existence by nature, require existence be given them not just when
they come into being, but in order to remain in being. The fact that a thing exists at each moment would
not allow for an infinite regress in causes.
But because this is not immediately obvious, we will discuss it briefly.
The chain of causes that we are describing is called an
essentially subordinate series. It is
labeled as such because in order for the entire series to hold, the First Cause
must continually exercise its causal activity.
Suppose we have a chain ABCD. C
can only cause D because it is being caused by B. Likewise B causes C. You could multiply the causes between B and A,
but unless you get to a cause, which we are calling A, that is uncaused, then
the chain of causation will never occur.
There must be a cause that does not itself require a cause in order for
any link of the causal chain to connect.
Recall that this causal chain is not tracing back in time
like an ancestral tree where a grandmother ceases to exercise causal power on
her grandson, but is horizontal in holding a being in existence here and
now. St. Thomas uses the analogy of a
man using his arm to push a stick that moves a rock. If the man ceases to exercise his free will
in moving his arm, then the stick ceases to move and the rock remains
stationary.
Once we eliminate the possibility
of an infinite regress, we can see how the proof leads us to God. If there must be an uncaused cause, a being
who does not get existence from another source, then we can say this being’s
essence includes existence. We call this
being the necessary being. More accurately
we would say that this Being because his essence is to exist is existence
itself. And we call this Being God or “I
AM”.
The
Five Ways and the Way
This obviously does not take
us all the way to the Christian God as He has revealed Himself. Reason could never get us there. But it does, in a certain sense, lead us up
to the time of Moses. God revealed
Himself to Moses as Being Itself, “I AM WHO AM” because it was the foundation upon
which He was to reveal Himself not just as Being Itself, but Being Who is here
for you right now. Once we grasp that it
is God Who doesn’t just create us and leave us to our own devices, but instead
holds us in existence at each moment, the Christian message becomes more
accessible. If God is holding us in
existence then He must will to do so. He
wills not in some disaffected way, but because He sees our existence as
something good. And not just “our” but
mine and yours individually. He wills it
because He loves the good that we are.
We need only open ourselves to the fullness of that love so that we don’t
merely exist as creatures but are crowned as sons.
By adding the Christian
conclusions to our philosophical findings, we come to realize why St. Thomas
should never be seen as some dry intellectual philosopher. He saw all of his work as leading us back to
God, including his proofs for his existence.
We too may grasp this when we set to succinctly give his reasons for
believing, not just to win arguments, but to win souls. The Five Ways ultimately lead us to the Way
Himself.
C.S.
Lewis once said that there was no doctrine that, if he had the power, he would
more willingly remove from Christianity than hell. But he also was humble enough to recognize
that were he to do so, it would destroy the very reason for Christianity. The Good News is really only good when we
understand the bad. Unfortunately, there
are many in our modern day who, rather than teaching us how to avoid hell,
avoid hell itself by explaining it away.
In its place they have offered a universalism in which all men will be
saved. There are different ways in which
this universal salvation is brought about, but one of the more popular versions
posits that hell is not everlasting and those who had been consigned there will
be given the opportunity to repent and join everyone else in heaven.
According
to Scripture, Sacred Tradition and human reason, escaping hell after death is
an impossibility. In Hebrews 9:27-28 we
are told that just as Christ died once, we too die and receive judgment
once. Likewise, Revelation 20:10 says
that the damned “will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” That “their worm dies not and the fire is not
extinguished” (Mk 9:45) is also taught by Sacred Tradition, not only through
the unanimity of the Fathers (c.f. St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, St.
Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Augustine) but also through the Fourth Lateran
Council (1215) which declared that the damned “receive a perpetual punishment
with the devil”.
The
Permanence of Hell and Human Nature
It
is when we apply human reason to Revelation about the duration of hell that we
begin to understand why it is the way it is.
In our temporal state, our will remains flexible in that it may be
changed both before and after a choice is made.
We choose based upon some knowledge and only choose differently based on
some new knowledge. In short, a change
in will is dependent upon a change of mind.
Regret only follows upon some new realization.
The
ability to change our minds is a uniquely human power, and uniquely temporal at
that. The angels, our spiritual
counterparts, are incapable of regret because they can’t change their
mind. Our decisions are plagued by
ignorance, their decisions are always fully informed and thus fully consented
to. Their wills remain everlastingly
fixed in the decision they have made because they never have a reason to change
their mind. When the soul is separated
from the body, we will “become like the angels” in that our wills too will remain
fixed in the state they were at separation and we have no reason to change our
mind.
As
we apply this anthropological truth to the question of the damned, it does not
seem obvious at first why they should not desire to change their mind. Wouldn’t the pains of hell be enough to make
them rethink their relationship to God?
The short answer is no and to deny this would begin to tear at the
fabric of many Christian beliefs besides the everlasting duration of hell.
A
change of mind regarding God in this life requires the action of actual
grace. We are incapable of lifting
ourselves out of sin and move towards repentance on our own. It is actual grace that moves us. Because it is still my and your repentance
however there must be a movement of the will that accompanies the actual
grace. It is possible that the will
become so hardened that actual grace no longer penetrates the hardened
heart. Scripture offers us a prime
example in Pharaoh. While Moses pleads
with him, his heart remains impenetrable.
The will becomes hardened through its own acts and only a supernatural
act of God can undo it.
Why
Repentance After Death is Impossible
The
soul in hell then is incapable of repentance because there is no actual grace
present to move them. This is not
because God withholds it however. It is
so because their will is fixed in a permanent “No!” to God. There is no actual grace is present because
no amount of grace could change their mind.
Why this must be so becomes obvious once we think about it for a second. This fixity of the will is, in a certain
sense, a two-edge sword. It keeps both
the damned in hell and the blessed in heaven.
If a change from evil to good is possible, then it could also be
possible that there is a change from good to evil. In other words, there would be nothing per se
that would keep the blessed from crossing over the chasm into hell. This law of human nature cannot be operative
for good only. As Abbot Vonier puts it, “God
has made spiritual natures so perfect that a wrong use of their powers will
bring about results as permanent as the right use of them.”
This,
by the way, is at the heart of the error that those who believe in “once saved,
always saved” commit. They confuse our
temporal state with our permanent state.
The soul is not fixed until death, but they insist that it is fixed once
a single choice for Christ is made.
All
of this helps us to see damnation as caused strictly by the damned themselves
and not as a result of God’s judgment.
It all depends upon the condition of a person’s soul upon death. Our souls at baptism are reformed into the
shape of a cup enabling them to hold sanctifying grace. This grace, as a participation in the divine
nature, is what enables us, upon death, to see God face to face. It is what makes our souls flame resistant enabling
us to stand within the flames of the Consuming Fire. But our wills, through mortal sin, can also
bend our souls so that they are no longer able to hold sanctifying grace. If our souls are never repaired and we die
with them in that shape, then we become permanently incapable of standing
before God. It is the shape of our souls
then that determines are everlasting state.
Catholics
have grown very fearful of hell, not in the sense that they try to avoid it,
but that they avoid speaking of it. The
risk for seeming harsh or intolerant is overwhelming. The problem is that silence on the bad news
makes preaching the Good News very difficult.
Catholics need to rethink their approach if they are to trample down the
Gates of Hell and save many people who would otherwise end up there. This begins by seeing hell for the hell it is
and understanding why it must be so.
During the Democratic
Presidential Debate last week, the country was treated to a reminder of just
how hell-bent the Democratic elite are to make abortion an unlimited foundation
of their party platform. I say “elite”
because, for the most part, the party’s extreme position on abortion is far
ahead of their constituency. A
majority of Democrats are in favor of the otherwise outdated “safe, legal, and
rare” approach to abortion and favor restrictions on abortion. This doesn’t mean the rank and file are
right, but that an ideological mandate is being passed down from above that,
once adopted, could make abortion nearly impossible to eradicate.
The mandate is being slipped
in under the cover of rights. In
particular, there is a growing insistence that abortion is a human right. Take as an example, the words of Senator
Elizabeth Warren who insisted “I believe that abortion rights are human rights. I believe that they are also economic rights.
And protecting the right of a woman to be able to make decisions about her own
body is fundamentally what we do and what we stand for as a Democratic Party.” Those of us who see abortion for what it
really is must be prepared to confront this cooption of human rights head on.
Drowning in a flood of rights,
we fail to make key distinctions between “rights” so that it becomes a jumbled
mess. But not all rights are right
(which means it is not a right) and not all rights that are right are
equal. The adjective that is attached to
the right matters. That is why
designating abortion as a human right can act as an ideological trump
card rendering the rights of the unborn irrelevant. We must then be prepared to challenge this
designation and oppose the typical approach of framing the issue as a collision
between the right to choose and the right to life.
Rights
Language
We speak of justice as
rendering to each man what is due.
Rights are the content or the thing that is due. There are two ways of determining what
someone is due. The first would be
because some authority says so. We call
these rights positive rights. Included
in these rights would be civil rights, that is, rights like the right to vote,
that belong to citizens by virtue of the fact that they are citizens. Because these rights are based upon some
authoritative fiat, they must be checked both against the common good and human
rights.
Human rights on the other hand
are those things that are due to a person simply due to the fact that they are
human. Also referred to as natural
rights, these rights are attached specifically to those things that naturally
lead to human flourishing. Put another
way, natural rights are those things that all human beings need in order to
complete their nature. Because they are
natural, they recognize things that all human need by virtue of the fact that
they are human. To label abortion as a
human right is to say that all women, by their nature as women, need abortion
in order to truly fulfill their nature.
Some might challenge what has
been said so far and insist that some women need access to abortion in order to
flourish. But that is to misunderstand
what is meant by flourishing.
Flourishing only occurs when we act in accord with our nature. Abortion in that regard is totally unnatural
in that it willfully acts against the nature of woman to fulfill herself
through motherhood. This does not mean
all women must be mothers, but that motherhood is the means by which women
naturally grow in the virtues that lead to their flourishing. It can happen other ways, but it is the
ordinary means by which that occurs.
While an exhaustive list of
human rights is not necessarily possible, there are certain rights that are
self-evident. Pope St. John XXIII in his
encyclical Pacem in Terris listed the rights as “(M)an has the right to live.
He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper
development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest,
and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right
to be looked after in the event of ill-health…”
Conspicuously absent from the
list is abortion because it is currently a positive right. Through mere judicial fiat, the Supreme Court
ignored both the common good and human rights and gave women the right to
choose. While it remains upon this level
of positive right, legislation may challenge it and seek to overturn it because
of its blatant disregard for the human rights of the unborn and its harm to the
common good. But once it is declared a
human right, it becomes something that is due to a woman simply because she is
a woman. This is why this movement from
a positive right to a human right, at least in the court of public opinion and
jurisprudence, is very important and must be stopped.
Rights
and Duties
In addition to challenging the assumption that abortion leads to genuine human thriving that undergirds the human rights theory of abortion, there is another important connection that can be helpful in seeing the truth. When we speak of rights, especially human rights, there is a connection to a corresponding duty. A person has a natural right to some thing because it is essential in fulfilling some obligation. Related to the question of abortion, there is much traction that can be gained by framing the discussion not in terms of rights, but of duties. Specifically, what are the duties that a mother has towards her child? When do those duties begin? If it as birth, then why the plethora of pre-natal interventions? If it is prior to birth, then when does a woman “officially” become a mother? If the woman is not a mother, then exactly what is the relationship between the her and the biologically distinct entity that is growing inside of her? Is it a relationship of dependency only if willed or does the woman naturally have an obligation to care for it?
The point is that rather than
challenging the status quo with the biologically certain question of when life
begins, it can be helpful to restate the problem as asking when motherhood
begins. By emphasizing motherhood there
can be an awakening of the awesome reality of what the woman has already become
and not only what her obligations are, but that the presence of the young life
growing within her will ultimately lead to her personal fulfillment.
Tomorrow will mark the 160th
anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Considered to be a formational tome in the
field of evolutionary biology, it has in the last century plus become a
foundation of the model world. We find
evolution, not just among plants, but races of men. Survival of the fittest becomes political
eugenicism. We find it in not just
animals, but among societies of men who reject the ideas of the past as extinct
that needed to evolve to suit the changes in enlightened mankind. The modern world is, in truth, all in on
evolution. And this might help to
explain why it has devolved. The theory
of evolution is bad science and even worse philosophy.
Evolution as Bad Science?
Science, in Aristotelian tradition is thought of in more general terms than we do today. The most general meaning of the term is an organized body of knowledge, resting on first principles, purposed to investigate causes. This broad definition includes all fields of knowledge from metaphysics to the empirical sciences such as evolutionary biology. This spectrum of sciences has a natural hierarchy in the sense that it studies not just individual beings (empirical science), but being itself (metaphysics). Each science must accept certain first principles, givens if you will, upon which the investigation of the causes of things can proceed. With no foundational truths to build upon, the scientific house is destined to crumble. The hierarchy allows the lower sciences to draw from the higher to procure their first principles. For example, physics, one of the lower sciences, depends on mathematics, a higher one, for its first principles. A physicist in acting to quantify some aspect of reality, could not proceed if he doubted the laws of mathematics. If he were question the laws of math rather than his own hypothetical law, then he would most certainly be wrong. He is ignoring the first principles so that the truth can adapt to his theory.
Portrait of Aristoteles. Copy of the Imperial era (1st or 2nd century) of a lost bronze sculpture made by Lysippos
A science then can be bad not
just in its method, but in its observance of first principles. In this way evolution is bad science. Evolutionary biology depends on the
philosophy of nature for its first principles.
The philosophy of nature is concerned with principles of unity in the
face of change. Evolutionary biology,
too, is concerned with change, but specific changes in individual species. Any theory that explains the change in
individual species must respect the higher science in order to maintain its connection
to truth. If the evolutionary biologist
ignores these principles then he is no different than the physicist who ignores
the laws of mathematics.
The First Principles
What are the first principles
that evolutionary biology borrows from the Philosophy of Nature? There are a number of them, but three will
suffice to show why evolution is bad science.
All that exists is either substance
or accident. A substance is an
individual existing thing, while an accident depends upon a substance to
exist. A tree is a substance, the green
of the leaves is an accident. Trees exist
on their own, greenness does not exist except in the trees (and other green substances). You could take away the green from the leaves
and the tree would remain a tree.
Since
evolution deals with change, we must also look at some of the first principles
related to change. Change consists in
reducing potency to act; some specific potential that is dictated by a thing’s
nature is brought into existence through some agent cause. This agent cause must already have the power
to cause the change. That is, it must be
in act. Suppose a room is cold which
means it is potentially warm. Only
something that is actually warm like a burning log can heat up the room. A log that is only potentially hot could
never heat up the room. This is the
principle of sufficient reason. This
principle, in all its variations, deals with cause and effect. An effect must in some form be in the cause. In layman’s terms, you cannot give what you
do not have. For an effect to come
about, the cause must have the power to cause the effect.
Third, there is the principle
of hylemorphism. This principle says
that all material beings are composed of form and matter. Form, which is ontologically prior to matter,
determines what a thing is. Matter is
the individuating principle, it is what makes the thing “this thing” rather
than “this other thing”.
There is also another
principle related to the upward movement of evolution. Material creation proceeds from simple to
complex, from the lowest to the highest.
In philosophical terms, there is a hierarchy of being in which the
higher beings exhibit perfections not found in the lower. Stones are not alive the way that plants
are. Plants cannot move and sense the
way animals can, even if they have the same vegetative powers. Animals cannot abstract and communicate the
way that man can, even if they can gain sense knowledge of individual things. As one of the philosophical dictionaries puts
it, “in material and living bodies we
find an ascending order of perfection in which the higher beings have their own
perfections as well as those of the lower level of being. In the unity of the
higher being, the multiplicity of the lower beings is virtually present.” What this means is that although the lower is
contained within the higher, the higher is not contained in the lower.
The First Principles Applied to Evolution
If we frame evolution first as a
philosophical problem, then it becomes clear how the first principles
apply. Specifically, it deals with
changes not in individual substances, but in the generation of offspring. The law of generation allows for accidental
differences between parent and offspring.
These accidental differences can be based upon both the mixing of genes
of the parents and on mutations in the genetic information. These differences result in an offspring with
the same essential form, but accidental differences. Some of these differences may be biologically
advantageous such that the incidence in the population increases. Still we are dealing with like
substances. Evolutionary biology has a
term for such changes and it calls it microevolution. Microevolution is on solid philosophical
groundwork such that if the biological data supports it then we can conclude
that it is at least highly probable.
Macroevolution, on the other hand, posits
a different sort of change. Based on
random a series of random mutations the matter is changed to the point that a
new form is brought about. This
hypothesis comes in conflict with our first principles stated above. First, the direction of evolution is always
upward towards greater perfections. But
this would violate the principle of sufficient reason. An effect cannot exceed its cause. If the cause does not include the effect,
then it must be brought about by some other way. A blind animal can give birth to an offspring
with sight because she has sight in potency, but no amount of lightning and “primordial
soup” can effect sight in the offspring of a being who does not have eyes. You cannot give what you don’t have.
This principle is also violated quite
frequently when the fossil record is combed for the elusive “common ancestor” and
“missing link” that the lower somehow caused the higher. There is little actual biological evidence
for this causal link such that it is much more plausible that are closely
situated on the ladder of being. If
nature is a continuous hierarchy then we would expect to see beings that are
closely related to each other.
Secondly, and more fatal for the
philosophical backing of macroevolution, is that it posits that matter is the
cause of a new form. It is saying that
given enough changes in the matter, a new kind of form can come into existence. But form always precedes matter. Matter cannot exist without a form, even if a
form can exist without matter. Once the
new form exists, the matter which is in potency to the form, can be reduced to
act. If the new form cannot come into
existence without some immaterial Cause, then the only way that macroevolution
could possibly be true is if this Cause intervenes at each evolutionary stage
to create new forms. This Cause, because
He was capable of creating all forms, would have to be omnipotent and
omniscient. Most would call such a Cause
God.
We can readily see why microevolution often
is used in an ideological sleight of hand to cover up what is going on with
macroevolution. If matter cannot bring
about a new form, then in order for macroevolution to proceed, God must create
new forms. In other words,
Macroevolution, if it is true, then offers proof for the existence of God. Because it does not conform to the ideological
agenda that most who support evolution have, this fact is kept quiet and only
material explanations are allowed.
Good science always requires good philosophy. Darwin may not have realized the implications of his new theory, but once we apply the Philosophy of Nature to his theory, we quickly find that macroevolution needs not only Aristotle, but God.
Marriage, according to conventional
wisdom, is a social construct. Governed
by cultural norms and expectations, the institution of marriage is completely
malleable. This view of marriage was
front and center in the debate over same-sex marriage, but the battle against
traditional marriage was won long before that when divorce, especially in its
no-fault variety, became an acceptable norm.
Divorce, or at least its cultural acceptance, is what changed marriage
making it a social construct. To say divorce
made marriage a social construct is to suggest that things once were otherwise
so that if we are to grasp how we got here, we might simultaneously find a
remedy.
Anthropological Roots of Divorce
Deeply imbedded within the
Western mind is the notion of man as a rugged individual. Naturally solitary and free, man forms a
social contract either to escape the anarchy of the state of nature (Hobbes) or
its noble savagery (Rousseau). All
social institutions become “social constructs” in which men and women freely
enter and freely leave according to their own will. From within this paradigm of liberalism, marriage
like all other social institutions are “social constructs” in which men and
women freely associate and equally as freely disassociate. Only the State remains a permanent fixture so
as to protect the individual from other individuals infringing upon their
rights, even if it too is ultimately a social construct.
Civil
divorce grew out of the soil of 18th Century liberalism because it,
like all other private contracts, was completely voluntary and always in danger
of one of the contracting parties dissolving the contract. In order to protect this freedom, the State
adopts the stance of arbiter and enforcer and is empowered to dissolve what was
previously thought indissoluble. Given
the power to dissolve, the State must also then have the power to define and
decide what marriage is and who should be married.
There
is a certain irony surrounding the fact that marriage was not always thought to
be a social construct. The “social
construct” viewpoint replaced the natural view of marriage. For millennia, marriage was considered to be
a natural institution that formed the foundation of the family which was the
building block of society as a whole. It
is the natural view of marriage that would preclude either divorce or gay
marriage. By combining them into a
single issue it avoids reducing the argument to mere biology.
It
is not any mere external circumstances that draws man into society, but his
nature. Man is by nature a social animal. In order to fulfill his nature, he must have
a society of other men to do that. Because
they are absolutely vital for fulfillment, the family and the State are natural
societies.
In
order to grasp this truth, we must also see that men and women fulfill their
nature by becoming virtuous. Virtue is
what perfects all our natural powers. Marriage
is the bedrock of virtue. Only within
the framework of the family are both the spouses and children perfected in their
gift of self and unity. It is where the
children are educated in the cardinal virtues as they prepare to give themselves
in service to society as a whole. It is
where siblings learn how to live as a community of equals. It is where parents learn to shed ego. As statistics repeatedly show, those who
divorce or are victims of divorce severely handicap their chances at fulfilling
their nature.
It is the Author of human
nature, and not the State, that is the Author of marriage. Marriage, because it is a complete union of
persons in all their dimensions—bodily, spiritual and temporal—and thus
naturally indissoluble. The State does
not make marriage but only provides an occasion for consent and works to
protect and promote it. The State in its role as guardian of the
common good, may act to protect and promote marriage, even by dissolving legal
bonds between spouses, but is powerless to dissolve the marriage itself. In truth a civil divorce is worth no more
than the paper upon which it is printed.
Marriage, because of its indispensable
and irreplaceable role in fulfilling human nature, is a natural institution and
not a social construct. Understanding
the roots of the errors that led to its demise helps us to go back and correct
them.
In a commentary in
Chicago Catholic posted last week, Cardinal Cupich weighed in on the
Pachamama controversy. The Cardinal decried
the removal and disposal of the statues into the Tiber River of calling it an
act of “vandalism”. He defended the inclusion
of the “artwork from the Amazon region depicted a pregnant woman, a symbol of
motherhood and the sacredness of life” during the Amazonian Synod as an example
of the necessary “two way street of inculturation” in which “both the cultures
and the church are enhanced in coming to know God.” In truth however, the Cardinal is defending idolatrous
syncretism, a position that is indefensible for a Catholic.
Artwork
or Idol?
In an act of sophistry that
would make even Protagoras blush, the Cardinal depicted the statues as “artwork”. One has to wonder why Aaron didn’t think of
that when Moses confronted him over the Golden Calf. His description defies logic and is a great
distortion of the truth. Pachamama is no
mere symbol of motherhood and the sacredness of life, but a benevolent goddess
of motherhood and fertility that is still worshipped among the indigenous
peoples of the Andes. The peoples, as
evidenced by the opening ceremony in the Vatican Garden, still offer worship to
the goddess through the statue.
Each August,
the people of the Peru dedicate the month to making offerings and sacrifices to
Pachamama. It is believed that it is
necessary to satisfy her hunger and thirst with food offerings. These offerings are burnt, carrying the
prayers of the people in the smoke. The Pachamama
is no mere symbol, but instead a goddess.
The Cardinal is either lying or a fool or both.
Even Pope Francis admits that
it was an idol, although not directly of course. In his apology for the theft and submersion
of the statues, he said that the statues were displayed “without any idolatrous
intentions”. No one would question the idolatrous
intentions of someone unless the items in question were, in fact, idols. The Pope’s comment, rather than exonerating
him however actually makes what happened even worse. Worse, that is, if you believe St. Thomas
Aquinas.
As an offense against the First Commandment, he thought that idolatry, next to heresy is the gravest sin. It is an offense directly against God Himself. Aquinas thought that not all idolatry was equal. He said that the worst kind of idolatry is, using the Pope’s words, idolatry “without any idolatrous intentions.” The Angelic Doctor said “since outward worship is a sign of the inward worship, just as it is a wicked lie to affirm the contrary of what one holds inwardly of the true faith so too is it a wicked falsehood to pay outward worship to anything counter to the sentiments of one’s heart” (ST II-II q.94, a.2). To set up idols without any idolatrous intentions is not only to commit idolatry but to lie as well. Citing St. Augustine’s condemnation of Seneca for setting up idols that he did not believe in, Aquinas condemned the Pope’s position.
St. Thomas makes another
interesting connection in his treatment of idolatry. Citing St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, he
mentions how God turns men over to sins against nature as punishment for
idolatry. He says that it is a fitting punishment of the sin of idolatry which
abuses the order of divine honor that man would sin against nature as a way of
suffering from the confusion from abuse of his own nature. Might it be that the refusal of the Church to
stand against all of the idolatrous elements of New Age spirituality has been
met by gross sins of nature, especially among the clergy? In other words, perhaps the homosexuality
that plagues the Church is an effect of idolatry that won’t be rooted out until
its cause is also rooted out.
Inculturation?
The Cardinal mentions that
this event is simply an attempt at inculturation. He errs however is describing inculturation as
a two-way street. The Church needs no
outside help as She has been given the fullness of truth. Instead she brings the truth to those who
have yet to accept it and explains the truth on terms that are readily
understood by her audience. When
evangelizing new cultures she may find elements that can be baptized such that
they will make the Gospel intelligible.
She brings nothing back to the Church except the souls she is
saving. Our Lady’s approach (detailed
here) to St. Juan Diego and the people of Mexico is a prime example of
this. She borrowed elements that were
familiar to them, modified them, and used them to point to the true God in her
womb. The Church learned nothing from
the Aztecs.
A two-way street approach to
inculturation is just another word for syncretism. Often masquerading as “ecumenism”, this practice
ultimately is about finding creative ways to blend the Church’s doctrines with
those of other religions. It thrives on
ambiguity and teeters on heresy. The
problem is that you end up far away from the truth in a way similar to what
Chesterton described when he described syncretism as analogous to a man who
says that the world is a rhomboid because some people believe that the world is
flat and others round.
It signals a loss of faith,
thinking we must compromise to get people to come over to our side. But the truth has a power all its own such
that when it is spoken, especially with charity, it is immediately compelling. It is also a loss in faith in anything supernatural. The fact that idols have demons behind them
is totally foreign to those of Cardinal Cupich’s ilk.
This is why they find it so incomprehensible that someone would go to the lengths the “vandal” did in attempting to destroy the idol. It is an act of zeal; zeal for God and hatred of demons. As St. John Henry Newman puts it, “zeal consists in a strict attention to His commands—a scrupulousness, vigilance, heartiness, and punctuality, which bears with no reasoning or questioning about them—an intense thirst for the advancement of His glory—a shrinking from the pollution of sin and sinners—an indignation, nay impatience, at witnessing His honor insulted—a quickness of feeling when His name is mentioned, and a jealousy how it is mentioned—a fulness of purpose, an heroic determination to yield Him service at whatever sacrifice of personal feeling—an energetic resolve to push through all difficulties, were they as mountains, when His eye or hand but gives the sign—a carelessness of obloquy, or reproach, or persecution, a forgetfulness of friend and relative, nay, a hatred (so to say) of all that is naturally dear to us, when He says, ‘Follow me.’” It is zeal that destroys idols without destroying the idolaters. It is zeal that seeks to set the idolaters free.
The Greek philosopher Epicurus
may have been the first to articulate it, but he was most definitely not the
last. For the past 2400 years, believers
have been haunted by his trilemma: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not
able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he
able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then
whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” Epicurus is putting forth the “Problem of
Evil” which remains the most repeated argument against the existence of
God. Dressed in various forms, the conditions
are always the same—the incompatibility of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and
the existence of evil. Because of its
longstanding quality, believers of every age, our own included, must be
prepared to answer this challenge.
Navigating the gauntlet begins
by defining our terms, the first of which is evil. In our time there is a tendency to see evil
as some positive force in the universe locked in a cosmic battle with good. Viewed as something, it seems to have a power
all its own. But evil is no more of a
thing than blindness is a thing. It is
not a something but a nothing.
Just as blindness is a lack of sight, evil is a lack of a good that
should otherwise be there. Both exist,
but neither has any being of its own.
Instead it exists in the form of a deprivation. In fact, blindness in the philosophical sense
of the term is an evil; a lack of sight in a being that should otherwise see. Evil only exists as a parasite to some good
and has no existence of its own.
Whence
cometh Evil?
This philosophical hair
splitting is necessary because it addresses Epicurus’ question “whence cometh
evil?” and demonstrates how God can be all good and there still be evil. God, as Creator, gives being to all
things. He is, in an absolute sense, the
cause of being. God cannot create
non-being, not because He isn’t omnipotent, but because “create non-being” is
nonsense. To create is to give being and
to create something with no being is a contradiction. God’s omnipotence does not suddenly make the
intrinsically impossible, possible. God
could no more create evil than He can make a square with three sides,
omnipotent or not.
If we are to take the world as
it is, that is a material world with a multitude of creatures, we could see why
a certain amount of evil might be logically necessary. We call these evils physical evils or evils
suffered. These types of evils are not
privations per se, even though they can be causes of privations. They are simply incidences where two goods
collide. When the good of the lion’s
preservation meets the good of the lamb’s, the lamb tends to get the short end
of the stick. Physical evils are always connected
to a good directly. The lion’s
self-preservation is a good thing, even if the lamb’s demise is not. For God to
remove such evils is not simply to make our world better, but to make an
entirely different kind of world.
Whether that world would be better or not can be debated, but the
presence of physical evil is no argument against God’s omnipotence or
omnibenevolence because one could readily imagine that same God guiding all
interactions such that they work out for the good of the whole.
Moral evils, that is, evils
done by rational creatures, are by far the more difficult to explain. There are no goods in conflict, only a
failure to do what is good. The moral
agent deliberately introduces disorder into what should otherwise be good. Exonerating God from responsibility for these
evils is a bit more challenging.
God is not just the Creator,
but the sustainer of creation. That
means nothing happens without His somehow being a cause. He is not only the cause of a man, but a
cause of His free will activity. Related
to the topic at hand, God is not the cause of the man’s choice, only his power
of choosing. The man cannot choose
without God, but what he chooses is up to him.
Recall that God, through His
omnipotence, can do anything that does not imply a logical contradiction. God could have made a world in which a man
might choose freely but always choose good because there is no contradiction. But He did not. Instead the world we inhabit allows for free
choice that can include evil. This is
allowed because God’s will in creating is to create a world such that His
goodness is most fully made manifest through the goods of His creatures. One can readily see that there are a
multitude of goods that would never be made known were it not for the ability
to choose what is evil: courage, forgiveness, mercy, justice to name just a
few. If through the designs of divine
Providence God wanted to make His creatures participate in these real goods,
there must be some evil present; not just physical evil, but moral as well. Eliminate all evil, and you drag goods with
it.
Why
the Argument Fails?
This is why the argument
ultimately fails. One may readily admit
that there are a multitude of evils present in the world, but not without admitting
that there are many cases in which goods that would not otherwise be created
are made present. So, the good trailing
on evil is proof not of God’s non-existence or His weakness, but of His
goodness and power. As Aquinas puts it,
“‘Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His
works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out
of evil.’ This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow
evil to exist, and out of it produce good” (ST I, q.2, a.2, ad.2).
Once we define evil for what
it is metaphysically, that is a “no-thing”, we realize that it is only God Who
is All-Good and All-Powerful that can create good ex nihilio. The fact that good does come from evil shows
that to be the work of God Himself. So,
the Problem of Evil, rather than leading us away from God, actually leads
towards Him.
When Martin Luther nailed his
95 Theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral, the Augustinian priest ignited a
firewall that continues to separate Catholics and Protestants down to this
day. At the heart of his question was the
abuse of indulgences, but he ultimately attacked the firewall upon which the
doctrine was built—Purgatory—in order to make his point. Unfortunately, the debate still rages today,
not necessarily because of Purgatory itself but because of all of the ancillary
issues attached to it: Atonement, Penance, Tradition, Development of Doctrine,
and Authority. In an age of exaggerated ecumenism,
we tend to ignore those doctrines like Purgatory that ultimately lead to
division. Ignoring the truth is never a
good idea, especially when the truth is a practical one. Purgatory is perhaps the most practical of
doctrines; many of those who don’t believe in it now will experience it
first-hand in the not too distant future.
But it also is important to have a ready explanation for it because it
is also a “head-pin” doctrine; knock it down and many of the aforementioned
obstacles will fall with it.
The most common argument
against it is that it is not Scriptural.
We have spoken any number of times in the past about the rule of faith
being implicit within Sacred Scripture and the need for Tradition to make it
explicit. In other words, doctrines like
Purgatory need not be explicit in Scripture only implicit. We will not traverse that well-worn path yet
again. It is mentioned because we need
not necessarily have this discussion regarding Purgatory. If we dig a little deeper into Scripture then
we will find that Purgatory is a common theme, so much so that we can offer a
strictly Scriptural defense of it.
St. Thomas said that, when
arguing with an opponent, we should always argue using terms and sources of
authority that they agree with. For
example, when discussing some aspect of morality with a non-Christian, we
should not cite the Bible but instead Natural Law. We can certainly show how the Bible agree
with that source of authority, but to obstinately stick to the Bible when they
think it mythical is foolish. A similar
thing happens with Catholics and the doctrine of Purgatory. Second Maccabees (2 Maccabees 12:39-46) clearly
points to a belief in Purgatory. The
problem is that Protestants don’t accept that book as inspired. By referencing them it seems to only prove
their point that Purgatory is a Catholic fabrication, yet it still remains the
go-to texts from the Old Testament.
St.
Francis de Sales and the Argument from Scripture
Throughout post-Reformation
history, there is perhaps no one better than St. Francis de Sales at converting
Protestants. Some estimate that he was
responsible for over 70,000 conversions in his lifetime. It is therefore instructive to look at how he
presented this divisive doctrine. He did
not argue from Tradition or even mention 2Maccabees, but instead gave a strict
Biblical defense using Protestant accepted texts. Given his success rate and the fact that most
of these texts are rarely cited, it is educative to review what he said (Catholic Controversy, Appendix II).
It without saying that
Catholics and Protestants both agree that Christ’s Blood is the true
purgatory. But the question still
remains how and when that purgation is applied.
For the saintly Bishop of Geneva
and the thousands he converted there was a simple reasoning process: if there
are passages which speak of purgation after death then there must be a place
(call it Purgatory since the name is never given us) where this purgation
occurs for purgation can happen neither in hell (where “the worm does not die”
Mk 9:48) or in heaven (where “nothing unclean may enter it” Rev 21:27).
St. Francis begins where many
of the Fathers of the Church, those who spoke the great Amen to God’s
Revelation, began, in Psalm 66. There
the Psalmist speaks of being led out into the spacious place by passing through
fire (Ps 66:12). Likewise, Isaiah 4:4
speaks of being cleansed by a spirit of burning.
St. Francis also refers to
Christ’s teaching on the Sermon of the Mount where he cautions about the
punishments attached to anger (Mt 5:22-26).
Our Lord suggests different levels of punishment, with only the latter
meriting hell. For the other two, Jesus
speaks of a prison of sorts that one can leave saying, “truly, I say to you,
you will never get out till you have paid the last penny” (5:26). Building on this theme, St. Paul refers to a
man who is saved “as through fire” (1
Cor 3:11-15).
Praying
for the Dead
All of this points to a time
and place of purgation, but, absent a connection to Tradition, one could argue
that this purgation occurs in this life.
The problem with that interpretation however is the abundance of
Scriptural examples of people praying for the dead. St. Francis begins by referring to David’s prayer
and fasting for Saul and Jonathan after their deaths—”And they mourned and
wept and fasted until evening for Saul and for Jonathan his son and for the
people of the LORD and for the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the
sword” (2 Sam 1:12). Likewise, we find
St. Paul praying for his departed friend Onesiphorous (1 Tim 1:16-18).
He also explains two other
often problematic texts by referring to Purgatory. The Mormons often justify their habit of
literally vicariously baptizing the dead by referring to Paul’s text in the
fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians (1 Cor 15:29). St. Francis says that when Paul speaks of
being baptized for the dead he does not mean it in the literal sense, but as an
exhortation to offer sufferings for the dead.
He says that St. Paul is using Baptism in the same manner as Christ did
when He speaks of His baptism of afflictions and penances undertaken in Luke 12:49-50—I
have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be
baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”. Notice how Our Lord references to a fire in
this rather clear passage.
Perhaps his most convincing
passage prooftext is the last one he refers to: Philippians 2:10. St. Paul says that that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth”. In particular, St. Francis is concerned with
a proper interpretation of those “under the earth”. To assume that refers to those in hell would contradict
Scripture— ”For there is no one in death, that is mindful of thee: and who
shall confess to thee in hell?” (Ps 6:5, c.f. Isaiah 38:18). Instead those “under the earth” refers to “holy
souls in Purgatory”, that is the Church Suffering. St. Paul’s hymn is making reference to the
Church in all her members in heaven, on the earth and in Purgatory. Ultimately then, there is no firewall between
the Church’s members nor should there be between Catholics and Protestants.
According to the First Vatican
Council, it is an article of Faith that the existence of God can be proven
using reason alone. This declaration
shows just how much faith the Church has in reason and philosophy. It is an endorsement for the metaphysical
endowment that God has given to man in the form of his own intellect. The timing of the Vatican Council’s
declaration is not accidental; reading the signs of the times almost 150 years
ago, the Council Fathers saw that faith in reason was in decline and so the
Holy Spirit thought it necessary to remind us of our metaphysical prowess. Their message remains a clarion call for us
today.
Among the many proofs for the
existence of God, the Church has given a special pride of place to the Five
Ways of St. Thomas. These proofs ably
combine metaphysical thinking with common experience to lead us to back to God under
five different attributes: the Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused Cause, the Necessary
Being, the Most Perfect Being and the Orderly Governor of Creation. This does not, mind you, replace what God has
revealed, but instead acts like a preamble to faith or a preliminary motive of
credibility that paves the way for the invasion of grace and true Faith. These proofs have proven to be irrefutable. Those who have tried have only shown
themselves unable to understand them. It
is therefore vital that we be able to present these proofs in an intelligible
manner. In the past we have explained
the First Way so that in this essay we will present what is the most
metaphysical of the Five Ways, the Fourth Way, often called the Argument from
Degrees of Being.
Before getting to the actual
proof, it will be helpful to review the metaphysical principles that St. Thomas
employs because the modern mind habitually assumes that all value judgments are
subjective. But objective reality is
otherwise. But in order to grasp this,
we need to introduce the medieval concept of the Chain of Being.
The Chain of Being
In an egalitarian age that is
unable to decipher between the value of man and beast, the Chain of Being might
strike us as odd. It posits that the
world is not just a blob of different stuff or a random collection of atoms,
but instead an ordered hierarchy of beings.
The ordering is not based upon subjective preferences, but upon
objective standards. A man’s best friend
really does have more value than Man’s Best Friend; John is objectively more
valuable than Fido.
Merely saying so does not make
it so however. Instead we must look at
why John is more valuable than Fido. We
say that one creature is greater than another when it has more perfections,
that is more being. A geranium has life
and can grow and thus has more perfections than a Plymouth Rock. Fido has life and the capacity to grow, but
also the power of locomotion and sense knowledge. John too has vegetative powers and sensitive
powers of Fido, but also the power to reason.
John is more valuable than Fido because he has more perfections. And because he has more perfections, he has
more being and occupies a higher place in the Chain of Being. We can say that John is objectively more
valuable than Fido accusations of speciesism not withstanding.
It is better to be than not to
be. Put another way, a thing must exist
before it can be good so that whatever has goodness must have being. The reverse is also true: everything that has
being also has some goodness. This is
the case because being and goodness are convertible meaning that we can examine
being under the aspect of goodness. To be is good and to be more is to better. Good is related to the perfection of being.
Being is not within a
category, but instead transcends all categories because it contains all
categories. The same applies to goodness
in that it transcends all categories because it applies to all of them. This is why we refer to goodness, along with
truth and beauty as transcendentals.
Truth is a transcendental because all being is in a sense knowable. The more being a thing has, the more knowable
it is (and the hard it is to truly know).
In that sense we can also say that a plant is more true than a
rock. Likewise with beauty which, in a
certain sense, combines goodness and truth so that the objectively beautiful
exhibits integrity, harmony and clarity.
To avoid repeating what has been said before, I point the reader to this link
on beauty.
Aquinas’ Fourth Way
With our feet planted on this
metaphysical foundation, we can now evaluate St. Thomas’ argument.
The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But “more” and “less” are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.
ST I, q.2, art. 3
St. Thomas begins by referring
to the aforementioned Chain of Being.
What he then goes on to do is say that if we predicate a transcendental
property to any being, then there must be “something which is truest, something
best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being.” This might not be intuitive based on our
foundation so we will spell it out more explicitly.
Although creatures have
various degrees of being, none of them are the cause of their own being. Each creature is limited in their being by
their nature or their essence and thus they must receive their existence from
another (this is the First Way). This
cause of being cannot itself require a cause but instead must have maximal
being, that is, it must be of their essence to exist. This Being, we call God Who calls Himself “I
AM”.
Meeting
an Objection
It
is worth looking at an objection because it helps to clarify the argument and illuminate
St. Thomas’s genius. It would be a misreading
of the argument to assume that St. Thomas is saying that all things that exist
in degrees must have a maximum. He is
partly to blame for this because of the example he used with respect to fire
and heat. Heat need not have an absolute
maximum. Treating it as simply an
example of a closed system in which a fire is the source of all heat, makes the
example more intelligible. Many people,
including theists, make this mistake.
But none make it with as much flair as Richard Dawkins did in his book The
God Delusion when he said that “You might as well say, people vary in
smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect
maximum of conceivable smelliness.
Therefore, there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker.”
Dawkins’
cleverness stops at his example. Unable
to see anything without his scientistic glasses, he can only see the flaw in
St. Thomas’ example and is unable to grasp the underlying logic. A bad example does not invalidate the principle. Dawkins and his kind do not grasp that the
argument is not about beings in particular, but being itself. St. Thomas is focused only on the
transcendentals—” so that there is something which is truest,
something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is
uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being”—and
not on particular created things. Those
things that share or participate in a limited way of being, goodness, truth and
beauty must be caused by a Being that is essentially and maximally good, true
and beautiful.
In the days leading up to now
St. John Henry Newman’s beatification in 2010, NPR’s All Things Considered turned its
consideration towards the question as to whether the Cardinal may in fact have
been gay. Never one to miss the
opportunity to promote the LGBT agenda, Fr. James Martin retweeted the article
on the eve of Newman’s canonization saying, “This doesn’t imply that the man
who will become a saint tomorrow ever broke his promise of celibacy. And we may
never know for sure. But his relationship with Ambrose St. John is worthy of
attention. It isn’t a slur to suggest that Newman may have been gay.” Although no one in the Church hierarchy is
likely to correct Fr. Martin, it is both a slur and manifestly false to suggest
that the saint may have been gay. A
comment such as this is not only disingenuous, but reveals the lavender glasses
that color everything that Fr. Martin says and reveals his animus for true
Catholic teaching. In the 2010 NPR
piece, Fr. Martin was interviewed and offered that, “It is church teaching that a gay
person can be holy, and a gay person can be a saint. And it’s only a matter of time before the
church recognizes one publicly.”
This reveals a serious flaw in his thinking and shows why he is
ultimately unfit to minister to those people who struggle with same sex
attraction.
The Saints and Heroic Virtue
The second step in the process of canonization is to be
declared Venerable. This declaration, which, in Newman’s case, occurred in 1991, declares that
the man exercised all of the virtues, both theological and natural to a heroic
degree. The point of such an examination
is to show how deeply grace had penetrated the man’s life enabling him to practice
the moral virtues with ease and the theological virtues eminently. Among these natural virtues, chastity plays a
key role meaning that, in Newman’s case, the Church has declared that he
practiced chastity to a heroic degree.
And herein lies the problem with Fr. Martin’s hypothesis, both regarding
the new saint and any canonized saint in the future: you cannot exercise
chastity to a heroic degree and also be gay.
This may seem rather harsh, until we examine the nature of
virtue in general. The role of virtue in
the moral life is to habitually order our faculties towards their proper
end. These powers of the soul “train” the
lower faculties to respond in accord with right reason. The man who struggles with disordered anger,
or what we would call the vice of anger, by developing the virtue of meekness
not only is able to keep himself from angry outbursts, but actually so governs
his feelings of anger that it is only felt when it is reasonable to do so. A similar thing can be said about all of our
other vices or disordered inclinations including Same-Sex Attraction. Just as meekness roots out any disordered
anger, chastity roots out all disordered manifestations of our sexual faculties
and orders them towards their proper ends.
The man who is truly chaste would no longer experience SSA.
Notice that I did not perform any of the usual moral hairsplitting
that many people make regarding this topic between homosexual activity and the
vice of SSA. While this may have some
value in assessing personal culpability, it has no place when it comes to the
virtue of chastity. To employ such a
distinction, such as Fr. Martin does in this case only serves to muddy the
moral waters making chastity harder, not easier. It all stems from an error in thinking that chastity
and celibacy are the same thing. But
they are most certainly distinct. Celibacy
has to do with restraining the exterior actions. Chastity has to do with properly ordering
interior inclinations. A man may be
celibate without being chaste, but an unmarried man cannot be chaste without also
being celibate. Fr. Martin seems to
suggest that St. John Henry Newman fell into the former category—celibate without
being chaste. To suggest that a canonized
saint wasn’t chaste is a slur, especially given that the Church has declared
him to be a man of heroic chastity.
Deep down, Fr. Martin knows all this. This is his motivation for trying to change
the designation of SSA from disordered to differently ordered. If it is merely that there is a different
ordering, then the chaste person could in fact experience SSA. But if it is disordered then it will be rooted
out as the person grows in chastity.
There is no reason why a person who struggles with SSA (or to use Fr. Martin’s
designation of gay) couldn’t become a Saint someday, but it will only
happen after they have removed that vice (and all the others) from their lives. In fact, there may already be some Saint that
had this difficulty at some point, but to suggest that we might someday have a
gay saint is like saying that we already have a fornicating Saint in St.
Augustine. St. Augustine is a Saint
because he became chaste and rooted out all the sexual vices he had in his
soul.
Blinded by the Lavender Light
All
of this reveals why Fr. Martin is ill-suited to minister to those who have
SSA. All he can see is gay. In examining the life of John Henry Newman,
it is quite obvious that he deeply loved Fr. Ambrose St. John. But it is only someone who sees all things in
a lavender light that would mistake the love of friendship with erotic love. The aforementioned St. Augustine, on losing a
friend said:
I was amazed that other mortals went on living when he was dead whom I had loved as though he would never die, and still more amazed that I could go on living myself when he was dead – I, who had been like another self to him. It was well said that a friend is half one’s own soul. I felt that my soul and his had been but one soul in two bodies, and I shrank from life with loathing because I could not bear to be only half alive; and perhaps I was so afraid of death because I did not want the whole of him to die, whom I had love so dearly.
This seems very similar to what Newman said at the loss of his friend “I have always thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband’s or a wife’s but I feel it difficult to believe that anyone’s sorrow can be greater than mine.” Would Fr. Martin have us believe that St. Augustine was gay or bisexual? Or is it, that he is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging that there is a proper, non-sexual love between same sex persons in friendship? One of the ways in which chastity is increased in the person with SSA is to acknowledge that to the extent that his love for the other person is real, it is really a disordered love of friendship. Once this is realized the person is able to develop a healthy and ordered love for the other person. What makes Fr. Martin unsuited then to help these people is that he would not admit to the true love of friendship. Otherwise he would not make such a stupid comment about St. John Henry Newman, but put him forward as an example of how those with SSA might purify their love for a person of the same sex through authentic friendship.
In the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,
the novel’s protagonist Arthur Dent journeys to a distant planet and meets an
alien race. He finds that this race has built
a supercomputer that successfully calculated the meaning of life as the number 42. Despite the absurdity of the response, a deep
truth emerges. The truth is that there
is an objective answer to the question of what the meaning of life is and it is
happiness. In recognition of this fact,
the Catechism quotes St. Augustine’s state that we “all want to live happily;
in the whole human race there is no one who does not assent to this
proposition, even before it is fully articulated.”
To see the truth of this, we
must begin by examining the nature of man himself. We begin with the simple definition of
Aristotle that man is a rational animal.
Like all animals, man acts with a purpose. However, because man is also rational, truly
human acts are not only done for a purpose but also proceed from deliberation
and are freely chosen. In other words,
everything we do is oriented toward the attainment of some freely chosen end.
Upon examination of human
acts, one finds that man acts for the attainment of a myriad of ends. However, to say that there is a single
meaning or purpose to life is to say that there is a single end behind everything
that man does. How can one say this
without contradiction?
St. Thomas addresses this
question in the Summa Theologiae. He
proves that man has an ultimate end that motivates everything he does and that
all men have the same end.
He begins by proving that man
has a last end in a manner that is parallel to his argument for the existence
of God as the first cause. He argues
that there cannot be an infinite regress of ends without a final end.
Next, St. Thomas shows why
this final end is that which motivates all of man’s actions. This ultimate end must fulfill all our
desires. Everything man desires is
desired in terms of this final end even though we may only be subconsciously
aware of it. Each and every good that is
pursued derives it goodness from its relation to the ultimate good.
Finally, St. Thomas argues
that because all men have the same nature (i.e. the same human essence that
equips them for human operations) all men must have the same goal. This goal is complete human fulfillment which
is referred to as happiness or beatitude.
Happiness is the ultimate end
of life because it fits each of the criteria.
Everyone desires to be happy and it is desired only as an end in itself. Nobody desires happiness for the sake of
something else. Happiness is the
motivation behind every decision and action.
Even though it seems that
everyone agrees on the idea that happiness is the meaning of life, nearly
everyone disagrees as to what is the ultimate cause of this happiness. So the question of what this happiness
consists in must now be addressed.
The
Contenders
To address this question, the
Angelic Doctor looks at eight possibilities.
By looking empirically at human nature, he comes to a single, final end
through the process of elimination.
He begins by looking at riches
and finds that wealth is merely a means to an end. It is “sought for the sake of something else,
namely as a support of human nature (natural wealth)” or as “means to exchange
those natural goods.” Like other bodily
goods, it also cannot be used to obtain spiritual goods and thus cannot fulfill
man in his totality. The goods of the
body are subordinate to the goods of the soul and therefore cannot be the
supreme good.
St. Thomas then looks at honor,
fame and power. We must be in possession
of happiness and we do not possess honor but receive it from without. With fame we find that the controlling source
is outside us while power is no more than the capacity to do something. Happiness is a state.
St. Thomas then looks at
pleasure but notes that it always accompanies something else. Thus, pleasure is an accident to happiness
and not the source of happiness.
Likewise he looks at the goods of the soul such as the intellectual and
moral virtues. Although happiness resides in the human soul, its source is
outside of it.
And
the Winner Is…
What this means concretely is
that happiness cannot be found in the will because it remains the goal of the
will to desire the good and unite man to it.
It is not the power through which goods outside the soul are experienced. This can only happen in the intellect.
Man, through his power of abstraction, is able to unite to the essence of a thing through knowledge. The thing known becomes united to the knower, it literally becomes a part of him. This is why the Bible often uses knowledge as an analogy or euphemism for the marital embrace. When the intellect comes to know God in the Beatific vision, that is to “see Him as He really is” it is fully satisfied because it knows God and all things through Him. Faith is a preview of this, but ultimately passes away when vision is granted.
All of this “dry” philosophy would be little more than an intellectual exercise unless it didn’t also change our view of the world. After all, St. Thomas is only demonstrating what the Faith already teaches. We were made for God. But by showing the reasonableness of the Faith, it makes it very practical. This ought to teach us to put first things first. As free creatures, everything we do either moves us closer to God or away from Him. We need to examine each and every one of our actions against this measuring stick. It was St. Ignatius, in his Principle and Foundation who put the practical aspects of this proof most succinctly:
For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things as much as we are able, so that we do not necessarily want health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long rather than a short life, and so in all the rest, so that we ultimately desire and choose only what is most conducive for us to the end for which God created us
In conclusion, thanks to
reason enlightened by faith, we are able to come to the conclusion that all men
seek the vision of God as their ultimate end.
Like the Angelic Doctor, we pray that our rational justification match
his answer to the voice asking him what he wanted as his reward: “Only Yourself
Lord.”
Benjamin Franklin once
quipped that nothing was certain but death and taxes. If Mr. Franklin were alive today, he would
add evolution to the list of certainties. The theory has become fact and has
won uncritical acceptance from nearly everyone, Catholic or not. Having become adamantine, this theory has
broken Adam’s family into pieces with dire consequences both for the Faith and
for the world because of one particular aspect, polygenism. Polygenism, put simply, is the belief that,
rather than tracing our human origins back to a single couple, we came from
multiple couples. Rather than look at
each of the different theories in particular, we will examine the idea based
through philosophical and theological lenses.
First it is worth mentioning
that the Magisterium has cautioned the Faithful about accepting polygenism in
any of its forms. In his 1950
Encyclical, Humani Generis, Pope Pius
XII spoke of the liberty the Faithful have in discerning the origins of the
human body. But,
“When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own”
Humani Generis, 36-37
It takes a bit of theological gymnastics not to read this as a blanket rejection of polygenism, but nevertheless some theological contortionists have posited that the door is still open. What is clear however is that any polygenetic theory would have to maintain two truths about Adam. First, that there are no men on earth that did not take their origin from him. Secondly, we cannot see Adam as somehow an icon or symbol for a bunch of first parents. Hard to imagine that any theory of polygenism could maintain this since it seems to assert its opposite, but even if the Pope did leave it open, there is no theory as of yet that meets this criteria.
Pius XII mentions the
theological interest in the question as it relates to Original Sin. It leaves open the possibility and historical
reality of an unfallen race at various time points throughout history. Even if all mankind eventually fell, there
would have been a time when unfallen and fallen men lived together. That means there may have been unfallen men
who were conceived of unfallen parents.
This would then call into question the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception by which Our Lady is said to have received a “singular grace”. It also
leaves open the possibility that men died without falling and thus would not be
in need of redemption. If all men did
not sin in Adam then all men are not
redeemed in Christ.
This is not the only way
that polygenism tugs at the thread of the seamless garment of the Faith in ways
we do not initially grasp. It also puts
in jeopardy the dogmatic truth of the
special creation of Eve. It is a
matter of dogma taught through the Ordinary Magisterium, and first affirmed Pope
Pelagius I in 561 and reaffirmed by Pope Pius XII in the aforementioned
Encyclical that Eve was literally created from the rib of Adam. This belief is protective of the equal
dignity of men and women because they come from the same origin.
It turns out that polygenism
not only leads to inequality between the sexes but between races as well. The evolutionary model rests upon a
progressive view of beings. Things are
always adapting and getting better. From
a philosophical perspective, evolution is the tool by which the rungs of the
Ladder of Being are being added. Beings
on the same rung are equal in dignity, those above or below have more or less
dignity. Human beings are equal in
dignity because they occupy the same rung of the Ladder of Being. Under the model of polygenism this ceases to
be the case. With different evolutionary
origins, different races occupy different rungs on the ladder. In short, it gives both biological and
philosophical justification for some human persons being more equal than
others.
This is why the Francis Galtons, Margaret Sangers and Hitlers of the world have always loved the Theory of Evolution. It justified their eugenic madness. Under polygenism, some races would necessarily be inferior to other races. This would justify their extermination and there would be no disputing them. This is why Pope Pius XII thought it necessary to safeguard not just Revelation, but man’s unique place within visible creation against the threat of uncritical acceptance of Evolution. Ideas have consequences and all of us, especially Catholics, need to be more critical in their acceptance of the Theory of Evolution.
Before closing, it is worth mentioning
that many well-meaning Catholics accept polygenism because it seems better than
accepting incest among Adam and Eve’s children.
Rather than revisiting that question here, I will simply point you to a previous
post that deals with that objection.
Carl Linnaeus was an Eighteenth-Century
Swedish Biologist who first adopted the binomial nomenclature for naming organisms. In so doing, he dubbed man has homo sapiens
or “wise man”. If Linnaeus was to have
witnessed mankind’s evolution, not through random mutation, but through
political correctness, he might dub him homo insapiens instead. Modern man is a lot of things, but wise is
most certainly not one of them. For all
of the supposed progress that modernity has offered, the threat of a new Dark
Ages remains a real possibility.
Linnaeus’ choice of the
participle sapiens to describe man was a recognition of the fact that
among all of the species, only man has the capacity for wisdom. It is, in a very real sense, his specific
difference. But it is only a capacity
and not a biologically determined inevitability. It is his destiny, but only if he accepts it
as his vocation. He must both value it,
pursue it and come to love it.
Wisdom
and Philosophy?
In order to do this, we must
first admit that most of us don’t know what wisdom is. The wise man knows the right ordering of
things; not just some things, but all things.
He knows what the first things are so he can put them first, what the
second things are so you can put them second, and so on. It is only by acknowledging and choosing
according to this order right order that he can be truly fulfilled. Wisdom isn’t “no” but “instead of”. To put it in philosophical terms, wisdom is
to judge all things according to their final causes or purposes.
Accepting his sapiential vocation means that man strives to become a lover of wisdom. He becomes a philosopher, not because he enjoys esoterica, but because he is a man. Man can no more avoid being a philosopher than he can avoid thinking. He will see the world according to his own first principles. The choice then is not about whether he will be a philosopher but about his philosophy. Will it be as Chesterton puts it, “thought that has been thought out” or will it be the “unconscious acceptance of broken bits of some incomplete philosophy” that comes in “nothing but phrases that are, at their best, prejudices”?
The
Antidote to PC Culture
Ultimately then, Political
Correctness in all its forms is perhaps the greatest threat to mankind today. I say this without any danger of succumbing to
hyperbole. By serving as a substitution for
thought, it threatens to make us into something less than human. At the heart of wisdom, and therefore of any
philosophy, is the question why.
We cannot order anything without investigating causes. When a philosophy forbids, or at the very
least, avoids that question, it becomes a danger to us all. Usually very reserved in his language, GK
Chesterton, playing the role of prophet warns of dire consequences:
The best reason for a revival of philosophy is that unless a man has a philosophy certain horrible things will happen to him. He will be practical; he will be progressive; he will cultivate efficiency; he will trust in evolution; he will do the work that lies nearest; he will devote himself to deeds, not words. Thus struck down by blow after blow of blind stupidity and random fate, he will stagger on to a miserable death with no comfort but a series of catchwords; such as those which I have catalogued above. Those things are simply substitutes for thoughts. In some cases they are the tags and tail-ends of somebody else’s thinking. That means that a man who refuses to have his own philosophy will not even have the advantages of a brute beast, and be left to his own instincts. He will only have the used-up scraps of somebody else’s philosophy; which the beasts do not have to inherit; hence their happiness.
The Revival of Philosophy–Why?
So many Catholics feel
helpless in the face of modernity, especially as the detritus of secular
philosophy continues to overflow into the Church. Whatever the solution, it is clear that no
solution will be viable without a cadre of right-thinking Catholics. Only the Scholasticism of St. Thomas offers a
complete and coherent explanation of reality that is able to refute political correctness
in all its subtle forms. Our enemies,
much quicker than us to realize this, have successfully suppressed his thought
for several generations. Chesterton thought
there needed to be a revival of philosophy, I am saying there needs to be a
revival of a specific philosophy. It is
time that the Church and all in it sit and the feet of St. Thomas and learn how
to be truly wise.
Only the wise man is truly free. He moves about unhindered within the range of
reality, seeing and using everything in its specific place. This is why the attack on perennial
philosophy is actually an attack against man’s freedom. Controlling a man’s thoughts, controls the
man’s actions. Political correctness is
enslavement to groupthink. A man who is
truly a freethinker, that is one who thinks freely about how to use his
freedom, is impossible to control. He
sets his sights on the highest things and pursues them with love and zeal. He is a philosopher in the truest sense of the
word and enjoys the freedom of right action that always flows from right thought. The future of mankind very much depends upon
our decision to be homo sapiens.
There is perhaps no topic that
St. Thomas Aquinas is more closely associated with than angels. Dubbed The Angelic Doctor, both
because of his angelic purity, and because of his thorough compilation of the
Church’s teachings on the angels, he is a reliable teacher on the topic. We can turn to him and find the necessary principles
that will enable us to answer any question we might have, including the
question as to why angels always appear as men in Scripture.
One of the things that St.
Thomas does is to help us see beyond on modern prejudices because he appeals to
universal principles. There is a modern
tendency, especially in an age of exaggerated gender equality, to attribute it
to patriarchal repression. But there is
more to it than that and it begins by turning to Aquinas’ negative definition of
an angel as that which is “understood to be incorporeal” (ST, q.51, art.1). Lacking bodies, are neither male nor female
by nature. Nevertheless, because matter
makes the invisible visible, the angels use a body to reveal themselves.
Where
the Body Comes From
To say that they “use” a body
leads us to a necessary digression. The
angels do not rob a grave nor perform something like a good possession, but
instead draw together the matter necessary to create the physical appearance of
a human body. “Appearance” because it is
not truly a human body because its proper form of the human soul. Although they do not have a body by nature,
they do, by nature have the power to move matter in accord with their will (assuming
Divine approval of course). Making a
body then would be perfectly within their natural powers.
This “body” serves solely the
purpose of revealing the angel and allowing him to communicate with humans on
their level. In this way, the angels are
in the image of God, given the power to use the material to make the non-material
intelligible to us. This is why we can
never look upon their choice of body as an accident of social convention or a
concession to patriarchy. Instead it is
chosen for a purpose, namely to reveal the angel, in both his nature and
personality, to men. This purpose helps
set the tone for an explanation as to why the bodies are always male.
Angels, because they lack
materiality, also lack, philosophically speaking, potency. The angel is pure intellect, always being in
act of knowing a loving. If they cease
to think and love, they cease to exist. Likewise,
being immaterial, they “live” outside of visible creation. This means that angels are always the initiators
in their interaction with mankind. Men
cannot beckon them (this is why the angel will not tell Jacob his name) nor
conjure them up. They must always come
on their own accord. In “coming” they
enter into the physical world from the outside.
They must come from outside of visible creation and enter into the
physical world. Finally, angels are by
their mission, the militant protectors of mankind. They are warriors assigned to battle the evil
spirits in their assault upon mankind.
The
Body Reveals the Personality
If the angel, in forming a
body, wants to convey both his nature and his personality, then how should he
present himself? To convey personality,
he must choose one of the sexes and not just an amorphous blob or non-personal
type matter. To convey his nature, he
must choose one or the other. To see
which one, another slight digression is in order.
The sexes, male and female,
are meant to reveal masculinity and femininity.
The masculine principle is always the initiator, always the one who
comes from the outside. The feminine
principle is always passive and receptive.
The masculine is, viewed philosophically, acts as the efficient cause in
reducing the feminine from potency to act.
Likewise, the masculine is always the protector and warrior of the
feminine.
Angels, by choosing to appear
with men, are revealing that they have initiated the conversation with men, and
that they have come from outside of visible creation. The Heavenly Host is an army arrayed in battle
to protect us. This militancy is best
portrayed by being a man. It is for these
three reasons that angels always appear as men in Scripture and why we always
speak of the angels that we don’t see as “he”.
In the book of Zechariah, there
is a story of how the prophet was visited by an angel. In that regard, it is no different than many
other cases in Scripture of similar visitation.
It is unique however because at first glance it appears that a female
angel (actually two) makes an appearance.
There is reason to think however that these angels are actually demons.
The prophet is visited by an
angel who points out to him a basket that contains a woman whom he identifies
as “wickedness”. He closes the basket
and then the angel raises Zechariah’s “eyes and saw two women coming forth with
wind under their wings—they had wings like the wings of a stork—and they lifted
the basket into the air. I said to the
angel who spoke with me, ‘Where are they taking the basket?’ He replied, ‘To build a temple for it in the
land of Shinar. When the temple is constructed, they will set it there on its
base.’” (Zech 5:9-11). These “two
women”, some posit, are angels. But the
destination, Shinar, which is where the tower of Babel was built (Gen 11),
later referred to as Babylon, tells us something different. Throughout Scripture, Babylon is always
presented as the city of the devil and thus they are carrying wickedness back
to its biblical home.
Devotion
to the Angels and Angel Statues
All of that being said, why
does it matter if they appear as both men and women or only as men? It matters because angels are not just
hypothetical beings but real people who play an active role in the world of
mankind. It becomes then a matter of
discernment, giving us a principle by which to distinguish between an angel of
light and an angel of darkness. Given
all that we have said, it is not surprising that exorcists and demonologists find
that only demons appear as women and that they caution us to avoid a feminine
spirit. This is not to suggest that women
are evil, (for the demons also appear as men) only that femininity does not
properly convey the nature of the angel.
The demons operate on deception and seduction and thus we should not be
surprised that these is one of the means they use.
It isn’t just discernment that
matters, but also devotion. Devotional
art ought to portray the object of devotion as it truly is. It may abstract away certain pieces (like the
excess blood of Christ on the Cross) but it must remain true to the object
itself. In other words, devotional art ought
to imitate nature because it helps to foster a deeper devotion. This is why we should be cautious in
accepting the modern tendency to depict angels as female in art. The angels themselves are artists and they
have chosen the male body to portray themselves. Masculine angel art helps to foster true
devotion to the angels because it depicts their true characteristics more than
a female art would. In this way, that is
because it has claritas, the masculine angel is always more beautiful
than the feminine.
If it is really true that only
demons appear as women, then these aesthetic objects may in fact be idols,
fostering devotion to devils instead.
Devotion is always directed from the heart to the object. In this way it has a power of forming our
hearts to love the object of our devotion.
A poor depiction of angels, or even one that is really demonic, can
eventually do harm to our spiritual life.
This is why it is always better to foster devotion based on what we do
know, namely that angels always take on masculine form, then to speculate, and
risk offering devotion to something far more insidious.
Summing up why
Sacred Scripture matters, St. Jerome once proclaimed that “ignorance of Scripture
is ignorance of Christ.” The famously acerbic
Doctor of the Church knew that the Word Made Flesh could be found on every page
of the Bible and therefore dedicated his life to studying the Scriptures and producing
accurate translations of the books of the Bible. Living in a time when many of the versions had
become corrupt due to poor translation and copyist errors, he learned Greek,
Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic just so that he could create the most accurate
translation of the ancient books. So gifted
was he in this area that the pope at the time, Pope Damasus, asked him to
produce an “official” translation in Latin that became known as the Vulgate. It is this translation that remains the
official translation of the Church to our day.
Like much of what
the somewhat contentious Jerome did during his lifetime, his work was not
without controversy in his day. Little
did he know that this controversy would be felt a millennium later when a
former Augustinian monk stumbled upon some of his early thought and used his
arguments to justify his own position.
The bulk of Jerome’s work was done when the Church did not have an
official canon—official in the sense that the Church had authoritatively spoken
as to which books were part of the Bible and which weren’t. It was not until 382 that Pope Damasus produced
a list of the canon that was later affirmed by the Council of Hippo (393) and
the Council of Carthage (397). Nevertheless,
there was still widescale agreement among the Faithful as to which books could
be used in the Liturgy (which was the home of Scripture) and which couldn’t. There was still some question about a few
books like the Book of James, Revelation, the Letter of Clement to the
Corinthians and the Didache, but most agreed that the former two belonged and
the latter did not. But before
officially closing the canon, Pope Damasus sought to produce an accurate
translation of the entire canon of Scripture so that the Church could have a
single collection of the books to rely on.
It is
important to note however that the debated books never included what has become
known as the Deuterocanon (or Apocrypha in Protestant circles). This name, Deuterocanon, was used to
distinguish books of the Old Testament that could be used for argumentation and
evangelization with Jews from those that couldn’t. For the Jews, once they realized that their
books were being coopted by the Christians, had begun to build a wall around
their Scriptures and rejected all those books that were not found in Hebrew. A list that included the seven books (Baruch,
1st and 2nd Maccabees, Sirach, Judith, Wisdom, and Tobit)
and parts of two others (Daniel and Esther) of the Catholic canon. But the Church still viewed both sets of
books as inspired and we find those books included among all the early lists of
the approved Scriptures by the Church Fathers.
Jerome’s Line
of Reasoning
The agreement in the Early Church regarding the Deuterocanonical books was unanimous except for one man—St. Jerome. For Jerome made a mistake in his thinking, a mistake of which the aftershocks are still felt today. As he gathered up the various translations of the books, he found that the copies of the Septuagint, that is, the ancient Greek translation of the books of the Old Testament, were various and not wholly consistent. Translating them without finding an “official” text proved difficult to say the least. He also found that the Hebrew texts, what he called the Hebrew Masoretic (HM) texts, had been widely circulated for several centuries and were much cleaner and consistent. From these two facts, Jerome came to an incorrect conclusion. He thought that the HM texts were the “correct” ones and not the Septuagint. He called this the principle of “Hebrew Verity”. And since the Deuterocanon did not appear in the HM texts he also concluded that they were not inspired.
Flash forward 1100
years and Martin Luther, whose theology, especially on indulgences and praying
for the dead, is clearly contradicted by these books, is looking for a reason
to throw these books out of the Canon.
He stumbles across Jerome’s reasoning and latches on to it. The story of how he removed the books has
been covered
previously, so we won’t rehash that here.
What we will cover however is that Jerome was wrong in his line of
thinking and therefore Luther merely resurrected his error and passed on a
stunted Canon to his Protestant progeny.
Why Jerome
was Wrong
We know that
Jerome was wrong for two reasons. The
first is related to the findings in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This sacred library was discovered in 1947 by
Bedouin shepherds and contained the earliest translations of many of the books in
the Old Testament. These translations
precede any of the earliest translations we had up to that point by almost 1000
years and precede Jerome’s HM text by almost 500 years in some case. Why this is significant for the discussion at
hand is that among the books that were found were the books of the
Deuterocanon. And not only were they in
the library, but there were Hebrew and Aramaic translations. These translations, as well as the
translations of the other books that were found, are closer in substance to the
Septuagint and not to the HM texts. In
short, the Dead Sea Scrolls show that Jerome erred in thinking that just
because the HM texts were consistent, they were correct. The problem was that the parts of the
Septuagint were actually preserving the original Hebrew better than the
currently existing Hebrew and the Dead Sea Scrolls show this.
While Luther
might be excused for not knowing this, the second reason should have convinced
him. The reason we know Jerome was wrong
is because Jerome said he was wrong. In
a letter Against Rufinus he said,
“What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches? But he who brings charges against me for relating the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the Story of Susanna, the Song of the Three Children, and the story of Bel and the Dragon, which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant. For I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they [the Jews] are wont to make against us.”
And this
ultimately helps us to uncover not just the error Luther made but his
motivation. For he cites St. Jerome as
his authority, but then does not do what Jerome did. For Jerome, even though he had personal
reservations against those books being included in the official canon, still
translated them, and ultimately deferred to the authority of the Church. He knew that his personal opinion could err,
but the Church could not, especially when it comes to the Canon of
Scripture. He knew that a fallible list
of infallible books leads to an absurdity, one that tugs at the seamless garment
of the content of faith until it entirely unravels.
It is not much
of a stretch, especially when we read their writings, to see that Jerome and Luther
were kindred spirits with one huge exception.
St. Jerome has the humility of a saint and deferred to the authority of
the Church. Luther had the pride of
devil and decided to set himself up as his own authority.
The
Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, better known as the Jeffersonian Bible,
was compiled in 1820 by the founding father of the same name. Using a literal cut and paste method,
Jefferson extracted sections of the New Testament that he thought presented
Jesus as a great moral exemplar. Left
behind are only mentions of the miracles He performed, including the
Resurrection, and any passages that even have a whiff of his divinity. The famous tinkerer could find no reasons to
believe in the divinity of Christ and the operation of the supernatural so he
imposed his naturalism upon the texts of the Bible. Although he hid it away for fear of reprisal,
there are many, even inside confines of the Church, who openly adopt and preach
naturalism.
Naturalism
Simply
put, naturalism is the position that all that exists is nature. It usually goes hand in hand with scientism,
that is, the belief that the only field of knowledge is empirical science. Within this philosophical framework the
supernatural is a priori excluded such that there must be a natural explanation
for everything. This would include the
divinity of Christ and miracles. Rather
than scientifically investigating the possibility of miracles, they simply
conclude that miracles are impossible because they are impossible. As we shall see, however, the miracles of
Jesus are in fact quite possible.
CS
Lewis makes a helpful distinction in categorizing the miracles of Jesus into
two very broad categories: miracles of the Old Creation and miracles of the New
Creation. The former are those miracles
in which, seemingly, the laws of nature are altered. The latter are those that pertain to the laws
of supernature. As an example of the
former we could have the changing of the water into wine and of the latter, the
walking on water. Both however respect
nature and are no mere suspension of natural laws. The super-natural always builds upon and
assumes the natural.
Using
the Miracle of Cana as an example, let us examine whether or not such a miracle
of the Old Creation is possible. But
before doing so, a disclaimer of sorts must be made. The goal of this discussion is to show that
miracles are possible and if possible then probable. This is not a definitive proof that any
particular miracle, including the changing of water into wine, actually
happened. That must be taken upon
faith. Instead the goal is more modest and
that is to show that there is nothing irrational about believing in miracles,
and, in fact, it is irrational not to believe in their possibility.
Returning
to our example, let us examine what is happening. A substance, namely water, is being changed
into another substance, wine. Change is
a reality within the natural world and occurs everywhere we look so there is
nothing per se out of the ordinary here.
All substantial change is governed by the enduring principle of
matter. In each substantial change, the
matter takes on a new form; water gets into a grape seed and the matter becomes
the grape vine which then bears grapes which undergo another substantial change
through the process of fermentation and become wine. So, we see, using the laws of substantial
change, it is quite possible that water becomes wine.
The
Lord of Nature
This
is not to explain away the miraculous, but to set it in its proper
context. Properly speaking the miracle
is not in the change itself, but in the rapidity of the change. Christ is revealing that He is the Lord of
Nature and so it is fitting that He would respect the laws of nature and yet
show His mastery over them. He is the
Sovereign King of Creation and thus He can do all things. He came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it
means not just the religious laws like the ritual washing that made the stone
jars necessary, but also the laws of nature as well. In fact, He uses the miracle as a sign that
it is His power over nature that also gives Him the authority over the
religious law. This mastery over nature is precisely what lends credibility to
His claims of divinity and is the reason why He always uses some form of matter
in His miracles rather than just creating it out of nothing. The fact that He also produced a
superabundance of 520 liters of wine shows how His absolute mastery. A similar thing can be shown with the other
miracles such as the multiplication of the loaves.
What
about the miracles of the New Creation, those like the walking on the water and
the Resurrection? How can we reconcile
these? Here again we must admit that we
cannot prove them, but we can show how the follow from the possibility of the
Miracles of the Old Creation and how they are not a repudiation of the laws of
Nature. If we view the miracles of the
Old Creation as signs, motives of credibility if you will, then we can say that
these miracles of the New Creation are the fulfillment of those signs. They are meant to show that the laws of
nature are not what is altered but man and his relationship to nature that is
altered. Water is still wet and still
permeable, but man is given power over it.
Peter, a mere man in the process of becoming a new man, is able to walk
on the water as long as he kept his eyes fixed on Christ. Death, a natural consequence of man’s
material being, no longer can hold him.
In both cases the laws are still in place, but man himself has
changed. Previously governed by the
material laws because of his material body, he is governed by the laws of a
spiritual body. Spirit asserts its
dominance against matter.
We
see now that we must admit at least of the possibility of miracles of Jesus and
any philosophy that eliminates them by definition is necessarily false. There is nothing contrary to the character of
nature that would preclude them. To
eliminate them a priori means that you must in some way deny some of the
attributes of nature itself. To
eliminate the possibility of the supernatural in this case means a denial of
the natural as well. The only way they
could be excluded is if God did not allow them, a question that the Naturalist
is not even willing to consider.
Not
surprisingly most naturalists are also atheists (or at least deists). In other words, they form their philosophy
based on their belief, rather than as true scientists who would allow the data
to take them wherever it goes. In other
words, they invent a philosophy to fit their belief rather than fitting their
belief to a correct philosophy. One may
not know whether Christ was God or not, but to eliminate the possibility of the
miraculous ultimately is unreasonable.
Legend has it that the Spanish
explorer Juan Ponce de León stumbled upon Florida while searching for the
Fountain of Youth. The mythical spring
would restore youth to anyone who drank or bathed in its waters. His personal records make no mention of his
search, but nevertheless popular history has attached the fountain to his name,
often as evidence of a backward time.
But if we replace magical fountains with technology, then the quest at
least, does not seem so doltish. The
fountain may not exist, but the desire to remain forever young remains a part
of the human psyche. Mass vanity? Perhaps.
But if we dismiss the desire too quickly, then we are in danger of
missing a message from our hearts that points towards the One Who is the fulfillment
of every desire.
A quick word first about
vanity. Vanity or vainglory is not wrong
because it seeks glory. We were made to
receive glory. Vainglory is wrong
because it seeks glory in the wrong things, in the wrong way or from the wrong
person. Glory is meant to be received
from God in reward for the good that we do for the right reason. To seek it in other ways is ultimately empty
and unsatisfying and thus leaves us perpetually searching for what ultimately
proves to be a mythical satisfaction.
St.
Thomas on Perpetual Youth
Reading St. Thomas’ Summa
Theologiae can be intimidating, but those who are willing to brave the raging
intellectual waters are often struck by his common sense. Related to the topic at hand, he takes a
common sense approach about the state of our bodies after the general
resurrection. Building off the promise
in Ephesians 4:13, namely “until we all attain to…mature manhood, to the extent
of the full stature of Christ”, St. Thomas points out that man will rise again
at the most perfect stage of nature (ST III, q.81, art.1). Because perfection does not come to us all at
once, there is a defect in human nature in time. First there is the defect of childhood in
that they lack maturity and bodily strength.
Secondly there is a defect in old age brought about by the diminishment
of bodily strength and faculties. These
two defects meet at a single point in which growth terminates and just prior to
the movement towards defect begins. This
point, St. Thomas calls a “youthful age” and it is when we are at our strongest
bodily. This is the same youthful age
that the Fountain of Youth is attempting to capture. It is the same age that the bodily
resurrection will capture for all eternity.
This desire in our culture to stay forever young is really a twisted-up
desire for our bodily resurrection in which we will attain to “the extent of
the full stature of Christ.”
Because Christ Himself rose at
the youthful age of 30, and our resurrection is a share in His, we will all
arise in our bodies of a similar youthful age.
But, before closing, we would be remiss if we merely glossed over the
fact that Christ was struck down at what would be considered the strongest
age. This ought to bring both pause and
praise because the age in which He was strongest was also the age at which He
could suffer the most. To cut a man down
in His prime requires the greatest effort.
His gift of self to mankind was more complete at 30 than it would have
been at any other age and helps explain why it was fitting that He be that age.
The desire for perpetual youth
in this world is vanity, not because it seeks the glory that comes in youth,
but because it seeks it in the wrong way.
The desire is a pointer that extends beyond this world to tell us that
it is only by dying to self with a youthful vigor that we can actually become
younger. Perpetual youth only comes from
the One Who won it for us by giving Himself away during His youth. Fully untwisted, the Fountain of Youth and
all its present day manifestations become a true north for us to fix our desire
on its proper object. Only by sharing in
Christ’s passion do we share in His youthful resurrection.
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