But Vatican II, that question of the vision of God, question 12, do we have a natural vision of God? I was talking about it with Father Godfrey. But there’s a ginormous principle behind that. That is this: Omnem forma sequitur inclinatio. To form corresponds inclination. It’s a ginormous question.

So, to that triple form corresponds a triple inclination. This is appetitus (appetite). It’s either the sensitive appetite (passions) or the intellective appetite, which is voluntas (will). Whereas the entitative is not an appetite, except in the broad sense. This is an inclinatio entitativa, like the stone falling to the ground. So, for instance, lapis cadit (the stone falls). That’s its inclination if it’s left without support. Ovis fugit (the sheep flees). The sheep sees the shape of a wolf on the horizon and scrams. And then, of course, the intellective, voluntas, will be something I grasp in my mind and which I desire with my will. For example, „Opera, let’s go!‟ Opera eas, vamos.

Therefore, I can’t have, just by my natural intellect, a desire to see God as God, to supernaturally see God. It’s not possible; it’s absurd to suppose it. Therefore, if I have an inclination towards God as God, it’s only going to be by some supernatural information. God must give me some supernatural information before I’m going to be able to desire to see the supernatural God. That’s just a law of being.

Now, the natural inclination can go for the heat shield. Yes, God as the author of nature. That I have necessarily got a desire to know, yes. Because I can pick up with my intellect the natural effects, and therefore I want to know the natural cause of these natural effects. And therefore I have a natural inclination to know, a desire to know God as the author of nature, yes, a thousand times yes. But from there, to wanting to know God as God is in Himself, there’s no way I can even imagine what God is in Himself, above and beyond the heat shield. The heat shield is all that the effects tell me. Here I am with my natural powers of intellect. Here are the effects, for instance, the beautiful sunset. The natural effects climb to God the author of nature. There’s no way in which they go through to God as He is in Himself. No way. It’s absolutely impossible. It’s just a law of nature, a law of being, because form and inclination correspond to one another.

The only desire that the natural mind can have to see God in Himself is elicit. If nobody ever had the Catholic faith, there’s no way any of us would even know that God was anything more than just the author of nature. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost and all the rest, there’s no way we could know that. All that we would know would be the pure act; we would know that God is pure act, that He is one, that He is perfect, that He is infinite, and all of those perfections which the reason can grasp, like Aristotle grasped. For Him, we would desire to know. But that He is three in one, one in three, and all of the rest of His supernatural perks, we wouldn’t even have an inkling of it. How could we desire it? It’s impossible. What we would have no knowledge of, we could have no natural desire of. It’s only because the faith tells us that He’s much more than just the author of nature.

Every inclination, every form is followed by some inclination. And the inclination corresponds to the form, and it can’t exceed the form, obviously. Because the form is the information of the inclination. The effect can’t exceed the cause. Effectus non excedit causam. And therefore the inclination can’t exceed the form. The appetite can’t exceed the information. Ignoti nulla cupido (Of the unknown, there is no desire). That should strictly be ignoti nulla est cupiditas, but the expression is a little loose. Nihil volitum quin praecognitum (Nothing is willed unless it is previously known). It’s such a law. If one studies St. Thomas, you see these things so clearly, you get all pulled together so clearly with a few basic principles to possess the whole thing. It’s a very lightweight system, believe it or not. St. Thomas is very lightweight baggage in the mind. With a few principles, you hold everything.

This was a great question at the time of Baius and Jansenius. Baius said that God was forced to give us grace to correspond to that natural inclination, something like that. If you say that the natural intellect has a handle on God as God, you’re blurring grace and nature. You’re saying that grace is built into nature. The Calvinists got it wrong because they wanted to affirm that grace is built into us because we are the elect. And then, the modernists get it wrong for another reason, but it’s the same error and it’s the same material of error. They get it wrong because the modernists want to blur grace and nature. They want to say that everybody has grace built into them, which is exactly what John Paul II says. Grace is built into everybody, grace is built into nature. We’re all born with what I call granatus. Granatus, which is a total blend of grace and nature.

So, you see why the modernists use this issue in order to arrive at the blurring of grace and nature. Because if they affirm that the purely natural inclination can have a supernatural object, they’re denying the dividing line between grace and nature, which is what they want to do. They use all the quotations of St. Thomas Aquinas saying that the created intellect has a natural desire to see God as He is in Himself. And that the principle behind that is that every effect desires to rise as high as its cause. It’s true, but it’s only materially that the supreme cause of this natural intellect is supernatural. There’s no way in which the purely natural intellect can…

But, therefore, there’s no instinctive push. On the other hand, there is an elicit desire. Meaning I think about it; it’s not instinctive, but I think about it when I’m told, when I realize that God is much more than just the „space shield.‟ Then I say, „Gee whiz, wouldn’t it be great to see God?‟ So that’s an elicit desire. The intellectual creature has an elicit inclination on the basis of what he’s told. If somebody tells me, „God is much more than just a space shield,‟ I’d say, „Oh, gee whiz. In that case, I’d love to see him.‟ That’s perfectly reasonable. I can give him some extra information on the basis of which I have an extra desire, yes. But again, it’s an elicit, therefore it’s not instinctive. I have an instinctive push to know the space shield, but I only have an elicit push to know God as God.

Secondly, it’s an inefficacious desire. That is to say, it’s a desire… „Oh, gee whiz, I’d love to see him if it was possible.‟ I don’t know whether it is possible. If I’m smart, I know that I’ve only got a brown faculty (natural faculty). So if somebody tells me that there’s something much more to the first cause than just a brown space shield, I’d say, „Well, if he were willing to show me, I’d love to see him as he is.‟ So all that there is by way of natural inclination in the rational creature to see God as God is an elicit and inefficacious desire. That observes the laws of being. That’s the Thomistic answer. St. Thomas himself never worked it out as clearly as that, but the Thomists coming after him needed to work this one out under the push of Protestants, Calvinists, and then they needed to repeat that answer under the push of the Modernists.

How did the Modernists dismiss St. Thomas? They call it Scholasticism or Neo-Scholasticism. „How dinosaurish can you get?‟ They’ve got a scorn for Scholasticism, as noted in Pascendi. With their historical minds, they relativize Thomism: „Oh, it’s just an answer which suited the Middle Ages.‟ But St. Thomas is reality, and reality doesn’t change. The last magnificent gasp of Neo-Scholasticism was the encyclical Humani generis in 1951 of Pius XII, in which he said Scholasticism is it, because truth doesn’t change, and these words and this language have been worked out very precisely, often at the cost of blood.

Father Godfrey was expounding this question last week, and one of the priests said, „Well, what’s the practical use of this?‟ This is the whole question of Modernism, of de Lubac and these modern delinquents, Vatican II. It’s all confusion of grace and nature, all granatus.

I’m caricaturing obviously, but this is the basis of it. We pray for the Pope here; I certainly believe he is Pope. But when I want to say how crazy the whole thing is today, I don’t mind caricaturing, because only if you highlight the idiocy can you see just how grotesque it all is. And yet when he writes these huge encyclicals, he manages to disguise granatus, talking for pages in more or less old-fashioned language, so that unless you know what’s going on, you can’t pick it out. It’s incredible. He thinks that he is simply developing the same doctrine just a little bit further. He does not believe that granatus contradicts previous Catholic doctrine. Incredible. The devil has done a masterpiece of deceiving.

The moral of the story is that theology, Catholic dogma, matters. It matters on the bottom line more than moral theology. You may find these abstract questions difficult to understand, but that’s where it’s at. This elicit, inefficacious desire is crucial in order to maintain the huge difference between grace and nature. For instance, elsewhere in question 113 of the Prima Secundae, St. Thomas will say, „The least little movement in the order of grace outweighs the totality of created nature.‟ One Ave Maria prayed in the state of grace weighs heavier than the entire Rockies, than the whole of the Milky Way put together. That’s the enormous difference between the order of grace and the order of nature. There’s a total intrinsic, absolute difference. But that’s what they want to blur, because they want to say man is divine, that man is a superb, dignified, worthy, great, admirable, adorable creature. In other words, they want to say that man is God. So man has got grace built into his nature, the supernatural divine is built into our nature. That’s the modern idea. Completely false. But from that flow a cascade of false consequences. This question is enormous.

And you resolve it on this principle: a clash of two principles. One, every intellect wants to know the cause of every effect. True. The other, every inclination follows a form. The one principle seems to go from a natural knowledge to God Himself, and the other principle says, „No, the natural knowledge can only go to God as a space shield.‟ But then the Thomists work it out with great exactness.

People today are not easy to argue with. Their minds are gone. Most people can’t think. Their minds have been deliberately unhooked from reality so that their wills are unhooked from the Ten Commandments. People want to be unhooked from reality, and they got what they want. If you want to hook them back to reality, the heart of the reality is dogma. Dogma is simply the statement of reality – the organized, purified, exact statement of natural and supernatural reality. Most people don’t want reality just as they don’t want truth. Res et veritas convertuntur (Being and truth are convertible). Men today don’t want res (the thing, reality). They don’t want veritas (the truth).

That’s an important thing to remember today. With the world going crazy, don’t let people tell you that God doesn’t know what He’s doing. The judgments of God in this terrible situation are entirely exact and just. They’re mysterious, but they’re true and just. The corrupt people deserve a corrupt president, a corrupt government, corrupt judges, corrupt school teachers, corrupt university professors. I’m afraid that’s what the people want today. They don’t want the truth. They want Clinton, believe it or not, because Clinton represents liberty from God, liberty from the old Christian religion. I quoted Betty Friedan or Bella Abzug: „If we vote against Clinton, we’re voting for all those awful old Christian White men.‟ Or, „A vote against Clinton is a vote for the prehistoric sexist ancient ages.‟ That’s the way these minds think. Clinton is the triumph of the anti-Christian way of life. The Christian way of life had a noble defender in Henry Hyde. The Republicans in the House of Representatives did a good job making sure the Senate would face the question. But in the Senate, all the Democrats, without fail, voted in defense of Clinton, whereas a few Republicans voted for him. And the Democrats accuse the Republicans of party politics, and in the media, they get away with it. These things tell you that the people want this corruption. It’s deliberate. So the judgments of God are just upon our naughty and wicked world.

Verse eight: „And a fourth angel…‟ We jump from ages one, two, three, to four, five, six. The preachers against the Antichrist. „The fourth angel,‟ in verse eight, „poured out his vial upon the sun (S-U-N), and it was given unto him to afflict men with heat and fire.‟ The sun is the Antichrist, a false sun. When the Christian preachers preach against the Antichrist, his only reaction will be to become still more cruel.

We won’t get any further than that today.