Prudence: Disappearing Among Our Clergy?

The four cardinal virtues are prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. St. Thomas Aquinas calls prudence the "mother" of the others. The word cardinal comes from a Latin root meaning "hinge" and of the four hinge virtues, prudence, in fact, has pre-eminence. As Josef Pieper says in his book, The Four Cardinal Virtues, "[N]one but the prudent man can be just, brave, and temperate, and the good man is good in so far as he is prudent." Pieper goes on to say that proclaiming prudence as the first among the moral virtues is met with a sense of "incomprehension and uneasiness." Modern man is more likely to attribute prudence to the man who runs away to fight another day, than to the man who, seeing an immediate danger stands his ground. Modern man would rather tell a "prudent" lie than face an uncomfortable truth. As Pieper puts it: