L'analogie chez saint Thomas d'Aquin par l'abbé S. Leclère

Salve Regina

Those who defend Christopher West (and others) talk about how he has changed their lives and so on. How does this compare with the talks given by Jason Evert and his wife? What is it about West's teaching that is more effective than the Church's teaching, even if it is understood only in prohibitions? After all, obedience is a necessary addition to Faith, and also a "component" of charity (as well as religion). Why weren't these [infused] virtues enough for people to abstain from acts that are prohibited by Christ? Do people need to be presented with the 'positive' goods associated with a prohibition before they cooperate with grace and fulfill the Law? Society, bishops, and other traditional sources of wisdom concerning marriage and family have been lost, that is true, and people need to be taught about the vocation to marriage. But telling them that certain acts are somehow not consonant with giving one's self, or are a lie, or something else -- is this really an adequate explanation for the prohibition? If certain acts are opposed to love, as a general virtue, it is because they are against reason (and some subordinate good) in some way.

A critique of the phrase "integral good" is found here:

« The entire activity of the Church is an expression of a love that seeks the integral good of man. »

The Abbé de Nantes often contested this expression, inherited from John Paul II, but going back to Paul VI, “expert in humanity”. He claimed to be exercising a global magistracy, infallibly fixing new rights and duties for persons and States, determining the entire ideal and programme for a universal social reform “for the integral development of the whole man and of all men”. In this claim, developed by the encyclical on the progress of peoples (Populorum progressio, Easter 1967), the Abbé de Nantes detected the venom of the errors condemned by Saint Pius X in the Letter on the Sillon of 25 August 1910 (Letter to My Friends no 245, April 1967).

Some thoughts that struck me as I read this part -- is this expression really that problematic? And is it linked in any way to the 'integral humanism' of Jacques Maritain? What of the integral human fulfillment of John Finnis? Answers to come, perhaps...

At the Dawn Patrol: Schindler's list
Sparks fly as JP2 Institute dean raps Christopher West for errors
A guest post by FR. ANGELO MARY GEIGER F.I.

bloggingLOURDES takes issue with Dr. Janet Smith and Christopher West over their approval of certain sex acts, in the name of theology of the body.

Two other posts on TOB: Sex, Matrimony, the Garden of Eden and Theology of the Body and 10 Via Crucis on Mount Carmel (a brief comment on the Theology of the Body).

It does not appear to me that Father gives an argument against the act in question, except that it goes against human dignity -- that may seem almost tautological. Still, and this is something that those looking for theological arguments to permit such acts forget, there is something to be said for the connatural knowledge of the virtuous that enables them to know that certain things are wrong, even if they cannot give a scientific (that is, reasoned-out) explanation of why this is so.

Curious, in the comments section there is a lot of cricism of NFP--some may be criticizing just the mentality (or intentions) of those practicing it, some appear to be going further and criticing the practice itself.

Something from Counterpunch, of all places: On Evolution, by James C. Faris
A Critique of Darwinism

Space.com: Close-up Look at Black Hole Reveals Feeding Frenzy

More Theology of the Body resources

I came across the names of Matt Pinto and Greg Popcak while writing this post.


Theology of the Body
John Paul II's Theology of the Body
John Paul II's Theology of the Body

Michael Waldstein
Retranslating the Theology of the Body.rtf
Retranslating the Theology of the Body
The 2nd International Theology of The Body Symposium
The Theology of the Body According to John Paul II
Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body

Carl Anderson and Father José Granados
Called to Love - More on Theology of the Body
Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II's Theology of the Body
What is the Theology of the Body & Why is it Changing so Many Lives?

Greg Popcak
Pastoral Solutions Institute: Homepage
Ave Maria Radio Host - Greg and Lisa Popcak - Heart Mind and Strength
Holy Sex!
Catholic Dads: Holy Sex - by Gregory Popcak - Book Review

Christopher West
Christopher West Home
Theology of the Body Institute

A better approach? Chastity - Pure Love Club and Real Love Incorporated

Catholic Social Thought, Political Liberalism, and the Idea of Human Rights
Zachary R. Calo
(via Mirror of Justice)

Christopher West's Theology of the Body by David L. Schindler

stating that, while “there are some important health and aesthetic considerations that can’t be overlooked,” “there's nothing inherently wrong with anal penetration as foreplay to normal intercourse," (Good News About Sex and Marriage, 1st ed., emphasis in original), though qualifying this in the revised edition and stressing the subjective dangers of lust in such activity

I believe it can be argued that anal sex is intrinsically wrong -- the penis is not meant to be put in the anus, and we can know this precisely from the adverse impact on health that this can have. We can also look at the functionality of the organs involved as well.

Some Ralph McInerny videos

Medieval Philosophy: St. Thomas Aquinas


Introduction to Thomas Aquinas


Medieval Philosophy


Metaphysics


Ralph McInerny
Center for Ethics and Culture bio
icuweb
International Catholic University

Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy: Section 1

Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy: Section 2
Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy: Section 3
Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy: Section 4
Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy: Section 5

Philosopher Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy • VideoSift

wiki
Gifford Lecture Series - Biography - Anthony Kenny
Anthony Kenny - Aquinas on Being - Reviewed by Robert Pasnau

Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle: Section 1

Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle: Section 2
Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle: Section 3
Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle: Section 4
Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle: Section 5

I hesitate to add "Aristotle" as a label for this post, as I do not consider Nussbaum to be a reliable disciple.

Interview with Quentin Skinner.

Interview of Professor Quentin Skinner - part 1

Interview of Professor Quentin Skinner - part 2

(You can download this interview here.)

James Chastek brings us a translation of the first part of the first chapter of Msgr. Maurice Dionne’s treatment of analogy: Dionne on analogy.

James Schall, "Rights" and Liberties

Few recognize how dangerous the origin of this word is. Many fine scholars such as Jacques Maritain, John Finnis, and others have worked valiantly to save “rights” terminology from relativism, the context in which it is understood in modern political philosophy. They have not prevailed in baptizing it as was their intent, even though they provide plausible arguments about why it need not be a relativistic concept. These arguments are simply ignored or rejected by most rights advocates, though seldom confronted intellectually.


David Walsh has noted that the word “rights” still retains a vague relation to some stable grounding in being. Today, however, “rights” mean what Hobbes, its original formulator, claimed: namely, the word rights means whatever the de facto political authority says it means. A “right” is what the government defines and enforces as a right, nothing more, nothing less. The current president’s whole anti-life agenda, the most extreme ever designed in any responsible or irresponsible polity, is presented to us under the guise of “human rights.” It is breathtaking.


The idea that such “rights” have “natural law” behind them, a way of looking at them so that we can appeal to a common and agreed rational concept of human nature, is fine. But this understanding is neither what the word nor the actions of the government mean. We like to say that the “right to life is the fundamental right.” Nix that “right” and all else falls. This is true. All else is falling. The “right to life” now means politically what, and only what, the government and courts define it to mean, not some “inalienable” idea of human dignity from God or nature.


The Church has taken up the term “natural right” as if it meant something rooted in human nature. I can count almost on one hand the number of times that, aware of the problem, a pope or theologian will say, almost as an aside, that “natural right,” of course, does not mean what “natural right” does mean in the public order. They then use the very same term as if everyone agreed with a grounded view, rooted in natural law.


In practice, we seem to think that everyone agrees with this Catholic background of “natural rights.” We have a basis for common discourse. Yet we soon find that people polemically inquire: “If you claim a ‘right to life,’ why not grant a ‘right’ to abortion or any such thing?”

It seems that the word right is used to refer to both subjective passive rights and subjective active rights, it is being used equivocally, and not univocally. Given our disregard for natural law and its Author, naturally we would associate our conception of rights with some brand of legal positivitism, would we not? What possible limits could there be? Some may say that the liberal 'no harm' principle is sufficient. But how is harm to be defined? Just the production of physical evils? Or moral evils as well, and everything "in between"?

Edward Feser, Davidson’s anomalous monism

James Chastek, Aristotle's account of substance

Charles De Koninck: Works in philosophy

The website includes the following:

Letter On The Common Good

Charles de Koninck


December 22, 1961




Dear Sister Margaret Ann:

The book you mention was out of print six weeks after publication. A new printing will appear in France some time next year.

I wrote that little work to defend Aristotle and St. Thomas when they say that, within a given genus, the common good is always more divine than the proper or personal good. This proposition had been under attack for some time. The reasoning behind this open attack even by well-known Thomists assumed that "common good" is a univocal expression, i.e. with one single meaning, and that one can therefore pass from one genus to the other. Yet in fact the common good of the family (namely, the offspring) and that of the political community (the well-being of the citizens, which, in the end, consists in virtuous activity) are one only in proportion. When said of the Church, we must distinguish between the intrinsic common good, which is the inherent good of the whole made up of parts; and the extrinsic common good, which is God in his very Deity. The latter is a common good in still another sense, for it refers to what St. Thomas calls a "totum ante partes", not "ex partibus." When we say that the creature participates in God's perfection, we do not mean that it is part of God the way a slice of bread is part of the whole loaf. It means simply that the fulness of God's perfection is such that, no matter how perfect the creature or even the ensemble of all creation, it will never compare to God except in the way in which what is only partial compares to the whole. Hence, had God created only one single person, he would still have the nature of common good in the latter sense; so that this person would have to love God as a good that far exceeds the measure of any created person. And this is the basis of charity towards neighbour, whom we must love qua "capax Dei". This is so true that one cannot love God without love of neighbour. Had God produced but one person, this person would still have to love God in his super-abundant communicability to others. This applies even to the soul of Christ, which, in the beatific vision does not see God comprehensively.

It is one thing to compare the member of a society to the society as a whole. The society is for the sake of the common good of its members who are individual persons. Hence society is for man, not man for society. But it does not follow from this that the common good of society must be broken down into individual goods, the way a loaf of bread is shared at the table. In the Eucharist, however, which St. Thomas calls the spiritual common good of the whole Church, "Sumit unus, sumunt mille, quantum iste, tantum ille."

You say: "If we are part of the whole living Christ, then I conclude that the part exists for the whole, and not the whole for the part." Concerning the Mystical Body, three kinds of good are involved. If you consider the perfection of this complex whole as such, then each member, the humanity of Christ most of all, contributes to the perfection or good of the whole; and, in this respect, the member is for the whole the way feet and eyes are for the good of the whole body. But the perfection of the whole flows back to the members, though to the members as their common good. Finally, if we consider the ultimate purpose of the Mystical Body, it is the Deity itself, the extrinsic common good, achieved, immediately, by the individual persons severally. The point is that in God's designs we are in fact dependent upon one another; he has chosen teachers, ministers of the Sacramenta, etc. Now, all this bespeaks dependence on the part of those who are taught and partake in the Sacraments. But we cannot day that the ultimate good of the Mystical Body is the good that is intrinsic to it as an orderly whole of parts; this itself is for the sake of something else, namely, the extrinsic good which is God in his Deity.

Let me put it this way, by analogy: The proper good of the eye is to see; but its seeing contributes to the good of the whole man; but the whole man is not for the sake of the eye's seeing; yet, without sight, the whole would be maimed. But here is where the comparison breaks down: eyes are for seeing and for nothing else; but the teacher, whom St. Thomas calls an eye of the Mystical Body, is not, in all that he is, for the sake of teaching. The immediate good of the teacher is to enlighten those whom he teaches; It is good for him to do so, and good for those taught. But teaching is not his ultimate end as a person; his teaching serves this end, which is to know God as he is in Himself; and he wants those whom he teaches to attain this same end, and to attain it in their individual persons.

See also: Charles de Koninck Archive and the Charles De Koninck Scribd group.

Charles De Koninck, the Common Good, and the Human Environment (pdf)

I have a copy of Love and Responsibility somewhere. Source of the following.

From Love and Responsibility , written by Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II’s pre-papal name) way back in 1960..

The basic premise of the book is the Personalistic norm:—the person is the kind of good which does not admit of being used and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end. In its positive form the norm confirms this: the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love. (i.e. love your neighbor as yourself)

JP II extends this personalistic principle to the sexual act in the following excerpt pg. 272-275:

“Sexual ethics, the ethics of marriage, must examine closely certain facts on which clinical sexology can provide precise information. We have defined love as an ambition to ensure the true good of another person, and consequently as the antithesis of egoism. Since in marriage a man and a woman are associated sexually as well as in other respects the good must be sought in this area too. From the point of view of another person, from the altruistic standpoint, it is necessary to insist that intercourse must not serve merely as a means of allowing sexual excitement to reach its climax in one of the partners, i.e. the man alone, but that climax must be reached in harmony, not at the expense of one partner, but with both partners fully involved. This is implicit in the principle which we have already so thoroughly analysed, and which excludes exploitation of the person, and insists on love. In the present case love demands that the reactions of the other person, the sexual ‘partner’ be fully taken into account.

Sexologists state that the curve of arousal in woman is different from that in man—it rises more slowly and falls more slowly. Anatomically, arousal occurs in the same way in women and in men (the locus of excitement is in the cerebro-spinal system at S2-S3). The female organism, as was mentioned above, reacts more easily to excitation in various parts of the body, which to some extent compensates for the fact that the woman’s excitement grows more slowly than that of the man. The man must take this difference into account, not for hedonistic, but for altruistic reasons. There exists a rhythm dictated by nature itself which both spouses must discover so that climax may be reached both by the man and by the woman, and as far as possible occur in both simultaneously. The subjective happiness which they then share has the clear characteristic of the enjoyment which we have called ‘frui’, of the joy which flows from harmony between one’s own actions and the objective order of nature. Egoism on the other hand—and in this context it is obviously more likely to be egoism on the part of the man—is inseparable from the ‘uti’ in which one party seeks only his own pleasure at the expense of the other. Evidently, the elementary teachings of sexology cannot be applied without reference to ethics.

Non-observance of these teachings of sexology in the marital relationship is contrary to the good of the other partner to the marriage and the durability and cohesion of the marriage itself. It must be taken into account that it is naturally difficult for the woman to adapt herself to the man in the sexual relationship, that there is a natural unevenness of physical and psychological rhythms, so that there is a need for harmonization, which is impossible without good will, especially on the part of the man, who must carefully observe the reactions of the woman. If a woman does not obtain natural gratification from the sexual act there is a danger that her experience of it will be qualitatively inferior, will not involve her fully as a person. This sort of experience makes nervous reactions only too likely, and may for instance cause secondary sexual frigidity. Frigidity is sometimes the result of an inhibition on the part of the woman herself, or of a lack of involvement which may even at times be her own fault. But it is usually the result of egoism in the man, who failing to recognize the subjective desires of the woman in intercourse, and the objective laws of the sexual process taking place in her, seeks merely his own satisfaction, sometimes quite brutally.

In the woman this produces an aversion to intercourse, and a disgust with sex which is just as difficult or even more difficult to control than the sexual urge. It can also cause neuroses and sometimes organic disorders (which come from the fact that the engorgement of the genital organs at the time of sexual arousal results in inflammation in the region of the so-called little pelvis, if sexual arousal is not terminated by detumescence, which in the woman is closely connected with orgasm). Pyschologically, such a situation causes not just indifference but outright hostility. A woman finds it very difficult to forgive a man if she derives no satisfaction from intercourse. It becomes difficult for her to endure this, and as the years go her resentment may grow out of all proportion to its cause. This may lead to the collapse of the marriage. It can be prevented by sexual education—and by this I mean more than merely instruction in sexual matters. For it must be emphasized yet again that physical disgust does not exist in marriage as a primary phenomenon, but is as a rule, a secondary reaction: in women it is the response to egoism and brutality, in men to frigidity and indifference. But the woman’s frigidity and indifference is often the fault of the man, when he seeks his own satisfaction while leaving the woman unsatisfied, something which masculine pride should in any case forbid. But in some particularly difficult situations natural pride may not be enough in the long run—everyone knows that egoism may either blind a man and rob him of his pride or, on the contrary, result in a morbid hypertrophy of pride, which causes him to lose sight of the other human being. Similarly, the natural kindness of a woman, who (so the sexologists tell us) sometimes ‘shams orgasm’ to satisfy a man’s pride, may also be unhelpful in the long run. These are mere palliatives, and cannot in the end give satisfactory solutions to the difficulties experienced in intercourse. There is here a real need for sexual education, and it must be a continuous process. The main objective of this education is to create the conviction that ‘the other person is more important than I’. Such conviction will not arise suddenly and from nothing, merely on the basis of physical intercourse. It can only be, must be, the result of an integral education in love. Sexual intercourse itself does not teach love, but love, if it is a genuine virtue, will show itself to be so in sexual relations between married people as elsewhere. Only then can ‘sexual instruction’ bestow its full benefits: without education in our sense it may even do harm.

This is where the ‘culture of marital relations’ comes in and what it means. Not the ‘technique’ but the ‘culture’. Sexologists often put the main emphasis on technique, whereas this should rather be thought of as something secondary, and often perhaps even inimical to the purpose which it is supposed to serve. The urge is so strong that it creates in the normal man and woman a sort of instinctive knowledge ‘how to make love’ whereas artificial analysis (and the concept of ‘technique’ implies this) is more likely to spoil the whole thing, for what is wanted here is a certain spontaneity and naturalness (subordinated of course to morality). This instinctive knowledge must subsequently mature into a ‘culture of marital relations’. I must refer here to the analysis of ‘tenderness’ to be found in section 3 of Chapter II. This ability to enter readily into another person’s emotions and experiences can play a big part in harmonization of marital intercourse. It has its origin in ‘sentiment’, which is directed primarily towards the ‘human being’ and so can temper and tone down the violent reactions of sensuality, which is so oriented only towards the ‘body’ and the uninhibited impulses of concupiscence. Precisely because a slower and more gradual rise in the curve of sexual arousal is characteristic of the female organism the need for tenderness during physical intercourse, and also before it begins and after its conclusion, is explicable in purely biological terms. If we take into account the shorter and more violent curve of arousal in the man, an act of tenderness on his part in the context of marital intercourse acquires the significance of an act of virtue—specifically, the virtue of continence, and so indirectly the virtue of love (see the analysis in Section 3 of Chapter III). Marriage cannot be reduced to the physical relationship, it needs an emotional climate without which the virtues—whether that of love or that of chastity—become difficult to realize in practice."
(Emphasis mine)

Christopher West even states in his book Theology of the Body for Beginners which explains Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and incorporates the teaching of his book Love and Responsibility that “behind virtually every abortion is a man of lust.” But if one operates by the personalistic norm and values sex as it should be valued--in the context of marriage, then this won't happen.

Based on the above foundation, you might see why I have no need to stimulate arousal by reading posts in this forum. Nor would my wife for that matter.

A Summary of Karol Wojtyla's Love and Responsibility by William E. May
Naked without Shame
Love & Responsibility Foundation
Holy Spirit Interactive: Edward P. Sri - Love and Responsibility