“What? Curiosity is a sin”? I waited quietly. “Nonsense,” says my dear wife. “I won’t bother reading any more of this blather.” My response: “Well, don’t you wonder why the op-ed guy claims it is?” Privately, I lamented her reigned-in curiosity. But my curiosity was piqued, so I decided to explore the matter.

Caution: curiosity killed the cat. And that despite a cat’s having nine lives. Curious and curiouser! But did I really want to keep company with the curious? Back in the day, I’d hoped to tutor the youth in “the permanent things.” Their minds were elsewhere. An example: In the College Gazette, bubbly interviews of the current Big Man on Campus often began with the question “Boxers or briefs”?

Not to mention the bright eyed couple across the street from us. Call them the Smiths. Ever alert, they appear on their front lawn, or even curbside, at the slightest hint of neighborhood mischief. Are they snoopy or what? (Don’t ask me how I know about their antics.) Okay, maybe it’s only idle curiosity.

Given that he wrote some eight million words, it’s no surprise that Thomas Aquinas had some sobering things to say about curiosity. He locates it in his discussion of the cardinal virtue of temperance, that is, the strength of character that helps us to act reasonably with regard to our desires. So what’s the relevant desire? Citing Aristotle, Thomas reminds us that all of us have a natural desire for knowledge. Problems arise, however, when our desire to know becomes disordered. There are plenty of particulars. Sometimes curiosity leads to pride. Enter the tiresome Mr. Smarty Pants. Often curiosity distracts us from our obligations. St. Jerome bluntly remarks, “We see priests forsaking the gospels and the prophets, reading stage plays.” On occasion curiosity leads to superstition, as in “let consult the cards.” At other times, curiosity is content with the superficial; an empty curiosity doesn’t take us very far. In contrast, an unbridled curiosity can take us dangerously out of our depth.

But there’s a whole other set of problems. Curiosity often has a kind of intellectual knowledge as its object. But just as often curiosity has what Thomas calls a knowledge of “sensible things” as its object. The worst case? Curiosity about “sensible things” can stem from what St. Augustine and Thomas term “concupiscence of the eyes,” that is, the look of lust. It’s a leering look that turns a person into a sexual commodity. Pornographers bank on it. Prurience aside, though, the attraction of the senses is an everyday and distinctive distraction. Augustine, in his Confessions, offers a personal example: “I go no more to see a dog coursing a hare in the circus; but in the open country, if I happen to be passing, that coursing haply will distract me from some weighty thought…and unless Thou, having made me see my weakness, didst speedily admonish me, I become foolishly dull.” (Ah, yes, do we recognize, reading this passage, the folly of allowing students to bring their smart phones to school?) Surely, surfing the web is far more distracting than watching a dog chase a rabbit.

In canvassing the hazards of curiosity, St. Thomas would have a question for me about my tattle tale report on the Smiths. Why am I so curious about their vigilance? If they are simply doing their part for Operation Neighborhood Watch, they are showing a healthy curiosity. And if I am, say, videotaping them for the purpose of snarky detraction, isn’t there a beam in my own eye? Am I perhaps morbidly curious?

But allow me, gentle reader, to close on a positive note. Yes, for Thomas, curiosity tends to undermine the virtue of temperance. But he identifies studiousness, the opposite of curiosity, as a part of temperance. It is studiousness that orders and channels the pursuit of knowledge. It counters our lack of balance and moderation. And, when necessary, studiousness overcomes intellectual inertia. Studiousness, thankfully, isn’t just for Study Hall. So let us now praise lifelong students!