by Dennis McInerny

The irony of certain situations is sometimes so overpowering that it fairly takes one’s breath away. Such was the situation when Pontius Pilate uttered his famous question, What is truth? The reality which he was having doubts about he could have literally reached out and touched. And that is often how it is with all of us: the truth is right before our eyes, but we do not see it, and we do not see it because we do not want to see it. A corrupted will has succeeded in blinding the intellect.

What is truth? If the question is to be taken seriously—and there are few questions more worthy of being taken seriously than this one—then it deserves a considered philosophical response. In answering the question, philosophy begins by making a distinction between ontological truth and logical truth. Ontological truth is the truth of the actual existence of things. (“Ontological” comes from a Greek word meaning “existing things.”) To say that something is ontologically true, then, is to do no more than acknowledge that it really exists. To be true in this sense means simply to be an indisputable matter of fact. It is clear that this is the most foundational meaning of truth, where we must necessarily start—with actual existence.

But something can be ontologically true, an indisputable matter of fact, without anyone being the least bit aware of its existence. Enter logical truth. When a human mind becomes aware of the existence of something, call it X, and when it knows X as it really is (as opposed to having a distorted idea of the reality of X), then it can be said that the mind is in possession of the truth with regard to X. Thus the essence of logical truth is the correspondence between ideas in the mind and things in the world. The truth which is in the mind is made public through language, specifically through that linguistic unit which grammarians call a declarative sentence and which philosophers call a proposition. If any proposition corresponds with the facts, if it faithfully reflects what is actually the case in the real world, it is a true proposition. And of course if it fails in that respect it is a false proposition. “The moon is a satellite of earth” is a true proposition because that happens to be the way things really are, whereas “The moon is made of crushed popcorn” would qualify, most astronomers would agree, as a false proposition.

Given how ontological truth is related to logical truth, we can see that the latter is dependent upon the former. In order that there be a correspondence between an idea in the mind and a thing in the world, there must first be that thing in the world to which the idea in the mind can correspond.

Pontius Pilate’s scepticism toward the  truth did not represent a novel phenomenon. Throughout the entire course of their history, men have never been free, burdened as they are by a darkened intellect, from the baneful influence of scepticism. It is more prominent in some eras than in others, and it has to be said that our own era is suffering from a veritable plague of scepticism. The truth is under siege. Expediency has become the governing consideration. There are too many people today who are  concerned not so much with what is true as with what will work. A statement need not be true; what is important is that it have the capacity to move people to follow a certain course of action, and often irrespective of the moral quality of that action.

Relativism is the spawn of scepticism, and is, in a sense, more dangerous than scepticism, at least that extreme scepticism which attempts to deny the very reality of truth. Extreme scepticism is, after all, intrinsically self-contradictory, and this is because it must rely on the very thing, truth, which it claims does not exist. The extreme sceptic boldly proclaims, “There is no truth,” but how does he expect us to take that statement? As true, of course. He wants to have his cake and eat it too.

The peculiar danger of relativism lies in the fact that it robs truth of its proper meaning, and cynically redefines it for purely practical purposes. In a gesture of profligate magnanimity, relativism proclaims that there are many truths, as many, indeed, as there are individuals who want to invent it. In other words, truth, for the relativist, loses its critical objective status and becomes entirely subjective. I may think it true that abortion is wrong, and my neighbor may think it true that abortion is right, but not to worry, the relativist sweetly assures us. That is called pluralism, and pluralism is a good thing. In a pluralistic society everyone can be right and nobody has to be wrong, for it is up to each individual to decide what is true what is false. Needless to say, thinking along these lines provides a surefire blueprint for disaster. A purely “subjective truth” is not truth at all, for the foundation of truth is what actually is so, not what you or I might like to be so.

It is sometimes no easy matter to see the truth, even when it is right in front of our faces, nor is it easy steadfastly to adhere to the truth once we have grasped it. The ultimate explanation for this is to be found within ourselves. When it comes to attaining the truth, we must always begin with ourselves. We would be totally incapable of seeing the truth “out there” if we did not first have a truthful conception of who and what each of us, as individuals, really are.  Saint Teresa of Avila rightly makes humility the very first step for advancement in the spiritual life (which could be called the quintessential life of truth), and humility follows naturally upon our gaining a thoroughgoing and completely honest knowledge of ourselves.

If I am blind to the truth about myself, there is no way I will ever be able to discern truth from falsity in the world outside myself. There is a close association here between love and truth. We all know that we are under solemn mandate to love our neighbor as ourselves. But if I am debilitated by self-hatred, I am therefore insuperably prevented from fulfilling that mandate. A healthy self-love, then,  is a necessary condition for a genuine love of others. The situation is comparable with respect to the truth. The man who is wilfully blind to the truth about himself is for that reason going to be blind to all other presentations of the truth round about him. In fact, what he will end up doing is falsifying everything he sees, imposing his interior darkness on the world at large, turning that world upside down, seeing black as white and white as black. And if while in that condition he has the presumption to suppose that he is qualified to be a leader of others, then both he and those whom he leads will end up floundering about in the ditch.

This article originally appeared in the February 2009 North American District Fraternity Newsletter.  To receive our monthly newsletter free by mail, please visit our subscription page.

by Dennis McInerny

The eminent Thomistic philosopher Jacques Maritain took as his motto the phrase Distinguer pour unir, which I translate freely as, “Distinguish so that you will be able to unite.” Unless we form the habit of making critical distinctions, so that we clearly see how things differ and are separate from one another, we will never be able to discover the underlying unity that binds all things together. We cannot have a clear and complete vision of the “big picture” unless and until we appreciate the distinct things that go together to compose that picture.

So many of the difficulties with which we are beset today, both within the Church and in society as a whole, can be explained by our systematic failure to make distinctions. The most important distinction that we need constantly to be aware of—and the failure to acknowledge results in utter disaster—is the distinction between truth and falsity. It is upon that distinction that all other distinctions rest.

Clearly, the distinction between sickness and sin is an important one, and quite real. A real distinction, in contrast to a logical distinction, is one that actually exists in the objective order, and is independent of the mind. So, for example, the distinction between a hand and a foot is a real distinction; it is not one made up by the mind simply so that it can better understand the world. Likewise, the distinction between sickness and sin is a real distinction. No sane person would confuse the conscious killing of an innocent human being, an obvious sin, with the circumstance of, say, being afflicted by muscular dystrophy. And yet in contemporary thought there is much blurring of the distinction between sickness and sin.

What is the critical criterion for establishing the distinction between sickness and sin? It is the fact that sin is always the result of conscious, willed action on the part of a human agent. Let us recall the basic conditions that have to be met in order for a sin to be a sin. (a) There must be a thought, word, or deed that is contrary to God’s law. (b) The person must know what he is about when he thinks a certain thought, says a certain word, or does a certain deed that is contrary to God’s law. (c) The person must freely will what he knows. All this can be summed up by saying that sin is something we are responsible for. Sin does not simply happen to us. We make it happen. If we sin, we have literally no one else but ourselves to blame for the sin.

In contrast to this, it is possible for us to become sick, perhaps seriously sick, through no fault of our own. By definition, one cannot sin and be morally innocent. But sickness, physical or mental, and complete moral innocence can go together, and often do.

But we must take note of a significant kind of overlapping that can take place between sickness and sin. Once again, we are always responsible for sin, and that is because sin is something done knowingly and willingly. (Conversely, if there is not sufficient knowledge and full consent of the will, there is no question of sin.) A sinner, in other words, is always at fault. This is obviously not the case with a person who is sick. We can become sick and not be in any way morally responsible for our sickness. It can indeed be something that simply happens to us.

But is this always the case? No, it is not. We all know that sometimes we can bring sickness upon ourselves, by the free actions that we perform. Furthermore, sometimes the free actions that we perform which result in sickness may be sinful actions. Think of the man who deliberately sets out to get drunk, succeeds, and as a result spends the whole following day in bed, quite sick and incapacitated. And as a result of his escapade he misses two days of work. Or, more seriously, consider the man who habituates himself to grave sexual sin, and as a result he contracts a deadly disease. These men are not innocent. The sicknesses they suffer are sicknesses they brought upon themselves.

At times, then, we ourselves can be the cause of the sicknesses we suffer. There are instances where sickness does not just happen; we make it happen.Let us consider another circumstance. Would it ever be possible that a physical or mental sickness with which a person is afflicted, through no fault of his own, could be a cause of sin in that person? The answer is No. We remind ourselves of a basic truth, often stressed by St. Thomas: the human will is the cause of sin. There is nothing in the universe, not Satan himself, that can cause us to sin, and this includes sickness. Granted, mental or physical sickness can affect a person in such a way so as to make it more difficult for him to combat the temptations to sin. But in such a case, as St. Paul assures us, the grace of God will always be sufficient.

We could imagine a situation where a person is so seriously ill, either mentally or physical, that the ability of that person to think clearly and to exercise his will with perfect freedom would be impaired. But in a situation of that sort the person would not be morally responsible for his actions, for the two conditions that must be met in order for sin to be present—sufficient knowledge, full consent of the will—would not be met. But the important point here, worth repeating, is that no state of sickness, mental or physical, just as such, can cause us to sin.

We live in an age that does not at all like the idea of sin, but—to use its own language—is quite “comfortable” with the idea of sickness. The intellectual elite that shapes our culture studiously avoids explaining adverse human behavior in terms of sin. Indeed, it is considered to be bad taste even to mention the word. But we are more than willing to explain just about all adverse behavior in terms of sickness. No one is a sinner. Everyone is merely sick. And if there is not an immediately available sickness by which a certain kind of aberrant behavior can be designated, then one will be quickly invented.

Modern psychology must bear much of the blame for this whole mode of thinking. “Mental illness” has now became a very capacious category; “syndromes” proliferate like bunny rabbits; and who can keep track of all the “addictions” and “disorders” by which the human race is now supposedly being victimized. The purpose behind the movement to remove “sin” from our vocabulary and replace it with “sickness” is as obvious as it is self-serving: to relieve human beings of the burden of responsibility for their actions. It is as if there is a dedicated effort to establish a perpetual game of passing the buck, to the accompaniment of a catchy ditty: “Everyone nicely is the same, no one really is to blame.”

Our concern here is with the importance of distinctions. There is, to be sure, a real distinction between mental health and mental sickness. Mental sickness, in other words, is not simply a fiction. But to attempt to reduce all adverse human behavior to mental illness blurs a real distinction, and serves to diminish the reality of genuine mental sickness, and its seriousness. It also has the devastating effect of destroying human dignity, for that dignity rests squarely on the fact that we are truly free, and are truly responsible for our actions. Take away the freedom and responsibility and the dignity is gone, and without the dignity men are reduced to the level of animals. Confession, repentance, and reparation are replaced by therapy.

This article originally appeared in the August 2004 North American District Fraternity Newsletter.  To receive our newsletter free by mail, please visit our subscription page.

On Being Charitable
by Dennis McInerny

Charity, as St. Thomas Aquinas loves to remind us, is the most basic of all the virtues their “mother,” as he puts it. And charity “is the mover of all the other virtues,” the seminal cause of whatever level of genuine goodness we might manage to gain for ourselves in this vale of tears. As believers, we all know that charity should be the governing factor in our lives, guiding and shaping everything we do. Without charity, as St. Paul effectively tells us, we are, in spiritual terms, nonentities.

But while we would all acknowledge the centrality of charity, and readily agree to the imperative of always being charitable in our dealings with others, we are not always as clear as we could be as to the precise nature of charity and the obligations it lays upon us. The confusion that attends this matter frequently comes down to this: a failure to make the critical distinction between being charitable and being nice. Specifically, we too often make the mistake of thinking that being charitable really involves nothing else than being nice, and by that we do a great disservice to charity, and to ourselves. While being charitable and being nice may on the surface seem to be similar, they are in fact essentially quite different.

The world in which we live puts great store in being nice. Now, being nice, taken in itself, is not necessarily bad, so long as we don’t overdo it, but neither is it, as some would have us believe, the most admirable and valuable of human achievements. Well, what is at issue here? What does being nice essentially amount to, at least in the minds of its most ardent advocates, those who are prepared to hold it up as the chief of the social virtues? Being nice means, at bottom, being consistently and impeccably inoffensive in everything that one says and does. The number one rule for someone who is dedicated to the ideal of being nice at all times and in all places is this: Never offend. Offensiveness is the number one moral sin against niceness.

A nice person is universally and indiscriminately tolerant, meaning that he is comprehensively non-judgmental, meaning that he is a de facto subscriber to moral relativism. None of his words, none of his actions, are such that would ever give offense. He is a veritable virtuoso of inoffensiveness, because, among other things, he has trained himself to be super-sensitive to all the reigning super-sensitivities of our day. He is positively fluent in the sanitized language of Political Correctness. And because the nice person never offends anyone by anything he says or does, he is, not surprisingly, warmly liked and approved by all. Everybody likes the nice person, and he is welcome wherever he goes.

But here is the problem: the nice person is ineffectual. And his ineffectualness is the direct result of his inoffensiveness. What the nice person has seemingly never learned is that sometimes it is necessary to be offensive, not for the sake of being offensive, mind you, but for the sake of truth, goodness, and beauty. Charitable people, in contrast to nice people, have no compunction about being offensive when they see a pressing need for it. They understand that sometimes it is necessary to offend others, for their own good.

A nice person could never be confused with a true friend. The truest friend you would ever want to have is a charitable person, for he would always act toward you out of charity, which means that it is your good, your genuine good, which he always has first in mind. He thinks of you before he thinks of himself. As St. Thomas puts it, “we love our friends, even if nothing might come of it for us.”

What then is this charity which motivates the true friend? It is of course one of the theological virtues, which means that it is an infused virtue, a totally gratuitous gift of God. Charity, in its essence, is simply sanctifying grace, which is a sharing in, a co-living of, the very life of God. And this is what leads St. Thomas to say that charity is simply the life of the soul, just as the soul is the life of the body. What is more, charity is a habit, which means that it actually enables the person who possesses it to act according to its sublime dictates.

To be charitable is to have authentic love for others, which means to will what is really good for them. And what is really good for any human being? It is that good for which each of us was created, the Supreme Good, who is God Himself. If I truly love another person, I want for him what I want for myself true human fulfillment, the achievement of his final end, the realization of his very reason for being. And this is nothing less than beatitude, eternal union with God.

If a charitable person sometimes acts towards others in ways they would find offensive, it is because he has their genuine welfare at heart. Like the conscientious physician, he knows that it is sometimes necessary to hurt in order to heal. Totally committed as he is to the truth, it is no concern to him whether or not he is liked. Could not each of us recount, with gratitude, at least one critical turning point experience in our lives, when we were saved from going over the precipice by someone who cared enough for us to offend us? The offense came as a singular blessing, for it was just the kind of shock we needed to awaken us from our moral stupor, make us aware of the disastrous path we were following, and then take the necessary steps to straighten out our crooked ways.

As in everything else, in this matter too Our Lord is our great model and guide. Let us study Him and His ways. In all that He said and did, He acted with exquisite, supreme charity. Little wonder, for He is Charity Itself, as St. John reminds us. (Deus caritas est: “God is charity.”) But Our Lord was often anything but nice, at least not according to the understanding of niceness described above. Indeed, He was often quite the opposite of being nice, and He offended a great many people by His teaching. For example, some found the doctrine of the Eucharist very offensive, and left His company for that reason. The scribes and Pharisees and doctors of the law made it a veritable point of honor to be offended by just about everything He said and did. But He never made the least effort to modify His message to mollify His enemies. His auditors were offended because they had hardened themselves against the truth. They had eyes but saw not, and ears but heard not. Our Lord was trying to break through their callousness for the sake of their immortal souls. They found Him offensive, but offensiveness was the very means the occasion called for. Niceness would not do. Charity alone was sufficient for so important a task, because and no one knew this better than Our Lord for those to whom He was addressing His words, literally everything was at stake.

This article originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of the North American District Fraternity Newsletter. To receive our newsletter by mail, simply sign up on our newsletter subscription page.

by Fr. Eric Flood, FSSP North American District Superior

When Our Lord walked throughout the Holy Land, He chose 12 men to be His Apostles to spread the True Faith throughout the known world. Our Lord did not choose the wise of the world; rather, many of the Apostles were fishermen with dirty jobs which required great labors, muscles, and not much knowledge. But after spending several years with Our Lord, grace built upon their nature and their lives of virtue would aid them in becoming strong Bishops with inflexible spines, ready to fearlessly discharge their duties in the face of difficulties.

In this month of June when we remember fatherhood, we turn to these first fathers of souls as an inspiration for all fathers to imitate. The Bible says to “act like a man; take courage and do [your duty]” (I Para. 28:20). Like Adam, men are required to work by the sweat of their brow, to defend the rights of women and children, and to provide for their family. But these manly qualities take time to learn, so like the Apostles who brewed into holiness over time, boys will need a constant example of what they must become like. Sons, it goes without saying, learn about their manliness from their own father. If the father is a virtuous one, the sons will most likely be virtuous, but if a father does not practice his Catholic Faith, the sons will probably follow the same path. Hence it is imperative that fathers are not ruled by alcohol, lust, or laziness, but by an upright and unselfish life if their sons are going to correctly mature into manhood. Just as the Apostles taught us that they needed the graces through the Catholic Church to be good Bishops, so, too a father of children needs the graces through the Catholic Church to be a good dad.

However, fathers need more than the promise of God’s graces, for they also have to be able to receive the graces into their Soul. Hence, if a father is not in the state of grace, then the graces cannot be received, and his fatherhood will become defective. However, if he is in the state of grace, then God the Father shares part of his All-powerfulness with the father in order to assist him within the life of his family.

We then reason that since so many fathers do not faithfully practice their Catholic Faith, many families are suffering as a result. Due to the increased temptations in the world, men are easily blown over by the winds of their passions. As sin abounds in this modern world, once God’s graces are lost, it is easy to become a lukewarm father or to be a mediocre role model to the family. But the strength with which fathers need to survive is readily available if they sustain a daily life with Christ. It is from the Sacraments, prayer, and fasting that men gain the graces to maintain their manliness. For which takes greater strength: to control the passion of anger or to throw a fist? to control lust or to give into pleasure? As greater strength is necessary to control the passions, then the man who controls the passions is stronger than he who does not control them; thereby his manliness is actualized.

Our passions require a balance, for we can fall into one extreme that passions are evil or the opposite extreme of “why bother fighting them, they are too strong for me to control.” The true man finds a balance, recognizes that he has passions and emotions, and then finds the willpower to rule over the tendencies of his lower nature. The vicious man, however, will be ruled by his passions, falls prey to them, and weakens to the point of exhaustion. For example, if a man yields to anger and bursts into fits of fury which make others tremble, he may picture himself as a strong lion, but in reality, he is really weak since he is not in control of his passions. Outwardly he appears strong, but inwardly he is feeble and has become a slave to his passions.

The attack on fatherhood is not just from the world, but also from the evil one. Since the devil has declared war on the Catholic Church, he will try to destroy family life since it is from stable, Catholic families that Souls more easily gain Heaven. Thus, we should not be surprised that the notion of a hard-working father who goes to Mass every Sunday has vanished and has been replaced by a father figure who does fun things, does not discipline, and gives license to sinful behavior. As a result, sons receive little direction in life and are not challenged to be responsible. In order to discover if fathers are faithful to their duties we can ask: how many 18-year-olds are ready for manhood with the responsibilities of life which now face them?

So much rests upon the father, and he has to be rooted in Christ by practicing his Faith. To show the importance of a practicing Catholic father, statistics show that if a father practices his Catholic Faith, then there is an 80% chance that his sons will remain faithful Catholics throughout their lives. However, if a father does not practice his Catholic Faith, then his sons have only a 20% chance of remaining a faithful Catholic. The same study showed that the statistic remained the same whether or not the mother went to church. May this serve as an inspiration for Catholic women to find a good practicing Catholic man to marry.

It is imperative, then, that fathers live as God demands. When God commits the care of children to a married couple, the success of the father will hinge upon the virtue of the father. Even though the duties of a husband and father do not begin until the first day of marriage, the preparation for being a virtuous father began before the wedding day. How the man acted before marriage will determine what kind of a father the man will become. Did he learn how to work diligently? Did he set reasonable goals for himself and then pursue them even when difficulties arose? Did he pay off his debts? Did he say the Holy Rosary every day? Was the courtship a time of virtue? If he did these things, after the wedding ceremony it will be easier to live in harmony with his wife, to work diligently, to finish the tasks around the home, to manage his money well, and to pray with his wife and children.

Lastly, as we are often inspired when we see our Priest praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament, so too, it is an inspiration for children to see their father praying at home. By prayer, the Apostles became strong Bishops who fearlessly discharged their duties in the face of difficulties; and by prayer, men can also become strong fathers who fearlessly discharge their duties in the face of difficulties.

This article originally appeared in the June 2008 edition of the North American District Fraternity Newsletter. To receive our free newsletter by mail, please visit our subscription page.

On Saturday, May 22nd, six men were ordained priests for the FSSP by His Excellency, Bishop Bruskewitz (Diocese of Lincoln). We extend our gratitude and thanks to His Excellency for ordaining these men to the Holy Priesthood, our congratulations to our new priests and their families, and thanks to all our benefactors and friends who have supported these men and the seminary during the course of their studies with prayers and other assistance. Below are some pictures of the day.

Please remember the seminarians in your prayers as they head off to assist at various apostolates over the summer months. The seminary will now be closed until late August.

The full photo gallery can be seen on the Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary website.

Father Calvin Goodwin, FSSP, from Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska discusses the history and struggles associated with the Traditional Latin Mass in this hour long talk.

The Battle for the Ancient Mass:
(click to play)

The Battle for the Ancient Mass

Dates: June 21-25, 2010

Cost: Sung Mass Workshop $400 (includes $100 non-refundable deposit)

Program

Each workshop comprises a five-day residential course at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary including both classroom sessions and practical hands-on instruction. All instruction, training materials, meals, and room & board at the seminary are provided.

Sung Mass Workshop:

• Comprehensive hands-on instruction and training in the ceremonies of Sung and Solemn Mass
• Comprehensive overview and practice in the chants of the Sung Mass
• Complete training in all the altar server positions for Sung Mass

The cost of each workshop covers all classroom instruction, training materials, meals, and room & board at the seminary for the full five days.

Registration

To register, please go to the SIGN UP page and follow the steps listed. Please note that we need all the documentation listed before we can secure your reservation. Please register in advance as spaces are limited and will be allocated on a “first come, first serve” basis.

Financial Assistance Available

For priests who require financial assistance, Una Voce America has set up a financial aid plan. For details please contact Una Voce America, c/o Mr. Jason King, PO Box 1146, Bellevue, WA 98009 or e-mail INFO@UNAVOCE.ORG

Dates: June 14th – 18th, 2010  (Monday – Friday)

Cost: $400

Program

Each workshop comprises a five-day residential course at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary including both classroom sessions and practical hands-on instruction. All instruction, training materials, meals, and room & board at the seminary are provided.

Low Mass Workshop:

• A comprehensive introduction to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and its liturgical principles
• An overview of the 1962 Roman Missal and liturgical calendar
• A complete explanation and demonstration, with practical hands-on instruction, in the ceremony of Low Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal
• Tips and strategies for gaining proficiency in Latin
• An introduction to Sung Mass and Gregorian Chant

Registration

To register, please go to the SIGN UP page and follow the steps listed. Please note that we need all the documentation listed before we can secure your reservation. Please register in advance as spaces are limited and will be allocated on a “first come, first serve” basis.

Financial Assistance Available
For priests who require financial assistance, Una Voce America has set up a financial aid plan. For details please contact Una Voce America, c/o Mr. Jason King, PO Box 1146, Bellevue, WA 98009 or e-mail INFO@UNAVOCE.ORG

The following are photos from the recent Solemn Requiem Mass offered at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary by Fr. Josef Bisig, FSSP for the repose of the soul of Paul Augustin Cardinal Mayer, O.S.B. , President Emeritus of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”.

Dear Confrere

Your prayers are asked for the repose of the soul of His Eminence Paul Cardinal Mayer who passed away on Friday, April 30.  Cardinal Mayer was influential in the foundation of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, and always remained a great friend.  Fr. Berg visited him each of the last three years in Rome and each time the Cardinal showed particular interest in the solid formation of seminarians and the spiritual lives of its priests.

The two seminaries will offer Solemn Requiem Masses on Monday for the repose of his soul.  Fr. Franz Karl Banauch, FSSP (Rector of our Wigratzbad, Germany seminary) and Fr. Axel Maussen, FSSP (Superior of our German-speaking District) will be present at the burial at the Abbey of Metten on May 12.  A Solemn Requiem Mass will also be offered at S. Trinità dei Pellegrini on the seventh day after death.

Each house is asked to offer a Mass of Requiem for the Cardinal on Monday or the nearest available date.

Domus Generalis

What Is A Person? (Part II)
By Dennis McInerny

For the Platonist, the human person is the soul. The body is but a temporary incumbrance, and a most bothersome one at that, from which we will be freed permanently on the day we die. On that happy occasion, released from bondage to the material, we will become again what we originally were—purely spiritual creatures.

For the materialist, on the other hand, the human person is the body. The soul is only a fiction invented by certain benighted types who can’t face the fact that reality is simply matter and nothing but than matter. All of our human experiences, including things like consciousness and thought, can be explained entirely in terms of matter. And when the body dies, says the materialists, that is the end of the story.

Both the Platonists and the materialists have gotten it radically wrong concerning the true nature of the human person. We are neither pure spirits, like the angels, nor are we, like the animals, creatures whose nature is dominantly material. In one way we are comparable to the angels, in another way we are comparable to the animals, but we cannot be classified unqualifiedly with either. St. Thomas, repudiating both the Platonist mistake and the materialist mistake, says crisply: “Man is not the soul, nor is he the body.”

The human person is a composite creature, made up of both body and soul. In philosophy, we explain the existence of any particular substance (a substance is simply an actually existing being) by the presence in it of a form, a substantial form. The form of a thing is the dynamic internal principle that makes it precisely what it is. In living creatures the substantial form is called the life principle (anima, in Latin; psyche, in Greek). In human beings the life principle is the rational soul, which is described as an incomplete substance. The body, too, is called an incomplete substance. These designations serve to stress the point that it is body and soul together, and neither alone, that constitutes the human person.

Both body and soul are incomplete substances, but of a profoundly different kind. When we consider the human person as composed of body and soul we must be careful not to think in crude quantitative terms, supposing a human person to be made up, say, of one half body and one half soul. The two composing elements of the person, material and spiritual, are by no means equal. It is the spiritual element, the rational soul, which is inestimably more important, for it is the soul which simultaneously establishes a human being and a human person. Without the rational soul, there simply would not be a human being, but neither would there be a human person. That is why it would be incoherent to argue that there could be present a human being and not a human person. The two are inseparable.

So, then, a human person is a creature composed of matter and form, but the two are not of equal worth. St. Thomas emphasizes that “it is form alone [i.e., the soul] that in a way peculiar to itself serves as the cause of a being of this type.” In other words, it is the soul, the spiritual element, which essentially determines a human person to be a human person. Personhood, we may say, is founded in the soul. We commonly speak of the soul being “in” the body, but St. Thomas makes the arresting observation that it would actually be more accurate to refer to the body as being in the soul. His meaning here could be expressed by saying that the soul completely encompasses the material body within its life-giving embrace, and thereby constitutes it specifically as a human body.

These philosophical considerations concerning the nature of the human person are of the utmost importance, for they underscore the truth that human personhood is a fact grounded in the way things actually are in the objective order. Human beings do not choose who is and who is not a person. What they do choose, tragically, is to refuse to accept persons simply for what they are.

We often speak of our “having” a body, but, strictly speaking, it is not so much the case that we have a body as that we are a body (albeit not exclusively), and that is because corporeality is part of our essence as human persons. It is even more emphatically true of personhood that it is not something we possess. As persons we are the possessors, for personhood constitutes our very identity. We are persons, and to repeat a very important point, we are persons right from the beginning, from the first moment of our existence as human beings.

Personhood, we say, is incommunicable. This means that personhood is not something that is common to many. All of us, as human beings, of course share a common nature—human nature. But personhood is not shared. Each of us is a human being in a way that is singular to each of us. It is not to indulge in sentimental language, then, but simply to speak the plain truth, to say that each human being is unique and unrepeatable. Personhood is the explanation for that uniqueness.

It is the massive ignorance of the true nature of the human person, so prevalent today, which makes abortion possible. If it were to be realized by all parties concerned that, from the moment of conception, there is a human person who is in our midst, and indeed a completely innocent human person, it would then be unthinkable that anyone could ever suppose that there could be a “right” to do mortal harm to that person.

But, some might continue to insist, we are dealing with something so tiny, so minuscule! Such is the case, but this is to take into account only a part of that “something,” and by no means the more important part. When we think in exclusively material terms in this context, we inevitably miss the person, for the person can only be seen in terms of the spiritual. It shows a remarkable lack of creative imagination to so fix one’s attention on the small size of the bodily human being dwelling within the mother that we fail to take into account the soul—that which constitutes the person as a person. Yes, the human body at that beginning stage is very small indeed. But, from the moment of conception, there is nothing in the least bit small about the person as such. It is the soul that “makes” the person, and the soul, which is purely spiritual, has no dimensions, then or thereafter. The human person is as decisively present at the first moment of conception as it is throughout all the many years that may follow.

Philosophy can be very helpful in providing us with a sound understanding of the nature of the human person, but whatever is of value in its message in this regard is owning to a source that is beyond philosophy. The eminent Scholastic philosopher Jacques Maritain once remarked that philosophy was only able to get it right about the human person after it began to assimilate the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. No purely natural learning will ever be able to apprize us of the full truth about human personhood, because that is a truth which transcends the natural order. We only begin to grasp the full import of a human person when we realize that, in each instance, we are face to face with a creature whose reality transcends the natural order, an inimitable “someone” who was eternally intended by God, and eternally intended for God.

This article originally appeared in the July 2004 issue of the North American District Fraternity Newsletter. To receive our newsletter by mail, simply sign up on our newsletter subscription page.