Moral Intelligence

This column by Fr. Ron Rolheiser ran in our Catholic Herald. Relying on the work of James Hillman, Fr. Rolheiser asserts that "moral intelligence" or depth of character comes from our inferiorities, failures, and humiliations.

Indeed, Jesus' struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane, his asking God three times to spare him from the pain and humiliation of being crucified, was precisely his own reluctance to accept that a certain kind of depth can only be arrived at by journeying through a certain kind of humiliation.

More conventionally this reluctance was attributed to the Lord's human nature rather than to a lack of depth of character.