George Weigel and logic

"The Truth of Catholicism" is under 200 pages, but dense despite the brevity. Weigel's writing consists of simple, clear expositions of basic logic. Sometimes I think the disappearance of logic (along with Latin and the virtues) from the educational curriculum is the underlying root of the muddle-headed thinking so much in evidence today: there is no effort to teach people how to think.

Anyway, here are some examples of what I mean.

Abortion: (p 162) Weigel pronounces the simple syllogism I've longed to see in print.

1. Abortion is the end of an innocent life.
2. Ending an innocent life is always wrong.
3. Therefore, abortion is always wrong.

Then he goes on to defend the fact that abortion is, in fact, the end of an innocent life (as opposed to the "mere" destruction of a lifeless clump of cells).

Christianity and others: (p 145) While not such a straightforward exercise of logic, the Catholic position is expressed very tersely and succinctly: "The Church cannot believe that Christ is anything other than the unique savior of the world; the Church cannot but believe anything other than that God wills the salvation of all, whether or not they ever hear of Christ or the Catholic Church." The conflict is resolved as follows: everyone that is saved (even if they have never heard the name of Christ) is saved because of Christ and his redeeming death and resurrection. The value of missionary activity (bringing the word of God to non-believers) is two-fold: giving them the opportunity to lead a Christian life; and providing them with the ordinary means of salvation (participation in the Christian liturgy; salvation outside Christianity is extra-ordinary - beyond the ordinary).

Freedom, willfulness, and the law: (p 77) Chapter 10 "How Should We Live?" was the most powerful for me. Weigel considers how we can grow in virtue and become better human beings, and the real nature of freedom. He compares the act of living a fully human life with learning the arts. How do we extract beautiful music from a piano? Not by willfulness - just sitting at the keyboard and pounding away; an exercise in freedom as the world understands it, but productive of nothing but cacophony - much as the exercise of similar willfulness in all spheres of life has led to the chaotic situation of today's modern world! No; to produce beautiful sounds from a piano requires laborious exercise, discipline, and renunciation of perfect willfulness in order to become a masterful player. "After a while, though, what we once experienced as constraining seems liberating. Mastering those exercises has equipped me to play anything I want, including the most difficult compositions." Weigel calls the freedom of discipline and mastery "freedom for excellence", and contrasts it with "freedom as my way". The discipline of the Church (daily prayer, frequent reception of the Host, frequent Confession, spiritual reading...) gives you the freedom to live life as a follower of Christ, and frees you from your slavery to sin.

And make no mistake about it - we are all slaves, either slaves to sin and the devil, or slaves of Christ.

George Weigel "The Truth of Catholicism"

The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored was recommended by a priest at my parish. I owe him, because it is quite good! It is very clearly and simply written, very powerful. It is meant for your average semi-articulate Catholic - such as myself - looking for good ways to explain the faith to others. I myself have a very hard time engaging my family in these matters.

Here is a selection of the first few quotes I recorded in my book journal:

• "In these 3 respects - boredom, skepticism, the Church's own limitations - our contemporary situation replicates 2,000 years of Christian history.... The really new and distinctively modern change is that what [the Church] proclaims is inherently dehumanizing." (page 20)
• "The doctrine of the Trinity reinforces the Christian claim that self-giving and receptivity are the road to human flourishing." (page 32)
• [On Vatican II] "John XXIII had something different in mind [than earlier ecumenical councils].... Some of what John XXIII hoped for actually happened.... [but] Western Europe today is the most religiously arid place on the planet." (page 36)
• "The story of salvation - the story of the Church, and the story of Israel that made the Church's story possible - is the world's story, rightly understood." (page 41)
• "Sanctity, in Catholicism, is not just for the sanctuary." (page 44)
• "Doctrine, those defined truths which mark the boundaries of Catholicism, is in fact liberating." (page 50)
• "Authority in the Church exists to insure that Christians do not settle for mediocrity." (page 51)

The continuity of the Faith

In the middle of the 20th century, Romano Guardini wrote these words:

God is the One of whom it can be said, that the more powerfully he activates an individual, and the more completely he penetrates his being, the more clearly that individual attains his own inherent personality.... all that I am, I am through him. The more intensively he directs his creative powers upon me, the more real I become. The more he gives me of his love, the fuller my self-realization in that love.... Not until he inhabits me, do I become the being God meant me to be.
Guardini, "The Lord", page 529

In the middle of the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas wrote:

As wisdom increases, and the subtle fragrance of holiness makes its unobtrusive way into the least crevices of the hours of a man's day, more and more hearts go out to him; he is a better man, a more lovable man, for he is more of a man. There is more to him, he is fuller, bigger; more of his powers have been put to work in completing the image of God within him. On the same count, every step downward a man takes in vice the more isolated he becomes.
Aquinas, "My Way of Life (Pocket Edition of St. Thomas)", p 9

My perception is that these two quotes are about the same concept, and I happened to read them within a day or two of each other! They are so close, that on the very next page, Guardini talks about the living Christ present in each baptized Christian (the same idea as St. Thomas' "image of God within him").

Last word on "The Lord"

So I read the last third of this great book and didn't write here about it at all! For a fact there is just too much to write about. I repeat my blanket endorsement - any Christian should read it as soon as possible. Some semi-random final thoughts:

• To go along with the Second Fall I wrote about earlier, Guardini sees the Resurrection as a Second Creation. This parallels St. Paul's teaching on the first Adam and the new Adam (Christ).
• The whole book provides a panoramic overview of the Christian life, from first things, to ordinary life (marriage, society), to the life of faith, to the end times. Hardly any aspect of Christian life is left out.
• One thing in particular that struck me was his discussion of property and wealth. The story of the rich young man always troubled me. Along with the apostles, I've always wondered, "Given such a standard, who can be saved?" From page 329:

  
  Two legitimate Christian attitudes to property are revealed. First, that based on the commandments: to own property; to be grateful for it; to manage it well and achieve something with it; to avoid dishonesty and injustice; to be decent to others and help dispel need. This order of existence is acceptable to God and leads to eternal life.... Something in the young man yearned to surpass the Law, to enter the free realm of magnanimity, of spiritual creativeness and novelty. It was this that had driven him to Christ. Hence the Lord's encouragement: if this is really your desire, go ahead and follow through! Then a special order of things is valid for you, that will help you to concentrate all the power of your love on God, to serve him not only in justice, but in the absolute freedom of the heart that has stripped itself of everything that is not he. Then away with things and follow me!

  That first calling is binding to everyone. The second path is a special vocation.
• Similarly with marriage and virginity, Guardini says there meanings are bound up with the Lord: "Both Christian marriage and Christian virginity become incomprehensible the moment the Nazarene ceases to be their essence." (p 325)
• Much of the last part of the book, especially his treatment of the Book of Revelation, talks about the Christian sense of history which has largely been lost. The history of salvation - Creation, the Fall, the promises, the prophets, the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, and the End Times - are the history of the world, and we don't know our place in the world unless we place ourselves in this arch of Christian history. In the Crucifixion Christ - the author of life, he who is life itself - descended into the depths of death and lifelessness. When he rose on the third day, he commenced to lift the world with him. As each of us grows in sanctity, as our faith matures, we rise along with Christ. In the end of times, when the world is made anew, this process will be complete - Christ will have lifted the whole world, and the world will be re-made in him (the new Heaven and new Jerusalem mentioned in Revelation).

This book more than any other I can think of, conveys the joy of the Faith - the sheer unbounded gratitude, happiness, clarity, joy of life in Christ - without hiding the demands and difficulties that go along with true Faith - being out of step with the world, the constant spiritual warfare. Only G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy" conveys the same sense of superabundance in the face of God's limitless gifts to us. Read this book now!

Trusting in God

Once again I want to reiterate that every Christian should read "The Lord". Since I last blogged I've read so much that I won't have the time to write about.

In the chapter "Belief in Christ, Imitation of Christ" Guardini talks about a transposition of values. At chapter's end he talks about the intellectual life of those who continue to believe only in themselves. The task of the Christian is to achieve "an ever more complete exchange of natural security, self-confidence, and self-righteousness, for confidence in God and his righteousness as it is voiced by Christ and the succession of his apostles".

Then he talks about what happens to the man that doesn't make this transposition. He describes perfectly how I found myself before I rediscovered the Faith; in fact he describes the fate of all those who find themselves alone without God, like Dante in the first cantos of "The Inferno". Guardini:

Until a man makes this transposition he will have no peace. He will realize how the years of his life unroll, and ask himself vainly what remains. He will make moral efforts to improve, only to become either hopelessly perplexed or priggish. He will work, only to discover that nothing he can do stills his heart. He will study, only to progress little beyond vague probabilities -- unless his intellectual watchfulness slackens, and he begins to accept possibility for truth or wishes for reality. He will fight, found, form this and that only to discover that millions have done the same before him and millions will continue after he is gone, without shaping the constantly running sand for more than an instant. He will explore religion, only to founder in the questionableness of all he finds. The world is an entity. Everything in it conditions everything else. Everything is transitory. No single thing helps, because the world as a whole has fallen from grace. One quest alone has an absolute sense: that of the Archimedes-point and lever which can lift the world back to God, and these are what Christ came to give.
(Guardini, p346)

Only Christ gives us the grace and the light to find our way out of this morass. Compare the above passage to the first canto in "The Inferno":

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.
(Dante, Inferno Canto 1, lines 1-12)

The forest where Dante found himself is the same moral and intellectual swamp that Guardini describes. We are made in God's image and likeness; only Christ -- God that brought himself down to man's level -- can bring us to realize what that means and give us the grace to grow in his image. Only the Church gives us the foundations to accept all the world offers and remain strong in the Faith and true to ourselves.