How to Forgive with Fr. Gregory Pine

hello and welcome to pints with aquinas i am father gregory pine and um yeah coming at you live from somewhere new and um for those of you who tried to join the stream 43 minutes ago my sincere apologies um yeah i still don't know how the internet works but i take some small consolation because this time i could never have anticipated the problems that arose i will leave that description veiled in darkness and then proceed to the substance of today's livestream um so thanks for today got saints behind me so that's awesome there's st thomas aquinas they're sending nations of loyola there is padre pio i think there is centuries of calcutta plus per georgia for saudi saints resolution it's actually just working on my motor skills and seeing if i could point to things accurately in a mere review i've confirmed that i can do it with moderate ability um so the theme of today's live stream is how to forgive because well because i think it's an eminently practical task and because i think it's something that's on everyone's heart as it were so why why broach the subject why broach the topic the subject topic the subject of forgiveness um so uh past 14 months coveted have been difficult and i think a lot of that has been compounded by the sadness and anger which comes with a situation over which one has very little control um but as we learned when we read viktor frankl's man search for meaning one of us has control over the stance that one takes towards life that's kind of from frankel's point of view but in a more christian setting we could say one is never bound unless one can sense to be bound so one can always be free by virtue of abandonment divine providence or consent to god's plans but specifically by forgiveness especially when it comes to other people but but forgiveness is one of the things that's tough to define and um yeah it's uh yeah it's really difficult to wrap your head around and as a result of which it takes some thinking through you'll find no question in the summa theologia dedicated to forgiveness so the approach here is a little more uh wild wandering speculative describe it as you will so what is forgiveness well i think a good place to look maybe it would be just a brief word on the sacrament of confession and then the application that one can make to life more broadly so so what is it that we're looking for in the sacrament of confession what is it that's efficacious well you bring to the sacrament your sins and your sorrow over those sins your sorrow needn't be perfect it can be imperfect in fact so you need to bring imperfect contrition or what some people call attrition to the sacrament of confession and the sacrament of confession actually brings your contrition to perfection how does it do that it does it by the virtue of charity so love signals true forgiveness love signals true pardon so how then do we apply that in our lives well i think that it's a good test for when you know that you have forgiven someone all of us have experienced uh you know struggles and forgiving someone in a kind of abiding feeling of anger or resentment so how do you know that you've moved on well we've all heard that that forgiveness is not just a one-time choice somebody does you wrong you say i forgive you and then it's just never to be thought of again i mean perhaps some people are capable of that but i think most of us are not so as a result of which we need steps we need to take steps that correspond to our human life which is itself a kind of taking of steps um so what is that what does that mean well i think that forgiveness is a choice okay forgiveness is a choice it's a human thing right and as human beings right we have these these spiritual powers of intellect and will which really characterize us or define us as human beings which set us apart from the beast and that's our kind of point of contact our most intimate point of contact with god that's where we resemble him most that's where we are most made to the image and likeness of god and so forgiveness is an especially human thing and it's an especially human thing with respect to this you know image of god so it's a it's a place where we meet god where we are touched by his forgiveness but it's also a place where we can extend forgiveness to others who may have wronged us and so choice is the fruit of the will so what then does it look like to choose to forgive you effectively say this this fault that you have done to me i undo right i choose that it not be kind of counted against you right so whenever you sin there are two dimensions to it there's fault culpa and then there's punishment or pain right and so when you do something bad to another person that other person may forgive you but there still may be punishment entailed so let's say that um you know like you're playing golf in your yard and you've got a nine iron out you've got like a decent piece of property but you're used to hitting a nine iron like 85 yards okay so you've got it just angled in such a manner that you really like you know you know how this is going to work out and you've got a pretty good sense of things so you haul off in whack one but you really slice it and you send it flying into my yard and it goes through my back window so you come over there and you say i'm very sorry and i say yeah i forgive you but it's not like all right see you later it's like you're going to fix my window okay so these two dimensions fault and punishment so by forgiveness what we do is we remit the fault we say this will not be held against you and how do we do that by choosing it right by choosing it we say this will not be held against you all right but father gregory i mean it's not that easy all right because a human being is a complicated thing right you got a body you got emotions you got these you know thoughts and all that stuff and they kind of limp along behind your initial choice to forgive a human being so so how then do you ensure that this forgiveness endures or how do you ensure that this forgiveness matures well you continue to make that choice all right you continue to make that choice and the continual affirmation of the good of the other human being all right which is just what that forgiveness represents is love okay so you know that you have forgiven somebody when you love them all right now let's say that this person harmed you in a pretty egregious way let's say that they harm you in such a way that you suffer great trauma and it might actually be imprudent to expose yourself again to that you know potentially damaging situation or person okay so how do you know that you love that person well in a baseline way you need to will that person the good you need to will that that person know love and serve god and enjoy god in the next life it may not involve you kind of uh being involved in that person's life ever again or anymore but you do have to love them in just that most basic way so will that person's good and i continually choosing to will that person's good forgiveness grows forgiveness matures forgiveness endures in your life so what does god ask that you do he asks that you forgive all right to be merciful as your heavenly father is merciful as it's posed in the gospel of luke but that means effectively that you are growing into choosing into love on a continual basis and that is arduous and it may not always feel like you have forgiven and truth be told you might still have to deal with the sadness with the anger with the resentment for days for months even for years right but provided that you are continually choosing provided that you are continually you know um making a priority of this forgiveness which in fact represents the love of the other human being then you are doing what falls within your power right you don't have immediate command over you know what you feel but you can choose to feel otherwise and if that choice is continually ratified in the sight of the lord you do what falls within your power the lord will make good on it okay and in so doing you are free in so doing you are free because you are no longer captive to you are no longer prisoner of your anger and your sadness right you have begun the process whereby you can mature beyond them they might continue to wound your heart you know for many days hence but that that need not be the last word on the situation so those are kind of more impressionistic thoughts than i am typically accustomed to give usually more robotic i suppose in my repetition of things from the sympathetology but on account of the fact that uh yeah that uh this is not in the summa theologia at least not in a systematic fashion uh yeah i suppose it it requires more cobbling together so in sun what are we talking about when we talk about forgiveness well start with sin and sin when inflicts a harm on some other human being right so a sin being any thought word or deed contrary to the eternal law but one which wounds our relationship with god with others with self okay and in that sin there are two dimensions fault or culpa punishment or panama in forgiving someone you choose to remit them of the fault that they have committed against you now when you admit that faults right so when you wish that when you will that it be undone you need to persevere in that choice otherwise um the kind of physical or emotional or psychological dimension of the wound that you have suffered or the trauma that you have endured can kind of creep back in and and under undercut or undermine that choice so you need to have that choice flow through the entirety of your human life right psychological emotional even physical all right and so you need to continually ratify or reaffirm that choice by choosing to love right to affirm the good of that other human being to will them the good that they know love and serve god at the very least and enjoy him in the next and in so continuing to choose uh that transformation for which we hope will take place maybe gradually there might be plateaus along the way or hiccups as it were but god who has begun a good work and you will see it through to completion okay so that my friends as a basic introduction to a saint thomas inspired thought on forgiveness at this point i'm going to scroll up to the top of this year chat and get going so thanks so much for your patience thanks so much for sticking with it i apologize if my delay was frustrating for you so please forgive me all right colin cormier says hi glad to be here colin cormier i'm glad that you're here too anastasia bennett says god bless you father pine god bless you frats thank you for this wonderful resource it is something i look forward to every week hey i am delighted uh andrew mom petey says hey everyone um okay uh can children have a baptism of desire via their parents is the question uh so i think that the typical traditional answer would be no if by via their parents you mean without themselves engaging in any way intellectually or volitionally so this would be to follow saint augustine or st thomas aquinas right who thought very intensely thought very carefully i suppose about uh you know like how a child could potentially partake of the fruits of salvation without having been baptized where he or she could die so i don't think that you want to go the route of baptism of desire by way of their parents intent because i think that that kind of dilutes this individual or personalistic notion of choice mind you when that child is baptized that child is baptized in the faith of his or her parents but that's a different ritual act which represents more kind of like the urgency with which one treats original sin uh than it does a corporate dimension of human volition i'll think about that more so in answering it i realize that i'm not as clear as i'd like to be so that's a good question um that my friend is not a zoom background that my friend is the real deal um that's saying ignatius oh wait maybe you're right maybe there's any guys i don't actually know yeah i thought i was saying ignatius but it could be sin augustine um there you go uh all right next question father pine why do you believe the revolutionary war is unjust does it have to do with saint paul's letter to the romans uh potentially yeah insofar as saint paul uh gives criteria for just wars so so the the criteria for for a just war is just like the criteria for a good moral act so it has to have a good end it has to have a good object and it has to have good circumstances and in the church's elaboration of this teaching uh in her meditation upon the revealed data of scripture and what the fathers in the church and medieval theologians have said what the church is pronounced right you you have these kind of prudential concerns which get posed as criteria for the prosecution of a just war and it seems you know generally the case that uh it's it's in some way shape or form has to be defensive okay so there was a kind of current or a kind of tradition in the church that you could launch a punitive war but it seems like that's a minority position it hasn't gained much traction uh certainly in the last 500 years um so then the question is when when one is defending himself from an unjust aggressor uh what constitutes uh proportionate means for doing so in the case of a just war that aggression or the violence the coercion that one suffers from another political body uh need be significant enough to [Music] have someone put this need be significant enough to actually merit the huge human cost which a war entails and i think that uh when you look at the american revolution right so there are certain uh perceived injustices i don't want to like sound like unpatriotic in this certain perceived injustices as concerns like virtual representation or is concerned taxation uh or is concern uh yeah just in general the colonial policy of great britain um and i think it's the opinion of many moral theologians that those do not amount to sufficient grounds for war and that there could have been political means exercised for the redress of wrongs which didn't entail the same human cost um now mind you super complicated issue i just sailed out i'm not i'm not a scholar of this and truth be told i don't know it too terribly well so uh yeah there you go um okay hi father did catholics break from judaism for a friend at frenchman's fury is it okay to pray in our father instead of addressing the subject directly like a car crash um so i'll answer the first one i don't exactly answer the understand the second one but maybe that's because it's actually directed to someone else uh so with respect to the first did christians break from judaism so a good response to this comes in saint paul's letter to the romans specifically in chapters 9 through 11 which reads our covenantal life as in continuity with the old covenant so specifically you know departing from the lord's words in the gospel i did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it this idea that the new covenant which the lord jesus christ um yeah forges as it were or ratifies by his blood this new covenant represents the full flourishing or it represents the fulfillment of the old covenant so not a radical departure from right contra supersessionism but truth be told uh the old covenant coming into its fullness uh if that is the case then you have to account for continuity within israel and saint um saint paul makes this argument in the letter to the romans where he says that we've been grafted in so you have this image in romans 11 about the the two olive trees so i would say direct you direct you to uh romans 9 through 11 on this matter and then um yeah saint thomas's treatise on the new law which is in the premier secondary questions 106 through 108 which i think you will find helpful yeah okay uh father pond if one comes across a ouija board should they burn it or what would be the proper course of action it's a good question uh so i think that there are okay so parallel situation st thomas asked the question should you baptized an infant against the wishes of that infant's parents and he says no okay so like say you're a nurse in a hospital and you know you help with the delivery of a child and you see that the parents have identified as not pertaining to a christian denomination of whatever sort and you decide to take matters in your own hand and baptize that child well st thomas would say that that's not uh truth be told uh a legitimate way by which to celebrate the sacraments he says in danger of death yeah that's a different story go for it because such is the urgency of salvation but in ordinary circumstances you wouldn't do that why well because uh you can't rely upon the the children excuse me you can't rely upon the parents of that child to bring that child up in the faith so it seems in a certain sense like pearls before swine to use a somewhat harsh image and also it kind of undercuts the rights which the parents have injustice to raising the child in the faith of their choosing okay so now we're talking about ouija boards so presumably it's not your ouija board presumably it belongs to someone else all right so that person injustice owns that thing and i would say that it's not for you to destroy something that you don't and that you don't own and that someone else does because to do so represents a kind of injustice like a theft or robbery as a work um so i think that you are responsible for yourself primarily right when it comes to the order of love and the salvation of souls you're responsible for the salvation of your own soul and if that ouija board were to be in you know like say your workplace a place over which you didn't have full custody but which might potentially expose you to the malign influence of the evil one then i think that's that's the time where you you make all legitimate attempts to have it taken out of you know your line of sight to take it out of your workspace to take it out of your life and so far as you can remove that um so i think that you should work suddenly to remove it from your sphere of influence and to convince those who may have welcomed it into their own lives unwittingly or maybe somewhat curiously to encourage them to do so as well but not to transgress the rule of justice um okay next question is there any theological significance in mary's suffering yes right so it's uh commonly held that what our lord merits and strict justice our blessed mother merits by kind of association with him the words that are used are condy merit and congruous merit so condyne equal dignity and then congress by a kind of fittingness so what our lord suffers our lady suffers by extension what our lord merits our lady merits by extension so there's no intrinsic worth to suffering but suffering undertaken for love undertaken in obedience as part of a saving plan which god has ordained um you know for the redemption of the human race that is fruitful and our lady participates by her suffering in that of her son uh this would be like you know the kind of devotion of the stavat mater that our lady is not overcome by the suffering which her son endures and she endures by extension or rather she bears it up nobly she bears it up courageously there was a kind of spurs devotion in the middle ages called our lady of the swoon and dominicans were influential in suppressing this uh cardinal cashton being one of them who was a famous dominican fame and famous tomist of the 15th 16th century uh because he said it's it's against true faith to say that our lady would have been overwhelmed because she shares perfectly right she shares perfectly in the redemptive mission of her son and just as he was not overwhelmed nor was she saint thomas argues that our our lord would not have over been overwhelmed because at the end of his life you hear this um you hear this great cry uh whereby he gives up his spirit and saint thomas observes it's not customary that a man who dies of asphyxiation as the wherewithal to bellow at the top of his lungs with his last breath so from that we would garner the knowledge that our lord was was in control even to the last mind you his suffering is real so it's not like a fake suffering but that the lord remains god you know he remains sovereign uh and he remains the protagonist of the saving work right he suffers so things are done unto him but because of his will to endure those things to bear those things up he remains again the protagonist and our lady is associated with him in that okay we're cruising guys all right i don't really know when i started so i'm just going to keep going until i stop uh hello father pine lovely to see you again god bless you from rob whitehouse from wales uk cheers all the best vito zui says father pine i tried the same question last time but wasn't precise enough is it a sin to use the death penalty when the option of life imprisonment is available ed phaser and you seem to disagree on this one so my argument would be that it's not sinful um provided that it is meted out right in a proportionate way so the criteria that people will sometimes use to ground things like this okay is the criterion taken from sukuna sukunde question 64 article 7 which concerns self-defense so when you are threatened by an unjust aggressor and let's say that that unjust aggressor seems to intend to use lethal force you are justified in using lethal force to protect yourself okay so you wouldn't intend the death of that individual but you would intend to protect yourself by deploying lethal force and that's not just a creative redescription you know you don't want to kill the person but you want them to stop and sometimes wanting them to stop means you know inflicting a blow of a certain sort so as is true with personal self-defense so is true with corporate self-defense and that's the understanding that is deployed in the argument regarding capital punishment now um when somebody commits an injustice we respond to that injustice by punition uh by deterrence by a kind of reformation as it were so the the punishment that is mean it out first and is based on the fact that this person has merited okay this person has called for a fitting punishment all right a punishment that is somehow proportionate to the act that they themselves have committed cs lewis has a has a really good essay in god in the doc where he describes this he says without the punition element the other the other elements don't really make sense because then there's no connection between the aggressor and the punishment because the punishment were just about deterrence or if it were just about um reform then why this guy and why this long and why according to this you know particular dispensation sorry that someone extract but um he carries the point beautifully in that essay and got in the dark so um i think that when you're assessing these claims what you're talking about is an injustice committed and then a punishment that is suited to that so it may still be the case even if it's possible uh for a life imprisonment that the punishment suited to a particular crime would be capital punishment okay um and there can be prudential reasons to take into account the type of burden that would be placed upon society that would that elect prison would entail um and like the cost and things like that although obviously cost considerations of cost should be subordinated to considerations of human life and its integrity so i think that yes even if one could um deploy a life imprisonment it would still it could still be you could imagine a situation in which it might still be just um to employ or to deploy capital punishment uh yeah what i mean what the most recent pontificates what the most recent papal magisteria have emphasized is that the window in which that um that set of circumstances might arise is very very narrow right it seems prudentially that it's very hard to imagine or it's very hard um to get these things to line up in such a way that capital punishment should be or could permissibly be or ought to be deployed so i think that's what's being suggested i hope that's more helpful i hope that's clarified okay um okay uh somebody's asking i mentioned that as a cross-country runner do i still run um i can't anymore because of uh of an injury so you can pray for that thoughts on guinness it's like a loaf of bread i'm not a big porter and stout man it's just a little too thick i like weak beers i like kosh pilsner hellas lager it's my jam okay julio cesar says hello father i have a question how do we explain reconcile that god is all good and omnipresent and that evil is a lack of good so if good is everywhere how do we explain evil in that way okay so uh so good is convertible with being so to say that good is everywhere uh we shouldn't think about that in the way that we think about like gas filling up the container in which it uh you know like in which it is found so it's not like um a material ethereal sense of goodness being everywhere we're saying that everything that is is good that's scriptural language omnia creature bona so everything that is is good and saint thomas has a philosophical explanation as to why because he thinks that the transcendentals are convertible so whatever is is one is true is good so to say that a thing is good is to say that it's represents a kind of perfection right that it is in somehow desirable or attractive and that it can in some way stand in as a final cause so goodness names being under the aspect of desirability or being is related to an appetite or tool will so when we kind of launch into this conversation what we're saying is that everything that is is good okay a privation is the conspicuous lack of some good that ought to be there and that isn't so we're not saying that there was a good thing and now there's a good thing with some bad thing in it we're saying that there's a good thing that has somehow been lessened which has somehow been kind of accidentally diminished so the thing to which we point is still good all right it's still related to an appetite it's still a perfection of a certain sword it's still desirable like it still stands in for a final cause in some way shape or form okay but it's not all that it could be so god is the creator of all that is everything that god creates is good but evil can befall those good things well how well saint thomas gives a thorough explication of this in the demolo and he does it according to the four causes so he says with respect to material cause right so what is it that sub stands an evil thing he says it's just that in which the evil adheres or that in which the privation is located okay so that thing is good because we're talking about a good substance as it were well okay says what then about formal causality what would we say that well there is no real formal causality of an evil thing because what we're naming is actually a privation of privation is the opposite of a form it's the absence of a form whether that be an accidental or a substantial form okay then he moves on to ask final causality what about that he says really i mean like evil is a kind of madness okay so it's the preferring of a lower good to a higher good in such a way that you exclude the order that ought to obtain so so the final causality it obtains is towards the good the lower good but that lower good is disproportioned vis-a-vis the higher good so there's yeah it's it's a kind of final causality but a fail final causality and then finally efficient causality he says it's not so much an efficient causality as a as a kind of deficient causality so it's it's the launching of efficient causality but in such a way that it doesn't attain to its full grandeur or it doesn't attain to its term or its rule or its order rather it kind of falls away from that so what you see is a kind of diminished deficient causality which he calls deficient causality so god can be the creator of the good thing in which the privation adheres he's not responsible for the privation itself and the order of formal causality because it's the conspicuous lack of what ought to be there the final causality is still coherent right it still obtains insofar as it's ordered to a good you're not choosing an evil thing and then the deficient causality god supports that creator in act right but he is not the source of you know the lack of order right which we see exhibited in that choice so again god remains present he remains good but he remains innocent um so there you go all right jason m says father i've heard you say and others the orthodox church has true sacraments does this mean that their priests can confect the eucharist how is this possible if they are separated from rome yeah so their priests can confess the eucharist this is possible because they are validly ordained by bishops who have retained apostolic succession and they have retained true faith about the eucharist and about holy orders so all those things taken together make it such that their sacraments are valid so you couldn't say the same things for instance about the anglican priesthood because their faith in the eucharist has undergone a change and as a result of which their understanding of the priesthood has changed in turn and so even if they were to have maintained apostolic succession which i think some times in history that claim has been has been advanced and i think at other points they may have even had co-consecrators present for some of their ordinations so as to buoy up the validity of them but if you change your faith about the sacrament you change your faith about the order and as a result of which you lose the integrity of what the church intends so those would not be valid ordinations okay um all right daniel siverson says father how do you focus on a task for longer periods of time for example reading the summa or studying reading in general i don't know that i have like uh systematic thoughts about this um yeah this is like uh study tips with father gregory so a good book about study tips is called the intellectual life by a.g certions which is spelled s-e-r-t-i-l-l-a-n-g-e-s so a dominican from the early 20th century of the french province i think so excellent kind of encouragement to the life of study but also some practical tips that you might find helpful uh one thing i would say is so to schedule helps not schedule too tight in such a way that you crowd people out from your life but schedule in such a way as to keep yourself honest i think moderating study breaks that you take is a good tip or trick um yeah what could you do so i think that um [Music] yeah pulling your so if you're working on a laptop for instance i read a lot of text on a laptop i find that it's helpful to pull my laptop away from the internet right so unplug my ethernet turn off my wi-fi and so i'm reading for 35 minutes and i think i wonder what the philadelphia 76ers record is right now and where they fall in the standings of the eastern conference of the nba and i would ordinarily like flip to that if i were plugged into the internet and then flip right back but i would have broken my concentration been a little lost on the text and probably taken a couple minutes to get back in the zone but because i'm unplugged from the internet it's a harder lift and then i just don't do it okay so that's one thing let's just keep a keep a critical distance from the internet i think another thing is just to kind of get out of the habit of googling things especially things that don't matter so a lot of times when you're in conversation right people are like yeah who was it you know that won the world series in 1994 truth be told i think that was the year they had the strike um and then somebody just pulls it up on their phone so i i think that that's typically a way to make conversation uninteresting when you have the answer just ready at hand why well because no one's actually exercising their memory because you've offloaded your memory to that device so you can have wild speculative conversations if you just afford yourself the space to do so and that actually makes you more focused it makes you more attentive makes you more engaged and makes you more contemplative so that's a simple small thing so unplug from the internet don't always look up answers to ready-made or in ready-made facial ways and then with respect to text i think it's super important whenever you're whenever you're reading a text sometimes we read things just to finish them but i think it's if you find yourself in the zone of just reading to finish then stop read something else read something light or take a break we should always be reading to to grow right so that means taking notes so highlighting in the margins making small notes and then outlining a text if it's important i just think if you ever want to retain a text i think you just have to write about it because i don't know that we know a thing until we've taught it um and oftentimes we don't have the opportunity to teach things in great length so the next best thing is to compose something on the matter um yeah i the books that i know the best are the books that i've outlined i have outlined soon with theology and it's super helpful just one article by article and just wrote a little summary of each thing with the main distinctions and that has helped me tremendously to retain it okay um julio cesar what does the op stand for it stands for the order of preachers which is the official name of the dominican order um jonathan ziegler finally made it for a live chat greetings father hey i'm delighted you're here i started this one 45 minutes late because i'm a man of constant sorrow so i'm glad that it worked out providentially um okay how should predestination be explained pastorally that is to someone converting or questioning the faith that's a good question so a good book on the matter is predestination by father reginald gary lagrange it's a little bit of a heavy lift but i think it's actually it's pretty approachable if you have any appetite for lagrange he also uh broaches the topic in a book that's been republished by lighthouse media um so if you search lagrange lighthouse media and then cadgetin cuddy c-u-d-d-y he wrote the introduction to it i forgot the name of it though but it's like knowing the love of god or something like that but i forgot but he also touched about it there so what is predestination basically god has a plan and that plan encompasses human action all right so god has a plan and that plan encompasses human action what is more god is the cause of that plan so anything that comes to be comes to be through god's willing it final and definitive way while some are moved by that grace all right cooperate with it and then grow in holiness right or justified and then grow in holiness or sanctification so god knows this plan from its start to finish because as eternal he possesses his whole life in a simultaneous embrace and he imparts to all times and places their being and their agency so god gives us to be and gives us the cause all of that is open to his plan all of that is present before him god does so in such a way where we retain our freedom god does so in such a way where free things happen freely or contingent things happen contingently but it is subject to god's sovereignty in such a way that none of it escapes from his providential gaze so i think there you have the basic outlines of how one would go about describing predestination you have further clarifications that come down the line like for instance um you know no one goes to heaven but by god's grace no one goes to hell but by their choice so there's a two-fold movement there that is non-parallel right so so predestination is a matter of god's giving the gift god matter of god's election and perdition is a matter of our rejection thereof okay now it's not to say that our assenting to god's gift of himself thereby makes that grace efficient or makes that grace efficacious in our life but there is this kind of sense in which graces are daisy chain together so god gives the grace of justification he gives that operative grace and thrown around a lot of um a lot of what would one say lingo or jargon right but um in the premium secunde there's this treatise on grace questions 109 through 114 you can find it all there and i think a lot of the distinctions there are very straightforward um and very beautifully simply explained so that's a good place to look too the the other pertinent question on predestination is in the primabar is question 23 um yes yeah so grace is being daisy chained together so when god gives this gift he gives it with an eye towards future gifts and as we kind of grow in the habit of consenting to and cooperating with that grace it tends to grow and to flourish and that's the general trajectory of predestination whereas the trajectory of perdition would be a thorough going um kind of decided rejection of the grace that god continually offers throughout the course of one's life um four he remains faithful to his covenant even if we prove faithless all right i hope that's helpful um so tj kaczynski says does forgiveness necessarily mean abolishment of anger and distress towards a person it doesn't no so forgiveness consists in an act of the will right so it's a spiritual act we hope that act of the will kind of flows through the rest of the human person as it were but it doesn't necessarily so we hope that it has psychological effects emotional effects even physical effects you know you see people that are just doubled over under the weight of their anger um so we want to see that transpired there's no guarantee that it will but provided that that forgiveness is continually chosen that's sufficient right that's sufficient we can hope uh that it will eventually blot out the anger the sadness the resentment which comes along uh with that uh yeah bingo um okay next question uh hi father why do we have to abstain from meat on fridays of lent and why is fish permitted thank you and god bless you saludos uh so this is just a i mean it's a traditional fast uh in the church's life namely that one would um forego certain things i mean like historically i don't actually know how it came about i'm more and more cognizant of the fact that i don't know a lot of positive theology if it's something about like knowing a concrete date in history or knowing about how some pious practice came about i'm just i'm less and less confident in my abilities um so so it means simply denying oneself a thing that is good why so as to discipline one's flesh why well because the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh the two are opposed says saint paul um this meaning that um there's a non-parallel kind of a phenomenon that takes place with respect to material and immaterial goods with material goods when you have them right they tend to be delightful at the outset but they tend to depreciate in quality so like your first five sour patch kids that you eat are absolutely incredible and you can't imagine that anything could taste so good then after that just the quality of the experience tends to decline or if you have like a really good dessert then somebody comes around and says like would you like another you're like yeah and then like eight bites in you're like should not have had that um so with material goods like big payout at the outset but then they tend to depreciate whereas with immaterial goods just the opposite is true initially they're kind of forbidding and difficult burdensome heavy yeah it's just not it's just not easy but as we continually engage with them right we not only develop the capacity but also the appetite for it um so our desire for those things grow and also our delight in those things grows so yeah when we're talking about this um yeah so we're talking about giving up meat on fridays you're giving up something that's fortifying that's sustaining it's a it's a quick way to deliver a hit of calories uh which permits you to you know go about your ordinarily work without feeling faint or weak but when you encounter your own hunger when you encounter your own weakness as it were then you're more cognizant of the fragility of your own human constitution but also the kind of thinness or lack of substantiality that you encounter in material good so that you can be more so ordered to hungry for the immaterial goods which ultimately sustain so there you go there's a speculative answer to a practical question um finn dunsty says hi father what attracted you to the priesthood and when did you recognize your calling hey i'm digging this question so thanks for asking it um i'm actually right now in austria at the campus of franciscan university of steubenville in gaming serving just saying masses and exposing a busted sacrament here and some confessions for the english-speaking community there aren't any students here present but they're still faculty and staff uh and this place was a big part of my um kind of getting excited about the prospect of becoming a priest specifically about the dominican life so my my freshman year in college i had gone to a lecture by eleanor stump she spoke about aquinas on the nature of love and i found that lecture just especially beautiful very captivating very engaging and she gave expression to um yeah things that i had maybe yeah intuited but like poorly in a muddled fashion or things that i had hoped to know at some point in my life or things that i tried to express but only ever done so poorly and she did it with such clarity and precision that i was like wow this is this is really great and i felt like the distinctions that she set forth made it easier to parse reality it made it easier to sympathize with reality it made it easier to to know and to love the other and i was like there is there is something to it so i started reading a little bit about st thomas aquinas and i read i read a book called the quiet light which is historical fiction truth be told but very charming uh mostly about members of his family it's kind of like soap opera at times uh but you get enough of there about saint thomas aquinas to see the character of his holiness and to find it very attractive and that was the case for me so this would be the summer after my freshman year of college and um yeah that uh i finished that book and i started telling people that i wanted to become a dominican priest and i came here the next semester i came to austria and um there were a number of influences during that semester which were uh which were really good you know like help to mature that vocation so the residence director at the time was now father sebastian white who's the editor-in-chief for magnificat a dominican conference of mine uh so one of the first trips that we took was to vienna and he brought me to the the dominican church there the dominican akieka and introduced me to the friars and then just would chat with me about dominican things here and there when i told him that i was going a particular place who would direct me to dominican holy sites and then also that was the first semester i really studied philosophy in any way shape or form i had one theology class introduction to catholicism but i hadn't studied really any philosophy or theology i just been taking math classes my freshman year and um yeah i studied philosophy of the human person ethics and metaphysics here with um professor maria seifert now walter and yes she was just especially passionate for the truth in a way that i found very engaging um animating and it was the first time that i felt like i don't know motivated by the liberal arts um how does i man yeah so so and so in high school i had kind of just tapped out unlike english class as it were i just found it to be entirely too much so i took a poetry class over the summer at a community college and i doubled up on sciences my senior year so that i could just yeah yeah just get out of that i used to jokingly say that if i could speak in numbers i would so when i came to steubenville i signed up to study math and maybe chemistry was my second major initially but then i took this course my freshman year called um religion and culture it's the first course in the humanities and catholic culture program at steubenville where i read certainly is the intellectual life and i found that to be very uh eye-opening i suppose and then i started taking philosophy and theology courses here and it was like yep yeah this corresponds i am i am made to think about these things and um yeah so it was a time of great and delightful study a wonderful conversation good christian friendship i think all those things were especially nurturing for my vocation that is a long answer so for those of you who didn't bank on that my sincere apologies god bless um all right realm this says in what way does the priesthood reflect the steadfastness of god hey let's go man we just got priesthood questions coming up i don't know what it is but it is so all the sacraments serve as a sign okay because what is a sacrament it's a sign of a sacred thing which makes men holy that's the the definition that saint augustine gives so it's an efficacious sign or it's a sign that gives grace so what is it then about each sacrament that uh has this sign kind of character so like baptism for instance you wash right so you place a child over the font you wash the child's head i mean we don't typically think about it as a washing but that's the reason for which you would pour water over a child's head and the washing which you signify by this physical gesture this ritual gesture actually communicates the grace of cleansing from sin original and personal the temporal punishment associated there with the infusion of grace etc it gives a bunch of things but through the sign uh what is it the priesthood is okay what is it the priesthood is i don't even know what i'm saying anymore um so what kind of sign is the priesthood i think that's a more appropriate way to speak the priesthood i think is a sign that god is near or at least i i hope that's the case so when a priest is ordained he's given a character you know that character is given in three sacraments the three sacraments that cannot be repeated baptism confirmation and holy orders at baptism the character that you're given well all character is a participation in the priesthood of christ but specifically a baptism you're constituted as a priest in christ so you are participating in the common priesthood of all believers which is described at some length and lumengency in paragraphs 10 through 12. it's a good place to look and that makes you a worshiper right it makes you a christian and it makes you capable of receiving the sacraments okay and then there is next the sacrament of confirmation okay so in confirmation you receive a further character which strengthens you uh so saint augustine says it's like the tattoo which the roman legionnaires would get on the back of their hands it said spqr which signed them as pertaining to rome the senate and the people of rome such that they could never they were to abandon their ranks they would be identified as pertaining to this group so it's about witness okay and he says cinegasten says that one is signed on his forehead uh with the anointing of oil because it's forward-facing because it's manifest because confirmation is about christian maturity it's about spiritual soldiery so the character that you're given your your new sharing in the priesthood of christ pertains to that kind of grace then with respect to the priesthood the character that you're given is not so much for the receiving of divine things as it is for the giving of divine things so a priest is a mediator between god and man on behalf of the people he offers up prayers and sacrifice and on behalf of god he gives divine things so priestly character is about giving divine things so when grace comes into a priest's life that grace is for the people of god uh which is why it's so um yeah terrible or ugly uh such a counter sign when a priest is selfish that's not to say that like a priest should be utterly devoured or destroyed by the demands of his flock but a priest should be generous right he's ordained to be generous and i think that the simple signification of the priesthood is that you should see a man who was given to others so like fulton sheen's book a priest is not his own and i think that uh that is what is operative so that by virtue of one's interactions with a priest one should know that god is near and one should know that god is given to you to be received and to be loved right father pond can you explain the justification for the distinction between primary and secondary causality well how is god not responsible for the sins we commit with the freedom that he causes in us yeah that's a great question um so i'm reading this book right now published in 1886. the last name of the author is dummermuth i sometimes suspect that i'm pronouncing that wrong maybe doom removed but it's about it's about physical promotion but it's specifically about causality so a primary cause god does not require any further actualization to carry out his activity as it were so god is holy actual or pure act as he is sometimes referred to in the theologia so he's the unmoved mover an uncaused cause right um he has necessity from himself as it were he is the utmost noblest highest best so god is a a particular type of agent because god requires no actualization to be set in motion god requires no input energy in order to bring about a change in the system whereas in our case we all require some activation which makes us secondary causes so we have agency god gives us being and god gives us agency and that pertains to us as it were in a substantial fashion so we really subsist in the nature of you know human person as it were but our activity needs to be actualized okay so we can't pull ourselves up by our own metaphysical bootstraps we can't set ourselves in motion unless we are first set in motion by god so saint thomas refers to this as the auxilium as the help uh and that's true in both the natural and supernatural orders and the subsequent tradition it gets referred to more as like physical pre-motion than being like the domestic tradition specifically the commentatorial tradition and then the second question responsibility for sin yeah that's a great question uh what does one say um uh so i actually well i just answered this actually about the causality of sin and presumably your question was already in the chat when i answered that so i hope that that is helpful i'm going to punt um all right kathy salter chiming in from great britain says good evening father gregory great to hear you again on such a pertinent topic for me wonderful it's a pleasure to hear and see you kathy cheers uh jenna zeke says father upon if god created ex nilo and we receive our being from him is it accurate to say that god limited himself and his creation and if so how does that differ from the idea of kenosis so god doesn't limit himself in any way to suffer you know like potentiality so if we were to speak of limits in certain ways um then what would one end up saying you might tend to posit a change in god so we don't want to do that we don't want to say that god limits himself in such a way as to undergo change or so as to require further actualization uh but we can speak about limitation in a kind of extended sense so like christ for instance and the incarnation limits himself insofar as he constrains the glory of his divinity such that it not constantly break forth from his transfigured visage so we see that momentarily on mount tabor but presumably that's always operative in his life but he keeps that um so as to exercise what some have called the principle of credibility if he has to truly take a human nature then his human nature has to be credible otherwise people will just think you know docetic thoughts like he doesn't have a real human nature and truth be told this is just god masquerading in a human suit uh rather than actually adopting as it were or assuming a human nature so we can speak about limitations in this extended analogical or even metaphorical sense we don't want to talk about it in a real way how does this relate to kenosis great connection so canosa's comes from that greek word kana'a which mentioned in the philippians in philippians 2 7 i want to say which in latin is rendered i just recently learned as x and the nazio and this means um right so the emptying of one's self so typically it'd be used for a kind of thoroughgoing condescension or humiliation or humbling as it were the idea that the second person the most blessed trinity and taking to himself the human nature limits himself in the way that we've just described um so as to become man uh so the word becomes mute the almighty becomes powerless you know you have all of these different patristic tropes which try to uncover the paradoxical nature of the lord's choice to take human flesh such that you know in some strange fashion by his poverty we would be enriched so that's a great connection that you forged there marion barger what is uh marion barger great woman louisville kentucky sister miriam master and other members of the saint joseph's monastery same prayers for your mom hey cheers thanks um okay will herman can you explain luke 12 10 and the unforgivable sin of blaspheming against the holy spirit yeah so saint thomas actually asks this question i think it's in the treatise on charity and the sins against charity which would be like questions maybe like 34 to 43 i want to say there's a lot of them there's a whole heck of a lot of them is that right i think that's right i hope that's right um and what does st thomas say he introduces a number of different options uh so what does he say he says that uh so one option that he induces is that it is the sin of final uh unrepentance so the unforgivable sin would be refusing the lord's mercy so the only way by which to exclude yourself from the lord's mercy is to despair of it or to say that it doesn't pertain to you in some way shape or form so the despair-filled person says you know god's promises he who is omnipotent and merciful god's promises do not pertain to me or at least not in the way that he says and so that it would be unforgivable basically to persevere in one's impenitence uh in such a thoroughgoing ways to exclude the mercy of god uh there are other ones uh there are other options i want to say that there are two other options but i'm forgetting them right now um and if i were to pull them up it would take too long and be distracting so it's in the treatise on charity so in the sukuna sukunde which begins question 23 and goes through question 46 it's in the sins against so i want to say questions 34 34 through 43 but i don't know exactly where but he gives three different options there and they're cool and i remember them at a certain point in my life but that that time is not now okay um will herman says well i just read that one oh and i just skipped a thousand questions um scrolling back up okie doke here we go um fabric pixie says can we forgive and still not like someone struggling with forgiving an ex-son-in-law can't imagine ever liking him yep you can forgive and still not like somebody because forgiveness is a choice and that choice has to kind of make its way through your entire humanity that may take time and that might actually take more time than you have on earth but provided that you continue to choose for that is enough okay so for those who have been toxic to us you have a choice yes you have a choice whether or not you want to reintroduce them into your life and you don't have to but you do have to forgive them by virtue of choice victoria lopez says hi father quick question i heard a priest mention that mary took a vow of virginity that's why she said to the angel how can this be i do not know man wasn't she going to marry saint joseph thanks yeah i think it's widely held in church tradition that mary would have been a professed virgin so we celebrate her presentation in the temple under this aspect and i want to say that it comes up in the proto-evangelion of saint james if i'm getting that right i think i am um so so these would be non-canonical texts but still ancient christian texts with a good basis in tradition and that her marriage to saint joseph would have been a true marriage on account of the fact that it was consent to a bond that was on the one hand permanent faithful and fruitful and on the other hand not contrary to the nature of marriage so they didn't intend to consummate the marriage um i think that would be a widely held teaching that joseph was committed to protecting her virginity and she was committed to being a virgin but saint thomas actually asked this question too he describes it in the tertia pars and the section devoted to the blessed virgin mary so i want to say it's somewhere in questions 27 through 30. he asks about the nature of their marital bond and he talks about marriage in the supplement actually to the summa which is not often read but i want to say that that comes up i think it's like questions 4 41 and following maybe 41 through 69 in the supplement so there might be something in it there too uh sorry i can't be more helpful okay just another catholic says how can we forgive ourselves father speaking as someone who left the faith in my youth yeah how does one forgive him or herself yeah i think that you use the sacrament of confession frequently okay uh because by receiving forgiveness from god it becomes easier to give forgiveness to yourself as it were um i think that uh yeah i think i mean time is a big thing because time heals memory in a way that few other things do um i would say maybe make a pilgrimage with that intention so a place associated with healing like fatima or lords for instance i think would be a good idea maybe make a retreat with this particular intention so there are a lot of retreats dedicated to healing many dedicated to healing for women who have had an abortion previously right but there are other that are kind of more broadly for people who want to undergo healing of a certain sort um and uh yeah maybe we could we could think about that together at a later point those are those are my thoughts initially frequent use of the sacrament of confession maybe think about going every month at least every two weeks would be would be great um make a pilgrimage make a retreat um [Music] yeah i mean obviously the other basics prayer friendship from good friendship you learn that you are forgiven by others and it becomes uh more i suppose it becomes more second nature to to be more forgiving of yourself sorry i'm stumbling a little bit here okay um i just looked and we're at an hour so i am going to answer one more question um ryan marcus says hi father how come you're streaming tonight uh good question i'm streaming tonight because i typically stream at 3 p.m eastern standard time on wednesdays and i was a little bit delayed by a firewall uh so instead i'm streaming at 3 45 pm eastern standard time okay um there you go so it's been confirmed that's in augustine it's not saying ignatius of loyola by someone who knows better than i um okay last thing um thank you for your time father how do you recommend we teach children how to forgive for example they're being bullied at school and he or she is now full of anger or hatred i think a good way to describe it is that if you remain angry and hatred you only ever end up punishing yourself and that if you continue to punish yourself the other person wins so the bully doesn't win uh by virtue of the fact that he or she inflicts blows billy the bully wins by making you scared and by imprisoning you in your anger and in your sadness and so when you learn to forgive you are freed from the captivity of your anger and sadness and you enter into the fullness of the freedom to which the lord calls so that's a great question uh i think a good one a good one with which to complete one good one with which to end just struggle bus over here um so thanks so much for tuning in please like this video because um yeah and other people will see it with greater frequency and then if you haven't yet subscribed to the channel please do subscribe to pinterest with aquinas and then click the bell so that way google will be forced to give you an update whenever matt posts a video or goes live and then do check out god's planning i have an episode going up with father bonaventure tomorrow about obedience another one always has to obey when one might not obey or what obedience really has to do with human flourishing and the goodness of life uh yeah in this present evil age so yeah do check out god's planning you can find that on any podcast app and then also on youtube as well so thanks so much for tuning in thank you for your patience if you uh endured a bit of a wait tonight and i'll catch you next time on bonsai aquinas

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

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Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

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Length: 62min 45sec (3765 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021