Indelibly Catholic

All this Anglican frenzy of friends and opportunities was further compounded this weekend by an Anglican girl I'm friends with semi-asking if I wanted to start some sort of relationship. I thought to myself 'somehow by the end of the weekend, I will have 'reasoned' my way into the CofE (Church of England)'. Interestingly enough, the process began by me being unable to reason my way out of Catholicism, as the claims are so binding, the teachings of the saints and doctors so clear, there really is no way out of Rome. So then I started trying to reason my way out of reason a la Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling", but if I likewise found such a position untenable. I took a course in Islam, and while I am prejudiced as a Westerner, I have to say that 'logically' if you are going to disavow 'logic' Islam is a much better religion than Christianity. Christianity is inherently rational, and the bible doesn't have an origin like the Qu'ran (in the sense that there was disagreement and there are textual variants of the bible - not that I believe the Qu'ran is inspired).

I went for a walk today and prayed my rosary and was thinking about the sorrowful mysteries. About Christ's agony in the garden, his cross. I realized my agony was totally selfish and nothing compared to his, and that while he carried a real cross if my sufferings and trials were incarnated into a cross, it would be about as small as the one on my rosary. When I suddenly remembered St. Thomas More, I felt so much guilt. He had so much more to gain than I, and still he died as a martyr before renouncing the papacy. St. Edmund was offered the archbishopric of Canterbury for his conversion, and he accepted death over severing communion with Rome.

I repented, and thought it funny that even when I was considering the CofE - for all the wrong reasons - I was still thinking "well I hope I can still pray the rosary" or "I still want to believe in infused righteousness" or "I still need Confession". I guess I am unchangeably Catholic, a Roman through and through.

In all of this, I've realized that I'm nowhere near the level of holiness required for religious life. I told my Jesuit vocations director some of my doubts, and we're continuing, but honestly I don't think I'm mature enough yet. It's only taken a few waves to rock the boat, and if I'm to be an anchor, I'm going to need alot more strength, if that is my vocation after all.

Sts Thomas More and Edmund Campion, pray for me, a coward.

Loving God According to Rowan Williams and I

"...which of us does "love" God? I remember, ages ago, talking to a young Chinese Marxist student, who amazed me by saying, "of course, priesthood [I had him I hoped to be ordained] is unrewarding, but you won't mind that, because you love God." I was amazed and rather appalled, because I couldn't imagine why he should think I loved God; as soon as he'd said it, I knew it wasn't true. After all, what was it to love God? The saints loved God: their whole lives revolved around God, they wept and laughed and danced for love of him. When St. John of the Cross was staying at a convent over Christmas, one of the sisters saw him, when he thought no one was looking, picking up the figure of the child Jesus from the crib. He hugged it close to his chest and then, with eyes closed, danced around the crib for a few minutes. Well, that, it seems, is love of God: a devotion that makes people more than a little dotty, that produces an all-pervading warmth and delight, an incommunicable gladness beyond all words. "My beloved is mine and I am his"; Jesu, the very thought is sweet; In that dear name all pleasures meet"...St. Aelred of Rievaulx on his deathbed murmuring "Christ, Christ, Christ" unceasingly; Francis of Assisi literally crying himself blind in his long vigils of prayer.

If this is loving God, most of us don't." - Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury) "Loving God" in "A Ray of Darkness" p. 127

This is one of my favourite sermons of all time. Dr. Williams goes through the Catholic position and the Protestant position and notes how both fail to adequately describe the experience of loving God. He doesn't dogmatically state his views, in typical Anglican style, but rather talks about loving God as understanding him as "incomparably worthwhile". Almost a Thomistic understanding of knowing the kind of thing God is, even if not knowing exactly what he is, and then allowing our souls to ascend to the love of God by his grace. As the Angelic Doctor stated "To love God is something greater than to know him".

The Protestant/Calvinist/Lutheran position traditionally has been to say that humans can't love God. The Wesleyan/Catholic tradition has been to say humans can purely love God. A third way that modern Evangelicals and Roman Catholics alike have share is the idea of love as a choice.

Given the choice between Papist, Puritan, or Prelate, I'm going to have to side with the latter, and agree with Rowan Williams that love of God is something indescribable. It is mystical, but it comes from a choice we make long before the experience that prepares us for the reception of this grace.

There's so much in this sermon and I'm butchering it. Do yourself a favor, go out and buy a copy of Ray of Darkness. I don't agree with alot that Williams says, but much of what he says has formed my faith in that wonderful Anglo-Catholic tradition that harmonizes so well with both the fathers and Rome.

He borrows alot from Hans Urs Von Balthasar and I enjoy both of their understandings of love. They are both just within the Catholic tradition, but not in the mainstream of it.

Glorious Defeat, Scotland, and Spiritual Combat

Today we were learning about one of my favourite 'recusants' (he technically wasn't, but he was still a resister and came from a traditionally Catholic family... sort of): Bonnie Prince Charlie (Charles Edward Stuart / Charles III uncrowned king of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France as the traditional title goes...).

He was the last hope for Jacobitism in Britain and if he would've had a successful takeover of London, he might've gotten France's support and been the Catholic king of the UK, bringing back the faith, and sending the Hanoverian Usurpers back to Hell/Germany where they could proceed to not learn English... anyway. Why was I telling this story again? RIGHT!

ok. So Charlie had a glorious victory at the battle of Prestonpans but lost at Culloden. I was thinking about his defeat and exile. Things went so well with him for a while, and he was doing great, but then his arrogance coupled with fear of the returning Hanoverian armies made him act foolishly. In the end he lost, ran, and eventually even temporarily converted to Anglicanism in an attempt to claim he could rule since he was Protestant (he eventually reverted to Catholicism when back in France). One character flaw lead to the next, and if he'd only known his limits and listened to his friends things would've gone differently.

The whole history of Scotland is this sad tale of fiery ideals and passions of the Highland Scots, eventually dwindling and joining the lowlanders in the Anglo-fied subservience and cynical pragmatism of Adam Smith and David Hume.

In my life, I see the dangers of the history of Scotland. I have these lofty ideals, and these plans to immediately rush to completely perfect myself in one day or over a short period of time. If I would only recognize my weakness and commit myself to slow progress, then perhaps I could have some victory. But sadly I feel much more like Bonnie Prince Charlie, I am unready for battles I allow myself to be caught in, and during my retreats from the enemy I endure such heavy losses that I end up without anything. I'm exiled from my own homeland and have fallen from my vocation. So hopefully from this Catholic brother of Old, his majesty Charles III, I can learn some lessons about Spiritual Combat and perhaps Jacobitism and Sanctification are closer than one would think.

Lessons:

1. Don't go it alone. Without the Catholic and even the Protestant Lords and Clan Leaders, the Bonnie Prince wouldn't have been able to even begin. So always stick with your friends and take their advice when they tell you you're acting foolishly.

2. Be content with whatever victories you can have. When Charlie had taken Edinburgh he still hadn't even got the support of all of Scotland, and he spread himself too thin in search of greater glory. Mastering oneself is a slow business, and should always be done -as St. Thomas tells us- by submitting the passions to reason. If we get ahead of ourselves, that's when bad things happen.

3. Glorious defeat. When the Jacobites retreated, the Hanoverians & the Winter destroyed them and thinned their ranks incredibly. They fled and hid until their towns and homes were burned by the English. Many were imprisoned and nearly starved to death, it was a total shame. When tempted don't gradually give in to weakness, don't even consider surrender as an option, but valiantly stand your ground until you are so overcome by concupiscence or the enemy that your defeat was at least glorious.

4. Don't lose the dream. After losing at Culloden and going into hiding, Bonnie Prince Charlie began having affairs and drinking heavily. When it seemed like he had no chance at all he even temporarily gave up his Religion (which was the heritage of his family, he was born in Rome for God's sake! and supported by the Pope). Everyone around him lost hope and Jacobitism died slowly. If he would've kept up the dream, perhaps he could've made it when the French tried to invade later. Always hope that even in defeat and exile from God's grace while in mortal sin, you will return again, and maybe -just maybe- one day your flag will wave high in highland winds once more.

How Philosophy Changes Our Lives

I was taught as a teenager the Worldview of C.S. Lewis, for which I am grateful, as there are many worse starting points. I think my view of faith and reason as well as the neo-Platonism of Lewis that we learned in philosophy allowed me to fit well into the Catholic faith. Unlike the nominalists (anti-rationalists) Luther and Calvin, Lewis fell more closely to the Angelic Doctor (Aquinas), through Lewis' study of Dante, and in his clever use of reason, I understood how Christianity shouldn't be afraid of philosophy.

But I did learn many unhelpful views that I'm only now philosophically unpacking. Our epistemology (method of finding truth) was Berkeleian Immaterialism. It was basically this argument:

Ideas are true or false
Matter/Material Objects is/are not true or false
Therefore ideas are not Matter/Material

This gave us "spirit" which wasn't material, or 'idealism' at least. Then we would go on to attack Empiricism with the typical Cartesian methods, as well as Berkeley's which sought to show how the senses were unreliable. Ex:

How do you know you have proper vision?
you hear the doctor say you passed a vision test
How do you know you have proper hearing? , etc to infinity where one can no longer believe anything based on the sense, but by the mind alone / reason.

This is the argument Bishop (Anglican/CofE) Berkeley used to argue for immaterialism, the idea that the only 'real' existent things are ideas perceived in one's mind. This then led to the problem of: 'what happens when someone isn't thinking about an object? does it cease to exist?' - we know the things don't cease to exist, as we do not when we sleep, etc. This means a universal mind must be perceiving everything at once (a Term Lewis uses in Mere Christianity for God - he was a Berkeleian after all). This universal mind is God.

Thus cometh the famous phrase that "we are all just thoughts in the mind of God".

This was a fun worldview because it was diametrically opposed to materialism, the worldview of the modern university. Then I remember reading Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols" and his chapter on how the real world became myth, etc. It wasn't so much of a logical argument that disarmed me / immaterialism, it was just an interesting approach which many people would prefer to my pseudo-platonic arguments.

Like I said, Nietzsche never really convinced me logically of anything (that's kind of his whole point really), but it did much to shake my thinking. Subsequently I've read Christians who attack his post-modernism from a Modernist Christian standpoint, and I've seen other Catholics and Protestants accept postmodernity and understand Catholicism within it (Kearney, Vattimo, MacIntyre also kind of).

I then started studying Aquinas, and I began to love his way of doing things. He mixed the 'best' of neo-platonism with aristotelianism, and made it all Christian. But there was one problem... He was an empiricist (the view, you'll remember, of my oldest enemies). He described the intellect and soul ascending to God from perceiving sensible things. But when I read "Nicomachean Ethics" by Aristotle last year and his "Politics", I felt like I "gave my mind to Aristotle" (like I gave my heart to Christ), because he was such a genius. But I'm still trying to figure out Aristotelianism and my own life.

The advantage I do see in St. Thomas - aside from his legacy and centrality in our Holy Roman Church - is the way his system seems so true in everyday life. It is a challenge though to my normal Platonic system which has a heavy emphasis on distinguishing between mind and body, matter and spirit. This has been a key theme in my life (probably why I'm obsessed with learning and education, but morbidly obese, or why I am great with faith, but terrible with works). Aristotle, and St. Thomas always make sure that the internal and the external are linked, and that grace perfects nature. That sounds really simplistic but in reality it's REALLY profound. In my previous worldview matter was almost evil, corrupted by the fall, grace abolished nature, it didn't perfect it. The material world was the fake and transient world, the world of the forms or ideas was the 'real world'. Aquinas will have none of this. God is reconciling even nature to himself, and evil is only a privation of good, Christ gave us physical things - sacraments (baptism, eucharist, etc) - to change our spiritual reality by grace. This means faith and works, nature and grace, the natural and supernatural, are all married to some extent. For instance he writes on the Law of Christ:

"The kingdom of God consists chiefly in internal acts: but as a consequence all things that are essential to internal acts belong also to the kingdom of God. Thus if the kingdom of God is internal righteousness, peace, and spiritual joy, all external acts that are incompatible with righteousness, peace, and spiritual joy, are in opposition to the kingdom of God; and consequently should be forbidden in the Gospel of the kingdom." - St. Thomas Aquinas (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2108.htm)

I didn't go to church/mass today, even though I could've, because "I didn't feel like it", and because I couldn't receive the sacrament anyway (I'm as usual, in mortal sin). I figured regardless of whether or not I sat in church today, my relationship with God would be uneffected. But Aristotle reminds us that virtues are formed by habitual action and repetition. St. Thomas and Catholicism likewise oblige us to attend Mass regularly because this physical habit changes our spiritual reality, it makes God's Word more prevalent in our mind, it makes our Will more easily inclined towards the work of God, and it brings us into deeper fellowship and even allows us to spiritually partake in the oblation (Sacrifice of the Mass) of the priest/Christ.

But in my own choice of will, I demoted my intellect to my passion of laziness, and thus missed another chance at grace. This is how philosophy changes my life, and our lives. Perhaps you should look over your own philosophy, after all, according to Socrates: "the unexamined life is not worth living".

Oxford Movement, Personal Note, and Mariology

Today I wrote a fascinating paper on the Oxford Movement and the birth of Anglo-Catholicism as well as the conversion of the Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman. It was a great story to hear and to see how it was tied to the lives of other eminent Victorians I'd studied like William Gladstone and Lord Palmerston, etc, was really cool.

I have alot more respect for Newman now, after seeing the way his life played out, but also no naivety about the clear flaws in his character. Like one story about him said that a man who entered the Oratory apparently offended him with one comment (he didn't even know how) and Newman didn't say a single word to the man for over a decade (i want to say it was something like 18 years). He had a capacity to hate for sure.

But I also found it interesting how his biographers wrote that Newman had the courage to follow through with the logic he had started. As we study Victorian society it's hard to stress how much propriety and social standing meant and for someone to throw it all away - which even today is quite a gesture - was a great witness back then.

I feel like Keble and some of the others were a bit cowardly in that sense.

Then I read about the Ritualists and the work of the Anglo-Catholic priests among the poor in the London Docks. Allegedly that is where priests in England began being referred to as 'father', which I don't know if I believe, but if it's true, how ironic, that the Anglicans started it.

It also reminded me of the historical disagreement I have with some people who say the Anglican church was purely a Reformed/Calvinistic church with Bishops. When I think of Nicholas Ridley, of Lancelot Andrewes, and even to some extent Cranmer I don't see how this could be true. But perhaps I need to study more. Certainly the majority did fall under Calvinist influence in some areas, and yes it did only get gradually more "Catholic" over time, but there was -I think- a distinct belief in the continuity of the Catholic faith, etc. (in a way not shared by other Reformation churches)

On a personal note, I've made it 1 day without falling into mortal sin by the superabundant grace of God. I prayed the rosary twice today and felt so much peace from it. I'm starting to understand the beginning of the phrase "De Maria Numquam Satis" - a phrase my level of Latin can actually deal with: "of Mary enough can never be said" or "Of Mary there is never enough". It helped to read more Mariology about how she is never admired in and of herself, but almost as an empty shell which Christ occupies. In many ways it's not so much the actual person of Mary as much as the typology she represents, of cooperating with God, of having Christ within us, etc. But that sounds dangerously modernist as if I were Bultmann describing the resurrection or something.

Read Ratzinger/Papa Benny on Mary and was sold, he responds so kindly to Hans Kung even though you can tell he considers Kung to be a complete heretic.

I'm not even trying to be Marian at all, it's just happening. In some ways like I've mentioned before I'm stilling being nagged by Protestant soteriology a bit, but I feel like the Rosary is becoming a strong part of my devotional life. As well I read somewhere an Augustinian phrase the other day which was "solus christianus nullus christianus", 'A solitary Christian is not a Christian'. In this book on the Catholic doctrine of grace it talks about how at the end of the day, the doctrine of grace cannot in the Augustinian system be separate from the doctrine of the Church, they are both intrinsically tied. This has all been helpful, as has Pelikan's description of the near universal acceptance of the Anselmic model of atonement which is acceptable for Catholics, i.e. that Christ has made satisfaction for our sins and offered God something better than we ever could have, which ties nicely into the doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass as Christ holding himself and his sacrifice before us and allowing us to partake in it and be cleansed of sin and acceptable and blameless before God.

So it's all good, and I'm wanting to go on a pilgrimage now to see the Oratory in Birmingham, and possibly, Our Lady of Walsingham.