Why I March: Because of Her

[W]e are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the "culture of death" and the "culture of life". We find ourselves not only "faced with" but necessarily "in the midst of" this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.

 - John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 28

De Mendacio Non Est Disputandum?

I promised myself (as well as several people dear to me to whom I was becoming a bore) that I was done with the whole Lying and Live Action controversy - you know, after this, that, and the other thing.

But, lo, from the American Chesterton Society come lately three rejoinders, in the form of contrary editorials in the hot-off-the-presses issue of Gilbert Magazine: from David Beresford, Sean Dailey, and Dale Ahlquist. Sean Dailey explains that the Gilbert editorial board arrived at an impasse on this particular issue. Unable to reach their customary unanimity in doling out the task of the editorial on the subject, they decided to present the competing views to the readership. It's provocation! A gauntlet cast! Just begging me to get back into it, even! (I rationalize to myself and the aforementioned bored loved ones, anyway.) So, it's back into the fog, go I.

I must add a couple more prefatory notes before jumping in: First, I want this to be a discussion, really and truly, so please don't be shy! Second, there'll be multiple posts on this, so be courteous in replies and give me the benefit of the doubt that I might not be completely overlooking something, but maybe only waiting. Third, the last having been said, if it seems obvious that I'm "through" a point and you note errors in my logic, I welcome - indeed I desire! - your correctives and counterpoints, because I intend to try to shape something of an official reply for the magazine out of this discussion. Or, you know, my scrapbook.

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I want to begin with David Beresford's piece because his is the one which most obviously stands opposed to the position on the Live Action debate which I took the last go-'round.

And in beginning with Beresford's piece, I'm going to prescind momentarily from discussing the beginning half of his article, for reasons which I hope will become apparent further down. Instead, I'll begin in the middle of his article, where he proposes to "strip away the emotion" that often belabors this matter in debate, and offers an example which will make the issue "clear." Allow me to quote at length:

Suppose, for example a four-year-old girl comes to her father and shows him a crayon drawing of a cow. “Look at my cow, Daddy! Isn’t it a good picture?”

What is the right response?

For literalist, truth-at-all-costs-and damn-the-consequences types, the situation is stripped of the heroic sacrifices associated with telling the strict truth, and reveals this position as that of a heel. “No, it is not good,” they must answer. And shame on them.

The equivocators among us may want to craft a clever response with a mental reservation: “It is a wonderful picture and the colors are so bright!” Congratulations, this verbal dexterity will allow one to maintain self-respect and fool the small child in the process by dodging the question. But, this is no better than the previous answer.

There is only one morally right answer, one answer that does not sin against charity, against duty, and against innocence: “That is the best picture of a cow I have ever seen!”

This is the only answer that is not encumbered by “self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.” We do not know if it is lying or not, by definition.

We do know that in this case equivocating is a disgusting pose almost as despicable as answering that the picture is no good. [SOURCE; emphasis mine]From this situation, Beresford argues, we can appreciate "the common sense of ordinary people: the natural law written on men's hearts."

Now, there's something very wonderful about this argument, and I mean that truly. It's a refreshing appeal, just as was Dr. Kreeft's appeal so many month's ago to the power of synderesis. And both these good men are right: there is a common sense element here. But as I argued back then, I will argue now: common sense leads in the opposite way than what is suggested here.

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Let's look at Mr. Beresford's analogy more closely. What is it about the four-year old girl that informs this common sense judgment that she deserves to be affirmed in her cow drawing? I do not deny that she should be so affirmed! But I ask, again - isn't it that she should be affirmed that is the crucial thing here?

Suppose it's not a four-year old, but my fourteen year old daughter. She brings me a painting she made up in her room, whence she rarely comes because the world is so tragic, and only she and the wailing voices in her music really "get it." And she expresses this tragedy that she just gets so well, because she's suffered and lost love (even though she never actually talked to the boy one has in mind), she expresses all this pain and ennui in her edgy, stick-figure and glitter art.

Suppose that's the situation. She brings me this painting and says, "Daddy, isn't this just the best? Ohmahgawd, I'm totally dropping out of school and becoming an artist!"

Now, how would anyone with common sense respond? All good parents will tell my daughter that she should stay in school and make sure about her choice of career path. But what about commenting on the quality of her art? If it really is awful (which, let's presume it is), there's suddenly something different about saying it's not, because she's fourteen and not four.

Okay, now press pause. We're going to a third scenario.

Press play.

I'm with my thirty-four-year-old yuppie daughter and my four-year old granddaughter (by another child) in the local art museum. We come across a sculpture involving legs pointing upward from a urinal that has teeth painted around its rim. Both my daughter and granddaughter exclaim, "That's great! I love it!!!... Grandpa [Daddy] - what do you think?"

Pause.

Now it's time to turn the disc over...

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There seem to be different demands upon our common-sense notion of truth-telling in these situations, even though the questions and the quality of art are constant. What's changing is the person. And if you want to write that down as one of my central theses throughout this whole debate - that the other person matters fundamentally to the demands of truth-telling - you can go ahead and do that now.

Mr. Beresford, while suggesting that he is going to eschew all of the emotional attachments which belabor this argument, doesn't make a very good show of it by conjuring the heart-string-tugging image of a four-year old tyke holding up a crappy picture for doting dad to drool over! But why do we drool? Because four-year old art is all good, to all of us, because it's done by four-year olds. None of us has to lie to say it's great. Nor is this a lie to the other.

Truth-telling is about communication. What does a four-year old want to know when she asks, "Isn't this a good picture?" What does a four year old mean by "good"? Child psychology has shown that children of that age operate by a very pure inductive method of reasoning, and that they cannot apply abstract axiologies to form evaluative judgments. In the four-year old vocabulary (which is what we'll be responding in), "good" means "good for me" and also probably means something very much like "morally good." Contrariwise, to a four-year old, "that's a bad picture" means "you're a bad artist" and, in all likelihood, "you're a bad person." We know this by common sense reasoning - there, Mr. Beresford is right. And so we say what we say in order to communicate truth to the four-year old: to validate her worth, even with a hyperbolic statement like, "That's the best picture of a cow I've ever seen!" Because it's the "best"-loved by us, for the artist's sake.

Some might object though that we have also communicated falsehood about the objective nature of art. But that's precisely what we have not done because we cannot have done. A child of four couldn't intuit that because they can't understand those kinds of evaluative systems. They can't conceptualize "best amongst all cow pictures" in any way such that we could be accused of genuinely communicating it to them as a falsehood. How many times have we heard kids say, "Blue is my favorite color, and so is pink!" They don't understand the axiological weight of "favorite" and "best," so we can't really have communicated much falsehood to them by our use of the phrase in our line about the cow drawing. Instead, "best" here meant what it ought to mean for that child.

Similarly, in the museum with my granddaughter, my granddaughter is "right" when she says that the urinal sculpture is "great." Because, as far as my granddaughter as a four-year old is concerned (barring any gross and perverse anomalies or aberrations), it is "great" - if it makes her giggle, if it makes her happy, if it gives her imagination fuel.

What about my thirty-four-year-old daughter, though, who also said the sculpture is "great"? Well, no, she's wrong. Because really it's not great, it's a piece of shit. And a thirty-four year-old ought to know that; and I'll tell her when I get the chance. Why ought she to know? Because it bears consequences for her that it doesn't for my granddaughter. And so with my fourteen-year-old and her emo nonsense. She might cry if I tell her the truth; and in charity I'm bound to try to help her learn the truth gently. But I'm a bad parent and a perverse sycophant if I tell her it's good art. I have obligations towards these two that I didn't have formerly, and it's all conditioned by how the other is able to get the truth from what I say, and what the truth that benefits the other is considered to be.

To put it simply, one might say that for children under the age of reason alone does the adage really hold true: de gustibus non est disputandum.

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So, we must wonder at this point, how does any of this relate to Live Action? Well, according to Mr. Beresford's logic:

If mothers and fathers cannot rear children without daily having to choose between crushing a child’s heart or telling what some call lies, then lying has become a meaningless term. In the same way, if men of good will cannot save the lives of children without being accused of lying, then again, lying has become a meaningless term.

But here is where we're talking about apples and oranges. As I have tried to demonstrate, these two sentences largely refer to separate moral universes; it is for that reason that I am leaving the earlier half of Beresford's piece to discuss in a future post. The first sentence is too sweeping in its scope, encompassing as the analogy of the four-year-old's drawing is not. Parents don't have to - and shouldn't have to - worry in such a way about the daily struggle to be honest and communicate truth. When the troubled teens come along, though, and the topics are pot and sex and God-knows-what, don't mom and dad choose their words a little more carefully? But I digress...

I will add one final comment on the analogy here.

If one were to apply the logic of this analogy to the Live Action stings, I think common sense derives a very different conclusion than what has been urged in Beresford's article. We have seen that common sense tells us to speak to our daughters - of whatever age - in love. And we have also seen how this always involves the hearer knowing a kind of truth from our statement. We want to love our daughters through what we tell them, and so we tell them the truth - as they are able to understand it. We speak the truth to those we love.

If the analogy has any connection, the only one I can see is this: If my daughter gets the truth because I love her, why not somebody else's daughter behind the desk at the abortion clinic? If I correct my daughter when she's in error and teach her right from wrong without lying and prevarication and "stings" - why do I deal any differently with God's beloved daughter working for the terrible organization? Doesn't she, after all, need the truth all the more? Maybe she's only there because she didn't have a Daddy who loved her enough to tell her so, in all the ways that that truth can be told.

So, What Would Dorothy Day Do?

About a fortnight ago, I posed a question and promised to return to it.

And so, let's get to it. But how?

It would be tempting to start with an invitation, dear reader, that you reflect with me upon the world in which we find ourselves, now nearly a full year into the second decade of the second millennium of the Christian era. But what use is it? I don't know how it goes for you, but for me the reflection overwhelms me almost the moment I've begun. How difficult it would be even to try to catalog the major problems we face, to pick perhaps the top ten maladies plaguing society, and then even tentatively to suggest how Dorothy Day's example might help us in addressing just one of them! How, then, to begin?

Well, in short, not there. We have already been warned against the wrong-headedness of such an approach by the great Chesterton, who called it - in What's Wrong With The World - "the medical mistake":

[T]his scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the disease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease.... The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? I have called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?" and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right. [Source]

And so we will undertake a different approach, a positive project: we will outline certain aspects of the example of one modern saint and see whether these qualities suggest anything to us that can be transfered into and emulated in the context of our own age, not so distant from her own. I might suggest certain crises of culture which seem to line up in particular ways with Dorothy's life, but the choice of how exactly and to what extent her own actions apply in a given situation calls for personal discernment and the diligent exercise of prudence.

But here I must take one more tangent. I own that this list is by no means exhaustive; but even with that caveat I know some will disagree with what I have remarked as "essential" to Dorothy Day's character based on my own study of her life and works. I fear this is unavoidable - yet, I will not apologize nor over-correct for the possible disagreement. I cannot enter deeply here into any discussion of where and why I see these features figuring prominently in Dorothy's biography (nor discuss why I choose these particular qualities above others equally worthy of consideration). My main goal is too modest for all that; I am concerned here to explore the usefulness and fruitfulness of our question as a practical one for translating the Gospel in our age. I welcome dispute and conversation on the matter and will happily work to justify my observations at a length in the comment-boxes that would be cumbersome to this main post. [For those who are simply unfamiliar, there are plenty of good resources out there to get started in a study of this fascinating woman's life: here are just a few.]




Today, I offer for our consideration three manners in which Dorothy Day is a modern exemplar of the Christian life and the practice of the Gospel: as a radical, as a personalist, and as a woman with an apostolate.

Dorothy Day: Radical

In identifying Dorothy Day as a radical, I borrow from the wisdom of Archbishop Charles Chaput who recently offered some reflections on her witness to our age on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of her death. In his own choice to call Day a radical, the Archbishop returned to the etymological root (pun intended) of the word: "She was radical in the truest sense of the word," Chaput said, "committed to the root of the Christian vocation." She witnessed to the Gospel in season and out of season, and "refused to ignore or downplay those Catholic teachings that might be inconvenient."

Thus we find the first use for our question, "What Would Dorothy Day Do?" It translates into the many situations in which the relation of the Christian vocation to the status quo is one of paradoxism. We might think especially, in our age, of situations which seem to imply a binary choice, wherein neither proposed way seems really consistent with the demands of the Gospel. How often are we choosing "the lesser of two evils" - when do we give into compromise for the sake of social manners and communal comfort? Such are situations which probably call for radicalism.

We may ask, what would Dorothy Day do in political life? Whose "side" would she have taken in the many conflicts which define civic discourse in our age: in the airports, at the borders, outside the abortuaries, across the world from the battle zone? I think that her life gives us clear indications of what she might have done in any of these scenarios; but it does not finally matter so much whether we choose to do exactly as she might have done, rather it is important for us that we, when once we've discerned the way that our vocation seems to indicate, do not hesitate in following through to the radical consequences that may unfold. We need not seek ridicule, strife, indignation, or imprisonment: consequences which Day's social actions earned for her with striking regularity. But when the cause of righteousness seems to lead to these things - which seems more and more likely an event - then we may find a useful measure of the full extent of our call in the radicalism of Dorothy Day. And if the situations of paradoxism plaguing our world discomfort only our minds but do not otherwise affect us, then we may well ask whether we are truly fulfilling our Christian call. If the times call for radical response and we do not give it, who will?

Dorothy Day: Personalist

I have remarked before on how the personalist vision is essential for rightly-ordered social action. I believe that it is, philosophically, the key to unlocking the import of the Catholic Church's Social Teaching.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of Christian Personalism - a response to and development upon Christian Existentialism - I think a useful encapsulation can be found in a teaching by Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day's own tutor in this school. She recounts somewhere (I am paraphrasing) how Peter described "selfhood" as being essential to living in true communion: He said that when any number of "I"s are present - that is, truly thematic selves - then there is a "we", and "we" is the essence of community; where, on the other hand, there is only "they", there is not community but "a crowd".

Crucial to the living of the Christian vocation is finding the other truly as a "self", a fully realized person with whom we are called into relationship. For Day, the importance of this is that the very self of the other is transformed by the Incarnation and by Christ's teaching on the judgment: when we serve others who are hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, we serve Him: and discovering Him in this way is crucial to having true relationship with Him. This is an inimitable aspect of Christian life which prayer and even the sacraments - even the Eucharist - cannot replace. Thus, for Dorothy, the exercise of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy became essential expressions of the Christian vocation: not merely peripheral concerns or even fruits of some deeper experience of holiness and grace. Christ is waiting to be met in personal encounters with the poor and needy in a way that is necessarily complementary to the manner in which He comes to us through sacrament.

[[It is an interesting side-light on this matter that the present Holy Father's social teaching seems to take a very similar tact to that of Dorothy and Peter Maurin. I have written about the Pope's work here in light of his affinity with the Christian Personalism of Dietrich von Hildebrand. I also treat of an instance in section IV) where, on the unique category of love of neighbor, Benedict seems to go beyond the master's theology; it occurs to me now that the direction he seems to be taking in this respect is really foretokened in the examples of Day and Maurin.]

So, what would Dorothy Day do as a personalist in our age? Where - in whom - would she find Christ waiting for compassion, for respect, for love? Would she wait for Him to come to her, or go to seek Him out? ... which leads us to our next category:

Dorothy Day: Woman of Apostolic Living

Dorothy's apostolicity comes in two categories: word and action.

In Word

Dorothy challenged the orthodoxies of her day with words seeded by the Gospel's teachings. What conversations call for authentic Christian voices in our world today? In her own age, Dorothy published a paper for a penny-a-copy with a pittance of resources. We have unprecedented technological means for spreading the Christian message, for reaching untold audiences at the click of a mouse. On our own Facebook Walls we have, in all likelihood, audiences which numerically equal or surpass the initial subscribing membership of The Catholic Worker. Do we use this to our advantage - rather, to the Gospel's advantage? Do we choose our words to discomfort the smug and comfort the afflicted? Do we challenge with our words? Do we respond to the errors that cross our screens and add our voice to the conversation, or for the sake of anonymity and convenience turn a blind eye?

In Action

Dorothy was not content merely to wait for the challenge of the Gospel to cross her doorstep. She went out and gathered the lost and forsaken. She let her lodgings be overtaken by those in need and found larger ones when she ran out of space so that more could have the advantage of her aid. To our jaded age it may seem she was often taken advantage of. Perhaps she was. But this seemed to her less of a risk than the risk of doing too little, of missing a chance to engage in the apostolate.

The answer to our question here is so vast and varied as to almost seem unhelpful. There are so many ways in which we can help, so many ways in which we can make a difference. We know this much from the Gospel - so how does Dorothy's example really help to elucidate and distill that teaching for us and make it practicable?

I would argue that Dorothy's apostolic action is a useful model for us in its ambition and scope. In the name of humility, and in the name of the virtues of prudence and temperance, it seems that Christians today might let themselves too easily off the hook for simply not doing more that they could. (I should note that here, as in all of the above - in case you haven't realized it yet - I accuse myself first of all!)

This is, again, something I have written about before. In our age excuses are not hard to come by. Furthermore, -and I know this will be one of my more controversial points - it seems more in vogue these days to encourage the ordinary ways of holiness, to call for Christians to be more perfect in their day-to-day lives as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, businessmen, workers, painters, writers, etc. And, surely, this is needed. But I think we also need to intensify our call for Christians to do more - to go beyond the ordinary, to become immersed in the apostolate in a thorough-going manner, to go to the brink of when it seems they can simply do no more and then give even a little extra.

Perhaps it will seem that we are being taken advantage of, that the needy are bleeding us dry. But, then, perhaps this is the kind of bloodshed called for in this apostolic age, a new kind of martyrdom. And so, rather than asking what action Dorothy would undertake among the many social imperatives that need the work of good Christians, we can ask our question as a measure of degree: when we wonder whether we should do more, we can ask: "What Would Dorothy Day Do?"

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I began this series of reflections by looking at the question, "What Would Jesus Do?" The question emblazoned on bracelets adorns the hands of believers throughout the world; what should really be found at the hands of believers is the answer to that question. In the hands of Dorothy Day, that answer was found: hands cuffed in radical action against injustice, hands lovingly stroking the face of a stranger, hands typing the words of evangelistic love, hands serving food to Christ in the breadlines. Ultimately, our purpose in asking our new question is not the question itself: it is the answer we will give: the answer we must give: the answer that reveals how Jesus already had done and continues doing "what He would". He calls us - and sends us forth.

Even His Own Life

We live in a very sentimental age. I'm mired in the muck of it from day to day, and mostly grin and bear it, although many an encounter could easily enough prompt me to hold forth here on the matter. I've been a very lazy blogger this year, preoccupied with other business and expert in making excuses for neglecting this organ of mission. But once in a while, a homilist will annoy me so greatly that I feel positively compelled to write something in response - so any faithful readers who continue to watch here for some kind of update can always pray for the certain provocation that a bad sermon will provide.

This Sunday at Mass, Our Lord in the Gospel gives one of those hard-sayings that astonish disciples and halt us in our tracks:

If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. - Luke 14:26

Now, the most interesting thing in this brief saying to my nerdy sensibilities is its structure.

In the Greek text, there's a turn of phrase before the last item on the list - his own life - which is rendered in the NAB translation as even. Even, of course, gets the job done, but there's an emphatic weight that is sort of lost to us unless the one proclaiming the Gospel really nails that word. The fact is that the Greek phrasing does contain an adverb meaning "even", but that its situation amongst a conjunction and a particle make it a very emphatic, very insistent "even." It's a "moreover" even, a "yes, even" (as the RSV renders the phrase).

An illustration might help us get deeper into it. Another Lukan use of this phrase can be found in the moreover in the 28th verse of Chapter 21 in Acts. The Jews from Asia are bringing accusations against Paul:

Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching men everywhere against the people and the law and this place; moreover he also brought Greeks into the temple, and he has defiled this holy place.

Now, observing the effect of the "moreover" in this sentence, we can see that it is an obvious signal for a particular kind of argument: namely, the a fortiori, the argument that builds up from weaker to stronger reasons and ends by emphasizing the strongest evidence. This is a kind of argument found throughout the Scripture: recall the place where Christ compares the goodness of human fathers in giving good gifts to their children in order to highlight how "much more so" the Father in Heaven will give good gifts to the persevering supplicant.

Well, the a fortiori is in full operation in the passage from this week's Gospel as well. And this is where the bad homily and sentimentality comes in.

Good-natured modern folks are often guilty of a very blithe kind of altruism. It's a dressed-up aping of the virtue of humility that forgets the self rather than transcends the self, and - in an ironic solution - ends by disallowing self-transcendence because of that very forgetfulness. How to better illustrate what I mean?

Let's look at this reading as an example. Now, a good modern preacher's first approach to a reading should always be a response to a "concern." What is the concern, the felt need of the community, the point of friction or challenge, that a particular pericope pinpoints? The bad homilist I have in mind from this weekend was, emphatically, not a bad preacher - he responded directly to the most obvious felt need of his congregation in engaging this passage. What I will be taking issue with here is the nature of that need, what it means for modernity, and how the fact of feeling it ought to become to focal point for the preacher's sermon. The preacher in this case focused on why Our Lord demands such terrible things as that we hate our mom and dad, and oh isn't that terrible? He succeeded, I suppose, in making some sense of the matter, but he left out the main part: the denial of self to which all this ordered and from which all this stems.

Admittedly, a modern listener is jarred by the admonition to hate anything at all coming from Our Lord's mouth in the first place - and further discomfited by the specific direction given that it's our own parents, siblings, spouses, and children that we must hate in order to follow the call of discipleship. By the time the argument spins round - a fortiori - to the emphatic call to hate even one's own life, it glances off. In a strange way, the moral and ethical self-consciousness of this Gospel's hearers swallows the hardest part of this saying most easily: we can almost imagine the congregant saying, "Well, the call to deny self I'm used to; I can do that, sure, and who does that hurt but me? But how can I hate me dear old mum?!"

It's the same sort of distaste that creeps into our perception when Christ generically addresses his Mother as "Woman." (Of course, this is not so generic as it seems on the surface, but to discuss that here would be too long a digression.) We often get another hint of the problem of sentimentality when people talk about or teach the "law of love." How many times have you heard someone interpret the saying, "Love your neighbor as yourself" or draw the inference from it that we're to love our neighbor MORE than our very selves? Now, there's a drawing toward truth in this inference, but the fact is that most of the time its utterance is too easy, too glib, and devoid of depth or meaning. It's a sentimental altruism, a sort of stoic generosity. We swallow the hard pill of self-denial (in theory) and suddenly find it's not so hard anyway, because gosh isn't it swell to be so loving and selfless and all?

But the a fortiori will not abandon its strength, and finally we must confront its deeper signification: in this saying, in the law of love itself, in every place where Our Lord tells us without confusion that there's a "better way" of reading His message. It does no good to reconcile ourselves to the hardness of His words if we simply throw ourselves against them without discernment of the meaning of the pain. What is the difficulty? What do we understand from this hard saying? Why is it hard - and what does the challenge mean for us?

Well, I'm for reading the Gospel as a whole, and for the answer to this paradoxical question, I'm going to turn to an ulikely source. Whether intentional for this purpose or not by the Church authorities who constructed the lectionary, I think the Holy Spirit offers a solution to the problem of this Gospel in the reading situated before it in the liturgy: the section from Paul's letter to Philemon.

In verses 15 and 16, Paul gives a very beautiful rationale for the slave Onesimus's temporary absence from the community to which Paul is returning him:

Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Now, I don't think I take undue liberty with this text if I argue it to be an intepretive text for the Gospel of the day. Paul has given us a rubric, a hermenuetic if you will, for understanding what happens when we "give away" something to the Lord's will and service: we get it back, a hundred-fold.

I don't see this as a liberty with the text because of Our Lord's own words to this effect in a different Gospel passage, which bears a resemblance to the "hard sayings" given this week by Luke: "And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life" (Matthew 19:29). (Another interesting note is the proximity in both Gospels of this saying to the one that "the first shall be last, and the last shall be first".)

Our Lord is making a radical proposal demanding a real trust on the part of the disciple. There was not so much confusion about this for the Apostles themselves: they had literally left family, fields, and all manner of other things behind, and eventually followed Christ even to death.

This is not a sentimental suggestion about merely being willing to walk away, but a challenge to put our actions in line with our words - and if not our external actions, our internal ones. There's nothing stopping a single disciple from fully renouncing all that he's been given in this life, today, by an internal act. For those familiar with the method of Saint Louis de Montfort's consecration to Our Lady, you might recognize in this something akin to where de Montfort speaks about "giving up" even our own intentions and concerns of intercessory prayer, and relinquishing them to Our Lady. In fact, we don't really give them up, but we begin with that total dedication, that total commitment to her, and accept our own intercession - even our own will - back as gift.

Why is sentimentality the enemy? Because sentimentality forgets that the "giving up of ourselves" which we find so easy, in contrast to the difficulty of denying our loved ones, is not a real giving up. We're taking refuge in the things we love, and the very pleasure we have in loving them becomes a consoling balm. We forget that what we struggle with in the saying about hating mother, father, sister, brother is the pronounal reference of these: they are abstract terms, situated primarily in our own relation: it's MY mom, MY dad, MY sister, MY brother, MY spouse, MY kids. And that's why the a fortiori drives so hard at the self: it's getting after the MY. All of those things which are MINE must first be severed from my ultimate desires in order that the ME may follow. Contrarywise, if we truly accomplish this abandonment of self - of all our desires, hopes, dreams, pains, sorrows, loves, wishes - into the Lord's service as perfect disciples... well then of necessity all of the things which were MINE become HIS along with my very self. And the new point of reference for all relating to the things which might have been MINE is now centered in Christ: if I love them, it's primarily because they're His; if I deny them, it's ultimately because I'm His.

Once again, and important to remember, the long road of martyrdom and some external act to finalize and concretize this commitment is not our immediate concern. No, the Cross is ours to carry today, and every moment of prayer affords us an opportunity of total abandonment, of relinquishment, of renunciation. This is a hard saying indeed. Will we, today, "hate" these things and give them away? Will we, that is, deny them unless and except they are His? Will we accept them only as return from Him, and not as already given? Will we love them only when they come back to us through their being His and our being His together? And when sentimental love begins to ache in our heart, will we tear our heart away and place it within His own pierced heart, never to beat again or to love again unless in perfect harmony with His?

The a fortiori does not give up its strength. We can't stop at moreover.

Who Is My Neighbor?

Now the whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all these pages, is this: to assert that we must instantly begin all over again, and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl's hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race.

G.K. Chesterton

The preceding passage is taken from one of the most stirring and rhetorically brilliant passages in all of Chesterton's writing. It is a brief chapter at the end of a too-brief book. You can read the entire passage here. When you're done that, you really should read the whole book. When you've done that, why not attend a conference on the book to learn more?

In an earlier post, I spoke about the ramifications for our spiritual lives of the Gospel's teaching that we "belong" to Christ, and, by extension, to one another. I promised to come back to the subject and relate its meaning to our socio-politico notions.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) is often used in addressing issues of social justice, and rightly so. It should be borne in mind that Christ's parable is addressed as an answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" We tend automatically to think of the poor man beset by robbers who receives the service of the Samaritan as the "neighbor." But, when Christ reiterates the question at the end of the parable, he asks which of the three passers-by - the Pharisee and Priest who ignore the man's plight, or the Samaritan who shows mercy - are neighbor to the afflicted person. The Good Samaritan is the neighbor in answer to the question.

This, then, begs the question: why were the priest and the teacher not neighbors to the wounded traveller? The answer lies in their choice not to commiserate with his sorrow and enter into relationship with him. Their coldness was a result of their attentions to other precepts of ritual purity which took precedence over the command to help the migrant man left in the ditch at the side of the road by brigands. The translation of Christ's answer, then, is not that "neighbors are people who help us" - remember that the question had been asked in the first place as a means to interpreting the command to love one's neighbor. Christ's answer, we must say, is indirect. It answers the question of who neighbor is by answering the more ultimate question of what neighborliness consists in. The command to love one's neighbor contains all of the information that the questioner needed: love is what creates neighborhood. Love draws person to person and establishes relationship. Love of neighbor does not need a qualifying question to answer who neighbor is: when love reigns, the lover sees his neighbor and, seeing him with love, he does what a good neighbor ought to do.

An important point to remember, here, theologically, is that the command to love God fully is placed first. This, then, becomes the basis - theoretically and formally - for the love of neighbor. For love of God will actually beget the virtuous disposition of charity - or, if you like, infuse it - in the believer. This disposition then serves as the answer key for finding a neighbor and responding according to the command to love.

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Now, the upshot of this, following from the previous post, is that our social order needs to be one in which this disposition can realistically become the basis of personal action. In the engagement of every social work, including our economic service, human beings must be able to realize this potential which is begotten by the theological virtue of love.

And this has consequences for how we organize the relationships we have in society and the economy. We must remember that the human person is at the beginning and end of all our work in these matters. When we become too abstract, speaking about the migration of peoples as a labor force, or as laborers as an aspect of economic capital, or as the roles of people within society as their determinative value or worth to the social good, we do so at our peril. Economic rationalization has its place. Abstract theory of government and the rhetoric of policy have theirs. But all of these things are at the service of the ultimately important things, the human things.

A social order's efficiency and value may be seen in terms of what can be accomplished and achieved. But the matter of how things are achieved and who achieves them is even more important to consider. People need a space in which they can have the vision that love demands: a vision directed toward human ends, toward the good for themselves and the good for others.

This should be a staggering thought for us to consider. I'm not saying that I know the necessary ways to transition to a more personalistic atmosphere for modern society, but I know that the Church's Social Teaching demands us to consider it. Think of the line in the supermarket, the stands at the major sporting event, the traffic jam on the freeway, or the cubicle in an office building: maybe a lot like that road to Jerico. The end of the road might be the commercial city, or a mis-placed sense of civic, economic or even religious duty. But our way is strewn with real people, real people who would be loved - regardless of whether or not they'd love in return. And it's our job, it's the whole purpose of the love God gives us, to see them fully, to become neighbor to them by considering them under the aspect of a full personalist humanism, and if necessary by rendering them a service in charity.

The difficulty of this excercise should sober us. But it's also worth considering whether it needs to be so difficult, or how it might be less so. In our earlier post, we looked at how our membership in the Mystical Body of the Church bears a mark of personalism by our individual recognition within the unity to which we are ordered. We are called to communion, yes, but we are called by name - the name we are marked with at the same time as our marking with the sign of the Cross in Baptism and our "being claimed" for Christ. We retain that mark of individuality and it's what enables us to be in real relation with others, to belong to them while still being ourselves.

And so, another question that must confront us and that should inform our consideration of social ethics is how we enable people to become truly "thematic" to one another (to borrow a term from the personalist philosophers). What this means is that people need opportunities to excercise their humanity, their full activity of reason and will, their talents, quirks, and even just to be seen and felt in their fleshly individuality. To the extent that this thematicity is diminished, it becomes harder to become neighbor to one another - we're missing the spur that drives loves on, that awakens it in the heart of the lover and draws him to the other.

So, there we have reached the answer to our question - and it is, paradoxically, no more than a more fundamental question. Just as Christ's parable sort of threw the question back upon the questioner and made him look in the law of love to discern whether he was a good neighbor to others, so must we return to the basics and find a new beginning to looking at the social order. Let's start where Chesterton did: with our neighbor.