Although it was only in the first half of the twentieth century that the term personalism became known as a designation of philosophical schools and systems, personalist thought had developed throughout the nineteenth century as a reaction to perceived depersonalizing elements in Enlightenment rationalism, pantheism, Hegelian absolute idealism, individualism as well as collectivism in politics, and materialist, psychological, and evolutionary determinism.

In its various strains, personalism always underscores the centrality of the person as the primary locus of investigation for philosophical, theological, and humanistic studies. It is an approach or system of thought which regards or tends to regard the person as the ultimate explanatory, epistemological, ontological, and axiological principle of all reality, although these areas of thought are not stressed equally by all personalists and there is tension between idealist, phenomenological, existentialist, and Thomist versions of personalism.

[ . . . ]

Personalists hold personhood (or “personality”) to be the fundamental notion, as that which gives meaning to all of reality and constitutes its supreme value. Personhood carries with it an inviolable dignity that merits unconditional respect. Personalism has for the most part not been primarily a theoretical philosophy of the person. Although it does defend a unique theoretical understanding of the person, this understanding is in itself such as to support the prioritization of moral philosophy, while at the same time the moral experience of the person is such as to decisively determine the theoretical understanding. . . . Stressing the moral nature of the person, or the person as the subject and object of free activity, personalism tends to focus on practical, moral action and ethical questions. (Continue)

(Via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Leonid DRAGOMIR | Mihai Şora – O filosofie a bucuriei şi a speranţei

APARIŢIE

Leonid Dragomir, Mihai Şora – O filosofie a bucuriei şi a speranţei, Bucureşti, Editura Cartea Românească, colecţia „Hors collection“, 184 p. in-octavo, 2009 [Redactor: Mădălina Ghiu, coperta: Radu Răileanu].

Prezentarea editorului:

Mihai Şora – O filosofie a bucuriei şi a speranţei constituie nu doar o expunere de ansamblu, ci şi o sistematizare a gândirii filosofice a lui Mihai Şora, gândire sinuoasă şi imprevizibilă, cum însuşi filosoful o caracterizează.

Leonid Dragomir nu-şi propune o interpretare a doctrinei filosofului, ci o reconstrucţie a problematicii principalelor sale cărţi de filosofie, tratate în ordine cronologică. Accentul exegezei cade pe latura creştină – personalismul creştin –, ocultată din cauza contextului în care au fost scrise şi concepute cărţile sale, publicate în ţară până în 1990. Autorul abordează „din interior“ volumele: Despre dialogul interior, Sarea pământului, A fi, a face, a avea, Eu & tu & el & ea… sau dialogul generalizat, Clipa şi timpul. Pe lângă acestea, analizează eseurile şi interviurile apărute în Firul ierbii, continuând cu dialoguri punctuale referitoare la opera sa filosofică şi la proiectele prezente şi viitoare. Între acestea, cel mai important proiect constă în traducerea şi editarea operei lui Benjamin Fondane.

Volumul reuşeşte să creeze o imagine de ansamblu asupra originalităţii operei şi a personalităţii filosofului român, demonstrând că Mihai Şora cultivă, prin însăşi vitalitatea sa creatoare, o filosofie a bucuriei şi a speranţei.

Filosofia lui Mihai Şora este, în latura ei ontologică, dar şi în cele ce ţin de etică, axiologie, antropologie, poietică sau politică, construită pe tensiunea dintre a fi şi a avea. „Răstignit“ pe cele două planuri corespunzând acestor verbe, omul are de dus la îndeplinire două sarcini adesea contradictorii: una ţinând de autorealizare, de împlinire fiinţială sau „mântuire ontologică“, alta, secundă ca importanţă, dar prealabilă în ordine temporală, de asigurare a condiţiilor în vederea celei dintâi. 

 

„Doar omul este pus în poziţia de a căuta soluţii, de a trebui mereu să opteze între «da» şi «nu». Această continuă oscilare, această deliberare, prealabilă oricărei decizii umane, este ceea ce numesc dialog interior. El nu se desfăşoară la modul explicit, ba, în majoritatea cazurilor, nici măcar verbal, pentru că ar cere mai mult timp decât timpul care-ţi este lăsat pentru o hotărâre.“ (Mihai Şora)

• Fragmente din volum pot fi citite pe situl Editurii Cartea Românească.

 Gratias agimus.

To my knowledge, “Gruber’s Journey” (Calatoria lui Gruber) is the first movie ever-made which approaches the issue of the Holocaust in Romania. It is based on the real story of Curzio Malaparte passing through Romania on his way to the Eastern front as a war correspondent. In June 1941, he went to Iasi to search for a famous doctor, Josef Gruber, in order to cure his allergy. The facts that he witnessed would be described in his 1944 novel, “Kaput”.

And these facts are the pogrom of Iasi, 29 June 1941, executed by Romanian authorities in collaboration with German troops stationed in the region. The main character is obsessed with his allergy, traveling from one place to another having no sense of smell- in fact a metaphor for his spiritual numbness related to what was happening. The Iasi that he sees is the stage of a tragedy which had happened one day earlier. With minimal means and very few scenes, the massacre is suggested discretely in two or three rides with the car through the city. The most powerful hint is the short trip to the countryside, where Malaparte reaches the train cars still crowded with bodies and dying survivors, crying for help, air, water. To this, the journalist can only reply “Let’s go.”, from the safety of his car. Scenes from city life evoke interwar nostalgia, picturesque details, elegant costumes, provincial tranquility, as the director skillfully touches one of the nervous centers of contemporary perplexities: that such a large community could disappear from one day to another with no emotion, no question, not the slightest shiver of consciousness. A director, Radu Gabrea,  from an older generation than the “Romanian New Wave”, with some resemblance concerning the minimal style and the ethical engagement (“banality of evil”), but revolutionary in the subject tackled. So far, the movie has a discrete reception. Good performance from “rebel” Florin Piersic Jr., powerful acting as expected from Claudiu Bleont and Razvan Vasilescu, and a subtle and unforgettably emotional appearance of Marcel Iures.

Talking about the easy destruction of a whole community. Without questioning the fundamental resemblances between Communism and Fascism/National-Socialism, which are in fact their differences? One striking, albeit terrifying fact comes into mind: Hannah Arendt writes in Eichmann in Jerusalem and it is further testified in the Final Report of International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania that the operations of Romanian troops against the Jews were so violent, spontaneous, erratic and sadistic that even the Germans intervened. Of course, the latter did not do this out of a humanitarian instinct, but because they wanted to have a “clean”, “rational”, “disciplined” program of extermination. On the Romanian part- and perhaps on the majority of all the other European authoritarian/fascist states and movements, the attitude and repression against the Jews frequently took incredibly appalling forms, ranging from banal everyday discrimination to humiliation, rape, torture, mass executions. But still, until the case of Nazi Germany, the idea of complete extermination through an industrial, efficient method never occurred in the minds of even the worst enemies of the Jews. It can be replied that Auschwitz, the paradigmatic place of mass killing, appears gradually, that Germany did travel in fact the same road as the other fascist movements and that the gas chambers are the logical step forward from the “traditional”, late 19^th century anti-Semitism. In other words, the Nazi extermination program commences as a historical necessity.

However, even after conceding this fact and after accepting the common sense statement that murder is murder regardless of its circumstances, can the comparison lead to some meaningful directions of reflection? Again, what was specific about traditional anti-Semitism is that it was frequently associated with moral degradation of the victims. Insults were first carried out in the media, than discrimination occurred in the relation with authorities; through legislation, the Jews gradually lost their fundamental rights. Insults cried out in public usually appeared in the later forms, when pressure increased, while deportation and rounding up in ghettos ensued. These physical measures, as they reached the most radical point, execution, were frequently associated with insults, beatings, humiliation, rape. The general feeling is that the perpetrators want to touch, even if the final point is physical elimination, the spiritual side of their victims. The purpose is inner degradation, a radical transformation of the very core of each person.

In Communism, the victim went through a similar hell. The great show trials, the memories of the Gulag point to diabolical measures of human engineering, experiments of completely enslaving the conscience through terror and reeducation.  The pervasive symbol is the concentration or labor camp, designed primarily for the transformation of the human being, even if this operation claimed the majority of the lives of the inmates; those who perished did not do so before they were subjected to the same ideology of the total transformation of reality. They were de facto extermination camps, but on paper they had economic and ideological purposes. The show trials ended with murder, but only after the victim, prosecutor, lawyer, judge repeated the magic formulas in a public gesture in order to demonstrate the transcending, divine force of the Idea. Even spontaneous executions, occurring with no trial or outside the camp, were preceded by beatings, curses, humiliation of the victim and his family. The murders themselves were usually committed through shooting, beating, starvation, thirst, cold. Terrifying, but not unusual for what was known to man since his existence.

But, until Auschwitz, gas was never used, neither in the history of anti-Semitism, nor in Communism. And I believe that here there is something more than just a gradual change or macabre variation. Auschwitz itself travels a history from a secondary camp for Polish political prisoners, through a stage of being a massive work camp associated with local I.G. Farben industry, to the final stage of death factory; this history alone, together with the extreme conditions of work preceding the build-up of the gas chambers in Birkenau, would seem to further demonstrate the idea of gradual change, from an unsophisticated instrument of killing to a more efficient one.

However, I believe that the difference between leaving someone to die or beating or starving him to death, on the other hand, and directly sending him to a gas chamber, incinerating his body, using his hair as raw material for the fabrication of textiles, on the other, is substantial; and it is constituted by the attitude: the first case denotes an unconscious acknowledgement that the victim is a person- a human being composed of flesh and spirit. When he is humiliated or tortured even with the price of his life, the torturer unknowingly or not has a statement: not only that the victim deserves to die, but he must disappear with his soul being enslaved, conquered or destroyed; the ones who do survive and are subjected to these measures without being murdered are deemed to have even a bigger price, a higher value with the condition that their soul is transformed. In fact, any violence which does not end immediately with death is directed at the inner, invisible dimension of the human being, whether one considers it as soul, consciousness or brain activity. Both the “traditional” antisemitic movements and the Communists were, ironically and unknowingly, acknowledging the transcendent dimension of humanity, its duality of flesh and spirit.

And the first stages of Auschwitz were also defined by this attitude, with extreme life conditions and random terror, thus turning the inmates into living corpses. It was meant as an experiment for the power of the ideology to transform human being. But when mass extermination by gas begins, the attitude changed. The victims went off the train; they were calmly selected by doctors and escorted with a neutral, almost polite attitude towards the gas chambers. At the infamous Wansee conference in January 1942, the officials frequently mention the words “clean”, “efficient” solution; the terms are borrowed from the euthanasia program, which was destined to provide a “dignifying” end to the mentally disabled. Individuals like Eichmann take their task seriously and work with “German efficiency” to accomplish this “great mission”. Meanwhile, the commander of Auschwitz leaves a happy life with his family within 50 meters away from one of the gas chambers. He recalls in his memoirs how he was looking with petrified heart at a mother, as she was begging him, on the way to death, to spare at least her children. The valuables are taken by the soldiers, the hair is used for textiles, the bodies are cremated. Soon it becomes routine. Few were the cases of truly sadistic killers, of individuals who lose control. The SS soldiers do what they can to accumulate wealth, get drunk from time to time and try to escape after the war, shamelessly disguising themselves or reconverting into decent, honest clerks in some quiet German town, being loving fathers and husbands. Himmler even wanted to negotiate with the Allies, on one occasion requesting 1 million trucks in exchange for the Hungarian Jews. As the deal did not go through, they were sent to Auschwitz.

In short, what is so characteristic, so disheartening and chilling is the feeling that with the Nazi extermination program a new attitude fully enters the stage of history: to regard human being as not having any invisible dimension. No duality, no feeling, nothing, absolutely nothing beyond appearance. I was once with a friend in a park in Krakow. Out of nowhere, an English man, obviously drunk, sat near us and began to chat. Strange enough, he began to talk on our main topic: God. What I still remember is the weight, which you almost felt right in your heart, of the word “nothing”: “There is nothing beyond death. Nothing. There is nothing.”, he kept repeating with paralyzing determination. So the neutrality with which the victims were escorted to death is so frightening because it goes beyond the duality flesh-spirit involuntarily admitted by a moral aggression: the duality is not recongnized. They simply felt no need to humiliate the Jews for the simple fact that they did not recognize that they were anything else than walking corpses, a vermin, a plague of humanity.  The commander of Auschwitz recalls his sense of relief when the gas facilities were installed. It wasn’t just the fact that logistics and bureaucratic efforts would have been streamlined, but something infinitely deeper: the very existence of these facilities signaled a break from all traces of remorse or at least embarrassment caused by bloody methods of killing; it is a break from a consciousness which still experiences some faint shivers when the existential stance still recognized the attribute of personhood to the victim; it is, in the end, an encouragement to leap into nothingness, where everything is possible because nothing exists.

Finally, a question: who should we fear more- does who want to enslave our soul or those who do not recognize its existence?

I think the title of this post should be a prayer of blessing.  Well, I am being facetious . . . sort of.  Or perhaps I have caught a bit of the Christopher West shock-jock bug.  In any case, three cheers for good old fashioned shame.  Hip, hip, hurray, etc.!

During my hiatus from blogging here I have been busy about many things a la St. Martha.  One of those things has been a fruitful discussion at The Linde on The Personalist Project’s web site.   Cupuches off to Katie van Schaijik who runs that blog and gave me the opportunity to defend my views.

The Holy is Shameful

There is a shock statement for you that has real apologetical punch, and yet it is perfectly true.  Unfortunately, the masters of the anti-prudery crusade, the TOB shock-jocks, just don’t get it, so I need to use my own shock-term in order to make the point to them.  Shame is not only embarrassment at what is ugly, it is also modesty and humility in the face of what is holy, beautiful and mysterious.

I am currently trying to get my hands on Dietrich Von Hildebrand’s work, Purity:  The Mystery of Christian Sexuality (Steubenville, Ohio: The Franciscan University Press, 1989), originally In Defense of Purity, 7th ed.  In the comments on The Linde, Dr. Josef Seifert made reference to this work in which Von Hildebrand distinguishes between different kinds of shame.  Dr. Seifert notes that both Karol Wojtyla and Von Hildebrand (as well as Max Scheler) speak highly of sexual shame and “have distinguished it sharply from prudishness.”  He points out that whereas Wojtyla commended shame as a way of protecting persons from being objectified and the body from irreverent and lustful attitudes, Von Hildebrand stressed the positive aspects of shame of the beautiful and holy.  According to Dr. Seifert, Dietrich Von Hildebrand distinguishes

between shame of something ugly or evil and the shame of something beautiful but so intimate that it belongs to the personal mystery of persons. This is the authentic sense of positive sexual shame which does hide from others those mysteries of love and of the body which only spousal love ought to see or unveil because of its beauty and depth and intimacy. Also in the religious life there are feelings, thoughts or experiences of Saints so sublime that they did not wish to expose them to everybody. . . .

This shame is noble and just as opposite to prudishness (which regards the beauty of the body ugly) as it is to the shame we will and ought to feel when we are seen to perform impure acts or watch porno movies or to act in bad immoral and dishonest ways.

Another commenter, Steve B., quoted Von Hildebrand on the subject of shame from The Devastated Vineyard:

. . . We should experience shame when someone praises our virtue and brings it out into the open, or when we ourselves make public things which are by their very nature intimate. All kinds of being ashamed are deeply human, classical attitudes, especially the shame which encourages us to keep intimate things out of the public eye. It is a stupid mistake to interpret this latter kind of shame, which is especially related to the sexual sphere, as prudery, as contempt of this sphere, as a sign that one views it as taboo. True and noble shame towards the sexual sphere, with which even the pagans were acquainted (just think of the gestures of the hands of many of the Venus figures, which covered the breasts and the pubic region), is a classical human characteristic, an adequate response to the mysterious intimacy of this sphere (28-29, emphasis commenter’s).

The more I engage with people of good will who are understandably enamored of Christopher West’s ability to make a difference in the lives of many thousands of people who are struggling with sexual sins and a lack of peace with their sexuality, the more I am convinced that this wholesome, humble and intelligent kind of shame is under serious attack.  That attack, in my view, is all the more serious because instead of directly denying the existence of good shame, it simply minimizes its usefulness on the grounds that apologetical exigencies are more important.  While this might sound to some like a valid argument, the result, in my opinion is insidious.

The TOB America Train

Apologetics has the curious quality of being compelling precisely because the apologist has simplified the argument and presented an immediate and clear reason to change one’s judgment, and has done so in an enthusiastic and rhetorically effective way.  But while this ability and approach has obvious assets, it can also have real liabilities.  Sometimes the most compelling argument is an over-simplification, and the most rhetorically effective and most enthusiastic presentation is an expression of zealotry, which because it is based on an oversimplification is by definition reactionary and misguided.  In other words, sometimes the most immediately effective apologetical approach is tantamount to an unbalanced crusade, like a down-swinging pendulum, it has far too much momentum to find equilibrium.

In a sense, I wish I could jump on board the TOB America Train, because I really do think that prudery is a problem.  However, when in the interests of providing a powerful argument the apologists for this version of TOB minimize essential distinctions, they shoot the whole effort in the foot, because they begin calling good responses “prudery” so that in the end their effort is transformed from a crusade against prudery into crusade for a fascination with sex.

They say that if we were really on board the train and understood the beauty of sexuality we would want to strip everything and everyone naked as much as possible.  This is truly unfortunate, because the result of all this is that the pendulum ends up swinging back and forth.  When those truly inclined to prudery hear West & Co. criticize every reaction against stripping they just dig their heels in deeper.  And in a sense, why not?  Why should we prefer one error over another, especially when our choices are between prudery and sexual over-exposure?

The Sex Crusade

Real prudery—it is true—is unresolved lust.  However, the crusaders misappropriate it to every and all reactions of shame.  They tell us that anytime one acts with shame in respect to sexual matters it is because they have hidden lust in their hearts and are not being honest about it.  Hence, West always gives the following recommendation to those who object to his habit of stripping everything:  “Look into your heart and ask yourself why you are uncomfortable with this.”

Unfortunately, this approach is doomed because there are real distinctions between Manichaeism, Jansenism and scrupulosity.  The later is not hatred of the body, but pride of judgment and fear of responsibility.  All three things can overlap, but they don’t necessarily.  The apologetic gurus of our age, I must presume, do not read souls.  They should not pretend to.

Likewise, there are real distinctions between shame of sinful things, shame of holy things and lust dressed up as shame (prudery).  They are not the same thing and cannot be treated as the same thing without misrepresenting the faith and misleading souls.

As I say, I would like to join forces with the crusaders against prudery, except that I don’t want to be a zealot and I don’t want to shoot my efforts in the foot by engaging in over-simplifications and encouraging a reactionism that will inevitably result—as it has already—in the opposite extreme, namely, an obsession with sex.

I recently read an interview with an actress who was asked about her willingness to take on roles that had a great deal of sexual content and nudity.  She defended herself by saying:  “it’s kind of an American thing to be uptight about naked bodies.”  This is precisely the confusion I am referring to, and in my opinion, the only difference between the crusader’s argument and that of the actress is that the former is dressed up in piety.  I even encountered someone apparently favorable to West defending the soft-core pornography of Father Andrew Greeley.

The Real Thing

So what about real prudery?

I believe where it exists among Catholics it is usually found in people recently converted who formally lived immodestly and unchastely, or who previously took matters of chastity lightly and went along with the pornified culture.  Now reacting against it, not wanting to be an occasion of sin for anyone else and desiring to give good example (especially parents to children), they are inclined to the zealotry of modesty–to their own kind of reactionism.  Thus, they place nearly all the emphasis on modesty of dress, manners and eyes, rather than give due attention to custody of the heart.

This is not far from the Islamic ideal that presumes that men are pigs, but that women are really at fault for being shaped like women.  Of course, no one would put it that way, but isn’t that the nature of prudery?  It cloaks sinister ideas in a mantle of piety and strictness.

The problem is that genuine prudery is in reality the wormy apple.  In truth, the genuine article is holy shame, that is, modesty, and it can be easily be confused with rotten prudery by an untrained or superficial eye.

In one or another of my comments on The Linde I brought up the need to cultivate prudence among the faithful as an integral and necessary way to make this discernment.  The reasons seem clear to me:  1) because there is a real difference between Manichaeism, Jansenism and scrupulosity; 2) because there is a real difference between shame of sin, shame of the holy and prudery; 3) because without it we oversimplify and promote reactionism and zealotry; 4) because it belongs fundamentally to the nature and practice of true modesty.

Prudery or Prudence

I think that West and his supporters would do well to give this serious consideration, because it seems to me that both forms of zealotry minimize the role of prudence.  Those inclined to prudery place all their trust in hard and fast rules that can be measured and enforced with uniformity.  They are agitated by intellectual independence and by virtually all diversity within Catholic culture.  They do not give due regard for the fact that our counsels are not certain in many areas of  life and that good men can disagree about many things, including many things that are important to them.  But even this may have more to do with ordinary unresolved scrupulosity than it does with Manichaeism or Jansenism.

On the other hand, the anti-prudery crusaders also minimize the role of prudence, precisely because they pretend to be able to size-up those who disagree with them and label them with Manichaeism, Jansenism and prudery, when, in fact, they really have little or no idea with whom they are really dealing.  They also are inclined to say that modesty is purely relative and is almost exclusively a matter of custody of the heart, and in so doing disregard many of the particulars that make up modest or immodest behavior.

For example, the TOB crowd often brings up the African women who live topless nearly all the time. (Although our community works in Nigeria, Benin and Cameroon, I cannot comment intelligently on how prevalent this custom remains in Christianized Africa.)  They say the men think nothing of it and that the women have no shame about it.  It is all quite innocent and wholesome.  No need here for the cultivation of any kind of shame.  By this logic one would have to surmise that the customs of pagan Africa are more in keeping with the redemption of the body than our own. This is supposed to be evidence that the external aspects of modesty are all relative.

But the fact is that wherever Christianity has sunk its roots deeply, over time these customs have been given way to what Paul VI called “higher expressions of the mind.”  And even if Maria Lactans is a venerable visual tradition within the Church, it is because there is a mean by which prudence can justify limited exposure in appropriate circumstances.  It is no justification for the sexualization of culture or the disparaging of natural shame.

In fact, the anti-prudery crusaders are arguing for their own kind of uniformity and lock-step thinking.  This is one reason, I think, that some were so inclined to interpret a challenge to West’s ideas as a personal attack.  There is no room for divergence and diversity among those who are truly enlightened.

Rules of Thumb

Before I conclude, I want to underscore the importance of prudence in this matter, because I know the tendency to oversimplify and ride the wave of indistinct enthusiasm is much stronger than my abilities to defend prudence.  Though I am sure I will not be as convincing as a real soapbox rhetorician, I will give it my best, boring attempt.

Everyone schooled in the fundamentals of Catholic moral theology knows there are three things that are required to make a moral act good:

1. The object of the act must be good, that is, the act itself cannot be intrinsically evil, like stealing, but must be good in itself, like praying, or at least objectively indifferent, like walking.
2. The intention of the one acting must be good, that is, the act must not be directed by mind and will to an evil end or with a malicious purpose.  Thus, even praying could be evil, if one was knowingly asking God for something sinful.
3. The circumstances surrounding the act (time, place, manner, etc.) must be such that the one acting may reasonably judge that the act is appropriate to do here and now.  Hence, praying is not pleasing to God if one is doing so in a way that prevents him from fulfilling the obligations of his state in life, even though praying itself is good and the person’s intention might be upright.

If any one of these three requirements is not in possession, then the act is not good but sinful or at least imperfect.

In particular, the last point regarding circumstances is the domain of prudence, and this is precisely what we are dealing with when we try to distinguish modesty from immodesty and shame from prudery.  If you don’t want to teach people about prudence then never mind talking about prudery, or modesty for that matter, because your listeners will be unable to define them in practice.

Incidentally, this is why rules of thumb have typically been part of the Catholic tradition of moral catechesis.  For instance: “the Eucharist is present within a communicant for 15 minutes after receiving communion”; “stealing is a mortal sin when it equals the value of a man’s daily wage”; “a dress isn’t modest unless it extends well below the knee.”  It does not seem to me that any of these rules were ever intended as absolute moral imperatives, but neither are any of the questions they are intended to resolve purely subjective and relative.  They are rules of thumb precisely because they are to assist us in the cultivation of prudence.  The solution is neither to absolutize the rules of thumb, nor to absolutize the relativity of the questions.  Absolute uniformity of behavior is neither required nor desirable, because both are based on false premises and concern matters which in some measure are the domain of each man’s prudential judgment.

This is not to say that modesty is purely relative or subjective (in Christian cultures women don’t go topless because of natural, wholesome shame), only that in those matters where good Catholics may disagree the solution is not going to be found in crusades for uniformity (whether in dress or undress) but in the freedom to make independent judgments that are ever more enlightened and generous.  In this way, we acknowledge and respect the rightful place of ordinary shame, the higher and objective standard of Christian modesty, the holiness and beauty of both the body and of sexuality, intellectual freedom, a measured diversity of culture, and the legitimate differences of personality, temperament, history and mystery that belong to individual persons created in the image and likeness of God.  This is the opposite of zealotry.  It is just plain common sense.

Stopping the Pendulum

This approach has the added advantage of pulling that rug out from under reactionary tendencies which are just aggravated by the propensity to use the labels such as prude or skank. More disturbing to me and more frequently occurring than a modesty crusader calling a woman dressed in a trashy outfit a skank, is that same crusader shabbily treating a decent woman or girl who does not meet their standard of uniformity.  Both instances offend the dignity of the human person and welfare of souls, but in the second case, the estimation entirely inaccurate.

But this is not only a problem with the modesty crusaders.  The anti-prudery crusaders are just as inclined to size people up and examine their consciences (even publicly, as West does).  Without having any real idea what is going on in the conscience of someone else, they suggest that ordinary and sincere reactions against unveiling every aspect of sexuality is prudery.  What they are looking for is a whole new standard of enlightenment by which they can measure the authentic response to the sexual intuition, and they have their own set of rules that they wish to impose by way of the invocation of authority.  Hence, John Paul II is used as the unquestionable authority for all kinds of things he never recommended.

Either way it is shabby treatment and positively anti-personalist behavior.  In fact, no one is inclined to change their view of things when they are measured with oversimplified and plainly bogus standards.

Real Men

Finally, I want to speak directly to men on the question of shame and modesty.  John Paul does say that a special burden is placed on the man to see to it that a woman is not made an object (TOB 33.1-2).  In this regard men should not project onto women their own disordered desires.  Not every woman whose manner of dress a man finds provocative is trying to be provocative.  However, that does not mean she is not being thoughtless and a bit selfish.  Sometimes women just want male attention.  They know exactly how to get it, and sometimes act accordingly, even when their purpose is not lustful.

So there is a mutual burden in this regard, but men with sensitive consciences in matters of purity should not take the depersonalization of women to a new level by projecting onto them their own lust, and like Muslim men expect women to look like something other than attractive and then blame women for their own lack of custody of heart.  Again, this is not to say that women’s fashions today in general are not objectively immodest, but it is to say that the preoccupation with the standards of modesty are not altogether helpful to men and the transformation they need to undergo.

In this too, the facile, enthusiastic and clever apologetical argument may be effective but it has also some serious liabilities.  The often told story of the two monks who approach a stream and find a damsel there unable to cross is a good example of the problem.  Supposedly, one of the monks decided to do the chivalrous thing and carry the girl over the stream.  Once across, the monks and the damsel bid their adieus and went their separate ways.  After a long time of walking along in silence, finally the other monk said:  “Brother, I can’t believe you picked up that woman and carried her over that stream.  What were you thinking?”  The offender replied:  Brother, I put her down a long time ago.  It seems you are still carrying her.”

This story, in fact, illustrates something very true, but something that needs to be considered carefully.  The second brother’s scandalized heart presumably had lost its peace not because of an offense against God or because of the spiritual peril of the other brother, but because of its own preoccupation with matters of sexuality.  The scandalized monk was, in fact, projecting his own problem onto his brother.  However, this is no argument that the first monk actually behaved in a prudent fashion.  The sword cuts both ways.  Modesty is not just a matter of custody of the heart, and while the scandalized brother may well have been a prude, the circumstances of the damsel’s predicament and the monk’s station in life, as well as his own personal story and baggage may have dictated a much different solution.

If as West and his followers suggest the redemption of the body is a matter of self-mastery, why does that mean that ordinary, wholesome shame must go out the window along with prudery?  There may be several answers.  One is perhaps that in some circumstances souls reach a state in which they attain something akin to original innocence.  But West says he is not suggesting that anyone is going to attain that kind of purity.  So if prudery is jettisoned and self-mastery is obtained, why does the wholesome shame of holy things have to go as well?  In my opinion, it is because the real argument in all this in not about prudery, but about the assertion that the Theology of the Body mandates a new and holy fascination and fixation on sexuality. Unfortunately, this is an invention,  and one produced, not by John Paul II, but by Christopher West.

Real Hope

The road to self-mastery is not going to be won by trying to convince the world by flashy but superficial arguments that the Church is not anti-sex when it really never has been.  It is not going to be won by teaching men, who need to learn to fight, to seek the path of unrestricted, cushy-soft and allegedly holy eroticism. The road to self mastery is the narrow and difficult road of trial and error, of nuance and distinction, of high ideals and knowledge of one’s weakness, an appreciation for goodness of all that God has created, spontaneity in action, and shame of the ugly and of the beautiful and holy.  Men must fight for their chastity.  Yes, the message of the Church about sexuality is good news, but it is not a false and shameless hope.

May we all be blessed to see the truth of it.  Shame on you.  Amen.

With this video I announce a change in my interests and my new blog.

Please visit me at globvilla.com

You came into power by having a platform the public could relate to.

You can win by having a new platform the public can relate to.

Forget about attacking the opposition directly. It is a waste of time and resources.

It was Eisenhower who said, “The plan is useless, the planning essential.”

Planning is about knowing yourself and your competitor. The actual battle is about adaptation and destruction of the competitor’s tools. WE MUST DOCUMENT THE COMPETITION TO GUIDE OUR ATTACK STRATEGY.

Napoleon’s first strike was at night and in the rain.

Martin Luther’s attack was with German and Satirical Cartoons instead of Latin and Religious Debate.

Canada conquered Vimy Ridge, by knowing how to hunt game in Canadian forests.

Germany invaded France by taking a country road around the Maginot Line.

D-Day was preceded by a massive night attack on front line communication, infrastructure and airborne troop drops behind enemy lines.

The Iraq invasion was founded on destroying the enemies’ will to fight.

We have no intent of ever executing a frontal assault against the enemy.  It is romantic incompetence.

Our competitive strategey: “Don’t fight like a Gentleman, fight like a Noble Savage.”

We are not seeking the approval of the professionals.

We are developing a language and tools to make the ordinary person extraordinary.

It is called the RECOVERY PLATFORM.

Create a phenomena called the “Personal Corporation.”

Make every Canadian capable of governing every aspect of their own life via the internet.

Abandon Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Racism, Fascism, Nazism.

Create the Manifesto of “PERSONALISM” the politics of the internet.

Sincerely,

Grant Czerepak

I was rereading some of Thomas Merton’s Mystics and Zen Masters while doing several loads of laundry(an existential type of work anyway), and it certainly was food for thought. I jumped in where the old bookmark was, which was toward the end, and he was speaking of existential philospophy, and how it should not be interpreted as a nihilistic, negative approach to life, but rather a recognition of the alienating and isolating way of collective conformism, a way which strips people of their individual humanity, that is, as he calles it, a “leveling” of humanity, so that the authentic self, the true self, that true self sought after, say, in buddhism, the personalism of a Dorothy Day, is leveled away and there is no self anymore, just a piece of the collective society, encouaged to behave in a way, to conform to ideal typographies of “heroes” and “idols,”, and on and on.

Let me say that I do want to become a mystic and zen master when I grow up. But even more of a priority for me, and I would like to say this has grown out of my tai chi practice, but the truth is the tai chi practice has only affirmed what I’ve known about myself from a young age, more of a priority is the freedom to be truly an individual, a person, to be me, albeit within community, but me. Whatever matrix we find ourselves in, whether it be in Catholicism, taoism, buddhism, totalitarianism, fascism, the primacy of the individual and the nurturing of that person, the growth and development of that person to be wholly them, that’s the thing.

The corporate world, advertising, propoganda, social mores, all look to destroy individualism and make people conform to a way, usually a way that is delusional and illusory. And this is just the perspective within an industrialized, technologically advanced society. The collective grip in other countries is it’s own set of issues. We may deal with subtle, hidden ways of fascism and totalitarian oppression, but some peoples live under it blatantly every day, and often face violence and death if they stand against it. Here, we face a lot of harrassment, and then maybe death if we step outside the norm and make a stink about it to boot.

I do want to say that it is a complex issue, simply from the fact that there are so many people in the world. How do you in fact create a social construct that gives everyone the opportunity to be educated, to work, to make a living, to have a home and food and clothing? It’s easy to point out the negatives of any framework, and let’s face it, a certain amount of conformity and following of rules and leveling off is necessary for the good of and the proper workings of a society. But there should always be a compatible way of allowing a person to have dignity and respect, to be an individual, a person. Even in the monastic life, a monk sacrifices much of the self to become, lets say, a monk in christ. But he is always brother so and so or sister what’s her name. The individual person remains important.

It should be simpler. People want coffee, for example, a company opens a store that sells coffee, people buy the coffee at the store. But it become co-opted. The company begins making all kinds of coffee and then proceeds to “educate” the consumer about what they really want. It is a manipulation that takes us down the slippery slope, and it happens in all facets of society. In any type of team affair, there has to be a sacrificing of some of a person’s individuality. In an orchestra, not everyone is the soloist or featured artist. Sometimes the oboe player needs to be just the oboe player. But the oboe player should never be stripped of his personal worth. He should always be joe the oboe player.

One other important concept I’d like to touch upon, which is sort of related to the topic, but, how do we get our information, how do we get our revelation, how do we achieve enlightenment and begin to understand who we really are? I think the answer lies primarily in ourselves. We must look deep inside ourselves, in our hearts. It is somewhat cliched to say it, to use the terminology, but we should listen to what our hearts are saying. We must look deeply into our oen consciousness, and our own conscience. It is our consciousness which has, as it’s source, the consciousness of the ineffable. It’s there for us to listen to, to study, and to accept.

I began reading “Love and Responsibility” by Karol Wojtyla last night, and already, my mind is sufficiently blown into little Thomistic pieces. Thankful that it is stylistically worlds apart from “Theology of the Body,” Wojtyla starts at the mezzanine floor of personalism: a person is a rational being which acts freely both as a subject who acts and an object who is acted upon. Although many entities may act as subjects, man is distinguished by his interior life, which revolves about truth and goodness,  and his striving “to assert himself.”

I promise — this is going somewhere, and somewhere personal at that! Now, while a person may be an object, he is never to be strictly a means to an end. Wojtyla cites examples of the employer and the employee and the commander and the soldier. It is the former of these which inspired me. Wojtyla asserts that men must be free to choose their own aims — not even God Himself thwarts this gift to man. Rather, loving God that He is, He makes His intentions known to man, in order that man may freely choose to adhere or rebel.

Seeing how God respects the decision of men (enter: hell), how does man image God in his relation to other men? How does man treat other men as objects (meaning simply that he acts upon them) without treating them as means? Wojtyla’s answer is concise: “the Bond of the Common Good.” Men subordinate themselves to a common perceived good, and thus they both act as subjects seeking a common end. This is the “core of love,” and allows freedom and ultimately all social order to function properly.

To shift gears, I’ve often wondered why my days working for a veterinarian clinic in Sulphur, LA under Dr. Terry Ford are perceived as the glory days in its 13 year tenure. Many workers have come and gone, many have quit and moved on to other jobs, some meaningful, some trivial. Dozens of high school students have knelt on its floors and scrubbed its walls, tromped in its yard and washed its dishes. But there was always something different — something set apart about the few years that I , Ryan M., Jenny, et. al. bustled about its corridors. What was different? Why are the new kennel workers so lackadaisical? Why did all, including Dr. Ford, long for the spirit (which spirit will soon be named) that hovered over the clinic?

Reading this book in Coffee Call last night, an angel whispered the words in my ear — “common good.” This is the answer to the employer-employee problem, and the reason why no kennel workers seem to do the job like Ryan M. and I did. We all shared a common good, and it bound us together in love. Not a sentimental, squishy sponge of an emotion, but a binding of a half-dozen free wills into a something meaningful, as spokes to a wheel.

We loved the clinic; we loved Dr. Ford; we sincerely wanted it to succeed, wanted it to bring joy, wanted it to save (animal’s) lives. That’s why we showed up on a Sunday evening (in unconscious protest of the Lord’s Day) to shake out the rugs, douse the floor in Mr. Clean, spray the counters, and wipe out the autoclave (not to mention a dozen other tasks). Our sense of common good — our sense of subordination to our love of our work and of our employer — compelled us to make the ship run smoothly. We had succeeded if Dr. Ford walked in the next morning, took a deep breathe, and grinned.

It was this love that made these days glorious, if such an elaborate term could be used; glorious, perhaps, in the sense that where persons are loving freely, God is present, for God is the source of all freedom and all love. We did not use Dr. Ford as a means to our own ends — or if we did, it was not intentional. Seeing the sacrifices which Dr. Ford had made for the graces that he was able to give, we could do nothing else than give similarly.

I realize this sounds more like a “this is what ‘Love and Responsibility’ means to me,” but I feel as though I finally have an understanding of what set us, as a crew, apart. It wasn’t simply that we worked late hours, or came in when we weren’t scheduled, for bought donuts — it was love, and love which was expressed through a common sense of purpose. That’s what made those days glorious. I think John Paul II would be glad to see such glory permeating all of society as it did in our little clinic on Maplewood Drive.