An amazing result of the vast technological achievements of man is that men are generally much more ignorant than they ought to be. People, including me, come out of school inexcusably poorly read in the classics of literature, history, ethics, civics, philosophy, & religion. I spend a great deal of my time attempting to make up for lost ground on these accounts.
Since I travel a lot, I've found that I can take a massive amount of great reading material with me in a very small package by taking a CD of the contents of the New Advent website. I think it costs about $20, but if one were to collect the actual books of all the material on it, I'm sure it would cost thousands & take up rooms.
Below are just a handful of thoughts on 2 very different papal encyclicals I read recently in the New Advent library archives, but both with connections to my philosophy studies (I also read Leo XIII's encyclical against duelling, Pastoralis Officii, but it was only loosely connected)...
Sublimus Dei - On slavery in the New World, Pope Paul III, 1537
Theology & philosophy from ancient times throughout the Middle Ages largely strove to understand the nature of person in the context of the Divine Persons of the Trinity, & perhaps secondarily to man, but only then with a view toward man as a species, often called the "cosmological" view. The full working-out of the nature of man as a person - including his interior life, the "personalist" view - is a rather recent happening.
So, what happens when fifteenth & sixteenth century Europeans come into contact new races of humans, whose appearance & culture are markedly different from their own? Well, the sub-title given to the papal encyclical gives a clue.
In 4 short paragraphs, the Holy Father notes that God has established that "all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith," and that those who hold that the "people of whom We have recent knowledge" are mere "dumb brutes" are in league with that ancient enemy of man. Of course, if these newly discovered peoples are not really human persons, but just man-like animals, then there can't be much wrong with owning or using them, right?
He declares flatly that, "the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it." He goes on to say that they shall not have their property taken nor be reduced to slavery, but "should be converted to the faith of Jesus Christ by preaching the word of God and by the example of good and holy living." An absolutely priceless phrase that applies today as much as it did 500 years ago.
Now, I have been on record as stating that the Vatican did not officially denounce the evil of slavery until Pope Leo XIII's In Plurimis of 1888 (curiously directed toward the bishops of Brazil). Some may wonder why the 1573 decree does not decry all slavery or indentured servitude, but only as pertains to the newly-discovered peoples of the Americas. My understanding for this is that the Church does not see slavery as a direct impediment to salvation, as did not St. Paul (1 Cor 7:20-24, et al.) (though another of Leo XIII's encyclicals on slavery, Catholicae Ecclesiae, opens with numerous citations to show that the Church has always opposed slavery as evil. There is also Gregory XVI's In Supremo Apostolatus from 1839). Yet, as the Church emerged from a limited way of thinking about human persons inherited from antiquity & the Middle Ages, it has increasingly come to see not just in terms of pure salvation/damnation, but also in terms of justice due human person. Slavery itself may not be a hindrance to salvation, but it is unworthy of persons to either try to own another or to be owned by another. This fullness of understanding of the inherent value of human life continues to be worked out, as we wrestle with issues ranging from abortion to human cloning to euthanasia.
Mit Brennender Sorge - "With Burning Sorrow," On the Church & the German Reich, Pope Pius XI, 1939
Given the recent upheaval surrounding the cause for canonization of Pope Pius XII (who is thought to have heavily contributed this encyclical while Papal Nuncio to Germany) & my own interests in this issue, I read this encyclical with wonder. I honestly can't imagine what it must have been like to live through this time in Germany.
The background of the letter is that the Holy See & the Reich had entered into a concordat in 1933 which guaranteed that the Church would be able to continue to operate freely in Germany, including the running of schools & seminaries (though I haven't read the concordat itself yet). It is clear from the language here that the government has now undertaken a campaign to actively disregard the provisions of the prior agreement & to undermine the Church's moral & spiritual authority.
While this is a long & penetrating document covering the salvation of man through Jesus Christ alone, the role of the Church in bringing Christ to the world, the Natural Law, the rights of parents to rear & educate their children as they see fit, & the condemnation of racial crimes - including a note that Jesus himself was a Jew - the thing I find intriguing & which I comment upon here is a reference to a kind of German religion set up by the Reich - a paganistic & pantheistic alternative religion which deifies the well-ordered universe as reflected in the well-ordered State & whose sacraments are scientific progress & societal purification.
The Holy Father notes quite sharply, "Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God... Neither is he a believer in God. [7]"
While circumstances have certainly changed, there are still any number of people today who hold that the earth, the universe, the collectivity of all life, or whatever is the real divine being, & that we are the ones who sin against her when we damage her with oil spills, pollution, etc. Since we are the problem, we must be contained, esp. through population control. The thing is, it all seems so reasonable at the time.
The philosophical error here, as I see it, is what Dietrich von Hildebrand calls "value judgment." It is simply the recognition & justice due a given person, thing, or circumstance. Ice cream is nice on a hot summer day, but it hardly calls for for the adoration due God. If one of your scoops falls on the ground, you may be disappointed, but it hardly calls for the same outrage as against Hitler or the same tears as over millions exterminated.
We often live for this merely "subjectively satisfying," while rarely giving due consideration to those things of real value. Many thinkers, even St. Thomas himself, seems to have failed to make this distinction among the various goods. Even the entire universe, as inconceivably vast & wonderful as it is, is still just a thing without a soul, & so does not dwell on the same plane of value merited by a single human being, of whom John Henry Cardinal Newman called, "an infinite abyss of existence." This is why we respect the dignity of all human beings: they merit it simply by being human beings. This is why we adore God - because God is inherently adoration-worthy due to his perfections. How we respond to a value placed before us has implications for our own selves. If we respect or revere a thing according to what it due it, we make something greater of ourselves. But if we either ignore or rebel against this call for a value response, or if we give a thing more honor than it deserves, then we degrade ourselves as person.
This reasoning also has something to do with why Catholics cannot participate in Masonic organizations (see papal encyclicals Humanum Genus & here & here, & the CDF's pronouncement against Masons here). Despite their various benevolent works, they are basically a rival religion, who pay homage to an unspecific, generic maker & orderer of the universe. While this sounds harmless enough, the problem is that God is not a nameless, generic deity, but a very specific Being whom we know (though we don't know everything), because he has revealed himself to us.
The Holy Father says, "Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side. [9]"
To continue to address a mysterious & nameless deity while standing in the light of full revelation is simply untenable. This is also the concern with any ecumenical movement or program that disregards or eliminates revealed truths of the Faith for the sake of an easy, though false, unity.
In a different vein, there is a little phrase that begins the last cited paragraph to which we should be attentive: "Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label..." I was really taken back to find that "My God!" is a phrase used frequently by Chinese English-speakers to denote surprise or exasperation. I'm sure they are just parroting what they have heard elsewhere - probably Western films - & know not what they do. Less forgivable is how common we've allowed the flippant use of "OMG!" to become in our own culture.
Similarly, the Holy Father notes that Christian religious language has been appropriated & given new meanings by the Reich, blurring the distinction between the Church & the new State Religion. Using the example of the term "immortality," the pope declares that, "Whoever only means by the term, the collective survival here on earth of his people for an indefinite length of time, distorts one of the fundamental notions of the Christian Faith and tampers with the very foundations of the religious concept of the universe, which requires a moral order. [24] " Immortality in the Third Reich refers not the individual, but the indefinite survival of the Reich itself.
But instead of wasting your time reading what I think these mean, go read them yourselves. There is a vast wealth of wisdom & insight to be found in all of these papal writings (including the truly brilliant ones by our most recent popes), no matter the time or circumstances in which they were written. Here we find the very best of the men who were personally called by Christ to feed his sheep & confirm the brethren.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Persona est sui iuris...
et alteri incommunicabilis. So sayeth Roman law.
One might translate this as: "Persons belong to themselves & cannot share themselves with another."
Why does this matter? Mostly because my Philosophy of the Human Person mid-term is on Monday & I better know this stuff!
My Franciscan U. professor, Dr. Crosby, opens the course by to appealing to common moral intuitions that most of us have, such as that it is wrong always & everywhere to frame the innocent even for some societal good, it is wrong to own another human being as property, it is wrong to breed human beings as one breeds animals.
We are called to consider, What, then, is revealed about human persons if these things are universally wrong?
He concludes the introduction to his book by formulating these statements about what human persons are:
A person belongs to himself & not to any other.
A person is an end in himself & never an instrumental means.
A person is a whole of his own & never a mere part of something.
A person is uniquely (incommunicably) his own & never a mere specimen.
I wrote about it a few posts ago, but I'd like to know what you, the man on the virtual street, think about these things. How do they ring in your ears? How do they hold true or not in your experience? Can you point to concrete examples of these things going right or wrong in our society or world today?
One might translate this as: "Persons belong to themselves & cannot share themselves with another."
Why does this matter? Mostly because my Philosophy of the Human Person mid-term is on Monday & I better know this stuff!
My Franciscan U. professor, Dr. Crosby, opens the course by to appealing to common moral intuitions that most of us have, such as that it is wrong always & everywhere to frame the innocent even for some societal good, it is wrong to own another human being as property, it is wrong to breed human beings as one breeds animals.
We are called to consider, What, then, is revealed about human persons if these things are universally wrong?
He concludes the introduction to his book by formulating these statements about what human persons are:
A person belongs to himself & not to any other.
A person is an end in himself & never an instrumental means.
A person is a whole of his own & never a mere part of something.
A person is uniquely (incommunicably) his own & never a mere specimen.
I wrote about it a few posts ago, but I'd like to know what you, the man on the virtual street, think about these things. How do they ring in your ears? How do they hold true or not in your experience? Can you point to concrete examples of these things going right or wrong in our society or world today?
Friday, June 4, 2010
The Complicated Kind
While in China in May, I told my hostess that I would very much like to worship at a Catholic Church in Hangzhou on Sunday. Note well that most non-Westerners do not know that there are divisions within Christianity; they understand it to all be basically the same. She said there was a famous church in town & she would arrange for one of the engineers to take me.
Intrigued, I did a little research. The Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was the result of the conversion of a Chinese nobleman in the early 1600's by priest & scholar Matteo Ricci & his Jesuit brothers. Fr. Ricci was truly one of the great minds of his day. He was also passionate about using his knowledge as a vehicle for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ & also passionate - with that glorious, early Jesuit zeal - for the conversion of the peoples of Asia. He learned to speak, read, & write Chinese. He shared his great knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, cartography, & other natural sciences with the learned men of the Chinese courts. In the mode of St. Paul speaking in the Areopagus of Athens, he explained the Christian faith to his hearers using an approach & language they could grasp. He was, however, accused of going a bit too far & had to answer to charges of syncretism. Still, he won the favor of many & gained many conversions.
One of those conversions in the courts of Peking was a nobleman who was later granted land in the lake districts of Hangzhou. It was this man who commissioned the construction of the cathedral, which was completed in 1661. The church has undergone many additions & renovations since its inception. The Communists ended Catholic worship there & turned it into a kind of living quarters for families. Later it was used as a prison. When attitudes in China began to change in the 1980's, the cathedral was restored & the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was again offered, albeit I imagine under the auspices of the State Church. Most sites state that it is the only operating Catholic church withing the city of Hangzhou proper. One website listed an English-language Mass on Saturday evening & one Chinese-language Mass on Sunday. Too bad the Mass that Fr. Ricci himself celebrated was not available here. In any case, I couldn't wait to discover this treasure in the heart of the city for myself!
When Sunday rolled around, I met my friend Mao Zhou & we grabbed a cab. He was eager to show off his Bible - apparently new - which I took & thumbed through. It was a Chinese-English New King James Bible. I didn't want to be ungracious, but my first thought was, "Nice! Where's the rest of it?" - a non-too-charitable reference to the 7 books missing from the Protestant canon. But I quickly remembered that Bibles can be hard to come by in China, &, again, most folks there probably don't know the difference. I didn't have my Bible with me, but I did show him my Magnificat prayer book/missal, explaining that this little books contained all the readings & prayers for Mass. He smiled & nodded in a way that told me he had no idea what I was talking about, but didn't want to offend me by looking puzzled.
Well, imagine my surprise when the taxi rolled up to a massive structure in the contemporary style that I was pretty sure wasn't built by Jesuits in the 1600's (though maybe today;) We had arrived at the biggest Evangelical Mega-church in Hangzhou! I was totally crest-fallen, but I tried to be open even to this unforeseen happening. So I sat or stood through an hour & a half of singing American-style praise music followed by a 45-minute Scripture lesson/sermon, all in Chinese, naturally. With a couple of thousand people there singing, swaying, clapping, reading, listening, crying, laughing, I might summarize the Evangelical experience as: pull on every heart-string available. While the worship of God certainly is an emotinal experience, to target only this raw nerve of our human nature & not to tend to the mind & soul seemed odd. But I had experienced this many times over whilst attending various Protestant churches with friends. What was odd was how familiar it was, not Asian at all, but something that could have been picked up from anywhere in the Southern U.S. & dropped down in China. Odd & odder.
Now, my friend Li Mao was meeting a friend, to whom he introduced me when she arrived. Her name was something like Xian Tian, & she was very kind. When the preacher asked us to greet those around us, she turned to me with a big smile & said, "God loves you, & I love you, too!" I hardly knew what to say; I think I said, "Thank you." During the service, she would periodically feed me a little summary of what was being said. It sounded like 1st grade catechism to me, but sometimes we need that. Mostly, I looked through her Chinese-English Bible, 
looking up the verses to which the congregation was directed on the big screens on either side of the "stage," curious to know how they were going to be connected. I can't remember them all, but there was a reading from Romans 5 & maybe Psalm 33. She, & most others, were furiuosly taking notes during the sermon, which she shared with me after the service. There were about 10 points in all, but I think the main ones were something like: 1) God is the first priority in all things, 2) he loves us, so we should love him & each other, & 3) find joy in God, not in things; be content with what you are given. All fair & true enough.
Interestingly, after the service, as we were taking the obligatory group photos outside the church building - which had some interesting artwork of Jesus in the tomb & of Mary & the women with Peter at the empty tomb - the young lady asked me to give her a Western name, which is common with the younger, English-speaking crowd. I immediately thought "Joy" would be the perfect name. She thanked me & hoped we could meet again next time.
The next morning, I met my work collegue in the hotel lobby & we headed toward the office. She asked how I liked going to church, & I said it was nice, but not exactly what I expected. I tried to very simply & briefly explain that I was a Catholic Christian & really needed to go to the Catholic Church on Sunday. She was a bit confused, then I showed her a printout about the cathedral. She conversed with the driver for a second & he apparently told her that this church was only a block or 2 from our location, so we asked him to drive there. Situated back from the road between some high-rise buildings, it was a glorious sight, though smaller in stature than what I was picturing. We parked & went inside the compound - being the cathedral, there were many other offices & residences surrounding the church.
The door was open, so I stepped inside into a vision of heaven: just the most beautiful little church you could imagine! Vibrant, colorful stainted-glass windows, beautiful Corinthian-capped columns, lovely painted Stations, a marble high altar with a mural rendering of the Trinity filling the sanctuary apse. The most beautiful sight was the glowing red candle by the tabernacle door in the center of the high altar - the presence of Christ himself in this distant land, as if there was a place on earth where God is not. I didn't take too many pictures inside, partially out of reverence, but also because I wasn't sure if photos were allowed. I took a quick tour of the church & said a prayer for the conversion of us all, both those who have not heard of Christ & just as much for those of us who have heard & believed, but so frequently fail to act as if we do.
On the way out, I noticed a beautiful, little spiral staircase by the main doors, leading up to the choir loft, I suppose. I also noticed a stained glass window of Fr. Matteo (on the left in the top photo) & one of his companions by the door. The globe depicting the Orient is a reference to Matteo's production of one of the first accurate & modern maps of China. Please, Lord, grant me just a tiny fraction of this man's understanding, faith, & zeal! On the bookcase by the door, I noticed a booklet of Latin prayers & hymns. I was moved to sing as well as I could remember the Sanctus from the Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mass IX?), & then we left to go to work.
When we arrived at the office, my host asked me how was church. I said it was very interesting, but that I had really hoped to go the cathedral because I was Catholic.
Intrigued, I did a little research. The Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was the result of the conversion of a Chinese nobleman in the early 1600's by priest & scholar Matteo Ricci & his Jesuit brothers. Fr. Ricci was truly one of the great minds of his day. He was also passionate about using his knowledge as a vehicle for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ & also passionate - with that glorious, early Jesuit zeal - for the conversion of the peoples of Asia. He learned to speak, read, & write Chinese. He shared his great knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, cartography, & other natural sciences with the learned men of the Chinese courts. In the mode of St. Paul speaking in the Areopagus of Athens, he explained the Christian faith to his hearers using an approach & language they could grasp. He was, however, accused of going a bit too far & had to answer to charges of syncretism. Still, he won the favor of many & gained many conversions.
One of those conversions in the courts of Peking was a nobleman who was later granted land in the lake districts of Hangzhou. It was this man who commissioned the construction of the cathedral, which was completed in 1661. The church has undergone many additions & renovations since its inception. The Communists ended Catholic worship there & turned it into a kind of living quarters for families. Later it was used as a prison. When attitudes in China began to change in the 1980's, the cathedral was restored & the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was again offered, albeit I imagine under the auspices of the State Church. Most sites state that it is the only operating Catholic church withing the city of Hangzhou proper. One website listed an English-language Mass on Saturday evening & one Chinese-language Mass on Sunday. Too bad the Mass that Fr. Ricci himself celebrated was not available here. In any case, I couldn't wait to discover this treasure in the heart of the city for myself!
When Sunday rolled around, I met my friend Mao Zhou & we grabbed a cab. He was eager to show off his Bible - apparently new - which I took & thumbed through. It was a Chinese-English New King James Bible. I didn't want to be ungracious, but my first thought was, "Nice! Where's the rest of it?" - a non-too-charitable reference to the 7 books missing from the Protestant canon. But I quickly remembered that Bibles can be hard to come by in China, &, again, most folks there probably don't know the difference. I didn't have my Bible with me, but I did show him my Magnificat prayer book/missal, explaining that this little books contained all the readings & prayers for Mass. He smiled & nodded in a way that told me he had no idea what I was talking about, but didn't want to offend me by looking puzzled....
Well, imagine my surprise when the taxi rolled up to a massive structure in the contemporary style that I was pretty sure wasn't built by Jesuits in the 1600's (though maybe today;) We had arrived at the biggest Evangelical Mega-church in Hangzhou! I was totally crest-fallen, but I tried to be open even to this unforeseen happening. So I sat or stood through an hour & a half of singing American-style praise music followed by a 45-minute Scripture lesson/sermon, all in Chinese, naturally. With a couple of thousand people there singing, swaying, clapping, reading, listening, crying, laughing, I might summarize the Evangelical experience as: pull on every heart-string available. While the worship of God certainly is an emotinal experience, to target only this raw nerve of our human nature & not to tend to the mind & soul seemed odd. But I had experienced this many times over whilst attending various Protestant churches with friends. What was odd was how familiar it was, not Asian at all, but something that could have been picked up from anywhere in the Southern U.S. & dropped down in China. Odd & odder.
Now, my friend Li Mao was meeting a friend, to whom he introduced me when she arrived. Her name was something like Xian Tian, & she was very kind. When the preacher asked us to greet those around us, she turned to me with a big smile & said, "God loves you, & I love you, too!" I hardly knew what to say; I think I said, "Thank you." During the service, she would periodically feed me a little summary of what was being said. It sounded like 1st grade catechism to me, but sometimes we need that. Mostly, I looked through her Chinese-English Bible, 
looking up the verses to which the congregation was directed on the big screens on either side of the "stage," curious to know how they were going to be connected. I can't remember them all, but there was a reading from Romans 5 & maybe Psalm 33. She, & most others, were furiuosly taking notes during the sermon, which she shared with me after the service. There were about 10 points in all, but I think the main ones were something like: 1) God is the first priority in all things, 2) he loves us, so we should love him & each other, & 3) find joy in God, not in things; be content with what you are given. All fair & true enough.
Interestingly, after the service, as we were taking the obligatory group photos outside the church building - which had some interesting artwork of Jesus in the tomb & of Mary & the women with Peter at the empty tomb - the young lady asked me to give her a Western name, which is common with the younger, English-speaking crowd. I immediately thought "Joy" would be the perfect name. She thanked me & hoped we could meet again next time.
The next morning, I met my work collegue in the hotel lobby & we headed toward the office. She asked how I liked going to church, & I said it was nice, but not exactly what I expected. I tried to very simply & briefly explain that I was a Catholic Christian & really needed to go to the Catholic Church on Sunday. She was a bit confused, then I showed her a printout about the cathedral. She conversed with the driver for a second & he apparently told her that this church was only a block or 2 from our location, so we asked him to drive there. Situated back from the road between some high-rise buildings, it was a glorious sight, though smaller in stature than what I was picturing. We parked & went inside the compound - being the cathedral, there were many other offices & residences surrounding the church. 
The door was open, so I stepped inside into a vision of heaven: just the most beautiful little church you could imagine! Vibrant, colorful stainted-glass windows, beautiful Corinthian-capped columns, lovely painted Stations, a marble high altar with a mural rendering of the Trinity filling the sanctuary apse. The most beautiful sight was the glowing red candle by the tabernacle door in the center of the high altar - the presence of Christ himself in this distant land, as if there was a place on earth where God is not. I didn't take too many pictures inside, partially out of reverence, but also because I wasn't sure if photos were allowed. I took a quick tour of the church & said a prayer for the conversion of us all, both those who have not heard of Christ & just as much for those of us who have heard & believed, but so frequently fail to act as if we do.
On the way out, I noticed a beautiful, little spiral staircase by the main doors, leading up to the choir loft, I suppose. I also noticed a stained glass window of Fr. Matteo (on the left in the top photo) & one of his companions by the door. The globe depicting the Orient is a reference to Matteo's production of one of the first accurate & modern maps of China. Please, Lord, grant me just a tiny fraction of this man's understanding, faith, & zeal! On the bookcase by the door, I noticed a booklet of Latin prayers & hymns. I was moved to sing as well as I could remember the Sanctus from the Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mass IX?), & then we left to go to work.
When we arrived at the office, my host asked me how was church. I said it was very interesting, but that I had really hoped to go the cathedral because I was Catholic.She replied, "Oh, that's the complicated kind!"
...
...
...
I've been thinking about that ever since...
Monday, May 31, 2010
Epistemo-paloosa!
After Mass on Trinity Sunday, Father & I were talking about Mystery. No, not Aurthur Conan Doyle or Dan Brown (my apologies to Sir Doyle) type mysteries. But genuine Mystery.Modern man doesn't much like Mysteries. They remind us too much of our limitations & finitude. We don't mind them in stories when they eventually resolve themselves - usually by our own wit - into a self-gratifying conclusion. But Mysteries before which we simply stand dumbfounded & "fold the wings of the intellect"? Not so much.
Christians holds for many Mysteries, but the central Mystery, the one on which all others dependant & without which all vanish like a vapor is the Holy Trinity - one God in Three Persons. It cannot be reasoned; man cannot figure this out on his own; it can only be revealed by that same Trinity.
St. Thomas said that truth is reality in accord with right reason. When we perceive something to be a certain way & it really is that way, then we have stumbled upon the truth. The truth resonates with human beings. Despite our fallen condition, we still intuitively seek the truth. In fact we crave it. For one, the success of Law & Order testifies to this.
When it comes to God; however, the truth is so overwhelming that many balk at attaining to it. It goes without saying that our own limitations posit no obstacle for God in revealing himself & continually calling us. However, he does require our cooperation & consent. Yet, so many balk...
In many ways, our responses to this invitation to know & participate in this Mysterious Truth are like Jesus' parable of the sower of seed (Matthew 13). We come up with all kind of schemes to avoid staring straight into the heart of this Mystery. Three things come to mind. We profess belief with our mouths but not with our hearts & lives. We alter the Truth to something more palatable - perhaps the most common today. Or we simply turn our backs, throw up our hands, declare that the truth is unknowable, & get on with the practicalities of life.
The point Father made in his homily is that, while we cannot know everything about a Mystery, it does not follow that we cannot know anything about it (BTW, this is where the Church runs afoul of so many today - it actally has the gall to claim that it is the custodian of the fullness of revealed truth, & that any other person or institution is, by definition, deficient). It means that no matter how much you yearn, no matter how much you explore, & no matter how much you strive to learn, there is always more & richer depths to plumb. In mathematics, it would akin to the properties of ininite numbers. It is reasonable that this "ever knowing more" is part of the experience of the Beatific Vision.
Note that my usage of Mystery & Truth has somewhat merged, which might seem a paradox. Yet, they truly are one, because they are ultimately God himself. A God that loves us & calls us to communion with him. Yet, the father of lies plants that evil seed & we doubt whether there is really an attainable truth. Maybe it is all man's attempt to explain the world we observe before the advent of modern science. Maybe there is no God. Or maybe we simply have no way to know.
And here our human nature, without any reference to revelation, comes to our aid. If there is no God, then we are just a random occurence, merely the most articulate of all animals. Then we are freed of any moral obligations & perfectly justified in tearing at each other as competitors for vital resources, even if the competitor is mother's own child in the womb. What a dismal picture of humanity emmerges, but one that doesn't really jive with our natural sense of worth & dignity; the produndity of the depth of our own being & of others around us; our desire to love & be loved. It is clear that man is an uncomfortable sojourner on the earth, always searching, always questioning, never content.
It is in this longing that we turn our minds upward - a metaphor for reaching above the carnal earth. We recognize a likeness of ourselves to the Other. We hear when he calls us. Our souls find solace in his presence. We find our higher purpose. We find in the heart of this Mystery Truth.
...
I could go in a hundred different direction here, relaying all kinds of sincere conversations or bizarre encounters I've had about how we can possibly know the truth of anything. I encourage you not to let anyone shake your faith on this. You can approach this Truth, you can enter into this Mystery simply because God wants you to.
...
Photo of Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Hangzhou, China taken in May 2010.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Back From China
Greetings All, I'm back from the Orient (again). Still fascinated by getting a chance to meet & live with these people first-hand, because I assure you that stereotypes don't really work there. It is an extremely complicated place. However, some generalizing is required unless we want to just throw our hands up & stop asking questions, because we know that the common culture gives people a common frame of reference for most of their internal & external activities.
So, with that in mind, I would like to share some results of a little mental experiment I've conducted while in China. Because of the sheer number of people, I've tried testing a few of the assertions made in Franciscan U. philosophy of the human person class against the culture.
1. Persons belong to themselves, & therefore cannot belong to another.
It is true that every person & relationship is colored by the uniqueness of the individuals in question, but it is in conflict with other forces - citizens belonging to the state, workers belonging to the factory, or possibly children belonging to the parents. But I noticed that even in factories where everyone dresses in drab uniform, many will accentuate their individuality & independence by adding a pink scarf, or a bit of jewelry, or a crazy hairdo. People inherently know of their own dominion over themselves & seem to naturally rebel against the idea of conformity, sameness, or ownership, even in China.
2. Persons are wholes of their own, & never mere parts.
In a country with something approaching a billion & a half people, it is tempting to for both the individual & the state to take this approach - that every one fits into the society as gears fit into a machine. However, people do not fit into society like parts of a machine; they are a complete machine unto themselves. Or if you prefer a more organic example, people are never arranged in society like organs in a body, each with its own & purpose & function, but each individually only making sense when properly fitted into the whole. No, persons are wholes bodies, literally & otherwise. Newman said each person is an "infinite abyss unto himself."
However, people feel a little uneasy about the idea of a billion and a half infinites walking around, and perhaps we either tend to avoid or downplay the responsibility that comes with having such a completeness of existence unto ourselves. This is evident in China, just as it is in our land; however, there is some evidence that people in China are waking up to their birthright as an infinity, as a whole unto themselves. Much of the clamor for material comforts & the rampant rise of consumerism in China may be a kind of unhealthy expression of this discovery of self, not as a part, but as a complete whole.
3. Persons are never mere instrumental means, but are ends in themselves.
In a pseudo-Communist society, the first three of these proposals resonate rather strongly. In this statement, we say that a person must act according to their own wills & nature, & that no one can appropriate that self-determination, either with or without the person's knowledge or permission. It is unclear to me if the idea of self-determination is strongly present in China, though I have undoubtedly met many individuals who have the strength of character that manifests personalistic self-determination. It is only a recent development in Western philosophy that people are their own ends & therefore determine themselves. But on a natural level, we seem so beholden to so many ties & limitations, whether family, friends, church, work, school, society, politics, charity, even our own bodily limitations & failings. With all of these present, no wonder we have such a hard time seeing ourselves as the strong self-determinants we were meant to be.
Unlike here in the U.S. where most people seem to work to provide a high living standard capped by the pursuit of leisure, in China, the cost of living is much higher, the work load is much heavier, & just getting by is the order of the day. It is the rare individual that has the space in their lives to ponder such things. Perhaps this is one reason for the recent emergence of a full-bodied philosophy of the person - people have a hard time pondering such things when they don't know if they will be able to feed their family.
There are also some other cultural factors like history or religion that are harder to pin down. It seemed to me that most people in East China are Buddhists. Even if not practicing, they seem to carry some of its ideas in their thinking - such as the notions that everything is in essence a unity & that everything proceeds in cycles. These seem to rub harshly against the concrete individualism, self-distinction, & self-completeness proper to each human person. Also, the pervasive belief in luck, astrology, & magic seem to undermine the person's self-determination in favor of spiritual forces that just blow us along for the ride.
In the end, the most interesting results were found by comparing my observations of the Chinese culture to our prevailing post-modern culture, & then to contrast those with the notion of person proposed by Catholic Christianity. There are more similarities than one might think between East & West, but I would finish by noting that history shows that the attempt to build a society without accounting for the nature of the human person will generally leave man in the most depersonalized & unhappy state.
So, with that in mind, I would like to share some results of a little mental experiment I've conducted while in China. Because of the sheer number of people, I've tried testing a few of the assertions made in Franciscan U. philosophy of the human person class against the culture.
1. Persons belong to themselves, & therefore cannot belong to another.
It is true that every person & relationship is colored by the uniqueness of the individuals in question, but it is in conflict with other forces - citizens belonging to the state, workers belonging to the factory, or possibly children belonging to the parents. But I noticed that even in factories where everyone dresses in drab uniform, many will accentuate their individuality & independence by adding a pink scarf, or a bit of jewelry, or a crazy hairdo. People inherently know of their own dominion over themselves & seem to naturally rebel against the idea of conformity, sameness, or ownership, even in China.
2. Persons are wholes of their own, & never mere parts.
In a country with something approaching a billion & a half people, it is tempting to for both the individual & the state to take this approach - that every one fits into the society as gears fit into a machine. However, people do not fit into society like parts of a machine; they are a complete machine unto themselves. Or if you prefer a more organic example, people are never arranged in society like organs in a body, each with its own & purpose & function, but each individually only making sense when properly fitted into the whole. No, persons are wholes bodies, literally & otherwise. Newman said each person is an "infinite abyss unto himself."
However, people feel a little uneasy about the idea of a billion and a half infinites walking around, and perhaps we either tend to avoid or downplay the responsibility that comes with having such a completeness of existence unto ourselves. This is evident in China, just as it is in our land; however, there is some evidence that people in China are waking up to their birthright as an infinity, as a whole unto themselves. Much of the clamor for material comforts & the rampant rise of consumerism in China may be a kind of unhealthy expression of this discovery of self, not as a part, but as a complete whole.
3. Persons are never mere instrumental means, but are ends in themselves.
In a pseudo-Communist society, the first three of these proposals resonate rather strongly. In this statement, we say that a person must act according to their own wills & nature, & that no one can appropriate that self-determination, either with or without the person's knowledge or permission. It is unclear to me if the idea of self-determination is strongly present in China, though I have undoubtedly met many individuals who have the strength of character that manifests personalistic self-determination. It is only a recent development in Western philosophy that people are their own ends & therefore determine themselves. But on a natural level, we seem so beholden to so many ties & limitations, whether family, friends, church, work, school, society, politics, charity, even our own bodily limitations & failings. With all of these present, no wonder we have such a hard time seeing ourselves as the strong self-determinants we were meant to be.
Unlike here in the U.S. where most people seem to work to provide a high living standard capped by the pursuit of leisure, in China, the cost of living is much higher, the work load is much heavier, & just getting by is the order of the day. It is the rare individual that has the space in their lives to ponder such things. Perhaps this is one reason for the recent emergence of a full-bodied philosophy of the person - people have a hard time pondering such things when they don't know if they will be able to feed their family.
There are also some other cultural factors like history or religion that are harder to pin down. It seemed to me that most people in East China are Buddhists. Even if not practicing, they seem to carry some of its ideas in their thinking - such as the notions that everything is in essence a unity & that everything proceeds in cycles. These seem to rub harshly against the concrete individualism, self-distinction, & self-completeness proper to each human person. Also, the pervasive belief in luck, astrology, & magic seem to undermine the person's self-determination in favor of spiritual forces that just blow us along for the ride.
In the end, the most interesting results were found by comparing my observations of the Chinese culture to our prevailing post-modern culture, & then to contrast those with the notion of person proposed by Catholic Christianity. There are more similarities than one might think between East & West, but I would finish by noting that history shows that the attempt to build a society without accounting for the nature of the human person will generally leave man in the most depersonalized & unhappy state.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Bahhhh!!!
The erudite Msgr. Charles Pope has written a nice article for the Archdiocese of Washington's blogsite about the last Sunday's Gospel reading - John 10:27-30 (which also ties in to the previous weekend's Gospel - John 21:1-19). We always hear that we are like sheep: always wandering off & getting lost. And that's probably true.But the good monsignor has some other interesting observations, both good & not so good. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I reproduce one of the more salient points here...
Sheep are wary... Sheep have the remarkable quality of knowing their master's voice and of instinctively fearing any other voice and fleeing from it. In this matter sheep are smarter than most of us. For we do not flee voices contrary to Christ. Instead we draw close and say, "Tell me more." In fact we spend a lot of time and money to listen to other voices. We spend huge amounts of money to buy televisions so that the enemy's voice can influence us and out children. We spend large amounts of time with TV, radio, Internet. And we can so easily be drawn to the enemy's voice. And not only do we NOT flee it, but we feast on it. And instead of rebuking it we turn and rebuke the voice of god and put his word on trial instead of putting the world on trial. The goal for us is to be more wary, like sheep and to recognize only one voice, that of the Lord...
A little H.E. advice: read everything Msgr. Pope writes.
Mosaic photo taken at the Basilica de Notre Dame de Fourvier overlooking Lyon, France in 2008.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
The Bible V: Interpretation
Now that we have some idea of what the Bible is - the collection of writings that the Catholic Church accepts to be inspired by God – we turn to consider how we can understand it. Fortunately, the Bible originated within the Church, so we can learn from her how to profit from a correct reading of it.
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The Church’s understanding of Divine Revelation was well summarized in the conciliar document Dei Verbum & further elaborated upon in the Catechism (50-141) (both documents available at the excellent
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Now, I hear all the time that “in the old days” the Faithful were discouraged from reading the Bible. While this undoubtedly happened in some times & places, this mentality is definitely not in accord with the mind of the Church, which has unceasingly striven to impart to the Faithful every good thing necessary for the sake of their salvation using every means available. However, what the Church has always been against is handing someone the spiritual equivalent of a nuclear device without the training & tools to operate it &, rather, leaving it to their own devices to figure it out, which has historically proven disastrous. Recall that every major heresy in history of the Church has hijacked the Scriptures to “prove” that it was right. Even a casual look into the Bible will be enough to show that it is not exactly crystal clear & self-explanatory; & that some help is required.
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Starting with these two documents, we can profit tremendously from the wisdom of
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Other articles in this Knights of Columbus newsletter series:
The Bible IV - From the Church for the Church
The Bible III - Inspiration of the New Testament
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