Is Religious Life Better? w/ Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

hello and welcome to pints with aquinas i am father gregory pine and uh it's a joy to be with you so i thought that um for this particular live stream that we could look a little bit at religious life not necessarily because everyone is called a religious life well i guess it would be certainly not necessarily for that reason because well most people aren't um but for gosh man all right here we go i'm going to gather myself because i think that religious life is a helpful way by which to kind of like illuminate all christian vocations shed light on what is good what is grace bearing in all christian life so we'll ask specifically a question like what about christian we'll ask the question what about religious life is perfect or what about religious life is objectively better or higher as the tradition sometimes refers to it as and then use that as a way by which to illumine how grace is operative in all states uh in a kind of analogical way so it will not be an extended form of like condescension or you know self-hatred or what other options there might be but hopefully it's a way by which you can see acknowledge and embrace those means in your state that god is using to make you a saint so religious life here we go in lumengencium the dogmatic constitution of the church of the second vatican council uh it said that all christians regardless of rank or states are called to the perfection of charity okay so why the focus on charity why this emphasis on perfection what are we doing here and i don't know like in more precise terms or what are we doing here more more generally um so charity right is a kind of way by which of encapsulating the whole of the virtuous life so charity is the greatest of virtues why well it's a theological virtue so it has god for its end which is true of faith hope and charity but where is in heaven faith and hope pass away because there's a note of imp imperfection in them charity does not pass away because it's the very substance of christian perfection so faith gives way to vision hope gives way to possession but charity remains charity abides because charity is just supernatural friendship and what is the nature of that heavenly life but supernatural friendship so charity actually brings all of the other virtues to their term it brings them to their perfection because when we do something whether it's an act of temperance or fortitude or justice when we do it for love when we do it in charity then it has its full scope full grandeur right it's done for the love of god and for the love of neighbor because it's animated by this deepest insight that god is our father that our brothers and sisters are in truth our brothers and sisters and that love ought to be what kind of characterizes the soul before god and before you know those with whom we live so so charity is a kind of peculiar or most excellent participation in the life of grace so grace is like health of the soul grace is that healing and elevation of our nature whereby we abide in the divine life and charity um you know it's kind of like a shorthand for it charity kind of encapsulates what it means to be in a state of grace um so all christians are ordered to the perfection of charity so at the end of the fifth chapter of matthew's gospel we read be therefore perfect as your heavenly father is perfect i want to say that's matthew 5 48 be therefore perfect as your heavenly father is perfect so all christians are called to the perfection of charity and in that pursuit we are given a variety of means or god gives us a variety of means to attain to the perfection of charity um so what what are those means well i mean the lord jesus christ so the incarnate word uh you can think about it in terms like christ's humanity is an instrument that god gives for the attaining to perfection right for the attaining to him and then you can just kind of go down from there so like the church the sacraments the ministers as it were you know sacramentals there are a variety of things you think about the life of grace virtue gifts of the holy spirit god's giving you all kinds of things all kinds of gifts all kinds of means whereby to attain to him in perfection now one of those we call states of life okay one of those we call states of life so sometimes we refer to it also as vocations and this would be like priesthood religious life and marriage and in these states of life we adopt certain means to the attainment of christian perfection and religious life adopts perfect means so when we say that religious life is perfect or when we say that religious life is objectively higher state we're referring to this phenomenon that in religious life one embraces perfect means to the perfection of charity okay what are those means well saint thomas talks about this in secunda secunda question 186 article 7 and he says the vows the vows are perfect means to the perfection of charity and he gives this really cool article where he does three sets of three so he says we can think about this in three different ways the vows he says cool concupiscence they curb solicitude and they offer the whole okay so cool concupiscence so in uh first john we hear about this kind of three-fold effect of original sin in our lives so the pride of life the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes saint thomas associates that with certain faults regarding you know like autonomy as it were or self-rule so that'd be like the pride of life the lust of the flesh would be certain faults of chastity certain faults of one's bodily existence and then the lust of the eyes would be like a kind of acquisitiveness right or like greed average what you might call it and he says that by the vows right we adopt perfect means to cooling concupiscence to cooling these manifestations of original sin all right so it kind of softens them it heals them it purifies them specifically you know like we said this uh inordinate attachment to self-rule to goods of the flesh and then to possessions so next he says that curbs solicit their they the vows curb solicitude so we have a well-formed or we have a basis for like good desires of secondary goods speak more clearly father greg what do you mean okay um there are a lot of good things out there some of those things are the they're good in the utmost sense or they're good leaving nothing to be desired that would be god everything else is a secondary good but those secondary goods are arranged hierarchically so some are better than others depending on your state and life or depending on how you know like god has called you particularly so in religious life one sets aside certain secondary goods why well to be more wholehearted in the embrace of certain other secondary goods which conduce to the one thing necessary to the highest of goods so one sets aside self-rule the goods of family life possessions so that one can be more wholehearted in prayer consecration common life study preaching things like that okay so this would be the second and poverty chess and obedience do this perfectly i realized i didn't map that out for the first two but we'll see it more clearly in the last one um and then third and finally he says that it offers religious life the vows offers the whole person so in the old testament you have descriptions of a variety of different sacrifices right so there are oblations first fruits tithes there are sin offerings wave offerings cereal offering all kinds of things usually in those sacrifices you would give part of the host to the priest part of it to the actual offer and then part of it to god with one exception the holocaust offering where all of it would be given to god and saint thomas says that the holocaust offering is an especially apt image for religious life because by religious life one gives the whole of oneself so by let's see by obedience one gives the soul by chastity one gives the body and by poverty one gives his or her goods so it offers the whole person and he says for these reasons namely that it's perfectly disposed to cool concupiscence to curb solicitude and to offer the whole right religious life is perfect so it's perfect in an operational sense right it's not perfect in an essential sense so it conduces perfectly to the attainment of christian perfection but that christian perfection god makes available to all and he affords different means to that given you know who you are as it were so vacation is not something that's just proposed objectively and then for those who can do it religious life is the move but for those who can't it's not rather god proposes a vocation to you specifically god proposes a vocation to you that takes into account who you are right what you know what you love uh and your peculiar destiny um as it is somehow a unique expression of the glory of god so i think that the thing to keep in mind is that yes religious life is objectively higher but that need not be you know grounds for self-condemnation for those who aren't called to religious life rather what we should be animated by is the prospect of embracing those means those gifts that god gives so the incarnate lord the church the sacraments sacramentals the life of grace virtue gifts of the holy spirit all these different things and perhaps a state of life but that state of life which will be best for you not to say that it's relative but in the sense that god has a particular plan for you which involves telling something glorious about him that only you are suited to tell so what we should be animated by is the prospect of consenting to and cooperating with the grace that god actually gives sometimes that'll be in the context of religious life more often than not it won't and i would say ordinarily it won't because in the garden man and woman were called to marriage because that's the ordinary means whereby grace is communicated to subsequent generations things get wonky with the fall but by the redemption the lord reconstitutes us you know in good states of life or he reconstitutes us by good means to the attainment of perfection so all are called to it all are called to it religious life is an especially excellent way to attain to that perfection it's not the only way and it may not it may not be the way for you but it is good and if you have a desire for it pray that that desire be deepened that it be increased that it be strengthened that it be purified that it be healed but ultimately that we're down to his glory okay with that i am now going to pass on to some questions i'm going to scanarou to the top scanaroo that's not a verb i'm embarrassed i take it back okay um james says question all right let's do it why does the church venerate old testament figures for example abraham who committed so many mortal sins and never seemed to repent for example polygamy giving his wife to pharaoh etc good question so um i think that uh it's helpful to see this in the context of salvation history so salvation history reaches its climax in our lord jesus christ and in our lord jesus christ the fullness of revelation is given so we would talk about like this this time of public revelation ending with the death of the last apostle so uh christ's life and the generations immediately subsequent to it are especially thick with revelation and as a result of which right this this this fact of the laws coming to fulfillment or coming to perfection we now know better right we now know more clearly we now know more accurately more precisely we now know more excellently the plans of god right and the way in which he is leading us to salvation in his christ through the holy spirit so prior to that though it would have been possible to know you know the triune god and the christ who is to come but it would have been far more difficult and saint thomas speculates that it would have been available only to those great ones like moses or abraham for instance but that for you know those not necessarily in a position of prophecy prophecy or kingship or exercising some sort of um peculiar grace or charism in the life of the people of israel that they would not necessarily have known explicitly the trinity and the coming of christ and as a result of which they would not have yet full access to the means whereby that salvation is clarified precise made more accurate as it were so in the old testament we have to understand that revelation there is pedagogical okay so they have the law the mosaic law they also have the natural law and they have certain revelations certain theophanies certain ways by which god makes himself known but they don't yet have the fullness of christ or they don't yet have the fullness of christ as he intended to make himself had in the incarnation so i think that um you know like the lord himself gives us this this type of interpretation when he's describing marriage right so it's put to him whether or not one can divorce for adultery or you know for for a kind of a grave sexual reason or for any reason and he says from the beginning it was not so rather because of the hardness of your heart moses permitted this so there's the sense that god had a good original design but that the law the natural law and um you know our hearts deepest longings have been obscured from us by sin and that revelation is going to reconstitute us in that fullness with the how much more of christ but that it's going to take time it's going to take progressive revelation so i think that the reason for which we attach important importance to abraham or moses isn't because they were impeccable nor is that the reason that we attach importance to new testament saints right but it's because they played an excellent role in god's dispensation uh and because they consented to and cooperated with his grace and the ways that god gave them to do um yeah and i think that one can have a greater [Music] a greater sense of the imperfection or a greater appreciation for the imperfection of old testament characters given the fact that they had not yet received the fullness of revelation in christ okie doke maria elisa says since purgatory is where our sins are purified doesn't that mean that everyone is going to heaven not necessarily because upon death one is judged one receives his or her particular judgment and then goes either to hell to purgatory or to heaven okay so there are two ultimate destinations hell and heaven purgatory is an intermediate state whereby those who remain in a state of impurity oh impurification is what i was going to say but i don't think that's a word in a state of impurity uh have what is lacking to them right uh filled up right or they have what kind of presents an impediment or an obstacle to the vision of god they have that purified so so purgatory is an intermediate state to heaven but it doesn't presume that all go to happen because some die with a decided purpose of being against god right they've chosen something else as their last end and they do not repent of that um in the moment of death or unto their death whereas in the case of those who go to purgatory they have god for their end they chosen for god they don't die in a state of mortal sin but there's still some sinful attachments that need to be purified okay tom ws says hi father pine i wanted to know how to reconcile the fact that according to saint thomas the devil cannot work miracles and what exorcists say for example a possessed person who levitates right um so i suspect i don't actually know the particular text which you're referring but i can tell you that the longest or most extended uh disquisition on miracles comes at the end of the primo pars and it's also there it comes up with the ministrations of the angels um so i you know i'm not surprised that saint thomas thinks about them in tandem um so i think that so what is a miracle a miracle is something whereby god operates in a way that transcends the ordinary natural causality of the world so he has like a really cool kind of taxonomy whereby he maps out different kinds of miracles but it's something that would not okay not not not transpire according to the ordinary course but for god's kind of direct insertion of his causality so god makes things to be or makes things to cause according to their own proper causality right a kind of rich sense of secondary causality but then god sometimes makes extraordinary interventions whereby he doesn't so much subvert that causality as he accelerates it or something along those lines right so the restoration of health we have an interior natural principle whereby health is kind of drawn forth from the the human body that's a that's a creepy way to speak what do i mean um so so if you leave a thing if you leave an organism to its own oftentimes it recovers its health and sometimes you know you'd use medicine or surgery or things like that but those are done to aid the health giving properties of the body they're not so much like a violence visited upon the body or contrary to natural principles but what you have in a healing is a kind of instantaneous movement so it's deeply in accord with nature but it transcends nature's operation right it goes beyond uh it goes above so i think that um demons are circumscribed by their nature so they do not have the same type of causal power as god does and as a result of which they cannot perform miracles in the same way so god performs miracles authoritatively uh and saints for instance perform miracles i don't know if you would say instrumentally so much as like by intercession okay so it's not something that they have by right so like christ heals in his own name whereas the saints heal in the name of christ so we are kind of bound or circumscribed by our nature so to the demons and as a result of which we operate within nature and not so much above nature in the way that god does so maybe that's that's a way by which to go about it okay uh jenna zeke says hi father the pond i have trouble reconciling the faith with contemporary culture i feel removed from christ in daily life because 2021 feels completely foreign to jesus's time um christianity ends up feeling fake or saccharine to the point where i want to avoid it yet i know it is the truth advice yeah so i think um the things that are fake or saccharine ought to be kind of set aside right so there are different ways by which to approach the faith there are different lowercase t traditions within the church and some appeal to some while others appeal to others and i don't think that you're bound to love all of the saints equally for instance so like devotion to saints is like friendship you have a few really good ones and then for the most part you kind of neglect the others not to say that you wish them bad but you know you feel about them the way that you feel about um you know dominicus in lithuania you're like i know dominicus and lithuania exactly so you don't have to get bound up by it and so i think that there are certain traditions in the life of the church which are kind of saccharine and which at times feel fake like there are many spiritual writers whom i don't like all right and i don't say that as a way to be like impeach or like so controversial but it's just like they don't do anything for me oftentimes because they're appealing to the will and um and many times in my life my will is very tired what i crave or what i hope for is a kind of illumination of the intellect that motivates a response on the part of the will and so there are certain like modern spiritualities that i just find exhausting and they more so convince me of my own like lassitude and neglect and they actually motivate a genuine response so too i think that you know you'll find things in the church that are kind of saccharine and that's okay for you to name them as such right so i think that what you're in search of is something genuine something real something authentic something that engages your humanity something that animates in you a real response to a real world now mind you a lot of things in the world are fake um we need to sort through those as well so we need to we need to affirm what's what's true in the faith and we need to affirm what's true in the world and bring them into dialogue so that way we can be effective teachers witnesses evangelists etc um so there are different ecclesial movements that that focus on the type of thing i think that you that you describe just based on your short question you might be interested in checking out the neocatechumenal way or communion liberation both of which are very kind of engaged with the modern world but try to do so in a way that's genuine that corresponds with experience that isn't just papered over or made saccharine as you described so those are some thoughts okay uh joseph freeze says i'm really torn between protestantism orthodoxy and catholicism and have been for a few months now what is your opinion what what in your opinion is the strongest argument for the papacy um i'm a big i'm a big man for constellations of arguments i think that like to take one argument on its own terms you know can be interesting or fun but that we should ultimately attend to all of the arguments uh because they there's a so john henry newman refers to it as the illitive sense you know there's a way by which the conjoined testimony of all these many voices eventually leaves us in a position where we do not have sufficient grounds for turning away so with respect to that i would say i would recommend a book called pope peter by joe heschmeyer so buy it read it and i think you'll find it to be very excellent um so i you know like i don't find any uh particular exegetical historical philosophical theological arguments to be like knock down drag out absolutely proves the case cannot be called into question but i find that when taken together and the way in which he presents them in that book for instance that they are that they are very convincing all right we got ourselves a super chat from john paul geese in a past q a you said it is wrong to steal a ouija board from another which i believe is true however i found porn magazines at my work and burned them and i believe that was right too um can someone justly own porn ouija yeah so good question um can someone justly own those things i think yes uh right um so the the making of those things is the making of pornography is gravely immoral um and as a result of which it calls into question not doesn't call into question but it um it reveals as debased false uh manipulative evil the entire industry and all that surrounds it um but i think that the possession of the property gosh yeah that's a good question i i yeah i think that um yeah i think you can still own it why do i think that um because yeah i'm trying to think of good parallels for whereby to explain so like slavery for instance should people be um you know like in the 19th century when slaves were freed should their owners have been removed oh gosh yeah that's tough um yeah i don't actually know that i have like any good analogies ready at hand whereby to describe this um so like for instance i i don't think that you can blow up um an abortion clinic right um and i think that maybe that's the closest analogy to which i can come up i just don't think that um you're not responsible for preventing the sin of other peoples right so you're responsible for yourself you're responsible for those in your immediate care like the members of your family but you can approach life as if it were your responsibility to forbid the sin of all others over whom you could exercise influence right so you want to appeal to them as thinking and loving human beings because just by destroying the pornography you don't necessarily motivate a change you could remove temporarily in your occasion of sin but you could also incense them if they think for instance that christians won't stop at the burning of porn magazines they'll they'll next proceed to the destroying of of abortion clinics so my thinking on this is an especially clear isn't especially muddled but st thomas has a pretty he's got pretty significant things to say about the rights of justice um you know like the parents have over the children or that um one might exercise over his or her property um so yeah i mean with respect to private property it belongs to god by rights he gives us access to it for a variety of reasons uh you know for its maintenance right that we would increase its wealth um yes to avoid what is is rendered in the american translation of the summa theology is the vice of shirking uh right a kind of negligence or laziness with respect to the care of common goods things like that um etc dot dot dot but i i don't think that you can destroy something that is not yours i think that the person who owns it who purchased it can pertain can can you know like have it by rights you can express to your boss that you're profoundly uncomfortable and in fact morally affronted by the existence of these materials in your workplace in such a way that you could potentially stumble on them um how you do that in a way that doesn't alienate you from your co-workers is a difficult question uh but you might describe that this is something that causes you you know great distress and discomfort and see if you can work out a solution through those means so that's not an especially yeah satisfactory answer i myself am cognizant of its limitations but i think uh yeah i i would be hesitant i wouldn't is what i'm trying to say um okay next ana sarah hello father pine i hope you're doing well what do you think about new catholic communities like shalom shumann nuf foculare thanks god bless you um so i don't know anything about shalom i only know a few things about schumann neuf and the things that i've heard have been really impressive i know that there are certain communities especially in the french speaking world that have um kind of ecumenical options tesse and schumann nuff being one of them i think that um yeah certain things about their liturgy about inter communion uh you know like sharing in the sacraments as it were uh cause me some yeah questioning right because i think that there's always there always has to be this dynamism towards uh unity in the church and i think that the way i understand that dynamism is that everyone should be encouraged to become catholic because the church of christ subsists in the catholic church and i think in some sometimes in those communities that that dynamism is a little bit different and i i don't yet understand it to be completely honest but because i haven't lived their life i'm hesitant to say like you know better worse yadda yadda um but but the one thing that i would say is with respect to you know like a kind of encouragement for protestants to stay protestant catholics to say catholic in these communities as a sign to their ecumenical value i just i wonder about that um that's that's true i think in tesse i think one of the founders of tesse was encouraged to remain protestant so that this could be a kind of meeting ground for protestants and catholics i don't know about shaman enough but i know i think that the protestants can sometimes receive holy communion um at a catholic mass and show madness which again i don't know all the details but things like that cause me some questions i know that a lot of 20th century christian communities have had difficulties especially with their founders um difficulties of a sort like so sexual abuse problems with the manifestation of conscience uh gross manipulations of the vow of obedience um and certainly you've probably heard things about um the legion with respect to that uh about the community of saint john and others of such a sort and um yeah i think that in the 20th century there was a real crisis in religious life and and the founders of these communities had a uh yeah they had a choice to adopt older traditions with all of their baggage right many of which seemed entirely more abundant certainly errant um or to found something new but when they found something new if they did it in rejection of the kind of like tradition of religious life that had um been in continuous existence up to that day then sometimes they introduced excesses or they introduced just peculiarities at the very least into their mode of life which proved destructive over the course of time so i think that this is an argument for tradition in these communities uh and the fact of a life having been tried tested found good you know found excellent you know an exception to some of the difficulties that i've described is um yeah uh the missionary is a charity right so they have a saint for their founders and their transition from foundress to second generation was smooth right so that's that's a great sign um of of hope so yeah those those are some thoughts um okay pines with aquinas says something if you like this video please like if you like subscribe that's awesome cheers what's up um okay nicholas s says hello father pine why isn't um why is it that a single unrepented mortal sin can potentially send you to hell i struggle to understand how a single sin can potentially outbuy many good deeds yeah so good question so basically what you say by immortal sin is that you no longer have god for the end of your life right i no longer have god for the end of my life so there's something else that i esteem is the end of my life something to which i am attached more than i am attached to god and if that's the case basically then your love exerts a kind of gravity and you gravitate towards that place where you can continue to embrace whatever secondary good and preference to god so that's like a kind of i don't know existential description of it you can also think about it in terms of the life of grace right so that the seed of glory is grace so when you when you die right if you have grace it will kind of flourish or give um give growth to glory uh but if you don't have grace there's nothing there to germinate there's nothing there to sprout forth there's nothing there to well up unto eternal life as it were and so you kind of pass by way of um by way of all flesh a helpful literary illumination of this particular theme is in the great divorce where you see what it means to be attached to something more than god and that's portrayed very dramatically very excellently by c.s lewis in that book and i realized that you know like the fact of one sin being capable of damning seems arbitrary right um but when you think about it like graces are daisy chained together so um you know when one consents to and cooperates with grace they tend to grow and grow and grow or take deeper and deeper hold on one's life so that by the end of a saint's life for instance like sin holds no sway it holds no power it holds no temptation for him um so gkh estrogen says in his life of saint francis of assisi that he could only be tempted by a sacrament right he could only be tempted by a sacrament which is kind of coin cheeky but the idea is like a sacrament is a sign of a sacred thing you know and all saint francis wanted were sacred things the only thing by which he could be tempted was a sign thereof um so i think that you want to see the life kind of as a continuous growth or diminution you want to see it as a kind of trajectory towards heaven or hell if one is saved it's by the grace of god if one is damned it is by is there a free rejection thereof so um yes i don't think that this should be something that causes you constant anxiety and worry because the nature of hope is that we rely upon god who is omnipotent and merciful to give what he promises and if we continually appeal to that hope um then then hell becomes yeah it just it ceases to factor into our moral imagination because it's been crowded out as a possibility okay jc beets says hi father pawn i picked up colin's primer of ecclesial ecclesiastical latin at your recommendation any tips yeah so just time that's all like that's it just time so just do it i did it for 30 minutes a day for a year and i could read st thomas's latin at the end of that so just do it just do it right and then after that i did like another workbook basically and then you just start reading st thomas with a dictionary and then eventually you just don't need a dictionary so i did 30 minutes a day but do anything yeah it has to be at least like 15 minutes a day or else it just doesn't take hold or stick but every day so just write 3.5 at the top right of your planner each week and just take off 0.5 and then you've got yourself three and a half hours a week all right aj holcomb says father could you speak a bit about how to apply the virtues in one's life how does a virtuous man approach life and what does a virtuous man look like thank you yeah that's uh that's a great question so virtue looks like freedom all right virtue looks like freedom um so we associate virtue with difficulty often like the virtuous person exerts great force in the resisting of temptation and the clinging to the good but truth be told saint thomas well aristotle's vision of the virtuous person is that they're able to do the good thing easily promptly and joyfully because they're operating out of a stable and permanent habit for that good thing so um so you have vicious people right who are kind of fixed or stabilized in what is evil then you have incontinent people um so the word that that aristotle uses is a cracia or a craddock person right so this would be the type of person who knows what is good but tries for it but fails do so and then you have the continent person okay again the word that aristotle uses is um like encratic all right would be this type of person so they know what's good they struggle for it and they attain to it right but it still represents a kind of difficulty for them and then you have the virtuous person at the top who knows what is good and attains to that good easily promptly and joyfully so the virtuous person looks free but in order to grow in that freedom we need to undertake some discipline right so we need to be educated and trained in our freedom which means that we need to get in the habit of consenting to and cooperating with the grace that god gives so that grace can flourish in our lives so that grace can attain to its end so people will often give examples maybe of like musicians or athletes or like a craftsman as to how this looks so i think the musician one is pretty good but like at the outset say you signed up for the violin in third grade and you started at it and it was terrible but then you did you know like a steady diet of scales or whatever one does on a violin arpeggios i don't know what you would do okay but you do all of these different exercises and then you start working on practice pieces and then eventually you find that these things are easy and you can progress to things of greater difficulty and then those become easy and then you find yourself with a kind of virtuosity so that you don't need no so much to be prompted as you just kind of incline spontaneously to what is good and maybe you compose or maybe you find yourself able uh to extemporize with great facility and ease but basically you've grown into the habit such that it possesses you and you possess it and that you can operate out of it without you know deliberation or without heaviness or without having to plod through the steps it's just something that issues seamlessly through your life so i think that's the goal when we think about the virtuous life that's what we want to attain to that's what we want to strive for and in time by god's grace such a thing can happen so it's not like a sisyphean task where you like push the boulder up to the top of the hill for the rest of your live long days it's something where you actually mature and freedom okay um madeleine rafferty says hi father gregory hope you are well offering a rosary for you today peace that's awesome thank you hello father is a bla brain transplant possible as in will the people still be them or is it a body transplant rather than a brain transplant thank you so the church has actually described um like certain points about the morality of transplants okay so there's certain things that you can transplant certain things you can't and basically the criterion is how much it enters into the personality of the individual so the church says for instance that you can't have transplantation of gonads because that's something that's like eminently personal right and i would say that you would you would argue a similar thing about the brain that brain transplantation actually starts to kind of like get in the way of human personality um or it or it muddies the waters in such a way that it causes serious serious ethical concerns so yeah i think that would be a moral take on it as to you know like would it be a body transplant or a blank brain transplant uh good question i don't know i mean the intellect is not seeded in any corporeal organ right so it's not like the soul lodges in the brain in a peculiar fashion the souls throughout the entirety of the body mind you certain powers of the soul operate through the brain um and and like in western conceptions of human personality oftentimes we associate with our heads uh whereas in some eastern traditions you associate more with your thumas with your heart right so yeah i mean this is it's a peculiar question but don't do it um so i've heard some priests say that protestants are the antichrist is there any truth to this i would go ahead and say no um so i would read lumenjancy in paragraph 16 on how protestants pertain to the fullness of catholic communion in the church of christ um father what text would you recommend to read to make a case for having a soul so in st thomas the big ones are primo paris questions 75 and 76 so start with those i mean there are other things which are more foundational in western civilization like aristotle's day anima book three you can check that out as well and then i mean the scriptural revelation but if the person doesn't think you have a soul i'm guessing that they don't accept the authority of scripture all right gandalf graham says let's go father uh what would you say to someone who feels a call to religious life and priesthood but does not have a great interest in the study of philosophy and to also extend theology i would say that there are many religious orders good religious orders for which that is true um so yeah i don't think that you have to be interested in the study of philosophy theology to be a dominican i think you have to want to study in some way shape or form you have to have a desire for a kind of passion for wisdom but you don't have to be smart um i would say that if you have like really little little desire to study then that might be a sign um that you so there are a variety of religious congregations that just don't emphasize study so much they like they would emphasize a kind of discipline of human formation which entails a modicum of study but they don't have the same emphasis that the dominicans do one of which is the cfrs uh whom i know a little bit and i would recommend um or really good men um solid solid communion uh so here we go uh armand uh babakanian says question what does thomas aquinas say about those in the religious life who suffer from ligma is it the secunda secunde of the summa so i don't know what ligma is my apologies um so i don't know but he talks about religious life in the sukuna sukunde so it'd be in questions 183 to 189 on states of perfection some of that's about the episcopacy but most of it's about religious life and then he also talks about the um kind of two modes of life active and contemplative in questions 179 and 182. so i just say start with 179 and then go to 189. okay sukanya sampath says hello from india father pine i need to sleep it's uh it's it's it's 12 30 a.m here so i'll watch this later but i wanted to say i'm so grateful for all your work take care hey that's awesome i'm grateful um father pine could you make a defense for not voting in the u.s didn't hear this take on god's planning you know what i'm going to do i'm going to um i'm going to recommend that you listen to the episode in god's planning um so yeah we gave some arguments for voting and some arguments against voting or not against voting but from arguments why it may not necessarily be requisite to vote um we did a similar thing actually with code vaccines along a similar line just like to kind of clear some of the chaff of bad argumentation so check that out um so finn dunsty says father in your opinion what is the strong strongest argument for christianity thanks finn right so the resurrection uh that's that's basically what saint paul says so check out first corinthians 15. mr d says good evening from the netherlands what is up um says hello father what are your thoughts on gregory palamus and the essence energies issue hope you're doing good i don't actually know anything about it um this it seems there's a gap in my formation because i have answered in just that way to like this question something like five times so maybe i got to get on my horse and go for it um so i can recommend the work of father peter toddleman whose um stl thesis or tacina is on his academia.edu page and who did an episode with matt on this channel so check both of those out chicken and bristol says hi father pine that's awesome if you were canonized what would you like to be the patron saint of um chick-fil-a patrons uh here we go michael brooks hello father pine can you help me understand why does the first cause need to have virtues and how do aquinas's five ways prove the existence of the christian god great question so saint thomas talks about exemplar virtues uh in prima secunde question 61 article five and the basic idea is he's arguing from this position of so it's kind of neoplatonic theory but i mean it comes up in aristotle metaphysics book two called moxie metalle which which occurs for the first time in the summa in the fourth way so primapar is question two article three fourth argument and the idea is like whatever we see here in gradation has an utmost expression and that utmost expression is the causal source of all of its instantiations so if we see virtue here then it must pre-exist in god in some way so some virtues pre-existing god kind of like intellectually metaphorically you know well blah blah blah that's not so much important but some things are based off of the divine idea and some things are based off god's nature and so virtue i mean kind of breaks down in those two categories certain things pre-exist in god's nature like wisdom uh the neoplanian triad triad of like um essay viva ray at intellij right so like to be to live to understand but then other things pre-existing god after the manner of uh yeah after the matter of an idea which is to say god knows some way by which he can be participated uh that is some somewhat imperfect or deficient uh yeah i could clarify that but maybe we can we can leave it at that um so yeah check out prima sukunde question 61 article 5. um patron saint of obscure trinitarian dogma what's up i love it yeah that's great i'm for that uh karina tachook says how can one know that biblical figures with larger roles in salvation history for example judas had free will also if god were not to intervene in any scenario would this not contradict free will um i'm not sure exactly understand the question but i'm just going to answer some things so we would argue to their having free will on the basis of their being human right um so god saves us right by having assumed a human nature one constituent element of which is a free will so god is in the business of saving human nature specifically of saving human freedom and if his salvific plan entailed as a kind of necessary corollary the undermining of human volition that would be at least a contradiction at worst a kind of yeah and like undoing of a salvific plan um so i would say that yeah like the whole plan hinges on a genuinely free exercise of human volition so i think that you need the players to exercise their human volition in a real way um so god can intervene or god can can move free will interiorly and non-violently uh but when he does so he makes it to be free right so he moves it interiorly he moves it strongly and sweetly according to his providence for the good um so i don't think that we have to worry too terribly much about that uh for reasons that st thomas explains uh he talked about the will in the primo pars and he talks about it in so so the treatise on man is question 75 through 102. 75 and 76 are about the soul 77 is about the powers of the soul 78 and continuous er and 78 79 i think about the intellect and then i want to say like maybe it's 80 and following about the will if not then it starts shortly thereafter um before he gets into uh different more kind of wild and speculative questions so yeah there's a lot of stuff about human volition there and then it comes back up in the premise akunde specifically in like questions six through ten that's a big it's a big section on the voluntary and the involuntary yeah so you might check out those things hello father when you were studying to become a priest did you go to a diocesan seminary a dominican seminary or something else i went to a dominican studio we call it we don't call it a seminary because we're not seminarians or student brothers and it's called the dominican studies in washington dc and you can study there as a layperson you don't have to just be a dominican so it's a small faculty where you just get trained in entomism there's no ism like tomism um all right jacob says can you explain how the soul can be eternal if it does not pre-exist in the original fashion thank you yes so the soul isn't eternal in the strict sense so to be eternal means to possess one's life wholly and entirely and humans don't do that so we're time-bound right um but the human soul doesn't have an end because it's immaterial and therefore immortal so i think that we when we speak of the soul we don't want to so much talk about it as eternal as we might talk about it as sempaternal right or die eternal um so endless rather than eternal uh those being different things and the soul can kind of have an experience or participation or share in god's eternity in heaven insofar as it ceases to experience the past the passing of time and begins to partake of god's immutability unchanging nature um albeit in a human mode uh and it's it's as a result of this unchanging nature of god that he is eternal so when we partake of it or share in it in some way you know we have something of of his eternity uh righteous moving on um uh mikhail says hello from fellow dominican first year student from polish province that is awesome hello uh another mikhail says father i'm currently discerning my vocation to become a secular dominican i'm blessed to live in a city where there are two op fraternities could you offer some paternal help god bless you yeah i would say that um do it if it conduces to your growth not all not all groups are equal but many are good so just go and check it out pray with them for a while see whether or not it corresponds if it does then take a next step and go from there i know a lot of good lay dominicans uh nathan alex says hello father pine god bless you since the last live stream i've been receiving to the church do you have any advice on dealing with scrupulosity one congratulations that is awesome any advice on dealing with scrupulosity uh yes um so it's a matter i mean scrupulosity can take a variety of forms uh it might refer to a kind of heightened sensitivity of conscience it might refer to a like a legitimate psychological obstacle to spiritual growth and i think that you want to be able to sort through that and a good thing is just to have a consistent confessor and then just to troubleshoot it with your confessor over the course of weeks and months so a lot of people jump to the conclusion that they are scrupulous when they are not necessarily they might just have a very sensitive conscience just like some people jump to the conclusion that they're experiencing the dark night of the soul when truth be told they aren't necessarily so i'd say just make frequent use of the sacrament of confession like every month for instance and then just kind of talk it through see if you can go to the same priest and then talk through your concerns with him over the course of months um hello father pine uh is it fruitful to pray the rosary during mass thanks so much for god's planning hey you're welcome for god's planning um i would say don't pray the rosary during mass just focus on trying to participate in the prayers of the mass so attend to the words the senses of those words and the realities described by those words and then in the silent times just kind of focus on uniting your sacrifice with that of the lord jesus and you can do that in simple ways but just simply by saying like lord i offer you my life something simple like that but just pay attention so look notice hear smell um all the above and then and then try to unite your sacrifice with that of the mass cashton actually has a commentary on a certain section in st thomas's works where he asks about whether one can pray the brevery during mass and he says no because there's a conflict of intention right because when you do the mass you're doing one thing when you do the rosary you're doing another thing right now mind you was there a tradition of praying the rosary during the mass in the old right yes but i think that part of the liturgical reforms of the mid-20th century was to address that and to engage the lay faithful more wholeheartedly more intentionally and attentively in the mass okay note jason lusk says believing in something without justification is not a better life it's a life of self-deception there you go um so yeah i think that's a good point and uh certainly the catholic faith would say that there is justification warrant reasonable grounds for belief uh and usually these come under four headings so the first is that the doctrines proposed uh by the catholic faith have a kind of coherence that they can be subjected to philosophical scrutiny and that no contradictions are revealed and that the arguments of those who say there are contradictions can be and are defeated second you can say how the doctrines of the faith illumine the human condition right so when brought into the works or when brought into the mix they actually help to make sense of reality rather than obscuring it then you can point to the preambles of the faith there are certain things of faith that can actually be proved by reason for instance the existence of god and then fourth and finally signs of credibility certain things that point to the truthfulness of what is proposed in the catholic church so like um the confluence of prophecy fulfilled in christ the endurance and irreformability of the church's teachings um the witness and testimony of the saints the fact of miracles like the miracle of the resurrection so i think that these are all grounds for warrants for belief okey-doke uh i scrolled to the bottom and i think it's about to skip a bunch yeah it did all right scrolling back up to the place where i was all right here we go finding my spot hey you guys are generating some great questions kudos thank you um all right next question how does one understand pope saint john paul ii and pope francis saying that bible gives no reason to assert the bible gives no reason to assert the superiority of marriage i don't know that i understand the question but um yes so i i would say that religious life is a superior state to that of marriage and the priesthood the relative ranks of priesthood and marriage is not necessarily established in catholic teaching but this idea of religious life as an objectively higher state comes up in pseudo-dionysius a father of the church fifth sixth century father of the church in the temistic tradition you know suarez is a big advocate of it it comes up in the modern papal magisterium like in vita consecrata um so pope st john paul ii refers to it as such uh and then in the code of canon law you also have language that conduces in this direction so i think that yeah i don't think that you would hear that attached to oh you just okay got it you just said virginity later so the superiority of virginity is something for which one might argue in first corinthians seven okay would be some of the clearest texts on it um in i want to say mark 11 and matthew 19 on the lord's own lips um and you might encounter it again like first corinthians 11 or 14. i've just forgotten so those would be the place um all right nick buckner what's up nick buckner domestic institute george mason university real dude um father gregory i'm ending the novitiate this summer some friends and family are having a hard time coming to terms with me leaving how can i charitably explain an attitude of detachment so here's the thing you're not going to be able to explain it to them and i think that once you kind of give up it's a lot easier um you might come to find that uh that they appreciate it in time but they're not going to necessarily appreciate it and i don't think it's reasonable for them to be expected to appreciate it in short order um yeah i think that my family will have any problem with my sharing this but i think that my family had some reservations about my entering the order because they thought that i was just doing it because it was hard and certainly i gave them reason to think that because i had done that with a variety of other things in my life so if they were somewhat skeptical they had grounds um and i think that they saw me enter and then they saw that i wasn't like over the moon happy all the time because religious life is hard and it can be sad i jokingly say that before i entered the order i was lonely sad and anxious and then i entered the order and then i was lonely sad and anxious um so so formations but you know it's like an intense time and as a result of which initial formation i should say is an intense time and as a result of which it can be you know it can be difficult and it can weigh on you and my family saw that and they thought maybe it wasn't the right fit but um it was not necessarily after a solid profession but after my diaconate ordination when they came to mass the next day and i preached independently three different members of my family said like we had reservations up until now we no longer have reservations this is what you're made for but that's like a full five years into formation so um yeah it just it just takes time it just takes time and um i think that you can love your family don't be dismissive um take their their sorrow take their concern seriously um and love them through it and yeah just give them the time and the space to think it through look it up um what do you say about the bible containing books that are known forgeries like first and second peter six of paul's letters etc whoa um so i'd say that the scholarship which suggests that they are forgeries as it were is dubious at times right not necessarily proven but but weren't the case that they were authored by someone other than i don't think that attributing the name of an apostle or an apostolic man uh makes the letter of forgery right because you have this this kind of sense of the pauline church or the johannine church of christian communities who would have distributed letters with the names of of kind of like excellent christians apostles uh the foremost among of which as a way by which to confer the validity or confer the approval or approbation of that apostle on their work so like dionysius for instance writes under the the name of um yeah dionysius the ariappa guy who comes up in acts maybe like 11 who's you know in athens and converts to the faith so i mean he's running the fifth sixth century that's like a long time afterwards and i don't think people would have necessarily you know his contemporaries thought that he was claiming but i think it's a way by which to confer validity or confer approbation on the work that you go about so i would say yeah there's that's a complicated issue there's a lot that's at stake but i wouldn't say it's just straightforward forgery casey knox father tjw and father nick signed a doc on the vaccine that says crucially the abortion was not performed for the sake of providing biological materials to researchers why is this point crucial if it's remote good question um so we recorded an episode on god's planning called code vaccines and moral thoughts which is helpful it's just a longer form discussion i think that if um so if an abortion were performing something from an aborted child so that way medical research could be conducted it would um seriously initiate all of the work downstream of that act whereas in the case of heck 293 cells those cells were taken from an aborted child but it wasn't as if the the child needed to be aborted in order for those cells to be taken uh nor was it the case that the abortion was performed in order for those cells to be taken so the the intentionality of you know those doctors parents researchers as it were um it's kind of like at the font or it's um at the source right of the moral evaluation and consideration of the act so it's still remote material cooperation and evil insofar as any act of cooperation seems in some ways to condone the act itself so it's permissible but it's the type of thing from which one wants to distance him or herself and certainly catholics are encouraged to do that in a variety of ways but yeah um code vaccines and moral lots check it out um all right alexander dude alex trujillo um i want to join an order but i'm not smart nor do i have a college degree no big deal my friend there are plenty of places that would you know be good fits um so i mentioned the cfrs aren't especially concerned with the life of kind of like contemplative study as envisioned by saint thomas aquinas they're concerned with formation and insofar as formation always entails an intellectual component they're going to have you read you're going to have you study and if you want to be a priest you're always going to have to study um so i trust them and would recommend them um but uh yeah i think that you can find a variety of places in which you might flourish uh but i think the first question would be to ask contemplative life for active life and if contemplative life then start poking around monasteries of active life then perhaps the cfrs would be a good place to start uh john vivalaqua says can non-catholics go to heaven right away potentially it depends um what kinds of elements of grace and salvation they have at their disposal and the nature of their death and the nature of their faith uh that's somewhat unhelpful but like a catechumen for instance on his way to the easter vigil who gets hit by a car uh not a catholic in a strict sense but on his way doing everything in his power and maybe lives a life of great faith and charity by virtue of the fact that um you know like that that baptism which he anticipates has already begun to work in his life so that's a for instance um doo doo doo uh hey erock5b keep killing it talia hello father pine do you by any chance know what time dominican sisters would typically wake up or does it depend on the community so it depends on the community the only two dominican sisters congregations with that well three which would have spent significant time um would wake up at five is when the bell rang some of them wake up before so i like the dominican sisters of saint cecilia whom i whom i love they wake up at five and then they have meditation in common at 5 30. morning prayer at 6 mass at 6 15. that's at the mother house at their other places they might do something similar but that's uh that's the kind of typical schema but yeah i'm sure that'll depend on active sisters or kind of like monastic life dominican nuns but i think five is five's a good number okay um how does one know if god would like us to marry the person we are with or to end a relationship do you want to marry the person if so then marry the person do you not want to marry the person then if so do not marry the person um so i think that desire is a good indication provided that that desire is well formed provided that that desire is being healed and elevated by the grace of god you know so you're praying you're going you know like making good use of the sacrament of confession receiving holy communion you have a good life of study of penance um you've got good christian friendships all those things are being brought to bear in your life and i think that you can trust what the lord is doing and that you can kind of go with what you want so um yeah just live your life and i wouldn't i wouldn't overcomplicate it all right uh next question my best friend has invited me to join the grand lodge he says i can and it's not a problem being catholic can i i don't actually know what the grand lodge is if it's something masonic i wouldn't because masonic movements at root are typically anti-christian and especially anti-catholic josh hershberger can you elaborate in saint thomas aquinas view on evil and why it exists i just recorded a video with father mark mary um and you can check that out on ascension presents so the problem of evil and then i also gave a couple of lectures on this for the thystic institute so just check out god evil pine tumistic institute just google that online and you should find something and uh yeah that my friends is an hour so what do we say at the end of the thing um please like this if you haven't yet like this see that's you just like push the thumbs up and then that indicates the fact that this is a likable thing and thus to be liked um also if you haven't yet subscribed to the channel two pints of aquinas please do so and you'll get notifications when these things happen and you can hop on and ask your questions i typically just start at the top and cruise through unless the spirit gives alternate indication and then i just do wildly unpredictable things um so thanks so much for your participation in today's live stream i was jazzed you were jazzed the whole world was jazzed i hope and then do check out other things from pints and also check out godsplaining which is a podcast that i contribute to so there are five of us dominicans that contribute to it it's god's planning g-o-d-s-p-l-a-i-n-i-n-g 30-minute episodes once a week during liturgical seasons that merit it we do lectio davina on saturday sundays and then we occasionally have guests cool guests recently karen oberg who is contributing presently to the aquinas 101 program led by the mystic institute on science and faith which is boss uh mike gormley from catching foxes uh father mike schmitz zena hitz who recently wrote a book published uh gosh maybe harvard university press called lost and thought so some really great episodes there so do check out godsplinting and i'll catch you next time on one of these here live streams cheers

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

Id: 0YmDCj7nrO4

Length: 61min 4sec (3664 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021