Traditionalism as Therapy for Late Capitalism

On the issue of politics, the article only discusses churches that take "leftwing" political stances, but at least anecdotally, it seems to me that many young people--even those with an interest in traditional liturgy and the like--are even more hostile to churches with "rightwing" politics. So, sure, they like the bells and smells, but that doesn't mean that they are all going to accept orthodox Christian positions on, say, homosexuality or contraception.

To be a little pessimistic, this sort of thing makes me wonder if for many of these people traditional liturgies and devotions are anything more than isolated, "authentic" aesthetic experiences like eating ethnic food or listening to indie music rather than practices that shape one's life in any sort of meaningful way.

In this case, traditional churches serve a sort of hygienic or therapeutic function, providing people with temporary relief from the pressures and unreality of late capitalism, but people who rely on traditional religious practices for these functions do not accept the idea that they have political and social consequences. Christopher Lasch had it right, I think: "A society that has made nostalgia a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today. Having trivialized the past by equating it with outmoded styles of consumption, discarded fashions and attitudes, people today resent anyone who draws on the past in serious discussions of contemporary conditions or attempts to use the past as a standard by which to judge the present." Thus, we have people who are fascinated with past styles but who nevertheless angrily reject the idea that the societies in which those styles emerged might have anything meaningful to teach us.

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Source: http://www.fisheaters.com/forums/index.php?topic=3470152.msg34024618#msg34024618

Repost: Jonathan Franzen on Techno-Consumerism

Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.

To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.

Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn.

Its first line of defense is to commodify its enemy. You can all supply your own favorite, most nauseating examples of the commodification of love. Mine include the wedding industry, TV ads that feature cute young children or the giving of automobiles as Christmas presents, and the particularly grotesque equation of diamond jewelry with everlasting devotion. The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff.

A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb “to like” from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they’re designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren’t fixated on your liking it. (I’m thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.)

But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable.

If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick. You may find yourself becoming depressed, or alcoholic, or, if you’re Donald Trump, running for president (and then quitting). [...]

Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.

And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don’t have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors. [...]

My friend Alice Sebold likes to talk about “getting down in the pit and loving somebody.” She has in mind the dirt that love inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard.

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life. [...]

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie. [...]

The big risk here, of course, is rejection. We can all handle being disliked now and then, because there’s such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful. The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking. [...]

When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s” is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer. [...]

Instead of continuing to drift forward through my life as a global citizen, liking and disliking and withholding my commitment for some later date, I was forced to confront a self that I had to either straight-up accept or flat-out reject.

Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.

When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.

And who knows what might happen to you then?

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Source: Jonathan Franzen, "Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts," The New York Times, May 28, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html.

Repost: The Progressive Condition: The Cynical Art of Michel Houellebecq

“What we have today is the hegemonic figure of the liberal subject who, like Nietzsche’s Last Man, is concerned only with the pursuit of private pleasures + ideals of happiness.”

– Slavoj Žižek

Michel Houellebecq is known for his abrasive and vulgar wit, as a pamphleteer of literature; a pornographer of the neoliberal market place of ideas in its darker contours, a sexploitative tourist of the flyways within a global system that has lost itself among the labyrinths of its own economic nightmares; and, as a man who has been accused of obscenity, racism, misogyny and Islamophobia among other things. But beyond the surface tension of the mediasphere hype he is more a product of our free-market era than its perpetrator or victim. One might even suggest that he incarnates the Progressive Condition that is both our glory and possible demise: he is the Last Man in its hollowed out core tumbling toward that narrative aporia beyond which none of us will remain human.

As Ben Jeffery will put it Houellebecq’s narratives inhabit that space in the negative undertow of the enlightenment, a realm where “we are able to see ourselves as merely creatures, rather than God’s creatures, and nature as purposeless matter, rather than divine plan. Humans are just animals, and, unsurprisingly, that knowledge gives precedence to biological impulse; to strength, health and beauty over weakness, infirmity and repulsiveness – and it makes self-interest paramount” (Jeffery, Ben (2011-11-16). Anti-Matter: Michel Houellebecq and Depressive Realism (p. 15). NBN_Mobi_Kindle. Kindle Edition). This notion of rational self-interest has been one of those elements that that runs through most thought for the past two-centuries, a thematic or leit-motif of our Progressive Condition.

The original progressives held the consistent conviction that a “public interest” or “common good” really existed (Nugent, Walter (2009-12-04). Progressivism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Kindle Locations 258-259). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition). In our time this notion has taken on the fabric of a lie, a fiction that democrats continue to support in theory, republicans laugh at, but in practice both agree is just that: a nice idea that is best left in the shadows or hinterlands of the public unconscious. It’s in this society of moral bankruptcy and decay that Houellebecq situates his characters. They are much like himself (and much of his fiction comes right out of his life) cynical in the sense of Diogenes: a street art that shits on the most respectable citizens as if this was just the natural order of existence. As Sloterdijk in his Kritik der zynischen Vernunft (English: Critique of Cynical Reason) will inform us of Cynicism after Diogenes:

Its insights disclose the questionable and ridiculous aspects of the grand, serious systems. Its intelligence is floating, playful, essayistic, not laid out on secure foundations and final principles. Diogenes inaugurates the Gay Science (Nietzsche) by treating serious sciences in a tongue-in-cheek manner. How much truth is contained in something can be best determined by making it thoroughly laughable and then watching to see how much joking around it can take. For truth is a matter that can stand mockery, that is freshened by any ironic gesture directed at it. Whatever cannot stand satire is false. To parody a theory and its proponents is to carry out the experiment of experiments with it. (Critique of Cynical Reason, translation by Michael Eldred; foreword by Andreas Huyssen, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988, 288)

So that Houellebecq’s humor is both subtle and full of satiric intent, tongue-and-cheek cynicism that neither takes itself seriously nor expects to be taken seriously. Against a postmodern nihilist reading of his works one might actually see in it a critique of our eras Progressive Condition. Sloterdijk believed that this condition of our time was best typified by the difference between ancient and modern forms of cynicism, suggesting that unlike ancient Greek Cynicism the modern one no longer stands for values of the natural and ethical kind that bind people beyond their religious and economically useful convictions. Rather, it has become a mode of thought that defines its actions in terms of a “final end” of a purely materialistic sort and reduces the “ought” to an economic strategy aimed at maximizing profit. This new grittier market realism, what Mark Fisher will call “Capital Realism“, and Ben Jeffery as simply – “Depressive Realism” underlies most of Houellebeq’s novels and stories. His satires are for the most part taken at face value rather than as ironic and satirical statements about our eras cynicism in its rawest forms.

As Houellebecq will say through one of his characters: ‘Contemporary consciousness is no longer equipped to deal with our mortality. More than at any time or in any civilization, human beings are obsessed with aging. Each individual has a simple view of the future: a time will come when the sum of pleasures that life has left to offer is outweighed by the sum of pain (one can actually feel the meter ticking, and it ticks inevitably towards the end). This weighing up of pleasure and pain which, sooner or later, everyone is forced to make, leads logically, at a certain age, to suicide.’ (Jeffrey, pp. 15-16) This pop-cult psychoanalysis of our condition as a Freudian pleasure/pain dialectic that leads to suicide is seen almost everyday in various pop-cultural spheres: musicians, artists, performers, etc. committing suicide through drugs, self-inflicted wounds, et. al..

In his book on H.P. Lovecraft he will relate the basic condition of our era:

For humans of the end of the twentieth century, this cosmos devoid of hope is absolutely our world. This abject universe, where fear spreads in concentric circles from the unnameable revelation, this universe where our only imaginable destiny is to be crushed and devoured, we recognize absolutely as our mental universe. (Michel Houellebecq. Translated by Robin Mackay. H.P. Lovecraft Against the world, against life, Believer Books; First Edition edition (May 1, 2005))

This is the world according to Houellebecq, our world in its downward devolution into that strange and twisted thing it is. A market world where the maximization of everything is accelerating us into that disjunctive era where the lines between the human and inhuman blur, and we enter the machinic phylum like “dogs in the street barking”.

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Source: S.C. Hickman, "The Progressive Condition: The Cynical Art of Michel Houellebecq," Alien Ecologies blog, June 12, 2015, accessed July 18, 2015, http://darkecologies.com/2015/06/12/the-progressive-condition-the-cynical-art-of-michel-houellebecq/.

Pope Francis on the Technocratic Paradigm

106. The basic problem goes even deeper: it is the way that humanity has taken up technology and its development according to an undifferentiated and one-dimensional paradigm. This paradigm exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object. This subject makes every effort to establish the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation. It is as if the subject were to find itself in the presence of something formless, completely open to manipulation. Men and women have constantly intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand. Now, by contrast, we are the ones to lay our hands on things, attempting to extract everything possible from them while frequently ignoring or forgetting the reality in front of us. Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed”.

107. It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups. Decisions which may seem purely instrumental are in reality decisions about the kind of society we want to build.

108. The idea of promoting a different cultural paradigm and employing technology as a mere instrument is nowadays inconceivable. The technological paradigm has become so dominant that it would be difficult to do without its resources and even more difficult to utilize them without being dominated by their internal logic. It has become countercultural to choose a lifestyle whose goals are even partly independent of technology, of its costs and its power to globalize and make us all the same. Technology tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic, and those who are surrounded with technology “know full well that it moves forward in the final analysis neither for profit nor for the well-being of the human race”, that “in the most radical sense of the term power is its motive – a lordship over all”. As a result, “man seizes hold of the naked elements of both nature and human nature”. Our capacity to make decisions, a more genuine freedom and the space for each one’s alternative creativity are diminished.

109. The technocratic paradigm also tends to dominate economic and political life. The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings. Finance overwhelms the real economy. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated, and we are learning all too slowly the lessons of environmental deterioration. Some circles maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems, and argue, in popular and non-technical terms, that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth. They are less concerned with certain economic theories which today scarcely anybody dares defend, than with their actual operation in the functioning of the economy. They may not affirm such theories with words, but nonetheless support them with their deeds by showing no interest in more balanced levels of production, a better distribution of wealth, concern for the environment and the rights of future generations. Their behaviour shows that for them maximizing profits is enough. Yet by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion. At the same time, we have “a sort of ‘superdevelopment’ [sic] of a wasteful and consumerist kind which forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations of dehumanizing deprivation”, while we are all too slow in developing economic institutions and social initiatives which can give the poor regular access to basic resources. We fail to see the deepest roots of our present failures, which have to do with the direction, goals, meaning and social implications of technological and economic growth.

110. The specialization which belongs to technology makes it difficult to see the larger picture. The fragmentation of knowledge proves helpful for concrete applications, and yet it often leads to a loss of appreciation for the whole, for the relationships between things, and for the broader horizon, which then becomes irrelevant. This very fact makes it hard to find adequate ways of solving the more complex problems of today’s world, particularly those regarding the environment and the poor; these problems cannot be dealt with from a single perspective or from a single set of interests. A science which would offer solutions to the great issues would necessarily have to take into account the data generated by other fields of knowledge, including philosophy and social ethics; but this is a difficult habit to acquire today. Nor are there genuine ethical horizons to which one can appeal. Life gradually becomes a surrender to situations conditioned by technology, itself viewed as the principal key to the meaning of existence. In the concrete situation confronting us, there are a number of symptoms which point to what is wrong, such as environmental degradation, anxiety, a loss of the purpose of life and of community living. Once more we see that “realities are more important than ideas”.

111. Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm. Otherwise, even the best ecological initiatives can find themselves caught up in the same globalized logic. To seek only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system.

112. Yet we can once more broaden our vision. We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral. Liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm does in fact happen sometimes, for example, when cooperatives of small producers adopt less polluting means of production, and opt for a non-consumerist model of life, recreation and community. Or when technology is directed primarily to resolving people’s concrete problems, truly helping them live with more dignity and less suffering. Or indeed when the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who behold it. An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance?

113. There is also the fact that people no longer seem to believe in a happy future; they no longer have blind trust in a better tomorrow based on the present state of the world and our technical abilities. There is a growing awareness that scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history, a growing sense that the way to a better future lies elsewhere. This is not to reject the possibilities which technology continues to offer us. But humanity has changed profoundly, and the accumulation of constant novelties exalts a superficiality which pulls us in one direction. It becomes difficult to pause and recover depth in life. If architecture reflects the spirit of an age, our megastructures and drab apartment blocks express the spirit of globalized technology, where a constant flood of new products coexists with a tedious monotony. Let us refuse to resign ourselves to this, and continue to wonder about the purpose and meaning of everything. Otherwise we would simply legitimate the present situation and need new forms of escapism to help us endure the emptiness.

114. All of this shows the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution. Science and technology are not neutral; from the beginning to the end of a process, various intentions and possibilities are in play and can take on distinct shapes. Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur.

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Source: Pope Francis, "Laudato Si' ('On Care for Our Common Home')," Papal Encyclical, promulgated May 24, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html.

Some Quotations on Liberalism's Power

Liberalism, it seems to me, has defeated all of its rivals with relative ease. Christianity was barely a speed bump and was defeated and humiliated so thoroughly that all Western Christian leaders, including the "conservative" ones, now agree that liberalism is the true inner core of the Gospel and that Christianity ought to be defended on the basis that it supposedly gave us modern liberalism and egalitarianism and without it we would fall back into the illiberal nightmare that was pre-modern Europe. Liberalism also defeated fascism and socialism without much difficulty, so I think liberalism has certainly shown that it can defeat faiths or ideologies that are more straightforwardly "positive." I see no reason to think that this will not be the case with Islam as well.

For the most part, liberals are not going after Muslims in Western countries too directly, as the concept of "Islamophobia" is still a useful cudgel with which to beat the few remaining pockets of partial resistance, but I don't think it's obvious that they will fare any better when the time comes. Many Muslims in European countries already listen to rap music and show other signs of becoming a part of the underclass, and in this role I think they will remain subservient to the white liberals who give them handouts for some time to come.

Source: Crusading Philologist, November 26, 2014 (7:45 p.m.), comment on ThomasTheDoubter, "
United Religions Back in the Spotlight," Fish Eaters Traditional Catholic Forum, November 25, 2014, http://www.fisheaters.com/forums/index.php?topic=3466709.msg33990783#msg33990783.

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I think this is an important sentence to consider: "America has also put the view in which man is considered in terms of quality and personality within an organic system in opposition with that view in which man becomes a mere instrument of production and material productivity within a conformist social conglomerate." Individualism and collectivism are two sides of the same coin. Once people are separated from organic communities and institutions, they are at the mercy of the market, in which they are nothing more than, in Evola's words, "instruments of production" and, now especially, consumers. Authenticity and individuality become simple marketing gimmicks. This is very apparent in America, which supposedly prizes independent thought, the questioning of convention, creativity, and so on, but is in fact one of the most remarkably and thoroughly conformist societies in history. I think Martin Heidegger gives voice to a similar view of America in the famous passage from his Introduction to Metaphysics in which he asserts, "Russia and America, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man." The belief that capitalism and communism represent opposite ends of the spectrum is false and needs to be overcome in order to properly understand the true state of affairs in the modern world.

At any rate, I believe that, for Evola, the alternative is an organic and hierarchical society in which the excellences, talents, and creativity of the person can be genuinely cultivated and appreciated in a way impossible in a mass society such as the United States. Also, I would consider that much of the Catholic Church has for quite some time been little more than yet another vehicle for the promotion of humanitarian moralism, and so it is understandable that non-Catholics [with anti-modernist views] who are otherwise correct on many points might see her as a hostile entity.

Source: Crusading Philologist, July 29, 2014 (7:53 p.m.), comment on Dirigible, "Regarding America," Fish Eaters Traditional Catholic Forum, July 20, 2014, http://www.fisheaters.com/forums/index.php?topic=3465366.msg33978189#msg33978189.

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I've always found the way in which Western liberals talk about "true Islam" or a "proper reading" of the Koran to be somewhat condescending. Imagine a Jewish person letting us all know that he thinks that Presbyterianism is "true Christianity" and everything else is false. Who really cares what he thinks in the first place?

Source: Crusading Philologist, December 09, 2013 (5:49 p.m.) comment on Cambrensis, "Pope Francis on Islam," Fish Eaters Traditional Catholic Forum, December 9, 2013, http://www.fisheaters.com/forums/index.php?topic=3462487.msg33944697#msg33944697.

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[L]iberal humanism is incredibly good at making converts. Yes, religious traditionalists might have a lot of kids, but you have to remember that most of those kids will grow up to be secular liberals who despise religion and want nothing to do with its medieval, homophobic nonsense. In truth, any sort of traditional Christianity is probably doomed in the West. I mean, even the Pope is going around telling us that he is in no position to judge anyone and that all that matters is that we each pursue our own unique vision of the good, and when even the head of the Catholic Church has been reduced to saying things that one might hear on Oprah, I don't know why we should think that anyone else will fare any better.

Source: Crusading Philologist, October 2, 2013 (2:19 p.m.), comment on Sigfrid, "The Pope's Interview in La Repubblica," Fish Eaters Traditional Catholic Forum, October 1, 2013, http://www.fisheaters.com/forums/index.php?topic=3461131.msg33930472#msg33930472.

Self-Identified Cafeteria Catholic

There are certain phrases used among Catholics that are very subtly equivocal. Let me identify two for example.

Some Catholics reject the use of Latin because it is a "dead language." Calling a language dead, strictly speaking, refers to the fact that a language is no longer natively learned. Is there anything in such a description that leads to the conclusion that Latin should not be used anywhere, least of all in liturgy? Of course not. But when people call Latin a dead language, they do so not to point out that no one natively learns Latin but that Latin is a useless language, a backward language, an outdated language, and even a harmful language. They rely on the connotations of dead language and assert these connotations as denotation; hence the calling of Latin as a dead language is an ideological move per se. But liturgy should not be determined or changed by ideology but only by consideration of what is truly beneficial to the Church and in light of the Church's living tradition. Therefore, an ideological proposition has no place in rejecting the use of Latin (or even the vernacular), and thus Latin cannot be rejected solely because it is a "dead language."

A second example. Lukewarm Catholics, modern Catholics use the phrase "practicing Catholic," but this phrase is problematic precisely because it is descriptive in an equivocal way. It describes the alleged fact that a certain Catholic does certain practices, and the performance of these practices form a sufficient condition for the identity of "practicing Catholic," the implication being that the individual is an active Catholic and not a lapsed Catholic. But there is a significant problem: being Catholic means more than doing certain practices. Catholic is an identity that one cannot simply give to oneself as one sees fit, but it is an identity conferred by the Church. In other words, Catholic is a juridical identity firstly, an identity that of course presupposes ontological and behavioral bases but nevertheless is juridical. This point could be drawn out by the distinction that some in a state of grace are not Catholic, and not all Catholics are in a state of grace; in other words, to be Catholic requires more than being a child of God renewed by valid Baptism. To be Catholic is not even determined by whether one is confirmed in the Catholic Church or not. The Code of Canon Law shows what is required to be a Catholic:

Those baptized are fully in the communion of the Catholic Church on this earth who are joined with Christ in its visible structure by the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical governance. (Canon 205)

The three conditions are: the profession of the same faith as the Catholic Church; the participation in the Church's sacraments; submission to her governance. Notice that "practice" falls only under the second condition. Going to Church on Sundays is necessary but not sufficient.

If a Catholic self identifies as a so-called "cafeteria Catholic," then that Catholic is not a Catholic according to the Church's standards for two reasons: 1) the acceptance of Church doctrine, practice, and submission to governance is to be wholly accepted by the will, not vitiated by distinct choices of this or that practice or doctrine; 2) there are only two possible variants on the Catholic identity: those in full communion and those not in full communion

T.S. Eliot on Technological Provincialism

In our age, when men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and try to solve problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism, not of space, but of time; one for which history is merely the chronicle of human devices which served their turn and have been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no shares. The menace of this kind of provincialism is, that we can all, all the people on the globe, be provincials together; and those who are not content to be provincials, can only become hermits. If this kind of provincialism led to greater tolerance, in the sense of forbearance, there might be more to be said for it; but it seems more likely to lead to our becoming indifferent, in matters where we ought to maintain a distinctive dogma or standard, and to our becoming intolerant, in matters which might be left to local or personal preference.

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Source: T.S. Eliot, "What Is a Classic?," in Selected of T.S. Eliot, ed. by Frank Kermode (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975).

Fr. George Rutler on Shallow Religion

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

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

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

The "Unchurched" Error

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

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

The Specificity of the Gospel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Repost: "Titanism 101"

The titanic orientation of our contemporary humanity is a theme continually referred to and explained by Ernst Jünger and his brother Friedrich Georg. It might be useful to readers to have their vision applied in simple form to a few concrete aspects of our modern world.

According to one interpretation, the etymology of the ancient Greek word "titan" expresses the notion of an "over-stretcher" or over-extender. This expresses the titans' lack of a sense of measure when it comes to expressing power. Put in Nietzsche's terms, titans are motivated by a blind and insatiable will to power: always more to the point of extreme, without a conception of balance, of a point of sufficiency or equilibrium that can be reached and then maintained over time. The gods, who the titans periodically overthrow and briefly manage to keep out of the picture, represent this sense of balance and equilibrium.

It is already clear from this description how civilization in the last couple of centuries has become ever more titanic, beginning in the west but now reaching global extension. According to Jünger, our period is the next return of the titans after that of Imperial Rome. I believe we are slowly starting to understand the dangers of titanic arrogance in man and, at least theoretically and in restricted circles, contemplating a retreat from its unsustainable, inescapably catastrophic approach to existence and also the manner in which the next phase may emerge, a return of order-restoring "gods".

Here then are some superficially explained examples of titanism as it presently manifests.

Economic growth, environmental rape, unhappiness

Along with the intrinsically connected theme of the environment, the stagnant economy is the crisis of the day in the US and Europe, that is, in the titanic avant-garde of our world. It has long been taken for granted that nothing is more important to human welfare than continuous, unlimited economic growth, that higher GNPs and incomes are the critical measures of a country's all-significant entry into modern times and indeed measures of its citizen's physical wellbeing and even happiness. Given this assumption, there is no limit to the level of wealth to be achieved - this is most apparent in the richest western countries where a higher level of material comfort can hardly be imagined, yet growth is still the obsession. Indeed, a vicious circle of ever-intensifying, futile effort is created in this cul-de-sac: as the elusive happiness promised by politicians and scientists remains always around the next corner, behind the next technological improvement or economic upswing, we grow more and more desperate and run even faster down this alley, at whose end not salvation but spiritual and environmental catastrophe await us.

At some point, we titanic westerners also seek patronizingly to aid the "underdeveloped" world with our superior knowledge, though the process actually resembles more an infection of the innocent with our poison, with the seeds of discontent. If such initiatives seem (naively) well-meaning, at a deeper level they function for us as a necessary distraction from our spiritual desperation at the dilemma of "where to go now, now that we have everything and are more miserable than ever."

It may seem that there is no more to criticize in these material ambitions than their futility in providing happiness - given a basic level of comfort and sustenance, happiness is only ever a product of inner harmony and meaning, and not physical luxury. But in fact they bring serious material dangers with them, since economic growth at all costs entails a constantly increasing consumption of energy and natural resources (see F.G. Jünger's The Failure of Technology), to the point of environmental bankruptcy and nest-spoiling. Enter our environmental crisis, nothing more than the inevitable consequence of titanic over-extension and lack of measure. The tragedy here is that titans - we - do not learn through experience, we simply become its victims: we only stop when self-provoked catastrophe stops us dead in our tracks. From Ernst Jünger´s Aladdin's Problem: "We will either be saved by the poet or by fire".

But even the worst imaginable environmental catastrophe would not be the most tragic result of our titanic pretensions: the real tragedy is that they distract us from the spiritual efforts to be made in our personal lives and therefore lead to increasing inner poverty, personal meaninglessness and unhappiness. We put all our hopes in a material salvation and forget the fundamentally spiritual, internal basis of all deeper fulfillment. Indeed, those on the cutting edge of titanism, our wealthy western countries, are undoubtedly not the richest in happiness, and they are almost certainly the most spiritually bankrupt. Aladdin's Problem, "Soon there will be nothing left but the sound of Sheol".

Science

From being a source of spiritually meaningful knowledge in ancient times, science has been degraded by our titanic culture into a mere tool for driving economic growth and invention for its own sake, that is to say, science has been degraded into technology and an insatiable amassing of knowledge. Most scientists would be surprised to hear of times when science sought an absolute knowledge that had spiritual meaning for people, that aided them to achieve inner happiness and not merely physical comfort.

For today's titanic science is interested in knowledge only to the degree that it increases worldly or material power, or, when that is not applicable, as in astronomy for example, that is provides egotistical self-gratification, material to lord it over other titans involved in the same race to nowhere - by the very nature, Titans are competitive. (A low level expression of this is the curious pride the man on the street feels in his knowledge of trivia, which is absolutely useless in every sense except as a potential competitive measure: "I know more than you" - however useless such unintegrated abstract knowledge is.)

This titanic faith in technological science as a cure-all whose saving power always lies tantalizingly around the next corner, with the next technical innovation, is not just arrogant or naive, it can also be deadly; for invention per se has no preference for good or evil ends, and, in an age of spiritual decline, the latter may even emerge more readily than the former. Moreover, when the accidents inevitably happen, they take on technically-empowered proportions: the sinking of the Titanic was an early sign, one with unique symbolic value, but many others have since taken place, including for instance the technical ability of the Nazis to kill and dispose of human beings so efficiently. In this respect, we can only thank our lucky stars that the atomic machinery has never really gotten out of our control.

Art and Culture

As F.G. Jünger points out in The Failure of Technology, titans are incapable of art since they lack its basic prerequisites, a sense of measure. In fact, contemporary art limits itself, with rare exceptions, to pure innovation, novelty, and more often than not has a quite abhorrent effect by its disproportions. Like everything titanic, it aims at a dynamic effect, to be didactic or pornographic, to attract or repel - it has no understanding of the stasis that true art evokes (a la Stendhal effect).

If it has a genuine purpose in the greater process, which surely it does, then for the moment at least, it must be that of the compost heap on which the old used-up forms of old are decomposed and from whose rich substrate new forms can one day sprout. But let us be objective about which stage we are at now - when the new forms emerge, it will already signal the end of the titanic period.

As Ernst Jünger points out in Aladddin's [sic] Problem, human culture as such cannot be developed in a titanic society, since culture is based on our treatment of the dead and titans are patently not interested in the dead or anything that has to do with the past and with tradition - they only want to express power and that implies a break with static models of the past; they live with an existential centre of gravity in becoming and not being. The continuity and being-beyond-time implied by remembrance of the past, by graves and cults of the dead is of no interest or meaning to them.

In this same book, Ernst Jünger speculates that the emergence of a new cult of the dead will be a sign that culture can take root again - and we add that this will necessarily also mark the death throes of our present titanic phase.

"Extremism"

In the essay "Mut und Übermut" from Das Abenteuerliche Herz (2nd Edition), Ernst Jünger speaks of having lost his taste for certain words combined with the prefix "super" (über). As he explains, this prefix has a strong connotation of will power, a belief that the supreme achievement comes from the most intense application of will, and not wisdom - that is, as a result of titanic effort.

(Aside: the fate of the Superman actor Christopher Reeve may be another foolishly clear sign from Cassandra of the destiny of titanic mankind, similar to that other prophecy of hers which Jünger regularly mentions, the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic.)

The trend towards the superlative, in words and actions, has only progressed since that essay was written - today I would suggest that the equivalent word, the appropriate one for the next stage in the pursuit of more, is the adjective "extreme". "Super" has lost its power and now we are forced to use the next and last possibility, the extreme. Thus, in the media, in the lifestyles and productions of the west, we see this word appearing everywhere: extreme sports, extreme sex, extreme nutrition, extreme technology, extreme performance, my toothpaste is even called "extreme mint"!

A seemingly trivial social development that is in fact a frightening omen for our titanic civilization - because the extreme of any linear development (i.e one that does not follow or believe in cyclical patterns) must represent the last stage. There is nowhere to go after this word appears, there can be nothing beyond the extreme, except a precipitous plummet from the cliff we have so fanatically scaled.

Salvation?

This end must logically come, to some unknown degree catastrophically, even if in reality the meta-historical processes involved are not linear but cyclical, so that "the end" is actually only the low point that marks the beginning of a new cycle. Our titanic will power is such that it will drive us to that end without slowing down, and it will thus be more or less disastrous in a material sense. If this much is clear, then the only real task we have today is not to attempt a redemption of the material state of affairs, whose fate is essentially sealed, but rather to prepare spiritually for a passage through the curtains of fire and for the new world that must born on the far side.

In this respect, it may be we in the west who have the main role, for he who leads the way into the pit or cul-de-sac of material power will also be the one who first realizes its futility and so finds the way out.

Ernst Jünger often said that although he might be a pessimist in the short term, "ultimately" he was an optimist. The gods always return - at some point. He ascribed the 21st century to the titans, the 22nd to the gods - for myself, I am not sure that things can last that long.

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Source: "Titanism 101," Ernst Jünger Blog, July 21, 2011, http://www.ernst-juenger.org/2011/07/titanism-101-junger-brothers-view-in.html.

Distinction: Being and Choosing Reindeer

There is a serious confusion between being and action here. "Being a reindeer" is not a choice but a state of being, which poor Rudolf couldn't change even if he wanted to (and maybe in his abused, depressed state, he pondered at some point whether Santa might be able to change his ontological status to fit his subjective self-constructed identity mush).

Being an atheist and being a Christian are not ontological states but free choices.

Choosing to be an atheist is objectively evil because it rejects truth.

Choosing to do evil after having converted to Christ is an even graver evil than being an atheist because those redeemed by Christ have made a promise at Baptism to renounce sin and Satan.

Shaming religions doesn't make sense because religions have no feelings. Religious believers have feelings, and they can be shamed.

Homophobia, misogyny, racism, and hatred are not states of being—one cannot "be" these things. One can feel homophobic/misogynistic/racist/hateful feelings, and one can act on these through some form of expression of ill will. These are firstly feelings (but without further qualification, these feelings may be sinful or not) and secondly actions, which are sinful because they are rooted in hatred.

Whether an act is truly homophobic/misogynistic/racist or otherwise an actual expression of hatred is not up for a secular meme or secular society to decide because secular society has absolutely no sense of what is actually loving and what is hateful. For example, the assertion that there exists a hierarchy between the sexes, where the man rules the woman even though the two are equal in dignity, is "misogynistic" only from a modernist lens. The assertion that the natural institution of marriage is between a man and woman is "homophobic." Actually, these labels are almost tautological within the modern paradigm. Why must this lens be accepted, and why should they mean anything beyond those who reject such views in the first place? I'm not concerned with being homophobic; I try not to make a point and go out of my way to offend people, but there are truly more important goals to pursue than to worry about if I'm offending someone.

In fact, the entire meme assumes a basically modernist narrative and makes sense only within that narrative. Maybe this narrative finds its epitome in an anthropomorphized reindeer that is a late capitalist ploy for brainwashing mass society into consumeristic conformity and totally incoherent notions of justice and morality, especially in reindeer-to-reindeer relations as well as Santa-to-reindeer relations. At that point, why not label anything as homophobic/misogynistic/racist? Does it really mean anything anymore?

Local culture vs. Universalization

The tendency of American culture is still readily situated within and geared towards industrialization: mass production, the lowest common denominator, selling to "everyone" by flattening the product enough to make it appealing to the average, the masses. This tendency is seen especially in the difference between musicians authentically rooted in the context of a genre, pursuing and perfecting their work here professionally and with technical precision vs. popular musicians, which takes all that is universal in each genre and flattens it to make it appealing to the masses.

Local—folk—culture is broadcast and universalized; this is the great angst of the hipster. Specific, local fashions become available at J.C. Penny.

Perhaps this tendency also has contributed to the so-called "desacralization of the sacred." For example, Gregorian chant exists for the liturgy. Now, it is available on Pandora, audio CDs (even among so-called "Traditionalist" religious who pride themselves on preserving Sacred Tradition and the sense of the sacred lost in Modernist culture, especially post-Vatican II Catholic culture), and YouTube for casual listening. It appears in a gimmicked form in movie soundtracks and documentaries. The desire to make this form of music popular comes at the price of its very purpose and soul.

On the other hand, there is a growing movement within Western culture to appreciate the unique, the niche, the specific. Businesses that insist on doing things a specific way even if it means that potential profit is lost—these attract attention and spread through word of mouth; these businesses thrive on connection and relation.

Perhaps, then, it is through relation, through connection, through the insistence on the unique soul of a particular thing that it will find its authentic vehicle for spreading and becoming appreciated for what it truly is. The sacred can hence remain as such without sacrificing itself.

Repost: 15 Minutes Alone - A Study

Source: Mark Prigg, "Need Some Alone Time? Researchers Find Men Would Rather Administer Electric Shocks to Themselves than Spend Time Alone with Nothing to Do but Think," Mail Online, July 3, 2014, accessed July 22, 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2679950/Need-time-Researchers-men-administer-electric-shocks-spent-time-do.html.

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We've all complained that we would love some time alone - but few people actually enjoy it, researchers have found.

Most volunteers who were asked to spend no more than 15 minutes alone in a room doing nothing but sitting and thinking found the task onerous.

In fact, some of the volunteers, men in particular, preferred to administer mild electrical shocks to themselves rather than sit and do nothing.

'Many people find it difficult to use their own minds to entertain themselves, at least when asked to do it on the spot,' said University of Virginia psychology professor Timothy Wilson, who led the study appearing in the journal Science.

'In this modern age, with all the gadgets we have, people seem to fill up every moment with some external activity.'

Nearly 800 people took part in the study.

Some experiments involved only college students.

The researchers then broadened the study to include adults who live in the same area.

They went to a church and farmer's market to recruit people from a variety of backgrounds and ages up to 77.

And they got the same results: most participants regardless of age or gender did not like to be idle and alone with their thoughts.

In some experiments, college volunteers were asked to sit alone in a bare laboratory room and spend six to 15 minutes doing nothing but thinking or daydreaming.

They were not allowed to have a cellphone, music player, reading material or writing implements and were asked to remain in their seats and stay awake.

Most reported they did not enjoy the task and found it hard to concentrate.

Researchers then had adult and college student volunteers do the same thing in their homes, and got the same results.

In addition, a third of volunteers cheated by doing things like using a cellphone or listening to music.

The researchers did an experiment to see if the student volunteers would even do an unpleasant task rather than just sit and think.

They gave them a mild shock of the intensity of static electricity.

Volunteers were asked whether, if given $5, they would spend some of it to avoid getting shocked again.

The ones who said they would be willing to pay to avoid another shock were asked to sit alone and think for 15 minutes but were given the option of giving themselves that same shock by simply pushing a button.

Many did not, especially men: Two-thirds (12 of 18) administered at least one shock.

One did it 190 times. A quarter of the women (six of 24) gave themselves at least one shock.

'I think they just wanted to shock themselves out of the boredom,' Wilson said.

'Sometimes negative stimulation is preferable to no stimulation.'

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Pascal was right: diversion is both modern man's greatest misery and greatest consolation from misery. We don't know how to sit quietly in our rooms. 

It would be very easy for some of us to see this study and scoff and claim, "They didn't test me. I could have done it easy." In a study of 800 people, surely at least a few of them had a similar idea. But if we were to be totally honest with ourselves and face the stark truth: could we find pleasure in being alone with ourselves, our thoughts, our being? Not distracting ourselves, not reading, not thinking, not fiddling; just being. 

Here's why most can't: 1) a habit of diversion from modern living; 2) a deep aversion to any circumstance that brings us face to face with the truth of ourselves; silence and darkness are two powerful ways of doing this. Prayer is another. Traumatic events are also another. Beauty and child-like simplicity can also do it; see, for example, how Mr. Rogers totally disarms Joan Rivers in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Kp5YeqrlE.

For most of us, the truth of ourselves is quite simple: it is the horrifying pain that we have endured for so long that we will do anything to forget about it. It is the shame and fear that has been instilled in us by our parents, peers, society, and even ourselves. It is our deepest secret and what we always are hiding from. We shun silence as boring; the darkness as full of monsters (fear of the dark, the boogeyman, which is simply a representation of our inner, psychological turmoil that we fear); prayer as going unheard or useless; simplicity as naivety; beauty as trivial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw); trauma as the universe's sadism; and death as the ultimate evil for an individual (YOLO).

The truth is we don't know what to do with ourselves, so we just, in the words of the Joker, "do... things...."

John Ruskin on Vulgarity, Sensitivity, and Tradition

Having thus faithfully listened to the great teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you have yet this higher advance to make;—you have to enter into their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear sight, so you must stay with them, that you may share at last their mighty Passion. Passion, or "sensation." I am not afraid of the word; still less of the thing. You have heard many outcries against sensation lately; but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation we want, but more. The ennobling difference between one man and another,—between one animal and another,—is precisely in this, that one feels more than another. [...] Being human creatures, [sensation] is good for us; nay, we are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honour is precisely in proportion to our passion.

You know I said of that great and pure society of the Dead, that it would allow "no vain or vulgar person to enter there." What do you think I meant by a "vulgar" person? What do you yourselves mean by "vulgarity"? You will find it a fruitful subject of thought; but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a dreadful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that men become vulgar; they are for ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are incapable of sympathy,—of quick understanding,—of all that, in deep insistence on the common, but most accurate term, may be called the "tact" or "touch-faculty," of body and soul: that tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above all creatures; fineness and fulness of sensation, beyond reason;—the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but determine what is true:—it is the God-given passion of humanity which alone can recognize what God has made good.

We come then to that great concourse of the Dead, not merely to know from them what is True, but chiefly to feel with them what is just. Now, to feel with them, we must be like them; and none of us can become that without pains. As the true knowledge is disciplined and tested knowledge,—not the first thought that comes, so the true passion is disciplined and tested passion,—not the first passion that comes. The first that come are the vain, the false, the treacherous; if you yield to them they will lead you wildly and far, in vain pursuit. . . . So the anxiety is ignoble, with which you linger over the course and catastrophe of an idle tale; but do you think the anxiety is less, or greater, with which you watch, or ought to watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with the life of an agonized nation? Alas! it is the narrowness, selfishness, minuteness, of your sensation that you have to deplore in England at this day;—sensation which spends itself in bouquets and speeches: in revellings and junketings; in sham fights and gay puppet shows, while you can look on and see noble nations murdered, man by man, without an effort or a tear. . . .

No nation can last, which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. It must discipline its passions, and direct them, or they will discipline it, one day, with scorpion whips. Above all, a nation cannot last as a money-making mob: it cannot with impunity,—it cannot with existence,—go on despising literature, despising science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you think these are harsh or wild words? Have patience with me but a little longer. I will prove their truth to you, clause by clause.

(I.) I say first we have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad—a bibliomaniac. But you never call anyone a horsemaniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. [...] What position would [our nation's] expenditure on literature take, as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? [...] No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armoury, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book; and the family must be poor indeed, which, once in their lives, cannot, for such multipliable barley-loves, pay their baker's bill. [...]

(IV.) You have despised Nature; that is to say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of France [and today, I may add, consumerism has made bookstores, cafés, cafeterias, etc. of the same cathedrals: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/a-15th-century-cathedral-transformed-into-a-modern-bookstore/; http://www.flickr.com/photos/army_arch/6294298015/]; you have made race-courses of the cathedrals of the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their altars. [...]

Our National wish and purpose are only to be amused; our National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word Dis-Ease, the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and its Amusements!

When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower;—when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body.

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Source: John Ruskin, "Of King's Treasuries," in The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings (Victorian Literature and Culture Series), ed. by John D. Rosenberg (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 303-312.

"Liking" Isn't "Helping"

From Feature Shoot:

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/

Fr. David Greenstock on the Sanctification of the Family

We must never forget that marriage is a sacrament, something holy, and not a mere permission to accept a state less perfect than virginity because one could not quite make the grade. It is every bit as difficult to live a holy married life as it is to live a life of celibacy in the priesthood or the religious state; and it is just as important for the well-being of the Church.

Writing of Christian marriage, Pope Pius XI says that husbands and wives, by means of the sacrament and the charity which informs it, must have 'a persevering endeavour [sic] to bring each other to the state of perfection'. There is a great truth enshrined in those simple words. When two people become 'one flesh' by means of this sacrament they dedicate themselves to a common life together which embraces both the natural and the supernatural order. They are bound, not merely to seek perfection as individuals, but also as a family unit with in the Mystical Body. This applies not only to husband and wife but also to the children. Salvation and perfection are no longer individual goals, so to speak; on the contrary, the spiritual perfection of a husband will depend very much on his efforts to help his wife and children to attain that same end. The same is true of a wife and mother—she must attain her perfection in and through her marriage obligations. [...]

A good Catholic marriage lived in full accordance with the laws of God can have a stunning effect on a world which is lost in a maze of false principles concerning divorce, birth control, and sex. Such a marriage can prove to be the best of all demonstrations that the true sanctity of this human contract is at a much deeper level than mere obedience to a spiritual authority. It is essentially an expression of love—of a love which is no mere sentiment, but a sacramental love which mirrors the love which prompted God to become man and to found a Church, uniting Himself with it.

The apostolate of the Catholic family is simply to be a loving, united whole, working for a full life of the Spirit within and through the obligations of that state. The sacrament must be allowed to permeate and sanctify every element in that union if its full purpose is to be achieved. It must orientate the theological and moral virtues, for example. There will be a special need in marriage for prudence, fortitude, patience, purity, confidence in God, and temperance in all its varied forms. 

The practice of religion must now be an act of virtue in which two people act as one. Family prayers provide an example of this. The family must be at Mass, at confession, and Communion. The virtue of piety now comes into its own in a special way, prompting obedience on the part of the children and loving service on that of the parents. It should never be forgotten in this connection that the foundation of true Christian education is the family. If the family education is missing or is defective, then all other education is liable to fail in its aims and become an elaborate superstructure on a defective foundation.

This has practical applications in every department of life. Parents must not rely entirely on the school to educate their children in religion. Morning and evening prayers must become a family affair, not something merely individual. There must be a family effort to overcome the materialistic attitude of the world around us, a spontaneous family attitude of living faith which is seriously put into practice. There must be authority and obedience in a Catholic family, because love is based on the keeping of the law. This is the very basis of sanctity inside the family unit and should never be forgotten. However, both authority and obedience must be based on love if they are to avoid becoming arbitrary dictatorship and servility.

Prayer is, of course, the foundation of this Catholic family atmosphere. Prayer in common, the Mass, the family Rosary, etc., will do more than the mere formal teaching of religion to bring about an effective family sanctity. The great feasts of the Church, birthdays, anniversaries, and patron-saint days will be important landmarks which will bring the whole family into intimate contact with the world of spiritual realities.

Once this truly religious atmosphere has been attained, it will be a simple matter to include such things as spiritual reading in common, a simple but careful study of the doctrines of the Church and, when the children are still young, instruction in the truths of faith. As they grow older, there will be the need for guidance through conversation and discussion of various topics in order to maintain their Catholic standards of values. The work of both husband and wife must be sanctified, not merely as individual daily tasks, but as a family concern. Here mutual help and understanding play a very great part in the family sanctification.

In such an atmosphere the gulf which sometimes appears between religion and secular life will vanish, because the sense of being given to God as a family unity will sanctify even the most frivolous entertainments as well as the more serious side of life. Family joys and the pleasures of married life together will acquire a new, richer, and deeper meaning for all. Nothing can break the power for good of a Catholic marriage as the central unit both of the Church and of the State, provided it is lived for and in God.

In this way the family becomes first of all a great source of personal and communal sanctity in which the members all work for themselves and for others. It also becomes a power-house of personal example of what the love of God means when translated into effective action. It becomes the breeding ground for solid vocations on which the Church depends to provide priests and religious. Above all, it is the most effective spearhead for our attack on the indifference and malice of a world which has lost the sense of sin and true spiritual peace. In the sanctification of the family unit lies the hope for the sanctification of the world.

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Source: Fr. David L. Greenstock, "Christian Perfection and the States of Life," in The Meaning of Christian Perfection (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1956), 145-147.

Is Fasting from Food So Hard?

Finally, it seems quite odd that in our society—a society in which people gladly and freely spend huge sums of money for diets, most of which recommend that one refrain from red meats and dairy products—fasting is not more widely embraced. How odd that a Jenny Craig consultant or diet guru or physician will tell us to refrain from eating meat or cheese or butter and we will gladly embrace—and pay large sums of money for—his or her advice, while when the Church offers the same advice [at “no cost”] we tend to balk, as if we were being asked to do the impossible.

Source: "Why Fast Before the Nativity?," Orthodox Church in America Website, accessed December 8, 2013, http://oca.org/questions/dailylife/why-fast-before-the-nativity.

Dr. Daren Jonescu, the Church's Embrace of Progressivism, and Naturalistic Reduction

For several decades, the presumption of the Catholic hierarchy, from the Vatican on down, has been that since socialism seems, on its face, to have similar goals to Christianity—caring for the less fortunate, charity, devoting oneself to a goal higher than self—it is the natural political affiliation of the Church. There are a variety of major problems with this presumption of a Christian/socialist affinity, of course: Christianity is doctrinally committed to individual salvation, socialism to collective achievement, at the expense of the individual where necessary; Christianity is doctrinally committed to a higher purpose beyond the material world, socialism fundamentally materialistic in its focus on earthly “equality”; Christianity has a doctrinal reverence for the past (including the extremely distant past), while socialism has grown out of materialist historicism’s disdain for the men and ideas of the past; and so on. [...]

[According to Thomas Aquinas, l]aws do not prohibit all vice, because that would be to restrict unduly the free will of the majority of men, who are imperfect. In other words, virtue in general is a private, which is to say non-legal, matter. The purpose of human law is to restrict the kind of vicious behavior (“murder, theft and such like”) which directly harms other people, thereby, if left unchecked, causing the breakdown of human society. That is, the law ought to restrict only those behaviors which the majority of men, though imperfect, can and will abstain from of their own free will. Stated differently, the law ought not to touch the actions of the majority of men. Laws ought to be of a limited and “negative” character. [...]

This is much more than a matter of Catholic doctrine. It has the deepest implications for all religions, and for moral philosophy in general. Leftist progressivism seeks to impose specific behaviors on all citizens, in order to bring about “desirable” social outcomes, of a material nature. But what is the goal of religious and moral teaching? Is it to achieve materialistic social outcomes, or individual moral outcomes?

By limiting human law to the restriction of those violations against others “without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained,” St. Thomas reinforces the proper Christian theological focus on the salvation of individual souls, which is only possible (short of divine intervention) when men are able to exercise free will in the practice of the virtues which perfect the soul.

In short, there is no virtue in doing that which one is compelled to do. Charity, for example, is only charity (i.e. a Christian virtue) if it is a freely chosen course of action. Government-imposed “charity,” in addition to violating constitutional rights, also short-circuits the moral growth of individual citizens.

Source: Daren Jonescu, "Santorum and St. Thomas Versus the Catholic Bishops," Canada Free Press Website, February 6, 2012, accessed December 5, 2013, http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44416.

The Catholic Church's recent history of sympathizing with, and even supporting, Marxist progressivism is clear, sad, and indicative of a deeply irrational and anti-individual streak within the modern Church hierarchy. Catholics who care about the Church, its history, and its future -- and also about humanity, reason and freedom -- must stop making excuses for their current spiritual leadership's collectivist authoritarian impulses. [...] 

For generations, the global Catholic Church, at leadership levels, has been deeply invested in progressive collectivism. This has been an awkward relationship, in as much as hardcore Marxism seeks to abolish religion in favor of the deification of the State, and doctrinaire collectivism runs counter to any notion of the value of individual souls. As a result, the Church has, at times, spoken with some force against both communism and socialism. These moments of reasonableness have allowed thoughtful Catholics to defend the Church's political position as basically non-leftist: "See," they repeatedly tell themselves, "the Church is fighting the good fight against Marxism." 

In so far as Marxism includes atheism, the Church could hardly do otherwise. Soviet-style Marxists openly declared religion their enemy, and persecuted believers. Obviously the Church defended itself against this direct assault. But while abhorring atheistic dialectical materialism, practical elements of Marxist theory -- "social justice," economic redistribution, the condemnation of wealth -- struck a sympathetic chord within the Church, which gradually adopted such Marxist language as its own. This baptism of the Marxist vocabulary in the waters of Christian faith has allowed generations of good men and women to deny the disturbing truth before their very eyes, and to persuade themselves that this language, when used by the clergy, is somehow legitimate Catholic moralism. [...] 

Notice that he is specifically calling on political leaders and "financial experts" (57) to undertake a "vigorous change" -- fundamental transformation, anyone? -- in the direction of "balance" and a "more humane social order" which "favours human beings." In other words, [Pope Francis] is not advocating Christian charity, which is, and must be, a private moral decision, since it is through the correct application of his God-given free will that man is to find his path to God. Rather, to state the obvious -- let us finally apply the famous "razor" of a truly great Catholic philosopher here, and dispense with sophisticated explanations of the indefensible -- Francis is advocating socialism: a political system which obviates the morality of free will, and thus violates the foundations of the Catholic faith on the most profound level. [...]

In the U.S., the Catholic bishops firmly and enthusiastically supported ObamaCare, the penultimate step towards completely socialized medicine, until they "discovered" -- or, I suspect, until the Catholic laity discovered -- that abortion and birth control were part of the deal. Like their leaders in Rome and their brothers throughout the Catholic world, the U.S. bishops support progressivism in principle -- the Church has declared healthcare a universal human right, an expressly socialist ploy -- but will criticize particular progressive parties or factions when matters of doctrinal import are directly in dispute. In effect, the Church's war against collectivist tyranny extends only so far as that tyranny encompasses atheism or some other specific affront to Catholic practice. [...]

In its socioeconomic position, a large proportion of today's Catholic hierarchy is unofficially progressive, socialist, even Marxist.

Source: Daren Jonescu, "Catholics and Communists," American Thinker Website, December 3, 2013, accessed December 5, 2013, http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/catholics_and_communists.html. 

But on the other hand, many people, such as Rush Limbaugh and his league of listeners, may very easily fall into the trap of a reduction of the supernatural to purely natural principles.

The point is this—this is impor­tant to under­stand: The pope’s words about the “idol­a­try of money” can­not be under­stood within an ide­o­log­i­cal or dual­is­tic pol­i­tics of Cap­i­tal­ism vs.Marx­ism. Instead, they must be under­stood within the frame­work of the teach­ing of the Church about ethics and our respon­si­bil­ity to the poor. [...] 

The pope attacks both Marx­ism and trickle-down. [...] 

Any defense of the pope, and any crit­i­cism, is wrong if it is meant in the con­text of liberal-vs.-conservative. Catholi­cism tran­scends such cat­e­gories; its teachings—which the pope is con­sis­tent with—are premised on eth­i­cal cat­e­gories, not polit­i­cal ones.

Source: Scott Eric Alt, "A Counterblast to Rush Limbaugh on Evangelii Gaudium 54," Logos and Muse Blog, December 3, 2013, accessed December 5, 2013, http://www.logosandmuse.com/a-counterblast-to-rush-limbaugh/.

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What the last quotation is getting at is the distinction between looking at the world either with supernatural faith enlightening reason or without supernatural faith enlightening reason. Without faith it is sensible to analyze the Holy Father's words through a political or economic hermeneutic. But here I quote Dr. Scruton as I've posted elsewhere on reductionism:

Here we encounter a peculiar use of the phrase 'nothing but' [...] justice is 'nothing but' the power requirements of the ruling class [....] Reductionism of this kind does not merely involve a host of philosophical confusions. It is essentially anti-philosophical, based in the desire to simplify the world in favour of some foregone conclusion, whose appeal lies in its ability to disenchant and so demean us. The reductionist 'opens our eyes' on to the truth of our condition. But of course, it is not the truth at all, and is believed to be true only because it is shocking.

Source: Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (New York, NY: Penguin Books USA, 1996), 28.

That being said, Dr. Jonescu provides many disturbing facts about the actions and either de facto or explicit positions of many Catholic hierarchy (and laity, I might add), especially regarding relativism, progressivism, and other ways of viewing the world that have been enhanced and crystalized in the post-Enlightenment West. (Here I find it unfortunate that Dr. Jonescu on the one hand praises the development of natural law thought into modern political theory that allows for a capitalist economy or a democratic nation like the US but on the other hand neglects to mention—although he is most likely aware of it—the fact that these post-Enlightenment errors could occur only in such an intellectual milieu as has developed in the modern era. And regardless, despite his Catholic upbringing, he seems more deeply influenced by his political-philosophical views than any faith that can cut through peripheral and symptomatic issues to the core of the problem before us regarding what the Pope may or may not have said about modern economic systems, namely, whether growing in the love of God is our top priority or not.) 

But as Dr. Jonescu rightly pointed out, the pursuit of virtue can be pursued only freely, individually, and with the assistance of laws to protect the majority from the grievously-vicious minority. Charity, whether of the non-profit or supernatural variety, cannot be forced but only desired with all of one's heart. Until then, we will have quite a fuss about how to sort out the obvious fact that we are imperfect.