Father Anthony

(Anthony II)

St. Anthony the Frail

1.

Anthony the second was born to Margaret Appletree, granddaughter of Anthony and Anna. From the time Margaret was young her life was chaotic. Her parents didn’t understand how a person could produce so much chaos, and knew not what to do with her. One thing led to the next, and when she dropped out of college at 21 to take care of her one year old child, Anthony’s older half sister, Miriam Johnson, who took the last name of her father, the next phase of chaos began. She was in and out of relationships over the next decade, always seeking to find her identity in a man, but telling everyone in the world on the internet that a man could never fulfil her, and all she needed was herself, and that she had been taken through every hardship in her life so she could get to where she’d gotten. But where she’d gotten was misery. She was unhappy, desperate, addicted to shopping, over medicated, and given to fast relationships that ended as soon as they started. When she was thirty five, mostly out of desperation, she had Anthony, hoping that the child would make her boyfriend stay around, but it didn’t. She had no idea what to name the boy, but the father’s favorite football player was named Anthony and suggested that, to which she said yes for no other reason than she wanted to do anything to please the father so that he’d stay around. It was only a coincidence the boy ended up with the same first name as his great-grandfather. By the time little Anthony was born the father was gone from her life, but little Anthony was now in it, 15 years younger than his older half sister, and alone with his mother most of the days of his early life. His mother’s life continued to go downhill from there—she drank more, took more medication, was constantly tired, had more destructive and even faster relationships, and had little to give to little Anthony. He grew up a small boy, mostly because he was underfed, and was often ill. His greatgrandfather, Anthony the first, lived in the same town and would come by every day to check on Anthony the second. Anthony the first was Anthony the second’s favorite man in the whole world. The elder Anthony would tell the younger Anthony about his great grandmother, Anna, and Anthony would feel the love of God in every fiber of his being. He saw his great-grandfather as the greatest man he’d ever known—and would see him as so throughout his entire life. Elder Anthony taught little Anthony how to pray. He would take him with him to Church a few times a week, where sometimes the elder Anthony would altar serve, even as a 90 year old. Elder Anthony was fit and active through the end of his life. Little Anthony always assumed he was named after his great-grandfather, and he saw it as the greatest honor anyone could ever have given him. When little Anthony was diagnosed with stage four Leukemia at the age of 8, his great-grandfather showed up to the hospital with the same glow he had whether he was taking his great-grandson to a baseball game or sitting with him in Church or playing around in the backyard with him. For his mother, Anthony’s cancer only became a reason for his mother to post endlessly about him online. She loved to show the world how sad and difficult her life had been, and Anthony’s cancer was one more reason to garner attention and sympathy from those who didn’t know her. She wanted to be saved, and this made her look like someone who needed saving. Little Anthony only appreciated that his mother cared about him, and from a young age he saw her heart, with all its flaws, and knew that every flaw in her was only accidentally there in her, and felt her love despite all those flaws as if it was the only thing there.

When the doctor gave Margaret the news that little Anthony had only a few months to live, it broke her. She couldn’t look at little Anthony, and a few days later she was so out of her mind that she needed around the clock care, which she’d need for the rest of her short life. The day the news of his coming death was delivered, Elder Anthony was there, with his grandparents as well, but the only person little Anthony truly wanted to see and be around was his great-grandfather. So after all the others left, and Anthony the first hung around, he finally got to spend time with his great-grandfather, who stayed the whole night with him in the hospital, and every night he was there without fail. Little Anthony looked forward to it because whenever he asked his great-grandfather questions, his great-grandfather answered him as best he knew. He didn’t hesitate or change what he said because the lessen was hard to process for a person—he said the truth, and he saw the perfect love of God in every truth, so it always came off to little Anthony as the most loving explanation he could find anywhere. Little Anthony was always comforted and consoled by the answers his great-grandfather gave, though most people thought his great-grandfather was too harsh with his answers because they weren’t always warm and fuzzy and easy answers.

Little Anthony looked at elder Anthony, and without sadness, but only curiosity, asked him why some people die young, and others old, and what was in the mind of God when He did this. Elder Anthony, without skipping a beat, told the little boy that God takes one person at one time, and another at another; we think that a child should die after their parents, and their children after them, but God doesn’t always do it this way, because God sees all things from eternity, and he works marvels with some people in 8 years that another, in 80 years, does something else with. When elder Anthony said all this, there was no pain on his voice—he didn’t look at little Anthony with any tears or sadness in his heart, he was just happy to be there.

“Will I die, pop-pop?” Little Anthony asked.

Elder Anthony, without flinching, told him that we all die, and that the question isn’t whether or even when we die, but whether we’re ready to go meet the Lord when He desires for us to come to Him, who knew from before all time exactly when and how He’d call us back to Himself.

“And how can I be sure that I’m ready, Pop-pop?”

Elder Anthony told him that he should be neither scared of death, nor forget to think about it, because it brings out of us what is most important in this life and in others.

“Have you thought about me dying, Pop-pop?” Little Anthony asked.

His great-grandfather told him that he often thought of it, because his love for him is so great. He said that whenever he loves someone much, he thinks about their death even more so that he can appreciate them while they’re with him, and see the Lord’s working in every aspect of their life. “For only when we reflect on a person’s death,” he said, “do we notice how every challenge and set back and joy and success is part of the Lord’s perfect plan for their life.”

Little Anthony felt the love of God in every fiber of his being that day, and he trusted Him too. The Lord gave little Anthony an even greater measure of faith from that day on than He had given Anthony the first, and it would stay with him for the rest of his life. Sometimes the Lord does just that: he takes someone with great faith, let’s another see it with great clarity, so that they can receive an even greater ammount of faith from God through them.

A month later little Anthony was released from the hospital, healthy as a lamb. The doctors couldn’t believe it, but they also knew statitstics, and knew that sometimes things happen in unexpected ways, and they concluded that this was one of those times.

A month after that elder Anthony passed away, but when he passed away little Anthony did not cry, but only smiled, because he saw in his death the whole of his great-grandfather’s life, and he knew exactly where his great-grandfather was, and how he had went ahead so he could help little Anthony more perfectly from heaven than he ever could from Earth.

For the next ten years, as Anthony’s mother went in-and-out of full in-patient care homes, he lived with his half sister, who though young, never failed to provide for the basic needs Anthony had. Anthony the first had left money for Anthony’s sister to take care of him and herself far beyond their childhood years, and when the rest of their extended family learned of the proportion Anthony the first had set aside for them, it made them jealous, and they began to hate little Anthony and Miriam.

Miriam struggled with many of the same things her mother did, but still Anthony saw her heart as if the love she did have for him was the only thing on it, and everything else was just an accident and a consequence of her trying to love him more perfectly but failing because it’s not easy, because she did not know the Lord in the hardest moments of her life, and for this he always had compassion for her.

The years went by and, though still sickly and small in frame, Anthony grew in wisdom, intelligence, and mortification with each passing year. In high school the school superstar sat next to him in two of his general ed classes, because their last names were right next to each other, and the superstar liked Anthony. The superstar’s whole life was a rollercoaster, but Anthony was steady, and for some unknown reason, which always boils down to an intentional plan of the Lord, the superstar saw that and recognized it, and appreciated it.

The superstar’s life was chaotic. He was the top football recruit in the state and committed to play football in the SEC. He loved cute girls and he loved to party, and though he was still young, drugs became a central part of his life. One day, forgetting that he’d still had some drugs on him from the night before, he came to school with them, and it was the same day that the school was having police and police dogs come do a random drug search—something that happened once every three months in the school, and it was that day. When the superstar got wind of it, he hid his backpack in Anthony’s locker—which was next to his, because their last names were right next to each others—, asking Anthony if he could throw it in there because he’d already shut his own and he’d get it later today, which Anthony obliged to, not knowing there were drugs, but happy to help him out, because he saw his heart and appreciated him, despite his flaws and the chaos in the young prodigy’s life. The superstar was only thinking about himself, and his future, and in that moment he didn’t care what happened to anyone else, much less Anthony, because all he could think about was avoiding any punishment he might face.

When the drug dogs got to Anthony’s locker and identified the drugs for the police, the assistant to the assistant dean of students had Anthony’s locker identified, opened, and took out the bag with the drugs in it. Since they went to a school with over 3,000 kids, the deans didn’t know Anthony at all, and while a handful of his teachers knew him, and couldn’t believe Anthony would ever do anything like this, they knew that students loved to party, and they suspected that it was just a hidden problem he, like many other students, struggled with. No one came to his defense. But no one needed to, because Anthony was not scared, for perfect love casts out all fear.

When Anthony was pulled out of his classroom by police and taken to his locker, he knew God had a plan, though he didn’t know what.

“Is this your bag, sir?” The hulky police officer asked him.

Noticing it was the superstar’s, but knowing that if the superstar was caught that his life and his future would be over, and knowing how that can break a person, like it did his mother, and knowing how fragile hearts and souls are, and how fragile the heart and soul of the superstar’s was at that phase in his life, and knowing that the Lord had a plan for both their lives, whatever it was, he took the fall for the superstar and said the backpack was his own.

The next thing that happened was he was put into handcuffs, and because the new attorney general of their state campaigned on cleaning up the city for their youth, slapped the maximum juvenile sentence on little Anthony, and he was given three years in jail for possession of a grade one controlled substance, a felony in the state.

Walking out of high school in handcuffs that day the superstar saw him, along with every other student, and began to weep. Prior to that moment he had only been thinking about how he was glad it wasn’t him being walked out in handcuffs, but when he saw Anthony, who was neither mad nor sad nor flustered nor bothered, the Lord pricked the superstar’s conscience, and he crumbled. Over the coming days the superstar grew to hate Anthony for how seeing him walk out had exposed his own fragility and wickedness to himself, so he said to himself that Anthony was actually the evil one in the situation, and that he did it to make the superstar feel guilty, because Anthony was a self-righteous man that would expect him, the superstar, to pay him back one day. “He did this so that he’d have something in his pathetic life that he could hold over me for years to come,” the superstar said to himself with anger on his heart. What it was that most bothered him, in truth, was that Anthony, in looking at the superstar, recognized all that had happened, and had united his will to the whole situation, and the superstar saw how inferior he was to Anthony in truth, and how he could never bring himself of his own will to do such a sacrificial act, and so he convinced himself it was not noble or heroic, but dumb, desperate, and a plot to take advantage of him, the superstar…

So walking out, seeing the superstar in tears, broken, and knowing that it was not the beginning of the superstar’s struggle, because the Lord showed this to Anthony in that moment with perfect clarity, Anthony said to the superstar “God has a great plan for your life.” There was a peaceful feeling that the Lord gave to Anthony in that moment, and the superstar, regardless of how mad he was at Anthony in the days afterward, would reflect on this for the rest of his life. It wasn’t the words that stuck with him, but the look and feeling of peace on Anthony’s soul amidst the hardest trial a seventeen year old could face—being innocently thrown in jail and having your life ruined.

Anthony never had the chance to finish high school, but he got his GED from jail, and when two years in, his cellmate, whom Anthony knew the heart of, and saw that it was good, only mixed with evil beyond the man’s intention because life was hard, Anthony again took the fall when drug dogs came into their cell and found his cellmates stash of drugs. This time Anthony’s sentence was extended 9 years, and so it was that Anthony was in jail from the time he was 17 until he was released on good behavior at 27.

By that time his whole extended family assumed he was a drug addict and a troubled man, like his mother and sister, chalking it up to a side effect of growing up in a broken home, and him being just like those that had always been around him. At the news of Anthony’s second offense, and his additional nine years he’d have to spend in adult jail, his mother passed away, without any illness, broken in spirit by this life.

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2.

When Anthony had been in jail he was known for his generosity toward all. He would tutor other cell mates so they could earn their high school degrees and some, who were taking college classes, he also tutored. He had a quick grasp of even the deepest concepts across a broad range of subjects, and he enjoyed helping others come to understand what they didn’t previously understand. Every day he read his Bible, or a work of moral philosophy from a great saint, or a story from the lives of the saints, and at the end of each night he’d give thanks to the Lord for all He had done for him. “Lord, you know my heart, you see every movement of it, and you see the flaws I plague it with. My spirit wants one thing, but my flesh another, and my flesh wars against my spirit. If the worst punishment in my life is having to go to jail for something someone else did, I know that I am not here because of that but because of the wickedness that dwells within me, and I can never forget all the offenses of my own you already forgave. This punishment is generous and light of you, O Lord, and I’m so grateful for your exceeding kindness to me. How good and merciful You are, and how grateful I am that You, in Your infinite wisdom, placed me with these great men, that I might be of service to them in their lives.”

There was never a day that Anthony hated jail, or hated that he had to be there. He liked all the people there, and he knew the loneliness of his home, and in jail he felt like he was never lonely. Plus, he had the opportunity to study the Word of God, the philosophy of the saints, and the lives of the saints, uninterrupted, day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month, and year-after-year. He received the nickname “Friar” while in jail because one of the inmates said he looked like one of those dudes that would’ve worn a brown outfit tied with a rope, with a hair cut in the shape of a halo. He laughed and said to the man, “Oh, you mean a Friar?” And the man responded that that’s exactly what he meant, and from that day on he was known as “Friar” throughout the jail.

“I’m not worthy of such a dignified name,” he thought to himself each day, though it was only a joke to everyone else, and carried on with a joy that few could ever understand in the moment, but that was recognized by all, everywhere, and stuck with them for the rest of their lives.

By the time he was leaving jail there were not a few guards that were convinced that Anthony had never done an ill deed in his life, much less drugs, and had no idea why he was there, though Anthony would always say, “this punishment was the most generous mercy the Lord ever had on him,” and they assumed it must’ve been something really bad that he’d done.

Now out of jail, Anthony took a job at the local convenience store, run by a elderly foreigner with a big family who just needed someone that would reliably show up to work, to which Anthony never missed a day in the next 6 years. Anthony moved into the local low-income housing, though he had a trust he could now accesss, left behind by his great-grandfather, that made him the wealthiest 27 year old in the entire city. The first thing Anthony did after getting out was get everything in order to anonymously donate all his money to his local Church and the homeless shelter they ran and operated. When the parish secretary saw the check come through she nearly fainted, and the old priest, stoic from his decades of honest commitment to the Lord, deposited it into the Church’s account, never knowing who it came from, changed little in what he did or how he operated the parish, other than rewarding his staff with a 100% raise to each of their salaries, and carried on. “The Lord will reveal whosever work this is in due time,” said the old priest.

Every day the elderly priest would see Anthony at mass, and in time he introduced himself to Anthony because he recognized the spirit of God hovering over the the young man, who was no longer so sickly looking, and was actually quite naturally strong, very handsome, but shone with a steadiness and calm that even those with no spiritual insight could recognize the glory of, but that the old priest saw with peculiar accuracy.

“Oh no,” Anthony the second said, “I am not what you think; a two time convict, guilty before the Lord, you honor me by introducing yourself. I pray for you every day, Father.” He told the old priest, and the old priest knew it was true.

“Tell me, do you sense a calling to the priesthood?” The old priest asked.

Anthony told the priest how such a calling would be a blessing too far beyond what he deserved, but that it would be the greatest gift he could ever receive to give his life totally to the Lord, and His Church, in service.

“Would you like to go to seminary?”

Anthony answered simply: “I want what the Lord wants, and if that’s to become a priest, I would be the luckiest man ever to live.”

But when he applied to join the seminary at the Priest’s insistence, they denied him. He had only been out of jail for two years at that point, and they weren’t particularly eager to add a two-time convict to their next class of priests. When Anthony heard the news he only smiled, “the plans of the mind belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” The elderly priest, for his part, was irate—how could they turn away a man who had repented of his wrongs and wants to give his life to the Lord?? “Judases!” He screamed in frustration. “They would’ve turned away Peter, himself!”

But Anthony only looked at him and told him of how the Lord is even better than he thinks, because Anthony was now able to continue on the work he was already doing, and help in the lives of those who the Lord wanted him to help here first.

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3.

Anthony had been living among the homeless for over a year, ministering to their needs, dressing wounds, providing basic over-the-counter medicines to those in need, and hearing the stories of their lives with optimism and gratitude. In his time, more than half the people in the homeless encampment had begun to pick their lives back up, and put the pieces together. Anthony had a special way of encouraging all those he came into contact with, and it moved them in ways they, nor anyone else around them, could explain.

One day, he was walking between tents when his friend from high school, the superstar, came out of one of the tents, having just finished using drugs, and dressed with the same misery and fatigue he had once seen on his mother.

“Anthony…?” the former superstar said, confused at what he was seeing, and forgetting his misery, or even the guilt he’d felt that Anthony went to jail on his behalf, because of him. In that moment the superstar was only glad to see him. Anthony had been sent to jail, but lived a life a freedom; the superstar lived a life of freedom, but was in a worse jail than any prison that has ever existed on the face of this planet.

After that incident in high school, the guilt consumed the superstar, and unwilling to repent, his life went from one mistake to the next. By his second year in college he was kicked off the team, and having neither the grades, nor the money, to stay around, transfered to a smaller school, where he was no longer the player he once was, because he lacked the discipline and self-possession to be effective against players that were no longer young boys, but budding men, and out of pride, not wanting to be beat by them, “retired” from football with a “chronic injury”, after hitting his head, which was actually only the depression he already had. From there he moved back home, started using drugs more frequently, and 8 years later, came to where he was right now, periodically homeless and addicted to hard drugs.

In the next moment the superstar realized all the wrongs he did to Anthony, how his life had only crumbled, and how here was Anthony, who, though they were in the same place, was evidently not in the same place as him, and the superstar was ashamed. Again he began to hate Anthony in that moment for being at peace despite the worst thing the superstar could ever imagine happening to someone—taking a harsh punishment for something they didn’t do.

The superstar had no idea that all his life’s troubles after Anthony’s arrest stemmed from his unwillingness to repent of his wrongs, and the only thing he could do was hate Anthony because everything in his life fell apart, seemingly immediately, after the incident in high school where Anthony was arrested for his crime.

“All my life I’ve done everything I could to avoid jail. I lied when I faced getting in trouble. I pleaded with others for mercy when I faced punishment. And here’s a man that has won peace after going to jail for doing nothing that was his fault. Even worse, he looked at me with such gentleness and understanding that day when he was being walked out of the school in handcuffs. What a devilish trick that was! That look has messed with me my entire life since, as if he knew by looking at me in that way that he would punish me even worse than if he had looked at me with anger. At least if he had had anger I would’ve known that I should feel pity on him—but he only had pity on me. And what an insult—to pity me of all people. I was going to be someone great. I was going to climb to the heights of the world of football… I was already experiencing fame but I was only going to experience more, and get richer, and inspire thousands, if not millions, of young boys to follow in my same footsteps! I wasn’t going to be a miserable nobody like him… And yet he had pity on me!… Can you believe this man!? I hate him with a perfect hatred.”

The superstar turned and walked away in disgust. “You’re a fraud, Anthony,” he shouted back at him, and though no one else in the surrounding area heard any noise in response, Anthony’s voice traveled to the superstar’s heart and said only, “you’re right,” in response, with further humility. The superstar tried for many years to get that voice he’d heard out of his head and off his heart, but it never left.

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4.

Three years later, after expending every connection and every effort to have the Bishop hear his case, the elderly priest was able to convince the Bishop to do what he needed to do to get Anthony into seminary. The Bishop, knowing nothing about Anthony, but seeing how persistently the elderly priest fought for him, let the old priest’s wishes be granted, only so that it would stop the elderly priest from pestering him so incessantly. That year, at the age of 32, Anthony entered the seminary. He now had a single cot, a warm place to stay every night, but the rector struggled to know what to do about Anthony when, after only two weeks there, it became known that Anthony almost never slept in his room.

“He’s disobeyed curfew every night this week,” the lay supervisor relayed to the rector. “We have to dismiss him. He’s a felon and he’s not given up his old lifestyle.” “Lord have mercy on him,” the lay supervisor of the dorms added with spiritual sentiment he learned to attach to every deed, whether it was him unjustly plotting against a person or not, like he was in this case.

So the rector, planning to expel Anthony from the seminary, went to the Bishop, and told him what he was going to do. The Bishop responded in desperation, “no, wait. Don’t do anything.” And before he said any more, assuming Anthony was guilty, the Bishop reached out to the elderly priest to reprimand him for pleading to him to let Anthony be admitted into the seminary. Though in secret he only rebuked the old priest to make sure the elderly priest knew why he, the Bishop, was doing what he was doing before the action was carried out so he, the Bishop, wouldn’t be pestered every day for the rest of his life by the hot headed, and untiring, elderly priest.

“Now you can no longer come to me with anything, much less your self-righteous judgement. I am your superior and you ought to learn before you meet the Lord what is owed to your superiors,” the Bishop said with pride and arrogance.

The elderly priest scoffed over the phone.

“You idiots!” The elderly priest shouted back even more angry than he’d been all the years he’d pleaded for Anthony to be admitted to seminary. “Anthony goes and spends all night at the homeless encampments helping the poor. And THIS, of all people, is the one you want kicked out of seminary?!” The elderly priest was fuming with righteous anger, “I can’t wait to see your judgement scrolled across your forehead in the next life! I will be praying that you make abundant reparations, because if you don’t, you’ll be in hell!” And the elderly priest hung up the phone.

The bishop, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, called back the rector.

“No! Don’t expel the man. My orders. That’s final.”

When the rector put down the phone he was more confused than he’d ever been. Why on earth did the bishop not want the man expelled from the seminary? What happened between the time he told him of his plan and now? The bishop was so enthusiastic to kick the man out of seminary, only to hear this response… The rector imagined someone higher up must really have a vested interest in Anthony being there. But the person higher up was the Lord, and the Bishop didn’t do it because of Him, but because he feared the righteous scorn of the elderly priest—above all, because he feared that the elderly priest might have justice on his side, and that scared him to no end.

So Anthony, never knowing that they’d considered expelling him from seminary, but only encountering hostility from the rector and his fellow priests at every turn, worked even harder to be obedient in all that he did, and make greater reparations for his wrongs and for the wrongs of the whole world. When the rector sternly reminded all the seminarians that they have curfew, and that they are required, by direct order under their authority, to remain in their rooms after curfew until the early morning, Anthony followed the rule he was given perfectly, and from that day forward, went to bed in his cot, slept for a few hours, and would wake up at 2:30am every day to leave and go minister to the homeless down by the river until he had to be back for morning prayer and breakfast.

Over the next 7 years the impact of Anthony was felt in more and more places. The rector had moved on and been appointed bishop of a small diocese on the other side of the country, a new rector came in, and the new rector saw in Anthony a holiness he had never seen before, and scarcely had even conceived of being possible in actual reality. In all his classes at seminary, Anthony had a grasp of the material that led not a few of the seminary professors to seek his advice in how to address a given topic. Anthony had a more profound grasp of philosophy, and moral philosophy in particular, than anyone they’d ever been around. He wasn’t just gentle and kind—he possessed a knowledge that cut through all things at all times, and he could explain it with ease and clarity to anyone who asked. When the professors would come to Anthony, he would simply smile and thank them for how much they had taught him, and then without them noticing it he’d bring up something seemingly unrelated that helped the professor see the whole problem of the question they were wrestling with with profound clarity.

After his ordination, in addition to continuing to minister to the poor, now as a minister of the sacraments along with ministering in every other capacity, Father Anthony would spend hours every day in the confessional, hearing peoples confessions and offering insight and correction that would set souls right in a way that no one knew was even possible.

“You must go to confession with Fr. Anthony over at St. Innocent’s on 4th street.” One person would say. “It’s hard to even explain. He’ll show you every contour of your soul with a clarity you couldn’t imagine.”

It was not rare that a single person’s confession would last for well over an hour on any given day, as Fr. Anthony sat with them and helped them see every impulse and habit driving whatever sin they were most struggling with, and he would answer as many questions as they had until they knew with certainty what they needed to do. As the days went by, out of demand, he remained in his confessional longer and longer, until it preoccupied nearly every waking minute of his day that he was not saying mass, or praying his breviary, or, now only scarcely, ministering to the homeless.

“I am at a different phase in my life,” Fr. Anthony would say to himself. “It’s no longer my calling to primarily carry out the corporal works of mercy; now the Lord has called me to carry out the spiritual works of mercy.”

Another person would say to someone else: “You have to go to confession with Fr. Anthony over at St. Innocent’s on 4th Street, downtown. He showed me my whole life and I haven’t struggled with my sins since. It’s like they’ve been totally washed and uprooted from my soul. It’s unbelievable.”

Once a week, for the second half of Sunday, he’d have no confessions available because he’d still go down to the river, often in street clothes, to be with the homeless. It was there, 7 years into his ministry, at the age of 46, that his life would come to an end… It went like this:

A man, not well in his mind, was threatening a girl with a gun that was also there who the man had relations with. Fr. Anthony, being called by one of the other people in the encampment, came out.

Everyone respected Fr. Anthony and looked at him to see what he would do when he came out. The man, not well in his mind, noticed the esteem Fr. Anthony had from everyone there, and began to hate him with a perfect hatred.

“Who’s this? A cop? Your protector?” The angry man said sarcastically, mocking Fr. Anthony.

Fr. Anthony said nothing. He knew the moment he saw the man that his time had come, that there was nothing else the Lord had in store for him in this life, and that his life would end there that night, and he surrended his soul over to the Lord in that moment. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” he said, and, “Lord, do not hold this sin against him.”

The man turned the gun on Fr. Anthony and mocked him further, “what are you going to do?? You think I’m playin’ with you?” “This girl—you care about this girl? You should’ve seen what she was doing to me last night. But you want to cape up for her?” The man laughed at him with mockery. “How bout I do you in… What are you gunna do about it.”

Father only looked at him silently, with compassion.

In the next moment the man pulled the trigger. There were shrieks heard from every corner of the encampment. Screaming and wailing began—for nearly all of them knew Fr. Anthony and they couldn’t believe what just happened. The woman began crying and hitting the man. “How could you? How could you!” The man, paranoid, looking every which way, turned and ran away, and it was as if no one saw him leave because they were all focused on Father Anthony, laying there dead on the sidewalk, lifeless.

The tears continued through that night, and the next night, and every night thereafter for the next year, with vigils for Fr. Anthony spontaneously happening without fail. The first cop called to the scene, two blocks away doing patrol, was the superstar. He collapsed under the weight of his own soul when he saw Fr. Anthony. He had begun the process of reforming his life a decade prior, but it was in that moment that all his struggles with selfishness and pride faded completely away, never to return again for the remainder of his life.

Every regular in the homeless encampment was healed of their diseases, mental and physical, and across the whole city there was hardly a homeless person left—for all were cared for, and there were none homeless on account of moral disease in that city for centuries to come. They built a hospital and a church on the grounds where Father Anthony died, and they were both the most beautiful and well respected institutions the city ever knew.

After Fr. Anthony’s death, his personal room revealed volumes of notes and commentaries on different works—works he’d studied in seminary, classic works of great saints, confessional manuals from the scholastic period up to present day, the Bible, and the lives of his saints. The books he had with him in jail were all marked up with insight and wisdom that people would study for centuries after his death. His scholarship was unmatched, though few people in the broader world knew of him for his intelligence while he lived, while those professors and fellow preists he went through seminary with knew it all too well.

At the front of every book in Fr. Anthony’s personal library was a note of dedication to his great-grandfather, Anthony the first, recalling to mind the lesson he’d learned from him when he was young and a dying boy in the hospital: “when you love someone, think about their death more often, for then you will see the plan of the Lord in everything that happens in their life.”

Fr. Anthony prayed that he would receive the death the Lord had in store for him with gratitude, and the night he died, the Lord gave him what he’d asked for. The man who killed him was arrested and taken to jail, but even there, Anthony, though passed from this life, did not abandon him. After the first ten years in jail, where the man was in a perpetual frenzy, Anthony began to come to him each night, and for the next 17 years Anthony was with him every night in jail, until the man was set free on good behavior. The killer, after he was released, joined a monastery, and became a monastic brother—a friar, actually—and spent his life in contemplation of the Lord and perpetual penance.

The number of souls moved by the encounter and life of Fr. Anthony exceeds man’s ability to count and track, but the Lord knows every one. He did not influence thousands or millions, as the superstar once said in his pride that he would influence; he inspired tens and hundreds of millions for years and decades and centuries to come.

None of it was Fr. Anthony whom they saw, but the image of the Lord shining through him and working in him, and his example and witness to the Lord transformed their lives. +

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Below is a letter I wrote to families at my first Crown of Thorns Academy school. I’ve come under fire in the community for the same podcast appearance I was fired for 12 months ago… They can’t get me fired here, but they can try to dissuade families from joining us at our school. Unfortunately for them, it also gives us a chance to proclaim what we believe and what our values are! Deo Gratias!

Below you can read what I wrote—my approach to all forms of cancel culture going forward with my school as we strive to expand across the nation & beyond.

Dear families of Crown of Thorns Academy,

I’m writing a personal letter to you to strengthen you and encourage you against the latest round of attacks against Crown of Thorns circulating in the community that I’ve become aware of.

As you all know, I was fired from my last job as Principal. I believe I’ve had conversations with each of you about this at different times over the last few months. But I was fired for appearing on a podcast called “Dump Her” in November of 2023 with 4 other men where we gave advice to young men searching for wives and things to look out for when dating a woman. (For reference: There are many examples of women doing this about dating advice to women for what to look out for in men.)

The advice I offered was that men should look for women who have a capacity for suffering. Suffering maps on to the life of faith, the life of virtue, the cross of Christ, and everything in between. It’s the key to unlocking our faith in depth and in practice.

Here’s an excerpt of what I primarily said in the podcast episode, directly:

“What I would tell people to look out for—and I really think this is good advice (it’s advice I’ve given to other people)… What I think to look for is a person’s capacity for suffering. So, ‘how well do you think that person can suffer’?... I always make the joke, you know, in The Dark Knight, when Joker looks at the Asian dude who works for the big bank and he points at him, and he says, ‘I know a squealer when I see one, and that’s him.’ … That’s what you’re going for. When you’re in the presence of someone, you can say, ‘is that person capable of suffering’? No, they’re not going to be Padre Pio yet. I get that. I get that. They’re not going to be Mary Magdelene—perpetual penitent, or something. But the point is—and I would actually say this is a deeper distinction—the point is to say, ‘are they someone that hates suffering, or are they someone that kind of has the instinct to think that there’s something good that comes through it. Because those are the two poles: there are the people that hate it, they want nothing to do with it, they’re going to flee from it. And all these things that you’re talking about are going to be signs, especially if you go back to your early ones, Tim, related to them withoholding affection—you know, I call it a retaliatory boycott—so someone retaliates with a boycott. (Tim: “Oh, that’s good.”) That’s very spiritually immature. (Tim: “That’s good.”) Very spiritually immature. And it’s a root of a lot of other problems. And, um, so to me—if someone’s activating that, they—it’s not just that they’re not good at suffering yet—they hate suffering. And that’s a no-go. To me, that’s an actual no go. Whereas if someone, you’re like, alright, I feel like this person could suffer. Another way I put it is like, ‘how well could this person be Job’d. You know, if they were Job, how well could they handle it. No, they’re not going to handle it like Job. They’re not going to get every single thing—physical, spiritual, social—because that was by Divine Providence for that to take place [in that particular (and total) way at that one time]. But it’s a good image of it. How could that person be ‘Job’d’? How would they handle being Job’d?
[…]
You know, we talked earlier in this show, we talked about ‘where this starts?’ When you say, the woman, doesn’t really have an attraction toward the men they date. Tim, you guys mentioned, ‘well, this goes couple generations back with men.’ I really think the core of this, right, the deep core of this, is that when they had that crush and the person didn’t want them, and they started suffering that heartache—because when you want something and you don’t get it, you feel heartache; if you’re hungry and you don’t get the food, you feel disappointment; right, you can think of ‘Hell’ as a perpetual desire for finite goods that you can never have because you’re not in a finite place. So it’s just a perpetual agony of heartache; your hunger never wanes—when kids ask, ‘what are punishments in purgatory like’? That’s what I imagine: you now have this desire that feels this heartache and you can’t satisfy it—you can’t repress it; in no way can you satisfy it; and you know that you can never satisfy it—but it keeps going. So to me, when I look at the young woman who’s going, ‘I don’t have that sort of natural attraction to someone.’ What they need to do—what they need to do, is ask forgiveness for the sin that they committed when they were suffering and they tried to repress it. They were suffering because they lost someone. It’s not what someone else did to you—that sin, it always springs, as Christ said, it always springs from the heart outwards. What they need to do is they need to look at that time when those wounds came up in them and they fought back, and they repressed them, and there they incurred a sin. (Royce: ‘Mmm’) And they need to ask forgiveness for that. So that the Lord can re-open their heart to desire—to wanting things—to (Royce: ‘Wow’) this sort of natural and good vulnerability that comes with desiring. They need to get to that point. And it’s—it’s the same lesson for young men too. There’s some point where you took on a hardship, and where you erred is that you sinned in relation to that pain—because you didn’t want to suffer. And you need to go ask the Lord to forgive you for that. Be absolved of it—you’re probably already absolved from your previous confession—but bring that to the Lord, and now actually start that healing process, where you can now actually birth real desire.”

When I was fired, it was not because of anything I said, but it was because of things other men said on the podcast—things that were much more inflammatory in nature: “If she won’t move to where you live, dump her.” “If she’s interested in what her college major is, dump her.” “If she tells you how to dress, dump her.” Even, “if she doesn’t prepare you a plate of food when you’re at a party, dump her.”

It was these things that bothered people to hear. They universally acknowledged that what I said on the podcast was beautiful and there was nothing I said that caused anyone pain… When I refused to denounce the fellow Catholic men on the podcast, the priest fired me.

I’ve been informed that this same attack has now circulated in Waconia like it did in New Prague last fall. People are reaching out to Colin (my Crown of Thorns Academy cofounder) and Colin’s family about how hurt they are by things said on the podcast, how they can’t believe Colin is associated with me, who’s associated with them; etc., etc..

I was fired and left without an income for 12 months and that’s not enough for them. The reality is that this attack will likely come back many times, so long as Crown of Thorns exists and grows.

I’m writing you all, then, to arm you with how to understand why I did what I did, how I view it, and what our Crown of Thorns response is now, back when we started, and going forward. You can use these arguments yourself, if you’d like, or you can point them to this statement (I’ll post it to my substack).

For starters, this podcast was not something I “accidentally” or “mistakenly” did. I was honored for the chance to speak to men about what they can look for in a partner to try to form a beautiful marriage. Estimates place the number of divorces in the U.S. over the last 60 years at over 50 million. 50 Million marriages have failed in the last 3 generations. These divorces have destroyed lives and families and children. I see the state of our marriages as the most pressing issue facing us as a society. I knew what the personalities of the men joining me on the podcast were like—they are friends of mine, I deeply respect them, they are ardent in their pursuit of virtue and the Catholic faith, and I was happy to be present in the conversation with them. I still affirm all of this.

How, then, do we parse the fact that they said things that very easily trigger many people? What’s going on when they, or other people, say inflammatory things like they said?

In the last year I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on this and Colin and I long ago established how we would approach this at Crown of Thorns as it came up over time, should people try to wage this attack against us.

The keys of the attack are two fold:

1. Guilt by association.

2. Force you (one associated with these phrases) to give an account of their views on them (a trap and an implicit pressure to disavow and distance yourself from the “guilty” ones).

The fact you guys are part of Crown of Thorns Academy means you will even face this yourselves. People will say—“how can YOU defend this?” “Do YOU think this is acceptable?” The point of it all is to guilt you by another degree of association to what they deem to be the inexcusable crime of ridiculing their worldview.

The gut reaction we always have is to say things like, “I, myself, didn’t say any of it… I don’t have to agree with everything someone says… I’m horrified by what was said… Etc., etc..”

All of these responses create distance between us and our fellow Christians/Catholics that are earnestly pursuing the Christian/Catholic life—we do NOT want to do this. It is 100% dangerous for the state of our soul. Charity requires justice and justice requires proportionality in our acts, and accurate appraisal of the objective right and wrong involved in a given thing. Hating evil is not evil; it is good. Loving, or permitting, evil is not good; it is evil. When we endorse the wickednesses of our modern evil world, we are not “tolerant” or “charitable”, as foreign as that feels to us growing up so psychologically manipulated by a modern atheistic worldview—we are participating in evil ourselves.

Our Lord dined with tax collectors and prostitutes, the Pharisees tried to hit him with the same thing—guilt by association. The Lord did not back down and denounce them, but leaned into them and the good in them.

Our approach to all of this, and the same approach I held as I faced firing, and was fired, is to do the same thing.

The false idols of our modern, secular world are the following, and we all know what they are: feminism, anti-white (european-ancestry) anti-Christian hatred, and LGBT-ism. These are the “sacred cows” of our modern Atheistic western world. In the Bible, from Moses to the Prophet Elijah to the Prophet Isaiah to Saint Paul, the false idols and sacred crows of the pagans are not “peacefully respected” or shown reverence. They are mocked and ridiculed… Moses doesn’t respect the Israelites’ wishes to worship a sacred cow; he has it torn down and pleads to God not to annihilate them, RECOGNIZING that if God were to do so, it would be totally right and just and good… The prophet Elijah is even more explicit against the false gods of Ba’al…

While I often lack the courage to mock the sacred cows of our modern age publicly, many of the men I know, and those men I podcasted with, have the courage to do so, and I hope to one day demonstrate the same strength and courage they do!

The message from Crown of Thorns Academy is clear: we will not pay homage to any of these sacred cows of the secular, Anti-Catholic / Anti-Christian, anti-white-european modern world. Not to feminism that has inculturated pride, disobedience, murder (abortion) and sexual degeneracy. Not anti-white ideology that has fostered and encouraged every manner of vice in our minority communities and explicit hatred toward white Christian men. Not LGBT-ism that has given over an entire generation to lust, pornography, contraception, adultery, divorce, and sexual objectification. We deride ALL of them. We love the Lord, we love virtue, we strive after virtue, we rebuke all forms of wickedness and vice. What we do worship is the True God and Him alone. We give everything in us to keep His commandments; confess immediately when we fail to keep HIs commandments, and continue to heap praise and worship on God. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Those men on the podcast I was on who mocked the evils of feminism, whether with hyperbole or even as literally held beliefs, were doing what the prophets do, what the saints did and counsel, what Our Lord did and counsels, and what is not only understandable, but actively good.

At Crown of Thorns Academy, we will worship the Lord and Him alone. We will hate what God hates (cf. Ps. 139:21), and we will love what He loves.

We are trying to form the minds of young men. Who at these other schools can connect with boys the way we can at Crown of Thorns Academy? Who can hear them out as they show irreverence for the false idols of our modern world and direct them toward devotion to the Lord the way we can? Who can inculturate true virtue and connection with boys the way we can? You must have authenticity to connect with boys—they are the ultimate litmus test of honesty and truth. If you connect with them, but don’t love the Lord, you give them nothing. But if you can connect with them, and love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul, you will see them transform in ways you couldn’t imagine. That is already happening at Crown of Thorns Academy, and you will see the glory of God to the degree we hold true to the virtues of fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice.

Have you ever stopped to wonder how we got to this place in society where the things of Christ and the Catholic Church are so widely mocked and accepted? The enemies of the Lord did not venture to undermine the Christian faith by speaking respectfully of Christianity—they mocked it and ridiculed it. They made movies denigrating it. They made books lambasting it. They spit on Christian virtue. They derided chastity. They manipulated arguments in favor of divorce and abortion. They used political leverage to mock Christianity. They knew that the majority of people respond to the cultural norms of mockery more than they respond to intellectual arguments. They transformed a culture to hate God, hate having children, and hate one another.

Without Christ there is no love because love can never be separated from justice, nor justice separated from truth. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

If we try to lead boys by being respectful of false idols and do nothing when people attack Christianity, we implicitly tell them what we prioritize. We respect the false idols and we denigrate Christianity. When we see so many Christians that have left the faith, we don’t have to look any further than this to see why.

We chose the name CROWN OF THORNS for a reason: we knew if we were to be true to our mission we would face TONS of social and professional persecution/humiliation along the way. This is one of those trials, and we call on the Lord to help us through this.

Our Lord, Crowned with Thorns, have mercy on us! +

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THE HERESY OF CONSCIENCE

I’ve got three pop quiz questions for you on conscience:

1. If your conscience thinks something is a mortal sin that is not actually a mortal sin, does that make it a mortal sin for you to do?

2. If your conscience thinks something is a venial sin that is actually a mortal sin, does that make it a venial sin for you to do?

3. Can you explain why or why not you answered what you did for the first two questions?

We have four possible responses to these questions:

First, in our modern world, the majority of people think the answers to the first two questions are “yes” & “yes”. They think that whatever the conscience says goes, no matter what.

Second, some portion of people would be in profound error and say the answers to the first two questions are “no” & “yes”. That is, if you think something’s a mortal sin but it’s not, you’re excused for doing it—but if you think it’s a venial sin and it’s actually mortal, then the truth does not prevail, but you’re excused. For these people, it’s not whatever the conscience says goes, it’s whatever creates the least amount of guilt possible goes. People in this group likely don’t have an express conception of conscience, they’re just universalists and think everyone’s saved so effectively they fall into this camp—making nothing ever a mortal sin.

Third, and I don’t know if this group of people exists, but they would answer the first two questions “no” & “no”. These would be people that effectively don’t think conscience is a thing or that it has any effect on our moral actions one way or another. Maybe casual Jansenists (Catholic puritans) would be in this group—but even that, I’m just kidding, I don’t think there’s anyone actually in this camp.

And then fourth, some portion of people would be correct and answer the first two questions as “yes” & “no”. I would suspect that the majority of my auidence would be in this camp, but I don’t know that they’d be able to explain it well. Nor do I suspect that they’d be able to articulate it in a way that would illumine why most people erroneously answer with the majority first group, when in fact they should be responding with this fourth group. Nor do they likely know that we have direct quotes from St. Thomas unequivocally articulating this fourth position.

In this article I’m going to explain why this fourth position is right, why the first position is wrong, why I think so many people are in error on it, and why I think this is the most significant heresy of our modern time.

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CONSCIENCE

What is conscience? Let’s start here.

The technical definition for conscience is essentially: “an act of the practical reason applying the universal moral law to a particular action.” That is, conscience is when we take our personal understanding of the moral law and apply it to a given action.

Our conscience tells us that we think something in particular that we’ve done is wrong or right.

Say you (1) ate a bunch of junk food, or (2) ate animal meat, or (3) got drunk, or (4) microdosed LSD, or (5) married a guy as a guy, or (6) advocated for expanded access to abortion, or (7) used contraception to avoid having kids at a given time—in each of these scenarios, your conscience tells you that what you are doing is legitimate or illegitimate, right or wrong, and this is based on your personal understanding of morality.

Your neighborhood hipster, dink, or yuppie, would probably say something like, (1) is fine, (2) is bad, (3) depends on whether you can handle alcohol or not and keep your job and attend to your friendships, (4) is good and progressive, (5) is obviously good, (6) is heroic, and (7) is mature and responsible.

Your neighborhood Thomist or Liguorian Catholic would probably say something like, (1) is roughly fine, (2) is acceptable except on obligated days of abstinence, (3) is bad, (4) is an insane instance of modern human hubris, and bad, (5) is bad, disordered, and an offense againt the institution of marriage, (6) is inhumane and evil, and (7) is bad, disordered, and you’re voluntarily under the authority of Asmodeus, the principal demon of Lust.

In each case we have conscience at work doing what it does: judging whether things are good, permissible, or bad, and to what degree they’re bad—seriously bad or trivially bad.

CONSCIENCE BINDS BUT DOES NOT LOOSE

The key to understanding conscience with clarity is to understand this simple assertion: conscience has the power to bind but not to loose.

When we say that conscience has the power “to bind”, we mean that conscience can make something a more serious sin when in truth it is a more trivial sin. When we say that conscience does not have the power “to loose”, we mean that conscience can not make a sin more trivial that is in truth more serious.

That is, conscience does not go both ways. It can only make things more serious, it cannot make things less serious. This is the key to understanding conscience with clarity. As St. Thomas says:

It is said improperly that someone intends to sin mortally or venially, for evil is beyond intention and will. […] But someone intends to do something which he believes to be mortal sin, and from this it is said that he intends to sin mortally. Therefore, the aforesaid question seeks nothing except why someone believing what he does to be mortal sin, sins mortally. Yet it is not necessary that it be venial if he believes it to be venial, such as if he believes fornication to be a venial sin. (QL VIII:6:v:resp) (My emphasis.)

The following chart shows how the interaction between the Law of Conscience and the Law of God works:

Most of our Church today is in error because they think the Law of Conscience is “absolutely sovereign”, and imagine the interplay between the Law of Conscience and the Law of God to be instead like this:

Conscience can never be “absolutely sovereign” because it’s always bounded from above (God). Any created sovereignty is automatically limited by what it’s been given sovereignty over from God. Only God has purely absolute sovereignty.

THE SOURCE OF THE ERRORS

The main question we have to answer, then, is how people have gotten this so wrong? And if it’s so clear, why hasn’t this understanding proliferated in our Church today?

The reason I’d offer is that the same rules that mediate the “imperfection” of a moral act due to ignorance / weakness / malice, mediate conscience. And most people are entirely confused on the distinction between these. They do not have clarity of understanding around the distinction between vincible (culpable) ignorance and invincible (inculpable) ignorance. I’ve presented this chart before, and it’s in my forthcoming book on Mortal Sin, but I’ll represent it here:

These same guidelines qualify conscience—so that if one is inculpably ignorant, not of a law/precept, but of some particular fact, and conscience makes a judgement accordingly, then conscience does have the power to loose. But if a person is culpably ignorant, and conscience makes a judgement, accordingly, then conscience does not have the power to loose. Here’s St. Thomas saying precisely that in multiple places:

When a man sins in making the error itself, a false conscience is not enough to excuse him. This is the case when he makes a mistake about things which he is required to know. However, if the error is about things which he is not required to know, he is excused by his conscience, as is clear when one sins from ignorance of a fact, as when one approaches another’s wife, whom he thinks is his own. (DV:17:3ad4)

When the error itself is not a sin, the conclusion is true, as when the error is due to ignorance of some fact. But, if it is ignorance of a law, the conclusion is wrong because the ignorance itself is a sin. For before a civil judge, also, one who thus appeals to ignorance of a law which he should know is not excused. (DV:17:4ad5)

Why then do I speak of it so simply and straightforwardly? The answer is because these qualifications around culpable/inculpable ignorance apply to the nature of a voluntary act, which precedes the specifications of sins/conscience. Conscience works the way I’ve outlined above—if there is an inculpable error preceding it, it’s not the specification of the nature of conscience that is changed—rather, it is that specification of conscience does not apply there because of the proper imperfection of the act.

I suspect that the majority of our errors around these specific topics of moral philosophy (viz. mortal sin & conscience) spring from the fact that people have failed to properly parse the difference between the thing considered in itself, specifically, and the considerations of the preceding genus that is qualified by the specification.

Once we straighten that out, we see the nature of both mortal sin, and conscience, with much greater clarity and simplicity.

CONSCIENCE: THE HERESY OF OUR TIME

What do most people believe to be the heresy of our time? Answer: Modernism. “Modernism” has been described as the “synthesis of all heresies”. It’s been characterized as the de-supernaturalizing of the faith. 170 and 120 years ago two of the most notable papal documents of our modern world were devoted to addressing the problem of “modernism”, Blessed Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, and Saint Pope Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis (presented in English as “On the Doctrines of the Modernists”). In these seminal documents, these great popes were trying to address a serious problem that was encroaching upon the faithful. The problem, however, was not yet crystallized, and the Church has been broached by even more widespread error around topics of modernism since, not because we weren’t warned about them, but because the categorization was too broad.

Take, for example, the following exhortation of Pope St. Pius X to bishops in Pascendi Dominici Gregis:

“It is also the duty of the bishops to prevent writings infected with Modernism or favourable to it from being read when they have been published, and to hinder their publication when they have not.” (PDG, 50)

He encouraged dioceses to set up “Diocesan Watch Committees” to check for the errors of modernism in writings published in their dioceses. This document was written in 1907—over the next century we would see the amount of published books per year rise to its current level of ~4 million new books every year. Add on top of that the fact that modernists, according to Pope St. Pius X, “employ a very clever artifice, namely, to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement into one whole, scattered and disjointed one from another, so as to appear to be in doubt and uncertainty” (PDG, 4), we quickly see that identifying this error is incredibly difficult to do, and no doubt contributes to the fact that the heresy was not stamped out—nor were clear anathemas able to be promulgated about what to look out for.

It’s my view that the heart of all these errors was the error on conscience enumerated above. I do not think that I have a keener eye than Blessed Pius IX or Saint Pius X, but rather that with the passage of time the central error crystalized more clearly and grew more evident. As it was, in 1907, St. Pius X was referring largely to clergy and academics—in todays modern age, it is a vast majority of the lay faithful that are in error around conscience, believing they can support abortion if they want, or if they think fornication, or living together outside of marriage is fine, then their conscience frees them.

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THE DEFINITION OF “HERESY”

All of this gets to the heart of what a “heresy” even is?

If you google it, you will read that a heresy is a belief or opinion contrary to orthodox (especially Christian) doctrine.

If you read Hilaire Belloc’s The Great Heresies, you will get a more essential definition of “heresy” like the following:

“Heresy is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein.” (Belloc, p. 12)

He’ll go on to explain this as so:

“We mean by a ‘complete and self-supporting scheme’ any system of affirmation in physics or mathematics or philosophy or whatnot, the various parts of which are coherent and sustain each other.” (Belloc, p. 12) And: “Heresy means, then, the warping of a system by ‘exception’—by ‘picking out’ one part of the structure—and implies that the scheme is marred by taking away one part of it, denying one part of it, and either leaving the void unfilled or filling it with some new affirmation.” (Belloc, p. 13)

He’ll even rule out possible sources of confusion with the following:

“The denial of a scheme wholesale is not heresy, and has not the creative power of a heresy. It is of the essence of heresy that it leaves standing a great part of the structure it attacks. On this account it can appeal to believers and continues to affect their lives through deflecting them from their original characters.” (Belloc, p. 14).

The essential definition I use for heresy is the following: A heresy is an erroneous idea introduced into the Christian faith that leads to the spiritual deterioration of those who adopt it.

I specify it as relevant to the Christian faith because the Christian faith is totally and perfectly true, so all errors must ultimately be contrary to it. Additionally, if you have an error within your understanding of ultimate truth, it will cause spiritual, psychological, emotional, and relational deterioration in the one who holds it.

MODERNISM VS. ERRONEOUS CONSCIENCE

With these considerations in mind we begin to see why “modernism” fails to pass the more essential test of what a heresy is: it’s a wholesale attack—it seeks to undermine the whole thing; to leave nothing standing; to destroy Christianity altogether. As Belloc said, “the denial of a scheme wholesale is not heresy, and has not the creative power of a heresy. It is of the essence of heresy that it leaves standing a great part of the structure it attacks. On this account it can appeal to believers and continues to affect their lives through deflecting them from their original characters.” So modernism lacks specificity, whereas “conscience” does not.

Further, errors in conscience evidently lead to major spiritual, psychological, emotional and relational deterioration in those who hold to them. The vast majority of Catholics today have a dead faith, wherein they habitually engage in mortal sin and/or endorse mortal sins with their reason. None of these are inculpably ignorant situations—rather, they are ignorances and denials of precepts, not misapplication of particular facts.

Finally, armed with this understanding of “conscience”, it’s very easy to spot the errors and anathematize them. A priest preaching, or theologian teaching, that conscience is absolutely sovereign is in error. A priest preaching, or theologian teaching, that “as long as you follow your conscience you’re good” is in manifest error. A priest preaching, or theologian teaching, something to be a venial sin or no sin that the tradition of the Church has resoundingly established to be mortal sin is in manifest error, and they have no recourse to erroneous notions of “private opinion” or “matters of conscience”.

For all these reasons, I am firmly convinced that the heresy of our time, that which needs to be uprooted entirely from our Catholic faith, is not pertaining to modernism, but to conscience. +

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ST. THOMAS: MORTAL v. VENIAL SINS

*This Substack article is taken from an excerpt of my forthcoming book: Mortal Sin.

In St. Thomas’s De Malo, Question 7, on venial sins, the first article deals with the question of whether mortal sin is properly distinguished from venial sin (DM:VII:1). That is, the Angelic Doctor addresses whether the distinction between mortal and venial sin is a real, substantive, objective distinction, or whether it is a nominal distinction that is meaningless at bottom.

This article includes twenty-four objections. Most articles in the Summa Theologia (St. Thomas’s most well known work), by comparison, include ~3 objections. For this article the Angelic Doctor references 24 arguments for why the distinction between mortal and venial sins is not a true, objective distinction. As is evidenced by the article containing 24 objections, this is clearly not an easy question to resolve, and many people have erred on attempting to resolve it. The response that he gives, where he elaborates both the correct answer and the philosophical/theological justification for the correct answer, is 9 paragraphs long (Again, for reference by comparison: the Summa Theologia’s “responses” are often 1-3 paragraphs long).

Because of the immense value in understanding the distinction between mortal and venial sin, and how thoroughly and specifically it’s dealt with in this article, we’re going to treat of St. Thomas’s response in full. The following is a comprehensive presentation of the contents of this article.

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Paragraphs 1-4

In the opening of the response, St. Thomas starts by telling us where the word “venial” in “venial sin” comes from, and then explains the three ways in which a sin is said to be venial. “Venial” comes from “venia”, which means “pardon”. So venial sins are those sins that are pardonable. On the contrary, mortal sins are derived from “mortalis”, which means “death”. Mortal sins cause the death of the soul and are not pardonable in themselves; venial sins are pardonable sins. And so a sin becomes “venial”, or pardonable, in one of three ways:

1. Because the mortal sin has been confessed, and by the power of God, who alone can pardon any sin, gives pardon to the sin. This is venial from the outcome.

2. A sin is called venial because there is a defect in the voluntariness of the act, so that those acts committed with [excusable] ignorance or weakness are pardoned either wholly or in part. This is venial on the part of the cause.1

3. A sin is called venial because something in the act itself does not exclude pardon. Whereas sins that are mortal, considered in itself, deserve eternal punishment and exclude pardon. This is venial generically.

This is only the first paragraph of the Angelic Doctor’s response. From here, St. Thomas commences to show all the ways in which people have erred in trying to account for the generic categorization of venial sins before finally presenting the correct (and coherent) account of what makes a sin objectively venial or mortal—that is, generically.

The following are the erroneous explanations for the distinctions between mortal and venial sins. Note: the distinctions are actual distinctions, but they do not constitute the reason for differing mortal vs. venial sin, generically:

1. Venial sin warrants temporal punishment, but mortal sin warrants eternal punishment. This distinction is accurate, but follows from the real distinction—it does not constitute it. Put another way, those are the effects of the difference between mortal and venial sins, but not the cause of the difference. “For sin is not of such a particular kind because this punishment is deserved for it, but rather, conversely, because the sin is of a particular kind, therefore such a punishment is deserved for it.”

2. Mortal sin deprives of grace, but venial sin does not. Again, this distinction is accurate, but is an effect of the difference, not the source of the difference. “But neither is this the difference we are looking for, since this difference follows as a necessary effect of the nature of sin, for from the fact that sin is of such a kind it has such an effect, and not the other way around.”

3. Mortal sins are in the reason, but venial sins are in the sense appetite. This would be a distinction on the part of the subject, as intellectual virtues are distinguished from moral virtues because the subject of intellectual virtue is reason itself, whereas the subject of moral virtue is the will (or rational appetite). However, this is not the way in which mortal and venial sins are differentiated because venial sins can be in the reason. “Hence even according to this difference a diverse notion of the two sins cannot be maintained.”

4. Mortal and venial sins are constituted by a difference in interior act—i.e. like the one being intentionally evil, the other not. This is not the case, however, because there are exterior acts that are generically venial sins (“such as speaking an idle word or telling a jocose lie and the like”) as well as exterior acts that are generically mortal sins (“such as homicide, adultery, blasphemy, and the like”). “But the diversity which is on the part of the act of the will does not diversify the genera of exterior acts, […], but exterior acts differ generically by reason of their objects.”

When you ask a teacher or priest or theologian about the difference between mortal and venial sin today, it’s likely they explain the difference according to numbers one and two. That is, they tell you that one deserves temporal punishment (viz. venial sins), the other eternal punishment (viz. mortal sins); or that one deprives of grace (viz. mortal sins), while the other does not (viz. venial sins)—but they never tell you about the source of the actual distinction between mortal and venial sin.

Having covered the first 4 of the 9 paragraphs in St. Thomas’s response, wherein he treats of the erroneous explanations of the distinction between venial and mortal sin, what’s left is for the Angelic Doctor to explain the objective difference between mortal and venial sin, which he does by first describing the nature of sin and the difference between venial and mortal sin by analogy to biological illness in the body (paragraph 5), followed by an explanation of how mortal and venial sin directly work in paragraphs 6-9.

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Paragraph 5:

Here St. Thomas explains that sin consists in a disorder of the soul, just as, by analogy, illness consists in a certain disorder in the body. And so there or those that call sin “a sickness of the soul”. He then says that just as some illnesses are terminal and some are not, so some sins are incurable, and others are not.

Paragraph 6:

Here St. Thomas starts by further drawing out his analogy of sin to bodily illness, clarifying what makes an illness in the body terminal or non-terminal. A terminal illness is one in which the principle of life is destroyed in the subject; a curable illness is one in which the principle of life is not destroyed. He gives the example of a common cold as an illness that can be overcome, either on its own or with the aid of medicine, because the principle of life remains both intact, and sufficient to overcome the illness. Whereas a terminal illness, like that of late stage cancer, cannot be overcome by the principle of life within oneself, and so the disease is mortal (or terminal), resulting in the destruction of the principle of life.

Now the principle is determined by the end, St. Thomas tells us, referencing Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (VI, 5 (1140b16-17) and VII, 8 (1151a16-17)), and the end of the spiritual life is love of God and of neighbor, which he draws from St. Paul’s First letter to Timothy: “For the pupose of the law is charity.” (1 Tim 1:5)2 If the principle of life in the soul is charity—love of God & neighbor—then wherever charity is attacked, objectively, you will have mortal sin; just as the disease that attacks the principle of life in the body is considered a terminal disease. “Therefore, if charity is excluded, the sin is mortal: for there remains no principle of life by which this loss can be repaired[.]” But if the sin does not attack charity, then it will be a venial sin because the principle of life in the soul which is charity can repair it. “But if the loss of rectitude be such as not to exclude charity, the sin will be venial because through the charity remaining as it were by a principle of life all defects can be repaired, for ‘charity covereth all sins,’ as is said in Proverbs 10:12.”

Paragraph 7-9

What remains to be demonstrated by the Angelic Doctor, then, is how a sin objectively attacks/excludes, or does not attack/exclude charity—because this will determine whether a sin is mortal or venial. And in paragraph 7 he briefly notes that charity can be excluded/not-excluded in two ways: one by the interior act in the sinner, that is, “on the part of the sinner”; the other by the exterior act, that is, “from the very genus of the work.”

In paragraph 8, he explains the two ways a sin can exclude/not-exclude charity on the part of the interior act.

1. First, he deals with how a sin does not exclude charity on the part of the sinner if the sin arises in one of the powers that is not capable of ordaining means to ends. That is, movements of sensuality, no matter how powerful, cannot of themselves be mortal sins, for the passions are in the body and not in the rational intellect, and so they cannot order means to ends. “The movement of sensuality cannot be a mortal sin but only venial, for to order something to an end pertains to reason alone.”

2. Second, he deals with how a sin can exclude charity on the part of the sinner (i.e. interior act) where the act would otherwise not exclude charity according to the exterior act. That is, the sinner can cause an act to be mortal by their interior act even though the exterior act is not itself mortal when the interior act is perverse enough to be itself an attack against charity (i.e. God/neighbor). “For example, if someone speaks an idle word in contempt of God, which is contrary to charity, it will be a mortal sin, but not by reason of the genus of the [exterior] act but by reason of the perverse will of the doer of the act.”

In paragraph 9, St. Thomas explains how the exterior act can exclude/not-exclude charity itself and thereby be mortal or venial, regardless of the interior act of the sinner,3 which is to say “generically mortal” or “generically venial”. For generically mortal sins, that is, those sins which exclude charity, St. Thomas explains that some acts are contrary to love of God or neighbor, when, in reference to God, “they destroy the subjection and reverence of man toward God”, or in reference to man, they “destroy the fellowship of human society.” Notice that the parameters for an act being contrary to charity are not that they consciously hate God / self-identify as an enemy of God, or premeditatively kill their neighbor; it’s that they attack reverence for God or fellowship between men. They don’t have to do evil for the sake of evil, or contemn the teachings of God while fully and consciously knowing they are placing themselves against God in doing so… No. Examples of things that attack the subjection and reverence of man toward God in paragraph 9 are “Blasphemy, idolatry, and the like,”4 and examples of attacking the fellowship between men in paragraph 9 are “theft, homicide, and the like, for men would not be able to live together where those acts would be perpetrated habitually and indiscriminately.”5 He follows this up directly by saying, “And these are mortal sins by reason of their genus no matter with what intention or will they are committed.” We don’t have to do the worst thing imaginable to God or our Neighbor for the sin to be mortal sin—it just has to attack God or neighbor, and according to the principles stated above, viz. attack the subjection or reverence of man toward God, or the fellowship between men such that if they were done indiscriminately it would make good, honest, non-paranoid accord between people impossible. (See explanation of footnote 3 below for further elaboration of relation between intention (interior act) and the exterior act.)

For generically venial sins, (i.e. those sins which objectively do not exclude charity), St. Thomas explains that these are sins that do not attack God or neighbor, and he gives the following example: “if a man should lie not in a matter of faith nor to injure his neighbor but to please or even to give help, or if someone be excessive in eating or drinking and the like. Hence these sins are venial by reason of their genus.”

Mortal Sins: Sins Against God or Neighbor

Further, St. Thomas confirms this distinction (that mortal sins, and grave matter, accordingly, pertain to sins against God & Neighbor, whereas venial sins are sins against self) in the Summa Theologia, in the second part of the second part, question 59, wherein he treats of injustice; article 4, where he asks whether every sin against justice is mortal according to its genus, to which he answers affirmatively:

“A mortal sin is one that is contrary to charity, which gives life to the soul. Now every injury inflicted on another person is of itself contrary to charity, which moves us to will the good of another. And so since injustice always consists in an injury inflicted on another person, it is evident that to do an injustice is a mortal sin according to its genus.” (ST II-II:59:4resp)

Finally, we have an objective principle of distinction between mortal and venial sins: namely, that sins attacking God or our neighbor are objectively mortal, and sins attacking ourselves are objectively venial.

From the example above about lying—“if a man should lie not in a matter of faith nor to injure his neighbor but to please or even to give help” then those sins are venial—we see that the distinction is whether the lie hurts God (lying in a matter of faith) or neighbor (lying to injure your neighbor), in which case the sin is mortal—or whether it doesn’t, and then it is venial.

When teaching my students I would always use the following example: if I lie about something bad my friend did to another kid, I sin against the victim of the bad act, and since the lie hurts another person, it’s mortal (the fact I’m trying to *help my friend not get in trouble* doesn’t make the lie not the cause of injury to the victim—therefore it’s an attack against my neighbor, and mortal). Or another example would be if I lie and say that someone I don’t like did something evil to another person when they didn’t, then that lie hurts another person, and is mortal. Whereas if, after the weekend is over, I come back to school and everyone’s talking about a party they went to, and I have FOMO, an example of a venial sin would be me lying and saying I did something fun on Saturday night when in reality I stayed home and was super bored. In this case the lie doesn’t hurt my neighbor, and it’s to embellish my own life.

This distinction between what constitutes “grave matter” in mortal vs. venial sins—namely, that mortal sins are sins that attack God/Neighbor; venial sins are sins that don’t—is the most coherent distinction I’ve ever found anywhere on the topic. Further, it’s not just that it’s easy to understand that makes it profound—it maps onto the entirety of the Christian message and the commandments summarized by Christ, himself:

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Mt 22:36-40)

The whole of the commandments boil down to loving God and your neighbor.

If God gives us the Ten Commandments, and the entire purpose of them is to love God and your Neighbor, it would be absurd if sins that are categorically outside of those 10 commandments (e.g. getting drunk) could lead to your eternal damnation—but it makes sense that they would encompass all that you need to understand, generically, to be right with God.

This profound and simple distinction given to us by the Angelic Doctor is a gift to the spiritual life as well. If you begin to focus all of your most serious spiritual discernment onto thoroughly loving God and your neighbor, your soul will grow immensely; your conscience will grow strong with clarity and concision; your charity will expand.

The simplicity of this conception, combined with its application across the heart of the gospel and the spiritual life—it’s articulated source being the Angelic Doctor (St. Thomas Aquinas), the greatest Doctor of our Catholic Church—all gives me great confidence that this explanation is the most substantive, the most beautiful, the most credible explanation of what mortal sin is that we have in our Catholic Church.

I encourage any of you interested in all that I have said here to go read the text of this article in St. Thomas’s De Malo, and the rest of De Malo after that!

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3

To understand how the Overall Moral Act relates to the Interior and Exterior Acts, the following table is helpful. Overall Good Acts have to be integral—meaning they have to be good in all their parts. Evil Acts do not have to be integral, and so they can be evil in either the interior act or the exterior act, or they can be evil in both.

*Properly, the generically evil exterior act can’t have a good interior act, because the generic evil of the exterior act subsumes the interior act into itself as evil. That is, a generically evil [external] act is evil regardless of the intention of the doer, therefore the interior act itself becomes corrupted by the evil exterior act and is itself made evil.

UNDERSTANDING MORTAL SIN

Grave Matter

I’m currently finishing up writing my book on Mortal Sin, where I unpack what I believe to be the most vague and obscure topic in all of Catholic teaching today. I say today, because once I started researching the topic some four years ago, I found out that there was more clarity than what we’re presented with today. If you ask someone what makes a mortal sin a mortal sin today, you’ll get the stock answer provided by the Catechism: a mortal sin is a sin that is grave matter, committed with full knowledge and intent. That part is absolutely correct—what follows is where all the confusion sets in.

What’s grave matter?

You’re likely to hear a response something like the following: Grave matter means that the act must be serious.

“Serious” and “grave” are synonyms, though, so that actually doesn’t provide any further clarity.

Next, you’re likely to get an example: If you steal $1,000 that’s grave, but if a child steals a candy bar from the grocery store, that’s not grave.

Make sense?

…Maybe… and only if you don’t look too closely…

The example above is a distinction in quantity, and distinctions in quantity can never constitute a formal distinction. Take the following as a good way to understand this: so $1,000 is grave, but what about $775? Or $990? Or $20?… If they respond that $20 is not grave but $775 is, there has to be a point where a dollar amount goes from grave to non-grave, and does that mean that if you find that quantity, say $51, and you take one dollar less, then you’re in the clear? It’s of course absurd, and that’s precisely because a distinction in quantity can never constitute a formal distinction.

Quantity is a measure of the matter of a thing; quality is the measure of the form of a thing. In order to understand something, we have to understand the formal aspect of that thing. If we’re going to understand “grave matter”, we’re going to have to understand the formal dimension of what constitutes a grave sin.

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Full Knowledge

From here, things don’t get any clearer. Ask about the next parameter of mortal sin, What’s full knowledge/intent? And things only get more confusing…

Full knowledge is any act that is committed with knowledge of the moral implications of the act.

That’s what you’ll typically hear.

Here’s what “Magisterium AI” says about “Full knowledge”:

The person committing the sin must be fully aware that the action is sinful and gravely wrong. This implies an understanding of the sinful character of the act and its opposition to God's law.

This creates an even more paradoxical conclusion which everyone in Catholic circles seems to work tirelessly to avoid saying out loud: why would anyone ever want to learn anything about sin if that were the case??? Even worse, Why would anyone try to teach anyone else about mortal sin if that were the case???

You can’t avoid this paradox given that explanation of what constitutes “full knowledge”. It strikes one immediately as absurd. By this logic, only those knowledgeable in the faith can sin. As a priest friend put it sarcastically, “they treat it as if only theologians and faithful Catholics can sin.” In what world would anyone want to learn about sin?

To reconcile this problem, however, is not an easy task, even if the hard-fought-for answers are quite clear and simple once you know them.

Enter St. Thomas Aquinas. In one place, he mentions that an erring conscience binds to sin but does not loosen or excuse sin (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~QVIII.Q6.A5), saying that “the error of conscience does not have the power of loosing or of excusing […] when the error itself is a sin, such as when it proceeds out of ignorance of that which someone can know or is held to know, just as if he were to believe that simple fornication is a venial sin. And then, although he would believe himself to sin venially, nevertheless he would not sin venially, but mortally.”

In another, quoted by Pope St. John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor, St. Thomas says (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~DecemPrae.BookI.C5), “But a good intention is not enough; there must also be a good will, which is indicated by the term soul. For it often happens that someone acts with a good intention, but to no avail, because a good will is missing. For example, someone may steal to feed the poor; his intention is right, but he is lacking the requisite good will.”

These observations by the Angelic Doctor immediately strike the reader as more clear and accurate. There is something that qualifies an act as a mortal sin objectively, not just arbitrarily and indiscernably. A person may be ignorant of this or that aspect of a given action, but the nature of the sin does not arise solely from some imaginary subjectivity—it is evil first because it is evil, and only secondarily is the person’s culpability in the act considered.

Christ came to teach about and heal us from sin precisely because it is objectively evil and destroys the soul. Ignorance is not bliss. You don’t go to heaven simply because you didn’t “know” with “full clarity” that evil acts you’ve done were evil, or sufficiently evil—you go to heaven because you’ve been raised up and made holy by the One who is Holy Himself. Christ atones for our sins precisely because they need to be atoned for.

To learn about faith and morals is good precisely because it gives you a chance, precipitated by God’s grace, to truly correct your evil ways and be made right with Him.

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Full Intent

*Brief Note: “Full intent” means that the act of the will is done without coercion, and whereas we are taught that any form of coercion disqualifies from it being “full intent”, St. Thomas demonstrates that only specifically formulated conceptions of both knowledge and intent rightly constitute disqualifying mortal sin.

(For full treatments of both knowledge, intent, and grave matter, check out my forthcoming book when it releases.)

Ignorance, Weakness and Malice

Every sin proceeds from one of these three proximate causes: error in the intellect (ignorance), error/weakness in the passions (weakness), or error/corruption in the will (malice). St. Thomas thoroughly explains the interaction between these causes and culpability for sin in De Malo, his treatise on sin & evil. He rightly points out that not all ignorance excuses mortal sin—only properly “involuntary” ignorance (maybe you’ve heard of “invincible” ignorance) does so… He rightly points out that not all weakness excuses mortal sin; again, only properly involuntary weakness does so…

Our modern consensus teaches the interaction between Ignorance, Weakness, and Malice much differently than St. Thomas does. It teaches that effectively all forms of ignorance and weakness excuse mortal sin. It even teaches “malice” to be something entirely different from what St. Thomas teaches. Below are two diagrams, one of how St. Thomas articulates the interaction of these proximate causes with excusing mortal sin, the other how our modern world implies these proximate causes to interact with excusing sin.

Our Modern World:

St. Thomas:

You’ll see that St. Thomas only has a very narrow articulation of what excuses a sin from being a mortal sin according to knowledge / intent (those boxes colored “green”). Our modern world excuses all of the above, with some priests / theologians articulating that not all ignorance excuses mortal sin (they, for example, would say the left-most green boxes are “red” and do not excuse mortal sin).

This is a major contrast, and it radically changes one’s understanding of mortal sin, of the relationship between faith and morals, of the coherence of the Church’s teaching on morals, in particular, and many other things.

In my upcoming book I lay this all out in as best detail as I can. I go through the charts above and explain all the different parts of them. (Some of you may even be able to discern everything there is to know about these distinctions from the brief conceptions given above.) Further, I highlight a few threads that I think are particularly important for understanding how we’ve arrived at such a distorted conception of mortal sin; I do my best to explain all the important terms/concepts needed to understand sin; in the second part of the book I even offer a full demonstration of how sin can be taught from the ground up, in line with St. Thomas and the magisterium of our Catholic faith, such that those seeking to learn, whether young or old, can orient their consciences to the morals of our Christian faith.

St. Thomas provides clear answers to what constitutes the formal distinction between “grave” and “non-grave” sins. He lays out the metaphysical foundations of sin and evil. He explains the voluntary act with profound precision and clarity. He profoundly elaborates the relationship between the causes of sin (ignorance, weakness, malice) and mortal/venial sin. I go over all of this.

Please keep on the lookout for this upcoming book—right now it’s scheduled to be released in Mid-to-Late July.

Until then, keep fighting the good fight, and hold strong to the Lord in all things. God bless.+

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THE VIRTUOUS MEAN

The “Rational” Mean

A lot of people don’t understand this today but the difference between a moral virtue and a vice of excess/defect is not a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. That is, if you’re initiated into the world of virtue and vice, and are familiar with the distinctions between “moral virtues” and “intellectual virtues”, and “virtue” more generally, then you know that a virtue is always the “mean” between two poles of vices: vices of excess, and vices of defect. Because of this, and our familiarity with “mean” as it’s applied to statistics (mathematics) as the quantitative middle point between two different quantitative points, …and our living in a world of philosophical logical positivism (read the late Pope B16’s Regensburg Address to get an amazing breakdown of logical positivism and the history of philosophy in the West)…, we are inclined to think that the virtuous mean is also a quantitative middle point between two extremes.

It's not. The virtuous mean is a “rational mean”, not a mathematical mean…

What does this mean?

For example, most people think that the difference between courage (the virtue) and rashness (the relative vice of excess of courage) is that you’re “overly courageous”—meaning you attack difficult things too often. Or to use another example, they think the difference between the virtue of studiousness and the excess vice of curiosity is that you “study too much”. Or to use a third example, they think the difference between the virtue of [healthy] conscience and the vice of scrupulosity is that you scrutinize yourself too much, or too often. All of these are wrong: the vice of excess is because the given activity (attacking difficult things; applying your mind to learning; scrutinizing our actions according to the moral law) is applied to the wrong things, in principle. That is, the distinction is one of reason, not of quantity. Rashness is a vice of attacking things that are unworthy to attack—it’s being “courageous” about securing your own vanity; it’s fighting for a degraded cause; it’s fighting for the wrong reasons. Similarly, the vice of curiosity is not that you “study too much”, it’s that you study trivial things; things that don’t bear on your moral and spiritual life (the principle which ought to occupy the majority of your voluntary intellectual exertion); it’s even that, when you do study morality, you conveniently avoid the topics that are hardest and most pressing in your life. The vice of scrupulosity is not that you scrutinize too many things, or you’re too critical with yourself, it’s a defect in reason—it's that you scrutinize venial things under the aspect of wrongly believing them to be mortal (most people have no idea what the principle of distinction between mortal and venial sin is—I’m writing a book on this right now, according to what St. Thomas teaches…keep an eye out for that coming in the near future); it’s an OCD that emerges around scrutinizing yourself precisely because you are unable to differentiate the application of the moral law to your actions along proper principles; you are without principle in your method of self-scrutiny and so your self-scrutiny wreaks terror on you and becomes the vice of scrupulosity.

Here's an absolute gem of a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas perfectly describing the principle of the rational mean like what I’ve just laid out:

“But in moral virtues, what is common to all is that they are in the mean. And the very fact that some reach the maximum [note: maximum here is referring to a situation like that in which two people are courageous and virtuous, but one person is more courageous, and “maximum” refers to the person who is “most courageous”] belongs in them to the nature of the mean, insofar as they reach the maximum according to the rule of reason; just as a brave man reaches the greatest dangers according to reason, namely when he should, as he should, and for what reason he should. But superfluous and diminished are understood not according to the quantity of a thing, but by comparison with the rule of reason; as for example, it would be superfluous if he were to involve himself in dangers when he should not, or for what reason he should not; but diminished if he did not involve himself when and how he should.” (DeVirt:1:13ad5*)

So virtue is a mean. But it’s not a quantitative mean; it’s a rational mean. The key to developing virtue, then, is figuring out what the rational mean consists in among different types of actions we do & things we pursue.

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Arrogance vs. Confidence

Let us now apply this to a further case that is particularly relevant to our modern world: the difference between “arrogance” and “confidence”.

The relationship between arrogance and confidence is not one of “excessive confidence”, it’s being confident in the wrong things. It’s not that arrogance is just “more confidence” and confidence is “less arrogance”. Arrogance and confidence both have to do with how we view ourselves positively (that is, what do we base our positive view on), but they do so under two different aspects.

Arrogance is based on thinking you will succeed at a thing just because you are the one doing it, regardless of what you do. You think that it’s you yourself that will make you successful. Your positive view of what the result will be springs from your positive view of the mere presence of your own being.

Confidence is based on thinking two things: one, that it matters what you do/don’t do; and two, that you believe you can do the things that will be successful and avoid the things that would be unsuccessful.

So Arrogance is about the specialness of yourself—you don’t think it matters what you do… For example, if you love someone, you think that no matter what you do (whether you drink, or cheat on them, or lie to them, etc.) that you deserve to have their respect and that you have license to do whatever you want… Similarly, you think that when you pursue something you will be successful because you are pursuing it and you are special.

Confidence is about recognition of the difference between good and bad; it’s recognizing that if you are not focused/careful or don’t act with integrity that you will fail and that it will be your fault… For example, if you love someone, you think that it’s possible for you to ruin that love if you do not act well (be sober, honest, faithful, etc.). Confidence, then, will be believing that you have what it takes to do difficult and good things and that you can participate in a great love as a result… The confident person starts a venture not knowing that the venture will succeed, but knowing that they have a skill set that can facilitate their venture’s success and that they’re going to do everything they can to help the thing succeed.

Confidence is always healthy; arrogance is unhealthy.

Errors in Confidence

When a confident person becomes arrogant it’s because they start to apply their instinct toward “confidence” toward something they don’t have ability/mastery in. They start ascribe their success in a different- unrelated- domain to a domain that they don’t have mastery/virtue in.

There is one more division worth noting, because we often ascribe our own specialness to the work/things that we do. So in reality the arrogant person is often arrogant not merely because they believe their presence will make them great at something—they believe they’re good at whatever they do. The arrogant individual lacks a sense of competency and desists from proper self-scrutiny. They may even scrutinize themselves, but it’s in irrelevant ways.

Finding the Rational Mean

When trying to discern the rational mean in a given vice-virtue-vice combo, you’re looking for something that can be distinguished in principle. It’s possible that you even distinguish a different principle from some saint or philosopher that came before you. That doesn’t disqualify it—if it’s a relevant distinction, it becomes another aspect under which the vice-virtue-vice pair can be understood.

Things in this life are rarely one dimensional. The obscurity of our rational intellects requires that we understand things under different aspects to come to a fuller comprehension of the thing itself. When we learn about God, we see the different things God does under different aspects (say, His “omnipotence” from His “omniscience” from His “omnibenevolence”). Technically, God is one and undivided. But when His action “distends” across time, it is seen doing different things under different aspects. From eternity, however, He is doing only one “simple” act.

Now a saint philosopher’s aspect under which they distinguish a given vice-virtue-vice pair may be more profound, because it more precisely encapsulates the essence of that virtue, and thereby facilitates the growth in it more perfectly—but so long as you don’t know what St. Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine said about a given virtue; or to the degree you’re considering a mode/object of action that they didn’t write on (say, the virtue of “exercise”), then it’s up to you to formulate a rational principle that can distinguish the virtue from its vices.

One of the most important things we can do in the life of virtue is internalize this most crucial distinction. The virtue is not the mathematical mean between two vices, but the rational mean. Distinguishing the points of rational differentiation between genres of acts will help you rapidly grow in virtue, and even help you begin to understand the material of sin…… +

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* DeVirt:1:13ad5 = St. Thomas’s work “Quaestiones disputate de virtutibus” (Disputation on the Virtues), Question 1, Article 13, reply to objection 5… Article 13 deals with the question of “whether virtue consists in a mean”, and I’d recommend to everyone to read the body of that article (the “response”), it’s so good… (if you can’t read latin, use the “google translate” feature in chrome (or a similar feature in another browser) to have the text sufficiently translated into english.)

VICES x VIRTUES

Vices X Virtues (BARKER)

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*NOTE: Please post any particular questions you have about the chart in the comments. There’s a lot on it and a lot is in shorthand, so if you’re unsure what one part or another means, ask and I’ll answer.*

In one of Thomas Aquinas’ greatest works, De Malo (“On Evil”), the Angelic Doctor includes a treatise on the Capital Vices (the “seven deadly sins”). He starts the treatise talking first about the vice of pride, and after that enumerates the seven capital vices. Note: “Pride” is not actually included in the list of Seven Capital Vices, not because it’s not serious, but because Pride is virtually present in all the vices, and so stands over and above the other seven.

The seven capital vices are then the following: vainglory, greed, gluttony, lust, sloth, envy, and wrath.

About a year ago I shared a post, entitled “Mastering the Vices”, taken from a combination of Thomas Aquinas’ treatment of the capital vices in De Malo and the classic list of vices enumerated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where Pride is one of the seven deadly sins (the Catechism does not include “vainglory”). Going back over the treatise from Aquinas, I realized I wanted to adapt the chart to what he said as precisely as possible. After completing it, I realized how yet-more-profound his conception truly is.

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Today I’m sharing with you all that chart, in full detail. It includes the same differing intrinsic relationship between vices/virtues and mindset/desire that my previous post included: namely, that vices are habits that are motivated by desire and result in the adoption of a mindset—whereas virtues are habits that are framed by a mindset and result in the conformity of a virtuous desire to them over time. This explains why vices are “irrational” and virtues are “rational”…

It also has all the vices arising from a desire not to suffer under different aspects like the previous post did.

My hope is that this chart can be of assistance in people overcoming vice and harnessing virtue.

The all-caps bold, color writing in each of the “vices/virtues” boxes articulates the substance of each vice/virtue so that the vices, in particular, can be systematically related to one another (the “heavenly virtues” simply correspond to the capital vices—they are not themselves systematic; for that you would have to learn the virtues through the lens of the cardinal virtues). For example, “vainglory” says “CRAVES: REPUTATIONAL GOODS”; gluttony says “CRAVES: GOODS OF BODY (SELF)”; etc., etc.. These allow you to understand the fundamental nature of each of the vices.

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“Impeditive Goods”

One final note on “Impeditive Goods”. Impeditive goods are things that impede the pursuit of some vulgar/vain good. For example, the life of a righteous person acts as a condemnation/judgement of a conscience that desires evil/vain goods, and so impedes their perceived “peace” in pursuing those vulgar/vain goods. That righteous person becomes an impediment to the “peace” of the wicked person, and so the wicked person responds by hating the righteous person. Cf. Wisdom 2:12-20

Similarly, prayer/worship/the restrictions of the Ten Commandments, the Church, etc. impede the pursuit of vulgar/vain goods, and so are “impeditive” of vulgar/vain goods. This is why so many people hate the Catholic Church: it stands in the breach and proclaims that divorce and remarriage is immoral; contraception; abortion, etc.,… The people who want to do those things are impeded by these spiritual goods (the Ten Commandments; Christ; the Church) in their pursuit of what they want to do.

If those impeditive goods are in us (e.g. prayer, worship), standing in the way of us doing something else that is more vulgar/profane that we desire to do, then our aversion to them is a manifestation of our vice of Sloth. If those impeditive goods are in someone/something else, then if we are averse to it, we have the vice of Envy, and if we attack it, we have the vice of wrath. Envy/Wrath map on to the “fight” / “flight” response in relation to these “impeditive goods” in others.

This distinction about impeditive goods is particularly important for the following reason: it’s easy to think that anyone who attacks another is guilty of the vice of Wrath; anyone who feels disgust at another, guilty of the vice of Envy, etc. But in truth, envy and wrath can only properly exist in relation to impeditive goods. That is, they only exist when someone attacks an impeditive good (i.e. something/someone that is a spiritual good blocking some vulgar/vain good) or feels disgust at an impeditive good (in another) (someone that embodies a spiritual good that casts implicit judgement on vulgar/vain goods). On the contrary: Attacking a vulgar good is not wrath; feeling disgust at a vulgar good (even in another) is not envy—these are actually moral and good dispositions/acts. I thought that this was an important observation to highlight.

Humility vs. Charity

Lastly, let me close by noting one other choice I made: the inclusion of “humility” as the principal virtue in all the other designated Seven Heavenly Virtues… Aquinas rightly notes that “Charity” is the mother of all virtues, but here he is noting that charity is literally the form of all-and-every-single virtue. Because this list deals with virtue in a non-systematic way (whereas, for example, the “cardinal virtues” deal with virtue in a systematic way) I am not making “charity” the principal virtue of these Heavenly Virtues, but Humility—and also because humility is notably necessary in combatting the 7 Capital Vices in particular, and so worthwhile to distinguish in this treatment of vice/virtue.

Hope this chart is of help!

Good luck fighting the good fight! May God be with you. +

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I did a podcast with Will Knowland about all things education. We spoke about the launch of the Crown of Thorns Academies that I, along with my colleague and co-founder, Colin Faust, am starting up. They will be a network of All-Boys, Catholic elementary schools.

We talked about the nature of knowledge and how a school can use its institutional structures (schedule, curriculum, pedagogy) to impact the process of learning in students. We also spoke about the great potential an all-boys elementary school has in doing all of this in a way that optimizes boys’ learning. I’ll include some of the show notes down below.

We’re planning to announce our first Crown of Thorns Academy location in the coming weeks, when all details are formally finalized (lease agreements signed, etc.). It’s going to be in the Twin Cities (Minnesota). It will be the only All-Boys elementary school in the entire Midwest.

Checkout the podcast and stay tuned for more details! I’ll be sharing a lot more here in the coming weeks/months.

www.crownofthornsacademy.com

God Bless!

A.J.

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Discussing nature of knowledge and how it affects education:

Discussing how you can influence the formation of another person’s will:

Discussing Aquinas’ view of “manliness”:

Discussing Aquinas’ view of the role of fathers in families:

COUNSEL, GOSSIP & FRATERNAL CORRECTION

St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that offenses against charity are mortal sins according to their external acts—which means that they are mortal sins regardless of the “intention or will of the doer”. (De Malo (“On Evil”): Question 7: Article 1: Response)*

Further, he elaborates that charity is love of God & love of neighbor—so sins against God or our neighbor are mortal sins in themselves, and the Ten Commandments give us the categories of the offenses that exclude charity, in principle:

Voluntary acts (necessary for a sin to occur) are speech, thought, or physical action, so each of those are proscribed as offenses against God, specifically. Then for all the other commandments any abuse of your neighbor, whether in speech, thought, or physical action, that causes unjust harm, to them or one of the rightful extensions of them (i.e. spouse; property; reputation) is proscribed.

Under the 8^th Commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, we are to understand that all unjust harm to another’s reputation is an offense against this commandment, and consequently a sin against our neighbor, excluding charity, and thereby a “mortal sin”.

The most prominent of these acts against the 8th Commandment today is “gossip”—where we talk about bad things a person has done, whether true or untrue, to others, without any intention to bring it to them in fraternal correction to help them grow in virtue. Gossip is a mortal sin—and it’s everywhere.

In today’s Substack I’m going to share with you all a diagram I created for the school I was Principal of to teach my faculty and staff about the sin of gossip and the standard we were going to operate from as a school. The clarity of the diagram immediately helped us to diagnose the problem and recognize the meaningful solution.

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First: Counsel

In this diagram you’ll first see the full picture of what we’ll break down in more detail throughout the rest of this article. You’ll notice at the center is the circle with the word “Counsel” in it. I’ve taken “counsel” to be loosely defined as the sharing of info / getting advice. Counsel is working as the generic term that unites all the other possibilities that spring out from it—based on what you do with the info you discuss / advice you seek.

On the bottom half of the diagram we have “bad info”, either shared with the one who did it (i.e. Fraternal Correction), or not shared with them (i.e. Gossip). On the top half of the diagram we have “good info”, also either not shared [with the one who did it] (i.e. Edification), or shared [with the one who did it] (i.e. Compliment).

The key to this diagram is that you’ll begin to see that, in dealing with “bad info”, it’s not about whether you have any way of addressing bad things or not, it’s entirely about whether you bring it back to that person, for their correction, or not.

Second: Gossip

Within the category of Gossip we have two subcategories: “Slander” and “Detraction”. The sin of slander is when you say something bad about someone else that did not actually happen—it’s when you lie about them doing something bad that they didn’t… The sin of detraction is when you say something bad about someone else that actually did happen. In this case, you are not lying, but you are guilty of a sin against your neighbor nonetheless.

The thing I stressed to my faculty & staff was that, while it’s natural for us to try and process bad things that someone else did to us—that we can confide our struggles to someone close to us (either a spouse or a close friend or a close colleague)—we should always understand that if we don’t eventually bring that back to the person (on a reasonable timeline (think: something like ~72 hours)), then we’re only gossiping about them. When we bring it back to the person, we evidence that we care about the state of their soul, and how we want them to grow in virtue. Care for the good of others is the basis of charity, and the whole reason Christ came down to earth to make Himself known to us and open a way to salvation.

Sometimes, nonetheless, it’s difficult to bring things back to the person who did them, so a further clarification/understanding of what qualifies “Fraternal Correction” is helpful here.

Third: Fraternal Correction

Notice here that there are two different ways we can bring bad info back to the person who did it for the sake of their correction: directly or indirectly: One, to them directly; Two, to someone that has rightful authority over them, indirectly.

If a colleague, or fellow classmate, or civilian, did something evil to you, and you don’t feel that you can reasonably bring your grievance to them without enflaming further problems—which happens when dealing with vicious individuals that are prone to the vices of wrath or pride—then you can bring it to someone with rightful authority over them. For classmates, that would be a teacher or a Principal. For colleagues, that would be a manager or a boss. For civilians, that would be the civil authorities.

At that point, the responsibility to affect justice falls to the rightful authority, and any dereliction on their part is accounted to them as sin. If you have authority and don’t wish to use it, or are too intimidated to use it, that is to your shame. St. Thomas Aquinas notes that a prosecutor who fails to prosecute a criminal offense that took place within their jurisdiction owes restitution back to their community—amounting to the returning of their salary to the public and paying compensation (penalty) over and above that. While our society may turn its nose up at such a suggestion today, it’s still the case that to be right with God demands just such restitution of an offense.

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Practical Advice

Mortal sins kill charity, and with it the life of the soul (viz. because the principle of the life of the soul is charity). Gossip is one of the most pernicious sins rampant in our society today—talking about bad things another person has done away from them without desiring or bringing it back to them for their good.

A good distinction is one that helps us understand the landscape of a given problem more clearly, and also how we can correct that problem. When I pieced together this relationship between “counsel”, gossip, and fraternal correction, it greatly helped me in holding myself to account with more precision and peace.

I didn’t have to worry about never saying anything about bad things that happened to me (i.e. seeking counsel), I just knew I had to get better at restraining who I share that with (so I didn’t share it with people that would have no interest in encouraging me/others to fight for charity), and be sure to bring it back to the person I was originally upset with (or an appropriate authority over them). From there I was able to start bringing my offenses in this regard to God in the confessional—there were numerous times I caught myself speaking about something bad someone else did that I knew I would never bring back to them. My wife and I worked hard on it and after a good year-and-a-half of implementing it, it has bore much spiritual fruit in our lives. You begin to notice your sincere charity for others grow, along with your patience in bearing trials and abuses.+

May the God of all good things guide all of you into the fullness of His truth and glory, to one day dwell eternally with Him, where I hope we can all join in the chorus of unending praise: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelations 4:8)+

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*Excerpts from St. Thomas Aquinas’ De Malo, Chapter 7, Article 1, Response, where he notes that there are mortal sins according to their external acts, and that mortal sins [according to those external acts] are mortal regardless of the “intention or will” of the doer:

“External acts”:

Regardless of “intention or will”:

Hope you all are having a blessed Advent.

God bless! +

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SIFTED LIKE WHEAT: REFLECTIONS ON MY GETTING FIRED/CANCELED

Note: This is a longer read (7k+ words). It’s about my getting fired from my job as Principal at a Catholic School a month ago. Given the weight of the situation, I expounded more than I otherwise would’ve. TL:DR: I was fired and had to work hard to try to process the weight of what I experienced so that I could ultimately retain my faith, strive to keep charity intact, and persevere in my conviction for my role in education. +

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A month ago (Friday, October 25^th) I was fired from my job as Principal at St. Wenceslaus Catholic School. I had been there for four-and-a-half months. It was a very trying time for me and my family, but one that had the Lord’s hand all over it. A man’s mind plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps. (Proverbs 16:9) At the beginning of October an elderly parishioner, with no relations in the school, came to my boss—the parish priest—with, what was told to me, a “stack of papers” of things I’d written and spoken about publicly. What was passed on to me was that one podcast appearance the parishioner mentioned--that I did a year prior, before my time working there--brought them to tears and they asked how I could be Principal of the school with such views? The priest asked me about the podcast appearance, what he was going to find on it, and what I said in it. I told him that I always try to speak honestly and with respect about anything I talk about. I didn’t recall much from the podcast, and certainly not every comment I’d made on it in that moment, but I knew what my principles are: the rule of the faith, the things our great saints teach, the principles of charity (no unjust harm against God/neighbor). I consider myself quite well restrained. I don’t speak publicly that often; I don’t tweet or use social media. But I told the priest, “if you find things I said that are contrary to the faith—please tell me, because I want to be right with the Lord. That matters more than anything.” He voiced his support of me but warned me that people in the community were coming after me.

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The meeting ended positively and over the next week we touched base a few times about the podcast. We both watched it over.  I told the priest that I very clearly stand behind what I said on the podcast—I thought it was both true and well restrained. He too believed what I said to be good and beautiful and that he thought I was a moderating force on the podcast. What emerged, though, was that all the concern was about what others said on the podcast—not what I said. He told me that the podcast was causing problems with other people in the community it was being spread to. The feedback he’d received was that those who were watching it universally believed that what I said was really beautiful but that they were very troubled by the overall podcast.

1.

One of the first things I did when this started was tell my wife about it all. The nerves and the pressure were intense. I told a friend of mine that weekend, “my days might be numbered [at St. Wenceslaus].” He asked, “why?” I told him that there were people coming for me—that they want me gone for things I’ve written and podcast appearances I’ve done. He was shocked to hear this was a possibility—“no way this leads to you getting fired.” I told him, “in our society—it’s definitely a real possibility.” “What do you mean, how so?? You work in a Catholic school and you believe what the Catholic Church teaches—how can that possibly be grounds for being fired?” He responded. I told him that in our society that’s no guarantee of protection. “And plus, theology is more dynamic than that. I draw from the saints as best I can, but there are many factions within the Church that disagree with one another… I won’t be fired for saying that I believe Jesus is literally God, or that Mary was immaculately conceived—but I could easily be fired for any number of things that our modern culture is in revolt against that I profess & teach: sexual ethics; the necessity of Christ in salvation; the necessity of the Catholic Church & her sacraments; the primacy of the natural law and my conception of the natural law; real distinctions between mortal and venial sin; real distinctions between men and women; the headship of the father in a household.” These are highly combustible issues in our society—I think their major importance is why they are such combustible issues. No one cares about issues that have no- to little- bearing on our day-to-day lives and how we live. But the ones that do—those are hotly contested. With enough momentum and hatred against me in the right spots, my head could definitely roll over this.

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2.

One of the comments my wife made to me a few days after this all started was that when I first told her about this her initial reaction in her mind was, “he could lose his job… we wouldn’t be able to pay our mortgage… we could lose our house!” And then she told me that she said to herself, “it’s ok. If we have to lose our house, we lose our house. We can move into an apartment. We can do what we have to do. What matters is our family.” Hearing her process this like this and say this was one of the proudest moments of my life and my marriage. When I began writing and speaking publicly I told my wife from the beginning that it was possible I could one day be fired for these things or face real persecution. Her initial reaction was one of disgust at me doing any of it then: “well then you shouldn’t say anything!” But I told her that that’s not how Christian obligation works. We don’t get to avoid things because people may persecute us for what we believe. Now we should certainly always try to be respectful, but we have to stand up for what’s true not simply because it’s true, but most of all because it’s good. We don’t believe in the Catholic Church and what the saints teach because, sorry, it just happens to be true. No!, we believe in it because it perfectly conduces to charity. Charity—love of God & love of neighbor (for the sake of loving God)—is why we do it. What the Church teaches is charity—when you live it out you experience the profound joy, peace, patience, hope, clarity, and meaning that it brings with it. That’s why we do it.

            I’ve always spent a lot of time in my marriage preemptively talking to my wife about things of loss and death—and not in the abstract. We talk about what it would be like to lose one of our children—we name them each specifically when doing this. We talk about what it would be like to lose one another. We talk about what it would be like to be fired and lose a job—to have to move and to have to struggle to find a new place to work. Each of these things were met with intense emotion up front, but that’s why we bring it out and return to it: it’s only in the face of real loss that the most important, because eternal, principles emerge. It’s the only way to anchor your life in the wisdom that- and do the things that- most conduce to eternal life. Memento mori (“remember death”).

3.

Charity is not simply “being kind to others”; charity is not simply “calling out hurtful things.” It is those things, but only when rightly qualified by justice. What does this mean? It means that it’s not kind to affirm someone in their sins; it means that it’s not “calling out hurtful things” because someone else is subjectively hurt by something that is not contrary to God. Charity is entirely about love of God. The “love of neighbor” attached to it is tethered to the first principle: love of God. We love our neighbor for God & in God. If we love our neighbor in a way that separates them, or us, from God, there is no charity.

This is what it means that the relationship between charity and truth is held together by justice: by recognizing what others are rightly due. Above all what is due to God is a total gift of self—mind, soul, heart, and strength. St. Thomas Aquinas, in one of his most beautiful and accessible works—his treatment of the Ten Commandments & the Law of Charity (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~DecemPrae) —lays out what each of those parts mean: mind, soul, heart, and strength.

-        He says that heart represents a good intention (i.e. wanting to do good to others, especially others in need).

-        He says that soul represents a conformity of ones will with the divine will (i.e. your actions should be in line with the justice God prescribes in His commandments—You shall not murder, steal, lie against another, commit adultery, blaspheme, commit idolatry, dishonor your parents—and all their extensions that Christ lays out in his sermon on the mount.)

-        He says that mind represents the surrender of one’s whole intellect over to God (“for many do not sin by deed, but they like to think much about sins.” (DP:I:5:vi:¶4)).

-        He says that strength represents all that we do (i.e. outwardly).

-        “So to love God, the following must be given to God: intention, will, mind, and strength.” (DP:I:5:vi:¶5) ^[1]

It's not simply the case that being charitable means you say nothing that would harm another in any way, or cause others discomfort in hearing. Being charitable means you say nothing that is contrary to God, and by extension, the natural law. That is what it means to say that being charitable means you say nothing that would cause *unjust* harm to another.

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4.

As the weeks mounted the pressure mounted with it. Meetings were called with advisory councils and trustees and even the archdiocese made an appearance. My first instinct—that this could legitimately lead to me being fired—was looking more and more like a reality. When I told the priest in the first few days of this beginning that my wife and I had begun to process the potential consequences of this all the priest reassured me, “to be clear, this is not a fireable offense.” It was a very kind gesture of him to say, and I truly believe he was being sincere, I just also knew that the pressure hadn’t mounted yet like it might. I told my wife what he said but also that it could still be the case I end up being fired. Social/professional persecution pressure is very intense and very hard. Intensity in a moment is different than sustained intensity across weeks/months. What my boss thought initially could change with time as the intensity spread from one moment to a prolonged stretch of days & weeks. I knew that there are no guarantees in this life, and that that’s ok.

5.

I was talking regularly with my priest (not the priest that was my boss at the school) and other priest friends, my closest friends that are all ardently living out the faith, and I was committing myself to whatever God’s will in this situation was. I was hopeful that it wouldn’t have to mount to me being fired, but if it would, I dedicated myself to striving with everything in me to not forsake charity and not forsake my duty to God, to His Church, to His saints, or to anyone I knew that I’ve ever podcasted with, whom I judge to be earnestly trying to live out their Catholic faith in conformity with those things. There would undoubtedly be things that could be criticized—though even that doesn’t mean they’d be criticized fairly. There would undoubtedly be things that I err in doing myself, either in things I’ve said, or motives for doing this or that thing. My motives are not infallible: I say things on podcasts or write things in articles that may spring from desperation, or a desire to “make a splash” and be known—these are failings, but I strive earnestly to subject my motives to God and let Him work on them.

I recognized that another trap of the Evil One would be to draw me into extreme self-justification: claiming that I am beyond reproof and that this is an unprincipled persecution.  It may be—but no one can be a judge in their own case… “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.” (Proverbs 21:2)

I gave into this temptation to justify myself many times over the last two months—but, with the grace & assistance of the Lord, I fought to not settle myself there.

After Christ, no one that is persecuted is persecuted with perfect innocence. We are all in need of God’s mercy—“Who can say, ‘I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin’?”. (Proverbs 20:9)— and some more than others. I am certainly one in great need of His mercy for I have many failings. If I were to be sifted by the devil, there would be fault found, but I knew that I had to try to not take the bait and try to justify myself. As Saint Augustine puts it, let me not claim I have no debts to pay, but only that my debts have been forgiven by the one that no one can ask repayment from.^[2]

6.

The fear mounted in the inner circles where I worked. I was asked to give account not only to what I said, but more significantly, what others said and what my views were in relation to those I’ve done podcasts with. I was advised by people in the school community to defer to things like, “you don’t have to agree with everything someone else says”; “their views don’t have to be your views”; etc., etc.. These suggestions were not of the Lord. They were suggested from a place of fear: fear that my leadership would lead the school astray; fear that my character might be wicked in actuality; fear that under my leadership the school could be headed toward financial ruin. Those are always real possibilities, and we have to do our best to account for them, but they were causing us to no longer try to evaluate what God teaches and how we can be right with God going through this trial—it was oriented toward others anger in the community and trying to assuage them for fear of retaliation and backlash.

The advice I was given—to distance myself from others I’ve podcasted with in the past—will never be of God because it leads us to a place where we are left on an island—where no one shares what we think but ourselves; where we distance ourselves from our fellow Christians; where we become the only authority in our lives—and a tacitly infallible authority at that. This method is a self-centered one; it conduces to a radical pride; it leaves you isolated and thereby more vulnerable to attacks from the wicked one. It’s a mindset that has proliferated in our [especially conservative] world, and it’s one I will not endorse.

There are views I’ve once held that I no longer hold. The views I now hold I hold because I think they are right, even if imperfectly fleshed out or understood. Our minds know bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece—that’s what it means to have a rational intellect. Our knowledge is always imperfect in this life. Why would that not be the case for others? And what is it that really matters in the views we hold? The answer must be whether the vectors of the general directions of our views are correct or not… Which means that they are pointed earnestly and courageously at the things of God according to what the Church and her Saints/Popes teach, or not… Which is determined by whether we hold to them especially in regard to the most difficult teachings to affirm in this day and age.

7.

I want to briefly revisit a point I shared earlier: there are any number of views you will be unlikely to be attacked for holding in our Catholic world. If you believe Jesus is literally God, that Mother Mary was immaculately conceived; lived her whole life without sin; retained her virginity through her whole life, etc., etc.. If you believe that abortion is wrong, or that marriage is between a man-and-a-women, you’re in slightly more vulnerable territory, but you’re still rather securely within the bounds of acceptable view in our general Catholic world. What starts to distinguish your safety here is whether you really believe these things to be wrong or whether you simply think it’s your duty to submit to them because the Church has still not abrogated their teachings. That is, if you really think these things are wrong, you’re more exposed. If you defer to them because they’re what the Church teaches—essentially because you think they’re “true” but you publicly and outwardly hide, or reject, that they are good—then you’re less exposed. When you begin to realize this dynamic alive in our Church today, you see with greater clarity what we’re facing.

            If you believe in the natural law—if you believe that the Church’s moral teachings spring from the natural law, and are thus a question of philosophy and observation; if you believe that the Church conforms to the natural law because it is infinitely good, the direct manifestation of the eternal law in material creation, and therefor perfectly conforms to charity, then you are in much more vulnerable territory.

            More than a distinction between “tradition” and “progress”, the distinction between being a “natural law Catholic” and a “non-natural law Catholic” is much more descriptive of the fault line we see dividing our Catholic world. The non-natural law Catholics tend toward an arbitrary authoritarianism—and this can happen on both the progressive and the traditionalist side (though the middle ground is not equidistant between “tradition” and “progress”, it is undoubtedly much closer to “tradition”). They submit to what has been stated by the Church, but they argue over who has said what—they discredit the individuals who propound things they disagree with. Their stress and contention springs from a belief these things can change because the people in authority can simply change what they say. They manipulate the concept of authority to serve their agendas.

            A natural-law Catholic, however, believes, fundamentally, that God sewed his eternal law into creation. He gave us general desires that have to be perfected—neither misused nor abnegated—but because they manifest His will for creation. Things like survival, reproduction, truth, harmony, bodily expression, beauty, union—these are these general desires that must be perfected, yet manifest God’s will for creation. A natural law Catholic believes in real distinctions of authority, that are observable in nature and experience. A natural law Catholic doesn’t bracket the more controversial (by modernity’s standards) parts of the writings of St. Augustine, or St. John Chrysostom, or St. Thomas Aquinas, or St. Padre Pio, or whoever else that’s a great saint, because they are unpalatable with modern sensibilities—they want all of it and they trust in the holiness of these people in no small part because they are so detached from social fears: they are focused entirely on God & what is true in His creation.

            Many young Catholics & Catholic families—people like myself, and the families I’m friends with, are converts/reverts to the faith and are drawn to the Natural Law version of Catholicism that is so robustly bore out in the lives of the great saints. We desire tradition because it’s a much closer approximation to this real and right instinct toward sin, grace, redemption, reverence, praise, and gratitude. We want all of those things—they’re the central things we want.

            This is the world that my views represent, and this is what put the crosshairs on my head at my job.

8.

As the momentum built I brought the real possibility of my termination to my teachers. I spoke honestly and plainly with them. I told them that there was a real chance I would be fired. I told them that one podcast appearance in particular was really angering certain camps of people—a podcast appearance I made on the CMASC podcast titled “Dump Her”. It was an easy podcast to evoke a visceral reaction from non-Natural Law Catholics, and an easy one to put a target on the back of the people that contributed to it—myself included. Even so, I had many supporters—and I’m grateful for those people to this day—but my detractors possessed much vitriol for me and vehemently wanted me gone. A desire to kill what we hate will often overwhelm our desire to save what we love if we don’t know what we’re looking at. The landscape of the battlefield is not very clear to most of us. Even for me it’s only gained greater clarity precisely because I went through this trial…

            The reason I knew that a simple apology or distancing myself from the views of those who have been generous enough to invite me on their podcasts wouldn’t even work, practically speaking—not to mention it would be a grave offense against charity because it would be an injustice against them—is because when people are persecuting you for views that you hold, it’s rarely constrained to just changing your views. They want you to change what you do along with what you think. They want you to abandon your views because they want their way of life to continue on unencumbered.

“Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen in the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.” Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hope for the wages of holiness, nor discern the prize for blameless souls; for God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it. (Wisdom 2:12-24)

People that want to get you for speaking of the things of God & His natural law do so because the estrangement they feel in themselves is exposed through the estrangement they feel to those things said. “He who is estranged seeks pretexts to break out against all sound judgement.” (Proverbs 18:1)

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9.

What I did at that school when I got there infuriated certain members of the community—families that left the school and families in revolt against the more Natural-Law teachings of the saints and the Church throughout time. The first thing I did when I got to the school was implement Daily Mass, a new uniform code, make changes to the school-day scheduling to block-scheduling, and make select classes single-sex classes. They were all ordered toward reverence, self-respect, and recognition of the natural law. The school day was going to be made psychologically easier and a more natural fit by increasing things like Phy. Ed. time and giving more opportunities for outlets (arts, recess). The curriculum was being moved toward an integrated curriculum with elements of training in formal logic and interdisciplinary study. Visual timeline maps were brought into the teaching of history so that history could be made more intuitive and lighter in cognitive load. These changes (daily mass, scheduling, select single-sex classroom make up) allowed all of these things to fit together in one seamless whole—but the real key was that we were getting much more Catholic, and much more conformed to the Natural-Law, overnight. We were bringing the Lord in all that we were doing and I was very intent on improving the psychological experience of school for our kids.

Every change-leadership method I’ve ever been taught claimed that change should be slow, gradual, and effectively imperceptible. I always disagreed with this on a very deep level, though, and not arbitrarily. I come from the world of sports—and in the world of sports you change everything and you change it right away. You try to transform the culture so that you can transform the experience. You try to transform the experience so you can get momentum going in your intended direction right away. When you are trying to overcome a vice, you will never get anywhere trying to rid yourself of it bit-by-bit. You have to strive to starve yourself of the vice and learn to adapt to the new terrain. The reason is because vice is determined by inordinate desire, and continuing to satiate a vicious desire precludes it from being transformed into a virtuous desire. So long as an outlet for the vicious desire remains, you cannot quench the fire of the desire. For example: if you try to overcome a vicious drinking habit, and tell yourself you’ll let yourself drink when you “celebrate”, then your desire remains for the drinking. You must choke out the desire entirely, then virtue and peace can emerge in its place. The drinker is not looking to suppress a desire, but to transform it. What they need is a mindset change that can be paired with a tangible habit of sober living. At that point their new desire will conform with a truer and healthier model of living.

What I was doing in this school was going to be experienced as intuitive to the kids. It wouldn’t do away with difficulty, but it would focus it. The goal was not to have a kid say “I love how this school works!” on the first day, because that would be premature. The goal was to acclimate them to a more balanced form of living—a balance between tension and release; a balance between attention and relief. What it was striving to induce—and it did within the two months I was there—was a sense of natural orientation toward life and toward God. I was a teacher in the classroom in my time there because the method of learning was as important as the structural changes being implemented. The goal was being produced—seamlessly and effortlessly. Kids attention was increasing, their struggles were met sensibly, their failings were directed toward resolution in charity.

The Lord gave me enough to know that this method is real and true; that it is over the target; and that it can be really and truly replicated, right away.

10.

In a society where the foundations are relatively well aligned with God and the people are generally experiencing fulfillment in their lives, slow-and-gradual change, which really means “no” change, would be the way to do it. But in a society where people are in misery, confusion, and despair—even, and especially, in those who insist they’re not, but are utterly cut off from eternal hope—then I contend that the “slow-and-gradual” model of change is a vehicle of preserving vice and retaining rejection of God. Amidst such a landscape, abrupt and drastic change is what’s needed. This conviction has not waned in me with time, it has only strengthened—and my experience of being fired has only further proved it. The people that wanted me fired cared nothing of the principles of charity. They cared nothing of what the Church has taught throughout its ages. They never paused to ask if they were in the wrong for the vitriol they felt—they never deferred to a priest’s judgement or even paused to consider they could be in the wrong. They were viscerally offended, they wanted me gone, and they wanted to do whatever it took to get me out of there as fast as possible. As the weeks progressed, communication with me became more secretive, Just procedures of informing me what was coming fell away, ambushes started popping up everywhere. None of this was of the Lord.

What the people coming after me wanted was not an apology, but a change in direction of where the school was headed. They wanted me to cede ground to their secular worldview; they wanted me to defect from my ardent conviction for the faith; they wanted me to change my views so that I would change how things were done. They wanted to tarnish my career so that I would not be able to find another school to be Principal of, and so that the views I hold would not be able to influence and inspire others.

They may succeed in ruining my career, but the truths of God will endure. If I am getting the things of God wrong, then I will be left behind. But if I’m over the mark, then they will preponderate. I heard a priest once say, though I’ve never tracked down the quote, that Saint Augustine said, “The truth is like a lion: you don’t have to defend it, you just have to set it free.”

I feel that.

I really deeply feel that.

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11.

“Unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.” (John 12:24)

            In what would become my final week of work, the Lord brought peace to my heart. He brought peace to both my own, and my wife’s, hearts. He began to pull down the mask of those set against me. “What is done in the dark will come to the light.” (Luke 8:17) He began to rally those in support of me. He made it clear to me that this persecution was driven by hatred and fear. Hatred from those who hated what I believe; Fear from those who supported me but were scared of those who hated me. There were three camps: those who hated me; those who supported me but feared those who hated me; and those who supported me but didn’t fear those who hated me. Those who supported me and were not scared of those who hated me were not among my persecutors. But the ones that supported me yet were scared of what the ones that hated me would do, became my most aggressive persecutors.

            This is deeply insightful.

More and more I was told by this group how this was all my fault—how my inability and immaturity as a leader was the problem; how I was bringing this upon myself. It was incredibly spiritually and psychologically-emotionally intense. It was a weight of scorn unlike many people will ever be subject to. I had been through much greater scorn a decade prior when I made a splash in college football by leaving my team in the way I left. It drew the ire and scorn of many more people, and it would eventually be the beginning of the end of my football career—I never ended up playing a down of football again after that. But that didn’t change that this new scorn was immensely difficult. Add to it that it was the second time I was facing it in this major way, and it became very easy to identify me as the common denominator, and hence the problem. Of course, that could completely be the case—but the Lord will sort that out in His time, and my duty is to try to continue loving the Lord, studying my faith, discerning His action in my life and in observance of how He created nature and our natures, increasing my practice of prayer, and leaning more and more into everyone around me—enemies (i.e. those who hold hatred in their heart toward me) and all.

            What the Lord showed me in this were a few really beautiful and powerful things: first, that in my former-supporters that were now most vehemently against me, it was fear that had captured them; second, that you can effect much more positive change by embracing punishment and loss, not merely in theory, but in practice when you are staring it down, if you retain your desire for charity and really stretch yourself to understand what the implications of that are, as you go through loss; third, that this is not only what Christ endured, but why he endured it; fourth, that radical trust in divine providence is necessary for real psychological health in our modern world.

            Being a Principal at that school for 20 years wouldn’t demonstrate the value of Christian life 1/1,000^th that suffering well this trial and termination could. The Lord was honoring me by putting me through this; by giving me a chance to truly grow and lead through this all.

12.

As the Lord gave me greater clarity around all of this, I began to see how spiritually valuable it would be for me to give over the reigns of my career to him and embrace the possibility of loss—of being fired; of losing my home; of losing my reputation; of being tarnished and losing my career. Nothing in this life is not in the Lord’s hands. Even when we do evil we are not working outside of God’s providence. “The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.” (Proverbs 16:4) And:

“Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take soil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. But he does not so intend, and his mind does not so think; but it is in his mind to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few[.]” (Isaiah 10:5-7)

The Lord had and has a plan in all of this—I just don’t know what it is. He knows what I’m like; he knows what everyone in that community is like. He threw me into that place, with all my passion and conviction for Him, with all my personality dispositions and deep-seated tendencies, because He has designs over it all. Whether those designs are for me or for someone else, I do not know; but He has designs over it all. My job is to trust Him by doing especially those things I can control: be true to my obligations to pray; examine my conscience; seek His knowledge in all things; be faithful to my wife and my children; continue to love His Church.

What they meant as evil against me, God means for good. (Genesis 50:20)

13.

On Friday, October 25^th, I was fired. I was offered a chance to resign, but refused. I had accepted that if they must fire me, I will embrace it. “Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble with it.” (Proverbs 15:16) I had drafted a letter to the community saying I was potentially going to be fired, and that if I must be fired I accept it as from the Lord. I gave over veto-power to not send out the letter to my boss (the priest) and he asked that I don’t, so I didn’t. I wanted the community to know that, among other things, like I tried to teach the kids at school in the brief two months I had been with them: we don’t want to fear punishment. Punishment is from the Lord. When we embrace punishment, it becomes penance, and penance restores the dignity of the sinner… God’s grace is not divided, where good things are from the Lord but punishments are not. Punishments are there to draw us more perfectly toward God. If I must suffer the punishment of losing my job, I will do it: the Lord is the author of my life and I submit all that I am and do over to Him. He is gentle and merciful—and He knows my family’s needs. It doesn’t make it easy, but I see in this that this is what being Christian means. Christ did not merely suffer on the cross for past sins, but all the sins ever committed—past, present, and future. Christ embraced His suffering so that we might break the bonds that our fears hold over us. He broke the bonds of fear over anxiety, over pain, over humiliation, over injustice, and over death. He gave all of himself so that we might not be afraid to give all of ourselves over as well. We are called in the Christian life to be imitators of Christ. We are called to strive to be like Christ. If we see in our sufferings an affinity to Christ in his suffering, we’re not being arrogant, we’re realizing with greater depth the humility of Our Lord to make Himself like us. God made Himself like us so that we could conform ourselves to Him. It was my turn to suffer these punishments with peace and grace so that it might break the bonds of fear for job and reputation in some of those members of that community. It was my turn to suffer these real punishments so that I might allow the Lord to help me grow in the ways He desires me to grow. Getting fired was not going to be the end—it was only the beginning, and the most trying spiritual times lied ahead.

14.

It’s been a month since I was fired and it did not get easier after it was done—quite the opposite. The Lord gave me peace in the days leading up to being fired, but in the week or two after there were even stronger demons I had to wrestle with. When one demon leaves, seven more come and take their place. (cf. Matthew 12:44-45) Now my deepest faults were coming out one-after-another. Desires for vengeance, for self-justification, for glory and for personal enrichment. Major blows were leveled at my marriage: disgust, doubt, cynicism, anger. This fueled the desire for vengeance even more, for self-justification, for self-aggrandizement. My faults were stronger and more vehement after it all than they were before and during it. It had been over a decade since I wreaked vengeance in my football career—it had been easy for me to imagine that tendency was no longer in me. But the Lord is good, and He wants all of us, not part of us. He knew that I wouldn’t uproot that tendency for vengeance unless the temptation to do it was really and truly before me again. I envisioned countless scenarios of avenging myself, of inflicting pain on those who had pained- or wronged- me. But the Lord was better still to me: He showed me that these are things I must confess to in the confessional. My musings of vainglory and vengeance were themselves sins. I was taking pleasure in imagining them. I was consoling myself through them. I’d experience dread in their wake. In that dread, my anger would grow, and I’d pursue them more vehemently still.

            Mass every day.

            Confession every day.

            Never once did I have to confess falsely. The Lord was showing me not only that I need his mercy for my past wrongs—He was showing me that I need His mercy indefinitely into the future. We cannot go through life freed from the possibility of sinning. St. Thomas teaches us this in De Veritate, answering whether a person in the state of grace is able to avoid sin (DV:24:13resp)^[3]: They can in each act, because to avoid sin in a one-off scenario is called a “negation”—a negation from committing a sin; but to avoid sin indefinitely would require an “affirmation”—an ability to put oneself in a state where sin is not able to exist in him. That is, to avoid sin indefinitely by one’s own power would require them to be capable of making themselves unable to sin—and this is not possible. So it goes that no matter who you are, no matter how steady in good you are, or how given to sin you are, you utterly need God’s mercy to make it through this life and find your way to heaven.

            My failings did not diminish by embracing my firing—they came out through it. God gave me the greatest blessing He could: the opportunity to work on my truest faults and the help to begin to see it through.

15.

In the last two-or-so weeks God has turned my sights back on education. There is so much ground to cover. There is so much that needs to be done to strengthen the educational experience of our kids and our larger society. The Lord has put a conviction on my heart to keep working to perfect the educational experience—and I ask the Lord’s help to carry out the work He has assigned to me. Let me love my family with greater fervor, devotion, and honesty. Let me be a better husband to my wife and a better father to my children. May this unfortunate situation stir in whoever reads this a more ardent desire to love the Lord.

            I will continue to work—and I hope that you all will too. “Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established.” (Proverbs 16:3)

God is good! His justice is merciful! The Lord is all that matters!

May God bless you all and confirm you in charity forever. +

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If you feel moved to support me / my family in this time, and I am grateful for you reading this story whether you are or are not, please consider becoming a paid subscriber of my Substack—it’s the best, and most honest way, to really help us out and let me give you something in return for your generous support. God bless. + 🙏

[1] DP:I:5:vi:¶5 means the source can be found in the work Decem Praeceptis, Book 1, Chapter 5, Section 6, paragraph 5. Here’s the link to the general work: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~DecemPrae

[2] St. Augustine: “Let no one wrench her (Monica) away from your protection. Let no lion or dragon thrust in between by force or guile; for she will not claim that she has no debts to pay, lest she be convicted by the crafty accuser and fall into his power; she will reply only that her debts have been forgiven by him to whom no one can repay what he paid for us, though he owed us nothing.” (Confessions. Book IX:13:36.)

[3] DV:24:13resp means the source can be found in the work De Veritate, Question 24, Article 13 in the body of the “response” (¶2). Here’s the link to the general work: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~QDeVer

MALE VS. FEMALE: CULTIVATION VS. SACRIFICE & THE ROOT OF THE REAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE GENDERS

A parishioner at the Catholic School I am Principal of submitted a question asking why we have some classes separated by gender? The deeper question, and the one worth answering here, is more aptly, “what’s the difference between men and women?” And, “is the difference significant or insignificant?” Because…if there is a difference, and that difference is significant, then the separation of genders for some classes becomes a prudential and insightful conclusion. I will set out to prove that we can reasonably arrive at that conclusion!

Note: This is a question that most people have a visceral reaction to one way or another. “What are we, living in the stone age? The difference is totally insignificant!”, or, “Are you kidding? Of course there’s a significant difference!” No matter how you answer this question, you’re going to run afoul of one group or the other.

The further question then might be, “is this a question that is worthwhile to answer?”

The answer to that may well be a prudential, “no”, but since someone asked, and really wanted me to answer, I am happy to do so. Usually, the most loaded and difficult questions are the most fruitful ones to answer if you can answer them with courage and grace. I can’t decide whether I achieve that or not, but I will strive for that!

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Gender Chaos

Let me start by saying that just last week a news story made the rounds about a school quizzing their kids on gender. On the quiz the students were asked the following questions: “what determines whether you’re a boy or a girl?” The possible answers were “your brain”, or “your private parts”? A student answered, “your private parts” and was told they got the answer wrong. Next it asked, “how many genders are there?”, with the possible answers “2”, or “more than 2”. Again, a student answered “2” and got the question wrong…

For many people, stories like this are a shocking example of where the state of culture and society are at. The distinctions between men and women are not simply under attack, they’re being annihilated—something more akin to “genocide” than “battle”.

While this example pertains to questions of transgenderism and gender ideology—make no mistake about it, the root of the transgender issue is grounded firmly in the notion that there are no differences between men and women. When there are no differences between men and women, then who’s to say there aren’t multiple genders? Or no genders? This doesn’t change the reality of the situation that men and women are different, but people militate against the order of creation in spite of its truth, and persevere in their convictions even as it fosters resentment and discontentment in their lives as a result of revolting against that same truth.

A Rational Defense of Men vs. Women

So in what way are men and women most different? That’s the ultimate question we want to try to answer. We don’t want to say, “they’re different because God, and our faith, says so.” While that is true, it is not a strong or convincing argument, and it betrays a cowardice. We can point to literal differences and make our case much stronger to the general public—many of whom are either not Christian, or reject the enduring and eternal validity of the authority of Scripture or the Church.

What is a man? What is a woman? Let’s start with a clear answer to these questions and build out from there.

A man is a person in potential to fatherhood.

A woman is a person in potential to motherhood.

We could say other things about a man or woman: we could refer to their chromosomes; we could try to articulate differences in interest—but all of this sidesteps a more fundamental reality: our gender is determined by our potential to reproduction.

The Significance of Reproduction

Why is reproduction so important? The answer to this is also very straightforward. Every biological creature is dependent on reproduction for their existence, and the continuation of its species is dependent on reproduction. For a physically bodied being—which we are—reproduction is the first condition of their actual existence.

Ok, so then what does this fact of reproduction tell us about the distinction between men and women? Who cares that one is in potential to motherhood and the other is in potential to fatherhood?

This is where the heart of the answer lies.

The distinction between motherhood and fatherhood is not an abstract or meaningless distinction. It affects differences of lived experience that diverge on a multi-year time scale. To carry a child and give birth is a biological reality that spans a year’s time. To nurse a child spans even more time. To do this multiple times can stretch the timeframe to multiple years, such that the window of adult life (from post-puberty to menopause) spans decades. On a physical and biological level, this is only possibly the case for people in potential to motherhood (i.e. women). This is not the case for men: There’s no growing or carrying a child in the womb; there’s no nursing; there’s no menopause. It’s not a coincidence that the efforts of those most in revolt against this reality also claim things like abortion to be “women’s” healthcare.

A woman is a person in potential to motherhood—to undermine motherhood is to undermine women…

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Cultivation vs. Sacrifice

The more significant implication of this distinction, however, arises in the set of values the one situation incurs versus the other. Our values do not arise out of nowhere. They are not abstractly imposed on us. They spring up from our physical and natural realities. That is the basis of how we as humans can reliably discover how we should act and what we should do even if we were never exposed to the aides of divine revelation.

It’s been said that with 100 men and 1 woman, you can make a small number of children, but with 100 women and 1 man, a nation can arise on a short historical timeframe. This means that if you have a society with 100 men and 100 women and you lose 99 men, you still have a promising prospects as a people. If you lose 99 women, however, you’re in trouble. 99 men can be discarded without a problem, evolutionarily—but every woman is invaluable.

The translation of this reality into values is then the following: women are inclined toward a principal value of something like cultivation, or being cherished; men are inclined toward a principal value of something like sacrifice, or being discardable. It doesn’t mean men don’t have to cultivate things, or women don’t have to sacrifice, but they don’t as their principal values. This makes a huge difference.

All of this leads us to the place where we can begin to truly understand that there is a meaningful and significant difference between men and women. The challenges they face will be more acute in one way or another. The strengths they develop will be more acute in one way or another. While gender—the social experience of men and women—is distinct from sex—the chromosomal make up of a person determining their reproductive organs—it is not separable, precisely because the reproductive potential determines a contrary principal value in the individual.

Demonic Inversion

It's also worth noting that the answers our society provides to transgender individuals are to make them reproductively-sterile, and many who revolt against the distinction between men and women also often lose their drive to reproduce or embrace a childless lifestyle.

A childless lifestyle is not a valid proposition for any bodily being because it fundamentally contradicts bodily existence. If our whole society adopted such an attitude, our species would die out in one generation and would no longer exist. Our existence is tethered to our reproduction.

That is the way it is—no amount of revolt against that truth changes it; nor does such an attitude foster peace and acceptance of who and what we are.

As leader of this school, I see helping our children to accept and embrace who they truly are as one of the most important services we can provide to them. It’s the only route by which happiness is actually possible. +

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Reading Great Books

For schools, a central question they must decide upon is what books they’re going to have their children read. There are really two camps in trying to sort through this problem: in one camp, teachers just want their students to read, regardless of what they read—the student’s interest in reading is the focus; in the other camp, they want to make sure that what they read possesses real substance—here the books chosen are the focus. It’s likely the case that most schools try to strike a balance between the two camps.

Eventually, educators must try and answer the question: “what makes a book great?” Or, “what makes a book a ‘classic’?” Is it just that the book is really old? In one sense, yes. If a book was written long ago, and we still know about it, there are likely deep reasons why that books is still known and read. But when we peel back the layers of this question, we begin to uncover the truth that what makes a book a classic is not when it was written—it is the themes that it wrestles with. A book becomes ‘timeless’ because it deals with themes that are relevant in every time, every place, and every circumstance. A book becomes relevant in all those ways when it is a book that wrestles with central, universal themes of the human heart. A book becomes relevant in all those ways when it is a book that probes deeply into the common human condition.

We live in an era where the notion of “common human condition” is disputed by many. We live in an era where the “universal themes of the human heart” are doubted or outright rejected. Do we have a common human condition? Are there universal desires of the human heart? To answer this question briefly, we can simply note that the similarities between people vastly outweigh the differences. When a mother and a father give birth to a child, it’s not a question what will come out. It’s not like there’s a possibility it’s a bear or a tiger. A human is born. A human does certain things—even where there is much variability in the specifics of how it does this or that thing.

Our Catholic Church tells us that humans were made for the purpose of knowing and loving God. Even if we bracket out the part about [God], this begins to tell us everything we need to know to understand what humans are: we are creatures that seek to know and love things. And it also begins to tell us everything we need to know about the heart’s desire: it longs to love, and it longs to love without measure, for the only proper object of the heart is God—who is Himself infinite and inexhaustible.

“The heart is restless until it rests in You, O Lord.” -St. Augustine

A great book, then, will bring us into an encounter with the reality of that desire. It will lay out a circumstance in which characters are tested and proven for the love they possess. A book that doesn’t do this will never become a classic—though it may have an audience for a time. As we enter this school year, my questions to all of you are, “What books are you reading these days?” And, “Does it deepen your understanding of love?”

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DAILY MASS IN CATHOLIC EDUCATION

This past summer I’ve begun my first position as a Principal in a Catholic school. It’s been a whirlwind—some families are happy with the changes I have instituted; others are upset and, most of those, left the school. As my readers here would know, I chose to center the faith in all that we do.

One of the first changes I instituted was the inclusion of Daily Mass in our schedule. I want to share with you all today an excerpt of the letter I wrote to families announcing & explaining this new change.

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Daily Mass used to be a regular fixture of Catholic Schools. The logic was quite clear: if you’re in a Catholic school, and the Catholic Church has the sacraments, and the sacraments are the most profound aspect of our faith, why would we not bring our children before them as often as we could?

I don’t know the specific reason this or that school moved away from daily mass, but we could imagine the reasons quite easily—a hesitancy about the goodness and value of our faith increased, and shame/fear/cowardice/indifference/dislike moved schools to remove mass from their daily schedule.

Regardless, the Mass’s beauty endures, and so we are emphatically reinserting it in the school I am now Principal of!

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I hope you enjoy reading what I wrote to my families!

Here’s the letter:

St. Wenceslaus Catholic School

Daily Mass Announcement

Dear Parents & Families,

I’m excited to share the announcement with you that this year we will have the privilege of incorporating Daily Mass into our school day schedule. As most people are unfamiliar with Daily Mass, I wanted to take this brief opportunity to explain why we’re doing this and why I’m so excited for this change.

1.

Daily Mass is something that is done in some portion of Catholic Schools across the country & world, but not in most Catholic schools. In the Twin Cities, we will be one of only three Catholic schools that does Daily Mass. I think the reality that most schools do not do daily mass is both a missed opportunity and a major loss on the part of our Catholic schools. We miss the opportunity to participate in the greatest sacrament of our Church, and our children & schools lose out on the grace and love offered to each and every one of us in Holy Mass—a grace and love that we all know our communities need more of, not less.

In the Mass we come before Our Lord, we offer Him praise and thanksgiving, we bear witness to His presence, and we memorialize the passion and death of Christ on the Cross. Mass is not for us—it is for God. But further, it’s not because God needs it—it’s because it’s good for us to be in right relation to God. When we are out of touch with God, nothing can be right beneath that. When we are in right relation to God, we are able to love all things in God, and therefore love all things perfectly.

There’s nothing that can compare with the sacrifice of Mass in showing love, reverence, and thanksgiving to Our Lord. There’s nothing that can compare with the sacrifice of Mass in disposing us to God, and by extension, all things. “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” (Revelations 4:11) The Mass was instituted by Christ at the last supper, and it continues on to this day in our Churches throughout the world. The ability to attend mass daily is a blessing that nothing else can replace. “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelations 19: 9)

Daily Mass is also different than your standard Sunday Mass. Sunday Masses are typically between 45 minutes and an hour long. Daily Mass is more like 20-25 minutes long. Sunday Mass can be difficult for children to focus through—sometimes even us, adults!—as their attention spans are not as developed as our adult attention spans. The answer to this difficulty, however, is not to remove them from exposure to Mass on Sundays—far from it! Rather, the answer is to expose them to mass in the streamlined form of Daily Mass so that they can build their attention span and appetite for longer masses. Our Daily Masses will be 20-25 minutes long. At least once a month, then, we will have “Feast Day” masses that will be the fuller 45-55 minutes, where the students will participate in the music and service of the mass like they did last year every Wednesday.

As many of you are aware, I was a former collegiate athlete, playing wide receiver for the Minnesota Gophers, and the answer to not being strong or fast enough to play at a higher level is not to stop playing, but to work your way up to greater levels of performance and excellence one step at a time. So too, the same principle applies to sharpening our minds and souls for the Mass of Our Lord: when we are not yet ready for the full length of Sunday Masses, we must prepare ourselves by experiencing Mass in regular intervals at an abbreviated pace. In time, the transition to the longer mass will be effortless and easy—and we will be better prepared to receive the rest and repose-of-soul that Our Lord offers. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am humble and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30)

2.

One of the things that I’ve made a primary focus of my Principalship for this year is trying to address the phenomenon of “cognitive overload” that our children face. Cognitive overload is where, when taking in large amounts of disparate, or unconnected, information, the mind struggles not only to retain some excess of information, but also to retain much of anything that it is being exposed to. A school day that is not thoughtfully and intentionally set up to counter this phenomenon will always fall victim to it. To address this, in our Middle School (grades 5-8), we’ve instituted structural changes to the daily schedule. We’ve condensed the curriculum and worked hard to make every day a better fit for the natural ebbs-and-flows of our children’s attention and energy expenditure. We’ve increased the amount of physical education they will have, we’ve provided extra time for Math classes, and we’ve added communal times throughout the day where the whole school is together as a school.

In most schools the only “communal time” that students have is during Lunch/Recess. When I taught at St. Thomas Academy—a military Catholic high school in St. Paul—prior to coming here, there would be something called “Formation” for half-an-hour every morning at 10:00am. At this “formation” the students would get into military formation, go through their daily protocols, make school announcements, and give the students time as an entire student body together. People that would visit the school—consultants, other principals, current & prospective families, etc.—would consistently remark how struck they were by what they witnessed. It was clear how meaningful and valuable this time was for the school to form its community and for the students to cultivate a sense of connectedness with one another. Experiencing this, a number of my colleagues couldn’t help but realize with clarity and conviction how much greater this would be if a school were coming together daily for 20-30 minutes to do daily mass, instead of any alternative. Not only would such a school have this same benefit of communal bonding, they would be doing something infinitely greater in communing around worship and thanksgiving of Our Lord. The grace that Our Lord gifts us is infinitely greater than any natural gifts we can give one another.

For us at St. Wenceslaus, by incorporating Daily Mass into our daily schedule, we have an opportunity to step away from the classroom in the morning, unwind for a brief period of time, be present with our entire school, and give thanks to the Lord for all that He has given us in this life. “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) Students will have class to start the day; we will then all go to Mass, followed by Breakfast; then they will go back to class for another window of time; then they will have Lunch; and finally they will have afternoon class. You can begin to see already how this day is entirely structured around what cultivates the attention, energy, and learning of each and every student.

I’m happy to share this good news with all of you!, and I look forward to the effect this great privilege will have on our students, our school, our faculty+staff, and our entire community. May God bless us and keep us, always. St. Wenceslaus—pray for us! +

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GIDEON’S ARMY & THE M.O. OF THE LORD

The Lord said to Gideon, “The People with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’” (Judges 7:2)

In the Book of Judges, a series of individuals are raised up to defend Israel against their enemies in the interim period after they’d settled the holy land but before they’d raised up Kings to lead them. These individuals are called ‘Judges’, and Gideon is one of those Judges. In the story of Gideon, the Lord tells Gideon to assemble an army of men to fight against their enemy at that time, the Midianites. Gideon brings together some 32,000 men when we read what is quoted above: “The people with you are too many.”

This is one of my favorite stories in all of scripture because it’s so counterintuitive, and thus so telling of the modus operandi of God.

• God tells Gideon to assemble an Army.

• Gideon assembles an Army.

• The Army has 32,000 men in it.

• God tells Gideon the Army is too big.

• Why? Because if they win the war with 32,000 men fighting for them, they will think they won by their own human power.

• The Lord tells Gideon to shrink the Army.

• The Army is shrunk all the way down to 300 men.

• The Lord then sends them into battle with the Midianites, and utterly destroys them, proving that only the Lord could work such a miraculous defeat.

The Lord takes what is weakest amongst us and makes it strong; He takes what is lowest amongst us and raises it up. When God desires to show His power most magnificently, He takes what is worst in us and transforms it. That’s His m.o.. He humbles the proud; He tempers the wrathful; He chastens the lustful. When you’ve known someone that was any of those things to an extreme and at a later date you see them and they have come to faith and they are that no more, then you know more perfectly that the Lord is the one who worked that transformation in them.

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Christian/Jewish Supremacy

There’s an interesting discussion going on in conservative circles, in Christian circles (both protestant and Catholic circles), and in Jewish circles around the question of God’s election. There seems to be a growing chorus of figures—I’m thinking here most recently of comments I’ve heard Jordan Peterson, Bishop Barron, Andrew Klavan at the Daily Wire, and different writers on the Catholic Thing, say about the Jews and the reason for their election by God—they all endorse supremacist reasons for God’s election of Israel. Nothing could be more contrary to the truth of both the Old and the New Testaments. Nowhere are people chosen based on their merits, and that’s not a one-off observation located solely in the New Testament or something. That’s there from the absolute beginning…

• Abraham is chosen out of nowhere and is told that nations will come from him, that Kings will come from him, and that the whole world will be blessed through his seed, when he is old in age and past the point of being able to have children.

• When the Lord chooses Moses to deliver the Israelites, the first, second, constant, and last things they do is rebel against God—first with the Golden Calf, then repeatedly in the wilderness for 40 years before Joshua brings them into the promised land.

• The books of Judges and Kings are a constant chorus of Israel’s rejection and obstinacy against God.

• So too the Israelites in that same time with all the prophets.

• The Apostles defect from Our Lord before returning.

• Paul persecutes Christians before being converted by the Lord.

The M.O. seems to be the exact inversion of any supremacist notion—if anything, God’s desire seems to be to take those who will be most rebellious, most unfaithful, most irredeemable, and redeem them, humble them, and draw them into faith… If there’s a trait that characterizes the Israelite people above all others, it would have to be obstinacy (a demeritorious trait)—from Abraham with Hagar, to Jacob against Esau & Isaac, to the Sons of Jacob toward Joseph, to Aaron & Miriam against Moses, to the Israelites against Moses, to the Israelites against the Judges, to the Israelites against the Kings, to the Israelites against the Prophets…

Grace & Merit

As Christians, we have a tendency to think that we are the ones who are responsible for the life of faith we live (presuming we happen to be living it)—but nothing could be further from the truth. It is grace that draws us to the Lord, it is grace that inspires faith in us—“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing it is the gift of God.” (Ephesians 2:8)—, it is grace that sustains us in the Lord—“‘In him we live and move and have our being.’” (Acts 17:28). What we work, we work because of the Lord. If we are to boast, let us boast in the Lord! (c.f. 1 Cor 1:31; 2 Cor 10:17) And if we know someone outside of the faith, let us pray that the Lord might draw them to Himself in due time…

“The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to every one, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth.” (2 Timothy 2:24-25)

Notice it is the Lord who may grant it—not them of their own power.

Radical Humility

There is no place for anything other than humility in relation to the Lord, the good things He has given us, and the life of faith we aspire to live. God’s M.O. is not chosing those who have done the most for themselves, but rather, seemingly, the opposite. “For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.” (Romans 11:32)

There is no place for any notions of supremacy in the Christian worldview—not of those elect amongst us as Christians, and equally not of those elect in the Old Covenant. If any of us forget that, we will be cutoff from the divine assistance of God in that same moment… “Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cutoff.” (Romans 11:22)

In the story of Gideon, the Lord won the war with the Midianites with a measly 300 people, but right once Gideon passed away, the people ignored the good things of God and turned back to themselves.

So when God works great things in you, and you overcome your old faults, beware not to be too hasty to take too much credit, lest you fall right back into disbelief and become subject again to the holy & just judgement of Our Lord. +

And as soon as Gideon died, the sons of Israel turned again and played the harlot after the Ba’als, and made Ba’al-be’rith their god. And the sons of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the hand of all their enemies on every side.” (Judges 8:33-34)

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THE DIVISION OF SACRED SCRIPTURE ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

In one of St. Thomas Aquinas’ most impactful works, Hic est Liber (“This is the Book”), he lays out a division of the entire text of Sacred Scripture. What this means is that he explains how the entire Bible internally relates to itself, from Old Testament to New. He weaves a thread through the entire corpus of scripture and offers us a way to see the work as an integrated whole. What he says is that the entire purpose of the Holy Bible is to teach us about the Life of Grace, the Life of Justice, and the Life of Glory (which is promised to us in the next life if we live out the life of grace & justice). He says that Scripture teaches us that by commanding, and by helping. The Old Testament pertains to commanding; the New Testament pertains to helping.

Link

You’ll notice, further, that in the Old Testament God commands us in two ways: As a King, and as a Father. And then He yet further commands as a King in two ways: by establishing the law (the 5 Books of Moses), and by encouraging us to observe the law (the Books of the Prophets). As a Father, He commands by warning us of the dangers in front- and behind us (the “Sacred Writers”: the wisdom literature and the hagiographers).

The Old Testament is principally concerned with teaching us about the Life of Justice; the New Testament is principally concerned with teaching us about the Life of Grace. What is grace? Where does it come from? What is its nature? What are its effects? What is its relationship to history? All of this is systematically laid out in the books of the New Testament—each mapping onto a different dimension of the above questions.

If you really want to begin to understand scripture more clearly and more profoundly, there is no greater work in the history of Christianity for making the entirety of scripture accessible and comprehensible. The greatest doctor of the Church gives us the greatest key to unlock the code of scripture—and how blessed we are to have such a gift.

I’ve transcoded the entire work into an outline format for my students, and I’m making it accessible for you here today should any of you be interested to see it. I’ve exported it as a .jpeg so that it can be viewed in this Substack post—or you can download the PDF of this same outline at the bottom of this article. By clicking here, or on the link at the top of the page, you can view the entirety of the work in its original form—available through the Aquinas Institute in Latin | English side-by-side.

May God bless you and keep you always. +

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The Division Of Sacred Scripture Thomas Aquinas

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A LABOR OF LOVE

I’d like to share with you today the approach I take to digesting and making sense of the information we receive from the leadership of the Catholic Church these days. What should we do when these documents come out, or when some news headline comes out, or when this or that statement is made by the Pope? I, just like every other Catholic in the world, am faced with the task of trying to make sense of our Catholic faith so that I might live in accord with it. My approach to these things has solidified over time to the point that I can discern a pretty clear method of how I engage these things. That method is what I’m sharing with you today.

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Faith

What is the point of faith? That’s our central animating question. The point of faith, put simply, is to reconcile ourselves to God and reality as He/it really is. This is what everything in the life of faith is ordered toward. Closeness to God is what we seek. Such close closeness, in fact, that we hope to one day be utterly dissolved entirely into Him—that nothing of us might remain but Christ Jesus in us.

“For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.” (1 Cor 3:11)

The Rule of Faith

Christ and his saints are the rule of my faith. They’re what I turn to; what I try to model my life after; who I try to learn from; who I am encouraged by. I turn to Christ always. Even when I turn to the saints it’s Christ that I’m seeking through them.

I then take as the basis of my understanding of the faith those propositions, delivered by saints, that are clear and comprehensible to me. What have they taught about the spiritual life? About the Church? About God?... I look to the saints takes on all these things as first priority because they are the ones that most sublimely reveal the truth of God and the Holy Spirit in their lives. They have given themselves over most thoroughly and completely to God, and their lives testify to that reality, bearing in them a mark of beauty that softens the heart and encourages the soul. When I see that example—when I hear the stories of these great Saints, animated chiefly by the manifestation of their profound humility toward self, others, and God—I am renewed in my mind and consoled in my heart. What these saints then teach about God, the things of God, Scripture, the world, the forces of evil, and the Church, I trust with an unwavering trust. I’ve gained so much learning about all these things from them.

Devotions

There is no shortage of great saints that I turn to—but I’m happy to share those saints with you that have particularly moved me. Any time I’ve heard a story of a saint that has deeply affected me, often to the point of reverential tears—a piercing of my heart—I add that saint to the litany of saints that I seek intercessions from every day in my prayers. That litany of saints is the following for me up to this point in my life:

St. Paul                                                                      pray for us
St. Augustine                                                             pray for us
St. Monica                                                                  pray for us
St. Elisabeth LeSeur (servant of God)                pray for us
St. Maria Goretti                                                         pray for us
St. Jacques Fesch (servant of God)                    pray for us
St. John Bosco                                                            pray for us
St. Thomas Aquinas                                                  pray for us
St. Benedict XVI (not canonically beatified)    pray for us
St. Elisa (not canonically beatified)                    pray for us
St. Gerard Majella                                                      pray for us
King David                                                                 pray for us
St. John Chrysostom                                               pray for us
St. Joseph                                                                    pray for us
Mother Mary                                                               pray for us

I hope that litany continues to grow throughout my life; that they may be my first witnesses accompanying me into eternity. I’ve learned more or less from these different saints—but something about each of them deeply moved me and for that reason I cultivate a devotion to them.

Doctors of the Church

There are some 36 Doctors of the Church, but when it comes to studying and learning the faith, I tend to turn to a few of the Saints (Doctors), in particular, that I have devotions to: Namely, above all others, St. Thomas Aquinas;...after that, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and Pope Benedict XVI. The authority amongst them lies in St. Thomas Aquinas, such that I defer to what he teaches above any of the others. And even this I do not defer to arbitrarily, or because of some title—it is because his ability to explain things with profound insight and clarity has always, on every occasion I can recount, trumped anything I’ve learned from anyone else. I know that if St. Thomas Aquinas teaches something different than what I thought was the case, or at odds with something another Saint has said, he will so robustly explain it as to remove my doubts as to whether what he’s saying is legitimate or not. And that has literally been the case in every single instance I can remember.

Amongst the works of Thomas Aquinas, I don’t give pride of place to one individual work, but to whatever I learn on a topic from him that offers the most clarity. For example, Thomas speaks of mortal sin and its distinction from venial sin in each of the following works: De Malo, the Summa Theologia, and in a number of Quodlibets—but his teaching on the distinction between mortal and venial sin is far and away most clear and comprehensive in his treatment of the topic in De Malo. For that reason I defer to that explanation above all the others—it’s the one I can most squarely comprehend and correspondingly apply in my life.

This example illumines how I establish my broader rule of faith based on coherence and an effort to defer to the great saints.

The Church

When it comes to the Church and what it teaches, I always try to submit in humility to that which it teaches. However, it’s not the case that every papal document, or Church council document, is evidently clear to me. I’m also not under the impression that it either should be, or that it is. Ambiguity is not an accidental occurrence in God’s divine plan for the faith: it forces charity to be central in all that we do. (cf. Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on Romans 11:9-10)

That being said, I give pride of place to those things I can understand (even if difficult to understand) and/or that are stated with greatest clarity. (A good list of anathemas is typically very clear.)

I’ve been satisfied reading a couple treatments of Papal Infallibility & Magisterial Authority from the likes of Fr. Ripperger and Ed Feser—they both are guys that bring receipts and make clear arguments. I don’t care to wrestle over the topics beyond that. What they’ve said satisfies my intellectual appetite for those topics.

Examination of Conscience

In anything that I make my way through, if I run into something that contradicts something else I’ve learned and incorporated into my life of faith with great fruit—“great fruit” measured by greater and more fervent reception of the sacraments of the eucharist/confession; self-denial; kindness, generosity, patience, forbearance, gentleness, & meekness towards others; zeal for the faith/evangelization; etc.—I first try to challenge myself on it, often for a few days. Is there something in here that can open me up to love of others and love of God in a more profound way? Is there a prideful tendency in me blocking my reception of this (perceived) teaching?... If after a few days, it hasn’t born fruit, I don’t dismiss it as much as I just return to learning my faith from the Saints, and continuing on in devotion to the Mass, personal prayer, examination of conscience & confession, etc.

Modern Documents

Most modern documents don’t end up making that large of an impact on me because I simply can’t make my way through them. I start reading them—be it an encyclical from Pope Francis or Pope John Paul II, Declarations from the CDF, Vatican II documents, etc.—but I often don’t even finish them because they’re too verbose and intellectually undisciplined for my liking. I have no problem with length—I devour the works of St. Thomas… I simply have a problem with vagaries, excessive euphemisms, and misdirection in writing and speech. I simply don’t remain drawn to them long enough to even fully take them in—and I’m filled with a clear sense that I don’t care to study them beyond that. The primary thing I’d gain in studying them beyond that would be an ability to argue with people over them, which seems neither interesting, worthwhile, nor fruitful, to me in my life of faith or my relations toward others. When someone doesn’t try to say what they’re going to say succinctly, and with clarity, they’re not trying to have their thoughts taken seriously—they’re playing at some other social-psychological game that I have neither the authority, the wherewithal, nor the time to dissect and identify. The Lord will do that—I’m fine with that.

The majority of modern documents that I have made my way through have been on account of their beauty, or inspiration, I found in reading/contemplating them. If some of those are long, that’s fine with me, because they inspire me. But if they don’t do that, I evidently don’t possess what I would consider a good motivation to get through them (that is, learning them for my correction or edification;…proving others wrong is expressly not a good motivation by my estimation). I’ll give you two examples of modern documents that I’ve found very beautiful and inspiring:

Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Spe Salvi
Pope Francis’ recent homily On Compunction

The rest of the stuff I read just hasn’t registered for me, no matter how hard I try, or even if I do slog my way through a whole reading of this or that one.

A Labor of Love

So there’s the method I use: Cultivate my faith always—pray, study scripture, learn from the Saints, honor my devotions, defer to the Doctors (& comprehensibility), respect the Church, examine my conscience, incorporate the good; pray, study scripture, cultivate the faith, repeat.

“Test everything; hold fast what is good.” (1 Thess 5:21)

I try to return back to what I do know and what I’m curious to know. I try to seek answers for those dissonances resting in my mind around this or that topic. The intellectual life is a labor of love—but you don’t grow to love it until you cultivate the practice of doing it. Often, I have a specific question I’m looking to have answered, and it takes me months of diving into this-or-that thing (usually by Thomas), only to eventually carve out, not an answer, but a clearer image of the answer’s landscape and what its substance might entail. When one of those dissonances are finally resolved—sometimes months later, by stumbling across the answer in reading something unrelated—it’s one of the great joys I experience in this life.

To be honest, I couldn’t make my way through the latest document, Dignitas Infinita, because it was too rambling. I read the first about ~10 paragraphs (which is more than I was motivated to do) and it felt like a chore. I don’t know what they mean by “infinite”… I know that Thomas talks about the loss of dignity due to sin (which disqualifies the notion of “infinite” dignity)—but maybe he means something subtle and therefore different…? I know the document introduced distinctions to dignity that seemed superfluous to me—i.e. ontological vs existential dignity..? I know that it seemed to drop a lot of references to Saints/previous Popes/councils to bolster its claims—something that felt suspicious and inauthentic when reading it. If you’re referencing old things at such great length, only to say something new, that strikes me as manipulative. If you’re referencing old things at great length, only to say something not new, then there’s no need to say anything at all. Why not just share what they’ve said and leave it at that? On top of that, the references to Vatican II documents carry little-to-no weight with me because the Vatican II documents are themselves so convoluted and verbose as to be effectively meaningless to quote.

I can’t tell you what games these people are playing—but I can tell you that I’m convinced there are games that they’re playing. Everything is pre-assertive qualifications and hedged bets. Nothing is ever falsifiable with them (I think blank, and if it goes like blank, then I’ll be proven wrong and you can throw out this speculation). It all strikes me as soft—and ultimately softness springs from a lack of humility. People don’t want to be exposed, and so they slither out of the possibility of being wrong. “A Scoffer does not like to be reproved; He will not go to the wise.” (Proverbs 15:12)

With that, my encouragement to you is to keep studying the faith from the saints, increase your practice of prayer and worship, examine your conscience, receive the sacraments of Eucharist & Confession, and seek answers to those questions that are gnawing at you.

May the God of all good things bless you and keep you always. +

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FOOD FOR THE SOUL

A family friend’s school age daughter interviewed me recently for a class assignment on the Eucharistic Revival. “Why do you think people struggle to understand the Eucharist today?” was one of her central questions…

Sitting in Mass last week on Holy Thursday, during the homily, the Priest spoke about how if we had the consciousness to realize that Christ was present in the Eucharist our whole life would be forever transformed in that moment…

It’s clear that people today struggle to understand the reality and significance of the Eucharist. As my family friend’s daughter asked, “why is that?” I don’t think it’s the answer this priest offered. I don’t think it’s that we’re failing to educate our children about what the Church teaches the Eucharist is. I don’t even think it’s that we’ve lost much of the reverence in our Mass that we once had—though it is a tragedy that we’ve lost that.1

I believe that our loss of understanding of sin, in principle, and of our sins, in particular, is what drives our loss of understanding of what the Eucharist is and does for us. But here’s the catch: we can’t just learn about sin in the abstract and then grow in our understanding of the Eucharist—as if a strong instructional curriculum & teaching method around the mechanics of sin will solve the problem. That helps!, certainly!—but it is not even the chief part of the answer.

The chief part of the answer is that people have stopped striving after greatness. People have given up. People have stopped trying to demand the impossible out of themselves. People have turned their gaze away from glory. They’ve substituted true glory for worldly glories; they’ve substituted a consciousness of failure for a comfort of self-assurance. People have shrunk from what was difficult and consigned themselves to mediocrity.

If you want to truly understand sin, all you have to do is strive after truly great things, without wavering, and your sin will slowly but clearly present itself to your eyes. If you want to truly understand sin, try to be great, and the more you try at that, the more you will experience all the ways you are holding yourself back and getting in your way. Strive after spiritual greatness and your sin will expose itself to you.

What the Eucharist is and does—what the Church teaches the Eucharist is and does (i.e. it is Jesus and it nourishes our spiritual life)—will become both evident and insatiably desirable to us.

If we grow in our desire for the Eucharist, we’ll see our consciousness of the Eucharist expand. If we grow in our desire for the Eucharist, we’ll organically bring greater reverence to the mass—and help others to restore the reverence of the mass. If we grow in our desire for the Eucharist, then the reception of the Eucharist with right faith will have the power to transform us.

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Knowledge vs. Experience

I do not play hockey. I’m not good at hockey. I know this about myself. I’m not in the dark about this… However, since I don’t ever play hockey, I don’t really have much experience as to why I’m bad at hockey. I’m not really aware of what stands in my way to being better. Generally speaking, I know I have to get better at everything, but the actual reality of getting better at hockey, by getting better at particular aspects of the game, is totally foreign to my mind.

The same goes for the spiritual life.

Any person that has overcome an addiction can attest to the fact that they didn’t know how truly deep the addiction had a grip on them and their life until they tried to quit their bad habit. It’s only when they attempt to stop that they realize how attached they are to thing… You won’t know how addicted you are to coffee until you try to stop—and then you won’t know the depths of it until you try to stop for 3 months, and then 6 months, and then indefinitely. Most people won’t even attempt to stop! They’ll just claim up front that that’s not a problem and ignore trying altogether.

The same goes for the spiritual life.

Many young boys don’t know how addicted they are to video games because they never try to give them up—or if they stop, they stop for a weekend, go, “well that wasn’t so bad, I guess I’m fine”, or “oh man, yeah I do have a problem”, and then stop trying to perfect their habit thereafter.

Many adolescent boys don’t know how addicted they are to pornography and masturbation because they’ve never tried to stop.

Many college age men and women don’t know how addicted they are to drinking/drugs because they never try to stop.

Unless we have an experience of our weaknesses, and we apply ourselves with persistence to overcoming them, we will not know the depth and reality of our sin & weakness, nor will we be able to intuit why we would need the help of Christ at all.

Learning about sin can begin to help, but eventually we have to strive after hard and meaningful things if we are going to apply that knowledge at all.

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The Spiritual Life

The spiritual life consists in denying ourselves and loving God & neighbor.

“‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’” (Mt. 16:24)

“And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”(Mt. 22:37-40)

Most of us never try to deny ourselves. The three appetites pertain to sex, food, and drugs. The majority of people in our society have never gained virtue in any of the three appetites. It’s no wonder then that they’re completely oblivious to either their weakness, or their need for divine assistance (i.e. grace).

Most people never take seriously the command of charity—to love God & your neighbor for the sake of loving God. As Thomas Aquinas explains in De Malo, the command of charity informs our understanding of mortal vs. venial sin (DM:VII:1resp). Mortal sins are any sins that cause unjust harm to God or your Neighbor. They’re mortal because they kill charity (the life of grace) in the soul. It’s only if we really try working at this that we realize how bad we are at it and how much help we need from our Lord.

In trying to stop all forms of gossip in my life (detraction, reviling, slander, rumormongering), it wasn’t until confessing to it for over a year straight in the confessional—sometimes a mere day after having previously confessed it—that it began to really dawn on me both A) how hard the demand of charity truly is, and B) how much I need God’s assistance to come to Christian perfection.

If we don’t have experience of our weaknesses and our faults—if we don’t persist in going after good and difficult things—it won’t matter what we know about Christ, or the Eucharist, or even sin: it will carry no weight with us.

Try to Become A Saint

Don’t listen to our modern society insist that if you want to become a saint you have to give up on trying to be a saint. This is a false notion of humility that suffers from a philosophical incompetency in our general population… What people are trying to say is that desiring external recognition for your life of faith/virtue will disqualify you from actually living the life of faith/virtue. That is true. External recognition is a secondary effect; you must do a thing for its own sake for it to be good and virtuous; therefore, trying to be good for the external recognition of being good disqualifies doing good in the first place. (Cf. Mt. 6:1-18: concerning almsgiving; concerning prayer; concerning fasting.)

But as to the essence of what it means to be a saint, it is nothing other than loving God. And as to the essence of being a greater (vs. lesser) saint, it consists in nothing other than losing more of yourself, and thereby giving over more of yourself to God, for total love of God.

You must strive to truly become a saint to grow in the life of faith. Strive to love God, and love Him the greater by losing more of yourself that you might dissolve more fully into Him. You should both know that you’re striving for it, and what it means to strive for it—and then strive for it! If you don’t, you won’t ever understand any of the aspects of the life of faith in any meaningful way.

Food for the Soul

The Eucharist is nourishment for the soul. It is substantial nourishment, not merely symbolic. Jesus is literally present in the Eucharist, and sanctifying grace is nourished by our reception of it.

When the Church proclaims that Christ is literally and substantially present in the Eucharist, it does so in order that we might know the divine aid our Lord is giving us every time we receive it. If you’re not striving for the life of faith, its effects won’t take in you—there will be nothing for it to help. If someone gives me advice on how to be a great hockey player, but I’m not ever playing hockey, it’s not going to help… If you are striving for the life of faith, however, the Eucharist will help prepare you to take on the challenges you face in front of you.

Like an athlete, if you have a big game coming up soon, you nourish your body with food beforehand. In the spiritual life, the spiritual warfare that faces you at every turn is like having to perform at the level of a Superbowl, or World Cup finals match, every day. If you don’t nourish yourself beforehand, you have no chance. So it is with our propensity to sin—without the grace of God, and our striving after sinlessness, and nourishment of that grace, we’re not going to make it.

The Master Teacher

If you want to be great at anything, you appreciate the advice of the greater more than the lesser. Who, wanting to play in the NFL, wouldn’t appreciate the advice, the instruction, and the help of a Hall of Famer? Who, wanting to be a world class soccer player, wouldn’t appreciate the advice, the instruction, and the help of someone like Lionel Messi? So if you want to be great in the spiritual life, look to Christ, and draw whatever guidance and wisdom from the Saints that you can—those who Our Lord has raised up for our edification.

If you strive after the hardest, most demanding thing of all—progress in the spiritual life—you will quickly realize how deficient you are, how much you need the Lord’s help as often as you can get it, and how marvelous it is when God brings us through a weakness and transforms our weaknesses into strengths. Your weaknesses are not meant to be final—the Lord wants to perfect you. And your perfection will be to His greater glory. “For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.” (Rom 11:32)

The Lord’s assistance is always on offer, but you won’t have any of it if you’re too scared, too soft, or too disinterested in pursuing the life of faith to seek it out. “Ask, and you shall receive. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened to you.” (Mt. 7:7) It’s not just learning about sin that will make the difference—it’s the one-two combo of striving after the life of faith, paired with learning about sin and grace, that will make the difference. But the first key is striving after the life of faith with all that you have.

That’s what I think is so drastically missing in our society today and what needs to be recovered.

May God bless you and keep you along your journey toward Him in this life. +

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THE SYMPHONY OF OUR LORD: ON DIVINE SIMPLICITY

One of the more profound concepts a person can learn about in their life of faith is the doctrine of divine simplicity. It’s shrouded in mystery and confusion for most, but when grasped with clarity, it really opens up doors to knowing and loving God in a much deeper way. I go so far as to teach the 6^th grade students I have about Divine Simplicity at the end of the school year, and venturing to do that has helped me to gain many insights about how this can be understood with clarity and comprehension. I’d like to share those insights and observations with you here today.

Intro to Divine Simplicity

Divine simplicity is a very abstract concept. It brings with it many implications—and those implications are why there’s a value in us learning about it—but, being so abstract, it’s very difficult to wrap one’s mind around. Its premise is that God is simple. This means two things, primarily: 1) He doesn’t have any parts; and 2) His entire existence consists of one, simple, act. Above all else, the implication of the doctrine of divine simplicity that is most relevant for us is going to be that it accounts for precisely why God is unchanging—why He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This is a huge deal when it comes to understanding- and believing in- God. If God changes, then we have no stable ground to anchor ourselves to. If His morals change, or His plans change, then we’re out here floating through an abyss, mired in chaos. If God changes—how could we even be saved? We might be saved one moment, but not the next…

Add to that that it’s an unchangeable article of our Catholic faith and we have more than sufficient reason to try and really understand this often-enigmatic concept well.

For all these reasons, the doctrine of divine simplicity is profoundly important.

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God’s One, Simple, Act

The central principle to understand in God’s simplicity is how His existence consists of one, simple, act. It’s clear that God does many things—and He does different things at one time from another. How, then, can it be said that God is one, simple, act?? How can we reconcile these two seeming contradictions?

(Pure) Intellect vs. Rational Intellect

We humans have what’s called a rational intellect. Intellects understand immaterial things (or essences of material things, which are themselves immaterial). To have a rational intellect, then, simply means that your intellect is mediated by your senses; that you gain immaterial knowledge through a process of perceiving and interpreting material (sense) data, and extrapolating essences from material things.

Humans all have this type of intellect.

Angels (and God) do not. They have what are called pure intellects. They do not move from imperfect knowledge to perfect knowledge, they merely possess perfect knowledge of the things their intellects know.

For angels, what they “know” is determined by, and given to them by, God. They have “infused” concepts of all the things they know.

For God, He knows all things perfectly as the progenitor of all things, both real and possible. His intellect has knowledge of every essence that will ever exist, or could ever exist. In that way we refer to him as “omniscient” (knowing all things).

Difference Between Knowledge of Rational & Pure Intellects

With my sixth graders, we do a whole unit on the Human Mind, and constantly refer back to the contrast between Angels and Humans as a means of helping us understand what it means to know a thing, how we know it, and why that’s relevant for us.

In this article, you’re getting a crash course on all the above.

The main takeaway for us, however, is that the rational intellect operates in a radically different way than a pure intellect does. We understand things piece by piece. We inch toward a fuller understanding of a thing slowly, imperfectly, and often never arriving anywhere near a perfect understanding of a thing. In fact, technically speaking, we never even arrive at understanding any material essences perfectly—we are only able to gain what is called an “accidental” understanding of an essence. That is, we understand an essence by approximation—by seeing the accidents of a thing and thereby distinguishing one thing from another. This is not the case for a pure intellect. For a pure intellect—there is no division in the knowledge; there is no acquisition of knowledge; there is no pursuit of truth bit-by-bit, from imperfect to more perfect understanding. For a pure intellect, everything related to the essence of a thing is seen simultaneously and perfectly as a whole.

Mastery of Rational Knowledge

We approach the way in which a pure intellect operates when we gain mastery over a subject. Properly speaking, we are said to possess mastery of a topic when we understand all of the topics elements, exhaustively, and how those elements relate to one another and interact with one another. Once we know that, we are considered a master of that subject, and we approach seeing that thing as a whole.

Thomas Aquinas uses a great analogy for understanding how the act of a pure intellect is one and simple while still consisting of differentiated parts. He says that the act of a pure intellect is like that of a master builder of homes. When someone has acquired extensive skill and knowledge in building a home, they know everything that goes into constructing a good home: preparing its foundation and building its infrastructure; applying walling and roofing; in the case of homes built in the 21^st century, accounting for its plumbing, electricity, gas, and heating/cooling; adorning the house with structural detailing. The person that has that knowledge and skill is then able to understand all the different parts of building a home under the single primary act of desiring/choosing to build a home. For them, they set their mind on building a home in a new spot, and everything they do from there proceeds as a consequence of that single choice.

The same thing goes when we decide we want to go somewhere for a vacation. We set our mind’s on a specific location, and then we fill in whatever we need to fill in to get ourselves there and allow us to experience that intended vacation. Whether we choose this or that airline, or stay at this or that hotel/resort, is indifferent to the foundational act of going on a vacation to our already-determined-location.

Kobe!

A third and final example I always use when teaching/talking about divine simplicity is one drawn from a comment I once learned Kobe Bryant was reputed for having made. A reporter was asking him how many different moves he thought he had and Kobe responded by saying, “I have two moves.” After a pause he elaborated: “I go right, or I go left.” The reporter was caught off guard hearing this, but Kobe knew what he was saying. Kobe was obviously aware that he does any number of almost infinite moves—spinning one way, then back; crossing over; between-the-legs, behind-the-back; jab-fake-jab-jab-go; etc. etc.. But Kobe saw all that he did with clarity and simplicity. Ultimately, the defender in front of him had to be beaten to the right or to the left. Everything else he did was in service of getting to one of those two spots—and in that way, he not only didn’t lie to the reporter, but he also offered profound insight into his level of mastery that he had over the sport he played.

All of this serves to furnish us with robust examples for how the operation of divine simplicity actually works in God.

Certainly, God does many things—certainly, He does different things distended across time, each of these different things beginning and ending at different times. But not only is it not false to say that it all boils down to one, simple, act; it’s actually, and technically, precisely the reality that in God—being a pure intellect—there is only one act occurring, utterly undifferentiated in Him, with all its parts perfectly included in that one single act.

The One Simple Act of God

The one act of God is His desiring of His own goodness. That is the only act that God does—He does it perfectly; and He does it eternally. He never defects from that act; He never does anything but that act; He never stops doing that act. Everything else He does is perfectly contained within that one simple act. Like the house builder building a house, where every part of the house’s construction is contained under the principle of the act of building a house, so everything that is ever done by God is perfectly contained under the principle of the act of desiring His own goodness. All things will come to that one, final, ultimate end.

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Act & Sub-Acts

When describing the relationship of God’s one simple act of desiring Himself to all His other acts, I like to use the terminology of “Act” and “sub-act”. Every action He does of creation, all the different ways He acts in time, are sub-acts of the one single act of desiring His own goodness. In the same way, every differentiated act that goes into building a house is a sub-act of the act of desiring to build a house; every move that Kobe Bryant used to beat his defender was a sub-act of his simple acts of either going right or left. This helps my students see how God’s divine simplicity is reconciled with the multiplicity of things done. For a rational intellect like we have, our actions are done discursively, one-after-another, separated from each other, and often without clarity of the end. In many cases the acts we are doing are helping us to reveal the purpose of what we are doing to ourselves. “The purpose in a man’s mind is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.” (Prov. 20:5) For God—for the pure intellect—this is not the case.

First Tier vs. Second Tier Sub-Acts

The next layer of understanding I lay out for my students, then, is the distinction between what I call “first-tier” and “second-tier” sub-acts. That is, there are more primary sub-acts that God is evidently concerned with than less primary sub-acts. There are things that more directly conduce to the desiring of His goodness, and things that indirectly serve the end of desiring His goodness. Some have tried to enumerate this distinction with the terms “perfect will” (first-tier sub-acts) and “permissive will” (second-tier sub-acts), but I think that first-tier / second-tier distinction more profoundly symbolizes the divine ordination of all things. What we’re really concerned with here is answering the question: why does God allow evil to happen? And more specifically, why does God allow man to fall in the first place? Why did God allow some of the angels to fall and become demons? If God orders all things to the end of His one simple act of desiring His goodness, and no merits of ours can precede His providential direction of all things to that end, as Paul says in Romans—lest his grace no longer be grace (Rom. 11:6), then we ultimately yearn to know why evil is permitted at all?

The Saints have always emphasized the unshakeable principle that every single evil that ever occurs is ordained to the good of at least one of God’s saints. Now sometimes an evil is ordained to the good of more than one of God’s saints, but at bare minimum, every evil conduces to the good of at least one of God’s saints.

It doesn’t necessarily conduce to the good of the one who is the victim of an evil; nor certainly to the one who does the evil—but every evil conduces to the good of at least one of God’s saints.

My students always recoil for a second upon considering this… “Wait, so that means an entire war could be permitted by God for the sake of one person’s conversion to God?” They’re in disbelief, but I assure them, “Yes, absolutely.” And I continue, “you’re only confused by this because you’re not yet accounting for how infinitely great the raising to glory even one person is… If God allowed all the evil that ever occurred to conduce to only one person’s true repentance and conversion to God, the glory that would come of it would be infinitely greater than all the evil ever committed combined, because no number of finite things (evil) can ever add up to the infinity of an infinite thing (glory). To do evil is possible; to be raised to glory is utterly impossible.”

God’s Three First-Tier Acts

From here we can still get more specific, however. The good that God is communicating in His simple act of desiring himself amounts to three particular things: 1) creation; 2) His incarnation; and 3) the transformation of all creation at the end of time.

God, desiring His own goodness, could’ve done no sub-acts whatsoever—but He did. This means the sub-acts he does are going to more perfectly serve the desiring of His goodness—and for this, we are benefitted by seeing how some of these sub-acts more directly do that.

Creation

Creation infinitely manifests His goodness precisely because it wasn’t necessary. It was an entirely free gift of love that God created at all. For Him to create anything, then, is going to be one of His first-tier sub-acts.

Incarnation

Amidst that choice to create, God went a step further, and decided to insert Himself directly into that creation, as the absolute perfection of anything created. This is what took place in His incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth. God entered into creation, took on human form, fashioned in the likeness of man (Phil. 2:7-8), and perfectly revealed Himself to His creation. This is going to be the second of his first-tier sub-acts.

Consummation

The third and final first-tier sub-act is then the work that God has promised to do at the end of all time, when he transforms all matter from perishable to imperishable. (1 Cor. 15:53-54) This will be an inconceivably perfect action, and He has guaranteed to us that it will occur.

The Symphony of Our Lord

It’s only from the view of the incomparable goodness of those three first-tiered acts that we can even begin to understand every other act. Our Church at Easter says “O happy fault” to Adam’s sin and fall, because it meant that we would get to behold the glory of the Son of God. O truly necessary sin of Adam | destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! | O happy fault | that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer! (ref: Exultet) …We can consider it a great fortune that Adam fell precisely because it became the occasion for God’s incarnation.

So too we can see how the fall of the demons, by which the just are strengthened, and the glory won by the saints is the greater, is profound as well.

What comes of all the second-tier sub-acts is the beholding of an artist making the most profound artistic decisions in the history of all existence. The three main plot points are there—Creation, incarnation, consummation—and the Master Artist tells the most gripping, the most eloquent, the most riveting, the most profound, the most subtle, the most inspiring, the most beautiful story that could ever be told. Like a great composer adding the perfect flare at the right time are all the works of God in the symphony of His creation. We no longer have to wonder why God not only allowed it, but directed all of everything to its ultimate end of communicating His goodness. He did not cause anyone to sin, but He brought the greatest and most perfect goods out of all the sin that ever was or could be—and His good was the cause of every move and every flourish…

I was told that it was too ambitious to teach such a concept to boys as young as sixth grade—but I’ve witnessed myself how they get it, how it clicks, and how they begin to intuit the faith (and especially those counterintuitive insights of the great saints) with greater ease after learning it. What they don’t know is how striving to teach them such a concept proved that I had much more to learn, and only upon persisting to try and do so, humbled me to see the truth more clearly. In teaching them I ended up teaching myself. +

“Unless you change and become like a child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 18:3)

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THE VIRTUE OF HOPE

“Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13:13)

In Christian circles, we talk a lot about the virtues of faith and love (i.e. charity)—protestants talk about faith; Catholics talk about love—but rarely do we spend much time talking about hope. It’s one of the three theological virtues, but it is often neglected or overlooked. Do we think that if we don’t know much about it we won’t be subject to it? Do we think that we will reap the rewards of the virtue without developing it? Do we think there is nothing that can meaningfully be said about hope in the first place? In any case, we’d be wrong. But let us inquire to the depths of this virtue and how a deeper understanding of it can benefit us in our Christian life.

Hope

Hope is always before us in this life. The soul is made up of intellect and will, but we have three theological virtues—all of which pertain to the soul. If, then, we have two dimensions of the soul, and three theological virtues, are they redundant?

The answer is no. The virtue of faith pertains to the intellect. It perfects the knowledge of man in regards to things unseen, as they are according to God. Where the intellect has one act—knowledge or understanding, however you wish to refer to it—the will has two acts: one of approach to a thing desired, and the other of conformity to the thing itself. (ST I-II:62:3ad3) The approach to a thing desired is the subject of hope; the conformity to the thing itself is the subject of love (i.e. charity).

Hope is painful. Hope is hard. Hope lives in the interim before a thing desired is gained. Not knowing whether you will attain that thing desired or not is painful. Not caving into despair or presumption is hard. Hope is indecisive… We tell ourselves that if we just give up on the hope it will be easier. If we give up on it though, that’s despair. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up” is the rallying cry of despair. If we just convince ourselves we’ll get the thing we want, we give in to presumption. “You’re good to go; you deserve this; I can feel it, it’s going to happen”—all of the above are the rallying cries of presumption.

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Hope is Hard

If you’ve ever had someone you’ve had a crush on, or wanted to be with, romantically, you know exactly how painful hope is. You desire to have that person; you desire to begin conforming yourself, and your life, to partnership with them. Very few people are able to endure that period of trial without giving in to vice. If they’re young, they usually drink and go out; they seek the attention of other people to distract them from the difficulty of hoping for a thing that’s not theirs yet. If they’re older they distract themselves with work and other cares of life, or also dating other people, all in an attempt to ignore the pain of the interim unknown that is the context for hope.

Hope is Painful

You’ve interviewed for a job that you really want; you’re waiting to hear back from the company on whether they want to hire you or not / whether they want to grant you another round of interviews. What do you most want in that time? You want to know what their decision is. If they want you, you want to know; if they don’t want you, you want to know—you don’t want to be left in limbo for a second longer than you need to be. As in dating, so in work—you maybe start searching for other jobs: you don’t want the other jobs; you want the one you’re waiting to hear back from—but if they reject you, you want to try and avoid the pain of that rejection by being in pursuit of another position. The tragedy of hope is, in truth, however, that if you can’t hope well, you won’t be able to love well. If you can’t hope well, you can’t do well with the thing once you get it… If they give you the job, or the girl begins to fall in love with you, your inability to hope without despairing or presuming will translate into an inability to cultivate the principles and virtues of love/constancy that make for a good relationship or job. You’ll reach the next phase of desire (a promotion; an achievement; a disagreement; a challenge to your authority; a marriage; another child) and you won’t be able to endure the pain of that unfulfilled desire without again lapsing into vice to distract yourself from the pain of hope.

The Theological Virtue of Hope

The theological virtue of hope pertains specifically to our hope for eternal happiness (i.e. union/conformity with God). In a preliminary sense, hope inspires us to desire union with God’s Church and the partaking of His sacraments. In its proper sense, however, the inescapability of hope stays with us throughout this life as we can’t but wait on the prospect of heaven in the next life. We can’t have heaven in this life—so as long as we are alive here on earth, we are subject to the pain and difficulty of hope.

Will we be found ready for heaven at our death? Will the light of grace be alive in us when this life ends? Will we persevere in our faith until the end?

We have the assurance of God that He desires to bring us to this end, but then is the theological virtue of hope not painful? Is it not subject to despair or presumption as well? Is it not perfected just like faith and love are perfected?

Of course it is, to all of those things. But God’s assurance……

So what’s difficult about it?

The Difficulty of Theological Hope

Imagine living in a time where it’s very hard to hold on to your faith. Imagine living in a time where there is a persistent subcurrent of fear with you at all times that you could be expelled from society; that you could lose your job; that you could be brandished with an irredeemable reputation. Imagine living in a time where pressure against the faith was so hostile that holding to the faith endangered your family, your job, your reputation, potentially even your life.

Now realize that we live in that time today—and also that this time, in one form or another, sometimes worse than others, undoubtedly, has been with us from the beginning of Christianity.

Is it so hard to imagine that you might defect from the faith? That you might re-crucify Christ? That you might offer incense up to false idols to protect your name/job/family/life?

Is it so hard to imagine that you might find yourself too weak to not give in to despair or presumption?

Despair: that in truth, persistence in the faith is impossible for us.

Presumption: that we don’t have to worry, no matter what we’re good to go as long as we say Jesus is Lord.

“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Mt. 7:21)

Faith places a demand on us. Anyone who has understood the requirements for a valid confession and given themselves over to the habit of confession knows this. You cannot validly confess a sin that you do not resolve to stop doing. That means that confession comes with a burden: you must change. When you face a crossroad in your life, you can’t just offer up incense to idols, escape persecution from the secular/atheist world we live in, and be good to go. Even if you confess to having given in to such idolatry, to selling out your faith or your fellow Christian, you have to reform your life and make restitution for your wrong if you are to be restored to grace.

That terrifies me.

How easy it would be for me to defect from the faith—at first, ever so subtly, and then over time, totally—having convinced myself that I have the right and true opinion of what the life of faith entails?

Without the grace of God I have no chance.

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The Necessity of Grace

Grace is often referred to as “the divine assistance” in shorthand by the saints. This is precisely what we need to make it through this life with our faith intact—we need the express help of God. We need to call on His help continually. We need to be brought to perfection by him.

If we are going to develop our Theological Virtue of Hope, we must first understand that neither despair, nor presumption, will permit us to do so. We must understand exactly why hope is what it is—a desire for a difficult good—namely, because the thing we are striving after is difficult (no, impossible without divine assistance) to achieve. We have to conform our whole lives over to God—and we have to do it at every crossroad throughout our lives.

Even the prospect of perfecting the virtue of Hope is terrifying to deeply consider.

The Gate is Narrow & the Way is Hard

How many of us can’t even cultivate the natural virtue of hope around things like a desire for a romantic partner, or a good job we want? But eternal blessedness is infinitely greater and infinitely more impossible to achieve on our own… And yet we think we’ll just be good to go?

When you learn about any aspect of the life of faith and it doesn’t encourage you to pray more, to worship God more fervently, to study the truths of God more, to turn to God more, etc., then you have not learned about that aspect of the life of faith in truth. A right understanding of hope should do just that: it should make you see with greater clarity how truly difficult hope is because it’s so painful; that on our own we are hopeless, and as a result it should make you more desperate (i.e. fervent) for the grace of God to come to your assistance and be with you always.

I want the sacraments more; I want the help of God more; I realize more how insufficient I am to grow in the life of grace on my own… “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” (Rom 11:6)

Don’t give in to presumption—as most Christians do.

Don’t give in to despair—as Atheists do.

May the God of all good things bless you and keep you always, until the end. +

“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Mt. 7:13-14)

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