The petrification of James Holmes

Dear Editor,

No one seems to be able to figure out what leads to one human being becoming a mass-murderer. The answer can be found in both pagan and Christian philosophical writings of the past.

Socrates, for example, says "Know thyself." The Christian Scholastics come along in the Middle Ages and point out that we human beings are a composite of substance and accidents, body and soul, animal and spirit; further, we are always becoming from potency to act, from act to potency, which is determined by our God-given "free will."

In the latter 20th century, Jacques Maritain, a follower of St. Thomas Aquinas, simplifies the previous metaphysical truisms by explaining what it means to be a composite human being: "Our individuality (which is disposable) comes from our accents (bodily animal parts); on the other hand "our person, which ennobles the body (and is indeposable) comes from our soul, which is our substance."

And so, modern society, with its emphasis on "stove-pipe" education: math and science to the neglect of the humanities, art and music, not to mention the disparaging of our Judeo-Christian traditions, and, finally, the entertainment field with its emphasis on violence and vice, whose ultimate effect is to freeze or petrify the person, pushing it into the background, allowing the individual, the accents, the animal part of the human composite to become dominant; once this petrification of the person part of our human composite is accomplished, what is left is nothing but an irrational animal.

This, a James Holmes is born, as well as the mass murderers of the past, including Hitler and Stalin.

Sincerely,

James G. McHale,

McCook, Nebraska