Virtue Quest

Last week, I did a little housesitting for some friends. These friends have two boys, two dogs, and two cats. They took the boys with them on their vacation.

My own family didn’t keep pets. We had a short-lived experiment with gerbils. Then a little grey kitty hung around for a little while. But we never sought pets, nor strove to keep them.

Frankly, I’ve never seen the point of pets. I mean, on a farm, sure: you need some help with guarding the cattle and depopulating the rodents. But in a city, in a suburb, what purpose do they serve?

Still, I know how much my friends love these animals, so I did my best to take good care of them. Food, water, opportunities to fertilize the lawn, etc.

They repaid me with presents, (more…)

I’m a firm believer that the virtues are helpful to everybody. Any random Jane or Joe can benefit from growing in Prudence and Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. You don’t have to be smart, or strong, or rich, or anything like that.

You don’t even have to be Christian.

Huh?

So, at this point, I expect there are two groups of reactions to that sentence. First, from the Christians, I expect some flavor of “What do you mean you don’t have to be Christian?” And from the non-Christians (whether atheist or adherents of other religious traditions), “Why would you even ask that question? What does Christianity have to do with it?”

Here’s the thing. The virtues I’ve been studying arose in what’s called the Western philosophical tradition. Greeks like Plato and Aristotle wrote about them, and the early Christians picked up their ideas and ran with them. In developing the older, pagan ideas of virtue – ideas, by the way, which don’t fit neatly with the Jewish heritage of Christianity – they connected them to their theological notions, and significantly added three new virtues that were mentioned in the Bible: Faith, Hope, and Love.

The original Greek virtues were called Cardinal Virtues, since (like the cardinal directions on a compass) they point you in the right direction. The new ones were called Theological Virtues, because they are seen as gifts of God.

So I’m a Catholic myself, and I have no problem with some virtues being gifts from God. But I have big questions about how it works. (more…)

I know some people who don’t get started on a task or deal with a problem until it becomes a crisis. They wait and procrastinate and put off until further inaction will result in disaster. Then, most of the time, they scramble everything together and get done what needs doing.

They say, “I thrive under pressure.”

Maybe this is true for them. For me, the pressure, the anxiety and the fear, can become overwhelming. I get paralyzed. I drop the ball.

That doesn’t stop me from procrastinating. It just means my threshold for crisis is much lower. A deadline a week or a month away produces as much urgency in me as a tomorrow morning deadline provides for them. I know (from sad experience) that if I put it off any longer, I’ll freeze up and utterly fail.

This gives me the reputation as someone who is responsible, who plans ahead, who is organized. If only.

I’m just as crisis-driven as anybody else. The only difference is my tolerance for anxiety. I hate the stuff. And it’s taken a while for me to learn how to get moving before the pressure crushes me.

Currently, my goal is to head off anxiety at the pass. (more…)

Posted over at Coalition for Clarity.

First off: I’ll be speaking this Sunday morning at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Seattle. The topic: Virtue in Everyday Life.

When: 10:30am, Sunday 20 March 2011
Where: 5062 9th Avenue NE, Seattle – the downstairs room in the school across from the church

Here’s a chart I’m putting on the handout:

Foundation	Form	Strength
Prudence: natural foundation – discern good and evil	Justice: natural form – give what belongs to another	Fortitude/Courage: overcome external obstacles
		Temperance/Self-control: overcome internal obstacles
Faith: supernatural foundation – remain in trusting relationship	Love: supernatural form – give oneself for another’s good	Hope: direct life toward God with purpose and meaning

I expect that’s perfectly clear to anyone who thinks exactly as I do. The above organization is (as far as I know) my own invention. If anyone out there actually knows stuff about virtue ethics and thinks I’m barking up the wrong tree, or am just barking mad, please drop me a line and correct me. I’m working stuff out as I go.

Anyway, if you want to know what I’m talking about, come hear me talk!

Second, and far less importantly: I’ve had tech troubles with my old computer for the past few months. Random crashes and so on. It finally became intolerable, so I have a shiny new laptop. (Okay, it’s actually a matte finish.) Now I have to constantly remind myself that cool new toys do not equal happiness.

“Yes, I love technology / though not as much as you, you see / but still, I love technology / always and forever…”

A few days ago, I told some of my friends that I was declaring war on Sloth. For me, it’s the key vice that’s holding me back from every kind of growth. It is directly opposed to loving my family and friends, to diligent attention to work, to delight in the good things of the world.

So here is where I’ve drawn the line in the proverbial sand:

• No computer games whatsoever
• No TV except on weekends
• No internet before noon

I’m giving these things up, not because they’re bad in themselves, but because in me they are areas of life entirely controlled by the enemy. I’m not capable of playing computer games in moderation, or turning away from TV when I have work to do. And if I start surfing or answering emails before I do more localized work, well, I never get around to the work that needs doing here and now. So I have to fortify my headquarters; I have to build a barricade to insure that my life is not further invaded. Perhaps one day I’ll regain freedom from Sloth in those areas of my life; but that day is not today.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to go on the offensive. The best way to defeat vice is by developing virtue, and the virtue that Sloth opposes is Charity. So I’m trying to fill my time with activities done to benefit others. Yes, there’s a certain amount of self-care that’s important, especially getting enough sleep. But most of my time is spent focusing on my own needs and desires. That’s what leads to Sloth in the first place. The cure, the solution, the victory, is only found in recognizing that all I have is given me so that I can serve others with it. And then actually using my gifts to serve.

I am, tragically, that all-too-common combination of lazy procrastinator and idealistic perfectionist. This means that whenever I want to do something, I am both overwhelmed at the size and/or difficulty of the undertaking, and despairing of ever being satisfied with what I have done.

This applies, depending on my mood, from tasks as great as writing a twelve-volume epic novel (which really is a gargantuan task) to duties as tiny as brushing my teeth. Most of the time, thankfully, my ambitions range through more middling territory: cleaning my apartment, writing a decent blog post, finishing a chapter or a short story. That sort of thing.

Even so, I have this irrational expectation that I should somehow achieve some ultimate and final perfection. There’s a part of my that truly believes, if I have brushed my teeth well, I should never have to brush my teeth again, because I shall have achieved dental perfection.

Did I mention that this expectation is entirely irrational? (more…)

Here is the traditional Christmas Proclamation:

The twenty-fifth day of December.
In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth;
the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood;
the two thousand and fifteenth year from the birth of Abraham;
the one thousand five hundred and tenth year from Moses and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;
the one thousand and thirty-second year from David’s being anointed king;
in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome;
the forty second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;
the whole world being at peace,
in the sixth age of the world,
Jesus Christ the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,
conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and nine months having passed since his conception,
was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary,
being made flesh.
The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

Now, what you heard in church was probably a slightly different version, updated with somewhat contemporary science (“unknown ages from the time when God created the heavens and the earth,” etc.) which is good in that it dodges the presumption that we have exact knowledge of the history of the universe but bad in that it loses a great deal of the poetry of the traditional version. Such is life: we can’t have all good things all the time.

But what I love about the Proclamation is that it places Jesus Christ in the very midst of history and fact. As the time of Jesus’ birth draws near, the revised and the traditional versions are almost identical, because these are historical events we know with much greater accuracy and certainty. And the point is that the Christmas miracle is not some unknown philosophical idea or moral code or community feeling.

The Christmas miracle is that an infinite God of pure spirit entered into full union with the material world he created in the person of Jesus, son of Mary.

The Christmas miracle is that Creator and creation are no longer divided, but are related.

And the Christian religion stands or falls on the truth or falsehood of this concrete historical claim. Christianity is not a moral code, though Jesus Christ does offer moral teachings. It is not a philosophical system, though philosophers have built systems on its foundation. It is not a a social or political ideology, though knowledge of Christ expresses itself in some social and political ways. Rather, Christianity at its heart is a relationship between the God who is Love and the world that he loved into being. Love always seeks the good of the beloved; so God gave the greatest good he could, his infinite self, in the only way a finite world could truly receive him, in a simple human being.

That is the great mystery and miracle and true spirit of Christmas. May yours be blessed!

Don’t worry, I’m not going all gushy on myself. Nor do I expect you to.

So one of the things I do to escape from stress is to read about the history of philosophy. So far I have a rough knowledge of Western thought from the Greeks up through about the beginning of the fourteenth century, and a couple bits of Muslim, Indian, and Chinese philosophy from various parts of history.

Anyway, I was reading about John Duns Scotus (ca. 1265 – 1308) in Frederick Copleston’s masterpiece, and I came across the following provocative passage:

Scotus often gave a peculiar stamp or emphasis to the elements he adopted from tradition. Thus in his treatment of the relation of the will to intellect he emphasized freedom rather than love, though he held, it is true, to the superiority of love to knowledge….

This helped me to articulate something I’ve known for some time but have never quite managed to say clearly.

Let me ask you a question. What does your will do? What is the action of your will? What is its purpose?

Okay, that was three questions, or at least, (more…)

I don’t like to talk much about sex, partly because I’m ashamed of my own weaknesses in this area, and partly because any restriction on sexual “expression” or activity is seen as “backward” (and I’m vain enough to want to be seen as progressive), and partly because sex is just plain everywhere already and I don’t particularly want to add to the mess.

But what with the foolish hooplah over Pope Benedict’s out-of-context statement on condoms, and in light of some personal questions from a few different friends, and considering a fascinating conversation over at Just Thomism, I thought I’d toss my tuppence into the ring.

Human nature

The human person is made for love.

That sentence has many meanings, because “love” has many meanings. Love could mean, broadly, (more…)