Sir William Scott informs me, that he heard Johnson say, 'A man who is converted from Protestantism to Popery may be sincere: he parts with nothing: he is only superadding to what he already had. But a convert from Popery to Protestantism gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as any thing that he retains; there is so much laceration of mind[311] in such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and lasting[312].'
From Boswell's Life of Johnson:
1763
He this evening again recommended to me to perambulate Spain. I said it would amuse him to get a letter from me dated at Salamancha. JOHNSON. "I love the University of Salamancha; for when the Spaniards were in doubt as to the lawfulness of their conquering America, the University of Salamancha gave it as their opinion that it was not lawful." He spoke this with great emotion, and with that generous warmth which dictated the lines in his "London," against Spanish encroachment.
Here Dr. Johnson is referring to the writers such as Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, etc. who argued against the American conquest. The Indians were sovereign and should not be forced to be under the Auhority of the Pope or the Spanish Crown. However, there was also no way for the Indians to completely bar the Spaniards from their land. Nor could the task of evangelization be prohibited.
Catholic blogger Historical Christian has posted excerpts from Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky's fascinating take (Mystical Theology in the Eastern Church) on what St. Maximus the Confessor has to say on Sin and Free Will. It should also be noted that St. Maximus the Confessor was an important bridge between East and West, who is also the subject of a major study by the Catholic theologian Urs Van Balthasar. As Church Catholic it is important to recognize that the Church is Universal and thus both Western and Eastern in scope.
According to St. Maximus, this freedom of choice is already a sign of imperfection, a limitation of our true freedom. A perfect nature has no need of choice, for it knows naturally what is good. Its freedom is based on this knowledge. Our free choice indicates the imperfection of fallen human nature, the loss of the divine likeness. Our nature being over-clouded by sin no longer knows its true good, and usually turns to what is ‘against nature’; and so the human person is always faced with the necessity of choice; it goes forward gropingly. This hesitation in our ascent towards the good, we call ‘free will’. (p. 125)
The person called to union with God, called to realize by grace the perfect assimilation of its nature to the divine nature, is bound to a mutilated nature, defaced by sin and torn apart by conflicting desires. It knows and wills by means of this imperfect nature, and is in practice blind and powerless. It can no longer choose well, and too often yields to the impulses of a nature which has become a slave to sin. So it is, that that in us which is made in the image of God is dragged into the abyss, though always retaining its freedom of choice, and the possibility of turning anew to God. (pp. 125- 126;)
Here Maximus expounds the fact that Free Will is a limiting factor in that we are fallen and cannot recognize what is Good out right. For if we knew what was good we would automatically do it. But we are ignorant and must rely on our own choices. However, many of us take advantage of such deficiencies to do merely what we will and not what we ought. Thus, it is no surprise that the word heresy derives from haerare meaning to choose. Many of us choose to live in darkness than walk in the light as evidenced by many utterances in St. John's gospel and Paul's epistles.
When St. Augustine says "Love and do what you will" he consideres the act of Love as a well ordered desire and a pull toward the Ultimate Good which is God. Thus through Divine Grace we will what is good. Good is love and if love is in us, namely the Holy Spirit, then we will ultimately do what is good, illuminated by Grace. Herein lies the greatness of the Christian message where the depravity of a will ensnared by sin and thus blind to what is good can in the end choose to turn back to God. So while tied up in a way with Original Sin, Free Will also affords us the chance to confirm our will and essence towards God's.
Saints throughout the ages have been witnesses to this truth. May we not forget Our Blessed Mother whose fiat and cooperation in God's plan was instrumental in our salvation. Thus her title of co-Redemptrix. However, chief in her ability to do this is a precondition toward receiving God's grace and not the condition of "incurvatus", a turning away from God. Thus one realizes the need of the traditional concept of the Immaculate Conception in which the Holy Virgin is conceived without Original Sin. Only then can the concept of Irresistible grace expounded by Protestant Reformers and some Catholic theologians such as Fray Luis de León be properly understood. Here Irresistible grace only applies to Our Lady and the Human Nature of Christ derived from Her.
Recently I had the opportunity to see the Chinese-American author Amy Tan speak at Ohio Dominican University. Which got me to thinking: what's in a life? She spoke about how she used to use Cliff Notes in college because she was taking something like 10 literature courses at one time. Hers was a buffet family that took what it could get. So it came as a surprise to find a number of Cliff Notes dedicated to the Joy Luck Club during one of her speaking engagements at a bookstore. The manual described in detail her life's story as well as the supposed hidden meanings behind her literary narrative. Set out like this, one's life becomes nothing more than a series of dates and names. Thus written such a biographical sketch is at a great remove from what we have come to know as our life. Our whole experience is gone, boiled down to mere anecdote. All the meaning and content that pervades our world is sucked out and freeze dried under the icy stare of a third eye. (The antidote to this reductionist slant would be the tact of Boswell's Life of Johnson, in which the reader is immersed in the meat and marrow of the protangonist's life.)
In this light, I have come to think of a recent biography done on St. Augustine and the assumptions behind it that have come to foist themselves upon us with increasing regularity. I will pass over the author of the work on St. Augustine, suffice it to say it is the most recent such attempt.
As it happens, the controversy surrounds Augustine the man and how he presents himself in his work. The most autobiographical of his works would of course be the Confessions. However this work ultimately forms just a part of the Saint's vast output. His work range from when he was a newly converted Neo-Platonizing Philosopher still in Italy on his way back to Africa. The younger Augustine is more of an intellectualist drawing from Cicero, and Plotinus for much of his thought. Later however his work reveals developments in the man himself in response to crisis and controversy. Including the Donatists and finally the Pelagians.
In this the Saint develops from a concern for the soul and God to a comprehension of the vast commmunion of Saints and the Church at large. Also his Neo-Platonism becomes increasingly tempered by an incarnational understanding of reality, in which the Sacraments play a key role in the mediation of God's grace.
Overall, St. Augustine represents one of the major bulwarks of Western Christianity in the way this synthesis is come about. Thus the concept of Original Sin, and the reality of sin and disordered love depicted in the City of God. It must be remembered that the Bishop of Hippo's work must be read not as a system part form itself but through the prism of the Magisterium.
Therefore Augustine's more extreme views concerning Free Will, Grace and Original Sin are tempered via what the Church has accepted from his teaching as authoritative. For example, the Church recognizes such concepts of a baptism of desire as well as Eastern Doctor's view of divinization versus the more Western concept of sanctification.
That being said, Augustine's controversy concerning the Pelagians is more complicated than is often portrayed in that his adversaries such as Julian assumed that all believers had to live a celibate life in order to gain salvation. The Pelagian ethic was eeriely close to the tenants of a gentleman of late Anitiquity and was elitist at heart. Obviousy Augustine held to the sanctity of marriage as well as the celibate state in the life of a christian.
His assertion of the presence of concupiscence even within the conjugal act is not as negative a view as is often asserted. True, there is an underlying tendency toward the demonization of sex and sexuality within the West which propenents of the Sexual Revolution reacted against. But such a reaction has often been to our peril as sex is separated from any instrinsic value. it may have beyond self-gratification. However if one is realistic it cannot be denied that even within marriage sex need not be without sin since partners can act selfishly in this area as well as in other areas in their life.
Modern revisionism tends to lean on what many have called the hermeneutics of suspicion championed by Marx, Freud, Nietzsche et al. In this context the account that someone, say St. Augustine, gives of his life is seen purely in manipulative terms reducing his motives to the basest possible ones. In this reading St. Augustine's Confessions are a provocative display of personal baggage meant to enhance the writer's position within the North African Church in which he was a minority as a Catholic Bishop. Since most Christians in North Africa belonged to the Donatist sect at this time, it is thought Augustine used this piece to rally support for his cause which he eventually was able to accomplish in the Emperor's action against the Donatist's later in his life which liquidated their possessions in favor of the Catholic party.
To this end, the author of the biography dissects the Confessions as a self-aggrandizing enterprise in which St. Augustine purposely misrepresents the events of his own life.
We are told to resist the siren all of the Saint's rhetoric and line of argument. He was a teacher of rhetoric after all. So to get to the truth we must reconstruct half-hints and allusions within the Saint's own writings.
Of course upon reading St. Augustine one could not for a moment believe he was unaquainted with Classical Learning including Rhetoric. This much is obvious. Yet beyond the form there is the message he alludes to, the Deposit of Faith left by Christ ot His Church. That Augustine was zealous for his party is evident, and is not to be doubted. That he had more charity than many, especially the Donatists, which were along the line of Puritans, is revealing however. Can a priest who is in mortal sin say a valid mass? Yes. Is unity in doctrine and belief important to the Church? Most definitely.
Herein we see the emerging Western Church which the biographer is highly critical of as a whole. Not to mention the oft-hated Augustinian concept of Original Sin, or the state of incurvatus, the turning away from God. Such developments beg the question, does the biographer's own method of suspicion hold up to scrutiny?
Firstly, whenever we read a text, especially a narrative in the case of the Confessions, we naturally give assent to the narrator's assertions. We have an implicit trust, a confianza in the validity of what the narrator is telling us. To bracket such a text in a priori doubt fundamentally changes the nature of the text itself. Such a posture owes much to the Cartesian method of radical doubt so as to eliminate all falsehood in the search of truth. Ironically, St. Augustine, as many scholars, was already in position of the Descartes' cogito, the fact that human intellect is reflective that I know that I think and so in some sense I must trust the fact that I exist. However he does not isolate this cogito from all the other mental operations in an artificial manner which is the characteristic of Modern Idealism.
If one were to follow the biographer's own method of suspicion or desconfianza, and cast a jaundiced eye on his own argument one comes to one main conclusion. The author is attempting to discredit many of the bulwarks of the Church, of which Augustine is representative such as the Hierarchical Structure, the Sacraments as vehicles of God's grace and a sign of Eccesial Communion, as well as Original Sin.
Also one must keep in mind the role of tradition in the reading of Augustine's work and how it is read not just by the lone skeptic but how it is read and received in the community of Faith across the centuries.
While an expert in Latin and possessing an intimate knowledge of Augustine's corpus the author seems to miss the boat on Augustine the man. As an historian the biographer is highly competent in the World in which Augustine lived (i.e. the Mediterranean in Late Anitquity). However on matters of theology, he is gravely amiss.
The importance of the Confessions lies not so much in the accurate depiction of historical events for a history textbook but the inner journey of Augustine the man toward God. That he makes use of his classical training in the reconstruction of the episodes into a moving narrative does not take value away from the text. The message remains as true then as now.
Nietzsche laughed at the Pear story as an episode of infantile moridity. Oh no, he stole some pears when he was a boy! Wow that Augustine was a wussy. Yet Augustine says that it was not so much that he stole the pears but that he sole them because he knew it was wrong. So in his conscience he knew what he was thinking of doing was wrong and that was the reason he did it. Just take a look around at the plague of infantile rebellion around us, both real and manufactured. "Whatever, I do what I want!" This was one of the problems with the Mosaic Law and all laws for that matter that since something is forbidden we naturally want to do it.
With the help of Divine Grace we can will to do what is good. Only in this context can the injunction: Love and do what you will, have any meaning at all. If the person is right with God and is in a state of grace then that the person will naturally love that which is good, and therefore what they will, will be good also.
In medieval Spain acted as conduits and go-betweens between the Christian and Muslim communities much as the dwindling Middle East Christians today. Forced conversions were common especially after the collapse of the Caliphate of Cordoba at the end of the 11th century. However as we know a violent imposition of a religion is contrary to reason and thereby contrary to God's nature as Benedict XVI aptly put in his controversial Regensburg address. In the case of the Sephardim this meant that forced conversion were never considered valid. This same view was voiced by Maimonides who may have undergone such a conversion as a young man before his family left for North Africa and Egypt. Therefore it was a problem when in 1391 and after, Jews in Christian lands were also subject to forced conversions. This led not to the absorption of the conversos but the creation of a community neither Jewish nor Christian. Since those of old Christian stalk: Old Christians consider them guilty of crypo-jewish practices. Therefore the major impetus behind the 1492 expulsion of the Sephardim was to keep them from presumably influencing the converso community which included many of their relatives. As time went on while many conversos lost all concept of their ancestry the prejudice of la limpieza de sangre- the purity of blood - barred peope with Jewish or Moorish blood from many posts. These slights only seemed to heighten their self-consciousness as a community apart. In fact some actually emigrated to Holland and the New World and reverted back to Judaism such as was the case of Miguel Cardozo, born in Madrid in 1626 a leader of the Sabbateans, a Jewish sect that proclaimed the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi.
In intellectual life many people of converso stock were important in that tradition of literacy was prevalent in their families and therefore they embraced much of the devotio moderna and Renaissance thought particularly that of Erasmus. This so called Erasmism is not a straight aping of the Rotterdam scholar but a purely Peninsular phenomenon peculiar to Spain. Prominent amogn them where the Cardinal Cisneros, the Brothers Valdés, Luis Vives, Andrés Laguna etc. It's not that the conversos were exclusively of this tendency but their presence is significant since this line of thought was attractive since it was more egalitarian and offered an escape from prejudice. By sharing in Christ's Humanitas, we realize the dignity and vocation of man no matter his birth or background. To echo St. Paul, in Christ their is no l0nger Gentile or Jew. This Erasmist phase marked the First Renaissance, the Second being colored largely by the Council of Trent.
In this mold are Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Juan de la Cruz, and Fray Luis de León.
Santa Teresa is more along the lines of the "iluminados" or "monjas iluminadas" mixed with the Catholic Reformatory spirit. While Fray Luis, an Agustinian, combines the Erasmist and Humanistic impulse in his Christo-centrism and textual exegesis and concern for the original Biblical languages, with Trentan themes such as Patristics, Homilectics and Moral Theology. However demonizes the Council of Trent should read the Declaration on Justification and appreciate it more fully. As this document is a masterpiece of theology that thoroughly engages the theses of the Protestant Reformers and articulates a Catholic response, which in itself is a development of doctrine in that the deposit of faith had not been challenged in such a way before.
Fray Luis is unique in how he combines scriptural exegesis of the Hebrew Bible with his roots. Doubtlessly he was barely aware of them as he had some converso blood on his mother's side. Yet he was fully Catholic in his work and thought as all but a tiny minority of conversos were. However, his trials and tribulations at the hands of a Spanish translations of the Song of Songs from Hebrew afforded him no end of attacks on this score, that he preferred the interpretation of the Rabbis over the Fathers of the Church. However the addition of the Hebrew text, set by a scholar in France (Vatable), included some commentaries by Ibn Ezra and others.
A year or so ago I was searching through the OSU library and found an Old Spanish religious debate between a Jew and a Jewish convert to Christianity which quoted the Talmud at length. These debates were common and the Talmud was used to defend Christianity against Judaism. This was the background situation that Fray Luis was heir to in that Jewish converts were some of the worst Jew-baiters. These included Pedro Alphonsus, and others who had a public debates with Jewish religious leaders like the public disputation with great Catalan rabbi Nahmanides in the 14th century. Concerning what Christians call the Old Testament the Rabbinic sages cited in the Talmud are helpful in understanding the Jewish Scriptures. Indeed, they often agree with the Church's traditional interpretation. Take for instance the Song of Songs. In the interpretation of this book the Love Song is seen as an allegory of the House of Israel and God. This is more in line with the Church's teaching about Christ and His Bride the Church.
Late Medieval Jewish scholars would move away from the Rabbinic Sages, offering more innovative interpretation such as the relationship between the individual soul and God offered by Maimonides. This tact is further elaborated in Gersonides (a Provençal Rabbi in the 14th century) who sees the book as an extended allegory of Aristotelian Psychology involving the Material and the Active Intellect.
More importantly, the plight of Fray Luis and others like him shed light on the Jewish Question as it can be posed in Christian Circles, by once more positiong Jewishness at the root of Christianity. This has been one of the definite coups of the 20th century, a small but precious thing, in the barrage of genocide and death.
For truly, the Catholic Church contains Judaism within it from the Liturgy of the Word- the Sinagogue, to the Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Holy of Holies.
If the Jew is important it is that he reveals mankind to man in Jesus Christ. And as a community they represent mankind in microcosm, wandering the Earth in search of a Heavenly home, the New Jerusalem. Yehuda Ha-Levi a prominent courtier at the Height of the Caliphate at Cordoba said it best: "My heart is in the east and I in the uttermost west."
A Longing to Return to the Land of Israel
A poem by Yehudah ha-Levi
My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west.
How can I find savor in food? How shall it be sweet to me?
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
A light thing would it seem to me
to leave all the good things of Spain -
Seeing how precious in mine eyes
to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.
| Creed |
We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin. |
Fray Juan de Bonilla
1-On the nature of the heart and how it should be managed.
You should know that God gave you a very noble heart, created soley to love Him and melt yourself therein. And since you will do anything for love of Him difficult things become simple. On the contrary, if you try to do something by force you will never accomplish it. Order the intentions of you heart so that what is inside you shows on the outside. So even though penance and penitential rites are praiseworthy- practised with discretion as is proper for those who do so- you will never achieve virtue through them but only vanity and an arrogant air on which you’ll waste all your efforts if they do not agree with what is within your own soul. “Man’s life on earth is war” as saintly Job says. For this battle it is best to be prepared. Your preparation should be to calm and tranquilize your spirit. So when some disturbance or whirlpool of uneasiness arises in your soul be prepared to calm and pacify it, not letting it get out of control. Do this everytime you are uneasy, in or outside of prayer. Following this advise you will know how to pray well. And whenever you do this let it be done smoothly and without effort. For the whole purpose of this exercize is to pacify your heart and not let it run wild so you may always be at peace.
2-On the care the soul should take in coming to be at peace
Above all else you should apply this peaceful advice to your senses. This will raise you to great heights without much effort but with great peace and security. In this peace and security, being desirious of God, you will keep vigil, pray, and suffer insults without sorrow. Since until you are at peace you will come to suffer many troubles for lack of experience. Your soul will be consoled whatever contradictions that befall you and every day you will be taught how to better calm your spirit. And if you should find that you are so troubled that you cannot find any peace go straight to prayer and persevere in the example of Christ Our Redeemer who prayed three times in the garden as an example for us.
May all your memory and consolation lie in prayer and do not cease until your will is calm and at peace, conformed to God’s will. And if you are occupied in corporal or manual labor do not try to finish your work early, nor measure out the time you have to accomplish it. But labor peacefully for your main intent is to have God always present in your mind. Thus you will be at great peace without worrying about pleasing any one but God. And if you do this with any another intention in mind you will see how whirlwinds and uneasiness rise up in your soul once again. As you fall and rise you will be aware and clearly see that all the evil we possess comes from our own self-love since we wish everything to bend to our will. For the opposite troubles and disquiets us.
3-On how this peaceful dwelling is to be built.
Be on guard and never let your heart be troubled or sad. Nor get involved in matters that upset you. But make an effort to keep calm, since the Lord says: Blessed are the peaceful ones. Doing this the Lord will build a peaceful city in your soul and make it a house of delights. He only desires that whenever you are afflicted you sit down and calm yourself in all your doings, thoughts and movements. Yet since a city is not built in a day do not presume that in a single day you will achieve interior peace and calm which means building a house for the Lord and making yourself His temple. This same Lord is the one who should do the building, otherwise it would be by your own efforts. Behold, the most prinicipal foundation of this endeavor is humility.
4-The soul should leave all consolations behind to gain this peace.
To enter through this door of humility you must try and embrace tribulations like sisters, desiring to be ridiculed by all so you have no one console you but God. And you must set it within your breast that only God is your aide and everyone else are as thorns to you. So you will instruct your soul to be alone with God, imagining as if others were putting you to shame or insulting you. Thus you would have to go along content, and suffer with joy, being certain that God is with you. And you should not desire or pursue any other prize but to suffer for His love, honor and glory. You must persevere and smile if someone tells you insulting words, despises or scolds you. A great treasure lies beneath the surface, because a soap that cleanses all faults is a tribulation well suffered indeed. Lastly, you are not to desire honors – even though no one loves you or notices you in this life- but rather that you be allowed to suffer for Jesus Christ crucified.
Guard against yourself like an enemy. Do not follow your will, understanding, or desires if you do not wish to lose yourself. For this alone you should be equipped to defend against yourself. And when your will wants something even though it be holy place it openly and alone with profound humility before the Lord, praying that His will be done on the matter. And do this with a pure desire and without a hint of self-love, knowing that nothing is your own. Nor can you keep yourself from your opinions which bring with them a type of holiness and peace along with indiscrete jealousy of which Christ Our Lord says: Beware of prophets that come dressed as sheep and are ravenous wolves, by their fruits you will know them. Their fruits are leaving your soul troubled and uneasy. Everything that strays from humility- this interior peace and calm- is like anything else, a false prophet and a devouring wolf. Who comes under the appearance of a sheep to rob and deprive you of humility and the necessary calm you hoped to take advantage of. It so happens that what has been gained after many days with much effort is lost in a short while, and it is the theft of these same wolves. The greater signs of holiness a thing possesses the more it should be examined. And this should be done with great calm and interior peace as has been said. Do not be troubled if you should fail in some of this but humble yourself before the Lord and recognize your weakness. And take head for a later time should the Lord humble some hidden pride that you are as yet unaware of. Do not be troubled if the embers of vice touch your soul but take care and softly remove your spirit from them. Place yourself in a calm peace and do not be troubled, disturbed, happy, or sad, but keep your soul peaceful and pure for God. Which you will find in your insides assuring you that the Divine Will is always to our benefit.
5. How the soul should remain in solitude so God can work on it.
You should hold your soul in high esteem for it is a temple where God stays and dwells. Value it so highly that you do not mix it with anything else. Put your hope solely in the Lord’s return. That it desires to be alone without thoughts, desires, and without will. Never look indiscretely for travails to endure for God but along with the advise of your spiritual father. But let Him dispose your will to suffer for His love what He requires. Never do what you desire instead let God do what He wills through you.
May your will be free in everything as well as your desires. That you desire nothing. But when you do, if something is done which you do not want, but just the opposite, do not be pained but let your spirit be as calm as if you had not desired anything at all. This is true freedom, not being attached to anything. God desires your soul alone so that He can work great marvels within you. Oh solitude where the high city of Jerusalem will be built! Oh happy exile! Oh desert in which we can enjoy God so easily! Do not stop on this road, take off your shoes and enter, for this is sacred ground. Do not stop and wave to anyone on the way, let the dead bury the dead. You are going to the land of the living; death has no stake in you.
6. On the prudence that one should have with the love of neighbour so that this peace is not disturbed.
Experience will show you that this path clearly leads to eternal life for the love of God and neighbor will infuse your soul. The Lord said he came to set the earth on fire and he wants nothing else than for it burn. Even though God’s love has no limit, love of neighbour does. And if you do not handle it with moderation and temperance this other love can destroy you. For edifying others you would be destroyed. You should love your neighbour so that your soul does not suffer any detriment. Never do anything just to give an example to another person or win other people over since you will only end up at a loss for yourself.
Do everything sweetly and smoothly without caring for anything but to please God. Humble yourself in all your works and you will know that you can get little out of things done just for yourself or others. Be sure not to have such a fervour in your soul that you lose your peace and calm. Also be desirious and thirsty that everyone know this truth that you understand so that they can get drunk on this wine that God promises to everyone for free. Your neighbor’s thirst should accompany you, having received it from the hand of the Lord. But not aquired through overzealousness. So if God has planted this thirst in the solitude of your own soul, He will reap it in due time.
Do not pursue or sow anything; rather leave your soul alone so that God can plant His seed there. God desires your soul alone unattached to anything so that He can tie and bind you to Himself. Let Him bind you. Allow yourself to relax in the calm of your spirit and wait for Him to inhabit you. Lose all your worries, walk alone and unattached to any place so that God can put you on and supply you with what you ought to think. Be forgetful of yourself so that only love lives in your soul. So that without any diligence that disturbs or removes this peace you should pacify you favors with temperance. God will thus preserve all peace and tranquility within you. Since the silence in your soul is like a kind of shouting, this need for peace is what determines everything.
While generally I abhore smoke and smokers. In fact I would often try to breathe out so as not to breath in the noxious fumes after spending time around Spaniards I had to get used to the habit. Of course this was right before the tide of anti-smoking legislation in the United States and Europe. Now I appreciate a smoke-free environment but prohibiting people from smoking bars is a bit much. In fact, its asinine. Since we have dispensed with all previous forms of morality all we have left are prejudices against so-called material "vices". We all want to be in a clean well-lit place thank you very much. Also the sting of the whole thing is that it is not a campaign for the common good but just an attempt to save insurance money for the medical costs that smoking brings into the system. So I can not help but be annoyed by such legislation. Not to mention the relentless anti-smoking campaign paid for by the tobbaco companies after a lengthy lawsuit. Chesterton for one would have crapped his britches at the hypocrisy of it all.
America is sometimes offered to us, even by Americans (who ought to know better), as a moral example. There are indeed very real American virtues; but this virtuous attitude is hardly one of them. And if anyone wants to know what a welter of weakness and inconsequence the moral mind of America can sometimes be, he may be advised to look, not so much to the Crime Wave or the Charleston, as to the serious idealistic essays by highbrows and cultural critics, such as one by Miss Avis D. Carlson on `Wanted: A Substitute for Righteousness.' By righteousness she means, of course, the narrow New England taboos; but she does not know it. For the inference she draws is that we should recognize frankly that `the standard abstract right and wrong is moribund.' This statement will seem less insane if we consider, somewhat curiously, what the standard abstract right and wrong seems to mean -- at least in her section of the States. It is a glimpse of an incredible world.
She takes the case of a young man brought up `in a home where there was an attempt to make dogmatic cleavage of right and wrong.' And what was the dogmatic cleavage? Ah, what indeed! His elders told him that some things were right and some wrong; and for some time he accepted this strange assertion. But when he leaves home he finds that, `apparently perfectly nice people do the things he has been taught to think evil.' Then follows a revelation. `The flowerlike girl he envelops in a mist of romantic idealization smokes like an imp from the lower regions and pets like a movie vamp. The chum his heart yearns towards cultivates a hip-flask, etc.' And this is what the writer calls a dogmatic cleavage between right and wrong!
The standard of abstract right and wrong apparently is this. That a girl by smoking a cigarette makes herself one of the company of the fiends of hell. That such an action is much the same as that of a sexual vampire. That a young man who continues to drink fermented liquor must necessarily be `evil' and must deny the very existence of any difference between right and wrong. That is the `standard of abstract right and wrong' that is apparently taught in the American home. And it is perfectly obvious, on the face of it, that it is not a standard of abstract right or wrong at all. That is exactly what it is not. That is the very last thing any clear-headed person would call it. It is not a standard; it is not abstract; it has not the vaguest notion of what is meant by right and wrong. It is a chaos of social and sentimental accidents and associations, some of them snobbish, all of them provincial, but, above all, nearly all of them concrete and connected with a materialistic prejudice against particular materials. To have a horror of tobacco is not to have an abstract standard of right; but exactly the opposite. It is to have no standard of right whatever; and to make certain local likes and dislikes as a substitute. We need not be very surprised if the young man repudiates these meaningless vetoes as soon as he can; but if he thinks he is repudiating morality, he must be almost as muddle-headed as his father. And yet the writer in question calmly proposes that we should abolish all ideas of right and wrong, and abandon the whole human conception of a standard of abstract justice, because a boy in Boston cannot be induced to think that a nice girl is a devil when she smokes a cigarette.
If the rising generation were faced with no worse doubts and difficulties than this, it would not be very difficult to reconcile them to the traditions of truth and justice. But I think the episode is worth mentioning, merely because it throws a ray of light on the moral condition of American Culture, in the decay of Puritanism. And when next we are told that the idealism of America is to set a `standard' by which England must transform herself, it will be well to remember what is apparently meant by a standard and an ideal; and that the fire of idealism seems both to begin and end in smoke.
Incidentally, I must say I can bear witness to this queer taboo about tobacco. Of course numberless Americans smoke numberless cigars; a great many others eat cigars, which seems to me a more occult pleasure. But there does exist an extraordinary idea that ethics are involved in some way; and many who smoke really disapprove of smoking. I remember once receiving two American interviewers on the same afternoon; there was a box of cigars in front of me and I offered one to each in turn. Their reaction (as they would probably call it) was very curious to watch. The first journalist stiffened suddenly and silently and declined in a very cold voice. He could not have conveyed more plainly that I had attempted to corrupt an honorable man with a foul and infamous indulgence; as if I were the Old Man of the Mountain offering him hashish that would turn him into an assassin. The second reaction was even more remarkable. The second journalist first looked doubtful; then looked sly; then seemed to glance about him nervously, as if wondering whether we were alone, and then said with a sort of crestfallen and covert smile: `Well, Mr. Chesterton, I'm afraid I have the habit.'
As I also have the habit, and have never been able to imagine how it could be connected with morality or immorality, I confess that I plunged with him deeply into an immoral life. In the course of our conversation, I found he was otherwise perfectly sane. He was quite intelligent about economics or architecture; but his moral sense seemed to have entirely disappeared. He really thought it rather wicked to smoke. He had no `standard of abstract right or wrong'; in him it was not merely moribund; it was apparently dead. But anyhow, that is the point and that is the test. Nobody who has an abstract standard of right and wrong can possibly think it wrong to smoke a cigar. But he had a concrete standard of particular cut and dried customs of a particular tribe. Those who say Americans are largely descended from the American Indians might certainly make a case out of the suggestion that this mystical horror of material things is largely a barbaric sentiment. The Red Indian is said to have tried and condemned a tomahawk for committing a murder. In this case he was certainly the prototype of the white man who curses a bottle because too much of it goes into a man. Prohibition is sometimes praised for its simplicity; on these lines it may be equally condemned for its savagery. But I myself do not say anything so absurd as that Americans are savages; nor do I think it would matter much if they were descended from savages. It is culture that counts and not ethnology; and the culture that is concerned here derives indirectly rather from New England than from Old America. Whatever it derives from, however, this is the thing to be noted about it: that it really does not seem to understand what is meant by a standard of right and wrong. It is a vague sentimental notion that certain habits were not suitable to the old log cabin or the old hometown. It has a vague utilitarian notion that certain habits are not directly useful in the new amalgamated stores or the new financial gambling-hell. If his aged mother or his economic master dislikes to see a young man hanging about with a pipe in his mouth, the action becomes a sin; or the nearest that such a moral philosophy can come to the idea of a sin. A man does not chop wood for the log hut by smoking; and a man does not make dividends for the Big Boss by smoking; and therefore smoking has a smell as of something sinful. Of what the great theologians and moral philosophers have meant by a sin, these people have no more idea than a child drinking milk has of a great toxicologist analyzing poisons. It may be a credit of their virtue to be thus vague about vice. The man who is silly enough to say, when offered a cigarette, `I have no vices,' may not always deserve the rapier-thrust of the reply given by the Italian Cardinal, `It is not a vice, or doubtless you would have it.' But at least the Cardinal knows it is not a vice; which assists the clarity of his mind. But the lack of clear standards among those who vaguely think of it as a vice may yet be the beginning of much peril and oppression. My two American journalists, between them, may yet succeed in adding the sinfulness of cigars to the other curious things now part of the American Constitution.
I would therefore venture to say to Miss Avis Carlson that the quarrel in question does not arise from the Yankee Puritans having too much morality, but from their having too little. It does not arise from their drawing too hard and fast a line of distinction between right and wrong, but from their being much to loose and indistinct. They go by associations and not by abstractions. Therefore they classify smoking with vamping or a flask in the pocket with sin in the soul. I hope at least that some of the Fundamentalists will succeed in being a little more fundamental than this. The men of Tennessee are supposed to be very anxious to draw the line between men and monkeys. They are also supposed by some to be rather too anxious to draw the line between black men and white men. May I be allowed to hope that they will succeed in drawing a rather more logical line between bad men and good men? Something of the the difference and the difficulty may be seen by comparing the old Ku Klux Klan with the new Klu Klux Klan. The old secret society may have been justified or not; but it had a definite object: it was directed against somebody. The new secret society seems to have been directed against anybody; often against anybody who drank; in time, for all I know, against anybody who smoked. It is this sort of formless fanaticism that is the great danger of the American Temperament; and it is well to insist that if men must persecute, they will be more clear-headed if they persecute for a creed.
- from Generally Speaking, Dodd & Mead, 1929
For the title of this blog I have chosen the following phrase from St. Augustine:
Dilige et quod vis fac
7th Homily on First Epistle of St. John
Literally: Love and what you will, do it. Therefore once we have loved the Good, we should do what is right. However without this end this same motto can be the springboard toward all matter of slutting it up and to live the way the world lives. However to the abyss to which our disordered love has put us is not initially clear so we should explore it further.
First let's take the Archpriest of Hita from his Libro de Buen Amor (circa 1340)
| Como dize Aristóteles, cosa es verdadera, | | ||
| el mundo por dos cosas trabaja: la primera, | |||
| por aver mantenençia; la otra era | |||
| por aver juntamiento con fembra plasentera. As Aristotle saith, 'tis a thing most true that the world worketh by two things: the first to maintain itself, the other to join with a female of pleasing meign. | |||
| Here we have the cosmic drive toward propagation the divine commandement "be fruitful and multiply" yet at the same time this desire is twisted. For here the means, coitus, is taken as an end when it is a mean. Later the situation becomes more complicated via the manipulation of wealth and the reduction of the sex object to object as such in this sonnet from Quevedo (1580-1645): | |||
Quiero gozar, Gutiérrez; que no quiero
Tener gusto mental tarde y mañana;
Primor quiero atisbar, y no ventana,
Y asistir al placer, y no al cochero.
Hacérselo es mejor que no terrero;
Más me agrada de balde que galana:
Por una sierpe dejaré a Diana,
Si el dármelo es a gotas sin dinero.
No pido calidades ni linajes;
Que no es mi pija libro de becerro,
Ni muda el coño, por el don, visajes
Puta sin daca es gusto sin cencerro,
Que al no pagar, los necios, los salvajes,
Siendo paloma, le llamaron perro.
I want to enjoy myself now Gutiérrez,
Don’t wanna have regrets for tomorrow
I want a go at the finest-
with access to pleasure and not just a peep-show
For it’s better to do it hardcore than woo from afar
and I’d rather have it on the sly than be romantic
I’d quit virginal Diana at the drop of a hat for a real slut
If she gave it to me slow and free of charge.
Now I’m not out for quality or lineage
‘Cause Lord knows my cock ain’t no prize
and a twat’s a twat no matter what.
For a whore without money is pleasure without pain
since when you don’t pay
the flunkies and dweebies
call it a freebie.
Now the unitive, conjugal act is reduced to a manipulation of organs detached from personhood as such. Also the monetary value of the act is foremost in that it is a debasing exchange. Thus man is reduced to a mere tool in the hands of the other ruled over by the cosmological forces of money and the market. These two constants: money (daca) and whores (puta) then redefine man's place in the universe in that he is a whore who is in turned valued in terms of money. The next step in this process is the fusion of these two whore and money in the compound known as whorney. No longer are we to be gristed in the mill to obtain coin, we carry money in our very being. (Expounded in The New Laws)
Now then whorneykind occupies what is the whorneyverse. Originally the universe referred to the totality of all that exists. Now that there is a plenum of whorney, whorney is all there is.
It was around May, around May
When it gets hot,
When the stalks of wheat shoot up
And the fields are in bloom,
When the lark sings
And the nightengale responds,
Around the time lovers go to serve their Love
Except me, sad and troubled, living in this prison
I don’t know whether it is day or night
Except for the chirping of a little bird at dawn,
A crossbowman shot it down,
May God grant him his just desserts!
Confucius say: All is turtle poop the rest is just salad dressing.
Traveler there is no path, you make the path as you go.
- Antonio Machado
Christ is the Way, He is the path by which we make our lives as we go following in His footsteps. And like a road we walk on Him in Whom we live, move, and have our being, out of all life’s options we make ourselves in His image. So we not only believe but we act and the Divine and human wills work together like the potter with his clay which is soft to the touch and not hard like marble. Together God and man we make a new creation. We regenerate Nature, that original gift that began the universe, the self-giving Love that laid the ground for all things. But following Christ is not a mere doctrine it is a complete life that re-connects us to God, our foundation. And so those who were once uprooted by the winds going about towards a dead-end now found themselves on the Eternal Rock through this new path. Being a Christian means that you follow this Way of life with all your heart, following the example of Christ which is both a sacrament and a mystery. Traveler there is no path, you make the path as you go, following in Christ’s footsteps in this the human adventure.
Camino
“Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.”
- Antonio Machado
Cristo es camino y El es la vía por la que se hace la vida y nos vamos siguiéndole los pasos. Y como <
