Bonus link:  Feeling Moral

You have probably heard popular mottoes like “Feelings are neither right nor wrong, they just are” and “I can’t help how I feel.”

Of course feelings can be wrong.  I may become enraged whenever anyone doesn’t do exactly what I want, sulk through my days in a permanent state of sullenness, or long to betray my wife every time I see an attractive woman.

Of course we can do something about how we feel.  It’s true that we can’t simply shut off unwanted emotions and desires, and it’s also true that the very effort of suppressing them stirs them up.  Even so, our control over our inward life is much greater than we like to admit.  Although I may not be able to keep an unwanted guest from entering the house of my thoughts, or to force her outside after she has entered them, yet nothing forces me to ask her in.  Nor am I compelled to sit down and admire her, to enjoy her attentions, or to invite her to play with my imagination.  If I ignore her and go on about my business, she will eventually leave my mind on her own; if I pet her, say, “Don’t go yet”, and tell her what a lovely thought she is, she will return another day in power, and that day she will burn down the house.

Tomorrow:  The limits of fixing ourselves

As my regular readers know, Mondays are letter days.

Question:

You might find me a bit sour or unpleasant, so I thank you for your patience in advance, and I hope not to impose on it.  I know that you have written eloquently on matters of good and evil, and I find you persuasive, but to what point do you let reality intrude in your deliberations?

Personally, when it comes to sex, I have come to the conclusion that in order for the act to take place certain organs must be gorged in blood, and that blood has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the brain.  Which means that sex makes you stupid.  To use syllogisms on people who are temporarily stupid is a thankless task, and you should not be surprised that the lessons do not take root. 

Reply:

Two opposite errors must be avoided.  One error is to think that people will automatically act in the way that is good for them, even without the long, patient discipline of virtue and the grace of God.  The other is to think that no one will ever act in the way that is good for them -- that no one can develop virtue, and that encouraging people to do so makes no difference.  You are avoiding the former error, but not the latter.  I know a lot of people who practice chastity and marital faithfulness.  Don’t you?  If you don’t, maybe you are looking in the wrong places.

There is no guarantee that a person will never be stupid under the temptations of passion.  For our tendency to burst into flame from a spark, medieval natural law thinkers used the word fomes, meaning “tinder,” long before there was a sex hookup app by that name.  Even so, temptation is much more manageable if one has long practiced purity.

By the way, purity is not merely negative, a no or not lacking character of its own.  Those who "get it" aren't just not-doing something; they are doing something.  By living as they do, they are pursuing goods of beauty and integrity that impurity undermines and sullies.  Even today most people have some idea how this claim might be true in the case of faithful marriage.  It is true in the case of chaste singleness too.

And no, I don’t usually use syllogisms on people who are wallowing in filth.  But there come moments when they wonder if filthiness is all there is.  At times like that, sometimes glimpses of light trickle into the mire, and we can talk across the railing of the sty.  They may even make up their minds to escape.

We shouldn't be surprised that sexual purity is so poorly understood.  In our day it is hardly known at all.  It is like a lovely blue planet orbiting a faraway, undiscovered star.  Yet even today it is possible to live there.

Client to counselor:  “You don’t know the first thing about being OCD.  You can’t even get the letters in the right alphabetical order.”

After I gave a talk about natural law and marriage recently, a young man in the audience remarked “That doesn’t sound like natural law.”  I asked, “Why not?”  He answered, "It seems so existential."

Three things emerged from our conversation:

1.  He was complimenting, not criticizing.

2.  He wasn’t referring to existentialism.

3.  What he meant by seeming “existential” was that it made sense of experience.

I was glad of all that, but still a bit taken aback.  Certainly natural law makes sense of experience.  What else would it be called natural law?  I think he must have viewed it as a theoretical abstraction divorced from experience.

Of course there is a theory of natural law, but natural law is not a theory.  It is the very warp and woof of life for creatures of our kind.  It is the fabric of what we naturally are, including our inbuilt meanings and purposes, with all that this implies about what our creaturely happiness requires.

To be sure, the writing of people like St. Thomas Aquinas is difficult and abstract, but St. Thomas agreed with me.  Alasdair MacIntyre puts the point nicely in a article on “The Privatization of Good”:

“For it is Aquinas's view that rational persons, who are able to develop their practical rationality in undistorted ways, become natural Thomists without having had to read Aquinas.   But in our culture -- indeed in any culture -- how relatively few of such persons there are!”

A few grad students deal with pressure by not doing their work, but far more deal with it by working constantly, denying themselves rest or play.  Even if they become ill they keep working, which not only makes their work bad, but makes their illnesses last longer.

For them, unsolicited advice:  During the holiday, take real time off.  Enjoy your families.  Have some hot chocolate with friends.  Catch up on all that missing sleep.  Pray more.  Worship.  Give thanks to God.

Stop making excuses.  It’s okay.