Hunkering Down
July 02, 2005
Prof. Koyzis also asks the following questions, which I neglected to respond to in my earlier post: “In the meantime it is worth asking ‘Fr. Jape’ the following: If not principled pluralism, then what? What would he prefer? A nonliberal order, to be sure, but what would this look like? Would it mandate a state establishment of Christianity, or even Catholicism? If he really is a Catholic, what does he think of Dignitatis Humanae? Is this a ‘liberal’ document? If he judges it thus, and rejects it accordingly, one might have reason to doubt his claimed obedience to the Roman magisterium which endorses it.”
These are good, practical questions, and deserve to be answered. I believe on a number of specific points I have already indicated what I would prefer, and Prof. Koyzis and others are welcome to peruse my past writings. In the realm of generalized and abstract theorizing, otherwise known as daydreaming, I would offer as a model the decentralized city-states of the Middle Ages. But, of course, it does no good, nor does it make any sense, to suggest that now. It is possible to gesture weakly in that direction by advocating certain policy positions–the reforms suggested by Allan Carlson come to mind–and these I heartily support. But in the main, I do not think there is any real hope for “reform” of the late-liberal state. I think the best answer is to resist disorder personally, and if one is truly successful at this, it will spill over into one’s family and one’s immediate community. Hunker down and wait for the big crash per MacIntyre* and Eliot.** See what’s salvageable from the rubble.
Answering similar questions in an earlier interview, tNP’s EIC gave the following answer, to which I can only concur:
If this [the triumph of liberalism and the attendant culture of death] is how things really stand, what ought I to DO about it? And without a doubt, it’s difficult. In important and fundamental ways we are all implicated in, and penetrated by, the structures of disorder that dominate our age. One can hardly drive to work or eat a meal without joining, even if it is in an unwilling or unwitting way, the culture of death and its revolt against the spirit. Being willing to recognize and accept this truth, and to grapple with it in an honest way over a period of years, decades, a lifetime, is a good first step. And we have tried to do that in the way we live our lives. I should note also that there is a real danger that goes along with fomenting any kind of reform movement, particularly a religious reform movement, and that is the danger that the movement will veer in a Gnostic direction. That is, a sectarian movement has a natural tendency to set itself up as an ideal, and to promise its adherents a large dose of eschatological fulfillment in the temporal here and now. Again, in this situation, temporal things usurp the primacy that properly belongs to the spirit. And so my perspective is, and I hope this is a healthy perspective, that resistance is futile: futile and necessary. There is a sense of the tragic in that. You know, there is a wonderful Hungarian playwright named Andras Visky who suffered a great deal for his Christian faith in Romania before the collapse of the Soviet Union who says: ‘The situation is very good, it is hopeless.’ I love that. This posture of the spirit does two things: first, it acknowledges that our hope is really not a thing of this world, it properly lies over the eschatological horizon; and second, this ‘letting go’ actually opens the spirit up to a proper appreciation of the temporal sphere, so we can say heartily that things are good; the situation is very good–it is hopeless. So this kind of joy is really the most important spiritual virtue for us to nurture I think; a spirit nourished on joy will not so easily fall to the temptation of the ideal, or the temptations of the world. These temptations offer the false comforts of liberal freedom or of Gnostic pride, but I think a joyful heart recognizes both as really pretty drab and boring affairs. Better to accept both the joys and pains that come from dipping your hands in the soil; from eating something you’ve raised and sweated over yourself; from having a bevy of children around you to bring up; from commitment to a particular place, a particular people; from knowing your neighbors; from loving language and books and music; from heartfelt worship and thankfulness to God; and so on. Any and all of these make it difficult to engage in either pride or selfish ideas about freedom.
With regard to Dignitatis Humanae, that document contains some unfortunate language which, in the hands of the hermeneutically uninitiated, dangerously suggests a rapprochement between the Church and the modern liberal state. Fortunately, this aspect of DH is being permitted a quiet death by the rather Cromwellian interpretation of that document given by the Holy See and the Holy Father, much to the chagrin of those liberalizing elements of the Church. I refer Koyzis to the infallible Syllabus of Errors (along with Quanta Cura) promulgated by Pius IX in 1864 for the Church’s true and Apostolic teaching on these issues.
Many readers accustomed to thinking as Protestants and Evangelicals, which is to say, as moderns, will be confounded by the seeming difference between the language of DH and the current application of it by the Pope. This is because they are hermeneutically bound by an individualist/rationalist need to seek out the right principle, theory, or method by which the truth may be guarded and right action prescribed, and they are set adrift from the additional inchoate resources of solid communities of tradition which might provide ballast against the waves of Lockean positivism. This, however, is not a hermeneutic or epistemological prejudice shared by Rome, which has always been closer to the Jewish midrash tradition in its awareness that no method, principle, or theory is sufficient to steer laws and doctrines in fidelity to truth and right order. Thus, creative mis/interpretation to adjust tradition within parameters that it should be able to tolerate affords flexibility and “progress” that is not bound to itself, its own theories or principles, but is subordinate to human beings standing in and defending the Apostolic line and tradition, preserving the Christian order for the next generation of faithful Christian communities.
This is illustrated by the Holy Father’s own commentary on Vatican II and DH as a “counter syllabus” meant to codify what had already been established de facto as the Church’s changed relationship with national powers following the events of 1789. Yet this has not prevented Ratzinger from a muscular assertion of the Church’s authoritative teaching and prerogatives in the public square and over Church members who are active participants therein. This is a position which cannot be squared, on strictly positivist grounds, with the language of Vatican II.
Notes:
* “It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman Empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead–often not recognising fully what they were doing–was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new Dark Ages which are already upon us.” – After Virtue
** “The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide.” – Thoughts after Lambeth
This is Hunkering Down in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Hold the Line, Simians! | Next: Spud Guns and The World’s Most Dangerous Parishes | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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