Welcome to the Moderate Catholic, where we discuss topics that deepen faith and inspire action. I am your host, Christina Gebel, and this is Episode Seven: What happened to Acedia? Welcome back. So, this is episode seven. It is a bonus episode because we have, as I mentioned in the last episode, formally concluded our study of acedia, but there will be some bonus episodes because if you like me, [and] resonated with this topic, you might want to learn more. In wanting to learn more, you might be wondering whatever happened to acedia. You know, this is not a word that is part of our everyday vernacular, much like some of the other seven deadly sins [00:01:00] are, if you choose to talk about that, or you just might be wondering, why has it taking me till now to learn about acedia? Why did I never come across this until later in life? And that was something that really piqued my interest because it took me a while to learn about Acedia. So, this episode is for those diehard acedia enthusiasts who have to know the quote ‘end of the story.’ And to do so, we will be going back to one of our primary texts, The Noonday Devil, by Jean Charles Nault, and around page 96, he starts to tell the story of how this all came to be. So, the story starts with actually a Franciscan Friar William Ham Ockham, who lived around [00:02:00] 1300 to 1350 AD. If you know anything about Franciscan Friars, there are obviously a lot of very good people. Although I will say Friar Ockham was not the best person in the story we’re about to tell because he actually helped to influence the idea of acedia kind of falling out of favor, but I’m sure he was a great dude otherwise. So, we’re gonna cut him some slack. So Franciscan Friar William Ockham sparked kind of a quote ‘revolution,’ if you will, because at the time, he was countering the theological understanding of freedom, which up until that point had primarily been articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas. So Ockham [00:03:00] proposed a new concept of freedom, which essentially differed from Aquinas’s concept of freedom, and he called this new freedom concept, quote, the “liberty of indifference.” End quote. Jean Charles Nault describes this on page 96 as “human beings are totally indeterminate, totally indifferent with regard to good or evil’ end quote, and I said human beings, because again, a lot of these things just refer to ‘man,’ and I prefer to make it more gender neutral. So indeterminate, totally indifferent with regard to good or evil. Actually, this is how we largely conceive of freedom today. We see freedom as the idea that you can [00:04:00] choose between two contrary things. You have that choice. However, at the time, this was a bit of a quote ‘revolution,’ to what was considered a classical understanding of freedom, and that view, that classical understanding Jean Charles Nault describes as quote, “Freedom is the ability that human beings have an ability belonging jointly to the intellect and will to perform virtuous actions, good actions, excellent actions, perfect actions when he or she wants, and as he or she wants. Humankind’s freedom is therefore the capacity to accomplish good acts easily, joyously and lastingly. This freedom is defined by the attraction [00:05:00] of the good.” Okay, so let’s unpack that a little bit. In this more classical understanding of freedom, prior to Ockham, mostly delineated by Aquinas, the idea is that we have the freedom to do good. Okay, and we are attracted to doing that good innately as human beings. How is it that we have that innately? Well, we believe that we are human beings with a soul, and we’re not simply animals who kind of just act on impulse and their basic needs. Right? But Ockham kind of deviated from all of this because he made freedom live in the moment prior [00:06:00] to our intellect and will. So, man or woman are no longer attracted to the good, as Aquinas had said. Instead, they kind of have a indifference to good and evil. Okay, so total indifference and it’s that time period before the intellect and will kick in. Ockham, being a Franciscan friar, being a religious person, was still somewhat concerned with people doing good things. Okay? He wasn’t like a relativist, let’s just say. But he believed there had to be some sort of an external element or something extrinsic, which points human beings to the good, and he described that as the law, and it points to [00:07:00] what the good action might be. Around that time, this was really kind of picking up steam and the idea that what is good is defined by obedience to the law. On page 97, Jean Charles Nault points out that eventually this leads to this concept of legalism, and legalism is quote, “The law alone is the criterion for good.” So, because this is externally motivated, human beings no longer have what Aquinas called, quote “natural inclinations.” And those natural inclinations were dependent upon really the spiritual nature of humankind, so the soul, and he bases his teaching about natural law on the idea that we are [00:08:00] created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore to determine whether you know something is good, we can look inwardly to ourselves because we are created with God dwelling within us. Jean Charles Nault explains Aquinas on page 98, “Human beings are free not despite their natural inclinations, but on the contrary because of them.” Okay, so again, let’s unpack it. Some people might say, well, you know, if this is innately within me and was put there by my Creator, am I actually free because I didn’t choose to be created this way? Or some people might say, oh, well, if this is how I was created, am I in some ways predestined to think a certain way, you know? [00:09:00] So those are all good questions, to ponder. Folks today might feel like that restricts consent or freedom of choice. And Ockham kind of agrees with it, that if humankind was made naturally oriented towards the good, then that means that humankind is no longer essentially free. Going back to Aquinas, one has to ask the question, okay, if we’re naturally inclined this way, what about sin? And Aquinas would say, people sin, not because they’re attracted to evil, but because evil appears to them as good. And in that way, sin is very deceptive. If you’ve been following along in this first season, you’ll know that that is one of the primary strategies [00:10:00] of the False Spirit. The False Spirit might know that we are attracted to good, naturally inclined to good, or just simply want to be good. So evil can’t always look like an outright evil. It has to have some trickery in it, and it can be deceiving, right? At this point in reading about it, I’ll be honest with y’all, I was like, I kind of get it, but I’m not sure what Aquinas means because he’s so like Aquinas-y. So, there’s an example in The Noonday Devil on page 99, that kind of started to make sense for me and actually is perfectly timed because I just went to the symphony with a very good friend and we saw Carmina Burana. So, the violin, right? Envision in your head [00:11:00] a master violinist. Somebody who is an aficionado, who does the 10,000 hours of practice thing and continues to hone their craft, until they’re this expert of their skill. So Aquinas would look at that and say, okay, as the violinist goes, through his or her life, they are always trying to be better, and being better means playing the right notes at the right moments in the right harmonies or whatever is being asked of the musician. But in playing the right notes, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re no longer free. Actually, they are free to do the most good thing, which is to play the right notes and play beautiful masterpieces. So, Jean [00:12:00] Charles Nault writes, is the possibility of playing wrong notes what makes the violinist free? Or from another perspective, does the fact that the violinist no longer plays wrong notes really impair their freedom? Or on the contrary, is it not the pinnacle of freedom to be capable of no longer playing wrong notes? That really stayed with me. Is freedom, like Ockham would say, the ability to play a good note or a bad note? Is that where we wanna start the concept of freedom? Or is it really that because we are these divinely created beings who are inclined to the good, and I would say also beauty, is true freedom, really, to move closer to the good and to beauty as created human [00:13:00] beings with the divine within us? Something to think about. So back to Ockham. As I mentioned earlier, Ockham feels we need this extrinsic thing to point us towards the good because he’s still, you know, he’s still concerned about doing good, but he just sees it a little differently. So, he feels that we need the law. Okay, what law, Ockham? Well, Ockham says God’s law. So, Jean Charles Nault explains this on page 100, quote, “Human beings act in terms of a law that is no longer inscribed within them, but is totally external and foreign to them. A law that is totally arbitrary, which humankind can carry out only by God’s decree.” So, notice the kind of spatiality of how he explains that this law [00:14:00] is no longer the law that you could say is written on our heart. It is this external thing. And yes, it could be God’s law, it could also be civil law. You know, it could be anything external to us. And at first, it might seem like nothing changes, right? Because if it really is God’s law, let’s say the 10 Commandments, and the Ten Commandments are good, right? So really are we just like pulling apart hairs at this point? But, Aquinas and Jean Charles Nault go on to say, no, this is really a big change because it changes the reason why we do things. We do things not because there’s an intrinsic goodness there, but because God says so or someone says so. Right? And the issue with this [00:15:00]
