BEING AN EXERCISE IN THE UTILIZATION OF SEQUENTIAL SYMBOLOGY TO VISUALLY CHARACTERIZE AND SYNOPSIZE "CONSERVATIVE" NEO-CATHOLICISM

 

BEING AN EXERCISE IN THE UTILIZATION OF SEQUENTIAL SYMBOLOGY TO VISUALLY CHARACTERIZE AND SYNOPSIZE "CONSERVATIVE" NEO-CATHOLICISM

INVITATION TO ADMIRE THOMAS ROSICRUCIAN

Whether we wish to admit it or not, Father Thomas Rosicrucian has played a significant role in Canadian Catholic affairs since the Second Vatican Council. We cannot rewrite history.

The many things and errors attributed to him at present are unjustified. Those like, for example, Catholic bloggers, who wish to blame Father Rosicrucian for facilitating the decline of the Catholic Church in Canada are dishonest and completely incorrect.

The human condition often makes us blame others for things that we cannot fully understand. The ad hominem attacks against Father Rosicrucian have nothing to do with Gospel charity and Christian behaviour. Let those who have eyes and ears to see and hear view the entire interview and not base judgments on others' interpretation and distortion of Father Rosicrucian's WITLESS interview with Professor Baum.

In response to the attacks by Catholics on the internet upon Salt + Light Television and Fr. Rosicrucian, I simply wish to recall the words of an important statement released by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI on February 1, 2010:

In a social milieu that encourages the expression of a variety of opinions on every question that arises, it is important to recognize dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate. It is the truth revealed through Scripture and Tradition and articulated by the Church's Magisterium that sets us free. (see statement)

When the name "Salt + Light" is applied to one's public activity and work, this is a very serious matter. Having known for some time of Fr. Rosicrucian's background, it is a story that invites us not into anger and rage, but into profound admiration and trust in him, and all those who have found his method, style and content significant for their lives.

Fr. Rosicrucian has celebrated Mass for orthodox Catholics on the internet this past weekend. May the Lord help them realize what they are doing. May the Lord heal them from the sadness and unreconciled hearts that produces such unchristian, virulent, slanderous behavior and disrespect for Father Rosicrucian.

TH2

(original)

INVITATION TO ADMIRE THOMAS ROSICRUCIAN

REASONS 2546 AND 2547 WHY I NEVER BECAME A JESUIT

Two Irish Jesuits vocations posters. H/T Fr. Blake

A long time ago, a fair number of years after the Nu-Church Modernists assumed control, I seriously considered the priesthood. Discernment always, unequivocally, pointed in the direction of the Jesuits.

My mentality is thoroughly Jesuitical. Why do you wonder posts at this blog are so long, intricated and laborious? How else is to be explained the blunt meanness periodically interrupted by bursts of outlandish, edgy humour?

But, you see, I mean Jesuitical in the old time sense, positively - when the order was faithful, tough and intellectually rigorous. Now, after its transmogrification, it is mostly populated by proportionalists, liberation theology afficiandos and all manner of subtlizing fruitcakes. Thusly, I never applied to a seminary and never again considered the priesthood.

Fills me with a shuddering disgust when I'm reminded of what the Jesuits have become, as illustrated in those cheezy, vulgar, offensive posters. It is a personal, subjective feeling. Mine alone. But it is there nonetheless. Perhaps the intensity of my contempt (not hatred) is explainable by the fact that, in the naiveté of my younger days, I actually revered Jesuits and wanted to be like them.

What is Reason 2545, you ask?... America magazine.

Next post is coming. It will be long, intricated, laborious, sometimes bluntly mean, with bursts of outlandish humour.

REASONS 2546 AND 2547 WHY I NEVER BECAME A JESUIT

HEY YOU CATS, WHAZZZZZUP WIT YOUCAT ?

I. One of numerous disasters coming with the wake of Vatican II was that cornball attempt to get hip with the kidz. Everything from cartoon Jesus to children gathering around the altar at Mass, from Jesus Christ Superstar performed at school plays to the kindergarten krap of felt banners, right down to the utter embarrassment of acoustic guitar singing circles: "One bread, one body..." (shudder). Now I'm certainly not going to lay entire blame on this kitsch for my abandoning the Faith as a young lad. Nevertheless, upon reflection, the only effect all this had was to make me recoil from any kind of religiosity. Catholicism and cheese don't mix. Teenagers, even younger kids, know this by natural instinct, at least based upon my observation and "life experience" (wince). If today they mock or laugh at some hokey piece of Crayola "Catholic" artwork, I'd gleefully join in on the fun. If they are averse from going to Mass because holding hands during the Our Father makes them feel awkward or stupid, I fully understand this aversion. Who can blame them? They're absolutely correct.

 

II. When considering the past, I frequently wonder that, had good catechesis been my experience, instead of being a "participant" in those dreadful classes on "World Religions", or if I'd known a traditional and - yes - tough priest to look up to and model myself after, I might not had turned out to be a self-absorbed-know-it-all teenager (as a child, TH2 was naive and impressionable to a degree more than most, a mind easily moulded). At age 15, would have I've intentionally gotten bombed by drinking a mickey of lemon gin at that field party? Still remember that evening. A cool and clear night in - probably - October. Stars clearly visible in the sky, the fire we made, Rush's Permanent Waves on the boom box, the billowing clouds of cigarette smoke, the vomiting, and that cute rocker chick who not so affectionately called me a "tool". Somebody phoned the cops and we scattered, myself hightailing it into a ravine. Never told the parents about that one. So, you younger Catholics, take it from this Gen-X punk who was subjected to the comfy chair Inquisition imposed by the Nu-Church hipsters: Stay out of trouble!

 

III. It is in the context of the aforementioned that this blogger deems the whole YOUCAT endeavour to be an exercise in futility. That is, making Catholicism "relevant" to the younger crowd. Evidently, YOUCAT is supposed to be some modishly slick sounding acronym, short for YOUth CATechism. Sounds silly to me. Just the self-centralizing acronym itself is a giveaway, i.e. Catholicism tailored for "YOU". Even the promotional video is off-putting. The syrupy music isn't working either, though this repellent reaction may be due my preference for progressive rock. And why does the book cover have to be a gaudy yellow colour? Is that supposed to add some kind of pizazz? Why not good and reliable black or dark red? YOUCAT even cites Kierkegaard. Listen, the Dane was an mesmerizing existentialist, but let's face it, he was no fan of natural theology. Let the young people ponder Sickness Unto Death on their own time, or in a philosophy course, or whatever. Stick with the essentials. It is a catechism, yes? Why all the flash?

 

IV. Unsurprisingly, earlier this year problems were discovered in YOUCAT's commentaries on contraception.[1] In response to that controversy, and other apparent problems, a protest group has arisen, with its own website, petitioning for a YOUCAT recall. Content at that website also includes a series of objections, "compiled through the cooperative efforts of more than twenty-five Catholic theologians, scholars, clergy, seminary instructors, and lay Catholics involved in various Catholic apostolates". These compilers wish to remain anonymous, "fearing to be dismissed from their posts".

 

V. At this point in the post the reader is probably thinking the remainder will be a critical analysis of YOUCAT. Nope. Let's do a 180. Here we focus on the Recall because a howler occurs in a discussion from one of its objections. There are a total of six, and the commentaries do seem more or less adequate, except for one assertion made in Objection No. 4, relating to the Creation account in Genesis 1. It reads:

Objection #4. YOUCAT Places greater weight on modern scientific speculation than on the Church Fathers’ unanimous interpretations of the first chapters of Genesis.

Then we find these critical remarks:

...a note in the margin of page 37 [of YOUCAT] defines "creationism" as "the idea that God himself by his direct action created the world all at once, as if the book of Genesis were an eyewitness account." But the authors of YOUCAT do not tell their young readers that virtually all of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church took this "naïve" view, including the greatest Doctors of the Church, men like St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Ambrose.

This is followed by a quote from St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Genesis, 2:2), who also "expressed the common view of all of the Fathers and Doctors". The issue is not with Chrysostom's exegetical extract as such. Rather, it relates to evident ignorance or, at minimum, a misunderstanding of the recent history of Catholic exegesis on the part of the petitioners.

VI. True, "naive" is an inaccurate descriptor of exegeses done by the Church Fathers/Doctors, as it is argued. Yet the petitioners still give an impression that the Fathers/Doctors subscribed to Creationism, which they did not, since that term more properly belongs Protestantism, as in the works of James Ussher (1581-1656) or John Lightfoot (1602-1675). The accurate and correct word to use here is Concordism, meaning the reading of some scientific cosmogenesis into Genesis 1, i.e. introducing science, however indirectly, when explaining the biblical account of Creation. Why Concordism is a fallacy is clear enough: the Bible does not teach science. It is not a textbook, in a astronomical or biogeophysical sense, on how all that is came to be. Thing is, Concordism was an error persistent from the beginning, if you'll excuse the pun. Circa 1900, prominent exegetes Fr. Franz von Hummelauer and Fr. Marie-Joseph Lagrange made a shocking admission: the previous 1800 years of Catholic exegesis on Creation in Genesis 1 was not credible, unpersuasive. Why? Concordism. Fr. Stanley Jaki explained further:

Concordism kept a hold on the minds of most Catholic theologians and in fact became a quasi-official position in Catholic seminaries. Concordism, which produced an immense literature, fell merely into official disfavor with the publication November 18, 1893, of Leo XIII's Encyclical Providentissimus Deus on the interpretation of the Scriptures. The Pope emphasized that the inspired authors did not mean to teach about the workings of nature... the subsequent grappling of theologians and exegetes with this task did not improve a bit on the dismal picture that had emerged from their previous efforts.[2]

Fr. Hummelauer, a Jesuit incidentally, helped Pope Leo XIII draft that encyclical. Not only SS. Basil, Ambrose and Chrysostom, but also SS. Augustine and Aquinas[3] were derelict in that they proposed scientific parallels, however circuitous, with the Creation account.

VII. Fr. Jaki, in my opinion one the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, tells of the proper context to which Genesis 1 must be considered:

The unusually systematic character of Genesis 1 should suggest that it contains a literary device to make very explicitly the message about the total dependence of all on God. Written as Genesis 1 was in such a way as to instruct and enlighten the uneducated, that device had to such as to be instinctively grasped by them [the Hebrews]... Contrary to preconceived notions about the irremediable primitiveness of the biblical world view, it has one major advantage over all those scientific world views.[...and it is here where the Recall people should take note] It represents an all which has a dynamic character, or an all that is not at the mercy of the fallible character of precise confines, however sophisticated. For that world view is anchored in an elemental conviction about the all which rests on God's omnipotence. Such an all is presented to man not so much as a unit to be circumnavigated easily by the mind's eye but rather as a horizon that challenges the mind to see beyond the apparent boundaries and forces him to pursue it as it keeps escaping his grasp for one reason or another. At the same time it also assures the mind that the all is never lost while one constantly loses hold of its actual confines.[4]

So it seems that a correction or clarification is in order. Beforehand, however, this writer highly advises the compilers of the YOUCAT objections to first read Fr. Jaki's Genesis 1 Through the Ages.

NOTES / REFERENCES

1. See various reports: D. Kerr, "World Youth Day catechism suggests endorsement of 'contraceptive methods'", Catholic News Agency, April 11, 2011; J.H. Westen, "Italian version of official World Youth Day Catechism errs on contraception: report", LifeSite News, April 11, 2011; M.A. Kreitzer, "Catholics demand recall of Youth Catechism", Spero News, August 15, 2011.

2. S.L. Jaki, Genesis 1 Through the Ages (London: Thomas More Press, 1992), p. 238.

3. Cf. ibid., p. 242. See also Sum. theol., i, qq. 65-74, passim.

4. Ibid. pp. 63, 285. See also Fr. Jaki's analysis in his Angels, Apes and Men (Peru, IL: Sherwood Sugden & Company, 1990), pp. 199-203. Originally published in 1984.

HEY YOU CATS, WHAZZZZZUP WIT YOUCAT ?

OUI, MESDAMES ET MESSIEURS... YOU, TOO, CAN WRITE LIKE A POSTMODERNIST INTELLECTUAL

Yum yum yum. It's Saturday night so let's have some fun.

I. A good part of what I've learned over the years about Postmodernism came from reading the literary critic and essayist George Steiner (not that there is anything we can really learn from it, but just stay with me here). His books were introduced to me by a very good friend with whom I've lost touch, many years now. Those were my university days, meaning sleep during the day and work into the late night hours at our assigned office. That is, if we weren't procrastinating, which was a common occurrence. Oftentimes we'd just consume enormous quantities of junk food and smoke like fiends, discussing everything from theology to macroeconomics to science to the streamlined biology of women. An atheist with a elevated propensity for melancholic defeatism, he nonetheless had one up on me in that this guy was a massive storehouse of knowledge and culture (coming from a highly educated, upper class family abroad). In hindsight, I now have mixed feelings about delving into the works of a self-proclaimed elitist.

II. The thing that really grabbed my attention in Steiner's writings was his emphasis on the fundamental importance of language to culture. He is also a stylistic writer, extremely so at times. His essays are chuck full intricated and confounding words that even aristocrats use only once per decade. Steiner's prose is alluring as a river flowing with quicksilver. As a speaker, he effortlessly mesmerizes the audience. Here is a little video sampling of him when interviewed for a documentary on Martin Heidegger. I've read 16 of his books. Those pertaining to language are After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, one of his more famous works, Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?, Language and Silence and Extraterritorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution, the latter three being essay compilations. Other notables where hours were spent reading include The Death of Tragedy, Antigones, No Passion Spent and On Difficulty and Other Essays. One of his first books, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in Contrast is, in my opinion, essential reading for any student of literature. Rightly, he sides with the vehement, soul-exposing Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy is too pastoral and girly for my tastes. Three books are apocalyptic in tenor: In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture, a biography on Heidegger, father of Postmodernism, and Nostalgia for the Absolute, from his 1974 Massey Lectures.[1]

III. Despite his ability to dazzle with astounding feats of linguistic gymnastics, many of Steiner's ideas and propositions repulsed me. First and foremost is that he's made claims to the effect that anti-Semitism is endemic to Christianity. Not a few academics make this argument. It's an industry in some places, but that's a discussion for another day. In the context of this post, what is immediately apparent with Steiner is that he avows to be a traditionalist/conservative when it comes to high culture and it's preservation (classical music, fine art, poetry, etc.); yet at same time he approvingly quotes and references those radical thinkers whose philosophies have facilitated the abolition of Western Civilization. For example, he will praise Martin Heidegger as being the greatest philosophical mind of the twentieth century. However, Steiner is well cognizant that Heidegger was a Nazi and that his ontological existentialism is intimately associated with the Nazi weltanschauung.[2] This amoral, contradictory, even inauthentic mode of presentation is persistent throughout most of his books.[3] It is also a mirror reflection of the elemental aspects of Postmodernist thought. Praise and promotion for a treatise there will be because of a supposedly enigmatic writing style (as over substance), of subjective epiphanies, of bizarre interconnections, of free association without limitation, etc. And all this without regard to its moral and social consequences in the objective world where real people live their lives, knowingly or not, in conformance with this debilitating worldview, if it so happens to hold sway with whatever group. Note, for instance, the structural abominations "designed" by architects spellbound by Deconstructionism.

IV. In 1996 a brilliant experiment was conducted by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. He submitted a paper entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to the Postmodernist journal Social Text. The main argument of the paper was that the scientific notion of quantum gravity was in actuality a "social and linguistic construct". As Sokal detailed in this paper:

...deep conceptual shifts within twentieth-century science have undermined... Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics... revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast further doubt on its credibility... most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream-Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the facade of "objectivity"... It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical "reality", no less than social "reality", is at bottom a social and linguistic construct.[4]

Beautiful textual content, is it not? Mellifluent, yes? Deliciously appealing to Gunther, the thick-rimmed glasses-wearing sipper of latte's, connoisseur of Lacan-inspired interior design schemes? The paper was accepted and published. But... it was a hoax, as Sokal afterward wrote in an article for Lingua Franca magazine.

V. Inspired by the "Sokal Affair", some time ago this blogger conducted his own experiment, a kind of "stream of consciousness" test. In the blurring smoke of sophistry, I will now like to effect a self-indulgent exercise in grammatical solipsism; checking, in a way, for "presence" and meaning in language. As Steiner said in the video linked above, "Deconstruction speaks of language as an autonomous, inward turning game, as a dance around an infinity of possible meanings". In what follows I will as much as possible neglect rules, evade logic, engage in the solipsistic and the ridiculous. I will pick words, so to speak, out of nothing, ejecting the notion of continuity, direction and purpose. Essentially, I will just play like the Dadaists and "let everything go". I will be a Postmodernist intellectual.

Here is the outcome:

Notwithstanding the innate inclination of neurologically-minded denizens, who, without ruminating on the quagmire that has interpenetrated their circumflexive normalities, things have metaphorically culminated into a maelstrom of incontestibilities. Alternatively, the hyper-biological, those individuals whose externalities are devoid of stratae - and I wholeheartedly affirm the erudition of these buffoons - perpetually combat the ontological necessity of a necessary unit, thus extenuating into an apocalyptic chaos. Now, one might interject that, even though these amalgamations, these conglomerates of particularities, are withdrawn from the hiddenness of the global scheme of interconnections, they are still, without rubric, the epiphany and apex of potentialities. Predestination and the atypical meanderings that delve and suffuse within the innermost cavities of the metaphysical abyss are, indeed, the dissociates of the embedded, nominated anti-logocentrisms. However, if the roundaboutness has camouflaged the internalities of the megalopolis, it would be presupposed that the juxtapositions and circumlocutions would suffice for the post-conditioned detachments and antecedents. Moreover, the multi-dimensioned, the trinity of universals, would, perchance, scream onwards beneath, between and behind the geometrical subdivisions that are coincidentally adjacent, and therefore intermingled with, the extraordinary capacities of humanity, the befriending of consequences. Collaterally, these indiscreet problematics are tautological in the sense that they commingle with the eventualities inborn in the cranium that we label as society. The randomness of the syllogisms and hence their totalities are rendered nil. If the reader were to subsequently refute these verifications - and, indeed, the probability confounds us - it would be explicated that the implosive force of the corresponding returns would eventually rebound and enter our range of spatial cognition. This hypothesis may seem fruitless, but if we sample the denatured aspect of thrownness of the gratifying essent we sublimate into that singularity which swirls into a region contiguous to Gondwanaland. The cataclysm, the catastrophe, astound and attract us as though we defended the crushing thrust of the pluralisms of the contemporary dissidents. From this, in this, near this, and of this, we wane, we compress and decompress until the finality of the circumstance is floundered. Although, if the duality of the substance is a reflection of its existentiality, we push backwards and succumb to a plentiful notion that dwells, to the residency within the coextensiveness of being human.

Now, one asks, is this true?

Nay, I say.

Sixteen score and three years have passed, have engendered indecisiveness that detaches, that staggers the credible emblems. Lastly, and by no means eloquently, it is too late. Bypassing these actualities, and fretting alongside these buttresses, we query the naturalness of the dreaded classification and, supposedly, the subjugations that infuse into our minds. If this were subdued teleologically, we would - and I concur with this grandiosity - be baffled and compounded retrogressively. Venus and vapour, that etherealness, would make ephemerality reign in the highest sovereign mode. Saliently and, one would assume precipitously, we are disgusted to the point of an abdominal implosion. And the dissonant music of the spheres would give an unstable foundation, a structure that wavers synchronously as time diminishes. Perchance without the condition of boundedness. It follows that pornographic subliminalness and the noise humanity makes one excitable. Returning to the lowest immaterial possibility, the folly of the complicated, including that bilateral diffusiveness which is incessantly propounded, enmesh us in quietness.

Or so it would seem.

See, it's easy. Try it and then submit your work to Social Text for possible publication, or perhaps to Vox Nova, or even to the poetry section at the Prairie Messenger. And, no, yours truly was not consuming an alcoholic beverage when composing that tract. Nor was the Postmodernism Generator utilized.

Just think of all the people Joyce has hoodwinked.

Will have something more substantial up next time around. In the meantime, the reader might want to peruse my essay on Deconstructionism here.

Now it's time for a cookie. Goodnight.


NOTES / REFERENCES

1. Steiner also has some fiction: Anno Domini: Three Stories, Proofs and Three Parables and The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., the acronym meaning "Adolf Hitler". His autobiography, Errata: An Examined Life, is one of the strangest books I've ever read.

2. See V. Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, trans. P. Burell and G.R. Ricci (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), passim; W.E. Hughes, "The People Versus Martin Heidegger", First Things, December 1993, no. 38, pp. 34-38; H. Ott, Martin Heidegger, A Political Life, trans. A. Blunden (London: Fontana Press, 1994), pp. 133-260; R. Safranaski, Martin Heidegger, Between Good and Evil, trans. E. Osers (London: Cambridge University Press, 1998), passim.

3. For a critical review of Steiner's works see B. Cheyette, "Between Repulsion and Attraction: George Steiner's Post-Holocaust Fiction", Jewish Social Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, Spring/Summer 1999, pp. 67-81.

4. A Sokal, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", Social Text, Spring-Summer 1996, no. 46/47 (Science Wars issue), pp. 217-252.

OUI, MESDAMES ET MESSIEURS... YOU, TOO, CAN WRITE LIKE A POSTMODERNIST INTELLECTUAL

LIFE OF THE PARTY...

...well, can't really say that of myself lately, at least in the blogosphere. I always have some projects on the go and a post will come soon. For those blogs I regularly visit and semi-regularly comment, my apologies for not doing the latter. I'm just all commented out as of late. And a special thank you to my readers and commenters, especially to those who abhor this space.

Work and other matters are intruding. What time is it now? ...err, 1:06 am EDT and I'm just finishing with the daily toil. The body is lethargic and my brain hurts big time.

Anyhow, this seems a good time as any to advertise my services with a promotional video. Bookings are $420. I'm available for all kinds of parties...

LIFE OF THE PARTY...