Growing and Diminishing in Virtue (Aquinas 101) 

I agree with you 100%

I thought the same thing

Glad you found this helpful! God bless.

Perhaps we'll have to have Fr. Cuddy give voice lessons to all of the brethren!

Thank you very much for your prayers! They are certainly received. Please keep them coming!

@@jonathanwilbur8527 That's definitely what I meant, and I can't blame autocorrect for that one

Glad this was of help! God bless you.

Glad to hear it! God bless you.

Thank you for watching! God bless.

Thank you! Please do like and share with your friends... because it matters what you think! God bless.

Thanks for such a lovely comment! God bless you!

Sure thing! God bless you.

Amen! Glad this was helpful. God bless you!

Thank you very much! Glad the video proved helpful for you. God bless.

Thank you for watching!

Of course! God bless you.

Thank you! God bless.

Glad to hear it! If you have any questions, please post them in the comments with #AskAFriar. Thanks for watching, and may the Lord bless you!

Thank you! Glad you have found these helpful. God bless you.

We're glad it was helpful! God bless you.

Thank you!

Generally, sacraments and prayer. Pray the rosary everyday with intention and awe. 🙏🏼

Great question. Kevin is correct: sacraments and prayer are surefire ways to grow in chastity. Contemplative prayer is particularly helpful because it helps our minds to better understand the virtue of chastity, to see its goodness and necessity for a virtuous Christian life, and thereby to desire it. In this regard, we can contemplate Scripture passages like the 6th Beatitude, "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8), or "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" (Mt 6:22-23). Recognizing that heaven is about seeing God, in his fullness, with our minds ("face to face" as St. Paul says in 1 Cor 13:12), we are led to desire a pure mind so that we can, in the fullness of time, see God in himself in heaven and, in the meantime, recognize his will in our lives and in the order of creation. In the particular case of chastity, a pure mind helps us to see the order God has promulgated for men and women and their conjugal unity, which is a most holy thing. Study, too, can be of aid, i.e. studying the way the natural law orders our natural inclinations (see the Aquinas 101 video on natural law) and, in particular, the way in which the virtue of chastity (a species of temperance) correctly orders the human appetite for conjugal union according to our state of life (single, married, clerical, religious, etc.). In sum, since the operation of the will follows the understanding of the intellect, if we train our minds to understand and to love the virtue of chastity-to really see the goodness of chastity-our wills will incline toward chaste acts all the more promptly, easily, and joyfully. The Aquinas 101 video on Temperance and and the Angelic Warfare Confraternity (Google search) might be helpful aids to your study and prayer. Thank you for your question, and God bless you!

Hello Patrick. It seems to me that in the case that you are describing these people have some of the moral/natural virtues. Yet, they do not possess the theological virtues, or have not restored them after a mortal sin. Confession is necessary because a mortal sin orients our soul away from God in such a way that if it were to be separated from the body (by death) before the sacrament of Confession, its orientation would forever remain hostile to God. Even leaving the issue of death and eternity aside, to restore the theological virtues we need to mend our relationship with God, that flow of Grace that comes from Him and that we have to freely cooperate with. And Christ, who knows our nature better than anybody, has given us as an ordinary means for this restoration the sacrament of Confession. I hope this helps. God bless you.

@@matteosalonia3158 Thanks for the distinction Matteo. I’ve been reading Plato and the Neoplatonists, and had, prior to commenting, not been made aware of this distinction in Aquinas’s, or I suppose, the Church’s understandings of moral as opposed to theological virtue. I’ll have to do some further reading. I appreciate your help. Best wishes.

This is a great question, Patrick, and Matteo has provided a helpful reply. The distinction indeed comes down to the natural/moral (cardinal) virtues and the supernatural/theological virtues. When someone commits a mortal sin, he orders himself away from God as his final end. In doing so, he loses the theological virtue of charity and therefore falls out of friendship with God, which friendship is the effect of charity. But that does not mean he has necessarily lost the virtues of hope and faith; indeed, the person who commits a mortal sin but desires to go to confession both believes (has faith) that the sacrament of confession is real and hopes that its effects will heal his soul. Hope and faith are lost by committing explicit acts against hope and faith, as when one commits sins of despair and blasphemy, respectively. The Aquinas 101 videos on Faith, Hope, and Charity are very helpful in these regards. The question of growth in natural virtue while in mortal sin is subtle. Man has a nature, which has natural powers, and thus he really can grow in natural virtues, which perfect those powers, without needing the grace of God. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were, by external signs, virtuous men-and especially intellectually virtuous (possessing the virtues of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, which perfect the intellect's powers of understanding). And they were so because they perfected their natural powers (their passions, intellect, and will) toward their proper natural ends. It is also quite possible that the grace of God was working in them invisibly, as it was in the Patriarchs of the Old Testament and all righteous people who lived before Christ (see ST I, q. 43, a. 6). Because natural virtues do not require grace, someone in mortal sin can still possess them. While one mortal sin cuts off our friendship with God, it does not entirely destroy our natural virtues. Repeated mortal sins, however, do destroy our natural virtues in the exact manner outlined by the video.

@@ThomisticInstitute Thank you for taking the time to make a thoughtful and clarifying reply. The distinction, which at the time of posting, I hadn't been aware of, has been made clearer to me. I'll continue my efforts at understanding. Best wishes.

@@Patrick-gr2wr You bet. Glad this was of help! God bless you.