Chapter 1: Religion and the Mind

1. Introduction to the Course
   • Articles about Frank Sheed
     • Frank Sheed: A Catholic World Report interview with Dr. Joseph F. Martin
       • http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2920/the_evangelistic_brilliance_of_frank_sheed.aspx#.UyTi7Gco7Dc
     • Article on Frank Sheed by Patrick Madrid
       • http://gator1327.hostgator.com/~pmadrid/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/The-Prophet-of-Hyde-Park.pdf
2. The Faculties of the Soul
   • Thinking, the Brain, the Soul
     • Human nature consists of the union of a material body with a non-material (i.e., spiritual) soul.
     • Science does not concern itself with the soul because science only studies things that can be measured, that is, things that can be observed with one or more of the five senses, things having color, weight, taste, smell, or sound.
     • Spiritual (non-material) things do not have any properties that can be observed with the senses; hence, the soul is beyond the range of science.
     • Science is in the business of identifying the causes of things that can be observed with the senses; since there is no property of the soul that can be observed by the senses, science has nothing to say about the soul.
     • But this does not mean the soul does not exist; rather, God has revealed the existence of the soul; hence, we are certain of the soul’s existence.
       • Note that the existence of the soul can also be demonstrated philosophically. This is done along the lines of observing that we have certain powers that cannot be attributed to material processes. For example, the power of abstraction.
     • In regard to thinking, science necessarily has to attribute the cause of thinking to the brain, for there is no other material thing that seems to have a relationship to thinking.
     • But this is an error. It violates the principle of nature that an offspring always takes on the nature of its parent.
     • Now, the nature of a thought has nothing in common with the nature of the brain; the brain has the properties of material beings, whereas a thought has none of the properties of material beings.
       • A thought has no color, weight, taste, smell, or sound, whereas a material being must have one or more of those properties.
     • Consequently, a thought is a spiritual being, and it must be produced by a spiritual being because of the aforementioned principle of nature. That spiritual being is the soul.
     • We need to rid ourselves of the idea that thinking is done by the brain. Rather, thinking is done by the soul, and more specifically, it is done by one of the soul’s faculties, the intellect.
       • https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/06/a-map-of-the-soul
       • https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
   • Faculties of the Soul in General
     • “A faculty is the power of a living substance to exercise a specific life-operation” (Msgr. Paul J. Glen, “A Tour of the Summa”).
     • Aristotle lists five groups of faculties; the highest individual faculties found in these five groups are the faculties of intellect and will, which are the principal faculties of the soul.
       • Aristotle groups the faculties as (1) the vegetative (concerned with the maintenance and development of organic life), (2) the appetitive (the tendency to any good), (3) sense perception, (4) the locomotive (presides over the various bodily movements) and (5) reason (Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Faculties of the Soul).
   • The Principal Faculties of the Soul: Intellect and Will
     • The intellect and the will, the soul’s two principle faculties, will be referred to throughout Sheed’s book. The time given to understand these two faculties will be time well spent.
     • The task of the intellect is knowing, that is, seeing and understanding reality. In other words, the task of the intellect is sanity, for we are sane to the degree that we see reality as it really is (21-1, 22-2).
     • The task of the will is loving, that is, to desire that which is good and to properly order those desires. In other words, the task of the will is sanctity, for we are holy to the degree that we desire that which is good and act according to that desire (21-1, 22-2).
     • Of these two faculties, the will is more important because we make our choices based on what the will desires, and our salvation is dependent on those choices (21-2).
       • Ultimately, there are only two choices to make: love of God or love of self.
       • If our will chooses God, we will attain salvation. If our will chooses self over God, we will place ourselves in a state of damnation (21-2).
     • Regarding our relationship with God, the intellect is less important than the will. Nevertheless, its proper functioning is still very important because of the relationship between the intellect and the will, for the will loves according to what it knows through the operation of the intellect (21-2).
       • We cannot love what we do not know, for “nothing is loved except it be first known” (Summa I, q. 60, a. 1).
     • The Great Commandment calls us to a maximum love of God:
       • The Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind” (Lk 10:27).
       • But “we can never attain a maximum love of God with a minimum knowledge of God” (22-1). Hence, we need to study theology.
     • Sheed writes that the soul’s full functioning requires, not merely an intellect and a will, but a Catholic intellect and a Catholic will (22-2). What does that mean?
       • Having a Catholic will means loving and obeying God, loving and obeying the Church (22-2).
       • Having a Catholic intellect is “to live consciously in the presence of the realities that God through His Church has revealed. . . . [which is] to see what the Church sees [when it looks at the universe]” (22-2).
       • The advantage of this is that the universe the Church sees is the real universe (22-2).
3. Shape and Texture of the Universe
   • Developing a Catholic Mind
     • We will begin our work of developing a Catholic mind by looking at the texture and shape of the universe.
       • As Sheed uses “mind” here, it is synonymous with “intellect.”
     • “Most of us have Catholic wills, but not many of us have Catholic intellects . . . We have not so much Catholic minds as worldly minds with Catholic patches” (22-3).
     • We tend to form our minds by the same things that form the minds of the rest of the world (secular news, entertainment, books, education, etc.) (22-3).
       • For example, in the second round of debates (in 2015) for Republicans seeking the 2016 nomination for president, candidate Carly Fiorina spoke about the recently released video tapes by the Center for Medical Progress (CWP). She said:
         • “I dare Hillary Clinton [and] Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’ This is about the character of our nation.”
       • Several groups (e.g., Planned Parenthood, Politico, Huffington Post, Vox) issued “fact-checking” statements and denounced Fiorina as a liar. Fiorina was correct word for word. You can see the truth of the matter in the short article at the First Things link below:
         • http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/09/fiorina-was-right
     • As a result of this worldly formation of our minds, when we look at the universe we tend not to see what the Church sees; we see what the world sees.
       • What does the Church see when it looks at the universe? It sees two things: the “texture” (25-3) of the universe and its “shape” (26-1).
   • Texture of the Universe: Nothingness
     • We know from Revelation that “God used no material in our making; we are made of nothing” (23-2).
       • “And God said, ‘Let there be light; and there was light’” (Gen 1:3).
       • “He spoke and it came to be” (Ps 33:9).
     • By “nothing” is meant the absence of every created thing; hence, nothing is the absence of everything except for God Himself. In short form, we say nothing is the absence of everything, but it is understood that this statement excludes God, who is the one uncreated being.
       • Note that being “made of nothing” does not contradict Genesis 2:7, for the universe itself was made from nothing (i.e., “ex nihilo”), hence, man is ultimately made from nothing whether he is a direct creation or the end product of an evolutionary process. Creation “ex nihilo” will be covered in more detail in chapter 3.
       • “And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen 2:7).
     • Hence, the Church sees the universe continuously held in existence by God’s will (23-1), for that which is made of nothing must be continuously held in existence by the same omnipotence that brought it into being.
     • If we do not habitually see this, then we are not living mentally in the same world that is seen by the Church (23-1)
       • “It is a simple and startling fact that no human mind on earth ever conceived the idea that the entire universe, visible and invisible, was created out of nothing . . . by a single all-powerful God” (Kreeft, “Catholic Christianity,” p. 44).
     • You probably already knew that God made all things from nothing, but in addition to knowing it as a fact, we need to see it as being so. Whenever we look at anything, we should be in the habit of recognizing that thing’s nothingness (23-1).
     • Now, the fact that we are made from nothing should startle us, and cause us to consider how it is that we exist at all if we are made from nothing. The consideration forces upon us “a more intense concentration upon the God we are made by” (24-1). There are two reasons for this:
       • First, the gap between existence and non-existence is infinite; the gap can only be “closed” by an infinite act of power, and only an infinite being is capable of an infinite act of power.
         • Therefore, we must conclude that we came into existence because an infinite being willed the act of omnipotence that brought us into being. We call that infinite being God.
           • “Omnipotence was needed to make something from nothing” (138-1; also see chapter 3 notes).
           • “But whatever distance may be imagined between potency and act, the distance will ever be still greater if the very potency itself is withdrawn. To create from nothing, then, requires infinite power” (“Aquinas’ Shorter Summa,” 65).
           • “When passive power is simply nothing, active power must be infinite” (Lagrange, “Reality”, 125).
       • Second, the material something is made of determines its ability to remain what it is.
         • For example, if an ice sculpture is left to itself to maintain its shape, it will soon return to the natural state of the material from which it was made, unless it is kept in a sub-freezing environment.
         • Similarly, if we are left to ourselves for our existence, we would immediately return to what we are made of – nothing. We would be annihilated because there is nothing about us that enables us to remain as what we are.
         • Therefore, we must conclude that we continue to be held in existence simply because it is God’s will that we be kept in existence and, as a result, He continues to exercise His omnipotence to keep us in existence (24-3).
       • St. Paul, quoting a pagan poet, expresses our situation this way:
         • “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
     • Sheed uses an analogy to help us see how we must come to an awareness of seeing the reality of our nothingness. When we see a coat hanging on the wall, we also “see” the hook that supports it even though the hook is completely hidden by the coat (25-1).
       • If we see the coat but do not, in the same act, “see” the hook that supports it, we are living in a world of fantasy (25-1).
       • “Similarly, If we see things in existence and do not in the same act see that they are held in existence by God, then . . . we are living in a fantastic world, not the real world . . . this is a kind of insanity, like overlooking anything else that is actually there” (25-1).
     • It may appear to us that these considerations of our nothingness and the conclusions that follow are relevant for those having a religious temperament but of no particular value for the ordinary man. Sheed addresses this fallacy with another analogy.
       • The non-botanist driver: read from pg 25-2.
       • “God is not only a fact of religion: He is a fact. Not to see Him is to be wrong about everything, which includes being wrong about one’s self” (25-2)
   • Shape of the Universe: God as Source and Center of Its Interconnectedness
     • Regarding the shape of the universe: “Above all, [the Church] sees . . . all the things that exist and their relation one to another” (26-1). In other words, the Church sees everything in its proper context.
       • By proper context, Sheed is referring particularly to the principle elements of reality, that is, the three principle actors (God, Adam, Christ) and the four principle events (Creation, the Fall, Redemption, Judgment). This is explored in chapter 26.
     • Analogy: The eye of one’s beloved is appreciated only when in the context of the beloved’s face. It does not hold the same attraction when it’s lying on a plate, that is, outside of its living context (26-1).
     • From an article on the class blog: Why Study Theology?
       • Knowledge consists of a relationship between an item and its context.
       • The number 25 (the item), by itself tells us nothing.
       • In the context of temperature, we have knowledge of some sort (i.e., the temperature is 25).
       • But we don’t know the significance of that temperature until we know the temperature scale (the full context). On the Celsius scale, 30 degrees is hot. On the Fahrenheit scale, 30 degrees is just below the freezing point of water. On the Kelvin scale, 30 degrees is 405.67 degrees below the freezing point of water.
       • Once we know the temperature scale, we have the full context, hence, we then have specific and useful knowledge.
     • We may know every item on a list of facts but unless we know the relationships that exist among those facts, that is, their context, we miss the larger message those facts hold for us.
     • Similarly, if we don’t see everything in the universe with respect to the God who made it, holds it in existence and is “the center by relation to which every part is related to every other,” we are not seeing the real universe (26-2).
       • At best we are in darkness. If this darkness is freely chosen, we are not sane, for we are freely choosing not to see reality (29-2).
       • When we go outside and look at the physical landscape around us, we see it as being sun-bathed. Similarly, when we consider the universe as a whole or any part of it, we must see it as “God-bathed,” in order to see it as it really is (28-1)
     • What the Church sees: read 27-2.
4. Intellect and Will
   • The Intellect and Religion
     • “To many, the idea of bringing the intellect fully into action in religion seems almost repellent,” and if not repellent, at least unnecessary (28-2).
     • The intellect strikes us as being cold and boringly scientific, whereas the will is typically spoken of in warm and glowing terms (28-2).
     • The thinking of many is that one can love God “without any very great study of doctrine. . . . [and they will say] some of the holiest people they know are quite ignorant” (28-2).
     • It is true that “a virtuous man may be ignorant, but ignorance is not a virtue. It would be a strange God who could be loved better by being known less” (28-2).
       • We cannot love what we do not know, for “nothing is loved except it be first known” (Summa I, q. 60, a. 1).
       • Consequently, it is more reasonable to think that if one could love God by knowing Him a little, one could love Him more by knowing more about Him (29-1).
   • Intellect and Will: Mutually Beneficial
     • “The man who uses his intellect in religion is using it to see what is there” (29-2). There are two alternatives:
       • First, not seeing what is there by failing to apply one’s intellect to religion, which is darkness (29-2).
       • Second, “seeing something” that is not there by applying one’s intellect incorrectly, which is error and a kind of double darkness (29-2).
     • It follows that the operations of the intellect and will are mutually beneficial, for the intellect’s sight helps us to love and the will’s love helps us to see (29-1).
     • Consequently, “in the appallingly difficult struggle to be good, the will is helped immeasurably by the intellect’s clear vision of the real Universe” (29-4).
     • On the other hand, if we live with our minds in the twilight of having a “worldly mind with Catholic patches,” many teachings of the Church, and the natural law itself, will seem odd, unreasonable, and burdensome, which in no way helps us to be obedient to God’s law (30-1)
     • “The problem we shall consider in this book is how our minds are to ‘master’ the Church’s landscape, habituate themselves to it, move about easily in it, be at home in it. Somehow or other we must become fully conscious citizens of the real world, seeing reality as a whole and living wholly in it” (30-2).