The House of the Spirits: Isabel Allende

The Giver, Lois Lowry: Simple Artistry

What a terrific, terrific little book! I was hooked right away, and the novel sustained my attention to the end. I read this on the heels of Collins’ Hunger Games, and wow, what a distinct difference. While there’s little artistry in the former, Lowry’s novel is delightfully artistic.

Here’s one simple example of narration. (Narration sets the tone and foundation for everything else: plot, character, conflict, etc. How something is told is often as important, or perhaps intrinsically connected to, what is being told.)

Hunger Games is written in first-person. Our protagonist is a spunky, inventive, selfless, and confused girl of about fifteen: Katniss. Since she is narrating the novel, we learn about everything from her. However, she is so intensely obtuse at times; for example, it is abundantly clear to the reader that the other boy character, Peeta, “likes” her in a romantic sort of way. We need only hear one story about their past and we know it. However, Katniss doesn't see this through the entire novel, and in fact, she still is a bit confused by the end.

Now, it’s OK for a reader to “catch” more in first-person narratives than the narrators themselves – up to a point. It must be subtle and complex. Hunger Games is neither. The effect is that Suzanne Collins, the author of the novel, becomes so increasingly clear: something you don’t want in fiction. It’s so obvious Collins wants us to recognize Peeta’s interest, even if Katniss doesn’t. And besides this unfortunate intrusion of Collins into the narrative, the situation also doesn't make sense, since we need to assume that Katniss is incredibly dumb to not see what we see; however, we know what one thing she isn't is dumb.

Comparatively, the narration in The Giver is so gifted and well done, despite the fact that the intended audience is younger than Collin’s. Lowry uses a third-person, semi-omniscient narrator. From this lens, the narrator could give us more info than our protagonist, the young and reflective Jonas, has. But there is such compelling restraint in the narration. Although Lowry uses the third-person, she uses free indirect style, and so we tend only to see from Jonas’ perspective – and we tend to only have the knowledge that he has in the moment.

For example, the narrator tries to explain an experience of Jonas’ in which he is throwing an apple around with a friend, but Jonas notices something changing about the apple. The narration is vague and confused, just like Jonas. Later, we learn that Jonas lives in a world without color, and that he has begun to see the color red: hence, the apple. It is so superbly done. I can’t even imagine the butchering involved if Collins tried to write this scene.

So while Hunger Games is in first person, it drifts so far from Katniss’ knowledge and perspective, in fits of un-believability and author-intrusion – while The Giver’s third person narration stays so much closer to the protagonist, opening the door to a more interesting revealing of the plot, not to speak of its ability to introduce irony and psychological depth.

But I drift off topic. The Giver was well-written, well-narrated, and well-constructed. It is one of the best young adults / children’s books I’ve ever read. It only took a sitting or two, so take the time and enjoy it.

The Hunger Games: Suzanne Collins: Apparently We're All Selfish and Violent

Hmm. I have mixed opinions about this novel. (By the way, there will be some spoilers here, but nothing concerning how the conflict is resolved; just some early stuff.)

On the one hand, literarily, the book is rather poor. It is intended for middle-school aged kids, but that’s no excuse. For example, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, intended for a younger audience, is superbly written. Hunger Games is probably closer to Harry Potter, in the sense that it tells a good story and gets you hooked, but it has little artistry. But it has even less than Potter, in my opinion.

But it keeps your attention – and not always in a bad way, like the horribly conceived and written Da Vinci Code. Collins spins a fast moving and exciting story, and I found myself rooting for the protagonist, despite the fact that she was an annoyingly naïve (and often just annoying).

But there was an ethical question that I feel the novel never entertained. Quick recap: In a post-apocalyptic world, the US is controlled by one wealthy city; it manages twelve outposts, who all do some sort of forced work for the city: one is agricultural; another technical; our protagonist’s deals with mining coal. In order to maintain their power and fear, every year the city sponsors the hunger games: an “entertainment” for all. Each outpost randomly selects one girl and one boy to go to the city and play in a “fight to the death” game, which is televised. There can only be one winner.

Now, apart from the reasonable furrowed foreheads on account of this being the storyline intended for twelve-year olds (I wouldn't let my kids, if they were twelve, read it), I have a bit of a moral question for the novel. How come the protagonist never engages the possible idea of not killing other people in the game: other people who are innocent? Now, I understand it wouldn't be much of a book then, and I also realize that most people wouldn't agree with this moral choice, but that the novel never even entertains the moral option is…well, beyond unpleasant, actually puzzling. Is the idea that if we were all faced with the choice of accepting death or trying to kill innocent people we would all take out the swords and clubs and bash each other to death?

Just once, the boy from our protagonist’s outpost lightly hints at the possibility of not killing anyone – but he admits he’s not serious. But that’s it. It never comes back up. I understand that in a kid’s book it’s difficult to deal with intricate moral quandaries, but this novel actually makes a moral statement: and it’s one that is self-defeating. While our protagonist desires to live, and more importantly, while she makes friends and teams up with other contestants, she essentially recognizes their humanity. But she is also free to kill other innocent people. Collins gets away with this by making some of the contestants bloodthirsty and consciously sadistic, so it’s easy for us to say, “Oh yeah, kill him, he’s a horrible person.” But I didn't buy it all.

The book is just one of three; but although I read it quickly, even on an entertainment level, I wasn't sold enough to go ahead and read the other two. I will admit it has something to do with my unsettling feelings concerning its moral levels.

A Visit from the Goon Squad: Jennifer Egan: Structure Through Disorder

This book won the Pulitzer a few years back. As someone who doesn't read much new fiction, I’ve decided to remedy the situation. This doesn't mean giving up on classics or anything like that, but simply adding to my diet.

The structure of this book is interesting, to say the least. Every chapter is written by different narrator (sometimes first person, sometimes third). The chapters also go back and forth in time. Most intriguingly, the chapters are not all about the same people. They are held together by a set of characters; but there’s no central protagonist. So the annoying boss of the protagonist in the chapter 1, who’s only mentioned a few times, becomes the protagonist in chapter 2. And then this boss is only a minor kid on the outside of a punk rock group in chapter 3. And so on.

I decided I like the book. Now, I like most books, so I’m relatively easy to please. But I (for the most part) bought Egan’s artifice. The beginning and end of the book were weak, but the middle was pretty terrific, held together by some really funny chapters. We are transported to the future by the end of the novel, and Egan falls into clichés as we are brought into a world of Uber- and spiraling commercialism (now kids don’t run the music market; babies and toddlers do, since they can order songs on their little computer-things); a world affected by the global warming crisis (the world is more of a dessert these days); and so on.

The novel is tied together thematically, focusing on the music market, the collective inability of people to understand and communicate with one another (especially across generational lines), the crux of moral decisions, and other such subjects. While Egan’s creativity makes the trip worthwhile, I got the impression of someone trying to make more of the human person and ethics than his or her own intellectual foundation allows for. Egan wants to believe in the worth of the individual, amidst the craziness of the world and consumerism and impersonal structures, and she tries to present him or her as such; but there’s a certain hollowness is the attempt, a result of the lack of intellectual (and dare I say, theological) underpinning to her worldview.

By the way, there’s a whole chapter in slides, like PowerPoint, with flow charts and the like. I was skeptical of it as I began it, but it was well done. Impressive – like the novel as a whole.

Was Lincoln a Racist? Of Course. Does it Matter? Not Very Much.

Introduction

I try to read at least one book concerned with American history every summer. Last year, I tackled McCullough’s popular John Adams, which was really well done. I was led to read something on Lincoln this year, so I picked up Stephen Oates’ With Malice Toward None, a book published in the 70’s, but still one of the classic biographies of the epic figure.

It was a relatively strong book. Some of the writing got a little flowery or emotional when it didn’t feel appropriate. Also, it wasn’t always clear when a quotation was woven into the sentence whether Oates was citing the words of Lincoln or simply citing another historical book. But I was happy with the pace. Great proof that the book did a good job “being a book” was the fact that I was significantly emotional during the narrative of the day of his assassination. Compared to the Adams’ bio, I didn’t get the fullest picture of Lincoln’s personal life and inner thoughts. But Adams wrote copious letters and journaled throughout the majority of his life, while Lincoln did neither.

Lincoln, The Man

Lincoln spent much of his young adult and adult trying to distance himself from his past. It was a childhood of an intense and immense poverty only tolerable by the very poor. Good ole' Abe (who hated the name “Abe,” as he saw it as a “poor man’s name”) was very conscious of the social respect for lawyers and politicians. He didn't deny this was some of the appeal. When he became a real candidate for the presidency, he was interviewed for a short bio. He said very, very little about his childhood, stating that nothing really needed to be said about it.

Lincoln suffered from bouts of deep depression, something they referred to during that time as “hypochondria.” He was an extreme conversationalist (apparently enjoyed telling rather lewd jokes), but he could also be very much an isolationist, especially when he had “a bad case of the hypo.” One of the other human elements is Lincoln’s lack of personal confidence; he constantly second-guessed himself, viewing himself as a failure at many points in his life. Unlike the statuesque and statesman’s stoicism we usually attribute to the man, he battled with a poor self-image, even as president.

I connect this inner demon of self-doubt to John Adams, who, after appearing in public with unflinching confidence, would journal about not being liked, or thinking people thought him silly, or other like things. Perhaps this sort of self-doubt, coupled with a determination to continue and persevere in spite of it, is a mark of strong man and leader: Perhaps this sort of humility prevents hubris, which can prove myopic; perhaps it can help keep people constantly attentive to the truth of the situation. I’m interesting to see if this quality is common in other accounts I read in the future.

Through the humanizing picture Oates paints, we get an authentic and principled man. It’s a sort of authenticity and principle I doubt could be attributed to almost any modern politicians. Now, perhaps I’m not giving modern politicians enough credit; or more possibly, I’m believing too much in the words of someone like Oates. However, I’m fine with the narrative I read, fictitious or not.

Lincoln's Racism, and Racism of the Times

What I was struck by was the extreme racism of Lincoln, at least by modern standards. He didn’t see the slaves as having much intellectual promise; because of this fact, he didn’t want to give them much political power. He was against interracial marriage. He said it disgusted him. He thought a country of mulattos was bound to fail. Also, he was afraid of freeing the slaves since he sympathized with the fear that black men would be very prone to rape white women. There was, though, a sense of the “older brother” racism in him: Blacks are lower and less than us, but it’s our responsibility to care for them because of this, and not take advantage of it.

What set him apart from other racists was his firm belief that what made the blacks and whites equal was their sharing in the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He didn’t think they were, or should be, equal is many other areas; but slavery was wrong because it violated the “Declaration of Independence.” Interestingly, the way a lot of pro-slavery politicians got around this fact was that they insisted that the writers of the “Declaration” and “Constitution” were speaking only of whites when they wrote that “all men are created equal.” They had a point, since the Constitution protected slavery. Also, how could they have meant blacks and whites were really equal if they said in so many other documents that they didn’t believe they were equal? But Lincoln’s insistence on arguing against this line of thought, along with his resolve in seeing slavery as the principal moral sin of America, was what made him the man he was.

The Birth of the Republican Party

Another interesting historical account you get in the book is the beginning of the Republican party. It was a bipartisan – Whigs and Democrats – party joined by the belief that the Nebraska-Kansas Act was unconstitutional and would lead the country to disaster. The act championed state supremacy in an effort to allow new territories to choose to be pro-slavery or not, despite the fact that the Missouri Compromise said there would not be slavery above a certain geographical line. Lincoln insisted that the founders allowed slavery to exist only because they knew it would eventually die out if only allowed in the states where it already existed. Lincoln thought this would eventually happen, even if not in his lifetime. But the Nebraska-Kansas Act threatened this eventual death by allowing slavery to grow and prosper.

These beginning Republicans agreed that the federal government could in fact weigh in on slavery issues in all states, as long as they acted constitutionally. The Democrats sought to limit government control and power, calling the Republican party the beginnings of a totalitarian regime. Oh, how the tables have turned.

Final Thoughts

Do I recommend the book? Yes. Since I have no other Lincoln bio to point to instead, this proved a good look into the life, person, and politics of a hugely influential and important American figure. It also proved an interesting look into the incredibly unique ideas and beliefs of an age that, although not so distant, feels almost medieval.

What American figure should I tackle next? Jefferson? MLK?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: A Study in the Ineffective Appeal to Subjective Morality by Contemporary Society

Introduction

I have now taught Huck Finn two times in three years; plus, I read it once in high school and once in college. To be perfectly blunt, I don’t find it all that compelling. Perhaps this is blasphemy, but I often don’t find Twain’s writing that enjoyable – and I find his characters so incredibly unrealistic, even if they are caricatures.

So rereading it multiple times becomes rather painful. This year, I approached it with a strong focus on the satire and its devices – i.e. comedy, Socratic Irony, etc. – and we connected it to a lot of outside satire. The students did projects on examples of satire of their choice. Listening to projects on The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and Family Guy made the unit bearable.

Although I understand the purpose of the novel’s episodic nature (a satire on American society must travel often in order to generate enough situations and characters as fodder for social criticism), it makes it weak narratively. Perhaps on a journey like this the thematic and character development can make up for this narrative lapse; but alas, the last ¼ of the novel is so entirely lacking in any sort of development that this too collapses. Twain put the book down for two years, not able to decipher a proper ending; and when he came back to it, he dropped the serious and biting satire for lighthearted slapstick, on the verge of literature’s version of blackface.

The Moral Level of the Novel and Contemporary Society’s Misreading of It

But instead of approaching this review on a purely literary level, I would like to approach the moral level of the novel. Huck most definitely takes a moral journey down the Mississippi, a trip in which he finally sees Jim as a human person, even if subconsciously; and he makes a final decision to free him, even if he must go to Hell, since society’s values tell him being a “low-down Abolitionist” is hell-worthy.

An extremely common approach to the moral aspect of the novel is to see it as a journey in which Huck is finally able to reject social values and morals in favor of his own values and morals. In this light, it becomes a triumph of the individual, who boldly crafts his own set of standards and values. I find contemporary’s tendency to see the novel this way as incredibly indicative of a false and specious argument often made in the realm of modern ethics; it is emblematic of the modern world’s praise of amorality or “individually-created moral systems,” when these are simply facades for a very specific moral order.

Huck does in fact reject society’s moral system – at least subconsciously. (That Huck still thinks he is going to hell for helping Jim lets us know he hasn’t consciously rejected society’s system of values; but he is still able to act out against society, and it very clear that this is because he recognizes the humanity of Jim.) Our tendency to see the novel as a criticism of blindly accepting a system of values as put forth by a specific society is clear. However, Huck did not simply act, after rejecting society, by his own set of individually created standards. No. In fact, he acted in line with a very specific code of ethics: one that recognizes the humanity of all people.

If Huck had rejected society’s laws in favor of another set of values, say, one that allowed him to rape and pillage villages all down the Mississippi River, not only would modern audiences not applaud his “individuality,” but they would be appalled – and rightfully so. Why? Because Huck has not rejected society’s values in favor of any sort of subjective system of ethics. In fact, quite ironically, Huck’s discovery of Jim’s humanity, and his actions in light of this, point more to a firm sense of objective morality and natural law, and the individual’s ability to recognize both.

Huck, orphaned and marginalized by a society that upholds both the goodness of and need for slavery, is able to recognize (once again, unconsciously) that this culture is inherently flawed. In his friendship with the runaway slave Jim, he comes to recognize the dignity and worth of the individual person, whatever his race may be. Huck has not decided to simply follow what he feels he wants to do, or what sort of ethics he wants to project onto the “morally impressionable” world; instead, he finds within himself a sense of what is objectively true: human equality. And Huck’s ability to find this, recognize its existence, and importantly, to act on it, reveals Twain’s belief that certain basic tenets of ethics are knowable by the human individual, via something like natural law.

Modern society often praises individuals, artists, movies, books, or whatnot for their rejection of society’s harmful, narrow-minded, and constricting ethics in favor of a morally free and nonjudgmental approach. However, just like people wouldn’t praise Huck if he rejected society in favor of a system that admired raping children, people only shower this praise on people whose “individual and subjective system of ethics” corresponds to their own set of rigid ethics.

For example, people praise the brave and inspiring works that support gay and lesbian lifestyles for their rejection of conservative society’s lifeless and rigid moral codes; but would they praise such a work that was intensely anti-homosexual, even if it was done in the selfsame name of “subjective morality?” I don’t think so. People praise Huck for his reconfiguring of ethics, in that he saw slaves as equal on a human level; and they should praise him for this. But, even though they may think it, they don’t praise him for deciding his own set of ethics. They praise him because he found a very specific code of ethics that they agree with.

Racism of an Anti-Racist Novel?

Last, I find it ironic how a book that is reputably one of the cornerstones of the anti-slavery and anti-racism movement is itself racist, to a certain degree. Although Jim is undeniably and genuinely good, he is incredibly inept. He cannot grasp any sort of “higher level” concepts, even extremely simplistic ones. Twain uses this for the sake of humor; but the effect is the same nonetheless. In fact, there isn’t a single black person that is presented in the novel as capable of any sort of abstract thinking. Is Twain reprehensible in his use of caricature and stereotypes? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, I find it silly and overly defensive to find no scent of Twain’s unconscious and subtle racism. I see Twain’s indistinct racism the same way Leonard Woolf saw T.S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism. Woolf judged that Eliot was probably "slightly antisemitic in the sort of vague way which is not uncommon. He would have denied it quite genuinely.”

Should Huckleberry Finn continued to be taught? Despite my own problems with it, I say yes. First, it is an undeniable cornerstone to early American literature; “well-read-ness” demands it of us. Second, despite it’s narrative difficulties, it remains a clever, imaginative, and intellectually stimulating example of Socratic Irony and Cognitive Dissonance; and to have students able to read the novel as such is an apt window into having them understand literature on a deeper level.

Words That Don’t Exist in the English Language

I stole this list directly from http://ranajune.com/post/64352844/words-that-dont-exist-in-the-english-language. But I felt the need to post this here, since this blog, in part, is about language. This makes one reflect on the nature of languages, and why one idea becomes a word and not another---and the multiplicity of things, ideas, and concepts we don't have words for in any language presently.

Enjoy.

Gheegle: (Filipino) The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute.

Cualacino: (Italian) The mark left on a table by a cold glass.

Sgriob: (Gaelic) The itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky

L’esprit de escalier: (French) The feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the things you should have said. Translated it means “the spirit of the staircase.”

Pari-pari and Saku-saku: (Japanese) Hard-crispy verses Soft-crispy, i.e. a rice cracker versus fried chicken

Stam: (Hebrew) An agreement out of amusement and frustration that something doesn’t have a satisfactory answer among those talking.

Forelsket: (Norwegian) The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love.

Pena ajena: (Mexican Spanish) The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation.

Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI: The Mystical and Literal Simplicity of Our Pope

Introduction

It is with purpose that my primary review is on this incredible text. Deus Caritas Est is the first encyclical by the present Pope, Benedict XVI. When you boil it down, the message is about the unifying power of love: unifying in the sense that God is love, and therefore all of existence hinges on Love; and also unifying in the sense that all of our actions, in relation to God, man, and society at large (politics), must be based on this same love.

The encyclical is split into two parts. The first deals with Love in creation and salvation history, and the second with the practice of Love by the Church in the world.

It is stereotypical to see the capacity and need for a “personal relationship with Jesus or God” as the domain of certain brands of Protestantism, while Catholicism deals with faith in terms of mystery, sacrament, and ritual – incense and ashes. The Catholic, the argument goes, deals with a inscrutable power that he may associate with, but in no sort of personal or inter-relational way. However, this is purely façade, and one need only read the late John Paul II, or the current Benedict XVI, to discover this. I’ll admit that I didn’t expect the present Pope to focus on this so much; his German stoicism, coupled with his concentration and background in theology, led me to assume that his approach to God and faith would be rather impersonal. I was way off the mark – way off.

The Encyclical’s Introduction

This line is from the opening page of the “Introduction” to the encyclical. It is so indicative of JPII and what I now know to be Benedict: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (7). Constantly throughout the text, Benedict keeps emphasizing that Christianity is about Christ, not just in theory, but in actual fact; it’s about the person of Jesus. Not only does this separate Christianity from modern fads and theories – from the “isms” of the modern world – but it also it gives us the appropriate lens in which to view the rest of what our faith teaches us. The person of Jesus died because He Loves us. This truth opens up the horizons in the past, present, and future: It is this same Love that created and sustains the universe; it is this same Love that nourishes and invites us to a personal relationship at this very moment; and it is this same Love that will ultimately invite each one of us to spend eternity with our Creator. The invitation is there, but the choice is our own.

Themes from the First Section: Love in Creation and Salvation History

I’ll just hit on some major themes throughout the encyclical. Benedict begins by discussing language, specifically the different words for love; two of the primary ones are Eros and Agape: sensual, emotional love versus emotionless, self-giving love. The argument runs that both are different aspects of the same central Love that is God. It is relatively common sense to understand that Eros cannot survive without something more than itself, without some sort of agape – it cannot be itself without something more. Eros desires eternity with a lover; but simple emotional love, even though it is powerful in the moment, cannot sustain itself in the midst of trial – or in the midst of time. Eros doesn’t have the selflessness that any and all love needs to sustain itself. Benedict discussed this; but he also discusses the fact that agape needs Eros: “When [Eros and Agape] are totally cut from one another, the result is a caricature or at least impoverished form of love” (27). Therefore, the passionate facet of love isn’t a nice “add on” to help sustain weak-willed human beings; it is part of the nature of God. This connects back to one of the main point: that God’s love is a personal love.

Continuing with the theme of “personal-ness,” Benedict explores man’s revelation of who God is through the Bible. Importantly, we can understand God through two different lens: the Hebrew and Greek traditions. As usual, there is no conflict between the two; instead, one helps illuminate and fulfill the other. “God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation – the Logos, primordial reason – is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love” (31). The actual chronological moment of God’s incarnation, His physical step into history, was conscious and meaningful, and we can learn something about His nature from it. God is both unchanging and eternal – alike Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover – but He is additionally personal and interested in each and every aspect of His creation – like the Lover in the Song of Songs, or the jealous God that walked with Moses. The world bridging the new and old Testaments was one of Greek and Hebrew philosophies, a world that saw God as calculating reason and logic, and a world that envisioned a God that could love and involve Himself in individual lives. Instead of having to choose between the two formulations of God and the world, the Christian rejects this “either/or” construction, choosing instead the “both/and:” God is both everlasting, unmoved and intensively in love with each and every one of us.

Another prominent theme in the text is idea that God, love, faith, and Christianity cannot be lived alone; instead, it is others-driven, for it is loving and living for others that we discover our true selves: “Communion draws me out of myself unto him and, thus, toward unity with all Christians” (37). In these constructions of the faith, movement toward the Good, toward God, is a movement toward life-lived-with-others, while sin is a movement toward solipsism, toward the negation of life. In this portion of the encyclical, Benedict moves from a discussion of God to a discussion of all Christians.

Boldly, Benedict announces that “love of God and love of neighbor have become one” (40). You cannot love God and refuse to love man. Since God exists Trinitarianly, in Communion Himself with Himselves, God’s love of Himself is in itself not selfish, since it is directed toward the other Persons of the Trinity. And as such, when we experience this love, we respond by loving; and in loving, we necessarily love others. But as Benedict did with Eros and Agape, he makes it clear that the argument runs the other way too. Refusing to love others will blind us to God: “Love of neighbor is a path that leads to the encounter with God and that closing our eyes to our neighbor also blinds us to God” (41). Perhaps honest-minded people who have sought to know God if He be knowable haven’t found Him because they have refused to love those sitting next to them.

The Second Part: Charity, The Church, and Society

The second portion of the book is less mystical; it deals less with the nature of God. Instead, it builds upon the nature the first half of the book outlined, and asks how a Church that preaches a God such as this must act in a world of flaws, poverty, and sin. That the Church must work in an organized fashion to bring Charity to a physically impoverished world underlines Benedict’s argument: “The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the sacraments and the Word” (55). This bold statement rejects any super-spiritual notion that seeks to see the Church’s function as solely transcendent. Benedict outlines the three responsibilities of the Church as distribution of the sacraments, preaching of the Word, and ministry of Charity (60). He claims that they presuppose one another, and so one cannot exist without the other. Certain types of Jesuits seem solely concerned with Charity; and I have heard many good arguments against this. But equally incorrect is the idea that we are to bring only spiritual guidance and support to the people of this world. Just as we are spiritual and material and humans, so must our enactment of Charity see humans as both.

But there is a limit to this – or, perhaps, ways of incorrectly interpreting this. The Church’s purpose isn’t to bring about the most just society. Benedict emphasizes this often. He seems to be responding to both Marxist theory, as well as certain brands of Liberation Theology. Just as America separated Church and State, Benedict claims that Vatican II clearly expressed the necessary “autonomy of the temporal sphere” (65). While the Church must be involved with man as physical being, since to ignore this would be to treat man incompletely, the Church’s goal is Charity and not pure Justice. “Justice is both the aim and intrinsic criterion of all politics” (66). So individual, organizations, and communities should work toward making society as just as possible; but while the Church may be involved in this process by offering and informing Her believers, and by informing society with a sense of a correct ethics, Her main purpose is not political. She can and should speak out against unjust societies, but it isn’t Her place to take arms against the oppressor.

From reading a bit of Gutiérrez (the Liberation Theologian), I’m sure he could respond with the following: a) man is political by the nature of either himself or his society, and therefore to remain absent from the political sphere is to not treat man completely; b) an organization can only be on the side of the oppressor or oppressed, and staying neutral often places us on the side of the oppressor.

However, we can respond to man as political without succumbing to the idea that the Church should or must make it Her goal to make all societies perfectly just. Justice is an important virtue, and it is connected to Charity and Love; but they are not the same. Second, not taking arms against an oppressor does not put you on his side. While certain historical cases may quite rightly implicate the Church as a sustainer of a very unjust society, this is not how the Church is supposed to act according to Benedict’s theology. Additionally, we need to remember that just because we claim the Church’s primary goal is not to bring about perfect Justice, this does not mean that individual Catholics should not be involved in just this aspiration.

Besides her charitable works, the Church also proves an indispensible facet of the political sphere, as Benedict makes clear: “[Faith] is…a purifying force for reason itself” (66). While the Church recognizes the power and authority of the State, She also recognizes that societies created by man have a tendency to corruption, as a result of human weakness and the ineffective means of reason to recognize if it is being compromised. Moreover, “the Church wishes to help form consciences in political life” (67). This makes it very clear that a Catholic should – in fact, needs to – bring his conscience, as formed through the teaching and revelations of the Church, to the political world, whether as a citizen or politician. The illusion of the purely positive march of the age of reason was shattered through the World Wars, the horrors of the communist revolutions, and through the secular understanding of our post-modern lack of meaning and morality.

In short, faith is integral to politics achieving its true end: justice. But the Church, as a structure, doesn’t provide the enactment of this justice. For one, this argues against, as well as provides a future defense against, certain reprehensible moments in Church history, moments in which the Church was influenced by money, politics, and influence. The medieval Church comes to mind: moments of corrupted indulgence-sellers, power-hungry popes, and their like. But more than a defense against this sort of vice, past or present, Benedict is pointing to a deeper truth about the nature of the temporal structure of the Church. Affirming the American idea of the separation of Church and State, Benedict sees the primary mission of the former as Charity, and the latter as Justice.

Personal Thoughts

I thought this encyclical was tremendous – beyond tremendous. Before personally delving into the complex simplicity of Benedict’s theology, I judged him on account of his nationality and age. I assumed his writing would be full of technical and opaque theologies, involved in the categorizing of monotonous and intangible, technical points. While Benedict is involved in putting things in their correct categories, carefully defining his more complex points, his writing is so alive; it visibly spring from a soul who has encountered the living God – a soul that understands that, when discussed correctly, there is nothing more exhilarating and pertinent as theology.

I find a distinct similarity, after reading this and Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity, between our present pope and CS Lewis. They have a way of breaking apart complex issues in entirely recognizable and admirably comprehensible ways. But the mystery and complex of these issues don’t lose their fullest effect with these two thinkers. They are the Everyman’s theologians.

I was delighted to find a pattern in here that I have found reoccurring in my fiction and spiritual reading, as well as my personal reflections and prayers: that of Communism: that idea that life is life-with-others, that the nature of existence of reality is not solipsistic but relational. Just as the center of all existence, God, exists in Trinitarian-reality, so too are we invited to live life-in-relationship. In contract, sin is essentially a negation of God or goodness, and therefore a rejection of life as lived in relation. This is why I have come to see both pride and selfishness as so insidious to a life of faith. Unlike sexual immorality and other sins which often drive us together, albeit in a disordered fashion, pride and selfishness drive us further and further into the hell our of our desires and fancies – desires and fancies that are illusionary and terrifying. For both the positive and negative aspects of this reality and truth, read Charles Williams’ masterpiece, Descent Into Hell.

I look forward to conquering – or more appropriately, relishing – the rest of Benedict’s encyclicals.

Statement of Purpose

As far back as I can remember, I have always loved to read. The obsession was initially centered on fantasies and science-fiction, like The Lord of the Rings and the like, but I also fed from a regular diet of Agatha Christie’s mysteries and Louis L’Amour’s westerns. My reading habits since have expanded to include almost any and everything – although I must admit fiction, and in particular novels, still hold a powerful place in my reading tendencies.

I read quite a bit (but, of course, never as much I feel I should). As an English teacher, I read for school; as a student, I read for classes. And I hardly ever read a text without having some sort of reaction, whether it is emotional, intellectual, or something quite else. I don’t often write out these responses, reactions, or analyses, even though I feel led to do this. I hope for this blog to be a space for me to put my unbiased reactions to what I’ve read recently into words; and hopefully I will do this more often than I won’t.

I hope, as well, that this blog is a space to enter intro dialogue with others about books and words. It has been said that no two people have ever read the same book, and while I may not agree to the full extent of what this quotation intends to convey, I do think that every single reader offers to the world a unique perspective on every text.

On a more intellectual and artist level, I hope this blog also serves as a space for me and others to ask the bigger questions of art and literature. What is art? More importantly, why is art? What does it mean to respond to art? What does it mean to analyze art? As opposed to contemporary ideas of the analysis of art that see it simply as a gateway into various ideological perceptions of the world – i.e. the Marxist sees art as a mode of demonstrating the power and economic structures of a particular society; the post-modernist sees art as a demonstrating the fact that man as a product of social and cultural surroundings – I see art as a product of the individual person, in all his glory and divinity and sin and tendencies.

There are specific questions I have about narrative art such as novels, short stories, movies, narrative poetry, and the like. Why does man tell stories? Why is man so inclined to reinterpret his experience in this world through a fictitious medium? What is it that we’re doing, or supposed to do, when we discuss these stories? What is important about story-telling as a human trait?

The best I can do in answering these questions in the small amount of space afforded me at the very end of this post is to point back to the words of Evelyn Waugh that this blog takes its title from: “There is an Easter sense in which all things are made new in the risen Christ. A tiny gleam of this is reflected in all true art.”