Habitus
| Controlling authority | Catechism 1803–1845 and 1996–2005; Thomistic synthesis |
|---|---|
| Status | Virtue as stable disposition is authoritative doctrine; the technical genus habitus is scholastic theology |
| School | Thomism |
| Branch | Moral theology |
Habitus is a stable quality disposing a subject well or ill in its being or in the use of a power, the Thomistic genus of virtue, vice, and certain gifts of grace.
A quality, not a mood
In the Aristotelian categories received by Aquinas, habitus is a quality, a difficult-to-move disposition of a subject. It is not a single act, not a feeling, and not a mere potency. Act and Potency remain: a habit is midway, a determination of a power that makes its act more prompt, easy, and stable. A pianist has a habit; a first attempt at a scale does not.[1]
Operative habits qualify powers: intellect, will, and sensitive appetite. Entitative habits qualify the essence of the soul. Sanctifying grace is the principal example of the latter, a created participation in the divine nature from which the infused virtues flow. The Catechism's habitual grace is this reality in less technical speech. Neither is a fluid measurable in the blood.[2]
Increase, loss, and subject
Habits increase by intensified acts and can diminish or be corrupted by contrary acts, except where God infuses and conserves a supernatural habit. The subject of a moral habit is a power of the soul, not the habit itself as a little person. ST I–II qq.49–54 is the primary Thomistic treatise. It is philosophy of quality in the service of moral and sacramental theology.[3]
Virtue, vice, and the passions
A good operative habit is a virtue; a bad one is a vice. Acquired and Infused Virtue specifies how those habits arise. The Thomistic Account of the Passions explains the matter they moderate. A habit is not the suppression of appetite. It is the stable ordering of appetite and reason so that the person acts as he ought with a connatural joy. That is why virtue is more than correct policy.[4]
Faith, in one classical analysis, is a habit of the intellect; hope and charity are habits of the will. This is school language for realities the Church actually teaches: theological virtues infused with grace, lost or wounded by sin in different ways.
Natural and supernatural habits
Acquired habits arise from repeated acts in the Natural and Supernatural Orders' natural line. Infused habits are given with grace and are proportioned to the supernatural end. They can coexist with the difficulty of remaining contrary acquired dispositions, which is why a newly justified person may still struggle. Infusion is not a personality transplant. It is a new principle of operation that still needs exercise, training, and the sacraments.
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit are further habits or dispositions, in the Thomistic account, by which a person is readily moved by the Spirit. That specification is theology. The Church teaches that the Spirit's gifts belong to the life of grace. She has not defined Aquinas's exact mapping of seven gifts onto the virtues. The distinction of Habitus remains useful provided it stays a map, not a cage.
Status
Authoritative: virtues are stable dispositions toward the good; grace is habitual as well as actual; mortal sin destroys the life of charity. Synthesis: habitus as first species of quality, the mechanics of increase by like acts, and the precise subject of each virtue. Aeterni Patris commends this moral psychology because it treats character as real. It does not make the Categories a biblical book.[5]
Without some such notion, Catholic talk of growth in holiness becomes either a pile of disconnected deeds or a fog of sincerity. With it, formation, penance, education, and the Eucharist have a subject: a person whose powers can be durably healed and elevated. That is the concept's service.[6]
References
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, questions 49–54 — Primary analysis of habitus as a stable quality disposing a power, its causes, subject, increase, diminution, and distinction from potency and act.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1996–2005 — Authoritative teaching on sanctifying grace as participation in divine life, actual grace, the elevation of human powers, and the gratuity of God's gift.
- Back to citation Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris — Encyclical restoring Christian philosophy in the school of Thomas Aquinas while distinguishing that commendation from a definition of every Thomistic thesis.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I–II, questions 55, 62, and 63 — Primary account of virtue as a good habit, the infused theological virtues, and the distinction between acquired and infused moral virtues.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1803–1845 — Authoritative synthesis of human and theological virtues, their acquisition or infusion, the cardinal structure, and charity as the form of the virtues.
- Back to citation John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor — Encyclical on the moral law, the natural law, virtue, and the relation of human freedom to eternal and divine law without reducing morality to mere consensus.