Chaput and Bernanos

Well, there's obviously much to say about this speech, which I'll have to go read in full. But on first pass, I was struck by this statement: "American optimism in particular Bernanos refers to the United States bitterly as the Rome, the Mecca, the holiest sanctuary of this civilization is really only the eager restlessness of unsatisfied appetites."
Really? The optimism of our society is ONLY "eager restlessness"? Color me skeptical of this universal dismissal of the way in which America today manifests hope in, and hope for, the future. Bless, Doug

It may be that Europe is sending itself into free fall by abandoning its Christian antecedents. But I am forced to approach the issue from a classic position: Is it good for the Jews? At the moment, of course, anti-semitism is resurging like mad in the UK and especially in France, both of which are walking away from their Christian past. Nonetheless, the data tell me that I can be free and safe in the practice of my religion only to the extent that my neighbors are lukewarm in the practice of theirs. As Wikipedia says, this needs further research.

I have to say that I sympathize with Marian. While the modern nihilism and consumerism that renders life meaningless is deplorable, things weren't so great when the Church was in charge either. There is a reason why civil society became secular and it because the Church used its power to torture and murder; much like some fanatical Muslims do today. I am not convinced that a wellspring of religious revival will necessarily make for a better society. If anything, too much religiousity fuels the passions that lead to murder and war. And I have to say, as well, that I am disappointed by his excellency's straw-man portrait of Nietzsche and his bringing out the old "Nietzsche leads to Naziism" fallacy. In short, the piece was full of logical fallacies.

Alibris is a good used book source, but addall.com allows you to check availability from many booksellers. I recommend trying it, especially if Alibris' other copy of Bernanos' Essays is sold.

I haven't bothered to read Nietsche since college, but the baseless comparison with the Nazis jumped out at me too.
From Wikipedia: "The German Nazi Party misrepresented and exploited Nietzsche's work through selective readings. During the interbellum, certain Nazis employed a highly selective reading of Nietzsche's work to advance their ideology, notably Alfred Baeumler in his reading of The Will to Power. The era of Nazi rule (1933 1945) saw Nietzsche's writings widely studied in German (and, after 1938, Austrian) schools and universities. The Nazis viewed Nietzsche as one of their "founding fathers". Although there exist few if any similarities between Nietzsche's political views and Nazism, phrases like "the will to power" became common in Nazi circles. The wide popularity of Nietzsche among Nazis stemmed in part from the endeavors of his sister, Elisabeth F rster-Nietzsche, the editor of Nietzsche's work after his 1889 breakdown, and an eventual Nazi sympathizer. Nietzsche himself thoroughly disapproved of his sister's anti-Semitic views; in a letter to her he wrote: You have committed one of the greatest stupidities for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti-Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire or melancholy. It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti-Semitism, namely, opposed to it, as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well) is as pronounced as possible."

Caroline, That's a great question. Many philosophers, such as David Hume, seemed to think so. I am a Christian. But, I confess that I my own Church's history to be scandalous. And I am not infrequently displeased with the stuff that is typically peddled as apologetics. More than anything else, I am against romanticizing the past. There were no good old days. Things have pretty much always been terrible for the human race. In some ways, things are better today because of the Enlightenment and because of technology. However, freedom and technological mastery come with their own problems. And since most people are not educated and habituated to do what is good for its own sake, they often fall into selfish hedonism, once spell religion has cast over them has disappaited. I would suggest that this is what we are seeing. Large numbers of people, who have rejected their traditional religious beliefs, have given themselves over to pleasure because they have not found a higher vocation.

improbable- I had to re-read that line myself. He didn't mean they see life differently from each other but that they both see life differently from others.

Is the existential Zeitgeist of this secular age all that optimistic? It seems that only movies causing a dark, cynical rumination of life are deemed worthy of an Academy Award. The musical "Chicago" was certainly praised by many commentators, but the viewpoint shown in that celluloid extravaganza was astonishingly cynical. And, it didn't seem to bother anybody! I don't think the mood of the larger secular culture is particularly optimistic.

'Huh? I suppose I should miss the days when the Church was in charge and human rights were universally respected and bemoan the fact that since the Enlightenment respect for human rights dwindled with the rise of the Inquisition and the burning of witches. Medieval church councils made much better international law than those modern day "declaration of human rights" documents. Right"' Wildwest, you missed the point. The quote you're contesting isn't about the Church being 'in charge.' It's about the fact that Western political philosophy and its related governmental and judicial systems have their root in Judeo-Christian thought, which is theistic. "What is it that we want to do? Destroy all the machines and produce less? Or even if we achieve more equitable distribution and consumption of what we do produce, will not our unpooring the poor de-Christianize them as well? Does Christianity to sustain itself depend on the preservation of a more or less poor society with a low standard of living? Christians decrying modern society with its plentitude of material things need to address this question." Caroline, these questions have been addressed by 20th century writers, some Christian, some not: the Southern Agrarians, Chesterton and Belloq, Russell Kirk, many 'paleocons' and those thinkers sometimes referred to as 'critics of modernity.' Affluence is always a threat to faith; 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.' The challenge is to identify and then attempt to separate the good that modernity has brought from the bad. The connection from Nietzche to Nazi may not be a direct one, but then the bishop didn't say that. He said 'SOME people in Germany did read him. And they did take him seriously' (my emphasis). Can you really say that nihilism wasn't in the air in 1930's Germany, and that Nietzche's thought wasn't influential?

I agree that this is a very well-written and provocative article, and Archbishop Chaput makes me want to read Bernanos (and Nietzche). The place of religion in public life is one that I personally have not figured out.
I think that the separation of Church and State is one of the best things that ever happened to humankind.
But, then I think of calls by well-intentioned and insightful people to not be mere "Sunday Christians" (or "Friday Muslims" or "Sabbath-Day Jews") and attempt to live out my religion on a daily basis.
On another subject the quote about modern technology being similar to a child's rattle is wonderful. I couldn't agree more.
I've resisted getting a cell phone for years (not having that much money, it is not all that hard to resist) and I constantly have to remind myself that I'm not less of a person because I don't own all the modern technological toys that so many people feel they can't do without. But, it really does take some inner strength to resist.

"As the battle lines become clearer and clearer, we are going to need prophetic voices like his." Which battle are you talking about? The battle between Christians and Muslims? Between Conservative Christians and everyone else? Between "Good Christians" and "Bad Christians."? Between conservatives and liberals? Between Catholics and eveyone else?

Between the City of Man and the City of God, Susan S., just like always. Between the good we are called to become and the evil we return to again and again, just like always. Between the narrow way that leads to salvation and the broad path that heads for perdition, just like always. The battle may intensify in our modern age, but the battle lines were drawn a very long time ago.

Francis X. Maier: Reading your posts makes me feel as if the cavalry has arrived. Thanks for jumping in. Hope to see you on the evening of 5/5. Abp's Chaput's talk was superb. A clarion call to Catholic Christian witness, both personally and in the public square. Tell Jody another swallow has returned to Capistrano, although it remains a difficult "flight".

EDIT: The Fest book is The Face of The Third Reich.

Bernanos's masterwork novel, "Diary of a Country Priest", details a life of personal sickness, failure and rejection from the townspeople he served.
Yet he concludes, "All is grace." If all is grace indeed, does that not blur the line between spirituality and materialism (relative to culture) and God's timeless plan for mankind?
This essay, however great, brings us back to the oldest quandry in Judeo-Christian history: Who (or what) is our master?
Until we resolve that within ourselves, we have little hope of effectively influencing others.
It's not a job for weaklings, the good Archbishop reminds us.

Those comments by Chaput on Scalia are reprehensible, but do they really mean he has "no credibility" as a result? That's like saying Jefferson has no credibility because he owned slaves. There's good and bad in people.

Starrs: Sorry, The Nietzsche/Nazi connection just doesn't hold up under close (and honest) examination. The fact that certain Nazis lifted bits and pieces of Nietzsche's work out of context and applied them to their own ends no more implicates Nietzsche in their crimes than Hitler's claims that he was "doing the Lord's work" by fighting the Jews necessarily implicates Jesus Christ for the Holocaust. P.S.: Since this thread has been Godwin-ed beyond hope from the beginning, now is probably as good a time as any to point out once again that Hitler was a Catholic. not that it means much, but there it is. Game. Set. Match.

jaybird is correct. Many posters have already pointed out the wrong done by Christians in the name of Jesus. Most people don't blame Jesus.

Sorry, The Nietzsche/Nazi connection just doesn't hold up under close (and honest) examination. This is certainly a debatable point. Each person should read him, remember how popular his ideas were, reflect on where living out his ideas would lead one (look at his own life for that!), note that the Nazi's claimed him...and then think about if you were a German back then if this would make you more or less likely to accept Nazism...and make up their own mind. As I said, it's a debatable point. Some Nietzsche in his own words: *Beyond Good and Evil *As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies *The human being who has become free and how much more the spirit who has become free spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. *What is it: is man only a blunder of God, or God only a blunder of man *Without cruelty there is no festival *...perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most disgusting invention of mankind. *God remains dead! And we have killed him. *nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time, as a present and it was we who gave and bestowed it. *...one must have chaos in one *...distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
Quotes only give an incomplete look at the man. Everyone should really read him for themselves. Personally, I think anyone really absorbing Nietzsche would either become like a Nazi Superman, go mad (like Nietzsche himself) or become a Christian out of fear and loathing.

I just think that the sort of lazy attribution of Naziism and/or the Holocaust to his ideas (or Darwin's or Freud's for that matter) is just that - lazy. Humans are group animals, and ideas in every culture are indeed held as a group. The belief that ideas can "float" without being accepted or rejected by the group as a whole is a false Western conceit. Look, for example, at the global warming debate. The need to marginalize those who are skeptics is overwhelming. Or look at our view of the history of Hitler to us; his very name has become a slander, yet Stalin (a worse dude) has not. No, every culture creates a background of ideas that are acceptable or not in the common culture, and the leading thinkers of the day set the standard. I doubt ordinary Germans(who were largely responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Holocaust)in the 1930s and 40s had much more grasp or appreciation of Nietsche's ideas than most people do today. This is true. Same as global warming. Who here has actually read the science? Less than 1%. Who has the brains to understand the statistical evidence? Less than 0.1%. So pretty much nobody has read the text, yet this doesn't mean that people still snatch the ideas like hotcakes and that global warming as fact hasn't sunk into the culture, with this opinion being thrust onto the broader culture. IOW, you don't need to actually read the text to get the message. The elites do the reading for you, and then let us peons know what is acceptable to believe.

M_David: That's fair enough, but again, you could just as easily make a the case that 1000 years of explicitly Christian anti-semitism in Europe contributed as much - if not more - to the Final Solution as Nietzsche's ideas. After all, how many people over the centuries have cited scriptures like "His (Christ's) blood be upon us (Jews) and the heads of our children" as a justification for their anti-semitism? I'd guess it's considerably larger than the number of people who ever referred to Nietzsche in that regard. If Nietzsche bears some responsibility for how some people mis-interpreted his ideas in pursuit of awful ends, then Christianity is just as guilty by that standard.

sometimes these ideas are accepted passively, as it were, without the greater culture realizing it. Agreed.

now is probably as good a time as any to point out once again that Hitler was a Catholic. not that it means much, but there it is. Game. Set. Match. Hitler was no more Catholic than I am. Duh.

1000 years of explicitly Christian anti-semitism in Europe contributed as much - if not more - to the Final Solution as Nietzsche's ideas. It's possible. Some points against this: 1) Christian doctrine explicitly opposed persecuting Jews (it does allow for separating cultures, however). 2) Christian culture was the only one that accepted Jews to live among them in any numbers; this is why so many Jews lived among them. Jews found refuge and did well in Christian lands. They did not do so well among the pagans or Muslims. 3) The Christian culture spoke against persecuting the Jews, and many lost their lives doing so. In addition, the Jews were not the only one's persecuted under the Nazis - Christians were as well. Yet I wouldn't blame this on the Jews who often spoke against Christians in their writings - rather, I would blame it on the anti-religious position of modernist culture. 4) Jews are hated the world round, by Muslims, pagans, you name it. The reason for this, of course, is that they have an IQ a full standard deviation above the mean. Jews have been persecuted in pretty much every culture they live among for this reason - soon, they start to run things due to their superior intellegence. They are simply too successful and the locals cannot compete. Hence, the persecution. This is the most logical explanation for Jewish perseuction. What's truly amazing is that Christianity - and Germany in particular - provided such a awesome haven for Jews - who also have anti-Christian tendencies, they claim the Messiah, for goodness sakes - for so long. And as soon as that Christian culture was overthrown by modernist philosophers and finally the Nazis, that was it for the Jews.

M_David, Anti-semitism (or anti-Judaism) preceded IQ tests by quite a bit. I think it's a little specious to explain thousands of years of persecution using very recent scholarship from the present day. Historically, Jews were persecuted by the Romans because the wouldn't worship the Emperor or follow other practices of civil religion (just like Christians). They were persecuted by many Christian leaders, including some in the hierarchy of the Church, because they were outside the Christian practices of society and (erroneous)theological arguments could be made that their persecution was the reasonable consequence of their rejection of Jesus as Messiah and Son of God (and because of their theological competition with Christians in late Antiquity - see the recent book about controversies between Jewish Talmudic scholars and Christians over Jesus). The animus that arose toward Jews among Christians undeniably played a role in allowing modern anti-semitism to develop, if only by muting Christian response to the portrayal of Jews in the bizarre racial theories that arose in the late 19th century. But if you look at European anti-Semitism at the beginning of the 20th century, it was most common among the (Orthodox) Russians and the (Catholic) French, and I think that anti-semitism in both groups was the result of a historic tradition--begun in the Christian period--that treated the Jew as "other", social factors that magnified the "otherness" of Jews and caused envy among peasants and the poor, and modern racial theories. Does Christianity justify anti-semitism or even permit it? Absolutely not. But anti-semitism has developed in the way it has and had the effects it has because of certain attitudes in Christianity toward Judaism. Also, Jews were accepted more by Persians in the Sassanid empire and by the early Muslims in the Levant than they were by Byzantine Christians.

Lest Joe D'Hippolito's point go unanswered, I think Joe's aware that Archbishop Chaput and I have had sharp differences over the scandal. And I think he was out of line to rap Scalia as he did. None of that takes away from the fact that Chaput said something true and important and courageous the other day, and deserves credit for it.

You don't think Hitler was a madman?!

I believe he's pointing out that the phrase "logical outworkings of Neitzche's ideas by a madman" is a bit, shall we say, self-contradictory. And for the record, I don't personally believe that Adolf Hitler was a "madman" (in the sense of mental illness). Beyond some pretty garden-variety personality or mood disorders which affect most people at some point in their lives, Hitler was sane. Nothing we know about Hitler's behavior speaks to any kind of significant mental disorder. He was a mentally competent, reasonably intelligent individual who was consumed by a hateful and vicious ideology which led him to unspeakable evil.

I will forgive Abp. Chaput for not being a Nietzshe expert. I have read most of Nietzsche's corpus, and I have to say that he cleary did open a door to toltalitarianism. Now I have no doubt that he would have been as horrified by German National Socialism as he was by English Liberalism if he had lived to see it, but his thesis of the superman DOES provide a foundation for an anit-humanism. What else can be said of a philosophy that says "the greatest hour is the hour of the great contempt."? M_David says: "Personally, I think anyone really absorbing Nietzsche would either become like a Nazi Superman, go mad (like Nietzsche himself) or become a Christian out of fear and loathing." This is one of the more profund statements on Nietzsche I have ever read. Upon reading it I recognized instantly that it is what happend to me. However, I would not recommend that anyone read Nietzsche. His thought is deceptively seductive and profoundly evil, and will never do good to anybody. Mr. Maier, Any chance that the Bernanos essay is available at the Vehr Library?

Rod and Scott in PA, the issue isn't just the fact that Chaput slandered Scalia. The issue also is the fact that, as an archbishop, Chaput didn't understand the difference between the weight the Church gives its judgements concerning abortion and euthanasia, and its judgements concerning capital punishment. This is like a math teacher not knowing algebra. As far as Chaput's remarks go, the fact that a broken clock is right twice a day doesn't negate the fact that it's still broken. BTW, Rod, the archbishop's stance on the scandal makes me trust his judgement even less...

Religion by its very nature requires ignorance and poverty to function. Religion is not the opiate of the masses, at least with opium you can get high. Religion is the pigeon drop of the elite." Wow, dude, that is, like, deep.

M_David, My point was not that intelligence is a recent phenomenon, but that studies that indicate a higher IQ among Jews today say very little about the situation of Jews in 70AD. We have no quantitative measurements of such things from earlier periods in history. There was a large Jewish population in the Persian empire (namely present-day Iran and Iraq), that decreased somewhat during the Middle Ages and has virtually disappeared in the last 60 years. Jews there suffered far less than under the Byzantine Christians. The tens of thousands of Jews who fled pogroms the (Orthodox) Russian empire would have questioned whether they were flourishing. I think you are looking at the history of the treatment of Jews in Europe through rose-colored glasses. Or did Pope John Paul II not have reason to offer the apologies he has given for the treatment of Jews by Christians in the past (setting aside the issue of whether we can apologize for the acts of our ancestors).

I thought it [secularization] happened in 1648 after the Thirty Years' War. Secularized societies didn't really happen until the 60s and 70s. The modern West is unprecedented. The Thirty Years War led to increased tolerance for religious diversity but not secularization as such. And the Thirty Years War is hard to put into a framework of "the Church killing and torturing." Lots of Unitarians were killed before that, and fewer and fewer until the early 18th century when it stopped, largely in reaction *against* those persecutions. Huh? Unitarians were really, really sparse. Most of the religious conflict was between different groups of Christians who disagreed about baptism, authority, free will, and so on. It wasn't persecution that led to the end of persecution, since persecution of various sorts had been going on worldwide for thousands of years. And Thomas Paine was part of that reaction. That that reaction had its roots in Christianity (proto-modernist Christians like the Socinians and Anabaptists) does not invalidate the point. What is the point? It is an inconvenient fact that Anglo-American political philosophy owes at least as much to Paine as it does to Burke. Paine. Are you serious? You must mean Locke. As far back as the ratification of the Constitution, when there were feuds between the Federalists and anti-Federalists, people of fighting ideological persuasion have been co-existing more or less peacefully. I hope that peaceful co-existence can continue. Me too. So what?

Hello All, You bet religion makes an easy scape-goat for all the non-religious folk out there. Interesting discussion, especially those bits about medieval persecutions ans Jews, and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, and the bit about Scalia. Good point. What, I am prompted to ask has it to do with anything the good man had to say? I have the text in front of me. He challenges us with a question and then suggests, in his last three sentences a way of going about living out the true answer to the question. I did not read in anything he wrote an invitation to discuss whether or not Frenchies wrote nice operas or when and where societies got secularized. Do our enemies bloviate like this about how many embryos fit in a bucket?

Wow, what a lively debate. I heartily commend the posters here for disagreeing and continuing to engage one another so contructively. What a breath of fresh air it is. I mostly read jaybird, M_David, and Starrs. Thanks.

Did I do that?

Cleveland, You might also like Maclin Horton's blog. Posters there manage to wrestle with Religion AND politics without getting ugly. Imagine that. http://www.lightondarkwater.com/blog/index.html

you are STUPID!!!