Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

The Theological Virtue of Hope

RCC Catechism: 

1817. Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Now listen to Pope Leo:

The pontiff [Leo] said that the Jubilee Year of Hope “encourages the universal Church and indeed the entire world to reflect on this essential virtue, which Pope Francis described as the desire and expectation of good things to come despite or not knowing what the future may bring.”

I am no theologian, but Pope Francis's description of the theological virtue of hope leaves something to be desired. Compare it to the quotation immediately preceding. Is Leo, who seems to be uncritically accepting Francis's description, much of an improvement over his predecessor?

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Bill Vallicella

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16 responses to “The Theological Virtue of Hope”

  1. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    If Leo does not put the Mass back in Latin, and turn the altars back around so the priest faces God and not man, then I do not think that Leo ia an improvement over Francis.
    In the era of our childhood we were living in a sort of paradise unawares.
    I can’t go back in time, but I try my best to get outside of time, because I despise the modern world.

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  2. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Bill,
    “Is Leo, who seems to be uncritically accepting Francis’s description, much of an improvement over his predecessor?”
    Briefly, I have been following the words and actions of Prevost very closely since he became pope in early May, and they leave me with no doubt that he is no improvement at all. From secularist homilies on the Gospels; * to many appointments of unorthodox and heretical prelates; to his continual praise of Bergoglio, thus normalizing his many dubious, heretical, and scandalous actions and proclamations; to his endorsement of synodality, the means by which the doctrinal and ecclesial unity of the Church will be undone; to continuing his predecessors support for open borders, regardless of the engulfment of Europe by hordes of Muslim men; and so on. Now all of this is done with a smile, by an amiable man, rather than by his scowling, nasty predecessor. However, the essence, radical modernism, remains the same, just the form has changed–a friendly demeanor, a bit of Latin here and there—whatever it takes to make the horror of the preceding thirteen years seems normal and acceptable. Here we have the RCC version of “moderate” Joe Biden that the far-left Dems sold in 2020, and once again the gullible, Trad inc. included, are falling for it.
    *See, for instance, his 30 July homily MK7:31-37 (Jesus healing of the deaf mute) in which Prevost, while reflecting on the contemporary problem of communication, quite explicitly denies the miraculous nature of this event, seeing it rather as a moment in which Jesus, drawing close to the mute, who has simply DECIDED not to speak, invites him to find his voice (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/audiences/2025/documents/20250730-udienza-generale.html). Here, we have the usual Bergoglian secularist treatment of miraculous events, as in the late pope’s homily on the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, on the Immaculate Conception (Mary as “an ordinary girl”), to cite just two.
    Vito

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  3. john doran Avatar
    john doran

    amen, joe.
    (you know he won’t, though – you’ve known for a while.)

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  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    Vito,
    >>Here we have the RCC version of “moderate” Joe Biden that the far-left Dems sold in 2020, and once again the gullible, Trad inc. included, are falling for it.<< And so I say again what I've said before: the Left needs to be defunded and defeated. Politically, we have Trump. But religiously, who do we have?

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  5. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Joe,
    A word of caution: As much as I love the Tridentine Mass, which I have been fortunate to attend for the last eight years, we must not remember that the the lessening of the restrictions on it, as much as this would be desirable, is not the most essential issue at stake in the struggle against the modernist perversion of the faith, which is the incessant undermining of dogma and doctrine. I can imagine a scenario in which Traditionis custodes is modified in some form to placate and buy the silence of adherents of the TLM. In fact, something like this is evident in unfounded, positive assessments of the new pope by many traditionalists on X, blogs, and other media. Maybe Paris was worth a Mass, but the Faith is not.
    Vito

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  6. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Bill,
    “But religiously, who do we have?”
    We have what the Italian historian Roberto Petrici terms “il tramonto di quell’imponente realtà storica definibile come‘cattolicesimo romano,’” with no practical means to effectuate a restoration. I imagine that islands of orthodoxy will survive, either in dioceses with traditional or conservative bishops; in some religious houses, although these are under assault; in the chapels of the SSPX, but at the price of increasing concessions; among the small sects of sedevacantists; and finally, as in many times in the past, among individual believers, alone or with the like-minded, who continue to follow the Gospel and hold to tradition. But I see no means to oust those now in control of the papacy and the leading institutions—the Curia, the College of Cardinals, much of the episcopate, the “Catholic” universities, the “Catholic” media—since we are dealing with no republic here like our own, but a monarchy, absolutist in law–with provisos that are confidently ignored–and in practice.
    Vito
    PS In my earlier comment, “we must remember” and not “we must not remember.”

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  7. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    Thank you for your comments Mr. Caiati.
    You are right about the Faith writ large is more important, and that the Latin Mass might possibly be used to placate some of us.
    But the Faith is there even though the institutional church can throw trash at it from the outside. (And that is where they are; outside.) I share your pessimism regarding any real reform in the near term.
    And I also personally get the feeling of wandering, isolated and abandoned by the institutional church. It ought to be a help for living a good life to call yourself a Catholic, in terms of the respect you might get from others not in the RCC, but now if I say I am a Catholic, I am hit with comments about pedophile priests and piles of gold in the Vatican.
    So, I read the scriptures on my own; pray the Rosary, read seven storey mountain about once every two years, and try to personally walk in the spirit, and I go to mass with my sister Mary, who is a very simple soul, when I am in Santa Cruz, once or twice a year. But it is not a Latin mass. And that is all I seem to be able to manage right now.
    But for the far future, God only knows how, all the bad mistakes and evil will be fixed, we may be sure.
    Wel that is my reply, tired and at the end of the day. I might be able to make a better reply tomorrow morning.

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  8. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Mr. Odegaard,
    Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
    I fully agree that “the Faith is there,” that is, in the TLM, which is why it has been a primary target of the modernists long before the Montini/Bugnini replacement of it with the Protestantized, and hence the gravelly theologically and liturgically flawed Novus Ordo. The late Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci brilliantly presented case against the latter rite in 1969, only to be ignored by Montini.*
    Your personal experience at this time has marked similarities to mine, since I too am following my own religious path, with the only difference being my weekly attendance at a TLM which, by chance, is offered near my home. Once it is gone, I will revert to private prayer. It is a hard time, certainly.
    Vito
    * The Ottaviani Intervention (https://lms.org.uk/ottaviani-intervention)

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  9. BV Avatar
    BV

    Vito,
    Banged on the link, got a 404 in response.
    Here is the OI is booklet form: https://angeluspress.org/products/the-ottaviani-intervention
    Here is the OI online: https://www.catholictradition.org/Eucharist/ottaviani.htm

    Reply
  10. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Bill,
    Thanks for the link to OI; sorry, the site that I found did not work.
    The OI remains the best short analysis of the grave defects of the Novus Ordo.
    Cardinal Ottaviani, the head of the CDF, was seen by the progressives at the Council, who were highly organized, as their principal enemy; they plotted against him, and in one session, went so far are having his microphone shut off before he had finished speaking. Montini, who was one of them, made sure that this coup against orthodoxy and tradition was successful.
    Vito

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  11. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    Google the Margaret Burke-White photograph of US soldiers at mass in the damaged cathedral of Cologne, in 1945. The priest is facing God, and the men are there for all the spiritual support they can get; they are not there to shake hands with each other in a forced display of artificial chumminess.
    Link:
    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2022802557893484&id=129233573917068&set=a.220359594804465

    Reply
  12. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    Here’s a non-facebook link for the photo in the rubble-strewen cathedral of Cologne, in 1945{
    https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/sa21lh/american_soldiers_at_mass_in_the_rubble_at/#lightbox

    Reply
  13. Elliott Avatar
    Elliott

    Bill,
    I’m thinking quickly here, but both descriptions seem incomplete to me.
    “which Pope Francis described as the desire and expectation of good things to come …”
    It seems to me that hope and desire are different intentional states. A desire is an inclination toward or away from something. Hope entails desire, but desire does not entail hope. If Smith hopes for a raise, he desires it. But Smith might desire a raise and yet not hope for one.
    Perhaps Francis meant that hope is a combination of desire and belief. Suppose we say that S believes that p iff S takes p to be true. So, if S hopes that p, then S desires that p is the case and believes that p is possible and at least somewhat probable though not objectively certain. (It doesn’t make sense to hope for something the probability of which is 0, nor does it make sense to hope for something the probability of which is 1.)
    “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, …”
    I wonder about the “by which.” How can it be that hope is a means to desire? Doesn’t hope presupposes desire? If Smith hopes for a raise, he already desires one. It’s not as though Smith first hopes for a raise, and then, as a result of his hoping, desires the raise.
    Maybe the meaning of the catechism is that, since we already desire happiness, as Aristotle noted long ago, hope is the means by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as necessary conditions of our ultimate happiness.
    What do you think?

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  14. BV Avatar
    BV

    Elliot,
    >>Hope entails desire, but desire does not entail hope.<< I agree. >>S believes that p iff S takes p to be true. So, if S hopes that p, then S desires that p is the case and believes that p is possible and at least somewhat probable though not objectively certain.<< That seems right. >>I wonder about the “by which.” How can it be that hope is a means to desire? Doesn’t hope presupposes desire?<< You're right, but a simple repair seems at hand: substitute 'in which' for 'by which.' More vexing, perhaps, is the classical view that hope is a virtue. A virtue is a hexis, habitus, habit, dispositional state of a person. Above you said that hope entails desire, and I agreed. But can a virtue in its latent or unexercised state entail anything? A theologically hopeful man is hopeful even while in a deep sleep. But he then cannot be said to occurrently desire anything. At best, he could be said to be disposed to desire the beatific vision, say. Is desire ever properly describable as either a virtue or a vice? Maybe it is. "All men by nature desire knowledge." (Aristotle) = All men are disposed to desire knowledge. What I was getting at in the OP, however, was that Francis speaks of the desire and expectation of good things, but then leaves out what those good things are, namely, the kingdom of heaven and eternal life -- I smell secularism!

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  15. Elliott Avatar
    Elliott

    Bill, you’re right to distinguish between occurrent and dispositional hope. Occurrent hope is an intentional state. Smith has occurrent hope at t about the possibility of a raise at t1. But in its dispositional state, it seems hope is not about anything but only disposed to be about something when occurrent.
    >>What I was getting at in the OP, however, was that Francis speaks of the desire and expectation of good things, but then leaves out what those good things are, namely, the kingdom of heaven and eternal life — I smell secularism!<< I also noticed the absence of the kingdom and eternal life. Francis and Leo provide a definition of theological hope that is too broad, for it includes earthly goods like healthy meals, reliable vehicles, and clean air and water.

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  16. BV Avatar
    BV

    Elliot,
    >>But in its dispositional state, it seems hope is not about anything but only disposed to be about something when occurrent.<< This raises the question whether there is any intentionality at all in a dispositional mental state. Temperance is one of the cardinal virtues. A temperate man is temperate even while under an anaesthetic. Should we say that there is nothing he is temperate about? Or should we say that he is temperate about a range of items of consumption, potables and comestibles, but not about any particular comestible (e.g. cheesecake) or potable (e.g. whisky)? There seems to be a difference between this sort of generalized intentionality and non-intentional mental states such as feeling nauseous.

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