Category Archives: Paganism

A Porch to Christianity?

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Although it is not clear who first pointed this out, it is most certainly true that there is a certain law of undulation at play in every time and every culture related to the quality of the men: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”  We are, by almost any accounting, living in hard times, plagued by weak men.  Historically speaking it is hard to say how long the hard times must go on before the strong men emerge, but there is a growing awareness among many men in our culture that something is amiss with manhood.  This awareness helps to explain the growing popularity of Stoicism, especially among young Catholic men.  Because of Stoicism’s emphasis on virtue, most assume that Stoicism and Catholicism are compatible.  It is worthwhile then to examine whether this is true.

Sitting on the Porch

Stoicism has a long history that extends back to ancient Greece and the lectures that Zeno of Citium gave to his students on his porch or stoa.  It lay mostly dormant until around the 1st Century AD when it was revived by Epictetus and Seneca, followed by the first philosopher king, Marcus Aurelius.  It is marketed as a practical philosophy (i.e. ethics) based on the pursuit of virtue.  According to Epictetus this pursuit is governed by two principles.  First, “In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choice.”  This dichotomy of control is supplemented by a second principle aimed at our response. “What hurts this man is not the occurrence itself…but the view he chooses to take of it.”   Essentially this means that there is nothing good or bad in itself, only our attitude towards it gives it an ethical color.  We have the opportunity to see everything that happens as a means grow virtue.  Although it is often described as such, Stoicism is also not an emotionless ethic.  Because of its emphasis on virtue, it is about bringing our emotions under the control of reason.

It is ultimately this pathway to an inner freedom that comes about by focusing only on those things that we can control that makes it appealing to modern men.  The hard times make the battlefield seem so large and many men struggle to pick their battles and end up in a holding pattern.  But there is more to Stoicism than just this.  Stoicism ultimately is a pantheistic religion.  The reason why the Stoic can practice the necessary detachment is because he believes that everything that happens is necessary and good serving the Good of the whole.  There are no physical evils and the only moral evil is personal vice and folly. 

Ideas Have Consequences

That I labeled Stoicism as a pantheistic religion anticipates the fact that it is not wholly compatible with Catholicism.  But in truth, the two cannot be reconciled at all.  Its insistence that it is only our reaction to what happens that makes something good or evil leads to a subtle form of moral subjectivism.  There are many evils in the world that we cannot control and yet we must offer resistance or even fight against.  Detachment to things we cannot control is great until we are confronted with the suffering of another person.  Their suffering is only because they are thinking about it wrongly and thus empathy and compassion are folly.  Epictetus unashamedly counsels a fake compassion when he says,

“When you see a person weeping in sorrow, either when a child goes abroad, or when he is dead, or when the man has lost his property, take care that the appearance do not hurry you away with it as if he were suffering in external things. But straightway make a distinction in your mind, and be in readiness to say, it is not that which has happened that afflicts this man, for it does not afflict another, but it is the opinion about this thing which afflicts the man. So far as words, then, do not be unwilling to show him sympathy, and even if it happens so, to lament with him. But take care that you do not lament internally also.”

This fits with my experience with many men who practice Stoicism, Christian or not—they are usually the most judgmental and disinterested especially towards those who they deem not as strong-willed as themselves.

This brings up a necessary, although slightly tangential point.  The reason the Church maintained the Index of Forbidden Books for so long was not just to protect the Faithful from heresies.  There is a very real way in which false teachers of religion and philosophy can put an enchantment on the reader.  They have a tendency to draw the reader in and make him question reality, even when he is only curious or trying to adopt certain aspects of that philosophy/religion.  In this regard Stoicism is no different.  Read enough of it with an open mind, even while trying to filter it through a Catholic sieve, and it will “magically” cause you to see the Faith differently.  It seems that there is a fine line between reading a prayer and saying a prayer—a line that may be safe when it comes to the Faith but when encountering false belief systems becomes perilous.  This is why Augustine ultimately rejects Stoicism in his City of God (Book XIX, CH.4); because Cato came under its spell and committed suicide out of pride.

Stepping Off the Porch

In truth it does not actually help the person grow in virtue either.  First, it has a false view of human nature that borders on dualism.  It sees an evil that is done to body as not being done to the person.  The only evil is what is done to the soul.  Furthermore, because everything that happens is good, it rejects any negative emotions.  The 2nd Century Stoic Aulus Gellius tells the story of a Stoic philosopher who is at sea when a terrible storm breaks out.  Because he cannot control the storm, it is wrong for him to fear.  Likewise, it is wrong to be angry or sadness.  The emotions are good and especially important in hard times as they serve to propel the battle against evil.  

Because it denies the negative emotions, it ultimately pins our problems, like Buddhism, on our desires.  Epictetus tells the stoic, “Therefore altogether restrain desire…Demand not that events should happen as you wish but wish them to happen as they do happen.”  The last thing men of hard times need is to become men without chests.  That is exactly what happens when you stamp out desire and create a whole group of men who are aloof. 

Ultimately then the Cross and the Porch are incompatible.  Stoicism’s emphasis on virtue may seem like a good thing, but it is wholly unnecessary for those who accept the counsel of Christ to “take up your cross and follow Me.”

Discernment of Spirits and Mindfulness

Anthropology, Ignatian Spirituality, Paganism, , ,

In a previous essay, I offered an anthropological criticism of what most aptly be described as Catholic Mindfulness as described by Dr. Gregory Bottaro in his book of the same name.  The heart of the problem, as I described it, lies in the fact that mental health will never be restored by turning off our natural mechanism by which we come to know reality.  The error is in our judgment and so we must learn to judge rightly rather than judging at all.  It is akin to stopping overeating by not eating at all rather than training ourselves through the virtue of temperance to eat correctly.  I ended that essay by saying that we were much better off not looking any further East than Rome for help in governing our thoughts.  Now I would like to offer the Catholic alternative to Mindfulness.

This “alternative” is not a baptized version of the Buddhist practice, but instead an approach that is deeply rooted within Ignatian spirituality.  St. Ignatius of Loyola calls this practice Discernment of Spirits.  It is predicated upon the idea that not every thought that each of us has is his own.  We are caught in a cosmic struggle between Good and evil spirits.  Our minds are the battleground upon which this conflict is played out.  The Good Spirit, appealing to our freedom, inspires us to love the Good and move towards its source, God Himself.  The Evil Spirit meanwhile moves us by using confusion, discouragement and darkness away from God and towards “low and earthly things.”  So St. Paul invites us to “hold every thought captive to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5) to judge whether the thoughts we have are our own or if they are coming from the Good or Evil Spirit.  And St. Ignatius offers us a practice to make this admonition possible.

To Be Aware, to Judge, and to Act

According to St. Ignatius, when a thought or movement in our soul arises, we need to discern its source.  We do that first by making ourselves aware of the thought.  In this way, Discernment of Spirits is similar to Mindfulness.  We should cultivate the habit of examining the movements in our souls.  But this is where the similarities end.  Rather than “paying attention to the present moment without judgment or criticism,” as Dr. Bottaro suggests, we should judge where the thoughts are coming from.  St.  Ignatius gives us rules by which we can judge their source, that is, he gives us rules by which we can train ourselves to judge correctly.

St. Ignatius says that if the thoughts inspire in us an increase in faith and hope, inflame the heart with love for God, increase our commitment to the will of God and to true humility or align our hearts with the Truth, then these thoughts should be acted upon.  St. Ignatius calls these consolations and it is the means by which God forms us and strengthens us.  When those thoughts arise we should act in accord with them. 

On the other hand any thoughts or movements in our souls that draw us away from those things or, as St. Ignatius puts it, those things that stir in us “darkness of soul, disturbance in it, movement to things low and earthly, the unquiet of different agitations and temptations, moving to want of confidence, without hope, without love, when one finds oneself all lazy, tepid, sad, and as if separated from his Creator and Lord” should be acted against. 

Notice that this rule does not say we should ignore or push the thoughts away, but, when faced with desolation we should judge them rightly and act against them.  In fact, according to St. Ignatius, to respond weakly, or not at all, will actually make matters worse.  Like most bullies, the evil spirits flee when they are confronted with strength (see Rule 12).  The best time to resist evil thoughts and temptations is in the beginning before they gain any traction in our hearts. 

It was mentioned above that consolation was the means by which God formed us.  In order to be more accurate we should say that God also forms us by permitting desolation.  It is when “I am weak, that I am strong” so that by exposing us to desolation, God is able to deepen our faith, hope and charity.  In other words, desolation is only permitted when it is for our spiritual good.  So important is this principle that St. Ignatius says that consolation is often given to us in order to strengthen us during times of desolation (Rule 10).  The point though is that in order to benefit from it in the way that God intends, we must actively oppose it.  For this, St. Ignatius gives us three specific rules (Rules 5-7).

Rules for Times of Desolation

St. Ignatius says that when we are in desolation, we should never make a change to a spiritual resolution we made while in consolation (Rule 5).  Because we are drawn towards “low and earthly things” we will be tempted to think our previous resolutions to be too hard or a little “over the top” and want to walk them back. 

Resisting that temptation to change, we should instead insist on changing ourselves (Rule 6).  Rather than merely standing against the temptation, we are advised to fight back “by insisting more on prayer, meditation, on much examination, and by giving ourselves more scope in some suitable way of doing penance.”  There is no better way to resist being drawn away from God than to run back towards Him and rejecting “low things” through penance and mortification. 

It becomes plain to see that what Dr. Bottaro and his mindfulness friends offer is not liberation from our thoughts (as if they were only ours) but a means by which to get further ensnared by them.  We should follow St. Ignatius rules for the Discernment of Spirits and enjoy the freedom that only Christ can give.

Masking and the New Religion

Apologetics, Church and State, Church Authority, Conscience, Culture, Human Dignity, Magisterium, Marxism, Moralilty, Natural Law, New Age, Paganism, Politics, Sacramentals, Sacraments, Virtue, , , ,

We have been hearing for decades that we are living in a post-Christian society.  This has mostly been a way to describe the fact that Christian values have been in decline.  But Christianity has still been the dominant religion; dominant, that is, until the Covid-19 crisis hit.  The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in our society marked the official changing of the guard.  While we have been hearing about the emergence of a post-Christian society for decades, Christianity was still the dominant religion.  No longer is this true, however.  Christianity has been toppled and replaced by a new Gnosticism that we call Science. 

To be clear, the issue is not against science per se, but what is more accurately described as religion masquerading as science.  After all, as Aquinas says “He who neglects the experimental order in natural science falls into error” in all aspects of knowledge.  To solve the Covid-19 crisis, natural science plays a necessary, although not sufficient, role.  The peddlers of the new religion, would have us believe that it is sufficient because all we need to do is “trust the science.”  We are saved by faith, not in Christ, but in Science.

The New Priesthood

Nor should we be quick to dismiss expert opinion.  But expert opinion is not fact, it still must be based on solid reasoning.  The problem is that expert opinion is often treated like dogmatic truth because the Scientific Elite are the new priests.  Based on their secret knowledge that only “experts” such as themselves can understand, they dictate religious dogma.  Spoken word becomes fact.  Thus says the Scientist—“Masks don’t work” and it is so.  Thus says the Scientist two months later—“Masks do work” and it is so.  The Shepherds have spoken and the Sheeple must follow suit.  Laws are made to punish heretics who dare to question the spoken word.

This, by the way, is why masks have elicited such a strong response.  The High Priest initially said that they don’t work.  Then he spoke again saying they did and that the Priests lied because they were worried about a shortage.  But if a person unapologetically lies once, how do you know they are telling the truth now?  Actually, a leading Priest at Johns Hopkins says, it wasn’t lying but that “[A]t first, researchers and scientists did not know how necessary mask wearing would be among the general public. Now we are aware that wearing masks is an effective way to help prevent spread of this coronavirus” (Emphasis added).  Given the timeframe and the rather dramatic shift from no-mask to mask, where did this awareness come from? Changing your mind is fine. But changing your mind without a change in the data is based not on science, but fiat.  If you search prior to the dogmatic declaration, scientific opinion for the most part deemed them ineffective.  The fact is that the Priests exercised their hidden knowledge (because there was no new data) and declared them so.  I would probably be clothed in a scarlet mask for this statement alone, but let me go a little further as a statistician and speak about what a reasonable approach to this question would look like.

The Statistician Speaks

First, proving a negative is extremely difficult.  To conclusively say “masks don’t work” is a practical impossibility.  Having said that, there is little data to suggest that they do work (a complete summary that is thoroughly documented can be found here).  There have been studies in the last few months that have suggested they might, but these are inconclusive at best.  They are all very poorly done because they are being done in the midst of the crisis.  To study the problem properly you need to set up what would be something akin to a clinical trial in which you had a placebo group to compare it to.  But you also have the problem that mask usage is almost certainly confounded with social distancing.  Is social distancing the thing that helps, or is it masks, or is it both?  You’d have to set up a study to separate them.  Secondly, not all masks are created the same or are equally effective.

Carnegie Mellon tracks (among many other things) mask compliance here.  Notice that many places are in the high 80ish% for compliance and yet “cases” continue to increase in all of those areas.  If any intervention works, then you should expect the slope of the line of increase to decrease (“flatten the curve”).  But the data suggests that the lines are actually steeper.  For example, see the plot below of my home state of North Carolina which instituted a Mask Mandate on June 26th and has had above an 85% mask compliance rate (currently 91%).  North Carolina is far from unique in this regard and you can find similar data for all your favorite states.

If we were true to “Science” we would look at this medical intervention and determine that it does not work.  A drug company running a clinical trial (where they are using their own money) would stop the trial and might even decide that the intervention is actually making it worse.

This might mean that…wait for it…masks are making it worse.  You would again need to study this, but it is a reasonable supposition given the data.  It also makes sense in that it could easily be creating a false sense of security or become a petri dish of germs just waiting to be deposited on someone else or an aritficial barrier suppresses the body’s natural barrier of the immune system.  To be sure though, if we were testing a drug and the data looked like this, we would stop giving it to people.

This tangent was necessary because it speaks to the reasonableness of mask mandates.  Law, according to St. Thomas, is “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community and is promulgated.”  Any law that does not fulfill those four requirements—reasonable, aimed at the common good, proper authority, and made known—is not, properly speaking, a law.  Therefore, because they are not reasonable (or at least can not be proven to be at this point reasonable) we have no obligation to obey them.  As true Shepherds of the Flock, Bishops and Priests need to stop being so deferential to mask mandates precisely for this reason.

The New Sacrament

The revolt against masks then is really a revulsion to what they symbolize.  They have been made into sacraments through the words of the New Priests.  They are said to protect and so therefore they do.  Those who do not want to subscribe to this religion therefore will not want to wear them.  It seems like a small thing to do, but it plays a key role in the overall narrative that Science can save us.  As a sacrament it symbolizes the fact that the Coronavirus is a serious threat to our overall well-being.  If you are tempted to think “well 99.99% of people that get this will survive”, then you only have to look around at everyone wearing a mask to tell you that you should be scared anyway.  The smiling face of your neighbor, which would normally comfort you, is now hidden from your sight.  The masks will permanently disfigure us because when the next virus comes along, and it will, they will tell us “this is more serious than the Coronavirus (which it likely will be) you must put the mask back on.” 

By blessing the mask, the Priest also makes it into a Secular Scapular.  Through the words of Mary to St. Simon Stock, we know that the Brown Scapular helps to save you eternally.  Through the words of the Scientist, the mask saves us from Covidoom.  The Brown Scapular is an aid to our growth in virtue, the Covid Scapular signals that we have virtue.

One of the things that the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century was their exaltation of Science as the new religion.  Lenin, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Hitler all committed their atrocities using “Science” as their justification.  Had someone stood up to them early on, one has to wonder whether things would have been different.

The Divine Quadrilemma

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The greatest heresy in the history of the Church was the Arian heresy.  At one point during the Fifth Century, nearly 3/4 of the world’s bishops were Arian.  Arius posited that Jesus was not truly God but instead the greatest of God’s creatures.  The popularity of this heresy was due to the fact that it would enable Christianity to be palatable to both Pagans and Gnostics alike.  By denying the equality of the Father and the Son, Christianity would take a decidedly Pagan turn.  This is what made this particular heresy such a threat—it made Christianity more palatable to Pagans and could be a source of unity throughout the recently Christianized Roman Empire.  This blending of Christianity was, of course, rejected by the Council of Nicaea with St. Athanasius leading the charge.  It took a long time for the Nicene effect to be felt throughout the Church, but eventually the Arian Heresy was squashed.  Unfortunately, heresies never wholly die, but are reincarnated in different forms such that we have seen a revival of the errors of Arius in our own day.  This time it comes in the form of a religious eclecticism that attempts to blend all religions together.

In our day there are any number of people who say, “there are many paths up the mountain, but the view is the same at the top of the mountain.”  They present the metaphor usually as a defense of blending religions or choosing a religion that best suits them (as opposed to one that is true).  This religious indifferentism is really a substitution of spirituality for religion.  Spirituality is about self-fulfillment whereas religion is about a relationship with God.  But it is problematic for a more fundamental reason, one that is easily uncovered once we drop the metaphor and actually compare religions. 

To insist that they lead up the same mountain while simultaneously contradicting each other makes this hard to believe.  One says Jesus is God, another that He was a prophet, another that He is the brother of Lucifer, another that we are all gods, and another that says everything is God.  While it may be convenient to use the “same mountain” metaphor, the truth is that there is no way that Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Pantheism can be reconciled.  Depending on which you believe you will end up with vastly different conclusions.  They are not different paths on the same mountain, but different mountains all together.  

It may be possible to blend some religions together, but Christianity does not lend itself to any blending whatsoever.  This is because Jesus, in His infinite wisdom, has forced us all to take a stand.  Unlike any other religion, He made the claim to be God Incarnate.  That means that you must either accept that claim as true and relate to Him as absolute Lord or you must treat Him as a crazy, lying cult leader and dismiss everything He said.  If it is the latter, then to say that you like His teachings, that is to label Him as merely a human teacher, is not really an option.

The Quadrilemma

Those familiar with CS Lewis’ Christological trilemma will recognize this as a version of it.  Lewis said that you must treat Jesus as either lunatic, liar or Lord.  Those are the only three options.  You cannot treat Him as a merely human teacher however.  You either submit wholly to Him or you run as far away from His teachings as possible, even if some of them are actually helpful.  Lewis’ trilemma however is not impenetrable because, thanks to “biblical scholars” in our own time, there is now a fourth option that many people are choosing.  They claim that Jesus never actually said He was God.  And in this way, we see how the Arian heresy is coming back into play.

When we focus on whether Jesus actually said He was God (as opposed to whether or not that is true) we move from the realm of faith to that of history.  In other words, this is an attack on the historical reliability of the Gospels.  As an internal witness, the Bible is quite clear that Jesus made Divine claims.  But in order to grasp this, we must first take a necessary tangent in order to examine how He might say it.

The Internal Evidence

If the Incarnation were to have happened in our day and age you might expect Him to say (in English) “I am God.”  But if we look at the translations of the gospels we have today, we do not find such a direct statement, nor should we expect to.  We should expect that Jesus would say it the way a first Century Jew might.  Our Lord’s moments of self-revelation always invoke the Old Testament name for God, the same name He gave Moses and that the Jews treated as unutterable (YHWH).

In Greek, the language of the gospels, the Name is translated as egō eimi or “I am”.  This phrase is used in a number of places, but any time it is used in an absolute sense without any predicate, it refers to the Divine name.   The most obvious examples occur within John’s Gospel where we find he uttering things like: “unless you come to believe that I AM, you will surely die in your sins” (Jn 8:24).  Likewise, when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus in the Garden and announce it is Jesus they are seeking, He answers egō eimi.   In the ordinary sense it simply means “I am he” letting them know they have found who they were looking for.  However, those who hear this response fall to the ground suggesting that they are party to a theophany.

John’s Gospel, written later in the first Century, has a distinctive emphasis on the divinity of Christ because it was, according to Irenaeus, meant to counter some of the early Christological heresies that had arisen (Against Heresies, Book 3, Ch11).  But he is most certainly not the only one who uses this Jewish formulation for identifying Jesus as divine.  These references are found throughout the Synoptic Gospels as well.  First, there is the fact that only one reason is given for His crucifixion—blasphemy.  When on trial before the Sanhedrin, the High Priest asked Him:

“Are you the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One?”  Then Jesus answered, “I AM”; and “you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”  At that the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further need have we of witnesses?  You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” They all condemned him as deserving to die.”

(Mk 14:55-64, c.f. Mt 26:59-66, Lk 22:66-71)

Notice that Jesus invokes the Divine Name and equates Himself with God by prophesying that He will sit at God’s right hand.  Likewise, He is also accused of blasphemy for setting Himself equal to God when He forgives sins (c.f. Mk 2:6-7, Mt 9:3).

Perhaps His clearest revelation comes in the form of a question to the Pharisees about whose son the Messiah will be.  They tell Him David, which He does not deny but He shakes their limited understanding by quoting from Psalm 110: “The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies under your feet’? If David calls him ‘lord,’ how can he be his son?” (Mt 22:44-45, c.f. Mk 12:35–37; Lk 20:41–44)    By referring to the Messiah as both pre-existing David and David’s LORD, He is admitting to being God Incarnate.

The External Evidence

Those who challenge that Jesus said that He was God often overlook the fact that we have external evidence as well.  They try to attack the timing and historical accuracy of the Bible but forget that we have writings of the Apostolic Fathers that confirm what has been said has been received as such.  These writings show that Christ’s divinity was not something added later on but was understood to be true directly out of the hands of the Apostles.  There are numerous quotations that could be shared, but a few should suffice to show that the gospels are historically reliable.  First there is Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John who was likely ordained by Peter who said, “For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians 18:2).  There is also the aforementioned St. Irenaeus, the disciple of St. Polycarp who was a disciple of John who said “…He indicates in clear terms that He is God, and that His advent was in Bethlehem…” (AH, Book 3, Chapter 20). Finally we have Pliny the Younger, a Roman Governor, describing Christians as “singing hymns to Christ as to a god” in a letter to the Emperor Trajan.

Given both the internal and external evidence, we must conclude that Jesus did make the claim that He was God.  This, of course, doesn’t prove that He was, but it does render our potential quadrilemma as a trilemma.  Christianity cannot be mixed with other religions because of the unique demands Jesus makes upon His followers.  He is either Lord or Liar, but you must choose one or the other.

The Art of Apologizing

Defending the Faith, Faith and Reason, Paganism, , , , , ,

The Early Church was well practiced in the art of apologizing, not because they were sorry for their beliefs, but because they were sorry that everyone else had not come to accept the truth.  The most famous of apologies came from the pen of St. Justin Martyr, a philosopher saint, who wrote two famous defenses of the Catholic faith to the Roman Emperors.  Ever since then, the field of apologetics has proven invaluable to the spreading of the Faith.  With the re-emergence of Paganism and the stark division within Christianity between Catholics and Protestants, the need is especially acute in our time.   But in order for it to be effective, there is a need to properly understand how it should be applied.

The battle between the Sexual Revolution and the Church has dealt a blow that, if not for Divine protection, would have been fatal for the Church.  The attack came from both without and within, but was successful mainly because the Church lost the battle of public opinion.  In other words, it was a failure of apologetics.  This failure came about not because of silence, at least initially, but because she was speaking another language. 

Using the Arms of the Adversary

As an example, take the battle over gay marriage.  The best public defense that many Christians could offer was based on the Bible.  It failed miserably, not because it wasn’t true, but because it wasn’t believable.  Even the Church says things like “the Church teaches…” rather than “it is true because …”  These arguments from authority, even if they are true, are the weakest of all arguments.  That is because they only work when the two parties accept the same authority.  Contrast this approach with that of St. Justin Martyr.  In his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, he limited his discussion only to non-disputed books of what would become the Old Testament.  Most Jews did not accept certain books that the Christians did and, so, St. Justin did not use those books in his argument. 

The awareness that successful apologetics rests upon shared authority prompted St. Thomas in the first question of the Summa Theologiae to formulate a rule of discourse:

Hence Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith, we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections — if he has any — against faith. Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.

(ST I, q.1 art.8)

For non-Catholic Christians, we can use Sacred Scripture, but only the books they accept.  Likewise, because of the unity of the Faith, we can argue from one accepted article of faith to another.  But for those who do not accept divine revelation, we cannot simply use the Bible as many are apt to do.  Instead we must limit ourselves to using either reason alone to either answer their arguments or to prove those truths which, although revealed, are also discoverable through human reason (like God’s existence and attributes and most of the moral law). 

From Common Authority

It is important to also emphasize that just because we limit ourselves to the arms of the adversary does not mean that the Bible is not true nor that we don’t believe it.  Instead it is an admission that the person we are dialoguing with does not accept the same authority structure that we do.  To obstinately cling to using that authority is to fail in the goal of leading the person to the truth.  In fact, by arguing from their accepted authority you can often lend credibility to the truth of Divine revelation by showing how it leads to the same conclusion.  Truth cannot contradict truth and so we should not be surprised that when we argue from true premises we often come to the same conclusion.

What also cannot be forgotten, although it often is, is the fact that faith in divine revelation is a gift that cannot be obtained via argument or discussion.  The best that can be hoped for is to lend motives of credibility for the truth, that is, to remove the impediments that keep them from receiving that gift. 

If reason cannot demonstrate faith and truth cannot contradict truth then there is a flip side as well.  Any proof that claims to disprove the Faith is a mere sophistry.  There is at least one error in the logic of the argument.  We may not be able to prove the truth of the Faith, but because the truth cannot be divided, we can answer every objection using reason alone.  This principle is what motivated St. Thomas to write the Summa Contra Gentiles.

This principle is well-known by the spirit of the world.  That is why Nietzsche said that one should not attack Christianity based on its truth, but based on it livability.  A moment’s reflection leads one to see that this is the way in which the Faith is most often attacked today.  This is why we must be prepared to demonstrate its livability by our actions as well as through our words.  In a culture obsessed with license masquerading as freedom, we must be prepared to show what true freedom looks like.  True apologetics, then, will include both argument and demonstration, appealing to both intellect and will. 

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St. Justin Martyr and the Divorce of Faith and Reason

Church Fathers, Faith and Reason, Paganism, Scripture, , , ,

The image of an acorn and an oak tree is often invoked to describe the growth of the Church from its humble beginnings to today.  The image is meant to convey the unity of the Church separated by nearly two millennia, but it is also helpful because it transmits a second, often overlooked aspect.  To grow from acorn to oak, the tree needs not only water, but must grow within the soil it is planted by assimilating the various nutrients found in the ground.  Watered by the Spirit, the Church too grew out of the soil of not just the Jewish faith, but also the Hellenic culture in which it was planted.  Not only were the Jewish people chosen to bring us the Messiah, but the Roman Empire was the chosen soil from which the Church would grow.  And it would grow by assimilating the nutrients found within that culture, most especially its reliance on Greek philosophy.

St. Justin Martyr was the first to recognize this.  Born a generation after the destruction of Jerusalem at the turn of the second century, Justin was a pagan living in Samaria.  Despite his beginnings, God had placed a great desire in Justin’s heart for wisdom.  He was the precursor to St. Augustine.  He sought out masters in every school of philosophy in his day—Stoics, Paripatetics (Aristotelians), Pythagoreans, and Platonists—but it was not until he met an old man while walking on the beach one day that he found Truth.  This man taught Justin about “the Word made flesh” and “straightway a flame was kindled in [his] soul; and a love of the prophets, and of those men who are friends of Christ, possessed me; and whilst revolving his words in [his] mind, [he] found this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable. Thus, and for this reason, [he was] a philosopher” (Dialogue with Trypho, 8).

The love of wisdom is what made him cling to the “true philosophy” and to open a school of philosophy in Rome.  But it was God’s Providential love for mankind that placed the philosopher saint in an age of philosopher kings.  Rome put the brakes on its decline when two philosopher emperors came to power—Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius.  God hit the accelerator on the spread of the Church by inspiring Justin to write two apologies for the faith, one to each of the emperors.  Far from apologizing for the Faith, St. Justin was showing how sorry the lover of wisdom would be to dismiss the Faith without trying it against reason. 

St. Justin and the Logos

In was in his Second Apology that St. Justin left his most lasting contribution to the Church.  He laid the cornerstone upon which the edifice of Faith and Reason could be constructed.  And that cornerstone was Christ, Logos Incarnate.  He told the Emperor that,

“[o]ur teachings appear to be greater than every human teaching by the entire rational principle having become Jesus Christ who appeared for our salvation, in body, reason (logos), and soul. Whatever things were well spoken by philosophers and legislators, they did so by participating in the Logos either by discovery or theory. But since they did not know the Logos completely who is Christ, they often said contradictory things.”


Second Apology, 10

The Greeks believed that the logos was the principle of reason that governed and ordered the universe.  Christians professed the same thing, but rather than seeing it as some abstract principle, the Logos was God who took flesh in Jesus Christ.  St. Justin was merely echoing what he had heard in the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel.  “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God” (Jn 1:1).  But St. Justin took it a step further and said that all of the truths found outside of direct revelation were merely participations in the Logos.  For truth cannot contradict Truth.  Clement of Alexandria, a generation later, would speak of the prophetic power of philosophy that  “was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a schoolmaster to bring ‘the Hellenic mind,’ as the law, the Hebrews, ‘to Christ.’ Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ” (Stromata, I, V).

When we speak of the edifice of Faith and Reason we immediately fast forward to our own days where the two appear to be in constant conflict.  But we need to linger a little longer in the early days in order to see the contemporary conflict correctly.  In the designs of divine Providence everything always happens right on time.  The time was right for St. Justin because the Church as it moved away from Jerusalem towards Athens would need to be able to explain the Faith in terms readily understood.  The time was right because the Church would need a language to defend the interpretation of Revelation from the coming onslaught of heretics.  Finally, the time was right because philosophy needed to be purified and elevated to assume its proper role as God’s prophet.

We speak so much of faith and reason, but what made what St. Justin said so profound is the fact that he shows faith in reason.  If it is through the Logos that all things are made, then “there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason—nothing which he has not willed should be handled and understood by reason” (Tertullian, On Repentance, 1).  What the Early Church discovered is not only that there is an observable order to the universe, but that human reason, as a participation in the Logos, is a reliable instrument for observing the universe.  Prior to this time either the world was governed by capricious gods or else there was a pantheistic “personalization” of nature that left each thing under its own control.  In either regard, without faith, human reason remained handcuffed. 

Once Christianity corrected Greek metaphysics, then physics could emerge.   It is only within the Christian conception of the Universe and of mankind that anything remotely resembling science and technology can emerge.  That is why it is absurd to attempt to put faith and reason in conflict with each other.  Their marriage is based on a inherent complementarity.  Any attempt to tear asunder what God has joined will end up destroying both.

The Enemies of Faith and Reason

Nevertheless, there are two schools in the modern world that have granted an imprimatur on their bill of divorce—the Enlightenment and Protestantism.

The Enlightenment is rooted in an absolute exaltation of human reason.  Without anything to purify it however faith in reason is lost.  Unable to bear the weight, we speak of Progress without reference to what it is we are progressing towards.  Progress without an endpoint, an endpoint given by Faith, is just aimless wandering.  Reason yields its crown to feeling and a real Dark Ages is sure to emerge.

On the opposite extreme is the fideism that is marked by Protestantism.  Martin Luther hated philosophy, especially Scholastic philosophy.  But because every man has a philosophy whether they know it or not, he was a nominalist.  The world is just a collection of individual things without any real relation to each other.  Creation has nothing to tell us about God and faith and sola scriptura are the only means by which we know God.  Of course, there are no ways to understand, explain or defend the content of faith so that all that really matters is the sincerity of what you believe and not what you actually believe.  You can believe anything as long as it is somewhere in the Bible.  Faith ultimately is destroyed.

It is not a coincidence that both these schools of thought have a common enemy, the Catholic Church.  We should not be surprised then that the Catholic Church is the lone defender of not only the true Faith, the same Faith that St. Justin Martyr earned his moniker defending, but also human reason.  And just as she stubbornly upholds Our Lord’s admonition about divorce between a man and woman, so does she keep Faith and Reason wedded. 

Can God Suffer?

Defending the Faith, God's Love, Paganism, Passion of Christ, Pope Francis, Redemption, Suffering, The Life of Jesus, Theology, , , ,

In a recent homily on the Biblical narrative of the Flood, Pope Francis challenged those gathered to have a heart like God’s, especially in the face of human suffering.  The Holy Father said that “God the Father…is able to get angry and feel rage…suffering more than we do.”  So common has this assertion that God suffers become that it is practically becoming an assumption.  But upon closer inspection we come to find that there are a number of faith altering and faith destroying consequences that follow from this false view of God.  Therefore, it merits further reflection why it is that God does not suffer.

The Need for Analogy

We must first admit that our language inevitably fails us when we attempt to speak about God.  In fact, we can say nothing positive about Him.  This is not because we are pessimists, but because we can only speak definitively about what He is not.  He is omniscient because there is nothing He doesn’t know.  He is omnipotent because there is nothing He can do, etc.  To speak of what He is, is impossible because He transcends our categories.  This linguistic limitation can be partially overcome once we allow for the use of analogy.  For example, God reveals Himself as Father because His fatherhood is something like the human fatherhood that we are all familiar with.

The problem with this approach of analogy is that we often get it backwards.  Properly speaking it is human fatherhood that is like God’s fatherhood.   Keeping the primacy of God’s fatherhood in mind keeps us from assuming that it is just like human fatherhood and making God in our image instead of us in His.  Human fatherhood is only true fatherhood to the extent that it images God’s fatherhood as St. Paul is wont to remind the Ephesians (c.f. Eph 3:15). 

More closely related to the topic of God’s suffering is the dictum that God is love.  To say that God is love is to say that God loves fully and for all eternity.  He cannot love any more than He does because it is His nature to love.  We speak of different “kinds” of love from God such as mercy, compassion, kindness, etc. but in God there is no distinction.  He loves fully.  We, however, cannot receive His love fully.  “Whatever is received,” St. Thomas says, “is received according to the mode of the receiver.”  To the sinner, God’s love is received as mercy.  To the suffering His love is received as comfort.  Yet, from God’s perspective it is a completely active and full love.     

To say that God suffers with us reverses the analogy.  The assumption is that because compassionate human love includes suffering, then Divine love must also.  But the fact that it includes suffering does not mean that it must include suffering.  It is the love that is given that makes it love, not the suffering.  In fact you could remove the suffering, the love would still be love.  In fact, it would be a purer love because there would be no need on the lover’s part to succor his own suffering.  Instead it would be a completely free love with no compulsion towards self-interest.  Rather than being somehow cold and indifferent, it is complete and free.  So God, by not be able to suffer, actually loves us more than if He could suffer.  To insist otherwise makes God love us less, the very thing that they think they are avoiding by positing that He must suffer.  As Fr. Thomas Weinandy puts it, “what human beings cry out for in their suffering is not a God who suffers but a God who loves wholly and completely, something a suffering God could not do.”  God is compassionate not because He suffers with but because He is able to fully embrace those who are suffering

Further Consequences of the Suffering God

If reversing the analogy was the worst part about this, then we might simply chalk it up as a misunderstanding.  But the fact that it represents an attack on God’s nature eventually leads us into a theological pitfall that destroys our faith in God.  God, in order to suffer must be capable of change.  But we believe in a God who is immutable.  His immutability comes about not because He can’t change, but because as the fullness of being there is nothing for Him to change into.  No change would make Him more than He is because He is already “I AM WHO AM”, pure act.  He fully alive.  To posit that He can suffer is to posit that He can change and to posit that He can change is to say that He is not the one true God.

He must also be incapable of suffering, that is, impassible for a subtler reason as well.  Suffering is caused by a lack of some good that ought to be there.  If God, in Himself is lacking some good, then He is not All Good.  If the suffering comes about because of the lack of some good in creation, then He becomes a part of creation itself and is no longer transcendent.  As part of creation He is no longer Creator.  Evil and suffering must be seen as having real existence (rather than a lack of some good) since nothing is immune to it.  Our new God is the god of pantheism or process theology and an ontological dualism becomes the result.

The suffering God hypothesis ultimately means the destruction of the Christian God.  If God is not free from suffering, then no one is.  And if no one is, then there is no possibility of redemption.  God simply becomes one being among many striving for perfection.  If He cannot save Himself from evil, then how can He save anyone else?  The Incarnation becomes totally incomprehensible.  The God-Man cannot offer redemption, nor can He sanctify suffering.  In truth, a suffering God need not stoop to our level because He is already there.  The truth that He could love fully without suffering, yet still chose to add suffering carries the assurance of His total love for each one of us.  If He could already suffer, then it looks like little more than masochism.

In short, ideas have consequences. Serious ideas have serious consequences.  The idea of divine passibility has nothing but negative consequences.  Therefore, despite its present popularity, the assertion that Divine suffering is possible must be wholly rejected in favor of the Traditional teaching of the Church so that the Faith may remain intact.

Purloining the Pagans?

Anthropology, Apologetics, Church, Defending the Faith, Devils, Paganism, , ,

History, some will have us believe, is riddled with myths of dying gods who in their rising, restore life.  The renewed popularity of these myths is but a thinly veiled attempt to debunk the truth of the Resurrection of Our Lord.  The implication is that Jesus is just one more in a long line of these myths and therefore most certainly false.  So common are these attacks, especially among adherents to the cult of the New Atheists, that it is important for us to have a ready defense.

We need not go into specific examples, but it is worth mentioning that whether it is Osiris (who became king of the underworld and didn’t actually come back to life) or Dionysius, the Christian concept of Resurrection is something that is totally foreign to Pagan mythology.  Witness the response to St. Paul’s preaching of the Resurrection in the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34).  The wise men of Athens have never heard of the Resurrection and thought it another god that should be added to their pantheon.  So nonplused are they by the mention of it that they blow St. Paul off to hear of it another time.  Christ’s resurrection is not a resuscitation in the manner of some of the Pagan myths, a mere return to life, but an introduction of a profoundly new way of life.  This way of life was not just for Christ, but something that could be communicated to all mankind.

There is also a gap in the logic of the argument as well.  Just because there are other things that are similar to a given thing does not mean that the new thing is simply derived from those other things.  This is especially true when there are important distinctions that render the two things very different  such as afore mentioned concept of Resurrection.  But it may suggest some deeper connection than mere plagiarism.

The Flip Side

It is this flip side cannot be easily dismissed.  If Jesus Christ truly is God incarnate and by His resurrection, He offers to all mankind salvation and life everlasting, then why should we be surprised that there are hints of it found throughout all times and places?  A message that is meant for all mankind from an omnipotent God would be expected to be delivered to all mankind, even if the method of delivery is different.  In other words, this is exactly what we should expect.  If God’s offer really is for everyone in every age, then He would leave traces of it in nature and in human reason so that men would come to know the saving truth. 

In fact, this is not only what would be expected, but is what Divine Revelation tells us to expect.  As the sun was setting on Adam and Eve’s Edenic abode, God made clear to them what the consequences of their actions were.  These consequences and knowledge of them would be passed down from one generation to the next.  No doubt they would be distorted at times, but they would never be wholly forgotten.  This includes both the bad news of division within and without as well as the Good News. The last thing that God tells our first parents before shutting the gates of their earthly paradise is that He will redeem them.  In other words, mankind would never live under a regime devoid of hope.  And just as the bad news is in “our genes” the Good News would be as well.  They are a package deal because God has ordained them as such to suit His purpose of drawing all men to Himself.  If sin cannot change His plans, then neither can something as accidental as time and place.

Of course without continuous revelation to remind them of the meaning of the “hope that is in them“ along with the continued presence of the Serpent, the tree of hope can become twisted and gnarled.  Man, in speaking from the depths of his hope will make up myths to fit the true story as he comes to understand it.  Believers are accused of wishful thinking, but that merely glosses over the question as to why the wish is there to begin with.  The wishful thinking is the residue of the hope that is simply a consequence of God’s promise.

Therefore this plan of attacking the truth of Christ is ultimately false.  There are no myths that precede the “myth become fact” as CS Lewis once called it. For this true myth is found throughout salvation history.  It is a “tale as old as time” because it was “in the beginning.”  The Chosen People simply kept the facts straight, but they lived with the same hope as the pagans.  It is no mere story, but history.  God promised it over and over and then delivered “in the fullness of time”.  The power of prophecy, this calling of His shot long before the actual event, is ultimately what sets Christ aside and renders all the other resurrection myths as weak prophets at best.  It is time we finally bury the myth of the resurrection myth to hopefully never arise again!

Making Up Your Mind about Mindfulness

Anthropology, Culture, Devils, New Age, Paganism, , ,

As Christians we are somewhat conditioned to look east, for east has long been believed to be the direction that Our Lord’s triumphant return.  While we wait however there are some of us who have looked further east and sought to adopt spiritual elements from the religions in the Far East.  The latest practice to be pondered is Mindfulness.

One of the most vocal proponents of Mindfulness is Dr. Gregory Bottaro.  As a practicing clinical psychologist and Catholic, he has sought treatments to help his patients in ways that are consistent with the Catholic vision of man.  To that end, he has been using Mindfulness within a clinical setting and has even written a book called The Mindful Catholic defending its use.

Mindfulness finds its origins in modern Theravada Buddhism and purports to create within the practitioner an awareness and acceptance, without judgment, of what he or she is thinking or feeling.  Or, to use Dr. Bottaro’s simple definition, mindfulness is “paying attention to the present moment without judgment or criticism.”  It is this inherent connection to a “New Age” practice that has many people concerned about its use.

Dr. Bottaro believes, like the Church herself, that even if a technique is borrowed from a New Age religion, it does not automatically make it wrong.  Instead we must look to see whether the technique can be stripped of its spiritual elements so that it can be “baptized” and used and prescribed licitly by Catholics.  In the case of Mindfulness, Dr. Bottaro claims that it is possible and that Mindfulness is not just a therapeutic technique, but one that all Catholics should be practicing.  This, of course, has been met with serious opposition questioning whether or not it can be severed from its Buddhist roots, including a book written by Susan Brinkmann as well as those at EWTN.  We will not add another voice to that particular debate here, but instead will examine Mindfulness from a different angle, namely Catholic anthropology.

Mindfulness and Catholic Anthropology

In the opening line of Appendix I of his book, Dr. Bottaro makes the claim that “Catholic mindfulness is built on Catholic principles.”  It is not clear from the rest of the article which principles he has in mind.  He seems to spend the bulk of his time defending its use against New Age claims that he never gets around to discussing how mindfulness harmonizes with Catholic anthropology.  It is in this arena of Catholic anthropological principles that mindfulness fails.  Rather than leading to mental health, it can facilitate further mental illness.

In anticipation of an immediate objection, what qualifies me, a theologian, to answer the question as to whether Mindfulness can lead to mental health?  To ask the question is to admit just how steeped we have become in the empirical mindset.  There is a distinction of vital importance to be made between what I will call the philosophy of psychology and the science of psychology.  The philosophy of psychology is concerned with, to use Dr. Bottaro’s terms, “Catholic principles” while the science of psychology is concerned with the clinical application of those principles through various techniques.  The theologian or philosopher can ask whether a given technique can lead to mental health (i.e. it leads to actions in accord with human nature) while a psychologist, once he knows the answer to this question, can ask if a given technique does in practice lead to mental health.

Foundational to Catholic anthropology is the fact that each one of us, to greater or lesser extents, is mentally ill.  This is said not to make us all victims or belittle those who suffer greatly because of serious mental illness.  Instead it is to point out a fundamental flaw in that we have a tendency to embrace the brokenness that comes from the Fall.  We equate natural (what we are) with normal (what everyone around us is doing).  This means that mental health can only come about through practices that restore what is natural and not necessarily what is normal.

Man, by nature, is an intellectual creature.  This means that he was made to rule himself by right reason to do the good passionately.  In other words, the intellect in man was to reign supreme, guiding the will to the good which had full cooperation from the bodily powers including the emotions, memory and imagination.  Post-edenic man finds his intellect darkened by ignorance, the will weakened and the bodily powers running amok.  The Fall left man in disarray, but not beyond repair.  God, using supernatural means such as actual and sanctifying grace can heal us.  But there are also natural means at our disposal to heal these effects.  Primary among those means are the virtues by which we develop habits that overcome the effects of the Fall.  The virtues rescue what is natural from what is normal.

Secondly because man is (and not just has) body and soul, the soul depends upon the body for its operation of knowing.  It does this primarily through the imagination and memory.  They provide the “raw material” upon which the intellect works.  The intellect abstracts the contents of its thoughts from the image (called a phantasm) provided it by the imagination, an image it received either from the outside world or from the memory (or both).  It is not just productive, but also reproductive in that it exercises insight and control to produce images as reflections of ideas.  This puts flesh to concept so to speak.  When we think of a concept, say like God, some image comes into our mind, even though we have never seen Him.  The images we form greatly affect our thoughts.  Imagine a demon who looks like a terrible dragon.  Now imagine a demon wearing red tights with horns.  Which of these reflects right thought about demons?

Given the material prominence of the imagination and to a slightly lesser extent the memory, one can readily see how important they are to mental health.  Whether we like it or not, they affect not just what we think about, but also how we judge.  A trivial example might help.  Suppose I fall out of a chair because I wasn’t being careful.  The next time I see a chair that memory will be invoked and I may recall the pain of the fall.  Chairs (and not just that one chair) will become associated with pain and something to be feared.  My intellect must then make a judgment on the phantasm that the chair poses no danger.  If I do not make that judgment, or I judge wrongly that chairs are bad then the association becomes stronger causing fear each time the phantasm is present, reinforcing the idea that chairs are dangerous.  A feedback loop is created and mental illness is comes about.  This can only be corrected when the judgment that chairs are not harmful is adopted and the intellect “corrects” the phantasms attached to chair.  Until the imagination comes under the complete control of the intellect, the person will still be torn between reality and perception.

Quieting the Interior Chatter

Obviously the memory and imagination are necessary faculties for mental health and therefore we can’t simply shut them off.  Instead they must be schooled so that they do not, as Adolphe Tanqueray says in his classic book The Spiritual Life, “crowd the soul with a host of memories and images that distract the spirit” but fall under the control of the intellect and the will.

Although he never says so explicitly, it is these two faculties, memory and imagination, which mindfulness attempts to govern.  Dr. Bottaro says that the goal is to turn away from the “interior chatter.”  This interior chatter comes from overactive memories and imaginations that lead to wrong ways of judging reality.  He suggests that by focusing on the present moment through mindfulness exercises you can begin to bring these powers under the control of the “mind.”

In this regard Dr. Bottaro is no different from many of the spiritual masters who say that one of the best ways to mortify the interior senses of memory and imagination is by focusing on the present moment.  However, there is one important difference—none of them would say that you can learn to govern the interior senses by “paying attention to the present moment without judgment or criticism.”  Mental health consists in the right judgment of reality.  The remedy to judging incorrectly is not to cease judging.  Any exercises that promote this lead away from mental health and not towards it.

Why is this the case?  Because the mind judges “automatically.”  It judges because that is what it does.  The mind has three acts—understanding, judgment and reasoning.  Once the mind has grasped what a thing is (understanding), it immediately attempts to relate it to other things (judgment).  As Blessed John Henry Newman put it, “It is characteristic of our minds to be ever engaged in passing judgment on the things which come before them.  No sooner do we learn that we judge; we allow nothing to stand by itself.”

Inevitable Path to Buddhism?

Dr. Bottaro says that “mindfulness does not meaning turning off the thoughts in your mind, but using them as a door to greater awareness of yourself.  This is actually one of the essential differences between Catholic mindfulness and Eastern-based forms of meditation.”  But one cannot simply turn off judging without doing violence to the natural process of reasoning.  In essence by trying to abort the second act of the mind, it shuts down the mind completely, precisely what the Eastern-based forms are proposing.  It seems the very thing he is trying to avoid, he inadvertently brings about.  Perhaps those who are concerned about the spiritual traps of Buddhist practices are right after all.  Mindfulness may be not just a practice that Buddhist use, but a Buddhist “sacrament” that brings about the desired outcome of emptying the mind.  This happens regardless of the intention of the practitioner.  Perhaps there is a “genius” in the technique that, by doing what a Buddhist does, it causes the person to think like a Buddhist.  And once they think like a Buddhist they begin to act like one.

This may explain why, given that the doctor is also a “patient” of mindfulness that his book has a number of New Age red flags in his book when he attempts to articulate some Catholic principles.  Under the sub-heading Finding Peace, Dr. Bottaro sounds more New Age than he does Catholic.  He describes Jesus as “the human person of God, Jesus Christ.”  As Nestorius found out in the 5th Century, Jesus is not a human person but a Divine person who took to Himself a human nature.  One might excuse this merely as a lack of theological precision except he goes further making the reader wonder whether the label Catholic can be applied.

In the same section he also says “You have heard that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit, but you are also more than that.  You exist in the form that God Himself would take if He were to enter into the created universe…”(emphasis added)  To say that we are more than temples of the Holy Spirit has a very Buddhist “feel” to it.  The only thing “more than” being a creature with the indwelling Holy Spirit is to be God Himself, something a Buddhist would readily accept.  Christ did not take to Himself a human nature because human nature was so great, but because He is so great.  In other words the doctor gets it backwards by putting man at the center instead of God.  We should not be surprised then when he says that “the central being that is consistently in your awareness in each present moment is you.  Therefore, mindfulness is a journey to find peace with yourself.”

Buddhism is a journey to find peace within yourself.  Catholicism, however, is a journey to find peace with God; peace that is only found outside of man.  The two are not compatible.   You will look forever, perhaps we might say eternally, for peace with yourself and you will never find it.   For Buddhists peace is found within because God is found within.  But for Catholicism the interior division that we experience is caused by our division with God and only when that is healed, can be even begin to experience the “peace with surpasses all understanding” (Phil 4:7 ).  Perhaps it is better not to let our gazes go any further east than Rome and leave Mindfulness to the Buddhists.

The American Athanasius

Creed, Culture, Defending the Faith, Freedom, Natural Law, Paganism, Politics, ,

Throughout her 2000 year history, the Church has confronted a number of great heresies that put Our Lord’s promise that she would not fail to the test.  The greatest of these may have been the first, Arianism.  It challenged the divinity of Christ, labeling Him as the greatest of all divinely inspired creatures.  The Arians taught that “He was”, as Hillaire Belloc put it, “granted, one might say (paradoxically) all the divine attributes but divinity itself.”  At its height, almost ¾ of the world’s bishops were Arian along with most of the army.  So widespread had the heresy become that there were many “rank and file” Christians who were Arians and didn’t even know it.  Swimming within the Arian waters, they were presumably orthodox even though they were, in truth, heterodox.  It was really the grace-filled insistence, mingled with plenty of personal suffering, of one man, St. Athanasius, that kept us all from becoming Arians (and not knowing it).  But rather than offering an account of how he did this, instead he is put before us as an example to be followed.  Many of us, wholly unawares, are swimming within the waters of a different heretical tank.  It is the heresy of Americanism.

This term, Americanism, may be vaguely familiar to some of us, but for the most part it is as foreign as the term Arian was to our 4th Century counterparts.  Although appearing under different guises such as Gallicanism, it is essentially a subordination of the spirit of Catholicism in favor of a nationalistic one.  In an 1899 letter to James Cardinal Gibbons called Testem Benevolentiae, Pope Leo XIII warned his American colleague of the danger confronting both the American Church and, because of its rising prominence, the Church universal.  It is, as one papal biographer of Leo XIII put it, “A spirit of independence which passed too easily from the political to the religious sphere.”

The Errors of Americanism

Pope Leo XIII attached four specific errors to Americanism.  First, all external guidance is set aside as superfluous so that all that is needed is the interior lights of the Holy Spirit.  It is the American ideal of rugged individualism, freedom of conscience, and a rejection of any authority that animates this error.  Second there is a higher regard for natural virtues than for supernatural virtues as if the latter are somehow passive and therefore defective.  This comes from the practicality of the American spirit that shuns philosophy in favor of the empirical and a do it yourself mentality.  Third there is a rejection of religious vows as somehow incompatible with the spirit of Christian liberty.  There is a certain irony here given how important religious communities like the Jesuits and Franciscans were in the beginnings of our country.  Finally, and perhaps the underlying principle of the entire heresy is that the Church should shape her teachings in accord with the spirit of the age.  To gain those who differ from us we should omit certain points of teachings so as to make the faith more palatable.

At the time the letter was written the US Bishops agreed that these would be a great problem if they were present in the American Church, but denied that they could be found and dismissed them.  This point is obviously historically debatable, especially given that Americanist tendencies can be found from the beginning in the actions and writings of the first bishop in the United States John Carroll who was a cousin of Charles Carroll (of Carrollton as he reminded the British in signing the Declaration of Independence) and was mostly American before he was Catholic.  But what cannot be debated in an age of “personally opposed but…” Catholicism Leo XIII was definitely prescient.

One of the reasons that Arianism had such great appeal was that at heart it was simply a clever attempt to save paganism by making Christianity more palatable.  For a pagan, a religion in which a creature was endowed with god-like qualities is easier to swallow than the truth that the Creator became man and suffered to redeem wayward mankind.  And so it is with Americanist Catholics who cleverly seek to focus only on those things that are easy for Americans to swallow.  As she grows older, America’s palate becomes increasingly limited.  For the Catholic the highest law is God’s law mediated through the Church.  For the American it is the Constitution mediated through the Supreme Court without any reference to a Higher Authority.  How long can these two things can co-exist without significant concessions by the Catholic?  Regardless of the timeframe there will come a moment of crisis for both the individual and the Church.  Simply agreeing to disagree and focus only on what unites us is not a solution.  The problem with this of course is that there is no reason then to convert to the fullness of the truth that is found only within the confines of the Barque of  Peter.  Why convert when you are simply promised more of the same?

Patriotism and the Catholic American

Why would I offer this reflection on July 4th of all days on the greatest of all secular holidays?  Could I be any more un-patriotic than to offer a criticism such as this on today, of all days?  To ask the question is to admit the problem.  We are not patriotic to the American ideal.  That is to treat America as a religion, which is at the heart of the problem.  To be sure we love America because it is our home, but it is our home only because we share it with people that we love.  We are patriotic because we follow Our Lord’s commandment to love our neighbor.  Those people who we share a home with are those that God has placed closest to us in order that His commandment might take flesh.  And there can be no greater love than to offer to them the Truth that has been handed on to us by preaching and living it unapologetically.

We find ourselves in a society that is coming apart at the seams and it is because what unites us is not greater than what divides us.  No matter how well the Founding Fathers framed the Constitution (and they did frame well) it was never strong enough to keep us united forever.  There is only one thing in this world that can keep a people united and it is the Church.  Only a reformation of Christendom can save this country and that begins with the Church being more Catholic not less.  For a Catholic resident in a non-Catholic country it is an act of true patriotism to want to convert his country—what we need is an American Athanasius.

 

Redeeming Halloween

Paganism

Tomorrow will mark the 498th anniversary of the founding of Protestantism.  On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany.  It is not without irony that this occurred on Halloween, because it directly led to the loss of meaning this once sacred feast day in the Church.  Eventually it led to a near total paganization of the day as we will all witness to varying degrees on Saturday.  Before we can reclaim this day as a Catholic day, we must begin to understand how all of this came about.

Whenever discussions about Christian holidays come up, there is always the accusation that they were originally pagan holidays lurking in the background.  In fact, many would say that Halloween as we celebrate it today is a return to its original pagan roots.  This is a claim that is worth examining because it has also been leveled at Christmas and Easter as well.  Before doing this however it is important to shed light on the implied assumption of most people that do this—Christianity, like paganism that went before it is simply another myth.  They see it as a variation on a similar theme.  Because they all basically tell the same story, they are all made up.

However, this is not the way the term myth should be understood.  To understand it as merely a made up story and therefore a falsehood is to equivocate truth with fact.  Myths can be true without being facts.  Because of his composite nature of flesh and spirit, man can often only know the truth abstractly until he experiences it firsthand.  Through the use of myth, mankind is able to overcome this limitation and  experience a truth concretely.

This is a theme that CS Lewis takes up in his essay Myth Became Fact.  In responding to a friend’s claim that Christianity was merely one more myth of the Dying God, Lewis admits that Christianity is a myth; but a myth that became fact when the Son of God took human flesh to Himself.  Lewis says that:

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.

Once we understand that myth can convey truth, rather than refuting the claim that Christianity is a myth, we can follow Lewis’ suggestion that all the myths of the primitive religions were expressions of mankind’s yearning for contact and communion with God—a yearning the true God had placed inside of all of us.  Jesus Christ and the religion He established, rather than being one myth among many, is the fulfillment of all of them.  It is a myth to be sure, but a myth that is also a fact.

pumpkin_fish

Recognizing that Christianity is the “myth that became fact,” it seems perfectly natural for it to adopt and baptize pagan holidays.  These holidays too are in need of fulfillment because they reflect to varying degrees the seeds of the myth become fact.  In particular, Halloween began when the Western Church took over the pagan festival of Samhain.  This Celtic festival was a celebration marking the end of harvest time and was a time in which they celebrated the dead.

Christians too had a way to celebrate the lives of the dead—called All Saints day.  Halloween is simply an anglicized version of “All Hallows Evening” or the vigil of All Hallows (Saints) Day.  This also marks the time of the most important harvest—the harvest of souls.  The Samhain festival honored the dead because they thought there was a thin veil that separated the living and the dead.  The Church wanted the pagans to know that there is a thin veil that separates Christians from the “Cloud of Witnesses” that had gone before and it was possible to speak with them.

The accusations regarding stolen pagan holiday also come from Protestants as well.   But this incorporating of paganism into Christianity has Pauline roots.  When he is in Athens, he compliments their religiosity and reveals to them who their “unknown god” really is (Acts 17:22-23).  St. Paul clearly adopted this as an evangelical principle telling the Corinthians that “To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor 9:22).  When Catholics borrow from Pagans what is not sinful, they are simply doing what Paul taught us.

The gate to paganism in Halloween was actually opened shortly after Luther’s protestation.  Because the Protestants thought it idolatry to venerate the saints, All Hallows Eve became a day of mockery.  Once Henry VIII suppressed the Church in England, some of the original pagan practices were able to creep back in.  This is the form in which it was brought to the United States.

Obviously “trick or treating” has become the staple of most people’s Halloween celebration.  There are various accounts of where this came from, but the pagans believed that the souls that entered the nether world bore great hunger and would beg for food.  From this came the practice of dressing up like the dead and begging for treats.  As the holiday was Christianized, poor children would visit the houses of wealthier neighbors and receive pastries called soul cakes in exchange for a promise to pray for the dead members of the patron’s family (Sting has a song where he describes this called Soul Cake).

How can we restore Halloween to its rightful place as a Catholic holiday?  There are some who would avoid the festivities all together.  But if Christians transformed the celebration once, we could do it again by changing or restoring the meanings.  Instead, I would suggest that your children dress up as saints or, at the very least, not dress up as anything that has connections to the occult.  Also, I would suggest that rather than participating in the dialogue of “trick or treat” that they might offer prayers for the departed members of the families they visit in exchange for the candy they receive.  I recognize that this might be awkward for younger children so it would also be an excellent day to offer a family Rosary for all the families whose homes they will visit.