It's not normal to want to understand everything

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Edward_H

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There’s some point at which our prudence should kick in steering us away from threads of endless speculation about rather picayune matters of our faith or the Bible, if even that.

We don’t have to know everything. We don’t have to understand everything.

“what if a martian arrived…”
“what would we call the first female pope…”
“If a person had a sex change operation, what if they then converted, why couldn’t they one day be the pope…”

We use our intelligence, our memory, and our imagination to come to know God and to help us do the good (using our will) out of love for God.

Curiosity is in fact, classically studied, a vice, not a virtue.

It leads to superficiality, trendiness, lightness, no depth, skating from one topic that moves us to another (eventually anxiousness, haughtiness, pride, lack of interior peace - because they don’t really know anything!)

Studiosity or studiousness is the virtue, a strength of character in a person that helps them to go into the depth of a matter, seeing the essence, internalizing the essence, SO THAT they can do good.
 
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Great post, Edward !
Your third paragraph made me laugh out loud.
First laugh of the day 😛

Your sixth paragraph is just awesome !

I think of the silly question lawyers asked Jesus…,
About if a woman marries and remarried and remarried -
So even Jesus heard the ludicrous 🦇
 
Curiosity isn’t custody of the mind; it’s actually an intemperate mind.

Studiosity is custody of the mind, with the will applying the control that the passions can’t.

People’s intemperate use of technology today has led to shallowness in conversations and their understanding of topics (“headline reading”)…they get pushed around by their appetites and passions.

They scan a lot; they know so little and can remember even less.

And what’s worse is you hear parents say “oh my son is so smart, he’s so curious…”, as they shovel ADHD drugs into this system.
 
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Edward_H said:
Curiosity isn’t custody of the mind; it’s actually an intemperate mind.
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Read the Article.

“Certainly curiosity is not solely a vice. There can be good curiosity, such as the curiosity that inspires invention or exploration that furthers the good of mankind. Curiosity can also develop the mind and soul if it is ordered to that which is good.”

“Aquinas also considers good curiosity and says that if the intent of our curiosity is to inspire us to act more uprightly or to engage in fraternal correction, then curiosity is licit.”
Edward_H said:
Studiosity is custody of the mind, with the will applying the control that the passions can’t.
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I haven’t seen the word studiosity used theologically or in real life.
Edward_H said:
And what’s worse is you hear parents say “oh my son is so smart, he’s so curious…”, as they shovel ADHD drugs into this system.
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That’s another issue entirely.
 
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I don’t feel we should disregard other peoples questions if they are searching for answers.
 
Good points.

Regarding the example of the trans who had a conversion, it is always the original sex that is true. No such thing as changing one’s sex. Period.
 
Edward_H said:
Curiosity is in fact, classically studied, a vice, not a virtue.
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The English word “curiosity” just means wanting to know about stuff. There’s nothing inherently sinister about it.

Mountains and molehills Ed.
 
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You know what else is not prudent? Posting multiple threads condemning other posters and lecturing everyone on your opinions cloaked in pseudo-intellectual twaddle.
 
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Yeah I dont really care about understanding every inane rule the Church comes up with, if God cant work through me via my conscience on top of common sense then oh well.

This is a good web forum for endless bickering and arguing though.
 
vallancec said:
I don’t feel we should disregard other peoples questions if they are searching for answers.
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We do have the choice on this forum to ignore questions, or even mute threads, that we personally do not think are productive or helpful. However, someone else might find the question or discussion to be productive, helpful, maybe even important in their own faith journey, and we should respect that not everybody thinks as we do.

If a thread or a poster goes so far as to violate the TOS, we can flag it as a violation. Other than that, I think it’s charitable to “live and let live” when it comes to the questions of others.
 
Don’t confuse “Intellectual Curiosity,” with nosiness.

The former is a virtue the latter is not.

Jim
 
The article is fine, but it suffers from a diluted understanding of curiosity.

As I said, the Greeks (and later Aquinas) put great study into the human virtues (and Aquinas later connected the human virtues to the supernatural virtues, of hope, faith, and charity).

And they drew out great detail from them.

Curiosity is a vice. Vices sit in opposition to virtues.

The virtue is studiosity.
 
No, it’s important to understand what is the true virtue (stuidosity: depth, mastery of a topic, exactitude in our understanding of it, so well mastered that one can explain it to others beautifully, attractively) and what is the vice (curiosity).

In fact the diluted understanding of curiosity has led to the false elevation of curiosity as a virtue!!
 
We need to use prudence and own intellect to lead them to the great and deeper truths, not to simply entertain their mercurial curiosity for 25 seconds, before they move on to the next question, which describes about 40% of the threads here.
 
Read this careful treatment.


Or this one:


“Thomas Aquinas makes this distinction between curiosity, which actually is connected to lust and greed, and studying. Curiosity connects us with the senses, not the intellect. Whereas studying increases our knowledge in order to help us know God and ourselves.”

Or this one.


Or for far more depth.

 
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I tend to support your view. It is important to note that the Church does not have a position on everything and some things are mysteries of the faith. No matter how much we speculate, we will not know the answer to certain things, until the afterlife, when we become like angels and acquire exalted knowledge. Until then, we can hope for eternal life.
 
Maybe you should put more thought into this. Curiosity is not a vice, but it can become one in certain cases. Just like eating or sleeping. Aquinas is careful to distingiush harmful curiosity.
 
As the articles I posted substantiate, it is a vice, classically understood.

I like this characterization too because it fits the “data” we can easily observe day and night with people we know and even our own inclinations to read/browse news/the internet.

We all know what an absence of interest (in serious matters) is: indifference and this too is a vice, and it follows too that there can be an excess of a desire to know everything (intemperance, and of course accompanying pride!)…and so the "excess of a virtue (in this case studiosity) is a vice, namely curiosity, as the Greeks and Aquinas pointed out.

Virtues are the golden mean, the point in the middle.

Vices sit on the “outside”, either a deficit of the virtue, or an excess of it.

It is interesting to see how hard some people want to hold on to their hobby horse curiosity.

Fanning “curiosity” in children has led to today’s epidemic in attention span.

No mastery of topics, just cursory understanding and an over abudance of self esteem. Esteem, without deep competence.
 
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