The Nature of Material Beings

The Nature of Material Beings

By Jim J. McCrea

The traditional Catholic stance on material beings is known as the *hylomorphic doctrine* This states that all physical things consist of prime matter combined with substantial form.

Now this has been dismissed in the modern world as antiquated and medieval in light of modern scientific knowledge. This modern scientific knowledge demonstrates that physical things have subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, and often consist of systems.

We can address this objection by updating the hylomorphic doctrine to take into account modern science. With this, we can start off by saying that matter is a thing's parts, whereas form is the arrangement, distribution and interconnectivity of those parts in three dimensional space. With this, form is something deeper than mere shape.

For example consider a computer. The matter of a computer is its chips of memory, central processor, etc. - and its form is how they are put together. But matter and form have several levels in this. Consider an element of the matter (or part) of a computer: its processor. That processor itself has matter and form. The matter of it is the individual transistors that constitute it (and other things), and its form is the connection and arrangement of all those transistors (with the other things).

Now each transistor has matter and form. Its matter is the silicon, phosphorous, and boron atoms, etc. and its form is how they are arranged and connected in the atomic lattice. We can go deeper and deeper. Atoms consist of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and protons and neutrons consist of quarks.

What if there are more undiscovered levels deeper? What is at the bottom? That would be *prime matter.* What is prime matter? Prime matter is *mere* existence - it merely exists and nothing else. If it were not mere existence and had some attribute in addition to that, it would need form to explain that attribute, which would also have matter, so it would not be at the bottom.

Now prime matter cannot exist on its own. If prime matter is mere existence, there is nothing that is mere existence on its own. It must always be combined with some form to constitute a real physical thing. For it to be real, it must have some attribute. Prime matter is substratum, not a being in itself.

Prime matter cannot be discovered in a particle accelerator for it is not a physical reality that can be scientifically analyzed, but is a *metaphysical* principle. Form itself is a metaphysical principle, for the physical sciences only investigates the matter of things, and what is immediately adjacent to particular items of matter (form is often modeled mathematically, but that model is not the same as the form. The map is not the territory) Form bespeaks of intelligibility which is a transcendental principle. It is a holistic reality that can only be grasped by an intellect.

With this, to ultimately explain physical reality we require metaphysics.

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The Metaphysical Intuition of Being

     

The Metaphysical Intuition of Being

By Jim J. McCrea


Metaphysics is the science of being as such. It is the study of being in its most abstract and general features. It investigates what is common to all being, and studies the major categories of being (I am not talking about New Age metaphysics here, which is something else).

A correct metaphysics is vital for the Church and society because bad philosophy, held by most people today, is at the root of all their problems. Good philosophy is the corrective to that. Now it may be affirmed that the problem with society is the falling away from Christianity - that so many people do not have the Faith.

However, the Faith cannot take root in a mind that has erroneous ideas about reality. For example, if one holds that God is the universe, it would not make sense that God would come into a sinful world to save it; if one thinks that the only meaningful truth is that which can be detected by the senses and investigated by scientific instruments (with its mathematical methods), that would exclude God or anything else spiritual.

Now the pinnacle of philosophy is *metaphysics,* which we have stated is the science of being as such. This reformation of thought in the public does not necessitate that the general public understand metaphysics, but that only certain key players do. These players, in strategic positions, would influence many other intellectuals and philosophers in particular fields (such as ethics, politics, and education), and be an enlightener and corrective of their thought. These intellectuals and philosophers would in turn, by their talks and publications, influence the general public in the truth of things. When people in general have truth, and they embrace it, goodness and then religion flourishes.

Now back to metaphysics. What is the basic ability of mind that makes metaphysics possible for the metaphysician? It is the *metaphysical intuition of being* (or the intuition of being as such). The metaphysical intuition of being is the ability to see the essence of being itself; to know what it means to be an *IS.* This is not merely the perception of phenomena, which everyone is capable of, but is the ability to perceive being as being with the intellect. This is not a technique or a form of analysis but is a simple and direct seeing by the mind. It is absolutely simple; superhumanly simple. And it is this metaphysical intuition of being that is essential to the metaphysician.

Most philosophers do not have the metaphysical intuition of being. And this is evident when they attempt to understand the nature of being or reality in its deepest aspects. Without the metaphysical intuition of being, in attempting to analyze being, the philosopher goes down a rabbit hole and gets entangled in numerous paradoxes and difficulties without resolution. Many philosophical errors and difficulties have occurred in the history of philosophy because of this. For example, Kant claimed that we cannot know things in themselves but only their impressions on our senses and on our minds. For example, for Kant, when we see a telephone, we are not viewing a being called a telephone but merely a sense impression called a telephone. But the metaphysical intuition of being would have corrected this in Kant if he were able to perceive the "beingness" of the telephone.

The metaphysical intuition of being is the core habit of the metaphysician because the process of metaphysics is simply an action of grasping one intuition after another, linked by logical inferences. What one is intuiting, in the process of doing metaphysics, is being with its properties. For example, the metaphysician, by observing reality, can see that being has transcendental properties of unity, truth, goodness, and beauty. These belong to all beings in their *integrity.* These transcendental properties of being are so much a part of all integral beings that they are literally other names for being.

Now the metaphysician, if he is successful, is able to communicate his intuitions about being to other minds, by a craft and the "magic" of word use - that is, transfer his intuitions to another. In this way, the proper understanding of reality, which comes from a correct metaphysics, when it is made widespread, can foster goodness in society and a mind-set that is open to the Gospel.

** When I say being in its integrity I am talking about good beings. Evil is simply the absence of what is due in something. Evil is a fact, but it is not a being.

The Heresy of Uniformitarianism

The Heresy of Uniformitarianism

By Jim J. McCrea

Uniformitarianism states that all things always have and always will operate according to the same laws and principles.

Mainstream science sees all things through the lens of uniformitarianism. This is the basis of all evolution, both biological and cosmic. Space exploration that studies the nature of planets is based upon this as they attempt to understand why the planets are the way they are due to supposed billions of years of formation.

We have to understand that uniformitarianism is a philosophical supposition rather than an empirically derived finding. It is through this supposition that much mainstream science operates.

Uniformitarianism is also a very powerful conditioning of the human mind as it attempts to understand the events of every day life. It is supposed by the human mind, not illuminated by divine grace, that things will continue the way they are indefinitely: that if there is a deterioration in life, that it will continue, and the same financial principles will continue to operate, seeing catastrophe as the end game in certain circumstances. Despair and suicide are often the result of foreseeing catastrophe. This is based upon the supposition that laws, principles, and trajectories must of necessity head in the same direction at all times. There may be a lack of faith in divine intervention and the fact that God is in control and always provides for those who trust Him.

Many Catholics are absolutely certain that the Catholic Church is wrong in many of Her teachings, and that happiness and safety can only come from defying them. For example, the widespread use of contraceptives, even among Catholics who know Church teaching, is based on faith in uniformitarianism, as the couple surmises their physical strength, financial, material, and medical situations, and presume that they will always continue as before, leading to a crash unless they contracept. Much abortion is based upon the same thing - the idea that a disaster is inevitable unless the baby is aborted.

The heresy of uniformitarianism can also be the basis of people not having the courage to act or speak out against what is wrong because they see due to the current political climate, doing so will result in disaster for themselves. Such belief in uniformitarianism is contrary to belief in divine providence and power.

The martyrs were a powerful witness against uniformitarianism. Often the tortures inflicted by the oppressors far exceed natural human tolerance. But God gives the martyr the grace to understand that his usual human weaknesses will not be operative when the trial comes, and no matter what is inflicted he will be able to endure it. This is why, when the trial comes, the martyr must pray fervently and trustingly for strength. For this strength is normally granted in response to prayer.

The entire Bible is a testimony against uniformitarianism, as time and time again the normal laws of nature were suspended to bring about a desired outcome, from the Creation, to the myriad of miracles in it, to the Resurrection of Christ. That is why it is recommended that you read the Bible, or as they say "get the Word into you." That powerfully deprograms the mind of uniformitarianism. This deprogramming expels fear and builds trust in God.

Believers in Logos vs. Believers in Flux

Believers in Logos vs. Believers in Flux

By Jim J. McCrea

Those who believe in logos believe in the fixed essences of things: the essence of a cat, a dog, a tree, a house, and the essence of male and female.

Those who believe in flux, hold things differently. They believe that all reality is simply a stream of phenomena that impacts the senses. Thus reality is a flux or a flow. They deny fixed essences.

There is a vast difference of moral beliefs between the adherents of logos and that of flux. With those who believe in logos, fixed essences of things means that there is objective good and evil, and objective truth and falsehood, as good is that which facilitates the proper essences of things and evil is that which violates them. These are the *traditionalists.* With those who believe in flux, morality is relative and changing and depends upon circumstances. Their judgment of the good is based not the integrity of things in their essences, but on the pleasure or the pain that a given stream of phenomena gives them. Of course they have a dictum that one should not do something if it harms someone else, but that is only because harming someone else can bring blowback and pain to oneself. These latter are the *progressives.*

We can see this concretely in what believers in logos vs. believers in flux adhere to in the realm of morality. The believers in logos hold to traditional morality, because traditional morality honors the essences of things - particularly the essences of man, woman, and God. The believers in flux hold to things such as sex outside of marriage, gay marriage, freedom for abortion, doctor assisted suicide, gender fluidity, etc. We can give some examples of why this is so. As believers in flux, they tend to think that that which impacts the senses most strongly has the most reality and that which brings the most pleasure has the most goodness. As a result, believers in flux in the Catholic Church (the modernists) wish to dispense with the discipline of priestly celibacy (because the great pleasure of sex is considered a great good), and also at the same time ignore abortion as a problem (because the unborn have little impact on the senses, being hidden in the mother's womb, so it is considered that they have little reality). But believers in logos hold that a thing is what it is, independent of its impact on us, and it is reason guided by supernatural faith (divine reason) that must judge the goodness or evil of that which is presented to our senses. And this goodness or evil, is determined by whether something facilitates or violates the proper essence of a thing (particularly the essence of the human person).

Believers in flux most often do not believe in the existence of the traditional God (transcendent, infinite, and almighty). This is because they hold that the flux is simply a given and do not enquire into its ultimate cause (they may enquire into causes, but only in how one element of phenomena relates to another, in isolated bits, not its ultimate underlying cause). As a result, they reject the metaphysical principles of identity, non-contradiction, and sufficient reason (after all, they do not want pesky rules of reality getting in the way of what they desire in life and their liberty of mind). But believer in logos hold that if there is an intelligible essence, there must be an ultimate intelligent cause for that. Only the believers in logos properly use their reason.

To hold to flux ultimately tends to hell, because flux without logos is simply chaos (it is just a stream of phenomena without an ultimate underlying order to it). But to hold to logos is to tend to heaven because logos is ultimate order, and heaven is supreme order and harmony.

The Logos (capital 'L') is Jesus Christ, who gave us the law through His Catholic Church. He is the right order of the universe. He is the ultimate reason and logic of reality. He is the form of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Only in accepting Him and doing His will, as taught by the authentic Magisterium of the Catholic Church, do we find salvation.

Those who believe in flux might believe in Jesus, but it is a Jesus of flux (fuzzy feel goods), not Jesus the Logos. 

Reflection for Trinity Sunday

Reflection for Trinity Sunday
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By Jim J. McCrea



Although the Trinity is a mystery, I would not say that it is true that there is no way we can know how three persons can exist in one God. The key is given by the early Church Fathers. According to them, the persons are distinguished by their relations of origin.

The only difference between the Father and the Son is that the Father begets and the Son is begotten. In all other respects they are the same. This is unlike human fatherhood in which there are a whole host of differences between father and son besides the fact that the father begets his son. God is absolute simplicity in that He has no composition of parts or attributes. In the Trinity, Father and Son have this absolute simplicity in distinction in simply that one is the Father and the other is the Son (they are not physical bodies related by space and position which would introduce complexity). Similarly, the only difference between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and not the other way around.

As a result, the persons are distinguished not by what they are but by where they come from. What they are is one and the same, therefore, they are one God. But there is a real distinction in their relations which are the individual persons. When the Father begets the Son, He is not generating another thing or another being (or another substance), but is generating His own being in the relation of being begotten. Similarly, when the Holy Spirit proceeds it is not another being proceeding, but is the same being in the relation of proceeding. God is one being in three relations.

When I was younger, I strained to understand how three persons can exist in one God. My Father (unfamiliar with the explanation of the Church Fathers), said that only in heaven will we know how that is possible. I thought we were being asked to accept a contradiction. Many years ago I first read the explanation in St. Augustine's "The Trinity." It was a huge "Ah Ha" moment for me. It was Gregory of Nyssa who first came up with the explanation shortly before St. Augustine. From what I read, he received it in private revelation from the Blessed Virgin and St. John the Apostle. It seems as if the explanation is too simple and profound for man to come up with unaided.



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Four Principles of Providence

Four Principles of Providence
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Taken from
Holy Abandonment
By: Dom Vitalis Lehodey
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The Lord tells us by the Prophet Isaias that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and that as the heavens are exalted above the earth so are His ways above our ways and His thoughts above our thoughts (Is. 55, 8-9). Hence it comes about that Providence is very often misunderstood by the man of weak faith and imperfect mortification. We now proceed to specify four immediate causes of such misunderstandings.

1. Providence remains in the shadow so as to give us the opportunity and the merit of exercising our faith, whereas we want to see. God hides Himself behind secondary causes; the more these become manifest, the less does He appear. Without Him they can do nothing, they could not even exist. We know this well enough. And nevertheless, instead of ascending to Him, we make the mistake of confining our attention to the external phenomenon, agreeable or otherwise, and more or less enveloped in mystery. He does not enlighten us as to the particular end He pursues, the paths whereby He is conducting us thither, or the way already traversed. And we, far from putting blind confidence in Him, are anxious for this knowledge, and almost venture to ask Him for explanations. Would a little child be impatient to know where its mother is taking it, or why she chooses one road rather than another? Does not the patient go so far as to entrust his health, his life, the integrity of his members, to his physician or surgeon? This latter is only a man, but we have confidence in him on account of his devotion to his science and his professional skill. Should we not, then, impose infinitely more confidence in God, the almighty Physician, the incomparable Saviour? But at least when all is dark around us and we know not where we are, how we should welcome a ray of light! Ah, if we had even the assurance that this is in truth the operation of grace, and that so far all goes well! As a rule, however, it is only when the Divine Artist has completed His work that we are in a position to appreciate it. God wills us to be content with pure faith and, putting our trust in Him, to preserve our hearts in peace, despite the enveloping darkness. And this is the first cause of our misunderstandings.

2. Providence has views very different from ours regarding both the end to be pursued and the means of attaining it. So long as we have not entirely renounced the spirit of the world, we desire to discover a heaven here below, or at least a path of roses conducting us to paradise. Therefore we become unduly attached to the esteem of good people, to the love of our relatives and friends, to the consolations of piety, to tranquility of soul, etc. Therefore also we feel such a repugnance for humiliations, contradictions, sicknesses, and trials of every description. Consolation and success seem to us, at least in some degree, the reward of virtue; aridity and adversity the chastisement of vice. We are astonished when we behold the sinner often prospering in this life, and the just man undone. God, on the other hand, has no intention of giving us a heaven on earth; He desires that we should merit our heaven, and as beautiful a one as possible. If the sinner is obstinately determined to ruin himself for eternity, it is necessary that he should receive in time the recompense of whatever little good he may do. With regard to the elect, their reward is reserved for them in paradise. Meanwhile, the essential thing is that they be purified and sanctified ever more and more, and made richer and richer in merits. Tribulation serves admirably as a means to these ends. God, therefore, deaf to everything but the voice of His austere and wise affection, labours to reproduce in us Jesus crucified, so that hereafter we may reign with Jesus glorified. Who does not know the Beatitudes enumerated by the Divine Master? The cross, accordingly, is the present He most willingly offers to His friends. "Look at My whole life, full of suffering," He said to St. Theresa the Elder, "and be persuaded that they whom My Father loves most dearly shall receive from Him the heaviest crosses. The measure of His love is also the measure of the suffering He sends. How could I better prove My affection for you than by desiring for you that which I desired for Myself?" Language supremely wise, yet how little understood! Here we have the second cause of our misunderstandings.

3. Providence smites us severely, and poor nature complains. Our passions boil over, our pride seduces us, our wills allow themselves to be carried away. Grievously wounded by sin, we resemble one afflicted by a gangrened member. We realise clearly enough that nothing but an amputation can save us. Yet we have not the courage to carry out the operation ourselves. Therefore God, Whose love has no weakness in it, determines to render us this painful service. As a consequence, He sends us these unforeseen difficulties, this destitution, this contempt, these humiliations, this loss of external goods, this illness which is wasting our strength. All are the instruments wherewith He binds and squeezes the diseased member, strikes on the sound part, wounds and cuts to the quick. Nature cries out in pain. But God pays no heed, because this severe treatment is necessary for our cure and the preservation of our lives. Those tribulations which come to us from outside are sent as a remedy for the evil within us: to restrain our liberty that is so apt to wander, and to bridle the passions that carry us away. We have here the reason why God permits obstacles to our designs to appear from every quarter, why He ordains that our employments should be so full of troubles, that we can never enjoy the peace we so long for, that our superiors are so often opposed to our desires. This also explains why our nature is subject to so many infirmities, why our occupations are so tiresome, why men seem so unjust and so annoyingly variable in temper. We have to endure assaults on every side from a thousand different opponents, so that our wills, only too free, being thus exercised, harassed, and exhausted, may at last detach themselves from themselves, and for the future have no other desire except to be conformed to the will of God. But our wills refuse so to die to themselves, and this is the third cause of our misunderstandings.

4. Providence sometimes employs means which disconcert us. The judgments of God are incomprehensible. We can neither penetrate their motives nor recognise the ways whereby He chooses to bring them to effect. "God begins by annihilating those whom He entrusts with any enterprise. Death is the ordinary way by which He leads to life. Nobody understands the road on which he is travelling." Neither do we understand how the divine action will turn to the advantage of souls. It seems to us not seldom to tend in the opposite way. But let us adore the sovereign wisdom which has disposed all things most perfectly. Let us be convinced that even what appear to be obstacles shall serve it as means, and that from the evils it permits it will be able to draw the good it has invariably in view, viz., the glory of God through the progress of the Church and the salvation and sanctification of souls.

Consequently, if we look at the question in the light of God we shall be forced to the conclusion that very often in this world what are called evils are not really such, nor is everything good which appears so to us. There are failures wherewith Providence blesses us, and there are successes which it sends us in punishment of our faults.

Of the countless examples on record, let us cite just a few. God promised to make Abraham the father of a great people, and that all nations should be blest in his seed. And then He commanded him to immolate the son through whom this promise would have to be fulfilled! Had He forgotten His word? Certainly not. But He willed to put to the test the faith of His servant, designing at the proper moment to stay his hand. He purposes to make the kingdom of the Pharaos subject to Joseph, and begins by abandoning him to the malice of his brethren. The poor boy was thrown into a well, led into Egypt, sold as a slave, then languished many years in prison. His career seemed to be ruined beyond hope. And yet it was through this series of calamities that God conducted him to his glorious destiny. Gideon was miraculously chosen to deliver his country from the yoke of the Madianites. He assembled a hastily levied army, which scarcely amounted to a fourth of the opposing force. But instead of increasing the numbers, the Lord dismissed nearly all. He retained only three hundred, and arming these with trumpets and lamps in earthen pitchers, He led them forth to what seemed more likely to be a butchery than a battle. And yet with this unpromising host He won for His people an astonishing and decisive victory. But let us leave the Old Testament.

After the triumph on Palm Sunday, Our Lord was betrayed, arrested, abandoned, denied, judged, condemned, buffeted, scourged, crucified, robbed of His reputation. Was it thus God the Father secured to His Son the nations of the earth as His inheritance? Hell was triumphant and all seemed lost. Nevertheless, it was precisely through this apparent defeat that Christ victoriously achieved our salvation. Again, He chose what was weak to confound the strong. With a dozen fishermen, ignorant and unknown, He went forth to conquer the world. They could do nothing of themselves, but He was with them. During three centuries He permitted His Church to be exposed to violent persecution, which indeed, according to the prophetic word, shall never wholly cease; but so far from being destroyed by the rage of her enemies, she was rather invigorated. The blood of martyrs has always been the seed of Christians, and it is so still, even in our own times. In vain the impiety of philosophers and the sophistries of heresiarchs endeavoured to extinguish the lights of heaven: their efforts only served to render the faith more definite and luminous. The kings and nations of the earth raged "against the Lord and against His Christ" (Acts 4:26), Who neverthelesss was their real support; but in His own good time the Son of the Carpenter, the Galilean, always victorious, has brought His persecutors down to the dust and cited their souls to His judgment seat. Whilst a never-ceasing succession of revolutions shake and convulse the world, the cross alone remains standing, luminous and indestructible, above the ruins of thrones and empires.

There are still other means, unlikely means, which God chooses to save a people, or to stir the multitudes, or to establish religious institutes. He once exercised in this way wonderful mercy in favour of the kingdom of France: in order to save it from total and imminent ruin, He raised up, not powerful armies, but an innocent child, a poor shepherdess, and it was by means of this feeble instrument He delivered Orleans, and brought the king in triumph to Rheims, where he was to be crowned. In quite recent times, He aroused whole nations by the voice of the Cure of Ars, a humble country priest, with but little resources apart from his sanctity.



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Reconciling Man's Free Will with God's Sovereignty

Reconciling Man's Free Will with God's Sovereignty
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By Jim J. McCrea


God's sovereignty means that God is omnipotent and has control over every detail of creation and does in fact control every detail of creation.

Now Calvinism generally claims that this rules out man's free will, for if man were free to decide this or that, it would take away from God's controlling power since it would be a human being deciding in a given situation rather than God.

Is there a way to reconcile the free will of man with God's sovereignty so that there is no conflict between the two, in which a human being can decide a given thing yet God is in total control?

I would say yes.

One thing that we have to know is that God is not simply another being along side of us (much greater than us of course) in a kind of competition with us, in the flow of time with us, where one player takes away from the action of the other.

Rather, God is the infinite ground of being itself - the sheer act of being - outside of time - from which all other beings derive their own existence.

God being outside of time is crucial to this. He is present to all times and to all things of all time, all at once. Everything in existence, for all time, is simply "now" for Him.

Another thing that is necessary to this thesis of reconciling man's free will with God's sovereignty is a given idea of His omniscience. This goes beyond God knowing all things that are actual. It is God knowing all that is possible - that is, knowing all that could possibly happen or exist, and all that would happen under all possible circumstances.

Of course God knows the free-will choices of all creatures for all time, but one of the deepest mysteries of God's omniscience, that theologians discuss, is that God knows how a given rational creature (created personal being) would choose even if a situation that would elicit a choice were not presented to that creature, and even how any creature that could possibly exist but was not created would choose in any given situation. For example, God would have known that Satan would have rebelled even if Satan were not created. For Satan's fall is part of the *concept* of Satan that exists even if he never had real existence. And God knows the concepts of all possible beings.

Now with God knowing all possible choices of all creatures, for all time, in all possible situations, this allows Him to bring into existence a history of creation down to the finest detail, without Him first having to create anything to find out what would happen.

His will to make things happen precedes anything happening at all (not in the order of time, but logically).

Out of all the infinite possibilities with its infinite branchings, God selects one logically consistent possibility and gives it real existence (logically consistent mean that a given created possibility does not have an event and its contradictory, such as an angel falling and not falling at the same time).

The free will choices of all possible creatures under all possible circumstances forms the "possibility" space that God has to work with. He selects one self consistent possibility, out of all, and brings it into reality, so that a particular universe and history are created. Another constraint is that that universe must be consistent with God's goodness. He would not have allowed a possible history to come into existence that has gratuitous evil to inflict His creatures. All evil that any creature experiences, in the reality He has brought into being, has a place in God's plan and is consistent with His love, justice, and mercy.

With this, it is not true that a creature makes a choice and then God responds with an afterthought. The creature only makes the choice because God selected that possible history with that choice in it with a view to what would be the consequence of that choice (because the consequence is part of that possible history) - not that God wills or causes the sin directly, for sin comes from the creature alone, but God *permits* the sin because that possibility (out of all) that He brought into existence includes the sin within it. Although God sees all possible sins of all creatures for all possible times, He is not the creator of the sins themselves and strictly forbids them as they are offences against Him.

We have to digress here for a moment and discuss whether God causes evil or brings evil into people's lives.

The book: Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence (by Father Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure and St. Claude de la Colombiere) holds that although God does not will sin, He does will the evils (apart from the act of sin itself) that flow from that sin, and is responsible for bringing them into people's lives with a view to the good that God wishes to bring about.

From this perspective, although God does not will the sin itself (which is defined as a pure choice in the will), He does will the troubles and the tragedies that flow from that sin. This is because God takes an infinitely long view of that possible history that He has brought into actuality (seeing it before-hand). That possible history which contains the sin and the trouble or tragedy also contains the good that will come about in the long run as a result of that trouble or tragedy. Everything that God does is a function of His infinite knowledge and His infinite goodness, and any possible history that He could have brought into existence is compatible with His infinite knowledge and goodness.

It can be argued that if a thing occurs and God only responds as an afterthought, that God's plan could be destroyed or at least severely degraded. That would defeat His omnipotence and sovereignty. We can see that many things that depended upon a certain exercise of free will of creatures were necessary to God's plan. We know that in the time of test of the angels that Michael the Archangel was necessary to lead the good angels to God and salvation as Satan lead other angels to rebellion against God and to hell. And we also know how essential St. Michael is in defending us on earth against Satan and his infernal hoards. The system of St. Thomas Aquinas (died 1274) is a necessary undergirding of all sound philosophy and theology in the Catholic Church today. On the other hand, it was necessary that others choose wrongly for God's plan to be fulfilled. For example, the betrayal of Judas and the cowardice of Pilate were necessary to bring Jesus to the Cross so that He could redeem the world. But what if Michael fell along with Lucifer and what if St. Thomas succumbed to that woman that his brothers sent to tempt him? What if Judas choose to be faithful to the Lord or Pilate choose to exercise courage in refusing to condemn a man whom he knew was innocent? God choose the history out of all possibilities with those particular players (St. Michael, St. Thomas, Judas, and Pilate) and which included the free will actions that they executed which included the good that would flow from them afterwards.

Calvinists claim that God predestines people to heaven or hell. They are right, but not in the way they think. The Church rejects *positive* predestination to hell - it rejects that a person is determined to hell by God and that he could not have chosen otherwise. I would hold that a proper understanding of predestination means that God sees all the journeys of all possible creatures in all possible worlds to their final end, and that God then selects the particular history out of the infinite possibilities which includes all the paths of all the rational creatures contained in that particular history.  This would not be predestination to hell in the sense condemned by the Church, because if a given human's path is to hell, it is necessary that that path include his freely chosen mortal sin and his refusal of repentance before death.



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