St. Louis the Ninth King of France pt. II

History is an extremely useful tool in demonstrating the correctness of Catholicism. Of course Catholicism is a Historical religion, with its central dogma revolving around the historic person of Jesus Christ. The actual intervention of the God-head, with the incarnation of the Second Person of the Ever Blessed Trinity. It relies on the fact that this historic person was in fact both God and Man and that He offered a Vicarious Sacrifice for our redemption. This God-Man was then to rise from the Dead, the most glorious of all the miracles and commissioned the Twelve Apostles, Peter as the Rock, founding a Church to carry the Gospel of the New Testament to all mankind. It's books contain historical accounts of this God-Man's life as well the very early days of the Church. The deposit of the Faith was completed at the historic date of the death of the last Apostle John. All of its decrees and councils have a specific historic setting. In general it would be impossible to understand the Catholic Church without knowing at these historical details.

It is my conviction that the history of philosophy is an essential discipline in coming to grips with philosophy in general. Likewise if one wishes to have a fuller understanding of Catholicism its general history should be understood. That is not to say that its Sacred Decrees and dogmas must be historicised in order for them to be understood, for they are a unique form of data revealed directly by God, but it is still helpful to know something of the controversies and difficulties which the Church has had to face through the ages. My point is actually that the history of the Church in all matters, those of revelation and of secular influence, are useful for not only understanding, but demonstrating Catholicism correctness.

Let it be said that I am in no way impressed by an atheists or Protestants objection that the Church has harboured sinners; and that some of Her children have abused the positions of power, or done evil things. This does not demonstrate Her correctness or falsity, it only demonstrates that men have a fallen nature. I believe it was Chesterton who was convinced that the presence of Sin in the world was the surest proof of God's existence. I happen to agree, for if God didn't exist there would be no Sin, no evil, no badness, only sheer, blind, existence. However, in this essay I will talk about Louis IX a Saint and a King. He happened to be my first real contact with Catholicism. Prior to my studying him I had no idea about saints, or popes or any of that. I do not believe that an individuals sanctity can be a proof of correctness or falsity either. I once faintly asked a friend of mine if there were any Anglican Saints, to which the reply was 'No, of course not, you have to be Catholic to be Saint'. (Of course at this point neither of us had heard of 'Saint' Charles king and martyr of the Anglican Church, nor its Lambeth Conference)

As for Saint Louis the Ninth I came across him in an essay I wrote entitled, '‘The Epitome of a Christian King’ Do you agree with this verdict on Louis IX (St. Louis) of France?'. Needless to say I did. In fact I wrote a glowing essay on the virtues of this Prince, defending him against all who would dare to spoil his name. It occurred to me that it may in fact have been a certain secular bias that would refuse to see Louis as he was. There is a definite 'black legend' surrounding the Middle Ages; that it is an Age of backwardness or repression. One can see it reflected well if you pick up a standard text on Philosophy. Likely you will see that there were the Socratics up to and including Aristotle and then there was Descartes. What ever happened to Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, Bonaventure, Peter Lombard, et al? As if nothing happened between 300 BC and 1700 AD except for a few pious people, mumbling prayers.

The principle biography of Louis was written by his friend Lord of Joinville whose credibility is questioned because it is was written as hagiography. At the time I believed that it was a ridiculous accusation to make, not because I felt that hagiography couldn’t be called history, but because Lord Joinville had put many details into the biography that showed Louis to be human; things such as his impatience.

What most impressed me was the voice of his holy mother who said, ‘Never forget that sin is the only great evil in the world. No mother could love her son more than I love you. But I would rather see you lying dead at my feet than know that you had offended God by one mortal sin’. This idea of hating Sin more than loving life was something that set deeply upon my mind. For what could be worse than to be dead spiritually? One’s soul is no longer fully functioning, it possesses nothing, the flesh has no purpose but to harbour empty meaningless matter, extrinsic reality is the only thing left and what a horror that is. Considering also the horror wrought against so Good a God; one does not deprive God of anything, for He remains Infinitely Good, but one looses God, looses Good. There is then nothing left, there is no substance in evil, it is only emptiness. In any case there was this Queen, with all the material advantages that being a monarch would bare, telling her son and the heir to the throne that it would he’d better off dead in the flesh than to ever offend God.

This message of his mother’s left a deep impression of Louis as well, for he was to live a most exemplary life. Devoting to helping the poor, rescuing fallen women, purging usury, arbitrating justly in international disputes and of course going on crusade for the sanctification of his subject princes. There is a brilliant tale of him jumping enthusiastically off the boat upon arrival in Egypt ready to fight and having to be restrained by his followers. He also supported the mendicant orders, extended the inquisition, while restraining it from over zealousness and banned the baring of arms against Christians.

Louis’s advice to his son is inspiring:

You should, with all your strength, shun everything which you believe to be displeasing to Him. And you ought especially to be resolved not to commit mortal sin, no matter what may happen and should permit all your limbs to be hewn off, and suffer every manner of torment, rather than fall knowingly into mortal sin.

[…]

If our Lord send you any prosperity, either health of body or other thing you ought to thank Him humbly for it, and you ought to be careful that you are not the worse for it, either through pride or anything else, for it is a very great sin to fight against our Lord with His gifts.

Dear son, I advise you that you accustom yourself to frequent confession, and that you choose always, as your confessors, men who are upright and sufficiently learned, and who can teach you what you should do and what you should avoid.

Dear son, I advise you that you listen willingly and devoutly the services of Holy Church, and, when you are in church, avoid to frivolity and trifling, and do not look here and there; but pray to God with lips and heart alike, while entertaining sweet thoughts about Him, and especially at the mass, when the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are consecrated, and for a little time before.

[…]

Dear son, I advise you that you try with all your strength to avoid warring against any Christian man, unless he have done you too much ill. And if wrong be done you, try several ways to see if you can find how you can secure your rights, before you make war; and act thus in order to avoid the sins which are committed in warfare.

That a king should be so zealous in the Faith was an eye opener for me. Was Louis IX the epitome of a Christian king? I couldn’t think how anyone could be more fitted to the title. At the time however, it never really occurred to me that this view was controversial, or that I was speaking like a Catholic. One instructive instance is when I said in my essay something to the effect: ‘The Vatican canonized Louis as a Saint, which really suggests that he must have been a Christian king, for how much more Christian can one get than being a Saint?’. Not a very Protestant or modern way of looking at it.

It must be remembered that my knowledge of Catholicism was still very limited at this time. I had learned that it was a separate thing, something distinct from Protestantism and I was beginning to come across all the no-popery cries, none of which I found particularly convincing. I would defend Rome against stupid attacks, but it never occurred to me that I needed to be a Catholic, or that I would become one.

I was also at this time attending an evangelical Bible study group. I have to confess that I was never that impressed by biblical fideism or the manner of interpreting one verse in multitudinous ways. There never seemed to be any reason for belief in the Bible except that it was called a Holy Book. I also found the tactic of playing on peoples fears to be abhorrent. Nevertheless I stuck with this group for a long time, even though unconsciously I was becoming more ‘Roman’ in my outlook; things like ‘How brilliant is St Thomas Aquinas?’ where not uncommon phrases to pass my lips.

So leaving for the Christmas vacation in the first year I was becoming disenchanted with Protestantism, but I was not really thinking about Catholicism. I was quite content in my moderately high Church Anglican establishment and I passed my last Christmas as a non-Catholic happily. I was about to receive a shock however, with the coming term.

To be continued…

Confessions of a Convert pt. I

There are so many various accounts of Conversions to the true Faith and it seems that an additional voice is almost pointless, if not even a little arrogant. However, in the midst of hundreds of voices crying out for every sort of madness, from divorce now wholly acceptable to abortion acceptable to only to those who wish to loose their humanity, perhaps there is a place for a reality check.

As a whole conversion to the Faith, for me in any case, was not so much a terrible intellectual struggle as it was a massive learning curve. It was once observed, by Chesterton I think, that the Faith is often charged with stopping people from thinking. What is amusing about it is that it actually teaches one how to think. Fulton Sheen once observed that a non-Catholic will know a great deal about his own little idea and will jealously defend it but will know very little about his opponents ideas; whereas a Catholic will always go out of his way to know exactly what his opponent thinks so that he may fairly access it. It is an amusing irony that the man who best described ecclesial Modernism was in fact the arch-antimodernist Pope St. Pius X. It was again observed by Chesterton that people often attack the Church on what it is not, rather that what it is. He defended the Church against any sort of prejudicial attack, e.g. that the Church ignores the Bible, because it was complete nonsense. He found that his objections lay not in what was commonly found in the no-popery camp, but what the Church actually taught, which might actually be true. His worries were not about 'the errors of Rome' but about the Truths of Rome. In any case if conversion has done anything for me it certainly has given me the capacity to think.

I suppose that in this day it is not so much a contest between whether this or that provincial Protestant sect is correct or the Church of Rome is correct, but rather a matter of whether God actually exists and if he does whether he would actually interfere in any special way in human affairs, answering prayers etc. I must confess that I find the atheist or antitheist debate not terribly interesting, I only really pay attention when they start talking about evil, at which point they actually have a real point. Apart from that to say, 'The that than which nothing greater can be conceived doesn't exist' is a statement of pure nonsense, for if it doesn't exist it is not the 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived'. To say 'God doesn't exist' is in fact a negative statement of His actual existence, for know God is to know He exists. To say 'God probably doesn't exist' is a very human statement, a psychological condition owing to our rather experiential dominated minds.

As I said the problem of evil is valid and real point because in it we see an apparent contradiction, God the highest conceivable and actual Good, creates 'things' and seemingly must create evil, since nothing exists that does not come from God. Yet God is Good, so how can there be evil? It is a good point that can be simply answered, although not wholly satisfactorily in such short space, by saying that evil is a deprivation of Good; in other words it is a choice not to possess Good.

The argument about God is an interesting one but it was not one that interested me as a non-Catholic. My position before conversion was one of mild agnostic, read ignorant quasi-Christian. I had a nominal Christian upbringing, I went to church if I felt like it (and if I got up on a Sunday morning) but I was not terribly concerned about religion or God or anything like that. In actual fact I was completely ignorant of Rome. When I say this I do not mean that I knew something about Her, that She was run by the Bishop of Rome, that She had sacraments and Rosaries and all that, I mean that I did not know anything about Catholicism. I would have said at most that She was a denomination of Christianity, perhaps the national Church of Italy, but apart from that I knew nothing of Her history, Her doctrines, Her current controversies, Her organisation, and likewise (and hence my agnosticism) I knew very little about Protestantism. I was mildly attracted to the High Church CoE, I was appalled at evangelicalism, with its particular emphasis on using Hell as a tool for conversion. (I mean using fear rather than Love/Charity as a basis for being a Christian).

I left 6th form with an interest in politics/economics and history and some vague interest in finding out what Christianity actually was. Upon arriving at University I was put into a position of having a lot of spare time (a lot more than at home at least) and being able to spend many hours reading. It was in fact the study of history that was my first proper encounter with Christianity, and Catholicism.

To Be Continued...

Distributism

There are many excellent websites around that give an very full account of Distributism and allow a certain amount of practical discussion on distributism in the modern world. There are also many excellent sources dealing with the current crisis in the Catholic Church. As far as this blog is concerned my primary interests revolve around the Church and the world. The Church offers the answers the spiritual and intellectual crisis that affects so many. As far as the world is concerned Distributism offers one possible alternative to the madness of modern Capitalism and liberalism.

As far as I am concerned a return to a sane economy can never be a final solution to the troubles that afflict the world, but it can be a medium for restoring balance. Chesterton said 'So if I am told at the start: "You do not think Socialism or reformed Capitalism will save England; do you really think Distributism will save England?" I answer, "No, I think Englishman will save England, if they begin to have half a chance."' In this simple phrase Chesterton sums up the heart of social reform. Men must be changed, not systems. No system can perfect man, for he is imperfect. Yet restoration of sanity is possible if the right conditions exist. Whether man is imperfect or not, if in he is put into the right situation he can at least have half a chance at being better than he was.

So whats my point. As far as I see the world is infected, as it always has been ever since the fall, with the self, the ego. This formulation, dogmatic as it sounds, is basically the beginning of the problem. If man puts himself as the supreme being, if the individual is the absolute, then everything will descend into chaos. One only has to look a the multitude of philosophies that have been concocted by so-called intellectuals to realise the general futility a making man the supreme being. Existence proceeds Essence!, in other words man, finding that he exists fabricates himself in any image he chooses; that image then becomes his being! Clearly if one were to truly believe such nonsense then it must be true that one must always in effect 'create' oneself and then anything goes. Logically we would only be the sum of our total existence and thus an 80 year old would have more essence than a 2 year old. (Perhaps that might justify abortion? only if such a ridiculous notion were actually true)

The sum of it all is simply this; Catholicism being a dogma is the only 'system' that is 'big' enough for all, it is the only thing that can be truly universal. From there on in reality and a sanity can reign. Distributism, with its belief in the redistribution of private property for the restoration of liberty, is certainly a creed that may enable us to finally root out insanity. In any case it is worth the try.

If pride is the first sin, then the root of of evil is love of money. Both of these construct insubstantial realities, that it to say they mirror God's creative power but without the substance. They pit a new phantom reality in place of real reality, which is ultimately God's reality. The only way out, is not to fabricate yet another Babel in a vain attempt to try to replace all previous monstrosities, but to submit to real reality, that is to God. No system can do this only the individual can, but in a beautiful paradox we can do that in Christ, through him, in communion with Him and His Church. There is nothing so universal as a dogma!