CURIOSITY

Nathaniel Peters writes, “Latin Christians from Tertullian through Bossuet in the seventeenth century recognized curiosity as a disordered appetite for knowledge that we do not have or need to know. This they distinguished from studiousness, an eager and rightly ordered pursuit of the truth.

This may seem like splitting hairs, but we see it all the time when on the Internet or even as we wait to pay for our groceries in the supermarket. The headlines we see appeal to our propensity to gossip, lust, and anger. They call us to look at beautiful bodies, read the juicy news of the downfall of others, and fuel our rage at the triumph of our political enemies. But the handmaiden to all these sins is that small desire to know more when we have no good reason for knowing it. Our study of our faith and the information proper to our vocations has a gathering effect. They concentrate the mind and, with effort, create clarity. Curiosity, by contrast, scatters and produces noise, not fruit.”

“It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” Jesus