Piety Is No Magic Substitute For Technique

I thought it would be ironic to use a St. Francis painting for this topic (Francisco de Zubaran, Ecstasy of St. Francis, 1693; Source: Wikimedia, PD-Old-100). — I thought it would be ironic to use a painting of St. Francis especially for this post–long life OP! (Francisco de Zubaran, Ecstasy of St. Francis, 1693; Source: Wikimedia, PD-Old-100).

Those outside of religious traditions sometimes articulate the belief that believers adhere to belief as a magical talisman for all of life’s problems. Alas, that Freudian wish remains unfulfilled for the vast majority of believers. Belief, much like marriage, is not a magical solution to all of life’s problems, but the inauguration into a whole new set of problems and obstacles. This at least makes sense for Christianity, the paradoxical religion of a Divine Physician who dies in the prime of his life (Harold Remus’s Jesus as Healer discusses this paradox thoroughly and with some dark humor).

There’s been much bad news from Mt. St. Mary’s University, so I’d like to restore the balance by posting something by Christopher Anandale, a philosopher who teaches there. He cites and explains a passage from Etienne Gilson who was at the head of the midcentury Thomistic revival (not all of them were Neo-Thomists, Gilson was an existential Thomist). Gilson, unlike most Thomists of that time (including Maritain), was an accomplished prose stylist who wrote not only studies of Aquinas, but also a retelling of the Abelard and Heloise history, a reading of Darwin, and a wonderful book on art.

Anyway, take a look at why piety is no substitute for technique, no magic pill, according to Gilson: