The Cardinal Virtues: Temperance
The Cardinal Virtues: Temperance Or: Avoiding Ruin Throughout our lives, we will all have struggles against temptations for what we know to be detrimental to ourselves and others. Temperance is the virtue which counteracts these temptations. Temperance enables us to keep from doing what is wrong, even when we have strong feelings for it. In other words, temperance is what keeps us from sinning, even when we...
The Cardinal Virtues: Fortitude
The Cardinal Virtues: Fortitude Or: The Determination to Become Happy In our lives many situations arise in which it becomes difficult to do the right thing, even when we know what it is. There may be all sorts of reasons for why it is disagreeable to act according to what we know is best. In order to stay strong, to do what is good, we need the third cardinal virtue, known alternately as fortitude, courage, or...
The Cardinal Virtues: Social Justice
The Cardinal Virtues: Social Justice Or: Our Obligations to Societies As we saw in the last section, justice is the virtue whereby we give others what we owe them. We have already discussed justice in relation to individuals (God and neighbor), as well as the proper relation between justice and the closely connected themes of love and mercy. Now we will look at how we are to preserve our proper relationship to...
The Cardinal Virtues: Prudence
 The Cardinal Virtues: Prudence Or: Smart Living Reprinted with permission from the Holy Family School of Faith. Alright, let’s review: we want to be happy, and we want to pursue goods in a way that will make us happy. This means we have to learn how to act well, which in turn involves an acquisition of virtue. If that sounds complicated, let me put it more simply: virtue is about doing the right...
The Nature of Virtue
Reprinted with permission from the Holy Family School of Faith. The Nature of Virtue Or: How to Attain Happiness In the last chapter we saw what every human person craves, and what motivates all human action, namely, certain goods such as friendship, love, accomplishment, health, etc… Further, we saw that if we pursue all these goods in the right way, it will lead to our happiness, whereas if we pursue them...