Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly
PRESIDENT'S LETTER ...... Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. 32 articles What Authentic Christianity Requires...... James Hitchcock Number 2 Summer 2009 de Jouvenal on Power...... Jude P. Dougherty Condoms and the Pope...... Kenneth D. Whitehead On Politics and Physics: Stanley Jaki on Science in Islam...... James V. Schall, S.J. The Merry Widow...... James V. Schall, S.J. The Good Habit: The Depiction of Nuns in the Novels of Rumer Goddens...... Glenn Statile Reflections on Medjugorje...... Eugene Diamond, M.D.
REVIEWS St. Thomas Aquinas on Love and Charity: Readings from the “Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” trans. by Peter A. Kwasniewski, Thomas Bolin, & Joseph Bolin...... D. Q. McInerny Constitutional Adjudication: The Costa Rican Experience, by Robert S. Barker...... D. Q. McInerny The Order of Things, by James V. Schall...... Roland Millare A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith with “On My Religion,” ed. by Thomas Nagel...... Jude P. Dougherty Basile Moreau and The Congregation of Holy Cross, by James T. Connelly, C.S.C...... Raymond W. Belair
ISSN 1084-3035 Notices
Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Ex Cathedra...... J. Brian Benestad P.O. Box 495 Notre Dame, IN 46556 officers and directors (574) 631-5825 www.catholicscholars.org J. Brian Benestad, Editor [email protected]
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 1 Pr e s i d e n t ’s Le t t e r Choosing Our Projects Fellowship of
Catholic Scholars t will always be important for the Fellowship Scholarship Inspired by the Holy Spirit, of Catholic scholars, precisely as a fellowship, to in Service to the Church promote an appreciation for the intellectual contributions that so many of our number Ihave made as well as to promote the development of the new scholarship that is needed for the service of Christ and his Church. In this light I would like to Co n t e n t s invite and encourage members of the Fellowship to Articles share their work in these pages. We would be grateful President’s Letter...... 2 to receive news of what our members have recently What Authentic Christianity Requires...... 4 published as well as to use these pages to advance de Jouvenal on Power...... 5 current discussion on questions of contemporary Condoms and the Pope...... 8 significance. On Politics and Physics: Stanley Jaki The Catholic nature of our fellowship, of course, on Science in Islam...... 14 suggests the importance of expressly theological proj- The Merry Widow...... 18 ects. Hence, I would like to devote the bulk of this The Good Habit: The Depiction of Nuns in letter to that focus, but not before taking note of the the Novels of Rumer Goddens...... 19 wide array of disciplines that are represented in the Reflections on Medjugorje...... 23 ranks of our membership. I would like to encourage scholars from all disciplines, not just theology, to con- Book Reviews tribute to the pages of the FCS Quarterly. What are St. Thomas Aquinas on Love and Charity: Read- the current problems and the special perspectives of ings from the “Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard”,...... 26 your discipline that bear on Catholicism? How can Constitutional Adjudication: The Costa Rican they be illuminated by the resources of our Catholic Experience...... 28 faith? The venues that are provided by the profes- The Order of Things...... 31 sional journals of a number of disciplines are some- A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of times not very receptive to these matters. Publishing Sin and Faith with “On My Religion...... 32 scholarly contributions on questions of this sort will Basile Moreau and The Congregation help us in an important way to be the sort of fellow- of Holy Cross...... 33 ship that we want to be. notices...... 35 One of the foremost issues on the current horizon is the problem presented by recent and Officers and directors...... 37 imminent attacks on conscience-protection in Ex Cathedra...... 38 various quarters of American life. Catholic phar- macists, for instance, have already faced grave problems in their licensing when regulatory agen- cies have pressured them to provide abortifacients and tried to remove the safeguards for conscience Reminder: Membership dues will be that have previously protected them. Catholic mailed out the first of the year and are hospitals and health-care providers are now under based on a calendar (not academic) year.
2 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 severe pressure on a number of similar fronts, and but wonder if there would not be extremely valuable the agencies for adoption and foster-care place- service rendered to the Church on several counts ment within the Catholic social service system here. As Avery Cardinal Dulles indicated in his “The have been feeling the brunt of the removal of Hierarchy of Truths in the Catechism” (printed in conscience-protection clauses in some states. The Thomist 58 [July 1994]: 369-88), these variegated It seems to me that this is a topic on which the notes are still useful for sorting through the kind and members of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars degree of respect that deserves to be accorded to pro- ought to be contributing from their professional nouncements by the Church on important matters. competence. Not only the lawyers among us need In certain respects an updating of the terminology to be brainstorming about appropriate strategy and of the theological notes would be highly appropriate tactics for the legislatures and courts to consider, but and desirable. our scholars in politics, philosophy, economics, and In the spirit of Aristotle, who remarked that the other fields can also make important contributions to wise will not expect more certainty on a question the public debate by turning their attention to this than the discipline that treats such questions can matter. What are the acceptable forms of cooperation provide, it is incumbent on faithful Catholic scholars with standards and policies that we find distasteful, to discuss and debate the level of certainty and the and what forms of cooperation would cross the line kind of respect that is appropriate on diverse ques- of moral acceptability? What further implications tions. One sees Magisterial recognition of this point down the line will the strategies being designed for in recent documents like Personae Dignitatis, which the resolution of immediate problems have? seems eager to identify which questions it considers In addition to such interdisciplinary and dis- to be settled and which it thinks still remain open, cipline-specific topics, I would also like to use the pending on-going scientific research and theological present occasion to raise a question for the theolo- reflection. As the late Cardinal Dulles liked to remind gians of the Fellowship. In decades past, many collec- us, these theological notes were not provided by the tions of the pronouncements that the Magisterium Magisterium itself but were determinations made by has made on various topics were accompanied by theologians after proper debate in scholarly journals. some “theological note”—that is, by some technical But, so far as I can see, there is little to no discussion term designed to express the relative degree of cer- of this point nowadays despite the increased num- tainty or the type of censure that a given theological ber of scholarly journals. If anything, the members opinion deserved. These theological notes of polarized camps often write for their own con- ranged from fides divina for cases in which belief in stituencies. I would hope that the theologians of the the proposition is due on the immediate author- Fellowship could provide a valuable service on this ity of divine revelation, through fides ecclesiastica for issue. ✠ doctrines on which the infallible teaching authority of the Church had come to a definitive decision, to Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. various forms of sententia (opinion). I cannot help President, FCS •
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 3 A r t i cl e s What Authentic Christianity Requires
By James Hitchcock tians were capable of casual and shockingly dehu- St. Louis University manizing comments about race, and occasionally even of brutal actions. uthentic Christianity requires three dis- Catholic insensitivity to racial justice was most tinct elements—orthodoxy of doctrine, effectively overcome by clergy whose orthodoxy was piety or worship, and morality of life— never in question, who rooted love of neighbor in and Christians are required to live all the doctrine of the Mystical Body. But the belated threeA to the fullest possible extent. awakening of many believers to the demands of social In a way the distinction is analogous to that of justice has in turn inevitably produced a new kind of truth, beauty, and goodness, and in both triads there disjunction, in which the sense of justice—often dis- is a profound and ineradicable, but at the same time torted—not only exists independent of orthodoxy and intensely frustrating, sense that they must be inti- traditional morality but even in opposition to them. mately connected but often are not. Liberal Catholicism now deliberately separates In eternity beauty is the dramatic manifestation ethics from dogma and thereby ceases even to have of goodness and truth, but on earth, although it is not an authentically Catholic ethics. By a tangled but possible to separate truth and goodness, good people discernable process dogma and morality are discon- may not be beautiful in any discernable way, lacking nected, with sexual behavior in particular now treat- both physical attractiveness and personal charm. Most ed as having little to do with religious belief, causing problematical, the best art sometimes bears an at least moral prohibitions on sexual behavior to be defined ambiguous relationship to truth and goodness, and as injustices. certain kinds of beauty can even undermine both. Of all the religions of the world Christianity (not Altogether the uncertain relationship of beauty only Catholicism) has always placed the greatest em- to truth and goodness is one of the most telling phasis on doctrinal orthodoxy, something that, as its manifestations of the fallenness not only of human critics are fond of pointing out, is susceptible to a par- nature but also of all of creation, even as the human ticular kind of distortion, which is the idea that to be yearning for the harmony of the three is one of the a Christian requires merely holding to the creeds. most powerful signs that the human heart is made for But if morality and orthodoxy often do not go something beyond this world. together, it is less often noticed that piety and or- In the real world there are also often only tenu- thodoxy also do not. An orthodox individual may ous connections between orthodoxy, piety, and mo- be lacking in fervor—it is not unknown for people rality. Professed believers are sometimes vulnerable to who attend church irregularly nonetheless to affirm the charge of moral hypocrisy, precisely because they basic Christian beliefs. On the other side, most of the are conspicuous in their piety and orthodoxy but are heretics of history were quite devout, if only because not only deficient in morality but seemingly oblivi- undevout people have little motivation to speculate ous to some of its demands. about doctrine. Most often the heretic’s very piety This is not simply the gulf between teaching and imparts fervor to his false beliefs. practice that is endemic to human nature—the fail- Today those who undermine both doctrinal or- ure to live up to one’s beliefs, the old-fashioned hy- thodoxy and authentic Catholic morality are in their pocrisy of the religious stalwart caught in a brothel. way often more pious, or a least more ecclesiastically It is rather a morally culpable failure of belief itself, a involved, than most other Catholics—more likely to failure to see the truth. attend services, to participate in retreats and workshops, The ideology of political correctness notwith- to read religious publications, to undertake tasks. Many standing, it is only necessary to go a back a few de- indeed are clergy or religious. The single most destruc- cades to recall pious people who did not recognize tive force in the Church—groups of feminist nuns—was that there even were moral issues involved in racial not long ago communities of the greatest devotion. segregation and its antecedent slavery. Serious Chris- The simple lesson to be learned from this is
4 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 that an authentic faith requires three pillars none of is only in eternity and (imperfectly) in the lives of the which can substitute for the other two and none of saints on earth, that all the elements of the Christian which by itself guarantees that faith. life are brought into perfect balance. The homey lesson If it is only in eternity that beauty will be brought is, once again, that fallen human nature can always find into full harmony with truth and goodness, so also it ways of turning virtue into vice. ✠
de Jouvenal on Power
By Jude P. Dougherty scrutiny of every new proposal that would extend the The Catholic University of America power of the state. Do not leap into the dark, he cau- tions his countrymen at war’s end; beware of letting ome cultural historian of the future, some “necessity,” the tyrant’s plea, have its way. future Gibbon will record the decline and fall Politics are about Power, he tells us. “It is in the of a once great nation, how it lost contact with pursuit of Utopia that the aggrandizers of state power its founding documents and with the spiritual find their most effective ally. Only an immensely pow- traditionsS which animated its growth and how it suc- erful apparatus can do all that the preachers of pana- cumbed to the siren song of a charismatic leader who cea government promise.”2 De Jouvenal believes that led it to its dissolution in a visionary multi-cultural, history shows that the acceptance of all-embracing universal democracy. state authority is largely due to the fatigue and despair As our nation faces a questionable future, we may brought about by war or economic disorder. The Eu- turn to the past to determine in its light what the fu- ropean may say that liberty is the most precious of all ture portends. Yet as some wag once put it, “The only things, yet as the experience of France attests, it is not thing we learn from the past is that nobody learns from valued as such by people who lack bread and water. The the past.” An often neglected cultural historian is Ber- will to be free in time of danger is easily extinguished. trand de Jouvenal. His work, On Power: Its Nature and Liberty becomes a secondary need; the primary need is the History of Its Growth,1 remains timely although it security. was written more than 60 years ago. Penned during the One of the pitfalls of democracy is its lack of ac- dark days of the Nazi occupation of France, the book countability. The popular will is easily manipulated. was published at first opportunity in 1945 and appeared It recognizes no authority outside itself that possesses in English translation five years later. Up against the the strength to limit it excesses. The dethronement raw power of the German occupation, de Jouvenal, of the old faith to which the state was accountable the philosopher and historian, was led to reflect on the left an aching void in the domain of beliefs and prin- nature of power in the abstract. He set out to examine ciples, allowing the state to impose its own. Without the reasons why and the way in which Power grows in accountability, democracy because of its centralizing, society. As he uses the word, “Power” is always capital- pattern-making, absolutist drive, can easily become an ized; it may stand for authority, the ruler, or simply the incubator of tyranny. The kings of old, the personifica- drive for dominance. tion of power, were possessed of personality, possessed On Power can be read at different levels: as history, of passions good and bad. More often than not, their as prophecy, as political theory. Pierre Manent speaks of sense of responsibility led them to will “the good” for de Jouvenal’s “melancholy liberalism.” Given de Jouve- their people. Power within a democracy, by contrast, nal’s sweeping command of history, he can make a case resides in a faceless and impersonal bureaucracy that for every judgment or argument he advances in the claims to have no existence of its own and becomes the book by citing numerous historical examples in sup- anonymous, impersonal, passionless instrument of what port, yet his experience of Hitler’s rise to power in the is presumed to be the general will. Writing in France 1930s cannot be discounted as a coloring factor. The when the Roosevelt administration was barely 10 year book is a call for repeated stock taking, for an extended old, de Jouvenal feared the long range danger posed
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 5 A r t i cl e s by the many regulatory commissions created by that top state authorities, in alliance with the bottom (that administration. He saw that agencies possessing at once is, the oppressed), squeeze out the middle (the Estab- legislative, executive, and judicial control could operate lishment) and in doing so progressively penetrate ever largely outside of public control and become tyrannical. deeper into the personal lives of citizens. The point of The extension of Power, which means its ability course has been made by others, notably by F.A. Hayek, to control ever more completely a nation’s economy, is who called attention to the fact that an assault on prop- responsible for its ability to wage war. De Jouvenal asks, erty rights is not always apparent because it is carried “Had Hitler succeeded Maria Theresa on the throne, out in the name of the common good, an appealing but does anyone suppose that it would have been possible elastic concept defined by those whose interest it serves. to forge so many up-to-date weapons of tyranny?”3 It is Given that all political activity is concerned with alas no longer possible for us to believe that by smash- the acquisition of Power, both to seize and to maintain ing Hitler and his regime we are eradicating the root of the organs of power, one must first gain control of statist evil. “Can anyone doubt that a state which binds public education at its early stages. A state monopoly man to itself by every tie of need will be better placed in education has the ability to condition minds in to conscript them all, and one day consign them to the childhood for its later years, thereby preparing popular dooms of war? The more departments of life that Power opinion for the seizure by the state of even greater takes over, the greater will be its material resources for power.8 De Jouvenal reminds his reader that in times making war.”4 Even within a democracy the vast re- past Western Europe has acknowledged that there is sources of the state are ripe for a dictator to seize. The a superior will to the collective will of man and that bold, by discounting all risk, are positioned to seize all there is an immutable law to which even civil author- initiatives and become the rulers, while the timid run ity must bow. Absent that acknowledgment, Power has for cover and security. “The more complete the hold free reign. “Even the police regime, the most insup- which the state gets on the resources of a nation, the portable attribute of tyranny, has grown in the shadow higher, the more sudden, the more irresistible, will be of democracy.”9 France, disliking the minority rule the wave in which an armed community can break of one person, deposed the crown and subsequently on a pacific one . . . . It follows that, in the very act of organized itself in the light of mass interests only to handing more of ourselves to the state, we may be fos- discover that when the majority holds power over a tering tomorrow’s war.”5 minority, justice within a democracy can be as elusive Aristotle in the Politics reduced the variety of as it is in a despotic regime. governmental structures that he had studied to three: De Jouvenal’s translator couldn’t resist a postscript, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, recognizing that “One of the first casualties in times of discord is, as whatever shape a government takes, the essence of gov- Thucydides noted, the meaning of words, and to the erning is Power. Force may establish Power, but once Thucydidean list of inexactitudes, it is time to add the established, habit alone can keep it in being. A standing current equation of liberty with security, the posses- center of power which is obeyed by habit has, in the sion of a vote with liberty, and justice with equality… case of the state, the means of physical compulsion and of democratic with whatever the user of the word hap- is kept in being partly by its perceived strength, partly pens to approve. Humpty Dumpty has succeeded to the by the faith that it rules by right, and partly by the hope chair of more precise thinkers.”10 of its beneficence. The natural tendency of Power is Yves R. Simon, a French contemporary of de to grow. Power is authority, and authority enables the Jouvenal, born in 1903, the same year as de Jouvenal, expansion of authority.6 (Simon in Cherbourg, de Jouvenal in the Champagne Power, when dedicated to egalitarian pursuits must region), were both in their early thirties when they always be at war with capitalist authorities and despoil witnessed Hitler’s rise to power. At the outbreak of the capitalists of their accumulated wealth.7 Its political the war, Simon was a visiting professor in the United objective consists in the demolition of a class that en- States. Remaining in America, he eventually became a joys “independent means,” by seizing the assets of that member of the Committee on Social Thought at the class to bestow benefits on others. The result is a trans- University of Chicago. From this vantage point, Simon, fer of power from productive individuals to an unpro- like de Jouvenal, surveyed the ruins of Europe and in ductive bureaucracy that becomes the new ruling class, his own way addressed the conditions that brought it displacing that which was economically productive. The about.11 Influenced by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, no
6 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 friend of democracy, Simon was fearful that democracy, as a fundamental right that it has an obligation to protect far from excluding a totalitarian regime, would in time but as an obstacle to “social justice.”16 Even in the most actually give way to one. Absent appropriate checks advanced democracies, the main threat to liberty may and balances, the legal processes of the democratic state come not from tyranny but from the pursuit of socialist may work in such away as to allow the elimination of objectives. Liberty by its very nature, Pipes reminds us, is democracy. Of equal importance to whatever checks inegalitarian. Men differ in strength, intelligence, ambi- and balances may be prescribed by law or inscribed in a tion, courage, perseverance, and all else that makes for constitution, are those that are in a sense external to the success. There is no method to make men both free and political structure, namely, private property and inde- equal. In the pursuit of equality, property rights may be pendent management of resources. “When people ac- subtlety undermined through taxation and government quiesce to the removal of all checks on the conquering interference with business contracts as the state pursues expansion of the state, the totalitarian regime is firmly its egalitarian objectives. Insofar as poor voters always established.” Simon was convinced that an impersonal and everywhere outnumber rich ones, in theory there authority could not win such an irrational surrender are no limits to the democratic state’s drive to promote but that a leader with charismatic talents could win ap- equality and to run roughshod over the rights of private proval.12 We know from experience, he says, that where property. “The rights to ownership,”17 Pipes argues, “need totalitarianism prevails, democracy has no chance, yet to be restored to their proper place instead of being sac- few men dare to voice the paradoxical consideration rificed to the unattainable ideal of social equality and all that democracy may become totalitarian. Totalitarian embracing economic security. . . . The balance between democracy, of course, would not be true democracy.13 ‘civil’ and ‘property’ rights has to be readdressed if we Proudhon maintains that the state, whether democratic care about freedom.” He continues, “The Civil Rights or not, remains the state and of its very nature threatens Act of 1964 gave the government no license to set quotas all liberties and the very life of society. for hiring personnel by private enterprise or admitting De Jouvenal has yet another concern. In a demo- students to institutions of higher learning, and yet the cratic regime, we are told, the general interest is repre- federal bureaucracy acts as if it had.”18 Some fear, Pipes sented by Power. From this postulate flows the corollary acknowledges, that the drive for social justice will inevi- that no interest is legitimate that opposes the general tably lead to the destruction of democracy, yet he is not interest. For this reason even local or particular inter- drawn to that pessimistic conclusion. He reasons that en- est must yield to the general interest, in de Jouvenal’s croachments on property cannot advance relentlessly to words, “bend its knee to Power.” Power, which is con- their logical conclusion, the abolition of private property, ceived as the incarnation of the general wish, cannot because the most affluent are twice as likely to vote as tolerate any group which embodies less general wishes the weakest. If he were addressing the subject today, some and interests.14 10 years later, I am not sure he would be so sanguine. The distinguished American historian, Richard The prospect of government control of all aspects of the Pipes, a former director of Harvard’s Russian Research electoral process looms as the present administration is Center and a specialist in Russian history, reinforces now positioned to mobilize the vote through federally de Jouvenal’s judgment that democratic procedures in funded organizations and through redistricting by taking electing government officials do not guarantee respect direct control of the census. Not to be discounted is the for individual rights. The right to property, he holds in distorting effect of a monolithic media able to advanc- his book entitled, Property and Freedom,15 may be more ing its own political agenda in concert with officials important than the right to vote. Property of itself does who share its objectives. De Jouvenal addressed this issue not guarantee civil rights and liberties, but, historically when speaking of the ability of popular newspapers to speaking, it has been the most effective device for en- awaken emotion, building or destroying concepts of right suring both. Property has the effect of creating an au- conduct. “From the day the first ha’penny paper was tonomous sphere on which, by mutual consent, neither launched until now, the big circulation newspapers have the state nor society can encroach. In drawing a line never built up an ethic.”19 between the public and the private sphere, it makes its In concluding paragraphs of his study, de Jouvenal owner, as it were, co-sovereign with the state. writes, “It is impossible to condemn totalitarian regimes Even so, once “the elimination of poverty” becomes without also condemning the destructive metaphys- a state objective, the state is bound to treat property not ics which made their happening a certainty.”20 He asks,
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 7 A r t i cl e s
“What would the individualists and free thinkers of 7 Ibid., p. 171. the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries say could they 8 Ibid., p. 11. 9 Ibid. but see what idols a man must now worship, to what 10 Ibid., p. 380. jackboot he must now pay homage; would not the 11 Yves R. Simon, The Community of the Free, trans. From the original superstition they fought seem to be the very acme of French by Willard R. Trask (Lanham, MD: University Press of Amer- ica, 1984). enlightenment, compared to the superstitions which 12 Simon, op. cit., p. 149. have taken its place?” No wonder Pierre Manent called 13 “The real question is whether democracy can lead to totalitarianism, him a “melancholy liberal.” ✠ whether a democratic regime can develop into a totalitarian regime, whether the democratic state may happen to work in such a way as to bring about the elimination of democracy and the establishment Endnotes of totalitarianism” (Simon, p. 150). 1 Bertrand de Jouvenal, On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its 14 de Jouvenal, op. cit., p. 261. Growth, with a Preface by D. W. Brogan; trans. by J. F. Huntington 15 Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, (New York: The Viking Press, 1949). 1999). 2 Paraphrased by D. W. Brogan in his Preface, pp. xvi-xvii. 16 Pipes, op. cit., p. 229. 3 Ibid., pp. 11-12. 17 Ibid., p. 287. 4 Ibid., p. 12. 18 Ibid., p. 288. 5 Ibid. 19 de Jouvenal, op. cit., p. 373. 6 Ibid., p. 157. 20 Ibid., p. 377. Condoms and the Pope
Kenneth D. Whitehead asked, and exactly what he answered, that caused such widespread furor, particularly since part of the contro- I. versy that blew up involved the charge that the Vatican Press Office altered the pope’s actual words. It was a ike the recurring papal travels that have now French journalist, Philippe Visseyrias, who asked the become such an integral part of the modern pope during the flight to Africa: Holy Father, among papal office, Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the many ills that beset Africa, one of the most press- Cameroon and Angola in Africa in March, ing is the spread of AIDS. The position of the Catholic 2009,L was intended to carry the Church’s message of Church on the way to fight it is often considered unre- peace, justice, reconciliation, hope, and healing to some alistic and ineffective. Will you address this theme dur- of the Holy Father’s African children and episcopal ing the journey? brethren, and, in particular, to deliver the Instrumentum The pope’s reply to this question was as follows: Laboris, or Working Document, for the upcoming 2009 I would say the opposite. I think that the most ef- Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of ficient, most truly present player in the fight against Bishops, to representatives of the African hierarchy in AIDS is the Catholic Church herself, with her move- Yaounde, Cameroon; and then Pope Benedict was to ments and her various organizations. I think of the proceed to Luanda, Angola, to celebrate the fifth cente- Sant’Egidio community that does so much, visibly and also behind the scenes, in the struggle against AIDS. nary of the evangelization of that African country. I think of the Camillians, and so much more besides. Alas, as sometimes occurs in the case of “the best laid I think of all the sisters who take care of the sick. I plans,” a single reporter’s question about Africa’s current would say that this problem of AIDS cannot be solved HIV/AIDS epidemic transformed the pope’s trip into an merely with money, necessary though it is. If there is international incident to be viewed with incredulity and no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by re- alarm by enlightened informed opinion nearly every- sponsible behavior], the problem cannot be overcome where, and, not surprisingly, sensationally reported on in by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, the same way by the world press and media. they increase it. The solution must have two elements: In the interests of an accurate historical record, it firstly, bringing out the human dimension of sexual- is important to make clear exactly what the pope was ity, that is to say, a spiritual and human renewal that
8 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 would bring with it a new way of behaving towards in a democratic era to express their opinion on this or others, and, secondly, true friendship offered above other topics, regardless of today’s received opinions. The all to those who are suffering, a willingness to make Vatican statement deplored “the fact that a parliamenta- sacrifices and to practice self-denial, to be alongside ry assembly should have thought it appropriate to criti- the suffering… cize the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview separated from its context, and used How this question and this answer got reported to by some groups with a clear intent to intimidate, as if the world, of course, was that the pope and the Catho- to dissuade the pope from expressing himself on certain lic Church were callously dead set against helping AIDS themes of obvious moral relevance and from teaching victims, and, irrationally and inexplicably, wanted to the Church’s doctrine.” deny to them the condoms that could supposedly save The French government’s statement actually made their lives. It did not help that the Vatican Press Office reference to a “duty to protect human life”—a duty changed “money” in the above statement to “publicity that does not ever seem to have been mentioned by slogans,” and also spoke of a risk of increasing the prob- that same government in connection with, for example, lem by distributing condoms, not that such distribution legalized abortion. More than two months after Pope did, in fact, increase it, as the pope plainly said. Benedict XVI’s visit to Africa, Frances’s first lady, Carla The response by Pope Benedict XVI, including his Bruni, wife of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, was point that the distribution and use of condoms is not still fuming about the pope’s failure to appreciate the ef- an effective answer to Africa’s HIV/AIDS epidemic, but ficacy of condoms; she garnered admiring press coverage rather might even aggravate it, immediately (though reporting her conviction that the Catholic Church badly perhaps not surprisingly) aroused the kind of indigna- needed to “evolve.” Raised Catholic, she found that the tion and outrage that some of the Church’s other coun- pope’s words left her feeling “profoundly secular.” tercultural positions quite regularly bring out today. Formerly “Catholic Spain,” meanwhile, had pub- There were not only the hew and cry and the baying licly pledged to send a million condoms to Africa in of hounds of the mass media, along with the typical response to the pope’s words! Spain’s current pro-con- supercilious and condescending looking down the nose traceptive policies, however, did not lack criticism from so characteristic of certain pundits and other commen- the country’s own Institute for Family Policy, which tators (a practice which then often and very quickly recently issued a paper pointing out that Spain’s “dread- degenerates into near hysteria); there were also the pro- ful” contraceptive policies were having an effect that tests and picketing by homosexual activists scattering was “catastrophic” for the country’s future. With the condoms about in front of churches like confetti. How Western world’s lowest average birth rate—1.07 chil- such people can pretend to be taking a moral stand is dren per couple—and with a high average life expec- hard to fathom, and the degree to which they manage tancy, Spain now has the most rapidly aging population to summon up moral indignation even harder. At the in the European Union. same time, there were even a few rather embarrassed Then, in May, the European Parliament itself con- disavowals of the pope’s position by some Catholics, sidered, but finally turned down by a vote of 253 to including open criticisms of it by some Portuguese and 199, a resolution to “condemn the recent declarations South African Catholic bishops. of the pope, who has prohibited the use of condoms The governments of Belgium, France, and Germa- and warned that condoms can even bring about a ny, no less, actually issued official statements faulting the greater risk of illness.” Although this resolution did pope and reiterating the current supposedly imperative not pass, the fact that 199 European parliamentarians need for widespread condom distribution in the inter- nevertheless found it possible to vote against the pope ests of public health. The Belgian parliament actually on such a pretext was both extraordinary and surely went so far as to pass a resolution instructing the coun- unprecedented. try’s government to “react strongly against any state or Given this kind of alarmed reaction in govern- organization that in the future brings into doubt the ment circles, it was perhaps not any surprise, therefore, benefit of using condoms to prevent transmission of the that in the United States the New York Times and the AIDS virus.” The Vatican felt obliged to reject officially Washington Post should have led the editorialist pack this Belgian government action out of hand, reaffirming in attacking the pope’s position. For them it was evi- that the Church and the Holy Father were surely free dently not an opportunity to be missed to go after
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 9 A r t i cl e s the Church. Their strong disapproval if not hatred for Lancet, British Medical Journal, and even Studies in Fam- Catholic teaching was considerably less controlled than ily Planning have reported this finding since 2004. I these mainstream organs usually manage to keep some- first wrote about putting emphasis on fidelity instead what within bounds. The Times opined that the pope of condoms in Africa in 1988. “deserves no credence when he distrusts scientific find- However that may be, the British medical journal, ings about the value of condoms in slowing the spread The Lancet, whatever it may have previously published of the AIDS virus.” The Post cited a rather confusing to the contrary, in the present instance joined the pack welter of data about the AIDS epidemic which did not in accusing the pope of having “distorted scientific evi- actually apply to the pope’s point, but then neverthe- dence to promote Catholic doctrine.” There was seem- less considered this to be “evidence” which supposedly ingly no way that the pope’s viewpoint could simply be refuted the pope’s position. allowed to stand without challenge. Actually, as several other journalistic outlets Yet another example which seemed to support promptly and more honestly reported, the preponder- Green’s—and the pope’s—conclusion that widespread ance of current research evidence probably tends to condom distribution actually increases rather than de- support the pope’s position. A number of studies have creasing the incidence of HIV/AIDS was the statement shown that it is the reduction in sexual partners rather issued by Asia’s Catholic Association of Doctors, Nurses, than the wide distributions of condoms that tends to and Health Professionals (ACIM-Asia), based in the slow or reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS. For exam- Philippines. ACIM cited the case of Thailand, which ple, Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention aggressively promotes condom distribution and use. Research Project of the Harvard Center for Population This South Asian country with a population of around and Development Studies, told National Review Online; 63 million registered some 570,000 HIV-positive adults “The best evidence we have supports the pope’s com- and children at the end of 2003, and there were some ments.” 58,000 AIDS-related deaths. By contrast, the Philip- Green pointed out further that “there is a consis- pines, with a population of some 80 million, where tent association supported by our best studies, including condom distribution programs have been much more the U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health Survey,’ between vigorously resisted, registered only 9000 HIV-positive greater availability and use of condoms and higher cases during the same time period, and with only 500 (not lower) infection rates.” That’s higher infection rates reported AIDS-related deaths. The ACIM statement where condoms are widely distributed—although the concluded that “the condom-use program in Thailand very idea of this seems counter-intuitive at first.. is not effective.” Nevertheless, “in every African country in which But it was the president of the Catholic League for HIV infections declined,” Green said, this decline has Religious and Civil Rights, William A. Donohue, who not been the result of condom use but “has been as- probably made the same general point in support of sociated with a decrease in the proportion of men and the pope’s position more succinctly; it came in a press women reporting more than one sex partner over the release issued shortly after the whole controversy blew course of a year—which is exactly what fidelity pro- up: “Why,” Donohue asked, pertinently, “is it that New grams promote.” In another interview with Christianity York City, which under Major Michael Bloomberg, Today, Green, who has been criticized by some public has given away tens of millions of free condoms, has an health officials for his support of sexual partner reduc- HIV rate three times the national average”? Anyone pre- tion programs as the answer to AIDS, said that: pared to look at the actual statistical facts of the matter, There is no evidence at all that condoms have worked is surely entitled—if not obliged—to ask: why indeed? as a public health intervention intended to reduce HIV infections at the “level of population.” This is a II. bit difficult to understand. It may well make sense for an individual to use condoms every time, or as often reason why, contrary to what appears to be as possible, and he may well decrease his chances of the almost universal popular belief, public catching HIV. But we are talking about programs, condom distribution seems to increase the large efforts that either work or fail at the level of incidence of HIV infection and AIDS in a countries, or as we say in public health, the level of Apopulation rather than diminishing or curbing them, population. Major articles published in Science, The was perhaps the same reason that has been widely
10 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 and typically voiced by the Catholic bishops of Africa youth, rendering them fragile and making them the themselves. As National Catholic Reporter journalist John objects of sexual desire without the faculty of control R. Allen, Jr., traveling with the pope in Africa, reported: given to them by the Creator.” “In a nutshell the bishops’ position—expressed both Later on, on May 12, Cardinal Polycarp Pengo, by individual prelates and by whole conferences—is archbishop of Dar-es-Salaam in East Africa, and presi- that wide availability of condoms encourages a sense of dent of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of invulnerability among Africans, especially the young, Africa (SECOM), issued another statement on the leading to riskier sexual behavior, and increases the pos- subject, making reference to the media attacks on the sibility of infection.” pope. Inter alia, this SECOM statement observed that This explanation, that condom use just might actu- the pope’s position ally encourage riskier behavior, not only seems to have …did not go down well with certain people, and more than a little plausibility; it accords with the best some sections of the media who for their own selfish current research results to date, as we have just seen. ends will always look for an opportunity to attack the Condoms are notoriously unreliable as contraceptives pope or the Catholic Church. Since then there has in any case, as a matter of fact, with failure rates as high been fierce debate between those who advocate the as twenty percent. Those imagining themselves “safe” use of condoms to help stop the spread of the epi- because of their condom use, however, could well feel demic and those who oppose it. able to engage in riskier behavior anyway, in particular Pope Benedict’s position on condom use is not new. by multiplication of their sexual partners. It has long He was only reaffirming the Church’s position with been argued, of course, that widespread availability and regard to the use of condoms in the fight against use of condoms definitely does encourage sexual pro- AIDS. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, often said miscuity that sexual abstinence, not condoms, was the best way Nevertheless, this line of thought does not seem to prevent the spread of the disease. It is also clear that ever to have occurred to any of those almost automati- the Catholic Church has always been at the forefront cally excoriating the pope. The conventional wisdom of the battle against AIDS and she is most prob- in our contemporary secular culture seems to be that ably the largest private provider of HIV care in the condoms are not only a protection, but are a positive world…. benefit. How could they possibly be considered a risk fac- tor instead? This is evidently not something that is easy This therefore calls for a responsible and moral at- for everybody to see in today’s moral climate. Instead, titude towards sex as the only sure way of succeeding the Catholic Church gets blamed for causing or ag- in the fight against the disease. The Catholic Church gravating the AIDS epidemic, when the true fact of the advocates fidelity in marriage, and chastity and absti- matter is that anyone actually following the Church’s nence from premarital sex as key weapons in the fight moral teachings concerning chastity and abstinence is against AIDS. surely at the lowest possible level of risk for contacting HIV/AIDS. Thus, in spite of the widespread opposition aroused by Moreover, the Catholic bishops in Africa have is- the words of the pope around the world in response to sued at least two additional statements on the subject the question about the African AIDS epidemic, it could following Pope Benedict XVI’s visit, which triggered surely have been no great surprise that the pope would the subsequent aggrieved and outraged worldwide enunciate the teaching of the Church. Moreover, it hullabaloo that ensured. On March 27, shortly after would certainly appear from the statements just quoted the pope’s departure, Cardinal Theodore Adrien Sarr, that the pope enjoys strong support from the leadership archbishop of Dakar and president of the Regional of the Catholic Church in Africa itself. The pope’s posi- Episcopal Conference of West Africa (CERAO), issued tion also garnered a modicum of support from a num- a statement remarking on how “surprised and amazed” ber of other sources, mostly outside Western Europe CERAO was “at the mode in which a phrase spoken and North America. For example, the Russian Ortho- by the Holy Father was completely taken out of con- dox Church promptly issued a statement identifying text.” This CERAO statement maintained that “one moral behavior as the best defense against HIV/AIDS. does not combat AIDS by destroying the spiritual and Similarly, a prominent African AIDS prevention activ- moral resources of man, above all of adolescents and ist, Martin Ssempa, declared that the real culprit in the
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 11 A r t i cl e s spread of the disease “is sexual promiscuity driven by teaching seem to have become persuaded recently by the immorality of the heart.” Even the Belgian Catholic this idea that condom use could be considered licit bishops—rather grudgingly, though, it seemed—de- in this one case of an HIV/AIDS infection within plored their government’s action in censuring the pope. marriage—and not just theologians, but a few bish- But it was hardly to be expected that enlightened in- ops as well. As the National Catholic Reporter reported formed opinion generally in the developed world could in a story back on April 6, 2006, a surprising number accept or countenance the pope’s point of view. of prominent Catholic prelates have already publicly The very fact that the pope was asked the particu- bought into the same line of argumentation, namely, lar question about combating AIDS that he was asked that such condom use to prevent disease could indeed surely indicates how defenders of morality and chastity be licit. Included in the NCR story were the names are distinctly on the defensive in today’s moral climate. of such cardinals as Carlo Maria Martini, formerly of Nevertheless, the answer that the pope gave should not Milan, Belgian Cardinal Godfried Daneels, English really have been all that unexpected. Rather, it should Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Conner, and Swiss Car- have been expected that the pope of Rome, the su- dinal Georges Cottier, formerly theologian of the papal preme authority in the Catholic Church, would reiter- household under Pope John Paul II. ate the constant teaching of that Church. The Church While it may be thought unusual at first sight that has always considered the use of condoms to be wrong. cardinals of the Holy Roman Church should venture It is not a position that has arisen out of some supposed so openly to endorse such unproved moral thinking, hostility or unconcern for AIDS victims. Yet even while many with long memories will recall that a majority of continuing to condemn behavior that she has judged to the cardinals and bishops on Blessed Pope John XXIII’s be immoral, the Church still remains the world’s larg- papal birth control commission back in the 1960s were est single organization taking care of AIDS patients, as prepared to sanction the use of contraception as a the African bishops’ statement noted. There is no lack of remedy for “hard cases” within marriage. As long as a concern for AIDS victims on the Church’s part—quite marriage was generally “open to life,” the idea was that the contrary. Attacks on the Church for supposedly individual contraceptive acts could be countenanced in helping cause or somehow compounding the AIDS some particular cases. As it turned out, however, Pope epidemic are without any foundation whatsoever. Paul VI knew better when he issued his encyclical Hu- But the pope’s answer does point to another im- manae Vitae in the face of the contrary advice of what portant fact about the Church’s negative view regarding was actually a majority of the members of that same condoms even when faced with the ravages of AIDS. papal birth control commission. Pope Paul VI’s Humanae A number of Catholic theologians have recently been Vitae has, in fact, been rather dramatically vindicated in suggesting that the use of a condom just might be licit the light of the rapid depopulation of a formerly Chris- in the case of married couples where one partner is al- tian Europe as a result of todays near universal reliance ready infected with the HIV/AIDS virus. The rationale on and use of contraception—in or out of marriage! is that the use of a condom in such a case would not be Nevertheless, around two years before Pope Bene- primarily contraceptive; the intention would not be to dict XVI’s trip to Africa, according to the same NCR prevent a possible conception—an action forbidden by story just quoted, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, Church teaching, as most people are aware. The inten- president of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral As- tion would instead be to prevent the transmission of the sistance to Health Care Workers, was reported to have HIV/AIDS virus. stated in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Thus, the argument goes, the classic double-effect Repubblica, that his dicastery had been asked to prepare principle would come into play: the prevention of a a document on the subject of possible condom use as possible conception would be a by-product—foreseen an AIDS preventive by Pope Benedict XVI himself. but not intended—of the action taken to prevent the Cardinal Lozano was reported as quite openly favoring transmission of a disease. The double-effect principle al- the option of such a “defensive” use of condoms within lows an unintended negative consequence of an action marriage; in his interview he held that a wife had a not in itself intrinsically evil if a positive good is both right to defend herself against being infected, and could intended and achieved by that action. thus properly require that her husband wear a condom. A number of Catholic theologians not otherwise And as reported at the same time, it was strongly necessarily known to be dissenters from Church moral implied that an official Church document to this effect
12 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 would be issued “soon”—although the then president whole question through; surely they have to show that of the Pontifical Council for the Family, the late Car- condom use is not wrong in itself. dinal Alfonso López Trujillo, strongly maintained the Two years after the original NCR report, however, contrary position, namely, that no use of a condom there has been no further public mention of any possi- could ever be licit, since condom-use was intrinsically ble Roman document allowing any kind of “defensive” evil. Others argued that once the use of a condom ever use of condoms. Nor does it now seem likely that there came to be allowed under any circumstance at all, its ever will be any such document, considering how defi- use could never be limited to one approved circum- nite Pope Benedict XVI proved to be in rejecting con- stance within marriage. dom use as a possible public health measure. The pope Certainly the historical experience related to the did not hesitate for an instant. In his reply to the French former universal Christian teaching prohibiting contra- journalist’s question, he seemed to be absolutely clear in ceptive use would suggest that trying to limit condom his own mind, considering himself to be on very firm use to a marriage where one spouse was infected with ground. And he most certainly came down unequivo- the HIV/AIDS virus would fail. When the Church of cally on the side of the traditional Church teaching England in 1930 broke ranks with the traditional Chris- against any condom use whatever. Moreover, he proved tian teaching prohibiting contraception, it was clearly to be quite calmly willing to incur virtual worldwide specified at the time that contraceptives were only sup- criticism and obloquy by speaking out against condom posed to be employed in genuinely “hard cases” and use, even as a possible safeguard against the transmission within marriage. Yet once contraception came to be of disease. considered licit in any one situation, it very quickly Yet another straw in the wind, perhaps, was the came to be considered licit in virtually every situation— retirement, in April, 2009, of Cardinal Javier Lozano and not only licit but desirable and indeed even im- Barragán as head of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral perative. This, of course, is how contraception is almost Assistance to Health Care Workers. There was no fur- universally regarded today. ther mention of any kind of the Roman document that But once contraception came to be considered he had reportedly been asked to prepare on any “defen- acceptable as a means for managing difficulties within sive” licit use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS infec- marriage—i.e., came to be considered, in effect, as no tion within marriage. longer wrong in itself—it very quickly came to be con- In the mind of Pope Benedict XVI, it would seem sidered, in the minds of almost everybody, as the means that human dignity and the good of the human person by which, “without consequences,” marital acts them- properly understood evidently appear to outweigh any selves no longer needed to be confined to marriage. Far specious and supposedly easy “technical” solution to from helping to alleviate difficulties within marriage, a moral problem. For however the world may wish it contraception came to be one of the principal agents were otherwise, the fact remains that Africa’s current in the current widespread dissolving of marriage bonds HIV/AIDS epidemic is at bottom a moral problem. within society as a whole. Nor is it any surprise at all that Pope Benedict XVI Similarly, the moral acceptance of condom use, should view it as primarily a moral problem, whatever even for the prevention of disease, would surely be most of the rest of the world might continue to imag- likely to have similar unforeseen consequences as well, ine to the contrary. ✠ quite apart from the question of whether such use could ever be considered licit in itself. Deciding that something always considered to be wrong is somehow Kenneth D. Whitehead’s most recent book, Mass Mis- suddenly not wrong in a particular circumstance would understandings: The Mixed Legacy of the Vatican II Liturgical surely not be without consequences, some of them Reforms, was published by St. Augustine’s Press in May, perhaps not immediately foreseeable. However that may 2009. His other new book, The New Ecumenism: How the be, those advocating “defensive” condom use within a Catholic Church after Vatican II Took Over the Leadership marriage where an HIV/AIDS infection is present have of the World Ecumenical Movement, was published by St. at the very least perhaps not adequately thought this Paul’s Alba House in January, 2009.
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 13 A r t i cl e s On Politics and Physics: Stanley Jaki on Science in Islam
By James V. Schall, S. J. and secularization in a unique way because he sees the Georgetown University centrality of science and religion in these very changes while at the same time he rejects the secular humanist “What is happening in the Muslim world is not so implications that seem to be present in Lewis. much an outburst of fanaticism as a frantic last-ditch William F. Buckley, Jr., likewise, has taken note of effort to ward off the specter of —well, not of capital- the perplexity we have in understanding Islamic aims ism, not of Communism, not of hedonism—but of and principles. “We are, after all, face-to-face with science.” something very different from the religion common to —Stanley Jaki, “On Whose Side Is History?”1 our own culture...,” he wrote. In Islam, where The Law as put forth in scripture (the Koran) and tradition (Sun- nah) is “To be reflected exactly not only in the personal I. lives of believers, but also in the laws of the state as well.... The government of Muslim states is explicitly ot since the Crusades, perhaps, has an un- an institution of God.”3 It is this understanding of “The derstanding of Islam’s self-understanding Law” that deserves some further attention, in the light of itself been a more immediate political of Stanley Jaki’s work. issue. Behind this sudden rise of Islamic An abiding theme in the work of Stanley Jaki con- Nunrest is an issue of deeper import. Stanley Jaki has cerns the various still-born historic initiatives to begin been one of the few scholars knowledgeable enough science and to sustain, once begun, its self-generating and careful enough to address the origins of the prob- progress. We might like, perhaps, for cultural or ecu- lem that lies behind the public unrest. At bottom the menical reasons, to believe that science could have issue is nothing less than Islam’s understanding of the commenced just anywhere, at just any time, with just meaning and nature of its God, of Allah. The other and any people, with just any cultural, religious, or philo- more visible civil turmoils are the consequences, car- sophic presuppositions. The fact is, however, that science ried out in different ways, of the implications of this requires certain definite habits of mind, certain under- basic issue. standings about the reality of the world, and certain Bernard Lewis, in his Jefferson Lecture of 1990, epistemological ideas about the relation of mind and saw the issue in terms of “secularism and modernism,” reality. which presumably could be relied upon to tame this Without these specific ideas and habits, moreover, Islamic turbulence. “The war against modernity is… there will be no original or continuing science. To be directed against the whole process of change that has sure, any human being, in any time or place, can in taken place in the Islamic world in the last century or principle learn and understand such principles and hab- more and has transformed the political, economic, so- its we call science if he has the will, talent, and under- cial, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries,” standing to do so. That too is part of the very meaning Lewis continued. of both universal science and universal human nature. It Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a is only in this latter sense of a common human nature form to this otherwise aimless and formless in a real world that we can know with our given intel- “resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the lects that a universal philosophy and an abiding truth forces that have disrupted their societies…robbed them open to all men are possible. of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and, to an In the history of the world, it was neither neces- increasing extent, even their livelihoods.”2 Jaki’s posi- sary nor inevitable that science would develop in the tion addresses the very origins of this modernization first place. And by changing our ideas, it is still possible
14 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 for it to disappear even where it has already material- On the surface of things, however, this position, ized. Furthermore, in those places in the world where that science investigates a real finite world to find its science has not appeared, it will not appear or develop universal laws that can be discovered and formulated by until certain and known ideas and basic views of the the human mind, might seem perfectly obvious were world are accepted. All these observations should be it not for the cultural and theoretical issues involved. stated with the full realization that some scientists can Both the conflicting claims to truth of the various reli- be charlatans, while many errors are found in the very gious and the claims to the un-knowability of truth in effort to develop science, the importance and meaning relativism and multiculturlism make it seem that science of which errors Stanley Jaki has himself clarified in a itself as a claim to truth is a very limited, even danger- magnificent passage in The Relevance of Physics.4 ous thing. If science is a good thing and if it bears a true de- II. scription of an actual world in all its interrelationships, however, ideas—religious, philosophical, racial, or cul- eaders of Jaki’s work are familiar with his tural—that do not allow for this scientific understand- discussions of the fate of science in China, ing must in some sense be not merely unworkable but Greece, India, Mexico, and Islam. Unlike positively wrong. If and to the degree that there is a many historical discussions of the origins scientific truth, positions contradictory to it, which can- Rof science, Jaki takes seriously the specific differences not in principle support its premises, cannot be main- of beliefs, customs, and philosophies as reasons for the tained except at the cost of making science subjective origin and continuation of science or the lack thereof. (Kantianism) or of giving up science altogether—which Jaki is objective enough to grant that certain ideas are a people, a nation, a religion, or a culture is free to do. necessary for certain developments to take place. Not What is most counter-cultural in Jaki’s own work, everything can come from anything. Some ideas, some of course, is his argument, made with great care and theories, some experiments, and some endeavors just erudition that at the origins of science as we know it lie will not work. This relationship is what the very idea in certain theological positions that deal with the actual 6 of truth as a conformity between mind and reality world, particularly those of Creation and Incarnation. The problem of reason and revelation arose because of means. the historic confrontation between Greek science and In the case of Islam, in particular, Jaki argues that philosophy with the three established revelational reli- the particular notion of Allah found in the Muslim gions.7 Primarily, this is an issue in Judaism, Islam, and theologians and philosophers whereby Allah is pure will Christianity, though in some respects Plato is pertinent makes science, in principle, impossible. here also. What is occurring in the Muslim world today is a The most important question that arises, conse- confrontation ... between a very specific God and sci- quently, concerns the relation of Judaism, Christianity, ence which is a very specific antagonist of that God: and Islam to science and its origins. This issue is par- the Allah of the Koran, in whom the will wholly ticularly pertinent since it has been claimed all through dominates the intellect. A thousand years ago the modernity that science undermined religion. Jaki’s great Muslim mystics al-Ashari and al-Ghazzali de- work is precisely to examine the tenuous basis of this nounced natural laws, the very objectives of science, as claim, without denying the problems science causes a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah. religion. The case of Islam falls under this general Today, the impossibility of making ends meet without consideration as an example of a religious theory that science forces the Muslim world to reconsider its no- cannot, in principle, maintain the logic of science and 5 tion of Allah. simultaneously be consistent with itself. Jaki thus sees that the real problem, even with science, Jaki argues that the origin of modern science is is theological. An all powerful God, free even from the medieval, that the first law of motion was a medieval principle of contradiction, makes both the meaning discovery (Burdian). Jaki further argues that this law was of God and of the created world impossible to ascer- originally formulated because the theological position of tain. On this premise, science as an investigation of and Christianity on Creation from nothing required the re- knowledge of a reality that is simply given, but given to jection of a pantheist or animist view of the world, espe- be what it is, becomes impossible. cially a rejection of the notion of the eternity of motion.
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 15 A r t i cl e s
Motion thus had to have an initial impetus or cause. God? At the end of his essay, “The Physics of Impetus Jaki further argues that the doctrine of the Incarnation and the Impetus of the Koran,” Jaki wrote: of Christ was the doctrine that forced attention to the The whole question of why science was not born specificity of the world in time and of each moment and within the Muslim milieu, or the question of why being in it. In general, science could not develop with- the physics of impetus was not formulated there, is out the notion of a beginning in time in which, however, in the end a theological question, which can only be there were stable secondary causes that had their own answered in terms of theology, such as the true nature reality. nature, and stability. Science was an account of of the Koran’s impetus. The significance of this result specific events, specific relationships which were ob- will not seem minor at a time when religious revival served, tested, understood. is at work in the Muslim world with a greater impetus than perhaps ever before in its history.10 III. Clearly, in Jaki’s analysis, some aspect of Allah, as de- scribed in the Koran, makes the ability properly to see ith this background, Jaki has a particu- science impossible, whereas there is something in the lar problem with Judaism, Islam, and Christian understanding of God the Creator that fosters Eastern Christianity, each of which this relationship. would, paradoxically, grant the doc- What is the essence of Jaki’s position? Briefly, that Wtrine of the Creation of the world. Eastern Christianity, the orderly notion of science, the three laws of mo- moreover, would have no difficulty with the Incarna- tion and the engineering developed as a result of these tion but science did not originate there either. Thus, in laws, required a proper view of the actual world and Jaki’s argument, there must be some teaching or doc- what happened within it. The crucial Muslim thinker trine in Western Christianity that was particularly apt is Avicenna (d. 1037). The Koran did have a notion of for the beginnings and progress of science. This was the doctrine of creation from nothing that caused Burdian Creation, but Avicenna held a Plotinian emanationism to realize that motion must have a beginning and not in which creation of new beings from nothing is re- be eternal, that once begun, motion would not stop un- placed by a transformation of God Himself into every- less impeded by something outside of itself. thing else. God eternally produces world, but He is not 11 Jaki, of course, does not deny the basic Christian a Creator. Like the Latin Averrorists, Avicenna and teaching that neither Creation nor Incarnation can be the Arab philosophers put Aristotle’s pantheism ahead proved by science though he does hold that the exis- of the Koran. tence of God can be proved from reason through the The Muslim philosophers held a kind of two truth finite things that exist. Jaki. in agreement with Aquinas, theory to protect both themselves and the Koran. They does not hold that either the doctrine of Creation or opposed, by using uncritically Aristotle the philosopher, Incarnation can be the conclusion of a scientific prem- the more conservative Muslim view of Allah. This con- ise, however much they are not capable of being shown servative view to exalt God or Allah was forced logi- to be contradictory to any truly scientific position. cally to an occasionalist position. Occasionalism denied, Jaki’s position is more subtle, more attuned both to in the name of the power of God, any real causality in the nature of reason and the meaning of revelation. In secondary natures in the world. Thus, if God could cre- his work on Duhem, we find, for example, the follow- ate, it was apparently a greater power for Him to create ing passage: “In a footnote (F.) Mentré felt it important every moment than if He left other beings their own to warn against what he termed an already widespread power to act. Muslim orthodoxy “rejected the notion misinterpretation of Duhem’s thought: “Duhem does of scientific law for fear that it would impose con- not say that modern science is a product of Christian- straints on the infinite power of Allah, the Creator.”12 ity; he rather says that Christianity has been an auxiliary, Since Muslim scholars failed to formulate a proper and indispensable one, to the scientific development.”8 idea of creation from nothing in time from a definite In his footnote to this passage, Jaki comments briefly: beginning, Jaki concludes that this failure is a theologi- “This is an all-important point, often forgotten in sym- cal failure. It results in either occasionalism or panthe- pathetic portrayals of the role of Christianity in the rise ism, neither of which can found science. Jaki further of science.”9 analyzes the position that science is merely a result of What was Jaki’s problem with Islam’s notion of civic development with on need to worry about reli-
16 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 gious or philosophic ideas to support it. The two truth principles are clearly spelled out. Jaki’s service to Islam tradition which proposed to let the two spheres exist is of a piece with his service to Judaism, Christianity, side by side with no attempt to relate one to the other and to science itself, a persistent, clear presentation of left the culture and the philosopher at war each with what science is, what religion is, of how they might itself and with no firm basis for science in either sys- relate to one another. ✠ tem.14 Jaki points out that the exposure of the Muslim Endnotes world to science and technology has made it alert to its own inferiority in the area of science. No theory of 1 Stanley L. Jaki,”On Whose Side Is History?” Change or Reality and exploitation or military submission will avoid the real Other Essays (Lanham, MD.: University Press of America, 1986), problem which is the understanding of the world and 242. its causes, including the nature of God and creation For a general view of Jaki’s work, see Paul Haffner, Creation and from nothing, that will make science possible. Essen- Scientific Creativity A Study in the Thought of S. L. Jaki (Front Royal, tially, what Jaki is arguing is a religious and philosophic VA.: Christendom College Press, 1991); P. F. Hodgson, “The Signifi- consistency of idea and action that would in fact result cance of the Work of Stanley L. Jaki,” The Downside Review, 105 in a true representation of God and the world, one (1987). which in fact has been worked out in the history of 2 Bernard Lewis, 19th Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, “Western science. In this context, it would be wrong to con- Civilization: A View from the East,” Washington, D. C., May 2, sider Jaki either as anti-Muslim or pro-Christian, but 1990, 23. as someone who sees where the issues lie and who is 3 William F. Buckley, Jr., “Unfamiliar Foe Among Us,” The Washing- willing to spell them out and articulate their relation to ton Times, July 8, 1993, G3. a true understanding of science and its history. 4 Stanley Jaki, The Relevance of Physics (Chicago: University of “The Muslim world is fully justified both in de- Chicago Press, 1966), 219-21. ploring the abuses of science and in trying to apply 5 “On Whose Side Is History?” ibid., 242. On the relation of this same science in a humane way,” Jaki concluded with much idea of the deity as pure will to Occam and Hobbes, see Josef Pieper, sympathy. Scholasticism (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), Chapter XI. 6 But before that humane application takes place, there See Stanley L. Jaki, Universe and Creed (Milwaukee: Marquette has to be science, that is, there have to be minds fully University Press, 1992), 86 pp. familiar with science. This view, however, demands that 7 See Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New there be minds fully imbued with the thinking under- York: Scribner’s, 1938); James V. Schall, Reason, Revelation, and lying science especially if they wish to be creative in the Foundations of Political Philosophy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana science. The question is then whether the present-day State University Press, 1987); Faith and Political Philosophy: The Muslim reawakening, which is a reassertion of the role Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934- of the Koran in every facet of life, can be reconciled 1964, Edited by Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper (University Park, PA.:Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). Jaki’s own most with the thinking demanded by science.14 thorough treatment of these issues is in The Road of Science and the Clearly, on the basis of the Muslim theoretic under- Ways to God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). standing of Allah and of the consequences of that 8 Stanley L. Jaki, Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem understanding of the world and its laws, Jaki does not (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 231-32. think the impetus of the Koran is compatible with the 9 Ibid., Ftn. #36, 232. impetus of science. 10 Stanley Jaki, The Physics of Impetus and the Impetus of the Koran,” Neither wars nor acrimony will resolve the valid- The Absolute Beneath the Relative and Other Essays (Lanham, MD.: ity or invalidity of this position, only the accurate and University Press of America, 1988), 151. true understanding of both the theoretic positions of 11 Ibid., 146-47. the Koran and of science. Eventually, true ideas must 12 Ibid., 147, replace untrue ones. No religion or philosophy or 13 Ibid., 148-49. science would, in Jaki’s view, have it otherwise if such 14 Ibid., 148.
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 17 A r t i cl e s The Merry Widow
By James V. Schall, S. J. rich widow marries again to a foreigner, the country is Georgetown University in danger of losing her millions, a not un-contemporary theme. But it is an operetta of true love finally real- First published on-line, First Principles Journal, ized. This is where Count Danielo, her once spurned April 25, 2009. admirer, comes in to save both love for Hanna and the money for the country. o doubt the most popular operetta ever And we have Maxim’s in Paris with its dancing is Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow. Its Ger- girls, an example of how not to live a staid life back man title is Die lustige Witwe, in French, home in the boondocks of Pontevedra or wherever. La veuve joyeuse. It has been played by Anyone who sees the finale must wonder how is it pos- Nprofessionals and amateurs so many times all over the sible for him not to have joined this cast, even as a klutz world, in every opera house, in many languages, that in its least of roles, for one of its thousands of perfor- it is almost impossible to record how many. In 1934, mances over the years? Someone is always redoing it. It Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier starred in all reminds me a bit of Plato’s remark about what we it in a black and white movie. I saw a used DVD of this do in heaven, the “singing, the dancing, and the sacri- version on Amazon for $3.93, a steal if there ever was ficing.” one. What great singer has not been Hanna Glawari, At the particular performance that I attended, we the merry widow? I note, among others, Frederica von had two intermissions. During these intermissions, a Stade, Dagmar Schellenberger, Dorothy Kirsten, and lady played the music of the show we were attending Beverly Sills. Even Lana Turner played the part in the on a grand piano in the foyer. After some time during 1952 Technicolor movie version. The first Hanna was the first intermission, I noticed a very lovely little girl Mizzi Gunthur, on December 30, 1905, in Vienna. The on the floor before us. Her age I estimated at around first American performance was at the New Amsterdam three. Her mother was sitting by the piano watching Theater in New York, on October 21, 1907. her. As it turned out, after intermission, they were sit- Of course, what is great about the operetta is the ting right in front of us. music, so lively and memorable, and yes, so often senti- The little girl wore a lovely dress with long pink mental. One sings it to himself for days after hearing it. leggings, her long dark hair in a bow. Her shoes were Everyone has probably heard it even before seeing and off. She began to dance by herself. She obviously had hearing it on stage. Happily, I was invited to see a local had some ballet lessons, as she carefully moved in front production at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theatre in Rock- of us. Soon, many of the people around her began to ville, Maryland, one Sunday afternoon, as performed watch her. By objective standards, the majority of the by a local, mostly amateur, opera company. I had not audience was far closer to Schall’s age than the little heard or seen The Merry Widow in years, but I could not girl’s. pass up the opportunity when I was kindly invited. I The girl was quite oblivious to the fact that every- do remember seeing it years ago, I cannot recall where, one was watching her. She twirled and skipped. Often perhaps at the Kennedy Center. Even then, I was struck she fell in making a step, but gracefully came right up by the fact that it was something that was perfect in its again. Her posture was very erect. Her movements with kind. her hands and body were very graceful. She did not Much exuberance enlivens this musical for sure. come to anyone, not even her mother. Her head was The program notes said that basically its plot was the back; she looked into the distance. She just danced by traditional “battle of the sexes.” But in the outcome, herself. She was really beautiful. She reminded me of both sides happily win, as it should be, if such a battle that passage in Plato in which he observes that the very does indeed exist. The plot does have to do with young cannot help but dance. money, politics, and Pontevedra, the legendary German When, after the Vilia aria, the second intermission duchy from which Hanna and her money hails. If the came, even more people were watching the girl. Again,
18 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 she seemed very distant, curiously so. It was almost as see sights of such incredible beauty that we would be if she knew there was an audience to watch her, but it paralyzed in inaction if we paused before them all. Yet was not us folks in front of her. One wonders, on seeing we know that this pause is what we should do. her dance, how something quite that lovely can exist. Aristotle said that human life is filled with many But it does. You are seeing it. There she is, dancing by different dramas, not just our own, not just one big one. herself. Would she some day, I wondered, be a “Merry And that is also the lesson of the Merry Widow, why, I Widow” herself? Would she waltz with some future think, that it comes back again and again, why everyone Count Danielo? The very notion of a widow in this wants to sing it, play in, dance in it. For one moment, operetta connotes both the sadness of widowhood and “Chez Maxim’s” is there before us and the garden of the abidingness of life and love beyond the initial sad- Hanna Glawari, with the Ambassador and the counts, ness. the suitors and the ladies, the waltzes, the machinations, As we left the theatre, the mother and the little the human condition of perhaps a happier time, yet of girl were sitting in the lobby. I said to the mother as a time out of time when we behold something beauti- I passed, “That was the best intermission I have ever ful that we will never see again in this passing world. In had.” The mother smiled and thanked me. This little seeing again the Merry Widow, in seeing this lovely little girl I will never see again. In fact, she will grow up and three-year old dance by herself, I realized that I again never be quite in that lovely way a three year old can had seen something “perfect in its kind.” We are given be That is how our lives are constructed. Every day we life for such moments, I think. ✠ The Good Habit: The Depiction of Nuns in the Novels of Rumer Godden
By Glenn Statile ible one, but Rumer’s marriage to Foster was neither St. John’s University happy nor compatible. While Foster was a dashing and swashbuckling type, he was by no means Godden’s Rumer and Her Sisters intellectual peer. It is even said that he mistook Omar Khayyam for a kind of curry. God d’en was originally n the pantheon of accomplished women Catholic a good day greeting meaning “Good day to you.” It novelists of the last century the quintessentially hails from a time when Northwest France, especially English Rumer Godden (1907—1998) is not near- Normandy, belonged to the English. The French called ly as much of a household name as the Norwegian the English soldiers recruited from this area “Goddens.” I Rumer Godden was taken by her parents to In- Sigrid Undset or that grand dame of the American South, Flannery O’Connor. Margaret Rumer God- dia in 1908 where her father ran a shipping line. One den was born on December 10th, 1907 at Eastbourne might with only a dash of poetic license claim that her in Sussex England. Her great grandfather was Thomas body of literary work represents a dialectical forging of Hewitt Key, a philologist who had been appointed to a the stereotypical coolness of the English demeanor and professorship in astronomy and mathematics at the new the hot Indian sun that baked both her body and mind University of Virginia by its founder Thomas Jefferson. during many of her formative years. Sent to her grand- During a long life she was married twice, to Laurence mother’s London home for a year in 1913, she would be Foster—a stockbroker, from 1934 until 1946; and to shipped back to India at the outset of World War I in James Haynes-Dixon—a civil servant, from 1949 until 1914. Ironically, it took an outburst of war to create the his death in 1973. G.K. Chesterton once quipped that conditions for the continuation of her idyllic childhood he knew many a happy marriage but never a compat- in India. In a short story entitled “The Little Fishes,”
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 19 A r t i cl e s which appeared in the September 18th, 1954 issue of A visiting philanthropist on a tour of the slums of the New Yorker, Godden provides a fictional account of Calcutta once told Mother Theresa that he would not the unkind treatment both she and her sister Jon had do her work for $10,000.00. To which she responded: received at the hands of the nuns in an Anglican con- “Neither would I.” While anyone with a charitable vent school after returning to England from India in sensibility can appreciate such a joke it is tailor made 1920. Her later, predominantly positive, writing about for Rumer Godden. nuns was at times psychologically colored by this early Rumer Godden was the second of four sisters, negative experience. This was especially true in the case the oldest of whom, named Jon, was also a fairly well of Black Narcissus (1938) which Godden tells us was known and accomplished novelist in her own right. written “in a spirit of revenge” (Publisher’s Weekly, vol. But my focus in this essay will be those religious sisters 196, 11/10/1969, p. 18). Rumer’s move toward Catholi- brought to life so strikingly in the three aforemen- cism was initially motivated by her own daughter Jane’s tioned Godden novels, although it should be kept in decision to become a Catholic in 1956. While Rumer mind that several of her short stories and a novel en- was received into the Church in 1957, she would not titled The Dark Horse (1981) also take up the nun theme. become a fully-fledged Catholic until 1968, by which It is important to note however that nuns were not the time the obstacle of her divorce to her still living first only literary subject that Godden treated with the flair husband had been satisfactorily overcome. of a specialist. Her literary oeuvre, consisting of over In a literary career that spanned more than sixty twenty novels, short stories, poetry, books for children, years Rumer Godden lit up the literary firmament non-fictional works—including several of an autobio- quite brightly with her talent for evoking the domestic graphical nature, amounts to an amazingly coherent and lives and vocations of those women so aptly character- recurring concentration on such seemingly disparate ized as brides of Christ. Godden’s gift, as manifested in themes as nuns, children, the ballet, animals—especially such mature post-Catholic works as In This House of dogs, India, houses, and lots of flowers. Godden’s pen- Brede (1969) and Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy (1979), was chant for delving into such diverse topics and the pro- intimately connected to her adult conversion to Ca- lific body of work she amassed, publishing her last novel tholicism. It was also influenced by her childhood in entitled Cromartie versus the God Shiva (1997) in the year India, that subcontinental jewel of the English empire, prior to her death in 1998, can be summed up in an old whose long languorous days and sweltering nights nur- Indian proverb. In an aptly entitled autobiographical tured in her an almost sensuous appreciation for the memoir entitled A House With Four Rooms (1989) God- personally edifying virtues of contemplation and silence. den writes that “everyone is a house with four rooms; a In an article entitled “On Words” Godden attributed physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of her attunement to the infinite variety of language to us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless the vividness of the Hindustani language to which she we go into every room every day, even if only to keep was exposed in her early years. As a literary chronicler it aired, we are not a complete person.” of the lives of nuns in such novels as Black Narcissus (1938), In This House of Brede (1969), and Five for Sorrow, Black Narcissus (1938) Ten for Joy (1979) Godden easily belongs in the com- pany of such first rate recent contributors to the nun lack Narcissus was Rumer Godden’s third novel. genre as Ron Hansen—Mariette in Ecstasy (1996) and It tells the story of a group of Anglican nuns Mark Salzman—Lying Awake (2001). B who travel to a remote location in the Himalayas Francis Mauriac once said that “If you would tell in order to establish a school and a hospital. In addi- me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but tion to these overt and worthy goals, the less transparent what he rereads.” One could say something similar dual incentives for establishing a community of nuns in about the heart of anyone who puts himself or herself a distant mountain enclave are those of converting the on a steady diet of good religious novels like those heathens to Christianity and taming them by the very just mentioned. In a posthumously published fictional civilizing effects which accrue to anyone who learns work Mark Twain wrote that “Against the assault of the fine art of English gardening. When Rumer God- laughter nothing can stand.” With the wisdom of such den told her father that she was writing Black Narcis- wit in mind I would like to share with you a humor- sus he advised her not to waste her time, for nobody ous but true anecdote from the life of Mother Theresa. would read it, proving once again, given the novel’s
20 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 mostly critical success and longevity, that father doesn’t perfume made from the flower known as the black nar- always know best. cissus Godden is able to highlight the differences between Black Narcissus was made into a feature film in the exotic mysticism of Indian culture and Anglicized 1947 which starred Deborah Kerr as the Anglican nun Christianity, as well as to focus attention upon the van- Sister Clodagh. Kerr would also portray a nun in the ity involved in any expectation that the latter could ever John Huston film costarring Robert Mitchum entitled transform the former into its own mirror image. Heaven Knows Mr. Allison. Clodagh’s lack of humility in the eyes of her own superior is contrasted with what is In This House of Brede (1969) projected by Godden as the virtue of her having a re- alistic sense of her own competence, which one might n a short story entitled “No Virtuoso” Rumer God- argue is the proper way to understand humility. Just den presaged her later extremely sympathetic and as chastity is not to be equated with celibacy, humility Iwell-balanced treatment of nuns as presented in her ought not to be equated with self-abasement. Godden novel entitled In This House of Brede. The novel por- does an excellent job throughout the novel in putting trays a contemplative community of Benedictine nuns both the self-confidence of Clodagh and the voca- in England. The short story deals with a young girl tion of any woman who aspires to the religious life on who takes the veil for the right reason, for the glory of trial, both credibly and reverently. With In This House God rather than as a refuge from the world after hav- of Brede and Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy readers of Rumer ing been jilted by some unrequited love. The Rule of Godden eventually learn that the author will come to St. Benedict is, technically speaking, a book for monks affirm the self-sacrifice involved in choosing to live the living in community under the authority of an ab- highly regulated and confined life of a cloistered nun. bot. Since the seventh century it has also worked well The film version of Black Narcissus led to a protest for religious communities consisting of women, and in Catholic circles as the cinematic depiction of the subsequent to the Reformation it has also come to Anglican nuns made it difficult to distinguish them be adopted by Protestants and Anglicans. The Rule is from their Catholic counterparts. What was objected moderate in its demands in relation to other monastic to was neither the holiness nor the charity of the nuns, approaches and fosters an appreciation of the relational which is artfully conveyed in both the novel and the nature of the human being. film, but the murderous and utterly worldly inclinations Dame Felicitas of Stanbrook Abbey, the model for of one of their number. A petition of protest against the the fictional Abbey of Brede, told Rumer Godden that film was issued and signed by several hundred Catholic she wished “someone would write a book about nuns priests and nuns at a conference held at Notre Dame in as they really are, not as the author wants them to be.” 1947. Godden’s so-called spirit of revenge, if one takes Godden writes that “I thought of Black Narcissus and her own turn of phrase to heart, would also manifest blushed.” After the death of Godden’s mother, Dame itself in a 1945 short story entitled “Sister Malone and Felicitas arranged for Rumer to recuperate at Stan- the Obstinate Man” in which an Anglican nun serving brook, at which time she was able to attend a solemn as a nurse in India fails to regard the natives as persons. profession. Rumer by that time, as part of her gravita- Godden herself hated the film but this was due in most tion toward the Catholic Church, had already been part to the artificiality of the Himalayan sets rather than accepted as an oblate member of the community—one anything to do with the chemistry of the explosive of a group of lay people attached to the abbey who are emotions that erupt upon the silver screen. entitled to wear the symbolic scapular beneath their The title of Black Narcissus ties in nicely with the clothes, indicating allegiance to St. Benedict. Muriel narrative thread of the novel. “Black” of course conveys a Spark also visited Stanbrook Abbey for research pur- sense of the sinister, the constant companion and coun- poses while working on what would become The Ab- terpoint of the good both in actual life as well as in the bess of Crewe (1974), a satire which spoofs the Watergate film, while “Narcissus” conjures up the mythological tale scandal. Sylvia Plath stayed incognito at Stanbrook involving the deleterious if not sinful effects of vanity during the final year of her unfortunate life, while both upon the human soul. Rumer Godden would have very Alec Guiness and the anti-war poet Siegfried Sassoon likely been familiar with Herman Hesse, whose own also spent some time in residence at the Abbey. retelling of the mythological Narcissus story, Narcissus and In This House of Brede realistically depicts the day in Goldmund, was published in 1930. By means of an Indian and day out frustrations and triumphs in the lives of a
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 21 A r t i cl e s
community of cloistered and contemplative Benedictine nuns living in the south of England within the walls of Five For Sorrow, Ten for Joy (1979) a monastery called Brede from the mid 1950s until the After publishing In This House of Brede Rumer Godden’s immediate aftermath of Vatican II in the late 1960s. It second husband James Haynes-Dixon implored her to is part of Godden’s artful craft to reveal how such frus- never write another novel about nuns, but to write a trations can function, not only as obstacles to holiness, book about a brothel instead. In the autobiographical but also as a basis for elevating oneself toward spiritual memoir entitled A House With Four Rooms Godden perfection. The protagonist of the novel is the middle writes that “Ten years later I wrote a book about both.” aged and worldly wise Philippa Talbot, a successful civil The title is an obvious reference to the mysteries of the servant, widow, and mother of a long dead child. She is rosary in which the joyous and glorious incidents in forty two years old at the time when she opts to trade the lives of Jesus and Mary outweigh those whose suf- in her secular lifestyle within the rapidly changing fering gives rise to great sorrow. world for a mode of living in which the eternal verities The novel tells the story of Elizabeth Fanshawe and virtues will eventually, albeit not without suffer- and her transformation from victim and victimizer to a ing, reform her. She is by nature a domineering woman person who tries to avoid the sole tragedy of human life, who discovers that dominance leads to a dead end. At which as Leon Blois tells us in The Woman Who Was Poor first her dominance is held in check to an extent as the result of her attempting to conform to the expected is that of not being a saint. In 1944 at the young age of behavior of one who wears a habit. In time the Rule of twenty-one, Elizabeth enlisted in the English army. Her St. Benedict will enable Philippa to appreciate that it is assignment as a driver took her to Paris at a time when only with obedience and true submission that authentic the French were jubilant over the liberation of their city. selfhood lies. Analogous to the statue of Our Lady in Intoxicated from hours of celebratory drinking, Elizabeth the novel that is brought to life from a mere hunk of or Lise encounters a charming criminal named Patrice wood, Dame Philippa is herself transformed into a true Ambard. She is subsequently seduced, falls madly in love bride of Christ. The path which leads from Philippa’s with Patrice, and is put to work in the brothel which refusal to yield herself until her eventual surrender to serves as his livelihood. While not exactly an Horatio Al- God is the key to understanding the way of life which ger story, Lise will eventually rise to the highest echelons the novel portrays. The novel turns on the question of of bordello life when she becomes the madam and pro- whether an intelligent, competent, self-sufficient, even curess in charge of the sordid daily operations of Patrice’s arrogant woman of the world can give the greatest gift establishment. Lise is eventually displaced in the affec- of all, which is to give oneself away to God. tions of Patrice by an underage street urchin of unfortu- In This House of Brede was an immediate criti- nate upbringing named Vivi. Nevertheless, Lise adopts a cal success, It was a Book of the Month Club main maternal attitude and affection for Vivi which will sur- choice in the United States. Godden participated in vive even Vivi’s attempt to kill her at the end of the novel. a publicity tour of the United States which included Such a bond leads Lise to kill Patrice in order to prevent a speaking engagement at the Library of Congress. him from harming Vivi. As a result Lise is convicted and There was one notable critic however who did com- sentenced to a number of years in prison. While there plain to Godden about the novel, saying that except in she undergoes a conversion to the Catholic faith as the the word “Sussex” there is no sex in the novel. When result of visits from the Sisters of Bethany, a Dominican a film of the novel was made in 1975, starring Diana order of nuns devoted to Saint Mary Magdalene, which Rigg as Philippa Talbot, Rumer Godden ensured that in real life was founded by Pere Marie Jean Joseph Lataste Stanbrook Abbey would receive a large proportion of in the 1860s. its earnings. The name of the fictional Abbey, Brede, Lise enters the Sisters of Bethany upon her release can mean either bread or meat. The nuns of Brede are from prison and takes the name of Sister Marie Lise du concerned with both material and spiritual sustenance; Rosaire. By the end of the novel she is tracked down the ordinary, rather tasteless diet prepared in their by Vivi, who has never forgiven her for killing Patrice. kitchen and the Eucharist which both renews and el- While in adoration of the Eucharist, Lise’s near ecstati- evates their efforts to give themselves entirely to God. cally charged body begins to sense impending danger as Vivi approaches from behind. Lise’s protégé, a younger nun named Lucette, makes a sacrifice of her own life in
22 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 order to save that of Sister Lise. Yet the novel ends on a Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is a novel about the excru- happy note as Lise hopes that someday Vivi will return ciating process of sanctity, excruciating because it is so to retrieve a pair of broken rosary beads that she has closely linked by Godden to the cross. In taking a life- mended for her estranged spiritual daughter. time for Lise to achieve the station of sainthood God- Five For Sorrow, Ten for Joy is a very Catholic novel den gives us a fictional affirmation of Aristotle’s insight about a woman who turns from sin to sanctity. The that happiness (eudaimonia) “can not be achieved in less heroine Elizabeth Fanshawe gets caught up in the kind than a complete lifetime; one swallow does not make of swirling vortex of social change so ably charted by a summer, neither does one fine day. And one day, or such post-conciliar novelists as David Lodge. Despite indeed any brief period of felicity does not make a man this very human tendency to get carried along by the happy” (Nicomachean Ethics I, vii, 16). Summoned by selfish spirit of the times, as Scott and Zelda were in the calls of the rosary, the cross, and the sisterly angels the previous generation, there is however implanted who announced the good news of salvation during her within each of us made in the image and likeness of years of imprisonment, Lise eventually comes to learn God an underlying universal desire to cast off the con- the full measure of her worth as both a woman and a fines of the false freedom of individuality in a search for human being. It was a lesson that St. Augustine, another the true freedom which can only be found in relation- sinner turned saint, had already learned and tried to ship to Christ. Oscar Wilde once said that he preferred teach us so long ago. It is a lesson which still reverber- a woman with a past and a man with a future. In the ates in the hearts of anyone willing to drown out the character of Elizabeth Fanshawe the venerable Rumer deafening noise of selfishness that pursues us into each Godden has given us an indelible fictional portrait of a of the four rooms of our being that Rumer Godden woman with a material and sinful past which pales in refers to in her autobiography. It is this: the true mea- comparison to her spiritual and hope filled future. sure of love is to love without measure. ✠
Reflections on Medjugorje
By Eugene Diamond, M.D. scientific skills and detachment. The fundamental question for any person on pil- mile Zola, when visiting the Grotto at grimage to a shrine is “Do you believe in miracles.” In Lourdes and seeing the discarded crutches other words, do you believe that God, as the author of and canes, was said to have remarked, “What, creation, does in fact intervene to suspend the laws of Eno wooden legs?” Although there is strong nature in any particular instance? Some miracles we be- evidence that Zola actually witnessed a miraculous lieve as a matter of obligation. Jesus did, as the gospels cure during his visit, he became a cynical and persis- tell us, suspend the laws of nature to allow Him to walk tent critic of the alleged healing powers of the Shrine. on water, heal the leper, cure blindness and deafness, Alexis Carrell, on the other hand, visited the Shrine raise Lazarus from the dead and heal the servant of the out of curiosity and with an open mind. He verified a Centurion, among other things. Were miracles a feature miraculous cure of tuberculosis peritonitis by actually exclusively of Christ’s public life or are miracles ongo- examining the patient. He reported his findings, as an ing through time? The purpose of the miracles per- agnostic, to the French Academy of Sciences, which at- formed by Jesus, were apparently intended to increase tributed the cure to some poorly understood psychoso- the faith of the people. Does God intervene in nature matic phenomenon rather than as a miracle. The mem- now for the same purpose of demonstrating His power bers of the Academy rose up in righteous indignation and enhancing faith? to expel him and, ultimately to lead him to emigrate In the scientific community, one is likely to find to the United States. While Carrell was not a believer, the most outspoken critics of the possibility of miracles. he eventually won a Nobel Prize which attested to his This happens despite the fact that almost every physician
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 23 A r t i cl e s will attest to the fact that he has attended a patient who ciated with acceptance or rejection of the occurrences survived against overwhelming odds from an expected at Medjugorje. fatal outcome. As my response to such vociferous dis- The analysis of Franz Werfel has become somewhat claimers of the possibility of miracles, I usually ask, “If of a cliche but it is, nonetheless, highly relevant. As he your wife were sick, would you pray for her?” When wrote in the Song of Bernadette, “For those who believe, firmly reassured that they would, of course, pray for no explanation is necessary; For those who do not a near relative’s recovery, I respond “You are praying believe no explanation will suffice.” As with Lourdes, for a miracle.” A person who prays for a sick person is belief is the key but the credulous are still at risk. The asking that God interfere in nature to alter the course apparitions at Medjugorje are unique in having access of an illness to convert an unfavorable outcome to a to modern scientific technology to help to validate favorable one. One physician friend of mine whose some-key points. In the publications of Dr. Henri Jo- wife had a malignancy, protested that he would only yeaux, written with Rene Laurentin, some factual data pray that there would be no pain associated with the emerge. Using the technology of evoked visual re- disease. Even this, however, is a petition for a miracle sponse and evoked auditory response, there is scientific since what the prayer asks is that the natural course of evidence from tracings taken on the visionaries dur- the disease be altered to spare the patient from painful ing the alleged apparition, that they are in fact hearing complications. something and seeing something. Such evidence would During the last century, most of the miraculous oc- not be available if the visions were a hoax nor would currences in the Catholic tradition have been associated it be present if the young people were hallucinating. with Marian apparitions. The inevitable response to the Likewise, frame by frame analysis of time lapse motion huge outpouring of faith occasioned by the few appari- pictures indicate that the children begin to pray, alleg- tions authenticated by the Church is the proliferation edly in response to an invitation to do so by the Blessed of many unsubstantiated claims fabricated by alleged Mother, at the same precisely synchronized moment. witnesses for a variety of motives. Some of these are re- This would seemingly rule out the occurrence of joint jected out of hand as transparent hoaxes but others are prayer in imitation of one or the other of the vision- surrendered with great reluctance by impassioned par- aries acting as a leader. The state is described by Dr. tisans. Some of these partisans see the disqualification Joyeaux as an ecstacy but there is no parallel state de- of certain occurrences as part of a grand plot initiated scribed in the medical literature under a different set of by diabolical forces with certain ecclesiastical authori- circumstances. This scientific evidence is not irrefutable ties as co-conspirators. The painful interlude between but it would seem to refute, at least, a completely fabri- claim, counterclaim, and either acceptance or rejection cated conspiracy. has caused the Church in its wisdom to engage in ap- Inevitably one must depend on personal first-hand propriately cautious evaluation of each new alleged experience to a large extent in evaluating the verac- phenomenon. The withholding of official sanction is ity of the Medjugorje story. It must be conceded that particularly important in view of the predisposition the ambience of the Yugoslavian pastoral countryside of the faithful to succumb to what Ronald Knox has is, of itself, an influence to be considered. My own visit called Enthusiasm. The temperate evaluation of alleged came at the urging of five of my sons and daughters miracles is a form of damage control to limit the dis- who preceded me on pilgrimage. I should emphasize enchantment occasioned by revelations of deception or that they are not unsophisticated children but adults clerical confidence game which sometimes occur. with advanced degrees (M.D., J.D., M.S.N., and two The alleged Marian apparitions at Medjugorje M.S.W.s). I was nonetheless, reluctant and unconvinced are currently in this stage of agonizing appraisal. It is until I received an invitation to speak at a meeting in obvious that objective evaluation is extremely difficult Split, Yugoslavia, close to Medjugorje. Since the invita- against a background of literally hundreds of thousands tion was quite unexpected and came from a colleague of pilgrimages to the site with innumerable testimonials I had not seen for 15 years, it was hard for me to deny to personal faith experiences elicited by such pilgrim- that I was somehow being summoned to the scene. ages. The firm unwillingness of the Holy See to extend It is difficult to capsulize the experience at Med- official recognition to the apparitions or even to sanc- jugorje but I will give what are only personal impres- tion Church sponsored travel is validated by the ines- sions. First, of all, in all honesty, it must be said that capable ambivalence and strong emotional charge asso- most of what is said by those on the site, would be of
24 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 dubious credibility. There are always numerous enthu- Fatima indicating that such experiences can be deemed siasts who are anxious to tell you of their personal con- authentic. versation with the Virgin or of a sighting in a treetop or Perhaps nothing is more damaging to the credibil- on a belfry. I suppose that all of us as pilgrims are long- ity of the Medjugorje apparitions than the implacable ing for such an experience or for the spiritual metanoia opposition of the Bishop of Mostar, the ordinary of the which would inevitably follow. Such happenings are diocese in which Medjugorje is located. Bishop Zanic mere distractions which do not prove or disprove the has a long standing incompatibility with the Francis- authenticity of the revelations described by the vision- cans who were so actively involved in the early activi- aries. If these are blocked out, to the extent possible, the ties of the visionaries. In contrast to the viewpoint of central theme and impact of the place is quite extraor- the Bishop of Mostar, Bishop Franic, the retired Bishop dinary. The unearthly silence of thousands of pilgrims of Split has expressed a preliminary endorsement of at the top of Apparition Mountain or Mount Krizevac the pilgrimages. Marijo Zivkovic, one of the leading during the period when the visionaries are said to be Catholic laymen of Croatia has expressed the opinion engaged in listening to the Blessed Mother is certainly that disagreement between the bishops had a salutary dramatic and unprecedented in my experience. political effect. The Communist government of Yugo- Some years ago, I was able to march in one of the slavia was much less inclined to suppress the activities processions at Lourdes. Physicians who are members of at Medjugorje as a religious plot in view of the public the International Medical Association of Lourdes are disagreement between the bishops. Zivkovic has also privileged to join the procession immediately behind expressed the viewpoint that the bloodless revolution the clergy who carry the Blessed Sacrament to bless the which now has removed from power the Titoist Com- sick and disabled. Even after thirty five years of hos- munist party is attributed by devout Catholics in Croa- pital practice, I have never experienced such a scene of tia and Slovenia to the intervention of the Virgin of concentrated severely handicapped and pre-terminally Medjugorje. ill patients. The benefit of Lourdes to the 99+ % who Much of what has been attributed to the young are not cured is surely a new acceptance of their prob- seers in their public utterances seems inconsistent lem and a new access to a spiritual dimension to their and, at times, protective of the political status of their suffering. Franciscan sponsors. I suspect that if the statements of Likewise, the overriding impact of the scene at the peasant children at Fatima or those of Juan Diego Medjugorje is one of profound devotion and prayerful during interrogation were to be subjected to the same reawakening. There is a fundamental and uncompli- scrutiny, similar inconsistencies would have appeared. cated spiritual message which might be disappointing The Blessed Mother seems to have established a pat- to those looking for exhilaration or transports of in- tern of appearing to simple peasant youths rather than spiration. Any individual response would obviously be sophisticated intellectuals. It would be unfair to hold conditioned by one’s personal history, expectations, and them to higher standards of consistency than St. Peter spiritual readiness. No multiplication of favorable re- or Doubting Thomas. sponses would confirm that Medjugorje is bonafide any My own inclination is to keep an open mind about more than such experiences could be cancelled out by Medjugorje and to treasure the positive spiritual expe- a plurality of negative responses. riences of my pilgrimage there. At the same time, I do Peripheral to the profoundly moving spiritual ex- not trivialize the potential scandal of any future expo- perience of the Medjugorje pilgrimage are other events sure of irregularities nor do I minimize the devastating to which differing degrees of significance have been at- effects of such an exposure on the faithful who have tached. These are the phenomena of the changing color invested much devotional capital in the shrine. of the rosaries and the so-called “spinning sun”. My There are many reasons to have confidence in the own rosary did unquestionably change color from silver objective investigating powers of the pope and his ap- to gold. I attach no necessarily miraculous significance pointed representatives. In the meanwhile, open discus- to this occurrence which could conceivably be related sion and debate should continue and we should not yet to an environmentally driven chemical effect. The be prepared to foreclose either the strong opinions of change is factual, however, and not imaginary. I did not critics or of advocates alike. The reality of the present witness the sign of the sun. It is said that a quarter of situation should be acknowledged honestly, however. a million people experienced a similar solar display at The jury is indeed still out on Medjugorje. ✠
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 25 Bo o k Re v i e w s
St. Thomas Aquinas on Love and synonymous terms, and refer to the Charity is a habit, but because it is Charity: Readings from the “Com- most elementary of the passions or an infused virtue, it is not one we mentary on the Sentences of Peter sense appetites; as such, they could can acquire through our own ef- Lombard.” Translated by Peter A. be regarded as “givens” of nature. forts, or, as St. Thomas puts it, always Kwasniewski, Thomas Bolin, O.S.B., But dilectio may be said to differ mindful of larger, metaphysical con- and Joseph Bolin. With introduction from amor in that it involves the siderations, “charity is not nature, and notes by Peter A. Kwasniewski. element of choice. Amicitia, for its since it cannot be caused by the Washington, D. C.: The Catholic part, is a habit, hence is something natural principles of creation” (15). University of America Press, 2008, which must be acquired through God alone is the efficient cause of xxxii, 404 pages, $39.95. conscious effort. Caritas refers first charity. While we can dispose our- and foremost to a theological virtue, selves to charity, we cannot effect it Reviewed by D. Q. McInerny which means that it is also a habit, in ourselves. Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, but in this case an infused habit. In a typical way of his analyz- Denton, Nebraska But caritas or charity might also be ing things, St. Thomas sees a tri- said to be an elevated expression of partite division of charity. There eter A. Kwasniewski, Thomas the most basic of the passions, amor. is, in the first instance, uncreated Bolin, O.S.B., and Joseph Charity is transformed love, love as charity, which is simply God Him- PBolin have met a significant raised above the level of the merely self, the Holy Spirit; there is the need in providing us with what is natural. The Introduction includes charity which is the infused habit, to date “by far the most extensive discussions of how the translators the theological virtue; and there English translation” (xvi) of St. handled several other key terms that are those individual acts of charity Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on figure prominently in the work, which flow forth from the infused the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Peter terms which are pregnant with habit. Charity, as God’s gift to us, Kwasniewski offers an interesting special meanings for St. Thomas– is the means by which we love and informative Introduction to amans, amatum (“lover,” “beloved”); Him, and because all love neces- the work, in which he explains that affectus,(affective), secundum affectum sarily involves knowledge–for the the team’s translating efforts were (“affection,” “affectively,” “by way obvious reason that we cannot love guided by two general principles: of affection”); appetitus, appetibile what we do not know–as our love “(1) maximal fidelity to Thomas’s (“appetite,” “appetible”); ea quae of God increases, so too does our text, the attempt to say things as sunt ad finem (“those things which knowledge of Him. But everything he says them, with the weight and are ordered toward an end”). Given has its source in the charity which balance of his own statements; and the wide range of its meanings, the is God Himself (Deus caritas est), (2) maximal clarity in English, often translators decided to leave the Latin for knowledge of God comes only preferring phrasings more familiar term ratio untranslated in most in- through grace, not through nature. to our ears and closer to the Latin’s stances, leaving the reader free “to Given our utter dependence upon meaning” (xvi-xvii). These are ex- pull out the meaning from the con- charity/grace, are we then to con- cellent principles, and they have text” (xxix-xxx). clude that we are not entirely free been followed with laudable faith- The focal point around which creatures? That would not follow, fulness. St. Thomas develops his treatment for, as St. Thomas points out, assist- The selections here translated, of love is caritas or charity; this is ing grace does not negate free will, which represent a sizable portion the quintessence of love in that it but rather makes it possible (60). of the Commentary, deal principally is nothing else than our participa- Given the fact that God is both with the subject of love and charity, tion in the very life of God (“Now the source and the proper end of hence the title the translators give to charity is a certain participation of charity (He is the proper end of the volume. Caritas, amor, dilectio, and divine goodness.” 39), so that, just as charity because He is the only fully amicitia (“charity,” “love,” “affection,” the soul is the life of the body, char- adequate and worthy object of our and “friendship”) figure promi- ity, which is one and the same with love), and because He is infinite, nently in St. Thomas’s writings, grace, is the life of the soul. Thus, we can never love Him enough. If and he himself notes that they are “the soul’s entire goodness is from we are loving rightly, we love God “four words that refer, in a way, to charity” (10). And because charity above all else, as our ultimate end, to the same thing” (xxi). But there are is our participation in the very life which are subordinated the count- of course differences to be recog- of God, St. Thomas is able say that less lesser ends of life which are also nized. Amor and dilectio are virtually the power of charity is infinite (9). the objects of our love. The relative
26 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 worth of those lesser ends is gauged the multi-layered nature of love and by a man more than a man loves by how they relate to our ultimate its many ramifications (could we not himself” (213). It could not really be end, and they can be counted as call them infinite?), he gives consid- otherwise, for the proper object of real goods only to the extent that, erable attention to the foundational love is the good, and the greater the however obliquely, they contribute fact that love and knowledge are good, the greater the love. Charity toward the achievement of the ulti- inseparable. The intellect must in- is supreme; it is the mother and “the mate good. form before the will can move. And mover of all the other virtues,” (163) We can lose charity, alas, and yet love enjoys a certain superiority and orders all the other virtues to that unhappy eventuality is brought over knowledge for its out-going their proper ends. about by mortal sin, “mortal” by rea- dynamic, and the peculiar kind of As to how charity applies to our son of the fact that it kills the life of unity which that brings about. It is fellow creatures, it is unqualifiedly God in our souls. This happens, not love that “enters more into a thing inclusive, extending to evil men as because of a default of knowledge than knowledge,” (142) because well as to good. But, St. Thomas necessarily, but because of a default while with intellect we receive, take carefully notes, the precise object of will. St. Thomas remarks interest- things into ourselves, with love we of our love is the evil-doer, not the ingly on this point when he writes: go out of ourselves, even to the evil that he does; as long as the evil- “It should be said that the opinion point where, as we have seen, the doer lives and breathes, charity holds of those who held that charity, on loving subject undergoes a transfor- open for him the possibility of con- account of its firmness, cannot be mation of self. version (195). He expatiates on this lost, is similar to the opinion of In taking yet another analytic point beautifully: “It should be said Socrates, who held that one who has approach to his subject, St. Thomas that we are bound to love someone knowledge, on account of its nobil- sees love as including (1) longing for according as he shares something in ity and certainty, cannot go astray” the beloved, (2) benevolence toward common with us. Now the enemy (265). the beloved, (3) along with benefi- has in common with us a sharing in St. Thomas’s analysis of what we cence, and (4) concord. With regard human nature, on the basis of which might call the psychological aspects to benevolence, we recall that the it is possible for him to have in com- of love are especially arresting. He essence of love is willing the good mon with us a sharing in the divine argues that love, considered now for the other, and willing the good life. Accordingly, we ought to love in the most comprehensive way, “is would naturally entail the doing of him in regard to things that pertain nothing other than a certain trans- the good. As to concord, that is not to his nature and to the possession of formation of affection into the thing to be regarded as synonymous with grace, whereas we ought not to love loved” (120). In more particular peace, for peace is the mere absence the enmity he has against us, since terms, this happens because “the of disagreements. Concord, on the according to it he has something in lover takes up the beloved as though other hand, involves positive union common neither with us nor even he were the same as himself,” (122) of lover and beloved. with himself, but rather something and thus there is a conjoining of For St. Thomas, love and char- that is contrary [both to us and to persons such that the “lover is trans- ity inevitably involve the notion of himself], as was said also concerning formed into the beloved and in a friendship. Following the thought other sins” (245). We must love our way is turned into him,” (123) so of Aristotle, he argues that, on the enemies, but not their enmity, for that “nothing of the beloved remains natural level, friendship is founded were we to do the latter we would not united to the lover” (124); “the on the virtues. Only good men can be loving un-loving. lover is transformed into the inner be true friends. But virtue cannot The signal mark of our char- identity of the beloved,” (125) mak- be the foundation for our friendship ity toward all men is that we want ing “the beloved the lover’s form” with God, and that is because this exactly for them what we want for (125). Can there be any intimacy friendship is based on charity–in- ourselves, the attainment of our like unto this? And consider its deed, we can say that it is but anoth- common final end–the beatific vi- implications when the love in ques- er dimension of charity–and charity sion, eternal union with God. We are tion is divine love, the love between is an infused virtue, that is, pure gift. to consider our fellow man as one of God and man. According to the In other words, while natural friend- our “proper goods,” and we love him Thomistic way of looking at things, ship can be a result of our own ef- as a likeness of God. The first and to love Christ is to be transformed forts, divine friendship cannot be. most obvious effect of our posses- in Christ. One of the results of divine friend- sion of charity is our emphatic In St. Thomas’s explorations into ship is that, “God is naturally loved and uncompromising withdrawal
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 27 Bo o k Re v i e w s from sin. On the positive side, we Constitutional Adjudication: The constitution, things are not faring actively do good and we rejoice in Costa Rican Experience. Robert S. particularly well for the republic. the good that we do. St. Thomas Barker. Lake Mary, Florida: Vandeplas In his most recent book, Con- specifies a hierarchical order of char- Publishing, 2008, x, 180 pages. stitutional Adjudication: The Costa ity: we should love God above all Rican Experience, Professor Barker else, then our neighbor, then strang- Reviewed by D. Q. McInerny makes another significant contribu- ers, then friends before enemies Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, tion to contemporary constitutional (while of course not excluding Denton, Nebraska thought, in this case giving principal enemies), then the common good emphasis to the relation between before private goods. ccording to not a few a constitution and the judiciary In order to have a correct under- knowledgeable and con- branch of government. The consti- standing of the greatest of all com- Acerned observers, we live tutional republic which is the focus mandments, we must clearly realize in times which are precarious for of his attention is Costa Rica, and that if we do not love God first and the U. S. Constitution, not for the quality of his study is emphati- foremost, there can never be any any radical defects in the docu- cally attested to by Professor Keith love of neighbor, for “love of God is ment itself, but for the seemingly S. Rosenn of the University of the cause and reason for the love of systematic way certain of its key Miami School of Law, who writes neighbor” (255). provisions tend to be ignored by that it “will become the definitive On giving further reflection to those who should be abiding by English-language work on Costa the somber possibility of the loss of them, and for the interpretations Rican constitutionalism” (v). There charity, St. Thomas observes that we given to the document by a hyper- is a twofold value to this book. It is lose charity simply by not actively activist judiciary, interpretations valuable first and foremost for what availing ourselves of its presence, by which only a free-wheeling and the reader can learn from it about not using it. The battle to maintain fanciful mind could imagine bear the developmental history of the ourselves in a state of grace is con- any resemblance to the intentions Costa Rican constitution, as well as tinuous and trying. It is more dif- of the framers. In a comprehen- about its present condition and the ficult to resist evil than to do good, sive study of the U. S. Constitu- role it plays in the country’s gover- but we are never alone in the ongo- tion published four years ago (La nance, matters which are intrinsically ing spiritual combat in which we Constitución de los Estados Unidos y interesting and richly informative. are engaged, and “God will always su Dinámica Actual, reviewed in the Secondly, given the situation which administer to one who is fighting” Spring 2007 issue of the Fellowship now obtains in our own country (278). And the victory toward which of Catholic Scholars Quarterly), Pro- regarding constitutional questions, the battle is aimed? Beatitude, “the fessor Robert S. Barker gave special there is much in the Costa Rican ultimate end of human life” (337). attention to the problems created situation by which we can be ben- The blessed state of perfect union for constitutional stability by activ- eficially instructed. with God, the supreme consum- ist judges whose often remarkably Robert S. Barker is Distinguished mation of love, is, for St. Thomas, far-fetched interpretations of the Professor of Law at Duquesne Uni- essentially “an act of intellect,” (343) founding document seriously de- versity, and Adjunct Professor of Law an eternal, utterly unalloyed banquet preciate the enduring authority it at the University of Pittsburgh. He of knowledge of the Divine Essence. was clearly meant to have. In a note has a deep and wide-ranging knowl- Man, in enjoying beatitude, will be for a forthcoming book by Profes- edge of constitutional law, especially maximally in act, which means that sor Charles E. Rice of the Univer- as it pertains to Latin America, in he will be maximally alive. sity of Notre Dame Law School, several of whose countries he has The translators of On Love and we read that, “He [Professor Rice] spent a considerable amount of time Charity are to be congratulated and argues that the American republic as both researcher and teacher, Costa commended for the fine book they is dead and the Constitution can- Rica in particular. Among his many have given us, making available in not be restored to what it was in accomplishments, he has served as English one of the seminal works the beginning” (St. Augustine’s Press the Chairman of the Constitutional of St. Thomas’s theological corpus. Winter/Spring 2009 Catalogue, 19). Law Committee of the Inter-Amer- Up to this time it has been for many Whether things are really that dire ican Bar Association. perhaps the least well known of his is an arguable point, but it seems to Costa Rica, Professor Barker works, but now, happily, that will be beyond dispute that at the mo- points out at the beginning of his change. ment, in terms of the status of its book, “has long been a functioning
28 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 democracy with stable govern- to suppose, as a mystic source of ever cameral body made up of fifty-seven mental institutions and a traditional emanating and imagination-provok- members who are elected by direct respect for law” (5). It is a country ing penumbra. popular vote for four year terms, in which “constitutional principles The reforms which were inaugu- and, like the president, they are not are followed and court decisions are rated in 1938 were of special signifi- eligible for immediate reelection af- obeyed to an extent equaled in few cance for Costa Rica’s constitutional ter their term expires. The Costa Ri- other countries” (32). Costa Rica history in that they accorded more can Supreme Court, as set up by the can be said to have had a favored power to the judiciary in interpret- 1949 Constitution, was composed past in that its colonial history, un- ing the constitution. This is signifi- of seventeen members, called mag- like that of just about every other cant because it represented a marked istrates, divided into three chambers, Latin American country, did not change in emphasis, for up to that each with specialized legal tasks witness the emplacement of a strong time it was the legislative branch assigned to it, and who are elected aristocracy, and thus was avoided which bore the principal responsi- by the Legislative Assembly for subsequent pronounced social and bility for constitutional interpreta- terms of eight years; a magistrate can economic divisions within the pop- tion, which is to be explained by be retained for an additional eight ulation. Right from the beginning, the fact that the country was very year period unless he is opposed by then, there was created a social at- much in the Civil Law tradition. a two-thirds vote of the Assembly. mosphere which would prove favor- As was true in all Latin American As specified by the Constitution, able for the eventual establishment countries, the development of politi- a two-thirds vote of all seventeen of a healthy and stable constitutional cal thought in Costa Rica was con- magistrates was required “to declare republic. Costa Rica gained its in- siderably influenced by the French unconstitutionality of dispositions of dependence from Spain in 1821. It Revolution and its many ramifica- the Legislative Branch and decrees was part of the Central American tions. This resulted, in Costa Rica, of the Executive Branch.” (50) Be- Federation until 1848, at which time in the fostering of a view of Civil low the Supreme Court, there are it became fully independent, and Law which was suspicious of the three additional levels of the judicia- the republic was established. For the judiciary and gave primacy of place ry branch. In descending order, they first fifty years of its history, “the in governmental affairs to the legis- are: the Superior Tribunals (usually era of experimentation,” Cost Rica lative branch. Specifically, what the consisting of three judge panels), went through a number of consti- 1938 reforms did was “to establish district judges, and alcades, the last tutions, but a durable stability was judicial supremacy in constitutional being more or less like justices of the achieved with the promulgation of matters and to concentrate judicial peace. Only the Supreme Court has the Constitution of 1871, which was review in the Supreme Court” (48). the power to declare unconstitution- to be the governing document of Although the 1938 reforms then ality. Consonant with the Civil Law the country for three quarters of a represented what can rightly be tradition, juries do not play a part in century, and which was signally im- described as a pronounced turning the Costa Rican legal system. portant for the country’s subsequent point in Costa Rican constitutional Habeas Corpus figures promi- political history in that it solidified history, that event was in effect only nently in the Costa Rican Constitu- the principle that “the constitu- the blossoming of an attitude which tion, “and habeas corpus petitions tion should be the supreme law of had been slowly germinating over take priority over all other matters the land” (41). What this meant, in the years, and had an important before the court”; (13) remarkably, practical terms, and particularly with precedent in the Organic Law of the protection afforded by habeas respect to the country’s present and Tribunals (Ley Orgánico de los Tribu- corpus applies to governmental presumably permanent constitution, nales) of 1888, where judicial control omissions that might result in the promulgated in 1948, is that the of constitutionality saw its inception. infringement of individual liberties, document “is treated as a set of op- In Cost Rica, the President of as well as to overt acts on the part of erating rules. It is not merely a state- the Republic is elected for a four the government. A particular inter- ment of national aspirations...” (30). year term, after which he must step esting feature of the constitution is It might be remarked parenthetically down; he may, after a period of eight the amparo provision, which might here that this is also the import of years, run for a second term. The be regarded as a supplement to ha- the U. S. Constitution, as originally Constitution provides for two vice- beas corpus. Amparo (“help,” “pro- conceived; that is, it is to be under- presidents, both elected, along with tection”) is of Mexican origin, and stood as laying down definite norms, the president, for four year terms. the relief it provides “usually consists and is not to be taken, as some seem The Legislative Assembly is a uni- of the suspension of the unlawful
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 29 Bo o k Re v i e w s conduct” (15). Its particular value individual is already there in place, all Obando and her husband, quite nat- consists in the speed with which it the information necessary and suf- urally, then requested that the hos- can bring relief, and the comprehen- ficient to define the characteristics pital turn over to them the body of siveness of the relief. of a new human being appear united their child so that they could give it A 1989 amendment to the Con- in the meeting of the twenty-three a fitting burial. The hospital refused stitution effected a change in the spermatozoid chromosomes and the this request, explaining that, “after structure of the Supreme Court by twenty-three ovular chromosomes.... scientific study by hospital person- the addition of a fourth chamber, In short, what has been conceived is a nel, the remains had been placed in the Constitutional Chamber (Sala person, and we are dealing with a a common burial area.” (167). The Constitucional) whose specialized task living being, with the right to be Obandos brought the matter before is to adjudicate all constitutional protected by the legal order...” (165, the Constitutional Chamber. In the matters. Decisions of unconstitu- emphasis mine). decision the Chamber made in their tionality are made by the absolute After noting that “every hu- favor, Justice Eduardo Sancho Gon- majority of this seven member body. man being has the right to life, zales wrote: “Although that child did The Constitutional Chamber has liberty and personal security,” (165) not complete its process of forma- borne the burden of a heavy case Justice Rodolfo E. Piza Escalante, tion such as would have enabled it load every since its creation, and the who wrote the decision, continues: to develop itself as a normal child large backlog of cases makes for a “There do not exist human be- and to endure, the certainty is that from continuing problem. ings of any other juridical category the moment in which it was conceived it “The present system of judicial [i.e., other than “persons”]; we are was a person with rights” (167, empha- review in Costa Rica,” Professor all persons and the first thing that sis mine). Barker writes, “is the result of a long, our juridical personality demands of The Costa Rican Supreme Court and, by Latin American standards, others is the recognition of the right showed its concern for freedom of smooth, process of constitutional de- to life, without which the [juridi- education in a decision it handed velopment” (127). That the country cal] personality cannot be exercised” down in 1991. The government had has “one of the most respectable, and (165). He goes on to state that, issued an Executive Decree which respected constitutional traditions “Every person has the right to have sought to impose restrictive regula- in the world” (132) surely has to be his life respected. This right will be tions on private educational institu- attributed in great part to its impres- protected by the law and, in general, tions. The decree was challenged by sive record of “protecting certain from the moment of conception” the association of Catholic schools basic human rights that are often (165-66). As to in-vitro fertilization and the association of private (non- ignored or undervalued elsewhere” and embryonic transfer in particu- Catholic) schools. The Court decid- (132). By way of providing telling lar, this technique “is an attack on ed in favor of the petitions presented illustrations of this last point, Profes- human life. The human embryo is by these organizations, arguing that, sor Barker, in the final chapter of his a person from the moment of con- though the government had a point book, cites three recent decisions of ception, and thus cannot be treated in regarding all education, includ- the Constitutional Chamber which as an object for purposes of re- ing private education, as being “in I find to be particularly edifying, and search...” (166). Had the majority of the public interest,” this should not which, because of their inherent im- the members of the U. S. Supreme be construed as implying that all portance, deserve ample quotation. Court in 1973 possessed the kind of education, irrespective of by whom In 1995 the government of Costa wisdom, not to say the elementary it was conducted, is a “public activ- Rica issued an Executive Decree scientific knowledge, displayed by ity or a public service.” (169) The regulating “In-Vitro Fertilization the Supreme Court of Costa Rica, decision declared that “to be educated, and the Transfer of Embryos.” The Roe v. Wade could never have been and to educate, is a fundamental right of Constitutional Chamber subse- decided in the woefully wrong way every human being, and a right precisely quently nullified that decree, declar- it was. (The decision was obviously ‘of liberty,’ that is, of autonomy or self- ing it to be invalid. In its decision a sin against morals, but it was a sin determination...” (170, emphasis in we read: “When the spermatozoid against science as well.) the original text). fertilizes the egg, that entity is con- In 2001, Kathia Cecilia Saborio In 2006 a Costa Rican male verted into a zygote and from there Obando, who was four and a half applied for a marriage licence to to an embryo. The most important months pregnant at the time, entered marry another male. The licence was characteristic of this cell is that every- a public hospital following the onset denied. He appealed to the Supreme thing that will permit it to evolve to the of labor pains. The child died. Kathia Court. In rejecting his appeal, Justice
30 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 Calzada Miranda took pains patient- Relativism has been inculcated by truth to things” (ibid.). The strength ly to spell out the obvious: marriage our schools for a few decades now of Schall’s books is that like the great can take place only between a man and this effect on the intellects philosopher, Eric Voegelin, he rec- and a woman. of countless students has caused ognizes that, “The reality of order is In reviewing the work of the catastrophic distortions in modern not my discovery” (p. 232). Constitutional Chamber, Professor culture. The antidote to this “dicta- The lesson that Schall always Barker describes the Costa Rican torship of relativism”2 can be found seems to be teaching is that our Court as active, but not activist, mean- in Fr. Schall’s latest, book, The Order knowledge of truth always finds its ing that the judiciary in that country, of Things. roots in the thoughts of others. He unlike what is increasingly the case In merely 234 pages of text Schall is able to draw from the thought with the United States judiciary, is able to accomplish a seemingly of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augus- does not attempt to usurp the pre- impossible feat to write a very dense tine, Aquinas, G.K. Chesterton, rogatives of the legislative branch. yet clear and concise book on the John Henry Newman, Josef Pieper, The guiding principle for the Costa order that should govern our minds, Samuel Johnson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Rican judiciary would seem to be our approach to study and even C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Walker Percy, that they see it as their task to in- to life itself. As with all of Schall’s Edmund Burke, Eric Voegelin, Wen- terpret the constitution as written, books, the treat for any lover of dell Berry, E.F. Schumacher, Etienne and not presumptuously to attempt truth is always his lists of books that Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Pope John to rewrite it. The constitutional he inevitably provides. Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and government of Costa Rica can “be Educators find themselves at the even Charlie Brown. This is an in- matched by few other countries crossroads where they must choose valuable lesson, seemingly lost on anywhere,” (174) and its judiciary between rival views of order to pres- many modern minds, that we need is admirable for its “defense of such ent to their students. In the end, “or- to dialogue with the great books traditional principles as the dignity der in certain areas of reality must from the past and present in order of human life, the unique status of itself be freely chosen. But if order to better understand life and truth the family, and the importance of is rejected, as it can be, it is always itself. Today’s students need to heed freedom of education” (175). The rejected in the name of another the words of Bernard of Chartres: Costa Ricans, in their judiciary deci- order, even if it be one that has no “We are like dwarves standing on sions, set examples that this country origin except in ourselves” (p. 11). the shoulders of giants, and so able could very much profit by. Profes- The vocation of any teacher in our to see more and farther than the an- sor Barker is to be commended for modern culture involves the onerous cients.” The Order of Things is of the the laudable service he has done in task of presenting an order that will few great books today that reminds making the Costa Rican experience appeal to their students. While stu- its readers of the need and value of known to the world at large. dents may freely rebel against such continuity. an order, they are in need of it now Schall defines thinking as “sepa- more than ever, and Schall is the rating this thing from that…identi- perfect guide to prepare any teacher fying accurately what each thing is. The Order of Things. James Schall, for that dialogue. Relating this thing to that. It means (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007) One of the crises in our times seeing the order of how this thing Reviewed by Roland Millare is that many people lack the ability stands to that thing” (p. 15-16). Yet to think in an integrated manner. without a sense of order how could The educational landscape contin- Part of the problem is that most any teacher pass on this process to ues to be dominated by the disor- are no longer able to comprehend students that are being bombarded dered “closing” of the mind that how ideas connect to one another. with a “technopoly”3 that teaches Allan Bloom poignantly described a It is Schall’s goal in his books to them to “think” passively and un- little over twenty years ago: “There teach how “things are related both critically. In the end, “We become is one thing a professor can be abso- to one another and to their origin what we love. And to love is always lutely sure of; almost every student and destinies” (p. 13). It is part of to choose, though to choose is entering the university believes, or our human nature to want to know not always to love rightly” (p. 20). says he believes, that truth is relative. “[i]f things fit together, if they be- Schall’s first exhortation in return- If this belief is put to the test, one long together; we want to know ing to the order of things is to keep can count on the student’s reaction: how and why….We seek to know, company with the “divine and or- they will be uncomprehending.”1 to know the answers, to know the derly things” (ibid.) because we may
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 31 Bo o k Re v i e w s begin to reflect this love in our lives When many of their students 18, 2005 prior to the conclave that (p. 32). It is essential to understand are “lost in the cosmos,”4 educators elected him as the 265th Bishop of Rome order because the universe itself need to be a beacon of order. Plato (Pope). See http://www.vatican.va/gpII/ according to Aquinas is ruled by an rightfully asserted that the “order of documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontif- internal order of its parts to one an- our polity reflects the prior order ice_20050418_en.html other and an order of the whole to (or disorder) of our souls” (p.86). 3 See Neil Postman Technopoly: The Surrender some end that accounts for its unity The order or disorder that is fostered of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage (p. 23). in the minds and hearts of future Books, 1993). As for the finite realities, Aquinas generations will ultimately steer 4 See Walker Percy Lost in the Cosmos: The offers a vision of a fourfold order the course of modern history. G.K. Last Self-Help Book (Picador 2000). that is evident: (1) the order of the Chesterton’s prophetic voice should 5 Gaudium et Spes no. 36 world (2) the order of the mind not fall on deaf ears for teachers that (3) the order of our actions (4) the bear a great moral responsibility: “In order of things that humans make the end it will matter to us whether through art, craft, technology or we wrote well or ill; whether we A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning rhetoric (p. 24-26). In the end, the fought with flails or reed. It will of Sin and Faith, with “On My mind seeks to know and the teacher matter to us greatly on what side we Religion.” Rawls, John. Edited by must feed (or at least offer) that vo- fought” (p. 87). The side that Schall Thomas Nagel with commentar- racious appetite of his or her pupils exhorts all people to be on is one of ies by Joshua Cohen and Robert with order. This order of the mind redeemed and virtuous order. The Merrihew Adams. Cambridge: Har- will potentially lead to ordered (vir- loss of a sense of the transcendent vard University Press, 2009. 275 pp. tuous) lives for we are a “project to God has led to a loss of an ordered $27.95 (Cloth). ourselves. We are making ourselves education, a just polity, and in many into what we choose to be” (p. 100). cases a virtuous life. In the end the Reviewed by Jude P. Dougherty After building the case for the Second Vatican Council was pro- The Catholic University of America need of the “orderly and the divine,” phetic: “Without the Creator, the Schall proceeds to give an ordered creature vanishes”.5 Schall’s book is ne would not ordinarily series of philosophical meditations summed up by Yves Simon, “Order take seriously the senior- on order that flow from this need. alone can be the essential cause of Oyear thesis of a 21-year old He begins with (or rather within) order” (150). Teachers need to pass Princeton undergraduate or give the Godhead and this leads to His on to their students as their prede- much attention to an unpublished creation—the cosmos. The order of cessors have done before the order memoir found on the computer of the cosmos will lead to the heart they have received. Many should not a deceased author. But the author in of its climax, the order of the soul. ignore this text from Fr. James Schall question is John Rawls, the political This order of the soul is ultimately if they wish to be able to have an philosopher known widely for his reflected in our polity (politics). The order to hand on to their pupils. So celebrated volume, A Theory of Justice. order of the polity should rightly begin by reading The Order of Things Clearly Rawls was a serious, albeit allow for the order of the mind. The and then proceed to read the books somewhat brash student. He begins order of the mind will ultimately on his select bibliography. Fr. Schall’s his thesis with a set of “fundamen- lead a person to experience either virtual classroom found in this small tal presuppositions.” The first: “It is the order of hell or redemption. And book will help many understand assumed at the outset that there is the redemption expresses its order in that their lives are “in fact out of a being whom Christians call God our world ultimately through beauty. order,” but even better he gives us and who has revealed Himself in The “high cost” of losing Pascal’s a philosophical guide in “setting Christ Jesus; as to what sort of be- wager may have dire consequences things out-of-order aright” (9). ing God is –– that is, whether He for individuals who chose to believe possesses all the metaphysical at- Christianity is not true (p. 228-229). Endnotes tributes assigned to him –– we do Yet the question not asked often not presume to know. It is doubtful enough is: what is the potential cost 1 Cf. Allan Bloom, The Closing of American whether natural theology can tell for the teacher that leads their stu- Mind. (New York: Simon and Schuster, us very much. The Bible has told us dents astray from the real order of 1987), 25-26. all we need to know about Him… things either through ignorance or 2 Homily given by Joseph Cardinal Ratz- We assume then that God is, and ideology? inger (Pope Benedict XVI) on April He is the sort of God that the Bible
32 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 says He is and that He revealed His One can find in the senior thesis the itself to others in the way the Son nature in Christ Jesus.” In a “Pref- seminal outlook that governs much of God gave Himself to suffer on ace” to the thesis, he writes, “I do of A Theory of Justice, notably his the Cross.” One is tempted to say not believe that the Greek tradition altruistic concern for the material of Rawls something that Petrarch mixes very well with Christianity, needs of others and the primacy he could say of Cicero, “One could and the sooner we stop kow-towing gives to community sometimes fancy that it is not a to Plato and Aristotle the better. “If our culture,” he writes in the pagan philosopher but a Christian An ounce of the Bible is worth a senior thesis,“is to solve the problem apostle who is speaking.” pound (possibly a ton) of Aristotle.” of individual and society. . . we must The passages is worthy of Tertul- realize that the individual is not lian declaiming “wretched Aristotle” merely an individual, but a person, or of Luther denouncing “fetid” or and that society is not a group of in- Basile Moreau and The Congregation “putrid” Aristotle. Tertullian had dividuals but a community. Once we of Holy Cross. James T. Connelly, asked, “What does Athens have to do realize this fact, any solution which C.S.C., Portland: University of Port- with Jerusalem?” and that question advocates a balance between inde- land, Garaventa Center for Catholic has resonated throughout the cen- pendence and absorption is seen to Intellectual Life and American Cul- turies. The early Christian Fathers, be false. It is false because there is no ture, 2007. 83 pp. Paper. steeped in the Hellenistic learning of such thing as independent personal- their day, for the most part regarded ity free of community, and further, Reviewed by Raymond W. Belair revelation as complementing what community as such does not absorb Institute of Religious Studies they already knew from philosophi- personality but creates and sustains Dunwoodie, N.Y. cal sources. Tertullian was an excep- it. The problem is. . . one of control- tion. Justin Martyr, Clement, the two ling and ridding the world of sin.” oly Cross priest James T. Gregories, Marius Victorinus, Jerome Sin, he concludes, is the separation Connelly makes clear that and Augustine, to be sure, were all from and destruction of community Hwhile there are many biog- indebted to Athens in their attempts and therefore of personality, whereas raphies attesting to the zeal and holi- to understand the “Memories of the faith is the integration and recon- ness of Basile Moreau, the founder of Apostles,” as the Gospels were first struction of community. The result the Congregation of Holy Cross, his known. and consequence of sin is “alone- own purpose is to explain why the Though he once considered ness.” “The problem of ethics,” he virtues of Fr. Moreau took so long studying for the Anglican priest- writes, “like the problem of politics, to be recognized, “especially among hood, the fundamentalism that is how to establish community in his spiritual sons and daughters.” Rawls embraced at this early stage of the face of sin in the world.” Although the Congregation of Holy life failed him in moments of per- One may find in some of Rawls’s Cross is best known in America for plexity, especially when he entered later work, particularly when he is the “Fighting Irish” of the University military service in the early years of defending his theory against crit- of Notre Dame, which it founded World War II. Alhough he put his ics, that this ardent foe of “natural- in 1842, much of the history of the youthful Christianity aside, he never ism” surreptitiously embraces an Congregation, and its founder Very lost belief in God. Belief for him was Aristotelian notion of natural law. Rev. Basile Antoine Marie Moreau, a kind of Kierkegaardian leap into And yet Rawls never strays far from C.S.C., could be described as the the dark, one which he happily took. his youthful beginning. On the last struggles of the “Feuding French.” “My fideism,” he writes in, “On My page of “On My Religion,” the text This history includes the aftermath of Religion,” “remained firm against all found posthumously on his com- the French Revolution, anti-religious worries about the existence of God.” puter, Rawls wrote. “It is this pecu- and anti-clerical bias, the opposition Although deeply concerned with liarly Christian love (agape) which of successive governments, ecclesi- religion in his college years, Rawls’s growing from faith, binds the astical roadblocks and internal strife interests lay primarily in the moral Christian community together un- within both the embryonic and es- order, not in doctrinal issues, such as der God. It is this love which looks tablished Congregation. Many of the original sin, heaven and hell, salva- up to God in faithful thanksgiving, early successes of Fr. Moreau and his tion by belief, priestly authority, and which knows the full structure of order were achieved outside of both predestination. All these doctrinal its obligations and its duties, which Moreau’s own Diocese of Le Mans elements he found “repugnant.” His has accepted full responsibility of its and France itself. interests were both moral and social. communal nature, and which gives Moreau was the founder not only
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 33 Bo o k Re v i e w s of the Congregation of Holy Cross, property while simultaneously man- send an unfavorable report to Rome. but also of the Marianites of Holy aging the finances of the indepen- When his bishop died in 1856, the Cross, the Sisters of the Holy Cross dent Sisters of Providence, viewing association still lacked approval of its and the Sisters of Holy Cross. The the two groups as being responsible constitutions. statue of Moreau which stands today for each other. By 1831 Dujarie’s Moreau had by 1841 also orga- in Le Mans incorporates a stylized seriously deteriorating health, re- nized a sisterhood, known as the three-branched tree, symbolizing newed anti-clericalism, conflict with Marianite Sisters of Holy Cross, also the Brothers, Sisters and Priests civil authorities, defections from the without formal ecclesiastical sanc- whom Moreau was able to unite Brothers’ ranks and the Sisters’ desire tion. Two of the sisters were sent to in his vision as the Congregation to secure greater financial separation the group’s new foundation at Notre of Holy Cross. The story is told by from the Brothers had produced a Dame du Lac in Indiana in 1843. Fr. Connelly in a well documented, crisis. Though still lacking formal approval, detailed and dispassionate narrative, The Brothers’ annual retreats in Moreau had by then realized the which quietly constructs a compel- 1831 and 1832 were preached by Fr. general plan of the future Congre- ling read about a determined man of Basile Moreau, a 32 year old dioc- gation, with three separate societies faith whose journey was never easy. esan seminary professor of Scripture under Moreau, who was elected Su- His original sources include Circu- and dogma. As more Brothers began perior General in 1843 and 1846. In lar Letters written by Moreau and to profess fidelity to Dujarie, he 1849 he was elected Superior Gen- other Holy Cross superiors to their sought permission for Moreau to eral for life. But he still faced op- Congregation and correspondence take over as superior of the Broth- position, as his schools were seen as held privately for years by Moreau’s ers, which permission was withheld competitors by local school boards. nephew, also a Holy Cross priest, until 1835. Moving the Brothers to His bishop also viewed Moreau’s who resigned from the Congrega- the Le Mans suburb of Sainte-Croix, educational work as competing with tion following the forced resignation Moreau then obtained approval for the latter’s seminaries and colleges. of his uncle. The nephew’s biography a new society of Auxiliary Priests However, as education law was re- of his uncle, which was published in of the Diocese of Le Mans, whose formed, Moreau was viewed as a 1900 after the nephew’s death, was work would be the preaching of leader in the fight for educational also among the sources relied upon parish retreats and missions, along freedom in France. He was asked by by Fr. Connelly in his reconstruc- with substituting for sick priests and the Bishop of Orleans to take over tion of a conspiracy against Moreau understaffed parishes. In 1837 the the minor seminary there. By then, which is in some ways reminiscent Fundamental Act of Union united con- the Indiana Legislature had granted of the intrigues of an Alexandre tractually, but not civilly or ecclesias- a college charter to the “University Dumas novel. tically, the Brothers with the Auxil- of Notre Dame du Lac.” Similar suc- In this short three chapter book, iary Priests as a diocesan association cesses followed in Canada. Moreau’s the first begins circa 1820, when the under Moreau’s leadership. patrons in the Vatican’s Congregation Church was still recovering from the The second chapter covers the for the Propagation of the Faith then Revolution’s dissolution of religious period after the Fundamental Act, suggested he pursue approval of his congregations and when public edu- when Moreau unsuccessfully sought group as a missionary institute, with cation was virtually nonexistent. Fr. his bishop’s approval for papal rec- the implicit blessing of Pius IX. He Jacques Francois Dujarie, a 50 year ognition of his order in 1843 and agreed, and accepted an offer from old diocesan pastor of Le Mans, was 1844. By then Moreau’s group was an Indian Bishop to take over pasto- designated by his bishop to organize involved in missionary work in ral work in East Bengal. By 1858 the a group of teachers, the Brothers of France, North Africa and North first Holy Cross priest to become St. Joseph, to address rampant igno- America, winning praise from many a Bishop was installed as Vicar Ap- rance by restoring elementary edu- French Bishops and the approval of ostolic of East Bengal. By 1857 his cation. Dujarie, driven from priestly its constitutions by the Bishop of bishop had died and, the new bishop formation when his seminary was Vincennes, Indiana. Moreau again being favorably disposed, Rome dissolved under the Reign of Terror, asked for his bishop’s approval in approved the Congregation’s con- witnessed the execution of one of 1845, which was again refused on stitutions. But all was not resolved. his professors. Ministering to Catho- the basis of the Congregation’s short He had been forced to agree that lics underground, he was ordained duration. Worse, his repeated re- the Marianite Sisters of Holy Cross by an underground bishop and quests, as well as other organizational would form a separate congregation. survived. Dujarie held the Brothers’ activities, prompted his bishop to In Canada the separation of property
34 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 between the men and women of of the Congregation and for greater his ouster in 1866, he was regarded Sainte-Croix was easily done. Not so autonomy in these provinces and much more favorably. It is perhaps in America, and this was a harbinger for themselves. Charges and coun- not without irony that the motto of problems to come. ter-charges were exchanged, with of the Congregation of Holy Cross, The final chapter, entitled “A Time repeated referrals for adjudication appearing in its seal on the cover of of Trial,” covers the period from the to Rome. Though he enjoyed the Fr. Connelly’s book, is “Veritas Vos Order’s formal recognition through Congregation’s general support, the Liberabit”: The Truth Shall Make You a period of financial crises and inter- last of his many offers to resign for Free. nal revolt against Moreau. Since he the good of the order resulted in the In this very readable and careful was in formal control of the entire acceptance in 1866 of his resignation study Fr. Connelly appears to have Congregation, financial problems as Superior General of the Congre- achieved his purpose of explaining not under his direct supervision gation he founded. The loss of both why Fr. Moreau’s virtues were not were depicted by his detractors as his the Congregation’s mother house recognized or appreciated sooner. personal failures. While he addressed and conventual church was followed His thoroughly documented book and corrected these problems, the by Moreau’s death in1873. followed some 25 years of research issues supplied fodder for his for- The brief Epilogue covers on the history of the order and mer confidants who accused him of Moreau’s eventual posthumous re- coincided with the beatification of running an absolutist administration. habilitation, which began in 1893. Basile Moreau, who entered the rolls They argued both for participation After acquisition of new documents of the Blessed at a ceremony in Le in defining the location and compo- and following research and re-exam- Mans on September 15, 2007. sition of the subordinate provinces ination of the events which lead to
Bo o k s Re c e i v e d No t i c e s
Our Books Received shelf is bare this month, but if you have read a $10,000 Challenge Grant Wanted: New Members recently published book that you I am happy to inform our member- As we move ahead in the work of think other readers of the FCSQuar- ship that the Fellowship has recently the Fellowship, it is very important terly would want to know about, received a challenge for a matching that we reach out and invite others please write a review of it and send grant of $10,000, intended for the to join our ranks. Let me take this by email to Alice.F.Osberger.1@ purpose of supporting the travel and occasion to encourage you to recom- nd.edu. If you know of a new book lodging arrangements for speakers mend to interested colleagues that that should be reviewed, let us know at our future conferences. Receiving they join the Fellowship. I would and we will request a copy from the these funds is contingent on raising be very happy to contact personally publisher for you to review.” $10,000 from other sources for these anyone whom you would care to purposes. I would be very happy to recommend to me. Please feel free to hear of anyone who might be able to send me the name and contact infor- assist us with this challenge and mation of anyone whom you think with our other development needs. might be suitable.
Fr. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Fr. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Fordham University Philosophy [email protected] Department Bronx, NY 10458 (718) 817-3291 [email protected]
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 35 Fellowship of Catholic Scholars 32nd Annual Convention Schedule Providence Marriott Downtown, Providence, RI September 25-27, 2009
“The Thought of Joseph Ratzinger-Pope Benedict XVI”
Most Reverend Thomas J. Tobin, D.D. Bishop of Providence will be the principal celebrant and homilist for Vigil Mass Saturday at 5:00 p.m. at the Cathedral of Sts. Peter & Paul
Program Chair, William E. May, has announced the following presenters and topics: . Vincent Twomey, SVD, “An Introduction to Ratzinger’s Theology of Political Life” . Tracey Rowland, “Evangelization in the Thought of Benedict XVI” . Sister Timothy Prokes, FSE, “The ‘Body’ in the Thought of Ratzinger-Benedict XVI” . Rev. Francis Martin, “Sacred Scripture in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger-Pope Benedict XVI,” with Rev. Joseph Rogers responding . Joseph Fessio, S.J., Helen and James Hitchcock, “Benedict XVI, the Mass, and the Liturgy” . E. Christian Brugger with William E. May, “Benedict XVI and Moral Theology” . Professor Scott Hahn, “Benedict XVI on Covenant Theology” . James Schall, S.J. “Eschatology and Hope in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger-Pope Benedict XVI” . Keynote Address: John Michael McDermott, S.J., “Benedict XVI and the Faith-Reason Relation” The titles of the presentations are subject to change. The order in which presentations are listed here is not necessarily the order in which they will be given. Fathers Twomey and Fessio were both students of Joseph Ratzinger.
Host Hotel: More info is available at: 1 Orms Street Web: www.CatholicScholars.org Providence, RI 02904 Phone: 239-595-1813 Phone: 866-807-2171 E-mail: [email protected]
36 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 Of f i c e r s a n d Di r e c t o r s
(as of September 2008)
Officers Past Presidents ELECTED DIRECTORS
President Prof. William May (2006-2009) Mrs. Helen Hitchcock Rev. Joseph Koterski, SJ Emeritus Prof. John Paul II Insti- 6158 Kingsbury Fordham University/Philosophy tute Prof. Carol (Sue) Abromaitis St. Louis, MO 63112 Bronx. NY 10458 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Loyola College/English [email protected] [email protected] Washington, DC 20064 4501 North Charles Street (314) 863-8385 (718) 817-3291 (voice) [email protected] Baltimore, MD 21210 (718) 817-3300 (fax) c/o [email protected] [email protected] Prof. Patrick Lee [email protected] (410) 617-2254 (voice) Franciscan Univ./Philosophy Vice-President (202) 526-3799 Steubenville, OH 43952 Dr. Max Bonilla Mr. William L. Saunders and [email protected] Vice - President Family Research Council Senior Fellow (740) 283-6245 for Academic Affairs 801 G. Street, NW Culture of Life Foundation (740) 283-6401 Egan Hall – Franciscan University Washington DC 20001 1413 K Street NW #1000 Steubenville, OH 43952 [email protected] Washington, DC 20005 Dr. Kenneth Whitehead [email protected] (202) 624-3038 (voice) 809 Ridge Place (740) 283-6228 Rev. Earl A. Weis, S.J. Falls Church, VA 22046-3631 Executive Secretary Loyola University Dean Kristin Burns [email protected] Rev. Msgr. Stuart Swetland 6525 N. Sheridan Road Christendom Graduate School (703) 538-5085 (voice) Mount St. Mary’s University Chicago, IL 60626-5385 4407 Sano St. 16300 Old Emmitsburg Road [email protected] (Cheryl Alexandria, VA 22312 (2008-2011) Emmitsburg, Maryland 21727 Newson) [email protected] Prof. Stephen Miletic [email protected] (773) 508-2344 (voice) (703) 658-4304 Franciscan Univ./Theology (301) 447-3453 office Steubenville, OH 43952-1763 (217) 621-9519 cell Prof. James Hitchcock Prof Joseph Capizzi [email protected] St. Louis University/History Catholic Univ. of America/Theol- (740) 284-5284 (voice) Editor of FCS Quarterly St. Louis, MO 63103 ogy Prof. J. Brian Benestad [email protected] 620 Michigan Ave. NE Fr. Peter F. Ryan, SJ Univ. of Scranton/Theology (314) 863-1654 Washington, DC 20064 Mount St. Mary’s Seminary St. Thomas Hall #367 [email protected] Emmitsburg, MD 21727-7797 Scranton, PA 18510 Prof. Ralph McInerny (202) 319-6511 [email protected] [email protected] Emeritus Dir., Maritain Center (301) 447-5020 (voice) (570) 941-4359 (voice) 714 Hesburgh Library Dean Gladys Sweeney Notre Dame, IN 46556 Inst. for the Psychological Sciences Sr. Timothy Prokes, FSE. [email protected] 2001 Jefferson Davis Hwy #511 Christendom Graduate School (574) 631-5825 (voice) Arlington, VA 22202 4407 Sano Street [email protected] Alexandria VA 22312 Prof. Gerard V. Bradley (703) 416-1441 (voice) [email protected] University of Notre Dame 703-658-4304 124 Law School (2007 – 2010) 7504 St Philips Ct. Notre Dame, IN 46556 Falls Church VA 22042 [email protected] Prof. Christian Brugger H: 703-204-0837 (574) 631-8385 (voice) St.John Vianney Seminary 1300 South Steele Street Fax: 703-204-9054 Dean Bernard Dobranski Denver CO 80210 Dr. Nick Eberstadt Ave Maria School of Law [email protected] American Enterprise Institute Dexter, MI 48130 [email protected] 1150 17th Street NW [email protected] 303-282-3442 Washington DC 20036 (734) 827-8043 (voice) H: 9730 Cyprus Point Circle Lone Tree CO 80124 [email protected] 202-862-5825 (voice)
FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 37 Ex Ca t h e d r a Pope Benedict XVI on the Proper Way to Read the Bible
n the fall of 2008 the Synod of Bishops met with one another and with the overall plan of revela- to discuss “The Word of God in the Life and tion and the fullness of the divine economy contained Mission of the Church.” On the morning of in it.” To be cohesive the truths of the faith cannot October 14 Pope Benedict gave a brief ex- contradict one another. To respect tradition means, temporaneous presentation to the bishops that for example, that a Biblical scholar would not come Iin the long run could have a deep and lasting impact up with an interpretation that contradicts the Nicene on the reading and study of the Bible, and even on Creed. A proper attention to the unity of Scripture the mission of the Church. Echoing Vatican II’s Dei would lead exegetes to interpret some individual verbum, he first confirmed the necessity of Scripture passages in the light of others, while attending to the scholars using the historical-critical method in their central word of Revelation that God loves his people. work. This necessity is a consequence of the Incarna- Augustine once said that any Biblical interpretation tion, so movingly described in John 1:14 as Verbum that contradicts charity must be wrong. caro factum est. “Historical fact is a constitutive dimen- Pope Benedict next notes that while biblical sion of the Christian faith.” After a long prepara- scholars have brought the historical-critical method tion for his coming described in the Old Testament, to a very high level, they have paid almost no heed God became man, died on the cross and rose from to the theological elements contained in Dei ver- the dead at a particular time in history. “The his- bum’s three interpretive criteria for reading the Bible tory of salvation is ... a true history, and is therefore as God’s word. The consequences have been grave. to be studied with the methods of serious historical First, exegesis “is no longer truly theological, but be- research.” The pope mentions that he benefitted from comes pure historiography, the history of literature.” such scholarship in preparing his Jesus of Nazareth. The second consequence is even worse. When the Since God is acting in history and speaking hermeneutic of faith is absent, a secularized herme- through the human words of the Biblical writers, neutic fills the void with the conviction “that the Biblical scholarship has to take this divine dimension Divine doesn’t appear in human history.” Biblical of the Bible into account by making use of a “second scholars then come with up with interpretations “that methodological level” of interpretation. This entails deny the historicity of the divine elements.” As ex- following the three rules of interpretation indicated amples, the pope mentions that the “‘mainstream’” of by Dei verbum, 12: 1) to keep in mind that Scripture German biblical exegesis denies both the institution is a unified whole; 2) to embrace “the living tradition of the Eucharist by Jesus as well as his Resurrec- of the whole Church”; and 3) “to observe the analogy tion. The corpse never left the tomb, they argue! If of faith.” The last rule, the pope explains in a speech German exegetes took the three theological criterial to the Pontifical Biblical Commission (April 23, of Dei verbum seriously, they could never have pro- 2009), means that the interpreter is to keep before his posed such interpretations. A third consequence of eyes “the cohesion of the individual truths of the faith an exegesis divorced from the life of the Church is
38 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009 the creation of “a profound gulf between scientific members of “the community of believers of all times” exegesis and lectio divina.” When exegesis lacks the (speech to Pontifical Biblical Commission, April 23, theological dimension, “Scripture cannot be the soul 2009). If Catholics are successful in this educational of theology, and vice versa, where theology is not endeavor, then the “treasures of Scripture” will be essentially the interpretation of Scripture within the opened to all. Church, this theology no longer has any foundation.” It is not surprising that Pope Benedict believes What are the consequences of this crisis in Bibli- that the preservation of a sound theology is crucial cal scholarship for the life of the Church? Without for the Church and its individual members. When explanation Pope Benedict affirms that the salvific theology doesn’t directly or indirectly ( say, through mission of the Church and the future of faith de- religious education) clarify and deepen the faith of pends on overcoming “this dualism between exegesis all Catholics, then the prospects for integrating faith and theology.” Therefore, he calls for educating fu- into every aspect of people’s lives will grow ever ture Biblical scholars to do both historical and theo- more dim. ✠ logical exegesis. They are to see themselves not only as members of the scholarly fraternity, but also as J. Brian Benestad •
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40 FCS Quarterly • Summer 2009