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24 November 2012

Advent and "The Coming of God"


“It promises more than it can deliver.” That saying seems to apply to Advent. In the Advent season, Liturgy and Scriptures speak poetically and powerfully about “the coming of God,” about “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” about a divine renewal and transformation of the earth, about the destruction of our sins, and so on. Our faithful are encouraged to pray more, to be watchful for the coming of the LORD, to seek more silence, to be more disciplined in mind and body.

But what happens? Shopping, parties, sporting events, busyness, chattiness, boozing, and deepening darkness as we approach the solstice. What happened to the “coming of God?” Did we miss it? Perhaps “we had the experience but missed the meaning.” Or perhaps we did not experience God’s coming at all. Maybe we were just too busy to be bothered about God.

Speaking for myself, I have usually been disappointed by Advent. It promises to be a supremely beautiful, peaceful, contemplative season. What a contrast with what we have made of our religious services, of our whole lives, and perhaps especially in Advent. As a priest working in parishes, I have long found Advent to be exhausting, with extra Masses, extra reconciliation services, extra home visits, and the growing tension of Christmas. What I have looked forward to is less than coming of God than the passing of Christmas for another year. January is often more sweetly quiet and bright compared to the noise, busyness, and deepening darkness of December.

If there is some truth to these observations, what can one do to make Advent truly a season of waiting for the coming of God? In larger terms, how should one live in the face of society’s noise and “good times,” or indeed, the madness of this passing world?

Seek to keep returning to the truth of reality: God is here now, quietly waiting for a soul to enter into His peace, His love, His joy. As the waves are crashing, one must dive beneath the waves, and enter into the divine silence. Is it easy? No way, especially when we have constructed lives aiming to drown out peace and silence. We light little fires and little lights, and consume distilled spirits, rather than seek through the darkness to the inner Light, by the help of the stilling Spirit.

You who are, draw me by your Spirit away from all that passes, into your unseen Presence. Draw hard, LORD, for powerful forces would drag me away from You. Give me the desire, the will, the grace to keep seeking to enter your peace. Even in the midst of daily duties and occasional celebrations, help me to be mindful of You, drawing me to Yourself.

You are here, even when we are not.

12 November 2012

Brief Thoughts On Decadent American Culture

Nothing that exists can or will be complete as long as it exists--not even the whole universe.  Hence, this thought cannot be complete, this essay cannot be complete.  Not only is everything in process, but the process will never be completed, as long as it exists.  

Given incompleteness and imperfection, is there anything worth writing about American culture and its decadence, or is it futile to set forth any thought on the subject?  Why bother?  Those who experience American culture as decadent do not need to be persuaded of the fact, and those who do not experience American culture as decadent or dying would most likely not be persuaded by words.  If one cannot see, feel, experience the decadent culture in which we exist, as decadent, as damaging to human well-being, then what can one possibly say to convince them?

What do I experience, concretely, really, that leads me to want to resist this culture? I see and feel its ugliness, brutality, untruthfulness, destructive powers. Many of the words I hear spoken are foolish, or unthinking, or misleading, or (in the case of successful politicians), deceptive and blinding.  When I listen to the President of this country speak, I virtually nothing to which my mind can say, “That is true.”  I experience from his words a flood of words that raise many questions, befog the mind from thinking, mislead, occasionally bedazzle by mere cleverness.  If this President is not a sophistic intellectual, perhaps of the Gnostic variety, I really cannot imagine who would be.  And yet, so many follow, praising him as a “great orator,” as a “political leader,” even as “a genius.”  Who is more foolish, the deceptive speaker or the deceived masses?  

The lies and deceptions of leading politicians are one recurring sign, unpleasant sign, of this decadent society.  Other reminders are even more prevalent:  ugly, sick, often angry sounds that get sold to the masses and elites alike as “music.”  When I hear these sounds, I often begin to cringe, as they immediately cause mental confusion.  “American music”--pop, rock, whatever it is called--is not only enormously mindless, but drowns out mental peace required for thinking.  And that is perhaps one of its purposes.  The main purpose may well be simply to make money, for making money is an American obsession.  This music sells, and makes much money, because it appeals to minds already debased, fragmented, immersed in utter temporality, without hints of striving for beauty and what endures.  Any sane, sober-minded soul, experiencing contemporary American mass music for the first time, would probably assume that it was concocted to cause pain and mental confusion.  No relatively healthy soul would not experience these sounds as sick and disturbing.  And yet, rarely do I hear anyone in this country comment on the sickness, ugliness, anger, brutality in our music.  Rather, it often gets praised as “fun,” as “popular,” as “invigorating.”  Well, as Heracleitos said, “asses prefer straw to gold.”  I would go further:  As dead bodies do not experience influenza as illness, dead or dying souls do not experience this disgusting American “music” as destructive.  An alcoholic, trapped in his or her illness, does not realize--or admit--the destructive power of drinking alcohol.  A sick or unliving mind does not experience destructive sounds for what they are.  

What does the disease of American music tell one about American culture, and more importantly, about the souls or minds that make up this culture?  First, there are surely a number of folks--mainly older, and probably away from urban life--who refuse to indulge in this “music.”  They do not listen to it, unless it is blared on TV sets, even during commercials.  (Often when someone is talking on a television show or commercial, this propagandistic, mind-damaging music blares in the background, nearly drowning out words.)  As for the vast masses who indulge in this music willing:  Are they dead souls, or do they just smell of death?  They are decaying, rotting, even if not fully dead yet.  Anyone with a nose can smell the stench of these souls, these shrunken sounds, and malformed minds, that willingly indulge in listening to mass-produced “music.”  What does the predominance of such “music” say?  At the very least, it indicates a lack of mental development allowing one to discern ugliness from beauty, ordering forces from those that destroy.  What does this “music” say about parents who allow their children to listen to it, to immerse their minds in it?  Is not this neglect of their children’s right mental development a real form of child abuse?  But then, most of the parents probably indulge in the same or similar “music,” so they do not have the interior standards by which to taste, to discern, the poison being taken in by their children.  

Of the decadence of such “music,” and its bad effects, I could write much more.  But let me pass on to other forms and causes of spiritual and mental disorder in American society.  

Selfism is what I call the religion of America.  Most people are, or seem to be, immersed in self, wallowing in self, entrapped in self.  Most Americans--or at least, the political leaders and elites who speak for and to the masses--are self-referential, self-absorbed, self-promoting.  As typical examples of this cult of self, one needs only call to mind Bill Clinton or other the present demagogue in the White House.  Their love is clearly for power and public acclaim.  They seek at all costs to gain power and worship by the masses.  They are drunk on power, but underneath that drive is their self-absorption.  They will say and do anything to get public attention, approval, power.  These are the wild beasts who not only feed at the public trough, but who have powerful means to broadcast themselves into everyman’s life.  At the least they are demagogues; at the worst, tyrants.  In either case, these men are American:  they embody, express, and further the American trait of self-worship.  

How does selfism show up in the masses?  It shows up in the addiction to pleasure, sports, and entertainment:  indulging one’s fleeting desires and interests at the expense of mental development.  The self that is cultivated is not the higher self of reason and spirit, but the passing self of passions, images, wants, pleasures.  As far as I know, most Americans, when not working or sleeping, are indulging their desires for pleasure, evidenced by promiscuity, sexual perversions, addiction to TV and mass entertainment, addiction to sports, even addiction to children and grand-children to an unhealthy degree.  I know people who will drive hundreds of miles (even in dangerous conditions) in order to attend some “sporting event” in which a family member is sharing.  And they think that such behavior is “good.”  Would it occur to them that they could spend that time working or learning, or even getting good exercise out in nature? 

Actually, enough said. Thinking and writing about the decadence of American culture is distasteful and in large measure a waste of time. Who could be persuaded that hours spent indulging in entertainment, sports, music, and so on, are largely wasted?  Who understands that time wasted is time lost for mental and spiritual development?  What good could come from warning men who are playing in a sand-box?  Or simply falling to asleep on the edge of a cliff?

Obama Was Re-Elected President Yesterday


08 Nov 2012
After the elections of 2012: A first attempt at an essay

“When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then indeed has a form of life grown old. It cannot be rejuvenated, but only understood. When dusk starts to fall, the owl of Minerva spreads its wings and flies." G.W.F. Hegel (Philosophy of Right, 1820)

A Orienting the mind through thinking

Making the proper distinctions brings clarity to thinking. When the mind is disturbed by events, as mine was by the election results two days ago, one must use reason to sort through the emotional and intellectual disturbances. Making the proper distinctions is an important part of reasoning, and right reasoning restores balance and sanity to consciousness. Leaving one’s mind drenched in emotions and disturbing thoughts arouses more disorder, disturbs psychic peace, abandons one to mental confusion, and denies reason an opportunity to throw light on various parts of reality. Hence, the disturbed soul must turn to thinking, and especially to making the proper distinctions and asking the right questions, in order to “live well,” to thrive, and ultimately to return to its proper place within the Whole.

And what is the human mind’s proper place within the larger scheme of things? That is, what is the proper function of the human being, moved from within by mind under the discerning guidance of reason? Human being’s proper function is to thrive, to be “happy,” doing its particular tasks well, and seeking to understand the Whole of which each being is a living part. In Aristotle’s summarizing words, “Man by nature desires to know,” for in knowing what is, and especially the ultimate causes of all that exists, one experiences happiness, and in Platonic terms, “rises towards the Beyond.” To think, to reason, to gain insight, to know--all within the existential response of loving trust in the mysterious process of the Whole--the human being becomes what it truly is: a partner with the divine Mind guiding all being-things to perfection in itself.

In sum, this particular being, existing here and now, wants to sort through the disturbances aroused by recent political events in order to be open to the truth of reality: to the divine Presence that is moving all things into oneness with itself. Mental disturbances break the peace of union, as they are in effect little rebellions against the cosmic order being established by the Divine Mind. What causes mental disturbances? The mind yields to irrational forces without and within. Right thinking employs reason to restore mental order, and so to be at once an image of the order of the Whole, but to be a partner in divine creativity bringing forth all from nothing, and returning all into itself.

B. A few questions raised by the elections

Through thinking, I just moved from mental disturbances to a contemplative gazing towards the divine “steering all things through all,” using Heracleitos’ phrase. What does this mean? Thinking is a human mode of participation in God. The human mind or soul is aroused to think because we exist in an incomplete and ever-unfolding mystery. We do not exist in a state of complete peace, union, fullness of life, happiness. Rather, human being exists in tension between disturbance and order, between incompleteness and completeness, between coming-to-be and passing away. Whether animals think about their place in the Whole, I do not know. But to be fully human one must be engaged with one’s mind and one’s body in life as it unfolds. Human is reality ever moving towards fullness of life, of being, of loving-knowing. To be human, one must share consciously and freely in this perfecting process.

Now, what is disturbing my mind from within? What feelings or thoughts are preventing me from living in peace, of being more truly one with the ultimate source of all that exists? Or, is asking such questions just a form of wallowing in the disturbances? Must the mind discover the causes of its own disorder? Is that part of the price of a return to balance? Is that part of the price of freedom: to discover why one’s mind is not fully at peace, and to take action to restore order?

The main distinctions I make in response to present mental disturbance are the following: (1) This week’s elections, including the Presidential election, and the results, over which I have no control. (2) What these results indicate about American politics. (3) Possible ways to work towards better results in the future. (4) A few decisions to consider. (5) The underlying conditions of our society.

Regarding the first (1), it does no good to yield to anger, sorrow, hatred, joy, or just plain excitation over these events. They are past, and there is nothing I can do about them. I acknowledge my disappointment, even sorrow, but I also choose not to indulge in these feelings, but rather to learn from them. And that is one reason I am writing now. I have many concerns for our body politic aroused by the results, concerns for particular persons and groups, concerns for one young man I know personally who apparently lost his job. And I am prepared to take steps at the right time to assist either a better alternative (individual or party) to those who won the election, and to assist persons who may be suffering from the results.

Regarding the second point (2 above): I have begun to think about what the results indicate about American politics, and especially what the more conservative party must do in order to win elections, even as it becomes more insightful, more understanding, more able to help improve some of the deeper and more persistent problems afflicting our body politic. Winning elections and gaining power ought not to be the primary goal, but a means to serve the common good. Much is seen in the recent elections which reinforces known truths about the defects and strengths of the American character. That the President won re-election by vilifying his opponent, by a focused “smear campaign,” was visible to anyone observing as fairly as possible. President Obama did not take a “high road” of presenting the best that he has to offer, but spent enormous financial and human resources arousing anger and hatred in people for his opponent (Romney) and the social class to which he belongs (“the top 1%”). Hence, victory was gained at the cost of performing many ignoble actions, and perhaps more importantly, of inflaming increased anger, hatred, and division in the body politic. (Other than listening again to one of Obama’s campaign speeches--a most tedious task--one could watch a few minutes of the Vice-President’s performance in his “debate,” and see the tricks of doing anything to distract the mind of listening and thinking to what his opponent has to say.) What shows up is that American political leaders, or rather some of them, are willing to use destructive means to attain their goal of gaining political power. For the sake of one’s power-position, the body politic gets knifed, sliced, agitated, and divided. Hence, part of my sorrow and disappointment is not only that President Obama won, but that he did so by engaging in tactics that damage the common good. What does it say when a person who claims to be seeking to serve the common good, proceeds by dividing, agitating, harming the common good? What it suggests to me is that for such a person, gaining power is the real goal, and that any means needed to gain and maintain power are justified. Most unfortunately, this is an all-too-common problem in American politics, and it showed up with shocking bluntness in the recent Presidential election. In short, American politicians will lie, obfuscate, smear, avoid, promise all sorts of “goodies,” and so on, all to gain or to maintain political power. Or viewed from the role of the voters: Many Americans are unwilling or unable to discern truth from error, good character from bad character, deception from reality. “We the People” live in spiritual darkness which clearly shows up in politics.

Regarding the third point (3), about what to do to work towards better results in the future, I will leave that question for the time being. First I prefer to see the problems, the underlying diseases, as well as I can, before offering any possible medicine or solutions on the more explicitly political level. After all, politics is a form of activity within a culture; in the United States of America, it is not only the political landscape that displays evident problems, but more fundamentally, the American culture, the American way of life.

I suggest several practical points (4) as a first response for consideration. Given what has been displayed by the President of the United States, with numerous politicians and citizens complying by supporting him, how could one respect the man, or listen willingly to his voluminous and often voluble speeches? His seemingly empty words, his calculating promises, and his impassioned rants against those whom he hates or judges to be his political enemies reveal a politician to whom one would only foolishly listen. Immediately after the election of 2012, the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, told the President to lead, “and we will follow.” The House Republicans may seek to work with the President and his party, but need to resist being “led” by him, lest they share in his deceitful and destructive ways. One should follow a good person who leads, not a highly defective “leader,” regardless of his power-position and outward displays of “authority.” Hence, the Speaker’s words were flattering to the President and may have suggested a sycophantic attitude, or a genuine but naive attempt to “be led” by the President. What matters here is that by his actions and words, the President has forfeited a position of serving as a true leader or political model. His actions and words have rendered respect impossible, unless one willingly blinds himself from the President’s actions. What shows up is that this man has gained and maintained political power, but forfeited authority. Hence, one must choose to follow right reason, and respectfully obey only those men and women displaying in public good character and genuine concern for the well-being of our country.

Now we come to the main issue (5) clarified by the recent elections, hinted at above: the underlying condition--disordered condition--of our American political society. So many issues must be raised, so many problems must be seen and sorted out, that only some sketchy hints can be provided here at the present time.

C. On the disorder of American political society

The recent elections illustrate underlying diseases in the American body politic, but they are not primary causes, nor do they change my thinking on our regime, our American way of life. My desire to disengage from much that happens in American society is not new. I am not one to think, “I may leave this country,” because the elections did not go the way I would wish. Rather, what I think and write now is what I have thought for years. Indeed, I do not want to be unduly moved or biased in my judgment because being disappointed by the recent elections. Both political parties display the diseases rampant  in our body politics, although perhaps to differing extents, or in different ways. The worst of the underlying spiritual and political problems seem to show up in our large urban areas, but rural and small-town America is by no means exempt from the diseases. For a major cause of the relative equity of disease is the power of media, entertainment, “higher education,” and government to penetrate into the furthest recesses of American life, thinking, and practice. No one is protected from these powerful social diseases.

If American society is not in a late stage of decay, and not dying in us and around us, then I am radically mistaken. This issue will be partially examined below. First, however, assuming that American society is corrupt, one wonders, “What can one do?”

D. What is one to do?

Granted, an analysis of the spiritual and political condition of American society should properly be offered before attempting to answer the question, “What is one to do?” In order to act reasonably, one must discern properly the conditions in which he is living. Suffice it for the present to note that although I have not yet written the preceding section analyzing the disorder in American society, it is a subject about which I have given much thought since the mid-1960’s. The upshot of my thinking on American society can be given most briefly, without details or explanations at this time, and this short summary may suffice to consider the practical question, “What is one to do?”

And this is the summary view on American political society: The substance of politics is the character of the human beings in the political society. Americans display an enormous range in qualities of character, from well-ordered and prudent down to very serious mental and spiritual disturbances. The bulk of the people seem to be well-intentioned, but heavily immersed in a culture of self-seeking: pleasure, entertainment, restless money-making, self-worship in various forms. As for the ruling elite, what most comes to mind is that our political and social leaders display enormous “egos,” or over-weening self-love, greed, lust for power, deceitfulness. These traits do not show up in every political and social leader, but they predominate.

So what is one to do in this society? Surely it depends on one’s age and station in life. As things stand, I do not understand why one would want to bring children up in this country today, given the overwhelming effects of a highly corrosive and corrupting culture. One cannot escape the destructive power of the entertainment industries, the mass media, mass education, and the power elites. If one is sufficiently old enough and grounded enough not to have to be immersed in “education” or indulge in popular entertainment and the foolishness of mass media, then one can “keep oneself unspotted by the world” to one extent or another, albeit with enormous effort. For these older people I will offer some thoughts below.

But for young persons who are being “educated” in American schools, colleges, and universities; and for those who freely and willingly indulge in mass entertainment and the offerings of main-stream mass media, then I can offer virtually nothing other than to say: Become aware that you are being manipulated, brain-washed, and corrupted, whether you want to be or not. Your minds are being malformed by men and women who know very little about proper intellectual and spiritual formation (right paideia), and because you lack the experience to judge wisely of what is being done to you, your chances of thriving mentally and spiritually are slight indeed. You need to ground yourselves in divine reality and right reason as well as you can. But know this: The forces at work in your “education” and “entertainment” are corroding whatever sound order may have been built in you from the earliest years, largely by the hard work of your parents. You may survive and live, but you will be sharing in the evils of this culture more than you realize. You need to make conscious and deliberate breaks from the mass culture, but without formation from within, you will not know how, and attempts may be more foolish (as in rebellion) than wise and life-giving (as in genuine conversion of mind).”

***
On fleeing the culture: introduction by way of referring to my life

Now I write for those of us who are no longer subjected to “education,” who can refuse to indulge ourselves in popular music and mass entertainment, who know enough not to rely on the propaganda machine of the mass media (especially major news and entertainment outlets). I write for those of us who understand that American society is corrupt and corrupting, and who desire to free ourselves from its worst influences, and to do what we can to benefit ourselves and perhaps a few others. I write on behalf of Americans who have the sense to know that the ship is sinking, and that we must at least put on life jackets and prepare to swim in icy-cold waters; for the Titanic of American society has been taking leaks for years, and a number of icebergs may be about to rip the hull wide open.

Before generalizing, I shall make a few concrete suggestions based on my life and experience, which may or may not be of any worth for someone else. Still, it gives an idea of the direction in which to go: flee immersion in the culture!

Years ago, having experienced mental abuse at the hands of “Progressives” in the Catholic Church, I learned a lesson: That I am in the church, but not of it; that I do my duties, but keep myself as unspotted from the church’s politics as I possibly can; that I remain in the church to help serve spiritual-intellectual needs of others, and for my own financial support, but not primarily for spiritual enrichment. My spiritual life is nourished primarily through studying philosophy, political philosophy, and some theology, and only to a lesser degree, through fellowship or communion in the church. In other words, I remain active in the church as a means to assist others, but also because I still need to earn an income.

Now I add to my formula of being “in the church but not of it.” Although I may wish to do so, I cannot say, “I am in America, but I am not of it.” For I am indeed of the American political order from birth, so I cannot in truth say that “I am not of the American regime.” I am not only an American citizen, but I think and act in ways that are distinctly American, whether I like it or not! This country is my homeland, and it has constituted a very large part of my psychic formation. On the other hand, I am choosing to detach myself to the extent possible from much that is current now in this country: First and foremost, from the American mass-pop culture, especially as it propagandizes through the entertainment and music industries. For years I have reduced my exposure to this cultural garbage--to put the matter bluntly--to the extent possible. But watching television, I cannot escape the trash music on commercials, or the effect of entertainment-”values” even on news broadcasting. So I must limit television watching more than I have in recent years to keep myself less spotted by the corruption of American mass culture. Secondly, since 2004 I have been investing in U.S. equities, which I can continue to do for the time being. But to limit time wasted on them, I must keep off margin to the extent possible, not spend hours watching CNBC with financial news and chatter, and look for other ways to invest for my financial future that require less mental involvement.

***
General considerations on fleeing American culture

Orienting question: Given that we already live in the United States of America, and given an awareness that there is much in this regime and culture which corrupt and wound genuine human-spiritual life, what is one to do? What are the main options open for a person who recognizes the need to reduce immersion in mass culture, and to break from corroding influences to the extent possible? Several different answers to the orienting question are outlined below, then briefly explained. Finally, we shall focus on what seems to be the most reasonable response.

" A. Extremist-destructive responses to decadent American culture

1. Deny that American mass culture is corrupt and corrupting: the way of spiritual blindness

2. Attempt to flee from the corrupt culture by leaving the USA: the way of ignorance of reality

3. Seek to destroy the political regime and culture by violence: the way of terrorism

4. Wait for, even desire, the “utter collapse of the system” (the way of apocalyptic dreaming)

B. Half-hearted, spiritually foolish responses to decadent American culture

1. Make one’s peace with the culture, submerging oneself in it: the way of spiritual laziness

2. Embrace American culture and try to “move it forward” to become more “progressive,”
that is, more decadent: the way of Gnostic intellectuals

3. Believe that the culture will transform itself for the better: the way of magic

4. “Pray” that things will get better in the corrupt culture: the way of futile wishing

C. More constructive ways to live and thrive in decadent American culture

1. Do one’s daily duties and tasks while seeking to remain “unspotted by the world”

2. Seek to understand the nature and causes of the corruption, and avoid them

So much for a first essay written after the election of 2012, and trying at least to raise a few questions about underlying issues, especially the decadence of our mass culture. Duties press on me that I am unable to organize an essay or pursue questions as I wish. My plan is to post this draft as a first response, and then to begin afresh.

09 November 2012

An Example Of Using The Mind In Prayer

  Picture
When we offer the next series of class in adult faith formation, the plan is for us to read a classic work on praying. The book which I am inclined to present was written nearly a thousand years ago, by St. Anselm. He was a Benedictine monk in France, who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury, England. He wrote a number of significant works in Christian theology while living as a monk, including two famous meditations on using the mind in prayer. One of these works is called the Proslogion, a Greek word meaning speech to another, an address, a prayer; it is an exercise of what he calls “faith seeking understanding.” I offer a brief excerpt from St. Anselm’s work:

“Let me discern Your light, whether it be from afar, or from the depths. Teach me to seek You, and reveal Yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek You if You do not teach me how, nor find You unless You reveal Yourself. Let me seek You in desiring You; let me desire You in seeking; let me find in loving; let me love in finding.”

“I acknowledge, LORD, and I give thanks that You have created Your image in me, so that I may remember You, think of You, love You. But this image is so effaced and worn away by vice, so darkened by the smoke of sin, that it cannot do what it was made to do unless You renew it and reform it. I do not try, LORD, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I also believe this: that `unless I believe I shall not understand.’”

“Have you found, o my soul, what you were seeking?... If you found [Him], then why do you not experience what you have found? Why, LORD God, does my soul not experience You if it has found You?....”

“You permeate and embrace all things. You are before and beyond all things....You alone, LORD, are what You are, and You are who You are.

05 November 2012

Revelation And The Truth Of Experience

 
I sent a few emails today to family members with summary thoughts on revelation, mystic and gnostic experience, scripture, and so on.  My words were necessarily overly brief, as I was writing on my iPad’s virtual keyboard. Now I attempt a little fuller and more careful explanation. It is a brief statement, and by no means the last word on anything addressed here.

Various meanings to the symbol “revelation” and equivalent terms have emerged in history. Fundamentalists concentrate on one meaning: verbal inspiration from God to some man or woman, with the understanding that the actual words spoken or written by a prophet or apostle are “revelation.”  The approach is overly simplistic, and partially misleading, as I shall explain.

Drawing on my study of the Apostle Paul--who did indeed know much about “revelation”--what is primarily meant by the symbol “revelation” (in Greek, apocalypsis; in Latin, revelatio) is “unveiling.”  That is the literal meaning of the word. What is unveiled? When the Apostle Paul writes, he says (in Galatians 1), “God was pleased to reveal his son in me.”  That is literal from the Greek, and that is all.  He never claims that words were whispered in his mind. Now the usual translations are fundamentalistic-friendly:  “God...revealed his son to me,” as if Paul saw the Christ external to himself.  His Greek says, “God revealed his son in me,” as I quoted above.  What is “revealed,” however, is simply the presence of God as Christ in Paul’s consciousness. Note, though, that the Apostle explicitly avoids collapsing the divine into his experience, and his language preserves “layers” of revealed / unrevealed. The “God” who does the “revealing” is not directly revealed.  This unrevealed depth of divinity, if we can use this term, is called “Father” by early Christians.  It is not “a person,” but a symbolic expression communicating that there is ever more to the divine than what is “revealed.” The God of the Apostles was no “revealed God.” “The Father” is not a distinct hypostasis or “person,” but divine reality beyond what can be experienced. Divinity as experienced by early Christians is called “Christ” when it is personal (as in “I living in you, you living in me” or “Come to me...”), and it is called “Spirit” when not personal, but impersonal, as in “forgiveness,” “love, joy, peace,” and so on.  What is important to keep in mind is that Paul and the early Christians emphasize both that the unknown God lets himself be known in experiences of the resurrected Christ and of the impersonal Spirit, but at the same time remains utterly beyond human understanding, using the symbol “Father.”  This, in short, is the experiential basis of the Christian symbol “Trinity,” using the term introduced several hundred years later by the early father, Tertullian. We are speaking here of experiences of divine presence, and not of doctrines or dogmas, and surely not of “3 persons” floating around in space. What is at stake is the symbolization of divine Presence in the human soul. What is at stake is the truth of existence: that divine Presence constitutes and forms our humanity through our cooperation.The Apostle Paul’s main terms for this human cooperation are “faith, hope, charity,” with simple trust or the opening of the soul to Presence as the meaning of “faith.”  “Hope” is the expectation of full union beyond death. “Charity” or “love” is the mutual penetration of the divine and human, with divinity working in and through human cooperation to bring good to others.
 
Second point: In addition to experiences of divine presence as “revelation,” the long Christian tradition has used the symbol “revelation” in several other senses. It can be applied to the words of the prophets and apostles, who articulated their experiences of God in words. This meaning of “revelation” came to the fore only in the Reformation of the 16th century. When the Fathers used the symbol “revelation” from the earliest centuries of the Christian era through St. Bonaventure (1200’s), it primarily applied to the process of “unveiling” of divine Presence in the psyche (soul) of the hearer.  In other words, “revelation” is personal and subjective, not objective and external. This usage is strong in the New Testament, and is especially clear in the so-called Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (a composite of perhaps 4 letters, scholars have shown). Here we find explicit discussion of having “the veil removed from the heart” when “Christ is proclaimed.” One hears in faith, and the veil is “removed,” making one aware that “the LORD” or “the Spirit” is present and active in one’s soul (consciousness), “transforming” one’s life, “from one degree of glory to another.”  In other words, the divine divinizes the human through revelatory action in the soul.  
It was mainly during the Reformation that “revelation” got hardened into a book, the “holy Bible,” although I am sure that plenty of church documents and theologians were already moving in this direction as the truth of experience withered from awareness. For external, “objective” revelation is easier to understand, and in effect reduces the truth of experience to the letter of a text. (As St. Paul says, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”)  That process of the hardening of original experience into objective “revelations” is one of the constants in the history of “religions.”  And in the history of philosophy as well, as anyone who studies Plato comes to understand: the search for truth becomes objective “teachings.” What matters, though, is that someone experienced the truth of God’s presence, and that experience gets buried beneath “revealed words” or “texts,” such as the Bible, the Koran, and so on.
 
Disclaimer:  Admittedly, my approach to matters of faith is philosophical-historical and experiential, and not dogmatic or theological.  The theologians have their place, as do scriptures and dogmas. In Plato’s words, “Every myth has its truth.”  “Sacred texts” often record and preserve within them records of genuine spiritual experiences over the ages. The Divine is generous, and many have been genuine experiences of divinity over the ages. On a fundamentalistic level, the texts and doctrines are the “revelation,” as I have noted, and this claim can be a serious derailment, for it suggests that one must be a “Bible believer” or accept all the church dogmas, and so on, rather than simply open up to the Presence of the living God.
 
Conclusion:  The God (Elohim) who said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM” (ehyeh asher ehyeh) is as close as one can get to the verbal content of revelation.  The Gospel of John builds on this awareness in the many “I AM” sayings in Jesus, as in “Before Abraham was born, I AM.”  Or again, in the words of the Greek philosopher Parmenides,  “IS!”  That is all.  The rest of the elaborations often detract from the stark truth of divine presence as that which is in the midst of consciousness, and at the same time, forming the whole of reality. That which is by tradition called “God” can be symbolized as both the beginning or “First Cause” (Aristotle), and the beyond (Plato, epikeina). What we are speaking about here is, simply put, the truth of reality, or divine reality as it presents itself in history. 

The Pain of Working-Class Catholic Americans


There are, no doubt, many casualties in the American body politic as the country is torn apart by divisive and ideological politics.  

As a Catholic priest, parishioners confide in me about some of their mental anguish caused by divisive politics.  The most common problem I have heard in the present election cycle, similar to the recent past but now more intense, is the anguish in the minds of blue collar, working-class Catholics.  All of their adult lives they have been loyal Democrats, and speak with joy and pride about the Democratic Party of the past:  about Kennedy especially, but also about LBJ and Humphrey.  They do not speak with pride about leaders such as McGovern, McCarthy, Carter, Gore, or Kerry.  Some of them mention Bill Clinton with mixed feelings.  But what they now feel is the mental pain of being caught between their sense of loyalty to the Democratic Party and their strong disagreement with a number of prominent policies now embraced by their party.  These working-class Catholics feel dispossessed by a party that favors “abortion rights,” “gay rights,” “extreme environmentalism,” “climate control,” and so on.  These are probably the four issues about which they express disagreement most often.  But they clearly cannot identify with national Democratic leaders, either.  In brief, they embrace the politics of the Democratic Party of the New Deal to the Great Society, but surely want nothing to do with the beliefs and policies of leaders such as Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and Barrack Obama.  For these men, their sense of betrayal by the Democratic Party is not based on racial or gender prejudice, and to interpret it that way would be unjust.  

What surfaces among Catholic Democrats is a clear split in the Democratic Party between older and middle-aged working class men and women and a more socially liberal element of the Party dominant in large urban areas, especially in greater New York and California.  These Catholic Democrats express respect or affection for none of the national Democratic figures; on the contrary, they speak of them with disdain and disgust, in terms similar to those used by more avowedly conservative Catholics.

To some extent, one finds a similar split among Republicans:  between more rural and small-town Republicans in the south, midwest, and west, and the more “monied Republicans” of the Northeast (the group sometimes called “country-club Republicans”).  But to the present I have not heard Republican Catholics speak with anything like the anguish of working-class Democrats, who speak in private with passion and anger at the Party that they believe has betrayed its principles, and surely left them alienated.  These working class Catholic Democrats are clearly a casualty of contemporary politics in the USA.