New Series – Cardinal Virtues and their Allies
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Once the academic year comes to an end the Dominican students begin their summer placements. Already one student is in Spain attending a language course and another is doing a hospital placement in London. Two students are attending a course at the Dominican centre for Islamic studies in Cairo. Eventually students will be on placement also in Leicester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Brussels. They will take part in pilgrimages to Ely and Lourdes, as well as in Spode Music Week and in a Dominican study week in Dubrovnik.
Although the Godzdogz team is scattering we hope to sustain a new series of reflections during the summer months. This will be on the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, and the secondary virtues that accompany them. The tradition of four cardinal or principal virtues goes back to the ancient world but was taken up by Christian teachers – Ambrose of Milan, for example – to become a standard part of Christian moral teaching. The good human being is one who is growing in these principal virtues and their allies. (One of the allied virtues is the ability to relax well, a good ‘summer virtue’ to cultivate.) Grace does not replace this level of natural virtue but perfects it. The good Christian, then, is the person whose life is orientated immediately towards God and who is sustained in that orientation by the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.
A good image for the structure of virtue as St Thomas Aquinas presents it is the naval fleet. At the centre is the aircraft carrier, the cardinal virtue itself, and sailing with it is a set of destroyers, frigates, supply ships, attack boats, support vessels, etc. So each virtue has parts and subsidiary virtues, as well as particular acts, gifts and commandments that go with it. We will offer reflections on the cardinal virtues themselves as well as on the main ancillary vessels. These virtues are the principal weapons for the ‘spiritual warfare’ in which we are engaged.
