Repost: Jonathan Franzen on Techno-Consumerism

Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.

To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.

Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn.

Its first line of defense is to commodify its enemy. You can all supply your own favorite, most nauseating examples of the commodification of love. Mine include the wedding industry, TV ads that feature cute young children or the giving of automobiles as Christmas presents, and the particularly grotesque equation of diamond jewelry with everlasting devotion. The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff.

A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb “to like” from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they’re designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren’t fixated on your liking it. (I’m thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.)

But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable.

If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick. You may find yourself becoming depressed, or alcoholic, or, if you’re Donald Trump, running for president (and then quitting). [...]

Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.

And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors. [...]

My friend Alice Sebold likes to talk about “getting down in the pit and loving somebody.” She has in mind the dirt that love inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard.

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life. [...]

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie. [...]

The big risk here, of course, is rejection. We can all handle being disliked now and then, because there’s such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful. The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking. [...]

When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s” is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer. [...]

Instead of continuing to drift forward through my life as a global citizen, liking and disliking and withholding my commitment for some later date, I was forced to confront a self that I had to either straight-up accept or flat-out reject.

Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.

When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.

And who knows what might happen to you then?

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Source: Jonathan Franzen, "Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts," The New York Times, May 28, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html.

Ernest Hello on the Mediocre Man

It is said that the after reading the following passage by Ernest Hello in L'Homme, among others, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange left medical school and became a Dominican priest in order to dedicate his life to the highest excellence in pursuit of God.

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Is the mediocre man silly, stupid, idiotic? Not in the least. The idiot is at one extreme of the world, the man of genius is at the other. The mediocre man is in the middle. I do not say that he occupies the center of the intellectual world, that would be quite another matter; he occupies a middle position.

The characteristic trait of the mediocre man is his deference for public opinion. He never really talks; he only repeats what others have said. He judges a man by his age, his position, his success, his income. He has the profoundest respect for those who have attained notoriety, no matter how, and for authors with a large circulation.

The mediocre man may have certain special aptitudes; he may even have talent. But he is utterly wanting in intuition. He has no insight; he never will have any. He can learn; he cannot divine. Occasionally he allows an idea to penetrate into his mind, but he does not follow its various applications, and if it is stated in different terms, he denies its truth.

The mediocre man may, and often does, respect good people and men of talent. He fears and detests Saints and men of genius--he considers them exaggerated.

Of what use, he inquires, are the religious Orders, especially the contemplative Orders? He approves of the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul because their work relates, partially at least, to the visible world. But the Carmelites, he says, what can be the good of them?

The mediocre man admires everything a little; he admires nothing warmly. If you confront him with his own thoughts, his own sentiments, expressed with enthusiasm, he will be displeased. He will declare that you are exaggerating. He prefers enemies, so long as they are cold, to friends who are warm. What he detests above all is enthusiasm.

To escape the reproach of intolerance aimed by him at all who think with consistency and decision, you would have to take refuge in absolute doubt; but even then you must be careful not to call doubt by its name. He considers every affirmation insolent, because every affirmation excludes the contradictory proposition. You must represent it as a modest opinion, which respects the rights of the contrary opinion, and appears to affirm something while affirming nothing whatever. But if you are slightly friendly and slightly hostile to all things, he will consider you wise and reserved. The mediocre man says there is good and evil in all things, and that we must not be absolute in our judgments. If you strongly affirm the truth, the mediocre man will say that you have too much confidence in yourself.

The mediocre man regrets that the Christian religion has dogmas. He would like it to teach only ethics, and if you tell him that its code of morals comes from its dogmas as the consequences comes from the principle, he will answer that you exaggerate. If the word "exaggeration" did not exist, the mediocre man would invent it.

The mediocre man, in his distrust of all that is great, maintains that he values good sense before everything. But he has not the remotest idea what good sense is. He merely understands by that expression the negation of all that is lofty.

The man of intelligence looks up to admire and to adore; the mediocre man looks up to mock. All that is above him seems to him ridiculous; the Infinite appears to him a void.

The mediocre man appears habitually modest. He cannot be humble, or he would cease to be mediocre. The humble man scorns all lies, even were they glorified by the whole earth, and he bows the knee before every truth.

The mediocre man is much more wicked than either he himself or anyone else imagines, because his coldness masks his wickedness. He never gets in a rage. He perpetrates innumerable little infamies, so petty that they do not appear to be infamous. And he is never afraid, for he relies on the vast multitude of those who resemble him.

When, however, a man mediocre by nature becomes a true and sincere Christian, he ceases absolutely to be mediocre. He may not, indeed, become a man of striking superiority, but he is rescued from mediocrity by the Hand that rules the world. THE MAN WHO LOVES IS NEVER MEDIOCRE.

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Source: Ernest Hello, Life, Science, and Art, trans. by E. M. Walker (London: R. & T. Washbourne, 1912), 112–115.

Ernest Hello on the Spirit of Contradiction

As long as I can remember, I have noticed that men are continually disputing together, and doubtless you too have noticed it. Universal contradiction is a universal fact. Division covers the earth. It is not between enemies that we find the deepest division; it is between friends....

The intellectual condition of the human race is a masterpiece of division....

The fact is, there is in the world a monster called the Spirit of Contradiction.

Everything I consider in the world, I can consider under several aspects, and so can you. Paul sees a thing on a certain side; it looks to him white. Peter sees the same thing on the other side; it looks to him black. Both are right, both are wrong, for the thing is white on one side and black on the other. "It is white!" cries Paul. "It is black!" cries Peter. And behold two enemies! The Spirit of Contradiction shuts their eyes and embitters their hearts and blinds and separates their souls.... They were two intelligent men, made to understand each other. Now they are two enemies, stupidly obstinate, stupidly blind, all because the Serpent of Contradiction has raised his head between them....

If Peter is to show Paul to any good purpose the black side which he sees, he must first perceive as clearly as Paul the white side which Paul sees, and he must tell him so. If he does not frankly tell him so, each will hopelessly entrench himself behind his individual point of view.

This is why kindness of heart has such an immense role to play in the reconciliation of minds. If you are irritated with your enemy, who perhaps, after all, is your friend, you will never convince him.... I have seen clearly that the Spirit of Contradiction is Satan himself, the father of all lies.

Father Faber holds that we shall never convince a man unless we first prove to him that we have thoroughly grasped all his objections and entered into his point of view. Nothing is more true.

Father Faber also says that there is one thing in the world which can never, in any case, do any good. This unique thing is sarcasm. You have an antagonist. Laugh at his point of view: he will never see yours. Never! You have shut off from this man the sources of Life. Father Faber further says that if a man were suddenly to begin to look with friendship on all other men, and to put a favorable construction on their conduct, this man would find existence as completely altered as if he had been transported to another planet....

St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi adopted the following for her rule of life: Never refuse anybody anything, unless it be an absolute impossibility to grant it. Here is the spirit which is the exact opposite to the Spirit of Contradiction.

The experience of centuries teaches that men need consoling first, instructing afterwards. They do not understand the instruction until they have received the consolation. The Spirit of Contradiction violates this law. It will begin by speaking of the cause of irritation; it puts the obstacle in the foreground. It sets out by a reproach. It irritates before it tries to pacify. That is why its teaching is sterile and fatal, even were it a hundred times in the right. Begin with argument, and all will be sterile. Begin with love, and all will be fertile.

The Spirit of Contradiction resides in the soul and gives the man who speaks a certain tone.... Tone indicates the attitude of the mind. The tone is more important than the words used. Let us suppose that Father Faber's hypothesis has been realized, and that this very day men have adopted kindness as the principle of all their actions.... We shall be astounded if we one day see the small proportions to which [our differences] are reduced.

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Source: Ernest Hello, Life, Science, and Art, trans. by E. M. Walker (London: R. & T. Washbourne, 1912), 73–78.

Repost: "Marriage, a History"

Through most of Western civilization, marriage has been more a matter of money, power and survival than of delicate sentiments. In medieval Europe, everyone from the lord of the manor to the village locals had a say in deciding who should wed. Love was considered an absurdly flimsy reason for a match. Even during the Enlightenment and Victorian eras, adultery and friendship were often more passionate than marriage. These days, we marry for love—and are rewarded with a blistering divorce rate.

Antiquity-Renaissance

What's love got to do with it? In early history, politics and money trumped emotions.

Ancient Greece: Love is a many-splendored (manly) thing. Love is honored—especially between men. In marriage, inheritance is more important than feelings: A woman whose father dies without male heirs can be forced to marry her nearest male relative—even if she has to divorce her husband first.

Rome: Wife-swapping as a career move—Statesman Marcus Porcius Cato divorces his wife and marries her off to his ally Hortensius in order to strengthen family bonds; after Hortensius dies, Cato remarries her.

6th-century Europe: Political polygamy—The Germanic warlord Clothar, despite being a baptized Christian, eventually acquires four wives for strategic reasons, including his dead brother's wife, her sister and the daughter of a captured foreign king.

12th-century Europe: Marriage is good for loving...someone else—Upper-class marriages are often arranged before the couple has met. Aristocrats believe love is incompatible with marriage and can flourish only in adultery.

14th-century Europe: It takes a village—Ordinary people can't choose whom to marry either. The lord of one Black Forest manor decrees in 1344 that all his unmarried tenants—including widows and widowers—marry spouses of his choosing. Elsewhere, peasants wishing to pick a partner must pay a fee.

16th-century Europe: Love's a bore—Any man in love with his wife must be so dull that no one else could love him, writes the French essayist Montaigne.

1600s-Victorian Era

It's a family affair: Married love gains currency, but for intimacy and passion, people still turn to family, lovers and friends.

1690s U.S.: Virginia wasn't always for lovers—Passionate love between husband and wife is considered unseemly: One Virginia colonist describes a woman he knows as "more fond of her husband perhaps than the politeness of the day allows." Protestant ministers warn spouses against loving each other too much, or using endearing nicknames that will undermine husbandly authority.

18th-century Europe: Love gains ground—In England and in the salons of Enlightenment thinkers, married love is gaining credibility. Ladies' debating societies declare that while loveless marriages are regrettable, women must consider money when choosing a partner.

1840, England: Virgin lace—Queen Victoria starts a trend by wearing virginal white, instead of the traditional jeweled wedding gown. Historically thought of as the lustier sex, women are now considered chaste and pure. As a result, many men find it easier to have sex with prostitutes than with their virtuous wives.

Mid 19th-century U.S.: Honeymoon suite for three—Honeymoons replace the older custom of "bridal tours," in which the newly married couple travel after the wedding to visit family who could not attend the ceremony. Even so, many brides bring girlfriends with them on their honeymoons.

20th Century-Today

We worship the couple. Intimacy shrinks to encompass just two, and love becomes the only reason for marriage.

1920s U.S.: How Saturday night began—Dating is the new craze—in restaurants and cars, away from the oversight of family. Popular culture embraces sex, but critics fear that marriage is on the rocks.

1950s U.S.: Marriage is mandatory—Marriage becomes almost universal, and the nuclear family is triumphant: Four out of five people surveyed in 1957 believe that preferring to remain single is "sick," "neurotic" or "immoral."

1970s U.S.: All you need is love?—Self-sufficient women and changing social rules mean marriage is no longer obligatory. Quarreling couples split up rather than make do, and the divorce rate skyrockets.

Today: Bride pride—Marriage is the ultimate expression of love, leading gays and lesbians to seek the right to marry, but also encouraging couples to cohabit until they're sure about their "soul mate." Marriage rates fall—but the fantasy of the perfect wedding is ubiquitous.

Based on research from Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz.

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Source: PT Staff, "Marriage, a History," Psychology Today, May 1, 2005, accessed May 28, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/marriage-history.

Fr. Servais Pinckaers on True and False Love

For some, love has become the “Open, Sesame,” the cure for all problems. They misapply St. Augustine’s magnificent expression, “Love, and do what you will,” as if warmth of emotion liberates a person from all commandments and restraints. For St. Augustine, however, the greater the love the greater the adherence to commandments, for they are the expression of God’s love. Without the rectitude ensured by the commandments, love will not be true, will not survive.

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Source: Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. by Mary Thomas Noble (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 29.

The Astounding Truth of God's Relationship with Us

Ignatius shows no hesitancy in accepting in its fullness the central truth of Christian faith and all its consequences—unlike most of us who, if not in theory, at least in practice, are hesitant to accept the full astounding truth. If God so loves us as to send his Beloved, Jesus Christ, to be one with us in the flesh; to be a sacrifice for our sins; to give us all that the Father gave him, his life, his truth, his love, his joy, his glory; to give us his body to eat, his blood to drink; to give us the Holy Spirit who makes us children of God in Christ, who lives in us, enlightens us about Jesus and his teachings, pours out God's agape, defends and cherishes the Christ-life in us—if God so loves us as to do all this, then after that there is no problem in believing that God is constantly attending to each of his children, calling each of them by name, speaking to them, listening to them, sometimes in extraordinary ways but usually through the ordinary motions of their own minds and hearts, and giving them power to discover when it is he who is speaking and what he is saying. Given what a Christian is called to believe about his relationship with God, is it not surprising to our way of thinking that God does not speak and act in our lives even more obviously than Ignatius, with all genuine Christian tradition, has said he does?

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Source: Fr. Jules J. Toner, S.J., A Commentary on Saint Ignatius' Rules for the Discernment of Spirits: A Guide to the Principles and Practice (St. Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1982), 32.

Memo: A Philosophy or Theology of "Like"

A memo to think about how people often say we don't need to like people but only to love them. What is meant here by "like"? Is it an affective attraction to a person? Is it how that person makes me feel? These two things (an attraction and how a person makes me feel) are different, yet both are usually associated with "liking" a person.

Does loving a person lead to some sort of attraction to them?

Also, what are the social consequences of "liking" or "upvoting" or "downvoting" as is becoming common on social media websites for a notion of "like"? Does "like" become synonymous with some form of intellectual (social, political, philosophical, theological, etc.) or affective support?

If I don't "like" a person, why does it seem very difficult also to love that person? Is there a strict separation between liking and loving even when loving is defined as willing another person's good? Did our Lord "dislike" anybody?

Tolerating People vs. Tolerating Sins

In the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–11), Jesus tells the woman, "Neither do I condemn you." People usually stop there when recounting the story, but it doesn't end there. Our Lord then tells the woman, "Go and sin no more."

Why do people stop before the last line? Because they usually tell this story as an example of what compassion and tolerance look like. They say, with Pope Francis, "Who am I to judge?" They end up mistaking compassion with blindness, and divesting mercy of truth, they end up with self-congratulation that will lead them all straight into Hell.

Christ made a judgment of this woman's behavior but not her being. Look at His words:

"Neither do I condemn you" in your very being, which is good, created in God's image, and called to a life of union with Him. No matter what you do or fail to do, I love you in your being, being a person, being a creature, called to be a daughter.

"Go and sin no more" because what you are doing and have been doing will lead you only to destruction. If you therefore value your life and what is good, you will do what is good because our actions follow our desire and our values.

Christ tells the woman to stop sinning. By implication, Christ is judging her actions and saying, "You have been sinning." We might say in protest, "Who are you to tell me what to do?" But Christ is truth, and He knows better. Christ doesn't threaten her because He doesn't need to. Why doesn't He need to? Because he made clear the distinction between who we are and what we do. Who we are is good, but what we do is not always good.

Compassion is for people, not for actions. Tolerance is for people, not for actions. Actions and beliefs are open to praise or rejection. People are more than their actions and beliefs, and their value is determined by neither.

Faith Changes Our Relations

Faith changes our relations with each other and ought to make us aware of these changes.

By faith we come to realize that how we treat others is not only how we treat Christ but how we treat ourselves, for we are all connected mystically by grace into the Body of Christ. Hence the second great commandment is that we love our neighbors as ourselves. Why? Because as we love our neighbors, so do we love ourselves.

Actually, we can know this principle even without divine revelation. We see that the unconscious reflects the Other and projects ourselves into the Other. How we treat others, then, unconsciously reflects and projects how we treat ourselves and wish to be treated. Hence if we wish to receive qualities of patience, consideration, and generosity, we ought to give these out and practice them ourselves.

Amazingly, divine revelation has taken this psychological-social dynamic and elevated it through grace, showing us that our relations are more profound than we ever believed. This is why sin can never be isolated, and to believe that my personal actions and choices in private do not affect others betrays a lack of faith and a lack of understanding of the unconscious. Everything I do creates and changes my relations with others, both in the natural and supernatural realms.

In this phenomenon we can also find one reason for the spiritual and psychological stagnation of so many people: they do not put in the effort to treat others in such a way as to reveal to themselves their earnest desire for transformation through virtue. The very effort to act virtuously works as a signal that effectively mobilizes the unconscious forces to cooperate with grace such that even if the initial attempts of a beginner are filled with failure and imperfections the process of spiritual transformation is nevertheless truly begun. The effort to treat others in a saintly way stimulates one to become actually a saint and to encourage others to become likewise. It in a certain sense gives permission to oneself to become holy, to let go of old habits of behavior.

Hilaire Belloc on Beauty, Love, and God

I think that beauty and love, and things which people generally look down upon as not stoic or heroic, are the essence of heroism and manly feeling, and this because they are the essence of God as we hear of Him and understand Him. I felt this in chapel today, that the light feeling which proceeds from love or something beautiful, is not a feeling that will pass, but the happiness of angels in the love of God. Have you ever felt that in one of those beautiful churches, Notre Dame or St. Ouen, how one loves the beauty around one so much that one is convinced that it was the grace of God, as well as man, that helped to build that church?

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Source: Belloc Lowndes, The Young Hilaire Belloc (New York, NY: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1956), 20, quoted in Joseph Pearce, Old Thunder (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2014), 20.

Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis on Love of Enemies and Spiritual Perfection

"You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven [....] Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt. 5:43-45, 48).

[236] [Our Lord's] commands are couched in the future indicative: "You will love your neighbor...", "You will be perfect...." These wills are stronger than a more straightforward command in the usual imperative because they not only communicate the speaker's wish that something be done, they also prophesy that something in the future will in fact be the case. Hence, not only the desirability that something be so is expressed by Christ but also the possibility that it become a reality.

Now in the first instance, when the Lord is loosely quoting Leviticus (19:18), all seems to make sense. It is not difficult to prophesy that natural man will love his neighbor (that is, those who are like himself and with whom he must get along if he is to exist at all) and hate his enemy. This is the logic of the flesh, of survival, of the precarious community establishing its unique identity over against all other groups, which simply by being other are potential threats. Much of the force of the passage resides in the fact that the Lord goes on [237] to subvert this natural logic by continuing to use its own forms, as if the unheard-of things he is proposing, so naturally repulsive to man, came as naturally to himself as Word of God as loving one's neighbor and hating one's enemy come to natural man.

"You will be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect": the expediency and real possibility of man putting on the mind and habits of God are presented by the Son as if nothing else in the world were more natural, desirable, possible, or necessary. His use of the future indicative as an imperative command manifests not only his wish and his teaching that his followers ought to move in this direction; it contains the promise that, by the power of his word here and now spoken to them, this will in fact become a reality. 'You must be perfect like God, because such is the nature of the human vocation in God's mind, and therefore you will be perfect. The One manifesting your deepest identity to you at this moment is, by doing so, communicating to you the power to undergo such a transformation.'

The image of man in the mind of the Word imposes itself as more real than the condition in which natural man happens to find himself. The very revelation of this image is already a promise of its realization.

"Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you [...] for if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this?" (Mt. 5:44, 46-47).

Whereas human activity had previously been neatly and satisfyingly divided into loving and hating others, the Lord here keeps the first verb but adds another to that, instead of being its opposite, is rather an extension of the first. The Christian cannot allow himself the too easy satisfaction of loving and hating [238] according to personal whims or the superficial identity of his community or race. All the Christian is allowed to do is love, unconditionally. It is crucial, however, that the categorical imperative to love everyone at all times does not come from a blindness that refuses to see the existence of evil in the world. We are not to love others without exception on the grounds that everyone is so good and love-worthy, or especially because we are so good and loving in any spontaneous, natural sense. No: this would be illusory daydreaming of the first order! We are to love without qualification because the Son of the Father has, through the power of his word, made us children of this same Father [....] It is by the power of God in Christ that we are enabled to love without exception, because this is what the Father does, who is incapable of hatred.

Furthermore, the Lord here recognizes the existence of real enemies and persecutors. He passes no judgment, either, as to whether there is any justice in their animosity toward us and their persecution of us. We are hardly to assume automatically that anyone who is our enemy is a personification of evil! But the Christian's business is to love and to perform the work of love without having previously qualified or disqualified others according to criteria foreign to the mind of the Word. [...]

[239] The universal generosity of love to which Jesus is calling his disciples is like the unrestrained brilliance of the sun as it sheds its rays over all of creation. When we love someone, we are like a sun bestowing the benefit of life, or like rain drenching the parched land that it may give fruit. Behind both the Christian's deeds of goodness and the outpouring of light and water there is the same agent at work: God, the Creator and Bestower of life. Our love is the light and the rain of God upon the world, especially on those who need it the most—the bad and the unjust, who are the truly benighted and parched. [...]

The Lord is establishing a continuity and a harmony between the moral attitude in the heart of man and the objective laws that govern the laws of the cosmos. When we choose to love universally without private prejudice, we leave that illusory inner chamber where we create a puny world in keeping with our own mean ideas and begin discovering the real world created by God in his magnanimous wisdom. Learning how to love as God loves not only makes us his children in a purely interior sense; it is the gateway itself to our perception of the cosmos in all its glory and a participation in its mysterious life. Through universal love, we allow the full benefit of the sun and the rain to fall upon ourselves for the first time. [...]

"If you love [only] those who love you...." Can my attitude of soul be worhty of the name "love" if it is nothing more than a response in kind to someone else's [240] attitude of goodwill toward me? At a purely human level, yes: What sense does it make to pour affection into a dark hole? Is not a clinging to unreciprocated love—or, even worse, to the love of what hurts us—the privilege of the mad? Human love encloses itself in a neat system of "energy conservation", where nothing is ever lost because nothing is ever gained. To love in this way is to take a prudent, speculator's view of human relationships, in which success depends on the greatest possible avoidance of risks. [...] The alleged child of God belies his Origin if he loves only those who love him, out of self-interest, instead of acting like his Father, whose goodness falls upon all without expecting a return in kind. [...]

To love only those who love us is its own reward. The account is neatly balanced. We are established in self-satisfaction. We inhabit a purely horizontal realm with a ceiling so low that our existence smothers for lack of oxygen. Our vision, too, is projected only unidimensionally down the tunnel of our immediate concerns. Man is unlike the other primates in that his posture is upright: he can, if he so chooses, gaze upward continually. His field of vision, if free of artificial clutter, enables him to take in both the ground under his feet and the sky above his head. This is why "our Father" is said here to be "in the heavens": by nature he is the one above the choking [241] horizontality of hermetic systems; he is the one whose very nature makes him condescend, makes him bestow life and love where none yet exists. To be "in heaven", to have one's dwelling in the heavens, far from connoting a spiritualistic fleeing from the earth, means rather to reside in the fullness of love and to be always engaged in bestowing the benefits of love on others—to pour out one's being into the void in others as if one were sunlight and rain. [...]

"You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." How can a human being be perfect in the same manner that God in heaven is perfect? There is an insurmountable problem in our Lord's solemn injunction, which concludes this whole section as its summary, as long as we insist on an abstract, essentialist definition of the term "perfect". The being of man, in this sense, can never be perfect in the same way God's is, and the Lord seems to be enjoining the impossible. Persons have been known to wreck their psychic, physical, and spiritual lives trying to apply this command in an erroneous way. If we apply the literal Greek meaning of the word for "perfect" as noted ("goal" or "end"), we will see that what the command intends is, rather, 'Guide your actions and attitudes by the same intention, the same finality, as your heavenly Father's.' Far from implying a head-breaking striving for the unattainable, we should rise from our immersion in the business of self-survival and focus our outlook from the divine point of view.

From this vantage point in heaven, the Father has as the "goal" of his love the totality of the human family, not just individuals within it.

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Source: Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word, vol. 1 (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1996), 237–241.

Intrinsic Dignity vs. Circumstantial Dignity

Experience tells us that circumstances may either dress a man up with nobility or with degradation. When Christ was scourged and crowned with thorns and then shown to the people, such an act was surely not dignifying but degrading. Nevertheless, we know that even in that circumstance, Christ's intrinsic dignity both as God and man perdured. In fact, reflection on such common experiences of public shame and embarrassment show us that it would be absurd to propose that a person's dignity could be annihilated by circumstances.

Intrinsic dignity is that which remains inherent to a person in spite of circumstances, perceptions, and actions. It is why rape is always wrong, even if as some people crudely suggest a victim was somehow "asking" for it or herself guilty for attracting potential rapists. Even if a woman was inviting such a gravely immoral action, the rape is still wrong because it violates the woman's dignity (among other reasons). It is also why many people argue against capital punishment; they say, "What example are we setting by killing a killer?" I'm not here to comment on the rigor of these arguments but am simply pointing out that they imply and appeal to a notion of intrinsic dignity.

Hence, it is clear that to take the life of someone, or for him to take his own life, would be wrong even if all the circumstances of his life were undignified—poverty, lack of hygiene, the absence of loved ones or any support, depression and other suffering, etc. No number of degraded circumstances could destroy the intrinsic dignity of an individual. These circumstances may make a person's life psychologically unbearable to endure, it may be granted, but the dignity remains.

When a person begs to "die with dignity," they usually, but not always, are pointing more properly to the notion of being perceived as dignified. In other cases, such a request points to that individual's self-perception of dignity: "do I see myself as dignified in these circumstances?" In either case, the person ignores intrinsic dignity. Of course, they have the freedom to do so, but they are ignoring it nonetheless.

What is the implication of intrinsic dignity? Does it mean that a person can take his own life? Most cases of euthanasia appeal to circumstantial dignity—the suffering, the dwindling resources, the age, etc. People who commit suicide often do so, if they leave a suicide note, out of circumstances and not an appeal to their intrinsic dignity.

Actually, intrinsic dignity suggests that despite circumstances a person should persevere in the struggle for self-actualization as a human. This would mean, as far as possible, the cultivation of virtue. Intrinsic dignity implies a firm rock amidst a violent ocean to which they ought to cling.

There is, finally, a striking conclusion from the notion of intrinsic dignity. A common and powerful argument for abortion is that a child should be killed before he or she should be made to suffer growing up in terrible circumstances, where a mother may resent the child for being a reminder of when she was raped, where a father is absent, where poverty and frequent abuse is the norm, where an education is practically impossible, etc. This argument presents abortion as an act of mercy to a child. But if we remember intrinsic dignity, then we can see its absurdity. Take a 5 year old who has already been growing up in such circumstances as described in this argument: should the mother/father/society/etc. be allowed to kill the child to prevent that child from suffering further abuse or neglect? What about a 2 year old? What about a 1 year old? What about a baby who has just been delivered? Should it be killed then? Clearly no one would kill a 5 year old because of such reasoning. But why should age be the only differentiating factor, and if it is, when is the child young enough, and why does that age justify the act?

If we would not kill another person because that would be a violation of their intrinsic dignity, which includes in it the right to live and to self-determination, why is the violation acceptable in the case of an infant still in the womb? The infant is biologically an individual despite its physical dependence on the mother, but even such physical dependence doesn't reduce the intrinsic dignity of an individual being; this is again circumstantial dignity which points to the physical dependence. Calling the embryo a "parasite" is again simply an argument referring to circumstantial dignity.

No, the responsible action is, as always, a respect of individuals and of what is properly theirs, which includes dignity and the right to life and self-determination even if an individual is not in the concrete capable of doing so (appeal to circumstantial dignity). The responsible act, then, is to accept the reality of suffering and moral evil AND respect the right of an infant to live despite the fact that it will grow up in the worst of circumstances.

The Apostolate Flows from the Nature of Love

The love which has been poured out on us cannot remain static in our souls. It must ascend once more whence it came, having made us the instruments of a further giving of itself. Taking us captive, the Wisdom of Love introduces us into the inner current of the divine life in the bosom of the Trinity, enlisting us as her co-operators in attaining her divine designs, making us channels of grace and instruments of her action. Love is essentially dynamic [....]

The apostolate is not a work of supererogation. It is the normal sequel to contemplative love. To think only of intimate union with God is to be ignorant of the nature of love, to arrest its movement. For it would be the destruction or at least the diminution of love to confine it within any kind of selfishness no matter how spiritual this might seem.

Holy Wisdom is concerned with souls less for themselves than for her own divine purpose. And this only purpose is the Church. She chooses us as members of the Church, that we may hold a place in it and fulfil [sic] a mission.

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Source: Fr. Marie-Eugène, I Want to See God, trans. by M. Verda Clare (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1953), 335–336.

St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross on Spiritual-Sensible Friendships

[Sensible love] can be legitimate in marriage. Saint Teresa is talking to religious [....]:

These last affections are a very hell, and it is needless for us to weary ourselves by saying how evil they are, for the least of the evils which they bring are terrible beyond exaggeration. There is no need for us ever to take such things upon our lips, sisters, or even to think of them, or to remember that they exist anywhere in the world; you must never listen to anyone speaking of such affections, either in jest or in earnest. (Way of Perfection, vii; Peers, vol. II, 31)

[...] The Saint tells us her plan to explain two kinds of love.

There are two kinds of love which I am describing. The one is purely spiritual, and apparently has nothing to do with sensuality or the tenderness of our nature, either of which might strain its purity. The other is also spiritual, but mingled with it are our sensuality and weakness; yet it is a worthy love, which, as between relatives and friends, seems lawful. (Ibid., iv; 19)

The first is dominated by spiritual love. In the second, the spiritual is united with elements drawn from reason and the senses in diverse degrees, such as make it lawful and even good. Let us call this last love "spiritual-sensible" from the two extremes that it unites; and with the Saint, let us speak of it first.

Spiritual-sensible love

Spiritual love is a fruit found at the summits; hence, it is very rare. Spiritual-sensible love is much the more frequent. It is the one that ordinarily nourishes friendships between spiritual persons. As a rule, their spiritual bonds are engrafted in natural sympathies and find in these their strength and their stability. How could they love with a love purely spiritual when their faculties are not purified, and supernatural charity has not yet established its dominion over the lower powers?

Saint Teresa reassures us as to the morality of spiritual-sensible friendships by comparing the love that animates them to that which we have for our relatives. Not only are they lawful; they may be beneficial. The apostolate of friendship, that is found so often in specialized movements, will use for the most part this spiritual-sensible type, more adapted as it is to our weaknesses. By the atmosphere that these friendships create around souls, the persuasive force that they add to counsel, the affectionate support that they afford, they can rescue a soul from loneliness, from bad surroundings, or from the mediocrity of a milieu, to elevate it into purer and more supernatural regions.

The friendships by which Saint Teresa benefited before her entrance into Carmel were of this nature. The affection that she inspired in those about her and that enabled her to attract them, must also have been spiritual-sensible. We cannot suppose that those souls were elevated at once to spiritual love [....]

Might not the same be said with regard to the crowds that forgot their food and drink to follow Jesus even into the desert? They were not only captivated by the divine radiance that shone forth from the sacred humanity of our Saviour; but also, by the kindness, the eloquence, and all the external charms of the Master. Indeed, it was in order to conquer thus, by adapting Himself to our weakness, that the Word became flesh; and by assuming our human nature, He wanted it to be clothed with all the perfection of which it is capable.

In Christ, and also in Teresa, affection was wholly spiritual; and it preserved from danger the less perfect affection of the souls that were captivated by it.

The case will not be the same when both friends bring to their union only an imperfect love. How then can we avoid fearing a loss of balance between the two elements, spiritual and sensible, that are united in this friendship? It is a law that each one of our faculties is drawn towards the good that is presented to it, to taste its proper satisfaction. The satisfactions of the senses are the most violent and risk dominating in the soul that is not purified, and dragging it down. In our nature wounded by sin, love tends to descend to the lower powers and to pour itself out through the senses. This break in balance threatens the most sincere strivings for spiritual good and makes them founder in the culpable liberties of sensuous love [....]

Without falling into these excesses, spiritual-sensible friendship can imperceptibly be transformed into an inordinate affection, or an exclusive and particular friendship which is already a disorder. The Saint writes:

Little by little they deprive the will of the strength which it needs if it is to employ itself wholly in the love of God.... even among brothers and sisters such things are apt to be poisonous.... The harm which it does to community life is very serious.... I am more inclined to believe that the devil initiates them so as to create factions within religious Orders. (Ibid., iv; 17)

They are "wrong in anyone, and, in a prioress, pestilential."

The Saint notes in this connection that "consciences of those who aim only in a rough-and-ready way at pleasing God ... think they are acting virtuously"; and that in order to check such friendships, "we must proceed diligently and lovingly rather than severely."

It could happen that some element of sensibility might creep into ones relations with the confessor. The question is important and delicate for religious; and so, the Saint treats of it at considerable length. First of all, a person should not fall into exaggerated scrupulosity on this point. If the confessor is holy, zealous, and if he is guiding the soul to greater perfection, Teresa advises:

What you can do here is not to let your minds dwell upon whether you like your confessor or not, but just to like him if you feel so inclined.... Why should we not love those who are always striving and toiling to help our souls? Actually, if my confessor is a holy and spiritual man, I think it will be a real help to my progress for me to like him. (Ibid.; 22) 

But if the confessor is seen to be tending in any way towards vanity, he should be regarded with grave suspicion.... It is a dangerous matter, and can be a veritable hell, and a source of harm to everyone.... The devil can do a great deal of harm here. (Ibid., iv; 19-20)

 [...] The friendship that is deviating, feeds on trifles:

Some injury done to a friend is resented; a nun desires to have something to give to her friend or tries to make time for talking to her, and often her object in doing this is to tell her how fond she is of her, and other irrelevant things, rather than how much she loves God.... Many imperfections can result from this. (Ibid.; 17)

The discernment of good friendships was a problem that had bothered Saint Therese of the Child Jesus. Saint John of the Cross gave her the solution. On the back of a holy card that she kept in her missal, she had copied this passage from the Dark Night:

Some of these persons make friendships of a spiritual kind with others, which oftentimes arise from sensuality and not from spirituality; this may be known to be the case when the remembrance of that friendship causes not the remembrance and love of God to grow, but occasions remorse of conscience. For, when the friendship is purely spiritual, the love of God grows with it; and the more the soul remembers it, the more it remembers the love of God, and the greater the desire it has for God; so that, as the one grows, the other grows also.... But, when this love arises from the vice of sensuality aforementioned, it has the contrary effects; for the more the one grows, the more the other decreases, and the remembrance of it likewise. (Dark Night, iv; Peers, vol. I, 362)

The tree is recognized by its fruits. The criterion given by our Lord for the discernment of true prophets is applicable here also, and gives certitude. The effects make known the nature of the affection; or rather, indicate which, in this synthesis, is the force that dominates and imposes its movement on the other elements. If the spiritual-sensible friendships make one grow in love of God, they are good and should be encouraged. Such is the conclusion.

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Source: Fr. Marie-Eugène, I Want to See God, trans. by M. Verda Clare (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1953), 262–266.

Distinction: Divisions of Hatred

Hatred is increasingly becoming the new conversation stopper, similar to using words like "bigot" and "dogmatic." But just because someone uses this word doesn't mean they are using it intelligently or even coherently. It seems therefore convenient and useful to draw up several distinctions and definitions of hatred for Christians. The following is far from adequate but is an attempt to work towards clarity. It is a work in progress.

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Last updated: June 7, 2014.

Hatred (synonymous in this case with anger) generically is a movement of extreme dislike, antipathy, or opposition in the face of some perceived evil typically exceeding what is reasonable. By itself the movement is morally neutral. Its object and motivation determine its sinfulness. This movement may occur in the passions (emotions), the intellect, the will, or any combination of the three. This movement may be conscious or unconscious. This movement may be sanctified or not. This movement may be individual or collective.

1.1 Hatred as a passion is a feeling of deep aversion and dislike for some object perceived as evil. Usually it is vigorous and energetic.

1.2 Hatred as an intellectual act is a negative judgment towards an object deeming the object worthy of opposition because it is evil in some way/degree.

• Problems: this definition is clearly inadequate because it doesn't seem to be able to distinguish between hatred and simple opposition.

1.3 Hatred as an act of the will is a decision to work against an object's proper good due to it, especially through the expression of dislike.

• Problems: this definition is inadequate for the same reason as above.

2. Hatred may be under the conscious awareness of an individual or group of individuals. In such a case, the individual(s) recognizes the movement of opposition towards a specific object. Nevertheless, the degree of recognition may extend over several levels:

2.1.1 recognition of the movement itself;
2.1.2 recognition of the object of the hatred;
2.1.3 recognition of the reasons for the hatred;
2.1.4 recognition of the unconscious associations motivating the reasons for the hatred.

2.2 Of 2.1.1–2.1.4 above, whichever degree that an individual does not attain to in his conscious awareness remains unconscious. That is unconscious hatred.

3.1 Sanctified or holy hatred can mean either an emotional detachment from some object (as when Christ said, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Lk 14:26)) that would otherwise impede the individual's taking responsibility for his own life with moral integrity; or holy hatred may mean an antipathy towards some object fully in accord with God's will primarily by means of connaturality through the activation of the gifts of the Holy Ghost and/or secondarily by means of knowledge of the theological sciences. Only insofar as this movement cooperates with the will of God is it a holy hatred. Nevertheless only the movement of the Holy Ghost may fully and in the concrete circumstances protect the movement from exceeding its proper bounds. Although knowledge of the theological sciences may help protect and direct this hatred to a certain extent, knowledge alone is no guarantee of moral excellence and hence self-control.

3.2 Unholy hatred is any hatred that falls outside of the will of God, known primarily connaturally and secondarily through science. This hatred descends by degrees insofar as it moves away from God's expressed will. Furthermore, insofar as this hatred falls outside the will of God, it may apply both to the motivation for the hatred as well as the object of hate. This hatred is therefore by definition sinful to varying degrees.

4.1 Finally, this movement may exist simply in one individual.

4.2 The movement exists collectively when the the same generic movement is focused at the same object. The coherence of this movement increases insofar as its conscious awareness (of varying degrees as indicated above) coordinates and exists identically among individuals. For example, the Saints of heaven possess a collective, holy hatred of sin and all the forces working against God's will, directed principally through the illumination of the Holy Ghost and freely consented to with perfect moral liberty.

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To accuse someone of hatred may itself be a veiled act of hatred and may not necessarily mean that the accused actually is acting out of hate.

Furthermore, because hatred may be an act of the will and not concomitantly a movement of the passions, hatred may not be "felt." Hence even apparently apathetic, cold, or even joyful people may be hateful; e.g. a person laughing out of schadenfreude or out of sadistic tendencies.

Indifference is commonly said to be worse than hatred and the "true" opposite of love because at least hatred is some sort of reaction towards an object. In fact, indifference is not the true opposite of love, and often indifference is a form of unconscious hatred precisely because it resists the good by rendering the good meaningless or irrelevant. Indifference may be hatred without its concomitant passion. Strictly speaking, the opposite of an attraction to the good is an aversion from it, but because indifference may also indicate a more subtle form of aversion (by not embracing the proper good), indifference itself may be hatred.

God's Love and "Anything Goes"

Yes, God loves us but not in the way that He therefore accepts everything we do or fail to do. God's love is not a passive acceptance of "who we are," whatever that phrase is twisted around to mean. His love for us extends to our being insofar as we have being, but God cannot love disorder (for disorder is the lack or twisting of being from what it properly should be), and anything disorderly present in our being therefore cannot be the object of God's love. God loves us precisely by showing us what sin is in all of its ugliness (our disorder), calling us out of it, and giving us an abundance of means to do so. God loves us by helping us to take responsibility for our lives.

G.K. Chesterton on "Free Love"

They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words — ‘free-love’ — as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word.

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Source: G.K. Chesterton, "A Defense of Rash Vows," American Chesterton Society, accessed April 18, 2014, http://www.chesterton.org/a-defence-of-rash-vows/.

Sacrifice: Appeasing Zeus vs. a Loving, Merciful God

Someone I know emailed me about a poetry professor who gave a presentation in class and mentioned that he has an "issue with sacrifice." From the email: "particularly Christ's death on the cross. [The professor] seemed to equate Jesus' sacrifice to the Father with sacrificing an animal to Zeus, trying to appease an angry and jealous god instead of one who can [sic] loving and merciful." My friend wanted to know what I had to say about that, how I'd respond and explain the difference, etc. I thought I might as well include my response here.

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The professor's "issue" with sacrifice is probably less theological-philosophical than it is psychological, i.e. there is an "issue" from the past that makes the idea of sacrifice difficult for him. Did he have an "angry and jealous" parent who acted like a Zeus, demanding sacrifice of some kind? Perhaps it was the "Father"? Without further information, who knows? So that's the first thing.

The second matter is the difference between God and Zeus. Zeus is a fiction of the mind, and even if Zeus existed (hard to prove since there aren't many people getting zapped or raped by huge swans, etc.), he would be only a creature, albeit a powerful one. And actually the Greeks believed that their "gods" were physical, so he wouldn't even been that far up in the hierarchy of beings because angels (and hence demons) are above physical beings and far more powerful. God, on the other hand, is the pure, self-sustaining act of existence itself. Big difference, in fact, an infinite difference.

A sacrifice to Zeus is meaningless because Zeus can't do squat, even if he existed. All he could do would be to threaten us, in which case, sacrifice means appeasing him like an abusive parent who has power over a helpless child.

God on the other hand is pure mercy and pure justice. The idea of mercy is meaningless without the idea of justice after all. Just try to define what exactly mercy is without referring in some way to justice. Mercy, after all, is pardoning someone who doesn't DESERVE to be pardoned; that is, it overrides justice.

Here's where it gets interesting. Sin is an offense against God and hence an offense not only against pure justice but also against pure mercy. The degree of evil is determined by the act, the person committing the evil, and the victim of the evil. In this case, God is the "victim" (although God doesn't actually suffer in any way, God deserves honor and respect instead of rejection by the nature of his being). Sin is a rejection of love. So a sin, no matter how small it seems to us, is an infinite offense because it attempts to violate infinite mercy and justice. Hence Cardinal Newman said quite strikingly,

"The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse."

A farthing was one of the smallest units of currency, by the way, like our penny.

And who would deny that pure justice and mercy should be respected, even if those are merely ideals in our heads?

But remember this key: mercy is impossible to conceive without some notion of justice. Hence, without justice, there is no such thing as mercy. Mercy becomes valuable only insofar as the degree of justice to be administered increases. The more that justice demands, the more merciful the pardon.

Now a sin is an infinite offense. Therefore, any pardon of an infinite offense is an infinite act of mercy. And that is the sacrifice that Christ made. An animal couldn't make it because an animal would just be a victim, literally a scapegoat, where we get the idea of scapegoat today. A sin is a personal act, an act of free will. Hence a human has to make reparation who can freely choose God again. But the one offended is God, so that act of reparation must be infinite. But only God can make an act that is infinite. So the human making reparation to God has to in some way be infinite. Hence in Christ the humanity and divinity were united in one person so that justice could be satisfied. And here's the twist: the same act of satisfying the justice of God was the way that God showed us infinite mercy in pardoning us for every past, present, and future sin. In the Crucifixion is infinite justice and mercy at the same time. It satisfies justice, and in so doing, it bestows mercy.

Because, after all, if we commit sin, we're in the pickle of being unable to do anything to satisfy justice. And we certainly don't deserve forgiveness.

But, could God have simply forgiven us without going through the Crucifixion? Yes. But it was more fitting that God become like us, suffer like us, die like us, to show us an example. In our fallen state, when we are so prone to selfishness and revenge rather than justice, hardness of heart rather than mercy, we need a model of what true humanity looks like, how tall it can stand when it is virtuous and noble.

Because—here's the second interesting thing—St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out that to call sin an offense against God is true but incomplete. Sin is wrong not only because it offends God but because it hurts us, it destroys us, it is contrary to what it means to be fully human. A plant needs water, nutrition, air, and sunlight to grow well. A human has specific physical and spiritual needs. On the spiritual level, the human needs virtue. Virtue alone will make us truly human.

Hence God's act of satisfying justice and bestowing mercy was a double act of mercy. If God simply said, "I forgive you," we would still be left in our same darkness, with no guide as to how to live our lives. But God Himself showed us how we are to find our proper fulfillment, and it is through sacrifice.

Victimization, which is suffering without desiring it, is not sacrifice. Sacrifice is accepting all suffering that comes necessarily from doing the right thing, the thing that will make the individual and those around him more human. Hence, sacrifice is the core of love, and sacrificial love is the core of the family. The family is the core of society. Without sacrifice, love is simply attraction rather than mutual consideration. Without love, the family is simply a game of manipulation. Without family, the society is bored, aimless, and selfish. Without society, there can be no civilization, no leisure, and hence no freedom. Christ freely embraced the suffering that would come.

The Gospel is the most powerful story because it is the story of what happens when infinite Love enters our world. We crucify and reject it because in fact we don't want love. We like Frank Sinatra's song "I Did It My Way." That's why the Gospel is the most poignant story and why every good story is good insofar as it resembles the Gospel. Even B-movie entertainment is good because it resembles the Gospel—we like to see people kicking butt and taking names. Christ did that to Satan. We see huge power, tremendous struggles, high stakes. All of that is in the Gospel. At the heart of it is the notion of sacrifice, which is simply—I'm not a rock. I'm not an island. The only way for me to be happy as a human is to be selfless, to help others, to give consideration to others, to "do unto others what I would have them do unto me." That's love.

In fact, mercy is a sacrifice. I sacrifice the demands of justice and my personal satisfaction at seeing justice administered in order to show mercy. A poetry professor who doesn't understand that must be pretty bad at poetry...

Love's Place in Marriage

This is a follow up post to "Courtship & Dating."

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When I say that love is not necessary for marriage, I emphatically do not mean that true love (charity) is not requisite to have a happy marriage, or a good home, or that it is not commanded by Christ, not only to our spouses, but for everyone. In fact, it is indeed commanded by St. Paul in the context of marriage ("Husbands, love your wives"-Eph. 5:25). So, I am definitely not downplaying the importance of love in a marriage.

But it is nevertheless true that sacramentally, love is not necessary to bring forth the sacrament of marriage, which is the point I was getting at. The sacrament of marriage can be brought about without love. All it that is required for the form and the matter is a Catholic man and a woman free of any impediments, public vows, and a witness of the Church. That is the nuts n' bolts of a sacramental marriage. So, while I agree that love is essential for the practical working out of a good marriage, I maintain that it is not necessary in the least way for bringing about the sacrament of matrimony. I don't think this needs any "proofs" but I will submit two.

First, if we look at annulments (and yes, we all know they are abused) we will see that an annulment regards impediments to marriage that were in place at the time the marriage was celebrated, so that though the couple thought they were getting married in good faith (i.e., putative marriage), they were in fact not getting married at all due to the presence of an impeding or diriment impediment. Now, if "lack of love" was essential either as matter or form to bring about the sacrament, then "lack of love" or "He didn't really love me" would be grounds for an annulment. Of course, even in our modern Church where annulments can be granted for a variety of reasons, lack of love is not one of them. This may be an element in the "psychological" reasons for an annulment, but this alone is not grounds for an annulment and never has been. Therefore, since lack of love cannot annul a marriage, we have to assume that love is not (strictly) necessary to bring the sacrament about.

Second, if love were requisite for the sacrament, none of the world's many politically arranged marriages throughout history would have been valid. Consider in the Middle Ages, where a monarch might bargain with another monarch and receive the other king's daughter in marriage. He would have never seen her, and even the marriage itself was contracted over long distance, via a proxy (an odd rite where the king would ceremonially lay down in bed with a minister of the other family to symbolize comsummating [sic] the marriage). The King would meet his new bride for the first time after they were already married legally and sacramentally and then would proceed to consummate the union with a woman who was practically a complete stranger. This was the norm for Christian marriage among the upper nobility in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, a type which everybody, including the popes, recognized as valid. For example. Pope Julius II regarded the marriage of Arthur Tudor to Catherine of Aragon as valid, though the two had never met and were married by proxy. If love were a strict requirement, the pope could not have done this.

There is, however a degree of fidelity or truthfulness that is required to bring about the sacrament. The vows have to be said in good faith, and the vows of course state that the man promises to love and care for the spouse. We must notice something: in the vows, the man swears that he will love his wife, not that he already does. And how is the love to be manifest in these vows? By what comes next: in swearing to take care of her, defend her, care for her in sickness and in the raising up of children, etc. In other words, this love is presumed not by the affection that the husband bears the bride, but by the practical things he promises to do on her behalf.

So long as the husband promises these things in good faith, the sacrament occurs. But let us not confuse the promising of the things with the things themselves. It is necessary that the hubsand and the wife vow to care for each other in love (which is seen in this sacrament as the practical supporting of each other's physical needs and the raising of children), but it is not necessary that they possess that love at the time of the ceremony. In fact, the marriage rite's conception of love is very different from the modern idea of love as an emotive affection ("romantic fondness"). Therefore, traditionally speaking, it is possible for the paradox to arise of a man loving his wife but not liking her, because his matrimonial love is manifest in the tending to practical and material needs.

Now, let me be frank about something historically: it was always seen as ideal and beneficial for the spouses to have true affective attachment to each other. That was seen as a given. You get married, go off with your spouse and learn to love and cherish them as time goes on. However, people who married "for love" were considered to be fools, ignorant of how their union would affect their later lives. If someone did have a marriage for love that worked out well, it was considered a happy (but rare) occurrence. Thus the sister of Henry VIII, Mary Tudor, when she married the Duke of Suffolk Charles Brandon for love, was considered rash and foolhardy, and Henry even considered prosecuting against her for marrying without his consent. But he later relented and Mary and Charles had a happy marriage - that is not unusual, but we must look at how it was perceived, and the people of the day perceived their union as extraordinarily fortuitous, for usually such unions "for love" wound up ruinous, as in Romeo and Juliet, for example. Obviously the play is not a true story, but it demonstrates how people thought: though romantic unions for love were passionate, enticing and sometimes envied, in the end (it was thought) they were bound to turn out poorly.

Therefore, yes, of course we want to have love in our marriages. I never insinuated otherwise. But however much we may want to exalt marital love, we are bound to admit that strictly speaking, it is not necessary to bring about the sacrament of matrimony.

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Source: Boniface, "Love & Matrimony," Unam Sanctam Catholicam, January 20, 2009, accessed April 10, 2014, http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2009/01/love-matrimony.html.

"Courtship & Dating"

I found this article very enlightening and helpful. It confirmed a few things that I was suspecting too.

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So first, let’s come to terminology. Wooing a female. Well, it does not matter one bit to me what you call this process. Some homeschool parents get all bent out of shape about the terminology. My child will not “date”; they will “court.” Okay, well what really matters is the substance of what is going on at these liaisons, not what you call them. You can call it courting, dating, keeping company, going steady, (or, my mother’s annoying phrase from the 1960’s, “going with”), or whatever you want. Don’t get all upset about the name. I know of some families who don’t let their kids “date,” but allow their daughters to be in situations with other boys that would be tantamount to dating, but they for some reason allow it because it’s not called dating and because “we know their family,” as if that makes concupiscence and passion any less intense!

But let’s look at the definitions: courting or courtship, in a romantic sense, first appears in 1596. It grew out of the idea of medieval courtly love, and the idea of courting a woman came from the phrase “paying her court,” which originally meant a knight visiting the court of a noble lady whom he wished to woo. This phrase originally had nothing to do with how the visit was carried out; i.e., whether you visited the woman alone, or with her family present. Generally, this would have been a public display of affection for a lady followed by a solitary (and often amorous) encounter. I have news for people who think the term courting is somehow intrinsically better than dating: medieval courts could be some of the most immoral places on earth, especially from the time the term originates (late Renaissance, early modern period). Even in France, the home of courtly love, the courts of the French kings were known to be rottenly immoral sexually. Sexual promiscuity and adultery were so commonplace in the French courts that syphilis (first introduced into Europe around this time from the New World) was known as the “French Disease.”

Here’s my point (1) Courting, traditionally, had nothing to do with how a liaison was arranged (with family or without) but concerned itself rather with paying a visit to a lady at her court (2) These courts were rampant places of immorality. Therefore, we ought to not be all excited about saying we prefer “courting” to dating.

However, courting later did come to take on a more respectable tone: paying a lady a visit in her home (i.e., her court), presumably in the presence of her family, with a stated or unstated romantic intention. Talking with my grandmother, however, (who is now 90 years old), I am told that even in the old days among traditional families (mine was Sicilian Catholic), it was still common place for the boy and girl to go off alone. The boy might pay the girl a visit at her home, spend a little bit of time chatting with the family, then take the girl off for a picnic, bicycle ride, walk in the woods or boat ride. This modern idea that a boy and a girl who are interested in each other never spend any time alone is (a) not historical or traditional at all (b) stifling to any real intent of getting to know the other. Parents along time ago knew that for a boy to get to know a girl, they needed the opportunity to get to know each other one on one.

Therefore, the emphasis wasn’t on whether time was spent alone or not, but whether the two were put into any compromising positions. Therefore, though the two would be left alone, it would be outdoors, in public, etc., places where they could talk freely but would not be able to act on any temptation. I know two people definitely intent on fornicating cannot really be stopped – there is always a way to sneak off into the woods or go into a Port-a-Potty, like they used to do when I was in Basic Training, but the basic idea is sound: two persons together in a boat or on a walk in the park are much less likely to think about any shenanigans than two persons alone in a bedroom. That would have never been permitted nor do I think it should be.

Interestingly enough, the term dating first comes from the Victorian era (around 1898), a period of much stricter morals than the late Renaissance. Dating had an innocuous meaning originally: simply having a date or appointment set with someone. Therefore, if we are going to look at the eras that the terms dating and courtship came out of, I think dating had a much more wholesome and moral bent to it, since Victorian manners (on a whole) were much more moral and reserved than late Renaissance French morality. But this again just has to do with terminology, which is not the entirety of the argument at all. Dating, of course, has a bad name because it is at the end of the Victorian era that the automobile enters the picture and the date is transformed, with all the silliness about “Make Out Point” and that kind of thing. Like it or not, the automobile is now a factor in romantic liaisons, though it need not have the sinister connotation that it sometimes does.

Therefore, how should a Catholic boy go about in his relations with his female prospect? I’m going to try to be as systematic as I can in this, but because this is such a weighty topic, I’m going to take it for granted that the boy is of age to drive. If he’s not, he probably shouldn’t be worrying about it yet (although, traditionally boys were considered of marital age around 16 or 17. Therefore, let’s not push back dating/courtship until age 20 and pretend like we are being traditional. We might be being prudent, but let’s not deceive ourselves and say that is traditional. If we were really following tradition, we’d be giving our daughters in marriage at age 15).

I reject (my opinion) this modern fascination with “discerning who God wants you to marry.” Obviously we want to discern God’s will in all things to the best of our ability, but what exactly are we discerning and how precise can we be with our discernment? In my extensive reading of history, here is how it has always been done:

The discernment process has always been whether or not to get married, not to whom one gets married.

That is, in the Middle Ages and beyond there is a great focus in spiritual writings on discerning whether you are called to celibacy or the married state. But once one discerns they are called to the married life, there is almost nothing like we see nowadays about “figuring out who God wants you to marry.” There is a lot written, however, about how to best “pick” your spouse. That is to say, the choice of a spouse was not seen as a matter of God’s will but as a matter of human prudence, much like picking a good house or picking a good piece of fruit from the market. Love was never seen to be the basis for a marriage, though it was sought after to arise after the fact by mutual affection and sharing of a common life. The woman (or man) who married simply out of love was considered a fool, and there are no records that I know of any person being taught to ask who God wanted them to marry. It was seen as something that a person was supposed to use their human judgment (common sense) on and not try to be all vocationally oriented with. A man chose a wife based on several factors, and once the marriage was consummated, love was seen to be a worthy thing that could grow on the basis of that union, but it was not deemed essential. My RCIA classes always marvel when we get to the class on the Sacrament of Matrimony and they see that “love” is not required for either the form or matter of the sacrament.

But I want to stress this: the “discernment” came when you decided whether or not to be married at all. That is because, of course, there used to be a great emphasis on the superiority of the celibate state. However, nowadays, pop-Catholic culture would have everybody spend as much time discerning their spouse as they would the question of whether or not to remain celibate. This is because in the past 40 years, marriage has been stressed more and more as a “vocation,” or a calling. This has always been admitted, but the emphasis was different before. In the past, there was those called to virginity, and then there was everybody else. Nobody spoke of being “called” to marriage – marriage was referred to, with virginity, as a “state in life”; i.e., a state that you may find yourself in, not necessarily some heavenly calling. Obviously God has a will for everybody, and you are fulfilling that will to the extent that you conform to God’s design for your life. Therefore, God has a will or a call as to what career I should pursue in life, for example. But people don’t usually refer to their jobs as “callings” in the religious sense. God has a will for everything we do, but we don’t always apply the words “calling” and “vocation” to them. I think in the modern Church, because of the drastic decline in consecrated virginity, people are over-anxious to apply the terms “vocation,” “discernment” and “calling” to other endeavors besides consecrated virginity, in an attempt to make it seem like everybody is still seeking God’s will even though there are a drastic reduction in vocations. God, however, has not stopped calling people – but people have stopped listening.

But that is a digression. So, what criterion does one use to pick a good spouse? Traditionally, the pick of a spouse was foremost an economic decision, and I don’t think this was an entirely bad idea. Economics are very important in marriage, and a home is more likely to be happy if it was financially stable. Therefore, a bachelor might look for qualities in a woman that would lead him to believe she could help him establish a financially secure home. Did she have good work habits? How did she bear up under trials? Was she patient? In some cases, did she have strong arms and a sturdy back? Because a husband wanted his wife to be respectable as well, she had to be of solid moral character: Was she devout? Was she loyal? Would she make a good mother? Therefore, the husband did not so much choose a wife because of an intense love or a desire to do God’s will, but of practical considerations based on what the addition of the wife to the husband’s household would bring to the family collectively; children, financial security, a pious atmosphere and respectability. Of course, all men wanted their wives to be attractive. Attraction is the basis for all of these things, and it was the most fundamental type of desire from which true love could grow. After a man secured a wife who would fulfill all of these requirements, he was considered happy and blessed if, in time, he came to truly love her and she him. But love was seen as secondary and in the end non-essential. It was an ideal to be strived for, not a building block that everybody felt like they had to have to get started.

To some sense, I applied these principles in my own life when I was dating my wife, though I was only 19 and still pretty ignorant. When I was dating my own wife, I looked at her and admired certain qualities about her: her fidelity, joy, industriousness, beauty and virtue. Therefore, based on these factors, I approached her and informed her that I thought we ought to get married. It is kind of amusing: I never asked her to marry me, nor did she ask me, nor did I ever ask permission from her father. If I could do it over, I would no doubt do so. But at the same time, there is a simple logic in the way I went about it: I simply approached her like it was a mathematical formula and said, “Based on X, Y, and Z factors I think we are a good match and ought to get married.” And she agreed (she was young and ignorant, too: only about 18 – that’s the only reason she agreed to marry me!).

That brings up another point: if you are trying to discern whom you should marry, the worst time to do that is while you are already dating them. How can a person make an objective judgment about this when they are already emotionally involved with another person? Just like in college, guys who joined the pre-Theologate program were forbidden from having girlfriends. The reason was obvious – one has a hard time hearing a call to the priesthood if you have a girlfriend distracting you. In the same way, you can’t figure out if you should marry a person after you are already involved with them. This is why so many people get married while they are infatuated, fail to see their partner’s flaws and then accuse them bitterly of “changing” after the marriage is complete.

Here’s how I think it should work: a man ought to observe a woman from afar, from a vantage point of friendship only, and a remote friendship at that. He should look at her objectively, asking himself questions about her virtue, modesty, industriousness, etc. Only if she fulfills all of these requirements ought he to go ahead and pursue a romantic relationship – and even then I don’t think he has to say for sure “yes, this is the person I think God wants me to marry,” but she should at least be a potential. By the way, you will never know if the person you marry is the one you should have until you are old and ready to die. Only then can you look back on your life and really reflect on it. J.R.R. Tolkien said that all marriages were, in a sense, a gamble, and that most were probably mistakes. Here’s what he wrote to his son on the issue:

"Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to."

The last line emphasizes my thought exactly. Instead of worrying about who God wants you to pick (because you’ll never be able to be sure, and even if you are, you’ll second guess yourself as soon as things get hard and then start blaming God for your poor judgment), use the same common human prudence, enlightened by grace, that you would use if you were making any other long-term commitment. Date and marry based on this, and realize you are not marrying to make yourself happy but to make another happy and to establish a home – and in that your happiness will arise, and with it love.

Is it appropriate to be alone together while you are dating? Absolutely - in controlled environments. How can you really get to know a girl if you’re sitting around with her mom and dad all the time? You can’t, and though you want to get to know the family, you’re interested in the girl, not in her family. If you do marry her, you’ll see enough of them in the future anyways (haha), so pay your visits to her, show deference and respect to the family, enjoy some family gatherings, but make sure there is time for you and her to get on alone. There’s plenty of opportunities, besides just going to Mass together: go out for coffee together, take her out to dinner, go for a walk in the park or just down her street. Until you get to know her better, probably she should meet you at these places and drive separately (unless of course she has no car). If these are not options, a good middle ground is doing things together with her friends. This way, you are not alone with her, but neither is she in the company of her parents, and she will be freer to speak and be forthright with you in the company of her friends. Probably shouldn't spend a lot of time just driving around aimlessly, though. If you want to do something aimless, walking is a lot more wholesome than driving.

I have to throw out a closing gripe here: I dislike when people presume they are following traditional morality when in reality they are pursuing novelties. I’ve said this before: withholding your child from dating until they are 18 or 19 is not traditional morality. Talking about discerning whom God wants you to marry is not traditional morality. Adhering to the novel “courting” ideal where a boy and girl spend all their time together hanging out with the family is not traditional either. I’m not saying these are bad ideas – in our society, they may be necessary to protect chastity. But let’s stop pretending that we are going back to some lost moral code with these things, because we are not. We are simply adapting to the times and slapping the “traditional morality” label on it. If we were really being traditional, the father would find a husband for the daughter with no spiritual discernment at all, would base his judgment on financial factors, would betroth the two of them and marry her off around age 16. The wife would be expected to run the husband’s household and prosper him financially, and maybe down the road they would grow to love each other. That’s tradition. I’m not saying it’s the best way, but that is the traditional way – and anything else that claims to be “traditional” is really just a novelty. Maybe a good novelty, but a novelty nonetheless.

In closing: courting or dating? Doesn’t matter. Spend time alone? Sometimes, but not in imprudent circumstances. Hang out with the family constantly? If you can stomach that kind of thing. How to make your choice? Virtue, Industriousness, Beauty, Piety. Who does God want? You can’t really know – just do the best you can.

These are just my opinions, and I only post them here because someone made the foolish mistake of asking me what I think!

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Source: Boniface, "Courtship & Dating," Unam Sanctam Catholicam, January 9, 2009, accessed April 10, 2014, http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2009/01/courtship-dating.html.