A terrific review

I'd like to recommend that you read the intelligent and sympathetic review of Jim Kalb's new book that you'll find here.

It's best to read it in its entirety, but there are a few bits that particularly appealed to me. Here, for instance, is Kalb explaining why the liberal understanding of inclusiveness harms real community:

In fact inclusiveness destroys community by reducing the importance of personal ties, making us interchangeable with others and making our goals as much a matter of individual choice as possible.  There is nothing special to distinguish shoppers at a shopping mall from each other, so there are no divisions among them.  They do not constitute a community, however, because there is nothing that brings them together other than a common interest in acquiring consumer goods.  Each has come for his own purposes.  They have very few positive duties toward each other and they could just as easily be somewhere else, if they found some minor advantage in doing so.

But perhaps the most important part has to do with these papal quotes:

Pius XII, for instance, tells us that “[t]here exists an order, established by God, which requires a more intense love and a preferential good done to those people that are joined to us by special ties,” while Bl. John Paul II speaks of spiritual gifts we receive via our history, our culture, and “the national community to which we belong.”

Kalb concludes that:

If particular cultures and national communities have such importance for the way we become human and connect to God, then an understanding of diversity and inclusion that abolishes legitimate boundaries between them and so makes them nonfunctional cannot be acceptable, and multiculturalism, which deprives every culture of any setting of its own in which it can function as authoritative, must be wrong.

The part that I've italicised is critical, I think, for the argument that religious traditionalists ought to develop.

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Two Catholic quotes

Catholic social teaching is sometimes too universalistic to fit in well with traditionalism. But sometimes there is a considerable overlap. Here, for instance, is Pope Paul VI analysing liberalism back in 1971:

35. On another side, we are witnessing a renewal of the liberal ideology. This current asserts itself both in the name of economic efficiency, and for the defense of the individual against the increasingly overwhelming hold of organizations, and as a reaction against the totalitarian tendencies of political powers. Certainly, personal initiative must be maintained and developed. But do not Christians who take this path tend to idealize liberalism in their turn, making it a proclamation in favor of freedom? They would like a new model, more adapted to present-day conditions, while easily forgetting that at the very root of philosophical liberalism is an erroneous affirmation of the autonomy of the individual in his activity, his motivation and the exercise of his liberty. Hence, the liberal ideology likewise calls for careful discernment on their part.

The part that I bolded is the starting point for my own criticisms of liberalism. So I can at least claim the support of Catholic social teaching in this respect.

Here's another good quote, this time from Pope Benedict (at the time Cardinal Ratzinger) in 1986:

[O]ne cannot abstract from the historical situation of the nation or attack the cultural identity of the people. Consequently, one cannot passively accept, still less actively support, groups which by force or by the manipulation of public opinion take over the State apparatus and unjustly impose on the collectivity an imported ideology contrary to the culture of the people.

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Is this Catholicism or liberalism?

The Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, has given a speech urging American Catholics to support the legalisation of millions of illegal immigrants.

What is particularly disturbing about the speech is that it is framed almost entirely within a political liberalism.

The archbishop breezily advocated the creation of a new America via immigration:

“Immigration,” he emphasized, “is a question about America.”

During his remarks, Archbishop Gomez addressed the root of the immigration debate by asking the questions that underlie the issue: “What does it mean to be an American? Who are we as a people and where are we heading as a country? What will the 'next America' look like?”

“What should the next America look like?”

Talk about a fast and loose attitude. There is no concern at all for upholding a people and a tradition, just a casual embrace of change from one America to the next.

Can such a fast and loose attitude really be confined to issues of national identity? If you're willing to throw out your nation this casually, then why not change your church or religion while you're at it. Why not ask "What should the next religion look like?"

To put this another way, most people don't compartmentalise the different strands of their own tradition. If we value our tradition, and see the good in it, and want to uphold it, then we are likely to want to hold to the different aspects of it, including our national identity and the religion associated with it.

But Archbishop Gomez wants us to be so careless of our tradition that we will throw away our national identity in favour of the next one - whilst still caring about the fate of the historic Western religion. He advocates that we adopt an attitude that is both careless and caring - a contradictory impulse that is unlikely to hold.

The archbishop then appealed to a liberal civic nationalism:

The archbishop noted G. K. Chesterton's comment that the U.S. is the only nation founded not on a material basis such as territory or race, but on a belief – a vision.

The Founding Fathers – the writers of the Declaration of Independence – envisioned a nation “where men and women from every race, religion and national background could live in equality.”

But these days all the Western nations hold to a liberal civic nationalism. It is not distinct at all - it makes America no different to Australia or Sweden or Canada. It is a mere pretence that such a nationalism makes America unique.

And here's another problem with basing a national identity on liberal values of equality and non-discrimination. Because every traditional society did discriminate in order to uphold its particularity, then they all failed the test of these values. Therefore, the past is looked on negatively in terms of how morally tainted it was. The archbishop himself has adopted this liberal mindset. He said,

The American Dream has always been “a work in progress...not fully delivered,” Archbishop Gomez told his listeners. Slavery, nativism, and race discrimination have always been blights upon that dream, the reality of which has been both “painful and partial.”

How can you maintain a sense of continuity and a love of tradition if you adopt this liberal understanding of what a nation should be? What does it mean if the word you use to describe the history of your tradition is "painful"?

And how would the church fare if it were held to the same standards? Should American Catholics turn their backs to the historic church because the church discriminated to maintain its sense of itself and of the good that it embodied? After all, the church did not ordain women. It discriminated against homosexuality. It did not see polygamy as being equal to monogamy. You might argue that the church would not be the church if it accepted everything as being equal; that, in fact, it would be pointless to have a church that accepted everything as equal - that it would no longer be meaningfully a church. And you would be right. But the same thing can be said of a nation. If a nation is universal then can it really be a nation?

Which brings me to a final point. Archbishop Gomez peppers his speech with appeals to liberal moral terms, such as diversity and anti-discrimination. This is unfortunate as these are the very moral concepts that are likely to increasingly impact on the church itself in America.

Why? These concepts derive from a liberal idea that what can be truly and definitively known about individuals are their wants and desires. These wants and desires therefore constitute the good that individuals seek, and so what matters is that they can be pursued equally without impediment. Therefore, if there is a morality, it is based on qualities of non-interference, i.e. on concepts of individual rights, of tolerance, inclusion and non-discrimination.

And so when the Catholic Church makes a different kind of moral pronouncement, one based on the idea that something is inherently right and wrong, and that it is so for all people (a non-relativist moral position) it is condemned by liberals as fundamentalist. What is more, it is thought to be judgemental and to violate principle of inclusiveness.

In a liberal morality, for instance, it makes no sense at all to oppose the idea of gay marriage. If that is what people want to do, then to respect their expression of desire equally means allowing them to do what they wish to do. It would be thought mere bigotry or a phobia or prejudice or discrimination to think otherwise. So why shouldn't the church be forced to agree to gay marriage or else face legal sanctions? If, that is, such a liberal morality really is legitimate.

But if it's not legitimate the church should not be using it to justify amnesty for illegal immigrants. It is a dangerous thing for the church to be supporting the use of liberal moral concepts when it wishes to do so, but then to suddenly swing around and object when these concepts are used against the church itself.

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Does Pope Francis want a Muslim Europe?

Pope Francis has chosen as his first papal visit the island of Lampedusa. This is an island belonging to Italy but close to the African coastline. It is where Muslim Africans seeking to enter Europe illegally head for.

In a sermon on Lampedusa, Pope Francis made it clear that he supports the migration of Muslims into Europe "on their voyage toward something better". He said,

I give a thought, too, to the dear Muslim immigrants that are beginning the fast of Ramadan, with best wishes for abundant spiritual fruits. The Church is near to you in the search for a more dignified life for yourselves and for your families. I say to you “O’ scia’!” [trans.: a friendly greeting in the local dialect].

This doesn't bode well for the Church under Pope Francis. First, it means that the Church is committing itself to a false and unorthodox understanding of solidarity. Second, it means that the Church is orienting itself toward fitting in with secular liberal modernity rather than standing against it.

I knew immediately when I first read about the Pope's visit (hat tip: Laura Wood) that this was an expression of a certain understanding of solidarity. And, sure enough, in the Pope's sermon he takes solidarity as his theme. For instance, he says in reference to those Muslim African immigrants who drowned chancing the voyage to Lampedusa:

These our brothers and sisters seek to leave difficult situations in order to find a little serenity and peace, they seek a better place for themselves and for their families – but they found death. How many times do those who seek this not find understanding, do not find welcome, do not find solidarity!

Why call this a false understanding of solidarity? It is false because it is part of the tendency to redefine solidarity as meaning compassion for the "suffering other". Who could be more "other" to Europeans than Muslim Africans? Therefore, it is with them that we are to find solidarity.

There is a disastrous logic to this understanding of solidarity. If we are to welcome and find solidarity precisely with those most different to us, then we will necessarily dissolve our own existence. If solidarity requires Europe to welcome African Muslims, then the long-term result will be the dissolution of a European Christianity. Pope Francis is following a policy that will ultimately dissolve his own church.

In truth, solidarity is based on relatedness, and the particular loves and duties which flow from these forms of relatedness. Therefore, I am commanded to honour my father and mother, because of the close and particular relationship I have with them. I am to provide for and protect my wife and children as part of my duties as a husband and father. I am not to shame my family name, nor to be disloyal to my ethnic kin. And, yes, it is true that I am also to be hospitable to the stranger, as I do have a degree of relatedness to him as someone made, like me, in the image of God. But my duty, and my compassion, toward the stranger, does not oblige me to do harm to those I am more closely connected to.

That is why the Catholic Church developed the ordo caritatis:

The exercise of charity would soon become injudicious and inoperative unless there be in this, as in all the moral virtues, a well-defined order...

The precedence is plain enough...Regarding the persons alone, the order is somewhat as follows: self, wife, children, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, domestics, neighbours, fellow-countrymen, and all others.

That is the orthodox Catholic position. So why are so many churchmen reversing the order of charity?

Unfortunately, I think it has to do with an ongoing dispute in the Church about how the Church should relate to the secular liberal world around it.

The last pope, Pope Benedict, early in his life supported Vatican II, which was supposed to lead to the Church being more open to the secular world. But over time he saw how the principles of liberal modernity clashed with those of the Church and he took the view that the Church would have to resist, rather than join in with, the trends within the larger society.

Pope Benedict was very skilled in describing the principles of liberal modernity and how they could not be reconciled with those of Christianity. In particular, this is true of his writings on gender and the family (see here and here). But even on issues of communal identity he was critical of trends within secular liberalism. For instance he said:

This case illustrates a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost all capacity for self-love. All that it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. What Europe needs is a new self-acceptance, a self-acceptance that is critical and humble, if it truly wishes to survive.

Multiculturalism, which is so passionately promoted, can sometimes amount to an abandonment and denial, a flight from one's own things

He also opposed the idea of Turkish admission to the European Union on these grounds:

In the course of history, Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe. Making the two continents identical would be a mistake. It would mean a loss of richness, the disappearance of the cultural to the benefit of economics.

But there is a significant section of the Church which wishes to reconcile itself with liberal modernity. And one way that this can be achieved is for the Church to emphasise the theme of "solidarity with the stranger" because that fits in well with the liberal belief in "solidarity with the other".

Where do liberals get this belief in solidarity with the other?  I think it has to do with the way that liberal morality has developed over time. Liberals believe in autonomy as the overriding good. Therefore, they believe that what matters is that we are unimpeded in freely choosing what we do, i.e. what matters is the free choice, rather than what we choose.

However, this requires us to not infringe on other people making free choices. Therefore, a liberal morality will also emphasise qualities of non-interference, such as openness, diversity, tolerance and non-discrimination. So these become the liberal equivalents to positive virtues. And how then do you show that you are the most virtuous? You have to be the one who is most open and tolerant and non-discriminating and welcoming of diversity.

And how do you show this? You show this by identifying with (and being in solidarity with) the people who are most "other" to your own society. Hence the liberal cult of the other.

So can you be a good Catholic and also a good liberal? Not really, given that liberals don't generally believe in objective forms of morality and, as Pope Benedict pointed out, the liberal pursuit of autonomous freedom is incompatible with the Christian tradition. But those Catholics who want to approach liberal modernity can do so by emphasising the idea of "solidarity with the other". That's where a point of crossover can be constructed.

Further reading on this issue:

Upholding the four relationships

Losing the particular

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Did the institutions in 42 really need marching through?

There are people who blame Cultural Marxism/The Frankfurt School for what has gone wrong in the West.

The argument runs as follows. In the 1950s the West was going well. But a group of European Marxists (the Frankfurt School) had developed a new strategy. Instead of relying on a class war to win power they would instead begin a long march through the institutions. The 60s student rebellion gave these cultural Marxists their opportunity and they began to win influence in the institutions. This has then led to Western decline.

This theory of decline does have its merits. It refers to something real that did have seriously negative consequences in the West. It's worth understanding the particular theories generated by the Frankfurt School and how they influenced university life in particular from the 1960s onward.

But there are problems with the theory as well. And a major problem is the timing. The theory suggests that things were basically OK in the West until the 1960s. I don't think that's true and I'll give just one bit of evidence for that in a moment. Apart from this, the theory also suggests that the liberalism which dominated the West up to the 60s was also OK and that it was only when Cultural Marxists subverted this liberalism that things went wrong. That seems to me to let Western liberals off the hook and to discourage the kind of rethinking of liberal orthodoxy that needs to take place.

So what is some evidence that things were going seriously wrong before the 1960s? In 1941, when the Axis powers were triumphant in Europe, there was a conference of liberal Anglicans in Malvern, England. Led by the Archbishop of York and 23 bishops, these Anglicans wanted to lead "the ordering of the new society" which they were sure would emerge following the war.

How did they envisage this new society? Most notably, they were keen to build a European Union:

After the war our aim must be the unification of Europe as a cooperative commonwealth

There were also debates about dropping the importance of the mass in favour of social activism and of switching from private ownership of property. But what is really noteworthy are the speeches about how the old order must be swept away in favour of a completely new society - and this new society was envisaged in modern liberal terms.

Anyway, in 1942 an even more significant conference took place of American Protestant church leaders. This occurred in March around the time that the Japanese were invading Java (in other words, when the Axis powers were still predominant). 375 representatives of 30 denominations met together at Ohio Wesleyan University. What did they decide?

It was their view that the U.S. should lead the way in creating an international system of government. Here are some of the post-war policies they favoured:

• Worldwide freedom of immigration
• A world government of delegated powers
• Elimination of all tariff and quota restrictions on world trade
• International control of all armies and navies

The ultimate aim to be achieved was the following:

a duly constituted world government of delegated powers; an international legislative body, an international court with adequate jurisdiction, international administrative bodies with necessary powers, and adequate international police forces and provision for enforcing its worldwide economic authority.

So the question to be asked is this: did the churches really need to marched through and captured by cultural Marxists? Or had they already reached a point of post-nationalism under the influence of liberalism as early as the 1940s?

I think it's clear that the rot had already set in. Liberalism had already done the job by the 1940s - there was no need for the cultural Marxism of the 1960s to swing the churches.

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Another significant Benedict quote

In 1997 the then Cardinal Ratzinger, later to be Pope Benedict, gave a long interview to a German journalist, Peter Seewald.

In this interview, Pope Benedict rejected the idea that men and women are interchangeable in their roles in society. He explained the belief in interchangeable roles in a similar way that I do. According to Pope Benedict, moderns think of freedom as being a liberty to self-author or self-create. But to be free to self-author means rejecting the given parts of our nature.

Pope Benedict described the modernist mentality this way:

The idea that 'nature' has something to say is no longer admissible; man is to have the liberty to remodel himself at will. He is to be free from all of the prior givens of his essence. He makes of himself what he wants, and only in this way is he really 'free and liberated'. Behind this approach is a rebellion on man's part against the limits that he has as a biological being. In the end, it is a revolt against our creatureliness. Man is to be his own creator - a modern, new edition of the immemorial attempt to be God, to be like God.

Moderns believe that in taking this approach they are maximising individual freedom. That's supposed to be the selling point.

But what kind of freedom is it really? In the traditional view, my identity as a man connects me to a masculine essence, which exists independently of me as an objective value. But in the modern view, there is only an arbitrary, invented identity that doesn't connect me to anything outside myself. It seems that in adopting the modern view I am losing something rather than liberating myself.

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"The West has lost all capacity for self-love"

I went to mass today at Our Lady of Victories in Camberwell. The priest officiating this morning was very impressive. He spoke clearly and concretely and he managed to uphold both the universal values of the Church but also the particular traditions which carry forward the good over time.

He began the homily by talking about how man was made for community. He then asked why so many Catholics no longer take part in the community of the Eucharist. He thought that part of the reason was that Western societies have become more individualistic and that traditional communal identities have waned in modern multicultures.

Included in the mass were two prayers, which I wish I could remember verbatim, but they were about preserving cultural and civilisational traditions and how we are links in a chain connecting generations past, present and future.

Whilst on the topic of the Catholic Church, I was interested to read a lecture given by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict, to the Italian Senate in 2004. It is about European identity and the crisis of European civilisation. The lecture has faults, I think, but it does at least take seriously the gravity of the situation facing Europe:

At the hour of its greatest success, Europe seems hollow, as if it were internally paralyzed by a failure of its circulatory system that is endangering its life, subjecting it to transplants that erase its identity. At the same time as its sustaining spiritual forces have collapsed, a growing decline in its ethnicity is also taking place.

Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as though they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen—at least by some people—as a liability rather than as a source of hope. Here it is obligatory to compare today's situation with the decline of the Roman Empire. In its final days, Rome still functioned as a great historical framework, but in practice its vital energy had been depleted.

Another excerpt:

This case illustrates a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost all capacity for self-love. All that it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. What Europe needs is a new self-acceptance, a self-acceptance that is critical and humble, if it truly wishes to survive.

Multiculturalism, which is so passionately promoted, can sometimes amount to an abandonment and denial, a flight from one's own things.

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German cardinal: we are a dying people

How's this for a coincidence. A few days ago I wrote about the decision of a former Archbishop of Cologne to build the Neviges cathedral in a modernist style.

Now it's the current Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Meisner, who is in the news. He has criticised the German Government's family and immigration policies in a courageous way.

Read on, because you don't often hear figures in positions of authority speaking out like this. It began when a journalist challenged the Cardinal on his opposition to abortion. He replied:

We are a dying people, but have a perfect legislation for abortion. Is that not the suicide of a society? People want most of all to shut women out of families so that production continues. But with money alone you can't get children.

He was then asked if he was against formal child care:

No, but it would be better for society to create a climate in which women bring more children into the world. That is to say: to bring to awareness the high worth of the family with a mother and father for the children.

He went on to talk about his experiences in communist East Germany:

I have already been part of the whole one-sided tragedy in East Germany. The women there, who stayed home for the family, were told they were demented. Because labour forces were needed childcare was brought in. A socialist educator said of this: "The creche (the "child crib") is in the Bible a temporary thing and we have made of it a permanent institution."

The interviewer then objected "But women want to self-actualise in a career." The Cardinal replied:

Not all. Where are women really publicly encouraged to stay at home and to bring three or four children into the world? One should intervene here and not - as Mrs Merkel does currently - only present immigration as the solution to our demographic problem. We cannot take the young people away from Portugal and Spain and thus rob their countries of their future just out of selfishness. We should train these unemployed people and offer them perspectives, but then allow them to return home where they are needed.

What's impressive here is that the Cardinal has recognised a need for the German people to survive into the future by being encouraged to have children of their own rather than relying on taking the youth of other nations. He wants the family as an institution to be accorded value and not just the market.

It turns out that the Cardinal has also (unsuccessfully) taken a stand on cathedral design. Back in 2007 the artist Gerhard Richter completed a new stained glass window for the historic Cologne Cathedral. Richter based his design on his trademark "random pixel" paintings (randomly computer-arranged coloured pixels).

I haven't seen the window personally, but I would have thought that art in a cathedral should attempt to be inspired rather than randomly generated:

Gerhard Richter's stained glass window in the Cologne Cathedral

Maybe it looks better when you're there, but from the photo I'd have to say that Cardinal Meisner was correct in thinking that this doesn't work as religious art (the colours fit, but it comes across as chaotic).

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Upholding the four relationships

One thing that the left gets right about Christianity is that it is a religion which encourages social commitment. If we are to love man for the sake of God then we can't retreat entirely into a purely personal, otherworldly focus which disdains a concern for human society.

And, more than this, we were created for relationships. There are four key relationships, the first one, uncontroversially for a religion, being with God.

The second relationship we were created for is with family. How do we know we were created for family?

We know this bodily, first, in the sense that men and women are brought to physical union and, second, in our perception of beauty and nobility in the physical form of the opposite sex. We know it bodily as well in the way that our physiques correlate to family roles: a woman's body being oriented to motherhood, a man's body having the strength to protect.

We know too that we were created for family in the way that our identity, our sense of who we are, finds its fulfilment in family roles, such as those of husband and wife and father and mother. Our moral natures perceive a higher good or value in these roles, which gives a significance to our sense of self and to the ends we work toward.

We know as well that we were created for family because through these relationships we experience forms of human communion and mutuality which bring us to particular and significant expressions of love. Flowing from this, we experience a loving pride in family, a protectiveness toward family, a willingness to make sacrifices for family, and an identity within a shared family history.

So in body, mind and spirit we were created for family relationships. For Christians, that we were made this way is understood as an aspect of divine governance.

The third, and most neglected, relationship we were made for is with ethnic kin. There are reasons it has been neglected within Christianity, which I'll discuss later. But this relationship is similar to that with family.

How do we know we were made for a relationship with ethnic kin? We know it through the sense of communion we have with the ethny we belong to, a communion that extends to generations past and present, and which creates a distinct form of human mutuality and a love of people and place. Flowing from this relationship comes a willingness to make sacrifices for a common good, a protectiveness toward the tradition we belong to, a pride in communal achievement and a core aspect of our personal identity.

A relationship with ethnic kin once again ties our identity, our sense of self, to a higher good within the larger tradition we belong to. It therefore gives additional meaning to the work we do in society, no matter how humble that work might be. Physically our instinct to procreate - to reproduce who we are - encourages our commitment not only to family but also to our ethny as a kind of extended family.

The fourth relationship we are made for is that with the stranger or the outsider. This one may not seem as intuitive, but Christianity rightly stresses that if we are to love man for the sake of God, then our relationships don't end with those we are most closely related to, but extend all the way to our fellow man, even to those set most apart from us. Therefore, we are to be hospitable to visitors and we are to extend charity not only to relations but to others who require it. That we are made for this is evident in our common humanity and in our natural feelings of sympathy for our fellow man.

Christianity ought to uphold all of these relationships and to find a balance that allows all of them to flourish. It once sought to do so, at least in part, in the "ordo caritatis". Today, however, the fourth relationship (with strangers) dominates to the point of sacrificing the third (with ethnic kin). There has been some rearguard defence of the second relationship (with family), but the mainstream churches have not been good at promoting the first relationship (with God).

Why has the relationship with ethnic kin been neglected? This relationship runs all the way through the Old Testament in the form of a Jewish "we". But in the New Testament there is an emphasis on the fourth relationship, that with strangers, which is understandable in a community where the kin relationships were already so strong. Furthermore, it was Paul's role to argue for Christianity to be extended to gentile communities and this led Paul to emphasise the supra-ethnic dimension of Christianity.

Apart from this, there has been a universalist focus in many modern churches. In these churches the emphasis is on a more abstract, universal love, one that is detached from any particular relationships. At times, such universalists suggest that it is more spiritual to ignore our created being. Here, for instance, is the complaint of a nineteenth century Quaker and feminist called Sarah Grimke:

permit me to offer for your consideration, some views relative to the social intercourse of the sexes. Nearly the whole of this intercourse is, in my apprehension, derogatory to man and woman, as moral and intellectual beings. We approach each other, and mingle with each other, under the constant pressure of a feeling that we are of different sexes; and, instead of regarding each other only in the light of immortal creatures, the mind is fettered by the idea which is early and industriously infused into it, that we must never forget the distinction between male and female.
 

But it is very difficult to square this kind of abstracted universalism with Christianity. Consider this from Exodus:

Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God gives you.

If particular relationships don't matter, then why would it be so important to honour our father and mother?

And there's this from Timothy:

But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.
 

An abstract universalism is often adopted by those who don't wish to make commitments to the particular relationships they were created for. The historian Paul Johnson has written an entire book called Intellectuals which notes in great detail the tendency for intellectuals to preach universal love whilst mistreating or neglecting those around them.

Nor does an abstract universalism impart meaning very well to young people in the churches. What does a call to abstract universal love really mean to an 18-year-old young man? It makes it sound as if churches are about empty words, rather than connecting to the real inner life of individuals.

The ideal option is to have a Christianity which encourages the four relationships and which wisely orders the four to allow each its proper expression.

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Which way for the churches?

It's impossible not to notice that Christianity has been mostly captured by the left. The reality struck home for me in my recent efforts to find a relatively apolitical suburban Catholic parish. I failed. Every mass I attended had lines blurred between left-liberal causes and the Catholic religion.

That makes things awkward for us traditionalists. It's no use attempting to renew traditionalist communities but bringing with us a Christian culture that has become hostile to tradition.

The very opposite ought to be true. The clergy ought to be the most solid supporters of traditional communities.

So what has gone wrong? I'm not going to attempt to put forward a complete or systematic answer. I'll limit myself to a few thoughts and acknowledge at the same time that I am not an expert theologian.

The first observation I'd like to make is this: Christianity enjoins us to love man for the sake of God. That makes Christianity a certain kind of religion, one that encourages social commitment rather than an otherworldly withdrawal from society.

That's something that should be appreciated by traditionalists. It means that the "big picture" aspect of Christianity encourages us to care about what kind of society we live in and the kinds of goods that are promoted in that society. It discourages the option tempting to traditionalists, of finding a quiet place in the countryside where we can live the good life, without being concerned about what is happening to the larger society.

However, this social commitment aspect of Christianity can also appeal to the left. Furthermore, in scripture there are plenty of references to helping the most marginalised and to the particular virtue of showing love for the outsider. If you combine the social commitment with the identification with the other then you get something very like a left-liberal understanding of solidarity (one in which you show virtue by turning against your own in order to identify with the other). That then becomes a dissolving form of religion, as there is no longer a loyalty to the particular tradition you belong to.

And that is where we have to be very careful in the way that Christianity is understood. It is not that the left is making things up, but that they are running with a certain understanding of scripture that fits with their world view.

The leftist take on scripture isn't supported within Catholic tradition. In this tradition there is an "ordo caritatis" in which our obligations are ordered, with the closer relations taking precedence to those further out.

And that's the basic answer to leftist Christianity: that extending compassion and care to the marginalised or to outsiders does not extinguish the loves and the obligations that we have to those we are more closely related to.

However, I do want to make a criticism of the Catholic position (at least as I understand it). The Catholic position seems to be that the love we have for our family or our ethnic kin is a natural one, but that through the infusion of divine grace we are given a supernatural ability to love those we have no such natural inclinations toward, such as outsiders or the marginalised.

That perhaps explains why Catholic priests and bishops have collapsed on this issue. If you really believe this, then it will seem more distinctly Christian and more virtuous to prefer the marginalised and the outsider, as such feelings will be thought of as being more than natural - as being supernatural.

But I don't think the schema works very well. It seems to me to be a false division into natural and supernatural.

Let's look at the relationships more exactly. Is it really true, for instance, that the traditional family is founded on natural ties of affection and loyalty? The answer seems to be: yes and no. Certainly, there are natural instincts that bring men and women together to procreate and to attempt to ensure the survival of offspring. But these instincts can be expressed in different ways. For instance, there have been some societies in which women were allowed to follow an inclination to choose a variety of men to have sexual relationships with. With uncertain paternity, men then invested more in their sisters' children; the role of uncle was more important than that of father. Other societies have permitted older men with resources and status to follow an inclination to choose much younger women as additional wives.

So why then in the Christian tradition have we had monogamous marriage? It's not because this is simply a natural outcome that doesn't require any larger spiritual aspect. Instead it involves an ordering of natural inclinations through our higher conscience, our social commitments and our spiritual nature. Why, for instance, would an attractive, resource rich older male limit himself to his first wife? Does it not have to do with a ideal of love that is an expression of our spiritual being? Does it not have to do with our social commitment, in the sense of understanding that we limit ourselves for the good of the society we identify with? And why would men not lightly abandon one family for another? Does that not have to do with our higher conscience, in the sense of recognising paternal duties to our children?

The family as we know it is not simply a natural unit and therefore lesser to what might be thought of as spiritual. It survives at least in part through a kind of inspiration - through a process of higher valuing - that is a key role of the churches to promote.

And we can say something similar for ethnic kinship. It is not the case that the relationships we have to people we are ethnically related to are simply natural ones. Yes, there is a kind of natural form of identity with people we are closely related to in matters of language, culture, race, history and so on, But so too are there factors undermining such a loyalty, a key one being material self-interest (but there are others: a nihilistic urge to destroy, a desire to more easily control people by dissolving group loyalties, sectional interests such as dynastic or class ones, assertions of radical individualism based on pride or radical autonomy and so on).

People have long been aware of the natural forces pulling apart communal loyalty. The Australian Federation poets warned of a base materialism and of radical autonomy; George Essex Evans, for instance, wrote of the newly established nation:

The world's grey page lies bare today-
The rise of nations - the decay.
Will She, too, rise - and fall as they?

What shall it profit Her if we
Make gold our God, and strength our plea,
And call wild licence Liberty?
 

Unfortunately his warnings went unheeded: the forces pulling against a communal loyalty proved too strong.

So what then allows an ethnic kinship to survive? If you have natural inclinations pushing both for and against this kinship, what allows the baser ones - the materialism, the individualism, the managerialism, the sectionalism - to be suppressed so that the communal tradition can survive?

Again, this is where social commitment, higher conscience and human spirituality come into play. Human spirituality recognises the inherent good (a kind of communal soul) that is created over time within such communities. It also values the connectedness to generations past and present that exists within such communities. Social commitment means that people choose to place limits on their own material or sectional self-interests for the larger interests of the community. A higher conscience means that people feel a duty to the key institutions of the society; they might, for instance, be willing to make sacrifices within the family in order to raise a future generation.

Again, a church should set itself to promote this kind of sorting or odering amongst natural impulses; it should encourage the preferencing of commitment, conscience and spirituality rather than a falling into materialism, sectionalism and individualism.

Finally, there are the relationships we have to people we are not closely related to: toward people who are outsiders or marginalised in some way.

The point to be made here is a slightly different one. I suggested above that current theology tells us that our concern for such people is not a natural one and must therefore be a divinely infused supernatural one.

Again, I think this is at least partly false. I don't doubt that people are naturally more willing to make sacrifices for those they are more closely related to. I'm likely, for instance, to be more willing to put my life at risk to save my children than to save a stranger.

But we shouldn't exaggerate this. Is there really no natural feeling for the suffering of another human being, even if they are not family or ethnic kin? If I saw someone of another tribe or nation in need of medical attention and I had a phone to ring for an ambulance is it really unnatural for me to make the call?

Christianity does do a good job in forcefully reminding us that charity doesn't stop at home. It is right that it does so. But I would dispute the idea that the sacrifices men make every day as fathers are merely "natural" and unspiritual, whilst the occasional act we might make for someone we don't know is supernatural and therefore the proper focus and subject matter of a church.

A church ought to see to it that each form of relationship - family, ethnic kin and stranger - is rightly ordered, in the sense that natural inclinations are joined together with social commitment, higher conscience and spirituality to create the higher forms or expressions of these relationships.

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Losing the particular

I've just read an essay titled "Living with the "Other"" by Miroslav Volf (in Muslim and Christian: Reflections on Peace, University Press of America, 2005).

Miroslav Volf is a professor of theology at Yale University Divinity School. He's a bit difficult to place politically. He seems to want to commit to both a liberal view of identity (one that is inclusive, porous, open and dynamic) whilst retaining the basic goods of a traditional view.

I don't think that's likely to work out well in practice, but it does at least mean that Professor Volf isn't entirely committed to a "dissolve at all costs" view of the world.

For instance, he writes:

...in order to have an identity, you must have boundaries. Imagine a world without boundaries. You cannot! For without boundaries you would not have "a world"; everything would be jumbled up together and nothing distinct would exist, which is to say that just about nothing would exist at all. To have anything except infinite chaos, you must have boundaries. Hence when God creates, God separates. If boundaries are good, then some kind of boundary maintenance must be good too. Hence when boundaries are threatened (as they often are in a variety of ways), they must be maintained. (pp. 9-10)

Similarly, although Professor Volf advocates embracing the other, he does recognise that conditions apply:

But should we not maintain our boundaries so as to protect our cultural identities? Yes, we should. If I am crushed in the process of embrace with the other, this is no longer an embrace but an act of covert aggression. Whereas the will to embrace the other is unconditional, the embrace itself is not. It is conditioned, first, on the preservation of the integrity of the self. Boundaries are good, I argued earlier, because discrete identities themselves are a good. And because both are good, they have to be protected.

Earlier I have argued for protection of identities - of oneself and of one's group - by appealing to creation. To have anything at all and therefore to have "a world," you must have and maintain boundaries. Hence when God creates, God separates (and binds together, of course). One can argue for protection of identities also on the basis of redemption. Since God showed redeeming love in Christ for all humanity, the self cannot be excluded as a legitimate object of love. I should love myself, provided my love of self is properly related to the love of God and of the neighbour. And since I can love myself, I can certainly love my group because such love includes both the love of the neighbour and the love of the self (since my own well-being is often connected with the well-being of my group). Hence one is entitled to ensure that the embrace of the other does not endanger the self. (p.18)

There are some good arguments in that passage. To summarise:

i) You are not "embracing" the other if you are crushed in the process; rather you are submitting to an act of aggression.

ii) It is important to preserve the integrity of self.

iii) Our distinct identities are a good, and we should seek to preserve the good.

iv) Creation necessarily involves acts of separation and the making of boundaries.

v) God's redeeming love is not directed at everyone except ourselves. We too have a self that is properly an object of love. We are therefore not empty vessels which take on content only in our regard for the other. We too have a self to be considered, and our well-being is connected to the well-being of the group we belong to.

Finally, Professor Volf argues that we should pay closer attention to those we are most closely related to:

But do not people to whom we are "thickly" related demand special attention? A spouse and children seem to do so. Why not fellow members of the same ethnic group? Insisting that "every human being is my neighbour," some Christians have advocated that we should be impartial in our love, extending it to those to whom we are "thinly" related no less than to those to whom we are "thickly" related. Yet even those Christian theologians who, like Augustine in Teaching Christianity claim that "all people should be loved equally," insist that "proximity makes a difference"...Other Christian theologians, like Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica, have claimed that all neighbours should not be loved equally; we have special relations to some people and "the union arising from natural origin is prior to, and more stable than, all others." So to claim that love's scope is universal does not imply that we do not differentiate in how we ought to love those with whom we have special relations and those with whom we do not.

There is no good reason to wed the claim that love is universal in scope with what Gene Outka has called "simplified egalitarianism" which does not take into account that "our capacity for reciprocal help and harm is deeper and more varied with those closely related to us." The Christian claim that we should "love" all people, not just those with whom we have special relationships, does not imply undifferentiated cosmopolitanism, which would preclude giving special attention to our own family, ethnic group, nation, or broader culture. Not only is it right to maintain boundaries of discrete group identities, as I have argued earlier, it is also right to devote one's energies so that the group to which we belong will flourish. (pp.20-21)

 It seems to me that these kinds of theological arguments are important within Christianity; for Christianity to work there has to be an understanding of how a love that extends universally can be combined with the obvious goods of more particular relationships, such as those involving family, ethnic group, nation and broader culture.

As I mentioned at the start, I think that Professor Volf doesn't quite get it right, as his way of combining things wouldn't easily allow the particular relationships to survive. But at least he recognises the need to uphold both things: the universal and the particular.

If  you go to a Catholic church now, you are likely to hear only one side - the universal. A concern for the particular has been lost (unless it involves a group that has status within liberal politics, such as Aborigines - see here and here - but this then suggests that the Church isn't getting the universal right either - why should the Aborigines have a human status that others don't have?)

If anything, at a time when liberalism is dissolving particular relationships, the Church should be focused on the defence of the particular, rather than helping to drive liberalism forward by emphasising the universal.

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The Pope on rights

This week came the news that Pope Benedict is to retire. So one of his last addresses will be the one he made in January to members of the diplomatic corps.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the address. Reading it you get the sense that the Pope wants the Church to speak in the same terms as that of the secular world and to contribute to a common mission together.

And yet that secular world is allowing less and less room for the Church in the public sphere.

So in the address the Pope does pause to argue that the terms used in the secular world should be understood in a way that isn't hostile to the Church.

For instance, human rights legislation is being used in some European countries to restrict public expression of Christian faith. So the Pope said of human rights:

Sadly, especially in the West, one frequently encounters ambiguities about the meaning of human rights and their corresponding duties. Rights are often confused with exaggerated manifestations of the autonomy of the individual, who becomes self-referential, no longer open to encounter with God and with others, and absorbed only in seeking to satisfy his or her own needs. To be authentic, the defence of rights must instead consider human beings integrally, in their personal and communitarian dimensions.
 

I find that interesting as I too see "exaggerated manifestations of the autonomy of the individual" as being a key problem in the modern West.

Also, the alternative put forward by the Pope is a promising one. He wants rights to be considered not just in terms of a self-referential individual (what I have previously called an abstracted, atomised individual) but more "integrally" including a person's life within a community (what liberals call the "encumbered" self).

It's a pity the Pope didn't draw this out more. What, for instance, would be some examples of rights that a person considered integrally would have? Wouldn't a person, considered in their communitarian dimension, have a right to preserve the communal identity from which he derives a significant aspect of his identity and his commitment to a larger society?

The American Catholic Church doesn't think so, holding instead that there is a right to immigrate:

Persons have the right to immigrate and thus government must accommodate this right to the greatest extent possible, especially financially blessed nations.
 

 To sum up:

a) It's a positive that the Pope is willing to make criticisms of the exaggerated emphasis on autonomy in the secular world.

b) It's a positive too that the Pope wants the individual to be considered integrally, in his personal and communitarian dimensions.

c) The Church, however, is inconsistent in defending such a concept of the human person.

d) I doubt if it's a good strategy for the Church to practise outreach to the secular world by adopting the terminology of that world, and then trying to draw a line when the terminology becomes overtly hostile to the Church. From what I've observed of suburban Catholicism, one negative effect of this strategy is that priests start to see themselves as representatives of a liberal social order (i.e. as lending their authority to that order). In other words, instead of the liberal concepts being Christianised, the Christian institution at the ground level gets colonised by the dominant priorities and understandings of liberalism.

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The test of time

Immaculate Conception, Hawthorn

This morning I attended mass in the suburb of Hawthorn. The church is beautiful, though I was disappointed that a projector screen covered nearly all of the stained glass windows. The music was done relatively well (a very good singer) as were the readings. The priest (a temporary replacement) had an old school type of gruff personality.

But once again the main focus of the mass was a celebration of diversity and immigration. There was an almost comical moment when the priest sternly invited the congregation to examine themselves in case there was any lingering resistance to cultural diversity.

It's a suicidal theology. If Australia was once 95% Christian it can only become less so through a process of immigration, particularly since the main source countries are Asian and Middle-Eastern, rather than, say, Latin American.

In effect, the priest is insisting that the central thing in being a good Christian is to accept the decline of the Church; perhaps even to support a process in which his own historic church will one day be occupied by members of some other religious group.

Crowning of Mary

It's a contradiction. The priest is arguing "You must do X because our church is founded on fundamental truths, but I don't mind if X causes my own parish church to no longer exist in the future." If there is no fundamental truth held by the Church then why should I do X? But if there is a fundamental truth held by the Church then why should I do X if that causes the Church to be replaced by another, less truth-bearing religion?

The solution is for the clergy to carefully think through a theology that brings about its own rapid decline. Can such a theology really be right?

(I remember now that the priest said that the people being referenced in the Gospels as strangers to be welcomed were groups like the Somalis, Sudanese and Japanese  - which at the time I thought was a strange comment (the Japanese being a long way from the Holy Land), but perhaps it shows how much the priest wants Christians to be oriented to the non-Christian other, just as liberals want us to be oriented to whoever is regarded as the most other.

It's that liberal mindset of making the "test" how much you're willing to give way to the person most different to you - which for a Christian will be a Muslim or a Buddhist. But you can't expect to give way and to maintain the same place you once had. You will have a diminished place or perhaps none at all. So it's not exactly prudent to make that the "test".

And another thought: wouldn't the ultimate test of proving how open you are to Islam or Buddhism be to join one of those religions? Isn't that the logical end point of the kind of theology being preached in suburban Catholic parishes?)

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One of their motives?

Daybreaker wrote an interesting comment in the last post. In it he pointed out how all-embracing the charge of racism has now become:

You can't avoid being charged with racism if you are white. That's because "racist" basically means "white".

University of Delaware:

“[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

That means that whites count as racist, and non-whites do not.

That means that the mandatory policy in all white nations to get rid of "racism" is the same thing as a policy to get rid of whites.
 

I agree with Daybreaker that this is the logic of the leftist position on race.

Left-liberals choose to explain race differences in terms of one race (whites) being socially constructed to exploit and oppress other races. Whites get to be exceptional in a highly negative way. Whiteness is held to exist as a manifestation of privilege, discrimination and racism. Therefore, those who defend being white must be, by the leftist definition, "white supremacists" - people who want to maintain a supremacy over others.

As Daybreaker points out, the logical solution then becomes to defeat whites and whiteness through mass immigration and the breaking up of formerly white societies. The demographic decline of whites becomes, for leftists, a mark of progress to be cheered on.

Leftist anti-racism becomes, in effect, an anti-white movement. Getting rid of racism comes to mean getting rid of whites and white societies.

Daybreaker also made a point in his comment that I've made at this site as well. Whites get targeted by the left in this way, despite the fact that we are not even the most privileged ethnicity. On measures of income, careers, family stability and education, Asians are on average the best off in countries like America or Australia.

So why target whites? I don't want to attempt a complete explanation in what follows. I just want to point to one particular strain of thought on the left.

It seems to me that there exists a certain kind of person who reacts badly to the existence of order, authority or structure in society or within reality itself. Why? Perhaps because they think of this as a power existing outside of their own self which, in their pride, they think of limiting their own self, rather than as giving meaning to it. Perhaps they want their own self to be the organising power. Perhaps there is a personal bitterness or disappointment toward representatives of authority or power in their own lives, for instance, in the relationship with their father.

Whatever the reason, such people seem to view white, conservative, Christian males as symbols of an order or authority that they see as a hostile force at an existential level - it scares them or at least discomfits them at some level of self and being to be confronted by such symbols.

And it's what traditional whites mean symbolically that seems to matter. Asian Americans, for instance, are more privileged in a range of fields, but their success doesn't carry the same symbolic weight, as they aren't (yet) associated with traditional structures of authority or value or order in society. Similarly, Republicans are mostly right-liberals who self-neutralised a long time ago. And yet there are some on the left for whom the symbolism of Republicans as white, conservative, Christian males still very much matters.

This helps to explain too why some on the left see themselves as anti-establishment outsiders, even though they became the establishment decades ago. They continue to understand their own political mission in terms of opposition to the symbolically powerful white, Christian male. They are still, in their minds, fighting an entrenched power structure, whereas they themselves, no matter how powerful, are the liberating force, opening society up to some new possibility or some new experiments in living that will somehow take things forward, i.e. that will open up the path to human progress.

If I'm right on this, then so much the worse for liberal Christianity. The Christian tradition has always set itself strongly against a spirit which, on sensing a power or authority or order outside itself, reacts nihilistically out of pride or hubris. In the Christian tradition the fall of Satan is understood along these lines. And yet so many Christians today fall in with a programme that has its origins, at least in part, from this spirit which is so strongly condemned within the Christian tradition.

For instance, there are those on the left who use open borders to destroy the existence of a "whiteness" which they associate negatively with order or authority. Instead of condemning this as a manifestation of nihilism (or of the kind of pride which led to Satan's fall), there are many in the churches who fall in line with it or even put a Christian gloss on it as being an act of charity. The churches have not confronted what they ought to have confronted; they have not examined what might lead a person to be disloyal or to seek to destroy. It's an uncomfortable fact that a relatively small number of nihilist spirits have ended up on the winning side, despite transgressing a core aspect of Christianity.

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Should we welcome our weaknesses?

A few days ago I wrote a post criticising a homily given by a local priest. The priest had argued that Mary was not favoured because she was special but because she was a poor confused peasant girl and that God favours the poor, broken down and marginalised. The equivalent of Mary in the modern world, continued the priest, are the likes of the Sri Lankan refugees and the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

I agreed with the priest that it is sometimes when we are at our lowest that the egoistic self gives way and we become more receptive to God. But I wrote too that:

I find it difficult to believe that we should automatically side with whoever seems to be most powerless, as if being powerless defines you as good.

In the comments I added some further thoughts, which several readers have urged me to include in a post. The gist of it is that focusing always on being weak or powerless can be one factor in alienating men from Christianity:

I know people whose fathers have died and it sometimes affects them very deeply. Not just in the sense of mourning a lost one, but in the sense of their existential stability. The father brought a sense of assurance and stability to their lives.

And this is an aspect of men attempting to be strong for the benefit of those around them, those they are responsible for.

The interpretation of Christianity made by my local priest suggests that a man who is successfully strong in this way is separating himself from the good. He should instead focus on and identify with being powerless, broken down, marginalised etc.

If this is true it sets up an irresolvable contradiction in the lives of men. Our worldly role would be to be strong; our religious role would be to be weak.

I don't think this is how Christianity was understood by previous generations of Christians. I think instead the idea that we should treat well "the least amongst you" meant that those who were strong should not abuse those less fortunate.

You can see this is in the ethos of the Christian knight; you can see it in Western literature (as when in a Jane Austen novel the heroine is chastised for mocking a poor widow).

Is it not true that men should be morally strong and self-disciplined? That men should be strong in wisdom and prudence? That men should be strong in discharging their duties to family and community? Whilst at the same time serving God in a spirit of humility? (i.e. not adopting a stance of arrogant, closed off self-sufficiency).

Cannot the Church sometimes encourage men to be strong? (For instance, in their role as husbands and fathers within a family?)

Maybe this is part of the reason why many men don't feel as connected to Christianity as they might. They know that they have to develop their masculine strengths as best they can, but when they sit in a church they hear a message that identifies the good with being broken down, weak and marginalised.

It's not that churches shouldn't challenge the way people ordinarily think, but in this case the churches are challenging genuine duties held by men. It makes the message heard by men in the churches feel alien to their deeper conscience.

I'd like to hear a sermon which praises men for a strength of perseverance in working to support their families. Or for a strength in maintaining composure when there is stress within their families. Or for exercising a masculine protectiveness in stepping in when their wives need support. And so on.

And rather than charity meaning supporting Palestinians against Israelis, maybe it could be an encouragement to do something practical and local, for instance, helping an elderly person maintain their home, or doing some maintenance work for the local kindergarten.

I wrote this several days ago, but the significance of it has been confirmed by the Christmas Day sermon of the next Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop Justin Welby. In this sermon, you get the same theme that Christians should aim to be vulnerable and weak as this is what makes a man receptive to God's transforming love. I can't reproduce the whole sermon but here are some snippets:

This is the true triumph, of utter vulnerability that in weakness overthrows every apparent strength.

Glorifying God, leaking into the world the love that he leaks into us through the wounds and breaches and gaps of our own lives

we do in the world what God does in us. We receive His love where we are vulnerable and weak, and lose sight of it when we claim strength and power. Christians reach to the jagged edges of our society, and of the world in general.

we must begin with weakness and vulnerability

God comes to us through the breaches and wounds of our lives because He comes in utter vulnerability. We are to be those who allow Him to make us vulnerable, welcome the weakness we have

It's not that I think this is entirely false. There are people who on hearing this kind of message might let go of their egoistic defences and become more receptive to the Christian message.

But think of the logic of what is being proposed in Bishop Welby's sermon. If it's true that we receive God's love when we are vulnerable and weak, then presumably we are to aim at being vulnerable and weak (we are to welcome our weaknesses, rather than trying to overcome them). And mere powerlessness, rather than goodness or faithfulness, becomes the deciding factor in who is most blessed. The Palestinians get to be defined as the good guys not because their cause is deemed just or because their acts are deemed more moral, but simply because they don't as yet have the upper hand. And if they do get the upper hand, then they won't be the good guys anymore - they'll drop back in moral status.

Nor is it true, in my opinion, that we are only open to God "in extremity". It could be claimed equally that the religious experience is often a "peak experience" - one that comes to us most forcefully when we are physically and mentally at our best. And when this happens, we have a sense not of powerlessness but of our powers being held in their proper place. It is a feeling of being completed or fulfilled in who we are, and it is that feeling which brings us a sense of peace, of a natural sense of humility before God, of the Biblical virtue of "prautes" (a measured, deliberate, self-possessed response to things) and of a desire to serve God's will. But it is definitely not an experience of weakness or powerlessness.

Finally, I don't think it's true either that the only way for a church to encourage people to be open to the religious experience is by emphasising our weakness as a way of dissolving an excessive egoism. Churches might also encourage time for contemplation and prayer; inspiring forms of architecture, music and art; a form of the mass that imparts a sense of the sacred; and a striving toward moral virtue.

And many people are led toward a religious outlook by what they experience as beautiful, good and true and which then inspires their particular loves. They might be inspired in this way by an ideal of manhood or womanhood, by the love they feel for their spouse or children, by the higher forms of art and culture, by the beauty of nature or by the goodness they discern within a communal life and tradition.

Bishop Welby's Christianity doesn't and can't speak to any of this, as it defines the good narrowly in terms of weakness, vulnerability and powerlessness. I don't think this is a form of Christianity that is likely to stand in the longer term. It leaves too much out and, as I argued in my comment, it establishes a particular difficulty for men who are called on to be strong for the benefit of those around them.

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What's happening to Canadian Christianity?

I wrote a post recently on some female Anglican priests who performed the play The Vagina Monologues in a cathedral.

A reader has pointed out to me that the United Church of Canada (the equivalent of the Uniting Church here in Australia) is no better. But before I point out what's happening in that church I'd like to set out a theory of what's going wrong in a number of Christian churches.

The theory goes like this. A church that is functioning well is going to create a religious culture through which its members will come to a sense of communion with the divine. But there are Christian churches now which are either abandoning or compromising this function.

What they are increasingly focusing on is the idea of bringing meaning or purpose to their members' lives through involvement in a series of causes, such as environmentalism, the Palestinians, Aborigines or refugees.

It is no coincidence that this aligns these churches very closely with liberalism. There are a lot of liberals who like to believe that they have a "deep social conscience" which means that they support the marginalised and dispossessed. It's likely that Western liberals were influenced by Christianity in this, as it is a part of Christianity to be concerned for "the least amongst you". It's possible that liberals secularised this aspect of Christianity and ran with it. And now this secularised liberal ethos is making its way back into the churches from which it most likely originated, albeit as part of a larger and more integrated religious view of things.

What does it mean when churches go with a secularised "cause" based approach rather than the more traditional "religious culture" one? Here's one significant problem. A religious culture was one of the forces protecting against anomie; it was significant in bringing a sense of a moral universe to the individual, of the goods of family life, of the sacred purpose of social roles and social hierarchies, of a higher purpose of art and culture. It helped, in other words, to protect against the dissolving of society and social roles and relationships and identities.

So the more that the churches abandon the traditional function, the more likely it is that anomie will increase, which then means that cause based satisfaction will have to be ramped up even more to compensate for this.

And here's another unfortunate consequence. Because there is so little difference between the secular liberal ideal of "social conscience" and the new church focus on "social justice" or "cause" based satisfaction, then there is little to prevent members of the churches from drifting away into the secular liberal mainstream. Why go to church if you can get the same thing in your daily secular programming?

Which brings me back to the United Church of Canada. The process of abandoning a religious culture in favour of a secular cause based one seems to have gone further in this church than elsewhere (though even in suburban Catholic parishes here in Melbourne the process has gone some way). There are parishes of the United Church which have adopted what they call "post-theism"; they continue to talk in a vague way about spirituality but they no longer have religious beliefs:

It’s community prayer time at West Hill United, and a microphone is being passed from hand to hand between the pews. Overhead, colourful streamers resembling a rainbow dangle wistfully, nearly concealing a cross on the wall beyond. A few of the 50 or more people packed into the church on a November Sunday seem to bare all during this time: one offers a prayer for the quashed federal climate change bill, and another remembers a neighbour who has hurt her ankle. A woman stands up to share her battle with depression and reveals she’s been going through a dark stage in her life. “I just ask that I be kept in your thoughts and prayers,” she says, her voice fragile but clear in the Scarborough, Ont., sanctuary.

She wasn’t asking for God’s strength or for a miracle. West Hill identifies itself as a post-theistic congregation, one that does not believe in a supernatural being or an interventionist, capital “G” God, but rather in the sacredness inherent in leading a life of justice and love. And so the woman’s plea was met with “May love abound,” a blessing spoken in unison by the people around her.

Post-theism has quietly emerged in individual United Church ministries across Canada that desire a sense of intellectual satisfaction and nurturing and inspiration in their spiritual lives, qualities they say the traditional format fails to offer. Post-theistic churches use the Bible sparingly, acknowledging its contents as myth — or don’t reference it at all. Many write their own music, use contemporary songs to convey their values or change the lyrics to familiar tunes. Prayers aren’t addressed to God, but to the community and its innate sacredness.

West Hill’s shift to post-theistic worship began in 2001 when the Board decided to gradually shed the word “God,” says Rev. Gretta Vosper, the minister of West Hill and author of With or Without God: Why the Way We Live Is More Important than What We Believe. “In the United Church, we’re very strong about praying for guidance, praying for strength, praying for courage, and if you take that idea of an interventionist God . . . away, nothing has really changed,” she says. “You’re still asking for strength, except it’s not coming from some supernatural source. It comes from the community that you gather with.”

Note the emphasis on "leading a life of justice and love". I'll write more about this later, but if there is a theological heresy in the modern Christian churches it comes from a non-traditional understanding of the concept of caritas, i.e. the virtue of love or charity.

A Protestant historian has made the following criticism of the United Church:

It is that reluctance to define doctrinal belief, while at the same time putting an emphasis on social causes, that is making the United Church indistinguishable from many activist secular groups, said Kevin Flatt, a Protestant historian who has studied the United Church for years.

“The main question is, What are the characteristics a religious group needs to have in order to hold on to members and maintain its relevance in our society?” said Prof. Flatt, who teaches at Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ont. “There have been lots of studies that show a religious group has to have a very clear and shared identity and there are boundaries around the group that makes them distinct from the general culture. In the United Church, those lines have blurred.

“What is this organization bringing to the table that doesn’t already exist from a secular perspective? There are many people concerned about the environment who have no belief in God. If you are essentially not bringing anything that’s different, there’s a risk you will be perceived as redundant and groups who are redundant lose members.”

The data on United Church membership seems to back him up:

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Canadian Anglicans, what are you doing?

Think you've heard it all? Earlier this year a group of eight female Anglican priests performed a play in the Christ Church's Cathedral in Hamilton, Canada. A large audience greeted the play with laughter and a standing ovation.



Smiling Canadian priestesses

What's so bad about that? Well, the play was Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues. It's a play in which a young teenage girl finds salvation in lesbian sex with an older woman and in which the men are presented as hellish rapists and abusers of women. If you read the play you can't help but think it's the product of a very sick mind. And yet here we have it being performed by smiling priestesses in an Anglican Cathedral and being cheered on by the audience.

Even though these people are fellow Westerners, I don't see myself as belonging to what they have become. They are hurtling away from me; the split is irrevocable.

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Where some churches go wrong

Here's a theory about why some churches have adopted a dissolving kind of Christianity, i.e. a kind of Christianity in which everything distinct about the human person dissolves, in which there are no particular identities, no particular loves or attachments, no standards of behaviour apart from an all-encompassing and abstracted love for the other.

The theory goes like this. Christianity is incompatible with liberal modernity in its insistence on substantive, objective goods. In the Christian world view there is a standard by which some acts are inherently morally right and others wrong.

For liberal moderns this aspect of Christianity can be threatening. It can seem to be an act of power over the individual will - a violation of the sovereign individual will. Liberal moderns generally prefer a morality of non-interference. The good is to self-determine our own subjective good and not to interfere with others doing the same. Hence the morality of non-interference: of not discriminating or judging; of showing tolerance and respect; of not being bigoted or prejudiced and so on.

(Yes, it's true that liberals can be highly intolerant in enforcing a morality of tolerance and highly intrusive in enforcing a morality of non-interference but that's an issue for another day.)

So what is a Christian to do? The best option would be to reject the assumptions of liberal modernity and hold to the Christian world view. But it is the liberal world view which dominates the modern world, the world in which Christians make a life for themselves. And perhaps inevitably some Christians have tried to reconcile or form a synthesis between Christianity and liberalism.

How can the two be reconciled? If liberalism demands that no substantive goods be asserted and that we focus on not interfering with or judging the actions of others, then a possible fall back position for Christians is to focus on an abstracted, all embracing love for the other. This can be justified readily by the command to love one another and if love is all then what do moral rights or wrongs or distinct human qualities or relationships count for?

Once a church takes that path then there is nothing to hold back a philosophical merger with political liberalism. Concepts and terms are freely borrowed from a liberal political philosophy, to the point that if you read the documents produced by some modern churches you get the sense that you are dealing with a liberalism with religion added on.

There do exist hindrances, though, to the success of a merged Christianity. It requires that people are willing to give up on the idea of objective moral standards (the new standards are those derived from liberal non-interference, e.g. respect, non-discrimination, anti-sexism etc). But that means that even one kind of moral standard can derail the process. What, for instance, if some members of a church can't give up on the idea that marriage should be between a man and a woman? That upsets the basis for the merger; you then get a church set apart and perhaps a schism somewhere down the line.

Love is all was not even an adequate basis for preserving a hippy movement let alone a church. A serious church will set love within a broader understanding of human life and the human soul. It will help to foster particular loves, affections and loyalties, as well as a larger (albeit more diffuse) concern for a wider humanity.

A church which is concerned for the fate of the individual human soul must also encourage a virtuous life, which then means asserting a positive concept of morality, one which goes beyond non-interference.

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An interesting Bible verse

I don't often comment on scripture, but I thought this part of Paul's letter to the Philippians worth highlighting:

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. (New International Version, 4:8)

Another translation is:

Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Here the Christian is being asked to meditate on the true, the noble or honourable, the just, the pure, the lovely, the gracious and the excellent or virtuous.

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Fathers matter

Katherine Baldwin is 41 and is unmarried and childless. She has written a piece for the Daily Mail on the difficulties of dating men when the biological clock is ticking loudly. In her piece she writes:

It seems the trend to postpone motherhood till later has produced an army of women in their late 30s and early 40s who, like me, wonder if they’ve left it too late. We had succeeded in our careers and now we were ready for a family, but no one informed our ageing ovaries of the plan. We thought we could have it all, but statistics tell us that not all of us can.

That's an important point to make, particularly when one in five British women are reaching age 45 without having had children. And I have no doubt that putting careers and independence first is part of the problem. But there are other reasons why women end up childless, reasons which Katherine Baldwin discusses at her own website (more of which later).

Katherine Baldwin

My wife has two female friends who are both beautiful and feminine women, but who have remained childless. One of these women chose obviously unsuitable men for boyfriends right through her 30s. The other didn't go out with men.

I've had a chance to get to know these women and the problem isn't really a desire to remain independent. Rather, it's that they weren't able to overcome problematic relationships with their fathers.

I've noticed too that the women at my workplace who marry well and in a timely way seem to have close and affectionate ties with their fathers.

It seems that fathers matter. The work we put into our relationships with our daughters has long-term consequences.

Katherine Baldwin explains her difficulties in partnering partly in terms of an absent father:

I seem to be one of those women who craves intimacy and affection with a man but is so scared of it that she chooses people who aren’t up for it or ready for it or she sabotages relationships with anyone who is. This pattern seems to be common with women of “absent” fathers...

She writes also that:

my tendency to choose inappropriate or unattainable partners is definitely the most concerning at this stage in my life...

The above quotations also chime with something I read a few weeks back in the Mail on Sunday’s You Magazine about daughters of absent fathers. It said that “as adults, women with absent fathers are often torn between longing for a committed, loving relationship and a fear of having one in case the man they love abandons them as their father did. It is only when they realise what they are doing that they can move on and have a healthy relationship.”

...For many years, I’ve had far too many boxes that a potential partner had to tick and I’ve found fault in many a boyfriend. I’d always concluded they weren’t right for me. I’m finally realising that maybe my tick boxes and fault-finding were my ways of avoiding commitment – the commitment I so craved but was so terrified of.

That's not to say that other factors might not be involved. When women are told that their 20s are for "freedom" rather than for family formation, they are more at liberty to choose "inappropriate or unattainable" partners - men who push "sexy" buttons rather than "potential husband/father" ones. And pickiness seems to be a part of our natures - we build up idealised, romantic images of our soul mate that are difficult for people to measure up to in real life. (That's one of the problems with leaving family formation too late - we are often so driven to relationships in our early 20s that the pickiness is overruled - but later on in life it can take control).

Katherine Baldwin's career has been a glamorous one: she has travelled extensively overseas as a correspondent. But she is honest in discussing her mixed feelings about it. There are aspects of travel and life overseas that she has enjoyed, but she has also found it exhausting and unsettling. And it is not career itself from which she derives higher meaning:

I think relationship is key to addressing that sense of emptiness some of us feel. And I’m not just talking about getting ourselves a partner...For me, it’s about my relationship with myself, my relationship with something greater than myself (or God as I like to call Him) and then, once those two things are in a good place, my relationship with others.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re in the company of someone you love or of someone you’re really comfortable with – you could be having a laugh or just sitting in silence – those existential questions rarely come up? We feel connected, content and are able to live in the moment.

The same goes when I feel connected to God. I feel grounded, I feel a sense of purpose...

This is relevant to the discussion I've tried to open up recently about problems with the current culture of Christianity. I see what Katherine Baldwin is expressing here as being both basic and authentic to the spiritual life. She is not dissolving herself or abstracting herself; she describes herself as feeling "grounded" and having a sense of "connectedness" which brings her contentment and a sense of purpose and an ability to live in the moment.

Finally, I know that some of my readers will react angrily to Katherine Baldwin, seeing her as a representative of women who have made family formation difficult. But I'd ask that she not be attacked personally in the comments. My aim isn't to antagonise her personally and I don't think it does our cause much good to do so either. There's nothing I've read at her site which is anti-male; she is someone who is trying to work things through and she is doing so with a degree of culture and intelligence.

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