The Mystery Horn

The miracle of the loaves

2011-08-12T18:38:00.000-07:00

“I once heard a homilist give what he said was the real meaning of the story: the people in the crowd took out food they were hiding under their cloaks and shared it. Jesus’ preaching inspired the melting of selfishness, and this was the true miracle according to this preacher.” Marcellino D’Ambrosio, Ph.D in The Miracle of the Loaves

Yes. That is the usual interpretation of the priests of the liberashun zeology which is another way of describing those who suffer from Bolshevik Retardation Syndrome. If we all share our bread then we will all have more, twelve baskets more than what we started with. This moment of obscurity brought to you by the same school that got you “if we all pay more taxes we shall be a more affluent society.”

Now, I belong to the superstitious medieval ignoramus part of the Church. You can recognize us in the pews, we are the ones rolling our eyes like Linda Blair in The Exorcist every time father pulls a doozy like that.
I am proud to confess that I have read Karl Marx and I find it supremely boring and wrong. To use Bearded Chuck’s own words: “this matter of the surviving meta-historical values in our societies must be explained, we must explain its influence or else Dialectic Materialism is toast!” A toast! I drink to that.
The miracle did not materialize when the Soviet Commissars forced everyone in the USSR to share his/her lunch. Obviously only Jesus could pull one like that, with no tanks and no KGB. But I digress…

I say that calling Phillip (the practical, educated man among the twelve) and asking him to fix lunch about 8,500 miles and 2,000 years time from the nearest Pizzeria Uno was the way Jesus confronted his body of bishops with the reality of 5,000+ empty bellies. The whole committee of problem solvers could do nothing. To save the day comes a little boy with a few fishes and a few barley loaves, the product of being up early to grind some barley and go fishing (otherwise known to those Neanderthals as individual initiative, work, and dedication–obviously he did not know about Section 8 and the Food Stamps Program, otherwise he would have been taking a nappy.)

So Jesus takes the meager contribution (presumably after giving the boy one or two copper coins for his mom) and starts multiplying bread like nobody’s business. The greatest thing since the chariot (slice bread was a few centuries in the future.)

In the end the 5,000+ hungry travelers were fed and (to rub it in) Jesus sends the bishops on doggy-bag duty and they come back each with a mean basket full of leftovers. Jesus did not want anything to go to “waist” that is He did not want the people to hide it under their cloaks one more time… oh.. let me read that again. It is “waste” you dummy! What a maroon! Of course!

But… that would indicate we have a surplus! Where did the extra munchies come from? I am sure you have to read a lot of Albert Nolan and Leonardo Boff to make this thing square! Look at that! This Jesus must have been somethin’! Where did he get all that chow?

Ah… he must have had some divine powers to make things appear from nothing, like evolutionists make DNA appear from lighting hitting a can of Campbell soup, or Soviet courts make witnesses materialize in the docket declaring they saw their mothers teaching other babushkas that Stalin does not exist.

Like I told you before, I am a complete ignoramus and I live in the mountains. But even here we would be astonished if a regular Billy Bob pulls one catfish sandwich out of his empty raccoon skin hat. Should it ever happen I’m sure we can hit him hard with that old dusty volume of Das Kapital. That will teach him to fake miraculls!

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

Catholic Church is Booming!

2011-07-26T14:18:00.001-07:00

Bill Donohue

All we ever hear from the wild-eyed critics of the Catholic Church, including the dissidents within, is that the Church had better “get with it” and change its teachings on abortion, homosexuality and women’s ordination. Yet it is precisely those religious institutions that are the most liberal on these issues—the mainline Protestant denominations—that are collapsing. Not so the Catholic Church. Indeed, its numbers are going north while the mainline denominations are going south.

The latest findings by the “Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership” project, a collaborative effort with Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, are illuminating. In the last 40 years, the Catholic population has increased by 75 percent; it has grown by 50 percent since 1990. More important, Catholic attendance at Mass is up 15 percent since 2000. And in the last five years, contributions have increased by 14 percent. It is also important to note that there has been a 40 percent increase in Latinos in the Church over the past five years.
Shedding more light on the statistics is a study released a few months ago by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion. Its “Landscape Survey” found that of those Catholics who have left the Church, roughly half became unaffiliated while the other half became Protestant. Regarding the latter half, only 23 percent did so because of the Church’s teachings on abortion and homosexuality; only 16 percent left because of the way women are treated. Importantly, two-thirds of these Catholics elected to join a Protestant evangelical church.
In other words, disaffected Catholics who left for another religion opted to join a more conservative church. That they did not run down the block in search of a mainline denomination—one that entertains the liberal agenda on issues governing sexuality and women—is telling.

It’s time some people took a hard look at the data and made some hard choices. This is great news for the Catholic Church.

Mary in the Old Testament

2011-07-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

The Bible relates the story of the Virgin Mary in both the Old and the New Testament. In the Old Testament we read about Our Blessed Mother in the prophecies and prophetic models used by God to teach us about her qualities.

Genesis 3, 15 — I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.

In Genesis 3, 15 we find the first prophecy about Mary. She is the one who will inflict a mortal wound on the head of the original serpent. When the Hebrew scholars of ancient times translated this verse into the Greek language, they used the word gunai (woman, lady). She is the one who is going to bring the divine punishment upon the father of the "brood of vipers" (Matthew 12, 34) those whom Jesus refers to as "sons of your father, the Devil" (John 8, 44). In this small verse we find the first sign of the Gospel's promise. The seed of the woman is also the seed of Abraham, the father of all the faithful. That seed is Christ, who comes to the world through Mary. This is explained by Saint Paul in Galatians 3, 16: "Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant. It does not say, 'And to descendants,' as referring to many, but as referring to one, 'And to your descendant,' who is Christ."

The enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed or progeny of the original serpent continues until the time of the end as it is shown in Saint John's vision of the Apocalypse, in Revelation 11, 19 to 12, 6.

Isaiah 7, 10-14 — Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

God reiterates that He will bring a Messiah revealing for the first time that he will be the son of a young maiden: "the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel." The word used here for virgin is almah (a maiden or young woman). The name Immanuel means "God with us". Isaiah reveals more about this son of the virgin.

Isaiah 11, 1-5 — But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, A spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the LORD, and his delight shall be the fear of the LORD. Not by appearance shall he judge, nor by hearsay shall he decide. But he shall judge the poor with justice, and decide aright for the land's afflicted. He shall strike the ruthless with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. Justice shall be the band around his waist, and faithfulness a belt upon his hips.

This prophecy confirms that a maiden from the tribe of Judah, and from the family of David will give birth to the promised Messiah. The Jesse mentioned here is the father of King David, who is from the tribe of Judah. Early in history, Jacob had prophesied that the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49, 10). Here Isaiah begins to reveal the role of the mother of the Messiah. In the New Testament, the final connection is made when we read how it was fulfilled in the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew 1, 18-25 — Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means "God is with us."

A contemporary of Isaiah also mentions the mother of the Messiah:

Micah 5, 1-2 — But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah too small to be among the clans of Judah, From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; Whose origin is from of old, from ancient times. Therefore the Lord will give them up, until the time when she who is to give birth has borne, and the rest of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel.

Also the prophet Jeremiah seems to mention the mother of the Messiah in this mysterious verse:

Jeremiah 31, 22 — How long will you continue to stray, rebellious daughter? The LORD has created a new thing upon the earth: the woman must encompass the man with devotion.

Here the "rebellious daughter" is Israel. The phrase seems to suggest that God is about to do something to cure the constant rebellions of His people. Saint Jerome explains this verse as a prophetic model of the virgin birth of Christ. The "new thing" that God is creating is Mary of Nazareth who will have the mission to conceive a perfect and complete man, not stained by original sin.
There are other prophetic types of Mary, like Sara, Hannah, Deborah, Jael, Judith, and Esther among others.

Sarah, a Woman of a New Covenant

Sarah is the wife of Abraham, the mother of Isaac and the grandmother of Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. There are many parallels between Sarah and Mary of Nazareth. Like Mary she goes into Egypt for a while (Genesis 12, 10-20). She did not have any children (Genesis 16, 1) and her miraculous pregnancy was announced by a celestial messenger (Genesis 18, 10). She asks the angel a question very similar to the question asked by Mary:

Luke 1, 34 — And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since I know no man?"
Genesis 18, 13 — [...] 'Shall I really bear a child, old as I am?'
Both Sarah and Mary live at momentous times in history, when God is establishing a new covenant for His people.

Genesis 17, 2 — Between you and me I will establish my covenant, and I will multiply you exceedingly."

Luke 1, 30-33 — Then the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, 11 and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

Hannah, Mother of Samuel Example of Faith

In ancient times children were the most worthy treasure of a family. It was considered a blessing from God to have many children. When a woman could not have children, she had to bear the shame of being barren. In many cases, the husband would add another woman to the household making the life of the original wife very difficult. That was the case of Hannah the wife of Elkanah, a man from the tribe of Ephraim. This faithful woman was barren but that did not stop her from praying to God for offspring.

But one year, at the time of the great religious festival at Shiloh, Hannah approached the Tabernacle and earnestly prayed to God for a child. She prays silently as the priest Eli, observes her from a distance. Eli notices that Hannah is in great distress and weeps bitterly as she prays. Eli concludes wrongly that she has been drinking too much wine during the celebration. He rebukes her for being drunk in the house of God. Let us remember that Mary, along with other Christians gathered in the upper room, were also accused of being drunk after celebrating the Pentecost. It happened the day when the Church received the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2, 1-13).

1 Samuel 1, 12-17 — As she remained long at prayer before the LORD, Eli watched her mouth, for Hannah was praying silently; though her lips were moving, her voice could not be heard. Eli, thinking her drunk, said to her, "How long will you make a drunken show of yourself? Sober up from your wine!" "It isn't that, my lord," Hannah answered. "I am an unhappy woman. I have had neither wine nor liquor; I was only pouring out my troubles to the LORD. Do not think your handmaid a ne'er-do-well; my prayer has been prompted by my deep sorrow and misery." Eli said, "Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him."

After receiving the blessing of Eli, Hannah faithfully believes that God will grant her prayer. She promises God that if He gave her a son, she will consecrate him to the Lord to serve Him all his life. The answer to her prayer and vow was Samuel, the great prophet-priest of Israel who was born to her that year. Hannah fulfilled her promised and five years later she took Samuel to be raised by Eli, the priest of God in that place.

Like Mary, Hannah was the mother of a great prophet whom she consecrated from infancy to the service of God. (compare 1 Samuel 1, 24 with Matthew 2, 22-40)
The song of Hannah, registered in the second chapter of 1 Samuel was most likely the inspiration for Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1, 46-55).

1 Samuel 2, 1-10 — and as she worshiped the LORD, she said:

"My heart exults in the LORD,
my horn is exalted in my God.
I have swallowed up my enemies;
I rejoice in my victory.
There is no Holy One like the LORD;
there in no Rock like our God.
"Speak boastfully no longer,
nor let arrogance issue from your mouths.
For an all-knowing God is the LORD,
a God who judges deeds.
The bows of the mighty are broken,
while the tottering gird on strength.
he well-fed hire themselves out for bread,
while the hungry batten on spoil.
The barren wife bears seven sons,
while the mother of many languishes.
"The LORD puts to death and gives life;
he casts down to the nether world;
he raises up again.
The LORD makes poor and makes rich,
he humbles, he also exalts.
He raises the needy from the dust;
from the ash heap he lifts up the poor,
To seat them with nobles
and make a glorious throne their heritage.
He gives to the vower his vow,
and blesses the sleep of the just.
"For the pillars of the earth are the LORD'S,
and he has set the world upon them.
He will guard the footsteps of his faithful ones,
but the wicked shall perish in the darkness.
For not by strength does man prevail;
the LORD'S foes shall be shattered.
The Most High in heaven thunders;
The LORD judges the ends of the earth,
Now may he give strength to his king,
and exalt the horn of his anointed!"

Deborah and Jael, Courageous Servants of God

Deborah is a model of wisdom, judging Israel from a place situated between Ramah and Lapidoth (Judges 4, 4). At a time when the Israelites were oppressed by the Canaanites she summoned the tribes of Zebulon and Nephtali to fight Sissera, the Canaanite commander. She prophesized that the mighty oppressor was going to be delivered into the hands of a woman. This is a prophetic model of Mary, who is going to fulfill the prophecy of Genesis 3, 15 by crushing the head of Satan, the original serpent. The woman chosen by God to end the life of Sissera is Jael. Both Deborah and Jael are prophetic types of Mary.

Judges 4, 17-21 — Sissera, in the meantime, had fled on foot to the tent of Jael, wife of the Kenite Heber, since Jabin, king of Hazor, and the family of the Kenite Heber were at peace with one another. Jael went out to meet Sissera and said to him, "Come in, my lord, come in with me; do not be afraid." So he went into her tent, and she covered him with a rug. He said to her, "Please give me a little water to drink. I am thirsty." But she opened a jug of milk for him to drink, and then covered him over. "Stand at the entrance of the tent," he said to her. "If anyone comes and asks, 'Is there someone here?' say, 'No!'" Instead Jael, wife of Heber, got a tent peg and took a mallet in her hand. While Sissera was sound asleep, she stealthily approached him and drove the peg through his temple down into the ground, so that he perished in death.

Judith Delivers Israel from Its Enemies

The Book of Judith tells us how God delivered the Jewish people through Judith a brave woman who fears God. Judith's name means "Jewess". She exemplifies prophetically Mary's unfailing trust in God. (Luke 1, 38-37). Like Mary, she intercedes before God for the salvation of His people.

Judith 9, 5-14 — "O God, my God, hear me also, a widow. It is you who were the author of those events and of what preceded and followed them. The present, also, and the future you have planned. Whatever you devise comes into being; the things you decide on come forward and say, 'Here we are!' All your ways are in readiness, and your judgment is made with foreknowledge. "Here are the Assyrians, a vast force, priding themselves on horse and rider, boasting of the power of their infantry, trusting in shield and spear, bow and sling. They do not know that". 'You, the Lord, crush warfare; Lord is your name. Shatter their strength in your might, and crush their force in your wrath; for they have resolved to profane your sanctuary, to defile the tent where your glorious name resides, and to overthrow with iron the horns of your altar. See their pride, and send forth your wrath upon their heads. Give me, a widow, the strong hand to execute my plan. With the guile of my lips, smite the slave together with the ruler, the ruler together with his servant; crush their pride by the hand of a woman. "Your strength is not in numbers, nor does your power depend upon stalwart men; but you are the God of the lowly, the helper of the oppressed, the supporter of the weak, the protector of the forsaken, the savior of those without hope. "Please, please, God of my forefather, God of the heritage of Israel, Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of the waters, King of all you have created, hear my prayer! Let my guileful speech bring wound and wale on those who have planned dire things against your covenant, your holy temple, Mount Zion, and the homes your children have inherited. Let your whole nation and all the tribes know clearly that you are the God of all power and might, and that there is no other who protects the people of Israel but you alone."

Queen Esther, Intercessor for God's People

Queen Esther is one of the most beautiful prophetic types of Our Blessed Mother. She is a model of trust in God and in the power of prayer and fasting. When the enemies of God's people device an evil plan to exterminate them, she intercedes for them before the king, risking her life in the process. She is a model of Mary, the courageous Queen of God's People.

Esther 8, 4-6 — The king stretched forth the golden scepter to Esther. So she rose and, standing in his presence, said: "If it pleases your majesty and seems proper to you, and if I have found favor with you and you love me, let a document be issued to revoke the letters which that schemer Haman, son of Hammedatha the Agagite, wrote for the destruction of the Jews in all the royal provinces. For how can I witness the evil that is to befall my people, and how can I behold the destruction of my race?"

The theme of Mary as the New Eve is prefigured in this story. In the ancient court of King Ahasuerus of Persia Queen Vashti is banished from the court because of her disobedience. Four years later, King Ahasuerus selects Esther for his wife and queen because she is beautiful and intelligent.

Later on some enemies of the Jews plot to destroy all the Jews in the empire. The only one who can save them from destruction is Esther but she cannot talk to King Ahasuerus unless she has been called. Anyone appearing before the King uninvited is punished with death. Esther decides to save her people. So she and her maidservants along with all the Jews of Persia fast and pray for three days. At the end of the three days Esther enters the King's court unannounced, to petition for her people. This reminds us of the role of Mary as intercessor for the people of God. That intercession is made both through her prayers and sorrows, just like Esther prayed and fasted.

In the end, through the intervention of Queen Esther, the Jews are saved and their enemies are vanquished. That is why the Jewish people celebrate the feast of Purim. Originally the fast was observed by Esther and the entire people of Israel on the 14th, 15th and 16th of Nisan, in what would roughly correspond to the three days of Christ's Passion. In that we observe a parallel: just like the Jews defeated their enemies in ancient Persia, so Jesus defeated the enemy of all mankind on the Cross on Nissan 14th, that is Good Friday.

Esther is presented to us in the Bible as a woman of deep faith and courage who loves his people, and is willing to risk her life for those she loves. She is an instrument of salvation provided by God to save and protect His people. In the same way Mary is God's instrument of salvation. Through her we have received Our Lord. Like Esther, she is a permanent intercessor before the throne of God for the good of all her beloved children.

Not by the Bible Alone

2011-07-05T19:38:00.000-07:00

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

The Protestant doctrine commonly known as "Sola Scriptura" does not come from Sacred Scripture. That doctrine asserts that any reader of the Bible can interpret Scripture, without error, thanks to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In short, it guarantees infallibility to any person who simply reads the Bible, regardless of whether or not that person has any education or sense or is living out a Christian life and spirituality. It is, therefore, a very dangerous doctrine since it leaves faithful Christians and believers exposed to unscrupulous leaders who don't have to answer to anyone for their actions. In the words of the author Robert Sungenis, "Fallible men will invariably produce fallible interpretations of Scripture." Our Lord and Savior loves us too much to leave us under the dangerous influence of "false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves." (Matthew 7, 15). For that reason, He established His Church, ordering Peter to care for His sheep (John 21, 16) and promising him that he would send His Spirit to guide the Church to all truth as explained in John 16, 13.

2 Thessalonians 2, 15 — Therefore, brothers, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours.

St. Paul clearly affirms both tradition and oral teaching and orders the faithful to preserve those teachings. If the doctrine of "Sola Scriptura" were true, he would have called his readers to follow Scripture and nothing more. Clearly, he nor any of the other apostles make this type of declaration. Therefore, the principle of "Sola Scriptura" refutes itself. The principle essentially states that, "Scripture is the supreme authority on all principles of faith, except for proving this doctrine, which is not found nor even implied anywhere in Scripture.

2 Thessalonians 3, 6 — We instruct you, brothers, in the name of (our) Lord Jesus Christ, to shun any brother who conducts himself in a disorderly way and not according to the tradition they received from us.

Here, St. Paul again instructs his followers to recognize the autority of oral tradition and not only his letters. Actually, in each instance, he writes his letters in order to reiterate the teachings that he had previously imparted verbally.
1 Corinthians 11, 2 — I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold fast to the traditions, just as I handed them on to you.

Apostolic traditions seem to be important enough to be preserved, at least according to St. Paul.

Matthew 23, 1-3 — Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, "The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice."

In this passage, Jesus himself recognizes both the authority of the religious hierarchy of his time and that of oral tradition. The authority of the Pharisees did not come from the righteousness of their actions, since, with their hardened hearts, they were not leaders worthy of being emulated. Their autority had its origin and justification in their religious leadership positions in the community. Note too that Jesus uses the phrase"chair of Moses." There is no record of such "chair" in the Old Testament, which demonstrates that Jesus himself was adhering to the oral tradition of the Jews when he presented this teaching. It is clear that "Sola Scriptura" is not found in the Bible, nor in written form, nor in traditional Christian practice. One can therefore conclude that "Sola Scriptura" is one of the "traditions of men" against which St. Paul warns us in Colossians 2, 8.

Acts 8, 30-31 — Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, "Do you understand what you are reading?" He replied, "How can I, unless someone instructs me?" So he invited Philip to get in and sit with him.

Scripture tells us that it is not revealed by itself. The Holy Spirit does not infuse wisdom and knowledge of Scripture into someone through the mere reading of a book.

Ephesians 3, 8-10 — To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ, and to bring to light [for all] what is the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God who created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the principalities and authorities in the heavens.

St. Paul tells us that it is the Church—and not Scripture—that teaches even the angels.

2 Timothy 3, 16-17 — All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

This is the passage that is cited most frequently by those who are trying to defend the doctrine of "Sola Scriptura." However, St. Paul is not telling us anything about Scripture as the source of authority, nor is he comparing Scripture to other sources of said spiritual authority. He is saying only that Scripture is very beneficial for preparing believers for the spiritual life—which, obviously, is not being disputed.

1 Corinthians 2, 12-13 — We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.

In addition to his writings, the oral teachings of St. Paul are also inspired by the Holy Spirit. Of course, "Sola Scriptura" would have us ignore everything but the revelations that were written down. If the Corinthians—to whom St. Paul was writing—would have subscribed to "Sola Scriptura," they would have ignored these teachings, paying attention only to his letters. That clearly would have been absurd. Nevertheless, this is the position that the followers of "Sola Scriptura" hope that we would adopt today.

Acts 17, 10-11 — The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas to Beroea during the night. Upon arrival they went to the synagogue of the Jews. These Jews were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with all willingness and examined the scriptures daily to determine whether these things were so.

This is probably the main text used to support "Sola Scriptura." However, what it actually does is supports the dual authority of Sacred Tradition and Scripture since nowhere does this passage suggest that the believers of Beroea would have been able to conclude that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah without the oral teachings of St. Paul. Surely they never would have been able to do it. Upon thinking about it for a moment, it can definitively be said that there was a group in the New Testament that really clung to "Scripture alone" and refused to believe oral testimonies of Jesus himself. This group was the Pharisees. They were the ones who sought to thwart Jesus' influence with verse after verse of Scripture. However, the truth was not passed on to them by "Scripture alone." It was necessary that St. Paul teach the believers of Beroea to understand the truths about Christ contained in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit did not enlighten each one of them directly.

2 Peter 1, 20 — Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of Scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation [...]

Personal interpretation can lead us to error. We don't have the authority to arrive at a definitive interpretation of Scripture by ourselves. Notice that St. Peter gives this paramount importance. Above all, Christians should know that nothing is revealed privately.

2 Peter 3, 15-16 — And consider the patience of our Lord as salvation, as our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, also wrote to you, speaking of these things as he does in all his letters. In them there are some things hard to understand that the ignorant and unstable distort to their own destruction, just as they do the other scriptures.

The Bible can be interpreted wrongly—intentionally or not. God never guaranteed that our personal interpretation of Scripture would be free of errors. Without an authority—guided by the Holy Spirit—that interprets Scripture for us, it is inevitable that we will arrive at conflicting interpretations. This is what we see in tens of thousands of Protestant denominations that now exist. All of them agree that Scripture is the fundamental authority, but there are not two denominations in agreement about what Scripture actually teaches. This tragic situation can result in the loss of faith when doctrinal disagreements arise or when the leaders change the doctrines and hope that the faithful adopt them or separate themselves from the denomination. These constant separations and disagreements are not the work of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 11, 27-34 — Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying. If we discerned ourselves, we would not be under judgment; but since we are judged by (the) Lord, we are being disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. Therefore, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that your meetings may not result in judgment. The other matters I shall set in order when I come.

St. Paul is explicit here. Concerning this very serious matter—the abuse of the Eucharist that is causing illness and death among the abusers—St. Paul explains that he has teachings that he wants to share in person, apart from his written message. Nevertheless the doctine of "Sola Scriptura" would not let us consider the authority or the inspiration of those oral teachings.

Galatians 1, 6-9 — I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by (the) grace (of Christ) for a different gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach (to you) a gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, and now I say again, if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one that you received, let that one be accursed!

Notice that St. Paul is referring to the truth of the Gospel that has been passed on to the faithful orally and not "written." Nowhere does he instruct the apostles to follow only the Gospels in written form.

2 Thessalonians 2, 3-5 — Let no one deceive you in any way. For unless the apostasy comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one doomed to perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god and object of worship, so as to seat himself in the temple of God, claiming that he is a god—do you not recall that while I was still with you I told you these things?

When St. Paul refers to the "lawless one," he is citing his previously given oral teachings and prophecies. The apostle hopes that his readers remember and obey such instructions. The readers of the apostolic letter should take into account the oral teaching already received in order to be able to discern the truth. The apostle St. Paul's intent is that his writings support and reinforce his oral teachings and sermons and never that they would be considered apart as if they have greater authority.

Luke 24, 13-35 — Now that very day two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, "What are you discussing as you walk along?" They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?" And he replied to them, "What sort of things?" They said to him, "The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see." And he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures. As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. But they urged him, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them. And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. Then they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning (within us) while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?" So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, "The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!" Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Jesus had to explain to his disciples the meaning of Scripture before they could understand it. "Sola Scriptura" was not sufficient for them. It should be taken into account that many believe that the Holy Tradition of the Church contains much of what the Lord taught his followers on the road to Emmaus: specifically the parallels between Adam and Jesus, Moses and Jesus, the prophets and Jesus and also the notable parallels between Calvary and Passover. However, since these are interpretations that our forefathers of the Church have left us in their teaching and are not found formally in Scripture, the most fundamentalist followers of "Sola Scriptura" would have us reject them.

Luke 7, 18-23 — The disciples of John told him about all these things. John summoned two of his disciples and sent them to the Lord to ask, "Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?" When the men came to him, they said, "John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, 'Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?'" At that time he cured many of their diseases, sufferings, and evil spirits; he also granted sight to many who were blind. And he said to them in reply, "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me."

Not even John the Baptist who was full of the Holy Spirit since before birth (Lucas 1, 15) could discern the true nature of Jesus based on "Sola Scriptura." He commanded his followers to ask Jesus. Notice that Jesus did not give them a direct answer. Instead, he interpreted the truth found in Scripture. The followers of John don't get any new information. Only an interpretation authorized by Scripture. If "Sola Scriptura" were true—that we don't need any authority to interpret Scripture for us—John and his followers would not have needed this clarification from Jesus.

John 5, 37-40 — Moreover, the Father who sent me has testified on my behalf. But you have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word remaining in you, because you do not believe in the one whom he has sent. You search the scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life.

If "Sola Scriptura" were true, the Holy Spirit would have inspired the temple leaders to discern the truth entirely by way of the Scripture that they scrupulously analyzed. Instead, Jesus condemns them for reducing it to only Scripture. Now we know how Scripture prophesied about Jesus. But the Pharisees, basing it only on "Sola Scriptura," could not discern that truth. Not even Jesus' followers themselves could (Luke 24, 13-35). They needed Jesus to reveal to them the true meaning of Holy Scripture.

John 16, 12-13 — "I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.

Jesus says that He is not going to reveal "all truth" during His time on Earth. He says that He will send the Holy Spirit, that it's about to come; this is a clear statement concerning inspired teaching and the deepening of our understanding of the faith.

Ephesians 3, 3 — [...] the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly earlier.

St. Paul openly states that he has not given all of revelation in his writings and that there is a portion that he teaches verbally. The intention of his writings is to support and reinforce his preaching, not to be autonomous and complete. Let us note that St. Paul did not become a follower of Christ by reading the Bible but by witnessing a miraculous apparition of the Lord. What is more, nowhere in the Bible do we find a single person that has been converted exclusively by reading Scripture, nor do we find any saints who appeal to Scripture as their greatest authority. In the Bible, only Satan, the Pharisees and the scribes do this in order to try to entrap Jesus as soon as they have the chance.

1 Timothy 3, 15 — [...] the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth.

St. Paul says that the foundation of truth is the Church, not Scripture. This is logical, given that it was the Church who declared which, among the texts that the first believes read during Mass, were actually inspired. That is why we say that history shows us that the Bible rests on the authority of the Church and not the contrary. Sacred Tradition is the memory of the Church that it recalls in community and what keeps the apostles' teachings alive.

Luke 10, 16 — Whoever listens to you listens to me.

Jesus defends oral teaching, telling his followers to go out to preach what he has taught them. Those who listen to faithful followers of Christ, listen to Christ.

1 John 4, 6 — We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.

To submit oneself to apostolic authority—and not follow "Sola Scriptura"—is the guarantee of the integrity and truthfulness of our faith.

Hebrews 13, 17 — Obey your leaders and defer to them, for they keep watch over you [....]

The author urges obedience and not the development of an individual interpretation of the Bible, an exhaustive study of ancient languages, cultures, and traditions so that they can arrive at a more complete understanding of Scripture.Those of us who are too busy with our daily responsibilities—work, family, etc.—to embark on such a monumental scholastic undertaking should not worry. As long as we follow the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit and submitted to it, we will not be confused and will remain in the truth.

2 Timothy 2, 2 — And what you heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well.

St. Paul never teaches "Sola Scriptura." On the contrary, we find him invoking apostolic succession within an oral tradition. St. Paul—who is a close contemporary of Jesus—writes to the young Timothy about sharing the truth of the Gospel with the generations to come. In this exhortation, St. Paul doesn't mention the written word. Timothy is explicitly instructed to preserve the oral teachings received from St. Paul. Timothy obeyed this instruction and so did his successors. In this way, the deposit of Sacred Tradition has been passed from generation to generation up to the present.

1 Thessalonians 2, 13 — And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.

St. Paul tells us that his discourse is as inspired and has as much authority as his writings. The word is neither static nor limited to the written page—it is dynamic—alive in the mind, on the lips and in the heart of the Church that he has founded on Christ.

Romans 10, 14-15 — But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring (the) good news!"

Once again, we don't see St. Paul invoking the authority of Scripture but the authority of those who preach. Those who announce the Good News declare it out loud.
Deuteronomy 19, 15 — One witness alone shall not take the stand against a man in regard to any crime or any offense of which he may be guilty; a judicial fact shall be established only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Scripture by itself needs more than a witness in order to establish truth. That's why the Hebrews never would have supported "Sola Scriptura," since if they had, we would rely on the testimony of a single witness: Scipture alone.

John 8, 17-18 — "Even in your law it is written that the testimony of two men can be verified. I testify on my behalf and so does the Father who sent me."

Jesus affirms that a single witness is not sufficient, even when it is Jesus himself who testifies. Jesus does not expect his own testimony to be accepted without another—God the Father—supporting it. Nevertheless, the Protestant position claims that we are guided by one witness: Scripture.

2 Corinthians 13, 1 — This third time I am coming to you. "On the testimony of two or three witnesses a fact shall be established."

St. Paul's teaching reinforces the previous passage. But the doctrine of "Sola Scriptura" establishes the idea that one witness—Scripture—is sufficient.
Ephesians 4, 11-14 — And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ, so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery, from their cunning in the interests of deceitful scheming.

The authors of Scripture by themselves are not enough "for building up the body of Christ." The variety of gifts of the Spirit exist in the community of faithful and not in documents.

Romans 10, 17 — Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.

St. Paul defends oral teaching and tradition. What is more, nowhere in the Bible do we see someone who has converted after merely reading Scripture.

Exodus 28, 30 — In this breastpiece of decision you shall put the Urim and Thummim, that they may be over Aaron's heart whenever he enters the presence of the LORD. Thus he shall always bear the decisions for the Israelites over his heart in the LORD'S presence.

The oracle of God is pronounced through the high priest by way of the Urim and the Thummim.These mysterious devices were not, in any way, scriptural. Nevertheless, Scripture tells us that in ancient times the Israelites regularly consulted them in order to determine the will of God. However, the Jewish people did not use those devices to interpret the Word of God in the manner of "Sola Scriptura."

Deuteronomy 17, 12 — Any man who has the insolence to refuse to listen to the priest... shall die.

The Old Testament had its own magisterial method in which disagreements were to be resolved by the priests and the judges. The high priests spoke with the authority of God. This passage by itself is a refutation of "Sola Scriptura." Nowhere in the Old and New Testaments is it taught that Scripture is the ultimate authority of our faith.

2 Timothy 3, 14 — But you, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it [...]

In other words, spiritual authority comes from apostolic succession, not from "Sola Scriptura." In fact, this approach would imply that the apostles that left nothing written—Andrew, Nathaniel, Bartholomew and the others—had little or no authority, given that their writings did not survive as part of the canon of Scripture. St. Paul's statement clearly indicates that the authority of the Church, on its most fundamental level, comes from preaching, not Scripture. The teaching of the apostles survives in the men who carried on the deposit of faith, the bishops and presbyters who they educated in the doctrine of Christ and whom they laid on hands, entrusting them to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 15, 11 — Therefore, whether it be I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Again, St. Paul defends oral tradition. Never in Scripture is there a single case of an individual whose conversion is based on "Sola Scriptura." And St. Paul never states "so we write and so you believed."

Acts 2, 42 — They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.

St. Luke defends oral teaching. The statement does not allude to "the writings of the apostles," which St. Luke never mentions.

Matthew 2, 23 — He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He shall be called a Nazorean."

Oral tradition is cited as authority. Remember that not all the prophets wrote. Nevertheless, "Sola Scriptura" makes us believe that their words would not have authority unless they were written in the sacred texts.

Matthew 10, 19-20 — "When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you."

Jesus gives evidence of the fact that Scripture is not the only thing inspired by the Holy Spirit. That's why it can also inspire our speech and help us to preach the Gospel. It's important to stress that this writing does not declare that any Christian receives the help of the Holy Spirit to discern doctrines by oneself.

John 21, 25 — There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.

Not all that Christ said or did is found in Scripture. Are these acts unworthy of consideration because they were not written? This notion is obviously absurd, nevertheless the doctrine of "Sola Scriptura" wrongly supports this position, since it negates the authority of the words of Jesus that were not recorded in writing.

Isaiah 59, 21 — [...] my words that I have put into your mouth Shall never leave your mouth, nor the mouths of your children Nor the mouths of your children's children from now on and forever, says the LORD.

Inspired oral tradition passes from generation to generation. Note that the prophet is referring to the spoken word. This is a clear reference to Sacred Tradition that is preserved and transmitted from one generation to the next. It is the intervention of the Holy Spirit that inspires the prophet's speech. Apparently, the breath (pneuma) of God is not limited to "Sola Scriptura."

1 Corinthians 14, 3 — On the other hand, one who prophesies does speak to human beings, for their building up, encouragement, and solace.

Not all of God's truth is shared by way of Scripture. St. Paul says that the prophets are moved by the Holy Spirit for the sake of the believers.

2 Peter 3, 1-2 — This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you; through them by way of reminder I am trying to stir up your sincere disposition, to recall the words previously spoken by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and savior through your apostles.

The key part here is "words previously spoken." The apostle is not referring to written expressions here.

2 Chronicles 19, 6-7 — [...] and he said to them: "Take care what you do, for you are judging, not on behalf of man, but on behalf of the LORD; he judges with you. And now, let the fear of the LORD be upon you. Act carefully, for with the LORD, our God there is no injustice, no partiality, no bribe-taking."

When God instructs priests on how to resolve disputes, he does not teach them to turn to Scripture to make a decision.

Malachi 2, 7 — For the lips of the priest are to keep knowledge, and instruction is to be sought from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.
The priest has the authority to teach, not just read, Scripture.

Romans 6, 17 — [...] you have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted.

Paul is explicit. We owe our obedience to apostolic teaching, not to Scripture. Actually, Scripture was not compiled with the intention of teaching the faith but with strengthening believers in their faith. In the Bible, we see individuals who are instructed through teaching and preaching—never, not even once—by way of "Sola Scriptura."

Genesis 17, 14 — If a male is uncircumcised, that is, if the flesh of his foreskin has not been cut away, such a one shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.

The apostles did not adhere to the authority of "Sola Scriptura" when they revoked this clear and ancient precept and declared that the converted Gentiles didn't need to be circumcised . The apostles felt that they had the authority to receive inspiration apart from Scripture, specifically the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That was how saints Peter y Paul accepted uncircumcised Gentiles in the Church—which launched them in a totally new and unexpected direction. Any faithful Jew who adhered to "Sola Scriptura" at that time would have been offended, angry and wrong.

Jeremiah 23, 1-4 — Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the LORD. Therefore, thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds. I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to their meadow; there they shall increase and multiply. I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble; and none shall be missing, says the LORD.

Nowhere has God said that he would protect his sheep by providing them with the Scriptures. Instead, he raises up leaders from among the community for them to follow, shepherds that He uses to guide them. Even in the present day, God continues to act in this same way.

The Canon of Scripture was established by Pope Saint Damasus I around the year 400 B.C. Prior to that, there was no agreement in the primitive Church concerning which—among the hundreds of texts considered by some to be sacred—were actually inspired. So for almost 400 years—a considerable amount of time—there was no Bible that served as a reference for Christians. All those who learned the faith were instructed by others—following the same method used by the apostles. Eventually, the Church in her authority, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, determined the canon of Scripture that provided the believers with a trustworthy reference when building faith. If we believe that Scripture is truly inspired, it can be deduced naturally that the Church is infallible, since it was by her authority—not by Scripture itself—that those writings were declared specifically inspired by God. However, if the Church is not infallible in her teachings, we cannot assume that Scriptures validated by her are inspired by God, given that, the authority that declared them as such, would not be worthy of trust. Therefore, it cannot at the same time be asserted that the Catholic Church can err without condemning, at the same time, the origin and selection of Scripture that she passed on. Trusting the Bible and distrusting the Church that compiled, presented and later protected the Bible throughout time is something that betrays both logic and history. Without the Catholic Church, the Bible never would have existed.

Truth and Consequences

2011-07-05T19:34:00.001-07:00

David Warren

One of my living heroes, the American journalist and economist Thomas Sowell, wrote a column a couple of days ago consisting of "random thoughts" -- aphoristic remarks about things as they now are. His points ran from the generality of:

"Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences."

To the specificity of:

"Barack Obama seems determined to repeat every disastrous mistake of the 1930s, at home and abroad. He has already repeated Herbert Hoover's policy of raising taxes on high income earners, FDR's policy of trying to micro-manage the economy, and Neville Chamberlain's policy of seeking dialogues with hostile nations while downplaying the dangers they represent."

Sowell is superb when apothegmatic. The value in such assertions as these -- made free of the encumbering apparatus of careful qualification on which he usually depends -- is that they light a dark landscape with lightning. They are the pure electric charge of insight.

I love Sowell, because he can "do" desolation without wandering into despair. Reciprocally, he can do hope -- the real thing, not the rhetorical posture. A black man, from a fatherless home, raised by an aunt whom he thought was his mother, in rural then urban conditions that would excuse any man for failure, he saw through his circumstances. He dragged himself up, through a machine shop, through the Marines, eventually to great eminence in the academic world, at a time before he could trade on his race. And he continued rising, with the help of honest friends, and by ignoring vilifications.

He is the opposite of the current U.S. president, who, despite a semi-fatherless start, lucked out at every stage, and has consistently traded on race. Which is not to say I'm against luck, per se, nor against exploiting one's natural advantages. I am instead calling attention to what can be done without luck and advantages. Obama's youthful memoirs are well-written and captivating, but narcissistic; I would recommend The Autobiography of Malcolm X for better insights into American black experience. And I would recommend Sowell's A Personal Odyssey for something that defeats both, by refusing to politicize the personal.

We learn by suffering; Sowell knows that, and has learned. We advance by finding advantages in what at first sight are only limitations and oppressions; by turning the tables on fate. This is an individual, not a collective operation; it begins with that refusal to make an excuse. In moments Sowell reminds me almost of Solzhenitsyn, turning a Siberian prison camp into an elite finishing school of hard knocks, and graduating from it, magna cum laude.

When I read a man's works, I do not look only at his arguments, but when I can know, at how he has lived them. One is not converted by arguments alone, one is converted by personal example, and by spiritual qualities that go beyond the purely rational. Note that construction: the spiritual requires more than the rational, not less. We do not, or rather should not, take instructions on how to live from people who do not live by them.

Now, Professor Sowell is only one of many living heroes, and I mention him today because he is so often casually vilified, demonized, derided and condescended to by "progressive" people, including many fellow blacks, as if he were an Uncle Tom, when he is no such thing.

Clarence Thomas, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who is another of my living heroes, recalled throwing a book by Sowell in the trash, in his young radical days. In Justice Thomas's memoir, My Grandfather's Son, a parallel story is told of wrestling with, then finally breaking through, the political myths that have provided the greatest obstacle to the genuine liberation of "African America."

Another hero, though a man I did not at first appreciate, is the late Martin Luther King Jr. Read him and one finds that he is no mere politician, selling illusions to advance a career, or to promote any party agenda. His unambiguously Christian apprehension of the world is visible to all who are prepared to take seriously what he has to say, for instance against moral failure, against broken families, against the evil of abortion, against radicalism and violence. The black man must stand, not as a black, but as a man. King is accepted today as a hero, across all political classes, yet his message is often reduced to that of a "community organizer." Yet he was, in reality, the opposite of that.

In this Holy Week, facing towards Good Friday, we should remember what lies deeper than politics: Truth. "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you." Yet what goes deeper than politics, applies also to politics. It is to stand on truths for which you won't be thanked, to stand alone if you must, full of the hope that in the end, truth wins

America and Europe

2011-07-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

“Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people. We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.” –Ronald Reagan

Margaret Thatcher said: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” There was a United States of Europe once. It was called Christendom. Sometime after Thomas Aquinas finished his Summa Europe began to change from pursuing things eternal to pursuing things temporal: to the enjoyment of the material riches created by centuries of Christian order. In time that change reached the core of the European spirit. The German Reformation arrived and challenged the ancient vision of the Church, the nature of authority, the purpose of obedience.
The fruits of the Reformation were soon made evident in the French Revolution, the Weimar Republic, Marxism, Communism… Europe’s slow death by ideas progresses even to this day.
Just a few years before the French Revolutionaries killed the King of France, the American Revolution triumphed with some help from the French Catholic crown. Our revolution was a reluctant revolution against a Parliament that already had destroyed Ireland because of her obstinate catholicity. Ireland was a nation under God who refused to be a nation under a human king demanding godlike obedience.

It was very present in the mind of our Founding Fathers that we could go the way of Ireland if we did not arrest the growing signs of oppression coming from Parliament. And so, in a subtle way, the American Revolution was a statement in favor of the universal brotherhood of man, a catholic revolution of sorts. It remains a unique milepost in the history of mankind.

In our land we do not have a king who is head of a state church. God is in Heaven, we are under His rule, constitutionally so. That idea is at the core of the American Revolution.

Chesterton’s intuition saw in the American flag a symbol of hope lost even to the Britain that should have inherited the catholic sentiments of Edward the Confessor, and the Crusader King Richard, but instead succumbed to the folly of Henry VIII.

Now Europe is going way past that point trying to be a sort of Christendom without Christ and some of her sick ideas have crossed the sea thus infecting the American soil. Yet I think the destiny of America is to save Europe from herself. It has happened two times and this third time it may happen in a slightly different way (a less bloody way I hope.)
Only God knows how we are going to surmount the perils we face now. Europe may have been the Faith once but now the Faith lives here in this nation under God, this band of brothers who are not united by common ancestry or mere geography but by the conviction that God has endowed all men with certain inalienable rights life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If the happiness that the American people pursue is spiritual happiness under God, then this happy realm will last for a long, long time.

Carlos Caso- Rosendi

All Things New

2011-06-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

We can begin with a simple reflection on beauty. At first the concept is difficult to define. Instinctively I feel that beauty is real to everyone. Once I have made my mind that something is beautiful I know it in the same sense that I know what the number one is. The natural number does not represent something: one is simply one. Beauty seems to appeal to that same area of our nature, that part that is connected both to the instinctive and the rational.

I think of this often in the context of the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. The absence of ugliness in the garden goes together with the absence of evil. The forbidden fruit will bring both evil and ugliness to the life of mankind. The act of disobedience seems to brake something in the matrix of human life. Just as God has warned death ensues but before man experiences death itself he has to experience a fall into a life of ugliness.

The garden was good to see, its fruits were good to eat. There is a whole inventory of desirable things that man has in the garden: he can sense the proximity of God and other spiritual beings. He can taste and see that all that God has given him is good. When God bring the animals before him, he starts growing a language that comes from within him, from his feelings and yet it is connected with that part of creation that is now being trusted to him.

When God names things the very act of naming them makes them come into existence: “Let there be light” results in light. But the naming of the animals is different. Man has to create a symbol in his mind, a second name of sorts for those creatures that God is bringing before him. God does not reveal to man the primordial names of a bear, a cat, a butterfly. God allows man to reach into his own soul and find a new name for creation. But is it new or is it something that man has to find within him, something that God has hidden inside man’s soul?

Posted in Daily Post

The Truth About The Economy In Two Minutes

2011-06-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said he could explain the problems with the economy in less than 2 minutes, 15 seconds—and he did it. But he left a few things out. The analysis is right but not complete. What is left out is how to correct the course. George Bush and Congress gave tax breaks to those on top of the earnings scale. That seems so "Reagan Conservative" but it is not. Blanket tax cuts don't work as fast as targeted tax cuts. Traditionally the American economy grows when tax laws punish stagnant capital. In short, you can have money but you can't have it and do nothing with it.

Example: If I own an apartment building and I am given a blanket tax break on my income but my expenses on real estate maintenance are discounted from taxes on a seven year schedule... that sends me the message that the state wants me to be a slumlord.

Consider this: why using my money to fix the building and keep it going smoothly? I rather get all the money I can from it, invest nothing in maintenance, and raise rents as much as I can. When the building is no longer good for renting I demolish it and build another one. That way I get a 7 year tax bonanza on top of my permanently low blanket tax rates. It works to my advantage if my investment is lumped in one big number when I pay to rebuild instead of paying for steady maintenance.

That way of operating business ads to the natural boom-bust cycles diminishing the number of people constantly employed in building maintenance. Instead it generates a quick few months of employment for those building the new edifice. That is the way South American economies work: the rich get a pass from government and pay no taxes. Due to corruption, targeted taxation does not work. The result: weak middle class, steep boom-bust peaks and valleys, and a vast number of poor and chronically unemployed. We will get there eventually if we keep electing idiots to run the government. I don't think I have to name any names, especially this week.

We the people need to force capital to move, invest, take risks. Gentle prodding is all that's needed. Capitalists are always willing to risk if the odds are reasonable and there is no punishment for making money. The blanket tax breaks for upper level income individuals simply add to the problem: the money is sucked upwards, fleecing and slowing down the middle class (typically the movers and shakers in a healthy economy.) As the crisis deepens the rich get more cautious with their capital and keep it quiet in safe investments (bonds, government debt, etc.) thus adding to the general scarcity of money. By the way that is why the stimulus did not work: because it runs counter to basic human nature.

The post-Reagan policies have turned a positive cycle into a negative cycle. One of the side effects has been that the price of borrowing has gone down for the U.S. Government. As a consequence politicians have gone into a borrowing spree thus compounding the problem even further. That was totally predictable by the way. Leaving politicians alone with cheap money is like having the fat kid guarding the pie.

Capital has to be punished when it goes safe and rewarded when it takes risks or creates more wealth. Remember the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:12-28,) a real primer in economics. Basic teaching: bury the talent and the Boss will chew your butt. Government has to cease competing in the money markets with those willing to do creative things with the available money. If you don't want to ever see your talent again, bury it in the Government coffers.

Remedy:

Cancel the blanket tax cuts and enable targeted tax cuts thus inviting capital from abroad to come and invest, and forcing local capital to come off the caves. Put the tax pressure on stagnant capital. Ease the tax pressure on capital taking risks.

Stop government from borrowing money. Government should subsist on revenue only. Borrowing is only for times of war or national emergencies.

Stop taxing labor by means of payroll-based taxation, obsolete labor unions, and other parasitic measures.

This is how a Reagan Conservative should think. Bush Conservatives are nothing but certain bankers and rich people who want to return to the times when there was no middle class. They want cheap servants and no change for the better unless it is for them and them alone. They are not Conservatives, they are simply stupid selfish people that can't see beyond the tip of their own snooty noses. For the most part they have inherited wealth but not the talent that created that wealth. They are simple people unfit to fulfill the duties that came with their station in life.

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Atheist Conservatives and Other Impossible Species

2011-06-27T17:20:00.000-07:00

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

There is a group out there that decided long ago that the shortest path to become an “intellectual” is to be an atheist. Some of them are inexplicably politically Conservative. How can a person be Conservative and yet not believe in normative values or a higher order is something hard to conceive. Yet one of those geniuses here slaps the whole community of believers labeling them schizophrenics (see second quote below.) This is a good moment to quote one of the basic principles of Conservatism:

Real progress consists in the movement of mankind toward the understanding of norms, and toward conformity to norms. Real decadence consists in the movement of mankind away from the understanding of norms, and away from obedience to norms. Russell Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things, 1969

After the luminous definition by Russell Kirk let us hear what one of those “atheist Conservatives” has to say:

“Also, someone who believes in a creator will also only trust his own conscience, because he believes his god is always speaking to him. Therefore, if he thinks something is okay, regardless of the action’s moral or ethical value, then he believes it is his god’s decision. Basically, it’s like putting a schizophrenic person into office. One that is very obedient to his imaginary friends and alternate personalities.”

Let me explain this in the simplest terms. Regardless of the bad uses of religion, or the capacity some people have to live up to decent moral standards in spite of their disbelief in God, gods, or almighty forces in nature, etc. Regardless of all that there are simple people in our society whose brains are not up to the task of the philosophical challenge of connecting ethics with their everyday behavior.

The simple come in two flavors, those who are mostly naturally good and those who have bad inclinations (incest, self destructive habits, theft, killing for pleasure, and worse.) General mores emanating from the belief in the all-seeing eye of God may deter some of the bad ones but not all. Some will bet that God exists perhaps and choose not to act on their bad desires.

There is no harm to anyone in (at least) make believe that not raping a four-year-old is better than actually doing it because our laws have a divine origin, or at least carry some divine permission. The opposite–in the mind of the simple–means that if the police is not looking and I can get away with it… hey! Why not? You see, we have transferred the moral roots of our law from an ideal entity (God) to the force and power of a real entity (The Police, distinct from merely the police.)

The belief in God, as a real person or as an archetype or sublimation of society’s most desirable virtues, is an admission that there are norms for our own good that supersede our own personal desires. In that scenario the state is a servant of the common good and does not dictate what is the common good. It is left up to you to decide if God is a useful concept or a moral reality.

If you are an Atheist and decide to live your life accordingly but you are also a philosopher, and what we call a decent law-abiding citizen, then God does not add nor detract from your moral conduct. Yet you should think of the simple living among us, and of those who are as intelligent as you are and yet believe in God as a source of all goodness and justice.

Remember this: if tomorrow we were to prove to the whole world beyond any doubt that God does not exist and never existed, the result would be obvious within minutes. Nothing would prevent me from acting as I please. We would all be gods knowing good and evil. There will be no stopping anyone from following his basest instincts. Even if the majority remains civilized there is going to be a sizable minority that can only be brought under control by continuous overwhelming force. I do not think that is your wish (or anyone’s.)

Don’t give me the same boilerplate answer. Just think about it in your own mind. Run the different scenarios and you will see what I mean. By the way, this is not my original thought. Check Plato, Aristotle (especially the Ethics) and even more ancient philosophers. This has been proposed many times before. Only in this dark age there are those so dimwitted to think that we can run a society without rules or rulers, without a moral reference point, with no more ideals that what our fractured human nature can propose through the ballot box.

Another atheist added this curious point of view:

“Most atheists are good patriotic neighbors, even conservative sometimes (like me), but the only atheists the public sees are the few loudmouth Christian hating jerks filing lawsuits against Santa Claus.”

You are not mistaken it is the atheists who bring lawsuits against crosses, mangers, Christmas, and baby Jesus. A belief that is afraid of an object (a Cross, a Christmas tree) is –in my humble opinion– comparable to animism of the lowest variety. Especially when it is difficult to establish a civilized dialog with its defenders without them foaming at the mouth insulting their intellectual adversaries in righteous indignation (Hawkings, Hitchens, etc.)

Christianity is not only the local Pentecostal preacher, or Jeremiah Wright. Don’t they tell us all the time that Islam is not only Osama Bin Laden?

Christianity’s highest ideas come from people like Thomas Aquinas, Augustine of Hippo, Sir Isaac Newton, or if you wish the more recent thinkers like George Lemaitre. Hardly a bunch of schizophrenic morons I daresay. Christian thinkers have left a legacy of unimpeachable thought and science for all of us.

The legacy of atheist thinkers still has a long way to go before it matches the legacy of Christian believers.

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Accusers of John Corapi

2011-06-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

This follows the thread from Father John Corapi and the State of Due Process for Accused Priests in Catholic Lane where the comments have been closed. There is a comment by K. M. Tierney that asked for my response. Here is Tierney’s comment and my response below. It seems to me that Mr. Tierney really wants John Corapi to be guilty but the way things are going either Corapi is innocent or he is the dumbest megalomaniac the Church has seen lately. I am inclined and I hope for the first.

kmtierney says:
June 20, 2011 at 11:10 AM
I base my contention something improper occured over the fact that the accuser was compensated financially as a result of the NDA. That makes it a big difference. The military didn’t pay you to keep quiet about classified material. (or did they? Ultimate Catch 22 lol!)
In response to Carlos, the NDA happened after the employee left Santa Cruz Media. These things had already taken place when the allegations were made.
So let’s hear the answer to that question. What purpose was the accuser paid for (the accuser Fr. Corapi said he had no clue who it was) to sign an NDA, if there was nothing improper about the NDA?
I find it troubling the double standard Mr. Rosendi and others have. On the one hand, Fr. Corapi is part of an anonymous smear campaign of people who make judgements before knowing the facts.
Now Mr. Rosendi uses statements such as “sue the liar” and the like. If she was lying, Fr. Corapi would sue her for liberal/defamation of character. He isn’t. He is suing her for “breach of contract.” It would appear the truth of her allegations are conceded.
Jflare may find the distinction between civil and canonical cases “not credible”, but I’m simply describing the basics of it as it exists. If you want a more technical answer, consult a canonist. In order to protect the integrity of both civilian and canonical proceedings, they do their best to keep them seperate. If Fr. Corapi wanted an expedetious resolution to his canonical trial, he should have just dropped or delayed the civil suit. That simple.

Response:
Yes it is that simple if you use common sense Mr. Tierney. By the way my last name is Caso-Rosendi not “Rosendi” I don’t think you’ll appreciate being called “Ney” so don’t chop my last name. If it is too much typing you can always cut and paste.

Let me explain. Once I received a severance pay and had to sign a non-disclosure document obviously after the the severance was agreed upon. A common clause in NDA’s is something to the effect of “this is agreed to be total and final compensation for severance…” etc.

I’d like to add that severance may be a sign of actual mercy on the justly fired employee so that she will have some means to survive while she looks for a job. Her original contract may have had a severance clause. Paying severance is not an admission of guilt either. Some NDA’s contain non-disparaging clauses where the parts agree to be civil and positive when referring to each other in the future.

I repeat: none of those are admissions of guilt.

Yet there are some NDA’s that are really devised to protect an employer from exposure to litigation BECAUSE a mistake has been made. They are not very useful really because two people cannot ask the protection of the law over a contract designed to conceal an illegal act. As soon as the cat is out of the bag the agreement becomes a proof that the illegal act was committed and it may become proof of further crimes if it s found that one part signed it under duress.

Some employers are dishonorable and try to bully their ex-employees with things like NDA’s but those who use NDA’s in the hope to cover their wrongdoing surely will be the last to go to court and further expose themselves to an adverse judgment.

In my personal analysis I think Fr. Corapi appears to be the innocent victim of slander who decided that the only way to clear his name–and protect the employment of those working at Santa Cruz Media–was to resort to civil litigation.
This does not violate St. Paul’s commandment not to take the brethren before the pagan courts. Since the times of Paul Christianity has expanded and we are an active part of society–In court we swear to tell the truth on a Bible, don’t we?

Besides this is not a religious disagreement outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts: it is a clear attempt to destroy a person’s reputation and livelihood using the Church as a platform to hurl the slanderous statement. The judge won’t have to rule over a religious issue but over something that also concerns U.S. law.
If Corapi is guilty of having any kind of sexual relationship with his accuser he would be rather foolish to bring the whole thing to court where intimate details of the alleged relationship will be material to determine the charge of slander.

Padre Pio was accused by a fellow priest who was actually having a sexual relationship with a woman. The accusing priest sent his paramour to the Church authorities to lie saying she had a sexual relationship with Pio. The superiors asked her to describe Padre Pio’s room and she obviously failed to do so. Padre Pio was exonerated and the woman later was found to be quite insane. I bet dollars to donuts that will be the case here.
If the accuser gets an adverse ruling or publicly admits guilt, a precedent will be set. Those who have been using the Church to profit from false accusations will know that they run the risk of incarceration and hefty fines. That will make them think twice before falsely accusing anyone.

Then the great accuser of our brothers who accuses them day and night before the throne of God will have his latest weapon turned on himself.

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Beware of Darkness

2011-06-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

The … conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of spirit and character—with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest. Russell Kirk

Do not be misled: Randian objectivism is not a conservative option, much less a Catholic option.
Objectivism supporters are everywhere these days filling the airwaves with their fluff. They follow Ayn Rand’s technique of presenting a ridiculous straw man, then their position. They sometimes present some false option like the one espoused here: Sanger or Rand a preposterous option like Himmler or Hitler (whom both Sanger and Rand admired.)

The person making the comment tries to force the belief that the choices are Margaret Sanger progressives or Ayn Rand conservatives (the last one an actual contradiction in terms.) Why trying to present Rand libertarians as a class to include all conservatives? The idea may be that muddling the options may be pro-life conservatives can be presented as being just as evil as pro-abortion progressives. In that fashion potential Catholics voters that are politically conservative can be convinced that there are no political options for them because both (false) choices are opposed to Church doctrine. Here’s the quote:

Neither Ayn Rand nor Margaret Sanger are going to be designated saints or doctors of the Church. That is because the views of those women were, and are, directly contrary to Church doctrine. Now would be a good time to stop providing their views the cover of “prudential judgment” and “conscience.” [1]

Central to this example is the case of Rand herself. Rand seriously misrepresents the history of ethics. Take for example Rand’s two alternative views in ethics: the first asserts moral knowledge is believed to come to us by mystical revelations from God. Then her assertion follows that moral principles are arbitrary conventions. The left has adopted that last view lately.

Ethics is falsely presented as something either irrational akin to superstition or as an arbitrary set of customs. Both choices are bogus. To reinforce Rand’s position she goes and sticks her own previous definition of ethics to Aristotle (he’s the author of something called Ethics isn’t he?)

Here comes the deformation: Rand says that Aristotle understands ethics as the habits and conduct of noble and wise people and she adds that he neglected to explain the reasons why noble and wise people adopted such rules.
For someone only partially formed in philosophy Rand’s sleight of hand looks brilliant. Yet the maneuver is just a crude ruse: Aristotle never thought that ethics were mere social customs. On the contrary in his Ethics he clearly presents ethical norms as ideals that can benefit any society: “Where no one wills to be wicked, no one fails to be blessed” (Ethics). Of course Rand never offers any reference or quotes any passages to support her outrageous conclusions but she manages to confuse the ignorant with that rubbish.
Normally objectivists are cultish and verbose, pretty much like the Jehovah’s Witnesses with a different lingo and a different leader. They display an abysmal incompetence in philosophical matters but because no one studies any philosophy anymore they manage to pass for “intellectuals” just like sloppy little Ayn did. The fact that her soporific books continue to be sold, studied, and even taught in some places is a testimony to the darkness of our age. The above is a gross caricature of the history of ethics, and Rand makes no effort to document her claims at all. Rand simply draws plausibility for her position by attacking straw men.

It is not hard to conclude that faithful Catholics should not waste our time with a philosophy that presents selfishness as a virtue. We don’t even need to be Christians to dismiss a priori something that contradicts one of the things that all classic philosophers agree with. But there’s the rub: objectivists are just like a Jehovah’s Witness trying to convince us that the Bible was not understood until they came along nineteen centuries after the fact. In the same fashion objectivists present their unnatural view of ethics as a revolutionary insight that no one ever was able to see until they came along.

In one of the last letters to his daughter, Marx noted his preoccupation with something he calls (paraphrased) “the survival of meta-historical values in the culture.” The story goes that he went to see a play (The Trojan Women by Aeschylus) and he was surprised that women among the audience would cry or become emotional. If every era’s mores are simply a construction derived from economic pressures and class struggle: Why should women of today be touched by a play written thousands of years ago? We know the reason but for Marx that was a torpedo hitting below the flotation line of dialectic materialism. He admitted in that letter that the problem had to be resolved or the whole thing was over.

Well, his life was over before he could solve the problem but none of his followers ever even noticed that passage of his letters. The proof is in the pudding… almost a century later we got Derrida.

Those meta-historical values in the culture are essentially Marx’s cloudy understanding of what Russell Kirk refers to as norms [2] and Aristotle presents as immanent virtues.

Today I publish this here to manifest my disdain for liberal thinking and this sort of trap appearing everywhere someone is trying to present the truth. This being my blog I am allowed to dismiss liberals for what they are: ignorant petulant rabble for the most part. In the forum where this was originally published liberals can insult but traditional conservatives cannot respond in kind. That kind of censorship is eventually noticed and readers vote with their feet.

This is a mere observation and not wishful thinking on my part I hope the site grows in readership in spite of the insipid and confusing liberal comments. That kind of “neutrality” -learned from the legacy media- gives equal value to everything no matter how outrageous and that is precisely the root of the disease. Pope Benedict XVI made it clear in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate:

“What eclecticism and cultural leveling have in common is the separation of culture from human nature. Thus, cultures can no longer define themselves within a nature that transcends them, and man ends up being reduced to a mere cultural statistic. When this happens, humanity runs new risks of enslavement and manipulation. [3]

We can end up being fair to death in pursuit of a plural and “diverse” audience. That is the fatal error of many. Once the destroyers are in clarity is out and darkness ensues.

[1] Hell, Heaven, and Progressive Catholics, Samuel Gregg. Comment by a reader, Catholic Lane, 2011.

[2] Real progress consists in the movement of mankind toward the understanding of norms, and toward conformity to norms. Real decadence consists in the movement of mankind away from the understanding of norms, and away from obedience to norms. Russell Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things, 1969.

[3] Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 2009. Chapter 2, 26.

The Good Samaritan, the Good Conservative

2011-06-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

These days government insists in having programs to take care of anyone that could possibly be in need of help. The natural result of all that preoccupation with the needy has resulted in a multiplication of both the number of needy people and the number of needs that have to be addressed. Programs for the needy proliferate as fast as the needy themselves. There seems to be a correlation between the growth of government and the growth of needy people. I sure wonder if government is not creating a market for its own products but I digress. Someone recently told me that his interpretation of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church was that actually Caesar is in charge of mending all the social ills that individuals, families, and the Church cannot address.

I thought it was time to hit the Good Book and see what it has to say about taking care of the poor and downtrodden. What better place to start than with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Here is the parable as told by St. Luke:

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 26He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ 27He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’ 28And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’ 29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ 30Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two denarii,* gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” 36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ 37He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ (Luke 10, 25-37)

Notice that the man asking Jesus is a lawyer. He wants to live forever so he asks the Master what is a lawyer supposed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus points at the Law in a very Socratic manner. Of course the lawyer wants definitions, details, focus. You know, he is a lawyer after all. Who is my neighbor? Jesus again presents him with a familiar situation: a man has been assaulted and robbed and he is laying helpless by the side of the road. Some religious types come by but look the other way. Then comes a Samaritan. Samaritans were a despised race for the Jews of that time. The Samaritan helps this poor Jew whom his own brothers ignored and left to die. He takes good care of him and makes sure the man will be taken care of until he is well again. Ending the story Jesus asks the lawyer the same question: who do you think is this poor man’s neighbor? And the lawyer finally gets the point: the answer is not in the letter of the law but in the spirit and practice of it. The Levite and the Priest knew the Law well but they did not practice it, they did not walk by it. The Samaritan was a member of a community that had a lesser version of the same Law. For that reason his community was considered unclean by the Jews and yet it is the Samaritan who reflects more perfectly the love of God that the Law demands.

Margaret Thatcher mentioned a small but very important detail: “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.” Good point. Now I ask: who is the robber, who is the victim, and who is the good Samaritan in today’s America? Do I have an answer for that!

Since Ronald Reagan left the White House we have seen the country resume the trajectory of decadence initiated by the Johnson administration and continued more or less by all its successors perhaps with the exception of Reagan. The various welfare bureaucracies have grown to gargantuan size and now their projected expenditures threaten the existence of the once rich and prosperous United States. In our modern version of the parable the American people are being assaulted and robbed by their own government but there’s a twist: the government pretends to be the good Samaritan while getting fatter and fatter with the stolen proceeds. By the way, the number of the needy keeps on growing too as a result of the general scarcity of money that is going mostly to line the pockets of bureaucrats.

Conservatives these days are called to be good Samaritans. We have to take this America fleeced nearly to the point of death by the beastly Liberal Progressives and take care of her, nurture her, and take her into the inn until she can walk again. I am convinced that the Progressives will bankrupt the country. May be that is what it takes to kill their destructive ideology, may be this is sort of the end of the world for a way of life that is as unsustainable as it is unnatural.

Because we know the end is near we have to be prepared to rebuild America and set her in the right path again. Just like Christendom emerged from the ruins of the Roman Empire something beautiful can emerge from the impending financial collapse. It is the turn for good Conservatives to become the good Samaritans.

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

The Aleph

2011-06-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

Jorge Luis Borges

O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a King of infinite space...
Hamlet, II, 2

But they will teach us that Eternity is the Standing still of the Present Time, a Nunc-stans (as the schools call it); which neither they, nor any else understand, no more than they would a Hic-stans for an Infinite greatnesse of Place.
Leviathan, IV, 46

On the burning February morning Beatriz Viterbo died, after braving an agony that never for a single moment gave way to self-pity or fear, I noticed that the sidewalk billboards around Constitution Plaza were advertising some new brand or other of American cigarettes. The fact pained me, for I realised that the wide and ceaseless universe was already slipping away from her and that this slight change was the first of an endless series. The universe may change but not me, I thought with a certain sad vanity. I knew that at times my fruitless devotion had annoyed her; now that she was dead, I could devote myself to her memory, without hope but also without humiliation. I recalled that the thirtieth of April was her birthday; on that day to visit her house on Garay Street and pay my respects to her father and to Carlos Argentino Daneri, her first cousin, would be an irreproachable and perhaps unavoidable act of politeness. Once again I would wait in the twilight of the small, cluttered drawing room, once again I would study the details of her many photographs: Beatriz Viterbo in profile and in full colour; Beatriz wearing a mask, during the Carnival of 1921; Beatriz at her First Communion; Beatriz on the day of her wedding to Roberto Alessandri; Beatriz soon after her divorce, at a luncheon at the Turf Club; Beatriz at a seaside resort in Quilmes with Delia San Marco Porcel and Carlos Argentino; Beatriz with the Pekingese lapdog given her by Villegas Haedo; Beatriz, front and three-quarter views, smiling, hand on her chin... I would not be forced, as in the past, to justify my presence with modest offerings of books—books whose pages I finally learned to cut beforehand, so as not to find out, months later, that they lay around unopened.

Beatriz Viterbo died in 1929. From that time on, I never let a thirtieth of April go by without a visit to her house. I used to make my appearance at seven-fifteen sharp and stay on for some twenty-five minutes. Each year, I arrived a little later and stay a little longer. In 1933, a torrential downpour coming to my aid, they were obliged to ask me for dinner. Naturally, I took advantage of that lucky precedent. In 1934, I arrived, just after eight, with one of those large Santa Fe sugared cakes, and quite matter-of-factly I stayed to dinner. It was in this way, on these melancholy and vainly erotic anniversaries, that I came into the gradual confidences of Carlos Argentino Daneri.

Beatriz had been tall, frail, slightly stooped; in her walk there was (if the oxymoron may be allowed) a kind of uncertain grace, a hint of expectancy. Carlos Argentino was pink-faced, overweight, gray-haired, fine-featured. He held a minor position in an unreadable library out on the edge of the Southside of Buenos Aires. He was authoritarian but also unimpressive. Until only recently, he took advantage of his nights and holidays to stay at home. At a remove of two generations, the Italian "S" and demonstrative Italian gestures still survived in him. His mental activity was continuous, deeply felt, far-ranging, and—all in all—meaningless. He dealt in pointless analogies and in trivial scruples. He had (as did Beatriz) large, beautiful, finely shaped hands. For several months he seemed to be obsessed with Paul Fort—less with his ballads than with the idea of a towering reputation. "He is the Prince of poets," Daneri would repeat fatuously. "You will belittle him in vain—but no, not even the most venomous of your shafts will graze him."

On the thirtieth of April, 1941, along with the sugared cake I allowed myself to add a bottle of Argentine cognac. Carlos Argentino tasted it, pronounced it "interesting," and, after a few drinks, launched into a glorification of modern man.

"I view him," he said with a certain unaccountable excitement, "in his inner sanctum, as though in his castle tower, supplied with telephones, telegraphs, phonographs, wireless sets, motion-picture screens, slide projectors, glossaries, timetables, handbooks, bulletins..."

He remarked that for a man so equipped, actual travel was superfluous. Our twentieth century had inverted the story of Mohammed and the mountain; nowadays, the mountain came to the modern Mohammed.

So foolish did his ideas seem to me, so pompous and so drawn out his exposition, that I linked them at once to literature and asked him why he didn't write them down. As might be foreseen, he answered that he had already done so—that these ideas, and others no less striking, had found their place in the Proem, or Augural Canto, or, more simply, the Prologue Canto of the poem on which he had been working for many years now, alone, without publicity, with fanfare, supported only by those twin staffs universally known as work and solitude. First, he said, he opened the floodgates of his fancy; then, taking up hand tools, he resorted to the file. The poem was entitled The Earth; it consisted of a description of the planet, and, of course, lacked no amount of picturesque digressions and bold apostrophes.

I asked him to read me a passage, if only a short one. He opened a drawer of his writing table, drew out a thick stack of papers—sheets of a large pad imprinted with the letterhead of the Juan Crisóstomo Lafinur Library—and, with ringing satisfaction, declaimed:

Mine eyes, as did the Greek's, have known men's
towns and fame,
The works, the days in light that fades to amber;
I do not change a fact or falsify a name—
The voyage I set down is... autour de ma chambre.

"From any angle, a greatly interesting stanza," he said, giving his verdict. "The opening line wins the applause of the professor, the academician, and the Hellenist—to say nothing of the would-be scholar, a considerable sector of the public. The second flows from Homer to Hesiod (generous homage, at the very outset, to the father of didactic poetry), not without rejuvenating a process whose roots go back to Scripture—enumeration, congeries, conglomeration. The third—baroque? decadent? example of the cult of pure form?—consists of two equal hemistichs. The fourth, frankly bilingual, assures me the unstinted backing of all minds sensitive to the pleasures of sheer fun. I should, in all fairness, speak of the novel rhyme in lines two and four, and of the erudition that allows me—without a hint of pedantry!—to cram into four lines three learned allusions covering thirty centuries packed with literature—first to the Odyssey, second to Works and Days, and third to the immortal bagatelle bequathed us by the frolicking pen of the Savoyard, Xavier de Maistre. Once more I've come to realise that modern art demands the balm of laughter, the scherzo. Decidedly, Goldoni holds the stage!"

He read me many other stanzas, each of which also won his own approval and elicited his lengthy explications. There was nothing remarkable about them. I did not even find them any worse than the first one. Application, resignation, and chance had gone into the writing; I saw, however, that Daneri's real work lay not in the poetry but in his invention of reasons why the poetry should be admired. Of course, this second phase of his effort modified the writing in his eyes, though not in the eyes of others. Daneri's style of delivery was extravagant, but the deadly drone of his metric regularity tended to tone down and to dull that extravagance.

[Among my memories are also some lines of a satire in which he lashed out unsparingly at bad poets. After accusing them of dressing their poems in the warlike armour of erudition, and of flapping in vain their unavailing wings, he concluded with this verse:

But they forget, alas, one foremost fact—BEAUTY!

Only the fear of creating an army of implacable and powerful enemies dissuaded him (he told me) from fearlessly publishing this poem.]

Only once in my life have I had occasion to look into the fifteen thousand alexandrines of the Polyolbion, that topographical epic in which Michael Drayton recorded the flora, fauna, hydrography, orography, military and monastic history of England. I am sure, however, that this limited but bulky production is less boring than Carlos Argentino's similar vast undertaking. Daneri had in mind to set to verse the entire face of the planet, and, by 1941, had already dispatched a number of acres of the State of Queensland, nearly a mile of the course run by the River Ob, a gasworks to the north of Veracruz, the leading shops in the Buenos Aires parish of Concepción, the villa of Mariana Cambaceres de Alvear in the Belgrano section of the Argentine capital, and a Turkish baths establishment not far from the well-known Brighton Aquarium. He read me certain long-winded passages from his Australian section, and at one point praised a word of his own coining, the colour "celestewhite," which he felt "actually suggests the sky, an element of utmost importance in the landscape of the Down Under." But these sprawling, lifeless hexameters lacked even the relative excitement of the so-called Augural Canto. Along about midnight, I left.

Two Sundays later, Daneri rang me up—perhaps for the first time in his life. He suggested we get together at four o'clock "for cocktails in the salon-bar next door, which the forward-looking Zunino and Zungri—my landlords, as you doubtless recall —are throwing open to the public. It's a place you'll really want to get to know."

More in resignation than in pleasure, I accepted. Once there, it was hard to find a table. The "salon-bar," ruthlessly modern, was only barely less ugly than what I had excepted; at the nearby tables, the excited customers spoke breathlessly of the sums Zunino and Zungri had invested in furnishings without a second thought to cost. Carlos Argentino pretended to be astonished by some feature or other of the lighting arrangement (with which, I felt, he was already familiar), and he said to me with a certain severity, "Grudgingly, you'll have to admit to the fact that these premises hold their own with many others far more in the public eye."

He then reread me four or five different fragments of the poem. He had revised them following his pet principle of verbal ostentation: where at first "blue" had been good enough, he now wallowed in "azures," "ceruleans," and "ultramarines." The word "milky" was too easy for him; in the course of an impassioned description of a shed where wool was washed, he chose such words as "lacteal," "lactescent," and even made one up—"lactinacious." After that, straight out, he condemned our modern mania for having books prefaced, "a practice already held up to scorn by the Prince of Wits in his own grafeful preface to the Quixote." He admitted, however, that for the opening of his new work an attention-getting foreword might prove valuable—"an accolade signed by a literary hand of renown." He next went on to say that he considered publishing the initial cantos of his poem. I then began to understand the unexpected telephone call; Daneri was going to ask me to contribute a foreword to his pedantic hodgepodge. My fear turned out unfounded; Carlos Argentino remarked, with admiration and envy, that surely he could not be far wrong in qualifying with the ephitet "solid" the prestige enjoyed in every circle by Álvaro Melián Lafinur, a man of letters, who would, if I insisted on it, be only too glad to dash off some charming opening words to the poem. In order to avoid ignominy and failure, he suggested I make myself spokesman for two of the book's undeniable virtues—formal perfection and scientific rigour—"inasmuch as this wide garden of metaphors, of figures of speech, of elegances, is inhospitable to the least detail not strictly upholding of truth." He added that Beatriz had always been taken with Álvaro.

I agreed—agreed profusely—and explained for the sake of credibility that I would not speak to Álvaro the next day, Monday, but would wait until Thursday, when we got together for the informal dinner that follows every meeting of the Writers' Club. (No such dinners are ever held, but it is an established fact that the meetings do take place on Thursdays, a point which Carlos Argentino Daneri could verify in the daily papers, and which lent a certain reality to my promise.) Half in prophecy, half in cunning, I said that before taking up the question of a preface I would outline the unusual plan of the work. We then said goodbye.

Turning the corner of Bernardo de Irigoyen, I reviewed as impartially as possible the alternatives before me. They were: a) to speak to Álvaro, telling him the first cousin of Beatriz' (the explanatory euphemism would allow me to mention her name) had concocted a poem that seemed to draw out into infinity the possibilities of cacophony and chaos: b) not to say a word to Álvaro. I clearly foresaw that my indolence would opt for b.

But first thing Friday morning, I began worrying about the telephone. It offended me that that device, which had once produced the irrecoverable voice of Beatriz, could now sink so low as to become a mere receptacle for the futile and perhaps angry remonstrances of that deluded Carlos Argentino Daneri. Luckily, nothing happened—except the inevitable spite touched off in me by this man, who had asked me to fulfill a delicate mission for him and then had let me drop.

Gradually, the phone came to lose its terrors, but one day toward the end of October it rang, and Carlos Argentino was on the line. He was deeply disturbed, so much so that at the outset I did not recognise his voice. Sadly but angrily he stammered that the now unrestrainable Zunino and Zungri, under the pretext of enlarging their already outsized "salon-bar," were about to take over and tear down this house.

"My home, my ancestral home, my old and inveterate Garay Street home!" he kept repeating, seeming to forget his woe in the music of his words.

It was not hard for me to share his distress. After the age of fifty, all change becomes a hateful symbol of the passing of time. Besides, the scheme concerned a house that for me would always stand for Beatriz. I tried explaining this delicate scruple of regret, but Daneri seemed not to hear me. He said that if Zunino and Zungri persisted in this outrage, Doctor Zunni, his lawyer, would sue ipso facto and make them pay some fifty thousand dollars in damages.

Zunni's name impressed me; his firm, although at the unlikely address of Caseros and Tacuarí, was nonetheless known as an old and reliable one. I asked him whether Zunni had already been hired for the case. Daneri said he would phone him that very afternoon. He hesitated, then with that level, impersonal voice we reserve for confiding something intimate, he said that to finish them poem he could not get along without the house because down in the cellar there was an Aleph. He explained that an Aleph is one of the points in space that contains all other points.

"It's in the cellar under the dining room," he went on, so overcome by his worries now that he forgot to be pompous. "It's mine—mine. I discovered it when I was a child, all by myself. The cellar stairway is so steep that my aunt and uncle forbade my using it, but I'd heard someone say there was a world down there. I found out later they meant an old-fashioned globe of the world, but at the time I thought they were referring to the world itself. One day when no one was home I started down in secret, but I stumbled and fell. When I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph."

"The Aleph?" I repeated.

"Yes, the only place on earth where all places are—seen from every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or blending. I kept the discovery to myself and went back every chance I got. As a child, I did not foresee that this privilege was granted me so that later I could write the poem. Zunino and Zungri will not strip me of what's mine—no, and a thousand times no! Legal code in hand, Doctor Zunni will prove that my Aleph is inalienable."

I tried to reason with him. "But isn't the cellar very dark?" I said.

"Truth cannot penetrate a closed mind. If all places in the universe are in the Aleph, then all stars, all lamps, all sources of light are in it, too."

"You wait there. I'll be right over to see it."

I hung before he could say no. The full knowledge of a fact sometimes enables you to see all at once many supporting but previously unsuspected things. It amazed me not to have suspected until that moment that Carlos Argentino was a madman. As were all the Viterbos, when you came down to it. Beatriz (I myself often say it) was a woman, a child, with almost uncanny powers of clairvoyance, but forgetfulness, distractions, contempt, and a streak of cruelty were also in her, and perhaps these called for a pathological explanation. Carlos Argentino's madness filled me with spiteful elation. Deep down, we had always detested each other.

On Garay Street, the maid asked me kindly to wait. The master was, as usual, in the cellar developing pictures. On the unplayed piano, beside a large vase that held no flowers, smiled (more timeless than belonging to the past) the large photograph of Beatriz, in gaudy colours. Nobody could see us; in a seizure of tenderness, I drew close to the portrait and said to it, "Beatriz, Beatriz Elena, Beatriz Elena Viterbo, darling Beatriz, Beatriz now gone forever, it's me, it's Borges."

Moments later, Carlos came in. He spoke drily. I could see he was thinking of nothing else but the loss of the Aleph.

"First a glass of pseudo-cognac," he ordered, "and then down you dive into the cellar. Let me warn you, you'll have to lie flat on your back. Total darkness, total immobility, and a certain ocular adjustment will also be necessary. From the floor, you must focus your eyes on the nineteenth step. Once I leave you, I'll lower the trapdoor and you'll be quite alone. You needn't fear the rodents very much—though I know you will. In a minute or two, you'll see the Aleph—the microcosm of the alchemists and Kabbalists, our true proverbial friend, the multum in parvo!"

Once we were in the dining room, he added, "Of course, if you don't see it, your incapacity will not invalidate what I have experienced. Now, down you go. In a short while you can babble with all of Beatriz' images."

Tired of his inane words, I quickly made my way. The cellar, barely wider than the stairway itself, was something of a pit. My eyes searched the dark, looking in vain for the globe Carlos Argentino had spoken of. Some cases of empty bottles and some canvas sacks cluttered one corner. Carlos picked up a sack, folded it in two, and at a fixed spot spread it out.

"As a pillow," he said, "this is quite threadbare, but if it's padded even a half-inch higher, you won't see a thing, and there you'll lie, feeling ashamed and ridiculous. All right now, sprawl that hulk of yours there on the floor and count off nineteen steps."

I went through with his absurd requirements, and at last he went away. The trapdoor was carefully shut. The blackness, in spite of a chink that I later made out, seemed to me absolute. For the first time, I realised the danger I was in: I'd let myself be locked in a cellar by a lunatic, after gulping down a glassful of poison! I knew that back of Carlos' transparent boasting lay a deep fear that I might not see the promised wonder. To keep his madness undetected, to keep from admitting he was mad, Carlos had to kill me. I felt a shock of panic, which I tried to pin to my uncomfortable position and not to the effect of a drug. I shut my eyes—I opened them. Then I saw the Aleph.

I arrive now at the ineffable core of my story. And here begins my despair as a writer. All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same problem, fall back on symbols: to signify the godhead, one Persian speaks of a bird that somehow is all birds; Alanus de Insulis, of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and the same time moves east and west, north and south. (Not in vain do I recall these inconceivable analogies; they bear some relation to the Aleph.) Perhaps the gods might grant me a similar metaphor, but then this account would become contaminated by literature, by fiction. Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency. What my eyes beheld was simultaneous, but what I shall now write down will be successive, because language is successive. Nonetheless, I'll try to recollect what I can.

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny—Philemon Holland's—and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon—the unimaginable universe.

I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

"Feeling pretty cockeyed, are you, after so much spying into places where you have no business?" said a hated and jovial voice. "Even if you were to rack your brains, you couldn't pay me back in a hundred years for this revelation. One hell of an observatory, eh, Borges?"

Carlos Argentino's feet were planted on the topmost step. In the sudden dim light, I managed to pick myself up and utter, "One hell of a—yes, one hell of a."

The matter-of-factness of my voice surprised me. Anxiously, Carlos Argentino went on.

"Did you see everything—really clear, in colours?"

At that moment I found my revenge. Kindly, openly pitying him, distraught, evasive, I thanked Carlos Argentino Daneri for the hospitality of his cellar and urged him to make the most of the demolition to get away from the pernicious metropolis, which spares no one—believe me, I told him, no one! Quietly and forcefully, I refused to discuss the Aleph. On saying goodbye, I embraced him and repeated that the country, that fresh air and quiet were the great physicians.

Out on the street, going down the stairways inside Constitution Station, riding the subway, every one of the faces seemed familiar to me. I was afraid that not a single thing on earth would ever again surprise me; I was afraid I would never again be free of all I had seen. Happily, after a few sleepless nights, I was visited once more by oblivion.

Postscript of March first, 1943—Some six months after the pulling down of a certain building on Garay Street, Procrustes & Co., the publishers, not put off by the considerable length of Daneri's poem, brought out a selection of its "Argentine sections". It is redundant now to repeat what happened. Carlos Argentino Daneri won the Second National Prize for Literature. ["I received your pained congratulations," he wrote me. "You rage, my poor friend, with envy, but you must confess—even if it chokes you!—that this time I have crowned my cap with the reddest of feathers; my turban with the most caliph of rubies."] First Prize went to Dr. Aita; Third Prize, to Dr. Mario Bonfanti. Unbelievably, my own book The Sharper's Cards did not get a single vote. Once again dullness and envy had their triumph! It's been some time now that I've been trying to see Daneri; the gossip is that a second selection of the poem is about to be published. His felicitous pen (no longer cluttered by the Aleph) has now set itself the task of writing an epic on our national hero, General San Martín.

I want to add two final observations: one, on the nature of the Aleph; the other, on its name. As is well known, the Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Its use for the strange sphere in my story may not be accidental. For the Kabbala, the letter stands for the En Soph, the pure and boundless godhead; it is also said that it takes the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order to show that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher; for Cantor's Mengenlehre, it is the symbol of transfinite numbers, of which any part is as great as the whole. I would like to know whether Carlos Argentino chose that name or whether he read it—applied to another point where all points converge - - in one of the numberless texts that the Aleph in his cellar revealed to him. Incredible as it may seem, I believe that the Aleph of Garay Street was a false Aleph.

Here are my reasons. Around 1867, Captain Burton held the post of British Consul in Brazil. In July, 1942, Pedro Henríquez Ureña came across a manuscript of Burton's, in a library at Santos, dealing with the mirror which the Oriental world attributes to Iskander Zu al-Karnayn, or Alexander Bicornis of Macedonia. In its crystal the whole world was reflected. Burton mentions other similar devices—the sevenfold cup of Kai Kosru; the mirror that Tariq ibn-Ziyad found in a tower (Thousand and One Nights, 272); the mirror that Lucian of Samosata examined on the moon (True History, I, 26); the mirrorlike spear that the first book of Capella's Satyricon attributes; Merlin's universal mirror, which was "round and hollow... and seem'd a world of glas" (The Faerie Queene, III, 2, 19)—and adds this curious statement: "But the aforesaid objects (besides the disadvantage of not existing) are mere optical instruments. The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court... No one, of course, can actually see it, but those who lay an ear against the surface tell that after some short while they perceive its busy hum... The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions, since, as ibn-Khaldun has written: 'In nations founded by nomads, the aid of foreigners is essential in all concerning masonry.'"

Does this Aleph exist in the heart of a stone? Did I see it there in the cellar when I saw all things, and have I now forgotten it? Our minds are porous and forgetfulness seeps in; I myself am distorting and losing, under the wearing away of the years, the face of Beatriz.

El Aleph, 1945. Translation by Norman Thomas Di Giovanni in collaboration with the author.

Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

2011-06-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

Lewis Thomas

From a book of essays by Lewis Thomas Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

In the seventeen years since the initial publication of this book, quite a bit has changed in our worldview, in some aspects of society and science. But not enough! The observations and challenges that Thomas lays out will endure for centuries, provided only that we endure as well—Bob Zeidler

I cannot listen to Mahler's Ninth Symphony with anything like the old melancholy mixed with the high pleasure I used to take from this music. There was a time, not long ago, when what I heard, especially in the final movement, was an open acknowledgement of death and at the same time a quiet celebration of the tranquility connected to the process. I took this music as a metaphor for reassurance, confirming my own strong hunch that the dying of every living creature, the most natural of all experiences, has to be a peaceful experience. I rely on nature. The long passages on all the strings at the end, as close as music can come to expressing silence itself, I used to hear as Mahler's idea of leave-taking at its best. But always, I have heard this music as a solitary, private listener, thinking about death.

Now I hear it differently. I cannot listen to the last movement of the Mahler Ninth without the door-smashing intrusion of a huge new thought: death everywhere, the dying of everything, the end of humanity. The easy sadness expressed with such gentleness and delicacy by that repeated phrase on faded strings, over and over again, no longer comes to me as old, familiar news of the cycle of living and dying. All through the last notes my mind swarms with images of a world in which the thermonuclear bombs have begun to explode, in New York and San Francisco, in Moscow and Leningrad, in Paris, in Paris, in Paris. In Oxford and Cambridge, in Edinburgh. I cannot push away the thought of a cloud of radioactivity drifting along the Engadin, from the Moloja Pass to Ftan, killing off the part of the earth I love more than any other part.

I am old enough by this time to be used to the notion of dying, saddened by the glimpse when it has occurred but only transiently knocked down, able to regain my feet quickly at the thought of continuity, any day. I have acquired and held in affection until very recently another sideline of an idea which serves me well at dark times: the life of the earth is the same as the life of an organism: the great round being possesses a mind: the mind contains an infinite number of thoughts and memories: when I reach my time I may find myself still hanging around in some sort of midair, one of those small thoughts, drawn back into the memory of the earth: in that peculiar sense I will be alive.

Now all that has changed. I cannot think that way anymore. Not while those things are still in place, aimed everywhere, ready for launching.

This is a bad enough thing for the people in my generation. We can put up with it, I suppose, since we must. We are moving along anyway, like it or not. I can even set aside my private fancy about hanging around, in midair.

What I cannot imagine, what I cannot put up with, the thought that keeps grinding its way into my mind, making the Mahler into a hideous noise close to killing me, is what it would be like to be young. How do the young stand it? How can they keep their sanity? If I were very young, sixteen or seventeen years old, I think I would begin, perhaps very slowly and imperceptibly, to go crazy.

There is a short passage near the very end of the Mahler in which the almost vanishing violins, all engaged in a sustained backward glance, are edged aside for a few bars by the cellos. Those lower notes pick up fragments from the first movement, as though prepared to begin everything all over again, and then the cellos subside and disappear, like an exhalation. I used to hear this as a wonderful few seconds of encouragement: we'll be back, we're still here, keep going, keep going.

Now, with a pamphlet in front of me on a corner of my desk, published by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, entitled MX Basing, an analysis of all the alternative strategies for placement and protection of hundreds of these missiles, each capable of creating artificial suns to vaporize a hundred Hiroshimas, collectively capable of destroying the life of any continent, I cannot hear the same Mahler. Now, those cellos sound in my mind like the opening of all the hatches and the instant before ignition.

If I were sixteen or seventeen years old, I would not feel the cracking of my own brain, but I would know for sure that the whole world was coming unhinged. I can remember with some clarity what it was like to be sixteen. I had discovered the Brahms symphonies. I knew that there was something going on in the late Beethoven quartets that I would have to figure out, and I knew that there was plenty of time ahead for all the figuing I would ever have to do. I had never heard of Mahler. I was in no hurry. I was a college sophomore and had decided that Wallace Stevens and I possessed a comprehensive understanding of everything needed for a life. The years stretched away forever ahead, forever. My great-great grandfather had come from Wales, leaving his signature in the family Bible on the same page that carried, a century later, my father's signature. It never crossed my mind to worry about the twenty-first century; it was just there, given, somewhere in the sure distance.

The man on television, Sunday midday, middle-aged and solid, nice-looking chap, all the facts at his fingertips, more dependable looking than most high-school principals, is talking about civilian defense, his responsibility in Washington. It can make an enormous difference, he is saying. Instead of the outright death of eighty million American citizens in twenty minutes, he says, we can, by careful planning and practice, get that number down to only forty million, maybe even twenty. The thing to do, he says, is to evacuate the cities quickly and have everyone get under shelter in the countryside. That way we can recover, and meanwhile we will have retaliated, incinerating all of Soviet society, he says. What about radioactive fallout? he is asked. Well, he says. Anyway, he says, if the Russians know they can only destroy forty million of us instead of eighty million, this will deter them. Of course, he adds, they have the capacity to kill all two hundred and twenty million of us if they try real hard, but they know we can do the same to them. If the figure is only forty million this will deter them, not worth the trouble, not worth the risk. Eighty million would be another matter, we should guard ourselves against losing that many all at once, he says.

If I were sixteen or seventeen years old and had to listen to that, or read things like that, I would want to give up listening and reading. I would begin thinking up new kinds of sounds, different from any music heard before, and I would be twisting and turning to rid myself of human language.

The Abolition of Man

2011-06-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

C. S. Lewis

Third of a series of three chapters: Men Without Chests, The Way, The Abolition of Man

It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave.
—John Bunyan

'Man's conquest of Nature' is an expression often used to describe the progress of applied science. 'Man has Nature whacked,' said someone to a friend of mine not long ago. In their context the words had a certain tragic beauty, for the speaker was dying of tuberculosis. 'No matter' he said, 'I know I'm one of the casualties. Of course there are casualties on the winning as well as on the losing side. But that doesn't alter the fact that it is winning.' I have chosen this story as my point of departure in order to make it clear that I do not wish to disparage all that is really beneficial in the process described as 'Man's conquest', much less all the real devotion and self-sacrifice that has gone to make it possible. But having done so I must proceed to analyse this conception a little more closely. In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?

Let us consider three typical examples: the aeroplane, the wireless, and the contraceptive. In a civilized community, in peace-time, anyone who can pay for them may use these things. But it cannot strictly be said that when he does so he is exercising his own proper or individual power over Nature. If I pay you to carry me, I am not therefore myself a strong man. Any or all of the three things I have mentioned can be withheld from some men by other men—by those who sell, or those who allow the sale, or those who own the sources of production, or those who make the goods. What we call Man's power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. Again, as regards the powers manifested in the aeroplane or the wireless, Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

It is, of course, a commonplace to complain that men have hitherto used badly, and against their fellows, the powers that science has given them, But that is not the point I am trying to make. I am not speaking of particular corruptions and abuses which an increase of moral virtue would cure: I am considering what the thing called 'Man's power over Nature' must always and essentially be. No doubt, the picture could be modified by public ownership of raw materials and factories and public control of scientific research. But unless we have a world state this will still mean the power of one nation over others. And even within the world state or the nation it will mean (in principle) the power of majorities over minorities, and (in the concrete) of a government over the people. And all long-term exercises of power, especially in breeding, must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones.

The latter point is not always sufficiently emphasized, because those who write on social matters have not yet learned to imitate the physicists by always including Time among the dimensions. In order to understand fully what Man's power over Nature, and therefore the power of some men over other men, really means, we must picture the race extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. And if, as is almost certain, the age which had thus attained maximum power over posterity were also the age most emancipated from tradition, it would be engaged in reducing the power of its predecessors almost as drastically as that of its successors. And we must also remember that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes—the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct—the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few. There is therefore no question of a power vested in the race as a whole steadily growing as long as the race survives. The last men, far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise least power upon the future.

The real picture is that of one dominant age—let us suppose the hundredth century A.D.—which resists all previous ages most successfully and dominates all subsequent ages most irresistibly, and thus is the real master of the human species. But then within this master generation (itself an infinitesimal minority of the species) the power will be exercised by a minority smaller still. Man's conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men. There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man's side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well aas stronger. In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car.

I am not yet considering whether the total result of such ambivalent victories is a good thing or a bad. I am only making clear what Man's conquest of Nature really means and especially that final stage in the conquest, which, perhaps, is not far off. The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have 'taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho' and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?

For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please. In all ages, no doubt, nurture and instruction have, in some sense, attempted to exercise this power. But the situation to which we must look forward will be novel in two respects. In the first place, the power will be enormously increased. Hitherto the plans of educationalists have achieved very little of what they attempted and indeed, when we read them—how Plato would have every infant "a bastard nursed in a bureau", and Elyot would have the boy see no men before the age of seven and, after that, no women, [1] and how Locke wants children to have leaky shoes and no turn for poetry [2] —we may well thank the beneficent obstinacy of real mothers, real nurses, and (above all) real children for preserving the human race in such sanity as it still possesses. But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please.

The second difference is even more important. In the older systems both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by the Tao—a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart. They did not cut men to some pattern they had chosen. They handed on what they had received: they initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of humanity which over-arched him and them alike. It was but old birds teaching young birds to fly. This will be changed. Values are now mere natural phenomena. Judgements of value are to be produced in the pupil as part of the conditioning. Whatever Tao there is will be the product, not the motive, of education. The conditioners have been emancipated from all that. It is one more part of Nature which they have conquered. The ultimate springs of human action are no longer, for them, something given. They have surrendered—like electricity: it is the function of the Conditioners to control, not to obey them. They know how to produce conscience and decide what kind of conscience they will produce. They themselves are outside, above. For we are assuming the last stage of Man's struggle with Nature. The final victory has been won. Human nature has been conquered—and, of course, has conquered, in whatever sense those words may now bear.

The Conditioners, then, are to choose what kind of artificial Tao they will, for their own good reasons, produce in the Human race. They are the motivators, the creators of motives. But how are they going to be motivated themselves?

For a time, perhaps, by survivals, within their own minds, of the old 'natural' Tao. Thus at first they may look upon themselves as servants and guardians of humanity and conceive that they have a 'duty' to do it 'good'. But it is only by confusion that they can remain in this state. They recognize the concept of duty as the result of certain processes which they can now control. Their victory has consisted precisely in emerging from the state in which they were acted upon by those processes to the state in which they use them as tools. One of the things they now have to decide is whether they will, or will not, so condition the rest of us that we can go on having the old idea of duty and the old reactions to it. How can duty help them to decide that? Duty itself is up for trial: it cannot also be the judge. And 'good' fares no better. They know quite well how to produce a dozen different conceptions of good in us. The question is which, if any, they should produce. No conception of good can help them to decide. It is absurd to fix on one of the things they are comparing and make it the standard of comparison.

To some it will appear that I am inventing a factitious difficulty for my Conditioners. Other, more simple-minded, critics may ask, 'Why should you suppose they will be such bad men?' But I am not supposing them to be bad men. They are, rather, not men (in the old sense) at all. They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what 'Humanity' shall henceforth mean. 'Good' and 'bad', applied to them, are words without content: for it is from them that the content of these words is henceforward to be derived. Nor is their difficulty factitious, "We might suppose that it was possible to say 'After all, most of us want more or less the same things—food and drink and sexual intercourse, amusement, art, science, and the longest possible life for individuals and for the species. Let them simply say, This is what we happen to like, and go on to condition men in the way most likely to produce it. Where's the trouble?' But this will not answer. In the first place, it is false that we all really like the same things. But even if we did, what motive is to impel the Conditioners to scorn delights and live laborious days in order that we, and posterity, may have what we like? Their duty? But that is only the Tao, which they may decide to impose on us, but which cannot be valid for them. If they accept it, then they are no longer the makers of conscience but still its subjects, and their final conquest over Nature has not really happened. The preservation of the species? But why should the species be preserved? One of the questions before them is whether this feeling for posterity (they know well how it is produced) shall be continued or not. However far they go back, or down, they can find no ground to stand on. Every motive they try to act on becomes at once petitio. It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man's final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.

Yet the Conditioners will act. When I said just now that all motives fail them, I should have said all motives except one. All motives that claim any validity other than that of their felt emotional weight at a given moment have failed them. Everything except the sic volo, sic jubeo has been explained away. But what never claimed objectivity cannot be destroyed by subjectivism. The impulse to scratch when I itch or to pull to pieces when I am inquisitive is immune from the solvent which is fatal to my justice, or honour, or care for posterity. When all that says It is good' has been debunked, what says 1 want' remains. It cannot be exploded or 'seen through' because it never had any pretentions. The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. I am not here speaking of the corrupting influence of power nor expressing the fear that under it our Conditioners will degenerate. The very words corrupt and degenerate imply a doctrine of value and are therefore meaningless in this context. My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.

We may legitimately hope that among the impulses which arise in minds thus emptied of all 'rational' or 'spiritual' motives, some will be benevolent. I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently. I am inclined to think that the Conditioners will hate the conditioned. Though regarding as an illusion the artificial conscience which they produce in us their subjects, they will yet perceive that it creates in us an illusion of meaning for our lives which compares favourably with the futility of their own: and they will envy us as eunuchs envy men. But I do not insist on this, for it is a mere conjecture. What is not conjecture is that our hope even of a 'conditioned' happiness rests on what is ordinarily called 'chance'—the chance that benevolent impulses may on the whole predominate in our Conditioners. For without the judgement 'Benevolence is good'—that is, without re-entering the Tao—they can have no ground for promoting or stabilizing these impulses rather than any others. By the logic of their position they must just take their impulses as they come, from chance. And Chance here means Nature. It is from heredity, digestion, the weather, and the association of ideas, that the motives of the Conditioners will spring. Their extreme rationalism, by 'seeing through' all 'rational' motives, leaves them creatures of wholly irrational behaviour. If you will not obey the Tao, or else commit suicide, obedience to impulse (and therefore, in the long run, to mere 'nature') is the only course left open.

At the moment, then, of Man's victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely 'natural'—to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man. Every victory we seemed to win has led us, step by step, to this conclusion. All Nature's apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawals. We thought we were beating her back when she was luring us on. What looked to us like hands held up in surrender was really the opening of arms to enfold us for ever. If the fully planned and conditioned world (with its Tao a mere product of the planning) comes into existence, Nature will be troubled no more by the restive species that rose in revolt against her so many millions of years ago, will be vexed no longer by its chatter of truth and mercy and beauty and happiness. Ferum victorem cepit: and if the eugenics are efficient enough there will be no second revolt, but all snug beneath the Conditioners, and the Conditioners beneath her, till the moon falls or the sun grows cold.

My point may be clearer to some if it is put in a different form. Nature is a word of varying meanings, which can best be understood if we consider itsvarious opposites. The Natural is the opposite of the Artificial, the Civil, the Human, the Spiritual, and the Supernatural. The Artificial does not now concern us. If we take the rest of the list of opposites, however, I think we can get a rough idea of what men have meant by Nature and what it is they oppose to her. Nature seems to be the spatial and temporal, as distinct from what is less fully so or not so at all. She seems to be the world of quantity, as against the world of quality; of objects as against consciousness; of the bound, as against the wholly or partially autonomous; of that which knows no values as against that which both has and perceives value; of efficient causes (or, in some modern systems, of no causality at all) as against final causes. Now I take it that when we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience, we reduce it to the level of 'Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgements of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity. This repression of elements in what would otherwise be our total reaction to it is sometimes very noticeable and even painful: something has to be overcome before we can cut up a dead man or a live animal in a dissecting room. These objects resist the movement of the mind whereby we thrust them into the world of mere Nature. But in other instances too, a similar price is exacted for our analytical knowledge and manipulative power, even if we have ceased to count it. We do not look at trees either as Dryads or as beautiful objects while we cut them into beams: the first man who did so may have felt the price keenly, and the bleeding trees in Virgil and Spenser may be far-off echoes of that primeval sense of impiety. The stars lost their divinity as astronomy developed, and the Dying God has no place in chemical agriculture. To many, no doubt, this process is simply the gradual discovery that the real world is different from what we expected, and the old opposition to Galileo or to 'body-snatchers' is simply obscurantism. But that is not the whole story. It is not the greatest of modern scientists who feel most sure that the object, stripped of its qualitative properties and reduced to mere quantity, is wholly real. Little scientists, and little unscientific followers of science, may think so. The great minds know very well that the object, so treated, is an artificial abstraction, that something of its reality has been lost.

From this point of view the conquest of Nature appears in a new light. We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may 'conquer' them. We are always conquering Nature, because 'Nature' is the name for what we have, to some extent, conquered. The price of conquest is to treat a thing as mere Nature. Every conquest over Nature increases her domain. The stars do not become Nature till we can weigh and measure them: the soul does not become Nature till we can psychoanalyse her. The wresting of powers from Nature is also the surrendering of things to Nature. As long as this process stops short of the final stage we may well hold that the gain outweighs the loss. But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same. This is one of the many instances where to carry a principle to what seems its logical conclusion produces absurdity. It is like the famous Irishman who found that a certain kind of stove reduced his fuel bill by half and thence concluded that two stoves of the same kind would enable him to warm his house with no fuel at all. It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. It is in Man's power to treat himself as a mere 'natural object' and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will. The objection to his doing so does not lie in the fact that this point of view (like one's first day in a dissecting room) is painful and shocking till we grow used to it. The pain and the shock are at most a warning and a symptom. The real objection is that if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his de-humanized Conditioners.

We have been trying, like Lear, to have it both ways: to lay down our human prerogative and yet at the same time to retain it. It is impossible. Either we are rational spirit obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao, or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own 'natural' impulses. Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

I am not here thinking solely, perhaps not even chiefly, of those who are our public enemies at the moment. The process which, if not checked, will abolish Man goes on apace among Communists and Democrats no less than among Fascists. The methods may (at first) differ in brutality. But many a mild-eyed scientist in pince-nez, many a popular dramatist, many an amateur philosopher in our midst, means in the long run just the same as the Nazi rulers of Germany/Traditional values are to be 'debunked' and mankind to be cut out into some fresh shape at the will (which must, by hypothesis, be an arbitrary will) of some few lucky people in one lucky generation which has learned how to do it. The belief that we can invent 'ideologies' at pleasure, and the consequent treatment of mankind as mere hule, specimens, preparations, begins to affect our very language. Once we killed bad men: now we liquidate unsocial elements. Virtue has become integration and diligence dynamism, and boys likely to be worthy of a commission are 'potential officer material'. Most wonderful of all, the virtues of thrift and temperance, and even of ordinary intelligence, are sales-resistance.

The true significance of what is going on has been concealed by the use of the abstraction Man. Not that the word Man is necessarily a pure abstraction. In the Tao itself, as long as we remain within it, we find the concrete reality in which to participate is to be truly human: the real common will and common reason of humanity, alive, and growing like a tree, and branching out, as the situation varies, into ever new beauties and dignities of application. While we speak from within the Tao we can speak of Man having power over himself in a sense truly analogous to an individual's self-control. But the moment we step outside and regard the Tao as a mere subjective product, this possibility has disappeared. What is now common to all men is a mere abstract universal, an H.C.F., and Man's conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce.

Nothing I can say will prevent some people from describing this lecture as an attack on science. I deny the charge, of course: and real Natural Philosophers (there are some now alive) will perceive that in defending value I defend inter alia the value of knowledge, which must die like every other when its roots in the Tao are cut. But I can go further than that. I even suggest that from Science herself the cure might come.

I have described as a 'magician's bargain' that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.

If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe's Faustus, the similarity is striking. You will read in some critics that Faustus has a thirst for knowledge. In reality, he hardly mentions it. It is not truth he wants from the devils, but gold and guns and girls. 'All things that move between the quiet poles shall be at his command' and 'a sound magician is a mighty god'. [3] In the same spirit Bacon condemns those who value knowledge as an end in itself: this, for him, is to use as a mistress for pleasure what ought to be a spouse for fruit. [4] The true object is to extend Man's power to the performance of all things possible. He rejects magic because it does not work; [5] but his goal is that of the magician. In Paracelsus the characters of magician and scientist are combined. No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power; in every mixed movement the efficacy comes from the good elements not from the bad. But the presence of the bad elements is not irrelevant to the direction the efficacy takes. It might be going too far to say that the modern scientific movement was tainted from its birth: but I think it would be true to say that it, was born in an unhealthy neighbourhood and at an inauspicious hour. Its triumphs may have-been too rapid and purchased at too high a price: reconsideration, and something like repentance, may be required.

Is it, then, possible to imagine a new Natural Philosophy, continually conscious that the 'natural object' produced by analysis and abstraction is not reality but only a view, and always correcting the abstraction? I hardly know what I am asking for. I hear rumours that Goethe's approach to nature deserves fuller consideration—that even Dr Steiner may have seen something that orthodox researchers have missed. The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained it would not explain away. When it spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. While studying the It it would not lose what Martin Buber calls the Thou-situation. The analogy between the Tao of Man and the instincts of an animal species would mean for it new light cast on the unknown thing, Instinct, by the only known reality of conscience and not a reduction of conscience to the category of Instinct. Its followers would not be free with the words only and merely. In a word, it would conquer Nature without being at the same time conquered by her and buy knowledge at a lower cost than that of life.

Perhaps I am asking impossibilities. Perhaps, in the nature of things, analytical understanding must always be a basilisk which kills what it sees and only sees by killing. But if the scientists themselves cannot arrest this process before it reaches the common Reason and kills that too, then someone else must arrest it. What I most fear is the reply that I am 'only one more' obscurantist, that this barrier, like all previous barriers set up against the advance of science, can be safely passed. Such a reply springs from the fatal serialism of the modern imagination—the image of infinite unilinear progression which so haunts our minds. Because we have to use numbers so much we tend to think of every process as if it must be like the numeral series, where every step, to all eternity, is the same kind of step as the one before. I implore you to remember the Irishman and his two stoves. There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis—incommensurable with the others—and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through5 things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.

References

[1] The Boke Named the Governour, I. iv: 'Al men except physitions only shulde be excluded and kepte out of the norisery.' I. vi: 'After that a childe is come to seuen yeres of age... the most sure counsaile is to withdrawe him from all company of women.'

[2] Some Thoughts concerning Education, §7:1 will also advise his Feet to be wash'd every Day in cold Water, and to have his Shoes so thin that they might leak and let in Water, whenever he comes near it.' §174: 'If he have a poetick vein, 'tis to me the strangest thing in the World that the Father should desire or suffer it to be cherished or improved. Methinks the Parents should labour to have it stifled and suppressed as much as may be.' Yet Locke is one of our most sensible writers on education.

[3] Dr Faustus, 77-90.

[4] Advancement of Learning, Bk I (p. 60 in Ellis and Spedding, 1905; p. 35 in Everyman Edition).

[5] Filum Labyrinthi, i.

Transcriber's Notes

Buber, Martin (1878-1965) philosopher who said the I-Thou approach to relationships is the only way people can be fully authentic; only a part of our humanity is expressed in the I-It relationship.

Clotho: of the three Fates of Greek mythology, she was the one who wove the fabric of life.

Factitious: contrived, artificial.

Faustus: the magician of Renaisance legend who bargained his soul to the devil in exchange for power.

Ferum victorem cepit: from Horace Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et, Artes intulit agresti Latio: "Greece, once overcome, overcame her wild conqueror,/ And brought the arts into rustic Latium." The vanquished were actually the victors; Lewis is saying that nature, being conquered, is the true winner.

Francis Bacon: proponent (1561-1626) of the "scientific revolution" who advocated science as a tool to gain power over nature; he is known more for his polemical writings on science than his advancement of human knowledge.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: (1749-1832) Romantic poet who reverenced nature as divine.

H.C.F.: highest common factor.

Inter alia: Amongst other things.

Paracelsus: (1493-1541), more properly Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, who was known for his medical innovations during the Renaisance. Traditionally it has been said that Paracelsus was taught by several bishops and the occultist abbot of Sponheim, Johannes Trithemius.

Petitio: short for petitio principii or begging the question: a logical fallacy in which the thing to be proved is implicitly assumed.

Sic volo, sic jubeo: short for sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas: "Thus I will, thus I command, my pleasure stands for law."

Sui generis: adj. [literally, of its own kind] constituting a class alone: unique, peculiar.

Hule: or matter, as used by Aristotle.

Wireless: radio.

The Way

2011-06-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

C. S. Lewis

Second of a series of three chapters: Men Without Chests, The Way, The Abolition of Man

It is upon the Trunk that a gentleman works.
—Analects of Confucius, I.2

The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it. But this is not necessarily a refutation of subjectivism about values as a theory. The true doctrine might be a doctrine which if we accept we die. No one who speaks from within the Tao could reject it on that account: e? de fae? ?a? 'd?ess?? [*]. But it has not yet come to that. There are theoretical difficulties in the philosophy of Gaius and Titius.

However subjective they may be about some traditional values, Gaius and Titius have shown by the very act of writing The Green Book that there must be some other values about which they are not subjective at all. They write in order to produce certain states of mind in the rising generation, if not because they think those states of mind intrinsically just or good, yet certainly because they think them to be the means to some state of society which they regard as desirable. It would not be difficult to collect from various passages in The Green Book what their ideal is. But we need not. The important point is not the precise nature of their end, but the fact that they have an end at all. They must have, or their book (being purely practical in intention) is written to no purpose. And this end must have real value in their eyes. To abstain from calling it good and to use, instead, such predicates as 'necessary' or 'progressive' or 'efficient' would be a subterfuge. They could be forced by argument to answer the questions 'necessary for what?', 'progressing towards what?', 'effecting what?'; in the last resort they would have to admit that some state of affairs was in their opinion good for its own sake. And this time they could not maintain that 'good' simply described their own emotion about it. For the whole purpose of their book is so to condition theyoung reader that he will share their approval, and this would be either a fool's or a villain's undertaking unless they held that their approval was in some way valid or correct.

In actual fact Gaius and Titius will be found to hold, with complete uncritical dogmatism, the whole system of values which happened to be in vogue among moderately educated young men of the professional classes during the period between the two wars. [1] Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values; about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough. And this phenomenon is very usual. A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional or (as they would say) 'sentimental' values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process. They claim to be cutting away the parasitic growth of emotion, religious sanction, and inherited taboos, in order that 'real' or 'basic' values may emerge. I will now try to find out what happens if this is seriously attempted.

Let us continue to use the previous example—that of death for a good cause—not, of course, because virtue is the only value or martyrdom the only virtue, but because this is the experimentum crucis which shows different systems of thought in the clearest light. Let us suppose that an Innovator in values regards dulce et decorum and greater love hath no man as mere irrational sentiments which are to be stripped off in order that we may get down to the 'realistic' or 'basic' ground of this value. Where will he find such a ground?

First of all, he might say that the real value lay in the utility of such sacrifice to the community. 'Good', he might say, 'means what is useful to the community.' But of course the death of the community is not useful to the community—only the death of some of its members. What is really meant is that the death of some men is useful to other men. That is very true. But on what ground are some men being asked to die for the benefit of others? Every appeal to pride, honour, shame, or love is excluded by hypothesis. To use these would be to return to sentiment and the Innovator's task is, having cut all that away, to explain to men, in terms of pure reasoning, why they will be well advised to die that others may live. He may say 'Unless some of us risk death all of us are certain to die.' But that will be true only in a limited number of cases; and even when it is true it provokes the very reasonable counter question 'Why should I be one of those who take the risk?'

At this point the Innovator may ask why, after all, selfishness should be more 'rational' or 'intelligent' than altruism. The question is welcome. If by Reason we mean the process actually employed by Gaius and Titius when engaged in debunking (that is, the connecting by inference of propositions, ultimately derived from sense data, with further propositions), then the answer must be that a refusal to sacrifice oneself is no more rational than a consent to do so. And no less rational. Neither choice is rational—or irrational—at all. From propositions about fact alone no practical conclusion can ever be drawn. This will preserve society cannot lead to do this except by the mediation of society ought to be preserved. This will cost you your life cannot lead directly to do not do this: it can lead to it only through a felt desire or an acknowledged duty of self-preservation. The Innovator is trying to get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of premisses in the indicative mood: and though he continues trying to all eternity he cannot succeed, for the thing is impossible. We must therefore either extend the word Reason to include what our ancestors called Practical Reason and confess that judgements such as society ought to be preserved (though they can support themselves by no reason of the sort that Gaius and Titius demand) are not mere sentiments but are rationality itself; or else we must give up at once, and for ever, the attempt to find a core of 'rational' value behind all the sentiments we have debunked. The Innovator will not take the first alternative, for practical principles known to all men by Reason are simply the Tao which he has set out to supersede. He is more likely to give up the quest for a 'rational' core and to hunt for some other ground even more 'basic' and 'realistic'.

This he will probably feel that he has found in Instinct. The preservation of society, and of the species itself, are ends that do not hang on the precarious thread of Reason: they are given by Instinct. That is why there is no need to argue against the man who does not acknowledge them. We have an instinctive urge to preserve our own species. That is why men ought to work for posterity. We have no instinctive urge to keep promises or to respect individual life: that is why scruples of justice and humanity—in fact the Tao—can be properly swept away when they conflict with our real end, the preservation of the species. That, again, is why the modern situation permits and demands a new sexual morality: the old taboos served some real purpose in helping to preserve the species, but contraceptives have modified this and we can now abandon many of the taboos. For of course sexual desire, being instinctive, is to be gratified whenever it does not conflict with the preservation of the species. It looks, in fact, as if an ethics based on instinct will give the Innovator all he wants and nothing that he does not want.

In reality we have not advanced one step. I will not insist on the point that Instinct is a name for we know not what (to say that migratory birds find their way by instinct is only to say that we do not know how migratory birds find their way), for I think it is here being used in a fairly definite sense, to mean an unreflective or spontaneous impulse widely felt by the members of a given species. In what way does Instinct, thus conceived, help us to find 'real' values? Is it maintained that we must obey Instinct, that we cannot do otherwise? But if so, why are Green Books and the like written? Why this stream of exhortation to drive us where we cannot help going? Why such praise for those who have submitted to the inevitable? Or is it maintained that if we do obey Instinct we shall be happy and satisfied? But the very question we are considering was that of facing death which (so far as the Innovator knows) cuts off every possible satisfaction: and if we have an instinctive desire for the good of posterity then this desire, by the very nature of the case, can never be satisfied, since its aim is achieved, if at all, when we are dead. It looks very much as if the Innovator would have to say not that we must obey Instinct, nor that it will satisfy us to do so, but that we ought to obey it. [2]

But why ought we to obey Instinct? Is there another instinct of a higher order directing us to do so, and a third of a still higher order directing us to obey it?—an infinite regress of instincts? This is presumably impossible, but nothing else will serve. From the statement about psychological fact 'I have an impulse to do so and so' we cannot by any ingenuity derive the practical principle 'I ought to obey this impulse'. Even if it were true that men had a spontaneous, unreflective impulse to sacrifice their own lives for the preservation of their fellows, it remains a quite separate question whether this is an impulse they should control or one they should indulge. For even the Innovator admits that many impulses (those which conflict with the preservation of the species) have to be controlled. And this admission surely introduces us to a yet more fundamental difficulty.

Telling us to obey Instinct is like telling us to obey 'people'. People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own cause and deciding it in its own favour would be rather simple-minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged; or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing the preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.

The idea that, without appealing to any court higher than the instincts themselves, we can yet find grounds for preferring one instinct above its fellows dies very hard. We grasp at useless words: we call it the 'basic', or 'fundamental', or 'primal', or 'deepest' instinct. It is of no avail. Either these words conceal a value judgement passed upon the instinct and therefore not derivable from it, or else they merely record its felt intensity, the frequency of its operation and its wide distribution. If the former, the whole attempt to base value upon instinct has been abandoned: if the latter, these observations about the quantitative aspects of a psychological event lead to no practical conclusion. It is the old dilemma. Either the premisses already concealed an imperative or the conclusion remains merely in the indicative. [3]

Finally, it is worth inquiry whether there is any instinct to care for posterity or preserve the species. I do not discover it in myself: and yet I am a man rather prone to think of remote futurity—a man who can read Mr Olaf Stapledon with delight. Much less do I find it easy to believe that the majority of people who have sat opposite me in buses or stood with me in queues feel an unreflective impulse to do anything at all about the species, or posterity. Only people educated in a particular way have ever had the idea 'posterity' before their minds at all. It is difficult to assign to instinct our attitude towards an object which exists only for reflective men. What we have by nature is an impulse to preserve our own children and grandchildren; an impulse which grows progressively feebler as the imagination looks forward and finally dies out in the 'deserts of vast futurity'. No parents who were guided by this instinct would dream for a moment of setting up the claims of their hypothetical descendants against those of the baby actually crowing and kicking in the room. Those of us who accept the Tao may, perhaps, say that they ought to do so: but that is not open to those who treat instinct as the source of value. As we pass from mother love to rational planning for the future we are passing away from the realm of instinct into that of choice and reflection: and if instinct is the source of value, planning for the future ought to be less respectable and less obligatory than the baby language and cuddling of the fondest mother or the most fatuous nursery anecdotes of a doting father. If we are to base ourselves upon instinct, these things are the substance, and care for posterity the shadow—the huge, flickering shadow of the nursery happiness cast upon the screen of the unknown future. I do not say this projection is a bad thing: but then I do not believe that instinct is the ground of value judgements. What is absurd is to claim that your care for posterity finds its justification in instinct and then flout at every turn the only instinct on which it could be supposed to rest, tearing the child almost from the breast to creche and kindergarten in the interests of progress and the coming race.

The truth finally becomes apparent that neither in any operation with factual propositions nor in any appeal to instinct can the Innovator find the basis for a system of values. None of the principles he requires are to be found there: but they are all to be found somewhere else. 'All within the four seas are his brothers' (xii. 5) says Confucius of the Chün-tzu, the cuor gentil or gentleman. Humani nihil a me alienum puto says the Stoic. 'Do as you would be done by,' says Jesus. 'Humanity is to be preserved,' says Locke. [4] All the practical principles behind the Innovator's case for posterity, or society, or the species, are there from time immemorial in the Tao. But they are nowhere else. Unless you accept these without question as being to the world of action what axioms are to the world of theory, you can have no practical principles whatever. You cannot reach them as conclusions: they are premisses. You may, since they can give no 'reason' for themselves of a kind to silence Gaius and Titius, regard them as sentiments: but then you must give up contrasting 'real' or 'rational' value with sentimental value. All value will be sentimental; and you must confess (on pain of abandoning every value) that all sentiment is not 'merely' subjective. You may, on the other hand, regard them as rational—nay as rationality itself—as things so obviously reasonable that they neither demand nor admit proof. But then you must allow that Reason can be practical, that an ought must not be dismissed because it cannot produce some is as its credential. If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.

To some it will appear that I have merely restored under another name what they always meant by basic or fundamental instinct. But much more than a choice of words is involved. The Innovator attacks traditional values (the Tao) in defence of what he at first supposes to be (in some special sense) 'rational' or 'biological' values. But as we have seen, all the values which he uses in attacking the Tao, and even claims to be substituting for it, are themselves derived from the Tao. If he had really started from scratch, from right outside the human tradition of value, no jugglery could have advanced him an inch towards the conception that a man should die for the community or work for posterity. If the Tao falls, all his own conceptions of value fall with it. Not one of them can claim any authority other than that of the Tao. Only by such shreds of the Tao as he has inherited is he enabled even to attack it. The question therefore arises what title he has to select bits of it for acceptance and to reject others. For if the bits he rejects have no authority, neither have those he retains: if what he retains is valid, what he rejects is equally valid too.

The Innovator, for example, rates high the claims of posterity. He cannot get any valid claim for posterity out of instinct or (in the modern sense) reason. He is really deriving our duty to posterity from the Tao; our duty to do good to all men is an axiom of Practical Reason, and our duty to do good to our descendants is a clear deduction from it. But then, in every form of the Tao which has come down to us, side by side with the duty to children and descendants lies the duty to parents and ancestors. By what right do we reject one and accept the other? Again, the Innovator may place economic value first. To get people fed and clothed is the great end, and in pursuit of its scruples about justice and good faith may be set aside. The Tao of course agrees with him about the importance of getting the people fed and clothed. Unless the Innovator were himself using the Tao he could never have learned of such a duty. But side by side with it in the Tao lie those duties of justice and good faith which he is ready to debunk. What is his warrant? He may be a Jingoist, a Racialist, an extreme nationalist, who maintains that the advancement of his own people is the object to which all else ought to yield. But no kind of factual observation and no appeal to instinct will give him a ground for this option. Once more, he is in fact deriving it from the Tao: a duty to our own kin, because they are our own kin, is a part of traditional morality. But side by side with it in the Tao, and limiting it, lie the inflexible demands of justice, and the rule that, in the long run, all men are our brothers. Whence comes the Innovator's authority to pick and choose?

Since I can see no answer to these questions, I draw the following conclusions. This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) 'ideologies', all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.

Does this mean, then, that no progress in our perceptions of value can ever take place? That we are bound down for ever to an unchanging code given once for all? And is it, in any event, possible to talk of obeying what I call the Tao? If we lump together, as I have done, the traditional moralities of East and West, the Christian, the Pagan, and the Jew, shall we not find many contradictions and some absurdities? I admit all this. Some criticism, some removal of contradictions, even some real development, is required. But there are two very different kinds of criticism.

A theorist about language may approach his native tongue, as it were from outside, regarding its genius as a thing that has no claim on him and advocating wholesale alterations of its idiom and spelling in the interests of commercial convenience or scientific accuracy. That is one thing. A great poet, who has 'loved, and been well nurtured in, his mother tongue', may also make great alterations in it, but his changes of the language are made in the spirit of the language itself: he works from within. The language which suffers, has also inspired the changes. That is a different thing—as different as the works of Shakespeare are from Basic English. It is the difference between alteration from within and alteration from without: between the organic and the surgical. In the same way, the Tao admits development from within. There is a difference between a real moral advance and a mere innovation. From the Confucian 'Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you' to the Christian 'Do as you would be done by' is a real advance. The morality of Nietzsche is a mere innovation. The first is an advance because no one who did not admit the validity of the old maxim could see reason for accepting the new one, and anyone who accepted the old would at once recognize the new as an extension of the same principle. If he rejected it, he would have to reject it as a superfluity, something that went too far, not as something simply heterogeneous from his own ideas of value. But the Nietzschean ethic can be accepted only if we are ready to scrap traditional morals as a mere error and then to put ourselves in a position where we can find no ground for any value judgements at all. It is the difference between a man who says to us: 'You like your vegetables moderately fresh; why not grow your own and have them perfectly fresh?' and a man who says, 'Throw away that loaf and try eating bricks and centipedes instead.'

Those who understand the spirit of the Tao and who have been led by that spirit can modify it in directions which that spirit itself demands. Only they can know what those directions are. The outsider knows nothing about the matter. His attempts at alteration, as we have seen, contradict themselves. So far from being able to harmonize discrepancies in its letter by penetration to its spirit, he merely snatches at some one precept, on which the accidents of time and place happen to have riveted his attention, and then rides it to death—for no reason that he can give. From within the Tao itself comes the only authority to modify the Tao. This is what Confucius meant when he said 'With those who follow a different Way it is useless to take counsel'. [5] This is why Aristotle said that only those who have been well brought up can usefully study ethics: to the corrupted man, the man who stands outside the Tao, the very starting point of this science is invisible. [6] He may be hostile, but he cannot be critical: he does not know what is being discussed. This is why it was also said 'This people that knoweth not the Law is accursed' [7] and 'He that believeth not shall be damned'. [8] An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else. In particular instances it may, no doubt, be a matter of some delicacy to decide where the legitimate internal criticism ends and the fatal external kind begins. But wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position. The legitimate reformer endeavours to show that the precept in question conflicts with some precept which its defenders allow to be more fundamental, or that it does not really embody the judgement of value it professes to embody. The direct frontal attack 'Why?'—'What good does it do?'—'Who said so?' is never permissible; not because it is harsh or offensive but because no values at all can justify themselves on that level. If you persist in that kind of trial you will destroy all values, and so destroy the bases of your own criticism as well as the thing criticized. You must not hold a pistol to the head of the Tao. Nor must we postpone obedience to a precept until its credentials have been examined. Only those who are practising the Tao will understand it. It is the well-nurtured man, the cuor gentil, and he alone, who can recognize Reason when it comes. [9] It is Paul, the Pharisee, the man 'perfect as touching the Law' who learns where and how that Law was deficient. [10] In order to avoid misunderstanding, I may add that though I myself am a Theist, and indeed a Christian, I am not here attempting any indirect argument for Theism. I am simply arguing that if we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity: that any attempt, having become sceptical about these, to reintroduce value lower down on some supposedly more 'realistic' basis, is doomed. Whether this position implies a supernatural origin for the Tao is a question I am not here concerned with.

Yet how can the modern mind be expected to embrace the conclusion we have reached? This Tao which, it seems, we must treat as an absolute is simply a phenomenon like any other—the reflection upon the minds of our ancestors of the agricultural rhythm in which they lived or even of their physiology. We know already in principle how such things are produced: soon we shall know in detail: eventually we shall be able to produce them at will. Of course, while we did not know how minds were made, we accepted this mental furniture as a datum, even as a master. But many things in nature which were once our masters have become our servants. Why not this? Why must our conquest of nature stop short, in stupid reverence, before this final and toughest bit of 'nature' which has hitherto been called the conscience of man? You threaten us with some obscure disaster if we step outside it: but we have been threatened in that way by obscurantists at every step in our advance, and each time the threat has proved false. You say we shall have no values at all if we step outside the Tao. Very well: we shall probably find that we can get on quite comfortably without them. Let us regard all ideas of what we ought to do simply as an interesting psychological survival: let us step right out of all that and start doing what we like. Let us decide for ourselves what man is to be and make him into that: not on any ground of imagined value, but because we want him to be such. Having mastered our environment, let us now master ourselves and choose our own destiny.

This is a very possible position: and those who hold it cannot be accused of self-contradiction like the half-hearted sceptics who still hope to find 'real' values when they have debunked the traditional ones. This is the rejection of the concept of value altogether. I shall need another lecture to consider it.

References

[1] The real (perhaps unconscious) philosophy of Gaius and Titius becomes clear if we contrast the two following lists of disapprovals and approvals.
A. Disapprovals: A mother's appeal to a child to be 'brave' is 'nonsense' (Green Book, p. 62). The reference of the word 'gentleman' is 'extremely vague' (ibid.) 'To call a man a coward tells us really nothing about what he does' (p. 64). Feelings about a country or empire are feelings 'about nothing in particular' (p. 77).
B. Approvals: Those who prefer the arts of peace to the arts of war (it is not said in what circumstances) are such that 'we may want to call them wise men' (p. 65). The pupil is expected 'to believe in a democratic community life' (p. 67). 'Contact with the ideas of other people is, as we know, healthy' (p. 86). The reason for bathrooms ('that people are healthier and pleasanter to meet when they are clean') is 'too obvious to need mentioning' (p. 142). It will be seen that comfort and security, as known to a suburban street in peace-time, are the ultimate values: those things which can alone produce or spiritualize comfort and security are mocked. Man lives by bread alone, and the ultimate source of bread is the baker's van: peace matters more than honour and can be preserved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers.

[2] The most determined effort which I know to construct a theory of value on the basis of 'satisfaction of impulses' is that of Dr I. A. Richards (Principles of Literary Criticism, 1924). The old objection to defining Value as Satisfaction is the universal value judgement that 'it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied'. To meet this Dr Richards endeavours to show that our impulses can be arranged in a hierarchy and some satisfactions preferred to others without an appeal to any criterion other than satisfaction. He does this by the doctrine that some impulses are more 'important' than others—an important impulse being one whose frustration involves the frustration of other impulses. A good systematization (i.e. the good life) consists in satisfying as many impulses as possible; which entails satisfying the 'important' at the expense of the 'unimportant'. The objections to this scheme seem to me to be two:
I. Without a theory of immortality it leaves no room for the value of noble death. It may, of course, be said that a man who has saved his life by treachery will suffer for the rest of that life from frustration. But not, surely, frustration of all his impulses? Whereas the dead man will have no satisfaction. Or is it maintained that since he had no unsatisfied impulses he is better off than the disgraced and living man? This at once raises the second objection.
II. Is the value of a systematization to be judged by the presence of satisfactions or the absence of dissatisfactions? The extreme case is that of the dead man in whom satisfactions and dissatisfactions (on the modern view) both equal zero, as against the successful traitor who can still eat, drink, sleep, scratch and copulate, even if he cannot have friendship or love or self-respect. But it arises at other levels. Suppose A has only 500 impulses and all are satisfied, and that B has 1200 impulses whereof 700 are satisfied and 500 not: which has the better systematization? There is no doubt which Dr Richards actually prefers—he even praises art on the ground that it makes us 'discontented' with ordinary crudities! (op. cit., p. 230). The only trace I find of a philosophical basis for this preference is the statement that 'the more complex an activity the more conscious it is' (p. 109). But if satisfaction is the only value, why should increase of consciousness be good? For consciousness is the condition of all dissatisfactions as well as of all satisfactions. Dr Richards's system gives no support to his (and our) actual preference for civil life over savage and human over animal—or even for life over death.

[3] The desperate expedients to which a man can be driven if he attempts to base value on fact are well illustrated by Dr C. H. Waddington's fate in Science and Ethics. Dr Waddington here explains that 'existence is its own justification' (p. 14), and writes: 'An existence which is essentially evolutionary is itself the justification for an evolution towards a more comprehensive existence' (p. 17). I do not think Dr Waddington is himself at ease in this view, for he does endeavour to recommend the course of evolution to us on three grounds other than its mere occurrence, (a) That the later stages include or 'comprehend' the earlier, (b) That T. H. Huxley's picture of Evolution will not revolt you if you regard it from an 'actuarial' point of view, (c) That, any way, after all, it isn't half so bad as people make out ('not so morally offensive that we cannot accept it', p. 18). These three palliatives are more creditable to Dr Waddington's heart than his head and seem to me to give up the main position. If Evolution is praised (or, at least, apologized for) on the ground of any properties it exhibits, then we are using an external standard and the attempt to make existence its own justification has been abandoned. If that attempt is maintained, why does Dr Waddington concentrate on Evolution: i.e., on a temporary phase of organic existence in one planet? This is 'geocentric'. If Good = 'whatever Nature happens to be doing', then surely we should notice what Nature is doing as a whole; and Nature as a whole, I understand, is working steadily and irreversibly towards the final extinction of all life in every part of the universe, so that Dr Waddington's ethics, stripped of their unaccountable bias towards such a parochial affair as tellurian biology, would leave murder and suicide our only duties. Even this, I confess, seems to me a lesser objection than the discrepancy between Dr Waddington's first principle and the value judgements men actually make. To value anything simply because it occurs is in fact to worship success, like Quislings or men of Vichy. Other philosophies more wicked have been devised: none more vulgar. I am far from suggesting that Dr Waddington practises in real life such grovelling prostration before the fait accompli. Let us hope that Rasselas, chap. 22, gives the right picture of what his philosophy amounts to in action. ('The philosopher, supposing the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-operated with the present system.')

[4] See Appendix.

[5] Analects of Confucius, xv. 39.

[6] Eth. Nic. 1095 b, 1140 b, 1151 a.

[7] John 7:49. The speaker said it in malice, but with more truth than he meant. Cf. John 13:51.

[8] Mark 16:6

[9] Republic, 402 A

[10] Philippians 3:6

[*] Transcriber's Notes

Cuor gentil: a noble heart

e? de fae? ?a? 'd?ess??= En de faei kai dlessou: roughly "in the light you perceive it [light]"

Dulce et decorum: sweet and seemly, from the Roman saying dulce et decorum est pro patria mori It is sweet and seemly to die for one's country.

Humani nihil a me alienum puto: from Terence: homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto: "I am a man; and nothing of man is foreign to me."

Nietzschean ethic: an 'ends justify the means,' 'win at any cost' philosophy; the starting point his philosophy is his own desire instead of reality; he is a nihilist.

Olaf Stapledon: a famous science fiction writer (1886-1950) whose most famous works include Last and First Men, Darkness and the Light, and Star Maker.

Theist: a believer in one or more gods, e.g. Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Zoroastrians

Men Without Chests

2011-06-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

C. S. Lewis

First of a series of three chapters: Men Without Chests, The Way, The Abolition of Man

So he sent the word to slay
And slew the little childer.
—Traditional Carol

I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text books. That is why I have chosen as the starting-point for these lectures a little book on English intended for 'boys and girls in the upper forms of schools'. I do not think the authors of this book (there were two of them) intended any harm, and I owe them, or their publisher, good language for sending me a complimentary copy. At the same time I shall have nothing good to say of them. Here is a pretty predicament. I do not want to pillory two modest practising schoolmasters who were doing the best they knew: but I cannot be silent about what I think the actual tendency of their work. I therefore propose to conceal their names. I shall refer to these gentlemen as Gaius and Titius and to their book as The Green Book. But I promise you there is such a book and I have it on my shelves.

In their second chapter Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. You remember that there were two tourists present: that one called it 'sublime' and the other 'pretty'; and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust. Gaius and Titius comment as follows: 'When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall... Actually ... he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word "Sublime", or shortly, I have sublime feelings' Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: 'This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.'[1]

Before considering the issues really raised by this momentous little paragraph (designed, you will remember, for 'the upper forms of schools') we must eliminate one mere confusion into which Gaius and Titius have fallen. Even on their own view—on any conceivable view—the man who says This is sublime cannot mean I have sublime feelings. Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker's feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings', in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible. But we need not delay over this which is the very pons asinorum of our subject. It would be unjust to Gaius and Titius themselves to emphasize what was doubtless a mere inadvertence.

The schoolboy who reads this passage in The Green Book will believe two propositions: firstly, that all sentences containing a predicate of value are statements about the emotional state of the speaker, and secondly, that all such statements are unimportant. It is true that Gaius and Titius have said neither of these things in so many words. They have treated only one particular predicate of value (sublime) as a word descriptive of the speaker's emotions. The pupils are left to do for themselves the work of extending the same treatment to all predicates of value: and no slightest obstacle to such extension is placed in their way. The authors may or may not desire the extension: they may never have given the question five minutes' serious thought in their lives. I am not concerned with what they desired but with the effect their book will certainly have on the schoolboy's mind. In the same way, they have not said that judgements of value are unimportant. Their words are that we 'appear to be saying something very important' when in reality we are 'only saying something about our own feelings'. No schoolboy will be able to resist the suggestion brought to bear upon him by that word only. I do not mean, of course, that he will make any conscious inference from what he reads to a general philosophical theory that all values are subjective and trivial. The very power of Gaius and Titius depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is 'doing' his 'English prep' and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. The authors themselves, I suspect, hardly know what they are doing to the boy, and he cannot know what is being done to him.

Before considering the philosophical credentials of the position which Gaius and Titius have adopted about value, I should like to show its practical results on the educational procedure. In their fourth chapter they quote a silly advertisement of a pleasure cruise and proceed to inoculate their pupils against the sort of writing it exhibits.[2] The advertisement tells us that those who buy tickets for this cruise will go 'across the Western Ocean where Drake of Devon sailed', 'adventuring after the treasures of the Indies', and bringing home themselves also a 'treasure' of 'golden hours' and 'glowing colours'. It is a bad bit of writing, of course: a venal and bathetic exploitation of those emotions of awe and pleasure which men feel in visiting places that have striking associations with history or legend. If Gaius and Titius were to stick to their last and teach their readers (as they promised to do) the art of English composition, it was their business to put this advertisement side by side with passages from great writers in which the very emotion is well expressed, and then show where the difference lies.

They might have used Johnson's famous passage from the Western Islands, which concludes: 'That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.'[3] They might have taken that place in The Prelude where Wordsworth describes how the antiquity of London first descended on his mind with 'Weight and power, Power growing under weight'.[4] A lesson which had laid such literature beside the advertisement and really discriminated the good from the bad would have been a lesson worth teaching. There would have been some blood and sap in it—the trees of knowledge and of life growing together. It would also have had the merit of being a lesson in literature: a subject of which Gaius and Titius, despite their professed purpose, are uncommonly shy.

What they actually do is to point out that the luxurious motor-vessel won't really sail where Drake did, that the tourists will not have any adventures, that the treasures they bring home will be of a purely metaphorical nature, and that a trip to Margate might provide 'all the pleasure and rest' they required.[5] All this is very true: talents inferior to those of Gaius and Titius would have sufficed to discover it. What they have not noticed, or not cared about, is that a very similar treatment could be applied to much good literature which treats the same emotion. What, after all, can the history of early British Christianity, in pure reason, add to the motives for piety as they exist in the eighteenth century? Why should Mr Wordsworth's inn be more comfortable or the air of London more healthy because London has existed for a long time? Or, if there is indeed any obstacle which will prevent a critic from 'debunking' Johnson and Wordsworth (and Lamb, and Virgil, and Thomas Browne, and Mr de la Mare) as The Green Book debunks the advertisement, Gaius and Titius have given their schoolboy readers no faintest help to its discovery.

From this passage the schoolboy will learn about literature precisely nothing. What he will learn quickly enough, and perhaps indelibly, is the belief that all emotions aroused by local association are in themselves contrary to reason and contemptible. He will have no notion that there are two ways of being immune to such an advertisement—that it falls equally flat on those who are above it and those who are below it, on the man of real sensibility and on the mere trousered ape who has never been able to conceive the Atlantic as anything more than so many million tons of cold salt water. There are two men to whom we offer in vain a false leading article on patriotism and honour: one is the coward, the other is the honourable and patriotic man. None of this is brought before the schoolboy's mind. On the contrary, he is encouraged to reject the lure of the 'Western Ocean' on the very dangerous ground that in so doing he will prove himself a knowing fellow who can't be bubbled out of his cash. Gaius and Titius, while teaching him nothing about letters, have cut out of his soul, long before he is old enough to choose, the possibility of having certain experiences which thinkers of more authority than they have held to be generous, fruitful, and humane. But it is not only Gaius and Titius. In another little book, whose author I will call Orbilius, I find that the same operation, under the same general anaesthetic, is being carried out. Orbilius chooses for 'debunking' a silly bit of writing on horses, where these animals are praised as the 'willing servants' of the early colonists in Australia.[6] And he falls into the same trap as Gaius and Titius. Of Ruksh and Sleipnir and the weeping horses of Achilles and the war-horse in the Book of Job—nay even of Brer Rabbit and of Peter Rabbit—of man's prehistoric piety to 'our brother the ox'—of all that this semi-anthropomorphic treatment of beasts has meant in human history and of the literature where it finds noble or piquant expression—he has not a word to say.[7] Even of the problems of animal psychology as they exist for science he says nothing. He contents himself with explaining that horses are not, secundum litteram, interested in colonial expansion.[8] This piece of information is really all that his pupils get from him. Why the composition before them is bad, when others that lie open to the same charge are good, they do not hear. Much less do they learn of the two classes of men who are, respectively, above and below the danger of such writing—the man who really knows horses and really loves them, not with anthropomorphic illusions, but with ordinate love, and the irredeemable urban blockhead to whom a horse is merely an old-fashioned means of transport. Some pleasure in their own ponies and dogs they will have lost; some incentive to cruelty or neglect they will have received; some pleasure in their own knowingness will have entered their minds. That is their day's lesson in English, though of English they have learned nothing. Another little portion of the human heritage has been quietly taken from them before they were old enough to understand.

I have hitherto been assuming that such teachers as Gaius and Titius do not fully realize what they are doing and do not intend the far-reaching consequences it will actually have. There is, of course, another possibility. What I have called (presuming on their concurrence in a certain traditional system of values) the 'trousered ape' and the 'urban blockhead' may be precisely the kind of man they really wish to produce. The differences between us may go all the way down. They may really hold that the ordinary human feelings about the past or animals or large waterfalls are contrary to reason and contemptible and ought to be eradicated. They may be intending to make a clean sweep of traditional values and start with a new set. That position will be discussed later. If it is the position which Gaius and Titius are holding, I must, for the moment, content myself with pointing out that it is a philosophical and not a literary position. In filling their book with it they have been unjust to the parent or headmaster who buys it and who has got the work of amateur philosophers where he expected the work of professional grammarians. A man would be annoyed if his son returned from the dentist with his teeth untouched and his head crammed with the dentist's obiter dicta on bimetallism or the Baconian theory.

But I doubt whether Gaius and Titius have really planned, under cover of teaching English, to propagate their philosophy. I think they have slipped into it for the following reasons. In the first place, literary criticism is difficult, and what they actually do is very much easier. To explain why a bad treatment of some basic human emotion is bad literature is, if we exclude all question-begging attacks on the emotion itself, a very hard thing to do. Even Dr Richards, who first seriously tackled the problem of badness in literature, failed, I think, to do it. To 'debunk' the emotion, on the basis of a commonplace rationalism, is within almost anyone's capacity. In the second place, I think Gaius and Titius may have honestly misunderstood the pressing educational need of the moment. They see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda—they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental—and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

But there is a third, and a profounder, reason for the procedure which Gaius and Titius adopt. They may be perfectly ready to admit that a good education should build some sentiments while destroying others. They may endeavour to do so. But it is impossible that they should succeed. Do what they will, it is the 'debunking' side of their work, and this side alone, which will really tell. In order to grasp this necessity clearly I must digress for a moment to show that what may be called the educational predicament of Gaius and Titius is different from that of all their predecessors.

Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. The reason why Coleridge agreed with the tourist who called the cataract sublime and disagreed with the one who called it pretty was of course that he believed inanimate nature to be such that certain responses could be more 'just' or 'ordinate' or 'appropriate' to it than others. And he believed (correctly) that the tourists thought the same. The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions. But for this claim there would be nothing to agree or disagree about. To disagree with This is pretty if those words simply described the lady's feelings, would be absurd: if she had said I feel sick Coleridge would hardly have replied No; I feel quite well. When Shelley, having compared the human sensibility to an Aeolian lyre, goes on to add that it differs from a lyre in having a power of 'internal adjustment' whereby it can 'accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them',[9] he is assuming the same belief. 'Can you be righteous', asks Traherne, 'unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.'[10]

St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it.[11] Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.[12] When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in 'ordinate affections' or 'just sentiments' will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science.[13] Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.[14] In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one 'who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her.'[15] In early Hinduism that conduct in men which can be called good consists in conformity to, or almost participation in, the Rta—that great ritual or pattern of nature and supernature which is revealed alike in the cosmic order, the moral virtues, and the ceremonial of the temple. Righteousness, correctness, order, the Rta, is constantly identified with satya or truth, correspondence to reality. As Plato said that the Good was 'beyond existence' and Wordsworth that through virtue the stars were strong, so the Indian masters say that the gods themselves are born of the Rta and obey it.[16]

The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.[17] 'In ritual', say the Analects, 'it is harmony with Nature that is prized.'[18] The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being 'true'.[19]

This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as 'the Tao'. Some of the accounts of it which I have quoted will seem, perhaps, to many of you merely quaint or even magical. But what is common to them all is something we cannot neglect. It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are. Those who know the Tao can hold that to call children delightful or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not. I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: because I speak from within the Tao I recognize this as a defect in myself—just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or colour blind. And because our approvals and disapprovals are thus recognitions of objective value or responses to an objective order, therefore emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it). No emotion is, in itself, a judgement; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it.

Over against this stands the world of The Green Book. In it the very possibility of a sentiment being reasonable—or even unreasonable—has been excluded from the outset. It can be reasonable or unreasonable only if it conforms or fails to conform to something else. To say that the cataract is sublime means saying that our emotion of humility is appropriate or ordinate to the reality, and thus to speak of something else besides the emotion; just as to say that a shoe fits is to speak not only of shoes but of feet. But this reference to something beyond the emotion is what Gaius and Titius exclude from every sentence containing a predicate of value. Such statements, for them, refer solely to the emotion. Now the emotion, thus considered by itself, cannot be either in agreement or disagreement with Reason. It is irrational not as a paralogism is irrational, but as a physical event is irrational: it does not rise even to the dignity of error. On this view, the world of facts, without one trace of value, and the world of feelings, without one trace of truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, confront one another, and no rapprochement is possible.

Hence the educational problem is wholly different according as you stand within or without the Tao. For those within, the task is to train in the pupil those responses which are in themselves appropriate, whether anyone is making them or not, and in making which the very nature of man consists. Those without, if they are logical, must regard all sentiments as equally non-rational, as mere mists between us and the real objects. As a result, they must either decide to remove all sentiments, as far as possible, from the pupil's mind; or else to encourage some sentiments for reasons that have nothing to do with their intrinsic 'justness' or 'ordinacy'. The latter course involves them in the questionable process of creating in others by 'suggestion' or incantation a mirage which their own reason has successfully dissipated.

Perhaps this will become clearer if we take a concrete instance. When a Roman father told his son that it was a sweet and seemly thing to die for his country, he believed what he said. He was communicating to the son an emotion which he himself shared and which he believed to be in accord with the value which his judgement discerned in noble death. He was giving the boy the best he had, giving of his spirit to humanize him as he had given of his body to beget him. But Gaius and Titius cannot believe that in calling such a death sweet and seemly they would be saying 'something important about something'. Their own method of debunking would cry out against them if they attempted to do so. For death is not something to eat and therefore cannot be dulce in the literal sense, and it is unlikely that the real sensations preceding it will be dulce even by analogy. And as for decorum—that is only a word describing how some other people will feel about your death when they happen to think of it, which won't be often, and will certainly do you no good. There are only two courses open to Gaius and Titius. Either they must go the whole way and debunk this sentiment like any other, or must set themselves to work to produce, from outside, a sentiment which they believe to be of no value to the pupil and which may cost him his life, because it is useful to us (the survivors) that our young men should feel it. If they embark on this course the difference between the old and the new education will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions'. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds— making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.

It is to their credit that Gaius and Titius embrace the first alternative. Propaganda is their abomination: not because their own philosophy gives a ground for condemning it (or anything else) but because they are better than their principles. They probably have some vague notion (I will examine it in my next lecture) that valour and good faith and justice could be sufficiently commended to the pupil on what they would call 'rational' or 'biological' or 'modern' grounds, if it should ever become necessary. In the meantime, they leave the matter alone and get on with the business of debunking. But this course, though less inhuman, is not less disastrous than the opposite alternative of cynical propaganda. Let us suppose for a moment that the harder virtues could really be theoretically justified with no appeal to objective value. It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that 'a gentleman does not cheat', than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism (such as Gaius and Titius would wince at) about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the 'spirited element'.[20] The head rules the belly through the chest—the seat, as Alanus tells us, of Magnanimity,[21] of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments. The Chest-Magnanimity-Sentiment—these are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.

The operation of The Green Book and its kind is to produce what may be called Men without Chests. It is an outrage that they should be commonly spoken of as Intellectuals. This gives them the chance to say that he who attacks them attacks Intelligence. It is not so. They are not distinguished from other men by any unusual skill in finding truth nor any virginal ardour to pursue her. Indeed it would be strange if they were: a persevering devotion to truth, a nice sense of intellectual honour, cannot be long maintained without the aid of a sentiment which Gaius and Titius could debunk as easily as any other. It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so.

And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

References

[1] The Green Book, pp. 19, 20.

[2] Ibid., p 53.

[3] Journey to the Western Islands (Samuel Johnson).

[4] The Prelude, viii, 11. 549-59.

[5] The Green Book, pp. 53-5.

[6] Orbilius' book, p 5.

[7] Orbilius is so far superior to Gaius and Titius that he does (pp. 19-22) contrast a piece of good writing to animals with the piece condemned. Unfortunately, however, the only superiority he really demonstrates in the second extract is its superiority in factual truth. The specifically literary problem (the use and abuse of expressions which are false secundum litteram) is not tackled. Orbilius indeed tells us (p. 97) that we must 'learn to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate figurative statement', but he gives us very little help in doing so. At the same time it is fair to record my opinion that his work is on quite a different level from The Green Book.

[8] Ibid., p 9.

[9] Defence of Poetry.

[10] Centuries of Meditations, i, 12.

[11] De Civ. Dei, xv. 22. Cf. ibid. ix. 5, xi. 28.

[12] Eth. Nic. 1104 b.

[13] Ibid. 1095 b.

[14] Laws, 653.

[15] Republic, 402 a.

[16] A. B. Keith, s.v. 'Righteousness (Hindu)' Enc. Religion and Ethics, vol. x.

[17] Ibid., vol. ii, p. 454 b; iv. 12 b; ix. 87 a.

[18] The Analects of Confucius, trans. Arthur Waley, London, 1938, i. 12.

[19] Psalm 119:151. The word is emeth, 'truth'. Where the Satya of the Indian sources emphasizes truth as 'correspondence', emeth (connected with a verb that means 'to be firm') emphasizes rather the reliability or trustworthiness of truth. Faithfulness and permanence are suggested by Hebraists as alternative renderings. Emeth is that which does not deceive, does not 'give', does not change, that which holds water. (See T. K. Cheyne in Encyclopedia Biblica, 1914, s.v. 'Truth'.)

[20] Republic, 442 b, c.

[21] Alanus ab Insulis. De Planctu Naturae Prosa, iii.

Guilt trip, writ large

2010-03-08T05:27:00.000-08:00

Robert Fulford

All the world knows what causes great global problems. It's the West, meaning the United States, Europe, the countries that inherited British politics and of course Israel.

There's nothing that can't be blamed on the West. Many countries are poor today because Western capitalism keeps them that way. If they are undeveloped, that's the fault of colonialism, which was invented by Europe after it invented slavery. Colonialism's numerous crimes will never be forgotten or forgiven, its numerous virtues never celebrated.

Pascal Bruckner describes the melancholy results of these attitudes in his forthcoming polemic, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism (Princeton University Press). His angry book could change a whole civilization's opinion, if only that civilization had sense enough to pay attention.

"Nothing is more Western than hatred of the West," Bruckner says. It runs through the bloodstream of opinion, a river of poison that thrives in our universities, affects our media, saps the spirit of foreign policy, and routinely gets subsidized by genial NGOs.

In theory, guilt has a positive effect when it encourages better behaviour. Everyone could use some improvement. But the guilt of the West, as Bruckner correctly sees it, takes a morose and cynical pleasure in moral failure.

"We Euro-Americans," Bruckner argues, "are supposed to have only one obligation: endlessly atoning for what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity."

Bruckner identifies guilt as an indirect form of self-glorification. Popular American memoirs express the same syndrome when the authors describe, for large audiences, their earlier lives of degradation as alcoholics or drug addicts. Old sins become the basis of a new importance. In the same way, Europe's barbarity in the fascist and communist eras gives it the authority of an expert witness.

It acknowledges, of course, only the barbarity of the West. For the crimes of non-Western states, the West likes to find extenuating circumstances, a way of denying them responsibility.

Bruckner was one of the New Philosophers who emerged in Paris in the 1970s. They were passionate anticommunists, more academic yet more flamboyant cousins of the American neo-conservatives. In 1983, Bruckner created intense discussion with The Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt, a vehement critique of the West's sentimental and mainly unsuccessful aid programs. He influenced many writers, though perhaps fewer policy makers. His fiction can generate as much controversy as his essays. (One novel became the basis for an unfortunate Roman Polanski film, Bitter Moon.)

In the 1990s, Bruckner argued in favour of military action against Serbia in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. He supported the war against Saddam Hussein but later decided the human cost was insupportable. Even so, he writes in The Tyranny of Guilt that the pacifists who paraded against George W. Bush in 2003 were supporting one of the worst dictatorships in the Middle East. He sets down a typically rueful conclusion: "Iraq was an exemplary case of the double bind: whether one approved of the intervention or not, one was wrong."

Israel has suffered spectacular collateral damage from Western masochism. We might guess that Europeans would empathize with the state of Israel, which was in large part founded by Europeans on mainly European models. But those in the West who consider their own history shameful find it natural to dislike its offspring in the Middle East. Pathological hatred of Israel has reached grotesque levels in Europe.
The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism
by Pascal Bruckner

Bruckner, no admirer of recent Israeli governments, nevertheless suspects that supporters of the Palestinians are essentially Europeans pursuing their own guilt trips in a foreign theatre. He agrees with Bernard Lewis's remark that for many people, "the Arabs are in truth nothing more than a stick for beating the Jews."

Why do those who love the Palestinians never march for the Chechens, the Tibetans, the Sudanese, the Congolese? People who speechify endlessly on the Palestinians show no interest in the Uighurs. Those who care about only one of the world's downtrodden peoples naturally arouse suspicion that something other than humanitarian feeling is behind their rhetoric.

Europe displays its paralytic guilt complex, Bruckner notes, even on its common currency. Once the great artists of Europe (and some not-so-great monarchs and politicians) appeared on European money. Travellers in Europe found themselves paying their bills in Michelangelo, Cervantes or Voltaire. No longer. The European heritage has disappeared from the cash, to be replaced by unidentifiable arches, bridges and doors. Artists are too blatantly specific—too European, in fact. Chastened by its history and terrified by its enemies, Europe prefers to advertise nothingness.

Published previously in the National Post, (Canada) March 6, 2010.

Robert Fulford has been a journalist since the summer of 1950, when he left high school to work as a sports writer on The Globe and Mail. He has since been a news reporter, literary critic, art critic, movie critic, and editor—on a variety of magazines, ranging from Canadian Homes and Gardens to the Canadian Forum. He was the editor of Saturday Night magazine for 19 years, and since he left that job in 1987 he's been a freelance writer. He writes twice a week in the National Post and contributes a monthly column about the media to Toronto Life magazine and writes for Queen's Quarterly. Among his books are: Best seat in the house: Memoirs of a lucky man and The Triumph of Narrative: Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture. Robert Fulford is an officer of the Order of Canada and the holder of honorary degrees from six Canadian universities.

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

2010-02-20T04:47:00.000-08:00

Timothy Keller

The Enemies Are Both Right

There is a great gulf today between what is popularly known as liberalism and conservatism. Each side demands that you not only disagree with but disdain the other as (at best) crazy or (at worst) evil. This is particularly true when religion is the point at issue. Progressives cry out that fundamentalism is growing rapidly and nonbelief is stigmatized. They point out that politics has turned toward the right, supported by mega-churches and moblized orthodox believers. Conservatives endlessly denounce what they see as an increasingly skeptical and relativistic society. Major universities, media companies, and elite institutions are heavily secular, they say, and they control the culture.

Which is it? Is skepticism or faith on the ascendancy in the world today? The answer is Yes. The enemies are both right. Skepticism, fear, and anger toward traditional religion are growing in power and influence. But at the same time, robust, orthodox belief in the traditional faiths is growing as well.

The non-churchgoing population in the United States and Europe is steadily increasing.(1) The number of Americans answering "no religious preference" to poll questions has skyrocketed, having doubled or even tripled in the last decade.(2) A century ago most U.S. universities shifted from a formally Christian foundation to an overtly secular one.(3) As a result, those with traditional religious beliefs have little foothold in any of the institutions of cultural power. But even as more and more people identify themselves as having "no religious preference," certain churches with supposedly obsolete beliefs in an infallible Bible and miracles are growing in the United States and exploding in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Even in much of Europe, there is some growth in church attendance.(4) And despite the secularism of most universities and colleges, religious faith is growing in some corners of academia. It is estimated that 10 to 25 percent of all the teachers and professors of philosophy in the country are orthodox Christians, up from less than 1 percent just thirty years ago.(5) Prominent academic Stanley Fish may have had an eye on that trend when he reported, "When Jacques Derrida died [in November 2004] I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion."(6)

In short, the world is polarizing over religion. It is getting both more religious and less religious at the same time. There was once a confident belief that secular European countries were the harbingers for the rest of the world. Religion, it was thought, would thin out from its more robust, supernaturalist forms or die out altogether. But the theory that technological advancement brings inevitable secularization is now being scrapped or radically rethought.(7) Even Europe may not face a secular future, with Christianity growing modestly and Islam growing exponentially.

The Two Camps

I speak from an unusual vantage point on this two-edged phenomenon. I was raised in a mainline Lutheran church in eastern Pennsylvania. When I reached my teens in the early 1960s, the time came for me to attend confirmation class, a two-year course that covered Christian beliefs, practices, and history. Its aim was to bring young people into a fuller understanding of the faith, so they could publicly commit to it. My teacher for the first year was a retired minister. He was quite traditional and conservative, speaking often of the danger of hell and the need for great faith. In the second year of the course, however, the instructor was a new, young cleric just out of seminary. He was a social activist and was filled with deep doubts about traditional Christian doctrine. It was almost like being instructed in two different religions. In the first year, we stood before a holy, just God whose wrath could only be turned aside at great effort and cost. In the second year, we heard of a spirit of love in the universe, who mainly required that we work for human rights and the liberation of the oppressed. The main question I wanted to ask our instructors was, "Which one of you is lying?" But fourteen-year-olds are not so bold, and I just kept my mouth shut.

My family later found its way to a more conservative church in a small Methodist denomination. For several years this strengthened what could be called the "Hellfire Layer" of my religious formation, although the pastor and people there were personally as gentle as could be. Then I went off to one of those fine, liberal, smaller universities in the Northeast, which quickly began to throw water on the hellfire in my imagination.

The history and philosophy departments were socially radicalized and were heavily influenced by the neo-Marxist critical theory of the Frankfurt School. In 1968, this was heady stuff. The social activism was particularly attractive, and the critique of American bourgeoisie society was compelling, but its philosophical underpinnings were confusing to me. I seemed to see two camps before me, and there was something radically wrong with both of them. The people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists, while the morally upright didn't seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world. I was emotionally drawn to the former path—what young person wouldn't be? Liberate the oppressed and sleep with who you wanted! But I kept asking the question, "If morality is relative, why isn't social justice as well?" This seemed to be a blatant inconsistency in my professors and their followers. Yet now I saw the stark contradiction in the traditional churches. How could I turn back to the kind of orthodox Christianity that supported segregation in the South and apartheid in South Africa? Christianity began to seem very unreal to me, though I was unable to discern a viable alternative way of life and thought.

I didn't know it at the time, but this spiritual "unreality" stemmed from three barriers that lay across my path. During my college years, these three barriers eroded and my faith became vital and life-affecting. The first barrier was an intellectual one. I was confronted with a host of tough questions about Christianity: "What about other religions? What about evil and suffering? How could a loving God judge and punish? Why believe anything at all?" I began to read books and arguments on both sides of these issues and slowly but surely, Christianity began to make more and more sense. The rest of this book lays out why I still think so.

The second barrier was an interior, personal one. As a child, the plausibility of a faith can rest on the authority of others, but when we reach adulthood there is a need for personal, firsthand experience as well. While I had "said my prayers" for years, and while I sometimes had that inspirational, aesthetic sense of wonder at the sight of a sea or mountain, I had never experienced God's presence personally. This required not so much knowledge of techniques for prayer, but a process in which I came to grips with my own needs, flaws, and problems. It was painful, and was, as is typical, triggered by disappointments and failures. It would take another, different kind of book to go into them. But it needs to be said that faith-journeys are never simply intellectual exercises.

The third barrier was a social one. I desperately needed to find a "third camp," a group of Christians who had a concern for justice in the world but who grounded it in the nature of God rather than in their own subjective feelings. When I found that "band of brothers"—and sisters (just as important!)—things began to change for me. These three barriers did not come down quickly or in any set order. Rather they were intertwined and dependent on one another. I did not work through them in any methodical way. It's only in hindsight that I see how the three factors worked together. Because I was always looking for that third camp, I became interested in shaping and initiating new Christian communities. That meant the ministry, so I entered it just a few years after college.

The View from Manhattan

In the late 1980s, my wife, Kathy, and I moved to Manhattan with our three young sons to begin a new church for a largely non-churchgoing population. During the research phase I was told by almost everyone that it was a fool's errand. Church meant moderate or conservative; the city was liberal and edgy. Church meant families; New York City was filled with young singles and "nontraditional" households. Church most of all meant belief, but Manhattan was the land of skeptics, critics, and cynics. The middle class, the conventional market for a church, was fleeing the city because of crime and rising costs. That left the sophisticated and hip, the wealthy and the poor. Most of these people just laugh at the idea of church, I was told. Congregations in the city were dwindling, most struggling to even maintain their buildings.

Many of my early contacts said that the few congregations that had maintained a following had done so by adapting traditional Christian teaching to the more pluralistic ethos of the city. "Don't tell people they have to believe in Jesus—that's considered narrow-minded here." They were incredulous when I explained that the beliefs of the new church would be the orthodox, historic tenets of Christianity—the infallibility of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the necessity of spiritual regeneration (the new birth)—all doctrines considered hopelessly dated by the majority of New Yorkers. Nobody ever said "fuggedaboutit" out loud, but it always hung in the air.

Nevertheless, we launched Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and by the end of 2007 it had grown to more than 5,000 attendees and had spawned more than a dozen daughter congregations in the immediate metropolitan area. The church is quite multi-ethnic and young (average age about thirty) and is more than two-thirds single. Meanwhile, dozens of other similarly orthodox-believing congregations have sprung up in Manhattan and hundreds of others throughout the four other boroughs. One survey showed that in the last several years more than a hundred churches had been started in New York City by Christians from Africa alone. We were as stunned by this as anyone.

New York isn't alone. In the fall of 2006 The Economist ran a story with the subtitle "Christianity is collapsing everywhere but London." The crux of the article was that despite the fact that church attendance and profession of the Christian faith was plummeting across Britain and Europe, many young professionals (and new immigrants) in London were flocking to evangelical churches.(8) That is exactly what I've seen here.

This leads to a strange conclusion. We have come to a cultural moment in which both skeptics and believers feel their existence is threatened because both secular skepticism and religious faith are on the rise in significant, powerful ways. We have neither the Western Christendom of the past nor the secular, religionless society that was predicted for the future. We have something else entirely.

A Divided Culture

Three generations ago, most people inherited rather than chose their religious faith. The great majority of people belonged to one of the historic, mainline Protestant churches or the Roman Catholic Church. Today, however, the now-dubbed "old-line" Protestant churches of cultural, inherited faith are aging and losing members rapidly. People are opting instead for a nonreligious life, for a non-institutional, personally constructed spirituality, or for orthodox, high-commitment religious groups that expect members to have a conversion experience. Therefore the population is paradoxically growing both more religious and less religious at once.

Because doubt and belief are each on the rise, our political and public discourse on matters of faith and morality has become deadlocked and deeply divided. The culture wars are taking a toll. Emotions and rhetoric are intense, even hysterical. Those who believe in God and Christianity are out to "impose their beliefs on the rest of us" and "turn back the clock" to a less enlightened time. Those who don't believe are "enemies of truth" and "purveyors of relativism and permissiveness." We don't reason with the other side; we only denounce.

We have an impasse between the strengthening forces of doubt and belief, and this won't be solved simply by calling for more civility and dialogue. Arguments depend on having commonly held reference points that both sides can hold each other to. When fundamental understandings of reality conflict, it is hard to find anything to which to appeal. The title of Alasdair MacIntyre's book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? says it all. Our problems are not going away soon.

How can we find a way forward?

First, each side should accept that both religious belief and skepticism are on the rise. Atheist author Sam Harris and Religious Right leader Pat Robertson should each admit the fact that his particular tribe is strong and increasing in influence. This would eliminate the self-talk that is rampant in each camp, namely that it will soon be extinct, overrun by the opposition. Nothing like that is imminently possible. If we stopped saying such things to ourselves it might make everyone more civil and generous toward opposing views.

Such an admission is not only reassuring, but also humbling. There are still many of a secular turn of mind who confidently say orthodox faith is vainly trying to "resist the tide of history," though there is no historical evidence that religion is dying out at all. Religious believers should also be much less dismissive of secular skepticism. Christians should reflect on the fact that such large sectors of our formerly largely Christian societies have turned their backs on faith. Surely that should lead to self-examination. The time for making elegant dismissive gestures toward the other side is past. Something more is now required. But what?

A Second Look at Doubt

I want to make a proposal that I have seen bear much fruit in the lives of young New Yorkers over the years. I recommend that each side look at doubt in a radically new way.

Let's begin with believers. A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts—not only their own but their friends' and neighbors'. It is no longer sufficient to hold beliefs just because you inherited them. Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith will you be able to provide grounds for your beliefs to skeptics, including yourself, that are plausible rather than ridiculous or offensive. And, just as important for our current situation, such a process will lead you, even after you come to a position of strong faith, to respect and understand those who doubt.

But even as believers should learn to look for reasons behind their faith, skeptics must learn to look for a type of faith hidden within their reasoning. All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs.(9) You cannot doubt Belief A except from a position of faith in Belief B. For example, if you doubt Christianity because "There can't be just one true religion," you must recognize that this statement is itself an act of faith. No one can prove it empirically, and it is not a universal truth that everyone accepts. If you went to the Middle East and said, "There can't be just one true religion," nearly everyone would say, "Why not?" The reason you doubt Christianity's Belief A is because you hold unprovable Belief B. Every doubt, therefore, is based on a leap of faith.

Some people say, "I don't believe in Christianity because I can't accept the existence of moral absolutes. Everyone should determine moral truth for him or herself." Is that a statement they can prove to someone who doesn't share it? No, it is a leap of faith, a deep belief that individual rights operate not only in the political sphere but also in the moral. There is no empirical proof for such a position. So the doubt (of moral absolutes) is a leap.

Some will respond to all this, "My doubts are not based on a leap of faith. I have no beliefs about God one way or another. I simply feel no need for God and I am not interested in thinking about it." But hidden beneath this feeling is the very modern American belief that the existence of God is a matter of indifference unless it intersects with my emotional needs. The speaker is betting his or her life that no God exists who would hold you accountable for your beliefs and behavior if you didn't feel the need for him. That may be true or it may not be true, but, again, it is quite a leap of faith.(10)

The only way to doubt Christianity rightly and fairly is to discern the alternate belief under each of your doubts and then to ask yourself what reasons you have for believing it. How do you know your belief is true? It would be inconsistent to require more justification for Christian belief than you do for your own, but that is frequently what happens. In fairness you must doubt your doubts. My thesis is that if you come to recognize the beliefs on which your doubts about Christianity are based, and if you seek as much proof for those beliefs as you seek from Christians for theirs—you will discover that your doubts are not as solid as they first appeared.

I commend two processes to my readers. I urge skeptics to wrestle with the unexamined "blind faith" on which skepticism is based, and to see how hard it is to justify those beliefs to those who do not share them. I also urge believers to wrestle with their personal and culture's objections to the faith. At the end of each process, even if you remain the skeptic or believer you have been, you will hold your own position with both greater clarity and greater humility. Then there will be an understanding, sympathy, and respect for the other side that did not exist before. Believers and nonbelievers will rise to the level of disagreement rather than simply denouncing one another. This happens when each side has learned to represent the other's argument in its strongest and most positive form. Only then is it safe and fair to disagree with it. That achieves civility in a pluralistic society, which is no small thing.

A Spiritual Third Way?

The rest of this book is a distillation of the many conversations I've had with doubters over the years. In both my preaching and personal interactions I've tried to respectfully help skeptics look at their own faith-foundations while at the same time laying bare my own to their strongest criticisms. In the first half of this volume we will review the seven biggest objections and doubts about Christianity I've heard from people over the years. I will respectfully discern the alternate beliefs beneath each of them. Then in the second half of the book we will examine the reasons underlying Christian beliefs.

Respectful dialogue between entrenched traditional conservative and secular liberal people is a great good, and I hope this book will promote it. But my experience as a pastor in New York has given me another incentive to write this volume. As soon as I arrived in New York I realized that the faith and doubt situation was not what the experts thought it was. Older white people who ran the cultural business of the city definitely were quite secular. But among the increasingly multiethnic younger professionals and the working-class immigrants there was a lush, category-defying variety of strong religious beliefs. And Christianity, in particular, was growing rapidly among them.

I think these younger Christians are the vanguard of some major new religious, social, and political arrangements that could make the older form of culture wars obsolete. After they wrestle with doubts and objections to Christianity many come out on the other side with an orthodox faith that doesn't fit the current categories of liberal Democrat or conservative Republican. Many see both sides in the "culture war" making individual freedom and personal happiness the ultimate value rather than God and the common good. Liberals' individualism comes out in their views of abortion, sex, and marriage. Conservatives' individualism comes out in their deep distrust of the public sector and in their understanding of poverty as simply a failure of personal responsibility. The new, fast-spreading multiethnic orthodox Christianity in the cities is much more concerned about the poor and social justice than Republicans have been, and at the same time much more concerned about upholding classic Christian moral and sexual ethics than Democrats have been.

While the first half of the book lays out a pathway that many of these Christians have taken through doubt, the second half of the book is a more positive exposition of the faith they are living out in the world. Here are three people at the church now.

June was a graduate of an Ivy League university, living and working in Manhattan. She became so obsessed with her physical image that she developed eating disorders and substance addictions. She came to see that she was heading for self-destruction, but she also realized that she had no particular reason to stop being reckless with her life. After all, what did her life mean? Why not be self-destructive? She turned to church and sought an understanding of God's mercy and an experience of his reality. She saw a counselor at the church who helped her draw a connection between the mercy of God and her seemingly inexhaustible need for acceptance. Finally she had the confidence to seek an encounter with God himself. Though she can't pinpoint one moment, she came to feel, for the first time, "unconditionally loved as a true daughter of God." Gradually she received freedom from her self-destructive behavior.

Jeffrey was a New York City musician, raised in a conservative Jewish home. Both his father and mother suffered terribly with cancer, his mother succumbing to it. Because of a variety of physical ailments from his youth, he took up the practice of Chinese healing arts, along with Taoist and Buddhist meditation, and became extremely focused on physical wellness. He was in no state of "spiritual need" when a friend began taking him to Redeemer. He liked the sermons "until that Jesus business came around at the end" at which point he'd stop listening. Soon, however, he became somewhat jealous of his Christian friends' joy and hope for the future that he had not encountered before. Then he began listening to the ends of the sermons and realizing they posed an intellectual challenge that he had not wanted to face. Finally, to his surprise, during his times of meditation he discovered his "moments of normally pure quiet and stillness were constantly interrupted by visions of Jesus on the cross." He began to pray to the Christian God, and soon he realized that his dominant life narrative had been the escape and total avoidance of suffering. Now he saw how futile such a life goal was. When he understood that Jesus had surrendered his physical health and life to save the world—and him—it moved him deeply. He saw a way to get the courage to face the inevitable suffering of the future, and to know there would be a path through it. He embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Kelly was an Ivy League atheist. As a twelve-year-old, Kelly watched her grandfather die of cancer and her two-year-old sister undergo surgery, chemo, and radiation therapy for a brain tumor. By the time she was an undergraduate at Columbia University, she had lost hope that life had any meaning to it. Several of her Christian friends at college spoke to her of their faith, but she was "rocky soil for the seeds" of their testimonies. However, when her sister had a stroke and was paralyzed at the age of fourteen, it moved her not to give up on God but to begin more deliberate searching. By then she was living and working in the city. She met her future husband, Kevin, also a Columbia grad and an atheist, who was working on Wall Street with J. P. Morgan. Their doubts about God were very stubborn, and yet they had doubts about their doubts, and so they began attending Redeemer. Their pilgrimage toward faith was slow and painstaking. One of the things that kept them on the trail, however, was the large number of believing Christians they met that were every bit as sophisticated and smart as anyone else they'd met in the city. Finally they were not only convinced of Christianity's intellectual credibility, but were attracted by its vision for life. Kelly wrote, "As an atheist I thought I lived a moral, community-oriented, concerned-with-social-justice kind of life, but Christianity had an even higher standard—down to our thoughts and the state of our hearts. I accepted God's forgiveness and invited him into my life." Kevin wrote, "While sitting in a coffee shop reading C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, I put down the book and wrote in my notebook 'the evidence surrounding the claims of Christianity is simply overwhelming.' I realized that my achievements were ultimately unsatisfying, the approval of man is fleeting, that a carpe diem life lived solely for adventure is just a form of narcissism and idolatry. And so I became a believer in Christ." (11)

Jesus and Our Doubts

Kelly's account recalls how, as a struggler with doubt and faith, the passage about Thomas in the New Testament was a comfort to her. There Jesus modeled a view of doubt more nuanced than those of either modern skeptics or modern believers. When Jesus confronted "doubting Thomas" he challenged him not to acquiesce in doubt ("believe!") and yet responded to his request for more evidence. In another incident, Jesus meets a man who confesses that he is filled with doubts (Mark 9:24), who says to Jesus, "Help thou my unbelief "—help me with my doubts! In response to this honest admission, Jesus blesses him and heals his son. Whether you consider yourself a believer or a skeptic, I invite you to seek the same kind of honesty and to grow in an understanding of the nature of your own doubts. The result will exceed anything you can imagine.

References

Timothy Keller. "Introduction." excerpted from The Reason for God: Belief in the Age of Skepticism (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008): ix-xxiv.

Called a "C.S. Lewis for the 21st century" by Newsweek, Dr. Timothy Keller is founder and pastor of New York's Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. Over the past 20 years, the church has grown to five services at three sites, with a weekly attendance of over 5,000. Named one of the Top 25 Most Influential Churches in America, Keller's ministry is notable not only for winning over New Yorkers who are skeptical to faith, but also for its missional approach, planting more than 100 churches though the Redeemer Church Planting Center. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Reason for God: Belief in the Age of Skepticism, The Prodigal God, and Counterfeit Gods. Copyright © 2008 Timothy Keller

A New Conservatism

2010-02-15T20:57:00.000-08:00

Anthony Esolen

“This year will mark a great opportunity for conservatives,” said the voice over the radio, by which he meant that one style of politician wholly committed to the cramped secular vision of man would triumph over another style of politician committed to the same thing. Which caused me to consider that any new conservatism in America will be Catholic, or Christian at least, in both its looking forward to the kingdom of God and its gratitude for the gifts of the past, or it will not be at all.

What would such a conservatism look like? I suggest the following, at the least.

It must be rooted in natural piety. Our schoolchildren these days know next to nothing about the heroes of their native land, flawed though these heroes certainly were. They know little enough about the place where they live, as their days are devoured by the institutional school and the place-denying un-world of the television and the Internet. They are taught to dissociate themselves, in pride, from the narrow prejudices of their parents, thus enabling them all the more easily to absorb the narrow prejudices of their keepers in the schools and in the media.

The result of all this dissociation is that we hardly have citizens at all, who take pride in their localities and exert themselves to preserve them and pass their beauty along to the next generation. We have instead a mass of rootless people, isolated in time—since they come from nowhere in particular, and are going nowhere but to the place where their untrained wills must lead them—and alienated from one another. We must remember that piety is a natural virtue before it has been baptized; it is a deeply human thing to love one’s place merely because it is one’s own, and to cherish memories of those who dwelt in it before and helped to make it what it is.

It must recognize zones of authority. Libertarianism is, I am afraid, a false friend. It assumes that my freedom is defined by what others cannot legitimately prevent me from doing: from learning how to play the violin, if I so choose (to use Isaiah Berlin’s example), or, far more sinister, from destroying the offspring in the womb. But that is a cramped view of freedom, and assumes that the relationship between freedom and authority is adversarial.

For authority is not opposed to freedom; it is rather its precondition. We can divine this from the suggestive Latin etymology: the “auctor” is one who gives increase. When, for example, the child cheerfully obeys his father, he liberates himself from both the unruliness of his youthful appetites and from the distractions with which the world besets him. He becomes a responsible young man capable of shingling a roof, or changing the oil in the car, or kneeling before the Lord in humble and exalting prayer.

The family, for instance, ought to be an area of freedom from state intrusion not, principally, because the individuals in it should be allowed to do as they please within the bounds of the civil law, nor even because the family can accomplish what the state cannot, but because it is in itself an area of law-giving and law-abiding. It has its own authority, which demands respect. The school, the parish, the neighborhood, the city, the workplace, the football team, indeed all free associations of human beings—both those that arise by nature and those that men create and choose—should be afforded freedom, not as part of a Madisonian compromise among competing factions, but as an acknowledgment by the state of what is after all human reality.

Such a vision would, paradoxically, help deliver the freedom which libertarians long for while grounding it in the virtue of obedience and breaking the terrible reduction of human life to the conflict between individual will and state control.

It must uphold human nature: both what is human, and what is natural. We will perhaps soon hear scientists, motivated by the lust for glory and power, championing the production of “transhuman” creatures, or suggesting that we take control of our own evolution by placing it in the capable hands of politicians and genetic engineers. This, of course, is rather like looking for one’s philosophy of life from mayors and plumbers—meaning no disrespect to mayors and plumbers, so long as they keep to what they know how to do, such as cutting ribbons at a statue-unveiling, or laying pipes in the right direction.

The conservative must reject all violations of the human and the natural. We must treasure the beauty not of some imagined life of indefinite duration, cobbled together with spare parts grown from embryos for our own purposes, reducing ourselves and them to mere machines. We must instead insist upon the holiness of a human life, from conception to natural death; and we must see that yielding to a secular vision of freedom as autonomous choice has now brought us near the disaster of an engineered world, with children pieced together according to our specifications, to fulfill our ambition or vanity.

At the same time we must understand why it is that so many people resist, with shock and outrage, the notion that their bodies are not their own, and that they may not do with them what they please. Josef Pieper long ago suggested that in a drab, regimented world, a world without the celebrations that people naturally engage in, a world without the leisure of true worship, people will turn to eros as the last “green thing” left. Now that the state has arrogated all authority to itself, and now that human life moves restlessly between one institution and another, we turn, mistakenly, to the last bastion of freedom, the last enclosed garden wherein a few flowers may bloom. We turn to the body.

Those hopes, of course, have proved delusive. Eros, elevated to the sole remaining god of freedom, cannot deliver upon that promise; it has instead underscored our alienation, as young people now—to use their own sad and mechanical phrase—“hook up,” without even the heat of the erotic to warm their chilly souls. Or consider the veritable pharmacopia of drugs and devices without which modern man and woman cannot make themselves attractive to one another, so they believe, and cannot even perform the act that the lowly savages, without benefit of instruction manuals or pills or magazines, somehow manage to enjoy. We are so befuddled, and so inured to the mechanization of the body, that the biological and linguistic absurdity called “same-sex marriage” becomes imaginable to us; mainly because we have lost the sense of what sexual intercourse really is—the one-flesh union of man and woman whereby, if the circumstances are right, children come into the world. So we pretend that two men or two women can do other than mimic sexual intercourse, and then we resort to the laboratory or the sperm bank or some other governmental apparatus to provide the children that cannot otherwise be had.

And yet men and women are still longing. Here we find our greatest opportunity. The world preaches autonomy, as sterile as the sexual manipulation which is its greatest but ultimately its most disappointing lure. We must preach instead the fullness of being.

It must recognize that our greatest threat is Nothing. The false gods of pagan Greece and Rome are no more. It is now, for western man, as David Hart has put it, Christ or nothing. He did not mean simply that a belief in the Messiah (having come, or, for the faithful Jew, yet to come) is the only belief left standing. He meant also that the world now offers, as a totem of worship, the god of Nothingness, meaninglessness. “Ye shall be as gods,” said the serpent in the garden; but our new tempters improve upon the old. “Ye are no more than serpents,” they say, or collocations of atoms in the void, and once you understand this—once you understand that there is no objective reality to good and evil, and no such thing as human dignity, you may then do as you please. You may then, for example, act as a serpent does, one long alimentary canal, consuming what you like, and excreting what is not to your use. You may be gods—serpent-gods.

We must learn to “see” this faceless Nothing, this spiritual death. For it cloaks itself in the shabbiest ways. When we hear that all cultures are equal, meaning that man never makes any progress toward the truth, because there is no truth, then we must see Nothing hovering near, like a sinister Cheshire cat, no body and all grin. When we hear that there are no differences between man and woman, then we should turn around and see Nothing, flipping through a magazine, yawning, bored. When we hear that the State must assume all our duties for caring for one another, must feed our children, fill their brains with fog, and put them to bed at night, we must see the Nothing sitting enthroned in our parlors, in front of the television.

Nothing beckons, because Nothing promises freedom: as of a body falling from a great height, but indefinitely. We must understand that Nothing is now, in a terrible parody of God, everywhere, all the time; in the nihilism of personal choice elevated to the sole standard of the good; in the nihilism of the rejection of the past; in the nihilism of the homogenization of cultures; the fast food, the cheap thrill, the easy trick. We must instead offer not Something, but Someone. It is Christ, and him crucified.

“Behold,” says the Lord God, upon the throne at the consummation of time, “I make all things new.” In that great promise, or that stunning paradox, lies what I believe is, finally, the only hope for a renewed western culture. That is because it situates our hope in what we had always known, but only in part; and in the One whom we had always loved, but imperfectly. Therefore the most “progressive” among us, those who have proceeded farthest along the journey of all men towards truth, are those who see most clearly the beauty and the value of all that has gone before. They alone dwell in the fullness of hope.

Anthony Esolen, professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island, translated Dante’s Divine Comedy for Modern Library (Random House).

The 2007 Solution

2010-02-07T11:12:00.000-08:00

Fred Barnes

Republican senator George LeMieux of Florida has done the math. If government spending were reduced to its 2007 level, we’d have a balanced budget (with a $163 billion surplus). Returning to the 2008 level of spending, the budget would be balanced in 2014 (a $133 billion surplus). And in both cases, that’s while keeping the Bush tax cuts across the board and indexing the loathed alternative minimum tax for inflation.

“Could we live with what we did in 2007?” LeMieux asks—the “we” a collective reference to Congress, the federal government, and the country. He thinks so. Because of the recession, “most Americans are living with less than they had in 2007.”

LeMieux’s ideas on curbing spending haven’t gotten much attention. That’s because of who he is, a 40-year-old appointed rather than elected senator filling out the final 16 months of the term of Mel Martinez, who resigned. He’s not running for election this November. In fact, he’s never been elected to any office. (Nor is he related to Mario Lemieux, the hockey legend.)

When LeMieux arrived in Washington last September, he was struck—appalled, really—by one thing. “You come in thinking Washington is out of control,” he says. “And spending is out of control.” But it’s actually much worse than that. After working as chief of staff for Florida governor Charles Crist, then managing a large law firm in Ft. Lauderdale, LeMieux found the spending habits on Capitol Hill “bizarre.”

“It stands in sharp contrast to what the real world is like,” he says. For the state government in Florida, “the biggest thing in town” is the quarterly report of how much revenue has been collected. “We could only spend what was coming in.”

Not so in Washington. “No one asks what we’re taking in,” LeMieux says. “And no one gauges” how much to spend based on that amount. “After a while you get used to it,” he says. At least he assumes that’s what occurs. LeMieux hopes that doesn’t happen to him. “I haven’t bought in,” he says. He won’t be in Washington long enough to become inured to the spending binge.

When he talks to fellow senators about the need to slash spending, LeMieux thinks some of them dismiss his fervor as the result of inexperience. “He’ll learn soon enough we don’t do that kind of stuff here”—that’s the way they regard him, LeMieux suspects. And he’s probably right.

He prefers the Florida approach, which is similar to what other states do to meet their balanced budget requirement. In 2007, “storm clouds” of the looming recession began to appear. With diminishing revenue, the state could do three things: cut spending, raise taxes, or find new sources of tax revenue.

The state began to pare its budget, from $73 billion in 2006 to $70 billion in 2007 and even lower to $66.5 billion last year. As the law mandates, there was no deficit. LeMieux cites this as the opposite of the Washington practice. Estimated spending for 2010 is $3.8 trillion based on revenue of $2.2 trillion, leaving a humongous $1.6 trillion deficit.

After four months in Washington, LeMieux is willing to support “anything” to bend the spending curve. Last week, he joined Republican senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn in seeking a yearlong ban on earmarks, which fund special projects for individual states or congressional districts. “I’ve made the decision to voluntarily disarm,” he says. He’ll propose no earmarks for Florida.

LeMieux is convinced that earmarks are, as DeMint insists, “the engine that drives the train.” A senator is bound to vote for an appropriations bill, no matter how bloated, if his earmarks are in it. “That’s the way you get 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent increases in spending,” he says.

A balanced budget amendment, a constitutional amendment giving the president line item veto authority, legislation to kill duplicative federal programs—the senator is for all of these. He thinks agency heads should submit annual budgets with a 5 percent cut across the board as “a healthy exercise in efficiency.” “I’ll bet you could cut 20 percent out of the budgets of agencies” without any loss in efficiency. Washington would scream.

But something worse could happen if Washington doesn’t get a grip on its spending and debt. LeMieux mentioned it in his first speech on the Senate floor in October. “One of my greatest concerns is that one day one of my children will come to me when they are grown and say that they are moving to another country, perhaps to Ireland or Chile, because they believe the opportunities are greater than the promise and the opportunities of America,” he said.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

A conversation about C.S. Lewis

2010-01-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

Jedd Medifind interviews Peter Kreeft

What first piqued your interest in C.S. Lewis?

What first piqued your interest in Chopin? In sunsets? In astronomy? In Audrey Hepburn? The question does not need to be asked by anyone who has answered it. The thing itself, the object, Lewis's mind and spirit, the truths and goodnesses and beauties in his writings, rather than any psychological, individual, "felt need" on my part or any sociological relevance or fashionableness on the part of the society or culture I came out of.

My college roommate credited Lewis, especially Mere Christianity, with saving his faith. When I tried it, it was like Augustine's first reading of the Bible: "Oh, I know all that; that's too easy for me." Like the Bible, and like a human face, the book is deceptively simple on its surface but inexhaustible in its depths. Once we have grown some depths of maturity and overcome superficiality and superciliousness and adolescent arrogance, we love it. It's the second book I mention, after the Gospels, when people ask me what to read to understand Christianity.

The Problem of Pain was actually the first Lewis book I read, as a college freshman. I didn't understand it all the first time, but I did understand that the reason I didn't understand had nothing to do with Lewis, but only with me. Here was the clearest, most direct, honest, intelligent, reasonable answer I had ever seen (and almost 50 years later it remains that!) to the most difficult problem in the world.

What gives Lewis' writings their remarkable staying power? Is there something Lewis offers that modern Christian thinkers lack?

The question has two parts: what does Lewis have and what do most modern Christian writers lack?

My answer is that my own question gets it wrong. It's what Lewis lacks and modern writers have that makes the difference. Most Christian writers today want to be up to date, relevant, speaking to their generation, useful, etc. They want to be creative and original. And they end up saying the same things and going out of date very quickly. Lewis just tells the truth as he sees it, and ends up being original. He is totally uninterested in "marketing," in intellectual economics. He does what Thoreau advises: "Read not the Times, read the eternities." Chesterton says if you marry the spirit of the times you will soon become a widower. If you seek and find and communicate "the permanent things," you are permanently relevant.

There are also personal qualities in Lewis that make him one of the greatest Christian writers: his intelligence, of course, and his imagination; but also his utter honesty and openness and objectivity and love of being. He doesn't have ingrown eyeballs.

What allows Lewis' work to transcend many of the traditional Protestant-Catholic barriers?

Two things: one a fault, the other a virtue. The fault is that that is the only subject Lewis didn't want to talk about, even with his friends, much less in public -- the differences between the churches, especially the differences between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. He addressed issues within his own church and demolished Modernism, which infected (and still infects) all the churches. But he refused to deal with 1517 (or 1054, for that matter.)

Why? Both Christopher Derrick, Lewis's student, and Joseph Pearce, Lewis's biographer, give the same answer: he was born in Belfast and knew his prejudices sat deep.

Like the Bible, and like a human face, the book is deceptively simple on its surface but inexhaustible in its depths. Once we have grown some depths of maturity and overcome superficiality and superciliousness and adolescent arrogance, we love it.

But he [generally avoided this question] for two good reasons. This is true even if the above constitutes a bad reason. For we must take him at his word in Mere Christianity when he says that the reason why he does not address the issues between the churches are these: first, he is not a professional theologian but an amateur whose "expertise" is in the "basics." Second, that he thought God wanted him to address the "basics" because most Christian writers were not doing so; they were fighting on the flanks while the center was going undefended.

He also made very clear, in the preface to Mere Christianity, that "mere Christianity" is not an alternative to any church, nor itself a church. It is like a hall, from which different specific doors lead out, and only beyond those doors, only in the concrete churches, is there food and fire and bed.

Yet, he says, "mere Christianity" is no mere abstraction, no lowest common denominator (or "highest common factor," as they say in England), but a person: Christ Himself. And that is why in each church there is a fundamental controversy between those who affirm and obey and believe that Person totally and those who want to revise, update, nuance, relativize, psychologize, or otherwise water down His strong meat. And this controversy is far more important than the admittedly important controversies between the churches. Whether Jesus really rose from the dead and is literally alive and active now has got to be more important than sola scriptura or the Immaculate Conception. Whether there is one savior or 260 million is more important than whether there are two sacraments or seven.

Do you think Lewis was on to something other Protestants often miss?

What Lewis was onto was the fullness of the faith. He wanted it all. Mere Christianity led to more Christianity. This is a vague thing, a "tendency" rather than a doctrine; but Lewis thought of Christianity as something like art rather than something like science in this sense: science tries to purify its hypotheses and is minimalistic. [The method of science] assumes that any idea is guilty (false) until proven innocent (true). Art, on the other hand, glories in fullness and diversity and richness and universality ("catholic" with a small "c").

If the churches ever did reunite, it would have to be into something that was as sacramental and liturgical and authoritative as the Roman Catholic Church and as protesting against abuses and as much focused on the individual in his direct relationship with Christ as the Evangelicals, as charismatic as the Pentecostals, as missionary-minded as the old line mainline denominations, as focused on holiness as the Methodists or the Quakers, as committed to the social aspects of the Gospel as the social activists, as Biblical as the fundamentalists, as mystical as the Eastern Orthodox, etc. Some people have a nose for scandal, or garbage, or baloney; he had a nose for "Christianity-and-water."

Does Lewis have something Catholics need to hear as well?

Yes, he was onto something Catholics need to hear too: the parts of their tradition, i.e. the unbroken tradition of the single church which for a millennium was a single visible church and then for another half millennium was still a single church in every way except the papacy and the filioque. And that tradition contained every one of the ingredients listed above. I think he thought (and I certainly do) that God was not allowing the desired reunion of the churches until all of them had learned what they had forgotten. He did not live to see Vatican II, but he would have been immensely pleased by it, because its genius was to return to the sources, to interpret the Catholic Church's rich 2000 year history in light of Scripture and the early Church Fathers. If all the limbs of the tree began again by a return to the trunk, they would be united since there is only one trunk.

Father Joe Fessio got up at the closing session and proposed that we issue a joint statement of agreement and say that what unites us all, despite our serious differences, is scripture, the first six ecumenical councils, and the collected words of C.S. Lewis. Everyone cheered.

Which means, by definition, that insofar as Luther was right, Catholics have to learn, or relearn, from him. And insofar as the Pope is right, Protestants have to accept him. Of course that does not settle the substantive question of what they are right about, or even whether they are right about anything, and what they are wrong about, if anything.

All the churches, including the "trunk," the Catholic Church, repeatedly forget things and need reminders, sometimes from outside. Everything essential is already contained in the "Deposit of Faith," or Sacred Tradition, left by the apostles; the Church, marked by visible unity under Peter and his successors, is guaranteed infallibility to interpret this. The people "staffing" this sacred organization, however, are not only morally defective (that has always been so; even saints are sinners), and sometimes rather spectacularly so (e.g. the Borgia popes, which dwarfed the current priestly sex scandals), but they also forget (though never officially deny) some important theological dimensions, aspects, angles on one or more of the "mysteries" (dogmas) of the Faith. The Church herself has admitted as much.

The significant difference is that Catholics are assured that no matter how stupid her teachers are, their Church will correct them and the Magisterium will never fall into heresy, despite the fact that the Church is full of heretics. I don't believe any Protestant can make that claim.

If Lewis were alive today and could deliver one more radio address on BBC, can you speculate on what theme he might choose?

I'm sure of it. The last thing he ever wrote was an article for the Saturday Evening Post on the sexual revolution and pop psychology (which are allies), titled "We Have No 'Right to Happiness.'" Like Chesterton, he saw that this was the most radical revolution of all because it touched the very sources of life. It was a matter of practice and not just theory, and it would destroy both the first and most fundamental institution of society, the family, and the first and most fundamental precondition of all virtue, namely the principle of honesty, or truth, or light—that reason must control the passions rather than vice versa. Screwtape keeps coming back to that in The Screwtape Letters: dim the lights! In the forties, when that book was written, the main motive for light-dimming rationalization was social acceptance and "relevance." Once the Pill allowed the Sexual Revolution, a far stronger passion has dominated the world, producing things our ancestors did not even dream of, like the right of any woman to murder her own unborn son or daughter (abortion), and the right of any family to commit suicide (i.e. divorce).

Any final thoughts?

It's always dangerous to try to outguess God, but I suspect [the reason Lewis never chose to become a Catholic] has something to do with reunion. After the best conference I ever attended, with two serious theologians [each] from the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Evangelical, and mainline Protestant churches staying all week and talking about their differences and agreements, in a frank and candid but irenic and listening way, everybody constantly and naturally referring to things C.S. Lewis wrote about this and that. Father Joe Fessio got up at the closing session and proposed that we issue a joint statement of agreement and say that what unites us all, despite our serious differences, is scripture, the first six ecumenical councils, and the collected words of C.S. Lewis. Everyone cheered.

Let the cheers continue.

Resolution for 2010

2010-01-07T06:11:00.000-08:00

Dinesh D'Souza

America is under attack as never before—not only from terrorists, but from people who provide a justification for terrorism. Islamic fundamentalists declare America the Great Satan. Europeans rail against American capitalism and American culture. South American activists denounce the United States for "neo-colonialism" and oppression.

Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the evils in the world. On the political left, many fault the United States for a history of slavery, and for continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right, traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear influential figures say that America has become so decadent that we are "slouching towards Gomorrah."

If these critics are right, then perhaps America should be despised. And who can dispute some of their particulars? This country did have a history of slavery and racism continues to exist. There is much in our culture that is vulgar and decadent. But the critics are wrong about America, because they are missing the big picture. In their indignation over the sins of America, they ignore what is unique and good about American civilization.

As an immigrant who has chosen to become an American citizen, I feel especially qualified to say what is special about America. Having grown up in a different society—in my case, Bombay, India—I am not only able to identify aspects of America that are invisible to the natives, but I am acutely conscious of the daily blessings that I enjoy in America. Here, then, is the first half of my list of 10 great things about America.

America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary guy: Rich people live well everywhere. But what distinguishes America is that it provides an impressively high standard of living for the "common man." We now live in a country where construction workers regularly pay $4 for a nonfat latte, where maids drive nice cars, and where plumbers take their families on vacation to Europe.

Indeed newcomers to the United States are struck by the amenities enjoyed by "poor" people in the United States. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s when CBS television broadcast a documentary, "People Like Us," which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an ongoing recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have TV sets, microwave ovens, and cars. They arrived at the same perception that I witnessed in an acquaintance of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States. I asked him, "Why are you so eager to come to America?" He replied, "I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat."

America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other country, including the countries of Europe: America is the only country that has created a population of "self-made tycoons." Only in America could Pierre Omidyar, whose parents are Iranian and who grew up in Paris, have such ideal conditions for starting a company like eBay. Only in America could Vinod Khosla, the son of an Indian army officer, become a leading venture capitalist, the shaper of the technology industry, and a billionaire to boot. Admittedly tycoons are not typical, but no country has created a better ladder than America for people to ascend from modest circumstances to success.

Work and trade are respectable in America, which is not true elsewhere: Historically most cultures have despised the merchant and the laborer, regarding the former as vile and corrupt and the latter as degraded and vulgar. Some cultures, such as that of ancient Greece and medieval Islam, even held that it is better to acquire things through plunder than through trade or contract labor. But the American founders altered this moral hierarchy. They established a society in which the life of the businessman, and of the people who worked for him, would be a noble calling. In the American view, there is nothing vile or degraded about serving your customers either as a CEO or as a waiter. The ordinary life of production and supporting a family is more highly valued in the United States than in any other country. Indeed America is the only country in the world where we call the waiter "sir," as if he were a knight.

America has achieved greater social equality than any other society: True, there are large inequalities of income and wealth in America. In purely economic terms, Europe is more egalitarian. But Americans are socially more equal than any other people, and this is unaffected by economic disparities. Tocqueville noticed this egalitarianism a century and a half ago, but if anything it is more prevalent today. For all his riches, Bill Gates could not approach the typical American and say, "Here's a $100 bill. I'll give it to you if you kiss my feet." Most likely the person would tell Gates to go to hell! The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but he isn't in any fundamental sense better than anyone else.

People live longer, fuller lives in America: Although protesters rail against the American version of technological capitalism at trade meetings around the world, in reality the American system has given citizens many more years of life, and the means to live more intensely and actively. In 1900, the life expectancy in America was around 50 years; today, it is more than 75 years. Advances in medicine and agriculture are mainly responsible for the change. This extension of the life-span means more years to enjoy life, more free time to devote to a good cause, and more occasions to do things with the grandchildren. In many countries, people who are old seem to have nothing to do: they just wait to die. In America the old are incredibly vigorous, and people in their seventies pursue the pleasures of life, including remarriage and sexual gratification, with a zeal that I find unnerving.

In America the destiny of the young is not given to them but created by them: Not long ago, I asked myself, "What would my life have been like if I had never come to the United States?" If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me.

In America, I have seen my life take a radically different course. In college I became interested in literature and politics, and I resolved to make a career as a writer. I married a woman whose ancestry is English, French, Scotch-Irish, German, and American Indian. In my twenties I found myself working as a policy analyst in the White House, even though I was not an American citizen. No other country, I am sure, would have permitted a foreigner to work in its inner citadel of government.

In most countries in the world, your fate and your identity are handed to you; in America, you determine them for yourself. America is a country where you get to write the script of your own life. Your life is like a blank sheet of paper, and you are the artist. This notion of being the architect of your own destiny is the incredibly powerful idea that is behind the worldwide appeal of America. Young people especially find irresistible the prospect of authoring the narrative of their own lives.

America has gone further than any other society in establishing equality of rights: There is nothing distinctively American about slavery or bigotry. Slavery has existed in virtually every culture, and xenophobia, prejudice and discrimination are worldwide phenomena. Western civilization is the only civilization to mount a principled campaign against slavery; no country expended more treasure and blood to get rid of slavery than the United States. While racism remains a problem in America, this country has made strenuous efforts to eradicate discrimination, even to the extent of enacting policies that give legal preference in university admissions, jobs, and government contracts to members of minority groups. Such policies remain controversial, but the point is that it is extremely unlikely that a racist society would have permitted such policies in the first place. And surely African Americans like Jesse Jackson are vastly better off living in America than they would be if they were to live in, say, Ethiopia or Somalia.

America has found a solution to the problem of religious and ethnic conflicts that continues to divide and terrorize much of the world: Visitors to places like New York are amazed to see the way in which Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, all seem to work and live together in harmony. How is this possible when these same groups are spearing each other and burning each other's homes in so many places in the world?

The American answer is twofold. First, separate the spheres of religion and government so that no religion is given official preference but all are free to practice their faith as they wish. Second, do not extend rights to racial or ethnic groups but only to individuals; in this way, all are equal in the eyes of the law, opportunity is open to anyone who can take advantage of it, and everybody who embraces the American way of life can "become American."

Of course there are exceptions to these core principles, even in America. Racial preferences are one such exception, which explains why they are controversial. But in general America is the only country in the world that extends full membership to outsiders. The typical American could come to India, live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not "become Indian." He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense "become American."

America has the kindest, gentlest foreign policy of any great power in world history: Critics of the U.S. are likely to react to this truth with sputtering outrage. They will point to longstanding American support for a Latin or Middle Eastern despot, or the unjust internment of the Japanese during World War II, or America's reluctance to impose sanctions on South Africa's apartheid regime. However one feels about these particular cases, let us concede to the critics the point that America is not always in the right.

What the critics leave out is the other side of the ledger. Twice in the twentieth century, the United States saved the world: first from the Nazi threat, then from Soviet totalitarianism. What would have been the world's fate if America had not existed? After destroying Germany and Japan in World War II, the U.S. proceeded to rebuild both countries, and today they are American allies. Now we are doing the same thing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Consider, too, how magnanimous the U.S. has been to the former Soviet Union after its victory in the Cold War. For the most part America is an abstaining superpower: it shows no real interest in conquering and subjugating the rest of the world. (Imagine how the Soviets would have acted if they had won the Cold War.) On occasion America intervenes to overthrow a tyrannical regime or to halt massive human rights abuses in another country, but it never stays to rule that country. In Grenada, Haiti, and Bosnia, the U.S. got in and then it got out. Moreover, when America does get into a war, as in Iraq, its troops are supremely careful to avoid targeting civilians and to minimize collateral damage. Even as America bombed the Taliban infrastructure and hideouts, U.S. planes dropped rations of food to avert hardship and starvation of Afghan civilians. What other country does these things?

America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous nation on earth: This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice, and immorality in America. Indeed some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens. Virtue, these fundamentalists argue, is a higher principle than liberty.

Indeed it is. And let us admit that in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes the freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. The millions of Americans who live decent, praiseworthy lives desire our highest admiration because they have opted for the good when the good is not the only available option. Even amidst the temptations of a rich and free society, they have remained on the straight path. Their virtue has special luster because it is freely chosen.

By contrast, the societies that many Islamic fundamentalists seek would eliminate the possibility of virtue. If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost non-existent in a society like Iran. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all. Consider the woman who is required to wear a veil. There is no modesty in this, because she is being compelled Compulsion cannot produce virtue, it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue. Thus a free society like America is not merely more prosperous, more varied, more peaceful, and more tolerant—it is also morally superior to the theocratic and authoritarian regimes that America's enemies advocate.

"To make us love our country," Edmund Burke once said, "our country ought to be lovely." Burke's point is that we should love our country not just because it is ours, but also because it is good. America is far from perfect, and there is lots of room for improvement. In spite of its flaws, however, the American life as it is lived today is the best life that our world has to offer. Ultimately America is worthy of our love and sacrifice because, more than any other society, it makes possible the good life, and the life that is good.

Published originally by To The Source.

A retarded e-mail receives an angry response

2010-01-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

This is my--angry--response to the stupid e-mail listed below. The good ones are starting to get tired of the abuse. We're not gonna take it anymore.

Shortly after responding to that STUPID e-mail I did a little research and found out that this and other stupid e-mails attributed to Professor Olson are BOGUS and part of a DEFAMATORY campaign against him. You can read all about it here:

http://law.hamline.edu/node/784

The original post can be seen below. Remarks about Prof. Olson have been removed. The real author will be referred simply as THE CRETIN since we do not know the name of the coward. It is also likely that the stats presented are also bogus and fraudulent. I will research the election data if I have time this weekend. Keep passing on this kind of CRAP if you want to end in Hell.

== ORIGINAL POST ==

Borderdash!

I'd like to see who's going to pick up carrots and tomatoes from sunrise to sunset at 2.75/hr. if the "criminal invaders" stop doing it. Not the idiot that came up with that stupid theory. [Hamline University would have hired a real "ham" there if this had been really written by Prof. Olson!]

Hate always provides simple answers to complex problems. [The CRETIN WHO AUTHORED THIS PIECE] is a certified IDIOT and I will show you why.

The reason we have so many immigrants working among us is simply because the economy has continued to grow in a country with a great economic engine that has also killed over 50.000.000 (that is FIFTY MILLION) of its own citizens in the womb. If those babies where alive, the illegals and many other legal immigrants would be at their own countries enjoying the global benefits of an American economy with REAL GROWTH.

Wake up: every abortion is an invitation to THREE immigrants to come in and fill the vacant place. Read about it, Thomas Sowell, Newt Gingrich, etc. and read them carefully.

As for McCain, or rather the Republican Party, they lost the election FAIR AND SQUARE because for EIGHT YEARS they had done NOTHING to stem the tide of abortions. They thought they could use that forever as a convenient "issue" to draw the votes of the undecided. That strategy, although morally abominable, worked for a while. The problem is that we had a President that spent like a Democrat for 8 years, rubber-stamping every conceivable freebie for cronies and big business. His economy grew but we did not see the benefits of it.

In the end the GOP presented another non-viable candidate, a man whose incompetence destroyed tons of valuable US property (namely 4 or 5 fighter jets) and was allowed to do so only because of his connections to the Admiralty. This is the same guy that signed the McCain-Feingold bill... enough said. Many voters (like me) supported him only because Obama was scarier and nothing else. In the end... another opportunity squandered by the GOP, like the Dole-Kemp team (that should have been Kemp-Dole) or the Ford-Dole formula of 1976 etc. etc.

Try competence, integrity and a little charisma next time. I think that's what the American people would like to see in their leaders.

Don't blame the Mexicans for your own laziness. Most of them are good family people, good Catholics, good parents and sons. Their country has endured the schemes of the Masons, and the governments of the U.S., and more than one real unprovoked invasion. From California to Texas it used to be their country and they have never said peep about that disproportionate and unjust loss. If you disagree with me just think what would have happened if France, Germany, Belgium and Italy would have been turned into States by Harry Truman. Yet, more Americans died to secure that territory in any given month of WWII than in all of the Mexican Wars together. And we happily gave them their territory back, gave them money for reconstruction and bought their products at preferential prices so that in two generations they all could become fat Communists and America-haters. Good deal! Now, don't you go and pay $2.75/hr to José for breaking his back picking onions with no health benefits or retirement contributions... nooo!!! the friggin' criminal!!! If he only was an honest American like Joe Kennedy Sr. and his lovely sons!

Get used to the fact that the racial future of America is brown and if you want to hate someone, hate those who chose the pill over the joy of having American babies, those who have sacrificed 50 million + Americans at the altar of the "abortion rights", hate the politicians that are stabbing every working American in the back by selling out to Big Business, China, and the importers lobby... Those are the criminals and not poor José, thanks to whom you have vegetables on your dinner table tonight, by the way.

Those "criminals" are the soldiers of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the rightful Queen of All the Americas. They are here (they are NOT queer) and the future belongs to them. You yourselves chose to be a dying race. Now do yourselves a favor and die off with your mouth shut. There is enough stupidity coming out from the radio and TV, we don't need more venom. We need solutions--if we are going to have a country ten years from now.

Visit Newt's site http://newt.org/ so far one of the few Republicans making any sense. By the way, he is a Catholic convert now and he is learning Spanish. I know this first hand.

Get real, morons. This is a war and you are shooting your own soldiers.

Morons and the moronic e-mails they write

There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. Mark Twain, American Genius.

Here is for your enjoyment the stupid e-mail I got. Did I mention that I think this e-mail is stupid? Oh! Well, it is really stupid.

===BEGIN STUPID BOGUS FRAUDULENT E-MAIL===

Professor Joseph O---- of H------ University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning last November's Presidential election:

Number of States won by:
Obama: 19 McCain: 29

Square miles of land won by:
Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by:
Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1

Professor O----- adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.

Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."

O----- believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message.

If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

[Bible quote removed out out respect for the Word of God]

===END STUPID E-MAIL===

The Organic Formation of Feudalism

2009-12-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

By the end of the Western Roman Empire, there were colossal estates of land, which gave rise to difficult and complicated agrarian questions. Despite this, when one considers the Western Roman Empire at the time of Constantine’s conversion, there were many Romans with large estates who had converted to Catholicism and had given the Church enormous properties. It is true that between the conversion of Constantine (312) and the conversion of Clovis (496) almost two centuries had passed, but with regard to property, the situation was much the same. Already at the end of the Roman Empire, because of the Christian influence, slaves were being freed and a system of small property owners was emerging that had similarities with the Feudalism that would come.

On the other hand, once the great barbarian invasions ceased, there was a period of time when the different races integrated and started to establish the various regions of Europe. For example, in France there were fundamental differences among the Bretons, the Gascons and the Alsatians, but at a certain moment they had integrated sufficiently to make up what is called the French people. The same happened with other peoples, who after a period of integration, came to constitute a whole. This was the moment when the Middle Ages started. It is a simplified way to present History, but it is essentially what happened.

Medieval society sprouts

With Charlemagne one is in the Middle Ages. It is a time when the period of barbarians and the period of the Moors merged. I would say that even before the Carolingians, under the Merovigians, the Middle Ages was already present.

Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne as Emperor

Charlemagne’s Empire was a magnificent institution established and supported by the Holy See. His grandfather, Charles Martel, had expelled the Moors from France and broken their impetus at the Battle of Poitiers (732). The Moors remained on the Iberian Peninsula – Spain and Portugal – and were expelled only when Boabdil, the last King of Granada, was sent out of Spain by King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabel of Castile in 1492. But the Arabs from the Iberian Peninsula were no longer able to cross into France and go wherever they wanted in Europe. Their momentum had been broken at Poitiers.

Dubai World

2009-12-03T14:03:00.001-08:00

David Warren

On the face of things, the financial collapse of the United Arab Emirate of Dubai would seem to be, in the broad world of sovereign debt, what the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in the U.S. credit system. Now that the markets have absorbed the initial shock, we are entering the denial phase -- "this isn't as big as you think it is" -- with worse to follow. Or so I gather from the same jaded financial observers who told me the U.S. meltdown was coming.

At root they are comparable only because all financial catastrophes are comparable. There is an essential law of supply and demand; that was not invented by human beings. Like gravity, it does not turn off and on. It is a constant. And, as the old Scottish jurisprude explained, you cannot break the laws of nature. You can only be broken by them.

"Dubai World," the obscenely grandiose waterfront development, might as well have been designed to break a few banks. For all the external glitz, Dubai, like all the other Gulf States, and indeed like Saudi Arabia, has an economy that depends entirely on the price of oil. There is no real enterprise, and no deep, variegated cultural history of enterprise. The oil would still be in the ground had it not been for foreign investors with foreign technology and foreign habits of mind, as well as foreign uses for the oil. (Before oil, it was pearls.)

It may well be politically incorrect to point at this big obvious fact, but the failure to do so is, I think, behind miscalculations of foreign bankers, and of the Arab rulers.

They did not look clearly at the viability of the project they were financing, only at the oil money. They further assumed -- despite everything that should have been learned through the last few decades -- that Dubai's sovereign debt was ultimately secured by the mutual loyalties of neighbouring emirates. Fools!

There may have been a time (we can't be sure) when even merchant bankers were capable of analysing an investment in the round. That is, by seeing through the numbers, to the thing itself, and asking, "Does this look sound?" If the answer is no, don't lend money.

The "problem" with thinking "outside the number box" is that it puts you in irreducibly moral territory. Here I mean moral in the broadest sense, incorporating all cultural norms. As I've suggested before in this space, perhaps a little too meekly, Dubai World represents the flip side, within Arab culture, of the phenomenon now known to us as Islamism.

Put it this way. There are two, and only two ways, to survive in nature. One is by diligent work, and one is by appropriating the work of others. The piratical approach works well for the larger predatory animals in the wild, but only so long as the diligent little creatures on which they depend for their sustenance can themselves multiply.

In human affairs, a whole social order based on someone else working is what we might call "ecologically fragile."

The whole social order of Arabia has been adapted from ancient principles that we will not discuss to modern ones dependent on foreign labour, right down to the "guest workers" who in many places outnumber the underemployed natives.

And all this thanks to the accident of oil under the ground and to the further accident that it is in a form easier to pump than, for instance, the much larger reserves under North America.

Al-Qaeda is one of the stranger manifestations of this "grand idleness"; Dubai World is another.

Of the two megalomanical displays, of course Dubai's is not malicious, and yet, the financial collapse of one Arab oil state after another will do more damage than terror strikes. Perhaps not as much as Iran with nuclear missiles, but there you go.

Put it another way. Foreign investment in "sovereign debt" is not different from foreign aid, in one important respect. In order to see a return, we must count on the money being used wisely.

The reconstruction of Europe and Japan, after the Second World War, through the Marshall Plan and similar devices -- and later the lifting of such "Asian tigers" as Taiwan and South Korea out of abject poverty -- worked because the help went to enterprising cultures. There was even some show of gratitude.

Constitutional government was also successfully exported because it was compatible with cultural norms in each of the countries subject to our western ministrations.

Whether in the optimistic schemes to bring democracy to Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine -- or through investments in infrastructure to create broad modern economies throughout the Middle East -- we have simply assumed a cultural norm in both West and Far East: "Work hard, make money."

Perhaps we should think again.

Why Is Everyone Crazy About Vampires?

2009-11-26T04:28:00.000-08:00

Fr. Robert Barron

You’d have to be living under a rock not to have noticed the prevalence of vampires in today’s culture.

One of the most popular television shows in recent years was Buffy the Vampire Slayer Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles continue to be widely read; HBO is currently running a series about vampires called True Blood; Wesley Snipes starred in a trilogy of vampire films called Blade; and one of the most successful movies of late is Twilight, the story of teen mortals and teen vampires in love. How do we explain the seemingly endless fascination with the undead?

Obviously, clever marketing has a good deal to do with it, but I think there are deeper reasons as well. There is, in the spiritual order, a law analogous to the law of the conservation of energy, which I would express as follows: when the supernatural is suppressed, it necessarily finds expression in indirect and distorted form. What we have witnessed in the last fifty years or so is the attenuating, and in some circles, complete disappearance of the biblical worldview. I've complained in the past about a bland, bored secularism that simply sets aside questions of the spiritual, the supernatural, and the transcendent. And this widespread bracketing of the religious dimension is abetted by a consumerist culture that teaches us in a thousand ways that sensual pleasure and wealth are the keys to happiness. For the secularist mind, God is, at best, a distant, indifferent force; Jesus is a guru of self-affirmation; and eternal life is a childish fantasy.

But in accord with the above-mentioned law, the supernatural will not be denied. The instinct for God and for a world that transcends the realm of ordinary experience is hard-wired into us and thus our desire, thwarted by the environing culture, will produce some distorted version of transcendence, some ersatz spirituality. Hence the world of vampires. Let me analyze just one feature of this universe. Besides blood sucking, the distinguishing mark of vampires is immortality: they are the undead, the eternally young. Though the materialist ideology around us insists that we are no more than clever animals who will fade away at death, deep within us is the sure sense that we are more than that. There are in us, as Shakespeare's Cleopatra put it, "immortal longings," for we are linked, whether we like it or not, to the eternal God who stands outside of time. When the proper religious sense of immortality is suspended, we produce the weird ersatz of the vampire who cannot die. I say ersatz, because authentic immortality has nothing to do with endless life in this world; rather, it has to do with being brought outside of time into the eternal realm of God. But when we're starving spiritually, we find even thin gruel appealing.

Just recently, I came across a most illuminating remark by Anne Rice, the aforementioned author of the series of novels that effectively inaugurated the entire vampire craze. She said that the character of Louis, the tortured vampire who is famously interviewed in her first novel, was evocative of the many friends of hers from the sixties and seventies of the last century, people who had fallen into the morass of a post-Christian secularism. Like Louis, they knew they were caught up in something spiritually deadly, and again like the vampire, they could find no way out. The anguish of the Rice's vampire was parallel to the anguish of the secular generation, thirsty for the very thing that their culture had denied. And what makes Rice's observation even more fascinating is that she herself followed that thirst and made her way through the secularist delusion of her generation and rediscovered Christ. Just about ten years ago, Anne Rice re-embraced the vividly imagined and intellectually profound faith of her youth and since then has dedicated her writing exclusively to the Lord. She has brought out, so far, two volumes of a multi-volume life of Jesus, told in the first person; and her most recent text is the commencement of a new series of novels on angels. And she has asserted that, despite the pleas of her legion of fans, she will never write another vampire novel. What's really fascinating is that the godmother of contemporary vampire chic has effectively seen through phony supernaturalism and embraced the real thing.

There are in us, as Shakespeare's Cleopatra put it, "immortal longings," for we are linked, whether we like it or not, to the eternal God who stands outside of time.

Anne Rice's Catholicism brings to mind the Catholicism that played a central role in the original Dracula by Bram Stoker. Stoker, a nineteenth century Irishman, placed the vampire legend within the overarching biblical narrative of sin, grace, and redemption. In Stoker's telling, Dracula had cursed God and hence fallen into a hellish state (which helps to explain his aversion to the crucifix). Professor Van Helsing, a scientist and a devout believer (yes, the two can co-exist!), brought the tortured vampire to salvation. Throughout the novel, Catholic themes abound: the Eucharist, the Mass, eternal life, etc. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was still possible to situate the vampire story within the far greater story of Christianity. What we witness today is a sad declension, whereby vampire tales are a bloodless substitute for robust Christianity.

References

Father Robert Barron, "Why Is Everyone Crazy About Vampires?" Catholic New World (November 19, 2009). Fr. Robert Barron was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1986. He has a Masters degree in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Institute Catholique de Paris. He is currently professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein Seminary. Fr. Barron is the author of, And Now I See: A Theology of Transformation, Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, Heaven in Stone and Glass: Experiencing the Spirituality of the Great Cathedrals, Eucharist (Catholic Spirituality for Adults), Priority of Christ, The: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism, and Word on File: Proclaiming the Power of Christ. He also gives frequent talks, retreats and workshops on issues of theology and spirituality. Father Barron uses his YouTube channel to reach out to people and bring valuable lessons of faith alive by pointing out things that can be learned by watching popular characters of movies and television shows.

Faulty Dichotomies

2009-11-23T17:15:00.000-08:00

Jose Yulo

For neither Man nor Angel can discern
Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through Heav'n and Earth.
— John Milton

"By liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters, in which, from the constitution of the human mind, cannot be brought to any successful issue, and therefore is out of place"
— Cardinal John Henry Newman

It is a mere twenty-four hours since the news broke on the attack by a gunman on an army base in Texas. With the appropriate reserve owed to an event of such severity, various media outlets were hesitant at first to speculate on the identity and ethnic origin of the assailant, not wanting to foment irrational fears and reactions.

The motivation behind the massacre still remains mysterious. What is intriguing, however, was the quickness with which some news organizations began the narrative of a soldier ridiculed because of his ethnicity, ultimately cracking and lashing out in a rage against his perceived persecution. Making matters more interesting was the possibility of the murders carried out because of post-traumatic stress, an unusual possibility to say the least since, by latest account, the attacker had not yet been deployed overseas and therefore had yet to experience the fire of combat.

Perhaps unknown to its various authors, the roots of this narrative run deep and parallel to the precedents set forth by certain philosophical schools in the last century. Paramount here is the dichotomous worldview ham-fistedly established by Marx and perennially finding converts among cultural elites. The dialectical clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is often chameleon-like, assuming the suitable color and hue to fit the assigned socio-political context.

In the liberation theology of Paulo Freire, the paradigm of the oppressor and the oppressed takes form as the basis for the Brazilian's distillation of Socratic dialogue into "conscientization." In this third world setting, members of the latter class are made aware of their assigned status and encouraged to rebel, sometimes violently, against the former since, as Freire claims, rebellion is an "act of love."

Integral in this school of thought is the belief that group membership in the oppressed class, even removed by both time and current economic conditions, permits for a looser interpretation of moral norms, enabling a historically underprivileged group the license to "correct" their plights by means restricted only by their creativity.

Perhaps an example removed from the wages of war will be helpful.

In 1990, an undergraduate student at the University of Hawaii wrote a letter to a school publication addressing the word "haole" as it was and is used in pidgin Hawaiian. The term literally denoted a foreigner, but as most who have visited or lived in Hawaii would know, it is more specifically focused on people of Caucasian descent. The student went on to describe how he had discovered the many negative associations to the term, relating to his own experiences within the island of Oahu, up to and including his being assaulted and beaten more than once simply for his ethnicity alone.

One would expect at a university a spirited letter or essay submitted to counter such claims, if only for the academic exercise they would involve. Such counterarguments did not come. Rather, what came in response surprised most observers. A faculty member in Hawaiian Studies wrote a letter to the same publication, seeking to build a case, if one can call it that, not against the nature of the word "haole," but against the student, a Caucasian male from Louisiana, who had the temerity to even suggest he was victimized because of his race.

The professor expounded that the student's forefathers had permanently afflicted "her" homeland with racism, disease and all manner of oppression. In her words he was a haole, and ought resign himself to his negative treatment by reason of this. If he found such status difficult to bear, the faculty member advised him to take one of the many flights off the island and "go back to Louisiana." Little is further known of the student who was involved in this case, though within three years, the lady teacher of Hawaiian Studies was awarded a full professorship by the university.

There are two noteworthy errors exhibited by the reasoning of faculty member in this case. Both are predictably caused by the faulty dichotomous worldview cited earlier.

First, the zeal with which students of this school of thought compartmentalize individuals into oppressor and oppressed camps allows for a generalization always tempting for the sociologist and liberation theologian alike. Namely, the assumption that since the student in question "belonged" to a historically privileged class, he must have ontologically enjoyed his lineage's perks and savored its depredations.

It is most ironic that this blanket perspective on race and culture is usually perpetrated by those who supposedly educate against such stereotype and prejudice. In short, the student in question may be a bad student, perhaps even a deplorable human being as well. Yet, the simple fact remains: he was not guilty of the crimes the professor cited. In a departure from ex post facto law, he was not guilty now from something he did legally then. Rather, he was guilty now for something someone else did a century before. It would appear that the teacher had loftier ambitions than professorship, assuming Yahweh's capacity of punishing the sons for the sins of the fathers.

Second, the professor's implied approval and sanctioning of the ills visited upon the student logically extended from a stilted perspective on the plight of the oppressed. Name-calling, ostracizing, and physical beatings were "expected" repercussions by those from oppressed groups, even if the oppression occurred to someone else a century before. It is almost pitiable, this lack of exposure to Augustinian lessons on man's free will. What is at work here however, is something more than blithe ignorance of medieval philosophy.

In allowing "the oppressed" to bend, if not to overtly break moral standards of behavior, the professor, and the would-be apologists for the Fort Hood shooter write a common chapter with a shared pen. They write, "some people, because of the group they belong to, cannot be blamed for acts of malevolence."

As the evidence has yielded so far, only one man has his bloody prints on the murder weapons in Texas. Instead of excusing such behavior, which is the ultimate wish and end of such prevarication, a most condescending form of patronization is produced. Who do societies claim are not responsible for their actions? The answers are fairly obvious: children and lunatics.

By asserting that certain segments of the population should be absolved of their freely chosen acts of mayhem, those who write this narrative do "the oppressed" a greater disservice than overt oppression: the rendering of convenient calibanization of human beings for the cause.

Jose Yulo, Ed.D. teaches courses on philosophy, Western Civilization, United States history, and public speaking at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He has a Doctorate in Education from the University of San Francisco, with an emphasis on the philosophy of education. He also holds a Master's degree in political communication from Emerson College in Boston, as well as a Bachelor's degree in the classical liberal arts from St. John's College in Annapolis, MD. Originally from Manila in the Philippines, his research interests lie in Greek philosophy, the histories of Greek and Roman politics and warfare, and the literature of J. R. R. Tolkien. He has written several articles for IgnatiusInsight.com

Are Catholics Creationists?

2009-11-09T13:03:00.000-08:00

George Sim Johnston

Today, the Pope Pius V University in Rome will be the setting for a day-long conference with the arresting title, “The Scientific Impossibility of Evolution.” The sponsors of the event are known crusaders against Darwin. But they go further than most Darwin dissenters and postulate a “young earth” chronology based on a literal reading of Scripture. Need less to say, the Catholics among them are not comfortable with what the ordinary Magisterium has to say on the subject. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have affirmed that the Book of Genesis is not meant to teach science and that theories of evolution are permissible so long as God is not excluded from the big picture.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously remarked that the test of a first-rate mind is to hold two apparently contradictory ideas and still be able to function. In the debate over evolution, a Catholic must allow both revelation and science their due authority, reconciling the apparent contradictions between Genesis and modern research. Catholics also have to be skeptical about the claims of materialist ideologies disguised as science, while being open to the genuine findings of geneticists and paleontologists.

In 1986, John Paul II gave a series of general audiences on the subject of Creation. In them, he laid down a principle of Biblical exegesis that has been around since the Church Fathers: The Book of Genesis is not meant to teach science. Genesis tells what God did, not how he did it. “Indeed,” writes John Paul, “the theory of natural evolution, understood in a sense that does not exclude divine causality, is not in principle opposed to the truth about creation. . . .as presented in the Book of Genesis. . . .It must, however, be added that this hypothesis pro poses only a probability, not a scientific certainty. . . .[But] it is possible that the human body, following the order impressed by the Creator on the energies of life, could have been gradually prepared in the forms of antecedent living beings.”

In an address to Italian clergy on July 24, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI also recognized evolution as a legitimate scientific theory. At the same time, he expressed impatience with the false polarities of “creation ism” and “evolutionism.” The doctrine of creation and the theory of evolution, he said, are not “mutually exclusive alternatives.” The world need not be divided between fideists who cram scientific data into a Biblical template never meant to receive them and materialists who think that soothing phrases like “random fluctuation in the quantum void” dispense with the need for a Creator.

While allowing for the possibility of evolution, neither pope has issued a free pass to evolutionary materialism. The Church has nothing to fear from legitimate science, but is wary of materialist philosophies tricked up as science – which is what Darwinism often amounts to. In Truth and Tolerance, Benedict com plains that evolutionists often trespass their legitimate bounds by making sweeping metaphysical claims. As a result, the educated public has the vague impression that “evolution” explains everything. Why, it even explains Darwinists whose purpose in life is to explain that the universe has no purpose.

Benedict reminds us that there are fundamental questions that science in principle cannot answer. Such as: Why is there some thing rather than nothing? As G. K. Chesterton, an astute observer of the evolution wars, re marked: “Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.”

Apart from the origin of the universe, there are two other ontological leaps that elude scientific explanation. First, the origin of life: Life only seems to come from life. Second, the human person: How could a purely “natural” process produce a creature so unlike anything else in nature? Mankind did not need the ability to write Hamlet or compose Don Giovanni in order to compete with the apes.

While aspects of evolutionary theory are certainly open to criticism, I don’t think a conference of Christian scholars who read Genesis as a textbook in geology is very helpful. One could argue that there is not a single scientific datum anywhere in Scripture – for the simple reason that the sacred writers had no notion of science in the modern sense. When ever I encounter a creationist, I like to ask how we can see the Milky Way if the universe is only a few thousand years old. The response, needless to say, is wonderfully baroque.

The Big Bang is a perfectly reasonable model – as is the common descent of species, since all animals share genetic coding and homologous structures like wings and limbs. Still, we know very little about the origin of species. Darwinists have not satisfactorily explained how bacteria, which appeared over three billion years ago, gradually morphed into everything from trilobites to Homo Sapiens. Paleontologists like Steven Stanley and Niles Eldredge tell us that the fossils do not show gradual Darwinian evolution. Geneticists never observe the systematic mutations they deem necessary for major evolutionary changes. Breeding experiments show species stubbornly clinging to their blueprints: Dogs remain dogs, fruitflies remain fruitflies. All Darwinists can show are small adjustments within species (e.g., the famous beak of the finch) from which they extrapolate macro-evolutionary changes which occur off-stage, as it were.

Catholics should take their cue from the Magisterium: Welcome the genuine discoveries of modern science while casting a skeptical eye on evolutionary “science” that for philosophical reasons dispenses with a Creator and treats man as a thing. At the same time, Christians who insist on explaining the universe in terms of ancient Hebrew cosmology are going to have a difficult time engaging the modern world.

George Sim Johnston is the author of Did Darwin Get It Right? Catholics and the Theory of Evolution (Our Sunday Visitor). He is a New York writer whose works appear frequently in such places as The Wall Street Journal, Crisis, and First Things.

Humble Friend of the Poor

2009-11-02T17:44:00.000-08:00

Sandra Miesel

Though overlooked by many during her lifetime, Jeanne Jugan—now St. Marie de la Croix—founded an order that cares for thousands of the poor and sick around the globe today.

Saints are supposed to be humble. Few have been as quietly humble as Jeanne Jugan, foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who was canonized by Benedict XVI on October 11 as St. Marie de la Croix. Through humility she achieved what T.S. Eliot called

“A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything.)”

That simplicity lives on today in Jeanne’s religious daughters, who serve the elderly poor throughout the world.

Jeanne was a poor fisherman’s daughter, born at Cancale in Brittany on October 25, 1792, during the French Revolution. Her parish priest, who had conformed to the Revolutionary regime, left the village within a few years. Women kept the faith alive through private instruction. They defiantly continued their pilgrimages to pray for the safety of their men at sea. After Napoleon made peace with the Church in 1802, Mass returned and Jeanne was able to receive the sacraments.

Jeanne’s father drowned before she was four years old. Her mother scrabbled hard to keep her four children alive. Breton women were famously hardy and used to giving each other mutual support. Jeanne did her part by watching cows, spinning, and knitting. By age 15, she went out to work as a kitchen maid at a country estate. The kindly lady of the manor took Jeanne along when distributing food to the poor. This apprenticeship in discreet giving would prove invaluable to her in later years.

In 1816, Jeanne attended a huge parish mission, part of a national re-evangelization effort begun after the Revolution. During the program, she felt the stirrings of a divine call that would not soon take form. “God wants me for himself,” she told her family. “He is keeping me for a work as yet unknown, for a work which is not yet founded.” Jeanne rejected a patient suitor and chose celibacy. The following year, she left home for employment at a hospital in the nearby town of Saint-Servran.

The Revolution and Napoleon’s wars had taken a heavy toll on France. Beside social upheaval and military casualties, unemployment and famine drove hordes of beggars across the countryside. Old forms of relief for the poor—religious, civic, and private—were overwhelmed. In Saint-Servan, where four persons out of 10 were destitute, the town government tried to limit alms to licensed local beggars. The under-funded institution where Jeanne worked for the next six years was a refuge of last resort, not a place to get well. Although she learned rudimentary nursing skills there, her own health broke under the strain.

Fortunately, an older friend took Jeanne on as a maid and companion, allowing her time and rest to restore her strength. Both women belonged to the Society of the Heart of the Admirable Mother, a Third Order for laywomen founded by St. John Eudes, the great home missionary of 17th century France. Jeanne and her friend followed a regular schedule of prayer and taught catechism to parish children. After her friend died, Jeanne found a new roommate and supported herself as a maid, laundress, and nurse.

In 1839, 25 years after her initial call, Jeanne found her life’s work when she gave up her own bed to a homeless old blind woman. A second elderly guest and a young orphan soon joined them. Jeanne gave up her day-jobs to help support the household by begging. (The residents themselves also spun and knitted goods to sell.) Within two years, they had moved to larger quarters and were caring for 12 “good women.” To better meet the never-ending need, Jeanne and three young friends established a pious association called Servants of the Poor in 1842. They purchased their first residence that year and attracted favorable notice from their bishop.

Cheerful, discreet, and persistent, Jeanne had a charism for begging, despite her initial reluctance to do it. “She collected by praising God,” one observer recalled. Turned away, slapped, or even shoved down stairs, she managed to keep her begging basket full. Jeanne was not simply helping the poor—she made herself one of them. The whole town was drawn into collaboration, giving money, goods, and labor to the ever-growing enterprise. Whether the need was firewood or butter, donations had a way of materializing exactly when required.

As Jeanne and her companions were evolving into a religious community, they received valuable encouragement from a male nursing order, the Brothers of St. John of God, and from a local secular priest, Father Augustin Le Pailleur. But in 1843, shortly after the women had elected Jeanne their superior for the second time, Father Le Pailleur abruptly annulled the election and installed a younger woman of his own choosing in her place. Forty years later, he was still claiming credit for founding the community himself—under the sudden inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Jeanne submitted. She never denied Father Le Pailleur’s version of history, then or later. The name she took under private vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and hospitality as a “Sister of the Poor” the following year was Marie de la Croix, a reflection as well as a prophecy of her life.

But as far as the public knew, Jeanne was still in charge. Local dignitaries—prodded by Father Le Pailleur—brought her to the attention of the French Academy, which awarded “Mlle. Jeanne Jugan” a prize of 3,000 francs for her good deeds. Even the usually anti-clerical Freemasons sent her a gold medal, which Jeanne had melted down and turned into a chalice for the sisters’ chapel.

“The little work” flourished. Within a decade, there were 15 foundations from Brittany to Paris to London served by more than 300 sisters. Jeanne walked everywhere across northern France, ringing doorbells for God and her beloved poor. The mention of her name could open the tightest purse. Her community, now called the Little Sisters of the Poor, received episcopal approval as a religious congregation on May 29, 1852.

No sooner was this done than Father Le Pailleur ordered Jeanne off the roads and into the motherhouse for the remainder of her life. As Father Superior-General of the community, he wanted Jeanne safely hidden away while he polished his self-aggrandizing falsehoods about the foundation.

Meanwhile, Jeanne spent her days quietly living among the postulants and novices at the congregation’s motherhouse, La Tour de Saint-Joseph, in the countryside outside Rennes, Brittany. Her steady kindness, joy, and simplicity, her unshakeable sense of “littleness before God” and gratitude for his blessings, seeped into the hearts of her young colleagues. Jeanne Jugan melted away completely into Sr. Marie de la Croix. She had been “grafted onto the Cross.” Only once did her superiors consult her, over the question of accepting endowments. They accepted her advice to rely on God’s Providence alone. It was a tacit admission that she was the guardian of the community’s true spirit. Corporate poverty was duly written into the Rule, which was approved by Pope Leo XIII on March 1, 1879.

In her final years, Sr. Marie de la Croix had gone blind: “Now all I can see is God.” She died, apparently of a heart attack, on August 28, 1879. No immediate public announcement was made, perhaps because it would disrupt the celebration of Father Le Pailleur’s patron saint’s day, the feast of St. Augustine.

Nevertheless, truth did prevail. At the request of the Mother General of the Little Sisters, a Vatican investigation in 1890 uncovered the truth about Father Le Pailleur and sent the overweening cleric to his own exile in a Roman convent. Once Jeanne Jugan was rightfully acknowledged as the real foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor, her reputation for sanctity spread in ever-widening arcs. After a diocesan investigation in 1935, the cause for her canonization was formally introduced in Rome in 1970. She was declared Venerable in 1979 and beatified in 1982. Jeanne’s canonization was authorized this spring after an Omaha man’s cure of metastasized cancer of the esophagus was declared miraculous. As Pope John Paul II declared at her beatification: “God could glorify no more humble a servant than she!”

Published originally in the Catholic World Report.

This account is largely drawn from Jeanne Jugan: Humble So As to Love More by Paul Milcent.

Today, 2,700 Little Sisters of the Poor care for 13,000 people in 202 homes in 32 countries on five continents. They subsist entirely on alms, as their holy foundress wished. Sandra Miesel is the co-author with Peter Vere of Pied Piper of Atheism (Ignatius, 2007) and co-author with Carl Olson of The DaVinci Hoax (Ignatius, 2005). The Apostle to the Lepers, her article on St. Damien of Molokai—also canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11—was published in the October 2009 issue of Catholic World Report.

Nicolaus Copernicus

2009-10-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

Fr. George W. Rutler

Father Copernicus seems to have been so self-effacing that he was not considered well-known enough for a marked grave. He did not change the world as Christ did, but he changed the way the world is understood.

Analysis of a tomb in St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls, commissioned by the Pope four years ago, using Carbon-14 and DNA analysis, enabled the announcement earlier this year that it does indeed contain the remains of St. Paul. Similarly, computer analysis has now verified the discovery of the long-lost body of Mikolaj Kopernik (1473-1543), popularly known as Nicolaus Copernicus, buried anonymously in the Polish cathedral of Frombork. DNA samples of a femur bone and a tooth matched the DNA of a strand of hair found in one of his books in a Swedish library. Digital reconstruction from his skull done in a crime lab reproduced his broken nose and a scar on the forehead.

Copernicus, son of a Polish father and German mother, was a priest and the temporary administrator of the diocese of Frauenburg. As a Renaissance man, he put Leonardo da Vinci in the shade, although painting seems to be the one art that did not claim him as a master. After studies in the universities of Krakow (where Pope John Paul II studied and taught), Bologna, Padua and Ferrara, he became a prominent jurist and mathematician and also practiced medicine for six years, donating his service to the poor. The polymath pioneered reform of the monetary system as it was developing in his day and did it so well that he was made an economic advisor to the government of Prussia. In what little spare time he had, he translated into Latin for posterity the Greek letters of Theophylactus.

He studied astronomy well enough to lecture in Rome on the planets, and shortly before his death he completed his heliocentric cosmology. This "Copernican Revolution" which overturned the Ptolemaic picture of Earth as the center of the universe, except for Manhattan of course, launched modern astronomy and greatly influenced Galileo who was born 21 years after the death of Copernicus. He was too careful a theologian to muddle astronomy with astrology as did Galileo, nor did he insist unscientifically that his theory was absolute fact, a mistake which got Galileo into trouble.

Father Copernicus seems to have been so self-effacing that he was not considered well-known enough for a marked grave. He did not change the world as Christ did, but he changed the way the world is understood. He stands in the line of such Catholic scientists as Pascal the mathematician, Lavoisier the father of modern chemistry, Schrodinger who discovered wave mechanics, Vesalius the anatomist, Fermi who began atomic physics, Malphigi who developed microscopic anatomy, von Neumann who theorized the modern computer, the childless monk Mendel who became the father of genetics, Pasteur whose germ theory saved countless lives, and Fleming whose penicillin probably saved more lives than any other discovery in history. The identification of the body of Copernicus is a fitting reminder of this great and continuing tradition.

Father George William Rutler. "Nicolaus Copernicus." Weekly Column for October 24, 2009.

From Hinduism to Catholicism

2009-10-24T09:47:00.001-07:00

Katie Bahr

It was three years ago when Uma Krishnan says she first dreamed of the Virgin Mary. It was January 2006 and she was living in Singapore with her husband, Kumar, and her son, Karthi. In her dream she saw a “very humble lady” surrounded by candles.

She and Kumar were devout Hindus and they knew the lady in Uma’s dreams was not a Hindu god. They knew little of Christianity, but they thought this lady might be the Blessed Mother. Still, because they came from a long tradition of Hinduism in India, they didn’t give the dream much thought.

Later that year Kumar got a job that took him to San Diego. A few months later, he found a new job in McLean. Uma and Karthi joined him that December.

This past April, Uma began to have more dreams of Mary.

One night she dreamed she was walking into a church she’d never seen before. Once inside, she turned right and found a little room where there were red candles and a statue of Mary.

The second night, she was in the same room, but this time she saw a big cross made of palm leaves.

Another night, she dreamed she was in a boat. On her right was a black woman with dark hair and on her left, a lady wearing a blue scarf and holding a Bible. The woman in blue showed Uma some verses to read to make her worries disappear. In her dream, Uma read the Bible verses and both women disappeared.

Uma and Kumar talked about the dreams and, by the fourth night, they decided to visit a church to see what was happening.

Kumar typed “St. Mary Church Fairfax” into Google and entered the address from the first result into his GPS device. The address was for St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax.

When they got to the church, Uma was shocked. On the outside, it looked just like the church she had dreamed about the first night. When they went inside and turned right, there was a small chapel with red votive candles, a statue of Mary and a cross. It was just like her dreams. Uma started to cry.

“The moment was so touching,” Kumar said. “We were not even Christians and we were not even worshipping when we got such a thing. We were Hindus and we didn’t exactly know how to pray, but we just sat there and said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for all these visions and thank you for bringing us here. We don’t know what to do, you tell us, you guide us, show us what has to be done.’”

After the first visit to the church, a few days passed and Uma and Kumar didn’t return. Instead, they went to their Hindu temple.

Uma had another dream. She saw the statue of Mary on the outside wall of the church. Mary’s arms were out and there was a bright light coming from behind. In Uma’s mind, the statue seemed to be saying, “Come back to me.”

When Uma told Kumar, they decided to go to St. Mary of Sorrows that day. It was a Wednesday, and this time, they went into the main meeting room, where the Charismatic Prayer Group gathered. They shared their story and prayed with them.

After that, Uma and Kumar began to attend Mass and the Charismatic Prayer Group every week.

Uma’s dreams continued, but the couple also started experiencing strange “spiritual disturbances.” Uma would have nightmares, and during the day, alone at home, she would hear strange laughing, heavy breathing or footsteps. Sometimes she would feel a pressure on her neck and would have trouble breathing.

The disturbances were so bad that Uma was afraid to be alone. Kumar would drop her off at St. Mary of Sorrows when he went to work in the morning and she would stay at the church all day.

Frightened, Uma and Kumar talked to Father Stefan Starzynski, St. Mary of Sorrows parochial vicar.

Starzynski told them the disturbances might be coming because they were moving away from Hinduism. He told them not to worry and that they’d be okay if they just went toward the one, true God.

“Even as Hindus they were coming to the prayer groups and the healing Masses and praying the rosary every day, so I think something was trying to stop them from entering the Faith fully,” Father Starzynski said.

Kumar and Uma decided to get rid of all of their Hindu belongings and devote themselves entirely to Catholicism.

Because of their circumstances, the parish had a team of four parishioners teach the couple a condensed version of the traditional yearlong Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults program. Uma and Kumar went to the program every Saturday to learn about the sacraments and to discuss the Bible.

“It sounded like Mary was calling them to us and I felt like we had a responsibility to them,” said Father Starzynski. “They told me they wanted to become Catholic and they were so excited and eager that I thought this was an opportunity to be flexible.”

By the end of August, the group decided the family was ready to become Catholic. Sept. 12, Uma, Kumar and Karthi were baptized and the couple received the sacraments of confirmation, Communion and marriage.

In the days leading up to the ceremonies, Uma and Kumar feel they received lots of help from Mary.

Though they had a very limited budget and hardly any time to plan, Uma and Kumar wanted to have a nice wedding ceremony. They only had $400 to spend on a wedding dress for Uma, but their son found a perfect dress for $399.

Then, after deciding wedding photographers would be too expensive, a photographer from the parish offered his services for free.

Before the baptism and wedding day, Uma had another dream. This time Mary was standing outside the historic St. Mary of Sorrows Church, with a big smile on her face. She was holding two wedding rings and three rosaries — red, orange and yellow.

The couple decided to use those colors in Uma’s bouquet and on the wedding cake, all donated by fellow churchgoers.

On the actual day, the whole parish was invited to see Uma and Kumar receive the sacraments. A reception was held in the hall of the historic church, decorated with red, orange and yellow flowers.

“Even though we hadn’t planned things, God had planned for us,” Kumar said. “He planned everything so perfectly and he took care of everything, right down to the photographs. It was like he has predicted this marriage for us. We are so glad and so thankful and so lucky to be here.”

Father Starzynski said Uma and Kumar’s conversion story shows that God works in mysterious ways. He felt honored that he could be there to help the family.

“I think it speaks to how beautifully God can work and does work,” he said. “It makes you think, are we flexible enough to understand the ways God may work that are outside the box that we have constructed?”

Since they received the sacraments, Kumar and Uma say the disturbances and nightmares have stopped. Uma feels stronger and is able to stay home by herself with no fear.

“We feel like the Holy Spirit in her has just given her this total protection,” Kumar said.

The couple says they are constantly impressed with the parish community.

“I feel like I’ve been wandering all over the place and that I’ve come home,” Kumar said. “I never heard of such good people, such good Catholic people.”

And through it all, Uma’s dreams of Mary continue.

“Whether it’s good or bad, we want to share them with everybody so everybody knows about it,” Kumar said. “Some may take it badly, but we want to share it. We are very fortunate. I feel lucky, I feel honored and I feel blessed.”

Published originally in The Arlington Catholic Herald

Saint Damien of Molokai

2009-10-23T06:05:00.000-07:00

George Rutler

Last Sunday, Pope Benedict raised to the altars five new saints: Zygmunt Szczesny Felin'ski (1822-1895), archbishop of Warsaw; Francisco Coll y Guitard (1812-1875), a Dominican priest; Jozef Damiaan De Veuster, (1840-1889), priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary; Rafael Arnáiz Barón (1911-1938), a Trappist religious; and Marie de la Croix (Jeanne) Jugan (1792-1879), founder of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Jeanne Jugan's homes for the infirm elderly are now in 32 countries, and some of their selfless work is in our own archdiocese. A statue of Saint Damien represents the state of Hawaii in the United States Capitol building. Word of his heroic labors among the lepers on Molokai quickly spread after his death. Theodore Roosevelt instructed the sixteen battleships of the Great White Fleet to dip their flags as they passed Damien's grave. In 1934, Roosevelt's fifth cousin Franklin sent a U.S. naval vessel to transport the body to its native Belgium, where it was received by the King, the Cardinal-Archbishop, and 100,000 people who hailed Father Damien as "De Grootste Belge" -- the Greatest Belgian. One day at Mass, Father Damien spoke to his outcast congregation as "we," for he had contracted the disease himself. Now known as Hansen's Disease, leprosy can be treated with drugs first developed in the 1940s. There still are about 2.5 million Hansen's patients in the world. About 75 lepers could be cured for the average cost of one cosmetic "face lift" in New York City.

When Jesus told a young man, perhaps the same age as Damien when he arrived in Hawaii, to get rid of everything that blocked God, "his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions." (Mark 10: 22). Christ the Saviour is not a cosmetic surgeon. At the Mass, he does not say, "Lift up your faces," for he bids the people: "Sursum Corda" - "Lift up your hearts." St. Damien's face was most beautiful when it became disfigured like the Messiah's: "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid our faces from him...." (Isaiah 53:3).

Among Father Damien's despisers was a wealthy Presbyterian missionary in Honolulu, the Rev. Dr. Hyde who, in a letter in 1890 to another missionary, the Rev. H.B. Gage, wrote that the Catholic priest was dirty, headstrong, bigoted, and promiscuous. Robert Louis Stevenson, himself a fair-minded Scots Presbyterian, had visited the leper colony. Upon reading the attack on Father Damien, he published a scorching reply to Dr. Hyde, which included the words: "For if that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named a saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend H.B. Gage." In St. Peter's Square, 119 years later, that prediction was fulfilled.

Father George William Rutler. Weekly Column for October 18, 2009. Father Rutler received priestly ordination in 1981. Born in 1945 and reared in the Episcopal tradition, Father Rutler was an Episcopal priest for nine years. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1979 and was sent to the North American College in Rome for seminary studies. Father Rutler graduated from Dartmouth, where he was a Rufus Choate Scholar, and took advanced degrees at the Johns Hopkins University and the General Theological Seminary. He holds several degrees from the Gregorian and Angelicum Universities in Rome, including the Pontifical Doctorate in Sacred Theology, and studied at the Institut Catholique in Paris. In England, in 1988, the University of Oxford awarded him the degree Master of Studies. From 1987 to 1989 he was regular preacher to the students, faculty, and townspeople of Oxford. Cardinal Egan appointed him Pastor of the Church of Our Saviour, effective September 17, 2001. Since 1988 his weekly television program has been broadcast worldwide on EWTN. Father Rutler has published 16 books, including: Coincidentally: Unserious Reflections on Trivial Connections, A Crisis of Saints: Essays on People and Principles, Brightest and Best, Saint John Vianney: The Cure D'Ars Today, Crisis in Culture, and Adam Danced: The Cross and the Seven Deadly Sins.

Amen To A Good Offer

2009-10-22T16:02:00.000-07:00

Raymond J. de Souza

The decision announced in Rome yesterday to create structures to allow Anglicans to convert to Catholicism in a corporate way, while retaining many of their Anglican traditions, is a major historical development.

And, as is usually the case with something truly historic in the Catholic Church, it is a retrieval of something centuries old.

Pope Benedict will permit Anglicans who believe what Catholics believe -- many of them call themselves "traditional Anglicans" or "Anglo-Catholics" -- to become Catholics en masse, and that parishes and dioceses will be set up so that they may maintain their own traditions. Parishes and dioceses are usually territorial, meaning that you belong to a certain parish or diocese depending on where you live.

But there are plenty of anomalies in Church practice: bishops appointed to look after military personnel dispersed through a country or around the world; non-territorial dioceses ("prelatures") for groups attached to certain liturgical traditions or norms of life (Opus Dei is one of them); provisions for ethnic groups -- for example, there has long been a bishop in Toronto charged with care of the Hungarian diaspora.

Most significantly, some 400 years ago a breach was healed with the Greek Catholics in the east who had separated from Rome in order to follow Constantinople. Upon their return in 1595, they were permitted to maintain their own liturgical traditions and forms of governance, while affirming total unity of faith and full communion with Rome. Canadians will be most familiar with Ukrainian Catholics, numerous especially in Western Canada, who are fully Catholic while maintaining the Eastern liturgy and practice. Indeed, the Catholic Church includes nearly two dozen "Eastern Rites," all of which have their own distinctive traditions, including married priests (but celibate bishops).

The Vatican had received hundreds of requests from Anglican bishops and priests over the past few years for some structure for integration, and the Apostolic Constitution announced yesterday -- canonical parlance for a legislative papal document -- is the response.

"In this way, the Apostolic Constitution seeks to balance on the one hand the concern to preserve the worthy Anglican liturgical and spiritual patrimony and, on the other hand, the concern that these groups and their clergy will be integrated into the Catholic Church," the Vatican said.

The patrimony! English speaking Catholics for generations have admired the Anglican patrimony, especially in liturgy and sacred music. That this patrimony might soon enrich Catholic worship is news for great rejoicing. In much the same way as the riches of Greek Catholic worship were grafted back on the Catholic vine after the Eastern divisions of the 11th century, so this modest step is the first grafting back onto the vine of those western Christians who were divided in the 16th century.

While Catholics could never countenance the division of the Church wrought by Henry VIII, to say nothing of his brutal persecutions, much that was noble survived in the subsequent development of Anglicanism. Anglicans today are divided about how to adapt that tradition to today's circumstances, and a minority have decided that the only way forward is to go back to full union with the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict's decision is a generous and liberal one, accommodating all novelties which can be accommodated within the profession of the ancient faith.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, commented yesterday that this was not an "act of aggression" on the part of Catholics, but rather an indication of how much Catholics and Anglicans share in common. It is true that what unites us has always been greater than what divides us, but it is also true that differences make a difference, and at some point one has to decide where one stands. The Anglican Communion has been wrestling with its very identity for some time now, and at least some part of it has decided that becoming Catholic is God's will for them. It behooves the Catholic Church to respect that.

Both Catholic and Anglican bishops were keen yesterday to say that this new papal initiative does not detract from the search for full communion between Catholics and Anglicans as a whole. That remains a shared prayer, but simple prudence means finding other workable measures for unity today, as in fact the two communities are moving farther apart, not closer together, on matters of doctrine. The unity of the Church, Pope Benedict said at his inaugural papal Mass, was his first duty. He has creatively made a significant step forward in discharging that duty.

Father Raymond J. de Souza, "Amen to a good offer." © National Post, (Canada) October 21, 2009. Father Raymond J. de Souza is chaplain to Newman House, the Roman Catholic mission at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. Father de Souza's web site is here. Father de Souza is on the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.

A New Era Begins

2009-10-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

Damian Thompson

This is astonishing news. Pope Benedict XVI has created an entirely new Church structure for disaffected Anglicans that will allow them to worship together – using elements of Anglican liturgy – under the pastoral supervision of their own specially appointed bishop or senior priest.

The Pope is now offering Anglicans worldwide “corporate reunion” on terms that will delight Anglo-Catholics. In theory, they can have their own married priests, parishes and bishops – and they will be free of liturgical interference by liberal Catholic bishops who are unsympathetic to their conservative stance.

There is even the possibility that married Anglican laymen could be accepted for ordination on a case-by-case basis – a remarkable concession.

Both Archbishop Vincent Nichols and Archbishop Rowan Williams are surprised by this dramatic move. Cardinal Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was in Lambeth Palace only yesterday to spell out to Dr Williams what it means. This decision has, in effect, been taken over their heads – though there is no suggestion that Archbishop Nichols does not fully support this historic move.

Incidentally, I suspect that Rome waited until Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s retirement before unveiling this plan: the cardinal is an old-style ecumenist who represents the old way of doing things. His allies in Rome, and many former participants in Anglican-Catholic dialogue, are dismayed by today’s news, which clears away the wreckage of the ARCIC process.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is unlikely to be pleased, though he was vigorously concealing any displeasure at a press conference this morning. (There was a lot of spin about this decision “arising out of dialogue”.) The truth is that Rome has given up on the Anglican Communion. With one announcement, the Pope has given conservative Anglicans a protected route to union with Rome – and promised that, even once they are members of the Catholic Church, they will be offered a permanent structure that allows them to retain an Anglican ethos.

Thousands of Anglicans who reject women bishops and priests and liberal teaching on homosexuality are certain to avail themselves of this provision. Within a few years, there will probably be “Anglican ethos” Catholic parishes in England and Wales (and one wonders how many conservative cradle Catholics will gratefully start attending Mass there).

Under the supervision of a “Personal Ordinary”, who can be a priest or unmarried bishop, ex-Anglicans will be able to put forward their own candidates for ordination. In the short term, there will be no difficulty in ordaining married former Anglican clergy.

The Vatican would not use the phrase, but this is very close to the setting up of a “Church within a Church”. Yet that is not as unusual as it might seem: Eastern-rite Catholics have their own liturgy and church structures, and in America a small number of ex-Anglicans use service books that borrow from the Book of Common Prayer.

Anglicans will have to request their own “Personal Ordinariate”, to use the Vatican’s clunky term. How might that play out in England? This is just a guess, but the most pro-Roman C of E bishop, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet, could submit a request to Rome. He would be ordained a (married) Catholic priest, and might himself be made “ordinary” (bishop in all but name) of ex-Anglican clergy and lay people who have been received into the Catholic Church together.

This unprecedented canonical structure will affect different countries and dioceses in different ways. But we are not talking about the creation of an “Anglican-Rite” Catholic Church. Although some parishes will want to use the Anglican-usage liturgy, in England many ex-Anglican congregations will be only too happy to avail themselves of the new English translation of the Roman Rite, to be introduced next year.

This is a decision of supreme boldness and generosity by Pope Benedict XVI, comparable to his liberation of the Traditional Latin Mass. The implications of this announcement will take a long time to sink in, but I suspect that this will be a day of rejoicing for conservative Anglo-Catholics and their Roman Catholic friends all over the world.

Originally Published by The Daily Telegraph

God vs. Science Isn't the Issue

2009-10-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

William McGurn

When the poet Matthew Arnold wrote of faith's "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar," the thought was that scientific inquiry had forever undermined claims to certitude. In hindsight we see Arnold was only half right.

In place of Genesis we now have scientism -- the idea that science alone can speak truth about man and his world.

In contrast to the majority of scientists whose wondrous discoveries seem to inspire humility, today's advocates of scientism can be every bit as dogmatic as the William Jennings Bryans of yesteryear. We saw an example a week ago, when the New York Times reported that many scientists view "outspoken religious commitment as a sign of mild dementia."

The reporter was Gardiner Harris, and the object of his snark was Francis Collins -- the new director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Collins is perhaps best noted for his leadership on the Human Genome Project, an effort to map the genetic makeup of man. But he is also well known for his unapologetic talk about his Christian faith and how he came to it.

Mr. Harris' aside about dementia, of course, is less a proposition open to debate than the kind of putdown you tell at a private cocktail party where you know everyone in the room shares your orthodoxies. In this room, there are those who hold that God cannot be reconciled with what science has discovered about the human body, the origin of the species, and the beginnings of the universe. The more honest ones do not flinch before the implications of their materialist principles on our understanding of human dignity and human rights and human freedom -- as well as on religion.

In 1997, for example, an International Academy of Humanism statement in defense of human cloning -- whose signatories included scientists such as E.O. Wilson, Francis Crick and Richard Dawkins -- went out of its way to attack the special dignity of human beings. "Humanity's rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seems to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul that operates in ways no instrument can discover." They concluded "it would be a tragedy if ancient theological scruples should lead to a Luddite rejection of cloning."

Here's the problem: Almost no one really believes this. Not, at least, when it comes to how we behave. And the dichotomy between scientific theory and human action may itself have something to tell us about truth.

That's not to deny electrochemical brain processes and the like. It is to say that much as we may assent to the idea that we are but matter in motion, seldom do we act that way. We love. We fight. We distinguish between the good and noble and the bad and base. More than just religion, our literature and our politics and our music resonate precisely because they speak to these things.

Remember Peter Singer? Mr. Singer is the Princeton utilitarian who accepts scientism's view that human beings are not fundamentally different from animals, just more complex. In his thinking, those who cannot reason for themselves or have lost their self-awareness have no real claim to life. Yet when Alzheimer's struck his mother, he paid for care to prolong and sustain her life. The irony is that an act that does him credit as a son must discredit him among those whose principles about life he claims to share.

To put it another way, while we talk about the clash between God and science, in practice it often comes down to disagreements about man and morals. The boundaries are not always neat. Many Americans who are indifferent to faith will confess they find themselves challenged as they try to raise good and decent children without the religious confidence their parents had. The result may not be a return to religion but a healthy agnosticism about agnosticism itself.

I once had the opportunity to interview one of my heroes, Sidney Hook. This was a man whose commitment to his atheism and secular humanism was beyond question. One example: A doctor saved Mr. Hook's life by going ahead with an operation against Mr. Hook's wishes. Mr. Hook recovered -- and promptly published an op-ed taking his doc to task.

It is possible, of course, to imagine a good society in the absence of a belief that man's dignity comes from his being fashioned in God's image. Something of the sort would have been Mr. Hook's ideal. Yet in his writings, the Almighty in whom Mr. Hook did not believe makes an extraordinary, one might say miraculous, number of appearances. When I asked him why he was not more dismissive, Mr. Hook replied that he was never comfortable with the dogmatism of the village atheist.

Perhaps he thought it "a mild form of dementia."

Previously published by The Wall Street Journal © 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. William McGurn was the chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush until February 8, 2008. Formerly an executive with Newscorp, McGurn also served as the chief editorial writer with The Wall Street Journal. From 1992 to 1998 McGurn served as the senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review. Prior to this he was the Washington bureau chief of National Review. McGurn is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Boston University. He is the author, with Rebecca Blank, of Is the Market Moral?.

Statesmen and Women

2009-10-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

Bevil Bramwell, OMI

When he wanted to send a message to politicians worldwide, John Paul II declared Saint Thomas More the Patron of Statesmen and Politicians (October 31, 2000). He listed various reasons for making this choice. Fundamentally he spoke of “the need felt by the world of politics and public administration for credible role models able to indicate the path of truth at a time in history when difficult challenges and crucial responsibilities are increasing.” His key phrase refers to men and women who can “indicate the path of truth.”

The pope went on to say that: “What enlightened [Thomas More’s] conscience was the sense that man cannot be sundered from God, nor politics from morality.” In Church teaching there is a profound sense of truth that even embraces politicians and statesmen — like it or not — and which is both grounded in God and orders the moral behavior of men and women, both the public servants themselves and the people whom they represent. This is to say that faith in God is eminently necessary. In Thomas Aquinas’ words: “the gift of wisdom presupposes faith, because ‘a man judges well what he knows’ (Ethic. i, 3).” (ST II II question 45) This comes from the Summa’s section on human actions.

Both Aquinas and John Paul II do not speak of knowledge in the narrow sense, where someone knows a few isolated facts about something or who forms an opinion and confuses that with a fact. Aquinas and the pope speak instead of the special all encompassing gift of wisdom. The Book of Wisdom explains that wisdom “reaches from end to end mightily and governs all things well.” (Wisdom 7:1) There is that governing again! Statesmen and politicians merely participate in governance guided by that order. Notice that wisdom takes in the whole complex of reality. She sees the part and its relation to the whole. So when the Second Vatican Council reflected on politics, the Council Fathers brought out the concept of the whole by teaching that: “the political community and public authority are founded on human nature and hence belong to the order designed by God, even though the choice of a political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the free will of citizens.” (Gaudium et spes, 78)

In his motu proprio on Thomas More, John Paul explained that “whenever men or women heed the call of truth, their conscience then guides their actions reliably towards good.” But of course they can choose the opposite course. The council itself said that: “Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity. The same cannot be said for a man who cares but little for truth and goodness, or for a conscience which by degrees grows practically sightless as a result of habitual sin.” (Gaudium et spes, 16)

So with John Paul we can understand that “government is above all an exercise of virtue.” It is being spiritually “clear” enough to learn God’s order. Then “laymen should . . . know that it is generally the function of their well-formed Christian conscience to see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city.” (Gaudium et spes, 43) Statesmen and women are uniquely placed and so have unique demands placed up on them by their role in government.

Further in the discussion of Marriage, the council taught that the spouses “must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive toward the Church's teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel.” (Gaudium et spes, 50) But here there is also the more fundamental point that the Church does in fact authentically interpret the divine law.

Thomas More’s fidelity to the Church’s teaching of the divine law produced some wonderful effects that John Paul listed in his letter: “Throughout his life he was an affectionate and faithful husband and father, deeply involved in his children’s religious, moral and intellectual education. His house offered a welcome to his children’s spouses and his grandchildren, and was always open to his many young friends in search of the truth or of their own calling in life.” More had a good and wholesome effect on those who surrounded him family and non-family alike. Moreover: “Family life also gave him ample opportunity for prayer in common and lectio divina, as well as for happy and wholesome relaxation.” He lived an ordered life.

Interestingly he also did a lot of penance: “Thomas attended daily Mass in the parish church, but the austere penances which he practiced were known only to his immediate family.” This mode of life and his frequent contacts with the Franciscans at Greenwich and the Charterhouse in London meant that as a knight, a member of parliament, Speaker of the House and finally Chancellor of England, he continued to lead an ordered life and became a saint. Could there be another goal for a Catholic politician?

Bevil Bramwell, priest of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, teaches theology at Catholic Distance University. He holds a Ph.D from Boston College and works in the area of ecclesiology. ©2009 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved.

Polluted Water, Polluted Culture

2009-10-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

Matthew Hanley

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reacted to an August report that emissions from coal-fired power plants have led to widespread mercury pollution in our rivers and streams by saying: "this science sends a clear message that our country must continue to confront pollution, restore our nation's waterways, and protect the public from potential health dangers." Who, after all, wants toxic levels of mercury in our rivers?

But mercury is not all there is in the water. Estrogen – from artificial contraception pills, consumed daily by tens of millions of women – makes its way through sewage treatment plants and severely pollutes our waterways. Classified in the United Kingdom as a pollutant, “the pill” has led – according even to the Austrian chemist who helped invent it – to "demographic catastrophe". The oversaturation of estrogen in the environment likely contributes to male infertility, which has been rising in recent years; there is also the impact it has on aquatic life.

To take one recent example, University of Colorado scientists found that of the 123 fish they had caught at a nearby mountain stream for research purposes, “101 were female, 12 were male and 10 were strange ‘intersex’ fish with male and female features.” The director of the Colorado Genetic Engineering Action Network, Dave Georgis, reacted to these freaky findings by saying: “Nobody is to blame for this, and I don’t have a solution.”

That, no doubt, would be above his pay grade.

It does not take much effort to imagine a Dictator behind the scenes (Relativism, as Benedict XVI famously suggested), ordering him to dissemble like that. To speak the truth – even only about the science of estrogen overload, as Salazar did with respect to mercury – would be an act of gross insubordination. The inability to say what is manifestly so or not so, Romano Guardini (a mentor to Benedict) perceptively wrote nearly fifty years ago, is “the most hideous manifestation of tyranny.”

You can get away with such evasions scot-free, since the Zeitgeist cannot be bothered to target this source of contamination, even though that means making peace with harming women and the environment. How quickly its professed faith in strictly disinterested science is exposed as mere pretense, when the science scrutinizes its interests.

Is there any better illustration of the connectedness between human and natural ecology, each of which Benedict XVI stresses (in Caritas in Veritate) can only be protected by firm commitment to moral truth? Artificial contraception’s modus operandi is to thwart nature – it ruptures the intimate (“ecological”) bond between a man, a woman and future generations, splinters entire societies, and contaminates the environment.

Nature can only brook so much dissent.

Connecting the dots is a straightforward but thankless task. Anyone who is aware of ever having preferred darkness to light knows that truth can irritate before it illuminates. Indicting the tools of consequence-free sex as the culprit in environmental degradation, much less personal or social disintegration, is to court rage.

In this case, ’roid rage, since oral contraceptives are steroids (yes, think Mark McGwire), though few know it – and carcinogenic ones at that. To “work,” they must first interfere with the liver, which normally breaks down ingested substances; they are specifically designed not to biodegrade – which helps explain estrogen’s presence in the environment, and why they are implicated not only in breast cancer, but also liver cancer.

Plato timelessly remarked that “men prefer themselves to the truth.” Overcoming the all-too-human aversion to uncomfortable truth costs parts of ourselves dearly – which is why grappling with truth is a noble act.

Without a willingness to acknowledge and “love what is true,” Benedict suggests, there can be “no real social conscience or responsibility,” however much well meaning environmentalists earnestly cultivate and aggressively retail those goods. (A woman may believe that by bringing her own reusable grocery bag to Whole Foods in one hand she helps save the planet – but only if she does not let herself know that the contraceptive pill she pops with the other hand is messing with the planet’s water supply). Quite the contrary: without truth, “social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power.”

This striking passage calls to mind not so much Plato and the human penchant to struggle with truth, but Nietzsche and the “will to power”; it evokes the cold, self-centered nihilism which lends a brutish quality to our culture.

The nihilistic assertion of the self – which lashes out at truth in its quest for power (even over the human body) – is a defining characteristic of “modern liberalism,” which Cardinal Pell of Sydney observes “has strong totalitarian tendencies.” It is a toxic cultural contaminant that shrinks hearts and minds, restricts happiness, and produces “lovelessness, fear, and despair.” It helps foment what Archbishop Dolan of New York called “the real vocation crisis”: fewer and fewer people getting married, later and later in life.

It, like truth, also imposes costs – but in diametrically opposed ways.

The nihilistic “hook-up” culture dishes out debilitating and drug resistant emotional wounds that, though less quantifiable, propel many young and not so young people to “lead lives of quiet desperation” – as Thoreau put it.

But the Truth came to set us free, to heal and reconcile, to restore equilibrium, so that we do not take our quiet desperation “to the grave,” as Thoreau imagined most men do, but rather might find love and happiness in this world and the next.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center will be publishing Matthew Hanley's book, with Jokin D. Irala, M.D., Affirming Love, Avoiding AIDS: What Africa Can Teach the West. © 2009 The Catholic Thing.

The Man Who Defused the 'Population Bomb'

2009-09-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

Gregg Easterbrook

Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America's Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.

Born in 1914 in rural Cresco, Iowa, where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work ending the India-Pakistan food shortage of the mid-1960s. He spent most of his life in impoverished nations, patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the Green Revolution agricultural techniques that have prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II.

In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that Borlaug's efforts combined with those of the many developing-world agriculture-extension agents he trained and the crop-research facilities he founded in poor nations saved the lives of one billion human beings.

As a young agronomist, Borlaug helped develop some of the principles of Green Revolution agriculture on which the world now relies including hybrid crops selectively bred for vigor, and "shuttle breeding," a technique for accelerating the movement of disease immunity between strains of crops. He also helped develop cereals that were insensitive to the number of hours of light in a day, and could therefore be grown in many climates.

Green Revolution techniques caused both reliable harvests, and spectacular output. From the Civil War through the Dust Bowl, the typical American farm produced about 24 bushels of corn per acre; by 2006, the figure was about 155 bushels per acre.

Hoping to spread high-yield agriculture to the world's poor, in 1943 Borlaug moved to rural Mexico to establish an agricultural research station, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Borlaug's little research station became the International Maize and Wheat Center, known by its Spanish abbreviation CIMMYT, that is now one of the globe's most important agricultural study facilities. At CIMMYT, Borlaug developed the high-yield, low-pesticide "dwarf" wheat upon which a substantial portion of the world's population now depends for sustenance.

In 1950, as Borlaug began his work in earnest, the world produced 692 million tons of grain for 2.2 billion people. By 1992, with Borlaug's concepts common, production was 1.9 billion tons of grain for 5.6 billion men and women: 2.8 times the food for 2.2 times the people. Global grain yields more than doubled during the period, from half a ton per acre to 1.1 tons; yields of rice and other foodstuffs improved similarly. Hunger declined in sync: From 1965 to 2005, global per capita food consumption rose to 2,798 calories daily from 2,063, with most of the increase in developing nations. In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared that malnutrition stands "at the lowest level in human history," despite the global population having trebled in a single century.

In the mid-1960s, India and Pakistan were exceptions to the trend toward more efficient food production; subsistence cultivation of rice remained the rule, and famine struck. In 1965, Borlaug arranged for a convoy of 35 trucks to carry high-yield seeds from CIMMYT to a Los Angeles dock for shipment to India and Pakistan. He and a coterie of Mexican assistants accompanied the seeds. They arrived to discover that war had broken out between the two nations. Sometimes working within sight of artillery flashes, Borlaug and his assistants sowed the Subcontinent's first crop of high-yield grain. Paul Ehrlich gained celebrity for his 1968 book "The Population Bomb," in which he claimed that global starvation was inevitable for the 1970s and it was "a fantasy" that India would "ever" feed itself. Instead, within three years of Borlaug's arrival, Pakistan was self-sufficient in wheat production; within six years, India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals.

After his triumph in India and Pakistan and his Nobel Peace Prize, Borlaug turned to raising crop yields in other poor nations especially in Africa, the one place in the world where population is rising faster than farm production and the last outpost of subsistence agriculture. At that point, Borlaug became the target of critics who denounced him because Green Revolution farming requires some pesticide and lots of fertilizer. Trendy environmentalism was catching on, and affluent environmentalists began to say it was "inappropriate" for Africans to have tractors or use modern farming techniques. Borlaug told me a decade ago that most Western environmentalists "have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things."

Environmentalist criticism of Borlaug and his work was puzzling on two fronts. First, absent high-yield agriculture, the world would by now be deforested. The 1950 global grain output of 692 million tons and the 2006 output of 2.3 billion tons came from about the same number of acres three times as much food using little additional land.

"Without high-yield agriculture," Borlaug said, "increases in food output would have been realized through drastic expansion of acres under cultivation, losses of pristine land a hundred times greater than all losses to urban and suburban expansion." Environmentalist criticism was doubly puzzling because in almost every developing nation where high-yield agriculture has been introduced, population growth has slowed as education becomes more important to family success than muscle power.

In the late 1980s, when even the World Bank cut funding for developing-world agricultural improvement, Borlaug turned for support to Ryoichi Sasakawa, a maverick Japanese industrialist. Sasakawa funded his high-yield programs in a few African nations and, predictably, the programs succeeded. The final triumph of Borlaug's life came three years ago when the Rockefeller Foundation, in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced a major expansion of high-yield agriculture throughout Africa. As he approached his 90s, Borlaug "retired" to teaching agronomy at Texas A&M, where he urged students to live in the developing world and serve the poor.

Often it is said America lacks heroes who can provide constructive examples to the young. Here was such a hero. Yet though streets and buildings are named for Norman Borlaug throughout the developing world, most Americans don't even know his name.

Originally published by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Easterbrook is a contributing editor of the Atlantic and author of the forthcoming "Sonic Boom," due out by Random House in January 2010.