(Note: As of June 2009, the entry below has been slightly edited and revised. The second promised installment will not appear at this weblog. But both parts have been combined into a single text and will shortly appear as an article at a new site, Cor Jesu Sacratissimum. Address: http://www.corjesusacratissimum.org.)
First, my apologies again to you my friends, known and unknown.
I have given you the idea that this weblog would be updated more regularly than this. And now I have to say that I really have little clear idea as to the future of this endeavour, beyond this extended "Au Revoir", which will be appearing here in two parts.
This "Au Revoir", which will cover all the themes mentioned in the last entry, and more besides ...
I am now in France, in a situation that is self-chosen, entirely self-chosen, and also very demanding and precarious. And in sometimes overwhelming difficulties, my access to the internet has been very limited.
Now in the past, for the sake of Unknown Friends, I´ve tried to keep strictly personal content to a minimum here.
But for once, I'll allow myself some laxity - and also speak of more intimate things, which may be more of interest to my known friends.
I´ll also allow myself the laxity of writing in a very unstructured, fragmentary way. Some of what follows is not even fragments, but simply scraps, scraps from the contents of my consciousness ...
Yes our situation is very demanding and it also seems to Kim and myself, very, very rich.
2006 has been, at one and the same time, one of the hardest years of my entire life, and I think, perhaps the most profound and rewarding.
Recently, we have been a fifth time to Paray-Le-Monial, where Saint Marguerite Marie began receiving visions of the Sacred Heart of Christ in 1673 ...
Day after day, we have been at Mass there and we have been in the profound stillness, that can be felt in the chapels there.
"Avez vous bu le silence quelquefois?" Or in the English translation, "Have you ever drunk silence?"
This is a question that the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot asked his readers. But which he asked in FRENCH. And this is not unimportant to my theme ...
For why was it that this anonymous author, a Russian, living in England, chose to write his Magnum Opus in French? Some of his reasons, I think, may be, at least a little, intimated further on in this piece ...
But to return to the question of whether one has drunk silence ... In the English translation, the anonymous author goes on to say that, if the answer to that question is "in the affirmative, you know what concentration without effort is."
And concerning this, he says:
"It is the profound silence of desires, of preoccupations, of the imagination, of the memory and of discursive thought. One may say that the entire being becomes like the surface of calm water, reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its indescribable harmony.
And the waters are so deep, they are so deep! And the silence grows ever increasing ... what silence!
Its growth takes place through regular waves which, one after another, pass through your being: One wave of silence followed by another wave of more profound silence, then again, a wave of still more profound silence."
Yes, in Paray I experienced perhaps the deepest and most significance silence of my life. Perhaps.
Now I know well that the waves did not become as profound, as our author suggests they can become. But at least the beginning of profound waves of silence did become present. I trust that.
Yes, in Paray I have experienced perhaps the deepest and most significant silence of my life. Perhaps. Now I do not believe that the waves became as profound as our author suggests they can become. But at least, the beginning of such waves did become present. I trust that.
Yes some of the richest prayers of my life have been spent in silence before the relics of Saint Marguerite Marie and those of her Jesuit confessor, Saint Claude Colombiere in their respective chapels. Also sitting before the Blessed Sacrament in another chapel in Paray, I felt moved to write these words in my journal:
"There is this Sacred Story trying to unfold between Christ and us.
He is trying to heal each and everyone of us.
This is amazing.
Amazing.
Each and every one of us, he is trying to heal.
He is trying to heal ME and billions more like me.
It is amazing.
... He is trying to heal us all.
He is trying to heal me.
That woman behind me.
All of us.
Amazing.
Completely, utterly amazing.
Heal me, and billions, trillions like me.
Each of us."
Yes, sitting before the Blessed Sacrament, I was with the faith that this healing was offered through an individual relationship with each of these uncounted entities ...
He sought to reach out to each of us through individual relationship ... !! ...!
And this has so many corollaries. One corollary I also noted in my journal at the time.
"He can "use" each of us.
(He never wants to "use" any of us!)
But he can extend through each of us.
We can help him. We can help his work."
So, so many things to dwell upon in pondering this question: "How to help his work?" So many answers to that question.
At one level, obedience. Obedience to the deepest matters one is able to discern in one's prayer. Such obedience, I believe, led Kim and me to France, and to Paray-le-Monial.
Such obedience, I believe, led Kim and I to France, and to Paray-Le-Monial ...
Much unfolds for us around a work, a work to be done.
Can I speak yet of this work? Perhaps in halting scraps ...
Recently I replied to Mama Pelican on this weblog about Mother Angelica.
Though I suspect some of what shes sees has more to do with an American species of Catholicism, than Catholicism itself (See footnote to this in comments section).
Mama Pelican also speaks of her discovery of the beauty of pre-Vatican II books ...
Friends, I am also more and more moved by a beauty I find in many writings, images, works of art associated with the immediate pre-Vatican II era.
I, who was first a fully fledged, card-carrying New Ager, then a liberal Anglican, then a liberal Catholic, and then ... Words fail.
And in France, it seems to me, we see more than anywhere else I have lived, a most concerted to BURY the pre-Vatican II church.
The result it would seem are empty churches or a Catholicism my wife calls "zany."
"Zany". What does she mean by "zany?"
Among other things, she means a Mass, wherein the Mystery of the Mass is no longer central.
Where instead, what has so often taken centre stage is singing and "happy-clappy" entertainment, that is neither reverent nor consciously present to the Mystery, but which is animated by something bordering on inane or even manic ...
At a Mass in the Pyrenees, my wife and I are looking up at a MODERN mural of the Resurrected Christ behind the altar. In this image, painted certainly in the 1960's or since, he smiles sweetly down at us ...
But there is no GRAVITAS in this modern face of Christ. Is this an image of the Christ who weeps with us, as well as smiles? No, it is zany.
Again, how to do, to serve the work of Christ?
Again, obedience.
Including obedience to WORK WITH WHAT LIFE PRESENTS ONESELF. Which includes that mural. That is just one small example.
The life that aspires to obedience brings with it, I see now, the recognition that the Spirit is speaking to us, in oh so many, many different ways ...
Another example of working with what life presents oneself, is that of the inspiration, which I believe Kim and I followed, to come to France. And then being presented here with a dying, zany church, in which it seems to us, that Christ is more and more obscured ...
But life presents so much more, besides.
Here is another example.
This summer, life also presented me with the Da Vinci Code at last, and also some comments from Rudolf Steiner ...
Around these two, so much could be said, but I must content myself with noting just a little.
Noting for example, that I am seeing a direct connexion between two statements. First there is the statement that I find on pg 403 of the Da Vinci Code:
"The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the Church, had considered English the only European PURE language for centuries. Unlike French, Spanish and Italian, which were rooted in Latin - THE TONGUE OF THE VATICAN - English was linguistically removed from Rome's propaganda machine, and therefore became a sacred, secret tongue for those brotherhoods educated enough to use it [Emphasis in original]."
And then there is the statement, or at very least the implication, that Rudolf Steiner makes - that English is also a tongue which can so easily facilitate the aims of certain secret societies. Certain secret societies, which for decades, he claims, have aimed to promote global capitalist domination, through that language.
Yes, in lectures given in Dornach in October 1920, Rudolf Steiner touches on these societies and on the invisible entities working through the people in them.
He stresses the role that English plays for this endeavour, noting on the other hand, that within peoples speaking Romance tongues (such as French), these same entities "would be extremely constricted."
Yes, I am hearing a connexion between these statements from Dan Brown and Rudolf Steiner, and between these and much more besides ...
For example, I connect all this to a recent cover of The Economist. That cover shows the tricolour of the French flag - blue, white and red - with the bold headline, "What France needs".
And in the middle panel, the white panel, below the headline, there is the image of Margaret Thatcher.
My wife sees this cover and recoils in shock. "Oh my God", escapes her lips.
I ask her why.
She says is struck by paradox: For in one sense, she is already here in France: "Margaret Thatcher" has already conquered France.
And of course, globalised capitalism is everywhere.
But in another way, my wife notes "Margaret Thatcher" really is NOT here yet ...
I nod in agreement. No "Margaret Thatcher" and all she so radically brought to Britain, if not Europe, in 1979 has still not fully engulfed France.
That is why the Economist feels she is needed.
Like myself, The Economist can feel her ABSENCE here.
For of all the European countries I know, in many ways I feel the greatest resistance to capitalist globalisation here in France. In many ways, I feel the greatest need to preserve tradition and SOUL here ...
In many ways, I wish to repeat. Not all. As my wife noted, great contradiction and paradox exists ...
And what then, of Ireland, which I love with all my heart?
Well yes, particularly in the Catholic Ireland of the West, there is also a marked attempt to resist the colonising culture of global capitalism.
But in the East, in the East where I also lived, alas, one feels much more the influence of this colonising influence, brought on a wave of Anglo-American impulses.
That is, impulses that the French call "Anglo-Saxon". And feel they need to resist. In so many cases, at least.
Yes it seems to me that in many ways, the French sense more keenly this loss of SOUL that the so-called Anglo-Saxon colonising impulses bring ...
It is a quality of soul that Margaret Thatcher, it seems to me, did much, so very much to bury in Britain ... bury under a culture, so-called, more and more exclusively dedicated to economic FUNCTIONS ...
A "culture" that is, whose aesthetic, religious, spiritual, as well as political,legal and moral dimensions are more and more dictated by and hence, REDUCED to economic agendas.
Now here is more of what Rudolf Steiner says of the invisible beings working through the English language.
"They have set themselves the task of keeping life as a whole restricted to the mere life of economics. They seek to gradually root everything else ... to root out spiritual life, to chip away the political life and to absorb everything into the life of economics."
Yes eighty years ago, Rudolf Steiner you warned of the threat of reducing all of culture and politics to economic functions.
And now I feel it everywhere.
A successful musician tells me how she left the record industry, because of corporate pressure to make her music more commercial.
University doctors tell me of the crass, commercial ethos that now pervades the academy. (If academy it can still be called, for it has been "dumbed-down" to meet economic agendas).
Artless, graceless buildings arise everywhere, sacrificing Soul for economic ends. And children grow up in built environments of rigid angles and uninspired monotony.
And if individuals nations try to express their unique souls, there is indeed mighty pressure to CONFORM, that is, to MARCH to the global capitalist beat.
And everywhere people's individual lives also become stripped of Soul.
Friends, I receive e-mails which haunt me. Thus a dear known friend expressed to me the stripping of Soul he experiences in his own life in America.
Yes, here is a fragment from a haunting letter that elaborates for me, the soul-destroying trajectory, so well well advanced in America and Asia - but now being summoned forth in Europe too:
"In this fast-paced, busy, time-starved,complex environment we've created, we are forced to compartmentalize our lives.
For example: Up at 6:45, to work by 8, pick up the kids after soccer practice, throw together dinner, pay the bills, do the laundry, go to church at 10 a.m. Sunday, meet the parents for lunch, fix the fawcet in the kitchen...
Church, religion, spirituality, get compartmentalized along with all the other things we do in life. ...
Is it any wonder that the lessons and brotherly love we shared at 10 a.m. Sunday get brushed aside in the boardroom Monday, when we decide to up profits by laying off a thousand people? ...
Connectedness -- we've lost it in America, at least to a great degree. (That makes it easier to lay off people!)
If you look at the European model of community and work, and weeks of vacation each year, and the East Asian model of all work and no play, America long has fallen in between. But we're moving toward the East Asian model; in fact, we've been accelerating in that direction.
Nowadays, [with]greedy business owners and corporations ... there seems to be a mentality spreading that ANYTHING that is good for a company's profits is a good idea.
Lying, stealing, cheating, destroying the environment and exporting jobs overseas ... [We have]an acceleration to the disconnected, dog-eat-dog jungle style of capitalism in East Asia.
In East Asia, where I lived for two years and worked at a business magazine, capitalism is perverted thoroughly in this way ... Japan is woefully ill in spirit, having replaced all their values with the worship of wealth. Korea is far down that track, and China is racing up behind those nations ...
I see a societal illness -- and let's admit that society never has been and never will be perfect -- that results from imbalance, away from spirituality and toward self-centeredness."
Yes dear known friend, how your words strike my soul ... "FORCED to compartmentalise" as you put it. Forced that is, to acquiesce to an increasingly mechanical society that leaves no room for soul.
And without Soul, we move ever more to the self-centred dog-eat-dog horror that you see so clearly ...
Yes all of this, it seems to me, has to do with the Da Vinci Code, and with Rudolf Steiner's warnings more than 80 years ago about the dangers of a society CONQUERED by the forces working through Anglo-American Secret Societies.
To a degree, France resists. And the Economist is NOT happy about it. The Spirit of "Margaret Thatcher" simply must be summoned here as well. But she is still "constricted" here ...
What am I saying here? Am I insinuating?
Or am I just pointing? Stammering and pointing: "Look there. Look there."
Because for the moment, I can do no more than point and stammer. I will, of course, let you friends, decide for yourselves. Perhaps after you have read the second and concluding installment, which I hope will appear before long. Though I am having difficulties, as I say.
In this second installment, I will suggest more on all these themes. I will speak more of both the darkness and the light. The light of the love of Christ that does indeed shine on in the darkness.
In saying this, I am with an image that France gave to the world, or rather that Our Lord gave to the world, through France, in the Seventeenth Century.
"Through France", how the sense of this impressed my soul in Paray-Le-Monial: Through France!
This image then, is that of the blazing Sacred Heart encircled by a crown of thorns.
Yes the encircling is very real, but how much more real are the blazing flames of love on the altar of His heart ...
End of Part One.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
Apologies and Forthcoming ...
First, my apologies.
Even though I've mentioned it in the comments section (to the last entry), something needs to be said here.
It is this. I am sorry that it has taken so long to post here, when I have clearly indicated that material would be posted here much more often.
It has become clear to me that some people really do care about this weblog, and I am sorry about my long silence.
I am also sorry about not being able to respond to some of you individually yet. But I am NOT forgetting your kindness ... You WILL be responded to.
It is just that, at present, it has become very hard to get sufficient access to the web and maintain this site ...
However, I have been preparing a very, very LONG and personal piece, which I hope will be appearing here quite soon.
I will just note here, that it contains scattered musings on many diverse topics,
including but not limited to:
- Personal Notes on my unfolding time and endeavour in France
- The Sacred Heart
- The Soul of France, and the World
- The Spirit of "Margaret Thatcher"
- Rudolf Steiner and Valentin Tomberg
- The Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation.
And much else, besides. Again, it is only "scattered musings" and very, very long ... I hope it will be up within the week, but it could be a little longer.
Till then, my friends, known and unknown,
May His Sacred Heart have mercy on us ...
Agneau de Dieu, qui effacez les péchés du monde, ayez pitié de nous ...
Roger
Even though I've mentioned it in the comments section (to the last entry), something needs to be said here.
It is this. I am sorry that it has taken so long to post here, when I have clearly indicated that material would be posted here much more often.
It has become clear to me that some people really do care about this weblog, and I am sorry about my long silence.
I am also sorry about not being able to respond to some of you individually yet. But I am NOT forgetting your kindness ... You WILL be responded to.
It is just that, at present, it has become very hard to get sufficient access to the web and maintain this site ...
However, I have been preparing a very, very LONG and personal piece, which I hope will be appearing here quite soon.
I will just note here, that it contains scattered musings on many diverse topics,
including but not limited to:
- Personal Notes on my unfolding time and endeavour in France
- The Sacred Heart
- The Soul of France, and the World
- The Spirit of "Margaret Thatcher"
- Rudolf Steiner and Valentin Tomberg
- The Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation.
And much else, besides. Again, it is only "scattered musings" and very, very long ... I hope it will be up within the week, but it could be a little longer.
Till then, my friends, known and unknown,
May His Sacred Heart have mercy on us ...
Agneau de Dieu, qui effacez les péchés du monde, ayez pitié de nous ...
Roger
Monday, November 13, 2006
A Very LONG and Personal Au Revoir, with Extensive and Diverse Notes on The DaVinci Code, Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg and much uch more.
First, again my apologies to you my friends, known and unknown.
I have given you the idea that this weblog would be updated more regularly than this, and now I have to say that I am sorry and that I really have little clear idea as to the future of this endeavour - and when it will be possible to resume.
I am also very sorry for long delayed personal replies to many of you who have written very kind things to me.
I am now living in France, in a situation that is self-chosen, entirely self-chosen, and also very demanding and precarious.
In sometimes overwhelming difficulties, my access to the internet has been very limited. Still I do not think that that is an excuse, and I am sorry.
Now in the past, for the sake of Unknown Friends, I´ve tried to keep strictly personal content to a minimum here.
But for once, I'll allow myself some laxity - and speak of more intimate things, which may be more of interest to my known friends.
I´ll also allow myself the laxity of writing in a very unstructured, fragmentary way. Some of what follows is not just fragments then, but simply scraps, SCRAPS from the contents of my consciousness ...
Yes our situation is very demanding and it seems to Kim and myself, very profound.
We have been a fifth time to Paray-Le-Monial, where Saint Marguerite Marie began receiving visions of His Sacred Heart in 1673 ...
Day after day, we have been at Mass there and we have been in the profound stillness that can be felt in the chapels there.
"Avez vous bu le silence quelquefois?" Or in the English translation, "Have you ever drunk silence?" This is a question that the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot asks his readers.
"If in the affirmative, you know what concentration without effort is."
And concerning this, he says:
"It is the profound silence of desires, of preoccupations, of the imagination, of the memory and of discursive thought. One may say that the entire being becomes like the surface of calm water, reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its indescribable harmony.
And the waters are so deep, they are so deep! And the silence grows ever increasing ... what silence!
Its growth takes place through regular waves which, one after another, pass through your being: One wave of silence followed by another wave of more profound silence, then again, a wave of still more profound silence."
Yes, in Paray I experienced perhaps the deepest and most significance silence of my life. Perhaps.
Now I do not believe that the waves became as profound as our author suggests they can become. But at least the beginning of profound waves silence did become present. I trust that.
And so much became evident.
Including some of the most well known truths of the Catholic tradition.
Still it is one thing to take a religious teaching on faith. It is another thing entirely to FEEL it penetrating into one's depths.
Thus do a few words from my personal journal express an idea, that has been expressed to saiety - one would think - for nearly two thousand years.
One would think it would be quite mundane by now.
But the experience, my experience, I repeat, sitting in profound stillness before the Blessed Sacrament in Paray-Le-Monial was anything BUT mundane ...
And these words written in the immediate aftermath of that experience, whilst still sitting in that chapel, are for me, not mundane either:
"I felt ... there is this Sacred Story trying to unfold between Christ and us.
He is trying to heal each and everyone of us.
This is - feeling it still now - amazing.
Amazing.
Each and every one of us, he is trying to heal.
He is trying to heal ME and billions more like me.
It is amazing.
... He is trying to heal us all.
He is trying to heal me.
That woman behind me.
All of us.
Amazing.
Completely, utterly amazing.
Heal me, and billions, trillions like me.
Each of us."
And what was implicit in this experience, was an overwhelming sense that this healing was offered through an INDIVIDUAL relationship with each of these UNCOUNTED entities ...
He sought to reach out to each of us through individual relationship ... !
Needless to say, this experience has provided a source for great reflection, ever since.
And it has so many corollaries. Corollaries.
One corollary I noted in my journal at the time.
"He can "use" each of us.
(He never wants to "use" any of us!)
But he can extend through each of us.
We can help him. We can help his work."
So, so many things to dwell upon in pondering this question: "How to help his work?"
How to do his WORK. How to serve his work.
So many answers to that question.
At one level, OBEDIENCE.
OBEDIENCE to what is carried in the deepest layers one struggles to discern in oneself ...
Such obedience, I believe, led Kim and I to France, and to Paray-Le-Monial ...
Much unfolds for us around a work, a work to be done in and through France. I do not know how much more of my writing will be done through my mother tongue.
Can I speak yet of this work? Perhaps in halting fragments or even scraps ...
Recently I replied to Mama Pelican on this weblog about Mother Angelica.
How I share her concern about what she identifies as "conservative Catholicism!"
Though I suspect some of what shes sees has more to do with an American species of Catholicism, than Catholicism itself.
Mama Pelican also speaks of her discovery of the beauty of pre-Vatican II books ...
Friends, I am also more and more moved by a beauty I find in many writings, images, works of art associated with the immediate pre-Vatican II era.
I who was first a fully fledged, card-carrying New Ager, then a liberal Anglican, then a liberal Catholic, and then ... Words fail.
And in France, it seems to me, we see more than anywhere else I have lived, a most concerted to BURY the pre-Vatican II church.
The result it would seem are empty churches or a Catholicism my wife calls "zany."
"Zany". What does she mean by "zany?"
Among other things, she means a Mass, wherein the Mystery of the Mass is no longer central. Where instead, what has taken centre stage is singing and entertainment, that is neither reverent or present, but is animated by something bordering on manic ... Bordering, I say.
At a Mass in the Pyrenees, my wife and I are looking up at a MODERN mural of the Resurrected Christ behind the altar. In this modern image, he smiles sweetly down at us, maybe even starts to grin ...
But there is no GRAVITAS in this modern face of Christ. Is this an image of the Christ who weeps with us, as well as smiles? No, it is zany.
Again, how to do, to serve the work of Christ?
Again, obedience.
Including obedience to WORK WITH WHAT LIFE PRESENTS ONESELF.
The example of Kim and I following an inspiration to come to France is just one example.
And another example is of being presented here in France, with a dying, zany church, in which it seems to us, that Christ is obscured ...
But life presents so much more, besides.
Here is another example.
This summer, life also presented me with the Da Vinci Code at last, and also some comments from Doctor Rudolf Steiner ...
Around these two, so much could be said, but I must content myself with noting just a little.
Noting for example, that I am seeing a direct connexion between two statements. First there is the statement that I find on pg 403 of the Da Vinci Code:
"The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the Church, had considered English the only European PURE language for centuries. Unlike French, Spanish and Italian, which were rooted in Latin - THE TONGUE OF THE VATICAN - English was linguistically removed from Rome's propaganda machine, and therefore became a sacred, secret tongue for those brotherhoods educated enough to use it [Emphasis in original]."
And then there is the statement, or at very least the implication, that Doctor Rudolf Steiner seems to make - that English is also a tongue which can so easily facilitate the aims of secret societies, which he claims for decades have aimed to promote global capitalist domination.
Yes, in lectures given in Dornach in October 1920, Rudolf Steiner touches on these societies and on the invisible entities working through the people in them. He emphasises the role that English plays for this endeavour, noting that within peoples speaking Romance tongues (such as French), these same entities 'would be extremely constricted." (Pg '( etc)
Yes, I am hearing a connexion between these statements from Dan Brown and Rudolf Steiner, and between these and much more besides ...
For example, a recent cover of The Economist. That cover shows the tricolour of the French flag - blue, white and red - with the bold headline, "What France needs".
And in the middle panel, the white panel, below the headline, there is the image of Margaret Thatcher.
My wife sees this cover and recoils in shock. "Oh my God", escapes her lips.
I ask her why.
She says because she feels a striking paradox: For in one sense, she is here in France: "Margaret Thatcher" has already conquered France.
And of course, globalised capitalism is everywhere.
But in another way, my wife notes she really is NOT here yet
...
I nod in agreement. No "Margaret Thatcher" and all she so radically brought to Britain, if not Europe, in 1979 has still not fully reached France.
That is why the Economist feels she is needed.
Like myself, The Economist can feel her ABSENCE here.
For of all the European countries I know, I feel the greatest resistance to capitalist globalisation here in France. I still feel SOUL here ...
A quality of soul that Margaret Thatcher, it seems to me, did much, so very much to bury in Britain ... bury under a culture, so-called, more and more exclusively dedicated to economic FUNCTIONS ...
A "culture" dedidicated more and more exclusively to economic functions.
Here is more of what Rudolf Steiner says of the beings working through the English language.
"They have set themselves the task of keeping life as a whole restricted to the mere life of economics. They seek to gradually root everything else ... to root out spiritual life, to chip away the political life and to absorb everything into the life of economics (ibid, pg 36)."
Yes eighty years ago, Rudolf Steiner you warned of the threat of reducing all of culture and politics to economic functions.
And now I feel it everywhere. A successful musician tells me how she left the record industry because of corporate pressure to make her music more commercial. University doctors tell me of the crass, commercial ethos that now pervades the academy, if academy it can still be called, for it has been dumbed-down to meet economic agendas. Artless, graceless buildings arise everywhere, sacrificing Soul for economic ends. And if individuals nations try to express their
And everywhere people's individual lives also become stripped of Soul.
I receive e-mails which haunt my soul. One of my dear known friends, expresses the stripping of Soul he experiences in his own life in America.
Yes here is a fragment from his letter that elaborates something far better than I can, at least right now, something well advanced in Asia and America - but now being summoned forth in Europe:
"In this fast-paced, busy, time-starved,complex environment we've created, we are forced to compartmentalize our lives. For example: Up at 6:45, to work by 8, pick up the kids after soccer practice, throw together dinner, pay the bills, do the laundry, go to church at 10 a.m. Sunday, meet the parents for lunch, fix the fawcet in the kitchen...
Church, religion, spirituality, get compartmentalized along with all the other things we do in life. ... Is it any wonder that the lessons and brotherly love we shared at 10 a.m. Sunday get brushed aside in the boardroom Monday, when we decide to up profits by laying off a thousand people?
... Connectedness -- we've lost it in America, at least to a great degree. (That makes it easier to lay off people!) If you look at the European model of community and work, and weeks of vacation each year, and the East Asian model of all work and no play, America long has fallen in between. But we're moving toward the East Asian model; in fact, we've been accelerating in that direction.
Nowadays, [with]greedy business owners and corporations ... There seems to be a mentality spreading that ANYTHING that is good for a company's profits is a good idea. Lying, stealing, cheating, destroying the environment and exporting jobs overseas ... [We have ]an acceleration to the disconnected, dog-eat-dog jungle style of capitalism in East Asia.
In East Asia, where I lived for two years and worked at a business magazine, capitalism is perverted thoroughly in this way ... Japan is woefully ill in spirit, having replaced all their values with the worship of wealth. Korea is far down that track, and China is racing up behind those nations.
... I see a societal illness -- and let's admit that society never
has been and never will be perfect -- that results from imbalance, away
from spirituality and toward self-centeredness."
Yes dear known friend, how your words strike my soul ... "FORCED to compartmentalise" as you put it.
Forced to acquiece to an increasingly mechanical society that leaves no room for soul.
And without soul, we move ever more to the self centred dog eat dog horror that you see so clearly ...
Yes all of this, it seems to me, has to do with the Da Vinci Code, and with Rudolf Steiner's warnings more than 80 years ago about the dangers of a society CONQUERED by the forces working through Anglo-American Secret Societies.
To a degree, France resists. And the Economist is NOT happy about it. The Spirit of "Margaret Thatcher" simply must be summoned here as well. But she is still "constricted" ...
What am I saying here? Am I insinuating?
Or am I just pointing? Stammering and pointing: "Look there. Look there."
Because for the moment, I can do no more than point and stammer. I will let you decide for yourself.
For again, these are but the contents of my consciousness, as I ponder the question, how am I called to serve the work of Christ?
Again, so, so much more might be said.
Because so much has happened since Kim and I have come to France, via Spain.
Through all of that has come an ever deepening conviction as to the work, the mighty work that is being done "to bypass the Mystery of Golgotha" as Rudolf Steiner has put it.
To obscure, that is, the Mystery of Christ ...
Yes we have the Da Vinci Code which would tell us, as its leading protagonists do, that 'Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false" and that "Nothing in Christianity is original."
Thus millions are led to suspect, if not believe, that almost the entire content of two thousand years of mystical experience, work, thought, prayer and revelation, are nothing but a spurious rehash.
There is nothing then INSPIRED with all these mystics, theologians, philosophers and saints. At best they are dupes. And at worst? Those who would follow Dan Brown can only conclude that everything from the original writers of the Gospels to the Christian mystics and hermeticists of the last centuries, all of these, including Rudolf Steiner, all, all are, at best, deluded.
Thus that which the Church teaches us about the Mystery of Christ has almost nothing to do with the truth ...
But to return to my theme, the true question in my heart is, again, how to HELP, to SERVE his WORK.
Ranting about the DaVinci Code will not achieve that.
Although perhaps what will, perhaps what will, is really allowing myself to WEEP at the immense unfolding tragedy to which those best selling pages say to me: the full scale tragedy of the vast attempt to bury Christ ...
Yes, not to rant, but to weep, to weep and act ...
To act in obedience.
Am I weeping enough? Am I acting enough? These are questions in my soul.
As I ask them answers come. And answers came most particularly in the profound stillness of those chapels in Paray-Le-Monial.
It seems to me that there is a work to be done.
A work that seems to me to involve so much.
It involves it seems to me, the legacy of Rudolf Steiner, who unlike Dan Brown proclaimed the unutterably immense depths of the Mystery enacted by Christ on Golgotha, on Calvary ...
But who it seems to me, lamented the rigidity and materialism he saw in the pre-Vatican II Counter-Reformation Church. And much else besides ... (Again these are fragments, if not scraps, barely elaborated ...)
Rudolf Steiner also lamented the Jesuits who pioneered so much of Counter Reformation, whose work he considered most "dangerous".
And yet this future work in France I see, also draws on the legacy of Valentin Tomberg. And Valentin Tomberg saw something very different in regards to the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation (and it needs to be said here, I think, that Prokofieff, in a sense, is right).
As he writes in his Covenant of the Heart (pg 95), Valentin Tomberg considers that with "the spiritual exercises [of St Ignatius]it was a matter of awakening the whole human being to the reality of Christianity through inner experience.
Through the meditative training people became MORE than pious; they became witnesses to the truth of Christianity.
Human beings emerged from the meditative training of the spiritual exercises to wholly devote themselves, out of their own deepest knowledge and conscience to the redemptive truths of Christianity.
What was usually experienced - more dreaming than awake - through pious devotion became in this experience of medirtation a matter of burning conscience, a challenge to action and an overwhelming awakening to the reality of redemtion, the Redeemer and the saints."
Is this, of necessity, an unqualified endorsement of Jesuitism? No.
Is the author saying something different from Rudolf Steiner? Yes, I think that he is.
And what is this difference that he indicates? For now? I can only offer a fragment of what I start to see.
But what strikes my heart as I consider the profound disagreement between two profound Christian Hermeticists, is that much that is at issue here, revolves around how we consider, the human, concrete, one can even say material expression of Jesus Christ.
For Rudolf Steiner, the Jesuits were clearly too materialistic.
He tells us thus, "Because Christ had to be incarnated in a physical body, the purely spiritual took part in the physical world; but over against this participation stand the monumental and most significant words of Christ: "My kingdom is not of this world."
But for Steiner, Jesuitism misses all of this. In Jesuitism, he believes "the Jesus principle is exaggerated ..."
Ignatius, Rudolf Steiner also tells us, wanted "to represent everything to do with Jesus in a purely material way."
Now there are also many other objections made by Rudolf Steiner to the Jesuits. This one of materialism is hardly all encompassing.
But I am focussing on this, because it may be at just this point that the Catholic Valentin Tomberg parts company with the Rosicrucian Rudolf Steiner.
For it seems clear to me that what Valentin Tomberg is saying has gone wrong with so much of esoteric Christianity, including Anthroposophy, is that the human, concrete aspect of Christianity has gone missing - in favour of the Logos.
Thus at one point he writes that although LIGHT is present in a Christianity that focusses on the Cosmic Christ, magic, warmth and PERSONALITY and LIFE are so often missing.
Thus in Covenant of the Heart, he speaks of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, noting that "the third aspect of the Way, the Truth, and the Life - namely life - was not given enough attention. For the scientific form into which the logic of the Logos had to be cast, and by which it was LIMITED, left little room for pure mysticism and spiritual magic, that is for LIFE. So there is in Anthroposophy a MAGNIFICENT achievement of thought and will, which is however, unmystical and unmagical, i.e. in want of LIFE. Rudolf Steiner himself was conscious of this essential lack. Therefore it was with a certain amount of hope that he indicated the necessary appearance of a successor (the Bodhisattva) who would remedy this lack and would bring the trinity of the Way, the Truth and the Life to FULL fruition." (Emphasis mine, pg 70).
And he makes it clear that these lacking elements CAN be found in the Catholic tradition ...
Anthroposophy failed perhaps because it did not value highly enough the concrete, the particular, the human and the personal, including the "material".
But if he were with us today, he might tell us that Jesuit Counter Reformation Catholicism did indeed participate in that ...
For unlike Rudolf Steiner, he does affirm the value of the Counter-Reformation, saying that this last "should not be understood as anti reformatory, but as a true reformation.
For the movement toward interiorisation and spiritualisation which arose then in the Church was indeed, in a real sense REFORMATION, and in no sense a process of outer revolt - destroying images and annihilating Church hierarchy, and doing away with the spiritual orders and the three vows.
A monastery, for instance, is not reformed by chasing out the monks, but by bringing in a more interiorised spiritual life ...
The so-called Counter-Reformation and the so-called Reformation stand in the same relationship to one another as the spiritualisation of the monasteries stands in relation to their dissolution.
The first was an impulse toward inner transformation; the second signified "rebellion" and "purge". The one meant "evolution", the other signified "revolution". (Covenant of the Heart, pg 96)"
Yes, yes Mama Pelican, again there is this beauty I sense in the Counter Reformation Catholic Spirituality that is so sidelined in our time. Though this is not the same as denying the "danger" which Rudolf Steiner saw so well.
But every imbalance can be dangerous.
Yes the future work I see in France involves all of this and more.
It involves, for example, the striking fact that an anonymous Russian author who lived in England, nevertheless chose to write his Magnum Opus in FRENCH.
And it involves the immense French legacy of the experiences of Saint Marguerite-Marie who saw His Sacred Heart in 1673 ...
A legacy which seems so very tied up with the Jesuits. A legacy which inspired profound resistance to the Revolution of 1789. A legacy with countless shadows and contradictions. A legacy which may be more profoundly relevant to THE SOUL OF FRANCE, and to the world, than even I dare to imagine yet.
And so much more this work I see involves.
But one more thing I will leave you.
It is a translation of a few lines from a German book by Martin Kriele, who guards Valentin Tomberg's estate, and who knew him during his life. I hope that Doctor Kriele can forgive my taking these brief lines from his book. It seems to me somehow important.
"Occasionally [Tomberg] spoke of evil in which he saw not only a "lack of being", but very real powers manifold and chaotic.
One should not occupy oneself excessively with it but pay attention to evil in the seductive form of seeming good, its method of adopting something beautiful and half-true which deceives us and leads us unwittingly into evil.
He was concerned with the art of the discernment of spirits which was needed particularly also in matters of politics and political philosophy. In this context he held V. Soloviev's writings in high esteem.
If people were afraid of evil occult groups and "conspiracies", this was not principally unjustified - they did in fact exist - but most of the time, one did not understand how to localize them accurately.
Thus the talk of a "Jewish world-conspiracy" had been a fateful lie. But in fact sinister occult forces had worked in Hitler's and Lenin's movement.
To counter these there was a need for a "white" Christian Esotericism of Good which alone was up to this task. It could unfold "magical" effects if the will of man is in perfect harmony with the will of God.
In "Scottish" Masonry, whose center in London had been destroyed during the war and relocated to New York, he saw a dangerous occult counter current.
It would lure man with the promise of humanity - but with the aim of a world without Christ and without death and resurrection.
Beginning from the 21st degree the member which saw through the game could only liberate itself from the entanglement through suicide.
He described to me the methods of working of the sinister counter-occultism, for example its influence on language, manners of speech, ideological forms of thinking and the fostering of all sorts of enemy-polarizations.
He took the occultism without Christ which based itself on the Theosophy of Blavatsky and worked out of the Indian-Tibetan region very seriously.
It was very influential from the background. It was for example partly instrumental in the spread of Bolshevism, in the benevolent neutrality towards it, in the threatening east-west polarization but also in the "esoteric" youth movement of the "New Age" which began to flourish at the time.
History is like a chess board with white and black figures. One could never clearly foresee which moves the enemies prepared from out of the dark.
Therefore no certain prophecy was possible. This also explains why some predictions of Rudolf Steiner for this century have not come to pass.
It could well be useful to reveal what the enemies still wanted to keep hidden. The most effective counter measure though was to turn to Christ, prayer, contemplation, the cultivation of love and kindness of heart.
Everything in Tomberg's thinking revolved around one center: Christ. His greatness and glory he said, full of reverence, was so immeasurable that every attempt to imagine it stayed far behind the reality.
When he spoke of Christ his language took on the tone of gravity and deeply being moved familiar to us, from the Gospels, especially the St John's Gospel. Him he loved with every fibre of his heart. In His service, he placed himself without any reserve and through Him in the service of the Father."
Friends, I am either mad, or I am aspiring to the Hanged Man of which the anonymous Russian author writes that He acts first, then he desires, and lastly he understands
Which is to say, I do not yet understand all that this work in France is about.
But I felt these indications were not only justified, but somehow _warranted_. Again, obedience.
And for the moment, I do not know either the future of this weblog, or of this future work I glimpse in fragments.
In the meantime, I recommend to all Christians who can do so, a pilgrimmage to Paray-le-Monial, where it seems to Kim and his Sacred Heart can STILL be felt ... more than 300 years after 1673 ...
Yes his Sacred Heart, day after day radiating through our bodies, cleansing, stilling, healing us...
In the meantime, I really do not know what can be posted at this weblog.
I DO have the unfinished remainder of my Confessions manuscript.
But so much has changed in these last months, I do not know if it is appropriate to present that old material. Or if it is better to start afresh.
I feel very strongly though, that my future work does involve writing, and that writing will be emerging from myself in both French and English, on the web, and I hope eventually in print ...
I feel also that my future work may involve publishing the thought of others, including perhaps long forgotten mystics and hermeticists of Catholic France.
I also feel that something else will be entailed. A local expression of these impulses in rural France, which will perhaps involve Community.
I feel my effort to be obedient will entail this.
But how these "entailed things" may come to pass, I do not know.
So much more I wish that I could say. But having said this much, it seems that what I must say now, dear Friends, is THANK YOU for all the kind attention you have given this weblog. Thank you for all your kindness, expressed in so, so many ways ...
Again, I do not know the future. New material might appear at this site quite soon, or it might not.
Whatever happens, I trust an extended web presence for my work will be forthcoming at some future point. Though how much it will be in English or in French is not yet clear to me.
However, if you wish to be apprised of my future activities in cyberspace, you can send your e-mail address to me at sophialiebhaber at yahoo dot com. And I will let you know ...
But for now, dear Friends, I must bid you "Au Revoir".
(I find myself thinking of George Weigel's vast biography of John Paul, where nonetheless, nonetheless I wish to repeat, my experience in reading it that almost nothing, almost not one thing critical of John Paul's papacy, was uttered, except under the heading of one category. That single category is where John Paul began to criticise American ideology ... Thus when John Paul was too "left wing", Weigel, it seemed to me, became uncomfortable ...)
I have given you the idea that this weblog would be updated more regularly than this, and now I have to say that I am sorry and that I really have little clear idea as to the future of this endeavour - and when it will be possible to resume.
I am also very sorry for long delayed personal replies to many of you who have written very kind things to me.
I am now living in France, in a situation that is self-chosen, entirely self-chosen, and also very demanding and precarious.
In sometimes overwhelming difficulties, my access to the internet has been very limited. Still I do not think that that is an excuse, and I am sorry.
Now in the past, for the sake of Unknown Friends, I´ve tried to keep strictly personal content to a minimum here.
But for once, I'll allow myself some laxity - and speak of more intimate things, which may be more of interest to my known friends.
I´ll also allow myself the laxity of writing in a very unstructured, fragmentary way. Some of what follows is not just fragments then, but simply scraps, SCRAPS from the contents of my consciousness ...
Yes our situation is very demanding and it seems to Kim and myself, very profound.
We have been a fifth time to Paray-Le-Monial, where Saint Marguerite Marie began receiving visions of His Sacred Heart in 1673 ...
Day after day, we have been at Mass there and we have been in the profound stillness that can be felt in the chapels there.
"Avez vous bu le silence quelquefois?" Or in the English translation, "Have you ever drunk silence?" This is a question that the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot asks his readers.
"If in the affirmative, you know what concentration without effort is."
And concerning this, he says:
"It is the profound silence of desires, of preoccupations, of the imagination, of the memory and of discursive thought. One may say that the entire being becomes like the surface of calm water, reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its indescribable harmony.
And the waters are so deep, they are so deep! And the silence grows ever increasing ... what silence!
Its growth takes place through regular waves which, one after another, pass through your being: One wave of silence followed by another wave of more profound silence, then again, a wave of still more profound silence."
Yes, in Paray I experienced perhaps the deepest and most significance silence of my life. Perhaps.
Now I do not believe that the waves became as profound as our author suggests they can become. But at least the beginning of profound waves silence did become present. I trust that.
And so much became evident.
Including some of the most well known truths of the Catholic tradition.
Still it is one thing to take a religious teaching on faith. It is another thing entirely to FEEL it penetrating into one's depths.
Thus do a few words from my personal journal express an idea, that has been expressed to saiety - one would think - for nearly two thousand years.
One would think it would be quite mundane by now.
But the experience, my experience, I repeat, sitting in profound stillness before the Blessed Sacrament in Paray-Le-Monial was anything BUT mundane ...
And these words written in the immediate aftermath of that experience, whilst still sitting in that chapel, are for me, not mundane either:
"I felt ... there is this Sacred Story trying to unfold between Christ and us.
He is trying to heal each and everyone of us.
This is - feeling it still now - amazing.
Amazing.
Each and every one of us, he is trying to heal.
He is trying to heal ME and billions more like me.
It is amazing.
... He is trying to heal us all.
He is trying to heal me.
That woman behind me.
All of us.
Amazing.
Completely, utterly amazing.
Heal me, and billions, trillions like me.
Each of us."
And what was implicit in this experience, was an overwhelming sense that this healing was offered through an INDIVIDUAL relationship with each of these UNCOUNTED entities ...
He sought to reach out to each of us through individual relationship ... !
Needless to say, this experience has provided a source for great reflection, ever since.
And it has so many corollaries. Corollaries.
One corollary I noted in my journal at the time.
"He can "use" each of us.
(He never wants to "use" any of us!)
But he can extend through each of us.
We can help him. We can help his work."
So, so many things to dwell upon in pondering this question: "How to help his work?"
How to do his WORK. How to serve his work.
So many answers to that question.
At one level, OBEDIENCE.
OBEDIENCE to what is carried in the deepest layers one struggles to discern in oneself ...
Such obedience, I believe, led Kim and I to France, and to Paray-Le-Monial ...
Much unfolds for us around a work, a work to be done in and through France. I do not know how much more of my writing will be done through my mother tongue.
Can I speak yet of this work? Perhaps in halting fragments or even scraps ...
Recently I replied to Mama Pelican on this weblog about Mother Angelica.
How I share her concern about what she identifies as "conservative Catholicism!"
Though I suspect some of what shes sees has more to do with an American species of Catholicism, than Catholicism itself.
Mama Pelican also speaks of her discovery of the beauty of pre-Vatican II books ...
Friends, I am also more and more moved by a beauty I find in many writings, images, works of art associated with the immediate pre-Vatican II era.
I who was first a fully fledged, card-carrying New Ager, then a liberal Anglican, then a liberal Catholic, and then ... Words fail.
And in France, it seems to me, we see more than anywhere else I have lived, a most concerted to BURY the pre-Vatican II church.
The result it would seem are empty churches or a Catholicism my wife calls "zany."
"Zany". What does she mean by "zany?"
Among other things, she means a Mass, wherein the Mystery of the Mass is no longer central. Where instead, what has taken centre stage is singing and entertainment, that is neither reverent or present, but is animated by something bordering on manic ... Bordering, I say.
At a Mass in the Pyrenees, my wife and I are looking up at a MODERN mural of the Resurrected Christ behind the altar. In this modern image, he smiles sweetly down at us, maybe even starts to grin ...
But there is no GRAVITAS in this modern face of Christ. Is this an image of the Christ who weeps with us, as well as smiles? No, it is zany.
Again, how to do, to serve the work of Christ?
Again, obedience.
Including obedience to WORK WITH WHAT LIFE PRESENTS ONESELF.
The example of Kim and I following an inspiration to come to France is just one example.
And another example is of being presented here in France, with a dying, zany church, in which it seems to us, that Christ is obscured ...
But life presents so much more, besides.
Here is another example.
This summer, life also presented me with the Da Vinci Code at last, and also some comments from Doctor Rudolf Steiner ...
Around these two, so much could be said, but I must content myself with noting just a little.
Noting for example, that I am seeing a direct connexion between two statements. First there is the statement that I find on pg 403 of the Da Vinci Code:
"The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the Church, had considered English the only European PURE language for centuries. Unlike French, Spanish and Italian, which were rooted in Latin - THE TONGUE OF THE VATICAN - English was linguistically removed from Rome's propaganda machine, and therefore became a sacred, secret tongue for those brotherhoods educated enough to use it [Emphasis in original]."
And then there is the statement, or at very least the implication, that Doctor Rudolf Steiner seems to make - that English is also a tongue which can so easily facilitate the aims of secret societies, which he claims for decades have aimed to promote global capitalist domination.
Yes, in lectures given in Dornach in October 1920, Rudolf Steiner touches on these societies and on the invisible entities working through the people in them. He emphasises the role that English plays for this endeavour, noting that within peoples speaking Romance tongues (such as French), these same entities 'would be extremely constricted." (Pg '( etc)
Yes, I am hearing a connexion between these statements from Dan Brown and Rudolf Steiner, and between these and much more besides ...
For example, a recent cover of The Economist. That cover shows the tricolour of the French flag - blue, white and red - with the bold headline, "What France needs".
And in the middle panel, the white panel, below the headline, there is the image of Margaret Thatcher.
My wife sees this cover and recoils in shock. "Oh my God", escapes her lips.
I ask her why.
She says because she feels a striking paradox: For in one sense, she is here in France: "Margaret Thatcher" has already conquered France.
And of course, globalised capitalism is everywhere.
But in another way, my wife notes she really is NOT here yet
...
I nod in agreement. No "Margaret Thatcher" and all she so radically brought to Britain, if not Europe, in 1979 has still not fully reached France.
That is why the Economist feels she is needed.
Like myself, The Economist can feel her ABSENCE here.
For of all the European countries I know, I feel the greatest resistance to capitalist globalisation here in France. I still feel SOUL here ...
A quality of soul that Margaret Thatcher, it seems to me, did much, so very much to bury in Britain ... bury under a culture, so-called, more and more exclusively dedicated to economic FUNCTIONS ...
A "culture" dedidicated more and more exclusively to economic functions.
Here is more of what Rudolf Steiner says of the beings working through the English language.
"They have set themselves the task of keeping life as a whole restricted to the mere life of economics. They seek to gradually root everything else ... to root out spiritual life, to chip away the political life and to absorb everything into the life of economics (ibid, pg 36)."
Yes eighty years ago, Rudolf Steiner you warned of the threat of reducing all of culture and politics to economic functions.
And now I feel it everywhere. A successful musician tells me how she left the record industry because of corporate pressure to make her music more commercial. University doctors tell me of the crass, commercial ethos that now pervades the academy, if academy it can still be called, for it has been dumbed-down to meet economic agendas. Artless, graceless buildings arise everywhere, sacrificing Soul for economic ends. And if individuals nations try to express their
And everywhere people's individual lives also become stripped of Soul.
I receive e-mails which haunt my soul. One of my dear known friends, expresses the stripping of Soul he experiences in his own life in America.
Yes here is a fragment from his letter that elaborates something far better than I can, at least right now, something well advanced in Asia and America - but now being summoned forth in Europe:
"In this fast-paced, busy, time-starved,complex environment we've created, we are forced to compartmentalize our lives. For example: Up at 6:45, to work by 8, pick up the kids after soccer practice, throw together dinner, pay the bills, do the laundry, go to church at 10 a.m. Sunday, meet the parents for lunch, fix the fawcet in the kitchen...
Church, religion, spirituality, get compartmentalized along with all the other things we do in life. ... Is it any wonder that the lessons and brotherly love we shared at 10 a.m. Sunday get brushed aside in the boardroom Monday, when we decide to up profits by laying off a thousand people?
... Connectedness -- we've lost it in America, at least to a great degree. (That makes it easier to lay off people!) If you look at the European model of community and work, and weeks of vacation each year, and the East Asian model of all work and no play, America long has fallen in between. But we're moving toward the East Asian model; in fact, we've been accelerating in that direction.
Nowadays, [with]greedy business owners and corporations ... There seems to be a mentality spreading that ANYTHING that is good for a company's profits is a good idea. Lying, stealing, cheating, destroying the environment and exporting jobs overseas ... [We have ]an acceleration to the disconnected, dog-eat-dog jungle style of capitalism in East Asia.
In East Asia, where I lived for two years and worked at a business magazine, capitalism is perverted thoroughly in this way ... Japan is woefully ill in spirit, having replaced all their values with the worship of wealth. Korea is far down that track, and China is racing up behind those nations.
... I see a societal illness -- and let's admit that society never
has been and never will be perfect -- that results from imbalance, away
from spirituality and toward self-centeredness."
Yes dear known friend, how your words strike my soul ... "FORCED to compartmentalise" as you put it.
Forced to acquiece to an increasingly mechanical society that leaves no room for soul.
And without soul, we move ever more to the self centred dog eat dog horror that you see so clearly ...
Yes all of this, it seems to me, has to do with the Da Vinci Code, and with Rudolf Steiner's warnings more than 80 years ago about the dangers of a society CONQUERED by the forces working through Anglo-American Secret Societies.
To a degree, France resists. And the Economist is NOT happy about it. The Spirit of "Margaret Thatcher" simply must be summoned here as well. But she is still "constricted" ...
What am I saying here? Am I insinuating?
Or am I just pointing? Stammering and pointing: "Look there. Look there."
Because for the moment, I can do no more than point and stammer. I will let you decide for yourself.
For again, these are but the contents of my consciousness, as I ponder the question, how am I called to serve the work of Christ?
Again, so, so much more might be said.
Because so much has happened since Kim and I have come to France, via Spain.
Through all of that has come an ever deepening conviction as to the work, the mighty work that is being done "to bypass the Mystery of Golgotha" as Rudolf Steiner has put it.
To obscure, that is, the Mystery of Christ ...
Yes we have the Da Vinci Code which would tell us, as its leading protagonists do, that 'Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false" and that "Nothing in Christianity is original."
Thus millions are led to suspect, if not believe, that almost the entire content of two thousand years of mystical experience, work, thought, prayer and revelation, are nothing but a spurious rehash.
There is nothing then INSPIRED with all these mystics, theologians, philosophers and saints. At best they are dupes. And at worst? Those who would follow Dan Brown can only conclude that everything from the original writers of the Gospels to the Christian mystics and hermeticists of the last centuries, all of these, including Rudolf Steiner, all, all are, at best, deluded.
Thus that which the Church teaches us about the Mystery of Christ has almost nothing to do with the truth ...
But to return to my theme, the true question in my heart is, again, how to HELP, to SERVE his WORK.
Ranting about the DaVinci Code will not achieve that.
Although perhaps what will, perhaps what will, is really allowing myself to WEEP at the immense unfolding tragedy to which those best selling pages say to me: the full scale tragedy of the vast attempt to bury Christ ...
Yes, not to rant, but to weep, to weep and act ...
To act in obedience.
Am I weeping enough? Am I acting enough? These are questions in my soul.
As I ask them answers come. And answers came most particularly in the profound stillness of those chapels in Paray-Le-Monial.
It seems to me that there is a work to be done.
A work that seems to me to involve so much.
It involves it seems to me, the legacy of Rudolf Steiner, who unlike Dan Brown proclaimed the unutterably immense depths of the Mystery enacted by Christ on Golgotha, on Calvary ...
But who it seems to me, lamented the rigidity and materialism he saw in the pre-Vatican II Counter-Reformation Church. And much else besides ... (Again these are fragments, if not scraps, barely elaborated ...)
Rudolf Steiner also lamented the Jesuits who pioneered so much of Counter Reformation, whose work he considered most "dangerous".
And yet this future work in France I see, also draws on the legacy of Valentin Tomberg. And Valentin Tomberg saw something very different in regards to the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation (and it needs to be said here, I think, that Prokofieff, in a sense, is right).
As he writes in his Covenant of the Heart (pg 95), Valentin Tomberg considers that with "the spiritual exercises [of St Ignatius]it was a matter of awakening the whole human being to the reality of Christianity through inner experience.
Through the meditative training people became MORE than pious; they became witnesses to the truth of Christianity.
Human beings emerged from the meditative training of the spiritual exercises to wholly devote themselves, out of their own deepest knowledge and conscience to the redemptive truths of Christianity.
What was usually experienced - more dreaming than awake - through pious devotion became in this experience of medirtation a matter of burning conscience, a challenge to action and an overwhelming awakening to the reality of redemtion, the Redeemer and the saints."
Is this, of necessity, an unqualified endorsement of Jesuitism? No.
Is the author saying something different from Rudolf Steiner? Yes, I think that he is.
And what is this difference that he indicates? For now? I can only offer a fragment of what I start to see.
But what strikes my heart as I consider the profound disagreement between two profound Christian Hermeticists, is that much that is at issue here, revolves around how we consider, the human, concrete, one can even say material expression of Jesus Christ.
For Rudolf Steiner, the Jesuits were clearly too materialistic.
He tells us thus, "Because Christ had to be incarnated in a physical body, the purely spiritual took part in the physical world; but over against this participation stand the monumental and most significant words of Christ: "My kingdom is not of this world."
But for Steiner, Jesuitism misses all of this. In Jesuitism, he believes "the Jesus principle is exaggerated ..."
Ignatius, Rudolf Steiner also tells us, wanted "to represent everything to do with Jesus in a purely material way."
Now there are also many other objections made by Rudolf Steiner to the Jesuits. This one of materialism is hardly all encompassing.
But I am focussing on this, because it may be at just this point that the Catholic Valentin Tomberg parts company with the Rosicrucian Rudolf Steiner.
For it seems clear to me that what Valentin Tomberg is saying has gone wrong with so much of esoteric Christianity, including Anthroposophy, is that the human, concrete aspect of Christianity has gone missing - in favour of the Logos.
Thus at one point he writes that although LIGHT is present in a Christianity that focusses on the Cosmic Christ, magic, warmth and PERSONALITY and LIFE are so often missing.
Thus in Covenant of the Heart, he speaks of Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, noting that "the third aspect of the Way, the Truth, and the Life - namely life - was not given enough attention. For the scientific form into which the logic of the Logos had to be cast, and by which it was LIMITED, left little room for pure mysticism and spiritual magic, that is for LIFE. So there is in Anthroposophy a MAGNIFICENT achievement of thought and will, which is however, unmystical and unmagical, i.e. in want of LIFE. Rudolf Steiner himself was conscious of this essential lack. Therefore it was with a certain amount of hope that he indicated the necessary appearance of a successor (the Bodhisattva) who would remedy this lack and would bring the trinity of the Way, the Truth and the Life to FULL fruition." (Emphasis mine, pg 70).
And he makes it clear that these lacking elements CAN be found in the Catholic tradition ...
Anthroposophy failed perhaps because it did not value highly enough the concrete, the particular, the human and the personal, including the "material".
But if he were with us today, he might tell us that Jesuit Counter Reformation Catholicism did indeed participate in that ...
For unlike Rudolf Steiner, he does affirm the value of the Counter-Reformation, saying that this last "should not be understood as anti reformatory, but as a true reformation.
For the movement toward interiorisation and spiritualisation which arose then in the Church was indeed, in a real sense REFORMATION, and in no sense a process of outer revolt - destroying images and annihilating Church hierarchy, and doing away with the spiritual orders and the three vows.
A monastery, for instance, is not reformed by chasing out the monks, but by bringing in a more interiorised spiritual life ...
The so-called Counter-Reformation and the so-called Reformation stand in the same relationship to one another as the spiritualisation of the monasteries stands in relation to their dissolution.
The first was an impulse toward inner transformation; the second signified "rebellion" and "purge". The one meant "evolution", the other signified "revolution". (Covenant of the Heart, pg 96)"
Yes, yes Mama Pelican, again there is this beauty I sense in the Counter Reformation Catholic Spirituality that is so sidelined in our time. Though this is not the same as denying the "danger" which Rudolf Steiner saw so well.
But every imbalance can be dangerous.
Yes the future work I see in France involves all of this and more.
It involves, for example, the striking fact that an anonymous Russian author who lived in England, nevertheless chose to write his Magnum Opus in FRENCH.
And it involves the immense French legacy of the experiences of Saint Marguerite-Marie who saw His Sacred Heart in 1673 ...
A legacy which seems so very tied up with the Jesuits. A legacy which inspired profound resistance to the Revolution of 1789. A legacy with countless shadows and contradictions. A legacy which may be more profoundly relevant to THE SOUL OF FRANCE, and to the world, than even I dare to imagine yet.
And so much more this work I see involves.
But one more thing I will leave you.
It is a translation of a few lines from a German book by Martin Kriele, who guards Valentin Tomberg's estate, and who knew him during his life. I hope that Doctor Kriele can forgive my taking these brief lines from his book. It seems to me somehow important.
"Occasionally [Tomberg] spoke of evil in which he saw not only a "lack of being", but very real powers manifold and chaotic.
One should not occupy oneself excessively with it but pay attention to evil in the seductive form of seeming good, its method of adopting something beautiful and half-true which deceives us and leads us unwittingly into evil.
He was concerned with the art of the discernment of spirits which was needed particularly also in matters of politics and political philosophy. In this context he held V. Soloviev's writings in high esteem.
If people were afraid of evil occult groups and "conspiracies", this was not principally unjustified - they did in fact exist - but most of the time, one did not understand how to localize them accurately.
Thus the talk of a "Jewish world-conspiracy" had been a fateful lie. But in fact sinister occult forces had worked in Hitler's and Lenin's movement.
To counter these there was a need for a "white" Christian Esotericism of Good which alone was up to this task. It could unfold "magical" effects if the will of man is in perfect harmony with the will of God.
In "Scottish" Masonry, whose center in London had been destroyed during the war and relocated to New York, he saw a dangerous occult counter current.
It would lure man with the promise of humanity - but with the aim of a world without Christ and without death and resurrection.
Beginning from the 21st degree the member which saw through the game could only liberate itself from the entanglement through suicide.
He described to me the methods of working of the sinister counter-occultism, for example its influence on language, manners of speech, ideological forms of thinking and the fostering of all sorts of enemy-polarizations.
He took the occultism without Christ which based itself on the Theosophy of Blavatsky and worked out of the Indian-Tibetan region very seriously.
It was very influential from the background. It was for example partly instrumental in the spread of Bolshevism, in the benevolent neutrality towards it, in the threatening east-west polarization but also in the "esoteric" youth movement of the "New Age" which began to flourish at the time.
History is like a chess board with white and black figures. One could never clearly foresee which moves the enemies prepared from out of the dark.
Therefore no certain prophecy was possible. This also explains why some predictions of Rudolf Steiner for this century have not come to pass.
It could well be useful to reveal what the enemies still wanted to keep hidden. The most effective counter measure though was to turn to Christ, prayer, contemplation, the cultivation of love and kindness of heart.
Everything in Tomberg's thinking revolved around one center: Christ. His greatness and glory he said, full of reverence, was so immeasurable that every attempt to imagine it stayed far behind the reality.
When he spoke of Christ his language took on the tone of gravity and deeply being moved familiar to us, from the Gospels, especially the St John's Gospel. Him he loved with every fibre of his heart. In His service, he placed himself without any reserve and through Him in the service of the Father."
Friends, I am either mad, or I am aspiring to the Hanged Man of which the anonymous Russian author writes that He acts first, then he desires, and lastly he understands
Which is to say, I do not yet understand all that this work in France is about.
But I felt these indications were not only justified, but somehow _warranted_. Again, obedience.
And for the moment, I do not know either the future of this weblog, or of this future work I glimpse in fragments.
In the meantime, I recommend to all Christians who can do so, a pilgrimmage to Paray-le-Monial, where it seems to Kim and his Sacred Heart can STILL be felt ... more than 300 years after 1673 ...
Yes his Sacred Heart, day after day radiating through our bodies, cleansing, stilling, healing us...
In the meantime, I really do not know what can be posted at this weblog.
I DO have the unfinished remainder of my Confessions manuscript.
But so much has changed in these last months, I do not know if it is appropriate to present that old material. Or if it is better to start afresh.
I feel very strongly though, that my future work does involve writing, and that writing will be emerging from myself in both French and English, on the web, and I hope eventually in print ...
I feel also that my future work may involve publishing the thought of others, including perhaps long forgotten mystics and hermeticists of Catholic France.
I also feel that something else will be entailed. A local expression of these impulses in rural France, which will perhaps involve Community.
I feel my effort to be obedient will entail this.
But how these "entailed things" may come to pass, I do not know.
So much more I wish that I could say. But having said this much, it seems that what I must say now, dear Friends, is THANK YOU for all the kind attention you have given this weblog. Thank you for all your kindness, expressed in so, so many ways ...
Again, I do not know the future. New material might appear at this site quite soon, or it might not.
Whatever happens, I trust an extended web presence for my work will be forthcoming at some future point. Though how much it will be in English or in French is not yet clear to me.
However, if you wish to be apprised of my future activities in cyberspace, you can send your e-mail address to me at sophialiebhaber at yahoo dot com. And I will let you know ...
But for now, dear Friends, I must bid you "Au Revoir".
(I find myself thinking of George Weigel's vast biography of John Paul, where nonetheless, nonetheless I wish to repeat, my experience in reading it that almost nothing, almost not one thing critical of John Paul's papacy, was uttered, except under the heading of one category. That single category is where John Paul began to criticise American ideology ... Thus when John Paul was too "left wing", Weigel, it seemed to me, became uncomfortable ...)
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Intermission of Fragments IX - Book Review: Mother Angelica
While I travel in France, seeking to establish myself here and incarnate in this culture, I regret how little time I have been able to devote to internet activity - either to this weblog or to individual responses.
For now, here is another book review written in Ireland, that never quite made it to Amazon, now slightly modified for this weblog.
Mother Angelica - Raymond Arroyo
At the end of this remarkably interesting book, Raymond Arroyo offers two testimonies to the work of Mother Angelica – the founder of EWTN – the Eternal World Television Network, or the ‘world’s largest religious media empire’ as the book’s dustjacket describes it.
The first testimony comes from Father Richard John Neuhaus who said, ‘The greatest thing John Paul II did was constructing and putting in place the authoritative interpretation of Vatican II. And though we are still in a state of confusion and enormous damage, I think one can say the tide has turned, and Mother Angelica played a significant part in that.’
The second is from Arroyo’s own pen, ‘More than preaching at them, Mother gave her flock things to do. She used television to teach and popularize pious devotions thought lost to modernity.
It can be safely said that no one in America, and perhaps in the world[! - R.B.], did more than Mother Angelica to perpetuate and stoke interest in the Rosary, Eucharistic adoration, Latin in the liturgy, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, litanies and traditional prayers.'
Thus, what is apparently bound up with Mother Angelica’s life mission is a remarkable worldwide ‘turning of the tide’, whereby much of the post-Vatican II spirit that threatened to wash away so very, very much of the Catholic Tradition has been perhaps decisively checked.
Mother Angelica’s life mission … this fascinating account, details her remarkable life, from her miserable childhood in an Ohio slum, to the miraculous encounter with a stigmatic, which inexplicably healed her from a severe medical condition and led to her vocation ... and onwards through an intensely dedicated religious life, lived out amidst an ongoing series of seeming miracles - all of which eventually led to founding the ‘world’s largest religious media empire’.
With nothing to her name, but two hundred dollars and faith in God.
Arroyo is a good storyteller, telling a truly riveting story. This is thus a fascinating book that appeals on many levels simultaneously.
But for me, the most important of all these – was the way in which the book testifies to what Neuhaus calls a 'turning of the tide', whereby a post-Vatican II trajectory that seemed headed towards a very largely Protestantised, even secularised Roman Church was halted.
Halted, not so much from heavy-handed Vatican authoritarianism in this case, but from the grassroots, grassroots which testify to the fact that Catholics the world over love and revere the practice and tradition of the Catholic Mystery.
I came to this book, never having seen Mother Angelica or EWTN at all – being a traditional Catholic, but also without being plugged into television for many years.
I also came with a certain caution. Although I consider myself traditional, I make a profound distinction - too often lost, alas! - between traditionalism and fundamentalism.
There is not space here to adequately deal with this distinction. But what I wrote in my Amazon review of Colleen Carroll's The New Faithful, might serve to clarify just a little:
"Fundamentalism focuses on literalism and single-issue ethics - premarital sex, abortion and so forth. Traditionalism is different. John Paul II ... is clearly a traditionalist. "Fidelity to roots" John Paul said, is not "a mechanical copying of the past. Fidelity to roots is always creative."
Thus, John Paul stood for fidelity to the Church's tradition. But he was neither a literalist, nor of a static persuasion."
(And thus, as the last entry in this weblog hopefully demonstrated, John Paul could BOTH uphold tradition AND some of the most radical evolutions of that tradition in the entire history of the Church ...)
A true tradition then, is not dead and static, but living and evolving …
I am a traditionalist therefore, who is cautious about fundamentalism and other aspects of very conservative Catholicism – for example, a lamentable capacity for invective and polemic (which, I hasten to add, is no less tragically evident in the Church’s liberal wing).
Having completed Arroyo’s remarkable tale, I cannot say I am an uncritical admirer of every aspect to Mother’s ministry.
But then, we are all profoundly fallen, filled with shadow and attributing a pure, shadowless quality to any human being, save Our Lady and Our Lord is hardly Catholic.
As with all of us, all-too-human motives seem to be at work with Mother Angelica - along with genuine inspiration and even divine intervention.
In the mixture of shadows and light in Mother’s ministry, I found myself with profound questions, concerning the working of Grace and Providence, through limited human beings and even through sometimes narrow human agendas.
Yet whatever human failings may be at work in the story of EWTN, I find it hard not to conclude that the Angels profoundly recognised Mother Angelica’s tenacity, sincerity and total commitment to her sense of God’s calling.
And also hard not to feel that the spiritual world met her dedication, with a *parallel* response.
And the result of this lifelong story of faith, total commitment, apparent miracles and providence?
The result certainly appears to be exactly what Father Neuhaus has intimated, a profound contribution to John Paul the Great’s campaign to save the Church from the worst, most reductionist excesses of Vatican II.
This book I suspect will mainly be read by the legions of Mother’s adoring fans.
But I wish I could convince some of my more liberally minded friends to *honestly* confront Mother’s story and *honestly* ask themselves: What is ***GOING ON*** behind the appearance of continuous, sustained providence and continuous miracles, that are clearly in evidence here, leading to such dramatic and improbable, yes, ***completely improbable*** success?
Whatever human agendas may be inevitably present here, this book is *also* a testament to Mystery and Miracles, and to a woman very evidently filled with faith, courage, sincerity and tenacity.
For that, and many other reasons besides, it both greatly deserves and rewards careful attention.
For now, here is another book review written in Ireland, that never quite made it to Amazon, now slightly modified for this weblog.
Mother Angelica - Raymond Arroyo
At the end of this remarkably interesting book, Raymond Arroyo offers two testimonies to the work of Mother Angelica – the founder of EWTN – the Eternal World Television Network, or the ‘world’s largest religious media empire’ as the book’s dustjacket describes it.
The first testimony comes from Father Richard John Neuhaus who said, ‘The greatest thing John Paul II did was constructing and putting in place the authoritative interpretation of Vatican II. And though we are still in a state of confusion and enormous damage, I think one can say the tide has turned, and Mother Angelica played a significant part in that.’
The second is from Arroyo’s own pen, ‘More than preaching at them, Mother gave her flock things to do. She used television to teach and popularize pious devotions thought lost to modernity.
It can be safely said that no one in America, and perhaps in the world[! - R.B.], did more than Mother Angelica to perpetuate and stoke interest in the Rosary, Eucharistic adoration, Latin in the liturgy, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, litanies and traditional prayers.'
Thus, what is apparently bound up with Mother Angelica’s life mission is a remarkable worldwide ‘turning of the tide’, whereby much of the post-Vatican II spirit that threatened to wash away so very, very much of the Catholic Tradition has been perhaps decisively checked.
Mother Angelica’s life mission … this fascinating account, details her remarkable life, from her miserable childhood in an Ohio slum, to the miraculous encounter with a stigmatic, which inexplicably healed her from a severe medical condition and led to her vocation ... and onwards through an intensely dedicated religious life, lived out amidst an ongoing series of seeming miracles - all of which eventually led to founding the ‘world’s largest religious media empire’.
With nothing to her name, but two hundred dollars and faith in God.
Arroyo is a good storyteller, telling a truly riveting story. This is thus a fascinating book that appeals on many levels simultaneously.
But for me, the most important of all these – was the way in which the book testifies to what Neuhaus calls a 'turning of the tide', whereby a post-Vatican II trajectory that seemed headed towards a very largely Protestantised, even secularised Roman Church was halted.
Halted, not so much from heavy-handed Vatican authoritarianism in this case, but from the grassroots, grassroots which testify to the fact that Catholics the world over love and revere the practice and tradition of the Catholic Mystery.
I came to this book, never having seen Mother Angelica or EWTN at all – being a traditional Catholic, but also without being plugged into television for many years.
I also came with a certain caution. Although I consider myself traditional, I make a profound distinction - too often lost, alas! - between traditionalism and fundamentalism.
There is not space here to adequately deal with this distinction. But what I wrote in my Amazon review of Colleen Carroll's The New Faithful, might serve to clarify just a little:
"Fundamentalism focuses on literalism and single-issue ethics - premarital sex, abortion and so forth. Traditionalism is different. John Paul II ... is clearly a traditionalist. "Fidelity to roots" John Paul said, is not "a mechanical copying of the past. Fidelity to roots is always creative."
Thus, John Paul stood for fidelity to the Church's tradition. But he was neither a literalist, nor of a static persuasion."
(And thus, as the last entry in this weblog hopefully demonstrated, John Paul could BOTH uphold tradition AND some of the most radical evolutions of that tradition in the entire history of the Church ...)
A true tradition then, is not dead and static, but living and evolving …
I am a traditionalist therefore, who is cautious about fundamentalism and other aspects of very conservative Catholicism – for example, a lamentable capacity for invective and polemic (which, I hasten to add, is no less tragically evident in the Church’s liberal wing).
Having completed Arroyo’s remarkable tale, I cannot say I am an uncritical admirer of every aspect to Mother’s ministry.
But then, we are all profoundly fallen, filled with shadow and attributing a pure, shadowless quality to any human being, save Our Lady and Our Lord is hardly Catholic.
As with all of us, all-too-human motives seem to be at work with Mother Angelica - along with genuine inspiration and even divine intervention.
In the mixture of shadows and light in Mother’s ministry, I found myself with profound questions, concerning the working of Grace and Providence, through limited human beings and even through sometimes narrow human agendas.
Yet whatever human failings may be at work in the story of EWTN, I find it hard not to conclude that the Angels profoundly recognised Mother Angelica’s tenacity, sincerity and total commitment to her sense of God’s calling.
And also hard not to feel that the spiritual world met her dedication, with a *parallel* response.
And the result of this lifelong story of faith, total commitment, apparent miracles and providence?
The result certainly appears to be exactly what Father Neuhaus has intimated, a profound contribution to John Paul the Great’s campaign to save the Church from the worst, most reductionist excesses of Vatican II.
This book I suspect will mainly be read by the legions of Mother’s adoring fans.
But I wish I could convince some of my more liberally minded friends to *honestly* confront Mother’s story and *honestly* ask themselves: What is ***GOING ON*** behind the appearance of continuous, sustained providence and continuous miracles, that are clearly in evidence here, leading to such dramatic and improbable, yes, ***completely improbable*** success?
Whatever human agendas may be inevitably present here, this book is *also* a testament to Mystery and Miracles, and to a woman very evidently filled with faith, courage, sincerity and tenacity.
For that, and many other reasons besides, it both greatly deserves and rewards careful attention.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Intermission of Fragments VIII - Book Review: The Splendor of Faith
Some of you friends, know that in addition to this weblog, I also have a number of book reviews, lists and other writings at Amazon.com (Accessible here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A31FLL3YFP8TZL/102-4140495-6733765 for anyone who might be interested).
Now, back in Ireland, I also wrote a number of reviews, that never quite made it to Amazon. Here is one, slightly rejigged for this weblog:
An American friend of mine once remarked to me that most folks impression of John Paul II amounts to little more than ‘pro-life, anti-communist’.
Now if one counts oneself as a traditional Catholic, as I myself do, the above perception indicates nothing less than tragedy on an enormous scale.
Heartbreaking tragedy, I feel, as I consider all the implications involved in millions of people believing in John Paul as representing little else, than being against abortion and communism ...
I will use even stronger language. For me, it indicates not only tragedy, but the presence of supernatural evil – evil that works through disinformation and prejudice and ever seeks to OBSCURE ... evil that saturates our media and culture and would obscure the profound sense that we have just lived through one of the greatest, most overarching and far-reaching papacies of the past two thousand years.
One that can hardly be reduced to ‘pro-life, anti-communist’, but which over twenty- six years addressed and rejuvenated countless dimensions of the Catholic faith.
What is desperately needed then, is literature that testifies to the sweeping scope and enormity of John Paul’s mission.
To this task, Avery Dulles’ book makes a most admirable contribution. Clearly it focuses on John Paul’s thinking and teaching, rather than his vast legacy of decisive, pragmatic ACTION that has had such enormous geopolitical impact – including though not at all limited to, the Gandhi-like pacifist movement begun in 1950´s Poland by the future pope - then a simple priest - which would so alter the world.
(For as Gorbachev said, ´Without the Pope from Poland, the mighty changes in Eastern Europe would have been inconceivable.´ But for that story, one will need books like Weigel’s Catholic hagiography ‘Witness to Hope’ or Kwitney’s non-Catholic, non-hagiography ‘Man of the Century’, which reveals John Paul as a very ***human*** being, with both very human shadows and human greatness ...
But here in Dulles’ book, what we get is not a focus on John Paul’s vast legacy of direct action and initiative, but on his equally vast legacy of ideas.
As Dulles makes clear in highly accessible layperson’s language, the scope of what John Paul addressed was truly staggering.
Truly staggering then – once one gets beyond the media stereotypes - is not only John Paul’s profound and personalist meditation on the Christian Mystery, but also its implications for our contemporary culture in countless regards – from economics to human rights, from ecumenism to the world religions, from war and non-violence, to secularism and epistemology, from gender and the ‘Theology of the Body’ ... to how much else besides? The list goes on ...
(How many people, for example, would credit the man who became John Paul II, with radically arguing for the importance of the female orgasm in ***1950’s Poland***?!).
And running like a golden thread of love through all of his profound thought, there is the dignity, the dignity of the human being, human freedom, human rights and EMBODIED human existence ... the new dignity conferred to all of these through the Mystery of Christ.
There is so much more one can say about John Paul’s epic achievement. But this is a book review and not a book. I will simply leave the reader with a small sampling of the rich panorama, which Dulles’ book details in depth.
In the interest of integrity, I will also note that my very small selection is not without bias on my part.
I am, as I have said, deeply concerned with the inherent tragedy and evil I see in smearing John Paul’s legacy with an ultraconservative, reductionist caricature as ‘pro-life, anti-communist’.
The world deserves the truth and my own selection here is purposely made to balance the one-sided portrayal of the media. That said, here is a sampling of Dulles’ exegesis of John Paul´s thinking (clearly written during the late pontiff’s lifetime).
On matters of social order and economics, Dulles explores not only John Paul’s stringent critique of communism, but also of ‘capitalist neo-liberalism’ which as [John Paul] puts it ‘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’.
In explicating John Paul´s social thinking, Dulles himself is worth quoting at length:
’John Paul describes the devastating effects of consumerism in many of his encyclicals ... In the consumerist culture, he says, the market is flooded with luxury goods that are acquired for purposes of amusement or as status symbols.
The rich are surfeited by a superabundance of possessions and ***enslaved*** by the tasks of managing and protecting their wealth. Meanwhile the poor are left in dire misery ...
In accordance with his personalist humanism, John Paul II insists on the priority of labor over capital...
Labor, while it should ideally redound to the benefit of the laborer as individual, has larger purposes.
It is intended also to benefit the family, the nation, and the universal human community.
Opposing the unbridled thirst for profits and power, John Paul II calls for a theology of development that takes account of the whole human person and every person.
Authentic development, he maintains, must respect the cultural, transcendent and religious dimensions of human life.
In light of these broadly humanistic goals, it is possible to correct some of the errors of what the pope calls "ECONOMISM" - a view that elevates enterprises only in terms of productivity and profits [Emphasis mine].’
To turn to another set of issues, there is John Paul´s rejection of authoritarianism in the Church. In this context, Dulles cites the entire legacy of John Paul´s work, including his contribution to Vatican II, made while he was still a bishop from Poland.
The book makes clear then, the future John Paul’s role in Vatican II’s thinking on religious freedom and how that has continued to be expressed in his teaching, quoting him as saying: ‘Religious freedom, an essential requirement of the dignity of every person, is a cornerstone of the structure of human rights …
The Church addresses people with full respect for their freedom. Her mission does not restrict freedom, but rather promotes it. THE CHURCH PROPOSES; SHE IMPOSES NOTHING [Emphasis in original]’.
(Now given the Church’s often-tragic history with human rights, many, of course, will find such a statement all too ironic. I would suggest rather that they take it as evidence of John Paul’s sincere, sustained-over-decades determination to place the post-Vatican II Church firmly on the course of freedom.
Controversies notwithstanding, Dulles´ book can serve to clarify John Paul’s huge role in consolidating that course of freedom.
Had the late Pope been simply the ultraconservative caricature, so often presented by the media, the Vatican II trajectory of freedom would have been negated … rather reinforced.
But as Dulles makes clear to the unprejudiced reader, John Paul´s papacy worked to extend Vatican II´s commitment to human rights and freedom, again certain controversies not withstanding.)
Clearly related to the issue of religious freedom, is the matter of the salvific value of other religions. For it must be admitted that for many centuries, the Catholic Church can be seen as intimidating non-Catholics with fear of hellfire ...
But a radical new thrust has been born in Catholicism, and Dulles documents how much, how very much, the Pope from Poland has had to do with this.
This revolutionary thrust emerged clearly at the Second Vatican Council, where major positive statements about other religions, were made for the first time.
As Dulles makes clear, John Paul continually re-emphasised the new approach of Vatican II in innumerable ways.
At this point, I find myself disagreeing with Dulles somewhat, when he writes that in his treatment of other religions, ’John Paul II ... makes no doctrinal moves that clearly go beyond the council, but he does give an interpretation of the council that, at least in emphasis, is original.’
In other words, John Paul cannot be said to have definitively gone beyond the council - except in his emphasis, his emphatic call that is, to value other religions.
But my own feeling is that John Paul´s teaching on the other religions is definitely more radical than anything offered by Vatican II.
For example, previously in this weblog (on 14 November 2005) I have quoted John Paul to the effect that:
’Normally, it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience, that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognise or acknowledge him as their saviour.’
And as I also wrote before:
’Now here John Paul defends the Glory at the heart of the Church – the Glory that transformed the cosmos on Calvary, since which time, that Glory has become the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
At the same time, the head of 60% of global Christianity, decisively sheds the usual interpretation of Extra Ecclesiam Nullus Sallus (‘Outside the Church, there is no salvation’) by arguing that the **normal** way for non-Christians is through their own religion. And in my view, this is more decisive than anything said by Vatican II.’
In regards to the matter of salvation, Dulles also draws attention to the controversy surrounding what may yet amount to one of the most radical, groundbreaking positions ever held by any Pope, ever.
For although it is not at all clear, there is evidence, that late in his life John Paul may have joined with Origen, John Henry Newman and Hans Urs von Balthasar in questioning eternal hell …
That is, though it is not clear-cut, John Paul may have said: “Eternal damnation remains a real possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of WHETHER or which human beings are effectively involved in it(Emphasis mine).’
Yes, if John Paul did write these words, it would consolidate the view that may increasingly emerge of John Paul II in future years … a faithful traditionalist, faithful in this case, to the traditional Christian teaching of Hell, yet unwilling to condemn anyone to perdition or even to admit that human beings must necessarily be involved with it.
Coming from a modern secular perspective, this last quote may seem of small moment. Yet coming from a Pope dedicated to tradition, especially a Pope as beloved as John Paul, it could yet prove a momentous and evolutionary point in Catholic teaching …
Finally in speaking of John Paul and universalism, we should not ignore his transcendent Christology, which Dulles details admirably saying:
‘John Paul II takes every opportunity to quote Vatican II to the effect that Christ by his incarnation united himself … with ***every*** human being and in so doing elevated human nature to an incomparable dignity [and] points out ‘the incarnation of God the Son signifies the taking up into unity with God, not only human nature but in this human nature … the ***whole*** of humanity … The incarnation then, has also a cosmic significance [Emphasis mine]’.
Oh, John Paul. My review here is written partly to honour this worthy tome of your Cardinal, Avery Dulles.
He has written an invaluable, clear, accessible and necessary, most necessary book, that I profitably return to again and again.
But I confess that I also write this review to make a contribution to the veneration of your memory.
A world increasingly enthralled in ever more brutal social conditions, needs the unshuttered memory of your passionate, comprehensive and overarching vision of all that humanity ... humanity forever and irrevocably infused by the Christ ... can be and needs to be, if we are not to sink further into the abyss ...
Yes, if we are not to sink further into the social abyss generated by brutal, cold materialism, we need books like that of Dulles, which can open one´s eyes - and above all, one´s HEART - to all you tried to do, our dear and venerated John Paul the Great ...
And to how our Church and World have forever been enriched beyond measure ...
Now, back in Ireland, I also wrote a number of reviews, that never quite made it to Amazon. Here is one, slightly rejigged for this weblog:
An American friend of mine once remarked to me that most folks impression of John Paul II amounts to little more than ‘pro-life, anti-communist’.
Now if one counts oneself as a traditional Catholic, as I myself do, the above perception indicates nothing less than tragedy on an enormous scale.
Heartbreaking tragedy, I feel, as I consider all the implications involved in millions of people believing in John Paul as representing little else, than being against abortion and communism ...
I will use even stronger language. For me, it indicates not only tragedy, but the presence of supernatural evil – evil that works through disinformation and prejudice and ever seeks to OBSCURE ... evil that saturates our media and culture and would obscure the profound sense that we have just lived through one of the greatest, most overarching and far-reaching papacies of the past two thousand years.
One that can hardly be reduced to ‘pro-life, anti-communist’, but which over twenty- six years addressed and rejuvenated countless dimensions of the Catholic faith.
What is desperately needed then, is literature that testifies to the sweeping scope and enormity of John Paul’s mission.
To this task, Avery Dulles’ book makes a most admirable contribution. Clearly it focuses on John Paul’s thinking and teaching, rather than his vast legacy of decisive, pragmatic ACTION that has had such enormous geopolitical impact – including though not at all limited to, the Gandhi-like pacifist movement begun in 1950´s Poland by the future pope - then a simple priest - which would so alter the world.
(For as Gorbachev said, ´Without the Pope from Poland, the mighty changes in Eastern Europe would have been inconceivable.´ But for that story, one will need books like Weigel’s Catholic hagiography ‘Witness to Hope’ or Kwitney’s non-Catholic, non-hagiography ‘Man of the Century’, which reveals John Paul as a very ***human*** being, with both very human shadows and human greatness ...
But here in Dulles’ book, what we get is not a focus on John Paul’s vast legacy of direct action and initiative, but on his equally vast legacy of ideas.
As Dulles makes clear in highly accessible layperson’s language, the scope of what John Paul addressed was truly staggering.
Truly staggering then – once one gets beyond the media stereotypes - is not only John Paul’s profound and personalist meditation on the Christian Mystery, but also its implications for our contemporary culture in countless regards – from economics to human rights, from ecumenism to the world religions, from war and non-violence, to secularism and epistemology, from gender and the ‘Theology of the Body’ ... to how much else besides? The list goes on ...
(How many people, for example, would credit the man who became John Paul II, with radically arguing for the importance of the female orgasm in ***1950’s Poland***?!).
And running like a golden thread of love through all of his profound thought, there is the dignity, the dignity of the human being, human freedom, human rights and EMBODIED human existence ... the new dignity conferred to all of these through the Mystery of Christ.
There is so much more one can say about John Paul’s epic achievement. But this is a book review and not a book. I will simply leave the reader with a small sampling of the rich panorama, which Dulles’ book details in depth.
In the interest of integrity, I will also note that my very small selection is not without bias on my part.
I am, as I have said, deeply concerned with the inherent tragedy and evil I see in smearing John Paul’s legacy with an ultraconservative, reductionist caricature as ‘pro-life, anti-communist’.
The world deserves the truth and my own selection here is purposely made to balance the one-sided portrayal of the media. That said, here is a sampling of Dulles’ exegesis of John Paul´s thinking (clearly written during the late pontiff’s lifetime).
On matters of social order and economics, Dulles explores not only John Paul’s stringent critique of communism, but also of ‘capitalist neo-liberalism’ which as [John Paul] puts it ‘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’.
In explicating John Paul´s social thinking, Dulles himself is worth quoting at length:
’John Paul describes the devastating effects of consumerism in many of his encyclicals ... In the consumerist culture, he says, the market is flooded with luxury goods that are acquired for purposes of amusement or as status symbols.
The rich are surfeited by a superabundance of possessions and ***enslaved*** by the tasks of managing and protecting their wealth. Meanwhile the poor are left in dire misery ...
In accordance with his personalist humanism, John Paul II insists on the priority of labor over capital...
Labor, while it should ideally redound to the benefit of the laborer as individual, has larger purposes.
It is intended also to benefit the family, the nation, and the universal human community.
Opposing the unbridled thirst for profits and power, John Paul II calls for a theology of development that takes account of the whole human person and every person.
Authentic development, he maintains, must respect the cultural, transcendent and religious dimensions of human life.
In light of these broadly humanistic goals, it is possible to correct some of the errors of what the pope calls "ECONOMISM" - a view that elevates enterprises only in terms of productivity and profits [Emphasis mine].’
To turn to another set of issues, there is John Paul´s rejection of authoritarianism in the Church. In this context, Dulles cites the entire legacy of John Paul´s work, including his contribution to Vatican II, made while he was still a bishop from Poland.
The book makes clear then, the future John Paul’s role in Vatican II’s thinking on religious freedom and how that has continued to be expressed in his teaching, quoting him as saying: ‘Religious freedom, an essential requirement of the dignity of every person, is a cornerstone of the structure of human rights …
The Church addresses people with full respect for their freedom. Her mission does not restrict freedom, but rather promotes it. THE CHURCH PROPOSES; SHE IMPOSES NOTHING [Emphasis in original]’.
(Now given the Church’s often-tragic history with human rights, many, of course, will find such a statement all too ironic. I would suggest rather that they take it as evidence of John Paul’s sincere, sustained-over-decades determination to place the post-Vatican II Church firmly on the course of freedom.
Controversies notwithstanding, Dulles´ book can serve to clarify John Paul’s huge role in consolidating that course of freedom.
Had the late Pope been simply the ultraconservative caricature, so often presented by the media, the Vatican II trajectory of freedom would have been negated … rather reinforced.
But as Dulles makes clear to the unprejudiced reader, John Paul´s papacy worked to extend Vatican II´s commitment to human rights and freedom, again certain controversies not withstanding.)
Clearly related to the issue of religious freedom, is the matter of the salvific value of other religions. For it must be admitted that for many centuries, the Catholic Church can be seen as intimidating non-Catholics with fear of hellfire ...
But a radical new thrust has been born in Catholicism, and Dulles documents how much, how very much, the Pope from Poland has had to do with this.
This revolutionary thrust emerged clearly at the Second Vatican Council, where major positive statements about other religions, were made for the first time.
As Dulles makes clear, John Paul continually re-emphasised the new approach of Vatican II in innumerable ways.
At this point, I find myself disagreeing with Dulles somewhat, when he writes that in his treatment of other religions, ’John Paul II ... makes no doctrinal moves that clearly go beyond the council, but he does give an interpretation of the council that, at least in emphasis, is original.’
In other words, John Paul cannot be said to have definitively gone beyond the council - except in his emphasis, his emphatic call that is, to value other religions.
But my own feeling is that John Paul´s teaching on the other religions is definitely more radical than anything offered by Vatican II.
For example, previously in this weblog (on 14 November 2005) I have quoted John Paul to the effect that:
’Normally, it will be in the sincere practice of what is good in their own religious traditions and by following the dictates of their own conscience, that the members of other religions respond positively to God’s invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even while they do not recognise or acknowledge him as their saviour.’
And as I also wrote before:
’Now here John Paul defends the Glory at the heart of the Church – the Glory that transformed the cosmos on Calvary, since which time, that Glory has become the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
At the same time, the head of 60% of global Christianity, decisively sheds the usual interpretation of Extra Ecclesiam Nullus Sallus (‘Outside the Church, there is no salvation’) by arguing that the **normal** way for non-Christians is through their own religion. And in my view, this is more decisive than anything said by Vatican II.’
In regards to the matter of salvation, Dulles also draws attention to the controversy surrounding what may yet amount to one of the most radical, groundbreaking positions ever held by any Pope, ever.
For although it is not at all clear, there is evidence, that late in his life John Paul may have joined with Origen, John Henry Newman and Hans Urs von Balthasar in questioning eternal hell …
That is, though it is not clear-cut, John Paul may have said: “Eternal damnation remains a real possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of WHETHER or which human beings are effectively involved in it(Emphasis mine).’
Yes, if John Paul did write these words, it would consolidate the view that may increasingly emerge of John Paul II in future years … a faithful traditionalist, faithful in this case, to the traditional Christian teaching of Hell, yet unwilling to condemn anyone to perdition or even to admit that human beings must necessarily be involved with it.
Coming from a modern secular perspective, this last quote may seem of small moment. Yet coming from a Pope dedicated to tradition, especially a Pope as beloved as John Paul, it could yet prove a momentous and evolutionary point in Catholic teaching …
Finally in speaking of John Paul and universalism, we should not ignore his transcendent Christology, which Dulles details admirably saying:
‘John Paul II takes every opportunity to quote Vatican II to the effect that Christ by his incarnation united himself … with ***every*** human being and in so doing elevated human nature to an incomparable dignity [and] points out ‘the incarnation of God the Son signifies the taking up into unity with God, not only human nature but in this human nature … the ***whole*** of humanity … The incarnation then, has also a cosmic significance [Emphasis mine]’.
Oh, John Paul. My review here is written partly to honour this worthy tome of your Cardinal, Avery Dulles.
He has written an invaluable, clear, accessible and necessary, most necessary book, that I profitably return to again and again.
But I confess that I also write this review to make a contribution to the veneration of your memory.
A world increasingly enthralled in ever more brutal social conditions, needs the unshuttered memory of your passionate, comprehensive and overarching vision of all that humanity ... humanity forever and irrevocably infused by the Christ ... can be and needs to be, if we are not to sink further into the abyss ...
Yes, if we are not to sink further into the social abyss generated by brutal, cold materialism, we need books like that of Dulles, which can open one´s eyes - and above all, one´s HEART - to all you tried to do, our dear and venerated John Paul the Great ...
And to how our Church and World have forever been enriched beyond measure ...
Friday, July 21, 2006
Intermission of Fragments VII - The Strange Joy of Catholicism
As I´ve said, at the moment I do not have the time I would ideally like to devote to this project.
And thus, this weblog is mainly being ´run on¨ a few previously written fragments. Here is another one, more fragmentary and crude and rough than most ...
Years ago, I attended a lecture by an impressive man, who would later become the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Now although I cannot recall the exact words spoken by this truly impressive speaker, I believe the following to be a faithful representation of something that he said:
“I’m reasonably happy being an Anglican, well ... as reasonably happy as any Anglican can be.”
For me, it was an incredibly striking and telling comment, which has reverberated in my soul ever since.
Reverberated, because of the contrast it made with something I might call: ‘The Strange Joy of Catholicism.’
For it seems to me, that not only have I experienced a profound joy in Catholicity, but that in all I have read, there is recurrent testimony to other Catholics experiencing this strange joy.
For the record, I also imagine something analogous exists in Eastern Orthodoxy. Though I am not well versed enough in Orthodoxy to say.
Now this joy paradoxically seems to exist even when there is great anger and bitterness towards the Catholic Church.
For it seems to me that no matter they may be, Catholics frequently display tremendous attachment to their faith.
It is ***mysteriously important*** to them, no matter if they feel disillusioned with the Church or not.
Thus disillusioned Catholics are frequently asked ‘Why don’t you simply leave the Church?’
Indeed, I find myself mentally putting this question to certain radical Catholics.
For instance, the Catholic theologian Fiorenza proclaims “Ordination is subordination” and advocates doing away with one of the central pillars of traditional Christianity (Orthodox and Catholic) that is, the notion of the ordained hierarchy,
I find myself wanting to ask: ‘Doctor Fiorenza, if you have a vision of the Catholic Church so alternative, so alien to the essential tradition, instead of trying to destroy the essence of the traditional Church, why do you not simply become a Protestant? Join a Christian Church, free of suppressed, subordinated priests?"
But I know or sense already, that even in the angriest Catholics, there is so often this deep aversion to leaving the Church.
It seems there is something holding them there.
We could think of it as a bonding glue. And I suspect that this same glue is the reason why the Catholic Church, along with the Orthodox, have known so comparatively few schisms through the centuries.
By contrast, the Protestant Churches do not seem to me, to have the same glue of attraction.
Hard data I lack. But I think it a fair wager that people move from one Protestant Church to another, far more easily and often, than Catholics or Orthodox move away from their faith.
And I think it can also be wagered that it is this same cohesive force that has kept the Catholic Church comparatively free from schism.
Thus it seems to me that the real answer that people rebel against or seek to reform the Catholic Church, rather than simply leave, is that Catholicism possesses an incredible attraction at its core - however much it may also anger or alienate.
And I suspect this attraction is rooted in a strange, strange joy.
This strange joy that I have felt so deeply since entering the Catholic Church.
And of which I have since heard so much repeated, confirming testimony to among so many other Catholics ...
To all of this I feel more attention should be drawn - because I also suspect that at the root of this strange joy, is the POWER of the Sacraments ...
End of rough, crude fragment ...
I look forward to spending more time at this weblog with you friends, known and unknown, when I can.
And thus, this weblog is mainly being ´run on¨ a few previously written fragments. Here is another one, more fragmentary and crude and rough than most ...
Years ago, I attended a lecture by an impressive man, who would later become the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Now although I cannot recall the exact words spoken by this truly impressive speaker, I believe the following to be a faithful representation of something that he said:
“I’m reasonably happy being an Anglican, well ... as reasonably happy as any Anglican can be.”
For me, it was an incredibly striking and telling comment, which has reverberated in my soul ever since.
Reverberated, because of the contrast it made with something I might call: ‘The Strange Joy of Catholicism.’
For it seems to me, that not only have I experienced a profound joy in Catholicity, but that in all I have read, there is recurrent testimony to other Catholics experiencing this strange joy.
For the record, I also imagine something analogous exists in Eastern Orthodoxy. Though I am not well versed enough in Orthodoxy to say.
Now this joy paradoxically seems to exist even when there is great anger and bitterness towards the Catholic Church.
For it seems to me that no matter they may be, Catholics frequently display tremendous attachment to their faith.
It is ***mysteriously important*** to them, no matter if they feel disillusioned with the Church or not.
Thus disillusioned Catholics are frequently asked ‘Why don’t you simply leave the Church?’
Indeed, I find myself mentally putting this question to certain radical Catholics.
For instance, the Catholic theologian Fiorenza proclaims “Ordination is subordination” and advocates doing away with one of the central pillars of traditional Christianity (Orthodox and Catholic) that is, the notion of the ordained hierarchy,
I find myself wanting to ask: ‘Doctor Fiorenza, if you have a vision of the Catholic Church so alternative, so alien to the essential tradition, instead of trying to destroy the essence of the traditional Church, why do you not simply become a Protestant? Join a Christian Church, free of suppressed, subordinated priests?"
But I know or sense already, that even in the angriest Catholics, there is so often this deep aversion to leaving the Church.
It seems there is something holding them there.
We could think of it as a bonding glue. And I suspect that this same glue is the reason why the Catholic Church, along with the Orthodox, have known so comparatively few schisms through the centuries.
By contrast, the Protestant Churches do not seem to me, to have the same glue of attraction.
Hard data I lack. But I think it a fair wager that people move from one Protestant Church to another, far more easily and often, than Catholics or Orthodox move away from their faith.
And I think it can also be wagered that it is this same cohesive force that has kept the Catholic Church comparatively free from schism.
Thus it seems to me that the real answer that people rebel against or seek to reform the Catholic Church, rather than simply leave, is that Catholicism possesses an incredible attraction at its core - however much it may also anger or alienate.
And I suspect this attraction is rooted in a strange, strange joy.
This strange joy that I have felt so deeply since entering the Catholic Church.
And of which I have since heard so much repeated, confirming testimony to among so many other Catholics ...
To all of this I feel more attention should be drawn - because I also suspect that at the root of this strange joy, is the POWER of the Sacraments ...
End of rough, crude fragment ...
I look forward to spending more time at this weblog with you friends, known and unknown, when I can.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Intermission of Fragments VI - Book Review: The Portal of the Mystery of Hope.
I regret that my promised piece on the Eucharist is still not ready.
In the meantime, a book review of sorts is offered here. Though it is a very different sort of review.
Hardly more than 24 hours ago, as I write these words, I started to read The Portal of the Mystery of Hope.
Started to read, knowing almost nothing about the book or its author, the French Catholic poet Charles Péguy.
Now having finished it, a day later, I am reeling …
What can I say? This is perhaps a book that should not be ´reviewed´ at all, till one has read it ten or even twenty times …
One senses that much, so very much resides within …
The work of years, perhaps to excavate and that one cannot competently comment on, until much more is fathomed.
But still my heart wants to record my first impressions …
My heart wants to proclaim, however inadequate my proclamation …
What do I say of your work, Charles Péguy? A work of profound, profound, profound and noble heart. A work by a man I know almost nothing about, save that he was evidently so very, very human …
A work covering so many varied themes … from the glories of nature to the wisdom of children to the esoteric healing Power of the Night.
Of the Mystery of Mary, Mother of God … Of the Mystery of France, ´the eldest daughter of the Church´ … Of the tenderness of family - wife and husband, parent and child, or of the JOY of being truly NATURAL and CREATURELY …
All of this and much, much more is expressed in the form of long monologue, by which a Franciscan Nun is teaching the young Joan of Arc.
But as meaningful as all these things undoubtedly are, in invoking them, I only scratch the surface of this authentic masterpiece.
How to go deeper, than these surfaces, albeit pregnant surfaces …?
What is underneath them all? What is underneath them all, that stirred me like no book has stirred me for years? That brought wetness to my eyes …?
A stab. I can only take a little stab at it.
Human-ness, profound tender, tender human-ness.
Human, creaturely naturalness. The wonder of the flesh that the angels will never know …
But not only human-ness, but knowing that this humanness is the very humanness of Christ … who learned to FEEL what neither God nor angel had ever felt before.
All these disembodied spiritualities that I have touched on in this weblog … A Course in Miracles … The Power of Now … Alice Bailey ...
Here we have the majestic message that Christ came to bring us something so very, very different to ´spirituality without a body´ (as Richard Moss has called the Course in Miracles).
(Yes, I know that not all these spiritualities so *explicitly* negate the body, as does the Course in Miracles. I know that some indeed pay a certain sort of attention to the body. But to read you, Charles Péguy, is – well, for me, at any rate - to realize how - by comparison - how disembodied, how detached from nature, they truly are. You are so NATURAL, Monsieur Péguy, in the most joyous, wholesome sense of that word).
The Franciscan Nun tells young Joan …
"What those that are carnal lack, as we know, is being pure.
But what we ought to know is that those that are pure lack being carnal.
...
The angels are certainly pure, but they aren´t the least bit carnal.
They have no idea what it is to have a body, TO BE a body.
They have no idea what it is to be a poor creauture.
A carnal creature.
A body kneaded from the clay of the earth.
The carnal earth.
They don´t understand this mysterious bond, this created bond,
Infinitely mysterious,
Between the soul and the body.
...
This my child is what the angels do not understand.
I mean to say, that this is what they haven´t experienced.
What it is to have this body; to have this bond with this body; to be this body,
To have this bond with the earth, with this earth, to be this earth, clay and dust, ash and the mud of the earth,
THE VERY BODY OF JESUS.
...
Jesus Christ did not come to tell us tales.
You see he didn´t make this voyage of coming to the earth,
A great voyage between you and me
(And he was so comfortable where he was.)
(Before coming.
He didn´t have all our worries.)
He didn´t make this voyage of descending to the earth
To come recount anecdotes for us.
...
His incarnation, which is really his assumption of the flesh.
[that is, I believe Péguy is saying, the entire physical world]
His taking on of flesh and of the carnal, his taking on of man and his being placed on the cross and his being placed in the tomb,
His in-carnal-ation and his agony.
...
Because Jesus Christ has become our carnal brother
...
It is to us the weak, that he was given.
He depends on us, weak and carnal,
To bring to life and to nourish and to keep alive in time
...
To keep alive the words of life,
To nourish with our blood, with our flesh, with our heart
The words which without us would collapse fleshless.
To grant (it´s incredible)to grant to the eternal words,
In addition like a second eternity,
A temporal and carnal eternity, an eternity of flesh and of blood
...
A worldly eternity.
...
[Jesus Christ who invented] a new justice. A justice of love. A justice of Hope."
Yes, the Christian Mystery is at the core of all the Nun is teaching Joan.
And does one not find echoes here at least, of what esoteric Christianity has said of the responsibility of the Tenth Hierarchy - Humanity, and of Christ as the New Lord of Karma ... ?
For my part, it is far more than echoes. Far, far more.
Here I am feeling a towering understanding of the Christian Mystery, that towers above the writings of vast numbers of Anthroposophists, Rosicrucians, and other Christian Hermeticists.
The Mystery of the Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, as Valentin Tomberg might have said.
Or the Descent of Buddhi into Manas, as Rudolf Steiner might have said.
Leading to a goal which is not a disembodied eternity, leading to a goal which constitutes no Luciferic short-cut ... but again to:
"a second eternity,
A temporal and carnal eternity, an eternity of flesh and of blood
...
A worldly eternity."
The Conjunction of Opposites!
A Second Kind of Eternity!
Wherein Eternity Marries Nature. (Nature becomes Supernatural, as in the administering of Holy Communion).
Yes, again, the Christian Mystery is at the core of all the Nun is teaching Joan.
But how Péguy delineates not only the core, but so many outer facets to the core, so many expressions of Humanity and Nature, Being Redeemed ...
To take but one single further example, how this nun comprehends the poignancy of human fatherhood:
“Children are never the ones who do the work.
But no one ever works except for children.
It´s never the child who goes to the field, who tills and who sows, and who reaps and who harvests the grapes and who trims the vine and who fells the trees and who cuts the wood.
For winter.
To warm the house in winter.
But would the father have the heart to work if he didn´t have his children?
And in the winter when he works hard in the forest?
With his billhook and his saw and with his felling axe and with his hand axe.
In the icy forest.
In winter when the snakes sleep in the woods because they´re frozen.
And when a bitter North wind blows.
That cuts to his bones.
That passes through each of his limbs.
And he´s completely numb and his teeth are chattering.
And the frost makes icicles in his beard.
All of a sudden he thinks about his wife who stayed at home.
About his wife who is such a good homemaker.
Whose husband he is before God.
And about his children who are peaceful and safe at home
...
They pass before his eyes, in a flash before his mind´s eye, before his soul´s eye.
They live in his memory and in his heart and in his soul and in his soul´s eye.
They live in his gaze.
In a flash he sees his three children playing and laughing in front of the fire.
His three children, two boys and a girl.
Whose father he is before God
...
It´s right that the father die before the children.
He thinks about them, by God´s grace, and immediately the blood rushes to his heart.
And warms him so
...
The bitter north wind in the forest.
Has just now frozen two big tears that fell stupidly upon his cheeks.
In the sunken furrows of his cheeks, and were just swallowed by his bushy beard.
Like two icicles.
There he is laughing and ashamed.
Laughing to himself and ashamed both inwardly and outwardly
And even laughing out loud.
Because it is sweet and it is shameful to cry.
For a man.
So the poor man tries to be discreet.
Pretends that he wasn´t just crying.
People always try to be discreet.”
And that again, was to sample, but a single example of Péguy´s paean to NATURE … including human nature and the natural beauty of things.
Nature in the process of Being Redeemed, of course, and being made whole once more ... Wholesome ...
So many more facets of the Mystery of Christ could still be cited here from The Portal of the Mystery of Hope.
I have chosen Péguy´s paean to fatherhood, again, as but a single instance of the poet´s pierced embrace of Human-ness.
Humanness on course to Christed Wholesomeness ...
True Wholesomeness. Not stuffy pretence of piousness, but the real thing. That real sacred-human quality that enters into us at Holy Communion, for example.
O, spiritual seekers outside religion, how once I understood your concerns!
I understood you Anthroposophists, who felt the Church was bankrupt in revealing the Mystery of Christ.
But here in the twentieth century, is a loyal son of the Church who fathoms the Mystery of Christ and who knows that Christ is Lord of a New Justice ...
No longer do I share your despair in the Church.
O New Age Friends, so taken with spiritualities that fly into the timeless realm; ´in tune with the infinite´; an eternity, that is not ´a worldly eternity´, not a Conjunction of Opposites ... a Conjunction of Opposites that negates neither eternity nor carnal, temporal nature ...
How often you New Age Friends have seemed to me to hold the assumption – conscious or not – that anything really valuable can be found within the Holistic Sphere.
In a really good Holistic bookshop, Watkins in London perhaps, or the Bodhi Tree in California … That there really is not much of spirituality outside this Sphere, which is of real worth…
But I doubt that few if any Holistic shops, have ever stocked The Portal of the Mystery of Hope.
(I might add that I held such assumptions myself, unconsciously for nearly 20 years. The Pope? Catholic Theology? What have they to tell me of anything truly spiritual?)
(Good Lord! What arrogance! I who knew nothing at all about the Catholic Mystery!)
Today I have come to see such vast and great treasures, beyond the Holistic Sphere, never even guessed by so, so many within it.
Sometimes however, these treasures are not so accessible to folk who prefer popular faire.
Thus at times, I hesitate to recommend to friends great modern Christian writings – whether those of Wotyla, Ratzinger, or the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot – because their scholarly style is more demanding than most of the New Age books.
Indeed, I have felt a need for literature that is profoundly revelatory of the Christic Mystery, but which is more accessible, without losing profundity.
Charles Péguy – you are the answer to a prayer. Your book strikes me as truly quite accessible.
How I would like to see your half-forgotten French masterpiece resurrected in the consciousness of the English speaking world.
How I would like to see your book amongst the so-called holistic shelves … but rather than holistic, I fear these very shelves are more SELECTIVE than is commonly appreciated.
O Charles Péguy, I wonder what I might have thought of you twenty years ago, had I discovered you, perhaps on a bookshelf at Findhorn or by word of mouth along the New Age grapevine …
But of course, all that is but to dream.
Because from all my years in New Age circles, I cannot recall one as tender as natural and human as you, who realized the Way of Christ was to lead us evermore into such tender, natural creaturehood … into finite, tender flesh …
O Charles Péguy! All this is but a portion of what you have evoked in me these last hours.
I realize I hardly do you justice at all. For example, I have said nothing at all of what you say of the little girl HOPE, so surprising to God, or the terrible, terrible freedom, awesome freedom and responsibility God has given us …
But if I serve to encourage any who read this weblog to hunt down the English translation of your masterpiece, I will be more than happy …
O Charles Péguy! Who were you? What were you? Noble soul, most noble heart who understood the heart of Christ and Christianity and who communicated them with such unfathomable and tender eloquence of HEART …
Who are you? I must find out.
In the meantime, a book review of sorts is offered here. Though it is a very different sort of review.
Hardly more than 24 hours ago, as I write these words, I started to read The Portal of the Mystery of Hope.
Started to read, knowing almost nothing about the book or its author, the French Catholic poet Charles Péguy.
Now having finished it, a day later, I am reeling …
What can I say? This is perhaps a book that should not be ´reviewed´ at all, till one has read it ten or even twenty times …
One senses that much, so very much resides within …
The work of years, perhaps to excavate and that one cannot competently comment on, until much more is fathomed.
But still my heart wants to record my first impressions …
My heart wants to proclaim, however inadequate my proclamation …
What do I say of your work, Charles Péguy? A work of profound, profound, profound and noble heart. A work by a man I know almost nothing about, save that he was evidently so very, very human …
A work covering so many varied themes … from the glories of nature to the wisdom of children to the esoteric healing Power of the Night.
Of the Mystery of Mary, Mother of God … Of the Mystery of France, ´the eldest daughter of the Church´ … Of the tenderness of family - wife and husband, parent and child, or of the JOY of being truly NATURAL and CREATURELY …
All of this and much, much more is expressed in the form of long monologue, by which a Franciscan Nun is teaching the young Joan of Arc.
But as meaningful as all these things undoubtedly are, in invoking them, I only scratch the surface of this authentic masterpiece.
How to go deeper, than these surfaces, albeit pregnant surfaces …?
What is underneath them all? What is underneath them all, that stirred me like no book has stirred me for years? That brought wetness to my eyes …?
A stab. I can only take a little stab at it.
Human-ness, profound tender, tender human-ness.
Human, creaturely naturalness. The wonder of the flesh that the angels will never know …
But not only human-ness, but knowing that this humanness is the very humanness of Christ … who learned to FEEL what neither God nor angel had ever felt before.
All these disembodied spiritualities that I have touched on in this weblog … A Course in Miracles … The Power of Now … Alice Bailey ...
Here we have the majestic message that Christ came to bring us something so very, very different to ´spirituality without a body´ (as Richard Moss has called the Course in Miracles).
(Yes, I know that not all these spiritualities so *explicitly* negate the body, as does the Course in Miracles. I know that some indeed pay a certain sort of attention to the body. But to read you, Charles Péguy, is – well, for me, at any rate - to realize how - by comparison - how disembodied, how detached from nature, they truly are. You are so NATURAL, Monsieur Péguy, in the most joyous, wholesome sense of that word).
The Franciscan Nun tells young Joan …
"What those that are carnal lack, as we know, is being pure.
But what we ought to know is that those that are pure lack being carnal.
...
The angels are certainly pure, but they aren´t the least bit carnal.
They have no idea what it is to have a body, TO BE a body.
They have no idea what it is to be a poor creauture.
A carnal creature.
A body kneaded from the clay of the earth.
The carnal earth.
They don´t understand this mysterious bond, this created bond,
Infinitely mysterious,
Between the soul and the body.
...
This my child is what the angels do not understand.
I mean to say, that this is what they haven´t experienced.
What it is to have this body; to have this bond with this body; to be this body,
To have this bond with the earth, with this earth, to be this earth, clay and dust, ash and the mud of the earth,
THE VERY BODY OF JESUS.
...
Jesus Christ did not come to tell us tales.
You see he didn´t make this voyage of coming to the earth,
A great voyage between you and me
(And he was so comfortable where he was.)
(Before coming.
He didn´t have all our worries.)
He didn´t make this voyage of descending to the earth
To come recount anecdotes for us.
...
His incarnation, which is really his assumption of the flesh.
[that is, I believe Péguy is saying, the entire physical world]
His taking on of flesh and of the carnal, his taking on of man and his being placed on the cross and his being placed in the tomb,
His in-carnal-ation and his agony.
...
Because Jesus Christ has become our carnal brother
...
It is to us the weak, that he was given.
He depends on us, weak and carnal,
To bring to life and to nourish and to keep alive in time
...
To keep alive the words of life,
To nourish with our blood, with our flesh, with our heart
The words which without us would collapse fleshless.
To grant (it´s incredible)to grant to the eternal words,
In addition like a second eternity,
A temporal and carnal eternity, an eternity of flesh and of blood
...
A worldly eternity.
...
[Jesus Christ who invented] a new justice. A justice of love. A justice of Hope."
Yes, the Christian Mystery is at the core of all the Nun is teaching Joan.
And does one not find echoes here at least, of what esoteric Christianity has said of the responsibility of the Tenth Hierarchy - Humanity, and of Christ as the New Lord of Karma ... ?
For my part, it is far more than echoes. Far, far more.
Here I am feeling a towering understanding of the Christian Mystery, that towers above the writings of vast numbers of Anthroposophists, Rosicrucians, and other Christian Hermeticists.
The Mystery of the Marriage of the Sun and the Moon, as Valentin Tomberg might have said.
Or the Descent of Buddhi into Manas, as Rudolf Steiner might have said.
Leading to a goal which is not a disembodied eternity, leading to a goal which constitutes no Luciferic short-cut ... but again to:
"a second eternity,
A temporal and carnal eternity, an eternity of flesh and of blood
...
A worldly eternity."
The Conjunction of Opposites!
A Second Kind of Eternity!
Wherein Eternity Marries Nature. (Nature becomes Supernatural, as in the administering of Holy Communion).
Yes, again, the Christian Mystery is at the core of all the Nun is teaching Joan.
But how Péguy delineates not only the core, but so many outer facets to the core, so many expressions of Humanity and Nature, Being Redeemed ...
To take but one single further example, how this nun comprehends the poignancy of human fatherhood:
“Children are never the ones who do the work.
But no one ever works except for children.
It´s never the child who goes to the field, who tills and who sows, and who reaps and who harvests the grapes and who trims the vine and who fells the trees and who cuts the wood.
For winter.
To warm the house in winter.
But would the father have the heart to work if he didn´t have his children?
And in the winter when he works hard in the forest?
With his billhook and his saw and with his felling axe and with his hand axe.
In the icy forest.
In winter when the snakes sleep in the woods because they´re frozen.
And when a bitter North wind blows.
That cuts to his bones.
That passes through each of his limbs.
And he´s completely numb and his teeth are chattering.
And the frost makes icicles in his beard.
All of a sudden he thinks about his wife who stayed at home.
About his wife who is such a good homemaker.
Whose husband he is before God.
And about his children who are peaceful and safe at home
...
They pass before his eyes, in a flash before his mind´s eye, before his soul´s eye.
They live in his memory and in his heart and in his soul and in his soul´s eye.
They live in his gaze.
In a flash he sees his three children playing and laughing in front of the fire.
His three children, two boys and a girl.
Whose father he is before God
...
It´s right that the father die before the children.
He thinks about them, by God´s grace, and immediately the blood rushes to his heart.
And warms him so
...
The bitter north wind in the forest.
Has just now frozen two big tears that fell stupidly upon his cheeks.
In the sunken furrows of his cheeks, and were just swallowed by his bushy beard.
Like two icicles.
There he is laughing and ashamed.
Laughing to himself and ashamed both inwardly and outwardly
And even laughing out loud.
Because it is sweet and it is shameful to cry.
For a man.
So the poor man tries to be discreet.
Pretends that he wasn´t just crying.
People always try to be discreet.”
And that again, was to sample, but a single example of Péguy´s paean to NATURE … including human nature and the natural beauty of things.
Nature in the process of Being Redeemed, of course, and being made whole once more ... Wholesome ...
So many more facets of the Mystery of Christ could still be cited here from The Portal of the Mystery of Hope.
I have chosen Péguy´s paean to fatherhood, again, as but a single instance of the poet´s pierced embrace of Human-ness.
Humanness on course to Christed Wholesomeness ...
True Wholesomeness. Not stuffy pretence of piousness, but the real thing. That real sacred-human quality that enters into us at Holy Communion, for example.
O, spiritual seekers outside religion, how once I understood your concerns!
I understood you Anthroposophists, who felt the Church was bankrupt in revealing the Mystery of Christ.
But here in the twentieth century, is a loyal son of the Church who fathoms the Mystery of Christ and who knows that Christ is Lord of a New Justice ...
No longer do I share your despair in the Church.
O New Age Friends, so taken with spiritualities that fly into the timeless realm; ´in tune with the infinite´; an eternity, that is not ´a worldly eternity´, not a Conjunction of Opposites ... a Conjunction of Opposites that negates neither eternity nor carnal, temporal nature ...
How often you New Age Friends have seemed to me to hold the assumption – conscious or not – that anything really valuable can be found within the Holistic Sphere.
In a really good Holistic bookshop, Watkins in London perhaps, or the Bodhi Tree in California … That there really is not much of spirituality outside this Sphere, which is of real worth…
But I doubt that few if any Holistic shops, have ever stocked The Portal of the Mystery of Hope.
(I might add that I held such assumptions myself, unconsciously for nearly 20 years. The Pope? Catholic Theology? What have they to tell me of anything truly spiritual?)
(Good Lord! What arrogance! I who knew nothing at all about the Catholic Mystery!)
Today I have come to see such vast and great treasures, beyond the Holistic Sphere, never even guessed by so, so many within it.
Sometimes however, these treasures are not so accessible to folk who prefer popular faire.
Thus at times, I hesitate to recommend to friends great modern Christian writings – whether those of Wotyla, Ratzinger, or the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot – because their scholarly style is more demanding than most of the New Age books.
Indeed, I have felt a need for literature that is profoundly revelatory of the Christic Mystery, but which is more accessible, without losing profundity.
Charles Péguy – you are the answer to a prayer. Your book strikes me as truly quite accessible.
How I would like to see your half-forgotten French masterpiece resurrected in the consciousness of the English speaking world.
How I would like to see your book amongst the so-called holistic shelves … but rather than holistic, I fear these very shelves are more SELECTIVE than is commonly appreciated.
O Charles Péguy, I wonder what I might have thought of you twenty years ago, had I discovered you, perhaps on a bookshelf at Findhorn or by word of mouth along the New Age grapevine …
But of course, all that is but to dream.
Because from all my years in New Age circles, I cannot recall one as tender as natural and human as you, who realized the Way of Christ was to lead us evermore into such tender, natural creaturehood … into finite, tender flesh …
O Charles Péguy! All this is but a portion of what you have evoked in me these last hours.
I realize I hardly do you justice at all. For example, I have said nothing at all of what you say of the little girl HOPE, so surprising to God, or the terrible, terrible freedom, awesome freedom and responsibility God has given us …
But if I serve to encourage any who read this weblog to hunt down the English translation of your masterpiece, I will be more than happy …
O Charles Péguy! Who were you? What were you? Noble soul, most noble heart who understood the heart of Christ and Christianity and who communicated them with such unfathomable and tender eloquence of HEART …
Who are you? I must find out.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Intermission of Fragments V – More from Valentin Tomberg on Anthroposophy and Church
I thought next, that I would be posting more on the Eucharistic themes of the last entry.
But an unexpected impulse has led me to put up more on the former Anthroposophist Valentin Tomberg (including further material previously unavailable in English, as far as I know) regarding Tomberg´s later attitudes to Anthroposophy, as well as to the Catholic Faith.
By way of departure however, I want to focus on how, in the 1960`s, the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot regarded the Anthroposophical movement. There he speaks of the wings of this movement being:
“clipped … which has rendered it, such as it is, since the death of its founder: a movement for cultural reform (art, education, medicine, agriculture) deprived of living esotericism, i.e. without mysticism, without gnosis and without magic.”
In terms of esotericism then, the anonymous author clearly considered the movement lifeless since 1925 – the year in which Rudolf Steiner died.
He goes to say that living esotericism has ´been replaced by lectures, study and intellectual work aiming at establishing a concordance between the writings and stenographed lectures of the master.´
Now all of this does not seem very far removed from the perspective of Valentin Tomberg, twenty years earlier, after he had decisively left Anthroposophy behind and entered the Catholic Church.
Recently, German notes have been published from Bernhard Martin (the author of Von der Anthroposophie zur Kirche, - which in English reads From Anthroposophy to the Church).
They are notes of what Valentin Tomberg is said to have related to Martin during two conversations in the mid-1940´s.
According to the German biography they are drawn from, these notes emerged in a context where Tomberg had unmistakably said: “Die Anthroposophie ist gescheitert.” Anthroposophy has failed.
And this is, I suspect, not unrelated to the fact that Tomberg *decisively* believed his 1930´s Anthroposophical works should not be republished.
More on this another time. For now, I feel that, sparse and fragmentary as they are, these notes offer much food for contemplation, and I publish a translation here, which a German friend of my Heart, gave to me as a personal favour.
" * First comes the test of Faith, only then Vision (about the reappearance of Christ). Knowledge as such is dangerous, also in relation to one's own past incarnations; it is of use only to the one who has stood the test of faith.
* Rudolf Steiner has given truth "on credit". It ought to have been repaid by the corresponding morality. Rudolf Steiner had the courage and the trust that humanity would justify his work.
* To begin with, Valentin Tomberg had joined his own work to this, but then abandoned it to work externally. There was to be no more "credit system". Enough had been said.
* The Catholic Church is an uncompromising force which unites and forgives.
* Confession (....cordis, confessio,satisfactio operum) = Help through self-knowledge and preparation for the meeting with the Dweller on the Threshold.
*Without devotion no progress. The effort is what counts, not the actual status.
* Living in the Tradition! Only the one with genius, ought to (and can) transcend it.
* The transformation in the Mass deeply shakes (erschuettert ihn) him(Tomberg) every time in his innermost being.
* The Mass has to be spoken in formulas; everything personal has to precede in the preparation."
I am hoping to say more on the Eucharist, but it could take me a week or more.
In the meantime, anyone interested in this post might appreciate a thread that ran here from Thursday 15 December to 22 December last year. This six-entry series definitely connects to the issues in the above, and is also one of the things that I feel most happy with in the entire weblog.
Christ be with you, friends.
But an unexpected impulse has led me to put up more on the former Anthroposophist Valentin Tomberg (including further material previously unavailable in English, as far as I know) regarding Tomberg´s later attitudes to Anthroposophy, as well as to the Catholic Faith.
By way of departure however, I want to focus on how, in the 1960`s, the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot regarded the Anthroposophical movement. There he speaks of the wings of this movement being:
“clipped … which has rendered it, such as it is, since the death of its founder: a movement for cultural reform (art, education, medicine, agriculture) deprived of living esotericism, i.e. without mysticism, without gnosis and without magic.”
In terms of esotericism then, the anonymous author clearly considered the movement lifeless since 1925 – the year in which Rudolf Steiner died.
He goes to say that living esotericism has ´been replaced by lectures, study and intellectual work aiming at establishing a concordance between the writings and stenographed lectures of the master.´
Now all of this does not seem very far removed from the perspective of Valentin Tomberg, twenty years earlier, after he had decisively left Anthroposophy behind and entered the Catholic Church.
Recently, German notes have been published from Bernhard Martin (the author of Von der Anthroposophie zur Kirche, - which in English reads From Anthroposophy to the Church).
They are notes of what Valentin Tomberg is said to have related to Martin during two conversations in the mid-1940´s.
According to the German biography they are drawn from, these notes emerged in a context where Tomberg had unmistakably said: “Die Anthroposophie ist gescheitert.” Anthroposophy has failed.
And this is, I suspect, not unrelated to the fact that Tomberg *decisively* believed his 1930´s Anthroposophical works should not be republished.
More on this another time. For now, I feel that, sparse and fragmentary as they are, these notes offer much food for contemplation, and I publish a translation here, which a German friend of my Heart, gave to me as a personal favour.
" * First comes the test of Faith, only then Vision (about the reappearance of Christ). Knowledge as such is dangerous, also in relation to one's own past incarnations; it is of use only to the one who has stood the test of faith.
* Rudolf Steiner has given truth "on credit". It ought to have been repaid by the corresponding morality. Rudolf Steiner had the courage and the trust that humanity would justify his work.
* To begin with, Valentin Tomberg had joined his own work to this, but then abandoned it to work externally. There was to be no more "credit system". Enough had been said.
* The Catholic Church is an uncompromising force which unites and forgives.
* Confession (....cordis, confessio,satisfactio operum) = Help through self-knowledge and preparation for the meeting with the Dweller on the Threshold.
*Without devotion no progress. The effort is what counts, not the actual status.
* Living in the Tradition! Only the one with genius, ought to (and can) transcend it.
* The transformation in the Mass deeply shakes (erschuettert ihn) him(Tomberg) every time in his innermost being.
* The Mass has to be spoken in formulas; everything personal has to precede in the preparation."
I am hoping to say more on the Eucharist, but it could take me a week or more.
In the meantime, anyone interested in this post might appreciate a thread that ran here from Thursday 15 December to 22 December last year. This six-entry series definitely connects to the issues in the above, and is also one of the things that I feel most happy with in the entire weblog.
Christ be with you, friends.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Intermission of Fragments IV – More on the Eucharist, Valentin Tomberg and The Lady of All Nations …
As I said last time, I was very grateful for all the responses to my piece on the Eucharist. And rather than post one of my previously written pieces, I thought I would respond here to some of these comments, within the main section of this weblog.
This could take two or three entries – but I thought would begin today with Bruce questioning Valentin Tomberg´s 1930´s statement that "There is nothing in the physical world more holy - more healing in the deepest sense of that word - than the bread of the Communion Service."
Scepticism here is understandable. All over the world, people receive this bread and there seems to be very little in the way of accounts, which would justify Tomberg´s remarkable assertion.
But then, who is to say what the world situation would be, were the Holy Communion to cease all together? For all we know, were humanity to be deprived of this colossal, collective act of Transubstantiation, catastrophic effects would be very much in evidence.
In other words, there are 400,000 Catholic priests in the world, whose principal duty is the Transubstantiation, and in most cases, this is undertaken on a daily basis.
There are also countless acts of such consecration happening in other areas of the Sacramental Church, though, as for example with the Orthodox, the work may not be undertaken daily, but rather weekly.
As you read these lines, dear friend, you might wish to pause and consider how many times, at this very instant, His Body and Blood becomes present in our world … And perhaps what the global results of that continuous coming-into-being, have been over these past centuries?
In any event, I ask myself, who can really say what humanity would be like, were it not to be receiving this continuous RADIATING sustenance - whether directly or indirectly? Personally, I believe the world situation would be far, far worse …
Nonetheless, though I myself am not skeptical of Valentin Tomberg´s dramatic statement, I also cannot help but profoundly resonate with Bruce´s feeling, when he tells us:
“The stature of the priest is so important in the delivery of the Communion. At the Catholic Mass I attended last week … the sermon was mumbled and disjointed. There was hardly any ritual or observable intention in the blessing of the wafer and cup. About six lay people handed out the wafers (which may have been sprinkled beforehand with the contents of the cup). In short it was a shemozzle.”
Yes I am in deep resonance here with Bruce about the present state of the liturgy.
The further I travel with the Church, the greater my sense of the immense tragedy of the post-Vatican II destruction of the liturgy – a liturgy that was still very much intact, of course, in 1930´s Catholicism.
Yet however much I agree with Bruce on this point, I feel the most crucial question has yet to be raised.
That question, it would seem to me, is not so much concerned with the stature of the priest, the sermon, distribution and so forth – as important as all of these undoubtedly are.
But rather, the crucial question is whether a consecration, a Transubstantiation has taken place. Or not.
That is to say, whether the bread and wine has been transformed into that which belongs to the One Whom is most ´holy … healing in the deepest sense of that word.´ ... ?
Now there may well be Catholic Masses, where a consecration has not taken place. Though personally I recall suspecting that only once in my entire experience. That came in a Mass by a priest, whom I, at least, perceived, as being of an ultra-liberal persuasion. And where so many elements of the Mass had been deleted, that I really had to ask myself, if I had been to Mass at all …
I admit I have not been to many Masses in America. Perhaps what I call this ultra-liberal Mass is more the norm there than I fear … Still I tend to doubt it, though am open to correction.
But in the question of whether the Transubstantiation has survived the 1960´s destruction of the liturgy, I want to return to Valentin Tomberg, by way of an unusual departure …
For in later life, Valentin Tomberg took most seriously the apparitions in Holland of ´the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary´.
From his German biography, I offer the following rough translation (for which, please see my note in the comments section):
“Valentin Tomberg took this appearance of the Holy Virgin very seriously, as he communicated to Ernst von Hippel [in a 1956 letter, after visiting the site of the Marian apparitions in Holland].
´In short: we made sure at this place, that it is a matter of a genuine and real revelation of the Holy Virgin and that the message and reports conveyed there are genuine and true. …
I understand - after everything – this, in such a way that, as at that time in Lourdes the ´Immaculate Conception´ brought a healing source for the individual illnesses of humans to effectiveness, now it is a matter for the development of a healing source for the diseases of the peoples by the “Mother of all peoples” [ie, the Lady of All Nations].
There is much concern around peace in the world, but where is the POWER, the SUBSTANCE of Peace? It concerns not thus political or other measures, but a – how shall I say it? - MAGICAL action of peace, as a direct contrast to Moscow´s measures to bring about peace and everyone, who participates in this action with thought and prayer, helps the flowing spreading-out of its effect.”
Concerning the magical action, which Tomberg speaks of spreading-out, it is perhaps necessary to say that this must certainly involve the central Prayer given by the Lady of all Nations:
'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.'
(The asterisked words are those which the visionary reported that the Lady asked to be especially emphasised when praying this prayer.)
In this regard, we have also already commented on how the the Catholic author of Meditations on the Tarot regarded these apparitions of Mary. For those who have not seen it, I suggest that further clarification might be found by reading my weblog entry for 1 December 2005:'Woe to me if I tell and woe to me if I do not tell!'
Now in 1981, there was another apparition in Holland of the Lady of All Nations to the same Dutch visionary encountered by the anonymous Catholic author.
The Lady of All Nations is recorded as saying:
“The Moral decline in the Church and in the World are coming about, and the Wars are still going on. My Lord sent Me to warn them of all of this, but they did not listen.”
But according to the report, the Lady went on to offer hope.
The visionary reports that “the Lady turned towards the Tabernacle and pointed to it with Her right hand saying … “The Eucharist still exists.”
Now this is taken from the book Eucharistic Experiences – where the entire book offers this visionaries´ongoing revelation of the disastrous contemporary state of the Catholic Church ...
One can justifiably interpret these words of the Virgin then, as pointing to a definite ray of hope and consolation in a dire context: The Eucharist still exists!
But to return to Bruce´s comments, one certainly does not need the experiences of a Dutch visionary, however deeply trusted by Valentin Tomberg, to confirm for us, the tragic state of much of the Church.
For we can certainly feel it for ourselves.
The Catholic Church is in trouble.
And as far as I am concerned, much of the trouble of the Church is the trouble with the Novus Ordo – the new Mass initiated in the 1960´s after the Second Vatican Council. (A Council which also certainly succeeded in many ways, perhaps as much as it failed in this one.)
Now Bruce suggests “Perhaps if one was looking for tradition, the Orthodox churches are the way to go. As Rudolf Steiner observed, when folk were running off to India for enlightenment, it would have been better if they had headed off to Mt. Athos.”
Such a direction is certainly appropriate for some.
For myself, I prefer to contemplate Valentin Tomberg´s counsel, when he said in his Covenant of the Heart:
"The darkening which today is described as ´the present crisis of the Catholic Church´ can lead to the necessity for the solitary sons of the Church to hurry to the aid of the Holy Father, the most solitary of solitaries, in order to save the Church from the abyss toward which she is moving."
Yes I spend my life contemplating what he meant by these words, ´darkening´, ábyss´ and the NECESSITY to hurry ... As I also do his many, many other indications of profound support for the Catholic Mystery.
And I also prefer to take heart from the message that the Lady of All Nations sought to give us – that in the Catholic Church, “The Eucharist still exists.”
Yes this is my conviction – based on this and countless personal experiences - that there still exists at the heart of the Church, the life-transforming encounter with Jesus Christ.
Thus while I would certainly agree that the Novus Ordo liturgy has tragically served to OBSCURE this ENCOUNTER in innumerable cases, it has not succeeded in destroying it ...
But the obscuration can indeed be so great, that it is necessary to develop a special form of attention in order to perceive what underlies it, and to HELP DISPERSE it, if one is to go beyond the clouds of fog generated by what Bruce so aptly calls a `shemozzle´.
And I will be shortly turning to what I mean by this special form of attention ... and I hope to other comments made here on the Eucharist.
This could take two or three entries – but I thought would begin today with Bruce questioning Valentin Tomberg´s 1930´s statement that "There is nothing in the physical world more holy - more healing in the deepest sense of that word - than the bread of the Communion Service."
Scepticism here is understandable. All over the world, people receive this bread and there seems to be very little in the way of accounts, which would justify Tomberg´s remarkable assertion.
But then, who is to say what the world situation would be, were the Holy Communion to cease all together? For all we know, were humanity to be deprived of this colossal, collective act of Transubstantiation, catastrophic effects would be very much in evidence.
In other words, there are 400,000 Catholic priests in the world, whose principal duty is the Transubstantiation, and in most cases, this is undertaken on a daily basis.
There are also countless acts of such consecration happening in other areas of the Sacramental Church, though, as for example with the Orthodox, the work may not be undertaken daily, but rather weekly.
As you read these lines, dear friend, you might wish to pause and consider how many times, at this very instant, His Body and Blood becomes present in our world … And perhaps what the global results of that continuous coming-into-being, have been over these past centuries?
In any event, I ask myself, who can really say what humanity would be like, were it not to be receiving this continuous RADIATING sustenance - whether directly or indirectly? Personally, I believe the world situation would be far, far worse …
Nonetheless, though I myself am not skeptical of Valentin Tomberg´s dramatic statement, I also cannot help but profoundly resonate with Bruce´s feeling, when he tells us:
“The stature of the priest is so important in the delivery of the Communion. At the Catholic Mass I attended last week … the sermon was mumbled and disjointed. There was hardly any ritual or observable intention in the blessing of the wafer and cup. About six lay people handed out the wafers (which may have been sprinkled beforehand with the contents of the cup). In short it was a shemozzle.”
Yes I am in deep resonance here with Bruce about the present state of the liturgy.
The further I travel with the Church, the greater my sense of the immense tragedy of the post-Vatican II destruction of the liturgy – a liturgy that was still very much intact, of course, in 1930´s Catholicism.
Yet however much I agree with Bruce on this point, I feel the most crucial question has yet to be raised.
That question, it would seem to me, is not so much concerned with the stature of the priest, the sermon, distribution and so forth – as important as all of these undoubtedly are.
But rather, the crucial question is whether a consecration, a Transubstantiation has taken place. Or not.
That is to say, whether the bread and wine has been transformed into that which belongs to the One Whom is most ´holy … healing in the deepest sense of that word.´ ... ?
Now there may well be Catholic Masses, where a consecration has not taken place. Though personally I recall suspecting that only once in my entire experience. That came in a Mass by a priest, whom I, at least, perceived, as being of an ultra-liberal persuasion. And where so many elements of the Mass had been deleted, that I really had to ask myself, if I had been to Mass at all …
I admit I have not been to many Masses in America. Perhaps what I call this ultra-liberal Mass is more the norm there than I fear … Still I tend to doubt it, though am open to correction.
But in the question of whether the Transubstantiation has survived the 1960´s destruction of the liturgy, I want to return to Valentin Tomberg, by way of an unusual departure …
For in later life, Valentin Tomberg took most seriously the apparitions in Holland of ´the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary´.
From his German biography, I offer the following rough translation (for which, please see my note in the comments section):
“Valentin Tomberg took this appearance of the Holy Virgin very seriously, as he communicated to Ernst von Hippel [in a 1956 letter, after visiting the site of the Marian apparitions in Holland].
´In short: we made sure at this place, that it is a matter of a genuine and real revelation of the Holy Virgin and that the message and reports conveyed there are genuine and true. …
I understand - after everything – this, in such a way that, as at that time in Lourdes the ´Immaculate Conception´ brought a healing source for the individual illnesses of humans to effectiveness, now it is a matter for the development of a healing source for the diseases of the peoples by the “Mother of all peoples” [ie, the Lady of All Nations].
There is much concern around peace in the world, but where is the POWER, the SUBSTANCE of Peace? It concerns not thus political or other measures, but a – how shall I say it? - MAGICAL action of peace, as a direct contrast to Moscow´s measures to bring about peace and everyone, who participates in this action with thought and prayer, helps the flowing spreading-out of its effect.”
Concerning the magical action, which Tomberg speaks of spreading-out, it is perhaps necessary to say that this must certainly involve the central Prayer given by the Lady of all Nations:
'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.'
(The asterisked words are those which the visionary reported that the Lady asked to be especially emphasised when praying this prayer.)
In this regard, we have also already commented on how the the Catholic author of Meditations on the Tarot regarded these apparitions of Mary. For those who have not seen it, I suggest that further clarification might be found by reading my weblog entry for 1 December 2005:'Woe to me if I tell and woe to me if I do not tell!'
Now in 1981, there was another apparition in Holland of the Lady of All Nations to the same Dutch visionary encountered by the anonymous Catholic author.
The Lady of All Nations is recorded as saying:
“The Moral decline in the Church and in the World are coming about, and the Wars are still going on. My Lord sent Me to warn them of all of this, but they did not listen.”
But according to the report, the Lady went on to offer hope.
The visionary reports that “the Lady turned towards the Tabernacle and pointed to it with Her right hand saying … “The Eucharist still exists.”
Now this is taken from the book Eucharistic Experiences – where the entire book offers this visionaries´ongoing revelation of the disastrous contemporary state of the Catholic Church ...
One can justifiably interpret these words of the Virgin then, as pointing to a definite ray of hope and consolation in a dire context: The Eucharist still exists!
But to return to Bruce´s comments, one certainly does not need the experiences of a Dutch visionary, however deeply trusted by Valentin Tomberg, to confirm for us, the tragic state of much of the Church.
For we can certainly feel it for ourselves.
The Catholic Church is in trouble.
And as far as I am concerned, much of the trouble of the Church is the trouble with the Novus Ordo – the new Mass initiated in the 1960´s after the Second Vatican Council. (A Council which also certainly succeeded in many ways, perhaps as much as it failed in this one.)
Now Bruce suggests “Perhaps if one was looking for tradition, the Orthodox churches are the way to go. As Rudolf Steiner observed, when folk were running off to India for enlightenment, it would have been better if they had headed off to Mt. Athos.”
Such a direction is certainly appropriate for some.
For myself, I prefer to contemplate Valentin Tomberg´s counsel, when he said in his Covenant of the Heart:
"The darkening which today is described as ´the present crisis of the Catholic Church´ can lead to the necessity for the solitary sons of the Church to hurry to the aid of the Holy Father, the most solitary of solitaries, in order to save the Church from the abyss toward which she is moving."
Yes I spend my life contemplating what he meant by these words, ´darkening´, ábyss´ and the NECESSITY to hurry ... As I also do his many, many other indications of profound support for the Catholic Mystery.
And I also prefer to take heart from the message that the Lady of All Nations sought to give us – that in the Catholic Church, “The Eucharist still exists.”
Yes this is my conviction – based on this and countless personal experiences - that there still exists at the heart of the Church, the life-transforming encounter with Jesus Christ.
Thus while I would certainly agree that the Novus Ordo liturgy has tragically served to OBSCURE this ENCOUNTER in innumerable cases, it has not succeeded in destroying it ...
But the obscuration can indeed be so great, that it is necessary to develop a special form of attention in order to perceive what underlies it, and to HELP DISPERSE it, if one is to go beyond the clouds of fog generated by what Bruce so aptly calls a `shemozzle´.
And I will be shortly turning to what I mean by this special form of attention ... and I hope to other comments made here on the Eucharist.
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