Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/412

ALUMNUS straint not differing in kind from other natural impulses. At best, even granting his evolutionary premises, he has only presented us with the genesis of conscience. He has not revealed the nature or source of its peculiar imperative. The fact that I know how conscience was evolved from lower instincts may be a reason, but is not a motive for obeying it. Lastly, the solution of the difficulty arising from the conflict between egoism and altruism is deferred to a future ideal state in which egoism, though transfigured, will be supreme. For the present we must be content to compromise, as best we may on a relative morality. Spencer's own judgment of his system may be accepted. "The doctrine of evolution", he says "has not furnished guidance to the extent I had hoped … some such result might have been foreseen."

The Catholic teaching on love of others is summed up in the precept of Christ: Love they neighbour as thyself. The love due to oneself is the exemplar of the love due to others, though not the measure of it. Disinterested love of others, or the love of benevolence, the outward expression of which is beneficence, implies a union proximately based on likeness. All men are alike in this that they partake of the same rational nature made to the image and likeness of their Creator; have by nature the same social aptitudes, inclinations, and needs; and are destined for the same final union with God by which the likeness received through creation is perfected. By supernatural grace the natural likeness of man to man is exalted, changing fellowship into brotherhood. All likeness of whatever grade is founded ultimately in likeness with God. Love, therefore, whether of oneself or of others is in its last analysis love of God, by partaking of Whose perfections we become lovable.

The conflict between self-love and benevolence, which is inevitable in all systems that determine the morality of an act by its relations to an agreeable psychological state, need not arise in systems that make the ethical norm of action objective; the ethically desirable and the psychologically desirable are not identified. Catholic ethics does not deny that happiness of some kind is the necessary consequence of good conduct, or that the desire to attain or confer it is lawful; but it does deny that the pursuit of it for its own sake is the ultimate aim of conduct. Apparent conflict, however, may arise between duties to self and to others, when only mediately known. But these arise from defective limitations of the range of one or other duty, or of both. They do not inhere in the duties themselves. The general rules for determining the prevailing duty given by Catholic moralists are these: (1) Absolutely speaking there is no obligation to love others more than self. (2) There is an obligation which admits of no exceptions, to love self more than others, whenever beneficence to others entails moral guilt. (3) In certain circumstances it may be obligatory, or at least a counsel of perfection, to love others more than self. Apart from cases in which one's profession or state of life, or justice imposes duties, these circumstances are determined by comparing the relative needs of self and others. (4) These needs may be spiritual or temporal; the need of the community or of the individual; the need of one in extreme, serious or ordinary want; the need of those who are near to us by natural or social ties, and of those whose claims are only union in a common humanity. The first class in each group has precedence over the second.

Catholic ethics reconciles self-love and benevolence by subordinating both to the supreme purpose of creation and the providential ends of the Creator. It teaches that acts of self-love may have a moral quality; that sacrifice of self for the good of others may sometimes be a duty, and when not a duty, may oftentimes be an act of virtue. It distinguishes between precept and counsel. The Positivist can only give counsel, and in his effort by emphasis and appeal to sentiment to make it imperative, he destroys all ethical proportion. Because the Catholic doctrine does not confound moral obligations with the perfection of moral goodness it is often charged with laxity by those whose teaching undermines all moral obligation.

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Alumnus (from Lat. alo, "to nurse", or "feed") signifies in ecclesiastical usage, a student preparing for the sacred ministry in a seminary. Originally the word meant a child adopted with certain restricted privileges, or a foster-child. Since the Council of Trent, however, the word has become equivalent to a seminarian, and as such is often applied to the students of the ecclesiastical colleges in Rome. The Council of Trent (sess. xxiii, ch. 18, de Ref.) required bishops to establish institutions for the education of students for the priesthood. Formerly, church candidates had been educated in the houses of priests, in monasteries, or in the public universities. According to the Council, such alumni, among other qualifications, should be a least twelve years of age and able to read and write, and their disposition should be such as to give hope that they would adorn perpetually the sacred ministry. Children of the poor were to be especially favoured. Besides philosophy, theology, scripture, and canon law, they were to study rites and ceremonies, sacred eloquence and plain chant. The bishop was to see that the students heard Mass daily, confessed monthly, and communicated as often as advisable. On festival days they were to take part in the cathedral services. The bishop was also exhorted to visit these students frequently, to watch over their progress in learning and piety, and to remove hindrances to their advancement. In 1896, the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars laid down rules for the guidance of bishops in regard to alumni who attend public universities, requiring especially that they do not associate too familiarly with the other students, and that they be gathered frequently for spiritual conferences and for philosophical, theological, and historical discussions. (See .)

Author:William Henry Windsor Fanning.

Alunno, (real name Niccolò di Liberatore), a notable Umbrian painter in distemper, born c. 1430, at Foligno; died 1502. He was the son of a painter and a pupil of Bartolommeo di Tommaso. His master's assistant was Bennozo Gozzoli, the pupil of Fra Angelico. The simple Umbrian feeling in his work was somehow modified by this Florentine influence. His earliest known example (dated 1458) is in the Franciscan Church of La Diruta, near Perugia. He painted banners for religious processions, as well as altarpieces and other pictures, died a rich man, and is supposed by Mariotti to have been the master of Perugino, Pinturicchio, and Andrea di Luigi. Some works ascribed to him are thought to be by another, and contemporary, Alunno, called Desiderato. A "Madonna Enthroned" is in the Brera Gallery in Milan, and there are altarpieces at Perugia, in the Castle at San Severino, at Gualdo