WHEN I departed the priory for my evening stroll around the surrounding suburbs a few weeks ago, I did not see anyone else on the street.
So, with the latest smash-hit from BTS playing in my ears and nobody within sight to view my disgrace, I attempted what I thought were some very reasonable attempts at imitation dance moves; a round-house kick here, a running jump there.
It turns out I was not unobserved.
Sr Margaret – one of the Dominican sisters who lives next door to us – had parked her car just moments before and had been graced with a full view of my enthusiastic maneuvers, courtesy of her rear-vision mirror.
As I came level with her car, and she exited it, her comment on the whole episode was: “Well, you must be getting the right kind of birdseed!”
When I later related the story to a friend of mine, he asked, “Official BTS moves or your own?”
My response was appropriately honest: “I’m not cool enough for BTS moves. I would damage the brand.”
His response was harsh, but equally frank: “Not coordinated enough, you mean?!”
I have never been able to dance.
Even Elaine from Seinfeld looks better than I ever did on my occasional peregrinations around the dance floor.
And for that reason I have great admiration for anybody who can dance properly.
I appreciate the extraordinary dedication and effort that must have gone into perfecting that skill.
But the whole episode serves to highlight the fact that the gifts generously distributed by God are not identical in everyone, but rather are different, varied – complementary.
One person will have great cooking skills, another prodigious intellectual talents and another tremendous dancing ability: like human gelatine this latter person will appear to possess no bones at all, so flexible and coordinated are their movements.
Yet no one will possess all those talents together; and this is for a reason.
Only in the aggregate do we human beings combine all the qualities necessary for the life of each one of us.
St Thomas Aquinas affirms without hesitation that even in the age of innocence before the Fall, those better endowed with knowledge and the virtue of justice would have had to watch over the others, particularly in governing civil society. (ST I, q. 96, a. 4)
And, I’m sure, had he ever seen J-Hope dance, he would have similarly opined that not all of us are made to trip the light fantastic: that honour is preserved for a chosen few.
But in all this, we have the very origins of our sociability.
Because our Creator has deposited with a given individual what his or her neighbour lacks.
And as a result we are naturally drawn to will what is good for our neighbour and vice vera.
We are continually exhorted in homilies to “love our neighbour,” which is fair enough, as it is a mandate of Christ. (Mark 12:30-31)
Yet it might be easier to do this if we realised just how much we need our neighbour, not only to survive, but to thrive.
The virtuous progress of our mutual interactions with one another makes us, over time, tend towards benevolence – willing the good of the other for his or her own sake – which, when it is reciprocal, is fulfilled in a perfect friendship.
As Dominican Father Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole puts it, over time, “the friendship becomes disinterested so that imperfections in reciprocity [i.e. one party ends up giving more or less than the other] do not cause it to disappear.”
In our unequal mutual interactions, growing in admiration and love for one another and appreciating the gifts that others possess, we are developing our own virtues and sense of altruism: we are being perfected morally and prepared for our ultimate transcendent end in heavenly beatitude.
In recent talks to university students, I have become fond of asking the entirely non-rhetorical question, “What is society for? Why does it exist? What is the goal, the end towards which it is working?”
In the inevitable tumbleweed-filled silence that follows, I am prompted to cite the words of Pope Leo XIII from the encyclical that is considered the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching: “since the end of society is to make men better, the chief good that society can possess is virtue.” (Rerum Novarum, n. 34)
Society exists to make us better, in moral terms; to help us grow in virtue.
And that is precisely because if we work towards that service of our temporal end, our ultimate (supernatural) heavenly end is also served.
Our moral formation and development is really the chief end of the society in which we live, and the diverse gifts and talents that have been liberally sprinkled among us from on high all contribute in a complementary way towards achieving that aim.
Thus, contra certain Thatcherite economists, there is indeed such a thing as society.
It is willed by God and, like the human nature that requires it, it is fundamentally good.
Interestingly, this view of St Thomas Aquinas sidesteps the opinion of St Augustine, who regarded society as an inevitable affliction resulting from original sin, or at least as a remedy compensating for the effects of that original sin.
Depending on how you feel about your neighbours, you might be more inclined to the Augustinian view.
But Aquinas, in arguing that “man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence would have led a social life” (ST I, q. 96, a.4) is also pointing out that the basis for the legitimacy for our society does not depend solely or even primarily upon a social contract between its citizens.
It is part of our nature, being destined as we are to grow in virtue and knowledge and love, precisely in order to arrive at our ultimate goal.
Because none of us grasp truth immediately as an angel does, but rather we arrive at the truth gradually, starting from sensory experience and growing through instruction.
Nobody can make all the necessary observations on his or her own – we learn from each other.
We are teachable and trainable by nature.
So, in order to facilitate my own growth in virtue and related talents, if anybody knows the contact details of J-Hope or any other qualified K-Pop dancer, please let them know I am willing to take instruction at their earliest convenience.
I’ll even provide the necessary birdseed.
