(Mid 12th Century) Nave Mosaics from Palatine Chapel, Palermo, Sicily The
Lord Confronts the Disobedience of Adam & Eve; The Expulsion from Paradise
: ‘Wounds to the body : loss of immortality and impassibilty.
D. Psychology
[1]
In this subsection we consider
the psychological source of antirealist subjectivism. This we locate in Fallen
Nature, the ‘internal spiritual enemy of man’, which, as we shall now see, may
simply be described as ‘egoism.’
The soul is created for God:
to know Him as Absolute Truth and to love Him as the Infinite Good both in this
world and then definitively, stably, and perfectly in the next. In metaphysical
terms, God is Being, objective reality in the ultimate sense of the word. The
soul is created to know Being under the aspect of the True and to love Being
under the aspect of the Good.
To know Being as the True in
this world is to orient our intellect to the True; to love Being as the Good in
this world is to orient our will and actions to the Good: in order to promote
Being in ourselves and in all around us. Any errors that we make and any evil
that we commit here below can only be the consequence of the failure perfectly
to orient our intellect to the True, and our will to the Good.
According
to St. Thomas, The Four Wounds to the
Soul: ignorantia, militia, infirmitas, concupiscentia, ‘weaken man’s attachment to the True and the
Good and deprive him of his natural inclination to virtue.’
The source of this failure
lies in our Fallen Nature, in the four wounds of the soul caused by Original
Sin, as we shall proceed to expound. Now the effect of Original Sin for the
whole of mankind (except, of course, for Our Blessed Lady and Our Blessed Lord)
is, in the briefest possible synthesis, that man is deprived of Sanctifying
Grace, and wounded in his nature both in body and in soul. The wounds of the
body are two in number and consist in the loss of immortality and impassibility
(the possibility neither to die nor to suffer); the wounds of the soul, by contrast,
are four in number:
- ignorantia, the difficulty of knowing
the true;
- malitia, the falling away of the will
from the good;
- infirmitas, the recoiling before the
struggle for the good; and
- concupiscentia in the narrow sense: the
desire for the satisfaction of the senses, of the lower faculties of the soul,
against the judgment of reason.
These four wounds of the soul,
according to St. Thomas, weaken man’s attachment to the True and the Good and
deprive him of his natural inclination to virtue. We may view them as
constituting together the internal spiritual enemy of man: man’s internal
source of sin. Clearly the third wound incites him to sins of omission, and the
others to sins of action.
This fourth wound, that of
concupiscence, which we have described in terms of the desire to satisfy the
senses and lower faculties of the soul in an irrational manner, may be
understood as a certain independence from reason and a certain lack of control
in the senses and in the lower faculties of the soul, which include the
emotions, the imagination, and self-love.
Concupiscence is triple and is
expressed by St. John as follows: ‘All that is of the world is the
concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of
life’ [2]:
* the concupiscence of the flesh is understood as the
excessive desire to indulge the senses;
* the concupiscence of the eyes is understood as the
excessive desire to possess: to
possess objects (avarice) or knowledge
(curiosity);
* the pride of life, otherwise known as the
‘concupiscence of one’s own excellence’, or as ‘spiritual concupiscence’, is
simply pride.
Reflecting on these eternal
truths, we can see how the four wounds detach us from the True and from the
Good:
* ignorantia makes it hard for us to know
the True;
* malitia and infirmitas make it hard for us to
realize the Good;
* concupiscentia draws us away from
the Infinite Happiness, the Infinite Treasure, the Infinitely lovable Being Who
is God:
a)
the concupiscence of the flesh moves us to enjoy by the senses a finite
pleasure;
b)
the concupiscence of the eyes moves us to possess a finite treasure;
c)
pride moves us to love a finite good which is ourself.
Fallen Nature draws us away
from the True and the Good, then, it draws us away from Being, from objective
reality, from the objective order, to the subjective order: from the infinite
to the finite, from God to ourself. It is, then, the very source of antirealist
subjectivism within us, the source that resides in very human nature itself.
The phenomenon of Fallen
Nature also provides the explanation for two particular aspects of antirealist
subjectivism.
The first aspect that Fallen Nature explains is its monism. In the
previous section we have noted the monism of Gnosis and of the Council:
- in the orders
of Being (in the syncretism of the natural and supernatural orders);
- in ontology (in the syncretism of God and Man in Pantheism);
- in logic (in the syncretism of True and False); and
- in morality (in
the syncretism of Good and Evil).
This monism is clearly the
effect of the egoism of Fallen Nature, for the egoist views the members of each
of these pairs as ‘all the same to me.’ He is not interested in distinguishing
God and man because he already views himself as God; he is not interested in
distinguishing natural and supernatural because he already views himself as
supernatural; he is not interested in distinguishing True and False, Good and
Evil, because he views himself as superior to True and False, Good and Evil:
what he says is True; what he does is Good. The subject has triumphed over the
object, and the will over reality. His will is the formal cause of all things
and the principle of their unity: what they are, are what they are for him; his
will determines both their essence and their unity. For the saint, by contrast,
in virtue of the gift of the Holy Spirit which is ‘Science’, God is the formal
cause of all things and the principle of their unity: they issue from Him, they
exist in Him, they return to Him, as all waters return to the sea.
The
Council teaching ‘is emasculated’; ‘it is bland and anodyne ; ‘…it manifests no
courage in the face of other Christian denominations, other religions, the
State, the World, Communism and impurity…’
The second aspect of antirealist subjectivism that Fallen Nature
explains is what we have described above in terms of ‘emasculation’: the
Council teaching is emasculated, it neither professes, nor proclaims, nor lives
objective Truth; it is bland and anodyne in its doctrine and liturgy; it
manifests no courage in the face of the other Christian denominations or of the
other religions, in face of the State and the World, in face of Communism and
impurity; in its marital ethics it demotes the husband and father to the level
of the woman, it advocates eroticism which is a mark not of virility but of
effeminacy [3].
Before
concluding this section we shall briefly suggest how modern man began more
readily to yield to the tendencies of Fallen Nature.
Historical Sketch [4]
We may trace the rise in
influence of Fallen Nature to the Middle Ages, as a reaction to the severe
rigor and discipline of medioeval thought and conduct. This reaction was at the
same time philosophical and moral: on the philosophical level it consisted in
the essentially antirealist stance of Nominalism that we have examined above;
on the moral level it consisted in the essentially subjectivist dynamic of
sensuality and pride.
The fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries were characterized by an unbridling of the senses, whether the
internal senses of the imagination and fantasy, or the external senses in a
search for earthly pleasures. Dress, manners, language, literature and art
reflected this process. ‘The whole trend was toward gaiety, affability, and
festiveness. Hearts began to shy away from the love of sacrifice, from true
devotion to the Cross, and from the aspiration to sanctity and eternal life.
Chivalry, formerly one of highest expressions of Christian austerity, became
amorous and sentimental.’ Pride, ostentation, and vanity entered into
intellectual circles; absolutism into political circles.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, writer of the famous Oration on the
Dignity of Man,
which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance". The pride
and sensuality of the Renaissance period ‘…found their model in the humanist Paganism of antiquity…’
Pride and sensuality found
their model in the humanist Paganism of antiquity, which was to inspire the
Renaissance, to relegate the Church and Her supernatural and moral values to a
secondary plane, and in some countries to give birth to Protestantism. Pride
begot the spirit of doubt, the free and naturalist interpretation of Sacred
Scripture, the denial of the monarchical character of the Universal Church;
sensuality begot the abolition of priestly celibacy and divorce.
‘The French Revolution was the
heir of Renaissance, Neopaganism, and of Protestantism, with which it had a
profound affinity... the revolt against the King corresponding to the revolt
against the Pope; the revolt of the common people against the nobles to the
revolt of... the faithful, against... the clergy; the affirmation of popular
sovereignty to the government of certain sects by the faithful...’
The Holy Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne, guillotined during the French Revolution -
[…] ‘which was heir of the Renaissance and subsequently gave rise to Communism.’
The French Revolution gave
rise to Communism. ‘The normal fruit of deism is atheism. Sensuality... tends
of itself towards free love. Pride, enemy of all superiority, finally had to
attack the last inequality, that of wealth. Drunk with dreams of a one-world
republic, of the suppression of all ecclesiastical and civil authority... the
revolutionary process now brings us to the twentieth-century neobarbarian, its
most recent and extreme product.’ A hatred of monarchy and aristocracy engender the ‘demagogic democracies which combat
tradition, persecute the élites, degrade the general tone of life, and create
an ambience of vulgarity that constitutes, as it were, the dominant note of the
culture and civilization...’
This historical sketch shows
how the Middle Ages provoked a reaction of antirealist subjectivism both on the
philosophical and on the moral levels; how the reaction on the latter level, in
the form of pride and sensuality (as well, we might add, the concupiscence of
the eyes, that is to say avarice and curiosity), also gave rise to the atheist,
Protestant, and socialist tendencies that we have identified in the Council
documents. Of all the ills of Fallen Nature, however, pride may be considered
as the principal motivation of the Council, for as St. Pius X states [5]:
‘Pride sits in Modernism as in its own house.’
‘Prides sits in Modernism as its own house.’ Pope St. Pius X
Conclusion to Section I
We have investigated the
source of the false principle of antirealist subjectivism in Modern Philosophy;
in Modern Theology; in that religion which we have termed Gnosis; and finally
in its ontological foundation in the psychology of Fallen Nature.
Reflection on this false
principle shows us that the philosophy, theology, the religion and the ethics
that they inform - first Gnosis and then all the other false religions that it
was to engender - are in fact all impostures.
- * For a philosophy to be antirealist, for it to doubt or
to deny Being, means that it is not a philosophy at all, but an
anti-philosophy;
- * For a theology to be antirealist, for it to doubt or
to deny God, means that it is not a theology at all, but an anti-theology;
- * For a religion to be antirealist, for it to repudiate
God, means that it is not a religion at all, but an anti-religion; for it to
advocate egoism as its ethics means that it is does not comprise a system of
morality but a system of anti-morality.
A philosopher that can tell us
nothing about reality, a theologian that can tell us nothing about God, is like
a geographer that can tell us nothing about the world or a chemist that can
tell us nothing about chemicals; the proponent of a religion that can tell us
nothing about God, about how to relate to Him, and how to live, is like a
doctor that can tell us nothing about illness or health.
But these systems of thought
and action are not only impostures but also mortiferous, since a philosophy and
a morality that are not about reality, a theology and a religion that are not
about God can offer us no guidance about how to live, but only darkness or
false light that will make us lose the way or lead us astray. The proponents of
such systems are like undertakers disguised as doctors working at the service
not of life but of death [6].
Modern
Philosophy and Theology (and thus the
Council) ‘have grafted the principle of
all falsehood and evil onto the Faith, like some abhorrent and monstrous black
leech, to suck away the life-blood of the Church and to transform Her into
itself.’
They are impostors and
murderers, and behind them is the impostor and murderer who instigated Gnosis;
who created, as it were, Fallen Nature and Death; who inspired and nurtured
Modern Philosophy until it entered into the minds of the Modern Theologians, and
from thence at last into the Council. What he has in fact done is to graft the
principle of all falsehood and evil onto the Faith, like some abhorrent and
monstrous black leech, to suck away the life-blood of the Church and to
transform Her into itself.
[1] by ‘psychology’ we mean the science of the soul’s
nature, here particularly its faculties as disordered by Original Sin
[2] I Jn. 2.16
[3] we recall Homer’s characterization of Helen’s seducer
Paris, in the Iliad: not as virile but as effeminate
[4] this sketch relies on Revolution and
Counter-Revolution, pp. 15-19 op.cit. That
book inspired, and corresponds to, the votum
sent to the Council by Archbishop Proença Sigaud RdM II 6 (b)
[5] Pascendi, 40
[6] the direction in which modern medicine is advancing
once it has disposed of morality: its murder of the unborn and the elderly, its
concern for symptoms rather than illnesses, its prescription of medicines
without regard for their adverse effects, its unreflective accommodation to
state-promoted vaccination.
Nuper erat medicus, nunc est vispillo Diaulus;
quod facit vispillo, fecerat et medicus.
Martial I. 47
‘Recently Diaulus was a doctor; now he is an undertaker. What he is doing as an undertaker he had also been doing as a doctor.’
