Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Cont...

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Part VI
A Thesis by Jacquelyn Barten, Guest Blogger

On Fortitude

Fortitude ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of good.  By its nature fortitude also perfects the spirited emotions of hope, courage, fear, despair, and anger.[1]  In other words, fortitude gives the ability to resist temptation, overcome obstacles, conquer fear, and face trials and persecutions.  It is a resoluteness of mind to endure any kind of danger, endure any suffering.[2]  Pieper wrote that human fortitude realizes this essential image: “man accepts insecurity; he surrenders confidently to the governance of higher powers; he ‘risks’ his immediate well-being; he abandons the tense, egocentric hold of a timorous anxiety.”[3]

One of the first examples Pope John Paul II drew upon in his 1978 General Audience on fortitude is the courage a mother experiencing difficulties with an already large family has in rejecting advice to end her pregnancy, and how she recognizes the sacredness of her pregnancy in doing so.[4]  Although familiar, this is an extreme circumstance.  There are countless heroic acts of fortitude, “little deaths” in motherhood known only to the mother’s conscience and God.  These little sacrifices could be as simple as waking up with a smile on your face for your children, gifts of love from God, after an interrupted night’s sleep, or cleaning up the spilled beverage for the third time with a joy in serving.  Kaczor and Sherman wrote that “small acts of goodness lead to more, and eventually a stable disposition to seek what is truly good.”[5]  Mother’s learn to die to self, a form of “white martyrdom.”[6]  They learn to temper and tame their emotions.  Kaczor and Sherman explain that “passions such as anger, fear, or desire are not considered in a general way good or evil.  Once a passion is brought into human action, however, this act of reason and will, though motivated by passion, has a character of good or evil.”[7]  The passions call for “neither praise nor blame” but, for example, being overly angry to an unreasonable degree may be blameworthy.[8]  While on the other hand, St. Thomas discussed how anger in action modified by reason can be found in a virtuous person.[9]  Anger brings about the realization of the need for discipline, which is indispensible in parenting.  When a mother is brave through anger, she makes a choice and acts steadfastly with purpose.[10]
St. Thomas wrote specifically about what is required of mankind to have the virtue of courage: the exercise of four related habits: magnanimity [confidence – not pusillanimity (shrinking back), or presumption (ambition, or vainglory)], magnificence (the ability to accomplish great things), patience (“suffering well” brings one to beatitude) and perseverance.[11] 

St. Thomas cites Scripture for an example of pusillanimity (Col. 3:21): “Fathers, provoke not your children to indignation, lest they be discouraged."[12]  Kaczor and Sherman expound on St. Thomas’ writings that “pride may be at work when people maintain their (belittling)[pusillanimity] viewpoint of themselves, thereby not shouldering the duties that they are capable of carrying,” to be a father or mother to a large family, for example.[13]  Vocations such as this take magnanimity, not to be confused, however, with vainglory.  Living a virtuous life always requires a delicate balance, a finding of the mean of a virtue.  The second habit, magnificence, may help a mother to have the goal of raising her children to be holy and virtuous, while recognizing that any success she has is through the grace of God. 

The third required habit of fortitude is patience.  Patience requires a preparedness of the mind, an act of prudence.  Kaczor and Sherman remind us of how Jesus was the best teacher of patience.  “Knowing all things, he waited for others to learn.  Capable of all things, he himself grew in wisdom and stature as a human.  Aware of the future and end of all people, he nevertheless related to them in time as they were.”[14]  This is the patient understanding that a mother is called to.  Discussing this third habit, St. Thomas pushed the virtue of patience a step further to the necessity of humility.  “Now it belongs to fortitude of the mind to bear bravely with infirmities of the flesh, and this belongs to the virtue of patience or fortitude, as also to acknowledge one's own infirmity, and this belongs to the perfection that is called humility.”[15]  How often do parents know more than children, but do not humble themselves to patiently wait for them to learn?

St. Thomas discussed the final habit of fortitude, perseverance, as a special virtue since it consists in enduring delays in virtuous deeds so far as necessity requires.[16]  This means abandoning the vices opposed to perseverance: being headstrong, stubborn, or opinionated, wanting one’s own way rather than what is right. [17]  For this reason, Kaczor and Sherman note that “grace is especially important for perseverance.”[18]  Motherhood constantly asks mothers to persevere and work with their faults, educating them through prayer and with the graces that especially come through the sacraments, in order to be virtuous in the home.  Pieper stated that “endurance, not wrathful attack, is the ultimately decisive test of actual fortitude,” since the “uttermost strength of the good manifests itself in powerlessness.”[19]  As Pieper explains, the Gospel message of offering your other cheek when someone strikes you is not to be taken literally, but it signifies a readiness of the soul to bear, if it be necessary, such things and worse, without bitterness against the attacker.[20]  Christ did this on the cross; mothers do this, albeit to a lesser degree, every day in their homes. 

Ultimately, how can mothers acquire the cardinal virtue of fortitude?  God graces them with the first step in the right direction: the vulnerable state created by each new stage in motherhood with its host of questions and doubts.  Pieper noted, “without vulnerability there is not possibility of fortitude.”[21]  Christians are assured that if they ask God and pray to the Holy Spirit for patience or simply the virtue of fortitude in general, those prayers will be answered.  Pieper wrote that “The supernatural fortitude bestowed by grace, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, pervades and crowns all other ‘natural’ modes of Christian fortitude.”[22]  Acquired habits are perfected by God’s graced gift of hope: “hope for eternal life is properly a gift, and that without this gift there can be no such thing as truly Christian fortitude.”[23]  St. Thomas stated: “Hence it is not presumptuous for a man to attempt the accomplishment of a virtuous deed: but it would be presumptuous if one were to make the attempt without confidence in God's assistance.”[24] 

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[1]Catechism 1808; Torraco, Part B, 2-3 & 3-2.
[2] Kaczor and Sherman, 227.
[3] Pieper, 138-141.
[4] Pope John Paul II, General Audience, November 15, 1978, (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1978), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19781122_en.html [accessed October 2, 2010].    
[5] Kaczor and Sherman, 279.
[6] Ibid, 250.
[7] Ibid, 254.
[8] Aquinas, II, II, 125, 1.
[9] Ibid, II, II, 123, 10.
[10] Aquinas, II, II, 123, 10.
[11] Kaczor and Sherman, 227.
[12] Aquinas, II, II, 133, 1.
[13] Kaczor and Sherman, 285.
[14] Kaczor and Sherman, 287.
[15] Aquinas, II, II, 123, 1.
[16] Aquinas, II, II, 137, 1.
[17] Ibid, II, II, 138, 2.
[18] Kaczor and Sherman, 290.
[19] Pieper, 131.
[20] Pieper, 132.
[21] Ibid, 117.
[22] Pieper, 141.
[23] Ibid, 141.
[24] Aquinas, II, II, 130, 1.

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Cont...

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Part V
A Thesis by Jacquelyn Barten, Guest Blogger

On Justice

The Catechism defines justice as the constant and firm will to render to God and neighbor what is due.[1]  The word “jus” means “right” and indicates the right thing itself.[2]  Pieper wrote that “Through justice the will is applied to its proper act.”[3]  Applying the virtue of justice is a constant need and is gravely significant because as Josef Pieper stated, “Every external act is of social consequence.”[4]  For example, when we speak, we are heard, when we use something it is someone’s property.[5]  Fostering the cardinal virtue of justice helps humans gain confidence that their external acts are of good consequence, that they respect individual rights and the common good.  Justice is the fundamental principle of existence and coexistence in community here on earth.[6]  Ultimately, however, humanity’s hunger for justice, insatiable here on earth, turns us to God who “is justice itself.”[7] 

Applying the cardinal virtue of justice to motherhood is not as straightforward as the application of prudence to the maternal role.  Pieper quotes St. Thomas on the subject:

“Justice properly speaking demands a distinction of parties.”  Because father and child are not entirely separate individuals, because the child, instead, belongs to the father, and the father feels toward the child almost as he feels toward himself, “so between them there is not a simpliciter iustum, the just, simply,” not justice in the strict sense.  Because the loved one is not properly “someone else,” there is no formal justice between those who love each other.[8]

Although there is no formal justice between a mother and her children, there are many ways to attain the virtue of justice in the home, especially in regards to the virtues categorized under justice.  Mothers can teach their children justice by following the Ten Commandments, tithing, demonstrating the importance of obedience, and teaching their children to be just citizens.  Teaching a child to be just can be as simple as writing a thank-you note or telling someone “thank you” in person; this is an important moral act according to St. Thomas.[9]

Pieper writes that “in the affairs of the world, everything depends on the rulers’ being just.”[10]  In a sense this phrase could easily be reworded for present purposes as “in the affairs of the [home], everything depends on the [parents’] being just.”  Christopher Kaczor and Thomas Sherman, S.J. authors of Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues, give several examples of what the virtue of justice looks like in motherhood: it allows one to act with joy and ease and does not give too much liberty to the children in the wrong situations so that they might become evil.[11]  For instance, another virtue connected with justice is vengeance.  As St. Thomas says, vengeance outside the order of divine appointment usurps what is God’s and is sinful.[12]  Kaczor and Sherman expound upon this and note that parents have due authority to raise their children properly.  It is a parent’s duty to care for, love, and educate their children in knowledge and character, and they can train them with discipline or due punishment.

The virtue of religion is another virtue St. Thomas connects with justice, and this virtue clearly lays out acts to be undertaken in the home.  Under the virtue of religion, it becomes clear that man can never be even with God, and children can never honor their parents, the ones who gave them the gift of life, enough.  Likewise, a parent should act in such a way that it is not difficult for their children to give them honor.  A mother should demonstrate the providential love of God to her children.  Kaczor and Sherman play out a wonderful example, observing that, if parents ask a child to “say please,” they remain before and after resolved to give the child something if she says please.  Likewise God gives mankind what He has promised them if they just ask in prayer: “Just as a mother works to better the child through making him use good manners in making requests, so too God intends our perfection through prompting us to commune with Him in prayers of petition.”[13]  Mothers need to ask for His help continually, because in doing so they “acquire confidence in having recourse to God” and “recognize in Him the Author of our goods.”[14]  Kaczor and Sherman describe what all mothers come to discover: “although God is the best and most worthy of our time and attention, there are circumstances when we should focus our immediate attention on other things, even though at these times God can remain our final end and the ultimate reason we do whatever we do.”[15]  For example, the seasons of motherhood which need to take into account the needs of the children (i.e. something as simple as diapering) could prevent or enable a mother to attend daily Mass.

Justice is the constant and firm will to render to God and neighbor what is due.  A mother’s actions affect her children; quite simply her behavior is reflected in their behavior.  Parents are the first and foremost teachers of the faith and its virtues for their children, but in return children teach their parents to perform morally good actions.  It may be discouraging when misbehavior is mirrored back at parents, but at the same time it is therapeutic.  St. Thomas Aquinas stated that, “The punishments of this life are medicinal rather than retributive.”[16]  The just man uses his goodness for himself but also for others to a higher degree than the brave or temperate man.[17]  For justice is not about man’s passions as are fortitude and temperance, but it is about man’s relations with another.[18] 

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[1] Catechism, 1807.

[2] Kaczor and Sherman, 67.

[3] Pieper, 68.

[4] Ibid, 62.

[5] Ibid, 62.

[6] Pope John Paul II, General Audience, November 8, 1978, (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1978), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19781122_en.html [accessed October 2, 2010].    

[7] Ibid.

[8] Pieper, 54.

[9] Kaczor and Sherman, 197.

[10] Pieper, 89.

[11] Kaczor and Sherman , 109 & 66.

[12] Aquinas, II, II, 108, 1.

[13] Kaczor and Sherman, 162.

[14] Aquinas, II, II, 83, 2.

[15] Kaczor and Sherman, 158.

[16] Kaczor and Sherman, 129.

[17] Pieper, 65.

[18] Kaczor and Sherman, 79.

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Cont...

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Part IV
A Thesis by Jacquelyn Barten, Guest Blogger

On Prudence

St. Thomas Aquinas defines prudence as “right reason applied to action.”[1]  The Catechism further states that prudence guides the judgment of conscience.[2]  It perfects the mind so that it is able to discern the true good in all circumstances and to choose the right means of achieving it.  Prudence is also called “practical wisdom,” and being practical it must be carried out and lived.[3]  Prudence is the first and most important of the cardinal virtues.  It is the cause of the other virtues being virtues at all, as its “right reason” in regards to the moral life, measures and informs the other virtues.[4]  Mother Teresa summed this up when she said, “Thoughtfulness is the beginning of great sanctity.”[5]

            Modern parent educators at work in the general public often use the buzz phrase “parenting in the moment,” in order to pinpoint and develop how caregivers parent on the spot, in the heat of the moment, when they could be quite possibly at their wits end.  Mothers everywhere are faced with this scenario countless times in a week, a day, or even an hour.  A key factor in succeeding at this parental transformation is missing from the secular vantage point: the cardinal virtue of prudence acquired not only through natural means but also supernatural means.  Josef Pieper, author of The Four Cardinal Virtues, stated prudence entails acting in the moment, “situation conscience” (solertia); a mother quickly wraps her mind around the unexpected situation and decides with extreme quick-wittedness and clear-eyed objectivity.[6]  Prudence is infused for the purpose of eternal salvation at Baptism, but this prudence is limited; there is a “fuller” prudence that is acquired and guides man in all matters relating to human life.[7]  Particularly helpful for mothers disciplining the same mischievous behavior under the pressure of a host of household tasks as Pieper states, is prudence’s special nature concerned with the realm of “ways and means” and down-to-earth realities.[8]  “Prudence as cognition” includes, most importantly, the ability to be still in order to attain objective perception of reality, and in addition, the patient effort of experience.[9]  Beyond the concept of practicing over time, how do mothers gain this virtue, where do they start?

St. Thomas Aquinas lists eight quasi-integral parts of prudence.  The first five: memory, understanding or intelligence, docility, shrewdness [quickly finding the middle term], and reason fall under prudence as cognitive virtues, while foresight, circumspection, and caution, command and apply knowledge to action.[10]  Second, Pieper, in summarizing Aquinas, states: “the attitude of ‘silent’ contemplation of reality: this is the key prerequisite for the perfection of prudence as cognition, which perfection in turn involves three elements, namely: memoria [memory], docilitas [the ability to take good advice], solertia [composed readiness for the unexpected].”[11]  The first Christian is a perfect guide.  Does not the Mother of God exemplify “the attitude of ‘silent’ contemplation”?  Mary’s countenance was contemplative although the events in her life were chaotic as she traveled nine months pregnant to Bethlehem, searched the crowds for her twelve-year-old Son, and knelt at the foot of the cross.  St. Thomas Aquinas stated that “man has a natural aptitude for docility [being taught] even as for other things connected with prudence. Yet his own efforts count for much towards the attainment of perfect docility [teachableness]: and he must carefully, frequently and reverently apply his mind to the teachings of the learned, neither neglecting them through laziness, nor despising them through pride.”[12]

Mary is the perfect example and in the words of Blessed Mother Teresa she will help to “make your house – your family – another Nazareth where love, peace, joy and unity reign, for love begins at home.”[13] 

God also places countless others in a mother’s life, however, to prepare and inform her to practice prudence.  The Gospel message preaches virtuous living in the actions of holy mothers, but often in motherhood counsel is also needed.  This is a significant reason why there is the proliferation of mother’s sharing groups, especially since in the modern world it is not the norm to house extended family under one roof and have another mother figure just down the hall.  St. Thomas Aquinas states, “those who need to be guided by the counsel of others, are able if they have grace, to take counsel for themselves in this point at least, that they require the counsel of others and can distinguish good from evil counsel.”[14]  This perhaps explains why Pope John Paul II implored all of the faithful to pray that the Holy Spirit give us the gift of good counsel.[15]  Josef Pieper further develops Aquinas’ words:
There is no way of grasping the concreteness of man’s ethical decisions from outside.  But no, there is a certain way, a single way: that is through the love of friendship.  A friend, and a prudent friend, can help to shape a friend’s decision.  He does so by virtue of that love which makes the friend’s problem his own, the friend’s ego his own (so that after all it is not entirely ‘from outside’).  For by virtue of that oneness which love can establish he is able to visualize the concrete situation calling for decision, visualize it from, as it were, the actual center of responsibility.  Therefore it is possible for a friend—only for a friend and only for a prudent friend—to help with counsel and direction to shape a friend’s decision or, somewhat in the manner of a judge, help to reshape it.[16]

For this reason the counsel of a prudent friend of the faith undertaking the same vocation of motherhood whether 100 feet or 1,000 miles away is priceless. 

A true friendship with God through prayer, modeling Mary and the prudent advice of other mothers, and turning to the grace of the Sacraments are indispensible in cultivating the cardinal virtue of prudence along with an on-going education of the conscience.  The cultivation of prudence then amounts to applying it to personal, living, experience.  Pieper stated that “desiring the good does not make a decision prudent; but real understanding and proper evaluation of the concrete situation of the concrete act does.”[17]  Mothers also need to know what prudence is not.  To be imprudent is to be thoughtless, indecisive, negligent, blind, and remiss in decision, and of course disobedient towards the commandments.[18]  It is to be overly anxious about temporal things over spiritual matters.

Finally, there are multiple ways to help people know that they are on the right path to acquiring the virtue of prudence.  Josef Pieper lists characteristics synonymous with prudence: being the filter of deliberation; purity, straightforwardness, candor, and simplicity of character, and standing superior to the utilitarian complexities of mere ‘tactics’.[19]  These mere ‘tactics’ in this case amount to the secular approaches of parent educators teaching parents how to “parent in the moment” without the virtue of prudence, without faith.  Josef Pieper also wrote that humans can “receive ‘practical’ assurance and reinforcement from several sources: from the experience of life as it has been lived; from the alertness and healthiness of the instinctive capacity for evaluation; from the daring and humble hope that the paths to man’s genuine goals cannot be closed to him; from rectitude of volition and of ultimate “intention”; from the grace of direct and mediated divine guidance.”[20]  And of course, mothers must remember that a “life of friendship with God must not be construed in the sense that it is immediately ‘given’ or realizable in smooth and ‘harmonious’ development.”[21]  Mothers understand that there are so many ‘seasons’ in life, the ebb and flow of parenting often parallels the hilly ascent towards the virtuous life.  Pieper reminds us of how intensely the great saints loved the ordinary and commonplace.[22] 

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[1] Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.SS_Q141.html [accessed October 10, 2010], II, II, 55, 3.
[2] Catechism, 1806.
[3] Kaczor and Sherman, 16.
[4] Pieper, 6 & 31.
[5] Mother Teresa, “God Had Sent the Family to Be His Love,” The Co-Worker Newletter, Spring/Summer, (Wauwatosa, WI: Family Life Council, Inc, 1989).
[6] Pieper, 9-13.
[7] Ibid, 14.
[8] Pieper, 11.
[9] Ibid, 13.
[10] Aquinas, II, II, 48, 1.
[11] Pieper, 14-17 & 22.
[12] Aquinas, II, II, 49, 3; Kaczor and Sherman, 31.
[13] Mother Teresa.
[14] Aquinas, II, II, 47, 14 ad 2.
[15] Pope John Paul II, “First General Audience of John Paul II,” General Audience, October 25, 1978, (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1978), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19781025_en.html [accessed October 2, 2010].
[16] Pieper, 29.
[17] Pieper, 35.
[18] Ibid, 8 & 19.
[19] Ibid, 10.
[20] Ibid, 18.
[21] Pieper, 36.
[22] Ibid, 39.

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Cont...

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Part III
A Thesis by Jacquelyn Barten, Guest Blogger

On the Cardinal Virtues

The theological virtues are the foundation of the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance which are also known as the moral, human, or hinge virtues because all other virtues are necessarily related to them.[1]  The cardinal virtues themselves are necessarily related to each other; they are so interconnected that one can not exist without the others.  For example, temperance needs fortitude, fortitude works for justice, and all the cardinal virtues rely on prudence.  In The Catholic Catechism, John A. Hardon, S.J. discussed the relationship of the cardinal virtues: “they are treated as special virtues, each occupied with its own proper type of situation, without denying that they overlap, or that one flows into the other.  Thus fortitude is temperate and brave, for a man who can contain his lusts can well control himself in danger of death; and if he can face death unflinchingly, he can also withstand allurements.”[2]

Although the cardinal virtues can be infused as a gift from God, the nature of this gift is limited to what is necessary for salvation.  However, Jesus called all human beings to perfection in His Proclamation of the Kingdom, and this perfection requires acquiring virtue through experience, time, repetition, and habit.  A virtue of this nature allows the mind to govern and train emotions.  Paralleling the differences between mothers with varying temperaments and natures, there are a variety of ways mothers can become accomplished in the virtues.  The journey through motherhood must be embraced, whatever it may entail, for it is sinful if a person does not acquire the virtues when they could have or should have.[3]  The Catechism states: “Human virtues acquired by education, by deliberate acts and by a perseverance ever-renewed in repeated efforts are purified and elevated by divine grace.”[4]  To attain and maintain the cardinal virtues, mothers need to freely cooperate with the Holy Spirit in their lives.

Understanding and embracing the cardinal virtues is so important that they were the topic of Pope John Paul II’s first four General Audiences.  He was continuing the plan of the late Pope John Paul I who had first discussed the theological virtues in his General Audiences, and the primacy of the virtues in the prevalent talks of two vicars of Christ in the modern day should not be left unnoticed.  All the faithful, and most fundamentally mothers, who can claim the title of the first teachers of love to the tiny lives in their wombs, should take note of the importance the popes gave to learning and applying these virtues.  Mothers everywhere need firm attitudes, stable dispositions, and habitual perfections of intellect and will, especially in the heat of a parenting moment, and the key to this kind of self-mastery is acquiring the moral virtues. 

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[1] Catechism, 1805.
[2] John A. Hardon, S.J., The Catholic Catechism, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1975), 198.
[3] Christopher Kaczor and Thomas Sherman, S.J., Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues, (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press at Ave Maria University), 2009, 39.
[4] Catechism, 1810.

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood...

A Thesis by Jacquelyn Barten, Guest Blogger

Applying the Cardinal Virtues to Motherhood, Part I

Humans are created in the image and likeness of God and are called to love as God loves.  Of all the relationships that human beings participate in, the most profound impact they can make with their love in this world starts right in their own homes.  At the 1994 Prayer Breakfast at the White House, Mother Teresa said: “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put into what we do.”  How do mothers grow in the virtues, especially when they feel like a little bird drowning in a monsoon, struggling through the daily continuous and seemingly unexpected crosses of motherhood?  For one, they need to heed the spirituality of St. Therese of Lisieux, pick up their heads and spread their wings after a shower so that God can dry them with His brilliant rays.  St. Gregory of Nyssa stated that “the goal of a virtuous life is to become like God,” to love like God.[1]  If mothers are worthy and willing to receive the theological virtues, these virtues are given to them as a gift from God, while the cardinal virtues are mainly acquired by human efforts which strive to follow the example of Christ.[2]  Now, more than ever, embracing the cardinal virtues is imperative for successful mothering and the sanctification of the domestic church.  Whereas, contemporary society is externally focused and places much emphasis on actions and relationships outside the home, an analysis of the cardinal virtues in terms of mothering shows that more focus needs to be put on relationships and actions inside the home. "

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[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 1803.
[2] Ibid, 1804.