John A. O'Brien, "Causes of Catholic Leakage" (1932)

[Much of this essay could have been written very recently.]

[412] To the Editor, The Ecclesiastical Review.

The discussion of Catholic leakage in the December issue of the Review has occasioned widespread interest and stimulated a discussion from which certain conclusions would now seem to emerge. (1) The statistics of The Official Catholic Directory, not only in regard to population but also in regard to baptisms and deaths, are apparently so "unbelievably untrustworthy" as to afford no reliable basis for the determination of the gain or loss of the Catholic population for the year 1930. (2) It follows, therefore, that the basis for the estimated loss of half a million for the year 1930, is undermined. While Dr. Ross writing in The Commonweal, 17 February, 1932, seems to contend that the essential framework of his statistical computations still stands, the evidence presented by both Dr. Shaughnessy and Fr. Bernarding is sufficient to shake the confidence of the writer in the reliability of any conclusion based on the figures of the Directory.

It is probably a matter of astonishment to most priests, as it is to the writer, to discover as a result of the excellent studies of Fr. Bernarding and Fr. Shaughnessy just how freakish, untrustworthy, and deceptive these figures really are. Fr. Bernarding puts the case in a nutshell when he reaches the following conclusion concerning the reliability of the Directory figures: "That they are faulty, most priests realize; just how faulty they are, probably very few know. It is only by tables of the returns extending over a number of years, such as the writer has kept for the past decade, that this comes to light. These tables show that out of 108 dioceses and vicariates recorded in the Directory, only thirty-eight, or about one-third, have never sent in the same population figures two years in succession. All the rest have duplicated figures repeatedly, most of them as often as five or six times, and in this some of the large dioceses are the worst offenders."

The gratitude of all the readers is due to both of these writers for the abundant evidence they have presented showing that the figures in the Directory are "unbelievably untrustworthy," and for all practical purposes either utterly meaningless or positively deceptive. Their studies raise in more acute [413] form than ever the question, "Can not some uniform system or method be worked out for the gathering of these vitally important statistics, so that they will be at least substantially reliable?" This appears to be urgently needed if we are to secure any dependable measurement of the annual gain or loss of Catholic population. As Bishop Noll points out, we can not at present determine "whether the Catholic population is growing or declining".

Before taking up the discussion of the sources of leakage, may I refer briefly and impersonally to two criticisms? Dr. Shaughnessy characterizes my presentation of the statistical groundwork published by Dr. Ross in The Commonweal as "slavish copying," and because I presented one of these computations twice, I am convicted of "absurd logic". Careful reading of my article will disclose my express acknowledgment of Dr. Ross's study as the source of the data presented, coupled with reference by name to Dr. Ross not less than six times. This shows that I made no pretense of originality and was content to play the humble role of reporter. Furthermore, I secured a more detailed statement of the statistical method used by Dr. Ross than appeared in The Commonweal, and presented it in a footnote so that it might be subjected to the most searching scrutiny. While presenting his thesis as cogently as I could, I invited refutation of the statistical groundwork by the presentation of factual evidence. Both Fr. Bernarding and Dr. Shaughnessy have presented abundant evidence and have the gratitude of the readers and of myself for so doing. In stating the above I do not wish to shift any onus to Dr. Ross. For carrying the discussion of the Review, where it would receive due attention and scrutiny, I assume sole responsibility.

It will be remembered that earlier in the year a story had appeared not only in every Catholic paper but in practically every secular newspaper in the country, stating that according to figures released by the Directory, the Catholic population of the U. S. for the year ending Dec. 31, 1930, was 20,091,593. This, the news story stated, represented a gain of but 13,391 over the preceding year in spite of the addition of 39,528 converts. On the very face of the story, there was apparently a loss in the number of born Catholics, which became disturbingly [414] large when one realized that the natural increase by excess of births over deaths, would alone mount into the hundreds of thousands. A few months later appeared Dr. Ross's article. What better place to have this disturbing problem solved than in the Review, a magazine for the discussion of problems affecting the priestly ministry? Like every other priest in the country, I am glad to learn that any story based on the Directory figures is, as Mark Twain observed of the report of his death, "slightly exaggerated".

Secondly, Fr. Shaughnessy pictures the writer as charging that the Church in America is "decadent, corrupt, and corroded to the heart," and as attacking "the good faith of bishops, priests, and people". Why? Because of the view I expressed that "we have unwittingly and unwillingly contributed vast annual quotas of born Catholics to swell the ever-growing army of the churchless around us." But this is a complete non sequitur. Even if the loss were so great as one out of every forty, it would not be a direct reflexion [sic] upon our bishops, priests, and people. The unfairness and the illogicality of such a charge can be clearly shown by a simple reductio ad absurdum. One out of twelve left Christ. Shall we say, therefore, that Judas's defection is a direct attack upon the character of Jesus Chrsit? Qui nimis probat, nihil probat.

Causes of Leakage

Let us come now to the causes of leakage. There is probably no priest in America who will question the fact that there are defections from the Church here, as there are in every country in the world. Not only now, but in every age since Judas sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. What is the size of the annual leakage? There are apparently no reliable statistics by which this can at present be determined. But that it is too large to be ignored, is also the conviction of every priest out on the firing-line. There is probably scarcely a parish in America but has its quota of sheep "lost, strayed, or stolen". That few from our ranks are to be found in the constantly increasing army of over sixty-five millions of people, surrounding us on every side, who are unaffiliated in any active way with any church, is an illusion held by none of the bishops or priests with whom the writer has convassed [sic] the subject.

[415] In a recent address, Cardinal Mundelein pointed out that, with the streams of immigration stopped, the growth of the Church will be effected [sic] by gaining converts and stopping defections. But in order to stop defections it is necessary first to discover their causes. In order that the study might reflect something like a cross-section of the observations and experience of the bishops and priests of the country, about forty personal letters were sent in December and January to prelates, pastors, and priests engaged in education and acting as editors in various parts of the United States. In addition, about ten laymen who are distinguished for their services to the Church, and who have unusually wide contacts, were consulted. The response manifested a degree of interest on the part of bishops, prelates, members of the secular and regular clergy, as well as of laymen, that was little short of a revelation to the writer. All but about three responded. Many went out of their way to say that the investigation was most timely and that nothing but good could result from a frank and courageous facing of the causes of leakage.

1. Lack of Priests and Churches.

One of the fundamental causes for leakage has been the lack of an adequate number of priests to provide ministrations of religion for a population which in a little more than a century and a half has spread over a vast wilderness of forest and prairie stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In this incessant trek of vast migrations to the West, it was inevitable that great numbers of people would find themselves in settlements where there was neither priest nor church, and where a priest would not be seen for years. Despite the heroism of those pioneer priests and missionaries, the vast expanse of territory made it simply impossible for them to reach the myriad settlements which sprang up everywhere in the marvelous epic of the making of America.

The carving of a vast empire out of a virgin wilderness covering an expanse of over three thousand miles in a little over a century and a half, has had as its inevitable concomitant the dispersion of uncounted numbers into settlements where the ministrations of religion could not possibly be secured. The result has been that great numbers—whose magnitude we can [416] only conjecture—deprived of contact with priest, sister, or teaching brother, have been lost to the faith.

The conditions described are still to be found in some degree in the missionary diocese of the South and West. A bishop in the Southwest informs the writer of parishes in his dioceses which cover over a hundred miles before the nearest parish is reached. There are families in remote parts of these parishes, comprising a territory larger than some whole dioceses in Europe, which can be reached only a few times a year. Priests who have labored in missionary dioceses in the West and South have reported visiting out-of-the-way settlements and encountering families who had not had the ministrations of a priest either to baptize their children or bury their dead for over a decade.

It was because of the conditions such as this that Bishop Kelley established the Extension Chapel Car, to bring the comforts of religion at least periodically to thousands of scattered settlements in remote districts of our country. The erection of hundreds of little mission churches by the Extension Society and the sending of priests to minister to them occasionally have undoubtedly served to rescue many thousands who otherwise would have lapsed, due to circumstances over which they had little or no control.

The evidence of lapses due to this factor are not, however, confined to the South or West. There are scars to be found in probably the great majority of counties in our land. Take, for instance, the heart of Illinois, where the Church is vigorous and well-organized. From the church in which the writer ministers you can travel in one direction over an arterial highway thirty-five miles before you come to another Catholic church. Yet along that highway you pass through eight towns, villages, and settlements in which there is not even an out-mission. For fifteen years the writer has read in the local newspapers of marriages and burials of scores of people with distinctively Irish Catholic names—the services taking place in Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, or Disciples' churches.

According to pioneer priests they are the descendants of families which settled there in the early days when priests were very few and they have been for over half a century without [417] the ministrations of priest or church. The result is that there is scarcely a vestige of Catholicity left in the families throughout this particular territory. Priests have informed the writer of many such territories where a similar story could be told. Indeed the question might well be raised as to whether there are many counties in the country in which evidence of the ruthless operation of this factor could not be found.

Dr. Charles P. Neill, who has brought honor to the Church by the distinguished record he has achieved in the friendly settlement of disputes between capital and labor, from the administration of President Roosevelt to the present time, lays great stress upon this factor. Incidentally Dr. Neill reports that Archbishop Ireland, strongly convinced, as a result of his long ministry and his wide observations, of a tremendous leakage, urged Dr. Neill to make a thorough investigation of its extent and causes. It is a real misfortune that the pressure of many duties prevented so able a scholar in the social and economic fields from undertaking such a systematic investigation many years ago. "I think there is no doubt," says Dr. Neill, "that there has been a tremendous leakage, and some valuable studies might be made in this field. A very thorough investigation should be made." Perhaps it might still be possible to secure Dr. Neill to direct such an investigation on a nation-wide scale, if it could be properly financed. The writer knows of no one more competent. The results would be invaluable.

Stressing especially the lack of priests, Dr. Neill relates how this was driven home to him at Johns Hopkins. "At an earlier period," he writes, "I think there was a tremendous falling off due to an environment in which there was lack of opportunities for the practice of the Catholic faith. This was brought forcibly to my mind a good many years ago when I was a student at Johns Hopkins. Another Catholic student and myself who were in the graduate department decided to attempt the organization of a Catholic society from among the graduate students in the Department of Economics. We went over the list of names and found such names as Riley, Callahan, Moran, and similar names which gave us reason for believing that they might be Catholics. We approached these students, to find that none of them were Catholics. Going into [418] the matter with them we found in practically all cases, that the families had originally been Catholic a few generations back. Some of them were from southern states where in the early generations the Church was very poorly organized and where probably they did not see a priest as often as once a year. One particular case impressed me very strongly where the student's name was M . . . , from Michigan. He told me that his family had moved to Michigan in the early days and were Catholics, but that there was no church organization in the section to which his grandfather had gone and that gradually they had drifted away from the Church entirely, although the descendants of his father's brother, who had remained in the east, were all still members of our Church."

2. Lack of Religious Instruction.

In the judgment of Bishop O'Hara and of a considerable number of the contributors to this investigation, lack of religious instruction is the largest single cause of leakage at the present time. Bishop O'Hara gives the following succinct statement of the case: "We have 18,000 churches and only 8,000 schools. Consequently, there are 10,000 groups of children who, under our futile system of Sunday schools, have very little chance to know what their religion is about. Our 2,500,000 children not in Catholic schools need to be better cared for. Real religious instruction, on the intellectual plane, is of course, by necessity, a matter of adolescents and adults. A mastery of the abstract principles of religion is only possible to minds somewhat developed. Here is a great weakness. The vast majority of young folks in America get secular training in high schools and large numbers in colleges, but comparatively few Catholics have religious education beyond the eighth grade. Adult religious education must keep pace with adult secular education—or religion must suffer a loss. The large number who cannot be brought to Catholics schools, have been very largely neglected."

The importance of this factor is likewise stressed by Monsignor Joseph H. McMahon, who ranks it as one of the two most prolific causes of defection. "In regard to this factor," Monsignor McMahon writes, "we find it almost impossible to get the children attending the public schools to come for religious instruction, or even to Sunday school. Once they [419] have been graduated from the elementary grades they are lost to us as a rule unless the home be thoroughly Catholic. This is unlikely, as, if it were so, the children would not be attending public schools. Of course parishes are to blame where there are not Catholic schools. In some cases the higher authorities have all the blame . . . Unless our children go from our elementary schools to Catholic high schools, (1) they never get more than an elementary education in their religion; (2) their association in public high schools dulls their faith, weakens their hold on the religious knowledge they possessed when leaving the elementary schools; (3) kills all devotional practices; (4) destroys any idea of making sacrifices for their faith; (5) gradually eliminates the supernatural from their lives and leaves them with the secular standard of worldly success as the one object worthy of achievement."

Similar stress is placed upon lack of religious instruction as second among the causes why so many Catholics are falling away to-day, by Fr. Joseph McSorley, C.S.P., who says: "there is too little education of the sort which will fit the soul of the individual for the trials—moral and religious—of life." Our people do not know their religion. We do not equip them with a personal apologetic with which they can meet the onset of hostile criticism, or even their own difficulties arising from modern unbelief and indifferentism."

That the problem of devising more effective means of reaching with careful systematic religious instruction the 2,500,000 children not in our parish schools, is one of the most urgent facing us to-day, is becoming increasingly apparent to pastors everywhere. Until this gap is plugged, it seems inevitable that a continued leakage of large proportions will occur. Readers are probably aware of the two means which Bishop O'Hara has devised of meeting this problem, at least in part—the religious vacation school and the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. Dr. Matthew Smith of The Denver Register calls attention to another practice instituted by Bishop O'Hara for reaching with a religious message people who would otherwise go untouched.

"It has always been my opinion," says Dr. Smith, "that our rural churches were used too little. If a priest goes only once a month, that is no reason why the church should remain locked [420] at other times. Bishop O'Hara has the people gathered together in every mission each Sunday morning for the recitation of the Rosary, reading of the Epistle and Gospel by one of the men, and then a catechism lesson for the youngsters and a study-club session for the adults. The results have been startling. The idea is very old—it is merely an adaptation of the catechist method to our rural missions. If it had been followed a generation ago, thousands who are now Methodists, Baptists, or nothing, would be Catholics. May the movement started in Great Falls spread!"

3. Lack of Home Training

It would seem difficult to overstress the basic importance of proper home training. Church and school will labor in vain, unless the home supports and reenforces [sic] the ministry of the other two agencies. It has been the experience of priests, sisters, and teaching brothers that a bad home environment will often speedily nullify the teaching imparted in church and school. A zealous priest who has spent about a quarter of a century in the ministry states the case well. "My experience has brought me into contact with thousands of young Catholics, and I am convinced that the kind of home they come from is much more important than whether they went to a Catholic school or not. Generally speaking, neither the church nor the school can make up for home deficiencies. The home remains the most important agency for religious training and the formation of character. One reason, of course, for the failure of so many homes to give proper Catholic training is the general break-down of the home. But another reason is the emphasis placed on Catholic schools. In September our people hear sermons that seem to say they fulfill their responsibilities as parents if they send their children to a Catholic school. For every such sermon, there should be a second one to emphasize the duties of parents at home for the religious education of their children. In line with this, our schools—at least high schools and colleges—should be doing more than they are to train our young people to fulfill their parental duties later on. And our parishes should strive to develop some machinery for adult education looking in the same direction."

Proper home training is of supreme importance. It must be made focal in our thinking. There has been apparently [421] too much reliance upon other agencies, too great a tendency to shift the unescapable duties of parents to the shoulders of sisters and priests. There is need of driving home to parents the stern realization that upon the fidelity with which they discharge their divinely appointed duties of training their children in the knowledge, love, and practice of their holy religion, the continued growth of God's Church in America will largely hinge.

While the above is only the scratching of the surface of the causes of leakage, and only a fragmentary reflexion of the convictions expressed in over a hundred pages of letters on the writer's desk, it may suffice as the first study of the causes of leakage and of methods of stemming them. Loyalty to Christ and His holy Church does not require that we ignore defections, but that we search for them with eager and open eyes, and upon finding them that we strive by might and main to lessen and eliminate them.

Seated at Jacob's well, the Master pointed toward the Samaritans thronging toward Him, and addressed to His apostles the message that comes to us to-day with peculiar urgency: "Behold! I say to you, lift up your eyes and see the countries: for they are white already to harvest." Until the last sheaf of human souls is gathered unto the eternal hills, and placed at the feet of the Divine Master, the priests of America will struggle and labor and pray, conscious that the stars in their courses are fighting for us. No matter how the tide of victory ebbs and flows, we know that God, and everlasting truth and the "victory which overcometh the world, our faith" are on our side.

John A. O'Brien.

Champaign, Illinois.

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Source: John A. O'Brien, "Causes of Catholic Leakage," Ecclesiastical Review 86 (April 1932): 412–421.

Distinction: Sex/Gender Ontologically and Epistemologically Considered

Whatever sex and gender may be, there is often a conflation in most discussions when trying to define these terms between what they are ontologically, in themselves (in se or per se), and what they are epistemologically (esse ad aliud, being toward another).

Hence people try to define sex and gender along ontological considerations, what is this thing in itself regardless of how people perceive it; arguments of this sort tend to say something like, "A person is this sex/gender even if he/she or anyone in the world doesn't realize it. The person's sex/gender is determined by genetics."

When defining sex and gender along epistemological considerations, arguments of this sort tend to emphasize the social construction and interpretation of each notion, ultimately explaining both as different because of performative qualities.

Yet people on both sides of the spectrum (ho ho...) of this argument will unconsciously conflate both types of argumentation. Hence you'll see some social constructionist or antiessentialist types refer to the "genetic realities/differences" of sex but go on to emphasize the psychological and social perceptions, intuitions, self-consciousness, etc. that predominate any consideration of what sex and gender ultimately are concretely considered for this individual. Something like: "Yes, although her chromosomes are XY, she is a woman because she knew, etc...." Hence the psycho-social, epistemological dimension of the definition of sex/gender dominates the ontological and becomes in turn a new ontological definition, *the* only ontological definition that matters.

Genetic/essentialist types will take the opposite approach: "Whatever she 'thinks' she is, because of the chromosomes XY, she is actually a he." Or more crassly, it's "lipstick on a pig."

However, it seems clear that both dimensions, the ontological and epistemological, are necessary to keep distinguished and present when discussing sex/gender, for these ultimately can be understood only by both aspects.

It must be remembered that the effects produced causally by genes will always have exceptions; this does not mean that biological sex is somehow more complicated or varied than the binary of male-female. It simply illustrates a basic facet of causality in reality: the transition (ho ho...) from cause to effect is not always and everywhere perfectly accomplished. This is precisely the importance and meaning of final causality in such discussions. All things being equal, this cause tends to produce this range of effects; this cause tends to result in this range of effects if nothing impedes or hinders the causal chain. The fact that not all things are equal or that circumstances occur in which that causal chain is impeded does nothing to change the fact of its final causality. We would never say a lightbulb under any circumstances gives birth to a baby; such an effect is in no way possible given its teleology. But certainly the lightbulb can fail to emit light for any number of reasons; such a failure does not mean the lightbulb is "more complex" than a certain light-producing entity powered by electricity. It simply means that the cause, for various reasons, failed to result in the range of expected effects. We may or may not know why that happened, but that is immaterial to the causality itself.

Hence the mere existence of intersex conditions says nothing about the biological finality of genetics; it says something about the chaotic nature of reality itself, in which not every cause leads inevitably, always and everywhere, to its intended effect. A definition, therefore, cannot be based on an accidental exception foreign to the intrinsic nature of the cause itself, a nature that becomes clearly discernible over time through scientific investigation and peer review.

Investigation and peer review bring us to the epistemological consideration of sex/gender. We judge the sex/gender of others based on sensible signs that accrue from gradual observation. Mischaracterization of peoples' sex/gender boil down to a threefold possible failure: 1) on the side of the misgendered person, who perhaps gives off ambiguous signs about his/her sexual/gender identity; 2) on the side of the interpreter, who failures to interpret properly those signs; or both. There are an innumerable number of possible reasons why such a mischaracterization may occur.

This distinction can obviously be further expanded, but I'll leave it there for now.

Repost: Our Boys; What Are We Doing for Them?

[51] In every well organized parish of any considerable size in this country, the religious and social instincts of the congregation are supplied with manifold outlets of activity through societies sufficiently diversified to meet the inclinations [52] of all. This is particularly true of city churches. Devotional, benevolent, educational, temperance and insurance societies flourish and bring forth admirable fruit among the men. Sodalities of various kinds help to preserve and stimulate the faith and virtue of our young women. The parochial school, or where its existence is not yet practicable, the Sunday school, shapes the young heart and mind in moulds of correct religious principles. In fact the entire line of defence [sic] against the inroads of infidelity and sinfulness seems strongly maintained; but while, in comparing our continued growth in strength with the manifest disintegration of the sects, we may take honorable pride in the possession of the principle that marks true progress, it would be folly not to admit at the same time the existence of weak spots in our safeguards here and there, which, as facts plainly prove, our enemy has discovered and taken advantage of.

We propose here briefly to point out one of these vulnerable spots and see how best we can repair and strengthen it. The period that elapses between the age of fifteen, when the average boy leaves school, and the attainment of his majority, is unquestionably a most important one in the formation of his character. During these years the imitative faculty, which is universally characteristic of childhood, becomes a dangerous element if unrestrained or not diverted into wholesome channels. Now it is a lamentable fact, the result presumably of our natural proneness to evil, that bad example is more readily followed than good, and, owing to the same inherent tendency, bad habits are more easily acquired and tenaciously adhered to than good ones. The early use of tobacco familiarly illustrates this inclination in vetitum among boys, and we know that the greater vices have a similar fascination and are proudly adopted by the boy who is physically almost a man in the same spirit of manhood mimicry. Habits of crime and carelessness among boys and young men are the logical consequence of this condition of things, and our reformatories and penal institutions contain emphatic evidence of youthful depravity, the result of uncontrolled boyhood. Besides these, what we may call extreme [53] cases, there is another class more numerous by far who go but seldom to Mass and never frequent the Sacraments, young men, too, who as boys in class room or Sunday school gave promise of unswerving fidelity to their religious duties; but the guardians of their souls lost sight of them for a few precious years and when next they met them were surprised to discover that so many of them had drifted far away from the fold.

It will be urged that we, the clergy, are not responsible for this, that the parents are the natural guardians of the child, and by divine right and obligation should keep their boys in the paths of duty so clearly staked out for them by the Church; moreover, the good influences of home should form an efficient antidote to the contagious poison of bad example. But as a matter of fact parents are not always alive to this duty, which is more difficult in the case of boys than of girls, for whom the ordinary safeguards of home generally suffice as a check to evil tendencies. There are, of course, many homes the atmosphere of which developes [sic] steady and good habits in boys, who subsequently become good young men. But the average boy is exposed to other influences equally or more powerful than those of the home circle. The boy of the laborer as a rule finds his attraction outdoors, especially at evenings, and fortunate is he if he escape the pitfalls which await his steps on all sides. The street corner has its quota of worthless young hoodlums who fairly revel in "manly" vice and vulgarity; the saloon, one of the Church's mightiest foes, opens its glistening doors—though unlawfully—eager to fill the places of those who are constantly falling from the dignity of customers to the degradation of victims; the cheap and nasty theatre [sic], conspicuously and immodestly advertised, abounding in immoral suggestiveness, attracts and corrupts him; add to this a passion, not uncommon, for flashy and criminal literature and the road to ruin stretches alluringly before him.

Where are we, the clergy, with the many soul-saving appliances at our disposal, in behalf of these victims? Can we stand by, with folded arms, watching the downward procession [54] of boys going to their ruin as they absorb the seeds of vice that permeate the atmosphere around them? It will not do to trust wholly to the moral strength that Christian education, and holy Mass, and the Sacraments have in the past supplied to destroy these pernicious germs, for evil is a ceaseless and a quick growth, especially in the youth. But what more can we do?

If it is an excellent thing to provide or encourage places where men can innocently or profitably spend an evening, such as the parish lyceums or society club rooms, and to establish also, where feasible, like institutions for young women; then a similar provision for the boy—who is father to the man—cannot be deemed less advantageous.

We venture to suggest that there should be in every parish large enough to afford it, some place where the boys, who will not spend their evenings at home (and often small blame to them for it), may congregate and occupy themselves harmlessly and pleasantly; a resort which will be an efficient counter-attraction to those places in which his morals would be in danger, where his natural buoyancy and love of amusement may find innocent scope in games, gymnastics, music, and light, clean reading, where, in short, the boy will be willingly kept under the protecting wing of Mother Church during these years which, perhaps, of his whole life are most fraught with danger.

There are, we know, parishes in which such provision is made for boys who have just left school. Readings and theatricals of a healthy and instructive character, drills, hours devoted to various branches of industrial training, relieved by games, music, and occasional out-door festivities, give interest and zest to the meetings and create an espirit de corps which rarely fails to do good service to the Church, not only in its parochial, but in its wider social relations.

But the subject deserves a larger share of attention than it actually receives, and it is with a view of eliciting discussion of it in the pages of the REVIEW that we have ventured to broach it here.

W. J. M.

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Source: W. J. M., "Our Boys; What Are We Doing for Them?," American Ecclesiastical Review 8 (January 1893): 51–54.

The Vitality of a Society is Found in Its Spiritual Roots

The central conviction which has dominated my mind ever since I began to write is the conviction that the society or culture which has lost its spiritual roots is a dying culture, however prosperous it may appear externally. Consequently the problem of social survival is not only a political or economic one; it is above all things religious, since it is in religion that the ultimate spiritual roots both of society and the individual are to be found.

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Source: Christopher Dawson, Enquiries into Religion and Culture (London: Sheed & Ward, 1933), vi.

The Scientism Within Sociology

From the beginning sociology has been haunted by the dream of explaining social phenomena by the mathematical and quantitative methods of the physical sciences and thus creating a science of society which will be completely mechanistic and determinist. The path of sociology is strewn with the corpses of defunct systems of “social physics,” “social energetics” and “social mechanics,” and their failure does little to discourage fresh adventures. Such systems have little use for history or for social reality; they content themselves with generalizations that have no significance and with “laws” which are nothing but false analogies.

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Christopher Dawson, “Sociology as a Science,” in Dynamics of World History, ed. John J. Mulloy (Washington, DE: ISI Books, 2002), 22. Originally published in Science for a New World, ed. Arthur Thomson and J. G. Crowther (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1934).

Rene Girard on the False Promise of Modernity

Great novelists, however, such as Stendhal, Proust, and Dostoyevsky, show the truly negative nature of the modern project: “In the eyes of the novelist, modem man suffers, not because he refuses to become fully and totally aware of his autonomy, but because that awareness, whether real or illusory, is for him intolerable.”[1] But they also show that modern man is very good at deceiving himself. He sees that the promise of autonomous fullness is not realized in himself, but he continually finds others in whom he suspects it is being fulfilled:

Each individual discovers in the solitude of his consciousness that the promise is false but no one is able to universalize his experience. The promise remains true for Others. Each one believes that he alone is excluded from the divine inheritance and takes pains to hide this misfortune. Original sin is no longer the truth about all men as in a religious universe but rather each individual’s secret…[2]

The contrast between the pre-modern “religious universe,” and modernity is important. In more Christian times, it could be recognized that the emptiness and misery of man were the products of original sin, and thus common to all, but in the age of secular humanism the experience of nothingness is a shameful secret. We can see here a reason for the infinity of desire that Girard does not make fully explicit: desire (especially in its modern form) is the desire to be God. God is therefore the ultimate rival, and desire includes an implicit hatred of God.

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Footnotes:

1. René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1965), 159

2. Ibid., 57.

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Source: Edmund Waldstein, "Desire, Deicide, and Atonement: René Girard and St. Thomas Aquinas," Sancrucensis blog, May 12, 2016, accessed February 2, 2017, https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/desire-deicide-and-atonement-rene-girard-and-st-thomas-aquinas/. 

Repost: NRK Documentary "The Gender Equality Paradox" (2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70&t=0s

Wikipedia page on the series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask

Repost: "Whose Sex Change Was It?: Caitlyn Jenner and the Boundaries of Public Identity"

Below is an insightful commentary on the importance and power of collective social construction in the notion of gender and "reality."

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Lately, there has been no shortage of commentators eager to discuss Caitlyn Jenner’s recent Vanity Fairy cover (featured above). In the public eye, Jenner has been a famous male athlete-turned reality show husband-turned transgender femme fatale, and this series of transformations has inspired plenty of ogling. Conservative outlets seem to decry the former Bruce’s sex change as something bewildering and strange (if not disgusting and unnatural), while more progressive ones praise her as a heroine who has had the courage to publicly reveal her “true self.”

But in the midst of the back and forth over the acceptability of Jenner’s identity change have been several other voices who recognize that for all the talk of liberation, Jenner’s female identity means that she’s now subjected to new restrictions that she likely did not experience before making her sex change public. While her athletic prowess and strength were conversation points when she identified as a man, as a woman her appearance is now center-stage. Her body has been scrutinized to ensure it matches unreachable beauty standards, down to her tight, restrictive clothing and made-up face. The public chatter surrounding Jenner has thus largely focused on the degree to which she has accomplished the physical markers of proper womanhood down to every last, painful detail. No matter whether one thinks Jenner “really is” a woman – an authenticity debate with an endless variety of twists and turns – what is perhaps more intriguing here is that she is absolutely being treated like one.

For those of us interested in the politics of identity there is yet another implication, for what Jenner’s case reveals is the fact that while we may perceive ourselves to be self-determining agents exercising our free will in shaping our own destinies, we can only do this to the degree that we are socially legible beings. In other words, the public’s intense voyeuristic interest in Jenner would hardly be satiated with a photo of her donning a baggy tee-shirt and sweatpants. Had she worn such attire, I suspect her sex change would have been pronounced a failure in the minds of many. While Jenner may thus have physically initiated the act of a sex change herself, the lingering irony is that the sex change was also imposed back upon her by a public that expects her to symbolically bear the burden of sexual proof in order to achieve the privilege of a specific social categorization, “woman.”

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Source: Leslie Smith, "Whose Sex Change Was It?: Caitlyn Jenner and the Boundaries of Public Identity," Culture on the Edge blog, June 5, 2015, accessed June 5, 2015, http://edge.ua.edu/leslie-dorrough-smith/whose-sex-change-was-it-caitlyn-jenner-and-the-ironies-of-public-controversy/.

Repost: "Marriage, a History"

Through most of Western civilization, marriage has been more a matter of money, power and survival than of delicate sentiments. In medieval Europe, everyone from the lord of the manor to the village locals had a say in deciding who should wed. Love was considered an absurdly flimsy reason for a match. Even during the Enlightenment and Victorian eras, adultery and friendship were often more passionate than marriage. These days, we marry for love—and are rewarded with a blistering divorce rate.

Antiquity-Renaissance

What's love got to do with it? In early history, politics and money trumped emotions.

Ancient Greece: Love is a many-splendored (manly) thing. Love is honored—especially between men. In marriage, inheritance is more important than feelings: A woman whose father dies without male heirs can be forced to marry her nearest male relative—even if she has to divorce her husband first.

Rome: Wife-swapping as a career move—Statesman Marcus Porcius Cato divorces his wife and marries her off to his ally Hortensius in order to strengthen family bonds; after Hortensius dies, Cato remarries her.

6th-century Europe: Political polygamy—The Germanic warlord Clothar, despite being a baptized Christian, eventually acquires four wives for strategic reasons, including his dead brother's wife, her sister and the daughter of a captured foreign king.

12th-century Europe: Marriage is good for loving...someone else—Upper-class marriages are often arranged before the couple has met. Aristocrats believe love is incompatible with marriage and can flourish only in adultery.

14th-century Europe: It takes a village—Ordinary people can't choose whom to marry either. The lord of one Black Forest manor decrees in 1344 that all his unmarried tenants—including widows and widowers—marry spouses of his choosing. Elsewhere, peasants wishing to pick a partner must pay a fee.

16th-century Europe: Love's a bore—Any man in love with his wife must be so dull that no one else could love him, writes the French essayist Montaigne.

1600s-Victorian Era

It's a family affair: Married love gains currency, but for intimacy and passion, people still turn to family, lovers and friends.

1690s U.S.: Virginia wasn't always for lovers—Passionate love between husband and wife is considered unseemly: One Virginia colonist describes a woman he knows as "more fond of her husband perhaps than the politeness of the day allows." Protestant ministers warn spouses against loving each other too much, or using endearing nicknames that will undermine husbandly authority.

18th-century Europe: Love gains ground—In England and in the salons of Enlightenment thinkers, married love is gaining credibility. Ladies' debating societies declare that while loveless marriages are regrettable, women must consider money when choosing a partner.

1840, England: Virgin lace—Queen Victoria starts a trend by wearing virginal white, instead of the traditional jeweled wedding gown. Historically thought of as the lustier sex, women are now considered chaste and pure. As a result, many men find it easier to have sex with prostitutes than with their virtuous wives.

Mid 19th-century U.S.: Honeymoon suite for three—Honeymoons replace the older custom of "bridal tours," in which the newly married couple travel after the wedding to visit family who could not attend the ceremony. Even so, many brides bring girlfriends with them on their honeymoons.

20th Century-Today

We worship the couple. Intimacy shrinks to encompass just two, and love becomes the only reason for marriage.

1920s U.S.: How Saturday night began—Dating is the new craze—in restaurants and cars, away from the oversight of family. Popular culture embraces sex, but critics fear that marriage is on the rocks.

1950s U.S.: Marriage is mandatory—Marriage becomes almost universal, and the nuclear family is triumphant: Four out of five people surveyed in 1957 believe that preferring to remain single is "sick," "neurotic" or "immoral."

1970s U.S.: All you need is love?—Self-sufficient women and changing social rules mean marriage is no longer obligatory. Quarreling couples split up rather than make do, and the divorce rate skyrockets.

Today: Bride pride—Marriage is the ultimate expression of love, leading gays and lesbians to seek the right to marry, but also encouraging couples to cohabit until they're sure about their "soul mate." Marriage rates fall—but the fantasy of the perfect wedding is ubiquitous.

Based on research from Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz.

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Source: PT Staff, "Marriage, a History," Psychology Today, May 1, 2005, accessed May 28, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/marriage-history.

Memo: Semiological Exercise Analysis

Memo to analyze this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnOJgDW0gPI) as an example of semiological exercise, the swapping and rearranging of signs and sign systems unique to humans that allows for fictional worlds.

What are its further implications in light of semioethics? What are its assumptions? What does it say and leave out?

Memo: Semiological Replacements—the Natural for the Supernatural

Memo to examine semiological replacements of the natural for the supernatural.

Question: when the supernatural is increasingly displaced, will the natural replace it?

Working definitions: 1) Supernatural: the whole realm of the object of faith and its relations, especially sociological-moral; 2) Natural: the realm of creatures, finite objects, particularly touching sociological-moral matters.

Examples of some sociological-moral matters: global market and economy (capitalism vs. communism); eugenics; smoking (http://www.thetruth.com/about); environment; health and dieting; Saints vs. celebrity role models; hierarchical and informed authorities vs. popular authorities; etc.

The above can be aptly summed up in humanitarian activist work; working for world peace in various ways is especially popular.

Creativity in business also is on the rise in ways that combine cultural values, such as independence and relation.

Memo: Modernist Influences Among Conservative Catholic Communities

Memo to think of and develop sociological surveys to measure modernist influences among conservative and so-called Traditionalist Catholic communities.

Specific dimensions would include the values that underlie liberalism in its various manifestations: political, economic, philosophical. Aesthetics (beauty), morality/ethics, metaphysics (especially hierarchical nature), epistemology (can we know/prove objective morality, God's existence and attributes, human nature, etc.). Social values: independence, human dignity and rights, education, career path, identity formation, subculture, delinquency (drug use, abuse, drop out rates, crime patterns). Religious values (modesty).

Science vs. religion; faith vs. reason; the relation of business, money, and work with faith and small communities (e.g. are there any such Catholics who occupy the so-called "super rich" upper class?).

Is religion and faith seen principally through a modern liberal lens? Etc.

Pope Benedict XV, Traditionalist Divisions, and Neo-Catholics

22. The success of every society of men, for whatever purpose it is formed, is bound up with the harmony of the members in the interests of the common cause. Hence We must devote Our earnest endeavors to appease dissension and strife, of whatever character, amongst Catholics, and to prevent new dissensions arising, so that there may be unity of ideas and of action amongst all. The enemies of God and of the Church are perfectly well aware that any internal quarrel amongst Catholics is a real victory for them. Hence it is their usual practice when they see Catholics strongly united, to endeavor by cleverly sowing the seeds of discord, to break up that union. And would that the result had not frequently justified their hopes, to the great detriment of the interests of religion! Hence, therefore, whenever legitimate authority has once given a clear command, let no one transgress that command, because it does not happen to commend itself to him; but let each one subject his own opinion to the authority of him who is his superior, and obey him as a matter of conscience. Again, let no private individual, whether in books or in the press, or in public speeches, take upon himself the position of an authoritative teacher in the Church. All know to whom the teaching authority of the Church has been given by God: he, then, possesses a perfect right to speak as he wishes and when he thinks it opportune. The duty of others is to hearken to him reverently when he speaks and to carry out what he says.

23. As regards matters in which without harm to faith or discipline—in the absence of any authoritative intervention of the Apostolic See—there is room for divergent opinions, it is clearly the right of everyone to express and defend his own opinion. But in such discussions no expressions should be used which might constitute serious breaches of charity; let each one freely defend his own opinion, but let it be done with due moderation, so that no one should consider himself entitled to affix on those who merely do not agree with his ideas the stigma of disloyalty to faith or to discipline.

24. It is, moreover, Our will that Catholics should abstain from certain appellations which have recently been brought into use to distinguish one group of Catholics from another. They are to be avoided not only as "profane novelties of words," out of harmony with both truth and justice, but also because they give rise to great trouble and confusion among Catholics. Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected: "This is the Catholic faith, which unless a man believe faithfully and firmly; he cannot be saved" (Athanas. Creed). There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism: it is quite enough for each one to proclaim "Christian is my name and Catholic my surname," only let him endeavor to be in reality what he calls himself.

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Source: Pope Benedict XV, "Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum ('Appealing for Peace')," Papal Encyclical, promulgated November 1, 1914, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Ben15/b15adbea.htm.

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If only Catholics realized the truth of this Holy Father's words and lived them, perhaps so much good would be done in the conversion of souls to the full embracing of the Faith and the recognition of the importance of Sacred Tradition. My own gradual embracing of Tradition in its greater totality and integrity was gradual precisely because of my perception that I wasn't so much being evangelized as so uncomfortably pinned, like the speaker in T.S. Eliot's poem The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock:

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? (ln. 55–61)

In other words, I had no sense that self-identified traditionalists were interacting with me out of any actual consideration for my salvation and sanctification, but instead I became a competitor in a most bizarre ideological game. It is growing parlance among (Internet) traditionalists to label quasi-traditionalists as "Neo-Catholics" or "Neo-Conservatives" (cf. Peter Miller, "A Brief Defense of Traditionalism," Seattle Catholic, December 21, 2001, http://www.seattlecatholic.com/article_20011221_A_Brief_Defense_of_Traditionalism.html; Fr. Chad Ripperger, FSSP, "Conservative vs. Traditional Catholicism," Latin Mass (Spring 2001), http://www.latinmassmagazine.com/articles/articles_2001_SP_Ripperger.html; Hilary White, "Revenge of the Neo-Cats," The Remnant Newspaper, November 23, 2011, http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2011-115-white-hilary-neo-cats.htm). In fact, it actually turns out that Neo-Conservative Catholics (Neo-Catholics) are actually liberal Catholics who essentially go through a subconscious intellectual battle to reconcile their dual adherence to traditionalism and modernism (especially Hegelianism, according to Fr. Ripperger). I will note off the bat that some of these treatments, such as Fr. Ripperger's, are quite considerate and thoughtful; a problematic enters in because of the easy association with a general sociological trend that as a whole seems uncharitable.

Why is this an issue for me? Because I've been hurt by their use, and I've been hurt by the division I see these identities cause, and I've seen others hurt by them as well. I've seen how they tend to foster a multitude of sins and environments of sin—occasions of calumny, mockery, indifference, group-thinking, close-mindedness, and pride. I am responding from a place of pain and a desire to make sense of my experiences, perceptions, and what this phenomenon itself reveals in its "observable" aspect, the tendencies and "taxonomic features."

As I said above, as far as sociological function goes, the term may be useful, but as is the tendency with all labels, their use can easily become obviously uncharitable and detrimental to the one promoting its use. Aside from a very brief perusal of online discussions that incorporate these labels, a glance at White's article makes the point clearly enough. Underneath her humorous pretense, the tone and overall effect transmitted by her description of the Neo-Catholic is strikingly condescending, showing no consideration for the wellbeing of the very people she describes, her own brothers and sisters in Christ. This lack of consideration is evinced through certain flippant phrases and hyperbolic descriptions that give the impression that one ought to look at a "Neo-Cat" like he were a clown or a zoo animal (I've bolded lines that particularly stand out in illustrating this tone):

• Neo-Catholics themselves frequently become angry when it is pointed out that it is an observable fact that there are certain taxonomic features that create an identifiable classification to which a distinguishing term, "neo-Catholic" can usefully be applied. They become doubly angry when they realize that it can usefully be applied to them. (Hours of fun can be had at the after-Mass tea ticking these characteristics off one's fingers.) [...]
• Common characteristics of neo-Catholics (often also called neo-conservative Catholics) are a fanatical devotion to a small selection of popes, often incorrectly termed "ultramontanism." This is manifested mainly in their belief that John Paul II was the greatest pope of modern times (who probably walked on water but was too modest to do it in front of anyone) and should be canonized immediately. [...]
• They will then proceed to bore everyone in the room into a coma by reciting their lists of places where [a reverent celebration of the Novus Ordo Mass] is done. [...]
• (Get them started on the Catholic Confessional State as a political concept and watch their heads explode. In fact, start a conversation on the Social Reign of Christ the King at the tea and cookies after a Traditional Mass. It flushes them out; they start screeching like vampires splashed with holy water, to the amusement of all.) [...]
• They are very big on ecumenism, and love to screech at the Trads for our opposition to the Assisi fiascoes [....]
• They will sometimes be opposed to drinking, smoking and card-playing, one of the little ways in which their underlying protestantism peeks out. This can make it easy to quickly distinguish the Neos and the Trads at a party. The former will be standing around in a little clutch cradling a warm, three-hour-old beer, earnestly discussing the pope's latest encyclical or some political thing. The latter will be off in the corner with the recently assimilated Anglicans, balancing martini glasses on their noses while reciting Greek poetry. [...]
• Despite the objections of the Neo-Cats themselves, the phenomenon has become so recognizable that it has its very own whole Wikipedia page [since removed] which, as we know, is the sine qua non of objective affirmation. It ain't really real unless it's on Wiki.

Perhaps people get upset when they are identified with "certain taxonomic features" because the impression they receive from the ones labeling them that seems to possess no benevolent intent or constructive purpose. White never describes how the term is actually useful. We may admit it is sociologically useful under certain circumstances, but if mere factual features are being described, why should this lead to anger on the part of the one described? (Further, why should there be hyperbole and jeering even if under the pretense of humor?) Anger is a response to hurt. Hurt is a response to a perceived evil. Perhaps when another person misconstrues your views, you feel hurt by the caricature. Perhaps when another person forms a caricature of you or your beliefs and gives no sign of friendship, mutual concern, support, consideration, this action is then hurtful. I don't think this requires any stretch of empathy at all to realize how and why a person might become angry.

The hyperbole doesn't need to be addressed. It forms the caricature, and as hyperbole, it cannot claim any sort of accuracy, much less the apparently scientific-esque status of "observable fact" or "certain taxonomic features," which are just fancy ways to legitimize a value assignment on someone, based not on certain faith but matters of legitimately varying opinion, which based on my experience is usually an exercise of intellectual pride. Recall what Bl. John Henry Newman said in Sermon 10 of his Discourses to Mixed Congregations (1849), "Faith and Private Judgment":

Men were told to submit their reason to a living authority. Moreover, whatever an Apostle said, his converts were bound to believe; when they entered the Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them. No one doubts, no one can doubt this, of those primitive times. A Christian was bound to take without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be revealed; if the Apostles spoke, he had to yield an internal assent of his mind; it would not be enough to keep silence, it would not be enough not to oppose: it was not allowable to credit in a measure; it was not allowable to doubt. No; if a convert had his own private thoughts of what was said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some secret opposition to the teaching, if he waited for further proof before he believed it, this would be a proof that he did not think the Apostles were sent from God to reveal His will; it would be a proof that he did not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate, implicit submission of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is now called private judgment. No one could say: "I will choose my religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not believe that; I will pledge myself to nothing; I will believe just as long as I please, and no longer; what I believe today I will reject tomorrow, if I choose. I will believe what the Apostles have as yet said, but I will not believe what they shall say in time to come." No; either the Apostles were from God, or they were not; if they were, everything that they preached was to be believed by their hearers; if they were not, there was nothing for their hearers to believe. To believe a little, to believe more or less, was impossible; it contradicted the very notion of believing: if one part was to be believed, every part was to be believed; it was an absurdity to believe one thing and not another; for the word of the Apostles, which made the one true, made the other true too; they were nothing in themselves, they were all things, they were an infallible authority, as coming from God. The world had either to become Christian, or to let it alone; there was no room for private tastes and fancies, no room for private judgment. (Source: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/discourses/discourse10.html)

Likening Neo-Catholics to "vampires" screeching "to the amusement of all" as well as spending "hours of fun [...] ticking these [taxonomic] characteristics off" further reveals the condescending tone as well as total indifference to their wellbeing. How are such exercises themselves spiritual or charitable in any way? How do they contribute to holiness, to the preparation of souls for the coming of Christ and His Reign? Do they not encourage and harden division? Isn't division one of Satan's most powerful weapons against followers of Christ? A house divided cannot stand...

St. John Chrysostom warns us about being careless with our words and comments on Christ's admonition not to call each other "fool" (Homily 16 on Matthew; http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/NPNF1-10/npnf1-10-22.htm):

Knowest thou not that most punishments and most sins have their beginning from words? Yea, for by words are blasphemies, and denials are by words, and revilings, and reproaches, and perjuries, and bearing false witness. Regard not then its being a mere word, but whether it have not much danger, this do thou inquire. Art thou ignorant that in the season of enmity, when wrath is inflamed, and the soul kindled, even the least thing appears great, and what is not very reproachful is counted intolerable? [...] 

For there is nothing, nothing in the world more intolerable than insolence; it is what hath very great power to sting a man's soul. But when the word too which is spoken is in itself more wounding than the insolence, the blaze becomes twice as great. Think it not then a light thing to call another "fool." For when of that which separates us from the brutes, and by which especially we are human beings, namely, the mind and the understanding,-when of this thou hast robbed thy brother, thou hast deprived him of all his nobleness. 

Let us not then regard the words merely, but realizing the things themselves, and his feeling, let us consider how great a wound is made by this word, and unto how much evil it proceeds. For this cause Paul likewise cast out of the kingdom not only "the adulterous" and "the effeminate," but "the revilers" also. And with great reason: for the insolent man mars all the beauty of charity, and casts upon his neighbor unnumbered ills, and works up lasting enmities, and tears asunder the members of Christ, and is daily driving away that peace which God so desires: giving much vantage ground unto the devil by his injurious ways, and making him the stronger. Therefore Christ Himself, cutting out the sinews of the devil's power, brought in this law. 

For indeed He makes much account of love: this being above all things the mother of every good, and the badge of His disciples, and the bond which holds together our whole condition. With reason therefore doth He remove with great earnestness the roots and the sources of that hatred which utterly spoils it. 

Think not therefore that these sayings are in any wise hyperbolical, but consider the good done by them, and admire the mildness of these laws. For there is nothing for which God takes so much pains, as this; that we should be united and knit together one with another. Therefore both in His own person, and by His disciples, as well those in the Old, as in the New Testament, He makes so much account of this commandment; and is a severe avenger and punisher of those who despise the duty. For in truth nothing so effectually gives entrance and root to all wickedness, as the taking away of love.

Finally, the description about the party is problematic precisely because of its hyperbole. The latter situation of the "real Trads" and converted Anglicans clearly describes people who are drunk or at least have gone beyond reasonable modesty and decorum. Drunkenness (nor modesty and decorum for that matter) isn't a post-Protestant, post-Victorian sin against political correctness or comfortable, liberal sentiments. Smoking, drinking, and card-playing should not be treated as though for the majority of participants there were no danger in these activities; no, for the majority of those who drink, smoke, or play cards and other forms of competition, I suggest that these activities provide numerous occasions of sin if not deep-rooted addiction and societal structures of sin enforced by capitalist economies. These activities are not intrinsically sinful—I think very few Catholics of any sense would actually argue this point, but on the other hand to present these activities without proper caution seems arrogant, blind, and a sure way to fall into Satan's traps to ensnare us in sin. In other words, the whole situation is another caricature that confuses the suggestion that these activities are probably dangerous for many, above all considering the average lack of self-reflection and discernment of spirits and motives, with the notion that they are intrinsically sinful.

As for what Pope Benedict XV said, I think here is the authoritative say on the (il-)legitimacy of calling oneself a "Traditionalist"; it is useful sociologically (and hence, perhaps, apologetically), useful as the distinction between a Coca-Cola drinker and a Pepsi drinker among soda drinkers (because, after all, there are traditionalists, and then there are traditionalists, not to mention traditionalists). But what good will that label do to keep one out of Hell and to attain holiness and enter Heaven? St. Paul replies: 

If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1–2, DR trans.)

We may here now understand one possible extension of "tongues of men," namely, our ability to construct our own identities and to project them. What good do I do myself or others if I call myself faithful and I am not faithful, charitable and am not charitable? Adherence to Tradition is adherence to Christ; adherence to Christ is not just intellectual belief but the Cross:

Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it. For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul? (Mt. 16:24–26; cf. Lk. 9:23–26)

Someone must be sent to preach. What do they preach? Christ Crucified, "Unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness" (1 Cor. 1:13). And the end of the Cross is our sanctification, and the end of our sanctification is the glory of God. The only thing we must ask ourselves is not, "Am I a Traditionalist or a Neo-Catholic?" but "Am I doing all I can to know the will of God and to do it?" Only the one who hears Christ's words and does them will have built his house on solid rock and be saved.

Repost: D. Stephen Long, "The Theological Danger of Church Marketing"

[4] The local church must avoid a marketing strategy that targets the unchurched, because there are no such people as "the unchurched," and to think that there are is to have already committed a serious theological mistake. To use the term unchurched is to subordinate the mission and the witness of the church to the logic of the market.

The "unchurched" is a category invented by sociologists and advertising executives; like other such categories—Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennium Generation, etc.—it seeks to describe in neutral terms broad sociological target audiences in order to convince these target audiences they need certain products. If you are to be a successful Baby Boomer, for example, you need to drive a SUX or a minivan, and [...] use Michelin tires if you love your children. Generation Xers have different needs and wants, and we must understand them. Some drink Coke; some drink the Uncola. Some are churched; some are "unchurched."

The "Unchurched" Error

The term "unchurched" produces a new target audience that will inevitably require a different kind of gospel. We do not call our target audience "sinners," "the unbaptized," "the lost," or even "the world." The "unchurched" lose the theological status of those former categories precisely because, consistent with corporate America, we wouldn't want to offend our target audience. We target the "unchurched" instead and ask them to become "churched." And I fear—not always, but on the whole—we promise this on their own terms, falsely promising self-fulfillment. That is a long way from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's claim "when Christ bids someone, 'Come and follow,' He bids that person 'come and die"" (The Cost of Discipleship [New York: Touchstone, 1995], 89). "Church" itself becomes a consumer item that persons need for their own self-fulfillment. This works against the Christian tradition of conversion and replaces it with manipulative market relations.

So I ask, can the commission, "Go and church the unchurched by developing a market strategy that draws upon the best sociological expertise and uses the market as well as any Fortune 500 company," fulfill or even be consistent with the church's commission, "Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that Jesus has commanded?"

The Specificity of the Gospel

Now those who argue for a marketing approach that targets the unchurched surely envision their work as being consistent with our Lord's Great Commission. The theological argument that is almost always used to justify this is that we must make the gospel relevant in our context through an incarnational ministry.

But notice what we already have had to do to our theological language to justify this practice. Can the term "incarnation" be used in such a context? The Incarnation is a specific particular event; it is God assuming Jewish flesh, Jesus of Nazareth, who is then crucified and bodily raised from the dead. Any appeal to the incarnation [sic], if it is theologically warranted, must have a direct relationship to the risen body of Christ. But once we justify a marketing strategy, the Incarnation often loses its particular bodily significance and becomes vacuous, meaning something like using the best available technological means to present some idea of the Gospel. Almost always, virtual reality replaces the material reality of the Incarnation in such justifications.

Another theological argument to justify using a market strategy is that we should use the [5] wisdom of our age to express the Gospel, just as Paul did in his. But can the logic of the market be that wisdom? Before using Paul's "all things to all people," we must ask, "Is the logic of the global market a hindrance or merely neutral to faithful Christian living?" Make no mistake about it, if you say: "yes, we should use a marketing strategy," you are inviting the logic of the Global Market into the sanctuary of the church, and the logic of the market is like a cancer. It grows and it grows, solely for the sake of growth, taking over everything in its midst.

Now, we are not yet at the place of other cultural industries. We don't yet stop in the midst of a service and say, "And before I begin, let me remind you that today's sermon is brought to you by the good people at Starbucks." But we are not that far off. The dangers are more real than many of the church growth experts want to believe.

I am convinced that the logic of the market is a threat to the Church's mission, because growth replaced faith. Growth is important as a secondary concern for the life of the Church. The first concern is faith, because Jesus said to Peter, not multiply my sheep, but "feed them." And He said, "The question when I come back is, will I find faith?" I am convinced the global market is a threat to the church and should be kept out of the sanctuary. Even if some good could come from the influence of the market, we must be scrupulous. [...]

Christianity is a local particular culture with a specific kind of language that has to be passed on from generation to generation. Christianity is a democracy of the dead founded in the communion of saints where no single generation has the right to say, "We have to do it differently, because our context is so new and unique." And I know, as Joseph Schumpeter, has taught us, that the logic of the market is what he called "creative destruction." It seeks to destroy the old, always for the new and improved. The logic of the market claims that it will provide the wealth of nations if we are obedient to it. It replaces Christian eschatology.

So for that reason, even if some good would come from it, the local church must avoid a marketing approach that targets the unchurched.

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Source: D. Stephen Long, "The Theological Danger of Church Marketing," Discernment (Spring/Summer 2005): 4–5, accessed January 11, 2015, http://brandon.multics.org/library/Stephen%20Long/long2005danger.pdf.

David Foster Wallace on Mediated Experience

Time stamp: 28:05-29:59

Those of us who write partly as a subject about popular culture are, I think, doing something important, which is that television and popular culture has become so saturated for people our age that we don't notice it's there. We don't notice that much of our experience is mediated, but it's got an agenda. It's trying to sell us things, that an attempt to—I don't know what you would call it—get behind the scenes, humanize, defamiliarize the experience of a mediated world is I think a good and important thing if nothing else to slap people kind of unpleasantly across the face and say, "There may not be something wrong with 68 hours of television, but it would be very nice for you to remember that you are essentially being offered a sales pitch and a seduction, six to eight hours a day." If we forget that, then for some reason just intuitively, I think we're in huge trouble. At a time in the US when I think it's very hard to find and commit to things that you think are important or good, at least for me, in some elements of fiction, it seems to me, it's a rather high-minded agenda to try to wake people up to the fact that our experience is weird now. There is something weird and thrice removed from the real world about it, and a lot of us don't realize it. What's at stake is in many ways human agency about how we experience the world. Would I rather go muck around in the hot sun by the seashore or watch a marvelously put together documentary about the death of egrets. But by the time I go to the G**d*** seashore and have seen the egrets, I have already experienced this smooth documentary so many times that it becomes quickly incoherent to talk about an extra-mediated or extra-televisual reality. Now that fact in and of itself is frightening, and it's that kind of—almost just sort of shooting flare into the sky and inviting people to say how weird that is. I can go to the ocean that I've never seen before, but I've spent a 1,000 hours... I mean, who would want to live when you can... watch?

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Source: Endnotes: David Foster Wallace, BBC Documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIjS4K2mQKY.

"When you interrupt a girl's school day to force her" Meme Analysis

Regarding http://viralwomen.com/post/make_this_go_viral_pass_it_on:

Sexism isn't the issue here. The real issue is the "Law": even in the hypothetical world of unlimited liberty, "Law" would still dominate because the hypothetical world is not real, hence symbolic, and hence dictated and circumscribed by the dynamics of language, of limit. Limit means the condition for desire, but it simultaneously is the barring of desire. I can't have it—so I desire it—but I can't have it, so I am not free.

But, after knowing this dynamic of the Law and liberty, one has only two choices remaining: to submit or to defy. To submit would mean accepting our condition and moving forward. To defy would mean deliberately remaining in a fantasy world in which unlimited liberty is attempted.

To bring this matter into concrete terms: in life, we must submit to rules, even if these rules are without reason, because if we don't, there will be consequences. Sometimes who happens to actually get punished is not as justice dictates—sometimes a woman gets punished more than a man or vice versa. But regardless, the rules exist, and to move forward in normal society, one must submit to the rules. There is nothing wrong with this, nor does it suggest that rules cannot be questioned or changed, but rules must exist in one form or another, and they ought to exist to preserve some sort of freedom.

Either school is about education or it is not. If it is about education, then the rules ought to protect this value, no matter how people feel or think about the specific content of the rules themselves; the specific content is immaterial, but the form or actual structure provided by the rules is essential. The true, passionate pursuit of education, then, means that one will go to any lengths to obtain education, and submission to the rules becomes a nothing rather than the over-exaggerated focus of an impossible fantasy function seeking unlimited freedom. It doesn't matter if boys can or cannot control themselves. If the boy really wants to be educated, put a naked woman in the class—it won't matter to him because he is not there for the woman but for the education. But if the boy doesn't really desire education, then you could put a nun in the class, and he will still indulge in sexual fantasies even regarding the nun. Likewise, if a woman is pursuing education, then what she wears is immaterial. She will submit to the Law, just as the boy submits. Both submit.

This meme is about freedom, not the freedom to chose, but the freedom to pursue education, and the freedom to pursue education limits pure individuality, or the ego, which seeks infinity. It desires infinity, but the pursuit of the object of desire necessarily is a finite and defining project.

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But what about the meme's internal construction? For one thing, it actually is a very manifestation of the sexism that it attacks, for it seeks to place the onus on men for limiting the freedom to choose to dress as a woman pleases. It implicates men as weak, selfish creatures for being unable to control their impulses. Finally, it locates the strength that upholds rules in men. (Some might also argue that the meme is a manifestation of so-called "heterosexism" because its dichotomy is between women and men who desire women—and even if the men didn't desire women, the meme is still man vs. woman). Women are complete, helpless victims; men are always scot-free. These are all sexist assumptions and disrespectful to the data. Actually treating men and women as equal means an equal submission to the law and equal punishment for its violation. Equality here is therefore defined with respect to submission and commitment to the law (and by implication, consequences for following or violating the law).

If someone wants to create a meme about how men and women are in fact punished unequally, then by all means, but that is a significantly different content than what we have here.

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Further thoughts:

The psychological analysis avoids discussing whether the rules are in any way useful or "fair" ("fair" being such a vague concept that its discussion is relatively useless). The reason being that whereas the actual value of this or that rule regarding dress code is always up for scrutiny, the fundamental psychological-social dynamics that create the rules are simply unavoidable. Hence discussion of the rules themselves (concrete manifestations of the underlying psychological-social dynamic) may lead to a never-ending debate on dress code while always missing the fundamental point that the pursuit of anything, that is, the focusing of freedom on the pursuit of any finite object, necessarily limits freedom.

Why do the two pursuits mutually exclude each other? In that hypothetical world, they do not—one could go to school naked if one wished and still get an education. But we do not live in a hypothetical world; we live in a world of Law and conflicting desire. In the world of Law and conflicting desire, one cannot do as one pleases and must submit to the Other. Therefore if one actually cares about one's education, one will accept the limit of a dress code in order to unburden oneself of the hindrance of punishment and the subsequent deprival of education. If one cares about dressing as one pleases, one does so at the expense of education.

Besides, this meme comes from the perspective of one who has never inhabited any seriously professional world (of which school is supposed to also be, but American students in high school and up like to think that school means childhood and not adulthood).

Repost: Karl Marx on How Human Rights Force Competition

But, if a man, although a Jew, can be emancipated politically and receive civic rights, can he lay claim to the so-called rights of man and receive them? Bauer denies it.

“The question is whether the Jew as such, that is, the Jew who himself admits that he is compelled by his true nature to live permanently in separation from other men, is capable of receiving the universal rights of man and of conceding them to others.” 

“For the Christian world, the idea of the rights of man was only discovered in the last century. It is not innate in men; on the contrary, it is gained only in a struggle against the historical traditions in which hitherto man was brought up. Thus the rights of man are not a gift of nature, not a legacy from past history, but the reward of the struggle against the accident of birth and against the privileges which up to now have been handed down by history from generation to generation. These rights are the result of culture, and only one who has earned and deserved them can possess them.” 

“Can the Jew really take possession of them? As long as he is a Jew, the restricted nature which makes him a Jew is bound to triumph over the human nature which should link him as a man with other men, and will separate him from non-Jews. He declares by this separation that the particular nature which makes him a Jew is his true, highest nature, before which human nature has to give way.” 

“Similarly, the Christian as a Christian cannot grant the rights of man.” (p. 19-20)

According to Bauer, man has to sacrifice the “privilege of faith” to be able to receive the universal rights of man. Let us examine, for a moment, the so-called rights of man – to be precise, the rights of man in their authentic form, in the form which they have among those who discovered them, the North Americans and the French. These rights of man are, in part, political rights, rights which can only be exercised in community with others. Their content is participation in the community, and specifically in the political community, in the life of the state. They come within the category of political freedom, the category of civic rights, which, as we have seen, in no way presuppose the incontrovertible and positive abolition of religion – nor, therefore, of Judaism. There remains to be examined the other part of the rights of man – the droits d’homme, insofar as these differ from the droits d’citoyen.

Included among them is freedom of conscience, the right to practice any religion one chooses. The privilege of faith is expressly recognized either as a right of man or as the consequence of a right of man, that of liberty.

Déclaration des droits de l’droits et du citoyen, 1791, Article 10: “No one is to be subjected to annoyance because of his opinions, even religious opinions.” “The freedom of every man to practice the religion of which he is an adherent.” 

Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc., 1793, includes among the rights of man, Article 7: “The free exercise of religion.” Indeed, in regard to man’s right to express his thoughts and opinions, to hold meetings, and to exercise his religion, it is even stated: “The necessity of proclaiming these rights presupposes either the existence or the recent memory of despotism.” Compare the Constitution of 1795, Section XIV, Article 354. 

Constitution of Pennsylvania, Article 9, § 3: “All men have received from nature the imprescriptible right to worship the Almighty according to the dictates of their conscience, and no one can be legally compelled to follow, establish, or support against his will any religion or religious ministry. No human authority can, in any circumstances, intervene in a matter of conscience or control the forces of the soul.” 

Constitution of New Hampshire, Article 5 and 6: “Among these natural rights some are by nature inalienable since nothing can replace them. The rights of conscience are among them.” (Beaumont, op. cit., pp. 213,214)

Incompatibility between religion and the rights of man is to such a degree absent from the concept of the rights of man that, on the contrary, a man’s right to be religious, in any way he chooses, to practise [sic] his own particular religion, is expressly included among the rights of man. The privilege of faith is a universal right of man.

The droits de l’homme, the rights of man, are, as such, distinct from the droits du citoyen, the rights of the citizen. Who is homme as distinct from citoyen? None other than the member of civil society. Why is the member of civil society called “man,” simply man; why are his rights called the rights of man? How is this fact to be explained? From the relationship between the political state and civil society, from the nature of political emancipation.

Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man, the droits de l’homme as distinct from the droits du citoyen, are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society – i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community. Let us hear what the most radical Constitution, the Constitution of 1793, has to say:

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.Article 2. “These rights, etc., (the natural and imprescriptible rights) are: equality, liberty, security, property.”

What constitutes liberty?

Article 6. “Liberty is the power which man has to do everything that does not harm the rights of others,” or, according to the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1791: “Liberty consists in being able to do everything which does not harm others.”

Liberty, therefore, is the right to do everything that harms no one else. The limits within which anyone can act without harming someone else are defined by law, just as the boundary between two fields is determined by a boundary post. It is a question of the liberty of man as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself. Why is the Jew, according to Bauer, incapable of acquiring the rights of man?

“As long as he is a Jew, the restricted nature which makes him a Jew is bound to triumph over the human nature which should link him as a man with other men, and will separate him from non-Jews.”

But, the right of man to liberty is based not on the association of man with man, but on the separation of man from man. It is the right of this separation, the right of the restricted individual, withdrawn into himself.

The practical application of man’s right to liberty is man’s right to private property.

What constitutes man’s right to private property?

Article 16. (Constitution of 1793): “The right of property is that which every citizen has of enjoying and of disposing at his discretion of his goods and income, of the fruits of his labor and industry.”

The right of man to private property is, therefore, the right to enjoy one’s property and to dispose of it at one’s discretion (à son gré), without regard to other men, independently of society, the right of self-interest. This individual liberty and its application form the basis of civil society. It makes every man see in other men not the realization of his own freedom, but the barrier to it. But, above all, it proclaims the right of man

“of enjoying and of disposing at his discretion of his goods and income, of the fruits of his labor and industry.”

There remain the other rights of man: égalité and sûreté.

Equality, used here in its non-political sense, is nothing but the equality of the liberté described above – namely: each man is to the same extent regarded as such a self-sufficient monad. The Constitution of 1795 defines the concept of this equality, in accordance with this significance, as follows:

Article 3 (Constitution of 1795): “Equality consists in the law being the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.”

And security?

Article 8 (Constitution of 1793): “Security consists in the protection afforded by society to each of its members for the preservation of his person, his rights, and his property.”

Security is the highest social concept of civil society, the concept of police, expressing the fact that the whole of society exists only in order to guarantee to each of its members the preservation of his person, his rights, and his property. It is in this sense that Hegel calls civil society “the state of need and reason.”

The concept of security does not raise civil society above its egoism. On the contrary, security is the insurance of egoism.

None of the so-called rights of man, therefore, go beyond egoistic man, beyond man as a member of civil society – that is, an individual withdrawn into himself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, and separated from the community. In the rights of man, he is far from being conceived as a species-being; on the contrary, species-life itself, society, appears as a framework external to the individuals, as a restriction of their original independence. The sole bond holding them together is natural necessity, need and private interest, the preservation of their property and their egoistic selves.

It is puzzling enough that a people which is just beginning to liberate itself, to tear down all the barriers between its various sections, and to establish a political community, that such a people solemnly proclaims (Declaration of 1791) the rights of egoistic man separated from his fellow men and from the community, and that indeed it repeats this proclamation at a moment when only the most heroic devotion can save the nation, and is therefore imperatively called for, at a moment when the sacrifice of all the interest of civil society must be the order of the day, and egoism must be punished as a crime. (Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc., of 1793) This fact becomes still more puzzling when we see that the political emancipators go so far as to reduce citizenship, and the political community, to a mere means for maintaining these so-called rights of man, that, therefore, the citoyen is declared to be the servant of egotistic homme, that the sphere in which man acts as a communal being is degraded to a level below the sphere in which he acts as a partial being, and that, finally, it is not man as citoyen, but man as private individual [bourgeois] who is considered to be the essential and true man.

“The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.” (Declaration of the Rights, etc., of 1791, Article 2) 

“Government is instituted in order to guarantee man the enjoyment of his natural and imprescriptible rights.” (Declaration, etc., of 1793, Article 1)

Hence, even in moments when its enthusiasm still has the freshness of youth and is intensified to an extreme degree by the force of circumstances, political life declares itself to be a mere means, whose purpose is the life of civil society. It is true that its revolutionary practice is in flagrant contradiction with its theory. Whereas, for example, security is declared one of the rights of man, violation of the privacy of correspondence is openly declared to be the order of the day. Whereas “unlimited freedom of the press” (Constitution of 1793, Article 122) is guaranteed as a consequence of the right of man to individual liberty, freedom of the press is totally destroyed, because “freedom of the press should not be permitted when it endangers public liberty.” (“Robespierre jeune,” Historie parlementaire de la Révolution française by Buchez and Roux, vol.28, p. 159) That is to say, therefore: The right of man to liberty ceases to be a right as soon as it comes into conflict with political life, whereas in theory political life is only the guarantee of human rights, the rights of the individual, and therefore must be abandoned as soon as it comes into contradiction with its aim, with these rights of man. But, practice is merely the exception, theory is the rule. But even if one were to regard revolutionary practice as the correct presentation of the relationship, there would still remain the puzzle of why the relationship is turned upside-down in the minds of the political emancipators and the aim appears as the means, while the means appears as the aim. This optical illusion of their consciousness would still remain a puzzle, although now a psychological, a theoretical puzzle.

The puzzle is easily solved.

Political emancipation is, at the same time, the dissolution of the old society on which the state alienated from the people, the sovereign power, is based. What was the character of the old society? It can be described in one word – feudalism. The character of the old civil society was directly political – that is to say, the elements of civil life, for example, property, or the family, or the mode of labor, were raised to the level of elements of political life in the form of seigniory, estates, and corporations. In this form, they determined the relation of the individual to the state as a whole – i.e., his political relation, that is, his relation of separation and exclusion from the other components of society. For that organization of national life did not raise property or labor to the level of social elements; on the contrary, it completed their separation from the state as a whole and constituted them as discrete societies within society. Thus, the vital functions and conditions of life of civil society remained, nevertheless, political, although political in the feudal sense – that is to say, they secluded the individual from the state as a whole and they converted the particular relation of his corporation to the state as a whole into his general relation to the life of the nation, just as they converted his particular civil activity and situation into his general activity and situation. As a result of this organization, the unity of the state, and also the consciousness, will, and activity of this unity, the general power of the state, are likewise bound to appear as the particular affair of a ruler and of his servants, isolated from the people.

The political revolution which overthrew this sovereign power and raised state affairs to become affairs of the people, which constituted the political state as a matter of general concern, that is, as a real state, necessarily smashed all estates, corporations, guilds, and privileges, since they were all manifestations of the separation of the people from the community. The political revolution thereby abolished the political character of civil society. It broke up civil society into its simple component parts; on the one hand, the individuals; on the other hand, the material and spiritual elements constituting the content of the life and social position of these individuals. It set free the political spirit, which had been, as it were, split up, partitioned, and dispersed in the various blind alleys of feudal society. It gathered the dispersed parts of the political spirit, freed it from its intermixture with civil life, and established it as the sphere of the community, the general concern of the nation, ideally independent of those particular elements of civil life. A person’s distinct activity and distinct situation in life were reduced to a merely individual significance. They no longer constituted the general relation of the individual to the state as a whole. Public affairs as such, on the other hand, became the general affair of each individual, and the political function became the individual’s general function.

But, the completion of the idealism of the state was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civil society. Throwing off the political yoke meant at the same time throwing off the bonds which restrained the egoistic spirit of civil society. Political emancipation was, at the same time, the emancipation of civil society from politics, from having even the semblance of a universal content.

Feudal society was resolved into its basic element – man, but man as he really formed its basis – egoistic man.

This man, the member of civil society, is thus the basis, the precondition, of the political state. He is recognized as such by this state in the rights of man.

The liberty of egoistic man and the recognition of this liberty, however, is rather the recognition of the unrestrained movement of the spiritual and material elements which form the content of his life.

Hence, man was not freed from religion, he received religious freedom. He was not freed from property, he received freedom to own property. He was not freed from the egoism of business, he received freedom to engage in business.

The establishment of the political state and the dissolution of civil society into independent individuals – whose relation with one another on law, just as the relations of men in the system of estates and guilds depended on privilege – is accomplished by one and the same act. Man as a member of civil society, unpolitical man, inevitably appears, however, as the natural man. The “rights of man” appears as “natural rights,” because conscious activity is concentrated on the political act. Egoistic man is the passive result of the dissolved society, a result that is simply found in existence, an object of immediate certainty, therefore a natural object.

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Source: Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question," Marxists, 2008/9, accessed October 12, 2014, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/.