Augustine on Faith and Reason

Auden: "Stagger onward rejoicing"

Pope John Paul II, in his letter on Augustine, explained why his conversion took time to unfold; he was laboring under some serious errors that needed correction. His Confessions, as well as his many works, confront these issues head on. Pope John Paul II also makes these issues thematic in his work. Here is the summary from the letter on Augustine:

Despite this love for truth, Augustine fell into serious errors. Scholars who look for the reasons for this indicate three directions: first, a mistaken account of the relationship between reason and faith, so that one would have to choose between them; second, in the supposed contrast between Christ and the Church, with the consequent conviction that it was necessary to abandon the Church in order to belong more fully to Christ; and third, the desire to free himself from the consciousness of sin, not by means of the remission of sin through the working of grace, but by means of the denial of the involvement of human responsibility in the sin itself.

The great theme for Augustine is the pair "man and God." But to clear away the obstacles to entering into the mystery of man in relation to God, Augustine and John Paul II work out the three issues. And it is for any member of the Church who wishes to be part of the new evangelization to learn from these great teachers of the faith.

The error concerning faith and reason is multi-dimensional. John Paul II names the error as the spirit of "rationalism." Can one learn by detaching oneself from  the tradition of (true) faith? There is a presumption that by reason alone one can get right to the truth of things, as if with "the flick of a bic" (an old ad for a type of pen). Put aside scripture and put aside authority -- we will work out all problems, all great issues, large and small. Augustine said of himself -- "in my wretchedness, I thought that I could fly, and left the nest; and before I could fly, I fell." Scepticism is an inevitable result of a faith-free approach, relying solely upon "pure reason." I find it interesting to read in a book I now use in a class, Early Greek Philosophy, editor Jonathan Barnes says the following: "most of their arguments were false, and most of their arguments were unsound. (This is not a harsh judgment as it may seem, for the same could be said of virtually every scientist and philosopher who has ever lived.)" (p. 23 of older edition) Surely this a curious reason for urging philosophy on the young student!

Barnes was writing about Thales and other Ionians, so I thought of W. H. Auden's nice poetic expression of the issue; in "Atlantis" he has this stanza:

Should storms, as may well happen,
Drive you to anchor a week
In some old harbour-city
Of Ionia, then speak
With her witty scholars, men
Who have proved there cannot be
Such a place as Atlantis:
Learn their logic, but notice
How its subtlety betrays
Their enormous simple grief;
Thus they shall teach you the ways
To doubt that you may believe.

We must note the grief of philosophers, then and now. They pride themselves on their acute minds and dialectic prowess. But yes, their subtlety betrays their grief. I have known too many philosophers whose lives are a wreck. 

So why faith? Augustine, according to Pope John Paul II, "explained that faith is the medicine designed to heal the eye of the spirit, the unconquerable fortress for the defense of all, especially of the weak, against error, the nest in which we receive the wings for the lofty flights of the spirit, the short path that permits one to know quickly, surely and without errors, the truths which lead the human person to wisdom."

Rationalism, an unbalanced or unhinged use of reason, will destroy the quest for wisdom and enervate the moral imagination of all those plunged into its briny solution. The educational system of our country from top to bottom excludes faith and therefore plants the seeds of our nation's grief.  We are impelled to join cause with John Paul II and Augustine in their vigorous criticism of the ratioanalist presumption.  Augustine wrote at the very beginning of his great book, On the Trinity,  "my pen is on the watch against the sophistries of those who scorn the starting point of faith, and allow themselves to be deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love of reason." 


By the way, W. H. Auden left those sophistries behind; thus he says in Atlantis: 

Stagger onward rejoicing;
And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
Descend, you should still be proud 

Even to have been allowed
Just to peep at Atlantis
In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
Having seen your salvation.

Thank God for the poets; but more so, for the theologians, such as Augustine. "Understand the difference between presumption and confession, between those who see the goal that they must reach, but cannot see the road by which they are to reach it, and those who see the road to the blessed country which is meant to be no mere vision but our home."  (Conf: 7.20)

Nevertheless, Pope John Paul II reminds us that Augustine avoided the twin errors of rationalism and fideism: "one must pass safely between two extremes, between the fideism that despises reason and the rationalism that excludes faith. Augustine's intellectual and pastoral endeavor aimed to show, beyond any shadow of doubt, that 'since we are impelled by a twin pull of gravity to learn,' both forces, reason and faith, must work together."  

Tomorrow we will take up the issue of fideism.

Pope John Paul II, Augustinian

Augustine, pondering (pulpit, Vienna)

As I ponder the legacy of Pope John Paul II I think about the core truths that he explored frequently and elaborated so well. These core truths set the intellectual agenda for the Pope John Paul II Forum:



1. The mutual support and influence of faith and reason.
2. The transcendence and dignity of the human person.
3. The ever present reality of God as the origin and end of creation.
4. The objectivity of morality, known through natural law and revelation.
5. The proper understanding of freedom and human rights.
6. The good of a culture of life, or civilization of love.

All of these truths are rooted in the philosophy and theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and significant 20th century Thomists admired by the Pope explored them and wrote about them (e.g., Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson). In a more radical way they are Augustinian truths. (Well yes, these are truths that emerge from the gospel and orthodox faith). One should read AUGUSTINUM  HIPPONENSEM (AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO), the Apostolic Letter of the Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, on the Feast of St Augustine, August 28, 1986.

In this letter, after exploring the conversion story of St. Augustine, John Paul takes up these themes: i. reason and faith, ii. God and man, iii. Christ and the Church, iv. freedom and grace, v. Charity and the ascent of the spirit. He concludes with fundamental lessons Augustine has to offer modern man: not to despair of truth (we have faith and reason); seek to study God and man; love truth and freedom together, and appreciate the beauty of bodies, art, virtue and God. Too late have I loved thee - "O, Beauty, ever ancient ever new." These five "word pairs," as he calls them, set up the dialectical exploration of the full theology of Augustine. And as he takes us through an impressive summary and lays out the best quotes (there are 293 footnotes to this brief letter, each one containing a reference to some nugget in the work of Augustine) for his commentary, we are led to appreciate his expression of a "fervent desire that his teaching should be studied and widely known, and his pastoral zeal be imitated, so that the authoritative teaching of such a great doctor and pastor may flourish ever more happily in the Church and in the world, for the progress of the faith and of culture."

The second word pair, God and man, opens up the distinctively Augustinian aspect of the pontiff's project, as we see taking shape in Redemptor hominis and throughout his writings. Augustine, he points out, "always studied the two together: man thinking of God, God thinking of man who is his image." The dignity of man is due to the ever present reality of God. "Above all in studying the presence of God in the human person that Augustine used his genius. This presence is both profound and mysterious. He finds God as "the eternal internal," most secret and most present --man seeks him because he is absent, but knows him and finds him because he is present. God is present as "the creative substance of the world," as the truth that gives light, as the love that attracts, more intimate than what is most intimate in man, and higher than what is highest in him." It is to the inter-relationship of man and God that John Paul II returns again and again. It is the inspiration of Gaudium et spes §22. No doubt, St. Thomas helps him to articulate this truth, it is the Augustinian mode of self-reflection  and focus on the dimensions of personal existence that fuel his message. He does not start from out and plod through nature and cosmology to the soul and finally to the human; he rather plunges right in to the personal dimension to find God and the mystery of human existence. He circles back around to formulate basic truths about nature, human being, and God.

A brief remark made the following year, 1987, illustrates his method and his deepest insight:

The more one seeks to unravel the mystery of the human person, the more open one becomes to the mystery of transcendence.The more deeply one penetrates the divine mystery, the more one discovers the true greatness and dignity of human beings. (New Orleans, Sept 12 1987)

Augustine is his first mentor. Seek to understand personal existence and find the divine presence; seek to understand God, and find in Christ the elevation of the human.

Newman on "Guilelessness"

St Bartholomew Chapel, Königssee lake, Bavaria

Newman is quite good in capturing the intimate character of the various apostles; he has some good insights about St. Bartholomew (Nathaniel), the apostle described by our Lord as "an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" John i. 47. (see PSS II.27) Newman thinks that guilelessness, or innocence, is a foundational virtue, but a very rare one because men of society think it "unmanly and weak." Here is the stuff of Christian guilelessness: "to mean what we say, to love without dissimulation, to think no evil, to bear no grudge, to be free from selfishness, to be innocent and straightforward." (Newman recommends that we meditate on Psalm 15 in order to better appreciate this virtue,  as a wise Dominican has recently urged on us as well.)

Men of the world, he says, "are mean, jealous, suspicious, censorious, cunning, insincere, selfish; and think others as low-minded as themselves." They cannot believe a person may be guileless, or pure of heart for that matter. But these men live in bondage and fear for their low-mindedness. The guileless man, on the other hand, has "a simple boldness and a princely heart; he overcomes dangers which others shrink from, merely because they are no dangers to him, and thus he often gains even worldly advantages, by his straightforwardness, which the most crafty persons cannot gain."

Newman speaks of Becket as a guileless man who "believed innocence of heart, and integrity of manners, was a guard strong enough to secure any man in his voyage through this world." Nevertheless, he was martyred. St Bartholomew was also martyred. Newman draws this lesson: first, innocence prepares the Christian best of all for the tasks which the Lord may ask of them. Grand plans are not as important as this quiet guilelessness which will mean we are not surprised or caught off guard when we must do the right thing. By the way, in the very pulpit at Oxford Newman warns his listeners that "secular learning and dignity have doubtless in their respective ways a powerful tendency to rob the heart of its brightness and purity."

Newman draws a second lesson that innocence is only the beginning, for we are sent as "sheep in the midst of wolves." So innocence must be "joined to prudence, discretion, self-command, gravity, patience, perseverance in well-doing, as Bartholomew doubtless learned in due season under his Lord's teaching."

Pope John Paul II on the River of God

The Mighty Mississippi

On the "river of our journey" God is its source and its mouth, its beginning and its end

A touchstone truth we seek to explore in the Pope John Paul II Forum is the reality and pervading presence of God as the source and end of all things, the "exitus et reditus" plan of the Summa of St Thomas. We recently re-discovered a short talk by Pope John Paul II in which he puts this truth very beautifully and prayerfully in the most specific terms of Christian revelation - the Trinity.

On Wednesday, January 19, 2000  Pope John Paul II spoke of the Trinity as the origin and end of human existence. He said the celebration of the Great Jubilee of the birth of Christ should seek: "the glorification of the Trinity, from which everything comes and to which everything is directed, in the world and in history" (Tertio Millennio Adveniente §55). 

He said our encounter with the presence of God may be compared to a pilgrim's path "along the shores of the river of God, that is, of his presence and of his revelation in the human history."   He would have us consider the beginning and end of the Bible: "the divine Trinity is the origin of both being and history, and is their ultimate goal. It constitutes the beginning and the end of salvation history. Between the two extremes of the Garden of Eden (cf. Gen 2) and the tree of life in the Heavenly Jerusalem (cf. Rev 22), stretches a long series of ups and downs marked by shadows and light, sin and grace. Sin has distanced us from the splendor of God's paradise; redemption brings us back to the glory of a new heaven and a new earth, where 'Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more' (Ibid., 21:4)." This great vision of the divine presence sustains us on the journey and it inspires us to strive to live the life of the beatitudes, including purity of heart.

In an Augustinian mode, Pope John Paul II explains that looking back or behind us to creation is really to look deep into the present state of the world, for creation is not simply nor even primarily an event in the past but an ever present truth about our very being:

this mystery, which infinitely surpasses us, is also the reality closest to us, as the source of our being. In fact, in God we "live, move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28), and we can apply what St. Augustine said of God to all three divine persons: He is "intimior intimo meo" (Conf. 3, 6, 11) [more intimate than my most intimate]. In the depth of our being, where even we cannot see, grace makes present the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God in three persons. The mystery of the Trinity, far from being an arid truth confined to the intellect, is the life that resides in us and sustains us. 

Pope John Paul II is very much the disciple of John, the apostle who loved Jesus, and so he discovers God's presence most of all in love, and purity of heart shows itself once more:

Above all he appears to us as Love, according to the beautiful definition in the First Letter of John (cf 1 Jn 4:8).  He is love in his intimate life, where the Trinitarian dynamism is the very expression of eternal love with which the Father generates the Son, and with which both reciprocally give themselves in the Holy Spirit. It is love in the relationship with the world, since the free decision to create it from nothing is the fruit of this infinite love that radiates in the sphere of creation. If the eyes of our hearts, illuminated by revelation, are made pure and penetrating enough, they become capable in faith of engaging this mystery, in which all that exists has its roots and foundation. 

Our life is a journey on this road along the river of God. We look forward to the destination, and enjoy the signs of his presence: "the Trinitarian mystery is also before us as the finish line towards which history runs, as the homeland for which we yearn."

And then we anticipate an even greater presence, a greater event -- the Trinitarian transformation and renewal of creation: "In the Heavenly Jerusalem, origins and end come together. In fact, we see God the Father who is seated on the throne and says: 'See, I make everything new' (Rev 21:5). Next to him is the Lamb, who is Christ, on his throne, with his light, with the book of life that records the names of the redeemed (cf. Ibid., 21: 23-27; 22:1-3). And at the end, in a sweet and intense dialogue, the Spirit who prays in us and together with the Church, which is the Lamb's spouse, says: 'Come, Lord Jesus' (cf. Ibid., 22:17-20)."

John Paul II said "in our long pilgrimage in the mystery of God" we must often stop to contemplate the great mystery of divine life which glides along through all creation.  He uses the prayer of Dionysius the Areopagite to remind us of the necessity of contemplation: "It is in the silence, in fact, that they learn the secrets of this darkness ... that shines with the most dazzling light... It, even remaining perfectly intangible and invisible, fills with splendors more beautiful than beauty the intelligences that know to close their eyes" (Theologia mystica I,1).

The Mississippi offers us a fitting vista for recalling this home truth.

Sex and the Liberal Scribe: There is No Shame

"Let him who is without sin . . .

Early in the Gospel of John we are told that Jesus "could tell what a man had in him" (Jn 2:25). He knew the heart of man; and in his talks on marriage and love, Pope John Paul II tells us that Christ appeals to the heart of man -- "he calls upon it, he does not accuse it." (Dec 10 1980) In Redemptor hominis,  he makes Christ and the heart thematic: "Christ, the Redeemer of the world, is the one who penetrated in a unique unrepeatable way into the mystery of man and entered his 'heart'." §8 Speaking the language of the heart, Christ challenged the scribes and Pharisees; they were usually befuddled, for they were literalists and legalists who could not comprehend such a language or respond honestly to an appeal to the heart. It was thirty years ago that Pope John Paul II was near the half way point of his catechesis on marriage, love and vocation, now known as the Theology of the Body. John Paul develops a series of profound meditations on the human heart.

There have been some efforts to commemorate this great achievement of JP2, and a few liberal Catholics are finding that they must lash out at the Pope and his Theology of the Body. For example, liberal scribe Eugene Kennedy just posted a diatribe against Cardinal Rigali's recent praise of Pope John Paul II. It is not only lacking in charity (it is quite vicious), it especially lacks intellectual honesty. You may find Kennedy's "Rigali's old time religion" here.  Kennedy is like the scribes of old, a literalist who apparently mocks the language of the heart. He seriously distorts the Pope's teaching on love and lust, ignores standard Church teaching on concupiscence, and pushes some version of a therapeutic "sex without shame."

What is going on here? Pope John Paul II took three years working through biblical texts, philosophy, Church tradition to develop a probing and innovative account of marriage, sexuality, and state of life. Not surprisingly, the theology of the body defends and explicates the teaching of Humanae vitae and Gaudium et spes. He spent of a year of the talks on Mt 5:27-28: "I wish to develop the following statement of Christ, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount: 'You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart' (Mt 5:27-28)." He deftly uses his sources to come up with some remarkable insights and explanations of the nuptial meaning of the body and marriage as a communion of persons. He works at distinguishing love and lust and integrating eros and ethics. It is an intellectual tour de force. So why does Kennedy work so hard to distort it and to demean the man who wrote it?

The reasons for the hatred I do not understand and I shall not attempt to explain, other than the reference I make to the befuddlement of the scribes and pharisees at the language of Jesus. He uttered hard sayings. After hearing the teaching on property and riches the apostles exclaimed, then who could be saved? Perhaps after hearing the teaching on adultery -- if a man looks with lust on a woman, then he has committed adultery already -- an honest response should be the same. Who can be saved? Who is innocent? Well yes, that was Jesus' response to the crowd who wanted to stone the woman caught in the act of adultery. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. But with God all things are possible. Does the vehement and vitriolic response derive from the difficulty of the saying combined with a despair over the grace of God?

The intellectual distortions are easier to mark.

• he is incredulous that a "disinterested love" could transcend pleasure seeking
• he attributes the teaching on concupsicence to be a peculiar quirk of Augustine and the "tortured" John Paul II
• the "divided model" of the person is also a quirk of JP2
• he says JP2 claims that desire in an "unacceptable element" in sexual love
• he says JP2 claims real love is the "antithesis" of emotional desire
• he finds problematic that the pope would say desire should be subordinate to love
• Kennedy says healthy human passion should "overwhelm all else"
• he mocks the notion that the will should combat sexual urge and the that the desire to possess the other could be contrary to the order of love
• he says that JP2 teaches that desire "limits and reduces" his "idealized control"
• he seems to find it strange that there may be erotic sensations that are not rooted in true love
• he says John Paul II teaches that there is shame for having a body

The notion of disinterested love is that of benevolence, or good will. Is it inconceivable to Kennedy that someone could act consistently or habitually for the good of another person, particularly a beloved? Concupiscence, the disorder of desire after the fall, is taught at Trent and in the Catechism  of Vatican II (see §§405, 418). It is not an aberration of Augustine and now John Paul II. Does Kennedy deny that there is a disorder in the soul of man that affects sexual desire, as well as other passions of the soul? Is he a Pelagian who thinks that human good will suffices for love (if there is benevolence after all); or better yet, shall we adopt Rousseau and simply acknowledge the goodness of natural passion? The divided model of the human person is prominent in Gaudium et spes -- "They are therefore divided interiorly. As a result, the entire life of women and men, both individual and social, shows itself to be a struggle, and a dramatic one, between good and evil, between light and darkness. People find that they are unable of themselves to overcome the assaults of evil successfully, so that everyone feels as if in chains." §10

John Paul never claimed that desire in unacceptable or that real love is its antithesis. I used a word search to examine the Wednesday audiences on the theology body. I could not find these claims. With proper explanation and qualification there is something like that -- but it begs the question to put it so simply. What he does say is that desire is a "substratum" for love or lust, depending on the person's response to the call to communion of persons:

already in the mystery of creation, that which constituted the natural, somatic and sexual substratum of that attraction, fully expressed the call of man and woman to personal communion. After sin, on the contrary, in the new situation of which Genesis 3 speaks, this expression was weakened and dimmed. (July 23, 1980)

John Paul II's argues precisely that desire may be deformed by lust and that it must be transformed by love. The major problem about lust is not that it limits self-control, but that it limits and restricts the "nuptial meaning" of the body. Kennedy does not mention this key idea in the teaching about the theology of the body. Lust reduces the person and weakens or dims the good of communion with the other.  Thus Christ warns his hearers about lust, as equivalent to adultery, because of this limit and reduction on spousal love. (See his audience of September 17, 1980) Christ does not condemn, he appeals to the heart and conscience of each man, i.e., each man who can (still) feel shame and acknowledge that they are not innocent in these matters (scribes and pharisees did not hear this appeal):

The heart has become a battlefield between love and lust. The more lust dominates the heart, the less the heart experiences the nuptial meaning of the body. It becomes less sensitive to the gift of the person, which expresses that meaning in the mutual relations of man and woman. Certainly, that lust which Christ speaks of in Matthew 5:27-28 appears in many forms in the human heart. It is not always plain and obvious. Sometimes it is concealed, so that it passes itself off as love, although it changes its true profile and dims the limpidity of the gift in the mutual relationship of persons. (July 23, 1980)

 Psychologists like Kennedy apparently wish to eliminate shame from the realm of sexuality in favor of natural spontaneity. JP2 did warn us in his talk that "The biblical and theological meaning of desire and lust is different from that used in psychology. For the latter, desire comes from lack or necessity, which the value desired must satisfy. As we can deduce from 1 Jn 2:16, biblical lust indicates the state of the human spirit removed from the original simplicity and the fullness of values that man and the world possess in the dimensions of God" (May 28, 1980). Lust imposes a reduction of the fullness of love and created order. Shame is the recognition that one is not simple in love, but guileful, and that one is alienated from the fullness of communion. The manifestation of lust is usually a reduction to the value of physical attractiveness and sensual satisfaction, at the expense of communion with the other, good will, and procreation. This is not an abstract rumination, as Kennedy claims, this is real life, everyday experience of men and women. Most simply put, "lust is a deception of the human heart in the perennial call of man and woman—a call revealed in the mystery of creation—to communion by means of mutual giving." Let him who has ears to hear  . . .

The scribes and pharisees had their own measure of reality, taken from their compromises or legalisms. In the very first talk on this topic Pope John Paul II explains that Christ does not condemn us but appeals to our heart to "realize the very meaning of being a man" and to "enter into the depth of the norm." He says, "to reach it, it is not enough to stop at the surface of human actions. It is necessary to penetrate inside." (April 16, 1980). In the remarkable series of talks he has done just that, and for this legacy we should be grateful. But to follow him on this journey of discovery, and to follow Christ, we must be ready to enter into our own heart: the words of Christ "demand that man should enter into his full image. The man who is 'flesh,' as a male remains in relationship with woman through his body and sex. In the light of these words of Christ, this man must find himself again interiorly, in his heart." (April 23, 1980)

Crossing the Threshold of Hope

Near the end of Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul reiterates the great line of his pontificate, from first to last, "Be not Afraid." Christianity is the permanent fulfillment of myth or the historical enactment of the myths, such as Perseus and Medusa. He states the reason for his hope --

When, on October 22, 1978, I said the words "Be not afraid!" in St. Peter's Square, I could not fully know how far they would take me and the entire Church. Their meaning came more from the Holy Spirit, the Consoler promised by the Lord Jesus to His disciples, than from the man who spoke them. Nevertheless, with the passing of the years, I have recalled these words on many occasions. The exhortation "Be not afraid!" should be interpreted as having a very broad meaning. In a certain sense it was an exhortation addressed to all people, an exhortation to conquer fear in the present world situation, as much in the East as in the West, as much in the North as in the South.

Have no fear of that which you yourselves have created, have no fear of all that man has produced, and that every day is becoming more dangerous for him! Finally, have no fear of yourselves!

Why should we have no fear? Because man has been redeemed by God. When pronouncing these words in St. Peter's Square, I already knew that my first encyclical and my entire papacy would be tied to the truth of the Redemption. In the Redemption we find the most profound basis for the words "Be not afraid!": "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (cf. Jn 3:16). This Son is always present in the history of humanity as Redeemer. The Redemption pervades all of human history, even before Christ, and prepares its eschatological future. It is the light that "shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (cf. Jn 1:5). The power of Christ's Cross and Resurrection is greater than any evil which man could or should fear.

 This statement for faith and hope is a summary of the message of Redemptor hominis. Such faith is definitive and all embracing; it is empowering and transformative; it is a source of both peace and energy. Christ can regenerate culture, however decadent, through faith (baptism) and hope (penance) and love (Eucharist). Jesus Christ has entrusted this task to the cooperative action of the priesthood and the laity.

John Paul II: who slays the Gorgon of despair?

Eric Gill, engraving, 1926

In my previous post I came to the conclusion that Russell Kirk approached the question of the Gorgon indirectly, as is appropriate to any enactment of the myth. He boldly announces her nearby presence in chapter one and then he talks and walks around her until the very last chapter and the penultimate paragraph of the [original] book. He names the gorgon as a life without meaning, or the despair that life is worth living. The multitude is rushed headlong into the empty whirlwind as traditions, communities, habits, and sacred beliefs are upended by the Machiavellians and Cartesians.

The despair of the "last man" remains in large measure unreflective; but for the man of reflective temper, including a conservative such as Russell Kirk, despair is also a temptation. To behold the long and near-inevitable descent of human beings and the undoing of culture ("Civilizations do not fall at a single blow" he says in the last paragraph) must so tear the heart and boggle the mind that one could become as hardened as stone. Although it may sound strange at first, Kirk suffers as Zarathustra did upon beholding the last man and upon considering eternal return. Nietzsche named the gorgon "nihilism." "'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?'--so asketh the last man and blinketh." Here all men have become as good as stone, for "there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man--and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz!" Kirk is very close to Nietzsche here concerning the decadence of culture and the undoing of excellence.

Kirk however will have none of the false hope of the ubermensch or the fantasy of eternal return. Clearly he sees religion as the center of renewal, if renewal be possible. The central question concerns whether man is made in the image of God. Yet he often speaks, in this book, tentatively or gropingly of religion. So Perseus is a mythic role but his identity is a mystery, a vague hope, an earnest wish.

If I suggested in an earlier blog that Pope John Paul II is that Perseus I may have misspoken. Yes he was a man of "undreamed powers of mind and conscience." But I now would say that John Paul was but the herald of the true Perseus, because that man is Jesus Christ. John Paul analyzes the problem, remarkably along very similar lines to Russell Kirk. Kirk read the signs of the times. He did achieve the shoring of the fragments against the ruins. He knew not how to turn a people, a culture back to hope. He did not know how precisely to restore man to his wholeness of being. John Paul too was a poet and philosopher. But John Paul II was a priest and pontiff. He could show us directly the way, the truth and the life. And he could stand us behind the true Perseus, the Christ.

I have traced this account in previous blogs on the Redeemer of Man. Here is a brief account. He cuts to the chase by section eight: "Does not the previously unknown immense progress-which has taken place especially in the course of this century-in the field of man's dominion over the world itself reveal-to a previously unknown degree-that manifold subjection 'to futility'?" It is St Paul and not Nietzsche who has the most authentic of the nothing and our despair.  All the signs of the times point back to the cutting of the link between man and God through sin. What does modern man fear, he queries in sections fifteen and sixteen of the Redeemer of Man, and he explores many similar issues as does Kirk: alienation, consumerism, weapons of mass destruction, anomie, greed.  Kirk's account is more extensive; John Paul II is keeping it brief. But John Paul takes it back to the sundering of man from the source of the good and true through the sin of Adam. With good reason we despair for we are in the dark and lie helpless before our darker force. We repent, acknowledge the duality and turn it to power and satisfaction and aggrandizement. The Prince of the world has much to promise, however dark and bitter in the end. Carpe diem.

John Paul announces the good news:

Christ, the Redeemer of the world, is the one who penetrated in a unique unrepeatable way into the mystery of man and entered his "heart". Rightly therefore does the Second Vatican Council teach: "The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come (Rom 5:14), Christ the Lord. Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling". And the Council continues: "He who is the 'image of the invisible God' (Col 1:15), is himself the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin." §8

Yes Dante has shown the depth (and the height); Kirk has the prescience to see the fifty year decline of his beloved country and the undoing of its traditions. And the Gorgon hovered nearby. John Paul, following his master, takes us to cross the "threshold of hope." His master's sword by which he slew the true terror of sin and despair is the cross, hence the image above of the crucifixion by Eric Gill.

Pope John Paul II is in a way the Perseus called for by Kirk, but only if we understand this along the lines of the doctrine of "in persona Christi" as only a priest can be.

Russell Kirk: where is the Gorgon's head?

"The frightful grin, the flattened nose, the lolling tongue, the eyes with their fixed stare . . . such a face as drifts through dreams, the goddess of terrors" Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives, p. 17

Kirk claims that the twentieth century writers about America do not really look upon the dreadful face of Medusa. Alfred Kinsey and David Riesman attempted to analyze the dark side of American character; Kirk said theirs was but a curious and morbid look in the monster's direction and they too would be frozen in stone.

"We still need Perseus; but our Perseus, if he is to crush Medusa now, must be endowed with powers of mind and conscience undreamed of in our national boyhood." p. 18. Who is this monster whose cove Kirk approaches in his work? It is a monster of the spirit, a "gorgon within."

After unmasking the sources of boredom and criticizing avarice, Kirk says near the end of the book: "The grand question before us is really this: is life worth living? Are men and women to live as human persons, formed in God's image, with minds and hearts and individuality of spiritual beings, or are they to become creatures less than human, herded by the masters of the total state, debauched by the indulgence of every appetite, deprived of the consolation of religion and tradition and learning and the sense of continuity, drenched in propaganda, aimless amusements, and the flood of sensual triviality?" (p. 253)

Kirk looks at the descending road before us and sees the ruin of souls and society.

Have we yet to name the Gorgon? It is not greed, nor power, nor sensuality. What then, where is she? In what mirror must we look; what shoes of Hermes must we don? Perhaps we must turn to Dante, mentioned by Kirk in chapter one. Dante fears that he might see the Gorgon's head and be turned to stone never to return from hell. We hear the story in Canto Nine of the Inferno. As Virgil and Dante cross over to the depths of hell at the gates of Dis, they are confronted by three "hellish furies" whose heads were covered with snakes. They screech "Fetch Medusa! Turn him to stone!" I will draw upon the interpretation of Dorothy Sayers -- she says they are "the images of the fruitless remorse which does not lead to penitence." (Hell, Penguin edition, p. 127) Why do they need Medusa, why can they not affect Dante? Dante is following his guides and seeking, will find the light. He must be turned to stone so as never to return to the light. And so Sayers says: Medusa, "in this allegory" she is "the image of despair which so hardens the heart that it becomes powerless to repent."

And there we have found her, the terror of Kirk's dream. Despair. A lack of hope. Conservatives are quite prone to a lack of hope. And despair will turn one to stone. A heart of stone. A eye of stone. All stone, with no movement or aspiration. In the Inferno, Virgil puts his hands over Dante's hands already covering his eyes. They descend to the bitter end and blown out from hell, make their eventual ascent. Hope is the one thing needed. See Margaret Mansfield, "Dante and the Gorgon," Italica 47 (1970) found on-line here.

But Kirk calls for Perseus because we may not avoid her stare, the Gorgon within, despair. "We still need Perseus; but our Perseus, if he is to crush Medusa now, must be endowed with powers of mind and conscience undreamed of in our national boyhood." Who has such powers of mind and conscience? Perhaps Pope John Paul II is that hero. [to be continued]

Rusell Kirk and Pope John Paul II on Redemption of Man, 2

Pope John Paul II and Russell Kirk defended freedom within the limits of truth and its authentic or right use. They knew it was crucial to distinguish license and liberty. But they have different approaches to truth.

An important passage in Redemptor hominis is this one: "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." These words contain both a fundamental requirement and a warning: the requirement of an honest relationship with regard to truth as a condition for authentic freedom, and the warning to avoid every kind of illusory freedom, every superficial unilateral freedom, every freedom that fails to enter into the whole truth about man and the world" §12

John Paul is unabashed in reference to the sayings of Jesus Christ and he has a rich notion of revelation and magisterium standing behind  his love of truth. This is appropriate of course for the supreme pontiff. But he also has a vigorous notion of reason as a spiritual capacity for natural knowledge of God and moral law. So in Fides et ratio he says: "This is why I make this strong and insistent appeal—not, I trust, untimely—that faith and philosophy recover the profound unity which allows them to stand in harmony with their nature without compromising their mutual autonomy. The parrhesia of faith must be matched by the boldness of reason." §48 The boldness of reason is not to be found in Kirk, nor is the parrhesia of faith as such.


So what do we find in Kirk, at this point in his writing, prior to his conversion to the Catholic faith?In Prospects for Conservatives he makes two references to "transcendent truth," and many references to a permanent, and presumably knowable, order. He emphasizes the importance of myth and parable as the source of truth; myth is "susceptible of rational interpretation," yes, but it is beyond calculative reason and science, or "utilitarianism" and "literalness." (18) Not a fan of "pure-bred" metaphysics, or an abstract thinker "devoid of humility and reverence," Kirk nevertheless speaks about the duty (and need?) to examine general or first principles. But with the invocation of Coleridge and Burke, this task is best left to the literary critic it seems.


Again, in his discussion of tradition, Kirk speaks of tradition as "transcendent truth" to a religious man. (233) He is a critic of private judgment and sceptics. But he does repeat the refrain this is truth "to a religious man," to a "Christian." And yet he even admits that traditions must not be superstitious, and they may need correction and change. Traditions are conflicting. Somehow, Kirk cannot really avoid the pressing if not paramount need for philosophy which he seems to fear as "defecated reason." John Paul's (which is Thomistic) account of the harmony of faith and reason should be welcome to Kirk or a Kirkean. For tradition seems to function as faith does in Thomas. The emphasis upon tradition is, of course, a proto-Catholic position already in early Kirk. And yet tradition has no ultimate authority without a magisterial office.


John Paul says that truth stands as a requirement and a warning for our love of freedom; the requirement we see brought out in tradition and myth. As for the warning against "illusory freedom" Kirk is at his splendid best, anticipating John Paul II in many respects. As mentioned previously, Kirk is a critic of consumerism and the atrophy of the heart. He devotes chapters to criticisms of sloth (boredom) and avarice. Kirk explores various "motives for integrity" that would round out and give substance to bare freedom -- love of God, emulation of virtue, and care for family. Love of gain shows a reduced notion of human fulfillment and encourages selfishness.

John Paul said that "what is in question is the advancement of persons, not just the multiplying of things that people can use. It is a matter-as a contemporary philosopher has said and as the Council has stated-not so much of "having more" as of "being more^". Indeed there is already a real perceptible danger that, while man's dominion over the world of things is making enormous advances, he should lose the essential threads of his dominion and in various ways let his humanity be subjected to the world and become himself something subject to manipulation in many ways -- even if the manipulation is often not perceptible directly-through the whole of the organization of community life, through the production system and through pressure from the means of social communication." §16

It is something of a surprise that one of the great American conservatives is so critical of the engines of prosperity in the mid-fifties. But Pope John Paul II certainly develops and intensifies the "prospects for conservatives" laid out by Russell Kirk in light of the vision of man as destined for love:

"With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to  this poor earth and all the stars." (21)

We must return to the Kirk/Wojtyla comparison one last time on the issue of "gorgons and chimeras" or "what modern man has to fear."

Twenty years ago: Ex corde ecclesiae, a personal recollection

JPH at the College of St Francis 1990

Today is the twentieth anniversary of Ex corde ecclesiae; I remember waiting at the College of St. Francis (Joliet, Il) with anticipation for the publication of this document and I remember my disappointment in seeing it shunted aside.

In the spring of 1985 I received a call from Dr. John Orr, president of the College of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois. He told me that he wanted to renew the Catholic identity of St. Francis. There was an opening in the department of philosophy and theology so he thought that this appointment would be a good time to begin a change. He had called a few prominent Catholics in the academic world and they all mentioned me as a person who could assist him in this project; I was just finishing my PhD at Catholic University and had spent seven years as an instructor and assistant professor at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. My wife and I were ready for a change; and the challenge of implementing the vision of Pope John Paul II for Catholic higher education appealed to me.

I took the position and within a year I was the chair of the department of philosophy and theology. In the span of two years we hired some solid young scholars to teach theology -- Greg Sobolewski a new PhD from Marquette was hired first; and then, an experienced teacher from St Anselms, Dan Hauser; and finally we hired  a new convert with great zeal and learning, Scott Hahn (see Rome Sweet Home, pp. 119-120). We worked together to transform the department to become a major resource for Catholic education. Although there were others on the faculty who wanted to develop a stronger Catholic identity and mission inspired by John Paul II, we were in the minority. So I discussed with the President the possibility of hiring some people in other departments to work with us. We brought on board Phil Sutton to work in the psychology department on an interim basis. We brought in various speakers such as Helen Hull Hitchcock, Mark Miravelle, Fr Mitch Pacwa and others. Needless to say, we met with resistance from many quarters and the prospects for full blown renewal were quite dim.  After a three year struggle, in the spring of 1990 Scott Hahn accepted a position at Steubenville; my friend Phil Sutton also left for Steubenville.

The President, Dr. Orr counseled patience and spoke assuringly of the new Vatican document that would appear later in the summer. I too was hoping that Ex corde would provide us with some leverage for a greater transformation of the College. I took copies of the document to a meeting of the academic affairs committee, of which I was chair, and asked the members if they would discuss how this document may apply to our college. I was stunned to hear that a significant number simply did not want to read it or to discuss it -- liberal open mindedness had its limits. I shall leave it to Scott Hahn's prudent summary of the lesson learned: "In three years I discovered that it takes more than the sincere desire of a few members of the administration and faculty to restore the Catholic identity of a college that has traveled a long way down the road of secularization. It was a real struggle at times." I left in 1994. I have taken up the struggle at two other Catholic institutions, but that would be a story for another day.

The promise of Ex corde still beckons those Catholic institutions willing to align themselves with Pope John Paul II's vision for renewal. Few have seriously done so; of course, few even have the capacity to do so, given the entrenchment of the faculty, the measures of success adopted by many administrators,  and the distractions of the board of trustees. There must be a plan endorsed by the board and set up as the chief measure of success for administration. Faculty hiring and formation would be the centerpiece of the plan. In fact, Pope John Paul II said it will take "courageous creativity and rigorous fidelity" (§8) That combination is exceedingly rare.

But if anyone wishes to seek the sources of renewal, here is my brief summary of the three key points of Ex corde:

1. The bishop and the Church's magisterium are intrinsic and essential to Catholic higher education; it is not enough to speak about the "Catholic tradition," we must allow the apostolic faith, ecclesial faith according to Pope Benedict, to echo through the institution by means of the mandatum, the board and administration working in close cooperation with the Bishop, and the respect for Catholic faith and morals to be predominant throughout the institution. "The responsibility for maintaining and strengthening the Catholic identity of the University rests primarily with the University itself. While this responsibility is entrusted principally to university authorities (including, when the positions exist, the Chancellor and/or a Board of Trustees or equivalent body), it is shared in varying degrees by all members of the university community." 4.1

2. A majority of the faculty, dispersed throughout all schools and departments, must be Catholic in practice and education. See article 4, no. 1: "calls for the recruitment of adequate university personnel, especially teachers and administrators, who are both willing and able to promote that identity. The identity of a Catholic University is essentially linked to the quality of its teachers and to respect for Catholic doctrine." Who is willing and able to promote the Catholic identity? As for personal life, all must maintain communion in the church by their manner of acting including an obligation to live a holy life, (see canons 209 and 210, and particularly canon 810, found in footnote 49). The obligation to be formed beyond professional specialization is great:  "University teachers should seek to improve their competence and endeavor to set the content, objectives, methods, and results of research in an individual discipline within the framework of a coherent world vision. Christians among the teachers are called to be witnesses and educators of authentic Christian life, which evidences attained integration between faith and life, and between professional competence and Christian wisdom." §22 

3. Students should receive an education that equips them to live as authentic witnesses in the world today. "Through research and teaching the students are educated in the various disciplines so as to become truly competent in the specific sectors in which they will devote themselves to the service of society and of the Church, but at the same time prepared to give the witness of their faith to the world." (§20) These cannot be parallel developments but mutually informative. This requires a fairly extensive core set of courses in philosophy and theology.  John Paul references Newman and Vatican II: here is what he means by life-long learning -- a "growth in its ability to wonder, to understand, to contemplate, to make personal judgments, and to develop a religious, moral, and social sense." (§23) Again, philosophy and theology would be central to this education.

Students will be leaders when they can become "witnesses to Christ in whatever place they may exercise their profession." (§23) From this end or outcome must educators derive the curriculum. As I have written extensively about this, I shall not elaborate. (see this article) 

Twenty years ago, from the heart of the Church, Pope John Paul II  laid out a vision and a program for Catholic education -- it will prove pure and fruitful, meek and strong, humble and courageous, zealous and prudent, like our Lady. We need more ventures of faith like hers -- "He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty."

Rusell Kirk and Pope John Paul II on Redemption of Man

Russell Kirk by Sam Torode (see samtorode@tds.net)

Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was a social critic whose works best defined conservatism in the United States for decades (not that his ideas were embraced or followed by any party or platform). But his case for an imaginative conservatism in books such as The Conservative Mind, Prospects for Conservatives and the Conservative Reader received a wide readership and the comprehensiveness of his accounts and the diffuse range of what is "conservative" continue to attract readers and provoke discussion. A disciple of Edmund Burke, a lover of Scottish history and culture, a devoted family man, beloved teacher, and a Roman Catholic convert -- Russell Kirk cut an eccentric and often misunderstood figure in the world of contemporary politics and academia. My brother and I had the pleasure of meeting him at his home in Mecosta Michigan in 1973 or 74 during a seminar for college students. In Mecosta there is now  a Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal directed by his wife Annette Kirk. Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a seminar at the Center for the American Idea on Kirk's Prospects for Conservatives, a seminar run by Dr Bradley Birzer, holder of the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in History and Director of the American Studies Program at Hillsdale College, Michigan.

As we discussed this work of Russell Kirk, written in 1954, revised in 1962 and 1988, I was very struck by similarities between the thought of Kirk and some keys themes in the thought of Pope John Paul II, who surely develops his own style of imaginative conservatism for the world at large through, of all things, the documents of Vatican II, his philosophical studies in Thomism and phenomenology, and Polish literary and religious culture. Kirk and Wojtyla both came of intellectual age in the 1950s, Wojtyla in his country oppressed by communism, and Kirk in the United States, triumphant in its military and economic power. Wojtyla struck his blow for freedom against the might of the Soviet; but Kirk, in the midst of an emerging and expansive economic superpower, is an early critic of the consumerist mentality that John Paul II would later identify as the chief mischief of the West. He struck a blow for integrity and humanity against the dumb Leviathan of liberalism. He begins to articulate the principles of a "civilization of love" also envisioned by the Archbishop of Krakow in the midst of the worker's paradise. I can but draw a few similarities in this blog.

First and foremost Kirk and Wojtyla, like Dante, are disciples of love. We have written a blog or two on John Paul's Redemptor hominis in which he advocates for human self-discovery in love, in Christ. "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it." §10 Christ reveals man to man himself through his love and his sacrifice on the cross.

Kirk in his opening chapter of Prospects for Conservatives says: "The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead that he object of life is love." There we have the true first principle -- a principle denied or neglected by Ayn Rand, or John Locke, or Hayek, or Milton Friedman. Obviously in the mid-Fifties this thirty some year old conservative would provide an alternative path for American conservatives, a path not always taken. And with what lyricism would Kirk hold forth -- "he knows that the just and ordered society is that in which love governs us, so far as love can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learned that love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by Love. . . . Men are put into this world, he realizes, the struggle, to suffer, to contend against evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire to the triumph of Love." (21)

The just society must be a humane society, ordered to the true measure of human happiness, which is love. Neither rights, nor prosperity, nor power, nor education will redeem man. But love will. As John Paul II proclaimed: "Above all, love is greater than sin, than weakness, than the 'futility of creation,' it is stronger than death." (RH §9) Kirk and Wojtyla saw how deeply this truth must be etched into our being and our striving.

So together with them we should place at the opening of any conservative creed the following:

To every captive soul and gentle heart
into whose sight this present speech may come,
so that they might write its meaning for me,
greeting in their Lord's name, who is Love.
-Dante, La Vita Nuova

Towards understanding Ex corde

On August 15 we shall commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Apostolic Constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. A year prior, 1989, Pope John Paul II delivered an Address to the Third International Meeting of Catholic Universities. In this address we can find a brief account of the important issues facing Catholic higher education today; it provides a more ready introduction to his vision than the more technical directives of the Apostolic Constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. In Ex corde he says that a Catholic university's privileged task is "to unite existentially by intellectual effort two orders of reality that too frequently tend to be placed in opposition as though they were antithetical: the search for truth, and the certainty of already knowing the fount of truth." In this address he says that the two poles of the phrase “Catholic university”, although in tension, complete and enrich each other. In fact, he ends the address with the assertion that the Catholic character “assists in the more complete and effective accomplishment of the mission of a university in the world today.” And he boldly says that contemporary society has much to receive from Catholic universities – it needs us to be “a convincing model of an institution in which research is joined to the search for solutions to fundamental human questions.”  The crux of the matter involves the fact that modern society needs a “renewed moral commitment” to deal with the tremendous challenges posed by the ambivalence of technological progress and the inequities in the development of peoples and nations.  These are issues that engage us on the level of ethics and the foundation for ethics – an understanding of the dignity of the person and transcendent source of justice. It is precisely the work of the university to engage in “probing, going to the root of the problem.” We must engage the full truth about the human person, the world, and God. For with these existential and global issues, it is not enough to continue to train a “more efficient and productive work force.” The renewal of moral commitment must go the root of the problem. At a Catholic University we must be radical and relentless in our inquiry.

John Paul II says that multiplying departments, faculties and specialized institutes is not sufficient because the problems require a unified or organic view of God, man and the world. He notes that the university is in danger of being reduced to “a complex group of academic areas” and these areas become “inarticulate and unrelated.” How does a university keep its sense of common mission and common dialogue around this spirit of radical inquiry and dialogue? It needs a center for its many centers and institutes and programs. The center for the center is the faith, it is the wisdom of the Church.

[Aside: I first envisioned the Pope John Paul II Forum to be precisely a "center" for the Centers, not a competing Institute or Center. This is why I chose to name it a "FORUM" and not a center or an institute along side the others. We need centripetal force, a principle of congregation not dispersal. Most of our events are co-sponsored. But now that I am a faculty member and the Forum something of an extra-curricular activity, I have no grand plan for the university at all. I just want to see the thought of Pope John Paul II provide a common heritage for us all.]

Each faculty member can be at the "center" by acknowledging the newness and embracing the radicality of the Truth of the gospel; in Fides et ratio John Paul II said "Saint Thomas is an authentic model for all who seek the truth. In his thinking, the demands of reason and the power of faith found the most elevated synthesis ever attained by human thought, for he could defend the radical newness introduced by Revelation without ever demeaning the venture proper to reason.” Fides et ratio §78

I just spent an hour today with the Rector of the University of St Thomas of Mozambique, the Rev. Joseph Wamala. He said that ST Thomas is a model for the university because he brings together faith and reason. He said he wants to teach the students that faith should not and cannot be left behind as one enters into business or politics. The communists had nationalized the educational system and purged it of all religion and ethics. From this sad legacy the Catholic schools may be in a position to renew society. They need our support. It is my hope that he can send some of his faculty to a summer workshop on Pope John Paul II.

Saints Cyril and Methodius as Co-Patrons of Europe

"The heirs of Benedictine monasticism had saved the culture of Western Europe during the dark ages; Cyril and Methodius had created the possibility of an enduring culture in east central Europe." George Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 408

Weigel explains that Pope John Paul II named Cyril and Methodius as co-patrons of Europe in an apostolic letter Egregiae Virtutis (1981); some in the West thought this but a "pleasant but inconsequential papal gesture of Slavic fraternity." But the figures of Cyril and Methodius served the Pope in highlighting the spiritual and religious basis of culture during the crisis of Solidarity; and in 1985 he returned to the figure of Methodius to confront the communist crackdown in Czechoslovakia. The regime refused him a visa to attend a celebration of the 1,100 year anniversary of Methodius. So John Paul wrote a letter to the priests of Czechoslovakia to secure these lessons from the life of Methodius: i. courage to accept history and humility before divine providence; ii. the religious character and mission of the priest; iii. responsibility for choices in history (Weigel, pp. 500-501).

Further, to establish the model of Cyril and Methodius for the universal Church, Pope John Paul II devoted his fourth encyclical to their witness, The Apostle of the Slavs (1985)[find it here]. He summarizes their lives and achievements in the first two sections.

The brothers were Byzantine in culture, obedient to the Roman pontiff, and immersed in the slavic culture. They are signs of Christian unity and models for evangelization. They embody the very thing called for by Vatican II -- a new evangelization characterized in Lumen gentium (§13) as follows: "The Church or People of God takes nothing away from the temporal welfare of any people by establishing that kingdom. Rather does she foster and take to herself, insofar as they are good, the abilities, resources, and customs of each people. Taking them to herself she purifies, strengthens, and enobles them."

Thus, the brothers ennobled the slavic culture; they had to argue for the use of slavic language against those who would impose either latin or Greek on the Church -- "The Gospel does not lead to the impoverishment or extinction of those things which every individual, people and nation and every culture throughout history recognizes and brings into being as goodness, truth and beauty. On the contrary, it strives to assimilate and to develop all these values: to live them with magnanimity and joy and to perfect them by the mysterious and ennobling light of Revelation." (§18)

The unity of the Church, John Paul II claims, is not static and not uniform. It embraces a true diversity and richness of cultures (purified, strengthened, ennobled).

There is a dynamic, forward looking quality to Cyril and Methodius. "Being Christians in our day means being builders of communion in the Church and in society. This calls for openness to others, mutual understanding, and readiness to cooperate through the generous exchange of cultural and spiritual resources." (§27) In their dialogue and openness, Cyril and Methodius did not abandon their commitment to orthodoxy nor did they forsake their loyalty to Rome.

The goal of the common Christian vision is the city of God, integral Christian humanism, or the civilization of love. John Paul II ends his letter with this prayer to the communion of saints:

 The future! However much it may humanly speaking seem filled with threats and uncertainties, we trustfully place it in your hands, Heavenly Father, invoking upon it the intercession of the Mother of your Son and Mother of the Church, the intercession of your Apostles Peter and Paul, and of Saints Benedict, Cyril and Methodius, of Augustine and Boniface and all the other evangelizers of Europe who, strong in faith, hope and charity, proclaimed to our fathers your salvation and your peace, and amid the toils of the spiritual sowing began to build the civilization of love and the new order based on your holy law and the help of your grace, which at the end of the age will give life to all things and all people in the heavenly Jerusalem. Amen! (§32)

Newman on St Benedict and the Poetical

Why does Newman attribute to the Order of St Benedict the element of poetry in Catholic culture?  He defines the poetical as follows:

"It demands that we should not put ourselves above the objects in which it resides, but at their feet; that we should feel them to be above and beyond us, that we should look up to them, and that, instead of fancying that we can comprehend them, we should take for granted that we are surrounded and comprehended by them ourselves. It implies that we understand them to be vast, immeasurable, impenetrable, inscrutable, mysterious . . .  Poetry does not address the reason, but the imagination and affections; it leads to admiration, enthusiasm, devotion, love. The vague, the uncertain, the irregular, the sudden, are among its attributes or sources. Hence it is that a child's mind is so full of poetry, because he knows so little; and an old man of the world so devoid of poetry, because his experience of facts is so wide." The Mission of St Benedict, found here.

 He says that Benedict, "entrusted with his mission almost as a boy, infused into it the romance and simplicity of boyhood." The monks turned their backs on the busy mart, the wrangling forum, and "all they wanted, all they desired, was the sweet soothing presence of earth, sky, and sea, the hospitable cave, the bright running stream,  . . . in having neither hope nor fear of anything below; in daily prayer, daily bread, and daily work, one day being just like another, except that it was one step nearer than the day just gone to that great Day, which would swallow up all days, the day of everlasting rest."

The simplicity of life, the contemplation of God, the cultivation of the earth (ora et labora) seemed to signify "a return to that primitive age of the world, of which poets have so often sung, the simple life of Arcadia or the reign of Saturn, when fraud and violence were unknown. It was a bringing back of those real, not fabulous, scenes of innocence and miracle, when Adam delved, or Abel kept sheep, or Noe planted the vine, and Angels visited them."

The spread of the monastic ideal and its persistent flourishing defies our calculative mind and burrows beneath our superficial, nay ideological, histories. After centuries of hostile destruction, the abbeys stubbornly remain as testimony to Newman's account. "It has been poured out over the earth, rather than been sent, with a silent mysterious operation, while men slept, and through the romantic adventures of individuals, which are well nigh without record; and thus it has come down to us, not risen up among us, and is found rather than established. Its separate and scattered monasteries occupy the land, each in its place, with a majesty parallel, but superior, to that of old aristocratic houses. Their known antiquity, their unknown origin, their long eventful history, their connection with Saints and Doctors when on earth, the legends which hang about them, their rival ancestral honors, their extended sway perhaps over other religious houses, their hold upon the associations of the neighborhood, their traditional friendships and compacts with other great landlords, the benefits they have conferred, the sanctity which they breathe,—these and the like attributes make them objects, at once of awe and of affection."

One must read the wealth of detail and Newman's loving recounting of their deeds. The drained the swamps, ploughed the fields, planted the grapes, built the churches and roads. Newman says "they were not dreamy sentimentalists, to fall in love with melancholy winds and purling rills, and waterfalls and nodding groves; but their poetry was the poetry of hard work and hard fare, unselfish hearts and charitable hands."

They brought healing and hospitality; they brought joy and song; most of all they brought "gentleness and tenderness of heart."

St. Benedict "found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way, not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it, not professing to do it by any set time or by any rare specific or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often, till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration, rather than a visitation, correction, or conversion. The new world which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing, and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes, and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully deciphered and copied and re-copied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one that 'contended, or cried out,' or drew attention to what was going on; but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning, and a city. Roads and bridges connected it with other abbeys and cities, which had similarly grown up; and what the haughty Alaric or fierce Attila had broken to pieces, these patient meditative men had brought together and made to live again."

I would suggest that a major element of the "poetic" according to Newman is "non-reductive" and "particular." The poetic is not anti-scientific, but pre-scientific. The scientific could pose as being anti-poetic, for example if we read Descartes' Discourse, part II. One may fear that the poetic is naive or superstitious. But it breathes of lived human experience.

The poetry of St Benedict is nothing less than European culture itself. He is after all the patron of Europe. It is the poetry of God, the poetry of nature, the poetry of place, and the poetry of men. Its concreteness and appreciation for the particular resist the abstraction of science and the universal schemes of the technicians who seek mastery of nature and man, rather than restoration.

I have succumbed to the danger recently noted  by Anthony Kenny in a review of a new book about Newman: "anyone who writes about him quickly discovers that he is such a gifted writer, and his style is so bewitching, and so superior to one’s own, that one hardly dares to paraphrase his thought, and ends up overloading one’s text with verbatim quotations" See Times Literary Supplement 7/28/2010. Found here

A particular monastery in US, Clear Creek, may be visited at this site
Chant from Solesmes found here

St. Dominic as an influence on St Philip Neri

For the Solemnity of St. Dominic (Aug 8) I turn to the thought of Cardinal Newman. He explains the mission of Philip Neri through the formation he received from the Dominicans, the Benedictines and the Jesuits. "Benedict, Dominic, Ignatius:—these are the three venerable Patriarchs, whose Orders divide between them the extent of Christian history. There are many Saints besides, who have been fruitful in followers and institutions, and have multiplied themselves in Christendom,  and lived on earth in their children, when they themselves were gone to heaven. But there are three who, in an especial way, have had committed to them the office of a public ministry in the affairs of the Church one after another, and who are, in some sense, her 'nursing fathers,' and are masters in the spiritual Israel, and ruling names in her schools and her libraries; and these are Benedict, Dominic, and Ignatius. Philip came under the teaching of all three successively."

Newman succinctly said: "As then he learned from Benedict what to be, and from Dominic what to do, so let me consider that from Ignatius he learned how he was to do it." Or finally, Newman says of his own spiritual father, Philip Neri, that he "had the breadth of view of St. Dominic, the poetry of St. Benedict, the wisdom of St. Ignatius, and all recommended by an unassuming grace and a winning tenderness which were his own."

He says the following about the Dominican influence on Philip Neri:

It was the magnificent aim of the children of St. Dominic to form the whole matter of human knowledge into one harmonious system, to secure the alliance between religion and philosophy, and to train men to the use of the gifts of nature in the sunlight of divine grace and revealed truth. It required the dissolution and reconstruction of society to give an opportunity for so great a thought; and accordingly, the Order of Preachers flourished after the old Empire had passed away, and the chaos which followed on it had resulted in the creation of a new world. Now, in the age of St. Philip, a violent effort was in progress, on the part of the powers of evil, to break up this sublime unity, and to set human genius, the philosopher and the poet, the artist and the musician, in opposition to religion. Accordingly, the work of the glorious Order of St. Dominic was more than ever called for, whatever might be those new methods of prosecuting it, more suitable to the times; and, if Philip was destined, as he was, to play an important part in them in the cause of God, it was therefore necessary that he should be imbued with the great idea of that Order. It was necessary that he should have deeply fixed within him, as the object of his life, that single aim of subduing this various, multiform, many-colored world to the unity of divine service. I mean there are Saints, whose mission lies rather in separating off from each other the world and the Truth; that of other Saints lies in bringing them together. Philip's was the latter. Suitably then, and reasonably, did he receive his elementary formation of mind from the Fathers of St. Mark. And when this had been secured, then he was sent off, "not knowing whither he went," to other tutors, and towards the scene of his destined labors, to do a work like St. Dominic's work, though he was not to be a Dominican. Sermons Preached on Various Occasions,  Sermon 12. The Mission of St. Philip—Part 2

 So what must we learn to do from St Dominic? As educators, "to train men to the use of the gifts of nature in the sunlight of divine grace and revealed truth."Or as professionals in the world, to give example or witness how to "use the gifts of nature" in that sunlight of faith. And to accomplish that task we must acquire "the breadth of view of St. Dominic" and to learn this from his spiritual sons of course, St Albert and St Thomas Aquinas. Pope John Paul II said of Aquinas: “Saint Thomas is an authentic model for all who seek the truth. In his thinking, the demands of reason and the power of faith found the most elevated synthesis ever attained by human thought, for he could defend the radical newness introduced by Revelation without ever demeaning the venture proper to reason.” Fides et ratio 78; and  “The philosophy of St. Thomas deserves to be attentively studied and accepted with conviction by the youth of our day, by reason of its spirit of openness and of universalism, characteristics which are hard to find in many trends of contemporary thought.” "The Perennial Philosophy of St. Thomas for the Youth of Our Times," Rome, 1979.

I have sometimes thought that the Newman account of the three saints who formed Philip Neri would serve as the basis for a curriculum for Catholic higher education.  We would commence with a study of the ancient world and find a culminating point in "the poetry of St. Benedict." Then we would study the middle ages and seek to acquire "the breadth of view of St. Dominic," through the work of Thomas Aquinas; and then look at the origins of the modern world and the development of the "the wisdom of St. Ignatius." All of this taught in the mode of Philip Neri's style of "an unassuming grace and a winning tenderness."

Hiroshima, part 2

The bombing of Hiroshima troubles our conscience in light of this clear statement from The Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and humanity, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons – especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons – to use them” (CCC #2314; cf. also Gaudium et Spes #80).

The statement uses the phrase "modern scientific weapons." Nuclear weapons do have a special destructive power and they are in some way indiscriminate in their very nature. Reportedly President Truman remarked "I don't think we ought to use this thing [the A-Bomb] unless we absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of something that (here he looked down at his desk, rather reflectively) that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn't a military weapon. (I shall never forget this particular expression). It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses." (David Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. Two, p. 391)

Sasesbo Japan, firebombed

Other scientific weapons, used with the precision of scientific calculation, could do equal devastation. The firebombing of Japan, under the command of Curtis LeMay (assisted by Robert McNamara, cf. the documentary, Fog of War) did indeed more damage: 330,000 civilians killed, 446,000 civilians wounded, 6 million civilians displaced, 2.51 million homes destroyed (Edward P Hoyt, Inferno: The Firebombing of Japan)

Hiroshima, 65 years later, still troubling for conscience

Pope John Paul II at Hiroshima Feb 25 1981

Today is the sixty-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I think that Americans continue to be in denial about the morally troubling aspects of this act which led to the end of World War II (following the second use of an atomic bomb on Nagasaki). When I taught at the US Air Force Academy I found that first year students were indoctrinated on the issue during their summer training and I encountered much resistance to broaching the issue among many cadets. In the Wall Street Journal today, Warren Kozak makes a strident denial that the bombing(s) deserve moral censure (p A15), and I recall that Donald Kagan made a similar argument on this day 15 years ago in the Journal pages. Mr. Kozak is troubled because the Obama administration is sending the US Ambassador to attend the official commemoration ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, for the first time in 65 years. I say it is about time!

Mr Kozak is worried lest this indicate an "apology" or perhaps suggest a "moral equivalence" between the Japanese acts of war and the United States, or perhaps even between Nazi and US acts of war. His argument for the bombings takes the form of a standard utilitarian argument. The United States fought for a just cause. The bombings helped us to achieve our just end. Further, more lives were spared by the acts of bombing than by the alternatives considered at the time, namely the invasion of Japan. Case closed.

But Pope John Paul II said "that wound affected the whole of the human family. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: few events in history have had such an effect on man's conscience." It would be good for our conscience to be deeply troubled by those events of 65 years ago.

I think we should stand back and consider the remarks by Pope John Paul II remarks at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. In his biography Pope John Paul II (pp. 380-381), Tad Szulc draws on the eye witness account of Jesuit Father Pittau: "It was one of the most beautiful and moving speeches. It took the form of a prayer: 'Lord Hear me! It is the voice of the mothers who have lost their children. It is the voice of children who have lost their mothers and fathers.  . . .  Never again Hiroshima! Never again Oświęcim. He pronounced a part of it in Japanese and I could see people crying.  . . .And when he saw the museum of the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima he was really moved. You could see  in his face this kind of sorrow." John Paul II spoke in Japanese. A policeman in Toykyo reported to Father Pittau that this was the first time he saw an important person who genuinely "understands and respects our culture and our language."


See his full speech here. And also see his remarks to scientists  here.

John Paul II visited as a "pilgrim of peace" and not an official ambassador of a state. He is correct to say that the name Hiroshima is now and forever associated with the horror of the blast, a "destruction beyond belief," and the "first victims of nuclear war." If the way of modern war leads to Hiroshima, then it is a place to make a "fresh determination to work for peace." We cannot simply refuse to remember what happened here; we must do more than think that nuclear weapons are but an "unavoidable means of maintaining a balance of power through a balance of terror." The pilgrim of peace is right to challenge these ways of thinking. We continue to live on the brink of a great disaster -- "there is a desire to be ready for war, and being ready means being able to start it; and it means taking the risk that sometime, somewhere, somehow, someone can set in motion the terrible mechanism of general destruction."

We still laugh at the movie Dr Strangelove; it lays out an exaggerated number to show the logic of a calculation whose possibility was formed on that fateful day 65 years ago. If then President Truman could calculate 40-50 thousand killed in the blink of an eye -- then why not a General Turgidson who proposed a massive nuclear strike on Russia and anticipated a counter strike ; so he said: "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks." It is an inhuman logic. Can we admit with Tolkein, "we are attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring. And we shall (it seems) succeed. But the penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men into Elves into Orcs. Not that in real life things are as clear cut as in a story, and we started out with a great many Orcs on our side." J. R. R. TOLKEIN, Letter to his son serving in RAF 6 May1944.

Thus the Pope said to the scientists at Hiroshima: "We realized with horror that nuclear energy would henceforth be available as a weapon of devastation ; then we learned that this terrible weapon had in fact been used, for the first time, for military purposes. And then there arose the question that will never leave us again: Will this weapon, perfected and multiplied beyond measure, be used tomorrow? If sο, would it not probably destroy the human family, its members and all the achievements of civilization? Ladies and gentlemen, you who devote your lives to the modern sciences, yοu are the first to be able to evaluate the disaster that a nuclear war would inflict on the human family. Αnd I know that, ever since the explosion of the first atomic bomb, many of you have been anxiously wondering about the responsibility of modern science and of the technology that is the fruit of that science."

John Paul was not a utopian thinker; he was a pilgrim of peace; he was a teacher of the faithful and a leader in the world at large. In the face of technological power, he said that we must appreciate the role of the cultural, the educational, and the religious as the decisive moment.

Our future on this planet, exposed as it is to nuclear annihilation, depends upon one single factor: humanity must make a moral about-face. At the present moment of history, there must be a general mobilization of all men and women of good will. Humanity is being called upοn to take a major step forward, a step forward in civilization and wisdom. A lack of civilization, an ignorance of man's true values, brings the risk that humanity will be destroyed. We must become wiser. Pope Paul VI, in his Encyclical, The Development of Peoples, entitled several times stressed the urgent need to have recourse to the wise in order to guide the new society in its development. In particular, he said that "if further development calls for the work of more and more technicians, even more necessary is the deep thought and reflection of wise men in search of a new humanism which will enable modern man to find himself anew by embracing the higher values of love and friendship, of prayer and contemplation".

After reading Pope John Paul II the following thoughts occur to me:

1. Should the U.S. issue or indicate an apology to the people of Japan for this bombing of their cities? An apology carries a certain significance that for diplomatic reasons may be not appropriate. But an acknowledgment that these acts of bombing involved the deliberate killing of innocent people would be a good thing. We planned for a direct attack, not simply collateral damage on a military target. Evasive speech is not helpful at this point. (In his announcement after the event, Truman said in his opening line: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped  one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.”) Robert McNamara's interview in "Fog of War" revealed a ruthless calculation in the firebombing of Japanese cities, not for military purposes but for retaliation. We became a Sauron.

2. Is there a moral equivalence between the US and Imperial Japan? Certainly not on the scale of imperial ambition and plan for systematic killing and acts of genocide. But as an act produced by scientific rational calculation of how to achieve an end, and allowing the deliberate killing of innocent women and children -- the bombing of Hiroshima evinces the disturbing trend of thinking and acting that characterizes the modern technological state. Human life is no longer sacred; moral law is subordinated to efficiency. The culture of death takes its root here. Paul Ramsey calls this type of reasoning "totalitarian" because it reduces the human person and society into its totalistic calculations: “At stake in preserving this distinction [combatant/non-combatant] is not only whether warfare can be kept barely civilized, but whether civilization can be kept from barbarism.  Can civilization survive in the sense that we can continue in political and military affairs to act civilized, or must we accept total war on grounds that clearly indicate that we have already become totalitarian - by reducing everyone without discrimination and everyone to the whole extent of his being to a mere means of achieving political and military goals?  Even if an enemy government says that is all its people are, a Christian or any truly just man cannot agree to this.” (Paul Ramsey, The Just War) But we did just that to the Japanese residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

3. With Pope John Paul II, we should appeal to the young people "to create a new future of fraternity and solidarity; let us reach out towards our brothers and sisters in need, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, free the downtrodden, bring justice where injustice reigns and peace where only weapons speak. Your young hearts have an extraordinary capacity for goodness and love; put them at the service of your fellow human beings." We should read to them the letters of Tolkein. In 1941, in the midst of the war and much personal suffering, Tolkien wrote to his son Michael as follows: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth.”

4. Religious conversion and education are the way to change the world, if it is to be changed. Here we can quote Solzhenitsyn (Templeton Address, 1983):

To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined guest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned.