Charles De Gaulle: The Oddity

When leaders fail, new leaders are projected upward out of the eternal spirit of France: from Charlemagne to Joan of Arc to Napoleon, Poincaré and Clemenceau. Perhaps this time I am one of those thrust into leadership by the failure of others.

Charles De Gaulle

 

The First World War resulted in a pyrrhic victory for France.  During the course of the war, it lost about one and half million men which equates to roughly one thousand men a day, about ten percent of the male population. Six and half million men were wounded of which over a million were mutliés, i.e. maimed or disfigured. The experience of war had deeply traumatised the  country and and had and had changed its national  temperament, similar in the way the U.S. was affected after Vietnam.  The country's strong sense of militant nationalism gave way to a malaise. Whereas before the war, the military were held in esteem, the experience of war and sense of national grief lead to a loss its prestige and an air of pacifism and hedonism took its place.

The needs of war temporarily put aside the national conflict between left and right, which gradually asserted itself again with the onset of peace. Further complicating matters was the relationship between the religious and the secular, which while still tense, was not as poisonous as in the pre-war years. And even within the French Catholic Church there was a broad division between the traditionalists and the liberals.

With regard to the French Left, and I'm painting in broad strokes here, who were the the lackeys for soviet communism, they worked to co-opt pacifistic trends for their masters advantage. Through economic and industrial sabotage the damaged the french economy, policy and national will.  There loyalty was primarily to a Soviet France and they danced to the tune played by Moscow. Their loyalty to France was conditional on soviet directives. and when the soviets wanted them to support Germany they did.

The Right in France were an all-together different beast. The main right organisation was Action Francaise.  It was pro-monarchy, pro-France, pro-Catholic and anti-Left. Led by Charles Maurras, a brilliant writer and journalist, he had dubious distinction of advocating a Catholic France while being totally contemptuous of religion.  Despite regarding belief with disdain, Maurras regarded it as valuable because of its social utility. He supported Catholicism because it was the historical religion of France, but but to him this was just an accident of history, and if France had had an Islamic tradition, he would have supported it as well.  The fact that the leading advocate of the largest right wing organisation in France was openly contemptuous of religion did bother some  of the religious, but that didn't stop many clergy--some of them at extremely high levels of the French church-- from supporting it and singing its praises.

The picture that I'm trying to paint is of a divided, depressed, hypocritical and wounded society which had deep social, economic, moral and religious problems. Two books which deal with the subject matter well are Eugen Weber's The Hollow Years which tackles the subject from a sociological level, and Yves Simon' brilliant book, The Road to Vichy which tackles it from a moral one. Simon's book is better, in my opinion, in understanding the near utter corruption of France's cultural institutions and population. A good summary of it can be found here.

The bottom line is that the France was a deeply traumatised country which seemed to want to forget the war and enjoy itself, all the while avoiding the menacing reality on its eastern border. What also strikes you, when you read the biographies of De Gaulle, is just how "culturally" different he was both to his contemporaries, and outside the temper of his own times. In many ways he was a throwback to values from before the war--though from the avant-garde* conservative element -- possessing a sense of realism that was lacking in many Frenchmen.  While he was not a "popular" fellow, he had superiors who recognised his intellect and abilities and ensured his progression through the ranks. By the eve of the war in France, he was a brigadier general commanding a tank division, attaining his rank from success in armoured combat. His success in battle earned him a promotion as the government minister. Even in government he was an oddity, because when the French finally capitulated against the Germans he decided to fight on.

The point that I'm trying to emphasise here is that De Gaulle  was an outsider and not someone  cut from the same prevailing cloth that made up the French governing classes of the time. He possessed a different set of values and this is the key to understanding the man and his subsequent actions.

It is very important to understand that the French ruling class of the 1930's--both right and left--was rotten.  De Gaulle was an outsider, and his rise through the ranks was not political but driven by the force of circumstances which highlighted competency in a time of crisis and rendered "political" skills inconsequential . And when I reflect on his rise, it always strikes me as remarkable how this oddity, this man who was different, ended up being in a position where he were he could with legitimacy speak for a France that did not want to capitulate.

There were Frenchmen who wanted to fight but it appears to be that there were none in Government. What further emphasises this point, it that when he put out his appeal for men to join him in England, not one intellectual, politician or senior diplomat wanted to join him.  As Don Cook, in his biography of him wrote:

In those early days, it was not men of experience or leadership, it was not the intellectuals or politicians or administrators or serving officers who were the first Gaullists and rallied to the Cross of Lorraine. They did not come from the châteaus or cathedrals, but from the parish churches and the synagogues, the French of the Paris Métro, the fishing villages, the factories, for whom all was clear and simple.

By and large the French educated and administrative classes were rotten and De Gaulle seemed to be the last vestigal element of what was good in it. I'm not trying to be melodramatic here but the facts speak for themselves. As De Gaulle took off from french soil for England, Churchill's comments were close to the mark.

He carried with him in his small air plane the honor of France

When De Gaulle arrived in England he was looking for an officer or official to serve under. He wrote to various French officials who could of assumed the role but none replied. Then he realised he was on his own. He didn't seek power, it was thrust on him. Realising he was on his own he made the decisive choice:

It was up to me to take responsibility for France

All his subsequent actions can be understood as the application of his principles to the custodianship of France. The reason why he baffled and infuriated his allies is because he was not like them.

*I think a point that doesn't get emphasised enough is just how well read and intelligent De Gaulle was. What really surprised me as I looked into him more deeply, is just how intellectual actually he was and just how influenced he was by the small coterie of French dissident Right thinkers who were repelled by Action Francaise and yet did not drift to the Left.

Julian Jackson's book on Charles De Gaulle

Now, I'll tell you how I felt about de Gaulle. About two years before de Gaulle came back into office I began to tell Dulles, I said, now look, Foster, our only hope in Europe is to get de Gaulle back in. He is the only man that will save that country. Now, let's make no mistake -- this man is not easy to deal with and, I said, as a matter of fact, that I was probably the only American that was welcome in his house. But the thing is, only he can save France, and France is going down the drain.

(Dwight Eisenhower, Interview Transcript)

I haven't been posting for a while thanks to commentator Jason. As a result of his recommendation to read Julian Jackson's biography of Charles De Gaulle, I've ended up falling down a rabbit hole of contemporary french history, European politics, philosophy and theology which I'm still trying to make my way through.

I've always had a great respect for Charles De Gaulle, ever since I read my first biography about him. I have always considered him one of the great statesmen of the 20th C. In light of the new material that I've been acquainted with I have now re-evaluated my opinion of the man and regard him as its greatest. I say that with the full recognition of the other famous leaders and their circumstances. Perhaps his nearest competitors are Konrad Adenauer, Lee Kwan Yew and Theodore Roosevelt but for a variety of reasons I feel that none of them was able to achieve so much with the hand that fortune had dealt them.

But first to Julian Jackson's biography.

A Certain Idea of France has achieved many accolades and I must admit the book is well written. I had actually read bits of pieces of it in the past but had not tackled it in its totality before. Jackson is a great story teller and gives a great account of De Gaulle's tumultuous life. The book is great on detail without getting boring and it does appear that Jackson is trying to give a fair and balanced account of De Gaulle's life. However, it does appear to me that the French critics of the book are to a certain degree right, in that the book gives a very British view of his life. And what I think the French critics are saying is that the British interpret De Gaulle incorrectly and I think that they are right.

The problem with Jackson's book is while he gives a good account of the life of the General but in my impression there's a "spin" to it, either conscious or unconscious, that is really not corroborated by an investigation of the facts which leads me to the conclusion that the author did not really understand his subject matter. He gave a good rendition of his life without understanding the man.

The Anglo-Saxon approach to De Gaulle tends to emphasise the negative experience of his personality as if this was an unavoidable feature of a "man of history." He is described a prickly, petty, cold, aloof, arrogant, ungrateful and spiteful man, especially to the British.  One really gets the impression that De Gaulle was a unnecessary "pain in the arse" and did everything he could to sabotage the latent goodwill of the British and Americans toward him. Furthermore, while Jackson, does acknowledge De Gaulle's patriotism it does appear to me that Jackson suggests that there is calculating Machiavellian component to it that poisons it's sincerity.

The impression that I got from Jackson was the De Gaulle was a disagreeable politician that was scheming for somewhat cynically for French dominance, particularly in Europe. And then while looking a bit deeper into some of the issues involved, I came upon this interesting interview with Dwight Eisenhower which gave me the impression of a totally different man. (It's worth a read)

Something wasn't right.

Part of my trip through the rabbit hole has been trying to work out which of the two versions of De Gaulle is correct. It's my opinion that Eisenhower's assessment is a truer understanding the man.

And that's where things get really interesting. In trying to understand De Gaulle you begin realise the greatness of his being and the vision he was trying to implement with the limited means at his disposal, all the time being undermined by "friends" and enemies. In a sort of super-Nietzschean sense, it was not enough for him to will himself to power, he willed France to power, particularly "a certain idea of it". The tragedy of his story is that the French people in 1968--as in 1939--weren't up to the task, and as Michael Houllebecq has demonstrated in his novels, they preferred mediocrity to greatness.

De Gaull's conception of French "greatness" was based up a deep sense of its history and culture. He saw France as a "light to the world" and it was only when the French were fulfilling this role were they truly themselves. At the bottom of this is an identitarian conception of France which saw it as having a unique  role in the world.

Identity is a keen theme in the philosophy of De Gaulle and it's important to understand that he didn't want the world to be "French" as much as he wanted the world to be influenced by France. No where was this line of thinking more evident than his conception of the European Union which he saw as a "Europe of patries" where each nation maintained his identity as opposed to a supranational european state which suppressed them. He would have supported Brexit, not because he hated the British but because, in a certain sort of way and no matter how much it exasperated him, he loved them being British.

De Gaulle’s concern was that political decisions affecting Europe should be made primarily by national leaders attached to national realities as they sought to negotiate outcomes that would first benefit their nations and thereby Europe as a whole. No doubt, this demanded a degree of statesmanship which (de Gaulle would undoubtedly agree!) was probably beyond most national leaders. But to refer to “Europe” as a political entity without more-or-less immediately speaking about European nations risked, from de Gaulle’s standpoint, precipitating a slide into a highly technocratic conception of Europe: one which viewed the differences between European peoples which reflect the rich tapestry of European culture as atavisms that obstructed the realization of perpetual peace and an apolitical empire ruled by largely unaccountable bureaucrats.

Samuel Gregg

Jackson misses the point that much of De Gaulle's intransigence and rudeness--on many occasions completely justified--came about as result of his attempts to reassert both French and European identity against the homogenising influences of Modernity, particularly the Anglo variety.  It's interesting to see that one of his most pointed criticism of Churchill was that he subordinated the British identity and independence to that of the United States. De Gualle never allowed France to follow this course; to his core he believed in the primacy of identity.

Jackson frequently attributes De Gaulle's identitarian impulse as reaction to the "humiliations" of a "dependent France" suffered by the hands of Britain, U.S and Nazi Germany, but here I think he has also missed the mark.

De Gaulle was perhaps one of the most "intellectual" politicians of the 20th C.  He thought deeply about  about the issues of nation and state, politics, religion and history. He read widely and deeply and his identitarian politics were as a result of a deep understanding of the human condition and politics. De Gaulle was no reactionary, he was a positive identitarian.

But what also struck me while digging deeper into his life is just how important religion was to him and just how influenced he was influenced by many of the writers associated with the Nouvelle Theology movement: Bergson, Maritan, Bernanos, Mauriac, but most particularly Charles Peguy. While there is no doubt that he was quite "conservative" and sympathetic to Action Francaise, he was not cut of their cloth. If I have understood De Gaulle at all, then his vision of France was influenced by a new "Right Wing" version of Catholicism which was able to transcend the moribund traditionalism of the past while avoiding the idiocies of its "liberal" opposition.

People who have frequented this blog will know that I think that one of the reasons why Christianity is in decline is because it affected by a heresy akin to Buddhism which has sapped it of its vitality. What surprised me was that what De Gaulle embodied--and attempted to instill politically-- was a spirit of anti-buddhism which he drew from these "nouvelle theological" authors.  He wanted Christianity, France and Europe to live. Unfortunately, he was undermined by other.

The political Right--and I'm not including Conservative Inc. in this group--seems rudderless at the moment. I think there is a lot of profit to be made from studying De Gaulle and the authors that influenced him. His ideas on nation, identity, history and politics bring a different approach to right wing thought. While Julian Jackson's book is a good read and has chronicalled his life well you'll miss the man for the history and hence the book is not a good start.

Happy "Non Judeo-Christian" Day

 

My children are politically interested but not woke and one of them, in particular, is quite cynical. This morning, over breakfast, he asked me how I would spin the Easter story if I were a Neocon.  I was actually surprised by this question as I'd never thought about this approach before.  Never mind,  the local "conservative" paper, in the form of an editorial on the meaning of Easter came up with the goods. It included this bit which I thought hit the mark perfectly:

Faith is no short-term proposition, as Scott Morrison acknowledged in his Passover message to Australia’s Jewish community last week. “From ancient times to the present day, Jewish people have been blessed with a rich identity, a deep understanding of the past, and a fierce commitment to liberty,” the Prime Minister said. “That identity enriches the lives of those around them.” He quoted the late British rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “Freedom is the work of a nation, nations need identity, identity needs memory, and memory is encoded in the stories we tell.” On Sunday, Jewish families will mark the final day of Passover, which ends after nightfall. Passover and Easter have been inextricably linked from the night Christ gathered his disciples in Jerusalem to eat the Passover meal — his Last Supper. There, he instituted the Eucharist and the ministerial priesthood and showed a supreme model for fraternal service, washing his disciples’ feet. It was the night before his passion and crucifixion.

Now, I must admit that I thought that emphasising of the Jewish component of Easter sort of missed the mark, not because there isn't a historical link between the Passover and the Crucifixion but because the "tone" of the article tends to paint an equivalence between the two. This, I felt, is disingenuous in that the relationship between Judaism and Easter is not so much "linked" as in opposition. I don't think that I'm being unjust to Judaism in stating that their "take" on Christ is in total opposition to the Christian.  Now it's quite true that there is a common historical origin of the two faiths--as there is with Islam as well--but the difference in the understanding of the role of Christ who is the central figure of the Christian faith, and his relationship to God, makes the idea of a Judeo-Christian "tradition" after the crucifixion ridiculous. Yes there is a tradition, but as I said before, it's a tradition of opposition. In fact, it would be closer to the mark that to say that there is a Judeo-Islamic "tradition" of denying the claims that Christ made of himself.

I can see the anti-Semitic radars firing up and I want to stress that this is not what I'm intending in this piece, rather I wish to point out that if you take Judaism and Christianity seriously you will see that the interpretations of the life of Christ are completely different.  The concept of Judeo-Christianity dishonors both traditions. When I see the term used approvingly by an author it's usually a sure sign that they're not intellectually serious.

The other day I was reading of how St Thomas remarked that there were other ways--beside the crucifixion-- by which Christ could have saved men but that God chose the most "fitting". And while it's true that the lion's share of the work of salvation was done on Good Friday what better way to prove your divinity to mortal men than by rising yourself from the dead.

It's a hard act to beat.

The Modern Christian Dilemma

Apologies for not posting for a while but as I've mentioned in the comments section of a previous post, I'm currently down follow intellectual rabbit holes which came about from reading a biography of Charles De Gaulle and I'll hopefully be posting properly soon.

However commentator MK gave me a heads up with regards to an interview of Rod Dreher by Aaron Renn and wanted to know my thoughts about it. In my opinion the pivotal moment of the interview occurs when Renn quotes Dreher a passage of his own writing. From Retribalising America:

Eventually, the provocations of Social Justice Warriors, especially when they are race-based, is going to empower the militant whites, especially those drawn to pagan masculinity, and they are going to do what the rest of us would not do: Fight. This, because the best — that is, those who want peace, civility, and tolerance — lack all conviction to defend the conditions under which we can have those things against their enemies.

Renn then asks Dreher "Why cant we [Ed: Christians] fight?"

Dreher: "How can we do that? I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm really trying to figure this out."

Here is the YouTube link to the interview segment.

I don't think Dreher was trying to avoid the question here rather the Christianity that Dreher espouses inhibits any type of fighting back.  I don't think that it's an issue of "conviction" as much as it is a perversion of Christianity which sees any type of righteous assertion as immoral. The "suffering" Jesus is seen as a moral example, the Jesus who chased the money lenders from the temple is ignored.

I really want to go back to one of my favourite quotes from Chesterton's, Orthodoxy:

So it is also, of course, with the contradictory charges of the anti-Christians about submission and slaughter. It IS true that the Church told some men to fight [ED] and others not to fight; and it IS true that those who fought were like thunderbolts and those who did not fight were like statues. All this simply means that the Church preferred to use its Supermen and to use its Tolstoyans. There must be SOME good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. There must be SOME good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. All that the Church did (so far as that goes) was to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other. They existed side by side. The Tolstoyans, having all the scruples of monks, simply became monks. The Quakers became a club instead of becoming a sect. Monks said all that Tolstoy says; they poured out lucid lamentations about the cruelty of battles and the vanity of revenge. But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough to run the whole world; and in the ages of faith they were not allowed to run it. The world did not lose the last charge of Sir James Douglas or the banner of Joan the Maid. And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is--Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved.

Chesterton recognised that "sound" Christianity was able to incorporate the gentleness of the lamb with the fierceness of the lion. How it did so is for a later time. But was happened over the last century or so is that Christianity has deligitimised the lion's nature and told it to be more lamb like.  In fact, what Christianity has done, through a Kenotic interpretation of itself, is told the lion to treat the lamb as a type of Buddha and incorporate himself within it, resulting in both a destruction of it's identity and nature. Chesterton saw that the pacifistic trend in Christianity had strong tendencies with Buddhism.

We don't have a Church that "told some men to fight" as it did in the Ages of the Faith. This could either be as a result of a doctrinal development or as a result of heresy. But as the Master says: "you judge a tree by it's fruit" and contemporary Christianity, especially in the West has been bleeding. The empirical evidence leads points to the latter.

The thing about heresies is that none of the heretics think that they are wrong and it just might be that we're in another one of those ages, like during the Arian controversy, when the laity were right and the senior clergy wrong.  Note, this trend in Christianity--especially Catholic Christianity--has been gaining traction over the last century, so this isn't a post Vatican two effect.

As for "fighting" I think our primary purpose at the moment should be to drive out the kenotic heresy from our Churches.

Paragraphs to Ponder

As Rod Dreher wails, I was struck by this passage in Eugen Weber's, The Hollow Years. In many ways, France in the 1930's was much like the U.S. is today.

Then came defeat--not quite, as Maurras put it, a divine surprise, but as in 1871, explained as providential. "France's calamities," opined the rector of Questembert, "provided a providential occasion to re-forge Christendom" where it had gone to pot. Conveniently for the soldiers who now ran the show; priests everywhere clamored that the 'War had been lost by godless schoolteachers, or else by the stupidity of universal suffrage, or else by failures in Church discipline. A major cause of the country's punishment, Canon Chaplain of Lambezellec informed the diocesan school inspector, was the profanation of Sunday. Chastisement was well deserved. Re-sanctify the Lord's Day and all would change for the better. French sins justified divine punishment, wrote Monsignor Salige, archbishop of Toulouse, who would become a cardinal at the Liberation for his Resistance activities. Given how the victory of 1918 had been wasted, what would the French have done had they been granted victory in 1940? Better penitence. The annual pilgrimage of Rocamadour at the end of June would in 1940 be "penitential": dedicated to accepting the country's harsh ordeal "in a spirit of reparation."

The progressive Cardinal Lienart became an ardent supporter of Philippe Petain, perhaps because of the subsidies that Vichy now provided to Catholic schools. So did Alfred Cardinal Baudrillart, who shortly before had found in Hitler "our only sheet anchor against Bolsheviks and Communists." Most of the episcopate took similar positions, declaring their "veneration" for Petain and calling on the faithful to support his endeavors. They were hardly exceptional. Most of the French supported Petain, at first with hope and then with resignation. Why should their Church be different? 

 The intra-Catholic war meanwhile continued. Aube and Esprit were prohibited; Mounier, who wanted "to arm French souls against Nazi contamination," was imprisoned. Traditional Catholics continued to denounce progressive heretics like him, his friends, and those of Aube, Christian Democracy, resistant to reaction, bred resistants to the order that reaction introduced: Edmond Michelet in Correze, Charles d'Aragon in the Tarn, Maurice Bye and Etienne Borne in the Haute Garonne, and those still better known, like Maurice Schumann and Georges Bidault. Some of the most visible collaborators--Henriot, Brasillach, Darnand--were also visible Catholics. Numerous members of Darnand's militia died crying, “Long Live Christ the King," at their execution. But Catholics who fought Vichy and the Germans were even more visible; 216 priests were killed or executed, 118 members of the Catholic student association, too. The role they and their fellows played to the Resistance defused what hostility to the Church there was. As one Catholic wrote to the bishop of Marseilles. without their courage to disobey their pastors and follow their, consciences "neither you nor most of your fellow bishops would sit in your seats today.

It's a real bother, said God. When the French won't be around any more, there are things that I do, there won't be anyone to understand them." But Charles Peguy, who wrote these words, never thought, though well he might have done, that the French, who understood so well the things God did, fathomed them in a variety of ways. Catholics did not agree among themselves, sometimes within themselves. Would Peguy, the Christian patriot, have been in London with de Gaulle or in Vichy with Petain? Both claimed him for their own, as they claimed God. And God could have been on the Right with either.

I have absolutely no doubt that Peguy would have sided with De Gaulle. He, like De Gaulle, shared "a certain idea about France."

Merry Christmas

 Wishing all my readers the a Merry Christmas.

Here's some Christian civilisation for you.

Possible Developments in the Pell Case

How it began:

From The Guardian,

How it's going.

From The Daily Mail:

The Australian newspaper has more details (behind paywall) but apparently the money was transferred across in forty thousand transactions.

That's 2.3 Billion dollars. Serious money.

Sky News has a good segment on the subject.

From what I've read on the subject, it appears that the Vatican bank was a personal fiefdom of several corrupt cardinals and they were laundering money. 

And I don't think Francis or the other Popes were aware of this.

That's a huge problem.

Our Barbarian: Dreher vs Pell

Donald Trump gets a fair amount of loathing here in Australia by our "respectable" media but so does Cardinal Pell, who was recently released from jail after the Australian High Court overturned his conviction 7-0. i.e he was innocent.  Pell is ostensibly loathed by the Left here in Australia for his supposed role in the pedophilia scandal but he earned their hate long before with his outspoken Christian conservatism.  He was chosen by the Pope to clean up the Vatican finances and while he was always a man of controversy, the real heat was put on him while trying to clean up that mess.

While in prison he kept a journal of his thoughts and it was interesting seeing his musings on Trump;

Cardinal Pell also offered his evaluation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s single term in office, saying “he was a little bit of a barbarian, but he was our barbarian.”

Calling Trump a “controversial fellow,” Cardinal Pell also praised certain moves Trump made, such as his Supreme Court appointments and his decision to participate in the annual March for Life.

“I’m grateful for that and I’m not one running around trying to damn his memory,” he said, adding, <b>“In a democracy, we Christians have got a right, and indeed an obligation, to struggle to maintain Christian values in life, because the moment they start to disappear, notions like truth and reason and free speech” also go away.</b>

“On the whole I think Trump has made a positive contribution to the Christian cause, but in other areas, I’m not so sure he’s been sufficiently respectful of the political process,” Cardinal Pell said, adding, “and it’s important that people believe they’re getting a fair go, and if that’s not the case, <b>it needs to be established very, very clearly</b> because it’s no small thing to weaken trust in great public institutions” *

There's a couple of points I want to make here. Pell has definite conservative bona fides. His handling of the sexual abuse crisis, at the time, was groundbreaking but not without its faults, Theologically he is solid, so it's interesting to see his take on Trump compared to Dreher's.

Trump as a politician is measured by his policies and governance, not his personal failings. Secondly, he sees that the Trump presidency has been beneficial to Christians in a way that a Clinton presidency would not have been. Thirdly, he sees that Christians must be politically active and not simply accept whatever comes their way. While he sees that Trump has faults I think it would be fair to think that unlike Dreher, Pell does not think that Trump is a fascist.

The question to ask here is: is the Christian West so emasculated that we need to rely on "barbarians" to save us?

Christian Buddhism: Scrutonism

This is an excellent review of Dreher's, Live Not by Lies and I broadly agree with the sentiments of the author:

Scrutonism, of which as you can see Dreher has a bad case, is a call to be a beautiful loser. But you can’t inspire anyone with a program that offers being a loser. People cowering under fire want a plan; they want a leader to point not only to what Christ would do, but how that will help them, and more importantly their children, come out the other side, cleansed and victorious. What Dreher offers instead is a call to martyrdom. This is theologically sound, but not politically.

With regard to "theological soundness", I'm not so sure. While it may be that in certain circumstances martyrdom may be the only option for the Christian, in others it may be the totally wrong choice.

One of the things that I'm interested is in the relationship between Caritas and Evil (Malum). Particularly, does Caritas have the right to push back and not merely suffer it? It's an interesting question as I feel that the Buddhist drift in Christianity over the last few hundred years has all but deligitimised it. It would be extremely difficult to visualise the current Pope, or even JPII for that  matter, if capable of time travel, blessing the soldiers prior to the battles of Vienna or Lepanto. Yet their contemporaries of the time would have had no problem in doing so. Although this is no proof, there does seem to be strong correlation between the decline of the Christian religion and Buddhist drift.

Just saying.

Note: I'd just add some reservations about alliances with "sinners" of various types. Materialists of any kind--even conservative ones--are generally bad news to Right politics.

U.S. Politics

"I appealed to Lincoln for his own sake to remove Grant at once, and in giving my reasons for it, I simply voiced the admittedly overwhelming protest from the loyal people of the land against Grant's continuance in command. I could form no judgment during the conversation as to what effect my arguments had upon him beyond the fact that he was greatly distressed at this new complication. When I said everything that could be said from my standpoint, we lapsed into silence. Lincoln remained silent for what seemed a very long time. He then gathered himself up in his chair and said in a tone of earnestness that I shall never forget, "I can't spare this man, he fights."

Posting has been light for a variety of reasons but mainly because I've been trying to keep abreast of the situation unfolding with regard to the current U.S. election. 
 

Firstly however, I would like to also give a shout out to Aaron Renn who, through his Masculinist podcast, was kind enough to link to some of the posts on this blog, and to commentator MK who bought this to my attention. I'm quite familiar with the "regulars" who comment here but its kind of nice to know that there are others who read the posts without leaving a presence. Sometimes I do wonder if the post are gaining any traction so it was both a pleasant and daunting surprise to know that Aaron had thought some of things I said were worthwhile.  I would also recommend my readers to subscribe to his podcast and newsletter.

Now to business at hand. As mentioned above, I've been closely following he U.S. election and am quite concerned with the developments. I'm old enough to remember the events preceding the war in Yugoslavia and there's an eerie similarity with what was going on then and what is happening now. The country is both deeply polarised and armed, and that does not make for a happy combination.

Contrary to  the opinion of some christian commentators it is my opinion that there is plausible statistical evidence that Trump was defrauded of an electoral victory. It's also my opinion that real Christian persecution is going to begin with a Biden ascendancy and I think that it's safe to say that I think that many Trump supporters are of the same mind. I'm also of the opinion that should the Democrats lose any Supreme Court contest they will not respect it's decision and will try to force their claim.  Should Trump try to preempt this by arresting those responsible, it will be perceived by his opponents and as an attempt at a coup. I really hope I'm wrong but I can't see a "peaceful" solution to this.  This does not mean that that the country will turn into a Yugoslavia or Syria but I can imagine a prolonged period of quite nasty civil unrest.

A lot of it will also depend on who the military supports in this struggle and from what I've seen I'm not convinced that they will all fall into line behind their Commander-in-Chief, especially if his legitimacy is contested. The other problem here is that the other side seems to have anticipated a fight and has laid the groundwork for it. Those Antifa riots which slipped out of the news prior to the election look to be both well organised and funded, and I can imagine a resurgence of activity as Inauguration Day approaches.  The actions of the U.S. Left over the preceding year have a remarkable similarity to the "colour" revolutions organised around the world. In other words, they're not spontaneous but planned.

The other dimension to this whole thing has been the Durham investigation which is very likely to lead to the prosecution of large numbers of individuals in the higher echelons of the U.S. Government. There are many people who will be in deep trouble with a Trump victory so they will do everything in their power to thwart it. On the other hand a Trump loss will likely result in reprisals and consequences to his supporters. There are major incentives not to settle this peacefully. The guy who runs Jim's blog is of the same opinion.

The pragmatic men of the Democratic party seem to be moderate but the ideological core has shifted radically to the left,  and a Biden victory will ensure a systematic and ever worsening Christian persecution. No one who has taken the slightest notice of messages telegraphed by the radical left can come to any other conclusion.  Given the existential threat to Christianity in the U.S., I cannot understand how men like Dreher can fail to fall behind Trump. These parlour-room Christians seem more concerned about social graces and etiquette which are accorded a greater weighting than any other quality a man can have. Combined with their Christian Buddhism, they would rather suffer under an urbane tyrant than fight with a righteous braggart. They seem to want some immaculate leader without spot and acceptable to polite company but they, for all their Christianity, forget the lessons of the Master:

When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society, He chose for its cornerstone neither the brilliant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward – in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it.

Chesterton.

Sometimes you've got to use what you've got.

I fully understand that Trump is a man of many faults, many of them quite objectionable, but he seems to have the quality that is most needed in this hour: Courage.  I've got to admit I find his style brash and objectionable, but I've grown to admire the his grit and determination in spite of the most vicious media pile-on I've ever seen, despite traitors in his own ranks and despite that machinations of a state apparatus that have sought to frustrate his every move. Other Republicans would have thrown in the towel a long while ago and, faced with the fait accompli of the election, would have simply rolled over. Men like Dreher, too holy to fight would have surrendered to the Left--and all that means--assured that in their abandonment of their country's defence and partrimony they were gaining points in heaven for their principled holiness. The attitude, given the circumstances, is contemptible and is an example of why modern Christianity is unable to fight evil.

Trump--flawed as he is--fights on.

I don't in any way want to suggest that Trump is some kind of divine figure, there's plenty of evidence that his Christianity is very superficial, but any man seeing what danger is looming can in no way approve of Dreher's approach given the situation.  A Christianity that walks away from the fight, given the circumstances, is not a Christianity at all.

The Daily Show, a while ago, mocked Trump giving a talk on Ulysses S. Grant, another man who was objectionable at the time. Despite his inarticulation, Trump seems to have grasped the lessons of Grant both intuitively and deeply, and like Grant, may end up being the saviour of the Republic. 

I hope I'm wrong but I think that there are going to be some trying times for the U.S. I want to wish my readers there all the best. If I were there I'd be putting myself behind Trump.

God Bless.

BTW

 For some strange reason this seems appropriate.

A Christian Heresy

One of the things that I've been trying to understand is how the Left was able to achieve a total dominance in Western Civilisation over the space of the last 100 years. Taking a big picture view, the stand out fact of 20th century has been the de-Christianisation of the European peoples replaced by a materialistic conception of themselves. The bloody struggles that have marked this period can best be considered a consequence of the struggle between Left and Right versions of materialism.  The curious factor of this state of events--unlike in previous ages-- has been the lack of participation of the Christian factor in this fight. Whereas in previous European ages, men to fought to assert or defend their their religious views  what's been interesting is Christianity's passivity during the materialistic ascendancy.

And I think it's important to explore the relationship of this passivity with the phenomenon of  dechristianisation. There is clearly a correlation but is there a link?

As I have said before, Faith is a product of Grace and without it, it cannot exist.   Therefore at its most fundamental level, the lack of Grace--either withdrawn or rejected--is the ultimate cause of the de-Christianisation. Traditional approaches have tended to emphasise the disobedience of the "people" as a causative factor in this state of affairs, the problem however is that the people aren't disobedient as much as indifferent. It's not that they're rebelling against God it's just that He "isn't there" in their lives to rebel against. The Christian God is as relevant to the practical day to day affairs of men as is Thor or Zeus. In many cases, rabid atheists, who care about God enough to hate him are closer to Christians than the mass of european peoples who simply and innocently don't care.

I personally think that the problem lays with the theocratic class, the group of men and women charged with the care of the Christian laity. In my opinion, under their leadership, they have forged a new version of Christianity with the last century which has sapped it strength and led to a withdrawal of Grace. I would like to stress that this is not a Vatican II thing, rather it's more fundamental and in the background, something that affects both "sides" of Church politics. To put it very crudely the problem is the issue is the Buddhist transformation of Christianity. In theological language it has to do with modern interpretations of the phenomenon of kenosis.

The essential issue is how to understand the phenomenon and it would appear that even in very "orthodox" factions an interpretation has been given which takes Christianity to the very steps of nirvana.

Let me illustrate what the problem is. 

Traditional Christianity always asserted that Christ had both Divine and Human natures. The concept behind kenosis is that God, in the being of Christ, "emptied' himself to become man. The traditional heresy, condemned by the Church was that in doing so Christ got rid of his "God-ness" in order to become man. The modern heresy is the opposite, namely that Jesus the man, got rid of all his man-ness in order to accept God more fully; all his desires, ambitions and even sense of self. In doing so, by ridding himself of his personality and activity, he became a passive receptive vehicle through which God could act. Jesus essentially became a shell of a man in order to let God work through him. He accepted whatever he was sent, and his suffering was meritorious insofar as it was done that it as the price he had to pay in order to do God's will.

The problem is that when Christians go to emulate Christ's life, as we are always told to do, we are expected to nullify ourselves again in order to to be perfect like Christ. Suffering needs to be accepted and is seen as a vehicle of Grace. The less we are of ourselves the more we are like God. Accept what comes your way, suffer cheerfully and let God work through you. What could be wrong with that?

Indeed it's almost ecumenical since Buddhist scholars have seen this approach as very similar to the concept of sunyata, in the Buddhist religion. Smarter people than me have recognised this problem as well though it appears they're on the outside.

In the twentieth century, in fact, there were many “theologies” that claimed authentication by resorting to what they called the “key” concept of kenosis, which was made to serve in a thousand different ways: “radical theology,” “theology of secularization,” “theology of hope,” “liberation theology,” “ecumenical theology,” “theology of dialogue,” “theology of trinitarian kenosis,” “theology of crisis and chaos,” “neocultural theologies,” “kenotic Christology,” “theology of kenotic anonymity,” “theology of biblical kenosis,”etc., etc. In all of these one notes the proper at-tempt to promote the kenotic principle in Philippians 2:7, so as to place truly at the center of Christian thought the mystery of the abasement and self-giving of the Son of God ................ We should also note, however, that this “kenotic key” has allowed many writers gradually to evacuate the Christian faith of everything that properly identifies and characterizes it (whether at the level of the concept of God, the level of ecclesial mediation, or the level of theological language), leaving only an empty, indeterminate space in which everything can be reconciled with everything: all faiths, all beliefs, all confessions, all languages are invited to censor themselves, to limit them-selves, to “weaken” themselves in the conviction that they thus imitate Christ’s self-emptying with a view to universal salvation. At the same time, this kenotic process supposedly liberates the Church from all religious, political, cultural, and scientific conflicts (for example, in relations between faith and science), simply be-cause the Church would finally recognize that it can have no “strong” language, no truth that can be formulated definitively, and thus no “strong” claim or presence in the world.

Sound familiar? The suffering weak Christ becomes  the suffering weak church and ultimately Christian culture that cannot assert itself. Modern interpretation of Kenosis, that have gained considerable traction even among the orthodox have emasculated the Church. (There are similar tendencies at play in non-Catholic Christianity.)

So how did we get to this place? The short answer is that it's complicated, but if I had to summarise the major forces at play it would be:

a) A glorification of asceticism which had the effect of encouraging a culture of passivity and suffering. 

b) The institutionalised Christian contempt toward the flesh i.e. decarnalisation.

c) The atrophy of the militant factions of Christianity which came about from the general disgust among reflective men to the Christian slaughter in the European wars of religion.

d) The secularisation of European governments as a result of the Enlightenment which meant that practical business of  using the "sword" was taken away from Christianity. This resulted in a greater emphasis on "caring" Christianity instead of fighting/defensive Christianity.

e) Further more, state sponsored Christianity gave it a "safe space" in which to operate, ensuring that questions of survival did not have to answers real world tests meaningfully.

f) The slaughter in the 20th Century which gave pacifism and ecumenism a new impetus.

g) Increasingly theological freedom from the mid 19th Century onwards resulting in a co-option of Modernism by liberal theologians

h) The sterility of conservative theological thought which was unable to respond to the challenges of liberalism and modernity. This latter is a very important point. It's not the liberalisation of the Church which is the problem, rather it was the inability of the conservative theologians to push back against the liberals within the intellectual "space" allowed by the liberalisation.

There are other forces at play, but the point I'm trying to get across here is that while there has been no explicit doctrinal change there have profound shifts in emphasis within the culture of the Church resulting in its Buddhisation.  Podles what right in describing the phenomenon:

A change of emphasis here, a neglect of inconvenient Scripture there, and soon a religion takes a shape that, though difficult to distinguish from the Christianity of the Gospels, somehow has a quite different effect. .........., but how far can one go in stressing the immanence of God and his will to save before Christianity is left behind? When does bridal receptivity become passivity, and when does passivity become Quietism? There have been differences of opinion over where to draw the line. The authorities win in the textbooks, but the mystics have often won the battle for popular influence.

There is a flipside to this as well. No society can survive without the ability of self assertion when faced with a threat. What has happened with the decline of Christianity is that assertive void was filled by secular, generally "right" materialist West which for a long time was happy to let Christianity subsist within its structure. Christian pacifism essentially was protected from destruction by a military which was frequently the subject of its criticism.  However as both left and right materialism have now begun to converge, the "safe space" offered to Christianity is decreasing and unless it starts asserting itself in a manner appropriate to the times it risks becoming a faded memory, in the West at least.

 

 

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A Church Impotent

As the Church became more and more feminized, the predominance of feminine emotions encouraged both mystics and the theologians who counseled them to attempt a subtle change in Christianity to make it conform more to the desires of the feminine heart. A change of emphasis here, a neglect of inconvenient Scripture there, and soon a religion takes a shape that, though difficult to distinguish from the Christianity of the Gospels, somehow has a quite different effect. Pantheism and universalism, for instance, are the heretical exaggerations of feminine attitudes, but how far can one go in stressing the immanence of God and his will to save before Christianity is left behind? When does bridal receptivity become passivity, and when does passivity become Quietism? There have been differences of opinion over where to draw the line. The authorities win in the textbooks, but the mystics have often won the battle for popular influence.

Leon Podles, The Church Impotent

Over the last few weeks I've finally had a chance to read Leon Podles book, The Church Impotent. I think its an interesting book which raises some interesting topics, particularly with regard to the diminishing numbers of men attending church. Though, for all the books merits,  I think it misses its mark mainly because it mistakes effect with cause.

First Things did a review of the book years ago which I felt was unfair, picking on the details which ignoring the big picture. The is clearly a problem with the lack of men attending Church, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Church is "feminised". Women, for example, seem to have a greater preference for sweet things than men, but it doesn't mean that sugar is feminine.

The big argument in the book is that because of the theological developments in the theology of bridal mysticism, which arose meaningfully in the Middle Ages, the Church has assumed a feminine nature which is repellent to men. Very crudely put, the argument is that men are put off the Church because it is a bit "gay". Real men, find the concept of being the "bride of Christ" really off putting and hence don't attend. For men of weak masculinity or "beta" sexuality this really isn't a problem hence their preponderance among the men that attend.

The problem with this view is that equates the worship of God equated with the the attendance to a theater show: you go if you expect some kind of pleasurable benefit from it, otherwise you stay away. It's a very sociological approach but it ignores the religious dimension of the problem.

That's not how it works. 

Worship is an obligation and the aesthetics of it are in many ways irrelevant. Sure, aesthetics may aid or detract from the experience but the underlying principle is that you're there to bend the knee, not go to a show: its duty, not entertainment.

As I see it there are two reasons why men are not attending Church:

a) They don't want to when they know they should be going. (Rejecting Grace)

b) They don't even know that they have to go to Church. (No Grace)

I think that the average European male in contemporary times is more likely to have (b) for an excuse rather than (a). Most men don't reject religion as much as they see it as irrelevant. They don't care enough to be repelled and the reason why men don't go to Church is because they don't feel the "pull of God." i.e. the movement of Grace. Now this "pull of God" may be felt in a variety of ways, either as a duty, sense of peace  or closeness etc. It all boils down to the notion that he needs to attend Church for whatever religious reason. Most men have no such sense. Hence it is my contention that it is a lack of Grace, rather than the feminisation of the Church which is responsible here.

I pulled the above quote from Podles book because while I feel his idea of a feminised church is wrong he does ultimately hit the mark with regard to the problem. Because of a variety of theological and cultural factors i.e. excarnation, bridal receptivity, clericalism and the idealisation of the contemplative life,  the Church has been infected with a Quietism which, while formally rejected on the books, has been hugely influential in theological developments and religious practice.  The Church is not so much feminised as it is quietistic and passive.  The feminisation follows the Quietism as women seem to enjoy this modality of religious practice.

Now Quietistic modes of worship may be more suited toward the female temperament but sort of irrelevant if God doesn't want the Church to embrace quietism. Furthermore, the fact that women attend Church more than men distracts from the fact that there has been an overall decline in Church worship. The big problem is the emptying of the pews not the proportions left. But if church attendance is due to pleasure rather than a sense of faith or Grace, how religious is the actual participant? What I'm saying if the clergy starts  Church starts saying stuff that women don't want to hear, how likely are they to stick around? You've got to distinguish between people who believe and people who go there  because they enjoy it. And it's not that faith and enjoyment are incompatible, it's just that enjoyment without faith misses the purpose of the whole exercise. Going for the music or "peace" is not the same as worshiping God.

Church going and holiness may be correlated but they're not necessarily contingent. This is where I think a fundamental mistake is made. The logic being that more church-going equals more holiness and therefore women are more religious than men. But that assumes that being a church groupie shares something of the same stuff as the saint. But as women like these have shown, you can say a lot of prayers and attend lots of Masses and still be widely off the mark.

The lack of men in the Church should be a sign that there is something wrong with men or there is something wrong in the Church. Podles should be commended for recognising this, the problem is that he gets the specifics wrong. The problem isn't the feminisation of Christianity is its slow conversion into a Buddhist equivalent.

Another  significant factor, in my opinion, which hampers analysis of this problem is the conception of the "Church". For Catholics, in particular, the Church is thought of the ecclesiastical and clerical apparatus; bishops, monks, priests, nuns, cathedrals, etc.  But theologically this is incorrect since the laity is a fundamental constituent element of it. When Christ spoke of Satan never prevailing against the Church  it's interesting to speculate if what He meant was that the faith would survive in its lay element while being corrupted elsewhere. The reason why I bring this up is because its always assumed that the ordained members will be the last men standing defending it, it's never assumed that it may be the plebs who hold the line.

Finally, astute readers will not in the article linked just how close Quietism is to Buddhism, and a Buddhist Christianity is not Christianity. Why should God draw men to a warped Christianity?

A  significant factor in my opinion which hampers analysis of this problem is the conception of the "Church". For Catholics, in particular, the Church is thought of the ecclesiastical and clerical apparatus; bishops, monks, priests, nuns, etc.  But theologically this is incorrect since the laity is a constituent element of it. When Christ spoke of Satan never prevailing against the Church  it's interesting to speculate if what he meant was the faith would survive in its lay element while being corrupted elsewhere. The reason why I bring this up is because its always assumed that the ordained members will be the last men standing defending it, it's never assumed that it may be the plebs who hold the line.

Secularisation in a Secular Age

One of the other things I didn't like about Charles Taylor's book is his theory of secularisation. While he does not explicitly blame Protestantism for the phenomenon he does see it as being a significant factor.  But what if it he is right and Protestantism does lead to secularisation, how does that explain the precipitous decline of religion in Catholic countries?

The implication in Taylor's book is that Western culture as a whole has undergone the changes he describes--religion being transformed from a holistic thing into a mental one--and this phenomenon is equally applicable to Catholic as is to formerly Protestant cultures. Once again I don't buy it.

One of the interesting things to note is that secularism tends to be far more militant in formerly Catholic countries than it tends to be in Protestant ones.  Now while it's true that a dechristianising "protestant mindset" will result in a different atheism from a catholic one, a dechristianisation that is the result of protestantisation should produce a secular culture that is similar to the Northern European model of religious indifference instead of the observed hate. Protestantism does not appear the culprit here and some other mechanism is at play.

It's my contention here that Protestantism is not the primary mechanism of secularisation, rather that secularisation is the result of decline in Grace, and given the cultural differences between the two religions, the effects of secularisation will be culturally contingent. Reasons may change but old habits die hard.

Catholicism, with its strong sense of of party clerical hierarchy, and it's emphasis of the collective over the individual is going to drift towards secular models of the same. Hence the the much more prominent presence of militant socialistic parties in these countries.The more puritanical the Catholicism the more puritanical its secular equivalent. One of the disquieting things that struck me after reading Orwell was just how similar the pre-Vatican Two Catholic Church was to the Russian communist Party in ideological structure. If the clergy party said 2+2=5 it was the role of the proletariat to believe.  Part of the reason I believe that the Church as a whole may have lost some of God's grace is precisely because of the fact that it elevated clerical authority above the truth, not to mention other matters.

Mainline Protestantism, with its strong sense of individual autonomy and tolerance, on the other hand, will decay into milder, yet more sincerely held,  forms of socialism   But that really depends on the particular variant of Protestantism. The more puritanical branches are liable to morph into something particularly nasty. To put in in a more succinct way:

Catholicism - Grace = Communism
Mainline Protestantism - Grace = Socialism
Puritanism - Grace = Pol Pot.  (That's assuming that God's grace is extended to Puritans.)

The point I want to make when it comes to Protestantism, I do think although it was separated from the Catholic Church, God did extend his Grace to some of the branches of it. Other branches were excluded from it. As a religious/epistemological system Protestantism is wide open to error but the same quality that makes error so easy, is also the faculty that makes legitimate Christian innovation possible and it was those branches which enjoyed God's grace and favour.  Where I think Taylor--and others-- make the error is in looking a Protestantism only though its errant, graceless branches: confusing the lack of Grace with Protestantism. 

I've been struggling to find a term which accurately explains how Taylor got it wrong.  The omission of Grace in a book about secularisation is really an attempt to explain spiritual phenomenon in a non-spiritual way.  You see the same thing in Jordan Peterson's understanding of religion which was also strongly influenced by Jung. You also see it in books trying to understand the phenomenon through sociological analysis. There's something not quite right about it.

And I think the person who got this right was Owen Barfield,* who described the phenomenon as Residual Unresolved Positivism. (Thanks Bruce Charlton.) It's basically trying to understand religion as psychological phenomenon and not a spiritual one.  The problem with this approach is that you approach religion as a problem of psychology instead of seeing as a problem approached though the lens of Christian understanding. 

Excarnation III: Paragraphs to Ponder.

While the effects of an excarnational culture can most easily be seen in the domain of sexuality, it's most pernicious effects lay in other areas. While reading up on the subject, I stumbled across this article by Professor Andrew Sandlin, which I think is worth some thought;

The Bible does not exalt spirit over matter; Jesus is Lord of the invisible and visible world (Col. 1:15–17). Yet ever since pagan Greek ideas of the inferiority of the material world infected Christianity, the church has battled with excarnation. Even as the church prays, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt. 6:10), many Christians view the world outside the church — economics, politics, entertainment, education, and architecture — as inescapably “carnal” (fleshly) and unfit for Christian influence. So the church retreats to an excarnated spirituality.

Prayer, interior dialogue, and contemplation of heaven are considered spiritual, while working to re-criminalise abortion, de-legitimize same-sex “marriage,” combat pornography, and reduce government theft programmes in the form of confiscatory taxation are relatively unimportant and, in fact, a diversion from the church’s real, excarnated tasks. Escape from evil within the created order rather than confrontation with and victory over it is the excarnational agenda. Christianity is reduced to a “personal devotional hobby.”

But Advent stares us unflinchingly in the face with the truth that the present world, immaterial and material, is cursed by sin and is to be redeemed by the death and resurrection of our Lord. The most evil being in the universe is pure spirit, but Jesus was born and lived and died and rose from the dead and lives forever in a body. He is profoundly interested in the world, including the material world. He came healing the sick and exorcising demons from tortured bodies. To trust in the Messiah for salvation is to surrender oneself mind, soul, body — our entire self — to him (Rom. 12:1–2)

He is as interested in purging sin from gangsta rap and abortion clinics and fraudulent bond-rating agencies and Bauhaus architecture as he is from Christian hearts and families and churches. The cleansing power of the Gospel does not simply take souls to heaven; it transforms everything it touches.

If I had to define what Caritas is, it would be; a potency, when realised in act, perfects form. Or in other words, Christian love, in act, transforms things into their perfection. Now the important thing to recognise is that it is a transformative power, not simply of the individual but of the world. The excarnational approach neutralises this resulting in a de-Christianisation of the culture. You end up with a world of beautiful churches but terrible public administration: Catholic and Orthodox Europe?

This type of Christianity seeks to avoid the world, not engage it, and hence all the various types of "Benedict Options" out there. Combine it with a Tolstoyan/Pacifist interpretation of the Bible and you've a got a combination that is unable to resist the collapse of Christian civilisation. And yet this was not always the case. I'm currently reading Owen Chadwick's, The Secularisation of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century: it's a really good book. But I was struck by this passage which is so out of spirit with our times:

To the middle twentieth century, where priests are expected to be of the left and to encourage revolution in South America or southern Africa, this is a more surprising juxtaposition than men of the nineteenth century found it. Here, for example, is a speech made by Archdeacon Christopher Wordsworth, son of a Master of Trinity, nephew of a poet, soon to be Bishop of Lincoln, at a Tory meeting in Reading on t February 1865. He engaged to define Conservatism:

What, gentlemen, is Conservatism? It is the application of Christianity to civil government. And what is English Conservatism? It is the adoption of the principles of the Church of England as the groundwork of legislation.[ED] Gentlemen, I say it with reverence, the most Conservative book in the world is the Bible, and the next most Conservative book in the world is the Book of Common Prayer.

The Church the mainstay of order — that is the conviction common to both sides; both of the revolutionary who wants to overthrow order and therefore the Church, and of the conservative who wane to maintain order and therefore the Church. The religious revival of the nineteenth century, evident in all countries of western Europe, did not depend upon faith in the political usefulness of Churches. They did not even depend only upon the background rattle of ghostly tumbrils on the streets. But this shadow of social ruin was quite important as a religious force. We can the more easily understand it when we remember how in our time Nazi terror forced many western Europeans back to enquire into their moral principles and thereby contributed, for a time, to a revival of religion.

One of the great effects of Reformation was to shift the cultural importance of various elements in society. In the Catholic/Orthodox world, where the clergy was to retain much of it's dominance, society continued to be "weighted" to the spiritual whereas, despite its theology, Protestant society resulted in a more of an engagement in "earthly" affairs. Protestantism was far better at "applied" Christianity.

It's my opinion the while Catholicism has remained relatively ideologically uncorrupted by modernity, its Clericalism and emphasis on "spirituality" has resulted in an impotent Church. Protestantism on the other hand was better able to apply Christianity to the "affairs of the world" and transform it. As it has withered so has the world's ability to resist modernity and as I see it, the Catholic Church is going to have to "protestantise" if we plan to get out of this mess.

Excarnation II

But this understates the difficulties. That Christianity has often been seen as another form of Platonism, even worse in that it seems to give such an important place to punishment and sacrifice, is not just a function of the denseness or  the ill will of the critics. The Gospel message doesn't fit into the categories which have come down to us through ages of human history, and is recurrently being twisted, even by its own adherents, to make sense in these terms.

This means that there are clearly wrong versions of Christian faith. But it doesn't mean that we can give a single right version to replace them. The hold of these categories which come to us through our history, including that of our pre-Axial religious life, is so great that we have trouble thinking through what the Christian revelation means. The wrong categories often come more "naturally" to us. So we operate with a certain amount of unclarity and confusion. This is the condition of doing theology.

Perhaps the most obvious area in Christian culture where the tendency for excarnation has been felt is in the Christian approach to sexuality.  Taylor doesn't devote a great deal of his book to the subject and the  impression I get is that  he is far more "liberal" than I am, but it would be a mistake to think his critique of excarnation is an attempt to "liberalise" Christian sexual ethics. Taylor does not go into an extensive historical treatment of the subject but simply reminds the reader of the the hostility that Christianity has towards sexual desire. No matter how the act is realised, there always seems to be an element of sin associated with it. This continual association of corruption with the desire itself resulted in a Christianity that was nearly always hostile to its expression. As this blog has mentioned before, it was only after two millennia of Christian thinking that unitive element of sexual desire was recognised as legitimate, and even then conditionally.

Whatever its reasons, Christianity's hostility to sex has resulted in theological treatment which links sin to its expression in nearly all instances, even within marriage. However this position  creates an anthropological vision which regards mans sexual nature as evil.  Therefore the good man in such a vision is a man who has literally "chopped off" his sexual nature. Now some defenders of the traditional position will argue that it is important to control an appetite as rowdy as sexual desire due to all the damage it can do, but difference between regulation and suppression is a matter of degree, and the Church regulated hard.

Really hard.

Yet, sexual desire is a constitutive element of human nature so the traditional Christian opposition to Eros was an attack on the human constitution. To quote Taylor:

And in this, it follows much of Christian sensibility over the ages, which has also own uneasy about many aspects of human flourishing, has been uncertain and ambivalent about them. Take sexual fulfillment for instance. For centuries, the midiaeval church taught that sexual intercourse was essentially to be directed to procreation, and you shouldn't enjoy it too heartily even then. The Reformers tried to rehabilitate sexual relations among married couples, but in practice the emphasis on its being carried out to the glory of God put a damper on sexual pleasure....... Now that there is a tension between fulfillment and piety should not surprise us in a world distorted by sin, that is, separation from God. But we have to avoid turning this into a constitutive incompatibility. This, however, is what both exclusive humanism on one hand, and the sensibility of much conservative Christianity on the other, tend to do. The first take for granted that what is dedicated to God must detract from human fulfillment. The second are so focused on the denial and restriction of desire that they easily fall into a mirror image of the secular stance: following God means denying yourself.

It's hard to beat the beast when you're both playing the same tune.

The problem with this approach is that it seriously impaired the Christian understanding of sexuality and created a state off affairs which many found repellent and pushed them into the secular world.

But there is another charge against the aspiration to transcend, not just futile and self-defeating, but that it actually damages us, unfits us for the  pursuit of human fulfillment. It does this by inducing in us hate and disgust at our human desires and neediness. It inculcates a repulsion at our limitations and poisons the joy we might otherwise feel in the satisfactions of human life as it is.

Here the enemy is not so much Greek polytheistic fantasy and Greek philosophy but Christianity, especially in its Augustinian forms. Here Nussbaum takes up one of the central themes, one of the constitutive polemics of our secular age, as I am trying to describe it. Hatred at Christianity for having defamed, polluted, impure ordinary human sensual desire is one of the most powerful motivations which impelled people to take the option for an exclusive humanism once it became thinkable.

What Christianity tried to do--especially Catholicism--is refashion Eros into a "platonic" version of itself, stripping the carnal element of it to its bare minimum and hence deforming it in the process. It tried to create sex without sexuality. It is also why--for the average person--it really has lost all authority of matters of sexuality. It speaks of sexuality in a way that the common man cannot relate to.

To consider what I mean take the following from commentator Chent in a recent post.

"Rape is sex without consent, and it can definitely occur in marriage."

Yes, a definition that is not found in the Bible or the tradition of the Church but it is the standard feminist definition.

The Bible never talks about consent. And even less about consent being the basis of the morality of sexual intercourse. The basis is marriage. [ED]

Of course, this does not mean "sex on demand" at any time or place". Nobody said that. But constant denial of sex is a serious sin and a break of marital vows. "You must not deprive each other, except by mutual consent for a limited time, to leave yourselves free for prayer, and to come together again afterwards; otherwise Satan may take advantage of any lack of self-control to put you to the test." (1 Corinthians 7,5)

Don't get me wrong. Of course, I am against a husband forcing himself on his wife. Not because it is rape (it is not, according to the Bible), but because it is aggression. Because an evil is not an excuse to commit another evil.

Commentator Chent puts forward a very orthodox and traditional interpretation of conjugal rights. But what's important to note here is that any dimension of desire [Eros] is not even factored into the analysis. Access to the partner is seen in strictly legal terms  and the erotic constituents of the sexual act which facilitate it, are considered irrelevant to the legitimisation of access. It's a thoroughly decarnalised understanding of sexuality. Furthermore, even the other partner's right to resist is also grounded in legal terms of access,  not in the lack of facilitation of the erotic faculty. It's as if we were having a discussion of property rights and not sexual responsiveness. The underlying approach being predicated on the notions that desire is irrelevant to the act or that the desire is evil and should not be factored in. To top it off, any attempt to introduce this element into the discussion is seen as Feminism or heresy.

And even here Chent is justified in his charge. Because the notion of factoring desire into the analysis of the situation is outside the traditionalist Christian tradition.  But this creates a tension between human nature which instinctively grasps the importance of Eros, and the Church's legalistic tradition which ignores the element.

What Christianity it tried to do is create a sexuality without Eros: it's teaching on the subject clashing with human nature. But because Christianity has been unable to address issues of sexuality convincingly within its own tradition, external non-Christian forces have filled the gap and thereby gained legitimacy.


*Quotes from Taylor's Secular Age.