An introduction to this read. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput was loved at all three dioceses he served as bishop, the last being Philadelphia. He’s a man of strong opinion and deep thought. I particularly liked the back page endorsement by the wonderful professor, Robert George:
“Archbishop Charles
Chaput has given us a training manual for revolutionaries―not the
ideology-obsessed, violent kind, but those who in ‘an act of rebellion against
a loveless age,’ choose to confront the question: ‘What is worth dying for?’
These are the rebels who, as Chaput says, ‘will, with God’s, help someday
redeem a late-modern West that can no longer imagine anything worth dying for.’
With that redemption will come a recovery of our personal and communal
vocations, a renewed sense of what is worth living for, striving for,
sacrificing for, dedicating ourselves to as persons and as peoples.”
―Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
I should say up front that the book club was gifted copies of the book. I was contacted by a woman, her first name Maia, from the publisher Henry Holt and Company and was offered a number of books for the book club. I promised we would take up the book as a club read if we received copies. True to her word, Maia delivered 21 copies of the book to us, mostly hardcopies but a few preferred eBooks. Over five weeks we had a very lively discussion. Given the subject of the book we even suspended our policy of not bringing political issues. They could not be avoided with this book, and so you will see some politically charged exchanges in these sets of posts on the book. I think you will enjoy these posts.
I and all at the Catholic Thought Book Club on Goodreads thank Henry Holt and Co. for the free books. It was a spirited discussion, and I think every single one of us admired the Archbishop.
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The first chapter divides into four sections. Here are the connecting links as I surmise for each of the sections.
(1) Memory—History—Tradition—Dedication to Faith—Disconnect with the Modern World
(2) What is Worth Dying For—Family—Friendship—Honor—Evil—Martyrdom—Life—Prudence vs Cowardice.
(3) The Natural Loves—St. Polycarp’s Martyrdom—Are We Willing to Do the Same—Recent Martyrs—Can Luke Warm Moderns Have the Faith to Face Martyrdom—In the Natural Loves We Find Grace—Modern World Has Weakened the Bonds Which Provide Grace.
(4) The Memory of a Religion/People Give Purpose to Life—Moderns Look at the Past as a Created Ideology—In Contrast, Man Needs “A Compulsive Value” of His Past—Christ’s Willingness to Die for Us—Simone Weil: “The Destruction of the Past is the Greatest of All Crimes—An Outline of the Book.
Now looking at the building blocks of each section, let me propose a summary point for each section.
(1) There is a difference in mindset between the old world and the modern world, and that difference can be located to the dearness of memory and one’s past.
(2) What is worth dying for? The four natural loves: family, friendship, honor, and integrity, and the modern world has allowed a certain evil to spread that weakens these loves.
(3) Christians in the past have been willing to die for these loves. Some Christians today in less modern societies still die for these loves. Are we in the modern world able to rise to this level of faith?
(4) The problem with the modern world is the breaking of bonds with our past, the destruction of our history, and perhaps even more important than that of historical facts, the destruction of our memory.
Now one could take the summary points of each section as more overarching inferences to reach a chapter wide conclusive point. Let me do so.
Having established the link of memory of the past with that of the integrity of being, having suggested that the modern world has weakened the bonds to our memory, the Archbishop asks the question of whether we modern Catholics are able to suffer and even accept martyrdom for that integrity of being. I think this particular sentence in the second section of chapter one points to the theme of the book: “The self-love proper for a Christian includes the love of personal honor, the kind that comes from living with integrity in a world that would have us betray our convictions (p. 13). “Integrity of being” is the concept that Chaput uses to sum up all that is vital in ourselves, our faith, our family, our friends, and our past.
Now here’s me opining on what I’ve just delineated. Archbishop Chaput is spot on. For years I’ve opined on the disintegration of culture in our modern world, but I’ve never fully conceptualized it as a disintegration of the personal integrity, and, perhaps by extension, cultural integrity. Integrity of being is what is at stake in the modern world. How can we have an integrated person when the past is forgotten, or ridiculed, or, even worse seen, as something of other, something not of ourselves?
###
Irene
Replied to My Comment:
I am not sure that I see
such a strong division between the pre-modern and the post-modern world
regarding integrity. The pre-modern world had numerous examples of both
personal and social vice, both individuals who clearly violated the values of
their Christian heritage and societies that did the same. And it had numerous
examples of saints, of martyrs who died with integrity for deeply held beliefs
and people of generous virtue who lived day and day out for what they believed.
But, I also know that I do not have as critical an opinion of the larger world
as some others may. When I saw the selfless way that nnurses and doctors and
other personnel sacrificed their lives during the past year of COVID, so many
dying as they cared for infected patients, I saw individuals who were willing
in very concrete ways to die for what they believed.
I find that the thought of dying for someone I love or something I value does not frighten me as long as I don't have to suffer. It is the thought of suffering that makes me weak. I don't fear death. I do fear pain. And I think that extends to psychological pain. I find that living consistently for what I value, forgiving 70X7 times, loving the enemy and doing good to those who persicute me, considering the needs of others before my own desires, accepting humiliation for the sake of the Gospel or failure and rejection because in weakness Christ is strong, that all of this and so much more I can't sustain day in and day out over the long haul. I can rise to brief moments of grace, but I don't sustain it.
My
Reply to Irene:
Your last paragraph
reminded me of the famous Flannery O'Connor quote: "She could never be a
saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.” ;) I
always get a kick out of that. But I'm with you. I don't want to suffer either.
As to your main point, it is possible we in retrospect romanticize the past.
The past certainly wasn't perfect. However the demographics of broken families,
sense of alienation (a common theme in the literature of the last hundred
years), a lack of connection or feeling of significance, and of course the loss
of faith and connection to a transcendence reveals a difference between the
modern and the pre-modern. From TS Eliot's "The Waste Land" on,
modern artists have identified a hollowness in the modern human being and their
condition. Archbishop Chaput's "lack of integrity" perhaps is not
specific enough to pinpoint the problem (if indeed it can be pinpointed) but is
general enough to capture all aspects of this difference. You're probably a
rare person - on either the conservative or liberal side of things - to think
there is no difference.
Irene
Replied:
Manny, I did a poor job of expressing myself. I did not mean to imply that there are no differences between the pre and post modern culture. Modern people do have a different world view than pre modern people. The social ills in the post modern world are different than the predominent social ills in the pre modern world. I just don't think that our age has a monopoly on personal vice or social sin or that we have a fewer proportion of virtuous lives. Divorce may have been rare in the Middle Ages, but this might not have been due to greater loyalty, but rather to economic and social forces. Abuse of women and children was rarely prevented by social forces and so there was a far higher proportion of family members enduring various forms of abuse 600 years ago than there is in most Western cultures today because society removes many abused children from homes and abused women have supports to leave their situation. So, yes, there are differences between pre and post modern cultures and peoples. I simply think that there are great examples of integrity in every era and great examples of serious sin in every era. Personally, I don't think I face more difficulty in following the mandates of the Gospel than did those who lived 5 or 7 centuries before me. Maybe I am lucky or maybe an earlier age was that much more virtuous. But reading of the clergy abuses in Catherine of Siena's age and of the prevolence of violence has not convinced me that any time did not face serious challenges to discipleship, just different challenges. My great grandmother had a saying that if all the crosses in the world were put in a pile and we were permitted to pick the cross we were most willing to carry, we would pick our own cross. By extrapolation, if I could see the pros and cons of living the Christian life faced by every generation, I think I would pick my time because God has put me in the time and place with th eunique crosses and challenges best suited to me.
My
Reply to Irene:
I don't think you did a poor job. I understood and I even addressed it as saying we may romanticize the past. We agree. The pasts - plural - have their own dysfunctions. I think what you're missing is that Chaput - and many others who point out the dysfunctions of the modern world, especially Pope Benedict XVI - as something distinct from the past. We're not talking about the crosses that all people bear or the evils that all people have to overcome. Never before has the notion of the absence of the transcendence been so upon western culture. Never before has relativism over come the foundational Truths of western culture. Never before in what was once considered "Christendom" has its own followers deconstructed - and I use that word specifically - its own values to what Pope Benedict calls pathological. Never before a has western culture faced the potential of the dissolution of Christianity itself. The demise of Christianity across western culture - perhaps more so in Europe than the US, but we're catching up - has never been so breathtaking. Every year there are worse statistics. Yes evil people did evil things across all times, but the type of dysfunction western culture is facing are unique and probably existential.
Irene
Replied:
Manny, Yes, I did not acknowledge that there are very unique qualities of the current post modern world that are antithetical to the Gospel. Relativism is certainly a new way of seeing reality. I don't disagree with the characteristics of this age. I suppose where I break is with the perception that I often hear that these qualities make this a more evil age. I suppose I lose sight of the forest for the trees. I hear the naming of specific social ills and I immediately think of social ills that were more prominent in another age. But, you are certainly correct that we face unique challenges in living out the Gospel.
My
Reply to Irene:
I agree. I don't think
there is more evil in this age than in the past. In romanticizing the past we
tend to ignore a lot of good institutions that have been set up, such as the
medical system. I think the evil of today is disconcerting for to reasons. (1)
It's here with us now, so it's right in front of us. (2) The loss of faith
across swaths of the population is unprecedented since Christianity won over
the Roman Empire.
Just between me and you and the hundreds that may read this, I would not prefer
to live in a previous age.
So let me break down chapter two in the same fashion I did with chapter one. Chapter two also is comprised of four subsections. Here’s how I identified Chaput’s train of thought in each subsection.
(1) Death as a mystery—Ancients honoring of the dead—Modernity’s trivialization of death—Contrast toward death of the modern vs. pre-modern—The Meaning of life that can be drawn from the approaches.
(2) Scripture teaches us about death—Death from Sin (Genesis)—Death without God’s Relationship (Psalms)—Death without hope (Ecclesiastes)—Live for Today.
(3) Scripture’s alternative teaching on death—Death will be swallowed up forever (Isaiah)—The dead awakening (Daniel)—God Victorious over death—Jesus as means to that victory—Lazarus—Gethsemane—Crucifixion—Descent into hell—Resurrection.
(4) Ancients understood rhythm of creation through death—modernity sees no transcendence in death—Gospel offers death with meaning & transcendence—Cistercian Monk’s approach to death—Meeting death with hope.
So now if I try to draw a culminating point of each subsection, I come up with this.
(1) “How a culture deals with death, reveals how it thinks about the meaning of life and the nature of the human person” (p31).
(2) One theological concept of death in the Old Testament is that death is the end of life, so live for today.
(3) A competing theological concept of death in the Old Testament is the prefiguring of the defeat of death and that fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ.
(4) Many today have chosen to trivialize death, but the Christian approach is that of the Cistercian monks.
Rolling the themes of the four subsections into an overarching point of the chapter, I would articulate it this way: “How a culture deals with death, reveals how it thinks about the meaning of life and the nature of the human person,” and the Cistercian monks deal with it best.
###
My
Comment:
Yes, that comment from the Archbishop about modernity trivializing death doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. Some do, but for the most part most people don't.
Kerstin
Replied to My Comment:
I'm going to have to
think about this. I have a feeling we're missing something here. Here are some
thoughts:
For one, death is not nearly as public anymore. It used to be that a person who
lost a loved one was publicly in mourning. You wore black for some months, even
a year in some cases, and after some time you were in half-mourning. There were
also customs of having a black hat band (in the days when everyone wore hats)
or men wore a black band on the sleeve. Not so long ago if you attended a
funeral you wore black, no exceptions. We are so much less formal today - a
loss of culture and cultural refinement, really - that in this case, in how we
present ourselves, we have trivialized death. What's more, a grieving person
who actually follows tradition, wears black longer than others deem
appropriate, gets ridiculed or their mental state gets questioned, as if it is
not permissible to give expression to one's loss and grieving.
Lets look at hearses. Still recognizable, but you can't see the coffin. Look at
hearses from just a few decades ago. The glass was never tinted, you could see
the coffin. And going back further, the coffin was prominently shown. People
showed deference when a hearse and funeral procession went by, and out in the
country this still happens. folks stop their cars, remove their hats. In all
the years we lived in suburbia, I don't recall ever seeing a funeral procession
go by - let alone traffic stopping.
My
Reply to Kerstin:
Good points Kerstin. By
me I've seen wakes go from three days down to two and now one and since Covid
none. And I have pictures of funeral processions in my small old world Italian
town my family came from. It was certainly more ceremonious than the ones I've
experienced here.
Maybe there is something to it, but I still don't think it's a major symptom.
There are greater symptoms that point to a problem with modernity.
###
Some random thoughts from the first two chapters.
The idea of forgetting one’s past and traditions really struck a chord in me. It is what links us with our heritage and therefore builds our identity. Societies and cultures grow. To forget is to be cut off from the roots and stem of our being. It’s a wonderful place for the Archbishop to start the book.
I loved the personal touches that embellish the work. His retirement, his dioceses, his parents, the family mortuary business, and the small Kansas town upbringing. I’ve only gone a few chapters in, so I don’t know if he expands on them. I hope he does.
Prudence versus cowardice. “Cowardice is very good at hiding behind prudence.” As others have stated, I too sometimes shrink from expressing my faith. Less so now that I’m older, but it still happens.
Perhaps the central theme of the entire book: “The self-love proper for a Christian includes the love of personal honor, the kind that comes from living with integrity in a world that would have us betray our convictions.” Great quote.
“Fear of martyrdom is the start of an honest appraisal of our own spiritual mediocrity…So we should ponder this fear more deeply, rather than repressing it, as we so often do.” That is worthy of deep contemplation.
“There can be no concordat between the Christian understanding of human identity, dignity, and sexuality and the contempt directed at our beliefs by so much of the emerging culture.” No there cannot be, and I would say is the central political struggle for Catholics today. But why does he say “emerging culture”? This In the 1960s one could say it was the “emerging culture.” That’s sixty years ago. Not only is it no longer just emerging, but it’s established, dominant, and tyrannical.
I enjoyed the exegesis of the two Biblical traditions of looking at death. I had never realized that, though it’s quite evident Judaism is lacking of a full notion of the afterlife. I hope the Archbishop will do more exegesis. He seems like a good teacher.
The trivialization of death versus the deep respect for death. I’m torn on whether I fully agree on this. My father passed away while on an EKG where we let nature take its course. We waited in the room while the beats slowed and finally stopped. It was gut wrenching and I nearly burst into tears when they did, even though I knew that was what was coming. Once he passed his body took on a different perception. It became holy where moments before it was not. We gave him a proper wake and burial. Family and friends came. It wasn’t trivial.
I have to get Nicolas Diat’s book. It sounds profound.
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