Saturday, March 18, 2017
Wise Cyril
Today is the memorial of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Doctor of the Church. From his Catechetical Lectures (Lecture 2.1-2):
A fearful thing is sin, and the sorest disease of the soul is transgression, secretly cutting its sinews, and becoming also the cause of eternal fire; an evil of a man's own choosing, an offspring of the will. For that we sin of our own free will the Prophet says plainly in a certain place: Yet I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true: how are you turned to bitterness, (and become) the strange vine? The planting was good, the fruit coming from the will is evil; and therefore the planter is blameless, but the vine shall be burnt with fire since it was planted for good, and bore fruit unto evil of its own will. For God, according to the Preacher, made man upright, and they have themselves sought out many inventions. For we are His workmanship, says the Apostle, created unto good works, which God afore prepared, that we should walk in them. So then the Creator, being good, created for good works; but the creature turned of its own free will to wickedness. Sin then is, as we have said, a fearful evil, but not incurable; fearful for him who clings to it, but easy of cure for him who by repentance puts it from him. For suppose that a man is holding fire in his hand; as long as he holds fast the live coal he is sure to be burned, but should he put away the coal, he would have cast away the flame also with it. If however any one thinks that he is not being burned when sinning, to him the Scripture says, Shall a man wrap up fire in his bosom, and not burn his clothes? For sin burns the sinews of the soul....
...But some one will say, What can sin be? Is it a living thing? Is it an angel? Is it a demon? What is this which works within us? It is not an enemy, O man, that assails you from without, but an evil shoot growing up out of yourself.
Lent XVI
Then when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death. (James 1:15)
[St. Bede, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, Hurst, tr., Cistercian Publications (Kalamazoo: 1985). p. 15. The quotation is from Gregory the Great's Homilies on the Gospels 1.16.1.]
'Temptation is carried out in three ways, by suggestion, by delight, by consent,' by the suggestion of the enemy, or by the delight, or even by the consent of our frailty. But if even at the enemy's suggestion we are unwilling to take delight in or to consent to sin, temptation itself carries us on to the victory by which we may deserve to win the crown of life.
[St. Bede, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, Hurst, tr., Cistercian Publications (Kalamazoo: 1985). p. 15. The quotation is from Gregory the Great's Homilies on the Gospels 1.16.1.]
Friday, March 17, 2017
Inspiring the Love of Reading
Wherein Gerdil shows himself to have a better understanding of how children learn than many do:
[H. S. Gerdil, The Anti-Emile, Frank, tr. St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, IN: 2011) p. 111.]
It is a charming speculation to pretend to lead children through the whole course of their studies by always amusing them. The most necessary studies require hard work and self-denial. We may partially mitigate the coercive quality of study, but we cannot entirely remove it, and still hope to make solid progress. And therefore it is not by means of these kinds of studies that we will inspire children with a love for reading. But we will succeed with reading that is amusing and instructive, so long as we take care not to propose it as part of their studies, -- for the very word will ruin everything, -- but rather as a reward for applying themselves to their studies.
[H. S. Gerdil, The Anti-Emile, Frank, tr. St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, IN: 2011) p. 111.]
Lent XV
Then Jesus said to those Jews, who believed him: If you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free...." (John 8:31-32)
[St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 6-12, Larcher, tr., CUA Press (Washington DC: 2010), p.124.]
Three things are required to be a disciple. The first is understanding, to grasp the words of the teacher: "Are you also still without understanding?" (Mt 15:16). But it is only Christ who can open the ears of the understanding: "Then he opened their minds so that they could understand the Scriptures" (Lk 24:45); "The Lord opened my ears" (Is 50:5).
Secondly, a disciple needs to assent, so as to believe the doctrine of his teacher, for "The disciple is not above his teacher" (Lk 6:40), and thus he should not contradict him: "do not speak against the truth in any way" (Sir 4:30). And Isaiah continues in the same verse, "I do not resist."
Thirdly, a disciple needs to be stable, in order to persevere. As we read above: "From this time on, many of his disciples turned back, and no longer walked with him" (6:67); and Isaiah adds: "I did not turn back" (Is 50:5).
But it is a greater thing to know the truth, since this is the end of the disciple.
[St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 6-12, Larcher, tr., CUA Press (Washington DC: 2010), p.124.]
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Evening Note for Thursday, March 16
Thought for the Evening: Of Just Protest
Both in class discussions with students, and in various other situations outside of class, I've noticed a tendency not to think very critically about political protests. This occurs on two different levels -- one, there is a sort of cargo-cultism about protesting, in which people go through the motions without any real understanding of what they are doing; and two, there is a tendency not to recognize that protesting is the kind of thing that must be done according to ethical standards, beyond (what is often the only significant ethical issue to be considered) distinguishing between protest and riot. The first I set aside here, although I think it ends up being a severe problem; it will come up in passing in discussing the second, which I think is the more serious one.
There are a number of reasons why the ethical standards for protesting are actually fairly high, but the most essential of these arises from the nature of a protest in and of itself. A protest is by its very nature:
(a) a complaint, which must meet the kind of standard of reasonableness a complaint must meet; and
(b) a rebuke, and thus something that can be a punishment, which must meet standards of justice;
and therefore must meet ethical standards relevant to both.
Reasonable complaint requires moral standing to complain, which involves at least the following basic elements:
(1) A reasonable candidate for an injustice has been identified.
(2) The real cause of the injustice, to the extent possible, has been identified.
(3) The injustice must actually admit of an identifiable remedy.
(4) These three components must be properly integrated in the complaint, so that the protest is addressing the real cause of the injustice in such a way as to contribute to reaching the remedy.
(1) is sometimes the most vehemently debated, but it's arguably a fairly easy standard to reach, in part because even made-up reasons to protest (like those used by dictatorial regimes) may sometimes be only made-up in specifics. Generic injustices are easy to find. (2) is often an issue; one saw this with the Chik-fil-a protests a few years back, which were utterly ineffective because they were done without any understanding of how franchises work, so that the targets were all wrong. But I think this tends to be most commonly a problem with spontaneous protests in particular. I think the most common weakness with protests generally is with (3) and (4) -- one might think that this is a fairly obvious thing, but it is remarkable how often you can flummox people simply by asking them either "What, specifically, can and should be done to solve the problem?" or "What, specifically, is this protest supposed to do to help the problem get solved?" This ties in, I think, with the cargo-cultism I previously noted: people treat protests as if the point of them were to have a protest, when in reality protests are social means for achieving practical ends. And the position that people most often fall back to in answering the second question, that the protest is to "raise awareness", is a useless one -- protests are extraordinarily poor means for raising any kind of awareness at all. Raising awareness is what you do in order to get people to pay attention to your protest, and to pay attention to it in the right way; protesting in order to raise awareness is starting at the back end. The effectiveness of a protest depends on how aware people already are of the actual issues; a protest on its own cannot be interpreted properly without an already existing context in place; and raising awareness, on its own, doesn't actually do much, since such awareness, if not focused by something, is temporary and results in no practical action. If you are protesting only to raise awareness, you are wasting time that could be better spent on means that would actually address the problem.
Besides moral standing, there are additional conditions required for a rebuke to be fully just. For instance, it must be necessary -- that is, less drastic measures have been tried -- and it must be proportional to the problem -- overkill turns a rebuke into an unjust punishment. The protest must be legible, i.e., it must be set up in such a way that people can figure out why it's happening in the first place. And one must do it in such a way as is appropriate to common good -- that is, the way one does it must be focused on rendering benefit to everyone, even those against whom one is protesting. This is, I think, the most difficult of the standards to meet, and it is often not met; movements that have done unusually well at meeting it, like Gandhi in India, or many of the protests of the Civil Rights Movement, did not find it easy, and did as well as they did only because they put a lot of time and effort into trying.
People tend to assume, I think, that you've done your duty if you've avoided rioting, but finding out how to uphold the common good while protesting is not a trivial problem to solve. People also tend to assume that if your goals are just enough, you are done; but here, as everywhere else in ethics, your means must be appropriate and just. Both of these assumptions are very dangerous, ethically speaking, and seem to be tied to a tendency (which sometimes seems to be on the rise) to give oneself a free pass to attack your fellow citizens and human beings when you feel like it, without any consideration for them as citizens and human beings.
There are, in any case, various complications that arise that I haven't gone into here-- protests are often planned, but sometimes arise spontaneously in the face of egregious injustices, and the former arguably involves a rather stricter set of standards than the latter, for instance -- but the above all arise from general principles. You can't be a just person in any endeavor and not consider some analogue of these. There is no end run around them.
Various Links of Note
* John Irons translates the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, A Leaf from Heaven.
* Richard Marshall interviews Roman Altshuler on time and action.
* I recently gave a link to a translation of part of St. Francis Borgia's litany through the topics of Aquinas's Summa; for those who are interested, here is the full thing in Latin, all twenty-two dual-columned pages of it.
* Joseph Trabbic defends Plato's Republic.
Currently Reading
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to be King
Christ - Our Pascha: Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Hyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil, The Anti-Emile
Michael Flynn, In the Country of the Blind
Both in class discussions with students, and in various other situations outside of class, I've noticed a tendency not to think very critically about political protests. This occurs on two different levels -- one, there is a sort of cargo-cultism about protesting, in which people go through the motions without any real understanding of what they are doing; and two, there is a tendency not to recognize that protesting is the kind of thing that must be done according to ethical standards, beyond (what is often the only significant ethical issue to be considered) distinguishing between protest and riot. The first I set aside here, although I think it ends up being a severe problem; it will come up in passing in discussing the second, which I think is the more serious one.
There are a number of reasons why the ethical standards for protesting are actually fairly high, but the most essential of these arises from the nature of a protest in and of itself. A protest is by its very nature:
(a) a complaint, which must meet the kind of standard of reasonableness a complaint must meet; and
(b) a rebuke, and thus something that can be a punishment, which must meet standards of justice;
and therefore must meet ethical standards relevant to both.
Reasonable complaint requires moral standing to complain, which involves at least the following basic elements:
(1) A reasonable candidate for an injustice has been identified.
(2) The real cause of the injustice, to the extent possible, has been identified.
(3) The injustice must actually admit of an identifiable remedy.
(4) These three components must be properly integrated in the complaint, so that the protest is addressing the real cause of the injustice in such a way as to contribute to reaching the remedy.
(1) is sometimes the most vehemently debated, but it's arguably a fairly easy standard to reach, in part because even made-up reasons to protest (like those used by dictatorial regimes) may sometimes be only made-up in specifics. Generic injustices are easy to find. (2) is often an issue; one saw this with the Chik-fil-a protests a few years back, which were utterly ineffective because they were done without any understanding of how franchises work, so that the targets were all wrong. But I think this tends to be most commonly a problem with spontaneous protests in particular. I think the most common weakness with protests generally is with (3) and (4) -- one might think that this is a fairly obvious thing, but it is remarkable how often you can flummox people simply by asking them either "What, specifically, can and should be done to solve the problem?" or "What, specifically, is this protest supposed to do to help the problem get solved?" This ties in, I think, with the cargo-cultism I previously noted: people treat protests as if the point of them were to have a protest, when in reality protests are social means for achieving practical ends. And the position that people most often fall back to in answering the second question, that the protest is to "raise awareness", is a useless one -- protests are extraordinarily poor means for raising any kind of awareness at all. Raising awareness is what you do in order to get people to pay attention to your protest, and to pay attention to it in the right way; protesting in order to raise awareness is starting at the back end. The effectiveness of a protest depends on how aware people already are of the actual issues; a protest on its own cannot be interpreted properly without an already existing context in place; and raising awareness, on its own, doesn't actually do much, since such awareness, if not focused by something, is temporary and results in no practical action. If you are protesting only to raise awareness, you are wasting time that could be better spent on means that would actually address the problem.
Besides moral standing, there are additional conditions required for a rebuke to be fully just. For instance, it must be necessary -- that is, less drastic measures have been tried -- and it must be proportional to the problem -- overkill turns a rebuke into an unjust punishment. The protest must be legible, i.e., it must be set up in such a way that people can figure out why it's happening in the first place. And one must do it in such a way as is appropriate to common good -- that is, the way one does it must be focused on rendering benefit to everyone, even those against whom one is protesting. This is, I think, the most difficult of the standards to meet, and it is often not met; movements that have done unusually well at meeting it, like Gandhi in India, or many of the protests of the Civil Rights Movement, did not find it easy, and did as well as they did only because they put a lot of time and effort into trying.
People tend to assume, I think, that you've done your duty if you've avoided rioting, but finding out how to uphold the common good while protesting is not a trivial problem to solve. People also tend to assume that if your goals are just enough, you are done; but here, as everywhere else in ethics, your means must be appropriate and just. Both of these assumptions are very dangerous, ethically speaking, and seem to be tied to a tendency (which sometimes seems to be on the rise) to give oneself a free pass to attack your fellow citizens and human beings when you feel like it, without any consideration for them as citizens and human beings.
There are, in any case, various complications that arise that I haven't gone into here-- protests are often planned, but sometimes arise spontaneously in the face of egregious injustices, and the former arguably involves a rather stricter set of standards than the latter, for instance -- but the above all arise from general principles. You can't be a just person in any endeavor and not consider some analogue of these. There is no end run around them.
Various Links of Note
* John Irons translates the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, A Leaf from Heaven.
* Richard Marshall interviews Roman Altshuler on time and action.
* I recently gave a link to a translation of part of St. Francis Borgia's litany through the topics of Aquinas's Summa; for those who are interested, here is the full thing in Latin, all twenty-two dual-columned pages of it.
* Joseph Trabbic defends Plato's Republic.
Currently Reading
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to be King
Christ - Our Pascha: Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
Hyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil, The Anti-Emile
Michael Flynn, In the Country of the Blind
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