The Public Square
Richard John Neuhaus
Copyright (c) 2000 First Things
108 (December 2000): 63-84.
What Jacques Barzun Believes, Maybe
I share fully the pleasure that our reviewer, John J. Reilly, takes in Jacques
Barzun’s big new book From
Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
(FT, November). It is a very big book indeed, coming
to almost nine hundred pages with notes. But it is a wonderful
read, summing up the learned and sometimes eccentric reflections
of a scholar now ninety–three years old. Anne Fadiman has
written, “Thank heaven he has lived long enough to complete
a book no one else could even have begun.” The second part
of that is a bit of an exaggeration. John Russell writes
with no exaggeration at all, “This book is what used to
be called a ‘liberal education,’ and it should bring that
phrase back into favor.”
That Professor Barzun is learned, cosmopolitan,
amusing, and wise there is no doubt, but I kept wondering what he really believes.
In all his masterful displaying of the ideas, philosophies, and artistic representations
of reality that have captured minds and souls over these five hundred years,
where does Jacques Barzun stand? What are the core convictions that anchor and
direct his way of trying to make sense of the world of which we are part? Answers
are elusive, for he is sometimes coy, and he tries always to describe sympathetically
intellectual and cultural movements of the most maddening diversity. From
Dawn to Decadence is, as the title indicates, written in an argumentative
mode but not in a confessional mode.
But there are here and there glimpses of a creed that sustains Barzun’s labors.
I do not mean just his aesthetic, moral, and intellectual judgments. The book
is riddled with those, which is a large part of its charm. By a creed I mean
the comprehensive belief or affirmation that undergirds the lifetime enterprise
represented by this remarkable book. The closest thing I could find to such
a creed occurs on page 756 in the context of his discussing the sundry existentialisms
that produced the literature and theater of the Absurd associated with figures
such as Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Eugene Ionesco, and
that a few decades ago exploded with such unhappy cultural and political effect
through the writings of R. D. Laing, Norman O. Brown, and Herbert Marcuse. In
an uncharacteristic tone of impatience, Barzun writes:
However fitting for the times, the existentialist complaint
seems puny. It laments because man must make his own goals within a universe
that stays aloof. Both are questionable assumptions. It can be argued that man
and nature are one: nature is conscious of itself in and through man. And what
man has made of the world, intellectually and materially, is his mission—chosen
by him, it is true, but so universal that it is tantamount to fated, obligatory.
Besides, how strange and unfriendly is nature? It has of course no intentions,
friendly or unfriendly; it does not even exist as an entity; it is a man–made
construct from his experience and for his purposes. But once taken as such “it”
feeds him, it yields in a thousand ways to his handling, and it is beautiful.
The sight of it often gives pure mindless joy. To dismiss as mistaken all these
links with the cosmos that men have celebrated in worship and song is to forget
that if the mind mistakes, it is because it “takes,” and that the current submission
to the absurd is a taking within life, not outside it; hence not competent to
damn it permanently.
What does he mean that the Absurdists were
“taking within life, not outside it”? What can be outside life? Only, it would
seem, upper case Life. He contrasts the Absurdists with earlier modernists,
such as the Dadaists of Zurich in 1916. They, too, recognized and represented
the absurd dimensions of existence, but they did not leave it at that; the absurd
did not have the last word. Unlike them, the later practitioners of the Absurd
“set off no spark of positive electricity, no rebellion against the absurdity
of the Absurd.” Then this: “In contrast, earlier philosophies used life as the
very source of sanity; it was the measure of rightness, not vulnerable to corruption.
The distinction was implicit between Life and our life at the moment;
and the new thought, the new art showed what Life demanded. Even the Stoics,
who did not dance with joy at the idea of being alive, left life and the cosmos
their validity. The Absurd marks a failure of nerve.”
The story line of From Dawn to Decadence
is, in Barzun’s telling, a failure of nerve. A failure of nerve to do what or
to be what? A failure to live in the truth that “Nature is conscious of itself
in and through man. And what man has made of the world, intellectually and materially,
is his mission—chosen by him, it is true, but so universal that it is tantamount
to fated, obligatory.” A life lived in that truth is a life lived in response
to what Life demands. At the risk of attributing to Barzun a theology that is
not his, one is reminded of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s declaration, “Man is the
cantor and caretaker of the universe.” There is no doubt about Barzun’s profound
humanism, his devotion to the human project. And, although he is confoundedly
reticent about it, there would seem to be no doubt that his devotion is sustained
by the confidence that the project is in response to an obligation not entirely
of its own creation. As to what that obligation and the promise attending it
might be, perhaps Prof. Barzun will overcome his reticence and tell us in his
next book.
Tired Taxonomies
He wrote a fine biography of Whittaker
Chambers and is currently writing a biography of William F. Buckley, Jr., so
I suppose it is understandable that Sam Tanenhaus is attentive to the squabbles
over the definitions and incessant redefinitions of “conservatism.” Who is and
who is not one, and of what kind? It is a subject for which I have severely
limited patience. I don’t mean to sound coy or suggest that I am above the squabbles
that preoccupy mere mortals. Goodness knows, I spend a good deal of my time
making arguments, countering opposing arguments, taking positions, and advocating
that we should do this rather than that. It is simply that I can’t work up much
interest in the taxonomical disputes over which arguments and which positions
belong in this ideological box rather than that.
But some attention must be paid when the
taxonomists grossly misrepresent the work in which one has a part. Writing in
the New York Times, Tanenhaus revisits, yet again, the “neoconservative”
phenomenon, fretting over what is right, what is left, what is center, etc.,
etc. Nothing new in that, but then we come to this: “And a turning point came
in 1996, when a group of Christian conservatives affiliated with the political–religious
publication First Things declared a virtual war on the American government and
proposed solutions ranging from ‘civil disobedience’ to ‘morally justified revolution.’
This extremism contradicted everything neoconservatives stood for.”
Where to begin? Maybe with the fact that
our critique of the judicial usurpation of politics in 1996 and since is advanced
by both Jews and Christians; or with the fact that the argument is entirely
supportive of the American constitutional order; or with the fact that nobody
in these pages has proposed civil disobedience, never mind revolution, as a
solution, although we have with great care discussed the theoretical and historical
responses to legal injustices—hardly an extremist subject in light of the American
experiment, from its eighteenth–century beginnings to the civil rights struggle
under Martin Luther King, Jr.
The locution “Christian conservatives” is
telling. The neoconservative story is essentially a Jewish story; it is the
last part of the last chapter of the endlessly retold legend of “the New York
intellectuals.” Non–Jews make occasional appearances, but Mr. Tanenhaus writes
as a Jew about Jews for Jews. “Christian conservatives” are something else.
In urging that neoconservatives drop the prefix and acknowledge that they are,
quite simply, conservatives, Irving Kristol, the “godfather” of the neocons,
is saying that the story of the New York intellectuals is over. Mr. Tanenhaus,
however, is stuck on the last chapter.
As for his alleged turning point, Mr. Tanenhaus
tells me that he has read the original 1996 symposium, although not the continuing
discussion in these pages, nor the several books that have appeared in this
connection. What he did read he did not, I would suggest, read carefully. Except
for my friend Norman Podhoretz’s book, My Love Affair With America, in
which Norman used the 1996 symposium as a ploy to prove that he hasn’t lost
his propensity for fighting with his friends. The fight was entirely one–sided,
and Norman and I are anything but—to use the title of his earlier book—ex–friends.
So much for Tanenhaus’ great turning point.
As Norman knows, I do wish he would stop
claiming that, in criticizing this journal, he was combating “anti–Americanism
on the right.” But one understands that he has been writing and living the story
of “making it” since long before he published the controversial book by that
title. The saga of his journey from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side is indeed
a tribute to America, and to his talented tenaciousness. Unlike Groucho Marx
who memorably said that he wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would accept
him, Norman is inclined to the view that his being accepted puts the club beyond
criticism. His unilateral revision of the club rules, however, is not likely
to gain many adherents. While I find it mildly annoying to be accused of anti–Americanism,
it has the dubious merit of balancing the many critics, on both the right and
the left, who have over the years charged this journal and its Editor–in–Chief
with excessive devotion to the American experiment. In any event, we will go
on making the arguments that we have been making, and do so, I trust, with friendships
intact. It’s the American way.
As for the important questions involved, there is, so far as I know, not one
neoconservative cited in Tanenhaus’ article who disagrees with the substance
of this journal’s analysis of the problem of judicial usurpation. It may be
that there are some who deny that there is a transcendent referent by which
this government can be brought under moral judgment, which strikes me as a denial
that should be impossible for any serious Christian or Jew. And some are obviously
made nervous by any discussion of legitimate and illegitimate government—at
least with respect to this country—despite America’s founding truths, such as
the Declaration’s claim that “just government is derived from the consent of
the governed.” Discussion of those questions will continue as occasion requires.
Meanwhile, the taxonomists will also go on churning out articles and books on
Whither Conservatism? Whither Liberalism? Whither the Left? Whither the Right?
Whither Whitherism? It is for the most part a harmless obsession, although one
wishes it were pursued with greater attentiveness to the facts.
To Say that Jesus Is Lord: Part Two
In the last issue we commented on the declaration
Dominus Iesus (Jesus the Lord) issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith (CDF) in September, and on various reactions to it. In an unusual
public expression of differences within the Curia, Edward Cardinal Cassidy,
who heads the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, has carefully distanced
himself from the tone, although not the substance, of the declaration. He and
others have suggested that parts of the text, notably those dealing with ecumenism,
could and should have been phrased with greater care for the sensibilities of
non–Catholics. It is a view with which I have some sympathy, although it may
well be that the straightforward—one might almost say stark—propositions of
the document will serve as a bracing reminder that the only unity that we should
seek is unity in the truth. Clarity in facing disagreements gives credibility
to agreements.
A harsh but not unrepresentative reaction
to Dominus Iesus is offered by Brazilian liberation theologian, Leonardo
Boff. In a long attack, he says the document represents “the Roman system—immutable,
implacable, cruel, and pitiless.” Cardinal Ratzinger of CDF “has appointed himself
the executioner of the future of ecumenism.” “Only an old, bitter, and fading
church could produce such a melancholic and spiritually corrupt text” setting
forth doctrines that represent the Vatican’s “thirst for power.” Along the way,
however, Boff does render a service by highlighting what is theologically at
stake. “In the end this document, a supreme expression of totalitarianism, would
say to everyone, in a cruel and merciless way: without Christ and the Church
you have nothing; and if just by chance you were to possess something positive,
it would not be because it is from you, but because it comes from Christ and
the Church.” Ratzinger, complains Boff, would put public revelation in the past,
whereas we should be open to present and future public revelations, including
from different religions such as the Aztec, Buddhist, Hindu, and other traditions.
Whether all salvation is through Christ
and the gospel of Christ proclaimed and lived by the Church has, of course,
been the question for centuries. Without Christ and his Church we would indeed
be eternally lost. Or so orthodox Christians of whatever denomination believe.
The question is whether Jesus the Christ is one expression, one emanation, one
revelation of God among others, or is, as we say in the creed commonly called
the Nicene, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten,
not made, of one Being with the Father.” Of course the orthodox Christian claim
is scandalously audacious—some say arrogant—in the twenty–first century, as
it was in the first and in all the centuries in between. The question is whether
it is true. If it is true, it is good news for everyone, for the one God intends
his one plan of salvation to be for everyone.
Given the storm of reaction and misrepresentation,
not all of it so extreme as Boff’s, Pope John Paul II took the occasion of his
Angelus address on October 1 to clarify what the CDF declaration does and does
not say. It is a very careful statement that rewards close reading.
“With the Declaration Dominus Iesus—Jesus
is Lord—approved by me in a special way at the height of the Jubilee Year, I
wanted to invite all Christians to renew their fidelity to him in the joy of
faith and to bear unanimous witness that the Son, both today and tomorrow, is
‘the way, and the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6). Our confession of Christ
as the only Son, through whom we ourselves see the Father’s face (cf. John 14:8),
is not arrogance that disdains other religions, but joyful gratitude that Christ
has revealed himself to us without any merit on our part. At the same time,
he has obliged us to continue giving what we have received and to communicate
to others what we have been given, since the Truth that is has been given and
the Love which is God belongs to all people.
“With the Apostle Peter, we confess that
‘there is salvation in no one else’ (Acts 4:12). The Declaration Dominus
Iesus, following the lead of the Second Vatican Council, shows us that this
confession does not deny salvation to non–Christians, but points to its ultimate
source in Christ, in whom man and God are united. God gives light to all in
a way which is accommodated to their spiritual and material situation, granting
them salvific grace in ways known to himself (Dominus Iesus, VI, nn.
20–21). The document clarifies essential Christian elements, which do not hinder
dialogue but show its bases, because a dialogue without foundations would be
destined to degenerate into empty wordiness.
“The same also applies to the ecumenical
question. If the document, together with the Second Vatican Council, declares
that ‘the single Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church,’ it does
not intend thereby to express scant regard for the other Churches and Ecclesial
Communities. This conviction is accompanied by the awareness that it is not
due to human merit, but is a sign of God’s fidelity, which is stronger than
the human weaknesses and sins solemnly confessed by us before God and men at
the beginning of Lent. The Catholic Church—as the document says—suffers from
the fact that true particular Churches and Ecclesial Communities with precious
elements of salvation are separated from her.
“The document thus expresses once again
the same ecumenical passion that is the basis of my encyclical Ut Unum Sint.
I hope that this Declaration, which is close to my heart, can, after so many
erroneous interpretations, finally fulfill its function both of clarification
and of openness. May Mary, whom the Lord on the Cross entrusted to us as the
Mother of us all, help us to grow together in our faith in Christ, the Redeemer
of all mankind, in the hope of salvation offered by Christ to everyone, and
in love, which is the sign of God’s children.”
Invited to a Revolution
As best I can calculate, it was 1956 or
1957 when I was a seminarian at Concordia, St. Louis, and during the summer
I was peddling Fuller Brush products in the north country of Ontario. Since
I was only a temporary, I was assigned a rural territory with a handful of villages
and farm houses few and far between. But one could make some decent money, at
least by the reckoning of that time. The deal was that one got a straight 50
percent on sales of brushes, waxes, mops, and sundry other items with which—or
so the sales pitch put it—no household should be without. I discovered that
getting orders was a lot easier than getting payment when I delivered the goods
a week later. Nothing new in that, I suppose. It was much the same the summer
I sold Wearever pots and pans. The next summer it was life insurance. I was
particularly good at persuading young ladies that lots of insurance would increase
their marriage prospects. I am embarrassed to recall that spiel. It was effective,
though, and they signed up eagerly—only to promptly default on paying the premiums,
which wiped out my commission. Typically, there was a father in the picture
who took a very different view of a young man selling his eighteen–year–old
daughter a large life insurance policy.
It was in the Fuller Brush summer, however,
that I stumbled across the Madonna House Lay Apostolate, nestled by the Madawaska
River in the Laurentian wilderness of Combermere, close by Barry’s Bay and Wilno,
the last being the first Polish settlement in Canada. My purpose was just to
sell brushes, and I didn’t know what I was getting into. I am not entirely sure
that I actually met “the Baroness,” Catherine de Hueck Doherty. I think I did,
but it must have been very briefly, for, from what I know now, any extended
encounter with her would certainly be remembered. I also don’t remember whether
I made a sale there. Probably not, since the people of Madonna House take a
vow of poverty and try to live on what they can produce themselves or beg from
others. But the people with whom I talked for an hour or so impressed upon me
that this was a very different place. In the years following, I would reflect
from time to time on that odd community and what they told me about their way
of life, and about their foundress, a Russian aristocrat who talked with God
and, more interestingly, taught what she had learned when God talked with her,
which, or so it was said, He regularly did. It all seemed a little strange,
as in fanatical.
Much later, I came to a better appreciation
of Madonna House and the Baroness. In addition to Combermere, where there are
about a hundred lay “staff workers” and ten priests, some twenty other houses
around the world have sprung up in response to Catherine’s invitation: “We need
to be poor! Let us live an ordinary life, but beloved, let us live it with a
passionate love for God. Become a mystery. Stretch one hand out to God, the
other to your neighbor. Be cruciform. Christ’s cross will be our revolution
and it will be A REVOLUTION OF LOVE!” Each year hundreds of lay people, religious,
and priests visit Combermere and the other houses to be formed for a week or
more in Catherine’s way of radical discipleship. This past summer I returned
again to Combermere.
She was not, technically speaking, a baroness,
since Russia did not have such a title, but she was from wealth and nobility.
The media gave her the title when she arrived in Canadian exile following the
Bolshevik revolution and it stuck. To say hers was an eventful life is to understate
egregiously. Between her birth in 1896 and her death in 1985, she served as
a nurse with the Russian army in World War I and with the poignantly hopeless
White Russian army after the revolution; she married a Russian ne’er–do–well,
gave birth to a son to whom she was an indifferent mother; supported herself
and her family as a successful anti–Communist lecturer; established houses to
serve the poor and advance interracial friendship in Toronto, Chicago, and Harlem,
in which connection she was often compared with her friend Dorothy Day. After
an annulment, she married the then noted journalist Eddie Doherty, and when
their world fell apart following her rejection by the movement she had launched,
they fled to Combermere. What seemed like the end was the beginning of Madonna
House. These few words cannot begin to suggest the tumultuousness of this extraordinary
life. The story is well told, not without a critical edge, in They Called
Her the Baroness by Lorene Hanley Duquin (Alba House).
Dozens of her books and booklets have been
kept in print by Madonna House Publications. I frequently have an ambivalent
response to the writings of the founders of spiritual movements. What their
followers hail as flashing spiritual insights often seem a bit obvious and even
banal, and one just knows these founders must have been much more impressive
in person. Some of Catherine’s publications are mainly transcripts of talks
given at Madonna House, full of exclamation points and assertions in the upper
case. One gathers that she herself was an exclamation point. From her writings
and from conversation with those who knew her well, I expect she must have been
quite impossible a good deal of the time. Her tone is relentlessly intense,
imperious, and flaming with the passion of discovered love. The little book,
Dear Father: A Message of Love to Priests, can be summed up: “Yes, but
do you believe, do you really believe, the wonder of who Christ is and
you are for him? Show it! Live it!” One is reminded of Chesterton’s remark that
the only sin is to call a green leaf gray. Catherine railed against a world
and a Church that seemed so indifferent to the luminosity of love. (Dear
Father also contains an excerpt I had quite forgotten from Thomas Merton’s
Seven Storey Mountain, in which he tells of Catherine’s influence on
his vocation.)
For Poustinia, perhaps her most
influential book, she must have had a good editor. The exclamation points and
upper case excitements are muted in this strongly moving account of a practice
of silence, solitude, and prayer drawn from the Russian experience of pilgrimage
and time apart in which poustiniki live in a small hut—for days or months
or years, or for a lifetime—in an isolation that is also total availability
to the community. The heart of the poustinia is kenosis, joining
Christ in the emptying of the self, as described by Paul in Philippians 2. “I
think that God calls the poustinik to a total purgation, a total self–emptying,”
writes Catherine. She cautioned against the impulse to be relevant by doing
something useful as the world measures usefulness. “If you want to see what
a ‘contribution’ really is, look at the Man on the cross. That’s a contribution.
When you are hanging on a cross you can’t do anything because you’re crucified.
That is the essence of a poustinik. That is his or her contribution.”
Poustinia is one of the more insightful and disturbing books on prayer
I have read in a long time.
As with Dorothy Day, Catherine’s “cause”
has been accepted by Rome and it is possible that somewhere down that path she
may formally be declared a saint. Also like Dorothy Day, Catherine’s faith and
piety came to be viewed as “conservative” because so radically orthodox. (Catherine
was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church and part of the continuing apostolate
of Madonna House is reconciliation between East and West, a purpose close to
the heart of John Paul II.) Many who admire Dorothy Day are prepared to overlook
her orthodoxy for the sake of the radical politics of her Catholic Worker movement.
It is harder to do that with the Baroness since she more clearly distanced the
Madonna House Apostolate from the political exploitation of its members’ dedication
to live for and with the poor. But both Dorothy and Catherine understood that
orthodox Christianity is ever so much more radical than the radicalisms that
the world regularly throws up to challenge or recruit Christian faith; and they
understood that the way of high adventure is not to trim the Church’s teaching
but to penetrate ever more deeply into living the mystery of Christ.
The last half century, and especially the
years of this pontificate, has witnessed an astonishing resurgence of renewal
movements. Among the better known in North America are Cursillio, Opus Dei,
Focolare, Legionaries of Christ, Regnum Christi, and the Neocatechumenal Way.
The explosion of similar movements in Latin America and Africa is perhaps without
historical precedent. These are mainly movements of lay people, married and
celibate, locked in communal determination to live the gospel of Jesus Christ
without compromise. The Madonna House Apostolate is part of this remarkable
phenomenon. Father Robert Pelton at Combermere—a personable, gentle, and wisely
innocent priest—says he does not know where the apostolate will go in the future,
but he knows that he does not need to know. It is enough that the life of Catherine
de Hueck Doherty—in both its pyrotechnical brilliance and silent deeps—begat
a movement that has changed lives beyond numbering by its invitation to a disciplined
adventure into a revolution of love. (For more information: Madonna House, Combermere,
Ontario, Canada, K0J 1L0 or www.madonnahouse.org)
Truth for Tolerance
So many pundits weighed in on the question of Joe Lieberman and religion, but
few so provocatively as Clifford Orwin, professor of political science at the
University or Toronto. Orwin writes in the National Post under the title
“Religion in the Public Square” that when he was growing up in Chicago, ethnic
and religious bonds made a big difference, for better and for worse. “But everything
has changed (and not in all respects for the better),” Orwin writes. “William
Julius Wilson, the brilliant American sociologist, has written from a quasi–Marxist
perspective of ‘the declining significance of race.’ His phrase applies equally
to religion. This decline is vast and obvious. The real threat facing North
American Jews today is neither intolerance nor evangelism nor the ‘Aryan’ lunatic
fringe. Rather it’s an aspect of excessive tolerance (of nominal Christians
toward Jews and of nominal Jews toward Christians). The seventeenth–century
Jewish renegade philosopher Spinoza dreamed of a liberal world where Jews would
cease to be Jews even as Christians ceased to be Christians. That world now
looks uncomfortably close to realization. Intermarriage rates have soared exponentially,
because to so many young people (and, increasingly, their parents) the old distinctions
just don’t matter. If your child is marrying a nice person, you don’t ask for
more. What remains of religion in mainstream North America is one thing only:
a diffuse moralism accompanied by a vague conviction that religion supports
morality. Polls purporting to show that Americans are highly religious reflect
only this. (Try asking an American to explain what distinguishes his denomination
from others. He’ll soon assure you that all religions are the same at bottom.)
Most Americans simply equate religion with morality. Whether the moral person
is Christian or Jewish or Sikh or a native American shamanist just doesn’t matter
anymore. (When I lectured in Massachusetts recently a Wiccan cabdriver explained
to me what his alleged paganism stood for: feminism, environmentalism, and the
Golden Rule). Americans may go to church more often than other modern peoples,
but what they learn in church is this gospel of universal toleration. All good
people go to heaven.”
Orwin overstates the case, but only somewhat.
Of course, Orthodox Jews and orthodox (also upper case) Christians are distressed
by such a depiction of our circumstance, and may want to insist that the greater
measure of mutual respect in our society is in fact grounded in biblical faith.
As indicated by the general reaction to the recent Vatican statement Dominus
Iesus (The Lord Jesus), which reiterated the traditional claim that Jesus
Christ is the one way of salvation—also for those who are not Christians—in
our culture the assertion that some religious claims are true and others false,
or even less true, is taken as a sin against tolerance. In reaction to such
muddled thinking, there are those who suggest that the test of vibrant religion
is the readiness to declare that those who do not share one’s understanding
of the truth will go to hell. Thus the debate is unhappily skewed in a way that
pits dogmatic thugs against relativistic wimps.
The never–ending task for Christians is
to make clear that their respect for others is not despite but because of their
Christian faith. The alternative to tolerance premised upon indifference to
truth is a lively pluralism premised upon the conviction that the truth both
requires and makes possible our mutually respectful engagement of the differences
that make the deepest difference. It is probable that only a minority of Christians
understand and embrace that alternative, but then it has probably always been
the case that most Christians are, at least most of the time, not terribly serious
or reflective about what they say they believe as Christians.
There is nothing wrong with the claim that
“all good people go to heaven,” if we understand that the good is inseparable
from the true. The tolerance that, implicitly or explicitly, denies the reality
of truth recruits religion to the service of the American Way of Life, which
then becomes, not to put too fine a point on it, an idol. The circumstance and
the temptations described by Prof. Orwin have been with us since the beginning
of the American experiment, and in fact go back much earlier. The adherents
of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus have always been tempted to settle
for His being tolerated as one of the gods of the tribe or nation. But He remains
a jealous God because truth is jealous. Truth refuses to split the difference
with falsehood.
Tolerance, rightly understood, is obedience to St. Paul’s injunction to “speak
the truth in love,” which, in turn, is premised upon love for the truth. In
this light, the “gospel of universal toleration” is not to be despised. Most
Christians are not theologians, which is just as well, nor given to making fine
distinctions, which is perhaps unfortunate but inevitable. When they tell pollsters
that religious differences make no difference in their respect for others, many,
if not most, Christians probably believe that that is what is required by the
commandment to love one’s neighbors. What social scientists register as religious
indifference may in fact be, to cite Paul again, “faith active in love.” It
may be. Who knows? God knows. And one day He will let us know.
Civil Religion or Public Philosophy
Traditional language about “Christian America”—which once served both liberal
and conservative purposes, as those terms are used today—was
vigorously attacked by the school of “Christian realism”
associated with Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother, H. Richard
Niebuhr. From the late 1930s through the 1960s, Reinhold
in particular assumed a “prophetic” mode in debunking any
idea of the “chosenness” of America. This was part and parcel
of his attack on the idea of moral progress (see “The
Idea of Moral Progress,” FT, August/September 1999).
In the regnant liberalism of the time, three ideas came
together: the idea of moral progress, the idea of American
chosenness, and the idea of a socialist utopia. This made
for a heady mix that Niebuhr condemned as a snare and delusion.
He employed his impressive polemical powers against the
notion that history can be understood in terms of a conflict
between “the children of light and the children of darkness.”
With almost mantra–like repetition, he underscored the “ironies”
and “ambiguities” of history.
The Niebuhrs did their job well, perhaps too well in some quarters. While a
Niebuhrian sensibility of skepticism toward historical delusions is to be cultivated,
it was essentially a corrective against the excesses of the “Redeemer Nation”
theme. In mainline Protestantism and in the liberal culture more generally,
that skepticism was employed in a polemic against what was perceived as an anti–Communist
crusade during the Cold War years. From the 1950s through the end of Soviet
Communism in 1991, that crusade was portrayed as a contest between “the free
world” and “godless communism.” In other words, the children of light against
the children of darkness. The attempt to check that exaggeration, an exaggeration
frequently freighted with hubris and self–righteousness, reinforced an attitude
aptly described as anti–anticommunism. In this view, the great evil was not
communism but anticommunism, a cause presumably discredited by the excesses
of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The anti–anticommunism that McCarthy did so much
to abet lived on long after his censure by the Senate and his pitiful death
in 1957.
The story of American religion during the
Cold War years, so closely connected with the idea of Christian America, still
awaits historians who can untangle its knotted complexities. In retrospect,
it is generally recognized, also by those who scoffed at the notion at the time,
that there really was something very much like a free world that stood in sharp
contrast to the tyranny of a communism that was “godless” in its aggressive
atheism. Except in the most diehard circles of the left, it is not controversial
today to refer to Soviet Communism as an “evil empire.” That was not the case
in oldline Protestantism—meaning, roughly, those churches belonging to the once
influential National Council of Churches—only a few years ago. From the mid–1960s
until very recently, the Vietnam War was in these quarters taken as definitive
proof that talk about a free world was a lie, and a good many religious leaders
frankly believed that, for all its faults, communism was “the wave of the future.”
In this view, as it was conventionally asserted, the United States was “on the
wrong side of history.”
Even more common—indeed so common as to
constitute a secure liberal consensus—was the belief that communism was a permanent
feature of world history, or at least it would endure as far as we could see
into the future. Many expected and encouraged a “convergence” between communism
and the free world (the latter being defined as capitalism). All who participated
in this consensus were committed to “peaceful coexistence” with communism. Figures
such as Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher, who made no secret of their belief that Soviet Communism was a temporary
and unsustainable aberration, were routinely criticized for threatening that
peaceful coexistence.
As I say, American religion during the Cold
War is a fascinating story that is yet to be told adequately. For present purposes,
I simply note that the period resulted in an emphatic repudiation—and not only
among oldline Protestants—of the last remnants of the idea of Christian America.
Other factors contributed to that repudiation, notably the convergence of the
civil rights movement with anti–anticommunism, and the passions surrounding
the Vietnam War. Under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil
rights movement was typically an affirmation of the American experiment, as
most memorably articulated in his great “I Have a Dream” speech of August 28,
1963. His argument was that slavery and racial segregation contradicted the
essential creed and character of that experiment. That was the liberal position.
The later and more “radicalized” argument of the “new politics” would be that
slavery and segregation, far from contradicting America, convicted America of
being essentially racist, in addition to its inherent sins of militarism, imperialism,
and propensity for the capitalist exploitation of the world’s poor. It followed
that only the enemies of Christianity would want to call such a country Christian.
A Replacement Religion
Prior to what many perceive as the anti–American
turn of what is comprehensively (perhaps too comprehensively) called The Sixties,
the idea of Christian America had been sharply modified, and in some ways replaced
by, the idea of an American “civil religion.” This was influentially set forth
in Will Herberg’s book of 1955, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American
Religious Sociology. Herberg, a Jew and a great admirer of Reinhold Niebuhr,
spoke of the American way of life as “the characteristic American religion,
undergirding life and overarching American society despite indubitable differences
of religion, section, culture, and class.” During those years and up to this
day, a statement presumably made by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954 is
frequently quoted: “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a
deeply felt religious faith—and I don’t care what it is.” While it has never
been documented that the statement, first cited in the Christian Century,
was ever made by Eisenhower, the sentiment fit perfectly Herberg’s thesis. As
Sydney Ahlstrom wrote in his monumental A Religious History of the American
People, “The postwar form of civil religion debased the older tradition
which had reverenced [America] as a bearer of transcendent values and summoned
citizens to stewardship of a sacred trust.”
Now even that debased form of the American
Way of Life as a civil religion has little currency in our public discourse.
Beginning in the late 1960s, sociologist Robert N. Bellah and others tried to
revive the civil religion argument, adapting it to the stringent critique of
America favored by the left, but their efforts never caught on beyond students
of religion in the academy. By the 1970s the doctrine, assuming dogmatic status,
had been firmly established that America is a secular society. At least it appeared
to be firmly established. When in 1984 I published The Naked Public Square:
Religion and Democracy in America, it was generally viewed as a provocative—some
thought eccentric and even dangerous—challenge to what “everybody knew” about
the secularity of America. Still today there are those who contend that the
dangerous argument of that book is that the naked public square should be replaced
by the sacred public square. My argument then and now, however, is that the
naked public square—meaning public life stripped of religion and religiously
grounded morality—should give way not to a sacred public square but to a civil
public square.
Writing in the New York Review of Books,
the late J. M. Cameron was sympathetic to the argument of the book but suggested
that the kind of religiously legitimated public philosophy that I called for
required a credal form of Christianity with rich intellectual resources, such
as Catholicism, rather than the revivalistic Protestantism now insurgent in
American public life. The latter form of “fundamentalism,” he believed, had
long since been bagged and stuffed by H. L. Mencken and was of no possible use
in public moral discourse. It is a point that should not be dismissed lightly.
At the same time, Cameron’s view does not take into account the degree of credal
seriousness, albeit confusingly articulated, among Baptists and others, or the
richer intellectual resources of the minority Calvinist tradition within evangelical
Protestantism. Equally important, it fails to reckon with initiatives such as
“Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” launched in the early 1990s, which give
expression to a growing convergence in both cooperative action and theology.
In this convergence, Catholic social doctrine, and particularly the power of
natural law philosophy, are challenging conventionally secular habits of public
debate.
Civil Religion Untethered
The reconstructed public philosophy that
is required could provide a secure foundation for the civil public square. The
civil public square is one in which different convictions about the common good
are engaged within the bond of civility. The “common good” is—and we can never
tire of making this point—unavoidably a moral concept, and that means the religiously
grounded moral convictions of the American people cannot be excluded from the
public square. Given the role of religion in American culture, both historically
and at present, a religion–free public square is a formula for the end of democracy.
To exclude the deepest convictions of the people from the deliberation of how
we ought to order our life together is tantamount to excluding the people from
that deliberation, and that is the end of democracy. We need not be delayed
here by the old debate, still pressed by many conservatives, over whether our
constitutional order is that of a democracy or a republic. Suffice it that the
Constitution itself, as unanimously asserted by the Founders, is that of a republic,
but it rests on the democratic premise that political sovereignty rests with
the people. The Declaration of Independence declares that “just government is
derived from the consent of the governed.” As the political sovereign, the people
are authorized to name a sovereignty that they acknowledge to be higher than
their own; for instance, “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” This is not,
as some claim, a formula for theocracy. It is an exercise of democratic authority
through republican or representative means by which the people place a check
upon their own power by designating the higher authority to which they hold
themselves accountable.
The civil public square requires something
not entirely unlike Herberg’s civil religion. The problem with calling it a
civil religion is that most Americans think they already have a religion and
are not interested in exchanging it for another. For this reason among others,
it is better to say that the civil public square requires a public philosophy
attuned to the Judeo–Christian moral tradition. A Judeo–Christian moral tradition
is not a Judeo–Christian religion. A moral tradition is part of religion but
by no means the whole of it; nor, especially in Christianity, is it the most
important part. But it is a necessary part. Sustaining the Judeo–Christian moral
tradition in public requires that Americans who are Christians recognize that
tradition as theirs, and recognize that it is necessarily dependent upon Judaism,
both historically and at present. Here, too, it becomes apparent that cultivating
the Jewish–Christian relationship is much more than a matter of interfaith politesse;
it is essential to reconstituting the moral basis of our common life.
Civil religion, when it is untethered from
biblical religion, can become a rival religion. Some Christian thinkers would
go further and say that civil religion is by definition a rival religion. Such
was surely the case with, for example, the religion of America’s “manifest destiny”
mentioned earlier in this series on Christian America. In that instance, Christians
succumb to a notion of the “Redeemer Nation” that is disengaged from, and becomes
a competitor to, their Redeemer. The perennial attempts, commonly called “Wilsonian,”
to assert some grand national purpose within the world–historical scheme of
things are usually Christian in inspiration but end by aspiring to take the
place of Christianity. If I am right in thinking that Henry Luce of Time
was premature, that it is the twenty–first century that is “the American century,”
it is certain that America will be safe neither for itself nor for the world
without a guiding public philosophy. And it is, I believe, equally certain that
any public philosophy that might be constructed will not be democratically sustainable
unless it engages in a fresh way the idea of Christian America.
While We’re At It
-
That time of year comes around once more, and John Grondelski,
who teaches Christian ethics at Seton Hall University, says we should not take
it lying down: “One hears endless calls for ‘tolerance’ and ‘civility.’ But
those calls invariably ask Christians to be ‘tolerant’ and ‘civil’ about being
gagged in public life. No one seems to ask, in the name of pluralism, that the
atheist ‘tolerate’ the crèche. No, the civility is all on one side and the toleration
is a sham—in which Christians are complicit so long as they play by the current
misconceived rules. So, yes, Virginia (and Rhode Island and Jersey City and
Pittsburgh and Scranton) . . . ’tis the season to fight injunctions. Christmas
(or Hanukkah or Ramadan) is only truly worth celebrating when Christians (or
Jews or Muslims) can proclaim—even on the public square—their unadulterated
messages. That is what American religious freedom is about, not about holiday
scenes that hide Jesus in his manger behind the jolly snowman Frosty and the
red–nosed reindeer Rudolph.”
- At the cottage up in Quebec there is no newspaper, so following morning prayer
it’s breakfast with the splendid eleventh edition of the
Britannica for chortles. George and Joan Weigel
come up with the family and the day begins with regaling
one another with our findings, both luminous and ludicrous,
in those twenty–nine volumes. Of the ludicrous kind, an
annual favorite is the long entry on Beethoven which,
while acknowledging his debt to Bach, ends with this thumping
conclusion: “And it is as certain as anything in the history
of art that there will never be a time when Beethoven’s
work does not occupy the central place in a sound musical
mind.” Meaning no offense to those of unsound mind who
disagree, that central place is of course occupied by
Johann Sebastian Bach. Confirmation of this is to be found,
were confirmation needed, in Christoph Wolff’s magnificent
new biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician
(Norton). (See Briefly
Noted, FT, November.) Admittedly, the book is not
terribly well written, but its literary deficiencies are
far outweighed by its exhaustiveness. There is almost
nothing of interest that Wolff overlooks, including the
minute examination of which works borrowed from which
and exact tracings of the master’s endless revisions.
In this he follows Johann Forkel, who wrote in his 1802
biography, “I have had opportunities of comparing . .
. many copies of his principal works, written in different
years, and I confess that I have often felt both surprise
and delight at the means he employed to make, little by
little, the faulty good, the good better, and the better
perfect.” Now that is the judgment of a sound musical
mind. Wolff writes, “Forkel does not exaggerate. . . .
One need only compare the initial melodic contour of the
principal theme of the ‘Confiteor’ fugal movement from
the B–minor Mass, as notated in the autograph score,
with its final shape. Here Bach changed the third note
in order to avoid undue emphasis on the third syllable
of ‘confiteor,’ thereby also mollifying the melodic flow
of the subject. A revision such as this is not driven
by any other than a purely musical consideration. . .
. It shows the degree of attention he paid to the most
subtle details of his scores, increasingly with advanced
age and growing experience as a teacher–composer.” Apart
from strictly musical considerations, I came away from
Johann Sebastian Bach with a renewed appreciation
of how admirable a human being Bach was. At the risk of
provoking disbelief among those who know me well, I confess
that I was humbled to recognize how pitifully small is
my talent and what I have done with it in comparison with
the greatness of Bach. It may alleviate somewhat the shock
of that spasm of unwonted humility if I add that the same
applies to almost everybody else who has ever lived. Years
ago, when over lunch I told my friend Norman Podhoretz
that I had decided to become a Catholic, there was a long
silence. His expression was one of deep concern, and finally
he came out with, “But what about Bach?” It had not occurred
to me that I might lose him, and, the musical drivel in
most Catholic parishes notwithstanding, Christoph Wolff’s
excellent book reassures me that I have never more securely
possessed or been possessed by the incomparable gift that
is Johann Sebastian Bach.
-
Unlike many New Yorkers, I have a deep and abiding affection for
Chicago. Living there during my internship was my first experience of a really
big city and confirmed for me that I am an incorrigibly urban person. It was
therefore with keen anticipation that I came to the new biography of Mayor Richard
J. Daley by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh (Little,
Brown). I hold no brief for the legendary Mayor Daley. When I was a delegate
to the 1968 Democratic convention, I, along with many others, got beat up a
little by his police for leading an unauthorized protest march on Michigan Avenue
and spent a night in his jail. (Back then, everything in Chicago was “his.”)
In the first few pages of American Pharaoh we are informed that Richard
Daley was a product of an authoritarian Catholic Church, a racist, a man with
an insatiable appetite for power, and a buffoon. With that conclusion in place,
the following six hundred pages merely fill out the details of the indictment.
The authors grudgingly acknowledge, because it can hardly be denied, that, at
a time when other big cities were on the skids, Daley revitalized the downtown
and prevented a wholesale middle class flight to the suburbs, thus laying the
foundation for the flourishing metropolis that Chicago is today. But even when
he did the right thing, they say, he acted from the worst motives of bigotry
and self–aggrandizement. His damning sin in their eyes is that he did not create
a city integrated by race and class. Today almost everybody recognizes the disaster
of “vertical slums” such as the Robert Taylor housing project, but the authors
never face up to the fact that no American city is integrated in the way that
they think is morally imperative, or that most urban experts now agree that,
even with the best will, it simply cannot be done for many reasons, including
the simple demographics of race. This is something on which Nathan Glazer of
Harvard has written in melancholic detail, as has been discussed before in these
pages. In 1963, Martin Luther King took his movement north, forming the Chicago
Freedom Movement and calling for an “open city.” He soon left, defeated and
demoralized. Cohen and Taylor put all the blame on Daley. The reality is that
neither Dr. King nor anyone else had a plan for racial integration that would
not have radically destabilized the city, turning Chicago into, for instance,
another Detroit. The authors pretty much reduce the high drama that is the wondrously
various worlds of Chicago to little more than a good guy/bad guy story line
of righteous protesters nefariously foiled by a bigoted and brutal fool. There
is undoubtedly much for which Daley can and should be criticized. But American
Pharaoh demonstrates once again that biographers who have neither sympathy
for nor curiosity about their subjects end up writing very dull books. To make
the story of Richard J. Daley dull is a disappointment. To make the great city
of Chicago dull is an unforgivable achievement.
-
Peter Berkowitz of George Mason Law School, a sometime contributor
to these pages, takes on the rational choice theorists and their game plans.
Nobody doubts that there is an economic dimension in human actions. “Economics
casts light,” writes Berkowitz, “but economicism casts darkness.” Here is his
conclusion that is, I think, both ringing and right: “But finally the law really
cannot do without the dignity of man, if it is to command the assent and even
the awe that it must command. To strip the law of its majesty, man must first
be divested of his dignity. There may be rationality in all these clever actors
making strategic moves for the aggrandizement of their interests; but there
is not much dignity. Are men and women who have been divested of their dignity
worthy of respect by the law? And is a law that has lost its majesty capable
of commanding the respect even of these rational actors? These are questions,
at once empirical and moral, that turn on the structure of the soul, or, if
you prefer, on the logic of human desire. However these questions are finally
answered, it is reasonable to believe that the game–theoretical standpoint,
in its quest for comprehensiveness, diminishes us, if in no other way than by
making us small in our own eyes. Insofar as we are small, game theory may explain
what we do; but we are not only small.”
-
This is the kind of thing you stumble across in a new collection,
The Quotable Knox, edited by George Marlin et al. and published by Ignatius:
“When you compare Christianity with Confucianism, you are comparing two systems
of personal morality. When you compare Christianity with [Islam], you are comparing
two forms of fighting enthusiasm. When you compare Christianity with Buddhism,
you are comparing two streams of mystical tendency. And, unconsciously, you
have recognized that Christianity is something greater than the other three;
because each of those others corresponds to one particular need, one particular
mood.” Monsignor Ronald Knox was one of those writers for whom the phrase “the
wit and wisdom of . . .” seems to have been coined. The above quote does short–change
the mystical tradition in Islam, but that is an Islam whose face is largely
hidden from the West, and thus the quote remains eminently quotable.
-
“I am a Christian because Christianity makes more sense of more
facts than any other way of thinking I know of.” I first ran across that statement
many years ago, I believe in something by Reinhold Niebuhr, and it greatly impressed
me. That’s not the whole reason for being a Christian by any means, but it is
a supporting consideration. Thoughtful human beings look for a total explanation,
a “theory of everything,” as it is sometimes called. On religion more generally,
practitioners of evolutionary sociobiology, which is the soft underbelly of
evolutionary biology, are today claiming that people are religious because religion
has a strong survival value. Thus E. O. Wilson in Consilience: “There
is a hereditary selective advantage to membership in a powerful group united
by devout belief and purpose. . . . Much if not all religious behavior could
have arisen by natural selection.” Lionel Tiger in Optimism: The Biology
of Hope writes that religion is universal and is fundamentally about hope.
“Optimism is a biological phenomenon. Since religion is deeply intertwined with
optimism, religion is a biological phenomenon rooted in our genes.” So it is
that evolutionary theory, which led many to believe there is no God, now purports
to explain why we believe there is. In the absence of something that makes more
sense, it makes a kind of sense. Fortunately, explanations that make more sense
are not absent.
-
Students should take control of their education, or at least know
what they’re getting into. That’s the purpose of a handsome series of books
published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Each is “A Student’s Guide
To” and the books include Ralph McInerny on philosophy, R. V. Young on literature,
John Lukacs on history, James V. Schall on liberal learning, and Mark Henrie
on the core curriculum. They are all basic, as in attending to the essentials,
and are available free to students and teachers from ISI Books, P.O. Box 4431,
Wilmington, Delaware 19807.
-
What is to be done about the world’s poor? Over the last thirty
years and more few people have given such relentless and acute attention to
that question as Peter Bauer (Lord Bauer), now Professor Emeritus of Economics
at the London School of Economics. Most welcome, therefore, is the publication
of From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays, a collection of Lord
Bauer’s thoughts on a wide range of pressing topics, with an introduction by
Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics (Princeton University
Press, 153 pp., $19.95). One could pick out any number of excerpts for special
attention; for instance, the essay “Population Explosion: Disaster or Blessing.”
Going back to Malthus in the late–eighteenth century, it has been said that
the problem of poor people is that there are too many of them. Today American
foundations, NGOs at the United Nations, world development institutes, and,
lamentably, the U.S. government pour huge sums into countering the “population
crisis” which, it is routinely asserted, is the chief obstacle to improving
life in LDCs (less developed countries). “The crisis is invented,” writes Peter
Bauer. “The central issue of policy is whether the number of children should
be determined by the parents or by agents of the state.” The fear of population
growth, he continues, is based on fundamental misperceptions. “These apprehensions
rest primarily on three assumptions. The first is that national income per head
measures economic well–being. The second is that economic performance and progress
depend critically on land and capital per head. The third is that people in
the Third World are ignorant of birth control or careless about family size:
they procreate regardless of consequences. A subsidiary or supporting assumption
is that population trends in the Third World can be forecast with accuracy for
decades ahead.” In addition, there are some rather unseemly moral assumptions
at work. “Some have argued that high birthrates in LDCs, especially among the
poorest, result in lives so wretched as to be not worth living: that over a
person’s life, suffering or disutility may exceed utility. If this were so,
fewer such lives would increase the sum total of happiness. This view implies
that external observers are qualified to assess the joys and sorrows of others.
It implies that life and survival are of no value to the people involved. This
outlook, which raises far–reaching ethical issues, is unlikely to be morally
acceptable to most people, least of all as basis for forcible action to restrict
people’s reproductive behavior, especially when it is remembered how widely
it was espoused about the poor in the West only about two generations ago. Nor
is this opinion consistent with simple observation, which suggests that even
very poor people prefer to live rather than not to live, as is shown by their
striving to remain among the living by, for instance, seeking medical help to
prolong their lives. Thus these considerations make clear that the much–deplored
population explosion of recent decades is seen more appropriately as a blessing
rather than as a disaster because it reflects a fall in mortality, which is
an improvement in people’s welfare, not a deterioration.” The essay concludes
with this: “Throughout the less developed world, the most prosperous groups
and areas are those with most external commercial contacts. And such contacts
also encourage voluntary reduction of family size. Thus, extension of such contacts
and the widening of people’s range of choice promote both economic advance and
reduction in fertility. In these circumstances, the reduction in family size
is achieved without the damaging effects of official pressure on people in their
most private and vital concerns. Yet this type of policy is not on the agenda
of advocates of the need for fewer children in LDCs. It is widely agreed that
the West should not impose its standards, mores, and attitudes on Third World
governments and peoples. Yet, ironically, the most influential voices call for
the exact opposite when it comes to population control.” Not here but elsewhere,
Bauer and others point out that, instead of trying to impose statist controls
on poor countries, the rich nations of the West might better attend to the real
crisis of their own population decline, notably in countries such as Italy,
Spain, and Germany, where, extrapolating from present replacement rates, entire
peoples might disappear in the next century. Fortunately for both rich and poor
countries, it is a repeatedly demonstrated
error to think that “population trends . . . can be forecast with accuracy
for decades ahead.”
-
Professional communicators “attempting to meet their responsibilities
deserve audiences conscientious about theirs.” That’s in a new statement from
the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, an office of the Vatican.
I rather like that. We hardworking writers have a right to equally hardworking
readers. In truth, at this journal we’ve never had occasion to complain about
the quality of our readers, although we would always like more of you. The document
goes on to say that Jesus is a model for communicators: “In his communications
he showed respect for his listeners, sympathy for their situation and needs,
compassion for their suffering (e.g., Luke 7:13), and resolute determination
to tell them what they needed to hear in a way that would command their attention
and help them receive the message, without coercion or compromise, deception
or manipulation.” For which, the document does not add, he was crucified.
-
I do not understand it. The rule of the barbarians is not so total
as to preclude its receiving review attention. After all, it is published by
a mainstream press, St. Martin’s. Yet nowhere have I seen a notice of Felipe
Fernandez–Armesto’s scintillating, erudite, and wise little book with the self–consciously
pretentious title, Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed. I
know, you’ve had it up to here with chatter about relativism, postmodernism,
deconstructionism, and all the rest. But give this Oxford historian (author
of Columbus, Millennium, and Reformations) a hearing. In the course
of his learned ramblings on the ideas that got us into the fix we are in, he
serves up glittering wit and swashbuckling polemics, but, withal, an informed
hopefulness. There is, for instance, this: “Underlying the traditional truth–tests
of humankind, and enfolding the concepts to which they are related, there is
a notion of the sacred. Words which seem unrelated have the same ancestry: verity
and virtue; order and rite; arithmetic and dharma. They all share the same Indo–European
root. The search for truth is a struggle: part of a war against chaos, a strenuous
ritual to wrest reality from doubt by naming its parts, or a spell to save it
from being engulfed in nothingness. Relativism, subjectivism, and deconstruction
could all break the spell. Truth could be relativized out of the lexicon, or
left as just another name for falsehood; without objects to speak of, the subject
could become an unheard voice, crying in an unpopulated wilderness; deconstruction
could demolish every utterance and every sign, leaving only a cosmic smirk hanging
in the néant, like the disappearance of the Cheshire cat. These barbarous
programs might succeed; civilizations have sometimes succumbed to destroyers
and history is a path picked across their ruins. More often, however, the barbarians
have ended up by joining the civilizations they threaten. They get seduced or
absorbed and end up making constructive contributions of their own. I think
there are good grounds for hoping this will happen with the truth–vandals who
face us today. First, because they have some good points on their side, which
seekers for truth can appreciate. Second, because they are not all implacable
enemies; some of the most devastating critics of recent times, including Foucault
and Derrida, were fellow–seekers who despaired or who, striving to rescue truth
from false conceptions of it, overdid their efforts. Finally, there are loops
in their arguments which, if we follow them boldly, lead back to truth.” Truth:
A History and a Guide for the Perplexed. St. Martin’s Press. 257 pp. $23.95.
It is a very good book. And that’s the truth.
-
Many people have written insightfully about the linguistic contortions
that necessarily follow when one buys into the mendacity of denying that abortion
does what abortion does. But I had not come across this one before. It occurs
in a special issue of the New York Times Magazine devoted to impending
technological changes that will presumably change our lives. (The entire issue
is reminiscent of the superficial futurism of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Plus ça change . . .) The article is titled, “The Genetic Report Card
That Will Tell You If Your Embryo Will Get Prostate Cancer.” Not “an embryo”
but “your embryo.” Imagine your friend happily announcing, “Jim and I are having
an embryo.” The “having” doesn’t quite work, since it is tilted toward the future,
suggesting that the embryo might become something else—maybe a baby. She might
try, “We have an embryo, and next month we’re expecting a fetus.” But that seems
to fall somewhat short of doing justice to the element of continuity regarding
the phenomenon in question. And the “we” is an egregious intrusion into a purely
personal and private circumstance. In addition, the point of the “genetic report
card” is that “your embryo” might get a failing grade and next month you will
have nothing. The important thing is to keep attention focused on the “your,”
as in your ingrown toenail, or your extra weight, or your whatever. It is a
condition you picked up somewhere along the way and, if it turns out to be a
problem, you get rid of it. In this case, the “it” is, in fact, a he or she.
But that is the fact that must not be admitted. “Your embryo.” The trope requires
painful twistings of both mind and language. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave
/ When first we practice to deceive.”
-
The long–standing liberal line on McCarthyism, says the liberal
Thomas Powers, must be junked. In an essay in the New York Review of
Books, he evaluates some of the new books on what we now know about Soviet
intelligence and concludes: “Once the new evidence is frankly faced no one can
write the history of McCarthyism and the early Cold War without taking into
account that the hunt for spies was based on the fact that there were spies—lots
of them; that those spies began with an idealism shared by a significant minority
of the American people; and that the defensive response of many American liberals
not only was wrong on the facts, but also exacerbated the suspicions of the
right, making it easier for demagogues to argue that progressive causes and
treason somehow went hand in hand.” In addition to the merits of truth, there
is an element of self–interest in this new candor. The material from Soviet
intelligence includes hundreds of code names for American spies not yet exposed,
and liberals should start telling the truth, says Powers, “before the Russians
further thicken the stew by telling us who was hiding behind the other half
of those 349 cryptonyms.”
-
From the quiet part of Yale that he helps to sustain, philosopher
Louis Dupré has for decades been providing us with some of the more convincing
analyses of why modernity is at war with the spiritual life. Symbols of the
Sacred is a kind of summing up of what he has learned (Eerdmans, 168 pp.
$20 paper). I have long been uneasy with what I am inclined to think is Dupré’s
excessive emphasis on the secularism of our time and his accent on personal
experience largely disengaged from the institution of the Church, but this book
is rich fare, as is all his writing. The last chapter is an interview with Dupré
in which he reflects on a Christian humanism that must of necessity be attentive
to movements of the Spirit evident in other religions and cultures: “It would
be wrong, however, to regard these analogies as justifying a syncretistic relativism
that entitles each person to compose his or her own religious collage. This
attitude, all too common today, shows a lack of respect not only for one’s own
faith but also for those faiths one so casually dismantles for spare parts.
It is yet another manifestation of that radical anthropocentrism, the main enemy
of sincere religion, that tempts believers to bring the language of transcendence
down to the level of purely human wants and choice. Without detracting from
the providential nature of other faiths, Christians cannot ignore the fact that
this same Providence has led them to a faith that is not a ‘choice’ but, for
those chosen to it, an absolute summons. To relativize faith is, I think, to
subvert its fundamentally divine character.”
-
“It appears that most non–evangelicals have little more to fear
from the majority of ordinary evangelicals than being thought of as spiritually
or morally mistaken, and thus prayed for, shown a life of good example, and
occasionally offered a word about one’s relationship to God. . . . These may
be things that non–evangelicals would prefer to do without. But they are hardly
views and practices that threaten civil American pluralism and democracy.” So
writes Christian Smith in Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want
(University of California Press). On the basis of his research, sociologist
Smith concludes that, for most evangelicals, “Christian America” means, for
all practical purposes, the American Way of Life, including the Bill of Rights,
balance of powers, and the commandment to be nice to people. Not very exciting.
Not very threatening either.
-
One of the big names in cognitive neuroscience is the very articulate
and media–savvy Steven Pinker of MIT. He is also, unfortunately, very glib
in reiterating the weary clichés of the village atheist. Religion, says he,
is “constructed from the cognitive modules of the brain, and used to explain
certain data that stymie our everyday theories.” In other words, religion is
for people who cannot live with the world as it is. “But believers avoid working
out the logical consequences of these piecemeal revisions of ordinary things
and concepts. They don’t stop to wonder why a God who knows our intentions has
to listen to our prayers, or how a God can both see into the future and care
about how we choose to act.” That is indeed worth wondering about. It is much
like parents who understand and see so much more than their little child but
care intensely about how the child comes to understand and see and act. It is
called love, and that is really worth a wonder why.
-
Here’s a voice not heard from in a long time. Many years ago,
Harvey Cox of Harvard Divinity School wrote The Secular City. Now married
to a Jew, Baptist Cox writes in the Jewish monthly Sh’ma on the possibility
of “secular Judaism.” He notes that many people who are religious—most Buddhists,
for instance—do not believe in God. The Jewish circumstance is different, however.
“Unlike Buddhism, loyalty to God has been central to virtually every expression
of Judaism for millennia. There are, however, large numbers of people today
who consider themselves Jewish and are not theists of any recognizable variety.
Many of them yearn for a spiritual home that would preserve their link to the
Jewish people and the Jewish past but not require them to hold their breath
and try to believe something they just do not believe. . . . I hope a secular
Judaism flourishes. I hope it nourishes a sense of mystery and depth, avoiding
market values and the success ethic. The question, of course, is whether it
will last. But I would prefer not to speculate about that. Only God, so to speak,
knows.” And maybe He, so to speak, has changed His mind about the loyalty thing.
-
Martin E. Marty’s Context quotes at length Paul Wilkes’
review of Donald Cozzens’ The Changing Face of the Priesthood, a book
not so grim as Wilkes makes it out to be. “Wilkes all but shrieks to get attention
for Cozzens’ book,” writes Marty, but then he goes on to accept his hyperbole
at face value. We have, according to Wilkes’ shriek, “a church culture that
is alarmingly dysfunctional . . . a significant contingent among our spiritual
leaders who have not faced their own humanity,” and so forth. A chief culprit,
if not the chief culprit, is, you will not be surprised to learn, celibacy.
I know priests who seem to lead disheveled, harassed lives, forever snatching
at the grace that recruited them and will not let them go. Most of the studies
we have suggest that priests are a pretty happy lot, despite the aggravations
that attend the human condition. My seminary teaching and other contacts with
younger priests in no way fit the Wilkes picture of dysfunctionality desperately
longing for “the transformation of the priesthood” that progressives demand.
A manifest sense of purposeful confidence and satisfaction is undoubtedly related
to the increase in priestly vocations in recent years. Reading Marty on Wilkes
on Cozzens, I was reminded of a conference some while back where a speaker was
addressing the problem of “priestly burn–out.” I was seated beside an older
bishop, a veteran of many crises real and alleged, who leaned over and said
sotto voce, “Of course we always got problems, but with most of the priests
who tell me they’re burned out, I never noticed they were on fire to begin with.”
-
With a wit that I cannot avoid the temptation to call brilliant,
Tom Wolfe writes in Harper’s on the “Land of the Rococo Marxists.” His
subject is why no one is celebrating the second American century, and, yes,
he has a villain: the intellectual. “But if there was decadence, what was decaying?
Religious faith and moral codes that had been in place since time was, said
Nietzsche, who in 1882 made the most famous statement in modern philosophy—‘God
is dead’—and three startlingly accurate predictions for the twentieth century.
He even estimated when they would begin to come true: about 1915. 1) The faith
men formerly invested in God they would now invest in barbaric ‘brotherhoods
with the aim of the robbery and exploitation of the non–brothers.’ Their names
turned out, in due course, to be the German Nazis and the Russian Communists.
2) There would be ‘wars such as have never been waged on earth.’ Their names
turned out to be World War I and World War II. 3) There no longer would be Truth
but, rather, ‘truth’ in quotation marks, depending upon which concoction of
eternal verities the modern barbarian found most useful at any given moment.
The result would be universal skepticism, cynicism, irony, and contempt. The
First World War began in 1914 and ended in 1918. On cue, as if Nietzsche were
still alive to direct the drama, an entirely new figure, with an entirely new
name, arose in Europe: that embodiment of skepticism, cynicism, irony, and contempt,
the Intellectual.” Wolfe takes his readers on a wondrous romp through the fevers
of academic and political correctness, finally asking what it is that they really
want. Despite their protestations to the contrary, it cannot be that they want
change. Change might mean they would have to go to work, taking on the hard
tasks of understanding, reason, scholarship, and the acquisition of knowledge.
So what do they want? “It’s a simple business at bottom. All the intellectual
wants, in his heart of hearts, is to hold on to what was magically given to
him one shining moment a century ago. He asks for nothing more than to remain
aloof, removed, as Revel once put it, from the mob, the philistines . . . ‘the
middle class.’” Wolfe knows that he will be accused of sympathizing with the
prejudices (which can be a very good word) of ordinary Americans, and even of
the cardinal sin in the catechism of intellectuals, namely, patriotism. To which
he responds, paraphrasing Patrick Henry, “If this be patriotism . . . make the
most of it!”
-
“But we secularists are the ones who protect your right to be
religious,” said a distinguished professor responding to my lecture. My answer
is that he had it quite backwards. I should have had in hand this fine article
by David Novak in the Virginia Law Review. Novak is making the point
that only those who can establish human rights as natural rights are able to
check the power of the humanly created state, making sure it remains our servant
and not our master. He writes: “Without such prior obligation and its protections,
our rights as humans cannot trump the power of the state because they are derived
from that very power that, without true covenant, can easily take away what
it has given. So those who would interpret Grotius’ dictum literally, that we
can have law ‘even without God’ (etiamsi non sit Deus), and who claim
that de facto atheism is the only cogent basis for commitment to a democratic
polity, have no basis for rationally challenging the unjust exercise of state
authority, which is the very antithesis of constitutional democracy. Ironically,
those whose god is neither the cosmic order nor the orderer of the cosmos have
their human rights protected for them by the democratic commitments of those
who have a moral religion or a religious morality. But how, then, can our doctrinaire
secularists attempt to exclude their very protectors from the conversation any
democracy needs to justify its own life and future?”
-
The retirement of Gerald H.
Anderson after almost twenty–five years as editor of the International Bulletin
of Missionary Research provides occasion for bringing that excellent publication
to the attention of our readers. There was a time when, for both Protestants
and Catholics, missions (in the plural) was a staple of parochial piety, prayer,
and preaching. Today, as John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Missio
reminds us, the very mention of missions is an embarrassment for many Christians
who are captive to the multiculturalist aversion to the claim that there is
a truth to be shared with all. IBMR bears refreshing testimony to the
large community of thoughtful Christians who have kept the faith by sharing
the faith. Protestant in origin but vibrantly ecumenical under Anderson’s leadership,
it is published by the Overseas Ministries Study Center (490 Prospect Street,
New Haven, Connecticut 06511).
-
The claim that popular music of the rock, rap, satanist, and druggie
varieties has a strong connection to real–world behavior is often lightly dismissed.
The evidence, however, is very impressive indeed. Both scholarly and anecdotal
testimony is usefully pulled together in an eighteen–page booklet by Thomas
L. Jipping, “‘There is a Virus Loose Within Our Culture’: An Honest Look at
Music’s Impact,” published by the Free Congress Foundation (717 Second Street,
NE, Washington, D.C. 20002). The quote in the title is from the Governor of
Colorado following the Columbine High School killings. Parents, clergy, and
teachers may want to have a copy of this study at hand.
-
A reader is upset about what she calls our “continuing campaign
of defamation against Christians and Catholics specifically.” Our offense, she
says, is that we have referred to non–Jews as gentiles. She writes, “Quite rightly,
other terms used by a group to define those outside—i.e., infidel, pagan—have
been excluded from public discourse because those so defined found them offensive.
We find ‘gentile’ offensive and demand the same respect you accord other religious/ethnic
groups.” As an unoffended person, I feel excluded from the writer’s “we.” But
then, we goys are used to that.
-
Margaret Atwood’s hysterical
rant of the 1980s, The Handmaid’s Tale, depicts an America that in the
year 2002 has been turned by the “religious right” into the Republic of Gilead.
In this new order, women of child–bearing age who have been divorced or slept
around are given to God–fearing but childless couples and undergo impregnation
sessions by the man of the house, called the Commander. Given the anti–American
fever raging in much of Europe, it is perhaps not surprising that the Royal
Danish Opera has given Poul Ruders’ adaptation of the novel a splashy world
premiere. There is a telling phrase in George Loomis’ rave review in Opera
News. “Ann Margrethe Dahl, as the authoritarian ‘Aunt’ Lydia, made one think
of some twisted version of Dialogues des Carmelites as she presided over
the handmaids, singing her high–flying phrases with fearsome intensity.” A twisted
version that assigns the martyrs the role of the perpetrators of the Great Terror.
The reviewer intends that as praise.
-
It is not sufficient to say
that the French are virulently anti–American, or possessed by ressentiment over
the loss of the glory that once was France in world history. Among intellectuals
and in the political culture (the two being joined in a way that is not the
case in America), there is a need to make everything explicit, an intolerance
of human untidiness. Which of course results in even more untidiness, often
of an embarrassingly silly sort. Thus the war against McDonald’s as a threat
to the French way of life, and the official tribunals guarding the linguistic
borders against the invasion of English. Now the government has established
the Interministerial Mission to Battle Against Sects (MILS). It is headed by
the former foreign minister, M. Alain Vivien, who says, “In the United States,
freedoms are crazy. In the name of the First Amendment of the American Constitution,
which forbids legislation on religious matters, one can say and do anything.”
A parliamentary report lists 172 groups as “sects,” including the Southern Baptists.
The Catholic Church in France, which still has some clout, could reap honor
by speaking out against MILS and the pitiful mindset it represents. For the
sake of religious freedom. For the sake of rescuing France from its penchant
for appearing ridiculous.
-
It was a narrow escape, but
Dutch authorities say they will not prosecute Pope John Paul II for the crime
of inciting homophobia. Charges were brought by the Dutch magazine Gay Krant
after the Pope criticized the gay pride march in Rome last summer (which turned
out to be something of a flop). In the course of his remarks, the Pope said
that the Church considers homosexuality “objectively disordered” and homosexual
acts “against natural law.” The Dutch court said in a statement that his elevated
position as head of the Catholic Church and of the Vatican state gave him “global
immunity from jurisdiction.” But don’t think that that means you can get away
with it.
-
“If, five hundred years from
now, the ordination of women has come and gone, [but] is viewed by some scholar
as a historical curiosity worth his further investigation, he will find in The
Close a revealing hint or two as to why it failed.” That is Sarah E. Hinlicky
reviewing a book of that title by Chloe Breyer on her first year as a student
at Episcopal General Theological Seminary in New York. Hinlicky, who is a student
at Princeton Theological Seminary and supports the ordination of women, quotes
Breyer: “Like many people of my age and gender, I put most of St. Paul’s writings
into the category of things despite which I call myself Christian. My list of
disclaimers includes the Crusades, the excommunication of Galileo, the Pope’s
stand on abortion and birth control, and most of the activities of the extreme
religious right.” Breyer adds that she developed “a grudging respect for the
apostle’s passionate, practical campaign to bring Christianity out from the
umbrella of Judaism,” and is sure that had he lived today he would support “the
rights of gay men and women” and other favored causes. Hinlicky comments that
Paul gains Breyer’s “respect” at the cost of becoming a mirror of her own fashionable
convictions. “In all too many passages [Breyer] manifests the ugly qualities
of—and I do not use this term lightly—a bigot, utterly unaware of it and shockingly
lacking in critical awareness.” Hinlicky concludes: “The ordination of women
is not a foregone conclusion. It is a young movement, a significant break from
previous practice, and by no means widely accepted. Let Breyer’s account leave
no room for doubt that mere feminism, unchecked and unreformed by the gospel,
is going to derail and destroy the cause for which it cares most. Women are
going to fail in the parish and pulpit as long as they are spoon–fed ideology
instead of theology and as long as they are taught liberation from patriarchy
instead of liberation from sin.” (The Close is published by Basic Books.)
-
It does seem odd that the
committee of bishops charged with implementing Ex Corde Ecclesiae has
appointed four consultants nominated by the Catholic Theological Society and
other academic groups that are on record as strongly opposed to implementing
Ex Corde Ecclesiae. I am told that the bishops are seeking the widest
possible cooperation in fulfilling their mandate, which is only right. That
surely includes consulting with opponents of that mandate. But appointing
them as consultants and thus making them partners in doing what they think should
not be done at all? On the other hand, it is understandable that the opponents
of what the bishops overwhelmingly approved are eager to contain the damage
of what they view as grave episcopal error. One observer says that this arrangement
is a little like asking the foxes to assist the chickens, which is, I think,
an unfortunate metaphor that might all too easily be misunderstood. But the
arrangement does seem odd.
-
“You may have heard accusations
or rumors that CTA (Call to Action) is pro–abortion. This is not true.” The
response to an inquiry says that “What CTA tries to do is to serve as a forum
where Catholic people with various perspectives on the issue can dialogue.”
“We have no organizational connections to CFFC (Catholics for a Free Choice)”
although it “is one of those organizations that we work with on church reform
issues.” The CTA letter, sent in response to an inquiry by a First Thingsreader,
says that among “the range of ‘life issues’ that our members work on are: opposing
the death penalty, working for peace, supporting the ban on land mines, and
calling for the closing of the U.S. Army School of the Americas because many
of its graduates are responsible for human rights abuses.” CTA adds, “Many members
undoubtedly subscribe to the late Cardinal Bernardin’s seamless garment principles.”
The implication is that other members make an exception for abortion. So is
CTA, which claims to have among its members six hundred religious and priests
and six bishops, pro–abortion? If an organization described itself as a forum
where people with various perspectives on anti–Semitism can dialogue, one might
reasonably think it is at least open to the view that there is something to
be said for anti–Semitism. As has been observed in another connection, when
you come across an article titled “Whither Incest?” you do not expect to read
a vigorous argument in opposition to the practice.
-
The editors of the New
York Times, our parish newsletter, are cheered by the number of institutions
that are withholding support from the Boy Scouts because that organization excludes
leaders who, it has reason to believe, may be homosexually active. The editors
say that “the organization needs to realize that a growing number of donors
will question its claim to belong on the center stage of American life if it
continues asserting a discriminatory philosophy.” And who defines what is the
center stage of American life? Need you ask? Then comes a categorical moral
judgment of sweeping exclusionary implications: “In today’s world, children
cannot learn about honor from an organization that views homosexuality [i.e.,
acting on homosexual desires and identifying oneself as one who so acts] as
a moral defect.” It follows that children cannot learn about honor from the
churches and synagogues to which around two–thirds of the American people belong,
nor from what is certainly the majority of parents in the country. The center
stage is getting emptier and emptier all the time, if you believe the left wing
is center stage.
-
During the UN summit of world leaders, Fidel Castro, age seventy–four,
donned his battle fatigues to address a rally of cheering supporters at Riverside
Church up on Morningside Heights. The Reverend Bernard Wilson, executive minister
of Riverside, said the church was pleased to host the event. “Riverside has
always been on the cutting edge of what is happening in the world,” he said.
The rheumatoid religious left moves boldly, if creakingly, into the second half
of the twentieth century.
-
I watched one episode of Bill
Moyers’ On Our Own Terms. Maybe I’ve been thinking and writing too much
about death in recent years, but it seemed to me terribly superficial, and one
felt sorry for the people and their families who turned the most intimate and
truth–demanding moments of their lives, unrepeatable moments, into something
to be retailed on PBS by Moyers Inc. Yes, I know, they probably meant well and
were told that it was a public service, and nobody should accuse them of publicity
seeking, but it was a grave disservice to themselves and to a time that should
be protected by reticence within the small community where love’s hard work
must be done. Dave Andrusko, editor of National Right to Life News, stayed
with the whole six hours, and went on to examine the various book tie–ins and
other promotions connected with the series. He calls the series an “infomercial
for assisted suicide.” That may seem hard, but let him explain: “It is one thing
to ‘demystify’ death, if what is meant by this is that we must face up to the
fact that no one gets out of this life alive and that when we are dying it is
crucial that there be people near by to sustain us with love and affection.
That connectedness, that assurance that we will never be abandoned is crucial
to ensuring that people do not become despondent and contemplate suicide. But
it is quite another when people start to romanticize the ‘last days,’ to make
our departure sound like preparing for a permanent ski trip. Be highly skeptical
of people, like Bill Moyers, who gush about death. Too often that kind of ‘enthusiasm’
leads to an eagerness to help the patient pack and depart early.” Andrusko is
right about that, but I keep thinking of the sadness of people who turned their
long and last goodbye into what was, after all the chatter about its being a
public service, a show.
-
As for the annual Erasmus Lecture (this year by papal biographer
George Weigel), there were many more requests for tickets than there were seats.
We are sorry that some were disappointed, but, as we have said before, tickets
are handled on a first–come–first–served basis, and we don’t know a better way
of doing it. A hint to subscribers: ask for tickets when you first see the notice
in these pages. Don’t wait for a special notice in the mails. The up side of
this, of course, is that the Erasmus Lecture is so very popular. Next fall the
fifteenth Erasmus Lecture will be delivered by Rabbi David Novak of the University
of Toronto on the future of the relationship between Christians and Jews. Watch
for details.
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A front page story in the New York Times, under
the heading “Priests of the 60s Fear Loss of Their Legacy,” features priests
who once thought that Vatican II would usher in a revolution, making the Church
an agent of radical social change, but now complain that younger priests do
not share their vision. They express bitter disappointment, fearing that their
generation is turning out to have been no more than a blip on the screen of
history. As reporter Diana Jean Schemo writes, “The younger, conservative generation
is more interested in sacramental matters and issues of faith.” Even worse,
it is rumored that the new Archbishop of New York, Edward Michael Egan, may
think that a very good thing.
-
“Criticism is still strong. I think it is deplorable that they
attack us rather than deal with the issues.” So says Robert Funk, seventy–four,
founder of the Jesus Seminar, who many years ago got some rich friends to pony
up for meetings at which he gathers religion teachers with nothing better to
do with their time and with a taste for notoriety who discuss questions such
as whether Jesus thought he was the Messiah, and then cast ballots of colored
beads to determine the outcome. That’s what Mr. Funk calls dealing with the
issues. An issue that Mr. Funk insists we deal with—what will his fertile mind
come up with next?—is whether God exists. Funk and seventy–five seminar participants
will vote on the question at Texas Christian University. The world waits. Says
Mr. Funk, “We are discussing the future of God, so to speak.” God waits.
-
“Had he been sheltered from the Christian ‘star system,’ with
its voracious appetite for fresh faces and sensational testimonies, might things
be different?” The article in World on Eric Craig Harrah, a flamboyant
homosexual and abortion–clinic operator turned evangelical Christian and pro–life
champion, clearly suggests that the answer is yes. Harrah’s speaking engagements
raised big funds for pro–life groups, and for himself. The 700 Club and
similar programs hailed him as a convert hero, until only three years after
his conversion he publicly repudiated his Christian profession and returned
to the gay subculture. Says one pro–lifer, “We in the leadership have taken
those who have left [the pro–abortion side] and held them up as our trophies.”
Says another, “It’s almost impossible for us to restrain ourselves from wanting
to use them. Exploit is a bit of a strong word, but it’s applicable.” The moral
of the story is that superstars and sensational testimonies are no substitute
for the tested endurance of those who bear witness, as the apostle says, in
season and out of season.
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“Banned in Opelousas.” That probably won’t boost sales as much
as “banned in Boston,” nor will it likely hurt the reputation of Flannery O’Connor,
one of the great writers, as well as one of the great Catholic writers, of the
century past. The curious thing is that she is banned at Opelousas Catholic
High School in the diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana. A teacher assigned O’Connor’s
short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find, in which some white folk use
the “n” word. The parents of some black students went ballistic. The bishop
did not insist on the firing of the teacher, but he did write, “No one can tell
another person whether or not he or she should be offended. That is simply a
matter of fact and should be respected in so far as is possible. For that reason,
I direct that the books in question should be removed from the reading list
immediately and other readings substituted for them.” “Blessed are they who
take no offense at me,” said Jesus, at least implying, it would seem, that people
should not be offended. Paul says he preaches Christ crucified, “foolishness
to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews.” They were offended. That is
simply a matter of fact and should be respected in so far as possible? Okay,
so Flannery O’Connor is not to be compared to Our Lord or the gospel, but there
is some comparably muddled thinking here. The Bible is full of many lesser stories
and statements at which people have been offended for centuries. Okay, so Flannery
O’Connor is not the Bible. How about Dante who put homosexuals in hell (although
some are also in purgatory on their way to heaven), Huckleberry Finn who had
distinctly incorrect views on race and women, or that ugly streak of anti–Semitism
in T. S. Eliot, a streak not entirely absent from the writings of G. K. Chesterton?
“No one can tell another person whether or not he or she should be offended”?
One might have thought that that is what education—in part, but in essential
part—is about. Commenting on the scandal created by the bishop’s ban, a distinguished
literary critic says, “To guard students against O’Connor is to confess a very
unseemly and un–Christian cowardice.” The fear probably has less to do with
the danger that O’Connor might corrupt the minds of impressionable young people
and more with the terror of the thought police labeling a Catholic school “racist.”
Paul may have also had bowdlerizing bishops in mind when he wrote, “I remind
you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of
my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power
and love and self–control.” One must hope that the bishop, rekindling the gift,
will reconsider his decision.
-
It’s only about eight hundred
words, the size of an op–ed piece, but it is the cover article in America,
with a picture of a sick pope and in big letters, “A Disabled Pope?” With the
cankered morbidity that characterizes the Jesuit weekly’s disposition toward
this pope, the article reviews the points familiar to anyone who has looked
into the matter, expressing deep concern that the “special laws” to be followed
if the Apostolic See becomes vacant or impeded have not been drawn up. In fact,
the author and editors do not know whether such laws are in place. Well, maybe
the author, Father James Provost, does now. He died a month before the article
was published. Meanwhile, John Paul II is alive and well—intellectually and
spiritually, although weakened physically. The facts will not prevent many more
such journalistic handwringings in what will be, God willing, the future years
of this pontificate. The secretive ways of the Vatican are such, an old saying
has it, that a pope is never officially sick until the day he dies. Which prompts
journalists to overcompensate by holding a death watch from the day he is elected.
Especially journalists who do not like him very much. There is piquancy in Fr.
Provost’s spending his last days worrying about the Holy Father’s health. It
is a quality of devotion to the papacy that is reminiscent of earlier times
in the Society of Jesus.
-
We have given favorable attention
to the work of Gerald McDermott, Associate Professor of Religion at Roanoke
College, Virginia, notably his fine book on Jonathan Edwards and Deism. At hand
is a notice from the people at the C. S. Lewis Institute that he is speaking
under their auspices. Above his picture is the legend, “Wisdom from America’s
Greatest Theologian.” I expect Dr. McDermott is embarrassed. I didn’t even know
the post was open. I checked with a number of friends who said they had not
resigned.
-
Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
was, by virtue of his much writing, a very famous monk. He sometimes worried
out loud whether his writing, and his poetry in particular, was consistent with
his monastic vocation. The late Father Eamonn O’Sullivan of Butte, Montana,
rhymed him the following whimsical counsel. Gethsemani, Kentucky, was Merton’s
monastery. Cistercians and Carthusians are orders of strict observance established
in the eleventh century. Merton had written that he was wondering whether he
shouldn’t join the stricter Carthusians. Fr. Eamonn’s counsel and Merton’s response
are published with the permission of Fr. Sarsfield O’Sullivan of Butte, who
is Fr. Eamonn’s brother.
Thomas Á Gethsemani
Baits the cowl with poetry,
Who would clap each God–ward man
To hell or go Cistercian,
Saves for cigarettes a curse
Bleak as T. S. Eliot’s verse;
Might his better blasts address
To his indecisiveness.
Still tempts heaven every time
Thomas puts his hand to rhyme;
Still is not entirely sure
Writing verse is for the pure.
Fear of the Carthusian louse
Keeps him from the Charterhouse.
Thomas, is it the devil’s ruse
Tempts you, bookly, go Chartreuse
Or stay Trappist? Why not, man,
Cast with me, Diocesan?
Dante, grant you, boiled in hell
Parish clerks—but monks as well.
Geoffrey Chaucer, who I hear
Banged your friar across the ear,
Sent not to rede helle doun
Any persoun of a toun.
Thomas, Thomas, why the fuss?
Simon Peter’s one of us.
Abelard, who unsettled so
Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux,
Later came to know this fact
By the desert fathers back’d:
Prudent clerics learn to flee
Maids who’d learn Theology.
(Peter, having had his fling,
Went Cistercian, solving nothing).
Devils not the least deceive
Those the parish care would leave.
Ars’ own Cure, but for God,
Might have died Cistercian shod.
(Even I might not be saved
If I “this? Or that?” behaved.)
Thomas, when the monthly bills
Dwarf the everlasting hills,
When a Ladies–Aid debate,
Tempts me from the higher state,
Tempts me to the easy way:
Vaguely pictured on a wain,
Faceless, lest some think me vain.
Or, aft, enjoying in a wood
My daily photo’d solitude,
Juan De La Cruz calls me not;
Matthew, Mark, and Luke I’ve got;
Each a stout Diocesan.
(That is not to slander Juan—
Nor you, Thomas.) Pray for light
As a holy Pastor might.
Thomas, you could stand the gaff!
Courage! Earn the epitaph:
Thomas Merton
Happy Man
Died a good
Diocesan.
Thomas Merton responded:
On one point, Eamonn, you’re not right
The louse, Sir, is a cenobite
Indeed I think I have been bitten
Eighty times since you have written
The main suggestion of your poem
Tempts me from my Trappist hoem
Such advice no doubt surprisin’
Opens up a new horizon.
I may not earn that epitaph
But you at least have made me laugh.
-
A company called Armento builds columbariums, a facility for the
interment of the ashes of the cremated deceased. A promotional brochure includes
this testimonial from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, Texas: “The
columbarium is one of the most significant actions in the history of our parish.”
-
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Sources: Sam Tanenhaus on neoconservatives, New York Times, September 16, 2000. Leonardo
Boff reaction to Dominus Iesus is on Internet, October 5, 2000. Clifford
Orwin on “Religion in the Public Square,” National Post, September 11,
2000.
While We’re At It: John Grondelski on false tolerance, New
Oxford Review, December 1999. Peter Berkowitz on game theory, New Republic,
June 5, 2000. On statement from Pontifical Council for Social Communications,
catholic trends, June 10, 2000. “The Genetic Report Card That Will Tell
You If Your Embryo Will Get Prostate Cancer,” New York Times Magazine, June 11, 2000. Thomas Powers on McCarthyism, New York Review
of Books, May 11, 2000. Christian Smith on evangelicals, Chronicle
of Higher Education, June 30, 2000. Steven Pinker on religion, Science
& Spirit, May/June 2000. Harvey Cox on “secular Judaism,” Sh’ma,
June 2000. Paul Wilkes’ review of The Changing Face of the Priesthood
by Donald Cozzens, Context, July 1, 2000. Tom Wolfe on the “Land of the
Rococo Marxists,” Harper’s, June 2000. David Novak on secular vs. religious
defense of freedom, Virginia Law Review, April 2000. Operatic version
of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, reviewed by George Loomis,
Opera News, July 2000. On religious sects in France, Insight,
August 2000. On Dutch charge of homophobia against Pope John Paul II, Reuters,
July 18, 2000. Chloe Breyer’s The Close reviewed by Sarah E. Hinlicky,
Books and Culture, October 2000. On Ex Corde Ecclesiae’s opponents,
catholic trends, August 19, 2000. On Boy Scouts objecting to gay scoutmasters,
New York Times, September 3, 2000. On Fidel Castro at Riverside Church,
New York Times, September 9, 2000. Dave Andrusko on Bill Moyers’ On
Our Own Terms, National Right to Life News, September 2000. “Priests
of the 60s Fear Loss of Their Legacy,” New York Times, September 10,
2000. Robert Funk on the Jesus Seminar, Fort Worth Star–Telegram, September 19, 2000. Article on Eric Craig
Harrah,World, September 2, 2000. On Flannery O’Connor, Baton Rouge
State–Times/Morning Advocate, August 26,2000. “A Disabled Pope?” on the
cover of America, September 30, 2000.