Friday, December 23, 2005

Into the Manger of our Hearts and Minds ...

Dear Friends, known and unknown,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, if you go to this page:

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

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

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

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

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

Your friend in Jesus Christ,

Roger

Thursday, December 22, 2005

No Eclipse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

“Now is the Time …” (to LOVE)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

To Heal the World …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, December 19, 2005

Steiner and John Paul: A Certain Accord

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, December 16, 2005

Rome ‘Throws Down the Gauntlet’ …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, December 15, 2005

The Viper’s Sting: Rudolf Steiner on Philosophical Materialism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, December 12, 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, December 09, 2005

Shock! Pope is Catholic!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued Monday.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Mystic Politician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Disinformation and John Paul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, December 05, 2005

Sanctifying Grace and Ireland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, December 02, 2005

Degeneration …?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, December 01, 2005

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

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

Anonymous d’ Outre Tomb has written:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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