Issue of Temperance

He begins by asking what the words "temperance" and "moderation" ave in common and what they mean today. The meaning of temperance, he says, has changed to the idea of "temperance in eating and drinking," and the word today is applied largely to mere quantity, just as "intemperance" seems to mean only excess. The true nature of the word is quite different and cannot be indicated by this usage. Present usage is more like the use of "moderation," and this use does not correspond to the meaning of temperantia:

Moderation mainly relates to admonishing the wrathful to moderate their anger. Though the moderation of anger belongs to the realm of temperantia, it is only a part of it (145).

Indeed, the passion of anger has been defended, and the concept of moderation itself has been emasculated. More than this, moderation has a negative implication and signifies too exclusively the concepts of restriction, curtailment, curbing, bridling, and repression.

Pieper looks back to the origin of the word "temperance" and analyzes

. . .
urch derive from this fundamental obligation. The rules of the church constitute no more than a more accurately defined form of this obligation, modified according to the circumstances of the time and the customs that prevail. Ordinary Christians have not reached the maturity of perfection, and they thus cannot preserve the discipline of fasting, meaning the inner order which keeps the spirit liberated so it may reach the heights of appropriate fulfillment and satisfaction: It is here, most particularly and strikingly, that the stern demands inherent in the Christian image of man become compellingly visible. Our natural duty obliges us to pay dearly so that we may become what we are by essence: the free moral person in full possession of himself (182). What is expected is hilaritas mentis, or cheerfulness of heart, an idea closely associated with fasting, as noted. The Church laws on fasting are not taken very seriously, but this is not a matter of contempt for ecclesiastical authority but rather derives from the fact that the natural, fundamental moral obligation to fast is quite alien to the average Christian. This has nothing to do with ecclesiastical injunctions. For that matter, the average priest might not be so rea
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Approximate Word count = 1572
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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