Intellectual Virtues

"Sin makes us stupid." ~Fr. Chad Ripperger

Aaron Sorkin once wrote and placed in the character of actor Robert Guillaume on Sports Night the insightful words, “If you’re a stupid person surround yourself with smart people. If you’re a smart person, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.” This exemplifies the central problem with the “never discuss religion or politics” theory with which I grew up, and which has haunted social discourse throughout my life. If we cannot politely discuss important ideas with people who love us, what hope do we have of doing so with strangers?

Surrounding oneself with only those who agree with us is not only bad for our intellectual growth, but it also makes it nearly impossible to remain intellectually honest. What person who was being intellectually honest could spout that comatose violin player pro-abortion nonsense certain people are so proud of?

As always, the Church has the answer. The central answer to all the world’s problems is Christ and His Church, of course. We live this answer through the sacraments, through prayer and virtuous living, and through fostering the intellectual virtues.

Intellectual virtues? Are there such wonders? Absolutely! The Church gives us everything we need to live a full life, and growing in the dignity of clear thought is an integral part of that. The intellectual virtues are understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. 

Understanding is the habit of mind by which one grasps the natures of things (Ripperger, 2016). The created world is infused with a specific essence by God. We are a thing, which means we are not another thing. I can see that a tree is not a skunk. A baby is not a tumor. An ordered government is not open to graft.

Both my parents were teachers, and I grew up with many books in my home. One of them that became a member of my own book collection was my mother’s high school history text. It was denser, had fewer pictures, and was more clearly written than any of the college texts I used, much less the ones that were available to my children once they began school. The idea that a rural, poor school district would have better written texts than college students were able to access would be funny if it weren’t such a problem for the intellectual development of our young. 

It is obvious that the textbook companies have deliberately dumbed everything down. I once had a math education professor tell me that a particular math text was best because of all the pictures it had in it. The children would not be as intimidated by math, apparently, if there were a fire truck next to the addition tables. Another part of this is the absolute unwillingness to have children and adolescence memorize things that obviously require memorization to move to the next intellectual level.

Knowledge, or scientia, is the virtue to judge created things as they are based on a set of principles (Ripperger, 2016). These data reinforce our understanding of the thing in question. If I observe water freezing when its temperature is below zero Celsius, then I can infer that zero degrees Celsius is the freezing point for water. The sun appears in the eastern sky and disappears in the west on a 24-hour cycle. This pattern replicates each day. An human egg that is fertilized by a sperm is a baby. We can know this by the growth from single cell to full-grown human. The cell never becomes a carrot, a puppy, or a toaster oven.  

Wisdom is the virtue wherein one grasps the things that pertain to God through the natural light of reason (Ripperger, 2016). This is a gift of the Holy Spirit particularly associated with Confirmation and should be lived as an integral part of the Catholic life. Wisdom in this sense allows us to see and judge things from God’s perspective, allowing us to live in Divine Truth. Thanks to this grace and virtue we are best able to seek the good in all situations, and use our abilities justly, always contemplating Our Blessed Lord.

Wisdom is a word we should reclaim for God. When I was in college people stopped talking about virtues and started talking about values. Values can be wrong, depending on what one decides to value. Virtues are immutable truths that have stood the test of time. Pop psychology platitudes can appear wise if one knows no history or literature. Snippets taken out of context have the potential to confuse rather than ennoble. 

The case for life has appeared in the descriptions of each of these three virtues. That is frankly because the confusion in our culture regarding sex and sexuality, children and life, is so widespread and occurs in so many ways it can be difficult to see them all.

It is patently obvious to anyone who is intellectually honest that when the sperm fertilizes an egg a human person is created. That is true when it happens as a natural part of procreation and when it happens against the will of God in a Petrie dish. Every IVF child is a child. To discard them, make jewelry out of them, or freeze them forever is an abomination. Every child deserves the protection of the law and their parents from the moment of conception.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that children deserve the protection of their parents and grandparents prior to conception. Somehow, we have gone from being a culture that understood that single parenthood was a tragedy to be avoided on behalf of one’s children, to celebrating and honoring single motherhood as if it were a social good. Even a cursory glance at the outcomes for children of single mothers tells the story. We were right that single parenthood is a tragedy. Children growing up fatherless is a tragedy. No amount of feminist-girl-boss nonsense changes that. And no matter how much we love and value the single mothers in our lives, and see the quality parenting they do, they and their children would still be better off with a husband/father in the home.

Wisdom is seeing God’s plan for creating and raising children. Children should grow up knowing that finding a holy spouse is the most important work any of us can do, other than discerning religious life. Once we are in a sacramental marriage, we are open to life and God creates all the children He wants through our cooperation with His creative power.

Contraception has probably always existed in some form. Yet the use of hormonal contraception was a moral tsunami that hit with the ferocity of a tsunami of deep evil. Suddenly people believed that they could have indiscriminate sex without conceiving children. That was only true sometimes, so what could one do with a child created who was not wanted? Hmm. If it’s just a clump of cells, or part of the woman’s body, then she can choose to have it removed. This isn’t wisdom, knowledge, or understanding. It is a demonic lie. And yet people choose to go along with it.

I think I understand why certain kinds of lies are comfortable and comforting. I see the ways people want to fit in and so they live by the “your truth” and “my truth” nonsense. We live in an intellectually frivolous age filled with obvious lies. It’s too difficult to argue in favor of sin against a framework of understanding, knowledge and wisdom. So, proponents of sin and error have learned to deliberately discard the intellectual virtues by claiming that their own subjective “truths” are equally deserving of our respect. When all ideas are “true” then nothing is true or false, good or evil. It’s Satan’s argument for despair, and it cannot stand against the intellectual virtues.