Do You Do Temperaments?

I've been hearing about the temperaments for awhile - you know, sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic - but never really paid any attention to them until recently. I know I had a book on my shelf once about it that I didn't get around to reading and just passed it along after awhile. A number of my family and friends would talk about them and I couldn't get straight which word meant which thing.

But a few weeks ago, the topic kept coming up in the randomest places, enough that I started to have a guess of which temperaments I had. During this random streak, I was at a friend's house and she had a copy of The Temperament God Gave Me sitting out from the library. I picked it up and quickly read an overview of one of the temperaments I thought I was - melancholic. Wow. There was an awful lot of "me" on that page, including: "They are skeptical about what may appear to be simplistic labels and categories - such as the four temperaments." (Ha!) - But really a lot more too, including the need to fight to achieve self-confidence and "Ironically, however, although small details can stump them, melancholics can often handle the truly big crises with grace and aplomb."

I went home and ordered the book right away. I haven't finished it, but have found it quite helpful overall. For those of you who aren't familiar with them, the temperaments refer to the part of your personality which is innate rather than learned. I had a sense that some aspects of my personality that were frustrating to me had pros and cons, but this really helped me sort some of them out and stop battling my own nature unnecessarily and try to work with what I have.

Upon further reading, I discovered that the other temperament I had suspected belonged to me - phelegmatic - was actually the dominant one. The section in the book entitled "Discovering Your Secondary Temperament", which describes temperament combinations, including potential pitfalls, was particularly helpful. This paragraph particularly rings true (and I've been working on doing many of these things, especially in recent years):

This temperament combination can face at times a greater challenge to your confidence than other temperaments (especially the choleric or sanguine). For this reason, when you are facing a major challenge or have been given a multifaceted and demanding project, it will be absolutely critical for you to maintain your level of energy and motivation - not to mention your prayer life - to complete the project. You will want to anticipate the way your moods can get you off track and take concrete steps to maintain accountability in order to remain focused and energized throughout the task. Motivational tapes, exercise, a healthy diet, spiritual guidance, and a strong sacramental life will be critical.

I haven't come close to finishing the book yet, but have found it quite helpful so far. The book is written by a licensed marriage and family therapist.

 

Final Talk Outline: Choosing Materials (in progress)

The talk was half about Choosing Materials and half about becoming a learner so that you're better prepared to choose materials (or something like that), but I had to choose the title long before I finished the talk, so I hope no one is too disappointed.

Also, I have so much about the wonderful GMCHE conference that I'd like to share, but probably after I've done a little more in the way of catching up on sleep. For now I want to post my updated outline for my talk along with the quotes I shared in the talk. Perhaps later, I'll even be able to add my stories and examples regarding particular Church teachings or particular problems that pop up in books.

Workshop: Choosing Materials That Will Work for Your Family:

Intro:

Books are tools – one part of the whole.

"It is necessary not only that religious instruction be given to the young at certain fixed times, but also that every other subject taught, be permeated with Christian piety. If this is wanting, if this sacred atmosphere does not pervade and warm the hearts of masters and scholars alike, little good can be expected from any kind of learning, and considerable harm will often be the consequence." (Leo XIII, Militantis Ecclesiae, as quoted in the encyclical On Christian Education by Pope Pius XI)

A. Catholic Truths relating to Education (and some of their consequences)

1. God is the author of all truth – no contradiction between faith and reason.

a. The God of our faith is also the creator of the world.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church #159

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition, religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." Pope John Paul II

b. Don't limit the influence of faith by mistakenly thinking that we as Catholics are only interested in overtly religious things.

"No amount of pious training or pious culture will protect the faithful, or preserve them from the contamination of the age, if they are left inferior to non-Catholics in secular learning and intellectual development. The faithful must be guarded and protected by being trained and disciplined to grapple with the false systems of the age... They must be better armed than their opponents - surpass them in the strength and vigor of their minds, and in the extent and variety of their knowledge. They must, on all occasions and against all adversaries, be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in them." (Orestes Brownson)

2. The Catholic Church is a sure guide.

a. Surround yourself with some excellent materials, like a good translation of the Bible (RSV-CE is a particularly good choice) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

b. It is a Catholic thing to study non-Catholic things.

c. Look for the true, good and beautiful.
(Analogy with a Catholic homeschool conference).

"Children exposed to what is aesthetically and morally excellent are helped to develop appreciation, prudence and the skills of discernment. Here it is important to recognize the fundamental value of parents' example and the benefits of introducing young people to children's classics in literature, to the fine arts and to uplifting music. While popular literature will always have its place in culture, the temptation to sensationalize should not be passively accepted in places of learning. Beauty, a kind of mirror of the divine, inspires and vivifies young hearts and minds, while ugliness and coarseness have a depressing impact on attitudes and behavior." (Message for the 41st World Communications Day, Pope Benedict XVI)

3. We are made to learn, but have a fallen nature.

We are made in the image and likeness of God and thus are made to learn and to know. But we have a fallen nature that makes it difficult to train our will. This has many consequences on education. Here are a few:

Knowledge does not equal virtue. Avoid condescending materials that destroy the joy of discovery and can certainly turn people away from virtue. Children need help training their will and developing their convictions.

Beware of simplifications, like old=good (or old=bad for that matter). Sin has been with us from the beginning and every age has its own errors which people from that time period tend to be blind to. see: C.S. Lewis on old books

Clean does not equal good. Distinguishing between offensive and dangerous can be helpful.

Consider:

Some books are offensive but not dangerous.
Some are offensive and dangerous.
Some are dangerous but not offensive.

The third category is the worst because it's the most subtle and we may not even notice it.

P.S. Educational does not necessarily mean good either.

More good reading: Pope Benedict XVI "There is talk of a great 'educational emergency'."

Problem spots (indications that someone is missing the fact of fallen nature): Materials that suggest that any sort of discipline, training or limits for children are automatically bad. The truth is that they are all necessary to some degree, but should be exercised with love and prudence.

4. The Virtue lies in the Mean
(I am too tired to write this one out at the moment - I'll try to come back to it later - but it's REALLY important.)

5. Be Not Afraid

"To have Christian hope means to know about evil and yet to go to meet the future with confidence. The core of faith rests upon accepting being loved by God, and therefore to believe is to say Yes, not only to him, but to creation, to creatures, above all, to men, to try to see the image of God in each person and thereby to become a lover. That's not easy, but the basic Yes, the conviction taht God has created man, that he stands behind them, that they aren't simply negative, gives love a reference point that enables it to ground hope on the basis of faith." (Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth)

Also see: Fear Undermines Talents, Says Pontiff

B. Developing Your Skeptometer (tools of discernment, critical thinking)

1. Become a Learner

Your children will learn from what you learn.

You'll set a great example to them that learning is for always.

It helps build a learning environment/atmosphere.

They enjoy learning more if they do it with you (e.g. informal discussions around the dinner table).

Reality, long term goals are more important than "current events". (My suggestion is to shift some of your focus - watch less news and read more books).

"One is entitled to think that the future of humanity is in the hands of those who are capable of providing the generations to come with reasons for life and optimism." (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1917)

2. Don’t expect perfection – books are written by people.

3. Some things are black and white, some aren’t.

"In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity." (attributed to St. Augustine)

4. Recognize Your own Danger Spots

5. Look Below the Surface

6. Know your children – become their mediator and advocate

Adjust things according to their needs.

Remember the diversity of the saints.

Recommended: Learning Style Test

Beware of surrendering your entire thinking process to the experts - you need to weigh and consider each issue. cf. Listening To Experts Inhibits Decision Making

Issues

1. Somewhat harmless but annoying things.

e.g. Books that use CE and BCE instead of AD and BC.


2. inaccuracies

Recognize them, but don't always reject the book. If worthwhile overall, it can be a great teaching moment. cf. David Macaulay's Cathedral

3. bias

Half the battle is simply recognizing bias. I like to have my kids practice recognizing things by analyzing TV commercials with them and talking about what the commercials are trying to sell.

4. anti-Catholic slant vs. non-Catholic perspective

anti-Catholic examples:

Atheistic direction:

"Then suddenly all this wondering and figuring stopped. Christianity was a new religion, fighting for survival, and in A.D. 391 Christians burned the city of Alexandria and its famous libraries, which contained, along with many ancient treasures of scholarship, the work of Ptolemy. Christians did not believe in scholarship. They thought it was sacreligiuos to be curious. Anything people wanted to know, they said, could be found in the Bible." (Around the World in a Hundred Years by Jean Fritz)

Protestant direction:

"With such a lack of spiritual leadership and the Romanist emphasis on works for salvation, it is little wonder that the common people lived under such spiritual bondage." (United States History for Christian Schools, Bob Jones University Press)

Not necessarily anti-Catholic:

Making mistakes about Catholics
Criticizing Catholics

non-Catholic perspective:

Can be very worthwhile. e.g. All of a Kind Family

5. Catholic books with authority problems

This comes in two basic varieties:

Cafeteria Catholics
Those who think they're more Catholic than the Pope.

6. Fundamentalism

7. Condescending materials

8. Secular (and its various meanings)

a. Materials with no religious content. e.g. An Egg is Quiet

b. Something with an atheistic bias.
Worth reading on this topic: 10 Books that Screwed up the World by Benjamin Wiker

9. poor pedagogy (teaching philosophy)

10. good intentions aren’t always enough

Initial Talk Outline - Choosing Educational Materials

I have loads of material and notes for my talk on Saturday at the GMCHE homeschool conference on choosing educational materials. The hard part is organizing it and keeping it within the allotted time frame. This is my current outline. I've also included some background links that I may quote from in places (or provide URLs in the hand-outs).

Intro: Books are tools - one part of the whole. Parents' job as mediator and advocate is essential.

A. Defining terms (for the purpose of our discussion - not because they're hard to understand, but because they are used in different ways)

1. Catholic

2. anti-Catholic

3. bias

4. educational philosophy

5. educational method

B. Catholic truths relating to education

1. God is the author of all truth. cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 159

2. The Catholic Church is a sure guide.

3. We are made to learn, but we have a fallen nature. link

4. The virtue is in the mean. link

5. Be not afraid! link

C. Developing your Skeptometer

1. Become a learner yourself.

2. Don't expect perfection (and rejoice in the good!)

"Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise." Cato the Elder

3. Some things are black-and-white, but not everything is!

4. Importance of filters - not just for keeping bad things out.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle

5. Recognize your danger spots.

"Most people tend to allow the truth they possess so to dominate their thinking that they see few other truths that place their one truth in perspective and balance it out. There is probably no heresy in the history of the Church that did not have its truth. The problem invariably is that the one truth so took over the heretic's mind that he was committed to cast out any number of other doctrines that clashed with his interpretation of it." (Authenticity by Fr. Thomas Dubay, pg. 34)

D. Mistakes to Avoid

1. arrogance

2. knowledge=virtue

3. old = good, new = bad or vice versa (c.f. C.S. Lewis on old books)

4. clean = good (looking only at the surface)

5. faith vs. reason

"Science can purify religion from error and superstition, religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." Pope John Paul II

E. Things to Remember

1. True, good, and beautiful

2. Dangerous vs. offensive

3. Diversity of the Saints

4. Don't let the experts think for you.

5. Adjust books, programs, etc. to fit you and your child's needs.

I Think This Especially Applies to Curriculum Choices...

I stumbled upon this quote in Real Simple magazine (I pick these up occasionally at the grocery store because I like their organizational ideas and such . I thought Gretchen Rubin did a wonderful job of explaining something that I find very much worth thinking about:

There are two types of decision makers. Satisficers (yes, satisficers) make a decision once their criteria are met. When they find the hotel or the pasta sauce that has the qualities they want, they're satisfied. Maximizers want to make the best possible decision. Even if they see a bicycle or a backpack that meets their requirements, they can't make a decision until they've examined every option. Satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers. Maximizers expend more time and energy reaching decisions, and they're often anxious about their choices. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

One More Quote I'm Thinking About...

This is also from Spe Salvi, on the "Moral Treasury of Humanity":

These decisions can never simply be made for us in advance by others - if that were the case, we would no longer be free. Freedom pre-supposes that in fundamental decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning. Naturally, new generations can build on the knowledge and experience of those who went before and they can draw upon the moral treasury of the whole of humanity. But they can also reject it, because it can never be self-evident in the same way as material inventions. The moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use; it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it. This, however, means that:

a) The right state of human affairs, the moral well-being of the world can never be guaranteeed simply through structures alone, however good they are. Such structures are not only important, but necessary; yet they cannot and must not marginalize human freedom. Even the best structures function only when the community is animated by convictions capable of motivating people to assent freely to the social order. Freedom requires conviction; conviction does not exist on its own, but mu-st always be gained anew by the community.

b) Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last for ever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined - good - state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

Open to Correction

Many thanks to Amy Welborn for writing a great blog post about an important topic - defensiveness regarding critique and criticism. This defensiveness she writes about makes it really hard for me as a reviewer because often even the littlest points or even clarifications can be taken for serious criticism or even condemnation - which makes me second guess whether I should mention this little thing, whether it will be taken too seriously, etc. I should mention that it's not just authors who can be sensitive, but readers don't necessarily make a big distinction between, say, some ideas for improving future editions of a particular book and grave reservations regarding the overall point of view of the author.

Ideally, a book review should be open and honest about various sorts of criticism. I know that I very much appreciate positive reviews that aren't afraid to give the potentially negative side of things as well (another fine line here, though - you certainly can get too nit-picky). When I read this sort of review it helps me in a number of ways.

1) The willingness to critique - as long as it's fair and reasonable - often gives the reviewer more credibility in my mind - because the review tends to be (or at least seems to be) more well-thought-out, balanced and objective. Somehow it gives more weight to the positive points made when the reviewer is willing to explore the negatives too - I get a stronger sense that they really mean what they say.

2) I have a better idea of the details of the resource I'm looking into - after all, I could just go to a book catalog to find the general, glowing details.

3) Finally, I think that a reasonable willingness to correct is more charitable to the author and even to the book itself than either ignoring the material or simply giving up on the details and condemning it. If someone is willing to take the time and bother to sort through the ins and outs, recognizing what is good and correcting the errors simply makes more of these books more usable, more worthwhile. And it doesn't tend to hurt the reviewer (sames goes for the reader, later on) to go through the process of making such distinctions.

I suppose the medium of the Internet makes this harder since, without the tone of voice, it's hard to get the sense of "Well, there's just this little thing I think I should mention..."

On the other hand, it takes a certain amount of gumption to stand up to the ideas in a book and not just write catalog overviews when there are other issues to be addressed. I have to admit that I'm not always up to the task myself.

Anyway, here's Amy's blogpost that I was referring to...

One of the most irritating thing about discourse, something that gets exaggerated, it seems, on the Internet (like anything else) is hyper-defensiveness. That is to say that to critique any aspect of any phenomenon amounts to a full-scale attack on that phenomenon.

For some, it seems, it is all or nothing.

Or perhaps there is just a fear that if one aspect of a phenomenon can be critiqued, that means that the whole enterprise is called into question.

Read the rest here

By the way this post isn't meant to be a rant about reviewing books, more a thinking through of some aspects and the challenge of keeping things in balance. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

Issues of Charity

I've seen a number of troubling offenses against charity by Christians against Christians around the Internet lately (I'm thinking of at least three particular instances I've seen quite recently, completely unrelated to each other). Rather than pointing these out and adding to the chaos, I thought it would be a good time to consider what the Church teaches about charity, judgment and protecting the reputation of others:

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2477-2478):

2477 Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:

-of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;

-of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another's faults and failings to persons who did not know them,

-of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.

2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved. (St. Ignatius Loyola - Spiritual Exercises)

Making a moral judgment about someone based on whether they like or don't like a particular book or movie or style of educating their children can be really dangerous territory. There are certainly reasonable cases where someone's tastes in movies and books might make you cautious about them influencing your children, but what I'm talking about is more along the lines of publicly accusing people of being bad Christians or Catholics based on such things.

Embracing Truth

from Cardinal Ratzinger's Salt of the Earth...

In the course of my intellectual life I experienced very acutely the problem of whether it isn't actually presumptuous to say that we can know the truth - in the face of all our limitations. I also asked myself to what extent it might not be better to suppress this category. In pursuing this question, however, I was able to observe and also to grasp that relinquishing truth doesn't solve anything but, on the contrary, leads to the tyranny of caprice. In that case, the only thing that can remain is really what we decide on and can replace at will. Man is degraded if he can't know truth, if everything, in the final analysis, is just the product of an individual or collective decision.

In this way it became clear to me how important it is that we don't lose the concept of truth, in spite of the menaces and perils that it doubtless carries with it. It has to remain as a central category. As a demand on us that doesn't give us rights but requires, on the contrary, our humility and our obedience and can lead us to the common path.

Constructive Criticism

I've had a sense of the importance of the right attitude towards critique and reform, but never seen it articulated as beautifully as this passage from Fr. Dubay's Authenticity. (I just shared this with my love2learn board too)...

It has been rightly noted that the sometimes necessary criticism in the Church heals no wounds unless it consists in an example of greater love:

The critic without love resembles rather a man who scratches himself all the more furiously, the more fiercely he itches, a process which of course can only result in exacerbating and spreading the inflammation. The great saints were reformers of the Church but they were edifying reformers. Not all great reformers were saints, that is to say those who truly loved; many of them destroyed more than they built up...

One can picture Catherine of Siena disapproving of the papal presence in Avignon and yet at the same time profoundly loving the pope as her "Christ on earth". Her criticism had all the marks of the Spirit: made with reluctance, moderation, gentleness, accuracy and love. One need only compare this approach with its opposite: eagerness, exaggeration, harshness, bitterness. When one reads of theological disputes through the centuries (including our own), he sees clear examples of the two types of criticism. One has the marks of proceeding from God; it builds up in love. The other bears the brand of human pride; it cuts and erodes.

The Humble are able to Listen and Learn

more from Fr. Dubay...

The humble person is open to being corrected, whereas the arrogant is clearly closed to it. Proud people are supremely confident in their own opinions and insights. No one can admonish them successfully: not a peer, not a local superior, not even the pope himself. They know - and that is the end of the matter. Filled as they are with their own views, the arrogant lack the capacity to see another view.

The humble listen to their brothers and sisters because they assume they have something to learn. They are open to correction, and they become wiser through it.

It is a chilling experience to meet face to face with a person so supremely sure of his inner light and his interpretation of the Bible that he rejects not only what you say but also what exegetes and theologians and saints say.

Speaking of Docility

(in my recent post, "Cardinal Newman and Grammar")

I came across some segments on docility in Fr. Dubay's Authenticity.

The word means, of course, a capacity to learn, to be taught by another. Yet in recent years the idea came upon hard days, for it spoke to many of a passivity, a weakness, a refusal to think for oneself. But then on the scene came a new label: openness, listening. Now openness and listening to others mean nothing if they do not mean exactly what docility means: willingness to be informed, instructed, changed by what another says.

A man in trouble laments that he did not listen to his teachers, and thus he finds himself in a sad state, utter ruin. A candid admission of a blunder is refreshing and not often heard in human affairs. It is the saint alone who is large-minded enough to think and speak in this way. This is part of his authenticity.

The person who is swift to hear and slow to respond is a stranger to an all-knowing illuminism. He believes that others, too, have some truth, and he is willing to be instructed by them. He is ready for the mind of God.

We are to welcome instruction, yes. But this is not enough. We are to welcome correction as well, being told that we are wrong. This is living the virtue of docility.

As the word indicates, docility is the capacity to learn, a willingness to be taught. One is docile when he recognizes his own lack of information and expertise, on the one hand, and the superior knowledge and skills of his teacher, on the other. In this context a synonym more acceptable to modern ears is receptivity.

There are two types of receptivity: one toward the indwelling Spirit and the other toward human teachers. Like other moral virtues, docility lies in a mean between two extremes. One extreme is the more or less arrogant refusal to accept the thoughts of another. The other is an exaggerated credulity that has lost a sense of proper discrimination and healthy criticism.

Fr. Dubay

I started reading Fr. Dubay's Authenticity: A Biblical Theology of Discernment about two years ago and did quite a bit of blogging on it, but got distracted about halfway through the book and finally picked it up again just a few days ago. It really is a wonderful book - I don't know why I ever set it down. The funny thing is, I had a bunch of cleaning I had to get done tonight in preparation for co-op at our house tomorrow. So I turned on Relevant Radio to listen to and caught a show with Fr. Dubay as the guest. The show was just starting and it was specifically about his book Authenticity! That made the cleaning go faster. :)

Authenticity, cont.

Some immediate causes of error ("due to an extension of one's judgment beyond evidence"):

haste,
we wish to impress others (with rapid answer, keen insight)
vanity
because we like a position
pleasure
lifestyle
conformism
emotional pressure - fear, joy, anguish, elation, anger (interfere with cool reasoning/insight)

"We err because we lack love...Defective motivation induces intellectual darkness. The more one loves, the more he sees ultimate reality. Love puts one into contact with God and with men as nothing else does. The person who loves fully sees deeply... He sees deeply because he is free of the thousand emotional and willed obstructions to inner vision. His passions do not prompt him to embrace an illusory but lax morality. Just as there is no one so blind as he who wills not to see, so there is no one so seeing as he who wills to love. He is authentic." (pg. 38)

Finally Getting Back to Dubay's Authenticity

Authenticity: A Biblical Theology of Discernment by Thomas Dubay, S.M. (Ignatius Press, copyright 1997)

Dubay really packs a punch. His material is challenging. Not so much in the sense of difficult to understand, as forcing the reader to examine their own conscience and look at themselves in a more complete way.

Some notes and quotes:

Scripture says a great deal about the conditions necessary before one is uncluttered enough to detect the gentle voice of God speaking in the depths of the person. (pg. 25)

We live very cluttered lives here in the 21st century.

Authenticity is reality without sham. (pg. 26)

Awesome

The human person must be whole to be completely authentic. ... There is only one enough for man, and that is the divine Enough. Anything less is incomplete, truncated... The Father made us in the image of his Son, so that anything less than conformity to this image is a falling away from the authentikos, the original. 'The disciple of Christ consents to live in the truth, that is, in the simplicity of a life in conformity with the Lord's example, abiding in his truth (CCC 2470).

The genuine man or woman measures up to the real, to the factual situation. He is humble because he knows and professes himself to be neither more nor less than he actually is. He is single-minded in his pursuits, for he operates with the pure motivation of eating and drinking and doing all else for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31).. He accepts the whole gospel, not simply the popular, pleasant parts of it. He welcomes correction because he knows himself to be ignorant of many things and a sinner besides (Prov 9:7-9)... Especially is he authentic because he is a total lover of God, and love brings all the other ingredients of authenticity (1 Cor 13:4-7). (pgs. 26-27)

This last part reminds me of a Latin proverb that came up in Lunch Bag Notes by Al and Ann Marie Parisi (Loyola Press). The proverb is...

Age quod agis.
"Do what you are doing." I really like that (and need to be reminded often!).

Part of living the truth is an acceptance of a reasonable dependence on others, an acknowledgement of a need for admonition and advice. (pg. 33)

This is so true. I think we homeschool moms especially need to be reminded. A lot is expected of us and we're doing a lot. Sometimes we think we're failures if we can't do "everything". Or we think it's wrong to burden someone else with our problems. But the Sacrament of Marriage doesn't guarantee that we'll be able to handle every single one of our children's needs without assistance. There's nothing that says we'll be good at teaching Algebra or handling every teaching challenge that comes our way. I always like the analogy (can't remember where I read it) that homeschool parents are like contractors on a construction project - an important part of the job is finding people/resources for tackling parts of the job. The contractor isn't inadequate if he can't do everything himself.

Most people tend to allow the truth they possess so to dominate their thinking that they see few other truths that place their one truth in perspective and balance it out. There is probably no heresy in the history of the Church that did not have its truth. The problem invariably is that the one truth so took over the heretic's mind that he was committed to cast out any number of other doctrines that clashed with his interpretation of it. (pg. 34)

This is a really challenging concept and it can be tempting to blow it off as just politically correct, "open-mindedness" stuff. But it's not. One example that struck me was that we can be so passionate about a cause that we can throw the virtue of prudence out the window and end up hurting the very cause that we care so passionately about. (An example of this might be a pro-Lifer who decides to use violence to accomplish his goals.) This segment reminds me of a term I like better than "open-minded", and that is "broad-minded."

Philosophers have long noted that error proximately is due to an extension of one's judgment beyond evidence. (pg. 37)

I really liked that phrase "an extension of one's judgment beyond evidence." Very helpful to remember.

Good stuff.

Humility as a Sign of Authenticity

Another Interesting Quote from Fr. Dubay's Book...

"Through the long centuries of the Christian dispensation spiritual directors have considered humility as an important sign of authenticity. When St. John of the Cross was asked his opinion of a nun who reportedly had extraordinary experiences, his analysis of her written account was negative because indications of humility were lacking. She had, he said, little fear of being mistaken. She was overly confident of her opinion. Where this healthy fear is absent, remarked the saint, the Spirit of God is never present. She seemed to desire to persuade others of the goodness of her experiences; she gave little evidence of humility and her style lacked simplicity -- it was exaggerated and affected. The saint was consequently little impressed with her experiences.

In the concrete order humility shows itself as a sign of the Spirit's operation in several ways. It appears in the desire to be corrected. It shows itself in the avoidance of the self-focusing of illuminism. The humble person can be reached by objective evidence because he does not consider himself a privileged channel from the Holy Spirit to the human race. It is a chilling experience to meet face to face with a person so supremely sure of his inner light and his interpretation of the Bible that he rejects not only what you say but also what exegetes and theologians and saints say. He rejects these interpreters, unaware that he is setting himself up as the interpreter per excellence.

This humility sign is seen in obedience to one's legitimate superior and to one's spiritual director. This person has no problem about submitting his will to that of another. The humble individual is willing to be sent. He is not a self-originating oracle. If he is the recipient of a genuine divine communication, he still obeys his leaders if they think otherwise."

Further Reading:

Catholic Encyclopedia on Humility
What St. Thomas Aquinas has to say about humility

Discerning God's Will

Discerning God's will is a concept that I've wanted to more fully understand for a long time. I've recently ordered some Catholic books relating to this topic. My sister sent me the following quote from Authenticity: A Biblical Theology of Discernment by Thomas Dubay (Ignatius Press):

God expects us to use ordinary means to achieve ordinary ends. If I break a leg, he expects me to get it set by a doctor. I may pray for divine healing but not at the expense of refusing ordinary medical help. We should surely pray for divine enlightenment but not at the expense of refusing study and consultation. Where human reason is sufficient to solve problems God is not likely to intervene in a supernatural manner.

This is such a great quote. It also reminds me of the two boats and a helicopter joke. Just in case you haven't heard it...

A man is caught on the roof of his house during a major flood. The waters are rising and he knows he's in trouble. So he prays to God to save him. A man comes by in a boat and offers to take him to safety. He refuses, saying that God will save him. Another boat comes by and once again he declines to be rowed ashore. The waters continue to rise and he has just a small piece of roof to keep him from the waters. He finally refuses the help of a helicopter team preparing to pick him up. The flood waters continue to rise and the man is swept away and drowned. He gets to Heaven and is feeling a little ticked off. He storms over to God and asks why God didn't save him from the flood. God responds, "What do you mean I didn't save you? I sent you two boats and a helicopter."

It's always made sense to me that faith and reason work hand in hand when trying to follow God's will. Some things take a lot of hard work. Does that mean it's not God's will because he would have smoothed things out for us? (I don't think so!) Some things are too coincidental and silly to be taken seriously as a "sign from God". Some "coincidences" are so amazing, beneficial and unplanned by us that the word "providential" seems a lot more appropriate than "lucky."

Well, I have a lot of unanswered questions and am looking forward to digging into some of these books - Authenticity (as mentioned above) and two books by St. Francis de Sales. That ought to keep me busy for awhile.