My life is like a story, sort of

Yet another old one. 

My kids sometimes talk about my life, especially my childhood, as like a story. What they mean is that I had a life like you read about in a Beverly Cleary book--going to school, little adventures in the neighborhood, etc. In a way they were right, although growing up in the 1960s during a cultural revolution, some of the less wholesome aspects of life creeped in at the edge of my life sometimes, such as the time a drugged-out 17 year old invaded out house and beat up my mom. I'm not likely to tell most of those stories to my kids.

There have been times when my life was almost adventurous beyond the ordinary. "Almost" is the key word. It is like something almost thrilling happened. Like the time I almost started a race riot after a little league baseball game when I accidentally hit with my glove an African American opponent after his side lost. Or the time we almost helped an East German dissident escape from East to West Berlin using a friend's passport. Or the time a woman and I almost accidentally tried to steal a car in an African American neighborhood in a town where race tensions were high.

Other aspects of my life are just kind of cool or interesting. Like the time some chums and I broke into the South Dining Hall at Notre Dame in the middle of the night using the steam tunnel system. I hope they don't read about this and revoke my diploma. There must be a statute of limitations, right? Like the time I hitch hiked to Munich. Or skied in the Alps. Or jammed on the guitar with John Michael Talbot. Or rode down a mountain from the Europabruecke (highest bridge in Europe) on a wooden sled at breakneck speed with an Austrian woman and her thirteen year old daughter, whom I was teaching English. Or had a stammtisch at a tiny local gasthaus half way up a mountain in Austria. Or spent a year and a half volunteering for one of the most famous priests in Kentucky, Fr. Ralph Beiting. Or shook hands with Mother Theresa. Or, had her spiritual director as my spiritual director. Or was a co-blogger with Amy Welborn and Christopher West during the early, heady days of Catholic blogging.

I think anyone could tell there story in a way that was interesting, even exciting. I mean, what is so exciting about a fifteen year old stealing pears, anyway? (St. Augustine did that, not me.) I don't think there are dull lives. Even people who don't do much on the outside must have very interesting, even thrilling interior lives. I mean, maybe Immanuel Kant wasn't really boring inside. Maybe.

History of the Catholic Church

One would like to find in historians a fair presentation of the reality of the Catholic Church that acknowledges the complexity of the situation. I recently pulled two books down from our bookshelf to do some casual reading. Although the topic of the books had nothing to do directly with Catholicism, the passages I read displayed such unsubstantiated antipathy to the Church, I can't help but wonder how much of this exists in the academic culture of our day, and how young people can help but get alienated from the Church. Here are the passages:

"In the Netherlands the Reformation had an even longer and bloodier struggle to establish itself than in France, for while they, like Germany, were affected by the imperial ban of Charles V, they alone had to suffer the domination of Spanish fanaticism, particularly during the reign of Charles' son, Philip II...." (Alec Harman and Anthony Miller, Man and His Music: the Story of Musical Experience in the West, Vol. II, Late Renaissance and Baroque Music (New York: Schocken Books, 1962).

The authors had made it clear earlier that the fanaticism in question was religious. So, you wind up with the reasonable Dutch Calvinists vs. the Spanish Catholic fanatics. This is the normal, English view of thing. Guy Fawkes and all that.

The second example is even more weird. The book in question is Clocks and Culture, by Carlo M. Cipolla (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978). Here is is describing the early middle ages (aka the "dark" ages).

"People were few in number, small in stature, and lived short lives. Socially they were divided among those who fought and hunted, those who prayed and learned, and those who worked. Thos who fought did so often in order to rob. Those who prayed and learned, learned little and prayed much and superstitiously. Those who worked were the great majority and were considered the lowest group of all." (p. 15).

Note there is no acknowledgement that the monks saved learning and had a genuinely rich religious life.

You also don't want a history of the Church written by a Catholic to be a Church always good, non-Catholics always bad whitewash. An egregious example is the handling of Augosto Pinoche by Anne Carroll in her Christ the King, Lord of History.

I agree with a friend on this one.

"I think it's important to understand that History is a very complex thing. For our understanding of History, we are always relying upon someone else's facts. Within the Catholic Church, there are many issues which are not agreed upon, and the Church doesn't say that you have to believe this or that side. I think this is a good concept for children (especially high schoolers) to understand. I would suggest having your children use this text, but discuss these important issues before you embark on your journey, and have them read materials from other Catholic sources as well."

I also think a perspective and interpretation that is sympathetic with the Catholic Church's role in the world and therefore prone to whitewashing and hagiography is closer to the truth than one that is antagonistic.

I've often found discussions of the Galileo affair to be simplistic and one-sided. Usually it is Galileo is the great hero for truth, the Church was the villainous enemy of scientific progress. This in no way does justice to the complexity of the issues involved--the relationship between scholastic philosophy and theology, the new humanism, and the new empirical sciences. Most people don't realize that the humanists (who opposed the scholastics), also apposed the new method of Bacon. Descartes was as critical of the humanists as he was of scholastic philosophy.

The Two Tiers

Yet another old, old post that was never published.

I had the opportunity to listen to Dale Ahlquist on Relevant Radio the other day. I am thoroughly convinced that G.K. Chesterton was a forward-seeing, prophetic voice in the Church that we need to continue to listen two.  I'm glad that Mr. Ahlquist and his associates is helping keep this voice alive. I myself was able to acquire for free almost the entire Chesterton corpus. I have only begun to dip into it.  Some of the wonderful kids in our homeschool group are associated with the Chesterteens blog. This has added an intellectual depth to our formal and informal discussions.

Now, for the point of this post.  One trap I think people can get into when they are enthusiastic about someone that God providential raises up in the Church to guide us through a particular set of challenges is the temptation to interpret everything through the lens of that person's thought or life.  I'm not accusing Ahlquist of this, by the way, but I can believe that anyone who listened to him talk on Relevant Radio would believe it about him.  I've noticed this about many enthusiasts in the Church. Opus Dei people have a tendency to quote El Camino;  Schoenstatt people will quote Fr. Kentenich; CL people will quote Giussani or Carron; Thomists will quote St. Thomas. 

I am convinced, however, that the center of anyone's spirituality and intellectual life should be these things that the providence of God has given us in the Church to sustain us--the Word of God, the liturgy.  It bothers me when someone can quote C.S. Lewis chapter and verse, but spend little or no time studying the Bible.  As Frank Sheed has pointed out, the important thing for Christians is to know Christ Jesus.  As St. Jerome pointed out, ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.   

I am a Franciscan so I am quite familiar with the tendency to interpret everything through a particular spiritual lens. But to truly follow Jesus in the footsteps of St. Francis, I should come to know the sacred text as deeply and as intimately as he did.  I should be able to interpret my own life and experience in light of the biblical text. 

The Exiled Wanderer: The Dream

My son just started a blog, called, "The Exiled Wanderer." He starts with a poem he composed.

The Exiled Wanderer: The Dream:
Behind the stars, which in their rolling course
Do turn around the Earth and back again;
Beyond the "rolling spheres," and spire...

What is wrong when something is wrong?

Old post #3.

The problem with us spiritual-minded people is that when things aren't going well we often interpret them in terms of spiritual warfare, as if Satan were attacking us because we feel uneasy or because things are falling apart. A good Catholic understanding of spirituality doesn't justify such an immediate leap because we believe that nature has a lot to do with the way things are going.

When things to wrong there are several possible causes. First of all, we may be experiencing physical stress due to lack of rest, inadequate nutrition or acute or chronic chemical imbalance. These are not the devil's fault! It may also be that we have made some bad choices, such as time-management, and are experiencing the consequences of those choices. Once again, not the devil's fault. Sometimes we have some significant defects in our psychological makeup that cause us problems. We are in need of healing. Finally, since we are a work in progress and still prone to make wrong choices, our problem could stem from an inadequately cultivated virtue or a sinful choice. Sometimes we are just plain selfish or inordinately attached to a carnal good. Or we allow anger to take root in us, thus alienating us from the good in others. The devil is pleased when this is so and certainly will take advantage of it, but, once again, he is not directly causing the problem--our own lack of conversion is.

Now, that does not mean that the devil doesn't try to interfere with our lives, even and especially us Christians. He certainly does, and that is what Ignatian principles of spiritual discernment are all about. The problem is when we do not resist his advances with spiritual means (self-examination, trust and humility, sacramental life, including confession, prayer, ejaculations, invocations of Mary and the saints and our guardian angel). Satan wants us to fear him. If you are living a Christian life of conversation and resisting his advances you really have nothing to fear. If you are dejected and confused, angry and bitter, despairing of your spiritual progress and you give up, you are letting the devil have an upper hand.

"Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for (someone) to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings." (1 Peter 5:8-9)

Disillusionment

This one is from several years ago.

Disillusionment seems to be a recurring theme in my life these days. Everything from conversations I've been having with my daughter about her work on Evelyn Waugh and Cervantes, to a discussion on Maclin Horton's blog about disappointments in implementing lifestyles and values, to the Church's reading of Ecclesiastes in the Office of Readings.

I have seen everything that is done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. What is crooked cannot be made straight,and what is lacking cannot be numbered. (Eccl. 1:14-15, RSV)

In my years as an active Catholic I have been involved in various efforts at personal, social and cultural renewal--the Charismatic Renewal, pro-life activism, home schooling, Caelum et Terra, St. Anthony's Parish in Milwaukee, St. Blog's parish, Secular Franciscans. I've watched other movements closely and with sympathy--the efforts to reform the liturgical reform, etc. I have experienced great blessings in each one, but also some pretty profound disappointments. In so many cases the flesh, the world, and the devil seem to have won a victory, or at least sapped the movement of its energy. I myself have found it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to fully implement even my most cherished spiritual values in the face of the complexities and ambiguities of life among a depraved generation--the depravity of which I am not completely free.

At the talk the other day by Fr. Rosetti of the St. Luke's Institute he said that cynicism is a disease. My kids can tell you that cynicism is something that I react strongly against because I sense that it is true.