Pages

08 October 2011

Vows for doctors and Immortal blindness

To help the students - or rather 'drive' the students - to read, study and reflect something and gain something out of their three years of study of Philosophy, the staff this year changed the methodology of the final B.Ph. paper. Rather than a research work, we adopted a reflective study mode. The students were given a set of twelve themes, two from each of the six treatises, at the beginning of the year. They were supposed to read, reflect and write the answer to those 12 questions, BY THEMSELVES, and submit them by the end of the semester. Next semester they are to summarise a book, just one book and apply these 12 themes to that book. That was the approach. A couple of days ago the Brothers submitted their themes. Most them, mind you 'most of them', merely got their neighbour's answer and copied it. And where did the neighbour get it from, of course, his neighbour. There were just a handful of them really working on the themes during the semester, in spite of repeated reminders and instructions from the Principal. The net result is evident. I now have some samples, just a couple of them, from the first four sets of papers I went through, today...

Here's one Brother, who copied another's example of a Priest's choice of life. He merely changes the word 'Priest' in his paper. Here's how the example begins:
For example, I have chosen to become a doctor and I should accept the life of doctor like poverty, chastity and obedience. (emphasis added)
Wow! What would become of the world, if all doctors begin to live the vows!!

From the same Brother's answer sheet, here's another. This time he is speaking of evil and 'trying' to exalt God - that's what the question was about - explaining reasons how and why God can be exalted in spite of the existence of evil.
Blindness is a physical evil, it can exalt God. If there is no blindness for beings then we would be immortal which God alone can be.
I never really could understand what blindness has got to do with immortality, until I read the next lot of answers. Another Brother had the same statement, albeit, the evil therein was 'death'. It then dawned on me that my good friend had merely replaced 'death' with 'blindness'!

There surely will be more along the way, but none better than these I believe... anyway, hoping against hope!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...