Ecce Verbum

Childhood  Christ loves the Childhood that he first took up in both soul and body. Christ loves childhood, the teacher of humility, the rule of innocence, the image of gentleness. Christ loves childhood, to which he directs the characters of older people, to which he brings back old age. Those whom he would raise up to an eternal kingdom he disposes to follow his own example. So that we may be able to recognize clearly how this wonderful change might be accomplished and by what alteration we might return to the level of childhood, let blessed Paul teach us and say, "Do not be made into children with respect to your senses, but become very little with respect to wickedness." It is not to the amusements of childhood and to our imperfect beginnings that we must return, but we must extract from childhood something fitting for later years.." Pope Leo I, Sermons, p. 161 (Sermon 37.3-4).

Temperance and elegance On the first, and most fundamental, kind, we can start with the recognition that any genuine temperance must be consistent with the other cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, and fortitude), and facilitating such temperance in others must be consistent with the conditions for these, not imposing undue burdens on those trying to do act in accordance with them. Therefore, to aid through temperance the prudence of ourselves and others, we get something like the first canon of elegance: (1) To make allowances for honest differences in judgment. (To aid through temperance the justice of ourselves and others) (2) To prefer, where different options are available, the options that seem most obviously conducive to mutual benefit. (To aid through temperance the fortitude of ourselves and others) (3) To make allowances for those who are enduring obvious difficulties, even where it causes some difficulty to oneself. (To aid through temperance the temperance of ourselves and others, directly) (4) To make one's pleasures, especially one's social pleasures, reside in things that seem most conducive to cultivating virtue in oneself or making the lives of others more quietly pleasant or less difficult. (On the other side, rules that help us and others more easily to do what virtues of the temperance family require, namely, to subordinate the pursuit of pleasure to more fully human things, the guidelines are perhaps more diverse. But there are a number of obvious candidates. First, virtues in the temperance family are always very obviously concerned with some kind of moderation) (5) To avoid apparent extremes that are neither physically nor morally necessary. (That canon is about bringing our actions more in line with what seems moderate to our judgment in the moment. But we are social creatures, and therefore we can also take into account what appears moderate to people in general. Therefore we have another canon) (6) To defer to reasonable custom. The moderation of the temperate virtues brings our actions into harmony, proportion, and balance, and thus the temperate virtues are most closely associated with beauty of character. (7) To respect all things physically or morally beautiful. (If one asks why the 'physically' is there, it is because, first, physical beauty can serve as a reminder of our need for spiritual beauty, and, second, because the physically beautiful is a symbol of the morally beautiful, and to respect the latter properly we must respect its symbols) Finally, all of the virtues of the temperance family deal in great measure with pleasure, and, as Aristotle notes, pleasure tends to bias us, thus requiring special precaution. From this we get another canon of elegance (8) To prefer the obviously virtuous or useful to the obviously pleasant. The canons of elegance will not make you temperate, in part because they clearly deal with appearances and not directly with realities, but they are guidelines that aid in determining how to be temperate. As noted above, they are not obligations, and there are situations in which they will not be the best rules, as well as situations in which violating them will be morally permissible. But they are the rules that in most situations are most likely to aid you toward the kind of temperate action that facilitates the temperate actions of others. source

The Successor of Peter and Biblical Interpretation “The Bishop of Rome sits upon the Chair to bear witness to Christ. Thus, the Chair is the symbol of the potestas docendi, the power to teach that is an essential part of the mandate of binding and loosing which the Lord conferred on Peter, and after him, on the Twelve. In the Church, Sacred Scripture, the understanding of which increases under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the ministry of its authentic interpretation that was conferred upon the Apostles, are indissolubly bound. Whenever Sacred Scripture is separated from the living voice of the Church, it falls prey to disputes among experts. Of course, all they have to tell us is important and invaluable; the work of scholars is a considerable help in understanding the living process in which the Scriptures developed, hence, also in grasping their historical richness. Yet science alone cannot provide us with a definitive and binding interpretation; it is unable to offer us, in its interpretation, that certainty with which we can live and for which we can even die. A greater mandate is necessary for this, which cannot derive from human abilities alone. The voice of the living Church is essential for this, of the Church entrusted until the end of time to Peter and to the College of the Apostles. This power of teaching frightens many people in and outside the Church. They wonder whether freedom of conscience is threatened or whether it is a presumption opposed to freedom of thought. It is not like this. The power that Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors is, in an absolute sense, a mandate to serve. The power of teaching in the Church involves a commitment to the service of obedience to the faith. The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: the Pope’s ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word. He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.” Benedict XVI, 2005 source

Cajetan and Prayer in Bad Papal Times From Thomas de Vio Cajetan, De Comparatione auctoritatis papae et concilii, ch. 27, nos. 417-420; cited in Journet, Church of the Word Incarnate, vol. 1 (pp. 425-427) "If you tell me that prayer is but a common remedy to be used against all the ills that afflict us, and that for the special evil that troubles us here we need a proper remedy—since every effect comes of a proper cause, not merely form general causes—I reply, in a general way, that the highest causes, although they play the part of common causes in respect to lower effects, play in fact the part of proper causes in respect to higher effects.  And that is why prayer, which is to be put among the highest of supernatural second causes, is only a common cause of lower effects; but it is a proper cause and the proper remedy for the highest effects, such as would be—since it is reserved for God—the removal from this world of a still believing but incorrigible Pope…. If then, on the one hand, the means available to human effort, even if superelevated by the authority of the Church, are a force inferior to prayer, appointed as the highest of second causes by God, to whom all creatures, corporeal or spiritual, are subject; and if, on the other hand, a remedy against a bad but still believing Pope is among the highest effects in the Church, it follows that God in His wisdom, must have given the Church for remedy against a bad Pope, not now any of these merely human means which may avail for the rest of the Church, but prayer alone.  And can the prayer of the Church, when she perseveringly asks things needful for her salvation, be any less efficacious than merely human means?  Is not the fervent prayer of an individual soul who asks such things for himself already efficacious and infallible?  (Cf. St. Thomas, SCG, 3.45 and 46.)  If then the salvation of the Church demands that such and such a Pope should be removed, then undoubtedly the prayer we have mentioned will remove him. And if it be not necessary, why question the goodness of the Lord who refuses what we wish and gives us what we ought to prefer? But alas, it seems that we are come to the days announced by the Son of Man when He asked whether, on His return, He should find faith on the earth.  For the promises relating to the highest and most efficacious causes are held to be of no worth. They say that we must depose a bad Pope by human means; that one cannot be content with resort to prayer and to divine providence alone!  But why do they say that , if not because they prefer human means to the efficacy of prayer, because the animal man does not perceive the things of God, because they have learnt to trust in man, not in the Lord, and to put their hope in the flesh? So if a pope hardened by evil ways appears, his subordinates, without leaving their own vices, content themselves with daily murmings against the evil regime; they do not seek to avail themselves, save perhaps in a dream and without faith, of the remedy of prayer; so that what Scripture predicts comes about by their fault, namely that it is due to the sins of the people that a hypocrite reigns over them, holy in respect of his office, but a devil at heart. We have become blind to the point of refusing to pray as we ought, while yet desiring the fruit of prayer; of refusing to sow, while still wanting to reap. Let us not call ourselves Christians any longer! Or if we do, let us turn to Christ; and the Pope, were he frantic, furious, tyrannical, a render, dilapidator and corrupter of the Church, would be overcome.  But if we do not know how to overcome ourselves, what right have we to complain of being unable to break through the evils that surround us by prayers that not only fail to rise through our roofs, but do not even mount as far as our heads? 

Justification by Faith- a Catholic interpretation of St. Paul's writings "If indeed you keep the royal law, according to Scripture, You shall be devoted to your neighbor as yourself, you do well. If however you discriminate, you work sin, being rebuked by the law as violators. For whoever shall guard the whole law but trip up on one thing, he has become liable for all. It having said, You shall not commit adultery, also said, You shall not murder. But if you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a violator of the law. Thus talk and thus act as being about to be judged by the law of liberty. For merciless judgment is to the one who has not done mercy. Mercy boasts against tribunal." "What is the point, my brothers, if anyone claims to have faith but has no works? Is the faith not able to save him? If a brother or sister is naked and lacking in daily nourishment, but anyone of you says to them, Depart in peace, be warmed and satisfied, without having given them bodily necessities, what is the point? So also faith, if it has no works, is dead by itself." "But someone will say that you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from works and I will show you faith by my works. You believe that there is one that is God. You do rightly; even demons believe and tremble. But do you want to learn, O foolish man, that faith apart from works is useless?  Was Abraham our father not rendered just by works, having raised Isaac his son on the altar? You see that the faith was cooperating with his works, and by the works, the faith was completed. And the Scripture was fulfilled, saying, But Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as justice, and he was called 'friend of God'. You see that from works man is rendered just, and not from faith alone. And similarly, was not Rahab the prostitute rendered just, having entertained the messengers and by a different way having sent them forth? Just as the body apart from spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead." *[James 2:8-26, The Greek here was rough going; it definitely is not as smooth to translate as Luke. The word for 'dead', nekra, is interesting; it seems to be associated less with death as an abstract idea and more with corpses in the concrete. Could also be translated as 'corpsified'. The point is that without being completed by works, faith is made corpse-like, as is clear from the last sentence in the passage.] article

Consolation in time of adversity II "The Church does not grow old, the faith does not grow old, the Holy Ghost does not grow old ; say not, The days that have been are better than those which are. We can go into this city and find as strong faith, as tender piety, as thorough self-annihilation, as the world in any age ever witnessed. God is as near us as ever ; we have all the aids we ever had, and we may emulate the virtues of any past age. God has not changed; his religion has not changed ; man's nature has not changed. What was possible aforetime is possible now. Let us not, then, suppose we have come too late into the world to aspire to holy living. Let us turn our eyes, not out upon the barren wilderness without, but in upon the vast treasures we have been accumulating for ages, and dare use them. Who cares for the heretics and infidels around us, — except for their conversion? They cannot harm us against our will. Were not the early Christians in a hostile world? Were they not surrounded by Jewish and Pagan relatives and friends ? Had they not apparently even greater obstacles than we to overcome? Why, then, shall we not speak to this age as they spoke to theirs ? Suppose we are sneered at, ridiculed, abused, insulted, trampled on. Suppose the world becomes mad against us, mobs us, shoots us down, sends us to dungeons, the scaffold, or the stake; worse it cannot do. Suppose all this. What then? We have only to rejoice and be exceedingly glad. Woe unto us only when all men speak well of us. Woe unto us only when we prefer the praise of men to the praise of God." Orestes Brownson, "St. Stanslaus Kostka", Brownson's Quarterly Review, October, 1847.

Scientific knowledge and virtue "Roger Bacon, the 13th Century English theologian, philosopher and scientist had a different notion of how science should progress.  Firstly, Roger Bacon, who is considered the earliest founder of the scientific method based upon Aristotle’s logic, said the following in his Sixth Part of the Opus Majus on Experimental Science “For this reason true philosophers have labored the more in morals for their integrity of virtue, concluding among themselves that they can not see the causes of things unless they have souls free from sins.”(Selections From Medieval Philosophers Vol II. Ed. Richard McKeon.  Charles Scribner’s Sons: NY. 1930. p.76)  Bacon thought it essential for the philosopher-scientist to be free from faults, free from vices, free from selfishness or evil, in a word: holy.  Why?  Well, he said, “Virtue, therefore, clarifies the mind that man may understand more easily not only moral things, but scientific things.”(p.77)  A clear mind, a mind that is able to apprehend the truth in moral reasoning spiritually, will have an advantage discerning the truth in scientific reasoning mentally about what he is sensing in his judgement in the world.  Bacon said, “For this reason the Scripture says, Wisdom will not enter into an ill-disposed soul.  For it is impossible that the soul repose in the light of truth while it is stained with sins, but it will recite like a parrot or a magpie the words of another which it learned by long practice…”(p. 77) In other words, the character, the disposition, the virtue of the scientist matters to his science.  He is not a disembodied objective Cartesian mind without a body, soul and personality, but a whole person.  The Presocratic philosophers or “philosophers of nature,” from Thales, Democritus, Pythagoras, and Anaxagoras, among many others, were really the first Western scientists, but it was common for most of them to have works on the nature of the soul, ethics and religion, and this certainly continued into the Middle Ages in Europe.  Roger Bacon is an example of this tradition." "Bacon suggests that from the earliest times in history, the holy patriarchs and the prophets, who also practiced science, did not depend solely on their external senses for knowledge but actively sought it out spiritually in their contemplative prayer.  The famous Second century astronomer and geographer, Ptolemy, thought that divine inspiration was a superior source of knowledge of things,  not to the exclusion to the experience of scientific knowledge, but in addition to it.  Bacon said wisely, “And, therefore, he who acts contrary to the truth, must necessarily be ignorant of it, although he may know how to put together very elegant phrases and to quote the opinion of others…”(p. 76) In other words, the inspiration from faith and scientific reasoning together stretch the imagination of the mind in order to discover the creativity and complexity of nature in a way that is not possible when they are separated from each other." article

Modern thought's faulty conception of civilisation "You speak to us of progress, liberalism and civiliza­tion, just as if we were savages, and did not know the meaning of the words. But these grand words, which you take out of their proper sense, it is we who taught them to you, and have given you the real meaning of them and the realities they represent. Every one of these words has and will have, forever, a thoroughly Christian signification; and on the day when that sense perishes all sincere liberalism, all real civilization, will perish also." source: The Thoughtlessness of Modern Thought, Rev. Demetrius Zema

The relationship between theology and the interior life Fr R. Garrigou-Lagrange, 1943 "Theology and the spiritual life should not be opposed, but rather should strengthen each other. For this reason, it is misguided to dismiss the theology manuals of the early twentieth century as dry and dusty. YouTube, podcasts and lightweight, popular polemics are not substitute objects for those who are able to study theology" "When our study is rightly ordered, it frees the interior life not only from subjectivism but also from particularism resulting from the excessive influence of certain ideas prevalent at some period of time or in some region, ideas which after thirty years will appear antiquated. Some years ago ideas of this or that particular philosophy prevailed, which now no longer find favourable acceptance. It is so in every generation. There is a succession of opinions and events that arouse one’s admiration; they pass with the fashion of the world, while the words of God remain, by which the just man must live." article

Communio personarum as God's plan for man and woman and its distortion by original sin "Recent years have seen new approaches to women's issues. A first tendency is to emphasize strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to antagonism: women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men. Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to seek power. This process leads to opposition between men and women, in which the identity and role of one are emphasized to the disadvantage of the other, leading to harmful confusion regarding the human person, which has its most immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family." "From the very beginning humanity is described as articulated in the male-female relationship. This is the humanity, sexually differentiated, which is explicitly declared “the image of God”.(Gn1:27) "Their equal dignity as persons is realized as physical, psychological and ontological complementarity, giving rise to a harmonious relationship of “uni-duality” "With regard to this text from Genesis, “...woman is another ‘I' in a common humanity. From the very beginning they appear as a ‘unity of the two', and this signifies that the original solitude is overcome." "The Hebrew word ezer which is translated as “helpmate” indicates the assistance which only a person can render to another. It carries no implication of inferiority or exploitation if we remember that God too is at times called ezer with regard to human beings (cf. Ex 18:4; Ps10:14)." “In the ‘unity of the two', man and woman are called from the beginning not only to exist ‘side by side' or ‘together', but they are also called to exist mutually ‘one for the other" "Although God's original plan for man and woman will later be upset and darkened by sin, it can never be abrogated." "When humanity considers God its enemy, the relationship between man and woman becomes distorted." "God's decisive words to the woman after the first sin express the kind of relationship which has now been introduced between man and woman: “your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gn 3:16). It will be a relationship in which love will frequently be debased into pure self-seeking, in a relationship which ignores and kills love and replaces it with the yoke of domination of one sex over the other. Indeed the story of humanity is continuously marked by this situation, which recalls the three-fold concupiscence mentioned by Saint John: the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life (cf. 1 Jn 2:16). In this tragic situation, the equality, respect and love that are required in the relationship of man and woman according to God's original plan, are lost. It follows then that the relationship is good, but wounded and in need of healing." "Above all, the fact that human beings are persons needs to be underscored: “Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God”.10 Their equal dignity as persons is realized as physical, psychological and ontological complementarity, giving rise to a harmonious relationship of “uni-duality”, which only sin and “the structures of sin” inscribed in culture render potentially conflictual. The biblical vision of the human person suggests that problems related to sexual difference, whether on the public or private level, should be addressed by a relational approach and not by competition or retaliation." source Letter of Benedict XVI on the collaboration between men and women in the Church and in the world

Consolation in time of adversity "Now one should consider further that the adversity of an impious man is graver than that of a just man, since when a just man suffers temporal adversity there remains to him the support of virtue and consolation in God; hence, he is not totally dissipated. But to evil men, once the temporal goods which alone they sought for themselves have been lost, no support remains." Aquinas, Super Iob p. 285.

The meaning of marriage Jacques Maritain, speaking of love and his wife Raissa excerpts taken from "Notebooks", ch.7 Love and Friendship  “The love of which I am speaking here is above all a disinterested love. It is not necessarily mad, boundless love; but it is necessarily and primordially a love of devotion and of friendship–that entirely unique friendship between spouses one of whose essential ends is the spiritual companionship between the man and the woman in order to help each other accomplish their destiny here on earth, and it is thus a love …which is truly in the measure of man, and in which the soul as well as the senses are involved, so that in this love, in which desire is there with all its power, disinterestedness really takes precedence over covetousness.”(p.243)  “It is through it [conjugal love] that marriage can be between man and woman a true community of love, built not on sand, but on rock, because it is built on genuinely human, not animal, and genuinely spiritual, genuinely personal love-through the hard discipline of self-sacrifice and by dint of renouncements and purifications.  Then in a free and unceasing ebb and flow of emotion, feeling and thought, each one really participates, by virtue of love, in that personal life of the other which is, by nature, the other’s incommunicable possession.”(p.244)  “And then each one may become a sort of guardian Angel for the other–prepared, as guardian angels have to be, to forgive the other a great deal, in short, a being really dedicated to the good and salvation of the other, and consenting to be entrusted with the revelation of, and the care for, all that the other is in his or her deepest human depths.”(p.244)