Bad Catholic

Thank you so much for the comments on my last post. They helped me realize two things:

1. The evil of the modern world is ripped out of the realm of abstraction and into reality by the fact of parenthood. Everyone who was truly concerned about the Culture Wars — and thus could not understand my quiz — spoke of concern for their children. Such an attitude makes complete sense: The fact of a child under your protection forces the abstraction (the pro-choice movement) to be realized at the level of the human person (this abstraction could harm my child) and thus it is made real.

2. I need to make it absolutely clear that I do not advocate the burning of cars. (Actually, if you want to burn your own car, I sincerely advocate it, if and only if I get a YouTube video of it immediately afterwards.) But the marvelous Mr. Wright was — well — right: We should not be burning cars “because and only because that would not accomplish the goal.”

But I only used the “burning cars” phrase to point out how the vast majority of us marching for life are only representing an abstraction. Regardless of whether it would be effective or not, surely real rebellion should be a temptation? Surely, if we are truly embodying the fact that thousands of innocents are being murdered every day, it should take everything within us to resist rushing the White House? We are some half a million strong, after all.

Mr. Wright claims that the only reason we don’t burn cars is because such an action wouldn’t help achieve The Goal. This seems to imply that we are suppressing our incendiary urges for the greater good. I’d hardly deny that it is better to work for the greater good — I simply deny that we are suppressing any urges.

And that’s the darkness of the modern age that we must brave, the Scary Thought that hitherto has been pushed aside in my mind.

I suppose it is possible that the remarkably good behavior of the Catholic — and the equally good behavior of his enemies — is the result of wise, effective reflection on the best way to achieve their respective goals. It is possible that the reason so many of us feel more nauseated than joyful with the idea of defending marriage, morality and all the rest, is that we know an excess of emotion will hinder our victory. It is possible that we are comfortable with our slogans, lobbies, merchandise, and the dichotomies of pro-life vs. pro-choice, pro-marriage vs. pro-equality, etc. because we know it’s the best way things are achieved in a functioning democracy.

But surely it is equally possible that we are following abstractions?

Surely it’s equally possible that what Kierkegaard said of his age is true of our own, that:

“the present age is one of understanding, of reflection, devoid of passion, an age which flies into enthusiasm for a moment only to decline back into indolence…”

(i.e. KONY2012)

“a Revolutionary Age is an age of action; the present age is an age of advertisement, or an age of publicity: nothing happens, but there is instant publicity about it. A revolt in the present age is the most unthinkable act of all; such a display of strength would confuse the calculating cleverness of the times…”

and that

“no person wishes to abandon Christian terminology, but they can secretly change it so that it doesn’t require decision or action…”

(I can hardly count the number of times I’ve cleverly manipulated that St. Francis misquote, “Preach the Gospel at all times; when necessary use words,” in order to not do anything at all; how many times I’ve read Christ’s words, “give away everything you own”, and happily abstracted his demand to some spiritual plane.)

I’m not claiming that there aren’t people truly living out there, men and women who have been saved from the age by the power of religion, as Kierkegaard said. I simply realize that I am not one of those people. Not yet, anyways.

I’ll close with this: Where did relativism come from? There is a tendency in the Catholic world to speak of it as the root source of all the modern age’s various evils, and there’s some truth to that. But relativism is the natural conclusion of a world that serves abstractions instead of the human person. The foolish but widely prevalent phrase, “What’s true for you isn’t true for me,” seems frightfully sensible if the you’re considering the pro-life and pro-choice movements as just that — movements, equal and opposite abstractions, badges to pin on our arms (you see good sirs, I am a Christian, and thus I have my pro-life badge, my pro-family badge, my support-of-traditional-values badge…) rather than authentic cries of the human heart. If support for assisted suicide becomes a lobby, it can be accepted as easily as any lobby. The argument “let people choose for themselves whether euthanasia is good, don’t force your morality on them” makes an insane sort of sense if the world is picking and choosing it’s abstractions.

Now don’t worry about sharing this, unless you think it’s worth it — I’m afraid to say I’m working this out as I go. Once I’ve come to something resembling a conclusion, I’ll write a big-super-fantastic post pulling everything together. And I understand that a lot of folks are upset by this idea. I am too. But don’t worry: The world is currently in the habit of using philosophy to justify pre-existing ideas, rather than letting philosophy kick their asses and force them to change. And, I promise you, the light at the end of this is brilliant. Suffer me to spend a little time getting to it.

You won’t like this post. Don’t blame me, blame him:

“A passionate, tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down; but [the present age] that is at the same time reflective and passionless, transforms that expression of strength into a feat of dialectics: it leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance.” — Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age

Don’t tell the evil, godless heathens, but Christians today are only pretending to be “offended!” by the state of the world, what with its diverse immoralities and general suckage. We don’t actually care. Sure, we’ll argue the cause of Goodness and Morality with raised voices and carefully arranged countenances, but when it comes down to it, we don’t give half a damn about the Attack on Traditional Family Values.

The dominant feeling associated with fighting the Culture Wars — whether over abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, or any of those super-fantastic conversation starters — is not one of righteousness, zeal, passion, hope, or holiness. It’s one of bleaugh. It’s a desperate attempt to feel anything but nausea over the prospect of defending “God’s plan for marriage!” or whatever slogan seems popular. There may be joy in the fight — for fights are fun — but beyond that we don’t care. To be perfectly clear, I don’t care. Traditional family values can go rot, as can traditional morality, good government, and all the rest.

Now stay with me for a while. If you, Christian, don’t believe you’re at least partially feigning your disgust with the age, I hold you’re either holy or lying. If the former is true, leave the Internet and pray for us. For those of the latter bent, I’ve developed a quick self-help quiz for your answering pleasure. Please be honest:

1. When Obama announced the screw-religion-I’m-awesome HHS mandate were you (a) personally offended and disgusted (b) filled with deep sorrow or (c) oddly exhilarated. Discuss.

2. Defending traditional family values, like marriage over gay ‘marriage’, makes you feel (a) righteous (b) Christian or (c) slightly nauseated. If you answered (c), where does the nausea come from? Honest disgust over the proposition of natural marriage being redefined, or elsewhere?

3. The slogan “It’s a Child, not a Choice” (a) inspires you (b) has no effect on you or (c) vaguely annoys you.

4. True or false: Conversation becomes more animated when discussing the sinfulness of the modern world. (Discuss: Is the separation of the world from its Father a topic that should liven discussion?)

5. Would you rather read (a) a book on the rise of the culture of death or (b) The Little Flowers of St. Francis. Why? Alternatively, for you hardcore Catholics, which makes for a better conversation starter: (a) the fact of Nancy Pelosi or (b) the fact of Jesus Christ?

You see whither the blogger doth drive. Now allow me to ask you, is it at least possible that you’re feigning some of this Great Disgust at the sin of the world? I am, barring a few rare moments (like when I read philosophical defenses of infanticide).

But why? Why, so often, is the Christian’s defense of the things he holds dear a halfhearted affair? Why is our offense at the culture so very apathetic, so mixed with inappropriate excitement? Why do we feel excitement and exhilaration when we should be feeling sorrow, and indifference when we should be fighting?  In short, why don’t we really, truly care? Why is a soul-sucking weariness the principle characteristic of the Christian at battle today, he who is supposed to have joy in his heart and fire on his tongue?

I could be wrong, but suffer me to speak. Everything has been cunningly emptied of its significance. The Christian today defends ghosts and attacks with shadows. He may look like St. George, but he has been given a sword of cloud to fight a dragon of steam. He may kill the dragon in the end, but he will never be happy, fighting such a whispery battle.

Our culture achieves this emptying through a rabid desire to define everything as an abstraction.

A godless, pagan man, in all his unique rationality, might seriously consider the mysteries of human life. He might decide — after much deliberation — that the present age’s obsessive drive to normalize the killing of unborn children is wrong. All this would take place in the only place things ever take place — the human person.

But were our man to stand up and proclaim this discovered truth to the world, the world would immediately level him into an abstraction. He would cease to be a man who believes — in the depth of his being — that human life is of infinite value. He would become a pro-life man, part of the pro-life movement. He would be politely forced to exchange his weapon of steel for a weapon of cloud. For the pro-life movement is not real.

You may have a man against abortion. You may have several men against abortion. But the moment you draw a circle around those men, group them into a class, point to the circle and say, “Here is the pro-life movement!” you’ve created a deadly logical error. You may use the term to speak of the men as a movement, but there exists no movement. The circle is your own construction. There exists only the men.

Now when an idea becomes a movement, a generation, or a lobby, that idea is emptied of its significance. It becomes an abstraction. We who oppose abortion become a demographic, and can be ignored as such. We have pro-life arguments, we develop pro-life slogans, we try to convince people to join the pro-life cause. One can only feel true joy in fighting such a fight for so long, for it attempts to operate on the level of abstraction, attempting to convince people to join a non-existent thing. (Think of the last time you seriously entertained a pro-choice slogan. Why did you dismiss it? Was it because it was immediately and apparently illogical? Or because it was pro-choice, part of an abstraction which your abstraction rejects?)

Surely you’ve noticed this. Surely I’m not the only one who, whenever some TV channel hosts two people to “represent” the pro-life and the pro-choice movement in a debate, ends up hating everyone?

Or take the marriage wars. Again, a man might — understanding marriage to be the ultimate expression of love between two human beings, knowing love to be the desire of the ultimate good of the beloved, and recognizing that the normalization of homosexual activity has not been shown to lead the beloved to the good, physically or mentally — decide that marriage is an institution to which only two humans of the opposite sex are orientated.

But again, were he to stand up and express that “all else is sham!” he would be immediately and violently leveled. He would be made to defend, not himself, but a movement. He must fight on the behalf of the anti-gay-marriage movement, for traditional family values. He’ll become — perhaps — pro-family. Perhaps he’ll even be abstracted into being a Christian! It matters not: he will be leveled. He will be obliged to defend ghosts.

Thus it begins to make sense why the Culture Wars sicken us more than they do anything else. We must defend the Abstraction — have we ever defended ourselves? We throw around these puffs of air — pro-choice, pro-life, pro-family, liberal, conservative, Christian, pro-equality, traditional, modern — with the grand result of nothing ever happening. And why would it? None of these things are real. When two wisps of clouds go to battle, the world is unmoved.

I really must come to some sort of conclusion, as this will take me several more posts to explain. Let me end by saying this: If the March For Life was a march of human beings who saw other human beings as normalizing and legalizing the murder of infants, there would be cars burning in the street. As it turns out, there is no protest in the present age. There is only representation. There is no foolish human action. There is only the support of abstractions. Infants are being killed — we follow the lines the police allow us to follow.

But there is a way out. Till next time.