Both the Chaos of Jackson Pollock and the Sterility of Photorealism are Incompatible with Christianity

Unveiling the middle ground where faith, philosophy, and beauty all meet in the person of Christ, image of the invisible God.

Authentic Christian art strikes a balance between abstraction and realism, rejecting the extremes of Abstract Expressionism—where meaning dissolves into unrecognizable chaos—and Photorealism, which reduces reality to soulless or meaningless matter. Rooted in a worldview shaped by faith and philosophy, the Christian artist uses partial abstraction to blend naturalistic forms with spiritual depth, revealing the soul and invisible truths of existence. This tension, distinct from modern art’s dualistic pitfalls, defines its unique purpose and beauty.

John the Baptist, by David Clayton, 21st cent.

The Limits of Abstraction and Naturalism

If a painting of a man is so abstracted that it is not recognisably what is meant to be—as is the case with Abstract Expressionism —then put simply it is a bad painting. There can be no Christian Abstract Expressionism. On the other hand, extreme naturalism, such as we see in Photorealism, is also bad art from a Christian point of view because it reflects an attitude that says there is no meaning or spiritual dimension in what we are looking at, only matter. There is no Christian Photorealism. Christian art sits between these two poles of dualism. It has traditionally aimed to reflect naturalistic appearances so that we know what we are looking at, but to stylise the image through partial abstraction to suggest to the observer the invisible aspects of what we see, such as its meaning and importance, and in the human person, the soul.

The Profound Connection Between Faith, Philosophy, and Art

A painter’s artistic choices are not made in a philosophical or theological vacuum. Rather, an artist’s ‘worldview’—his ‘personal philosophy’ or understanding of reality that combines philosophical and theological truths—profoundly shapes what he paints and how he depicts it. At a more general level, everyone possesses an underlying philosophical framework that informs his perceptions and judgments, whether he recognises it or not. This “worldview” also determines an artist’s decisions when he paints, including what he deems worthy of imitation and the specific stylistic techniques he employs to emphasise those aspects of reality that matter most to him. Therefore, a Christian artist must have a correct worldview; otherwise, he might lead people astray and misrepresent aspects of the faith through his paintings' content and style.

Lessons from Ancient Greece

Ancient Greek philosophy can help us here. Ancient Greece was a great cauldron of ideas. Indeed, there are so many ideas that it could be argued that just about any personal philosophy we encounter today was represented in some form by the ideas of at least one of those ancient Greek philosophers. Many of those ideas of ancient Greece passed into Roman civilisation, and the best of them, subsequently, into mainstream Christian thought. Of course, two Greek philosophers stood out as giants: Plato and his greatest student, Aristotle. Together, they came closest to describing the nature of man, God, and the world through natural reason alone and without the benefit of Revelation.

Plato, Aristotle, and Christian Thought

The ideas of these two philosophers have continued to be of great interest to Christians because the philosophical methods of inquiry they developed have helped Christians understand more deeply what Christ revealed to us and how it can be applied in everyday life today and in the past. Perhaps the Christian who did more than any other to integrate Christian teaching with Aristotelian and Platonic thinking and the Fathers who preceded him is St Thomas Aquinas (1215-1274 A.D.), who integrated their philosophies with the gospel.

Raphael’s School of Athens: A Visual Parable

To illustrate the continued importance of the ancient Greeks to Christian thought, consider this painting. It is called the School of Athens, and it was painted in 1511 by the Italian artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (1483-1520), generally known in English as Raphael. His painting is on a wall in the Vatican Museums.

It shows many great philosophers of the ancient world. Despite the name of the painting, not all of them lived in Athens. Indeed, some are not even Greek, but collectively, they represent the tradition of philosophy that originated in Athens and lasted over 1,000 years from about 600 BC. At the centre, featured most prominently, we see these two great figures already mentioned, Plato and Aristotle. Raphael has shown Plato pointing upwards to the metaphysical world, what we might call the spiritual world, which exists beyond the material realm (which he called the world of Ideas or Forms). Plato is talking to Aristotle, who is pointing downwards to the earth to symbolise his more significant interest in the goodness and reality of the material realm of existence.

The Eternal Tension in Art

This detail of a great painting symbolises the tension in all art: that is, how do we describe the relationship between the spiritual and the material worlds, especially when painting people, between body and soul? Some people believe that the essence of human nature is what we think and feel. An artist who believes this might dispense with the portrayal of the human body and try to represent pure emotion, thought, or subconscious aspects through abstract shapes (20th-century abstract artists did this, for example). The ethos of the abstract expressionists is testable - we can present people with these paintings to a hundred people (who haven’t studied art history at university) and ask the question that only 5-year-olds dare ask…what is it? If the majority respond with the artist’s intention without being told in advance, then we can concede a point to them. However, in my experience, few, not even the critics who promote their work, seem to see what the artists hope to portray.

Jackson Pollock No. 1

Mark Rothko, Untitled

At the other extreme, some people, called ‘materialists’, believe that man is only made of matter and has no soul. An artist who is a materialist might decide to paint the man in perfect correspondence to natural appearances, as close to perfect in every visible detail as possible, but would have no interest in communicating that he possesses a soul or that a painted scene has a meaning that indicates a Creator or loving God. If executed skillfully, such a painting or sculpture would be dazzling in its lifelike detail but sterile and lifeless in appearance, like a death mask or an image created mechanically without human artifice. Photorealism is an example of the art of the materialist. For example, I invite the reader to look at the work of Ron Mueck, who sculpts in an extreme form of photorealism called Hyperrealism (it is difficult to find photos that can be reproduced here).

Continue Reading this Article. . .

On Music and the Beautiful - Guest Article for the Feast of St. Francis de Sales

In honor of today’s feast, that of St. Francis de Sales, NLM is grateful to Alan Hicks for offering us this de Sales-infused reflection on the objectivity of the beautiful and the manner in which habituation in what is beautiful shapes the human character. This is a key lesson to bear in mind when considering the beauty of the liturgy in its ceremonies, music, vestments, furnishings, and architectural setting: not only is giving glory to God by the best we can offer at stake, but also the formation of Christians in right instincts, appetites, and responses. The moral and the aesthetic touch at every border. It is also clear that true beauty takes time to get used to, and that we do no service to anyone by making “instant relevance” or “easy accessibility” the sole or primary criterion. - PAK

On Music and the Beautiful

Alan Hicks 

It is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and on the surface, at least, this seems to be the case. A beautiful object is always a source of delight—what we call aesthetic pleasure—and for different people different things will please. Clearly pleasure has an obvious subjective element, in so far as it resides in a human subject with unique dispositions and inclinations.

Yet there are serious difficulties in denying any objectivity to beauty or to the pleasure it engenders; not least is the recognition that while people may sometimes differ in their judgments of what is beautiful, there is also remarkable agreement, which would not be so if beauty was purely subjective. That is why there are lines of tourists at the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, or St. Peter’s Basilica; for such objects, both natural and man-made, have always possessed a universal aptitude to please. It is only because of this objective element, even allowing room for subjective taste, that it is possible to educate and form in the young a sense of beauty and an aesthetic sensitivity.   

According to the ancient tradition, subsumed and elaborated upon throughout the Christian centuries, the objectivity of beauty rested upon its essential connection to what is true and good. Thus, the sense in saying that a moral person has a beautiful soul or even that a human act is beautiful. Accordingly, when the woman in the Gospel anointed Christ’s head with precious oil and was scolded for wasting wealth that could have been used for the poor, Christ replied that her act was kalos, literally translated as “beautiful.” [1] It would seem to follow, then, that one of the pathways to the good is through the beautiful, which in addition to its affective power to please, can contribute to the shaping of a virtuous and moral soul. Only with this understanding can we make any sense of the oft-cited line from Dostoevsky that “beauty will save the world.” [2] 

The connection between goodness, truth and beauty is grounded in their nature as “transcendentals,” a term signifying attributes or properties transcending any division or category of being—all of which is to say that they are coextensive with being itself, accompanying existence in all its forms. As coextensive with being, they are convertible with one another, such that we may say that a thing is both true and good to the extent that it exists, and to the extent that it exists, it is both true and good. Hence their identity.

Their differences, on the other hand, are understood in their relation to us. Goodness, for example, is a transcendental aspect of being understood as desirable. As for truth, while we might say that it exists primarily in the intellect, in the intellect’s conformity to what is, it can also be said to exist as a property of being itself insofar as what exists is capable of being known. [3] Though beauty is not identified by Aristotle as a transcendental property, Plato sees the good as always beautiful, and therefore always pleasing to the perceptive powers of intellect and sense. This is essentially the position of St. Thomas as well. [4] 

St. Francis de Sales, in the opening of his incomparable Treatise on the Love of God, describes this relationship of goodness and beauty:

As the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, following the great St. Dionysius, well puts it, although beauty and goodness agree to a certain extent, they are not one and the same thing. The good is that which pleases appetite and will; the beautiful is that which pleases sense and understanding. To put it otherwise, the good is that whose possession delights us, while the beautiful is that whose apprehension pleases us. For this reason, we attribute corporal beauty in the strict sense only to the object of the two senses that have the greatest capacity for knowledge and best serve the intellect, namely, sight and hearing. We do not say, ‘These are beautiful odors or beautiful tastes,’ but we rightly say, ‘These are beautiful voices or beautiful colors.’ [5]

Of course we desire to possess beautiful objects, for those objects are also good, and there is a corresponding pleasure in the possession. But the beauty of the object itself cannot be possessed and enjoyed except through apprehension, and this apprehension and its resulting aesthetic pleasure can be, and often is, of those things we do not possess in any material sense. I can get as much pleasure looking at a beautiful picture that is owned by my friend as my friend, I just don’t get it as often. 

Now one of the most widespread of human pleasures is the delight found in music, and in regards to this beauty which pleases the understanding through the medium of sound, we may ask: what it is in music that gives it its beauty and appeal? St. Francis de Sales is again a rich source of insight:

Unity established within a variety of different things produces order. Order produces harmony and proportion, and in things that are whole and complete harmony produces beauty. We speak of a fine army if all the parts making it up are so arranged that their differences are reduced to the relative proportions needed to constitute a single army. For music to be beautiful it is necessary not only that the voices be pure, clear, and quite distinct from one another, but also that they be blended in such fashion that a right consonance and harmony result by means of both union in the midst of variety and variety within that union of voices. Not incorrectly, then, is music called a discordant harmony, or a harmonious discord.[6]

St. Francis continues in elaboration on the added elements of the beautiful object—splendor and clarity.
 

Painting of St. Francis de Sales by Valentin Metzinger

But as significant and profound as his brief discourse on beauty is, it does not help us to understand why one person might enjoy a specific piece or form of music but not another, or why two people may have contrary responses to the same piece, which variance contributes to the perception that beauty is subjective and merely “in the eye of the beholder.” To account for this variety of taste would require an exploration of individual habits and acquired dispositions, in a similar manner by which we might explain why what appears good and hence desirable to one person might not to another, even assuming the objective nature of the good.

Years ago, while living in Northeastern Pennsylvania, my wife and I began attending the opera in New York City. We would dress and then drive in early, sometimes to shop and then to dine. After coffee and dessert, we would walk the streets in the fading daylight, enjoying the variety of people and sights, arriving at the opera house shortly before the performance. These are treasured memories, which even yet provide some pleasure in the memory, mixed with a note of sadness for days that are no more. They were times of togetherness, away from the many cares which beset our lives, sharing a beautiful and uplifting form of human expression. The theater was grand, the staging and sets elaborate, and the performances were of the highest order. But it was the music itself that touched the soul with a poignant beauty expressive of the most elevated emotions and longings of the human heart.

Now it is true that most people enjoy music, and children of all nations respond cheerfully to simple songs and melodies; for music is consonant with human nature. Yet complex musical expressions are not universally appreciated and only come to be so after experience over time. Earlier in my life I didn’t enjoy opera and in fact was quite put off by my wife’s attempts to introduce me to its pleasures. In time, however, it became one of my greatest delights.  I won’t elaborate here the progression of experiences that led me to change in my perceptions of the operatic art, but only to say that while the art remained the same, there was, over time, a clear change in me, in my perception and appreciation. 

All of which goes to show that there is a difference between the objective good or the beauty of an object and the value that we may attach to it or our appreciation; for “good” and “beautiful” denote something objective, while “value” and “appreciation” allude to our subjective response. The pleasure that we receive is no doubt connected to the good and the beautiful, but only through the value; that is to say, a good or beautiful object will please only if we see it as such. And there are many personal factors which influence how we see a thing. While I didn’t like opera in my initial exposure, we have all had the experience of having something “grow on us” as we come to know it better and thereby come to see the good that is there. My wife liked opera and I enjoyed spending time with my wife, and it was for this reason that I first submitted myself to the experience. Over time I grew to appreciate the art in itself.
 

People enjoying an opera in Romania (source)

And so it is with many of the things that we eventually come to value. In our limited understanding and perception, we often don’t see the full reality of an object or its goodness at first sight. When a young man meets a young woman fair of form and appearance, he is naturally attracted and drawn to her. Such an attraction may be superficial, but there is nothing wrong with that—that is simply the way of nature. Another woman may not be so attractive on initial meeting; yet if given the opportunity to spend time with her the man begins to see her for what she truly is. He comes to appreciate the charm of her personality, her feminine ways of thinking and looking at the world, her tender feelings and responses to things around her. Her very look begins to alter as she becomes more familiar and he sees her in a different light. Given time, the man is able to recognize a deeper and more lasting beauty, a beauty from which a greater satisfaction and pleasure is drawn.

This human progress in appreciation is multiplied repeatedly in the course of a human life. Some likes are fairly universal and immediate, while others are only what we call “an acquired taste.” No one, for example, has to be taught to enjoy food or drink. That is instinctual and innate. We exit the womb hungry for our mother’s milk. Yet eating soon becomes a more complex activity as its object becomes more diverse and differentiated. The ability to appreciate certain kinds of food or drink is not innate, but is a cultivated taste that develops over time, with culinary tastes formed according to environmental factors of culture and family joined to one’s own personal habits and experience. That being said, there are unquestionably better and worse ways to eat from an objective point of view regarding human health.

Now if pleasure immediately followed the objective good, then the best foods would always engender the most pleasure. Yet for a child, what is perceived as “best” may differ markedly from the judgment of an adult. If a child is allowed to develop bad eating habits, he will have an inclination to what is unhealthy and will generally be repulsed by what is not. The trick is thus to form the habit, thereby matching the value to the objective good. If a child is raised in an environment where the kitchen is ruled by reason as opposed to mere desire, he will have no choice but to eat what is healthy. Accordingly, he will develop in time a taste for healthy foods, after which he will eat better because that is what he likes.

For whatever agrees with a thing according to its nature is pleasurable, and as habit exists as a sort of nature—what we call “second nature”—those acts consonant with a developed habit are naturally agreeable. [7] This is true not only in regards to culinary tastes or ones taste in music and art, but in the moral realm as well, for virtue is an acquired disposition no less than one’s aesthetic sense. Thus it is that Aristotle sees the pleasure or sorrow experienced by a man in his moral activity as an indication of his true character. In his words: “every virtuous person rejoices in virtuous acts, for no one will call a man just who does not enjoy doing just deeds; no one will call a man generous who does not enjoy giving generously.” [8] For this reason, moral education was understood by Aristotle to be necessarily concerned with pleasure and pain and consists in training one to feel joy and sorrow in the proper object and at the proper time. [9]

Alan Hicks was a student of the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas under John Senior and received his degrees in Philosophy at Kansas following his conversion to the Catholic Church. He was the founding Headmaster of St. Gregory’s Academy in Pennsylvania and was subsequently the principal of Catholic schools in both St. Louis and Southern California. He has since returned to his first love—teaching—and is currently a professor of Humanities at St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Lincoln, Nebraska.

NOTES

[1] Mark 14, 6.

[2] The Idiot.

[3] See St. Thomas Aquinas, The Disputed Questions on Truth (Henry Regnery, 1952), Q. 1, art. 2.

[4] St. Thomas, On Truth, I, 5, 4.

[5] St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God (TAN Books and Publishers, 1975), 53.

[6] Ibid., 53.

[7] See St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Ethics (Henry Regnery, 1964), 124.

[8] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 1, ch. 8, 1099a 15-20.

[9] Ibid., bk. 2, ch. 3, 1104b10.

How Do Friendships Endure? by a Monk of Pluscarden Abbey

Here is an essay on the nature of friendship by a monk of the community of Pluscarden Abbey in Scotland, reproduced with permission from the Pentecost edition of their magazine, Pluscarden Benedictines. Friendship is an important aspect of the life of Benedictine monks, who are, in principle, bound to live in community with the same people for may well turn out to be several decades. As such, their lives as celibates in long-lasting and stable communities puts them in a position to consider the nature of human friendship and its relation to friendship with God. The bond that unites the community is the noble call of their common work of the worship of God, the opus Dei.

This essay is similar in theme, but at the same time in stark contrast to the series of three, I posted recently on the pictorial allegories of love as described in the Song of Songs: part 1, part 2, and part 3. Whereas the Song is a romantic and passionate love poem in which spousal love is portrayed as analogous to and participating in our love of God and God’s love for us, caritas, our wise Benedictine focuses on friendship (philia, amicitia), in which is there is no romantic component, and makes the argument that this too, if authentic, is a participation in ‘divine friendship’, which is an alternative way of referring to that same caritas. Caritas is a love which is simultaneously multi-faceted, superabundant and yet, paradoxically simple. Friendships, as with the spousal relationship in marriage, are therefore a training ground for heaven.

While the writer’s focus is primarily (though not exclusively) on deep and lasting friendships, my thoughts ran as I read it to the significance of superficial and temporary friendships. One thing that the last 18 months of enforced wearing of face-hiding masks and social isolation has taught me is how important regular and superficial contact with people is. For the most part, in the time of COVID, I have managed to maintain in some form at least my close friendships, but the number of regular face-to-face contacts with strangers has reduced dramatically, and I can feel the difference. Saying, ‘hello’ to strangers or to a person only seen in that one context regularly, say at the checkout of the local store, and who then returns the greeting with a smile, has a part to play in relieving loneliness too. Perhaps even these simple short interactions can also be small but significant occasions that lead us and others to heaven!

Photos by Peter Chalmers

There is a scene in the film About a Boy in which a couple asks the protagonist, played by Hugh Grant, to be godfather to their new baby girl. Grant plays an aging pop star who is drifting in life, and has for years been living off the royalties of the only hit single of his career. Though capable of personal charm, he is a cynic who claims he delights in a life of selfishness and irresponsibility in his personal relationships. At the beginning of the story, when asked to be a godfather he immediately refuses. The parents respond by suggesting that maybe he has hidden depths to his personality and that taking on this responsibility might help to bring them out. ‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ he replies, ‘I really am this shallow.’

However, in the course of the film, he meets a boy who draws him into friendship by stimulating his latent instincts to be a father. This in turn opens him up to other deeper and more satisfying loving relationships that he previously claimed he did not need. Its ring of truth for me was that it was not presented as a story of transition from misery to ecstasy, but rather, from relative contentedness to a far richer and more joyful life: from grayscale to glorious technicolor. It’s not that the friendships he had were nothing, rather, they were not enough, and he didn’t realize it until one of them developed into the life-changing friendship between himself and the boy.

I am not suggesting that shallowness and superficiality are all we need in our personal interactions, but I am going to say that shallow and superficial human interactions are underrated! Most of us need the full spectrum ranging from superficial and temporary to deep and permanent; one might say that God’s love is a single utterance that draws all loves, grey and colored, into itself.

Here then, is the essay.

HOW DO FRIENDSHIPS ENDURE?

How do friendships endure? It is certainly an interesting question. Both classical philosophy and St Thomas Aquinas applied the term friendship (philia, amicitia) to a wider range of human relationships than we are used to doing. Or rather, to be more precise, the Greek and Latin words which they used covered a wider range of meanings. Still, these terms obviously included our ordinary friendships. I cannot help but think of my best friend Paul in this context. We have known each other for over twenty years now. Our friendship endures and thrives, even though twelve years ago I entered a contemplative Benedictine monastery, while he has since become a husband and a father of four. That, plus a busy professional life, consumes more than 100% of his physical, mental and spiritual energies. We see each other a couple of times a year, at best, and yet the bond between us is stronger than ever, I would say. Why is this? Basing myself solely on Aristotle, I could already say a great deal: true human friendship is based on virtue, on worth; there has to be a certain equality between friends and the attachment must be mutual, but once it exists, friendship provides an ideal setting for growth in virtue; this growth in its turn strengthens the bond, and so it goes...

For St Thomas, this is how we prepare “the ground” for charity, which alone can carry us to God and life everlasting. Still, Aquinas would obviously want me to move beyond these basic truths and see my natural love for a friend itself as (with the help of grace) charity – so not just a mere setting for something greater, but the privileged means of achieving life everlasting. This is how we make our way to heaven: “not by bodily movements but by the soul's affections”, by enlarging the scope and the intensity of our human loves (2a2ae.24,4). Even though there can be no “natural” equality between God and man, charity (what God is in his essence and that thing “with which” we love him in our turn) is a kind of friendship! Charity “is our friendship for God arising from our sharing in eternal happiness” (2a2ae.24,2). It “is not based principally on human virtue, but on the divine goodness” 10 (2a2ae.23,3), expressed in “his sharing his happiness with us”.

In this present life, we can only experience it within our souls where “we have intercourse with God and the angels, though imperfectly” (2a2ae.23,1). My friendship with Paul then is ultimately a participation in this “divine friendship” – a unique virtue, the highest of all virtues, which alone “attains God himself so as to rest in him without looking for any gain” (2a2ae.23,6). Let me take a few steps back and start again. I could say that my friendship with Paul has endured because somehow we found each other equal in worth (more or less), and we mutually affirmed one another with (more or less again) the same intensity. Before that could happen, “life” somehow had to throw us together. We started off as what people would call “colleagues” nowadays (as students in the same department of the University of Warsaw) and teammates (representing our university in volleyball), not friends as such. But Aristotle would already apply the term philia to both of these fairly superficial connections, and St Thomas took up this broad understanding: “the chief concern of any friendship is with the main source of that shared good on which it is based” (2a2ae.26,2).

In other words, any shared good can become the basis of an amicitia. Yet I had studied and played volleyball with dozens, if not hundreds of people over those five years, and the vast majority of these “friendships” lasted only as long as the shared good on which they were based lasted, that is, only as long as we had the same preoccupations. Moreover, I had been in relationships with women which, at the time, seemed deeper and stronger than anything else in my life – but they all ended. Not so with Paul. Our friendship has survived all sorts of losses of lesser goods over the years. Why? Because we found each other good somehow, I think.

Man always aims at some good, Aristotle would say, even when in the middle of making a complete mess of his life. We love and desire “goodness” naturally, wherever we see it, even when we are deluded and the good is only apparent. So I can love the genuine good that comes with playing volleyball and, by extension, “love” all those who share this experience with me, especially when they are on my team and play well. But it is 11 slightly different when it comes to good people as such, because the “shared good” is hardly separable from them. What is more, it is also hardly separable from me, as I want to be good too. Not in some flat, moralistic sense; I just want to be a good instance of man, or even simply a good me. What happens when I see a man who appears good? “There are two things that we love in friendship,” wrote Aquinas, “our friend himself, for whom we desire good things; and the very good itself that we desire for him” (2a2ae.25,2). This “very good” in the case of people has to do with virtue, according to the classical tradition: a good man is a virtuous man; his virtue constitutes his worth as a man.

Our friendship began because Paul’s goodness somehow manifested itself to me through the dispositions which constitute his character, and vice versa – though back then we would never think of it this way. It endured because these dispositions are stable, repeatedly manifest themselves in what he does, and so they tend to strengthen the initial affirmation. This provides an ideal setting for growth in virtue for both of us; these “two things that we love in friendship” – we love them more and more, as the “two loves” and the two friends reinforce one another. St Thomas went further by placing friendship in the grandest of all possible schemes of things – “within” the theological virtue of charity, which then, in its turn, takes it right “into” God. I am able to love other people, including my friend Paul, because God loved me first – and that, for Aquinas, is specifically by sharing his eternal happiness with me. This is how God's love manifested itself, this is “God's virtue”, so to speak, through which I am able to know what he is like, to know his “character”.

Astoundingly, since eternal life is what I have in common with God now, I am able to have a personal relationship with a Being utterly beyond my reach otherwise. And this, in turn, enables me to love others (with various types of love and degrees of intensity), even my personal enemies and grave sinners, ultimately as also belonging to God, as his (potential) friends. Love, says Aquinas, “derives its species from its object, but its intensity from the lover” (2a2ae.26,7). Therefore, I will naturally desire greater good for 12 people whom I consider nearer to God, but the nearer the person is to me, the more intense this desire. No two relationships in my life will be the same then; their quality will depend on people's nearness to God and their nearness to me. Or perhaps, more precisely, on my inevitably skewed perceptions of these “nearnesses”. So really, in the final analysis, my friendship with Paul endures because, to a large extent, it has eternal life as the shared good on which it is based. Consequently, our friendship provides us with an ideal setting not merely for further growth in virtue, though it does – it is rather a training ground for heaven. In eternity “the entire order of love will be determined with reference to God, so that the closer another is to God the more dearly will we love him and see him as our own,” says St Thomas (2a2ae.26,13). In other words, the closeness to God will be the same as nearness to me. There is therefore no form of amicitia better than true friendship in approximating what will go on in heaven.

This is the best “simulator” available, if you like. But it does not stop at this, there is one more final consolation: Paul and I will still be friends “up there”, according to Aquinas (providing we both make it, of course, one can never presume that). True, closeness to God will be by far the most important factor in determining the order of our loves in heaven, but our earthly attachments will survive also – grace does not supplant nature, it perfects nature.

Liturgy as Labor versus Liturgy as Leisure

(Part 2 of a two-part series, “Exorcising the Demon of Activism.” For Part 1, see here.)

Last week I spoke of the tendency of modern Christians to prioritize activity, good works, social work — in short, the “horizontal” dimension — over the “vertical” dimension of the individual and corporate relationship with God and His kingdom that we find in, and cultivate through, personal and liturgical prayer. It is no secret that a pragmatic and utilitarian attitude dominates our world and, regrettably, our Church. Rare is the pastor of souls who takes seriously himself, and then teaches others by example and word, that seeking contemplative union with God is absolutely the first priority in the life of every man who has ever lived and who will ever live, and that this means giving Him the best of our time and resources. I sometimes have a mental picture of our final judgment being initially about why we gave God so little of our time, attention, and love when He was present in our midst in symbols and in His Real Presence; and, only after that fundamental defect has been thoroughly examined, launching into the terrifying review of our particular sins, offenses, and negligences.

The heroic Jesuit Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J. (1873–1917), who expended his life for his men on the battlefield of World War I as a much-loved and courageous army chaplain, and therefore cannot be accused of pious daydreaming, once observed: “Did it ever strike you that when our Lord pointed out the ‘fields white for the harvest,’ he did not urge his Apostles to go and reap it, but to pray?” (Recall Matthew 9, 37-38: “Then he saith to his disciples, The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.”)

Pope St John Paul II’s critique of the impoverishment of personal relations in a materialistic society suggests a striking parallel with the confusion of primary and secondary in the life of the Church:

The criterion of personal dignity — which demands respect, generosity, and service — is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality, and usefulness: others are considered not for what they “are,” but for what they “have, do, and produce.” (Evangelium Vitae, §23)

The liturgical reformers committed an analogous blunder. The criterion of liturgical dignity — which demands profound respect for tradition (a prerequisite to internalizing its wisdom), generous self-surrender to its ascetical and rubrical demands, and sincere service to the faithful in offering them ongoing formation — was replaced by the activist criteria of efficiency, functionality, and usefulness ad extra. Liturgy was to be judged not by what it is in its innermost essence, but by its externals, its facilitation of us, its meeting of our untutored needs, its satisfaction of our desires, and (in a best-case scenario) its stimulation of our apostolic activities. It became a Mutual Aid Society for Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, with a decorative Catholic touch.

A contemplative ritual such as the Church had offered to God prior to the mid-1960s will never be able to withstand the relentless demands of the pragmatist for instant results or continual production of “output.” This is due to a fundamental error: work is taken as the paradigm of actuality, rather than rest. We would do well to dwell on this point.

Aristotle introduced into philosophy one of the most useful distinctions ever made, the difference between “first act” and “second act” (or, as some translations have it, first actuality and second actuality). We understand this distinction, which is not logical but metaphysical, by considering a lot of examples from common experience and intuiting what they have in common: being able to see versus actually seeing; being alive but asleep vs. being awake; being equipped with intellect or habitual knowledge vs. actually understanding an essence, which is when knower and known, subject and object, are one and the same. This latter state is being “fully-at-work” (in the Heidegger-influenced language of Joe Sachs), but paradoxically, it is not working at something laboriously; it is actively resting in the possession of a form or a perfection. Capacity for work is ordered to working (attaining actuality), but working is ordered to a certain “rest” (actuality fully achieved). What Abraham Maslow called “a flow state” or, colloquially, “being in the zone,” is just this second act/actuality of which Aristotle speaks, at its peak.

The solemn public liturgy of the Church, though it involves the combined efforts of various people, is essentially the latter kind of work: being fully-at-work in Christ’s actuality, which He now shares with us as an overflow, a redundantia, from heaven, and to which we unite ourselves more as twigs or leaves floating downstream than as trucks carrying gravel or streamrollers flattening asphalt. We are not making a better world by the work of our hands; we are being remade in the image of God, who is pure act.

Josef Pieper’s best-known book is called Leisure, the Basis of Culture. By “leisure” Pieper means what we do for its own sake when all our other practical needs are met. Leisure is not relaxation, which is an interval of inaction before resuming exertions. Nor is leisure exactly the same as recreation, when we entertain ourselves or one another in a more or less dignified manner. Leisure is the reflective and contemplative activity of rejoicing in what is real, with a full mind and heart, with no other business pressing on us and pulling us away; it is resting with wonder and gratitude in the goodness of creation and its Creator; it is what the virtuous man labors to make room for, because it is the best human activity and, in fact, something more than human.

Seeing “Liturgy as Labor” and seeing “Liturgy as Leisure” are, then, the two basic ways of seeing it. The former is activist, the latter contemplative; the one is based on a paradigm of involvement and production, the other on a paradigm of receptivity, surrender, and rest. The partisans of the first conception think of themselves as doing the right thing, bringing the right state of affairs into being, and thus feel that their opponents are “passive” and “mute observers”; the partisans of the second conception think of themselves primarily as beholding and loving what is beautiful or noble in itself, and therefore consider a certain kind of passivity a virtue, and quiet observation a form of opening one’s soul to the power of another who acts to conform the soul to Himself. As Andrew Louth remarks, “To participate by beholding seems a shortcoming only to the busy Western mind.” (The Study of Spirituality, p. 187)

Monastic professions: everyone in this photo is receptive in stance and action

Monastic private Masses (see here for more recent photos)

Fr. Ray Blake asks the question “Why are contemplatives problematic?” and answers:

It is presumably something about the ‘otherness’ of their lives. . . . their values are not those of the contemporary world: they tend to stand still rather than go out to the peripheries of contemporary thought, stat crux dum volvitur orbis, which means they don’t get “with the program.” There is something about the transcendence and otherness of their lives that says some important things about God; that he is above and beyond us, that he is unknowable, ineffable, which means he is beyond the control of Kings and governments, or even Churchmen. The war on Liturgy that speaks of the transcendent of the post-conciliar period uses the same arguments, or lack of argument, as those who have difficulty with the contemplative life. Liturgy that is pure worship, that does not seek to teach, or build community or to “celebrate” in the contemporary sense of the word, is equally incomprehensible; it is about esse [to be] rather than agere [to act]. 

In his fine work Love and Truth: The Christian Path of Charity, Jean Borella brilliantly analyzes the mentality behind suppressing prayer and liturgy because of “social needs”:

Being universal, this commandment [of love] is by definition and a priori applied to every man, but its realization does not require, for it to be accomplished in perfection and for us to be perfect, that we apply it successively to all men. A similar interpretation is implied, however, in the manner in which our contemporaries have become intoxicated with a quantitatively unlimited charity. Besides, why limit the import of this commandment to humanity? Does not the cosmic order concern the whole of creation, and has not Christ ordained the teaching of the Gospel to every creature and not to man alone? And on the other hand, imperfection, misery, and injustice being by definition inexhaustible, the work of justice claims the totality of my time and therefore the totality of my life.
          Consequently, everything not directly an individual or social work of justice is [regard as] mortal sin. Prayer and liturgy, momentarily requiring the whole man and the cessation of every action for the sake of the collectivity, become mortal sins themselves. For to pray, we must withdraw from the world. It is not we ourselves but Christ who is saying this, and we only need state that the commandment on prayer comes immediately after the just-quoted passage, as if the Gospel wished to forestall the modern errors of interpretation: “For yourself when you wish to pray enter into your chamber, close the door and pray to your Father who dwells in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt 6:6).
          The hic and nunc of our existential situation implies a unicity of acting. We cannot do several things at once. The act of prayer and the liturgy concretely exclude the social act and vice versa. If active charity is to absorb the totality of the charitable power, everything opposing it should be eliminated. And this is why we think the modern conception leads directly and logically to the elimination of liturgical worship and the spiritual life, that is to say ultimately of the Church and theism, for their opposition, in concreto, is strictly inevitable. (225–26)

Now, what Borella describes may well be considered a “limit case” that will never be reached on earth, regardless of the combined effects of activism, indifference, and wickedness in high places as in low; nevertheless, the logic driving toward it leaves a path of carnage behind itself, along which are strewn the lost or never-awakened vocations of tens of thousands of contemplative religious after the Council — a gaping hole in the Mystical Body on earth that no campaign of charity, no pastoral programs, no liturgical reform, could ever fill. Precisely when and where the primacy of contemplation and the true leisure of liturgy are rediscovered and embraced will there be a restoration of the Church’s missionary dynamism and her once-unparalleled charitable work in the world. Delightfully, the way to reach that longed-for goal is the same as the goal itself: prayer and worship. The means and the end coincide, even as our “daily bread” par excellence is the Maker of bread and the Life it imparts.

Does Chaos Emerge from Order, or Order from Chaos?

In his book on the design of the Westminster pavement, Patterns of Thought; the Hidden Meaning of the Great Pavement of Westminster, published in 1991, Richard Foster interprets the meaning of the complex geometric design, which is based on a shape called a quincunx.

PHOTO: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/cosmati-pavement

A quincunx is a geometric pattern consisting of five points arranged in a cross, with four of them forming a square or rectangle and a fifth at its center. It has its origins in Roman times, and will be most familiar to many of us today as the arrangement of five dots on one of the faces of a six-sided die. It has cropped up in many places as a design principle even, for example, to encourage contemplation in geometrically set-out gardens.

As we can see, the quincunx in the Westminster pavement is actually a series of several interconnected quincunxes in which one can spin outwards, following a line from the center out to the edge, and then return by spiraling inwards. This exit-and-return motif was interpreted by Foster, in this particular arrangement, as a geometrical representation of the creation of the cosmos by God in which all of time and space emanate from and then return to a single principle. That principle is represented by the central circle, which is the largest of the cut stones in the whole floor. In this sense, it encapsulates in broad terms story the created world and salvation history.

This video was made in 2010 after the completion of the restoration of the floor, and prior to its permanent opening to the public, after being hidden under a carpet for 150 years.

As I looked at this, it occurred to me that this geometric portrayal of the connection between the one and the many might give us some clues to the mechanism behind the creation of emergent order.

The existence of patterns of order, such as common law, common sense, and the common good, is discernible when a society as a whole is observed. In these cases, they communicate to us what society as a whole holds to be just, wise, and desirable. Many individuals who might only be dimly aware of their existence, are nevertheless contributing to them by their daily activities and interactions with others, through an innate sense of how these principles apply to them personally. Even those who wish to dissent from the collective order often somehow contribute to it despite themselves. It is not easy for us to eradicate our own human nature.

This pattern of an order which emerges at the macroscopic level out of an array of mathematically random events, events which happen at the level of the individual, and seems to be observable different aspects of existence, is difficult to account for. Rather than clearing up this dilemma of the connection between the one and the many, modern fields of study seem to compound it. In 1974, for example, Frederick Hayek was given a Nobel Prize in economics. One of Hayek’s great insights was the description of what he called the ‘spontaneous order’ of a market that seemed to respond to the collective knowledge of the demand and supply of goods and services, despite the fact that no single person who was participating in the market, including those in government, had full knowledge of this information.

Modern science faces a similar dilemma in its struggle to reconcile quantum physics with Newtonian (or ‘classical’) physics; that is, to explain how the behavior of the individual molecules, atoms, and even the sub-atomic particles from which all matter is composed, gives rise to the order that is observed at the macroscopic level.

In each case, there are no detailed explanations of a mechanism by which the pattern of individual behavior is connected to the pattern of the whole. We simply observe that it is so.

Attempts to provide such a cause will tend to limit attention to the behavior at the level of the individual or particle as a cause of the order at the wider level. So, the assumption is that each system follows what the modern scientist would recognize as the law of cause-and-effect. By this assumption, Newtonian physics is caused by the accumulation of the effects of what happens at the quantum level. By a similar approach, we might argue that what we observe to be common law is caused by the behavior of individuals within that society. But this is an arbitrarily applied restriction that is a handicap to genuine inquiry. In the language of the philosopher, we would say this approach is limiting our consideration to efficient causes only when the explanation might lie elsewhere.

It occurs to me that principle that the interpretation of the pattern of the Westminster pavement outlined above might offer us help here. Perhaps we should consider final causes too?

The central circle in the pattern represents God, who is both the first and final cause of creation. The cosmos comes from God, and it returns to Him. In an isolated system that is a part of the whole, this dynamic would become efficient, proximate, and final causes respectively. Another way of looking at this from a temporal perspective is to say that just as the past pushes, the future pulls. Considered this way, the final cause accommodates efficient causes, just as efficient causes conform to the final.

Under this picture, the emergent order is as much a cause of the individual behavior as it is an effect that arises from it. So we would say that Newton physics could be considered at least as much a cause of quantum events as the other way around, and this being the case, any attempt to explain a mechanism without taking proximate final cause into account would be incomplete. In the social sciences, the ideals of the common good, common law, and even the free market indicate principles of what ought to happen as much as what does (given man’s exercise of free will). So this says that the common good ought to govern the behavior of the person, rather than the other way around.

Culture, the work of man in cultivating the goods and values of nature, is another emergent order. However, in the case of culture, we are accustomed to thinking of it as being simultaneously the cause and effect of human behavior - that is both efficient and proximate final cause. When all of these influences are in harmony with the ultimate final cause then we delight in it and consider it beautiful. We want to live in a beautiful culture because, as Roger Scruton put it, it tells us ‘that we are at home in the world.’

I would go further and say that the recognition of the beauty of these patterns of emergent order, which are based upon what is good and true, will delight us. Consequently, we delight in our apprehension of the beauty of the cosmos, and in a Christian culture. We are delighted because contemplation of them elevates our minds from the particulars to the universals that they point to, and ultimately to God. In the same way, the flawed individuals of the institutional Church direct us collectively to Truth and the mystical body of Christ. God is the uncreated Light that illuminates and delights and whom, ultimately we behold joyfully.

It is our recognition that they direct us to our final rest, maybe only at some pre-conscious level, that causes our delight in details of His creation. Listen to the comments of the people who viewed the pattern of clouds of starlings flying at dawn.

The patterns of the clouds of birds, incidentally, remind me of those of the swirling aurora borealis which are caused by charged particles from the sun striking air molecules in places where the Earth’s magnetic field is strong, that cause those molecules’ atoms to become excited.

Two Attitudes toward Ordinary Form Rubrics: Kantian Duty and Aristotelian Epikeia

Over the years at NLM, various authors have published articles concerning how the Ordinary Form might be “enriched” or “improved,” usually by way of adapting or importing practices of the traditional Roman rite. Sometimes this has taken the modest form of recommending that the OF’s own rubrics be actually followed (e.g., on the ad orientem stance, or on the use of Propers), and that a celebrant exercise a well-informed liturgical phronesis (prudence or practical wisdom) in the choice of options. At other times, the proposals have been more comprehensive, as in Fr. Richard Cipolla’s “A Primer for a Tradition-Minded Celebration of the OF Mass.” Such proposals tend to be greeted with two strongly contrasting reactions: a warm welcome from proponents of “mutual enrichment,” or a stern rebuke from those who see them as fomenting disobedience to the new liturgical books and the documents that control their use.

I submit that we can find a way forward in this debate by considering the contrast between the Kantian notion of duty and the Aristotelian notion of epikeia, often translated “equity.”

For Kant, duty is something absolute: in Germanic fashion, one ought never to swerve from the strict provisions of the law. In fact, the only way we can know that we are virtuous is by suppressing any subjective motivation or personal judgment about what is right to do and submitting to the objectivity of legal dictates. In this perspective, there is no room for going beyond the letter of the law to achieve more perfectly the law’s own intention of promoting the common good. If a traffic light or crosswalk signal is red, one must always stop at it, regardless of the circumstances.

For Aristotle, in contrast, formulated laws, as necessary as they are for social life, suffer from the inherent flaw of having been universally framed (as if to embody a timeless and placeless rational perspective), and thus incapable of responding to certain immediate needs. While justice is surely founded on law-abidingness, it is perfected by an additional virtue called epikeia, whereby one judges well of when and how to adapt the law to specific circumstances. Epikeia is the virtue of seeing past the phrasing of the law to the good it intends to safeguard or promote, so that one may do that which will best safeguard or promote that very good — even if at times it involves stepping aside from the literal dictate of the law. Hence, if the traffic light is red, but one has a seriously injured person as a passenger, one looks both ways and then drives straight through the red light to reach the hospital.[1]

In light of this brief sketch, it seems to me that people come at liturgical law and rubrics from one of two positions:

1. The Kantian: “Say the Black, Do the Red.” No more and no less.

2. The Aristotelian: “Say the Black, Do the Red, in accord with the requirements of liturgy and the pattern of tradition.” In other words, you must do and say the things that are directed, and refrain from doing or saying the things that are prohibited, but beyond this there is a wise liberty to practice unity with one’s Catholic tradition, letting it dictate the way the liturgy should be offered. A priest friend described this view as “classical liberal traditionalism.”[2]

(For the sake of completeness, there is a third position one might identify: the Liberal or Progressive. The clergy who espouse it, however well-intentioned they may be, neither consistently say the black nor do the red, but abuse their positions to improvise and make stuff up as they go along — e.g., arbitrarily speaking aloud prayers that are supposed to be silent.)

Now it seems to me that the Kantian position lines up with those who would see themselves as, or whom others would call, “conservatives,” while the Aristotelian view lines up with those who might are more likely to be characterized as “traditionalists,” whatever we may make of these inadequate labels. Each of these views seems to line up with a fundamental commitment. The Kantian values authority and its dictates over all other considerations, including Tradition, which is not regarded as having normative and probative value. The Aristotelian works with multiple criteria, regarding the moral act as a complex of internal and external elements, which include, to be sure, authority and law, but also extend beyond them to natural law, precedent, custom, and discretion in a Benedictine sense. (The progressive, for his part, takes as a first principle the superiority of the future over the past: he assumes the inferiority, crudity, or corruptness of tradition, exalts the value of human science as a guide to original purity and contemporary need, and therefore tends to chafe at, if he does not violently attack, the restraints of former custom and current law.)

The first or Kantian approach suffers from a kind of mechanistic hollowness: one acknowledges a strict duty to an extrinsic principle but makes no room for the intrinsic principle of intelligence to interpret the situation and act appropriately.[3] That this cannot possibly work for the OF is evidenced by the fact that all kinds of decisions have to be made for which there is no provision in the rubrics (unlike in the usus antiquior, where the Church, drawing on the wisdom of centuries, has carefully specified what is to be done, allowing the celebrant to yield himself more freely to the rite in its perfection). This is why Msgr. Elliott’s Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite and Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year are such helpful books — and so hated by liberals. It draws upon the wealth of classical rubrics in order to give more dignity to the OF’s celebration. While it is nowhere near as daring as the Primer published at NLM, it still presupposes the same “classical liberal” attitude of doing what is in line with tradition.

Let me offer a concrete example. Whether the architects of the Novus Ordo disbelieved in transubstantiation or whether they understood the Real Presence in a heretical manner is a moot point; what is beyond dispute is that they suppressed practices that centuries of reverence for the Blessed Sacrament had prompted, and that this suppression has had the effect, in practice, of lessening both the clergy’s awareness of the awesomeness of the sacred mysteries they enact and the people’s faith in the Real Presence. A priest, therefore, possessed of good liturgical sense, understanding why a genuflection should be made immediately after the consecration, why the fingers are thenceforward to be held together, and why, during the ablutions, the fingers should be washed over the chalice with wine and water, will simply do all this as dignum et justum, the right and just thing to do. In this way he is more in keeping with the mind and will of the supreme legislator, who is obligated ex officio to preserve and promote both the liturgical tradition and maximum reverence towards the Body and Blood of Christ. In this way the legislator’s authentic intention is taken up and strengthened, whatever a particular legislator may have been thinking in his human frailty.

All this being said, the Aristotelian approach is advisable for a priest who is steeped in the tradition and thus will know how and when to bring traditional elements to the OF. In contrast, it is dangerous, one might say, for a priest who is operating from a flawed or piecemeal liturgical formation to attempt to apply epikeia, for he may introduce untraditional, unliturgical elements, again with the best of intentions.[4] To put the matter practically, the priest who will be most capable of exercising epikeia in the OF will be the one who is well-versed in the celebration and rubrics of the usus antiquior. Indeed, this was precisely the source of the Primer: its author is a priest who for years has offered both the traditional Mass in all three of its forms (Low, High, and Solemn) and the Ordinary Form within a hermeneutic of continuity.

There is no magisterial document on this “meta-question.” The Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum and other documents say, of course, that the priest must be obedient to the rubrics, and that the faithful have a right to a liturgy that is celebrated according to them, etc., but both the Kantian and Aristotelian approaches already concur on this point. The confusion in the Latin Church today results, at least in part, from the importation of the antinomian culture of the 1960s into the very sanctuary, in the form of an open-ended liturgy with options, inculturations, adaptations, and a vastly impoverished code of rubrics. Whatever may be its social merits or demerits, antinomianism is an unsustainable liturgical philosophy. This is precisely why young clergy are eager for the kind of guidance offered them in Msgr. Elliott’s books and NLM’s Primer.

Ezekiel’s depiction of Israel — “you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred on the day that you were born; and when I passed by you, and saw you weltering in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live, and grow up like a plant of the field’” (Ezek 16:5–6) — might well remind us of the sorry spectacle of a liturgy so much depleted of sacrality, so much in need of growing up and joining the world of actual historical liturgies (if such a reunification is even possible — a theoretical question better left for another occasion). Naturally, clergy and laity who love Catholic tradition, and who are, in one way or another, confined to the use of the Ordinary Form, wish to do something about this problem of the loss of sacredness and the lack of appropriate rites and rubrics. We ought to recognize that there are various plausible and defensible solutions. One of them, as this article has argued, is to Say the Black and Do the Red with an epikeia that avails itself of traditional means by which the Black acquires a fuller resonance and the Red achieves a fuller dignity.

NOTES

[1] See Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, ch. 10, for Aristotle’s most complete treatment of this virtue.

[2] I say this somewhat tongue-in-cheek; my actual views on classical liberalism as a socio-political philosophy are well known. Suffice it to say that, following in the line of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII, I am not a fan of it.

[3] The priest is an instrument or tool, but he is, as Aquinas says, an intelligent tool. That is, the Lord makes use of him according to his own nature as a rational animal.

[4] There are larger theoretical issues here, as well, that go beyond the scope of this article. On the one hand, those who designed the OF presumably wanted to revive some fantasy of a free-wheeling early Church liturgy with ex tempore prayers, but there was no thought of the liturgical formation that would be necessary for such virtuosity. Then, formation itself presupposes a specific liturgical tradition, whereas the OF and its options are eclectic between traditions. How is anyone supposed to know if this (mangled) set of Roman orations goes best with that (bowdlerized) Alexandrian Preface, or this or another chant in Latin, English, or Spanish? Prudent choice makes sense within a stable, coherent structure. This, again, is why the usus antiquior is the only possible guide to stabilizing and harmonizing the usus recentior.

Objective Form and Subjective Experience: The Benedictine/Jesuit Controversy, Revisited

Almost three years ago, I published an article here entitled “The Ironic Outcome of the Benedictine–Jesuit Controversy,” which in rewritten form became part of chapter 5, “Different Visions, Contrary Paths,” of my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness. A reader recently contacted me with some interesting observations that prompted further thoughts. I am grateful to him for contacting me — as I am to everyone who sends me such reflections. They are often the germ for NLM articles!

In any case, here is what he wrote:

I have been subjected to two “Life Teen” conferences this summer, and I must say they are the true challenge to the return of Tradition. For they don’t attempt to be heterodox, just the opposite in fact. Those folks who wish the Church could just “get with the times” are dying off, and their children, if they had any, have apostatized. But the Life Teen business is so painfully anti-intellectual that you can barely argue with it, and so it’s tough to defeat. You know things by their fruits, and the fact is that these people are able to exercise a decent attraction for a time. It’s the longer view that comes into question, and it requires more subtle arguments about form and the nature of the spiritual life.
          Your book touches on the Benedictine–Jesuit divide in terms of liturgy, but I think that it can be pushed even further. On my view the Benedictine life is the practical working out of the Augustinian theological/spiritual synthesis. At the heart of that synthesis is the conflict between pride and humility. Pride is self-indulgence to the point of contempt of God. Humility is God-indulgence to the point of contempt of self. At the heart of this is Augustine’s profound self-effacement. He knows how complicated, tangled, and inverted things can become. As he says in the Confessions: “I have become an enigma to myself.” The Augustinian (and therefore the broadly Catholic) method for resolving that question is through submission to form that is not self-created or self-perpetuating. This, for two reasons. One, the self is untrustworthy and deceived, and two, because there is no coming to faith without mediation. That’s why he concludes the opening of the Confessions: “I call upon thee, O Lord, in my faith which thou hast given me, which thou hast inspired in me through the humanity of thy Son, and through the ministry of thy preacher.” The humanity of the Son, that is the one who takes the mediation of flesh through Mary, and the ministry of the preacher — i.e., Ambrose, and the episcopal office more generally.
          Thus, it’s not by accident that humility, submission to the rule and the abbot, are the very foundations of Benedictine life. It is through obedience — both to the rule and to the abbot, which are parallel to Augustine’s ministry of the preacher and humanity of the Son — that one draws near to the Lord. Here there is no room for self-expression or self-presence as we’ve come to understand those things. On the other hand, that’s why Benedict constantly exhorts the abbot to patience and magnanimity, never abusing that great authority.
          In a similar way, in Benedictine life the liturgy, the opus Dei, is the reception of and adherence to form, down to the last detail. Salvation comes through conforming yourself to the mediated image, just as the mediated image, in the case of the Host, becomes salvation, when a priest conforms himself to the given form (no wonder Augustine understood ex opere operato in his refutation of the Donatists). In other words, ‘experience’ understood as “conscious seeming,” has almost no role to play in Augustinian–Benedictine spirituality. Contrast that with the Jesuit tradition. Experience is everything. Self-presence, self-knowledge can be read (and indeed in the consciously modern period have been read) throughout the Exercises. It becomes very easy then to cast such things as fixed liturgical forms, rubrics, traditional chant as evils just to the extent that they put a damper on experience. To an experientialist, if something becomes rote, it doesn’t seem like anything. Options, flexibility, creativity, become paramount.
          Now, I’m not claiming this is what Ignatius had in mind, but in broad strokes, I think one can see clear differences. These are differences that aren’t merely contrasting; they are contradictory. The two schools disagree on the nature of knowledge, on the formation of the soul, indeed, on the very purpose of the liturgy.
          I may be way off base on all that, but I think there’s something to it. I’m curious to know your reaction to this theory.

I sympathize with many things my interlocutor is saying; his singling out of subjectivism as a modern vice is correct, and it is hard to dispute that the Jesuits have played a role in the decentering of the Church from her public liturgy. But I have to take some exceptions to his interpretation of Augustine.

Augustine can be and has been used to support just about any position under the sun (just think of the Protestant reformers who continually cited him, or later, the Jansenists). The reason is simply that he is so rich, so comprehensive, and so subtle that he really did see every angle of a problem. He gives us a lot to work with — and to take out of context. In his mature thought, however, there is a perfect balance of the subjective and the objective, or to put it differently, as a Platonist with a deep spiritual hunger for the reality of God, he was absolutely fixed on the Good which is above and beyond us, and in love intimately with this Good as it came to possess his own heart. The usual contrasts between, say, “objective spirituality” (i.e., liturgy, sacraments) and “subjective spirituality” (e.g., personal prayer, emotion, experience) fall apart when it comes to him: his most personal experiences were precisely ones of the reality of God as mediated through the order of creation and the order of redemption. He would look at us with extreme puzzlement if we started to make an opposition between Eucharistic worship and personal friendship with God, or between adoration through stable external signs and inward conviction or conversion. He would say: The Eucharist, the divine liturgy, is the locus of that friendship; and that friendship cannot exist unless nourished by God Himself. We have to be drawn out of ourselves into the transcendent mystery of God through sacramental signs in order to know and love ourselves aright and to have His indwelling presence in us.

This brings me to an Aristotelian point, which will supply a key premise. Aristotle argues in the Nicomachean Ethics that pleasure is the accompaniment of a good action, in some sense a concomitant or result of it, and that the best pleasures accompany the best actions. So, if you want the pleasure, you have to seek out the action; and if you want the best pleasure, you need to seek out the best action a human being is capable of. The reason we reproach “pleasure-seekers” is that they are aiming for easier, low-hanging fruit, usually of a sensual or emotional kind. The paradox is that if you seek pleasure in itself, you miss the better pleasures, which require a certain self-denial and self-transcendence. The virtuous man aims at good or great actions, and experiences a deeper, purer pleasure in doing them.[1]

Now let us consider worship as an action, and religious experience as a pleasure. Liturgical action, when pursued for its own sake, i.e., in adoration and praise of God, is accompanied by the best religious experience. But if we seek the experience as our goal, we will be denied the experience at its best, which comes only from pursuing something nobler than a mere experience. Hence, the person who will be most delighted in worship is the one whose motto is: “I want to find God” — not the one whose motto is “I want to have an experience of God.”

One may draw a parallel here with marriage. If a partner begins with the attitude: “I want an experience of a deep relationship,” the marriage is doomed. If he or she begins with the attitude: “I want to do right by this person, no matter what,” the marriage can flourish. What is vitally important is that the aim be not some experience gained by using another, but simply the other himself or herself: he or she is the aim.[2] It is the same with having children. For a parent to think “I want to have the experience of being a parent/having a child” is a subtle form of selfishness. The parent who thinks instead: “I want to bring a child into the world for his or her own happiness” is focused on the good of the other and willing to sacrifice himself/herself to accomplish it.

The result of this analysis is that we should not set form or objectivity over against experience, as if they are in opposition. Rather, form, or a formal action, will always come with an experience. A higher form will come with a higher experience. A lower form will be accompanied by a lower experience.[3] This, I believe, is exactly what Augustine is saying throughout the Confessions and other works.

That a lower form will be accompanied by a lower experience is what we see in a phenomenon like like Life Teen.[4] It’s easy to get the immediate emotional experience; it requires so little in the way of form or action. But it is correspondingly shallow and unsatisfying for that reason, and must be repeatedly sought, perhaps with attempts made at intensifying the same experience. In this way it is somewhat like drugs, where people start with small doses and eventually try bigger doses or move to more potent drugs, because they are seeking more of that experience, more of that pleasure.

With traditional worship, it is quite different. At first, the form is lofty and remote, the action difficult for our nature. We may feel dry, at a loss, perplexed, even offended at the lack of consideration for our feelings and (what we think to be) our needs. We are confronted with the otherness, the strangeness of God. But if we stick it out, something calls to us in our remoteness from Him. As we dwell with it more, it slowly seizes hold of us and lifts us up to a higher level, to higher perceptions of the truth of what we are doing and Whom we are dealing with. As this worship becomes more connatural, we experience more delight. The delight does not grow stale or cloying but, in fact, builds upon itself without limit, because it is of a spiritual or intellectual order (although not separated from the physical domain). At the limit, beyond this life, we enjoy the beatific vision, where the experience and the objective reality, the form, are utterly at one.

In conclusion, humility, obedience, submission to rule, reception of form, and adherence to form do not need to be (or be seen as) opposed to experience, self-presence, self-knowledge, and fulfillment. With Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas as our guides, we see that the latter are best accomplished by following the narrow road of the former, and the former is necessarily accompanied by the latter in its purest state. But we cannot pursue the latter for their own sakes if we ever wish to practice the former well; indeed, such a mistaken prioritization leads to a skepticism towards and an eventual abandonment of those “objective” foundations and qualities.

It is for this reason that Life Teen and programs like it are harmful to the spiritual development of adolescents, who are at a particularly vulnerable point in their lives, with anxieties about self-image, a tendency towards emotional instability and excess, and the temptation of pleasure-seeking. They will benefit the most, over time, from the traditional emphasis on formal liturgical action to which worshipers anonymously submit, all facing in the same direction and offering a visible sacrifice such as the nature of man requires, avoiding the psychological inflations and distractions of a contemporary style of worship.

I should like to give the last word to Dom Guéranger, as reported by Abbess Cécile Bruyère:

“Let us note well,” said Dom Guéranger in his familiar conversations, “that the science of the Christian life is a determined and definite science. Therefore we must not rest satisfied with repeating conventional phrases or with multiplying sentimental formulas [‘Oh, ah, I ah-dore you-ou-ou’—Ed.]; it is by labour, and not by dreaming and excitement, that we must learn the secrets of a science which has its axioms, its deductions and its certain rules. All must be drawn from divine sources, that this science may be truly that of the spiritual life in the Christian Church.”[5]

NOTES

[1] The reason pleasure-seeking leads to a bad end is that action grounds pleasure rather than pleasure grounding action. If you seek the best action, you have a grounded approach to the best pleasure; but if you seek the greatest pleasure, the pleasure itself will not guide you on to the best action.

[2] Obviously, not as an ultimate end, but as one ordered by charity to God.

[3] By “higher” and “lower” here, I mean more in accord with man’s rational or spiritual nature as capax Dei, a nature open to the knowledge and love of God, which are attained most of all in contemplation.

[4] A similar critique could be offered of tendencies in the Charismatic Movement.

[5] Cécile Bruyère, The Spiritual Life and Prayer according to Holy Scripture and Monastic Tradition (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 121.