December 2, 2020

Rev. Fr. Joselito Buenafe

Why do we need to study virtues?

The trend in moral theology is going back to the basic – Patristics, Thomas Aquinas.
In the time of Benedict XVI’s pontificate, Ratzinger the great theologian, his first encyclical
was Deus Caritas Est. It shook many theologians, because it was so basic, to go back to the
basic.

Spes Salvi (Hope Saves). His encyclicals were Faith, Hope and Love.

Virtue has been neglected in the past. Virtues have been overlooked because
dogmas, exegesis were more emphasized. In the field of Moral theology, Bioethics were
given more emphasis. Moral life has been reduced to ethical obligation to follow with
regard to laws and norms. There is a tendency to go back to rigid moral legalism. It is all
about what to do and what to avoid. It is about the dos and the don’ts. It is fostering guilt
and avoidance of sin. This is a growing tendency to emotivism. Macintyre explains it as the
doctrine that all evaluative judgment, and more specifically all moral judgments, are
nothing but expressions of preferences, attitudes, feeling. And thus, morality is based on
emotions. Consequently, it results to relativism – what I judge good may not be good to
you; and what I judge bad may not be bad to you.

Morality disappears because it depends on you. It is degeneration – a great cultural

loss. Morality is in danger. (Right now, there is a tendency to make things unacceptable,
acceptable). It is making what is shameful normal and ordinary. (Gay relationships were
freed in Boy Love series). This is a move to desensitization – to desensitize and make things
normal. (Today, there is a trial in marriage. Before, when a girl is pregnant, then she should
marry her boyfriend). (There was a time when massage parlors were not located in decent
places). It sounds essential to wellness.

We have chosen a path wherein we have to be witnesses – we chose to follow the

Lord. The way of the Lord is a virtuous life – it is not self-centered, it is not comfortable, it is
not always giving in to the flesh, to the cravings of the carnal body. This study of virtues can
be summed up in one sentence to act according to our natured-ness. It is disciplining our
instinct by our distinct rationality that separates us from the animal kingdom.

Ethics without virtues remains an illusion. There is a necessity to virtues. Many

theologians find interest in the study of virtues. It is making a strong comeback in the 20 th
century. The study of virtue is interconnected with other areas of theology. Our study of
theology would be meaningless unless it is carried out in real life. The study of virtues is
the practicality of theology.

Virtues disposes the possessor to practice the internalized principles and norms. In
layman’s term, it is making theology practically operative.
 What is the purpose of ethics? The purpose of ethics is to make people good – to
make them virtuous. Virtues are more than compliance; they should be cultivated and
inculcated. Virtue is the enhancement of the human person in a way befitting his nature.

Virtue is corrective – the bad habits, the displaced attitudes. We need virtue in order
to put order to our disordered, weak and vulnerable nature – to change our moral
deficiencies, to overcome temptations and to eradicate evil and vices.

Virtue is the perfection of the human person in the highest level. For Aristotle, it is
arete – excellence, the excellence of the human person, the achievement of virtues, arete,
the optimum potency, the highest possibility of the human person, virtue.

January 15, 2020 – Mensing

The Greek understanding has a great impact on how we understand virtues.

THE ETHICS OF CHARACTER: VIRTUES AND VICES

Socrates
-Knowledge and Virtue are One
-happiness consists in the well-being conditioned by good action. happiness cannot
be found in the perishable things in this world. it cannot be found in the external world.
what one needs is virtue. He focuses the way to be happy is to become virtuous. Becoming
virtuous depends on knowledge.

Knowledge and virtue are one in the sense that he who knows what is right does
what is right. It necessarily follows that virtues can be taught. Teaching is not mere
notional instruction but leading man to the real insight.

No man does evil knowingly. One errs because of ignorance. To answer that
ignorance – education. No wise man errs willingly. All who do evil would do them against
their will. All wants to be happy. When somebody errs, he is of wrong belief. Failure to do
good or what is right is due to ignorance. It is by the cultivation of virtue that we will be
able to destroy evil or ignorance.

For Socrates, the remedy is to educate the person so that he knows what is good.
Instruction. The purpose of a prison cell is to correct the errant.

Plato
-Concern for the character has flourished in the West since the time of Plato, whose early
dialogues explored such virtues as courage and piety.

-Happiness is also the summum bonum. It is the true development of man’s

personality as a rational and moral being through the right cultivation of his soul, which is
the general harmony. Happiness includes the knowledge of God, the Absolute God.
 -Dietetus-what we need is to escape this life because our soul is imprisoned in this
body. Man has to flee from this world.

Virtue is also teachable.

It is in the state that we find the most important application of virtue. Virtue is a
political concept. A virtuous man is a responsible citizen. There is no way to be excellent as
a man as he should be excellent as a citizen, and vice versa. The state does not exist merely
to advance the economic affairs of men. The state aims the development of virtues, in his
fullness in the principle of justice. It is the responsibility of the state to train its citizens in
virtue. The only person capable to teach is the philosopher, in whom reason rules, who is
the happiest among men.

Virtue is the order, harmony and health of the soul. Vice is the antidote of the soul.

Plato’s Republic points the four cardinal virtues. For him, the primary virtues are
prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, under which all other virtues are hinged. They
correspond to the natural of the soul. Virtues are not merely compatible with each other as
they are connected with each other. Either you have it all or you do not have it. The lack of
one is the lack of all. The presence of one is the presence of all virtue.

Aristotle
-Strength of character (habit)
-Involving both feeling and action
-Seeks the mean between excess and deficiency relative to us
-Promotes human flourishing
Nicomachean Ethics
-Aristotle believed that the summum bonum is happiness (eudaimonia). It is the
proper function of the human life as a whole – it involves all the aspects of man. Virtue is
arete or excellence. Happiness is a sense of well-being resulting from achieving excellence
in the fulfillment of one’s actions. Excellence is giving your best, the best of man can be.

Nature is you act according to your naturedness. Man is virtuous if he does his best
as a thinking person. The cognitive perfects the appetitive so that man acts according to
reason, to his naturedness.

In any case, happiness is attained by a virtuous activity, through the cultivation of

virtues.

Virtue is a disposition which has been develop out of a capacity by the proper
exercise of a capacity. Thus, good conduct arises from habits that are acquired by repeated
action. One does not wake up and he’s virtuous.

Virtue, he defines, also as the golden mean. Thus, there is a presence of two
extremes. Both of which are vices as defect or excess. Virtue is kainaman. Too little is
always wrong.
 Stoics

The universe is bound by a universal law. The essential nature of human is reason.
Both can be summarized by the stoics, “Live according to nature.” Agreement of human
action with the law of nature. It is to live in accordance with reason, with right reasoning.
You are not just an animal. You are a human persons. One must not be impulsive with his
instincts but it should be motivated by reasoning.

The virtuous person becomes the sage who has the knowledge of the good formed
by his insights.

Virtues are indissolubly connected. It is either you are virtuous or not virtuous. You
cannot be in a process. Virtue requires judgment. Conversion is instant.

Saint Augustine
Supreme Good is the eternal contemplation of God.
It is not the virtue of your soul that you become happy. It is He that inspires you and
the power to do so who is the end of virtue. Permanent and enduring happiness can only be
found in (loving) God. Virtue is the perfect love of God.

Demoribus Ecclesiae Catholicae 15, 25: To live well is nothing other than to love God
with all one’s heart and with all one’s soul.

The destiny of the human soul and the law of God are the determinants of the moral
good.
Referring to the moral law, it is union of the will to God. Christian virtues are an
endowment coming from God with his grace. Virtue is the fix disposition of the soul making
connatural to what is right.

Virtue (theological) is God in work with us even without us. You do not give effort to
give it, it is infused. Charity is the foundation of all virtues (cardinal). We are inclined to the
good. It has a fixed disposition.

Thomas Aquinas
God is the ultimate good and happiness of man. Perfect happiness lies in the vision
and union of God which is attainable in the next life but is experienced in this life if we live
virtue in this life.

This is different in Aristotle’s happiness which is attainable in this life. For Aquinas,
this happiness is beatific vision realized in God. The fullness of happiness is in the next life.
Only rational creatures can attain that final good because only man is made in the image
and likeness of God.
 Human act should perfect man as a rational being. The measure of human act is
reason. For it is through reason that man goes to what he is being ordained, his telos.

Virtue as a good operative habits. It is through which we reach perfection and to

which we move to God. He takes this from Aristotle.

A habit is a habit if it suggests:

1. promptness - readiness
2. ease – facility in performing the action
3. joy – satisfaction while doing it.
Virtue is not just a habit, but a good habit directed to the ultimate finality of our
naturedness. Because we are children of light, of God.

The quality of goodness distinguishes virtues from vices.

Virtue as the golden mean between the two extremes – excess and defect.

January 20, 2021

Life is confusing to someone without principles, without direction.

Is there a roadmap to life?

If you have a principle, then this life principle will be your highest priority. Others
will be subordinated.

This world is given to us by God with a roadmap.

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Road 1:
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you
today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees
and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land
you are entering to possess.

Road 2:
But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow
down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be
destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and
possess.

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and
death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and
that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD
is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers,
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Life and prosperity vs death and destruction.

Both the book of Deuteronomy and the book of Psalm.

Psalm 1

Road 1:
Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of
sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law
he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its
fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

Road 2:
Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will
not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD
watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
We are stronger in the knowledge of nature but weaker in the knowledge of goodness. We
are lost because we have thrown away the roadmap. Because we think we know it all, but
choose the thread that I want.

Abandonment of virtues leads to corruption. When you move closer and closer to
the cliff or to the abyss, the most progressive direction is not to move forward, but to go
backward – to trace the road, to go back to the basics of faith. A good example is Benedict
XVI’s Deus Caritas Est. This is basic – the movement of moral theology, to go back to what is
foundational.

Virtues and vices, good and bad quality of life.

The old maps were fallen into being unused or misused.
But the old maps still works.

EMOTIVISM – is the doctrine that all evaluative judgment and more specifically all moral
judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude, or feeling.

Emotivism claims that all faiths and all evaluations are equally non-rational; all are
subjective directions given to sentiment and feeling. The sole reality of distinctively moral
discourse is the attempt of one will to align the attitudes, feelings, preference and choices of
another with its own. Thus, others are always means, never ends.

Modernists or liberal Christians in all churches and denominations essentially reduce

religion to morality
-Christianity to them is essentially an ethic, a way of living in this world rather than a way
of attaining the next.
-Christ becomes essentially our human teacher and example rather than God our savior.
-Ethics thus become supremely important for the modernist. It’s his “thing”, all he has left.
What has been the Orthodox Christians’ response to modern value vacuum?
-Conservative Protestants, both evangelicals and fundamentalists, have not been able to fill
the ethical needs of our time mainly because of their suspicion of a traditional natural law
ethics of virtues and vices with a foundation in a rational knowledge of human nature.
-They think it results in a two-layer cake, with natural virtue on the bottom and
supernatural virtue on the top.
-One of the most serious faults in the evangelical and fundamentalistic ethics is its
passivity. Its adherent says, “The Lord will work it out.”

“The Lord will work it out.” – it means to them that no human effort can save you, it
is only God’s grace that saves you. So, one tends to be passive.

For us Christians, the grace is open to but he needs to participate.

Ethics without virtue remains to be an illusion.

-Josef Pieper: The Four Cardinal Virtues (1965), and the Theological Virtues: Hope (1935),
Faith (1961), and Love (1972).
-Peter Geach: The Virtues (1977)
-Philippa Foot: Virtue and Vices (1978)
-Alasdair MacIntyre: After Virtue (1984)

Why is virtue ethics making a strong come back at the end of the twentieth century?

And why is it relevant in the field of Moral Theology?

-Virtue helps in making theology become practically operative.

Our study of theology is nothing unless they are carried out in real life.

-“Virtue is the enhancement of the human person in a way befitting his nature.”

ST. THOMAS
-The theology of virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the beatitudes together form a
single instruction on Christian perfection. “The whole of moral matter is placed in the
context of virtues,” and so “nothing in morals will be overlooked.”

Shifting toward Virtue

1. The Shift from Acting to Being.
The act-centered ethics (x).
A movement from behavior to virtues (person-centered ethics).
 However, we say that the person is more important than the act. (This is in relation
to the pharisees who were act-centered).

Making a decision is more important than judging between 2 competing values.

What concerns virtue ethics? Man, the human person.

The Pharisees would judge Jesus for eating with the sinners and prostitutes. It is so
wrong to them because the Law says that they are not to touch them. However, Jesus was
more concern with the person, with bringing the good news to them, with saving them.

This is a kind of being-centered ethics.

Our God is not a result-oriented God, He is more concerned with what has become of
you, what has become of us. We are more interested with the doer. Who we are affects
what we do. What we do affects what we become.

Character is the term used in virtue ethics to express moral identity.

Our moral choice expresses who we are. We act in or out of character. Action follows
from character.

Character is built. It is characterized by certain traits.

We recognize character by certain traits, or virtues. “Virtues” are both the inclination to act
in a certain way so that the action is virtually “second nature” to us, and they are the ability
to act that way.

-In contrast to the act-centered approach that asks, “What is the right thing to do?”
-Virtue ethics asks, “From what inner place are you doing it?”

After the 9am Break

-Morality does not lie in the occasional, dramatic decisions that we sometimes have to
make, but in the character that we are forming by living from day to day and doing things
over and over.

2. The Restoration of the Moral Quality of Everyday Living

-If we restrict the meaning of morality to determining right actions, then we can easily get
the impression that we enter the realm of morality only when we face hard choices.

For virtue ethics, there is no moral free zone.

-The moral life goes on continually.

Virtue happens in the day to day life, in the everyday habit of doing good.
 The heart of the moral life is not law.
The way we live from day to day creates moral momentum.

-Character is always a work in progress. No one is finished. We are all on the way to
becoming a fuller realization of the kind of person we are practicing to become.

3. Shift from Classicist Worldview to Historical Consciousness

-Classicism emphasizes the unchanging and permanent.
-By contrast, historical consciousness recognizes both permanence and development.

The Church developed and become more aware of historical consciousness.

The Church condemned Galileo Galilei for denying that the earth is at the center of
the universe and that the world is flat. He was excommunicated. Only in the time of John
Paul II that it was lifted.

Virtue ethics fits well with historical consciousness by taking change seriously.

-The great gift of historical consciousness is that the truth we recognize along the way is
less like a comfort station and more like a launching pad sending us on to new discoveries.

Prudence helps to judge wisely in a particular situation. Virtue links us to action out
of the internal. In the end, the real test of virtues is how we are when no one is seeing us.
When we have not rehearsed.

What is lacking nowadays is passion for virtues.

Virtue is too conservative, distant and no outlet for passion?

Rekindle the fire of virtue.
The answer is that most people who practice virtue do not do so with passion.
-To be virtuous is a passion-less existence?

Ronald Rolheiser, Secularity and the Gospel

-“What is most needed right now to inspire us as missionaries within secularity is a re-
inflaming of the romantic imagination within religion.”

What Rolheiser thinks we are lacking however, is

-“…fire, romance, aesthetics, as these pertain to our faith and ecclesial lives.”
-What needs to be inflamed today inside religion is its romantic imagination…”
-“…solid ideas and solid programs alone are… not enough.”
-We need someone to re-inflame the PASSION that ignites revolution in Christianity, a new
Francis, a new Clare, a new Augustine, a new Thomas More, a new Ignatius, a new Therese
of Lisieux.”
People who are passionate in living out their faith through virtuous habits.
-We have too little idealistic fire left… We need to retrieve our passion for faith, religion,
and church and give people something beautiful with which to fall in love.”
Division of Virtues According to Classes
I. Theological (Faith, Hope and Charity)
-those by which the human soul is joined to God.

II. Intellectual (Speculative and Practical)

-those which perfect the intellect

III. Moral (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance

-those by which the appetitive faculties are perfected for obeying the dictates of reason.

I. Theological Virtues
-Supernatural and infused virtues
-Immediate end (objectum materiale) – God
-Motive (objectum formale) – God

Three in number
-Faith, hope & love

Faith
-Revelation & faith
-Faith is the firm assent of the intellect with the assistance of the divine grace, to a truth
revealed by God; an assent that is motivated by the authority of God, Who, in revealing, can
neither deceive nor be deceived.

Hope
-Hope, as theological virtue, “is the steadfast turning toward the true fulfillment of man’s
nature, that is, toward good, only when it has its source in the reality of grace in man and is
directed toward supernatural happiness in God.”

Love
-The virtue of charity is a habit which enables us to love God above all else for His own
sake, and ourselves and our brothers for God’s sake.
-Aristotle defines love as, “to wish another everything we think good, and moreover for
other’s sake, not for our own.”

II. Intellectual Virtues

-Aquinas states that, “the things of the intellectual virtues are those whereby a man is made
happy, both because the acts of these virtues can be meritorious and also because they are
a kind of beginning of perfect beatitude, which consists in the contemplation of truth.”

Speculative Virtues
-Understanding
-Science
-Wisdom

Practical Virtues
-Art
-Prudence

III. Moral Virtues

-Known as Cardinal Virtues
-Cardinal = “cardes” which means hinge
-Four in number:
-Prudence
-Justice
-Fortitude
-Temperance

Prudence
-Prudence is “the virtue that disposes us to discern the golden mean of all moral virtue, and
inclines us in the choice of the right means of action.”

Fortitude
-Fortitude signifies a state or habit of moral strength and bravery. “The task of the virtue of
courage is to remove the hindrance which holds back the will from following reason.”

Temperance
-By its very name, Temperance, “it expresses a measured temper communicated by
intelligence.”

The connection of Virtues

-Stoics
-Scholastics

Vices
-Material Element:
-Inclination that is present in us to exceed the mean (or to fall short of it) in certain spheres
thus repeat disordered actions frequently (a bad habit).

-Formal Element:
-Lack of the uprightness in the person’s will.

January 27, 2021

VIRTUE: A Semantic Exploration in Tagalog
Bakit dapat magpakamoral?
Moral in Tagalog
-Magpakabuti: to be good
-Magpakabait: to be kind
-Magpakatino: to be righteous, to be upright
-Magpakatuwid: to be straightforward
-Magpakatapat: to be honest
-Magpakadangal: to be dignified
-Magpakalinis: to be pure
-Magmagandang-asal: to have a good trait or good attitude
-Magmakapuri: to be pure
-Magpakalinis: to be clean, but also to be transparent

Ultimately, this will all boil down to…

-Magpakatao:
to be a human person, to act according to our nature
We have to be a moral person because we are created a moral person – beautiful
attributes of a human person.

Magpakamoral = Magpakatao: To be a moral person is to be a true person.

Ethics = Pagpapakatao
– kalinisang-asal (to be a human person in the fullest sense of being a human
person.

Example: Pasensya na tao lang.

This expression implies justifying weakness.
Sometimes we do that.

Character as Pagkamakatao
Again, it highlights the person. What should be emphasized is the being over the
acting

Pagkatao
-Character indicates the fundamental way of relating with reality. Pagkatao converges with
this meaning in the sense that man relates to the world in a manner peculiar to himself, i.e.,
in a human way.

We, at times, become mere creatures like animals. We should relate to the world in a
human way.

The truly moral character response to reality is neither quasi-divine or like a divine,
but as a human person. We also do not act like an animal.

Pagkamakatao vs. Pagkahayop (to be animal or beast like)

 One can call you, “Hayop ka, baboy ka, buwaya ka, kapit tuko, unggoy ka!” But
animalas would act according to their naturedness. Examples: there are no obese animals.
But man would procure everything to secure himself.

Karl Marx calls the human person as a beast with endless desires. “Happiness is not
having what you want. It is wanting what you have.” ~Bo Sanchez

Pagkamakatao sa isip at bait

Asal tao having the human conduct. We are behaving in a human way.

Character constituted by at least two elements

-bait [moral nature] &
-isip [moral sense]

Bait
-Constitutive capacity in man to discern what is rationally (prudentially) appropriate on
the basis of innate identification with, or personal appropriation of, the good.

It is kindness (kabaitan).
Bait is the carrying out in action of the good deeds. Isinaisip that is expressed with
kindness and goodness.

Isip (tangka)
-In the sense of Judgment, Sense, Discernment, Criterion and Opinion.
-To lack it is to be WALANG-ISIP (crazy, ulol, loko, hibang).
-To have it in a distorted way is to be LIKONG-ISIP.

Man has a sense (isip) for the moral (bait).

One can have a good isip or tangka or intentionality, but with a distorted bait (the
carrying out is not in accord with the isip). One can also a good action but a wrong intent.
However, to have a moral sense one must both have isip and bait. Neither isip nor bait
alone constitutes the moral sense. You need the isip and you need the bait.

Moral Personhood understood as Character is Actualized by:

-Fundamental Option (Ugat-Pasiya): root decision
-Moral Attitude – Hilig, Ugali, Paninindigan, Pananaw: One’s ethical stance & one’s ethical
perspective

Ethics as Pagpapakatao – lay down the principles and rules how to be human
Virtue as Pagkamakatao – one has achieved that becoming human person; when the how
process has been achieved.

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg
Kohlberg’s Stage Theory
In 1958, Kohlberg started to outline his stage theory

Preconventional level consists of:

Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment Orientation
Stage 2: Individualism and Exchange

Conventional level consists of:

Stage 3: Good Interpersonal Relationships
Stage 4: Maintaining Social Order

Postconventional level consists of:

Stage 5: Social Contract and Individual Rights
Stage 6: Universal Principles

In the preconventional level, we are unfamiliar with the standards of society. Values
are in external events. Unchanging set of rules or laws which are considered as right.
Individuals follow the rules of society to avoid punishment. We follow because there are
threats.

In Stage 2, they recognize that the rules they blindly followed in stage 1 are subject
to change and so morality is relative. That the rules can be done in other forms and
manners.

Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment Orientation

-There is a strict set of rules that must always be followed
-The ideas of punishment and permission are key
-Preconventional thought expressed
You will obey because if you do not obey you will be punished.

Stage 2: Individualism and Exchange

-Now there is not one right way of doing things; everything is relative
-Fair exchange policy
The person recognizes that there are other ways in achieving particular ends. One
discovers that there are other means to achieve an end.
-The role of punishment weakens
Accomplishing a task in your own way. When you can achieve the result by doing it
your way.

Stage 3: Good Interpersonal Relationships

Individuals are now aware and performing right rules. There is this awakening that
“I can’t do it just how I want. I need to conform with the society, to conform with a
particular standard, norm, rule, acceptable.”

-“Good Boy/Nice Girl” Orientation

 More concern with what others will say. This is a point of a proving of oneself. This
is dependent on public approval.
-People should live up to the expectations of community
-Characters’ traits and motives are examined
Meeting of the expectations of others are emphasized.

Stage 4: Maintaining the Social Order

-There is an emphasis is on obeying laws, respecting authority, and performing one’s duties
so social order is maintained.
-Perspective changes to society as a whole
-Not only does the child say a certain action is right or wrong, they explore the reasons why

Stage 5: Social Contract and Individual Rights

Individuals understand the morality behind the accepted norms of society. They
understand the need for shared standards, rights, and duties. Morality is accepted because
you know the reason why. You are fully awake, you are conscious, you realized why youn
need to follow.

-An individual’s moral judgment is motivated by community respect, respecting social

order, and respect for legally/determined laws
-Thoughts consider the rights and values a society must uphold.

I need to follow, yes. But in terms of your following, one is following with a sense of
freedom as you exercise your right (meaning it is not being compromised).

Stage 6: Universal Principles

-Involves universal principles of justice that apply to all people
-We treat the particular dilemma through unbiased and impartial eyes
-We can only reach this stage by looking at a situation through someone else’s eyes.

One is not imposing his own right alone. You are aware of the boundaries of your
right. But your right is in communion with others’ rights too. This is the highest stage – the
perfected stage. The principle of justice that applied to all people. Your decision is based on
a bigger perspective.

Obedience and Punishment Orientation

-Concern on a fixed set of unchanging rules
-We worry about what authorities will permit and punish
-Punishment=wrong

-I’ts /wrong to…

-You’ll get punished/You won’t get
-It’s a sin to…/It is against the…

Individualism and Exchange

-Everything is now relative; punishments are now a risk
-Individuals are seeking favors
-Fair exchange policy

-Just because one person thinks it’s right, someone else might not
-This person may think it’s good/right for him
-It was /The fair way would have been…
Interpersonal Relationships
-“Good Boy/Nice Girl” Orientation
-Now there is a look at motives of each party involved
-The children now see the multi-dimensional aspect to a problem
-Character traits are described

-This person had the right idea

-His , but…
-This person was “greedy, selfish” or “caring and loving”

Maintaining a Social Order

-Emphasis on obeying laws, respecting authority, and performing one’s duties so social
order is maintained
-Not only do we say it’s wrong, but we explore the reason why it is so

-Stealing or breaking the law is never right, even though it is understandable why the
person did it
-What would happen
-It’s against the law to… because…

Social Contract and Individual Rights

-Stress on basic rights and democratic procedures to change unfair laws
-Strong language is used; the idea of right to life

-The person has a

-Laws are that everyone agrees to uphold

Universal Principles
-Look at problems through all eyes-clear concept of universal principles

-We decided no child would reach this stage at age 10 or 11

Universal to Perfection and Holiness

Our common vocation by which we will respond to the call of God – a holy life. We
have the impression that striving for perfection is concern only of few – the path of
religious and priests are called. Christians would content themselves to the commands of
the Lord – without inspiration; minimalist.
The Story of the Rich Young Man (Mt. 19:16-22)
Sell all that you have and give it to the poor. He left because he was so rich and he
cannot detach with his richness. Holiness is not like saying, “Oh I got it.” It is a continuous
process. It is a pilgrimage. We can only reach our goal in the beatific vision. One has to go
on and on until you reach the mansion of God. Excellence is achieved when we give our best
and not the minimum.
In this story, to be virtuous is to reach his optimum. What is required? You give all;
you surrender all. The path to virtue is not an egocentric act; it is not self-enrichment. The
self benefits upon good deeds and works. The self gains when the self knows how to die to
self and give everything he has for others. The virtuous life is the willingness to give all in
order to achieve the sumum bonum. It is with intent of loving God.

The call to perfection is a universal one and since it represents not only a counsel but an
obligation, it is certainly suited, if not imperative, to give some consideration to it in a
systematic treatment of moral theology.

Some defective Ideas of Holiness

1. Holiness as the performance of more and more good works, zeal in religious practice,
conscientious participation in parochial organizations and abstention from any vices.
To say it is all there is is wrong. Remember how faithful the Jews were in the
performance of the act; rigid in the conscientious participation of the sacrifices, and fasting,
and all that is required. They religiously followed it. “If you have not loved.” ~St. Paul.
Holiness is not mere externalities. Holiness is the practice of virtue. It is the mean – the
golden mean between the extremes. It is the balance between the interior and the exterior.
2. Many today think of the Christian life as (1) a certain amount of church going, saying of
prayers, pious practices, and (2) not breaking the commandments and the commandment
of the church.
3. Growth in holiness may easily be taken to mean piling up more and more prayers and
pious practices and becoming more and more free of any sense-entanglements.
Prayer is a good habit which transforms and draws us to him, to God. In doing so,
when we are drawn to God, it is us who benefits from it. It is in becoming holy that we
become who we truly are. We are called to be an elect, a chosen people of God. We are
called to be with God. The call is a call to holiness. When we glorify the Lord we sanctify
ourselves and when we sanctify ourselves, we become who we genuinely are.

4. The popular idea of perfection and sainthood is often still further corroborated by the
conventional descriptions of the lives of the saints and the works of pious art.
For instance, Blessed Carlo Acutis. The path to holiness is the path to ordinary life
done in the will of God. St. Therese: the path to holiness is not loads of things to do and to
accomplish.
5.Each one becomes perfect, not by realizing one uniform standard of universal perfection
in his own life, but by responding to the call and the love of God, addressed to him within
the limitations and circumstances of his own peculiar vocation.
We are formed by memorization – these and that in the catechism. But we are told
to internalize what we are taught. It now becomes my faith, my assent to God. External
conformity to social norms and ideals may result to moral perfectionism. Look at the
scribes and pharisees, the looked well dressed but they did only follow what was only
required.
No one is born a saint. Saints had shameful past. They have just selflessly dedicated
their life to God. Being a saint is highlighting the triumph of God more than the self. It is a
gift from God – that halo.
Sainthood is not being a quasi-divine. Holiness is being truly human – pagpapakatao,
pagkamakatao – being who we truly are. It is not just about what I can do but about what
God can do.
Holiness is a dialectic between ideals and reality. Making the ideal concrete in the
lived experience. This is how the saints lived their lives witnessing concretely. Each
becomes perfect by responding to the call and love of God according to one’s peculiar
vocation. There is no one way, one path to holiness. There is a variety. Religious life is not
the supreme way to holiness.

Holiness in Scriptures
-OT concept of perfection can be defined as wholehearted service of God through obedient
fulfillment of his commandments and faithful, undivided love.
-NT – “Do not be conformed to the law but be transformed by the renewal of you mind, that
you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom.
12:2).
The law is not the end, but communion with God. OT had this definition that
obedience is all that there is required.
God is indeed compatible with humanity. We are made suitable for God. We are one.
I feel your pain. It is to carry each other’s load. Jesus comes to share our load.

Love.
All the virtues are under the umbrella of love. The very reason for being incarnate is
for us to value what love means concretely. Perfection is fulfillment of God’s precept –
selfless dedicated love for neighbor and as close discipleship of Jesus.

Essence and Universality of the Call to Perfection

-Theology: Perfection can be defined as the most consequent realization of the whole-
hearted option for God’ creative and salvific will.
-The concept of perfection can therefore be unfolded as dedicated, whole-hearted service
to the greater glory of God, to the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom, and to the universal
welfare and development of fellowmen.
Contemplation and acts of justice should be interpenetrating each other.

Purpose of Perfection:
-Perfection finally consists in the thorough development of the personal abilities and graces
required for the efficient fulfillment of one’s role in the Mystical Body.
-Hence the call to perfection must be understood as dynamic, not as static: to keep striving
towards the appointed goal. Must try to open for the new requirements of the times.

Holiness is not a matter of technique.

 While holiness is perfection, it is also the positivity in God everything is possible,
there is a reason to be frightened when we strive to further. He strives to be perfect
although one falls short. There really are low and high points in meditation. But one really
has to struggle, to continue, to keep striving towards the appointed goal.

Holiness, furthermore, is not a mere individual affair.

It is not, “basta ako, ewan ko sa inyo.” It is mediated through the Church as a
community. I am not to become holy alone. Holiness is perfected in the context of a
community. It is not realized alone, only with the other. If I will be holy, then you ought to
be holy too. We grow in holiness within a family, within a community. It is not an individual
affair.

-God created man to make manifest in him and through him his glory. He wanted him to be
a cooperator of his divine salvific plans. Since this task is the very reason for man’s
existence, he ought to live totally for it.

Pathway to Holiness: CHARITY

-Holiness is not merely the absence of sin. Primarily it is a creative love in the service of the
kingdom of God.
-Charity is the constitutive element of holiness is not possible without an interior poverty
of the spirit, which enables the person to practice solidarity with the unfortunate and
dispossessed.
The central core of Jesus’ teaching is love expressed in the Trinitarian love. Jesus
extends and expresses this Trinitarian love. God is love, and where there is love, there is
God. We need to persevere amidst the monotony and drudgery. We are not converted only
once in our life. Everyday is a call to be converted. In this endless series of large and small
conversions, the inner leads finally to transformation in Christ. When we love then we
become really an alter Christus.

February 10, 2021

Grace according to Thomas Aquinas
In Judeo-Christian, revelation of the love of God for us. God revealed himself because
he loves us. Love seeks to know the person. When you don’t want to relate with in the
fullest sense of the word, then maybe you’re going to utilize persons.

If you truly love, you reveal yourself. This is similar to God’s revelation. God wants
us to know Him. Love that surpasses understanding. We may not comprehend the fullness
of revelation, because we are limited. Be that as it may, he reveals in the way we can
understand Him.

Before faith, we have grace. Grace is the process through which we realize faith. God
meets us and encounters us where we are – that is why he became man.

Through creation, we see God’s love. This is the first act in which God’s love is
poured. He is the infinite absolute – we should not say he has intelligence and love. He is
being Himself and intelligence and love and beauty itself. It’s wrong to say he has, because
he IS. Man acts in order to gain benefit from us. But God could not benefit from creation and
from us. God is God (period). He has pure desire to… When God revealed himself, he reveals
his presence.

Three aspects of his presence in creation: 1. knowing presence – that pierces the
secrets of hearts, he knows us and creation through and through – almighty, omniscient,
omnipresent. 3. presence of essence – the power to be what it is, we are homo sapiens, we
are God’s children who has his image and likeness.

The second act: we realize the love of God in the presence of indwelling. We are
the only ones gifted with the soul in his image and likeness. Yes, it can be discerned in
creation – reflecting the giver – but the fullness of his indwelling in us is conditioned by the
descent in that Spirit of grace in the fullness of its meaning. The indwelling is facilitated by
God’s grace. Grace transforms the soul and fits it for the immediate indwelling of God’s
presence.

The word grace has 3 interdependent senses: we say someone has a grace – you
have the favor, act of love that comes down to some being. 2. something that is given to a
person to signify his well-wishing, something that you give a person, I will empower you, so
that we can be what God wants us to be. 3. gratitude on the part of the person who has been
favored, gifted, or given, that act of gratitude is grace, God wishes us to be well, this does
not remain abstract because it is concretized with grace and when we are given grace, our
response is gratitude.

The uncreated divine Grace causes us created graces for which we render acts of
thanksgiving.

Difference between God’s love and man’s love. God’s love gives being and meaning
into things. Man’s love presupposes the goodness and beauty of things. When it is fully
good it ravishes me, it invites me. God loves you and when he loves you, he is the one who
will give you the beauty, the goodness, the being. He will give you that which you need. He
will grace you with what you need. Willing and loving are the same in God. We qualify
based on our qualities. In God, he gave the seed, the grace, it is there. And when you are
open, you’ll see the potential of the seed, the grace in you. One marvels at how grace works
in you. Man’s love follow the goodness of things. God is creative of the goodness of things.

Love of God is common and special. Common love is by which God loves the created
realities, in its essence, that extend to all that exists insofar as it exists. Special love is by
which God elevates the rational creature above the conditions of his nature. He elevated
humanity above the condition of nature, as if with new nature, and brings him into a new
universe. He says creation for him. He makes him a sharer in the divine life by pouring into
him created graces. Man is the only creature gifted with grace. Because the grace is there,,
god made him co-creator and head and steward of creation. God called him beloved.
 Created grace is a reality, a quality, a light that enables the soul to receive worthily
the indwelling of the Trinity. Where there is indwelling of grace, there is the Three persons.
The indwelling of the Trinity is facilitated by grace. and faith is an assent to God. By grace,
the mystery of our creaturedness takes place. God comes to meet us – we are only natural
and God is supernatural. Grace allows, processes, and facilitates so that we may able to go
to the depths and intimacy of his being. What makes us utter, “Abba!”
It is supernatural, it transforms. It goes beyond our nature. God wants to encounter
us and He wants us to encounter him.

Habitual grace (from habere meaning to have) – grace is a habitus, a having, an

endowment we possess continuously and which is the source in us of activity. Man has
faculties such as intellect (to know the universe, the impression of things, to penetrate
within them by contemplating them), the will (the faculty that does not receive the world to
view it in a disinterested way but makes us contact with reality).
Grace is as it were the participation in the divine nature. Grace coming from the
supernatural can pick us up (the natural). We can know and love God through grace in his
most hidden depths of his mystery, as in himself. It is the principle of knowing and loving,
which is in God, in an infinite degree.
Grace is both finite and infinite. It is finite because it is in my soul which is finite. I
am drawn grace, if it is intense in others, then it is finite. The great paradox of the eye – as
an organ is finite in its structure, but considering its tendency, its scope of vision, then it is
infinite. In us, there is a ray of his love – a finite participation in his divine nature. It is also
like the net – as if capturing the Trinity.
In the very gift of sanctifying grace, the holy spirit is sent to man to dwell in him.
Grace makes us children of God. Jesus is the son of God by nature; we are sons of God by
adoption. Jesus is heir by identification of his glory; we are coheirs by participation in his
destiny. Us is by right of merit; his was right by merit.
Actual grace is the divine impulse which produces in us acts of free adherence to
God, of free acceptance and consent to his will. God comes to me to draw me to him, to take
possession of my freewill and make it assent without violating it. God gives us freedom.
Actual grace seeks me out in sin to bring us to justification. It carries me to come back to
God, because God is consistently knocking at the door of our heart. Our whole life is a
journey on the way to God.

Distinguish between good and evil act. Good act. Pelagius said, good act is the
product of man alone. While God created the world, He gave man illumination. It is man
alone who assents to God. The decisive factor is that I by my freewill alone takes God’s
hands. Luther’s concept: exact opposite error, the good act comes from God alone, man is
fully corrupted. God alone justifies the sinner. Only God’s grace suffices and saves.
The error common to both is to take the divine and human actions as mutually
exclusive. It gives its being. The good act comes both from God and man, from grace and
freedom. Human action is subordinated to the divine action. It is not only God and man, but
God through man, it is grace through freedom that does the good act. He enables me to
take his outstretch arms. Wholly from God as he touched man’s soul in order that man acts
according to its nature – to be directed towards God, the good. Freedom is not
independence in relation to God. If God does not touch me, am I free? No, I exist no more. I
fall into nothingness. Freedom is to be found within God himself. Freedom is never absolute
as it is relative to God, the truth, justice. It is never absolute. Thee problem with absolute
freedom is it is autonomous. One is free when one does what is right. Sin really enslaves us.
Freedom is doing that which is good, honorable, just, godly, because it is relative to God, the
Giver of freedom. It is interdependent. The nearer I draw to God, then I am more free. My
freedom is dependence in relation to God, a dependence that gives me power over the
lower things.
In the good act, God is the one enveloping the act; man is secondary. In an evil act,
man is the first cause of the deviation, the disorder, the destruction. Man is the first cause of
evil act because of the wrong choice of freedom.

When you have sin, you feel guilt. And where does that guilt come from? From grace
that God is ushering you.

February 17, 2021

The Virtue of Faith
Man exists. What are the questions of man? Man wants to know why he exists? We try to
find answers and explanations to the many whys and hows of our life. Man feels anxious
and insecure without reasonable account of his thrownness in the world. Man has
formulated so many answers – a priori, theism and so on – explaining life and our existence
and purpose. It is an attempt to explain to us and give us something to hold on so that our
questioning may have enlightenment. We contented ourselves with myths because they are
attempts to explain things. Man does not experience God directly. However, there are
manifestations of God that he experiences – religious experience. This forms creeds and
rituals. God knows that we need answers because we are given with rationality. The very
fact that man wants to know the very purpose of his existence is an indication that faith is
in us. Man becomes restless until he finds meaning. There is this longing to connect with
someone, with Absolute, with God. Man’s purpose is to be with God. Before man wants to
connect, God intended to connect with man in ways man can understand it.
Reason is not enough in order to know God. To use natural ability is not enough.
Through faith, we come to know the fulness of God’s revelation in Christ. God disclosed
himself in Christ to people. The purpose of revelation is to make man attain his end.
What is needed is faith that will lead man to an encounter with the divine. Faith is
our way to respond to God’s revelation. Moreover, St. Thomas Aquinas believed that there
need no conflict between what reason and faith teach. For him, faith is seeking
understanding. They are never in opposition; they are hand-in-hand. The Bible teaches us
how God wants us to live. However, God also gives us the conscience to do what is right. A
reasonable faith is not something that ends in the awareness, but in the realization of faith.
Faith is more than assenting to propositions. This faith is never individualistic, it is
ecclesial. God reveals himself to the Church. It is not something private. Faith is a
fundamental option which calls for faithfulness towards God.

Propositions are part of God’s way of revealing Himself. Faith can be

propositional truths. In revelation, there is self-communication. Faith is an assent to the
propositions revealed by God. God in revealing himself to the prophets and in Jesus – there
are things that are right or wrong. Part of the way in which he reveals himself is by
asserting propositions. These propositions are not the whole of revelation. While the words
proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them (DV 2).
Faith in God includes assenting to the truth of propositions. One cannot give
God the submission of faith without assenting to the truths he has revealed. Faith comes
from what is heard and what is heard comes from Christ.
The propositional truths of faith really communicate God. Since God reveals this
propositional truth, believing them is believing in God Himself. Propositional truths can be
human words. But in faith, we believe that this is the Word of God, because they reveal the
truths of God and because Jesus said that it is the word of the Father. All who believe in God
should believe all the propositional truths.
One has responsibility with regards to the propositional truths revealed. The
truths of faith are part of God’s self-communication. Still, some Christians are unaware of
truths of faith. One should be ready to assent to the truths of faith as soon as he becomes
aware of them.
Christian faith is ecclesial. The intent of revealing to an individual is in view of the
ecclesial. What makes a fundamental option is communion with God – the ugat pasya, the
root decision. Faith in God involves personal submission to Him, that is humble and
reverent. The obedience of faith is not arbitrary. The fundamental option of faith initiates
an ongoing relationship. It is a commitment when we enter into a covenant. This faith
should be embodied and expressed in reverent actions.
Vices against faith. Pride that is the root of all sins. Pride is self-sufficiency,
independence. Distrust and unbelief. Unbelief in the form of atheism is not necessarily
denial of the Absolute but is seldom a protest in which Absolute is identified. It is denial of
God. Secularism, a form of unbelief, is a worldly world that is autonomous and self-
sufficient, prioritizing the material rather than God. Infidelity is culpable neglect to inquire
about the faith or cautious resistance to it or being lazy not to know. Heresy is the obstinate
(cautious and wilfull) adherence of a Christian to an error that contradicts a divinely
revealed. Schism is an obstinate refusal to the primacy of the Pope, without otherwise,
rejecting the teachings of the Church. Apostasy is the complete defection of the faith. It is
when you are baptized and then you rejected the faith.

The Virtue of Hope

Status Viatoris – Status Comprehensoris

-Man as pilgrim on this earth
-Status Viatoris one of the basic concept of every…
-To be a viator means to be one on the way.
-Its proper antonym is status comprehensoris. One who has comprehended, encompassed,
arrived, is no longer a viator, but a comprehensor.

-The state of being on the way is not a designation of place.

It refers to the innermost structure of being.
-The not yet of the status viatoris
 -negative
-positive

-The not yet of the status viatoris negative

-proximity to nothingness

-Negative
-Pessimism
-The prophetic hope of the kingdom of God always involved a catastrophic breaking
in of God as well as continuity and discontinuity with the older order.

God will not let his people to be corrupted. Jesus advises us to live a life of self-denial
– a via negativa.

Pessimism
-The final intervention of God will bring a world totally transformed
-their eyes are fixed on what is beyond history.
-distinction between present age and the age to come.
-it envisions a cosmic catastrophe that includes the collapse…

-The present world is viewed as totally under the reign of evil.

-The blessings of the kingdom cannot be experienced in the present.
-This age is abandoned to evil and the righteous can only submit patiently to suffering in
the hope of the new age to come
-God remains the Lord of the world but seems to let run its course without any
intervention.
-The image of God becomes rather deistic.
-The solution to the problem of evil is relegated completely to the future of the coming
Kingdom.
-There is no hope for the present world
-The world, human history and society are so afflicted and permeated by evil that no future
other than total annihilation is possible.

Jesus’ Positivism
-Jesus saw the beauty of creation and the goodness of human beings, because they are
God’s children.
Whenever Jesus sees us, he sees us as good. The question is, how do we also see
sinners?

-Confronted by evil – individual, social or cosmic – Jesus assumes an uncompromising

attitude that aims at the total destruction of it.
-Jesus’ entire mission is bent on overthrowing the demonic power structures who ask
Jesus, “Have you come to destroy us?”
Everything can be done in God.
-Jesus’ whole public life is seen as a struggle against hopelessness
-Temptation Story
His positivity rests in his confidence in God. We should not succumb to the
negativity of this world, but be anchored in the positivity of God.
-Entire Jesus’ ministry (rejection)
-The hour of his passion (climax)

-In the transition from the state of being on the way to that of status comprehensoris, then,
the status viatoris is dissolved in both its negative and positive aspects; the possibility of
turning toward nothingness is abolished by union; the claim to and the orientation toward
fulfillment are abolished by the reality of fulfillment.

-The status viatoris comes to an end at the moment when uncertainty comes to border on
certainty.

Argument by Nihilistic Existential Philosophy

-The proper movement of a being that stems from nothingness is to tend toward
nothingness.
-The meaning of creature’s existence is not nothingness but being, that I, fulfillment.
-The only answer that corresponds to man is hope.

Hope as a Theological Virtue

-Theological virtue is an ennobling of man’s nature that entirely surpasses what he can be
of himself.
-Theological virtue is the steadfast orientation toward a fulfillment and a beatitude that are
not owed to natural man.

Christ the Hope (per Christum Dominum Nostrum)

The miracles and death and resurrection give us hope. If Christ did not resurrect, all
will be put in vain. His resurrection is the fulfillment of our hope. He is the embodiment of
our hope. He is the hope of our glory. Hope cannot exist except in and through Christ.

Prayer and Hope

-Prayer is the expression and proclamation of hope; hope itself speaks through it.

Hope and Youthfulness

-The vitality, rejuvenated powers.
-Aspiration, adaptability and readiness, that strong hearted freshness, that resilient joy,
that steady perseverance in trust that so distinguish the young and make them lovable.
-2 Cor 4:16 – St. Paul: “Even though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being
renewed day by day.”

Vices against Hope.

Despair – is also an anticipation – a perverse anticipation of the nonfulfillment of hope: “To
despair is to descend to hell.”
-Against all reality, they transform the not yet of hope into either the not or the already of
fulfillment.
St. Augustine, “There are two things that kill the soul, despair and false hope.”
-Hope says, “It will turn out well.”

Presumption – is a perverse anticipation of the fulfillment of hope.

-The essential nature of presumption, according to St. Augustine, is a perversa securitas, a
self-deceptive reliance on a security that has no existence in reality.

Hope and Fear of the Lord

Fear of the Lord is understood as reverence and respect.
-Fear of the Lord is not Fear of God – understood as reverence and respect.

Two Kinds of Fear:

1. Timor Filialis or a Timore Castus, a filial or chaste fear. Genuine love of God that affirms
the highest Good for its own sake. Thus, the fear of sin responds to a deeper imperilment of
human existence than does.
2. Timor Servilis, a servile fear. It is an imperfect fear of the Lord. The timor servilis fear
above all the loss of personal fulfillment in eternal life – in other words, eternal damnation.
The fear of eternal punishment, is nevertheless good. It can pave the way for a true love of
God (caritas).

-“They who fear in the Lord turst in the Lord.” (Ps 115:11)

February 24, 2021

The Virtue of Charity

St. Thomas Aquinas gives us the definition of what charity is.

What is love?
St. Thomas’ definition
-St. Thomas begins his treatise on charity [or love] by stating that it is friendship between
God and man.

It implies communication of someone.

-Charity [or love] is a supernatural habit infused by God into the will, by which we love God
for Himself above all things, and ourselves, and our neighbor for God.

-The object of love is primarily God, secondarily ourselves and our fellow human beings.
-The object of love is God as supreme goodness in Himself and as our ultimate end.
-Above all, do not be afraid of loving God. Do you not know that the more we love God, the
happier we are? Because this is our ultimate end, the end for which we are all created. Do
you not know that we are made to love God, so much so that outside of God there is nothing
but emptiness?
 God wants to share his life, what he has. We are all product of love

1 Corinthians 13, 13
a divinely infused habit inclining the human will.

Its origin, by Divine infusion

-The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Rom. 5:5

It is infused together with the sanctifying grace.

-Its seat, in the human will.

It is not the good feeling.

Its specific act, i.e. the love of benevolence and friendship.

-To love God is to wish Him all honor and glory and every good, and to endeavor, as far as
we can, to obtain it for Him.

Its motive, i.e., the Divine goodness or amiability to us by faith

taken absolutely and as made known
It is a good in itself.

Its range, i.e., both God and man.

I. Love of God
Deuteronomy 6:5; Matt. 12:37 and Luke 10:27
The Decalogue – Commandments of Compassion
-The ten commandments set out systematically what the love of God and neighbor demand.
The first three concerns our duties towards God
-The ten commandments are actually moral imperatives of how to love others and to follow
Christ’s own command to love God.
-Credible and durable norms for everyday life;
-A pattern and structure for living according to Christ’s commandment to love God and
neighbor; and
-a universally accessible source for relation to non-Christians in moral matters.
-The law that God gave was a law not primarily for God’s benefit and delight, but for
humanity’s.
-Thomas Aquinas held that nothing bothered God about human conduct except when…
-Our well-being has always been the aim of God’s love and wisdom.
-A Gift from God

The 1st Commandment

-Ex. 20:1-6
-What is mercy?
-Rescue captures the meaning of mercy.
 Save us because we are sinners. We cry for Jesus for his mercy. To imitate God in his
rescue is our call. It is imitating God as God has mercy for us. Charity is the virtue by which
we are united to God.
Mercy is experienced by God sending Jonah to Nineveh.

II. Love of Man

Foundations of Benedict XVI’s

Reflections on the “Sacrament of Love”
Deus Caritas Est (God is Love).

Benedict XVI on love

-We speak of many forms of love.
-But the conjugal love of man and woman remains as our epitome of loving.
Because it is total self-giving, it is because the bodies are forming one body.
-Benedict XVI asks: Are all forms of love really one?

Eros
-Ancient Greeks called it eros.
-In the Old Greek version of the OT, the word is used only 2x.
-In the NT, not a single instance.

Agape:
-As a totally new vision of Love?
-Nietzsche, in his critique of Christianity, regards this negatively.
-Too much stress on self-denial? No right to enjoy? Advocating a joyless existence?
It is not God who is dead. It is the people who makes Him dead.
-This is an inaccurate caricature
-Did we deny eros

Eros for the Greeks is

-a kind of intoxication
-the overpowering of reason by a divine madness
-which turns man away from finite

Love conquers all

-Canticles 8:6

Eros
-celebrated as divine power
-as fellowship with the divine

-So why did the OT oppose it?

-Was it a perversion of religiosity?

Benedict insists
-The Bible doesn’t reject eros as such
-Rather, it declares war vs. a warped and destructive form of it.
-Instead of divinizing it, the later decadent expressions of Greco-Roman culture tended to
strip it of dignity.

Eros
-as an undisciplined, intoxicated force, is not an ascent in ecstasy towards the divine but a
fall.
-to become a foretaste of the divine, eros needs to be disciplined and purified,

Yes eros is related to divinity.

-Love promises infinity, eternity
-for this to happen it is not enough to submit to our instincts

The self-seeking eros is only purified

-In the path of self-renuncitation.
-John of the cross: In order to arrive at totality, one must pass through nothingness.

Hence
-It should be allowed to attain its true grandeur

Eros is truly achieved

-Only in the full union of soul and body , the spiritual and material.

An Anti-physical, Anti-material Christianity is false

-To say that the material world is evil, or the flesh is evil is
-to negate the goodness of material creation.
-to deny the truth of the physical incarnation of the Son of God.

The opposite extreme

-namely, the exclusive stress on the material or physical, is also false.

Eros, reduced to the physical,

-is debased.

Eros tends to rise in ecstasy towards the divine.

-Ex-stasis (standing outside)
-It pushes the lover beyond the self, in the path of ascent, renunciation, purification and
healing.
This is the proper process of eros.

2 words for love in canticles

-dodim – love as insecure, indeterminate, searching
-ahaba (source of the Greek agape) – love as discovery of the other, going out of oneself, no
longer self-seeking or sinking in intoxication
-it seeks the good of the beloved, ready for sacrifice.
 It is going for the happiness of the other. It is not possessing.

Biblical agape…
-is eros journeying out of the inward-looking self.
-is liberated through self-giving.

Recall Francis of Assisi:

In giving we receive… in dying we are born to eternal life.

Benedict’s synthesis
-Love consists in eros and agape.
-Eros as possessing, ascending love
-Agape as oblative, descending love

The former is realized in the latter.

The latter find its beginnings in the former.

Agape detached from Eros.

-Becomes totally other-worldly, cut off from the complex fabric of life.
-Our goal is not antithesis but synthesis; not separation but union

Initially, eros
-is covetous, passionate, ascending.
-until it gets out of itself,
-is drawn to the other,
-ready for sacrifice
-it becomes more and more concerned with the beloved.
-it goes through the journey from self-fulfillment to self-transcendence

Agape enriches eros.

-And yet, we can’t live on descending or oblative love alone.
-we can’t just give, we must also receive

Biblical analogy for eros-agape

-The image in Jacob’s dream: a ladder connecting earth and heaven with ascending and
descending.

Eros is ascending love. Agape is descending love.

(When detached from each other, the result is always an impoverishment.)

Is it possible
-that the so-called crisis of vocations to the priestly ministry is a fruit of the impression that
ours is a love-less existence?
-or could we be fostering a purely agapeic form of love that is totally devoid of (detached
from) the erotic?
Ronald Rolheiser, Secularity and the Gospel
-What is most needed right now to inspire us missionaries…
-we are lacking with fire, romance, aesthetics, as these pertain to our faith and ecclesial
lives.

Prudence
It is acquired virtue. Something that one develops through a habit.

Practically, it is equivalent to wisdom.

Man seeks a kind of enlightenment for man to realize his beginning and end with
God and to contemplate and to love God.

-the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstances
and to choose the right means of achieving it.

All virtues depend on prudence. It is the fulcrum of all the virtues. It discerns our
true good in every circumstance. It is not just practicality but coming up with a decision in
every situation. It guides the judgment of conscience.

-Prudence is the most necessary of all the moral virtues because its function is precisely to
point out and command the just means.

Without prudence, no other virtue can be practiced with perfection.

Practical rationality
It is the habit of cautiousness in practical affairs.

Virtue of the practical intellect

-a prudent person is someone who has both an understanding of what human fulfillment is
and an ability to perceive which action, here and now, can contribute to living a life of
human fulfillment.

Synderesis
-the first principle of practical reason.
-a natural habit by which choose to do good and avoid evil.

Perfection of Prudence
Helps us in the knowledge of reality and the realization of the good. Preeminence of
prudence means good intention and the means. The realization of the good presupposes
that our actions are good. It is with a cleared eye decision.

1. Memoria
-true-to-being memory
What you saw is what you saw.
-the true-to-being character memory means simply that it contains in itself real things and
events as they really are and were.
Truth cannot be falsified. One cannot deny the truth, even as you do not tell the
truth. The conscience tells you, through the memory.

2. Docilitas
-the kind of open mindedness which recognizes the true variety of things and situations to
be experienced and does not caged itself in any presumption of deceptive knowledge.

3. Solertia
-is a perfected ability, by virtue which man, when confronted with sudden event, does not
close his eyes by reflex and then blindly take random action.
It is avoiding the pitfalls of cowardice and intemperance. It is clear sightedness in
unexpected circumstances.

Qualities of mind of the Prudent man

-trueness-to-being of memory;
-open-mindedness
-clear sighted objectivity

The Three Principal Acts of Prudence:

-to take counsel
-to judge soundly
-to command.

To judge soundly
-a prudent man must see to it that his judgment is free from prejudice from the influence of
passion.
Weigh all motives calmly and dispassionately.

To command
-the final act of command
-having properly considered all circumstances and having arrived at a decision, prudent
must see to it that his decision is carried out, not putting off till tomorrow what can and
ought to be done today.

Prudence and Ethics

Prudence is both a moral and intellectual virtue simultaneously. A prudent person is
someone who make good decisions. A bright and learned person who makes a decision is
an imprudent person.

A prudent person is a good person.

Vices Contrary to Prudence

Impetuosity
-the vice contrary to good counsel and amounts to a failure to adequately consider all
available means to a particular end.

Thoughtlessness
-a defect of practical judgment and amounts to a defect of circumspection and caution.

Inconstancy
-is contrary to command, the principal act of prudence, and is a failure to complete a
morally good act by refusing to command that an act be done, a refusal rooted in inordinate
love of pleasure.

Negligence
-is also contrary to command, but it differs in that it is a defect on the art of the intellect to
direct the will in carrying out some good action.

March 3, 2021

Presentation of our work

Last hour for the exam.

Justice
Biblical Foundation of the Virtue of Justice

Justice is the order which love requires.

Right relations. It is lifegiving relationships – to God, to yourself, to neighbor, and to

creation.

Sedeq
-is the most comprehensive expression of what is valuable, right and fair in the community.
-it stands for what is good
-it is employed as the central concept governing all relationships
-it means setting things right between people and living in accordance with what specific
social relationships require

Mishpat & Sedaqah

-the core meaning they share is defense for the weak, the vindication of the victim the
liberation of the oppressed.

Covenant Formula
“I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

Exodus 19:4-6
You have all seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and
brought you to myself [“I will be your God,” exodus]. So now [Sinai], if you will truly hear
my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall become my own possession among all
peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall become my kingdom of priests…

“I will be your God…”

-God heard the cries of oppressed slaves
-God delivered them from their bondage

“…you will be my people.”

-How people respond to that….

Justice
-to practice grace and mercy toward those who have no power to secure it for themselves.

Righteousness
-How God acted in the world (Jer. 9:23-24)
-What people were to be and to do because of God and in relation to God.

Justice
-Fidelity to the demands of a relationship

Righteousness
-a relationship to God that transforms who we are.

Justice & Worship

Isaiah 1:11-17
The Jews were obsessed with how it is to serve the Lord.

Justice in the New Testament

What was wrong is not the law but the interpretation and application of the law; the
misuse and abuse of law that restricted it to one’s group.

Key to Justice: Lifegiving relationships and compassion.

It is between the sacred and the profane, Gentile and Jew, holy and sinner that
excludes, selects only the other.

Justice (lifegiving relationship) and compassionate love.

-Jesus’ key for understanding and interpreting the law.
-“Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate.”
Not the barrier, or exclusivity, to be far, but it is being the Father to you.

-“compassion code” vs “holiness code”

Touching a dead in the holiness code means forfeiting the prayers you are offering
in the holy of holies. It will make you impure. This is comparable to the Samaritan who
becomes a neighbor to him, the one who really made the best sacrifice. It is this Samaritan
who offered a pleasing sacrifice of compassion. For Jesus, the first is the person who is in
need. The Levite would forget the ethos, the spirit of the law.
Justice as Virtue
It is a fundamental attitude.
-Justice is the general virtue or moral attitude of will which seeks to give to every that
which belongs to him be he person or community of persons.
This is giving to one what is due to them. This is a minimal meaning of justice.

Classification of Justice
The domain of right and the domain of justice is equivalent. By right, Thomas
Aquinas means what is owed to another according to equality of proportion.
In the biblical terms, justice is always measured by love.

Classification of Justice
1. Commutative-Common Good
The object of the right is the moral advantage of the individual. It commands that
exchange be of equal value and forbids violation of the right of the other or any deprivation
of his right. Theft and fraud.

2. Distributive Justice – the individual in his relation to the community. The object is the
private or the particular good of each individual member of the community. Example is the
vaccines that are being given to health workers, again in view of the common good.

3. Contributive Justice

Social Justice
-justice which applies the gospel to the structures, systems, and laws of a society so that
people’s right are guaranteed.

Grace under pressure

-That’s courage

The virtue of Justice resides in the will (rational appetite). It perfects us in the right
relationship with others.

Temperance resides in the concupiscible appetite. It perfects us to some extent to what

we owe ourselves us God’s being.

Fortitude resides in the irascible appetite.

Courage is not the absence, but the control of fear.
-Fear concentrates on what can go wrong and in so doing interferes with one’s confidence
in being able to execute what is right.
-the need for building dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear. Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Fortitude is the virtue that enables us to face firmly and undismayed the difficulties and
dangers.
-The virtue which strengthens the soul against grave danger to bodily life, so that it does
not desist from pursuing a difficult, necessary good in conformity with right reason.
It is an emancipation, it is to be courageous.

Fortitude seeks not the danger itself, but the realization of the rational good.
It is the readiness to die in battle. The culminating point of fortitude is martyrdom.

Prudence and Justice precede fortitude

-Only he who is just and prudent can also be brave.
It is not the injury that matters but the realization of the good. What are you suffering,
what are you enduring with? Fortitude does not stand by itself.

Prudence
-Fortitude becomes fortitude through being ‘in-formed’ by prudence.
It is a sacrifice of self in accordance with reason. Genuine fortitude presupposes an
evaluative reason.

Justice
-Without the ‘just cause’ there is no fortitude. Fortitude without justice is a lever of evil.

Endurance & Attack

-foundation for the two basic acts of fortitude
-fortitude presupposes in a certain sense that man is afraid of evil; its essence lies not in
knowing no fear, but in not allowing oneself to be forced into evil by fear, or to be kept by
fear from the realization of the good.
Fortitude is concerned mainly with overcoming fears rather than suppressing aggression
-“to endure” implies an invasion by some greater force, whereas to control aggressiveness
implies an “assault” upon some weaker force, and therefore it is more difficult to
accomplish…
-Whoever “endure” already senses imminent danger; whoever is “aggressive” perceives a
still future danger…
-“to endure” implies an “interval of time”, whereas “aggression” is experienced in “sudden
bursts”.
St. Thomas Aquinas

Presumption
-too much confidence
-inaccurate assessment of oneself
-the presumptuous tend to what is above their power
-their hope in themselves is disordered.

Vainglory
-is the inordinate desire for glory (to be known by others)
-vainglory begets disobedience, boastfulness, hypocrisy, contention, obstinacy.

Ambition
-the quest for honor is inordinate when it is pursued for the sake of being honored, as if to
rest in the honor itself.

Temerity
Timidity
-the habitual disposition of soul that fails to measure up to fortitude is timidity. It is
obviously a form of fear.
-thus the vice of timidity is the permanent and constant disposition of a person to flee from
every prospect of future pain of sense or ego, regardless of circumstances…

Temperance
-Nature of the Virtue of Temperance
from it all other virtue hinges
-St. Thomas regarded Temperance as a general condition of all virtues.
-“Its very name spells a certain temper and control given by intelligence to human
activities.
Webster’s definition of temperance
-habitual moderation in the indulgence of the appetites and passions…
Temperatio
-an organizing principle in the widest sense it pertains to the directing of reason.

Temperance as selfless self-preservation

It is a positive ordering of the bodily appetites for the good of the person. Thomas
Aquinas defines man as a rational animal. We are capable of reasoning. Animals are only
moved by their instincts. Giving in to promptings and instincts, we are guided by the
reason, by the will’s mastery. A temperate person directs the sensitive appetite to what is
good and maintains a healthy discretion (to what is honorable).
Temperance is not anti-sex and everything that is good and attractive in life. It is not a
curtailment of the sense pleasure. But in the imposition of the role of reason. It is
moderating, putting order…
Temperance is wisdom governing almost everything that requires moderation and
balance. It is directing towards its proper end.

Temperance as selfless self-preservation

-the discipline of temperance, understood as selfless self-preservation, is the saving and
defending realization of the inner order of man. For temperance not only preserves, it also
defends: indeed, it preserves by defending.
-intemperance is self-destruction through the selfish degradation

Fruit of selfless self-preservation is serenity of the spirit.

-Aquinas says that the second meaning of temperance is serenity of the spirit.
-What it means is the serenity that fills the inmost recesses of the human being and is the
seal and fruit of order.
Division of Temperance
-related to nourishment (instinct of nutrition)
-related to sex (sex instinct)
-the material object of this virtue is the pleasure of taste and touch
-the formal object is the natural rectitude in such moderate use of them as befits a man’s
dignity.

Nature of the Virtue of Chastity

-When self-moderation and self-regulation in sexual life are apprehended and practiced by
man as inherently right or good they assume a moral character and become the natural
virtue of chastity.
-Chastity is a subjective part of temperance
-Chastity is seated in the soul, nevertheless the body provides material.
-Chastity by its very name means “chastising of concupiscence by reason.”
-it realizes the order of reason in the area of sexuality by disciplining sexuality.

The Order of Reason in the Area of Sexuality

-The order of reason implies, first, that the immanent purpose of sexual power be not
perverted but fulfilled (in marriage, with its threefold “good”); second, that the inner
structure of the moral person be kept intact; and, third, that justice between men and
women.

-Chastity is more than continence. As a virtue, chastity is not merely, or even primarily, a
matter of physical purity, but an aspect of the all-encompassing virtue of love.

Division of Chasitity
-imperfect chastity signifies “abstention from inordinate use of sexual faculty without
excluding its legitimate use whether present for married persons…
-Perfect chastity signifies “abstention from all, even legitimate, sexual pleasure, both
present and past, and accompanied by a plan, wi or without a vow, of remaining chaste in
the future.

Chastity as self-giving
-it is a power which frees love from selfishness and aggression.
-chastity is the joyous affirmation of someone who knows how to life self-giving free from
any form of self-centered slavery.
-chastity liberates us from our egoism
-the practice of chastity enhances self-respect and at the same time making one capable of
respecting others.

Chastity as self-mastery
-Chastity necessistates self-possession, which includes “an apprenticeship in self-mastery
which is a training in human freedom.”

The Vice of Unchastity

-a person becomes unchaste when he isolates sexuality from the total context of human
love
-unchastity corrupts the virtue of prudence
-selfishness leading to self destruction.