The human mind is one of the two principal faculties of the human soul, the other being free will, by which the Creator endowed a human being to know and to love Him as well as to know and love others. Knowledge is obviously important to any human being, but the most important way of knowing anybody or anything is to share in the way God sees and knows these, for that is the truth of whatever He created. Truth, therefore, is the proper object of the human mind, and the human mind reaches the truth when the idea that is in the mind conforms with the reality of the object outside it. Even if the object outside the mind is not fully known, i.e. even if the idea we have of someone or something inside our mind is not totally in conformity with the reality outside the mind, i.e. the way it is known by God, (in other words its truth), it remains important that the limited idea we have so far of this reality is true and without error.
In other words, the Creator has given to each and every human being a faculty which is eminently capable of leading the owner of it to the truth of anything on this earth as far as the human possessor of this faculty is prepared to go. And as for intelligence, this has mainly to do with the quickness of the mind and must not – as we will see – be confused with its essential quality. A better mind is not necessarily a quicker mind but a mind that is attuned to the truth. In human beings, composed as they are of a lifelong unity between a perishable body and an immortal soul, the organ in the body through which the human mind operates is called the brain. This organ called ‘brain’ is not the mind. The mind remains a spiritual faculty or power and stays with the soul after death.
For the purpose of the discussion developed in the course of this article, it is to be clearly understood that although we are talking here about spiritual activities of the mind, that is, ‘thinking’ in order to ascertain the truth, we are not dealing here with a supernatural activity. It is quite natural for the human mind to think, even to think about God, as St. Paul has set out so clearly in the 1st chapter of his Letter to the Romans:-
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
For although they knew God they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonourable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.
A frightening message ...!
If at any time in world history these words reflected prevailing human behaviour, who can deny that at the present moment we see the accuracy of this description all around us?
We are now ready to put the thesis of this dissertation into words:
“The human mind, then, is eminently capable of perceiving the truth at its proper natural level. It can know the Deity from His creation and know the inter-relationships with God and with the rest of creation of every part of this created universe. This is its normal operating level”.
But, after having stated this, something more is to be added:
“When the human mind is used for the defence and the propagation of a totally different Light, the Light of the supernaturally infused divine and Catholic Faith, its natural understanding will be raised far in excess of its normal operational power. In other words, as a reward for this defence, the human mind will understand the truths which are natural and proper at its own level of understanding in far greater depth than it normally would”.
The obvious meaning of this is that the human mind itself becomes more ennobled, more incisive, and so shares in a much greater wisdom, than it normally would in its every day use.
BUT there is another side to this fascinating prospect:
“If the human mind is used to twist, attack or even destroy what is known in the supernatural Light of Catholic Faith, it will plummet to a depth far below its normal operational power. This means that, as an act of God’s vengeance, the human mind will NOT understand the truths which it would have understood if it had been working at its normal operational level”.
In other words, the human mind becomes sub-human.
This we see as the tragic fate of all the Modernists……
And this has been made known by God to St. Paul as a revealed Truth which can be verified when we go back to the underlined words in the quote above:-
“… God gave them up to a base mind ...”
So, no matter who he or she is, be they newspaper editors, politicians, scientists, teachers, priests, bishops or simply Catholic parents: if they see fit to harm or slight or twist or oppose what is known in the Light of Catholic Faith, then their own human minds, far from being liberated by this activity, will plummet to a level of understanding far below what they normally would have understood if they had not interfered with someone else’s Catholic Faith according to the other words of St. Paul in the above-quoted words from his Letter to the Romans:
“… and their senseless minds were darkened ...”
It will no longer lead them to the truth ...
These, then, are the two ingredients to be examined in this essay: