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September 24, 2007
Why Is Doctrine So Darned Difficult?
For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. Luke 12:48
I have an interesting love/hate relationship with the doctrine of the Catholic Church. This was brought home to me by an innocuous request that arrived by e-mail this morning and provoked far more thought than I have time for or my correspondent had time to read. Pity him!
In point of fact, I belong to the Catholic Church for several reasons, approximately in this order: The Real Presence, the Church established by Jesus Christ, an ongoing authoritative teaching magisterium. Huh? What was that last? Yes, you heard it, the body of doctrine and dogma and teachings that might be termed advisory or cautionary, having not the weight of doctrine or dogma, but not so easily dismissed as many of our progressive friends would have us believe.
In fact, left to myself, I would be firmly in the ranks of the progressive Catholics. Why? Well, as much as I love the fact that there is firm and clear guidance in the Church, I know enough of the weakness of human intellect to question some of those more outré and far-flung notions that seem to come forth from this wealth of teaching. A case in point--although Jesus clearly teaches that it is wrong to kill in the cause of faith (after all, if it were not appropriate for Peter to defend Jesus forcibly, what can be justified in the name of the defense of faith?), we somehow derive from a relatively clear body of Christ's teaching something called "Just War Theory." Now, I'm not certain this rises to the level of doctrine, but let's just say that there are several aspects of this body of thought that I find disconcerting and unlikely when exposed to the fullness of the teaching of Christ.
However, I also know that in matters of abstract thought about such things, I am more often wrong that I am right. My intuition is guided by the part of me that prefers to be sensually enveloped rather than the part that seeks God. The Base Man triumphs in these matters.
But my own experience of intellect leads me to doubt the conclusions of other. What is the agenda? What are they headed for? Do they have my best interests in mind or were they in the service of some sovereign or power for whom my compliance in vassalage is advantageous? You can see what happens. I have no trust for humanity.
Now the Church informs me that all dogma (with which I have a good deal less problem) and universally taught doctrine is informed by, guided by, and kept on-target by the Holy Spirit. There is a certain amount of comfort in this. The difficulty is to know where that guidance ends and the speculation of theologians guided by more human motives might begin.
So, I'm stuck in this quandary. A little more humility and I would have no problem. a little less intellect (or a little more) and I'd probably see the matter straight. But the reality is that I am the flawed person I am. I have what I have been given. And from what I've seen, I have been given a tremendous amount. God has blessed me with a good mind (not a great one) a certain verbal felicity and flexibility, and a stubborn streak a mile wide.
It is to this last that I owe the greatest debt of gratitude. I do not join the progressive thinkers among us in large part because I have made a commitment to the Church and I intend to stand by it come Hell or high water. Period. My own doubts and questions be damned--I will stand by what the Church teaches.
That's the stubborn streak. Problem is, it means that I often have to put the brain in check for certain issues. I hear people begin to spiel out how war is just, owning weapons is a God-given right and obligation, torture isn't really against God's teaching. . . you name the controversy that rages.
Then you go to find a clear answer--what does the Church teach--and what you get is the muddy water of the millions of interpreters and theologians with their own understandings and interpretations.
So the bargain I thought I was getting in joining the Church--clear teaching--materializes more often than not. But it is insubstantial in a sufficiently large number of cases to be aggravating.
I suppose it is not doctrine I oppose so much as the ornament and filagree frequently attached thereto. However, to someone not sufficiently well versed in the sources and where to go to find the correct teaching, the doctrine and its accretions are indistinguishable.
So when I say that I don't like doctrine, I suppose I mean, I don't like the uncertainty that seems to surround some doctrine. For example, is it a doctrine that women simply cannot be priests? I don't know for certain. Some say yes, some say no. As this happens to be one matter on which a person who I came to trust completely had a clear statement, I can arrive at a conclusion which may not be doctrinal. And so it goes.
To whom much is given, much will be expected in return. For those of us gifted with intelligence, curiosity, and analytical ability, these problems will continue to chafe. Does that mean doctrine is useless? Absolutely not. But it does lead me to rely more on a direct experience of God in prayer and through the prayer and lives of the saints. Perhaps this doubt of mine is simply God's way of making me acquainted with him through a more human element. Perhaps, like St. Teresa of Avila, I should spend more time with Christ's humanity, while not neglecting His divinity.
And finally, why do I share this? Possibly because it is like the grain in the oyster that may become a pearl-malformed and mishapened as it may be. But perhaps others share similar difficulties--and perhaps their paths are likewise being directed to paths of knowing that do not rely exclusively on the intellect, but engage the other parts of our humanity.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 25, 2007
The Joy and the Pain of Philip Roth
Philip Roth is one of those great American writers with whom I've always had a good deal of difficulty. And his most recent book is just a continuation of that difficulty. The question is more whether the difficulty is mine or if it is simply Mr. Roth's constitution.
However, I do want to raise a major point contra the current publishing mindset. The problem is exemplified in this passage:
from Exit Ghost
Philip RothI know it was on June 30 because that's the day that the female snapping turtles in my part of New England make their annual trek out from their watery habitat to find an open sandy spot to dig a next for their eggs. These are strong, slow-moving creatures, large turtles with sawtooth armored shells a foot or more in diameter and long, heavily scaled tails. The appear in abundance at the south end of Athena, troops of them crossing the two-lane macadam road that leads into town. Drivers will patiently wait for minutes on end so as not to hit them as they emerge from the deep woods whose marshes and ponds they inhabit, and it is the annual custom of many local residents like me not merely to stop but to pull over and step out onto the shoulder of the road to watch the parade of these rarely seen amphibians, lumbering forward inch by inch on the powerful foreshortened, scaly legs that end in prehistoric-looking reptilian claws.
There is amidst the lyrical and fascinating prose a blunder of enormous proportions, amplified by the fact that a modifier in the same sentence hints at the real relationships of turtles within the animal kingdom. Why is it that some editor allowed this to pass? For anyone even remotely acquainted with taxonomy, the mistake is jarring and annoying. Mr. Roth may have been trying to be poetic, or trying to enlarge the use of the word "amphibian" to encompass a larger sense of the "lifestyle" rather than the taxonomic level; however, as it isn't germane to the point of either the passage or the novel, the wise editor should have simply brought Mr. Roth up short and pointed out how very disorienting and alienating such an attempt is, particularly isolated in a single passage as it is. I suspect that it was merely a slip of the pen, and one that a useful editor ought to have made an effort to see fixed.
Another facet of Mr. Roth's writing that often disengages me is his insistence that the worth of a man is judged primarily, if not solely, by the correct and frequent functioning of those anatomical parts that define his maleness. This has been a theme from the earliest works, and it pervades much of Mr. Roth's writing. It is entirely possible that I have not completely understood what point Mr. Roth has been trying to make with it, if so, that is my failing. However, the obsessiveness of that theme in this novel has not made for enjoyable reading for me.
However, even in and among the ruminations on body parts that no longer work the way they once did, we occasionally find something lovely, such as this:
I simply asked him to tell me about her; what I'd gotten was a speech appropriate to the dedication of some grand edifice. There was nothing strange about such a staunchly tender performance--men who fall madly in love can make Xanadu of Buffalo it that's where their beloved was raised--and yet the ardor for Jamie and Jamie's Texas girlhood was so undisguised that it was as though he were telling me about somebody he had dreamed up in jail. Or about the Jamie I had dreamed up in jail. It was as it should be in a masterpiece of male devotion: his veneration for his wife was his strongest tie to life.
This is gorgeous, even if spoken ironically, and with a post-modern cynicism most unappealing (however, I find it difficult to read the passage in that light). And from it you can read the obsession of the present work. Mr. Zuckerman is in lust with Jamie. And lust is the closest that any character in a normal Roth novel seems capable of coming to love--the only defined thing about Nathan Zuckerman is his desire that comes without any strong emotional underpinning. And so, we have the Philip Roth novel. Now, perhaps Mr. Roth's point is to satirize these attitudes. But there is a sameness and a plodding dullness surrounding that sameness that suggest that the attitude is truly the authors and not a conceit or a feint. Again, that may be a cursory misreading--if so, I'm not the only one who is inclined to such misreadings.
Finally, the political discussions in the book are a nauseating concoction of intolerant leftist political ideation. In this book they are so extreme and so blatant, that for the first time I have wondered if Roth might not be poking fun at the intolerance of the oh so tolerant portion of our society. (Interestingly, I agree with some of the political assessment in the book, I just find them too narrowly focused. Everything said about Mr. Bush and his regime could be applied, one long tarbrush to most of the regimes post Roosevelt I. And in the diatribe painting all of this, we pass lovingly over the administrations of the nearly saintly Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. I, like Zuckerman in the book, but for reasons quite different, am nearly completely uninterested in politics as a whole. I think I saw a great deal too much in the time I spent with my mother on Capitol Hill. Just a clue for you all--there are no Mr. Smith's in that gaggle--at least there weren't--I shouldn't exclude the possibility that some have showed up in the interim--but my impression is that things have rather gone downhill since my heyday.
So, while Mr. Roth's prose is elegant at times and interesting, his obsessions rapidly become tedious, and of the remaining "great figures" of recent American writing, he is one whose work is most colored by the person he is. It seems endlessly and repetitively autobiographical, and obsessed with what it means to be a man. Possibly obsessed because his characters really have no idea whatsoever. Nevertheless, there are things that are lovely, thoughts that are worthwhile, strands that are worth pursuing and occasionally prose that is sparkling, bright, and exemplary of very fine writing.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 26, 2007
Exit Ghost
In this, supposedly the last of the Zuckerman books, the legendary priapism of Mr. Roth, noted in comments on the previous post regarding the book, is once again fully in display, once again to no particular effect and for not particular purpose that I can discern unless it is to unite thanatos and eros in the Freudian clich´ that was ancient when Freud was a baby. Zuckerman, impotent and incontinent from a radical prostatectomy spends the entire book trying to recapture the vigor of youth in the face of decaying faculties.
Problem is, it isn't even remotely touching. It isn't funny, it isn't ironic, mordant, incisive, acute, or even particularly observant. It is, unfortunately, pedestrian--a rehash of Roth from previous years including all of the very worst aspects of his obsessions.
The really terrible part of this is that there is some lovely writing, some moving and beautiful writing. At moments even powerful writing--as when he relates the tale of the Jews who escaped from Oslo to Sweden. But there are plot encumbrances that occupy far more space than they are actually worth in effect and an unfortunate obsession with a writer with a great and mysterious sin in his past. Finally, there is an absolutely incoherent paean to George Plimpton occupying far too much of the last section of the book.
My opinion--give this one a skip and go read the only book Mr. Roth wrote that seems to be relatively free of his obsessions--The Plot Against America, you may not care for the politics--but in that book Roth has many points to make about anti-semitism (as he does in this one) and its present vigor in our society. He raises awareness about important problems without the other spirits he seems so fond of.
NOT recommeded in any way for any one.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 27, 2007
Prayers for My Father-in-Law please
Please add my father-in-law to your daily intentions. He's in the hospital with a serious infection.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:25 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 28, 2007
Prayer is Sustenance
Last week, the book of Mother Teresa's private writings was published--Come, Be My Light. I suppose I should first comment on a subject that disturbs many--the publication of writings that Mother Teresa had expressly requested be destroyed. Thank goodness the Church knows a legacy when they see it, and recognizes sanctity in human form when we are graced with it. I think about the fragments of letter from St. John of the Cross, the pitiful number of them, and of the destruction of what probably amounted to a great many of them by St. Teresa of Avila as a way of detachment. What a tremendous loss for the entire world that destruction was. We have a lessened sense of the beauty of spirit and the warmth of St. John of the Cross. We're left with an image of austerity and sparseness.
Fortunately, that has not been allowed to happen with one of the great Saints of our time. A saint so great that she throws Christopher Hitchens into paroxysms of anger every time he casts a thought in her direction. (Talk about a man resisting conviction--a man who needs his atheism, his crutch every bit as much as he think those with religion do--a man who battles God daily in his attempt to remain squarely in unbelief--a man personally challenged by Mother Teresa.)
While there is much new in the book, much insight into things we had only small glimpses and hints of, there is also very much that is well-known and which reflects who she was publicly and consistently.
from Come Be My Light
Mother Teresa of CalcuttaEvery Sunday I visti the poor in Calcutta's slums. I cannot help them, because I do not have anything, but I go to give them joy. Last time about twenty little ones were eagerly expecting their "Ma." When they saw me, they ran to meet me, even skipping on one foot. I entered. In that "para"--that is how a group of house is called here--twelve families were living. every family has only one room, two meters long and a meter and a half wide. The door is so narrow that i hardly could enter, and the ceiling is so low that I could not stand upright. . . . Now I do not wonder that my poor little ones love their school so much, and that so many of them suffer from tuberculosis. The poor mother. . . did not utter even a word of complaint about her poverty. It was very painful for me, but at the same time I was very happy when I saw that they are happy because I visit them. Finally, the mother said to me: "Oh, Ma, come again! Your smile brought sun into this house."
Consider the details of this little note--a room with a door so narrow and a ceiling so low that Mother Teresa--not exactly a giantess--could not fit through or stand upright. Those are straitened circumstances. And the thickness of poverty, so powerful you could feel it standing at a distance.
Now consider that Mother Teresa, pained by the poverty she can do nothing about, goes nevertheless because of the joy she can spread by her mere presence. That is a powerful witness to her obedience and to her love. I wonder how many among us would be willing to endure what is unthinkable to us for the sake of bringing joy to others--the word of God? I know for a fact that I am not there yet. Poverty frightens me. The impoverished frighten me in ways I can't begin to understand or articulate. There is no cause for fear, and yet, there you have it. I am not a saint, much less a Saint. Undoubtedly, that will come in time.
Much of the book focuses on the sharp contrast between Mother Teresa's inner darkness and her outward apostolate of spreading joy and the word of God among the poorest of the poor. It is filled with extravagances of love, and as such, it is a guidebook to love--to how to show profound and real love despite the fact that inside there is nothing but constant yearning, constant desire, constant longing for the infinite that seems to have vacated the space. Well, to give an instance:
Please pray for me, that it may please God to lift this darkness from my doul for only a few days. For sometimes the agony of desolation is so great and at the same time the longing for the Absent One so deep, that the only prayer which I can still say is --Scared Heart of Jesus I trust in Thee--I will satiate Thy thirst for souls.
If you have not already bought this book, you may want to consider it. At very least get it from the library and read it carefully. As with the works of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, I have a feeling that I will be returning to this book again and again, to learn from the example of Blessed Mother Teresa-- a Saint I have been privileged to see, even if only from a distance.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:39 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack