The relevance of camels while discussing gnats

In the aftermath of the EU referendum, I'm seeing a lot of judgments being made about the fitness of those who voted Leave (of whom I am one), and worry about what lies ahead.

We're a bunch of racist xenophobes, apparently. And even if many of us are not personally, we've enabled a bunch of racist xenophobes to usher in a Fascist state.

And people are very worried about that prospect. (I do not relish the idea either.)

But, what do we actually have today? What are we tolerating? What doesn't bother us too much? In fact, what do many actually support?

Well, if you point out that, while worrying about racism and xenophobia, we're tolerating the murder of unborn children, you'll be told that that is a separate issue, totally irrelevant, beside the point.

Now, let's go back to the Gospel and imagine an exchange between Our Lord and a Pharisee. The latter is criticising someone over a gnat-like matter. Our Lord points out that the Pharisee is actually swallowing a camel.

The Pharisee says, "We're not talking about that camel! This is about a gnat! Don't change the subject!"

Or, maybe the Pharisee is telling someone to address a mote that is in his eye. Our Lord comes along and says, "Erm, what about the beam that is in your own eye?"

The Pharisee says, "This is about that man's mote, not my beam! My beam has nothing to do with it!"

We live in a world where abortion is not merely tolerated. It is defended as a right. And we vote for politicians who support it. Even if we oppose abortion personally, we still hold politicians who support it in esteem.They are not beyond the pale. Why? Why is racism, or xenophobia, the only thing that would put them beyond the pale?

If we tolerate abortion, we are in no position to take exception to xenophobia.

To trust in God, by Pope Pius XII

What does it mean to trust in God?

Trust in God means the abandonment of oneself, with all the forces of the will sustained by grace and love, in spite of all the doubts suggested by appearances to the contrary, to the wisdom, the infinite love of God. It means believing that nothing in this world escapes His Providence, whether in the universal or in the particular order; that nothing great or small happens which is not foreseen, willed or permitted, directed always by Providence to its exalted ends, which in this world are always inspired by love for men.

It means believing that God can permit, at times here below, for some time, pre-eminence of atheism and of impiety, the lamentable obscuring of a sense of justice, the violation of law, the tormenting of innocent, peaceful, undefended, helpless men. It means believing that God at times thus lets trials befall individuals and peoples, trials of which the malice of men is the instrument in a design of justice directed towards the punishment of sin, towards purifying persons and peoples through the expiations of this present life and bringing them back by this way to Himself; but it means believing at the same time that this justice always remains here below the justice of a Father inspired and dominated by love.

However severe may seem the Hand of the Divine Surgeon when he cuts with the lancet into the live flesh, it is always an active love that guides and drives it in, and only the good of men and peoples makes Him intervene in such a painful way.

It means, finally, believing that the fierce intensity of the trial, like the triumph of evil, will endure here below for only a fixed time and not longer; that the hour of God will come, the hour of mercy, the hour of holy rejoicing, the hour of the new canticle of liberation, the hour of exultation and of joy, the hour in which, after having let the hurricane loose for a moment upon humanity, the all-powerful Hand of the Heavenly Father, with an imperceptible motion, will detain it and disperse it, and, by ways little known to the mind or to the hopes of men, justice, calm and peace will be restored to the nations.

We know well that the most serious difficulty for those who have not a correct sense of the Divine comes from seeing so many innocent victims involved in suffering by the same tempest which overwhelms sinners. Men never remain indifferent when the hurricane which tears up the great trees also cuts down the lowly little flowers which opened at their feet only to lavish the grace of their beauty and fragrance on the air around them. And yet these flowers and their perfumes are the work of God and of His wonderful designing. If he has allowed any of these flowers to be swept away in the storm, can He not, do you think, have assigned a goal unseen by the human eye for the sacrifice of that most unoffending creature in the general arrangement of the law by which He prevails over and governs nature? How much more, then, will His omnipotence and love direct the lot of pure and innocent human beings to good.

Through the languishing of faith in men's hearts, through the pleasure-seeking that moulds and captivates their lives, men are driven to judge as evil, and as unmixed evil, all the physical mishaps of this earth. They have forgotten that suffering stands at the threshold of life as the way that leads to the smiles of the cradle. They have forgotten that it is more often than not the shadow of the Cross of Calvary thrown on the path of the Resurrection; they have forgotten that the cross is frequently a gift of God, a gift which is needed in order to offer to the Divine Justice our share of expiation. They have forgotten that the only real evil is the sin that offends God. They have forgotten what the Apostle says: "The sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us", that we ought to look on "the Author and Finisher of Faith, Jesus, Who for the joy set before Him, endured a cross.".

Do you, too, dear children, look upon your sufferings thus, and you will find the strength not merely to accept them with resignation, but to love them, to glory in them as the Apostles and saints. . . .

Look upon your sufferings and difficulties in the light of the sufferings of the Crucified, in the light of the sufferings of the Blessed Virgin, the most innocent of creatures and the most intimate sharer in the Passion of Our Lord, and you will be able to understand that to be like the Exemplar, the Son of God, King of Sufferings, is the noblest and safest way to Heaven and victory.

Guide For Living, Radio address on "Divine Providence in Human Events", June 29, 1941

God is love; love isn't necessarily God - C S Lewis

St. John’s saying that God is love has long been balanced in my mind against the remark of a modern author (M. Denis de Rougement) that “love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god”; which of course can be re-stated in the form “begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.” This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God. I suppose that everyone who has thought about the matter will see what M. de Rougemont meant. Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God Himself. It tells us not to count the cost, it demands of us a total commitment, it attempts to over-ride all other claims and insinuates that any action which is sincerely done “for love’s sake” is thereby lawful and even meritorious.

The Four Loves

False Hope in the Neutral, by Carol Robinson

False Hope in the Neutral

Most of the naturally good reforms mentioned earlier are "neutral"; that is, they are good in themselves and standing alone. The question arises whether we ought not to try to put them into effect as soon as possible without waiting for the world to become Christian. It seems like a much more ambitious project to restore all things to Christ than to get young people to do folk dancing or to make and distribute whole wheat bread to malnourished people. Besides, many non-Catholics, not ready to join the Church, are willing to cooperate on these naturally good projects. We also belong to this world, it is argued, and owe it to our citizenship to work for good temporal ends.

Now the illusion here is that it is easier to bring about a good natural order through natural efforts than it is to obtain the rectification of the natural order through the reorientation of the world to Christ.

It is possible to obtain temporarily certain objects in the natural order, but by and large this naturally good world is impossible, and therefore unrealistic, whereas the ordering of the world to Christ is our mission and may perhaps be closer to realization in our day than it has ever been.

The reason the naturally good order is impossible is, theologically, owing to Original Sin. A naturally good society is impossible to fallen man.

But apart from theological considerations we should learn by our own experience and analysis. Our great hopes are always failing us. We think we can create wonderful citizens if only everyone gets an education - but human virtue keeps declining. We think we can create good interracial relationships by non-religious means, but we do not succeed. We think we can clean up political corruption by the right use of our franchise, but the change is only momentary, or apparent, and the situation continues to worsen.

One difficulty with "neutral" means is that being neutral, they cannot sustain their indeterminism and will thus become an instrument of atheism, avarice or idolatry if we decline to impregnate them with Christianity. The Communists use folk dancing to better advantage than we do, the British cooperatives are huge capitalistic enterprises, and lots of people worship wheat germs.
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My Life With Thomas Aquinas

The "Good Natural", by Carol Robinson

The "Good Natural" Not the Christian

If it were possible to achieve all these natural reforms by natural action, which it is not, the result would not be a Christian society. We have to say this because many people confuse a Christian order with a naturally good order. They are as different as day from night. Christ's own life centered in the mystery of the Cross, so His society also can be expected to bear an analogous resemblance. Christ's life was a contradiction, so His order can be expected to contradict the world too. Consider the illustration, how different the humanist's "ideal man" is from the saint. He has culture, refinement, learning. His natural gifts are all developed. He is courteous and clean and interested in the common good rather than in his own advancement. Obviously it is an ideal which rests heavily on natural endowment, material and social advantages.

Sanctity, in contrast, can use any human base, wise or simple, rich or poor. It completely fulfills its subjects, even intensifying their natural gifts, but by ordering a man's whole life to charity. a certain transformation and elevation of his nature takes place, within which the nature is perfected but not with the finality one finds in the humanist. St Francis of Assisi was a talented and charming youth before his "conversion." He gave up all promise of human development and achievement. Yet who can say that the saint lacked any fulfillment of his nature? His charm was still there, mysteriously magnified. He was a leader of men above anything he could have hoped for in war or politics. Furthermore what Francis became he could never have become by first perfecting himself in the natural order. The transformation and elevation of his faculties demanded as prerequisite their radical subordination to a higher principle. Francis the saint was so different from what would have been Francis the fully developed man that the quality of the two would have to be submitted to a different measure. One of the most striking contrasts would be in external appearance, that is, in the material aspect.

The same thing holds true with the social order. It is not only in the hearts of men that the difference lies between the naturally good man and the Christian; it is even more sharply evident in the temporal embodiment of the two ideals. We build housing projects and garden suburbs and fancy sometimes that we are making Christian communities, or at least communities waiting for and adapted to Christian groups. But these natural embodiments of natural standards, such as good garbage disposal, attractive houses and private garden plots turn out to be sterile and lifeless and to act as a natural constraint rather than encouragement of the life of mutual charity. It is not the goodness in these projects that condemns them, because Christianity incorporates all the good things like space and air and gardens and family-size units. But it does it in a different way and one which cannot be foreseen by merely technological considerations. Perhaps the best way to express it is to say that the naturally good thing is dead, like a corpes, or frozen, whereas the Christian thing is alive and vital and warm. Or maybe the difference is in the hierarchical structure of a community, a housing project, a political order. Or perhaps it lies in the fact that the naturally good scheme is "perfect" in a narrow, materially realizable way, whereas the Christian social order, being an embodiment in sinful mankind, is imperfect and perfect at the same time. Just as St Francis' clothes were beggar's rags and his body was sickly, so a Christian realization in a social order is unlikely to achieve new paint on all the houses or perfectly paved roads. But as St Francis lent a beauty to his very garments so these Christian things will take on a beauty which will transcend and transform the material element. Needless to say it will not be the beauty of the glass-brick kitchen advertised in the Ladies' Home Journal.
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My Life With Thomas Aquinas

The Impotence of Purely Natural Action, by Carol Robinson

The Impotence of Purely Natural Action

Because the devil's synthesis destroys the natural order, it is tempting for Christians to look to the restoration of the natural order as the antidote, or at least the primary and preliminary action demanded by circumstances. The fact that the natural law is binding on all men, not only on Christians, and that human reason is capable of being persuaded of its truth, is a further inducement to place emphasis on this level.

Reforms of various sorts are suggested organic farming, return to a wholesome nutrition with "whole" foods, banishment of usury from the financial world, the breakdown of large cities, distributism, folk dancing and culture, clean government, the reappreciation of women's nature and domestic role, credit unions, cooperatives, study groups of all sorts, creative work and recreation, housing reform. All these are good, most of them are also necessary, but none of them singly nor all of them collectively has the power to wrest the world from the devil, as they stand, without being ordered to a higher end.

Here is where the theology of nature and graces enters the picture again, to remind us that in one sense the "good natural" is just as far from the supernatural as is perverted nature - for they are both infinitely removed from it. "Without Me, you can do nothing."

There are several illusory positions to be dealt with.
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From "My Life With Thomas Aquinas"

Forgiveness - St Philip Neri

"If a man finds it very hard to forgive injuries, let him look at a crucifix, and think that Christ has shed all His Blood for him, and not only forgave his enemies, but prayed the Eternal Father to forgive them also."