The protester as hero

The recent 'troubles' both worldwide as a result of Donald Trump's election and within the Catholic Church as a result of Pope Francis' actions made me think quite how powerful the archetype of The Protester (and of his cousin, The Rebel) has become within modern culture.

That's rather odder than might appear. Disagreement is an inevitable part of human societies. But it's hard to think of many other cultures which privilege 'protest' as the appropriate reaction to such disagreement. The quadricentenary of Bishop Sancroft's birth recently reminded me of the non-juring attachment to passive obedience. I confess to a long standing irritation with the fame of the suffragettes as opposed to the relative neglect of the suffragists:

The NUWSS adopted a peaceful and non-confrontational approach. Members believed that success could be gained by argument and education. The organisation tried to raise its profile peacefully with posters, leaflets, calendars and public meetings.

[Here.]

Since the 1960s, there has been a gradual increase in the sense that protest, particularly violent, highly emotional protest, is the proper way to settle disagreement. I can quite understand that many people object to Donald Trump as US President. But that disagreement was subjected to a democratic test and Trump won. Whatever path the losers of such a test now follow ought surely to take account both of the democratic result and the need to preserve the order of the American republic: in short, if everytime you dislike your leader you 'protest' and 'resist', it's hard to see how a republic can survive.

Protest, particularly mass public protest suffers from two main defects. It is disruptive of order, and civic peace is perhaps the main desideratum of public life. Moreover it tends to be blunt: I'm not at all sure what the Women's March recently was objecting to precisely (besides losing the election), still less what it proposed to put in its place.

I suppose (though I'm not completely convinced) that there is a place for The Protester. But I'm sure it's not so great a place as is currently given. If we are to have a pantheon of political role models, let's emphasize a bit more those who conform for the sake of peace, those who bite their tongues and those who compromise.  That goes for both 'sides': if a boorish, expressive individualism characterises much of the reaction to Trump, it also characterises much of the Trump phenomenon as well.

Cordoba revisited: political thought or campaigning politics

                                       Heretical tabernacle-Cathedral of Canterbury

My (immediately) previous post on the Mosque/Cathedral/Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba produced some helpful responses online (and off) which probably helped me see more clearly part of what I was driving at.

The problem with the article from The Guardian is that it gives the overwhelming impression that the Catholic Church was acting unreasonably. (That of course is an impression that the Guardian's readership would doubtless already incline towards before reading the article.) As such, it does very little to move the readership's understanding of religion/politics beyond where it already stands: instead of deepening understanding, it simply confirms an existing understanding by slanting the evidence.

That problem sits within a more general problem with reporting politics: a greater emphasis on politics as a day to day party struggle rather than a longer term and deeper question about how to run society. It's similar to the domination of much economic coverage by the day to day movements of the markets, and much less by the deeper underlying economic issues. That problem is particularly difficult in Scotland where a (comparative) absence of think tanks, journals and university involvement has led to the domination of campaigning politics with only the thinnest foundation of deeper but still applied political thought to back it up.

Perhaps the key difference between what I might term 'political thought' and 'campaigning politics' is that the former tries to understand while the latter tries simply to win. Of course, if you are an anti-clerical leftist, campaigning politics would encourage you to paint the Church as a bunch of unreasonable fools trying to wreck the tourist industry. Of course, if you are a 'No' campaigner, the SNP are a bunch of feckless (National) Socialists with a personality cult (but where the leader is embalmed in the Palace of Westminster rather than the Kremlin). The increasingly hysterical outbursts from the Scottish Secular Society are all based on the tactic of making the alternatives unthinkable: of course, secularism is the only way to run the state.

I suppose it's probably unreasonable to expect The Guardian to veer more towards the 'political thought' side of the disjunction particularly on the place of religion in society. But it's a pity. Of course, a site like the Cathedral of Cordoba is going to be contested. Of course Muslims and anti-clericalists and Catholics are going to have different interpretations of its history and of its current status. I don't know how you resolve those tensions, indeed, I'm sure you don't: you live with them. But I think there are at least two key possibilities that are important tools which help and which are often overlooked. First, there is doing nothing. I'd encourage everyone involved here to do nothing: clearly there has been some sort of modus vivendi achieved up till now and I'd encourage everyone at least to think about letting sleeping modi lie. Secondly, there is regret. It's easy to underestimate how much Catholics in the UK do regret that our churches were ripped out of our hands. It's easy to get whipped up about it. But rather than starting a campaign for Canterbury Cathedral to be renamed the 'Heretical Tabernacle-Cathedral Church of Canterbury' (thus doing justice to both its many-layered history and Catholic/Protestant viewpoint) far better to moan silently and make feeble jokes (like the one just made) and try instead to find ways of not letting a potential sore point stop Anglicans and Catholics living together in fruitful co-operation.

To do that, however, requires the desire to understand rather than win as at least a starting point. I know that Anglicans have a different view of history and a different understanding of the status of their Church. I think they're wrong, but then they think we're wrong. That's what politics is like: learning to live with disagreement. As I ended the previous post:

Where you stand on those issues will no doubt depend on where you are coming from. Fair enough. But absolutely nothing is gained in an area of great sensitivity by pretending that one party is acting irrationally: living with this sort of dispute is only possible through making a serious attempt to understand the other points of view involved.

Richard Harries and secularism

                                        Lord Harries. Or a secularist. Thinking.


I confess I hadn't realized that the House of Lords were debating 'religion and belief' until it was all over (Hansard here). Anyway, I'm going to focus on the contribution made by Lord Harries, former Anglican Bishop of Oxford, and particularly to his discussion of secularism.

Now despite the continual claim by secularists that secularism is a clearly good thing and that it's very different from atheism, I've posted enough on this subject in the past to make my own position (and the reasons for it) clear: 'secularism' is an ill defined word and, so far as it is actually used in modern Britain, it usually means atheism applied to the political realm. (Perhaps the main posts on this have been here and here. If you're an atheist, do try and deal with the arguments before coming on here to tell me I'm an idiot.)

Bryce Gallie came up with the term 'essentially contested concepts' (here) for terms that served as openings to debate. The flipside of that is the existence of 'essentially uncontested' words which serve to structure debate by closing it down. In Scotland, it is essentially uncontested that we are progressive. More generally, it is essentially uncontested that religions are faiths and that good government is secular. Well, I contest all of those, but let's focus on the latter claim as channelled by Lord Harries (from Hansard here).


...we need to be very careful about the use of that word secular. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, draws a helpful distinction between programmatic and procedural secularism. The latter is what we must all accept, for it refers to a set of procedures, arrangements and rules of discourse that enable rational debate to take place and decisions to be made with everyone participating on an equal basis. Programmatic secularism, however, has been perceived as an attempt to drive the religious voices out of the public square altogether, and this must be resisted, for the public square is quite rightly a crowded place where all voices need to be heard, including religious ones. As often as not, those religious voices will be translated into the shared assumptions of public reasoning, but this should not be mandatory.

[...]

Thirdly, public authorities should beware of privileging only certain forms of authority or religious representation. There are often groups, such as women, who need to be heard and who lack access to power. Public authorities should not replicate and reinforce oppressive practices that might be present in a particular faith community.

Fourthly, in a society in which we all have multiple identities, our identity as UK citizens imposes a duty to the state. While both Christians and Muslims, for example, will claim a higher loyalty, according to the tenets of their religion, this must not be interpreted as loyalty to a foreign power structure, as it was, for example, by some Roman Catholics in the 16th century.

Fifthly, in devising public policy we need to take into account where we are as a result of our history and culture. There is no neutral realm, and what we have now is a quite specific achievement that has been worked out over many centuries. It is a fantasy to think that there is some neutral secular blueprint existing somewhere else, which can simply be plonked down. Clearly, one feature of where we are now is the existence of an established church, and here of course I have to declare an interest as someone who has had the privilege and fulfilment of being a bishop in that church, serving society for my lifetime.

Let's kick off with that distinction between programmatic and procedural secularism. Let's agree that programmatic secularism ('an attempt to drive the religious voices out of the public square altogether') is wrong. What of procedural secularism?

The latter is what we must all accept, for it refers to a set of procedures, arrangements and rules of discourse that enable rational debate to take place and decisions to be made with everyone participating on an equal basis.

Well, contrarian as I am, why must I accept this? Let's start by cavilling at the word 'secularism' here. If the claim was: 'we must support a set of procedures etc that enable rational debate to take place etc and decisions to be made with everyone participating on an equal basis', I might (for might see below) be inclined to accept it. But to describe that as secular is (given the normal use of the word) profoundly misleading. The problem of course is that what is rational and what is equal (or more exactly fair) is highly contested: to bracket out religion from what constitutes fairness and rationality is to concede far too much without discussion. (For a fuller development of this thought, think eg Alasdair MacIntyre.) So by all means let's look for those rational and fair procedures, but let's not assume that they can be described as secular without a great deal of explanation. (Indeed, just to be provocative, let's at least consider the possibility that they have to be religious, at least in the sense of requiring the social cohesion of a civil religion.)

Let's move on to the third point: public authorities should beware of privileging only certain forms of authority or religious representation. 

There's a bit of a non sequitur from the Bishop here: the claim 1) public authorities should beware of privileging only certain forms of authority or religious representation is linked (in the next sentence ) to 2) there are often groups, such as women, who need to be heard and who lack access to power. Public authorities should not replicate and reinforce oppressive practices that might be present in a particular faith community. The two claims are in principle distinct. I suspect that, to put forward a coherent point,  what he should be saying here is that, when privileging religions, one should be careful not to encourage oppressive practices. But what it sounds like (and again, I suspect this is deliberate or at least the culpable negligence of the bien pensant eager for social approval) is that the existence of some oppression within religion means that no subset of religions should be given privileges over other religions. The absurdity of the latter claim is clear: whilst we should clearly be careful about reinforcing (say) FGM in some religions or cultures, that carefulness has absolutely no implications for the privileged role of (say) the Church of England in national life. (I would also mention here the weaseliness of the word 'oppression': I have no doubt at all that Lord Harries regards the exclusion of women from (ordained) ministry as oppression and, hence, the exclusion of most traditional religions from 'privilege' in principle as entirely justifiable: highly convenient, no doubt, for the sort of liberal Protestantism he embodies.)

Moving on to point four: While both Christians and Muslims, for example, will claim a higher loyalty, according to the tenets of their religion, this must not be interpreted as loyalty to a foreign power structure, as it was, for example, by some Roman Catholics in the 16th century.

OK. Point received. Nonsense. My loyalty to Catholicism is not simply to obey everything coming out of the Vatican. But equally, I do have a loyalty to a 'foreign power structure'. (And analogous things can be said about Jews and Muslims etc etc.) Inconvenient for Erastians, I know, but get over it: that's what proper religions are like.


Fifthly, in devising public policy we need to take into account where we are as a result of our history and culture. There is no neutral realm, and what we have now is a quite specific achievement that has been worked out over many centuries. It is a fantasy to think that there is some neutral secular blueprint existing somewhere else, which can simply be plonked down. 

Now, this I agree with!! To adopt 'secularism' as a 'essentially uncontested' term is to assume a rupture of pietas and tradition: the existing state (State and situation) of the UK is not one where there is a neat separation between Church and State (let alone between Christianity and the State). If secularism is adopted as an unproblematic aim, then, on almost any interpretation of the word (and certainly on any of the usual meanings chucked around by the secularist clubs), we would need to change and abandon traditional ways of doing things. So, we need to ask, why? On what grounds (and on what evidence) do we assume that changing the (rather lazy vague Protestantism) of Scottish and English history in favour of some Spartist atheism is going to benefit anyone? I'm sure there's some tweaking to be done (in particular to allow, eg, theists from a non-Christian background such as Muslims to participate fully and bring up their children in their religion). But my bet would be that those sorts of accommodations would be more easily obtained in a culture and a State run by Christians (say) signed up to Dignitatis Humanae


It is in accordance with their dignity as persons-that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility-that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth, once it is known, and to order their whole lives in accord with the demands of truth. However, men cannot discharge these obligations in a manner in keeping with their own nature unless they enjoy immunity from external coercion as well as psychological freedom. Therefore the right to religious freedom has its foundation not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature. In consequence, the right to this immunity continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it and the exercise of this right is not to be impeded, provided that just public order be observed.

Further light is shed on the subject if one considers that the highest norm of human life is the divine law-eternal, objective and universal-whereby God orders, directs and governs the entire universe and all the ways of the human community by a plan conceived in wisdom and love. Man has been made by God to participate in this law, with the result that, under the gentle disposition of divine Providence, he can come to perceive ever more fully the truth that is unchanging. Wherefore every man has the duty, and therefore the right, to seek the truth in matters religious in order that he may with prudence form for himself right and true judgments of conscience, under use of all suitable means.

than by the sort of secularist whose view of religion is summed up in the following (here)

The Cambridge Secular Society was formed in 2009 to provide a forum for likeminded freethinkers concerned that religion, far from being in terminal decline, is making a comeback. With the establishment still in the thrall of religion the reasons are easy to see, for the politicians it is the grovelling pursuit of votes that motivates them along with the misguided idea that religion is good for us and our children, for others it is the cosy familiarity of Bishops smothering us all with pious words and incantations of God's love...

'Secularism' is not a clear desideratum. Lord Harries is wrong to accept procedural secularism as an aim. Instead, we should aim for a public space and debate that is rational and just, but also accepting that what this means is not easy and will involve conflicting views. How we live with that conflict is what matters, and that will be more easily done within the sort of broad theism (I might even be tempted to say deism) that existed within the institutionalized Protestantism of the existing State than within the shrill certainties of secularism.

On reading Walter Scott...

 
                                                    All in the best possible taste.


As most Scots, I shall be spending the months leading up to the Independence referendum reading Sir Walter Scott. (Certainly the novels and may branch out.)

I'm only about half a dozen in so far, so I reserve final judgment. Having read a scattering of them before, I've found that a concerted effort pays off: you need to get into his rhythm and popping in and out over a number of years doesn't make this easy.

My main reasons for even attempting this are fairly straightforward. Scott is one of the seminal figures of European culture and, in particular, romanticism. He is clearly one of the central figures of Scottish literary culture. He offers an imaginative engagement with the past, particularly Scotland's past, when we are told, by our nation's new clerisy, that our past is merely a 'dark place'. Moreover, now that all that is worthwhile in Anglicanism has been received into the Catholic Church as part of the Ordinariate's patrimony, it is probably worthwhile grappling with Scott as part of that Episcopalian tradition which itself grappled with the Catholic heritage of the Middle Ages.

Anyway, apart from that broader concern to engage imaginatively with the past, a couple of more specific issues have quickly emerged from starting on the novels. First, there is Scott's multiplying of perspectives: fictitious introductions, notes pointing his divergence from historical accuracy, Lowlanders looking at Highlanders etc. A key aspect of this is what A N Wilson notes as Scott's double perspective:

Two voices seem to be heard: that of an eighteenth-century Tory rationalist, and that of a timeless lover of romance, marvels and chivalry. 

In addition -again noted by Wilson- there is the emphasis on the possibility of the life of private virtue, in particular, within the household, as opposed to the life of the state, but without abandoning an involvement in that public life: there is due respect here paid to the family, civil society and the state, but without the modern tendency, all too prominent in modern Scotland, to reduce everything to the state.

If I were sticking on my cultural nationalist bonnet, it's hard to resist the initial thought that, through the lack of an education in Scottish history and culture (let alone religious history and culture) in our schools, we have raised up a generation that, even though laying claim to a national identity, cares little about the historical specifics of that identity: modern nationalism as a creature of the emaciation of culture rather than as a reaction to that emaciation. (And we might entertain similar thoughts about the rest of the UK and, indeed, the Catholic Church: is the failure to engage adequately with the past the single greatest cultural failing of our age?)

More, no doubt, in due course...

O tempora! O mores!

Apologies for being rather quiet recently. (Not that, I suspect, such a blessed relief is the sort of thing one needs to apologize for...) Not only a large slab of work to be got through, but a slight detachment from the blooming buzzing confusion of the internet brought on by the normal emotional flatness after too much food and booze and too much squabbling on comboxes before Christmas.

Anyway, to ease myself gradually back into the white heat of the culture war that is Catholicism contra mundum...

I was flipping through The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse in the loo (as you do), when I came across this rather optimistic passage in the introduction:

I have given references in a good many cases to easily accessible English translations, especially when they are to be found in the English Hymnal or Hymns Ancient and Modern (penultimate edition), as one or other of these is to be found in most cultivated English households.

Now putting aside any nationalist quibbles about suspected hints that we beyond the Border would be content merely with back numbers of the Broons annuals in our libraries, it is unimaginable that anything similar could be written today (the first edition of the Book of Medieval Verse was 1928 but my printing is 1946). It's difficult to know where to start. A book of music? A book of Christian music? Any book that all educated people would be expected to have? Would we even expect cultivated homes to possess a copy of the Bible these days? (I'm afraid when mulling this over that the only book I suspected most 'cultivated' Scottish homes might be expected to possess these days would be Trainspotting. I'm simply going to ignore this thought as a rather troublesome nightmare.)

Without a shared (and deep) artistic culture, the world we inhabit is diminished. Our ability to pass on accumulated wisdom and solidarities to our children is also diminished. Religion of course isn't just a matter of culture: it is primarily about an openness to a real intelligence and agency that transcends the world. But human flourishing is a matter of our natural as well as our supernatural end. And access to that supernatural end is itself restricted if we live in a culture that at best ignores and even actively frustrates that supernatural end.

It's pretty clear that Pope Francis is not an obvious recruit to the sort of conservative, culture warfare that I generally espouse on this blog. That doesn't really bother me: Popes don't have to do everything; and, moreover, culture warfare needs the corrective of a constant reminder that the centre of our concerns isn't Virgil but Jesus. Moreover, the sort of popular piety that Francis clearly does strongly favour is itself a conservative cultural tradition: the sort of simple trust in established forms that leads an illiterate peasant to a traditional veneration of a shrine ought to lead the 'cultivated' to a veneration for traditional high culture (but which also ought to include veneration of that shrine).

Grace does not abolish nature but perfects it. Christianity does not abolish culture but perfects it. It is easy for conservatives to get trapped in traditional forms for their own sake and not see beyond them. But there is an equal danger in thinking that you can abolish culture and get to God without it. And that danger is particularly acute when the culture we would do without is precisely one that was shaped with reference to that supernatural end of the Beatific Vision.

I'm not sure what the Catholic equivalent of the English Hymnal would be. But in any case, I've got a copy of it, so I guess that means I'm cultivated, innit?

Advent antiphons: O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel


O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.

Isaiah, viii, 14:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

(For explanation, see here.)

Advent antiphons: O Rex Gentium

O Rex Gentium

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.


Haggai, ii, 7:

And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts.

 

(For explanation, see here.)

Advent antiphons: O Oriens

O Oriens

O Morning Star

splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.

Wisdom. 7, 26:

For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.

Hebrews, i, 3:

Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high

Malachi, iv, 2:

But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

(For explanation, see here.)

Advent antiphons: O Clavis David

                                                        King David

O Clavis David


O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.


Isaiah, xxii, 22:

And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.

Revelation, iii, 7:

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;

Isaiah, xlii, 7:

To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.

 

(For explanation, see here.)

Advent antiphons: O Radix Jesse

                                                              Jesse

O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.


Isaiah xi, 10:

And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.

Revelation, xxii, 16:

I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.



(For explanation, see here.)

Advent antiphons: O Adonai

                                                    God the Father


O Adonai


O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.


Exodus iii, 14:

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.


John, viii, 58:

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

 

(For explanation, see here.) 

Advent antiphons: O sapientia

                                         
                                                            Solomon

In the last days of Advent, I shall be posting the  'O Antiphons' daily in their translation from the Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham,  together with relevant passages of Scripture from the King James Version. (Scripture readings suggested by Daniels' 'The Prayer Book Its History, Language and Content.') I hope this will both contribute to our preparation for Christmas and be an exercise in the use of the Anglican Patrimony.

O Sapientia:

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

Ecclesiasticus, xxiv. 3:

He will hide his words for a time, and the lips of many shall declare his wisdom.

Wisdom of Solomon, viii, 1:

Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things.

1 Corinthians, i, 24:

But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Proverbs i-ix:


The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel;
To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding;
To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
To give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.
A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:
To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:
For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.

 

Basic Catholic philosophical reading list

                                                      I have been thinking...

This is going to be one of those posts where I mull to no good purpose whilst sticking up some points so that I don't lose sight of them in the future. You have been warned....

I've previously mentioned my conviction that the most serious problem facing the Church is a lack of basic religious education. Let's split that into theological education and philosophical education. The absence of theological education can -to some extent- be remedied by using the Catechism. Either read it (and keep on reading it) yourself or do one of the numerous courses available on it. It's not  perfect solution, but at least it should stop most of the daftnesses of the 'It doesn't matter whether you go to Mass or not' and 'Vatican II abolished that' sort. (If you want a more straightforward summary without any concessions to modernity, keep a copy of either the Penny Catechism or the Baltimore Catechism as a back up.)

That leaves philosophical education. Well, OK, first question: why do we need philosophical education as Catholics? (And here I'm talking primarily about reasonably intelligent laity, not priests or religious.) Why aren't the above Catechisms enough? Roughly, this is because the theology of the Catechisms stands on philosophy: without that background, it is often reduced to simple fideistic statements. The Catechisms mostly sort out the what we believe; but they usually do not sort out the why, particularly that part of the why which is based on natural reason rather than revelation.

Catholic philosophy's status as the 'ancilla theologiae' (the handmaid of theology) is particularly important when we're dealing with a society that is post-Christian and post dead white males. The average (fairly intellectual) Victorian convert would have been a Christian of some sort with a background in Greek and Latin literature: to someone who is worrying about whether to be a Catholic or an Anglican or even a Platonist the sort of material in the Catechism is probably going to be most important. The average (fairly intellectual) modern convert probably thinks that Xena Warrior Princess is genuine history (or at least a genuine post modern jouissance) and that Galileo disproved Aristotle by dropping him off the Tower of Pisa. Nothing in the Catechism is (directly) going to touch  that sort of worldview. (And note that this isn't just a matter of apologetics: what is played out in a public space between individuals has its analogue inside the mind when individuals wonder if Catholic teaching makes sense to them: not only will converts fail to be made, but practising Catholics will start to believe that individual doctrines -or even the whole system- fails to make sense.)

Without a background in that sort of shared classical philosophical Ideenraum which characterizes all Catholic theology, key elements of Catholic teaching are going to look increasingly bizarre. For example, in the recent debate over same sex 'marriage', failure of even many Catholics to understand (in Aristotelian terms which have their analogues in Platonism) the concepts of a nature, embodied in a form, or of potentiality which is actualized, makes it very difficult to explain arguments against same sex 'marriage' which embody claims about the true purpose of marriage. (And those metaphysical points are in addition to the problems which arise from a failure to make clear the classical philosophical assumption that politics is about the promotion of flourishing rather than simply the creation of negative liberty.)

So we need a way of Catholics and others to grapple with the philosophical worldview on which revealed theology stands. (And that way has to be cheaper than (eg) the courses at Maryvale.) There is (to my knowledge) no one single book that even fully explains such a worldview, let alone tries to justify it. (And that of course is in part because philosophy can't as neatly be separated out into the what and the why: to philosophize is to engage critically with the views, not just to know what they are.) What books would I therefore recommend? My answer here is very much a work in progress: what I'm going to say is not right, but it's my best stab at the moment. (So any further suggestions gratefully received.)

Peter Kreeft's reading list won't do (however excellent it is): it's too long and wouldn't serve my main purpose (which is, roughly, to provide an introduction to the philosophical background of Catholic theology which explains primarily the what but enough of the why so that the what retains a plausibility which can be built on if you wish to pursue more detailed studies). There is, for example, not much point in grappling with the intricacies of Descartes and Mill when the absolutely key thing to know about them is that they are wrong and why.

Here's a tentative short leet:

Peter Kreeft: Socratic Logic. One to live with rather than to read through in one sitting.

Edward Feser: The Last Superstition. Polemical, but does make clear why the claim that Plato and Aristotle are still relevant isn't just an antiquarian fancy.

John Vella: Aristotle: A Guide for the Perplexed. Makes Aristotle sound like a neo-Thomist (which is fine for present purposes even if I think Vella oversystematizes the actual Aristotle). I have no idea why I can only find this on Italian Google books! The text is in English (and is still in print).

Leo Strauss: Natural Right and History.  I know Leo Strauss is supposed to be the Neo-Con devil incarnate whose followers eat babies and started the Iraq war. I'm not a Straussian, but this simply strikes me as a good, quick introduction to an approach in politics which is recognizably in keeping with classical models.

John A .Oesterle: Ethics: the introduction to Moral Science. Out of print -so I'm not totally happy about recommending this. But does give a short but clear account of moral philosophy from a Catholic perspective.


I've tried to cover analogues to a three volume traditional cursus philosophiae: typically, logic, metaphysics and ethics. For trying to bash sense into a hostile atheist, I'd try John Haldane's Atheism and Theism, just because Smart and Haldane model what a reasonable encounter between theism and atheism should look like. (If you just want to have fun and don't mind irritating your atheist, give them Feser's work above!)

Perhaps MOOCs will provide an alternative strategy?

------------------------------

Putting all that aside and coming at it from a completely different direction, I came across some discussions on Continuing Anglican websites about what a reading list in orthodox Anglican theology might look like. Both because there are some analogies between our purposes -ie how do individuals with limited resources get a basic grasp on orthodox religion- and because it begins to touch on a question that the Ordinariate will have to wrestle with (ie what is the Anglican intellectual patrimony that can be brought across the Tiber), I include some links below:

The New Contining Anglican: The advantage of a short reading list for study.
                                               Building an Anglican library. (Probably the most useful.)
                                               Anglican Theological Education I
                                               Anglican Theological Education II

Anglican Continuum: See combox on this post for a debate about reading material.

I'd stress that these links aren't to Catholic sites: I'm only including them as a convenient list for some analogous thoughts on what an 'unofficial' education in orthodoxy might look like and how it might be achieved. (And for any Anglicans dropping by!)

George Galloway on Catholicism in an independent Scotland

                                                Yes, I know it's a cheap shot

George Galloway is not one of my favourite people. He strikes me as representative of that well known type of apparently strong, charismatic leader in left wing politics that talks a good game, but ends by screwing up other people's lives. (That of course is if they ever get any power. If not, they just do a lot of screwing: he's apparently on the fourth Mrs G just now.)

Anyway, Galloway has been warning that Catholics should be careful about voting for independence:

Speaking to the Sunday Herald, Galloway warned Scotland's Catholics to be "careful what they wish for" in the 2014 independence referendum, and claimed that as a Roman Catholic he would have concerns about living in a post- independence, SNP-led Scotland.

The Respect MP for Bradford West said "there's an historic crossover between Scottish nationalism and anti-Irish-Roman Catholicism" and warned Catholic schools would be threatened by independence.

Galloway said: "My own experience of growing up as a Roman Catholic in Scotland has led me to fear independence in Scotland.

"The possibility of Scotland being a kind of Stormont [the Ulster parliament] is a real one. I wrote a book recently about Neil Lennon's year of living dangerously and in the course of it I had to revisit some of my own experiences.

"Of course, most Scottish people are not swivel-eyed, loyalist sectarians but there are a large number of them. A large six-figure number, and if I were living in Scotland as a Roman Catholic I would be worried about that.

"I really urge Scotland's Catholics to be careful what they wish for, because the SNP has, in its roots, a Tory, anti-Catholic mentality. William Wolfe, former leader – before Alex Salmond's time but still within my lifetime – called for the Pope to be banned from visiting the country."

(Full article here.)

It's quite true that William Wolfe did have some 'odd' views. For example:

He went on to describe the Roman Catholic church as the world’s “largest and most widespread political organisation” which had “centuries of experience, infinite patience and Machiavellian skill, using good or evil, wealth or poverty, left or right political parties, black men or white men, in fact any person, organisation or circumstance which is likely to serve the ultimate aim of the church”.

David Torrance covers the events here . But that sort of nationalist Protestant chippiness (familiar to readers of Archbishop Cranmer's blog) has all but disappeared from the modern SNP, in part because of a drive to win Catholic votes from Labour and, more importantly perhaps, because the younger generation of Nationalist politicos is as secularist as any sensible modern youth could be.

If there is a danger to Catholicism in an independent Scotland, it's from that secularizing tendency in a new political class. The National Secular Society and its ilk bombard the letters columns of Scotland's press with demands for the exclusion of religion from this or that sphere, and any replies in the comboxes are met with keyboard warriors rejoicing in the vision of a future Scotland where the last minister is strangled with the last copy of the Sunday Post. Militant secularism is certainly deeply embedded in 'progressive' politics up here and, in the absence of any sort of Burkean conservatism in Scotland, there isn't much of principled opposition to it.

So I agree with George Galloway that, should there be an independent Scotland, as members of the most obviously countercultural church, we'd need to be on our guard against (especially) a challenge to Catholic schools. But as education is already a devolved matter, that possibility exists already.

As it stands, it would be electoral suicide for the SNP or anyone else to aim to attack Catholic schools. I suspect that will change and I suspect the attacks will come at some stage, whether or not Scotland becomes independent. Certainly, the excitement generated by a newly independent nation might provoke a taste for nutty modernizing. (Whilst, if there is no independence, it's hard to imagine the future of Scottish politics other than a generation long sulk while the Tories use the opportunity to get UKIP supporters onside by bludgeoning 'rebellious Scots'.) Certainly, the wish to draw a clear line of separation between an outmoded British state with funny mediaeval habits and a nice new shiny Scotland with none of that sort of thing might again lead to increased attacks on religion in the public sphere.

But then, when you've got a United Kingdom Conservative Party forcing through same sex 'marriage', secularizing tendencies are hardly unknown elsewhere, are they?

My best guess is that an independent Scotland probably would see greater pressure particularly in the area of Catholic schools, but that, in everything else, the UK in substance is going to be as hostile to religion in the public sphere as could be wished. The rump of the UK would still have the form of an Established Church etc, whilst the last vestiges of the Church of Scotland as the National Church here will disappear. But otherwise, those of us who have not got 'with the programme' are going to find life distinctly chilly, whichever side of the border we end up.

Women priests, women Hamlets?

                                             What do you mean I can't be a Bishop?

Having listened to various bien pensants fulminating against the Church of England for not immediately allowing women bishops, I can't help feeling glad to be well out of it. Apart from worrying that, should politicians really decide to override the Synod and impose 'equality', they might get a taste for it (did I really hear Frank Field on Radio 4's PM hinting that if ever the majority of Catholics wanted women priests then MPs should step in give effect to that view?), as a Scot and a Catholic, it's really not much of my business.

It's clear that the Synod decision is more about dissatisfaction with the protection offered to the minority opposed to women's ordination than it is directly about opposing women bishops. It's also clear that for any relatively straightforward Catholic like myself the matter is closed by the definitive teachings contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis and the CDF's responsum making clear that the impossibility of women's priestly ordination is part of the deposit of faith.

It's impossible to convince non-Christians that women can't be priests. From an outsider's point of view, it's just another job, it's just another position of power. Women have historically been excluded from such positions in other areas, and the Church just needs to catch up. But I wonder if at least some of the point of the exclusion can be caught from looking at the theatre. As yet (and who knows what fresh hell awaits my children) we do not have crowds of demonstrators demanding that Hamlet is played by a woman or that Violetta in La Traviata is sung by Bryn Terfel. With the exception of rare cases of parody or deliberate playing with gender expectations (such as Asta Nielsen above), we accept that it matters that women are played by women and men by men. (Even where the roles are swapped, it doesn't cease to matter: it's just that we're playing with what matters.)

The prime task of a priest is not to organize the church raffle or raise money for the roof: he is there to impersonate Christ, particularly in the sacrifice of the Mass:



1548 In the ecclesial service of the ordained minister, it is Christ himself who is present to his Church as Head of his Body, Shepherd of his flock, high priest of the redemptive sacrifice, Teacher of Truth. This is what the Church means by saying that the priest, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, acts in persona Christi Capitis:

It is the same priest, Christ Jesus, whose sacred person his minister truly represents. Now the minister, by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is truly made like to the high priest and possesses the authority to act in the power and place of the person of Christ himself (virtute ac persona ipsius Christi).

Christ is the source of all priesthood: the priest of the old law was a figure of Christ, and the priest of the new law acts in the person of Christ.

1549 Through the ordained ministry, especially that of bishops and priests, the presence of Christ as head of the Church is made visible in the midst of the community of believers.26 In the beautiful expression of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the bishop is typos tou Patros: he is like the living image of God the Father. (From the Catechism.)

Now I fully accept that it is one thing to note that priest acts in persona Christi, another to show that it is impossible for a woman to do so. (The argument goes back and forth until settled, as it has been, by Magisterial authority.) But why is it that we find it so easy to accept that Hamlet can normally only be impersonated by a man, but so difficult to accept that Christ can only be impersonated by a man?

In fine, gender and sex matter. A male Hamlet does not convey the same set of meanings as a female Hamlet. A female priest does not convey the same set of meanings as a male one. It is of course open to theologians to argue that the set of meanings conveyed by a female priesthood are better than those conveyed by a solely male one (open, that is, unless you accept the Magisterial authority of the Papacy), just as it is possible to argue that Hamlet is better played by a woman. But what it is not possible within a Christianity that bears any recognizable relationship to the catholic tradition is to argue that it is simply a matter of equal jobs for women.

Haldane, celibacy and crisis

Spotting a link (H/T Catholic Herald)  to John Haldane's article in the Tablet  which, among other things, called for the admission of married men to the priesthood, prompted me to go out and buy the wretched paper.

The shortened online version (which I've linked to above) perhaps gives a misleading impression of the whole article: the suggestion about celibacy takes up only a couple of paragraphs, the bulk of the article being a reflection on 'A Church in dire need'. On the other hand, those paragraphs form the conclusion to the article, and it's hard not to see them being offered as the single most important solution to the crisis in the Church.

This is not a case of simply increasing the number of clergy, nor is it a easy way to solve the decline in vocations. Rather, a married contingent can better resemble and reassemble the faithful and speak to people of what they know about their needs and difficulties. Married priests could also speak to celibates from within the brotherhood of the ordained. Even if it were only for the sake of providing a compelling argument against this proposal, the matter should be addressed as the Synod of Bishops, currently gathered in Rome, reflects on the challenge of the New Evangelization.

The crisis deepens and still we are waiting. Let it not be said of the synod, 'We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet, Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street."

The diagnosis of the crisis is that the Church is under two forms of attack: an elite, post Enlightenment attack on Catholicism as the most conspicuous opposition to secular values; and a popular attack on the institution as a result of priestly abuse. Implicit in the article is also a third element in the crisis: a weakness within the Church in part characterized by

...a rise in materialism marked at one level by an implicit adoption of a general consumerist culture, and at another by the politicization of religious thought and behaviour. The latter comes in two forms: 'conservative' and 'progressive', and although each opposes the other, they are united in seeking recognition and influence. The 'conservative' version is nostalgic and slavish; the 'progressive' variant is faithless and craven in its desire for secular acceptance.

Now although the article isn't entirely explicit about this, I take it that it's the second and third elements of the crisis (the popular disgust with the Church, and the weakness within the Church) that removal of compulsory celibacy is supposed particularly to remedy: it's hard to see how such a change would affect an elite attack that has been going on since the 18th century.

My problem with this is that, coming from an Episcopalian background, I've seen married priests in action. I've also seen the admission of candidates to priesthood on a '(shortened) formation' (Non Stipendary Ministers). (Come to that, I've even seen women priests.) Now my conclusion from this experience is that at best, such a change will make very little difference, and, at worst, it might even exacerbate the crisis. Let me concede one point immediately: it's quite likely that, by allowing shortened formation periods for married men, you would increase numbers of priests. And to the extent that there is a problem with numbers of priests -and there clearly is some problem here- you might have a remedy in Haldane's suggestion. However, I'm not convinced that the shortage of priests is, historically, quite as serious as is being made out: there have been periods (think recusancy) when access to the sacraments has been far more difficult than it is now; there are areas where the shortage is far worse than in Western Europe:

(Source: here.)

Certainly, the existing parish structure of the Church will not survive a further reduction in numbers of priests, but it's by no means clear that's a bad thing. The Episcopal Church in Scotland is dogged by the continuation of small parishes of exclusively elderly congregants, made financially viable by the free labour of non-stipendary ministers. I'm not at all clear that such an immunization to the pressures of changed demographics is a good thing: paradoxically, a measure intended as a 'bold initiative' may simply compound resistance to needful change in how a church engages with modern society.

But let's grant that ordination of married men would carry the advantage of increased numbers of priests. What of the other claimed advantages of being better able to 'resemble and reassemble the faithful and speak to people of what they know about their needs and difficulties'? I'm frankly not convinced by this. There are two aspects to this: a) one of the major problems within the Church is a lay complacency -a contentment with (indeed pride in) the conclusions of their own secularized education and inadequate theological understanding. We need priests who are not like us, but who can remind us of our deficiencies, particularly in catechesis. A priesthood which transcends us is at least as important as a priesthood which resembles us. b) To the extent that 'resemblance' is a desideratum, it's easy to overemphasize the difference that celibacy (or marriage) makes. Educational and class background as well as personality are as much issues here as marital status All in all, I have found rather more in common with some celibate priests than I have with some married priests: married priests in my experience lead to an embourgeoisement of the clergy which can be far, far more off putting than celibacy.

This is perhaps missing the main thrust of the article which, I suspect, at least implicitly, is the line that people within and without the Church will trust it more in the area of child abuse if it has married priests. But to state this is immediately to see that it's flawed reasoning. Everyone really knows that married men are just as likely to abuse as pretend celibates. The statistics show it. Commonsense and anecdote show it. At best, by introducing married men, you may get some people to acknowledge the beginnings of a (putatively positive) change in the Church. But no one coming from this line of thought will regard it as sufficient.

The Catholic Church is widely seen by non-Catholics as having a hang up about sex, and simply bringing in married priests won't cure that. When acquaintances tell me that I'm a member of the world's largest paedophile ring (and they do quite regularly), they know I am married and have children. I don't think they (usually) consider that I am actually abusing my own children, but they do think that I am part of a system which does. I see no reason to assume that having married priests will alter that: they too will be seen as collaborators. Of course, it will be said, if this is the first step, to be followed by allowing contraception, women priests, celebration of gay relationships... Then we'll know that everything is all right. But all that clearly isn't a real possibility for orthodox Catholicism.

In sum, married priests might solve the numbers issue, but even that isn't a clear gain. In regard to the 'softer' advantages such as resemblance to the laity and plausibility in the issue of child abuse, such advantages, even if they exist are small and doubtful; and there are clear disadvantages. (Ask divorced clergy.) Maybe married priests should be allowed: it's clearly possible in a way that allowing women to be priests isn't. But my own view is that the advantages are so unclear that it's an unwise step.

After all, it's not that the married ministry of the Protestant churches is so obviously successful...


But today the Church of Scotland, founded with such lofty ideals, looks to be a kirk in crisis.

Membership has fallen by more than two-thirds in the past 40 years. The number of baptisms, which could indicate future members, has plunged from almost 17,000 in 1991 to just over 6,000 in 2009.


(Full article here.)


[The rather nice photo of a married Greek Catholic Priest above is from the OrthCath blog which also has an interesting article on married priests in the Byzantine Rite.]

Richard Holloway and Leaving Alexandria

I've been putting off posting about Richard Holloway's Leaving Alexandria because I didn't really trust myself to be fair about it. On the personal level, Holloway is charming. Which is, of course, part of the reason he provokes strong views: charm is a very easy gift for those who don't possess it to resent. On the other hand, theologically and philosophically, I can scarcely express how deeply I disagree with him. So all in all a potent affective brew I was content to leave alone for a while.

But it'd been sitting on my Kindle for a while, and I finally succumbed. Given that every review I've read has been favourable (Telegraph linked above; (Glasgow) Herald here) I'm relieved that I can recommend it. And I'm even more relieved that I came away liking Holloway rather more than I did before. The book begins with a heart wrenching return to Kelham Hall, former home of the Society of the Sacred Mission, where Holloway trained as a priest, now transformed into a Local Authority 'events centre', but still with the almost forgotten graveyard of former members of the Society which he visits. Despite a certain amount of posturing that goes on in the book, the sense of loss and regret here I've no doubt is both genuine and genuinely touching. Moreover, the one aspect of his career that really made me fume -how he could have accepted positions of power and authority in the Episcopal Church and then used them to undermine it- takes on a more human aspect: he wasn't fully aware of his developing doubts until after he became Primus. And given the detailed narrative in the book, that claim becomes more plausible than it might seem in the abstract.

OK. So as a human document, read it. But most of the reviews I've seen go further and praise its understanding of religion and God. For example, the Guardian:

Even more valuably, it meditates on the ways in which a doubt-filled life can still be filled with grace. "The mistake," he says, "was to think religion was more than human. I was less sure whether God was also just a human invention, but I was sure religion was." This is simply put, but with the whole weight of a very thoughtful and courageous book behind it, it summarises an argument that a lot of people will find sympathetic, as well as compelling.

On this level, it's hopeless. There's a very clear line of argument running through the book which goes like this. Religion -in its institutional, particularly (Anglo or Roman) Catholic state- is oppressive. Rather than developing the freedom and poetry that is within it, it allows itself to crush and pervert our natural human impulses:

The conservative mind believes that the only way to contain the unruly wills and affections of sinful men is through strong, stable and ruthless institutions that are prepared to sacrifice the individual for the greater good of the community. And the Church was one of the most important of these restraining structures. (Leaving Alexandria, p183).

Here, I think he does identify a problem, but a problem with only some versions of traditional Christianity, and in particular, with the version of Anglo-Catholicism he encountered at Kelham. Anglicanism, even in many of its Anglo-Catholic forms, is profoundly Erastian: it sees itself as a department of the state or world with its own peculiar, and heavily circumscribed sphere. And that sphere is indeed often social control: reconciling us peasants to the existing political power. In essence, Holloway sees 'good' religion as being a conscience: a critical and prophetic voice which challenges the world and calls it to a greater depth and love. But when it comes to work -moral thinking beyond the immediate and pastoral; creation of institutions and the rule of law- that's not religion's job: that's the job of the world. And by the end of his career, he's not even sure that religion is that good as a critical voice: if you want poetry, why not turn to a poet? If you want philosophy, why not turn to a philosopher?

When I was an Episcopalian, a lot of priestly activity seemed to be directed within the church: 'Look, we all know you've been brought up in this dreadfully oppressive understanding of God -but now we're going to free you from it!' Having been brought up as an atheist with very little guilt about anything, this always struck me as rather beside the point: I'd been attracted to Christianity, not by its bad bits (it contains human beings, of course it's got bad bits), but by its good bits -and in particular, an understanding of the world (and indeed of sex and personal relationships) that had been developed over two thousand years of constant reflection and engagement with the wisdom of the ancient classical world and Judaism. But the good bits weren't really mentioned or seriously considered. It was all: 'We used to oppress you with the thought that sex was bad, and now we're going to save you from that oppression. We used to think that reason was bad, but now we're going to get you to read and think for yourselves (but just so long as it's only stuff about how bad the Church used to be).' In my gloomiest moments, it all seemed (and still does seem) like a job creation scheme for redundant clergy: 'The only job left for the Church is to free those people still too stupid to leave the Church.'

At its worst, Anglicanism is dumb spirituality and ritualism. It lacks the philosophical background that Catholicism has in scholasticism. Moreover, unlike Holloway's Anglicanism, Catholicism is not just (although it is in part) a critical voice: it is also a constructive voice offering a full vision of a society and human life rather than outsourcing these activities to the state. Catholicism, unlike Holloway's Anglicanism, is not just the drama of priests working out how to spend their life in a world that increasingly ignores them: it is an institution and a tradition which shines forth in the life of every Catholic, from the migrant worker struggling with the injustice of immigration systems to the politician struggling with establishing a cohesive society; from the campaigner struggling to preserve the institution of marriage against sexual licence, to the families abandoned by a partner who has succumbed to that licence.

Institutions such as schools (or seminaries) always have their crassnesses. So do individuals. Pointing to their inevitable failings, whilst part of the struggle to make lives better, should not entail the abolition of either. Religion is in part the institutionalization of that struggle for meaning and love that ought to be part of the highest human activity. To abolish it is not to achieve salvation, but only to deliver us defenceless either into the crassness of secular institutions or into the emptiness of the individual who is sufficient unto himself.

The pornography of confusion

Well, I spent some of my free time over Easter reading Christ the Stranger: the Theology of Rowan Williams (ISBN-13: 978-0567599711) (H/T Peter Ould).

I've always thought of Rowan Williams as being a fine example of what happens to a good man in a bad culture: unless individuals, however talented and well intentioned are supported by good institutions and culture, they are incapable of complete flourishing. By being placed in an ecclesial community such as Anglicanism which largely seems to have abandoned any attempt at following Catholic intellectual or spiritual authority, there are limits to what any individual can achieve.

The book itself is quite thin: intellectually and (metaphorically on a Kindle but literally in paper) in size. A serious failing is the lack of any deep engagement with the sources of his theology. My own suspicion is that the key element in Williams' thought is a principled resistance to clarity of reasoning (or superficial ratiocination if you prefer) derived from tendencies in Russian thought (I found Lesley Chamberlain helpful here) and from Gillian Rose's reading of Hegel as a refusal of easy reconciliation of tensions in society and thought (a bit like MacDiarmid's 'anti-syzygy') rather than the traditional view of the upbeat proclaimer of the end of history in the nineteenth century Prussian state (see especially sections 2.2 and 2.3 here).

Avoiding any attempt at being totally fair to Williams -if I knew enough to do that, I wouldn't have been reading an introductory work on him- the sort of picture which emerges from Christ the Stranger at any rate is a relishing of not being clear. And that sort of line is one you can't help but encounter quite regularly in modern religion: at best a refusal of easy certainties; at worst, a self-indulgence in intellectual obfuscation on the one hand, and the sort of rambling on about 'wounded healers' that leads to the privileging of immoral behaviour as a path to holiness on the other.

And against this, we have Catholic Scholasticism with its emphasis on clarity of reasoning and system, and Catholic moral theology with its attempt to express the complexities of ethics again in clear rules and system. It's here that faithful Catholicism is at its most counter cultural: modern popular and academic culture (certainly within the humanities) does not value system and clarity; modern, magisterial Protestantism again tends not to value these aspects of traditional Catholic thought. Moreover, even within Catholicism itself, there are countervailing tendencies. Traditionalists oppose the anti-rationalism of inherited, past forms to the struggle for clarity; those possessed by the spirit of Vatican II oppose felt and inarticulate experience to the articulated conclusions of canon law and casuistry.

Now there is clearly the possibility of the life in spirit and in intellect being killed by a legalistic system building. If Catholicism thought God and life were exhausted by articulated systems, then some of these criticisms would be fair -and indeed, I have no doubt that, in some specific cases, they were and are fair. But in principle, the attempt to articulate and be clear about human life and God is essential: the drive to clarity and the comprehensiveness of system, if done in the awareness of the ultimate distance between the desired and the achieved outcome, better expresses humility than any immediate embracing and relishing of obscurity.

As Flaubert puts it in Madame Bovary,


Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.


But an acknowledgment of inadequacy does not entail the abandonment of the attempt: better dancing bears than nothing at all.