Conferences on the Virtues
By Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Number 82
Piety
We continue
with Section D of that part of the Treatise on the Cardinal Virtue of Justice
that considers two more virtues affiliated with Justice, namely, Piety
and Observance.
Chapter
1 – Piety
Question
1 – The nature of Piety
Piety
is the virtue that inclines us to render to our parents and
to our country due honor and cooperation. It is a virtue because it tends to perfect the individual as
a human being and citizen, and it pertains to justice because honor and
cooperation are things we owe to both parents and nation.
Piety
is a virtue analogous to the virtue of Religion because by it we acknowledge
our parents; on the one hand, as the secondary authors of our being, as well as
the persons, whose care, protection and guidance helped us to become mature,
responsible adults.
On the other
hand, by it we acknowledge the fact that it is our country that has maintained,
fostered and protected the necessary social fabric within which we were born
and raised.
Piety also
extends to the rendering of due honor and respect to our blood relatives
(because of their relationship to our parents) and to our fellow citizens. They are the ones who made up the familial
and social fabric that was so important to our well being and development as we
were growing up.
My author makes
some interesting observations about Piety that help us to see it in proper
perspective:
1. The
Debt we owe to our parents is a strict and legal one because it corresponds to
a strict and legal right they have to be honored and respected by us, their
children.
Piety,
however, is not Justice in the strict sense because the virtue of Justice is
based upon a distinction of persons, one of whom enjoys a right, to which
corresponds the other person’s duty or obligation.
In
the case of the virtue of Piety, children and parents are not considered as
distinct entities relating one to another on an equal footing. Children always are considered
[traditionally] in some way conjoined to their parents and forming a single
unit with them.
Again,
Piety is not Justice because the latter virtue requires that there be equality
between what is rendered by the debtor and the right to receive satisfaction on
the part of the creditor. Ordinarily
(we are talking about normal, functional families) children can never make an
adequate return to their parents for the gift of life in the first place, nor
for the upbringing and education the parents have provided at great cost to
themselves, thereafter.
2. Piety
is not the same as Legal Justice.
The
latter concerns the duties and obligations citizens owe their country
considered as the author of the common good.
The
former concerns the esteem and reverence we owe our country as the author of
our individual good as citizens.
3. Because
God is the creator [primary author of our being and existence}, and indeed,
because it is He who gives to parents the faculty (the power and the right) to
become parents, the virtue of Religion is a kind of super-eminent piety.
But
because God has, by Sanctifying grace, adopted us as children into His family,
we can formally exercise the virtue of Piety toward Him, as well. Indeed, in additional to the moral virtue of
Piety, we have been given the supernatural virtue of piety as a Gift of the
Holy Spirit. By means of it we show due
honor and reverence to God as Our Father, and to all human beings as His
[actual or potential] children.
4. The
name [and attribute] of Piety can be extended to Works of Mercy [and to God]
because of the similarity in what they achieve.
The
Works of Mercy are pretty much the same as the deeds of Piety, which we
exhibit, ordinarily, to those joined to us by ties of blood, friendship and
citizenship. Besides, we tend to
consider those who habitually do works of mercy to be pious people.
We
may even think of God Himself as being Pious, because His
goodness extends in a special way to those who are members of His family by
grace. But neither does He withhold
that same goodness to all other human beings.
It is toward the former that His Piety is most in evidence, and it is
toward the latter that His Mercy best manifests itself.
There
is a difference, though, between Piety and Mercy, because the good works of
Piety are done out of a sense of debt to family members, whereas the works of
mercy proceed out of a compassionate desire freely to bring relief to the
sufferer, whomever he/she may be.
Question
2 – Pious Duties Toward Parents
Both natural
Law and Divine Positive Law place upon us a grave obligation to manifest
certain things to our parents which they have a right to in virtue of their
being our parents.
First
among these is to surround them with love. We owe them this because, next to God, they are the beings most closely related to us, and our
greatest benefactors.
Next,
we owe them honor and reverence because they are our superiors (as
parents) in dignity and excellence.
Third,
we owe them obedient service in so far as they are the ones God has
given us to be our guides and protectors on the road to adulthood.
(We
owe our parents all of the above regardless of any other considerations or
circumstances).
Fourth,
when circumstances require it, we owe our parents spiritual and temporal
assistance and relief.
The first of
the above duties arises out of natural love and charity, the natural basis of
all piety.
The second and
third are properly and formally deeds of piety toward parents.
The fourth
arises out of both natural charity and piety.
Hence, any sins
of hatred, ill-will, personal injury or contempt which would be considered
slight and of little account in regard to others, could easily become grave
when committed against parents, and would acquire an additional dimension of
sinfulness, that is impiety.
The
Duty of Love and Assistance…
The duty
[imposed by Piety] upon children to surround their parents with love extends to
both affection in the hart and external evidence in word and
deed.
Internal
affection includes sincerely desiring the very best for our parents, and the
external evidence requires that we both pray for their spiritual and temporal
welfare and exhibit visible marks or signs of love and esteem, at the very
least.
Not satisfied
with these very general and necessarily vague expressions of the duties of
children toward parents, my textbook proceeds to give several specific examples
and instances.
A. It
would be a grievous sin of:
1. Lack
of internal affection were children to
a. allow
feelings of hatred for their parents to dwell in their hearts, and internally
despise them
b. feel
happy when misfortune befalls them or to feel sad when they enjoy prosperity
c. (more
seriously) to desire that evil befall them
d. to
desire their death only because they (the children) want to live a more licentious
life, or because they want to get possession of their inheritance, or
because they want to be relieved of the care and custody of the parents.
2. Lack
of external evidence of love were children to
a. manifest
signs of hatred toward their parents
b. speak
ill of them to others
c. do
things that cause them grief, especially to provoke them to tears by, for
example:
i.
by keeping bad company
ii.
by neglecting their studies
iii.
by staying out very late at night
(remember,
this treatise on the Cardinal virtues was written prior o World War II)
B. It
would be a sin of
1. Withholding
due temporal assistance were children to
a. fail
to supply for their parents’ bodily and material needs. This is true, even if the parents were able
to support themselves, but in a manner that would be beneath their dignity.
b. Fail
to visit them when they are ill
c. Fail
to console them when they are sad or discouraged
d. Fail
to protect them against harmful influences or vexing situations
The
obligation to provide due temporal assistance is so serious that St. Thomas
Aquinas teaches that children would be obliged to defer entrance into religious
life or into the state of marriage, and even to forego them completely, if the
parents are in such dire need that only by remaining in the world and unmarried
could the said children be able to assist them.
As
justification, St. Thomas states that the obligation to show Piety toward
parents is of the Natural Law, whereas entering Religious Life or the Married
State is only a personal option.
He
goes on to say, further, that children could even be obliged to leave the
religious life, should that become an absolute necessity in order to give due
assistance to desperately needy parents.
But he adds that this hardly ever becomes necessary, and if so, it is
usually only for a short time.
(Perhaps
someone might object that Our Lord said:
He who loves father and mother… more than Me, is not worthy of
Me. How can that be reconciled to
the above teaching of St. Thomas?
I
think we have to say that a statement of Jesus that is of more fundamental
importance is His censure of the principle of the Chief Priests, Pharisees and
Scribes of His time which allowed them to say to their parents: Any assistance you might have had from me
is Korban (dedicated to God).
Jesus
then said that this enabled them to refuse to assist their parents in their
bodily and material needs, and thus effectively to nullify the fourth
commandment: Honor thy father and
thy mother.)
2. Withholding
due spiritual assistance were children to
a. neglect
to advise their parents of the fact that they (the parents) are in danger of
death.
b. Fail
to arrange for them to receive the sacraments when in danger of death
c. Unfairly
to prevent them from making arrangements for the good of their immortal souls
by bequests for masses when the parents make their wills
d. Fail
to carry out the parents’ serious instructions with regard to funeral services
and burial once the parents are deceased.
Interestingly,
my author says that children are not obliged to pay the debts of deceased
parents. That surely has to be because
the civil law provides that the just debts of a deceased person are to be paid
from the assets of his/her estate.
Exceptions are:
a. When
the children inherit (i.e., choose to take over rather than sell) a business or
other income producing property left by the parents: and
b. When
otherwise the good name or the honor of the parents would be prejudiced.
The
duty of honor and reverence…
Honor and
reverence (they go hand in hand) toward parents are to be both interior
and exterior, as in the case of the love that their children owe them.
The interior elements include:
1. acknowledging
with the intellect that the parents are our superiors in dignity, excellence
and authority in so far as they preeminently participated with God both as the
origin of our being and existence, as well as our providential guides and
protectors while we were growing up, and
2. a
filial fear of hurting them in any way.
The
exterior elements include any and all words, comportment and conduct that give
accurate expression to the interior elements.
Although
we have placed the interior elements first, it is clear that the interior
dispositions of children toward their parents become evident only through
the external, visible behavior of the children toward them.
In
this respect, there is no middle ground.
The mere absence of any signs either of respect or disrespect in
the presence of parents is of itself a violation of this duty, enjoined
by the 4th commandment.
The
Duty of Obedience…
This duty is of
paramount importance while the children are growing up, obviously, since the
parents have a very serious obligation to see to the intellectual, moral and
spiritual education of the children.
Once the children are grown up and living independent lives, the duty
ceases.
Nevertheless,
adult children living under the parents’ roof must still obey them in all that
concerns the smooth and harmonious running of the household.
With regard to
the selection of a State in Life, the children remain free to choose, as
a personal option, in response to the grace of God. Though the parents cannot coerce children to embrace one vocation
or another, it pertains to their spiritual education that the parents make
their children well aware of all the possible vocations to which the grace of
God may urge them.
Finally, all
that is stated here with regard to parents is owed by children to those persons
who take the place of parents who are deceased or incapacitated, or to whom is
given a share of the parental role and authority in the upbringing of the
children, such as teachers.
Post-finally,
when live-in servants are engaged to assist parents in the running of the
household, they, too, owe to the Masters of the House reverence and cooperation
akin to that owed by the children.
Furthermore,
servants are obliged to be discreet with regard to making known what transpires
within the household. Piety, for
servants, includes, therefore, safeguarding the good name of the family.
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