When 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? …
Archive for the ‘virtue and vice’ 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.Are We Obliged to Do the Impossible?
Friday, November 19th, 2010Instincts Regarding Determinism and Moral Responsibility
Sunday, October 10th, 2010Shaun Nichols and Joshua Kolbe describe in a paper, Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions (PDF), several studies aimed at delineating common intuitions regarding the (in)compatibility of moral responsibility and determinism. Having one universe, universe A, described in which everything, including human decisions, is completely caused by the foregoing events, so [...]
Summary of Evidence on Rapidity of Sin or Conversion
Sunday, June 6th, 2010In this post and the next I will try to wrap up the considerations of sin, fundamental option, etc., which I have been considering in recent posts. If we somewhat generalize the theory that mortal sin and conversion consist in the exercise of a single, fundamental option that lies at a deeper level than the [...]
Counterfeit Charity
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010St. Francis de Sales in his Treatise on the Love of God devotes the fourth book to describing how we may lose charity, and there notes how charity, which is properly a share we have in God's own love, produces a likeness of itself on the human level. So long as charity remains, this is [...]
Mortal Sins and Ignorance II – Where and When is the Mortal Sin?
Thursday, May 20th, 2010When a person commits a mortal sin out of ignorance, when does he commit he a mortal sin, and in what does it consist? Take the case of a married person believes that contraception is not intrinsically wrong, and consequently judges in a particular case that he or she is obliged to use artificial contraception [...]
Aquinas on Mortal Sins and Ignorance
Thursday, May 20th, 2010When speaking about the influence of passions on the will, Aquinas takes the position that so long as people retain the use of reason and free will, if they are moved by passion to do a gravely disordered act, then they sin mortally. Only if they are so overcome by passion that they no longer [...]
St. Augustine, Penance, and the Forgiveness of Sins
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010In the early Church, the practice of the sacrament of confession was not a very common affair. While there is certainly testimony to the confession of light sins in the sacrament of confession, it was most associated with severe sins that demanded a canonical and public penance. St. Augustine frequently connects the forgiveness of light [...]
Aquinas on Mortal Sins of Passion
Monday, May 17th, 2010Though Aquinas clearly affirms that the influence of passions on the will can decrease the degree of voluntariness, and thus the merit or demerit of good actions or sins, when it comes to gravely disordered acts, such as fornication, masturbation, or theft, he still sees the issue as basically black or white: either the act [...]
Mortal Sin and Fundamental Option 2
Sunday, May 16th, 2010In the previous post I attempted to describe a man who, as far as morally possible, related to his family in a manner analogous to the manner a Christian relates to God, so that even things that normally are not incompatible with marital love would exclude it. We could also consider a more realistic case, [...]
Aquinas on the Sin of Drunkenness
Thursday, May 13th, 2010From the De Malo to the Summa Theologiae Aquinas apparently makes a shift in his judgment about drunkenness. While in the De Malo he says that getting drunk is of itself a venial sin, in the Summa Theologiae and in the Commentary on Romans (as well as the Commentary on 1 Corinthians), which are widely [...]
I am a Catholic seminarian and deacon in Vienna, and a teacher at the