Getting to the Point: modernity

Showing posts with label modernity. Show all posts

Thursday, May 21, 2015

The Gift of Science

Our tour of the gifts of the Holy Spirit has taken us to gift number five, which is the gift of knowledge. Or as I prefer to call it, based on its Latin name, the gift of science.

Now I realize that in our modern use of the word ‘science’ we don’t exactly experience it as a mystical gift of the Holy Spirit. The word science has been degraded (yes) from its rich and full medieval expression to a much more circumscribed and limited usage—namely the experimental physical sciences by which we learn through a disciplined process (the scientific method) the verifiable properties of physical objects of various kinds.

This was not unknown in the medieval world, although the silly historical illiterates called the New Atheists like to pretend it was. Scientific research and progress, and the technical innovations that arise from that, were part of the High Middle Ages, more often than not happening in the monasteries that were the locus of intellectual life in that era.

The medievals had a much broader concept of scientia than that, however. Their concept of science and knowledge was broad enough that they could speak of its highest expression in the gift of the Holy Spirit of knowledge.

The science yielded by the physical experimental sciences is of tremendous value, as far as it goes. It tells us how things work, and how they work in concert with one another. Because of that, it tells us how we can make things work for us to achieve purposes of our own design. All of which is good, very good indeed.

What the physical sciences cannot tell us is what things are, and what things are for. And any real scientist is quite happy to acknowledge that. We know quite a bit about how oak trees work—photosynthesis and root systems and all that. The experimental sciences have not a word to tell us about what an oak tree really is, or what an oak tree is really for.

Now, if we were content to leave it at that—yes, botany cannot tell us these things—that would be fine. But in our modern utterly illogical and unscientific thought processes, we declare more often than not that because botany cannot tell us these things, these questions are meaningless and cannot be answered by any other science, any other knowledge.

That this is a statement that derives from no scientific experiment (and cannot) and is as thorough-goingly metaphysical and indeed theological in its scope and claims utterly eludes the poor modern materialist who (I hate to break it to him) is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. Indeed, if the question is declared meaningless and void, then the claim is that all physical objects, which includes you and me, are nothing but assemblages of atoms in various patterns—there is no inherent reality to things, and certainly no purpose.

I am going on at a bit of length about this because we cannot understand the Spirit’s gift of knowledge without challenging something of the inadequacy of our modern notion of ‘science’. But that’s enough about that.

Knowledge is that gift of the Spirit by which we come to see all created beings as God sees them. Instead of our narrow and limited human view, by which we only see other creatures as either serving our purposes or impeding them, as giving us delight or causing us sorrow, and in which we see our own selves even more dimly and inaccurately, God wants us to share in His own God’s-eye-view of creation.

To see that the oak tree is a thing that gives glory to God, that in its beauty and strength it speaks of the beauty and strength of God, His protection, His goodness manifest in a tree. And a tree is one thing; my brother or my sister, the stranger on the street is quite another. Knowledge allows us to penetrate the veil of appearances and reactions, our own selfish and limited perspective of one another, and see the person as God sees them. Knowledge also gives us the ability to put creation in its proper place—a good and delightful thing, given to us to manifest God’s glory and serve our real needs in this life, but not the ultimate good, not the ultimate point.

Knowledge allows us to love creation with making it into an idol, to affirm the goodness of everything God has made while holding that goodness to be very little and unimportant compared to the goodness of God.

From knowledge, then, we have the wisdom to apply our mastery of the physical sciences, our insights into how things work, so that we use them not simply to do whatever we think is best, but to really serve the good of humanity.

The Spirit’s gift of science, then, orders all the other sciences of our human intellect so that they serve the true good, the true dignity and value of the human person. In our world today when science is used to pour poisons into the earth, air, and water, when it is used to kill unborn children and the elderly, and mutilate men and women confused about their genders, we need the science of the Spirit to show us the truth of things, and of people.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

What is the Point of Religion?

The essence of an image consists in the fact that it represents something… with the fact that it goes beyond itself… thus the image of God means, first of all, that the human being cannot be closed in on himself. If he attempts this he betrays himself. To be the image of God implies relationality. It is the dynamic that sets the human being in motion toward the totally Other. Hence it means the capacity for relationship; it is the human capacity for God.

Joseph Ratzinger, In the Beginning

Reflection – ‘What is the point of religion, anyway?’ In a novel I read on my holidays, one of the characters, completely steeped in secular values and irreligious, asked this perfectly reasonable question. What is the purpose of prayer in human life, of religious observance, of turning towards God?

It is an important question – one might argue that it is the question the world poses to the Church right now. What are we bringing to the table? We have to avoid, it seems to me, giving answers that are utilitarian in nature. Religion helps us to be more peaceful… or helps us to work for social justice… or makes us more generous… or creates a more stable society…

All of these may be true to greater or lesser degrees, but none of these is the ‘point’ of religion. Prayer, and hence God, are not tools we use to achieve some greater purpose, some end of our own. This quote from Ratzinger gives us the real answer. The real answer to the question, hard as this may be to present to a thoroughly secular person, is that the point of God is that God is the point of everything.

We are not religious people because we hope to gain some other good from being religious—having our prayers answered so that we get what we want, or some variation on that. We are religious people because we believe that the purpose of creation is to enter into relationship with God.

Really the question is not ‘what is the point of religion?’ The question is ‘what is the point of anything?’ Life can be about professional success… but why bother with that? Life can be about happy family relationships… but why bother with that? Life can be about cramming in as much pleasure as we can into each moment (YOLO!)… but why bother with that?

At each twist and turn of trying to find some ultimate meaning and purpose to life, we are always confronted with human finitude, with the inevitability of death and the insufficiency of strictly human goods to genuinely satisfy us. What is the point of anything, really, unless everything is pointing us beyond the human and the finite and the mortal?

Once we open the door to that other reality, to God and to faith and to prayer, then everything becomes charged with meaning—our work, our loves, our families, our pleasures all become taken up in a world of meaning that is not doomed to the futility of the grave.

The point of religion, of faith, is that it gives a sure and solid and indestructible meaning to everything else in life, and without this meaning, everything else is really very fragile. It is quite a mysterious affair—it is only when we allow for the invisible, the unprovable, that which no eye has seen and no ear has heard, that which seems to be so insubstantial and fleeting, that all the things that are near at hand, obvious, plain, become fully solid and real with a lasting meaning and purpose.

Secularism has turned its back on the invisible and indemonstrable matters of God and the spirit in favor of what can be proven and known to the senses. Ironically, we find ourselves in a world devoid of lasting value or purpose, a world of brute matter and physical forces, a world where there is no meaning save what our frail and feeble humanity can impose on it for a short span of years.

Faith allows for this one element of impenetrable mystery—God!—and so the whole universe becomes charged with crystalline purpose and goodness, all the brute matter echoes like a resonating glass vibrating with the music of the angels, and all of humanity becomes the great priesthood of the cosmos, offering praise and worship to the Creator and so enacting that which is the utter fulfillment of all creation, the utter fulfillment of our own human destiny and vocation, the absolute and final and endless point of all that is.

And that is the point of religion.

Monday, February 3, 2014

The Opposite of Funny

Mr. McCabe [an atheist writer who had criticized Chesterton, not for his views, but for his style] think that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else.

The question of whether a man expresses himself in a grotesque or laughable phraseology, or in a stately and restrained phraseology, is not a question of motive or of moral state, it is a question of instinctive language and self-expression.

Whether a man chooses to tell the truth in long sentences or short jokes is a problem analogous to whether he chooses to tell the truth in French or German…

The two qualities of fun and seriousness have nothing whatever to do with each other, they are no more comparable than black and triangular. Mr. Bernard Shaw is funny and sincere. Mr. George Robey is funny and not sincere. McCabe is sincerer and not funny. The average cabinet minister is not funny and not sincere…

The thing that is fundamentally and really frivolous is not a careless joke. The thing which is fundamentally and really frivolous is a careless solemnity. If Mr. McCabe really wishes to know what sort of guarantee of reality and solidity is afforded by the mere act of what is called talking seriously, let him spend a happy Sunday in going the round of the pulpits. Or better still, let him drop in at the House of Commons or the House of Lords. Even Mr. McCabe would admit that these men are solemn—more solemn than I am. And even Mr. McCabe, I think, would admit that these men are frivolous—more frivolous than I am…

It is solemnity that is stopping the way in every department of the modern effort… Every rich man who wishes to stop the mouths of the poor talks about ‘momentousness’. Every cabinet minister who has not got an answer suddenly develops a ‘judgment’. Every sweater who uses vile methods recommends ‘serious methods’… In the modern world, solemnity is the direct enemy of sincerity.

GK Chesterton, Heretics

Reflection – Well, things haven’t changed too much in a century, have they? It would be interesting to do a modern updating of who is funny, who is sincere in the modern scene. GKC is careful to choose people he doesn’t especially agree with in his examples. I would say, for example, that John Stewart is funny and sincere, any number of comic actors (which was what George Robey was - I have to confess I’m a bit unfamiliar with who’s out there right now) would be funny and not sincere, Planned Parenthood is not funny and sincere, and yes, most members of congress or parliament or any high elected office are neither funny nor sincere. Some things just don’t change that much.

Obfuscation, the use of big words, long meandering phrases, furrowed brows, evasive answers and the heavy reliance on talking points and slogans—these are the hallmarks of the solemn gasbag, the insincere person who always presents himself or herself as a serious engaged individual, tackling the problems of our time.

Right now, I find the solemnly insincere word of the day to be ‘hatred’. Any effort to have a serious conversation about human sexuality and its meaning, and whether or not there is a meaning, and whether or not the meaning of human sexuality has anything whatsoever to do with the meaning of marriage as a civil institution—all of this has been rendered impossible to have by the invocation of the sacred word ‘hatred’.

Now I know that there are people who read my blog who disagree quite strongly with me on the question of same-sex marriage. Bless you! I’m so glad you’re willing to come and read the ramblings of this retrograde priest from the frozen Canadian wilds!

But this particular matter is not about whether I’m right or wrong (right, of course, but that’s for another day…). It’s about whether or not a conversation is even allowed to happen. More and more, the use of the magic word ‘hate’ shuts any conversation down, and indeed since ‘hatred’, whatever that even means, is more and more viewed as a criminal matter, the word is used to not so subtly threaten people like me who will not shut up about the subject with being ‘shut up’ in a more radical and sinister sense of the phrase.

It is the same with abortion, where any effort to have a serious conversation about the beginning of human life and when exactly it should be legally protected is shut down by the magic phrase ‘War on women! War on women!’ It is all very solemn – who wants to be a hateful misogynist, after all? And it is completely and utterly insincere, since the purpose is not to have a serious conversation, but to bully, intimidate, threaten, and so end any possibility of conversation.

Not too much has changed in the past century, except that maybe it’s gotten a little harder to be funny about some of these things, since the stakes have gotten a bit high and the human costs have gotten a bit devastating. But then, as now, solemnity is used to block sincerity, and this situation is indeed the opposite of funny, and it will not do.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

How To Become a Mediocre, Cynical Coward (Or Not, If You Prefer)

The [modern] journalist begins with a worship of success and violence, and ends in sheer timidity and mediocrity. But he is not alone in this, nor does he come by this fate merely because he happens personally to be stupid. Every man, however brave, who begins by worshipping violence, must end in mere timidity.

Every man, however wise, who begins by worshipping success, must end in mere mediocrity. This strange and paradoxical fate is involved, not in the individual, but in the philosophy, in the point of view. It is not the folly of the man which brings about this necessary fall; it is his wisdom.

The worship of success is the only one out of all possible worships of which this is true, that its followers are foredoomed to becomes slaves and cowards. A man may be a hero for the sake of Mrs. Gallup’s ciphers or for the sake of human sacrifice, but not the sake of success.

For obvious a man can choose to fail because he loves Mrs. Gallup or human sacrifice; but he cannot choose to fail because he loves success. When the test of triumph is man’s test of everything, they never endure long enough to triumph at all. As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is a mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.

It was through this fatal paradox in the nature of things that all these modern adventurers come at last to a sort of tedium and acquiescence. They desired strength; and to them to desire strength was to admire strength; to admire strength was simply to admire the status quo. They thought that he who wished to be strong ought to respect the strong. They did not realize the obvious verity that he who wishes to be strong must despise the strong.

They sought to be everything, to have the whole force of the cosmos behind them, to have an energy that would drive the stars. But they did not realize the two great facts---first, that in the attempt to be everything the first and most difficult step is to be something; second, that the moment a man is something, he is essentially defying everything…

When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating oneself to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there. And that is more and more the situation of modern England.

GK Chesterton, Heretics

Reflection – Not just modern England, either, big guy! The tendency which GKC observes here, the use of phrases like ‘being modern and up to date’, ‘getting with the program’ and such and so has only become more acute in the century since he wrote this.

The chapter this is taken from is called “The Mildness of the Yellow Press”, how what is supposed to be hard-hitting and shocking journalism is fundamentally a cynical toadying to the powers of the moment in service of the agenda of the moment. Uh, yeah – that hasn’t exactly gotten any better lately either. I will spare you what I actually think of our modern media, as I don’t think I could do so whilst still using language befitting a reverend member of the clergy.

But since most of us are not, in fact, journalists, let’s think about this larger point GKC is making: the worship of success as a certain path to mediocrity and failure, the worship of strength as a certain path to weakness and timidity and cowardice.

I am reminded of a very funny bit from a Lily Tomlin routine where her character says “I always wanted to be someone, but I realize now I should have been more specific.” The truth of the matter is, we have to be more specific. We have to decide, not to be successful or strong or catch the wave (unless we are, in fact, surfing). Rather, we have to choose to be something real, do something that matters, some good thing outside ourselves that we care enough about to pour our whole heart and soul into it, whether we succeed or fail.

I remember full well making my final promises in Madonna House in 1998, acutely and painfully mindful of my weakness and inability to live this vocation well at all, yet deciding simply that I would rather fail at MH than succeed somewhere else that I didn’t care about. I would rather give my all in some ‘hopeless’ endeavor that meant the world to me than be all rational and canny and calculating in something that I didn’t actually care two cents for.

And it’s the same dynamic at play with all the trends and issues and preference cascades of the day. Whatever you think of, say, same-sex marriage, the last thing in the world you should think is ‘Well, everyone is getting on board with this, so I guess I should, too.’ Cowardice, that is—rank, mediocre, craven, cowardice. Be a Man, or a Woman, and think your own thoughts, and come to your own conclusions—don’t be bullied or rushed by the mendacious ninnies in the media-entertainment business who don’t know anything about anything and whose only concern is to accommodate themselves to a trend that isn’t there and to make everyone as mediocre and compliant as they themselves are so they can sell you whatever product they’re shilling (oops, there I go telling you what I think… better stop for today!).

We should be content to be out of step, retrograde, ‘on the losing side of history’, or whatever… and be right, then to be heedless of right and wrong and constantly running to conform to the mores of our day. That is what it means to be strong and brave and ultimately to succeed in the task we have set for ourselves in life.