Catholicism is [a] Mean

Mean ³ |mēn|

noun

2 a condition, quality, or course of action equally removed from two opposite (usually unsatisfactory) extremes: the mean between two extremes.

Aristotle describes a virtue as a mean: the point between an excess and a deficiency. One of the most easily comprehensible examples of this is courage, which is a balance between cowardice and foolhardiness. 

Thomas Aquinas argues in the Summa Theologica that religion is a virtue. 1 

If religion is a virtue and [all] virtues 2 are a mean, then religion is a mean. QED.

Objection: Religion is not a mean because obviously there are religions which are extremist. For example, you may have the extreme of a radical, conscienceless psycopath, but you can also have the opposite extreme of people who are overly prudish and obsessed with their own righteousness and therefore lose sight of what is truly valuable in life. The latter category is what is often associated with religion from a secular point of view. Sometimes you even get a combination of the two where you have radical psychopaths -- in the name of religion -- persecuting others for failing to confirm to their particular worldview.

Refutation: This is not true religion, but a corruption of religion. It's been too long since I've read the relevant Aristotle, but I believes he makes a similar point when defending the virtue of just government.  For example, if you were to write lengthy treatises on the nasty character of chocolate chip cookies based on the large quantities of burned ones you had consumed, you would be condemning a corruption of the good rather than the good itself. 3

Therefore, if religion is a virtue and if all virtues are a mean, then if Catholicism is not a mean, it is not a religion in the proper sense of the word [abbv. ipsow]. Conversely, if Catholicism is a religion ipsow, then Catholicism is necessarily a mean. There are two ways this could be approached. Firstly, from an apologetics standpoint, to show that Catholicism is religion ipsow by demonstrating that it is a mean. The second way is to start with the assumption that Catholicism is indeed a religion ipsow and then examine the faith from the perspective of a mean for further edification. While the former approach could be most interesting, for my purposes I will be pursuing the latter.

This promises to be a fairly lengthy analysis so I will split the various reflections on Catholicism's meanness into different blog posts and leave this as the introduction.

Salvation is [a] Mean (in between Faith Alone and Works Alone)
Penitence is [a] Mean (in between Scrupulosity and Sin)


Hyperlinks to be added later.

____

1 Summa Theologica 2.2.81.2 (aka the Second Part of the Second Part [Secunda Secundæ Partis], Question 81, Article 2) http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3081.htm 

2 I am not exactly sure if I can accurately say that all virtues are a mean. I know that there are some vices which are an excess by nature and cannot have a mean, so it is possible there are some things of which you cannot have too much. Nothing comes to mind though. Love seems an obvious example, but the true virtue of caritas is the mean between the excess and deficiency of affection. You cannot, however, have an excess and a deficiency of lust, because lust is itself an excess. 

3 It is one thing to say that the ideal for which a thing attains is impossible to reach and another entirely to say the thing is bad. Eg. if I laud the qualities of levitating chocolate chip cookies above all others, it would be perfectly reasonable to condemn me.  If a thing actually exists which conforms to my specifications, however, it is completely irrelevant to attempt to discredit the worth of my good by citing things which obviously do not fall within its parameters. This would be like saying the fish are not cold blooded by citing the whale.

Mary

After Christ, Mary has the distinction of being the most decorated Catholic. Just take a look at her titles:

Gate of heaven;  Star of the Sea;  Cause of Our Joy;
Queen of Heaven; Queen of the Angels; Queen of All Saints;
Theotokus; Mother of God; Blessed Mother;
Ever Virgin; Madonna; The New Eve
Our Lady of Lourdes;
Our Lady of Fatima;
Our Lady of Knock;
Our Lady of Guadalupe;
Our Lady of Loretto;
The Eschatological Icon of the Church;
The New Eve.

Just to name a few.

Catholics worldwide have been beseeching her intercession through the rosary ever since it was reborn and exploded in popularity through the work of the Dominicans in the 12th century. 1 Anytime anyone prays the rosary they say the Hail Mary 53 times, and just look at the thing!:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Or better yet, in Spanish! 2

Dios te salve Maria, llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo. Bendita tu eres entre todas las mujeres y bendito es el fruto de su vientre, Jesus. Sancta Maria, madre de Dios, rega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y a la hora de nuestra muerte, Amen.

But despite (or perhaps because of) her pivotal role in salvation history Mary is greatly misunderstood by the world, by Protestants, by Catholics, and even by myself, so in the following 3 posts (ish) I'm going to dive into Mariology.

The Mary Series!

Beyond the Incarnation: Why Mary is not Superfluous 

"My Soul Magnifies the Lord"
Correctly Phrasing Prayers to with Mary

(to be hyperlinked later)

____
1 I don't know my history of the rosary well enough so I tried to phrase that as vaguely as I could. The two things I do know are that a) the rosary existed even very early in the Church and certainly predates the 13th century; and b) Our Lady gave the rosary to St. Dominic in the 13th century as his weapon to fight the Albigensians and its current form is owing to this. How closely the rosary was tied to Mary prior to this I do not know, however.
2 I actually prefer the Hail Mary in Spanish to the English translation, I think mainly because rega has more significance for me than pray. I think a lot of it is that we are overly acclimatized to the word pray and thus overlook its deeper significance, whereas when I see a conjugation of rogar I think of begging, pleading, and all out supplication on your knees. Sometimes we need to go back to antiquated English to understand our language (eg. "Pray tell?")

This is not a Blog about Happiness.

As my intro to this blog I would like to explain the motivation behind my choice of joy as a theme.

If someone had asked me a year ago what joy was, I would probably have merely considered it a synonym for happiness -- one which rises approximately 400% in usage at Christmas time. The actual delineation between the two, however, is far subtler (and cooler). In fact, joy itself is far subtler (and cooler) than happiness.

Radical Joy

Why?

1) The Roman Catholic Church (esp. the CCC [Catechism of the Catholic Church])


If you take a look at the fruits of the Holy Spirit in CCC 1832, joy is listed. Happiness is not. I would say happiness has been owned but that sounds pessimistic. So, why the word choice? Why joy and not happiness? Allow me to explain further.

2) The Dictionary 1

joy |joi| noun a feeling of great pleasure and happiness : tears of joy | the joy of being alive. • a thing that causes joy : the joys of Manhattan. verb [ intrans. ] poetic/literary rejoice : I felt shame that I had ever joyed in his discomfiture or pain. ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French joie, based on Latin gaudium, from gaudere ‘rejoice.’

happy |ˈhapē| adjective ( -pier , -piest ) 1 feeling or showing pleasure or contentment : Melissa came in looking happy and excited |  • [ predic. ] ( happy about) having a sense of confidence in or satisfaction with (a person, arrangement, or situation) : I was never very happy about the explanation | I can't say they looked too happy about it, but a deal's a deal. • [ predic. ] ( happy with) satisfied with the quality or standard of : I'm happy with his performance. • [ attrib. ] fortunate and convenient : he had the happy knack of making people like him. ORIGIN Middle English (in the sense [lucky] ): from the noun hap + -y 1 .

There's a general observable trend in the two of these definitions; but, it is most observable in the origins. Now, to truly make an educated dissection of the distinction here I'd have to know some Latin, but I unfortunately do not. 2 I am incapable of giving an eloquent treatise on the significance of the word "gaudere." What I do know is that the word happiness places an emphasis on fortune, luck, and happenstance. So, really, when we say "Are you happy?" we are really asking "Have you been lucky lately?" or when we say "Sam went about his chores happily" we are literally saying "He went about his chores unaffected by any blight of misfortune."

A call to live with joy, however, is a call to rise beyond the ups and downs of fortune in our lives. There is a famous mosaic in Pompeii which shows Fortune's Wheel. On the left are a rich garments, and on the right the cloak of a beggar. Although Fortune's Wheel will give some riches and some poverty, ultimately death is the equalizing force. 

Images like this were meant to serve as "memento mori," reminders of death. While it seems morbid to be fixated on death, I would venture to say there is a large amount of crossover between "memento mori" and joy. To live with true joy is to live as unshackled from Fortune's Wheel as death will ever make you. When you have joy you do not need happenstances to give you happiness because your joy wells forth from a source within -- or above -- yourself. Joy is inherently tied to peace: they flow from each other. 

He who is happy cannot keep themselves happy forever, because happiness is something inherently out of our hands; but joy cannot be taken from you because it is a decision. If it becomes a decision to make yourself joyful, it will fail. It must be a decision to allow yourself to be used as an instrument of joy today. To be open to being radically, self-sacrificingly joyful regardless of whether you feel happy. In fact, true joy is beyond our ordinary human abilities to achieve -- it requires God. This, then, is the significance of joy being one of the fruits of the spirit. 

I'm going to end my philosophizing about joy here because the worst sort of ignorance is to not know when you've gone out of your depth. I simply  want to close with three conclusions from this view of joy.

1) Christ on the cross is the ultimate example of joy.

2) Resigning your will to God may mean the loss of some happiness, but it is the surest route to enduring joy.

3) To live your faith well is to live it with radical joy.

Fra Angelico. St. Dominic Adoring the Crucifixion. 
San Marco Monastery, Florence, Italy. Fresco.

______
1 Although I am not an English major, one of my two majors is a language, which gives me the right to be obsessed with words and their meanings, usages, and origins.
2 I do know a small amount of Latin (mainly from an ecclesial context), but my major is Spanish, not Latin. Spanish is a language with lower practicality when doing obscure etymology on blog posts or desiring to feel intellectually astute, but far higher practicality in real life. That being said if I had endless credit hours, intelligence, and time, I would learn Latin as well.