According to the constant teaching of the Church, human reason grounds free choice, and both capacities, intellect and will, together constitute the human person’s specific humanity. The intellectual powers of the human soul (both reason and will) distinguish human persons from all lower forms of vegetative and sentient life. In order to recall this important truth, Gaudium et spes cites Psalm 8: 5-7: “Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field.”Gaudium et spes, no. 14. In his treatise on the creation of the human person, Aquinas distinguishes between the substance of the soul and its powers.Summa theologiae Ia q. 77. Required background for Aquinas’s discussion of the moral virtues includes a basic knowledge of his conception of the human person and the operative capacities that belong to the person. The following texts provide a helpful summary of this material: Summa theologiae la qq. 7583 (this tract on the nature and abilities of the soul is available in volume 11 [edited by Timothy Sutton] of the Blackfriars *Summa)* Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans, from the 5th ed. by L. K. Shook (New York, 1956) Part Two, chapters 4, 5, 6, & 8; W. A. Wallace, O.P., The Elements of Philosophy (New York, 1977), pp. 7184, offers a very concise treatment of the required material, but he does provide references to the pertinent articles in the New Catholic Encyclopedia. While the intellectual or rational powers identify the human being as such, the human soul also includes vegetative powers (nutrition, growth, and generation) and sensitive powers (the five external senses and the four internal senses: memory, imagination, the sensus communis and the vis cogitativa).Summa theologiae Ia q. 78. Aquinas next considers the general features of the intellect in q. 79. Although he denied the plurality of forms in the one substance of a human being, Aquinas does maintain a plurality of powers, really distinct from the soul and from each other. This conception of human psychology, which the Christian tradition has largely made its own, does not, however, force a metaphysical schizophrenia onto our conception of the human person. For in every action that an individual performs, the human being, as one substance or supposit, remains a single subject of operation, an undivided agens or acting person.

In a broad sense, each power or capacity of the human soul is characterized by love, a reaching out toward what perfects a particular power and, indeed, the very person who acts. Human intelligence loves truth; human willing loves the good. This, in the words of Dante, “is the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”Dante, “II Paradise,” 33, 145. The dynamism of the appetitive powers in particular deserves to be called love. And in the human person, the rational animal, we distinguish sense appetite - the human passions or emotions - from intellectual or rational appetite. In order to delineate accurately the moral virtues that are circa passiones, namely, those that moderate human passions, the difference between the sense appetites and the intellectual or rational appetite remains central.

Sensitive love (amor sensitivus) is the complacency of the sensitive powers in their respective objects, such as happens in brute animals. In this context, “object” is anything considered as terminating and specifying an elicited act, cognitive or affective. Sense appetite is aroused by values sensibly perceived or imagined, whereas intellectual affectivity, or will, is the power to enjoy things that come within the focus of understanding.The phrase comes from the helpful appendices by Timothy Sutton, O.P., in volume 11 of the Blackfriars translation of the Summa theologiae (la. 75-83), Man, p. 252. Rational love differs from sensitive love in that its object is the good as known by the intellect. Moreover, in human choosing, the good intended is itself determined by choice. The medieval historian Etienne Gilson explains this major implication of the human ability to love rationally.

In this life, confronted as it is with a multiplicity of partial goods, human intellectual love enjoys the kind of freedom proper to free choice. Man freely chooses the objects of his love following the judgments of his intellect on their comparative goodness and the consecutive movements of his will.Etienne Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy (New York, 1960), p. 257.

Freedom, then, is possible for the human person because, and insofar as, no particular object necessitates the attention of his mind. Because the human will is an intellectual appetite, the choosing person approaches the good only under the appearance of a particular and concrete thing. A choice of will of course involves the whole human person, the origins of whose intellectual life lie in sense knowledge. Virtuous choice, imperated through intelligent command characteristic of prudence, effectively engages every necessary human resource within the person toward the accomplishment of a good end.

Even some classical philosophers recognized the difference between deliberate choice and sense desires. In his treatise On the Soul (the De anima) Aristotle, for instance, distinguishes the two powers of appetite; moreover, he asserts that the lower appetites of sense can participate in the higher one of reason.Aquinas actually quotes the Politics Bk. 1, c. 2 (1254b5) in the text of Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 56, a. 4, ad 3. And Aquinas accepts as fully compatible with Christian revelation that the appetitive dynamism in the human being “is born to be moved as a result of apprehension.”Summa theologiae Ia q. 80, a. 1. Even if emotionality is sub-rational in its own right, still it is naturally ordered to be controlled and directed by reason. However human nature in itself possesses scant resources for bringing about this state of moral equilibrium, and although this common experience seems to have escaped the notice of even so prominent a moral philosopher as Immanuel Kant, many people experience the utter helplessness of their will power to manage sense urges.

In Aquinas’s account of the emotional life, the sense passions fall into two main categories: the contentious emotions of the irascible power and the impulse emotions of the concupiscible power. In a brief text, Aquinas summarizes the main lines of what Christian anthropology teaches about the emotions:

The object of the concupiscible power is straightforward sensible good or evil, namely, what is pleasurable and painful. But conflict and stress arise from time to time about obtaining the one or avoiding the other; the situation is not simple, and good and evil as invested with the qualities of hardness or difficulty are then the objects of the irascible appetite. Some emotions, such as love and hate, desire and aversion, pleasure and sorrow, answer to the former appetite, while others such as courage and fear, hope and despair and anger answer to the latter.See the discussion of this important matter in Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 23, a. 1.

The Christian theologian need make no apology for introducing an adequate account of the emotional life into a discussion that explains the dynamic unfolding of the divine image in the human person. Using his own language and categories such as Spirit and flesh (Rom 8: 5), St Paul recognizes the facility with which emotional and other disturbances can occur within the Christian, thereby corroborating that the spiritual life is never that of a pure or disembodied spirit. In fact, St Paul correctly points out that the sense and other powers within the human person can rebel against the norms of the eternal law. Recall his comments apropos of human existence without Christ: “For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it” (Rom 7:18).

There are other terms that refer to the generically different appetites that govern emotional interactions. Since the concupiscible appetites constitute passions of attraction, they are sometimes referred to as the impulse emotions; for they account for the effortless responses that the person makes when confronted with a simple, viz, uncomplicated, good or evil object.In Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 23, a. 4, Aquinas devotes a long article to the explanation of the grounds for distinguishing eleven passions of the soul. These impulse emotions, as I have said, are six in number: love and hate, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow. On the other hand, since the irascible appetites amount to passions of attack, they are sometimes referred to as the contentious emotions; for they account for the human response to an arduous good or an especially difficult evil. Again, the contending emotions are five in number: hope and despair, fear and courage, and anger. Anger represents the railing of the emotions when an evil has already befallen a person. Because appetite by definition seeks rest in the object with which it is engaged, there is no counterpart for anger with respect to the good. Indeed, when the good, especially the ultimate good, befalls the human person, all appetite ceases. In their respective orders, the proper attainment of sense good, moral good, and theological good comprise moments of rest for the human person. For God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, according to a plan of pure goodness, has freely created humankind so that men and women might share in God’s blessed life, his perfect rest in the good.The Catechism for the Catholic Church, prol., no. 1.

The Christian tradition considers the irascible and concupiscible powers in two ways: first, in themselves, as they form part of the sensitive appetites; second, as they share in the life of reason, which, as Aquinas observes, the emotions are meant to do in intelligent animals. Because of St Paul’s theological observations in the Letter to the Romans on the contrasts between Spirit and flesh and sin and law - “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom 8:6)- Christian theology must give an adequate explanation of the way reason affects the emotional life. Aquinas’s account of the interaction between reason and the emotional life does full justice to the psychosomatic unity of the human person, and at the same time describes the important role that the virtues play in a life of Christian excellence.

The body is ruled by the soul, and the irascible and concupiscible powers by reason, but in different ways. The body blindly obeys without contradiction where it is born to be moved by the soul. Hence Aristotle says that “the soul rules the body with a despotic rule,” as a master rules his slave: here the body’s entire movement is attributed to the soul. For this reason virtue is not in the body but in the soul. The irascible and concupiscible powers, however, have no such blind response. Instead, they have their own proper movement, by which, at times, they go against reason; hence Aristotle says that reason rules the irascible and concupiscible powers with political control, as free men are ruled who have in some matters a will of their own. This is why virtues are required in these powers, so that they may be well fitted for operation.Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 56, a. 4, ad 3.

Because of this sharing in the life of reason, “the irascible or the concupiscible power can be the seat of human virtue, for in so far as each participates in reason, it is a principle of a human act.”See Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 56, a. 4. While the virtuous development of the sense appetites requires that they be “ruled” by right reason, this rule is not something extrinsic to the particular character of the sense appetites. Because they can be inwardly shaped by reason, these seats of human emotion possess the capacity for authentic virtuous formation. They constitute, then, true seats, as the scholastic theologians say, for virtue.

Sound moral theology must provide a psychological basis for its claim that virtue can radically transform human behavior of every sort. Consider the example of the virgin martyrs in the early centuries of the Church. Ordinarily, a life-threatening danger such as the sure promise of execution would so excite the sense appetites that a person would immediately act so as to avoid death. But an intelligence informed by faith can discover the particular moral truth that this threat should be withstood for the sake of the gospel. And in freedom, these youngsters effectively chose to withstand the emotional pressure to capitulate to the demands of the tyrant. We can also find examples from everyday life. For instance, many people experience themselves pulled toward indulgence in unvirtuous venereal pleasure because the sense appetites spontaneously react to objects of attraction, both real and imagined. But a well-formed moral conscience knows the moral truth that a rectified love of friendship excludes carnal communication outside of lawful marriage.In fact, as Summa theologiae Ia q. 82, a. 4 ad 1 points out, there is an essential difference (“per se”) between what the intellectual appetite wants and what the sense appetites want. And so the tempted person, who, as St Augustine says, “loves God with an undivided heart that no evil can shake loose,” can choose to withstand such an attraction and instead exercise the freedom to conform to moral truth.De moribus ecclesiae catholicae, Bk 1, chap. 25, no. 46 (PL 32: 1330-1331). “But you are not in the flesh,” St Paul assures the Romans, “you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Rom 8: 9). The grace of the Holy Spirit conforms the Christian to full moral truth.

Because sense desire in itself remains rationally indiscriminate, nothing in either the irascible or concupiscible appetites enables these sense powers to differentiate whether it is reasonable to seek a particular good or to avoid a particular evil. Only the intellectual virtue of prudence can discern the good-as-meant, or how this particular sense good or sense evil should be virtuously embraced or courageously avoided. Aquinas says that the “intellect penetrates the will with its act and object the way it does any other particular objects of understanding, like stone or wood, which all fall within the field of being and truth.”Summa theologiae Ia q. 82, a. 4 ad 1. Such penetration is possible because, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, the human being remains “a unity of body and soul.”Gaudium et spes, chap. 1, no. 14. And so there exists a similarity between the relationship of prudence to the behavioral virtues and how the intellect lays hold of any knowable object. Virtue, in other words, puts reason into emotion. The ordering of the lower powers to the higher betrays the divine design of creation; in the human person “the elements of the material world, which reach their peak in humankind, raise their voice in free praise of the Creator.”Ibid. When the human person follows a life of courage and moderation, he or she contributes to this chorus of praise by withstanding the “rebelliousness of the body.” And so the Second Vatican Council affirms that “human dignity itself requires us to glorify God in the body (see 1 Cor 6, 13-20) and not to permit the body to serve the evil inclinations of the heart.”Ibid.

The treatment of the cardinal virtue of fortitude introduces the complex of moral virtues that Christian usage designates as the virtues of personal discipline. Of course by definition, every virtuous habitus infuses the discipline of reason into some area of human conduct, but because the cardinal virtues of fortitude and temperance immediately moderate the human emotions, these virtues especially are said to shape one’s personal comportment. By distinguishing between the virtues of operation (associated with justice) and the virtues of personal discipline, the Christian moral tradition emphasizes that cardinal fortitude and temperance indeed form genuine virtues of the sense appetites. And since they moderate the emotional life or the sense passions (in Latin, the passiones animae), the virtues of personal discipline are sometimes referred to as virtues circa passiones; whereas the virtues of cardinal justice, because they regulate human interactions, are called the virtues circa operationes.

As qualities of the Christian life, the moral virtues of personal discipline shape and conform the emotions to the measure that corresponds to how God knows the world to be. In the moral psychology of the Christian believer, the virtues of personal discipline accomplish two objectives. On the one hand, these virtues affect the rational appetite or the will. Unruly emotions pose the most serious threat to maintaining a watchful prudence. By connaturalizing the irascible and concupiscible appetites to reach out for the authentically good ends of human life, the virtues circa passiones steady a person for making the right prudential choice. The second objective affects the sense appetites or emotions themselves. As real operative habitus of the human soul, the virtues circa passiones provide the actual operational principles for achieving any good action. In moral circumstances that involve the emotional life, the temperate and courageous person, then, both acts through and realizes the virtues of personal discipline. While in a certain sense the virtues of personal discipline cause a person to make a right choice, these virtues do not strictly speaking elicit choice, since this specifically human activity belongs to will itself. Rather, the virtues of personal discipline both facilitate virtuous choice and, by the ordering of the passions, eliminate emotional dispositions that would otherwise obstruct the realization of the virtuous life. In order to account for this full picture of human subjectivity, the scholastics said that the virtues of personal discipline bring about, especially in the sense appetites, what they termed choice by participation. In other words, because the emotions are conformed to virtue’s measure, they can be said to enjoy a certain voluntariness; and in this sense, even the sense appetites are sources for fully human activity.

The principles of Aquinas’s moral psychology uphold the importance of the whole person as the fit subject for human activity; his Christian account of how one lives a moral life never supposes a crypto-spiritualism in which the will holds (explicitly or covertly) an exaggerated predominance in the moral life. Because Christian life does not simply embody a spiritual ideal, moral realism unequivocally rejects all forms of anthropological dualism. Furthermore, because it recognizes that human personal existence comprises a unity of body and soul, sound moral teaching holds that the concupiscible and irascible sense appetites possess the capacity for true virtuous formation ordered to the authentic finalities of both nature and grace. Amid the exuberance and the dejection, the foolhardiness and the fear of anyone’s emotions, moderation, stability, and rectitude are quite possible. The rule of reason does not refuse to recognize the good within the object of the appetites, but it is aware that a particular good must be appreciated within the context of the whole human good. At the time, in the place, and in the way the limitations of the sense objects allow, the appetites may give themselves to their proper objects.For this account, I follow W. D. Hughes, “Virtue in Passion,” in Virtue, vol. 23 of the Blackfriars translation of the Summa theologiae (London/New York, 1969), pp. 245, 246. For further information on how the scholastics understood human emotion see Mark D. Jordan, “Aquinas’s Construction of a Moral Account of the Passions,” Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie 33 (1986), pp. 7297. Even within the life of grace and infused virtue, the emotions figure in achieving the best that human life can promise. Because the several capacities or powers of the rational soul (potentiae animae) all belong to a single subject that we call the acting person, the Christian tradition includes the conviction that moral truth affects every aspect of a human personality. “Just as it is better for someone both to will the good and to do it by an external act,” explains Aquinas, “so it also belongs to perfect moral good that we be moved toward the good not only through our will but also through our sense appetites, according to the saying of the Psalm 83: 3, ‘My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.’”Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 24, a. 3. Grace permeates nature, neither destroying it nor leaving it alone.

Today, rationalist moral theories maintain a highly skeptical outlook about the chances of achieving an authentic humanization of the emotional life. This represents a complete failure of nerve about what the French poet Charles Peguy calls the “climate of grace.” But a full theological vision, such as one finds in the writings of von Balthasar, consistently places the order of grace firmly within the natural world.See his Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles, ed. and trans. Joseph Fessio and John Riches (San Francisco, 1986), p. 404. For different reasons, the Christian Platonisms that developed in the 12th century and continued in the 13th reacted negatively to Aquinas’s bold attempt to incorporate even the most unruly sense urges, viz, the sexual urge, into the universe of truly moral comportment shaped by grace. Moreover, the tendency to exclude the power of divine grace from the realm of the sense life enjoys some impressive “patron saints.” St Bonaventure, for instance, could not bring himself to believe that something as divine as infused virtue could abide in the same powers or capacities as disordered sense urges and human concupiscence. For concupiscence, according to some theological views, especially marks the effects of original sin, the primary alienation of the human person from God. Accordingly, Bonaventure explains infused temperance and fortitude as dispositions of the will that only influence the emotions.For further information, see my The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (Notre Dame, IN, 1991). But for Aquinas, while the passiones animae remain neutral in themselves, they receive their true moral character from our personal determinations insofar as the virtuous man or woman authentically directs these sense urges toward the achievement of moral good. In sum, moral realism rejects the view that the rational part of the soul forms the only significant characteristic of the moral person. Virtue shapes the whole body-soul composite, the per se unum that is the human person, with the result that the practice of virtue need not always entail a conscious figuring out of what one ought to do; sometimes the recta ratio agibilium - the truth about what to do here and now - flows directly from well-ordered and fully developed sense passions.

Contemporary empiricist views about human psychology account for the human emotions in a way that differs considerably from that advanced by classical anthropology and theology. One significant difference lies in the way practitioners of each approach morally evaluate emotion. While classical theology recognizes the moral neutrality of the human emotions as such, any particular expression of emotion is good or bad depending on how it measures up to the rule of prudence; value-free empirical determinations, on the other hand, are those that are made without a fixed relationship to moral good. But views about what constitutes the true nature of the human person distinguish most sharply clinical views about human emotions from those of Christian theology. Because there is no agreement about what constitutes human fulfillment, secularist practitioners are free to establish their own hierarchy of values. And because there exists no consensus among secular thinkers as to what promotes human well-being, professional psychologists hold different opinions as to what kind of emotional life suits human moral maturity. Clinical psychologists are left to ascertain only whether a particular emotional bent is constructive or destructive for an individual person. Of course, Christian revelation, since it can communicate the truth about being human and acting well, requires that the believer judge the moral value of sense urgings according to the measure of right reason. Eternal law establishes the norm or pattern for right human conduct. As a result, the Christian moral theologian may not suspend a judgment of moral truth in order to accommodate value-free psychological theories about the emotional life.

Since the sense appetites remain true seats of virtue, prudence shapes these powerful sources of human activity toward the accomplishment of the end of human flourishing. In the human person, the conformity of sense appetite to reason transpires in freedom, and not in a vitalist or mechanistic way, as though the human person were a steam-driven engine that required occasional release in order to avoid exploding. Rather, by taking a reasonable and integrative approach to human emotions, the Christian tradition avoids the reductionism that identifies the human person with the sum total of his or her sense urgings.

The virtues of personal discipline concern two general areas of activity for the preservation of human life. The cardinal virtue of temperance along with its allied virtues principally concern various forms of proper restraint in the moral life, while the cardinal virtue of fortitude and its allied virtues mainly strengthen or bolster the emotional life. Of course, because the human person - the per se unum - grounds every emotional response in the unity of a created personhood, these general features or characteristics of the emotional life remain closely associated. However, the formal distinction between restraining and strengthening does serve the purposes of methodology and pedagogy. In particular, fortitude and temperance provide the Christian theologian with a way to explain the numerous texts in the Sacred Scriptures that encourage the Christian believer to control his or her passions. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly” (Tit 2: 11,12).

Because God sent his Son in the “likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8: 3), authentic Christian humanism must account for the full transformation of all human capacities. As a man, Christ himself enjoys a fully developed and entirely rectified emotional life. Furthermore, because everything that the Son of God assumed for our salvation enters into the mystery of our redemption, Christians believe that gospel truth and virtue impact on human emotional life. Nothing other than a transformation of this kind would do justice to the “new creation” (2 Cor 5: 17) that comes with the grace of baptism. On this basis, we can conclude that Christian theology does not configure well with certain prevailing philosophical spirits. Three philosophical schools in particular offer special resistance toward a virtue-centered moral theology that effectively touches the emotional life: Platonisrn, Stoicism, and Cartesianism.

First, Platonism. Although the early Church endeavored to make Platonic anthropologies fit Christian theology, since the 13th century there has been general agreement that, without significant modification, a full-scale Platonist anthropology does not serve well the central claims of the Christian message. For Platonism conceives the soul as a motor for the human body, instead of its substantial form. This outlook leaves little room for a doctrine about the humanization of human biological structures, especially the sense passions; indeed, Platonist-inspired spiritualities eschew the emotions as suitable for virtuous formation. Next, Stoicism. Because this popular world outlook considers the potential unruliness of the emotions as causes for special precautions and even for regret, the Stoic outlook, despite the best efforts on its behalf by certain Christian ascetics, offers little of substance to help develop authentic virtue in the emotional life. Aquinas especially points out the incompatibility of Christian moral realism with the Stoic ideal of ataraxia and of apatheia when he underscores the potential moral value of anger. “Sharp reaction to a vexatious situation,” he writes, “is characteristic of anger, and so it works directly with fortitude in attacking.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 123, a. 10, ad 3. Third, an authentic Christian teaching on the emotional life remains difficult to reconcile with the principal anthropological features of Cartesianism. The Cartesian spirit in philosophy strongly links human personhood with human consciousness, thereby emphasizing rationality as the constitutive element of the humanum. As a result, Cartesian-influenced thinkers tend to identify the process of humanization with the person’s ability to provide a rational expression for every experience. (An example of this is found in the trend that considers education to be the best remedy for moral disorder.) Because moral truth rectifies not only the reflections of reason but also the movements of the emotions, Christian moral realism offers a starkly different outlook on the emotions within the Christian life.

Like all of the virtues circa passiones, fortitude remains ordered to the humanization of the sense appetites, that is, toward bringing the appetites into conformity with the rational good.Cajetan provides a fine commentary on the way this works. See his In secundam secundae q. 123,aa. 1,2. In particular, courage stops us from being repelled unreasonably by difficulties. More than any other classical Christian author, Aquinas develops a profoundly systematic reflection on the virtue of fortitude.Aquinas probably wrote the small treatise in the Summa theologiae IIa-IIae qq. 123-140 at the end of his life, viz, around 1272 in Italy. He had completed commentary and notes on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, but the major influence in the treatise derives from his meditation on the passion of Christ and the witness of the Christian martyrs. See M.-J. Congar, O.R, “Le traite de la force dans la ‘Somme theologique’ de S. Thomas d’Aquin,” Angelicum 51 (1974), pp. 331-348. Moreover, in discussing Christian fortitude, Aquinas especially shows that Aristotle’s notion of courage fails to provide a paradigm that fits neatly into a complete vision of Christian humanism. Some persons, it is true, may enjoy a physical stature that well suits them for combat, but Aquinas insists that true Christian fortitude is a form of spiritual bravery. Building on Aquinas’s views, Josef Pieper uses this conception of fortitude to challenge the often-repeated, but utterly erroneous, position of Nietzsche that Christianity amounts to a religion of slaves and that instruction in gospel truth only fosters an unhealthy psychological attitude of submission,See his The Four Cardinal Virtues, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York, 1965).

Fortitude is a virtue of the irascible or contending appetite. The irascible appetites come into play when a person faces complex and difficult situations, such as those circumstances that require one to face up to special evils. In the discussion of theological hope, we pointed out that two alternatives face the person confronted with a difficult good. One is hope, a confident tendency toward an arduous, future possible good; the other is despair, the turning away from such a good as impossible of attainment. In their most basic forms, hope and despair are movements of the irascible appetite elicited by the presence of sense goods difficult to obtain. But in the face of a difficult evil, different emotional reactions set in. In the Christian view the virtue of fortitude chiefly addresses “fears of difficulties likely to cause the will to retreat from following the lead of reason.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 123, a. 3. The Christian believer, says St Augustine, “loves God with an undivided heart that no evil can shake loose.”De moribus ecclesiae catholicae, 3k 1, chap. 25, no. 46 (PL 32: 1330 -1331).

As with every authentic practice of moral virtue, the person of fortitude must rely on true prudence in order to figure out the proper course of brave action.Aquinas recognizes that there are many possibilities for false bravery; see Summa theologiae IIa-IIaeq. 123, a. 1, ad 2. Because Christian prudence is at work in every behavioral virtue, fortitude does not ape the bravery of Aristotle’s soldier of fortune.See Ethics Bk 3, chap. 8(1116al6). At least five different circumstances provide the opportunity for mock courage: when someone is ignorant of a danger involved, too optimistic about the nature of the danger, overly confident concerning his abilities, moved by untoward emotions of anger or depression, or is overly motivated by bounty-seeking. In these cases, people may in fact perform brave actions, but they do not possess the virtue of fortitude. Furthermore, because they lack the proper direction that prudence alone can impart, actions in these circumstances do not build character.

Because it restrains the urge to abandon activity in the face of obstacles to seeking the good, the virtue of fortitude restrains our fears - cohibitiva timorum. At the same time, fortitude moderates deeds of daring and audacity - moderativa audaciarum. So fortitude deals with fear and daring, restraining the first and imposing a balance on the second.

We define virtue by the maximum that it can achieve. “Fortitude,” writes Aquinas, “is properly employed in sustaining all misfortunes. But a man is not unreservedly considered brave because he endures just any sort of trouble, but only because he endures even the greatest evils well.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 123, a. 4, ad 1. Fear of the dangers involved with death particularly concern cardinal fortitude. Natural law inclines the human person to protect the substantial being of his or her individual human nature. However, when a person is confronted with the prospect of dying for some greater good cause, whether it be in defense of a fatherland or for the Christian faith, fortitude overcomes even love for one’s own life. Since death spares no one, fortitude becomes every man and woman; moreover, the inevitable threat of death establishes the indispensable place that fortitude keeps in human life.

Warfare especially occasions the risk of death. Since the Christian tradition has never sanctioned pacifism as the only response to unjust aggression, a just war - one that defends the common good - remains a theoretical possibility, although the destructive force of modern armaments makes prudent deliberation on a war’s expediency urgently necessary. Still, sometimes men and women are called into perilous circumstances in order to maintain the good order of peace. On this account, the Church continues to recognize the moral value of military service: “Those who are dedicated to the service of their country and are members of the armed forces,” Gaudium et spes affirms, “should regard themselves as ministering to the security and freedom of their peoples, and while they are performing this duty in the right manner they are genuinely contributing to the establishment of peace.”Gaudium et spes, no. 79. In order to fulfill this role, those who volunteer or are justly bound to military service especially need fortitude. Christian hagiographers like to remind us that the professional soldier constitutes the largest single profession of those listed in the Roman martyrology. And among the ancient depictions of the Savior, such as the mosaic in the vestibule of the archiepiscopal chapel in Ravenna, we find Christ depicted as a warrior.

Although fortitude primarily concerns the courageous response in the face of death, it extends as well to other occasions, especially those that a person may encounter in the service of virtue:

But a brave person is rightly concerned with the dangers of any other death [besides in battle], particularly as such a one may undergo the peril of any kind of death in the service of virtue; for example, when a man does not shrink from attendance on a sick friend for fear of deadly infection, or when he does not shrink from a journey on some matter of duty because of fear of shipwreck or bandits.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 123, a. 5.

Since no Christian believer passes through life without confronting difficulties of this kind, the virtues of fortitude serve a vital function throughout the Christian life. In medieval iconography, such as in the painting in the Chapel of All Saints at Ratisbon, the figure that represents fortitude wrestles with a lion. This image of true Christian strength reminds us that the believer must be ready to confront even the most ferocious challenges that the world sets up against the truth of life - the veritas vitae. And because he knew that adverse circumstances would inevitably confront those who believed in his name, Jesus himself encouraged his disciples to maintain a courageous spirit: “In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world” (Jn 16: 33).

Because great evil causes great fears, the principal act of fortitude involves endurance; to be brave is to endure (sustinere) hardships. Bearing up characterizes the work of fortitude more than attacking. Because an actually present evil brings its own seriousness and challenges, the emotions of daring or courage enjoy their own inbuilt moderation. So the virtue of fortitude concerns attack (aggredi) only in a secondary way. However, the endurance that comes from fortitude does not cultivate a passive quality of the soul; rather it represents an active and positive quality of character that allows one to cling to some good in the face of evil. Being a distinctively Christian endowment, “the virtue of fortitude,” observes Josef Pieper, “keeps man from so loving his life that he loses it.”Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 134.

Like each virtuous habitus, fortitude makes its special object, namely the endurance of evil, prompt, joyful, and easy. But the emotion of joy or delight seems incompatible with the experience of evil. In what does the brave person delight? The brave person delights in the exercise of virtue and its end. “Acts of the virtues cause delight chiefly because of their ultimate end,” says Aquinas, “but in themselves they can be painful.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 123, a. 8, ad 2. And he goes on to cite Aristotle: “The exercise of every virtue is not pleasant except insofar as it attains its end.”Nicomachean Ethics Bk 3, chap. 9 (1117b 15). But in another sense the brave person has cause for sorrow. For such a one must ponder the loss of life or experience the pain of body. Therefore the virtue of fortitude does not necessarily entail conscious delight; it is enough that the brave person is not depressed by the evil circumstances that he or she faces.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 123, a. 8. And so the Church sees no contradiction between Christ’s agony on the cross, even his experience of abandonment by the Father, and the joyful embrace of God’s holy will that gives his physical sufferings their salvific value for the human race.

The Christian theologian recognizes that fortitude belongs in an eminent way to the martyrs of the Church. As the original Greek term implies, the martyr witnesses to someone and something. In the witness of martyrdom, we can discern three specific virtues that are at work: charity, faith, and the moral virtue of fortitude. Aquinas describes this as follows:

Charity does prompt the act of martyrdom as its first and most important moving force by being the virtue that commands it [per modum virtutis imperantis], but fortitude does so as the directly engaged moving force, being the virtue that brings out [per modum virtutis elicientis] the act. Charity therefore is the directing virtue, and courage the eliciting virtue in the act of martyrdom; and so it manifests both virtues. But like any act of virtue, it gets its meritorious nature from charity; so without charity it is of no value.“See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 124, a. 2, ad 2.

In the language of the scholastics, martyrdom remains an elicited act of fortitude and a commanded act of theological faith and charity. In other words, the goodness of God becomes the source and ultimate motive for the martyr’s act, for charity unites the person who suffers for the truth of the Gospel or for some Christian virtue to the very power of God himself. Theological faith provides the specific adherence that distinguishes Christian martyrdom from political assassination or dying for an ideological cause. But the courage to face death flows from the virtue of infused fortitude, for it belongs to the brave person to face death without flinching. Consider the composure of the English Renaissance martyr St Thomas More when he mounted the scaffold.

The French spiritual author Louis Bouyer explains that the early Church interpreted martyrdom as something more than an exercise of the moral or even theological virtues. “The Christian martyr,” he writes, “is distinguished not only by faith in Christ, but by the explicit connection of his death with Christ’s.”See his History of Christian Spirituality I, The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers, trans. Mary P. Ryan (London, 1963), p. 193. In the acceptance of martyrdom, the Christian believer achieves the perfect imitation of Christ. Indeed, during the period of persecution against the Church, some believers wanted even to surrender themselves to hostile civil authorities as volunteers for martyrdom. Though the practice was discouraged by the legitimate Pastors of the Christian Church, it discloses how much Christ’s courage inspired the earliest Christian believers. So much did martyrdom shape the piety of the early Church that the 4th-century bishop and historian Eusebius of Caesarea says of the early Christians that they “loved to reserve the title of martyr to Christ, the ‘faithful and true witness’ (Rev 3, 14), the first-born from among the dead, the prince of the life of God.”Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5, 2, no. 5.

The vices against fortitude include timidity or cowardice as its defective form and fearlessness and reckless daring as its excessive forms. The coward refuses to endure the hardships that doing the good entails; he recoils from the discomfort that accompanies the completion of any arduous effort. This vice is especially unwelcome in the person who is charged with the preaching of the gospel or the care of souls, for timidity of spirit often leads to compromise of the truth. Reckless daring also jeopardizes the successful achievement of important projects, especially when it masquerades as a sophisticated bravado or appears in the guise of a naive spirit. Fortitude and prudence work together, for the Christian believer requires a perceptive spirit when it comes to making an accurate assessment of the difficulties that confront the preaching of the gospel. Fortitude strengthens the Christian’s resolve to resist temptations and to overcome the difficulties that one encounters in leading a moral life.

The capital vice that erodes fortitude is sloth, a state of dejection that gives rise to torpor of mind and felling of spirit. Following the language of W. H. Auden, the modern period is sometimes called the “age of anxiety,” referring to the prevalence of a sluggishness that can so sap a person’s strength that he or she loses a real desire for anything, even for the most simple forms of good. This oppressive sorrow can so weigh on a person’s mind that all thought of exercising virtue causes dread and immobility. The slothful person grows increasingly suspicious of everything, exaggerating difficulties and discerning evil where it does not exist. The only antidote for this debilitating condition that today afflicts so many persons, even those of good will, is fortitude.

Our blessed Lady, whom Christian piety invokes as Comforter of the Afflicted and Cause of our Joy, serves as a special intercessor against the depressed and depressing disposition of sloth. At the foot of the cross, Mary shares the passion of her Son in a preeminent way, and so her maternal mediation takes on a new and definitive significance. “The words uttered by Christ from the cross,” Pope John Paul II says, “signify that the motherhood of her who bore Christ finds a ‘new’ continuation in the Church and through the Church, symbolized and represented by John.”Redemptoris Mater, no. 24. During the course of the late Medieval period, the custom of portraying Mary in a dead faint at the moment of Christ’s death replaced the long-standing practice of depicting her in a serene and composed manner. In his commentary on Aquinas’s treatment of fortitude, Cajetan takes exception to this artistic license. He explains that since our blessed Lady shares in the fortitude of her Son, an upright stance instead of a swooning faint better represents the patient composure that she maintained while standing at the foot of the cross.In secundam secundae, q. 123, a. 8, no. II. As the Mother of Sorrows, Mary enables all those who invoke her maternal intercession to practice patient endurance in times of trouble, even of the most painful and aggravating variety.

Because death constitutes the formal object of fortitude, there are no subdivisions of this virtue to compare with the subjective parts of prudence - individual, political, and military. There is no way to subdivide death, which is sometimes called the great equalizer. However, fortitude does possess what we have earlier described as integral and potential parts. These can be conveniently organized under two headings: (1) the virtues of enterprise or attack, and (2) the virtues of support. Both the integral and potential or allied parts of the cardinal virtue of fortitude bear the same names. As integral parts, these dispositions refer to the psychological traits that distinguish a brave stance toward death. As potential parts, however, they constitute distinct habitus that regulate the proper restraint of fear and due moderation of daring in those situations that do not entail the full power of death’s threat.Aquinas discusses the virtues of enterprise (magnanimity and magnificence) and the vices that obstruct their exercise in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae qq. 129-135 and the virtues of support (patience and perseverance) in qq. 136-138.

The virtues allied to fortitude represent strong virtues, and they serve important roles in the life of the Christian. The principal potential parts of fortitude include magnanimity, which upholds us in the pursuit of great honor, and magnificence, which strengthens us at times of great outlays of money. These comprise the virtues of enterprise. But the potential parts of fortitude also include patience, which steels us against various kinds of affliction, and perseverance, which helps us persist in this effort over a long period of time. These comprise the virtues of support. In the Church of Saint Germain-en-Laye on the outskirts of Paris, the cenotaph of the exiled English King James II displays an epithet that captures the work of fortitude’s potential parts: “Magnus in prosperis, in adversis maior.” The courageous person shows greatness of spirit in good times and even greater resolve in trying ones. And because difficult circumstances can extend even over a long period of time, endurance in the face of evil provides one of the most challenging fields for maintaining virtue. Thus, perseverance further includes the virtue of longanimity, which reinforces one to accept postponement of expected relief from suffering, and the virtue of constancy, which braces a person against the threat of further obstacles that would delay finding relief from difficulty. Though each of these virtues represent distinct habitus within the family of the virtues of support, they all manifest a relationship to Christian patience.

Because of the example that Christ himself offers us in the gospels, spiritual authors single out patience as a virtue that particularly characterizes the Christian life. “Everything written before our time was written for our instruction,” St Paul tells us, “that we might derive hope from the lessons of patience and the words of encouragement in the Scriptures” (Rom 15: 4). Just as Christ himself manifests solid patience in the face of evil, and thus illustrates the divine compassion, so too must the Christian believer maintain a patient stance toward the world. “The virtue of the spirit which is called patience,” writes St Augustine, “is so great a gift of God that it is proclaimed as a mark even of him who bestows it on us.”St Augustine, Depatientia 1 (PL 40: 611). The Christian believer, then, bears temporal hardships as a way of reflecting God’s merciful forbearance with a fragile and sinful human race. In this way, the patient person becomes holy by interceding for those many persons who rebuff God’s loving call for union with him through suffering. “Charity,” St Paul insists, “is patient” (1 Cor 13: 4).

The Christian community must never abide pettiness or lavishness, discouragement or lack of interest, soft living or obstinacy; these represent the sins against fortitude’s allied virtues. Rather, those who embrace the Christian life should know how to exhibit greatness in accomplishing the good and how to hold fast with the good, even if this activity entails patient waiting, persistence in an effort, or continuing in a strenuous way already undertaken. “In your struggle against sin,” warns the Letter to the Hebrews, “you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb 12: 4).

Above all, waiting for the coming of the Kingdom requires a discerning patience and forbearance that eludes ordinary human calculation. In the “Admonitions” that St Francis of Assisi addressed to his first followers, the holy man of God lays great stress on the value of patience and humility for the sequela Christi. “We can never tell how patient or humble a person is,” he says, “when everything is going well with him, but when those who should cooperate do the exact opposite, then we can tell. A man has as much patience and humility as he has then, and no more.”“The Admonitions,” no. 13 in St Francis of Assisi, Omnibus of Sources (Chicago, 1973), p. 83. Though this degree of virtue may develop as a result of human strivings, we can expect to encounter patience and humility of this kind only in those who receive the virtue from Christ himself.

The gift of the Holy Spirit that we call Fortitude supplies the instinctus or special grace that directs believers to the right course of action toward building up the Church. Moreover, the Church’s tradition appropriately associates a gift of the Holy Spirit with the virtue of fortitude, “for sometimes it does not lie within human power to attain the end of one’s work, or to escape evils or dangers, since these sometimes press in upon us to the point of death.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 139, a. 2. But the Holy Spirit, Aquinas assures us, pours into our minds a certain confidence that we will reach eternal life and escape from all dangers. Because the moment of death remains a crucial one in the salvation history of each person, the believer at that time especially requires this sort of divine help.

The tradition associates with fortitude the fourth Beatitude, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Mt 5: 6). In making this connection, we are reminded that the gift of Fortitude especially points to the realization of evangelical justice in the world. Fortitude concerns what is strenuous. “Now it is very laborious not merely to perform the virtuous actions which are generally called works of justice,” says Aquinas, “but to perform them with an insatiable longing which represents a ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness.’ “Ibid. Because the Holy Spirit aids those who face special adversity in the pursuit of good objectives, this eschatological gift aids those who labor in the vineyard of the Church.