• The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self – Carl Trueman
• Strange New World – Carl Trueman
• Declaration “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity

00:00 – 00:33

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Welcome to conversatio, the Belmont Abbey podcast. This podcast aims to form and transform our community so that each of us can better reflect God’s image. I’m Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky. I’m the assistant professor of philosophy here at Belmont Abbey College, and I’m our host for today’s episode. I’m joined by Father Thomas Pietri, the president of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. And we’re excited to talk about truth and pursuing truth in today’s society.

 

00:33 – 00:53

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

But I’ll let Father Pietri introduce himself a bit more before we start. Father.

 

Father Thomas Pietri

It’s a great privilege to be here at Belmont Abbey College. I’m happy to be visiting from Washington, D.C. I am the president of our pontifical faculty at the Dominican House of Studies, which is the seminary, if you will, for the Saint Joseph Province of Dominicans, the eastern province of the United States.

 

00:53 – 01:22

Father Thomas Pietri

It’s where we have for over 100 years formed our Dominican student brothers to be great, we hope great Dominican priests and preachers, and we form other religious men and women as far as we can and lay men and women to be great teachers and evangelizers of the culture. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Fantastic. Well, we’re delighted to have you here at our Benedictine Institution, a meeting of Brothers in the Faith, Dominicans and Benedictines.

 

01:22 – 02:04

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

And we’re obviously surrounded by an institution dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Obviously, universities are Catholic in their origins, as I hope we’re all aware. But even beyond the Catholic realm, there’s secular colleges and universities that purport to be academies within which the truth is sought and not only sought, but hopefully reverenced. I think maybe there’s some reason to worry whether the mission of the university in the 21st century is still in alignment with truth in that way.

 

02:04 – 02:35

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

So hopefully we’ll be able to say some things about truth and the pursuit of truth, especially in the academic context. So obviously, as a Dominican, one of your North star for contemplating many things, but obviously including and especially the truth is at Saint Thomas Aquinas. How does Saint Thomas Aquinas define truth and what implications does his definition have for our understanding generally of knowledge and reality?

 

02:35 – 02:57

Father Thomas Pietri

Well, at the most fundamental level, for Saint Thomas Aquinas, truth is the configuration or the alignment of mind to reality. Now, that has implications. I mean, I think if you were to pull any individual off the street, that’s not necessarily how they’re going to understand truth. And so in an unself reflective way, it’s not how most people understand truth in the culture today.

 

02:57 – 03:28

Father Thomas Pietri

The implications for Saint Thomas are, first, that there is such a thing as objective reality and that the mind is actually made to know objective reality, to know the world, and to conform itself to the world and to reality. So truth for Saint Thomas and certainly for Catholics and Christians, but anybody who is operating from any objective understanding of science and knowledge until the modern era truth is not something that’s personal.

 

03:28 – 03:59

Father Thomas Pietri

It’s something that claims me that I get configured by and conformed to. And I think, as you alluded to in your introduction, it’s not always clear that that’s what people still understand by truth. And I think there are interesting reasons why that’s the case. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

So you say that the truth is not personal. That interests me a little bit as a philosopher, because of course, Aquinas’s definition of truth, while not making truths subjective or personal in that sense, is a relational definition.

 

03:59 – 04:27

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

it’s an adequation of intellect and reality. I’m trained in a philosophical tradition, the contemporary Western analytic tradition, where it’s very popular to say that truth is like a property of propositions, right? Where the propositions are imagined to live up in Plato’s heaven as abstract entities. And truth is just this property that those propositions have. They either have the property of being true or the property of being false.

 

04:27 – 05:03

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Do you think there is significance or does it make a difference in the way we think about truth in moving from that more kind of abstract, maybe platonic way of thinking about truth to a model in which it’s about the relation of a human intellect to the world? 

 

Oh, absolutely. And I’m glad you mention that, because I think sometimes Saint Thomas is accused of being too abstract in his understanding of propositions and truth, which I would want to vehemently deny and defend him against, because right truth is relational.

 

05:03 – 05:28

Father Thomas Pietri

And the fact is our minds are made to know truth and to know reality. And the more we know, regardless of what we know, whether they’re speculative truths, whether they’re practical truths, what we know begins to configure us. We become what we know for Saint Thomas. Right. And  I think as a man of faith I think, you know, he would not always want I would not want to make a hard distinction between his philosophical thought and this theological thought, as we tend to today.

 

05:28 – 05:49

Father Thomas Pietri

But remember always as a man of faith. For him, truth is a person that’s Jesus Christ. Right. And so the more truth and the more I study whatever I’m studying, if it’s authentic truth, whether I think G.K. Chesterton has that line, whether it’s a grub worm or an angel somehow is configuring me, but also bringing me closer to the one who is truth, which is Jesus Christ.

 

05:49 – 06:19

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Fantastic. Yeah, Great. Thank you. So You mentioned the truth. Not being personal in a subjective sense. In what ways do you think the modern notion of personal truth in a way that introduces this subjectivity contrasts with St Thomas’s way of thinking about truth as something that in some sense we conform ourselves to or ought to? 

 

Well, so I think the modern world and I, you know, your your viewers, your listeners, I’d recommend the work of Carl Truman.

 

06:19 – 06:52

Father Thomas Pietri

I’m not sure if you’ve read any of his books, but he’s had a couple of great books. One is The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which is much more scholastic and scholarly. But he wrote a sort of CliffsNotes version for the average layperson, which I highly recommend to everybody called A Strange New World. But his argument, I think, is correct argument using great people like Alastair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Philip Reeves is that we’ve come to a point in our in our culture, certainly in Western society in which he defines it as sort of a society in which truth is simply expressive personalism.

 

06:52 – 07:16

Father Thomas Pietri

You know that. And you see this in a lot of the debates in our culture right now, that truth is my truth, that I not only get to affirm what truth is for me, and you not only have to accept that, you have to applaud it. And if you do not applaud it, if you do not accept it, you are labeled and categorized as a bigot or, you know, and your and your doxed or canceled.

 

07:16 – 07:58

Father Thomas Pietri

In today’s culture, now St Thomas, this sort of understanding would not be articulable or even understandable 50 years ago, let alone in the 13th century. I think Carl Truman says at some point, even the very basic question, are you happy in your job you know, would never have been a question his father would have asked himself, You know, so what’s happened through just the Enlightenment, through culture, moving away from God, but yet still requiring some understanding of human nature and morality, is morality has turned into something much more subjective or based on a social construct rather than based on the reality of a given human nature given to us by God, by our Creator,

 

07:58 – 08:22

Father Thomas Pietri

to which we must not only be true to and normed by, but in fact which help us, helps us to grow in perfection and virtue. And so I think there’s a real challenge we face in helping to articulate even some of the basic presuppositions. You know, Saint Thomas classically holds that, you know, you can argue and have debates and arguments with folks if you have some shared assumptions.

 

08:23 – 08:54

Father Thomas Pietri

But increasingly, I doubt that we have a lot of shared assumptions with some of our interlocutors on the nature of humanity, on the nature of morality, on the nature of reality. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Right. Yeah. When I think about the term personal truth, something that also comes to mind for me, a term I think we hear often in the culture is lived experience and there’s this strange inversion with that term where obviously the term experience imports this idea that I am somehow receptive to something and I’m growing and learning from that.

 

08:54 – 09:22

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

But normally when the term when people appeal to their lived experience, it’s to impose something in a certain sense on the listener or maybe on their own reality itself in a certain sense. So I guess right there’s this strange inversion of the way that we think about the relationship between person and reality in a lot of contemporary ways of thinking about truth.

 

09:22 – 09:49

Father Thomas Pietri

Well, you know, and recently, just earlier this week, the Holy See issued the document Dignitas infinita and it  brings this up. You know that what suddenly has happened is that claims to dignity have been subverted to understand simply the claim of personal identity and that my personal identity is the claim of dignity which must be respected, which in turn, as you, as you mentioned, gives more authority to personal expression than in fact it should have.

 

09:49 – 10:13

Father Thomas Pietri

I should be configuring myself to reality and not attempting to think reality is going to configure itself. To me, it’s a strange place to be and it’s a strange place to be in. But I think when you mentioned lived experience of something, that or experience is something we should be open to, that still gives me a little bit of hope because I do think and this is good, you know, this is a typical natural law argument, right?

 

10:13 – 10:49

Father Thomas Pietri

I do think life and experience eventually reveals truth to people if they’re living authentically or self reflectively. Now, it might be a painful lesson, you know, lessons of contradiction and pain and sorrow before even questions like why? Why is this happening to me can come up. But I do tend to be optimistic that people who are attempting to impose something that’s unnatural to reality, even in how they choose to live or how they choose to view the world, will eventually, the thing it has to sort of, for lack of a better word, blow up at some point because it can’t.

 

10:49 – 11:30

Father Thomas Pietri

I don’t think we can live in such contradictions forever. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Yeah, I think that strikes me as kind of the moral side of the truth. Can’t contradict the truth coin. We often talk about truth not being able to contradict truth when we’re worried about potential conflicts, maybe between faith and science or faith and reason more broadly. But I often think about that same maxim in connection with people who are leading lives that are in whatever kind of way they might be, not entirely integrated or authentic, that eventually the rubber is going to have to meet the road somewhere.

 

11:30 – 11:57

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

And a coming to terms with reality is inevitable. 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

And I think that’s also true on a cultural level, right? So when you have a culture that is promoting values or norms that, for instance, biology doesn’t, doesn’t matter, that can’t but be a problem down the line in one way or another right now. Great. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

So let’s talk a little bit, I guess, about what we might call epistemology in contemporary philosophy.

 

11:57 – 12:27

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.  

Where can truth be discovered, according to Saint Thomas? 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

Well, I mean, truth can be discovered in all things that the mind can apply itself to, you know, not just external things, but even in rumination and internal thought, process, speculation and contemplation. But I think Saint Thomas is, he has a broad view of truth being actually studiable in all disciplines and being cohesive in bringing us to understand and know not just ourselves and not just the world, but to know God, you know.

 

12:27 – 12:57

Father Thomas Pietri

So I think that there’s a variety. He would not, I don’t think Saint Thomas would want to dispute or diminish any sort of academic pursuit or any active study of truth or the pursuit of truth. I also don’t think that he would necessarily believe that the study of truth is simply for its own sake, as Aristotle would, because I think for Saint Thomas, the study of truth is for the fulfillment of the human person and for union with God ultimately.

 

12:58 – 13:34

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Okay, that’s that’s interesting, I guess for a number of reasons. While not thinking about study of the truth for its own sake, obviously a lot of the truth that we study, especially in the context of Catholic thought, is aimed at the moral and the spiritual lives which are in turn aimed at union with God. But when we’re thinking about the really long term, they’re the hopeful long term to which we all aspire, be the beatific vision, final union with God.

 

13:34 – 13:56

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Might we reasonably describe something like the beatific vision as truth for the sake of truth? 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

Oh, yeah, yeah, I think so. And I’ll concede that. I totally would concede that. I guess when I say this, I mean to say that truth under the aspect of simple knowledge. Right? But truth is considered differently under the aspect of the beatific vision under God.

 

13:56 – 14:15

Father Thomas Pietri

Right. And so I’d want to, I’d want to caution on simply abstract intellectual pursuit, right. Versus a sort of an intellectual pursuit that in fact, and also leads eventually through virtue, the will and the passions. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

This might be where we talk, who make a careful distinction between the virtue of studiousness and the vice of curiosity.

 

14:15 – 14:40

Father Thomas Pietri

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Wikipedia is not helpful for this reason. So Wikipedia is not the goal of, you know, of course, the pursuit of knowledge. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Fantastic. Yeah. And I guess one of the things we might add to that in terms of where the truth can be discovered, I mean, one easy way of kind of seeing from a 30,000 foot level Aquinas’s thought about that is what truth is.

 

14:40 – 15:06

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

A truth is transcendental. So in a sense, the answer to that question is everywhere. Exactly. Exactly. So, okay, so given the vast amounts of information in today’s society, and I think you’re kind of important to distinguish between what we might call truth and knowledge on the one hand and information on the other, how can we discern truth from falsehood against the abundance of content in various forms, news, videos, entertainment, social media?

 

00:15:06:09 – 00:15:26:08

Father Thomas Pietri

I think that’s a big question. That’s a difficult question to answer. You know, obviously, I can give some bullet points of what I think people need to consider. Right. One is, as you just mentioned, not all information is about the pursuit of truth. And we were just talking about the vice of curiositas. Yes. I think we are bombarded now.

 

15:26 – 15:55

Father Thomas Pietri

I mean, we carry around in our pockets screens that have access to all sorts of information. 90% of it is not useful, you know, and 90% of it is not helping us grow closer to God or closer to truth. I think the discernment of truth has to happen, obviously as a man of faith in prayer, but more importantly in community and in communion with those who are scholars, those who are our elders, those who are experienced more than us.

 

15:55 – 16:24

Father Thomas Pietri

You know, I think that’s the whole point of university. That’s the whole point of a collegium, which is not just to have masters and professors, but to have peers in which, you know, the truth is pursued in a communal way. And I think that’s the beautiful thing of a university, right? 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Yeah, I think this is incredibly important for approaching ethics in the way that Aristotle and Saint Thomas do Virtue ethics, which of course is an ethics which can’t be reduced to a rulebook, but consist in the development of virtue.

 

16:24 – 16:45

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

And the development of virtue in turn is about, is always developed in relationship to not just peers but role models, people that we can look up to, people who are moral exemplars.

 

Father Thomas Pietri

You know, when I taught, I taught Providence College for four years before coming to the Dominican House of Studies and taught my moral theology to college students.

 

16:45 – 17:03

Father Thomas Pietri

But I always emphasize this point that, you know, Aristotle says, right, that the young should not study moral philosophy, you know, and because I think he understood that young people want a manual, a rulebook, they want a formula. We put in all the variables and then tell me what to do. Exactly. And morality is not that way.

 

17:03 – 17:23

Father Thomas Pietri

There’s very few things, even in our Catholic faith, that are black and white. I mean, there’s a whole lot of, there’s a field of choices that we can choose in any given situation. And so I was, I think, just right. I mean, growing in virtue, which is to say primarily also growing in prudence requires. Yeah, a community requires some learning 

 

17:23 – 17:44

Father Thomas Pietri

Requires, here’s this word that we’re talking about, like a certain lived experience, you know, making mistakes and reflecting on them. And I agree, I love having the role model. And I would always advise my students, think that we all know people in our lives, whether it’s parents, grandparents, maybe a professor that we think are virtuous and prudent and you know them so well, you can kind of figure out what they would tell you to do.

 

17:44 – 18:12

Father Thomas Pietri

And I would always share with students, even if you can’t ask them, imagine a conversation and know whatever you think that person will tell you to do. Probably you should do. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

This distinction between information and knowledge is kind of fascinating to me too, because it illustrates a way in which certain truths can not only be not necessarily very useful to us, but even potentially dangerous.

 

18:12 – 18:41

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

You know, I, I routinely have, you know, in talking about ethics with my students sometimes, or just not just students, but people who are not trained in philosophy or theology. I find that, like the concept of detraction, it is often hard for people to even understand. Right. You know, I’ll point out to point out to people who or try to gently lead people away from conversations that are going in that direction.

 

18:41 – 19:06

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

I find often people are not just, it’s not just that they reject the idea that detraction can be morally wrong. They’re perplexed by the idea that I could say something true, and it’s that it’s morally wrong, that there’s information that we shouldn’t share, that certain things should be kept private. And I find that fascinating, especially in an age where I feel as though, in a certain sense, we all value our privacy so much.

 

19:06 – 19:32

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

But at the same time, we think that if something is an item of knowledge, something that we can show is true, well, then it’s legitimate to spread it around as much as we can. 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

I think that’s a great insight. And I think it’s, you know, you can see it. it’s perpetuated by most social media platforms. You know, that it is true that I mean, the catechism speaks about detraction as distinct from calumny.

 

19:32 – 20:01

Father Thomas Pietri

You know, calumny is to say something about a person it’s false to assassinate their character, But detraction, it is a sin, even if the thing is true. Right. And so, yeah, I agree. We do live in a in a culture that tends to value to the deficit or to the death of all other values that every bit of knowledge has to be shared, especially if it’s a negative bit of knowledge, you know, And that’s that’s where I think growing in virtue and prudence and discernment.

 

20:01 – 20:18

Father Thomas Pietri

And I tend to think that this happens easier as people get older in life. You know, I think it’s for the young. But unfortunately, we see in our culture, even people who are older still can regularly engage in detraction and not understand that it in fact is morally wrong. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Yeah, I think it tells us something important about that.

 

20:18 – 20:41

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

The truth, like many great things, is extremely good. But precisely because it’s so good, it’s also, in a sense dangerous. 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

That’s right. It can be perverted.

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Yeah, it could be perverted easily. Yeah. Fantastic. So why is the pursuit of truth important for individuals both in their academic and professional endeavors as well as their personal lives?

 

20:41 – 21:01

Father Thomas Pietri

Well, we’ve touched on this a little bit already. I mean, for Saint Thomas and I obviously agree with this, the pursuit of truth is, how we’re made, that’s what we’re made to do. You know, we want to know things and we’re always seeking to know, to know the answers, whether it’s knowing how to, you know, turn on a car when you’re, you know, 14 years old trying to learn how to drive to get your license at 16.

 

21:01 – 21:22

Father Thomas Pietri

You know, whether it’s knowing how to get across campus and where your dorm and where the dining room is and whether it’s knowing how to get a job and knowing political science. If you want to be a politician and ultimately how you know, God. I mean, I think I would classify it a pathology and I’m sure we would call it depression if we encountered individuals who just stop wanting to know in life.

 

21:22 – 21:44

Father Thomas Pietri

Right. So I just think it’s hard wired and we can’t stop knowing. And of course, for Saint Thomas, this is one of his great arguments for the existence of God, right? We want to know what’s behind it all and simply knowing the effects of God and simply seeing His created world and his order and knowing that we want to know what the cause of that is too deeply down.

 

21:44 – 22:22

Father Thomas Pietri

Right. And I think that’s why the pursuit of truth and knowledge is so important because I don’t think we can do anything else. And I think that the challenge is to pursue it rightly and correctly and morally and authentically. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

So I, I find this distinction between academic, the academic pursuit of truth and the personal pursuit of truth interesting, because one of my constant struggles with intro students is to try to get them to see philosophy as something more than just an academic discipline, trying to teach them that there’s a sense in which philosophy is different from their math class or their chemistry class, right?

 

22:22 – 22:49

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Where in a sense to talk about the academic pursuit of mathematics or the academic pursuit of chemistry is maybe with a few exceptions, to exhaust what there is to pursue in mathematics or chemistry, but when it comes to something like philosophy or theology, it’s a little bit different insofar as, you know, we here at Belmont Abbey require students to take philosophy and theology.

 

22:49 – 23:25

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

And part of what I want my students to understand is we don’t primarily intend, I guess, right. As something for them to pursue academically. Obviously, most of them will not become philosophers, which is good because there’s not enough jobs for them anyway. Right. But for them to understand that this is supposed to be deeply personal in a way that their other courses aren’t necessary, that this is supposed to inform how they live and how they pursue wisdom and truth on a personal level.

 

23:25 – 23:54

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

In a way that obviously a course, of course, in mathematics or chemistry does inform them in that precise way. 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

Yeah, I’m happy to hear that because obviously I agree with that. I think the challenge that most colleges, certainly Catholic colleges and universities face, and certainly the challenge that liberal arts programs face is the really heavy emphasis in higher education now, because they’re responding to what students want, which are the practical sciences.

 

23:55 – 24:35

Father Thomas Pietri

You know, because the practical sciences where jobs are, is where job security is, it’s where perceived the money is. You know, and, of course, as you I mean, I know you would agree with this practical knowledge is obviously very useful and good, but it’s not speculative knowledge. And answering these larger questions like the nature of my life, in the nature of life and the nature of humanity and things like the nature of love and faith and existence, I mean, these are the things that I always hope for your students and for students taking intral philosophy courses or theology courses that they really latch onto and don’t stop asking even after the semester is over,

 

24:35 – 25:03

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

right? Yeah. No, I you know, when I moved here and started this job here at Belmont Abbey, I bought my first house. And I have since then become a even greater admirer of various practical arts. You know, when I would call a plumber or an electrician, I want someone who’s going to know what they’re doing. But something I try to point out to my students is as good and as valuable as all that is.

 

25:03 – 25:31

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

In a sense, all that stuff is done for the sake of leaving us, opening up the possibility of leisure, for us to pursue things like philosophy and theology. 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

You know, hopefully they could do both, you know, like find time for both in their lives.

there’s nothing I mean, you know, I know a guy back in Kentucky where I grew up, and you know, he’s a carpenter, but he would also read a lot of, he does a lot of reading of literature and, you know, philosophy and never got a bachelor’s degree.

 

25:31 – 25:56

Father Thomas Pietri

But I would say he’s still a very educated man. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Some of some of the you know, some of my favorite interactions is in philosophy is when people come up to me in person or they send me an email and it’s someone who maybe, you know, studied something else in college or they never even went to college, but now they’re in their their fifties or their sixties and they’ve accomplished maybe most over all of what they wanted to accomplish in their careers.

 

25:56 – 26:22

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

And they’re beginning to reflect on, okay, but now what? Now what do I do? What do I do with my life now? And it’s at that moment that I think the value of philosophy begins to really strike them as well as theology, of course. Yeah. So I think this is an important question. We’re in an election year. Truth is frequently politicized and polarized in many instances, especially as Catholic.

 

26:22 – 26:59

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

What actions can we take to ensure the faithful transmission of truth free from distortion? Are there specific steps we can implement? 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

Yeah, I think the first thing we should always, especially in these election years, and especially in our country, which is deeply polarized, you know, at this point in its history, is to realize that truth is not partisan. You know, and that even when it comes to political realities and moral realities, that candidates on different sides of the spectrum can actually be saying and holding true things, you know, and no candidate or no party, certainly in America holds everything that is true.

 

27:00 – 27:27

Father Thomas Pietri

You know, we have to be careful of that. I think as Catholics, even if we might want to weigh towards one or the other. Sure. You know, but I think just being able to not get to and for me, Pope Benedict the 16th pontificate and Deus Caritas act was very important. And for my own sort of conversion, if you will, on this matter, is that these political realities, they will come and go.

 

27:27 – 28:00

Father Thomas Pietri

But, you know, truth remains and the Lord remains and our faith remains. And so Benedict, probably because he was mostly an Augustinian, had a very sort of serene outlook on the divisions in the world and the struggles of the world. A very hopeful outlook, actually, that he knew the truth of Jesus Christ, the truth of the church. And while obviously he lamented and prayed for the world and culture, he was not horrified or he never got the sense he was personally like, what’s the right word here?

 

28:00 – 28:24

Father Thomas Pietri

Personally, agitated or, you know, he didn’t have he wasn’t losing sleep over the state of everything. Right. And I think that’s a great attitude for us to have, especially as we go into an election year and we’re seeing more and more divisiveness in our country, in our culture. 

 

Of course. Yeah, I think probably good advice within the church to see a lot of division, at least in the American church.

 

28:24 – 28:50

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Now, I’ve been witness to some of this division. And I think whether secular politics, ecclesiastical politics, whatever the case may be, I think this is an important point where it’s important to remember that there are intellectual virtues and not just moral virtues. I spend time trying to inculcate this idea with my students as well. Right.

 

28:50 – 29:22

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

I think there’s a sense in which we think about virtue is about how I behave . And there’s a there’s a modern and contemporary forgetfulness about the idea that Aristotle, and Saint Thomas, think, no virtue isn’t just about what I do, not just about how I behave. It’s not just moral. It’s about how I think too I think there’s probably something about the, you know, the American egalitarian spirit that a virtue isn’t supposed to be about how smart I am or something like that.

 

29:22 – 29:50

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

It’s supposed to be about, you know, it’s supposed to be about my character. But I think this leaves something important out, which is that part of our endeavor in trying to become good human beings has to be how to think rigorously about important topics, about political issues, right? This isn’t about becoming less political, but about learning how to do politics well.

 

29:50 – 30:10

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

And a big part of that is intellectual virtue. 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

And I think, yeah, and that means study. A lot of that means study and study and rigorously, you know, this is why, you know, 24 hour news stations aren’t always the most helpful and helping to build intellectual virtue because right real thought takes more than soundbites of course. Yeah. Okay.

 

30:10 – 30:40

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

So how can we work toward cultivating a society that cherishes truth? And is there a method to shift the perception of truth from a subjective personal experience to a universally acknowledged reality? 

 

Father Thomas Pietri

Well, this is a question that a lot of us talk about all the time. Like how because this is a big cultural question, especially as we’ve talked during our time here on the cultures temptation or tendency to espouse a sort of personal expressivism.

 

30:40 – 31:00

Father Thomas Pietri

And there are a lot of ways you can think about this in terms of policy and how you might work to push certain policies through government or through education then. But you can also think about this. What can I do as an individual, you know, and as a theologian, as a priest, that seems to me to be where I am on most of this.

 

31:00 – 31:23

Father Thomas Pietri

Especially, you know, earlier we mentioned that even with some arguments, you can’t even begin to have a dialogue or discussion because we don’t even share common assumptions anymore. And so I often think and this is, you know, might sound a little strange, especially if we’re talking philosophy. I have to think that’s a real thing we ought to do, is to live our Christian lives well and good and be good.

 

31:23 – 31:50

Father Thomas Pietri

And people who are knowledgeable and charitable and moral and through that help to introduce people to Jesus Christ, you know, and to really convert minds and hearts. And sometimes that means converting the heart first and then hoping once you have someone who acknowledges that there is a God, that there is a Lord, and that he loves us and has a plan for us, then I think that would open up the mind to explore other questions of what that means.

 

31:50 – 32:15

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Yes. So yeah, so I think this is great because I think part of let me be the first to say, as a philosopher, this is where I think Grace plays an enormous role because, you know, I was I was talking about abortion with some of my students recently, and we came across this question of like, you know, among some really sophisticated, philosophically sophisticated pro-choicers.

 

32:15 – 32:45

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Right. Some of them just reject the concept of personhood as morally relevant altogether. Right. So it’s very hard to try to find, as you said, any kind of common ground on which to have a meaningful dialogue dialectic with them. Because obviously, when you’re trying to convince somebody that abortion is morally wrong, one of the concepts you immediately reach for is personhood and maybe especially right as someone becomes more educated.

 

32:45 – 33:10

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

I find this often in philosophy my fellow philosophers are often some of the most frustrating people to interact with because they’re so intelligent and they know all the right moves to make to avoid having an inconsistent position. And what I think about when I have those kinds of encounters is like, you know, maybe we’ve reached the point where I can do no more aside maybe from pray.

 

33:10 – 33:34

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

And this is really something where we’re entering the domain, where there’s a need for a grace that breaks through consistent but false worldviews and really delivers that kind of punch of truth that we hear about, obviously from Saint Paul, Saint Augustine and other great saints. 

 

When you see this happen in history, the Saints and, you know, I’m sure we both have friends that this has happened to.

 

33:35 – 33:56

Father Thomas Pietri

You know, I think that’s right. I think you get to a point and it’s not like what you’re, it’s not like your dialogs or your interactions are useless. I mean, there’s sort of a preamble of the day, right? I mean, that’s what we hope that they become. You know, the preamble to grace working in them. And so at least are ready and receptive when Grace punches through.

 

33:56 – 34:16

Father Thomas Pietri

Right. And I’m a big believer, I think when we’re young and certainly when I was young, I probably operated off this false mentality that you can argue people into the truth. Right? But as you well know, as you say, there can be real consistency, intellectual. And if the will is sort of locked in this, it’s going to be hard to break through.

 

34:16 – 34:45

Father Thomas Pietri

And I think that’s where Grace can do more than we can. 

 

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

right. Okay. Fantastic. So as we conclude, thank you for joining us, Father Petri, Thank you to our audience for joining us. And I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation. If you have enjoyed the episode, please subscribe. Tell your friends about conversatio and please note that it’s available on Spotify, Apple and Google Podcasts.

 

34:45 – 34:58

Dr. Christopher Thomashefsky.

Until next time. God bless.