Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

My thoughts returned to Cardinal Ratzinger’s final homily before he was elected Pope as I was trying to ignore the talking head on MSNBC this morning at the gym. The story he was covering was the Department of Veteran’s Affairs settlement of a lawsuit by the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State demanding that the Wiccan pentacle be available as an option on Veteran’s headstones (see the NYT story here). Indeed, this was inevitable. For almost a decade now the military services have allowed Wiccans as chaplains. It is clear that modernity, not to mention postmodernity, does not possess the intellectual faculties by which they might make some discernment between religious belief that requires protection and accommodation, and inventions that promote socially destructive ideologies.

As Benedict suggested in his Regensburg lecture, in the Christian West Duns Scotus’ move toward voluntarism was the first step. While not an absolute voluntarist, he indicated that God’s freedom was such that He could change the second table of the Ten Commandments (those which deal with man’s relationship with God) if He wished . His student, William of Ockham took that ball and ran with it. Ockham absolutized this voluntarism and undergirded it with his philosophy of Nominalism and thus began the Western march toward modern thought.

Rene Descartes, often “extolled” by moderns as the father of modern philosophy, unintentionally ontologized skepticism in trying to combat it. His cogito ergo sum provided the fetid soil for such destructive thinkers as Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud. As an aside, I find it very telling in helping undergraduate students here at the U of I with their term papers in philosophy and religious studies. The only thinkers to whom they are exposed, the so-called heroes of modern thought (if it can be called thought), comprise the rogues gallery for the defenders of common sense. The skepticism that these thinkers have swallowed and promoted has led to the acceptance of the most ridiculous of dogmas one might normally associate with the gullible, but this by supposedly the most learned of men. It is this embrace of the ridiculous that has brought us to the point that we see religion as purely personal and have no moral or intellectual foundation whereby we might publicly judge the veracity of and value of social recognition for various modes of religious expression.

As we had Dale Ahlquist here last night, I think it only appropriate to throw some Chestertonian wisdom into the mix. Chesterton in many ways recognized the initial buddings of the ill fruit this thinking has now born. Chesterton described this situation in comparison to detective stories. He said:

“A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. A modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possibly be alive.” - A Miscellany of Men

How did we get this way. Well I think its roots are primarily in voluntarism. This began with making God’s will primary, coming before His nature. This ultimately means that God can will anything He wishes. Voluntarism leads to the nonsensical questions such as: “Can God make a mountain larger than He can move?” Voluntarism together with Nominalism ultimately destroyed the idea of nature.; God’s nature and also human nature. With nature gone, freedom needs to be redefined. Human freedom classically means the freedom to use the unique human faculties of reason and will to bring about personal perfection, which is the source of happiness and joy. Freedom was a means to be used for the purpose of perfecting oneself.

However, if in God, freedom comes before His nature it must also be so with men. If it does, then now freedom becomes not the freedom for excellence but the freedom to choose arbitrarily. In fact, now man is placed in opposition to God. If freedom has nothing to do with perfecting oneself then it has nothing to do with happiness. God’s freedom and man’s are arbitrary. God is free to will however He chooses and so man’s has freedom only where God has not restricted it by His arbitrary will. Thus, now God’s will comes at the expense of man’s freedom. Freedom becomes not a means to happiness but an end in itself. Is it any wonder then that the rabid atheists, such as Nietzsche, thought that they had to “kill” God. They fancied themselves as the rescuers of man’s freedom. Chesterton observed this when he said that modern freedom then is not anything more than fear:

“Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.” - What’s Wrong With the World

This fear has been buttressed by an intellectual hubris that puts more confidence in the intellectual elites’ ability to reason than in the experience of the common man. For the proud modern/postmodern, the average man lives in a fantasy world in which what he thinks he sees and experiences is not reality. Only the gnostic elite (scientists and modern/postmodern philosophers) have the ability to help him see the real world that hides behind the facade of common experience. Of course, Chesterton saw this as well. So what’s the solution? Humility:

“To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.” - Heretics, CW I, p128

In fact, we need to instill humility through a reappropriation of authentic philosophy. This is a realistic philosophy that takes common experience seriously. It is only authentic philosophy when it explains why our minds work in and are made for the world rather than trying to tell us that our minds really do not work at all. Chesterton proposes a “good” revolution as the solution:

“There are two kinds of revolutionists, as of most things - a good kind and a bad. The bad revolutionists destroy conventions by appealing to fads - fashions that are newer than conventions. The good do it by appealing to facts that are older than conventions.” (ILN 4-30-10)

We also need to discover the power of discernment. We need to stop conflating the idea of certitude with intolerance. Chesterton helps us one final time:

“It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.” - The Catholic Church and Conversion

Until then, we are going to have to get comfortable with the idea of our veteran family members’ remains resting next to Warlocks and eventualy Satanists. I think that I will start saving up for a plot in a nice Catholic cemetery thank you.

One last note. If you want to learn more about G. K. Chesterton, I can highly recommend Dale Ahquist as a speaker for introducing your school, parish, community to this formidable thinker, G.K. Chesterton. Dale is witty, warm, which help to convey these qualities that Chesterton himself possessed. Chesterton was a prophetic thinker and what he wrote at the beginning of the 20th century is still a powerful antidote for the problems that he forsaw and that we now possess. I will try to post Dale’s talk last night if there is any interest.

You can also try Dale’s two books that introduce Chesterton at the link above. As a first step, you can get an quick idea of his thought from the same source as I used for these quotes here.