[192] The Catholic Anthropological Conference has issued in pamphlet form ''The Age of the Human Race in the Light of Geology" by Stephen Richarz [sic], S.V.D., Ph.D., which inspires new hope for the intellectual future of Catholicism in the United States. Catholic anthropological work, as inspired and directed by this Conference, provides at least one sound reason for believing that intellectual activity among American Catholics is not entirely stagnant.
Father Richarz, whose work in this field has received due recognition, presents us in this monograph with a splendid statement of the age of the human race. According to him it is an established fact that man witnessed the glaciation in northern and central Europe; second, that man was in Europe even before the last period of severe cold, and, finally, that man was in Europe during a rather genial climate preceding the last glaciation and witnessed this process of glaciation from its beginning to the complete disappearance of the ice.
What does this indicate with regard to the age of the human race? The author concludes that "there are many uncertainties which block any attempt to assign a definite figure for the age of mankind. On the other hand it would be unreasonable and unscientific to reject all figures as uncertain and unreliable. There are facts which are obvious and accepted unanimously by all geologists, and these facts warrant the conclusion that man was undoubtedly in Europe 30,000 years ago. Of this number of millenniums the first half is determined by exact methods, while the other half is based partly on an estimate of the recession of the ice where this recession can not yet be measured directly, partly on a conservative estimate of the time required for the advance of the ice front from northern to central Europe. Future development of these methods as well as new discoveries may raise this minimum figure considerably and place [193] on a more solid basis the theories of those who believe in a much higher age of mankind. However, it seems impossible to the author that the figure of 30,000 years will ever turn out to be too high as a reasonable estimate of the minimum age of the human race. In any case, the present essay shows that it is impossible to reconcile the well-known facts of human antiquity with such figures as 6,000 or 8,000 years.
It may be added in conclusion that no theological problem is involved. Theologians, even the more conservative, acknowledge full liberty to deviate from the figures of the older exegesis and declare that the problem of the age of mankind, like that of the age of the earth and of the universe, is one which has to be solved by secular science.
The presentation of the proof for these statements is made in an exceptionally pleasing and understandable form. We commend to all educated Catholics the careful reading of this excellent monograph. May Father Richarz be permitted to continue his scholarly work and thus help to bring the Catholic cause in the United States into repute among the educated and intellectual classes!
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Source: Anonymous, "The Age of the Human Race," The Catholic Fortnightly Review 36, no. 10 (July 1929): 192–193.
Showing posts with label anthropology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anthropology. Show all posts
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Monday, June 5, 2017
Michael Crichton on Failed Environmental Predictions
Well, it's interesting. You may have noticed that something has been left off the doomsday list, lately. Although the preachers of environmentalism have been yelling about population for fifty years, over the last decade world population seems to be taking an unexpected turn. Fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. As a result, over the course of my lifetime the thoughtful predictions for total world population have gone from a high of 20 billion, to 15 billion, to 11 billion (which was the UN estimate around 1990) to now 9 billion, and soon, perhaps less. There are some who think that world population will peak in 2050 and then start to decline. There are some who predict we will have fewer people in 2100 than we do today. Is this a reason to rejoice, to say hallelujah? Certainly not. Without a pause, we now hear about the coming crisis of world economy from a shrinking population. We hear about the impending crisis of an aging population. Nobody anywhere will say that the core fears expressed for most of my life have turned out not to be true. As we have moved into the future, these doomsday visions vanished, like a mirage in the desert. They were never there---though they still appear, in the future. As mirages do.
Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on.
With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets.
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Source: Michael Crichton, "Remarks to the Commonwealth Club" (presentation, San Francisco, CA, September 15, 2003).
Okay, so, the preachers made a mistake. They got one prediction wrong; they're human. So what. Unfortunately, it's not just one prediction. It's a whole slew of them. We are running out of oil. We are running out of all natural resources. Paul Ehrlich: 60 million Americans will die of starvation in the 1980s. Forty thousand species become extinct every year. Half of all species on the planet will be extinct by 2000. And on and on and on.
With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets.
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Source: Michael Crichton, "Remarks to the Commonwealth Club" (presentation, San Francisco, CA, September 15, 2003).
Michael Crichton on the Religion of Environmentalism
I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
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Source: Michael Crichton, "Remarks to the Commonwealth Club" (presentation, San Francisco, CA, September 15, 2003).
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.
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Source: Michael Crichton, "Remarks to the Commonwealth Club" (presentation, San Francisco, CA, September 15, 2003).
Friday, February 3, 2017
Girardian Analysis of Modernity's Katechons
The so called peace-making state, the free market, international law and transnational organizations, a commercialist, utilitarian culture of mass-produced consumer products, technology, science, the privatization of religious belief and practice, the declaration of and enforcement of human rights and the dignity of every human, the universal concern for victims institutionalized in law and government—all of these katechons, according to modernity, prove modernity’s moral superiority, even its more perfectly Christian character; for, these institutions and practices require no scapegoats: no human sacrifices, on the one hand, no suppression of religious freedom, on the other—and they have brought about an unprecedented material prosperity and moral consciousness to boot(!).
However, with a Girardian lens, things look less rosy: the prolongation and escalation of violence and millions upon millions of human sacrificial victims—the unborn, the elderly, the handicapped, the poor and middle-class in the first world, the vast majority in the third world; religiously, culturally, and intellectually starved souls; the normalization of political propaganda; pathological violence and plasticized sex in media and entertainment; massive private indebtedness; masses of brave new world soma addicts (in forms Huxley couldn’t have dreamt of), the so-called collateral damage of millions of innocents in perpetual, epic-scale wars; the perpetual fear and terror of the national security and surveillance state; wars and rumors of wars; the renewed threat of nuclear Armageddon.
However, with a Girardian lens, things look less rosy: the prolongation and escalation of violence and millions upon millions of human sacrificial victims—the unborn, the elderly, the handicapped, the poor and middle-class in the first world, the vast majority in the third world; religiously, culturally, and intellectually starved souls; the normalization of political propaganda; pathological violence and plasticized sex in media and entertainment; massive private indebtedness; masses of brave new world soma addicts (in forms Huxley couldn’t have dreamt of), the so-called collateral damage of millions of innocents in perpetual, epic-scale wars; the perpetual fear and terror of the national security and surveillance state; wars and rumors of wars; the renewed threat of nuclear Armageddon.
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Source: Thaddeus J. Kozinski, "René Girard and Modernity’s Apocalypse," in New Directions for Catholic Social And Political Research: Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity, ed. by Guido Giacomo Preparata (New York: Palgrave Macmillam, 2016), ch. 6.
Repost: Thaddeus J. Kozinski on "René Girard and Modernity’s Apocalypse"
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s720/sh/f206dc1f-6e35-4cf3-96eb-ab52c07065c5/ebfbc47ba4fe730384d86a3e9eb4de3b
Posted at: https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/kozinski-on-girard-and-modernity/
Posted at: https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/kozinski-on-girard-and-modernity/
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:
Footnotes:
1. René Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1965), 159
2. Ibid., 57.
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/.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Monday, December 29, 2014
Nietzsche on Modern Marriage and Romance
This sounds like bigoted, misogynistic conservatism to modern ears:
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The things that make an institution into an institution are despised, hated, rejected: people think that they are in danger of a new sort of slavery when the word 'authority' is so much as spoken out loud. The value-instincts of our politicians, our political parties, are so decadent that they instinctively prefer things that disintegrate, that accelerate the end ... Witness modern marriage. It is clear that modern marriage is completely irrational: but this is an objection to modernity, not to marriage. The rationality of marriage lay in the fact that the husband has sole juridical responsibility: this gave marriage a centre [sic] of balance, while today it limps on both legs. The rationality of marriage lay in its principled indissolubility, which gave it an accent that knew how to be heard above the accidents of feeling, passion, and the distractions of the moment. The rationality also lay in the family's responsibility for choosing the spouse. With the growing indulgence of love matches, the whole basis of marriage has been eliminated, the very thing that made it an institution in the first place. You never, ever base an institution on an idiosyncrasy, and, as I have said, you do not base marriage on 'love',—you base it on the sex drive; on the drive for property (woman and child as property); on the drive to dominate that keeps organizing the family (the smallest unit of domination), that needs children and heirs in order to maintain (even physiologically) the measure of power, influence, and wealth that has been achieved, in order to prepare for long tasks, for a solidarity of instincts between the centuries. Marriage as an institution already affirms the greatest, most enduring form of organization: when society cannot work as a whole to extend an affirmation to the most distant generations, marriage has stopped making sense.—Modern marriage has lost its meaning,—consequently, it is being abolished.
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Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Anti-Christ, Ecee Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, ed. by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, trans. by Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 215.
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The things that make an institution into an institution are despised, hated, rejected: people think that they are in danger of a new sort of slavery when the word 'authority' is so much as spoken out loud. The value-instincts of our politicians, our political parties, are so decadent that they instinctively prefer things that disintegrate, that accelerate the end ... Witness modern marriage. It is clear that modern marriage is completely irrational: but this is an objection to modernity, not to marriage. The rationality of marriage lay in the fact that the husband has sole juridical responsibility: this gave marriage a centre [sic] of balance, while today it limps on both legs. The rationality of marriage lay in its principled indissolubility, which gave it an accent that knew how to be heard above the accidents of feeling, passion, and the distractions of the moment. The rationality also lay in the family's responsibility for choosing the spouse. With the growing indulgence of love matches, the whole basis of marriage has been eliminated, the very thing that made it an institution in the first place. You never, ever base an institution on an idiosyncrasy, and, as I have said, you do not base marriage on 'love',—you base it on the sex drive; on the drive for property (woman and child as property); on the drive to dominate that keeps organizing the family (the smallest unit of domination), that needs children and heirs in order to maintain (even physiologically) the measure of power, influence, and wealth that has been achieved, in order to prepare for long tasks, for a solidarity of instincts between the centuries. Marriage as an institution already affirms the greatest, most enduring form of organization: when society cannot work as a whole to extend an affirmation to the most distant generations, marriage has stopped making sense.—Modern marriage has lost its meaning,—consequently, it is being abolished.
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Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Anti-Christ, Ecee Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, ed. by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, trans. by Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 215.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Repost: "Break Out of the Box: Technology and Prayer"
A very neat article on technology and how it shapes our lives. Definitely a lot of considerations for further reflection here.
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In particular, Senior argues that TV has
two principal defects . . . its radical passivity, physical and imaginative, and its distortion of reality. Watching it, we fail to exercise the eye, selecting and focusing on detail—what poets call “noticing” things; neither do we exercise imagination as must in reading metaphor where you actively leap to the “third thing” in juxtaposed images, picking out similarities and differences, a skill which Aristotle says is a chief sing of intelligence. . . . There is nothing on the television which is not filtered through the secular establishment.Senior’s answer is to sit around the fire as a family, singing good music and reading good literature. Rather than experiencing reality through an isolate filter, he wants us to experience it directly, especially within the context of the home. TV intrudes on family life and fundamentally changes it.
The main thrust of Senior’s argument is that technology is not neutral, but its use shapes and molds us. This same claim has been presented by Neil Postman, in his book Technopolgy, where he argues that “the uses made of any technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself—that is, that its functions follow from its form.” We have surrounded ourselves with a host of media technology—not only TV, but mobile phones, constant music, and especially the internet—to the point of saturation: “When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown in psychic tranquility and social purpose occurs. Without defenses, people have no way of finding meaning in their experiences, lose their capacity to remember, and have difficulty imagining reasonable futures” (72).
Postman was writing before the heyday of the internet, but Nicholas Carr picks up where he left off in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Carr convincingly argues that the internet is literally changing the way our brains work. It overwhelms us with images and short bits of text, which makes it harder for us to concentrate and to think deeply. He makes the point that “we become, neurologically, what we think” (33). In terms of the internet, “when we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning” (116). The internet is changing us!
I’m actually amazed at how many people tell me that technology is neutral. The argument is that nothing has to be used a certain way; it’s only the use that is not neutral. And yet, when we look all around we see clearly that technology has not been neutral it has shaped us and formed to live, act, and think a certain way.
The closest to the teaching of the Church on this matter that I have found is from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (under the direction of then Cardinal Ratzinger) document “Donum Vitae,” which states: “It would . . . be illusory to claim that scientific research and its applications are morally neutral.” This, of course, is speaking about reproductive technology, but the underlying thought is the same: when we introduce a new technology, it will shape and alter us, which in itself is not neutral.
However, I think the real problem with technology concerns time, specifically how we order and shape it. St. Paul says that we need to redeem or sanctify the hours (Eph 5:16). If we allow technology to dominate our schedule than we are not sanctifying the time, but allowing it to be dominated by an outside force. This technological force influences the way we think and act, and also concretely shapes our day.
We need to respond to the dominance of technology, by ordering and shaping our lives through prayer. This means that we need to intentionally unplug every day and enter into a period of silence, and more importantly a time of conversation with God. If TV breaks up the life of the family in the home, then the barrage of media breaks up the peaceful relationship we are meant to have throughout the day with God.
When we think of what media is doing to our brains, we can make the connection that making our minds more shallow directly impacts our ability to pray. If media technology gives us a short attention span and makes it difficult to contemplate deeply in a sustained fashion, then it strikes right at the heart of what is needed for Christian meditation. When it is time for prayer, we will quickly get bored and out thoughts will jump from topic to topic?
Turning back to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (once again under Ratzinger), its document “On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation” recognizes this challenge: Many Christians today have a keen desire to learn how to experience a deeper and authentic prayer life despite the not inconsiderable difficulties which modern culture places in the way of the need for silence, recollection and meditation. . . . The spiritual restlessness arising from a life subjected to the driving pace of a technologically advanced society also brings a certain number of Christians to seek in these methods of prayer a path to interior peace and psychic balance” (1; 2).
The CDF specifically acknowledges lectio divina as a form of prayer that comes from God’s revelation, drawing upon God’s own words and entering into a conversation with Him: “This is why the Church recommends the reading of the Word of God as a source of Christian prayer, and at the same time exhorts all to discover the deep meaning of Sacred Scripture through prayer ‘so that a dialogue takes place between God and man. For, “we speak to him when we pray; we listen to him when we read the divine oracles”’ (Dei Verbum, 25)” (6).
We may not want to take up John Senior’s advice to smash the TV, but we at least need to question the role of technology in our life. We need to make sure that prayer, more than technology, shapes and orders our time. We need to make room for silence and meditation. If we don’t smash the box, then in order to enable our mind’s to be free for prayer, let us at least break out of the box!
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Source: R. Jared Staudt, "Break Out of the Box: Technology and Prayer," Catholic Exchange, May 5, 2014, accessed May 7, 2014, http://catholicexchange.com/break-box-technology-prayer.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Notes on Fr. Thomas Joseph White's "Sociology as Theology"
Original article: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/06/sociology-as-theology
Robert Bellah's Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age seeks to explore the evolutionary roots of human religious behavior. It examines particularly Israel, Greece, China, and India. It ends with the "Axial Age" (~ 200 years before Christ), the moment "in history when human thought attained a genuinely universal character and a profound ethical maturity."
Two tendencies in modern times: Enlightenment thought and liberal Protestantism (a response to the Enlightenment; hereafter LP). LP sought to explain religion with a "bottom-up" approach, a sociological perspective that grounded religion in human nature itself, instilling ethical attitudes. This is a form of Christian humanism. In modernity, two other deeply-rooted worldviews have emerged: evolutionary atheism and postmodern pluralism.
Animals have adapted to allow better ways to survive. Language -> leisure -> culture -> philosophy, ritual, art, etc. Within culture, we tell stories, narratives of the history of the cosmos.
A problem with Bellah's work is that he doesn't address the deep metaphysical questions that have arisen in human consciousness that demand an answer. His evolutionary hypothesis, while given much food for thought, doesn't explain how we have spiritual qualities and concepts, such as justice.
Fr. White moves over to the topic of pluralism in Bellah's thought—what are we to make of many religions? Bellah rejects the idea that there is "one true religion." But he also rejects the Enlightenment's attempt to color history as the history of progress, from early myth to modern "reason." Rather, Bellah insists that the Axial Age gave rise to "a diversity of cultures in different, nonreducible ways." Religion and ritual have enduring importance and are not simply to be replaced by scientific thought.
Bellah, in this way, embraces what certain postmodern thinkers have begun to recognize: religions are different, and they must be treated as such and respected and studied for what each is and is not. From these religions, a framework emerged that allowed for the development of critical analysis. Each religion and tradition has its own narrative and norms that are irreducible to a single essence. So contrary to modern attempts to point out that all religions are basically the same, Bellah shows through rigorous history and cultural studies that "the universality of the Axial Age cannot be separated from the particularity of its religious embodiments." Bellah is "weary of a cheap religious syncretism that ignores the real differences of belief and practice among the ancient religions." Each religion partially converges but is also partially incompatible with the others in their proffered visions of reality.
But, Fr. White presses, does man seek the absolute? And why should LP ignore metaphysics? But the problem of religion without revelation is that "it's not rational."
But the plurality of religious traditions suggests that "by our own powers we cannot finally resolve all the questions." So can we ask: "What if God has revealed himself to humanity?" The revelation isn't the enemy of reason but its intelligent light and answer, the unity that we have always sought.
Our religiosity then is a "sign of our latent desire for the truth about God, but it is also a sign of our confusion and fallenness." Religion without grace is obscure and dangerous. The life of grace is distinct from fallen humanity's religiosity, even at its best.
True religion is neither bottom-up nor top-down entirely: it's (here it comes...) BOTH-AND. The balance was perfected and performed in Christ, the God-man. Christ heals, purifies, and elevates all attempts at religiosity by grace. Christ, the Alpha and Omega, "fulfills and perfects our native religiosity."
Robert Bellah's Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age seeks to explore the evolutionary roots of human religious behavior. It examines particularly Israel, Greece, China, and India. It ends with the "Axial Age" (~ 200 years before Christ), the moment "in history when human thought attained a genuinely universal character and a profound ethical maturity."
Two tendencies in modern times: Enlightenment thought and liberal Protestantism (a response to the Enlightenment; hereafter LP). LP sought to explain religion with a "bottom-up" approach, a sociological perspective that grounded religion in human nature itself, instilling ethical attitudes. This is a form of Christian humanism. In modernity, two other deeply-rooted worldviews have emerged: evolutionary atheism and postmodern pluralism.
Animals have adapted to allow better ways to survive. Language -> leisure -> culture -> philosophy, ritual, art, etc. Within culture, we tell stories, narratives of the history of the cosmos.
A problem with Bellah's work is that he doesn't address the deep metaphysical questions that have arisen in human consciousness that demand an answer. His evolutionary hypothesis, while given much food for thought, doesn't explain how we have spiritual qualities and concepts, such as justice.
Fr. White moves over to the topic of pluralism in Bellah's thought—what are we to make of many religions? Bellah rejects the idea that there is "one true religion." But he also rejects the Enlightenment's attempt to color history as the history of progress, from early myth to modern "reason." Rather, Bellah insists that the Axial Age gave rise to "a diversity of cultures in different, nonreducible ways." Religion and ritual have enduring importance and are not simply to be replaced by scientific thought.
Bellah, in this way, embraces what certain postmodern thinkers have begun to recognize: religions are different, and they must be treated as such and respected and studied for what each is and is not. From these religions, a framework emerged that allowed for the development of critical analysis. Each religion and tradition has its own narrative and norms that are irreducible to a single essence. So contrary to modern attempts to point out that all religions are basically the same, Bellah shows through rigorous history and cultural studies that "the universality of the Axial Age cannot be separated from the particularity of its religious embodiments." Bellah is "weary of a cheap religious syncretism that ignores the real differences of belief and practice among the ancient religions." Each religion partially converges but is also partially incompatible with the others in their proffered visions of reality.
But, Fr. White presses, does man seek the absolute? And why should LP ignore metaphysics? But the problem of religion without revelation is that "it's not rational."
But the plurality of religious traditions suggests that "by our own powers we cannot finally resolve all the questions." So can we ask: "What if God has revealed himself to humanity?" The revelation isn't the enemy of reason but its intelligent light and answer, the unity that we have always sought.
Our religiosity then is a "sign of our latent desire for the truth about God, but it is also a sign of our confusion and fallenness." Religion without grace is obscure and dangerous. The life of grace is distinct from fallen humanity's religiosity, even at its best.
True religion is neither bottom-up nor top-down entirely: it's (here it comes...) BOTH-AND. The balance was perfected and performed in Christ, the God-man. Christ heals, purifies, and elevates all attempts at religiosity by grace. Christ, the Alpha and Omega, "fulfills and perfects our native religiosity."
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Sacrifice: Appeasing Zeus vs. a Loving, Merciful God
Someone I know emailed me about a poetry professor who gave a presentation in class and mentioned that he has an "issue with sacrifice." From the email: "particularly Christ's death on the cross. [The professor] seemed to equate Jesus' sacrifice to the Father with sacrificing an animal to Zeus, trying to appease an angry and jealous god instead of one who can [sic] loving and merciful." My friend wanted to know what I had to say about that, how I'd respond and explain the difference, etc. I thought I might as well include my response here.
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The professor's "issue" with sacrifice is probably less theological-philosophical than it is psychological, i.e. there is an "issue" from the past that makes the idea of sacrifice difficult for him. Did he have an "angry and jealous" parent who acted like a Zeus, demanding sacrifice of some kind? Perhaps it was the "Father"? Without further information, who knows? So that's the first thing.
The second matter is the difference between God and Zeus. Zeus is a fiction of the mind, and even if Zeus existed (hard to prove since there aren't many people getting zapped or raped by huge swans, etc.), he would be only a creature, albeit a powerful one. And actually the Greeks believed that their "gods" were physical, so he wouldn't even been that far up in the hierarchy of beings because angels (and hence demons) are above physical beings and far more powerful. God, on the other hand, is the pure, self-sustaining act of existence itself. Big difference, in fact, an infinite difference.
A sacrifice to Zeus is meaningless because Zeus can't do squat, even if he existed. All he could do would be to threaten us, in which case, sacrifice means appeasing him like an abusive parent who has power over a helpless child.
God on the other hand is pure mercy and pure justice. The idea of mercy is meaningless without the idea of justice after all. Just try to define what exactly mercy is without referring in some way to justice. Mercy, after all, is pardoning someone who doesn't DESERVE to be pardoned; that is, it overrides justice.
Here's where it gets interesting. Sin is an offense against God and hence an offense not only against pure justice but also against pure mercy. The degree of evil is determined by the act, the person committing the evil, and the victim of the evil. In this case, God is the "victim" (although God doesn't actually suffer in any way, God deserves honor and respect instead of rejection by the nature of his being). Sin is a rejection of love. So a sin, no matter how small it seems to us, is an infinite offense because it attempts to violate infinite mercy and justice. Hence Cardinal Newman said quite strikingly,
And who would deny that pure justice and mercy should be respected, even if those are merely ideals in our heads?
But remember this key: mercy is impossible to conceive without some notion of justice. Hence, without justice, there is no such thing as mercy. Mercy becomes valuable only insofar as the degree of justice to be administered increases. The more that justice demands, the more merciful the pardon.
Now a sin is an infinite offense. Therefore, any pardon of an infinite offense is an infinite act of mercy. And that is the sacrifice that Christ made. An animal couldn't make it because an animal would just be a victim, literally a scapegoat, where we get the idea of scapegoat today. A sin is a personal act, an act of free will. Hence a human has to make reparation who can freely choose God again. But the one offended is God, so that act of reparation must be infinite. But only God can make an act that is infinite. So the human making reparation to God has to in some way be infinite. Hence in Christ the humanity and divinity were united in one person so that justice could be satisfied. And here's the twist: the same act of satisfying the justice of God was the way that God showed us infinite mercy in pardoning us for every past, present, and future sin. In the Crucifixion is infinite justice and mercy at the same time. It satisfies justice, and in so doing, it bestows mercy.
Because, after all, if we commit sin, we're in the pickle of being unable to do anything to satisfy justice. And we certainly don't deserve forgiveness.
But, could God have simply forgiven us without going through the Crucifixion? Yes. But it was more fitting that God become like us, suffer like us, die like us, to show us an example. In our fallen state, when we are so prone to selfishness and revenge rather than justice, hardness of heart rather than mercy, we need a model of what true humanity looks like, how tall it can stand when it is virtuous and noble.
Because—here's the second interesting thing—St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out that to call sin an offense against God is true but incomplete. Sin is wrong not only because it offends God but because it hurts us, it destroys us, it is contrary to what it means to be fully human. A plant needs water, nutrition, air, and sunlight to grow well. A human has specific physical and spiritual needs. On the spiritual level, the human needs virtue. Virtue alone will make us truly human.
Hence God's act of satisfying justice and bestowing mercy was a double act of mercy. If God simply said, "I forgive you," we would still be left in our same darkness, with no guide as to how to live our lives. But God Himself showed us how we are to find our proper fulfillment, and it is through sacrifice.
Victimization, which is suffering without desiring it, is not sacrifice. Sacrifice is accepting all suffering that comes necessarily from doing the right thing, the thing that will make the individual and those around him more human. Hence, sacrifice is the core of love, and sacrificial love is the core of the family. The family is the core of society. Without sacrifice, love is simply attraction rather than mutual consideration. Without love, the family is simply a game of manipulation. Without family, the society is bored, aimless, and selfish. Without society, there can be no civilization, no leisure, and hence no freedom. Christ freely embraced the suffering that would come.
The Gospel is the most powerful story because it is the story of what happens when infinite Love enters our world. We crucify and reject it because in fact we don't want love. We like Frank Sinatra's song "I Did It My Way." That's why the Gospel is the most poignant story and why every good story is good insofar as it resembles the Gospel. Even B-movie entertainment is good because it resembles the Gospel—we like to see people kicking butt and taking names. Christ did that to Satan. We see huge power, tremendous struggles, high stakes. All of that is in the Gospel. At the heart of it is the notion of sacrifice, which is simply—I'm not a rock. I'm not an island. The only way for me to be happy as a human is to be selfless, to help others, to give consideration to others, to "do unto others what I would have them do unto me." That's love.
In fact, mercy is a sacrifice. I sacrifice the demands of justice and my personal satisfaction at seeing justice administered in order to show mercy. A poetry professor who doesn't understand that must be pretty bad at poetry...
The professor's "issue" with sacrifice is probably less theological-philosophical than it is psychological, i.e. there is an "issue" from the past that makes the idea of sacrifice difficult for him. Did he have an "angry and jealous" parent who acted like a Zeus, demanding sacrifice of some kind? Perhaps it was the "Father"? Without further information, who knows? So that's the first thing.
The second matter is the difference between God and Zeus. Zeus is a fiction of the mind, and even if Zeus existed (hard to prove since there aren't many people getting zapped or raped by huge swans, etc.), he would be only a creature, albeit a powerful one. And actually the Greeks believed that their "gods" were physical, so he wouldn't even been that far up in the hierarchy of beings because angels (and hence demons) are above physical beings and far more powerful. God, on the other hand, is the pure, self-sustaining act of existence itself. Big difference, in fact, an infinite difference.
A sacrifice to Zeus is meaningless because Zeus can't do squat, even if he existed. All he could do would be to threaten us, in which case, sacrifice means appeasing him like an abusive parent who has power over a helpless child.
God on the other hand is pure mercy and pure justice. The idea of mercy is meaningless without the idea of justice after all. Just try to define what exactly mercy is without referring in some way to justice. Mercy, after all, is pardoning someone who doesn't DESERVE to be pardoned; that is, it overrides justice.
Here's where it gets interesting. Sin is an offense against God and hence an offense not only against pure justice but also against pure mercy. The degree of evil is determined by the act, the person committing the evil, and the victim of the evil. In this case, God is the "victim" (although God doesn't actually suffer in any way, God deserves honor and respect instead of rejection by the nature of his being). Sin is a rejection of love. So a sin, no matter how small it seems to us, is an infinite offense because it attempts to violate infinite mercy and justice. Hence Cardinal Newman said quite strikingly,
"The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse."A farthing was one of the smallest units of currency, by the way, like our penny.
And who would deny that pure justice and mercy should be respected, even if those are merely ideals in our heads?
But remember this key: mercy is impossible to conceive without some notion of justice. Hence, without justice, there is no such thing as mercy. Mercy becomes valuable only insofar as the degree of justice to be administered increases. The more that justice demands, the more merciful the pardon.
Now a sin is an infinite offense. Therefore, any pardon of an infinite offense is an infinite act of mercy. And that is the sacrifice that Christ made. An animal couldn't make it because an animal would just be a victim, literally a scapegoat, where we get the idea of scapegoat today. A sin is a personal act, an act of free will. Hence a human has to make reparation who can freely choose God again. But the one offended is God, so that act of reparation must be infinite. But only God can make an act that is infinite. So the human making reparation to God has to in some way be infinite. Hence in Christ the humanity and divinity were united in one person so that justice could be satisfied. And here's the twist: the same act of satisfying the justice of God was the way that God showed us infinite mercy in pardoning us for every past, present, and future sin. In the Crucifixion is infinite justice and mercy at the same time. It satisfies justice, and in so doing, it bestows mercy.
Because, after all, if we commit sin, we're in the pickle of being unable to do anything to satisfy justice. And we certainly don't deserve forgiveness.
But, could God have simply forgiven us without going through the Crucifixion? Yes. But it was more fitting that God become like us, suffer like us, die like us, to show us an example. In our fallen state, when we are so prone to selfishness and revenge rather than justice, hardness of heart rather than mercy, we need a model of what true humanity looks like, how tall it can stand when it is virtuous and noble.
Because—here's the second interesting thing—St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out that to call sin an offense against God is true but incomplete. Sin is wrong not only because it offends God but because it hurts us, it destroys us, it is contrary to what it means to be fully human. A plant needs water, nutrition, air, and sunlight to grow well. A human has specific physical and spiritual needs. On the spiritual level, the human needs virtue. Virtue alone will make us truly human.
Hence God's act of satisfying justice and bestowing mercy was a double act of mercy. If God simply said, "I forgive you," we would still be left in our same darkness, with no guide as to how to live our lives. But God Himself showed us how we are to find our proper fulfillment, and it is through sacrifice.
Victimization, which is suffering without desiring it, is not sacrifice. Sacrifice is accepting all suffering that comes necessarily from doing the right thing, the thing that will make the individual and those around him more human. Hence, sacrifice is the core of love, and sacrificial love is the core of the family. The family is the core of society. Without sacrifice, love is simply attraction rather than mutual consideration. Without love, the family is simply a game of manipulation. Without family, the society is bored, aimless, and selfish. Without society, there can be no civilization, no leisure, and hence no freedom. Christ freely embraced the suffering that would come.
The Gospel is the most powerful story because it is the story of what happens when infinite Love enters our world. We crucify and reject it because in fact we don't want love. We like Frank Sinatra's song "I Did It My Way." That's why the Gospel is the most poignant story and why every good story is good insofar as it resembles the Gospel. Even B-movie entertainment is good because it resembles the Gospel—we like to see people kicking butt and taking names. Christ did that to Satan. We see huge power, tremendous struggles, high stakes. All of that is in the Gospel. At the heart of it is the notion of sacrifice, which is simply—I'm not a rock. I'm not an island. The only way for me to be happy as a human is to be selfless, to help others, to give consideration to others, to "do unto others what I would have them do unto me." That's love.
In fact, mercy is a sacrifice. I sacrifice the demands of justice and my personal satisfaction at seeing justice administered in order to show mercy. A poetry professor who doesn't understand that must be pretty bad at poetry...
Bad Liturgy and Jimmy Fallon
I found this article covering Jimmy Fallon's Catholic upbringing and his reaction to the Novus Ordo liturgy very interesting:
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Until this week, I had no idea that Jimmy Fallon grew up Catholic.
Then I came across this interview from 2012. As it turns out, Fallon really loved the Church when he was a young boy. In the interview with Terri Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, he talked about his childhood experience of Catholicism:
But over time, like so many Catholics, Fallon fell away from the Church. And when he fell on hard times, and looked to his childhood faith for answers, he found that things had changed.
The knee-jerk reaction of some Catholics is to say, “That’s a lame excuse. Christ is still present. He needs to man up and go.”
But that’s really not fair.
There is an anthropological dimension to liturgy that corresponds with belief. Gestures, symbols, aesthetics, and rituals all signify deeper sacramental truths. Just as the Mass is highest form of prayer, it is also the primary catechesis of the faithful.
In other words, we learn how to be Catholic by going to Mass.
The Church teaches that the four principle ends of Mass are adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and satisfaction, but there is an ancillary benefit to attending Mass. Seeing what happens at the Mass, reading the Gospel, listening to the homily, reciting the creed, witnessing the consecration, and comprehending the sacred dimension through which all these things transpire is fundamentally pedagogical. Almost everything you really need to know about being a Catholic and attaining eternal salvation can be obtained from regular Mass attendance.
When someone is turned off by what is happening in the liturgy and decides not to come back, it’s easy to point the finger in their direction. I would argue, however, that the primary responsibility falls on the pastors of souls who are obligated to provide something of substance to the faithful. If the most significant encounter people have with the Church undermines the belief that what is happening is sacred, important, and worthy of reverence, how can they arrive at that conclusion?
It should go without saying, but this means frisbees and beach balls have no place at Mass. [...]
Source: Steve Skojec, "Bad Liturgy Is Not a Victimless Crime. Just Ask Jimmy Fallon," Catholic Vote, n.d., accessed April 10, 2014, http://www.catholicvote.org/bad-liturgy-is-not-a-victimless-crime-just-ask-jimmy-fallon/.
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Until this week, I had no idea that Jimmy Fallon grew up Catholic.
Then I came across this interview from 2012. As it turns out, Fallon really loved the Church when he was a young boy. In the interview with Terri Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, he talked about his childhood experience of Catholicism:
GROSS: So you went to Catholic school when you were young.For many, this is how their Catholicism begins. It’s primarily cultural. It’s what you grow up doing. You find the aesthetics appealing. It’s an experience that you find comforting, and it’s something you can be a part of. There’s a foundation, but also a need for growth and greater depth. In other words, a fantastic opportunity for catechesis.
Mr. FALLON: Oh yeah.
GROSS: Did you have…
Mr. FALLON: I wanted to be a priest.
GROSS: Did you really?
Mr. FALLON: Yeah. I loved it.
GROSS: Why?
Mr. FALLON: I just, I loved the church. I loved the idea of it. I loved the smell of the incense. I loved the feeling you get when you left church. I loved like how this priest can make people feel this good. I just thought it was – I loved the whole idea of it. My grandfather was very religious, so I used to go to Mass with him at like 6:45 in the morning, serve Mass. And then you made money, too, if you did weddings and funerals. You’d get like five bucks. And so I go ‘Okay, I can make money too.’ I go, ‘This could be a good deal for me.’ I thought I had the calling.
But over time, like so many Catholics, Fallon fell away from the Church. And when he fell on hard times, and looked to his childhood faith for answers, he found that things had changed.
GROSS: Do you still go to church?For Fallon — arguably one of the silliest comedians in show business — the Mass he experienced was too frivolous, and thus unappealing.
Mr. FALLON: I don’t go to – I tried to go back. When I was out in L.A. and I was kind of struggling for a bit. I went to church for a while, but it’s kind of, it’s gotten gigantic now for me. It’s like too… There’s a band. There’s a band there now, and you got to, you have to hold hands with people through the whole Mass now, and I don’t like doing that. You know, I mean, it used to be the shaking hands piece was the only time you touched each other.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
Mr. FALLON: Now, I’m holding hand – now I’m lifting people. Like Simba.
(Laughter)
Mr. FALLON: I’m holding them (Singing) ha nah hey nah ho.
(Speaking) I’m doing too much. I don’t want – there’s Frisbees being thrown, there’s beach balls going around, people waving lighters, and I go, ‘This is too much for me.’ I want the old way. I want to hang out with the, you know, with the nuns, you know, that was my favorite type of Mass, and the grotto, and just like straight up, just Mass Mass.
The knee-jerk reaction of some Catholics is to say, “That’s a lame excuse. Christ is still present. He needs to man up and go.”
But that’s really not fair.
There is an anthropological dimension to liturgy that corresponds with belief. Gestures, symbols, aesthetics, and rituals all signify deeper sacramental truths. Just as the Mass is highest form of prayer, it is also the primary catechesis of the faithful.
In other words, we learn how to be Catholic by going to Mass.
The Church teaches that the four principle ends of Mass are adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and satisfaction, but there is an ancillary benefit to attending Mass. Seeing what happens at the Mass, reading the Gospel, listening to the homily, reciting the creed, witnessing the consecration, and comprehending the sacred dimension through which all these things transpire is fundamentally pedagogical. Almost everything you really need to know about being a Catholic and attaining eternal salvation can be obtained from regular Mass attendance.
When someone is turned off by what is happening in the liturgy and decides not to come back, it’s easy to point the finger in their direction. I would argue, however, that the primary responsibility falls on the pastors of souls who are obligated to provide something of substance to the faithful. If the most significant encounter people have with the Church undermines the belief that what is happening is sacred, important, and worthy of reverence, how can they arrive at that conclusion?
It should go without saying, but this means frisbees and beach balls have no place at Mass. [...]
...academic arguments are completely useless in questions of liturgy. These scholars are always concerned only about the historical side of the substance of faith and of the forms of devotion. If, however, we think correctly and historically, we should realize that what is an expression of veneration in one period can be an expression of blasphemy in another. If people who have been kneeling for a thousand years suddenly get to their feet, they do not think, “We’re doing this like the early Christians, who stood for the Consecration”; they are not aware of returning to some particularly authentic form of worship. They simply get up, brush the dust from their trouser-legs and say to themselves: “So it wasn’t such a serious business after all.” Everything that takes place in celebrations of this kind implies the same thing: “It wasn’t all that serious after all.” Under such circumstances, anthropologically speaking, it is quite impossible for faith in the presence of Christ in the Sacrament to have any deeper spiritual significance, even if the Church continues to proclaim it and even if the participants of such celebrations go so far as to affirm it explicitly. (Mosebach, The Heresy of Formlessness)---
Source: Steve Skojec, "Bad Liturgy Is Not a Victimless Crime. Just Ask Jimmy Fallon," Catholic Vote, n.d., accessed April 10, 2014, http://www.catholicvote.org/bad-liturgy-is-not-a-victimless-crime-just-ask-jimmy-fallon/.
Language as Communication, Big Words, Liturgy, Preaching
First watch this video:
I haven't read the study itself, nor do I plan to, but I think Derek's break down of the study shows clearly how deeply embedded is our modern society's emphasis on language as communication rather than expression. We like language that communicates clearly and succinctly. Even further, we prefer clear communication that uses small words than big words, even if it takes more small words to communicate the same thing.
Case in point. In the English translation (2010) of the Roman Missal for the Novus Ordo liturgy, "one in being" was replaced with the more Latinate "consubstantial" in the Nicene Creed. People asked, "What does 'consubstantial' mean?" The response: "one in being" (ish). Why was the change made, then, it was asked. People dislike the new translation because it has bigger words, more complex sentences, and unusual phrasing that follows the way the Latin language works more than the English.
So, as Derek pointed out, this goes to show that as a society we prefer and (unconsciously) assume that language is mostly supposed to be about communication.
And yet we cannot get rid of language as expression, under which "style" falls. Even Derek's presentation of this Princeton study required a certain style that was "simple." Language distilled to the most basic elements of communication is still itself a way of expressing meaning, and its furthest reduction is the input/output of a computer program reading code. Code is language in its purest communicative form.
But if we simply wanted language as communication, why don't we speed this whole thing up and bring it to its logical conclusion by changing English into code instead? Texting and online chat has been a huge catalyst in pushing this transformation of language into pure communication.
The question must be asked: can people who both regularly text and realize what their texting is contributing to (that is, the whole process of the reduction of language into pure "code" communication) actually appreciate language as expression?
It seems to me that there is a dichotomy when these two aspects of language are pressed further and further. They have to exist in balance, not as ends but as principles, as a framework. The balance seems to be determined by factors like context and circumstances, audience, message, time, etc.
Thus, of course, people who are accustomed to seeing and using language as communication will be repelled by expressive language and an evocative style, such as the style intrinsic to liturgical form as it has organically evolved through the centuries in all of the rites. Just look at how the Blessed Mother is described, for example, in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: "... our most holy, most pure, most-blessed and glorious Lady, the Mother of God and ever-Virgin Mary...." All of this description would seem to the modern man useless and its inclusion incomprehensible. "OK," he might say, "It's nice that Mary is obviously revered with all these titles, but why can't we just say something like, 'Blessed Virgin Mary'," and if he's generous, he might add, "Mother of God."
This distaste for bigger, more complicated words also suggests to me that the default reaction of a person towards the Holy Mass, especially if it is in, say, Latin, would be one of utter boredom, confusion, and perhaps contempt. Everything about the Holy Mass—the words, the gestures, etc.—are expressive. Why the incense? Why not simply just quote Revelation and recall that our prayers rise like incense? Isn't that enough? Why face "East"? Why a quiet voice now and a loud voice then? Why bells? Why kneel? Why consubstantial (or rather consubstantialem Patri)?
And then we see that the Holy Ghost, as a soul becomes more sensitive to His inner movements and promptings, teaches a soul the sensitivity and reflexivity required to appreciate such things, not only intellectually, but affectively and effectively—with the heart and will. The Holy Ghost's groanings within us—aren't those a form of lingual expression that transcend our understanding? And yet prayer is still made on our behalf to the Father. This is a deeply mystical reality. Even the mystics say that they cannot say what they experience in contemplation. How can it be communicated or even expressed in human terms? But something meaning-full is still happening, something still directed and perfused by the Logos.
But there can be a way to overemphasize language as expression. It is the rhetorical flourishes that serve to obscure and dilute a communication. It's the Baroque taken to its extreme, to the point that what is fundamental has been lost sight of for the lesser, smaller things.
Perhaps this is why holy preaching is the most effective preaching. I suspect that, no matter what people culturally believe about language as communication, expressive language is still so fundamentally human that it can't be avoided, and because of that fact, effective preaching from a Saint can pierce straight to the heart and will. As long as preaching isn't holy, there is the danger of speaking too tersely, speaking with a barren quality, or there is the danger of speaking too eloquently, with such abundance and redundance of flourishing that it must be questioned if the speaking is a matter of pride. But holy preaching will reach the right balance because the Holy Ghost, the breath of the Perfect Speaker (or perhaps Spoken?), is directing.
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Addendum:
Another thought struck me—as our society moves away from expressive language (to the extent that it can), our language has become increasingly banal and, paradoxically, full of superfluous interjections.
Example: "I just...like....um...want to...you know...go to the...thing...I don't know...."
It is as though we are trying to make up for the lack of expression by inserting filler words. The poet Taylor Mali was very observant on the effects of this rapid change in language:
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Addendum:
Another thought struck me—as our society moves away from expressive language (to the extent that it can), our language has become increasingly banal and, paradoxically, full of superfluous interjections.
Example: "I just...like....um...want to...you know...go to the...thing...I don't know...."
It is as though we are trying to make up for the lack of expression by inserting filler words. The poet Taylor Mali was very observant on the effects of this rapid change in language:
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Dr. Christine Mohrmann on Language as Expression
Under the influence of positivism [N.B.: a philosophical movement in the early 20th century that, among other things, sought to reduce all language to a pure form of communication as though we were computers feeding each other strips of data; the movement posited that language is merely for the purpose of communicating data; cf. George Orwell's "newspeak" in his Nineteen-Eighty Four for a good example of this "language"], people, especially people in non-professional circles, are still inclined to regard language as pure communication, as a utilitarian instrument, as a means of social intercourse, as language par excellence and as the only real linguistic phenomenon. Or, to put it another way: every linguistic form of expression is examined and judged according to its social utility and the ease with which it can be understood. The colloquial language is the language; the ideals of efficiency and intelligibility, the idea of language as communication, dominate the conception of language as a human phenomenon. People thus tend to forget that language as expression—which in many cases includes language as a literary tool—is certainly just as important a phenomenon, and plays a great role in many spheres in human life. In this latter case, i.e., language as a means of expression, it is not merely a question of the individual element, the personal style of the writer or poet. This phenomenon can also occur as a mode of expression based on a collective tradition. Linguistic form is then no longer chiefly and exclusively a medium of communication but rather the medium of expression of a group living according to a certain tradition. In such cases linguistic usage is often deliberately stylized, and there exist language and style forms, transmitted from generation to generation, in which people deliberately deviate from language as communication, as current in everyday life, in order to obtain a certain artistic, religious, or spiritual effect. Here we have the very opposite of the matter-of-fact development of languages as media of communication as they are so rapidly evolving in our times. This is probably the reason why the man of today, when confronted with the phenomenon of stylized languages as the traditional means of expression of a collectivity, languages not only accepted but maintained in use by countless generations, finds them incomprehensible, peculiar and, therefore, usually to be discarded. Thus we can understand too how the modern Christian, in the liturgical prayer texts, for example, longs first and foremost for intelligibility, clarity and lucidity; we understand also how it was possible for a translation of the Psalms to be made in our generation in which the mystery of the ancient prayer texts has been eliminated at all costs in favour [sic] of a lucidity and clarity dictated by a certain historical positivism [N.B.: the author is speaking of the Pius XII translation of the Psalms]. [...]
[Our concern is] the traditional, stylized use of linguistic elements which have little or no contact any longer with contemporary life, but which continue to survive in another, non-material connection. Whenever this phenomenon occurs in the field of literature, one usually speaks of stylized language. In connection with religion, one commonly speaks of sacral or hieratic languages. [...]
One of the artificial languages about which we know most and from which we can thus most easily gain an idea of the nature of this phenomenon is that of the Homeric poems. Homeric Greek, or rather the artificial language of the Greek epic, as we know it from the Homeric epics, from Hesiod and, in a more or less diluted form, from poetic inscriptions, was never a spoken language and never led an organic life in a civilized community. It is a combination of heterogeneous elements which together form the stylized instrument employed by the epic poets. It consists essentially of a great number of fixed expressions, word combinations, and turns of speech which must have had their origin in a long tradition of poetic oral improvisation, but which are also employed, with great virtuosity, by later poets who committed their works to writing. The epic vocabulary is a remarkable mixture of very early and later elements, of words and word forms taken from different Greek dialects. [...] This heterogeneous combination of various elements, which immediately sufficed to conjure up for the Greeks the world of the epic and which, as the consecrated language of narrative poetry, formed a structural unit, had a very long life. It not only provided the material for two of the greatest works in the history of world literature, but continued to be used for centuries as the language of epic poetry. Generation after generation of Greeks were brought up on it, and this explains its viability. Every generation took the trouble to steep itself in this artificial idiom, and in this way a great national artistic asset was preserved. As late as the fifth century A.D. a Christian poet, Nonnos of Panopolis in the Egyptian Thebaid, wrote a paraphrase of St. John's Gospel in Homeric Greek.
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Source: Christine Mohrmann, Liturgical Latin: Its Origins and Character (London: Burns & Oates, 1959), 7-11.
[Our concern is] the traditional, stylized use of linguistic elements which have little or no contact any longer with contemporary life, but which continue to survive in another, non-material connection. Whenever this phenomenon occurs in the field of literature, one usually speaks of stylized language. In connection with religion, one commonly speaks of sacral or hieratic languages. [...]
One of the artificial languages about which we know most and from which we can thus most easily gain an idea of the nature of this phenomenon is that of the Homeric poems. Homeric Greek, or rather the artificial language of the Greek epic, as we know it from the Homeric epics, from Hesiod and, in a more or less diluted form, from poetic inscriptions, was never a spoken language and never led an organic life in a civilized community. It is a combination of heterogeneous elements which together form the stylized instrument employed by the epic poets. It consists essentially of a great number of fixed expressions, word combinations, and turns of speech which must have had their origin in a long tradition of poetic oral improvisation, but which are also employed, with great virtuosity, by later poets who committed their works to writing. The epic vocabulary is a remarkable mixture of very early and later elements, of words and word forms taken from different Greek dialects. [...] This heterogeneous combination of various elements, which immediately sufficed to conjure up for the Greeks the world of the epic and which, as the consecrated language of narrative poetry, formed a structural unit, had a very long life. It not only provided the material for two of the greatest works in the history of world literature, but continued to be used for centuries as the language of epic poetry. Generation after generation of Greeks were brought up on it, and this explains its viability. Every generation took the trouble to steep itself in this artificial idiom, and in this way a great national artistic asset was preserved. As late as the fifth century A.D. a Christian poet, Nonnos of Panopolis in the Egyptian Thebaid, wrote a paraphrase of St. John's Gospel in Homeric Greek.
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Source: Christine Mohrmann, Liturgical Latin: Its Origins and Character (London: Burns & Oates, 1959), 7-11.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
"Liking" Isn't "Helping"
From Feature Shoot:
See some of the photographs here: http://www.featureshoot.com/2014/02/liking-isnt-helping/
A recent ad campaign for Singapore charity, Crisis Relief Singapore, confronts the idea of ‘Facebook philanthropy,’ reminding us that ‘liking’ or ‘sharing’ issues of world crisis on Facebook isn’t nearly enough. The ads show heartbreaking images encircled by a slew of thumbs up signs—the irony here quite powerful—and read, “Liking isn’t helping. Be a volunteer. Change a life.” A refreshing and bold message, these ads are a call to action, encouraging us to get out from behind the screen if we want to make a difference.Source: Amanda Gorence, "'Liking Isn't Helping': Powerful Ad Campaign Addresses 'Facebook Philanthropy'," Feature Shoot, February 17, 2014, accessed February 18, 2014, http://www.featureshoot.com/2014/02/liking-isnt-helping/.
See some of the photographs here: http://www.featureshoot.com/2014/02/liking-isnt-helping/
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Becoming an "Elite"—Prudence
In May 2010, Seth Godin wrote,
In more general terms, Godin indicates the option that is available to all regardless of their financial or living circumstances, the option to take responsibility for their actions, their lives, their orientation—and ultimately it will be either towards God or away from God. What Godin is actually talking about, when translated into the language of the Catholic heritage of moral philosophy and theology, is the difference between those with prudence (combined with a certain magnanimity) and those without it.
The Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan called this reflective self-appropriation, a series of actions by which we examine our experience, form an insight regarding it, make a judgment, and then decide to act on our insights and judgments. This process is, really, a contemporary version of what St. Thomas called the steps for acquiring prudence: reflection, judgment, action. It is a necessary step in order to be both a good human as human (for those who are legitimately ignorant of Christian revelation, wherever they may be) and a good Christian. Prudence shows us our proper goals and the right means to attain them. Magnanimity encourages us on to endeavor towards great things, those things worthy of honor, those things which give glory to God.
In the developing world, there's often a sharp dividing line between the elites and everyone else. The elites have money and/or an advanced education. It's not unusual to go to the poorest places on earth and find a small cadre of people who aren't poor at all. Sometimes, this is an unearned position, one that's inherited or acquired in ways that take advantage of others. Regardless, you can't just announce you're an elite and become one.
In more and more societies, though (including my country and probably yours [and I'm including virtually the entire planet here, except perhaps North Korea] ), I'd argue that there's a different dividing line. This is the line between people who are actively engaged in new ideas, actively seeking out change, actively engaging--and people who accept what's given and slog along. It starts in school, of course, and then the difference accelerates as we get older. Some people make the effort to encounter new challenges or to grapple with things they disagree with. They seek out new people and new opportunities and relish the discomfort that comes from being challenged to grow (and challenging others to do the same). [...]
[Becoming an elite is] because of a choice, the decision to be aware and engaged, to challenge a status quo of your choice.Source: Seth Godin, "Are You an Elite?," Seth's Blog, May 11, 2010, accessed February 16, 2014, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/05/are-you-an-elite.html.
In more general terms, Godin indicates the option that is available to all regardless of their financial or living circumstances, the option to take responsibility for their actions, their lives, their orientation—and ultimately it will be either towards God or away from God. What Godin is actually talking about, when translated into the language of the Catholic heritage of moral philosophy and theology, is the difference between those with prudence (combined with a certain magnanimity) and those without it.
The Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan called this reflective self-appropriation, a series of actions by which we examine our experience, form an insight regarding it, make a judgment, and then decide to act on our insights and judgments. This process is, really, a contemporary version of what St. Thomas called the steps for acquiring prudence: reflection, judgment, action. It is a necessary step in order to be both a good human as human (for those who are legitimately ignorant of Christian revelation, wherever they may be) and a good Christian. Prudence shows us our proper goals and the right means to attain them. Magnanimity encourages us on to endeavor towards great things, those things worthy of honor, those things which give glory to God.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
How Not To Take Things Personally
If you are like many, you probably wake up and go through your day expecting that it will go relatively smoothly and predictably. You expect to see the same people, go through the same routines, eat basically the same food. Perhaps you look forward to it or perhaps you don’t. But something everyone inescapably experiences are people who are inconsiderate, impatient, or even downright hostile. These people can treat us in a way that leaves us feeling worthless, helpless, overwhelmed, or even infuriated. Our interactions with these people, whether in a face-to-face encounter, or over the phone, or while driving in traffic, can dampen our spirits and make it difficult to focus for the rest of the day. Some of us will spend much time and energy thinking about things we could have done or said in response. Others will vent with those they are close to, hoping to find some amount of sympathy and appreciation. Others will withdraw silently and sulkily into themselves. Still others will seemingly brush aside the incident, perhaps even appearing happy while they move forward, yet perhaps in fleeting moments of honest self-reflection will wonder why they feel awful inside.
Perhaps you have been told by people to “suck it up” or that you need to develop “thick skin.” Sometimes these pieces of “advice” are given with good intention or in good humor, by friends, relatives, supervisors, or teachers. Their basic point is the same: to get over your feelings in order to stick with the task at hand.
And indeed, some people develop “thick skin,” but not in the way we commonly think of it. Some develop thick skin by becoming fat, their obesity unconsciously representing a thick layer to protect their internal spirit from the hostility of the outside world. Others develop thick skin by covering their skin in tattoos, such images sometimes covering huge portions of the body, turning the body into a piece of exhibitionism. Still others will pierce their skin, others will cut it, others will “cover it” in baggy clothing. There are people who will develop “apathetic attitudes” by which they hardly react to anything so as at least to avoid the possibility of ever experiencing pain again. There are those who use humor to such an extent that they’ll laugh when they should really be expressing concern—”Oh, haha,” they’ll react after they “accidently” bump into you and pour hot coffee all over you, “Did that hurt?” There are those who develop the thick skin of seeking constant emotional thrills, perhaps by drugs, drinking, sex, or other entertainment. There are those who have the thick skin of intellectualizing everything so as to never deal with emotions. And there are others who in a sort of subtle inversion will dress immodestly in order to draw peoples’ attention to their “skin” so as to avoid having to deal with people—or more importantly, themselves—on any meaningful level “beneath the skin,” that is, on the level of the emotions or spirit. After all, eroticism and romantic relationships do not engage the soul in any honest and loving way but only for emotional thrill rides by means of mutual manipulation that can cause emotional scars lasting for years, even lifetimes.
People who suggest that we ought to “suck it up” or develop “thick skin” are simply misinformed about human psychology and perhaps even themselves hold deep, dark emotions hidden in the recesses of their unconscious, an ugliness that is waiting to come out given the right trigger. Nevertheless, there is a way not to take things personally, and it is through a healthy realism.
Realism is a way of looking at things “realistically.” Usually it is opposed to idealism, which filters life through overly-optimistic lenses. In fact, realism if it is true realism includes all the ideals and aspirations of the human heart, but it places them where they ought to be and chooses the appropriate means to attain those ends. Some aspirations are contrary to the hard facts of reality; for example, no matter how much an individual may desire it, he cannot grow wings to fly like a bird. No matter how much we desire it, we cannot control weather, earthquakes, fires, or other natural disasters. No matter how much we dislike it, we cannot control other peoples’ behaviors although we may do certain things that we know often in fact manipulate other people in predictable ways.
Realism accepts the highs and lows of life, and at the end of the day, you are a realist even if you don’t think of yourself that way. We expect realistically a car with gas and working parts to get us from point A to point B. We expect realistically that eating will satisfy our hunger. We expect realistically that if we flip a light switch—if there is no power outage and if the bulb is working and if the circuits are all properly in place—that the lights will go on. No one spends a minute to think about whether or not to jump out of the way of an oncoming car—we just do it because we know that if we don’t, we most certainly will be seriously injured or probably even killed.
So how does realism allow us to take other peoples’ inconsiderate or hostile behavior not in a personal way? It’s quite simple: realism reminds us that we ought to expect most people to act in an inconsiderate manner anyway.
If we expect harsh or unfair treatment, which is all that this broken world can offer, then our hopes for receiving love will never be dashed because we will never seek to satiate those desires by means of turning towards the world. The world cannot give what it doesn’t have, and the world simply doesn’t have love, patience, empathy, consideration, gentleness. All things good come from God, and if we find these beneficial qualities in another human being, it is because God is working through that person, whether consciously or not. When we encounter consideration, justice, and mercy, we rejoice like parched flowers in a dry land when it rains. We then are grateful.
When we remember that in our fallen condition, the normative—or “normal”—behavior that society expects is greediness, narcissism, an “every-man-for-himself” individualism, then we can take the concrete steps towards making sure that, no matter how we are treated, we will resolve to be virtuous, loving, and considerate. No matter how others treat us, we can always take responsibility for our actions and treat others with the love that they never received, and perhaps in that brief giving of love, that other person’s heart may be cracked open by the grace of God.
When we expect hostile behavior, then we no longer need to defend ourselves. After all, this hostile behavior usually identifies a finite aspect of ourselves that is true—perhaps we were “stupid” for not noticing something (yes, even though we couldn’t have noticed it anyway); perhaps we were “retarded” for not being able to do something so seemingly simple; perhaps we did a “fail” by our mistakes or accidents; perhaps we were “slow” because we couldn’t provide what the other person expected as fast as they expected it (yes, even though we can move only so fast).
The point in these attacks against our character is not so much that we are being demanded to do something or demeaned for failing to do something that is literally impossible given the concrete circumstances but that the other person perceives a failure regardless of how realistic their expectation is in the first place. Yes, of course, we cannot move or think with the speed of Superman or a computer calculator. Of course, we may sometimes slip, fall, bump into someone, cut someone off, make a Freudian slip, or forget something important. Everyone makes mistakes. But when people treat us “unfairly,” we ought to remember that we forget this simple, realistic fact of life: we are finite creatures who often make mistakes. And we never need to defend our mistakes. All we have to do is admit them in all simplicity, honesty, and perhaps even humor.
“Yes, I am stupid!” It’s sort of funny when we just admit it like that, isn’t it? “Of course I’m dyslexic! Dyslexics are ‘teople poo’!” “Yes, I’m slow!” Or if they demand that we "go faster," we could simply say, "Yes, sir! I'm going as fast as I can," while simply going at the same speed. And if they demand it again, we can simply repeat it again, "Yes, sir! I'm going as fast as I can!" When we admit our mistakes like this, the other person eventually has only one option: to surrender to the hard facts of reality. No matter how much they may press us, make demands of us, or treat us rudely, eventually they will have to face the fact that their expectations cannot change our behavior, cannot get them any closer to their desired goal. We can go only so fast, think so fast, speak so fast, and no more. And it is in this encounter with, this surrender to reality that perhaps the other person will then be able to feel remorse for their behavior. But then again, don’t count on it!
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
The Super Bowl and Prayer
"Prayer is superstition, plain and simple," AA President David Silverman said in a statement [regarding a billboard making fun of prayer placed outside Metlife Stadium in New Jersey]. "It trivializes the dedication of the players and takes away from their achievements. A third of football fans pray in hopes of helping their team. These are adults we're talking about – people with children, people with careers, people who vote. It's 2014; it's time to stop believing that prayer works. Give credit where credit is due and celebrate what this is really about-coming together to cheer on hard-working athletes doing what they do best."
Source: Joe Heschmeyer, "American Atheists, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Straw Man," Shameless Popery Blog, February 3, 2014, accessed February 4, 2014, http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2014/02/football-formal-logic-and-new-atheism.html.
My point is this: Silverman and Godin are right about sports and secular holidays—they're not about God but us.
The Jews wanted nothing to do with the stadium built in Jerusalem (1 Maccabees 1:14) because of its association with pagan living, frivolity, and immodesty, and Jewish rabbinical tradition expands on these points (http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/870901_Olympic.html).
St. Francis de Sales writes of lawful and necessary recreations that "need no rules beyond those of ordinary discretion, which keep everything within due limits of time, place, and degree. [...] Only one must avoid excess, either in the time given to them, or the amount of interest they absorb [....] After five or six hours spent over chess, one's mind is spent and weary, and too long a time given to tennis results in physical exhaustion; or if people play for a high stake, they get anxious and discomposed, and such unimportant objects are unworthy of so much care and thought. But, above all, beware of setting your heart upon any of these things, for however lawful an amusement may be, it is wrong to give one's heart up to it. Not that I would not have you take pleasure in what you are doing [...] but I would not have you engrossed by it, or become eager or overfond of any of these things" (Introduction to the Devout Life, Vintage Spiritual Classics ed., pp. 161-162).
The Doctor also explains that we must not play games that "can only be enjoyed at the expense of your antagonist," such as gambling or other games of chance (p. 163). He cautions us against "frivolous amusements [which] are for the most part dangerous; they dissipate the spirit of devotion, enervate the mind, check true charity, and arouse a multitude of evil inclinations in the soul, and therefore I would have you very reticent in their use" (p. 164).
Even Mr. Silverman unconsciously recognizes the discrepancy between prayer and the Super Bowl (although, of course, because he believes no one should be praying at all). What do the two have to do with each other? If St. Francis de Sales would caution us against playing chess for a few hours, then what would he say about the Super Bowl? (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/02/04/super-bowl-xlviii-breaks-record-for-most-watched-tv-event-in-us-history/).
And Groundhog Day? It's not as peaceful or clean as the movie depicts it to be.
"Bethink you that your Dear Lord, Our Lady, all the Angels and Saints, saw all that was passing. Did they not look with sorrowful pity, while your heart, capable of better things, was engrossed with such mere follies?" (p. 165).
Source: Joe Heschmeyer, "American Atheists, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Straw Man," Shameless Popery Blog, February 3, 2014, accessed February 4, 2014, http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2014/02/football-formal-logic-and-new-atheism.html.
Seth Godin recently wrote a blog post on the anthropological (and marketing) relation between the Super Bowl (and other secular holidays) and personal identity in the context of the larger culture. I think the full post is worth quoting:
One way the tribe identifies is through the observance of a holiday, of a group custom, of the thing we all do together that proves we are in sync. People thrive on mass celebration, but as our culture has fragmented, these universal observances are harder to find. We used to watch the same TV shows at the same time, eat the same foods, drive the same car. Given a choice, though, many people take the choice—and so, as the culture fragments, we move away from the center and to the edges.
Halloween and the Super Bowl are the new secular holidays, the group-mania events that prove we're able to stay in sync. Every year, signed up for it or not, each of us is expected to survive the relentless hype. We see almost a month's worth of never-ending media about the Super Bowl—business articles, travel articles, legal articles, cooking articles—a huge onslaught of content-free noise.
And every year, the commercials disappoint, while the game includes eleven minutes of action over the course of four hours of not so much.
And yet we do it again and again. Because the corporate hoopla is beside the real point, which is a chance for all of us to talk about the same thing at the same time. This is part of what it means to belong.
While the Super Bowl is a large-scale example of this happening across a huge swath of people, these occurences [sic] happen often in much smaller tribes as well. The buzz about Fashion Week or CES or the latest from Sundance are micro varieties of the same desire to be in sync. Your customers and your employees want to feel what it feels to do what other people are doing. Not everyone, just the people they identify with.
It's easy to be persuaded that this event is somehow about the game, or the coverage or the hype, but it's not. Like Groundhog day, it's a pointless thing we do over and over again, because hanging out with people you care about (even if it's just to eat junk food and talk about how bad the commercials are) is almost always worth doing.Source: Seth Godin, "Groundhog Day and the Super Bowl," Seth Godin Blog, February 2, 2014, accessed February 4, 2014, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/02/groundhog-day-and-the-super-bowl.html.
My point is this: Silverman and Godin are right about sports and secular holidays—they're not about God but us.
The Jews wanted nothing to do with the stadium built in Jerusalem (1 Maccabees 1:14) because of its association with pagan living, frivolity, and immodesty, and Jewish rabbinical tradition expands on these points (http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/870901_Olympic.html).
St. Francis de Sales writes of lawful and necessary recreations that "need no rules beyond those of ordinary discretion, which keep everything within due limits of time, place, and degree. [...] Only one must avoid excess, either in the time given to them, or the amount of interest they absorb [....] After five or six hours spent over chess, one's mind is spent and weary, and too long a time given to tennis results in physical exhaustion; or if people play for a high stake, they get anxious and discomposed, and such unimportant objects are unworthy of so much care and thought. But, above all, beware of setting your heart upon any of these things, for however lawful an amusement may be, it is wrong to give one's heart up to it. Not that I would not have you take pleasure in what you are doing [...] but I would not have you engrossed by it, or become eager or overfond of any of these things" (Introduction to the Devout Life, Vintage Spiritual Classics ed., pp. 161-162).
The Doctor also explains that we must not play games that "can only be enjoyed at the expense of your antagonist," such as gambling or other games of chance (p. 163). He cautions us against "frivolous amusements [which] are for the most part dangerous; they dissipate the spirit of devotion, enervate the mind, check true charity, and arouse a multitude of evil inclinations in the soul, and therefore I would have you very reticent in their use" (p. 164).
Even Mr. Silverman unconsciously recognizes the discrepancy between prayer and the Super Bowl (although, of course, because he believes no one should be praying at all). What do the two have to do with each other? If St. Francis de Sales would caution us against playing chess for a few hours, then what would he say about the Super Bowl? (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/02/04/super-bowl-xlviii-breaks-record-for-most-watched-tv-event-in-us-history/).
And Groundhog Day? It's not as peaceful or clean as the movie depicts it to be.
"Bethink you that your Dear Lord, Our Lady, all the Angels and Saints, saw all that was passing. Did they not look with sorrowful pity, while your heart, capable of better things, was engrossed with such mere follies?" (p. 165).
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Dr. James Gaston on Lack of Catholic Cultural Perspective
Why then should we today care about culture, and Catholic culture in particular? Because our Catholic tradition has not been fully conveyed to us and therefore we lack the Catholic cultural perspective we need to understand and respond to the multifaceted modern culture in which we live. The religious and intellectual vision of the modern West has changed, and the culture has changed right along with it. Today we have a leviathanic [sic] secular humanistic technological culture void of nearly any higher moral vision of order or constraint. If the modern Christian is to live a good prudent life under the yoke of this pervasive materialistic deracinated culture, the need for a self-conscious Catholic cultural perspective has become almost mandatory.
Our ancestors didn’t need such a selfconscious [sic] perspective because they lived a Christian way of life in harmony with their local and regional ethnic cultures. Theirs was a culture rooted in a simple small-town agrarian rhythm of life, or based in an American Catholic immigrant ethnic ghetto, that directed and limited the individual’s personal and communal way of life. We no longer enjoy the luxury of living almost unconsciously a virtuous way of life fashioned by our Christian ethnic ancestors. There has been a break in the enculturation process, and the typical Catholic needs to reconnect with the Christian perspective and culture of the past in order to shape a new way of life that befits the religious, intellectual, and material crisis of Western society of today.
Such a vision is, frankly, akin to Catholic liberal education. It requires a reasonable grasp of the main currents of the history of the West and the Church and a practical understanding of how culture actually functions. [...]
You begin with your own spiritual and intellectual development, lovingly share this with your family, and do so while you interact with the culture and natural milieu at large. The source and starting point is your personal encounter with the Incarnate Word. Then your journey proceeds with a prudent consideration of the true dignity of the person and the family, the heritage and character of the local or regional community, and a just and harmonious utilization of property and the natural environment.
Our ancestors didn’t need such a selfconscious [sic] perspective because they lived a Christian way of life in harmony with their local and regional ethnic cultures. Theirs was a culture rooted in a simple small-town agrarian rhythm of life, or based in an American Catholic immigrant ethnic ghetto, that directed and limited the individual’s personal and communal way of life. We no longer enjoy the luxury of living almost unconsciously a virtuous way of life fashioned by our Christian ethnic ancestors. There has been a break in the enculturation process, and the typical Catholic needs to reconnect with the Christian perspective and culture of the past in order to shape a new way of life that befits the religious, intellectual, and material crisis of Western society of today.
Such a vision is, frankly, akin to Catholic liberal education. It requires a reasonable grasp of the main currents of the history of the West and the Church and a practical understanding of how culture actually functions. [...]
You begin with your own spiritual and intellectual development, lovingly share this with your family, and do so while you interact with the culture and natural milieu at large. The source and starting point is your personal encounter with the Incarnate Word. Then your journey proceeds with a prudent consideration of the true dignity of the person and the family, the heritage and character of the local or regional community, and a just and harmonious utilization of property and the natural environment.
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Source: Dr. James Gaston, "Catholic Culture: What is it and Why Should We Care About It?," Catholics United for the Faith, January 8, 2013, accessed January 1, 2014, http://www.cuf.org/2013/01/catholic-culture-what-is-it-and-why-should-we-care-about-it/.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
"Do Atheists Exist?"
An excellent article by Nicholas Frankovich on the "religion" of atheism, the fundamental religious consciousness of man, and the Western philosophical tradition related to God's nature and existence.
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[...] The Sunday Assembly, a “godless congregation” founded in East London last January by standup comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, now boasts affiliates in Brighton, Bristol, Oxford, Canberra, Melbourne, New York, and Portland, Ore. On September 21, it announced a “global missionary tour”: This past fall, interested individuals in 22 cities across the Anglosphere held Sunday Assembly meet-ups. [...]
Half ironically, the founders allow that the Assembly is a church, dedicated to benevolent acts and the search for transcendence. Though they draw the line at “religion,” insisting that it and atheism are mutually exclusive, the openness with which they borrow ecclesial atmospherics and nomenclature suggests that they see their atheist outfit as not entirely secular either. You might call it a third way, an alternative to religion and secularity both, much as the Church of England was historically a “via media” between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Speaking the language of the many who identify as “spiritual but not religious,” the Assembly draws on an increasingly widespread understanding of religion as something like what “the letter” of the law was for Saint Paul — “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). If “religion” remains the inevitable word for a certain moral and philosophical seriousness, however, atheism is, or should be, counted as religious after all. [...]
And so the Sunday Assembly, its rejection of the label “religion” notwithstanding, joins a distinguished parade of institutions demonstrating that religious practice persists as an anthropological fact even where belief in God is muted or absent.
We live in a post-secular age, having run up against the limitations of procedural liberalism, which, while regulating the market on which God and the Devil compete for souls, remains scrupulously disinterested in the outcome. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, an atheist, created a stir twelve years ago when he began to argue that the secular state has an interest in the distinctive contributions that Judaism and Christianity make to the political order. The Italian philosopher Marcello Pera, also an atheist, goes further, proposing a Christian civil religion to replenish the Judeo-Christian matrix from which the West derives the moral values on which liberal democracy depends. [...]
The third part of the Assembly’s motto, “Live better, help often, wonder more,” reflects a value attractive to souls seeking relief from the cool, or chill, as they experience it, of the secular climate in which they live. “Our modern culture is restless at the barriers of the human sphere,” Charles Taylor writes in A Secular Age. “The sense that there is something more presses in.”
Wonder more: No one disputes that atheism is compatible with wonder at the physical universe and how it works. Wonder at how it came to be just so, however, soon leads to wonder at how it came to be at all, a question that atheists typically sidestep. [...]
[T]he atheist seeking to communicate an accurate answer to the question “Why is there not nothing?” will find himself borrowing theologically inflected terminology. Inescapably, he affirms the most fundamental of theological precepts. He agrees with it implicitly. He asserts that he doesn’t. His disagreement is first of all with himself.
A dramatic declaration of atheism is usually an assertion of disbelief in a god no one else believes in either. Judging the shadowy masculine presence at the center of the Hebrew Bible to be a tyrannical father figure and a lie — Richard Dawkins calls him “the most unpleasant character in all fiction” — atheists who cross over into militant antitheism make quite the show of manfully defying the Lord’s authority to command them. They plant their flag in the ground. There they stand, they can do no other.
They lose their footing when they recoil as they do, reflexively, from classical theism as well. They don’t trust it. If it’s related to Him, they’re not interested; they won’t be seduced. They plug their ears to keep from hearing too distinctly the siren song of sweet reason, which they dodge, rather than confront. Either they see plainly or they intuit that God in his aspect as God of the philosophers is ground on which reason offers no apparent means of escape or resistance. We might as well try to refute the multiplication tables. They are what they are.
“I Am That I Am” is the conventional translation of the enigmatic Hebrew expression by which God in the burning bush identifies himself to Moses (Exodus 3:14). In the Greek of the Septuagint, “I am” is egō eimi. Jesus scandalizes his critics when, shifting to the present tense in a context in which you would expect the past tense, he answers them, “Before Abraham ever was, I am” — egō eimi (John 8:58). In first-century Jerusalem, that statement is either blasphemous or a theophany. [...]
The discernment of God as what Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century would term “ipsum esse subsistens” — the “Ground of Being,” in the parlance of Christian mysticism and theology — developed organically over the course of more than a millennium, with no clear moment of birth, although it was mature certainly by the High Middle Ages. Where the approach to God had been anthropological, it was now also philosophical — ontological, to be more precise. [...]
Many people who would never think to participate in the rancor of public antitheism are nonetheless susceptible to the zeitgeist in which atheism flourishes. It’s what they know. Doesn’t it speak well enough for them too? They start from the proposition that God is a person and rule it out as implausible. The argument that God can only be personal because he can’t be less than we are may be cogent in itself, but it needs a lot of unpacking. It has as its premise the God of the philosophers. To begin to make theism intelligible to a modern atheist, you have to bracket the God of the patriarchs and start from the premise.
Atheism is religion for people in a hurry. They’re quick to assume they understand someone who, engrossed in the question of why there isn’t nothing, says a few words to indicate what he sees the question pointing to. They mistake his verbal gesture for an answer that’s intended to close the question or do it justice. To see what he’s trying to get at, they would have to enter into the wonder that the question elicits in him and dwell there for a moment. The closest thing the question has to an answer is the wonder itself. [...]
For their rejection of all “gods” in the familiar sense of the term, Christians in ancient Rome were sometimes accused of being atheists. Now the misunderstanding is turned on its head: Atheists hold the Christian, and indeed any modern theist, to be most glaringly wrong in his understanding that God is a person, like a god of pagan antiquity. Training their sights on the notion of an anthropomorphic god, they excite and distract themselves. God as Being itself barely registers with them. [...]
To ask what [the atheist] means by “nothing” will provoke some eyeball-rolling at first, but the longer you think about it, the more you realize just how stubbornly inscrutable a concept “nothing” is, like “time,” which gave Saint Augustine so much trouble: “I know what time is until you ask me for a definition of it.” [...]
By “nothing,” it turns out, Krauss [an atheist physicist who sought to disprove the ontological argument in his book A Universe from Nothing] meant only the vacuum state, which in quantum theory is a field characterized by the occurrence of fleeting electromagnetic waves. In a withering review, David Albert, a theoretical physicist and philosophy professor at Columbia, dismissed A Universe from Nothing as a fraud and excoriated Krauss for failing to deliver the goods advertised in its title: “Vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields!” [...]
Notice how “nothing” can function for the atheist as “God” does for the theist. Are the two only using different linguistic tokens in parallel efforts to express the same ineffable thought? Their fear and trembling at the prospect of the “eternal nada,” Jones and Evans explain, moves them to cultivate their appreciation for the physical world (Christians call it “Creation”) that tickles our sense organs in the here and now: “Transcendence can be found in a breath of wind on your face or in a mouthful of custard tart,” they write. They pronounce nature “awesome,” a word whose recently acquired colloquial sense still shades into its older, literal sense. Open the door to just that much transcendence, however, and all of it comes rushing in, like a strong wind. Atheists instinctively try to resist it, while those of us who have been blown away by it recommend the experience.
“Wonder more,” the Sunday Assembly urges, and adherents of monotheistic religions echo the advice back to them. No, following wonder to its logical conclusion does not by itself make an atheist suddenly Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. It only means he’s not an atheist. Someone should tell him.
---
[...] The Sunday Assembly, a “godless congregation” founded in East London last January by standup comedians Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans, now boasts affiliates in Brighton, Bristol, Oxford, Canberra, Melbourne, New York, and Portland, Ore. On September 21, it announced a “global missionary tour”: This past fall, interested individuals in 22 cities across the Anglosphere held Sunday Assembly meet-ups. [...]
Half ironically, the founders allow that the Assembly is a church, dedicated to benevolent acts and the search for transcendence. Though they draw the line at “religion,” insisting that it and atheism are mutually exclusive, the openness with which they borrow ecclesial atmospherics and nomenclature suggests that they see their atheist outfit as not entirely secular either. You might call it a third way, an alternative to religion and secularity both, much as the Church of England was historically a “via media” between Catholicism and Protestantism.
Speaking the language of the many who identify as “spiritual but not religious,” the Assembly draws on an increasingly widespread understanding of religion as something like what “the letter” of the law was for Saint Paul — “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). If “religion” remains the inevitable word for a certain moral and philosophical seriousness, however, atheism is, or should be, counted as religious after all. [...]
And so the Sunday Assembly, its rejection of the label “religion” notwithstanding, joins a distinguished parade of institutions demonstrating that religious practice persists as an anthropological fact even where belief in God is muted or absent.
We live in a post-secular age, having run up against the limitations of procedural liberalism, which, while regulating the market on which God and the Devil compete for souls, remains scrupulously disinterested in the outcome. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, an atheist, created a stir twelve years ago when he began to argue that the secular state has an interest in the distinctive contributions that Judaism and Christianity make to the political order. The Italian philosopher Marcello Pera, also an atheist, goes further, proposing a Christian civil religion to replenish the Judeo-Christian matrix from which the West derives the moral values on which liberal democracy depends. [...]
The third part of the Assembly’s motto, “Live better, help often, wonder more,” reflects a value attractive to souls seeking relief from the cool, or chill, as they experience it, of the secular climate in which they live. “Our modern culture is restless at the barriers of the human sphere,” Charles Taylor writes in A Secular Age. “The sense that there is something more presses in.”
Wonder more: No one disputes that atheism is compatible with wonder at the physical universe and how it works. Wonder at how it came to be just so, however, soon leads to wonder at how it came to be at all, a question that atheists typically sidestep. [...]
[T]he atheist seeking to communicate an accurate answer to the question “Why is there not nothing?” will find himself borrowing theologically inflected terminology. Inescapably, he affirms the most fundamental of theological precepts. He agrees with it implicitly. He asserts that he doesn’t. His disagreement is first of all with himself.
A dramatic declaration of atheism is usually an assertion of disbelief in a god no one else believes in either. Judging the shadowy masculine presence at the center of the Hebrew Bible to be a tyrannical father figure and a lie — Richard Dawkins calls him “the most unpleasant character in all fiction” — atheists who cross over into militant antitheism make quite the show of manfully defying the Lord’s authority to command them. They plant their flag in the ground. There they stand, they can do no other.
They lose their footing when they recoil as they do, reflexively, from classical theism as well. They don’t trust it. If it’s related to Him, they’re not interested; they won’t be seduced. They plug their ears to keep from hearing too distinctly the siren song of sweet reason, which they dodge, rather than confront. Either they see plainly or they intuit that God in his aspect as God of the philosophers is ground on which reason offers no apparent means of escape or resistance. We might as well try to refute the multiplication tables. They are what they are.
“I Am That I Am” is the conventional translation of the enigmatic Hebrew expression by which God in the burning bush identifies himself to Moses (Exodus 3:14). In the Greek of the Septuagint, “I am” is egō eimi. Jesus scandalizes his critics when, shifting to the present tense in a context in which you would expect the past tense, he answers them, “Before Abraham ever was, I am” — egō eimi (John 8:58). In first-century Jerusalem, that statement is either blasphemous or a theophany. [...]
The discernment of God as what Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century would term “ipsum esse subsistens” — the “Ground of Being,” in the parlance of Christian mysticism and theology — developed organically over the course of more than a millennium, with no clear moment of birth, although it was mature certainly by the High Middle Ages. Where the approach to God had been anthropological, it was now also philosophical — ontological, to be more precise. [...]
Many people who would never think to participate in the rancor of public antitheism are nonetheless susceptible to the zeitgeist in which atheism flourishes. It’s what they know. Doesn’t it speak well enough for them too? They start from the proposition that God is a person and rule it out as implausible. The argument that God can only be personal because he can’t be less than we are may be cogent in itself, but it needs a lot of unpacking. It has as its premise the God of the philosophers. To begin to make theism intelligible to a modern atheist, you have to bracket the God of the patriarchs and start from the premise.
Atheism is religion for people in a hurry. They’re quick to assume they understand someone who, engrossed in the question of why there isn’t nothing, says a few words to indicate what he sees the question pointing to. They mistake his verbal gesture for an answer that’s intended to close the question or do it justice. To see what he’s trying to get at, they would have to enter into the wonder that the question elicits in him and dwell there for a moment. The closest thing the question has to an answer is the wonder itself. [...]
For their rejection of all “gods” in the familiar sense of the term, Christians in ancient Rome were sometimes accused of being atheists. Now the misunderstanding is turned on its head: Atheists hold the Christian, and indeed any modern theist, to be most glaringly wrong in his understanding that God is a person, like a god of pagan antiquity. Training their sights on the notion of an anthropomorphic god, they excite and distract themselves. God as Being itself barely registers with them. [...]
To ask what [the atheist] means by “nothing” will provoke some eyeball-rolling at first, but the longer you think about it, the more you realize just how stubbornly inscrutable a concept “nothing” is, like “time,” which gave Saint Augustine so much trouble: “I know what time is until you ask me for a definition of it.” [...]
By “nothing,” it turns out, Krauss [an atheist physicist who sought to disprove the ontological argument in his book A Universe from Nothing] meant only the vacuum state, which in quantum theory is a field characterized by the occurrence of fleeting electromagnetic waves. In a withering review, David Albert, a theoretical physicist and philosophy professor at Columbia, dismissed A Universe from Nothing as a fraud and excoriated Krauss for failing to deliver the goods advertised in its title: “Vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields!” [...]
Notice how “nothing” can function for the atheist as “God” does for the theist. Are the two only using different linguistic tokens in parallel efforts to express the same ineffable thought? Their fear and trembling at the prospect of the “eternal nada,” Jones and Evans explain, moves them to cultivate their appreciation for the physical world (Christians call it “Creation”) that tickles our sense organs in the here and now: “Transcendence can be found in a breath of wind on your face or in a mouthful of custard tart,” they write. They pronounce nature “awesome,” a word whose recently acquired colloquial sense still shades into its older, literal sense. Open the door to just that much transcendence, however, and all of it comes rushing in, like a strong wind. Atheists instinctively try to resist it, while those of us who have been blown away by it recommend the experience.
“Wonder more,” the Sunday Assembly urges, and adherents of monotheistic religions echo the advice back to them. No, following wonder to its logical conclusion does not by itself make an atheist suddenly Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. It only means he’s not an atheist. Someone should tell him.
---
Source: Nicholas Frankovich, "Do Atheists Exist?," National Review Online, December 28, 2013, accessed December 29, 2013, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367136/do-atheists-exist-nicholas-frankovich/.
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