Reading Circle: Fr. Groeschel's The Virtue Driven Life

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Joan1969 said:
I think a great deal of discretion must be exercised in criticizing or condemning the economic or social inequities of the past…
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Agreed, we are not able to judge anybody’s soul. However, we must be careful not to condone their actions. Perhaps supernatural justice is what pulls us out of the current social and/or economics conditions to see what is just and true.

I think there’s a Chesterton quote on that, paraphrasing, that Catholicism is what saves us from being a slave to the age.
 
Just to let everyone know, I was offline for a couple of days due to a power failure. Finally back- tough couple of days! 😦 Anyway, I’ll be writing again tomorrow.

God bless to all.
 
Hi all,

Just to clarify, what I was saying the other day goes somewhat beyond just not judging souls, which we can never do in any case. What I’m speaking against is an excessive eagerness to criticize certain policies, social structures or even sins of the past using our own present day conditions as a sort of measuring stick. This sort of facile attitude is poor history, and doesn’t help us to learn from past errors in the deepest and most fruitful sense.

To be frank, I believe the secularists enjoy painting the picture of a dismal past in order to discredit our ancestors, distance us from our traditional values and worldview, and to morally justify their own extremist positions.

Again, when we look at the negatives of the past (like slavery), we need to realize that the reason we don’t have them nowadays is not because modern society has “progressed” morally speaking. The situation with abortion and homosexuality is proof enough of that. We are simply not tempted.

In attempting to achieve justice, we really shouldn’t focus too much on sins to which we are not tempted, but rather ask all the toughest questions about the sins and injustices to which we, ourselves, may be tempted. Those who tolerated and committed injustice in the past did not do this, and so never rose fully above their current-day circumstances.
nobody said:
Agreed, we are not able to judge anybody’s soul. However, we must be careful not to condone their actions.
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Hey Joan, almost 2 years ago I tried starting a book discussion on John Henry Newman’s Development of Doctrine. Maybe that was too meaty and ambitious… because it did not get far off the ground. Your project here seems better… I am in. I just bought the book a few weeks ago, and will try to catch up.
 
Welcome in! It is not a long book, so catch-up should not be too difficult. Feel free to post about either chapter we’ve already read. I’m thinking we should read the next chapter over the weekend, so that anyone who wants can start posting on Monday.
 
Hi to everyone,

I have just read the chapter on fortitude, and I thought a good way to post about it might be to answer one of the questions; how do we apply fortitude in our own personal lives?

Just facing life involves a great deal of fortitude for most of us. Between one thing and another, there are very few who escape serious frustrations, difficulties of suffering in their lives. For me, I am dealing with a son who has major speech difficulties, and it is very frustrating since just about every aspect of childhood that is enjoyable involves speech in one way or another. So just keeping my mood up and making sure my family enjoys life in spite of our setbacks is my fortitude challenge.

Anybody else? We all tend to think of our problems as the “worst”, but the reality is that life offers about a thousand different types of roadblocks to exercise our personal strength.
 
After reading the chapter, I see that what I have working through lately is fortitude. I pray I get more of it. We have 2 children which we adopted when they were 6 and 7 years old. The emotional scars that they have from their lives need tremendous healing. Our home life is often very challenging. Living through their pain is almost unbearable sometimes. I have to believe Christ will get us through.

That was probably more than I should have shared in a book discussion. But I typed it, so hey, there it is.
 
jknits said:
Yes, I believe it is.
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Just FYI: when Fr. Groeschel was on the EWTN show Bookmarks recently, he said that he had already written, or had been in the process of writing this book on the virtues… it was Our Sunday Visitor who titled it “The Virtue Driven Life”. Fr. said he had heard of the book, but never read it. There is a book written by a priest called “A Catholic Perspective on the Purpose Driven Life” which is a Catholic response to that book.
 
I read the Into and at least half of the chapter on Prudence, but I decided to skip justice and get back to it later… I read the chapter on Fortitude to catch up.

I was struck by Fr’s point that we must go beyond being a pious person and move towards being a devout person (p. 72). He says we must be willing to ask ourselves “whether we would have been willing to follow the itinerant preacher who had seriously annoyed the powers that be.” That is a challenge for me, personally,… to go beyond my private piety/prayer, etc. and to actually live out my faith (allow the Holy Spirit to live in me) to the point that I really engage other people and the world around me… to take risks at put fortitude to the test.

Still, I also relate to his point that, for most of us, fortitude is exercised in the long struggle of daily life rather than staring down the barrel of a gun. I am bearing a great cross in my life recently, and I realize what this daily fortitude is.

One last point (for now): with fewer people having eternal life as their goal,… my generation (I am on the brink of 30) will exhibit fewer examples of heroes in this supernatural sense of fortitude (and yet, those who do have the goal of heaven may be forced into greater heroism when persecution steps up).
 
I notice the conversation is going in a similar direction as that on prudence. It would seem fortitude is the virtue that permits us to follow through on what our prudence tells us to do. Hardly surprising since all the virtues are interrelated.

I agree with Doctor that our Faith is likely to require more and more courage as years go on, unless God grants radical repentence to our world. Catholics need to get accustomed to sticking up for their beliefs now, because the time may very well come when we have to choose between social acceptability and just being a loyal Catholic (and in many ways that time is already here).

God Bless you, Nobody, as you deal with your family difficulties. It’s a very special thing to voluntarily take on a cross like that. I’ll be mentioning you and your family in my prayers tonight.
 
I think now would be a good time to move on to the topic of temperence.

I think Father did a good job p(name removed by moderator)ointing the two most common temperence problems in the US today- food and money. Just go into a restaurant and they are encouraging you to be very intemperate with both. And how many ads encourage women especially to overspend just for fun, as a sort of rite of womanhood? Then again, men are encouraged to splurge on the big stuff, like cars and entertainment systems.

Father also mentioned the need to do charity with money for things we need, not just from the excess. What does everyone think? The problem here, for some families, is that our true needs can be met with about half our income! (that’s not true of everyone, by any means though). Another way to put it might be to make real lifestyle changes in order to do more giving- foregoing, for instance the premium model car or extra nice vacations we might otherwise be able to afford. Just putting charity into the budget, or committing to a certain percent (10% is classic) might be another method. Then we do our charity before we spend on luxuries.

A lot of good can be done with charity money, so temperence with money is a very important virtue.
 
Hi everyone,

Interest in this circle seems to have waned, so I will just read through the last chapters and put down a thought or two this weekend as a wrap up. But if anyone else still wants to make a remark, please do so!

God bless.
 
Just a comment on temperance. Lent is a good time to exercise - really get a workout in - temperance. Eating less, giving up alcohol. Time to rebuild our will power in the areas we are weakest.
 
Hi Nobody,

What you say about food temperence is only too true. Cutting back on unnecessary spending would also be a good lenten discipline that is maybe not so emphasized. We are living in the middle of our culture, so we may not see just how extreme it is in terms of pushing self-indulgence. But people really can’t live the way some advertisements suggest and still have a reasonably strong Christian life.
 
nobody said:
I’ll try to participate, as well. Is The Virtue Driven Life like a Catholic response to The Purpose Driven Life?
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**No, The “Virtue Driven Life” focuses on the cardinal and theological virtues and is not a response to Warren’s book. A Google search will identify some Catholic reviews of “The Purpose Driven Life.”

Fr Groschel may be the exception, but publishers decide on a book’s title. Further, a title cannot be copyrighted.
jblair
**
 
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