Out of the Ashes

Since Pope Benedict XVI announced his abdication (I prefer this term to "resignation," which to me sounds like a career choice), my shock has given way to reflection. Lent is certainly the time for reflection.

When Blessed John Paul II died, I was still an evangelical, though definitely a "high church" one (although small, there is a substantial minority of such believers in the Calvinist tradition). I felt the momentousness of the event nevertheless; I knew almost nothing about him, and yet the force of his personality and devotion to God left such an impression on our culture as a whole that I could not help but pick up on it. I intuited that I was somehow involved in this, that even on the other side of the Tiber, the Bishop of Rome mattered -- and mattered in a way that the local Presbyterian synod or the Archbishop of Canterbury didn't; couldn't; made no claim to.

Benedict the academic theologian has been less popular with the world in general than the energetic, poetic, charismatic John Paul was, though he is dearly loved by myself and most of the Catholics I know. (I could not keep myself from laughing out loud when I read an article in the Washington Post yesterday morning averring that he had "failed to make an emotional connection" with the laity.) Yet his decision was a bombshell. A lot of people are claiming that this sets a significant precedent -- whether they think it a good precedent or a bad one seems to depend on whether they tend toward a progressivist or a conservative attitude toward the Catholic Church.

I'm a pretty impenitent traditionalist myself, but I'm not convinced it sets much of a precedent at all. Admittedly such abdications aren't, and shouldn't be, common; only two have preceded it: Celestine V's abdication in 1294 (the first of its kind, which, in most scholars' opinion, prompted a terrible rebuke from Dante in the Inferno); and that of Gregory XII in 1415, who was facilitating the Council of Florence. Plainly abdication isn't catching.

What is more important is that the office of Peter remains the same, through every change. The man who holds the office is of comparatively small import. If the Catholic belief is right, then it is the Holy Spirit who guides the Church through the Popes, so that who they are (in one sense) matters very little; and if the Catholic belief is wrong, then who the Pope is matters not at all. I will miss the Holy Father deeply -- he is the patriarch under whom I converted, one of the men who (unbeknownst to him of course) influenced me towards conversion, and whose wisdom, grace, and utter devotion to Jesus have truly inspired me. But his successor, whatever sort of man he is and whether I personally like and respect him or not, will equally be the Vicar of Christ.

The news coverage has, not altogether unexpectedly, consisted chiefly of a few neat historical tidbits (often wrong) and total, laughable failures to understand the nature of the Church. Journalists talk about this or that faction and its prospects for gaining control of the Church, as though it were a political office, and as though the papabili were candidates campaigning on the promise of policy changes. Never mind the fact that there are no serious dissensions on doctrinal matters within the College of Cardinals, a majority of whom were appointed by Benedict himself. I sometimes wonder whether the only thing most journalists understand is power. That would not be unnatural; it is what most of the sorts of things journalists report on revolve around. But if my acquaintance with postmodernism has taught me anything, it is to ask questions about the perspective of those who control narratives, and when I look at the media, I see a narrative dominated by people who -- irrespective of political affiliation -- have no conception of what the Church believes about herself. Of course, the mere fact that an institution believes something about itself does not make that thing true; I believe the Church's doctrine and credit her authority on other grounds (which, for the moment, need not detain us). But it does determine the nature of the decisions it makes, true or false. And the Church conceives of herself first and foremost as a family, the Mystical Body of Christ. Family does not translate easily into power politics; and families that do conceive of themselves in such terms, like the Julio-Claudian emperors, have a tendency to meet rapid and violent ends.

My own belief is that the reason the Catholic Church has persisted to the present day is that, even when she was manipulated and abused by her pastors, the revitalizing Spirit kept her real nature from being irrevocably wounded. The Word continued, the sacraments went on; the light was dimmed and cooled, but it never quite went out. Always it rose like a phoenix out of its own ashes. And phoenixes are not widely believed in by journalists. Yet --

"The colors of the Sistine will then speak the word of the Lord:
Tu es Petrus -- once heard by Simon, son of John.
So it was in August, and again in October,
in the memorable year of the two conclaves,
and so it will be once more, when the time comes,
after my death.
Do not forget: Omnia nuda et aperta sunt ante oculos Ejus.*
You who see all, point to him!
He will point him out ..." -- Bl. John Paul II

"And the Lord said, 'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." -- Luke 22.31-32

*All things are naked and open before His eyes.

News: Pope Benedict XVI Abdicates

The Holy Father has announced that he will resign the Throne of Saint Peter at the end of this month. The text of his announcement to the consistory can be found here. Farewell in the grace of God and the love of the Church, Holy Father.

Pacifisticuffs, Part Four: Kulturkampf

Every year at Christmas time, we are inundated with signs, commercials, and bumper stickers exhorting us to "Keep Christ in Christmas." Apparently we are also thus exhorted in early February, as I noticed when leaving Mass a few days ago. There are few things that annoy me more. I don't know whom these things are designed to convince: Christians who celebrate Christmas for religious reasons will presumably do so anyway, and I can't fathom the idea that non-Christians have an obligation to perform religious observances that pertain specifically to a religion they do not profess. As for those who are on the fence, or whose faith is habitual or residual, I cannot quite bring myself to believe that a bossy bumper sticker will fulfill for them the role that the light from heaven and the divine voice played for St. Paul.

This is one example of what has been dubbed, sometimes in cold prose, the culture war. Evangelicals are noteworthy for the gusto they devote to it, as are Catholics: forming political blocs, founding their own branches of the entertainment industry, hailing The Passion of the Christ as a masterpiece and branding Harry Potter with anathemas. It's us versus them, and the us are us because we are faithful to God.

This comes in harsher and in milder forms -- at its worst in collections of deranged fanatics like Westboro Baptist Church; possibly at its sappy best in many Christian bookstores, where every cover is in pastels and every decoration an American flag or a sentimental statue of Jesus, generally in Nordic mode. The essential quality of it, whatever its presentation, is the conviction not just that Christianity is true, but that Christians are right, a very different thesis. The former is, well, simply what it means to accept the faith, speaking intellectually. The latter is a first step on the road to spiritual pride, and one that nearly always comes with the corollary that "those people" -- whoever "those people" are: conservatives; secularists; Jews; pagans -- are the enemy.

I distrust any system or atmosphere of thought that makes another human being, as such, my enemy. That there are destructive, false ideas in the world, I readily accept, and I am (I hope) prepared to oppose such ideas; that people who embrace them are rendered less human by doing so, I will never accept. I have precisely one enemy, and that enemy is evil: evil is not a person, and therefore no person is my enemy. C. S. Lewis, in a passage I cannot now find, recounts that he once met a pastor from continental Europe "who had met Hitler, and had ... good cause to hate him. 'What did he look like?' I asked. 'Like all men,' he replied. 'That is, like Christ.'"

Now, I readily accept that our faith should inform our morals, our politics, our choice of entertainment, and so forth. But the idea of a culture war is not in my opinion a helpful one. It engenders and fosters an idea, a false idea, that Christians ought to believe all things that are in some vague sense "Christian" are better than things not so labelled. If the term had any content, as applied to anything and everything, it might be true, maybe; but even then I would be seriously skeptical. Right religious beliefs do not, in themselves, give someone an understanding of political science, or a talent for music (regardless of what the Christian music industry might have us believe), or any of the other things that make up a culture. The role of the Church is one of forming men's character so that they will be the right kind of men to hold public office, to make outstanding art, and so forth -- not to mass-produce such things as alternatives to what is already there. 

When a child is baptized, the parents aren't handed a new baby; they are given their own baby, who is now a baptized child. The change is interior and organic, not external -- which is, nearly always, related to superficiality or coercion. So here: the influence our faith should have in culture should be coming from us doing the things people do anyway, but doing them in a way that is suffused with the Holy Spirit. Thus the culture is changed, by being regenerated from within, not compelled from without.

To take a concrete example, one of the most hotly debated issues of our day is gay marriage. I don't say that the churches are wrong to say that gay marriage is wrong (the ones who do say that, anyway); I think so myself, though without relish. But -- while my political views on the subject will require a post of their own, later -- I really believe that democratic, legislative, and juridical action are beside the point. If we want reverence for marriage, we don't need to prevent gay marriage from being made legal in the remaining forty-odd states; we don't need stronger conscience clauses; we don't even need stricter divorce laws. What we need is reverence for marriage. And that comes from the heart.

I am a pacifist in the culture war because I do not believe that war is the answer to cultural problems. As long as our interaction with our neighbor is dominated by the thought of war, we who live by the sword shall die by the sword; or, if you throw a dead cat in your neighbor's back yard, he will probably throw it back into yours.

A good example of what I mean about a pacifist approach to the culture war is to be found in Acts 19. St. Paul was in Ephesus, and had made so many converts that the silversmiths, whose profits came in part from the sale of idols of the goddess Artemis, became worried that he would depress their trade, and bring Artemis herself into disrepute. The silversmiths started a riot, dragging two of the apostle's companions into the theater, where, for two hours, the crowd shouted, "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" over and over again. Finally they were quieted by the local governor, who made, in passing, the interesting remark that the Christians had neither robbed temples nor blasphemed the goddess. Dr. Glenn Parkinson, the pastor of my mother's church, said in a sermon that if the Moral Majority had been there they would have organized a boycott of silver idols, or tried to pass legislation making them illegal; but that as a result of St. Paul's message, and his love, "Thousands of people stopped buying little silver statues! Not because they wanted to hurt the economy, not because they were trying to make the pagans stop buying idols; they just didn't want them any more."

Change doesn't come from any external thing, from bumper stickers to legal reforms, even if they help. What it comes from is people aglow with the grace of God, a grace that animates their thoughts, their words, and their actions, in a way that those outside find irresistible. Violence is not the way, not even ideological violence. The way is to love God so totally that it fills every corner of our being, transforms it, and bursts our seams and floods everyone around us. And then, if they absorb it, they transform from within.

Pacifisticuffs, Part Three: "No One Can Breathe Against Their Will"

Christianity and the Republican party are almost inextricably linked in the American mind today. Even before the advent of the controversial HHS mandate, the nearly universal Democratic endorsement of abortion, and its friendlier attitude to gay rights, as well as to various forms of state intervention in the home -- all this made the GOP and the churches seem to be natural allies. Moreover, the more liberal disposition of Republicans to the rights of business, forming a strong contrast to Marxism and its ideological relatives, seemed to many (if only by being opposed to Marxism, which has never disguised its utter hatred of Christianity) a natural complement to Judeo-Christian values.

The idea of class warfare is largely a foreign one to our minds. Venerable Dorothy Day declared herself a pacifist in the class war, and it meant something at the time, since radical and even revolutionary sentiments were then by no means unknown in this country; today she would probably be met chiefly with blank stares, and perhaps one histrionic rebuke from an intensely conservative, but not traditionalist, Catholic.

I don't espouse the concept of class warfare as set down by Marx. Having finally read the Communist Manifesto, and having found it a puzzling mixture of insight, illogicality, eloquence, and colorlessness, I feel safe dissociating myself from it without undue prejudice: the notions that all conflicts among men are economic in origin, that the bourgeoisie are to be naturally and rightly mowed down by the proletariat, and that violence is an appropriate means of accomplishing this end -- I can accept none of these things. I am not a materialist, and even if I were, I can see little reason to view humanity through an exclusively economic lens; nor as a Catholic Christian do I believe that any kind of men are naturally or rightly opposed to any other kind.

But to say that the rich do not, in point of fact, make war against the poor, and that the poor do not at times respond in kind, seems impossible. Oppression is one of the salient facts of human existence, and that oppression very frequently takes the form of economic oppression. Or, to put it more simply, the rich exploit the poor. To call it war does not seem to me to be overstatement; for it is often precisely lives, through livelihoods, that are at stake. Or, to quote Ambrogio Ratti, better known as Pius XI:

"In the first place, it is obvious that not only is wealth concentrated in our times but an immense power and despotic economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few, who often are not owners but only the trustees and managing directors of invested funds which they administer according to their own arbitrary will and pleasure. This dictatorship is being most forcibly exercised by those who, since they hold the money and completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending of money. Hence they regulate the flow, so to speak, of the life-blood whereby the entire economic system lives, and have so firmly in their grasp the soul, as it were, of economic life that no one can breathe against their will. This concentration of power and might, the characteristic mark, as it were, of contemporary economic life, is the fruit that the unlimited freedom of struggle among competitors has of its own nature produced, and which lets only the strongest survive; and this is often the same as saying, those who fight the most violently, those who give least heed to their conscience." -- Quadragesimo Anno, paras. 105-107

His Holiness' words, penned in 1931, remain true, and relevant, in our own day -- succeeding as they did on Pope Leo XIII's famous encyclical on the rights of labor, Rerum Novarum, and since followed by others, such as Bl. John Paul II's Centesimus Annus, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Many Christians today give every impression of categorically dismissing such sentiments as these, and even of viewing capitalism as part and parcel with the faith itself. Those Catholics who do not dismiss the teaching of Humanae Vitae on contraception may well dismiss the repeated affirmations of the Magisterium that individualistic capitalism is not compatible with the faith either. Nor, with its Darwinian concept of the market and its divorce of economics from all moral considerations -- "as if it were for charity to veil the violation of justice which lawmakers not only tolerated but at times sanctioned" (Quadragesimo Anno, para. 4) -- could it be expected to be allied to Christianity. And in fairness, it is not only the Popes who have stated flatly that Liberalism (as it was then called) was in essential conflict with the faith; the free-market Liberals themselves said so.

Am I then professing socialism? No. To the extent that I sympathize with any political causes, the only two I much credit are anarchy (with qualifications that need not detain us) and monarchy; monarchy being, in my view, a close second-best to anarchy, and a cut above representative democracy, if only because kings are more easily caught than committees. One of the great falsehoods of the American political system is the notion that capitalism and socialism are the only two economic -- and, by extension, political -- systems on the market, or that at most any real organization of society will be some compromise between the two, as natural extremes.

What I do profess, with some warmth, is that the churches have been widely discredited by the commonplace acceptance of the economic theory of man -- an intrinsically utilitarian thing. Capitalism, from its inception, reduced man to the status of a machine for making profits, instead of a being with rights to be respected -- for instance, the right to a just wage and to decent conditions of work; something that no agreement can nullify: a man does not waive his right to what his humanity entitles him to, merely because he settles for the little he can get out of a desperate need to survive. And socialism (as Chesterton pointed out) simply took that view of man and reversed the status of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in fulfilling its demented and disastrous course. In capitalist countries the poor have nothing; in communist countries it is the same, with the addition that there are no rich -- except the governors. The Catholic Church, virtually alone, has attempted to stem the tide of this diseased view of man; but her rank and file, at any rate in this country, have not been conspicuous for their prophetic alternative in economic life; and American Catholic politicians, from Ted Kennedy to Paul Ryan, have shown themselves more American than Catholic in their willingness to compromise on matters of justice in order to secure political support.

What does any of this have to do with pacifism? Well, the fact that radicalism in politics often issues, both theoretically and practically, in revolution, is no small matter. The still graver reality that there cannot be peace without justice ought to be a warning to us, too. But I am not espousing a revolutionary solution, for the simple reason that I do not believe revolutions solve anything whatever. I don't mean that they are invariably or necessarily unjust; but what is needed is a revolution of man himself. Aristotle wisely remarked that men do not become tyrants in order to keep warm. Men become tyrants because they are men who have the same passions and pleasures that we do, and wish to indulge them. There is no depravity inherent in the powerful that is not, at least, potential in ourselves.

I seek a pacifist solution to class war as well as to military war. That solution is conversion of heart. Only by mutual commitment to justice and charity can economic violence be solved; and there can be no mutual commitment to justice and charity except by a personal commitment to these things. Society will not do for us a job that we decline to do ourselves; for society is only a name for ourselves, considered en masse. Both inaction (as the capitalist may desire) and revolution (as the socialist may promote) leave the nature of things as they are. We must act -- but we must not be violent, for force does not produce peace.

Act how, then? I have said it here before, and I will say it again: Reform yourself. It is the only thing you can ever do, ever. Give to the poor, work for an equitable system, but above all, seek and pray for a just heart. It is out of just hearts that just societies are made. They aren't made of anything else.

Pacifisticuffs, Part Two: The Sword

There have been wars and rumors of wars throughout the world for all of recorded history, and there is no reason to suppose prehistory was any different. One of the first events of Genesis is a fratricide; that human beings kill one another is, ironically, a fact of life.

Nor is the Christian tradition a stranger to war. Since St. Augustine formulated a baptized theory of just war, as Christendom was beginning in the twilight of the Roman Empire, there have been wars tolerated, approved, and even encouraged by the Christian world. There has also always been a dissentient tradition within the Church -- not, or not always, repudiating Just War Theory, but always calling for peace and forsaking violence of every kind. For every St. Louis who was a willing soldier against the infidel, there was always a St. Francis who would sooner be killed than kill. Since the fracture of the Occident during the Reformation, there have been not only movements but entire denominations who incorporated strict pacifism into their practice and even their doctrine, notably the cruelly persecuted Anabaptists and the Quakers.

I accept Just War Theory in principle, as do most people -- in the sense that most people think wars can be justified, though of course there are unjust ones. However, as I mentioned in my last post, I mean to register as a conscientious objector (notwithstanding my profound respect for those who are or have been in the armed forces, including my father and one of my brothers-in-law) if the draft is ever resurrected.

But if wars can be just, why be a conscientious objector? One important reason is that I have exactly no confidence that our government, or most governments, will lead their country into just wars -- whether considered according to their cause or according to the way they are waged. And why not? Because, throughout her history and including our most recent conflicts in the Middle East and central Asia, the US has exhibited a distinct disregard for the criteria of just war; less, maybe, than other nations, and that is something to be profoundly grateful for, but injustice remains injustice also when other people are worse than we are.

But why am I saying that America has disregarded the criteria of just war at all? Plenty of people, including plenty of Christians, would bristle at such an accusation, as a mark of impenitent flower-childishness. Well, I have to admit I am from California originally, so any mud thrown from the well of hippiedom will likely stick. But let's consider just a few of the criteria for just war -- the criteria generally accepted by theorists on the subject.

One is the criterion of right intention, connected with the need for a just cause to go to war. Self-defense, or the defense of innocent populations who are unable to protect themselves, is such a cause; but maintaining an economy is not, whether through the economic activity of war, or through seizing the resources of another nation (either outright, or through establishing a satellite regime that will favor one's own nation in trade).

Another is that, in the conduct of a war, no means evil in themselves can be used to subjugate an enemy. This would include tactics such as forcing prisoners of war to cooperate in efforts against their own side, or using weapons whose effects are uncontrollable, such as nuclear weapons.

A third is that a distinction must be observed between combatants and non-combatants. Deliberately killing civilians is out of the question. Strikes, of whatever kind, that involve destroying civilian lives or property at a scale disproportionate to the direct, military advantage to be gained, are ruled out.

Now, this or that specific war or particular act of war can be debated on these grounds, or on others. But I at any rate cannot look at these things and fail to see my own nation staring back at me. And I cannot commit myself to obeying as a soldier a government which is capable of commanding such things, especially since the lives of fellow soldiers could easily depend upon my actions.

I have often heard these requirements of just war dismissed in conversation as an unattainable ideal. Wars simply aren't fought that way. Maybe, but that is scarcely the point. The ideal of a perfectly hygienic child is equally unattainable. Arguably more so, since non-combatants in a war generally do wish to live, whereas few children wish to be hygienic; yet I never heard of a mother who saw that as grounds to excuse her children from washing. Likewise in every pursuit of justice, whether we are discussing war or politics or any other thing. It is only in pursuing possibly unattainable ideals that anything ever gets done; only the idealist can be really pragmatic. And, especially from a Christian perspective cognizant of the four last things -- death; judgment; Heaven; hell -- the lesson could be drawn that the inevitable injustices of war are a lesson about the wrongness of war, not the wrongness of justice.

But there is, for me, another and in some ways a deeper reason for being pacifistic. One of the ideas at the core of the Christian religion is that all human life is sacred, that every human being is an image of God, sacrosanct. To reverence the image of God in man is therefore a holy thing. Now, there may well be reasons to disregard the sanctity of the image; it is not, on a typical Christian view, wrong to do violence and even to kill in self-defense. But to choose, as a vocation, not to take up arms and not to do violence, even when we are ourselves wronged, threatened, endangered -- not only is this also not wrong, it has been historically required of priests. It is a symbolic affirmation of the sanctity of the human person, which persists, despite any actions taken by the individual.

Is this vocation obligatory? Certainly not. That is what distinguishes a vocation from the moral law as such. But I think our culture -- what Blessed John Paul II called a "culture of death" -- is badly in need of such symbolic affirmations of life. The Lord Himself would have been justified in avoiding His death. But -- "Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?" It was a lesson the great St. Paul absorbed well: "With all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

Nothing can convert a culture of death except a culture of life, and there can be no culture of life without a conviction of the sanctity of life. And as long as Christians are compromising and tolerant with regard to war, our professions of the sacredness of every human being are going to ring hollow.