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Happy Easter!

[Image: Dieric Bouts, Resurrection, 1455. Details here.]

Christopher Dawson and the history of the West

An interesting long read from The Imaginative Conservative here:

As one sits in the pews of many Christian churches today, he has his attention called to world-historical issues: to the “new” historical moment of the nuclear arms race; to the movements for social justice in the Third World; to the struggle to liberate men and women from structures of “patriarchal oppression;” and, in general, his attention is called to all sorts of momentous issues which are linked together by hyphens along what Kierkegaard called the “prodigious railroad” of world history. Rather than being addressed as individuals who need to cultivate the virtue of justice—as well as the other interior excellences of the soul—we are all too often invited from the pulpit to jump aboard the caboose of the train of world history lest it pass us by altogether.

The article engages the issue on two levels. First, it suggests that a characteristic of modern thought is its historical focus: unless Catholic thought engages in the same historical arena, it will lack purchase on the modern mind. Secondly, there is a reference to Christopher Dawson's analysis of western history as, roughly, having at its centre a clash between Augustine's City of Man and City of God which remains fertile precisely because it is not resolved:

Although it gave incentive to the synthetic ideal, the culture-forming energies of Christianity depended upon the Church’s ability to resist the temptation to become completely identified with, or absorbed in, the culture. Dawson maintained that the key of Western culture is the tension between Christianity and the culture which it spawned. In this regard, Dawson would probably agree with Leo Strauss’ remark that the conflict between the secular and the sacred is “the secret of the vitality of the West.” It was Augustinian theology that explained how to understand this conflict.

Finally, there is a diagnosis and cure for the ills of modernity: to the extent that modern thought tends to elide the difference between the City of Man and the City of God, it tends to replace this (fertile) tension with surrogate (and destructive) civil wars within the City of Man:

[W]e might ask whether the built-in tension represented by the Two Cities theme has been collapsed into a merely intramundane conflict—between rich and poor, between men and women, or perhaps between the so-called First and Third Worlds. A secular distortion of the Augustinian theme eliminates the transcendent nature and meaning of historical conflict and therefore makes historical development dependent upon a dialectic of continual civil wars within the body of the culture.

The claims here are clearly too large to be dealt with quickly. The claim that Catholicism in particular needs to move to a more historically based pattern of thought (and away from one based on (eg) natural law) is one I'm hugely suspicious of. Clearly, there is something to be said for historical studies, but equally there is something to be said for that sort of philosophical analysis that stands outside time and focuses simply on (timeless) ideas and reasons. Moreover, if the modern age is characterised by a focus on historical narrative, it is also arguably characterised by an historical amnesia. One symptom of this is the outpouring of fantasy literature where mediaeval and ancient themes are transmuted into a realm of pure imagination rather than the messy reality of actual history. Finally, the charge that the ill of modernity is the transference of the supernatural end of human beings to the natural realm (nicely captured in the slogan 'Don't immanentize the eschaton!') clearly has some force in a secularised world, but precisely what that force is is much more difficult to say. (A quick response might be that the sort of conservative thought attracted to such a charge is itself a secularised neutering of the prophetic and apocalyptic vision of the Kingdom of God.)

And what are the implications for Catholic social teaching? First, I think it's important that such social teaching is not seen simply as a pre-formed package of practical instructions but as a genuinely philosophical and theological grappling with human social nature. There is simply no way of avoiding the sort of deep issues that this article brings up. Secondly, the Catholic covert Dawson is a figure well worth getting to grips with in this area. Finally, it is worth considering the direct charge made in the first paragraph quoted above: that too much Christian discourse in this area is dominated by secularised distortions of the supernatural human end, the transference of heaven to heaven on earth. Or is this charge itself merely a secularised ruse to blunt the prophetic force of the Gospel and to ensure that the City of Man is left untroubled by inconvenient questions of justice and liberation?



[Details of image: photo of Christopher Dawson from The Imaginative Conservative article here.]

The EU referendum: 'Why Catholics can't agree on Brexit...'

An interesting and balanced article from Dan Hitchens at the Catholic Herald:

Fimister speaks of a “culture of death – the general drift of all Western societies towards a weird, radically atomised individualism where you create your own identity”. This is so corrosive and demographically lethal that it cannot last – but it will cause “an enormous amount of damage in the meantime”.

How much this is the EU’s fault is an open question. But it is interesting to reflect that, when Catholics cast their votes on June 23, they will be giving their verdict on a project which, without Catholicism, might never have even begun.

Full article here.

The article captures well at least one aspect of the Brexit debate. One the one hand, the EU has a clear historical link with Catholic social teaching and a general consonance with the Catholic aim of international co-operation. On the other hand, some will argue that aspects of the EU, as it has developed since that foundation, are either directly at odds with that teaching, or at least at odds with the general well being of constituent nations and citizens. Father Lucie-Smith is surely right when he argues in an earlier article in the Catholic Herald (here):

Catholics believe in subsidiarity, solidarity and participation. That is not up for discussion. What is to be discussed is the best way of achieving this. It is surely arguable that we can best promote these goals from outside the EU as from within it. Again, what do we do when we find that there is an apparent contradiction between the goals? In other words, when we are in a political system that promotes solidarity at the expense of participation, and at the expense of subsidiarity?

(The lightly Eurosceptic tone which pervades the article is worth comparing with Father Lucie-Smith's earlier declaration that he would remain in the EU (here):

So why on earth vote to stay in? The answer is because I am a Catholic and, as such, an internationalist. The single greatest threat to world peace is nationalism. Serb nationalism and Russian nationalism between them have given us a series of wars in in Europe in the last two decades. 
 
Coupled with this is the threat of religious sectarianism, with which, Catholicism, properly understood, must always find itself at variance. The EU, defective as it is, does represent an attempt to overcome nationalism. The idea of Germany invading Poland would nowadays seem unthinkable. )


The basket of principles by which we will decide our vote are relatively clear, but the application of those principles to the present concrete case requires the virtue of practical wisdom, prudentia.