Book Review

Towards the Gleam by T. M. Doran

I was interested in this book because it represents a modern attempt to publish Christian literature in a similar vein to the literary giants of the Catholic literary revival in England. In fact so influenced is Mr Doran by the likes of Chesterton, Tolkien and Lewis that he has actually incorporated them into his novel as characters. Though I don't know the background of Mr Doran I would assume that he is a "traditional" Roman Catholic from his treatment of philosophical notions in his novel.

The weaknesses of the novel were mainly in its prose which, whilst more than adequate, suffers, naturally enough, from comparisons with the famous literary giants who are the characters. The novel also suffers, in my opinion, from far too much inner dialogue and reflection on the part of the main character and too little dialogue and engagement with other characters. The central villain in the story was also, I found, a little one dimensional and hardly intimidating.

I am undecided how I feel about the plot. It was highly improbable and relying far too much on happenstance. It also failed to generate the required tension, for most of the novel I was more concerned for the marriage of the protagonist than for his life. The resolution was obvious well before it occurred and felt ridiculous afterward. Despite this if the plot is to be taken more allegorically or as demonstrating the presence of grace in the world then it makes far more sense. And while it would have been nice to have felt concern for the physical wellbeing of the protagonist, concern for his spiritual state and his marriage make more sense.

What Mr Doran did manage really well, I believe, was the presentation of the various literary giants which crop up throughout his story. I especially enjoyed the scene of G. K. Chesterton in an English pub. That said, I am a little annoyed at the presentation of Tolkien whose character in my opinion Mr Doran was a little liberal with. The treatment of philosophy and ideas in the novel was also engaging and, for the most part, deftly handled.

It is the spirit in which, I believe, the novel was published to which I am most attracted. It represents to me an attempt for Catholics to once again have a say in the culture; an attempt to present an attractive alternative through a cultural median. Bring on another Catholic literary revival, another Belloc, another Chesterton and another Tolkien (to name a few)!

I would warn readers, however, that unless they are somewhat familiar and sympathetic towards the lives and writings of at least Chesterton, Lewis and Tolkien most of the enjoyment of the novel will probably be lost.

In Summery;
Though this book is unlikely to be a classic the story was an enjoyable, light read; one which leaves you pondering over the issues raised throughout the novel. Would definitely like to see more. 3 and 1/2 stars

To see more of "Towards the Gleam" check out this webpage or Amazon.

Rerum Novarum - Some Lessons Learnt

120 years ago Pope Leo XIII released Rerum Novarum an encyclical on the “Conditions of Labour”. In my previous post I (or rather G. K. Chesterton) discussed the radical shift this Encyclical brought to thoughts on economic justice. To honour this 120^th anniversary I am writing on the Encyclical again; however, rather than discussing the ‘big picture’ of this Encyclical I want to focus instead on the implications Rerum Novarum contains for the ordinary life of a faithful Catholic. Most of the lessons I draw from this Encyclical will be familiar to faithful Catholics but are nonetheless useful reminders, for myself at least, to apply and reapply to life.

One of the first things that struck me on reading the encyclical was the common sense with which Pope Leo XIII presented his argument. This was especially apparent in the Pope’s discussion on property and property rights. Far from a puritanical, unreasonable ascetic Pope Leo demonstrates a far greater sympathy and understanding with man than either the socialist or the capitalist. Contrary to denying the value of corporal goods Pope Leo affirms that material processions can be a source of legitimate pleasure and enjoyment. Man as the “full perfection of the animal being” can thus “enjoy at least as much as the rest of the animal kind, the fruition of things material.” This animal side of man is of course tempered by his spiritual nature but that spiritual nature does not prevent the enjoyment of the material realm. This, therefore, is the first lesson which I take from Rerum Novarum; the material part of man is neither unimportant nor insignificant. If this were true there would be no need for the Pope’s Encyclical because material concerns like the living wage would be unimportant. Matter is not evil and can be legitimately enjoyed. Of course there is a real superiority of the concerns of the soul to the concerns of the body. This does not make your body evil or unimportant, however. Enjoy life’s authentic material pleasures; if you don’t there is probably something wrong with you.

The second point that struck me in Rerum Novarum was the importance of work to humanity. Pope Leo notes that even before the fall man worked in the Garden of Eden. Furthermore

“even had man never fallen from the state of innocence, he would not have remained wholly idle; but that which would then have been his free choice and his delight became afterwards compulsory, and the painful expiation for his disobedience. ‘Cursed be the earth in thy work; in thy labour thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life.’”

Thus work should be embraces as a core element of our being. Pope Leo also attributes the justification of ownership of private property, in part, to the labour through which a man produces goods. Through labour the fruits of man’s work become “indistinguishable and inseparable” from his work and his ownership of goods is justified. As Pope Leo so rightly states;

“Is it just that the fruit of a man's own sweat and labour should be possessed and enjoyed by anyone else? As effects follow their cause, so is it just and right that the results of labour should belong to those who have bestowed their labour.”

In this way we can see how an idle man could potentially forfeit his rights to ownership through his idleness. Humans are hardwired to work. It’s time to recognise this and quite seeking idleness.

The attempt to avoid the hardships of work is also dealt with in the Encyclical and declared to be impossible. No matter how many times you change your career or workplace seeking that ‘perfect job’ the hardship will remain. A Marxist utopia for the workers is in fact a fools dream. And Pope Leo is totally realistic about this.

The “pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently - who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment - they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.”

This then brings me to the second lesson I took from Rerum Novarum; to seek to avoid labour is flatly contrary to our essence as humans and the hardships of labour are inescapable consequences of original sin. This is one lesson I will constantly have to remind myself of. Instead of avoiding the difficult tasks offer it up and get on with it. The pain will not disappear in this life.

A final lesson I took from Rerum Novarum concerns wealth and how material processions should be treated by a faithful Catholic. Pope Leo reaffirms the Church’s stance that material processions are morally neutral. Catholics are allowed to be wealthy and are not to be condemned for being poor.

“As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them-so far as eternal happiness is concerned - it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them correctly.”

And what is the correct use of material wealth?

“Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others. "He that hath a talent," said St. Gregory the Great, "let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility hereof with his neighbour."

Least this statement seems weak and easy to incorporate into your life let me quote again; and this is the final lesson I am sharing that I took from Rerum Novarum. While wealth is not evil…

“When what necessity demands has been supplied, and one's standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. "Of that which remaineth, give alms." It is a duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity”

The easiest application of this sentence that I can think of is stop wasting money on frivolities. The Church, in her wisdom, allows us to determine for ourselves exactly what “necessity demands has been supplied, and one's standing fairly taken thought for”; but I know for sure that that sentence is not an accurate description of my spending habits.

This leaves me with another three more areas of my life to work on and to constantly remind myself of and I thought I was reading a dated text directed at multimillionaires and socialists… Well that’s the end of my posts on Rerum Novarum

Vive Christus Rex!

Rerum Novarum – 120 Years

This 15^th of May will be the 120^th anniversary of the release of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII on the “condition of Labour”. In anticipation of this anniversary I have read the Encyclical and have to admit to being impressed beyond my expectations by the wisdom it contains. I was afraid before reading Rerum Novarum that the conclusions would be out of date and/or else blatantly obvious to our society where, in Australia at least, trade unions are most certainly not banned and the almost every worker (and for that matter the unemployed) receive, at the very least, a living wage. Certainly the challenges (of which there are many) to create a Christian workplace have changed radically in Australia since 1891. Nonetheless it is no exaggeration to assert that the Rerum Novarum contains a goldmine of wisdom most of which is still applicable and necessary to heed today.

I will follow this post up at a later date with greater commentary on Rerum Novarum, but for the mean time I want to concentrate on a single point. This is Pope Leo’s simultaneous condemnation of both unbridled capitalism and socialism. Such a denunciation of both practices was fairly radical in its day as the extract from the writings of G. K. Chesterton, below, demonstrates. The rejection of the two most prevalent economic theories of the age, by the Pope, affirmed an alternate road, a more "human" solution to the problems of justice in economics. The condemnation of both capitalism and socialism also presents a striking example of the value of the Pontiff; free, through the grace of God, from bowing to the fads of an age, and thus able to present the necessity of Catholicism to be present, in all areas of life, to the world.

“Shades of the prison-house began to close and with them came a merely mechanical discussion as to how we were all to get out of prison. Then indeed, in the darkness of the dungeon, was heard the voice of Mr. Sidney Webb, telling us that we could only conceivably get out of our Capitalist captivity with the patent Chubb key of Collectivism. Or to use a more exact metaphor, he told us that we could only escape from our dark and filthy cells of industrial slavery by melting all our private latchkeys into one gigantic latchkey as large as a battering ram. We did not really like giving up our little private keys or local attachments or love of our own possessions; but we were quite convinced that social justice must be done somehow and could only be done socialistically. I therefore became a Socialist in the old days of the Fabian Society; and so I think did everybody else worth talking about except the Catholics. And the Catholics were an insignificant handful, the dregs of a dead religion, essentially a superstition. About this time appeared the Encyclical on Labor by Leo XIII; and nobody in our really well-informed world took much notice of it. Certainly the Pope spoke as strongly as any Socialist could speak when he said that Capitalism "laid on the toiling millions a yoke little better than slavery." But as the Pope was not a Socialist it was obvious that he had not read the right Socialist books and pamphlets; and we could not expect the poor old gentleman to know what every young man knew by this time--that Socialism was inevitable. That was a long time ago, and by a gradual process, mostly practical and political, which I have no intention of describing here, most of us began to realize that Socialism was not inevitable; that it was not really popular; that it was not the only way, or even the right way, of restoring the rights of the poor. We have come to the conclusion that the obvious cure for private property being given to the few is to see that it is given to the many; not to see that it is taken away from everybody or given in trust to the dear good politicians. Then, having discovered that fact as a fact, we look back at Leo XIII and discover in his old and dated document, of which we took no notice at the time, that he was saying then exactly what we are saying now. "As many as possible of the working classes should become owners." That is what I mean by the justification of arbitrary warning. If the Pope had said then exactly what we said and wanted him to say, we should not have really reverenced him then and we should have entirely repudiated him afterwards. He would only have marched with the million who accepted Fabianism; and with them he would have marched away. But when he saw a distinction we did not see then, and do see now, that distinction is decisive. It marks a disagreement more convincing than a hundred agreements. It is not that he was right when we were right, but that he was right when we were wrong.“

“The Exception Proves the Rule” from The Catholic Church and Conversion by G. K. Chesterton

No time for Beauty.

As Co- Blogger I feel I should have written something already, alas I haven't found the time...be assured that all things come to those who wait.

As I intend to write on all things related to beauty, being a designer myself, I thought for now I would just leave you with on of my favorite quotes. I stumbled upon this whilst reading a book on iconography, (which I intend to write about at a later date), it was written by John of Damascus denying the iconoclasts accusation of the deification of Icons. 

"I do not adore matter, I adore the creator of matter...and through the

 medium of matter did come about my salvation...And thus I adore the

 matter through which my salvation was achieved, and venerate [it] 

and worship [it]"

Andrei Rublev

Archangel Michael. circa 1400 Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Moral Relativism - Part Four

Part Four: The Catholic Church and Relativism
If the arguments against moral relativism are strong, how is it that so many people advocate and preach relativism on a day to day basis? Why is relativism so popular? I think this important question can be answered partly because of the problems supporters of absolutes encounter. This goes back to the two objections to moral absolutes raised in the previous post; 1) What if you get you objective standard wrong? and 2) What gives you the authority to judge the actions of others by your objective standard? The first of these two objections is the most powerful and the argument would appear to hinge on this point. If a person could provide absolute standards at once universal and convincing then the claims of moral relativism would be shot to pieces. Can such a system be demonstrated? Were you to ask a person to justify the absolute moral standards whereby he lives his life what would he say?

Moral Relativism - Part Three

Part Three: The Argument for Absolutes
One cannot of course mathematically prove the existence of moral absolutes any more than one can mathematically prove the existence of God. There is however one line of argument which I would like to pursue. (NB. This is by no means the only argument for moral absolutes, just the one I have time for.) The argument starts from the use of words such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. The relativist believes that such words have the relativistic meaning of ‘right in my society’ etc. According to the relativist, then, people allow society to decide for them matters of right and wrong, good and evil. Let’s hold off discussing whether the view, that society dictates for us what is right and wrong, is well founded. Instead let’s investigate whether an ordinary individual believes that his moral judgements are dictated by society. Or in other words what exactly do people believe in that can arbitrate on matters of righteousness?