with Dr Anna Abram, Heythrop College, University of London 

     The 11^th October 2006 the Augustinians of the Assumption opened their second year of Conferences on Spirituality which is entitled “A Journey to Freedom”.

     The fist conference “Take a risk: You don’t need to be brave to be courageous!” was hosted by Anna Abram who is a lecturer in Christian Ethics at Heythrop College, University of London. She is also a Sub-Dean of Research Students, and Programme Convenor of MA in Christian Ethics at the same College.

      Born in Poland Anna completed her first degree in theology with special focus on moral theology at Cardinal Wyszynsky University in Warsaw (1992) and then received her MTh (1994) and PhD (2001) from Heythrop College. Her doctoral dissertation was an interdisciplinary study of moral development from the perspective of developmental psychology and virtue ethics.

 

      Dr Anna Abram presented to us a Christian model of risk-taking. The session started with a reflection on the contemporary/common views of courage (Hollywood-style heroism and military victories and it was aided by visual displays of courage in painting.)

     Our speaker explored the concept of ‘fear’ as the essential concept to the understanding of courage – courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.  To be courageous is to embrace fear and endure suffering because there is something greater to be achieved.  She also presented courage as a reality that addresses threat and resistance.

      After that Dr Anna Abram explored the concept of ‘strength’.  In her views courage is not a kind of strength and cunning which enables to escape desperate situations and ‘win the day’.  It is a kind of strength that allows one to feel vulnerable. 

     We were referred to the scholarly writings on courage, especially in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.  Aquinas suggests that courage is the precondition of all morality and virtue; it has to do with sustaining the course of activity and is connected with perseverance and patience; it is the full maturation of will.  Courage is a virtue.  Its opposites are two vices: cowardice (vice of deficiency) and foolhardiness or rashness (vice of excess). 

     Dr Abram suggested viewing courage as love that is ready to risk, sometimes heroically, other times, reasonably.  The inability to take risk is the inability to live.  Those bent on survival do not survive.  The Gospel tells us that we must ‘lose our lives in order to save them’.  Courage is the characteristic of a healthy and creative personality and culture.  (We sometimes have to blow the whistle).

    Finally, the following questions were posed:  ‘What is the model of courage that Christ offers us?’  ‘How does this model inform our own vision of the moral life?’ –without such a vision it is impossible to be courageous.  Do we consider moral heroes/Christian saints such as St Thomas More and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as courageous?  If so, why?  Some answers were proposed.

The full text of the conference will be available soon on our website.