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<div>Please explain the "sins of the father" from Exodus.</div><div><blockquote>For I, the LORD, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their ancestors’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but showing love down to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments (Ex. 20:5-6).</blockquote>
The totality of Scripture condemns the idea that children are punished for the sins of the parents. The passage from Exodus on the surface appears to be contradicting that, and this misunderstanding was so prevalent that the prophet Ezekiel was forced to address it:
<blockquote>. . . What is the meaning of this proverb you recite in the land of Israel: “Parents eat sour grapes, but the children’s teeth are set on edge”?
As I live—oracle of the Lord GOD: I swear that none of you will ever repeat this proverb in Israel. For all life is mine: the life of the parent is like the life of the child, both are mine. Only the one who sins shall die! (Ez. 18:2-4).
But, in turn, if he begets a son who sees all the sins his father commits, yet fears and does not imitate him—a son who does not eat on the mountains, or raise his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, or defile a neighbor’s wife; who does not oppress anyone, or exact a pledge, or commit robbery; who gives his food to the hungry and clothes the naked; who refrains from evildoing, accepts no interest or usury, but keeps my ordinances and walks in my statutes—this one shall not die for the sins of his father. He shall surely live! Only the father, since he committed extortion and robbed his brother, and did what was not good among his people—he will die because of his sin! (Ez. 18:14-18).</blockquote>
Exodus 20:5-6 is speaking of the consequences of breaking the commandment against false idols and other gods.
The commandments are not portrayed as arbitrary rules. The commandments are given as the path to true life and the fullness of life.
<blockquote>I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them (Deut. 30:19-20).</blockquote>
The message of the passage from Exodus is that the sins of the parents set a bad example for the children to follow. The parents will certainly experience negative consequences for their sins. The children seeing this bad example may follow it. If they follow this bad example, they too will experience these same consequences. And this bad example may be so ingrained in a family that it will last generations, and they will suffer these bad consequences as well. This passage from Exodus can be seen as a warning to parents that they not only possibly condemn themselves through their sins but that their bad example might condemn future generations.
The message of Scripture is that sin has more than just a personal consequence. Our sins affect not just ourselves but everyone around us.
</div>

Sins of the Father?

Tim Staples explains that anyone in full communion with Rome who attends an SSPX mass out of love for the traditional liturgy legitimately fulfills his Sunday obligation, and then gives a brief overview of the history of the society and its conflicts with the Church.
Transcript:
Host: Olga Marie, on Facebook Live, asks the following question: &#8220;Can we go to SSPX mass and be valid for our Sunday obligation?&#8221;
Tim: Right, well, because of their irregular status—although I don&#8217;t know if our inquirer is aware that there&#8217;s been more good news concerning movement toward full communion today; as many of our listeners know, our Holy Father during the Year of Mercy extended faculties, exercising his immediate juridical authority, he communicated faculties to hear confessions to all SSPX priests. That was really remarkable, and since the Year of Mercy ended, he did not take those away, so they they are yet extended. This is our Holy Father, he is the priest of mercy.
Well, we just—in fact I was just reading it before I came over here, I didn&#8217;t finish reading the whole letter from from the Vatican on this—but it states that our Holy Father is encouraging bishops around the world to grant faculties. It&#8217;s not a mandate, he&#8217;s not exercising his immediate juridical authority as he did with confession, but he&#8217;s encouraging the Ordinaries to extend faculties, where possible, to the SSPX to witness marriages. Now it does say in the letter, as I was just reading—I want to go back and really take it apart after this broadcast—but it did say that, because of the irregular status, the ordinary witness is a priest who is validly incardinated into the diocese; but where that is not possible, where a priest is not available, that sort of thing, he&#8217;s encouraging them to extend faculties to SSPX priests. So it&#8217;s not—it&#8217;s not like the confession, but it is extending—encouraging bishops to extend faculties. So it&#8217;s more movement, I think, in a good direction.
Now, as far as going to masses&#8230;again, because of their irregular status, you know, people should go to parishes where the priest is incardinated into the diocese. However, the Church has been, you know, bending over backward for the SSPX and those who love the traditional mass so that a permission has been given, for those who love the the Latin mass, to attend those those parishes. So, you know, it&#8217;s again a sign that we&#8217;re moving toward—and I think it will be an exciting day, I pray that that day will come soon, where we will have—will no longer have to talk about this irregular status any longer; but those who are attending SSPX masses because they love the Latin liturgy, they are not, you know, dissing Vatican Council II or anything like that&#8230; are not sinning. You know, the Church is not saying that you&#8217;re in sin if you go to those masses.
There are other things that have to be taken into account, though. It doesn&#8217;t mean you&#8217;re free to reject all of Vatican II. That&#8217;s one of the big sticking points concerning full communion with the SSPX, you know, they have to acknowledge that Vatican II is a valid ecumenical council. But I happen to know people who attend those masses from time to time because they love the traditional liturgy, they&#8217;re not available a lot of times very generously in a particular diocese, and they&#8217;re certainly not in sin.
Host: And SSPX, Society of St. Pius the 10th.
Tim: The 10th, correct.
Host: And why—I—maybe I should know this, but why Pius X? What about him is&#8230;
Tim: Yeah well, I think it was a priestly fraternity that was started in France before there was a schismatic act. It was simply a group of seminarians, later priests—I believe it was seminarians and priests back in about&#8230;if memory serves, about 1972, a number of these young seminarians and such approached Archbishop Lefebvre, who was retired at the time, and they asked him, because of the post-Vatican II craziness that was going on, with the promulgation of the Missala Vermanum, the Mass of Paul VI, as it&#8217;s called, and the abuses that were going on, these folks came to Bishop Lefebvre and said, you know, &#8220;We need you to come out of retirement and help us,&#8221; and he did.
And at the outset, because he was not an ordinary, he was a retired bishop, he did not have a diocese, he had to get permission from the local ordinary to begin the SSPX, which he was granted. At that time he was in full communion with the Church; they were just concerned. But—so St. Pius X of course was a reformer bishop who, you know, wrote wonderful documents, you know, the syllabus of errors against modernism and so many things, so it was—a pope like that was a perfect fit for them.
But what happened was, they started to go extreme, pretty early on, to the point where they ordained some priests illicitly, Pope Paul VI got involved; that was not excommunicable, but it was a grave sin. But then what ends up happening is there&#8217;s back and forth between Paul VI and the SSPX, they were suspended &#8220;a divinis,&#8221; that is, their faculties were removed, and they continued in disobedience, and this back and forth went on until Pope Paul VI died in 1978.
John Paul picked it up—and really wanted to have a reunion—he picked up the dialogue, Cardinal Ratzinger, of course, involved when he became Prefect of the CDF. But unfortunately, it took a bad turn in 1988, when the SSPX ordained four—or, Bishop Lefebvre, he ordained four bishops illicitly, and that is matter of excommunication, automatically, latae sententiae, and so that started—but the amazing thing is, I mean, you really sympathize with the SSPX and the craziness that was going on and such; but you also see in this whole thing how the Popes have reached out and continued to reach out. John Paul—he was forced, I mean, he didn&#8217;t do anything. He simply declared what Canon law already stated: that was a latae sententiae excommunication; but the dialogues immediately were started. John Paul established the Ecclesia Dei, which was a—its specific task was to be the mediator to try and get the SSPX back.
And now here we are, you know, there&#8217;s been lots of trials and failures and semi-successes and such, and now it&#8217;s Pope Francis&#8211;some might think the most unlikely candidate—is the one who really seems to be moving the ball forward like none other.
So anyway, that&#8217;s just a brief thumbnail sketch.

Is an SSPX Mass Valid for Our Sunday Obligation?

Vox Media&#8217;s series of explainer videos failed badly when it tried to use science to suggest that monogamy doesn&#8217;t really fit with human nature. We asked Dan Kuebler, Professor of Biology and Dean of the School of Natural and Applied Sciences at Franciscan University, to help us understand monogamy in a more adult way, using both scientific and moral arguments.

Vox FAILS with Monogamy “Explainer”

With &#8220;Oppenheimer&#8221; filling up the cinemas, and today being the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, we take a look back at an earlier episode we produced about the morality of dropping the atom bomb.
Can a Catholic assent to blowing up entire cities? What about when to do so will save perhaps millions of lives? Catholic Answers President Chris Check joins us as we consider again America&#8217;s use of Atomic weapons to end a long, bitter war with Japan.

(Encore) Was Dropping the Atom Bomb Moral?

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Ask Me Anything

In Mark 1, we hear about the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law. So let’s just start with that, because as Catholics, some people hear this and panic a little: wait, St. Peter, the first pope, was married?
First, we needn’t panic, because there is nothing intrinsic about priestly ministry that requires celibacy. In Catholic law, this is largely a matter of traditional discipline in the Latin Church, even if it has strong resonances with our theology of the priesthood. In any case, there’s little to no evidence, apart from this one line of scripture, that Peter had a wife in his later ministry in the Church. Many argue that Peter was, by this point already, a widower—the presence of a mother-in-law certainly suggests that there had been a wife, but if she was around, it seems odd that she would never be mentioned in the tradition or the Gospels.
I always think it’s kind of a funny story. Jesus heals this woman, and she immediately turns into the hostess, serving the disciples and Jesus. One the one hand, we might think, let the poor woman have a rest; she’s just recovered from a serious illness. On the other hand, she wants to serve, with that stereotypical grandmotherly insistence, so maybe Jesus healed her precisely because he knew she would do what she wanted to do, regardless of her state of health. Further, the immediate transition shows that she is really healed, completely. It’s not just that the virus or the fever or whatever has left her so that she can now recover over the course of hours or days; she is restored. And no doubt this is what St. Mark wants us to see from this story. Jesus isn’t offering some kind of patchwork medicine; he’s the real deal. When he heals, he heals.
But let’s also notice another theme running through the readings. St. Paul talks about how he has made himself “a slave to all,” that he might “win more.” Everything, including his own rights as an apostle, takes a back seat to his sense of mission. We can connect Paul’s sense of service with Peter’s mother-in-law’s sense of service: in both cases, what matters is not our own needs, but the good of Christ. This service is a joy. It is its own reward.
By contrast, in our first reading, Job gives a rather different perspective on service. Is life, he wonders, anything more than forced slavery or hired drudgery? Months of emptiness, nights of grief, passing through life with no real joy? Of course, he says this after he has lost everything, as he sits in sorrow, wondering why God could have taken away his health and his family and his prosperity. Surely, his friends insist, there is a reason for these things; surely Job has done something wrong. But Job knows that he has done nothing wrong. His chapters of Hebrew verse amount to a beautiful iteration of that modern phrase “it is what it is.” There can be no justice, no healing, when the world is like this—when bad things happen to good people, when death and chance and sickness make our lives into drudgery without meaning.
Not that first-century Palestine is all living in the world of Job, but there’s a real question left lingering there, in the moral universe of the Old Testament: is there any meaning in suffering? Why bother with this life, why bother with service, when it can all fall apart because of a stupid virus that puts you in bed with a fever? Why bother when it can all be taken away for no apparent reason?
If you go back and read the rest of Job, the answer that God gives is not an answer. It is a challenge: what do you know about anything? God says, in effect, you want meaning, but your questions are meaningless. What makes you think you know what justice is? What makes you think you know what suffering is? Were you there when I created the heavens and earth?
I like to think that, by pairing these readings together today, Holy Church wants us to consider Jesus’ healing, and Paul’s preaching, as a kind of response to the pain and questioning of Job. You see, Job is right: suffering can be meaningless; life can be empty servitude. But God’s answer to this is not ultimately to make it meaningful, in some superficial sense, as in “I gave you the flu so that you could learn to be a better person.” Rather, his answer is to show up, in person, and be with us in those moments, and offer to transform them into his good purposes. For Paul, the reality of Christ’s personal presence and power was enough to get through any struggle. For Peter’s mother-in-law, the reality of Christ’s presence meant that her weakness had been transformed into strength. She now had the chance to participate in something of infinite value: the announcement of God’s kingdom come among us.
Rather than worry about what’s wrong, or what’s broken, or what seems to lack meaning—rather than sitting around asking why and what and how—can we instead invite Jesus into it, and ask him to show us how he will transform it into something good? And even harder, can we have the faith, like so many of those healed people in the gospels, to believe that he will?

What’s the Point of It All?

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Is this belief about Mary and purgatory actually Catholic?

How to Explain the Catholic Faith in 30 Seconds

In my book <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/confusion-in-the-kingdom/">Confusion in the Kingdom</a> I document how lots of liberal Catholics refuse to speak frankly about sexual sin and often use ambiguous language to give the impression that sins like sodomy really aren’t so bad. But these same people often have no problem clearly denouncing sins that are not celebrated among their political tribe.
So, for example, Fr. James Martin <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1219216859007880">will say</a> that the Bible has unclear “clobber passages” against homosexuality, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10154197847717882">but then say</a> the Bible is “clear” on the complex issue of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-nation-has-a-right-to-control-its-borders">immigration</a>. Or consider this article Alice Camille wrote in 2022 titled “<a href="https://uscatholic.org/articles/202208/sometimes-hate-is-the-friendly-man-next-door/">Sometimes hate is the friendly man next door</a>”.
She talks about “Bill,” an EMT who seemed to be a stand-up guy and was about to be received into the Church. Bill then, of his own free will, sent Camille articles he wrote that she considered racist. She writes, “It seemed our ‘model’ parishioner-to-be was a card-carrying Neo-Nazi racist.”
She said Bill was uneasy about his identity and so she “urged Bill to denounce [his writings] and put them behind him. I urged him not to approach the Easter mysteries until he had expunged the way of hate from his life.” The article then says she met him years later and she recounts the experience:
<blockquote>I didn’t see or hear from Bill for five years. Then I accidentally ran into him on the street one day. He saw me first and called to me. From a safe 10 paces away, he told me he’d burned all of his hate paraphernalia: books, magazines, flags, and keepsakes. He said he’d changed. He said it was over. I wanted to believe him and promised him my continued prayers. But I was too afraid to get closer and made no attempt to contact him again.</blockquote>
Camille is also the author of an article titled “<a href="https://uscatholic.org/articles/202109/even-god-got-bored-with-the-binary/">Even God got bored with the binary.</a>” The subtitle reads: “Dualisms—whether black and white, male and female, or good and evil—are appealing, but often fail to tell the whole story. ”
And yet for Camille, there is no dualism when it comes to racism. It is evil. Period. And, even worse, racism is an unforgivable sin. Even though this man repented of his racism, he still needed to be treated like a leper.
Let’s change the story and imagine “Bill” was a transgender woman (i.e. a man claiming to be a woman), who engaged in acts of sodomy. I doubt liberal Catholics would denounce his behavior and tell him to put his past behind him (or even address him as “him”). Let’s imagine further that Bill had written articles saying it was okay to kill so-called transphobes but then repented of this hatred.
Bill would be hailed as a hero whose hatred was “of course” wrong but understandable given how traumatic “transphobes” can be. Liberal Catholics certainly wouldn’t treat transgender Bill like an unredeemable monster as they might treat racist Bill, even though a transgender person <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting">could also commit</a> an act of violence.
So, when I see a Catholic effusively praising the LGBT movement without offering even a hint of a call to repentance, I ask that person two simple questions:
<ol>
<li>Are acts of racism wicked?</li>
<li>Are acts of sodomy wicked?</li>
</ol>
They almost always refuse to answer the second question because for many of them, deep down, they don’t think sodomy is sinful. I then ask why they can quickly denounce one sinful act but not another. These same questions also work for “far right” Catholics who may see nothing wrong with racism. As a Catholic, you should be able to easily answer “yes” to both questions; if you don’t, then I question your commitment to Catholic teaching.
As Christians, we should not let our politics cloud our witness of the Gospel. Jesus said that we must repent and believe in the Gospel; that means repenting not just of the sins of “the other side” we snipe about online, but also of the sins that may be common among our own political tribe that have no place among the people of God whose citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20).

Don’t Play Favorites With Sins

Jimmy Akin delves into the complex interpretation of Jesus&#8217; words in John 6 about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. Did His followers truly understand His meaning as a literal cannibalistic act, or was there a deeper theological implication they were struggling to grasp?
Transcript:
John 6 when the followers, some of his followers, Christ&#8217;s followers walk away, not being able to accept it. I know it&#8217;s kind of played in Catholic circles, like against people that think it&#8217;s metaphorically to show the literal, that it&#8217;s literal, that look, he meant this, but is that what the followers who walked away understood? Because it almost seems like a reading that that could be, they understood it to be something like cannibalism. And that was like, oh, that&#8217;s weird and gross or something. And they can&#8217;t accept that. And then Christ doubled down on that. Or is it there? That&#8217;s not what their understanding is. They&#8217;re not misunderstanding it. They&#8217;re understanding something correctly, maybe not what so much what he&#8217;s saying, but what that would entail, what that would imply, meaning something to his divinity or something. And they&#8217;re catching that kind of like a John 10 thing with the Jews understood as divinity. Is that what they&#8217;re not accepting?
Okay.
If I understand your question correctly, the individuals here who are from the city of Capernaum, and so this is sometimes called the Caffernaitic interpretation, do initially entertain the idea that Jesus is talking about cannibalism. And they say, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?
That doesn&#8217;t mean that they had settled on that as an interpretation of what he said. They may not be sure what he means. It just sounds ridiculous to them. And so the ones who walk away, walk away because what he says sounds ridiculous. And to them, it sounds like cannibalism, but they very well may have not been sure what he meant and thought, well, maybe he means something else. But Jesus doubled down and said, no, no, no, you really got to chew my flesh and drink my blood if you want to have life. And so he, even in the face of the cannibalistic understand, and he said, no, you really got to do this.

Did the Disciples Take John 6 Literally? (Eat My Flesh)

<div>I have a Jewish friend who claims that "sabachthani" does not mean "forsaken." Can you clarify?</div><div>Language, words, and translations can be a bit tricky. To claim that sabachthani does not mean forsaken is either right or wrong, depending on context.
Sabachthani generally means to have been abandoned or left behind, but it means to have been abandoned for a purpose or reason.
When we generally think of &#8220;forsaken,&#8221; we think of an uncaring abandonment. The Aramaic word for being abandoned without care or because of being unwanted would be taatani. The Aramaic for being abandoned because of being forgotten would be nashatani.
In the context of Jesus on the cross, it is clearly a reference to being abandoned, but it does not imply that Jesus felt his Father carelessly abandoned him.
In some ancient cultures, in order to pass from boyhood to manhood, the young male would have to spend the night alone in the wilderness. Alone and in the dark, the young male might wonder, &#8220;Why did my father leave me in this place?&#8221; But the young male knows there is a purpose to being there and that his father knows what he is doing and is doing so with love.
</div>

Does ‘Sabachthani’ Really Mean Forsaken?

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<div>How can I have a relationship with Mary if praying the Rosary is not my favorite? How can I learn to enjoy it?</div><div>Praying the Rosary regularly—or even fairly regularly—is not strictly necessary to have a relationship with the Blessed Mother. By virtue of your being a baptized member of the Church, Mary is your spiritual mother (John 19:27; Rev. 12:17). So you can pray informally to the Blessed Mother, including asking for her intercessory help in various ways.
In addition, a good way to get more out of the Rosary is to focus on the respective Rosary mysteries while you’re praying the 10 Hail Mary prayers associated with each mystery. Meditate on what’s going on in the event(s) of each mystery, placing yourself as an observer or even an active participant.
In the process, also ask our Lord Jesus Christ and Our Lady to help you draw lessons/guidance from the various mysteries for your own life. If you get an inspiration while praying the Rosary to apply in your life, don’t give yourself a hard time that you’ve become “distracted.” Take it as a blessing from the Good Lord and continue meditating on a mystery, and perhaps write down the inspiration so that you don’t forget it. In addition, don’t feel bad if you linger on an inspiration while praying the Rosary, because doing so can also be a gift from God.
If you approach the Rosary in this way, no matter how frequently you pray it, I think you’ll begin to appreciate the Rosary more and profit more from praying it, because you’ll be encountering our Lord and Our Lady in a more personal and otherwise profitable way.
</div>

Relationship with the Blessed Mother without the Rosary?

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In 2024, the most popular French film was The Count of Monte Cristo—the latest of innumerable re-imaginings of the great novel written by Alexandre Dumas in 1846. It is a good thing to be reminded that not all that is popular is bad, and that &#8220;popular&#8221; can mean what appeals to the common sense of the common man.
Novels can be as important to getting to heaven as to creating blockbusters. Doubt it? Consider this line of reasoning: Getting to heaven requires practicing the virtues. (This takes for granted that they are practiced for the love of God. Otherwise, as St. Augustine says, they are just glittering vices.) Practicing the virtues means knowing what they are and knowing what the contrary vices are. Knowing these means remembering. One of the best ways to develop memory, as St. Thomas Aquinas points out, is to associate some striking mental image with whatever one wants to remember. And one of the best ways to fix striking images in the mind is by looking through the eyes of the great novelists.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a case in point: A dramatic masterpiece in its own right, it sears the mind with a damning description of the vices that oppose the four cardinal virtues, as seen in the four principal antagonists.
The Count of Monte Cristo tells of a young man, Edmond Dantès, on the cusp of natural happiness, who is destroyed by four very different men: one who is envious of his career, one who is jealous of his fiancée, a magistrate who sacrifices the duties of his office for the sake of personal interests, and a man who is too cowardly to risk harm. All of this happens in the first fifty pages. The next 1,100 follow Dantès&#8217;s imprisonment, escape, and attempt to punish his enemies.
&#8220;A story of revenge&#8221; is the summary our broad cultural awareness makes of the book, but the truth is that each villain ultimately destroys himself, and does so precisely by cultivating the exact opposite of one of the cardinal virtues. The villains are cardinals of vice, so to speak.
These villains can be analyzed one at a time, following the order of the cardinal virtues as Aquinas presents them, echoed by such interpreters as the great twentieth-century Thomist Josef Pieper: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance.
<h2>1. Danglars Against Prudence</h2>
Prudence is the form of all moral virtues, since all moral virtue requires knowledge of what is right. Fittingly, the villain who instigates the conspiracy against Edmond is the best example of &#8220;false prudence.&#8221;
Danglars proves throughout the story to be both the most formidable villain and at the same time the most stupid. The reason for this paradox is as deep as the difference between true and false prudence. True prudence is properly ordered toward all reality and the proportion that exists within reality. Ultimately, sin is the stupidest thing we can do. It is our collusion in snatching away our own happiness and sinking ourselves into everlasting misery.
Whereas prudence helps us do the good more effectively, false prudence is just a more effective way of sinning and therefore hurting ourselves. As Aquinas says, it is connected to the vice of covetousness, characterized pithily by Pieper as &#8220;an anxious senility, desperate self-preservation, overriding concern for confirmation and security.&#8221; It is a malicious ignorance that willfully sets lower goals over more excellent ones. Limiting our sight to ourselves, being as we are created for vision of God and for vision of all things in God, is exactly what hurts ourselves.
Danglars lives by lust, greed, and selfishness, unknowingly plotting his own downfall, which Dantès really only hastens. He finds himself in the end with the reward of his unchaste pursuit of self, looking at his graying reflection in a stream. Danglars sees, for the first time, what he has made himself: old and alone. He is a loveless parent in a loveless marriage, because he married and had a child solely to advance his career. He is a man with no friends because he only used relationships to further his interests. He is a man with no appreciation for beauty because he has purchased only tasteless, expensive artwork to advance his mindless acquiring of material goods. What is there for him but his poor, barren self?
<h2>2. Villefort Against Justice</h2>
The signal sinner here is the crown prosecutor, Monsieur de Villefort. He is the most pitiable character, for two reasons. In accord with the sentiment stretching from Socrates to Pieper, &#8220;the person who commits injustice should be pitied,&#8221; but the novel, moreover, presents us most intimately with the inward workings of Villefort’s mind and soul.
Villefort is an exemplar of the pathology of injustice and the way in which attempting to harm another always hurts the self. Villefort violates all three modes of being just, not giving what is due to his superiors, his equals, or his inferiors. The most crucial of his violations is his refusal to distribute justice to young Dantès.
Unlike Danglars, who in practicing false prudence distorts his understanding of reality itself, Villefort fails to recognize the value of other people in relation to himself—a failure that blinds him throughout the book. Fittingly for a man who believes that other people may have to be sacrificed to his own good, his story ends in the discovery that he is prosecuting long-lost son from a hushed-up affair. What better illustration of a man attacking his soul than a father prosecuting his son? Whereas the imprudent man cannot do anything truly good for himself, the man lacking justice can do himself only evil.
<h2>3. Caderousse Against Fortitude</h2>
Whereas Danglars cleverly though unwittingly plots his own downfall, and Villefort wounds his soul again and again, the next character to be considered, Caderousse, is the perfect example of cowardice, the opposite vice of the virtue of fortitude. He takes no active part in the arrest of Dantès, but he repeatedly fails to redress this injustice because he gives into his fear of the possible repercussions.
Caderousse&#8217;s sin—and his vice, which is the cultivation of sin—is a perfect illustration of Christ&#8217;s dictum that &#8220;he who saves his life will lose it in the world to come.&#8221; An excessive valuation of physical safety is the very thing that will endanger one most, sometimes even in the realm of physical safety. Caderousse&#8217;s death is a masterstroke of Dumas&#8217;s genius—the direct result of his previous cowardice, accomplished by the cowardly act of his murderer.
<h2>4. Fernand Against Temperance</h2>
Finally, we come to the sinner against temperance, Fernand, the man who wants Dantès&#8217;s beloved fiancée as his own wife. Fernand&#8217;s crime is not his desire for the chaste and lovely Mercédès, but instead his putting this desire ahead of all other goods, including honesty and integrity. Whereas temperance is the virtue whereby a person keeps his inner life in order, Fernand decides to create his own order.
This decision destroys him and his life. Introduced as an honest and brave man at the beginning of the book, his compromise for the sake of passion gradually eats away all of his virtues. Temperance in itself is only a means for doing and being good, but it is an indispensable one. An intemperate man is like a sieve: No matter what excellent virtues are poured into him, he has no power to contain or use them.
The author of the Book of Proverbs tells us that the &#8220;foolishness of a man perverteth his own way.&#8221; There are no more vivid, engrossing, and powerful illustrations of this saying than the careers of the villains in The Count of Monte Cristo.