Cultural Renewal

I'm about 20 pages into Cormac McCarthy's narrative, The Road. I figure that I'll read a little bit each day, several days a week. Here's the passage for today:

"It's snowing, the boy said. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire like the last host of christendom."

I also read Chapter 3 of Christopher Dawson's book, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture. To understand Dawson, I have had to live a certain reality with friends, looking to verify the Christian claim. According to Dawson, we live in the sixth age of the Church. This is not a schema imposed on history according to apocalyptic theorizing, but a historian's synthesis of the various epochs of renewal, accomplishment, and decay. Here are the six ages as Dawson presents them:

1. Apostolic Age: "the main achievement of the first age of the Church was the successful penetration of the dominant urban Roman-Hellenistic culture" (49).
   
2. Age of the Fathers: from the Peace of the Church (Constantine: 313AD) to the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem (638), Antioch, and Alexandria.
3. Third Age: Seventh-Tenth Centuries. "The Church was the sole representative of higher culture and possessed a monopoly of all forms of literary education, so that the relation between religion and culture was closer than in any other period." Christianity "ceased to be a predominately urban religion; the old link between bishop and city was broken, and the monastery became the real center of life and Christian culture" (52). "[...] Saint Boniface, who was the chief agent in bringing about the alliance of the Frankish monarchy, the Papacy, and the Benedictine order [...] its educational and liturgical work, which laid the foundations of that common Latin ecclesiastical culture, which underlay the subsequent development of medieval civilization" (53).
4. Fourth Age: "began as a movement of monastic reform in Lorraine and Burgandy and gradually extended its influence throughout Western Christendom" (53). This monastic reform culminated in the poverty of St. Francis — "This marks the climax of the reforming movement, and the greatness of the medieval Papacy is nowhere more evident than in the way in which it accepted this drastic breach with the traditional order and made the new institution an organ for the evangelization of the masses and an instrument of its international mission" (55). The decay at the end of this age was the breakdown between the papacy and the reform movements.
   
5. Baroque Age: Italian Renaissance and the Reformation, Turkish expansion in Europe, discovery of America — ending in the French Revolution (1799). Artistic revival, St. Francis Xavier goes to Asia.
   
6. The latest age of the Church. 1850-???? (several hundred years at least). "This revival began in France during the Revolution, under the shadow of the guillotine, and the exiled French clergy contributed to the creation or restoration of Catholicism in England and America. Indeed the whole history of Catholicism in the United States belongs to this sixth age and is in many aspects typical of the new conditions of the period. ¶ American Catholicism differs from that of the old world in that it is essentially urban, whereas in Europe it was still rooted in the peasant population. Moreover from the beginning it has been entirely independent of the state and has not been restricted by the complex regime of concordats which was the dominant pattern of European Catholicism in the nineteenth century" (57). Dawson makes just a couple of suggestive remarks about the present age, leaving that work to the retrospective work of unborn historians.

1845, however, is the year that John Henry Cardinal Newman became Catholic. The first half of the Twentieth Century saw a cultural renewal in Europe, which could be termed Resourcement: Péguy, Bernanos, Claudel, Henri de Lubac, Jean Hans Urs von Balthasar, Daniélou. A revival of the common life among the laity with Dorothy Day and Madeleine Delbrêl. The Second Vatican Council. The rise of lay movements. Notably, the 1950s had Fr. Giussani starting Communion and Liberation in Italy. Around the same time, Francis Schaeffer rediscovered Christian hospitality at L'Abri in Switzerland, which incubated his ideas on worldview and political engagement. Stanley Hauerwas and the Protestant New Monastic movement.

Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit,
either rotten or ripe.
And the Church must be forever building, and always
decaying, and always being restored.
For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:
For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of
God,
For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.
And of all that was done that was good, you have the
inheritance.
For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he
stands alone on the other side of death,
But here upon the earth you have the reward of the good and ill that was done by those who have gone before you.
And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;
And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as devoted as those of our fathers who fought to gain it.
The Church must be forever building, for it is forever
decaying within and attacked from without;
For this is the law of life; and you must remember that
while there is time of prosperity
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of
adversity they will decry it.

T.S. Eliot, Choruses from ‘‘The Rock’,
Collected Poems, 1909-1962
(New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1963), 153-154.

We live in remarkable times, times of hope and struggle.

Review: What the World Should Be by Malcolm D. Magee

What the World Should Be: Woodrow Wilson and the Crafting of a Faith-Based Foreign Policy
by Malcolm D. Magee
Baylor University Press, 2008.

What is the impact of an individual's faith on public policy and the governance of a nation? Our modernist prejudices can cause us to underestimate the role of religion in our leaders. We tend to think that religion is at best an extra, a private motivation for pursuing or eschewing policies rooted in commonly held values; or, at worst a cynical move directed at selling these same values to a superstitious populace.

In his book, What the World Should Be, Malcolm Magee examines the religious beliefs of President Woodrow Wilson and demonstrates the pervasive affect that these beliefs had on Wilson's view of the world as it is and should be, how Wilson faced challenges in the political realm, and how these beliefs played out in history. John Maynard Keynes, the English economist and contemporary of Wilson wrote that:

"The President was like a nonconformist minister, perhaps a Presbyterian. His thought and his temperament were essentially theological not intellectual, with all the strength and the weakness of that manner of thought, feeling, and expression" (The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1920).

Taking this claim of Keynes seriously, Magee examines in detail the distinct Princeton Presbyterian tradition that Wilson inherited and Wilson's own substantial theological writings.

Magee's approach limits itself to Wilson's foreign policy, from the US's intervention in Veracruz, Mexico, through World War I, and culminating in the negotiations for the League of Nations. Wilson's policies led time and again to disappointment: like a Greek tragedy in which the protagonist never recognizes his tragic flaw. For Magee, this flaw is lack of personal humility, but to me it seems that Wilson's theology isolated him even from co-religionists and made it difficult to learn from experience and from others. Magee describes the key ideas of the theology in a clear and concise way for a non-specialist reader. He demonstrates lucidly how this theology pervades Wilson's policies. With this information, the reader is in a good place to evaluate the intersection of the political, the theological, and the personal.

The ancillary materials include "Christ's Army": A Religious Essay by Woodrow Wilson from 1876, Wilson's "Fourteen Points" Address to Congress, The Covenant of the League of Nations. and the 1876 Inaugural Address of Wilson's father, the Rev. Joseph R. Wilson, DD Delivered before the Board of Directors of the Southwestern Presbyterian University. These documents display a consistent theological point of view, well supporting Magee's thesis of the influence of Wilson's theology on his foreign policy.

Ron Paul and My Education

Originally published at Naru Hodo.

There is a certain aspect to my particular humanity that I have come to understand, and, after significant on-going internal debate, have an affection for. And that is that I come at the issues of life in an other-than-mainstream sort of way. One might say I tend to see what other people do and then do something quite the opposite. A bit of a contrarian, I am. I can accept that about myself, but I have to explain, even to myself, that I don't style myself as this, I don't try to be different; it emerges from me. It is part of me.

The image that comes to mind is being at a big party, a big family gathering. Upstairs is crowded with voices and faces and animated discussion, exchange, eating, greeting. After a short time, the crowd and the din threaten to suck off my face and render me numb, so for simple self-preservation I retreat to the basement, where I find some children playing, and there I engage in meaningful conversation with the eccentric uncle who for his own reasons also ends up there.

This is how I think about my political education these last many months. Upstairs, there's a lot of talk about McCain and Obama. I cannot help but hear all about it. But I have followed a way that has helped me glimpse Christ amidst all the political stuff. I've been learning "in the basement" in the company of Ron Paul.

I learned of him about a year ago, when he was a Presidential candidate. His position on health care attracted me first. Then I realized he was pro-life and anti-war. The whole idea that he called his campaign a revolution, with LOVE in it struck me as very catchy. More recently I've watched his economic views gain great respect, because the things he warned would happened actually did.

I am not generally interested in individual politicians. But here are some reasons why I can listen to Ron Paul and learn from what he has to say. First, I see humility in him. My brother has worked for state government, and I worked indirectly with lobbyists at the state level, and these experiences (plus the eyes in my head) tell me that humility in a politician is exceptional. I see that he desires that voters educate themselves, and thus I have really heard the call to take up that task. (Even though he is no longer a contender for the Presidency, he is leading a movement to essentially change the Republican party from the grassroots up, based on education and action.) One thing I admire about his call to education is the emphasis on the need for historical context to understand what is before us today. Although I can appreciate the need for knowing what is happening how, there is a certain addictive aspect to chasing the "absolute latest" and forming our opinions accordingly. We need more than news ticker headlines and soundbytes and instant-response polling to understand the meaning of the events of our time.

There is this other thing that appeals to me viscerally about his message, and I'm not sure if I'll put it into words adequately. His supporters have formed what is called the Campaign for Liberty. I'll step out and say I feel this move for Americans to understand and embrace liberty -- freedom -- is nearly a prophetic one. I am not about being a Libertarian, although I do lean more toward that direction than Socialism. But there is a specter that I do find worth fighting against, and it is not perhaps even so much a political reality right now as it is a societal reality, and that is the specter of totalitarianism. Here, I think of this definition: the character or quality of an autocratic or authoritarian individual, group, or government.

My journey of parenting, my journey of the education of my children, my own personal spiritual journey has been greatly marked, indelibly marked by a move away from the damage of an authoritarian model. So perhaps I am very sensitive to see acceptance, welcoming, of control in the movements of society in ways that crush the human spirit and essentially block its potential for movement toward God and the good. I taught in Japan and I saw how the human spirit was somehow almost systematically crushed out of children so that their lives could be brought into societal conformity. Japanese adults, who I think felt could only vent their pain to a foreigner, often told me of the desperation this brought to their own lives.

I believe there is a corollary in our political system. I see a "big picture" that involves much of the world scrambling for someone to take control for us to make things all better. That desire, I believe, can become dangerous for our nation and for our world. We cannot resign ourselves to operate as cogs in a machine. While we need not have as our model the rugged American individualist, we do need to have strength as individuals. Otherwise, banding together becomes not "for the common good," but to the benefit, or I should say the advantage, of those who are given power by those who have learned to believe that they cannot operate in power for their own selves.

For myself, my "naru hodo" moment in writing this is to realize that it really does make me just a tad weary to find myself always attracted off the beaten path. Part of me would like to just stay upstairs and join in what is "really" going on.

But I can't, and remain loyal to who I am. This is what is "really" going on for me.

The Mystery of Peter and the Net that Didn't Tear

With the visit of Pope Benedict, it was very apt that our last teaching day of first-year Confirmation class we showed the kids Steve Ray's documentary In the Footsteps of God: Peter. At the start, I told kids to listen to the history, that it was their history, our history, and thus indispensable in understanding ourselves and our destiny. So far so good, but I didn't take my own advice. Pretty soon, I was looking at the clock and critiquing Steve Ray's approach in my mind.

Nonetheless - and this is evidence of God's mercy in Christ! - my heart was penetrated by the encounter with Christ at the sea. They fished all night, and then at dawn Jesus shows up and says try the other side. And behold, 153 fish. One catch to make the night worthwhile (we have labored in vain). How could I not think of this history without thinking of my own work which depends now on making cold calls? I call in the morning, at lunchtime, and in the afternoon - often without reaching many. But one time last week, I called in the afternoon and everybody was there. Such is the mysterious hand of destiny: a hairsbreadth to the side and you'll miss it! So, obey, obey, obey.

The second part of this story is that after following Jesus to His death, the disciples pick up and go back to work, fishing. Jesus says ok, but don't fish so close to the shore, turn around and cast out into the deep. Work is not about eating. Jesus cooked fish that they didn't catch to feed them breakfast. Work is about mission, about announcing the Incarnation, Christ present in history: history now as well as history past. Christ present amid boats and nets or with a CRM filled with prospects and a headset.

The third part has to do with history. History makes us strong. I myself recognize the madness, the unreasonableness of "call reluctance." It's unreasonable to fear the unknown because the unknown has been announced to us, we know the face of the one who waits for us. This one crumb of history last night made today entirely different. It strengthened me, and this strengthening is so important to our destiny and our mission in the world (see, for example, the heartrending account in the current issue of Traces).

Gratitude and the American Experience

From Archbishop Charles Chaput's Thanksgiving Message:

The Roman statesman Cicero once said that, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” Gratitude expresses our dependence on others. By its nature, it leads to humility and wisdom, because a grateful heart understands than none of us is really independent. We have obligations to each other. We also have needs from each other. We’re designed to depend on each other as a family; and to depend as a family on God. Probably no other holiday speaks to the soul of the American experience like Thanksgiving.

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