Amy Welborn’s ‘Jesus Livingston Seagull’
I missed this Amy Welborn post from a month ago, observing the 60th anniversary of the failed Second Vatican Council. Amy, a well-known Catholic writer and blogger, was a small child when the Council took place. She says that its failure had a lot to do with how the swiftness and radicalism of the changes it mandated (or, more accurately, were believed to mandate by the liberals who implemented it), ended up delegitimizing the Church's authority in the minds of many. Amy tells a story about how, in her Catholic high school, the religion class was assigned to read the 1970s proto-New Age bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The idea seems to have been that the hippie seagull was a Christ figure. She recently re-read the book after decades, and concluded:
For decades I have thought, “Wow, I can’t believe that was my sophomore religion text in a Catholic high school, crazytimes, right?” but last night I transitioned fully to: I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY USED THIS AS A TEXT IN A CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL. WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE.
Who were, I don’t hesitate to say, very nice, well-meaning people. Most of them.
So let’s circle back. This was 1975. Ten years after the end of the Council. In just ten years, high school kids had gone from having substantive, challenging religious education in a Catholic high school, to spending weeks comparing a stupid anthropomorphized self-actualizing bird who just wants to fly, man, to Jesus of Nazareth.
(One of our big Senior projects was to compile a folder with reflections and artwork comparing the Beatitudes to the lyrics of The Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha.)
Don’t tell me that didn’t have an impact, both in terms of most obviously, the collapse of religious knowledge, but also our generation’s sense of how serious this whole business is. Narrator: not very serious at all.
I do remember what the teacher wrote in my progress report that year: Amy makes good grades although she sits in the back of my class reading novels all period.
Oh come on…just breaking those chains and learning to fly, okay?
These are the same kind of people pushing the Catholic Church today to change itself in the name of "synodality," "inclusivity," "accompaniment," and the other newspeak buzzwords. But this time, it'll be different, they must think. Mustn't they? Or do they think at all?
The future belongs to those who tell the stories that fill the moral imaginations of the young. I was an adult convert to Catholicism (in 1993), and only spent 13 years in the Catholic Church. I remember griping one day in the year 2000 about how everything was falling down around us, and the bishops weren't doing a thing about it, when a slightly older conservative Catholic -- someone Amy's age -- said to me, "I grew up Catholic in the Seventies, and by the end of the decade, we really thought we were going to be the ones to turn the lights out. Then John Paul II happened."
Point taken. But today? The Catholic story is not mine anymore, but I wonder how the Catholics are going to hold anything resembling what the Church has been when the power of Western pop culture, strongly anti-Christian, is met by marshmallowy sloganeering and loads of empathizing and sensitivity? Though the issue has played out, and continues to play out, in specific ways within Catholicism, the question faces all churches in the West today. All those young Evangelicals who know almost nothing substantive about the faith because they've been catechized by the Youth Group Feels. (I've heard many anecdotes by Evangelicals over the years about JLS-type stunts in their youth groups.) I don't know enough about how the Orthodox do it, because though I've been Orthodox for 16 years, the Orthodox Church is so small in the US that I don't know enough to make generalizations.
Is it possibly too late? Are the churches-as-societies in a decline that can't be arrested? The Orthodox Christian writer Philip Sherrard wrote:
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And this is but another way of saying that such a decline is inescapable when once the thoughts and actions of the members of a particular society are no longer determined above all by their allegiance and adherence to the norms of a sacred tradition. When these norms cease to be effective for the majority of its member, society simply disintegrates. In other words, the integrity of a society and the communal effectiveness of a sacred tradition are inseparable.
Why is this the case? Sacred tradition in the highest sense consists in the preservation and handing down of a method of contemplation. A method of contemplation, in its turn, is what makes it possible for us to transcend our bodily, psychic and merely ratiocinative life, to go beyond our sensations, feelings and argumentative logic, in order to attain through intellectual vision a knowledge of and communion with the Divine, the source of all things. A corollary of this is that it permits us to perceive physical things as symbols of what lies beyond them. It permits us to perceive the hidden workings of reality, the spiritual essences that all things enshrine and of which they are the visible and tangible manifestations.
We are not going to win any of those damaged young people back through moralism and didacticism. You can't give hard food to people who have been fed nothing but a diet of mush for all their spiritual lives, and expect them not to choke on it. So then, what? How are we going to do this? I suppose the first question is, How do we convince them that Christianity is so much more than moralism and emotionalism, but not just intellectualizing either?
When I was in London this week, I heard three different people say, at various points, "Christianity needs to be strange again." Well, that's what I'm working on with my forthcoming book. Please tell me what you're thinking. If you can't comment below, then email me at rod -- at -- amconmag -- dot -- com, and don't forget to put FAITH in the subject line.
The thing that religion can most offer a modern person is law - habits, the simple mental constraints that productively shape everyday life, and leave modern people adrift and often quite unhappy. But Christianity has come to be perceived by a great many as bad/untrustworthy authority. The sheep are scattered and don't trust any shepherd, they've seen too many wolves dressed as sheep. Live a good life, and teach by example, that is I think what will happen. Whoever has the correct example will be respected and followed.
Joe Rogan vs Matt Walsh on gay marriage, and debating marriage itself. What about childless marriage? Joe Rogan takes the liberal position, consistently offering a diet of mush. Matt Walsh stands on principle.
The missing counter-argument is universalising Joe Rogan's idea: what if every marriage was loving, richly fulfilling, and also childless?
What if every marriage ended in divorce? What if every marriage was gay?
Or, on the other hand, what if every marriage consisted of a man and a woman, who produce children? What if every couple stayed together?
If the idea is that marriage is for two and only two non-related adults, one man and one woman, who are supposed to stay together and have children, then yes, out-of-wedlock births pose a threat, as do divorces, as do wilfully (as opposed to inadvertently) childless marriages, and gay marriages, too. Why not have polygamy, polyamory declared as marriage, or why can't I marry my horse? Why have any taboos at all?
In life, there are soft taboos and hard taboos. None of us escape them. I wouldn't discriminate against gay couples, let them adopt and raise children, but I also wouldn't call it marriage. Polygamy isn't marriage, either, not in my eyes. I recognize that some people who are married are also swingers, some marriages don't produce children, and some people get divorced. No doubt, life is imperfect, but I wouldn't valorize any of that stuff. And I obviously recognize that sometimes divorce is the only option left.
Bottom line: even at the risk of sounding intolerant, although it's just firmness, standing against Joe's live and let live philosophy, I agree with Matt that procreation is written into the very "nature" of marriage, and is the seed that gives the definition its most graspable meaning. In my opinion, the marriage ideal is a man and a woman, two adults of the opposite sex and not related, joined in a committed bond to create the next generation.
Universalizing arguments are useless and rather stupid. "What if everyone became a doctor...Oh, no we'd all starve because there would be no farmers raising crops!" "What if everyone took-- and kept-- a vow of celibacy...Oh, no, the species would die out!"
You can use that sort of logic about almost anything under the sun and all you have is a reductio ad absurdum.
As for childless marriage, they have existed since time immemorial, sometimes deliberately (elderly people who marry) and sometimes by biological accident. Infertility has never been a bar against marriage, as many a king and nobleman, wed to "barren" wives, knew to their dismay. The idea that marriage must be fertile smacks of a crude instrumentalism which views human beings as "worthy" only as a means to an end, the production of more humans. It is not thus that I understand Christian mortality.
Me: Is it wrong to manipulate and take advantage of people? To use people for our own benefit?
Lib: Of course. It's wrong to treat people objectively and manipulate them for your own benefit.
Me: What if that person is being self destructive and manipulating them was done for their sake out of an abundance of selfless love?
Lib: Then I guess it would be okay because it is for their sake not yours.
Me: So in one instance it is wrong and in another being manipulative can be right. Right because the other person is wrong in their belief and that belief is causing harm to themselves and others?
Lib: Yes of course. If someone is hurting themselves we should try and help them change.
Me: So we can say that this person hurting themselves has a bad idea, a wrong idea, that if we could manipulate them to a better outcome then manipulation would be good.
Lib: Yes.
Me: What if that person we believe is hurting themselves and others is actually right and we are wrong? After all if they can be wrong about their beliefs are we not equally culpable and prone to error?
Lib: Yes but I'm always right!
Me: Okay, okay but seriously. The other person believes something to be true and we believe something to be true.
Lib: Okay. Where are you going with this?
Me: Lets suppose that we manipulate someone selflessly for their own sake like the prior example but in this case we are wrong and they are right. Lets also suppose that even though we believe our manipulation will prevent them from hurting themselves and others it will actually cause them and others harm. Are we wrong in this instance, to manipulate others?
Lib: I'm not sure. If our hearts are in the right place and we are trying to help others but end up hurting them I guess we are wrong but deserving of mercy.
Me: Isn't that self serving?
Lib: But what is the alternative? Are we to simply never try to help others? Never care about the plight of our fellow man? What alternative is their?
Me: So this is the level of inquiry the world works on in reality but many people desire to live in a simplified version. The first two scenarios. Because many people never cross into the third scenario we can say that they live in error and operate on a false equivalence of reality. They live in a delusion, a simplified version of themselves and others that is not representative of the reality of themselves and others.
Lib: What then is this reality?
Me: The reality is that almost everyone cares and that almost everyone is operating on incomplete information and therefore wrong assumptions. We attribute to others malice by judging their actions where in fact we have incomplete information about their hearts. The impetus of the action. We then expect others to perfectly judge our actions out of a false belief that we have perfect understanding of our own hearts. This is why in every ancient text we must first understand ourselves before we can ever truly help others. In becoming aware of the state of our own hearts we become aware of other peoples hearts. In so doing, we correctly order our judgment of action with intent. We aren't done yet I'm afraid.
Lib: What else is their? If we understand our heart and we understand others heart, we are able to judge intention and action.
Me: Yes but we are still left with a conundrum.
Lib: Which is?
Me: Our heart desires good for others but it also desires good for ourselves. We are left with overcoming not only our worst impulses but also our best. Sometimes we will get it wrong like in the third scenario. We will try to help but our help will cause harm. Alternatively others will also try to help and instead they will cause harm. Having knowledge of this third scenario is key but we must go a few steps further and realize another.
Lib: That is?
Me: In our error we believe our actions will do good and we destroy and harm others by our wrong belief and wrong action. The next step is realizing when this is true of ourselves and others after the fact. Then, if we are truly of selfless heart and good intention and our friend also is of good heart and solid mind we must show them the mercy and forgiveness we wish of them. This principal operates on both the selfish and the selfless plain. A paradox perhaps but true none the less.
Lib: You'll never get people to agree to your third step, let alone the fourth or fifth.
Me: Indeed and yet this is the task. The real task, the true task behind the cross and it is the cross we all must bear. It is the task of right heart and right mind. Of the truth, the light, the oneness that we share.
not in the Trad parishes. they are growing and thriving which is what annoys F1 and probably why he issued his motu propio restricting the use of the TLM. Parishes which were part TLM and part Novus Ordo depended primarily on the TLM members for donations and volunteering. now that they are no longer welcomed expected those parishes to slowly die
The big thing with the TLM parishes is the growth of young parishioners between the ages of 21 and say 35. (just my swag from watching attendance at my parish)
We locked Christianity out of the schools, because we didn't want ideology to interfere with "science." Then we allowed another ideology to come along and destroy the entire Enlightenment Era milieu, without any push-back. Somehow we assumed that parents could do it all, that our culture was self-perpetuating. The moral fabric has disintegrated however, with this negligence. Women are busier and expected to do more with less. Their traditions and role in society are undermined, by hapless leaders. The churches don't stand up for them, because they don't believe in themselves. The ministers are old and more focused on retirement, than on civilizing young people. Again the assumption is that society will civilize itself. It is not happening and it time to turn the decay around. Start supporting Christianity as a cultural tradition. It should be simplified and brought back into the schools. We have the kids building Greek temples and African toys, to teach them about those cultures. Why not have them build Christian cathedrals and talk about our Western culture. It is time to build America again and it begins with giving children a firm grasp of who we are, as a people.
Religion is the job of churches and if they are not doing a good job of it that is no excuse to call in the heavy hand of government. The right is skeptical of government power and overreach (at least it used to be) and any argument for "government religion" is an odd one to say the least.