Welcome to the Moderate Catholic, where we discuss topics that deepen faith and inspire action. I am your host, Christina Gebel, and this is Episode Seven: What happened to Acedia?Welcome back. So, this is episode seven. It is a bonus episode because we have, as I mentioned in the last episode, formally concluded our study of acedia, but there will be some bonus episodes because if you like me, [and] resonated with this topic, you might want to learn more. In wanting to learn more, you might be wondering whatever happened to acedia. You know, this is not a word that is part of our everyday vernacular, much like some of the other seven deadly sins [00:01:00] are, if you choose to talk about that, or you just might be wondering, why has it taking me till now to learn about acedia? Why did I never come across this until later in life?And that was something that really piqued my interest because it took me a while to learn about Acedia. So, this episode is for those diehard acedia enthusiasts who have to know the quote ‘end of the story.’ And to do so, we will be going back to one of our primary texts, The Noonday Devil, by Jean Charles Nault, and around page 96, he starts to tell the story of how this all came to be.So, the story starts with actually a Franciscan Friar William Ham Ockham, who lived around [00:02:00] 1300 to 1350 AD. If you know anything about Franciscan Friars, there are obviously a lot of very good people. Although I will say Friar Ockham was not the best person in the story we’re about to tell because he actually helped to influence the idea of acedia kind of falling out of favor, but I’m sure he was a great dude otherwise. So, we’re gonna cut him some slack.So Franciscan Friar William Ockham sparked kind of a quote ‘revolution,’ if you will, because at the time, he was countering the theological understanding of freedom, which up until that point had primarily been articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. So Ockham [00:03:00] proposed a new concept of freedom, which essentially differed from Aquinas’s concept of freedom, and he called this new freedom concept, quote, the “liberty of indifference.” End quote.Jean Charles Nault describes this on page 96 as “human beings are totally indeterminate, totally indifferent with regard to good or evil’ end quote, and I said human beings, because again, a lot of these things just refer to ‘man,’ and I prefer to make it more gender neutral. So indeterminate, totally indifferent with regard to good or evil.Actually, this is how we largely conceive of freedom today. We see freedom as the idea that you can [00:04:00] choose between two contrary things. You have that choice. However, at the time, this was a bit of a quote ‘revolution,’ to what was considered a classical understanding of freedom, and that view, that classical understanding Jean Charles Nault describes as quote, “Freedom is the ability that human beings have an ability belonging jointly to the intellect and will to perform virtuous actions, good actions, excellent actions, perfect actions when he or she wants, and as he or she wants. Humankind’s freedom is therefore the capacity to accomplish good acts easily, joyously and lastingly. This freedom is defined by the attraction [00:05:00] of the good.” Okay, so let’s unpack that a little bit.In this more classical understanding of freedom, prior to Ockham, mostly delineated by Aquinas, the idea is that we have the freedom to do good. Okay, and we are attracted to doing that good innately as human beings. How is it that we have that innately? Well, we believe that we are human beings with a soul, and we’re not simply animals who kind of just act on impulse and their basic needs. Right?But Ockham kind of deviated from all of this because he made freedom live in the moment prior [00:06:00] to our intellect and will. So, man or woman are no longer attracted to the good, as Aquinas had said. Instead, they kind of have a indifference to good and evil.Okay, so total indifference and it’s that time period before the intellect and will kick in. Ockham, being a Franciscan friar, being a religious person, was still somewhat concerned with people doing good things. Okay? He wasn’t like a relativist, let’s just say. But he believed there had to be some sort of an external element or something extrinsic, which points human beings to the good, and he described that as the law, and it points to [00:07:00] what the good action might be.Around that time, this was really kind of picking up steam and the idea that what is good is defined by obedience to the law. On page 97, Jean Charles Nault points out that eventually this leads to this concept of legalism, and legalism is quote, “The law alone is the criterion for good.”So, because this is externally motivated, human beings no longer have what Aquinas called, quote “natural inclinations.” And those natural inclinations were dependent upon really the ...
Mehr anzeigen
Weniger anzeigen
Jan 22 202637 Min.