Pastoral Counseling

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Pastoral Counseling

• Natural Law happiness

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Law

• Nothing other than a certain promulgated
  ordinance of reason for the common good by him
  who has care of the community.1
• Proceeds from reason
• Supplies order to a community
• Commands and prohibits
• Benefits community
• Promulgated
• Done by one who has care

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Types of law

• Eternal
• Natural
• Civil

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Eternal

• Providential plan as it exists in the mind of God
• Known by man only through His effects

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Natural

• Expresses the intention of God with respect to
  human nature.
• Cause is somehow in the effect
• Gods intent known by design of man
• (leads to Ignatius discernment of Gods will)
• What is consistent with the nature
• Natural law is nothing other than the
  participation of the eternal law in a rational
  creature.
• The means to grasp what is right and wrong ,
• a light within man which gives him the capacity
  to grasp the intentions of God about mans own
  nature and thereby know what is right and wrong.

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Civil law

• Enacted for the common good by men who are
  responsible to do so

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First thing to fall to the intellect

• Being
• Second
• Good

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Inclinations

• First inclination is to conservation or
  preservation of their being according to
  respective nature
• The second inclination is to those things with
  which we have in common with animals
• eating, upbringing of offspring, reproduction
  etc.
• The third inclination is that which is proper to
  man who possesses reason, to pursue the truth and
  truth about God.
• All these things are done in a way which requires
  reason-proper to man.

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Conscience

• Conscience is an act of the possible intellect,
  act of judgment, by which one applies ones
  knowledge of right and wrong to a specific course
  of action.
• Insofar as man is formed in what is truly right
  and wrong for his nature, it can determine the
  psychological health of that individual.
• For it is through the conscience that man acts
  according to his nature and since it is unnatural
  to suffer mental illness, one who follows his
  nature will never suffer mental illness.

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Three kinds of conscience

• considers current action should or not be done
• recognize what we should or should not have done
  in the past
• whether something was done well or badly in the
  past and for this reason it is said to excuse,
  accuse or torment.

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Torments

• Punishment for doing what is wrong.
• Violation of law brings punishment.
• Natural law is interior to the essence of man
  in him.
• When violated, punishment is also interior. From
  this follows depression and confusion as many are
  not clear as to the source of the problem. It
  gnaws and tortures and can lead to emotional and
  psychological illness.
• Modern psych can do harm here.
• Many schools think that the conscience is just an
  habituated way of thinking. Because it is an act
  of the intellect which is governed by natural law
  it is something essential or natural to man and
  cannot be done away with.

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Conscience can be cleared in two ways

• sacramental confession
• reversing in some fashion the bad act done.

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Conscience can error in two ways

• with respect to what the natural law prohibits,
  i.e. the conscience may error about the secondary
  precepts of natural law. it draws the wrong
  conclusion because it has the wrong principles by
  which it judges.
• in reasoning, it errs in applying the right
  principle or precepts to the particular act.
• this is in two ways
• The actual reasoning process
• Err about the act to be done

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Happiness

• The end
• Man knows what he is doing
• It suits him to know the end and freely choose to
  act for the sake of the end

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Ultimate end

• There must be an ultimate end for mans actions
  cannot go on indefinitely
• It is seen as that which is the perfective or
  completive good, it perfects the one who reaches
  it
• the ultimate end must totally fulfill every
  desire of man, otherwise he will seek something
  else.
• Leaving nothing to be desired
• All men share the same nature, therefore all men
  share the same ultimate end.

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Beatitude

• Beatitude is the proper and perfect good of man.

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Is not riches, honor, fame or power

• in possession one can still suffer evil
• happiness excludes it
• none are self-sufficient
• happiness is perfect good
• evil men can have these
• man is ordered toward happiness as from and
  interior principle and all of these are exterior
  causes because man must fulfill that order
  interiorly since the order itself is interior.

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Not in Bodily goods

• Body is ultimately there for the soul bodily
  goods are for the sake of the soul, not the soul
  for the sake of bodily goods

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Goods of the soul

• All goods of the soul are particular goods.
• Yet the human will is ordered toward the
  universal good.
• Nothing created man cannot be quieted by created
  good only universal.
• No created good is good universally, i.e., in
  every respect.
• Only God is the universal good, i.e. the good
  which is good in every respect and in which every
  create good participates.
• Therefore, the ultimate end of man, i.e., his
  happiness consists in God.

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Happiness

• Happiness, the possession of the object of the
  beatitude, consists in an act of the intellect
  rather than the will. (good is presented to will
  by intellect)

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Beatitude

• Since beatitude consists in the possession of the
  object of beatitude which is God, perfect
  beatitude or happiness consists in the vision of
  the divine essence.
• God is not known through effects but through an
  immediate intellectual vision of the divine
  essence.
• Perfect beatitude consists in God being joined to
  the possible intellect.

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Perfect Happiness

• Perfect happiness consists only in the beatific
  vision

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Imperfect Happiness

• Imperfect beatitude can be gained in this life in
  two ways
• a life of moral virtues, insofar as one leads a
  life of virtue, one gains a certain degree of
  happiness, since one is acting according to the
  Natural law.
• Through contemplation, consists in leading a life
  according to the intellectual virtues.
• Highest form of contemplation consists in wisdom
  for it considers the ultimate causes of things,
• Thinking about God constitutes the highest form
  of happiness