Five Movements of Love

Every particular love is a distinctive, unique combination of the five movements of love which mutually enrich each other: delight (eros), admiration (another dimension of eros), tender care (close to the classical agape and storge or affection), companionship in the good (philia) and desire (again eros). While the first, delight, characteizes all loves, the following four are more pronounced as filial (admiration), paternal/maternal (tender), fraternal (companionship) and spousal (desire) loves. Delight takes precedence of place: exultation, celebration, enjoyment of the Beloved. Delight is responsive to the Beauty of the Other. This Joy infuses and defines every genuine love. Secondly, admiration or reverence is closely related: responsive to the good of the Beloved, this is a deeper, more intellectual recognition of dignity, nobility, virtue and goodness. This is especially characteristic of filial love, for mother, father, God and all authorities who radiate Goodness. This love is primarily receptive, trusting and reverent. Thirdly, tender care, paternal and maternal, is the complement of filial love in that it cherishes the preciousness and fragility of the Beloved and passionately desires to protect, provide and bring the Other to full happiness and fulfillment. If the filial is love of the small for the large, tender care is love of the strong for the little. Fourthly, companionship in the good replaces asymetry with equality and particularly characterizes friendship in all its forms, including brother-sister love and spousal love. This indicates that the lovers mutually move each other beyond the duality into a Good that is greater than the two of them. This could be a friendship in some hobby or interest or more deeply the partnership of husband in wife in regard to children and family or a companionship in prayer and mission. Lastly, Desire for union with the Beloved is the most complex, paradoxical and challenging love. This would include the lowest forms of love: the craving for affection, affirmation, security and comfort of the infant or infantile (which remains with us into the grave) and sexual yearning with all its tension, frustration and vulnerability to violence and betrayal. However we also know the divine eros, the holy, generous, eternal desire by which God longs to be with us forever in heaven. And so, every human love is a mysterious mixture of earthly and heavenly eros  and we who are immersed in it are unable to divide out the one from the other. And yet the Holy Spirit is active among and with us, through the Church, to strengthen and purify our loves; to recognize and renounce anything "diabolic" that would separate us from God and each other in love; and to increase and magnify all that is generous, pure, holy and magnanimous in our loves. In this account, eros or desire has a certain preeminence. Creation itself is the fruit of God's own desire to share with us out of His boundless, effervescent and exuberant Goodness. We ourselves are created with infinite desire for the Good the Beautiful and the True, as well as our desires, in our finitude, for security, attention, comfort, purpose and communion. And so, Desire becomes neither an illusion to be discarded nor a passion to be denied or repressed, but is our deepest nature. Even agape and tender care is desire for the well-being, the happiness, the salvation of the ones we love. The five distinct but interwoven movements of Love can be summarized by an acronym: TREAT. Love is all its splendor is indeed a neat treat as it is: Tender in it care, Reverent and admiring, Elated and even ecstatic in its delight, Attentive towards the good in companionship with the Beloved, Tending in desire for union with the one loved. May our Desire and our desires be inflamed, purified and ordered, intelligently, each in its proper place, always flowing into and out of our Desire for God and the salvation of those we love.

"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." Chesterton

This adage from Chesterton is even more precious today than when he penned it almost a century ago. The first and immediate value, for many of us, is that it frees us from the paralysis of a perfectionism that expects high standards and is upset by anything else. It frees us for action, initiative, agency...even if we don't expect perfect results. This takes on more meaning in a society of technological development, expertise, and regulatory rigor that seems to teach us that we can do nothing on our own that is not certified by high, extrinsic standards of efficiency, productivity and value. This is especially true for men: a part of the crisis of masculinity is that we have been disenfranchised from traditional arenas of male accomplishment by an all-encompassing technocratic bureaucracy. How good it is to be free to do something...something of value...even if it is sloppy, incomplete or imperfect by someone else's standards. But Chesterton intended something deeper. He celebrated the "amateur"...someone who does something for the love of it, not because it earns money or recognition or satisfies some extrinsic need or standard. And so we know that the most important things in life are done by us as "amatuers"...we pray, we love our families and friends, we sing, we philosophize in blog essays, we garden, we dress up to be beautiful, we compete in sports. This is not to deny the need, in our society especially, the urgency of excellence in expertise: we don't want sloppy brain surgeons, engineers or nuclear scientists. Nor is this to repress the desire for excellence. Rather, this allows us, especially the less competent and confident among us, to start slow; to accept imperfection; and then to patiently, hopefully learn, improve and move deeper into the Good, the True and the Beautiful.This adage begs to be completed by its complement:  "Anything worth doing is worth doing well!" This is because anything worth doing is worth it in itself, not for something extrinsic. And so I pray, not for self-improvement or more efficacy in activism, but because I love God. I enjoy my grandchildren not to coach them to success, but because they are delightful in themselves, regardless of accomplishments. I enjoy my garden not because it lowers my carbon imprint, but because it is beautiful in itself. In a society of grandiosity, technological omnipotence, and meritocratic careerism, it is good for us to delight in "the little way" of acts done imperfectly, gratefully, modestly and generously!

Deeper Critique of Liberalism: D.C. Schindler's "Freedom From Reality: The Dialectical Character of Modern Liberty"

In this magisterial work of metaphysics, D.C. Schindler shows the "liberal" understanding of freedom (as diabolic, in the etymological sense of "to tear apart") to be the opposite of the classical and Christian as symbolic, (etymologically "to join together."). By "symbolic" he means a cosmos in which every being is, internally, related to every other, in an intelligible order, even as each enjoys its own inner integrity or form or soul. Additionally, every existent participates in a "greater Good" even as it embodies it, uniquely, and points beyond itself to its source, the Good. The "Greater Good" or God is a source of boundless generosity and "liberality" because it is "actual" which is to say that it has being, reality, completeness. According to this tradition, Being (all that is, insofar as it is) is always True, Good, Beautiful and One. Even better, the Source of all being is so generous and "liberal" that allowance is made for fruitfulness and purposefulness to be shared...and thus, our freedom is reception, reciprocity, engagement and donation to the Good.  Etymologically, our words "freedom" and "liberty" are rooted in connections with procreation and love and ecstasy and so freedom is the spontaneous, non-necessary acceptance of, participation in, and contribution to the Good. It is an inner principle of agency that moves towards a goal or telos even as it has an interior integrity and a disposition of rest; even as it relates, intrinsically not accidentally, to others and to the whole and to God. Liberty, as construed by Liberalism, on the other hand is the exact opposite of this: it is "diabolical" in that it intends to disconnect the individual from all bonds...tradition, the past, authority, and community. Such liberty is defined as freedom from constrain and therefore as release from the "other" as oppressive...be that other people, religion, or whatever. And so the Self becomes a disconnected, isolated center of agency understood as agency outward, extrinsically, without any prior internal relatedness. Freedom is the ability to entertain and choose from limitless options, without being in any way already oriented or determined by a prior connection or a greater Good. Freedom is not understood positively as integral participation in the Good and True, but negatively as removal of all restrain, relation and determination. In detail, Schindler shows how this core concept of freedom as isolation has penetrated all arenas of life and all the institutions of modernity. But really, it is far from a gloomy picture. He does not call for a retreat into the desert. He heralds VERY GOOD NEWS! If the diabolical view of liberty, however prevalent, is wrong, then the symbolic is right. And this is MARVELOUS! It means that Being, in all its splendor, is already and always and everywhere, True and Beautiful and Good and as such is irrepressibly, boundlessly and invincibly generous, magnanimous, delightful, fascinating, and intelligent. And so, true philo-sopher (lover of wisdom) that he is, he issues no call to action, no program of renewal or revolution, no exhortation to moralism or activism. Our path is clear,  pleasing and hopeful: to receive All-That-Is-Given, gratefully, soberly, peacefully, hopefully; to engage in and exult in it, ecstatically; and then participate in it fearlessly, recklessly; fiercely, magnanimously! The dynamics of isolation and impoverishment operative in the Liberal mindset cannot prevail because they are not True or Beautiful or Good. And so, even if the prospects are grim in the superficial and short-sighted view, they are boundlessly fecund in the deeper, longer view. In a telling phrase, he suggests that our founding institutions (global market, expanded state, rule of law, freedoms of speech/religion, etc.) as "possessed" need not be executed, but must be exorcised. This means that peacefully we can receive them with their flaws and strengths, and patiently re-orient them to the Good; revive within them their integrity or form; and reconnect them with each other, ourselves, Creation and God.  (to be completed.)

Top Ten 20th Century Women Saints

The 20th century (my century) belongs to the women saints (including the not-yet-canonized). On my "top saint list" they outnumber men 10 to 5. The men are: St. John Paul (the great), St. Leopold (4'4" icon of Mercy), Charles deFocault (handsome, hidden, anonymous), Father Solonus Casey (humble but powerful intercessor) and St. Maximilian Kolbe. There are twice as many women. Working backwards (more or less) from date of death: St. Teresa of Calcutta, Catherine deHueck Doherty, Dorothy Day, Adrienne vonSpeyr, Madeleine Delbreil, St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), St. Faustina, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, Elisabeth Leseur, and St. Therese (who died just before the century but greatly influenced it.) They were all holy, strong yet humble women. VERY pronounced in their femininity! Certain patterns emerge:

- Five worked fiercely with the poor: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Dorothy Day, Catherine Doherty, Adrienne Speyr, Madeleine Delbreil.

- All seemed to have suffered profound and prolonged desolation and loneliness: most notably Mother Teresa for 40 years, Adrienne Speyr's Holy Saturday experiences, Elisabeth's personal loneliness in her faith and physical suffering, Dorothy in her "long loneliness,"  and St. Therese in her excruciating and prolonged death,

- Half are canonized, half are on the way.

- Three were married, two were married twice (Adrienne and Catherine whose first was annulled).

- Three underwent radical conversions from disbelief: Dorothy Day, Madeleine, Edith Stein.

- Adrienne and St. Faustina were mystics in an extraordinary manner. All cultivated the mystical life of prayer and union with God, especially St. Elizabeth. Others buried themselves in the drudgery of poverty and service, especially Mother Theresa and Dorothy Day.

- Five lived the consecrated life; five were laywomen. Two were mothers: Dorothy and Catherine.

- Four died in obscurity to exert immense influence almost immediately after their death: St. Faustina, St. Elizabeth, Elisabeth, and St. Terese. Six were known and influential in their lifetime and sometimes suffered from it, especially Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day.

- Chronologically they fall into three groups:  St. Elizabeth and Elisabeth are contemporaries of St. Therese, died early in life and in the century and lived lives of quiet anonymity. St. Faustina and St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross died in midlife and mid-century. Catherine, Dorothy, Adrienne, Madeleine, and Mother Theresa all lived long, fruitful lives that virtually spanned the entire century.

- One was technically a martyr, St. Theresa Benedicta.

All were icons of ferocious but gentle, passionate but chaste, humble but magnanimous Femininity!

"Sacraments" of Liberalism, Religion of the SELF

"Liberalism," or what I prefer to call "Expressive Individualism," is developed by Patrick Dineen as an ideology, but it is that and more: it is a metaphysics, as explanation of reality, and a religion, as a comprehensive way of life organized around beliefs and practices that honor what is most valuable and sacred...in this case, the Imperial, Autonomous Self. Considering it as a religion, let us look at the founding practices, or "sacraments," that structure the religion. As Catholicism is centered in seven sacraments, so the Liberalism of our current society is structured around a system of co-inhering, concrete practices. They are best understood as "diabolic" in the etymological sense: in contrast with the "symbolic" which "joins together," the diabolic tears apart, sunders, separates.  First among these is contraception. As the contrary of baptism which issues us into new, eternal life, contraception literally acts "against conception" or against life. As such, it sunders sexual union from it's meaning as union, in one flesh of complementing male and female, and from it's inherent fruitful purpose, according to nature and our Creator. It separates the most intimate of engagements from its spousal destiny and thus isolates the Self into a compartment of loneliness and meaninglessness. As such, it leads to other rituals of death and despair. First of these, of course, is abortion which is back-up contraception as it eliminates the child, the natural fruit that had already been deliberately "decided against." It is no accident that Roe v. Wade came in 1971 almost immediately after contraception conquered our culture. A third "sacrament" would be cohabitation whereby man and woman live and sleep together but remain separated, without the mutual giving and receiving of self that sexual union expresses and seals. A forth "sacrament" would be all the "reproductive technology" which replaces the mystery, the miracle of conception with impersonal processes of control, power and manipulation. This is a most vivid expression of the other side of liberalism as the elevation of technology as the defining paradigm by which the human person takes control of life and manipulates it for utilitarian purposes. A fifth, follow up to abortion and reproductive technique, would be other Frankensteinian methods such as euthanasia and embryonic stem cell destruction, by which technology is allowed to destroy human life on behalf of some subjective preference. A sixth "sacrament" would be sanctification of homosexual marriage as the inevitable extension of contraceptive, which is to say sterile and non-unitive, sex. This practice galloped to popular approval in breakneck speed because it logically supports more widespread, almost universal (even among Catholics) practice of contraception. The seventh and highly significant "sacrament" is the deconstruction of masculinity and female in favor of the neutered, unbounded, unbonded, naked Self. As a metaphysics, Liberalism denies "form" or "essence" ("formal causality") and purpose ("final causality") and leaves only instrumental and material causality. Perhaps the most catastrophic loss is of the form of "masculinity" as son/brother/groom/father and "femininity" as "daughter/sister/bride/mother. In its place is the naked, self-determining self, stripped of bonds or internal, pre-existing relations to parents, family, faith, tradition and community. Femininity, however, proves to be far more resilient and we see many of our young women flourishing if over-achieving and over-stressed as they perform admirably in career as well as in the family as mother, daughter, sister and wife. But our young men are deep in crisis as they have been stripped of all complex cultural itinerary whereby a society educates boys into men. So, we live in a world that is increasingly FATHERLESS as our young men are systemically emasculated. After identifying seven primal foundations, like our Catholic sacraments, we can also view a vast network of "quasi-sacramentals" which Liberalism practices to support its faith in the self. Among these are: the trust that romance (separate from family and children) is the path to the deepest happiness; belief in career and its accompaniments (good school, connections) as the gateway to identity and social status; glorification of the expansive state (by the left) or globalized capitalism (on the right)  as rising currents that lift all boats; and a presumption that technology and engineering can remove all suffering and evil (e.g. if it weren't for the NRA, legislation would prevent school shooings!). Religion, etymologically from "religio" meaning bonds or connections, indicates the beliefs and practices that unite us with each other, God, the past and future, and the cosmos. Liberalism then can be understood as the "Anti-Religion" in that is exults the isolated Self and ruthlessly dissolves all inherent bonds or connections. The Liberal Self is isolated in a compartment of loneliness, cut off from tradition and past as well as future, in a sterile, purposeless present. Relentlessly if covertly it operates through our major institutions (state, market, law, entertainment, education) to isolate each person in loneliness and dissolve all abiding, hopeful, rooted connection and communion. In that sense it is surely erroneous to refer to liberal practices as sacraments since that expression indicates practices which unite us...with God, each other, the Communion of Saints and even the Eternity of the Trinity! More accurately, they may be described as "dia-ments" in that they tear us apart...from each other, from reality, and from God...into the despairing, lonely universe of the Imperial Self!

Saints Oscar Romero and Paul VI

I am not happy, I am giddy with Joy to learn that Mother Church will canonize Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Oscar Romero this coming October. To declare both saints at the same time is a strike of genius: these each represent (in my opinion) the two primary challenges presented to our Church in my adulthood, (1965 - 2018 and counting), solidarity with the poor and defense of marriage, family, spousal fidelity and the chastity of our youth. In a fine article (https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/03/12/new-saints-paul-vi-and-oscar-romero/) Robert Royal honors both men even as he acknowledges their flaws and failings. He describes the Hamlet-like indecision of Pope Paul but sees that at the end of the day, with Humanae Vitae, he is at once hero and martyr and prophet. I was interested to learn that Romero suffered psychologically from his mission and found comfort in counseling. I was especially delighted to learn that he visited Pope John Paul for comfort as I had always assumed that the suspicion John Paul (and Benedict as well) had for Liberation Theology had clouded their view of him as well. With these two October canonizations, we will be able to exult in the lives of these two who lived in our time, suffered deeply from the conflicts and confusions of our age, and yet witnessed in their specific and complementary ways to Gospel Truth!

Has Liberalism Failed? (3) The End of Ideology?

Dineen gives a surprising twist to Fukuyama's famous 1992 declaration (at the fall of Soviet communism) of an "End of History": by that phrase the later meant the final, definitive triumph of liberal democracy; Dineen on the contrary announces the fall of liberalism as the last of the great 20th century ideologies (along with Fascism and Communism). Dineen advocates a retreat to local communities and organizations and specifically advises against the development of a new, alternate ideology. There is a problem with this advice:  it is impossible for one to think and act politically, socially or culturally without some "ideology" (however vague or implicit) understood as a system of values and beliefs that guide society. Who of us is not in favor of democracy, economic liberty and free markets, a protective and regulative state, freedoms of speech, religion and so forth? Who of us is not opposed to slavery, racism, child labor, a state-free society or a totalitarian state? Even anarchists on the left (Dorothy Day) and right (Steve Bannon) have, at least implicitly, a vision of the good society, even as they renounce the status quo. In contrast to them, I consider myself a pragmatist, a gradualist, a moderate.   I agree with Dineen's analysis of the internal self-destructiveness of liberalism understood as "expressive individualism" and I am entirely unsatisfied with the three current prevailing ideologies (Trump, Clinton/Obama, Paul Ryan). However,  I do not see the current order of large government and global markets as unequivocally bad, as inevitably doomed, as incapable of redemption. Like almost all human systems, our current order has lots of good things and lots of bad things. We do well to start by accepting the current order, in its inadequacy and splendor, and envision the way to diminish the bad and enhance the good. With that in mind, I suggest the following guiding principles from accepted Catholic social teaching.

1.  Protection of innocent, powerless life: from conception to natural birth. Period!

2.  Solidarity with all...especially the poor, suffering, powerless and marginalized. All!

3.  Subsidiarity: a preference for smaller, organic, immediate organizations and communities rather than the de-personalized mega-state or global market.

4.  Reverence for the sacred, the holy, the transcendent as the source of a received (not fabricated) moral order in a non-denominational manner that protects freedom of religion.

5.  Respect, protection and support for the natural family and time honored habits of gender ("man and woman He created them...") and sexuality (chastity, fidelity, masculine reverence for the feminine, maternity/paternity) as the bedrocks of society.

Beyond these five foundational, non-negotiable principles, there is a range of values, beliefs and tensions that can be expressed in diverse manners: a patriotism that is internationalist in a prudent, positive way; a safety net for the poor that is sober yet generous;  compromise between the rights of gun-owners and public safety; an immigration policy that is welcoming but realistic; a tax policy that considers the vitality of business, the needs of the government, and the future of our children. These matters are ambiguous, complicated, the stuff of prudential judgment and inevitably productive of disagreement and argument. An informed Catholic conscience will not absolutize or consecrate a specific policy; will not demonize those who disagree; will maintain a serenity, lightness, magnanimity and liberty in deliberation and discourse; and will therefore avoid "ideology" in the pejorative sense. It is particularly important that our clergy and hierarchy not use their ordination and status to advance some particular position and thus succumb to an unacknowledged clericalism that disrespects the freedom and responsibility of the laity even as it profanes the holy office. However the five bedrock principles of our faith cannot be compromised; they are in "constant war" with an Imperial Individualistic Liberalism; they must be preached by our priests and practiced by our people with ferocity and zeal:  solidarity and subsidiarity; protection of the innocent, of the Sacred, of religious liberty, of the family, of masculinity/femininity and of sexuality.

Did Liberalism Fail? (2) Vermulle's Christian Strategy

Adrian Vermulle (https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/integration-from-within/ is a review of Dineen's book; and see also https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/11/a-christian-strategy) makes a most significant advance beyond the negativism and localism of Dreher (The Benedict Option) and Dineen (Why Liberalism Failed) in his suggestion of a "Christian strategy." He proposes Old Testament figures like patriarch Joseph of Egypt, Mordecai, and Daniel who assumed positions of influence in regimes hostile in many ways to their faith. Without any compromise in fundamentals, they were able to effect policy for the welfare of their people, their values and the common good. He suggests that we avoid pledging our allegiance to a specific party, movement or ideology and so maintain a freedom to form alliances with various actors in ways that do not compromise, but advance our faith and the welfare of the broader society and culture. He is advocating a certain detachment and indifference regarding partisan politics in favor of a freedom to maneuver. More importantly, he is demonstrating a confidence, a hopefulness, a sense of agency that is refreshing in contrast to the gloom shared by Dreher and Dineen. This confidence is warranted: a sober, humbled, and grateful Catholic triumphalism is correct as the wisdom we have received from tradition does provide the bedrock for a good, just society. Given the toxic, shallow, self-destructive nature of "liberalism" (by Dineen's definition) or what I prefer to call "expressive individualism," our world is becoming increasing desperate for what is deeply True and Good and Beautiful. Equally important is that although that negative liberalism has largely won the Culture War in the powerful elite institutions, our society retains immense riches, far more than a mere residue, of faith, truth, value and connection in families, churches, movements, and communities. These powerful streams of goodness continue to permeate local and more distant organizations: schools, police and fire departments, flourishing businesses, and yes even bureaucracies! We do well to heed Vermulle's call to a posture of detached, liberated, confident and assertive engagement, even as we develop our local and immediate communities according to a Benedict Option. Dreher and Dineen represent a strain of anti-modernist, "thick" Christianity (evident in traditional Catholicism as well as Fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestantism) that resists those Enlightenment tendencies that undermine our faith and so counters a "thin" liberal Christianity that embraces the modern order and so mis-remembers fundamentals of our faith. Providentially, there is a third alternative: both Benedict and St. John Paul engaged the Enlightenment and its liberal legacy in a positive, yet critical manner, embracing what is best and resisting what is worst. This suggests a confident, grateful Burkean conservatism that moves forward patiently and hopefully, conserving what is best in our present and retrieving what is best in our past, including the wholesome liberalism of FDR and JFK, the conservatism of Ronald Reagan, and the boundless riches of retro-culture from Gershwin to Peter Seeger to Bruce Springsteen.

The Pscho-Logic of the Mass Murderer: The Rage of the Fatherless

It is reported (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markmeckler/2018/02/27-deadliest-mass-shooters-26-one-thing-common/) that of the last 27 mass murderers, 26 were fatherless. This stark, tragic fact unveils the inner logic of mass murder of the innocent, the small, the powerless: fatherlessness! It is Herod and the Holy Innocents Redux! Consider the destined life itinerary of each male: first to be a son; then a brother/friend; then a bridegroom; and finally a father, in the broad sense that includes but exceeds the biological into the psychological, intellectual, social, moral, and spiritual. But the foundation is to be a son: of a specific father and mother, of a clan and tribe and nation, of a Church, and of God the Father Himself. If a male has not been a son, has not been loved by a father (or father figure(s)) and thus grown in filial trust and loyalty, he cannot become a father. He cannot give what he hasn't received. The unfathered cannot father! And so there are only two alternate paths: the young man becomes weak, shrivilled, indecisive and impotent. Or he rages...and destroys. The logic is clear: If I cannot give life, I can destroy it! If I cannot echo the generosity of the Father, I can mimic the Father of Death and Lies! Consider the three-year old boy who lacks the skills of his five-year old brother in building a lego set: frustrated and angry, he at least enjoys the thrill of destroying the thing. Hopefully and slowly, he develops and attains those creative skills and prefers them to the destructive inclinations. Consider teenage vandalism: I vividly recall as a seventeen-year-old walking with my best friend from a basketball game on garbage night as he methodically kicked over every garbage can along about a three block stretch. What was that about? He probably didn't himself know but clearly it was an inchoate rage...at something! From the viewpoint of our faith, those who die in these massacres are innocent and mysteriously identified with those first martyrs, slain by Herod in Bethelehem, and closely identified with Christ. But the aching tragedy of our time is the scourge of the fatherless: boys and girls both deprived of the love of a Father!