Thank you for the liveliest discussion yet! May there be many more!!
A few thoughts (not in any particular order):
1) On the course being challenging. Although I said a lot of what I wanted to say about this during the evening, I'd also want to add that it's intended to be very much a course you can access on different levels. Certainly, I do think that the intellectual life of the Church in Scotland could do with upping its game and I'd like to think that the course, but more importantly the Institute as a whole, is part of that attempt to bring the full riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition out into the open. If you've got plenty of time and the inclination, you'll find many resources here and much thought provoking material to take that exploration further.
But I also want it to be a course that can be skimmed (or dipped into!). Just by turning up on Wednesdays and participating in the class, I hope that you'd get quite a lot out of it, even if that's mostly: 'There's a lot here that I can have a look at when (if) I finally get the time.' The Church and its intellectual tradition is much bigger than any one of us: we're all dipping into it in our short lives.
2) Celibacy. Oddly, I hadn't envisaged the conversation taking the turn it had on celibacy! (I'd really just intended to talk about the goods of marriage!) When comparing celibacy and married life, I think the key point (as others made rather better than I did!) is to note the goodness of both. As the Catechism says (s.2349 link here):
' "People should cultivate [chastity] in the way that is suited to their state of life. Some profess virginity or consecrated celibacy which enables them to give themselves to God alone with an undivided heart in a remarkable manner. Others live in the way prescribed for all by the moral law, whether they are married or single." Married people are called to live conjugal chastity; others practice chastity in continence:
'" There are three forms of the virtue of chastity: the first is that of spouses, the second that of widows, and the third that of virgins. We do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of the others. . . . This is what makes for the richness of the discipline of the Church." '
There has undoubtedly been a change in emphasis in the Church's teachings over the years which has led to a greater understanding of how sanctification can be pursued through the married state as well as celibacy. I'd be happy to leave it there for the purposes of this course, but, as I did mention on Wednesday, there has been a strong view in the tradition that celibacy is a more direct path to our supernatural end. Aquinas for example says:
' I answer that, According to Jerome... i) the error of Jovinian consisted in holding virginity not to be preferable to marriage. This error is refuted above all by the example of Christ Who both chose a virgin for His mother, and remained Himself a virgin, and by the teaching of the Apostle who (1 Cor. 7) counsels virginity as the greater good. It is also refuted by reason, both because a Divine good takes precedence of a human good, and because the good of the soul is preferable to the good of the body, and again because the good of the contemplative life is better than that of the active life. Now virginity is directed to the good of the soul in respect of the contemplative life, which consists in thinking "on the things of God" ..., whereas marriage is directed to the good of the body, namely the bodily increase of the human race, and belongs to the active life, since the man and woman who embrace the married life have to think "on the things of the world," as the Apostle says (1 Cor. 7:34). Without doubt therefore virginity is preferable to conjugal continence.'
(STh IIa IIae q152 a4 link here)
I think my chasing that difficult issue was slightly going off on a tangent so far as this course is concerned though: for the normal working of society, it's the goodness of marriage that is more important.
3) Complementarity. We still didn't really get to deal with this completely! I'm going to take that as a sign from the Holy Spirit and move on! I've posted up the material on this for this week and last week if anyone wants to pursue it further. I think a fair summary of the case for the importance of a woman and a man at the centre of the family would be:
i) from the point of view of the procreative purpose of marriage, first, its biological necessity (!) and also the importance of a female and male presence in bringing up children (although noting of course that this ideal isn't always possible).
ii) from the point of view of the unitive end (ie being good for the spouses) that engagement with the distinct sensibilities of the other sex is part of the process of sanctification (roughly, men are made better men by women, and women are made better women by men).
Phew!
I'll be back with further thoughts for next week (on civil society -ie those bodies intermediate between the family and the state) before Wednesday.
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