What is Sin? with Fr. Gregory Pine

hello and welcome to pints with aquinas i am father gregory pine and um what's up let's see i am a doctoral candidate at the university of freeburg uh which thing is going well i am writing my first chapter on instrumental causality and uh it's going well so far yeah i'm digging on it so that to me is encouraging i'm back in the united states for the summer so it's good to be back with family and friends and brothers and uh just kind of plugging it along plugging away plugging along away on the on the principal work so yes um my principle study is on our lord jesus christ and specifically on soteriology so the question of instrumentality enters into the equation insofar as uh it's a matter of how christ's humanity is associated with the salvation he communicates you know from his godhead i don't know if that's the most felicitous way to express it but basically god gives us god and he gives us god through his sacred humanity and so right now i'm just kind of taking taking a deep dive and um yeah taking a look at that so i said that uh well i didn't say i said to myself i said to my soul be still and wait without thought says tsled in the four quartets i said to myself that for today's 10 minute entry sequence that i would just answer the first question that came up in the chat now the first question is what is the sin of omission and when is the sin of omission mortal sin so we're going to just take an opportunity here to describe sin in its uh varieties and to describe specifically what constitutes sin in the formal sense and so far as it has a formal sense right and then go from there so here we go uh so sin how is how is sin described saint thomas takes his definition from saint augustine where he says that a sin is any thought word or deed contrary to the eternal law okay so thought word or deed which is to say it's a human act so it's an act that issues from rationality and volition so it's something that is not merely animal so digestion can't be a sin insofar as it is digestion but something that is actually known and chosen as an end of some sort so it's it's known as an end it's chosen as an end so you'll hear in the catechism when when a description for instance is given of mortal sin it'll say that a immortal sin must be grave so it must um it must uh bear upon some grave matter but also that it must entail some knowledge and it must entail some consent so knowledge there just being the rational dimension and consent being the volitional dimension so a sin is a human act now mind you it's a fel human act so it's obviously not the best expression of our humanity nor are we humanized by it but it presumes that the agent of said thing is a human being and that that person is acting as a human being now one of the main divisions drawn among or between sins is mortal and venial sins so saint thomas entertains this in his uh in syma theologiae at one point and he says that's really truly speaking a mortal sin is sin in its fullest sense or sin in its proper sense so by mortal sin one displaces god as his or her last end so basically you're going along down the highway of life trying to love god with your whole mind uh whole mind heart soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself and then all of a sudden you encounter something along the way which uh you know seduces you as it were or kind of deflects you from the path and that displaces god as your last end so it becomes for you the focus of your life or it becomes an attachment so vehement um or so deeply entrenched that there is no room for god kind of to operate in your life he forced him out by by having been filled up with this other thing whereas a venial sin is not sin in the proper sense and it's not sin properly so called rather a venial sin is a kind of infilicidous means chosen towards the end yeah that's that's probably to speak of it too lightly but it's when you go about your pursuit of that end in an inordinate way in a fail way so a helpful analogy is think about it as you are driving down the highway of life and a mortal sin is like a car wreck and a venial sin is like a detour all right so v nielsen you're still headed on the path as it were you're still headed on the trajectory towards god but you go about it in a less than excellent way whereas with immortal sin you've stopped you've kind of turned around or you've just gotten in you're gotten in a wreck and you're no longer proceeding towards the goal um so then when it comes to further divisions of sin or further ways by which sin is understood or expressed um well i mean maybe we can just stay here with mortal and venial because we can think about the effects of mortal and venial so mortal sin is called mortal because it's deadly right because it's lethal to the spiritual life within so grace is often likened to health it's like the health of your soul uh grace heals the wounds associated with original sin and it also builds you up in your human nature such that you you know fire on all cylinders such that you operate after the manner in which god intends originally that we uh that we operate uh but mortal sin sees to it that that life that interior life of grace is actually banished from one soul so it's a it's a privation it's a loss of what ought to be there whereas with venial sin venial sin does not actually kill the life of grace and the soul but many venial sins will dispose to immortal sin which does so you know that you you know enjoy the grace of god insofar as well you can kind of make an evidential judgment that you enjoy the grace of god if you're doing the types of things which are proper to the life of grace but then when you are you know somewhat confident in the fact that you've committed a mortal sin then you should go back to the sacrament of confession because that sacrament is instituted to forgive mortal sin and also to start beginning to deal with the punishment associated with mortal sin but also to reconstitute the soul in grace whereby one is able to live a genuinely supernatural life um so uh when it comes to mortal and venial sin i think in the kind of initial steps of one spiritual life sometimes the spiritual life is described in three stages so there is the purgative way the illuminative way and the unitive way sometimes described as those stages pertaining to beginners proficient and perfect in one's initial stages you're focusing a lot really on rooting out habitual mortal sin and then subsequently you know you're focusing on growth and heroic virtue and that will often entail the diminution or the diminishment of venial sin in your life there's some debate among mystics in the 16th and 17th century as to whether or not it's possible to like wholly get over venial sin it seems to be the judgment of many that it's not right uh even the righteous man sins seven eight times a day however many one would count so um yes so that's like to give you the basic lay of the land now i said that i was going to answer this first question having given the background uh let's do a little work there on specifically sins of omission and when a sin of omission is a mortal sin so there are certain things to which you are bound uh by your state or by your identity and then there are certain things to which you are not bound so if you omit one of those things to which you are bound then that would be a sin of a mission but if you omit something that you're not bound to then that would not be a sin of omission um so for instance okay there's a kind of order of love right we are more responsible for loving those who are nearer to us so they'd be like you know parents brothers and sisters children the members of our of our immediate family pertain to us more approximately because um unity is the principle of union so insofar as they are like me right i ought to love them more because this is just the whole logic of god entrusting people to other people this is the whole logic of communion this is also like when we talk about in catholic social teaching the principle of subsidiarity that each task should be assigned to and carried out at the level of kind of greatest intimacy or the the greatest local level or excuse me the most local level i should say uh the reason for which is you can depend upon those who are closer to the situation to love it well and to love it better and therefore to attend to it more closely i suppose so like when it comes to in the united states the apportioning of snow plows for snow removal during the winter months that's not something that you want the federal government making determinations on because you know like maybe they just don't know climatically how each particular place is now mind you they've got the internet so they can look it up but think about yesteryear if somebody in washington was like you know every county gets five snow plows okay well that might work for like i don't know uh some place like rockford illinois nah probably not enough um that might work for some place like baltimore maryland okay but it's not gonna work for a place like portland maine and it's gonna be way super excessive for a place like miami so it's better that that the localities be left to determine what number uh they they want and then those those monies be allocated accordingly so too in in the life of you know an individual in the life of a family that you are more responsible for those things that you know and love better um and so when it comes to sins of omission you can think about your duties or responsibilities as kind of radiating out from you so you're most responsible to god because god is more interior to you than you are to yourself you are more gods than you are your own and then to yourself and then the members of your family and then kind of you go from there so there are certain things for which you are bound um when it comes to like the worship of god okay so you're bound to the worship of god but you're not necessarily bound uh to positive precepts when it comes to god at all times in all places so like for instance who are bound to make a profession of faith if it is demanded of you in fitting context so like you can't deny the faith if someone says deny the faith or i'll kill you you just can't you know it's just like all right pray that god gives you the grace to be a martyr uh but you don't have to constantly profess the faith so like when you go to bed for instance you don't have to set a recording of yourself saying jesus is lord to infinite loop and then set that on your bedside table um nor do you have to invent a small machine which manipulates your lips so as to mouth the words jesus is lord as you go through the night you know you can just add that to your little sleep apnea attachment and it'll just be great no you're not responsible for doing those things because positive precepts don't bind semper at pro semper but you need to be prepared in spirit says saint thomas aquinas you need to exhibit preparation anime so when it comes to god self others there are these duties which are attendant upon us and when we get into the weeds when we get into particulars we're going to have to do some serious moral parsing but i think that that hopefully gives you a nice little framework it gives you a nice little structure to begin to think about that question and to begin to think about it well so cheers to you luna david who asked the first question on this live stream which began or which became eventually the first 10 minutes so now i'm just going to uh take on more questions and we're just going to go because that's what we do we just go chicken of bristol says ps chicken of bristle you're ever faithful father pond what are some of your favorite books in the bible favorite new testament letter old testament narrative book favorite psalm etc hey cheers so favorite book in the bible is the gospel of john for obvious reasons if you're looking for a good book actually to read that just blows the doors down it's jesus the bridegroom by brant petry it's a really beautiful look especially at the gospel of john another one that i really like about the gospel of john is to jesus i think it's called did jesus know that he was the son of god it's by the last name of the author is dreyfus i think it's d-r-e-y-f-u-s and it's about the the fourth gospel and it's it's kind of explanation for or apology for the level of intimacy which is demonstrated in that gospel like how did he know the lord so well which is sweet uh okay so favorite new testament letter a good question i mean i suppose the one to which i recur with most frequency is the letter to the romans right you know that uh the letters of saint paul are basically organized uh in length so you start with the longest and you go to the shortest and and as a result of which they end up kind of being in order of importance i suppose you can make an argument for galatians being super important or whatever but yeah so i really love the letter of saint paul to the romans uh specifically for its meditation on the life of grace uh yeah i would say like the first seven chapters especially so okey-dokey uh favorite old testament narrative book great question i mean i don't know that you can be genesis and so far as we can talk about one book beating another book all of them being inspired by the holy spirit i like genesis and i like judges judges is wild um and then favorite psalm what is my favorite psalm i like psalm 131 hope in the lord as it ends um yeah i'll leave it at that okay jonathan h says how does merit work will you be greater in heaven than laity what does that mean i read aquinas said virgins martyrs doctors receive the greatest rewards should we be concerned or saddened by this good question um okey dokey he reaches into his pocket he grabs chapstick he applies the chapstick um so when it comes to merit basically merit is contingent upon the divine ordination so god sets things up and he says all right i'm gonna establish some rules and if you observe those rules then you get a reward okay so strictly speaking in the supernatural order we can't merit and christ marathon account of the fact that he's god so the principle of merit really is god okay god in his divine essence but also god as he ordains that others might share in that merit so when we merit it's because by virtue of the life of grace we are fitted or equipped with a second nature which second nature is proportioned to eternal life and so when we make acts of charity for instance when we make supernatural acts those acts by god's ordination have exigency for a reward uh a good book on this well it's it's a good book but it's also kind of confusing is william lynn's book something about redemptive merit in the title um another good book about merit is by joseph warrico the full name of which i do not remember and i'm trying to think about what's the other classic on merit uh i think it's prudentius de letter is the name of the the author okay so those are some books about merit but those are those are like domestic treatises as it were so um okay so that's how merit works will you be greater in heaven than the lady not necessarily right uh so religious life is a state of perfection objectively speaking right but that perfection obtains only instrumentally so religious life is perfect because it deploys perfect means to the attainment of salvation namely faith hope and charity excuse me poverty chastity and obedience my bad but here's the thing those means are situated within a variety of means that the lord gives to all so christ for instance uh the church the sacraments grace virtue gifts of the holy spirit he pauses so much dramatically um excuse me so so those means namely the means of one state of life which we call a vocation uh those means are kind of situated within this great chain instrumental chain of causality uh so the lord is giving all those uh whom he addresses in the life of grace the means to attain the salvation it says in lumengencia i think paragraph 40 that god calls all the faithful of whatever rank or states to the perfection of charity so some lives are more conducive to that some lives maybe maybe a little less so but that that like in the objective order that's not really an interesting claim because god calls you particularly uniquely to a vocation which takes account of the subjective disposition of the one whom he calls so i don't think you have to worry about that like god gives people different gifts but that's subject to god's choice the reason for which is because he is glorified in a variety of good vocations and you can trust that god will give you what you need to flourish and to glorify him so yes aquinas does say that virgins martyrs doctors receive the greatest rewards and i don't think that we should be saddened by this because in heaven we won't say mine and thine in heaven we will say ours right in heaven each will be full after the manner in which he or she lived or suffered in this life and some will glorify god in these ways others will glorify god in other ways what falls to us basically is to glorify god in the way in which he calls us to glorify him and that's particular okay so i don't think you should be saddened by that a little super chat action here here we go i have for the past year been pursuing the catholic church coming from a baptist background my wife and i are both baptized christians but how do i slowly get her going to mass with me um right so i think that depends a lot of it it depends a lot on you and on your wife um it's just it depends on whether she'll respond better to um you know like great great patients or great patients or patients or not that much patience you know it's just like is she impetuous or is she somewhat slow in coming to um yeah like share your decisions i mean she might not come to share your decisions but were she too is that something that takes time is that something that goes quickly and you just kind of base it off your own subjective disposition i think that invitations are hard to make without them seeming pressurey or without them seeming judgy so i think that you know you might make them but always take her temperature to see how they're registering because you don't want to apply unnecessary pressure that might make it uh yeah more protracted or more difficult uh you could certainly pray for her right so offer novenas um fast maybe every once in a while for that intention uh you can say um yeah just kind of offer that up in your prayers and then testify to her about what you are encountering in mass so you know just describe it it shouldn't shouldn't necessarily be a secret what transpires within those walls and if you describe it truly and you are engaged in beautiful worship and fitting worship and efficacious worship then i think she may she may come to find it desirable okay uh luis let's see here luis reyes says what is christ's atonement so the word atonement is an english word describing satisfaction or salvation um and it literally means at one mint so the idea is that by sin we are estranged or alienated from god by our own choice and then by the atonement right by christ's meritorious satisfactory sacrificial redemptive self-offering you know in the passion death and resurrection that he reunites us to the god from whom we were estranged uh and he does that first in his own flesh and the incarnation and then by the merits by the efficacious grace as it were communicated in that saving event okie dokie um i think that's a-s-d-a-s-d-a-a-s-d-s-d i don't know why i tried to send that out embarrassing um asks is karate sinful i think the answer is no i think karate typically self-describes as a manner of self-defense although mortal kombat haven't come out recently i don't know if you could qualify that as self-defense i don't also know if that qualifies as karate okay um elizabeth doucette says can you address the fake papers that were given to jews to save their lives this came up in your debate with janet smith was this lying short answer is i don't know and i think the answer is yes that formally it constitutes a lie which means that if i'm faithful to my position i need to uh yeah i need to come up with another way by which to deal i was actually just learning recently about a swiss dominican named father fabian moss he actually edited the third and fourth books of the sentences in the current kind of critical edition the best edition that's available because the leonine edition of those texts still hasn't come out uh but he lived on a border town i think between france and switzerland down by loch lamar and he actually spent considerable time during the second world war smuggling jews across the border but he didn't falsify papers so i think that like sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where it seems absolutely necessary to falsify papers right like there's no other way but to do it but to but but to falsify papers and i don't think that's true right so i think that when doing something laudatory like this it breaks a law but it breaks an unjust law you know to smuggle somebody out of an occupied country in which occupied country there is erected um a state that governs contra legend that governs contraditorum uh right and which is persecuting a particular set subset of human beings based on you know prejudicial reason or prejudicial grounds so i think those are those are different acts and i think that we want to move away from lying acts obviously towards acts which may be more a matter of not giving to the other a full accounting for what you're presently thinking right so you're not responsible obviously for telling everyone everything that you think that would be destructive if you did right so that's my that's the basic shape of my response all right um hello father our blessings by priests done online slash through screen still valid or effective the answer is like kinda not really um so when you think about it like sacraments for instance are not efficacious through screens or online uh you don't get grace in the same way that you do in presence as they say um so like with the sacrament of confession the sound waves from the man's mouth need hit your ear now they might be amplified right but they need to hit your ear so when it comes to something like that uh the mode of contact which is needed for the communication of grace is deluded uh by the medium uh so blessings aren't sacraments but they are sacramentals and sacramentals kind of participate the same logic of sacraments uh so they would only ever dispose one to the receipt of grace exoplanets which is by like you if you you know kind of like take that as a moment or an occasion whereby to cultivate devotion then fine but it's not it's not communicating grace in the same way that a blessing on presents is communicating grace all right i just used all presents there without like even batting an eye like it was a totally normal thing i'm becoming i'm becoming weird all right here we go um not sure if i or someone else has asked this then send me to the answer but i've struggled to explain confession to a protestant friend how would you explain it yeah a great question sacramento confession came up in a so i did an episode with matt on it so just look matt fred gregory pine confession also i did we did an episode on god's planning on confession i did one with father joseph anthony crest which is a good episode so just look up pine crest godsplaining confession that'll give you a good 30 minute answer uh jay didan says how do you recommend to start reading the summa theologica i'd say you just start right and then as you go highlight or annotate highlight underline annotate and then just take little notes as you go along and um you'll struggle initially but then you'll get better at it if you're like i don't even know where to begin like i don't even know the first thing in metaphysics okay then read ed phaser's book called aquinas which gives you a nice little introduction to philosophy if you're like i tried that super difficult i had no idea what exactly was going on okay dq mcinerney wrote these little manuals these little textbooks for seminary education basically that walk you through logic natural philosophy anthropology metaphysics ethics and epistemology six little volumes just read those three it's like 200 pages you take a year to do that kind of get yourself firing in the uh in the appropriate philosophical register and then you can take on take on the sumo from there um okay hi father pawn how do souls experience the beatific vision without having senses i'm off base about what the separation of body and soul people like that's a great question st thomas actually asked that question uh will the beatific vision be sensible or bodily and he says no that's going to be intelligible which is to say that god will basically give himself to the human intellect uh he will wed himself to the human intellect and he himself will be the medium through which the hum like the human intellect accesses god so you won't know god through some foreign intelligible species or concept you'll know god through god because god will give himself to the mind great question john lewis says oh yeah so that was already answered great great um louise m says how is nfp morally distinct from artificial contraception what impact does intention have on an act contraceptive mentality is there grave matter with artificial conception as opposed to nfp yeah that's that's a great question and the answer is i am still kind of working out what i think about this if i'm going to be completely honest so the answer that i give you now is provisional um so with artificial conception excuse me yeah with artificial contraception boom with artificial contraception you basically make it so that like a woman's cycle no longer factors into the equation right you can kind of just shut it down or run rough shot over it in its ordinary dispensation and then just make it to tick by the clock that you set um so like a man and a woman don't really need to check in with each other when it comes to the marital act as to whether or not they are open to life because the kind of default setting is that we're not because she's uh kind of makes it such that fertility is a limited phenomenon um so i think that the the the temptation in that instance is you know not only is it a kind of close off close oftenness to make up a word uh towards life but it also threatens to um you know like end with the spouses objectifying each other or making of each other sex objects with nfp right so you've included in the conversation uh the fact of fertility and you're working with a woman's natural cycle rather than kind of dictating the terms thereof or running rough shot over it by uh by technological or by you know chemical means so so i think nfp is just better in this kind of basic natural sense that it doesn't uh it doesn't throw hormones at a quote unquote problem uh but that it it intends or at least attempts to understand this problem right which is not a problem um so then the practicing of nfp uh this is yeah yeah yeah so i'm still thinking about this but i think that basically like a couple is always you know the default position should be open to life and um you know i think it's just i mean like oftentimes it takes a while for a woman's likelihood to return especially if she's breastfeeding in you know contemporary life it's often not the case that a woman is breastfeeding because she's unable to do so you know because she might have to get back to work within a few weeks or something like that right so some of these kind of natural processes will be interrupted and then you do have a question now when it comes to to spacing births and then then the question is whether or not there's a grave reason for which one might space birth so i think that the the general idea is that you're always open to life right so it's not so much a question of whether or not we should have kids it's a question of you know like um whether now might be a time to space because the default position is let's have kids okay um so that being so then the question is whether or not there's a grave reason for spacing and i think that you know you can think of kind of classic examples uh like when pregnancies um will gravely imperil the health of the mother uh whether that be physical or psychological health or if um you know like a father just lost his job there are serious questions about you know provision for so it's not even a question like i want my kids to go to the best schools and i want my kids to have you know the most recent pair of air jordans or anything like that it's just like i want my kids to eat if that's a consideration that my ribs might represent a grave reason so things like that i think um would would kind of shift the the nature of the conversation towards maybe we should wait maybe we should wait and then you use you know infertile periods to kind of cultivate sexual intimacy uh with uh with a lower chance right of of conceiving but each time that one would engage in the conjugal act one would have a kind of baseline openness to life so that's a provisional answer so uh what impact does intention have on an act yeah i mean intention is formal as it were so on account of the fact that we are rational animals the rational piece being the specific difference which is supplied by the form which is to say the rational soul uh rationality is determinative for what constitutes an act uh so uh yeah like when when you when you intend something right it's it's like kind of what you seek in that act but it also takes account also of the per se effects of the object so intention doesn't make it so that you just live in fairyland and you say like okay there's a line of people uh outside of costco because they just released a new whatever like tickle me elmo 4d uh and i really need this tickle me elmo because my child is disconsolate and the child will not stop crying until such time as i bring the child to tickle me elmo so what i'm doing right now is i'm consoling my child but on account of the fact that there are 25 people in line for me i'm going to forcibly remove them you know with a sidearm as it were uh so that way i can get this thing to my child what i'm doing here is an act of of supplying for my disciplic child so that's that's mental gymnastics and it's insane so if you kill somebody you have to take into account the per se effects of the object of the act which is murder okay and that's the type of act which cannot admit of any further intention even if that intention be good okay so intention is determinative for the act but the intention is always interfacing with the object of the act so intention is another word also for end you'll see the you'll hear that come up in considerations of this sort so the end in interfacing with the object constitutes like the nature of the moral act and rationality is you know the big piece for determining intention so that does factor into this um all right super chatorama father pine how much desolation can we expect we're on the right path and discernment does the devil tempt away from our correct vocation a lot so i think that the answer is maybe right but it's hard to determine and it's hard to tell so i don't think that you assume like i don't like this thing and so it must be satan trying to convince me otherwise because that's not necessarily true it might be because you don't want this thing so let's say that you have a kind of conviction a kind of desire to become a priest and you've experienced that as you know like a positive a positive feature of your life of discernment of your life of prudence but then you'll have like a period in which there's like really dark days and you're very easy you're very easily um what would you say uh i'm thinking consternate that's not the word bewildered or um depressed or thrown off in those moments i think you might just say like lord jesus christ i ask you i ask that you cover me in your most precious blood and i send these thoughts i bind and send these thoughts to the foot of your most blessed cross so in those cases i think that's the type of thing which seems like it's from the evil one but if it's just like you you thought about becoming a priest you were excited for a while but then you became subsequently more excited about the prospect of dating this woman whom you're really interested in and then you're dating her and you're enjoying it and things seem to be going well and you're praying and you're using the sacraments you have good christian friendships and there's a little bit of penance in your life and you know like i think that maybe you're just you're called to marriage i think that most everyone is basically called to marriage so i don't think you have to stress about that and say like oh i had the desire formally and now i don't have the desire so this present thing must be the evil one and i gotta go back to that no i think that i think that if you're called to the priesthood it'll keep coming back and it'll keep coming back in a positive way not necessarily with like waves of reinforcing emotion but it'll come back in a way that leaves you peaceful right just think about the fruits of the holy spirit as they are described in what galatians so i think you would use that as a kind of cipher for discerning uh okie dokie next question john bevelacqua says what are the levels of heaven i don't know that that's actually yeah it's not formally defined uh people speculate about the levels of heaven certainly there are um some some traditional answers about the levels of the choirs of angels you can find that in gregor the great and in pseudo-dinesius saint thomas himself talks about it in the treatise on angels supreme powers questions 50 through 64 and then in the tree to some divine governance which is like questions 103 through 119 of the primo pars you'll find questions in both of those sections about the ranks of angels but i think that the main description is in the latter treatise um but you don't hear about you know like the levels of people in heaven certainly dante speculates about that based off a kind of medieval astronomy but also a medieval estimation of the excellence of the virtues so you might check out the paradiso super chat here we go gandalf says nothing all right there you go thanks um okay odd request but could you pray for chris assoul a mexican soccer team who will play a final this week in hopes of winning another title after 23 23 years of not doing so thank you god bless father pawn hey man i'm i'm glad to pray for chris for the blue cross all right elias mary says can abstinence from the eucharist be an act of reparation by that intention alone thank you my my instinct answer is no um i mean if you find that your dispositions and reception of holy communion are somewhat what would one say complacent or presumptuous then that might be occasion and certainly this is the logic of the late 19th century you know you think about saint residency who had to obtain special permission to receive the eucharist on a daily basis and just during certain times in her childhood um but i don't think that yeah like i don't think that you abstain from the good for the purpose you know like from the highest good as it were that i think is the distinction because the sacrament of the eucharist is our lord jesus christ right present sacramentally and substantially i don't think that there's any fasting from from god just like there's no mean to be established in faith hope and charity like virtue in the theological virtues is not in the mean it's in the extreme and so i think too with reception of the sacraments um you know like if you're if you're becoming scrupulous with the sacrament of confession then you might have your spiritual director say don't come any more frequently than every two weeks if you're if you're receiving holy communion twice a day i think that might be a reason to dial back to one but i don't i don't think that you should uh abstain from the eucharist okay hello father pine what is the biggest challenge of the priesthood for you thanks finn i don't know there are lots of challenges you mentioned challenge and i just feel tired uh fatigue is one right so so life's tiring but sometimes priest life is especially so i think like in priestly life yeah yeah there's this kind of dynamism uh with priestly character towards you know towards the people of god so so the priest is a sacrifice and he ought to be offered on the altar right of his ordination for the people of god so he ought to be given generously to the people of god so all grace that comes to the priest is for the people of god and the priest makes known that god is present that god is near that god is for you he dispenses divine gifts to the people so there's the sense like when people ask a priest to do something the answer is kind of like yeah i mean because i was ordained for that but also there's a temptation there just to kind of get run down um and bedraggled and just kind of expend yourself somewhat quixotically on things that may not perhaps be part of your vocation so i think that's attention that's a challenge you gotta work it out we have the ingredients to make this summer sweet yeah okay um all right here we go father pine what is the sabotage privilege i don't actually know can you explain i cannot i wear the brown scapula but i can't find enough information to clarify i am sorry teresa i do not know what the sabotage privilege is i did record a video on the scapula though and that is available on youtube i'm sure you i don't know that you'll find anything in it that's helpful um okay father pond you agree with st thomas aquinas when he says that a catholic state has the right to kill formal heretics yes no why i think i asked i think i answered it last time if i didn't i apologize for putting you off yet further if you ask it again then i will definitely answer it father pine if a person committed a moral sin a mortal sin on pentecost would that be a way of blaspheming the holy spirit no i don't think so i mean every day belongs to the holy spirit pentecost in a certain way commemorates the gift of the holy spirit to the church in peculiar fashion but it's that's not how saint thomas understands uh sin against the holy spirit you can find more on that in the treatise on charity sins against charity questions 37-43 all right nathan in how does addiction play into this or more specifically a relapse into addiction yeah i mean like so addiction compromises voluntarity and voluntarity is a necessary feature of a human act and sin must be a human act so yes so addiction can compromise voluntarily to such an extent that an act which formerly was voluntary is no more so you're still culpable insofar as you chose the addictive pattern but that culpability can be diminished all right super chat gandalf could it be wrong to utilize catholicism as an overarching narrative structure to one's life even when one genuinely believes it may not be true and holy and wholly because it can combat nihilism no i mean i think that's that's honestly i think that's fine it's a kind of naturalistic way to approach a supernatural phenomenon um but if you don't believe i don't think that you have to necessarily worry about that so i think that i mean like i once visited the offices of prageru and the prageru is run by um i said dennis prager is jewish and then alan estrin is jewish and then the ceo i forgotten her name she's also jewish but um they like described themselves as like jews for jesus in a certain sense in so far as a lot of their content reaffirms uh christian moral perspectives or christian political perspectives or dot dot dot you know more probably know more about prager than i do um so like are they thereby compromising their integrity as jews to put forward things that they found to be true but don't necessarily comport you know like with their religious tradition in its entirety i don't think so because if it's true whether as revealed or as discernible by reason then it's true right it's it's a true description of the reality itself and if you're operating under the sway of something that describes reality in true fashion then i think you're it's more likely that you'll uh that you'll do well okay um double bass says yo-yo-yo from france um let's see it's 3 30 here that means it's 9 30 there monster um can a dominican wear a brown scapular yes is there a dominican scapula for the lady similar to the brown one yes i think you probably can just google that and you will find it jay ekblad says hey father any advice for understanding your passions longings and the dating engaged life i'm reading the logic of desire now by nicholas lombard and i was wondering if you had something to say i read that book it's good another one that i read about the passions which i found to be really excellent was the one by robert minor um i found it super super helpful super super illuminating so if you're digging hard on the passions check that out another thing that i really like is um the moral commentaries of uh father marie michelle la bourdette which are published by they're in french they're published by parole essilons and and the one on the treatise on the passions is the second volume in the long course which is what would you say uh it's like principles of human action i want to say are like ajir so you check that out too um talia says hello father pine in mark 10 when james and john ask jesus to be at his sides in heaven and jesus says i have no right to choose is it god who will give these places yes so there are a couple instances in the scriptures where our lord refers to himself as if he were not god you know like why do you call me good only god is good the typical patristic read of those texts is that the lord is referring to as humanity or but the lord is simply saying it's like not for you to know from me so a classic text there being from mark 13 as concerning the second coming and he says you know you don't know angels don't know son of man doesn't even know and he's referring to himself there it's like wait how do you not know that seems to pertain immediately and like very urgently to your providence and the exercise thereof so it's often i mean like some fathers of the church will say he does know right he knows by virtue of his divine knowledge but he also knows by virtue of his human beatific knowledge because in his humanity he looks always on the face of god and by his potentially by his infused prophetic knowledge and potentially by his acquired knowledge um but that he does not know for them as it were because it does not pertain to them to know the time and the place and so the lord does not know for them and so interpreting this passage um he like jesus says he does not have right for them in the sense that like they don't have rights to it and so he does not have the right to give them the thing for which they have not the right but you can you can read that in a variety of ways uh alex nagel says can you discuss the morality of listening to music that was previously illegally download what if one has paid for a streaming service that has the same music uh i don't know all of the technical ins and outs so let's say that like you know you have spotify and you also have itunes but like the things on your itunes are from illegally downloaded music but you can get it now in spotify but you just like having it on your itunes because then you can what like listen to it offline without having to take up space with downloading things on spotify or i don't know exactly to know the situation i think in things like that i mean you just follow the proprietary information of the music itself so if you're really worried just ask the company you know just ask the record label and they will be able to tell you and if you're not comfortable asking the record label and i think you probably aren't ought to be comfortable having the music um all right first name that's an awesome that's an awesome name okay first name says father pine can you speak on the history of the rosary as it pertains to thomas aquinas is there any evidence that thomas prayed the rosary and how widespread was the devotion during that time i don't know a great little introduction to this is at the beginning of the book the scriptural rosary so the practice of praying the rosary kind of gradually came together from the 13th to like the 15th centuries the first religious art where we see dominicans wearing a rosary on their hip i think is 16th century um so st thomas having lived in the 13th century wouldn't necessarily have inherited the rosary in its present form i don't think that the holy mary is actually composed until the 15th century i think that's right yeah so like obviously he makes his uh his commentary on the hail mary and i think it would have been common common enough in the 13th century to for lay brothers to say series of our fathers or series of hail marys uh in place of saying the full somebody because it would have been in latin and they typically would have been illiterate so he he would have known of it but as to whether or not he prayed it i just don't know and i don't know that that you could find that out um okay here we go pj gavin says what do you think about the most recent news of pope francis altering samorum pontificum i don't know anything about it i hope yeah i don't know anything about it i guess i'll find out if it's important what does it mean uh what does that mean since jesus is god uh right good okay so that's a follow-up from your last question father pond what book from saint thomas would you recommend for someone who is new with st thomas aquinas thanks charlie i would say read st thomas's commentary on the creed his commentary on the ten commandments his commentary on the our father and this commentary on the hail mary they're all short but they give you a good like kind of thumbnail sketch of saint thomas's theology going on from there some small treatises called the articles of faith and the reasons of faith which you might like and then a longer treat is called the compendium of theology which is a nice little it's like before you get to the zoom that's a good place to see what st thomas thinks kind of as commenting upon the entirety of the creed so those would be good places to start hello father pond have you read the divine comedy by dante answer yes if so what did you think of it and what tips do you have for me to get through it for the first time i loved it because it's beautiful some people refer to it as the summa inverse um there's a five part series on dominicana journal.com or dot org um just look up the summa inverse dominicana journal now that's those are like five good essays that help you to read it the best contemporary scholar of dante is anthony esslin we actually have a guest blending episode on god's playing with anthony esslin next month which you will no doubt enjoy but he um recorded some courses which are available i think through st benedict's press or catholic courses dot com on the divine comedy which are great i listen to those and i love those um you can also find some open courses on the divine comedy i think yale's open course on the divine comedy is available for free i think it's just like the more time you spend with the text the better and then the more time you make you make use of secondary resources also the better there's a good um gosh like the kanto project or something i forgot the name of the thing but there's a really good online resource which has full text right with a bunch of different translations in parallel and it also has good commentary you can search around for that uh john lewis says catholic state i think saint uh okay further on further up um any other books that would help me interpret the summa yeah the compendium of theology father can you please explain why aquinas says god doesn't have emotions yes because he thinks that emotions are rooted in the body so because god does not have a corporeal nature he does not suffer in his corporeal nature the types of changes which are at root um you know those movements which kind of in form or no those movements which originate the the passions or the sensible appetite sensible power uh mary dufour says some people in state of mortal sin have still love for their family or for people in general do they lose this love if they go to hell does hell make people more evil um so they wouldn't lose that love and so far as love is just complacency obony love is just a finding of the good to be pleasant and there are you know these goods continue to correspond to the nature of the individual and so you don't lose those loves but um sin is a is a disordering of love so it's a displacing of higher loves with lower loves and that represents the most significant problem so the person in hell is very much attached to lower goods to such an extent that he or she positively excludes those higher goods kind of resents the existence of those higher goods um okey dokey hello father pine how come there is not a catholic latin mass that is translated into english uh so yeah i mean with the second vatican council the nova sorto and the kind of translation of the mass into the vernacular just kind of came together as it were so i think it's by reason of historical accident um will pope francis do anything about germany no idea all right lisa uh no here we go john lewis oh never mind okay um double bass says what do you think an atheist is uh a not theist well yeah one who is not a theist so one who doesn't believe that god is or one who believes that god is not uh or one who thinks that the order of the universe suggests or demonstrates the non-existence of a god something like that all right what do you uh do what do you think about this from von balthazar here we go just as an aborted fetus cannot be restored to the womb that should have borne it so a rejected mission cannot be restored to the spirit that should have borne it yeah that's intense um one thing i would say is like yeah it's it's possible to mess up the will of god uh that is certainly the case it is possible to mess up the will of god because people can go to hell so i mean if you can mess it up in a final way it seems that you could kind of mess it up in a non if you can mess it up in an ultimate way you can mess it up in a non-ultimate way but such is the nature of god's causality that he's able to use even the mess-ups as it were for the good provided only that we consent to and cooperate with his ongoing offer of grace so i think that we needn't be terribly upset about the kind of intermediate mess-ups provided that we you know like let god use those intermediate mess-ups as occasions for deeper conversion as occasions for depending more wholly and entirely on him um as a reason for you know his reason for praise is reason for worship and not for discouragement or despair uh so yeah you can mess up your mission but god has good things in store regardless of how many times you have messed up and truth be told there's no real point i think in like looking back nostalgically or longingly on what would have been because that is in a certain sense to miss out on the grace of the present so yes uh we should feel penitence for those things right we should have a kind of lament or sorrow ordered towards past sins but you needn't live there okay catholic with a bible podcast it says father pine my child was stillborn last year we desired she be baptized but could not as she had already passed what is the church's stance on this the church does not have a defined stance on this but in in recent magisterial documents like saint john paul ii for instance says that we commend these children to the mercy of god um and that we have reason to believe that the mercy of god is bigger than any obstacle to the dispensation of salvation so um yeah yeah that's not nothing so i'm sorry for your loss um okay uh mikhail richard baliki says hi father what are your thoughts on pope francis's letter to father gerard timminer op for the 800th anniversary of the death of saint dominic may god bless the dominican family i actually haven't read it so my apologies for not having read it all right gabrielle segley says thanks for doing this again father i've got my interview for entry to the novitiate for the province of saint martin de porres next week please pray for me praying for your ministry thank you gabriel um how can i best my improve my understanding and memory says angela j are there a couple of books about memory by mary carruthers which describe medieval memory theory you might find those interesting just kind of on the theoretical level i mean they'll have practical import but yeah check it out hallelujah says hello everyone peace to all cheers brady says what advice would you give for discerning between diocesan and religious specifically dominican i am attracted to both for different reasons thanks father i would say that um yeah the the kind of quintessential desires of a religious are for this is based on edward paul farrell's book the theology of religious vocation so it's for perfection uh for great great deeds worthy of great honors because they are great and for like wholehearted or undivided devotion which is to say like the giving of oneself in undivided fashion so those would be like the virtues of devotion which is nestled under religion magnanimity and then charity so taking each of those things that i described in reverse order so i think that like as these virtues kind of coalesce or come together in your life you'll find that you are inclined more towards or desirous more of either one or the other state and and those who are inclined to the religious state typically exhibit a desire for religion right a kind of donation of self a kind of rendering of oneself and just to the god whom one knows through worship of magnanimity to do these great things worthy of great honors because they're great and then of charity namely perfection in the religious order man there are just like tons of super chats coming in today thanks guys for your generosity all right dignified blob says if god does not exist what would be worthy to replace our worship is this an invalid question thank you my father so i just think that the antecedent cannot obtain right so if we're answering this question we're answering this question x hypotheses pear and pacible so if god does not exist is something else worthy of worship so worship just means kind of to bestow honor on or to deem worthy so there are still things that would be above us and those things would still be worthy of worship i jokingly say that if god didn't exist i'd worship the sun from a mountaintop and so far as i love mountains and i love the sun um but is that the right move well neither the sun nor the mountain are rational and so strictly speaking they are lower ordered creatures than myself i mean if there are angels perhaps they'd be worthy of a kind of worship but like in a certain sense we worship the saints not as it is character by like you know those who find uh catholic practice to be idolatrous but in the sense that like we we declare them worthy insofar as god has made glorious in his saints right so we venerate them for what god has done in the order of grace in their lives but also we ask for their intercession and so far as their merits which they obtain during the course of their lives are made efficacious by virtue of the application of those merits in our lives by their by their means by their intercession so we kind of worship saints in that sense so if there were no god we would probably still worship those things which are better than us whether exemplary human beings or angels okay there you go uncle sam says hi what's up benedict does forgiveness of venial sins outside confession require perfect contrition or just attrition i don't actually know but i mean i think the answer would be attrition because they can be forgiven by like making the sign of the cross by blessing yourself with holy water by praying the our father by receiving holy communion you know so like um yeah yeah yeah yeah so they don't actually expel charity so you don't need to have perfect charity to signal the fact of their being expelled maybe that's what i want to say okay lld says does marriage require children if both people are continent such as the case of a joseph white marriage so st thomas actually asked that question in the turkey of paris he asks about the marriage desponciazzioni or something like that so you can find that in the treatise on our lord jesus christ it's somewhere in questions i want to say like 27-34 probably in the early ones yeah forgotten so saint thomas addresses that directly his answer will be more adequate and more comprehensive than mine there you go um johnny poptart says father pine what is the purpose for death the purpose for death is the dissolution of the body so um insofar as it's deprivation it's kind of purposelessness it's it's kind of purposeless so death doesn't have of its own a kind of formality and as a result of which it doesn't have a finality just death just signifies the privation of a form so death is the separation of the soul from the body so that which was constituted as a composite of body and soul loses its soul and so begins to decay and so yes that i mean for this reason death is most fearful because it's it's like the end of purpose uh but in the christian dispensation right we talk about death as having a purpose namely that you die in the lord right so the purpose of death is to be reunited with christ um and and while we are here in this veil of tears not separated from christ or not alienated from christ provided that we enjoy the state of grace right still there's a kind of greater intimacy or greater love to be enjoyed by those who look always on the face of the father uh in the sun through the holy spirit okay or yeah father pine oh wait nope [Music] dr peter is excellent boom um dreamy theater says here we go hi father gregory i was discussing purgatory with a friend she thinks because of revelation of saints it is likely going to hurt like hell because it is also fire i disagree what do you think yeah i mean so it's spoken of in the scripture as purgatorial fire um and certainly in the tradition of the church it it receives a similar treatment i mean one of the main sources for which i imagine she's thinking along these lines is uh the catherine of genoa saint catherine of january watched a lot about purgatory a good balanced treatise on purgatory is in gary garage is life everlasting so really good kind of excellent summation he gives you the doctrinal history and then he gives you some kind of modest claims about it so you might check that out dude two super chats everyone pray for stinging nettles grace and peace from jesus christ why not that's awesome um so v2 zoo he said no you didn't answer my question about killing formal heretics last time could you answer it now yeah sure let's go um so basically saint thomas thinks that a sin right so so heresy is a obstinate post-baptismal denial of something revealed uh so to which we are bound to believe by divine catholic faith basically by virtue of one's baptism one is constituted as a christian or as a catholic and then one is bound basically by ecclesiastical law and heresy is contra ecclesiastical law so pope like an obstinate pope has a post-baptismal denial of an article of the faith revealed to be held by divine catholic faith yeah that's what i want to say um so we like in a kind of modern sense think about ones being just like free to believe whatever but insofar as one has been incorporated into the church of christ one has both rights and duties okay so um so i think that the reflection that saint thomas has here and this is in i want to say it's in sukunisukuni and the treatise on faith maybe it's it's around like questions 10 or 11 when he talks about heresy and infidelity and then heresy specifically and so he thinks that that is punishable but because of the separation of the temporal and of the spiritual sword the church ought not exercise you know the death penalty that's part of the competence of the state but the church can hand someone over to the state to punish uh for heresy because of the civil unrest that it causes because that that spiritual sin or that sin and against ecclesiastical law has a kind of resonance in civil law insofar as it's destabilizing for the common good so i think it's in this sentiment that saint thomas would defend the practice although he's a lot more modest kind of in his argumentation than for instance saint augustine be for him i think that in our kind of contemporary understanding of the present political dispensation you know like we all kind of operate within a politically liberal um regime uh that this would be scandalous right so it would uh actually detract from um religious worship insofar as people would think christians to be intolerant murderous bloodthirsty etc and so i think prudentially now no it's not good but i think that on a principle level saint thomas still has reasons to argue for what he reasons for i just don't think that it's applicable in the 21st century i think that's what i think yeah but there are other people who write good things about this and you can check those out what's the guy's name pink i think is his last name this is a big thing when it comes up in like integralist conversations okay i got two more super chat so i'm going to pound through those and then we'll go the night before i went to confession i had a dream of holding someone's hand i experienced an extreme happiness and comfort feeling better than i've ever felt is that is that is this a dream from god possibly yes there's no reason to think that it's not from god um yeah that's awesome kudos uh next private address what do you have to say about those beautiful moments where we have a wordless rapid encounter with a stranger that strikes our hearts and we never forget and have you had one please share um what do i think about this yeah sometimes it's hard to account for the fact why you just kind of click with some people or why you don't click with other people um yeah i mean it's just hard to say i don't think that you necessarily need to reduce it to something like kind of base or crass like you're just attracted to the individual and it's a matter of infatuation rather than a matter of real connection but um yeah i i don't know is this just the kind of thing that i would say there i don't know just to be honest um i've had you know like i've had opportunities certainly like in recent years you go on a retreat and you have a conversation with someone you're just like wow that person's awesome but usually for me it's more of a kind of discursive sober rational thing i'm not i'm not as much a rapid encounter man as others may be so there you go all right coming on in towards the end hi father gregory pine what are your plans for your future as a theologian which avenues are you going to take and how does it how it works greetings from georgia yes that's awesome juan manuel gonzalez uh future is a theologian so i'm assigned well i'm afraid of the province of saint joseph in the northeastern united states in all likelihood i will live and work here for most of my life i'm trained i'm training in christology but i also want to work more broadly in theology so like soteriology ecclesiology trinitarian theology you know like theological anthropology i mean i really like talking about fundamental moral theology is that sometimes describe the life of the virtues so i like basically talking about basically everything in the suma basically basically he says twice without you know any whatever okay so um yeah which avenues are going to take and how is it going to work so i i imagine that i'll continue to publish in academic and popular media or at least i hope to and then i mean like i'm a dominican so i'm preacher so that preaching has various expressions preaching and teaching being the big ones but i'd like to continue to preach right liturgically but also you know like retreats and parish missions and conferences and things like that and then you know to do some of this kind of media apostolating so far as it's fruitful boom um there you go is that it yeah greetings from georgia boom uh father i understand connecting our sufferings to christ's sufferings when they are similar persecution isolation how how can we offer suffering that our sins have led to yeah i mean it's just you do that in faith uh because there is nothing that is estranged from our lord jesus christ for while he did not sin yet he suffers everything kind of um proper to our human state uh even the effects of sin so like you know he hungers he thirsts he is fatigued he dies uh so i think that um there's a kind of embarrassment that need be gotten over but yeah i just think that uh you just go for it sorry if that's not especially helpful but as i am coming to the end of the hour i'm running out of gas okay squad so thanks so much go ahead and like this video please do if you haven't yet subscribed to the channel please do check out godsplaining g-o-d-s-p-l-a-i-n-i um which is a podcast of the dominican friars province of st joseph there's five of us who contribute to it 30-minute episodes once a week and then we do lectio divine uh lexiones davina yeah no alexion is davine yeah alexionis davine stop it okay um we do those uh big liturgical seasons so we're taking a break now after pentecost and then we have guests who come on once a week so do go to that channel subscribe to it uh or pick it up on a podcast app i hope you like it i think you'll like it and yeah that i think is it so pray for me i'll pray for you and we'll catch you next time on pints with aquinas boom

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: -hIgg8Vjeh8

Length: 61min 49sec (3709 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021