The Dignity of the Human Person

How lovely and enriching to be here in Rome.  Our class is investigating three possible grounds for human dignity: human reasoning and the power to know objective truth (including mathematics, laws of physics, and so forth), the power of self-determination (freedom), and the capacity to love others.   

Lecturing in Ostia

Here we are in the ancient port town of Ostia.  I am giving a lecture on Augustine and Plotinus.  Did you know that Augustine records him and his mother, Monica, having a joint mystical vision?  It is one of the only recorded joint mystical visions in history.  They stood at a window in an apartment here in Ostia, according to the Confessions, and had a vision of heaven, transcending time and space for a brief moment.

   

Careers for Our Daughters--a Catholic Perspective

   I gave a presentation to a group of high school young women about "Choosing Your Career."  It struck me how different the Catholic perspective on this is than either a fundamentalist Protestant view or a secular feminist view.
   On the one hand, are girls to imagine themselves as housewives and elementary school teachers, as I was taught at my fundamentalist baptist church as a child?
   On the other hand, are they to imagine themselves as holding powerful positions in the public sector as I was taught by the secular humanists that I was influenced by in high school?
   The Catholic answer is YES to it ALL!  We may indeed enjoy being mothers, housewives, and elementary school teachers.  What a way to be the presence of Christ in the world.  Mothers bear the image of Christ in his Eucharist, nourishing children with their body and blood--how sacred!  Teachers reflect Christ the Teacher, the Logos--what a mighty calling!
    Alternatively, the Catholic Church encourages women to participate in the fullest measure in public life, from corporate life to government to the non-profit sector.  Catholic laywomen are called to be "leaven" in society, evangelizing and shining the light of Christ by means of lives resplendent in faith, hope and charity.
    What is women's work?  Being "another Christ" to their children, husbands, family friends, and in the workplace, in the government, in schools, in institutions of all kinds.
    What a strong and sacred view of a young woman's future the Catholic Church has!

Secret Genius of Catholic Motherhood

      I have a restless yearning.  It follows me, leads me, is ever-present with me.  It is that Catholic moms come to a fuller understanding of who they are.
      I have a hunch that the vocation of Catholic motherhood is yet to be rightly understood, that it is like a jet sitting on the runway.  Catholic moms are living out the Gospel simply and quietly, and yet so much more powerfully than most people on earth.  Their deep levels of sacrifice and their unique conformity with Christ are like the leaven--unseen, calling no attention to themselves, yet powerfully impacting the whole Body of Christ.
     The Church is aware that she does not yet appreciate the vocation of motherhood for all its Christological significance.  She says that the various roles of the laity, including motherhood, are not yet understood: “The Council considers the condition of the laity. . . a reality destined to find in Jesus Christ the fullness of its meaning” (Christifideles Laici).  In other words, meaning of the roles of the laity are not yet fully appreciated, and only one day will be when they are comprehended in light of Christ.
    The Church goes on to say that the role of mothers is just waiting to be revealed: We need to engage in “the task of bringing full dignity to the conjugal life and the experience of motherhood.  Today new possibilities are open to women for a deeper understanding and a richer realization of human and Christian values implied in the conjugal life and the experience of motherhood" (Ibid).
    My prayer is for Catholic moms discover the secret genius, the unspoken brilliance of motherhood.  Only then will our vocation be launched, set forth into the Church and world.

Cycladic Culture

I had no idea that there were ancient cultures that were ancient to the ancients.  That is, if ancient history is marked by people like Socrates and Plato (400 BC) to Julius Caesar 32 BC), then I learned about cultures that were 2,000 years before them.  One of the main cultures I learned about is the Cycladic peoples, who lived 2800-2300 BC in the Mediterranean.  Here are some of their works of art.  

Ongoing Reflections on the Human Person

    In my course, we are finishing Augustine, having looked at the will of the human person.  His analysis of what strengthens the will versus what weakens the will is, to my mind, extremely thought provoking.
    We are starting Thomas Aquinas, and looking at his argument for the subsistent soul.  I am curious whether that can be refashioned into a compelling argument for the 21st century.
    We'll then do Descartes--the birth of the "self" and subjectivity, and the turn toward the ego.
    Then Hume: the self is just a "bundle" of perceptions, he says.  It's not a lasting, persisting substance.  Really?  Yes, he says, if all of reality is only that which can be perceived.  Empiricism dissolves the enduring self.
    Then Kant: the Copernican Revolution--phenomena being the result of a conformity to our mode of apprehending reality, rather than our intellects conforming to reality as it really is.  The loss of the thing in itself, the self included.
    Then Nietzsche: The "I" is really a construct of morality.  Societies need to be able to punish and admonish people.  The "I" is simply a construct of the series of phenomena that we can deem "an entity," "an enduring substance."
    If it were an upper level class, I'd want to get into Heidegger and post-modernism.  I've been reading a bit on that recently.
    Then we treat modern natural science: we are a bundle of atoms, sub-atomic particles.  We are nothing but that which is physical and measurable.  Can that really be so?
     I present about five arguments against that position.  I would like to find about 10 more, and publish them altogether.
     Personalism: the inner self, the mystery and dignity of the human person.  The philosophical underpinning of human rights.  The Catholic intellectual tradition trying to spare us another holocaust.
   

Teaching Philosophy of the Human Person

   In my class here this summer, Philosophy of the Human Person, we are asking: How do we give a description of the dignity of the human person, an account that would show clearly what's wrong with genocide and other impingement of human rights?  Why are we a species that destroys itself?  Why do we kill each other en masse?  The Orlando shooting brings this immediately to the fore: why do we hurt our own selves?
    Some answer this question theologically: we are special because we are made in the image of God.  We are His special creation.  I completely agree with that view.
     But this does not speak to atheists or people of other faiths.  How do you convince all people to stop the torture?  Philosophers have the chance to speak to all people, all rational creatures.
    John Paul II said that in his spare time, he worked on the metaphysics of the human person, in order to combat the fascist and communist regimes.  He really believed that philosophy was more powerful than weapons and warfare.
    Let us do our job well!
    It is such a relevant question: how DO you explain the dignity of the human person?

Quel Semestre!

   What a semester!  I taught Epistemology to 21 seminarians, who are juniors and seniors at University of Dallas/Holy Trinity Seminary.  We had quite a journey together, from Parmenides to Plato to Aristotle to Aquinas to Descartes, Hume and Kant.  The main purpose of the course was to defend realism against the skepticism of the modern philosophers.  Skepticism leads to every sort of relativism. . . so it seems worth taking a stand.
     I enjoyed teaching the material more than I can say.  But the unintended consequence of the semester was. . . I am so fond of these young men!  I can say with confidence that I have hope in the future of our Church.  These are wonderful, smart, kind, funny, and lovable human beings.   God bless each one of them!

What is Philosophy?

    Philosophy might seem aloof, detached from real life or the real affairs of human activity.  But quite the opposite, philosophy has everything to do with our real lives.  Philosophy is the questioning and probing of the essential human life questions:  Who am I?  Where am I going?  What really matters?  Our answers to these questions, whether they come through our faith or through other means, determine our most important life choices.  As John Paul II writes:

    "In different parts of the world, with their different cultures, there arise at the same time the fundamental questions which pervade human life: Who am I?  Where have I come from and where am I going?  Why is there evil?  What is there after this life?  . . . These are the questions which have their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the human  heart.  In fact, the answer given to these questions decides the direction which people seek to give to their lives."
     (John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, para.1)

Contemplation and the Existence of God

   I have been reading, We Have Been Friends Together, by Raissa Maritain, a French, personalist philosopher.  She gives an account of her conversion from atheism to Catholicism.
    To my great surprise, it is an envy of contemplatives that was a turning point for her.  She found herself reading a book on contemplation, and she reports that it was "the only [way] capable of dealing with the inner life, of awakening that life dormant within each of us, of making us really alive and human in our spirit as well as in all our acts..."  But she became aware that this rich, interior life comes only through grace.  And so, feeling the desire for her inner heart to be awakened and enlivened, she says, "It was necessary, then, to believe in God."  (p. 153-4).
    I desire union with God, and so I must believe in God!  How fascinating!  I would never think a person would come to God that way.
    But this shows me wrong.  And rightly so--why wouldn't the beauty of the faith attract a smart woman?