Human Absurdity

Recent popes have had much to say about human dignity, but this is not the right time to talk about dignity.  Everyone in today's society believes in human dignity -- or at least in their own dignity, if more questionably in the dignity of others.  So for example, the Black Lives Matter movement is about dignity; so is the Sons of Confederate Veterans organization.  In short, all of identity politics -- right or left, national or racial or sexual -- and most of the short tempers tearing society apart are due to people intensely feeling and vigorously protecting their own dignity, something that used to be called the deadly sin of pride.

Instead, it would be much better to regain a healthy appreciation for the absurdity of all humans, most especially ourselves.  We must learn to laugh at ourselves again.

We have dignity because we are creatures made in the image of God, and we are absurd because we are creatures made in the image of God.  It is possible to have a finite image of the infinite, but it is not possible without distortion.  God is eternal, but we are mortal; God is omniscient, but we are ignorant; God is omnipotent, but we are weak.  Yet we really do bear His image; we are like fun house mirrors held up to God.

The kind of absurdity I am talking about should lead to humility as well as humor, but it is not degrading.  The image of God we bear is inevitably distorted, but it need not be desecrated; we may be unavoidably comical, but we do not have to be corruptions.

Was Frodo a "Type" of Jew?

• The survivors of Atlantis arrived on the mainland thousands of years ago.

• They were physically superior to the "lesser men" already living on the mainland.

• They were even more technologically superior to the "lesser men", creating objects and performing tasks that even today would appear magical.

• They rightfully conquered a large part of the mainland.

• They subsequently declined physically, mentally, and technologically due to interbreeding with "lesser men".

All these ideas were part of the intellectual atmosphere of the late 1800's and early 1900's.  They seemed to be supported by the increasingly obvious common heritage of the Indo-European family of languages.  They seemed to be supported by finds such as Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy and Arthur Evans' discovery of the labyrinth-like palace at Knossos, which indicated there might be a basis in reality for old myths and legends.  They seemed to be supported by the  "revelations" of esoteric cults like Spiritualism and Theosophy.

All these ideas were embraced whole-heartedly by an important part of the Nazi Party, who saw them as proof of the superiority of the "Aryan race".  In fact, the SS sponsored an expedition to Tibet under Ernst Schäfer to prove these ideas and flesh them out in detail.

All these ideas are present in The Lord of the Rings.  (Well, strictly speaking, it is The Silmarillion that explicitly identified Númenor with Atlantis.)

For years I have found that disturbing.  Likewise disturbing is the tendency of fans of Tolkien to accept the "superiority" of the Númenóreans without batting an eye.  However, I have recently come to believe that Tolkien was actually making a strong, if perhaps subtle, anti-Nazi point.  

To cut to the point, Tolkien actually did insert a "Superman" into Lord of the Rings:  Boromir.  Tall, strong, brave, of noble blood, accustomed to command, Boromir was willing to take what he wanted.  For the greater good of his Volk, Boromir violated his conscience.  Even though he repented in the end, Boromir came much closer to the SS ideal than Aragorn ever did. (I suspect that Nietzsche would have faulted Aragorn for his adoption of "slave morality".)  Boromir was also the only member of the fellowship who was no longer alive when Sauron was defeated and Aragorn was crowned.  Regardless of what Aragorn said to comfort his dying friend, the Aryan superman had failed.

At the other extreme we have the hobbits.  It is actually rather firmly established that hobbits were in fact just an inconspicuous race of men, but men so different that both they and other men thought of hobbits as something altogether different.  Númenóreans were tall, but hobbits were tiny; Númenóreans were bold, but hobbits, though rarely cowards, despised adventure; Númenóreans had kings and kingly stewards, but hobbits had scarcely any government at all.  Some Númenóreans -- certainly Faramir and Boromir -- had psychic or prophetic dreams, something the hobbits are never shown to have had.  The stereotypical hobbit was basically the opposite of the stereotypical Númenóreans; and we all know who were the stereotypical opposites of stereotypical Aryan superman.  Yet it was the hobbits who turned out to be the greatest heroes.

This, I think was the point.  Frodo was a "type" of Jew in the sense of Catholic typology, which is a kind of metaphorical foreshadowing.  For example, King David was a "type" of Jesus Christ because he was both a shepherd and a king, among other things; yet David was also his own person and only hinted at Christ, as opposed to C. S. Lewis's Aslan, who was supposed to be precisely Jesus Christ.  The date on which Frodo defeated Sauron -- March 25, which is traditionally believed to be the date of the creation, the Annunciation, and the Crucifixion, is also a very important clue.

So in essence, Tolkien was saying, "You want to believe you are taller, more talented, more psychic, and more adventurous?  Fine.  For the sake of argument, let's go with that.  It still remains true that the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived was one of those you wrongly consider your inferiors, even subhuman."

Of course that is not the only theme of The Lord of the Rings, which was never intended to be the same kind of simplistic book as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, let alone Pilgrim's Progress, but the presence of this theme is enough to justify the inclusion of otherwise distasteful elements.  The tendency of fans of Tolkien to accept the "superiority" of the Númenóreans without batting an eye ... that remains disturbing.

Paging Nurse Ratched!

When the director of the CDC has declared racism a "serious public health threat", how long can it be before (non-voluntary) medical treatments are prescribed?

Don't worry.  NO WAY is this leading to a dystopian nightmare. 

Poetry and Sports

If you just walk up a green with a golf ball in your hand and casually place the ball in the hole, you are not playing a bold and original form of golf; you are not playing golf at all.  The rules of any sport are apt to be unnatural -- it would be natural to tuck the basketball under one's arm and run with it, or to grab a soccer ball with one's hands -- but it is precisely this that makes the sport a sport.

The same holds true with poetry.  Rhyme, meter, alliteration, etc. are all as arbitrary and unnatural as the rules of American football, and different languages and cultures have different rules, as of course do different sports.  However, just as the rules make the sport, the rules make the poetry.  "Poetry" without rules is not poetry at all; it is typically just prose with oddly placed dramatic pauses.

The Atonement and Gaius Mucius Scaevola

Over the years, many explanations have been put forward in an attempt to explain just why God chose to redeem us by a method as shocking as the Crucifixion.  Very likely the real answer is something of a mystery -- even five sorrowful mysteries -- that we can encounter and on which we can meditate even though we cannot comprehend it fully.  At any rate, care must be taken not to create the impression that the Crucifixion was some sort of generic "good example" or, worse, that the Father is some sort of bloodthirsty monster, both of which errors being far too commonly held.

I suggest that some insight can be gained by remembering the example of Gaius Mucius Scaevola and drawing a rough parallel.  The sacrifice of his right hand did not make the words of Gaius true, but they made them credible, which no lesser gesture could have done.

Now it cannot be said that God was unable to forgive us without the Crucifixion -- Hebrews 9:22 need not be understood as a limitation on the part of God.  But just as a sin, to be mortal (CCC 1857), must be grave, committed with full knowledge, and committed with full assent of the will, our redemption -- which is as grave as anything concerning us can be -- must be accepted with full knowledge and full consent of the will.  After all, Jesus came not merely to give us a kind of legal pardon, like we might imagine for a tree scheduled to be cut down, but to restore in us the likeness of God, and that requires knowledge, will, and goodness -- that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds, as Romans 12:2 says.

If, however, Jesus had merely come to say, "Be at peace; God forgives you, only stop sinning," we all know what would have happened.  Many people would have said, "Huh.  It appears sins are not really a very big deal after all," and they would have continued on as before.  This is the sin of presumption.  Others would have thought, "That only applies to people who have committed minor sins.  My sins are too enormous to be forgiven by mere words.  I am damned."  This is the sin of despair.  There would have been scant room for the virtue of faith.  Of course, the overwhelming majority of people would have paid no attention whatsoever, reasoning that talk is cheap.

Coming back to the parallel with Scaevola, it is the willing sacrifice that gives weight to the words.  We now know how seriously God takes all sins, even the ones we dismiss as peccadillos.  We now know that God is not merely forgiving peccadillos, but really horrible sins.  Talk may be cheap, but in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; so the Word is of incomparable value.

Our need for salvation is grave, as it has been since the expulsion from Eden.  Due to the Passion, we now have enough knowledge.  Will we give the full consent of the will to repent?

Ecclesiastes and the Romance of Lost Causes

Every once in a while, I get in a blue funk for which the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible is a good antidote.  This might seem strange, since it is by no means a cheerful book.  Consider, for example, Ecclesiastes 2:9-11:

So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

But the blue mood I referred to has less to do with any real suffering -- compared with a great many, probably the great majority both in history and today, I have no really valid complaints -- and more to do with the suspicion that I have stupidly lost opportunities that could have made me truly happy.  If only I had had the nerve to ask this girl out, or if my courtship of that other girl had been successful; if only I had chosen a different major in college, or had chosen a different career path after getting my degrees; if only I had taken a different job within my current career path; if only!  Then I would surely feel less vexation of spirit.  King Solomon answers me, "Don't worry about that, kid.  I had all the women, all the wealth, all the power, all the success, all the acclaim -- all the things that men strive for -- and it all turned to ashes in my mouth."  

This life is, as the Salve Regina reminds us, the Valley of Tears, neither Eden nor Heaven, and these worldly goals cannot change that.  It's not that different choices and outcomes are without consequence -- they do matter somewhat -- but they are not the One Thing Needful.

This year, it is easy to see people making the same mistake on a larger scale -- but hardly for the first time.  For ages Europeans have lamented, "If only the Roman Empire had not fallen!"  Over the years, this has been echoed in such cries as, "If only the Arabs had been crushed when they first burst out!"  "If only the Crusader states had lasted!"  "If only Constantinople had not fallen!"  As we come closer to the present age, the laments become more controversial.  "If only Europeans had not discovered the Americas!" "If only the Spanish Armada had succeeded!" "If only James II had remained in power!" "If only the French Revolution had not taken place!"  Closer to home:  "If only Stonewall Jackson had not doubled back and been shot by his own men!"  "If only Lincoln had survived to the end of his term!"  "If only America had joined the League of Nations!" And, of course, "If only Kennedy had not been assassinated, Camelot would have lasted, and JFK would have ushered America and the world into a utopia of peace and justice and love and joy and wisdom!"  Feel free to add your own; we all do.

Each of these examples were important to history.  Each of them caused at least some people to suffer.  Some of them, like the Kennedy assassination, were sudden and unforeseen, and could have been avoided by trivial circumstances; others, like the fall of Constantinople or the Crusader states, were long foreseen and could not have easily been prevented.  The point remains that whatever good may have come from changing these events would be a good subject to decay.

For example, there is a trope in science fiction about going back in time and killing Adolf Hitler before he came to power.  "If only he could have been removed from history, how much suffering could have been avoided!"  Maybe, but we will never know.  Hitler scarcely invented antisemitism, nor did he create the dissatisfaction with the end of the First World War, so the Nazi Party would still have come into existence, maybe under the leadership of Hermann Göring.  The alternative leader might have been more cautious, proceeding more slowly than Hitler did -- slowly enough, perhaps, to avoid alarming the public in the USA and UK, slowly enough to allow Germany and Italy to properly prepare for war, slowly enough for Germany to develop ballistic missiles (like the V-2 rocket) and jet fighters before the war even began, maybe even slowly enough for Germany to develop the atomic bomb.  What happened in real history was bad enough, but it could have been even worse.

Like Tantalus, we are tormented by seeming goods that we cannot actually attain.  Maybe this is part of our punishment; at any rate, it seems to be part of being human.  In the final analysis, though, all we really need to mourn are our sins, and we must remember that

all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

EDIT:  Reading this again, I see I switched back and forth between two different ideas.  The first is that worldly success is not enough to make us truly happy, even while we have it; the second is that worldly success is both incomplete and transient.  Ecclesiastes also makes the same two points, and although they are different (like the soul and the body) I think they are related (like the soul and the body).

EDIT 2:  Perhaps it really is "part of being human", since even Jesus engaged in it.  "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" -- Matthew 23:37

EDIT 3:  Don't misunderstand my previous edit.  OF COURSE Jesus understands history better than we do, and He properly values historical events.  Jerusalem allowing God to gather her children together would not have been merely worldly, and it is PRECISELY what was needed to make them truly happy.  He does perfectly what we do poorly; but regretting what might have been still seems to be part of being human.

Life Sentences

In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis called for the abolition of life sentences, as he had earlier called for the abolition of the death penalty.

• Each appeal was made not on the basis of the fear of God, nor on Christian charity, nor was either made on the basis of the justice, but rather on the "new appreciation" for human dignity.  Take away the title of pope, and no one would give such a lame argument a second look.  Human dignity comes only and entirely from our relationship with God -- our creation in His image (meaning we are more than merely material, being moral and spiritual as well), the Incarnation of God the Son in which He became man, and His sacrifice for us poor sinners.  Absent this relationship to God, human dignity is no more outstanding than chimpanzee dignity.
• As a Church teaching, none of these suggestions are proclamations of infallible doctrines.  Their staying power, then, will depend on how well they integrate into actually indispensable and trustworthy teachings, or at least into compelling logic.  So far, this does not look good.
• The practical effect of saying that even men like Jeffrey Dahmer and Charles Manson should have been eventually freed is that fewer people will take his stance against the death penalty seriously.  It becomes very hard to accept that the Pope actually believes that justice is a real, spiritual good towards which we should work, softening it through forgiveness rather than laxity.  It becomes hard to believe he really accepts, "But I say to you, that whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council. And whosoever shall say, Thou Fool, shall be in danger of hell fire," when he also seems to believe, "But whosoever shall rape a boy, and murder him, and cannibalize him, shall be subject to 10 years, tops, in a prison that treats him well and respects his dignity."  Finally, it becomes clear that the safety of the law-abiding public is a very low priority for Pope Francis.