On the Supposed Impassibility of Our Lady

On the Supposed Impassibility of Our Lady

The movie The Passion shows our most Blessed Mother as being 49 years old, seemingly denying that she possessed the preternatural gift of impassibility, and implicitly the gift of her immaculate conception! How would you address this issue?

-Clyde.


Dear Clyde,

Thank you for your thoughts. I believe your reasoning is the following:

(1) Our Lady was immaculately conceived;
(2) therefore, She lacked original sin;
(3) therefore, She lacked all the defects of fallen human nature;
(4) therefore, She possessed the preternatural gifts, notably impassibility.
(5) therefore, She did not age.

I wholeheartedly agree with nos. (1)-(2)—denying those would amount to heresy. However, I must say that (3), (4), and (5) do not follow logically, are far from being theologically necessary, have never been taught by the Magisterium in any way, are doubtful, and are contrary to the teaching of St. Thomas, the other doctors of the Church, and the traditional scholastic manuals of Sacred Theology. Let me explain.

Our Lady did not have (2) original sin itself; however, but she did possess (3) some of the “defects” which exist in the rest of us as punishments due to original sin, but which existed in her only as poenalitates, that is, as means for her to cooperate with her divine Son in the work of redemption. She did not have any of those defects which imply moral imperfection (e.g., concupiscence), but only those that are “irreprehensible” such as hunger, thirst, pain, weariness. The liturgy of the Church attests to this: the fact she could suffer is attested by the feast of the Seven Dolours of Our Lady (Sept. 15); that she did undergo earthly death is attested by the “Feast of the Dormition” (Aug. 15) in the Byzantine Rite and early on in Roman Rite history.

The reason for believing that Our Lady had these defects is that Our Lord Himself (who had an immaculate human nature, free from original sin, just like his Mother) had them as well. He both suffered and died and, therefore, did not have the gifts of impassibility and immortality (otherwise our redemption could not have occurred the way it did!). Thus, a fortiori the Co-Redemptrix herself must have had a passible and mortal body as well to share in the sufferings and death of her divine Son.

This is the view of a great number of (traditional) Catholic theologians, such as Suárez, Terrien, Hugon, Campana, Merkelbach, Garrigou-Lagrange, Aldama, Ott, etc. And even Aquinas himself, although he never addressed this issue directly as it pertains to Our Lady, would have to agree because it follows from his own theological principles (he does speak of Our Lord's non-moral, irreprehensible defects).

Here is what Ludwig Ott says in his manual of dogmatic Theology, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1974), p. 173:

Chapter 2

The Defects or the Passibility of Christ’s Human Nature

Par. 29: Christ’s Capacity for Suffering

1. The Corporeal Defects of Christ (defectus corporis)

Christ’s human nature was passible (de fide)

....

The Church, in its symbols of faith, teaches that Christ (really) suffered and died. The Fourth Lateran council, and the Union Council of Florence expressly stress, not merely the fact of the Passion, but also the passibility of Christ. Denzinger no. 429: “... in [His] humanity He was made capable of suffering and mortal.” Denzinger no. 708: “passible by reason of the humanity [He] assumed.”

The Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament foretell the grievous suffering of the coming Redeemer. Is. 53, 4: “Surely He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” Cf. Ps. 21 and 68. According to the testimony of the Evangelists, Christ was subject to the general defects of the body, such as hunger (Mt. 4, 2), thirst (John 19, 28), weariness (John 4, 6) sleep (Mt. 8, 24), suffering and death. Christ’s passion was intended to be a model to the faithful (cf. I Petr. 2, 21)....

In Christ, by virtue of His freedom from original sin, bodily defects were not as in other men, consequences of original sin, but He voluntarily adopted them, in order a) to make vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind, b) to demonstrate the reality of His human nature, and c) to afford mankind a model of patience in the bearing of suffering. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.14.1. These defects were, however, natural to Christ, because they belong to human nature as such. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.14.2.

Christ’s work of redemption required only that He assume the general human defects of human nature as such (defectus or passiones universales sive irreprehensibiles, e.g., hunger, thirst, weariness, feeling of pain, mortality, which do not contradict His intellectual and moral perfections). He did not assume particular defects, e.g., illness of His body or soul. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.14.2.”

Cf. also Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 202:

Parr. 4. Mary’s Freedom from Evil Concupiscence and from Every Personal Sin

1. Freedom from Concupiscence

From her conception Mary was free from all motions of concupiscence. (Sententia communis)

Freedom from original sin does not necessarily involve freedom from all defects which came into the world as a punishment for sin. Mary, like Christ Himself, was subject to the general human defects, insofar as these involve no moral imperfection. Concupiscence cannot be reckoned among these since it excites a person to commit acts which are materially contrary to God’s Law, even where, through lack of assent, they are not formal sins. It would be incompatible with Mary’s fullness of grace and her perfect purity and immaculate state to be subject to motions of inordinate desires.

It is also important to note that the theological opinion that Our Lady underwent death is considered probabilior (more probable than its opposite, namely, than the view that she did not undergo death). The reason for this is that it was fitting for her to undergo death so that she might cooperate more intimately with her Son in the work of redemption. This view is corroborated both by the fact that Pius XII, in his definition of the Dogma of the Assumption, spoke of “the end of her earthly life,” and by the fact that the early history of the feast of the Assumption attests to the fact that she died (the feast used to be called the “Feast of the Dormition” and it celebrated the death and resurrection of Our Lady as a unique participation in her Son’s own death and resurrection).

Cf. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 208ff:

2. The Bodily Assumption of Mary into Heaven

a) Dogma

Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven. (De fide.)

[Pope Pius XII] promulgated by the Apostolic constitution “Munificentissimus Deus” as a dogma revealed by God that: “Mary, the immaculate perpetually Virgin Mother of God, after the completion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of Heaven.”

...

In the East, at least since the sixth century, and at Rome, at any rate, since the end of the seventh century (Sergius I, 687-701) the Church celebrated the Feast of the Sleeping of Mary (Dormitio, koimêsis). The object of the feast was originally the death of Mary, but very soon the thought appeared of the incorruptibility of her body and of its assumption into Heaven. The original title Dormitio (sleeping) was changed into assumptio (Sacramentarium Gregorianum).

Mater dolorosa by Luis de Morales (c.1510-1586)

STABAT MATER dolorosa iuxta Crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius.
Cuius animam gementem, contristatam et dolentem pertransivit gladius.
O quam tristis et afflicta fuit illa benedicta, mater Unigeniti!
Quae maerebat et dolebat, pia Mater, dum videbat nati poenas inclyti.
Quis est homo qui non fleret, matrem Christi si videret in tanto supplicio?
Quis non posset contristari Christi Matrem contemplari dolentem cum Filio?
Pro peccatis suae gentis vidit Iesum in tormentis, et flagellis subditum.
Vidit suum dulcem Natum moriendo desolatum, dum emisit spiritum.
Eia, Mater, fons amoris me sentire vim doloris fac, ut tecum lugeam.
Fac, ut ardeat cor meum in amando Christum Deum ut sibi complaceam.
Sancta Mater, istud agas, crucifixi fige plagas cordi meo valide.
Tui Nati vulnerati, tam dignati pro me pati, poenas mecum divide.
Fac me tecum pie flere, crucifixo condolere, donec ego vixero.
Iuxta Crucem tecum stare, et me tibi sociare in planctu desidero.
Virgo virginum praeclara, mihi iam non sis amara, fac me tecum plangere.
Fac, ut portem Christi mortem, passionis fac consortem, et plagas recolere.
Fac me plagis vulnerari, fac me Cruce inebriari, et cruore Filii.
Flammis ne urar succensus, per te, Virgo, sim defensus in die iudicii.
Christe, cum sit hinc exire, da per Matrem me venire ad palmam victoriae.
Quando corpus morietur, fac, ut animae donetur paradisi gloria. Amen.

HAPPY FEAST OF THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY AND OCTAVE OF THE ASUMPTION

Schools that Teach the Philosophy of St. Thomas, Part 4

Schools that Teach the Philosophy of St. Thomas, Part 4

Dear Sir,

I am giving considerable attention to the Center for Thomistic Studies in Houston for an M.A. and perhaps Ph.D. Is there anything of a cautionary nature I should know?

VR,
Daniel

-Dear Daniel,

The Center for Thomistic Studies (CTS) is not too bad. Compared to most schools, actually, they are pretty good in their commitment to Aquinas's thought. This you won't see even in schools which were previously known for their Thomism, such as Marquette, U. of Toronto (St. Michael's), Notre Dame, Catholic U., Fordham, etc. So CTS is really one of your best choices in North America for a grad philosophy program. (But note that I say that relatively, taking in consideration the other schools that are out there.)

Absolutely speaking (not "relatively"), however, you have to have your guards up, because even there, they do not teach the traditional scholastic Thomism of the manuals and commentators---the Thomism which innumerable Popes have blessed over the ages in word and deed. The Thomism at CTS, one could say, is a non-scholastic Thomism. Their approach to Thomism in general is very much infected by a post-Vatican II "neo-conservative" mentality, which aims at preserving only part of Catholic tradition, and tries to adapt the rest to modern times---and this inevitably leads to compromise. (If you look at the website you will see to what a nauseating degree they emphasize adapting Thomism to contemporary thought and culture.) This, in essense, is a sort of mild modernism, because it implies that philosophy must "evolve" to meet the supposed "demands" of modern times---I say "evolve," not in the correct sense of "developing" or "flourishing," but in the false sense of radically changing its methodology and terminology. This is precisely what Pope St. Pius X warned us about in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (see the section on "the modernist as philosopher").

There are three "brands" of non-traditional, non-scholastic Thomism that some of the faculty members of CTS engage in:

1) "Analytic Thomism": instead of dealing with philosophical issues in the traditional scholastic manner (questions, articles, distinctions, arguments for and against, syllogisms, middle terms, responses, etc.), they like to indulge in a totally foreign philosophical style called "Analytic Philosophy," i.e., contemporary British/American philosophy, which involves a highly specialized jargon and symbolic apparatus borrowed primarily from science and mathematics. They blend this with Thomism and end up using highly unusual, non-Thomistic language and methodology, such as symbolic logic, to express even the most basic of Thomistic doctrines. The result is that these "Analytic Thomists" end up spending most of their time trying to make Thomism palatable to their relativistic, materialistic, and agnostic colleagues by divesting it of most of its traditional elements and filling it with contemporary philosophical jargon. Metaphysics ceases being a science and becomes an intolerable language game.

2) Some older Thomists, which are increasingly few in number, are also influenced by "Existentialist Thomism." Existentialist Thomism is almost the opposite of "Analytic Thomism" in that it tries to incorporate much of contemporary Continental European (as opposed to British/American) philosophy, especially existentialism. They abandon all logical and methodological rigor and fall into a verbose, prosaic style totally foreign to the scholastic masters.

3) This latter brand of Thomism really goes hand-in-hand with what I would call "Historical Thomism," which focuses not on what the truth is---the assumption is, we'll never find it!---but rather on Aquinas and his thought as part of the history of philosophy. They only wish to establish what he said--that's it. Rarely do they discuss whether it is true. In fact, if they do, they only ask whether his "theories" are "more or less adequate" than other "alternative theories." They never openly ask whether what he said is the truth, because that would imply that there is one truth, and not just many "more or less adequate accounts" which amount merely to different "language systems" which never really get at reality, but discribe it in imprecise ways to varying degrees.

So, in short, you should try to keep yourself immune from their non-traditional (but now regarded as conservative) way of looking at Thomism to the extent you can by diving into the traditional scholastic manuals and commentators. I would especially recommend Edouard Hugon, Garrigou-Lagrange, and Santiago Ramirez.

I'm currently developing a traditional scholastic curriculum for students like yourself who would like to supplement their otherwise non-traditional Thomistic formation. I would be happy to give you some guidance regarding more traditional Scholastic/Thomistic sources. Just let me know.

Good luck, and God speed.
-FJR.

Schools that Teach the Philosophy of St. Thomas, Part 3

Schools that Teach the Philosophy of St. Thomas, Part 3

(Continued from part 2.)

“Greetings, my fellow Catholics and Seekers of Truth,

I live in Venutura, California, not 25 minutes of Thomas Aquinas College (TAC) in Santa Paula, and I must say, respectfully, that you are somewhat misinformed about what TAC teaches and encourages. I'm not sure if you've ever visited, but I have many friends there from freshmen to seniors, and I am plannig on attending in a year. TAC certainly does promote the Thomistic tradition that has built up over the ages; however, it does not incorporate that directly into the curriculum because that is not its aim. Its aim is not to acquaint you with what others said about what St. thomas said; they hope the student will, of his own accord, after the program. But, if the goal is to teach Thomism, and that certainly is TAC's goal, they undertake to acquaint you well with his terms, with logic, with Latin, with theology and philosophy in general. If Thomism is truly the study of Thomistic thought, then the mind one ought to study, ought to pour over, ought to become enwrapped by, is St. Thomas'. I can also assure you that none of the teaching staff has bought into modernism. Certainly, there are differences among them: some are Platonists, but most are Aristotelians. None of the Platonists teach either philosophy or theology, and there is contention over it.

Anyway, take care and God Bless.

James.

Ora pro me, Sancte Thoma.”


-Dear James,

I do not think Thomas Aquinas College (TAC) is infected with modernism—I never said so. I am very aware that at TAC students can be sure they will not get their minds filled with the garbage of modernist theology, feminism, historical criticism, etc., that almost every other “Catholic” school in the world now forces its students to swallow. (TAC even includes St. Pius X’s Pascendi, the Church’s antidote to Modernism, as part of its curriculum!) It is much more faithful to tradition than most neo-orthodox schools (such as Franciscan University Steubenville), whose philosophy and theology departments prefer to indulge in novelties such as phenomenology, la nouvelle théologie (i.e., modernism disguised as “dynamic orthodoxy”), and Vatican-2 worship, rather than delving in the traditional philosophy and theology of the Church. It is also one of the few schools in the world that actually has a strong commitment to the authentic thought of the Angelic Doctor and a love for the Church’s dogmas. In fact, at TAC you will occasionally even get a chance to encounter the traditional liturgy of the Church (the so-called Tridentine Mass), which is rare these days in most Catholic colleges. So, taking in consideration that most other “Catholic” schools in the world are even not worthy of the name, I would say TAC is probably one the best places to get a B.A.

Nevertheless, that does not mean that TAC offers a traditional theological formation. The Thomistic formation that the TAC student receives, while good and free from flagrant theological errors, is very much incomplete because it focuses exclusively on theological “sources” (like the Summa, the Fathers, the papal encyclicals, etc.), to the point of ruling out some of the most important works that develop and/or synthesize those sources. I do not mean to say merely that the TAC curriculum includes no “secondary literature” (i.e., books about books); that is actually not too bad—it can be argued that most secondary literature has little to no place within an undergraduate curriculum. What I mean to say is that the TAC curriculum wrongly excludes all other great theological syntheses written since Aquinas (which are not secondary literature), such as the great scholastic manuals and other seminal works by great traditional Thomists like John of St. Thomas and Garrigou-Lagrange.

Let me explain: Aquinas did write the most impressive and comprehensive manual of theology up to his time, but since the 13th Century there have been many, many developments in dogma (and, consequently, in theology) that build on—and go beyond—Aquinas’ work, and that are not to be ignored by the beginner in theology. It is not the case that all (or even most) authors in the Thomistic tradition wrote “secondary literature,” as if their point were merely to expound the text of Aquinas. Rather, they were theologians, and their aim was the same as Aquinas’: to expound the reality about God. They wrote theological, not exegetical, works; the object of theology is God, not Aquinas! They did not think that Aquinas said everything that needs to be said in theology and that all we have to do after 1274 is simply to reach a better understanding of his texts. Rather, they appreciated Aquinas’ thought as the most solid foundation for understanding God, but believed his thought is only that: a foundation. They believed that the task of theology, since Aquinas, is to develop the implications of those foundations in a scientific way. So Thomists do not merely interpret Aquinas; they also attain new theological conclusions that Aquinas himself never attained (in his earthly life) based on Thomistic principles.

There are entire fully-developed branches of theology now that Aquinas had not quite developed enough, but for which he only provided the most basic principles. A very clear example of these modern branches of theology is the discipline of fundamental theology or De revelatione, which includes apologetics (not the popular use of the term), ecclesiology, and the treatise on the sources of theology or De locis theologicis, which in turn includes the treatises on Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Aquinas is certainly the master when it comes to special theology (De Deo Uno, Trino, Creatore; Moral Theology; Christology; Sacramental Theology; Eschatology; etc.); it is undeniable that the best treatises on these subjects are those offered by Aquinas himself in his Summa (mostly everything else that has been written of any importance on these subjects is by way of commentary or exposition on these treatises; like they say “everything else is a footnote”). However, the task of writing a systematic exposition on fundamental theology came, instead, to his successors, the Thomists: the best treatise on Apologetics is Garrigou-Lagrange’s De Revelatione; the best treatise on ecclesiology is probably Schultes’ De Ecclesia; and the best treatise on the sources of revelation, to my knowledge, is Melchior Cano’s De Locis Theologicis; and so on. Aquinas alludes here and there to some of the topics included in fundamental theology, but he offers little or no discussion by way of systematic treatise on them (with the exception of the topic of Sacred Scripture, which he deals with in ST I.1.9-10, and elsewhere).

Now, by sticking to “the classics” (the Fathers, Aquinas, encyclicals, etc.) TAC fails to offer a single text in its curriculum that serves as a systematic treatise on Fundamental Theology or any of its sub-divisions. In fact, the TAC graduate is likely to know very little of topics such as: the authority of the consensus of theologians; the authority of the consensus of the faithful; the degrees of theological certainty; the weight of theological censures; the degrees of theological assent; the distinction between the organs, the witnesses, and the monuments of Sacred Tradition; the extent of, and criteria for, the infallibility of the ordinary Magisterium; the difference between virtual revelation and a theological conclusion; and many other topics in Fundamental Theology. The Fathers, Aquinas, and the encyclicals either do not speak of these subjects or do so in a non-scientific, non-systematic way.

TAC students also miss Thomistic developments in other branches that Aquinas does talk about to some extent. For example, even though Aquinas talks about grace and predestination, in the last seven or so centuries much has occurred (errors and heresies, such as Molinism, Calvinism and Jansenism; controversies, such as that between the Jesuits and Dominicans; and dozens of ecclesial pronouncements) which has deepened our understanding of that issue, especially the work of the great Thomist Domingo Bañez, who in the 16th Century not only confirmed, but also greatly developed, our understanding of predestination in his work De Auxiliis. More recently, the same has been done to an even-higher level of systematization by Garrigou-Lagrange in his work La prédestination des saints à la grâce (English trans., Predestination, TAN Books).

Now, because the beginner in theology does not easily manage works of this level of sophistication, it is also very important to be at least familiar with the “the traditional scholastic manuals,” i.e., modern, multi-volume, theological summae, which would offer to the student a very solid and systematic synthesis of a plethora of seminal theological sources of the first 1900 years of Catholic theology (not only the first 1200 years, as Aquinas does). They take into account all dogmatic and doctrinal pronouncements by the Church since the death of Aquinas, such as the Council of Trent, the first Vatican Council (by Vatican II the manuals had suddenly become unpopular), encyclicals, bulls, syllabi, and other letters by the popes and Roman congregations, etc. They also put together the insights of great post-13th Century theologians, such as John of Turrecremata, John Capreolus, Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Francis of Vittoria, Sylvester de Ferraris, Dominic Soto, Melchior Cano, St. Robert Bellarmine, Peter de Soto, Dominic Báñez, John of St. Thomas, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, the Salmanticenses, the Complutenses, Charles Billuart, L. Billot, N. del Prado, Ambroise Gardeil, and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange. These manuals are truly some of the most valuable and helpful pedagogical tools ever available in the field of theology, as they synthesize at a glance a quantity of theological research that would be nearly impossible for any non-expert even to assemble in a short period of time.

Some of the most popular manuals are:

(a) Hugon, Cursus completus theologiae dogmaticae,

(b) Herve, Manuale theologiae dogmaticae,

(c) Tanquerey, Synopsis theologiae dogmaticae, and

(d) Sacrae theologiae summa, by the Spanish Jesuits (published by B.A.C.).

Very few of these are available in English; most of them were written in Latin for seminarians and are long out of print. The best-known manual in English is a very brief, one-volume work translated from German: Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Rockford: TAN Books, 1974. Another similar work in English is a two-volume manual by Adolphe Tanquerey: Manual of Dogmatic Theology. Tournai: Desclée, 1959—it is out of print. For a discussion and defense of the traditional scholastic manuals see this article.)

So, whether you use the most advanced sources (like Garrigou-Lagrange and Schultes) or the summaries offered by the manuals (like Herve and the BAC), every undergraduate theology student must come in contact with these theological developments which go far beyond Aquinas. And yet, at TAC you will not be given the opportunity to discuss works like these, because the educational philosophy there is rather narrow in its emphasis of the great books: like I said, “Santo Tomás y nada más” (Aquinas and nothing else). So the TAC graduate will most likely know neither the meaning of traditional Thomistic terms such as “predetermination” and “predefinition” and “physical premotion,” nor the doctrinal precisions associated with those terms, because they came into use after the death of Aquinas.

So, in the end, I am only saying that, while TAC is to be praised for its love of, and devotion to, Aquinas, it nevertheless suffers from an educational philosophy that limits Sacred Theology to Positive Theology (the study of theological sources). While it does much good in encouraging its students to delve into the thought of the Angelic Doctor, it fails to introduce the same students to a large and indispensable part of the Thomistic tradition.

I do not mean to discourage you, but simply to warn you that you will need a serious supplement for to the education you will receive at TAC. If you are interested, I can at least point you in the right direction. For a well-balanced curriculum in English based BOTH on the classic sources of theology AND manual-style scholastic works, see my suggestions. These suggestions are being gradually incorporated into the curriculum of Christ the King College, but much funding and financial support is currently needed for the success of the College. For a suggestion incorporating traditional Latin manuals and other masterpieces in Latin, see this curriculum.