The League of Bearded Catholics

Population Control One is Tempted to Support

In the words of G.K. Chesterton,

"Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like."

- Babies and Distributism, GK's Weekly, 11/12/32

In a world as irrational as ours, The Onion, Colbert and The Daily Show seem the only news sources capable of grasping the scope of postmodern insanity. One must either laugh or cry, and laughter leaves more room for hope.

Tolkien on Tolkien on Film

Thank you, BBC, for posting this short (26 minutes) 1968 documentary about J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, featuring interviews with the author himself, some of his fans, students and a couple of amusingly tedious detractors. The film is also kind of a neat time-capsule of 1960s culture. I was seven at the time. I wonder what became of those fresh-faced college kids?

You might need to pay close attention, and ear buds might also help. Tolkien was a notorious mumbler, I'm afraid.

There was quite definitely a Tolkien craze in the late Sixties ("Frodo Lives!"). Then, as perhaps now, a large number of fans didn't get much past the flashing swords and fantastic creatures to what Tolkien was ultimately driving at. That's okay. As with fairy tales and nursery stories, the moral might slip in the back door and do some good down the road, just as there are many atheists who have been deeply influenced by the Gospel in ways they will never know or wish to acknowledge. They might one day be surprised to find themselves acting with heroic self-sacrifice and not completely understand why. It's in the air more than we might imagine... especially in America, I think. I hope.

That Hideous Strength

Hideously cheesy cover art, dontcha think? I picked it up for $.75 at a used book shop.

Just finished reading That Hideous Strength, the last of C.S. Lewis' space trilogy, and while a fuller discussion will have to wait, I have a few observations.

For one thing, each of the three books of the trilogy - Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength - is a very different kind of work from the others. Whereas, for instance, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and even including The Hobbit) there is a continuity of structure, style and rhythm, in Lewis' space trilogy, each novel is a completely different literary approach to the common material of the story.

Out of the Silent Planet is an outer space adventure romp, Perelandra is a gripping spiritual thriller and a deep meditation all in one (as I expanded on here), and finally That Hideous Strength bends the story arc into a complex and layered tale of intrigue and suspense, expanding at points into full blown satire, rolling the elements of the first two books into an apocalyptic ending.

Anyone who read one book of the trilogy and picked up another expecting more of the same might be confused for a few chapters, at any rate.

Each is worthwhile reading on its own, yet even with these very disparate approaches, the trilogy does hang together.

I have, myself, referred to Lewis now and then as Chesterton Lite, but his insights into human nature, sin and the walk of faith are at times astonishingly vivid and repeatedly call for deeper reflection.

More later. What are your impressions of the trilogy? ...What should I read next?

Corpus Christianum!

The Virgin with Angels - William Bouguereau

It's a bit late, but it seemed appropriate - on this Feast of the Assumption - to announce that some time ago, I joined the ranks of Corpus Christianum;

...an international Private Association of the Faithful, open both to men and women, dedicated to praying for a renewal of Christendom

I joined, as I say, some time ago, but did not feel I deserved to make much of the association publicly, as my prayer discipline has never been anything to write Rome about. I joined less to lend my prayers to the effort, and more in the hope of finding some meaningful structure and motivation for my prayers. I hoped that joining would be an aid to my daily prayer routine, and this has, in fact, happened... by increments. Baby steps.

Being a part of Corpus Christianum means making a commitment to praying the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and also to praying the Rosary daily, with specific intentions for each decade. This I have failed in, but... I continue to make progress, which can only be by the grace of God.

The Little Office has been a challenge and great source of growth. It has made me pray for greater understanding of our Holy Mother, and I think those prayers have been answered, to the capacity I am able to understand.

One thing that came to me on this feast day is that God did not just choose Mary to be the Mother of His Son (though we often speak that way)... He created her for that purpose. He was emphatically not drawing names from a hat.

Hob-nobbing with the Stars

I am a bit draggy this morning, and for just half a minute I forgot why. Then I remembered; last night, a most deliciously warm and breezy night - my daughter and I spent an hour or so laying in the grass and looking up at the cosmos. She saw the Milky Way for the first time a few nights ago, and has discovered the fascination of star gazing. Anyway, we went out to meet the Perseids meteor shower, with great success. I lost count of how many shooting stars we saw. I wish my eyes were sharper, though.

It was such a night as makes the unholy heat of the daytime very much worth tolerating. I could have curled up and slept very well in the grass. I think I almost did. It's what I imagine the nights in Eden were like.

People rarely see the stars, anymore. We have cut ourselves off from nature, put her at arms length, and starve for beauty and the whispered voice of God.

My daughter observed at one point that looking at the heavens reminds us of how small we are. I gently countered that we are not small at all, but are exactly the right size... as are the galaxies and the trees and everything else. It reminds me of this passage from Chesterton, and I'll throw in a couple more, for good measure. Next time I go star gazing, I'm going to bring these to read aloud, slowly.

"Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are — of immeasurable stature. That the trees are high and the grasses short is a mere accident of our own foot-rules and our own stature. But to the spirit which has stripped off for a moment its own idle temporal standards the grass is an everlasting forest, with dragons for denizens; the stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other; the dandelions are like gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around; and the heath-bells on their stalks are like planets hung in heaven each higher than the other." - A Defence of Humilities

"...if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse." - A Defence of Baby-Worship

"Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front." - The Man Who was Thursday

 

(cross posted at Old World Swine)

Strange Preface

I've been reading some of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries, lately, keeping a volume on my bedside table. I had only read a couple before now, and so I'm enjoying getting to know the sagacious little priest better.

The volume that I'm now reading begins with a preface by Auberon Waugh, and it strikes me as having been written by someone who had read Chesterton - and read about him - a good bit, but who had simply never understood him. He seems unable to see past Chesterton's ample surface, and weaves from his imagination a caricature of GKC that exaggerates all the wrong things.

So, he states that Chesterton "learned" Distributism from Hilaire Belloc, that he "drank himself into a state of corpulent immobility" while living in London, that because of this his wife "banished" him to Beaconsfield, and that she thereafter virtually forbade him to visit his "old haunts".

He speaks of Chesterton "churning out elegant paradoxes", and drily notes that he is certain to be forgotten except for his Father Brown stories and a few obscure bits of his poetry. He sums up Chesterton's brilliant essays as " ...pretty good rubbish, some of it repetitive, some contradictory, some nearly incomprehensible, with just the occasional flash of light that makes the reader gasp".

In other words, Waugh sounds like a thoroughly worldly modern trying to explain Chesterton's rather other-worldy and timeless thought in ways he and his more jaded peers can relate to.

The last laugh is Chesterton's, though. There has just concluded the twenty-ninth annual Chesterton Conference of the American Chesterton Society, and GKC is being read and quoted and considered more now than at any time since he was alive.

I haven't discovered, yet, when the next Auberon Waugh conference might be, but I'll keep you posted.

Anne Rice "Breaks Up" With Human Race

Anne Rice is calling it quits with the human species, after "giving it her best" for 69 years.

In a series of thirty-seven consecutive Tweets, Rice laid out her major disappointments with humanity. "I didn't realize going in - that is, as an infant - how much negativity and bickering and stupidity there would be. Also, there's the traffic and people cutting in line at the bank... my waiter at breakfast this morning was very inattentive and rolled his eyes when I pointed out that my biscotti was stale. He didn't think I saw, but I did. In the name of Humanity, I refuse to be lumped in with these disgusting humans. I'm quitting humanity as of today, right after my pedicure."

Rice was born a human, but in college began her first mental boycott  of the species, after a particularly disappointing blind date. She considered herself philosophically a Banana Slug for 38 years, but stopped short of actually declaring as an invertebrate.

Discussing her decision on the Intellectual Network, she was asked by Philosophy Today host Joy Behar if there was a species she might now consider her home. "I've heard from so many lovely creatures saying things like 'Hey, we toads don't show up late for appointments, come join us', or ' Lemurs understand where you're coming from'... but I think right now", and here she throws up her hands, "I just want to withdraw from the whole thing, from making a commitment to any species... or even genus. Truthfully, I find the whole animal kingdom kind of gross.".

Rice is working on a new book based on her experience, which should be in most homo sapiens bookstores in time for Christmas.

(Lovingly cross-posted at Old World Swine, for double your blogging pleasure)

The C.S. Lewis Song

I confess, for something called "The C.S. Lewis Song", I was expecting this to be a little more, I don't know... jaunty? Something one could sing at the pub. But I do likes it. Quite a voice, this girl has.

Back when I was still a fairly new Christian Evangelical revert (after being raised Baptist, and then college educated into a mushy kind of Christian Agnosticism) I was for a while a great fan of Christian Rock/Pop. We have had a popular evangelical Christian radio station in the area for decades (out of John Brown University) and my radio dial was permanently welded there in the late 80s and early 90s.

I'm pretty finicky, musically, but I overlooked what I considered to be a lot of Christian Drek because I found it worthwhile to get to the Good Stuff. I was a big fan of Out of the Grey, I remember. and Brent Bourgeois. The link is to one of my favorites of his. Though I think this was before he declared as a Christian, the lyrics show he was thinking deeply about things.

It's the question of the hour,

How can I be sure of what I don't know?

She comes to me with poison in her flower,

And steals the miracle of life right out of my hand

After I became a Catholic, though (or perhaps I was just growing up), slowly, imperceptibly, Christian Pop - or Pop of almost any kind - failed to satisfy. I began to notice the extent to which Christian Pop Radio was increasingly a reflection of ordinary pop radio, and that mainly for the worse (though not totally). I also came to resent the extent to which Pop Culture had insinuated itself into the liturgy. Even the Sacrament of the Altar is not immune from the din of drum kits and electric guitars, and I say this as a great fan  - a sucker - for great guitar work. I loves me some Stevie Ray Vaughan... only not in church, please.

In the words of Hank Hill, "Can't you see? You're not making Christianity better... you're making rock and roll worse!".

I'm all for honesty and sincerity, but it seemed more and more of Christian Pop songwriting was becoming a festival of breast-beating, cathartic, sentimental introspection to the point of narcissism. Okay, we all struggle, but if I want to be depressed I'd rather listen to Pink Floyd... or Tool.

There seemed also to be an element of Christian Guilt bubbling up, not unlike the White Guilt so prevalent among hip progressives. Yes, Christians are often hypocritical. So is everyone. It's a remnant of The Fall that is part of the human condition. Yes, Christendom has had it's share of moral missteps throughout history. We should be aware of our hypocrisy, aware of our past mistakes and constant shortcomings... but can we leave off apologizing at some point and please get on with things?

I've always admired celebrities who have had the good sense not to believe their own press clippings. We ought to do likewise. We don't measure our success - or failure - by worldy standards. We are, in fact warned about conformity to the world. Why, then, do we now seem so all-fired concerned that the world "like us... really like us"?

This is part of the problem I have with what is called the Emergent Church. This movement seems to me very much in danger of being the Tragically Hip church, the Church as Fashion Victim. Clothes? Check (Hot Topic). Music? Check. Hi-Def Multimedia Worship? Check. Pop-culture references? Check. Hair gel? Check.

I understand the impulse. Shoot, I'm as embarrassed as anyone to be lumped in with Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts and the old polyester suit crowd. But to bastardize C.S. Lewis, "Because our grandparents erred in one direction, does it follow that there is no error in the opposite direction?"

It's not good to try and freeze any moment in history (say, the 1950s) and set that up as The Good Old Days... to become stodgy and grumpy and interact with our unbelieving neighbors mainly by wagging our fingers and complaining of their godless music and their dungarees. But the opposite error isn't pretty, either. To court the approval of half-interested cultural agnostics (called "seekers") or to ape the fashions and attitudes (Watch me! I'm being ironic!) of a perenially bored and fickle generation is just as bad.

As irksome as it may seem, I think I might rather stand with Brother Falwell.

So, okay, let's admit our shortcomings and mistakes, our struggles, fears and doubts, but after that... well, do we have any Good News for these people, or don't we?

All that said, the song/video linked above - by New Zealander Brooke Fraser - does flirt a bit with depressing introspection, but she pulls it together into something very lovely and even powerful. She begins with what feels like an achingly agnostic perspective, but shows that there is hope for us all to "know as we are known" in the end. Behind everything, there really is Someone there.