Literally (xaracter) means stamp, badge or impression. In theology it is the mysterious sign that is engraved in the soul upon receiving the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders. Character, indelible in those who have received it, makes these three sacraments of Christian life unrepeatable. The others, by not printing character, can be repeated whenever desired according to ecclesial norms.
In psychology it is the way of being and reacting of each person before the outside world and before others. It is a concept handled profusely by differential and special psychology.
The term associated with “temperament” and “personality” is used. The term “temperament” refers more to the physiological traits (nervous, endocrine) that condition the somatic structure of the personality. The term “character” is reserved more for actions and reactions, that is, for behavior. “Personality” implies the globalized synthesis between the two: between being and acting, between temperament and character. However, the terminologies vary in each author or in each psychological school.
The educator needs to know the way of being of his students, because the personal treatment with them is very conditioned by the success in the treatment, and it is not possible to achieve it without sufficient knowledge of each person and without the appropriate adjustment to the character.
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
Character is a particular effect impressed on the soul by baptism, confirmation, and holy orders. Although it is also a grace, it must be distinguished from the proper and true effect of sacramental grace (res). It is indelible: that is why the three sacraments that imprint it cannot be repeated (DS 1609). This term is used by the Council of Trent in the sense that the word has in Greek: it is derived from the verb chara550 (cut), and therefore means the mark left by an engraver when fixing an image or an inscription on metal or on the stone. In Rev 7 3; 9,4 speaks of the sign of the tau (cross) imprinted on the forehead of the elect. In 2 Cor 1,21-22; Eph 1,13; 4.30 speaks of the seal printed by the Spirit. The idea is that of an irrevocable consecration that cannot be lost, but that also implies a resemblance to Jesus, the Anointed One par excellence. The term charakter was introduced into theological terminology by Saint Augustine. Before him the Latin Fathers spoke of signaculum, and the Greeks of sphraghis.
But Augustine also contributed to the first clarification of the essence of character in the controversy with the Donatists. These, following the constant tradition of the Church, recognized that baptism, confirmation and ordination, once validly received, could not and should not be repeated; but they denied that they could be validly administered or received within the schism or heresy. According to them, baptism was null if the baptized did not receive the grace of the Holy Spirit (and those who are separated from the Church are separated from the Holy Spirit). Augustine was then forced to explain why baptism (as well as the other two sacraments), once conferred according to the ecclesial rite, can never be repeated, and is valid even if it does not produce grace. There is a baptismal effect that occurs indistinctly in everyone and regardless of grace (which is only received by the “good”). This effect is permanent and indelible. For this reason, those who have validly received baptism retain their character, and the sacrament cannot be administered to them again. Baptism, confirmation and holy orders leave in the soul the imprint of the sacramental character.
Agustín compares it with the mint of coins or with the tattoo with which soldiers and animals are marked.
In later theology, the process of interiorization of character was accentuated, insisting on the fact that it is rather res than sacramentum; but without forgetting that it is a sign, its spirituality was emphasized more. Santo Tomás affirmed that the character belongs to the category of the quality, and ~ in particular to the species of the power; in effect, the essential end of character is not to dispose the soul for grace, but to make man capable of fulfilling the acts of worship. The sacraments have been instituted not only to cure man of sin, but also to consecrate him to the worship of the Christian religion; and this consecration is accomplished through character. Consequently, it has the purpose of making man capable of administering and receiving the sacraments: it is an effective participation in the priesthood of Jesus Christ.
Through character the faithful are clothed with a priesthood, which derives from and participates in that of Christ.
The character “intrinsically modifies the soul (Saint Thomas says that it modifies the powers and faculties of the soul, and in particular the intellective faculty) that in some way is modified by it, in the likeness of Jesus the High Priest, just as the coin is marked by legal tender, Thus, character is a physiognomy of the soul; it is the reflection in the soul of the priesthood of Christ.
Many modern theologians, collecting and developing the reflections of Saint Thomas, consider character, in its essence, as a real relationship with the Church, determined in various ways by baptism, confirmation and holy orders.
This relationship consists of belonging to the Church; but just as the Church is a visible and hierarchical community of salvation and worship, character is a particular delegation for a visible activity of sanctification and worship; it is what makes the salvific sacramental act perennially visible, through which the subject becomes a member of the people of God. In a certain sense, it constitutes and hierarchically structures the people itself.
In her sacramental activity the Church describes herself, builds herself and structures herself: the sacraments are the activity with which the Church generates her children and is in turn generated by them. But if one does not want to reduce the Church to a purely spiritual dimension and if one wants to save her visibility, in the economy of the incarnation one must point out, among the sacramental effects, something that, constituting and structuring a visible Church, is nonetheless visible. This cannot be attributed to (visible) grace, or to (subjective) virtues. It is rather the character, which constitutes the Church as a visible, cult and hierarchical society. The salvific act with which God reunites and constitutes the Church is definitive and irrevocable, and does not depend on the will of men. If character is the visible extension of the salvific sacramental gesture with which the Church is engendered, if it is what puts man in a determined relationship with the Church, structuring her as a visible community of worship, then character is something definitive and irrevocable. the individual may renounce his Christian commitment, the fundamental relationship he has with the Church, in which he was placed by baptism, confirmation and holy orders, will remain forever.
Finally, it must be said that some theologians speak, not without some foundation, of a “quasi-character” imprinted by the sacrament of marriage.
R. Gerardi
Bibl.: Character, in ERC, 11, 435-438: E, Ruffini, Character as concrete visibility of the sacrament in relation to the Church, in Concilium 31 (1968) III-124; J Galot, Le nature du character sacramental, Paris 1965.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary
The technical meaning that the term character has in theological controversy is very different from what is attributed to it in the language of common life, as well as in the literature dedicated to psychology, ethics and education. The interest surrounding the conception of character in these latter branches of speculation has been steadily increasing for the last hundred years.
Contents
- 1 Psychology and Character
- 2 The Four Temperaments
- 3 Character Types
- 4 Ethology
- 5 Ethics and Character
- 6 Education and Character
Psychology and Character
The term character has different nuances in different contexts. In general, we can say that character is the expression of the personality of a human being, and that it manifests itself in his behavior. In this sense every man has a character. At the same time, animals have no character, only human beings: it implies rationality. But in addition to this use, the term is also used in a stricter sense, as when we speak of a man “of character.” In this connotation character implies a certain unity of qualities with a recognizable degree of constancy or fixity in the mode of action. It is the task of psychology to analyze the constitutive elements of character, to trace the laws of its growth, to distinguish the main agencies that contribute to the formation of different types of character, and to classify said types. If anything approaching a science of character is to be built, it must be a special psychology. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, French psychologists gave us a great deal of insightful observation on the subject of character. The main of them were: MM. Azam, Pérez, Ribot, Paulhan, Fouilloe, and Malapert. Still these contributions do not constitute a science.
The behavior of each human being, in any phase of their existence, is the result of a complex set of elements. The manner in which he perceives or receives certain present impressions, the kinds of thoughts they arouse, the particular feelings with which they are associated in his mind, and the special volitions to which they give rise are to some extent peculiar to himself, to despite the common nature in which he participates with other men. Taken together they are said to constitute or, more accurately perhaps, reveal its character.
At any stage of mature life a man’s character is the result of two distinct classes of factors: the original or inherited elements of his being and those which he himself has acquired. On the one hand, each human being begins with a certain nature or disposition—a natural endowment of capacities for knowledge and feeling and tendencies toward volitions and action—which varies with each individual. This disposition depends in part on the structure of the bodily organism and especially on the nervous system which he has inherited; partly, perhaps, also in his soul that has been created. It forms his individuality at the beginning of life; and includes susceptibilities to respond to external influences, and potentialities for development in various ways that differ with each human being. A fundamental mistake in English psychology from Locke to John Stuart Mill was to ignore or underestimate this diversity of native aptitude in different individuals.
Much of the treatment…