Exactly like at the time of the first lockdown, I am dismayed about how eminent experts on epidemics and viruses are shouted down and subject to ad hominem attacks, especially with political overtones. I already wrote a couple of articles, which you can read again: Scepticism and Freedom of Thought and Science or Ideology?.
My attention has been drawn to Dr Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University who has become noted for a controversial position in the Great Barrington Declaration. I don’t have the scientific knowledge to judge whether these people are right, but I do wonder if the science is being discussed rather than the authors being attacked on political lines. Dr John Campbell discusses it quite fairly in this video:
Are our governments right in putting us back into lockdown, or is there a way of isolating and protecting vulnerable people (I might be one myself) and letting the disease burn itself out through the rest of the population that is less at risk of serious illness or death? I have noticed that lasting immunity has been questioned by Imperial College, which would cast a doubt on “herd immunity” and even the viability of vaccines. Dr Campbell asks where the references and evidence are in favour of the Barrington position. Dr Gupta gets a chance to respond about lasting immunity and also talks about the papers with scientific references that have been published.
There is a certain amount of scientifixc discussion going on, which is reassuring. I do believe that both Dr Gupta and Dr Campbell are both intellectually honest.
The problem is that this intellectual honesty is not shared by all, whether by way of vested interests or political ideology. A lot will be decided today or tomorrow by the American Presidential Election. Will the deadlock break or are we going to the wall because of ideological inertia and groupthink?
When the powers that be lack coherence and transparency, we are tempted to see a conspiracy, for example the creation of an “Orwellian” world dystopia where everyone comes under totalitarian control. Where are the infection figures coming from against which we can measure the number of seriously ill people in hospital, those in intensive care and those who have died specifically from the consequences of this virus? Are the cases counted in reality or projected by a computer programme with an algorithm?
I am also very sceptical about the so-called collapsology theory corresponding with the alarmist of extreme environmentalists of the Extinction Rebellion tendency. I have tried to read explanations of this way of thinking, but I find too much langue de bois or arrogant verbosity. That said, western civilisation that has been strongly influenced by Hellenism and Christianity seems to repose on very little. All civilisations come and go, and I am certainly influenced by some of the Romantics and one book in particular by Nicholas Beryaev, The End of our Time, London 1933.
We as a species have to make progress with returning to the laws of reasoned debate and intellectual honesty. Words no longer have the same meaning for different people in discussion or debate. We are increasingly immersed in a kind of bullshit thinking that destroys reason. This has become extremely apparent in American politics but over this side of the Atlantic too. Even when we lack the scientific qualifications of those we think we can trust, at least to an extent, we feel that we are in a morass of cognitive dissonance and lies all around us. There have always been con-men in history, but their art seems to have become mainstream. They have the power to control and topple governments in the name of reason and science, but without the most elementary notions of knowledge at a philosophical level.
Are we going to put our vulnerable people under a bell jar and let the virus rip until it burns itself out? Are we going to have “stop & go” rolling lockdowns indefinitely and only then think about how to deal with the economy? Are we going to be told in a year’s time that all attempts to produce a vaccine have failed? This experience tells me that if we get something like Ebola or a form of AIDS that can be transmitted through the air like flu and colds, it would be the final curtain on the western world.
Would the “great reset” or hard ecologist people have a response? For 8 billion people in this world? Personally I think of the idea of retreating even further into the country. But doing what to live? Using a computer and internet? Still depending on the modern world for food and medical care when needed? Do I not care what happens to the others, most of whom I imagine would have to be put on trains to gas chambers? The answer seems to be that pandemics happen to cull the human population without anyone being morally responsible for their deaths or choosing who would die and who would live. We do our best to escape, but we can do precious little about organisms that replace humans at the top of the food chain!
What I will say now is not “politically correct” in today’s rejection of the Ars Moriendi. Alle Menschen müßen sterben. We are all called to die. It is a fact that even in the ideal conditions, we die alone and face the afterlife independently from any priest who has given us the last Sacraments and family members who have prayed. Obviously, in this pandemic, we are going to take it seriously and take precautions. In any other situation, we have to take care and preserve our lives and those of others, whether driving a car or just walking through a town where we might get robbed and murdered. There is always an element of risk, an idea that seems to be absent in the sayings of the medical and technocratic establishment. I write this knowing that I will pass on one day – and my treasure will be other people’s trash.
Our time is one of apocalyptic anxiety, probably something like the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in the days of Fra Dolcino and Joachim de Flore. Those were ages profoundly marked by the Bubonic Plague and the decadence of the feudal system. Oddly, in the nineteenth century, there was an apocalyptic trend as churchmen in the days of Pius IX feared the influence of Freemasonry and other conspiracies, often blamed on the Jewish community.
I have seen this same kind of thought in the traditionalist Roman Catholic world and in some right-wing political tendencies. The enemy is named great reset and new world order. Those who denounce this “conspiracy” are marked by a dualistic mentality between the “goodies” and the “baddies”. The big problem is that the spiritual combat is not “other people” but ourselves, our own souls. I have just been reading a conference given by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò very recently, and it could have been one given at the end of the nineteenth century in the face of French and Italian anti-clericals.
I mention this conference as being fairly typical of the reaction against our incompetent and mendacious politicians and the equivalent in the Church. There is certainly a deeply evil tendency like the thugs Hitler recruited to run his empire. I have mixed feelings about the present Pope, between his talking in public about pastoral issues that are best dealt with by parish priests in the intimacy of the confessional. At the same time, my intellectual parameters are not those who would conclude a conviction similar to that of the sedevacantists.
Our time seems to be one that concerns more than simply the institutional Church, but civilisation as a whole. This civilisation was built on Hellenism and Christianity, something profoundly humanist in the most noble meaning of this word. Take away what remains of this civilisation and what remains? Iran after the downfall of the Shah? Chinese cruelty and Communism? Post-humanists who would revive a modern version of Nazism or connect our brains to computers.
One thing I notice too frequently with the medical profession is the rejection of spirit, the treatment of the human body and mind in materialistic terms. It considers death as an ultimate evil to be avoid at all costs. What Viganò seems to denounce is the very same thing as Alan Watts in the same quote I have given on this blog:
The present low ebb of Church religion consists in the fact that rarely, even for Church people, does it give the soul any knowledge of union with the reality that underlies the universe. To put it in another way, modern Church religion is little concerned with giving any consciousness of union with God. It is not mystical religion, and for that reason it is not fully and essentially religion.
That text was written in 1947, long before Vatican II or Pope Francis. That is important to remember, especially among those who are Catholics but not subjects of the Roman communion. We are often told to wake up and become political activists and militants, but our awakening has to be within.
I return to that wonderful little book I have by Rob Riemen, the Dutch thinker, To Fight Against This Age. He calls the ideologies of our time a form of Fascism, and I sympathise with his thought. Fascism is a form of Socialism, collectivism over the individual person. It incites resentment, anger and fear, a need for scapegoats and hatred of personal thought and spiritual life. Other than Christian authors, we need to learn from philosophers like Thomas Mann and Albert Camus with their experience of totalitarianism in the 1930’s and 40’s. The solution to the virus, our quacks and lying politicians, our lockdowns and “new normals” is a return to Christ and to European humanism with its universal values of truth, beauty, justice, and love for life―values underpinning any democratic civilization.
For the time being, we are obliged to go along with the lockdown and dutifully wear our masks – just in case there is someone with the disease we might get too close to. We are blind. We don’t know which scientists have the best or truest ideas. In these days of opposing ideologies and truths, we have to learn scepticism and a healthy enquiring mind. We can learn a bit about the science with work and curiosity. A little introduction:
On each of these pages, we will find references and related subjects. For us ordinary people not aspiring to the medical profession, we can at least learn an elementary form of the science. This knowledge will help us to be critical of some of the bullshit we are encountering today, especially the media and their scaremongering. Let us replace our anxiety with knowledge and critical thinking, keeping our minds open to learning from people like Dr Gupta and Dr John Campbell.
The more we learn and keep an open mind, the less we will be seduced by violent ideology and groupthink.
Sarum Mass of All Souls, a sorely needed consolation in our time of anxiety and being reminded of our mortality. The vestments are believed to have been discarded by a church in Avignon in the 1970’s and they were given to me by a friend.
This is the version completed by Franz Xavier Suessmayr
This text, along with all the musical settings it inspired, speaks of terror, anguish, grief – but yet peace, hope and serenity in the face of our own mortality and our missing loved ones who have passed away from this transitory life.
We have each one of us to face this certainty and the end of the ego we have constructed around ourselves. What happens after death? Our Christian tradition can only describe it by analogy, image and metaphor. What is sure is that we will die as we have lived. I am convinced that there is much more than the truncated and simplified ideas expressed in the catechism.
As I see the flowers and lights on the graves in the local cemetery, I am reminded by the fact that civilisation is judged by the respect it pays to the departed.
Fidelium animae, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace. Amen.
Like everyone who lives in France, we waited for President Macron’s decision last Wednesday evening about what is to be done about the exponential rise of Covid-19 cases and increasing numbers of very sick people in the hospitals. We got a nationwide lockdown for at least a month, but which could be extended to the end of January 2021 in the worst of cases. Three months with shattered dreams of Christmas and New Year celebrations with families will be a bitter pill indeed! However, if the infection rates go down radically at the beginning of December, there may be some loosening like more shops opening and perhaps a return to the curfew system (lockdown at night only) of only yesterday. We now have to fill in an attestation paper each time we go out of the house for any reason, just like last March, April and May. The chairman of the scientific council to the French government, Dr Jean-François Delfraissy, who pushed for a return to lockdown, has said (my translation):
The scenario is rather to have a month-long lockdown, look at the different markers, then get out of the lockdown via a curfew that could continue through December, possibly over Christmas and New Year, and come out of that only in early January. The end of year celebrations will be different this year: they will be held in small groups, under curfew.
Such a solution, if the number of infections are radically reduced, would give more hope for our human life and the economy of the country. France has budgeted 15 billion Euros for each month of lockdown, a lot of money! I see no “Orwellian” conspiracy here!
I hope this time that everything will be implemented with more coherence and common sense. I’m used to it: I have had very little social life this year and have travelled very little – no trips to England for Church or family. Being shut in will make many people very unhappy. I believe that God calls us to be patient and live with incertitude, and do what we can to teach people to turn loneliness into contemplative solitude. We know that violence and civil disobedience are not the way. There will be better days…
Lockdown started in France last night. M. Macron has decided on this solution to get infections down to below 5,000 a day. All the practical information is now in the mainstream news. It seems that the churches are closed again, but people can visit the cemeteries for All Souls. I am less likely to lose all my income because businesses needing translations will still be working. It is designed to be a softer lockdown than the one last spring. It will be a time for reading, writing, doing practical things and thinking about various other matters in my life.
As a priest, I am very conscious of my vocation to minister to people who are deprived of the liturgy and the Sacraments, or who find the Church more of a weight than a vehicle of grace. As a priest of the ACC – Patrimony of the Metropolitan, I will resume recordings of Mass of Sundays and feasts like All Saints and All Souls. I will also record spiritual conferences in English in the old Oratorian style.
As already mentioned today, I have coped reasonably well with very little social life. It is an advantage of autism! Many people will be distressed in the coming weeks, and this intention must be firmly in our hearts as we face this new restriction of our lives. There are other lockdowns in other countries. M. Macron told us to be in solidarity at a civil level, which is his job. As a priest I ask you all to be united in prayer and to put aside ideology and hatred. If we are being lied to, justice will fall on the politicians like a ton of bricks!
To give some impressions on lockdown in France. It’s the first day today. I live in a country village near a small town (Yvetot). The atmosphere is totally different from last March. People who can’t work at home are going to work and more shops are open than last time, not only supermarkets but also DIY shops where tools and materials can be bought, not only by professionals but all of us. We are already used to the “barrier gestures” and people are wearing masks, most of them properly.
There is less anxiety. There have been protests in the big cities, but nothing significant. The whole thing has been designed to quash transmission of the virus to the maximum, whilst leaving as much as possible of the economy intact. A percentage will be lost as those businesses having to close will get financial help from the State.
The French authorities recognise the failures and where things have gone wrong. I am thankful that the Macron government is more pragmatic and transparent than in some other countries. It is an exercise in social engineering, and manipulation has been necessary so as not to cause a general insurrection. We now also have the radical Islamist problem as well as Covid, like the UK has its impending Brexit with all its incertitudes. We have to have our attestation papers to justify why we are not at home, but I have seen no police or gendarmes in the street checking people.
It has all been designed to have us sacrifice social life for a time, and if the infection rates go down enough, we might be allowed to go back to the curfew system that allows us more freedom to move around (taking the dog for walks on the beach, etc.). It is a bind, but we have to live with it. We just have to get the infection rate down until they can get us the vaccine. Yes, I go with the mainstream view because the “herd immunity” way would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths and people maimed for life. Get the carers, doctors and vulnerable people vaccinated, and then we all wait our turn.
We just have to adapt until the virus mutates into a harmless strain and infection rates go down to those of colds and flu. I recommend Dr John Campbell, who knows his stuff about epidemics and microbiology. His teaching method may seem at times to be plodding and slow, but he is scientific in his approach. He has no political axe to grind.
I accept the notion of avoiding the two extremes of:
taking a massive gamble by lifting all restrictions and allowing the virus to take its course and cause “herd immunity”, at the cost of what some scientists think would be hundreds of thousands of deaths and so many sick people that the hospital system would collapse under the weight,
closing down the economy and sacrifice people suffering from other physical and psychological health problems.
Many will think that such an attempt to find the right compromise in the absence of a proven vaccine is absurd on the basis of most of those who have contracted the disease have very little or no symptoms at all.
I would hope that we attain herd immunity (preferably with a vaccine) with as few deaths and serious illnesses as possible. The hospital system is a subject of concern. I have read the Barrington Declaration. Dr Campbell debunks an alarmist interpretation of the Imperial College research and maintains lasting immunity to the virus in those who have caught it and recovered. Dr Gupta stands her ground, and Dr Campbell advances the idea that T cells can provide immunity even if the antibodies have faded away. I trust Dr Campbell’s political neutrality, good judgement and professional expertise. The problem is protecting those who will become seriously ill, including some young people – and preventing a situation of doctors having to select who will get treatment and who will be left to die. That is the difficulty with the Barrington Declaration, even though we all want this virus to go away.
We enter a new period of uncertainty. Is that not life? There have been other adversities in human history, wars and atrocious plagues and epidemics. It is truly time for us to come to terms with ourselves and begin to unite with God. We may be deprived of church, socialising, the warmth of human contact, but now we are called to the eremitical life, contemplation and self-sufficiency. Again, this will be a bitter pill for many of us. Being faced with himself can drive a man mad, just like being alone at sea on a boat. It is up to us to play by the rules, just on the off-chance that “they” could be right, and that our priority is to reduce infections and accept the vaccine when it is approved and available.
In particular, The Trinitarian can be ordered in paper copy and digital format through the site. This is particularly valuable in parts of the world where postal services are slow or unreliable. This is the main source of news about our Church.
I have now received my canonical licence as a priest in the Patrimony of the Metropolitan, which places me under Archbishop Mark Haverland’s direct jurisdiction. However, I continue to participate fully in the life of the Diocese of the United Kingdom under its Bishop, the Rt Rev’d Damien Mead. This change in my canonical situation is warranted by my living in Continental Europe and not in the UK, and was brought about by letters dimissory from Bishop Mead to Archbishop Haverland.
I express my gratitude and admiration for those who are responsible for this new website and organ of communication. They deserve our hearty applause.
Insanae et vanae curae invadunt mentes nostras, saepe furore replent corda, privata spe. Quid prodest, O mortalis, conari pro mundanis, si coelos negligas? Sunt fausta tibi cuncta, si Deus est pro te.
Frantic and futile anxieties invade our minds; they often fill our hearts with madness, depriving them of hope. What is the use, O mortal man, of striving after earthly things, if you neglect heaven? All things turn out well for you, if God is on your side.
I have known about this piece of Haydn from the chorus Svanisce in un momento from the Oratorio Il ritorno di Tobia for many years. This piece is an amazing exercise of harmonic dissonance and suspense in an intense piece of classical counterpoint. I have selected the version sung by the choir of St John’s College, Cambridge.
Frantic and futile anxieties invade our minds. They did at the end of the eighteenth century and continue to do so now. I am no exception as one of millions of human beings living in the face of death (we all have to die of something) and adversity through the accidents of life or our own decisions.
They often fill our hearts with madness, depriving them of hope. Over the years, I have learned a few elements of modern psychology and mental illnesses. Some illnesses are caused by diseases to the brain or neurological malformations. This is highly specialised modern medicine of which I know nothing except some books I have read on autism. Probably the most common mental illness is depression. It may be partly due to chemical imbalances in the brain that can be treated with drugs. For me, it is largely due to our attitude in life and our capacity to understand the mechanics of depression. One of the best approaches I have come across is the Clinical Depression Learning Path. Insofar as I endorse this advice to anyone suffering from this malaise, I am bound to say that people should follow the prescriptions of a qualified doctor or psychiatrist. That said, we have the choice of doctors depending on whether they have a spirit-soul-body concept of man or simply the idea of a “biological machine”. We also have the choice of distinguishing the medical profession from psychologists, psychotherapists, priests, spiritual directors, wise men and women in general. Only doctors can diagnose and prescribe medication, but everything else is within the reach of non-doctors. One example is this site. One major characteristic of this illness is that it makes us go round and round with repeating thoughts and obsessions. The more we get obsessed with negative thoughts, the more they fill us with bitterness, resentment and – in the extreme – thoughts of self-harm and suicide. The person who wrote this text in the eighteenth century was extraordinarily advanced in his knowledge of psychology. Remember that these were the days of Bedlam and the most obscurantist and inhuman ways of treating people suffering from depression, schizophrenia, other forms of psychosis, autism, catatonia and various ailments causing delusions. Here we have a sign of empathy for those who suffer.
I spent six months as a working guest at the Abbey of Triors in 1996-7, and the experience was truly a catharsis for me. The idea was that of my old superior as a condition for my being reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church as a cleric. I will not go into the conduct of this cleric after my time with the monks. One thing I learned was the capital importance of silence, not just the absence of noise but a real Ungrund within our souls. This is something I try to put into practice when entering my chapel and putting on vestments to say Mass. The frantic and futile anxieties must be left outside, symbolised by taking off our shoes, so that we can enter the sacred space. Please listen to this amazing talk by Alan Watts – What Happens If You Stop Talking To Yourself.
This seems to be the major condition of Zen meditation as well as monastic Christian meditation. We learn to shut the hell up – and then enter God’s presence, our own presence. We can control that machine of our repeated words and thoughts. The amazing thing is that many things attributed to mental illness can be controlled by the will so that the mind can be cleared for positive things and peaceful thoughts. I am convinced that depression is mostly caused by this interminable chatter in our minds and our inability to shut up. Certainly, the psychiatrist’s pills can be helpful – temporarily, only for the time that is really necessary. If we can stop or limit these thoughts, then we can avoid going mad!
What is the use, O mortal man, of striving after earthly things, if you neglect heaven? Heaven is within us. It is the ultimate Romantia of all our desires and hopes. The present pandemic puts us face to face with death if we are elderly and suffer from illnesses that most people over a certain age suffer from. Covid-19 can “take advantage” of these ailments and bring our life to an early conclusion. We no longer have those “borrowed” months or years. Sometimes, rarely, the disease gets young people in their twenties and thirties. It can happen. Forgetting about the inevitability of death will not abolish it. We are mortal, but we have hope of what we Christians call heaven. Heaven is that domain of consciousness that is not subject to the illusion of matter. It is spirit, beyond our super-ego and limited experience. Some have speculated. Others have had altered-consciousness experiences and have received knowledge. Most of us hope for something we cannot understand, the Mystery. Earthly things are an illusion created by energy and nothingness, whether they are things money can buy, or our hopes of excelling ourselves.
All things turn out well for you, if God is on your side. God is always there beyond us and within us to bring peace and beatitude. If God is “on our side”, that notion implies that we face an enemy. The devil and evil spirits are real. So are our unredeemed spirits until we side with God, beauty, goodness and truth. Our life is a spiritual combat as we fight these obsessive and diseased thoughts that drive us to the hell of insanity. Insanity is truly an image of hell. Many will never escape – Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate, said Dante Alighieri. Some can escape though hope in God and firmness to conquer their addictions and obsessions. Trust me, I am not being simplistic.
The most important thing is to avoid getting emotionally involved with many of these obsessions. A year ago, I found myself writing intemperately about Brexit and finding that I was becoming emotionally engaged. Just a couple of days ago, I had to force myself to disengage from discussions about Covid, lockdowns and various scientific questions presently being debated. This is how Woke works. It encourages us to switch off our rational faculties and to become emotionally obsessed about a particular issue, be it the role of women in society, the legitimate combat against racism and other “buzz” issues that call for simplistic and dualistic emotional reactions.
First of all, only a small minority is engaged with all this stuff and its ideologies. Is it generation-based? I don’t have enough information, but I do know that I personally have been brought up in the Judeo-Christian tradition and the heritage of the Enlightenment. I am very committed to the values and ideas of Romanticism, but I always return to the Thomist principle of the primacy of reason and the imagination as a rational faculty at a deeper level. There has to be a fine balance in the human spirit, soul and mind.
Is the Church able to give a credible response to this dissipation of humanity and humanism of the Age of Reason and the Renaissance? In my previous article, I mentioned the criticism made by Alan Watts of Christianity in 1947, Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion.
The present low ebb of Church religion consists in the fact that rarely, even for Church people, does it give the soul any knowledge of union with the reality that underlies the universe. To put it in another way, modern Church religion is little concerned with giving any consciousness of union with God. It is not mystical religion, and for that reason it is not fully and essentially religion.
One might be tempted to dismiss Watts as a sort of “proto-hippie” or an apostate Anglican priest. Reading through the book, I am discovering his belief in a profoundly mystical kind of Christianity along similar lines as the Baron von Hügel (Mystical Element of Religion, London 1927) or George Tyrrell. Decidedly, the Roman Catholic Church in the 1900’s failed to make a distinction between such mystical aspirations and the secularising trends of many of the “modernist” thinkers. Watts surprises me by his depth, and his thought reminds me of my discoveries at the traditionalist seminary as I read Russian philosophers like Berdyaev, Soloviev and Dostoievsky and the “modernists”. His work confirms my intuition about two reactions from the stuffy establishment, namely secularism and mysticism.
This distinction will enable us to understand many of the things being said by the present Pope. We are confronted by a notion of a “different Christianity”. Which one? I find Pope Francis very difficult to follow, especially because I have had so little motivation and interest since his election in 2013. It would seem that Francis’ vision in Fratelli Tutti is quite secular, the Church’s mission being essentially social and political. This is not something I can affirm, not having read the encyclical but going only by the article whose link is at the head of this posting.
I remember a slogan “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” which is taught by Freemasonry. However, before we get carried away by conspiracy theories, I will attempt a remark. I have never been a Freemason, but my grandfather was at the head of his local Grand Lodge. I have several friends who are Freemasons. As far as I can understand, it is not a war against God or the spiritual, but an extremely ritualised and symbolic fashion of teaching certain principles of belief and morality. There are various obediences. The Grand Orient represents the most atheistic and anti-clerical stream, but the Scottish Rite and the Grand Lodge are much more respectful of Christianity whilst diverging in specifics. Is the Pope a Mason? I would very much doubt it. This is something I needed to clarify. This slogan is associated with Christian Modernism that is seen more in its German liberal Protestant dimension rather than the mysticism of Tyrrell and Von Hügel. It is important to study Modernism in its historical context, that of Positivism in science and philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century. It is abusive to call anyone a Modernist today, because the context has changed. Is it really the intention of Pope Francis to “give birth to a different Christianity” in which “Jesus were nothing but a man?” I need to prepare myself for some very boring reading to make up my own mind!
This capital distinction is therefore not between Church orthodoxy and heresy in the form of secularism and the denial or neglect of the spiritual, but between this secularism and the spiritual life. Jesus is clear in the Gospel that acts and gestures of humanity and love for others is a vital condition for spiritual life, but also a consequence of the spiritual. Science itself has changed from the era of Positivism to the primacy of consciousness over energy and matter. The goalposts are no longer the same, and I see secularism as obsolete and passé, not something of the future. However, the vast majority of our contemporaries are outwardly materialists, and fast asleep in terms of living at a level different from this world.
From the article:
Transcendence is not denied, but is increasingly ignored. There is no need for explicit denial if the matter becomes irrelevant.
Like Watts, I partially blame the institutional Church for this shelving of the spiritual. I don’t think there needs to be an opposition between transcendence and immanence. If we take non-dualism as a base, the immanent God within us is just as transcendent as the image of יהוה in the Burning Bush. Transcendentalism as a form of dualism has been a problem in both Catholicism and Protestantism. There is room for a healthy pan-en-theism. Watts wrote this in 1947, eleven years before Pius XII died:
What do our more wide-awake churchmen propose to do about the state of Christianity? Some would have the Church launch out boldly into the field of “progressive” politics, and sacrifice every doctrinal difference for the sake of Christian unity in a purely ethical bond; others would adapt the Church’s teaching rigorously to modern thought, or provide for a more effective vocational training of the clergy, equipping them with the tools of modern psychological science; yet others would have the Church increase in numbers by any means possible and then dominate governments by pressure groups and political chicanery; these are among the more superficial and tiresome proposals. Wiser heads confine themselves to a few less flighty and more difficult demands. They ask for a ministry of higher intellectual power, familiar with modern thought and skilled in apologetics; for a vigorous campaign of instruction, explaining Christian belief in terms understandable to the modern mind; for an improved worship as to the nature of which both Catholic and Protestant liturgical reformers are in considerable agreement; and, more important than all, for saints, for Christians of deep faith and moral heroism who will do more for God, for man, and for the Church than any number of thinkers, teachers and liturgists.
Is this the Pope’s “different Christianity”? Was Christ the first teacher of Wokeness? The thought is revolting, because it drags the most sublime to the level of street ideologies. We are in 2020, and Watts saw it in 1947 and certainly much earlier.
Francis is proficient at talking about poverty, war, weapons, the environment, solidarity, immigration, unemployment, and so on, but when is he going to get around to talking about the salvation of souls?
I think we are all concerned about these social issues. But, frankly, they are not the job of the Pope but rather of secular governments, philosophers and people who work in this world with so much more professionalism. This was the essential message of Benedict XVI’s teachings as Pope, as a Cardinal and as a simple priest and teacher. Decidedly, there could not be any greater contrast between Benedict XVI and Francis!
Similarly, in the domain of the liturgy, lucid people saw it coming as far back as the 1930’s. Is modern man “no longer capable of a liturgical act” as Romano Guardini asked? Indeed, should we all become Quakers or atheists – stop outward religion altogether and busy ourselves with secular concerns or silent individual prayer? The real question is whether the Church’s spiritual work (Opus Dei) has to be adapted to secularism or whether man should learn and be progressively initiated into the mysteries through liturgical symbolism. What is the purpose of the Church? I understand why many people have left it to seek a spiritual life elsewhere.
The NLM article insists on the notion of education, not merely in the meaning of the liturgy, but a complete mystagogy. Going further, I know that it is “fashionable” to fustigate against modern schools, but we do find that young people are no longer articulate in their speech, writing and logical reasoning. We live in a post-rational era and need to return to the trivium in schools: grammar, logic and rhetoric. In classical education, there was then the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. There is little hope of that in our post-humanist era. The liturgy has more of a chance of meaning something to a properly functioning human being. On that intellectual and cultural basis, perhaps a person can have the idea of entering into a sacred space, another world, where chatter yields to silence and wonder. Catechesis needs to be added to this solid base of Bildung as the Germans call a particular notion of education from the Romantic era.
Liturgy is hard work. I lived through six months of the full Monastic Office, every Hour being sung in full or monotoned. I easily become saturated, and suffering from the liturgy is truly suffering. It is important to learn and study all we can about the liturgy.
This is my personal blog concerning my philosophy of life as a Christian following the Romantic world view. I am a priest in the Anglican Catholic Church – Original Province and live in France.
The Blue Flower 