The Domestic Hermit

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An illustration

February 17 : Personal
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In the last couple of days I have watched the Pope Michael Documentary Film. I was pleasantly surprised. (Don’t worry! Surprised but not convinced.) The music was great, the story telling exceptional, and the people came across not as right-wing nuts but as average people struggling with a new situation. Apart from a little section where Eli outlines his views (with associated pictures), the documentary – by design? – is devoid of the extreme rhetoric that is often associated with these type of people. It also precluded the circular argument if you do not agree with me you are part of the problem often used within these contexts. As the website says: “Despite people’s usual first impression, the Bawdens and the two seminarians – Phil and Eli – are quite normal. Their situation is just a little strange.”

I would be interested to know what event – not idea but event – moved the Bawdens, Phil and Eli to the conclusions they have reached. I recall reading of a person who could not except female altar servers and lay Eucharistic Assistants. When these started within his parish, he felt forced to adopt a sedevacantist position. I wonder what the trigger – the existential crisis – was for the Bawdens, Phil and Eli to necessitate this radical move?

However, this strange situation gives us an illustration of what Marcel writes about – as I mentioned in the last post – a truth pushed so far that its very nature is changed. In an attempt to defend the Catholic Faith, as Bawden himself refers to it, has he not fundamentally changed the object he thinks he is defending? He has moved from describing the Catholic Faith, and living it, to prescribing a new Faith for others. He has disconnected himself from the living tradition of the Catholic Church in an attempt to defend it.

I make no excuses for the excesses and liberalism of some members of the Catholic Church. I do not buy into the extreme interpretations of Vatican II. While Pope Michael may have serious questions to ask the Catholic Church – some of which we must all struggle with – his answer is wrong. Yet the documentary shows a person who is seriously seeking to live his faith.

Anyway, watch the film!

Reflection: The Mystery of Being

February 16 : Philosophy
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I have been reading, The Mystery of Being – Volume 1: Reflection and Mystery by Gabriel Marcel. It is my slow reading pleasure.

In the Introduction, Marcel muses on what the philosophical method should be. He makes the following insightful statement:

I think the philosopher who first discovers certain truths and then sets out to expound them in their dialectical and systematic inter-connectedness always runs the risk of profoundly altering the nature of the truths he has discovered. (2)

A useful insight for both philosophy and theology. Truth is experienced not taught and so it is described and not prescribed by either philosopher or theologian. Yet, one hastens to add, there is always need for a “fence around the paddock” – a defined “out of bounce”.

He goes on to expand, in a way, on this point in an extremely Augustinian fashion. Philosophy is fundamentally an attempt to answer the question, “Who am I?”, and to remain oneself. Marcel acknowledges that this comes with many temptations:

There are always gaps in our personal experience and our personal thought, and there exists a permanent temptation to stop these up with ready-made developments borrowed from some body of pre-existing doctrine. (3)

St Peter says, “Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15) – “in you” and not “in your neighbour”. Maybe the issues with modern day catechesis, and some of the related doctrinal laxity, is that we have come from a culture that has focused on “pre-existing” frameworks that need to be (passively) “obey” rather than (actively) “internalized”?

Anyway, interesting!

Gabriel Marcel

February 13 : Philosophy
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Another related major thread in Marcel was the struggle to protect one’s subjectivity from annihilation by modern materialism and a technologically-driven society. Marcel argued that scientific egoism replaces the “mystery” of being with a false scenario of human life composed of technical “problems” and “solutions”. For Marcel, the human subject cannot exist in the technological world, instead being replaced by a human object. As he points out in Man Against Mass Society and other works, technology has a privileged authority with which it persuades the subject to accept his place as “he” in the internal dialogue of science; and as a result, man is convinced by science to rejoice in his own annihilation.

From Gabriel Marcel

One wonders what he would think of social media?

Kierkegaard quote

February 10 : Philosophy
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From Either/Or:

What the philosophers say about reality is often as deceptive as when you see a sign in a second-hand store that reads: Pressing Done Here. If you went in with you clothes to have them pressed you would be fooled; the sign is for sale.

Reading list?

February 2 : Personal
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I have been meaning to post for some days. I have started a number of posts but never got past the first draft stage. Just can’t get the words down! Maybe too many things bouncing around. I am also trying to work on a Lenten Study for the parish on the parables.

So I thought a little report on my reading:

I am still working through The Sickness unto Death. Maybe with the kids back at school I’ll get a little further into it before Lent starts.
I am also listening to The Courage to Be as an audiobook. It allows me to do a few other things (ie housework!) while keeping the brain entertained.
I got about half way through The Mystery of the Jesus Prayer before I gave up. It was a little disjointed – jumping back and forth. The narrative does not seem to flow and the theology is a little repetitive and tedious. I do not know what I was expecting but it was not what I got!

So … anyway … what are you reading??

Great Merton posts

January 25 : Personal
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There are two great posts about Thomas Merton from a former novice:

The photos in the first post are great!

All theology is existentialist

January 23 : Existentialist Theology
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I wonder how St Augustine would respond to the following by Paul Tillich??

Theology formulates the questions implied in human existence, and theology formulates the answers implied in divine self-manifestation under the guidance of the questions implied in human existence. This is a circle which drives man to a point where question and answer are not separated…. (Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p 61)

Source: Tillich on the prophetic role of art, existentialism

Some completely random observations

January 18 : Personal
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Here are some completely random unrelated observations:

I like working with aphorisms.
Is existentialism really that opposed to Catholicism? There is a tradition of Catholic/Christian existentialism.
What is the “end” of dogma? Is being right on paper good enough? How do I experience the truths of the Church in my daily life?
What is the causal end of the Church? “Getting souls to heaven”? Being me?
I have been encouraged by reading Psacal’s Pensées – random thoughts surviving in history.
English is a difficult language. Or, putting words on papers is not always “writing”.
Thinking about trying some more calligraphy.
Watched Of Gods and Men – very sad!!!
It has been so hot that it is almost impossible to do anything. Coolish change today so maybe something going to happen.

Munch and Kierkegaard

January 16 : Philosophy
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Death in the Sickroom by Edvard Munch

From The Sickness unto Death (Preface)

Everything that is Christian must bear some resemblance to the address which a physician makes beside the sick-bed: although it can be fully understood only by one who is versed in medicine, yet it must never be forgotten that it is pronounced beside the sick-bed.

and

The Christian heroism (and perhaps it is rarely to be seen) is to venture wholly to be oneself, as an individual man, this definite individual man, alone before the face of God, alone in this tremendous exertion and this tremendous responsibility; but it is not Christian heroism to be humbugged by the pure idea of humanity or to play the game of marveling at world-history.

Adding … meaning to life?

January 10 : Personal
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While driving today we passed one of the Catholic churches in our area. Out the front, in a very prominent place, was a poster advertising the Alpha Course. Why on earth a Catholic parish would do Alpha is beyond me. I guess people are afraid of doing the hard yards and using the Catechism – which is exactly for this type of thing – to expound the Faith.

Anyway, the poster had this slogan:

Adding true joy and meaning to life.

Grrr?!?!?!? How’s that for Sartrean existentialism – existence precedes essence? Life is meaningless unless one “adds meaning”. A strange witches brew which has three pinches of truth with a little meaning for taste. Is there not meaning inherent in being? Are we not created in the image of God? Or, to use Sartre’s own language, does existence bring essence?

Of course one could defend the above, which I am not about to do, by saying that one is adding meaning. The glass is half full and Christianity fills it to the brim. However, would it not be better to change the above to “Finding true joy and meaning in life”? Only in my relationship with God do I find my true authentic self.

Okay, enough stupid waffle!