Tentative Thoughts On American Political Consciousness, And The Seemingly Undying Feud Between Left And Right

03 January 2015 (114 anniversary of the birth of Eric Voegelin)

Introductory Notes.
What follows is likely to ramble a little, as my mind struggles for clarity, and my body remains affected by an influenza virus most notable for the fevers, chills, and sweats it brings me. Even now I feel a chill in my legs. Despite not feeling well, I still take walks, with loyal Moses. Recently we returned from a short visit to Castner Park in Belt, braving the -10 F weather, and much snow. One must make do, and carry on, eh? How else could one live with reasonable contentment and happiness? In other words, winter, too, must be enjoyed for the good things it brings.

Despite fevers and chills, I find myself returning to questions and issues that have taken some of my attention for years: the nature and use of studying history; the American Civil War; the causes of the war; secession; the moral dilemma of so many, and well known in the person of General Robert E Lee; Lincoln’s attempts to “save the Union,” his analysis of the political problems and his attempt to help refound the American Republic; the seemingly endless and undying feud between the American left and right; and so on. These and related questions press in, not primarily for mere “historical interest,” but because they relate to present existence in the United States of America. This claim can best be clarified through a few questions and basic considerations.

That human beings die was evident to me from my earliest years of consciousness. I saw my first corpse around age 3; and when 4 or 5, a little girl who had been riding next to me in a car opened the door, fell out, and died. In contrast, the physical world around me and our homeland, the United States of America, seemed to endure, and that was comforting. Then came the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and the tearing apart of our political fabric during the Viet-Nam War and the racial tensions in the late 1960’s. So I had to recognize that countries, too, get sick and perhaps die. Indeed, even the superficial study of history in public school made me aware that empires, kingdoms, cities, states—all pass away. Before leaving high school, I was aware of the tension between political mortality and the claim of the United States to be the “new order of the ages.” Despite the rhetoric, I sensed, thought, and felt that our country, too, would eventually pass away. What I experienced in the turmoil of the 1960’s I interpreted as symptoms of political decadence, or perhaps of a dying Republic.

Initial Questions.
Is the United of America dying? In one sense it is, surely, for “everything that enters being must perish,” as Plato articulates this basic insight into reality in his Republic. It seems healthy and beneficial for a people to accept that their country had a beginning in time, flourishes for a few seasons or centuries, and gradually or sometimes suddenly (as through war) passes away. Or at the very least, one country joins another, or splits into a number of political units, each with its distinct life. In truth, the processes of coming-to-be and passing-away are ever at work, so that at each moment, in some ways, a country is coming into being; and at the very same time, in some ways, it is passing away. Political society is indeed “Man writ large,” again drawing from Plato’s Republic. What is true of the concrete individual human being, is true of a political society: life and death are ever at work, contending. At some point, forces of death seem to gain the upper hand, and the body, or body politic, silently or suddenly slips beneath the waves. In the case of a country, it is possible, even likely, that some of its former citizens survive the regime’s death, and become citizens of other countries. Although Hitler’s Third Reich did not last the promised thousand years, but a mere twelve years, and met a violent death after its vile and violent life, many of its citizens became West or East German citizens, or Americans, or Argentinians, and so on. In short, some citizens outlast the dying regime of which they had been members. And so it may well be with the United States of America, when our country finally falls beneath the waves of time, and ceases to exist.

How or when that will be, no one knows. There is, however, another kind of dying that we experience, and which is not final, and also accompanied with coming-to-be, with new births, growth, blossoming, new possibilities. This kind of process was what many of us experienced in the United States during the turbulent 1960’s: dying of some of our political culture, or at least a sickening and decay of parts; new growths appearing on the scene (whether healthy or cancerous, is another question); new possibilities opening up before our eyes.

Awake or napping? Even as I write, my eyes close and I begin to slip away into sleep. Influenza allows but little time for consciousness. Perhaps it is fitting in a man thinking about the sickness and passing of his own country.
                                                                                ***
Coming-to-be and major advancements in the development of American political consciousness.
A people in history gradually becomes conscious of itself as a people. Concrete individuals think of themselves not only in terms of where they were born, their country of origin and early formation, but of where they live now. In time the British colonists in North America—or at least in the colonies stretching from New England south through the Carolinas to Georgia—thought of themselves as Americans. It did not happen at once, or at the same time for everyone. During the Revolutionary War, “Loyalists” conceived of themselves as British, or at least as British subjects; the “Revolutionaries” conceived of themselves far less as subjects of the English Monarch, and more as American colonists, and even as “Americans.” The appearance and use of names for a people’s self-understanding chronicle the flux in consciousness. The coinage and growing usage of the symbol “American” for the British colonists in North America would be a useful study in the formation of American political consciousness: of the coming-to-be of a new regime in history, the United States of America. Note: for years I have observed that this new country lacks a proper name, such as France, Germany, or Great Britain has. By the words “United States of America,” the country could potentially include all of the Americas, continents both North and South. And we did try on several occasions to observe chunks of Canada, and did take over a large piece of Mexico’s territory. So far, Americans have not reached to Patagonia or Tierra del Fuego, except through commerce, technology, advertising, media, and so on.

A. No doubt the development of American consciousness is rooted in the England from which most (but surely not all) of the colonists came, and at least three significant advancements stand out that in time erupt into American consciousness: First, the limited but real breaking away of England from the Catholic Church, and emergence of a religion steeped in Christian experience and symbol, but also suffused with national self-consciousness: the Church of England. This religious faith was still mainly Catholic, although the King of England, not the Pope, was the recognized head of the church. Although not intended to be so by King Henry VIII, in principle this move lent itself to becoming Protestant. Second, the wave of extreme Protestant experience known succinctly as the Puritan Revolution that swept over England in the 17th century, affected probably every significant aspect of English life and self-understanding. The Puritan Revolution, although having Protestant-Christian elements, also contained massive doses of Gnostic experience, as Voegelin and other scholars have shown. In time, both the Protestant and Gnostic elements of Puritanism fed massively into American self-consciousness. I have long seen the Puritan seed as the basic germ giving rise to American political consciousness; and many of the Gnostic movements in American history were engendered out of the fertilizer of Puritan culture. Third, and related to the Puritan Revolution, but also with roots back at least as far as the Magna Carta, one must acknowledge the growth of English Republicanism as crucial to what becomes American self-understanding. Protestant, Puritan, and Republican experience and symbol all emphasize the concrete individual as the primary unit of society, and as the person which must be represented by and in the political community and its Representative. Here we find the belief and firm conviction that each individual human being is unique and must somehow be represented in the political community, unless that community is tyrannical, dominated from above, without respecting the real or imagined “rights” of the individual person.

B. A second major source for the development of American political consciousness as it erupted at the time of the American Revolution of 1775-1783 would be the colonial experience. Several facets of this experience stand out as salient and especially formative. First, men and women coming to shores of “the New World,” or “New England,” and so on, conceived themselves as English, but also as Christians seeking to establish some form of “the Kingdom of God” on earth. The most significant early formulation of this self-understanding is found in the Mayflower Compact of 1620, signed by men on board ship before landing at a place they would name “Plymouth,” honoring their English roots. The Mayflower Compact can be seen as an early eruption of what will in time become American self-understanding; when written, the men clearly think of themselves first and foremost as “Christians.” (Here I could insert the brief Compact to illustrate the predominant sentiments of the men in this historically highly significant political-religious action.)

Second, as one studies other founding charters of the several English colonies, one finds similar conceptions, and especially the notion of each individual man having the ability and freedom to speak for himself as the new community is formed. At work in each is the principle of individual representation for men (women were still considered as represented through father or husband, and children through their father.) These communities, even when formed by permission of the King, are Republican in spirit, and loyal to the King as the ultimate head of the Realm back in England, and one to whom they swear ready loyalty and obedience. Of especial significance, in my opinion, are the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, and the various founding documents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony also established by Puritans. Looking back from the Constitution of 1787, such documents stand out as significant milestones in the development of American political consciousness. The “We the People” of the Constitution of 1787 arose in continuity, not only with earlier American colonial documents, but more essentially with common colonial experiences and symbols, not least of which is “the People,” and the belief that individuals can freely associate themselves into a body politic and choose a Representative, who, in the colonial experience, would be accountable both to the King more distantly, and to the People out of which they arose, and whom they were to represent in their decisions. In most cases, the Governor was an appointee of the King, but the colonial legislature was directly elected by white men holding property. Through this process, “the People” were being gradually formed in responsible self-government, as they would experience directly the consequences of their choices in local and colonial government.

C. A third stream flowing into the growing national consciousness would come from “dissenters,” from men and women deliberately out of the English-Puritan mainstream: Roger Williams and the founding of what became Rhode Island; William Penn, the Quaker identified with the founding of Pennsylvania. Religious dissent, or the breach from Puritan and Protestant Orthodoxy, was in effect a more radical and individualistic form of the Puritan experience. If the Puritans still recognized the authority of King [if they did], Church, Scripture, dissenters were more closely identified with the “godded men” of the left-wing of the Puritan Revolution. The source of authority is the individual self, and these “dissenters,” as they often styled themselves, were not in principle prepared to recognize any authority other than the self, or that to which they freely chose to grant limited service.

Stop. What am I writing, and why? It seems that I am regurgitating information, without a proper theoretical framework founded on right questions and existential issues. Translation, please: Facts remembered are not the way to begin. What are the questions I wish to ask about American political experience, and why am I presently motivated to ask any questions at all?

                                                                               ***
Beginning afresh: What moves me to try to understand American political consciousness now? Here is the present experience and concern: That the kind of deep divisiveness now present in the American regime is not unlike the divisiveness that dominated American politics and consciousness between about 1820 and into the Civil War. In the 19th-century case, hostile politics and the divided consciousness clearly promoted outrage and violence, and also helped to incite a large segment of the country to seek to “dissolve the political bands” with the Constitutional order established with the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. A sizable part of the body politic chose secession from the Union rather than remaining in a political order they deemed beyond possible remedy. Rather than remain in the Union and see their way of life (including slavery) threatened, they chose to secede, to declare complete political independence from the Federal Government. As Lincoln said so succinctly, “And the war came.” The Northern forces would not let the Southern States depart without a very costly fight. (I have often wondered: Why not just let them secede, and try to woo them back gradually? One may wonder, but the past is unchangeable, having been sealed by “the spindle of Necessity.)

It seems to me that before engaging in any study, one must have some knowledge of what he is seeking, and why. The study of “history” in particular easily lends itself to a kind of “vacuum-cleaner” approach to reality, as one just discovers and recounts various more or less true, more or less undigested pieces of information—“facts” as they are styled. To what purpose? The ocean of information is relatively boundless. One must ever seek to discover what matters, and why. Consider how Voegelin keeps before his readers the sentence from St. Augustine’s De Vera Religione: “In the study of creatures, one should not exercise a vain and perishing curiosity, but take steps to advance towards that which is immortal and everlasting.” Remember what you are about, and what the final goal is. The ascent of the mind into the divine must be the ultimate end of any study, as it is the final end of human being. Those unaware of the final end—known through faith, Augustine’s “cognition of faith”—may heap up mounds of fascinating facts with or without a degree of theoretical framework. But still one must ask: “To what purpose?”

In the present case, how on earth can my concern with present political disorder in the United States of America aid in the human duty of “taking steps to ascend to that which is everlasting and immortal”? The question is all the more urgent, perhaps, given that this country was founded in part in the wake of the Enlightenment. And if anything characterizes the Enlightenment, it is the explicit rejection of the divine End for man, and the liberation of human beings from divine order. In the dark, seductive light of the Enlightenment, Americans sought to establish “a new order of the ages,” and in effect sought to replace the divine order and “that which is immortal and everlasting” by nature with a humanly created “new order” that “will not perish from the earth,” borrowing a phrase from Lincoln. America founded itself on a strange and unstable concoction of Judaeo-Christian faith in God, and of God’s Law, with a belief that “we, even we here,” can create a “new order” that presents itself as “the Kingdom of God on earth,” as “the last best hope for mankind,” as that “new order of the ages” which will not pass away. (Keep in mind that “New Order of the Ages” is our official motto, seen on the Great Seal of the United States of America, and reproduced on our dollar bills). America’s founding was ever split between a vision of faith in God and a secular, even utopian dream of creating the world anew. Often the same human beings entertained both conceptions at once. This tension runs throughout the fabric of human life, and it clearly colors and distorts the entire unfolding of the history of the United States of America. Are we one nation under God, and one nation among many, having a beginning and end in time; or are we this “new order” that brings peace and freedom to all, “by shedding its blood” on the battlefields of the world, as Present Wilson articulated his Gnostic-utopian dream.

It is possible that this psychic split is inherent in all politics: that even when people know themselves as participants in the whole of reality, yet they may conceive their political community as not only representative of divine order, as in ancient Egypt, but a replacement of transcendent order with “the Kingdom of God on earth.” Every political order may be based on the belief that it is, somehow, ultimate reality, the final human community. I have not found this awareness among the ancients, however, with the exception of a streak in the Hebrew prophets and priests who treat the Chosen People as the ultimate community under God. The conception seems to be dangerous, fraught with serious consequences. It shows up again in much of Christian self-understanding, with the Church or a part of it as representing God on earth. The same divinization of a part of reality shows up in Islam, with God, his prophet, and the community of believers destined to spread over the whole world, and rightly so. As noted, dangerous stuff to any who resist. To the Chosen People, to the Church, to Islam, to the Soviet Union, to Nazi Germany, to the United States of America, and to all such self-proclaimed embodiments of truth and justice, I ask, a little freshly: Will the real God please stand up?

That is the problem. We have made out of politics what it is not, and cannot be: the ultimate and final realization of divine order in time. A largely Christian-inspired section of American believes that this divine mission requires the spread and dominance of Christian faith. The secular, unbelieving, Enlightenment-formed part of the American body politic (dominant in universities, the media, the learned folks) believe that America’s purpose is to spread freedom, peace, democracy, science all over the world, a kind of “light to the nations,” borrowing Deutero-Isaiah’s symbol (which had already been used to apply to Jesus, as in St. Luke, and to the Apostle Paul, in whose letters, and especially in the one to Christians in Rome). The two visions have a common core, but differ in expression and means. The Christians emphasize faith in God and keeping His Law, and America’s mission based on our so-called “Christian values.” And the secular intellectuals emphasize faith in Science, in knowledge, in technology, and in their own “good intentions” to seek to benefit everyone. Two ultimate world views, with a common core: we Americans are unique and “special,” and have a duty to serve mankind at large.In simplest terminology, one group wants to evangelize with the gospel of Christ, and the other wants to evangelize with knowledge based on Science.

This much must suffice for the present.
                                                              ***

A New Year's Meditation

The reason to mark a change in years is grounded on the length of time it takes for the earth to orbit the sun. What we experience is the change of light and of seasons.  In principle, any day could be chosen as marking a “new year,” but some choices would be more rooted in nature than others. At various times in our history, different days have been used to mark the change of years.  January 1st is fairly sensible, as it falls so close to the Solstice in both hemispheres. Indeed, by 1 January it is possible to discern, even without costly instruments, the gradual lengthening of days in the northern hemisphere (and the shortening of days down under). The decisive event of the year, measured by natural phenomena, is not 1 January. The decisive events are the Winter and Summer Solstices. This year they occur on 21 December and then on 21 June 2015. In the long-standing Christian tradition, Christmas marks the Winter Solstice with the Feast of Light, although January 1st approximates the Solstice.   Sacred Winter Solstice, when the sun seems to “stand still,” and from this day until exactly six months later, each day will have an increasing duration of light, and nights will shorten. There was a time in human history when the daily loss of sunlight was fraught with fear and foreboding, that the earth and its inhabitants were plunging into endless Night. Gradually, human beings came to realize that Light and Darkness are in a constant battle, and that beginning with the Winter Solstice, sunlight would be increasing, chasing away the powers of darkness, and the dread of death by annihilation. And so there was much rejoicing, and celebration in villages and in city streets, with eating and drinking and dancing. The Winter Solstice marked the cosmic return of Light, and the beginning of a New Year. We have moved the day of celebrating the triumphant of light and cosmic renewal 10 days later than the Solstice —until January 1st, the 8th day of Christmas. The concluding day of the Feast of Light, the birth of Christ, now marks for us the beginning of a New Year.   The time of sunlight is growing. Winter storms may blast, but “when Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”  Darkness has its own charms and beauty, but it also threatens to extinguish the light. Now we see Light growing, and know from yearly experience that new forms of life will soon be appearing on the earth. We wait with hope to see earth renewed with Life. And in time the Sun will triumph even until it burns, and we beg for relief, for rain, for consoling darkness once again. Nature has its cycles, its wonders, its enchanting ways.   A new year. The new is never wholly new, the old never fully old.  What we have been, we shall be. What arrives anew, has come before, in one form or another. Each moment is a unique creation by the Almighty, each moment filled with possibilities, and yet—what has been endures. Nothing is truly lost forever, nothing is wholly new. The Cosmic Mystery in which we passionately share with everything in us continues to unfold, ever ancient, ever new. How vast, how beautiful, at times how terrifying the Whole in which we find ourselves. Our hope lies beyond the seemingly endless cosmic cycles of light and darkness, of life and death, of coming to be and passing away. Our hope is in the One ever creating, ever renewing.

Christmas Then And Now

In last week’s homily I sought to refocus our attention from an imagined future (“Second Coming,” “world peace,” and so on) to present reality: How God comes to us here and now. I also briefly examined the kernel of truth in futuristic speculations: that God is drawing each into a condition of perfection or completion in God alone, ultimately beyond death. On this day, the fourth Sunday of Advent, I seek to explain why we Christians recount stories of the birth of Jesus. What are we trying to do? Why do we tell these stories? Why do we think about the birth of Jesus? We tell these stories not primarily to have us imagine a distant past, but to help us be open here and now to Christ’s living Presence in each of us. In other words, we remember Christ’s birth, not to gain information about “what happened”—because we do not know—but for us to be aware of the Light breaking in, of Christ’s dwelling in our souls, making His home in the manger of our hearts. We can approach the mystery in a different way. What do you experience when stories of the conception and birth of Jesus, and stories about angels, shepherds, wise men are retold? Is it nostalgia you feel for years of Christmas past? Are these stories not vehicles for your remembering so many Christmases celebrated in your past? Yes, they do have power to evoke our pasts, but far more, something different: Hearing with faith the story of Jesus’ birth, we experience wonder, awe, gratitude. Reflecting on the sheer generosity and humility of God, our own hearts and minds are humbled a little, as we think:  For me? For us? Why? And then we remember, “For God so loved the world….” “In Him is light.” “This is Love, not that we loved God, but that He has loved us.” Seeing the manger, hearing the stories of Jesus’ birth, we have a fresh opportunity to be childlike in heart, to be awed by Love that is sheer goodness, utterly self-giving, here for each and for all. Aware of what God has done, we experience God breaking into our souls, our minds, and we experience His love, joy, peace.  As I see it, this experience of Christ here and now is indeed the miracle of Christmas.                   Merry Christmas  to you, to all whom you love, and to everyone.

Notes On Christian Public Worship - SATIRE

There was a well-known medieval saying that one may still hear in the cloister of an English Benedictine monastery: “De gustibus non disputandum.” As is often the case, the original Latin lends itself to brevity and clarity. An English translation would be: “Of matters of taste, one ought not dispute,” or even more simply, “Don’t argue about matters of taste.” In my opinion, most questions revolving around religious worship, styles of prayer, liturgies, and so on, are matters of taste, and one should not dispute about them. Of course, some folks have good taste, and a sense for what is fitting on an occasion; others lack this taste, and would not mind wearing their manure-covered barnyard boots to a prayer service. Others delight in letting everyone know that they were educated at Oxford or in Rome, and that they are indeed “experts in liturgical matters.” They can site chapter and verse from their church’s ritual books to justify anything that suits their favored style and tastes. What makes sense to me is for Christians to keep in mind what the Apostle Paul wrote to guide public work among the rowdy and proud disciples in Corinth: “Let all things be done decently and in good order.” And that is it. Hence, my own preferences in matters of private and public prayer, worship, and liturgy are ever for the simple, spare, direct.

Consider various styles of worship one finds among Christians today. At one end of the spectrum, but in some ways penetrating many Catholic public services because of the force of Roman authority, we find a more or less Romanesque style. Liturgies performed in this spirit have the air of a German Expressionist film from the 1930’s, or from a Cecil B Demille’s production from the 1950’s; in any case, these liturgies look staged. The underlying attitude is to elevate church authorities and to reduce lay persons to spectators at a grand production; some invisible wall of separation between clergy and lay must ever be asserted and maintained at all costs. The priest wears highly decorated vestments, often trimmed with lace or fancy cut-out patterns, preferably imported from Mama Roma. He does not even hesitate to wear pink on occasion—twice a year, in Advent and Lent. More often than not, this Romanesque priest folds his hands in a most pious, sky-pointing manner, much in the fashion of Beuronese art, or from habits insisted upon in the 1950’s by Sr. Mary Rigida or Fr. Geoffrey de Magnifique. Whether his accent is Oxfordian English, Bostonian, upper Northside Chicago, his voice has a rarefied nasal quality about it, with words spoken as though he deigns to lower himself to the common people when he (or she) opens his mouth to instruct the unwashed masses. He wears his spectacles low on his nose, and condescends to look down through the lenses at the lowly lay people. The entire liturgy has an aspect of being ever so dignified and more than a little affected. And no doubt there will be some chanting in Latin, to give the whole service more “authority,” more connection with “The Tradition.” In his homily, Fr. Romanus will speak tirelessly about “what the Pope wants” (well, unless the present pope is deemed “too liberal”), or about “the Roman Tradition,” and tell tall tales from the lives of sterilized, neutered saints. Now, for those who like the unfamiliar and affected, and have had a cute plastic statue of Jesus or the Virgin Mary riding unsteadily on their dashboard, or who want to feel especially connected to an imagined Rome, this style probably has a strange appeal. For others, it smells of a museum piece, or rather, of a fossilized replica of a bygone era. But ask the priest about his performance, and he will assure you—quoting chapter and verse in the “Pre-Notes” of the Sacramentary—that he is “doing what Rome requires.” He is a good boy, after all, ever responsive to the imagined wishes of Papal or Episcopal Authority.

Then we find other Grand Productions, but done without a deliberate attempt to look Roman. In fact, these productions are proudly “parochial,” and present themselves as “what the people want.” These Grand Productions feature an abundant crew of liturgical “experts,” some of whom may fill the sanctuary, dance gracefully around the altar (they practice their parts for hours), or just “perform their separate duties.” Having one priest or minister preside at the “Service” is never enough—too plain, too simple, too boring. No, one must have at least a deacon on board for extra spectacle, and perhaps two: “deacon of the altar,” “deacon of the word.” And of course one will see girls and boys dressed up in costumes called “liturgical robes,” moving about as if choreographed by Agnes de Mille for this theatrical production. And lectors trained to bow in pairs, ever conscious of the show. And perhaps other “acolytes,” and a stage crew to work on lighting, smells, and other atmospherics. The Grand Production aims to make people “feel good,” to smile, laugh, feel entertained, and to be impressed with what a good performance their church provides. Preferably, the service needs at least one cantor or deacon present who is so rotund that he or she waddles around grinning like a circus clown. And a circus is what has been provided. The people come for a spectacle, and they get it. Music—organ, instruments, choir, perhaps operatic or country-cousin singers. Sometimes they sway to the sounds of their own voices. It is all so much fun. The preaching does not really matter, and is over in the twinkling of an eye, with little said except, “Oh, you are so good, so wonderful, and God loves you just fine.” And that is standard fare. But words really don’t matter. On with the show! For those who like big, busy, showy, Hollywood or Elvis in Vegas, here it is.

A third style of contemporary Christian worship can be called “folksy.” If it is a Catholic Mass, the “presider” may be named Joe Feel Good.And do not call him “Father,” for such a term is “too traditional” and smacks of authoritarianism to boot. Joe may well strut into “the assembly” wearing cowboy boots with smiling horse faces, perhaps carrying a shiny guitar, and with a delightfully warm smile to make everyone feel right at home. Joe has a good singing voice, and everyone knows it. The children serving around the table (do not dare to call it the “altar”) feel very relaxed throughout the service, perhaps looking around at the congregation, picking their noses, tapping their toes to the rocking-fun music. As for Presider Joe, the people just love him. He is so “down to earth,” so “with it,” so “cute.” And he loves himself, too, especially his baby blues. He is very proud of his hair style—even if it is his newest toupee. Of course he wears jeans, perhaps a few spangles on his pearl-button shirt. If he bothers to “suit up” in liturgical dress, the collar has a nice ring of dirt, and is suitably rumpled to assure everyone, “Hey, guys! I am really just one of you, even if I put on these liturgical dresses because Bishop Big Daddy insists on it. But don’t be fooled, I am just a regular guy, just like you.” And remember not to call this fellow “Father.” As he has said repeatedly, “Call me Joe. After all, we are family, and all in this together.” And of course Presider Joe does not preach. Nor does he teach. No, as a man of the people, he just stands in front, hands in and out of pockets, slouching to one side casually, and tells stories—stories about what he watched on TV last night, stories about when he was a boy down home, about fishing the creeks of Catfish County, about drinking moonshine on a warm summer night. And oh my, do the folks love his stories. These stories make them laugh and feel good, and they do not have to think. As one of them has been heard saying, “I just put my mind in neutral and enjoy the fun.” And fun it was. That was their Sunday worship. The rest of the week is just like it: easy-going, laid back, and so relaxed.

We must not forget the Money Mass. This kind of liturgy is the specialty of some Catholic priests, and of some Anglicans and Episcopalians, as well. The church is beautiful—that is, it took much money to renovate it, or to construct this new building. Costs were not spared, with expensive stained glass, precious metals, marble, gold chalices, gilded columns, the richest art works money can buy, even if they seem a little less than tasteful. The priest may affect the Roman or Cambridge style, or he may be less “high church,” but he is ever about business in His Father’s house. And the business is money. In his private life, he has expensive tastes, and maintains a private home in La Jolla, or on Lake Tahoe, or on Key West. He likes the sun, and usually sports a tan—not from ranching or working outdoors, but from time spent at his favorite tanning salon. He must look good for his congregation, of course. He dresses well, and so do they. In fact, liturgical gatherings have the look and feel of a fashion show about them. The ladies used to wear mink or fox, but PETA got to their hearts, and so they wear faux fur from a Parisian designer. Their leather handbags proclaim Michael Kors. The music is luxurious, performed only by qualified professionals, well paid for their services. And the volume may be a little loud at times, especially during the collection. Money is needed, and money is preached. The priest may be highly educated and intelligent, and give a good sermon—and it always builds up to his appeal for money. The church ever needs more money. (He wants more money, too, but he will not say that in public; that might discourage the people’s spontaneous generosity). Announcements are quite long before and after the service, with special appeals for deserving causes—and for money.

Then we have the home Mass. A few of the faithful gather around the kitchen or dining room table, with a priest in simple vestments. They gather to pray together, to hear the word, to reflect on the word (with contributions from anyone who wishes to share his or her experience or insight), and to “break bread together.” Each person contributes to “the prayer of the faithful” (as if the prayer should come from the faithful!). The Eucharistic prayers are offered in plain English, freed from heavy-liturgical language. The service is quiet, dignified, joyous. With soft lighting and candle flames reflecting on friendly faces, Christ shines through.

To An Agnostic Intellectual

A letter to a dear friend, who turned away from God many years ago, aided an impoverished study of “philosophy.”

Dear 

I have never understood what happened to your study of philosophy. As I recall, you were an undergraduate major in philosophy at the University of Utah back in the early to mid 1960’s. Somehow, for some reason, you left off the study of philosophy, and turned to linguistics. Granted, the study of language has its own interests and values. But it is not philosophy.  To mistake the part for the whole is one of the foremost intellectual errors. Philosophy wants to see the whole, not merely a part.  

Philosophy means “the love of wisdom.” A student of philosophy, if he or she is indeed studying philosophy, seeks the truth about the whole of reality, and only secondly, knowledge of particular parts. Or in other words, one desiring to be a philosopher has to see all of reality, and every study of reality, in light of the whole.  Anything less than a noetic vision of the whole could not satisfy one on the philosophical journey. Along the way, one will have to study words, and physical reality, and history, and of course divinity. But one must not get derailed into an endless quest for endless information, and lose the perspective of seeing the whole, and seeing it wholly.  

Yes, philosophy must include within it a search for God. Plato made this crystal clear in his dialogues, from the Republic and Phaedrus to the Laws. Recall his words: "Philosophy is the love of wisdom. The god alone is truly wise. Philosophy is the love of God.”  That insight is found in the Phaedrus, and I do not know of any of the leading philosophers who did not share that understanding until a pre-Enlightenment thinker, and a leading modern philodoxer, to use Plato’s coined word:  John Locke. This shallow mind had some thoughts on “God,” but he did not connect his conception of God with concrete reality. Locke is what came to be called “a deist,” which as one can see, was a kind of latent atheism without the courage to take the final step: “God” is irrelevant to life, and to the life of the mind.  And this leads us into the even more superficial waters of the French Enlightenment, and its offshoots in 19th century and twentieth century ideologies.  

The best example I know of a man with a powerful intellect and philosophical background, who had the courage to push his rebellion against reality’s ultimate nature and source, was Nietzsche. His attack on “God,” on religious faith (especially Christian) was powerful, at times highly insightful, but also led to its natural consequences in his personal life. Nietzsche had the courage and consistency to accept the consequences of atheism:  Nothing is good, nothing is true, nothing is real.  How did Nietzsche handle such a major divine breaking into history as the Apostle Paul’s vision of the Resurrected Christ? How did he treat that vision? No, Nietzsche was too honest to ignore it. He labeled it “an hallucination.”  Nietzsche set the pattern for psychologizing spiritual experience (already prefigured in Fuerbach). But Nietzsche was not a mere game-player. Rather, he lived his rebellion against reality, and accepted the consequences for it.  And so he spent the final decade of his life in a total spiritual abyss that was as hellish as anything I know. He believed what he wrote, whereas the clever sophists of the Enlightenment—the self-styled “philosophes”—played with atheism as a child’s toy, get “rich and famous” for their witty assaults on stupidities of the Church, and taught others that “God is dead.” And they laughed, whereas Nietzsche suffered in miserable silence.  Nothingness lived.  

Philosophy seeks to know the nature of reality, and especially, the ultimate cause of all that is. To dismiss the search for the “first cause” is not only non-philosophical, but in truth irrational. Ideologies—including atheism and scientism, by the way—begin by forbidden asking the ultimate questions. That is the precondition for modern ideology. On this point, I refer to Karl Marx’s Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts of 1846 (as I recall the title). Marx explicitly forbids questioning reality about its ultimate cause, and he was sufficiently trained in the history of philosophy to know what this meant:  Do not speak of God in any form.  As Marx writes, “Do not think.  Do not question.”  He explicitly forbids “socialist man” to ask any questions that lead towards God, towards the ultimate source of reality. Instead, Marx makes the utterly nonsensical claim that “socialist man creates himself by his own labor.” The sophistry here is transparent, but it surely has duped millions of so-called “intellectuals.” Many are not even “Marxists,” but they are his intellectual descendants, none the less, as they do exactly what Marx inculcated: fear of reason; refusal to ask genuine, existential questions.  

To dismiss the search for the ultimate cause as “Catholic professionalism,” or “religious belief,” may appear to be witty or clever, but until one realizes—if one ever will—that doing so would dismiss Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle as being “Catholic professionals” too, long before Christ appeared.  The use of the symbol “God,” Theos, as signifying the first cause (Aristotle’s prote arche) is neither Catholic nor Christian, but deeply rooted in the tradition of philosophy itself. If you deny this, I can easily sight many passages from Heraclitus to Aristotle that link divinity with reality, with being, with the ultimate good, with truth, and with wisdom. Of course the Hellenic philosophers had to conduct their search for truth in a two-fold battle, in effect: from mythological beliefs that did not give adequate scope for reason (“religious beliefs,” not unlike creedal Christianity, or Islam); and from the learned “experts” of their day, the “sophists,” the professors.  As an example of genuine philosophy’s openness to God, I quote the famous final words of the Apology of Socrates, by the young Plato. Condemned to die for denying the gods of the city, for introducing a “foreign divinity” (his voice), and for “corrupting the youth of Athens,” Socrates speaks his final word to his so-called “judges:” "Now it is time to go—I to die, you to live.  Which of us has the better fate is unknown to anyone, except to the God.”  

Words such as these have stirred many young minds to enter into the philosophical life.  It is a genuine search for God.  What has happened?    

The abiding puzzle for me is how a student of philosophy may possibly have learned to break from a literalistic understanding of religious mythos (story), but then fell into the far worse pit of sophistical intellectuals with their “acid of modernity,” to borrow Nietzsche’s apt phrase.  This acid bath does not lead one to the search for the divine light, but blinds one to it. What ever happened to so many “students of philosophy”?  What blinded them to the light of reason, whose ultimate nature and source is what is called “God”? What prevented so many young persons from opening up to genuine spiritual experience, and exploring these experiences with the assistance of reason? What has happened?

Of course, even a would-be atheist can use reason in the instrumental sense to solve mathematical equations, to argue logic, or to study physical reality, but as soon as one wonders, "Why do I exist?”, either one’s reason is open to transcendent experiences, or one is not.  As for atheism in our culture: It takes the form of endless entertainment, rarely in the form of careful arguments that the ultimate source of reality does not exist.  The atheistic claim is philosophically empty, so it is held as a mask, in Nietzsche’s sense.  It is a pretense, an excuse, to stop seeking for that which simply is beyond space-time. In our culture, “agnosticism” or “atheism” is an excuse for intellectual laziness of a high degree.  
What a student of philosophy recently called “the closing of the American mind” is demonstrated repeatedly in American education. It is not Socrates with his “obedience to the god” that has corrupted our youth; it is book-clever intellectuals, more “bright” than right, who are guilty of contributing disastrously, ruinously, to the closing of the minds of so many young people. We have done this. Every teacher—myself included—must keep asking, “How have I closed off the minds of students to genuine inquiry? Have I fostered an atmosphere of the search for truth, of boldness to ask the really large questions of life, or I have helped to blind the students in my care?  Have I told them, as did Marx, “Do not think. Do not question,”when it comes to questions such as “Who or what created the world?” Have I called their real, personal questions, “Scheinprobleme”—mere appearance-problems, false questions.  We have much to answer for.

The major pain in my life is to see how we in this culture are destroying young minds—and not only young ones, but older ones as well. The American culture is not just “a culture of death,” but a culture of mental-spiritual closure. “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” Snowing people under mountains of facts cannot substitute for genuine inquiry: Why do I exist? What is the purpose of human life? What is the meaning of life? What is reality, and what is its cause? And who is this God that brings forth all that we experience out of nothing? The quest for God is the life of the spirit. The quest for divine order in the world, in creation, in history, is the life of reason. Not to enter this quest is highly praised by degreed professors. Its effects are all around us in the breakdown of order, in so many mental and spiritual illnesses, in a culture of hiding from reality by popping pills and using mental or physical drugs.  

America has gone so far down the path of spiritual blindness, of willful unbelief, of closure to God, that I am not at all convinced that we can still be turned around. And yet, the rescue of some by God working through the light of reason is ever possible. There will always be a Solzhenitsyn, it seems, who in the midst of the Soviet closure to divine truth opened up his heart and mind to genuine faith, and showed the way to a renewal for Russia. I myself still hold out for a young Saint Francis, or Saint Clare, who will moved many by their profound, childlike trust in God, filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, motivated by love of every human being they meet.  I do not want to underestimate the power of the Almighty to recreate a decadent culture—if and only if we cooperate. And that takes work, trust, humility, to know the truth of Delphi: “Know that you are a human being and not a god.” 

Animals In Eternity

Fr. Paul with Rummy A few days ago various news sources reported that Pope Francis continues to show he's anything but traditional. During a recent public appearance, Francis comforted a boy whose dog had died, noting, "One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God's creatures." Apparently, some “theologian” said that the pope’s comment was just “conversational.” Well, so were nearly all of the words attributed to Jesus, including his merciful words on the cross to the man crucified next to him (according to Luke’s gospel):  “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Only use of “Paradise” in entire bible. The word was picked up by Jews in Persia, and comes from two Farsi words meaning “enclosed garden,” I have read.  Note that the Pope uses the symbol as well. Anyway, was Jesus just “being conversational” to the dying man?  Or was he speaking truly? Note that Pope Francis did not say that anyone “goes to heaven.” That is a fairly late phrase, and not technical, but picturesque, as “heaven” (ouranos, in the Greek of the New Testament) means “sky.” The image is of “going up,” ascending, not meant to be literally in space, in the sky, although I have noticed that some fundamentalists take it that way.  All symbols can be misleading, and “heaven” is one of them. (Imagine a small child crawling up on a roof to find God!) Anyway, the Pope’s words as quoted are more precise than “going to heaven.”  He said, supposedly:  “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ.”  Those words to me are more precise, more profound, then “in heaven.”  But are they true? Brief note for now: I do not speculate on “afterlife,” on “resurrection of the body” (literalistic, quite nonsensical to me), or even “immortality of the soul,” borrowed from the Greek philosophers (from Pythagoras to Plato and Aristotle). I am content with a far more stark fare.  All die, but God lives.  And that which we call “God” is the Mind which conceived all of creation, and “brought it forth” out of sheer creative freedom and love. That Mind is what is “eternally,” or non-temporally. The rest passes.  But to be in the Mind of God, in the eternal mind of the creator, is more than enough. When some clever fellows tried to trap Jesus into talking about “afterlife,” in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), he referred his interlocutors back to “the passage about the bush,” and said that when God spoke to Moses, God called himself “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”  And then Jesus comments:  “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.” That is it, and that, once again, suffices for me. To be alive to Life is to be alive.  I look for no “separate existence.”  To see that Abraham, for one, is alive, because God identifies himself with Abraham, is an amazingly profound scriptural interpretation. For how many centuries did Jews read the story of the burning bush and not see in the passage any awareness that Abraham is alive now! Application. I think of my parents, and Leah, Rummy, Zoe, Binti, Misha, and so many others, as having died. Yes, I remind myself, Zoe died.  But I do not think of her as “dead.”  What would it mean to be “dead”?  Non-existent in any form? I think of Zoe as alive to the One that matters. And if Zoe is alive to the Creator, then I think of her as alive to me as well. In God all live, all “find their home,” in biblical symbols. And I love the Pope’s inclusivity: “Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.” The Pope sees that, because he is himself open to all of God’s creatures. We see according to what we are. I may be putting in a verbose and intellectualistic form what is a very old Catholic teaching: the communion of saints. “To God, all are alive.”  The mainline Christian tradition has no trouble talking to those who died. We just do it. Those who died are not treated as if “dead and gone,” but deceased and now living only in God. We pray through saints or deceased loved ones, not to them as the end-point. But in God, all creatures can address each other. Why should death hinder communication of mind and mind, heart with heart? And if I am wrong? What if no one is alive to God, because there is no God? What if Nietzsche was right? Suppose there is absolutely nothing ultimately real, no first cause, no Beginning, no End, no Absolute Beauty, no Truth, no eternal Love, no “God”? Then what? No God, no being. No being, no beings. No beings?   Then why and how are we communicating?  If there is no cause of all that exists, then nothing exists. If nothing exists, nor do we now. But…. something is happening.  My goodness, we do exist!  So there is a cause, there is reality.  The Cause of all causes, the being of beings, the Beauty in all that is beautiful, the goodness in all that is good, is all what is symbolized by the common word, “God.” The rest is indeed passing. As for Pope Francis, I appreciate his deed for mercy for the young boy, and I think that he was speaking far more truly, and not telling a “noble lie.”  Francis knows well: Love never ends. He is speaking out of his experience of divine Presence here and now.

From "Second Coming" To True Fulfillment

“Christ has come into the world.”  A key difference between Jewish Messianism and Christian teaching is the belief that “the Messiah” (“Christos” in Greek, “Christ” in English) regards the timing of the Messiah’s arrival. In a nutshell, Jews look back to Moses and the prophets, and forward to the coming of the Messiah at a time chosen by God. Christians believe all sorts of things about “the coming of the Messiah.” Catholic teaching has generally claimed that Christ came once into time through Jesus, born of Mary; Christ comes personally to the faithful whenever they will receive him; and Christ “will come again in glory (divinity) to judge the living and the dead” at “the end.” For the most part, Catholics and Orthodox Christians do not get too excited about futuristic speculations about Christ. And this is because we dwell on the event of Jesus Christ—born in the flesh, taught, healed, suffered for all, died, was raised from the dead—and, his present comings NOW through faith.   For my part, I surely do not speculate on Christ’s so-called “second coming,” and all such talk seems to me to be either doctrinally fixed or foolish. It is just talk without a basis in real experience. So I avoid it. Indeed, speculation about the “second coming of Christ” imaginatively seeks to force the eternal God back into time. Usually, Catholics are far more concerned about Christ in Jesus, Christ in humankind, Christ in the Sacraments, to waste time on futuristic imaginings. Still, fundamentalistic teachings on the imagined “Second Coming” influence some of our people, because of the intensity of opinion and sheer numbers of fundamentalists in American culture. Let me say it again: Our Catholic faith is not a variety of fundamentalism; t is a mature form of spiritual experience and practice. And yet… Even bizarre opinions, such as messianic, futuristic comings, often have a kernel of truth in them. Indeed, in the words of Plato, “Every myth has its truth.”  What might be the core of truth in futuristic speculations about Christ’s coming back, or about “peace on earth,” about “a war to end all wars,” and so on? Once we strip off the nonsense and sentimental dreaming, a spiritual core remains, although it would not satisfy utopian dreamers or religious fundamentalists. Here is the truthful core, as I see it: God is drawing each of us, and perhaps in some ways, all of creation, into a profound and lasting union with Him beyond space-time, beyond death. It is not that God is coming back into time, or that “Heaven” will be built on earth. The world has its own ways of being: “Everything that comes into being must perish.” But what we can experience, as well as see in the saints, is that that Divine Love, which we call “God,” reaches into our hearts and minds, and draws us into Love’s life, into truth, into “the End that has no end.”  In other words: “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face.”  Or in other words: All of the good and love we experience now is a foreshadowing of the fulness to come to all “in Christ Jesus our LORD.”  Amen!