Stupidity and Intelligence

Today, I have been musing on what makes people act in a stupid manner.

I know what intelligent actions involve-prayer, reflection, rational discourse, using the gifts of the Holy Spirit given in confirmation, getting advice from a spiritual director, reading, studying the Faith, doing penance.

Intelligence involves the entire person being focused on using the gifts at hand to learn the Faith and use it daily.

We are all made in the image and likeness of God, and the intellectual gift of thinking and decision making using will power-the will being one way we are like God, the other being our freedom and the third, which is the likeness, is grace.

I have written much on grace, so follow the tags, but using one's intellectual capacity to the fullest potential defines being human.

So, what makes people stupid and what does it mean to be stupid?

Second definition first-stupidity is dullness of mind, ignorance, and even obtuse, or stubbornness.

What makes people freely chose to be dull, ignorant and stubborn is, simply, sin.

Stupidity grows out of many sins, in fact, and here is an incomplete list:

lust
sloth
greed
anger
pride
gluttony
envy.....

I hope you recognize these as the seven deadly sins.

Lust consumes the imagination with false idolatry, thus making people dull of mind. Intemperance of thought, such as curiosity, and the chasing of emotional religious experience, are rooted in lust.

Sloth stops growth, makes one give up on holiness and ignores the virtue of studiosity.

Greed consumes one with false gods of money, things, status, power, making one into a beast instead of a thinking human being.

Anger brings about unforgiveness, rash judgements, prejudices, and intemperance, allowing the mind to dwell upon real or imagined hurts.

Pride creates an entire false world by which a person judges everything but themselves. Pride also dulls the mind, the soul, one's conscience.

Gluttony absolutely makes one stupid, as intemperance in food and drink slow down the thought processes and make a person dwell on satisfaction and comfort rather than study or reflection. Those who spend too much time on eating and drinking have little time or inclination for study.

Envy stops mental acuity by causing a person to dwell upon what others have and what others do. Envy causes shallow thinking and gossip, leading a person away from reflection and prayer.

I add fear to this list, as fear deadens the intellect. Fear makes a person fall back into the morass of negative emotions, protection, paranoia and self-preservation, all which stop intellectual growth.

Sin causes stupidity. Not facing and eliminating one's predominant fault causes stupidity. Refusing to follow the wisdom of the ages of Church guidance regarding holiness causes stupidity.

Wanting one's own way over and over and over is just plain stupid.

I incorporate the ideas of an old post to reveal how one can break out of stupidity. Humility is the answer.



Sunday, 22 July 2012

Perfection Series: Our Predominant Fault Two

Posted by Supertradmum

Newark Cathedral in England has some amazing stained glass. The Seven Deadly Sins plus one, 

show that the Medievals were being taught what we moderns have forgotten--that sin binds us to 

Satan and death.

Garrigou-Lagrange states that "it is of primary importance that we recognize our predominant 

fault and have no illusions about it. This is is so much the more necessary as our adversary, the 

enemy of our soul, knows it quite well and makes use of it to stir up trouble in and about us. In the 

citadel of our interior life, which is defended by the different virtues, the predominant fault is the weak spot, undefended by the theological and moral virtues." 

On this picture above,  Envy and Pride are depicted. 

Most of the characters have chains.


Many times we forget who is out to claim us for hell.

Lust and Sloth (who has beads) point to the need for deep, persistent prayer, as do all the other Deadly Sins. Garrigou-Lagrange writes that we must ask God, seek Him, for enlightenment as to one's predominant fault. We must ask him to remove the fault, help us to cooperate with Him is purification. We must be serious about our personal daily examinations of conscience.

What is really tricky is that the fault may seem like a virtue.

He gives us these questions to ask ourselves: "Toward what do my most ordinary preoccupations 

tend, in the morning when I awake, or when I am alone? Where do my thoughts and desires go spontaneously?"

For the sake of our souls, we must be brutally honest with ourselves.

Here is a great question from the Dominican: "What is generally the cause or source of my sadness and joy? What is the general motive of my action, the ordinary origin of my sins...a succession of sins or a state of resistance to grace, notably when this resistance persists for several days and leads me to omit my exercises of piety?" On the right, we see Violence and Gluttony. I would think that Gluttony is one of the most prevalent of the Deadly Sins in the West. That Violence is obvious in certain countries indicates certain people have this fundamental, predominant sin.

If we deny something which someone else points out, it is probably our dominant fault fighting to 

remain hidden to our consciousness. We need grace. We need God.

Satan watches us. He hears us speak. He knows our predominant fault and uses temptations to lead 

us to yet another sin. And, here is the big point, quoting St. John 8:34, made by Garrigou-Lagrange.

"Whosoever committeth sin 

is the servant of sin."

Also, quoting Thomas Aquinas, 

the author states "Every man 

judges of what is good according to his good or evil interior dispositions."


The good priest gives us the example of how the predominant fault becomes our greatest virtue. He shows the text revealing the anger and vengeance of St. John, who later in life, wrote the most beautiful passages on love. 

The "son of anger" became the 

poet and apostle of love. Wrath and Avarice on the right from Newark show contorted souls. Notice 

again the chains.

We have much work to do. Let us pray for good spiritual directors, holy wives and husbands, excellent companions in monasteries and convents, and holy friends to point out our worst flaw and to work on 

the remedy.

For the sake of our souls...to be continued.

Catholic Taliban

I am very concerned about some Catholic parents, most likely not anyone who reads this blog, who have decided that their home schooled girls do not need academic training or education.

I consider not teaching your girls classical education as child abuse. Western education was created by the Catholic Church through the Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, and many other orders featured on this blog.

The great heritage of liberal arts education was created by the members of these orders, as were the great colleges and universities of Europe. Catholic girls should be educated so that they can attend the great Catholic colleges of our day: Thomas Aquinas, Wyoming Catholic, Christendom and so on.

That Catholic parents choose anti-intellectualism alarms me, as to be a Catholic is to be educated in the glorious disciplines created and fostered by Catholics throughout the history of the Church.

Why would parents not want their girls to learn the classics? Disciplining the mind by studying grammar, music, math, art, literature, history, geography, and, of course, religion, have been part of our Catholic culture for over a millennium.

Do these anti-intellectual Catholics, many of whom are trads and charismatics, (sharing an odd ideal which they have in common), think that God does not intend us to use our intellect?

The intellect must be developed not only for skills, for logic, for rational discourse, but for prayer. The worse sins happen in the intellect, and all Catholics must learn to fight these sins in that part of our being.

Intellectual purity does not mean the absence of intellectual studies, on the contrary. Purity of the intellect does not mean emptiness, but a working with knowledge in grace, in appropriate studies, in the virtue of studiosity. In fact, this virtue cannot be ignored without sinning.

Recall my series on the Maritains, intelligence and prayer; recall my many posts on classical education. Follow the tags.

Virtue training involves the mind, not merely the hands. Virtue training comes with developing one's intellectual gifts, which we all have at various levels as God has given us, of intellectual abilities.

To ignore the disciplines of learning to is actually interfere not only with God's plans for one's life, but essential for coming to know God.

Few saints had infused knowledge. Most learned about God through the hard study and meditation, first of Scripture, and then of reading and studying the Doctors of the Church, and the writings and sermons of the great saints.

To deny children, especially high school age girls of the beauties of knowledge is, simply, child abuse. Some parents think that these girls or young women who only know how to sew, cook, take care of children will be good wives. Absolutely not. The Catholic husband needs a help-mate even in the area of intellectual discussion.

We do not need ignorant girls and ignorant women. We need savvy women, who can teach their children all the subjects in home schools. Of course, the skills of cooking, sewing and so forth can also be accomplished. All these skills can be learned well easily. Getting a higher degree does not mean one does not know how to cook or sew or can tomatoes. Many of us did all these things, and more. We made candles, soap, went back to the basics in household duties, and still managed to learn various academic subjects.

We learned how to properly entertain for visitors, and we learned womanly manners. We also learned that to be a woman meant learning our heritage, culture, faith.

Look at the writings of the great Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena.

We have in the Church, these women,  who are Doctors of the Church, not because they could cook and sew, but because they could pray, write, advise people, even popes. They knew the Scriptures, and much theology, as well a music.

To ignore the glories of our own culture, the Catholic culture, amounts to choosing anti-intellectualism and becoming a Catholic Taliban. Ignoring the intellect of young women does not prepare them for sainthood, but for stunted growth, and possibly, rebellion.

Repost

Monday, 8 December 2014

The Virtue of Studiosity

Posted by Supertradmum

Father Chad Ripperger has been one of the most influential priests in my life via his amazing set of talks and some personal input. He is the reason I am in the third order which he started. His intellect and spiritual insights are gifts from God.

One of the things he has pointed out is something I have written on this blog-the sin of curiosity.

This sin causes people to run after approved and unapproved apparitions. We do not need to concern ourselves with visions, but we do need to study our faith.

Recently, Father noted that curiosity is a vice, even when it is connected to wanting to know the latest about certain apparitions, even approved ones.

The virtue which is the opposite of this vice is studiosity, the virtue connected to temperance, which is a search for the truth which is disciplined and ordered. 

We are responsible for knowing the Faith, and we are also responsible for dulling our own intellects.

Raissa, as I noted, cried out in her diary for people to know their religion, the Catholic religion.

Without knowledge of the Faith, one easily falls into many other vices, and we are responsible for that type of falling away.

Studiosity is a virtue. If one is an adult and never studies the Faith in the Catechism or the encyclicals, or other excellent books, one is committing two sins at least. One is sloth and the other is neglect of conscience.

Ask yourselves honestly in your examination of conscience whether you are studying. If one merely chooses one author, such as St. Alphonsus, or the Pope Emeritus, or St. Augustine, or St. Therese of Lisieux, one is doing one's duty.

But the virtue demands that we study not only spirituality and prayer, but doctrine and dogma.

Studiosity is connected to the great virtue of temperance, the virtue which strengthens our reason. Temperance prepares us to combat temptation. Studiosity allows us to know the Faith so that we can avoid temptations and prepare for holiness.

Are you studying anything solid with regard to the Faith?

For those caught up with seers and visions, even approved ones, I challenge you to set those books aside and begin to study your Faith.

We are required to do this, and the fact that there is a virtue which helps us do so should be comforting.

Thomas Aquinas makes this distinction between curiosity, which actually is connected to lust and greed, and studying.  Curiosity connects us with the senses, not the intellect. Whereas studying increases our knowledge in order to help us know God and ourselves.

To be constantly distracted by trivia may be an indication that one has fallen into the vice of curiosity.



to be continued...