On paradigms and Prudence

 https://veritasamoris.org/a-paradigm-shift-from-veritatis-splendor-to-amoris-laetitia

The law is also a burden because I am also a sinner: redeemed, but still bearing the marks and consequences of concupiscence, in an arduous path of healing. The law is also a “no”; it also has an external aspect that must gradually mature toward the interiorization of virtue. The law also has an aspect of light: the virtues are “arma lucis—weapons of light” that illuminate reason (virtuous connaturality) and show the correspondence of our actions with the true good, which is what desire itself seeks. As the virtues are formed, the weight of the external character of the law decreases and the freedom to do good increases. It is therefore necessary not to neglect the law that exhorts and forbids. In this way the subject matures.

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What is needed is a formation of the subject that takes into account the originality of practical reason. It is not just a matter of teaching, but of facilitating the formation of virtues. Freedom and truth go together, in a one-to-one correspondence: without truth one is not free; and without freedom one cannot access truth.

How is the Christian subject born? How is the Christian subject generated, or rather regenerated? To be born again: this is the question of Nicodemus. “How can anyone be born after having grown old?” (Jn 3:4). It is not only a question of the formation of conscience (in the cognitive dimension), as modern scholastic or neo-scholastic morality had it, which understood formation as the ability to make correct rational judgments. Rather, moral formation is about growing in the virtues, especially in prudence, as the virtue that perfects practical reason, which aims not only at judgment but also and above all at the ability to choose and to act.

Prudence is the virtue that enlightens and promotes the making of choices and the carrying out of actions. It is rooted in virtuous affective dispositions that are well-ordered according to reason. Indeed, without the moral virtues there can be no prudence; without them there will be only cunning. Conversely, without prudence there can be no true moral virtues; without it there will be only mechanical habits. Virtue is a habitus electivus: a disposition to choose the suitable good, predisposing not the object of choice (id quod eligitur) but the excellent way of choosing it (id cuis gratia eligitur). It is a virtue and not a habit: it makes one freer and not less free. It aims at choice and does not remove the need to choose.