I look at Fr Z’s blog exceedingly rarely, but I was curious to see if he had any comment on the deteriorating situation between Washington and Moscow via Damascus. I found none, only various topics of interest to some Roman Catholics and some presumably tasty dishes from his kitchen.
One thing did grab my attention.
This is an image to illustrate the belief of Roman Catholics in the indefectibility of the Church. St Peter’s Basilica stands on a solid rock in the midst of the sea, presumably the Rock of St Peter (“Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church”). The image needs a good look, because my first impression was that of a number of people in a boat who had moored their vessel to the rock. I thought: what a dangerous thing to do in such a rough sea, because the violent waves would crush the boat against the forbidding cliffs and kill everybody on board.
Looking closely, we see the Devil with his Dracula wings and men hauling away on the ropes. They appear to be standing, not in a boat, but on dry land – and trying to pull the rocky island into the sea, clearly a futile gesture. Therefore St Peter’s Basilica and the Rock are safe from any assaults of evil spirits and evil humans. That seems a nice thought for the doubting or triumphalistic Roman Catholic.
Two things did occur to me. Instead of being built on forbidding cliffs, the symbol of the Roman patriarchate could have been on an island with gentle sandy beaches so that those needing to land from the sea could do so and find a welcome. Many such symbolic images feature boats as we read in the Gospels. Christ was on a boat when the conditions were dangerous and caused fear. Yet, in this image, there is not one single boat trying to make landfall and find the safety of the Church. The fortress is forbidding and impregnable, not only to enemies but also to spiritual refugees or shipwrecked sailors and fishermen. It is almost as if the Church is saying to the world “I’m all right, Jack. Let the others eat cake“. I don’t think this is intended, but it looks almost like a Freudian slip! Were the Rock of Peter an island with sandy beaches and a protected port, it would be even safer from nasty little fellows trying to pull it down with ropes!
One thing I appreciate is an ecclesiology based on compassion and love for souls coming from anywhere or from any origins. It was certainly the view of the Apostles and the earliest Fathers of the Church. It was also the view of thousands of saints, living here on earth and in the world they desired all their lives. I am sure that they did not find a forbidding black cliff in Christ but a sandy beach or a port where boats could moor sheltered from the fury of the waves and swell of the sea.
As happens most days, I received a circular e-mail with a link to A Possibility of Continuity? on the interminable discussion on Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) issued last April. Before beginning this posting, I resolved to read the text myself. My reaction was the same as finding something interesting in a shop but with a disproportionate price tag. In this case it is free but there are 264 pages to wade through. For someone who has been out of touch (apart from reading a few news articles) with the Roman Catholic Church, I didn’t have the courage. Therefore I can’t say whether it is right or wrong. I can only go on some of the things written about it. The linked article seems a good introduction to this pastoral and moral problem.
The real issue is the question of allowing divorced and civilly (invalidly) married people access to the Sacraments. Technically, sacramental marriage is absolutely indissoluble and any new union beyond civil divorce constitutes adultery. The Church I belong to, the ACC maintains this position which is that of the Roman Catholic Church. The situation of someone who is divorced (no canonical annulment) and civilly remarried (because a sacramental wedding in these conditions would be impossible) is inextricable. To return to the Sacraments, the person would have to separate from the new partner until an annulment has been obtained from a canonical tribunal that takes pleasure in taking its time and leaving people to suffer and die spiritually – or say To hell with the Church. The same happens with the delict of schism and ordination, though even that situation can be solved by a dispensation from the rigour of the law.
On one hand, we have a Roman Catholic hierarchy that is intransigent on this question, and on the other hand we have calls for re-marriage and same-sex marriage. The political dimension is staring us in the face. Let go of the absolute ban of access to the Sacraments of someone in an irregular situation and you have to open the window completely and let in everything else. It is easier to clam up. The “politically correct” media is waiting for the slightest crack so that it can move in and feast.
Amoris laetitia was perhaps a blunder on the part of the Pope, because it is all being brought out and discussed in black-and-white, all-or-nothing, terms. Pope Francis tried the approach of advising people in this situation privately, but it didn’t remain private. The press got hold of it, and now entire Episcopal Conferences are trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
As someone outside this hubbub, I will venture to give an opinion. Whilst adhering to the principles my Church and Rome have in common, the indissolubility of marriage, there are tragic situations with which we are all familiar once we get out of the various priests’ residences in Rome and libraries. The most frequent and tragic case is the victim of emotional and physical abuse by a partner with personality issues. Frankly, such a situation reveals an “error on the person” which can constitute a diriment impediment to the initial validity of the marriage. But, for such a nullity to be found, it has to go through a diocesan or curial marriage tribunal. Efforts have been made to quicken up the sluggishness of the system that shows its lack of pastoral or any kind of care for human beings. I got out of the RC Church in the John Paul II days, so I haven’t bothered finding out what is done these days.
Even in the absence of a canonically judged annulment, I do believe that there are many cases where pastoral care outweighs the literal observance of the law, where the original marriage is nothing more than something on paper. It no longer means anything in terms of a human community or a family in which children are safe and protected. Why do people want to remarry? I wouldn’t, but I cope well with solitude. Loneliness, being burdened with children and financial problems. Perhaps simply love…
There are many moral situations that are far from ideal, but are justified by the promotion of a higher good. An extreme example is the decision to trick the enemy in wartime to bomb a city to protect another that is producing the means to stop the war by winning it. This was the case with Coventry to save the armaments factories in Birmingham. Perhaps England should have surrendered to Hitler! Then more people would have been shipped off to concentration camps and an even greater sin of omission would have been committed. I can’t remember from academic moral theology whether this kind of thinking is justified, but it seems right to common sense. I can say that if I had a divorced person living with a new partner asking for the Sacraments nicely, privately and for the purposes of that person’s spiritual life, I would trust that person to be in good conscience. If the person asks for guidance, I would have to inform him or her of what the Church teaches, but that no soul may be forsaken by the Church or the channels of grace. Theoretically, I should distinguish between those who are having sexual relations with their post-marriage partners and those who are not. What a damned impertinent question! Since when is such a thing my business, unless the person wants to talk about it voluntarily?
A lot of this subject seems so artificial when so many people receiving the Sacraments are committing heinous sins of hypocrisy, doing the things politicians and sadistic lawyers or psychiatrists do. I only give an example among an infinite range of perverted human nature, not excluding the clergy. This alone is a sobering thought. The real problem in academic moral theology is adultery / fornication: having sex to someone you’re not married to. People get so steamed up about these things, and commit worse sins against other commandments and principles of God and humanity.
For once, I sympathise with the Pope deciding to circumvent the bishops and tell people over the phone what their parish priest might say in private. The trouble is that a pope can’t say anything in private to a person, and he even has to be careful that he is not being recorded in the confessional. It has happened in the days of Humanae Vitae! The seed of the Pharisees is much more perverse and iniquitous than questions of the flesh.
Pope Francis clearly wanted to change the Church’s practice on the admission of the divorced and civilly remarried to holy Communion, but could not get the synod of bishops to agree. It was an example of the Holy Spirit guiding the magisterium of the Church through the bishops against their head rather than in concert with him.
I think we ought to note this for when the same bishops try to hide behind their papal magisterium! Where are we going? Gallicanism or sedevacantism? They squirm about development of doctrine, and some way out of the cognitive dissonance. I feel sorry for them, and I note their blunders whilst someone like Richard Dawkins proposes another solution – do away with all religion and God and enjoy the freedom! More than for the divorced and civilly remarried person (or for that matter someone in simple concubinage), the situation for that Church is inextricable. The slightest contradiction of anything causes the whole to lose credibility. We need to revise the notion of truth: it is far beyond and above simple human epistemology.
More bureaucracy, more meetings, more corporate rationalism! It all makes me sick, and I am happy that it isn’t a single issue drum to be beaten, or an obsession or a cracked record, at every possible opportunity by my Church. Meetings and more meetings… Someone is having to pay for the hotel and food expenses of all those old men. What a damned waste!
These questions need to be dealt with in private. The Church has to maintain the indissolubility of marriage, and the teaching is clear. Perhaps the no-sex-outside-marriage can be treated as a matter of conscience, if the trust and confidentiality are not abused. It is akin to homosexuality. It isn’t my way, and the Church and Scriptures teach against it, but I would be merciful in the confessional. I oppose so-called “same-sex marriage” and militant flaunting, as for the so-called “gender” question, on which I have written quite unorthodoxly. People live in such a diversity of situations in life, and there just isn’t a law for all. We have to be in an order of things above law. I discussed Oscar Wilde a few days ago. I can’t condone his having gone with rent boys and ruined his family life, wife and children, but mercy and love is all such a man could relate to, certainly not repressive laws and inhumanity hiding behind them. Had I been his judge, I would have probably decided on a suspended sentence and advice to take his family to France – go and sin no more. There’s the difference…
This world is too full of claptrap and hype to be able to reason with the mass. One might as well try it with a crowd of football supporters or Sturmabteilung gangs in the 1930’s! Journalists with politically correct or dystopian agendas are no more rational or human.
Forget guidelines. Stick to principles, but be merciful in their application and judge the person as a human being. There is no point in discussing it in the street. Indeed, there are so many reasons why marriages break down, and mostly because of abuse and failure to communicate meaningfully. There may be fault on both sides to unequal degrees, or a clear case of unprovoked abuse.
I think Pope Francis has pulled a number a stupid stunts like the phone call to Argentina and trying to break the gravitas of the Papacy. He may be well-intentioned pastorally, but he fails to command my respect. He is the Pope! He can talk with his old faithful in Argentina and say what he wants, but in private. What good – cui bono – does it do? That Church seems to be utterly “screwed” and run by men who are as “pastoral” as priests as others are as psychiatrists and lawyers. It’s all their lousy careers and money.
I think I have been long-winded enough on the question. I have no hard and fast answers. The ideal is that a victim of a failed marriage should assume single life and manage with the children, the mortgage, a job and all the rest. They won’t come to me as a priest for spiritual advice before finding another partner, so we are presented with a fait accompli. It either stinks of something cheap and sordid – or arouses our instincts of compassion and empathy. No law can decide in every case how we are to make the best of a defective situation where nothing is ideal.
He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone…
There is something of the Epicurian in this posting. As Oscar Wilde once said:
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
It depends on the temptation. Usually in conventional language, temptation means what is pleasurable. A company that makes sweet chocolate cakes would advertise its product by calling it “Naughty but nice!“. Sweet cakes are fattening for someone who is trying to lose weight. At a higher level of poplar moralism is the question of sexuality, something that is made a market commodity and something supremely sordid through perversions and pornography. Wilde wrote provocatively to challenge the more absurd aspects of Victorian morality and public decency.
I have given much thought to the notion of simple sensuality as it is distinguished from sexuality. This is for the simple reason that many sensual experiences that bring pleasure have nothing to do with sexual intercourse which is typically between a man and a woman. There exists a whole range of paraphilias, a study of specialised psychology, where sexual pleasure is derived inappropriately from inanimate objects or parts of human bodies. Abstracts like domination or sadistic desires are sometimes expressed sexually. We become tired of commercialism and what is supposed to be “sexy” in both men and women. I do not wish to discuss this subject any further in this posting.
Many sensual experiences often arouse the human being without being connected with sexuality. From childhood, we become aware of our senses and what brings pleasure. For some, myself included, smells are important and contain many associations: a forest in spring and its earthiness, odours of home and childhood. My sense of smell has become extremely sensitive since I stopped smoking. I was surprised to detect a smell of cigars in my car; I must have driven past a car in which a person was smoking a cigar and a tiny amount of the smoke got into my van through the ventilation system. Feel is very important for me, whether through my fingers, other parts of the body or lips. This can determine how we dress as well as the question of appearance for other people and our own self-esteem. One lovely thing about having long hair is feeling it caressing one’s shoulders and back. Silk and satin bedsheets are very good for sleep and relaxation. Music and sounds in nature are also highly important. Taste is always less sensitive than smell, extremely so in a dog, and to a more moderate extent in humans. We are stimulated and brought awake by all the things we see each day, whether natural or works of human art and beauty.
Perhaps all this doesn’t seem very edifying coming from a priest! One problem in the Church is its tendency towards Stoicism and an anti-human asceticism: repression leading to worse moral and psychological disorders. The reduction of everything to sex is one of the greatest blunders of modern popular culture. For me, the earthy smell of the forest in spring will course through my entire body – but it is not sexual. It is an experience of another order.
Sensual experiences often lift us to the point of spiritual experience (to use a sober word), and this is how the liturgy can uplift the person who is sensually awake and in tune with the kind of culture that produced liturgy and art. The same is true in monastic spirituality in which life is lived according to principles of asceticism, austerity and discipline, from which the slightest experience is lived with an extreme acuity. A prisoner falls in love with the bird that settles on his window ledge outside the bars. Monastic Lent brings us to love and appreciate each leaf, the insects, the smell of the earth and everything around us as we walk through the Abbey grounds and the surrounding Vercors mountains (on my “day off”). This is sensuality at its highest. It is part of the Romantic awakening.
Perhaps many deviations of human desire might be solved by this vital distinction, so that the darkness may be illuminated by what is good and beautiful. Sexuality seems to be raw and brutish like animals mating to reproduce. Sensuality involves delicateness and tenderness, the feminine within all of us. Many men cannot cope with this aspect. As a child, I climbed trees outside, but loved to put on an old green satin dress to play with my sisters when I was indoors.
* * *
From a theological angle, I remember some fascinating lectures in moral theology by Fr Pinckaers at Fribourg University. The subject of eros (ἔρως) and agape (ἀγάπη) when considering love or caritas is vital in our understanding of ourselves, our ethics and Scriptural morality. Anders Nygren was a Swedish Lutheran in the 1930’s who wrote a book on this subject in two parts, both published in the 1930’s.
Much of our Christian theology of love for the sake of the other and for oneself is a major theme in St Paul’s Epistles. The Greek word ἀγάπη is usually translated as charity, a word that has become banalised to mean philanthropy or refraining from thinking, saying or doing evil against another person. The word love is as perverted in its modern meaning as romance (as distinct from Romanticism). It is brought down to the lowest common denominator of smuttiness or cheap sexuality. The Greek meanings have not changed – one advantage of a dead language, like Latin.
Love is motivated for each of us by pleasure and sensuality, which can then bring us to that pure disinterested love that is described in that great quotation from St Paul (I Corinthians 13) which we hear time and time again at weddings. Eros is based on our own needs and desires, and erotic love can be as much for God as for earthly things. Agape is unconditional and self-sacrificial, and it enters our life as a purification of our desires and sensual stimulation. Eros is not sinful, but provides a powerful motivation to seek transfiguration: it has not to be repressed but transcended, sublimated as Jung would have said. We are brought in the order of grace to love the other for the other’s own sake and not for our own.
Many problems in Christianity are caused by conflict between ἔρως and ἀγάπη. Christianity is a superposition of orthodox Jewish monotheism and the paganism of the gentiles it had to adopt to get the message through. There has always been this compromise, as will be seen when we compare nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholicism with Calvinist puritanism or Wahabee Islam. Nygren was quite opposed to this medieval compromise as being unfaithful to the true nature of Christian self-sacrifice and disinterested love. This was perhaps central to Luther’s Reformation. The highest kind of love is what we give our enemies, in the words of Christ. Love goes from our sensuality and desire to giving our lives, happiness and freedom for the other. This is the most difficult and the call to heroism. Is every Christian called to be a hero? Perhaps, but it will be a small Church, a “Benedict Option” – and churches and liturgies will be taken away from our countryside and the common folk. Elite or popular?
Medieval Catholicism might have had a lot wrong with it, but it was very healthy in places as attested in Eamon Duffy’s Stripping of the Altars. Medieval Catholicism indulged the erotic sense of the people, who would otherwise be passed-by and left to find spiritual expression in paganism and witchcraft. It is a pastoral consideration. One highly important piece of writing on the subject is Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus caritas est. This passage is capital:
Did Christianity really destroy eros? Let us take a look at the pre- Christian world. The Greeks—not unlike other cultures—considered eros principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a “divine madness” which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness. All other powers in heaven and on earth thus appear secondary: “Omnia vincit amor” says Virgil in the Bucolics—love conquers all—and he adds: “et nos cedamus amori”—let us, too, yield to love. In the religions, this attitude found expression in fertility cults, part of which was the “sacred” prostitution which flourished in many temples. Eros was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the Divine.
The Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, which represents a powerful temptation against monotheistic faith, combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But it in no way rejected eros as such; rather, it declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it. Indeed, the prostitutes in the temple, who had to bestow this divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and persons, but simply used as a means of arousing “divine madness”: far from being goddesses, they were human persons being exploited. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.
This is the kind of thought that formed me in my student days, both from the mouths of kindly Dominicans and the books I read. We have not to be inhibited from taking pleasure and enjoying what our senses bring us. We have to be purified – perhaps the meaning of Wilde’s suffering in prison, so that pureness will come out of the ecstasy – ex-stasis – being outside ourselves.
Let us fight against banality, cheapness, commercialisation, and discover our true selves by which we can learn to love God, humanity and the whole of created nature.
PS. The so-called statue of Eros, properly called the Shafesbury Memorial Fountain in London’s Piccadilly Circus (ironically a district that was once notorious for prostitution), is actually the Angel of Christian Charity, something most of us do not know.
Sorry, Elgar lovers. I came across Church or Corporation? It seems to give an American view of some of the things I have been discussing. It is said that the USA is just a few years behind Europe and Canada in terms of abandoning Christianity for materialist consumerism. I have been over there a few times and I have been impressed about how people will say Hi. How yer doin’? and supermarkets attendants who will pack your purchases into a bag or a box. Here in France, many will just give you a sour look and treat you as if you don’t exist. The Englishman in the Tube reading his newspaper will say, if you try to greet him – I don’t think we’ve been introduced. How different it is in two developed and industrial worlds that have traded with each other for centuries!
On the other hand, Europeans can be difficult to befriend, but when they do cross the barrier, they are loyal. Americans can also be loyal, but may leave little indication when they heed the last person to talk to them. That’s my impression at least.
Americans on an aeroplane (airplane for them) are as much at work whilst travelling as in their companies. Laptop computers and cell phones. We Europeans lazily look out of the windows at the clouds and brief appearances of the land below, enjoy the flight and read a novel when we get bored. I see something of American corporate life in films: high stress, speed, efficiency, maximum production. That is ergonomics, getting the job done efficiently and at affordable cost to keep the business running. Successful companies over here also have to get organised and compete, so human conditions of comfort are secondary to profit and cost effectiveness.
I have always worked for small firms, except my couple of months in a chocolate factory in York, and more recently self-employed. I have to be organised, efficient, pleasant to clients and being good at service. I have to make sure the job is done well and on time. At the same time, I am usually able to live at a slower and more human pace than people employed by large companies. For that, I am thankful.
Very often, one comes into contact with people who think that churches should be run on the same basis as large companies using methods like bureaucracy, project management, market research, marketing and advertising, production targets and suchlike. This mentality is widespread in America. The problem is that Christianity is a religion, a spirituality and a way of life, not a quantifiable product or service subject to the laws of merciless competition and pressure to sell the highest quality product at the lowest price, but yet to reap the biggest profits. The workforce takes the brunt of this pressure.
The corporate world thinks in terms of growth and quantifiable success. That notion operating in a church makes something inhuman and irreverent. It is a trap into which many lay Christians fall, because they consider themselves as paying customers, consumers, to be served competitively by priests and religious institutions.
In business terms, my own chapel is a failure. I am the only one to finance it (electricity, heating, consumables for the liturgy, maintenance, etc.). In business terms, the chapel should be sold and I should move on to where there is a market. Instead of that, I have just thanked God for being where I am and called to a more contemplative life in the catacombs. The Church as the Mystical Body of Christ deals as much with the communion of the Angels and departed human souls as with living people whether they live in my village or are to be found on blogs and Facebook. I have no profit to make of growth targets. It will be gone when I die and I pray that my books and liturgical items will be recovered by my Diocese for use somewhere else. What a difference!
I wrote some time ago about mega-churches, and more recently about some reflections from Cardinal Sarah about the Dictatorship of Noise. We are not competitive, preferring the strong to the weak, which last can be discarded as “useless eaters” (sorry about the same theme reoccurring). We are a Church.
What would William Blake say about the neatness and orderliness of corporate religion, the French garden as opposed to the haphazardness of nature? Would he not denounce such corporate religion mills as dark and satanic?
The world of God and spirit is more like nature, human and untidy, yet aspiring to the transcendent and the sublime. St Francis of Assisi taught us something about being less reliant on rationality and more on the heart and the will. God’s will is elsewhere than business strategies and market growth.
There is a balance, and there has to be some human organisation. It happens each time I decide what I am going to do on a given day and how – though allowances have to be made for the unforeseen. Reason is not all-powerful even if it is essential to guide the heart and our emotional life. It’s another world.
I have been watching a fascinating documentary about the Hippies of the 1960’s.
It is fascinating and the same themes come up again and again. I am struck by the shallowness of many of the people involved at the time, devoid of culture and having known only the materialist conventionalism of the 1950’s in the USA.
One aspect did come up, the use of drugs. It was mostly pot and LSD, sometimes heroin or cocaine. All these drugs are illegal and often dangerous for physical and mental health. Overdoses of alkaloids can kill. I have never touched any of them and I strongly advise anyone else to refrain. I don’t think that will be a problem for most of my readers!
That being said, the video mentioned a personality study about a group of people who took LSD in the 1960’s and claimed personality changes. William H. McGlothin, Long-Lasting Effects of LSD in Certain Attitudes in Normals: An Experimental Proposal. I have not yet read this study completely, but I intend to. In the video, it was said that the study was provoked by concern about the use of LSD and claims of personality changes, leading to the outlawing of the psychedelic drug. When the subjects were off the drugs, they reverted to their normal selves and personalities. They suffered no permanent changes or damage to their mental health. LSD, according to Dr McGlothin, is safe if taken under proper medical supervision in the right doses. All attitudes to life reverted to normal, in all but one question.
Their system of values was changed from the conventions of family, corporate employment and material wealth to the desire for a contemplative style of life, broad-mindedness and creativity. The drug obviously lowered inhibitions to allow some persons to express innate feeling and talents which had been suppressed by ambient culture and conformity. Here are the four most common experiences of people who have been on LSD trips:
Sudden insight or revelation with a sense of certainty.
Belief in unity – denial of the existence of opposites; good and evil are one.
A denial of the reality of time.
Evil is illusory.
It seems that these points concur with accounts I have read about those who have had near-death experiences (when the brain was so low in activity that unconsciousness should have been total) and those who had mystical experiences.
Some of us come to a more spiritual and contemplative view of life without drugs or special experiences caused by illness or by some miracle. In most ways, I am not impressed on seeing the Hippies and Counter Culture people of the 1960’s. I had a brief exposure at the age of 12, but I never entirely related to many of the turpitudes and the cult of “dropping out”. Things came together for me through reading and evaluating my own experience with conformist cultures like school and the Church. The expression of those young people was indeed shallow and foolish, but many of the intuitions and aspirations were just. Perhaps, after that false spring of fifty years ago, a more realistic movement of minds and hearts may arise.
Back to the subject of LSD: I am not readily given to conspiracy theories, but it is interesting to note that LSD was made illegal perhaps because it made persons who would become unpredictable and rebellious against the materialist and authoritarian order. You stop being politically correct when you take that stuff! I remember warnings at the time (around 1971) that LSD would make people believe they could fly and jump off roofs. I don’t know if this is true, but it is certain that no such drug should be taken without medical supervision as a part of an organised research project. There is also DMT, the so-called near death experience drug which is extremely powerful and has changed lives of those taking part in medical research projects. Ketamine, which used to be used for anaesthesia (and is still used by veterinary surgeons for animals), is another interesting one which is apparently safe under medical supervision.
I have never had the experience of those drugs, but the human mind certainly escapes control and repression. Our spirit soars and very occasionally touches the universal consciousness which we Christians call God. I regain optimism!
This entry more or less started as I took my boat out yesterday afternoon on the sea from Veules les Roses. The north-east wind was light and there was little swell. I close hauled into the wind and the tidal current to be sure of getting back to the slipway. For this purpose, I hugged the cliff so that I could make a little slow progress towards Saint Aubin, and then I went right out to sea on an exhilarating beam reach before finally going back to the beach and my launching trolley. It was perhaps during that time near the cliffs when the thought kept coming into my mind – why were are here, why we exist, all the usual questions everyone asks in childhood and old age.
The answer isn’t always to be doing things, but simply being, being gratuitous, being faced with the beauty of nature, the sea and the cliffs. It is not the first time I write about such themes of autumnal introspection, but I had not said everything with my postings on the so-called Benedict Option and the earlier articles on Romanticism. It is easy to look nostalgically to the past, whilst knowing that paradise is not found in this world or in time.
I vaguely remember my Scholastic philosophy from the Angelicum, all of thirty years ago, and something about the Transcendentals, in particular knowledge, truth, justice, goodness, love, beauty, being and the notion of home. I’m not bothered about the “right number” of these “things”, but about notions that are distinct from our fundamental animal instincts of survival (finding food, reproducing and defending one’s own life and sometimes the lives of others). The transcendent has nothing to do with survival, but things we yearn for as human beings, but which we will never find on earth in perfect form. We will always be unsatisfied in our quest for all these notions. It is one apologetic argument for God and the next world: it is pointless to yearn for what doesn’t exist. This yearning, which is universal, points to God and what lies beyond bodily death. I love the quote from C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity:
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
This notion of desire is an important part of the Romantic mind. It all ties in with the traditional Christian desire for heaven. We so often ask God in our liturgical prayers to teach us to relativise the things of this earth and yearn for heaven – doceas nos terrena despicere, et amare caelestia.
* * *
The second part of my reflection concerns the question of humanity, and the notion of humanism that largely sprang from the Renaissance. It was an attitude that sought to see the best in humanity, and which gave rise to movements seeking to help the sick and the poor, to abolish slavery and the death penalty. This tradition continued into the Romantic Russian soul like that of Dostoevsky and later philosophers like Nicholas Berdyaev. Of course, humanism has its limit unless it includes our spiritual dimension. Christian humanism was eventually replaced by secular humanism, giving rise to the worst or arrogance in technology, science and capitalism. Eventually, this kind of humanism would turn into post-humanism and trans-humanism. At this stage, we are faced with phenomena that are no less shocking than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The thought of many thinkers nowadays is increasingly anti-human.
Some are even advancing the notion that human beings are no higher or better than any other animal species, and therefore that humans should be culled by about ninety percent to provide a saved planet for the remaining elite. If war and famine won’t do the job efficiently enough, diseases like Ebola in a refined form would work wonders. Who would bury the bodies in the post-apocalyptic cities like in the movies? There is also forced sterilisation. All of a sudden, Nazism is back with a vengeance even without the raging Austrian corporal, the jackboots and Prussian military marches.
Anti-humanism is usually much less extreme than packing people onto trains to Auschwitz, but it is the anti-life ideology decried by Pope John Paul II in particular. The last of the secularists call for an end to human rights, abortion (compulsory if necessary) and euthanasia for those who “steal oxygen”. For the anti-humanist, who in reality is the modern philistine, art, creativity and personal genius have no value. They are just conventional ideas. Freedom is an illusion. It is easy to imagine these people dreaming of having the western world go under Sharia Law and the barbarity of radical Islam.
Christian humanism recognises and bewails the effects of sin and depravity, yet humans carry the image of God. God became man that man might become God in the ideas expressed by some of the Church Fathers. In this expression is found a notion of transfiguration or θέōσις of the lower into the higher. This notion is not restricted to Eastern Orthodox theology but is also found in some of the western Fathers and even in the high-church Anglican divines of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. For example, John Wesley’s writings of full of this notion of salvation that begins here in this life. That humans can be united with God gave the spirituality of men like St Francis de Sales and St Philip Neri among many others. This is Christian humanism, which may be the only thing that will defend humanity against the encroaching darkness.
I dream of a new Romanticism beyond the superficial drifts of the Bohemians, Beatniks and Hippies, something profound and not limited to dress and tastes in modern music. We humans need to rediscover feeling and purify it from banality and shallowness. Many turn to a world other than hopelessness and the idea that money is absolutely everything. Money is usually our recompense for complete conformity to a world that seeks to enslave, exploit and kill the spirit. Romanticism is not an ideal in itself, but an attitude that will probably develop yet again in history. It will develop as an antidote to the extreme rationalism of management, business, bureaucracy and politics. I can tell whether the best aspirations have succumbed, even those communities calling themselves free and respectful of diversity, when they are entirely in the “politically correct” mould and reeking to high heaven of hypocrisy.
A new Romanticism would not have the appearance of the old one of Keats, Shelley, Brahms, Wordsworth and Beethoven. What would be similar would be the inner idea of a boundless energy and desire for a new world, which can be reproduced in this world as “in a glass darkly”. One theme that penetrates throughout the New Testament is that of the law and grace, bondage and freedom, especially in St Paul but also in the Gospels. The law was given for man in his lower unreasoning state. The children of the free woman know no law but that of love and grace, the Transcendentals as I mentioned above. This is the principle of Christian anarchism, because law and totalitarianism are consequences of sin and falling from grace.
Romantics fell into sin, and often very seriously through every turpitude possible, but that does not condemn the ideal, the essential of which was freedom from dead convention and law (compare that with what Christ said about the Pharisees), the love of nature (a lesson we learn this day from St Francis of Assisi) and devotion to beauty. Beauty is an icon of our desire for what is attainable only in heaven. For our day even more than at the end of the eighteenth century, who, if he is a sensitive person, would not wish to be emancipated from the mechanisms of bureaucracy and managerial organisation in favour of intuition and dealing with issues individually and on the merit of each. Who would not prefer to negotiate with a banker for a loan rather than be “evaluated” for “security and status” by a computer? Who would not prefer a parish to be human and pastoral rather than a machine for processing information and people considered as consumer units or whatever? These are the aspirations of many of us, and possible only in small societies where people care about each other. This is the essential of the Romantic spirit, just the same as that which opposed the absurdities of the late eighteenth century and the revolutionary Terror just as much. As in the early nineteenth century, there needs to be something new with its roots in a more human and Christian age. To maintain a balanced position, there has to be organisation in life for practical reasons. Machines have to be designed to the user’s specifications. Not everything can be left haphazard or to chance. Even my little Diocese has meetings, discussions on how to do things, and we have rules and laws which are more of a reference in case of a dispute rather than a spirit of legalism. That is one thing I love about our ACC.
As the old Romantics reacted away from the boundless capitalism of the Industrial Revolution and the bloodthirsty moralism of Robespierre’s Terror, we react today against the excesses of European regulations and standards coming from the Brussels bureaucracy. We are concerned about the spectre of control and surveillance, the cult of the politically correct and intolerance masquerading as liberalism and love of freedom. We are over-regulated. Unbound capitalism flaunts itself as the “end of history” (at least until the money runs out). Our values are marketed and distorted, culture is sold off. We are dehumanised. We are being ripped off by the banks and politicians, by the global elites of oligarchs. We have the internet, and it is still an open forum of ideas – at least for now…
Romanticism is implicit in a good amount of thought of our times or just before. Tolkein is the great example of the imagination and the fantastic, the idea of another world. C.S. Lewis constantly expressed these themes in his work and thought. Modern cinema is something amazing, very much the art form of our time since the silent movies of the 1920’s and 30’s. We have virtual reality to make films of things that are completely impossible in our world. I have almost fallen in love with the baroque and gothic buildings in Star Wars, all made of virtual reality and carefully selective photography. The myth of the Jedi is entirely built on notions of medieval chivalry, and strikes home with a familiar note. Fantasy films take us away from “reality” into the rapture of a dream. Such is the power of the imagination enhanced by technology and art.
How many of us would like to break from conventions in fashion and appearance. This is one motivation that brought me to decide to stop cutting my hair three years ago. The symbolism of a man with long hair is powerful. He is a person who has broken out of slavery (slaves and prisoners used to have their heads shaved) and is a free man. Christ is more likely than not to have had long hair (if we go by the Turin Shroud) and most men of any originality in history had long hair. Many people go much further in their expression by clothing or accessories like piercings and tattoos. This rebellious behaviour in dress and appearance began in the 1960’s and even the 1950’s in a few places. The dandies and fops of the nineteenth century were no different in the way of their time.
I would love to see aspects of the new Romanticism move towards an appreciation of the past as well as their vision of the future. I have a couple of medieval style shirts that I love wearing around the house with their extremely baggy sleeves – but my wife hates them! Perhaps Romantics could wear medieval and nineteenth century style dress to set a new way that might inspire some. If you have the money to spend and dare to turn a few heads, here is an example of a shop that sells all that kind of stuff, mostly for disguises and theatrical shows. Clothing is only the exterior – L’habit ne fait pas le moine, but it is significant for us.
One things about the Romantic temperament is that a person considers himself as wild. We see the appeal of Tarzan and the vision of the man in a boat at sea, walking over the high Alps, being away from mass tourism and other people worrying about whether you are safe. [OK, I wear a lifejacket in my boat and a seatbelt in my van. I try not to risk my neck, but I prefer to take my own responsibility for the matter.] I am rather bored by horror films, and the modern ones are downright nasty. Perhaps there is the exception of a fine Frankenstein film from the 1990’s. I mentioned in another posting that I loved thunderstorms as a boy, something that caused my mother no small amount of concern. There is something of the Sturm und Drang in the new Romantic. This is something I always loved in Beethoven’s music inherited from Haydn before him. It was an instinct that drew me to the pipe organ. Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo character inspired me considerably as a boy. Later I learned about his dreadful passion for vengeance and killing by ramming and sinking naval ships with his submarine. He was not only a passionate Romantic but a rather unpleasant psychopathic killer. This is the drama, to a lesser degree in many.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Indeed that murderous energy of Nemo was motivated thus:
La mer est le vaste réservoir de la nature. C’est par la mer que le globe a pour ainsi dire commencé, et qui sait s’il ne finira pas par elle ! Là est la suprême tranquillité. La mer n’appartient pas aux despotes. À sa surface, ils peuvent encore exercer des droits iniques, s’y battre, s’y dévorer, y transporter toutes les horreurs terrestres. Mais à trente pieds au-dessous de son niveau, leur pouvoir cesse, leur influence s’éteint, leur puissance disparaît ! Ah ! Monsieur, vivez, vivez au sein des mers ! Là seulement est l’indépendance ! Là je ne reconnais plus de maîtres ! Là je suis libre !
Star Wars often mentions the Dark Side of the Force. It is not merely evil and sin, but a nemesis we have within each of us. I find Jung’s psychology and gnosticism fascinating. It is one means by which we can attain some degree of self-knowledge and healing of our difficulties whatever they may be in each of us. The theory is complex, and I won’t go into it all here. Our life is made of choices, and perhaps the shadow or the “dark side” is what we do not choose, or choose if we go really bad! It is a story of Jeckyl and Hyde in each one of us. If you want to know more about this subject, here is an introduction. This theme of the light and darkness go right the way through Romanticism. The above quote from Verne and his Nemo character is full of this dialectic of committing monstrous evils for a noble reason.
One thing I do notice is that many independently-minded people moved from the cities to the country and bought old farms or houses. That’s what I did, and I have lived the solitude – in and out of marriage – more or less well. I also notice the growth of eco-villages and intentional communities, some of which are totalitarian caricatures, but most are founded on the respect of diversity and the notion of friendship. Many are quite “New Age”, whilst others may find a deeper spiritual and cultural expression.
Many people think it is unhealthy to look back at childhood, but we read this in Holy Writ:
At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
This text will be capable of many interpretations, but the child’s world is one of creativity and naivety. As I took up sailing, I returned to my thoughts of a twelve-year old boy. This time, it was no longer the vengeful and powerful Captain Nemo but in a frail sailing dinghy. Swallows and Amazons is a theme that is close to my heart, both through my origins in the Lake District and these children of the 1930’s. What parent would allow their children to go off sailing unsupervised nowadays? In the 1960’s, we could still climb trees, get our knees grazed, make a kid’s tricycle into a sailing kart with an old bedsheet on a broomstick, go fishing. In the house, I loved to dress up as a girl to play with my sisters. I often wish I had the long hair I have now! This was really brought home to me when I saw paintings of long-haired boys from the 1890’s and 1900’s before their breeching. To some extent, I have “unbreeched” myself even though I wear trousers when I need to. Breeching tended to make the free-minded boy into a boring and conventional man. This connection over a span of time of forty-five years has done a lot for my spiritual and mental health. Perhaps this is getting close to what Jesus had in mind…
Another dimension of the Romantic mind is a love of a rose-tinted middle ages. We know that the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries were violent times, when you could die a very nasty death. Disease, filth and the lack of many things we consider indispensable nowadays – just for having a crap! At the same time, there was chivalry, the cathedrals, the illuminations in books of chant and liturgical books. The liturgy in its complex ceremonies was something normal inherited from the way things were done. The Romantic version of the middle ages might not be historical or authentic, all Viollet le Duc and Pugin, Percy Dearmer and the Dreaming Spires and temples of youth of Oxford and Cambridge. Despite its undoubted distortions, something lovely came out of the Romantic era and that of the Pre-Raphaelites, Ruskin and Dearmer. That is something that brought me to be interested in the old Sarum liturgy from the early 1980’s rather than the rigid authoritarian style of Roman Catholicism.
Such is the desire for something unattainable on earth. Living in France, I would listen to Vaughan Williams, Elgar and other English composers. I am often overcome with emotion about my English origins and an England that was never mine. Every time I make the trip over by car and ferry, I am confronted by the reality of a life that is all about money and nothing but money. I see the political hypocrisy and cant that has ruined my country. Housing is unaffordable. I don’t really belong in France either, but I have a house and enjoy the rebellious and unconventional attitude of the French. It has always been like that! Finally the England of my dreams is not England, but something only beyond the veil. Perhaps listening to this will bring you to feel as I feel:
I doubt that you will feel it as I do. Perhaps you might. Music conveys things no human language can. What is important is not where you live but who you are, where you are.
Finally, a word of warning. Any movement of thought is susceptible to becoming rationalised, organised, managed and controlled. From that point, the salt loses its savour and is no good to man nor beast. This is something I have seen with some intentional communities and official “culture”. It happened to Christianity, and how Christianity survived Christianity is a mystery to me! The seed is still with us and it comes up again and again in history, even implicitly and using language other than “church” language. I would hate to see a new form of Romanticism become “mainstream” or “official”. I hate to be “in fashion” and I would hate my own ways and appearance to become fashionable! I speak not only of externals but also these questions like freedom and desire for the Transcendent.
Let it be something we can each discover and live in our secret gardens, wherever we live, be it inspiring or arid. This is something of my purpose in this blog.
It will be the feast of St Jerome tomorrow, the patron Saint of translators, even though I don’t work from Greek into Latin! He was said to be a cantankerous fellow, but he must have had some virtues to be a Saint and a Father of the Church!
Here’s a song from my own childhood with fond memories of the Manchester Ship Canal as my father drove over the immense M6 motorway bridge when we went on holiday.
I have seen this expression – Benedict Option – being bandied about on the internet. Here is an article by the American conservative Rod Dreher – Benedict Option FAQ. I am sceptical about anything coming from across the Atlantic, because an idea is taken, institutionalised and mechanised and made like the system from which it sought to escape. It becomes a new conformist paradigm. The same happened with Romanticism when the word and the inner ideas came to be banalised and made into sentimental slush about boys meeting girls and falling in “love”. Eventually, the Beast assimilates everything, and this Benedict Option will go the same way down the drain-hole of political correctness.
On first view, it seems attractive. The French monastic movement stemming from Solesmes and Dom Guéranger came straight out of the Romantic movement as did Anglo-Catholicism and Arts & Crafts and the various rebel movements away from the Establishment and the Machine. It is all coming together for me as a global vision – but there lay the seeds of its destruction and assimilation by political correctness and a new vice of conformity and intolerance of diversity. Anything can get too big for its own good.
John Senior and other American intellectuals dreamed of ways that the Christian ideal as a form of Romanticism could survive the collapse of society as happened with the end of the Roman Empire and the Civitas Dei of St Augustine. It was in the sixth century that St Benedict picked up elements of the old monastic traditions and the Fathers and produced a new vision of the balanced and moderate monastic life that could be realistically lived, whilst maintaining the essential of prayer, work, asceticism and community life.
Rod Dreher compares the Roman Empire with the current state of the American imperium. Indeed, the USA looks like becoming a new totalitarian empire (without comparing it with the Nazis) that continues to conquer territories to which it has no legal or moral right and thereby exposing s all to the spectre of a nuclear war. “Killary” or Trump, it seems to make no difference. The empire is still waging war everywhere and is trillions of dollars in debt. Sooner or later, it will crack, and many will die or be thrust out into destitution and exile.
New communities? So far I have heard of none other than traditional monasteries with celibate and professed monks and nuns living under the Abbatial crozier and the Rule. Is there a community life possible for ordinary people other than marriage and the nuclear family? I did some time ago write about intentional communities, which are not always religious or Christian. Those communities are not always easy to discern as to their intentions, or whether they consist of a few free souls or yet another form of political correctness and totalitarianism.
I suppose that the Benedict Option is an idea of individual persons and small communities, perhaps families in a few cases, consisting of breaking away from the system to build an alternative way of life. That is what the Hippies and some of the old Romantics did. Human nature being what it is, the community usually lacks stability and falls apart due to differences between persons and various forms of intolerance. Among strictly Christian communities, the monastery has abided because of its system of authority and obedience, therefore an imitation of the world and the Establishment. The only difference is that it is smaller. The only alternative is the kind of community with tolerance and encouragement of diversity built into its constitution so that people live between community life and life as free individual persons.
In Dreher’s article, we note the rejection of the Enlightenment and the yearning for tradition or some aspiration that lies beyond the limits of earthly life. That is the basis of Romanticism, also something that can go horribly wrong and dark. Dreher also notes that it is not simply a question of going to the “right” church on Sundays, when most people are living in consumerist conformity. I am also limited by the fetters of being married and paying for a house, and to a wife with personality issues.
I understand the aspiration towards a kind of “lay monastery”. Who is going to be the infallible leader to keep it all together? If there is no infallible leader, on what principle can such a thing be founded so that it will stay together and prosper. Dreher cites no example of something that has worked out, and this creates suspicion and scepticism. Perhaps individuals with such aspirations can join a community founded on vaguely Romantic foundations and not seek to convert everyone to Christianity or that person’s understanding of Christianity. In which case, as individuals, we live in the catacombs in the ordinary secular world and get on with other people with a strict self-discipline of discretion and respect for diversity. That is the beginning of the contemplative aspect of Christianity as opposed to the imperium.
Americans often winge and lament the disappearance of institutional Christianity from life. They should come to France, where “true” secularism is not tolerance of all, but a narrow form of atheism and anti-clericalism. Much of post-Communist Europe is sterile and devoid of Christianity. Is there any Romanticism left either? Difficult to say.
St Benedict founded monasteries, and that is a very special vocation to live in a small totalitarian society in which you accept having your personality crushed and made compliant as is not even found in military life. I was a working guest at Triors from December 1996 to July 1997 and installed two organs in their Abbey church. I esteemed the Abbot, Dom Hervé Courau, an austere but just man. He agreed with me that monastic life is the ultimate form of socialist totalitarianism, except that it is accepted voluntarily as a form of asceticism. If this is so, alternative living cannot be based on monasticism. I loved the Offices and the context of the buildings and their lands – but monastic life was not for me. I might have become an Oblate, but my future orientation of life was too uncertain.
In the nineteenth century, many attempts were made to inspire parish life from monastic spirituality. One example was Mesnil Saint Loup and Fr Emmanuel. There is still a monastery there to this day. I have known parish priests who were Benedictine secular Oblates and went to the Opus Sacerdotale retreat each year at Fontgombalt. These priests often has a Romantic outloook on life, loved the liturgy and would promote reverence and Gregorian chant. They would continue to wear the cassock and be assiduous with their daily Office and times of private prayer and reading. Another effect was the love of simple life and not being afraid to build things with one’s own hands.
Of course, there are the fundamental principles that can rule our lives even if we are lay people or secular priests. The first is our fundamental purpose of life and vocation, to devote ourselves to God in an utterly singular way, a notion especially but not exclusively familiar to people with Aspergers Syndrome! Connected with this vocation is a notion of self-discipline and being down-to-earth by means of prayer and work. Another is resisting our flights of instability and believing we will find paradise on earth. Paradise is elsewhere, and we can be on pilgrimage towards it just where we are, unless we are truly threatened by evil. Much of the “greener grass” on the other side of the fence is illusory, and we will regret it if we go that way. Another is community, communion, the life of the Trinity reflected in us all who bear the image of God. The community needs to be designed for the reality of totalitarianism or a form of democracy and participation. We have to choose. Another essential element is hospitality: welcoming visitors and people in need. There has to be balance between Christian hospitality and self-defence against evil people and enemies. We can forgive our enemies, but we have the duty of defending ourselves from them.
I am also sceptical about intentional communities, which are often cult-like with totalitarian leaders. Perhaps a more realistic possibility is the “eco-village” where people with compatible outlooks on life can buy a small plot of land, build something to live in and take on a commitment to an agreed amount of community work (farm work, gardening, crafts, etc.). Most people in such a setup would not be Christians but would also have a defined and identifiable vocational motivation. The Christian keeps it to himself, but is open to others enquiring about the Christian way. That I could see working, as long as the basis of the entire community is not political correctness but true love of diversity and freedom. Watch out for bureaucracy and the “managerial” style!
Dreher does mention some existing communities, and they need to be looked into. Some monasteries let or sell land around the outside of their buildings to oblates. Clear Creek in America does that. They would have to be extremely selective! The Brüderhof of German origin are intriguing. As with a monastery, it depends on your vocation and your ability to live according to their rules and criteria, and accept the upheaval in your life (selling one’s house, dispersing ones possessions, etc.).
The alternative is living the ideal where one is, with all the constraints of “feeding the Beast” and living at home with screaming kids and the television blaring. Can we impose our vocation on an unsympathetic wife and the needs of children in the modern world? I don’t think so. Yesterday, I mentioned Oscar Wilde who was imprisoned for his various turpitudes, and had to discover suffering as asceticism and a source of transformation. Most men who are punished in this way suffer the broken heart of a good man or become worse when they are bad. Suffering can be accepted as asceticism, but is not in itself asceticism. Asceticism is the ability to discipline oneself and limit the effects of fallen human nature and sin. A contemplative life is possible in the worst of distractions and noise, if the interior is silent and in peace. That is probably the most difficult thing in the world. We need breaks from “normal life” and go frequently on retreat. That can be a monastery or something like sailing or a hike in the forest or the mountains. The Romantic love of nature meets the inner contemplative life. If our life is true, it will be its own living witness and will be detected by those who have intuition and sensitivity. There is no need for marketing or preaching!
I am sceptical about using labels because they set trends. When this happens, the wrong sort of people are attracted, the so-called wannabe or super-ego that imitates and caricatures an idea, and reduces it to banality and a marketable consumer product. This goes as much for Romanticism as Benedict Option or Classical Anglican or anything else. This is the phenomenon of the market brand and the world of money, conformity and status. The Romantics did not call themselves by that term. The fact that Oscar Wilde did brought him down somewhat in my esteem. If they did not call themselves anything but gave priority to the idea rather than the super-ego, perhaps the idea had some hope.
I admire Dreher’s attempt at saving Christianity. I don’t think Christianity is something to be saved, but rather something that is just there and waiting for us to embrace it and our own souls. My big discovery in life is that genius resides in individual persons and not in collectivities. A church committee takes three hours to decide on changing the vestry light bulb: who is going to do the job with what safety precautions, who is going to pay for it, and all the rest. The individual buys a bulb, climbs up a stepladder and changes the bulb. The committee is still discussing it. Plurality of humans makes for inefficiency and stupidity. Individually, we have a strangely consistent and coherent system of ideas, and we all think in similar ways. Together, the intelligence and good sense go out of the window and stupidity enters the picture. It’s a hard judgement on my part, but an indicator of what makes communities fail, not so much because of a difference of personalities, but the collective bêtise. This is a fundamental intuition of the Romantic, before that word got assimilated by the collectivity.
If this alternative community idea gets assimilated by the institutional Church, it has already failed or become a part of the corporate world. From the beginning of my time as a Roman Catholic (1981-1997), I intuitively felt stifled and forced into a mould in which I did not belong. My vocation was made illusory and I became unstable. The roots are in my own experience of life together with a system that could not bring me anywhere near my aspiration that was in any case unattainable in this world. I can live in the ACC as an institutional Church because the process of mechanisation isn’t even begun, let alone completed! It is still a community of inspired persons. Conservatives complain about individualism because they believe that human life can only be lived under the domination of the wealthy and strong in a class system – as opposed to the creative genius of the individual person. I believe that assumption is wrong. Community comes from consensus of aspiration to the highest.
There is the notion of the apprenticeship, a different kind of relationship between the master and the disciple. This is the way Christ did everything with the small group and the larger group of disciples. We are not masters of crafts spontaneously. We need to be taught by someone we esteem and view as a father. This is something different from the infallible leader, but things can quickly degenerate. This notion has disappeared from the world, and relationships between younger and older people are now reduced by political correctness to occasions of sin, just like in the nineteenth century – or calls for “same sex marriage”. Note, the ancient Greek idea was person to person, and there lay creative genius and the basis of community.
Language gets distorted into ideology, just as is probably happening in my own writings. I feel what is wrong more than rationalising or understanding it completely and globally. I make slow progress, but feel I am getting there.
We are not going to see the fruits of our labours. There may be none if World War 3 breaks out and they push the red button. If there is not a single human left on the earth, then it won’t matter. Either we will be annihilated as the atheists believe, or we will experience a new world in another dimension (or whatever analogy we choose). We hope to bring hope and joy to those still in via as I still am (otherwise I wouldn’t be bashing away on a computer). I hope yet to give back something for what I received from God.
I am not bothered with big institutional Churches like Rome or Lambeth. They don’t matter. What does matter is the Mustard Seed and the Kingdom it conveys. Dreher seems to understand the Romantic message even if he does not use the word (because of the contemporary understanding of “romance” or the turpitudes of men like Byron, Shelley and Keats). We do not live up to our own ideals, but we must have the ideals and vocational aspiration.
I see people without this vocation or what makes them real. I see the super-ego, the possessing spirit, and it is very ugly. It makes the closest loved one unrecognisable in the ugliness of a satyr or a gargoyle. It is frightening, and I ask myself what protected me from that hollowness and death in life. There but for the grace of God go I…
Very few will ever be up to a “Benedict Option“, because they have to have something that is not bought with money or taken from other people. Many are called an few are chosen, which does not mean I believe that most people will go to hell when they die, in the manner of the Jansenists and Calvinists. The mystery is beyond heaven and hell. God is above God. I do believe that souls will be given the chance to receive illumination even after bodily death. We all need healing from the effects of our sins but also from our faulty creation.
Hold on through the dark night? We are already there, and we will only find the light within ourselves, from the spark of divinity that the Demiurge and the Archons are unable to destroy (I use Gnostic terminology as an analogy, which was intended in the first place). We face a future not unlike Europe in the 1930’s, but much, much, worse.
You who are reading this, if you feel called to a community or form a new one, go for it. Some people have the freedom of not being tied down by marriage, debts or jobs. Be prepared to give up a lot to buy the precious pearl.
Another thing is that to be Christians, we don’t have to look like the stereotypes. Under persecution, Christians retreat to the catacombs and look like ordinary folk when they go to work, buy food and participate in cultural activities. Our community life as contemplatives can be spent temporarily with those with whom we come into contact in ordinary life. Their capacity for community, as ours, is limited. Not too much can be expected. We can only give so much before getting it thrown back in our faces. My monastery is where I live, the work I do and my privileged moments of retreat in the chapel or out in nature, whether in the boat or on foot.
It all depends on ourselves, none other. Simple as that…
* * *
Erratum: I am not as informed about Clear Creek Abbey as I thought. I have just received this message in a private e-mail:
I have visited Clear Creek as a lay retreatant on three occasions and I am writing to correct one mistake that you (or some source of yours) made about the developments of community in that region:
The monks do not sell land to neighboring lay persons. To the extent that lay persons have moved to the area to be near the monastery, they have purchased land from the Baptists or whoever were the native inhabitants of the place; they have not bought it from the monks. Insofar as Dreher and others write about the “Clear Creek neighborhood,” it is a notional space that includes people who drive as far as 40 minutes to attend Mass. It includes very few people who live close enough to walk to the monastery on any regular basis.
Romanticism is very difficult to define and many attempts to define it resemble the cold rationalism from which it reacted some two hundred years ago. The subject fascinates me, not only as a historical state of mind in given circumstances but also something of my own experience of life. I was drawn to Christianity not by rational argument or moralism but through medieval churches, choral music and an inner yearning for a love that is unattainable on this earth. That being said, there are two Christianities, that which is based on the yearning for the beyond, and the other which is based on rationalism and the dominance of the strong.
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.
This is an image to illustrate the belief of Roman Catholics in the indefectibility of the Church. St Peter’s Basilica stands on a solid rock in the midst of the sea, presumably the Rock of St Peter (“Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church”). The image needs a good look, because my first impression was that of a number of people in a boat who had moored their vessel to the rock. I thought: what a dangerous thing to do in such a rough sea, because the violent waves would crush the boat against the forbidding cliffs and kill everybody on board.
The Blue Flower 