“In this regard Wojtyla notes that an experience of values that comes about through feelings must always be subordinated to the truth.” (61)

How true is this? Certainly, feelings can color our experiences to a great degree and even sway our preferences and our decisions. However, our feelings are fleeting and change based on a whole slew of factors, some of which are of no more weight than whether or not I’ve had something to eat in the past several hours. And that’s not a good basis for decision-making. Truth, if it is indeed truth, cannot change. One of my favorite arguments to bring up when people start complaining that this or that is “behind the times” in the Catholic church. For example, if it is wrong to kill children in the womb because their life is just as sacred as those people who have already been born, then it could not be the case that all of a sudden it becomes okay to kill them just because society has deemed this not just a tolerable thing, but actually a preference to the “imposition” of an unwanted pregnancy. So too with many other things do we have to really think about what it is that we are deciding and make choices based on what we know and not on what we feel.

“Feelings are intentionally directed to values, but to rely solely on feelings to lead means to surrender self-determination.” (65)

At the moment, this speaks to me as representative of taking the easy way out. It is always so much easier for me to make a decision or a choice based on some arbitrary value, rather than on any trait of actual substance. An example here would be choosing — oh, say a car — based on how cute it looks or what color it is, rather than on something more important like fuel economy. A lot of this, particularly for me is a combination of mental laziness, coupled with the sense that I am too busy to do the necessary research, or that the choice isn’t that big of a deal. It becomes very easy to fall into a pattern of non-thinking in this manner, and have it extend into all aspects of my life, so that I’m not even making informed, carefully thought out decisions at the voting polls or in my day-to-day interactions with other people.

“In their proper place feelings greatly enrich the human person.” (65)

Not to say that feelings are not important! When rooted in an environment of truth, feelings enhance our experiences and help us to communicate and have empathy with others. They can help knit us together as the Body of Christ in our compassion and understanding.

“If the body is not humble, it will obscure not only the true love between man and woman but also that between man and God.” (42)  This, I think, speaks again to the fact that if we do not have self-control, self-mastery over our selves and our will, then we are not going to be able to make an authentic, free gift of ourselves to an other.  Only in a sincere gift of self, are we fully realized.  So, in a way, if I wish to be free, truly free, then I must self-impose limits and truly discern the Lord’s will and conform my own will to His.  Not for His benefit.  But for mine.  How very hard that is to remember, especially when there are so many things that I want, and try to convince myself that I need.  Things will never do it for me, but they are so very attractive, sometimes it’s hard to see beyond the packaging and realize that it’s only a momentary distraction from that which is most important:  my relationship with God.  And not only in things of the world as in material goods do I need to be wary of forming an inordinate attachment, but also the very real danger in my own case of seeing myself as a thing or a commodity.  If I do not see myself as having any value, what does that say about any attempt that I make to make of myself a gift for another?  An empty gesture?

“The proper object of the will is the good as perceived under the light of reason.” (51)

“…the great philosophers have only one word to say and spend their whole life saying it.” (53) I wonder if this is related to the idea that priests have only one homily, which they will preach over and over…. 🙂

I’m currently reading “Crossing the Threshold of Love:  A New Vision of Marriage in the Light of John Paul II’s Anthropology” by Mary Shivanandan.  Since it’s a library book, I’ll post my notes here.  🙂  Whatever catches my eye….  🙂

“…the ‘culture of contraception’ alienates man from woman.  Each begins to treat the other as an object, leading to a breakdown of the communion of persons of the husband and wife and the rejection of the child.” (xxii)

“Truth, he [Karol Wojtyla] asserts, ‘can only be enhanced from a confrontation with experience’ (LR, 10).” (4)  If it is true, then it is always true, and if it is actually true, than that truth cannot change.  It will be true for all times, and not just true for a past generation, but no longer applicable in modern times.  You cannot at the same time hold that the Church promotes truth, and that the Church is hopelessly “stuck in the past” when it comes to matters of contraception, sexuality and relationships between the genders.  The Church’s teachings are either true or they are not.  And one either accepts that or s/he does not.

“‘Perfectionism’ — the philosophical concept that a man’s actions form his character….” (7)  “In this whole process of accepting and rejecting the people and objects he meets, Adam is revealed to himself constantly and ‘reveals in himself the love that works through him’.” (7)  A great parallel of the concept of the grace that works through us, as everything begins as God’s initiative; and the participation we need to show in response to that gift of grace.