I’m continuing to respond to Lindsay’s comment on Part II of this series.

At one point Lindsay says,

The body can sin, when the Ego is what is driving the “bus” but the Ego is not the true nature of the person themselves. I don’t believe that God makes junk. The soul is perfect, but an intellect that identifies itself with the Ego will miss the mark again and again.

Here Lindsay is drawing a distinction between the Ego on the one hand, and the Intellect, the Soul, and the Person on the other. Here’s what I draw from this passage:

• The Ego is not the true nature of the person.
• When the Ego is given free rein, the person cannot help but sin again and again.
• The Soul is perfect, and cannot sin, except that the Ego gets in the way.

The difficulty is that I’m not sure quite what Lindsay means by the Ego. I don’t think in Freudian categories, and I’m not at all sure the Lindsay using the word in the Freudian sense anyway. So what follows is pure conjecture on my part.

She might mean my conscious self, that is, the I that can say, “I think, therefore I am.” Alternatively, she might mean ego in the colloquial sense, i.e., arrogance and selfishness.

If she means the latter, then yes, when Ego is driving the bus, everything goes wrong. If she means the former, which is, I think, more likely, then I’m puzzled. I mean, there’s only me in here. I am a conscious agent, responsible for my actions, which I choose. I am, sadly, afflicted by a tendency to sin, and by a plethora of vices and bad habits, including a hearty serving of selfishness garnished with a dollop of arrogance. But if you get rid of that “I”, there’s nothing left of me to be moved to either vice or virtue.

I can’t allow a distinction between the “I” and the Soul, either. The soul is the form of the body: when the soul departs the body is so much meat. In one sense, everything I do is spiritual, in that my soul is involved in even the slightest movement of my little finger. But, per St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, my Intellect and Will are wholly spiritual, aspects or functions of my soul, and though I hope they are perfectible they are most assuredly not perfect as I write. (Your mileage may vary, I suppose.)

I agree that the “Ego is not the true nature of the person”, but probably not in the way that Lindsay means. I am I; it is my nature to be human. In fact, it is my nature to have an I, to have an intellect, to be rational, to have a body, to need to eat, and so on. It is not my nature to be a sinner; sin is deeply unnatural, a perversion of what we are meant to be.

Pope Benedict points out over and over again in his writings that what God wants of every creature is that it be fully itself, that it be entirely true to its God-given nature. It is in this sense that the very stones cry out with praise for God: they are most perfectly and entirely stones, just as God made them. It is our task, with Christ’s help, to be most perfectly and entirely human. It is precisely this that we fall short of when we sin. And what it means to be perfectly and entirely human is to attain our true and final end, that which will crown our lives with true happiness: union with God in the body of Christ Jesus, with Christ himself as our head, a union of love in which we become one with God while remaining wholly and completely ourselves, and wholly human.

In an extended comment on Part II of this series, Lindsay gives her (I believe it’s “her”; if not, I apologize) understanding of the Intellect, the Will, and organized religion.

It’s immediately clear that Lindsay and I have very different views on the matter, a conclusion supported by a quick survey of her blog. I’ve no intention of giving her comment a righteous fisking; that’s not my way, and anyway it seems inhospitable after I specifically asked for comments of this kind. Nevertheless, she provides considerable fodder for contemplation, and it would be a shame to waste it.

Let’s begin with the low-hanging fruit. Lindsay says, speaking of organized religion:

I think religion teaches you that the body is evil and the person is innately sinful.

Many people think this, but it is certainly not what the Catholic Church teaches. Nothing created by God is innately, that is, naturally evil. It is true that we are sinful, but this is not part of our nature; it is more like a chronic illness that limits both our growth and the growth of those around us. It is the nature of an acorn to grow into a glorious oak tree; but a tree that is blighted cannot do so. It is our nature to grow into union with God as members of the body of Christ Jesus, but sin blights us, and, in a manner of speaking, poisons the soil around us as well. We need Christ’s healing to be free of this.

As for the body in particular being evil: according to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, the marital act is a sacred image of the love of the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity, and of Christ’s love for his bride, the Church. (The whole of scripture is shot through with this kind of imagery.) Casual sex is not sinful because sex is sinful, or because the body is evil; it’s sinful because it profanes something holy.

It’s true that scripture occasionally opposes the Spirit and the Flesh, as in “the Spirit is willing, but the Flesh is weak”: we do have a tendency to sin, and to do things we know we should not, and in fact choose not to do. Anyone who has struggled with a besetting sin knows how true St. Paul’s words are, that I do not do what I wish to do, but that which I do not wish to do, I do.

Lindsay also says (I’ve corrected typos),

WILL is not will-power (because that is the intellect rationalizing a desire, the Will is the part of you that instructs in desire and I don’t mean that as anything sinful, but if someone checked into themselves with honesty and no judgment and asked, “what is it that I feel to do right now?” the answer might be, to go for a walk, take a nap, have a drink of water, pray, or even: “I want that piece of chocolate cake.” The Will when intact and functioning properly does not instruct you towards destructive ends. Maybe your body really needs the high magnesium content in the chocolate and by not acquiescing, you are depriving your body of a nutrient it currently needs.

I believe that what Lindsay is here calling the “will” is in fact what St. Thomas Aquinas would call the “appetite”; or, at least, she’s conflating the two. And here we strike a major point of disagreement. Lindsay appears to me to be saying that we only desire that which is good for us, when the will, or appetite, is intact and functioning properly–that our desires are, in fact, a good guide as to what we should do. There are a number of points to be made, here. What is good for us? What does it mean for our will and appetite to be intact and functioning properly?

It is certainly true that we only desire what is good–that is, what we sense to be good (the appetite) or understand to be good (the intellect). No man seeks evil purely for its own sake. But I know from my own experience that this apparent good is often illusory, or, at least, extremely limited. Chocolate cake is good; but too much chocolate cake is bad. My understanding of what is good is also limited; there is much that I don’t know, and some of what I know is wrong. My appetite frequently wants more than is good for me (I’m not speaking solely of food, here). And then, sin darkens the intellect.

If I were in a perfect state, which is to say, if I were Christ, things would be simpler. My appetites would be properly ordered; my understanding of what is good would be correct; and what I willed, that I would do. I’m not him. Christ leads me in this direction, but it is not a speedy process.

Part IV