Note: This is the third installment on a long-dormant series of posts in which I reflect upon various heresies. Today's subject is cynicism; the modern cynic often tends to combine one or more formal heresies, or more broadly to reject three important ideas: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. I should add as a final note that I am here reflecting upon modern cynics, which are loosely based on the cynics described by Fr George Rutler in his essay for Disorientation: How to Go to College without Losing Your Mind, and not necessarily as the Greek philosophers such as Diogenes and Antisthenes (though these do have some things in common).
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"Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now my kingdom is not from hence. Pilate therefore said to him: Art thou a king then? Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice. Pilate saith to him: What is truth? And when he said this, he went out again to the Jews, and saith to them: I find no cause in him" (John 18:36-38).

As a general rule, heresy involves taken a single true doctrine or set of true doctrines and either rejecting them or overemphasizing them to the detriment of all other doctrines. Today's heresy, however, is not a heresy in the proper and particular sense, but rather is a type of attitude which lends itself to heresy, and indeed is a more vague kind of heresy. In fact, in a certain sense, it is an attitude adopted along with certain other attitudes or heresies, upon whose shoulders it stands. Cynicism might be described as the combinations of modernity (and post-modernity), moral relativism, and iconoclasm with a decided--indeed even and intentional--lack of charity.

One of the claims of materialistic scientism scientism is that the greatest works of man are reducible to mere chance. Thus, there is a popular bit of scientistic folklore which has long claimed that if we had a thousand monkeys and could provided them each with a typewriter and allow them to bang indefinitely, one or all would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. I contend that not only would these monkeys fail to do so, but that they could potentially fail to even begin to do so.

I really don't have a lot to say about Intelligent Design. They've brought up some interesting critiques of evolution as a purely natural phenomenon, but I don't think that theirs conclusions necessarily follow. That is to say, I do not think that just because a theory has some holes in it now does not mean those holes will never be filled, even filled with purely natural evidence and theory. In any case, I basically agree with Professor Stephen Barr when he says (with my emphases):
The self-styled Intelligent Design (or "ID") movement says that while evolution may have happened the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random genetic mutations is not adequate to explain it. In particular, the ID people point to the great complexity of life, especially at the cellular level. If they are right, that would be very interesting, as it would almost force one to invoke miraculous intervention by God to explain many of the facts of biology. It would give us a slam-dunk proof for the existence of God. I, for one, would be very happy about that.

But are they right in saying that the Darwinian mechanism is inadequate to explain biological complexity? Most biologists, including most of those who are devout Christian believers, doubt it very strongly. And even if the ID people are right, it will be virtually impossible to prove that they are right because they are asserting a negative. They are saying that no Darwinian explanation of certain complex structures will ever be forthcoming. Well, there may not exist such an explanation now, but there might exist one later. So, in practice, I don't see a slam-dunk proof for miraculous intervention in evolution as coming out of this movement.

[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?

"Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin…Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee."

Thus begins Saint Augustines’ Confessions, and these lines are among the most well-known ever written. I came returned to them after reflecting a bit on Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler’s discussion of Catholic misconceptions about atheists. Specifically, she notes that few if any atheists feel that they are “missing something” in their lives, and that few recognize the “God-shaped hole” in their hearts. Most atheists I’ve known, including those who are among my friends, would concur with this analysis, given that they reject the existence of said holes in their hearts. For her part, Mrs Fulwiler states that she only recognized that she was missing something after she had found it.

A couple of days ago, I wrote a somewhat rambling piece about Voice of the "Faithful" (VOT"F") Chicagoland's open letter to the Holy Father*. I focused on one passage in particular, namely the one in which VOT"F"C attempts to rebut the "metaphor argument" (e.g. the "sexual symbolism" argument) against ordaining women to the Catholic priesthood**. However, I had time only to consider the first half of that passage, which concerns their mistaken view as to the role of a priest. Today, I'd like to spend some time considering the second part of that passage, in which they make an even more grievous (and an even less well founded) error concerning Christ himself. Let's have another look at the passage in question, this time with the emphasis on its second part:

"The metaphor argument, that the priest should be male because he represents Jesus, the male priest, is simply fallacious. The priest does not represent Christ, but serves as leader of the community of men and women worshiping God in communion with Christ. Further, since the Risen Christ is neither male nor female, any gender based symbolism ascribed to the presider is meaningless" (emphasis mine).

I was reading a reflection by Monsignor Charles Pope concerning beliefs, philosophies, and God. He opens by stating that

There is a tendency in the modern age, at least in the Western world, to trivialize the human person. One of the ways we do this is to say, in so many words, that it does not really matter what a person thinks or believes.

This is by no means a new sentiment (in the sense of being unique to today), but rather has permeated the "modern" era. For example, writing about 100 years ago, G.K. Chesterton said that this was often the attitude of the day. He continued by writing that

“It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages….But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period.” (Heretics)

"Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down."
--G. K. Chesterton (The Innocence of Father Brown)

Professor J Budziszewski offers his own version of this quote (even citing the quote itself) in his books about the natural law philosophy. The good professor notes that just as no man can keep at a level of evil, neither can any society. We begin with our favorite sin--usually something specific like fornication or theft which is based upon something abstract such as lust or envy--and our refusal to repent of said sin. Yet, if we can't go through a normal and healthy repentance, we will be dragged through an abnormal, unhealthy form of repentance. Failing to confess the sin--and our guilt in it--we tell all of the sordid details about the sin, in gory detail. A simple sin seems to become an obsession--perhaps even a possessive one; but even having confessed every detail, even crying out "Peace, peace," we find that there is not peace to be had.

The Texas Alliance for Life—along with the Diocese of Austin—commemorated the infamous Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton decisions on Saturday. It was a day filled with Masses and marches, rosaries and rhetoric, statistics (over 50 million dead in the American abortion holocaust alone) and speeches—of prayer and politics. The problem in America—indeed, in what was and may someday again be Christendom—is one not merely of politics, but also of culture. The late (and perhaps great) president Ronald Reagan once referred to the Soviet Union as the evil empire; it was true, but the late and certainly great Pope John Paul II offered a more profound critique of culture when he called ours “the culture of death.”