Spinning straw into gold (or gold into straw)

                                       Definitely not a bishop on a pastoral visit

About this time in the year, I find myself heartily sick of my own voice (and thoughts): I pity those who have to listen to me without the (slight) comfort of actually being me.

Aquinas is supposed to have compared his work to straw after a mystical experience. I suppose the usual way of understanding this remark is that everything looks rough in comparison with a glimpse of heaven. But it might be taken as simply sober reality: 99% of our time is spent with straw, and there is nothing much to be done or complained of about that. So I comfort myself with the thought that my strawiness is simply the human condition rather than some particular failing of my own, and that even straw has its place in the world.

Countercultural Father's (as usual excellent) take on Bishop Conry reminded me of the mood which settled on me after the Cardinal O'Brien affair. It's less the one off failing of this or that particular priest which is so dismaying, but the suspicion that it is in some sense typical: that the failing of a particular bishop is part of a wider and general failing in the Church. And when you add to that worries about (shall we say?) the moral fibre of the papacy or the Synod on the Family, it is very easy to start seeing the modern Church as rather more strawlike than it should be.

Being a nasty, petty minded Anglo-Saxon empiricist, I tend to avoid the longue durée. But I think there's at least something to be said for seeing the Middle Ages as being a constant struggle by the Church to hold out for the true, the beautiful and the good against a bunch of murderous Germanic warlords. If seen from the point of view of a handful of missionaries plonked in the middle of societies that regarded rape and pillage as the height of workaday fun, the Middle Ages seem less a period of sad decline and stagnation between the Glory of Rome and the Renaissance, and a really quite remarkable triumph of patient, Godly persistence in the face of a world of brutality.

And fast forward to the twenty-first century. For all the (correct) cavilling about whether or not we live in a Christian society, in substance, it's clear we don't. Catholicism is a handful of missionaries in a society of Hottentots. (I apologize to Hottentots.) That its successes are few, that many of the 'converts' are lukewarm and sneak off to their ancestral spirits, that many of the missionaries give up and take on the colour of the society about them: this is all to be expected and can be mirrored by similar histories of similar missionary endeavours. Just as the mediaeval Church took on many of the bad habits of the warlords, so the modern Church has taken on the bad habits of the lotus eaters we live among (and indeed are). That isn't an argument for complacency in the face of backsliding and inadequacy, but it is an argument for resolute persistence. All flesh is straw: God makes it into gold. (And we do our best to turn that gold back into straw.)

The only really remarkable thing is that, if you look, you do still find gold. The Catholic intellectual who succeeds in retaining his integrity in a secularized academy. The Catholic musician who succeeds in bringing the transcendent to an audience drugged on love ditties. The Catholic mother who fights to keep holiness in her family. And -not as uncommon as it should be really if we were going by earthly probabilities- the priest who, day after day, really does incarnate Christ for his flock.

Most of us are straw, most of the time. But not everyone, not always. And that's the surprise.

Still going on about that Referendum...

               Enthusiasm 'rises from the conceits of a warmed or overweening brain' 


Still, I suppose, thinking predominantly about the aftermath of the Referendum. There are perhaps three blogposts lurking here which, in an attempt to smother any lingering spirit of separatism, shall henceforth be enfolded in a Most Glorious Union...

With the massive increase in the membership of the SNP, Scottish Greens and the Scottish Socialist Party, the nightmare scenario of the lunatics taking over the asylum may well have arrived. As I blogged before, one of the worries about Independence was that it would deliver Scotland over to a bunch of progressive loons. On the other hand, one of the strongest arguments in favour of Independence was the responsibility of self-government would force a more mature political culture to develop as reality began slapping Holyrood in the face like an old kipper.

Welcome to Nightmare Plus: none of the reality checks of Independence together with the complete absence of any conservative restraint on Scottish politics as the SNP (with a new leader more inclined to progressivism) looks over its shoulder at an opposition consisting of Patrick Harvie and worse.

Part of this brave new  world will of course be the new found mass membership of the SNP and other progressive parties. This leads me on to the question of the much vaunted success of the Referendum in boosting interest in politics. Now, before I go all grinch on you, I suppose I'd better concede that the 80% plus voting rate in the Referendum was a good thing: a gradually increasing non-participation in elections is a bad thing, and I'm pleased this trend has been reversed (at least in this special case). But whilst good in itself, such participation is a paltry thing in the big picture. Unlike many other commentators, I've never met someone who isn't interested in politics: they're interested in whether they have work, how their children are educated, whether the roads are repaired etc etc. What they're very often not interested in (or perhaps more accurately, not interested in participating in) are the practices of modern party politics: either voting, or (still less) the slog of active membership in a constituency party. Such an attitude is entirely understandable. Voting has an extremely limited effect on how most people's lives are run: unlike the very clear cut choice in the Referendum, the choice between one soggy progressive party run by PPE graduates and another soggy progressive party run by other PPE graduates is not epoch making. (And then factor in how much influence one vote has.) Even if you think the decision not to vote regrettable (and I do), it is understandable. Even  more understandable is the decision not to get involved in party politics. My own (very limited) experience of this suggests it requires both a high tolerance for odd personality types, saintlike patience, a complete indifference to domestic comfort etc. Again, I think that non-participation is regrettable, but in this case, it is entirely rational for most normal people: most people will not (cannot) be party activists.

So how can this enthusiasm for 'politics' be sustained? I think the simple answer is it can't and it shouldn't be imagined that it can. The heart of life isn't in the machinery of democracy: it's in the home, in art, in work and in religion. One (the key?) problem of democracy is that participation in it is necessary to the preservation of what we value, yet, to serve that preservative function, it has to become too dull to encourage participation. There may be little, ameliorative solutions to all that, but no silver bullet. (Well, unless you bring back religion into the sphere of government... That's a) true and b) there to wind up the Scottish Secular Society.)

Which, tertio, brings me on to the old. The current urban legend is that it's-the-old-wot-lost-it. Kevin McKenna (in an excellent piece) summarized the view:


The yes campaign maintained a sense of verve, excitement and drama that was largely supplied by young Scots who had previously been left unimpressed by the normal methods of party politics.

Sure, all the old footsoldiers of nationalism did their bit, visiting houses, handing out leaflets, but there was a fresh sense of unbounded optimism; of we-can-achieve-anything, and it was this that drove them to the outskirts of victory. By contrast, more than 70% of Scotland's pensioners voted no, fearful for their pensions and their end-of-life care.

Despite the fact that the figures don't really bear this narrative up, it is true that the strongest vote against Independence in any age group was that of the over 65s. I'm not sure what we're supposed to conclude from this: that the old, having a greater sense of corporeal frailty and the vicissitudes of life than testosterone fuelled young men with immature frontal lobes are clearly wrong? That because they are the other to us (about thirty-five, white male, full head of hair) that their sensibilities are somehow aberrant? There are all sorts of alternative, non-debunking explanations for the suspicions of the old other than the claim that they were simply too moronic or weighed down by a culture of deference to vote properly. (I thought it particularly unfair of Lallands Peat Worrier to complain about the unwillingness of a group of old ladies to give the time of day to a charivari of Yessers. Dodging crowds full of their own self importance is Urban Living 101, whether this is a matter of chuggers, Mormons or double glazing salesmen. And it's often accompanied by the emotional uneasiness and self-justification resulting from the habits of politeness being overridden by the need to avoid spending 25 hours a day explaining that you really don't want a new boiler or indeed, fundamental constitutional change, thank you.)

Anyway, surely the most important task in hand is the choice of a new National Anthem for Progressive North Britain. Judging from the progressive antipathy towards coffin dodgers, might I suggest Bloodhound Gang's I Hope You Die? (It's the Bloodhound Gang, so don't watch it if you mind rude.)

Aftermaths: the Referendum and others

Hhm. Haven't blogged since before the Referendum which, in the postmodern world, no doubt counts as an eternity...

Although, as I've made pretty clear up till now, I haven't been existentially committed to either side of the debate, and despite the fact that I took to bed at a reasonable hour on Thursday night, confident that the polls would probably be right (it's elementary really: they were the best empirical evidence one could have, so much better than dried seaweed or the state of one's gut) the reality of a No vote on waking did rather flatten me. I'm still not quite sure why. Undoubtedly the part of me that sympathized with the Independence case made its disappointment felt, just as the part that sympathized with the Unionist case would have been cutting up rough in the event of a Yes vote. It's not been helped by various pro-Yes friends and family looking like the sky has fallen in since then, or by some post referendum sillinesses from both sides online (although when did anything, ever, online help anything? I exaggerate of course). And then the house is noticeably quieter now child 2 is sent into the world of Higher Education. (Not as a punishment, I hasten to add...)

Reading George Weigel's Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II has provided an odd critical space to reflect on all that. Being soaked in St John Paul for a while has forced me to think more carefully about Vatican II (because it so clearly was the prism through which he viewed so much of the Church's role in the modern world rather than an odd hiccough which is better ignored) but also, more pertinently, on culture and nationalism.

It's difficult to read Weigel's work and not pick up the importance that St John Paul placed on culture as a vehicle of sanctification and digging deep into the roots of one's national culture as a part of that process. Of course, that doesn't immediately translate into a 'Vote Yes', but it ought to translate into a better understanding of some of the processes that led to an SNP government being returned with a massive majority, a 45% vote for Independence which would have looked utterly unachievable not so long ago, as well as a critique of that 'progressive' Nationalism which rejects the transcendent (again, another characteristic theme of St John Paul). Too much Catholic commentary -from both sides- has stopped at the level of everyday political badinage: Salmond molests wildstock; Darling is one of the undead.

A number of people have expressed suspicion of the 'reconciliation' agenda. I've got some sympathies with that suspicion. Despite some bullying (I think on both sides although the tone and manner of each side's methods differed somewhat) for a campaign of such importance, it has been surprisingly decent in many ways. (Nobody is dead: that's quite an achievement after the history of the twentieth century.) To talk about the need for reconciliation might be appropriate in South Africa or Rwanda: it's probably not in Scotland. Moreover, it suggests (and I think this is the real worry for some) that the issues of Nationalism and even Independence should go away. It was a good clean fight. Yes lost. Now let's all get on and put all that behind us.

Although, personally, I confess to a certain wistful sympathy for such a view, it's not going to happen. Unless the SNP dissolves electorally (and there seems no chance of that happening in a Scotland where the alternatives are the lack lustre Scottish Labour and Conservatives of today), Nationalism and Independence of some form isn't going away. What we need -as we need throughout Western democracies- is a way of living creatively with the resulting antipathies and tensions. (Dialogue isn't the right paradigm: it leaves out the bodily realities of loathing and anger that have to be dealt with; it leaves out the silences and withdrawals that are part of the techniques of cooperation rather than dialogue.) Part of that is stripping out the idea that politics is about self-expression. Too much of democracy is personalized. Slagging off Salmond or Darling as some wildebeest of hell allows the critic to rejoice in the fierceness of his own emotions whilst goring yet another person pumped up with emotion. It's difficult to see anything here Christian humility or discernment of the will of God: much more about the rutting habits of alpha males.

I don't know if Western democracy can survive. It certainly won't if we think solely in terms of individuals filled with the riot of their own subjectivity and trying to impose this on the public space. Perhaps the key is to appreciate the search for meaning in the polis as part of the search for God, and to accept that this search, mysteriously, is irreducibly personal whilst mediated through public spaces. We have to live with conflict and disagreement -whether between Unionist and Nationalist, Christian and Muslim, Theist and Atheist. That's something that I think comes over very strongly in St John Paul's thought and work -and it's not a bad lesson to be reflecting on just now.