Truth, for St. Thomas Aquinas, is the conformity of the mind to reality.

On the Willingness to See the Truth

By Brian Jones

A friend and I were recently discussing the status of our culture and the possible direction that our country will be moving in the next three or four decades. What stood out in our conversation was something that is quite the norm in our modern liberal democracy, namely, the willingness to hold to particular beliefs and opinions regarding a vast array of social and religious issues. This mindset is further mixed with an almost absolute unwillingness to propose these beliefs as true.

....................

While my friend was unaware of these statistics, he nevertheless was still unconvinced that we could know, with any sort of certitude, that the initial stages of what comes to be within the womb of a woman could accurately be called a human being, a person deserving of full protection under the law. As the conversation began moving in this direction, my friend said what I found to be the real core of his discontent and irrationality: “I know that you have your strong beliefs because you are Catholic, but you can’t expect everyone to think the way that you do. You have to be careful that your beliefs remain yours.”

This is an amusing, and simultaneously frightening train of thought, for it is the logical consequence of a society that sees no standard of truth, no standard of moral good and evil beyond what the human will creates for itself. We are a culture of “rights,” whereby what is true is so because it is simply the creation of our own mind. Further, what we choose is good and deserving of God’s blessing simply for the fact that we have chosen it. Such “rights” are completely removed of any moral content. This is precisely the point ofPresident Obama’s recent address to the Planned Parenthood National Conference.

Truth, for St. Thomas Aquinas, is the conformity of the mind to reality. This simply means that there are things which are true independently of whatever we think or feel about them, even and especially when we refuse to think about them in what they truly are. The goodness and purpose of the human mind is to know what things are, and to be willingly to call them as such. For Aquinas, following Aristotle, to deny that something is what it is can be the result of a lack of knowledge. It is more often the case that it is an intentional act, a choice whereby we refuse to acknowledge the truth of something.

.....................


Read more: www.truthandcharityforum.org