10 November 2008

St. Andrew Avellino

Confessor (III Class)
The holy priest Andrew was first a member of the ecclesiastical court of Naples. He entered the congregation of Clerks Regular, called the Theatine Order. He died at the foot of the altar, while saying: "Introibo ad altare Dei" in 1608.

In case anyone is interested, you can now read my lately finished Paper on Happiness. It is nothing more than a short summary (8 pages) of St. Thomas Aquinas' Treatise on Happiness found in questions 1-5 of the first part of the second part of his Summa Theologiae.

If you don't want to bother to read the whole thing, here is the short version: there is one last end or goal of human life, which every man aims for in each and every voluntary action, and this is generally called happiness (q. 1); happiness consists in God alone (q. 2), and it is essentially the vision of God's essence (q. 3); necessarily associated with happiness in some way are delight, comprehension, and rectitude of the will, as well as perfection of the body and the fellowship of friends (q. 4); and finally, happiness can be attained by man, but only from God (q. 5).

Please feel free to use the comment box to leave your comments, counter-arguments, etc. Enjoy!

4 comments:

Boniface said...

How do you get footnotes into Google docs? I can't figure it out...do you just put them in when its in Word and then they are just there when you upload it, or can you insert them right in Google docs?

Anonymous said...

Far be it from me to quarrel with the Angelic Doctor. . .

Unknown said...

Boniface,
I've only ever done it by having them in the Word.doc to being with, and then they are automatically there when you upload it.

M said...

Along similar lines, I heard the best description of morality (IMHO) from my professor of Thomistic Moral Theology:

Morality: the choices of a human person in light of his final end.

It took me blood, sweat, and tears, but I learned to read and understand Aquinas' Summa -- and can now see how helpful it can be.

Way to go, John!
~Margo