We stare into the abyss. As people of faith, this is our response to the contemporary plight of modern man, a man characterized by a perpetual wandering through a wasteland. Yet our faith gives us a certain strength—we have the freedom to long, the freedom to thirst—in short, the freedom to suffer meaningfully—in view of the deep chasm of human pain and confusion brought on by sin.

At this point, let us recall our dominant metaphor: The contemporary soul wanders in a perpetual wasteland. As people of faith, as stated in our introduction, we cannot accept this metaphor at face-value and define as our lot a seemingly-endless wandering through the wasteland until admission to eternal life.

To be a Christian is to live out of a center of being defined by faith. Faith is the credo found in the will of the Christian, the fundamental “I believe” that connects him to the content of doctrine, which is the historical reality of the Crucified and Resurrected Christ. Faith brings the Christian into a tangible, living encounter and relationship with Christ which entirely transforms one’s life.

[In part I of this series, we searched for a dominant metaphor by which to encapsulate the condition of the man of faith in the modern world. We settled upon one: "The contemporary soul wanders in a perpetual wasteland." We also anticipated that, in exploring this metaphor, we could not take it at mere face value and instead we must find a genuine expression of faith within it. Thus, in looking at the reality of faith, we begin by, today, examining the reality of sin.]

It scarcely bears mention that, from the perspective of faith, it is sin and its effects which provide the formal and efficient causes of the squalid conditions of our world, not just of now but in every other time in human history before us and after us. This is not at all apparent from the perspective of unbelief. Countless material explanations of our present darkness stand in the place of sin: economic (via Marx), historical (via Hegel), psychological (via Freud and psychotherapy), socio-historical (via Comte), biological (via Darwin), to give but a few, as the list is long and divergent. As people of faith, we can accept or reject any number of these material explanations based on the understanding that any material cause or combination of material causes is insufficient to account for the experience of darkness and desolation in our historical and cultural milieu.

[This is the first of a five-part series written to explore the role of faith within the modern world. We look at the response require of people of faith for living out the Christian vocation in the modern world. In the first part, we look at finding a dominant metaphor to describe where we are and what we are doing.]

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses[.]

—T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, 331-345

Finding a dominant metaphor to encapsulate the plight of man in the throes of modernism is, in many ways, a fool’s errand. What image, what allegory, is capable of tying together the dismembered fragments of the existential, brooding, introspective angst? How can we hold both the Kafka-esque alienation from one’s surroundings, even one’s very self—and the heady, glimmering, exhilarating optimism that so characterizes our hope in ourselves with our social projects, our utopian schemas, our progressive tendencies toward an ever-better future in both hands?

Film Review: Contact
1997, Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, David Morse, Angela Bassett

Overall Recommendation: B-
Moral/Spiritual (-5, +5): -1
Artistic (out of 5): ***1/2

Sci-Fi treats of the topic of extraterrestrial life in several ways. They’re either there, or they’re here. E.T. phones home from here, or he phones here from home. They’re either bright-eyed, childlike scientists (E.T.), or benevolent emissaries come to help us progress into the future (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind), or they’re hostile invaders who want our planet, our service, or whatever (War of the Worlds, Battle: LA). Nevertheless, it always seems that the best sci-fi treatment of extraterrestrial life strives to find a balance between the awe and wonder of such encounters and the crippling fear that accompanies the possibility. Contact, while giving a place for each of these poles, often fails in taking seriously the very real apprehension that rightly flows from the possibility.

[Note: This entry begins the first of movie reviews on the site. It is not likely that new films will be reviewed as released, rather, older films will be reviewed as fits having the time. I've started off with some benchmark sci-fi films, beginning with one of the greatest sci-fi classics Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In these reviews, I seek to view a film according to its merits as a film, and then using it to ask questions pertaining to the Catholic faith. I do not explicitly wish to judge a film according to Catholicism, but rather, from a Catholic perspective, to draw on a film's meaning as a film. My rating system is similar to Steven Greydanus'.]

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
1977, Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, Cary Guffey

Overall Recommendation: A-
Spiritual/Moral (-5, +5): 0
Artistic (out of 5): *****

As a child, I held a deep fascination with the topic of UFO’s and extraterrestrial life. I would always check out related books from the local library and watch as many UFO documentaries as I could. I’ve seen pretty much every film devoted to the subject, from the wholesome and friendly—for example, E.T., one of my favorites as a child—to the not-so-great B-list movies (see: the 1993 film Fire in the Sky, starring D.B. Sweeney, and the 1989 film Communion, starring Christopher Walken and based on the best-selling book by Whitley Strieber). I could go on.

[Cumbersome, detailed, and intense—yep, it's my first post. It's a piece I've been mulling around for about a year and a half now, and I thought it's about time it saw the light of day.]

There are many ways in which to articulate the human search for truth: man's longing for meaning, the human drive for self-perfection, the innate human need for love, and many other ways of classifying this search for “something else.” Within the various cultures of various times in the world, mankind has produced volumes of literature, priceless works of art, sublime compositions of music—all of which attest to this ineffable longing impressed within the individual and collective soul of the human person. Human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously, have a universal desire for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, as each are attributes of God and as each correspond to the major components of human consciousness: the Good for the will, the True for the mind, and the Beautiful for the affect. Literature serves as the narrative account for man's search for Truth—Logos, meaning, an object of the mind—and for the Good—Agathon, the moral, an object of the will. Yet to quote Thornton Wilder, “the whole purport of literature…is the notation of the heart,” and is intricately related to the affect. Thus literature constitutes a man's narrative search for the Beautiful—Kalon, the aesthetic, an object of the affect.