Aristotle – eyebeleave

Zanghí: the person, an individual fulfilled

Klee person

930 words, 5 min read

The question of who I am is at the very heart of philosophy and a failure to answer it was presented by Socrates even as grounds for voiding the very value of his being, when he said his famous “The unexamined life is not worth living.” during the trial that lead to his being sentenced to death. A philosopher who has given this question some very careful and insightful thought is Giuseppe Maria Zanghí, who in his 1980 article entitled “A few thoughts on the person” has looked at the distinction between person and individual.

His starting point is the presentation is a key challenge that we face when attempting to subject the person to scientific enquiry:

“In the humanity common to all humans, the person is precisely that which is not in common, that which constitutes me as me in a shared humanity. How is it possible, then, to objectify the person? If we do that, we can only state what the person is not (not to confuse with, e.g., human nature); but if we want to say what the person is, we won’t find a “scientific” answer.”

By definition, that of which there is only a single specimen can not be subjected to the scientific method, since it does not allow for repeatability, for generalization and for verification (already Aristotle knew this well, when he argued in he Metaphysics (XIII, 10) that there can be no science of individual entities).

This initial roadblock leads Zanghí to define the person as follows:

“The person […] is a “singularity” irreducible to another since it is other; it is that unrepeatable “singularity” that makes a human be this human, who then is the concretely existing one.”

Next, Zanghí introduces an important nuance and distinction: that between the person and the individual, lest his definition of the former be taken as pointing to the latter:

“Could we, therefore, say that the person is the individual? The answer to this question calls for careful reflection. If we analyze ourselves, we realize that the individual is that which exists concretely: only in it does human nature not exist as a logical concept but as effective reality. But there remains a difference between nature and individual, without which the individual would absorb the totality of the nature and would deny the other. We can say, therefore, that the individual is defined by the precise limits within which it exists; the individual is, to use an image, carved into the common, shared nature. Human nature is constrained, it contracts, becoming concrete in the space-times that are individuals.”

What I believe Zanghí is saying here is that the individual is an instance of human nature, but distinct from it, since, otherwise, there could be only one individual, and that it is a spatiotemporal restriction and concretization of that nature.

This leads Zanghí to the realization of what it is that distinguishes the person from the individual:

“Yet, as I affirm all this (non-identity between the individual and nature, spatiotemporality of the individual), if what I say makes sense, I demonstrate to myself that, because of the awareness that I have of it, I am overcoming precisely the limits that make me an individual; I overcome, by speaking about it, the space-time in which I am an individual, I overcome the individual-nature distinction. Not in a sense that confuses the logical and existential planes, but in the sense that I unite them on a higher level, that I call ontological. I can think of myself as I think, because I transcend myself as an individual, I achieve a way of being where the individual-nature opposition, and thus individuality itself, is overcome (but not negated). In this act of transcendence, in this overcoming that I achieve while thinking, I reverse the state proper to the individual, that is, I assume nature, through the individual but beyond the individual, in an “other” with regard to the individual, and that is the person.”

The person is essentially the individual’s self-transcendence, a going beyond the constraints and unicity of the individual that is demonstrated by the very act of thinking about oneself, which would otherwise not be possible – without transcendence the individual could not think about itself.

Zanghí unpacks this transcendental nature of the person as follows:

“I would say, then, that the person is the individual’s act of transcendence, it is the individual that overcomes itself by taking nature up into itself and achieving a unity between universality (proper to nature) and existential concreteness, that is, the particular (proper to the individual). Human nature exists concretely in an act of transcendence that, while it “limits” it in the concreteness of the here and now (the individual), it returns it to an existing universality (the person).”

Finally, in anticipation of a potential misunderstanding that the above could lead to, Zanghí focuses on how individual and person relate:

“It is to be understood, also, that the person is not placed above, so to speak, the individual: almost as though, if the individual is what exists, is substance, then the person is also another substance added to the individual. The person is the act of the individual human substance, the act in which that-which-is-human (the individual human individual) is in its fullness, I would simply say: is.”

In other words, Zanghí is careful to avoid a dualist misinterpretation of his thought by stressing that we are not some strange amalgams of two distinct substances: individual and person, but that it is the person which is how the individual exists/is.

Natural law

Last year’s Synod on the Family lamented an almost universal lack of understanding of the concept of “natural law” among the faithful, a principle that the Church relies on for the bulk of its moral teaching, which she sees as being shared by all of humanity. Her teaching on marriage and on human reproduction makes copious reference to the natural law, as does her social teaching. As a result, I would here like to review the foundations of what natural law is, how it fits into the bigger picture of the Church’s teaching and how access to it works. Since, like any aspect of the Church’s teaching, the understanding and consequences of natural law develop over time, let me look at a couple of sources in chronological order, starting with Aristotle and arriving at the current, 1993 Catechism.

Aristotle, in his Rhetoric points to a distinction between societal laws and laws that derive from nature and that supersede the conventions of a society. While doing so, he refers to examples from Greek literature that already at his time were “classics”:

“Universal law is the law of Nature. For there really is, as every one to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant with each other. It is this that Sophocles’ Antigone clearly means when she says that the burial of Polyneices was a just act in spite of the prohibition: she means that it was just by nature: “Not of to-day or yesterday it is, But lives eternal: none can date its birth.”

And so Empedocles, when he bids us kill no living creature, says that doing this is not just for some people while unjust for others: “Nay, but, an all-embracing law, through the realms of the sky Unbroken it stretcheth, and over the earth’s immensity.””

St. Augustine then emphasizes three very interesting things about natural law. First, that it relates to the orderedness of the universe (which is also its basis of intelligibility and of rationality in general):

“Therefore, let me explain briefly, as well as I can put it in words, the notion of that eternal law which is impressed upon our nature: ‘It is that law in virtue of which it is just that all things exist in perfect order.’” (De libero arbitrio, 1.8.18.)

Second, that such ontological order translates to a rational one and that acting in accordance with it leads to a well-ordered and fulfilled life:

“From this ineffable and sublime arrangement of affairs, then, which is accomplished by divine providence, a natural law [naturalis lex] is, so to speak, inscribed upon the rational soul, so that in the very living out of this life and in their earthly activities people might hold to the tenor of such dispensations.” (De Diversis Questionibus Octoginta Tribus)

“Whatever sets man above the beast, whether we call it ‘mind’ [mens] or ’spirit’ [spiritus] or, more correctly, both since we find both terms in Scriptures, if this rules over and commands the other parts that make up man, then man’s life is in perfect order … We are to think of a man well-ordered, therefore, when his reason rules over these movements of the soul, for we must not speak of right order, of or order at all, when the more perfect is made subject to the less perfect … It follows, therefore, that when reason, [ratio] or mind [mens], or spirit [spiritus], rules over the irrational movements of the soul, then that is in control in man which ought to be, by virtue of the law which we found to be eternal.” (De libero arbitrio, 1.8.18.)

Here the idea of a right order seems particularly well aligned also with the first (and again last) step of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, which is right understanding and about which he says that it is “a knowledge and vision of things as they really are”.

Third, St. Augustine – rooted in St. Paul – is also very clear about natural law being accessible to all, regardless of their beliefs and he even goes as far as to recognize its knowledge in the “ungodly”:

“For who but God has written the law of nature (naturale legem) in the hearts of men? that law concerning which the apostle says: “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing them witness and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another, in the day when the Lord shall judge the secrets of men.” [Rom. 2:14-16] And therefore, as in the case of every rational soul, which thinks and reasons, even though blinded by passion, we attribute whatever in its reasoning is true, not to itself but to the very light of truth by which, however faintly, it is according to its capacity illuminated, so as to perceive some measure of truth by its reasoning.” (Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount)

“For hence it is that even the ungodly think of eternity, and rightly blame and rightly praise many things in the morals of men. And by what rules do they thus judge, except by those wherein they see how men ought to live, even though they themselves do not so live? And where do they see these rules? For they do not see them in their own [moral] nature; since no doubt these things are to be seen by the mind, and their minds are confessedly changeable, but these rules are seen as unchangeable by him who can see them at all; nor yet in the character of their own mind, since these rules are rules of righteousness, and their minds are confessedly unrighteous. Where indeed are these rules written, wherein even the unrighteous recognizes what is righteous, wherein he discerns that he ought to have what he himself has not? Where, then, are they written, unless in the book of that Light which is called Truth? Whence every righteous law is copied and transferred (not by migrating to it, but by being as it were impressed upon it) to the heart of the man that works righteousness; as the impression from a ring passes into the wax, yet does not leave the ring.” (De Trinitate, 14.15.21.)

St. Augustine paints a picture of great harmony here: the universe is ordered, reason recognizes that order and even those who do not live in sync with it understand that there is an order that is proper to human conduct and that is inscribed in nature.

Next, St. Thomas Aquinas develops the concept of natural law by thinking of it as a rational agent’s participation in God’s eternal reason:

“All things partake somewhat of the eternal law, insofar as, namely, from its being imprinted upon them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine providence in a more excellent way, insofar as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident for itself and for others. Wherefore it has a share of the eternal reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end, and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law.” (Summa q91, a2 (p20))

Going beyond just the concept of Natural Law, Thomas Aquinas takes a stab at spelling out its “first principles” as being the following: that good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided, that life is to be preserved, that one is to reproduce and raise one’s offspring and that knowledge and life in society are to be pursued:

“Whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man’s good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of natural law as something to be done or avoided. […]

All those things to which man has a natural inclination are naturally apprehended by reason as being good and, consequently, as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil and objects of avoidance. […] Wherefore the order of the precepts of the natural law is according to the order of natural inclinations.”

What is interesting here is that, in addition to the orderedness of reality being reflected in our understanding of it that St. Augustine spoke of, St. Thomas adds to it also a link to our inclinations, making being, understanding and desire all aligned with each other. Even though St. Thomas already speaks about limits to the understanding of natural law, and gives examples of it being overridden in some societies (e. g., “theft, although it is expressly contrary to the natural law, was not considered wrong among the Germans, as Julius Caesar relates.”), the overall picture is one of all-encompassing harmony.

In 1888 Pope Leo XIII picks up the subject of natural law in the context of his encyclical entitled Libertas (“freedom”). There he first challenges the notion of freedom being opposed to an adherence to laws, which he in turn equates with reason:

“Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature.”

Leo XIII then defines natural law as follows, identifying it again with reason:

“natural law […] is written and engraved in the mind of every man; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin.”

and proceeds to elaborate on how God helps us to adhere to it in a way that does not cancel our freedom:

“To this rule of action and restraint of evil God has vouchsafed to give special and most suitable aids for strengthening and ordering the human will. The first and most excellent of these is the power of His divine grace, whereby the mind can be enlightened and the will wholesomely invigorated and moved to the constant pursuit of moral good, so that the use of our inborn liberty becomes at once less difficult and less dangerous. Not that the divine assistance hinders in any way the free movement of our will; just the contrary, for grace works inwardly in man and in harmony with his natural inclinations, since it flows from the very Creator of his mind and will, by whom all things are moved in conformity with their nature.”

The need for help with discerning natural law is also underlined in Pope Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, where he writes:

“[T]he human intellect, in gaining the knowledge of such truths is hampered both by the activity of the senses and the imagination, and by evil passions arising from original sin. Hence men easily persuade themselves in such matters that what they do not wish to believe is false or at least doubtful.”

And with that we arrive at the Church’s present understanding of natural law, which is clearly set out in the current Catechism. There human rationality (which already to St. Augustine was key) is presented as the interface with the natural law [note also the referring to humans as animals, consistent with evolutionary continuity]:

“Alone among all animate beings, man can boast of having been counted worthy to receive a law from God: as an animal endowed with reason, capable of understanding and discernment, he is to govern his conduct by using his freedom and reason, in obedience to the One who has entrusted everything to him.” (§1951)

“Man participates in the wisdom and goodness of the Creator who gives him mastery over his acts and the ability to govern himself with a view to the true and the good. The natural law expresses the original moral sense which enables man to discern by reason the good and the evil, the truth and the lie.” (§1954)

The aims of natural law, it’s subsisting in reason and being accessible universally are spelled out next:

“The natural law states the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life. It hinges upon the desire for God and submission to him, who is the source and judge of all that is good, as well as upon the sense that the other is one’s equal. Its principal precepts are expressed in the Decalogue. This law is called “natural,” not in reference to the nature of irrational beings, but because reason which decrees it properly belongs to human nature. […] The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God; through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation.” (§1955)

“The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men. It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties.” (§1956)

The Catechism then picks up on St. Thomas Aquinas’ point about variation in the application of natural law and presents a particularly useful way of looking at how our varying understanding of natural law differs from the immutable natural law itself (a relationship akin to that between science and the laws of nature):

“Application of the natural law varies greatly; it can demand reflection that takes account of various conditions of life according to places, times, and circumstances. Nevertheless, in the diversity of cultures, the natural law remains as a rule that binds men among themselves and imposes on them, beyond the inevitable differences, common principles.” (§1957)

“The natural law is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history; it subsists under the flux of ideas and customs and supports their progress. The rules that express it remain substantially valid. Even when it is rejected in its very principles, it cannot be destroyed or removed from the heart of man. It always rises again in the life of individuals and societies.” (§1958)

While the Christian sources cited so far all speak about a close link between natural law and divine law, the vast majority of what they assert about it can, in my opinion, be considered even in the absence of theist beliefs and depends only on whether moral values can be discerned by reason or whether they are all solely the result of social convention or individual choice. E.g., whether the goodness of treating men and women equally can be arrived at by the use of reason alone or whether it is solely the result of a social contract. Whether we could all just agree on its opposite tomorrow or whether the rational appeal of it would persist against social consensus.

This is a question that has been controversial for centuries and I won’t even attempt to do it justice here, skipping even Hume’s famous distinction between is and ought (i.e., that what is (e.g., as in human nature) has no normative power), and I’ll just conclude with presenting a pair of opposite assessments of natural law from the atheist perspective.

The first is Mark Murphy’s flat-out declaration of their incompatibility in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“If Aquinas’s view is paradigmatic of the natural law position, and these two theses — that from the God’s-eye point of view, it is law through its place in the scheme of divine providence, and from the human’s-eye point of view, it constitutes a set of naturally binding and knowable precepts of practical reason — are the basic features of the natural law as Aquinas understands it, then it follows that paradigmatic natural law theory is incompatible with several views in metaphysics and moral philosophy. On the side of metaphysics, it is clear that the natural law view is incompatible with atheism: one cannot have a theory of divine providence without a divine being.”

To me this sounds a bit tautological though in that it can be read as saying: the way St. Thomas Aquinas speaks about natural law is theist, therefore there is no atheist way of positing natural law. It does not engage with considering whether those aspects of Aquinas’ thought on natural law that are not theist (i.e., “human’s-eye point of view”) don’t also make sense in isolation (and would argue that they do).

Second, Murray Rothbard’s rebuttal of such a facile opposition to the concept of human nature in atheist thought, arguing precisely from a perspective of humans being just as much part of the material world as atoms, molecules and stones, all of which have specific shared features.

“It is indeed puzzling that so many modern philosophers should sniff at the very term “nature” as an injection of mysticism and the supernatural. An apple, let fall, will drop to the ground; this we all observe and acknowledge to be in the nature of the apple (as well as the world in general). Two atoms of hydrogen combined with one of oxygen will yield one molecule of water — behavior that is uniquely in the nature of hydrogen, oxygen, and water. There is nothing arcane or mystical about such observations. Why then cavil at the concept of “nature”? […] And yet, if apples and stones and roses each have their specific natures, is man the only entity, the only being, that cannot have one? And if man does have a nature, why cannot it too be open to rational observation and reflection? If all things have natures, then surely man’s nature is open to inspection; the current brusque rejection of the concept of the nature of man is therefore arbitrary and a priori.”

Considering all of the above, I believe there is a basis for recognizing that humans have rational access to innate moral values, from which normative laws can be derived. This does not necessitate a belief in a superhuman source of such laws (although for a Christian such a belief has added incentives for discernment and adherence) or a belief that those laws are perfectly and unchangeably known. In fact, the Church too recognizes that the natural law is not immediately accessible and that it subsists beneath our attempts to elucidate it, attempts that because of this alone need to continue and may yield evolving results. All that a subscription to the concept of natural law entails is a belief to there being values that derive from who humans are rather that only from our arbitrary consensus.

Being body in spirit

Le christ arcabas

Last Saturday at mass, I heard something along the following lines during the sermon: “We need to look after our souls more than after our bodies, since our souls are eternal and our bodies will be discarded at the end of our lives.” While the intention behind this statement may have been good, and was set in the context of the priest noting that only around 1% of those who attend mass come to confession in his parish, the suggestion of the body being secondary and only temporarily attached to the soul certainly wasn’t in keeping with the Church’s teaching. Since such dualist views are not uncommon and since I have heard them attributed to Catholicism by some friends of mine, I would here like to take a closer look at what the Catholic Church actually teaches about this topic.

Originally I was going to look at the question of how the body and soul are understood in a broader way, with a look at Scripture, a mention of St. Francis of Assisi, a glimpse at the counter-reformation and then examples from Pope Francis’ teaching (e.g., his insistence on the importance of touching the flesh of the poor and suffering), I will instead stay monographic and focus on what St. John Paul II wrote on the subject in his “Man and Woman He Created Them.” As soon as I went back to that book and started re-reading the relevant passages I realized that all of what I wanted to bring into play is there and is expressed crisply and sharply.

To being with, John Paul II’s point of departure is that of humans¹ being made in the image of God and therefore being a “primordial sacrament”:

“Man appears in the visible world as the highest expression of the divine gift, because he bears within himself the inner dimension of the gift. And with it he carries into the world his particular likeness to God, with which he transcends and also rules his “visibility” in the world, his bodiliness, his masculinity or femininity, his nakedness. […] Thus, in this dimension, a primordial sacrament is constituted, understood as a sign that efficaciously transmits in the visible world the invisible mystery hidden in God from eternity. And this is the mystery of Truth and Love, the mystery of divine life, in which man really participates. In the history of man, it is original innocence that begins this participation and is also the source of original happiness. The sacrament, as a visible sign, is constituted with man, inasmuch as he is a “body,” through his “visible” masculinity and femininity. The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it.”

Note how John Paul II does not say “he has a body” but “he is a body” and that the sacramentality of humans consists in their being a “visible sign” of God’s presence in the world. Unlike other sacraments, humans are conscious of their being so and therefore become subjects rather than objects:

“Consciousness of the gift conditions in this case “the sacrament of the body”: in his body as man or woman, man senses himself as a subject of holiness. With this consciousness of the meaning of his own body, man, as male and female, enters into the world as a subject of truth and love.”

The body’s origins (as gift from God and God’s visible sign in the world) and function (as “subject of holiness”) already point to it’s being a lasting and intrinsic part of what it is to be human:

“[W]e draw a first hope already from the mystery of creation: namely, that the fruit of the divine economy of truth and love, which revealed itself “at the beginning,” is not Death, but Life, and not so much the “destruction of the body of man made in the image of God,” but rather the “call to glory” (Romans 8:30).”

And it is Jesus’ resurrection that seals the deal:

“The resurrection, according to Christ’s words reported by the Synoptics, means not only the recovery of bodiliness and the reestablishment of human life in its integrity, through the union of body and soul, but also a wholly new state of human life itself.”

It is often said that all philosophy is a conversation between Plato and Aristotle, and the body-soul question seems to be no different. John Paul II here clearly aligns Christianity and Catholic teaching with Aristotle and later with Thomas Aquinas:

“Reflection about the resurrection led Thomas Aquinas in his metaphysical (and simultaneously theological) anthropology to abandon Plato’s philosophical conception on the relation between the soul and the body and to draw near to Aristotle’s view. In fact, the resurrection attests, at least indirectly, that in the whole of the human composite, the body is not, contrary to Plato, only temporarily linked with the soul (as its earthly “prison,” as Plato maintained), but that together with the soul it constitutes the unity and integrity of the human being. This is precisely what Aristotle taught, in contrast to Plato. When St. Thomas in his anthropology accepted Aristotle’s conception, he did so because he considered the truth about the resurrection. In fact, the truth about the resurrection clearly affirms that man’s “eschatological perfection and happiness cannot be understood as a state of the soul alone, separated (according to Plato, liberated) from the body, but must be understood as the definitively and perfectly “integrated” state of man brought about by such a union of the soul with the body that it definitively qualifies and assures this perfect integrity.”

Siding with Aristotle here is firmly on the basis of the resurrection, which brings about the original harmony that was created by God “in the beginning”:

“In the resurrection, the body will return to perfect unity and harmony with the spirit: man will no longer experience the opposition between what is spiritual and what is bodily in him. [… It is] not only that the spirit will master the body, but, I would say, that it will also fully permeate the body and the powers of the spirit will permeate the “energies of the body.””

John Paul II is quick to insist on the resurrection not having resulted in victory of spirit over body, a subjugation, but in participation and personal fulfillment:

“In fact, in the composite, psychosomatic being that is man, perfection cannot consist in a reciprocal opposition of the spirit and the body, but in a deep harmony between them, in safeguarding the primacy of the spirit. In the “other world,” this primacy will be realized, and it will be manifested in a perfect spontaneity without any opposition on the part of the body. Nevertheless, this should not be understood as a definitive “victory” of the spirit over the body. The resurrection will consist in the perfect participation of all that is bodily in man in all that is spiritual in him. At the same time, it will consist in the perfect realization of what is personal in man.”

This also very much echoes Giuseppe Maria Zanghí’s thought on how our being in God does not annihilate us, is not a victory over us, but instead:

“I can be myself in Him (being an intimate participant of Trinitarian life in the Word), while being really distinct from Him (by virtue of being a creature different from Him). It is His love that wants me, and the love of God does not withdraw into itself, canceling diversity with the other by totally reverting it to Himself, but “makes” the other and guards them in diversity from Himself, not wanting to possess (like He doesn’t possess Himself) in total reabsorption. […] Because the relationship between the two “opposing” extremes (I and the other, I and God) is still thought of as ending in one of the two (and, therefore, in the strongest!); while, if Christian faith is true, the relationship does not end in either of the mediated extremes, but in a third that saves them precisely in their diversity.”

And – as far as the body-soul relationship is concerned, I believe Zanghí’s “third” is precisely John Paul II’s “resurrection.”

¹ In my own words I will use the somewhat awkward “humans” to refer to both men and women, while in the quotes from John Paul II’s writings there will be reference to “man.” Note, however, that John Paul II means “human” when his words are rendered as “man” in English, which is explicit from the full text of “Man and Woman He Created Them” and also reflects the fact that in Polish he uses the word “człowiek” which also refers to both men and women and is used in everyday language without the technical connotations that “human” has in English.

Synod14: We aren’t the bosses of God’s mercy

Francis kids

Since the close of yesterday’s sessions of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, several interviews with or full texts of interventions by some Synod Fathers have been published.

The first of these I’d like to share is by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, the archbishop emeritus of Brussels, who’s contribution to the Synod was a plea for greater care for the divorced and remarried:

“God is just and merciful. He can’t contradict himself. He can separate good and evil in a great straddle. We, we have difficulty because we are only poor ballet dancers for a moment in the whole of history. […]

In the first place we are invited to greatly respect our brothers and sisters, the divorced and remarried. Mercy starts where we have unconditional respect for all who want to live within the Church but can’t marry again for the Church and receive Communion. […]

It is so important to speak with them, to let them speak about the beauty of marriage and the Christian family. Beauty is so powerful! This is obviously not esthetic beauty, but beauty who is the sister of truth and goodness. According to Aristotle “beauty is truth in all its glory”. Pulchrum est splendor veri.

Among our contemporaries there is much scepticism about the truth; even goodness can discourage, but beauty disarms. Beauty heals. Archimedes said about our world today, “Give me a place to stand and I will lift the world.”

The divorced and remarried are not the only suffering children, but there are far more than we think. My appeal – in all simplicity – is: to love God’s children. Their pain and suffering is often great. They don’t immediately ask for the regulations of the Church to change. Their cry is rather one to the shepherds with their hearts in the right place, why carry the wounded lamb on their shoulders. Beauty disarms. We hold the cards: there is indeed nothing more beautiful than Christian marriage and a deeply faithful family. But we must communicate the truth to divorced and remarried people – delicately – with the words of Saint Francis in mind, which he spoke to the superiors of his small communities, “never let anyone leave you in sadness”.”

Archbishop Denis Hart, the President of the Australian Bishop’s Conference, commented on the need for a new language – a “language of love” – and underlined the Church’s concern for all who suffer:

“[The] Catechism of the Catholic Church [speaks] about people being ‘disordered’, things being ‘intrinsically evil’. You say that to a parent who has a gay son or daughter and they just cannot understand that this child whom they love and who they have nurtured – might have chosen a thing that they don’t approve of – but is to be totally rejected because of that. And I think we have to be faithful to our doctrine and our teaching and practice have to go hand in hand, but we can do so with mercy and love and help people to realize that whatever may be the challenges that our in their life, they are respected and loved by the Church. […]

There are people who are separated and divorced, there are people who are same-sex attracted, there are people who are really struggling in their marriage, and wondering how they will go. The bishops have been emphasizing that we are pastors. When our people suffer we feel for them, when our people are bereaved we cry with them, when our people are burdened with sickness we struggle with them, when people are uncertain about where they can go or are suffering terrible material poverty the Church has to be there with them. I think this is the genius of Pope Francis. The great thing that concerns us in this is Synod is our love for our people and our ability to walk with them.”

There are, however, also voices at the Synod, like that of Cardinal Raymond Burke – the current Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura (whom Pope Francis removed from the Congregation for Bishops last year), who are opposed to a renewal of pastoral practice, e.g., saying that “[i]f homosexual relations are intrinsically disordered, which indeed they are — reason teaches us that and also our faith — then, what would it mean to grandchildren to have present at a family gathering a family member who is living [in] a disordered relationship with another person?”

There is also an important presence of members of other churches, religions and those who hold no religious beliefs at the Synod, who make important contributions. For example, the Anglican Rev. Paul Buttler, provided the following great synthesis of what the Synod is about:

“I think we actually need to reimagine family life again and help people grasp how important steadfastness, faithfulness to one another really is and offer much more support in times of difficulty. We have to be honest – the difficulties happen.”

Last night I also discovered a great blog by the Archbishop Droucher, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he recounts his experiences of the Synod, including a summary of his own intervention:

“What I especially wanted to say was that we should not only focus on what is negative in the world which is ours. True, there are many broken families, abandoned children, deeply wounded individuals. It is true that sexuality is often lived more as a leisure activity than as a true loving language of deep self-giving to another. It is also true that less and less couples are choosing marriage today. However, there are also positive realities in our world today. I named the commitment to equality between men and women in marriage, the refusal of all violence to children and women, the growing role of fathers in the affective life of their children, the place given to communication, mutual respect and healthy relationships. All of this is good and should be recognized and celebrated by Church leaders, creating openings for dialogue with society where the Church can proclaim its humanizing teaching on family, marriage and sexuality.”

I also liked Archbishop Droucher’s immediacy in his blog, where the follows his intervention’s summary by saying “And thus did I finish my four minutes of great nervousness (my hands were shaking) and adrenaline rush.” 🙂

Yesterday afternoon’s (8th) session was then focused on Christian education, where the French couple, Olivier and Xristilla Roussy, shared in their opening testimony that:

“Our mission as parents is above all to awaken our children to holiness. Like all of us, they too face the many temptations of the world and, with humility, we try to make them grow in freedom and generosity, to teach them the senses of discernment, decision making and perseverance. We help them develop their life project under the gaze of God. In spite of the difficult pace of modern life, we seek to be attentive to each one of them and give them plenty of time, both all together and individually.”

The notes provided about the following discussion started with:

“an invitation to the faithful to deepen their knowledge of Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae, thus better understanding the meaning of the use of natural methods of fertility control and the non-acceptance of contraception. Union and procreation, it was said, are not separate from the conjugal act.”

The importance of appropriate marriage preparation was revisited, and – I believe, importantly – linked to the preparation for religious life:

“as its celebration seems to be increasingly reduced to the social and legal status, rather than a religious and spiritual bond. The preparatory course, it was noted, is often perceived by couples as an imposition, a task to complete without conviction, and as a result it is too brief. Since marriage is a vocation for life, preparation for it should be long and detailed, as in the case of preparation for religious life.”

The other side of the marriage preparation coin – that of the adequate preparation of priests to lead it – was addressed next:

“The Assembly went on to insist on the importance of good preparation for priests in relation to the pastoral care of marriage and the family, and remarked that homilies can be used as a special and effective moment for proclaiming the Gospel of the family to the faithful. It was commented that there is a need for formation and information, as the spiritual holiness of the priest, his creativity and his direct relationship with families are particularly appreciated by the faithful.”

This morning then saw experiences shared by couples and lay experts, who are not voting participants but “listeners” instead. Here the notes point to themes that were very much the same as during the preceding days, with an added emphasis on the need for closer collaboration between the laity and the Church’s hierarchy, also in the context of the laity’s involvement in public and secular life. The challenge of caring for the growing number of people living in solitude (irrespective of their association with the Church) was also highlighted during the following press conference. Importantly, Fr. Lombardi, also mentioned Pope Pius X’s “revolutionary” changes to the reception of the Eucharist by children as opposed to only adults as was previous practice. It was emphasized that this is a different context to the questions facing the divorced and remarried, but that there is precedent to substantial changes. The difficult effects of divorce on children were also lamented, of “ping-pong children” who are oscillating between their parents (and their new partners) and lack stability.

Fr. Manuel Dorantes, reporting on the Spanish speaking Synod Fathers’ contributions (with aplomb, I might add), quoted one of them as saying:

“Above all we must kneel before the Holy Spirit and remember that we aren’t the bosses of God’s mercy. We must remember that the mission that Jesus entrusted to his apostles, and by extension to us as their successors, is to evangelize and to heal. And this means, spreading the Good News.”

Calls for a greater involvement of lay persons, and women in particular, in ecclesiastical tribunals were also reported. Fr. Dorantes then quoted another of the Synod Fathers calling for a greater focus on children: “Brothers, I am the son of divorced parents and I, as their son, experienced the stigma of divorce directed at my parents and directed at me.”

This afternoon the Synod is hearing from “fraternal delegates” – i.e., representatives of other churches and religions, about which there will be a press conference tomorrow and on Monday, Cardinal Erdő will present the report reflecting the week’s contributions.

LCWR "systems thinking" – the good, the bad and the ugly

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is an umbrella organization founded in 1956 by the Vatican and counting the leaders of 1500 congregations of women religious in the US as its members (spanning over 80% of all nuns and sisters in the country). Between April 2008 and July 2011 it has been under investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which has found “serious doctrinal problems” and “a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration which leads, in turn, to a loss of a “constant and lively sense of the Church” among some Religious.” In other words, the CDF are saying that the LCWR are taking Christ out of Christianity …

Among the multiple changes mandated by the CDF, the withdrawal of the LCWR’s “Systems Thinking Handbook” was one that particularly caught my eye, also because there are multiple references to it in the CDF’s doctrinal assessment and because its title alone makes me nervous. And as soon as I started reading it, my expectations were not only met but, sadly, exceeded and I very soon came to reading the text not with a question about whether the CDF were hounding the poor LCWR, but about why they haven’t enforced changes already. Roundabout the same point on my way through the “handbook,” I remembered my Aristotle professor and his admonition to apply the principle of charity when faced with another’s thoughts and it is that alone, which resulted in my take including a “the good” section.¹

So, let me start with the slimmest slice from the pie that is this Handbook – the good. Here what I am taking away from having read the 26-page publication is that its motives are good and that the intention behind the methods and attitudes presented in it is to bring about change that goes to the root causes of suffering and injustice:

“This is why it is necessary not only to feed the hungry or house the homeless but also to address the systemic relationships that result in social ills like poverty, homelessness, and hunger.”

Next, let’s move on to the bad (yes, that was it as far as the good is concerned), where the text unfortunately offers far richer pickings.

First, there is a ideologization already of the basic concept of “system” that is at the heart of this Handbook (an odd fact by itself, given the prominence of this text in an organization with canonical status):

“A ‘system’ is an entity that maintains its existence and functions as a whole through the interaction of its parts. The behavior of a system depends on the total structure. The interrelationship among the parts of a system, therefore, must be continually sustained for the system to exist. Systems are purposeful, open, counterintuitive, multidimensional, and have emergent properties not found in any of the parts by themselves. … systems thinking will prevent us from unconsciously employing the same mental models that are causing the problems we want to solve.”

While the first three sentences are pretty vanilla, and essentially paraphrase the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia definition, there is an immediate investment of the term with adjectives like “open” (what about closed systems) and “counterintuitive” (what about a simple system, like that of tea brewing: tea leaves + boiling water –> tea). The paragraph then concludes with an oxymoronic flourish: “systems thinking will prevent us from unconsciously employing the same mental models that are causing the problems we want to solve,” which Freud would have had a lot of fun with.²

Second, there are frequent counterpositions of “Western thought” on the one hand and “Organic thought” on the other, where the former is introduced thus:

“The limits of a short article do not allow for an adequate overview of the development of Western thought. We can safely say, however, that for almost a thousand years, Western thought has interpreted reality from the perspective of a worldview characterized by dualism and hierarchy. […] The ultimate result was a learned inability to think in any other than linear, dualistic, and hierarchical ways when dealing with problems, organizing ideas or work, and in structuring society, church, or our religious congregations. […] This way of seeing reality thus became an unconscious filter for the Western mind, a filter that made it easy to judge immediately what fit or did not fit a particular situation […] The world was stable and sure, a machine-like structure of predetermined and fixed relationships. The human mind could comprehend the universe in its entirety.”

The fault for the above blinkered and recalcitrant nature of “Western thought” is laid at the feet of Plato and Aristotle and all who followed them until the 1960s. The solution put forward by the LCWR is “Organic thought”:

“Th[e] “Organic” mental model prefers to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead of substances. [… T]he “Organic” mental model values chaos, connectedness, process, inclusivity, relationship, and a non-linear expression of authority.”

Commenting on the above is quite a stress test for my desire to apply the principle of charity, as a result of which I’d like to suggest that it is dramatically ill-informed and epically naïve. To suggest that Plato (i.e., mostly Plato’s Socrates; not to mention over two millennia of thinkers following him) had a sense of certainty, of the universe being “machine-like” and of “comprehend[ing] the universe in its entirety” is a claim that can only be made in the absence of any direct experience of his and his successors’ thought. In his Apology, Plato’s Socrates famously says “I do not believe that I know anything,” and even the concept of “system,” so central to the LCWR handbook, is extensively dealt with already by Aristotle.³ This is not to mention the importance attributed to the whole and its interrelationships in Christian sources, starting from St. Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:12-26), via St. Hildegard (“God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else.”) and St. Francis (who sings of fraternal relationships with creation) to Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere. To argue that pre-late-20th-century thought was linear, deterministic and endowed with a sense of its own omniscience is simply false and divorced from facts.

Third, there is an attempt to anchor the Hadbook’s approach to Vatican II and specifically to it’s Lumen Gentium, which – it is claimed – “consciously grounded ecclesiology in the holistic image of the “People of God,” rather than in the “top down” definitions of the past […] defined by dualism and hierarchy.” With the principle of charity at breaking point, I can at best see this statement as being an ultra-selective reading of Lumen Gentium that essentially omits its extensive third chapter (“On Hierarchical Structure”) and all of its numerous references to the role of the Church’s hierarchy not only in Lumen Gentium but also in all of the other Vatican II documents. No matter how hard I try, I cannot even chalk this up to the authors of the Handbook having missed some subtle in-between-the-lines content, as Lumen Gentium states quite directly that: “Bishops […] presid[e] in place of God over the flock, whose shepherds they are, as teachers for doctrine, priests for sacred worship, and ministers for governing. […] In the bishops, therefore [… Jesus], is present in the midst of those who believe.” Pretty hard to read this as a “holistic,” a-hierarchical twist versus the preceding 2000 years of the Church’s nature.

Finally, let’s turn to the “ugly,” where, I’m afraid, my threadbare principle–of–charity gloves may not be too effective anymore. While the above is confused and both theologically and philosophically lacking both in breadth and comprehension, the most serious issue with the Handbook is the following passage:

“[Sisters g]rounded in [“Western mind”] theology […] believe that the celebration of Eucharist is the summit of worship and at the core of what holds us together as a group. [… Sisters] situated within [an “Organic” mental model] believe that the celebration of Eucharist is so bound up with a church structure caught in negative aspects of the Western mind they can no longer participate with a sense of integrity [… and] believe that as long as men control women’s lives, there will be no justice. […]

Since so much of our identity is bound up with shared theological assumptions manifested in group behaviors and practices, who we are as a group can be called into question if we do not believe the same things. The function of ritual is to bring to visibility our deepest beliefs through symbolic word and action. Tension over which symbolic acts and words to use reveals differences at the level of belief. Such differences call into question our identity at the core of who we are. They push us to ask, “Is there something at the heart of who we are which is beyond a common Eucharistic theology and which holds us together?””

Err … No! For a Catholic to suggest that there may be something beyond the Eucharist as a means of bringing about unity is simply nonsensical. The Church is (as in identity) the Mystical Body of Christ and “[r]eally partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. “Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread”. In this way all of us are made members of His Body, “but severally members one of another”.” At least that is how Lumen Gentium (the only magisterial document referred to by the LCWR) puts it. And, no, it doesn’t then go on to say “or whatever else you might like to do instead” …

The above passage does another, worrying thing – i.e., it suggests that a problem with the Eucharist is that it is an instance of “men control[ling] women’s lives.” Would the authors of the Handbook have objected to receiving the Eucharist out of Jesus’ hands at the Last Supper? Would they have turned to him and said: “Sorry, mate, we won’t let you control us and deprive us of justice!” Maybe …

The ugly thing here, to my mind, is not so much that the LCWR leadership publishes a text like this Handbook, but that it considers their views to be consistent with “the Gospel of Jesus,” justified by Vatican II teaching and acceptable in the context of a Vatican-incorporated body. While their intentions are good, their reasoning is deeply flawed and their beliefs about the Eucharist are categorically not Catholic. This is unquestionably not a case of the CDF oppressing nuns, but instead a crystal clear case of an institution with canonical status having gone off the rails and placed their beliefs outside the Church (and done so with some margin). I sincerely hope that the women religious they claim to represent either leave the LCWR (if they don’t share its beliefs) or openly declare their loss of Catholic orthodoxy.

¹ In what follows, I will only reflect on the content of this publication and I have no intention to make inferences about the work of women religious in the US, about the doctrinal positions of the congregations whose leaders are members of the LCWR or about how the CDF have managed their investigation.
² The rest of the Handbook is peppered with plentiful displays of naïveté, such as a section entitled “The Need to See Things as They Really Are” or the list of the “Laws of Systems Thinking” of which I’d just pick out these three: “6. Faster is slower,” “9. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants,” and “10. There is no blame” :|.
³ E.g., see the following quote from his Politics: “the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that.”

Evening came and morning followed: the roots of science in Genesis

The hallmarks of the scientific method include its basis in empirical evidence and its reliance on repeatability for the sake of verifying or falsifying hypotheses accounting for and predicting observations that can be aided by measurement. An aspect of the above that has interested me for a while now has been the nature of repeatability (or reproducibility), which certainly does make good intuitive sense, but where I had questions about whether some other principle couldn’t be used instead to form an equally consistent method of enquiry. Essentially, I was wondering to what extent the scientific method, as anchored in repeatability, allowed for a formalistic reading (like mathematics does – in contrast with conceiving of it as a form of realism).

The breakthrough for me came when my bestie NP wrote a soon to be published article to stimulate dialogue between science and faith and listed the following two of the assumptions of science: namely, that “the universe is intelligible […] and that it has a rational structure.” While both of these may sound self-evident and be taken for granted, having them called out made me think more carefully about intelligibility. What is it that renders an event or entity intelligible and how does a successful understanding demonstrate itself? Especially the latter is a staple of epistemology and the philosophy of science and I don’t mean to review the literature on explanatory power or models of scientific explanation like the deductive-nomological one here. Instead, I’d like to focus on the role of repeatability and to argue that it is necessary not only for science but that it is inextricable from any expression of reason.

The repeatability of events, of the meaning of concepts and of the modes of reasoning is essential to rationality. If such recurrence and persistence of relationships and states did not exist, then each event would be a one-off and it would be impossible to conceive of it using human reason. Language would not exist since words would at most be labels for individual entities and the games it relies on would be impossible too since they require regularity and repetition. Understanding of any kind would also be impossible since reflection and either deductive or inductive modes of analysis would have a sole window of opportunity in which to relate to an event or entity. There would be no laws, rules, regularities or even statistics, since everything that would be, would be a unique, a one-of-a-kind. This necessity of repeatability and its being a constituent of rationality are also expressed in Einstein’s definition of “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

In science, the insistence on repeatability is then anything but arbitrary and instead becomes an expression of its rationality. It can even be seen as closing the loop that starts with the assumption of the repeatability and regularity of phenomena by requiring of a theory to be repeatably applicable to their recurrences to merit the status of scientific. In other words, the requirement of repeatability in science mirrors the assumption of the repeatability in nature to which it strives to correspond.¹

With the above thoughts in mind, and having read and hugely admired John Paul II‘s analysis of Genesis from the perspective of the human person, I proceeded to attempt an imitation from the point of view of science, knowing full well that it could at best be as if seen through a mirror, darkly. Nonetheless, I believe that I have found – to me – surprising traces of the scientific method in the first chapter of the Bible.² Before making these explicit, I would like to emphasize that I am not looking for a justification of science in the Bible (it is solidly derived from reason alone as sketched out above as well) and neither am I setting out to anachronistically twist the Genesis text to fit contemporary thought (although I am necessarily looking at it from a contemporary perspective). Instead, inspired by John Paul II, I am attempting to look for the roots of what today is the scientific method and I would have been unperturbed even if I had found no traces of it there.

The first thing that struck me when re-reading Genesis 1 over the weekend is its use of the following, exact sentence to conclude the account of each “day” of creation: “Evening came, and morning followed—the [n-th] day.” (verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23 and 31). Instead of the creation myth³ being a single “poof” event or a random sequence of entities popping into existence (à la Eddie Izzard’s great sketch⁴), it has a repeating structure as its backbone. Once set up on the first day (“God then separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”” 1:4-5), the alternation of day and night repeats itself and becomes subject to predictability and intelligibility.

The second feature of Genesis 1 that is worth noting in this attempt to trace the roots of science in the Torah is the repeated reference to visual observation. As early as verse 4, after the creation of light, we hear that “God saw that the light was good” and as far as the various translations and analyses I have seen, the term translated into English as “saw” does refer to ocular perception as opposed to just understanding in the abstract. Then, in verses 10 (after dry land is separated from water), 12 (after the introduction of vegetation), 18 (after the sky is populated), 21 (after fish and birds are created) and 25 (after animals living on land enter the scene) we are told repeatedly that “God saw that it was good.” From this perspective of visual perception, it is also worth noting that it is employed in a categorically different way once the two first humans are present.

Instead of vision only being a means for God to assess His own work, in His relationship with humans he calls them to use it as a source of evidence for His actions: “God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food.” (Genesis 1:29-30). In fact, the very last verse of Genesis 1 (verse 31), brings both visual observation and the repetitive, predictable nature of the universe together: “God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.”

What the above means to me is that Genesis, and therefore the whole of Judeo-Christian thought, is rooted in an account of creation that, albeit being in the form of a myth, has features that clearly contain two core aspects of the scientific method: repeatability and predictability on the one hand and sensory observation as a means of obtaining evidence on the other. While not a factual account of cosmogeny, Genesis nonetheless hints at how nature is to be approached also from the perspective of understanding it: that regularity can be expected and that the senses are a basis for engaging with it. Instead of being a source of superstition and confusion, the Bible to me is a source of gems that reinforce rather than oppose rationality.

¹ I think it unlikely for this train of thought to be novel, so the absence of references is an expression of my ignorance rather than innovation. All I can offer here is the acknowledgement of Aristotle’s already realizing that “there is no science of the individual” (“If they are individual and not universal, real things will be just of the same number as the elements, and the elements will not be knowable.” Metaphysics XIII, 10).
² I don’t wish to scare you off by setting out to link science directly to the Bible. Let me assure you that my intentions couldn’t be further from those who consider the universe to the 6000 years old or who run lunatic websites like answersingenesis.org (scarily that was the website that the vast majority of Google “science Genesis” searches point to). On the topic of answersingenesis.org, I was particularly struck by their attempt to distinguish between two flavors of science: historical (explaining past events) and operational (applied in the present for utilitarian ends). What the @#$%?!
³ I am using the term myth in the way in which John Paul II employed it: myth “does not refer to fictitious-fabulous content, but simply to an archaic way of expressing a deeper content.” (Man and Woman He Created Them).
⁴ “So then God created the world, and on the first day he created light and air and fish and jam and soup and potatoes and haircuts and arguments and small things and rabbits and people with noses and jam – more jam, perhaps – and soot and flies and tobogganing and showers and toasters and grandmothers and, uh … Belgium. And the second day he created fire and water and eggnog and radiators and lights and Burma and things that go “urh” and … and Colonel Gaddafi and Arthur Negus. On the third day he probably got lists and said, “I can’t remember what I’ve invented now. I’ve just been ad-libbing so far.”” (Eddie Izzard, Glorious, 1997)