As I mentioned in a previous post, I had a Catholic visitor from America over Christmas. I was very intrigued as to what she would think of Ireland's religious landscape.
(For my part, I was staggered by the conspicuousness of religion in America-- or in Richmond, Virginia, to be specific. Churches were everywhere. Baptist churches predominated, but every other Christian denomination and other religion seemed to be present-- Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Judaism, Episcopalian, and many I didn't recognize at all.)
One of the things that struck my visitor was a shopping centre oratory I took her into-- the little chapel in the Ilac Centre. "You'd never get this in America", she said-- and really, there is something odd about these little sacred nooks in palaces of consumerism.
The oratory in the Ilac Centre is actually a favourite spot of mine. The riot of flowers before the tabernacle, the solemn and ever-burning sacred heart lamp, the rather ornately carved figure of Christ on the cross, the commemorative plates upon the pews requesting prayers for the dead, the noticeboard whose notices change slowly enough to preserve the atmosphere of stillness but not too slowly to create an atmosphere of death-- I love it all. (I am rather intrigued by the opening to the left of the tabernacle, from which I occasionally hear noises-- who is there? I'm always too timid to look in.)
The noises floating in from the shopping centre itself-- the pop music playing on the public address system, the hum of voices, and the jingle of the arcade games located right outside-- only seems to deepen the silence within. It does indeed seem to be in the world, but not of the world. The positioning seems ideal to me; the sacred and profane, cheek by jowl, the figure on the Cross not a historical character but utterly relevant to the chocolate-eaters and lottery-players only feet away. If only they would step inside.
In fact, there is a steady stream of visitors, perhaps split half and half between Irish (usually elderly) and non-nationals. Most stay for a few moments. Some, especially the old, stare at the face of their Saviour for more protracted periods. Worshippers rarely look at each other; the space is too small to do so without embarrassment. Strangely enough, this leads to a funny sort of impersonal intimacy.
I have recently discovered another shopping centre oratory; one that, strangely enough, I had never entered before, despite having been a habitué of the shopping centre for many years. That is the oratory in the Omni Centre, Santry.
This feels very different to the dark, cramped oratory in the Ilac Centre. Its walls are white, and light floods in through the stained glass windows. It hasn't got pews, like the Ilac Centre oratory, but wooden chairs in a few short rows. There is a tabernacle, a hanging cross with an ebony-black Christ sculpted upon it, a few small statuettes, a magazine rack of rather Millenarian-looking pamplets, and (most interestingly) a series of Eastern Orthodox icons along the left wall. A framed information sheet on the back wall describes the icons, which are collectively known (it tells the reader) as the Deesis. The icons and the pamphlets give the space a rather exotic atmosphere, at least to me, recalling the farther horizons and more fevered pockets of Christendom.
Despite the brightness, or because of it, the oratory has something of a funeral home feeling-- not an entirely inappropriate or unwelcome assocation, since prayer should always turn our mind to the Last Things.
This is less busy than the Ilac Centre oratory, although people (nearly always old people) still come in every five or ten minutes. Sometimes people walk in and walk straight back out again (on opening the door, you have to turn a little corner to see the oratory itself). Perhaps they were merely curious. Perhaps they are embarrassed to find someone actually praying. Perhaps they were looking for somewhere quiet to make a mobile phone call.
I remember, too, visiting the oratory in the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. I only visited once; I remember a narrow, dark room. It seemed better-frequented than the others. I got the impression it had gathered a little community around itself.
These oratories are interesting as monuments to a particular moment in Irish history. A moment when Ireland was moving towards a consumer society, but still contained enough popular piety to make such installations desirable. I can't remember seeing an oratory or even a prayer room (or "contemplation" room) in Dundrum's more recently-built temple to Mammon. I wonder when Ireland's last shopping centre oratory was built.
I like them. Cathedrals and historical churches have never appealed to me very much; they have enough people to love them already, many of them tourists. I like chapels and oratories and humble little suburban churches. I like places of worship that were founded in living memory. I like modern stained glass and concrete blocks and low ceilings. I like stylized stations of the cross. In most things, I am as anti-modernist as the Amish, but I don't want religion to be a museum piece. In a plain suburban church, I feel somehow closer to the god of the Patriarchs than I do in a centuries-old cathedral full of carvings and tombs and inscriptions.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Should Catholics be Patriots?
Hawk-eyed readers will have noticed that this blog is called the Irish Papist, and that the photo shows a statuette of Our Blessed Lady against a background of the Irish tricolour. I am also aware that I have had many posts with a papist theme, but few with a specifically Irish theme.
Patriotism, it seems to me, is very unfashionable. It is out of favour with almost everybody. Liberals dislike it because, well, they are liberals, and they tend to frown on anything that might be considered tribalistic or exclusive. Socialists dislike it because it distracts from the economic conflict, which they consider the real axis of history.
Conservatives? They emphasise it much less than they used to, since the term "conservative" increasingly seems to mean "a champion of the free market". And what does the free market, with its multinational companies and its intercontinental trade flows, have to do with patriotism?
In America, patriotism still means a great deal, of course; but even there, it increasingly seems to signal support for "the American way"; which, on closer examination, turns out not to be the essentially American way at all, but an eminently exportable system of free markets, personal freedoms, democracy and so on.
Islam, resurgent across so much of the world, is said to lack the Christian distinction between God and Caesar, between the city of man and the city of God, and thus seems essentially internationalist. (I may be wrong, as my knowledge of Islam is limited.)
Even Irish republicans, now that they have accepted British rule in Northern Ireland is not going to be brought to an end by force, seem to have turned their attention to various other left-wing causes, while waiting for demographics to achieve what the men in the balaclavas never could. (Considering the hostility of ultra-liberal Sinn Féin and of so many Irish republicans to the Catholic Church, their former confidence that nationalists have procreation on their side might have been misplaced.)
In any case, patriotism-- and by patriotism I mean the romantic, sentimental, aesthetic love and celebration of your country, because it is your country, and the desire to preserve and strengthen its traditions and distinctive culture-- seems to be in abeyance today.
When I visited America, I was surprised and pleased at the amount of American flags I saw everywhere, principally flying from house porches and over the aisles of supermarkets. I understand that this was, to some extent, an expression of support for the troops abroad, but I think it also showed a casual, everyday, unembarrassed love of country that Europeans would do well to emulate.
So, when I got home, I bought two little Irish tricolours in a Carroll's tourist shop. I hung one in my bedroom and I stood one at my desk in work. After it had been there some time, one of my colleagues said, "I keep meaning to ask you. What is the flag for? The rugby, is it?"
This, to me, is the whole problem; the idea that patriotism has to be for something; that the flag should only be flown in times of war, or at times of high political drama at home, or to support the national team at some sporting event-- or perhaps when Ireland win something like the Eurovision Song Contest.
The flag is for life, not just for Euro 2012.
I do think this whole mentality-- that patriotism only applies at times of crisis or challenge-- is symptomatic of a deeper human fault. It is the malady that Chesterton never tired of addressing; I think he described it somewhere as "losing every good as soon as it is gained".
Why do we only love what is new, or what someone is trying to take from us, or what is in danger? Why do we only pine for what we don't have? Why are we so blasé about the nation and traditions that so many Irish people worked, fought and died to preserve? Why did Adam and Eve lose Eden for the sake of the one fruit they were forbidden to taste?
Irish Catholics often seem as uninterested in patriotism as everybody else. This is understandable, to some extent. In the decades following Irish independence, there was something of a holy (or perhaps unholy) alliance between Church and State, Irish patriotism and Roman Catholicism. The motto of the Irish Christian brothers was Do chum glóire Dé agus onóir na hÉireann, "For the glory of God and the honour of Ireland". A fine motto in itself, but one that has suffered from its association with the Christian Brothers, who are now identified in the fickle public mind with sexual and physical abuse.
Yeats depicted, in The Municipal gallery Revisited:
An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
Blessing the Tricolour. "This is not,’ I say,
"The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland
The poets have imagined, terrible and gay.’
De Valera, in his (unfairly) infamous "comely maidens" radio speech of St. Patrick's Day 1943-- the speech that never used the phrase "comely maidens", but has become the expression of everything modern Ireland rejects about its recent past-- left no doubt that the Ireland of his dreams was a Christian Ireland. ("The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live.")
So the marriage of the Church and the flag seems, in retrospect, unfortunate. The Church was blamed for all the faults, real and imagined, of twentieth century Ireland. Irish Catholics, for their part, might well feel that the Church was used as a kind of focus for national sentiment, a stick with which to meet the Protestant or Godless English, and then discarded when independence was safely attained.
But, as mainstream Ireland drifts further and further away from Christianity-- or even comes to ardently reject it-- I think it would be a shame for Irish Catholics to react by losing their patriotism.
For one thing, the Church enjoins us to be patriots, as we can see from the Catechism (where it is brought under the heading of the Fourth Commandment):
It is the duty of citizens to contribute along with civil authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom. The love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity. (CCC 2239)
It often seems to me, too, that Christ's fullness of human nature included, not just friendship and filial emotion, but patriotism. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not?"
Be that as it may be, it seems to me that patriotism is something that humans are always getting wrong-- in times of war and occupation, we elevate it to an idol, a substitute God. In times of peace, we seem to all but forget about it.
How, then, would I have us remember patriotism?
By giving our children Irish names. By giving our houses and boats and pets and private companies names that celebrate Irish history, mythology and culture. By preserving Irish traditions such as Wren's Day and the Irish aspects of Halloween ("Help the Halloween party!", not "trick or treat!"). By choosing uncial script when we have occasion to use fancy lettering-- for instance, in a shop sign. By choosing, at least sometimes, to holiday at home rather than abroad. By reading about Irish history and traditions and culture. By memorizing Irish ballads. By flying the tricolour for no reason.
I'm not much interested in debates over what constitutes "genuine" or "authentic" Irish culture, and what is merely Celtic Twilight fakery manufactured in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Personally, I am for anything that emphasises and strengthens our distinctiveness- or any other country's distinctiveness. I believe that thinking, talking and writing about Irishness, in itself, makes us more Irish. The very reaching out to our national past, no matter how clumsily or unlearnedly, enriches our nation. To seek to be a patriot is itself patriotism.
Patriotism, it seems to me, is very unfashionable. It is out of favour with almost everybody. Liberals dislike it because, well, they are liberals, and they tend to frown on anything that might be considered tribalistic or exclusive. Socialists dislike it because it distracts from the economic conflict, which they consider the real axis of history.
Conservatives? They emphasise it much less than they used to, since the term "conservative" increasingly seems to mean "a champion of the free market". And what does the free market, with its multinational companies and its intercontinental trade flows, have to do with patriotism?
In America, patriotism still means a great deal, of course; but even there, it increasingly seems to signal support for "the American way"; which, on closer examination, turns out not to be the essentially American way at all, but an eminently exportable system of free markets, personal freedoms, democracy and so on.
Islam, resurgent across so much of the world, is said to lack the Christian distinction between God and Caesar, between the city of man and the city of God, and thus seems essentially internationalist. (I may be wrong, as my knowledge of Islam is limited.)
Even Irish republicans, now that they have accepted British rule in Northern Ireland is not going to be brought to an end by force, seem to have turned their attention to various other left-wing causes, while waiting for demographics to achieve what the men in the balaclavas never could. (Considering the hostility of ultra-liberal Sinn Féin and of so many Irish republicans to the Catholic Church, their former confidence that nationalists have procreation on their side might have been misplaced.)
In any case, patriotism-- and by patriotism I mean the romantic, sentimental, aesthetic love and celebration of your country, because it is your country, and the desire to preserve and strengthen its traditions and distinctive culture-- seems to be in abeyance today.
When I visited America, I was surprised and pleased at the amount of American flags I saw everywhere, principally flying from house porches and over the aisles of supermarkets. I understand that this was, to some extent, an expression of support for the troops abroad, but I think it also showed a casual, everyday, unembarrassed love of country that Europeans would do well to emulate.
So, when I got home, I bought two little Irish tricolours in a Carroll's tourist shop. I hung one in my bedroom and I stood one at my desk in work. After it had been there some time, one of my colleagues said, "I keep meaning to ask you. What is the flag for? The rugby, is it?"
This, to me, is the whole problem; the idea that patriotism has to be for something; that the flag should only be flown in times of war, or at times of high political drama at home, or to support the national team at some sporting event-- or perhaps when Ireland win something like the Eurovision Song Contest.
The flag is for life, not just for Euro 2012.
I do think this whole mentality-- that patriotism only applies at times of crisis or challenge-- is symptomatic of a deeper human fault. It is the malady that Chesterton never tired of addressing; I think he described it somewhere as "losing every good as soon as it is gained".
Why do we only love what is new, or what someone is trying to take from us, or what is in danger? Why do we only pine for what we don't have? Why are we so blasé about the nation and traditions that so many Irish people worked, fought and died to preserve? Why did Adam and Eve lose Eden for the sake of the one fruit they were forbidden to taste?
Irish Catholics often seem as uninterested in patriotism as everybody else. This is understandable, to some extent. In the decades following Irish independence, there was something of a holy (or perhaps unholy) alliance between Church and State, Irish patriotism and Roman Catholicism. The motto of the Irish Christian brothers was Do chum glóire Dé agus onóir na hÉireann, "For the glory of God and the honour of Ireland". A fine motto in itself, but one that has suffered from its association with the Christian Brothers, who are now identified in the fickle public mind with sexual and physical abuse.
Yeats depicted, in The Municipal gallery Revisited:
An Abbot or Archbishop with an upraised hand
Blessing the Tricolour. "This is not,’ I say,
"The dead Ireland of my youth, but an Ireland
The poets have imagined, terrible and gay.’
De Valera, in his (unfairly) infamous "comely maidens" radio speech of St. Patrick's Day 1943-- the speech that never used the phrase "comely maidens", but has become the expression of everything modern Ireland rejects about its recent past-- left no doubt that the Ireland of his dreams was a Christian Ireland. ("The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live.")
So the marriage of the Church and the flag seems, in retrospect, unfortunate. The Church was blamed for all the faults, real and imagined, of twentieth century Ireland. Irish Catholics, for their part, might well feel that the Church was used as a kind of focus for national sentiment, a stick with which to meet the Protestant or Godless English, and then discarded when independence was safely attained.
But, as mainstream Ireland drifts further and further away from Christianity-- or even comes to ardently reject it-- I think it would be a shame for Irish Catholics to react by losing their patriotism.
For one thing, the Church enjoins us to be patriots, as we can see from the Catechism (where it is brought under the heading of the Fourth Commandment):
It is the duty of citizens to contribute along with civil authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom. The love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity. (CCC 2239)
It often seems to me, too, that Christ's fullness of human nature included, not just friendship and filial emotion, but patriotism. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not?"
Be that as it may be, it seems to me that patriotism is something that humans are always getting wrong-- in times of war and occupation, we elevate it to an idol, a substitute God. In times of peace, we seem to all but forget about it.
How, then, would I have us remember patriotism?
By giving our children Irish names. By giving our houses and boats and pets and private companies names that celebrate Irish history, mythology and culture. By preserving Irish traditions such as Wren's Day and the Irish aspects of Halloween ("Help the Halloween party!", not "trick or treat!"). By choosing uncial script when we have occasion to use fancy lettering-- for instance, in a shop sign. By choosing, at least sometimes, to holiday at home rather than abroad. By reading about Irish history and traditions and culture. By memorizing Irish ballads. By flying the tricolour for no reason.
I'm not much interested in debates over what constitutes "genuine" or "authentic" Irish culture, and what is merely Celtic Twilight fakery manufactured in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Personally, I am for anything that emphasises and strengthens our distinctiveness- or any other country's distinctiveness. I believe that thinking, talking and writing about Irishness, in itself, makes us more Irish. The very reaching out to our national past, no matter how clumsily or unlearnedly, enriches our nation. To seek to be a patriot is itself patriotism.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Silent Homilies
I have read recently that the split between the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholic Church has less to do with the particular doctrinal points at issue (for instance, the famous dispute over the filioque, the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son”), but to a different approach between the two traditions. The Orthodox churches believe that the Catholic Church is too rationalistic, too ensnared in abstract philosophy, too intent upon the building of philosophical systems such as Thomism.
(I recently read an intriguing book—Thought Prison by Bruce Charlton—which actually laid the blame of all the West’s decadence upon this supposed Catholic rationalism. This is especially notable since Bruce Charlton is English, and presumably not brought up in the Orthodox tradition.)
The Orthodox tend instead to believe that the Holy Spirit communicates itself to us in a mystical state called theoria, and that we are to be guided by this rather than the abstractions of theology. (I may have got that slightly wrong, but I think it’s not too far wrong.)
Of course, being a Catholic, I don’t believe this, for all my enormous respect for Eastern Orthodoxy. I agree with John Paul II who described faith and reason as the two wings on which the human spirit ascends, in Fides et Ratio. I don’t think human beings can ever escape conceptual thought, and I believe abstractions are useful. They must guide us for as far as our human minds can possibly reach. Without concepts and ideas, we can have no knowledge, intuitive or mystical or otherwise.
Likewise, we need dogmas to articulate the Creed, teachers to expound it, and apologists to defend it from intellectual attack.
All those things, we need; and yet increasingly, I think they are the less potent part of faith. I increasingly believe that the strongest argument for Christianity—with most people—is the sight of a Corpus Christ procession, the words of a Christmas carol drifting on crisp winter air, the vision of candles glowing before a holy statue, and a murmured prayer overheard by accident.
Am I sentimentalizing faith? I suppose there is that risk. That is why I insist on the need for an intellectual foundation.
And yet, how many people are actually persuaded by arguments? How often have you heard anybody winning anybody over in a debate? It is often said, as a sneer, that somebody can’t be reasoned out of a position into which they were never reasoned in the first place. But is anybody really reasoned into any position?
I believe most philosophies of life are born in the imagination—the rationalistic and utilitarian just as much as the romantic and mystical.
Nationalism is, perhaps, kindled by the words of a patriotic ballad or childhood experience of a country’s landscape. Socialism may have its genesis in the sight of a mother crying over bills she can’t pay. Liberalism might start with tight apron-strings.
Is it not a familiar experience that, when we debate politics or philosophy or religion with an opponent, we find ourself coming up against rocky soil that no argument can penetrate? Or how often do we find ourselves resisting an opponent’s argument, not out of sheer perversity, but from an overwhelming intuition that they are wrong, that their point—no matter how persuasively put—just doesn’t seem to fit?
I remember watching a debate between Richard Dawkins and the Oxford mathematician (and Christian) John Lennox, on Youtube. At one point Dawkins, exasperated by the Christian’s inability to see his own patent wrongness, sighed: “But it’s all so provincial, isn’t it?” It’s a tack I have heard from atheists more than once; how petty-minded to believe God could actually have been born on this obscure planet in one of billions of galaxies!
In other words, it’s an aesthetic consideration, and quite resistant to rational argument. All Christians can do is point out that the God of Christianity (and Judaism) generally does show a preference for the obscure and lowly, and that there is an aesthetic appeal to this, too.
Or again, the objection of rationalists to miracles so often seems aesthetic rather than rational. They find something messy and fumbling in the idea of a God who countermands his own orders (as they see it), who tinkers with his own creation.
So, given that the philosophies of human beings are so often shaped by non-rational forces, what should our reponse be? Should we give up on reason and rational argument and rely on the power of suggestion?
Well, of course not. But we should never underestimate the power of symbolism, poetry, atmosphere, ceremony, beauty.
I might even say; we should never underestimate the truth of these things, their power to communicate God’s message.
Christianity, especially Catholicism, is at least something. It is there. It is solid and positive and tangible, not simply a theory or an idea. This is the flip side of the Inquisition, the wars of religion, the sale of indulgences, and all the mud that has been flung at the Cross.
Christianity, as practiced, is not pristine; but nothing real and lived is pristine (saving Our Saviour and his Blessed Mother). Christianity has all the faults and virtues of the actual, and the virtues far outshine the faults.
It is there—and ready to draw those who are hostile, sceptical, or indifferent, and often to draw them in some unguessed or unforeseeable way. Ready to call them through some doggerel in a poorly-printed parish newsletter, or the peacefulness in a nun’s face, or an old carving in a deconsecrated church converted to a hardware shop.
For myself, too, I have sometimes felt the Holy Spirit works on me more in my inattention and my absence of mind than when I am concentrating. Kneeling, making the sign of the cross, mumbling oft-repeated prayers, catching the sight of the morning sun shining through a church window; this is when I seem penetrated by an assurance and peace I couldn’t put into mere words.
We preach Christianity by practicing it, and the sight of a young family saying grace in a restaurant has more power than all the opinion pieces in all the newspapers in the world.
Or so it seems to me, more and more; perhaps I am wrong; and yet I think the sight of lived Christianity must count for a great deal in the battle for souls.
(I recently read an intriguing book—Thought Prison by Bruce Charlton—which actually laid the blame of all the West’s decadence upon this supposed Catholic rationalism. This is especially notable since Bruce Charlton is English, and presumably not brought up in the Orthodox tradition.)
The Orthodox tend instead to believe that the Holy Spirit communicates itself to us in a mystical state called theoria, and that we are to be guided by this rather than the abstractions of theology. (I may have got that slightly wrong, but I think it’s not too far wrong.)
Of course, being a Catholic, I don’t believe this, for all my enormous respect for Eastern Orthodoxy. I agree with John Paul II who described faith and reason as the two wings on which the human spirit ascends, in Fides et Ratio. I don’t think human beings can ever escape conceptual thought, and I believe abstractions are useful. They must guide us for as far as our human minds can possibly reach. Without concepts and ideas, we can have no knowledge, intuitive or mystical or otherwise.
Likewise, we need dogmas to articulate the Creed, teachers to expound it, and apologists to defend it from intellectual attack.
All those things, we need; and yet increasingly, I think they are the less potent part of faith. I increasingly believe that the strongest argument for Christianity—with most people—is the sight of a Corpus Christ procession, the words of a Christmas carol drifting on crisp winter air, the vision of candles glowing before a holy statue, and a murmured prayer overheard by accident.
Am I sentimentalizing faith? I suppose there is that risk. That is why I insist on the need for an intellectual foundation.
And yet, how many people are actually persuaded by arguments? How often have you heard anybody winning anybody over in a debate? It is often said, as a sneer, that somebody can’t be reasoned out of a position into which they were never reasoned in the first place. But is anybody really reasoned into any position?
I believe most philosophies of life are born in the imagination—the rationalistic and utilitarian just as much as the romantic and mystical.
Nationalism is, perhaps, kindled by the words of a patriotic ballad or childhood experience of a country’s landscape. Socialism may have its genesis in the sight of a mother crying over bills she can’t pay. Liberalism might start with tight apron-strings.
Is it not a familiar experience that, when we debate politics or philosophy or religion with an opponent, we find ourself coming up against rocky soil that no argument can penetrate? Or how often do we find ourselves resisting an opponent’s argument, not out of sheer perversity, but from an overwhelming intuition that they are wrong, that their point—no matter how persuasively put—just doesn’t seem to fit?
I remember watching a debate between Richard Dawkins and the Oxford mathematician (and Christian) John Lennox, on Youtube. At one point Dawkins, exasperated by the Christian’s inability to see his own patent wrongness, sighed: “But it’s all so provincial, isn’t it?” It’s a tack I have heard from atheists more than once; how petty-minded to believe God could actually have been born on this obscure planet in one of billions of galaxies!
In other words, it’s an aesthetic consideration, and quite resistant to rational argument. All Christians can do is point out that the God of Christianity (and Judaism) generally does show a preference for the obscure and lowly, and that there is an aesthetic appeal to this, too.
Or again, the objection of rationalists to miracles so often seems aesthetic rather than rational. They find something messy and fumbling in the idea of a God who countermands his own orders (as they see it), who tinkers with his own creation.
So, given that the philosophies of human beings are so often shaped by non-rational forces, what should our reponse be? Should we give up on reason and rational argument and rely on the power of suggestion?
Well, of course not. But we should never underestimate the power of symbolism, poetry, atmosphere, ceremony, beauty.
I might even say; we should never underestimate the truth of these things, their power to communicate God’s message.
Christianity, especially Catholicism, is at least something. It is there. It is solid and positive and tangible, not simply a theory or an idea. This is the flip side of the Inquisition, the wars of religion, the sale of indulgences, and all the mud that has been flung at the Cross.
Christianity, as practiced, is not pristine; but nothing real and lived is pristine (saving Our Saviour and his Blessed Mother). Christianity has all the faults and virtues of the actual, and the virtues far outshine the faults.
It is there—and ready to draw those who are hostile, sceptical, or indifferent, and often to draw them in some unguessed or unforeseeable way. Ready to call them through some doggerel in a poorly-printed parish newsletter, or the peacefulness in a nun’s face, or an old carving in a deconsecrated church converted to a hardware shop.
For myself, too, I have sometimes felt the Holy Spirit works on me more in my inattention and my absence of mind than when I am concentrating. Kneeling, making the sign of the cross, mumbling oft-repeated prayers, catching the sight of the morning sun shining through a church window; this is when I seem penetrated by an assurance and peace I couldn’t put into mere words.
We preach Christianity by practicing it, and the sight of a young family saying grace in a restaurant has more power than all the opinion pieces in all the newspapers in the world.
Or so it seems to me, more and more; perhaps I am wrong; and yet I think the sight of lived Christianity must count for a great deal in the battle for souls.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Intermission
I am going to be completely offline for two weeks so I apologize in advance for any comments to which I don't reply.
I would deeply appreciate any of your prayers in the meantime.
I would deeply appreciate any of your prayers in the meantime.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Why I am Not "Still a Catholic"
I often browse the religion shelves of bookshops, and there is a particular title, recently published, that always makes me grit my teeth. It is Remaining a Catholic After the Murphy Report.
As a matter of fact, there are a whole genre of similar books. Recalling the title Why I am Still a Catholic, I looked for it on Amazon just now and found that several books of that title have been published. There is also an Irish book called What Being Catholic Means to Me, which—though its title is unobjectionable—contains essays (written by various luminaries) pregnant with the whole atmosphere that reeks from a title like Why I am Still a Catholic.
What is that atmosphere, you ask me?
I think the word “supercilious” sums it up best. Though perhaps I would be better off being blunt and calling it pride. I haven’t read any of the several books called Why I Am Still a Catholic, and I may be maligning all their authors, but the title suggests that the authors believe the Church is lucky to keep them, that the Church doesn’t quite deserve their continued loyalty, that their refusal to apostasize is a sign of heroic forbearance and patience and sacrifice.
Would anyone write an article called Why I Still Love my Wife, or Why I Still Love my Children?
Permit me here to make the ritual protestations of horror at clerical child abuse. Of course, outrages such as those chronicled in the Murphy Report should be a source of lacerating shame for the Irish hierarcy and laity. But, equally of course, they don’t make a whit of difference to the truth or falsity of the Church’s doctrine, any more than a doctor abusing his patient would make medicine a pseudoscience.
And yet, although I think the damage that sex abuse has done to Irish Catholicism is grossly overstated—to be blunt, I think it is often little more than a flag of convenience for those who were lukewarm in their convictions already—I have some sympathy for those whose faith is sincerely shaken by these outrages. I can understand (though I do not agree with) the reasoning by which someone would decide that the Church cannot be infallibly guided by the Holy Spirit if some of its anointed ministers have perpetrated such horrors. Of course, to think this is to forget that God’s church is made of living stones, that He never abrogates human freedom for the sake of His designs, and that even one of Our Saviour’s closest disciples committed an unspeakable betrayal.
Still, as I say, I have some sympathy for those who feel this way, for those who would describe themselves as Still Catholic because of the abuse scandals.
What really irritates me is those who forgive the Church, not for the failings of some of its members and ministers and hierarchy, but for its very doctrines and Tradition and character. Those, in other words, who forgive the Church for being Catholic.
I have a confession to make. A confession that might shock those people who declare, with a virtuous air, that they are Still Catholics despite the Church’s “negative view of sex”, or its “homophobia”, or its “rigid hierarchical thinking”, or its supposed "pomp and splendour".
I like pretty much everything about the Catholic Church. I don’t “struggle” with accepting any of it.
I like that the Church allows us an opportunity for loyalty, humility and deference, in a world where advertisers and politicians and psychologists and spiritual gurus of all stripes compete to flatter us, and to assure us that our problems are not our own fault, but the fault of The System, or Society, or our parents, or some other culprit.
I like calling a priest “Father”, submitting to the wisdom of the Magisterium, and accepting that one lifetime and one blob of cerebral tissue isn’t enough to attain timeless Truth.
I like that the Church insists on celibacy for its priests, and that there are men who are willing to witness to their faith in Christ by making such an enormous sacrifice. I admire any man who does so, even those whose orthodoxy leaves something to be desired.
I like that the Church is willing to defy our era and declare unabashedly that homosexual acts are wrong—not because I sit in judgement on those who are attracted to their own sex, or because I doubt that many people are born this way, or because I think that they are bad people. But because I don’t think anybody really believes that romantic love between two men is the same as romantic love between a man and a woman, or that there is not something unique and timeless and sacramental in the harmony of opposites that is the love between male and female. I always suffered from the cognitive dissonance that our era imposes on us by having to pretend otherwise, by having to rebuke an all-but universal moral intuition as an irrational phobia. I suspect I am not the only one.
I like that the Church prohibits contraception. It seems grotesquely incongruous to me that the lifestyle of sexual liberation—which purports to be so wild and unfettered and heady and, above all, natural—can ultimately rely upon little pills and latex sheaths. It is the Church’s teaching on sex that is really romantic and heady—the acceptance that lovemaking is reserved for those who have crossed the Rubicon of marriage, who have committed to each other irrevocably, and who do not grudge the natural consequences of their love’s consummation—those, in other words, who are giving it everything. The world’s ideal of sex seems lily-livered and puny compared to that of Catholicism.
I like that the Church ordains only men to the priesthood—not because I think women are any less wise, or less capable of heroic virtue, or less competent than men in any other way, but because I feel sure God made us male and female for a reason—a reason that goes far deeper than biology, a reason of cosmic significance. I am content not to understand that reason. No, more than content—I am happy to feel the weight of the mystery.
I like that bishops wear mitres and carry croziers, that priests wear chasubles, that many churches blaze with colour and splendour and ornament, and that even the plainest will contain some fragments of visual poetry—statues, tabernacle, altar. We live in a utilitarian age, one that draws a ruthless line between function and beauty. Soldiers wear khaki, workplaces are monstrosities of glass and concrete, and suburbs full of identical houses stretch for mile upon mile upon mile. Our discussions, in boardroom and parliament and newspaper columns, resolve around efficiency and cost-effectiveness and usefulness. Everything has been streamlined. Utilitarianism has carried all before it—everywhere except in the Catholic Church. Within its cathedrals and chapels and oratories, beauty still has a serious purpose, beauty still matters, beauty is indispensable.
“How can a Church preach the doctrine of Christ while luxuriating in splendour and ostentation?”, its critics ask. Well, one reason is that the poor, too, crave beauty and ceremony and grandeur—and where else will they get it, where can they actually participate in it, except in a cathedral, or on a pilgrimage to the Vatican?
I like that the Church mediates between God and me. Some people think we should take a direct line to God and we shouldn’t need anybody coming between Him and us. I don’t. I think God likes mediation. He could have invented us all from nothing, but instead we all have mothers and fathers who gave us the gift of life, and lines of ancestors stretching back untold millennia. I prefer it that way. He could have made us self-sufficient monads, but instead He contrived this world so that we need to get food and knowledge and company from others—very sensibly, I think.
Christ chose to appear to a particular group of people at a particular moment, so that the vast majority of Christians would receive their knowledge of him from others. Even when he spoke to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, he didn’t simply cram him with all the knowledge he would need. He sent Ananias to induct him into the Christian fellowship, and to restore his sight.
Why do we cherish stories, like The Karate Kid, about masters and disciples? Because we recognize there is something uniquely tender and touching and joyous in that bond; because we feel growth and discovery and flourishing should not be something impersonal, but something that happens between individuals. We even feel that it means more when it is a difficult, tentative process. The Karate Kid learning his stuff from an old book would seem somehow less meaningful.
I like that the Church requires a spoken confession of sins to a priest, even though I find this incredibly difficult and embarrassing and intimidating. God forgiving my sins through a wordless, silent, invisible process seems somehow banal and anti-climactic. That they should be forgiven at all is astounding and gratuitous enough. How could I wish for it to be any easier? And—though confession is a mystical sacrament and not a psychological coping mechanism—where is the catharsis in a purely mental confession?
I like saints. I like reading about Marian apparitions. I like relics. I like shrines. I like feasts. I even like fasts (especially when they’re over).
I like homilies. I like candles glowing before shrines. I like the poetry of names like Jesus and Ezekiel and Isaac and Melchizedek.
I like ritual, for its own sake—I believe ritual expresses something, enacts something, that mere words or thoughts never could. I've noticed that people tend to make rituals of the things they love—even if it’s something like sitting down to a cup of tea and a coffee slice before opening their favourite magazine each week.
I liked John Paul the Second. I like Pope Benedict the Sixteenth even more.
I even like the penumbral, cultural aspects of Catholicism-- things that aren't strictly Catholicism itself but that seem imbued with its spirit. I like little devotional magazines with covers showing cornfields and daffodills and stone walls, magazines that mix meditations on the Gospels with household tips and trivia about The Great Wall of China. I like gently-coloured hoIy pictures. I even like programmes like A Prayer at Bedtime. I don’t like any of those things ironically or knowingly, nor do I consider them kitsch. I like them for what they are.
I like thinking of all the millions of very different men and women, all over the world and all through the centuries, who spoke the same prayers that I speak today, who meditated upon the same mysteries of the Rosary, who recited the same Creeds, who partook of the same Eucharist. I cherish the spiritual communion with all those souls. I don’t see how watering down that continuity makes the Church, somehow, belong more to The People.
No doubt the Still Catholics who trudge reluctantly to Mass and who call for radical “renewal” in the Church would consider me otiose, complacent, brainwashed. They might even call me a sheep.
But I don’t mind that too much. After all, Our Saviour never used that comparison as a slur, did he?
As a matter of fact, there are a whole genre of similar books. Recalling the title Why I am Still a Catholic, I looked for it on Amazon just now and found that several books of that title have been published. There is also an Irish book called What Being Catholic Means to Me, which—though its title is unobjectionable—contains essays (written by various luminaries) pregnant with the whole atmosphere that reeks from a title like Why I am Still a Catholic.
What is that atmosphere, you ask me?
I think the word “supercilious” sums it up best. Though perhaps I would be better off being blunt and calling it pride. I haven’t read any of the several books called Why I Am Still a Catholic, and I may be maligning all their authors, but the title suggests that the authors believe the Church is lucky to keep them, that the Church doesn’t quite deserve their continued loyalty, that their refusal to apostasize is a sign of heroic forbearance and patience and sacrifice.
Would anyone write an article called Why I Still Love my Wife, or Why I Still Love my Children?
Permit me here to make the ritual protestations of horror at clerical child abuse. Of course, outrages such as those chronicled in the Murphy Report should be a source of lacerating shame for the Irish hierarcy and laity. But, equally of course, they don’t make a whit of difference to the truth or falsity of the Church’s doctrine, any more than a doctor abusing his patient would make medicine a pseudoscience.
And yet, although I think the damage that sex abuse has done to Irish Catholicism is grossly overstated—to be blunt, I think it is often little more than a flag of convenience for those who were lukewarm in their convictions already—I have some sympathy for those whose faith is sincerely shaken by these outrages. I can understand (though I do not agree with) the reasoning by which someone would decide that the Church cannot be infallibly guided by the Holy Spirit if some of its anointed ministers have perpetrated such horrors. Of course, to think this is to forget that God’s church is made of living stones, that He never abrogates human freedom for the sake of His designs, and that even one of Our Saviour’s closest disciples committed an unspeakable betrayal.
Still, as I say, I have some sympathy for those who feel this way, for those who would describe themselves as Still Catholic because of the abuse scandals.
What really irritates me is those who forgive the Church, not for the failings of some of its members and ministers and hierarchy, but for its very doctrines and Tradition and character. Those, in other words, who forgive the Church for being Catholic.
I have a confession to make. A confession that might shock those people who declare, with a virtuous air, that they are Still Catholics despite the Church’s “negative view of sex”, or its “homophobia”, or its “rigid hierarchical thinking”, or its supposed "pomp and splendour".
I like pretty much everything about the Catholic Church. I don’t “struggle” with accepting any of it.
I like that the Church allows us an opportunity for loyalty, humility and deference, in a world where advertisers and politicians and psychologists and spiritual gurus of all stripes compete to flatter us, and to assure us that our problems are not our own fault, but the fault of The System, or Society, or our parents, or some other culprit.
I like calling a priest “Father”, submitting to the wisdom of the Magisterium, and accepting that one lifetime and one blob of cerebral tissue isn’t enough to attain timeless Truth.
I like that the Church insists on celibacy for its priests, and that there are men who are willing to witness to their faith in Christ by making such an enormous sacrifice. I admire any man who does so, even those whose orthodoxy leaves something to be desired.
I like that the Church is willing to defy our era and declare unabashedly that homosexual acts are wrong—not because I sit in judgement on those who are attracted to their own sex, or because I doubt that many people are born this way, or because I think that they are bad people. But because I don’t think anybody really believes that romantic love between two men is the same as romantic love between a man and a woman, or that there is not something unique and timeless and sacramental in the harmony of opposites that is the love between male and female. I always suffered from the cognitive dissonance that our era imposes on us by having to pretend otherwise, by having to rebuke an all-but universal moral intuition as an irrational phobia. I suspect I am not the only one.
I like that the Church prohibits contraception. It seems grotesquely incongruous to me that the lifestyle of sexual liberation—which purports to be so wild and unfettered and heady and, above all, natural—can ultimately rely upon little pills and latex sheaths. It is the Church’s teaching on sex that is really romantic and heady—the acceptance that lovemaking is reserved for those who have crossed the Rubicon of marriage, who have committed to each other irrevocably, and who do not grudge the natural consequences of their love’s consummation—those, in other words, who are giving it everything. The world’s ideal of sex seems lily-livered and puny compared to that of Catholicism.
I like that the Church ordains only men to the priesthood—not because I think women are any less wise, or less capable of heroic virtue, or less competent than men in any other way, but because I feel sure God made us male and female for a reason—a reason that goes far deeper than biology, a reason of cosmic significance. I am content not to understand that reason. No, more than content—I am happy to feel the weight of the mystery.
I like that bishops wear mitres and carry croziers, that priests wear chasubles, that many churches blaze with colour and splendour and ornament, and that even the plainest will contain some fragments of visual poetry—statues, tabernacle, altar. We live in a utilitarian age, one that draws a ruthless line between function and beauty. Soldiers wear khaki, workplaces are monstrosities of glass and concrete, and suburbs full of identical houses stretch for mile upon mile upon mile. Our discussions, in boardroom and parliament and newspaper columns, resolve around efficiency and cost-effectiveness and usefulness. Everything has been streamlined. Utilitarianism has carried all before it—everywhere except in the Catholic Church. Within its cathedrals and chapels and oratories, beauty still has a serious purpose, beauty still matters, beauty is indispensable.
“How can a Church preach the doctrine of Christ while luxuriating in splendour and ostentation?”, its critics ask. Well, one reason is that the poor, too, crave beauty and ceremony and grandeur—and where else will they get it, where can they actually participate in it, except in a cathedral, or on a pilgrimage to the Vatican?
I like that the Church mediates between God and me. Some people think we should take a direct line to God and we shouldn’t need anybody coming between Him and us. I don’t. I think God likes mediation. He could have invented us all from nothing, but instead we all have mothers and fathers who gave us the gift of life, and lines of ancestors stretching back untold millennia. I prefer it that way. He could have made us self-sufficient monads, but instead He contrived this world so that we need to get food and knowledge and company from others—very sensibly, I think.
Christ chose to appear to a particular group of people at a particular moment, so that the vast majority of Christians would receive their knowledge of him from others. Even when he spoke to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, he didn’t simply cram him with all the knowledge he would need. He sent Ananias to induct him into the Christian fellowship, and to restore his sight.
Why do we cherish stories, like The Karate Kid, about masters and disciples? Because we recognize there is something uniquely tender and touching and joyous in that bond; because we feel growth and discovery and flourishing should not be something impersonal, but something that happens between individuals. We even feel that it means more when it is a difficult, tentative process. The Karate Kid learning his stuff from an old book would seem somehow less meaningful.
I like that the Church requires a spoken confession of sins to a priest, even though I find this incredibly difficult and embarrassing and intimidating. God forgiving my sins through a wordless, silent, invisible process seems somehow banal and anti-climactic. That they should be forgiven at all is astounding and gratuitous enough. How could I wish for it to be any easier? And—though confession is a mystical sacrament and not a psychological coping mechanism—where is the catharsis in a purely mental confession?
I like saints. I like reading about Marian apparitions. I like relics. I like shrines. I like feasts. I even like fasts (especially when they’re over).
I like homilies. I like candles glowing before shrines. I like the poetry of names like Jesus and Ezekiel and Isaac and Melchizedek.
I like ritual, for its own sake—I believe ritual expresses something, enacts something, that mere words or thoughts never could. I've noticed that people tend to make rituals of the things they love—even if it’s something like sitting down to a cup of tea and a coffee slice before opening their favourite magazine each week.
I liked John Paul the Second. I like Pope Benedict the Sixteenth even more.
I even like the penumbral, cultural aspects of Catholicism-- things that aren't strictly Catholicism itself but that seem imbued with its spirit. I like little devotional magazines with covers showing cornfields and daffodills and stone walls, magazines that mix meditations on the Gospels with household tips and trivia about The Great Wall of China. I like gently-coloured hoIy pictures. I even like programmes like A Prayer at Bedtime. I don’t like any of those things ironically or knowingly, nor do I consider them kitsch. I like them for what they are.
I like thinking of all the millions of very different men and women, all over the world and all through the centuries, who spoke the same prayers that I speak today, who meditated upon the same mysteries of the Rosary, who recited the same Creeds, who partook of the same Eucharist. I cherish the spiritual communion with all those souls. I don’t see how watering down that continuity makes the Church, somehow, belong more to The People.
No doubt the Still Catholics who trudge reluctantly to Mass and who call for radical “renewal” in the Church would consider me otiose, complacent, brainwashed. They might even call me a sheep.
But I don’t mind that too much. After all, Our Saviour never used that comparison as a slur, did he?
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Quite Ignorant: or, Don't Forget Everything You Think You Know Just Yet
For my birthday a few months ago, my brother bought me The Book of General Ignorance. This is a spin-off from the QI (Quite Interesting) TV show, hosted by Stephen Fry, with help from Alan Davies. (I've only seen snatches of the show here and there; it's a comedy panel quiz, which purports to explode popular myths.) Both of those gentlemen being fully-paid up members of the British Atheist Comedians' Front, I anticipated there would be some swipes at religion between the book's covers. (Of course, they didn't write it, but no doubt the actual writers share their ideological colouring.) I've only got round to glancing at the book today, but my suspicions turned out to be well-founded.
Under the heading Was Hitler a Vegetarian? (it claims he wasn't; but as you'll see, I'm rather wary of accepting anything this book claims), we are treated to this obiter dictum:
Nor was he an atheist. Here he is in full, unambiguous flow in Mein Kampf(1925): "I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work." He was to use the same form of words in a Reichstag speech in 1938.
Three years later, he told General Gerhard Engel: "I am now, as before, a Catholic, and will always remain so."
Far from being a "godless" state, Nazi Germany enthusiastically worked with the Catholic Church. Infantry soldiers each wore a belt with "Gott mitt uns" (God is with us) inscribed on the buckle, and blessings of troops and equipment were regular and widespread.
First of all, there is the laughable naivety-- in a book dedicated to debunking myths, no less!-- of taking Hitler at his word. I seem to remember a few statesmen ended up rather red-faced for doing just that. Hitler said whatever it took to attain his ambitions, and he poured scorn on old-fashioned notions of honour; for instance, when he betrayed the Soviet-Nazi pact with his sudden, undeclared war on the USSR.
Then there is the scandalously bald assertion that "Nazi Germany enthusiastically worked with the Catholic Church". Presumably this refers to the Concordat Hitler signed with the Vatican in 1933. Of course, signing a Concordat with the Vatican cannot be defined as "working with" the Church, since a Vatican Concordat showed the Church had a problematic relationship
with the State in question.
Last year, getting tired of the frequent swipes about Catholic complicity with the Nazis, I invested in a book called Hitler, the War and the Pope by Ronald J. Rychlak. It is a thorough and painstaking response to books like John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope, whose title speaks for itself. (Even the cover photograph of Cornwell's book, it reveals, is manipulated, to make it look as though Pope Pius XII is being saluted by Nazis; they are, in fact, Weimar soldiers, and the picture was taken when Pope Pius XII was not Pope, but the Papal nuncio to Germany.)
Amongst other things, the Rychlak book thoroughly demolishes the myth of a Catholic Hitler (also invoked by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion). Many passages could be quoted, but this one puts it quite succinctly:
Hitler did not receive Communion as an adult and had essentially excommunicated himself. The events surrounding Hitler's suicide make it clear that the Catholic religion had no influence over him, even at the time of his death. His wedding ceremony was carried out by a justic of the peace, not a priest. In addition, suicide has always been in violation of Catholic doctrine, and would have meant almost certain damnation to a devout Catholic. In 1945, cremation was also in clear violation of the Church's teaching. Moreover, despite his planning and the numerous directions that were left for others to carry out, Hitler made no arrangements for the last rites or any type of Christian burial. If the Catholic faith had meant anything to him, he certainly would have made some type of arrangement along these lines.
(Although, considering how little attention many professing Catholics pay to the requirements of their faith, one wonders if even this can be as definitive as we would wish it to be.)
Aside from the ridiculous claim that Hitler was any sort of Catholic, it is a cheap slur to assert that Nazi Germany "worked with the Catholic Church". Here is a sample of this close working relationship, according to Rychlak:
By 1935, Church leaders in Germany were regularly subjected to physical violence; hundreds of priests and other Church officials were arrested, driven into exile, accused of immorality, or charged with violating currency regulations. The trials, which ran for years, were designed to destroy the reputations of monks and nuns by showing their "perverted and immoral" lifestyles. Many of the trials were designed and publicized as a propaganda campaign to convince Catholic parents not to send their children to Catholic schools...The New York Times reported one incident in May 1936: A priest was summoned to a "sick call" at a hotel room, and when he arrived, photographers were there to film him with a prostitute hired by the Gestapo.
Enthusiastic? I guess so.
This is what Herman Goring had to say about his supposed enthusiastic bedfellows:
Catholic believers carry away but one impression from attendance at divine services and that is that the Catholic Church rejects the institution of the Nationalist State. How could it be otherwise when they are continually engaging in polemics on political questions or events in their sermons...hardly a Sunday passes but that they abuse the religious atmosphere of the divine service in order to read pastoral letters on purely political subjects.
And then, of course, there is the famous encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety) which had to be smuggled into Nazi Germany and was read from pulpits on Palm Sunday, March 12, 1937. (The encyclical caught the Nazis off guard; by the time worshippers were leaving Mass, it was already being confiscated, and even mentioning it was eventually made a crime.)
The encyclical contains such pro-Nazi sentiments as:
Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the state, or a particular form of state, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community—however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things—whoever raises these notions above their standard value and raises them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God.
Pope Pius XII, "Hitler's Pope", continually condemned racism and anti-semitism from Vatican Radio, gave refuge to thousands of Jews within the shelter of the Vatican and ordered convents and monasteries to do the same, and even met and encouraged the conspirators of the failed "General's plot" dramatized in the recent film Valkyrie. When he died, this is what the Jewish Post of Winnipeg had to say:
It is understandable why the death of Pope Pius XII should have called forth expressions of sincere grief from practically all sections of American Jewry. For there probably was not a single ruler of our generation who did more to help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy, during the Nazi occupation of Europe, than the late Pope.
The Jewish Chronicle of London had this to say:
Adherents of all creeds and parties will recall how Pius XII faced the responsibilites of his exalted office with courage and devotion. Before, during, and after the Second World War, he constantly preached the message of peace. Confronted by the monstrous cruelties of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, he repeatedly proclaimed the virtues of humanity and compassion.
Pinchas E. Lapide, the Israeli consult in Italy, said this:
The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations put together. Its record stands in startling contrast to the achievements of the International Red Cross and the Western Democracies....The Holy See, the nuncios, and the entire Catholic Church, saved some 400, 000 Jews from certain death.
Rychlak's book is packed with similar tributes, statistics, and facts, all of them exhaustively annotated and sourced. The Book of General Ignorance has no bibliography and I can't see citations or sources for any of its (mis)information.
An afterword states: "QI stands for Quite Interesting. We do not claim to be Quite Right."
Rather good thing, that. But then, what's the bloody point of the book (or the show) in the first place?
Under the heading Was Hitler a Vegetarian? (it claims he wasn't; but as you'll see, I'm rather wary of accepting anything this book claims), we are treated to this obiter dictum:
Nor was he an atheist. Here he is in full, unambiguous flow in Mein Kampf(1925): "I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work." He was to use the same form of words in a Reichstag speech in 1938.
Three years later, he told General Gerhard Engel: "I am now, as before, a Catholic, and will always remain so."
Far from being a "godless" state, Nazi Germany enthusiastically worked with the Catholic Church. Infantry soldiers each wore a belt with "Gott mitt uns" (God is with us) inscribed on the buckle, and blessings of troops and equipment were regular and widespread.
First of all, there is the laughable naivety-- in a book dedicated to debunking myths, no less!-- of taking Hitler at his word. I seem to remember a few statesmen ended up rather red-faced for doing just that. Hitler said whatever it took to attain his ambitions, and he poured scorn on old-fashioned notions of honour; for instance, when he betrayed the Soviet-Nazi pact with his sudden, undeclared war on the USSR.
Then there is the scandalously bald assertion that "Nazi Germany enthusiastically worked with the Catholic Church". Presumably this refers to the Concordat Hitler signed with the Vatican in 1933. Of course, signing a Concordat with the Vatican cannot be defined as "working with" the Church, since a Vatican Concordat showed the Church had a problematic relationship
with the State in question.
Last year, getting tired of the frequent swipes about Catholic complicity with the Nazis, I invested in a book called Hitler, the War and the Pope by Ronald J. Rychlak. It is a thorough and painstaking response to books like John Cornwell's Hitler's Pope, whose title speaks for itself. (Even the cover photograph of Cornwell's book, it reveals, is manipulated, to make it look as though Pope Pius XII is being saluted by Nazis; they are, in fact, Weimar soldiers, and the picture was taken when Pope Pius XII was not Pope, but the Papal nuncio to Germany.)
Amongst other things, the Rychlak book thoroughly demolishes the myth of a Catholic Hitler (also invoked by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion). Many passages could be quoted, but this one puts it quite succinctly:
Hitler did not receive Communion as an adult and had essentially excommunicated himself. The events surrounding Hitler's suicide make it clear that the Catholic religion had no influence over him, even at the time of his death. His wedding ceremony was carried out by a justic of the peace, not a priest. In addition, suicide has always been in violation of Catholic doctrine, and would have meant almost certain damnation to a devout Catholic. In 1945, cremation was also in clear violation of the Church's teaching. Moreover, despite his planning and the numerous directions that were left for others to carry out, Hitler made no arrangements for the last rites or any type of Christian burial. If the Catholic faith had meant anything to him, he certainly would have made some type of arrangement along these lines.
(Although, considering how little attention many professing Catholics pay to the requirements of their faith, one wonders if even this can be as definitive as we would wish it to be.)
Aside from the ridiculous claim that Hitler was any sort of Catholic, it is a cheap slur to assert that Nazi Germany "worked with the Catholic Church". Here is a sample of this close working relationship, according to Rychlak:
By 1935, Church leaders in Germany were regularly subjected to physical violence; hundreds of priests and other Church officials were arrested, driven into exile, accused of immorality, or charged with violating currency regulations. The trials, which ran for years, were designed to destroy the reputations of monks and nuns by showing their "perverted and immoral" lifestyles. Many of the trials were designed and publicized as a propaganda campaign to convince Catholic parents not to send their children to Catholic schools...The New York Times reported one incident in May 1936: A priest was summoned to a "sick call" at a hotel room, and when he arrived, photographers were there to film him with a prostitute hired by the Gestapo.
Enthusiastic? I guess so.
This is what Herman Goring had to say about his supposed enthusiastic bedfellows:
Catholic believers carry away but one impression from attendance at divine services and that is that the Catholic Church rejects the institution of the Nationalist State. How could it be otherwise when they are continually engaging in polemics on political questions or events in their sermons...hardly a Sunday passes but that they abuse the religious atmosphere of the divine service in order to read pastoral letters on purely political subjects.
And then, of course, there is the famous encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety) which had to be smuggled into Nazi Germany and was read from pulpits on Palm Sunday, March 12, 1937. (The encyclical caught the Nazis off guard; by the time worshippers were leaving Mass, it was already being confiscated, and even mentioning it was eventually made a crime.)
The encyclical contains such pro-Nazi sentiments as:
Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the state, or a particular form of state, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community—however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things—whoever raises these notions above their standard value and raises them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God.
Pope Pius XII, "Hitler's Pope", continually condemned racism and anti-semitism from Vatican Radio, gave refuge to thousands of Jews within the shelter of the Vatican and ordered convents and monasteries to do the same, and even met and encouraged the conspirators of the failed "General's plot" dramatized in the recent film Valkyrie. When he died, this is what the Jewish Post of Winnipeg had to say:
It is understandable why the death of Pope Pius XII should have called forth expressions of sincere grief from practically all sections of American Jewry. For there probably was not a single ruler of our generation who did more to help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy, during the Nazi occupation of Europe, than the late Pope.
The Jewish Chronicle of London had this to say:
Adherents of all creeds and parties will recall how Pius XII faced the responsibilites of his exalted office with courage and devotion. Before, during, and after the Second World War, he constantly preached the message of peace. Confronted by the monstrous cruelties of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, he repeatedly proclaimed the virtues of humanity and compassion.
Pinchas E. Lapide, the Israeli consult in Italy, said this:
The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organizations put together. Its record stands in startling contrast to the achievements of the International Red Cross and the Western Democracies....The Holy See, the nuncios, and the entire Catholic Church, saved some 400, 000 Jews from certain death.
Rychlak's book is packed with similar tributes, statistics, and facts, all of them exhaustively annotated and sourced. The Book of General Ignorance has no bibliography and I can't see citations or sources for any of its (mis)information.
An afterword states: "QI stands for Quite Interesting. We do not claim to be Quite Right."
Rather good thing, that. But then, what's the bloody point of the book (or the show) in the first place?
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
What Should We Do With the Liberal Catholic?
Apologies for the lack of posting recently—not that I think the internet desperately needs my outpourings, but because even the worst Catholic blog, if fairly regularly updated, must serve as a counterweight to the mighty tidal wave of liberal-left-secularist-progressive blogs, tweets, Facebook pages and goodness knows what else on the Irish internet. The logic is a bit like turning up at a public meeting to lend your lungpower to the right side. It doesn’t really matter what you say as long as you say it loud enough to be heard, and maybe even drown out the other side a little.
Incidentally, and on a biographical note, I have a visitor coming from America soon, a Catholic lady from Richmond, Virginia. Richmond is a small city, and Catholics are in a minority there, but it boasts at least two big churches that are packed out at every Mass. One of them, St. Benedict’s, is sure to delight the hearts of the traditionally-minded; long Mass, lots of Latin, deacons, altar servers in vestments—some of the female worshippers even wear headscarves. And, incredibly, it’s a young parish, with tons of young families and twenty-somethings to be seen.
I’m wondering what she will make of Ireland’s religious life; the strong contrast between the Catholic legacy everywhere to be seen (churches, shrines, streets named after saints, the Angelus bells broadcast on state radio and TV) and the tepid practice (before all the Sunday Masses were amalgamated into one, my local church had as little as nineteen worshippers at the earliest Mass).
But that’s not what I wanted to consider in this post. I wanted to wonder aloud—how should we treat liberal/progressive/left/dissident/cafeteria Catholics?
I have an admission to make. When I’m listening to the radio, or watching TV, or reading a newspaper, or even surfing that ole internet, and I find myself attending to someone giving their opinion about the Catholic church (as everybody does sooner or later), there are certain key words and phrases that make me stop listening. One is “clericalist mindset”. Another is “authoritarian”. Then there are “homophobia”, “reclaim the Church”, and “backward-looking”.
As soon as those catchphrases are used, I’m pretty sure I know what the person is going to say, and I know where the train of thought is going. Into heresy; into the dereliction of dogma and onto the broad, easy path that so many fossilized and perishing human creeds have trod already; into indifferentism and irrelevance.
Nor is this true only of challenges to dogma. I used to read the column of Nuala O’Loan in the Irish Catholic before I heard her, on radio, making the case for women priests. Since then, I skip over her column. Doesn’t she know that Pope Benedict has explained the Church’s stance on female ordination is irrevocable?
But is this right? Should I really stop listening to someone just because they have sounded my liberal alarm on one issue? Might they not have something interesting to say, aside from their errors?
I think there is a danger of the enthusiastically orthodox—like me—mistaking orthodoxy for holiness. The game of “spot the heresy” can become a little too gleeful, a little too self-congratulatory—even a little too pharisaical, perhaps. It is probably the case that the majority of Ireland’s practicing Catholics knowingly go against Church teaching in some way, and I am absolutely sure that thousands upon thousands of them—if not most of them, if not all of them—are closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than I am.
One thing I am always struck by, when reading the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, is the irenicism and calmness of the supposed “Panzerkardinal”. He does not denounce atheists or agnostics or secularists, and has even (I hope I do not misrepresent him) suggested that the dynamic between faith and doubt is part of the human condition; he draws from Protestant theologians and Protestant Biblical scholars; he quotes spiritual writers from other religions, such as Gandhi. Even his recent comments on condom use by homosexuals, utterly distorted as it was by the secular media, show how “edgy” he is willing to be.
I think there is truth in what Chesterton said; when you know where the line is, you can go as close to it as you like. Perhaps the truly orthodox are the least impatient with heresy, the least prone to a “siege mentality”. In any case, liberal Catholics are a presence in Irish life that cannot be ignored; unfortunately, even amongst the clergy. Name-calling and polemics are not going to get us anywhere. I think we have to be nice to the progressives, if we are ever going to win them back to orthodoxy.
Incidentally, and on a biographical note, I have a visitor coming from America soon, a Catholic lady from Richmond, Virginia. Richmond is a small city, and Catholics are in a minority there, but it boasts at least two big churches that are packed out at every Mass. One of them, St. Benedict’s, is sure to delight the hearts of the traditionally-minded; long Mass, lots of Latin, deacons, altar servers in vestments—some of the female worshippers even wear headscarves. And, incredibly, it’s a young parish, with tons of young families and twenty-somethings to be seen.
I’m wondering what she will make of Ireland’s religious life; the strong contrast between the Catholic legacy everywhere to be seen (churches, shrines, streets named after saints, the Angelus bells broadcast on state radio and TV) and the tepid practice (before all the Sunday Masses were amalgamated into one, my local church had as little as nineteen worshippers at the earliest Mass).
But that’s not what I wanted to consider in this post. I wanted to wonder aloud—how should we treat liberal/progressive/left/dissident/cafeteria Catholics?
I have an admission to make. When I’m listening to the radio, or watching TV, or reading a newspaper, or even surfing that ole internet, and I find myself attending to someone giving their opinion about the Catholic church (as everybody does sooner or later), there are certain key words and phrases that make me stop listening. One is “clericalist mindset”. Another is “authoritarian”. Then there are “homophobia”, “reclaim the Church”, and “backward-looking”.
As soon as those catchphrases are used, I’m pretty sure I know what the person is going to say, and I know where the train of thought is going. Into heresy; into the dereliction of dogma and onto the broad, easy path that so many fossilized and perishing human creeds have trod already; into indifferentism and irrelevance.
Nor is this true only of challenges to dogma. I used to read the column of Nuala O’Loan in the Irish Catholic before I heard her, on radio, making the case for women priests. Since then, I skip over her column. Doesn’t she know that Pope Benedict has explained the Church’s stance on female ordination is irrevocable?
But is this right? Should I really stop listening to someone just because they have sounded my liberal alarm on one issue? Might they not have something interesting to say, aside from their errors?
I think there is a danger of the enthusiastically orthodox—like me—mistaking orthodoxy for holiness. The game of “spot the heresy” can become a little too gleeful, a little too self-congratulatory—even a little too pharisaical, perhaps. It is probably the case that the majority of Ireland’s practicing Catholics knowingly go against Church teaching in some way, and I am absolutely sure that thousands upon thousands of them—if not most of them, if not all of them—are closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than I am.
One thing I am always struck by, when reading the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, is the irenicism and calmness of the supposed “Panzerkardinal”. He does not denounce atheists or agnostics or secularists, and has even (I hope I do not misrepresent him) suggested that the dynamic between faith and doubt is part of the human condition; he draws from Protestant theologians and Protestant Biblical scholars; he quotes spiritual writers from other religions, such as Gandhi. Even his recent comments on condom use by homosexuals, utterly distorted as it was by the secular media, show how “edgy” he is willing to be.
I think there is truth in what Chesterton said; when you know where the line is, you can go as close to it as you like. Perhaps the truly orthodox are the least impatient with heresy, the least prone to a “siege mentality”. In any case, liberal Catholics are a presence in Irish life that cannot be ignored; unfortunately, even amongst the clergy. Name-calling and polemics are not going to get us anywhere. I think we have to be nice to the progressives, if we are ever going to win them back to orthodoxy.
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