15 July 2008--By Ted Turner
Opening Questions
The first in the series was the un-aesthetic tale of Carlo and Lucia. It was not just plain; it was as ugly as it could be! The mention of the thermometer at a time when the young couple would naturally surrender themselves to the moment and to one-another slaps one in the face as surely as would a cold wet fish. The question before us is whether this ugliness is simply a matter of tastelessness? Is this simply a matter where the moment must give way to the demands of science? Or rather is there something more at stake than the mere assault on our sensibilities? Is the ugly an indicator for the immoral?
It would certainly be a mistake to think that every case of ugliness is also a moral crime for to die is no crime. But is not the reverse true? Can one think of a moral crime, a sin that is not tainted by at least a spiritual ugliness. Aha, the astute reader will pounce at the shift; where we had been speaking of an aesthetic lack, now we have shifted the conversation to consideration of spiritual ugliness! Is this a case of a dishonest argument, trying to slip the term so that one artless thing becomes an argument for another immoral thing in an illicit fashion?
In the following essays, I will try to answer that the un-aesthetic, while not in itself proof that something immoral is happening, it does at least pose the question. It does at least force us to ask, “Why do I feel that the thermometer or the NFP manual has no place in this story”? The human soul judges or perceives beauty in various fashions and modes. Order, brilliance, symmetry, belongingness, fitness, increase, joy, exuberance, sublimity, analogy, passion, excess, harmony, blessedness – all of these and many more besides are elements of beauty. These give expression to, they give life to, give wings to the soul and cause within it a resonance with the Divine Beauty. There is no illicit slippage from aesthetic beauty to moral beauty so long as one understands the difference. Even though these things are indeed separate in the mind, they can indeed be given in and through one another. Kant says that there is nothing more beautiful than the holy will! What a beautiful, perceptive, and good man he must have been to see this (his subjectivist notwithstanding)! Beauty has a spiritual component; beauty and the soul communicate one with the other on the same frequencies.
I maintain the question is fairly stated, “Is there something more at stake than the mere assault on our senses”? The answer is yes, there is more at stake. The assault on our senses fails to be understood as merely an aesthetic insult. This assault is worse than awkward or unshapely. There is more at stake. The intellect, the nature of love, the purpose of human existence, all of these are bound up in the investigation which we must undertake. In conspectu Dei – in the sight of God!
In succeeding weeks we shall set forth criteria that allows us insight into what it means to be most fully human, what it means to have integrity, what it means to be pure of heart, what it means for an action to be pure and undivided. We shall find that our strength, our integrity, our purity of intention all have something to say about the intrusion of the thermometer into the Tuscan Orchard, the snake into the Garden!
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