Spiritual Aristrocrats . . .

Faith is a gift. Those who have been given the gift have been give responsibilities along with it. I have recently been struck by this, as I have begun to use a passage from King Lear, Act III, scene iv as my prayer before meals. It is, it seems to me, an example of what it means to be a Christian aristocrat, radically distinct from, but not incompatible with, being a worldly aristocrat.

In this storm scene Lear is teetering on the brink of madness. So recently an arrogant and self-centered king doing precisely what Christ forbids in the Gospel, namely lording it over those under him, Lear is now reduced the famous "nothing" which is such a leitmotif throughout the play. Now noticing the suffering of common humanity and his indistinguishability from them, Lear cries out:

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayest shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

This is Shakespeare expressing a quintessentially Christian understanding of the world turned upside down and the aristocracy of the poor in spirit. For the time being at least, it makes a nice prayer before meals.

As Robert Frost said: what worked for me may work for you.

Gratuitous Goodness

Hans Urs von Balthasar:

There may be people who, for some reason or other, have become used to doubting the existence of intrinsic goodness. On their view, what is called good or appears to be so in everyday life can be explained away in terms of mores, changing customs, unconfessed laziness and selfishness, a natural will to power concealed under various guises. If, however, such people came face to face with the evidence of a selfless act that another, say a friend, performs for its own sake, and they realize by their own inward experience that the naked overcoming of self is a really attainable possibility, they forget for the moment their entire theory and bow before the simple fact of goodness. Their theory now has a breach in it; they may stop it up later, but for now they have stepped through it, naked and undisguised, into the presence of the Good.
[Theo-Logic, Vol. 1, p. 35]

Friday evening's lecture

Fr. John M. McDermott, S.J. "Benedit XVI and the Faith-Reason Relation." Here are a few things that I jotted down during the lecture, not necessarily attributable to the lecturer -- either approximations of what he said or thoughts which his lecture brought to mind:

The separation of reason and faith is tantamount to the separation of nature and grace, and that separation leads inevitably to either fundamentalism (fideism) or liberalism (relativism).

Understanding goes deeper than knowledge, because, as the word implies, it is knowledge that is inseparable from taking a stand.

Augustine's "You made us for yourself O Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee" correlates with Thomas Aquinas' "God leaves a wound in the human heart which only He can heal."

Or (again Thomas): "The light of faith makes it possible to see what is believed." Now there is an important insight!

Or, Ratzinger/Benedict: The mystery can be seen only by someone who lives it."

More anon.

Catch as catch can . . .

Blogging from the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars annual convention in Providence, Rhode Island . . . in between sessions.

Here are a few (roughly remembered) comments from the afternoon talks by Fr. Vincent Twomey, Emeritus Professor Moral Theology and former student of Joseph Ratzinger, either quoting Ratzinger/Benedict or remarking on his thinking and his theology:

It is the loss of transcendence that gives rise to political ideologies, which, in turn, give rise to social and cultural catastrophes.

By itself, politics cannot produce that without which it collapses into incoherence, namely, ethics and the authority on which they depend.

Political powerlessness is the key to the recovery of the Church's real power.

If Hans Urs von Balthasar was like a painter who painted every single detail with incredible precision, Joseph Ratzinger is like Picasso, who with a few bold brush strokes captured the essence of the subject.

Cardinal Ratazinger/Pope Benedict XVI, however, "speaks in paragraphs, thinks in chapters, and writes books in a single draft."

The reduction of reason to rationalism is a disaster for our age and our world. Reason needs revelation in order to be itself, and revelation needs reason in order to account for itself.

On the subject of conscience in a world where many think of it as a synonym for one's own preferences, Fr. Twomey used a little parable: an old woman has lost something but she cannot remember what she has lost until she finds it. An adequately formed conscience is like that.

Finally, from Fr. Twomey, citing the pope: Only when the Church respects her limits is she limitless.

From Sr. Timothy Prokes, Professor of Theology at the Graduate School of Christendom College:

The body's meaning is gift, and humans are made for self-gift.

On Ratzinger/Benedict's discussion of the body in the Church's liturgical life: the refusal to kneel is a misunderstanding of freedom. To kneel is to recognize the truth of one's existence.

More if and when there's time.

Objective and Subjective

"The Word is objectively present by the Spirit in the missionary's speech: but he (or she) must struggle to make that presence thoroughly subjective to the hearers by thinking through what its reception, spiritually, culturally, demands. (There is also the little matter -- crucial to the efficacy of mission -- of letting the Word be in subjective accord with the Gospel-bearer's life.)." -- Aidan Nichols O.P.

Free Speech on a Slipper Slope?

Here is something from September 11th.



Your comments are welcome.

More on the weblog icon in due course.

The Stone the Builders Rejected . . .

The search for a new image continues.

New Weblog Bannner?

In the immediately prior post I explained the new banner icon for this weblog, but I remain uncertain as to which of the images below to use. Perhaps you can help me decide.

Below these images is link which you can use to let me know which you prefer. I'm grateful to you for your help. This is, after all, a collaborative effort.

Go here to express your opinion.

A Cornerstone Forum newsletter will go out later today with several news items of interest, including a link to this same survey. If you are not on our email newsletter list, I hope you will sign up by putting your email address in the link at the upper right.

Thanks again.

Coming Soon: Easter in the Meantime

As the Caravaggio painting above -- depicting the arrest of Christ -- suggests, this blog is getting a slight make-over. In fact, however, it is only preparing to do more explicitly what it was originally designed to do, and now, as T. S. Eliot put it, "under conditions that seem unpropitious."

The blog exists, as it has from the beginning, to reflect on the interaction of faith and culture in our day. What is becoming more recognizable every day is that beneath the surface of events, where the tectonic plates are grinding, what is taking place is what Hans Urs von Balthasar called the reciprocal intensification of the Yes and the No to Christianity and the moral revolution it awakened. René Girard has made essentially the same assessment on the strength of his anthropological analysis. In his own way, so did the brilliant religious nihilist, Friedrich Nietzsche. (He was brilliant inasmuch as he understood what a catastrophe would ensue upon the death of Christianity should such a thing ever happen, as he most solemnly hoped it would.)

The point is that the worldly No to the truth to which Christianity exists to say Yes is growing louder and more explicit all the while. In that sense, we are living in the "mean" time. Our challenge is to bear witness, in season and out, and to do so as best we can in an Easter spirit. This does not mean that we must not speak and act with the strength of our convictions, or that no one will be offended by our defense of the truth which the spirit of the age exploits and distorts. But it does mean that we should, as far as we can, bear witness in the spirit of Easter. “Take courage,” Jesus said in John’s Gospel, “I have conquered the world!” (John 16:33)

A reproduction of Caravaggio's painting has hung in my home for some years, and I have had many occasions to wonder at it. The most obvious thing about it, as I have said elsewhere, are the hands of Christ in the lower center of the painting. The hands depict what Christ's face also shows: his faith that the terrible events that are about to occur are not outside of the Father's providential love and that the very act of expelling the Father's love-in-person will serve only to reveal that love more powerfully than ever.

This, it seems to me, is Easter in the Meantime.

Thanks for checking in here from time to time.

A Word of Thanks from the Sidelines

I often feel like a referee at a hockey game. I toss the puck down and flee for my life while contestants more agile and accomplished than I am whack away at the puck. Unlike the referee, I'm not often entirely neutral in the ensuing contest. Like everyone else, I tend to cheer for those who are clever enough to agree with me on everything. But that doesn't mean that I'm not grateful to those who hold up the other side of the argument with zest and conviction.

You know the one about the fellow he told his friends: "I went to brawl the other night and a hockey game broke out." Well, the latter is always preferable to the former, so whack away, but don't break any hockey sticks on each other.

Perhaps the Left hand does know what the Right hand is doing?

Rene Girard has thrown a great deal of light on the problem of cultural meltdown. Societies in the throes of a collapse undergo what Girard calls "the crisis of distinctions," making the detection and diagnosis of the crisis all the more perplexing. The differences begin to break down, beginning with the most "socially constructed" of differences, but eventually eroding even the most irreducible of differences, the difference, for instance, between sex and violence, or between men and women, or between beauty and ugliness (visit your local museum of modern art).

So . . . the tried and true labels for getting some grip on the overall crisis begin to lose their usefulness. Here is an example: A story from Germany -- a society, like Britain and many other European societies -- in a far deeper crisis than its political and reportorial classes would like to acknowledge. It is just one little example of a very large and very alarming international trend.

See what you think.

Snake Oil or Henry V at Agincourt

As I have said before, the health care debate is not one with which I am familiar enough to make intelligent comment, but I do remember a few of the arithmetical skills the good nuns taught me in grammar school. Based on that alone, Krauthammer makes sense to me.

Thanks again to Athos for calling my attention to this video clip.

Those more familiar with the details, have at it.

To make the exchange even livelier,
here's Mark Steyn's view of the matter.

My sacrifice: A Contrite Spirit

In penance for my occasional lack of charity, in past postings and in one's to come, here's a real palate-cleanser, one of my favorite hymns.


Here are the lyrics:

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING?

My life flows on in endless song:
Above earth's lamentation,
I catch the sweet, tho' far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul--
How can I keep from singing?

What tho' my joys and comfort die?
The Lord my Saviour liveth;
What tho' the darkness gather round?
Songs in the night he giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth,
How can I keep from singing?

I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smooths,
Since first I learned to love it.
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing;
All things are mine since I am his--
How can I keep from singing?

The Giant Pyramid Scheme

There is a spectre haunting Europe, the spectre of empty maternity wards and closed-down schools. Europe is dying - its people have lost confidence in themselves and choose a life of pleasure-seeking over procreation.

And for four decades they have bought the good life, with five-week holidays and retirement at 60, by hiring low-paid, invisible immigrants to do the dirty, dangerous and demeaning jobs, each generation of migrants then joining this giant pyramid scheme once they are granted citizenship. Now Europe is paying the price.

Ignore the exaggerated scare stories about Islamic growth in Europe - the raw statistics are disturbing enough. France and Holland are already 10 per cent Islamic, but that ignores the age gap between native and migrant - Britain is only four per cent Muslim but among new-borns that figure is 11 per cent; the top seven boys' names in Brussels are all Islamic; at current trends Germany and Austria could be majority Muslim by mid-century.

So begins an interview with Christopher Caldwell in Britain's Catholic Herald.

It's here.

Just coincidence?

I suppose there was no way the main stream media could have ignored the story of the murder of pro-life activist, Jim Pouillon, given how much coverage they gave to the murder of an abortionist not long ago. But am I alone in wondering why this particular photograph of Mr. Pouillon was the one chosen to appear on the CNN website?

I am trying to avoid cynicism, honestly I am.

Where is Freud when you need him?

EROS and THANATOS

Reuters reports this from Zurich:

Body Worlds plans cadaver show dedicated to sex

German anatomists plan a new show dedicated solely to dead bodies having sex as part of the Body Worlds exhibitions.

Gunther von Hagens and his wife Angelina Whalley show corpses prepared using a technique invented by von Hagens called "plastination," that removes water from specimens and preserves them with silicon rubber or epoxy resin. . . .

Von Hagens has already triggered uproar with a new exhibit which shows just two copulating corpses.

German politicians called the current "Cycle of Life" show charting conception to old age "revolting" and "unacceptable" when it showed in Berlin earlier this year because it included copulating cadavers.

The way a plastinate is exhibited can vary from country to country to reflect local sensibilities. A vote of local employees decided that one of the copulating female cadavers should wear fewer clothes in Zurich than was the case in Berlin.

"Switzerland is the first country that already said from the outset that we could show whatever we wanted," said von Hagens.

"Zurich is ready ... but it's maybe not so easy in every other town," he said. "We have discussed whether it is proper to show homosexuality and in what way. This is a very delicate subject."

"Delicate subjects," perhaps you remember the term. It once meant . . . oh, never mind.

Welcome to the final manifestation of the sexual revolution. It was shamelessly irresponsible while it lasted, but now it's come full circle: Eros has turned to Thanatos for titillation. What a perfect and perfectly fitting commentary on its wildly successful attempt to uncouple (if you'll pardon the expression) sex and reproduction, leading directly to the demographic death of Europe and many of the cultures it once inspired.

Thanks to Carl Olson at Ignatius' "Inside Scoop."

The Third Jihad

I am too busy at the moment to watch this film in its entirety, so I cannot vouch for it. But I watched the first part of it, and from what I saw it is balanced and objective. It is, I think, timely. I am posting it therefore in commemoration of September 11th. If you have time to watch it, I welcome your comments.

The Third Jihad

The Morning After . . .

"Anybody with an informed and reflective mind who lives in the twentieth century since the end of the First World War, as I did, finds himself hemmed in, if not oppressed, from all sides by a flood of ideological language. . . He cannot deal with the users of ideological language as partners in a discussion, but he has to make them the object of investigation. There is no community of language with the representatives of the dominant ideologies. Hence, the community of language that he himself wants to use in order to criticize the users of ideological language must first be discovered and, if necessary, established." -- Eric Voegelin

A Monk on the Loose . . .

Harold Talbott on Thomas Merton in Asia:

“He tipped Sikh taxi drivers like a Proustian millionaire. He was on a roll, on a toot, on a holiday from school. He was a grand seigneur, a great lord of the spiritual life. He radiated a sense of ‘This is an adventure, here I am folks,’ and he woke people up and illuminated them and enchanted them and gave them tremendous happiness and a good laugh. People knew his spiritual quality. People in planes knew it. There was no question about it. Merton was not an object of scrutiny, he was an event.”

I get a good long look at some of Merton's fellow Cistercians every morning, and I see this possibility in their bright, childlike eyes. If the Abbot turned them loose on the natives, they might not all be as flamboyant as Merton was in Asia, but I have no doubt they would -- in their own unique way -- give us worldlings good reason to rethink our habitual ways.

Love those who hate you.

1 million Pakistani Catholics pray for persecutors

September 08, 2009

Gathering at Pakistan’s principal Marian shrine the weekend before the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, over half of the nation’s 1.6 million Catholics prayed for their persecutors. “Let us pray and fast for the transformation of terrorists involved in the recent anti-Christian violence,” Father Emmanuel Asi preached on September 5. “We are a complete part of this country and want to become instruments of peace.”

The original story is here, and the Catholic Culture post is here.