BIG C CATHOLICS

On the last day, when the general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the text of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus. — St. Robert Bellarmine ______________________________________ Prayer for St. Robert Bellarmine’s Intercession Almighty ever-living God, who adorned the Bishop Saint Robert Bellarmine with wonderful learning and heroic virtue to vindicate the faith of your Church, grant, through his intercession, that in the integrity of that same faith your people may always find joy. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns together with you and with the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Divine Logos, is the embodiment of truth, beauty, and goodness. Aristotle's insight is but a dim reflection of God's perfect wisdom and infinite love. (A version of this article was originally published in July 2016.) ____________________________________________ The brilliant Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his treatise on ethical conduct, Nicomachean Ethics , discusses the "Golden Mean." It is a way of acting that enables us to live according to our ideal nature, improve our character, and deal effectively with life's hardships while striving for the good of all. The golden mean is the desired middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. For example, to Aristotle, courage is a virtue, which if taken to its extreme is recklessness, and, in absence or insufficiency, is cowardice. Aristotle's ethics is practical and decidedly teleological. He believed the end of human life is happiness (G

According to Aristotle, man's thought entails three types of inquiry. (There may be others but none are more important.) They are making, doing, and knowing. "making" is thinking about how to make things and the actual making of those things. Aristotle calls this "productive" thinking because it is about the production of things. A second type of thinking "doing," involves how we are to act, what is right and what is wrong, vice and virtue, and how we ought to live. Aristotle calls this "practical" thinking because it concerns itself with moral choices. The third kind of thinking Aristotle highlights is "knowing" Aristotle calls this "theoretical" thinking - acquiring knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The object of productive thinking is making something that is beautiful or, at the very least, something that works well. The object of practical thinking is virtue or goodness. The object of theoretical thinking is

Note: The philosophical concepts below have been greatly summarized. Christ, the Divine Logos, is the embodiment of truth, beauty and goodness. Aristotle's insight is but a reflection of the perfect knowledge and wisdom of God. The brilliant Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his treatise on ethical conduct, Nicomachean Ethics , discusses the "Golden Mean." It is a way of acting that enables us to live according to our ideal nature, improve our character, and deal effectively with life's hardships while striving for the good of all. The golden mean is the desired middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. For example, to Aristotle, courage is a virtue, which if taken to extreme is recklessness, and, in deficiency, is cowardice. Aristotle's ethics is practical and decidedly teleological. He believed the end of human life is happiness (Greek: eudaimonia ). Today, happiness is understood as the emotional state of joy, cont

Aristotle was one of the most brillant men to have ever lived. Hs philosophy was used by St. Thomas Aquinas in the later's synthesis of reason and revelation. Below are two explanations of Aristotle’s metahysical theory of causation, also known as the four causes. from which the Angelic Doctor borrowed heavily . Aristotle’s four causes are answers to four common sense questions we can ask about change in the world around us. They are; What is a thing made of?, Who made it?, What is it that is being made?, and What is it being made for? When it comes to human productions, the answer to these questions is usually easy. When it comes to answering these questions as they occur in nature, it becomes more difficult. Regarding human production, if you asked a shoemaker what he was making his shoes out of he might reply “leather.” If you asked a gunsmith producing a rifle what he was making it out of he might reply “wood and steel.” According to Aristotle, what a thing is made of is

Aristotle Aristotle’s four causes are answers to four common sense questions we can ask about change in the world around us. They are; What is a thing made of?, Who made it?, What is it that is being made?, and What is it being made for? When it comes to human productions, the answer to these questions is usually easy. When it comes to answering these questions as they occur in nature, it becomes more difficult. Regarding human production, if you asked a shoemaker what he was making his shoes out of he might reply “leather.” If you asked a gunsmith producing a rifle what he was making it out of he might reply “wood and steel.” According to Aristotle, what a thing is made of is the material cause . It is one of four indispensible factors without which the production would not or could not occur. The second question is: Who made it? Aristotle calls this the efficient cause . When we are dealing with human productions, this would seem to be the easiest question of all. The shoemaker mak

Thought of the Day "Philosophers: cleaner than poets, quieter than politicians."

Dumb Ox From the introduction to FIDES ET RATIO : "KNOW YOURSELF" In both East and West, we may trace a journey which has led humanity down the centuries to meet and engage truth more and more deeply. It is a journey which has unfolded—as it must—within the horizon of personal self-consciousness: the more human beings know reality and the world, the more they know themselves in their uniqueness, with the question of the meaning of things and of their very existence becoming ever more pressing. This is why all that is the object of our knowledge becomes a part of our life. The admonition Know yourself was carved on the temple portal at Delphi, as testimony to a basic truth to be adopted as a minimal norm by those who seek to set themselves apart from the rest of creation as “human beings”, that is as those who “know themselves”. Moreover, a cursory glance at ancient history shows clearly how in different parts of the world, with their different cultures, there