Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)

Tributes

• I Learned Virtue from Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–2025), by Wyatt Graham. The Gospel Coalition 05/26/25.
• Alasdair MacIntyre obituary The Guardian 05/25/25.
• Recognizing the Importance of MacIntyre, by John Haldane. First Things 05/23/25.
• In Memoriam: Alasdair MacIntyre, by Joseph R. Wood. The Catholic Thing 05/24/25.
• Alasdair MacIntyre’s Work of Mercy by Christopher Justin Brophy. The Lamp 05/23/25.
• Postliberalism’s Reluctant Godfather, by Nathan Pinkoski. Compact 05/23/25.
• Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025), by Russell Arben Fox. Front Porch Republic 05/23/25.
• Alasdair MacIntyre, renowned Catholic moral philosopher, dies at 96, by Kimberly Heatherington. National Catholic Reporter 05/23/25.
• Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025), by Christopher Kaczor. Word on Fire 05/22/25.
• Alasdair MacIntyre: de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Collected conference / lecture videos.

MacIntyre Online

• The Perils of Revolutionary Aristotelianism, by John F. Doherty. The Public Discourse 05/05/25. "The fundamentally Marxist philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre has less to teach conservatives than some have claimed."
• What Can the Right Learn from Karl Marx?, by Daniel Addison. The Public Discourse 12/15/24.
• The Left Should Take Alasdair MacIntyre Seriously, by Matt McManus. Jacobin 09/24. "Alasdair MacIntyre’s original critique of liberal modernity has won followers on the Left and the Right. His account of how capitalism has undermined the conditions of human flourishing deserves the serious attention of socialists."
• Alasdair MacIntyre's Adventures in Philosophy at Notre Dame, by Kenneth Sayre. Churchlife Journal 09/10/24.
• The Limits of Liberalism: A biography of Alasdair MacIntyre fails to illuminate, by Benjamin J.B. Lipscomb. Commonweal 02/12/23.
• Alasdair MacIntyre's Service to Theology, by Joshua Hothschild. Churchlife Journal 09/25/23.
• On Having Survived the Academic Moral Philosophy of the 20th Century, by Alisdair MacIntyre. Churchlife Journal 07/18/23.
• Liberalism's Two Sides: Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard Rorty’s lifelong argument, by George Scialabba. The Nation 05/23.
• The Oddity of God: A Preliminary Reflection on Alasdair MacIntyre’s Recent Comments, by John O'Callaghan. Churchlife Journal 12/08/22.
  • The Oddity of God, Part II: A Concluding Reflection on Alasdair MacIntyre’s Recent Comments, by John O'Callaghan. Churchlife Journal 12/13/22.
• This Christmas, Radical Christianity and Marxism Can Inspire Us to Build a Better World, by Matt McManus. Jacobin 12/25/22. "The conventional understanding of Marxism as doggedly anti-religious is wrong. In fact, as the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argued, Christianity and Marxism have at times inspired in humanity a radical sense of hope to build a more just world."
• The Anti-Modern Marxism of Alasdair MacIntyre, by Samuel McIlhagga. Jacobin 11/09/22. "Over seven decades, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has advanced one of the most radical critiques of capitalist modernity. But in opposing modernity, he has denied a key insight of Marxism: socialism must develop, not reject, capitalism’s dynamism."
• MacIntyre's Flight from Politics, by Pierre Manent. Compact 11/02/22.
• Speaking with the Barbarians: Maritain, MacIntyre, and Christendom, by Anthony Barr. The Public Discourse 02/19/22.
• Alasdair MacIntyre on human dignity: Summary, analysis, and comments, by Edward Feser. Catholic World Report 11/26/21. "I strongly sympathize with MacIntyre’s general theme that the notion of human dignity is more problematic and less interesting than many contemporary Catholics suppose, but I’m not convinced by some of the specific points MacIntyre makes."
• ‘Dignity’ as Dangerous? Alasdair MacIntyre and ‘the Power of the Catholic Intellectual Ecosystem’, by Jonathan Liedl. National Catholic Register 11/19/21.
• The Fractured Metaphysics of Protests, by Alasdair Macintyre. Churchlife Journal 01/10/21.
• Revisiting Alasdair MacIntyre on Liberal Toleration, by Nathan Pinkoski. The Public Discourse 06/21/20.
• Alasdair MacIntyre: True friendships are rare, but possible, by Mary Farrow. Catholic News Agency 11/17/19.
• Christianity's Contribution to the History of Ethics, by Alasdair MacIntyre. Churchlife Journal 11/08/19.
• Marxism and Religion, by Alasdair Macintyre. Churchlife Journal 01/25/19.
• The Anti-Integralist Alasdair MacIntyre, by Caleb Bernacchio. Churchlife Journal 05/08/18.
• MacIntyre's Philosophy of Mercy's Clandestine Work in a Secular World, by Caleb Bernacchio. Churchlife Journal 02/13/18.
• Alasdair MacIntyre's Marxist Sweet Spot, by Timothy Fuller. Law & Liberty 09/11/17. Review of Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative.
• MacIntyre Against Morality, by John Haldane. First Things 05/01/17. Review of Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative.
• Defending Alasdair MacIntyre’s Economics, by David Andreas. The Public Discourse 03/14/11. "Alasdair MacIntyre may be wrong about the details of finance, but he is right on the largest questions of political economy."
• MacIntyre on Money by John Cornwell. Prospect 10/20/10. "The influential moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has long stood outside the mainstream. Has the financial crisis finally vindicated his critique of global capitalism?"
• The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University, by Alasdair MacIntyre. Commonweal 10/16/06.
• The Achievement of Alasdair Macintyre, by Edward T. Oakes. First Things 08/01/96.
• Review: Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, by Alasdair MacIntyre, by Richard J. Neuhaus. Commentary June 1988.
• Dr Küng’s Fiasco, by Alasdair MacIntyre. London Review of Books Vol. 3 No. 2 · 5 February 1981.
• Alasdair MacIntyre on the claims of philosophy, by Alasdair MacIntyre. London Review of Books Vol. 2 No. 11 · 5 June 1980.

"A prayer is a request for a good directed to God by a believer. We do not consider this request limited to words. Indeed, we do not believe that God needs words to remember, for he knows what we need even if we do not pray for it. But what do we mean by this? That our prayer should not consist of just syllables, but should rather find its strength in the choices of the soul, and in the practice of the virtues throughout our life.... When sitting at table, pray; when taking your bread, thank him who grants it to you.... May you never cease remembering your benefactor. If you put on a garment, thank him who gave it to you; if you throw a cloak around your shoulders, may you grow in love for God who provides for us in summer and winter.... Has the day ended? Thank him who gives us the sun for daytime work and who grants us fire to light up the night and serve the other needs of life. May the night thus bring you other reasons to pray. When you lift your eyes to heaven and stare at the beauty of the stars, pray to the Lord of all these visible things and adore God, the sublime maker of the universe, who created all things with wisdom."

Basil the Great, Homily for Judith the Martyr, 3-4

Habemus Papam! - Congratulations, Pope Leo XIV!

On Undocumented Immigration, some Reading

• Human Dignity is Not Dependent on a Person's Citizenship or Immigration Status Bishop Mark J. Seitz (USCCB), Sr. Mary Haddad, RSM (CHA), and Kerry Alys Robinson (CCUSA) have issued a statement in response to action taken by the Trump Administration rescinding guidance related to "protected areas" in immigration enforcement.
• Worth revisiting and reading in full -- Pope John Paul II's “Undocumented Migrants: Message of Pope John Paul II for World Migration Day” (1996).
• Debate: Deportations, Trump, Human Dignity and the State. In a discussion with Pablo Christian Soenen, project manager for the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, and a student at Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration. Santiago Ramos asks:

  What is the principle by which we can distinguish a good deportation regime from a bad one? Given that deportations and its attendant tragedies happen under all administrations, then what are the specific steps that would make Trump’s plan worse than, say Obama’s? What would make Trump’s immigration law enforcement, and his deportation regime, exceptionally cruel and unjust? What is the red line — if there is one — that separates Obama’s deportation policy and the one Trump hopes to implement?

• The Rights of Irregular Migrants, by Joseph H. Carens. Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 22 , Issue 2 , Summer 2008 , pp. 163 - 186.
• Dignitas Migrantis: On the Morality of Deportation, by Fr. Matthew Gonzalez. Homiletic and Pastoral Review September 11, 2024.

J.D. Vance and "Ordo Amoris"

• Vice President Vance says U.S. bishops should ‘do better’ on supporting immigration enforcement Crux News 01/27/25.
• A Primer: How the Catholic Church partners with the U.S. government to serve migrants, by Tyler Arnold. Catholic News Agency. 02/03/25.
• JD Vance is Right About the "Ordo Amoris", by R.R Reno. Compact:

  I suspect that most of Vance’s critics anguished over his forthright affirmation of our love of our fellow citizens. They fear "nativism," or some other manifestation of xenophobia. But we should not let disordered loves discredit a proper order of loves. ... Love is jealous. I love my wife to the exclusion of others. The same holds for my country. But love is also fecund. A man who loves his wife with selfless devotion has prepared his heart to love his country and make sacrifices on behalf of his fellow citizens.

  Vance is not undermining America’s concern for the other nations and peoples, for the same fecundity operates on the world stage. God forbid that our future rests in soulless technocracy and bloodless “best practices.” We need leaders who love others rather than manipulating or managing them, including those in far-flung lands. This love must be encouraged, trained, and deepened—which happens when we live in accord with a warm and unapologetic ordo amoris.

• "Ordo Amoris" Is Not The Point, by Brendan Hodge. DarwinCatholic 02/01/25. A response to Vice President J.D. Vance's use of Ordo Amoris as an apologetic for Trump's administration policies:

  One thing Vance has become very adept at is turning a policy question into what sounds like a moral balance of absolutely. He famously said as a senator that he didn't care about Ukrainians, and when asked why said it was because his duty was to the people of Ohio.

  But of course, it's not a question whether we should care about Ukraine OR the people of our home state. One can easily care to some extent about both. And even if one cares more about local needs than international needs, that doesn't mean that one cannot do anything to help those abroad.

  Following that example, total US aid to Ukraine over the three years of war has been $113 billion. That's a lot, until you consider the US government spends $6.8 trillion annually. Ukraine aid has constituted roughly 0.5% of federal spending over the last three years.

  Maybe there should be no Ukraine aid at all, maybe it's not a good cause or one the US should be involved in, but if so that needs to be discussed on its own terms. It's not sufficient to say, "Local concerns are higher priority, therefore we can't spend a cent on this particular non-local thing."

  Likewise with any number of other issues.

  Pointing out that we're called by Jesus to love everyone does not end arguments about enacting some particular policy, and neither does pointing out that we have the greatest duty to those nearest to us and thus most dependent on our personal help. Those are both important principals to recall when making any decisions about policy, but the policies have to be evaluated and chosen based upon themselves and the necessary trade-offs which implementing them would require.

If man excludes himself from the temporal-eternal tension, he will be strangled by the senselessness that permeates everything and that forces itself upon him as the result of his life. Then he will fall into the confusion of an unenlightened existence, into whose twilight no illuminating sun can break through to him. He will find himself distracted by the multiplicity and the opposition of the various values to one another, if no divine order prioritizes his tastes, works, and affections. In the end, he will succumb to the barbarism of the most popular values and the most trivial material goods of the time. He will be possessed and hunted and driven, no longer a free man and no longer master. Through all of this, he is not merely offered certain basic experiences of existence that everyone must pass through, but is instead delivered over to them. He has fallen into the experience of limitation. He experiences himself, and the world, and all things as limitations, even though the colorful wings of his mind, of his yearnings, press beyond all limits. Left to his own devices, he cannot rise above these limitations. He falls prey to the impression that the world is futile and, what is worse, that human life is futile. At this point, he is in danger of remaining stuck in that experience of melancholy into which fate sends him again and again, because he no longer hears the intrinsic message of circumstances and the intrinsic song of events. The world readily becomes a place without comfort, to which it is hardly worthwhile to become accustomed, although he does not know any way out. Alternatively, all these experiences, which repeatedly offer opportunities for a view of the whole, can be rashly passed over and a cheap “Carpe diem! [Seize the day!]” raised as a colorful banner. The great deception begins, the time of noise and crowds, organized feeding-frenzies, and massive festivities. Until suddenly the earth quakes and the subterranean thunder -- which one wanted to drown out with screaming, because one failed to understand it -- breaks forth fully and mightily and fills the day with its call to judgment.

That is the path—of a people, of a generation, of an individual -- into the wasteland and void of a life without joy. Moreover, if people and things are permitted to remain in this condition, it will only get worse. An aversion to one another has seized hold of creation. The harmonic song of the spheres dissipates in an orgy of gore and of willful annihilation that creatures are beginning to perpetrate against all creation.

Only one thing will help, and that is to hear the call of John the Baptist.

-- Alfred Delp, priest and martyr. (1907-1945)

Goodreads’ “Year In Books” — 9,501 pages; 28 books finished (with many still partially read). Not one audible book.

As to my 280% reading challenge score I admit to copying my friend Jeff Miller’s practice of setting the bar low (10 books), thereby ensuring a consistent record of success and personal gratification.

(I probably would have read more, but 2024 was likewise a record year for creativity with the most art I’ve ever drawn).

Planned reading for 2025, Lord-willing:

• Definitely more Herbert McCabe (Dominican priest / philosopher who I happily discovered this year) and revisiting Jacques Maritain;
• Short stories by Leon Bloy; A Canticle for Leibowitz (my reading of which is long-overdue), and Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah (hopefully in time for the release of the film); Arthur C Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama, also with film in development by Denis Villeneuve); Ian McDonald (Chaga); a novel by Annie Proulx (Barkskins); finishing Pekka Hämäläinen’s North American history Indigenous Continent; putting a hopeful dent into more history by Jacques Barzun and Paul Johnson; and recently picked up Walter Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein.

So that's on my "to do" list for next year ... if anything, I'm ambitious. =)

Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus, on Undocumented Immigrants

But, of course, there are an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country. Not long ago I was speaking at a convention in the Southwest. The person sitting next to me at dinner was trying to persuade me that we should “send them back.” I asked him to look around the ballroom where about a thousand people were being served by hundreds of waiters and busboys, all of them, so far as I could see, Latino, and probably a large percentage of them here illegally. The same immigrant preponderance would likely obtain among the kitchen workers, the truck drivers who delivered the food, and those who had gathered and prepared it for shipping. My tablemate was unmoved.

Here in New York, in my daily walk to Immaculate Conception and to this magazine’s office, I pass dozens of businesses, along with construction sites, hospitals, and nannies caring for children, all reflecting the city’s dependence upon Hispanic immigration. They are here because immigrants are, as the president says, doing the work that Americans don’t want to do. To which some, including much of organized labor, say that, if so many immigrants weren’t here, Americans would do the same work, at higher wages and with benefits. I rather doubt it. In times of prosperity, such as the present, unemployment among American citizens is practically non-existent. (The official and very low unemployment figure includes a majority of people who are voluntarily between jobs or simply taking time off from work.) Very few Americans are lining up to wash dishes, mop floors, or deliver pizza. The economy and everyday life of New York and other cities would grind to a near halt in the absence of Hispanic immigrants. Not to mention what would happen to the vast agricultural enterprises of California and other states.

It is hard to argue with Andrew Ferguson, who writes: “Restricting that flow of willing workers would cause an economic calamity that no federal official will seriously contemplate. Nor would anyone in a position of responsibility pretend it is plausible to round up the 11 million illegal immigrants who are already in the U.S., ship them back to their homelands and then seal the border against their otherwise inevitable return.”

Richard J. Neuhaus, "On The Other Side of the Gates". First Things March 2006.

Historical Note - The Catholic Neocons of the 1990's-early 2000's on Donald J. Trump

Documenting for personal sake Fr. Richard J. Neuhaus (1936-2009), George Weigel, Michael Novak (1933-2017) and William F. Buckley (1925-2008) of the National Review insofar as where they had stood on the topic of Donald Trump.

Father Richard John Neuhaus passed on January 8, 2009. Reflecting on Neuhaus' death in 2021, Fr. Raymond de Souza noted:

Father Richard’s engagement in political activism never led him to messianic politics. He died after Barack Obama’s election but before his inauguration, and long before the current president came down the escalator at Trump Tower. He was suspicious of the messianic dimension of Obama’s candidacy and would have been troubled by those who regarded Donald Trump as having some kind of messianic anointing.

Father Richard would have been dismayed at the apocalyptic tone of politics today. The future of the republic does not hang on a presidential election, let alone a senate election in Georgia. Elections have consequences, sometimes, grave consequences, but electoral politics does not heal a corrupt culture.

“Moral progress is far from being self-evident,” Father Richard wrote. “We should at least be open to the possibility that we are today witnessing not moral progress but a dramatic moral regression.”

George Weigel in 2016 joined the likes of Robert P. George, Robert Royal, Ryan Anderson, Francis Beckwith, Eduardo Echeverria, Gerard Bradley, John P. Hittinger in "An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics" (National Review), asserting that

... there are candidates for the Republican nomination who are far more likely than Mr. Trump to address these concerns, and who do not exhibit his vulgarity, oafishness, shocking ignorance, and — we do not hesitate to use the word — demagoguery.

Mr. Trump’s record and his campaign show us no promise of greatness; they promise only the further degradation of our politics and our culture. We urge our fellow Catholics and all our fellow citizens to reject his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination by supporting a genuinely reformist candidate.

Due credit for taking a stand against the tide. Weigel would go on to add that Trump "is an immoral man both in his public life and in his private life. And then it is not credible in the management of power. As I can not vote for Clinton, so I will never vote for him."

Michael Novak broke with Weigel and the authors of "An Appeal to our Fellow Catholics", expressing his relief after Trump's first election that Hillary would never be president (Silver-Linings for Never-Trumpers First Things 11/15/16). For an explication of Novak's own perspective I would refer to the excellent survey Michael Novak’s ‘Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics’ in the Trump Era, by Jesse Russel. (American Spectator January 5, 2019).

Michael Novak passed in 2017, and even so, I wonder whether he would have continued in his guarded support for Trump -- especially on or after Trump's refusal to concede the election of 2020, his trafficing in outright falsehoods and conspiracy theories contesting the election, his vocal encouragement of those who staged an attempted coup on the nation's capitol on January 6, 2021 -- and his current promise as president-elect to pardon those currently convicted for doing so.

William F. Buckley -- a Catholic conservative, howbeit not of the "neocon" persuasion -- made his displeasure known in a sharply critical editorial on Trump's narcissism and demagoguery in an article for Cigar Aficionado:

... So there we have the one problem--the encouragement given to demagogues by undiscriminating voters. The procedure here is to attract support to finance a campaign. But does the term demagogue fit in other circumstances? What about the aspirant who has a private vision to offer to the public and has the means, personal or contrived, to finance a campaign? In some cases, the vision isn't merely a program to be adopted. It is a program that includes the visionary's serving as President. Look for the narcissist. The most obvious target in today's lineup is, of course, Donald Trump. When he looks at a glass, he is mesmerized by its reflection. If Donald Trump were shaped a little differently, he would compete for Miss America.

But whatever the depths of self-enchantment, the demagogue has to say something. So what does Trump say? That he is a successful businessman and that that is what America needs in the Oval Office. There is some plausibility in this, though not much. The greatest deeds of American Presidents--midwifing the new republic; freeing the slaves; harnessing the energies and vision needed to win the Cold War--had little to do with a bottom line.

... the interpretation of world and history is a fundamental process without which human beings cannot grasp reality at all. There can be no perception of reality without an interpretive model. More than that: when people open their mouths and do not just put out animalistic sounds such as groaning and growling but use concepts, they are already interpreting their reality. Every language presumes an overarching interpretation of the world and is itself such an interpretation.

Those who assign interpretation to the realm of the arbitrary call into question every field of scholarship, including the natural sciences. Still more, they question the value of every human discourse, because whenever we speak and construct sentences we are interpreting the reality that surrounds us. The same is true of Jesus of Nazareth, and of him above all. He is unthinkable without Israel, the people of God, in whose tradition he lived, and he can therefore be adequately understood only in faith and out of the believing memory of the people of God. An understanding of Jesus demands the foundation that is Israel, that is the church. If we do not hold to the church’s interpretive tradition and seek its genuine realm of experience again and again, then sooner or later the image of Jesus will disintegrate before us. Interpretation of him will become a matter of taste or at least be determined by the momentary horizon of the interpreter. We see this clearly in the many images of Jesus produced in the last several decades, each according to a shifting fashion. They show very little of the Jesus of the gospels but a great deal of the spirit of those who produce them.

So we see Jesus as an opium for the soul and as a political revolutionary. Here he is as the archetype of the unconscious, there a pop star. He appears as the first feminist and as the faithful advocate of bourgeois morality. Jesus is used by those who want to see nothing change in the church, and he is used as a weapon against the church. He is instrumentalized over and over again to confirm people’s own desires and dreams. At present he must above all stand for the legitimation of universal tolerance, which is no longer interested in truth and therefore threatens to slide off into arbitrariness.

Gerhard Lohfink , Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965

Among scholars of modern Jewish-Catholic relations, John Connelly's book From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965 has rightly gained wide attention. Connelly, professor of History at the University of California Berkeley, drew on bulletins, journals, and books issued from the thirties to the sixties and sources stored in ar-chives at Seton Hall University (John Oesterreicher’s papers) and in Munich (Karl Thieme’s papers), Vienna, and Washing-ton. The book explores, through a chronological approach, the shift that occurred in Catholic attitudes toward the Jews and the move away from a long tradition of Catholic anti-Judaism and antisemitism toward new, more positive views. Connelly reconstructs this fundamental change, tracing an in-ternational network of protagonists who contributed, before and during the Second Vatican Council, to ideas that shaped the Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate on non-Christian religions (particularly chapter 4, on the Jews). He mainly focused on groups of Catholics who, since the thirties and in opposition to Nazism, had developed new reflections on Christian-Jewish relations in Europe and the United States. Among them, Connelly devoted his attention particularly to converts to Catholicism from Judaism and Protestantism (primarily Johannes M. [John] Oesterreicher, but also Gregory Baum, Leo Rudloff, and Paul Démann).

Connelly's thesis is precisely that without the contribution of these converts, the Church could not have arrived at a reconsideration of its position in relation to the Jewish world.Although the phenomenon of conversions is being considered with growing interest by scholars (not only those studying the modern age), many focus on biographies, and the historical narrative of networks connecting the converts, clergy, and intellectuals is still limited. One of the most convincing parts of the book is the analysis of the major role some converts played in pushing to change Catholic teachings about Jews and Judaism. Following this process, Connelly compellingly illustrates their contributions. He defines them as “border-crossers”: “The great majority of Catholics who wrote on the race question [about whether Jews were a race and not able to become Catholics] were Jewish converts, and virtually every figure of note in the Catholic battle against antisemitism was a convert....the irony of conversion, of crossing a border supposedly with no return, is that one never entirely leaves the point of origin. And the scandal of racism was that those expecting security in the new Catholic homes were told that they remained alien, ‘in fact’ ra Jewish” (pp. 63-64). This connotation of the converts as people living along cultural and religious borders between communities is thoroughly examined in the book.

The book begins with a stunning survey of the racist views of prominent early twentieth-century Catholics, among them leading theologians, many denying that even baptism could fully make Jews into Catholics. The author then analyzes some Christian voicesagainst first racism and then against Nazi persecution of the Jews. In particular, Connelly describes a memorandum prepared by Thieme, Oesterreicher, and Waldemar Gurian in 1937, in an effort to obtain an official pronouncement by the Holy See against antisemitism and in favor of the Jews.Approaching the decade before the Second Vatican Council, Connelly highlights the personal "journey" accomplished by some of these converts in a process of rediscovery of the Jewish origins of the Church (p. 189). Thisspirit inspired the foundation by Oesterreicher of the Institute for Judeo-Christian studies at Seton Hall University in 1953, and especially the influential Apeldoorn initiative beginning in 1958 to rethink Christian theologies of Judaism (and Christian read-ings of Scripture) before the Council. In the last chapter of the book, Connelly sums up some of the main revisions of the conversionist attitude that for centuries had marked the behavior of Catholic institutions and congregations toward Jews. Starting from a mission intended to get Jews to convert to Catholicism, Oesterreicher, Thieme, and others moved the Church toward a mission of self-redefinition and ressourcement, with new attitudes toward the Jews and to the Church’s own Jewish roots.

-- Maria Chiara Rioli Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations.

~ *** ~

While not academically trained, I've read my fair share of books on Jewish-Christian relations and Catholic-Jewish dialogue over the decade. None of them come close to the achievement of Connelly's, which I imagine will be a resource for years to come. Though published in , I'm happy to have discovered and to have read it.

When discussing Catholic resistance to National Socialism and protection of the Jews, it is my impression that Catholics tend to get particularly defensive, focusing their attention on notable figures who distinguished themselves by speaking out in defense of, or actively protecting, the Jewish people. The antagonists in their scenario tend to be the Nazis, depicted as chiefly secular, atheist, pagan or anti-Christian (which they were to a large extent). Lost in this perspective, however, is a clear and deserved recognition of just how deeply entrenched antisemitism -- both of a racial and religious variety -- was among parishioners and clergy within the Catholic Church itself (to be clear, the Catholic Church in Europe is the focus here). Under such circumstances, it is not at all suprising that those few who struggled to come to arrive at better relations with the Jewish people were often met with ecclesiastical roadblocks and outright opposition from the clergy on multiple levels within the Church. Connelly's intensive historical research into this era of the Church under National Socialism is worth the price of the volume alone as a reference resource.

Connelly makes a notable observation that

“From the 1840s until 1965, virtually every activist and thinker who worked for Catholic-Jewish reconciliation was not originally Catholic. Most were born Jewish. Without converts, the Catholic Church would not have found a new language to speak to the Jews after the Holocaust.”

Catholics are probably acquainted to some degree (even nominally) with Jacques Maritain and Deitrich von Hildebrand (both recognized as early opponents to anti-semitism, howbeit moving on to other matters post-war). This book does an IMMENSE service in featuring the intellectual biographies of Johannes (later John) Oesterreicher, a Jewish convert and priest, and Karl Thieme, a convert from Luthernism, and the instrumental roles both played in countering antisemitism within the Church during National Socialism and later, in laying the theological groundwork for the drafting of Vatican II's Nostra Aetate.

Expectedly, Connelly arrives at the hope and conclusion that the Catholic Church -- in embracing its "elder brothers and sisters" -- ought to categorically forsake its mission to convert the Jews as a people. This was the ultimate conclusion of Karl Thieme, and to a degree Osterreicher as well in the last years of his life (who while never turning away individual requests for baptism, admittedly did not have any great success in his early efforts to convert Jews in the United States). One can't help but observe the irony in that if Jews like Osterreicher had never been permitted to convert in the first place, it would be questionable whether the Church would have arrived at the place it occupies now in its relations with the Jewish people.

Reviews and Discussion

• Review: From Enemy to Brother. The revolution in Catholic teaching on the Jews 1933-1965 by John S. Conway. Contemporary Church History Quarterly 19:4 (December 2013).
• Catholics and Jews: The Great Change, by Garry Wills. The New York Review
• Jacob and Esau, by Nicholas J. Healy, Jr. First Things January 2013. I concur with Healy's observation:

  Connelly argues that Oesterreicher “abandoned his missionary approach . . . for ecumenism,” that "his goal at the beginning was the opposite of what became the end point." The end point is "not one of Jews becoming Christians, or anything but Jews."

  The irony of Connelly’s narrative is that it is only because of the gifts of converts that the Catholic Church has renounced (he believes) the missionary hope that others will enter the Church. But the final irony is more paradoxical. Connelly is writing as a historian and, for the most part, he seeks to avoid direct engagement with theological debates. It is, however, impossible to reflect on the histori>cal setting and the significance of Nostra Aetate without touching on one of the thorniest questions confronting the Church. How can we hold together the universality of Christ’s saving work and God’s perduring election of the Jewish people?" [read the rest]

• Building on "Nostra Aetate" - 50 Years of Christian-Jewish Dialogue, by Cardinal Kurt Koch. Address delivered by Cardinal Koch at the Angelicum University in Rome under the auspices of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue. (05/06/12).
• ‘What Our Church Has Inflicted on Judaism’: An Exchange on Catholic-Jewish Dialogue, Stephen Englund. (Part of Getting Past Supersessionism: An Exchange on Catholic-Jewish Dialogue).Commonweal 02/10/14.
• Selected Works of John M. Oesterreicher Seton Hall University. [Archive] / see also co-authored theological articles.
• To Evangelize, or Not to Evangelize? Against The Grain 03/21/05.

Hannah Arendt on Pope John XXIII

... In the midst of our century this man had decided to take literally, and not symbolically, every article of faith he had ever been taught. He really wanted "to be crushed, despised, neglected for the love of Jesus." He had disciplined himself and his ambition until he really cared “nothing for the judgments of the world, even the ecclesiastical world.” At the age of twenty-one, he had made up his mind: “Even if I were to be Pope…I should still have to stand before the divine judge, and what should I be worth then? Not much.” And at the end of his life, in the Spiritual Testament to his family, he could confidently write that "the Angel of Death will take me, as I trust, to paradise." The enormous strength of this faith was nowhere more manifest than in the "scandals" it innocently caused....

***

It is with respect to his work in Turkey, where, during the war, he came into contact with Jewish organizations (and, in one instance, prevented the Turkish government from shipping back to Germany some hundred Jewish children who had escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe) that he later raised one of the very rare serious reproaches against himself—for all “examinations of conscience” notwithstanding, he was not at all given to self-criticism. “Could I not,” he wrote, “should I not, have done more, have made a more decided effort and gone against the inclinations of my nature? Did the search for calm and peace, which I considered to be more in harmony with the Lord’s spirit, not perhaps mask a certain unwillingness to take up the sword?” At this time, however, he had permitted himself but one outburst. Upon the outbreak of the war with Russia, he was approached by the German Ambassador, Franz von Papen, who asked him to use his influence in Rome for outspoken support of Germany by the Pope. “And what shall I say about the millions of Jews your countrymen are murdering in Poland and in Germany?” This was in 1941, when the great massacre had just begun. ...

Excerpts from The Christian Pope, by Hannah Arendt. (Reviewing Journal of a Soul, by Pope John XXIII, translated by Dorothy White). New York Review of Books June 17, 1965.

Samuel Schuijer 1873 - 1942

Interesting, these little "rabbit holes" the internet can put you on. Reading the introduction to "Loving the Torah More Than God: Toward a Catholic Appreciation of Judaism" -- provocative title, just started. I suppose I'll have a review at some point -- author Frans Jozef van Beeck mentions the following dedication:

Of the passages omitted in the present text, the most sigificant was the dedication of the lectures to the memory of my first violin teacher, the late Samuel Schuyer. I wish to repeat it here. Samuel Schuyer was born in The Hague, on September 9, 1873, into a family of musicians. He received his training in violin, bassoon, and theory at the Royal Conservatory in his native city. After an early career that involves positions as principal bassoonist in a variety of places as well as a European tour as a bassoon soloist, he became first assistant concertmaster at the French Opera in The Hague, and subsequently concertmaster at the Opera of Ghent, in Belgium. After a short stay in Paris, he returned to The Hague, where he became a very active violinist and teacher, and occasionally also a composer. He was sixty nine years old when in late 1942, he was taken from his apartment and transported to the transit camp at Westerbork. On December 8, 1942 he was put on the train to Auschwitz, where he was killed on the day of his arrival. May he live in peace.

On a whim and, wanting to find out more about this Samuel Schuyer, I Googled and discovered this fascinating biography and account of the musician containing a horrifying detail of his demise -- one can imagine no worse form of physical torture for an accomplished musician:

Het Vaderland reported regularly on new compositions by Schuijer and performances of his work until 1939. Then it becomes silent. The last official document is the death certificate showing that he perished in Auschwitz. A daughter of a former Schuijer piano student wrote to the Leo Smit Foundation: "My mother told me about the tragic fate of her respected piano teacher, who had suffered extreme torture in Auschwitz. We were told that both his hands were cut off."

as well as a remarkable tale of his discovery and the recovery of his music:

On December 11, 1942, Samuel Schuijer was murdered in Auschwitz. His home and music school had been plundered by the Nazis. With the loss of his life and destruction of his belongings, all traces of this significant Dutch musician seemed to be erased. But a group of children in The Hague found a box containing music manuscripts, waiting for the garbage truck. They took their treasure home and it became the first step in rediscovering a lost fragment of Dutch music history.

For which very reason, you can now listen to a composition by him:

Related

• Samuel Schuijer Leo Smit Foundation.
• Forbidden Music Regained - a Project of the Leo Smit Foundation - "Based in Amsterdam, the Leo Smit Foundation is a knowledge centre open to anyone who wants to know more about composers who were persecuted in the Second World War. Because of their situation their work has sunk into oblivion, yet in many cases they were the musical leaders of their time. The Leo Smit Foundation is dedicated to the discovery and research of these composers and to the publication of their works."
• Suppressed Composers in the Netherlands: Forbidden Music in the Second World War by Carine Alders (Editor), Eleonore Pameijer (Editor). Toccata Press (May 7, 2024) 356 pgs.
• Archives Diary: A Tribute to Frans Jozef Van Beeck, S.J. John J Burns Library.

Open to me the gates of repentance, O Giver of Life,
For my spirit rises early to pray toward thy holy temple,
Bearing the temple of my body all defiled;
But in thy compassion, purify me by the loving kindness of thy mercy.
Lead me on the paths of salvation, O Mother of God,
For I have profaned my soul with shameful sins, and have wasted my life in laziness.
But by your intercessions, deliver me from all impurity.
When I think of the many evil things I have done, wretch that I am,
I tremble at the fearful day of judgment.
But trusting in thy loving kindness, like David I cry to thee:
Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy.

Orthodox Christian hymn from Great Lent

_____________________________________________

(Dipping into Alexander Schmemann's Great Lent: Journey to Pascha as part of this season's Lenten reading)

Thomas Merton on Teilhard de Chardin's romanticization of evolution and the atom bomb

Inasmuch as I myself appreciate the thought of Thomas Merton and his role in my own spiritual evolution, I was compelled to research further Merton's own thoughts on Teilhard, who seems to be "of two minds" about Teilhard de Chardin -- commenting positively on some aspects of Teilhard's thought but also critical as well. Richard W. Kropf explores Merton's thought on Teilhard in his paper, Crying with a Live Grief: The Mysticism of Thomas Merton and Teilhard Compared.

In Merton's review of De Lubac's The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin, Teilhard's Gamble (Commonweal 10/27/67), Merton reproaches Teilhard for what he perceives as his naive and overly grandiose faith in human evolution and technological progress:

Teilhard gambles on God’s need for man, since without man God’s creative plan cannot be fulfilled. Without man, God’s face cannot be fully manifest in his evolving creation. Man has an inescapable inner need to be the locus of the divine epiphany, because in him the universe has at last become conscious of itself. And "the universe by structural necessity cannot disappoint the consciousness it produces." [...]

[The Teilhardian man] is a " pilgrim of the future," and he refuses to be diverted from his pilgrimage even by the H-bomb which Teilhard found very inspiring: it was only a manifestation of the spirit and the " dawn of a Christic neo-energy."

Clearly, the Teilhardian wager is as much a gamble as Pascal’s. Perhaps it is more of a gamble. Pascal’s existential thinking confines itself to the area of individual freedom, and the individual can decide his own spiritual destiny! Teilhard has hocked everything and bet it on the whole human species. He has done so at a moment when the odds seem somewhat long against the kind of runaway win he anticipates. Teilhard does not seem to notice the wounds of mendacity and hatred which have been inexorably deepened in man by his practice of technological warfare, totalitarianism and genocide. Certainly we can sympathize with the admirable innocence of his hope. But is it as he believes, and as de Lubac concurs, a completely valid extrapolation of Bible eschatology? Is Teilhard so convinced that he be right, that he obstinately refuses to see any possibility of losing? At times, the Teilhardian synthesis seems to demand nothing short of blind faith in predetermined evolutionary success: the Noosphere is here, the super-consciousness is dawning and—this de Lubac neglected to add—the armies of Mao marching on Peking in 1951 were seen by Teilhard as the vanguard of a new humanity. Everything is already in the bag. You can’t lose: " It would be easier to halt the turning of the earth than it would be to prevent the totalization of mankind."

In "The Plague of Camus: A Commentary and Introduction", Merton indulges the question of whether the existentialist Albert Camus would not have turned away from Christianity had he read the works of Teilhard:

Camus would have heartily agreed with Teilhard’s love of man and with his aspiration toward human unity. But it is rather doubtful whether he would have been able to accept the evolutionary and historical scheme of Teilhardian soteriology. To be precise, it is likely that Camus would have had a certain amount of trouble with the systematic progress of the world toward " hominization" and " christification" by virtue of laws im­manent in matter and in history.

The point cannot be adequately discussed here, but anyone who wants to investigate it further had better read Camus’ book on Revolt (L’Homme révolté), which he wrote after The Plague and which he thought out at the same time as The Plague. This study of revolt, which precipitated the break between Camus and the Marxists (especially with Sartre), is a severe critique of Hegelian and post-Hegelian doctrines which seek the salvation and progress of man in the "laws of history."

Camus was suspicious of the way in which totalitarians of both the left and the right consistently appealed to evolution to justify their hope of inevitable progress toward a new era of the superman. In particular, he protested vigorously against their tendency to sacrifice man as he is now, in the present, for man as he is supposed to be, according to the doctrine of race or party, at some indefinite time in the future. In Camus’ eyes, this too easily justified the sadism and opportunism of people who are always prepared to align themselves on the side of the executioners against the victims. In other words, a certain superficial type of eschatological hopefulness, based on evolution, made it easy to ignore the extermination camps, the pogroms, the genocide, the napalm, the H-bombs that so conveniently favored the survival of the fittest, got rid of those who no longer had a right to exist, and prepared the way for the epiphany of superman.

At this point, it must be admitted that one of the most serious criticisms of Teilhard bears precisely on this point: an optimism which tends to look at existential evil and suffering through the small end of the telescope. It is unfortunately true that Teilhard, like many other Christians, regarded the dead and wounded of Hiroshima with a certain equanimity as inevitable by-products of scientific and evolutionary progress. He was much more impressed with the magnificent scientific achievement of the atomic physicists than he was with the consequences of dropping the bomb. It must be added immediately that the physicists themselves did not all see things exactly as he did. The concern of a Niels Bohr and his dogged struggle to prevent the atomic arms race put Bohr with Rieux and Tarrou in the category of "Sisyphean" heroes that are entirely congenial to Camus. After the Bikini test, Teilhard exclaimed that the new bombs "show a humanity which is at peace both internally and externally." And he added beatifically, "they announce the coming of the spirit on earth." (L'Avenir de l'homme) [...]

No matter how much we may respect the integrity and the nobility of this dedicated Jesuit, we have to admit here that at least in one respect he resembles his confrere Paneloux. True, they are at opposite extremes of optimism and pessimism; but they do concur in attaching more importance to an abstract idea, a mystique, a system, than to man in his existential and fallible reality here and now. This is precisely what Camus considers to be the great temptation. Lured by an ideology or a mystique, one goes over to the side of the executioners, while arguing that in so doing one is promoting the cause of life.

There is no question whatever that Teilhard believes in the "new man", the homo progressivus, the new evolutionary leap that is now being taken (he thinks) beyond homo sapiens. Science certainly gives us a basis for hope in this development, and perhaps Camus needed to have more hope in the future of man than he actually seems to have had. Perhaps Camus was too inclined to doubt and hesitate. Perhaps his "modesty" tended too much to desperation. Perhaps there was much he could have learned from Teilhard. But it is not likely that he would purely and simply have agreed with Teilhard’s statement in Peking, in 1945, that the victorious armies of Mao Tse-tung represented "the humanity of tomorrow" and "the generating forces and the elements of planetization," while the bourgeois European world represented nothing but the garbage (le déchet) of history. No doubt there may be good reason to think that a "new humanity" will arise out of the emerging Third World. Let us hope that it will. But Camus would not be so naïve as to identify this "new humanity" with a particular brand of Marxism, or to pin his hopes on a party which announced its own glorious future as a dogma of faith.

Source: The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton, ed. Patrick Hart (New Directions Publishing, 1985), 214-217. Tip of the hat due to the blog Real Physics for reposting Merton's insightful essay in full).

• Regarding Teilhard's romanticized view of nuclear testing, see: A Symbolic Meditation on Hiroshima at 75: Divine-Human Transfiguration and Transhuman Disfiguration, by Christian Roy (The Symbolic World 08/06/20);

  What truly troubled [Bernard] Charbonneau however was the willingness of many supposedly high-minded humanitarians to celebrate — as immanent spiritual epiphany and ultimate eschatological fulfillment — globalized modern technology’s Activation of Energy. This was the title of a book about the spiritual life inherent in atomic particles by the worst culprit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). This Jesuit evolutionary thinker posthumously became fashionable well beyond an initial coterie of progressive Catholics. He remains a kind of patron saint of transhumanism as its pre-war initiator. But at the height of his fame, Charbonneau’s first published book was devoted to debunking Teilhard de Chardin, Prophet of a Totalitarian Era (1963).

  The inherent inhumanity of Teilhard’s technophile theodicy was evident in “A Few Reflections on the Spiritual Impact of the Atomic Bomb” (1946) for the journal of French Jesuits, that failed to even directly mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki or their human toll. They focussed instead on the Trinity and Bikini research and testing facilities as harbingers of world peace, through global unanimity in the concerted effort to consolidate mastery of the energy at the heart of matter, portraying this as the divine fulfillment of man’s destiny and the goal of evolution.

  Teilhard’s text is replete with inverted symbolic echoes of the Transfiguration, and especially of its defining role in the hesychastic practice of the prayer of the heart...

• Teilhard's reflections on the Bikini Atoll tests are reproduced in full here: Quelques réflexions sur le retentissement spirituel de la bombe atomique" ["Teilhard de Chardin, Some reflections on the spiritual impact of the atomic bomb, 1946"], in Etudes, 79th Year, Vol. 250, July-August 1946.

On the resurgence of Teilhard de Chardin

If there ever was a theology very much in vogue and appealing to hipsters, "new-agers", the young and the fashionable, it was that of Teilhard de Chardin -- whose theological vision served as aesthetic inspiration for jazz, folk folk and classical albums; the basis for a science fiction novels, and also a chief influence on Salvador Dali's artistic incorporation of religious iconography. Recently, Teilhard's name popped up in popular discussions of eugenics, transhumanism and artificial intelligence, with the philosopher Eric Steindhart praising Teilhard as "one of the first to articulate transhumanist themes".

The mystical theology of Teilhard de Chardin has been alluded to time and again in the works of recent popes -- implicitly by Pope Saint John Paul II, in his encyclical Ecclesia Eucharistica: "the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all creation". Chardin exercised an influence on Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as well, who referenced him numerous times in his book Spirit of the Liturgy as well as his speeches and homilies.

Thus it comes as little surprise that we find Pope Francis -- especially with his (pre)occupation with ecology -- carrying the Teilhardian banner, or that under his pontificate the Pontifical Council of Culture would request the repeal of the Holy Office's 1962 Monitum (warning) -- or even that a petition was recently circulated to declare Teilhard de Chardin a "Doctor of the Church."

Nor is it suprising that with every instance of a papal quotation, his supporters seem to reassert themselves, rushing to zealously proclaim on social media that he is being "REHABILITATED" in their desire to exonerate a polarizing theologian whose work, arguably, should still and nonetheless be approached with no small amount of caution.

Teilhard's defenders include the esteemed Henri de Lubac, who remarked "We need not concern ourselves with a number of detractors of Teilhard, in whom emotion has blunted intelligence." and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who naively mused that "it is very likely that within fifty years all the trivial, verbal disputes about the meaning of Teilhard's "unfortunate" vocabulary will have died away, Teilhard will appear like John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila, as the spiritual genius of the twentieth century."

On the other hand, those De Lubac ridiculed with "blunted intelligence" include the likes of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Cardinal de Journet, and Dietrich von Hildebrand -- all of whom in my humble opinion, were justifiably hesitant and properly cautious over the philosophical implications of Teilhard's theology, when carried to its ultimate conclusions.

* * *

Via the web, here's a compilation of related material as I dig a little deeper into said debate:

The Monitum on Teilhard de Chardin

• Monitum on the Writings of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, SJ Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. 06/30/62.
• Letter to [Pope Francis] to waive the Monitum on Teilhard's Works". Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Culture. 11/17/17.
• PETITION: Declare Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. Daryl Domning.

Teilhard de Chardin - Rehabilitated?

• Is Teilhard de Chardin being rehabilitated? And who is that, anyway?, by Luke Coppen. The Pillar 09/04/23.

• Pope cites Teilhardian vision of the cosmos as a 'living host', by John Allen Jr. National Catholic Reporter 07/28/09. Allen observes that regarding Teilhard "Benedict has sometimes seemed to be of two minds himself," at times agreeing with his cosmic vision, but also "complained that Gaudium et Spes [...] played down the reality of sin because of an overly 'French,' and specifically 'Teilhardian,' influence."

• When a Jesuit Evolutionist and a Religious Existentialist Cross Paths; (Or) Why Won't the New Humanity Emerge Already?, J. Scott Jackson. DET (Die Evangelischen Theologen) 06/23/16. On the debate bretween Teilhard de Chardin and the Catholic existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel. See also: The Marcel-Teilhard Debate Michael J. Latzer. New Blackfriars Vol. 82, No. 961 (March 2001), pp. 132-137.

Commentary on Teilhard de Chardin and his critics by Peter Kwasniewski.

• Teilhard’s Pseudo-Scientific Inversion of Christianity: Five Recent Writers. Tradition & Sanity 09/21/23. "Two Jesuits, two metaphysicians, and a Franciscan friar deconstructing the would-be cosmologist of a new faith."
• Gilson, Maritain, Tresmontant, Journet, and von Hildebrand on Teilhard de Chardin. Tradition & Sanity 09/14/23 "You wouldn’t necessarily know it from Vatican News, but Chardin was roundly criticized by fellow Catholic intellectuals."
• Teilhard de Chardin: A Key to Understanding Our Jesuit Pope. Tradition & Sanity 09/07/23. "Francis has proved an admirable disciple of his modernist forerunner."

A prominent critic of Teilhard de Chardin online is Dr. John P. Slattery, Director of the Carl G. Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology, and Law at Duquesne University.

• PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN’S LEGACY OF EUGENICS AND RACISM CAN’T BE IGNORED Religion Dispatches 05/21/18.
• Dangerous Tendencies of Cosmic Theology: The Untold Legacy of Teilhard de Chardin by John P. Slattery. Philosophy and Theology Vol. 29: No. 1. pp. 69-82, according to whom "from the 1920s until his death in 1955, Teilhard de Chardin unequivocally supported racist eugenic practices, praised the possibilities of the Nazi experiments, and looked down upon those who he deemed 'imperfect' humans."
• Teilhard de Chardin, racism and eugenics: An exchange - John P. Slattery | Juan V. Fernández de la Gala. America 08/09/23.
• Trashing Teilhard: How Not to Read a Great Religious Thinker, by John F. Haught. America 02/12/19. In which Haut responds to Slattery's article in Philosophy & Theology.
• Teilhard & Eugenics: A Response to John Haught Commonweal 03/12/19, in which Slattery concludes:

  ... it is hard to deny that Teilhard’s clear and consistent support of eugenics-related philosophies can be tied to core principles of his mature thought, especially his arguments combining physical and spiritual evolutionary development.

  I do think there is a way forward for Teilhardian research, in addition to further investigation of his ties to eugenics. I would welcome a renewed focus on Teilhard’s early mystical writings. But his support of eugenics and the related doctrine of human inequality force us to reject or readjust some interpretations of his ideas. It would be irresponsible to ignore even a tangential connection between Teilhard’s arguments and eugenics, especially at a time when CRISPR technology and widespread DNA sequencing have revived eugenics-related conversations.

  Christian theology demands, in its beautiful paradox, that we find holiness not in the strength but in the suffering of the world, and that the path to God is found by prioritizing the broken, the poor, the outcast, the marginalized, and the oppressed. I firmly believe there is a place for Teilhard in the Christian theological tradition, but there is absolutely no room for eugenics.

Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume I

Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination: Volume 1: The Modern Redefinition of Tongues
by Philip E. Blosser (Author), Charles A. Sullivan (Author).

In three carefully researched volumes, this ground-breaking study examines the gift of tongues through 2,000 years of church history. Starting in the present and working back in time, these volumes consider (1) the modern redefinition of "tongues" as a private prayer language; (2) the church's perennial understanding of "tongues" as ordinary human languages; and (3) the Corinthian "tongues," which, in light of Jewish liturgical tradition, turn out to have been a foreign liturgical language (Hebrew or Aramaic) requiring bilingual interpreters. In the first volume, the authors establish that modern glossolalia, far from being a supernatural gift enjoyed by certain believers since the time of Pentecost and undergoing a resurgence in modern times, has no precedent in church life prior to the nineteenth century. They discuss why German theologians, responding to the Irvingite revival, coined the term "glossolalia" in the 1830s; why Pentecostals between 1906-8 quietly began redefining "tongues" to mean a heavenly language unintelligible to human beings but pleasing to God, instead of foreign languages useful for evangelism; why Protestant cessationists believed miraculous tongues had ceased; and why interpolated idioms like "unknown tongues" in Protestant Bibles were aimed originally at Rome's use of Latin.

Reviews & Discussion

• Book Review: Blosser & Sullivan's Speaking in Tongues: A Critical Historical Examination. Unam Sanctamcatholicam 09/03/23.
• The Modern Redefinition of Tongues feat. Philip Blosser & Charles Sullivan YouTube 09/03/23.

Ronald Reagan on Hans Urs von Balthasar

On June 15, 1989, former President Ronald Reagan was inducted into the prestigious French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, his second honor during a weeklong European tour -- one day after receiving an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in London.

Apparently in receiving such an honor, it is customary of the current recipient devotes his speech to the recognition of his predecessor. In this particular case, said predecessor was none other than Swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar(!!!). The complete text of Reagan's tribute to Hans Urs von Balthasar can be found in the appendix of the book Dividing or Strengthening? Five Ways of Christianity by Harry E. Winter, O.M.I., and is available online here.

• WORLD : Reagan Honored 2nd Time on Tour Los Angeles Times 06/15/1989.

Remembering Paul Johnson (1928-2023)

Remembering Paul Johnson

• Paul Johnson, Prolific Historian Prized by Conservatives, Dies at 94 New York Times 01/12/23.
• Paul Johnson, prolific journalist and historian who started on the Left but became a champion of the Right – obituary The Telegraph 01/12/23.
• Paul Johnson, friend of Israel and the Jews, dies at 94 The Jewish Chronicle 01/15/23.
• On the Writer Paul Johnson (1928–2023 National Review:

  William F. Buckley Jr. wrote that Johnson was liable to be underrated, or taken for granted, because he was so routinely excellent. “His performances are unvaryingly (boringly?) extraordinary,” he wrote. WFB went on to say that Johnson had had “as productive a literary-analytical career as any in modern times.” And he said that in 1994, when Johnson had about 20 more writing years in him.

• Remembering Paul Johnson, the Historian of Human Dignity, by Hans Zeiger. Public Discourse 01/23/23. Underlying Paul Johnson’s historical writing was the sense that people possess an innate dignity. To Johnson, history was the story of people—flawed, creative, reasoning, exceptional—with the capacity for incredible achievement. People, he thought, were made with a purpose, and that meant history has a purpose.
• Knowledge and Verve: Remembering Paul Johnson, by Theodore Dalrymple. City Journal 1/13/23:
  Johnson liked nothing more than to infuriate by means of iconoclastic polemic. His book Intellectuals (1988) provided potted biographies of such revered figures as Rousseau, Marx, and Tolstoy, demonstrating what rotters they all were in their personal lives. This was not exactly an exercise in scientific method, but it was good fun and gave pleasure to those who distrust intellectual gurus. It also gave rise to insinuations that Johnson himself did not always quite live up to the moral ideals that he so fiercely propounded in public.

  He coined striking phrases—Hitler’s views, for example, were “the syphilis of antisemitism in its tertiary phase”—and he could never be accused of mealy-mouthedness. His views, though somewhat changeable, were expressed with vigor approaching dogmatism, though they were always well-informed. You knew where you stood with him.

  It is customary to say of remarkable men that we shall not see their like again. Whatever may be the case with other remarkable men, this is likely to be true of Paul Johnson. It is unlikely that anyone will tackle so huge a range of subjects again with such knowledge and verve.

• The World of Paul Johnson Book and Film Globe 06/01/23. "The late historian didn’t have a lot of friends on the left, but his popular histories help explain the present day."
• Paul Johnson: A Great Man of Letters The Catholic Herald 01/01/23:

  ... He had his undeniable faults, of which irascibility was just one, but he was also exemplary in his hard work (few people could write so quickly and eloquently), his diligence (the reading undertaken for his work and his range of reference was remarkable); his loyalty to his friends and his devotion to his children and grandchildren. His son Daniel is a prominent Catholic journalist (and writes in this edition). He was a Defender of the Faith; there are few of his calibre now.

  At his funeral, the opening hymn was, unexpectedly, “To Be a Pilgrim”, the words for which are based on John Bunyan, the anti-Catholic Puritan. It might seem a curious choice until we consider the words: “Hobgoblin nor foul fiend can daunt his spirit/ He knows he at the end shall life inherit”. That summed Paul Johnson up: may it be so for him.

• Paul Johnson and the fate of conservatism, by Dominic Green. 06/19/23:

  ... Johnson did as much as any writer to spread the ideal Western civilization, and especially Judeo-Christian civilization, in the U.S. These ideas have little purchase in Britain. Johnson’s son Daniel is one of their few advocates, and he, too, finds more receptive audiences abroad. Like Roger Scruton, Paul Johnson found that Americans supposedly a frivolous and unthinking people, are more interested in ideas than the British are. It is telling that Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2006, but he was not appointed a Companion of the British Empire until 2013.

... the majority of students do not see writing as a worthwhile skill to cultivate—just like I, sitting with my coffee and book, rereading Moby-Dick, do not consider it worthwhile to learn, say, video editing. They have no interest in exploring nuance in tone and rhythm; they will forever roll their eyes at me when I try to communicate the subtle difference, when writing an appositive phrase, between using commas, parentheses, or (the connoisseur’s choice) the em dash.

Which is why I wonder if this may be the end of using writing as a benchmark for aptitude and intelligence. After all, what is a cover letter? Its primary purpose isn’t to communicate “I already know how to do this job” (because of course I don’t) but rather “I am competent and trustworthy and can clearly express to you why I would be a good candidate for this job.” What is a written exam? Its primary signal isn’t “I memorized a bunch of information” but rather “I can express that information clearly in writing.” Many teachers have reacted to ChatGPT by imagining how to give writing assignments now—maybe they should be written out by hand, or given only in class—but that seems to me shortsighted. The question isn’t “How will we get around this?” but rather “Is this still worth doing?”

I believe my most essential tasks, as a teacher, are helping my students think critically, disagree respectfully, argue carefully and flexibly, and understand their mind and the world around them. Unconventional, improvisatory, expressive, meta-cognitive writing can be an extraordinary vehicle for those things. But if most contemporary writing pedagogy is necessarily focused on helping students master the basics, what happens when a computer can do it for us? Is this moment more like the invention of the calculator, saving me from the tedium of long division, or more like the invention of the player piano, robbing us of what can be communicated only through human emotion?

The End of High School English, by Daniel Herman. The Atlantic 12/09/22.

A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) - A Help or Hindrance to the Artist? -- Musings on Midjourney

As somebody who's (at least somewhat) creatively/artistically inclined, I find myself absolutely stunned by the recent advancements made in AI-rendered art. However, I admit to being conflicted and of two minds over such.

Half of me has that giddy mindset of a "kid-in-a-candy-store", especially when I experiment with Midjourney -- for the unfamiliar, "an independent research lab that produces a proprietary artificial intelligence program that creates images from textual descriptions" -- or see what others can come up with.

In its current state, which is still very much in its infancy (MidJourney beta only being released in 2022), AI-generated art gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, "the imagination is the limit", having the ability to render whatever the user wants, based on a unique prompt. Admittedly there is some level of SKILL required in utilizing the prompts, learning what particular kind and combination of prompts achieves the desired result. But in any case, the images that Midjourney produces -- spanning practically every genre and style and medium -- are absolutely, completely mind-boggling. See, for example, the regular postings to the Official MidJourney Facebook page.

But there's another part of me that is tentative, even fearful, for the potential impact it can have on artists and photographers and illustrators. What does it mean, for instance, when you can render a painted image in a matter of MINUTES, that would take a human literally days or weeks to produce on their own, using skills they have spent the bulk of their lives honing and cultivating as a craft?

What are the implications ... when I read that the first portrait created using artificial intelligence sold at auction in 2018 for $432,500; and that only this year, a Midjourney AI-generated painting won first place in the Colorado State Fair?

According to Kevin Roose, A.I.-generated art is already transforming creative work, both positively and not necessarily so. Some artists are less concerned than others about the impact AI may have on their careers, as in the example of an interior designer who has figured out how to use AI to streamlining their work, fleshing out prospective ideas for office-renovation in real-time. On the other hand you have stories like this:

"Initially, Mr. Waldoch planned to hire human artists to illustrate each day’s rhyming word pair. But when he saw the cost — between $50 and $60 per image, plus time for rounds of feedback and edits — he decided to try using A.I. instead. He plugged word pairs into Midjourney and DreamStudio, an app based on Stable Diffusion, and tweaked the results until they looked right. Total cost: a few minutes of work, plus a few cents.

“I typed in ‘carrot parrot,’ and it spit back a perfect image of a parrot made of carrots,” he said. “That was the immediate ‘aha’ moment.”

Mr. Waldoch said he didn’t feel guilty about using A.I. instead of hiring human artists, because human artists were too expensive to make the game worthwhile."

On the other hand, David Holz, the founders of Midjourney, was interviewed by Forbes and was largely dismissive of the idea that AI-generated art would have a negative impact on artists themselves:

... think that some people will try to cut artists out. They will try to make something similar at a lower cost, and I think they will fail in the market. I think the market will go towards higher quality, more creativity, and vastly more sophisticated, diverse and deep content. And the people who actually are able to use like the artists and use the tools to do that are the ones who are going to win.

These technologies actually create a much deeper appreciation and literacy in the visual medium. You might actually have the demand, outstrip the ability to produce at that level, and then maybe you'll actually be raising the salaries of artists. It could be weird, but that's what's going to happen. The pace of that demand increase for both quality and diversity will lead to some wonderful and unexpected projects getting made.

A generation of students graduated art schools, many of them heavily in debt, counting on relatively well-paid jobs in entertainment production, videogame production, commercial art and so on. How does the emergence of AI text-to-image platforms impact their future?

I think some people will try to cut costs, and some people will try to expand ambitions. I think the people who expand ambitions will still be paying all those same salaries, and the people who try to cut costs, I think will fail.

Of similar concern are the copyright and privacy issues involved. Take this story of fantasy artist Greg Rutkowski, who found his own original work quickly overtaken and overwhelmed online by AI-generated replications:

Rutkowski was initially surprised but thought it might be a good way to reach new audiences. Then he tried searching for his name to see if a piece he had worked on had been published. The online search brought back work that had his name attached to it but wasn’t his.

The article goes on to describe the experience of others -- illustrators, photographers, models, actors and actresses, directors, cinematographers" -- who are grappling with the fact that their work is being fed into the 5.8 billion dataset used by AI. It is currently the case that artists don’t have the choice to opt in to the database or have their work removed.

Anyway ... no offense intended in this post to those who use Midjourney and are demonstrably very adept at guiding it to producing what they desire. I honestly remain very much enthralled by its potential and entertainment value.

But lurking in the back of my mind are the questions and the issues raised in these articles as well.

The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible.

Great dangers always accompany great opportunities. The possibility of destruction is always implicit in the act of creation. Thus the greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself. From the beginning the weakness as well as the strength of the democratic ideal has been the people. People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others. The price of democracy is the ongoing pursuit of the common good by all of the people. One hundred and thirty-five years ago Tocqueville gravely warned that unless individual citizens were regularly involved in the action of governing themselves, self-government would pass from the scene. Citizen participation is the animating spirit and force in a society predicated on voluntarism.

We are not here concerned with people who profess the democratic faith but yearn for the dark security of dependency where they can be spared the burden of decisions. Reluctant to grow up, or incapable of doing so, they want to remain children and be cared for by others. Those who can, should be encouraged to grow; for the others, the fault lies not in the system but in themselves.

Here we are desperately concerned with the vast mass of our people who, thwarted through lack of interest or opportunity, or both, do not participate in the endless responsibilities of citizenship and are resigned to lives determined by others. To lose your "identity" as a citizen of democracy is but a step from losing your identity as a person. People react to this frustration by not acting at all. The separation of the people from the routine daily functions of citizenship is heartbreak in a democracy.

It is a grave situation when a people resign their citizenship or when a resident of a great city, though he may desire to take a hand, lacks the means to participate. That citizen sinks further into apathy, anonymity, and depersonalization. The result is that he comes to depend on public authority and a state of civic-sclerosis sets in. From time to time there have been external enemies at our gates; there has always been the enemy within, the hidden and malignant inertia that foreshadows more certain destruction to our life and future than any nuclear warhead. There can be no darker or more devastating tragedy than the death of man's faith in himself and in his power to direct his future.

Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals