Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Antony Gormley: tools for carrying nothing

3083 words, 16 min read

Ever since my first encounter with Antony Gormley’s sculptures, I have had a sense of great affinity with his work and later, as I started reading various of his writings and interviews, also with his thought. What attracted me to his sculptures initially is not verbalizable, but reflecting on it leads me to a recognition of shared experience and of shared values. And I am thinking here of existential and ontological values first, although not to the exclusion of moral ones.

Being in the presence of one of his pieces has always given me a profound sense of incarnation – of a beyond in the here – and of communion, of a blurring of boundaries. The latter is obvious in sculptures since his Domain series (and also in Quantum Could, Hive and other, later ones) but I feel it is also there in his earlier work that, at first sight, may suggest the polar opposite – isolation, separation, individuation. Already the Three Part Lead Bodycase works, which on the face of it are solid, lead boundaries, impermeably encasing individuals, are such strong pointers to that “darkness of the body” that Gormley presents as “objectless”, that they too bring out a sense of a collective, shared place – to which each one of us has access in their own bodies, open to encounter and communion.

Instead of talking more about how I see Gormley’s work, I’d like to share some of his thoughts with you, and encourage you to go an see his sculptures next time you get a chance.

To begin with, Gormley has a concept of art that is extreme (a matter of life and death), paradoxical (useless yet vital), but at the same time profound (potentially life-changing confrontation rather than illustrative decoration):

“Art is the way that life tests and expresses itself, without which we are already dead. [… A]rt […] is useless but vital; it is through art that we communicate what it feels like to be alive.” (Art In The Time Of Global Warming, 2010)

“Art is the means by which we communicate what it feels like to be alive – in the past that was mixed up with other illustrative duties but that was still its central function that has been liberated in the art called modern. Art is not necessarily good for you or about communicating “good things”. […] Making beautiful things for everyday use is a wonderful thing to do – making life flow more easily – but art confronts life, allowing it to stop and perhaps change direction – they are completely different.” (BBC Forum Questions And Answers, 2002)

Gormley’s art is very much also about meaning and has parallels with religion: “[My] work comes from the same source as the need for religion: wanting to face existence and discover meaning. The work attempts by starting with a real body in real time to face space and eternity. The body – or rather the place that the body occupies is seen as the locus on which those forces act.” (Concerning The Religious Dimension In My Art, 1987) While rejecting the Christianity of his childhood, which he recounts as something that he was “indoctrinated” with and where he speaks about how he was told that the Devil is inside him, Gormley looks to art as the means also for preserving what is good in religion, while excluding its past errors:

“I am interested in reviving this idea of presence. Can we have presence without the God? Can we resurrect the monument without bringing the shadow of bad history? The idea of an image that is open enough to be interpreted widely, that has multiple and generative potential for meaning but is strong enough to be a focus. How do we construct such an image? In its being someone’s can it become everyone’s? It has seemed for quite a long time obvious to me that the body can represent at the present time what abstraction did at the beginning of the twentieth century. That is, the ground on which all the seeds of emancipated identity are to grow: the last frontier, the inner realm. (Space has been probed but what do we really know of the body’s darkness.) The body, not as an object of idealisation that should be forced to carry allegorical, symbolic or dramatic readings, but the body as a place. The body not as hero or as sexual object, but the body in some way as the collective subjective – the place where we all live. The place on which the pressures of society are inscribed and out of which expression, language, feeling can come.” (Still Moving, 1996)

In the same interview, Gormley emphasizes communion as a purpose of art – also a deeply Christian teleology:

“Can we use the space of art for communion? A contact not only between ourselves but between ourselves and history? In doing this can we also derive the energy necessary to believe in our part in the construction of the future? Is it possible for art to provide a space that can be regenerative? Is it possible to use the space of art to resist this restlessness, this sense of fragmentation, this sense of alienation from self and from place?”

In fact, Gormely sees art as closely tied to beliefs about the value of life and its future not only in the context of an individual but of society and humanity as a whole:

“It is necessary these days to hold on to the crucial function art has in the continuance and regulation of life. It provides us with images and acts by which we identity ourselves but so often now in an unstable way. Art can be a focus for life by reasserting in times of vicissitude the central belie[fs] of a people. In tribal cultures it is a collective act whether in dance, carving, self-decoration that reasserts the body of the people and it is from this that the individual draws his or her power. Art and the practice of non-utilitarian skills is an act of will for the future and is as critical an aspect of survival as hunting or gathering food. What has happened to this urgency expressed in a collective creativity that projects into the future and ensures the belief necessary for life? It is not that we have lost it, but the repositories of dance, dream and art are dispersed into the hands of individuals who have responsibility not simply to a single family or tribe but as points of consciousness of the whole world.” (The Impossible Self, 1988)

The desire for community and an undoing of alienation and fragmentation through art is also a strong theme in Gormley’s 2010 talk about the specific role of art in the context of Global Warming, which is highly relevant also to the upcoming UN conference on climate change that starts on Monday in Paris and deeply consonant with Pope Francis’ Laudato si’ encyclical:

“Is it possible to re-think art and take it from this finished-object status and make it into a verb, a participatory, open space, a place of transformation and the exchange of ideas and reflection on our state and status? Can we use art as a way of investigating this perilous time? Can we change from our obsession with production values? Instead of the perfection of an Asprey’s catalogue or the gloss of the desirable branded object can we accept that art has to find its own raw and direct way of existing?

[In my studio w]e create here situations and objects that can become catalysts for a form of reflexivity that allows the viewing subject not simply to be a passive consumer of an already tested experience but for the experience of art itself to be testing ground for both the model of art and the model of the human subject. We have in making art a specialisation and its exchange as a matter of high monetary worth lost its central subject – the human being. In the art of the 20th century the Duchampian breakthrough was the examination of human labour and mass production in the ‘found object’. I would like art to re-focus on the lost subject.” (Art In The Time Of Global Warming, 2010)

I particularly like that Gormley self-applies his thinking about the state of the world – to his own most immediate environment: his studio. At the same time his perspective is anything but parochial and extends to a global scale [in same text as above]:

“In facing the challenges of global climate crisis in a culture which encourages us to do more, produce more, be seen more – my initial response is paralysing fear, I want to shrink, to go into a hibernating state with minimum muscular effort and put minimal demand on any kind of fuel.

This position is not helpful but perhaps is a good place to start to rethink one’s place in the world.

[…] We can no longer assume that more is better. We have to change our cultural heroes from generals and captains of industry to meditators and mediators, from Rambo and Terminator to Ghandi and the Dalai Lama.

Our tool systems, no longer stone, having separated us from the rest of the planet and biosphere, are now what will, without this revolution, destroy both. The notion that human life was going to be improved by an empirical march of tool making that would make life stronger, longer and safer is challenged by the fall out effects of this very technology. Technology that was in some senses made to make life better has now become the problem.”

Given the above context, let’s turn to what is at the basis of Gormley’s own work as an artist, a sculptor:

“I’m interested in art’s ability to bear witness, and I start with what I know, the bit of the material world in which my consciousness is embedded: my body. And I try to present that bit of material (to myself as much as to anybody else) in a way in which its trace is registered. So my work always starts with the idea of a body at a particular moment in a particular position, fixed by a negative just like a photographic negative, except that this is a three-dimensional negative and we call it a mould. I still think of a mould as being the most magical and mysterious thing. The mould is a testament, a proof of the existence of an object or a body and, for my sculpture, the particular body that I inhabit. […]

I think of my work as instrumental. My sculptures will be seen as very boring objects if you look at them in terms of Western art history, or a kind of desire to make beautiful objects or a “picture” of reality. But if you look at them as instruments then they can become vessels, empty things that can be used for a type of thinking or a kind of feeling, then they begin to get more interesting.” (Silence And Stillness: Antony Gormley Interviewed By Enrique Juncosa, 2002)

I get a great sense of humility from Gormley’s words: a starting from one’s own body, a witnessing first to oneself, a recognition of one’s work being an empty vessel (immediately making me think of Christ’s kenotic self-emptying).

This impression is further strengthened by seeing how Gormley explains the need for starting from the body, which represents common ground and which he sees as an invitation for others to inhabit his work:

“The issue for me is that it is impossible to make art that can truly be shared without acknowledging the body as a starting point of common experience. So I have to acknowledge the body and at the same time try to find a way of not representing it, or presenting it simply as an object. This is the reason why I’m not interested in the perfect copy, in representation. We probably never did it better than Mantegna or Masaccio, and anyway, photography does it perfectly. […]

[My sculptures] are tools for carrying nothing, nothing else than emptiness, shadow, darkness, carrying the condition of embodiment. They each carry the condition we all know. All you have to do is to shut your eyes when you are awake you are in the place that the bodyforms and the bodycases carry. […]

I completely disagree with the […] proposition that the highest aspiration of art is to have a specific object that is purely itself and refers to nothing. I want people to inhabit my sculpture with their own lives, feelings, thoughts, emotions, whatever. I would like the logical and affective to be in the right balance.” (Interview With Pierre Tillet, 2008)

A final point in this thread is also that Gormley sees art as non-elitist, as a landscape open to all:

“We could say that for most of European art’s progress, it’s been about picturing. Then in Modernism it turns to interpretation and deconstruction. And now, I think, we’re into a completely new phase in which art is about providing a place where the human subject is somehow able to concentrate on his/her own being. […] The subjective experience of space-time, the condition of life, rather than being in some way the assumed background condition for refined perceptions of the object, now becomes a landscape in itself. And I think this is a new paradigm in the evolution of art.” (Interview With Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2008)

While Gormley has been extremely successful in his appreciation by the art world, there is an explicit desire in his thought to not be confined by it and to live “in the wild” instead:

“All art now has to be lost: to be an awkward interloper within life, that is its job. What Heidegger talks about in The Origin of the Work of Art, the idea that the temple is part of its landscape and the landscape part of the temple is an ideal, and we have lost it. This is a classical image of interdependence of site and object. And while I recognise this ideal, I think that sculpture does not have a home. For me, sculpture is a lost subject, an alien body that infects and interrupts the cohesion of place. The museum is just one place amongst many wherein you might find art – but not art at work but in refuge. I’m not against museums because I think they have a very important part to play in the memory of a culture. But before my work has any need to be in the museums it has to have a life, it has to have adventures in the real world. For me, art has to be part of everyday life and every one of my pieces is an attempt to look at a new context and say: how can I deal with this opportunity?” (Interview With Pierre Tillet, 2008)

Gormley then positions the scope of art even beyond inter-personal communication, between artist and viewer:

“I’m not so interested in formal validations of work, where people called artists make something called art that belongs in a gallery. It’s tiny the ecology and economy of the art world. Art is not simply human communication or a way of explaining ourselves to ourselves. I’m interested in art that speaks of our vulnerability in time, in the same way that a figure on Easter Island looks up at the sky somewhere above the horizon and is evidently not a substitute for me speaking to you. It’s not about communication between human beings; it’s about communication between human beings and deep time and deep space. This is the broader horizon that I’m interested in positioning the work against. I want to make an art that has to do with survival, that thinks about where human beings fit in the chain of being, that asks who we are, and where we’re going…well, these big, big questions.” (Silence And Stillness: Antony Gormley Interviewed By Enrique Juncosa, 2002)

On the basis of the above, it should come as no surprise that Gormley is an admirer of Teilhard de Chardin, whose concepts of a continuum between matter and spirit and of an evolution towards collective consciousness bear strong resemblance to his art:

“The Internet, for better or worse, is an objectification of Teilhard de Chardin’s idea of the communion of human mind – the noosphere, which is the third encirclement of the globe, the first being the biosphere and the second the atmosphere. With this possibility of instant communication, created by a non-space that is everywhere, the idea of place becomes very important.” (Still Moving, 1996)

“I love Teilhard de Chardin’s idea of the ‘Noosphere’; the idea that there is a deep connection between the mineral and the mental. This has everything to do with sculpture. But in some way the history of material transformation on the planet is a progress from slower, less complex forms to faster, more complex forms and that, in some way, human consciousness is a kind of atmosphere. He calls it ‘Noosphere’ – the idea of an encirclement of the entire surface of the globe by ‘mind’. I think that mind is collective; a collective subjective and one of the tasks is to make that collectivity more apparent.” (Interview With Marjetica Potrc, 1994)

To conclude, let’s look at how Gormley positions his own work in such a continuous world view, speaking about the Earth in not dissimilar ways to St. Francis’ Canticle of Brother Sun:

“Sculpture is a direct way of allowing mind to dwell in matter. It is a means of becoming aware of the connections between matter, space and time in a way that complements (but is completely different from) the connections that science has demonstrated. I firmly believe that we are part of a chain of being and that sculpture is a way of providing instruments in which our place within it can be tested, made manifest and perhaps transformed.

Where does the world begin? Of course we can make it moment by moment and most intimately in what we call the self – but world and self cannot be separated – they are continuous. Where consciousness ends and the world begins is not so easy to define. We are, after all, borrowing our bodies from the earth and is it not likely that the earth knows more of us than we of it? Nothing is ever lost.” (Present Time, 1996)

I’d also recommend a great BBC documentary about Antony Gormley that has only come out recently.

Our Sister, Mother Earth

Klimt

Pope Francis’ much anticipated encyclical on the environment, entitled “Praised Be” (“Laudato Si’”) after the opening line of St. Francis’ canticle, starts by personifying our planet, calling her our sister and mother, and lamenting the violence we have visited on her, with whom we are one, who lives in us and who sustains us:

““Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”.¹

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.”

Already the above, opening paragraphs of this encyclical are worth pausing over, and before even proceeding with reflecting on its remaining 183 pages, I would like to pick up on the idea that the earth ought to be thought of as another person, instead of “just” as some inanimate matter that is alien to the human race. In fact, Pope Francis decries such an attitude towards our planet later on in Laudato si’ by quoting Romano Guardini (§115):

“[T]he technological mind sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere ‘given’, as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere ‘space’ into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference.”

To get a sense of the origin and nature of St. Francis’ broad use of personification when addressing not only the Earth as sister and mother, but all of creation too, let us take a look at the circumstances of his writing the Canticle of Brother Sun that Pope Francis quotes. In a profound analysis of the Canticle, Ilia Delio, O.S.F. recounts the circumstances of its writing in the spring or summer of 1225 (some 6-10 months after St. Francis received the stigmata), quoting from the Legenda perugina:

“He could no longer see in the daytime the light of day, nor at night the light of the fire, but always remained in the house and in the little cell in darkness. Moreover, he had great pain in his eyes day and night so that at hight he could scarcely rest or sleep, which was very bad for him and greatly aggravated the sickness of his eyes and his other infirmities.”

St. Francis was at a low point in the midst of this suffering and he cried out to God for help: “Lord, come to my help and look on my infirmities so that I may bear them patiently.” He then heard a voice promising him eternal happiness in the kingdom of heaven, expressed via an image in which the earth transformed into gold (still in the Legenda perugina):

“Tell me brother: if anyone were to give you for your infirmities and tribulations such a great and precious treasure that, if the whole earth were pure gold, all stones were precious stones, and all water were balsam, yet you would consider all this as nothing, and these substances as earth, stones, and water in comparison with the great and precious treasure given to you, surely you would rejoice greatly?”

To this St. Francis replied:

“That would be a great treasure, Lord, and worth seeking, truly precious and greatly to be loved and desired.”

The voice then said to him:

“Therefore, brother, rejoice, and rather be glad in your infirmities and tribulations, since henceforth you are as secure as if you were already in my kingdom.”

The next morning, St. Francis awoke, wrote the Canticle of Brother Sun and sent his fellow friars out to sing it “as minstrels of the Lord.”

What seems particularly significant to me here is that the Canticle was not the result of some euphoric lyricising, but instead the response to having received consolation from God in response to St. Francis placing his trust in Him in the midst of suffering and distress.

Beyond the circumstances of its writing, it is important to note what St. Francis’ disciple, St. Bonaventure though of the motives behind Francis’ personification of the created. The following are passages Delio quotes from Bonaventure’s Legenda maior:

“When he considered the primordial source of all things, he was filled with even more abundant piety, calling creatures, no matter how small, by the name of brother or sister, because he knew they had the same source as himself.

[…]

With a feeling of unprecedented devotion he savored in each and every creature – as in so many rivulets – that Goodness which is their fountain source … and like the prophet David sweetly exhorted them to praise the Lord.”

St. Francis called the Earth sister and mother because both she and he share the one origin: God. Since we and all of creation share the one Father, we are all siblings – not only among members of the human race, but also in relation to all of creation, from the simplest forms of inanimate matter to lifeforms most similar to us: a worldview also highly consistent with that of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom Pope Francis also refers to in Laudato Si’ (§83).

St. Francis tracing brotherhood and sisterhood with the Earth and with all of creation to a shared source in God is also very closely related to the intellectual visions of the Servant of God, Chiara Lubich, who in 1949 experienced insights into the life of the Trinity. There, Lubich saw the following image of how all creation proceeds from God:

“When God created, He created all things from nothing because He created them from Himself: from nothing signifies that they did not pre-exist because He alone pre-existed (but this way of speaking is inexact as in God there is no before and after). He drew them out from Himself because in creating them He died (of love), He died in love, He loved and therefore He created.

As the Word, who is the Idea of the Father, is God, analogously the ideas of things, that “ab aeterno” are in the word, are not abstract, but they are real: word within the Word.

The Father projects them — as with divergent rays — “outside Himself,” that is, in a different and new, created dimension, in which he gives to them “the Order that is Life and Love and Truth.” Therefore, in them there is the stamp of the Uncreated, of the Trinity.”

All of creation is a projection of the Word (words within the Word) “outside” of the Father, where these words (ideas) are the models, laws or forms of things, as Dr. Callan Slipper explains in an analysis of Lubich’s visions of creation. While all of creation is viewed in the above terms, consonant with St. Francis, Lubich also sees differences between the relationship that humans have with the Word (Jesus) and the relationship that the rest of creation has:

“At the end of time (and already now for God) the model of each pine tree, that is beneath each pine tree, will come into light and both the particular and the universal will be seen contemporaneously. Now the head is on High, and together with the other models, in the Word of God. […]

The plants that we see now, for instance the pine trees, are “members” of the model pine tree [that is, various forms of the model pine tree, Lubich explains] that is in the Word and thus destined to be Word. Here too is the mystery of the Mystical Body in nature. […]

Human beings, instead, because they are immortal, will return into the Word: son in the Son, but they will also be distinct from the Son as another son of God. Having however in themselves the whole of the Word they too will be a mirror of the Universe that is in the Word. […]

[I]n each human being [Jesus] sees the Human Being, that is Himself, the model of humanity, likewise He already sees beneath other creatures (as the pine tree for example) the Idea, the Word, that is then part (= the whole) of Himself. The human being (made in the image of God) is the whole of Himself; the plant is part of Himself (but = to Himself and it says: humanity—its God—is greater than me).”

While every created entity has its source in God, human beings each are both particular instances of a word-idea and the whole of the Word (Jesus); the rest of creation too has its source in the Word, but in a way that only partly expresses Him. Instead of suggesting superiority, the relationships between God (Word), human beings (particular instances of the whole Word) and the rest of creation (particular instances of the partial Word), place human beings in a position of containing the rest of creation (being “mirrors of the Universe”) by being instances of the Word that is their source and destination. This particular nature of humanity is also addressed in Laudato si’, where Pope Francis highlights both the need for treating all living beings responsibly and the greater dignity of the human person that is particularly, and most perversely, violated by other humans:

“At times we see an obsession with denying any pre-eminence to the human person; more zeal is shown in protecting other species than in defending the dignity which all human beings share in equal measure. Certainly, we should be concerned lest other living beings be treated irresponsibly. But we should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst, whereby we continue to tolerate some considering themselves more worthy than others.” (§90)

I believe that the personification of creation that St. Francis used as a means for acknowledging that all of creation has the same Father as each one of us, that Chiara Lubich’s vision of the life of the Trinity clarified with even greater nuance, and that Pope Francis placed at the basis of his call for a new culture of relating to each other and to nature is a perspective that immediately brings with it a deep sense of clarity. Thinking of nature as a sibling rather than as the “mere given” that Pope Francis criticized is a great token for investing it with a whole architecture of care and affection that other mental models would struggle to bring about. And it is a perspective that was easily accessible even to my 7 and 12 year old sons, who understood what it meant as soon as I told them about it and who immediately saw that it makes sense.

¹ Just because of its beauty, here is the original in St. Francis’ own, Umbrian words: «Laudato si’, mi’ Signore, per sora nostra matre Terra, la quale ne sustenta et governa, et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba.»

Teilhard de Chardin’s Universe

No reflection about the nature of the Universe can be complete without including the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ, the French Jesuit philosopher, paleontologist and geologist. As a paleontologist, Teilhard participated in the discovery of Peking Man, while – as a philosopher and naturalist – he elaborated a profound analysis of evolution in his most famous work, The Phenomenon of Man. Not only does Teilhard endorse evolution and reconcile it with his religious beliefs, but he argues for it being a principle that governs not only life, but all of matter: from its earliest moments and forms trough the emergence of life and consciousness and beyond to future, social forms of thought, along an axis of increasing complexity and interconnectedness.

Instead of looking at Teilhard’s scientific and philosophical work, I would here like to think about how he understood the nature of the Universe as a Christian – a Christian who contributed to science at the highest level and whose philosophy (suppressed by the Catholic Church during his lifetime, but having received some endorsement from Pope Benedict XVI) is yet to see the widespread recognition it merits.

Among Teilhard’s writings, the richest and most in-depth source about his understanding of the universe is the beautiful book of reflections, meditations and prayers: Hymn of the Universe, which I recommend in full wholeheartedly. In one of its earliest chapter – “Fire over the Earth” – Teilhard presents his vision of cosmogenesis and its daily persistence in being matter:

“In the beginning was Power, intelligent, loving, energizing. In the beginning was the Word, supremely capable of mastering and molding whatever might come into being in the world of matter. In the beginning there were not coldness and darkness: there was the Fire. This is the truth.

So, far from light emerging gradually out of the womb of our darkness, it is the Light, existing before all else was made, which, patiently, surely, eliminates our darkness. As for us creatures, of ourselves we are but emptiness and obscurity. But you, my God, are the inmost depths, the stability of that eternal milieu, without duration or space, in which our cosmos emerges gradually into being and grows gradually to its final completeness, as it loses those boundaries which to our eyes seem so immense. Everything is being; everywhere there is being and nothing but being, save in the fragmentation of creatures and the clash of their atoms.

Blazing Spirit, Fire, personal, super-substantial, the consummation of a union so immeasurably more lovely and more desirable than that destructive fusion of which all the pantheists dream: be pleased yet once again to come down and breathe a soul into the newly formed, fragile film of matter with which this day the world is to be freshly clothed.”

Teilhard then turns to God with the following words of invitation into, and already recognition of presence in, his own life:

“Radiant Word, blazing Power, you who mold the manifold so as to breathe your life into it; I pray you, lay on us those your hands — powerful, considerate, omnipresent, those hands which do not (like our human hands) touch now here, now there, but which plunge into the depths and the totality, present and past, of things so as to reach us simultaneously through all that is most immense and most inward within us and around us.

May the might of those invincible hands direct and transfigure for the great world you have in mind that earthly travail which I have gathered into my heart and now offer you in its entirety. Remold it, rectify it, recast it down to the depths from whence it springs. You know how your creatures can come into being only, like shoot from stem, as part of an endlessly renewed process of evolution.”

Finally, Teilhard identifies all of what is positive in the universe with Jesus’ body, and – in a stunning move of insight – all of what is suffering and death with His blood: a beautiful recognition of the being-by-non-being dynamic of the Trinity:

“Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say again the words: This is my Body. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: This is my Blood.”

In the next chapter – “Fire in the Earth” – Teilhard revisits God’s presence in the Universe, and speaks about it as a fire permeating it at the macro and micro scales:

“Not with sudden crash of thunderbolt, riving the mountain-tops: does the Master break down doors to enter his own home? Without earthquake, or thunderclap: the flame has lit up the whole world from within. All things individually and collectively are penetrated and flooded by it, from the inmost core of the tiniest atom to the mighty sweep of the most universal laws of being: so naturally has it flooded every element, every energy, every connecting link in the unity of our cosmos; that one might suppose the cosmos to have burst spontaneously into flame.”

And he proceeds to derive from this extreme-encompassing presence of God a tension flowing from His simultaneous intimacy and transcendence:

“All of us, Lord, from the moment we are born feel within us this disturbing mixture of remoteness and nearness; and in our heritage of sorrow and hope, passed down to us through the ages, there is no yearning more desolate than that which makes us weep with vexation and desire as we stand in the midst of the Presence which hovers about us nameless and impalpable and is dwelling in all things. Si forte attrectent eum [“so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him” (Acts 17:27)].”

Teilhard then speaks about an interconnectedness among all that is not restricted to the Universe, but that places God at its center and attributes to Him its unity:

“Now, Lord, through the consecration of the world the luminosity and fragrance which suffuse the universe take on for me the lineaments of a body and a face in you. What my mind glimpsed through its hesitant explorations, what my heart craved with so little expectation of fulfillment, you now magnificently unfold for me: the fact that your creatures are not merely so linked together in solidarity that none can exist unless all the rest surround it, but that all are so dependent on a single central reality that a true life, borne in common by them all, gives them ultimately their consistence and their unity.”

The final, extensive passage that I would like to share with you from Teilhard’s writings (still from the same “Fire in the Earth” chapter) contains an explicit comparison between his, Christian view of the Universe and a number of alternatives:

“What I experience as I stand in face of — and in the very depths of — this world which your flesh has assimilated, this world which has become your flesh, my God, is not the absorption of the monist who yearns to be dissolved into the unity of things, nor the emotion felt by the pagan as he lies prostrate before a tangible divinity, nor yet the passive self-abandonment of the quietist tossed hither and thither at the mercy of mystical impulsions.”

However, instead of dissociating himself from monist, pagan and quietist world views, as may seem to be the case at first, Teilhard goes beyond their rejection:

“From each of these modes of thought I take something of their motive force while avoiding their pitfalls: the approach determined for me by your omnipresence is a wonderful synthesis wherein three of the most formidable passions that can unlock the human heart rectify each other as they mingle: like the monist I plunge into the all-inclusive One; but the One is so perfect that as it receives me and I lose myself in it I can find in it the ultimate perfection of my own individuality; like the pagan, I worship a God who can be touched; and I do indeed touch him — this God — over the whole surface and in the depths of that world of matter which confines me: but to take hold of him as I would wish (simply in order not to stop touching him), I must go always on and on through and beyond each undertaking, unable to rest in anything, borne onwards at each moment by creatures and at each moment going beyond them, in a continuing welcoming of them and a continuing detachment from them; like the quietist I allow myself with delight to be cradled in the divine fantasy: but at the same time I know that the divine will, will only be revealed to me at each moment if I exert myself to the utmost? I shall only touch God in the world of matter, when, like Jacob, I have been vanquished by him.”

The above synthesis of disparate positions other than his own shows both a basis for dialogue with those who hold them (having recognized beauty, goodness and truth in each) and a going beyond each. It is not so much a rejection as an evolution of each into a single, richer whole, that Teilhard then makes explicit:

“Thus, because the ultimate objective, the totality to which my nature is attuned has been made manifest to me, the powers of my being begin spontaneously to vibrate in accord with a single note of incredible richness wherein I can distinguish the most discordant tendencies effortlessly resolved: the excitement of action and the delight of passivity: the joy of possessing and the thrill of reaching out beyond what one possesses; the pride in growing and the happiness of being lost in what is greater than oneself. Rich with the sap of the world, I rise up towards the Spirit whose vesture is the magnificence of the material universe but who smiles at me from far beyond all victories; and, lost in the mystery of the flesh of God, I cannot tell which is the more radiant bliss: to have found the Word and so be able to achieve the mastery of matter, or to have mastered matter and so be able to attain and submit to the light of God.”

Teilhard sees presence in the Universe as rich and complex to the point of self-contradiction, where “the most discordant tendencies [are] effortlessly resolved.” It is “a continuing welcoming […] and a continuing detachment” lived in the bosom of “the One [who] is so perfect that as it receives me and I lose myself in it, I can find in it the ultimate perfection of my own individuality.” It is a presence in “the magnificence of the material universe,” a being smiled at by the God who permeates it and a game of discovering matter through God and God through matter. It is a vision that is able to recognize the good, the true and the beautiful, wherever it may be, and one in which the encounter with the Universe and with fellow humans is always also an encounter with God.

LCWR "systems thinking" – the good, the bad and the ugly

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is an umbrella organization founded in 1956 by the Vatican and counting the leaders of 1500 congregations of women religious in the US as its members (spanning over 80% of all nuns and sisters in the country). Between April 2008 and July 2011 it has been under investigation by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which has found “serious doctrinal problems” and “a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration which leads, in turn, to a loss of a “constant and lively sense of the Church” among some Religious.” In other words, the CDF are saying that the LCWR are taking Christ out of Christianity …

Among the multiple changes mandated by the CDF, the withdrawal of the LCWR’s “Systems Thinking Handbook” was one that particularly caught my eye, also because there are multiple references to it in the CDF’s doctrinal assessment and because its title alone makes me nervous. And as soon as I started reading it, my expectations were not only met but, sadly, exceeded and I very soon came to reading the text not with a question about whether the CDF were hounding the poor LCWR, but about why they haven’t enforced changes already. Roundabout the same point on my way through the “handbook,” I remembered my Aristotle professor and his admonition to apply the principle of charity when faced with another’s thoughts and it is that alone, which resulted in my take including a “the good” section.¹

So, let me start with the slimmest slice from the pie that is this Handbook – the good. Here what I am taking away from having read the 26-page publication is that its motives are good and that the intention behind the methods and attitudes presented in it is to bring about change that goes to the root causes of suffering and injustice:

“This is why it is necessary not only to feed the hungry or house the homeless but also to address the systemic relationships that result in social ills like poverty, homelessness, and hunger.”

Next, let’s move on to the bad (yes, that was it as far as the good is concerned), where the text unfortunately offers far richer pickings.

First, there is a ideologization already of the basic concept of “system” that is at the heart of this Handbook (an odd fact by itself, given the prominence of this text in an organization with canonical status):

“A ‘system’ is an entity that maintains its existence and functions as a whole through the interaction of its parts. The behavior of a system depends on the total structure. The interrelationship among the parts of a system, therefore, must be continually sustained for the system to exist. Systems are purposeful, open, counterintuitive, multidimensional, and have emergent properties not found in any of the parts by themselves. … systems thinking will prevent us from unconsciously employing the same mental models that are causing the problems we want to solve.”

While the first three sentences are pretty vanilla, and essentially paraphrase the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia definition, there is an immediate investment of the term with adjectives like “open” (what about closed systems) and “counterintuitive” (what about a simple system, like that of tea brewing: tea leaves + boiling water –> tea). The paragraph then concludes with an oxymoronic flourish: “systems thinking will prevent us from unconsciously employing the same mental models that are causing the problems we want to solve,” which Freud would have had a lot of fun with.²

Second, there are frequent counterpositions of “Western thought” on the one hand and “Organic thought” on the other, where the former is introduced thus:

“The limits of a short article do not allow for an adequate overview of the development of Western thought. We can safely say, however, that for almost a thousand years, Western thought has interpreted reality from the perspective of a worldview characterized by dualism and hierarchy. […] The ultimate result was a learned inability to think in any other than linear, dualistic, and hierarchical ways when dealing with problems, organizing ideas or work, and in structuring society, church, or our religious congregations. […] This way of seeing reality thus became an unconscious filter for the Western mind, a filter that made it easy to judge immediately what fit or did not fit a particular situation […] The world was stable and sure, a machine-like structure of predetermined and fixed relationships. The human mind could comprehend the universe in its entirety.”

The fault for the above blinkered and recalcitrant nature of “Western thought” is laid at the feet of Plato and Aristotle and all who followed them until the 1960s. The solution put forward by the LCWR is “Organic thought”:

“Th[e] “Organic” mental model prefers to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead of substances. [… T]he “Organic” mental model values chaos, connectedness, process, inclusivity, relationship, and a non-linear expression of authority.”

Commenting on the above is quite a stress test for my desire to apply the principle of charity, as a result of which I’d like to suggest that it is dramatically ill-informed and epically naïve. To suggest that Plato (i.e., mostly Plato’s Socrates; not to mention over two millennia of thinkers following him) had a sense of certainty, of the universe being “machine-like” and of “comprehend[ing] the universe in its entirety” is a claim that can only be made in the absence of any direct experience of his and his successors’ thought. In his Apology, Plato’s Socrates famously says “I do not believe that I know anything,” and even the concept of “system,” so central to the LCWR handbook, is extensively dealt with already by Aristotle.³ This is not to mention the importance attributed to the whole and its interrelationships in Christian sources, starting from St. Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:12-26), via St. Hildegard (“God has arranged all things in the world in consideration of everything else.”) and St. Francis (who sings of fraternal relationships with creation) to Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere. To argue that pre-late-20th-century thought was linear, deterministic and endowed with a sense of its own omniscience is simply false and divorced from facts.

Third, there is an attempt to anchor the Hadbook’s approach to Vatican II and specifically to it’s Lumen Gentium, which – it is claimed – “consciously grounded ecclesiology in the holistic image of the “People of God,” rather than in the “top down” definitions of the past […] defined by dualism and hierarchy.” With the principle of charity at breaking point, I can at best see this statement as being an ultra-selective reading of Lumen Gentium that essentially omits its extensive third chapter (“On Hierarchical Structure”) and all of its numerous references to the role of the Church’s hierarchy not only in Lumen Gentium but also in all of the other Vatican II documents. No matter how hard I try, I cannot even chalk this up to the authors of the Handbook having missed some subtle in-between-the-lines content, as Lumen Gentium states quite directly that: “Bishops […] presid[e] in place of God over the flock, whose shepherds they are, as teachers for doctrine, priests for sacred worship, and ministers for governing. […] In the bishops, therefore [… Jesus], is present in the midst of those who believe.” Pretty hard to read this as a “holistic,” a-hierarchical twist versus the preceding 2000 years of the Church’s nature.

Finally, let’s turn to the “ugly,” where, I’m afraid, my threadbare principle–of–charity gloves may not be too effective anymore. While the above is confused and both theologically and philosophically lacking both in breadth and comprehension, the most serious issue with the Handbook is the following passage:

“[Sisters g]rounded in [“Western mind”] theology […] believe that the celebration of Eucharist is the summit of worship and at the core of what holds us together as a group. [… Sisters] situated within [an “Organic” mental model] believe that the celebration of Eucharist is so bound up with a church structure caught in negative aspects of the Western mind they can no longer participate with a sense of integrity [… and] believe that as long as men control women’s lives, there will be no justice. […]

Since so much of our identity is bound up with shared theological assumptions manifested in group behaviors and practices, who we are as a group can be called into question if we do not believe the same things. The function of ritual is to bring to visibility our deepest beliefs through symbolic word and action. Tension over which symbolic acts and words to use reveals differences at the level of belief. Such differences call into question our identity at the core of who we are. They push us to ask, “Is there something at the heart of who we are which is beyond a common Eucharistic theology and which holds us together?””

Err … No! For a Catholic to suggest that there may be something beyond the Eucharist as a means of bringing about unity is simply nonsensical. The Church is (as in identity) the Mystical Body of Christ and “[r]eally partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another. “Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread”. In this way all of us are made members of His Body, “but severally members one of another”.” At least that is how Lumen Gentium (the only magisterial document referred to by the LCWR) puts it. And, no, it doesn’t then go on to say “or whatever else you might like to do instead” …

The above passage does another, worrying thing – i.e., it suggests that a problem with the Eucharist is that it is an instance of “men control[ling] women’s lives.” Would the authors of the Handbook have objected to receiving the Eucharist out of Jesus’ hands at the Last Supper? Would they have turned to him and said: “Sorry, mate, we won’t let you control us and deprive us of justice!” Maybe …

The ugly thing here, to my mind, is not so much that the LCWR leadership publishes a text like this Handbook, but that it considers their views to be consistent with “the Gospel of Jesus,” justified by Vatican II teaching and acceptable in the context of a Vatican-incorporated body. While their intentions are good, their reasoning is deeply flawed and their beliefs about the Eucharist are categorically not Catholic. This is unquestionably not a case of the CDF oppressing nuns, but instead a crystal clear case of an institution with canonical status having gone off the rails and placed their beliefs outside the Church (and done so with some margin). I sincerely hope that the women religious they claim to represent either leave the LCWR (if they don’t share its beliefs) or openly declare their loss of Catholic orthodoxy.

¹ In what follows, I will only reflect on the content of this publication and I have no intention to make inferences about the work of women religious in the US, about the doctrinal positions of the congregations whose leaders are members of the LCWR or about how the CDF have managed their investigation.
² The rest of the Handbook is peppered with plentiful displays of naïveté, such as a section entitled “The Need to See Things as They Really Are” or the list of the “Laws of Systems Thinking” of which I’d just pick out these three: “6. Faster is slower,” “9. Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants,” and “10. There is no blame” :|.
³ E.g., see the following quote from his Politics: “the whole is of necessity prior to the part; for example, if the whole body be destroyed, there will be no foot or hand, except in an equivocal sense, as we might speak of a stone hand; for when destroyed the hand will be no better than that.”

Bonhoeffer, Lubich, Teilhard: A world luminous from within

Bonhoeffer lubich teilhard s

Sixty eight years ago yesterday, in the Flossenbürg concentration camp, the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was martyred. His opposition to Nazi euthanasia and genocide directed against the Jewish people, born of his discipleship of Jesus, earned him the gallows. While I have long been an admirer of Bonhoeffer’s witness and theology, I have only now come across the following passage from his Letters and Papers from Prison, where he points particularly lucidly to the alternative to the God of Gaps caricature still popular today:

“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know.”

This emphasis on the presence of God in what we know made me think of Chiara Lubich’s mystical experience that started during the summer of 1949.¹ There, before the start of the actual “intellectual visions,” she recounts the following:

“[N]ature seemed to me to be enveloped totally by the sun; it already was physically, but it seemed to me that an even stronger sun enveloped it, saturated it, so that the whole of nature appeared to me as being “in love.” I saw things, rivers, plants, meadows, grass as linked to one another by a bond of love in which each one had a meaning of love with regard to the others. […] I had seemed to see the blossom of a horse chestnut tree alive with a higher life that sustained it from beneath so that it seemed to be coming out towards me.” (Paradise ’49)

How is it though that one comes to seeing God “in what we know,” as “sustain[ing everything] from beneath”? Here, in the paragraphs preceding the above quote, Lubich says that “[for about five years w]e had been trying with great intensity to live [… communion] with Jesus in the Eucharist, with our brother or sister, with the Word of God […] constantly in the present moment.” Her answer then is that this experience of God “enveloping” all has for her and her companions followed a putting of the Gospel into practice.

This in turn made me think of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s “The Divine Milieu,” where he sets out “a way of teaching how to see” and starts by posing a challenge:

“God is as pervasive and perceptible as the atmosphere in which we are bathed. He encompasses us on all sides, like the world itself. What prevents you, then, from enfolding him in your arms? Only one thing: your inability to see him.”

Reflecting on the above near the end of his life, Teilhard shares the following:

“Throughout my life, by means of my life, the world has little by little caught fire in my sight until, aflame all around me, it has become almost completely luminous from within. … Such has been my experience in contact with the earth — the diaphany of the Divine at the heart of the universe on fire … Christ; his heart; a fire: capable of penetrating everywhere and, gradually, spreading everywhere.”

Again the vision of God illuminating the world “from within” follows a life focused on seeking Him, as Teilhard says in “The Divine Milieu,” both in what we do and what happens to us – both the active and the passive, and therefore in life as a whole:

“It is the whole of human life, down to its most “natural” zones, which, the Church teaches, can be sanctified. […] “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31).”

¹ For previous mentions of “Paradise ’49” see the following posts here and here.

Igino Giordani: the oxymoron of a catholic party

I have long been aware of the figure of Igino Giordani through his writings, of which the most beautiful one to me is his “Diary of Fire” and I also knew of his having been an MP in the Italian parliament, a journalist and an expert on the Fathers of the Church. It is only now though, after having read his memoirs (“Memorie d’un cristiano ingenuo” – “Memoirs of a simple christian”) that I am beginning to realize more fully the enormity of his example. While in the past I have very much admired certain aspects of his life, I am now seeing that it is really his life as a whole that is an instance of his imitation of Jesus. To give you a sense of what I mean, let me pick out just a couple of moments from his autobiography.

While I don’t intend to summarize his story, it is worth noting that Giordani (1894–1980) was the first of six children of a bricklayer and his illiterate wife and that he initially trained to become a bricklayer like his dad. Thanks to his father’s employer, who provided him with the necessary financial support, Giordani ended up attending a junior seminary and eventually studying humanities at the University of Rome. On the verge of going to university, he was conscripted and sent to fight in the First World War. There a bullet shattered a ten centimeter segment of his right femur, requiring a three year stay in hospital and a series of 18 operations (the first of which was performed without anesthetics!).

It is at this point of exposure to war, that I was particularly impressed by the following passage, where Giordani talks about the impossibility he felt of “killing a human person: a brother”:¹

“The five or six shots that I fired, in the air, I did out of necessity: I could never aim the barrel of my gun at the enemy trenches, with the intention of killing a child of God.”

Upon being discharged from hospital at the end of the war, Giordani immediately finds himself confronted with another battle: that of opposing the fascist regime and the alignment of parts of the Church with it. Here he speaks out against clericalism, which is:

“an exploitation of religious power for the political ends of a government, a party, a bank, … [… It is an] iron belt, disguised as gold, by which the freedom of the children of God was restrained, the proclamation of the Gospel deformed and the spirituality of the Church compromised.”

And adds that:

“During other periods Christianity was being attacked in the name of reason and freedom, while today we can affirm that it is only by a destruction of reason and freedom that Christianity can be attacked.”

A particularly poignant assessment of that period is also expressed by him as follows:

“Christ wasn’t crucified because Judas betrayed him, but he was crucified because Pilate washed his hands of him.”

Giordani’s outspoken attacks against the abuse of clerical power and offenses against reason, published also in the monthly “Parte Guelfa” whose editor he was, led to a clear and direct condemnation by Church authorities in 1925. Instead of rebelling and placing himself in opposition against the Church, Giordani chose obedience and published one final issue of the magazine. There, on the first page, he reprinted the authorities’ condemnation and added that the magazine “submits itself fully” to the Church’s judgment and “happily offers its loyal and disinterested allegiance,” evidenced by its decision to shut down. This struck me in many ways like St. Thomas More’s silence, which in “A Man For All Seasons” was described as “bellowing up and down Europe!” or Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s obedient submission to being denied permission to publish his theological and philosophical works.

After the war, Giordani moves from being part of the antifascist resistance to joining the public political life, which results in his becoming a member of the Italian parliament. Here, the following reasoning about how the Church and politics are to relate struck me in particular (and I believe it prefigures the Vatican II position also expressed in Lumen Gentium²):

“The Church incarnates the Gospel: but it mustn’t become a party, confuse itself with a category (party or regime) because it is catholic, i.e., universal, and, as the mystical Christ, it must love all, serve all, even enemies.”

All of the above paints a very clear picture to my mind of someone who was all about following Jesus, disregarding whether that brought him into conflict with state or Church, but also of someone who did it with tremendous humility and, as the memoirs’ title indicates, simplicity. A great example of this attitude is also the following event:

“One day Pius XII called me […] and asked me: “Giordani, but what have you written in that newspaper³ of yours? I have received complaints saying that you are a revolutionary” He then quoted a phrase from my latest cover story, where it says that the excess of the rich is the lack of the poor: that unjust or unjustly used property is theft.
“Holy Father,” I answered, “that is a quote from Saint John Chrysostom.”
“But you should have said so …”
“Holy Father, when an article is written in half an hour or an hour, there is not time for citing sources.”
“True, true, ” he said, beginning to smile, “They say that you are a revolutionary. But, don’t worry, they also say that about me: what do you think? In fact, in these days, Roosevelt put it as “too radical””
“But,” I replied, “a true christian is necessarily a revolutionary: don’t we want to change the world? But, our revolution is beneficial, it builds rather than destroys; brings love instead of hatred, it brings society back together in solidarity.”

There would be so much more to say about him (e.g., his life as a lay, married person and father of four, his establishing of the modern Vatican library (and publishing a journal of library science that both the Moscow and Beijing libraries subscribed to during the height of communism), his career as a writer, his encounters with the great minds of the 20th century, etc.), but that will have to wait for a future post. To conclude, let me instead leave you with the following poem by Igino Giordani, which also gives us a glimpse of his interior life:

“I have begun to die
and what happens,
matters to me no more;
now I want to vanish
in the forsaken heart of Jesus.
All this sinning,
by greed and by vanity,
in love disappears:
I have reconquered my freedom.
I have begun to die
to death that no longer dies;
now I want to rejoice
with God in his eternal youth.”

It should come as no surprise that Igino Giordani – Servant of God – is in the process of being recognized as a saint – a saint I will be very proud of!

¹ All the quotes from Igino Giordani here are from “Memorie d’un cristiano ingenuo,” with the crude translations from Italian, for which I apologize, being mine.
² “[T]he faithful should learn how to distinguish carefully between those rights and duties which are theirs as members of the Church, and those which they have as members of human society. Let them strive to reconcile the two, remembering that in every temporal affair they must be guided by a Christian conscience, since even in secular business there is no human activity which can be withdrawn from God’s dominion. [… I]t must be admitted that the temporal sphere is governed by its own principles, since it is rightly concerned with the interests of this world.” (Lumen Gentium, §36)
³ “Il Quotidiano” was a daily newspaper, directed by Giordani 1944–1946.

Benedict XVI: Servant of the servants of God

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The papal title that has always impressed me the most by far is Servus servorum Dei (Servant of the servants of God), first used by Saint Gregory the Great, and I believe Benedict XVI’s shock resignation today is an extreme expression of taking it seriously. When a servant can no longer serve, the ultimate manifestation of service is to resign. The Italian economist Prof. Luigino Bruni put this particularly clearly by saying that Benedict XVI’s humble decision has “shown us that the Pope is not a king but a servant.”

Having spent the day thinking about what to say, I have decided against the following, all of which would have been great choices:

Reflecting on the specifics of his beautiful resignation message (a highlight being his affirmation that the Petrine ministry “must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.”).
Reviewing the many heartfelt messages arriving from all around the world (a great example being Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger’s spokesman saying that “I think he deserves a lot of credit for advancing inter-religious links the world over between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During his period there were the best relations ever between the Church and the chief rabbinate and we hope that this trend will continue.”)
Surveying both the historical precedents (admiring in particular Saint Pontian, who in 235 AD “was arrested and sent to the salt mines, and in order for a successor to be able to be elected in Rome, […] resigned his office.”) and the canon law applicable in this case (pausing over the fact that for the resignation to be valid it does not need to be accepted by anyone).
Arguing that at the heart of both Benedict XVI’s resignation and John Paul II’s persistence in spite of his crippling illness (retorting that “Christ did not come down from the cross either,” when asked whether he’d consider resigning), which prima facie look contradictory, lies a profound commitment to discerning and heroically acting on the will of God.

Instead, I will share with you those insights and teachings of Benedict XVI that have most encouraged, guided and delighted me:¹

His joint highlighting of the saints and of art: “[T]o me art and the Saints are the greatest apologetic for our faith. [… I]f we look at the Saints, this great luminous trail on which God passed through history, we see that there truly is a force of good which resists the millennia; there truly is the light of light. [… H]eart and reason encounter one another, beauty and truth converge, and the more that we ourselves succeed in living in the beauty of truth, the more that faith will be able to return to being creative in our time too, and to express itself in a convincing form of art.”
His insistence on a fearless seeking of the Truth, backed by a profound trust in God: “[T]he search for knowledge and understanding always has to involve drawing closer to the truth. […] As far as preserving identity is concerned, it would be too little for the Christian, so to speak, to assert his identity in a such a way that he effectively blocks the path to truth. Then his Christianity would appear as something arbitrary, merely propositional. He would seem not to reckon with the possibility that religion has to do with truth. On the contrary, I would say that the Christian can afford to be supremely confident, yes, fundamentally certain that he can venture freely into the open sea of the truth, without having to fear for his Christian identity.”
His freedom to recognize truth even in sources that don’t have the Church’s approval, such as quoting Origen attributing the following saying to Jesus: “Whoever is close to me is close to the fire” – a statement not found in Catholic canonical Scripture, or praising Teilhard de Chardin’s vision that “At the end we will have a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host.”
His clear denunciation of fideism, by affirming that Catholic tradition “has always rejected the so-called principle of ‘fideism’, that is, the will to believe against reason. […] Indeed, although a mystery, God is not absurd. […] If, in contemplating the mystery, reason sees only darkness, this is not because the mystery contains no light, rather because it contains too much. Just as when we turn our eyes directly to the sun, we see only shadow – who would say that the sun is not bright? Faith allows us to look at the ‘sun’ that is God, because it welcomes His revelation in history. […] God has sought mankind and made Himself known, bringing Himself to the limits of human reason.”
His passionate emphasis of the centrality of joy: “Joy is at the heart of the Christian experience. [W]e experience immense joy, the joy of communion, the joy of being Christian, the joy of faith [… and w]e can see the great attraction that joy exercises. In a world of sorrow and anxiety, joy is an important witness to the beauty and reliability of the Christian faith.”
His proclamation that closeness to God is not contingent on a belief in His existence:² “[A]gnostics, who are constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart but suffer on account of our[, the Church’s,] sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than believers whose life of faith is “routine” and who regard the Church merely as an institution, without letting their hearts be touched by faith.”
His insight that faith is not a subscription to this or that dogma, but an encounter with the person of Jesus: “[M]any Christians dedicate their lives with love to those who are lonely, marginalized or excluded, as to those who are the first with a claim on our attention and the most important for us to support, because it is in them that the reflection of Christ’s own face is seen. […] It is faith that enables us to recognize Christ and it is his love that impels us to assist him whenever he becomes our neighbour along the journey of life.”

¹ Thanks to my bestie PM for this great suggestion!
² The truth of this was yet again brought home to me today, when my expressing admiration for Pope Benedict was met with understanding from an agnostic and an atheist friend of mine and with mockery from two Christian ones …

Conscience, dissent and the ex-excommunicated saints

Image pierre teilhard de chardin pere teilhard jesuite scientifique jesuit scientist point omega noosphere le phenomene humain the human phenomenon parapluie galactique galactic umbrell1

… walk into a bar. I wish I could turn that into a joke, but it happens to be deadly serious. Anyone even remotely following the life of the Church must be acutely aware of the multitude of dissenting groups both in and outside it. The spectrum ranges from the Austrian priests via the US nuns all the way to the Society of St. Pius X (who were largely responsible for the attacks on Archbishop Müller’s words on the Eucharist and Mary’s virginity that I discussed before). While it would be interesting to engage in their arguments, here I would instead like to look at the bigger picture: conscience.

What the Church teaches about conscience is, to my mind, key not only to seeking God’s will but applicable to all – believers and non-believers alike – as a basis for an honest and conscious life. Let’s start with how the Catechism introduces the topic (and forgive me for keeping this brief – it is a section that I am very fond of and would love to expand on in the future):

“Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment…. For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God…. His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1776)

I read this as saying that we have in us a sense of right and wrong that is not self–imposed and that Christians believe to come from God. While agnostics/atheists would hold other views on its origin, the key here is that I don’t choose what I myself consider right or wrong.

Next, the Catechism exhorts us to self–examination and reflection – very much in the tradition of philosophers ever since Socrates:

It is important for every person to be sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience. This requirement of interiority is all the more necessary as life often distracts us from any reflection, self-examination or introspection (CCC, §1779)

Finally, after providing numerous ways to inform one’s conscience, listing a couple of rules (never do evil so that good may result from it, the golden rule, respecting one’s neighbor) and elaborating on the fact that one’s conscience can be erroneous, the Catechism categorically states:

A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. (CCC, §1790)

In other words, if, after having scrutinized and examined your own conscience you get to a conclusion you are certain of, the Church teaches you to follow it no matter what. The conclusion you arrive at may be erroneous in the Church’s eyes and you may be admonished, gagged and even punished for your views, but under no circumstances are you to act against what your conscience, with the help of your reason (CCC, §1786), arrives at as being certain.

Seen from the perspective of an individual this is quite tricky, when their conscience leads them into conflict with the Church’s teaching. Imagine you arrive at a judgment that you are certain of but that is contrary to what the Church says. Are you to disregard your own conscience and fall into line, or are you to dissent? The Catechism warns against the former, but you may incur penalties for the latter, which would give you every right to say: ‘Hey, but you told me to follow my conscience! What gives?!’ This is how many who today are voicing their opinions must feel and I can see how that would be very frustrating.

If we look at this picture from the perspective of the whole Church and over its history, another aspect emerges though, which is that dissent, which may at first be punished, can end up being rewarded later. Often the changes that take place in the Church’s teachings are prefigured in its saints, who – being faithful to their consciences and committed to listening to God’s voice – often have to pay a heavy price for sticking their necks out when most others in the Church have not yet caught on to a new impulse from the Holy Spirit. In fact, suspicion on the part of Church authorities is a pretty constant feature of the lives of the saints (e.g., St. Ignatius of Loyola being questioned by the Inquisition three times, St. John of the Cross being imprisoned by his fellow Carmelites and many others), which brings me to the most severe form of punishment at the Church’s disposal: excommunication.

Excommunication is the severest penalty the Church can impose and results in the excommunicated member being deprived from participating in the life of the Church. It ought to be used as a ‘medicinal’ penalty, meant to correct rather than punish or make satisfaction for the wrong done. Those who have over the centuries proclaimed heresies or lead to schisms in the Church have been excommunicated, but the list also includes a number of saints – in other words, people whom the Church holds up as examples of how to follow the teachings of Jesus and his Church. These saints, who at some point of their lives were excommunicated (and whose excommunications were later either declared invalid or lifted) include St. Joan of Arc (for insubordination to a bishop – declared invalid), St. Mary MacKillop (for reporting a paedofile priest and insisting he be removed – declared invalid), St. Hippolytus (the first antipope, excommunicated, but later reconciled with the pope’s successor who lifted the excommunication – incidentally all three: the two popes and Hippolytus are saints), whose feast day is tomorrow, and finally St. Athanasius, now revered as the ‘Father of Orthodoxy’ (excommunicated by a pope influenced by the Arian heresy but exonerated by his successor).

Maybe the picture emerging here is one of it being just fine to ignore Church teaching and to just go with whatever comes into one’s head. This is not where I am going at all. There is a clear tension between faithfulness to Church teaching and fidelity to one’s own conscience, where – for an individual – the latter wins in the end. However, let us not side-step the elephant in the room: certainty! If you look back at the Catechism’s teaching, it says that ‘a human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience’ [emphasis mine] – not just a hunch or even an conclusion that is gathering support or one that has good statistical chances, but certainty! And, in the process of reflecting and analyzing one’s judgment, Catholics are called to take Church teaching and a host of other factors into account. Only after having undergone a rigorous and well informed process and only if this process has lead them to interior certainty are they commanded to follow their own conscience over Church teaching. This is pretty strong stuff and certainly sorts out the wheat from the chaff. In fact, if you look at the vast majority of saints who have come under suspicion in the Church’s eyes, the way they responded to them – with humility, but with determination – was in many cases a contributor to those suspicions having been dissolved.

To conclude, let me just point to an example that to me shines most brightly – that of Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit, philosopher, paleontologist and geologist, who was one of the most radical and creative thinkers of recent centuries. His ideas (on which more at a later date) are to this day viewed with suspicion by the Church and carry a warning about being ‘offensive to Catholic doctrine’ (although Pope Benedict XVI recently referred to them favorably). The most impressive thing to me about Teilhard de Chardin though is his humility and obedience. When asked by the Church to cease his writings and teachings, he and the Jesuit order complied. This, to my mind was a tremendously selfless act and one that also demonstrated Teilhard de Chardin’s priorities: obedience and poverty before fame and glory. I believe his insights will one day be exonerated and become part of Catholic patrimony.