Did Thomas Aquinas teach that women were just defective men created solely for reproduction?

A question came to me recently from some friends who were reading Women, Sex, and the Church, a collection of essays treating various Catholic teachings on sex and marriage as they relate to women.  In one of the essays, a woman categorized as a "dissident theologian" is quoted, wherein she asserts that St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Universal Doctor of the Church, taught that women A) are merely "defective" and "misbegotten" men who B) God only created so that there would be someone to carry babies during their 9 months of gestation.  The question, of course, is just what St. Thomas taught on this subject?

The first step in considering this question is to locate the reference to which this theologian is referring.  This does not prove difficult, the passage in question being located right where one would expect it to be in the first part of Aquinas' monumental Summa Theologica in his treatise on man.  Specifically, the issue comes up in article 1 of question 92 of the first part.  Here, Aquinas is answering the question of whether or not woman should have been created in the beginning at the same time as man.  He responds that yes, she should have been.  Let us look at the particular texts in question.  

The first comes from the article's first objection and it's response:

Objection 1. It would seem that the woman should not have been made in the first production of things. For the Philosopher says (De Gener. ii, 3), that "the female is a misbegotten male." But nothing misbegotten or defective should have been in the first production of things. Therefore woman should not have been made at that first production.  

Reply to Objection 1. As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence; such as that of a south wind, which is moist, as the Philosopher observes (De Gener. Animal. iv, 2). On the other hand, as regards human nature in general, woman is not misbegotten, but is included in nature's intentionas directed to the work of generation. Now the general intention of nature depends on God, Who is the universal Author of nature. Therefore, in producing nature, God formed not only the male but also the female.

We do see the "defective and misbegotten" text in question here.  It is first introduced as a quote from Aristotle to support the idea that woman should not have been created.  Aristotle, the objection asserts, declared that woman is simply a misbegotten man, and so she should not have been created in the first place, since nothing that is defective ought to have been created in the beginning, when all was perfect.  In brief, Aquinas' reply is that woman is only misbegotten in her individual nature but not in her universal nature, and so it would have been fine for her to have been created at the beginning by virtue of her universal nature.

However, the soundness of Aquinas' reply is not at issue here.  Rather, it is the question of woman being "misbegotten."  Specifically, we now see, it is the issue of her being misbegotten in her individual nature.  What exactly does this mean?  Fortunately, St. Thomas provides an explanation of why a woman is said to be misbegotten.  The male seed, he says, produces a perfect male likeness, and therefore he reasons that the production of a woman entails some kind of defect.  Aquinas then bases the rest of his response on this fact.  This is important because the "fact" is in error: the male seed does not produce a perfect male likeness.  It can produce either a male or a female, because sperm can contain either an X chromosome - leading to a female child - or a Y chromosome - leading to a male.  Of course we know this now, but in Aquinas' day (and Aristotle's, for that matter) this was not understood.  

It helps to try to look at things from the perspective of people of Aquinas' day.  They knew a little bit about the biology of reproduction, but not very much.  The microscope had not even been invented, and the theory of chromosomes was still nearly 700 years away.  What these people did know was that children developed in women after men deposited their "seed" during intercourse.  Women were thus understood as being responsible for giving a child it's body (as it grew and developed, taking what material it needed from her own) while the role of males was to give the initial seed.  What this seed was, exactly, nobody really knew.  The philosophers considered that it was the form of the child - the "plan" that directed how the material from the mother should be organized.  Whereas a blueprint indicates how girders, wood, and so forth are to be arranged to create the intended building, the man's seed would indicate how the the woman's biological material was to be arranged to form a child.

In any case, one element of their reasoning was a fairly fundamental principle which we follow even today: you can't give what you don't have.  To us, it means that a person who wants to teach must first learn, that a person who wants to bring peace to friends must first gain personal peace, and other similar platitudes along with more basic things like the simple fact that I can't give you $100 when I only have $50 in my pocket.  To the people of Aquinas' time, it made sense that a male could only give maleness.  Therefore, a father's seed could only give the "blueprint" to make another male.  Think about it.  It has been obvious even since the first human beings that we get our "form" from our parents: we look like them!  It's easy to see, then, how people could reason that when a father gives his seed he is giving that "blueprint" that made him.  

What all of this means for the "biology" behind Aquinas' reasoning is that men didn't have the capability of giving the form of a woman in their seed.  Therefore, a woman would have to come about by some defect in the form that a mother did receive.  Further helping us see just how strongly an erroneous understanding of biology influenced Aquinas, he goes on to list what were at the time considered some possible causes of this defect, even including a 'moist wind!'  The individual nature of a woman, he therefore says, is misbegotten.  In other words, in and of herself (individually), a woman is not the result of the perfect transmission of a father's seed.  

Now, we could simply end matters here recognizing that working with a more accurate concept of reproductive biology, Aquinas would have had an entirely different answer.  Were we do to so, however, we would miss something very important about Aquinas' point.  To see exactly what, we need to follow his reasoning through even from his faulty foundation, for next he goes on to address how woman, in her general human nature, is not misbegotten.  Nature, he points out, requires both men and women.  In other words, humanity by its very nature is made up of men and women.  There must be both, or there would be neither - for nobody would ever be conceived.  Now this is from a purely natural standpoint, even apart from considering God's role in things.  It is only at the very end that Aquinas brings God into things, pointing out that God directs nature and so God of course determined that humanity would consist of men and women.  In no uncertain terms, he says that God always intended that there be women.  

Further, we can see from other places in his writings that St. Thomas did not consider women to be of lower value, worth, or dignity than men.  For example, he teaches that the highest act a creature can perform is the intellective contemplation of God (in layman's terms, a way of defining Heaven) which women can of course also participate in.  In his reply to objection 1 in the 4th article of question 93, he rejects the idea that the image of God is not found in women and teaches that both men and women possess and intellectual nature, which he says is the image of God.  Other examples could be cited.  

It is important then to consider just how St. Thomas understands women to be defective or misbegotten men.  He does not mean it as we might use the terms to describe a defective CD player, for example.  Should I go to the store and purchase a CD player with as a broken motor, it would be defective in and of itself insofar as it would not work.  Understood in this way, a defective male would be an impotent man, or a man who had some other problem, but a male who, like the CD player, did not "work."  On the other hand, consider the chocolate chip cookie.  As the story goes, Ruth Wakefield was one day baking chocolate cookies only to discover she did not have the proper ingredients.  Substituting semi-sweet chocolate chips, she unexpectedly created what is today the most popular cookie of them all.  The chocolate cookie, while having a value and worth all its own, was a defective or "misbegotten" chocolate cookie.

The key point this analogy seeks to illustrate is that the "defect" of the woman is not a defect in the sense of a valuelessness, a badness, a brokenness, or even necessarily an inferiority.  Rather, it is a difference from what was originally intended (by the seed): a defect from the male seed's expected ultimate end.  Ironically, we can see a parallel in the way prenatal development really does function: it is generally accepted that everybody begins as a female until the Y chromosome starts to trigger the proper physiological changes to produce a male, and so in a similar sense to Aquinas' ancient one, all men are in a sense "misbegotten" women.  God, of course, intends that souls He intends to be women be women and those He intends to be men be men, and this is an even more important point.  Aquinas' conception of the defect here is purely a material, biological one (and, of course, one based on faulty biology in the first place).  However, he firmly insists (over and over in the course of other questions, in fact) that God's intent is that women be conceived.  In St. Thomas' eyes, then, God does something akin to altering nature itself so as to bring women about.

The second issue - whether or not Aquinas taught that women were made only for the purposes of bearing children - is an easier one to tackle.  The theologian is referring to the main portion of Aquinas answer in the question we have been considering.  He writes:

It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture says, as a "helper" to man; not, indeed, as a helpmate in otherworks, as some say, since man can be more efficiently helped by another man in other works; but as a helper in the work of generation.

It is only necessary to note three brief points.  

First, Aquinas' primary meaning here is, again, natural and not supernatural.  Just as in discussing misbegotten and defectiveness he was thinking in terms of the natural order of things (that is, as regards how women come about according to nature rather than to God), here he is also speaking primarily about women's natural purpose.  He goes on to illustrate his point by considering the ways that plants and animals reproduce.  Some plants, he says, reproduce on their own without the need for others.  Plants, however, are not very high creatures and their sole purpose for existence is to make more plants, and so always have the entirety of their reproductive abilities contained within themselves.  Animals, however, have other purposes, and humans above all have that highest of purposes: contemplating God.  Given this, he says that man should be separated from reproduction so as that he only exists as a reproductive entity during certain times - namely, intercourse  In other words, it's important that human beings aren't in a constant state of reproduction (like some plants) so as to most befit creatures whose ultimate purpose is in the spiritual.  Given this,  mankind's reproductive function is split up amongst different people, and so, he says, nature demands that women exist to take on part of the reproductive function.  For this reason, when considering how woman is a helper for man, he ties it very particularly to reproduction. 

Second, in other places he explicitly states that women have purposes apart from reproduction.  For example, in the very next article he writes, "Thirdly, because, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 12), the human male and female are united, not only for generation, as with other animals, but also for the purpose of domestic life, in which each has his or her particular duty..."

Third, as has been pointed out already, St. Thomas teaches how God made humanity, in His image and likeness, as man and woman.  Women, he says, have the image of God in them just as do men, and they are able to practice that highest intellective contemplation of God just as are men.  This is a particularly important point, for it is discussed in his treatment of the end of man's origin.  In other words, he teaches these matters as part of a discussion about why God made man in the first place.  Thus, it is very clear that Aquinas considered women to have been created in the Image of God to receive His happiness just as were men.   

St. Thomas was not perfect - though he was close.  On some issues (perhaps most famously the Immaculate Conception) he came to erroneous conclusions because of limitations in the understanding of scientific issues in his day.  The case we have examined here is one such instance.  One ought always to turn to the official teaching of the Church when seeking certainty on a given matter, for it is that teaching which is Divinely guarded and protected from error by Lord.  However, when seeking to understand this teaching better, the reasons for this teaching, or its deeper working, St. Thomas is the first source to which to turn.  Not only did he write about virtually everything, but his is the official theology of the Church - the official "way of understanding" things, as set forth by the popes.  His Summa Theologica was even placed on the altar at the council of Trent alongside the Bible!  A valuable source indeed!

The Philosophy of Gender

As part of a discussion, I have been prompted to write a post regarding the philosophy of gender. That is, what is the masculine, and what is the feminine? Let us begin by distinguishing between gender and sex.

First, gender and sex are not the same thing. Sex is biological. The sex of a person identifies the person as male or female - testicles or ovaries. Now the way the terms are normally used today, sex and gender are both understood to refer to this biological classification. What's important here is what we mean here in discussing gender, rather than what the words may mean in the dictionary, or philosophically, or whatever else.

Gender - as we're using the word here - refers to a person's quality of being masculine or feminine. Now consider how we think about masculinity. What makes a thing masculine? Typically, people associate the masculine with men, and the feminine with women. They define the terms on the basis of males and females. Things are said to be masculine insofar as they are like, or related to, men. Things are called feminine if they are like, or related to, women. Now this makes sense, and it's entirely consistent with the way most of us have grown up thinking. It's just obvious, right?

Well, if we think about it, we will realize one very important hidden assumption in this way of thinking. Namely, this definition is based upon the idea that the biological distinction between men and women is a primary characteristic of existence. In other words, in calling things masculine or feminine based on whether things are reminiscent or related to men or women, we're implicitly asserting that the distinction between men and women is something upon which other things can be based. That doesn't mean everything can be based on this distinction, but that at least some things can be - namely, those things which are called masculine or feminine.

At first glance, this seems fine. However, there's a real problem here when we consider God. God is called "He," after all. God calls Himself "He" in the Scriptures. Now God is not a male. First of all, God is spirit - He has no biology! Second, God created maleness and femaleness. So God is not male, but rather, He is masculine. That God is masculine is something that the monotheistic religions agree on. In other words, it's not controversial. It's a pretty well established fact. Yet if God is masculine, and masculinity is based upon men, well then we obviously have yet another problem, because first, we have already recalled that God created maleness, and He cannot be based upon something He created for He existed "before" He created it, and because second, that would make God dependent upon and defined by something, which He, the eternal Almighty, the uncaused cause, the one necessary existing thing, is not.

The reality is that masculinity and femininity are not defined by that which is male or that which is female. Rather, masculinity and femininity are based, in some way, upon God. Yet God is masculine, not feminine. In this we seem to have another problem, for how can we establish what is feminine if that which it is based upon is masculine?

The solution to this problem, and the answer which really gives us what we need to fully understand this issue, is that gender is relational. It is a matter of the relation between things. Let's simply forget about the words "masculine" and "feminine" for a moment, and simply consider God. God is God. Everything else is not. The important relation here is between that which is not God, and that which is. Now let's replace our term, recalling that we call God masculine. That which is not God, then, we can call feminine. Note here that we're dealing with relations, not identities. This is a very important distinction, because it's the difference between saying that men are gods and women are not - not something that we're trying to do!

Therefore, let's consider the relations between God and that which is not. How does God relate to that which is not? We could certainly list perhaps an infinite number of items, but let's keep it simple for now. First, God is separate from that which is not God. He is apart from it, not a part of it. In other words, God is not in creation, but "stands" apart from it. Second, God enters into that which is not God to effect His purposes. He has to do this, obviously, if He is to interact with creation, for we just recognized that He is not a part of or in it. That is, God enters into creation, either as the Holy Spirit acts in the world or as the Second Person of the Trinity became Incarnate and so literally united to creation.

We could go deeper, but let's stick with these basic relations for now. Not only are these simple ideas, but if we think about it they are really two very fundamental aspects of the relationship on which other ideas can be built. Now these relations can be expressed by the terms immanent and eminent (or transcendent). The quality of eminence or transcendence is the quality of being apart from a thing, being beyond it. We often speak of God as transcendent, and by this we mean that He is beyond the world; God transcends creation. The quality of immanence refers to being in or with something. I am immanent to creation, for I am a part of it.

These are the two basic concepts we want to keep in mind as we discuss the relation of gender. Recalling that God is masculine and Not God feminine, apply these ideas and then consider the relations between men and women. When we considered God, we focused on two of the more obvious and important relations between He and Creation. Where men and women are concerned, let us consider what may be the most obvious important relations between them: the creation of new life through their union. We see here very similar ideas regarding immanence and eminence that we saw with God. In that ultimate of human relations, procreation, man is really apart from the "creation," that is, the baby. He enters into the woman from without and accomplishes His purpose, the fertilization of her egg, that is, the "creation" of new life. The woman, on the other hand, is with the child. Throughout the entire process she is always, in a very important sense, connected to the child, one with the child. The child is in a real way truly a part of her. The man is beyond the child, while the woman is with the child, and the child in the woman.

It is important here to make a realization: if the feminine is the Not God to the masculine's God, then in their relation to one another, women are like femininity, and men are like masculinity. As God relates to creation, He is eminent to it. As man relates to a newly created child, he is eminent to it. Now creation is really immanent to itself, just as woman is immanent to the child. This is the real meaning of masculinity and femininity, at least in the sense in which we say that we are all feminine to God, and in the sense that we are the bride of Christ, and so forth: the masculine is that which is eminent, and the feminine, immanent.

In fact, we can see some extremely interesting examples of this throughout history. Consider pagan religions, which worshiped idols. The gods of the pagans were immanent: they were a part of the world, not transcending it. It is no coincidence at all that the pagans almost always had priestesses. Their gods were immanent, and so their sacrifices were offered by women, that is, by the feminine. The Jews, who worshiped an eminent God, had priests to offer sacrifice. They had men, who are eminent in their human relationships, to offer to their eminent God.

Why Have Faith in a God We Cannot See?

In a recent conversation, the following question was posed:

"Why are we called to be *faithful*?

....

Faith in the unseen is central to Christianity.

In a sense, it is also central to science, as we scientists proceed by believing that
the world is rational and, by experimentation, we will find the hidden laws that
govern this universe.

Yet, what I don't comprehend is:

Why are we asked to believe in a Person, with whom we cannot have an explicit, clear, obvious conversation. Any relationship - professional, friendship, love - starts by establishing a clear line of communication. I can trust my best friend because I know him; I have talked to him, listened to his opinion and had lunch with him many times.

Unfortunately I do not hear the voice of God in an unambiguous manner.
I can possibly attribute some of my feelings to His voice, but can never be 100% sure. This is an almost insurmountable obstacle to my journey.

In other words, things would be immensely simpler if God's voice were audible
by all in a clear, unambiguous fashion.

What do you think? I am curious to hear your thoughts!"

My response is as follows:


Davide, thanks for starting the discussion.

I like the fact that you began by pointing out that faith is necessary for science in a certain sense. I think this is a very important, and often overlooked point. It is also a point which can lead us into a greater understanding of the question that you posed. Let us consider this notion of faith in science for a moment.

As you said, the scientists must began with the assumption that the world is rational and can be understood. To this, I would add that the scientist must believe that his senses, and indeed the senses of all other scientists, accurately depict this rational world. In other words, when the scientist's eyes report to him that a frog is green, he must believe that the frog actually *is* green. Considering this, we see that there are actually a number of beliefs at play here: the belief that the scientist's eyes accurately capture the frog, the belief that the scientist's nerves accurately transmit the information captured by the eyes, and the belief that the scientist's brain accurately processes and interprets the information received by the nerves. The scientist must also believe that this is true of all other scientists, for his work is based upon theirs, and so if there is any problem in how any of these other scientists gather and process information, then the information that he receives from them would be inaccurate. Thus, I suppose we could add to our list the need to believe that those processes which package and transmit information *out* of the scientist are just as accurate as those which gather and process the information.

Now when we think about this, we can even extend these concerns to the everyday. Whether one is a scientist or not, each person must believe that the world is rational and that the human processes of interacting with the world are rational and are accurate. We see then that we all believe in a great many things, and indeed we all accept these things on nothing more than faith, for they are not verifiable because of the fact that any attempt to verify them would rely upon the very system that we are seeking to verify.

If, then, we are to have any real basis for science, or for anything else for that matter, it is necessary that we rely upon something outside of the system. However, in this case the system is the world itself; it is not possible to examine the system from the outside. If only it were possible to approach the system from the outside, then we could have greater confidence in a great many things, but it is not.

Given the dead end that we have arrived at, let us now turn from this consideration of science to consider the other side of the issue, religion. Whereas science is that endeavor in which man observes the world around him so as to understand it, religion is that endeavor in which man seeks to interact with that which is beyond the world around him. That is, science is concerned with the natural, religion with the supernatural. While there are many differences between the two, perhaps the biggest, or most obvious, pertains to how one knows anything in each. The scientist seeks out knowledge, observing, experimenting, and analyzing. In religion, there is none of this, because religion is not concerned with anything which *can* be observed or analyzed. As has already been stated, science concerns itself with nature - the world around us - while religion concerns itself with the *supernatural* - that which is beyond the world. In religion, man does not observe, but rather, he receives revelation: the supernatural is revealed to humanity.

CS Lewis addresses this point in a helpful way. He says to consider a man who is studying a rock. That rock can do nothing to reveal itself to the man, and the man must do all of the work in coming to understand the rock. Moving up the chain, Mr. Lewis says, we come to something like a bacterium. Still, the man must do almost all of the work in understanding the bacterium, which can do hardly much more than the rock to explain itself. Now if the man were to study something greater than a bacterium, such as an insect, the insect could do perhaps slightly more than the bacterium, but still most of the work is on the man's part. As we move up the chain, the ability of the studied to reveal itself to the studier increases, and the amount of work the man needs to do decreases. In fact, the amount of work the man *is able to do* also decreases. So, when the man studies a dog, there is some degree to which the dog must cooperate if the man is to understand it. If the dog does not wish to be examined, the he may bite the man. When we get to another human being, we find that nearly equal work must be done on the part of the student and the studied. If I wish to get to know you, Davide, you must cooperate to a large degree. I cannot know all but some of the most superficial details of your life if you do not wish to cooperate, and if you do not reveal things about yourself to me. Now, what if the man wished to learn about something *greater* than himself, such as an angel? Now we find that the angel must do a great deal of the work, and the man's capabilities for actively studying have diminished a great deal. Ultimately, this chain ends with God, and when it comes to God, the man can do *nothing* to know God, just as he had to do *everything* to understand the rock. God must do everything, and here we find revelation: God reveals Himself to man so that man may know him.

When we approach things this way, we see that the whole concept of revelation makes a fair bit of sense. If God is a higher form of life than me, then of course He will need to reveal Himself to me, rather than my observing and studying Him, and this thought is all the more profound when we realize that the difference between a human being and God is infinitely more than the difference between a human being and an insect or a rock. Revelation is, by all logic, necessary if we are to know anything about a being that is greater than us, like God. Of course, God has revealed Himself to us, and so we do have some knowledge of Him.

Given this, let us return to the questions of understanding the world, for something has changed. We are no longer at a dead end in our thinking, for indeed we now have something which we did not before: input from outside of the system. In God's revelation to us, we have knowledge which is *not* within the system of the world, and we can use this knowledge to help overcome our previous problem. God has revealed that He is rational, and He has further revealed that He created us with rationality. Further, God does not reveal Himself, per se, through those things which must be observed and so catch us in a cycle of circular reasoning. Rather, He reveals Himself to us, by Grace, in our inner being. In other words, He does not reveal Himself through obtained knowledge, but through infused knowledge. Certainly, we do find God revealing us in ways we can observe - through the Scriptures, for example - but ultimately, each individual's knowledge of Him is not based upon any of these things, but upon His own personal work in the soul of the individual. Many read the Bible, while only some believe. Many study the historical reliability of the story of Christ, while only some come to faith. The difference is in God's interaction with the inner soul of the individual. These external things are only ancillary to that. We now have reason to trust our eyes and our lobes, and a basis on which to believe that the frog is green - so long as we believe in God.

But alas! So fast as our problem seems to have been solved, we are confronted with another which is even greater than the first! Before, we could not be certain of our observations of the world, and then we came to see that thanks to God's self-revelation to us, these observations had been given a foundation. Now, we find that that foundation relies again on belief - this time, not a belief in our nerves or the fundamental rationality of the world, but in God. This problem is worse because we realize that even if there were in fact something outside of the system containing God which could give us foundation to believe in Him, then we would have to believe in *that,* and so on and so on, ad infinitum.

We see that belief is necessary. We cannot function without it. Ultimately, we will have to believe in *something.* The question is about what we choose to believe in. Given this, let us consider St. Thomas' Aquinas' treatment of belief. The question is posed, 'Can the object of faith be something seen?' That is, is it possible to have faith in something which one can observe? Thomas replies:

"I answer that, Faith implies assent of the intellect to that which is believed. Now the intellect assents to a thing in two ways. First, through being moved to assent by its very object, which is known either by itself(as in the case of first principles, which are held by the habit of understanding), or through something else already known (as in the case of conclusions which are held by the habit of science. Secondly the intellect assents to something, not through being sufficiently moved to this assent by its proper object, but through an act of choice, whereby it turns voluntarily to one side rather than to the other: and if this be accompanied by doubt or fear of the opposite side, there will be opinion, while, if there be certainty and no fear of the other side, there will be faith.

Now those things are said to be seen which, of themselves, move the intellect or the senses to knowledge of them. Wherefore it is evident that neither faith nor opinion can be of things seen either by the senses or by the intellect."

Here we see that St. Thomas confirms our suggestion that faith is a choice. If we submit our minds to something because we see it in itself (what Thomas calls the first principles), then certainly we do not have *faith* in it. I do not have faith in the computer I am using to type this, but I have strict knowledge of it. In this case, if we *do not* submit our minds to it we are delusional. Similarly, if our intellect assents to something which we do not see itself, but which follows from what we have seen (what Thomas calls the second principles), that is not faith either. For example, we can come to the conclusion that the sun is made of helium and hydrogen based upon a large mass of specifically observed information, including the spectrographies of various elements, the way that light diffracts though various gases, through glass, and so on and so on. This conclusion is not faith, for it is based entirely upon the interaction of various pieces of knowledge.

Thus, we arrive at a second important conclusion. First, we realize that we must believe in *something* and cannot function if we rely only on strict knowledge, for without belief we can in fact have no strict knowledge at all. Now we realize that faith must be a choice, and further that this choice must by its very definition be different from knowledge.

Given all of this, let us turn to the question(s) that you posed: "Why are we asked to believe in a Person, with whom we cannot have an explicit, clear, obvious conversation?" The answer might be obvious by now: we cannot interact with God *other* than by belief, at least not right now (more on this below). Any interaction we have with God must be based upon a belief in Him and in that presence He has used to bring us to belief in the inner-persons of our souls. This is, of course, a key point: we believe because He has given us to believe; it is by His Grace that we believe. Thus, the question is not *as* difficult as it may be otherwise. After all, our belief is not simply something we have, of ourselves, chosen to have. It has been given to us by the One whom we believe in. In other words, we could choose to believe because God, in the depths of our souls, presented us with the choice to believe.

It is also for this reason that faith is more certain than knowledge. Knowledge is based upon the belief that everything works as we believe it does: the world is rational, our faculties accurately capture and interpret this rational world, etc. Our faith is not based upon these sorts of things, which themselves depend upon faith (so that we may have an extra-systemic foundation), but upon God's touching our souls in a personal way: knowledge of the world flows from the relationship that we have with God. Because the Holy Spirit has personally touched us and given us faith, we can move forward and view the world in a rational way.

Thus, Christ tells us that it is *better* that the Holy Spirit - which we cannot see - be given us than that He Himself be physically with us: "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you." (John 16:7). So long is present to us physically, uttering words, performing physical actions, etc., our relationship with Him depends upon our senses. Not only does this pose the problems with which I began this discussion, but it relegates our relationship with God to the purely "physical." That greater, more perfect relationship with Him - the relationship of the soul - cannot come from talking to the man Jesus, or from walking around with Him. Yet when He left the earth, it made way for this greater relationship, the spiritual relationship.

Consider the difference this makes. The apostles spent 3 years with Jesus Christ the man, talking to Him, getting to know Him as we do our friends, eating with Him, observing Him, listening to His clear and unambiguous words, and so forth. Yet when things became difficult, they abandoned Him. Even the sight of Christ glorified in the Transfiguration was not enough to preserve their love of Him, for of the three who went up the mount to see that sight, only John remained with Him through the Crucifixion. James abandoned Him. Peter denied Him! These men had true *knowledge* of Christ - they observed Him and interacted with Him just as we do with one another, and yet they still abandoned Him, just as we so often turn upon, abandon, and hurt one another though we see how real we all are and how real is the suffering that our offenses cause to our loved ones.

Even after these men had seen Christ *rise from the dead,* they still were not swayed enough. When He had commanded them to preach the Gospel to all nations and ascended to Heaven before their eyes, they returned to the upper room. They did not get to the task He had given them. It was only at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon them and moved their souls, that the apostles got about to the work Christ had called them to. It was the Spirit which made all the difference. They had seen everything, observed everything, physically been at Christ's side and experienced everything from His miracles to His Transfiguration into Glory to His Resurrection and Ascension, all to little effect. When the *Spirit* came, this changed. The relationship *then* became solid, the Love *then* unwavering.

None of this, of course, is to the detriment of observations and evidences. Indeed, this is what makes Christ different from other purported gods. Christ entered into history, and, so far as we believe that our world is rational and our senses can apprehend it, we can examine the evidence for His life, death, and resurrection. Yet, as St. Thomas explains (see Summa Theologica II-II, 2, 10), and as I mentioned above, this is ancillary to the choice of the individual, moved by Holy Spirit, to believe. These things support faith, but they do not cause it. The cause is nothing more than God's Grace moving the soul to believe, and the soul freely choosing to consent to this movement.

Therein lies a critical point which I have alluded to above but which deserves far more explicit treatment. To quote Thérèse of Lisiuex, "everything is grace." Everything is Grace. Everything is Grace. I repeat it due to the utter importance, above all, of this statement. We believe *only* by Grace. God does not ask us to believe in anything; He moves us to. He does not ask us to trust Him though we have never heard His words aubily; He brings us to. He does not tell us to obey Him; He draws us to. Our part is only that we consent to His Grace, or that we do not consent. At one point, a person does not believe, and then God moves the person's soul. He poses a question to the soul in some way that is indescribable and yet is understood perfectly by the soul, even if in our explicit conscious thought we do not realize it. Then, He waits for our response. That response is either to answer yes, or to answer no. Either way, we do nothing. If we answer no, we continue about our life as we had. If we answer yes, we simply allow God to continue to move our soul, to continue to put belief into our soul, and so on. Our continued belief is the same: our soul is constantly touched by God in a very real way, and we continue to permit Him to work in us, or we do not.

The profound point here is that it is not that we believe or that we do not believe. It is not that we examine evidence, reasoning, or otherwise and make a decision from there. It is that in some way that we cannot now understand, God touches us, and we know it is Him, and we either accept Him or reject Him. Consider the five senses. Each receives the world in a different way. Now consider the person born blind. Because of the defect of body, such a person is not only unable to see, but were he not told about sight by others, he would not even know that such a faculty as sight exists. In the same way, our souls have senses, senses which perceive not the physical world, as do the senses of our bodies, but the supernatural world. It is the senses of the soul which can "see" God, which can "hear" Him, and so on. Yet just like the person born blind, we are completely unaware of these unless we are told by others who have them, and indeed, even once told, we cannot use them any more than the blind man can see once he is told that sight exists.

To the *soul,* not the ear, does God call, by His Grace enabling the soul to hear Him. While we may not be explicitly aware of this call, in the greatest depths of who we are, in our very souls, we do hear, and we either respond or we do not. God's first request is simply that He open the ears of the soul, and should we permit that, He begins to work in the soul more and more. When you think, Davide, that God is speaking, it is certainly difficult to be sure, for that connection between our explicit thoughts and the soul is so heavily damaged by our fallen nature. Yet the soul can hear, and we do respond in the affirmative or the negative. As we consent to God more and more, that connection is strengthened, and we come to know God's voice more and more. We see in the examples of the saints some of those who came to hear God's voice more and more clearly.

Finally, when we pass from this world, the sight of the soul can be opened to see God. Here, and only here, can we have knowledge of Him. I said above that we cannot have more than belief *now.* Now, the eyes of our souls are closed, and only by consenting to His call, only by letting Him open those eyes, can we come to *see* Him, for God is Spirit. He cannot be seen by the eyes of the body, but only of the soul. Thus, as we allow God more and more to heal us, we can come closer and closer to being able to actually see Him. Then, we can have knowledge. Now, we must have faith, for now, we have not the capability of seeing God. In a sense, then, we could say that the reason we must have faith, rather than knowledge, is because of sin. Sin blinds the soul. It is by our own choice that we are "relegated" more and more to belief. Christ's healing of the blind man meant far more than just the giving of His physical sight. Just as the blind man was given to see Christ's body because He permitted the Lord to touch his eyes, he - as can we - came to see Christ's *Spirit* by letting the Lord touch the eyes of His soul.

The journey we are on is one, not of getting to know God, but of permitting God to reveal Himself to us. We must at every moment worry, not about how to believe in what we cannot see, but simply of opening ourselves to God's voice - whether we can hear it or understand it or not! God's Grace will give to us all that we need. What we need do, simply, is not get in the way. Our struggle is not a struggle of believing. Rather, it is a struggle to be certain that we are open to God. The pharisees were given to *see* God's miracles, and to hear His voice, yet they did not believe, because they were not open to hearing Him. Those of them who *were* open to hearing God, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, came to Christ. *That* is our effort. *That* is our struggle. We must fight not to put up obstacles to the Lord. If we do that, He will give to us belief, and He will lead us with His voice, and He will bring us to Himself.

God bless,

Shane

How are Prayers to the Saints really Prayers to God?

I haven't posted in a while - I hope to return to it soon.

This particular piece is the response to a question about why several Catholic events that a woman attended did not involve any prayers to Jesus Himself, but only to saints. The events were things like Bible studies, so that's why I'd say it's ok to just have a few Hail Marys or something. Typically, even in spite of what I said to her, one ought to pray directly to Our Lord during a faith based event, just because of the nature of how we as human beings perceive things. Even though a reality might exist that is different from how things are perceived, nevertheless we God has programmed us to operate according to that perception.

In any case, some others had suggested to this woman that prayer to the saints really is prayer to God. Here is my response:

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You've got the right idea that prayers to saints are really prayers to the Lord in some way. And you've probably also got the right idea that you don't get it. I say this because its the sort of thing that, in my experience, people don't "get" until they've been Catholic for a while, or for cradle Catholics, until they really end up considering the issue for a while. This was true of me as well. I came into the Church in 2005, and I, like you, accepted prayers to the saints and Mary, accepted all the Marian stuff, but still in practice there was a certain degree of Marian piety that I was still uncomfortable with.

The reason for this is, I think, that it's based on some very advanced theological concepts. The thing is, unlike in [much of] Protestantism, Catholicism is so organic a faith that literally everything is deeply tied to everything else. You can't seperate this from that, as Protestants often do. My point is that theology in Catholicism is not merely theoretical - that is, not merely about God academically, but it truly is and stems from and leads to (all at once) the actual practice of the faith. Talk to anyone that's been studying the Summa Theologiae for a while and they'll tell you that they don't just get knowledge from it, but in some way - as cold and technical as it is - they get some sort of increase in their spiritual life as well. It's amazing.

Another way of putting this is to say that the Catholic faith is true, which means that the theological truths it teaches are a part of the fabric of reality, a part of the fabric of who we all really are as human beings and creatures of God, and so the more one prays and leads a spiritual life focused, the more one begins to recognize all the truths of the world and of themselves that underly every moment and aspect of existence. It's sortof like those movies where they show you all the stuff that's really going on in nature at every moment all around you but you never notice, except a lot less gross.

Now, so far as your specific question, that underlying reality that really matters is that everything that we have - even our mere existence - is just some way in which we are sharing in God. It is really God's own existence that in a certain way we participate in, as theologians say. That's why we have existence. It's ours, but it's also God's. Yet it's not in a pantheistic way, as if everything in existence isGod, either.

I'm sure you're familiar with 2 Peter 1:4, where it says that through Christ we are made partakers of the Divine Nature. What he's talking about is the concept of Divination, or Theosis as they call it in the east, which means that through Christ, we in some way share in what it is to be God. Athanasius, for instance, said in one of my favorite quotes, "By the participation of the Spirit, we are knit into the Godhead." This was the center of the faith in the early Church. It was everywhere, and every doctrine - even ones that seem so completely unrelated - were understood around the framework of it.

Now basically, Heaven is to participate in God's existence to the fullest extent that a creature can. That's what 2 Peter 1:4 is talking about. Hell, on the other hand, is to participate in God's existence to the least degree a creature can - to participate in existence alone, and have nothing else at all. Those in Hell suffer so much because they exist, but that's all. Everyone's experienced a moment in their life where they feel like they're just existing and that's all, and it's absolutely miserable. Hell is like that, except people who feel that way aren't even close to just existing and really have so much more - so imagine how terrible Hell is!

But Heaven is to participate more and more and more and more in God. It is to have more and more of what He has. We can never, ever become God, because we can never have existence in and of ourselves - that's what God has. But we can have nearly everything else that God has, not because we deserve it, but because He gives it to us. The first time I heard this it sounded crazy, but the thing is, we only exist by literally sharing that which is God's, His existence. For God to share with us any other part of Himself is no different. It's all just God giving to us that which is His, whether its existence, which we all have, or something more. So those who object to concepts of the saints having different "powers" or whatnot really have no ground to stand on. For a saint to have the "power" to bilocate, for instance, isn't any different from me having the "power" to exist and sit on my couch! The only difference is that that saint has become more open to God and shares more in God than I do.

The key to remember in all of this, though, is that that which we share in of God is not something that God creates, that is, something that He makes to give us that is like what He has. That's not possible, because He is all that really is at all. While those who do object to the saints "powers" are wrong in the way I mentioned above, they're actually correct at the same time because their reason for it is that only God has these things. And it's true! When I exist, or when a person speaks in tongues, or when Padre Pio bilocated, it is literally God doing that in us. It's not some power that is like God, but it is God. If it were something else, that would mean something existed on its own apart from God.

So when I am talking to you, I am talking to God in a certain sense, because you exist by virtue of sharing God's existence. Now when I talk to a baptized Christian, I am talking to God in an even fuller sense, because that person by virtue of baptism shares in more of God. This is why Christ said that what we do to the least of his brother's, we do to Him. It's true! It's why St. Paul said that it was no longer him living, but Christ who lives in him. To become more and more holy is simply to become more and more a partaker in God Himself.

So Mary up in Heaven, who partook of God more than anyone, was so emptied of "Mary" and so full of God that when we talk to her, we really are talking so directly to God, even though we're also talking to the human being Mary. Same goes for any other saint, just to a lesser degree as they were not as holy as she and participated in God to different degrees.

It's the same as with good works. The Council of Trent taught that the good works of a Christian are really the good works of the Holy Spirit living in the Christian, but in some mysterious sense that they are also the good works of the Christian at the same time. It's that Catholic "both/and" that everyone talks about. And it hints at that tremendous underlying reality to everything, namely, that everything that exists really is all at once both itself and God. It is itself, but it is God's own existence that it shares. This is one of those things we're never going to come close to grasping until we see God face to face.

So when we pray to Mary or to any saint, we're talking to them, but we're also talking to God, in the same way as when I talk to you or as when I feed my homeless brother. Yet we're also talking to God through them in an even deeper sense, because they share in God so, so deeply. They are so emptied of self and so full of God - so participating in God. Furthermore, you're praying - you're asking for Divine favors. That's what God does, and in asking them to grant these through their intercession, you're appealing to the Divine in them that they have become partakers of. So you're speaking to God, even though you're speaking to a human being, just like when I feed a human being I'm feeding Christ, but in a greater sense.

Now, I don't imagine that the people at these events considered all this. It's possible that just living the Catholic life led them, as it so often does, to an unconscious grasp of this aspect of reality such that what they did seemed perfectly great to them. It's also possible they just weren't very good Catholics and didn't care too much about Jesus. You'd be a better judge of that than I would, since you were there. But I bet they cared plenty about Him .

I know this is a ton to take at once, but I wanted to try to answer your question as best I could. I also prayed first, so I hope the Holy Spirit worked a little bit here. In any case, God bless.

Women's Ordination