Theologian Juan Luis Lorda publishes "Virtues. Human and Christian experiences".
The author analyzes the main habits that build the personality, the new Christian virtues, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
PHOTO: Courtesy
Virtues. Human and Christian experiences is the new book by Juan Luis Lorda, professor of the School of Theology at the University of Navarra. In Issue, the author analyzes the main habits that build the personality: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, "considered by Christianity as keys to human perfection," he says.
It also focuses on the new Christian virtues -humility, the capacity to forgive, poverty, chastity and obedience-, the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The last chapter is dedicated to the Beatitudes.
"The good person is a treasure, a rest, a triumph for humanity. But, really, can it be improved? Experience says yes, although it is not easy, because we have deep-rooted limits and defects. The search for improvement places us before the history of humanism, classical wisdom and virtue as a positive habit. It pushes us to knowledge and to control our impulses, to submit them to the rule of reason," he explains.
Mastering inner instincts and impulses
When we speak of humanism," Professor Lorda points out, "we are speaking, above all, of the human way of living. A way that is not given to us whole and complete by birth, but as a seed. We have the facility to do it by nature, but each one has to develop it with exercise staff. With exercise, one learns to live as a person, as a human being; as a being who thinks and decides personally; as a being who learns to dominate his instincts and inner impulses".
Juan Luis Lorda Iñarra is a priest, industrial engineer and Doctor of Theology. He is Professor of Dogmatic Theology and professor at high school of Anthropology and Ethics.
Among his latest books are: Para una idea cristiana del hombre ( 2009), Para ser cristiano ( 2009), Humanismo. Los bienes invisibles ( 2009), Humanismo II. Tasks of the Spirit (2010), The Sign of the Cross (2010) and Priestly Celibacy. Spirituality, discipline and training of vocations to the priesthood (2010) and Aphorisms (2013).
In addition, Professor Lorda collaborates in religious publications, in cultural magazines, in the daily press and in the program Alborada of Radio Nacional.