Faith, Reason and the University

Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture under this title to an audience at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006. The subsequent wave of angry and violent protest that spread around the world served to demonstrate his point that:

"'Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God', said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university."

As our Holy Father travels to Turkey, we would do well to pray for him and for those who wish him harm. Much has been written by far more qualified and insightful commentators on the topic of this lecture at the University of Regensburg, and therefore I hesitate to be redundant. However, the Holy Father's fifth international apostolic journey, as a response to an invitation from His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, carries much more significance, generally and personally, than is implied by the disconcerting backdrop of Regensburg. The visit comes two years after Pope John Paul II returned the holy relics of St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory Nazianzen to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople. The ceremony took place on November 27, 2004; On November 30, 2004 His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew presided over the Divine Liturgy for the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, during which the holy relics were enshrined in the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George. It was on this day that our son was born, and he was named after St. John Chrysostom and St. Andrew the Apostle in honor of this most historic event.

It has been stated publicly that Pope Benedict XVI has three objectives in Turkey:

1. Pastoral confirmation of the local Catholic community in the faith.

2. Ecumenical participation in the Divine Liturgy at the Patriarchal Church of St. George followed by an address and a joint declaration with His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

3. Fostering of dialogue with Islam.

As part of his third objective, the Holy Father will deliver an address to Ali Bardakoglu, Turkey's president of religious affairs, who has recently and publicly referred to the Regensburg lecture as an "attack on the pillars of Islam."

I think that in this turbulent context, the imperative for the reunification of East and West is as promising as it is urgent. Therefore my prayers are offered for Pope Benedict XVI, His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and all who would be our "partners in the dialogue of cultures."

Relevant Listening/Viewing:

EWTN Coverage

Relevant Reading:

Prayer for Pope Benedict
Faith, Reason and the University
The Regensburg Moment

Ingratitude as Privation of Freedom

"All the truths we are blessed in knowing, all beauty we are allowed to enjoy; every moment of good health and every bit of nourishment we take - all these are undeserved benefits in no wise due to us. How often do we misuse the gifts of God; with how much ingratitude and indifference do we requite His blessings? Yet, as soon as habit deludes us into misjudging our metaphysical situation, as soon (under the influence of habit) our nature represents to us any possessions or privileges we enjoy as self-evident rights, we have eo ipso renounced true freedom. For all subjection to illusions, and in particular, all misconceptions of our situation relative to God, necessarily imply a privation of freedom." -- Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ

Children and Chess

It was not long ago that I had the privilege to teach two of my young nieces how to play chess. Having already succumbed to the graceful, beautiful intrigue of the game, they were very excited and eager to learn. I sat down with the youngest first, and we proceeded to organize the black and white pieces by color. She took the white pieces; I opted for black. I explained the rules of movement for each piece, starting with the rooks and finishing with the pawns. After explaining the rules of movement, I explained the proper starting position for each piece. She was eager to begin playing. Throughout our first game I was repeatedly impressed with the questions that she asked. Her older sister was just as ready to learn, and toward the end of that evening I was grateful for the chance to share some small part of this beautiful game with two such genuine students.

I'm hardly a good chess player; would that they could learn from one. I learned the game as a child from an old copy of Encyclopedia Britannica. I wanted to learn, I think in much the same way that my nieces did. Early I discovered the philosophical quality of playing chess against oneself. Later I discovered that it's much harder to sacrifice pieces when playing against a committed opponent. My grandfather was a remarkable man and a true friend. But when I asked him to play chess with me, he specifically refused to play, stating a preference for checkers instead. Beyond that, I never found out why. Another friend of mine was in the chess club at his school. Later in life, after playing chess with Dan, I would learn that simple patterns of play, handpicked from hundreds of opening sequences followed by carefully rehearsed moves and counter moves, could checkmate the untrained player within seconds.

I enjoy the game and admire those, and there are many, who've achieved a level of mastery beyond my own skills. As a game unto itself, I believe that chess can uniquely contribute the the development of critical thinking, patience, and sustained introspection. The game has it's own way of purging the mind of scattered thoughts, summoning the enlistment of every possible neuron to the cause of making the next move. It's effect passes through the players to their surroundings in a manner similar to that of incense and candles through lone penitents to the outer depths of a great cathedral. The spirituality of gaming is apparent in chess; not so in many other games. There is a mysterious quality to it that commands attention, respect, and wonder. A game of chess in a crowded coffee shop affects everyone in the room, body, mind, and spirit. Even the violent, piercing sound of fresh espresso being ground loses some of its auditory sting when knights, rooks, bishops, and queens rally to the defense of kings.

And like other beautiful and mysterious things, chess leaves the irreverence, banality, and poor form of it's players and their bystanders in high relief. A game poorly played in an atmosphere of respect yields no such outcome. Not so for many other games, yet for chess this experience is inherent, unquestionable, and ancient. Anger at having lost a game of chess definitively reminds one of the finality of objective truth and in so doing, beckons one back to the board for nobler things. Pride at having won a game of chess quickly fades with the understanding that the game is measurably larger than it's greatest players.

The question can be posed to what extent the human person matters in a game of chess. After all, it has become a classic problem in computer science to program machines to play against each other and as a result we've witnessed the defeat of human grandmasters by their digital opponents. Did man discover chess, or did he invent it? I concede that man invented chess no more than I invented the games that I played against myself as an exercise in childhood learning. Yet in light of the almost incomprehensible number of possible chess games that could be played, the fact remains that the latter act of discovery pales in comparisson to the former. Where one is stayed by the boundaries of simple rules, the other may dip freely into the universe not once, but any number of times throughout human history. The result is an instance of one possibility among a number that not even our most powerful machines can be programmed to calculate. Hence the existence of so many variants on the game. And so it is that the human person matters in a game of chess when he participates in one. Only then is there a spirituality of gaming to animate and make possible true play, spontaneous, creative discovery, and authentic invention.

It has been said, "Show me the games of your children, and I’ll show you the next hundred years." I can think of no better game to play throughout one's life, yet chess seems to bring out the best in children. The question can be posed to what extent would the world be different had chess never been played? Scholars of the game's history know that it's influence is far-reaching. Along these lines, I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different had I not played chess, and having taught two children to play the game, I must also wonder how different our world would be in years to come if chess were more often among the games our children play.

My nieces both expressed a more acute appreciation for the vast expanse of possibilities that spread out before anyone playing a game of chess. Experiences like this confirm that there is great richness and beauty to be found in things that have form, boundaries, and objective definitions. Contrary to a culture that has cast form and obectivity from the theatre and the gallery, the game of chess, like baroque music, stands ever firm in the plenitude of its form.

Relevant Reading / Review:

The Immortal Game
The Art in Chess
America's Foundation for Chess
U.S. Chess Federation
Chess Magnet School

Why I Read Ellison's "Invisible Man"

Joseph Epstein wrote a piece for Commentary that pointed me in Ralph Ellison's direction. This excerpt from his book, entitled Friendship Among the Intellectuals, drew me in quietly. Before reading it, I hadn't been thinking about Invisible Man, invisible men, coming-of-age stories, and the like. Nor had I known of Norman Podhoretz's book entitled "Ex-Friends." Certainly I hadn't been thinking so much about friendship in general as I had been thinking about intellectual friendships in particular when I came across the article. Yes, I maintain that there's a difference. That's how the title grabbed me. But it was Samuel Johnson's quote in the opening sentence that drew me in...quietly:

"'It is painful to consider,' wrote Samuel Johnson about friendship, 'that there is no human possession of which the duration is less certain.'"

Epstein agrees. The published excerpt, insofar as it concerns Norman Podhoretz's Ex-Friends, specifically addresses the breakdown of friendships when one friend "finds himself violently disputing the other on matters of profoundest principle." States Epstein, "Here is the question Ex-Friends raises in high relief: for what ideas would one be willing to give up one's friends?"

That's an interesting question, more so when asked in light of Johnson's quote: it seems that the duration of a friendship becomes at least as certain as life itself if two friends can agree on the answer to this question. Or does it?

This brings me to Ellison. Epstein recounts a meeting he'd enjoyed with Ellison, his first introduction to the novelist, as editor of a magazine for which Ellison had written an essay:

"In Ralph Ellison I had met a man I long admired and found him not in the least disappointing. I felt I had made a new friend." Their meeting lasted for four hours, a time that Epstein describes as "magical." That was the first and last time that Epstein would correspond with Ellison. Subsequent written attempts on behalf of the former to contact and foster friendship with the latter would fail, landing in a great, empty, unresponsive silence.

Epstein found another person who had a similar experience with Ralph Ellison, and concluded with this gracious thought:

"A naturally gregarious man, he [Ralph Ellison] was someone whom many people, I among them, would have been pleased to think of as a friend. He was also a man who, having published a fine novel, Invisible Man, in 1954, had not written another in all the decades since - a man, in other words, haunted by work undone. He did not need more friends filling up his days with correspondence, lunches, and the other time-consuming niceties that would follow from his natural sociability."

It struck me then that I would like to read this "fine novel," that I may appreciate a little of the finished work of a man "haunted by work undone." There are many such men, especially in the literary world. But in the context of Epstein's rich excerpt, the knowledge that Ellison, while perhaps haunted by unfinished work, actually did succeed in finishing something of literary and cultural significance, lent something of the "magic" that Epstein described in his one personal encounter, and this was enough to pique my interest.

I was not disappointed in Invisible Man. And I found after reading it that the protagonist, while coming of age as a young man in an America beset by a heritage of guilt and grave injustice, found in disillusionment the same uncertainty of friendship that we're all bound to know if ever we should enjoy a true one. For what ideas would one be willing to give up one's friends? The question surrounds and penetrates Invisible Man, and the novel has it's way of stating it ever so differently throughout. By the end of his painful and at times pathetic journey, I found myself in disagreement with the answers, or lack thereof, discovered along the way.

I should conclude with one last quote from the poet Paul Valery, included in Epstein's essay, that encouraged a reflection on the nature of evil in relation to friendship:

"No true hatred is possible except toward those one has loved."

Yet I believe we should risk love all the same. I couldn't be a Christian otherwise. That it precedes hatred does not implicate love as the cause. Rather, it is the fundamental, life-giving foundation that is hatred's only cure.

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." (John 15:18-19)

Relevant Reading:

Friendship Among the Intellectuals

"We ignore poetry at our peril!"

Recently I enjoyed a lecture delivered by biographer Joseph Pearce about the Recusants. The lecture quickly narrowed in on the topic of Shakespeare, his family's place in the Recusancy, and some counterpoints to scholarly opinions that Shakespeare wasn't Catholic. These counterpoints and much of the substance for Pearce's lecture were taken from a new and promising biography of William Shakespeare that he is working on, complete with the wit and happiness that I've come to expect from this respected and accomplished Catholic writer.

So, at some time in the near future, we shall see another biography of William Shakespeare. What's so promising about it? The author closed his lecture by sharing with us his experience of talking to large audiences of young adults and college students about Catholicism. He admitted that these gatherings weren't advertised as such, but complete, undiluted, and orthodox Catholicism is what they received. What attracted these students to these lectures? None other than J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in particular, culture in general. He concluded by saying that Shakespeare is like a weapon of "mass reconstruction" in a world beset by weapons of mass destruction. With a nod in the direction of some literary critics, I might add weapons of mass deconstruction. In other words, Shakespeare understood as a Catholic introduces cultural inroads to the hearts and minds of those who at once need to know the most about what Catholicism has contributed to art through artists, and who stand the greatest chance of reconstructing a culture that has been deconstructed at every turn. I don't know it yet, but after attending this lecture I expect that Pearce is writing a biography that will further establish answers to the question of Shakespeare's Catholicism, and all of this from a scholar who has strong convictions about the value of poetry.

One might read an interview with Joseph Pearce that suggests much to look forward to. In it he exclaims, "We ignore poetry at our peril!" I agree. When someone with this belief sets out to write a biography about William Shakespeare, I look forward to it with great interest, especially when I know the subject connects to Christ and His Church. These we ignore at our peril also.

Relevant Reading:

The Code Breakers - for some background on the debate and what I don't expect to see from Pearce.

Images of Possibility: Art Redeeming Culture - a good article from the St. Austin Review.

Ye Cannot in your Present State Understand Eternity

Last summer I was struck by a poem written by Samuel Menashe in First Things entitled "Nothing New". How or when does now become then? I think C.S. Lewis was on to this question and perhaps even on to the poet's point when he considered salvation, damnation, time, and eternity in The Great Divorce:

"'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity... But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only in this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, 'Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say 'We have never lived anywhere except Heaven,' and the Lost, 'We were always in Hell.' And both will speak truly."

[The Great Divorce (CH. 9)]

This line from Samuel's poem brought The Great Divorce to mind: "That all was done before I was born to behold the sky at dawn once more..." Indeed, at "...the end of all things, when the sun rises here...the Blessed will say 'We have never lived anywhere except Heaven.'"

Relevant Listening / Reading:

Peter Kreeft on Time and Eternity, Oxford Conference July 2002

"The relation between faith and reason becomes radically different once a person has made the act of faith." - Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. in his article, Mere Apologetics.