Pope Francis Publishes Encyclical Letter "Lumen Fidei"

Check it out on the Vatican's website!

The Excesses of God

Christ is the infinite self-expenditure of God… he points back to the structural law of creation, in which life squanders a million seeds in order to save one living one; in which a whole universe is squandered in order to prepare at one point a place for spirit, for man. Excess is God's trademark in his creation; as the Fathers put it, "God does not reckon his gifts by the measure."  At the same time excess is also the real foundation and form of salvation history, which in the last analysis is nothing other than the truly breathtaking fact that God, in an incredible outpouring of himself, expends not only a universe but his own self in order to lead man, a speck of dust, to salvation. So excess or superfluity––let us repeat––is the real definition or mark of the history of salvation. The purely calculating mind will always find it absurd that for man God himself should be expended. Only the lover can understand the folly of a love to which prodigality is a law and excess alone is sufficient. Yet if it is true that the creation lives from excess or superfluity, that man is a being for whom excess is necessity, how can we wonder that revelation is the superfluous and for that very reason the necessary, the divine, the love in which the meaning of the universe is fulfilled?

Josef Ratzinger

Introduction to Christianity

Here Goes.

OK, well I've got two days down, and I'd better post to this blog before I forget.

The most striking change: I'm not around people any more. Every day as a priest is spent in the company of, at a minimum, a hundred or so people. Here, I see the same 5 morning and evening (though there are others here studying or on retreat, we don't interact much at all). I kind of like it––for now. I'm sure by the time I'm done I'll be hankering to be shuffling around in the madding crowd once again.

My academic duties are quite heavy. The two classes I'm taking meet every day. The first covers the history of Christian thought from 1500-1900. Yes, that includes the leading figures of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Romantic movement, and Catholic theological responses to it. Oh yeah, and the Council of Trent, Vatican I, and the development of neo-scholastic and ressourcement theology (what you might call "strains" of contemporary theology). It's being taught by a German priest of Turkish and Hungarian descent, who routinely pronounces Latin, German, Hungarian, and English phrases with such a heavy accent that it takes a minute or two to understand the syllables coming out of his mouth, or even to realize "ah, he's speaking in another language". But he's a genius, and tremendously humble. He entertains any and all questions. You could literally interrupt him in the middle of the most profound thought he's ever had and he would immediately break off to let you speak your piece. He would take your dumb question and demonstrate to the whole class why a truly wise theologian would ask such a thing. 

Deep down, I think this is the reasonable response to what we bring to the table:

Yet we are indulged. Truly, a teacher.

The other class covers the classics of contemporary theology. I'm reading Josef Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity and Hans Urs von Balthasar's Mysterium Paschale, which is a theological exploration of the tenet of the creed that says of Christ "he descended into hell". The class is taught by a Jesuit who regularly inserts Shakespearean bon mots in his everyday conversations and is currently reading to us (literally, reading to us) from the first two chapters of his latest book (which is still in manuscript form). We are mostly expected to listen and catch typos. I enjoy him very much.

I've had a number of very surprising reunions, including a college classmate ordained for the Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul, a seminary classmate ordained two weeks after me, and of course all the people I lived with for the 5 years I spent in formation here. The place has gotten even more beautiful, with all sorts of luscious greenery and careful landscaping. What a sanctuary. 

I hope to continue updates every few days, including delicious snippets from my theological reading. I'll leave you with something from Ratzinger's book, published in 1968:

Anyone who tries today to talk about the question of Christian faith in the presence of people who are not thoroughly at home with ecclesiastical language and thought by calling or convention soon comes to sense the alien––and alienating––nature of such an enterprise. He will probably soon have the feeling that his position is only too well summed up in Kierkegaard's famous story of the clown and the burning village... According to this story, a traveling circus in Denmark had caught fire. The manager thereupon sent the clown, who was already dressed and made-up for the performance, into the neighboring village to fetch help, especially as there was a danger that the fire would spread across the fields of dry stubble and engulf the village itself. The clown hurried into the village and requested the inhabitants to come as quickly as possible to the blazing circus and help to put the fire out. But the villagers took the clown's shouts simply for an excellent piece of advertising, meant to attract as many people as possible to the performance; they applauded the clown and laughed until they cried. The clown felt more like weeping than laughing; he tried in vain to get people to be serious, to make it clear to them that it was no trick but bitter earnest, that there really was a fire. His supplications only increased the laughter; people thought he was playing his part splendidly––until finally the fire did engulf the village, it was too late for help and both circus and village were burned to the ground.

... the theologian is the clown who cannot make people really listen to his message. In his medieval, or at any rate old-fashioned clown's costume he is simply not taken seriously. Whatever he says, he is ticketed and classified, so to speak, by his role. Whatever he does in his attempts to demonstrate the seriousness of the position, people always know in advance that he is in fact just––a clown. They are already familiar with what he is talking about and know that he is just giving a performance which has little or nothing to do with reality. So they can listen to him quite happily without having to worry too seriously about what he is saying. This picture indubitably contains an element of truth in it; it reflects the oppressive reality in which theology and theological discussion are imprisoned today and their frustrating inability to break through accepted patterns of thought and speech and make people recognize the subject-matter of theology as a serious aspect of human life.

But perhaps our examination of conscience should go still deeper. Perhaps we should admit that this disturbing analogy, for all the thought-provoking truth contained in it, is still a simplification. For after all it makes it seem as if the clown, or in other words the theologian, is a man possessed of full knowledge who arrives with a perfectly clear message. The villagers to whom he hastens, in other words those outside the faith, are conversely the completely ignorant, who only have to be told something of which they are completely unaware; the clown then needs only to take off his costume and his make-up, and everything will be all right. But is it really such a simple matter as that? Need we only call on the aggiornamento [updating], take off our make-up and don the mufti of a secular vocabulary or a demythologized Christianity in order to make everything all right? Is a change of intellectual costume sufficient to make people run cheerfully up and help to put out the fire which according to theology exists and is a danger to all of us? I may say that in fact the plain and unadorned theology in modern dress appearing in many places today makes this hope look rather naïve. It is certainly true that anyone who tries to preach the faith amid people involved in modern life and thought can really feel like a clown, or rather perhaps like someone who, rising from an ancient sarcophagus, walks into the midst of the world of today dressed and thinking in the ancient fashion and can neither understand nor be understood by this world of ours. Nevertheless, if he who seeks to preach the faith is sufficiently self-critical, he will soon notice that it is not only a question of form, of the kind of dress in which theology enters upon the scene. In the strangeness of theology's aims to the men of our time, he who takes his calling seriously will clearly recognize not only the difficulty of the task of interpretation but also the insecurity of his own faith, the oppressive power of unbelief in the midst of his own will to believe. Thus anyone today who makes an honest effort to give an account of the Christian faith to himself and to others must learn to see that he is not just someone in fancy dress who needs only to change his clothes in order to be able to impart his teaching successfully. Rather will he have to understand that his own situation is by no means so different from that of others as he may have thought at the start. He will become aware that on both sides the same forces are at work, if in different ways.

Gosh.... makes me wonder if Ratzinger was ever a high school chaplain.

Comments welcome.

rev.nb

Faith as Joy

Well, too many months have passed, but I'd like to send Christmas greetings to erstwhile readers of this blog and pass along some beautiful words spoken by our Holy Father to the Curia this week. They have been rolling around in the pope's heart for many years, as they sound strikingly familiar to some passages from the retreat he preached in 1988 to the Communion and Liberation priests (collected in the wonderful little book The Yes of Jesus Christ). He sums up the year, a highlight of which was the gathering of youth in Madrid:

Finally, I would like to speak of one last feature, not to be overlooked, of the spirituality of World Youth Days, namely joy. Where does it come from? How is it to be explained? Certainly, there are many factors at work here. But in my view, the crucial one is this certainty, based on faith: I am wanted; I have a task; I am accepted, I am loved. Joseph Pieper, in his book on love, has shown that man can only accept himself if he is accepted by another. He needs the other’s presence, saying to him, with more than words: it is good that you exist. Only from the You can the I come into itself. Only if it is accepted, can it accept itself. Those who are unloved cannot even love themselves. This sense of being accepted comes in the first instance from other human beings. But all human acceptance is fragile. Ultimately we need a sense of being accepted unconditionally. Only if God accepts me, and I become convinced of this, do I know definitively: it is good that I exist. It is good to be a human being. If ever man’s sense of being accepted and loved by God is lost, then there is no longer any answer to the question whether to be a human being is good at all. Doubt concerning human existence becomes more and more insurmountable. Where doubt over God becomes prevalent, then doubt over humanity follows inevitably. We see today how widely this doubt is spreading. We see it in the joylessness, in the inner sadness, that can be read on so many human faces today. Only faith gives me the conviction: it is good that I exist. It is good to be a human being, even in hard times. Faith makes one happy from deep within.

Christmas blessings to you all.

Pope Benedict on his Home Turf

Some beautiful words from his closing Mass homily, in the Berlin Olympic Stadium.

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me ... for apart from me [i.e. separated from me, or outside me] you can do nothing” (Jn 15:4f.). Every one of us is faced with this choice. The Lord reminds us how much is at stake as he continues his parable: “If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned” (Jn 15:6). In this regard, Saint Augustine says: “The branch is suitable only for one of two things, either the vine or the fire: if it is not in the vine, its place will be in the fire; and that it may escape the latter, may it have its place in the vine."

The decision that is required of us here makes us keenly aware of the existential significance of our life choices. At the same time, the image of the vine is a sign of hope and confidence. Christ himself came into this world through his incarnation, to be our root. Whatever hardship or drought befall us, he is the source that offers us the water of life, that feeds and strengthens us. He takes upon himself all our sins, anxieties and sufferings and he purifies and transforms us, in a way that is ultimately mysterious, into good wine. In such times of hardship we can sometimes feel as if we ourselves were in the wine-press, like grapes being utterly crushed. But we know that if we are joined to Christ we become mature wine. God can transform into love even the burdensome and oppressive aspects of our lives.

It is important that we “abide” in Christ, in the vine. The evangelist uses the word “abide” a dozen times in this brief passage. This “abiding in Christ” characterizes the whole of the parable. In our era of restlessness and lack of commitment, when so many people lose their way and their grounding, when loving fidelity in marriage and friendship has become so fragile and short-lived, when in our need we cry out like the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Lord, stay with us, for it is almost evening and darkness is all around us!” (cf. Lk 24:29), then the risen Lord gives us a place of refuge, a place of light, hope and confidence, a place of rest and security.

When drought and death loom over the branches, then future, life and joy are to be found in Christ. To abide in Christ means, as we saw earlier, to abide in the Church as well. The whole communion of the faithful has been firmly incorporated into the vine, into Christ. In Christ we belong together. Within this communion he supports us, and at the same time all the members support one another. They stand firm together against the storm and they offer one another protection. Those who believe are not alone. We do not believe alone, but we believe with the whole Church. The Church, as the herald of God’s word and dispenser of the sacraments, joins us to Christ, the true vine.

Feast of the Priesthood

Today is the day we celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper and the institution of the priesthood of the New Covenant. My pastor handed me a little quote from this month's Magnificat that I thought was worthy of being shared. . . not only because of its occasional significance but the way it sums up my own fears (and hopes) as well:

It became clearer and clearer to me that there is more to the priestly vocation than enjoying theology, indeed, that work in the parish can often lead very far away from that and makes completely different demands … The Yes to the priesthood meant that I had to say Yes to the whole task, oven in its simplest forms.

Since I was rather diffident and downright unpractical, since I had no talent for sports or administration or organization, I had to ask myself whether I would be able to relate to people—whether, for example, as a chaplain I would be able to lead and inspire Catholic youth, whether I would be capable of giving religious instruction to the little ones, whether I could get along with the old and sick, and so forth. I had to ask myself whether I would be ready to do that my whole life long and whether it was really my vocation.

Bound up with this was naturally the question of whether I would be able to remain celibate, unmarried, my whole life long… I often pondered these questions as I walked in the beautiful park of Furstenried and naturally in the chapel, until finally at my diaconal ordination in the fall of 1950 I was able to pronounce a convinced Yes.

Benedict XVI

Various and Sundry Engagements With Matters of Enlightenment

A few hours of desultory reading on the web can either be fuel for contemplation or a complete waste of time that calls into question one's character and sanity. Happily, this morning can be declared the former.

First Things has been on a roll with the daily article of late. R.R. Reno discusses some thoughts on how scientific discoveries are received by ordinary people, and sheds a tear of compassion for the well-funded, highly educated army of researchers whose labors do little to influence public opinion on matters that touch on basic human experience. The matter in question? Brain science, and the conviction among researchers that impending discoveries will put the last nail in the coffin of freedom (and hence moral responsibility). A recent study from the University of Utah suggests that regardless of the scientific consensus, certain basic convictions just won't be eradicated. Reno does a fine job of reining in our view that science has the last word on the humanum.

When a scientist reports that action x can occur if and only if there is an antecedent brain state y, which in turn requires brain state z, then he is identifying y and z as necessary condition for and not the causes of x. We all know that what counts as a free choice is not a mental moment suspended in ether, unconnected and uninfluenced by emotions, habits, and intuitions. The ability of science to explain and illuminate the webs of interconnection does not dislodge our deeper intuition that our deeply embedded, highly influenced, and profoundly physical mental lives are somehow genuinely our own—and somehow our responsibility to discipline and cultivate.

Reno's appraisal of the general reluctance to swallow massively counterintuitive scientific claims sits well with the perspectives of another FT contributor (and a favorite author of mine) Stephen Barr. I plowed through his Modern Physics and Ancient Faith on the exercise bike this summer, which I highly recommend to enthusiasts in the field of the philosophy of science. Dabblers might be more suited to print out an article that presents the thesis of the book in summary form, entitled "Retelling the Story of Science", and park themselves in an easy chair on a winter morning with a cup of hot coffee and a pencil. In it, Barr nails down five areas of scientific progress that have actually undermined the Enlightenment aspirations to eradicate religious perspectives on the world. The fourth and fifth these areas of discovery touch on the issues outlined by Reno above, but in a very different light. Barr takes up the favorite activity of ideological materialism, "debunking myths," and turns it back on its practitioners:

Here the scientist debunks himself. Here all the grand intellectual adventure of science ends with the statement that there is no intellectual adventure. For the mind of man has looked into itself and seen nothing there except complex chemistry, nerve impulses, and synapses firing. That, at least, is what the materialist tells us that science has seen. However, the story is really not so simple. Here again the plot has twisted. Two of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century cast considerable doubt upon, and some would say refute, the contention that the mind of man can be explained as a mere biochemical machine.

What might those discoveries be? Read the article and find out.

On a note related to some thoughts on relativism earlier, I came across this interesting video of Penn Gillette's reaction to the gift of a Bible from one of his fans after a show (link via Creative Minority Report). A short encounter with a genuinely good Christian man had an obviously powerful effect upon him.

What is most interesting is the way he countextualized the simple gift of a small Gideon Bible. "How much do you have to hate someone to believe everlasting life is possible, and not tell them that?" Contra the popular conception of evangelism as judgment and condemnation, this self-proclaimed atheist accepted what this man was offering: the gift of God's love, despite the personal discomfort making such an offer would probably bring him. That offer worked on a level more profoundly than the merely intellectual:

I know there's no God, and one polite person living his life well doesn't change that. But I'll tell you, he was a very, very, very good man.

We have here something akin to what made Christianity such a popular religion in the first place. Benedict has said that

the conversion of the ancient world to Christianity was not the result of any planned activity on the part of the Church but the fruit of the proof of the faith as it became visible in the life of Christians and of the community of the Church … The Church’s community of life invited people to share in this life in which was revealed the truth from which this kind of life arose. On the other hand the apostasy of the modern age rests on the disappearance of the verification of faith in the life of Christians. In this is to be seen the great responsibility of Christians today. They should be reference points of faith as people who know about God, should in their lives demonstrate faith as truth, and should thus become signposts for others.

We have, in this short, unpolished video, an account of just what effect a life lived in fidelity to truth can have on unbelievers.

Perhaps it also gives the lie to a common saying that, in my opinion, is much abused: preach the Gospel always; when necessary, use words. A true statement in itself, but perhaps it's necessary more often than we've led ourselves to believe.

Multiculturalism at its Worst and Best

This past Friday, the seminary took a break from classes to explore questions of Church and culture in a seminar on the multicultural setting of ministry. Many issues were raised that are of profound importance to the Church’s self-understanding and therefore to her relationship with the cultures in which she finds herself. I raised a number of questions with the rector during a brief conversation, and he made it clear that what was presented was not being proposed as an ideal for us, but a perspective that was to be critically evaluated and reflected upon. What follows is my attempt to do both.

Our presenter raised a number of very important points, but I will confine myself to a more abstract critique of the overall flow of his perspective. This perspective can be outlined as a description of the possibilities for interaction between cultures in an age of globalization, and a claim for which of those possibilities is the best one.

First, though, we have to pin down how the word “culture” was being used in our seminar. (A grasp of this is crucial for the full weight of my critique to be felt.) As it was discussed, culture is the man-made component of the external world in which human beings live. There are four dimensions in which each culture manifests its own proper characteristics, the first being its material aspect: artifacts and architecture are prime examples of this. Certain social institutions arise from culture, including family, government, trade, and explanations of the whole (such as religion or philosophy). It also includes the symbols assembled in language, stories, rituals, or writing. Finally, culture places emphasis on certain values, spoken or unspoken, good or bad, and exerts influence on society by holding them up as worthy of imitation either in the abstract or in concrete particulars. Being of human origin, all cultures are inherently limited and therefore biased (so it is said) in their grasp of ultimate values and realities. In other words, no one culture (religious or otherwise) has a stranglehold on reality; all cultures must collectively approach one another to gain mutual insight and approach the ultimate. While the Gospel transcends any one culture, there is always a danger that one dominant culture will insert its own bias into the Gospel and thereby place itself in a position of inherent superiority over all others.

In our age, technology has made it easier for people of different cultural backgrounds to encounter one another than in any prior age. Broadly speaking, the types of encounters can be placed on a spectrum. On the one end is monocultural interaction. This is simply the presence of one culture whose members are mostly homogeneous and unaware or uninterested in the existence of other ways of being in the world. By nature, most of us are comfortable in this situation and seek to reestablish it when equilibrium is disturbed by the arrival of persons of a different culture. Next on the line is the bicultural, signifying the ability of persons to effectively live within two cultural settings without the difficulties of transition between them. Moving along further across the spectrum, the multicultural world is one in which many cultures exist side by side without any real interaction, in which each culture bumps up against the others but retains its own integrity. A cross-cultural interaction is one in which members of one culture insert themselves into another while doing no violence to it, operating within its own proper dimensions. Finally, on the other end of the spectrum is an intercultural encounter in which people of many cultures do not merely coexist but actively interact, seeking to understand one another’s cultural setting through dialogue, clarifications, common projects, and tolerance of ambiguity, pluralism, and mistakes.

So far, so good. It can be safely acknowledged that this last kind of interaction is something the Church can hold up as desirable; being the sacrament of unity between God and men, it follows that her mission requires her to set aside coercion and violence while re-establishing harmony within humanity as a sign of the ingression of the kingdom into our historical existence.

Yet there is reason for caution here. By viewing the intertultural ideal through the lens of the four cultural elements listed above, it becomes clear that this ideal is itself a sort of culture with its own artifacts, institutions, symbols, and values. In this respect, the spectrum I outlined above bends back on itself to form a circle or an ascending spiral in which intercultural symbols and values become established as the elements of an over-arching meta-culture that exerts its own influence on the colliding cultures and subcultures within it while resisting any influences that oppose.

We must recall at this point that, being products of human activity, cultures are inherently biased; this is no less true, then, of our ideal of interculturalism. To the degree that interculturalism imposes its values, symbols, and institutions on its constituent cultures and subcultures, and is not open to other perspectives, it is guilty of the same absolutism it is meant to ward off. Anyone with eyes to see is very familiar with this imperialist enforcement of cultural (and by extension, religious) relativism. The prevailing winds of our media and higher educational system reek of such dogma—the turgid and tiresome political correctness, the obligatory endowed chair of religious studies held by an agnostic, the at once prolific and banal prophets who sermonize on the glories of diversity while failing to catch through the sea of fluttering rainbow flags the ironic smiles on the faces of “fundamentalist partisans” shifting from foot to foot in the wings. It is precisely this ideology that a certain Joseph Ratzinger named the “dictatorship of relativism” in his opening homily to the conclave which elected him pope, and this dictatorship is itself an institutional artifact of the Culture of Death.

The reason why we as Christians must qualify our assent to the intercultural ideal, then, is that there a real possibility that the values, symbols, and institutions of this ideal be derived from attitudes and philosophies antithetical to the Gospel. We can see the results of a premature and naïve embrace of the ideal in those once great missionary orders that now confine themselves to teaching missiology instead.

Yet if this possibility exists, then there is also the possibility that the intercultural ideal be informed by the Gospel and hospitable to it. This possibility echoes out from among the “great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue,” standing before the Lamb and the throne, crying out in a loud voice, “salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb” (Rev 7:9-10). The “stepping-out-of-oneself” which is so necessary for true intercultural harmony is a discipline integral to the giving of oneself that is humanity’s highest calling. Indeed, it is “law of the gift” that John Paul the Great so tirelessly preached, inspiring in the flock the paramount desire for the civilization of love that called upon each person—no matter how great or small in the estimation of the world—to discover herself through a sincere gift of herself (Letter to Families, 14). Yet this is not to be achieved through the de-mythologization of religion and the bracketing of our own very concrete origins in the person of Jesus, but through standing firmly upon those origins as upon rock. For the one who sees him “sees the Father” (Jn 14:9), and in him “the whole fullness of divinity dwells in bodily form” (Col 2:9). We ought not kid ourselves about the possibility of achieving for ourselves what is first and foremost the work of the Holy Spirit.

__________________________

Recommended reading and works referenced in this essay:

Cardinal Ratzinger’s homily to the conclave
“Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today” (PDF), an address given by Cardinal Ratzinger during the meeting of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the presidents of the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America, held in Guadalajara, Mexico, in May 1996. A very perceptive diagnosis of the conflict as it now stands, though light on solutions (as indicated by the title). You may disagree with Benedict but there’s few who can cast the conflict in such an illuminating posture. I would suggest this specifically to those who attended our seminar this past week.
John Paul II’s Letter to Families

The Desk Chair Review of Books, Continued

The Autobiography of St. Margaret Mary

I'll just come right out and say it: this book is disturbing. I'm not sure how else to sum up the reaction I have to this autobiography, though it is "offensive to pious ears" (as the theological notes would put it). Allow me to qualify this assessment: "disturbing" can be said in many ways. It is certainly disturbing on the level of spectacle; the saint performs some outrageous penances to overcome her sensitive nature, one of which was struck from the record as unfit to mention. Yet her story also stirs up something in me that justly accuses me of complacency, of coldness to the love of God and the unfathomable desire of the Sacred Heart to unite humanity to itself. I believe Margaret Mary is a saint and is now enjoying the fruits of reward tilled by a lifetime of confusion and suffering that perpetually conformed her to her suffering savior, but part of me wants to hold back from completely ratifying it as worthy of general consumption. Perhaps Pope St. Gregory the Great's adage applies here:

Those things are ours that we love in others, even if we cannot imitate them, and what is loved in ourselves becomes the possession of those who love it. Therefore, let the envious consider the power of charity, which gives us credit for the results of another person's work, without any effort on our part.

This "bond of charity," perhaps, is what one must keep in mind when hearing St. Margaret Mary describe the suffering she endured (and sought) in her all-consuming pursuit of perfection at the hands of her Lord.

Now, that being said, in the judgment of the Church, this woman is the recipient of private visitations that have been ratified by popes. My concern here is articulated best by a short piece on self-love by then Cardinal Ratzinger in a little book I highly recommend: The Yes of Jesus Christ. The relevant excerpt:

Man—every man and woman—is called to salvation. He is willed and loved by God, and his highest task is to respond to this love. He must not hate what God loves. He must not destroy what is destined for eternity. To be called to the love of God is to have a vocation for happiness. To become happy is a ‘duty’ that is just as human and natural as it is supernatural. When Jesus talks of self-denial, of losing one’s own life and so on, he is showing the way of proper self-affirmation (‘self-love’), something that always demands opening oneself, transcending oneself. But this necessity of going beyond oneself, of leaving oneself behind, does not exclude genuine self-affirmation. Quite the contrary: it is the way of finding oneself and ‘loving’ oneself. When forty years ago I read for the first time Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest the last words of this suffering soul made an indelible impression on me: it is not difficult to hate oneself; the grace of all graces would however be to love oneself as a member of the Body of Christ...

The realism of this statement is obvious. There are many people who live in conflict with themselves. This aversion to oneself, this inability to accept oneself and to be reconciled with oneself, is far removed from that self-denial that the Lord wants. Those who cannot stand themselves cannot love their neighbor. They cannot accept themselves ‘as themselves’ because they are against themselves and are bitter as a result, and the very foundation of their life makes them incapable of loving.

What I wanted to convey was that the kind of egoism Ratzinger rightly condemns ought never to seek justification in the lives of saints like St. Margaret Mary. Read her story, but imitate her only out of love of the Lord and not hatred of self.

The Dark Knight Runs Because We Have To Chase Him

I’d promised a review of WALL*E about a week ago but I made the mistake of going out to see Batman this afternoon. Sorry little guy, but you just got bumped. The Dark Knight brooks no competition.

This movie provoked some incredible discussion afterwards that I’d like to put up here, but most of that will contain spoilers so it might be nice to put some preliminary thoughts down first. Let me just say that I have not enjoyed a movie like this for a long time—Children of Men was probably the last film to give me such a high as this one. The filmmakers were able to build on the foundations laid in Batman Begins, and there is no question that Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker takes the character to new heights (and/or depths). What a phenomenal film to have as one’s last.

As of today, the whole Batman world has taken on a more distinguished hue. The word “epic” has been applied to the film, and I myself had the feeling that what I was viewing was at least was striving to operate on the level of something like Greek drama. About three quarters of the way through the movie, I realized why this comic book figure has fascinated us for almost a generation now: it is a modern myth. It is the same sort of myth the ancients recounted as they circled around the fire and reminisced about their godlike heroes late into the night, perhaps only dimly aware they were telling stories about themselves. It is what their poets worked and reworked, fleshing the tales out over time, embellishing them with their own narrative inclinations and truncating what did not grip the imagination or fortify the soul. Where else in our age can we find this storytelling than in our more enduring popular literature and film?

Now, I am no reader of comic books. I’m sure there are plenty of deviations in the movie from who Batman is in those original comics. Most of what I have to say will have no awareness of the prior fieldwork that has produced this fruit; I judge the film on its own terms. As long as what is presented stands in basic continuity with its prior forms, there is room for legitimate reinterpretation of this heroic figure and his attendant nemeses. There are no copyrights on myths.

READER BEWARE!

I should also note that I am chronically incapable of enjoying stories for stories’ sake. It’s like I have a compulsion to launch into abstraction without taking the time to delight much in characterization, scenery, or storytelling. This is nothing to boast about and is probably the reason why I could never write good stories (I mean stories with a plot and not just things that happened to me). Most of what follows is going to fall into this, so if that annoys you, bear with me.

[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Dark Knight is about the meaning of the unrequited suffering of innocents. (There’s a thesis statement for you.) Most crime heroes are concerned with one question—justice—and its corollary, the gratifying application of it to the deserving. Innocent suffering falls within this category, but the writers are doing more with it than just using it to demonstrate the bad guy’s lack of compunction. What snapped it all together for me was a friend’s observation of a significant fact about the Joker: each time he tells the story of his disfigurement, it always changes, and it always places him in a state of innocent suffering. The Joker, though he has no backstory (and is therefore all the more menacing—a great move by the filmmaker, framing him as a sort of absolute), in some way sees himself as embodying the unjustly wounded innocent and puts into the practice the only response possible to one who has despaired of healing. The Joker is the agony of unrequited (and unrequitable) suffering, run amok.

I should say the Joker is one of two erroneous responses to unrequitable suffering: the other villain of the film, Two-Face, constitutes the other, which I’ll get into later. In a way, these two are the twin spawn of this grief-stricken mother. Bruce Wayne refuses either of these and chooses a third way, which in a remarkable ending gave his character the shadowy depth that caused him to assume the mythical proportions I spoke of already.

So, the Joker. It is no stretch to see him as aggressive despair cloaked in violence. A world in which there is unrequitable suffering is devoid of justice and therefore is a world in chaos. There are no rules. He is driven by no motive, operates according to no plan, and as such, cannot be placated or intimidated. The fear with which Batman weakens his enemies is useless against this creature, and so this villain, in his immunity, is the Batman’s supreme enemy.

Yet, it should be noted, he is not Batman’s correlative (as it's often said). Joker insists “they’ll go on and on like this forever,” but that is a lie—not only is this the voice of despair at the cycles of violence and retribution, but in stark contrast to the Joker, Batman is a response to the parasitic presence of evil. His particular brand of vigilantism only came about through the rise of criminality (into which he was drawn, interestingly enough, by the unrequitable suffering of his parents), and it would cease if it achieved its purpose. Yes, the day may never come when criminals do not hold the populace at its mercy, but that does not mean good needs evil. Quite the opposite.

The Joker’s mandate for chaos requires him to inflict suffering on others. In his more personal encounters, he draws his victims into pity for him by telling a false story of his suffering to make them more vulnerable to his final blow. In the wide angle, he creates a number of dilemmas for his victims in which they are forced to choose between two equally abhorrent situations involving innocent suffering.

The most interesting of these is the ferry dilemma, in which an element of culpability is introduced with the boat full of convicts. Innocent citizens of Gotham are confronted with the possibility of saving themselves by electing to blow up this ferry full of convicts. Each ferry has the detonator to explosives in the other ferry, and will be spared if they are the first to use it. If neither use it, both ferries will explode and all will die. Thus, these people are given the semblance of control and freedom in a situation manufactured to inflict pain no matter what.

The citizens insist that “those men have made their choice.” The felons’ character has been unimpeachably established as unworthy. The citizens’ protests are fueled by an awareness of the injustice of the situation smashed up against their conviction of their own innocence. Compared to the men on the prison ferry, these people are clearly less “killable,” and they seem to intuitively recognize the reasonable course of action: blow up the other boat. We simply can’t be killed instead of them. We don’t deserve this—therefore, they do!

Note the modus operandi of evil here: it dehumanizes its prospective victims. The citizens see a crowd of mothers, children, elderly, and identify with them; that other ferry is full of felons and lowlifes. The antidote to this dehumanization comes from an unexpected quarter. The convicts' boat is the first to recognize good in the situation—one guard points out, minutes before their deadline, that “we’re still here; they haven’t killed us yet.”

That observation expands the space to surround both ferries, and it snowballs into one convict’s demand for the detonator to the other ferry. This con recognizes the guards can’t make the choice because they do not know what it means to kill. In a stunning and cathartic move, he chucks the detonator overboard and refuses to engage evil on its own terms, demonstrating the revulsion for doing evil that overpowers the visceral urge to live at any cost. To capitulate to the dilemma is to surrender to chaos concealed beneath a respectable veneer of the lesser of two evils. The businessman who attempts to take responsibility, however, fails to see any way out other than injustice because he has never felt the life of another run through his hands. A split-second intuition preserves him from doing what he does not understand. Only those who have done evil and experienced its meaning have the clarity to short-circuit the dilemma.

This is the only proper human response to unrequitable suffering (this side of heaven). Director Christopher Nolan insists that “the Joker's form of evil is a very human form of evil and I think it is very important you believe in him as a human being as well as a monster.” This lends credence to my intuition that what drives the Joker is not just insanity but something human gone into meltdown. This gives rise to a the common characteristic between these villains: facial disfigurement. What else but the face can sum up the whole of the person? Inflict pain in the foot and you will see it reflected in the face. Analogously, so too with the soul.

Now for Two-Face. He, too, finds his pathological genesis in truly unrequitable suffering. He, too, seeks satisfaction by inflicting injustice on others. “I did not deserve to suffer this loss, to be deprived of this promise of happiness, and there is nothing that can heal my wound. Others deserve nothing like this, either, but they don’t suffer, whereas I do—is there not injustice here? Would it not be just for all to suffer unfairly, then? Is this not my only hope for justice?” Such is the reasoned interior monologue of the bereaved Harvey Dent. With no hope to soften his own loss, he must inflict the same loss on others—and he does so by forcing Commissioner Gordon to “lie to his son and tell him everything’s going to be all right,” flipping a coin to decide the boy’s sentence.

Clearly, the ideal of this justice is not pure chaos (the Joker) or the restoration of balance between right and wrong (Raz al Gul, in Batman Begins), but blind chance. It is impersonal and requires no one to act responsibly, and therefore is an abdication of human freedom and the projection of it onto the cosmos. The law of chance is always watching and always acting. Nothing escapes its jurisdiction, and therefore it has appeal for this man who can find no tribunal to hear his claim. I would not be the first to point out the clear parallel to Anton’s coin-flipping discipline in No Country For Old Men, though Two-Face has been making his own luck for much longer.

How, then, does Batman himself fit in to all of this? We pick up in Dark Knight as Bruce Wayne is stepping out of the honeymoon phase of being a hero. We can sense his awareness of the grind of his double life and the relentlessly encroaching intensification of evil. We see a shot of the numerous scars across his back and arms from untold encounters with unscrupulous evildoers. Alfred, in perennially wise tones, informs Bruce he is still only a man, with limits. Something tells us we are going to witness a transformation in the Batman.

Indeed, it proves to be a transformation from symbol and executor of justice to despised bearer of secret truth. The Joker maintains the upper hand on Batman by playing on his reputation—only a weakling and a coward would allow a psychopath to continue to kill people rather than reveal his true identity (so goes the Joker's story). Batman’s ethics require him to rise to this challenge, and he does. It is here he discovers his limit—Commissioner Gordon saves his life when the Joker gets the best of the Batman. In Harvey Dent, Bruce recognizes the man who can do what Batman can never do: bring justice to the daylight. Dent is the White Knight; Batman only comes out at night.

It is this recognition that requires the “noble lie” following Two-Face’s death. This lie is required, we are told, because the people need an image of hope, and that “their faith deserves a reward.” This reward must be of the waking world, or not at all; shadowy vigilantes are no basis for a system of government, after all! (Nor are watery tarts distributing scimitars, but that’s another argument altogether.)

And so Batman assumes the role of the scapegoat. Like Plato’s just man, he is most truly just when he does right even when opprobrium and abuse is heaped upon him, even from the very ones he protects. A common enemy diffuses the rising tension and allows it to expend itself on a victim equally repulsive to all. Bruce Wayne has been thereby invited into a new way of being—one in which unjust suffering is its very condition. Yet he does so with alacrity. As we see him run from the scene, a new weight is upon him, which he bears willingly and secretly. Not only does Gotham’s order hang on his shoulders, but its sanity as well. In his acceptance of unjust suffering lies the rescue of Gotham.

[END SPOILER ALERT]

Whew! Where does all this leave us? Unrequited suffering of innocents is a real question, and so we ought to expect faith to have something to say about it. It’s not exactly peripheral to Christianity, after all. I will not attempt a thorough answer to it at this point, but I do want to emphasize again how this film carries a portrayal of the longing for ultimate justice. It is the cry of the suffering innocent from beneath the altar in the Book of Revelation, where they cried out with a loud voice,

O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?

Revelation 6:9

It is this cry that nourishes Christian hope. In this case, God's judgment is good news! Not without reason did the Holy Father Benedict write his latest encyclical on this most fundamental of virtues. In a short hat-tip to the atheistic philosopher Theodor Adorno, Benedict addresses the longing for justice cast in dramatic terms in our film (and in so many films today). The answer to this longing is not to be found in ever more spectacular retribution against those who perpetrate violence and evil. Rather, it is only to be found in the final judgment. Adorno insists that the horrible injustices of history should not have the final word. There must finally be true justice. But that, in the words the Pope quotes from Adorno, would require a world “where not only present suffering would be wiped out, but also that which is irrevocably past would be undone.” In other words, there can be no such thing as unrequitable suffering, and therefore it is never justified to inflict it on others in order to preserve ourselves from it. Yet this would mean, as the Holy Father points out, something foreign to the thought of Adorno: the resurrection of the dead.

Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him,
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not fail or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth.

Isaiah 42:1-5

If we are to evangelize this culture, we need to find ways to unearth its deep longings and show what truly satisfies them. And if that means I have to go watch Batman again, then I think I’m up for it.

[Update: saw it again this past weekend. I stand by my interpretation.]

On Pilgrimage

Friday, 18 April 2008
8 p.m.

The first day of our pilgrimage to see our Holy Father is far from over. We’re still in Pennsylvania and we’ve got hours to go. Though I’ve been on cross-country bus rides many times before, today is different—today there is something unique about what it is I am going to become a part of. I have a feeling of being part of something far, far greater than simply a sightseeing venture or seeking out an enriching experience to satisfy my curiosity (though I will confess that such motivations are not entirely beyond me). There is something momentous happening on the world stage that I, in my own small way, participate in, for Pope Benedict is more than a functionary or a hierarch. He is a custodian, a mystagogue, a teacher, a father, not just to me but to millions who look upon him in person or through the media.

The mild earthquake at 4 a.m. this morning helped to give us a sense that something important is afoot, though I am not in the habit of assigning deep significance to these things. But I do find earthquakes in Chicagoland worth noting.

This bus ride has provided ample opportunity for reflection on the recent writings of the pope, including his recent addresses to the U.S. bishops and university faculties. It was after a long hiatus over the lunch break that a remark from the former gave me pause. We’d been waiting for well over an hour because the bus had leaked some fuel and needed to report something it to the authorities; meanwhile, I was ready to be underway.

Only afterward did I realize the source of my discomfort. My life in the seminary is highly structured, and every moment there is something that could be getting done. For sustained periods of time I operate under a constant pressure to be moving down the list of things to be done and checked off—studies, prayer, chores, exercise. Even leisure can get pigeonholed in this way.

What I was given this afternoon was a taste of what life was like before all that, when it was a simple, timeless childhood. Nothing to be done, nowhere to go. Just live the moment.

Even more important than the experience of this little respite and my gratitude for it was being able to share it with some of the men I’ve lived alongside for the last couple of years. Of all the elements of the happy life, friendships suffer most from the need to always be making progress towards some goal, for they admit of no urgency or intentionality if they are to retain the name of friendship. Earlier that day, I’d read over Benedict’s words to the bishops, when he mentioned in his closing remarks the need for priestly fraternity.

Each of us knows how important priestly fraternity has been in our lives. That fraternity is not only a precious possession, but also an immense resource for the renewal of the priesthood and the raising up of new vocations. I would close by encouraging you to foster opportunities for ever greater dialogue and fraternal encounter among your priests, and especially the younger priests. I am convinced that this will bear great fruit for their own enrichment, for the increase of their love for the priesthood and the Church, and for the effectiveness of their apostolate.

How dangerous it would be to pare down my priesthood to a highly structured, pressure-driven lifestyle; yet there is danger, too, in seeing relationships as a means to greater effectiveness and fulfillment. It is a matter of zealous pursuit without having been the result of a conscious decision; in other words, a habitual disposition to pursue the good. Those Greeks were on to something.

It has been a blissfully undeliberate day. Here’s hoping there will be a few more to come before this gig is up.

Sunday, 20 April 2008
9:30 a.m. EST

Guess what? I saw the pope yesterday.

From the lowly man’s view of things, it was unbelievable just how much waiting was involved. Collectively, millions of man-hours were expended by various groups who traveled for a few minutes in the company of the Holy Father, but there are few who would not have judged their sacrifices of time and the discomforts of travel worthy of the reward they received.

We arrived at the rally site around 10 a.m. yesterday morning, and I secured a spot right in front of a platform that extended out from the stage into the crowd, hoping Benedict would at least come out to greet the seminarians assembled there if not come down to the lawn to shake our hands. With about seven hours until the pope’s scheduled arrival, I tied on a bandana, chugged some bottled water, and got settled.

Each of the acts scheduled during the hours prior to Benedict’s arrival managed to occupy the attention with spectacle and thus helped to pass the time. The best performer was a Franciscan priest by the name of Fr. Stan Fortuna, who had a short act woven from be-bop, funk, and quotations from recent papal addresses. With a 5-string bass guitar and a mixing machine he operated with his feet, he looped his own playing (a la Keller Williams) and soloed over himself, rapping all the while. It was by far the least flashy, while also being the most entertaining, though he was only on stage for ten minutes. Other acts included Third Day (who did some ah … “interesting” things with the Nicene creed) and Matt Mahar, who managed to lead the whole crowd in praise & worship that was probably the most effective in setting the tone for the pontiff’s arrival. There were numerous acts by local kids doing various cultural performances that were pretty good, but I was just too stinking tired to enjoy them. My loss.

Kelly Clarkson was the last act before the pope, and if the point was to bring in a big celebrity to get everyone excited then I guess she did her job—though I’m not sure how her rendition of “Since You’ve Been Gone” fit in with the whole “Christ our Hope” thing. I suppose the kids loved it, which is the real reason the organizers sought her out. A passage from the Gospel came to mind in the midst of all this, though: “What did you come out to the East Coast to see—a celebrity? Why then did you come?” (Mt 11:7f, slightly adapted)

Back to Benedict.

Seminarians were given access to the front section of the lawn, closest to the stage, and as the day passed it became more and more crowded. Short guys kept trying to work their way in front of me, and I found it difficult not to be rude! I felt bad for them (especially when the yellow and white hankies were being waved) as they probably couldn’t see much of anything, but my hours of standing in the same place were being reduced to nothing and it was hard not to resent it. Because I was determined not to lose my spot, I held tight and refused to go for lunch, munching on a couple of granola bars I had in my pocket. In between acts, we chanted “Be-ne-detto [clap, clap, clapclapclap],” “Christus vincit,” and whatever else was easy to pick up on the fly. When it got too packed to move, the event staff brought us water and we passed it back to those behind us after snagging one for ourselves. The sun was fierce on the sea of black cassocks and suits, and not a few faces were red and swollen from its rays.

By the time four o’clock rolled around, my dogs were barking. I’d been standing in the same place for nearly seven hours and my resolve was flagging. There would be respites here and there; when the bishops and cardinals started filing in, I managed to shake hands with Archbishop Naumann (my ordinary) and exchange a few words.

Once the pope showed up on the seminary grounds for his meeting with handicapped children, the energy went way up—he is here, this is what we’d been waiting for! We watched the prayer service in the chapel via a video feed to the Jumbotron, greedily devouring every glimpse we could get of the Holy Father as he blessed each of the handicapped children who sat on either side of the aisle. We prayedthe responses to his invocations and signed ourselves when he blessed the assembly, though it was all taking place on the other side of campus.

As he moved down the aisle, he tenderly signed each forehead with the cross and cradled the children’s faces between his hands. One little girl reached up and put her hands on his as he did this, a gesture that brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t tell you why it wasn’t anything more than sentimentality, but such things are rare enough for me that I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t. Plus, there was plenty of “awww” being tossed about, and this happens to be an utterance I find abhorrent. It didn’t bother me that this was a choreographed moment—something genuine shone through the script and registered with me in spite of it.

It took another forty-five minutes for him to get onstage, but once he was there, all bodily fatigue was forgotten. When he came out, he immediately walked out right in front of us on the stage extension, and the whole mass of thousands of people pressed us forward onto the fence. Everyone was packed so closely together that had anyone fainted, they would’ve been held up by the force of everyone else straining towards the Holy Father. He came within ten yards of me, and it was electrifying—in retrospect, I realize there were few non-dignitaries that got to be that close to him. Out of hundreds of thousands of people who will be seeing him during his time in the US, I was one of the luckier ones.

The cheering lasted for something like fifteen minutes—it just wouldn’t stop. Benedict was very gracious and patient, though he did try to quiet us down when cardinal Egan was interrupted by a particularly rousing chorus of “Viva Il Papa,” as if to say, “This is no big deal for me, I deal with this all the time … but I wouldn’t tick him off if I were you.” It was all immensely entertaining for us, though I’m sure it made watching it on TV a little frustrating. (They didn’t have to ride halfway across the country on a bus and stand in the sun half the day to see him … so there …)

Another great moment was when one of the youths presenting the pope one of his gifts stepped forward to embrace him, and the whole front section started chanting “FU-TURE-PRIEST! FU-TURE-PRIEST!” I’m not sure the pope heard it but the bishops did, and we all regarded ourselves immensely entertaining.

It’s the little things, you know.

All that chicanery ceased when the pope delivered his address; the crowd was all steadfastness and rapt attention. Though he read the whole thing in his typical no-frills style, he managed to create some dramatic moments as he outlined the challenges that the youth face. His remarks to seminarians were pointed and I intend to look them up in order to pore over them later. There was nothing spectacular or revolutionary in them; yet the simplicity of what he had to say, calling us back to prayer, contemplation, liturgy, and friendship with Christ, should be taken all the more seriously for that very reason.

At this point all sense of time had vanished so I couldn’t tell you if he was up there for one hour or for three. I’d like to believe it was our enthusiastic response to his entrance that motivated Benedict to come down in front of us again to say goodbye; the crowd pressed in again with the same fervor as before. This time, I forsook the camera and just soaked in the encounter, and I called out “thank you!” to the pontiff as he passed by, though he didn’t hear me—I was too hoarse to be heard over the roar.

When the final hymn was over (they picked, of all things, “City of God”!), we all made our way back to the buses and were finally able to connect with the seminarians we’d been hoping to meet up with but were prevented because of the crowds. A few moments were all we could afford, and then off to our separate ways. There were even a few surprises, including a former FOCUS missionary, recently wed, and his pregnant bride! By this time my camera batteries had died and so some crucial moments went unrecorded. The memories will serve.

The day ended as a mirror image of the first half: wake up, shower, Mass, eat, bus ride, SEE POPE, bus ride, eat, Mass, shower, crawl back into bed. All told, we were on our feet for over ten hours without a break, and when I peeled off my cassock and clerical choke collar a modest helping of heat rash was waiting for me. The shower rinsed off hours of sweat, dust, and sunblock in a cleansing that could only be described as baptismal.

Yet before all that, as we all knelt in the conference center auditorium after communion, our silence was more than just fatigue after an exhausting day; it was silence born of a deeper sense of purpose, of mission, of grace. Our travels had exercised in us a greater faithfulness to the call of God, like metal that is polished with use. The crowds, the fanfare, the spectacle was all gone, and what remained was the memory of a “humble servant laboring in the vineyard of the Lord.”

Sunday, 21 April 2008
11:59 p.m.

We’re back safe at the seminary, 17 hours of road behind us. The first thing I did was check the news to see what the coverage was saying, and I’ve found a couple of good sites worth checking out:

Godspy
The New York Times—one, and two

Pictures forthcoming.

In The News

Wondering where I've been the last couple of weeks? Well, there's just too much to talk about in detail, but at least some of my time has been spent talking with Chicago Tribune reporter Manya Brachear about Pope Benedict and vocations to the priesthood. Though the article doesn't get at the heart of what's going on with the papacy, the priesthood, Tradition, the relationship between JPII and Benedict XVI, and the Church, and tends to take a superficial view of "trends", nonetheless it's got my name in it. Hooray.

Amy Welborn has a good piece in the New York Times that has a perspective closer to home.

As the Tribune article mentions, I'll be traveling to Yonkers to see Il Papa, so check back here next week for my thoughts. This will be my first encounter with a pope, and though I am currently frustrated with the complications this visit has introduced into my life, I'm fully confident that I will be reaping dividends within a few days.

All the Facts, None of the Meaning

I’ve looked over my last post after doing some reading this past week, and I’m convinced I could be a bit more specific about what exactly is at stake with the “science and faith” controversy as it’s being presented in the public square. Specifically, towards the end of the post, I allude to the Regensburg address and Benedict’s insistence that the contemporary self-limitation of reason is a disastrous move. Allow me to quote briefly from the address to make clear the point to which I refer:

… [to the modern mind] only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.

In this post, I’d like to take a closer look at what this “reduction in radius” feels like in more specific terms. Over the last few days, I had a feeling that I should be able to explain just what Benedict (and countless other thinkers) mean by this self-limitation language. It was in this mindset that I came across an old favorite: Lewis’ essay on what he calls “transposition,” published in a collection of some of his best addresses entitled The Weight of Glory. Lewis managed to do in this essay exactly what I wanted to convey, so what follows is more or less a summary of this lucid little piece, with comments and reformulations of my own interspersed throughout. If what you read here is of the least interest to you, I advise you to run to the nearest bookstore and purchase a copy. It makes for fantastic (and quite relevant) reading.

The occasion of his remarks is Pentecost Sunday, and he chooses to highlight an odd theme to preach upon: the gift of speaking in tongues. It is a case that is quite difficult for the Christian to explain in supernatural terms, for while we must accept the miraculous nature of the apostles’ preaching in languages unknown to them on that day in Jerusalem so long ago, nevertheless most contemporary instances of this strike many of us as embarrassing and unrelated to the real substance of our faith. No doubt there are true movements of the Holy Spirit in this charismatic gift, but it is also likely that sometimes it is nothing more than a bad case of nervous energy being spontaneously discharged. 

At this point, the skeptic steps forward to invoke Occam’s razor. “Why,” he intones, “would it be reasonable to accept multiple explanations for one phenomenon—namely, the pronunciation of gibberish while in a state of ecstasy? Would it not be much more reasonable to say that a purely physical explanation which holds in most cases holds in all of them? Can we not dispense with the supernatural entirely?” Caught between the given of revelation and the plausible reductionism of the skeptic, the Christian may start to feel a little warm under the collar and start asking himself how important is this speaking in tongues stuff is, anyway.

Well, regardless of what you think about speaking in tongues, this difficulty can apply to any number of different things within the Christian worldview, for it is one case in a whole class of similar difficulties. Certainly the sacraments, being the use of natural signs to signify and effect supernatural realities, would be susceptible to this objection. Christian language about heaven is filled with references to purely natural, physical realities. The seven "infused" virtues have the same names and descriptions as their natural counterparts. We hear this language in other circles as well, such as among those who conjecture about the place of humanity in the cosmos: when all is said and done, isn’t human existence just a particularly refined and complex animal existence? Isn’t all this talk of a soul and of spiritual existence just a poetic and metaphorical way of describing our highly developed powers of tool making and communication, which we share with the animals?

Lewis summarizes,

Put in its most general terms, our problem is that of the obvious continuity between things which are admittedly natural and things which, it is claimed, are spiritual; the reappearance in what professes to be our supernatural life of all the same old elements which make up our natural life and (it would seem) of no others.

To refute the skeptic, Lewis seeks a case in which all would recognize that the simple explanation, which is plausible at first glance, is false. Lewis finds his case within the emotions and their physical manifestations, a realm common to the experience of all. Most would acknowledge that one and the same physical reaction may result from different emotional states: that unsettled feeling in the chest is present not only after successfully asking a girl out on a date but also after receiving a piece of horrible news about a loved one or getting caught in telling a boldfaced lie. The one physical reaction is both delightful and anguishing depending upon the emotional state that accompanies and gives rise to it.

Furthermore, the physical sensation is not merely a sign of the emotion, but is wrapped up in the emotion itself, truly becoming what it signifies. There is not only continuity between them but an overlap, a mingling. Here, then, we have a similar situation to our class of difficulties listed above in which the natural and (allegedly) supernatural are very closely tied, indeed so closely tied that it is quite reasonable to dismiss the supernatural as a figment. Yet in our present case, no one would deny that while emotional states are of a higher order than physical sensations (in the sense that the emotions are a more complex and richly varied phenomenon than the physical sensations that carry them), they are nonetheless real. What conclusions can we draw from this example?

In the emotional life, a more complex system (emotion) must be expressed through a less complex medium (the nervous system). Because there cannot be a one-to-one correspondence between elements of the two systems, linking every emotional state with its own peculiar nervous reaction in the body, multiple emotions must be associated with one and the same physical sensation. Hence, the same tight feeling in the chest I described above accompanies both delight and anguish. It is this “expression” of a more complex, “higher” system in a lower one that Lewis calls transposition.

A few examples might be of assistance here. When a language with 22 vowel sounds has only 5 vowel characters available to it, multiple sounds must be assigned to each character in order for the spoken language to be fully represented in writing. In an orchestral composition that is transposed for the piano, the notes originally played by flutes, violins, and oboes must be the notes of only one instrument in its transposed form. 

The example of drawing was especially helpful to me. In order to represent a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional piece of paper, one must use what artists call “perspective,” which means that one and the same shape must be able to represent multiple realities; a triangle must be able to represent both a dunce cap and a straight road receding into the distance. 

What if you tried to explain to someone who had never heard English spoken that each written character a, e, i, o, and u could refer to multiple sounds? There’s no reason to think otherwise based on the characters on the page. What if someone listening to a piano piece originally composed for an orchestra had never heard an instrument other than the piano, and doubted the existence of other instruments? All the talk in the world would never convince her that the performance on piano was merely a hint of the symphony it imitated. And if one could imagine a creature that existed entirely in two dimensions examining the lines of a drawing (if you’re having trouble, it was wonderfully imagined by the author of Flatland, from which this blog takes its name), even an initial openness to the idea of third dimension would soon be deflated when all the evidence for it was just the same old lines and shapes. Lewis steps into this perspective for a moment and speaks convincingly from the skeptic’s corner:

You keep telling me of this other world and its unimaginable shapes which you call solid. But isn’t it very suspicious that all the shapes which you offer me as images or reflections of the solid ones turn out on inspection to be simply the old two-dimensional shapes of my own world as I have always known it? Is it not obvious that your vaunted other world, so far from being the archetype, is a dream which borrows all its elements from this one?

In short, one can never understand the higher system when one approaches it from below. It is only when one understands the higher system or medium that its expressions in the lower one make sense; it is a prior acquaintance with them from the inside that renders them intelligible in their less complex expressions. It is only because we live in a three-dimensional world that two-dimensional drawings make sense to us.

Hence, the skepticism we encountered with regard to speaking in tongues makes sense, and is exactly what one would expect when approaching a supernatural reality “from below.” For confining oneself to the lower system or medium prevents one from ever moving beyond the most simplistic, reductionistic explanations from the outset.

Of course, none of this is to argue for the existence of the supernatural; the point is merely that the sorts of objections we do get from contemporary materialists are just the sort we should expect to get, for by consciously limiting themselves to the material, materialists render themselves unable to move beyond the material. We should not be surprised, then, when we hear claims (such as the one above) which insisted that humans are nothing more than highly developed beasts. For, when considering the expression of a highly complex system (the mind) in its less complex physical substrate (the brain), it will always—ALWAYS—be possible to deny that there is any real difference between the two as long as a purely naturalistic explanation is the criterion for all truth.

It is as if a man falls in love with a woman and suffers terribly after a stormy breakup. In his grief, be begins to look over the relationship and start to pick it apart. Though the love was real enough while he was in the midst of it, his examination in hindsight started to reveal her flaws and selfishness as well as his own imperfect motives. These, too, were real; yet if in order to dull the pain of his loss he chooses to ignore what was good about their love and dwell only upon what was shameful, soon enough that’s all his memories will contain, no matter what the reality of the situation might have been. His mistake is to consider the results of his analysis as truer than his experience.

Here we have the crux of the “self-limitation of reason” of which Benedict speaks. In a conscious effort to understand the world, it is possible to temporarily bracket all cumulative knowledge and start afresh with the plan to consider only what can be verified by experiment—that is, to look at reality from below, from within the framework of material existence. This is a perfectly valid way to approach the world; it is the scientific method. If, in the course of a long process of discovery that illuminates a great deal about reality, one forgets that this method is only a tool and not an end in itself, and begins insisting that there is nothing more to understand than what this method reveals, well, there isn’t much that can be done, for to him it will always be perfectly reasonable. As Lewis notes, “It is no good browbeating the critic who approaches a Transposition from below. On the evidence available to him his conclusion is the only one possible.” He has locked himself in a prison of his own making and thrown away the key. 

I will leave you with the author’s final analogy. It is a powerful one, and accurately diagnoses the impasse at which we find ourselves in the current exchanges over science versus faith. Perhaps you have tried to point out to a dog a piece of food lying out of his sight. Instead of looking where you point, he sniffs your finger. The world of the dog is all fact and no meaning, and it is precisely this habit of mind that a significant and vocal portion of the world induces upon itself. What does this mean for our continuing dialogue between faith and reason?

As long as this deliberate refusal to understand things from above, even when such understanding is possible, continues, it is idle to talk of any final victory over materialism. The critique of every experience from below, the voluntary ignoring of meaning and concentration on fact, will always have the same plausibility. There will always be evidence, and every month fresh evidence, to show that religion is only psychological, justice only self-protection, politics only economics, love only lust, and thought itself only cerebral biochemistry.

Chesterton, too, was an articulate defender of the power of reason to plumb the depths of reality when set free from the restrictive boundaries set by modernity upon itself. Disgusted with the reductive and impoverished anthropology and cosmology that sprung from the loins of the scientific revolution, he sought to portray for the materialist the real mistakes he was making.

He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love, or fear upon the sea. (Orthodoxy)

We are very much accustomed to accepting explanations for things that are far removed from our experience. We all believe our planet is spinning at a high rate of speed and hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour despite having no perception of this motion whatsoever. Few of us understand the principles at work when we flip on a lightswitch or a computer. Daily we are offered the most preposterous and counterintuitive explanations for such ordinary, simple things as the colors in a sunset or the propulsion of a sailboat into the wind, and we swallow them whole … which is not to say that we should not. They are, after all, true, so far as they go. 

But if it is demanded that we ignore our spontaneous wonder at the beauty of the setting sun or our delight in mastering the wild air using the work of our hands, it is time to politely end the conversation and get back to placating proud mothers and savoring first love.