All right.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Grant us grace a merciful God to desire ardently all that is pleasing to thee,

to examine it prudently, to acknowledge it truthfully,

and to accomplish it perfectly,

for the praise and glory of thy name,

who live and reign forever and ever.

Amen.

Our lady's seat of wisdom.

St. Thomas Aquinas. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

There is abroad a notion that it is bad to be dependent or over-dependent or hyper-dependent. So you could, I suppose, perhaps trace this genealogically through different enlightenment

philosophers. Specifically, Emmanuel Kant would be a person on whom you might settle for some

consideration as to how men and women are dignified to the extent

that they operate by reason and by reason's light, and that that reasonable act is perhaps

best or most expressive of human dignity to the extent that it is unconditioned or untrammeled

by pressures of whatever sort, whether that be the contribution of passion or

of culture or of custom or of dot, dot, dot, et cetera, fill in the blank.

So we have this kind of notion before our minds that it's bad to be dependent.

But this has a more broad kind of cultural cachet.

So you can think about maybe various types along the way in human maturation,

whom we would consider pitiable or silly by virtue of the fact that they are overly dependent.

...