Josef Pieper… emphasizes that the prudent person must avoid inordinate confidence and yet cultivate a supple reli-ability. Docility, he says, “is the kind of openmindedness which recognizes the true variety of things and situations to be experienced as does not cage itself in any presumption of deceptive knowledge.” And shrewdness is steadiness “when confronted with a sudden event,” nimbleness “in response to new situations.”
Do not these describe the qualities of a Christian who doesn’t lose faith even while being led to the lions? Note that Ignatius is not counseling apathy, or Stoic resignation. … Martyrs are clever and creative, but they do not coldly calculate the most advantageous outcome. In this light, the activity of prudence, as personally ennobling, can hardly be confused with modern social-scientific discussions of risk management, precautionary reasoning, and prediction.
The functionally amoral modern concept of prudence is essentially a fragmentation, or a disintegration, of the classical concept, breaking up elements of an organic whole. The components of prudence that Saint Thomas identified (eight of them, drawing on Aristotle, Cicero, Macrobius, and others) tune judgment so that the agent can align his actions with reality. Isolating or overemphasizing any one of these removes it from the context of virtue.