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#1 – An Argument for Aristotelian Forms

If you haven’t already read my article Some Things Never Change – A Metaphysical Reflection, please go do so. I’m going to presume a point or two from that article.

Let’s dive right into the depths of it. One of the most important pieces of my thesis, Thomistic Linguistics, is the existence of certain philosophically necessary forms. But what are these forms?

Recalling my previous article on change, I articulated the specific way a changeable thing can be reduced from potency to act. At the start, there is a thing. This thing undergoes a change. It has a thing that it is going to become as a result of its change, and this change is foreseen in its potency. This foreseen goal is the essence of what the thing is, or what it is supposed to be. This is the formal cause. There is the material of the thing, that which composes it, that is what makes it up. This is the material cause. There is something external to the thing which is how the formal cause is imprinted onto the material cause, how the act is brought onto the thing, called the efficient cause. Lastly there is the final cause, the end for which the thing is most inclined to do or be with its new state.

For Aristotle, these four causes answer the most important identifying questions you can ask about a changeable thing. What is it? We look to the formal cause. What is it made of? We look to the material cause. How is it here? We look to the efficient cause. What is it for? We look to the final cause. In sum, the formal, material, efficient, and final causes form Aristotle’s teleology (the study of the telos, the end cause).

Here what we are going to focus on in this article is the formal cause of something. The essences of things. For Aristotle the essence, the formal cause of something, is not just some imaginative thing. It is a real thing that exists in the universe.

This is the crux of this discussion.

We can all conceive of a concept, an image of something. But these things are hardly tangible. They are abstract images we think of in our minds. How does an idea that we think of translate to a necessary, invisible, intangible form? The answer lies in processes outside of human interaction.

Take the example of an acorn. An acorn is a seed, a thing of definitive size and nature. An acorn is not an oak tree. It doesn’t have leaves, it doesn’t have roots, it doesn’t have a stem, and it does not produce other acorns. It just sits there. But it does not mean an acorn cannot become an oak tree. Within the acorn is the potency to become an oak tree. The mere fact that acorns always become oak trees and that oak trees always produce acorns is a natural regularity within the flow of nature. It is a pattern of regularity that is entirely independent of human interaction.

What is it that guarantees the regularity of the oak tree, that it will always become an oak and not some other tree? What is it that guarantees the regularity of the acorn, that it will always be the fruit of an oak tree? DNA seems to be the most regular answer, that it genetically is set to occur, but even if we equate the regularity of the oak tree (and the acorn as its fruit) to the regularity of DNA, we must be forced to ask about the regularity of the DNA itself. The regularity has to have an origination point, not at some point in the past, but at some point in the present. There must be some cause which keeps and maintain the focus of regularity at any given point in time, otherwise the thing in question would lose its integrity and fall apart.

If you remember from my previous article this logic sounds quite similar to the argument for the Unmoved Mover, and you would be correct, but we don’t need to go back quite that far in the metaphysical order. Somewhere between the metaphysically necessary Unmoved Mover (an immaterial being, remember) and the unnecessary oak tree (or acorn, both quite material), needs be a thing that predicts the specific structure of the oak tree or the acorn.

This thing, that predicts the structure, should it be material like the acorn or immaterial like the Unmoved Mover? Remember the predictability of the acorn to become an oak tree. That potency is something that exists within the acorn, and not within a pine nut, for example. Somehow or another, the form of an oak tree already exists, then, within the acorn. The acorn has the potential to properly become an oak tree. But the acorn does not have the qualities of an oak tree. Neither does the DNA. The DNA does not have leaves, does not have a trunk, does not have roots. Therefore the existence of an oak tree, only a potency, does somehow exist within the acorn. Obviously it does not physically exist, so we must conclude that the form is immaterial.

This is the first premise for my thesis:

Everything that changes, that suffers a reduction of potency to act, has an immaterial formal cause, or an essence, just like the oak tree, and this formal cause actually and truly exists.

Next time:

If all changeable things have forms…wouldn’t man have a form?

#2 – The Formal Cause of Man

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Some Things Never Change – A Metaphysical Reflection

I’ve already written on the nature of love and caritas in Frozen and Frozen II, but now I wish to turn my attention to the least important character in the films – Olaf. You see, Olaf is there for the laughs, the unexpected punchlines, and any void of seriousness. Occasionally, though, he offers some really solid lines, the ones that matter.

“There’s your act of true love—riding across the fjords like a valiant, pungent, reindeer king.”

“I just thought of one thing that’s permanent – love.”

The reason that these lines stick is because the audience doesn’t expect them. Man, if cartoons aren’t worth analyzing, then surely Olaf isn’t. Except there is something that stands out about him. Because he maintains such a sideline position for the majority of the films, he gains a unique outsider position and a unique authority.

One specific vein of discussion that routinely arises around Olaf is the nature of change, especially around himself. In the first movie this notion is subtle, as he exposes the fact that he is entirely ignorant and naïve about change. In the end he doesn’t even face the consequences of change when Elsa preserves him with his own little snow flurry.

As he progresses into the second movie, though, it’s clear that his preservation of form, from snow flurry to a layer of permafrost, is not synonymous with a preservation of naivete. He has learned more about life (albeit not nearly enough), and is becoming aware that not everything around him gets to have the same blessing of a personal snow flurry or a layer of permafrost. He asks Anna:

“You’re older and thus all knowing. Do you ever worry about the notion that *dramatic look* nothing is permanent?”

This sparks, of course, an entire song where we get a glimpse into Anna’s fragile sense of love, the power that a sidekick character like Olaf has to cause. His question is nothing to laugh at, however. How would you answer him? If your own small child walked up to you and asked you this question, are you able to answer?

We humans are always worried about any time but the present. The future is unknown and scary and our past good times (which weren’t all that good but they seem better than what we have now) are always fleeting and have run away. Food satiates us for a short while with our hunger but then we just get hungry again. Have you ever thought about how boring it is to have to keep up with eating sometimes? That beautiful sunset that graced our eyes is all of a sudden gone again and all that lives of it is our memory. But Anna tells him this isn’t true – some things never change. Yet, from my other article we know that Anna’s understanding about what doesn’t change is clearly not reliable. So is Olaf right? Does everything change?

Funnily enough, this is a philosophical question that people have been thinking about since the time of the Greeks. Our first point of reference is Parmenides. Parmenides was an ancient Greek philosopher who proposed something quite wildly opposite to Olaf – he said that nothing changes! He said that everything that we perceive to actually be changing is just an illusion caused by our mind.

How? Essentially he thought through the following.

  1. Things either exist or they don’t.
  2. Being is that which exists, and Non-being is that which does not exist.
  3. If Being is going to change, then it has to be caused from outside that Being.
  4. The only thing outside of Being is Non-Being.
  5. Non-Being cannot cause anything.
  6. There is nothing to cause change in Being,

Therefore:

change does not exist.

 

This is quite the proposal. It assumes that everything we experience as change is just an illusion and experience of the mind. It is a bit radical, and Aristotle thought so as well. To claim that there is only Existence and Non-Existence without any sort of nuance is a lot to propose.

Aristotle took a look at this work and argued that there is a little more that happens in the span between Being and Non-Being. Rather than start with the premise that things either exist or don’t exist, Aristotle suggests that in every thing that changes there is a bit of existence and a bit of existence that could happen, which is a bit like non-being except that the potential for something to happen is something that actually exists, albeit not physically. He calls that which exists in a thing act or actuality, and that which could exist potency or potentiality. Change, Aristotle says, is the reduction, or realization, of potency into act.

If you have some rubber, it can be nice. But if you had a rubber ball…well that’s just a lot nicer. You see, the potency of a rubber ball exists within rubber, as it is a potential reality for that rubber, but it won’t exist unless some other thing reduces that potency into act. Aristotle allows that another being (i.e. a person) has the ability to do this, the only two options for reality not being Being and Non-Being (like what Parmenides thought). So, therefore, we can define change as change exists – as reducing potency to act. That is what happens all around us all of the time.

Now, does everything reduce from potency to act? That might be a bit of a tall claim. In fact, Aristotle does not think that everything undergoes change. You see, if you think about some change, like a person making rubber into a rubber ball, you can see that one change is always dependent on some other change. That change needs be complete, though, in its own way. That is, the act, and not potency, of something else is what is needed to effect change. The potency for a person to shape a rubber ball is not what causes the change, but the act of a person shaping. So the reduction of rubber’s potency for a ball to the act of a ball is done by something else in act. But the act of a person’s hand shaping the ball is only possible because that reduction of act to potency was caused by something else that was in act, namely the movement of muscle. And that was supported by a change in neurons, and that was supported by a change in chemicals, and that was supported by active molecular bonding. And that was…

This can go on forever. Or can it? Now we get to the root of answering Olaf’s query. Is nothing permanent? Aristotle and later philosophers, such as Thomas Aquinas, argue that something has to be permanent. In a single slice of time, the shaping of a ball is supported by an incredibly large number of changes that happen in a supporting fashion. Aristotle and Aquinas argue that underneath all of these changes there must be something in act that does not require a reduction out of potency like everything else. There must be something that actively sustains everything else which is self-supportive. Think here of a philosophical or metaphysical bedrock on which everything else is supported.

This one metaphysically necessary thing, this one permanent thing, is not some passive agent, either. It is actively involved in the support of everything that changes in the Universe. If something changes, it first must be sourced in this thing that is not changing. It cannot get it’s change from nothingness, as Parmenides had to have some idea about truth, it has to get change from something else that exists positively. This permanent thing is what Aristotle refers to as the Unmoved Mover. In Aristotelian language ‘move’ is another word for change. We could rephrase the term as the Unchanged Changer.

Now if you’re as pagan as Aristotle, or if you just leave the argument there, then this may feel insignificant. So what if there’s an Unmoved Mover? Looks like it will keep supporting you so that’s fine. Moving along. But if you keep reading around the tradition of philosophy that surround the Unmoved Mover, you will see that it doesn’t just stop there. This Unmoved Mover has quite a few other traits that can be surmised from other philosophical arguments. Aquinas says that the Unmoved Mover is that which we call ‘God.’

Again, Olaf tells Anna:

“I just thought of one thing that’s permanent – love.”

There is a necessary priority about the existence of things. The Unmoved Mover, the Universe’s metaphysical bedrock, has to exist prior to everything else. We don’t exist first and demand that the Unmoved Mover keeps up with us; no, the Unmoved Mover exists and therefore we exist dependently on it. But if the Unmoved Mover can subsist all by itself, why should we exist at all? We aren’t necessary the way that the Unmoved Mover is. Whence comes our purpose for existing?

The answer is that there is a part of volition, or willpower, on the part of the Unmoved Mover. The Unmoved Mover desires that we exist, and therefore it is possible for us to exist and makes choices. The second that the Unmoved Mover removes the will for us to exist, then *poof* we’re done. We don’t hold the metaphysical power here, the Unmoved Mover does. What Olaf points to, and what none of the characters perhaps realize, is that they have hinted at caritas, as you may remember from my last article. Caritas is love, specifically a love that wills the good of the other for no other reason than that they fulfill their good. Our existence is good, and our existence is literally willed by the Unmoved Mover, for no other sake than the fact that our existence is a good thing. In short? The Unmoved Mover, or God, if you will, wills our good for own sake. He loves us.

 

Thanks Olaf!

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What is the deal about the Eucharist?

Surrounded by your glory

What will my heart feel

Will I dance for you Jesus

Or in awe of you be still

Will I stand in your presence

Or to my knees will I fall

Will I sing hallelujah

Will I be able to speak at all

I can only imagine

Yeah

I can only imagine

 

These lyrics are from a song by Mercy Me, a popular evangelical music band. When I myself was a non-denominational Christian I knew these lyrics well, and often we would use it for worship music in church. Since converting to Catholicism I haven’t listened to music like this in a while, but as I was preparing this article, this specific song came to mind.

This song, I Can Only Imagine, is about being in the presence, the very face of God. It contemplates the impossible majesty one must be confronted by when they are finally able to see God’s presence directly in heaven. There is a strong conflict for the singer as he contemplates a strong pull towards multiple, appropriate, responses. Which would he do? It’s an answer as mysterious as God’s face itself.

One answer might be to think about the Disciples. They were in the presence of Christ, saw the very face of God, and how did they react? Another answer can come from a good Catholic. You see, this sort of song wouldn’t likely come from a Catholic, because while they would still contemplate the direct light of God in heaven (read: St. Thomas Aquinas), they have something of an idea about what it is like to be in the presence of God.

Today, Sunday, March 15th, 2020, the pandemic of the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) is at large in the United States. What we are doing now, which itself is perhaps novel, is an attempt to act in a preemptive way by stemming off the spread of this disease on the front end. We’re trying to cut it off before it becomes too drastically serious. Schools are closed (duh, because schools are western society’s infection breeding houses), gatherings of a certain number or above are prohibited or strongly discouraged, and social distancing is encouraged practice. This affects, naturally, religious institutions as much as any others. Churches are faced with the decision of staying open or closing, wondering what their place is. Do they stay open as a way to foster faith and hope or do they close for fear of catalyzing the spread of the novel Coronavirus?

The secular response is obviously that churches should close immediately. Any maintaining of an open church where many people come is a prime opportunity for the disease to spread. But the Christian faithful know there is something more at stake here than our physical well-being. We know that there is a huge significance to place of church within ours and others’ lives. We all have a ready acknowledgement of our own mortality and know that coming to understand and being closer to God is more important than any relatively earthly struggle.

Now, in my old non-denominational setting there is something to be said about the value of learning together, singing to honor God, and being close to your community members. So much hope comes from living in community with others and being close to God through them. As much, I do not discredit the value of such a gathering, but I must say that Catholics do not gather just for these things; there is a more central element that Catholics gather around.

In the documents produced by the Second Vatican Council, it was emphasized that the Eucharist is the “source and summit” of the Catholic Faith. You see, Catholics believe something quite miraculous and absurd in the context of modern thought. The world sees what is in front of it and considers not much further than that, but Catholics see something deeper. Of course, I must present the caveat that when I talk about “Catholics” believing this, I’m talking about what a surprisingly small amount of Catholics and the official documents of the Church profess. In a recent Pew Study it was found that a mere third of U.S. Catholics actually believe  one of the most central Catholic teachings.

All Christians practice communion, where each week or every so often they eat bread and wine (or grape juice) as a commemorative act that recalls the Last Supper. For most Christians, and for two thirds of “Catholics,” this is a symbolic act. It is representative of Christ’s sacrifice and we eat it to remember what He did for us. Except what one third of Catholics believe, and what the Catholic Church teaches, is that this is not a symbolic measure. It is literal. Literally…what? The bread and wine are not symbols of Christ’s body and blood, they literally are the body and blood of Christ.

That’s why a Catholic isn’t likely to sing or have come up with a song like I Can Only Imagine. In a great many respects, Catholics don’t really have to imagine. Every time a Catholic goes to Mass, the presence of Christ is real and right in front of them. Even more than that, the Catholics profess a wild claim that they must eat Christ in the form of bread and drink Christ in the form of wine. What other religion professes such a wild claim as that of eating their deity?

This belief is not rooted in nonsense, either. Let’s look at the Gospel of St. John, Chapter 6. In the original Greek, Christ tells his disciples that they must chew him, chew him in the way that animals eat, not in the way that humans may daintily consume a delicacy. This chewing consumption of the very body of Christ is a necessary path to salvation, says the Lord:

“The Jews were arguing among themselves, “How can this man give us flesh to eat?” So Jesus replied, “Truly, I say to you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives with eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. My flesh is really food and my blood is drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood, live in me, and I in them. Just as the Father, who is life, sent me and I have life from the Father, so whoever eats me will have life from me. This is the bread which came from heaven; unlike that of your ancestors, who ate and later died. Those who eat this bread will live forever” (St. John, Ch. 6 Vs. 52-58).

So the consumption of the Eucharist, bread and wine turned into the very body and blood of Christ, through the power of Christ via the institution of the Church and her priests, is no casual affair for the Catholic. For this reason there is an extra emphasis on the value of the Eucharist and going to Mass during a time of pandemic. In some ways it is absurd to ask a Catholic to casually give up going to Mass because you are asking him to refrain from seeing the miracle of Christ’s most tangible presence on earth. The Eucharist, the most regularly recurring miracle in the world, is the very heartbeat of the Church and it is the very heartbeat of the Catholic.

It is allowed, of course, that Catholics miss Mass. In times such as these when the threat of disease is so high, our Bishops are cancelling Masses. Large gatherings still present a threat of extending a pandemic. NPR and others are casually reporting on these affairs as well as what other religions are doing for their regular weekly gatherings, and while they have gotten better at using Church terminology to refer to things like the Eucharist, they still treat it as some sort of alien practice that has no inherent significance. But it is no casual affair – it is the most important affair.

“What? You’re still having Church? They didn’t cancel? Why would you risk going to Church?”

Because it’s not just church – it is the Mass. Further, it is the Eucharist, our Lord Himself. When push comes to shove I will respect my society and community, staying home when appropriate, but in no way will I diminish the value of Mass and the Eucharist. Its value and the consequences of its consumption are way more important than these earthly affairs of ours, and it will always come first. While I yet imagine what being in the presence of God is like, for now I will live in the presence of the Eucharist, the presence of Christ until He comes again, as much as I can. Should it be imposed, I will obey and stay home from the Mass, but the priority of my life is Christ, because whether it is COVID-19 or not, Christ is what I plan on seeking.

 

For an extra resource on this topic, listen here (part 1) and here (part 2) to a talk by Bishop Robert Barron (one of my heroes).

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Caritas in Disney’s Frozen

It takes but a casual observer to note that love is the theme to one of Disney’s largest franchises, Frozen. One can look at the theme of self-love, in the case of Elsa, romantic love, in the case of Anna and Kristoff, or sisterly love, in the case of Anna and Elsa. But as in any sort of literary analysis, it is too simple to look at just one level of love within the movie. Instead, one must look further and above to find a more central theme that courses through the whole piece. To get the best perspective on the value of love in Frozen, we must look at the character with the most amount of connections to others: Anna.

Of course if you take my mother’s view, there is no point in overanalyzing a cartoon, but the substance here is too much to avoid.

Anna begins in the first movie as one of the most innocent and naive characters. The creature in most need of human contact and care is the most isolated for a large part of her childhood. While she has her parents for some part, there is a significance to the fact that she is deprived of love for a significant part of it. She never comes to know what it means to truly be loved by someone else, and when the gates are finally opened for the first time in forever, a naive and delicate figure is launched at the world. She literally is throwing her love at the first handsome figure she meets because it’s the little amount of love that she has learned about.

The first franchise installment is important to Anna’s character development because she comes to understand what healthy and loving relationships can even look like. While Elsa is singing, desperately, “Let it go,” Anna is desperately singing ‘Let me in.’ She has been shut out from those that were close to her, and to even know how to form relationships and love someone, you have to have the opportunity to be in other peoples’ lives. Eventually the first movie shows the viewers that healthy love consists of a two-way street. You have to be in other people’s lives, and you have to let people in. Anna also grows in her understanding of love by understanding the key notion of sacrifice.

Reflected in all characters is the beauty that love is based first in sacrifice. What? What does sacrifice have to do with love? Sacrifice is the act of denying oneself (perhaps to the extreme degree of death) so that someone else may find a benefit of some nature. When the self is denied, the other is elevated. True love, the first movie teaches, is just such a love, where the good of another person is willed with disregard to one’s own benefit from the act or situation. True love is more powerful than evil and is bigger than any romantic relationship.

This notion of selfless love, willing the good of the other, is an ancient one: in Latin it is known as caritas (from where we get the word charity), in ancient Hebrew it is known as chesed. It is the most true form of love that we can describe, and it is the love that God extends to humanity and all of creation. He wills our good without benefit to Himself. There is nothing we can do that benefits God, but he chooses to love us anyway.

So this sets the stage for the real point of focus I want to take for this article: Anna as she appears in the second movie. While Anna learns about charity in the first movie, she ends up displaying an extension of her original naivete. The opening song, led by Anna, demonstrates that her love is fragile. In other words she does not have caritas, she has a lesser form of it. She has delectatio.

In no way has Anna’s love for her family decreased. If anything, her attachment has increased. With the immediate threats of the first movie’s finale gone, Anna’s sincere caritas took a step down in devolution and instead became delectatio. Instead of truly willing the good of the other without return expectation, we see that Anna’s love has devolved into total dependency on those she loves. She now requires their returned affection and gratitude in order to feel okay. She does not truly love them as much as she is delighting in them. They bring her delight, and the delight that she receives from them is what motivates her. This is what makes her love fragile, and what drives her through the first part of the second movie.

To the casual observer, Anna’s actions are eccentric and unnecessary. She goes way too far to make sure others are okay with the same sort of disregard for her own well-being, but it is not purely sacrificial, and it is not within full awareness of what is good for those she loves. At the slight appearance of Elsa’s discomfort during charades, Anna is sent herself into great internal turmoil, questioning every one of her recent actions towards her. At every one of Kristoff’s bumbly lines she perceives a threat in loss of his affection. When Elsa is even slightly in physical danger, Anna feels the need to dash brazenly into the fray, regardless of Elsa’s capacity and Anna’s incapacity. And finally, of course, when she believes Elsa is dead, Olaf is gone, and Kristoff has deserted her, Anna also believes she has nothing left that is precious and worth living for. That is how fragile her love is, and it is because it isn’t true love, it is a fragile delight in her family’s affection. Without their present affection and her inability to bring them back to where she can receive that affection, she is completely lost.

Important to note is that delectatio is not an inherently bad form of love. It is, however, a lesser form of love than caritas. It is not bad to delight in something or someone, but if that delight becomes more important than the good of the other, than it becomes a disordered and harmful love.

We see this exact problem between Anna and her sister. Elsa’s role in the second movie is about actualization, or becoming a more complete version of herself, or a higher or better version of herself. This actualization is definitively good for Elsa – she is lacking a knowledge of a powerful part of herself, and needs it to serve not just her own people of Arendelle but her ancestral people of Northuldra by discovering her side of the ‘Fifth Spirit.’ Anna explicitly hinders this development in Elsa. Every time Anna feels her loss of control over Elsa and restrains her so that she can still bring Anna delight and comfort, Anna keeps Elsa from fully engaging her development. In effect, Anna fails to will Elsa’s good, even though she thinks she is loving her in the best possible way.

Of course this strange perception of love that she has adopted is mostly fictitious. Kristoff certainly had a true love for her. Need I mention his constant and sincere sacrifice of self for Anna’s well being? Elsa never once doubts the strength of their bond. Olaf knows he can rely on Anna. Anna is the one who doubts, and who perceives her relationships in such a fragile way. At the end of her song she follows the advice she heard from around, to choose the next right step. Her delights have abandoned her and now she is alone with herself, and nothing else. Her option? To move forward. And since she has literally hit rock bottom, the only place to go is up and out into the light. Behind in that cave she leaves her attachments and her desires, exiting a better person, for she now seeks something entirely external to herself, rather than internally seeking delight. Actualized herself, she rediscovers that sense of bravery that she first experienced when she sacrificed herself for her sister against Prince Hans. With no thought of seeking delight in her mind, she seeks not what is directly good for her but what is good for everyone – the destruction of the dam that sowed such harm between her two ancestral peoples.

Funnily enough, this means she engages once again in the act of true sacrifice, knowing that she might be destroying her home of Arrendelle, i.e. herself, and destroys the dam in a heroic fashion. As she engages in this sacrifice, she realizes that she is not actually alone. Kristoff sacrifically serves her (and saves her from the giants) and she is reminded of his sincere caritas and delectatio for her. Later Elsa returns and she is given comfort for the fact that she was separated from Elsa for a time. She even has Olaf return to her.

The more she restricted her family’s movements so that she could hold on to their delight, she limited their good. But by letting them go and allowing Elsa (specifically) to become more actualized to the good, she finds that delectatio came anyway, and she needn’t have such a fragile love. More importantly she realizes that the love she has for her family is beyond momentary struggles and pain, and that the love persists beyond it, meaning that she can have hope in a more objective love and reality. As Kristoff tells her, “My love is not fragile” (“slap in the face, because yours was”). And as Olaf encourages her before his passing: “Anna, I finally found something that is permanent: love.”

Of course, following this logic, we see that Anna’s love is still not fully actualized in and of itself. She regains her independence, and relearns to love and will the good of the other without being dependent upon the delight she gets from them. Having the abstract object of their mutual bond as the higher object of her desire, rather than the more tangible object of their affection, she still has a materially bound object for the understanding of purpose in love. Her love is still dependent upon the people of her experience.

Observing Anna’s move to independence, most viewers might objectively agree with her choice to do the next right thing, and to base her love on more long term and abstract notions instead of affections, but what is it about the higher notion that we all assent to? The truth is that we assent to an unconditional love higher than any of us, but that would be a singular, unconditional, love that Anna does not have the virtue of exploring (due to her nature as a character of Disney property that would never explore theology lest they be cancelled by culture). A singular, higher, objective love that is independent from any of us and therefore can be inspiring to us, regardless of how dark our current situation might be, is of course God. He is Himself the fullest act of love, and therefore is Caritas and Delectatio. When all the fleeting pleasures of the earth fade away, as they inevitably will, what hope do we have that is left? What do we look forward to? How to rise from the floor when it’s not these we’re rising for? The answer is that we have to put stock into something, and our natural inclination as humans is to put it not into just some abstract and impersonal deity, but in someone that is capable of loving us at all times, regardless of whatever pain we face. The Christian God is such a God.

And so, we see, that a major underlying theme of Frozen I and II is not just any love but caritas itself, inviting us as the viewers to not be shallow in our relationships but to push deeper and to find a love not based in the people immediately pleasing to us but in some higher love that can motivate us when our delights inevitably fail us.

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Why I Attend the Traditional Latin Mass

I attend, as much as is practically possible, the Traditional Latin Mass. As a Roman Catholic I am obliged (quite happily, mind you) to weekly attend Mass, but as long as I go to a valid and licit Mass I have flexibility to attend wherever one is held. As a convert from non-denominational Christianity, you might believe that I would find something like the Traditional Latin Mass entirely appalling, but the truth is that it is incredibly attractive to me. An attraction borne of deep beauty.

Before investigating the reasons as to why I attend the TLM at all, first I must offer my reasons for attending any Mass to begin with. Compared with other groups of followers of our Lord Christ, the most Catholic of all beliefs is that our Lord left us with a particular gift of immense beauty before he sent out His apostles in His stead and was seated at the right hand of the Father. He instituted what is known as the Eucharist (Greek for thanksgiving), which is what non-Catholics know as being the Lord’s Supper. It is when the faithful eat bread and drink wine in memory of Christ’s death and resurrection, a symbol of the sacrifice itself. In Catholicism, however, there is a difference in belief. It is understood that the bread and wine become, during the consecration in the Mass, the actual body and blood of our Lord. As the Jews of the Old Testament consumed their sacrificial lamb after Passover, the Christians of the New Testament consume their own Sacrificial Lamb for the remission of sins, for sanctification, and for admittance to heaven.

This means that during the Mass, the faithful come into contact with heaven and with the eternal Christ, Himself, during the Mass. He Himself is present for others to see and consume. If you call to mind the significance of the literal presence of Christ in the Church, then a lot more about Catholicism makes sense. All of the reverent kneeling, music, and small symbols all take on a deeper aspect when you think that the person of their reverence is actually and legitimately present. If our Lord were not there, then it is a lot of show with no punch. But otherwise, it is like someone honoring the King of the Universe and they’re sure as heck going to be aware of such a fact. And when the King of the Universe says ‘eat of my flesh,’ I’m going to listen, and I’m going to receive it from the ecclesial authority that has maintained the centrality of the teaching of the Eucharist since its inception.

So that’s why I even attend Mass, and dare call myself Catholic. To receive the Eucharist is not something that any average ‘Christian’ can do, either. There are a whole host (Catholic joke, sorry) of consequences that arise from the consumption of our Lord through the Eucharist. When we consume the Eucharist, we are receiving His divinity, soul and flesh. Besides purifying us, this sacrament binds us together in Him. We are unified and not counted as separate. When Christ looks upon His church, He will see those who share a literal part in him. All of the physical churches of the world are then brought together by these and other singularly Catholic sacraments. Historically this is the significance of an excommunication. It is the power of Church authority to tell someone they are living an impure life and need a radical change before they can once again be admitted into the Body of Christ.

All Catholic Churches, singularly headed by the Bishop of Rome, believe and profess this to be true. It is the source of our unity and it is what binds our worldly organization together. Many Orthodox Churches also profess Christ to be literally present in the Eucharist, but do not submit to any singular Papal authority. That, however, is a different book to read about.

For me, this Eucharist is central to my relationship with God and it orients my worship of God here on Earth. What a miracle to claim and profess: that the God man can be literally and manifestly present in a form not explicitly human. So, then, I don’t take my Mass setting lightly. Whenever it is time for Mass, I orient myself as reverently as possible. While Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection is at once cause for us to jump for joy, the gift of the Eucharist is not everything. When we eventually go to heaven we will be gifted the immediate presence of God and all of our needs will be met in that singular presence, and the Eucharist is a temporal, mitigated presentation of something similar. For this season of human existence we are gifted the Eucharist, a faith in our Lord not confirmed yet by our immediate senses. And for those that have faith in that now will have faith in His later immediate presence when He comes again. So, then, the Mass is solemn as much as it is joyful, looking forward to the second coming.

Currently there are a couple of forms of the Mass to be seen, the Ordinary Form (OF) and the Extraordinary Form (EF). The OF is said in the local language where the Mass is being held and tends to feature more variance in choice of Music. It was a restructuring of the Mass in the late 1900s after the Second Vatican Council. The EF is said largely in Latin and relies heavily on the use of Gregorian Chant, Polyphony, and old Hymns and uses the rubric of the Mass right before the shift happened (from the early 1960s). The OF is entirely valid and licit so long as the rubric is completed in its entirety, and so Christ is present as much as He is in the EF, but there’s a lot to be said as to whether it can easily be felt that Christ is present in the OF.

Imagine, for a second, that you went to visit the Queen of England. Visiting royalty is a bit of a big deal, so you want to make sure you’re prepared. You learn about the pattern of visiting the Queen and you dress a little bit too nicely. You learn about the customs of the Buckingham Palace and make sure to follow them to a T. You practice what you’re going to say over and over again in your head. There is music that meets the tone of the occasion. After all of this preparation, though, you show up in England and you are told to meet the Queen, informally, down at a local pub over a couple of beers. Did you still meet the Queen? Of course. Did you still converse with her about the same content? Most likely. Was it underwhelming? Yeah! Probably!

The OF was designed around making the Mass more accessible and easier to understand. It caters more to the individuals present, breaking down any barriers that might keep the lay faithful from fully comprehending what is happening at any given point. Done properly, the OF can be very beautiful, but for me I find it has limitations. In many ways it can be like meeting the Queen at the pub instead of in a royal setting at the Buckingham Palace. As I heard recently in a discussion between Matt Fradd and Father Michael O’Loughlin, the OF can be a difficult place to search out and find the reverence towards the majesty of Christ and His tradition through the Church (even though it is still there). In many ways it feels like the removal of ‘barriers’ was really a removal of mystery and a removal of beauty.

The EF, for me, maintains a more full beauty and mystery properly due to our Lord Christ. I specifically have been enchanted by the Gregorian Chants so intricately involved in the yearly structure of the Church from Advent to Advent. I myself even began helping chant for the EF because of how beautiful I find it. When at the EF Mass, I don’t have to look hard to find reverence for Christ. I feel that my Christian brothers and sisters are, in unison, acknowledging the true depth of the mystery of our Lord’s presence. Furthermore I feel that as in a participant of the EF Mass, I am doing my fullest to participate and honor my God and King.

A key element of the EF is the use of Latin. The EF is oftentimes referred to as the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). For some this feels alienating, especially when the rubrics allow for Mass to be said in the local language in the OF. Of course with my affinity for languages I have a certain bias towards doing things in an alternative language other than English, but in this case there is a fairly objective reason to find the Latin beautiful. The Roman Catholic Church, centered in its Roman identity, uses the language of Latin as a centralizing language. Prior to the adjustments after Vatican II, Latin was the singular language used in all Roman Rite Churches – meaning that all Catholic Masses were precisely the same, regardless of the locale where the Mass was being said. By using Latin as the language of the Mass it aids in the universal identity and unity of the Catholic Church. The Mass is still this same way from place to place, as the rubrics are the same, but now individual languages are used instead, decentralizing the element of language. For me, participating in the Latin Mass gives me not just a connection the Church at large, as the OF does, but it also roots me in the tradition, knowing that I am saying and participating in the same Mass as many of my Catholic priors. I easily feel connected to Catholics of time past.

Most importantly, the TLM, the EF, inherently contains more respect for how the Eucharist is consumed by its attendants. In the OF the lay faithful have the option to receive directly on their tongue, usually while standing, or in their hand for them to put in their mouth themselves. In the EF, the lay faithful only have the option of kneeling at an altar railing to receive the Eucharist directly on the tongue. Some, as I, have taken to only receiving the Eucharist in the OF while kneeling. Worship is all about posture of the person and posture of the soul. Kneeling is an inherently more reverent way to acknowledge the Lord, and while it is possible in the OF, it is systematic in the EF. In this way, also, there is an increased reverence for the Eucharist and for the Mass.

I do not have the luxury of attending a weekly TLM. As of now I only attend it once a month, as it is the closest TLM by a few hours. Every time I go, though, I can say that it is the most fulfilling form of the Mass I have experienced. I don’t feel like I bumped into our King at the pub. I feel like I bowed and worshipped my King in a magnificent setting. In Christian circles, especially protestant ones, there is a mind to discuss witnessing, showing Christ’s love to others and inspiring them to follow Him. In my mind and within my own tradition of the Latin rite, there is no better way to revere and worship Christ. Similarly there is no better witness to the Catholic faith than the Traditional Latin Mass, which is shrouded in beauty and attractive mystery.

P.S. If you are Eastern Catholic or Orthodox, then please know I have a respect for your own traditions, I just didn’t really have the space to address them within the scope of my article.

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On the Indoctrination of Our Students

The word ‘indoctrination’ sounds really scary to people. The modern world is described as postmodern, and while defining that latter term is difficult, a certain element that stands out in the notion as a whole is a level of Post-Modern-Philosophy-Stress Disorder (PMPSD). We live in a world where the modernist science project has failed, where no secular philosophy has successfully gained a power-hold over any other, and where people generally see religion as a failed project. In this day and age it is expected that no one talks about their beliefs too much and that they hold them privately, away from the prodding eyes of others. The stress of the philosophical and theological wars of the past are too much and now the slightest mention of them can be the instigation of an anxiety attack, or, at the very least, a figurative bomb that destroys relationships.

Nowhere is this PMPSD more palpable, seemingly, than in western education. Explicitly due to the social trauma of our collective past, it was decided in some capacity that depriving our students of explicit moral instruction and separating the moral instruction from the rest of a student’s education was beneficial so that students were not being indoctrinated into a specific philosophy or theology. That, according to society, is meant for the parents to decide at home or to have their children pursue independently from explicitly religious or philosophical institutions. Should children be indoctrinated it would mean that they had been under some false pretense, because, according to the trauma directing future choices, any engagement with indoctrination must be under some false pretense. If there were no pretense, it would not have led to the trauma and destruction of the past.

There is a key element of discussion to be remembered when we analyze the meaning of the word ‘indoctrination.’ The word means to enter (in-) into a teaching (-doctrin-). What would it mean to entirely avoid indoctrination, as the postmodern world wants to avoid? It would mean not instructing our children! It would mean allowing students free choice to think about the world, and affirming whatever their thoughts are, right from the start. It would mean not guiding them up into our current knowledge, and instead have them stray off wherever they wanted to be. This idea would be called relativism, where everyones’ individual beliefs would be independently affirmed and allowed, regardless of their conflict with each other – each man’s reality is true to himself.

Of course, I am being slightly misleading in suggesting that postmodern thought is entirely relativistic, as it is not. Postmodern thought is the bounce back from pure relativism that was abound in the latter part of the XXth century, which ultimately accepts that some sort of ‘indoctrination,’ if you will, is necessary in order for humans to exist. It is as if our human nature has a universal fault that requires us to live in some sort of degrading hierarchy.

This discussion is ultimately important when we think about our schools. While postmodern thinking accepts that some hierarchy is necessary, it still tries to avoid the evil that is indoctrination. If a student becomes lost to one way of thinking, then they are doomed forever. As I have been building up to, however, this is unavoidable. When students go to school for 12 grades for education, they are going to get some kind of indoctrination. There is no working around it! If Christian parents raise their children ‘free’ of indoctrination so that they can come to their own conclusion about religion and faith, then the parents have not raised a child properly free of indoctrination, they have indoctrinated them with agnosticism.

The point of this article is to raise to the front of your mind the fact that indoctrination is inevitable. Your child, one way or another, is going to form a frame of reference to understand the world. They have to. How else can they even survive? Schools themselves cannot be purely agnostic in their approach to education, either. It just doesn’t work that way. Specifically, also, I want to take to task English education at the High School level.

I have met quite a few English teachers over time. I have been in my fair share of English classes. Especially at the High School level, and probably earlier, grammatical skill in the language is no longer the main point of focus. At this higher level it is about logic and comprehension as much as anything. Usually this involves reading books and other literature and learning to comprehend the deeper meanings of literature as well as come up with original ideas about these readings. Teachers sensitive to topics of racism and feminism well understand that the material chosen can impact their students deeply, and if they choose literature insensitive to minority races or specific genders, they are moving into hurtful territory. Why? Because the topics at hand deeply affect the mind and education of the students.

Most teachers I know are aware of this. They do not plan out their classes solely on the idea of some standard education. They contemplate the messages and themes that they can teach to their students by reading certain material or by doing specific discussions. They know that they can teach their kids grander ideas by reading and interpreting in a specific direction. They can teach children the value of respecting others, they can teach them about perceiving beauty and they can teach them how to explain their own thoughts. They also, however, can teach them that Western Society’s hierarchy is inherently hurtful and disparaging, that there is no redemption of our Christian past, that only a progressive society is a good one.

Even if a teacher builds their class to be receptive to the plurality of ideas that can come from students and does their best to avoid tempting students into any one direction, the teacher will have certain presuppositions about how they build their class. In this way, in the construction of the system that the students inevitably participate in, will lead to some kind of indoctrination on the part of the student. We must then not assume that an education can be free of indoctrination, and we must not assume that our students are not being led into any specific direction of thought. We cannot pretend, either, that students who go off to school for most of the day and do not have a lot of solid interaction with their parents on a regular basis are going to automatically follow the education of their parents. It matters where kids go to school and who the teachers are that lead their class.

Instead of shying away from that fearful idea of indoctrination, we should instead embrace it and step into it. We should be intentional in our direction and we should not be shy about what that direction is. We should make deliberate choices on behalf of our children that guide them into a specific step so that they are not burdened by the choice of philosophy when they are not even capable of understanding it. Even more, we, as adults, should civilly, but passionately, debate our philosophies. We should indoctrinate our children and be so comfortable in the philosophy with which we do it that there are no qualms behind it. We should not be apathetic to the indoctrination of our children, because our apathy there results in apathetic kids, and apathetic adults are a worse disease to society than any physical illness that might destroy our society.

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My Teaching Philosophy

My first and primary objective is to raise the intellect of my students from a lower to higher existence. To raise the intellect is to increase its breadth of knowledge, to improve its maneuverability, and to more closely align its own conceptions to reality itself. To learn another language is to achieve exactly these things. By learning a language, students are exposed to a wider view of reality, which increases the breadth of their knowledge by mere interaction with the subject. When the intellect is first confined by the limitations of a new setting of a different language, it is later more free to maneuver what it knows because it has a wider range of language skills to understand and communicate what it knows, quite tangibly increasing its maneuverability. Because every language maintains an individuality about itself, when students use it to perceive reality they inevitably gain an increased perspective of the world. This means that their previous conceptions about the world are corrected, or at least adjusted better, towards reality itself.

Since this is the learning goal I maintain for my students, my instruction has to follow suit. In language classrooms it is possible for students to learn about a language and not learn the language itself. If they only learn about the language they cannot gain the new perspective of reality or improve their intellect’s maneuverability. It is instead necessary that I assist my students to gain a skill based mastery of the language. This can only be achieved in one way: by introducing comprehensible input that fosters understanding of the language and creates a repository of language knowledge within the individual. Over time the repository gathers strength and force and is able to be summoned by the students to produce their own formulations of the language that I do my best to elicit, even from day one. I am, in essence, a living book for my students. I exist in the classroom to give them as much comprehensible language input as possible, either directly from me or from a text source I provide to them.

What I hold and maintain around this notion of education and instruction is that student engagement is absolutely necessary. Since education constitutes two parts, the form of my instruction and the matter of my students’ intellects, there are two elements to discuss about engagement. First is that I must foster the engagement as much as possible. When appropriate, I restrict student flexibility so that they are not engaged in their choices but are solely engaged with me or the task that I have given them. Language learning is difficult, and they need to focus as much effort as possible on understanding the language at hand. I also try to offer interesting content for their comprehension. I use dynamic characters, compelling plots, and logical puzzling to gather their attention. Furthermore, I foster a cyclical structure of class from week to week so students can focus most of their attention on the content of class rather than the structure of it. Second, however, is that students must be engaged with me. Explicit coaching in the native language on my part involves teaching students about the necessity of their election to participate and receive what I am giving. A master can lead his horse to the water, but the horse must choose to drink.

Because my philosophy of language instruction revolves around building a repository of that language within the student, a method which inherently involves little output on the part of the students, I tend to assess and grade as little as possible around the actual language growth itself. When I do assess and grade students, it revolves around their ability to comprehend material rather than just the content of their previous comprehension. In the short term this may seem to produce less than capable students, but in the long run leads to ultimate success. In the end of a given course period, I have lead students to have a higher intellect and to have a higher skill in the target language.

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Moana is a Catholic Converted from Protestantism

In this article, I will demonstrate how Disney’s film Moana can be read as a Catholic film, and specifically how Moana as a character is analogous to a Catholic convert that grew up as a Protestant Christian. This argument in no way presumes that Moana is meant to contain any of these symbolic connections to the Christian faith, but instead aims to highlight how various symbols and themes that are strong and valuable in Moana are also relevant to describe a Protestant’s conversion to Catholicism.

First, I shall look at Moana’s life on Montinui. In the song “Where You Are,” we see a beautiful, yet slightly tragic, account of village life on the island of Montinui. To a certain extent, the song motivates the viewer to see both elements in village life. The beautiful aspect comes from how Moana’s father describes a picturesque life on the island where tradition is encouraged through dancing, for example, and through the agricultural simplicities that villagers tend to. The way that he sings about the coconuts, fishing, and how the villagers treat their necessary tasks (“we joke and we weave our baskets”) is a seemingly ideal way of living into which he is inviting Moana. All of the beauty weaves back into how her father starts off the song:

“…The dancers are practicing

They dance to an ancient song

(Who needs a new song? This old one’s all we need)

This tradition is our mission…”

This is the crux of the song and what bridges the beautiful with the tragic. Her father is appealing to beauty through tradition, highlighting that what has been handed down to Moana has value and is worth maintaining. Yet, as we see in Moana’s intermittent lines, this is not a solely beautiful concept. For Moana this tradition is something that traps her. For herself, she feels the desire to go out into the ocean, something that she believes she is called to, as she later sings about in her solo song “How Far I’ll Go.” Furthermore, this is not a purely selfish desire. Moana’s grandmother fosters it, telling her that it is an entirely appropriate thing to feel, blaming her son’s “stubbornness and pride” as that which traps Moana. While it seems that the tragedy is the point of the song, existing to move the movie’s plot along in a stereotypical coming-of-age rebel story, it is only half of it. The overarching goal of the song is to highlight to Moana the importance of her family and the great roots that she has in the island and its history, and while she faces the tragedy of not fulfilling a natural desire to go out on the sea, she learns to find a peace and happiness with the beauty that her father showed her. In the end, she feels both things: the beauty of her family and tradition and all that is good within it, yet the tragedy of not fulfilling a natural desire to go out into the sea.

Going into this first song, the experience of the viewer is not entirely neutral with regards to Moana’s desire for the sea. The leading scenes for the song show Moana as a toddler, toddling over to the sea, where the Sea, as a mystical entity, attempts to give her the Heart of Tefiti. As viewers we are privy to the fact that this makes Moana’s plight more worthy, as she has the backing of mystical forces, while the tradition of her village, while not lacking in force, lacks mysticism.

The roots of the Catholic reading begin with Moana’s plight. The village of Montinui can be representative of Protestant Christianity. It has a tradition that goes back many generations and has something of an authority of its own, but in and of itself lacks in mysticism. Moana, growing up in this community, feels attached to it and does in fact see the beauty of it. Similarly, a Protestant-turned-Catholic (PTC) would have grown up in a similar way. They loved their families, they loved God, they loved the Bible, and were promised that all of their answers would be found in the traditions of their families, but they were unable to find a true peace with it all. Something, at some point or another, started tugging at their hearts and began encouraging them to imagine something greater than the faith that they had been raised in. A PTC, just like Moana, learned growing up that they could “find happiness right / where you are / where you are.”

At the heart of the island, later, is a hint of what Moana is feeling deep in her heart. Her grandmother shows her that she is not irrational for wanting to go out to sea because Moana’s ancestry is steeped in the notion. Upon entering a cave at the core of the island, she finds the core of the island’s identity – voyaging. Suddenly Moana realizes that her view of the world was only ever a portion of what actually existed. The traditions that her father had espoused were only ever part of the story; there was something more. Rather than only the traditions of Montinui being the core of her culture’s story, she sees that the voyaging of her ancestors reconciled both the beauty of their traditions and the beauty of the sea and exploration. The coconuts and simplicity of Montinui were only a small portion of her people’s larger story that spanned the wide ocean.

Similarly, a PTC likely had a moment like Moana’s discovery of the cave of canoes. They thought they understood the fullness of their faith but then might have come across a certain piece of information that put it off-balance. For some, it is the towering beauty of the Catholic Church; the cathedrals of the world alone have great sway over their visitors, with the reaction to the burning of Notre Dame in Paris being a pertinent piece of evidence. Others may find it in liturgy, the general motions and practices of the Catholic Church absent from other Protestant denominations. Some might be inspired by history, and by reading the early Church fathers to see that the faith that has lasted almost 2,000 years was much more Catholic than Protestant. Whatever cave that a PTC found, they were struck by it, and it began them on a journey not unlike Moana’s. They see that the tradition they grew up in is actually relatively young compared to the more full tradition of the Catholic faith.

Moana’s grandmother, inciting her to follow her passion for the sea and literally bringing Moana straight to the boats, seems to be sowing divisiveness. She is literally encouraging her granddaughter to abandon her traditions, go out to sea, and fulfill Moana’s community-detracting wishes of leaving the island behind, right?

Wrong! While Moana’s actions seem divisive, the only reason that she actually follows through with going out to sea and following her grandmother’s advice is to restore the way of life that the village should have had from the beginning. The island is falling ill, in a rather surreal and mystical yet very real way, and Moana is motivated to leave because her grandmother claims that Moana has a way to heal not just the island, but the whole world. Moana does not feel only a bold notion of rebellion against the island when she leaves; she also and mainly feels a strong love for her people and her island. She treks out into the sea because she wants to find a way to make what she already had better.

“I am a girl who loves my island,

And a girl who loves the sea,

It calls me!

I am the daughter of the village chief,

We are descended from voyagers,

Who found their way across the world,

They call me!”

It is not something that her father would ever understand, though. For Moana’s father such an action is ultimate betrayal. Were it not for Moana’s grandmother dying, he would have burned down the boats, and Moana’s hopes of ever sailing would have been gone forever. Of essence to her development, though, is that her growth is oriented towards her people and not away from them, despite the surface-level appearance of her actions and motives.

Ultimately, upon learning the core identity of her village’s culture, and by reconciling all that her grandmother ever taught her with this knowledge, Moana sets off into the sea to correct what had gone wrong so many years before.

A PTC’s actions, seeking to become Catholic while living in a Protestant community, also seem to be divisive. Rather than seeking unity with the community the PTC lives in, they are breaking away from it to set off on a journey that leads them away. But the PTC does not leave mainly out of rebellion. A true rebel of faith turns away from it completely, and this is not the way of PTCs. Instead, they seek to synchronize the newfound old truths that they stumbled upon, or were led to, with the faith they already had. With a new pebble of information that the Holy Spirit leads them to, they begin a journey to set that pebble where it belongs, healing the world around them and becoming that which Protestant faith never would have allowed them to be.

So what is the wrong that Moana attempts to set straight? She needs to mend a wound, fill a hole in reality that had turned a source of healing and right-direction for the world into a source of divisiveness, pain, and confusion. The Heart of Tefiti, once stolen by the demigod Maui to impress his human admirers, needs to be brought to Tefiti once more so that the order of the world can once again flow properly.

The equivalent of Maui stealing the Heart of Tefiti to Christianity is the Protestant Reformation. While there were fruits of this event for the Catholic Church, it overall led to a break in tradition that did more damage to Christianity in the world than it did good. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other reformers sought to take the faith and turn it into something better. They took the authority of the discernment of Scriptures and brought it right to the common man, telling them they had the power to know the true meaning of it rather than following what had been given to them by authority. This is not unlike Maui attempting to bring the Heart of Tefiti to mankind. He claims that he wanted to do it in order to benefit man, granting him the power to create life, the power which previously belonged only to the Earth Goddess Tefiti. Ultimately, even though good was intended from this rupture of Catholic tradition, it only led to chaos. The Reformation led to the most thorough division of material Christian unity that the world has ever seen. While prior to the reformation Christians were united under a single faith and a single mission, after it a theological division turned into real physical divisiveness, pain, and confusion. Seeing the actual violence that resulted from such a divide, subsequent generations sought to put religious and faithful life to a backburner because placing it at the center only led to violence. After the Protestant Reformation, the number of divisions in worldly Christian organization only ever increased and were never decreasing. These divides, as well, weren’t always peaceful. Modern philosophy and Christian denominations, seeing the havoc being wrought, sought to leave religion behind and to seek a greater and more peaceful ‘truth,’ not unlike the new traditions that the village of Montinui set up after Maui stole the Heart of Tefiti.

Moana, then, restores the Heart of Tefiti, not only by bringing it directly back, but also by taming Maui and his rebellious nature. She shows him how his inner desires sowed division and pain instead of bringing more actual joy to humanity, and thus corrects his course. While it is Maui that teaches Moana how to sail, Moana helps Maui seek where to sail.

A PTC seeks, while not immediately for the whole world, to bring the heart of their faith back to where they see it in the more complete context of the Catholic Church. Once they bring their faith there, all that they know of the world becomes clearer. Many PTCs must confront the divisions that Luther and other reformers set in motion. They must answer the theological questions and arguments that the reformers posed and decide who was more correct in their position. The question may not be “what do I think is the right theology?” but rather “who best holds authority?” For a PTC, coming to terms with Catholic Theology is a lot like restoring the Heart of Tefiti, and the result is a feeling of synchronicity that they never knew prior; the islands heal, the fish return, and peace is sown.

Moana’s journey is not a typical hero’s journey. While in so many ways the story revolves around Moana finding her right place in the world and performing a virtuous act that saves it, she is righting an order that was thrown off so many years before. Because of a singular event that happened long before her time she was living in a world that seemed askew. In many ways, the purpose of her journey is almost entirely about the world around her and her village rather than herself.

A PTC similarly does not find themselves in Catholicism as a result of selfish desires, but rather find themselves in the midst of Rome’s Church because they feel compelled by a sense of wholeness and completeness that is not found elsewhere. As the Ocean called Moana, the Holy Spirit called the PTC. In the end, Moana restored a truly whole way of life to her people and helped not just herself, but her people as well. Even though her family viewed their tradition as entirely complete, Moana was able to listen to the Ocean and discover that it was incomplete. She took it and made her tradition whole, making her life more whole in the process.

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What does St. John Henry Cardinal Newman Have to Say About Learning a Language?

Portrait of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, by Sir John Everett Millais, 1881

In his Idea of a University, St. John Henry Cardinal Newman expounds on a great many ideas, the principal of which is that a University is meant to teach someone about universal knowledge, to raise the mind of an individual to a new view and perspective of the world. Subordinate to this principle is that this type of education is only possible if all realms of knowledge are included, especially theology and religion. Reason informs us well enough about the existence of God, and faith and divine revelation shows how He is present with us, but education means studying the science, the knowledge, of God as much as studying the science of anything else.

 

Furthermore he argues that education must not be pursued for pragmatic means. If one seeks and receives education for the purpose of improving their skill in some trade or task then that education becomes subordinated to that trade or task. This type of education is fine, but Newman argues that universal education, education about the universal, needs to be a good in its own sake. It is good to know more about the universe, and therefore universal education to achieve the knowledge is also good for its own sake. To subordinate menial worldly tasks to this more universal good is a subversion of that good, and inappropriate. Knowledge that comes to be possessed by someone forever changes that person and increases their good. Useful knowledge increases the worldly pleasure of a man, but universal knowledge, properly useless knowledge, improves the intellect and the ability of an intellect to reason, and this is a good achieved for its own sake. He refers to classical thinkers, who highlight the fact that once man has fulfilled his basic needs he is inclined to contemplate, and universal education fosters that contemplation and ability to do it like no other. Universal education, liberal education, is meant to draw us out of our tic for tac worldly perspective and shows us the higher ways of the world.

Seeing this, before looking at language education, one may be convinced that language education, especially foreign language education, is a subject matter of extrinsic and pragmatic goods first before all. But Newman goes on to specifically address the education around language, and his thoughts are relevant to why someone would learn a language different from their own. Comparing his outlook on education to that of his contemporaries, he juxtaposes education for the advancement of the useful arts with education for the cultivation of the mind.

Thinking about language at all, Newman highlights how individually unique language is. Where does it work, first? As a cultivation of the mind or as a useful art? Language has a unique power as it actually accompanies reason in the process of its function. He calls to mind the meaning of the Greek logos, which means both speech and reason. These elements, he says, are deeply intertwined and inseparable. When understanding the nature of words, it is important, in his opinion, to recognize the inherent bond they share with reason. He claims that his contemporaries wish to have separated these two elements and wish to say that one man may be good at reason while the other at waxing words, but he shoots back that such a divide speaks as them being separated, while in fact language should be “the lawful wife in her own house” [married to reason].

The combination of language to reason, and the fact that every man’s reason stands to a degree on its own, pushes Newman to say that language is therefore individual and unique. As it combines between person and person, there is still the notion that words form first from certain people and then spread outwards. This is no more true than in literature, in the writing of any certain author. The language chosen by that specific author may have objectively good notions and principles, but the uniqueness of the language also stands out and is necessary for understanding the author on a deep level. For the recipients of such a text, it is important, in Newman’s mind, for them to approach that text in the text’s original language. By seeing and understanding the initial language, students, or the recipients, will have much more to understand out of the text.

So language is not just a useful art or cultivation of the mind – it serves in the middle. But language mediating thoughts is no simple notion. Words are literally the vehicles between soul and body, cementing things, that are first brought into the mind, into the brain as well. Without language there is no mediation of reason. Newman’s concept of language heavily relies on the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and there are multiple premises at hand to understand it. The first premise is that worldly thing exist in a unique combination of act and potency, the act of a thing being its abstract form. The second premise is that human comprehension is a matter of possessing forms within an individual’s mind, within the intellect of the soul. A third premise, not explicitly stated within Newman and not carefully expounded on within Thomas Aquinas’ work, is the notion that a human possessed form is called a quiddity.

The idea of a quiddity is where I believe Newman to situate the uniqueness of language, and what necessitates the study of foreign language for liberal education. According to Aquinas it is possible for someone to understand a word but attribute the wrong form to it, or vice versa. Naturally when learning about things in the world, humans do not understand them perfectly from the beginning. It is necessary for them to, over time, compose or divide forms that they have learned in order to perfect their knowledge. It is this that a liberal education does best, per the opinion of Newman. Consequentially for language, though, it means that the forms that we possess in our minds may not perfectly resemble the forms of the world. One comes to possess a general form of dog, not specific to any one species, as is proper to the existence of a form, but that form may not perfectly be the form of dog that exists in the world. It may lack certain aspects, like an understanding of the powers of organs within actual form of dog, or it may have additional aspects if a dog has never been closely observed by someone, such as the power within a dog to fly (which is simply not true). If 100% of a form exists in the world, the quiddity attains a certain percentage of that form as is seen and understood by the person perceiving it. It is this quiddity that St. Thomas says is the form of ‘material’ words, and it is the uniqueness of the quiddity and the many quiddities of words that gives rise to the uniqueness of language that Newman discusses.

Each language, then, presents a certain amount of a unique perspective on the world. Each language in its communication and existence within human minds is an imperfect capturing of reality, and if the purpose of liberal education is to raise up and cultivate the mind to view reality in a much more rational fashion, it serves the liberally educated to study multiple languages so as to gain extra insight into the nature of reality. Newman specifically mentions teaching foreign languages as a necessity. While not bringing up the notion that other languages in general aid in the mission of liberal education, he does discuss the study of literature. He talks about reading classics of literature, works derived from an author’s specific experience, in their original language. Only in reading it in their original language, he claims, can one perceive the specific beauty of their craft, which then serves the mission of liberal education.

Language does the impossible. Normally a combination of form and matter constitutes an object in the natural world, but language provides a different substance, a matter of sound and writing to forms that otherwise already have a natural pairing in matter. Language, an artifact of human experience, marries itself to the abstract forms within our minds and replaces the substance of the world for the mere sake of communication. Our own language, and most certainly language other than our own, deserve to be of incredible import to one’s education.

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Why Bother with Learning Languages?

How do you know things? How do you grow from being an incontinent infant to a semi-capable adult? There are two main elements of growth within a person. The first is their physical capability. Infants are useless and weak – adults have to do absolutely everything for them. Adults, on the other hand, tend to be self-sufficient. Growth, then, looks like a casual attainment of physical abilities. The second element of growth in humans is related to intelligence. Infants, beyond not being able to do anything, are also seemingly blank and stupid. They just don’t know anything. An adult, on the other hand, knows quite a lot. So growth also looks like a general attainment of common human knowledge.

That intellectual growth can come from two main places, itself. One of the basic sources of intellectual growth comes from a human’s sensory observations of the world. As children observe visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory patterns, they begin to form from these observations certain abstractions that are what we call information and knowledge. They learn to further gauge their senses towards inter-human interaction and experience emotions. The second source of intellectual growth is language. At first, children get a lot of input from their language-full surroundings. Family and family friends, school, all people around them speak to them and act using language in front of them. By observing and comprehending all this language input, children begin to form connections between words and abstractions. They connect words to abstractions they already understood or use the language to understand new abstractions. They take what they have already learned and combine it with other things they know, or divide it into smaller components. Language helps facilitate the intellectual growth beyond the directly observable.

While composition and division of abstractions is not limited to language itself, it certainly is accelerated by it. Instead of using worldly objects to pull out abstractions, words of language can pull out the abstractions instead, meaning that direct worldly observation is not necessary to gather abstractions.

When children go to school, they are constantly being fed language or worldly observation to compose and divide these abstractions and grow their knowledge. It is a beautiful thing. Classic liberal education, the standard upon which our universities and general schools are built, has a primary goal of giving individuals the ability to compose and divide with ease and to have a wide breadth of knowledge. The more abstract the composition and division goes, the more reliant one is on language to achieve it. This education, though, is not meant just for school aged children. Cicero once said that after a man’s worldly needs are met, the first thing he thirsts for is knowledge. Not knowledge for some worldly purpose, but knowledge for it’s own sake. We want to know simply to know. The more adept we are at language, the more we are able to know and able to come to know.

Great, so I have argued for a general liberal education and for knowing language better, but what about a second language, or even a third or fourth? Why invest in the effort to learn other languages?

Click bait articles and a scientifically minded society wants you to think of a useful reason to learn another language.

You’ll get a higher paying job.

What, by fifty cents?

Your brain functions, like processing and memory, will improve.

More significantly through language learning than through doing other thinking-heavy tasks?

You’ll travel abroad with more ease.

So learning a language belongs only to wealthier people like traveling does? Google translate couldn’t help you get around just as easily?

Anytime someone introduces one of these reasons, a pragmatic reason, a useful reason, they stake the whole process of language learning on a purpose, with a use. When that benefit falls through (as it is most likely to do) what happens then? Likely you give up on learning the language.

Instead, one should learn a language for the sake of learning that language. One language is an individual and specific way of looking at reality. Another language offers a slightly different perspective, and even more languages offer that many more perspectives. It educates the intellect and fosters individual growth in a unique and valuable way, in a way that no other education can do.

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