What Is Love? Follow up on Scott Hahn and "She's not your girlfriend".

Friends,

Following up on my earlier criticism of Professor Scott Hahn's assertion in the Mass of the Ages 3 movie that every bishop in the world should "fall in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary", I received a number of comments that make me realize "What is love?" is a question that first must be answered in order to understand how cloyingly mawkish, just plainly over-  sentimental, Hahn's comment is. 

• But first of all, please note he is speaking of bishops using their full Apostolic powers. In my original essay, I reported Hahn as saying, “All bishops and priests ought to fall hopelessly in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary.” 
• I have now watched the MOTA3 movie, and at 39 minutes in, Prof Hahn's full quote is, "I think bishops need to really stretch themselves to move from the natural to the supernatural. The bishops ought to be in persona Christi in a way that corresponds to Vatican II defined as the plenitude of holy orders. They ought to fall hopelessly in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary. That's the only safe way they can lead us."

A bit of a jump there, a bit tangled too, though now I understand his comment in context. (And for me, any reliance on anything Vatican II produces an immediate headache.)

Yet my initial observation in my original critique STILL stands: I wrote then that the majority of (at least the Western World's) bishops are chosen for their "hard-nosed" unbelief in the supernatural. All of Vatican II, especially the Novus Ordo Mass, is a desacralization of the Faith. That was exactly what the 16th century Reformation was, and Vatican II is exactly that revolution come again. In other words, the Modern Church Catholics who don't know what the Eucharist is regarding the Real Presence, they are a FEATURE of the Vatican II Church, not a BUG!

All this is because a non-Catholic "junta" or "deep state" runs the modern Church, and has done so since Pope John XXIII let his people he chose to manage the Vatican II Council be removed when the Council opened and "young Turks" took over.

This is self-evidently obvious. To deny it is to go cross-eyed with cognitive dissonance. And I mean that. The junta running the Church since the '60s has never relented in its goals. It wants no-nonsense materialist financial and "bottom-line" managers; it does not want "men of Faith". That's why Bergoglio dumped Bishop Strickland (and others): they obviously believed. That's why Benedict was deposed (and he was deposed.) That's why the Vat 2 junta remains at war with the Traditional Latin Mass: that ancient liturgy creates and inspires believers. Ergo, they want it G.O.N.E.

 

So, with that observation reinforced, I also note again how cartoonish, written in thick crayon and felt, like decorations for kindergarten, Prof Hahn's statement is. Therefore, here's a quick discussion of what love actually is.

Love

First of all: love, real love, is to "will the good of another", and it is to will their good without demanding or even wanting a return on that investment. Fr Ripperger so defines it in one of his online talks. How simple, how direct. And so of course the Vatican II Church never uses it. 

Christians use the Greek word "agápē" for this love. It was a Greek word originally employed as just a generic term, and Christians used it to denote their new love revelation: God is love. This sort of "real" love is different fundamentally from other kinds of love. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..."; John 3:16. Translate that as "For God so willed the good of the human race and His creation that He gave Himself...". 

Love in English

In English, we can say anything from "I love you" to a spouse or a child, or "I love ice-cream" or "I love the old Twilight Zone show" or "I love baseball" to "I love God" or "I love my country". The Greeks had a different word for each of those. Many languages invest in different words precisely to avoid confusion. But English doesn't. The word "like" is no substitute: "I like ice-cream" is quite different from "I love ice-cream." But idiomatic phrases like "fall in love" specifically refer to romantic love, and that's the phrasing Scott Hahn used. Note he used "hopelessly". That's clearly used of romantic love.

But romantic love is the cheapest and silliest of all "loves". It didn't exist for most human beings for most of the human history. There's an old joke about a Greek and an Italian arguing over who had the better civilization. For every thing the Greek came up with, the Italian had something to match it. "We created democracy" said the Greek. "We had a republic" the Italian countered. "We had the Parthenon" said the Greek. "We had the Pantheon" said the Italian. Finally, the Greek boasted, "You must admit, though, that it was we Greeks who created romantic love." The Italian thought for a bit and countered, "Yeah, OK, I'll have to admit that. But you have to admit one tiny fact about it." "Oh," said the Greek, "and what is that?" The Italian said, "We Italians first gave it to women."

This is funny precisely because it is true. What we call romantic love was a homoerotic creation, first by the Ancient Greeks, and later by the Muslims of Moorish Spain, where it was transferred via the Cathar heresy to Southern France and the famous troubadours. Only later did it become a standard affectation of average people. And of course, fiction writers and playwrights like Shakespeare made it a nearly de jure icon men and women were supposed to experience.

Maybe Scott Hahn didn't intend for his comment to be read this way, but he's supposed to be a professor, a knowledgeable man. As I wrote in the original essay, "We Catholics have the problem of too few men in the Catholic world. The world itself has that problem."

And so it is. The most important types of love: i.e. married spousal love, parental love, patriotic love, can never be just strong emotion and "desire". It HAS to be rational, founded in Faith in God's Creation and in the Will, and it must be selfless, a product of the rational mind, as the soul is itself rational. We get our emotions from our bodies, rationality from our souls. It's our bodies that get all passionately "love crazy." Careless "idiomatic usage" does NOT help clarify all this. 

AnP

Linguistic Meaning Reflection on 1 Corinthians 13

Note: This is a cut-out and development from the previous post regarding the words caritas and agapē.

First Corinthians 13: The only way to really translate the passage today into English is to use "caritas" directly, or ἀγάπη, agapē. A modern-language word just won't work: they're too overloaded with being "imprecise metaphors" and connotations that distort the original idea. One might as well use the old words as they take less explanation than "undoing" the modern word!

The original meaning of the Greek agapē, recorded in Homer, was to greet or show hospitality, from the verb ἀγαπέω, agapáō. I suspect at heart it has the idea of justice, to show justice by properly greeting or showing right respect, as for the dead, or visitors. (The idea reminds me of the Irish fáilte, the proper welcome guests can expect, though now it is too often used as an Irish equivalent for the English "parlor polite" thank you or the German bitte.)

Therefore, should your English-language Bible in First Corinthians 13 use "love" instead of "charity", it is simply a bad translation, for "love" can mean a host of quite different affections. The real problem is "charity" – why it was dropped in the past 60 years. in popular English it now means something different than "caritas". Etymonline.com says the English word "charity" is from: late Old English, "benevolence for the poor," also "Christian love in its highest manifestation," from Old French charité "(Christian) charity, mercy, compassion; alms; charitable foundation" (12c.), from Latin caritatem (nominative caritas) "costliness; esteem, affection," from carus "dear, valued," from PIE *karo-, from root *ka- "to like, desire."

AnP again: You can see why, from an Old English "benevolene for the poor" the modern English "charity" would be entirely used for the crass "social justice" bureaucratic maintenace of the "poor". "Charity case" or "I don't need your charity." Etc.

My wife noted that "Carissimo / carissima" means "dear, dearest", come from the Latin had cárus, dear. 

See Wikionary here for semantically related Semitic words, such as may have been used in Aramaic that Our Lord spoke. 

Irish
There's also the modern Irish word "cara", friend – Scottish Gaelic "caraid" – from the Old Irish "cara" (Krarant is a possible recreation of the oldest form of the word.) The Old Irish verb was carim, caraim, "I love". (Today one uses the lovely word "grá" for romantic love, as in "Tá grá agam duit.") Welsh had caraf, Breton quaret, and the Gaulish was carantus, perhaps as in the name Caractacus of the Catuvellauni, a name cognate with Welsh Caradog, Breton Karadeg, and Irish Carthach. 

Here is the Douay-Rheims (1899) of 1 Corinthians 13:

13 If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2 And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

3 And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4 Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up;

5 Is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Charity never falleth away: whether prophecies shall be made void, or tongues shall cease, or knowledge shall be destroyed.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10 But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

12 We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.

13 And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.