Came across an interesting article at the website for Crisis Magazine, a lay Catholic publication, by a guy named John Zmirak, whom I've never heard of but seems pretty insightful.
His argument: the theological virtue of love (or more clearly charity) cannot be properly understood or properly practiced without a proper understanding and practice of the "merely natural" virtues of justice (moral righteousness), temperance (moderation, avoidance of excess), fortitude (courage), and prudence (smart thinking).
Without the clear understanding and proper practice of those virtues, we cannot fulfill Christ's commandment, that we love one another as He loved us. For Jesus Himself was a model not only of the theological virtues (faith, hope and love), but of those four natural virtues as well.
The Christian message of Love, Zmirak writes, is not that only our conception of "love" by itself is sufficient without anything else to place it in context.
The example upon which he draws is indeed Benedict's comments regarding the abuse scandals, when he said:
"Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. In one word we have to re-learn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues."
Love without respect for justice is not really love, but a corruption of it. In modern popular culture, there are many conceptions and practices of "love" that do not include justice, or temperance, or courage, or prudence. They may involve strong emotional attachments and warm-fuzzies, but a strong emotional attachment and warm-fuzzies are not a foundation for a loving relationship in the Christian sense.
Some may argue that this makes it appear that God's Love is not enough, that we devalue God's Love by saying that it needs other virtues to make it work.
But I would say it is precisely by practicing these simple, ordinary human virtues that we place the value in Love that it truly deserves. Without these ordinary virtues, we strip Love of its identity. Love becomes merely an undiscerning affirmation of everyone, even those who need to be called to conversion, and everything, even the most heinous crimes. Love is challenging. As Zmirak put it:
Grace builds on nature, but it cannot simply replace it. If we're unjust, rash, intemperate or irresponsible, it won't simply cripple our attempts to practice faith, hope, and charity -- it might actually render them evil.
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