Is someone obliged to marry if that is the only way he can support his parents? This article is from Quodlibetal 10, q. 5, a. 1. Whether someone is bound to contact marriage in order to support his father by the marriage dowry, if he is not able to support him otherwise. Objections It [...]
Archive for the ‘Aquinas’ Category
Only excerpts or summaries of the posts are shown on this page. Click on the title of a post to see the whole post.Aquinas on Marrying to Support One's Parents
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011Infants and Holy Communion
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011In the previous post, Faith, Intention and Sacramental Reception of the Eucharist, I spoke about the necessity of an intention to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist in order to enter into the sacramental union with Christ specific to this sacrament (rather than merely have Christ within one's body, just as a ciborium does). This [...]
Aquinas, Averroes, and Habits
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011A question for my readers: Aquinas quotes numerous times Averroes definition of a habit as "that by which one acts when one wills", and seemingly relies on this definition when he argues, for instance, that the habits animals acquire are not habits in the full sense, since "they do not have the power to use [...]
Faith, Intention and Sacramental Reception of the Eucharist
Friday, March 11th, 2011While discoursing on who can receive the Eucharist sacramentally (Summa Theologiae III, q. 80, a. 3), St. Thomas Aquinas describes three cases where the one consuming the Eucharist does not receive the Eucharist sacramentally: when the Eucharist is consumed by an unbeliever, an animal, or by one who does not know it to be the [...]
Are We Obliged to Do the Impossible?
Friday, November 19th, 2010When speaking generally about the obligation to order our passions, Aquinas says that though it is possible to avoid any particular inordinate movement, it is impossible to avoid all inordinate passions. Nonetheless the possibility of avoiding any particular disordered passion is enough to make it a sin when we don't avoid it. Is this consistent with the position that Aquinas takes on the particular question of obedience? …
Aquinas On The Evidence For Original Sin
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010Aquinas sees the prevalence of evil the human race as evidence of original sin, on the supposition that God has a special providence for man, bestowing gifts of grace upon him. Apart from this view of divine providence, the existence of evil would not particularly support an Original Sin.
Christian Children Dying Without Baptism
Monday, September 20th, 2010One of the disputed questions Aquinas deals with is: whether a child who is born in the desert where no water is available, and dies without baptism, can be saved in virtue of its mother's faith: It seems that a child born in the desert can be saved without baptism in virtue of its parents' [...]
Aquinas, Sin and Fundamental Option
Thursday, June 17th, 2010In the previous post I summarized various evidence pertaining to a fundamental option in the sense of an orientation that changes through a series of acts. This post attempts a sketch that does justice to all of the evidence, as far as that is possible. (1) A person who is strongly committed to the love [...]
Natural Law and Natural Inclinations
Friday, April 23rd, 2010Why do natural inclinations of human nature give rise to an obligation of natural law?
The International Theological Commission presents a mean between two extremes: one, which it labels "physicalism," takes the natural inclinations as absolutes that are not subordinate to any higher principle; the other extreme takes the natural inclinations as mere "matter" for human action, devoid of any intrinsic human teleology.
On the one hand, the human subject is not a union or juxtaposition of diverse and autonomous natural inclinations, but a substantial and personal whole called to respond to the love of God and to unite himself through a recognized orientation towards a last end, which hierarchizes the partial goods manifested by diverse natural tendencies… On the other hand, in this organic whole, each part preserves a proper and irreducible meaning… The doctrine of the natural moral law should therefore affirm the central role of reason in the actualization of a properly human plan of life, and at the same time the consistency and the proper meaning of natural pre-rational dynamisms.
Aquinas on Pleasure as the Measure of Morality
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010In his treatise on the passions in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas, discussing the goodness of pleasure, asks whether pleasure is the measure or rule for judging moral goodness or badness. He argues that it is, on the basis of the three principles that (1) moral goodness depends upon the will, that (2) the goodness [...]
I am a Catholic seminarian and deacon in Vienna, and a teacher at the