review: cardinal and theological virtues

• the four cardinal virtues

  • prudence: acting with or showing care and thought for the future

  • justice: just behavior or treatment

  • temperance: abstinence from sinful behaviors

  • fortitude: perseverance through pain and adversity

• the three theological virtues

  • happiness comes from the possession of the Good (particularly the moral Good)

  • conscience helps us define the moral Good

  • virtue encapsulates the habits and actions we use to choose the moral Good

the four kinds of love

1. storge: humble affection for ordinary things

   • most basic and common love

   • easy to overlook; affection for things we experience in everyday life because they are familiar

     • dangers: neediness, over-attachment to things that might not really matter

2. philia: friendship based on an external purpose or goal

   • often portrayed as people side-by-side, looking in same direction

   • more than being “buddies”

   • the higher the good they are pursuing, the greater the philia

     • dangers: necessarily exclusive, so can be resistant to change/outside opinion

3. eros: romantic love; not sexuality itself but the state of being “in Love”

   • uniquely human desire for union, not just based off of instinct (like animals)

     • instinct itself desires pleasure/procreation, whereas eros desires full union with the other

   • can be represented by two people facing each other rather than out towards something beyond themselves

     • eros is good primarily because it shifts our focus to something beyond ourselves

     • dangers: conscience abandoned in the name of “love”

       • note that eros itself is not bad, but can easily be turned by selfish desire to use other for pleasure (lust)

4. agape: charity; the unconditional and total gift of self to another

   • the grace of God perfects rather than replaces natural loves

   • allows us to love others in their unloveable-ness

   • shown perfectly in God’s love for us - characterized by vulnerability and sacrifice

     • dangers: none if done perfectly, but some people might have “Messiah Complex” - think they alone need to save others/they don’t take care of own basic needs and therefore can’t give of themselves

the Christian view of love

love is the foundation of Catholic morality

• love: willing the highest Good of another (an action, not a feeling)

  • Highest Good - will and surrender to God

  • is this action leading them closer to or farther away from God?

• unconditional and selfless

  • what is best for THEM, NOT what is beneficial to you or easiest to say/do; endures through all things

• Christian love is not just being nice and making people feel good, not simply a feeling, and not “I’ll support you no matter what you do!” because you must still be able to hold people you love accountable to themselves, others, and God

the ability to love

• the human ability to love comes from

  • knowing that we are loved

    1. by God and by others

  • the idea that you can’t give what you don’t have

    1. daily prayer and sacraments give us strength to Agape others

    2. you don’t have to be perfect, but you can’t do it alone.