Into the Manger of our Hearts and Minds ...

Dear Friends, known and unknown,

Today, I want to share with you in a more personal way.

And after that, I am going to step back for a little while.

As indicated earlier, this weblog is taking a break. I need time to recharge and to more deeply ponder the issues I have been raising here. For those of you who wish to rejoin me, I will be resuming on Monday, 16 January.

Personally I pray that those of us who are engaged in these matters can use this period for deepening our quest. For years now, it has seemed to me that this time of year has special qualities that foster and reward **intensified** reflection.

As ever, I turn to Anonymous d’Outre Tombe, who speaks to us poetically in this regard – poetically, but with profound depths for meditation:

“It is not without reason that the manger is venerated by the Church each year and that a unique light is lit in the world each Christmas. What I want to say is that Christmas is not only the festival dedicated to the **memory** of the historical nativity of Christ, but that it is in addition, the **event** of the nativity which is repeated each year, where Christ becomes child anew and where the history of humankind becomes the manger.

Then all that is in us of the nature of the shepherds of Bethlehem and all that which is in us of the nature of the mages of from the East responds as in the past.

That which is in us of the nature of the mages from the East is enamoured of the “star” and sets out **en route** with the little incense, myrrh and gold gathered during the year that is drawing to an end; and that which is in us of the shepherds of Bethlehem kneels down before the Child whose reality is revealed from above …

Just as the Child is present at Christmas, so also there is an awakening and activation at Christmas of forces (including individual souls) capable of receiving His revelation …

It is thus that it happens that Hermeticism also undergoes each year the rejuvenating and inspiring effect of Christmas, and that Hermeticists - often without being aware of it - receive vivifying impulses and illuminating inspirations for their efforts.”

Personally my friends, a profound sense of this kind of ‘awakening and activation … rejuvenating and inspiring’ me at this time has been present in me for years. I look forward to the Holy Nights to come with deep joy. And I pray that you will too …

For although the matters I raise in this weblog are serious, and the suffering of the world demands of us that we seek ‘another way’ forward, this way will certainly not become evident without opening to the joy of inspiration.

With whatever fruits I gather in this coming time, I look forward to rejoining you in January with my thoughts on what I am calling Hermetic Catholicism.

But if any of you would like in these intervening weeks to get a fuller sense of my thoughts in this regard – which I know can be both cryptic and fragmentary - I have two suggestions.

First, if you go to this page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1585421618/104-8741947-1971107?v=glance&n=283155&%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

You will find my Amazon review of the most important book behind this weblog, which I dare to suggest may also be the most important spiritual book of the twentieth century. And there are links at that review, which if you are interested, can take you to further things, mostly reviews, that I have written, which are all relevant to this weblog.

Second I have a long piece, originally a letter to friends, and called appropriately enough Hermetic Catholicism: A Letter to My Friends. But if Unknown Friends wish to e-mail me, I am happy to send them an edited copy of this piece, which goes far more into the background of this project, including much of a personal nature. Please note however, you might need to be patient, as my aspirations to deep reflection in this time, may well involve my getting far away from cyberspace.

Finally I want to thank all of you who have been reading and responding to this weblog, particularly the head, fred k, jeff, dr john, mamapelican, 1dayin7 and chariot for **enriching** this site with your comments. I also offer my real gratitude to those of you, whom I know have made effort to generate awareness of the existence of this weblog. I truly **thank you** all.

May Christ be born(e) in the manger of our hearts and minds this Christmas season …

Your friend in Jesus Christ,

Roger

No Eclipse

I have been speaking of the need to find another way. Another way in which the Christian Mystery can inform our desiccating culture. Another way, in which the Christian Mystery is not imposed on people.

But neither is the ECLIPSE of the Christian Mystery allowed to proceed headlong. And neither is a secularist, philosophical materialism imposed on us…

Now this other way begins to be seen. It begins to be seen - as I have suggested - in the papacy of John Paul the Great. And I think in the radiant thinking of Anonymous d'Outre Tomb, as well. And I feel it is also within sight in other ways - at least in fragments. And I want to tentatively explore these in the coming weeks.

But among all these matters is the need for a stance - a stance of true love for the Church and true willingness to give respect and credit, **wherever** respect and credit are due. (Whatever errors may also be present).

This stance is a major thing I have in mind, then with 'Hermetic Catholicism'. This stance involves a discriminating **listening** to many profound thinkers, who stand beyond the Church.

Into this category, I clearly place Rudolf Steiner. But this is not the same as endorsing his vision. Now from different quarters recently, I have heard a concern I think, that I appear to link Steiner too closely to orthodoxy.

Now this webblog HAS contained numerous caveats in this regard. As to the question for example, whether there was accord between Steiner and John Paul's remedy for the world, I said yes AND no.

But perhaps the 'no' needs to be stated more emphatically: there IS a very great deal in Steiner’s Christianity that IS in contradiction with the two thousand year collective spiritual effort of the Holy Church. Such that the question has been raised whether Steiner is Christian at all.

Now this is a question attended by enormity. It is complicated by the fact that Steiner spoke of the event on Calvary as such a momentous happening, that humanity would take untold ages to grasp its full significance. And it is clear that for him, Calvary's true nature is such a transcendent, multifaceted MYSTERY, that it, more than anything, cannot be contained in human concepts - but must be approached from many angles.

Steiner's vision is further complicated by the fact that numerous commentators have amplified it and I, for one, am not at all confident they have been able to follow him accurately.

Nonetheless, one of these commentators, Christopher Bamford, gives us something, which I take as nobly addressing the core of Steiner’s vision. A core, which I take as Christian, no matter how unorthodox Steiner might be in other respects:

“For Steiner … the incarnation of [Christ’s] Being (His birth, death, descent into the Earth, resurrection and ascension) is more than the redemptive turning point in humanity’s relationship to God.

Enormous though that is and hardly to be conceived of, the meaning of Christ’s passage through our human Earth is greater still, and marks a watershed not just in the life of human beings and the earth, but also in the life of the [entities of the archangelic hierarchies] and – dare one say it? – even in the Divine Life itself. …

Christ’s deed continues to transform human nature and the cosmos, as it were, turning these inside-out – so that for human beings today the once transcendent God is no longer beyond, but within a non-exteriorised divine-human interaction, more intimate than our jugular vein."

Now in his rich, thought-provoking comments to this webblog, Fred K observed that Jesuits 'engage the world even if many of them seem paralyzed to make any claim beside peace and justice.'

Now I am not an expert on Jesuitism by any means – but I recently read a book on Christology by a learned Jesuit, whose conclusion seemed to give little meaning to Calvary at all, beyond the pacifism of Jesus – i.e. that the Crucifixion's chief significance lay in the fact that Jesus had refused the path of violence.

Yes there is ‘peace' here and perhaps 'justice’ – but is there the Christian Mystery?

No, my friends, the Christian Mystery has been eclipsed in such thinking. Entirely eclipsed.

And whatever his errors may have been, this is precisely what Rudolf Steiner was concerned about: the Eclipse not only of the Mystery of Calvary, but the loss of Mystery everywhere in the face of more and more prosaic, flat and reductionist ‘answers’ ...

I am aware that many a traditional Catholic will question my listening to those outside the Church. I only hope that they will not question my devotion to this Holy Church, and see that whether I am right or whether I am wrong, I believe in all sincerity that this must form **part** of the way forward.

If my traditional friends remain troubled, I would ask that they listen to these words from that great English Catholic, GK Chesterton:

“I myself am working in defence of civilization side by side with men who call themselves Agnostic, Anglican, Methodist. I trust that in the end they will realize the name of the home they are defending. But they are already defending that home. They are … in the work for … defending the rights of man; and it happens, curiously enough, to be the work for Catholics in the service of the kingdom of God.”

If that bastion of orthodoxy, Chesterton can embrace the good in people everywhere working for Christ, I hope that my traditional friends may come to accept my listening to Hermeticists - Hermeticists who are often are closer to the Christian tradition than current 'Catholic' theology. Even if some (though not all) remain separated from the tradition and the Holy Church in other grievous ways as well.

“Now is the Time …” (to LOVE)

Yes, Anonymous d’Outre Tomb did not consider it valid or possible to separate Esoteric and Traditional Christianity. And as I emphasised yesterday, he thought it ***NECESSARY*** that we who aspire to Hermeticism begin to concede this …

‘Begin to concede?!’ It is this and it is MORE than this: ‘Now is the time’ he writes ‘for the Hermetic movement to make true Christian peace with the Church.’ This he says will take – ‘love’. A love, which is ready to abandon pretensions:

“May the pretension of certain Hermeticists evaporate in smoke – namely to have the authority to found small churches under their own leadership, and to set up altar against altar …”

Yes … it will take love that blazes not only with this kind of **humility** – but also with compassion, with warmth, with forgiveness, with understanding, and not least - with determined **commitment**.

The time is now, says the Catholic anonymous author ‘d’Outre Tomb’. And he says it, I feel, with immense HOPE in the face of a world situation he well understood.

And personally, I believe it is this same situation to which Rudolf Steiner pointed, when he said that Rome ‘alone in fact is awake.’ And again, the same situation (as I said some time back), of which the man who is now our Holy Father warns: ‘a future in which it is no longer possible to be truly human’ for ‘the population of an entirely planned and controlled world are going to be inexpressibly lonely.’

Yes all of this is to do with why I believe Anonymous d’Outre Tomb said: the time is now.

To continue in this vein, I resume quoting Rudolf Steiner from 1920. I wish to repeat that no endorsement of Anthroposophy is intended here. I simply feel that Rudolf Steiner in his profound thinking and magnificent love deserves listening to with respect.

Now what we have had to do with so far, is Steiner’s conviction that Rome has long been awake to the fact that a philosophically materialistic civilisation will inevitably lead to disaster. Whether capitalist or communist does not matter. We have then, according to Steiner - three choices before us:

We can continue heading down the road to an ever more soulless and brutal society.

Second, we could choose ‘Roman domination’. In his era, Steiner predicted mainstream Protestantism would wither – but the Catholic Church DID have the resources to offer an alternative to Communist and Capitalist Materialism.

His evaluation of the potency of pre-Vatican II Catholicism will sound truly bizarre to many today. However, my own still fragmentary research suggests the power – for good AND ill - wielded by pre-Vatican II Catholicism is far more significant than is realised.

I have in mind here not only places like the Latin countries, Poland, Ireland – but even America. For example, in his well researched history book American Catholic, Charles Morris documents the ascending influence of Catholic culture in 1940’s and 1950’s America – to the point that many **alarmed**, yes truly alarmed Protestants voiced public concern that America might no longer remain a Protestant society.

‘My fragmentary research’ - this is but a fragment of a larger picture, I am working with. But after a Christmas break, it may figure more in this webblog. I will just say now that I suspect Vatican II helped to derail the ascending Catholic culture again for good AND ill in America and elsewhere. And that far, far more has been lost in the destruction of the liturgy than is ever commonly seen.

Thus in returning to the SECOND choice of ‘Roman domination’ – so-called, Rudolf Steiner said:

“There is **one** [Steiner’s emphasis] power ready to deal with [the fatal consequences of continued Capitalist/Communist materialism] and that is the power of Rome. It is only a question of how it will be done. Rome can establish a dominion; it has the necessary means for this.

Thus the only real question is, not whether Bolshevism or Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie [rightly or wrongly, Steiner saw the threat of global capitalism, principally focused through the Anglo-American establishment] will get the upper hand, the question is whether there will be anti-social chaos [again either Communist OR Capitalist]; Roman domination or …”

And he then goes on in technical Anthroposophical terms to outline his vision of a THIRD way. A vision that is far beyond this single entry’s scope. But which concerns many elements, which have been touched on here in previous weeks – including epistemology.

Essentially, Steiner is saying we must behold the Mystery of Christ again – in a way that is impossible, he maintains, under ‘Roman domination’.

For myself, I cannot help but feel that eighty years after Rudolf Steiner died, Anthroposophists must confront the VAST gulf that exists between Steiner’s hopes for his attempted THIRD way, and the present world, which it seems to me, more and more conforms to his dark ‘Ahrimanic’ vision. A vision that is also indicated by the words of the Holy Father.

Now this dark vision is – again – one, which Steiner is claiming that certain Christians – both Anthroposophical and Catholic – could clearly see. I believe the Roman Catholic author, Anonymous d’Outre Tomb could also see this vision – and that this is why he said to us: ‘Now is the time.’

Now is the time in which one can contemplate a FOURTH way. A way that is not Capitalist/Communist materialist domination. That is not Catholic domination. That is not the failure of Steiner’s vision.

But something else again. It is something that I have been approaching throughout the last weeks of this blog. It is something that John Paul intimates with a Church that ‘proposes’ – and vigorously so – but ‘never imposes’. It is something intimated in ‘now is the time … to make true Christian peace with the Church’ … through LOVE.

But I will confess to you, my friends, that it is also something still fragmentary in my own vision. But which I shall be contemplating over these Holy Nights to come. A little more will be said these next two days, and then we shall take a break …

To Heal the World …

Rudolf Steiner … John Paul the Great … Two Great Doctors of Humanity – with a similar diagnosis, but a world of difference in treatment.

Or is there? The answer it seems to me is both yes and no. Now whole volumes could and I feel, will need to be written about the worlds within worlds I approach here. (To date, the greatest one, which we have, is unquestionably, Meditations on the Tarot).

But in this humble space, I can indicate a few fruits of my own reflection in this regard. As Unknown Friends in the comments to this webblog have most helpfully pointed out, the post-1958 trajectory of Rome IS very different from what Steiner knew in his day.

In 1958, John XXIII ascended the throne of Peter, and proceeded to convene the Second Vatican Council. Nothing has been the same since.

And rumours of a restoration of pre-Vatican II Catholicism are flawed at best. As this webblog has endeavoured to illustrate, in certain respects at least, John Paul was far more radical than any of his predecessors.

And this is not least the case with his 1984 call for the Church to be a 'house of glass' with full transparency and again, a Church that only ‘proposes [but] imposes nothing’.

There are many paradoxes with John Paul’s pontificate – which hopefully can be addressed somewhat as we proceed. For now, let it suffice to say that I for one, have no doubt at all about John Paul’s IMMENSE sincerity.

His work for freedom in the Church spans decades - from his own Vatican II innovations as Polish bishop to his long, truly **extraordinary** Papacy.

Yes, what is meant by freedom here may be a little different from a reductionist idea of ‘negative liberty’ (present, for example, in Anglo-American libertarianism) which seeks to overcome authority as much as possible.

For John Paul certainly does not divorce freedom from a not-intimidated, but rather **voluntary** and **conscious** obedience to authority.

But John Paul’s **massive** accomplishment also stands in contrast with the anti-modernist Catholic Church Rudolf Steiner had in mind, a church of which he could accurately say in his day: ‘in the Catholic Church, there is no such thing as revolt’.

Here is Rudolf Steiner again from the lectures we have drawn upon. Steiner is speaking of a time gone by in which ‘free discussion’ was still possible in the less centralized Church of an earlier era: “This free discussion has gradually been completely eliminated. Free discussion was something, which the Catholic Church could not stand. And why not?

Because quite a new consciousness was arising in humanity. This was the transformation of consciousness in humanity, which took place … in the middle of the fifteenth century.

The human being wants ever more and more to form his own judgment from the depths of his own soul. In the Middle Ages that was not so. Humanity then had a kind of communal consciousness, and only a few learned people, the real scholars could get beyond that.

They were able to evolve out of this [pattern] because they had been trained in Scholasticism [or]rabbinical teaching. In general, however, humanity’s consciousness was uniform. It was a community consciousness, a family consciousness. But the individual consciousness was developing more and more …”

Thus Rudolf Steiner is essentially calling for a free Christian spirituality in the modern era, which lamentably, he sees impossible under ‘Roman domination’.

Now I want to re-emphasise here the phrase I used above: ‘worlds within worlds’. I am hardly competent to address all of these worlds and continually work to deepen my understanding of them. In the upcoming Holy Nights of Christmas, I shall be pondering these things as deeply as I can.

More tomorrow. Today I will just say that Rudolf Steiner considered free esoteric Christianity impossible with Rome. But decades later, Anonymous d’Outre Tomb, considered this not only possible, but **NECESSARY**. Necessary I think, for so much, not least the healing and hope of the world ...

And in the very first, opening paradigmatic sentences of his Magnum Opus, he indicated to the ‘Cher Ami Inconnu’, the dear Unknown Friend, his work for a way ‘que unit l’esprit de libre recherché au respect de la Tradition’ – unites, that is, the spirit of FREE research with respect for the tradition …

Steiner and John Paul: A Certain Accord

If you have joined me these last days, you have joined me in listening to Rudolf Steiner. Rudolf Steiner has been speaking here of the Expulsion of Spirit from the rationalist and empiricist impulses of naturalism in the last centuries.

The result is a world ever more stripped of Soul and Mystery, in favour of functionalism and utilitarianism – as I have been asserting since this webblog commenced.

Rudolf Steiner forecast that if such a state of affairs were allowed to continue, the result could only be the greatest decadence and bondage of the human spirit in the centuries to come. And what was needed most of all was ‘the Mystery of Golgotha’ the Mystery that **entered** our world two thousand years ago …

As stated, Rudolf Steiner also said in 1920 that Rome ‘alone in fact is awake’ to the tragic social consequences for a civilisation increasingly stripped of Mystery and Christic Mystery. I will return to Steiner tomorrow, but today I am going to pause a moment to listen to the more recent voice of Rome in this regard. A voice, which I think can be heard as resonating with Steiner’s, in many regards, at least.

More specifically, I turn to comments John Paul II offered in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, a bestselling book and perhaps the most well read papal document of all time. The fact that John Paul broke all papal precedent to offer his thinking in this groundbreaking format, suggests that he held the contents he selected for this slim volume in the highest importance …

“[Questions of modern doubt regarding God] stem from … purely rationalist … philosophy – the history of which begins with Descartes, who split thought from existence and identified existence with reason itself. ‘Cogito, ergo sum’. (‘I think, therefore I am’).”

Such rationalism, John Paul claims, determines "***the history of European thought after Descartes***. I put Descartes in the forefront because he marks the beginning of a new era in the history of European thought and because this philosopher, who is certainly among the greatest that France has given the world, inaugurated the ***great anthropocentric shift in philosophy***. "I think, therefore I am" … is the motto of modern rationalism.

All the rationalism of the last centuries-as much in its Anglo-Saxon expression as in its Continental expression in Kantianism, Hegelianism, and the German philosophy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to Husserl and Heidegger - can be considered a continuation and an expansion of Cartesian positions.

[In which] only that which corresponds to human thought makes sense. The objective truth of this thought is not as important, as the fact that something exists in human consciousness.

We find ourselves on the threshold of **modern immanentism** and **subjectivism**. Descartes marks the beginning of the development of the exact and natural sciences as well as of the humanistic sciences in their new expression.

He turns his back on metaphysics and concentrates on the philosophy of knowledge. Kant is the most notable representative of this movement.

Though the father of modern rationalism certainly cannot be blamed for the move away from Christianity, it is difficult not to acknowledge that he created the climate in which, in the modern era, such an estrangement became possible. It did not happen right away, but gradually.

In fact, about 150 years after Descartes, all that was **fundamentally Christian** in the tradition of European thought **had already been pushed aside**.

This was the time of the Enlightenment in France, when **pure rationalism held sway**. The French Revolution, during the Reign of Terror, knocked down the altars dedicated to Christ, tossed crucifixes into the streets, introduced the cult of the goddess Reason. On the basis of this, there was a proclamation of **Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity**.

The spiritual patrimony and, in particular, the moral patrimony of Christianity were thus torn from their evangelical foundation. In order to restore Christianity to its full vitality, it is essential that these return to that foundation.

Nevertheless, the process of turning away from the God of the Fathers, from the God of Jesus Christ, from the Gospel, and from the Eucharist did not bring about a rupture with a God who exists outside of the world.

In fact, **the God of the deists was always present**; perhaps … in the work of Voltaire and of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and even more so in Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which marked the beginning of modern physics.

This God, however, is decidedly **a God outside of the world**. To a mentality shaped by a naturalistic consciousness of the world, a God present in the world appeared useless; similarly, a God working through man turned out to be useless to modern knowledge, to the modern science of man, which examines the workings of the conscious and the subconscious.

***The rationalism of the Enlightenment put to one side the true God - in particular, God the Redeemer***. [i.e. Christ, who is now, since the Mystery of Golgotha as Steiner would say, IN the world …]

The consequence was that ***man was supposed to live by his reason alone, as if God did not exist***. Not only was it necessary to leave God out of the objective knowledge of the world, since the existence of a Creator or of Providence was in no way helpful to science, it was also necessary to act as if God did not exist, as if God were not interested in the world.

****The rationalism of the Enlightenment was able to accept a God outside of the world primarily because it was an unverifiable hypothesis. It was crucial, however, that such a God be expelled from the world****.

(All words that I have emphasized by ***, are in italics in the original).

Rome ‘Throws Down the Gauntlet’ …

I want to move in the direction of clarifying what it is **specifically** that Rudolf Steiner claimed Rome ‘alone’ was awake to.

For today, I will focus on more comments from the 1920 lecture I quoted yesterday, and the talk that followed it. When the webblog resumes Monday, I plan to expand on these themes. Again, I implore you to bear in mind all the **caveats** I voiced yesterday, in regards to what I now quote:

“Since the middle of the fifteenth century, what has appeared as philosophy, science, public opinion, world conception, apart from the Roman Catholic Church, is for, the most part void of spirit."

In this, Steiner includes much at very least of, "the natural scientific trend inaugurated by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler ... out of which Darwin, Huxley and so on have blown the last remnant of spirit …”

But Steiner contends that an all-dominating worldview devoid of spiritual mystery can only bring ruin. As he says in the lecture that follows this one:

“For if only the materialistic knowledge that has been developed in the last three to four centuries should continue to permeate human evolution … the present social chaos of the civilized world will repeatedly recur …

What science has been able to give humanity, since the middle of the fifteenth century has certainly been sufficient for the making of technical discoveries, has been sufficient to spread over the earth a network of commerce and business intercourse, but it does not suffice for the creation of social arrangements …

As long as an external, material science is alone recognized, so long will humanity be in the grip of chaotic social conditions.”

‘Chaotic social conditions’ may be understated here. From all I have read, I believe Steiner would classify both the Communist and Capitalist empires that continued to ascend after his death in 1925, as having the most **grievous** of social conditions. In chilling lectures with astonishing foresight, he foretells a grave future for a humanity based on either Materialistic Communism or Capitalism.

Steiner would affirm, I believe, that our society is still running on a spiritual ‘capital’ accumulated in the past – before the rise of a modern epistemology and science that marginalised the Spirit. But this ‘capital’ is now being rapidly exhausted. And a society based only on materialistic conceptions can only grow ever worse.

I return now to the original lecture. Though most regrettably I feel, Steiner labels Rome’s direction as ‘extremely harmful’, he also says: "it must be recognised that the Catholic Church has shown great foresight …

The Catholic Church long ago foresaw the [modern] social condition … the Catholic Church took her own measures to make her influences felt in these social conditions …

In face of the rising tide of naturalism [Rome] throws down the gauntlet before all this rising materialism … It demonstrates the only wakeful consciousness within our sleeping civilization …

Modern civilization is asleep … Rome is awake … Rome was wide awake and made in advance her necessary preparations … That Rome is awake is revealed by the mighty drama [of the seven decades previous to 1920] unrolled in the [1854] definition of the dogma of the Immaculate conception; in the [1864] Syllabus condemning eighty modern truths; in the declaration of the Infallibility of the Pope; in the naming of Thomas Aquinas as the official philosopher of the Catholic priesthood; and finally in the anti-modernist Oath."

Now, Rudolf Steiner, it must be said, condemns this trajectory. Nonetheless it is based, as he says in the next lecture, on ‘magnificent foresight … [with] a real spiritual basis, a spiritual foundation that is rooted in a real spiritual life and not in mere abstraction."

Now, my quoting Rudolf Steiner at length should not be taken as an endorsement of his views. For example, I lament most deeply Steiner’s assertion that the Catholic Church had nothing left to offer humanity. As far as I can see, this only creates tragedy at the present time ...

I reproduce his comments, then, not to propagate Anthroposophy, but in my belief that, for friends of a Hermetic persuasion concerned with the same issues as myself, they may suggest most useful avenues of reflection. As they have done for me. Webblog will resume on Monday with further considerations in this territory.

The Viper’s Sting: Rudolf Steiner on Philosophical Materialism

Today I return to Rudolf Steiner, philosophical materialism and the viper’s sting. That is, Steiner call to vividly **feel** as though we are attacked by a viper! I am thus going to begin quoting from a lecture given by this Christian master in 1920 …

In reading this, I beg readers to bear in mind what has been said from the start of this webblog, about the dangers of one-sidedness. That is, what Bohr had in mind when he said: “The opposite of one great truth may well be another great truth …’

Inherent, then, to what commences today are many paradoxes. For example, that regarding Steiner’s position on Catholicism. Now I have no wish to mislead readers in anyway. Although Steiner could appear respectful of Catholicism in what I will be quoting – it must be said that the overwhelming mass of his material is decidedly negative regarding the Catholic faith. At least, the Catholic faith of his era …

I will not enter into this matter in detail. It is already well documented and – as far as I can see - has given rise to a tragic situation. Thus I have no wish at all to echo Steiner’s condemnation of the Holy Church. Nonetheless, I do not want to mislead and a little more is said in a comment to this entry.

Still more apparent contradictions abound. Thus, it might appear that either Rudolf Steiner or myself condemn the rise of Natural Science. But that is not the case, at all. Rudolf Steiner certainly celebrated this rise.

To appreciate Steiner, one must think deeply and endeavour to hold the opposites continually in mind. Similarly, Steiner’s horror of Communism here should not in anyway be read as a sympathy for Capitalism. And now I quote the master:

“I should be interested to know how many people felt as if stung by a viper when they read a certain sentence [which had recently appeared in the press]. I should really like to know how many people, when reading this felt stung by a viper! The sentence runs:

‘Religion, which represents a fantastic reflex in the minds of human beings concerning their relations one to another and to nature, is doomed to natural decay through the victorious growth of the scientific, clear and naturalistic grasp of reality which is bound to develop parallel with the establishment of a planned society.’ This sentence is to be found in an article on the measures taken by Lenin and Trotsky against the Russian Catholic Church …

One knows for a certainty that the number of Lenin’s opponents who feel as if stung by a viper on reading such a sentence is very small.

I want to emphasise this as not being without significance, because it brings out to what an extent modern humanity passes **lightly** over things, usually **asleep** – how it passes over the weightiest facts, facts which are **decisive** for the life of humankind on this earth …

But the Roman Catholic Church is awake, **she ALONE in fact is awake**, and is working systematically against the approaching storm …

What is it that is to bring about the decay of the old religions one and all? It is all that has arisen during the last three to four centuries as modern science, enlightened science in the educational institutions of civilized humanity.

Bourgeois teaching and bourgeois methods of administration have been adopted by the proletariat. What the teachers of the universities and high schools have put into the souls of humanity, comes out through Lenin and Trotsky. They bring out nothing but what is already taught in the institutions of civilized humanity.

My dear friends, today … the primary necessity is no longer to allow our children and youth to be taught what has been taught right up to the twentieth century in our universities and in our secondary and elementary schools …

That is why one has to say that whoever reads a declaration such as the one I have just quoted, even if it only appears in a few lines of an article, should feel as if stung by a viper; for it is as if the *whole situation of present day civilization* were illumined by a flash of lightning (Emphasis mine).”

I beg friends to delay judgment, while I unpack more from Steiner in the days to come. Again I wish to stress many polarities in his thinking. Rome, he claims, is not the answer, though Rome alone is awake to the heartbreaking trajectory he depicts. Materialistic Communism is decried here- but Steiner was equally lucid about the alternate threat posed to the world by Materialistic Capitalism.

And even though he felt that certain consequences of the development of natural science had had the most tragic of effects, he certainly also celebrated humanity’s growth through reason, the Enlightenment and natural science …

All the Pope’s Men (Book Review: Part Four)

John L. Allen’s book is a book of many, many facets – all aimed at creating clarification, mutual understanding and peace.

In my review, I have emphasized some aspects more than others. For example, I have stressed Allen’s effort to hear and represent the perspective of Catholic traditionalists. For it seems to me in a world awash with media hype and secularist assumptions, that this latter voice is almost entirely drowned out in favour of the former …

In conclusion, however, I wish to emphasise that as someone coming from a liberal American Catholic newspaper, and a liberal background himself, Allen clearly understands very different positions and his book is a call for understanding in **every quarter** – as when he writes: ‘exchanges between Rome and America would be more constructive if both sides were to drop the pretense that they know the real motives of the other, and consider instead their actual aims and fears.'

At times, I feel Allen’s inspiration is near angelic. As an example, I will simply turn to one last passage, regarding divisions between liberal and traditional Catholics – which has flared up in the U.S. after the sexual abuse crisis, involving perhaps as much as 4% of the American priesthood.

As Allen points out, such a figure is disproportionately and tragically high. (It is perhaps around 2% in analogous non-Catholic contexts of authority). Yet Allen points out that both sides of the Church seek healing very sincerely – but often they can barely communicate. As Allen writes:

“Both sides in this conversation would feel more at ease if they could somehow assuage the worries of the other. Americans often suspect that when Rome talks about reform, they spiritualise the concept in order to avoid any substantive changes. In truth, the Holy See [is] not closed to the possibility of structural changes …

In the Vatican … suspicion is often that Americans know only the language of political power and their reform agenda is more akin to a putsch than a purification.

American Catholics would reduce anxiety levels in Rome if they would learn to speak in a more spiritual argot. For example, since forgiveness and healing are essential … to the sex abuse crisis, perhaps the various groups … could promote a nationwide return to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

If the Vatican were to see churches across the United States filled Catholics desiring to make confessions, imploring God’s grace … it would speak volumes about the underlying ecclesiology of the reform movement.

Further, it would help to avoid phrasing public activism in antagonistic terms, as if ‘the laity versus the clergy’ or ‘the left versus the right’. Obviously no one is pretending that pious exercises by themselves can solve the sexual abuse crisis... Yet … to heal, an examination of conscience by all parties is essential. Prayers for forgiveness and grace are never wasted. The more the reform movement can be visibly rooted in faithful, committed Catholicism, the better."

There is great, great deal of good will and sobriety – calm, caring soberness - in Allen’s book. Things that are desperately needed in a culture of increasing stress and hype.

If you care about the Catholic Church, if you care about its mission in the world, I can think of few better things to do than read this book and if you agree with me, recommend it to as many of your friends as possible.

Widely circulated, the kind of material in this book, so lovingly, fairly and articulately expressed, could do both Church and world an enormous power of good. `Blessed are the peacemakers.' Blessed be John L. Allen.

All the Pope’s Men (Book Review: Part Three)

Although I mainly quoted Allen yesterday about what is seen as a Catholic-Calvinist America divide, I would suggest far more is at issue here. And again, that Allen’s very fine effort can help to stimulate our cultural imagination in many unexpected ways – especially for those of us in the Anglophone world, who have little or no experience of cultures not of Protestant and secular heritage.

To illustrate, I note what Allen writes of Italian society:

“Despite proud assertions of its identity as uno loco laico, a lay republic [Italy] has never really separated Church and State …

The Church remains in a position to move votes … There isn’t a candidate in Italy who would say no to a picture with the Pope … For every issue that comes up in Italian national life, one of the first thing journalists will do is seek out the opinion of a member of the College of Cardinals …

Italian culture gives clerics every reason to conclude that nothing is outside their purview … Their opinions on every conceivable issue, from cloning to tomorrow’s soccer matches are solicited and weighed with great seriousness …

On the cultural front, Italy is many ways still an intact Catholic society in which the Church’s liturgical seasons still shape the annual calendar and in which Catholic custom’s and vocabulary are part of the ordinary public consciousness.

People in Italy know when it’s Lent, they know when it’s Advent … Cab drivers can explain the difference between Franciscans and Dominicans … Catholicism is in the marrow of the place.”

Certainly my own experience of Catholic Ireland, mirrors Allen’s picture of Italy. Although Ireland rapidly secularises, and there is bitter opposition to Catholicism in certain quarters – this bitter opposition exists in large part **because** Catholicism still counts as a major cultural force.

People can get very worked up about the Church here – precisely because this is still a culture in which the Church can mount an effective critique of the secularist and materialist capitalist shadow.

It may boggle many a secular mind to realise this is a country in which, just over ten years ago, Playboy magazine and divorce were still illegal. (Divorce was legalized by referendum in 1995 – but 49.7% voted against it. Before that the legalisation of divorce would have clearly been contrary to the will of the people.)

Now in speaking of ‘effective critique of the secularist and materialist capitalist shadow’ – I do not wish anyone to suppose I endorse every single aspect of Catholic culture. Nor that I think that Catholicism is without considerable shadow.

In a fallen world, any institution with a two thousand year embracing 1.1 billion people – nearly one sixth of humanity – will clearly cast a considerable shadow. It is my contention however that this Catholic Church is also casting far, far more light and hope, than many people will be able to credit.

And the incapacity to credit this, will be particularly true in countries where there is little Catholic tradition – and I fear often almost no sense of **any cultural alternative whatsoever** to constructing a society around an increasingly shallow media world – rooted less and less in tradition and thinking and more and more on a corporate agenda of keeping us all ‘entertained’.

I know that the picture here of highly Catholicised societies sends chills down many a spine. But I wish that the power and manipulation wielded by the Corporate Priesthood sent far, far more of a shudder - a cold shudder - down our collective spine.

Now, in 1920 Rudolf Steiner once read out a sentence which illustrated, he said, the consequences of materialistic education and suggested that if we were really, truly awake, we would hear these kinds of things – and feel as though a viper has stung us! If this webblog should lead any of us to **feel** more acutely the viper’s sting of secularist materialism, it will not have been in vain …

Be that as it may, I hold Allen’s effort in the highest regard. For raising awareness of cultural alternatives and stimulating imagination – Allen’s is a book that deserves to be deeply listened to. It is also a very worthy effort on other fronts, as well. As I will indicate in hopefully concluding this extended review tomorrow.

All the Pope’s Men (Book Review: Part Two)

As I say, much of Allen’s self-declared aim is to render communication between the Catholic Church and the Anglophone world (again, Ireland excepted) much better. And to do this, it is necessary to **stimulate imagination** by asking the parties concerned to **really imagine** the very different grounds on which they stand.

Without this, as when Americans (who as an American himself, Allen largely has in mind here) simply assume Catholic values are identical to their own, there can be no impetus, no call to the imagination.

That is, Allen suggests conservative Americans often simply assume that conservative Catholics are the same as they are. Again: ‘pro-life, anti-communist’ – and that’s that. But Allen here provides a stimulus to imagination – by showing what a vast gulf really exists here.

Rather than say much more today, I’m simply going to quote more from Allen’s very fine book:

“Cold War politics made temporary bedfellows out of the Vatican and the US, and what is re-emerging now is the caution and reluctance that have always characterized Vatican attitudes about America. In other words, perhaps [the cold war] alliance … was [an] aberration …

From this point of view, the clash of cultures most exacerbated by the Iraq War may not be between Christianity and Islam, but between the Holy See and the United States.

The war [helped to suggest] to Vatican observers that the ghost of John Calvin is alive and well in American culture …

The deepest thinkers in the Vatican have always harbored their doubts about the United States, seeing it as a culture forged by Calvinism and hostile to a genuinely Catholic ethos … One archbishop put it this way: ‘Americans have a bad combination of youth, wealth, power, isolation and very little serious Catholic intellectual tradition …

Key Vatican officials … have long worried about aspects of American society – its exaggerated individualism, its hyperconsumer spirit, its relegation of religion to the private sphere, its Calvinist ethos. A fortiori, they worry about a world in which America is in an unfettered position to impose this set of cultural values on everyone else.

The Calvinist concepts of the total depravity of the damned, the unconditional election of God’s favoured, and the manifestation of election through earthly success, all seem to play a powerful role in shaping American cultural psychology.

The Iraq episode confirmed Vatican officials in these convictions. When Vatican officials hear Bush talk about the evil of terrorism and the American mission to destroy that evil, they sometimes perceive a worrying kind of dualism …

After Cardinal Pio Laghi returned to Rome from his last minute appeal to Bush, just before the Iraq War began, he told John Paul II that he sensed ‘something Calvinistic’ in the president’s iron determination …

[One Vatican official] told me he sees a ‘clash of civilisations’ between the United States and the Holy See, between a worldview that is essentially Calvinistic and one that is shaped by Catholicism. ‘We have a concept of sin and evil too’ he said, ‘but we also believe in grace and redemption’ …

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago made a similar statement [saying] that U.S. citizens ‘are culturally Calvinist, even those who profess the Catholic faith. [American society] is the civil counterpart of a faith based on private interpretation of scripture and private experience of God.’ He contrasted this kind of society with one based on the Catholic [focus on] community and a vision of life greater than the individual."

Yes, Allen’s book is largely oriented to America. And as I say, to helping Americans really imagine the very different place the Vatican is really ‘coming from’. For this alone, it has enormous value. But I hope, in due course, to suggest that his book is most valuable as a stimulation to our cultural imagination in many other ways as well …

Shock! Pope is Catholic!

Change of plan. When this webblog resumes Monday, I intend to return to my review of John L Allen’s most important work.

Today though, I hope you may forgive a detour, which will prepare the stage for that continued review. That is, I want to say more about why I value so highly what Allen trying to do, in addressing the Anglophone world’s (Ireland excepted) incomprehension of the Vatican.

Among my reasons for applauding Allen is that I see a poverty of imagination in our culture. As though we simply cannot imagine any other alternative to our society, than it being built on the basis of the lowest-common-denominator of our experience: logic and empiricism. Which, as I have said, Rudolf Steiner so eloquently warned would lead to disaster.

Yes, friends, so that you are clear ‘where I am coming from’ I will say that I am haunted, haunted by Rudolf Steiner’s vivid portrayal of the ascent of ruthless capitalism on the back of Cartesian-Kantian epistemology and its heirs …

I am Catholic and I do not support many aspects of Steiner’s Anthroposophy. But I am haunted by what I take to be his undeniable foresight, as to a continued loss of soul in the world … with the gravest of consequences.

As to what I am calling a ‘poverty of imagination’, I think I can illustrate by turning attention to a common bewilderment about Catholicism, which can be regularly observed everywhere in the non-Catholic world – and as I have indicated before, particularly in the secular countries of Protestant heritage.

A bewilderment, which it seems to me, reflects an **unconscious assumption** that the Catholic does or at least should, think along the same lines as the non-Catholic, which conveniently ignores the fact that to be an accepting Catholic means to have one’s worldview shaped by very different factors than that of Secularism, or even Protestantism.

Now with the election of Benedict XVI earlier this year, this ‘unconscious assumption’ came into much sharper focus. At least for me. I can illustrate what I mean by referencing a piece by Gerard Baker in the London Times following the Papal election.

Commenting on ‘the simple incredulousness at the very idea that a man such as Joseph Ratzinger could possibly have become leader of the universal Church’ Baker went on to say:

“Pundits for whom the Catholic Church has long been an object of anthropological curiosity fringed with patronising ridicule have really let themselves go since the new pontiff emerged. Indeed most of the coverage I have seen or read could be neatly summarised as: ‘Cardinals elect Catholic Pope. World in Shock’.”

What Baker essentially suggests is that the non-Catholic world is simply unprepared to imagine the dynamics shaping contemporary Catholicism.

But I would say the problem goes far, far deeper than that. Our secular world is not simply unprepared to imagine Catholicism - it seems unprepared to imagine ANYTHING OTHER than its own perhaps-suicidal trajectory …

To be continued Monday.

All the Pope’s Men (Book Review: Part One)

It is hard to contain my enthusiasm for John L Allen’s book: All the Pope’s Men. It seems to me to represent **exactly** what is most needed in the tragic situation of the Catholic Church's communication with our media-saturated world.

For a heart-breaking situation of profound misunderstanding and miscommunication characterises the `dialogue' between a Church rooted in centuries of tradition and rigorous, painstaking thinking – yes, thinking - and a world of media myths and soundbites, which cannot hope to do justice to anything needing a significant span of attention.

Allen sees this much better than most. As a reporter, whose full-time beat is the Vatican and who knows its inner workings far, far better than nearly any English speaking lay-person, Allen has accomplished something desperately needed here.

Not only is there great journalism in this book - there is also a noble, inspired attempt to create fairness and justice, listening and understanding, appreciation of different perspectives and mindsets, amidst the psychic warfare that typifieses not only the tragic divisions within the Church, but also those between Catholicism and the ideology of the anglophone – particularly American – secularist ethos.

His very first sentence, in fact, reads: ‘The aim of this book is to promote better informed and hopefully less acrimonious conversation between the Vatican and the English-speaking world by identifying the core values and experiences that underlie specific Vatican policy choices.’ He is making ‘an attempt to understand how the Vatican thinks, why it reacts in certain ways and not others, how it sees the world.’

Many traditionalists will be suspicious. Allen works for the very liberal National Catholic Reporter and has previously written far more critically of the Vatican.

I am very happy to say that a certain turning is very evident here. In this book, there is a genuine attempt to serve both liberals and conservatives, by reporting their views fairly and without bias. So that they can simply be heard. Simply be **heard** - for God's sake. This is what is needed. Allen knows it, and is evidently a man who has tried very hard to simply listen himself.

Thus I find something truly uplifting and **sane** as Allen cuts through layer upon layer of prejudice, misperception and mythology to simply render how people in the Vatican really think and how their thinking is necessarily shaped by very different concerns from modern secularism. I think the best I can do at this point, is simply to let Allen speak for himself:

“Critics often complain about a lack of accountability in the Vatican, by which they mean that popes do not stand for re-election, are not subject to recall, and are not otherwise answerable to public opinion as expressed in modern democracies …

Yet it is a **terrible misconception** [Emphasis mine] to believe that Vatican officials do not regard themselves as accountable … Tradition [is what] informs the Vatican’s sense of accountability… policy is based on theological and philosophical principles derived from the tradition, the deposit of faith … Vatican officials believe the defense and transmission of the tradition is the highest service Church leaders can offer to their people …

Vatican personnel by and large do not see themselves as imperialists imposing their will on the rest of the Catholic Church. In many instances ... they see themselves defending the people against elites running roughshod over their rights, [protecting] the simple faithful against avant-garde theologians who would betray the faith, against experimental liturgists who risk transforming the Mass into something profane or banal, or against ecclesiastical bureaucrats.'

Writing as an American himself, Allen can say: `Americans often want to do things their own way, and if Rome puts on the brakes, it's a form of oppression. From Rome's point of view, however sometimes its precisely the reverse - they're saving the rest of the Church from being involuntarily ‘Americanised' ...”

My review of Allen’s MAGNIFICENT effort will continue tomorrow.

Mystic Politician

Oh John Paul, it took me so, so long to see you, for who you really were. Such are the clouds of malice and confusion, which surround you …

You who rose very early every morning – not with ease, but rather with iron determination – and worked the whole day long, till late at night. You who began these days with prayer, mass and mystic adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and unfolded your life’s work from communion with His Sacred Heart.

You who filled every hour, every day with meaningful work, so that scarcely a minute was wasted and at the end of 26 years, your pontificate spoke to so, so many things.

Spoke to so many things, that is, that are now so rarely heard. You who are often seen as little else, but ‘pro-life, anti-communist’. How many will be able to credit the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev called you ‘one of the brightest thinkers of the left’ adding that ‘Without the Polish Pope, the mighty changes in Eastern Europe would have been inconceivable’?

How many will have heard your call that human labour has dignity in and of itself, and must NOT be treated as simply a **means to an end**, a commodity to be bought and sold, a cog in the capitalist machinery that grinds down Soul.

How many will have heard your call then, for strong labour unions, or what you said in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution of ‘capitalist neo-liberalism’ which: ‘subordinates the human person to blind market forces and conditions the development of peoples on those forces. From its centres of power, such neo-liberalism often places unbearable burdens upon less favoured countries.’ And which ‘centres of power’ were you directly challenging?

Oh John Paul, in my little library is a cartoon introduction to postmodernism, written by an obviously otherwise learned man. This cartoon introduction shows images of you cavorting with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. As though you belonged to their revolution. When in truth, you abhorred what they stood for …

Oh John Paul, how many realise that on the issue of religious tolerance, you are the most radical Pope in two millennia of the papacy? That you are the first to visit a synagogue, the first to visit a mosque and kiss a copy of the Koran?

And then there is your gathering at Assisi for world prayer, bringing together, as Kwitny puts it: ‘Rabbis, mullahs, Sikhs, African animists, Buddhists (including the Dalai Lama) Protestant Evangelicals, Shintoists.’

And according to numerous reports, you undertook this action in the face of unusually stiff resistance, from more conservative members of the Vatican. Yes John L. Allen is absolutely right in saying:

‘The 1986 Interreligious Assembly was a breathtaking gesture from the Roman Catholic Church, given that earlier in the century the church had branded many of these faiths as ‘pagan’ or ‘heretic’. John Paul’s decision to pray … with this mixed crowd was equally dizzying, considering that Catholics were not permitted to as much as say the Lord’s Prayer with other Christians until after Vatican II.’

How many realise that you John Paul, as the Polish bishop Karol Wotyla, were a force for freedom at Vatican II, and that you worked considerably on what is arguably its most progressive document Gaudium et Spes – a document you never ceased to champion, after you became our Holy Father?

How many realise that in these things I briefly mention, I have hardly said anything at all of what you did? For I have not even mentioned your accomplishments in debt relief, your defense of human rights, your campaigns against war, nor your insights in epistemology, ecclesiology, Christology, Mariology and more. And more. How much more these 26 years of intense dedication to every waking hour have engendered …

Yes, John Paul, I am not ashamed to venerate you and offer you gratitude from the recesses of my heart. At the same time, I know your hagiographers disserve you. I know that you saw the darkness of your own heart, and saw the darkness of all hearts, believing only in the pure, undefiled hearts of Our Lord and of Our Lady. To paint you without limitation or shadow – the dark shadow each of us casts – does not serve you.

But you were also vilified more than any Pope in history and do not deserve the stones cast at you. And I will not join with those who cast them. Doubtless, history will prove that, as with us all, there are things you did not always see clearly. I only pray we will remember – and remember swiftly – **all** you tried to say and do …

Disinformation and John Paul

I have been speaking of late of the dulling of thinking and feeling generated by our present culture. As someone who has come very **slowly** to realise that the Catholic Church represents a great force standing against many, many aspects of this cultural decay – to say the very least about its true work – I have become poignantly aware of the vast amount of disinformation, that is also spawned around Catholicism.

Recently this became marked for me, when a dear American friend of mine related how most Americans saw the late John Paul II as little more than ‘pro-life, anti-communist’. My friends, this is a monstrous caricature. And addressing such injustice is definitely one thing I have in mind with this webblog.

But today I will simply say that years of reading a great amount of reporting on all sides (from bitter anti-papal polemics to adoring hagiographies) have led me to the conclusion that John Paul’s true work has been buried under lies. And by way of illustration, I want to quote from what I judge to be one of the most balanced books I’ve found, by Jonathan Kwitny who explains:

“I undertook this book because years of reporting-for the Wall Street Journal, previous books, and Kwitny Report documentaries in Poland - persuaded me that the story of the Cold War is widely misperceived.

On the evidence, the Cold War was won not by Washington, but by a nonviolent mass movement, like those of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., led by a man whose religious office has precluded him from talking about it openly.

Karol Wojtyla, as bishop of Krakow, forged the Solidarity revolution - in his philosophy classes, his community synods, his secret ordination of covert priests, his clandestine communications seminars, the smuggling network he oversaw throughout the Eastern Bloc, and above all by his example.

Even in its name, Solidarity was not just a shipyard union, but an idea rooted in Catholic tradition and formulated afresh by Wojtyla starting with a 1953 book daringly published underground ...

In interviews, colleagues reveal how Wojtyla guided them into a major hunger strike that was the Boston Tea Party of the Solidarity revolution and handed out envelopes of cash to sustain their work. Time and again, as pope, he singlehandedly rescued the revolution he begat, often in dramatic private confrontations.

Fabrications, widely repeated in the press, led people to misjudge his alliances and adversaries. Not only did the White House deny aid to a desperate Solidarity, by evidence it tried to help John Paul's opponents destroy Solidarity. The Vatican has been at odds with Washington over fundamental issues throughout John Paul's reign …

One obstacle to understanding John Paul is summarised by his friend and former student Halina Bortnowska: 'Most people are interested just in his teaching on sex … they miss what is important.' Contrary to popular belief, his clearest changes in Catholic doctrine as pope have been toward pacifism, respect for other religions, and willingness to admit error.”

I don’t know if the late Kwitny was Catholic or even Christian. I saw no evidence that he was, while reading his book: Man of the Century. And I saw plenty therein that – unlike the Catholic hagiographies – was not afraid to address John Paul’s limitations and shadow.

For me, this made his book all the more reliable. This and thousands of pages of further reading, have convinced me that what I quote here is only the **beginning** of what John Paul – this giant of the human spirit - contributed to our civilisation. Only the beginning … more will definitely be said as this webblog continues.

Sanctifying Grace and Ireland

Recently a newspaper here in Ireland, featured an interview with a traditional priest. The priest criticised the view of some clerics, who claimed that regular confession was not important. That is, instead of a situation where Catholics had once gone very regularly to confession, now once or twice a year was thought sufficient.

The priest objected. The point he said, was not whether people were in grave sin or not. The point was how often they received the strength given by the Sacrament **following** confession.

Actively promoting less frequent confession, he claimed was tantamount to: ‘stifling an increase in Sanctifying Grace in the individual.’

I am very moved by this. What moves me is that the effects of the Sacrament are taken absolutely seriously in this case. There is not a vague notion of confession being good for the soul, with a meagre faith in the presence of Christ.

Rather there is vital concern for **what really happens** when people receive Christ’s presence, via the absolution given by the priest.

What really happens, according to this priest - in alignment with centuries of tradition and experience - is that Sanctifying Grace makes its presence felt in the soul. And this is certainly my own humble experience as well …

What really happens … I have emphasised these words, because I think there is a crying need to take the Sacraments seriously. This is particularly important, I think, if we are Catholic and if we care not only about the sake of our own souls, but also the sake of the soul of the world.

The Sanctifying Grace of Christ is the grace of divine humanity. Is this not important in a society that seems ever less human?

Now I write these words as an American in Ireland. Ireland is the fifth nation I have lived in. But none of the countries I lived in before, prepared me for what hit me here. The legendary quality of Irish humanness is absolutely true. I am still regularly astonished by the kindness of strangers, the continuous goodwill everywhere evident. I have simply never experienced any culture like it.

Surprising facts leap out as one glances at Irish history. This is a country that until the 1980’s never had a right-wing party like the Republicans in America or the Conservatives in Britain and elsewhere. Ruthless capitalism only gained a political party here in the last twenty years, which still only polls around 5% of the vote.

The social conscience of the Irish is most marked in other ways, as well. Even when Ireland had incredible poverty, it gave amazing amounts of money to the third world in comparison with other countries.

And although Ireland is now rapidly secularising, the presence of Sacramental Christianity powerfully remains. Last year, I lived near Limerick, population 90,000. I walked around the half-dozen or so churches in the city centre. Churches which each had daily mass, often two or three times a day.

Close to a hundred people could be in **each** of these **weekday** masses, receiving the Sacrament. After the priest had departed, one heard in every church, the collective tones of ‘Hail Mary, full of Grace …’ Sincerity and devotion were palpable.

Yes, I am aware of many seeming contradictions to what I am about to suggest. Catholic cultures that were not nearly so human ... to say the least. There have certainly been dark sides to Irish Catholicism, as well.

Nonetheless, I believe that over fifteen hundred years of the Irish people regularly receiving the Sanctifying Grace of Holy Communion and Penance has not been without effect. In a dehumanising world, I salute the faith of this traditional Irish priest most deeply.

Degeneration …?

As I say, my life journey has led me to take Anonymous d’Outre Tomb very seriously. I believe, as I say, that his book Meditations on the Tarot holds profound hope for the Church and for the world.

Now the author chose to highlight the words from the Lady of all nations, ‘degeneration, disaster and war’, I believe, with careful thought.

In this website, I am also making my own humble attempt to speak of degeneration. **Among other things**. And to speak of these matters, with a chorus of far more profound Christian thinkers, again, as diverse as Rudolf Steiner and John Paul II and Benedict XVI …

A final personal note for the week. I ask myself a great deal as to the nature and degree of the degeneration I see. How bad is it – **really**?

Recently I have been reading a book by Curtis White, also a penetrating thinker, though not I believe, a Christian one. The book is called: The Middle Mind. Why Americans Don’t Think for Themselves.

White, like myself, is an American, and what he means by the Middle Mind is the generation of a collective mindset – generated across the board, in the media, in academia, in political pronouncements, in entertainment, in the arts so-called.

A collective mindset, whose effect is to dull thinking, numb feeling, flatten distinction, to admit no world beyond the borders of a tightly controlled domain. to reduce, confuse, blur and simplify issues … leading to a culture of banal mediocrity. And worse.

He also has the courage to link the generation of this collective mindset to a political agenda - one of stupefying people and producing tolerance to what ought to be intolerable.

He writes: ‘The Middle Mind is a **strategy**. It is a means to an end. It is a form of **management**.’ I would add: it is the **true** opium of the people.

Now more than eighty years ago, Rudolf Steiner warned in lucid terms of this kind of degeneration. He foresaw the coming of the Middle Mind. And his insight in this regard, at least, is certainly shared by Anonymous d’Outre Tomb, John Paul II and Benedict XVI …

I cannot do justice to Curtis White’s often profound book in this space. This webblog resumes Monday and I may say more of White’s **devastating** critique – which would be most disheartening, were it not for the fact that it demonstrates that what we need now most of all is HEART.

We must not give up to the call to surrender HEART. The French for heart is ‘coeur’. We need courage … the rage of the HEART.

'Woe to me if I tell and woe to me if I do not tell!'

Yesterday as I received Christ into me at the Holy Communion, I also received what I take to be an inspiration to post something at this site today:

Anonymous d’ Outre Tomb has written:

"There is not a shadow of doubt for anyone who takes the spiritual life of mankind seriously, even if he is short of authentic spiritual experience, that the Blessed Virgin is not an ideal only, nor a mental image only, nor an archetype of the unconscious (of depth-psychology), nor, lastly, an occultistic egregore (a collective astral creation of believers), but rather a concrete and living individuality-like you or I -who loves, suffers, and rejoices.

It is not only the children of Fatima, the child Bernadette at Lourdes, the children of La Salette-Fallavaux, and the children of Beauraing in Belgium, who have witnessed the "Lady", but also innumerable adults across the centuries, including our own.

Numerous meetings still remain intimate and undivulged (I know of three series of such meetings, including one in Tokyo, Japan), but one series of meetings with the Blessed Virgin took place recently in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where the Blessed Virgin manifested herself as the "Lady of all nations" (de Vrouwe van ale Volkeren) and inaugurated a prayer movement with a special prayer, with a view to saving all nations from "degeneration, disaster and war" …

I may add that I went to Amsterdam in order to make as scrupulous an investigation as possible, and the result of this investigation there (confirmed subsequently by experiences of a personal nature) was complete certainty, not only with respect to the authenticity of the experiences of the seer (a woman forty years of age) but also with respect to the authenticity of the subject of these experiences.

In writing of these things, I can only agree with the sentiment expressed by Rabbi Simeon in the Zohar, who exclaimed:

'Woe to me if I tell and woe to me if I do not tell! If I tell, then the wicked will know how to worship their master; and if I do not tell, then the companions will be left in ignorance of this discovery! ' ”

Now the entire journey of discovery that lies behind this Hermetic-Catholic webblog, has led me to take this author most seriously. And to feel that everything which he says in his testament, Meditations on the Tarot, has the most profound of worlds standing behind it.

I will say more. For now I simply wish to give the Prayer, the central Prayer given by the Lady of all nations, from which the anonymous author has chosen to select the words ‘degeneration, disaster and war’ …

'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father,
Send now your Spirit over the earth.
Let the Holy Spirit live in the hearts of all nations,
That they may be preserved from degeneration, disaster and war.
May the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary,
Be our Advocate. Amen'

My Fellow Americans …

I want to strike a more personal note today. My reasons involve the diversity of feedback I receive. Everything it seems from a wish at one extreme, that I give this webblog more intellectual beef, and less ‘rhetorical’ flab, to a suggestion at the other extreme, that I make it more accessible.

All of this leads me to conclude there is space here for a variety of approaches. Here comes a different, more personal one to the same issues …

I am an American living in Ireland. Since I last left America nearly twenty years ago, I have visited my home country only once. It was in many ways a chilling experience. I walked around New York – both upstate and the city – and I found myself repeatedly saying to myself: ‘Americans have no idea how poor they are …’

And I didn’t mean simply economic poverty, though that was all around me. I also meant social and cultural poverty. Upstate I had hoped – naively - to find perhaps-mythical beautiful New England-like villages. But I found parking lots and shopping malls instead.

And as I write these words, I recall the little store I had visited throughout my youth in America, a store which, in my memory at least, has **soul**. But which I now know has been demolished to provide parking for a giant chain supermarket. And this is just one example of the kind of horror I felt, as I encountered many other things that troubled me … Including at times, a dull, mechanical response in certain people I met.

Now lest anyone think I am on some pro-Europe, anti-America trip, let me hasten to add that I am addressing here a world-wide process. It is hardly American. In Europe however, there are certain factors that still retard and delay this world-wide process.

Chief among these is that in Europe, one stands far more in the presence of the **past**. A past, which, for all its horrors, still speaks of soul. In the comments to this blog, ‘the Head’ has raised the role of art in saving the soul of the world.

Well, in Europe one is still raised far, far more in a landscape of soulful art. The car parks and shopping malls are coming more and more of course - but one finds many, many streets of buildings, for example, built with **inspiration** – instead of ‘bottom line’ utilitarian efficiency.

Built that is, in an era when the Spirit was taken seriously, and not reduced to subjectivity and relativism. One can easily grow up here surrounded by art and soul. When Catholics go to Mass, they may have to suffer an inane modern liturgy, but even this can be lifted up by the testimony of the permanent 'liturgy' in stone and stained glass …

No I do not think that the answer is to turn medieval once again, or that America should become like Europe. But yes, my return to America not long ago, and the America that now greets me in countless reports, is an America that seems ever more stripped of Soul and Mystery. Ever more two-dimensional ...

And we see the same process across our globe; it is just a little slower in some parts. And the process is NOT decelerating. Rather the reverse. I stare into the future, and I find myself staring into horror. My soul, like yours perhaps, is in pain. Pain, but not despair. Something can and must be done for the Soul of the World …

Absolute Truth?

Yesterday I spoke of an entire universe spanning the distance between the Either/Or of Relativism and Fundamentalism. That is, between Relativism, which reduces all spiritual truth to pure subjectivity - and Fundamentalism, which amounts in practice, to the most rigid idea of Absolutism: that there are absolute truths, which can be absolutely defined, with no element of relativity.

I want to briefly say something to just **suggest** this vast span of universe between these two positions. Positions often entirely collapsed ... so that anyone, who does not describe herself as a relativist, becomes - ipso facto - tarred as a fundamentalist. In a short space, here is one way again to simply *suggest* this great intervening universe:

There is truth beyond the threshold of what can be perceived empirically or rationally. Truth does not simply stop and become **nothing at all**, where the senses and logic leave off.

This truth beyond the threshold of senses and logic is no less pure or absolute, than the truth of empiricism and mathematics.

BUT as pure or absolute as this truth is, it is not possible to represent it absolutely to the ordinary human mind.

The ordinary human mind deals in empiricism and logic. Truth that is beyond the empirico-rational threshold, is - of necessity - limited in the process of being represented to the ordinary mind.

Thus, while absolute, pure truth can be said to exist, that truth can never be formulated or represented absolutely. Limitation and relativity will always be present in virtually any representation of absolute truth.

(Virtually any, I say, because perhaps the most general of tautologies – eg. “God is love”... ‘love is God’ - might be exempt).

Thus paradoxically, we must aspire to absolute truth, while knowing that we can never adequately present absolute truths in absolute terms.

And yet despite this limitation, it is the aspiration of Christian thinkers as diverse as Rudolf Steiner and Benedict XVI to say: our culture demands the work of such conceptualisation – of trying to name matters of the absolute. And as diverse as they are, both are convinced that failure to at least try, will lead to the gravest of tragedy for the world.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said to us ‘the truth will set you free’. But today, we are not only denied liberating truth, but the possibility of even aspiring to such truth. Such truth being seen as impossible. And such aspiration as something to be mocked – as fundamentalist or worse. And our world becomes ever less free …

Tomorrow I will address some implications of all this in more **personal** terms.

Thinking Dies; Evil Wins

The older I get, the more convinced I am that a major key to the horrific ‘success’ of our capitalist world is the death of thinking. As I have suggested here, a major difference between Rudolf Steiner’s esoteric Christianity and the New Age movement is the stress on thinking.

Over 80 years ago, Steiner warned that our culture’s thinking was headed for decay: becoming dull, hypnotised, automatic and mechanical - lifeless. His aspirations to a spiritual culture stressed the need then, to make thinking as lively and as vigorous as possible.

The fact that our thinking has become very drowsy indeed, became even more apparent to me at the point that Benedict XVI ascended the throne of Peter, earlier this year. Throughout the media there were countless references to the idea that Benedict was some sort of fundamentalist. Now, friends, whatever we make of the Holy Father, it is clear to anyone really listening to him and really thinking, that he is NOT a fundamentalist.

Yet not only in the secular mainstream, but also in the growing New Age subculture, such confusion is frequently found. At any rate, twenty years experience in the New Age scene is sufficient to convince me, at least, that this movement is often in the thrall of somnambulent secularist assumptions and that Rudolf Steiner’s call to wakeful, sharp vigorous thinking is badly, badly needed therein.

In the strictest sense of the words of course, Catholicism and Fundamentalism form an oxymoron. The term ‘Fundamentalism’ derives from an American Protestant movement to ‘get back’. 'Get back' that is, in the spirit of the Beatles singing in 1969: ‘Get back to where you started from … get back to where you once belonged’ . ‘Get back’ in this case, to the so-called fundamentals – the teachings of scripture, which are then interpreted in the most literalist way imaginable.

But Catholicism by definition, has nothing to do with such ‘getting back’, in that it has never been interested in reducing Christianity to Luther’s ‘sola scriptura’ – the Bible alone.

Instead, it bases itself firmly on going forward with an **evolving** tradition, a two thousand year tradition of the scriptures, *plus* a long, long line of countless theologians, mystics, philosophers; papal pronouncements; the decisions of Councils, and so on.

Thus the relatively recent teachings of Vatican II (1962-1965) are taken to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and are treated with a seriousness that could not be more contrary to the spirit of the American Protestants, who coined the word ‘fundamentalism’.

To take a more recent example, when John Paul II came out with the most vigorous papal condemnation of the death penalty ever made, the Vatican acknowledged that the Catechism of the Catholic Church would need to be swiftly revised. This is not fundamentalism.

(For the record, John Paul argued that the only possible justification for capital punishment would be if it were otherwise impossible to stop the killer killing again. But in the modern world, such possibilities had been wiped out, and were all but non-existent. He then directed his pontificate in countless ways to challenging capital punishment across the planet. Not only through his teaching, but individually calling on governors and presidents everywhere to lift the orders for executions.)

To return to my theme, it would specious of me to deny that there are many Catholics who do indeed take positions identical to Fundamentalism in spirit, if not specifics. However it boggles the mind, that such a careful, penetrating, profound thinker as Benedict XVI can be associated with suchlike.

When I hear such a thing, it is clear: either people are not listening to the Holy Father - or they are not thinking. The tragedy of the world is that both these things are true: profound thought is neither listened to – it being frequently drowned out by a din of mindless ‘sound-bites’ - nor is it engaged with.

‘Nor is it engaged with’ … in terms of our present consideration, I suggest what is at issue here, is that our culture has reduced our philosophical alternatives to two options: Fundamentalism or Relativism. With nothing in between.

If we are not a relativist, believing that any spiritual truth (that is, any truth beyond logic or empiricism) can be reduced to subjectivity … then we must be - ipso facto - fundamentalist or absolutist. No other position is conceivable. Such is the tragedy that greets us today. In many quarters, at least.

Thus I think it imperative to generate consciousness that an entire universe spans the distance between Relativism and Fundamentalism. And tomorrow, I will make a humble effort to address this. And to continue elaborating what I mean by 'hoodoo magic' and thinking dies; evil wins.

Pause for a Personal Announcement

Dear Friends, known and unknown,

I write this in weariness, albeit a good weariness. And it is chiefly because of this weariness, that I am announcing that the webblog will now continue Monday to Fridays only.

I need time to recharge, regroup, and more deeply reflect on what I send out here.

I am obviously writing this webblog, because I feel it is important to at least attempt something of this kind. To attempt, as an online friend once put it memorably, to pitch a tent in the no-man’s land between Hermeticism and the Holy Church. Which, of course, entails getting shot at, which has started to happen …

There is much I hope to clarify in weeks to come. Questions come at me – either directly, or foreseen in imagination. Such as: do I not know that:
- Catholicism has its dark sides?
- There has been great value in secularism and the Enlightenment?
- Doubt, too, can have prodigious value?
- There is value to the negative theology of knowing in all humility, that one can never name in mental concepts, the ultimate nature of spiritual reality?

Yes Friends, all these things I know. For this reason, I have tried to weave a thread of paradox throughout these posts from the start – that, as Bohr said ‘the opposite of one great truth may well be another great truth’.

So while I agree with all of the above, I maintain that the horror of the world demands responses that are not reductionist, psychologising, carelessly destructive of tradition – but fired in FAITH, including faith in the Holy Church, the Mystici Corporis Christi.

I believe it is important to raise these things. Now I know that a fair number of you are joining me in this exploration. I am grateful indeed for your joining me. Even though I do not always know if it is in enthusiasm or outrage.

If however, you join me in believing there is value to what is being attempted here, you may wish to let others know. If this is the case, you may note a small icon of an envelope below each entry. By clicking on this, one can easily e-mail these entries to whoever might be interested. And if you think this effort worthwhile, I would also be grateful for any links you might wish to post to this site on the web.

Webblog will resume Monday.

Warm regards to you all,

Roger

'A Far-Reaching Operation of Hoodoo Magic'

Raising the thought of Rudolf Steiner in a Catholic webblog is a task fraught with peril. One risks censure from many quarters.

For the fact is, that Steiner, who died in 1925, was intensely critical of much of the Catholicism of his era. Moreover he raised many ideas, which are, it has to be said, inimical to Catholic teaching. These are so inimical in fact, that the image many Catholics will have of Steiner is that he is ‘New Age’.

Having spent many years actively advocating the holistic or New Age movement, it is clear to me, that this, at least, is not the case. Steiner would have been gravely concerned with many elements of the New Age scene.

For instance, he was opposed to the frequent disdain for clear thinking in the holistic subculture. He had achieved a doctorate and done post-doctoral work in the most rigorous of 19th century European philosophy. He believed in the value of Western tradition, and concluded that certain of the pre-Christian Eastern roots of today’s New Age movement were actually inappropriate, even destructive for the modern world – a world he saw had been utterly transformed by ‘the Mystery of Golgotha’.

For Rudolf Steiner then, the event on Calvary transformed not only humanity, but also God, who had entered into humanity and gone through death. But for the modern Catholic theologian Schillebeeckx, the Crucifixion is ‘a sadistic, bloody myth’ and ‘we are saved, despite the Cross.’ Whatever his errors may have been, is not the cosmos-transfiguring vision of Dr Rudolf Steiner infinitely closer to the Catholic Mystery, than that of Dr Edward Schillebeeckx?

I raise these questions for many reasons, which cannot all be unpacked in a single webblog ‘snapshot’ – but which will be unfolded as I proceed. Among these reasons, is the fact that Steiner also differed from much of New Age culture, in that, like the Church, he took the nature of evil very seriously indeed. He warned that it would be the work of evil to try to BURY consciousness of the deed of Christ, under a welter of lies and doubts.

Doubts … yes, I believe, along with the consistent message of the Catholic Meditations on the Tarot, that a highly efficacious work of seeding doubt belongs to evil, in fact to ‘a far reaching operation of hoodoo magic, whose victim is human intelligence’ (pg 519).

Now this work of seeding doubt proceeds through all channels. It is obviously rife in the sphere of secular materialism. Paradoxically, it also works through Protestant literalist Christianity – a Christianity, which as I touched on earlier (in my entry ‘Just the Facts, Ma’am’) has bifurcated on the issue of literalism – into a fundamentalism upholding literalism versus a liberal Christianity rejecting literalism (and Mystery in the process).

But the Mystery of Christ has nothing to do with literalism. Now ironically, it appears to me that the New Age culture, which rejects both philosophical materialism and ‘Christian’ literalism – also often falls prey to the work of doubt, inasmuch as its thinking – so it seems to me – frequently PSYCHOLOGISES Christ and the Christian tradition, reducing Mystery not to literalism, not to secular empiricism – but to psychological processes.

I shall have much more to say. But however much I regret Rudolf Steiner’s condemnation of the Church, I believe that Christians in these times need to acknowledge any voice that stands for Christian Mystery and warns of the evil that would bury it.

Rudolf Steiner and Benedict XVI

‘Was heute zu retten ist, das ist das Mysterium von Golgotha selbst’ so spoke Rudolf Steiner in 1920. And which we can take as meaning: that what must be saved today – for the sake of the world – is awareness of the Mystery of Golgotha, the cosmos-transfiguring Mystery of Christ.

Thus the views of Rudolf Steiner, while regrettable in many cases, from the point of view of the Church, are nonetheless in **essence** entirely in agreement with the faith of the Church, as to what is most vital and important.

There is also present an accord between Rudolf Steiner and the Holy Church, as to what menaces civilisation at this time. In essence, both Steiner and the Church are warning of the **same evil**, the same destroyer of freedom. I hope to bring this out in different ways over the weeks to come.

For now, I will just indicate that the love for the world, the concern for the world and the horror for the future of the world that animated Rudolf Steiner ceaselessly – whatever miscalculations he may have made – is also what is ceaselessly animating the man who is now Benedict XVI, and who among other things, identifies ‘a pressing need for social legislation to monitor and restrain the misuse of property.’

And this is because he sees how: ‘at present, as hardly ever before, we clearly see how people … are destroyed … by making possessions their real god. Anyone, for instance, who lets himself be ruled entirely by the workings of the stockmarket will basically become **incapable** of thinking in any other way … the world of possessions takes powerful hold upon people’s lives. The more they have, the more they are dominated and **enslaved** by what they have (Emphasis mine).’

A uniform pattern arises in which ‘town centers look the same in South Africa as in South America, as in Japan … the same jeans are worn everywhere, the same hits are sung … In that sense, there is a unity of civilisation right down to McDonald’s and a single menu for mankind. While at first sight, this growth of uniformity seems [like] reconciliation [in fact] people are increasingly alienated from one another … Any deeper communication between people is being lost now, if it cannot be … imparted by these superficial [patterns] of relationship.’

Believing in the likelihood that ‘the population of an entirely planned and controlled world are going to be inexpressibly lonely’ and in ‘a future in which it is no longer possible to be truly human,’ the Holy Father has predicted that the Church, even if it grows very small, will keep working to carry out her mission …

Friends, I am not without misgivings in posting this dark entry. We must be ever on guard against becoming morbid, depressed or melodramatic. Still, I have my reasons. These include the fact that I believe that there is more accord than realised – and I think more accord than ever before – between Catholic and Hermetic Christianity.

And this accord needs to be **recognised** and developed, wherever legitimately possible. I also wish to pay tribute to the insight, the heart, the soul of the brilliant mind and ceaseless worker for humanity who now occupies the lonely post of the Holy See and is so oft vilified by lies. Such that many Christian people often have almost NO idea of that for which he stands.

Oh, Holy Father my heart and prayers go out to you, as I also pray that we who are aspiring Hermeticists may recognise your courage and selfless dedication, and work with you in heartfelt sympathy and love, and not distance ourselves in indifference, suspicion or even hostility …

Into the Abyss

Where this webblog is going: More on mystery, paradox, doubt, relativity and the necessity and impossibility of absolute truth. More on John Paul, the Church today, New Age … and the Christian Hermetic tradition. And more on love, feeling and facing the contemporary world situation. And other matters as well.

But first I want to pause for a single illustration of what I mean by a widening abyss, a void of meaning, into which destructive Forces could and would rush in, limiting our freedom. That situation which Rudolf Steiner, among others, saw so very clearly.

Recently here in Ireland, I watched a videotape an American friend of mine had sent me of U.S. television. Inadvertently, he had taped a news report of a missing child, presumably abducted, with a sexual intent in mind.

I saw then the heartbreaking plea of her father and mother for information that might hopefully lead to her safe return. And then I **rewound** the tape a little – and found an **earlier** commercial enjoining the viewer to stay tuned. Stay tuned and watch the news at eleven, where one would hear about the missing child and the parent’s ‘emotional’ pleading … all of this said with drama, as opposed to compassion or sensitivity.

The underlying context of this message then, was: ‘Stay tuned, American viewer, stay tuned to hear the drama, hear the drama. Can we **fascinate** you sufficiently, so that you will stay tuned – so as you will also stay tuned to our corporate sponsors, our corporate sponsors who will then pay us more money for the higher ratings received by our eleven ‘o clock news?’

I grew up in America in the 1960’s and 70’s. I do not recall such OBSCENITIES from that era. And I am gravely concerned what further and perhaps far greater obscenities, lay in store twenty to thirty years down the line … I am also not sure which should be more disturbing to us: that such obscenity exists or that it is apparently received with blasé indifference.

Our society desperately needs to be built on something ELSE.

Be Not Afraid!

Our dehumanising world needs the affirmation of Mystery more than ever … these words concluded my last entry. Because, although my last entry was very personal, I am also writing this webblog with concern for the world …

Thus I stress that John Paul’s keynote words, ‘Be not afraid!’ are not simply addressed to lonely individuals such as myself, they are addressed to a bamboozled world. A bamboozlement, which paves the way for evil …

It is a bamboozlement, which renders all things beyond rational and empirical certainty open to doubt. And in this openness, a vacuum develops, devoid of any depth and meaning beyond rational and empirical certainties.

A vacuum is created then, in which almost ‘anything goes’. Brainwashing children to a lifetime addiction to sugar – to cite only a single example, among a vast multitude of other instances of manipulation and coercion. A vacuum is created, in which countless Forces casting doubt on nearly all values, can use to their advantage.

Their advantage, that is, in creating a culture that is ever **less free** . All of this, for example, is what Rudolf Steiner saw more than eighty years ago. The opening of an abyss, which he tried to bridge with epistemology.

All of this also involves what the Holy Father means by the ‘dictatorship of relativism’. In a world of relativism, all kinds of matters lose their value, and in fact, under the pretext of neutrality, ‘political correctness’ ‘openness’ and so on – one is co-erced, actually co-erced to give up one’s aspirations to a higher world of truth.

As Allan Bloom has said of our ‘politically correct’ climate: 'The point is not to correct the mistakes [of the past – religious, philosophical etc] and ***really be right***; rather it is ***not to think you are right at all*** (Emphasis mine).'

One is pressured then, to be in doubt. But ‘doubt is more than a psychological state of indecision; it is the soul’s sojourn in the intermediary sphere between the two fields of spiritual attraction – terrestrial and celestial.’

So writes anonymous d’Outre Tomb. He means we are caught between one world constituted simply of rational and empirical certainty and another world of unfathomable depth and meaning, but which as John Paul would have said, we are naturally frightened to embrace.

The anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot, I believe, had come to a similar conclusion as John Paul saying, ‘Be not afraid!’ For he continues his thought, by saying that from the above situation of doubt:

‘There is no other means of escape than a pure and simple act of faith, issuing from the soul itself, without heaven and earth taking any part in it. It is therefore a matter of an act of the free personality … where the following is at stake: either an act of faith, or despair and madness.’

Anonymous d’Outre Tomb addresses the individual, but from the context of the entire book, it is clear he is concerned about the ‘schizophrenia’ of the modern world. He writes with blazing compassion for the 'despair and madness' of the world.

And unlike, for example, Rudolf Steiner who emphasised epistemology as the principle way across the abyss, he aligns with the answer of John Paul II to the crisis of modern schizophrenia: Be not afraid!