Fatima Day 2026

     Many are the days on which I feel too existentially weary to write a single line. On some such days I give in: I declare a “day off” and retreat to undemanding pursuits. On others I rummage among earlier writings for something I can plausibly resurrect for reuse. And on still others, I mobilize myself by force of will, put my fingers to the keys, start typing, and “see what comes out.”

     In the afterword to her story “The Milk of Paradise” in Again, Dangerous Visions, the late Alice Sheldon, better known to the fans of her fiction as “James Tiptree, Jr,” made a comment about persons who have made writing their life’s work:

     [T]heir separate stories are in fact only nodes, local swirls in a life-flow of words.

     And every now and then I return to that seemingly offhand comment and ask, “To whom does that ‘life-flow of words’ not apply?

* * *

     Communication is life. – informal maxim of NASA astronauts

     The “life-flow of words” is a large part of what keeps us all alive. Once Mankind passed the stage of pure subsistence living, when every man had to spend nearly all of his waking hours searching for food, clothing, and shelter for himself and his dependents, that flow became the lifeblood of human society. Language and its accurate, context-appropriate use made cooperation, trade, and mutual defense possible. That opened the door to human advancement.

     But as men embraced the advantages of society and cooperation, other things were developing as well. A small minority of men chose to use the power of language to abuse others. They invented rhetorical techniques by which to perpetrate deceptions and to provoke hostility.

     One of the events of pre-classical times that receives inadequate attention is the development of written history. Several cultures did so contemporaneously. The Hebrews of the pre-Christian era did so at least a millennium before the birth of Christ. It was a vital development, for what’s been written down as having actually occurred forms a barrier to deception. While it’s not impossible to defeat, it increases the effort required from the deceiver.

     That made controlling the histories a prime goal of would-be deceivers everywhere. Rulers, in particular, had a strong interest in seeing that written history supported their preferred versions of events. As the writing of history is arduous and protracted, the usual course of events was for a king to fund a court historian and certify his product, provided it told the story the king wanted it to tell.

* * *

     There is no such thing as a tool that cannot be employed destructively. Words certainly have been used to destroy: alliances, agreements, affections, peace, faith. But words can also bolster and heal those things. That’s especially the case as regards predictions and prayers.

     One hundred nine years ago today, the Blessed Virgin Mary made her sixth of six appearances in the skies over Fatima, Portugal. It culminated with The Miracle of the Sun, which was witnessed by an estimated 70,000 onlookers. As impressive as the event was, what mattered more – and matters still today – were her predictions about the near future, all of which have been fulfilled.

     To many of our time, the circumstances surrounding the apparitions at Fatima are murky or unknown. The teaching of history having been displaced by a mélange of lies, half-truths, and irrelevancies called “social studies,” few younger Americans are well informed about them. Chalk it up to the secularization of the classroom if you like, but even children taught in Catholic schools are unaware of the tumult that gripped Portugal in 1917. In particular, a secular government rabidly hostile to the Church ruled the nation at that time. In keeping with that hostility, the State attempted to suppress reports of the apparitions.

     The Portuguese State did not succeed. The apparitions at Fatima and the Miracle of the Sun are among the best reported and best known of all miracles. As news of them spread, they fertilized a massive return to faith that swept across Europe.

     One of the things Our Lady said to the three shepherd children of Fatima was that the world, as riven as it was by war and hatred, could still be healed. The medicine it required was the Rosary:

     Our Lady: Do you wish to offer yourselves to God to endure all the sufferings that He may be pleased to send you, as both an act of reparation for the sins with which He is offended and an act of supplication for the conversion of sinners?
     Lucia dos Santos: Yes, we do.
     Our Lady: Well then, you will have much to suffer. But the grace of God will be your comfort.
     "It was upon saying these last words, 'the grace of God...' that for the first time she opened her hands, which emitted a most intense light that penetrated our breasts, reaching the innermost part of our souls and making us see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we can see ourselves in the best of mirrors.
     Then, driven by a deep inspiration, we knelt down and repeated inwardly: 'O Most Holy Trinity, I adore Thee! My God, my God, I love Thee in the Most Blessed Sacrament.'”
     "A moment later, Our Lady added, 'Pray the rosary every day to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war.'

     Sadly, that return to faith was undermined by the political and cultural currents that followed World War I. But the mandate the Blessed Virgin gave to Lucia dos Santos, Jacinta and Francisco Marto remains as it was on May 13, 1917:

If you wish to join in the healing of the world,
Then each and every day,
From today to the end of your life,
Pray the Rosary.

     Yes, like all prayers, the Rosary is “just words in a row.” It affects nothing in the “real world.” It can seem pointless to keep repeating the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Small Doxology over and over. But it quiets the mind and soothes the heart. In partaking of “the life-flow of words,” it brings peace. Where in our world can peace be so cheaply and easily purchased?

     And where is peace for our world to begin, if not our hearts – yours and mine?

     May God bless and keep you all.

Life After Death

     If you haven’t seen this documentary:

Why do near-death survivors stop being afraid of death? These people who came back from clinical death were asked directly. Their answers came without hesitation. Watch our documentary 𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗛𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗦—𝗜𝘀 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗱? 👇

— Epoch Health (@epochhealth) September 26, 2026

     …you might want to give it a look.

     The Epoch Times is a Christian-oriented publication, so many non-Christians would dismiss it a priori. However, the Final Hours production is intended to be a genuine documentary: i.e., it records the statements of persons who’ve had near-death experiences. It doesn’t insist that those statements are unimpeachable. Rather, it notes the commonalities among their statements and invites the viewer to form his own conclusions.

     There’s always more than one possible explanation for any given phenomenon, whether it’s an event we can all witness or something that happens in only one person’s experience and is therefore un-witnessable. Many explanations have been offered for the similarity of the experiences of persons who’ve been brought back from the edge of death. You pays your money and you takes your choice, as the saying goes.

     Still, the commonalities are suggestive. What, exactly, do they suggest? None of them involve being imprisoned in a place of torment. None of them suggest that the afterlife will be less pleasant than our temporal lives. Is the commonality being portrayed here about what we can all expect, or is it about the characters of the deponents?

     There’s no way to know on this side of the veil of Time. People will gravitate to the inference that fits most comfortably with their existing beliefs and convictions.

     I don’t know whether Final Hours is viewable by non-subscribers. But if you can see it, I would encourage you to do so, especially if you hold to Christian teachings about life after death.

For The Feast Of St. Francis of Assisi

     [Today, October 4, 2026, is the 800th anniversary of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi. October 4 is the feast day on which the Church honors the great “mendicant saint” of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Saint Francis brought not only a great ardor to Christian evangelism, but a wholly new style: one that had more in common with the ministry of Jesus than the immensely rich and powerful medieval Church could countenance. Yet few of the Church’s saints have inspired greater devotion.

     What follows first appeared at Liberty’s Torch on July 12, 2015. -- FWP]

---

     Though it has been called apocryphal, Saint Francis of Assisi is reputed to have said:

     “At all times, preach the Gospel. When necessary, use words.”

     The notion of evangelism without verbal preachment comes as a surprise to many. To some it’s a disagreeable surprise. If every Christian is charged with some portion of the Great Commission, surely we’re expected to tell others what Jesus said. At least, that’s how the usual reasoning runs. After all, how can we pass along the Word of God if we’re not to use words?

     That’s not totally incorrect. However, it runs into a common problem – and by “common” I mean “near to universal.” For Christians differ from non-Christians only in our profession of faith and the commitment it implies. In other regards we are much like our non-Christian brethren. The most important of these is our fallibility.

     Fallible means capable of error. That’s been the case with every man who’s ever lived. (“Man” is inclusive of both sexes, ladies, so don’t give yourselves any airs.) Note the similarity to the word fallen, more commonly used in theological talk. To have fallen is to have erred, whether willfully, through ignorance, or by accident.

     We are all fallen. Only two exceptions exist, one of whom was born Immaculate and the other of whom was the Son of God. As for the rest of us, few go any significant interval without falling, whether to little or great effect. Jesus reminded us of this rather pointedly:

     Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull the mote out of thine eye, and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye; and then thou shalt see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye. [Matthew 7:1-5]

     He could not have told us more clearly to look first to the health of our own souls. Inasmuch as no one this side of the veil of Time is ever absolutely sinless and perfectly resistant to temptation, His instruction pretty much precludes judging others. That makes verbal preachment something of a problem.

     However, being a good example is possible to all of us.

---

     Saint Francis of Assisi was known for his embrace of poverty and utter simplicity. His evangelism was largely by example. An illustrative story about his style of evangelism concerns a brother in a monastic order where Francis had taken lodging. One day the young monk begged Francis for permission to accompany him on a day’s preaching. The saint assented, and they went forth from the monastery at daybreak.

     First they came upon a group of men laboring in the field. Francis said “Let us work beside them,” which they did, in silence, for several hours before passing onward.

     Next they came upon a village where they found a group deep in prayer. Francis said “Let us pray with them,” which they did, in silence, for another hour before passing onward.

     Late in the day they entered a village where a wedding celebration was in progress. Francis said “Let us rejoice with them,” which they did. At last dusk was upon them and it was time to return to the monastery.

     When they had returned to the monastery, the young monk said to Francis, “Brother, was it not your intention to preach today? Yet we spoke not a word of preachment from departure to return.” Francis smiled. “Brother,” he replied, “this day we have done nothing but preach, from dawn till dusk.”

     Those are the very definition of “words to live by.”

---

     The great enemy of verbal preachment is, of course, hypocrisy. He who dwells in darkness can never draw others into the light with words. They will observe his behavior, note the contradiction to his words, and pass on unchanged.

     However, success breeds emulation. The Christian ethos -- faith in God and the rightness of His Commandments; hope of an afterlife of eternal bliss; respectful, appropriate charity toward others whom God places in one’s path – is the one most conducive to success in life. He who commits to that ethos and lives it sincerely will draw emulators and students as surely as the sunflower turns its face toward the Sun.

     This course does not free us from our susceptibility to temptation. Every day presents fresh opportunities to fall from grace, and rare to nonexistent is the man who resists without fail. But this is the reason humility is so vital to a Christian. The first, all-important step in accepting the divinity of Christ and committing oneself to the Christian ethos is accepting one’s own fallibility. That implies an obligation to recognize and admit one’s sins, to repent of them, and to strive not to repeat them.

     Saint Francis of Assisi knew temptation:

     Let us not imagine that saints are free from the vicissitudes common to human life, which includes moments of happiness and frustration, dangerous temptations and courageous stands. It was no different with Saint Francis, portrayed as «the always happy brother», courteous, who lived a mystical union with all creatures, whom he considered his brothers and sisters. But at the same time, he was a person of great passions and profound rage when he saw his ideals betrayed by his brothers. His foremost biographer, Friar Tommaso da Celano, described with cruel realism that Francis suffered temptations of violent lust, that he knew how to symbolically sublimate.

     There is, however, a fact that pious Franciscan historiography hides, but that is well documented by historical critique, and that is known as the great temptation. The last five years of Francis’ life (he died in 1226) were marked by deep anguish, almost desperation, and the grave illnesses that afflicted him, such as malaria and blindness. The problem was objective: his ideal of life was to live in extreme poverty and radical simplicity, divested of all power, and sustained only by the Gospel read to him without the interpretation that often shroud its revolutionary meaning.

     As it happened, in a few years his lifestyle captivated thousands of followers, more than five thousand. How to shelter them? How to feed them? Many were priests and theologians, such as Saint Anthony. His movement had neither structure nor legality. It was purely a dream taken seriously. Francis understood himself as a novellus pazzus, a new madman that God wanted for the very wealthy Church, led by Pope Innocence III, the most powerful of all popes throughout history.

     Beginning in the Summer of 1220, he wrote several versions of a rule that were all rejected by the gatherings of the fraternity. They were too utopic. Frustrated and feeling useless, he decided to renounce leadership of the movement. Filled with anguish and without knowing what else to do, he found refuge in the woods for two years, visited only by his intimate friend friar Leo. He waited for a divine illumination that would not come. Meanwhile, a rule was drafted that was marked by the influence of the Roman Curia and the Pope, turning the movement into a religious order: the Order of Friars Minor, with defined structure and purposes. Francis, with pain, humbly accepted it. But he clearly stated that he would no longer discuss it, but would continue giving examples of the primitive dream. Law triumphed over life, power confined charisma. But the spirit of Francis remained: the spirit of poverty, of simplicity, of universal brotherhood that inspires us to this day. Francis died amidst great personal frustration, but without losing his happiness. He died singing Provencal songs of love and the psalms.

     No, it’s not commanded of us to live in Assisian poverty. Few indeed are capable of such a life, or called to it. But whatever course we choose, if we are humble and sincere, we must be prepared to admit those occasions when we fail to uphold its strictures and norms, and to repent of them. Nothing else can make our example, as guided by the Christian ethos, attractive to others.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Denominations And Denunciations

All the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants.
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.

     [Tom Lehrer, National Brotherhood Week]

     There’s an infinite amount to say about this, and a never-ending torrent of tempestuous rhetoric and recrimination to go with it. Those are the reasons I try to stay away from it. But every now and then the topic broaches my Rant Threshold.

     It’s been said, by me among others, that the greatest fanaticisms arise over unverifiable, unfalsifiable propositions. A lot of blood has been spilled over religious differences. It’s hardly necessary for a minor-league commentator to deplore it. But even in relatively civil and peaceful times, the matter should be watched.

     We haven’t had a major religious war in these United States, at least as far as I’m aware. There have been some ugly occasions – the “Mormon Wars” and the “Bloody Monday” riots of the 19th Century, for example — but they passed into history without much persistent effect. Contemporary verbal conflicts among members of Christian denominations are of greater long-term significance.

     There’s a lot of mudslinging among Christian denominations. It’s more ironic than I can capture in a net of words. Christ demanded very little of His followers, as I’ve written here many times. The heart of His message was love of God and benevolence toward those around you: the two Great Commandments enunciated in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22. While I’m a Catholic for what I consider good reasons, I hold that anyone, regardless of denominational affiliation, who does his best to live by the Great Commandments, and to repent of his sins against them, will be happy with his next life.

     So why all the foofaurauw?

     Some of it derives from the desire to feel superior to others. Some might descend from a memory of having been abused by members of another sect. But regardless of the specifics, it indicates a shortfall of humility. It violates the second Great Commandment. And it is unworthy of a follower of Christ.

     It’s bewildering to think that it should be necessary to say those things. It troubles me that I feel such a need to say them. But the evidence of steadily rising inter-denominational hostility is too plain to ignore.

     My fellow Christians: Is it too much to ask that you do as your Savior would have you do? You can argue over points of doctrine and Scripture without becoming disagreeable, can’t you? Would it pain you that greatly to allow that you could be wrong?

     Any subject can be belabored unduly, and this one is no exception, so I’ll close here:

     Remember the words of the Redeemer.
     Live by the Great Commandments.
     Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
     And do have a nice day.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Crosses And Virtues

     Today’s Gospel reading was from Matthew, chapter 16:

     From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.
     Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.
     But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.
     Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
     For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
     For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

     [Matthew 16:21-27]

     Jesus made that statement about “taking up [your] cross” more than once. There’s been a fair amount of squabbling over what He meant. Today’s Mass celebrant tried to paper it over with a lecture about being ready and willing to help others. That’s that priest’s particular shtick; I come at it from a different angle.

     When I studied Latin many years ago, I came into contact with the school of philosophy called Stoicism:

     Philosophical discourse is paramount in Stoicism, including the view that the mind is in rational dialogue with itself. Stoic ethics centers on virtue as the highest good, cultivating emotional self-control, a calm problem-solving state of mind, and rational judgment to attain lifelong flourishing (eudaimonia). At the same time, passions, anxieties, and insecurities are viewed as misguided reactions that ought to be controlled through self-disciplined practice. Of all the schools of ancient Western philosophy, Stoicism made the greatest claim to being utterly systematic. Central to Stoic ethics was the idea of living in accordance with nature, which meant aligning one's life with one's sense of reason and the rational order of the universe.

     When we speak of a man as stoic, we hearken back to that school of philosophy. We mean he exemplifies the virtues the Stoics valued, beginning with Zeno and flowing thence to Marcus Aurelius:

• He controls himself.
• He is not easily disturbed.
• He does not complain, or parade his sufferings.
• He strives to put his reason in command of his emotions.
• He tempers wild impulses, sudden passions, and the onset of worry and fear.

     Those virtues are the heart of Stoicism. Every man bears burdens of some sort. We admire most greatly him who bears them Stoically.

     Few of us will depart this life by being crucified, and thank God for that. But whatever our burdens may be, bearing them with grace and quiet patience is at the core of what Western Civilization has esteemed most highly: the man who does what he must and asks little of others in the doing. Moreover, whatever his burdens may be – physical, mental, or spiritual – they are his. It’s rare that they can be shunted onto other shoulders. We think little of a man who tries to do so. Others might choose to assist him with some of them, but the responsibility for bearing them is his alone.

     That pair of recognitions demands stoicism from us. A society that lacks it, or fails to appreciate it, isn’t likely to endure and prosper. It may be held together by force for a while, but it’s likely to dissolve under a tide of predation and sloth.

     The cross, in First Century Judea, represented the greatest burden imaginable at that time. Crucifixion was ignominious, protracted, and excruciating. (Note the etymology of excruciating.) To accept such a fate silently and patiently – stoically – marked a condemned man as greater, in that regard at least, than those who had condemned him.

     In that metaphorical way, Christ instructed those who chose to follow Him in what He expected of them: the virtues Zeno and his successor Stoics elucidated and praised. That a number of the Apostles and lesser disciples experienced real crucifixion is barely relevant.

     Lord, though my burdens are far inferior to those You bore, help me to be as stoic in bearing them as You were on Your cross.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Schismata Part 3: The Cracks

     I’ve received a couple of questions about the neologism in the titles of these pieces. The resemblance to stigmata is deliberate. The wounds inflicted on Jesus Christ during his Passion and Crucifixion were preliminaries to His death on the Cross. The last of the stigmata, the spear wound to His side, was inflicted to guarantee that He was dead before His body could be taken down.

     My concept of schismata parallels the stigmata in that regard. The cracks in our philosophical and cultural unity being inflicted by the Left’s vanguard are preliminaries to a deathblow. They’re intended to soften us up for the kill. And they’ve been doing a bang-up job… or they were.

* * *

     As reality itself is a unity, all true wisdom is a unity as well. For wisdom is something other than material knowledge about “how things work.” True wisdom is the acceptance of reality in all its facets. The truly wise man “concedes the Tao,” as C. S. Lewis might have said. He doesn’t attempt to deny any part of it, for he knows its unity.

     Philosophy, “love of wisdom” etymologically, is a unity as well. Most peoples with a common culture share a philosophical outlook that’s seldom articulated. One aspect of that outlook is made visible in what they hail as beautiful. The architectural wonders of Europe, especially its cathedrals, testify to the esthetics of the culture that produced them. That esthetic cannot be separated from the rest of its enveloping outlook without destroying both.

     As I noted previously, that is where the Left chose to attack. No other part of the Western outlook was as vulnerable. Esthetics was uniquely sensitive because of the notion of relativism.

     In retrospect, we ought to have known better. To place the cathedrals and symphonies of Christian Enlightenment culture on a balance scale with the mud huts and grunted chants of self-mutilating savages was insane from the first. But the premise that beauty is “in the eye of the beholder,” rather than an aspect of reality itself, made it possible.

     The rejection of esthetic absolutes provided the ingress the destroyers needed.

* * *

     Once esthetic relativism had swept over Western culture, other aspects of the Western philosophical outlook became vulnerable. The key target was objectivity itself. Undermining the conviction that reality is real was the goal of the anti-Western forces. That could not be done by direct attack. It had to be through the promotion of non-Western outlooks, concepts of beauty, and “ways of knowing.”

     That trend began in Europe before the World Wars, but it accelerated sharply in the Sixties. That was when relativism as a philosophical primary took firm root. Millions of credulous young Westerners seized upon it. Their elders did little or nothing to correct them.

     Nonsense was promulgated as truth. Bizarre notions about reality as a plastic that individuals could reshape as they please were touted as wisdom. Relativism, already established in the arts, made it possible to introduce absurdities as acceptable alternatives to the real… and to get them accepted by millions.

     I was there. I was part of it. I remember it too well.

* * *

     “What is truth?” – Pontius Pilate

     Once, in giving a presentation to a college class in philosophy, I asked the students whether any of them had ever been interested in magic. A few hands went up...all of which belonged to persons who were somewhat reluctant to admit it. I smiled and told them not to be overly embarrassed, for magic, if it worked, would appear to be an easier way of achieving one’s aims – some of them, at least – than the alternatives. That’s its attraction.

     But magic doesn’t work. Why, then, are there persons who call themselves witches and claim to practice magic? Why are they granted the smallest amount of respect?

     If magic worked, it would be the focus of intense study and experimentation. Researchers would flock to the field, hoping to tease out the laws that govern it. Money would pour into the exploration of its limits and potential applications. None of that has happened.

     Another set of notions, similar to magic, is that of psi powers: in essence, mind over matter/energy. For a time, that was a field of investigation for some fringe researchers, but it yielded nothing and has been relegated to the mediums (not “the media”) and stage magicians. But again, there are persons who proclaim themselves to be telepaths, or clairvoyants, and make a living out of demonstrating those “powers.” Why are they accorded any respect?

     Ironically, a brilliant fiction writer, Robert Silverberg, provided a summary of the reasons:

     “For the last eight, ten years, we’ve all been trying to stumble toward some kind of workable synthesis, some structural correlative that’ll hold the world together for us in the middle of all the chaos. The pot, the acid, the communes, the rock, the whole transcendentalist thing, the astrology, the macrobiotics, the Zen—we’re searching, right, we’re always searching? And sometimes finding. Not often. We look in a lot of dumb places, because basically we’re mostly dumb, even the best of us, and also because we can’t know the answers until we’ve worked out more of the questions. So we chase after flying saucers. We put on Scuba suits and look for Atlantis. We’re into mythology, fantasy, paranoia, Middle Earth, freakiness, a thousand kinds of irrationality. Whatever they’ve rejected, we buy, often for no better reason than that they turned it down. The flight from reason. I don’t entirely defend it. I just say it’s necessary, it’s a stage we all have to pass through, the fire, the annealing. Reason wasn’t sufficient. Western man escaped from superstitious ignorance into materialistic emptiness: now we’ve got to continue on, sometimes down blind alleys and false trails, until we learn how to accept the universe again in all its mysterious inexplicable tremendousness, until we find the right thing, the synthesis, the getting together that lets us live the way we ought to be living.”

     [From The Book of Skulls]

     They – we – were looking for magic.

* * *

     But “mythology, fantasy, paranoia, Middle Earth, freakiness,” et cetera are not of the Tao. To compel respect for them, by whatever means, violates the precepts of rational thought. Silverberg may have known that, back in 1972 when he wrote The Book of Skulls. Indeed, a man that intelligent could hardly fail to know it. Those who sought to undermine the Western outlook – the philosophical bedrock of the Christian Enlightenment – knew it well.

     The fragmentation of that bedrock proceeded apace throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century. Magic, irrealism, and outright solipsism, propelled in part by the burgeoning drug plague, advanced as alternatives to reality itself. A critical moment arrived with the introduction and acceptance of a nonsense phrase: “our truth,” or alternately “your truth.” That became popular with the moral / ethical relativists, those determined to open a crack in the moral norms promulgated by Christianity.

     The assault on esthetic norms had made inroads for assaults on other norms. In large part that was through the personal charisma of the “new artistes.” It was also powered by the adolescent thrill of rebellion, flipping off the “straights” and “doing your own thing.” The cracks would soon be exploited by the purveyors of a deadly kind of magic: the “reality is plastic” notion that makes it possible to believe in impossibilities.

     More anon.

Schismata Part 2: The Unity

     A long time ago, I wrote:

     In the kitchen, Louis took a small saucepan from the cabinet beneath the cooktop, filled it half-full with hot water, and set it on a burner. From a drawer he produced a large bulb-type thermometer, attached it to a pair of wooden grips, and passed the combination to her.
     “This is going to be a little different. I’m going to make a prediction, and then we’ll see if it comes true.” He gestured at the saucepan. “I’m going to light the stove and heat the water in the pot. You put the thermometer in and watch the reading, but don’t let the bulb touch the pan! I predict that no matter how high we turn the flame, and no matter how long we let it heat, the temperature of the water will never rise past two hundred twelve degrees. Okay?”
     “Okay.” She dipped the bulb into the pot. The reading rose to a hundred fifteen degrees. He lit the burner, turned the flame up high, and they watched.
     When giant bubbles began to rise through the water, the thermometer read two hundred twelve. She kept it as steady as she could, never allowing the bulb to touch the metal of the pan. The water level dropped and the kitchen filled with steam, but the reading stayed at two hundred twelve until Louis quenched the burner ten minutes later.
     “We’ve boiled away too much to keep going safely. So? What does that mean to you?”
     She shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it supposed to mean something?”
     “Well, maybe not. But what does it mean to you that my prediction came true?”
     “You knew it would be that way.”
     “And what does that mean?”
     She started to speak and stopped herself. She knew his style. There was a pattern in the sequence of apparently unrelated things he had shown her that day. He was waiting for her to see it. The Nag lent a hand.
     Limits. He’s shown you three limits. Three things that wishing can’t do anything about.
     “Water’s just that way, right? It always stops at two-twelve. You can’t force it any higher.”
     He nodded as the huge grin returned to his face. “That’s right. Not at sea level, anyway. That’s one of the unvarying properties of water.” He took the saucepan to the sink and emptied it. There was a hiss and a new cloud of steam as the water ran over the cold porcelain.
     “Scientists study the properties of things all the time.” He set the pan down in the sink and turned back to her. “They look for patterns in the way things behave, and then they test their understanding by making predictions. When their predictions work, they gain confidence that they’re on to something. When their predictions fail, they junk their theories and start over. Mostly by little steps, sometimes by big ones, always building on the learning of those that came before them, this is how scientists come to know the world.”
     He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms against his chest. There was something in his demeanor she hadn’t seen before, a kind of all-pervading delight that transformed him and made it impossible to look away from him.
     “Scientists always look for the widest, most comprehensive patterns they can find, and then they try to explain them. And they’ve noticed that, the wider and deeper they go, the simpler the explanations seem to get.
     “The great discoveries of the past three centuries have all pointed toward the existence of an enormous central fact, a single law for the whole world and everything in it. All the little patterns we see in things, like legs only being so fast, or arms only being so strong, or water never rising past two-twelve Fahrenheit, are just special cases of that central law, like the differently shaped shadows a statue will cast depending on how you turn it in the sun. Does that suggest anything to you, Chris?”
     It took her a moment to register the question. She began to think. He waited in silence.
     A million million details. A single truth giving rise to them all. Human reason sifting the details for the patterns that hid in them. Human knowledge of the patterns accumulating over the centuries, gradually reconstructing the statue from its innumerable shadows.
     “The more you know, the simpler it all gets,” she whispered. “The parts might be confusing, but it’s made to be understood whole.” The thrill of discovery was coursing through her like an electric current. “Louis, it couldn’t have happened that way by chance, could it?”
     He folded his hands and looked down at them.
     “Some people think it could have, Chris.”
     “Do you?”
     “No.”
     “And that’s religion?”
     He nodded.

     That was a young genius attempting to explain the impulse toward religious belief to another young but untutored genius. He’d found God in natural law. The uniformity and consistency of natural law seemed to him to mandate a single great Lawgiver. Other great minds have done the same, though not all of them.

     Yet Louis’s insight, entirely apart from its religious overtones, has another implication of critical import: All laws are one. All truths are one. They intertwine and support one another. Were any one of them to be pulled loose, the edifice would crumble.

     Though many would disagree, the unity is there.

     I’ve written that for an individual to accept any single fact as objectively irrefutable would compel him to accept all the rest of reality, given time. But after long reflection, I’ve come to believe that the reverse is true as well: If he could successfully deny any one objectively demonstrable fact, it would force him to deny all the rest of objective reality. He’d have to! They’re intertwined. Any one thread that’s pulled loose would unravel the whole garment.

     It may be that the enemies of the Western edifice – what I’ve called the Christian Enlightenment — are more aware of this than are most of us who strive to defend it. Their attacks have demonstrated that their tacticians have some insight. A smart tactician doesn’t pit strength against strength. He always looks for a weakness to attack.

     The weaknesses of Western civilization are those realms of thought in which we’ve entertained disputes about objective truths… including the mystifying determination of some to dismiss the concept of an objective reality entirely.

* * *

     I led off yesterday’s piece by rhapsodizing, a bit wistfully, about the Apollo 11 mission. In what probably struck many Gentle Readers as the all-time champion of jagged segues, I leaped thence into a tirade about the Left’s attack on the arts.

     By now, you know that what I do, I do deliberately.

     Though I know that there are people who claim that the moon landing was faked – that men have never crossed that divide – only they take themselves seriously. They’re in a special category of naysayers, along with the flat-Earthers and Man Will Never Fly Society. But the naysayer, a.k.a. the skeptic, is an important creature. Provided that he is honest, he assists the rest of us in answering questions about natural laws. The honesty part is not optional: he must be willing to concede when he’s been proved wrong by objective means.

     The nature of objectivity is a tender point in the Western psyche. It’s unprovable, because proof is inapplicable to things that cannot be categorized. Objectivity isn’t a concept; it’s reality itself. To deny objectivity is to deny that the world we perceive is anything but a figment of our imaginations.

* * *

     I feel no need to go into the solipsist or social-constructionist fallacies today. Suffice it to say that these are the end states of the denial of objectivity. They who strive to destroy the Christian Enlightenment don’t want to go that far. They want something like this:

     ’There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,’ he said. ’Repeat it, if you please.’
     ”Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” repeated Winston obediently.
     ”Who controls the present controls the past,” said O’Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. ’Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?’
     Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether ’yes’ or ’no’ was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.
     O’Brien smiled faintly. ’You are no metaphysician, Winston,’ he said. ’Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?’
     ’No.’
     ’Then where does the past exist, if at all?’
     ’In records. It is written down.’
     ’In records. And- ?’
     ’In the mind. In human memories.
     ’In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?’
     ’But how can you stop people remembering things?’ cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. ’It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!’
     O’Brien’s manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.
     ’On the contrary,’ he said, ’you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

     With themselves as “The Party,” of course.

     If all of reality is truly a unity, then successfully attacking it at one weak point offers the best chance of destroying the acceptance of reality itself – that is, reality as objective, ontologically prior to perception, statement, theory, and opinion. The weakest point was in esthetics, the special province of the human activities called the arts. Accordingly, that was where the destroyers struck.

     “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” ran the old saw. Nothing that blatantly false has ever received as much deference. Beauty – esthetic Quality, as Pirsig would say – inheres in the object itself. We perceive it, call it beautiful, and think that in doing so we’ve rendered a personal judgment, but in point of fact we are merely recognizing a fact – something prior to our perceptions; something that simply is. The artists of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment eras accepted that without bothering to debate it. Their works exemplify their acceptance.

     As usual, C. S. Lewis had something to say about it:

     She saw from the windows of the train the outlined beams of sunlight pouring over stubble or burnished woods and felt that they were like the notes of a trumpet. Her eyes rested on the rabbits and cows as they flitted by and she embraced them in heart with merry, holiday love. She delighted in the occasional speech of the one wizened old man who shared her compartment and saw, as never before, the beauty of his shrewd and sunny old mind, sweet as a nut and English as a chalk down. She reflected with surprise how long it was since music had played any part in her life, and resolved to listen to many chorales by Bach on the gramophone that evening. Or else—perhaps—she would read a great many Shakespeare sonnets. She rejoiced also in her hunger and thirst and decided that she would make herself buttered toast for tea—a great deal of buttered toast. And she rejoiced also in the consciousness of her own beauty; for she had the sensation—it may have been false in fact, but it had nothing to do with vanity—that it was growing and expanding like a magic flower with every minute that passed. In such a mood it was only natural, after the old countryman had got out at Cure Hardy, to stand up and look at herself in the mirror which confronted her on the wall of the compartment. Certainly she was looking well: she was looking unusually well. And, once more, there was little vanity in this. For beauty was made for others.

     If yesterday’s piece didn’t make sense to you at first reading, perhaps it will today.

* * *

     I try not to go on at great length here. This is one of my longer pieces, yet it’s composed principally of citations of other works. In the next segment I’ll attempt to solidify the connections between the attacks noted here and the pillars of our intellectual realm.

     Have a nice day.

Schismata Part 1

     Depending on what time zone you were in at the time, either today or tomorrow, in the Year of Our Lord 1969, Neil Armstrong first set foot on the surface of the Moon. For many, that moment was the high-water mark of Western Civilization. In the person of an American astronaut, Mankind had escaped its womb and begun its journey to the stars.

     But the matter was far from settled. “Those who have not joy” (C. S. Lewis) immediately began to denigrate or cast doubt on the achievement. Some were blatant, others subtle. A number strove to recast the Apollo landing as somehow tainted by slavery, “imperialism,” or whatever else they could conjure up. A few tried to reduce its significance by stressing that the Moon is “conveniently close,” which makes getting there “no big deal.” Others pointed to the competitive, quasi-combative aspect of the “Space Race.” Had it not been for the Soviets’ early lead in space travel, they claimed, America would never have cared about a Moon landing. And so on, ad nauseam.

     We ought to have paid more attention to the denigrators and naysayers. They were the point of an invisible spear aimed at America’s heart. There was significant pressure behind that spear. It had already made an inroad into our national psyche. It penetrated ever more deeply as the years rolled past.

* * *

     The Sixties, for all the hype that’s been lavished on them, were the beginning of America’s decline. Those who sought to destroy us knew that you don’t start at the top. To bring down a society, you locate its foundation and work to undermine it. The foundation stones of the extraordinary achievement that Robert A. Heinlein called “the Renaissance Civilization” were all but invisible to the great majority of Americans. In consequence, we failed to recognize their attackers or grasp the aim of their efforts.

     Rather than follow my usual practice, I’ll cut to the chase:

The foundation of the United States of America
Was made from Christian ethics and political freedom.

     Those aren’t things that would yield to the first blows of the chisel. They are – or were – too deeply ingrained in the American psyche to be quickly shattered. So deeply, in fact, that the average American of the first decades after World War II never thought about them. They were omnipresent, like air. More, we had inherited them from prior generations. It was easy to believe that that’s just how things are and always will be.

     We never thought about why we believed that. That made it easy for the underminers to chip away undisturbed.

* * *

     It was the Sixties in which the attacks on our foundation became generally visible. Conspicuous socialist and communist movements began to proliferate in “centers of higher education.” Those things are inherently opposed to both freedom and Christianity. Their purveyors were clever; they aimed first at cultural targets: the arts. They strove to displace the esthetics that ruled music, painting, sculpture, dance, fiction, and entertainment. For they understood, as many of us did not, that those things reinforce a people’s sense of themselves and their achievements.

     Ironically, those who railed against the new, anti-Christian esthetics were beaten back with a weapon that baffled them: artistic freedom. That was presented to us with the implication that the nouvel artiste has an affirmative right to stand alongside traditional practitioners. It occurred to very few that freedom includes the freedom to condemn.

     Collectivist nostrums would soon infiltrate the educational system. Clouds began to form around basic concepts such as rights and justice. The arts had lifted the tent flap and made it possible. Eastern European intellectuals had embraced the Gramscian prescription and brought it to receptive American “scholars” who were looking for something “new.”

     First in the arts, then in “soft” studies such as psychology, sociology, and economics, American universities became battlegrounds between the Left and the Right.

* * *

     This is really an introductory piece. I can’t finish it in one Sunday; there’s too much ground to cover. (Besides, I have laundry to do, a cat room to clean, and meatballs to make.) I wanted to introduce the idea and ideas of the Sixties, “the Summer of Love,” as the appropriate starting point for examining the attack on America’s conceptual foundation.

     It’s time for the gloss that’s been smeared over that decade to be wiped away, in the interests of clearsighted understanding of our plight and its roots.

Marching Orders

     Today’s Gospel reading is one of the most difficult parts of the Gospels to accept literally:

     Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
     He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
     He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
     He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
     He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward.
     And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.

     [Matthew 10:34-42]

     That’s Christ talking to His Apostles. The Son of God had something quite definite in mind. The Twelve were about to set out on a difficult, tiring, hazardous journey. That journey had more than one reason.

     One of the distinguishing marks of this passage is its absoluteness. Jesus was putting out the Word unadorned. Loyalty to Him must take precedence over other loyalties. The Twelve had to bear that in mind at all times. Others would surely offer them inducements to leave Him for some other master, especially after they demonstrated the power He had bestowed upon them. Equally imperative, they were not to take among them any of dubious commitment.

     Bishops have to be like that. Bishops, be it remembered, have the authority under the Apostolic Succession to ordain priests and to elevate priests to the episcopate. The deadliest thing a bishop could do to the Church is to elevate an unworthy priest. Of course, if a priest is unworthy, whichever bishop ordained him committed a grave error of judgment at the very least.

     But the passage also speaks to lay Christians. We are commanded to put steadfastness in faith above all other priorities. That sounds harmless enough until we get to the implications. Could you, a Christian randomly selected from the pool of Liberty’s Torch Gentle Readers, profess your faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God if the consequences were to include the death by torture of everyone you love? Because that’s part of the deal. It’s not even in the fine print; it’s right out in front of God and everybody.

     That makes for tough chewing. But it’s at the heart of Christian commitment.

* * *

     We of the United States are blessed in many ways. Not the least of those is that until rather recently, ours was a Christian country. The overwhelming majority of Americans described themselves as Christians of some variety. There were minor faiths, of course: Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, even some Taoism and Shintoism. But all of those were compatible with C. S. Lewis’s “Law of General Benevolence.” We are commanded to be “men of good will:” i.e., to will the good of others, and to labor for it at need. A faith that rejects that Law is “outside the Tao,” in Lewis’s formulation. It is unfit for human consumption.

     Today, matters are not so pleasant. Two faiths go among us that reject that Law: Islam and militant atheism. Both of these are threats to the Christian. The Muslim is the sworn enemy of all persons of other faiths; he wills their subjugation or destruction. The militant atheist concerns himself with faith alone. Paradoxically that may make him more dangerous than the Muslim, for he appears harmless.

     I could go into details about those threats to body and soul, but I hardly think it’s necessary. A Christian, whatever his denomination, is sworn to follow the teachings of Christ. Anyone who attempts to induce a Christian to deny Christ – to set anything above His Word – imperils the soul. And one cannot know whence the threat emanates. It could come from within the circle of his temporal loves: his family and cherished friends.

     There is a challenge here, for we are not licensed to forsake our families. We must remain in Christ while also conserving our family relations and bonds. It’s not quite squaring the circle, but it can be difficult, especially if Brother Atheist or Daughter-in-Law Muslim is aggressive about the matter. The challenge is hardly less when the threat comes from a beloved friend.

     Those interested in embracing Christ must be fully conscious of the requirements. Clerics who specialize in Christian initiation have no higher duty. Indeed, a cleric who fails that duty will find forgiveness hard to get.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Timing

     Because I write frequently on matters of faith and the spirit, I occasionally get questions about – drum roll, please – how to lead others to Christ. Such questions make me want to run and hide. I’m no master evangelist. I’m just a thinker and writer. But the questions arrive anyway.

     The greatest Christian apologist of the Twentieth Century, Clive Staples Lewis, once wrote that “God does all things for each.” I sense that to be true. Yes, each of us was given free will, but that doesn’t mean we’ll never need a little help. We cannot predict the timing, nor the form, of that help. That makes it important to stay alert, attentive… and humble.

     I wrote the following in 2005. It first appeared at the late, lamented Eternity Road site. I’ve amended it slightly, to make it conform to events since then. If you’re a Christian of any denomination who hopes to become more effective at spreading the Faith, perhaps it will speak to you.

---

     Timing, they say, is everything. And while we all have our little disagreements with "they," I think on this matter they're more right than wrong. This being Sunday, my focus is, as usual, on matters of faith and the spirit.

     In recent years there's been a resurgence of interest in Christianity, a great part of which has gone to the Catholic Church and its Deposit of Faith. Many "cradle Catholics" who fell away when they became teenagers or young adults, as I did, have returned to the communion, oftentimes with wild expressions of astonishment and joy. I can only delight in this trend, not only because I love the Church and think it to have the best grip on eternal truth of all human institutions, but also because the great falling-away of the Baby Boom generation coincided with the rising of many social pathologies. The relation was more than a coincidence.

     But what does it mean? Are the returnees and recent converts flocking through the Church's ancient doors because they've had a spiritual awakening? Because they seek to change their lives? Because an hour a week with a psychiatrist has become prohibitive? For many persons have involved themselves with a church for reasons quite distinct from a true attachment to its mission and teachings.

     The Church, particularly the Church in America, has changed greatly. Fifty years ago, its presence on this continent was marked by an unpleasant degree of authoritarianism. Its priests and nuns seemed to want to declare everything either compulsory or forbidden, on God's Authority. They gave little or no explanation for their dicta; the subtext was always "It's this way or Hell." And one lesson we who attended parochial schools learned early and deeply, often from the business end of a Bolo paddle, was that you don't argue with a nun or a priest.

     The past half-century has seen a softening of the clerical attitudes that evoked the greatest resistance. Characteristic of the contemporary approach are these passages from What It Means To Be Catholic, by Father Joseph M. Champlin:

     The Church attempts to say something about [a wide range of contemporary issues with moral overtones.] Nevertheless, while it can clearly state the commandments, and almost as strongly teach certain general principles based upon the commandments, the further away the Church moves from the commandments and the more specific the issue at hand, the less authoritative the Church becomes. The Church on such points proposes its teachings more as tentative probings and studied insights designed to help Catholics resolve these delicate conscience questions....

     Catholics believe that an individual's conscience is the ultimate determinant of what is wrong or right for that individual. Moreover, God will judge us according to the fidelity with which we have followed our conscience. Nevertheless, this conscience needs to be formed by objective standards of moral conduct. The Church provides us with just that -- moral norms based on Jesus's teachings, the inspired scriptures, centuries of tradition and the laws of nature.

     In taking this position, the Church demonstrates not only its commitment to its Founder and the Deposit of Faith He left us, but also a quality to which all of us are advised to recur, especially at times when we're unsure of our ground and might well be spouting personal preference rather than sound reasoning based in eternal verities: humility. It's no less important in a two-thousand-year-old institution than in an individual man.

---

     All religious questions ultimately reduce to two:

1. What is eternally true?
2. What does God want from me?

     Historically, children who've undergone early religious indoctrination were seldom confronted with those questions in their fundamental form. Instead, they were drilled to repeat certain approved answers to certain questions, to do this and not that, and above all not to quibble with the hierarchy. Despite the obvious, long-established superiority of religiously based education to secular forms, especially to State-run schools, this is a significant error. Fundamentals should come first; no one of any age should ever be told of a compulsion or a prohibition without being given a clear explanation for it. To do otherwise is authoritarianism, especially if the person wielding the authority is not only unwilling but also unable to justify his dictates.

     Many young Catholics of my generation distanced themselves from the Church for precisely that reason. Their experiences conveyed bad lessons to others who might have become communicants. Contemporary priests and Catholic teachers are slowly coming to realize how great, and how greatly negative, the impact has been.

     In a comment to this essay, Father Ethan McCarthy of Easton, Massachusetts circled the matter in a particularly poignant way:

     As a priest, it is very hard to preach to my generation (I am 31) because they are not at church (I'm not that charismatic). Nevertheless, I try to go out around town and meet some of them. I think your insights are very interesting and similar to what I have seen.

     In the area I work, the cost and standard of living is very high. I could not believe my eyes and ears, but there is a standard to which everyone tries to live, often above their means. It was a very different lifestyle than I have ever experienced growing up and a lifestyle I would never want.

     To get to the crux of my comment, women in my generation want a career, good looks, and a good man. Men want a good job, money, a good car, and a good woman. Neither really wants to get married or have children, but they will if they think they can benefit from a marriage. And they are not getting married in the Church, but on a nice beach or resort.

     I usually come into the picture after their second child is born. For whatever reason, having a second baby is a crisis, I think, because they realize that they have no supernatural wisdom to hand down to their children. I "bless" their marriage and baptize their children. Sometimes they will come to see me when one of them (usually the man) has lost a job. I try to tell them to receive the sacraments (confession & Mass) and build up their domestic church by reading the Bible, praying together, staying away from sin, etc. Internet porn is a huge problem among married men. Past abortion(s) is a problem among women. But, I can never keep them around long enough for them to change their lives. As soon as they find a job, grandma moves away, a new ski house in NH, they are back to just dropping off their kids at CCD.

     I think the biggest problem is the lack of God in their lives. They never stop and think that everything I have will one day be dust. I will be dead and all of these things will not be with me on the other side. It will all be over someday. What they need to do is ask, "What does God want me to do?"

     Father McCarthy is himself young, and so cannot be held responsible for the defaults and missteps of those who instructed, or ought to have instructed, his sort-of-parishioners when they were younger. But the question he wants his parishioners to ask themselves is critical. If they truly believe in God, and in a Divine Plan that embraces all who live, why haven't they asked it?

     Perhaps because it's not time yet.

---

     No one on Earth knows the Divine Plan. God has not granted any man the power to read His mind. He speaks to individuals concerning His missions for them, but He has not deigned to sketch out the whole of His grand scheme for anyone. What He has done, and quite elegantly (if I may say so), is to write the laws of nature, particularly human nature, in a form legible to human eyes. What He has done is to send His Son into the world to reinforce those laws with the authoritative Word, and to suffer and die horribly as an ultimate testimony to their truth. What He has done is to promise that no man shall be tempted beyond his strength.

     That is all, but it is infinitely more than enough.

     Still, one must look in order to see. Many decline to look, or deliberately look away. Why?

     It's not because the Word is burdensome. Indeed, the great contrast between the simplicity of Christ's teachings, their negation of the complex and onerous Levitical Covenant, and the lightness of the yoke He asked His followers to accept is why the Pharisees and priestly caste of classical Judea regarded Him as a supreme enemy. Simplicity and clarity are the things arbitrary authority has always hated most. Ask any bureaucrat -- and judge not by the specifics of his answer, but by whether you can understand it.

     It happens that the central thrust of the Gospel passage for today, Matthew 25:1-13, is that we should be ready at all times to meet our fates, for "you know not the day nor the hour:"

     Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
     And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
     They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
     While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
     And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
     Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
     And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.
     Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
     But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
     Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

     All true, but He knows -- and dare we say that the information is of no use, to Him if not to us?

     The resurgence of faith in our day could well be a matter of timing. Father McCarthy, quoted above, might burn with urgency over getting God and faith into his parishioners' lives, but his efforts, however anxious, must defer to the Divine Plan for each individual he approaches. Perhaps Smith, whom the good father has earnestly but vainly entreated, isn't ready yet because God doesn't yet want him to be ready. Perhaps Smith, like an alcoholic still mired in his addiction, must "bottom out" in some indefinable way before he can will himself to look, and so truly see. Or perhaps he, like your humble servant, was brutalized by a hyper-authoritarian indoctrination as a boy, and needs more time for the bruises to heal. The desires and efforts of men, even the holiest and most ardent of men, must be subservient to the will of God -- a will whose barest outlines are only dimly visible, except as He has already sketched them in the laws that govern the universe.

     A great and underappreciated aspect of faith is the willingness to trust that, at the proper time and in the proper proportions, God will provide. Granted, beyond a certain point it's up to us as individuals to embrace our opportunities and move forward on our own, but it should never be a matter of anguish to a Christian, or a Christian cleric, that there are others who have not yet seen.

     God will do all things for each of us, at the time of His choosing. To wait serenely for that time is part of faith.

---

     "What should I have told him?"

     Father Schliemann grinned ruefully. "Do you seriously think I'd have done better than you did?"

     Tony winced. "I'd hope so. All I had in me was a platitude."

     The older priest's eyes were kind. "Sometimes that's all you're going to have, Tony. Don't flog yourself over it. Counseling Louis is likely to be difficult no matter what the occasion."

     Tony had expected the pastor to disapprove of what he'd said, to have an elaborate alternative ready for use that Tony would feel an idiot for not seeing. Louis's visit and sudden departure had left him off balance. Schliemann's attempt to soothe him detached him part way from reality.

     The rectory kitchen seemed to have filled with a faint haze. It glittered at the edge of perception in the light from the overhead fixture. Tony balled his hands on the table before him and tried to compose himself.

     "I can see some of the reasons, I guess. But I wasn't ready for it, and I thought I ought to have been. Does it get easier as you...gain experience, Father?"

     Schliemann grinned again. "You meant 'as you get older,' didn't you? In some ways, it does. In others, quite the reverse." The pastor of Onteora parish reached across the table, gently pried the younger man's hands apart, and folded them between his own.

     "We are the vicars of Christ, Tony. Not Christ Himself. We struggle with the lightest of our duties, because He who defined them for us set a far higher standard than mere mortals could ever meet. But mere mortals are all we have. The Church must make do until the Second Coming."

     A sheen formed on the eyes of the man who had defined the priesthood for Tony Baldaserra.

     "Louis is unlike other men. You should know that, you've known him almost as long as I have. When his sister died, he was only fourteen years old, and he was already the brightest, most mature individual I knew. Today...Tony, he's challenged every notion I ever had about human limitations. I don't know what purpose God has in mind for someone so potent, but I do know that, whatever it is, it's something I could never fulfill. If you had to be more intelligent and more responsible than he is to advise him, who in the world could do it?

     "We who do God's work can't afford to compare ourselves to our brothers in Christ. Our ability to help them doesn't depend on our being brighter than they are, or more worldly wise, or even more moral. It depends on remaining humble, on holding fast to the eternal truths we've made the core of our lives, and reminding them of those truths when they lose their way. We have nothing else to offer, except love."

     The old priest squeezed the young one's hands. "And that you have in full measure, Tony. I've known it since you were a boy. Believe me, Louis knows it too. No matter what you said to him, if it had your love in it, it had to be alright."

     Tony bowed his head.

     [From Chosen One.]

     The most effective preacher does not preach; he ministers. He lives his religion where others can see it in action. He stands true to his convictions against all opposition and despite all inducements to betray them. He is, in other words, an exemplar.

     Leonard E. Reed, who founded the Foundation for Economic Education in Westchester, NY, was gifted at conveying the power of the exemplar to others. His basic demonstration was to light a candle in a well-lit room, to stand a little apart from it talking of other things, and to have a confederate slowly dim the lights. When the room lights had been extinguished, he would note that his audience's eyes had all been drawn to the candle's light, as they had not been while there was other illumination. It was his way of encouraging his students to "be a light in the darkness" to those who lacked conviction or guidance.

     A Christian of any denomination, lay or clerical, who wants to see Christianity spread would do well to follow Dr. Reed's advice. Ours is a code of love, hope, and joy. Therefore, love well, live hopefully, and be joyous, and when asked, be ready to explain how and why. You know not the day nor the hour! There's no need to collar "sinners" in the street and drag them to church; anyway, what good would it do? Their eyes will be drawn to your light, or your Christian brother's light, at the proper time. At God's chosen time.

     May God bless and keep you all.

A Cold House

     On this, the 21st day of June in the Year of Our Lord 2026, the first day of summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, I read something that chilled my heart:

     Why don’t Christians welcome new church attendees?
     I’m a baby Christian. Other Christians on here always tell me if I went to church, it would help me. But the one time I walked a very long walk to the only church close by, I had a very unpleasant experience.
     They were like a clique, looking at me as if I was a weirdo when I said hello. No one approached me or welcomed me. And when I tried to be friendly to them, I was ostracised.
     The sermon was great and the music was okay. But the people were not what I was told they would be at all. It broke my heart.
     Is this how Christians usually act towards new people in church?
     Everyone told me to call churches. The vast majority of churches don’t take calls and don’t return messages. Those that have called back asked why I think anyone would want to pick up a complete stranger to bring them to church. I guess that’s a valid point. We live in a dangerous world with a lot of scammers.
     I have been attending my best friend’s online church (in St Louis) since Christmas Eve. I always said hello and spoke in the chat but was ignored. Those in the chat all seem to know each other so it’s not at all welcoming. I love the music and the pastor so I’ve continued to attend.
     2 weeks ago, a woman in chat asked if I usually went in person and if she’d met me. I told her no and who my friend was. My friend has taught kids on Sundays for decades and her husband is involved in putting the sermons online. So my friend is *very* well known. Now, that woman in chat said hello again to me last Sunday.
     But it took 6 months. Wouldn’t it be better to make all new people feel welcome? Maybe someone else is like me, brand new.
     I don’t find most Christians to be anything like Christ at all, to be honest. I’m sure He would have welcomed me with open arms. Shouldn’t we aspire to be more like Him? What am I missing?
     I read in the Bible that Jesus commanded “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” He also said: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
     I guess He didn’t specify that Christians should welcome new people to a church but I thought it’s kind of implied in His words. Am I wrong?
     Please help me with this. I’m a bit lost.

     That broke my heart as well. It shouldn’t happen to anyone. That it happened to a new follower of Christ is especially tragic. Yet it’s become the rule in churches nationwide.

     A long time ago, I wrote:

     The physical light may stream from a bank of incandescent bulbs. The physical warmth may flow from a furnace. But these are the least part of the thing. Any Christian will tell you.
     Try it out. You don't have to wait for an invitation; you can engrave this one on card stock and sign my name to it, if you like. Visit the church down the block, some Sunday soon. Don't be shy. Shake a few hands; make the acquaintance of the pastor. Everyone there is as flawed as you, but they'll accept you anyway, if you'll grant them the favor of reciprocation. If you're the least bit open to it, I guarantee that you'll feel it as I do.
     Whether made of wood, stone, or grass and mud, a Christian church filled with its congregants is a warm, well lighted place.

     Remembering those words adds to the pain from reading Samsara’s tweet above.

* * *

     Christian brotherhood – true, unfeigned acceptance of the newcomer – is required of us. Christ said it Himself:

     And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

     [Matthew 28:18-20]

     Yet “baby Christians” such as Samsara are frequently met with indifference or suspicion. That’s especially the case when the newcomer looks a bit “alternative:”

     Why? Why not greet the newcomer as a brother, a sheep welcome in the fold, even if he’s covered with tattoos or wearing his hair in some bizarre style? A lot of long-time parishioners treat anyone unfamiliar as someone to be wary of. It makes no sense!

     While there are occasional exceptions, a visitor to a Christian church is there to learn, to worship, or both. Isn’t that cause for celebration, rejoicing? Why show the cold shoulder to such a person?

     I don’t know Samsara. I plan to engage her, if she’s willing to talk to me. I want to know more about the church she visited that treated her that way. I want to see what I can do to help. A congregation that frosty plainly needs some help.

     I could go on, but I’ve made a resolution to cease flogging dead horses. Yeah, yeah, we’ll see how long that lasts, but all the same.

     May God bless and keep you all…including the guy in the back row who’s dressed like an escapee from an insane asylum, and the woman with the spiky hairdo and the forest of tattoos, and the man, woman, or child who enters the nave of the church alone, looking lost and desperate for a hand of welcome. C’mon, fellow believers! It’s the least you could do.

The Food Chain

     [I don’t remember when I first posted this piece. It first appeared at Eternity Road, beloved in memory. It’s more appropriate for Corpus Christi Sunday than anything else I could say.
     All glory to the God who feeds His people! – FWP]

---

     We who believe often speak of the need to "grow in faith." I've never been certain exactly what that means. But as time has passed, my own faith has become ever more important to me: not as a comfort against the certainty of bodily death, and not as some sort of confirmation of my own superiority, but rather as a unifying set of premises that allow the universe, and human life within it, to make sense.

     This is critical for one overriding reason: the incoherence of every other religion Man has ever practiced with the observable laws of Nature in action around us.

     Today being Corpus Christi Sunday -- a holy day celebrated much more enthusiastically and demonstrably in Latin countries than in us of the AngloSphere -- allow me to reprise an old favorite.

* * *

     The most fundamental of all relations among living things is the food relation. For any two species, which one can eat the other, either in theory or in practice, determines just about everything else about their interactions.

     This might seem a little fuzzy in certain cases. Beyond question, a dog can kill and eat a man. The same is true for the Portuguese Man O' War. But how often does it happen? Yet there are millions of people in various parts of the world for whom dog or jellyfish is a regular part of their diets. (You can stop shuddering now.) In the usual case, Man is considered the eater and these other species the eaten.

     Thus, a brief exploration of the food chain.

     Man has been an eater for a lot longer than he's been a builder of civilizations. His career as a hunter has established him as the world champion at that contest. His development of systematic agriculture demonstrated that his hegemony extends equally well to the plant kingdom. By all measures, he's at the pinnacle of the food chain. He eats whatever he wishes, and only in the rarest of cases does any other species eat him.

     The centrality of food relations to Earth's biosystem is so obvious that we're all but unaware of it. Two of the more significant but less frequently pondered manifestations of the thing can be found in our nightmares and our rites of worship and propitiation.

     Almost as soon as men began to compose tales for one another's entertainment, they invented creatures with power to hunt, kill, and eat human beings. Vampires, ghouls, and werewolves are items of fantasy, traditional terrors that have been invoked in horror tales for many centuries. Yet what is it that makes them so terrifying? Not that they can kill men, for far lesser creatures can do that, if they get the breaks. No, their ability to frighten comes from their greater-than-human hunting ability, and their view of men as food.

     There's nothing that terrifies like the prospect of being eaten. Men have gone into battle against other men under conditions that virtually guaranteed their deaths, yet they've often gone willingly, sometimes even eagerly. They still do. But no man can face the prospect of becoming an entree for a greater creature without quaking in fear.

     Mess with a man's assumptions about the food chain and you upend his whole concept of himself as a man.

     On the other side, there are human practices with relation to their concepts of divinity. Divinities -- gods -- are by definition superior to men. Yet their participation in the life of Man is not categorically predatory, even in those creeds which place evil gods on an equal par with good ones, and see the history of the world as a struggle between equally matched forces of light and darkness in which humans are less than pawns. In our attempts to win the favor of the gods, and on occasion to avert their wrath, men have traditionally offered sacrifices to them. Those sacrifices have almost always been food.

     Contemplate the nature of ritual sacrifice for a moment. What's offered to the god being propitiated is something valuable to men: creatures men had to hunt or cultivate, whose substance could nourish and sustain human life. Yet it is deliberately removed from the human economy, usually by burning, in the attempt to convey to the god the sense that we acknowledge his superiority to us. By denying themselves the consumption of the offered food and instead offering it to the god, the sacrificers make plain that they submit themselves to him. Metaphorically, the sacrificed items are substitutes for human bodies: pleadings that the shamans and their congregants not be eaten.

     The Biblical story of God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Abraham's readiness to obey, is terrifying and exalting for that reason. On the one hand, the God of the Old Testament was not perceived even by His Chosen People, of whom Abraham was the progenitor, as being so intrinsically kindly disposed toward Man that He would never, ever demand such a sacrifice. Moreover, His power was such that there was no question that He could enforce His will in such a matter, and much worse besides. On the other hand, God intervened at the last instant to prevent the sacrifice, having established to His satisfaction that Abraham submitted entirely to His will. Thus, the pact between God and the children of Abraham -- the Jewish people -- was sealed as one of guidance and beneficence from above in exchange for worship and obedience from below. God did not intend to eat His people.

***

     Clearly, the food relation is a superiority / inferiority relation. He who eats is the stronger, who can have his will in all things. He who is eaten is the weaker, who must prostrate himself before the other in the hope of benevolence or mercy.

     Men, the highest of the creatures of this world, do not eat one another, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. Those micro-societies that have practiced cannibalism have extinguished themselves thereby -- there are some very nasty diseases, with fatality rates approaching 100%, that arise from cannibalism -- or have been humbled and re-educated by more civilized, more insightful peoples. We have attained enough insight into moral matters, and most particularly into the fundamental equality of rights all men should enjoy, to regard cannibalism with appropriate horror.

     But we still tell, and shudder over, stories of powerful, inhuman creatures that hunger for human flesh and blood. Vampire legends make up a healthy fraction of our fantastic literature. When we figure in the werewolf, the ghoul, and the occasional extraterrestrial who regards us as haute cuisine, we've covered the overwhelming majority of our scare stories. That's how fundamental the food relation is to our view of our place in the natural world.

     There aren't many religious sects in the modern world that still practice the old form of ritual sacrifice, in which a food item -- usually an animal -- is offered up to a god in hopes of winning his favor or pardon. The devotees of Santeria do it, now and then, as do the practitioners of voudoun. But these are meager survivals of old, animistic-pagan creeds. Their adherents are few and will probably never be many.

     However, a form of sacrifice still characterizes the most important religious rite in the world. Its devotees number in the billions. They partake of this sacrifice at every opportunity; to them, it is the highest a living man can rise in communion with God. And most curiously of all, it is a bidirectional sacrifice, the only such ever celebrated in all the eons of Man.

     I speak, of course, of the Miracle of Transubstantiation in the Christian Eucharist.

     In the days of Christ, the ritual sacrifice of food animals at the Temple in Jerusalem was still the preeminent religious rite in the classical world. The Hebrews regarded those sacrifices as God's due for extending His protection over them as His Chosen People. Indeed, according to the Book of Exodus, such sacrifices were ordained by God Himself, as He gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. The Jews of that time considered them the only truly complete act of religious devotion.

     Christ upended their world by inverting the food chain. No more would they give up their sustenance in propitiation of the divine will. Henceforward, it would be the other way around: the Son of God would be the Sacrifice, and His people would partake.

     From the Gospel According To John:

     "I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
     The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever." [John 6:48-58]

     The rite of the Eucharist, in commemoration of the Last Supper, offers bread and wine to God and prays that they might be found acceptable. In response to this humble offering, and in fulfillment of Christ's promise, through the celebrant-priest He works the Transubstantiation, which allows the form of the bread and wine to remain as they are, but converts their substance into the body and blood of Christ. At each Mass, a traditional sacrifice of food to God is met with a renewal of the offering of Christ's body and blood to the world, for the remission of sin and as a perpetual grant of His grace to all who will accept it.

     No other creed has anything to compare with the Eucharist. Nor could any conceivable rite, however elaborately crusted with mystery or symbolism, approach the stunning power of God Himself, in the Person of His Son, offering Himself as food to lowly Man.

     He could eat us all. Instead He offers Himself as food, that we may remember His Sacrifice for us, and draw as close to Him as mortal creatures can get while still in this world.

     Today is the Sunday ordained for the celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Sacrifice beyond all others, that no offering by mortal men could ever equal. The proof that the food chain is not God's manacle about our hands. The unanswerable refutation of those who insist that a malevolent power bestrides the universe. The ironclad guarantee that we are not to be eaten, but to be fed.

* * *

     And may God bless and keep you all.