Catholic Twilight Zone

Most of the people I engage, in the various worlds I enter and exit regularly, are in a "twilight zone" with regard to the Catholic Church and faith. They are neither fully in nor fully out; they are in between somewhere. They are not in the flaming heat of the midday sun of Christ's love for his Church; nor are they in deep, cold darkness. They are a blend of light and darkness. This is also called "Catholic Lite" or "cafeteria Catholic" (choose what you want) or "thin Catholicism" (contrast to the "thick" or countercultural type.)

In NJ where I live, about 50% are Catholic. About 20% of Catholics "practice" their faith by the clear, specific habit of attendance at mass every Sunday. We Catholics have that very concrete, observable criterion: practice of our faith is clear in attendance at Sunday Eucharist. So perhaps 10% of our population are observant Catholics; about 40% are non-practicing (used to be called "fallen away") Catholics. That 40% practices their faith in a great variety of ways and intensities. Some come to Church on Christmas, Ash Wednesday and Easter; others attend mass randomly; many want baptism, communion, marriage and burial in the Church but have little interest otherwise. 

Many have formally left the Church for another religion but retain more than a minor residual Catholicism. There are different directions: some become "born again" in Evangelical or Pentecostal Churches; others retain much of their childhood faith in a convenient marriage with progressivism (women priests, gay marriage, etc.) in mainline Protestantism. We have a litany of high profile "Catholic" politicians who wear their faith on their lapels as they crusade militantly against her fundamental convictions. And SO many gifted artists who proudly retain a Catholic identity, albeit in a diluted form (Jack Kerouac, Bruce Springsteen).  And then there are the famous "Nones" without allegiance to any social body; but they may find themselves making the sign of the cross when passing a Church or cemetery. And of course we have the phenomenon of "reversion" or return back to the Church.

Beyond the institutional boundaries of the Church I find many people who have sympathy, attraction, and fascination with it. For example, many are influenced by a devout spouse, possibly attending mass and eventually converting.  In visitations as voluntary hospital chaplain, for example, I encounter secular Jews who use the rosary or are attached to St. Padre Pio. I just this morning read that Protestant President Ronald Regan had the Ave Maria sung at his funeral.  A Latin Mass friend of mine invited some Jewish friends: "Do you want to go to Christmas midnight mass with us?" He didn't expect the response: "Midnight mass? Are you kidding? What Jew does not want to go to midnight mass?"

Among my very favorite books is "The Christian Unconscious of Sigmund Freud."  Brilliantly, psychologist Paul Vitz highlights the fascination of Freud, the great antagonist of religion, for Catholic Churches and cathedrals, particularly in Rome. We see here that even the fiercest enemies harbor deep ambivalence about the Church. 

We also observe that some of the great secular, moral minds are drawn to the Church, but are unable to make the crucial step across the doorway, for reasons not clear. We think of Jordan Peterson, David Brooks, Ernest Becker and Albert Camus. We might call such "Almost Catholics."

I think of the Church as the mother, not always vigorous and thriving, who hovers over our society. Most of us are spiritually adolescents in crisis mode: still dependent, but desiring autonomy; and fluctuating in and out of resentment towards Mom.

I think of our society as a dynamic energy field, with the Church at the center, a powerful magnet, at once drawing us together, but also repelling many of us. And so, at any point in time we have complicated dynamics, with some fleeing desperately away from the Center, and others being drawn close. It is a thrilling, powerful Drama: at once a clash, and a romance of freedoms, human and divine and demonic. 

It is a great Mystery, the movements of our hearts and souls towards and away from God and his Church. And the subtle, profound ways we influence each other. 

May we all of us be drawn...and draw each other...into the midday Sun of God's love.

Movie Stars and Actors

Thinking about the greatest male, English language, cinematic actors of all time, I have been considering the sharp contrast between "movie star quality" and acting ability. The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that the two are not merely contrasting, but entirely different realities, "forms," and are mutually contradictory of each other, incommensurate.

By "star quality" I mean the powerful, indescribable charisma, charm, fascination, allure, and attraction that mesmerizes the movie viewer. This is the figure that "lights up the screen." By contrast, acting ability per se is the ability to create a new character  in which the person of the actor himself largely disappears. These two are almost contraries. The movie star brings his unique "persona" to each role, which becomes a vessel to manifest his compelling, fascinating person. The actor disappears in deference to a new creation, a new role, a new person. 

My suggestion: the great figures of the movies are either stars or actors. They captivate us by their own charm and charisma; or they dazzle us by disappearing behind the appearance of a new character. The two are incompatible. 

My favorite stars:  Marlon Brando,  John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Burt Lancaster, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Denzel Washington, Yul Brunner, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg,  Humphry Bogart, Gary Cooper, Fred Astaire, James Dean, Montgomery Cliff, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Spencer Tracey, Anthony Quinn, James Cagney, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Gene Kelly, Steve McQueen, Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford, Robert Redford. 

My favorite actors: Daniel Day Lewis, Russell Crowe, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Ed Norton, Philip Seymore Hoffman, Alec Guinness, Anthony Hopkins, Robert De Niro, Kevin Spacey, Jack Nicholson, Robert Duvall, Christian Bale, Sean Penn, Tommy Lee Jones, Jeremy Irons, Ralph Fiennes.

It is worth noting that the earlier, classic era (up to the 1960s) we see more stars; more recently less star power but a higher level of acting. More contemporary stars (Pitt, Damon, Clooney, etc.) are hardly in the same league as Wayne, Peck, Grant, Cooper. But they and their contemporaries are better actors.

When we think of the star, we have a clear, powerful image of the person that pervades every performance. John Wayne is a good example: he does not need to act; he is always John Wayne; us fans don't want him to be anything else. His portrayal of Genghis Khan is a cult classic and simply hilarious. By contrast, Alec Guinness is well known as Obi Wan Kenobi, but his career prior to Star Wars was a magnificent diversity of characters, each unique. His own persona is low in celebrity, glamour and appeal. He is a pure vehicle for the character he portrays. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are very similar in lifetime achievement; but I see that Pacino brings this star charisma to every role; while De Niro has the greater ability to disappear behind the character he portrays.

To be sure, some of the great stars are also great actors: Brando, Pacino, Dean, Quinn. But it remains that even in their greatest performances their personal charisma is irrepressible and exultant. Likewise, some of the great actors have great star stature by virtue of charisma as well as a huge body of work; but their greatness as actor includes their ability to camouflage their personal charisma in deference to the character they play.

We love our great stars as well as our actors. But I must give primacy of place to those actors who disappear behind their character and yet infuse that character with a radiance, power, fascination that is detached from the actor himself: Daniel Lewis, Russell Crowe, Ed Norton, Jack Nicholson, Robert Duvall, and Christian Bale.

Don't we love the movies?   

Virtues of Virility

 "Any man who has not plunged himself into the magnitude of the littleness of Christ is not fit to exercise power."    Caryll Houselander

These few words from the incomparable Brit pierce more sharply, profoundly into the perversity of ordinary (which is to say sinful) masculinity than volumes from militant feminism and cultural liberalism. The greatness of these 21 words is that it offers, not just a diagnosis, but a cure; The littleness of the Christ Child that we have been celebrating now for over two week.  

In the light of this luminous insight, I offer that the primary, foundational virtue of noble virility is humility; that the secondary virtues are fortitude and chastity; and that the tertiary are sobriety, serenity, prudence and justice.

HUMILITY is truth, honesty about one's self: one's gifts, strengths, goodness; the splendor of the masculine vocation as son, brother, groom and father; and one's weaknesses, failings, toxicities and perversities. It is this last that is absolutely crucial: accurate acknowledgment of one's inadequacies and sins. The slightest confusion or inaccuracy on this creates a monster. 

We are all of us men like St. Peter: one moment grandiose ("Even if I have to die with you I will never disown you"); the next minute violent (cutting off the ear); and the next cowardly ("I do not know the man.").  The greatness of tri-polar Peter is that he fully owned all of this, in humility, and opened his heart to the Mercy and Love of Christ.

We are each of us prone at any moment to become Herod the Great, megalomaniac murderer of infants, or the Holy Innocents themselves, witnesses in God's grace to the Christ. We are each of us at any moment prone to become Herod Antipas, cowardly adulterer and killer of the Baptist, or the witness-Cousin himself, fierce-fierceless-chaste-humble herald of Christ.

Humility is the pivotal virtue because the masculine, contrast so sharply with the feminine, has no value or worth interior to itself. Masculinity is entirely representative; it is created to stand for, present, convey Another, a far greater one, God the Father and Christ the Bridegroom and infinite varieties of analogous sacred authority. Virility is a vessel that carries something far greater than itself. It is the temple that encloses the Holy, the altar that contains the precious Body and Blood.

Consider our US Ambassador to Germany: he is not a policy maker, an executive, a legislature, a judge. He is a messenger. He carries the policy and decisions of the President to that country. Were he to start developing and proclaiming his own ideas he would be a contradiction. He is the communicator, nothing more. And so that is the masculine.

My oldest son once told me "I love to wear a uniform." He spent many years a a JAG lawyer with the Army. He was an EMT, a bartender, an altar boy. He now is a father. In all of these he stands for something greater than himself. My younger son teaches religion in a Catholic high school: he is a "doctor" in theology; he is certified; he has been tried and proven; he has immersed himself in the Great Tradition and speaks from it, not merely from his own limited experience and views.  I myself enjoyed many years in the brown uniform of a UPS driver. In that outfit I was something different from myself. I walked into hundreds of businesses and offices as if I were a partner there, fully comfortable and accepted. I was more than my own little self. Today  I am comfortable and confident in several ministries (catechesis, hospital, jail): not because of my own gifts and charm, but because I represent something transcendent, the Church of Christ. I represent!

And so the priest, judge, fireman, soldier, security guard, doctor and lawyer in his suit...all of the above are vested to indicate what they represent, something transcendent and abiding and worthy. How much more does the father...in the family or in the Church..."stand in" for the one True Father, our heavenly Father.

And so the primary task of the masculine journey is the: Deflation of the Ego. The male ego (contrast to the fluid, organic, generous, inclusive, welcoming feminine psyche!) is brittle, fragile, vulnerable, selfish and resistant to surrender and generosity. How can such be infused with light so as to become flexible, generous, porous, generous? The male has to be loved. To be humble is to be loved. To receive unmerited, undeserved goodness and grace. And then become a vessel of such to others. So the path to wholesome, humble virility is...paradoxically...not masculine competence, assertiveness and know-how, but receptivity!

FORITUDE understood as gentle strength and courage is the second crucial masculine virtue. Key here is the conjunction of gentleness with strength: this is the peaceful, calm, confident strength of the good father in his care for the little ones, including the mother. There is nothing shrill, frenetic, resentful, insecure or anxious here; but a deep serenity that conveys security, safety and peace. This includes courage: a certain ferocity and fearlessness in the face of attack of any sort. The man knows his life is to be given away, disposed of, in the service of his family and community. The woman sheds blood in her distinctive way, on behalf of family and new life. The man is prepared to spill his own blood, in the mode of martyr or hero, on the hill or battlefield that is given him. The goal of the young man is not success, affluence, achievement; but self-sacrifice, heroism and nobility in whatever combat or task is required. So we men need always to keep in our attention the witness of the martyrs and heroes.

CHASTITY is purity of heart...freedom, simplicity, sobriety, temperance...in the key arena of sexual desire and emotional/romantic yearnings. It is the inner capacity to see, value, revere, and protect the sanctity of the feminine. This is, for many of us, a lifelong task. Concupiscence, our wounded condition due to original sin, leaves us men especially infected with disordered, often overwhelming physical and psychological urges. The pandemic of pornography that has crept over our society since the 1960s has made things that much worse. Cultural progressivism and theological liberalism is in large part an enormous denial of the need for chastity and the perversity of lust and covetousness. This is a tragedy for our society and our Church. Our young men need to be mentored, encouraged, corrected and challenged to embrace purity of heart and chastity of the body. We Catholics benefit from the unspeakable splendor of the sacrament of Confession; but it is largely unused. The revival of virility basically includes the renewal of chivalry and chastity.

SOBRIETY here goes well beyond freedom from addictions and compulsions to include all that traditionally is understood as temperance: interior moderation, peace and harmony that is free from the intoxicating, confusing and disorienting passions of lust, anger, anxiety, depression, discouragement, jealousy and resentment. Sobriety is a relative emotional serenity that allows the intellect to operate freely, clearly, accurately in the evaluation of often complex and unclear realities. We speak of the "sobriety" of the judge by which we mean a certain realism, objectivity, neutrality and fairness. Such sobriety obviously builds upon humility (as the ego needs are not tyranical) and chastity and leads to the practice of prudence and justice.

SERENITY is the calm, certainty, clarity and security that flows from the prior virtues of sobriety, chastity, courage and humility. It is the peace inherent in genuine fortitude. It is a mysterious graciousness, stability and sense of safety that emanates from the good father. Where does such a good father himself find such serenity? From his own filial intimacy with his heavenly Father, the source of all that is good and true and stable!

PRUDENCE is practical wisdom, identification of the GOOD in the concrete practicalities of any situation, which flows from the prior virtues of serenity, sobriety, chastity, courage and humility. It is practical intelligence, exercised by a will that is not bound by disordered emotion and able to consider patiently all the circumstances of the Reality before it. It is the ability to judge correctly the right, the true, the just and the good of a dramatic, historical event.

JUSTICE flows fluently from the network of virtues already present. Here we do well to recall the memory of the Patriarch Joseph, chaste and wise and forgiving of his brothers, he was able to wisely guide the Pharaoh and exercise stewartship throughout the famine. Likewise, his namesake, St. Joseph, husband of Mary and father of Jesus, was a man of purity, courage, wisdom and responsiveness to the heavenly who protected the mother and child so well.

Let us conclude these considerations by returning to the words of Caryll Houselander about the "littleness of Christ." Here is the key to noble virility. The Christ child is little, humble, responsive, vulnerable, trusting, and above all receptive...of the love flowing from Mary, Joseph, the animals, the shepherds, the Magi, the angels, the Holy Innocents, the Father and the Holy Spirit. From all eternity, Jesus is The Son, absolutely and perfectly and infinitely receptive of the Father in the Spirit. Each of us is destined to emulate this receptivity...in our own unique, concrete lives...in filial trust, delight, obedience...in a humility that surrenders and embraces the courage, purity, sobriety, serenity, prudence and justice of Christ himself and all the saints, martyrs, heroes, patriarchs, doctors and fathers.

 

An Encounter: Stephen Tripp

That I, with my weak memory for names, remember so clearly his, after a random encounter over 50 years ago, indicates that this was not a trivial event.

In the extended, happy, honeymoon period of our marriage, before we received our first born (1971-4) we religiously practiced the sacred American rite of Saturday date night. Mostly we loved to go into "The City" (meaning lower Manhattan): movie, dinner and drinks, maybe stop at a bookstore or an open Church or a Saturday vigil mass.) We were walking up Avenue of the Americas, early evening, when around 9th or 10th street we almost walked over a man laying in the street. Many people were passing; some pausing to look or enquire. But I instinctively knelt down next to him and asked "Are you ok? Do you need help?" It seemed probable it was a drug overdose. I have the idea he could not see me, but not that he was blind. He seemed to immediately like and trust my voice as he grabbed my arm and said "Yes. Please help me." No cell phones than. I don't recall thinking about an ambulance, which would have been the correct protocol. We helped him to his feet and determined to bring him to a hospital. Fortunately, St. Vincents's was just one long block west so we made our way there slowly. He could barely walk on his own but he was not a big man and we were both young and strong so it was not so difficult. The ER declined to evaluate him. His address was not too far: more than a mile, less than two. We slowly accompanied him east on 11th Street a couple of long blocks and then south on, perhaps 3rd or 4th Avenue, quite a few blocks. 

His condition improved as we walked. We now were balancing but not carrying him. We talked pleasantly.. He must have told us he had overdosed. The walk was delightful. Lighthearted, in a heavenly way. The kind of transcendence we often receive from the ordinary flow of life at a really good vacation or funeral or wedding. Lifted out of life: easy, peaceful, delighted. 

As we left him, very grateful and affectionate, I said to myself: "I will never forget Stephen Tripp." And I never have. I wonder if he remembered us.

The High Feminism of Marian Catholicism

Mainstream feminism exploded upon our society in the sixties and has in large part informed our culture since. At its best, it was a liberating and refreshing release of women's energies across the culture, beyond the restrictive, (in my opinion) mostly wholesome and fruitful, limits of the postwar period of 1945-65. At its very best it recognized the feminine genius that enriches us in all areas of life. At its worst, it was the firstborn of the cultural/sexual revolution: an imitation of toxic/dysfunctional machismo as sexually liberational, careerist, techo-fanatic, individualistic. At its very worst, it vacated of any meaning the very concept of femininity, leaving Supreme Court Justice Brown incapable of describing "woman."

By contrast, consider the esteem for femininity inherent in the Catholic cult of Mary, Mother of God. 

The very early and decisive definition of Mary was that she was Mother of God, not merely of Jesus in his humanity. From this flows a litany of maternity: From the cross Jesus entrusts John, representing the Church, to her and establishes her as Mother of the Church. Beyond that, she is considered Queen of Angels and Saints. As such, she is the supreme creation, "nature's solitary boast," the incomparable high point of history and the universe.

Two Catholic dogmas defined authoritatively from the chair of Peter are the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption (1950). Both are celebrated by holy days of obligation. We see here the Petrine or Papal (which is to say masculine) dimension of the Church deferring in reverence to the holiness of a singular woman. We see clearly that within the Catholic Church the Petrine-priestly-hierarchical-apostolic dimension of the Church is subservient to the Marian, feminine, Church of holiness.

From Genesis we know that she would crush the head of the serpent, Satan, and so by her "fiat" or "yes" at the Annunciation she (cooperating with grace flowing from the subsequent Passover of her Son) decisively defeated (or "pre-defeated") Lucifer and the kingdom of darkness.

The forth of the Marian doctrines (along with the Immaculate Conception, Motherhood of God, and the Assumption) is her perpetual virginity: that she conceived Christ by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, and that she was preserved eternally in her physical virginity with all its spiritual significance. 

An idea congenial and obvious to the Catholic mind, but incoherent/ridiculous/sentimental to the secular intellect, is that of "the Eternal Feminine." In Genesis we see that "male and female He created them." Clearly, the ideas of masculinity/femininity were already in the mind of God prior to his creation of Adam and Eve. Since God is eternal, this form-essence-substance-logos of femininity existed intellectually prior to creation, history and the universe. As a divine idea, it is eternal. The perfect instantiation of the "eternal female" is, of course, the Immaculate One. But every specific woman...however wounded and disordered...is an expression of this "idea of God."

We do not speak of the "eternal masculine."  The masculine, as a form, is inherently inferior, diminished, and largely void of inherent value. The purpose of the masculine, in its very poverty and vacuity, is to represent another: the Father. The feminine, by contrast, is not primarily representative, but holds within herself her own value, preciousness, and worth...for eternity.

The purpose of the masculine is to be poor and humble, to revere the feminine in the mode of the Divine Bridegroom, and to provide and protect, in imitation of the eternal Father, the little ones, in need of such strength and mercy.

When the Father-Son-Holy-Spirit envisioned Creation...infinitely before time, history, or this universe...They fell in love...with the entirety of Creation...but specifically with its climax, the feminine as Mary. No, Jesus is not the high point of creation: he is an anomaly, a hybrid, both God and Man. Within Creation, it is Mary, the woman, who is the goal, the fulfillment, the climax. Jesus is the one who came from heaven to save us from sin and death and bring us into Eternal Life. He is the fireman who storms into the building, kicks down the doors, saves the Woman and her children, and dies heroically. His life is disposable, there to be given away, to save the Woman and her children. 

The Catholic lives an enchanted reality, inaccessible to modernity as cultural liberalism and techno-mania. We move from the comfort of the womb, to that of the breast, into the arms of Mother Church, within a Motherland, always on Mother Earth, which is part of a universe held by the Mother of God.

With Don Quixote, the Catholic man  sees in every woman, however wretched, Dulcinea, a creature of unspeakable loveliness. Yes, this can be in part a hallucination, a projection of insatiable desire. But no, at its heart it is a glimpse of the "eternal feminine" ... of the radiant, even salvific splendor inherent to femininity as created, and then redeemed, in Mary, by God.

In the real world that makes us Catholic men vulnerable to the seduction, the manipulation, the allure of the "femne fatale," the Jezebel, the Sirens, the temptress. No, we cannot blame Adam, or Ahab, or so many who have surrendered to temptation.  It is the weakness of the male and the inherent enchantment of the feminine that set up this dangerous drama. The strongest antidote to this temptation is, of course, closeness to the feminine in it integrity, dignity and holiness: that is, close, chaste, enduring friendship with good, holy women.  Here I pause to make a personal boast: I doubt there is a man on earth who has been so well loved by so many good, lovely, holy women as have I. I think God realized I needed this, as my personal weakness is so pronounced.

This is why I must praise and honor the Beauty, the Truth and the Goodness of the feminine: in our Mother, the ever-Virgin Mary, and in so so so many women close to me!

Political Contempt: How Are We To Live With It?

I heard from a marriage counselor that a marriage with some resilience, help and God's grace can overcome almost any obstacle, even abuse, adultery and addiction. But not every obstacle: there is one condition that, if present, efficaciously destroys a marriage: contempt. If the spouses view each other with contempt, there is no hope: the marriage is dead.

Our country is like such a couple: the two sides view each other with deep contempt. There is a profound, possibly unbridgeable abyss of disgust between the two. This is far more serious than a clash of views or a fight over how to divide the economic pie.

What is contempt? It is deeper and darker than anger, rage, fury, hurt, betrayal, disappointment. It is not merely the absence of respect and affection. It is an intense response of disgust to what is encountered as vile, despicable, nauseating. It is analogous to the visceral, somatic response, largely through the sense of smell, to what is violently sickening: a dead animal, rotten meat, human or animal waste. 

Like its opposites, love and reverence, it is a feeling but far more. Initially it is an involuntary emotion; but it then moves into a judgement of the intellect, that the offender is indeed worthless and even deserving of condemnation; and finally it settles into an attitude, a permanent viewpoint, out of which proceed a series of hostile thoughts, words and deeds. 

As a powerful, overwhelming emotion, contempt is irrepressible: it cannot be dismissed by an act of the will or intellect. It has an immense power behind it. But as with all emotion, it is capable of being directed, guided, channeled by the intellect and will. So, if we cannot merely dismiss the contempt we have for each other, how do we direct it in a fruitful, wholesome manner?

The contempt of the Left for the entire Trump phenomenon is evident: "deplorables" is the word made famous by Hillary Clinton in reference to about 50% of the voting population. The disdain is reciprocated by the Right: in large part the vote for Trump was not for his person or agenda but a renunciation of the Biden/Harris legacy and the DNC. This recent election was less a positive mandate for a specific alternative than a clash between two systems of contempt and disgust.

How are we to live together with such contempt?

Answer: detach the contempt from the person; aim it at the values as distinct from the person. Engage the person, not  oblivious to that which is disdained, but as someone far greater-deeper-denser than that which offends.

Maximilian Kolbe, shortly before he was arrested and eventually killed for his crusade against Nazism, was visited by a contingent of Gestapo agents. He received them into his monastery with impeccable courtesy and dignity. He did not personalize his contempt: he did not associate it with these specific men in front of him. Nor did he back down from his resistance to that system.

We are able to do this with analogous conditions. In relating to someone in a psychotic or addictive state, we hold the person in reverence even as we clearly, if quietly renounce the delusional and compulsive dynamics at work. Similarly, if one self-presents as "gay" or "trans," I defer courteously to the dignity of that subjectivity, however erroneous, and receive him in the dignity of his entirety, resisting the stereotype of a misleading label. When the 12-stepper introduces himself with "Hi! I am Bill, an alcoholic" he is admitting to a condition over which he is powerless; but he is also saying, if in Hope, I am more than that condition, which does not essentially define who I am.

We come back, as always, to: "hate the sin, love the sinner."

So, yes I despise contraception, Nazism, Communism, pornography, adultery. But I don't have a big problem with contraceptors, Nazis, Communists, porn users, or adulterers. Hey: we are all sinners, right? At the foot of the cross, the ground is level.

It helps always to remember that politics is not everything. It is not nothing. Especially to those of us (like my family) who take it seriously. But it is NOT everything. There is faith and religion. Family. Friends. Sports. Study. Music, cinema, dance, and culture in all its splendor. We do well to respect the autonomy of all these areas: no kneeling at football games; no political tirades, PLEASE, at the academy awards!

It is good to pray for all our political leaders, as St. Paul advises, even our political antagonists.

I like to pray for the families, marriages and souls of political figures...detached from their politics...the Clintons, Bushes, Obamas, Bidens, Trumps...that they all be drawn closer to God and into genuine love for each other. This is a salutary exercise. An excellent way of minimizing the toxic consequences of contempt.

David Brooks on Faith

In a Christmas meditation (NY Times, 12/22/24), David Brooks reflects upon his own faith journey. It is worth reading, touching and inspiring in many ways, as he shows his customary insight, intelligence, fluency, sensitivity and transparency. At the same time, since he is widely received as a moral teacher, moderate-balanced-profound, by moderates who lean left and right, it is worth scrutinizing carefully exactly what he is offering. 

He is clearly a seeker, admirable in that dimension, and articulate in his desire for the Good, the True and the Beautiful. He is an aesthetic, attuned to the beautiful, but I will suggest that his grasp upon the true and the good is tenuous and confused in serious ways, from the viewpoint of a Christianity that is either Catholic or Evangelical or both.

The True: Faith, Belief and the Sentimentality of Theological Liberalism

Immediately he is clear: he is a man of faith, not belief. He strongly contrasts the two: his is a mysticism of longing and experience, not a form of knowledge of the real. Implicitly, he diminishes cognitive or conceptual belief as he highly values his own experience of and longing for the transcendent, the luminous, which he implies is ungraspable by human concepts. 

He assumes, with all of modernity, a Kantian epistemology that the human mind constructs "models" of knowledge that explain and predict "phenomena" (the appearances) but cannot access the "noumenal" (the actual, the real, the ultimate) which is unavailable to us intellectually, but only mystically or emotionally.)  More specifically, he follows Schleiermacher, the father of Protestant theological liberalism, who defined religion as experience, emotion, sentiment...of wonder, awe, transcendence, depth...as subjectivity, void of cognitive access to the real beyond the self. He positively quotes Tillich, the epitome of contemporary Protestant liberalism, He is clearly at home in the Jungian universe in which religion is a dimension of the Sovereign Self, not connection of the little self to the Absolute.

Traditionally, faith is the engagement of the entire self...or more precisely, the grasping, by God, of the entire self: emotions, intellect, will, spirit, memory, intentionality, body, community, culture. Scripturally, faith is acceptance of the truth claims of Jesus: that he is the only Son of the living God, that he came to baptize us in the Holy Spirit, that he died to forgive our sins and bring us to heaven. The Evangelical and the Catholic are both clear on this.

The Catholic goes well beyond this: faith is acceptance of the Revelation, by God of his very self, through the inspiration by the Holy Spirit of the Church, originally the apostles, then of the Scriptures, and historically in the Church, especially the doctors, fathers, saints, martyrs, magisterium and theologians. While God is supernatural and inaccessible to the unaided human intellect, he makes himself manifest to us as he created us with a mysterious capacity to  know him, he became incarnate to communicate to us, and continues his concrete presence among us through the Holy Spirit and the entire sacramental, magisterial and mystical life of the Church.

And so, in the Christian world, although not the liberal branch thereof, belief is essential to faith, but one dimension, co-inhering with the mystical, liturgical, moral, and social-cultural. We see than that with regard to the Truth, as revealed in Christianity, Brooks remains an agnostic, a seeker, a journeyer: a charming, insightful, authentic soul, but trapped in the sentimentality of theological liberalism. He is hardly a guide for those seeking to grow in Wisdom from on high.

The Good: Indecision, Ambiguity, Confusion, Capitulation

In the context of PBS and NY Times, Brooks is the conservative. He considers himself a "Burkean" conservative, dismissive of radicalism of the right and left, moderate and balanced with a strong taste for tradition and community. He has described himself as on the conservative side of the liberal Democratic consensus. This is accurate. On the conservative/progressive divide, he falls into the later, despite his sympathies, his piercing critiques of the elites, his openness. On the decisive, apocalyptic issue of the time, he is pro-choice. He has the state support the mother in the killing of her unborn. His heart and intellect and will and soul and blood is blue. He has gushed with enthusiasm for Clinton, Obama, and Biden. He despises Trump. He is a strong intellectual in that he sees the multiple complexities, nuances and contradictions of many social policies. But on core decisions about Good and Evil, he becomes ambivalent, indecisive and finally surrenders to the worldly powers of darkness.

Individualism

To my knowledge, he has not pledged allegiance to any Church or corporate embodiment of faith. He wanders in a no man's land, as an itinerant: part Jewish and part Christian, admiring the best wherever he sees it, but keeping himself distant, uncommitted, autonomous. In this he embodies, however graciously-charmingly-intelligently, the very pathology of modernity he identifies: isolation, loss of community, autonomy, rupture with tradition, and refusal to surrender in humility and obedience. He is not part of something greater than himself. The essence of Christianity in any of its authentic expressions (Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, Pentecostal, etc.) is personal communion with Christ in his Body. Brooks remains, with many other admirable souls (Simone Weil, Jordan Peterson, Albert Camus, Ernest Becker), at the very boundary of faith, as ecclesial communion, but outside of it. He is modern man...therapeutic, moralistic, deistic. He is not a man of faith, in any traditional sense. He is a searcher, exquisitely appreciative of the lovely, the other person, the depth and the transcendent as experienced, the splendor of moral goodness. But he remains the Sovereign Self...with Schleiermacher, Tillich, Jung...unhinged, adrift, lonely, confused. But about the True and the Good, as received by Judaism and Christianity, he is confused, indecisive, and confusing. 

I will continue myself to read, with appreciation and profit, the gifted David Brooks. Perhaps, in the light of these reflections I will include a short prayer that, in his search, he be drawn by God's grace decisively into the True and the Good.