Folia Theologica et Canonica 3. 25/17 (2014)
IUS CANONICUM - Michael Carragher, O.P., The sacrament of confirmation and personal development
176 MICHAEL CARRAGHER, O.P. We are both animals. But otherwise than at this rudimentary level of description, everything else is different. For in me, the sensory input is mediated by a universe of meaning available to me by virtue of language, and unavailable to my dog for the want of it. Both of us sense danger. But only I can sense the danger and fear it under the description of “terrorist threat,” And I can describe the danger that particular way because I live in a world of language out of which and in which that description is made. Being linguistic animals is, Thomas says, what chiefly characterizes us as rational animals; and while it is true that for the materialist Thomas my animality goes all the way up through my rational nature, it is also true that my being rational goes all the way down through my animal nature. (Note omitted). The Book of Genesis states quite simply what human beings were capable of in the humdrum life of wrenching a living from the land. Cain and Abel, two of the sons of Adam and Eve, soon learned to earn the necessities of life by their skill. Abel was a keeper of flocks and Cain a tiller of soil (Gen. 4.2).10 Soon they were not content with bare necessities, for we read that among the descendents of Cain there was a man named Jabel who was the “forerunner of those who dwell in tents and have flocks. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the forerunner of all who play the harp and the flute” (4:20-21). As Benedict Ashley says: “Thus there not only useful arts for the food, shelter and clothing that men require for life itself, but also arts of recreation, like music, which men needed to enjoy life and to live well”. Subsequently, Ashley comments: “Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, had a son named Enos, who taught men how to pray rightly to God”. This dovetails well with what McCoy says in the same article: “There will be agreement on the most fundamental, primary principles of natural law - the preservation of life, reproduction, nurture, education of the offspring, and knowing the truth about God”. We shall return to other basic values that human beings participate in which distinguish them from non-rational creatures.11 But for the moment it is illuminating to follow St. Thomas as he asks the question why people are upright, i.e. bipeds (using two feet for walking).12 whose most distinctive acts are of insight and free choice, is, in each one of us, what makes one a live body and makes all one’s bodily functions, even the least ‘mental’ human bodily functions. God’s creative causality initiates and is in one’s life - one’s very reality - in a way more direct and immediate than his causality of everything else in the order of nature, which is a causality that works not ‘immediately’ but through the natural causes which with their effects are the subject-matter of the natural sciences”. Italics are in the original. 10 Ashley, B. M., The Art of Learning and Communication. A Handbook of the Liberal Arts, Eugene, Or. 2009. 7. See the first chapter. 11 Finnis, I, The Value of the Human Person, 27 (Twentieth Century) 126-137. 12 Summa Theologiae, I, q. 91, a. 3. For a modern day analysis of this phenomenon see Hurford, J. R., The Origins of Language, Oxford 2014. On page 3 states the following: “A prominent landmark is the human lineage was the advent of habitual bipedalism. The extant non-human
