Religious orders come and go, and for the past 40 years mainly the latter. If an order outlives its usefulness or forgets its mission, then it is best to let it go. But there are new orders and associations being founded these days, with new missions.
The purpose of a religious order is to increase the holiness of its members by serving God and man. Prayer—mainly the Divine Office and the Mass—is a primary means of doing the former and either intercessory prayer or secular service do the latter. The big religious orders that did the bulk of that secular service, mainly education and healthcare, are in serious trouble these days; the educators seem to be ignorant of Christianity, while the hospital orders are looking very sick. But many of the new fast-growing orders and associations seem to be contemplative, and are often based on the traditional Latin liturgy; this is a good start; a sick mind cannot be educated in right reason, and healing the soul is the first step in healing the body. This makes much sense: people no longer pray for themselves, so instead these new brothers and sisters have to pray for them.
Natural disasters seem to be multiplying, and often it seems that governments and agencies are at least somewhat incompetent in reacting to these. This could be a field of service for a new kind religious order, one that has disciplined members who can evacuate people from harm's way, and perform search-and-rescue missions and first aid in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. The months following a disaster is the time for the work of Catholic Charities and similar organizations: helping people find housing, finding homes for orphans, and such forth, in a mainly bureaucratic fashion. But in the proximity of disaster, special training and equipment are needed, and critically, a special kind of person. This would be similar to the type of service offered by the Red Cross, but at a much lower cost. The American Red Cross has an overhead of 75% or more; a Catholic religious order would instead have dedicated brothers doing the work with little overhead cost.
An order like this would have some similarities to the old military orders of the middle ages, for this kind of disaster service would be similar to military life: as is often said, there will be long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror. The members would have to have constant training, be willing to act under a moment's notice, and they will have to be obedient to superiors. Physical fitness and ability to withstand physical hardship would be unique requirements of this kind of order.
This kind of religious order would perhaps appeal to a different kind of person than would be attracted to a contemplative order, and also there would be a great need for secular members. A small core of members under permanent vows could make up the administration of the order and would oversee the daily operation, while a large number of secular members would do the bulk of the effort in times of disaster. A secular member could be bound to one weekend a month and two weeks a year—just like the National Guard—at the order's charterhouse for training and building community, and then go as needed to serve in an emergency.
Since a Christian has the duty to serve others out of charity, costs could be kept low. Needed supplies could be obtained by 'pledges in advance' from companies who are willing to donate transportation and material at an unspecified time in the future: as needed, when needed, also out of charity.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
How it Works
Christianity, Catholicism, value ethics, and orthodoxy in general has been under a general intellectual attack for the past several decades, from a form of criticism called deconstruction.
Earlier, Christ was attacked by the Communists, who claimed that the forces of history would inevitably overwhelm and destroy His Church. "We will bury you!" was their battle cry, and certainly the Communist governments buried hundreds of millions of victims. The collapse of that system of government led many of its followers to become Environmentalists, but also caused many to attack the Church in a more intellectual way. One method of attack is deconstruction.
Deconstruction is a technique of literary criticism invented by the French post-structuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). It takes a very broad view of 'literature': advertising, political speech, actions, art, and so forth, as well as written words are all considered 'text', and are suitable for deconstruction. Any human artifact that claims meaning or is subject to interpretation is fair game for deconstruction. The purpose of deconstruction is subversion and criticism, to cause doubt and confusion.
Deconstructionists themselves argue about what deconstruction actually is (and logically speaking, deconstruction is inconsistent), but the basics of this theory seems to be this:
After deconstruction comes reconstruction. After the critic completely deconstructs the text, shredding it up, so to speak, he then starts a reconstruction. It is a more-or-less plausible reinterpretation of the text; it doesn't have to be true, or there doesn't have to be any logical consistency to it: it just is. It's all made up. A reconstruction is just another story that is put out there. So a deconstructionist will take apart a text very carefully and logically, and then in its place puts in something that he just made up. This is similar to the technique used by trial lawyers, who make up stories to benefit their client that more or less fits the facts. This will then cause confusion.
The Historical-Critical method has shredded the Bible by its overly-critical methodology, finding contradictions even where a plausible explanation can be found. Imagine a history book that mentions President John Kennedy; and elsewhere it mentions President Jack Kennedy: a highly critical analysis will say that this text is inconsistent and therefore unreliable. This is similar to what happens in deconstruction. Reconstruction can then be quite fanciful: it can then claim that Jaqueline Kennedy was actually elected President and that her sexist homophobe husband drove her out of office, stealing her power. The method can often lead to absurdity.
That is precisely how the Mary Magdalene stories were created via deconstruction. The Biblical texts were dissected, and an alternative 'voice' in the text was heard. Then they created a reconstruction where the Magdalene was the primary Apostle. Never mind that they just made this up with no evidence. The newly reconstructed story cannot be deconstructed because it does not claim primacy of binary opposites and hierarchy.
Modern nonrepresentational art can claim it is meaningless and therefore escapes deconstruction; the same thing goes to much deconstructionist writing itself: it is incoherent.
I once heard this defense of the teaching of evolution in public schools by a teacher: "Evolution may or may not be true, but it is what scientists are talking about nowadays". This is pure deconstruction: 'talking' is considered more reliable than 'text', and truth or falsity is irrelevant.
Deconstruction tends to be either nihilist or relativist, although most practitioners are more agnostic about the truth. It is interesting to observe that most deconstructionists live their lives as though they trust technology and medicine; a truly deconstructionist lifestyle would probably resemble psychosis. In actuality, deconstruction is just used against their enemies; it cannot be a general technique. It ultimatly is all about power, not truth. This is a very good reason to not take the results of it seriously.
We need to be like Socrates, who knew that the truth was out there and that we needed to find it, even though it is very difficult to find. The Deconstructionists are like the Sophists, who were highly critical of their enemies and had no regard for the truth. Subjectivity is a fact of our humanity, but we must try to filter out individual subjectivites to find the truth, instead of just stopping there and saying that truth is unknowable.
Earlier, Christ was attacked by the Communists, who claimed that the forces of history would inevitably overwhelm and destroy His Church. "We will bury you!" was their battle cry, and certainly the Communist governments buried hundreds of millions of victims. The collapse of that system of government led many of its followers to become Environmentalists, but also caused many to attack the Church in a more intellectual way. One method of attack is deconstruction.
Deconstruction is a technique of literary criticism invented by the French post-structuralist philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). It takes a very broad view of 'literature': advertising, political speech, actions, art, and so forth, as well as written words are all considered 'text', and are suitable for deconstruction. Any human artifact that claims meaning or is subject to interpretation is fair game for deconstruction. The purpose of deconstruction is subversion and criticism, to cause doubt and confusion.
Deconstructionists themselves argue about what deconstruction actually is (and logically speaking, deconstruction is inconsistent), but the basics of this theory seems to be this:
- A text cannot provide a single coherent or consistent message to its readers.
- The writer of a text has little responsibility for the meaning of it. Impersonal forces of language, culture, and ideology control the meanings in the text. This is one of the great weaknesses of the theory.
- Deconstructionists look for problems in language, contradictions, missing information, and assumptions in texts. They tend to highly critical in this manner, demanding nothing less than perfection.
- Despite the intent of the author, a text will contain multiple 'voices' with conflicting viewpoints. "Many voices" is a common catchphrase among deconstructionists. This is another great weakness of the theory.
- Western philosophy often includes binary opposites and hierarchical values, and any text that claims these to be true is considered highly dangerous and is the main target for deconstruction. The main binary opposite they like to target is that of Male and Female; deconstruction is widely used by 'gender' activists.
- Texts themselves are seen as being tyrannical and unjust.
- There is no 'primary meaning' of a text; deconstruction can invent alternative meanings quite easily, to the point of creating a new primary meaning opposite to the intent of the author.
- Popular culture is more reliable than formal texts. The cartoon series The Simpsons is a favorite of deconstructionists due to its many popular culture references, and so it is considered to provide a reliable social commentary.
After deconstruction comes reconstruction. After the critic completely deconstructs the text, shredding it up, so to speak, he then starts a reconstruction. It is a more-or-less plausible reinterpretation of the text; it doesn't have to be true, or there doesn't have to be any logical consistency to it: it just is. It's all made up. A reconstruction is just another story that is put out there. So a deconstructionist will take apart a text very carefully and logically, and then in its place puts in something that he just made up. This is similar to the technique used by trial lawyers, who make up stories to benefit their client that more or less fits the facts. This will then cause confusion.
The Historical-Critical method has shredded the Bible by its overly-critical methodology, finding contradictions even where a plausible explanation can be found. Imagine a history book that mentions President John Kennedy; and elsewhere it mentions President Jack Kennedy: a highly critical analysis will say that this text is inconsistent and therefore unreliable. This is similar to what happens in deconstruction. Reconstruction can then be quite fanciful: it can then claim that Jaqueline Kennedy was actually elected President and that her sexist homophobe husband drove her out of office, stealing her power. The method can often lead to absurdity.
That is precisely how the Mary Magdalene stories were created via deconstruction. The Biblical texts were dissected, and an alternative 'voice' in the text was heard. Then they created a reconstruction where the Magdalene was the primary Apostle. Never mind that they just made this up with no evidence. The newly reconstructed story cannot be deconstructed because it does not claim primacy of binary opposites and hierarchy.
Modern nonrepresentational art can claim it is meaningless and therefore escapes deconstruction; the same thing goes to much deconstructionist writing itself: it is incoherent.
I once heard this defense of the teaching of evolution in public schools by a teacher: "Evolution may or may not be true, but it is what scientists are talking about nowadays". This is pure deconstruction: 'talking' is considered more reliable than 'text', and truth or falsity is irrelevant.
Deconstruction tends to be either nihilist or relativist, although most practitioners are more agnostic about the truth. It is interesting to observe that most deconstructionists live their lives as though they trust technology and medicine; a truly deconstructionist lifestyle would probably resemble psychosis. In actuality, deconstruction is just used against their enemies; it cannot be a general technique. It ultimatly is all about power, not truth. This is a very good reason to not take the results of it seriously.
We need to be like Socrates, who knew that the truth was out there and that we needed to find it, even though it is very difficult to find. The Deconstructionists are like the Sophists, who were highly critical of their enemies and had no regard for the truth. Subjectivity is a fact of our humanity, but we must try to filter out individual subjectivites to find the truth, instead of just stopping there and saying that truth is unknowable.
"The Way of Lights" at Shrine
The Our Lady of the Snows Shrine in Belleville, Illinois, is holding its annual Way of Lights Christmas display until January 6th. It's a mile and half long with more than a million lights.
Admission is free and is open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Included is a live animal display with donkey and camel rides (but not on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day).
442 South De Mazenod Drive
Belleville, Illinois 62223
Admission is free and is open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Included is a live animal display with donkey and camel rides (but not on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day).
442 South De Mazenod Drive
Belleville, Illinois 62223
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Browsing in a Used Book Store
I happened to be shopping in a used book store in the Delmar Loop neighborhood of University City, Missouri, looking for some books that I could use for article references. But this is not a musty kind of store, filled with unwanted volumes selling for steep discounts, but instead it seems to be a well-managed place, selling prime-quality books at a premium price.
I was looking for some architecture and philosophy books, and there were plenty to be found. One could presuppose what might be found in this store, based on its location and clientele: the Loop is near Washington University; which is a large, wealthy secular university with Puritan roots, an East-Coast student body, and Liberal politics.
The philosophy section of the store is relatively large, and is divided into 'Western' and 'Eastern' philosophy. The 'Western' section seems to reflect a belief that the study of philosophy is only a few centuries old, and is strictly materialist. Perhaps a third of the whole is the philosophy of Postmodernism, which promotes a lazy subjectivity based on feelings and emotion. Nowhere to be found are the great pagan thinkers of the Western world, from Socrates to Plotinus, who based their theories on objective reality; nor were there any volumes on the great Medieval synthesis of these philosophies with Christianity. The 'Eastern' section, however, was made up entirely of books of dogmatic religions that hold the philosophical view of objective reality, similar to the great thinkers of the ancient West. It is not surprising then that students who want substance in their philosophy can usually find it only in the Eastern religions, especially if what is found in this bookshop is reflective of what is taught at the university.
The single exceptional book I had found was on the subject of Aesthetics, the philosophy of beauty, which according to the ancients had an objective component: beauty is not just "in the eye of the beholder", but has a universal quality.
This brings me to the art and architecture part of the store, which is prominently located near the front entrance. Modern art took up a good part of the whole, but by no means the majority. Premodern architecture completely dominated the shelves, with few volumes on modernism and its offshoots. And the books about great premodern art are usually about Catholic art. Judging from the books on these shelves, no one is interested in postconcilliar religious art. The most expensive and beautiful books were on the Cathedrals. When it comes to Truth and Beauty, perhaps the philosophers are fooled, but the artists are not.
The Christianity section of the store is large and pretty good, with only a few obviously heretical works; this section is however, located in the back of the store. If any section of the store could be called 'musty' it would be here: I didn't see any obviously new books, even though Catholic publishing seems to be making a resurgence, with many new authors. General Christian publishing is huge these days, although it is ignored by the New York Times. By contrast, the Wiccan book section is right up in the front of the shop, and has numerous new volumes. This subjective, materialist religion seems to fit in well with the subjective, materialist Western philosophy sold here.
The music section of the store was suitably highbrow, and again was dominated by the Catholic classics.
So it appears that Catholic art, music, and architecture of the past is still hugely popular, and will have a great future again when artists, musicians, and architects choose to do it—and when the Church decides to patronize it again. Our current situation is an aberration.
Catholic religion is doing OK, but could do better. The word needs to get out that it remains always relevant. The poorly effected reforms of the last several decades has mainly driven people away from the Church, leaving a spiritual vacuum now filled with new religions with unknown ends and ethics, with an aversion to truth.
Catholic philosophy is a problem child. The West has given up on faith, hope, and love, and instead embraces power. The Enlightenment philosophes erased the memory of the great Medieval synthesis of philosophy, and deluded themselves into thinking that their own had invented science, and ignore the contributions of Aristotle and Aquinas. Philosophy, which means the "love of wisdom", is a poor name for Postmodern thought, since it rejects both the concepts of love and wisdom. And some would say that "Postmodern thought" is an oxymoron, due to its incoherence. So if anyone wants to find out about truth and love, they now have to look East. This problem of philosophy is a far more difficult to cure than either art or liturgy, for it is a problem of the soul.
I was looking for some architecture and philosophy books, and there were plenty to be found. One could presuppose what might be found in this store, based on its location and clientele: the Loop is near Washington University; which is a large, wealthy secular university with Puritan roots, an East-Coast student body, and Liberal politics.
The philosophy section of the store is relatively large, and is divided into 'Western' and 'Eastern' philosophy. The 'Western' section seems to reflect a belief that the study of philosophy is only a few centuries old, and is strictly materialist. Perhaps a third of the whole is the philosophy of Postmodernism, which promotes a lazy subjectivity based on feelings and emotion. Nowhere to be found are the great pagan thinkers of the Western world, from Socrates to Plotinus, who based their theories on objective reality; nor were there any volumes on the great Medieval synthesis of these philosophies with Christianity. The 'Eastern' section, however, was made up entirely of books of dogmatic religions that hold the philosophical view of objective reality, similar to the great thinkers of the ancient West. It is not surprising then that students who want substance in their philosophy can usually find it only in the Eastern religions, especially if what is found in this bookshop is reflective of what is taught at the university.
The single exceptional book I had found was on the subject of Aesthetics, the philosophy of beauty, which according to the ancients had an objective component: beauty is not just "in the eye of the beholder", but has a universal quality.
This brings me to the art and architecture part of the store, which is prominently located near the front entrance. Modern art took up a good part of the whole, but by no means the majority. Premodern architecture completely dominated the shelves, with few volumes on modernism and its offshoots. And the books about great premodern art are usually about Catholic art. Judging from the books on these shelves, no one is interested in postconcilliar religious art. The most expensive and beautiful books were on the Cathedrals. When it comes to Truth and Beauty, perhaps the philosophers are fooled, but the artists are not.
The Christianity section of the store is large and pretty good, with only a few obviously heretical works; this section is however, located in the back of the store. If any section of the store could be called 'musty' it would be here: I didn't see any obviously new books, even though Catholic publishing seems to be making a resurgence, with many new authors. General Christian publishing is huge these days, although it is ignored by the New York Times. By contrast, the Wiccan book section is right up in the front of the shop, and has numerous new volumes. This subjective, materialist religion seems to fit in well with the subjective, materialist Western philosophy sold here.
The music section of the store was suitably highbrow, and again was dominated by the Catholic classics.
So it appears that Catholic art, music, and architecture of the past is still hugely popular, and will have a great future again when artists, musicians, and architects choose to do it—and when the Church decides to patronize it again. Our current situation is an aberration.
Catholic religion is doing OK, but could do better. The word needs to get out that it remains always relevant. The poorly effected reforms of the last several decades has mainly driven people away from the Church, leaving a spiritual vacuum now filled with new religions with unknown ends and ethics, with an aversion to truth.
Catholic philosophy is a problem child. The West has given up on faith, hope, and love, and instead embraces power. The Enlightenment philosophes erased the memory of the great Medieval synthesis of philosophy, and deluded themselves into thinking that their own had invented science, and ignore the contributions of Aristotle and Aquinas. Philosophy, which means the "love of wisdom", is a poor name for Postmodern thought, since it rejects both the concepts of love and wisdom. And some would say that "Postmodern thought" is an oxymoron, due to its incoherence. So if anyone wants to find out about truth and love, they now have to look East. This problem of philosophy is a far more difficult to cure than either art or liturgy, for it is a problem of the soul.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Though you pray the more, I will not listen
From the Office of Readings, First Sunday of Advent; the prophet Isaiah:
Hear the word of the LORD, princes of Sodom! Listen to the instruction of our God, people of Gomorrah!
What care I for the number of your sacrifices? says the LORD. I have had enough of whole-burnt rams and fat of fatlings; In the blood of calves, lambs and goats I find no pleasure.
When you come in to visit me, who asks these things of you?
Trample my courts no more! Bring no more worthless offerings; your incense is loathsome to me. New moon and sabbath, calling of assemblies, octaves with wickedness: these I cannot bear.
Your new moons and festivals I detest; they weigh me down, I tire of the load.
When you spread out your hands, I close my eyes to you; Though you pray the more, I will not listen.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash yourselves clean! Put away your misdeeds from before my eyes; cease doing evil;
learn to do good. Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan's plea, defend the widow.
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