Any Underground Thomists in the San Antonio area? I'll be giving the Mars Hill
lecture at 6:30pm, THIS THURSDAY, January15, at the Geneva School of Boerne.
The talk title is “Written on the Heart: What Writing? What Heart?”
Continuing my reply to yesterday’s letter from a student:
Your second question is about what you call “moral miracles.” Can God make it right to do what is intrinsically wrong, just by commanding it? This question arises especially for those who not only accept natural law, but also accept the Bible as authentic divine revelation.
Mondays are reserved for questions from students. This student is writing from Oxford.
It’s strange how the notion that men and women are identical works against the very equality that it tries to uphold. The same, are they? The same as what? Though with some dissimulation, identicalists almost always answer, "The same as men."
People used to be taught to associate with persons who are good. Since the cardinal sin is now viewed as having opinions about the matter, we don’t consider whether people are good any more. Now we ask whether they are “nice.”
It is still a moral judgment, but it doesn’t look so much like one.
In certain times – ours is one of them -- war among different understandings of the world produces a fear of ideology. In the name of getting along, the cry then goes up that we must all become non-ideological. People who admit that they believe in something are called fanatics.
And then there was the young man caught interviewed on video camera by a roving reporter after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke during year five of the Clinton administration. Yes, I know that seems like the bronze age to at least half of you, faithful readers, but I’m still thinking about yesterday’s “bad man, good statesman” question.
Reporter (I'm quoting from memory): “Does the scandal affect your view of the president?”
“Even a bad man can be a good statesman.” It’s not true, but I’ve noticed that people who say this sort of thing tend to be unimpressed by explanations of the unity of the virtues.