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About that ‘Personal Relationship with Jesus’

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, June 17, 2024

It’s a good idea, of course, that “personal relationship” with Jesus. It works itself around any number of contemporary roadblocks to the faith. Which is unusual for Christian truths in current conditions. But without some other, very good, ideas, the personal relationship turns into a very bad idea.

Because if, as in most of the “relationships” we have these days, we limit what transpires between us and Him only to what we’re willing to agree to, we’re not in a personal relationship with Jesus. We’re in a toxic relationship with our own egos, a cocoon we create for our own comfort, but which, ironically, is one of the deepest reasons for our current unease.

The whole problem can be seen by asking a simple question: Which Jesus are we supposed to have that relationship with, anyway?

• The Jesus of the Scriptures and Early Church Fathers
• The Byzantine Pantocrator
• The Mystic Lamb of the Ghent Altarpiece
• The Da Vinci Salvator Mundi
• The Reformation Christ of sola fide and sola Scriptura
• The Enlightenment rationalist Jesus (miracles optional)
• The early modern, liberal Protestant, or Social Gospel Jesus
• The countercultural hippie Jesus of the 1960s
• The Marxist guerilla Jesus of liberation theology
• The Cosmic Christ of Teilhard
• The Rahnerian Jesus of “anonymous Christians”
• The prosperity gospel Jesus
• The uncertain, terminally debatable, and mutually contradictory figures conjured up by the historical/critical scripture scholars?

If these seem too tied to other times and places, we’ve now gotten the todos, todos, todos Jesus, who loves us all just the way we are – well, not exactly all, equally, more LGBT+ and other “irregulars” than the rigid, the backwardist, the Latin-lovers. This Jesus doesn’t (formally) change His teachings, but can swiftly turn previously unchallenged Catholic practicesby 180° – with far-reaching implications about the teaching at some future date.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Snippets: Ethan Hawke’s Biopic about Flannery O’Connor

Written by Brad Miner

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

In Wildcat, the recent film by Ethan Hawke based on the life and work of Flannery O’Connor, one hopes to see, you know, Flannery O’Connor’s life. But Mr. Hawke mostly gives us her writing instead – and only snippets at that – dramatizations from her novels or short stories that come across as scenes students might perform in classes at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City.

It’s mostly talk with little action.

Hawke might have given us more of Wildcat’s best scene in which Flannery (played by Maya Hawke, the director’s daughter) is surrounded by intellectuals, including poet Robert Lowell (Philip Ettinger) and writer Elizabeth Hardwick (Willa Fitzgerald). The subject of the Eucharist comes up and Hardwick inanely says it’s a lovely symbol, to which O’Connor replies, “If it’s a symbol, then the hell with it.” And she evangelizes the highbrows, eviscerating their dismissal of the Real Presence.

Innovative creativity is always risky, and Mr. Hawke has taken a big risk in choosing notto make a classic biopic. In Wildcat, a subtle mention of an O’Connor story title in a biographical scene morphs into a dramatic “excerpt” from the story itself, sometimes effectively, as in an interracial confrontation from “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” or less effectively in “Parker’s Back,” when Miss Hawke provides voiceover narration for the absentminded Parker’s tractor collision with a tree, which has the effect of being the audio equivalent of title cards in a silent movie.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Europe’s Elections: Right, But Not Far

Written by Robert Royal

Tuesday, June 11, 2024

It’s worth paying careful attention to the significant gains recently by so-called “hard right” parties in the European elections. They tell us something not only about a whole group of kindred nations at this juncture in history, but also about what may happen this November in the United States as well. On the whole, it’s good news that resistance has grown to the progressive juggernaut, which is most conspicuous by the rainbow flags that have sprouted all over the world. That “hard left” movement has been a far greater “threat to democracy” than its opponents, and the threat goes well beyond homosexual and trans questions to many other matters of culture, nationhood, and religion.

Pope Francis and several European bishops have repeatedly warned against the “sirens of populism” and “simplistic solutions” to problems like massive illegal immigration – and the many disorders that inevitably follow. But Sweden – Sweden! – has become the rape capital of Europe, and experiences on average three stabbings a day, a bombing every other day, to say nothing of less spectacular troubles. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think that maybe something’s wrong with soft immigration policies – to say nothing of the whole post-Christian guilt complex about welcoming the stranger or wanting to preserve national identity.

Sweden is hardly alone in experiencing such problems. Under the circumstances, simplistic solutions – like border walls, incarceration for criminals, and swift deportations – indeed, any real solutions at all, start to look better and better to people in dozens of nations compared to the status quo.

The pope and many bishops – in America as well – tend to view the migrant problems through a very narrow lens, as if even having a border-control policy is basically contrary to the Gospel.  Prior to COVID, America was admitting 2 million legal immigrants a year, odd for a supposedly xenophobic nation. Europe, too, had allowed large influxes of legal migrants. Blaming developed countries for not admitting even more, and then blaming them again because they can’t integrate the huge numbers they’ve taken in – as many churchmen do – those are the simplistic solutions based in a kind of religious fundamentalism.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Pope Francis’ Truly Shocking Remark

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, June 3, 2024

The Pursuit of Happiness

Written by Robert Royal

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Sociology is the softest of the sciences – according to sociological surveys – and its practitioners, with noteworthy exceptions, largely lean – and more than lean – Left. Which may explain why a recent New York Times essay seems puzzled and not a little irritated by the fact, noted by the sociologists, that conservatives are measurably happier (and have been for half a century) than liberals in our radically rabid era. Their explanations tend towards the judgment that conservative happiness may be deplorable – for instance, that conservatives are (allegedly) less troubled than their liberal counterparts by inequality and injustice in the world. But it doesn’t take much insight into human existence to see that, on the question of happiness, the sociological dogs may be barking up several wrong sociological trees.

Let’s stipulate at the outset that, to a reflective mind, it’s not immediately evident what it means to be conservative or liberal. Pope Francis recently remarked in his CBS interview that conservatism is “a suicidal attitude,” characterizing conservatives as people whose hearts are “closed up inside a dogmatic box.” The world is wide, and it may indeed contain such strange creatures. But that rather illiberal judgment doesn’t come within a country mile of the vast majority of persons – inside or outside the Church – whom a sociologist would classify as a conservative.

Meanwhile, recent surveys show that almost all younger priests in the United States and large majorities in Germany (!) are what the pope would doubtless regard as conservative without showing any signs of clinging to the past and failing to engage the present. In fact, for many of us, their resistance to many currents in the world offers a viable shelter while the world – especially the Western world – seems hell-bent on suicide.

But for the sake of a manageable argument, let’s say that the sociologists have a street-level understanding of who counts as a conservative. And for the same reason, let’s accept that what they mean by such a person being happier than liberals is also – in ordinary, everyday terms – an adequate description. The reasons for this, however, seem to lie elsewhere than usually thought.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

‘Sacred Service’ at the National WWI Museum

Written by Brad Miner

Monday, May 27, 2024

“A good chaplain is as valuable as a good general.”
– British field marshal Sir Douglas Haig, 1915

Growing up in Worthington, Ohio, Memorial Day was always accompanied – as where was it not – by a parade down High Street that included veterans, our high school band, some active-duty servicemen, and lots of spectators.

There were many WWII-era soldiers, Marines, and sailors in our town, and a few veterans of World War I too.

My memories are vivid of flags on veteran graves at Walnut Grove Cemetery and of band members in their full, fall uniforms, especially one 80+-degree day, on which occasion a clarinet player collapsed from heat exhaustion after the mile-long parade.

That cemetery is always the parade’s terminus (1300 veterans are buried there). A trumpeter always steps forward to play “Taps.”

These days the band members wear shorts and t-shirts, and the procession is followed by medical personnel – and plenty of water.

A diminishing number of WWII vets remain among us, but the last American veteran of WWI, Frank Buckles, died on February 27, 2011 – at the tender age of 110.

And it’s CPL Buckles’ war, the Great War, I want to discuss today, in thoughts prompted by a remarkable exhibit at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.

Sacred Service, which opened this past Thursday, presents stories about (and artifacts from) chaplains who ministered to soldiers between 1914 and 1918. All images herein are from the exhibit.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Unmaking a Mess

Written by Robert Royal

Thursday, May 16, 2024

faithful Catholic finds him or herself in a complicated situation these days. It’s not just the age-old opposition from “the world.” Too many people, including Catholics in the pews and even in the Vatican, now seem to think that the world’s opposition arises because of something we’ve done wrong – e.g., offending LGBT activists or actually believing what’s been revealed by God. Or, in line with the Church’s longstanding cultivation of our God-given capacities, we stubbornly insist on the truths discoverable by the interplay of Faith and Reason.

By contrast, a Certain Person warned us from the beginning: “If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as 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) And there’s a clear reason for this: “it hates Me, because I testify that its works are evil.” (John 7:7)

It’s a troubling feature of the postmodern condition that talk of Good and Evil is regarded as “simplistic” by many people, even – the horror! – judgmental. At least when Christians are concerned.  Yet at the same time, our culture is full of very poorly formulated, but quite absolute, condemnations of people judged to be engaged in evils like racism, sexism, patriarchy, “colonialism,” Western civilization, transphobia, Islamophobia – all usually regarded as, in some vague way, connected to traditional Christianity.

Untangling this mess of half-truths and outright fictions presents one of the greatest challenges to Christian life in our time – an urgent task, not just for the scholars but for all of us on a daily basis. Jesus was not afraid to speak of Good and Evil – as valid distinctions for all people in every place at all times. He didn’t think that there was liberation or sophistication in speaking of “my truth” and “your truth” as the most up-to-date marker of your personal dignity, as if there were no overarching common and real Truth.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

‘Keane’ on Rupnik

Written by Brad Miner

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Father Marko Rupnik’s work reminds me of the art attributed to Walter Keane, the American artist who was popular in the 1960s. His paintings of big-eyed girls and women, and of animals remain enduringly popular on posters, prints, and plates.

Keane and Rupnik are also alike in being frauds. In Keane’s case, he took credit for work actually painted by his wife, Margaret. In Rupnik’s case, the fraud was more moral and canonical; he’s been credibly accused of being a serial fornicator and a kind of spiritual rapist.

We could categorize the artistic work of both Keane and Rupnik as “Naïve.”

That term is defined by the Tate – London’s leading museum of modern art – as “simple, unaffected and unsophisticated. . .art made by artists who have had no formal training in an art school or academy.” This doesn’t mean Naïve art cannot be great. Among the artists lumped into the category are Henri Rousseau and Anna Mary Robertson, aka “Grandma” Moses.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Some Lessons from the Great Pagans

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, May 6, 2024

I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with pagans lately. Not the modern, self-indulgent, falsely idealistic, entitled, uninteresting kind all around us, conspicuously so at our universities. But the ancient – almost too interesting – stout seekers of the true and the good. Especially the Stoics, who influenced St. Paul and other early Christians, and – not incidentally – helped prepare the ground for the spread of Christianity among peoples living in great darkness, under bad rulers. Like us.

Plato and Aristotle are great lights – when there’s a chance that at least some measure of reason will guide worldly affairs. But in times like ours, the Stoics are particularly helpful because they know that serious evil exists and don’t expect, certainly not in the short run, to be able to do much about it, least of all via politics. What, then, is to be done?

They, like the Christians who were to follow, put their greatest efforts into forming their own souls: into gratitude for what has been given to us in our very existence; and, therefore, the pious efforts to bring ourselves into harmony with the divine order of the cosmos that made us. Our successes or failures in pursuit of that goal are the real measure of good – and evil. Soul work was as central to Epictetus (a former slave) as to Marcus Aurelius (a Roman emperor).

All that has affinities, of course, with the Faith, and opens a fresh window onto spiritual and moral disciplines that people today often dismiss as merely pious old Christian platitudes. But even Reason, right reason in the right hands, can approach them.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Scuffles in Brussels

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, April 22, 2024

So, I was in Rome recently chasing down information for a book and noticed that, at the time I’d be heading back home, a National Conservatism Conference was being held in Brussels. I decided to stop in to see how NatCon would fare in the “capital” of the European Union. As has been widely reported, under pressure from “antifa” forces, Brussels’ mayor foolishly forced Concert Noble, the initial venue, to cancel. And again, with the Sofitel. Ultimately, we gathered at the Claridge, where the Tunisian Muslim owner was (unsuccessfully)  pressured by the mayor, his wife threatened, and warned that his business would be destroyed (kudos to him for standing up for free speech). Then, during the first day, the Brussels police, under the mayor’s orders, arrived to shut the whole thing down.

The conference was allegedly advancing “exclusion” (i.e., controlling illegal immigration) and Euroscepticism (the horror!), harboring elements of “fascism” and “homophobia.”  Which, translated from the Globalese into the vernacular, means it was mostly advocating the kind of normalcy that existed since the beginning of time, until just a few years ago. All right-thinking persons are now supposed to classify mere sanity as “far-right,” “dangerous populism,” and a threat to “democracy,” even when democratic majorities (the populus) vote – as they are likely to do in European elections this June and America later in the year – for just such normality.

I was sick with what turned into something like the flu and left the conference at noon the first day in search of something hot to clear a stuffy head, just as the police were arriving. They told the organizers that they had fifteen minutes to clear the room. But then looked around and perhaps thought the optics were not great of rounding up a tranquil slate of academics and democratically elected officials, and an audience of political junkies, almost all in suits and dresses – and in their twenties.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .