Tuesday, May 27, 2025

St. Thomas actions toward what is good

 But the theologian considers as the final good that which is beyond the capacity of nature, namely, everlasting life, as has been said. Thus, he does not consider the good in human acts without qualification, because he puts the end not in the acts themselves, but in the disposition to that good which he makes the end. He says that only that act is completely good which has a proximate relation to the final good, that is, an act which merits eternal life. He says that every such act is an act of virtue, and every habit properly eliciting such an act he calls a virtue.

https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~QDeVer.Q14.A3.C.3

Leo XIII who wrote in Longinqua Oceani (January 6, 1895)

 But, moreover (a fact which it gives pleasure to acknowledge), thanks are due to the equity of the laws which obtain in America and to the customs of the well-ordered Republic. For the Church amongst you, unopposed by the Constitution and government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, protected against violence by the common laws and the impartiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hindrance. Yet, though all this is true, it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. The fact that Catholicity with you is in good condition, nay, is even enjoying a prosperous growth, is by all means to be attributed to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.

Samuel Johnson on Courage

 "Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other."

Boswell: Life