 Chapter 14 of Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Drink. Intimperance is the immoderate use of anything, good or bad. Here the word is used to imply an excessive use of alcoholic beverages, which excess, when it reaches the dignity of a habit or vice, makes a man a drunkard. A drunkard who indulges in highballs and other beverages of fancy price and name is euphemistically styled a tipler. His brother, a poor devil, who swallows vile concoctions or red pison, is called the plain ordinary soak. Whatever name we give to such gluttons, the evil in both is the same. It is the evil of gluttony. This vice differs from gluttony proper, in that its object is strong drink, while the latter is an abuse of food and nourishment necessary in regulated quantity for the sustenance of the body. But alcohol is not necessary to sustain life as an habitual beverage. It may stimulate, but it does not sustain at all. It has its legitimate uses, like trick nine and other poison and drugs. But being a poison, it must be detrimental to living tissues, when taken frequently, and cannot have been intended by the creator as a life-giving nourishment. Its habitual use is therefore not a necessity. Its abuse has therefore a more far-fetched malice. But its use is not sinful any more than the use of any drug, for alcohol or liquor is a creature of God and is made for good purposes. Its use is not evil, whether it does little good or no good at all. The fact of its being unnecessary does not make it a forbidden fruit. The habit of stimulants, like the habit of tobacco, while it has no title to be called a good habit, cannot be qualified as an intrinsically bad habit. It may be tolerated as long as it is kept within the bounds of same reason, and does not give rise to evil consequences in self or others. Apart therefore from the danger of abuse, a real and fatal danger for many especially for the young, and from the evil effects that may follow even a moderate use, the habit is like another. A temperate man is not, to any appreciable degree, less righteous than a moderate smoker. The man who can use and not abuse is just as moral as his brother who does not use lest he abuse. He must however be said to be less virtuous than another, who abstains rather than run the risk of being even a remote occasion of sin unto the weak. The intrinsic malice therefore of this habit consists in the disorder of excess which is called intoxication. Intoxication may exist in different degrees and stages. It is not the state of a man who loses, to any extent, control over his reasoning faculties through the effects of alcohol. There is evil and sin in the moment the brain is affected. When reason totters and falls from its throne in the soul, then the crime is consummated. When a man says and does and thinks what in his sober senses he would not say do or think, that man is drunk, and there is mortal sin on his soul. It is not an easy matter to define just when intoxication properly begins, and sobriety ends. Every man must do that for himself. But he should consider himself well on the road to guilt when being aware that the fumes of liquor were fast beclouding his mind. He took another glass that was certain to still further obscure his reason and paralyze his will. Much has been said and written about the grossness of this vice, its baneful effects and consequences to which it were useless here to refer. Suffice it to say there is nothing that besots a man more completely and lowers him more ignoble to the level of the brute. He falls below for the most stupid of brutes. The ass knows when it has enough. And the drunkard does not. It requires small wit indeed to understand that there is no sin in the catalog of crime that a person in this state is not capable of committing. He will do things that the very brute would blush to do. And then he will say it was one of the devil's jokes. The effects on individuals, families, and generations, born and unborn, cannot be exaggerated. The drunkard is a tempter of God and the curse of society. Temperance is a moderate use of strong drink. Teetotalism is absolute abstention therefrom. A man may be temperate without being a teetotaler. All teetotalers are temperate, at least as far as alcohol is concerned, although they are sometimes some of them accused of using temperance as a cloak for much intemperance of speech. If this be true, and there are cranks in all causes, then temperance is itself the greatest sufferer. Exaggeration is a mistake. It repels right-thinking men and never served any purpose. We believe it has done the cause of teetotalism a world of harm. But it is poor logic that we'll identify with so wholly a cause the rabid rantings of a few irresponsible fools. The cause of total abstinence is a wholly and righteous cause. It takes its stand against one of the greatest evils, moral and social, of the day. It seeks to redeem the fallen and to save the young and inexperienced. Its means are organizations and the mighty weapon of good example. It attracts those who need it and those who do not need it. The former to save them, the latter to help save others. And there is no banner under which Catholic youth could more honorably be enrolled than the banner of total abstinence. The man who condemns or decries such a cause either does not know what he is attacking or his malvings are not worth the attention of those who esteem honesty and hate hypocrisy. It is not necessary to be able to practice virtue in order to esteem its worth. And it does not make a fellow appear any better even to himself to condemn a cause that condemns his faults. Saloon keepers are engaged in an enterprise which in itself is lawful. The same can be said of those who buy and sell poisons and dynamite and firearms. The nature of his merchandise differentiates his business from all other kinds of business and his responsibilities are the heaviest. It may and often does happen that this business is criminal. And in this matter, the civil law may be silent, but the moral law is not. For many a one such a place is an occasion of sin, often a near occasion. It is not comforting to kneel in prayer to God with the thought in one's mind that one is helping many to damnation and that the curses of drunkards, wives and mothers and children are being piled upon one's head. How far the average liquor seller is guilty, God only knows. But a man with a deep concern for his soul's salvation, it seems would not like to take the risk. John Brandon Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton CHAPTER XV ENVY When Envy catches a victim, she places an evil eye in his mind, gives him a cud to chew, and then sends him gadding. If the mind's eye feeds upon one's own excellence, for one's own satisfaction, that is pride. If it feeds upon the neighbor's good for one's own displeasure and unhappiness, that is envy. It is not alone this displeasure that makes envy, but the reason of this displeasure, that is, what the evil eye discerns in the neighbor's excellence, namely a detriment. An obstacle to one's own success. It is not necessary that another's prosperity really work injury to our own. It is sufficient that the evil eye, though its discolored vision, perceive a prejudice therein. Ah, says Envy, he is happy, prosperous, esteemed. My chances are spoiled. I am overshadowed. I am nothing. He is everything. I am nothing, because he is everything. Remember that competition, emulation, rivalry are not necessarily envy. I dread to see my rivals succeed. I am pained. If he does succeed. But the cause of this annoyance and vexation is less his superiority than my inferiority. I regret my failure more than his success. There is no evil eye. It is the sting of defeat that causes me pain. If I regret this or that man's elevation because I fear he will abuse his power, if I become indignant at the success of an unworthy person, I am not envious, because this superiority of another does not appeal to me to be a prejudice to my standing. Whatever sin there is, there is no sin of envy. We may safely assume that a person who would be saddened by the success of another would not fail to rejoice at the other's misfortune. This is a grievous offense against charity, but it is not, properly speaking, envy. For envy is always sad. It is rather an effect of envy, a natural product thereof, and a form of hatred. The unnatural view of things which we qualify as the evil eye is not a sin until it reaches the dignity of a sober judgment, for only then does it become a human act. Envy like pride, anger, and the other vicious inclinations may and often does crop out in our nature momentarily without our incurring guilt. If it is checked before it receives the acquiescence of the will, it is void of wrong, and only serves to remind us that we have a rich fund of malice in our nature capable of an abundant yield of iniquity. After being born in the mind, envy passes to the feelings where it matures and furnishes that supply of misery which characterizes the vice. There is happy at our expense, the sensation is a painful one, yet it has a diabolical fascination, and we fondle and caress it. We brood over our affliction to the embittering and souring of our souls. We swallow and regurgitate over and over again our dissatisfaction, and are aptly said to chew the cut of bitterness. Out of such soil as this naturally springs a rank growth of uncharity and injustice in thought and desire. The mind and heart of envy are untrumbled by the bounds of moral law. It may think all evil of a rival and wish him all evil. He becomes an enemy, and finally he is hated. Envy points directly to hatred. Lastly, envy is a gadding passion. It walketh the street and does not keep home. It were better to say that it talketh. There is nothing like language to relieve one's feelings. It is quieting and soothing, and envy has strong feelings. Hence evil insinuations, detraction, slander, etc. This becomes an empty word, and the seamless robe of charity is torn to shreds. As an agent of destruction, envy easily holds the palm. Horde commands the two strong passions of pride and anger, and they do its bidding. People scarcely ever acknowledge themselves envious. It is such a base unreasonable and unnatural vice. If we cannot rejoice with the neighbor, we are pained at his felicity. And what an insanity it is to imagine that in this wide world one cannot be happy without prejudicing the happiness of another. What a severe shock it would be to the discontented, the morosely sour, the cynic, and other human owls, to be told that they are victims of this green-eyed monster. They would confess to calumny and hatred to envy never. Envy can only exist where there is abundant pride. It is a form of pride, a shape which it frequently assumes, because under this disguise it can penetrate everywhere without being as much as noticed. And it is so seldom detected that wherever it gains entrance it can hope to remain indefinitely. Jealousy and envy are often confounded. Yet they differ in that the latter looks on what is another's, while the former concerns itself with what is in one's own possession. I envy what is not mine. I am jealous of what is my own. Jealousy has saddening influence upon us by reason of a fear. More or less well-grounded, that what we have will be taken from us. We foresee an injustice and resent it. Kept within the limits of sane reason, jealousy is not wrong, for it is founded on the right we have to what is ours. It is in our nature to cling to what belongs to us, to regret being deprived of it, and to guard ourselves against injustice. But when this fear, without cause, visionary, unreasonable, jealousy, partakes of the nature and malice of envy, it is more malignant of passion and leads to greater disorders and crimes. For while envy is based on nothing at all, there is here a true foundation in the right of possession and a motive in right to repel injustice. Stapleton Chapter 16 Sloth Not the least, if the last of capital's sins is sloth, and it is very properly placed. For whoever saw the sluggard or victim of this passion anywhere but, after all others, last. Sloth, of course, is a horror of difficulty, an aversion for labor, pain, and effort, which must be traced to a great love of one's comfort and ease. Either the lazy fellow does nothing at all, and this is sloth, or he abstains from doing what he should do while otherwise busily occupied, and this too is sloth. Or he does it poorly, negligently, half-heartedly, and this again is sloth. Nature imposes upon us the law of labor. The who shirks in whole or in part is slothful. Here in the moral realm we refer properly to the difficulty we find in the service of God in fulfilling our obligations as Christians and Catholics, in avoiding evil and doing good, in a word, to the discharge of our spiritual duties. But then all human obligations have a spiritual side by the fact of their being obligations. Thus labor is not, like attendance at mass, a spiritual necessity. But to provide for those who are dependent upon us is a moral obligation, and to shirk it would be a sin of sloth. Not that it is necessary, if we would avoid sin, to hate repose, naturally, and experience no difficulty or repugnance in working out our soul's salvation. Sloth is inbred in our nature. There is no one but would rather avoid than meet difficulties. The service of God is laborious and painful. The kingdom of God suffers violence. It has always been true since the time of our ancestor, Adam, that vice is easy and virtue-difficult, that the flesh is weak and repugnance to effort natural because of the burden of the flesh, so that in this general case, sloth is an obstacle to overcome rather than a fault of the will. We may abhor exertion, feel the laziest of mortals, if we affect our purpose in spite of all that, we can do no sin. Sometimes sloth takes on an acute form known as aridity or barrenness in all things that pertain to God. The most virtuous souls are not always exempt from this. It is a dislike, a distaste that amounts almost to a disgust for prayer especially, a repugnance that threatens to overwhelm the soul. That is simply an absence of sensible fervor, a state of affliction and probation that is as pleasing to God as it is painful to us. After all, where would the merit be in the service of God? If there were no difficulty. The type of the spiritually indolent is that fixture known as the half-baked Catholic. Some people call him a poor stick, who is too lazy to meet his obligations with his maker. He says no prayers because he can't. He lies a bed Sunday mornings and lets the others go to mass. He is too tired and needs rest. The effort necessary to prepare for and to go to confession is quite beyond him. In fine religion is altogether too exacting, requires too much of a man. And as if to remove all doubt as to the purely spiritual character of this inactivity, our friend can be seen, without a complaint, struggling every day to earn the dollar. He will not grumble about rising at five to go fishing or cycling. He will, after his hard day's work, sit till twelve at the theater or dance till two in the morning. He will spend his energy in any direction, saving that which leads to God. Others expect virtue to be as easy as it is beautiful. Religion can conduce to one's comfort. They like incense, but not the smell of brimstone. They would remain forever content on table, but the dark frown of Calvary is insupportable. Beautiful churches, artistic music, eloquent preaching on interesting topics. That is their idea of religion. That is what they intend religion, their religion shall be, and they proceed to cut out whatever jars their finer feelings. This is fashionable, but it is not Christian, to do anything for God, if it is easy, and if it is hard, well. God does not expect so much of us. You will see at a glance that this sort of a thing is fatal in the sense of God in the soul. It has for its first direct and immediate effect to weaken little by little the faith, until it finally kills it altogether. Sloth is a microbe. It creeps into the soul, sucks in its substance, and causes a spiritual consumption. This is neither an acute nor a violent malady, but it consumes the patient, drives him up, wears him out, till life goes out like a lamp without oil. Our first duty to God, and the first obligation imposed upon us by the First Commandment, is faith or belief in God. We must know Him. Belief is solely a manner of knowing. It is one way of apprehending or getting possession of a truth. There are other ways of acquiring knowledge, by the senses, for instance, seeing, hearing, etc., and by our intelligence or reason. When truth comes to us through the senses, it is called experience. If the reason presents it, it is called science. If we use the facility of the soul, known as faith, it is belief. You will observe that belief, experience, and science have one and the same object, namely truth. These differ only in the manner of apprehending truth. Belief relies on the testimony of others, experience on the testimony of the senses, science on that of the reason. What I believe I get from others, what I experience, or understand, I owe to my individual self. I neither believe nor understand that Hartford exists, I see it. I neither understand nor see that Rome exists, I believe it. I neither see nor believe that two parallel lines will never meet, I reason it out, I understand it. Now it is beside the question here to object that belief for what we believe may or may not be true. Neither is all that we see, nor all that our reason produces true. Human experience and human reason, like all things human, may err. Here we simply remark the truth is the object of our belief. As it is the object of our experience and of understanding. We shall later see that if human belief may err, faith or divine belief cannot mislead us, cannot be false. Neither is it in order here to contend that belief of its very nature is something uncertain, that it is synonymous of opinion. Or if it supposes a judgment, that judgment is formidolose, liable at any moment to be changed or contradicted. The testimony of the senses and of reason does not always carry certain conviction. We may or may not be satisfied with the evidence of human belief. As for the divine or faith, it is certain. Or it is not at all. And who would not be satisfied with the guarantee offered by the Word of God? And the truths we believe are those revealed by God, received by us through a double agency. The written and the oral Word, known as Scripture and Tradition. Scripture is contained in the two Testaments. Tradition is found in the bosom, the life of the Church of Christ, in the constant and universal teachings of that Church. The Scripture being a dead letter cannot explain or interpret itself, yet since it is applied to the ever-varying lives of men, it needs an explanation and an interpretation. It is practically of no value without it. And in order that the truth thus presented be accepted by men, it is necessary of prime necessity that it have the guarantee of infallibility. This infallibility the Church of Christ possesses, else his mission were a failure. This infallibility is to control the vagaries of tradition, for tradition of its very nature tends to exaggeration, as we find in the legends of the ancient peoples. And they destroy themselves. But in the bosom of God's Church, these truths forever retain their character unchanged and unchangeable. If you accept the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as revealed by God and delivered to man by the infallible Church from the Bible and tradition, you have what is called ecclesiastical, Catholic, or true faith. There is no other true faith. It is even an open question whether there is any faith at all outside of this, or outside the Church there is no reasonable foundation for faith, and our faith must be reasonable. However, granting that such a thing can be, the faith of him who takes and leaves off the divine word is called divine faith. He is supposed to ignore invincibly a portion of revealed truth, but he accepts what he knows. If he knew something and refused to embrace it, he would have no faith at all. The same is true of one who having once believed believes no longer. He impeaches the veracity of God, and therefore can not further rely on his word. Lastly, it matters not at all what kind of truths we believe from God. Truth is truth always and ever. We may not be able to comprehend what is revealed to us, and little the wonder. Our intelligence is not infinite, and God's is. Many things that men tell us we believe without understanding. God deserves our trust more than men. Our incapacity for understanding all that faith teaches us proves one thing, that there are limits to our powers, which may be surprising to some, but is nevertheless true. CHAPTER XVIII. Belief, we have said, is the acceptance of a truth from another. We do not always accept what others present to us as truth, for the good reason that we may have serious doubts as to whether they speak the truth or not. It is for us to decide the question of our informants' intellectual and moral trustworthiness. If we do believe him, it is because we consider his veracity to be beyond question. The foundation of our belief is therefore the veracity of him whose word we take. They tell me that Lincoln was assassinated. Personally, I know nothing about it, but I do know the day who speak of it, could know, did know, and could not lead us all astray at this point. I accept their evidence. I believe on their word. It is on the testimony of God's word that we believe in matters that pertain to faith. The idea we have of God is that He is infinitely perfect, that He is all wise and all good. He cannot therefore underpain of destroying His very existence be deceived or deceive us. And therefore He speaks, He speaks the truth and nothing but the truth. It would be a very stultification of our reason to refuse to believe Him, once we admit His existence. Now it is not necessary for us to inquire into things He reveals, or to endeavor to discover the why, whence, and wherefore. It is truth and we are certain of it. What more do we need? It may be a satisfaction to see and understand these truths, just as it is to solve a problem two or three different ways. But it is not essential, for the result is always the same, truth. But suppose with my senses and my reason I come to a result at variance with the first. What is the testimony of God's Word and that of my personal observations conflict what then? There is an error somewhere. Either God errs or my faculties play me false. Which should have the preference of my assent? The question is answered as soon as it is put. I can conceive an erring man, but I cannot conceive a false God. Being human is infallible. God alone is proof against all error. This would be my first offense against truth. Yes, all this is evident. I shall and do believe everything that God deigns to reveal, because He says it whether or not I see or understand it. But the difficulty with me is how to know that God did speak, what He said, what He meant. My difficulty is practical, not theoretical. And by the same token you have shifted the question from why we believe to whence we believe. You no longer seek the authority of your faith, but it is Genesis. You believe what God says because He says it. You believe He did say it because the church says it. You are no longer dealing with the truth itself, but with the messenger that brings the truth to be believed. The message of the church is, these are God's words. And for what these words stand for, you are not to trust her, but Him. The foundation of divine belief is one thing. The motives of credibility are another. We should not confound these two things. If we would have a clear notion of what faith is and discover the numerous counterfeits that are being palmed off nowadays on a world that desires a convenient rather than a genuine article. The received manner of belief is first to examine the truths proposed as coming from God, measure them with the rule of individual reason, of expediency, feeling, fancy, and thus to decide upon their merits. If this proposition suits, it is accepted. If that other is found wanting, it is forthwith rejected, and then it is in order to set out and prove them to be or not to be the Word of God according to their suitability or non-suitability. One would naturally imagine, as reason and common sense certainly suggest, that one's first duty would be to convince oneself that God did communicate these truths. And if so, then to accept them without further dally or comment. There is nothing to be done once God reveals, but to receive His revelation. Outside the church this procedure is not always followed because of the rationalistic tendencies of latter-day Protestantism. It is a glaring fact that many do not accept all that God says because He says, but because it meets the requirements of their condition, feelings or fancy. They lay down the principle that a truth to be a truth must be understood by the human intelligence. This is paramount to asserting that God cannot know more than men. Thus are we on the face of it. Thus the divine rockbed of faith is torn away and a human base is substituted. Faith itself is destroyed in the process. It is therefore important, before examining whence comes our faith to remember why we believe and not to forget it. This much gained, and for all time we can go farther without it. All advance is impossible. CHAPTER XIX REASON My faith is the most reasonable thing in the world, and it must need to be such. The Almighty gave me intelligence to direct my life. When He speaks He reveals Himself to me as to an intelligent being, and He expects that I receive His Word intelligently. Were I to abdicate my reason and the acceptance of His truths, I would do my maker as great an injury as myself. All the rest of creation offers Him an homage of pure life, of instinct or feeling. Man alone can and must offer a higher, nobler and more acceptable homage, that of reason. My faith is reasonable, and this is the account my reason gives of my faith. I can accept as true, without in the least comprehending, and far from dishonoring my reason, with a positive and becoming dignity. I can accept, but I must accept whatever is confided to me by an infallible authority, and authority that can neither deceive nor be deceived. There is nothing supernatural about this statement. That which is perfect cannot be subject to error, for error is evil, and perfection excludes evil. If God exists, He is perfect. Allow one imperfection to enter into your notion of God, and you destroy that notion. When therefore God speaks, He is an infallible authority. This is the philosophy of common sense. Now I know that God has spoken. The existence of that historical personage, known as Jesus of Nazareth, is more firmly established than that of Alexander or Caesar. Four books relate a part of His sayings and doings, and I have infinitely less reason to question their authenticity than I have to doubt the authenticity of Virgil or Shakespeare. No book ever written has been subjected to such a searching, probing test a malevolent criticism at all times, but especially of late years in Germany and France. Great men, scholars, geniuses have devoted their lives to the impossible tasks of explaining the Gospels away, with the evident result that the position of the latter remains a thousandfold stronger. Unless I reject all human testimony and reason for vids, I must accept them as genuine, at least in substance. These four books relate how Jesus healed miraculously the sick, raised the dead to life, led the life of the purest, most honest, and sagest of men, claimed to be God, improved it by rising from the dead himself, that this man is divine, reason can admit without being unreasonable, and must admit to being reasonable. In Revelation there is nothing to do with the matter. A glaring statement among all others, one that is reiterated and insisted upon, is that all men should share in the fruit of his life, and for this purpose he founded a college of apostles, which he called his church, to teach all that he said and did to all men, for all time. The success of his life and mission depends upon the continuance of his work. Why did he act thus? I do not know. Are the reasons for this economy of salvation? There certainly are, else it would not have been established. But we are not seeking after reasons, we are gathering facts upon which to build an argument, and these facts we take from the authentic life of Christ. Now we give the Almighty credit for wisdom in all his plans, the wisdom of providing his agencies with the means to reach the end they are destined to attain. To commission a church to teach all men without authority is to condemn it to utter nothingness from the very beginning. To expect men to accept the truths he revealed, and such truths, without a guarantee against error in the infallibility of the teacher, is to be ignorant of human nature. And since at no time must it cease to teach, it must be indefectible. Being true it must be one, the work of God, it must be holy. Being provided for all creatures, it must be Catholic or universal, and being the same as Christ founded upon his apostles, it must be apostolic. If it is not all these things together, it is not the teachers sent by God to instruct and direct men. No one who seeks with intelligence single-mindedness in a pure heart will fail to find these attributes and marks of the true church of Christ. Whether after finding them one will make an act of faith is another question. But that he can give his assent with the full approval of his reason is absolutely certain. Once he does so he has no further use for his reason. He enters the church in edifice illumined by the superior light of revelation and faith. He can leave reason like a lantern at the door. Therein he will learn many other truths that he never could have found out with reason alone. Truth superior but not contrary to reason. These truths he can never repudiate without sinning against reason. First because reason brought him to this path where he must believe without the immediate help of reason. One of the first things we shall hear from the church speaking on her own authority is that these writings, the four relations of Christ's life, are inspired. However a person could discover and prove this truth to himself is a mystery that will never be solved. We cannot assume it. It must be proven. Unless it be proven the faith based on this assumption is not reasonable. And proven it can never be. Unless we take it from an authority whose infallibility is proven. That is why we say that it is doubtful of non-Catholic faith is faith at all. Because faith must be reasonable. And faith that is based on an assumption is to say the least doubtfully reasonable. End of chapter 19. Once our belief. Reason. Chapter 20 of Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Chapter 20. Once our belief. Grace and Will. To believe is to assent to a truth on the authority of God's word. We must find that the truth proposed is really guaranteed by the authority of God. In this process of mental research the mind must be satisfied and the truth found to be in consonance with the dictates of right reason, or at least not contrary thereto. But the fact that we can securely give our assent to this truth does not make us believe. Something more than reason enters into an act of faith. Faith is not something natural, purely human, beginning and ending in the brain and a product thereof. This is a human belief, not divine, is consequently not faith. We believe that faith is of itself as far beyond the native powers of a human being as the sense of feeling is beyond the power of a stone, or intelligence, the faculty of comprehension is beyond the power of an animal. In other words it is supernatural, above the natural forces and requires the power of God to give it existence. No man can come to me unless the Father who has sent me draw him. Some have faith, others have it not. Where did you get your faith? You were not born with it, as you were with the natural, though dormant faculties of speech, reason, and free will. You received it through baptism. You are a product of nature, therefore nature should limit your existence, but faith aspires to and obtains an end that is not natural but supernatural. It consequently must itself be supernatural and cannot be acquired without divine assistance. Unless God revealed, you could not know the truths of religion. Unless he established a court of final appeal in his church, you could not be sure what he did reveal or what he meant to say. Because of the peculiar character of these truths and the nature of the certitude we possess, many would not believe all if God's grace were not there to help them. Even though one could and would believe, there no divine belief or faith proper until the soul lives the faculty from him who alone can give it. The reason why many do not believe is not because God's grace is wanting, nor because their minds cannot be satisfied, not because they cannot, but because they will not. Faith is a gift of God, but not that alone. It is a conviction, but not that alone. It is a firm assent of the will. We are free to believe or not to believe. As one may be convinced and not act according to his conviction, so may one be convinced and not believe according to his conviction. The arguments of religion do not compel anyone to believe, just as the arguments for good conduct do not compel anyone to obey. Obedience is the consequence of willing to obey, and faith is the consequence of willing to believe. I'm not obliged to receive as true any religious dogma as I am forced to accept the proposition that two and two are four. I believe because I choose to believe. My faith is a submission of the will. The authority of God is not binding on me physically, for men have refused and still do refuse to submit to his authority, and the authority communicated to his church. And I know that I too can refuse, and perhaps more than once have been tempted to refuse my assent to truths that interfered too painfully with my interests and passions. Besides faith is meritorious, and in order to merit one must do something difficult and be free to act, the difficulty is to believe what we cannot understand through pride of intelligence and to bring that stiff, domineering faculty to recognize a superior. The difficulty is to bend the will to the acceptance of truths and consequent obligations that gall are self-love and the flesh. The believer must have humility and self-denial. The grace of God follows these virtues into a soul, and then your act of faith is complete. Herein we discover the great wisdom of God who sets the price of faith, and of salvation that depends on it, not on the mind, but on the will, not on the intelligence alone, but on the heart. To know man is grace denied. Every man has the will to grasp what is good. But though to all he gives a will, all have not the same degree of intelligence. He does not endow them equally in this respect. How then could he make intelligence the first principle of salvation and of faith? God searches the heart, not the mind. The modicum of wit is guaranteed to all to know that they can safely believe. Be one ever so unlettered in ignorant and dull, faith in heaven are to him as accessible as to the sage, saffant and the genius. For all the way is the same. How we believe. Faith is the edifice of a Christian life. It is of itself a mere shell, so to speak. For unless good work sustain and adorn it, it will crumble, and the Almighty in his day will reduce it to ashes. Faith without works is of no avail. The cornerstone of this edifice is the authority of the Word of God, while his gratuitous grace, our intelligence and will furnish the material for building. Now there are three features of that spiritual construction that deserve a moment's consideration. First, the edifice is solid. Our faith must be firm. No hesitation, no wavering, no deliberate doubting, no suspicion, no taken leave. What we believe comes from God, and we have the infallible authority of the Church for it. And of that we must be certain. That certainty must not for a moment falter. And the moment it does falter, there is no telling but that the whole edifice so laboriously raised will tumble down upon the guilty shoulders of the impudent doubter. And of reasons for hesitating and disbelieving, there is absolutely none, once we have made the venture of faith and believe sincerely and reasonably. No human power can in reason impugn reveal truths, for they are impervious to human intelligence. One book may not at the same time be three books, but can one divine nature be at one and the same time three divine persons? Until we learn what divinity and personality are, we can affirm nothing on the authority of pure reason. If we cannot assert, how can we deny? And if we know nothing about it, how can we do either? The question is not how is it, but if it is. While it stands thus and thus ever it must stand, no objection or doubt born of human mind can influence our belief. Nothing but pride of mind and corruption of heart can disturb it. If you have a difficulty, well it is a difficulty and nothing more. A difficulty does not destroy a thesis that is solidly founded. Once a truth is clearly established, not all the difficulties in the world can make it an untruth. A difficulty, as to the truth revealed, argues an imperfect intelligence. It is idle to complain that we are finite. A difficulty regarding the infallible church should not make her less infallible in our mind. It simply demands a clearing away. Theological difficulties should not surprise a novice in theological matters. They are only misunderstandings that militate less against the church than against the erroneous notions we have of her. To allow such difficulties to undermine faith is like overthrowing a solid wall with a soap bubble. Common sense demands that nothing but clearly demonstrative falsity should make us change firm convictions, and such demonstrations can never be made against our faith. Not from difficulties, properly speaking, but from our incapacity for understanding what we accept as true results a certain obscurity, which is another feature of faith. Believing is not seen. Such strange things we do believe. Who can unravel the mysteries of religion? Moral certitude is sufficient to direct one's life, to make our acts human and moral, and is all we can expect in this world where nothing is perfect. But because the consequences of faith are so far reaching, we would believe nothing short of absolute metaphysical certitude. But this is impossible. Hence the mist, the vague dimness that surrounds faith, baffling every effort to penetrate it, and within a sense of rarefied perception that disquies and torments unless humility, born of common sense, be there to soothe and set us at rest. Moral truths are not geometric theorems and multiplication tables, and it is not necessary that they should be. Of course, if, as in science, so in faith, reason were everything, our position would hardly be tenable, for then there should be no vagueness, but clear vision. But the will enters for something in our act of faith. If everything we believe were as luminous as two and two or four, a special act of the will would be utterly uncalled for, we must be able, free to dissent, and this is the reason of the obscurity of our faith. It goes without saying that such belief is meritorious. Christ Himself said that to be saved is necessary to believe, and no man is saved but through his own merit. Faith is therefore gratuitous on his part, and meritorious on ours. It is, in reality, a good work that proceeds from the will under the dictates of right reason with the assistance of divine grace. End of Chapter 21. Chapter 22 of Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Sieber. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Chapter 22. Faith and Error. Intolerance is a harsh term. It is stern, rigid, brutal almost. It makes no compromise, combats and utterance, and exacts blind and absolute obedience. Among individuals, tolerance should prevail. Man should be liberal with man. The law of charity demands it. In regard to principles, there must and shall eternally be antagonism between truth and error. Justice demands it. It is a case of self-preservation. One destroys the other. Political truth can never tolerate treason, preached or practised. Neither can religious truth tolerate unbelief and heresy, preached or practised. Now, our faith is based on truth. The church is the custodian of faith, and the church, on the platform of religious truth, is absolutely uncompromising and intolerant, just as the state is in regard to treason. She cannot admit error, she cannot approve error. To do so would be suicidal. She cannot lend the approval of her presence, nay, even of her silence, to error. She stands aloof from heresy, must always see in it an enemy, condemns it, and cannot help condemning it, for she stands for truth, pure and unallied truth, which error pollutes and outrages. Call this what you will, but it is the attitude of honesty first and of necessity afterwards. He who is liberal with what belongs to him is generous. He who undertakes to be generous with what does not belong to him is dishonest. Our faith is not founded on an act or agreement of men, but on the revelation of God. No human agency can change or modify it. Neither church nor pope can be liberal with the faith of which they are the custodians. Their sole duty is to guard and protect it as a precious deposit for the salvation of men. This is the stand all governments take when there is question of political truth, and whatever lack of generosity or broad-mindedness there be, however contrary to the spirit of this free age it may seem, it is nevertheless the attitude of God himself who hates error, for it is evil, who pursues it with his wrath through time and through eternity. How can a custodian of divine truth act otherwise? Even in human affairs can one admit that two and three are seven? We sometimes hear it said that this intolerance takes from Catholics the right to think. This is true in the same sense that penitentiaries or the dread of them deprive citizens of the right to act. Everybody outside of sleeping hours and with his thinking machine in good order thinks. Perhaps if there were a little more of it there would be more solid convictions and more practical faith. Holy writ has it somewhere that the whole world is given over to vice and sin because there is no one who thinks. But you have not and never had the right to think as you please inside or outside the church. This means the right to form false judgments to draw conclusions contrary to fact. This is not a right, it is a defect, a disease. Thus, to act is not the normal function of the brain. It is no more the nature of the mind to generate falsehoods than it is the nature of a sewing machine to cut hair. Both were made for different things. He, therefore, who disobeys the law that governs his mind, prostitutes that faculty to error. But suppose, being a Catholic, I cannot see things in that true light what then? In such a case, either you persist in the matter of your faith in being guided by the smoky lamp of your reason alone, or you will be guided by the authority of God's appointed church. In the first alternative, your place is not in the church for you exclude yourself by not living up to the conditions of her membership. You cannot deny but that she has the right to determine those conditions. If you choose the latter, then correct yourself. It is human to err, but it is stupidity to persist in error and refuse to be enlightened. If you cannot see for yourself, common sense demands that you get another to see for you. You are not supposed to know the alpha and omega of theological science, but you are bound to possess a satisfactory knowledge in order that your faith be reasonable. Has no one a right to differ from the church? Yes, those who are unconsciously, who can do so conscientiously. That is, those who have no suspicion of their being in error. These the Heavenly Father will look after and bring safe to himself, for their error is material and not formal. He loves them, but he hates their errors. So does the church abominate the false doctrines that prevail in the world outside her fold. Yet at the same time, she has naught but compassion and pity and prayers for those deluded ones who spread and receive those errors. To her, the individual is sacred, but the heresy is damnable. Thus, we may mingle with our fellow citizens in business and in pleasure, socially and politically, but religiously never. Our charity we can offer in its fullest measure, but charity that lends itself to error loses its sacred character and becomes the handmaid of evil, for error is evil. End of chapter 22. Chapter 23 of Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Sieber. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Chapter 23 The Consistent Believer. The intolerance of the church towards error, the natural position of one who is the custodian of truth, her only reasonable attitude, makes her forbid her children to read or listen to heretical controversy or to endeavour to discover religious truth by examining both sides of the question. This places the Catholic in a position whereby he must stand aloof from all manner of doctrinal teaching other than that delivered by his church through her accredited ministers. And whatever outsiders may think of the correctness of his belief and religious principles, they cannot have two opinions as to the logic and consistency of the stand he takes. They may hurl at him all the choice epithets they choose for being a slave to superstition and erroneous creeds, but they must give him credit for being consistent in his belief, and consistency in religious matters is too rare a commodity these days to be made light of. The reason of this stand of his is that for him there can be no two sides to a question which for him is settled. For him there is no seeking after the truth he possesses it in its fullness as far as God and religion are concerned. His church gives him all there is to be had. All else is counterfeit. And if he believes, as he should and does believe, that reveal truth comes and can come only by way of external authority and not by way of private judgment and investigation, he must refuse to be liberal in the sense of reading all sorts of Protestant controversial literature and listening to all kinds of heretical sermons. If he does not this, he is false to his principles. He contradicts himself by accepting and not accepting an infallible church. He knocks his religious props from under himself and stands nowhere. The attitude of the Catholic, therefore, is logical and necessary. Holding to Catholic principles, how can he do otherwise? How can he consistently seek after truth when he is convinced that he holds it? Who else can teach him religious truth when he believes that an infallible church gives him God's word and interprets it in the true and only sense? A Protestant may not assume this attitude or impose it upon those under his charge. If he does so, he is out of harmony with his principles and denies the basic rule of his belief. A Protestant believes in no infallible authority. He is an authority unto himself, which authority he does not claim to be infallible if he is sober and sane. He is after truth, and whatever he finds and wherever he finds it, he subjects it to his own private judgment. He is free to accept or reject as he pleases. He is not, cannot be, absolutely certain that what he holds is true. He thinks it is. He may discover today that yesterday's truths are not truths at all. We are not here examining the soundness of this doctrine, but it does follow therefrom, sound or unsound, that he may consistently go where he likes to hear religious doctrine exposed and explained. He may listen to whomever has religious information to impart. He not only may do it, but he is consistent only when he does. It is his duty to seek after truth, to read and listen to controversial books and sermons. If, therefore, a non-Catholic sincerely believes in private judgment, how can he consistently act like a Catholic who stands on a platform diametrically opposed to his, against which platform it is the very essence of his religion to protest? How can he refuse to hear Catholic preaching and teaching any more than Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian doctrines? He has no right to do so, unless he knows all the Catholic Church teachers, which case may be safely put down as one in 10 million. He may become a Catholic or lose all the faith he has. That is one of the risks he has to take, being a Protestant. If he is faithful to his own principles and understands the Catholic point of view, he must not be surprised if his Catholic friends do not imitate his so-called liberality. They have motives which he has not. If he is honest, he will not urge or even expect them to attend the services of his particular belief. And a Catholic who thinks that because a Protestant friend can accompany him to Catholic services, he too should return the compliment and accompany his friend to Protestant worship, has a faith that needs immediate toning up to the standard of Catholicity. He is an ignorance of the first principles of his religion and belief. A Catholic philosopher resumes this whole matter briefly and clearly in two syllogisms as follows. The first, major argument. He who believes in an infallible teacher of revelation cannot consistently listen to any fallible teacher with a view of getting more correct information than his infallible teacher gives him. To do so would be absurd, for it would be to believe and at the same time not believe in the infallible teacher. Minor argument. The Catholic believes in an infallible teacher of revelation. Conclusion. Therefore, the Catholic cannot listen to any fallible teacher with a view of getting more correct information about revealed truth than his church gives him. To do so would be to stultify himself. The second, major argument. He who believes in a fallible teacher, private judgment or fallible church is free, nay, bound to listen to any teacher who comes along professing to have information to impart, for at no time can he be certain that the findings of his own fallible judgment or church are correct. Each newcomer may be able to give him further light that may cause him to change his mind. Minor argument. The Protestant believes in such fallible teacher, his private judgment or church. Conclusion. Therefore, the Protestant is free to hear and in perfect harmony with his principles to accept the teaching of anyone who approaches him for the purpose of instructing him. He is free to hear with a clear conscience and let his children hear Catholic teaching. For the church claiming infallibility is at its worst as good as his private judgment is at best, namely fallible. Religious variations are so numerous nowadays that most people care little what another thinks or believes. All they ask is that they may be able to know at any time where he stands, and they insist as right reason imperiously demands that in all things he remain true to his principles, whatever they may be. Honest men respect sincerity and consistency everywhere. They have nothing but contempt for those who stand now on one foot, now on the other, who have one code of theory and another for practice, who shift their grounds as often as convenient suggests. The Catholic should bear this well in mind. There can be no compromise with principles of truth. To sacrifice them for the sake of convenience is as despicable before man as it is offensive to God. End of chapter 23. Chapter 24 of Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Brian Keenan. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Chapter 24, Unbelief. An atheist in principle is one who denies the existence of God and consequently of all revealed truth. How, in practice, a man endowed with reason and a conscience can do this is one of the unexplained mysteries of life. Christian philosophers refuse to admit that an atheist can exist in the flesh. They claim that his denial is fathered by his desire and wish, that at most he only doubts. And while professing atheism, he is simply an agnostic. An agnostic does not know whether God exists or not and cares less. He does not affirm, neither does he deny. All arguments for and against are either insufficient or equally plausible and they fail to lodge conviction in his mind of minds. Elevated upon this pedestal of wisdom, he pretends to dismiss all further consideration of the first cause. But he does know such thing, for he lives as though God did not exist. Why not live as though he did exist? From a rational point of view, he is a bigger fool than his atheistic brother, for if certainty is impossible, prudence suggests that the sure course be taken. On one hand, there is all to gain, on the other, all to lose. The choice he makes smacks of convenience rather than of logic or common sense. No one may be accused of genuine, or as we call it, formal, heresy, unless he persistently refuses to believe all the truths by God revealed. Heresy supposes error, culpable error, stubborn and pertinacious error. A person may hold error in good faith and be disposed as to relinquish it on being convinced of the truth. To all exterior appearances, he may differ in nothing from a formal heretic, and he passes for a heretic. In fact, and before God, he belongs to the church, to the soul of the church. He will be saved if in spite of his unconscious error, he lives well. He is known as a material heretic. An infidel is an unbaptized person, whose faith, even if he does believe in God, is not supernatural, but purely natural. He is an infidel whether he is found in darkest Africa or in the midst of this Christian commonwealth, and in this latter place there are more infidels than most people imagine. A decadent Protestantism rejects the necessity of baptism, thereby ceasing to be Christian, and in its trail infidelity thrives and spreads, disguised is true, but nevertheless genuine infidelity. It is baptism that makes faith possible, for faith is a gift of God. An apostate is one who, having once believed, ceases to believe. All heretics and infidels are not apostates, although they may be in themselves or in their ancestors. One may apostatize to heresy by rejecting the church, or to infidelity by rejecting all revelation. A Protestant may thus become an apostate from faith as well as a Catholic. This going back on the Almighty, for that is what apostasy is, of all misfortunes, the worst that can befall man. There may be excuses mitigating circumstances for our greatest sins, but here it is useless to seek for any. God gives faith. It is lost only through our own fault. God abandons them that abandon him. Apostasy is the most patent case of spiritual suicide, and the apostate carries branded on his forehead the mark of reprobation. A miracle may save him, but nothing short of a miracle can do it. And who has a right to expect it? God is good, but God is also just. It is not necessary to pose as an apostate before the public. One may be a renegade at heart without betraying himself, by refusing his inner ascent to a dogma of faith, by willfully doubting and allowing such doubts to grow upon him and form convictions. People sometimes say things that would brand them as apostates if they meant what they said. This or that one in the midst of an orgy of sin, or after long practical irreligion, in order to strangle remorse that arises at an inopportune moment, may seem to form a judgment of apostasy. This is treading on exceedingly thin glass, but it is not always properly defection from faith. Apostasy kills faith as surely as a knife plunged into the heart kills life. A schismatic does not directly air in matters of faith, but rejects the discipline of the church and refuses to submit to her authority. He believes all that is taught, but puts himself without the pale of the church by his insubordination. Schism is a grievous sin, but does not necessarily destroy faith. The source of all this unbelief is, of course, in the proud mind and sexual heart of man. It takes form exteriorly in an interminable series of isms that have the merit of appealing to the weaknesses of man. They all mean the same thing in the end, and are only forms of paganism. Rationalism and materialism are the most frequently used terms. One stands on reason alone, the other on matter, and both have declared war to the knife on the supernatural. They tell us that these are new brooms destined to sweep clean the universe, new lamps intended to dissipate the clouds of ignorance and superstition, and to purify with their light the atmosphere of the world. But truth to tell, these brooms have been stirring up dust from the gutters of passion and sin, and these lamps have been offending men's nostrils by their smoky stench ever since man knew himself. And they shall continue to do service in the same cause as long as human nature remains what it is. But Christ did not bring his faith on earth to be destroyed by the Liliputian efforts of man. End of chapter 24, recording by Brian Keenan. Chapter 25 of Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Brian Keenan. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Chapter 25, How Faith May Be Lost. It is part of our belief that no man can lose his faith without mortal sin. The conscious rejection of all or any religious truth once embraced and forming a part of Christian belief or the deliberate questioning of a single article thereof is a sin. A sin against God's light and God's grace. It is a deliberate turning away from God. The moral culpability of such an act is great in the extreme, while its consequences cannot be weighed or measured by any human norm or rule. No faith was ever wrecked in a day. It takes time to come to such a pass. It is by easy stages of infidelity, by a slow process of hefty niles, a constant fostering of habits of ignorance that one undermines, little by little, one's spiritual constitution. Taking advantage of this state of debility, the microbe of unbelief creeps in, eats its way to the soul and finally sucks out the very vitals of faith. Nor is this growth of evil an unconscious one. And there lies the malice and guilt. Ignorant pride, neglect of prayer and religious worship, disorders, et cetera, these are evils the culprit knows of and wills. He cannot help feeling the ravages being wrought in his soul. He cannot help knowing that these are deadly perils to his treasure of faith. He complacently allows them to run their course and he wakes up one fine morning to find his faith gone, lost, dead, and a chasm yawning between him and his God that only a miracle can bridge over. We mentioned ignorance. This it is that attacks the underpinning of faith, its rational basis, by which it is made intelligent and reasonable, without which there can be no faith. Ignorance is, of course, a relative term. There are different degrees and different kinds. An ignorant man is not an unlettered or uncultured one, but one who does not know what his religion means, what he believes or is supposed to believe and has no reason to give for his belief. He may know a great many other things, maybe chock full of worldly learning, but if he ignores these matters that pertain to the soul, we shall label him an ignoramus for the elementary truths of human knowledge are, always have been and always shall be the solution of the problems of the why, the whence, and the wither of life here below. Great learning frequently goes hand in hand with dense ignorance. The Sunday school child knows better than the atheist philosopher the answer to these important questions. There is more wisdom in the first page of the catechism than in all the learned books of skeptics and infidels. Knowledge, of course, a thorough knowledge of all theological science will not make faith, any more than wheels will make a cart. But a certain knowledge is essential and its absence is fatal to faith. There are the simple ignorant who have forgotten their catechism and leave the church before the instruction, for fear they might learn something, who never read anything pertaining to religion, who would be ashamed to be detected with a religious book or paper in their hands. Then there are the learned ignorant, such as our public schools turn out in great numbers each year, who either are above mere religious knowledge seeking and disdain all that smacks of church and faith, or knowing little or nothing at all, imagine they possess a world of theological lore and know all that is knowable. These latter are the more to be pitied, their ignorance doubling back upon itself as it were. When a man does not realize his own ignorance, his case is well nigh hopeless. If learning cannot give faith, neither can it alone preserve it. Learned men, pillars of the church have fallen away. Pride, you will say. Yes, of course, pride is the cause of all evil, but we have all our share of it. If it works less havoc in some than in others, that is because pride is or is not kept within bounds. It is necessarily fatal to faith, only when it is not controlled by prayer and the helps of practical religion. God alone can preserve our faith. He will do it only at our solicitation. If therefore, some have not succeeded in keeping the demon of pride under restraint, it is because they refuse to consider their faith a pure gift of God that cannot be safely guarded without God's grace. Or they forgot that God's grace is assured to no man who does not pray. The man who thinks he is all sufficient unto himself in matters of religion, as in all other matters, is in danger of being brought to a sense of his own nothingness in a manner not calculated to be agreeable. No man who practiced humble prayer ever lost his faith or ever can, for to him grace is assured. And since faith is nothing if not practical, since it is a habit, it follows that irreligion neglects to practice what we believe will destroy that habit. People who neglect their duty often complain that they have no taste for religion, cannot get interested, find no consolation therein. This justifies further neglect. They make a pretense to seek the cause. The cause is lack of faith. The fires of God's grace are burning low in their souls. They will soon go out unless they are furnished with fuel in the shape of good, solid, practical religion. That is their only salvation. Ignorance, supplemented by lack of prayer and practice goes a long way in the destruction of faith in any soul, for two essentials are deficient. Disorder, too, is responsible for the loss of much faith. Luther and Henry might have retained their faith in spite of their pride, but they were lewd and ephoricious, and there is small indulgence for such within the church. Not but that we are all human, and sinners are the objects of the church's greatest solicitude. But within her pale no man, be he king or genius, can sit down and feast his passions and expect her to wink at it, and call it by another name than its own. The law of God and of the church is a thorn in the flesh of the vicious man. The authority of the church is a sword of Damocles held perpetually over his head, until it is removed. Many a one denies God in a moment of sin in order to take the sting of remorse out of it. One gets tired of the importunities of religion that tell us not to sin, to confess if we do sin. When you meet a pervert who, with a glib tongue, protests that his conscience drove him from the church, that his enslaved intelligence needed deliverance, search him, and you will find a skeleton in his closet. And if you do not find it, it is there just the same. A renegade priest some years ago held forth before a gaping audience at great length on the reasons of his leaving the church. A farmer sitting on the last bench listened patiently to his profound argumentation. When the lecturer was in the middle of his twelfthly, the other arose and shouted to him across the hall, cut it short and say you wanted a wife. The heart has reasons which the reason does not understand. Not always, but frequently, ignorance, neglect, and vice come to this. The young, the weak, and the proud have to guard themselves against these dangers. They work slowly, imperceptibly, but surely. Two things increase the peril and tend to precipitate matters, reading and companionship. The ignorant are often anxious to know the other side when they do not know their own. The consequence is that they will not understand fully the question, and if they do, will not be able to resolve the difficulty. They are handicapped by their ignorance and can only make a mess out of it. The result is that they are caught by sophistries like a fly in a web. The company of those who believe differently, or not at all, is also pernicious to unenlightened and weak faith. The example in itself is potent for evil. The Catholic is usually not a persona grata as a Catholic, but for some quality he possesses. Consequently, he must hide his religion under the bushel for fear of offending. Then a sneer, a jive, a taunt are unpleasant things and will be avoided even at the price of what at other times would look like being ashamed of one's faith. If ignorant, he will be silent. If he is not prayed, he will be weak. If vicious, he will be predisposed to fall. If we would guard the precious deposit of faith secure against any possible emergency, we must enlighten it, we must strengthen it, we must live up to it. End of Chapter 25. Recording by Brian Tina. Chapter 26 of Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Hope. The First Commandment bids us hope as well as believe in God, our trust and confidence in His mercy to give us eternal life and the means to obtain it. This is our hope, founded on our belief that God is what He reveals Himself to us, able and willing to do by us as we would have Him do. Hope is the flower of our faith. Faith is the substance of the things we hope for. To desire and to hope are not one and the same thing. We may long for what is impossible of obtaining, while hope always supposes this possibility. Better a probability, nay, even a moral certitude. This expectation remains hope until it comes to the fruition of the things hoped for. The desire of general happiness is anchored in the human heart deep down in the very essence of our being. We all desire to be happy. We may be free in many things. In this we are not free. We must have happiness, greater than the present, happiness of one kind or another, real or apparent. We may have different notions of this happiness. We desire it according to our notions. Life itself is one long, painful, unsatisfied desire. When that desire is centered in God and the soul's salvation, it incontinently becomes hope. For then we have real beatitude before us and all may obtain it. It can be true hope only when founded on faith. Not only is hope easy, natural, necessary, but it is essential to life. It is the mainspring of all activity. It keeps all things moving and without it life would not be worth living. If men did not think they could get what they are striving after, they would sit down, fold their arms, let the world move. But they wouldn't. Especially is Christian hope absolutely necessary for the leading of a Christian life. And no man would take upon himself that burden if he did not confidently expect a crown of glory beyond, sufficient to repay him for all the things endured here below for conscience's sake. Hope is a star that beckons us on to renewed effort, a vision of the goal that animates and invigorates us. It is also a soothing balm to the wounds we receive in the struggle. To be without this hope is the lowest level to which man may descend. St. Paul uses the term men without hope as the most stinging reproach he could inflict upon the dissolute pagans. To have abandoned hope is a terrible misfortune, despair. This must not be confounded with an involuntary perturbation, a mere instinctive dread, a phantasmagoric illusion that involves no part of the will. It is not even an excessive fear that goes by the name of bussel animity. It is a cool judgment like that of King. My sin is too great that I should expect forgiveness. He who despairs loses sight of God's mercy and sees only his stern rigourous justice. After hatred of God, this is perhaps the greatest injury man can do to his master, who is love. There has always been more of mercy than of justice in his dealings with men. We might save him that he is all mercy in this world to be all justice in the next. Therefore, while there is life, there is hope. The next abomination is to hope but to place our supreme happiness in that which should not be the object of our hope. Men live for pleasure, riches, and honors as though these things were worthy of our highest aspirations as though they could satisfy the unappeasable appetite of man for happiness. Greater folly than this can no man be guilty of. He takes the dross for the pure gold, the phantom for the reality. Few men theoretically belong to this class. Practically, it has the vast majority. The presumptuous are those who hope to obtain the prize and do nothing to deserve it. He who would hope to fly without wings, to walk without feet, to live without air or food would be less a fool than he who hopes to save his soul without fulfilling the conditions laid down by him who made us. There is no wages without service, no reward without merit, no crown without a cross. This fellow's mistake is to bank too much on God's mercy, leaving his justice out of the bargain altogether. Yet God is one as well as the other, and both equally. The offense to God consists of making him a being without any backbone, so to speak, a soft, incapable judge whose pity degenerates into weakness, and certainly it is a serious offense. No hope should be sensible and reasonable. It must keep the middle between two extremes. The measure of our hope should be reasonably to be the measure of our efforts, for he who wishes the end wishes the means. Of course God will make due allowances for our frailties, but that is his business, not ours. And we have no right to say just how far that mercy will go, even though we lead the lives of saints, we shall stand in need of much mercy. Pudence tells us to do all things as though it all depended upon us alone. Then God will make up for the deficiencies. End of Chapter 26 Chapter 27 of Explanation of Catholic Morals This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Love of God. Once upon a time there lived people who pretended that nothing had existence outside the mind, that objects were merely fictions of the brain. Thus when they gave a name to those objects, it was like sticking a label in the air where they seemed to be. The world is not without folks who have similar ideas concerning charity, to whom it is a name without substance. Scarcely a Christian, but will pretend that he has the virtue of charity. And of course one must take his word for it and leave his actions in conduct out of all consideration. With him, to love God is to say you do, whether you really do or not. This is charity of the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal assortment. To be honest about it, charity or love of God is nothing more or less practically than freedom from an avoidance of mortal sin. If anyone say, I love God and hates his brother or otherwise sins, he has a liar. Strong language, but straight to the point. The state of grace is the first fundamental and essential condition to the existence of charity. Charity and mortal sin are two things irreducibly opposed, uncompromisingly antagonistic, eternally inimical. There is no charity where there is sin. There is no sin where there is charity. That is why charity is called the fulfillment of the law. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that humble folks of the world striving against temptation and sin to serve the master, imagine they can hardly succeed. True, they rarely offend and to no great extent of malice, but they envy the lot of others more advantageously situated. They think nearer by talent and state to perfection, basking in the sunshine of God's love. Talent, position, much exterior activity, much supposed goodness are in their eyes titles to the kingdom and infallible signs of charity. And then they foolishly depour their own state as far removed from that perfection because forsooth their minds are uncultured, their faith simple, and their time taking up with the drudgery of life. They forget that not this gift or that work or anything else is necessary. One thing alone is necessary and that is practical love of God. Nothing counts without it. And the sage over his books, the wonder worker at his desk, the apostle in his wanderings and labors, the very martyr on the rack is no more sure of having charity than the most humble man, woman or child in the lowest walks of life who loves God too much to offend him. It is not necessary to have the tongues of men and angels or faith that will move mountains or the fortitude of martyrs. Charity expressed in our lives indeed rates higher than these. The thing is good in the eyes of its maker if it accomplishes that for which it was made. A watch that does not tell time, a knife that does not cut, and a soul that does not love God are three utterly useless things. And why? Because they are no good for what they were made. The watch exists only to tell the hour, the blade to cut and the soul to love and serve its maker. Failing in this there is no more reason for their being, their utility ceasing, they themselves cease to exist to a certain extent, for a thing is really no longer what it was when it fails to execute that for which it came into being. Charity in a word amounts to this, that we love God, but to the extent of not offending him, anything that falls short of such affection is something other than charity, no matter how many tags and labels it may wear. If I beheld the brute strike down an aged parent, I would not for a moment think that affection was behind that blow, and I could not conceive how there could be a spark of illial love in that son's heart until he had atoned for his crime. Now love is not one thing when directed towards God and another where man is concerned. The great hypocrisy of life consists in this, that people make an outward showing of loving God, because they know full well that it is their first duty. Yet for all that they do not awit men their ways, and to sin costs them nothing. They varnish it over with an appearance of honesty and decency, and fair-minded men take them for what they appear to be and should be, and they pass for such. These watches are pretty to look upon, beautiful, magnificent. But they are stopped. The interior is out of order. The mainspring is broken. The hands that run across the face lie. These blades are bright and handsome, but they are dull, blunt, full of nicks, good enough for coarse and vulgar work, but useless for the fine, delicate work for which they were made. The master mechanic and artist of our souls who wants trustworthy timepieces and keen blades will not be deceived by these gaudy trinkets and will reject them. Others may esteem you for this or that quality, admire this or that qualification you possess, be taken with their superficial gloss and accidental usefulness. The quality required by him who made you is that your soul be filled with charity and proven by the absence of sin. End of chapter 27. Chapter 28 of the Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Love of Neighbor. The precept written in our hearts, as well as in the law, to love God, commands us at the same time to love the neighbor. When you go to confession, you are told to be sorry for your sins and to make a firm purpose of amendment. These appear to be two different injunctions. Yet in fact, in reality, they are one and the same thing, for it is impossible to abhor and detest sin, having at the same moment the intention of committing it. One therefore includes the other. One is not sincere and true without the other. Therefore one cannot be without the other. So it is with love of God and of the neighbor. These two parts of one precept are coupled together because they complete each other and the amount practically to the same thing. The neighbor we are to love is not alone those for whom we naturally have affection, such as parents, friends, benefactors, et cetera, whom it is easy to love. But our neighbor is all mankind, those far and those near, those who have blessed us and those who have wronged us, the enemy as well as the friend, all who have within them as we have the image and likeness of God. No human being can we put outside the pale of neighborly love. As for the love we bear others, it is of course one in substance, but it may be different in degree and various in quality. It may be more or less tender, intense, emphatic. Some we love more, others less. Yet for all that we love them. It is impossible for us to have towards any other being the same feelings we entertain for a parent. The love a good Christian bears towards a stranger is not the love he bears towards a good friend. The love therefore that charity demands admits a variety of shades without losing its character of love. When it comes to loving certain ones of our neighbors, the idea is not of the most welcome. What must I love, really love? That low rascal? That cantankerous fellow, that repugnant, repulsive being? Or this other who has wronged me so maliciously? Or that proud overbearing creature who looks down on me and despises me? We have said that love has its degrees, its ebb and flow tied, and still remains love. The low watermark is this, that we refuse not to pray for such neighbors, that we speak not ill of them, that we refuse not to salute them, or to do them a good turn, or to return a favor. A breach in one of these common civilities due to every man from his fellow man may constitute a degree of hatred directly opposed to the charity strictly required of us. It is not, however, necessary to go on doing these things all during life and at all moments of life. These duties are exterior, and are required as often as contrary bearing betoken a lack of charity in the heart. Just as we are not called upon to embrace and hug an uninviting person as a neighbor, neither are we obliged to continue our civilities when we find that they are offensive and calculated to cause trouble. But naturally there must be charity in the heart. We should not confound uncharity with a sort of natural repugnance and antipathy instinctive to some natures, betraying a weakness of character, if you will, but hardly what one could call a clearly defined fault. There are people who can forgive more easily than forget, and who succeed only after a long while in overcoming strong feelings. In consequence of this state of mind, and in order to maintain peace and concord, they prefer the absence to the presence of the objects of their antipathy. Of course, to nourish this feeling is sinful to a degree, but whilst driving against it, to remove prudently all occasions of opening afresh the wound, if we act honestly, this does not seem to have any uncharitable malice. Now all this is not charity unless the idea of God enter therein. There is no charity outside the idea of God. Philanthropy, humanity is one thing, charity is another. The one is sentiment, the other is love, two very different things. The one supposes natural motives, the other supernatural. Philanthropy looks at the exterior form and discovers a likeness to self. Charity looks at the soul and therein discovers an image of God by which we are not only common children of Adam, but also children of God and sharers of a common celestial inheritance. Neither a cup of water, nor a fortune given in any other name than that of God is charity. There are certain positive works of charity such as almsgiving and brotherly correction, et cetera, that may be obligatory upon us to a degree of serious responsibility. We must use prudence and intelligence in discerning these obligations. But once they clearly stand forth, they are as binding on us as obligations of justice. We are our brother's keepers, especially of those who misfortune oppresses and whose lot is cast under the less lucky star. End of chapter 28. Chapter 29 of an explanation of Catholic morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Explanation of Catholic morals by John H. Stapleton. Prayer. No word so common and familiar among Christians is prayer. Religion itself is nothing more than a vast, mighty universal, never ceasing prayer. Our churches are monuments of prayer and houses of prayer. Our worship, our devotions, our ceremonies, our expressions of prayer. Our sacred music is a prayer. The incense rising in white clouds before the altar is symbolical of prayer. And the one accent that is dined into our ears from altar and pulpit is prayer. Prayer is the life of the Christian as work is the life of the man. Without one and the other, we would star spiritually and physically. If we live well, it is because we pray. If we lead sinful lives, it is because we neglect to pray. Where prayer is, there is virtue. Where prayer is unknown, there is sin. The atmosphere of piety, sanctity and honesty is the atmosphere of prayer. Strange that the nature necessity of prayer are so often misunderstood. Yet the definition in our catechism is clear and precise. There are four kinds of prayer. Adoration, thanksgiving, petition for pardon and for our needs, spiritual and bodily. One need be neither a Catholic nor a Christian to see how becoming it is in us to offer to God our homage of adoration and thanksgiving. It is necessary only to believe in a God who made us and who is infinitely perfect. Why the very heathens made gods to adore and erected temples to thank them. So deep was their sense of the devotion they owed the deity. They put the early Christians to death because the latter refused to adore their gods. Everywhere you go under the sun, you will find the creature offering to the creator a homage of worship. He therefore who makes so little of God as to forget to adore and thank him becomes inferior to the very pagans who sunk in the darkness of corruption and superstition as they were did not however forget their first and natural duty to the maker. Neglect of this obligation in a man betrays an absence, a loss of religious instinct and an irreligious man is a pure animal if he is a refined one. His refinement and superiority come from his intelligence and these qualities far from attenuating his guilt only serve to aggravate it. The brute eats and drinks. When he is full and tired he throws himself down to rest. When refreshed he gets up, shakes himself and goes off again in quest of food and amusement. In what does a man without prayer differ from such a being? But prayer strictly speaking means a demand, a petition and asking. We ask for our needs and our principle needs are pardon and sucker. This is prayer as it is generally understood. It is necessary to salvation. Without it no man can be saved. Our assurance of heaven should be in exact proportion to our asking. Ask and you shall receive. Ask nothing and you obtain nothing and that which you do not obtain is just what you must have to save your soul. Here is the explanation of it in a nutshell. The doctrine of the church is that when God created man he raised him from a natural to a supernatural state and assigned to him a supernatural end. Supernatural means what is above the natural beyond our natural powers of obtaining. Our destiny therefore cannot be fulfilled without the help of a superior power. We are utterly incapable by ourselves of realizing the end to which we are called. The condition absolutely required is the grace of God and through that alone can we expect to come to our appointed end. Here is a stone that that stone should have feeling is not natural but supernatural. God to give sensation to that stone must break through the natural order of things because to feel is beyond the native powers of a stone. It is not natural for an animal to reason. It is impossible. God must work a miracle to make it understand. Well the stone is just as capable of feeling and the animal of reasoning as is man capable of saving his soul by himself. To persevere in the state of grace and the friendship of God, to recover it when lost by sin are supernatural works. Only by the grace of God can this be effected. Will God do this without being asked? Say rather will God save us in spite of ourselves or unknown to ourselves. He who does not ask gives no token of a desire to obtain. End of chapter 29. Chapter 30 of Explanation of Catholic Morals. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Explanation of Catholic Morals by John H. Stapleton. Petitions. For all spiritual needs therefore, prayer is the one thing necessary. I am in the state of sin. I desire to be forgiven. To obtain pardon is a supernatural act. Alone I can no more do it than fly. I pray then for the grace of a good confession. I prudently think myself in the state of grace. Where I for a moment left to my depraved nature, to the mercy of my passions, I should fall into the lowest depths of iniquity. The holiest, saintliest of men are just as capable of the greatest abominations as the blackest sinner that ever lived. If he does not fall and the other does, it is because he prays and the other does not. Some people have certain spiritual maladies that become second nature to them, called dominant passions. For one it is cursing and swearing. For another vanity and conceit. One is afflicted with sloth, another with uncleanness of one kind or another. To discover the failing is the first duty. To pray against it is the next. You attack it with prayer as you attack a disease with remedies. And if we only use prayer with half the care, perseverance, and confidence that we use medicines, our spiritual distemper would be short lived. A person who passes a considerable time without prayer is usually in a bad state of soul. There's probably no one who upon reflection will fail to discover that his best days were those which his prayers sanctified and his worst those which had to get along without any. And when a man starts out badly, the first thing he takes care of to do is to neglect his prayers. For praying is an antidote and a reminder. It makes him feel uneasy while in sin and would make him break with his evil ways if he continued to pray. And since he does not wish to stop, he takes no chances and gives up his prayers. When he wants to stop, he falls back on his prayers. This brings us to the bodily favors we should ask for. You are sick, you desire to get well, but you do not see the sense of praying for it. For you say, either I shall get well or I shall not. For an ordinary statement that is as plain and convincing as one has a right to expect, it will stand against all argument. But the conclusion is not of a peace with the premises. In that case, why do you call in the physician? Why do you take nasty pills and swallow whole quarts of vile concoctions that have the double merit of bringing distress to your palate and to your purse? You take these precautions because your most elementary common sense tells you that such precautions as medicaments, et cetera, enter for something of a condition in the decree of God which reads that you shall die or not die. Your return to health or your shuffling off of the mortal coil is subject to conditions of prudence and according as they are fulfilled or not fulfilled, the decree of God will go into effect one way or the other. And why does not your sane common sense suggest to you that prayer enters as just such a condition in the decrees of God that your recovery is just as conditional on the using of prayer as to the taking of pills? There are people who have no faith in drugs, either because they have never used any or because having once used them failed to get immediate relief. Appreciation of the efficacy of prayer is frequently based on similar experience. Do enumerate all the cures affected by prayer would be as bootless as to rehearse all the miracles of therapeutics and surgery. The doctor says, here, take this, it will do you good. I know it's virtue. The church says likewise, try prayer. I know it's virtue. Your faith in it has all to do with its successful working, as in bodily sickness, so it is in all the other afflictions that flesh is heir to. Prayer is a panacea, it cures all ills, but it should be taken with two tonics, as it were, before and after. Before, faith and confidence in the power of God to cure us through prayer. After, resignation to the will of God by which we accept what it may please him to do in our case. For health is not the greatest boon of life, nor are sickness and death the greatest evils. Sin alone is bad. The grace of God alone is good. All other things God uses as means in view of this supreme good and against this supreme evil. Faith prepares the system and puts it in order for the reception of the remedy. Resignation helps to work out its good effects and brings out all its virtue. Thus prayer is necessary to us all, whether we be Christians or pagans, whether jest or sinners, whether sick or well. It brings us near to God and God near to us, and thus is a foretaste and an image of our union with him hereafter. End of chapter 30.