I thought I would start to share with you all the writings of Peter Maurin, the co-founder — along with Dorothy Day — of the Catholic Worker Movement. His works and philosophy come to us in a free verse-style form he called his easy essays. I think we will find them relevant to a number of issues we regularly deal with on this blog. Here’s a couple to get us started: [...]

“Once monopoly powers are gone, there is nothing to be “protected” from. Regan and Thatcher would have us remove the protection while shifting the monopoly powers to private hands. I’m saying lets destroy monopolies, private and public, and we will have no more need for protection.”
– Dr. Trevor J. Acorn, EIT, LEED, CNU, BAMF arguing against protectionism and certain vulgar “Free Trade” ideologies.

Presuming someone may actually be paying attention:

 If there is a new understanding of the Bible and the Church today, there is also a new understanding of the secular world. The Church today sees itself not so much as set in opposition to the secular world as at the service of the world. But even more important than this is the change which is taking place in the understanding of the secular world itself. When I and my friends sought refuge from the Industrial Revolution and made an experiment in simple living in Cotswold village, we were simply responding to our own personal need to find a more meaningful way of life.

But since that time the whole world has begun to discover the disastrous effects of the present system of industrialism. The exhaustion of the earth’s resources, the pollution of the earth and air and water, the monstrous growth of nuclear power, are all threatening to destroy the planet and it is becoming clear to all who can see that our present civilization is set on a course which is leading to disaster. The conditions of life in a modern city, which set man in conflict with nature, also set him in conflict with himself. The result is a psychological tension, which must lead either to a destructive war or to an internal breakdown or to both.

In other words, we are beginning to experience on a world scale the same kind of situation as led to the breakdown of the Roman Empire. But at the same time a new hope has dawned. A revolt against the whole system has begun among the new generation and a recognition that a new beginning must be made. This movement extends throughout the world among people of all religions and of no religion. It is a movement towards a science and technology which will cease to exploit nature and will learn to live in harmony with nature.

 It is a movement also towards a more human way of life, in which human relations are seen to be of more importance than material progress and efficiency, and the quality of life more important than large-scale organization for material ends. Finally, it is a movement towards a unified vision of life in which man and nature are seen to be part of a cosmic order — what in ancient India was called rita and in ancient China Tao — an order of life which relates man both to nature and to the eternal realm of transcendence, on which man and nature both depend.

A short essay by Hilaire Belloc

Ok, so this essay isn’t so full of wisdom. But it is cutting satire, and I’m sure it strikes quite close to home to many of us, especially myself. Enjoy.

If someone would like to show me how to add a “continue reading” link to this post, the essay should probably be underneath one…

There is not anything that can so suddenly flood the mind with shame as the conviction of ignorance, yet we are all ignorant of nearly everything there is to be known. Is it not wonderful, then, that we should be so sensitive upon the discovery of a fault which must of necessity be common to all, and that in its highest degree? The conviction of ignorance would not shame us thus if it were not for the public appreciation of our failure.

If a man proves us ignorant of German or the complicated order of English titles, or the rules of Bridge, or any other matter, we do not care for his proofs, so that we are alone with him: first because we can easily deny them all, and continue to wallow in our ignorance without fear, and secondly, because we can always counter with something we know, and that he knows nothing of, such as the Creed, or the history of Little Bukleton, or some favourite book. Then, again, if one is alone with one’s opponent, it is quite easy to pretend that the subject on which one has shown ignorance is unimportant, peculiar, pedantic, hole in the corner, and this can be brazened out even about Greek or Latin. Or, again, one can turn the laugh against him, saying that he has just been cramming up the matter, and that he is airing his knowledge; or one can begin making jokes about him till he grows angry, and so forth. There is no necessity to be ashamed.

But if there be others present? Ah! _Hoc est aliud rem_, that is another matter, for then the biting shame of ignorance suddenly displayed conquers and bewilders us. We have no defence left. We are at the mercy of the discoverer, we own and confess, and become insignificant: we slink away.

Note that all this depends upon what the audience conceive ignorance to be. It is very certain that if a man should betray in some cheap club that he did not know how to ride a horse, he would be broken down and lost, and similarly, if you are in a country house among the rich you are shipwrecked unless you can show acquaintance with the Press, and among the poor you must be very careful, not only to wear good cloth and to talk gently as though you owned them, but also to know all about the rich. [...]

Hoping you may be following along:

But this still leaves open the question of the relation of the Church to other religions. I would not now speak as I did of an “absolute” religion or an “absolute” Way. There is only one absolute religion and that is the religion of the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of Love, present in some measure in every religion and in every man, and drawing all men into that unity for which man was created. There is only one absolute Way, which is the Word of God, that Word which is God himself, communicating himself to man and making himself known “in many and various ways” to different peoples.

That Word was “made flesh” in Jesus of Nazareth, but he does not cease to make himself known to other people in other ways. So also the Holy Spirit, which descended on the disciples at Pentecost and continues to dwell in the Church, does not cease to work in other people and to dwell among them in other ways. All religions are historically conditioned and though the absolute may be found making itself known and communicating itself in a religion, the religion itself can never be “absolute” in the sense of being free from historical and cultural conditions.

We have to recognize the presence of the Word of God and the Spirit of God in all religions and indeed outside all religions, while we acknowledge the unique revelation of the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ and the unique manner of the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church.

To continue:

A Catholic may see the growth of the Papacy, like that of Episcopacy, as the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, but he will see it as something conditioned throughout by historical circumstances. The structure of the Papacy inherited from the Middle Ages is already passing away, and we may expect to see a development of the Church which will take it nearer to the church of the fifth century, when there were Syrian, Egyptian and Greek churches representing Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, each with their own liturgy, theology and canon law, united with the Latin Church of the West and recognizing a certain primacy in the Church of Rome as the See of Peter.

If this conception is extended today to embrace the different cultures of Asia and Africa as well as those of Europe and America, one can concieve of a Catholic Church which would be really “catholic,” that is, universal, uniting the different churches of East and West with their diverse cultural forms and structures in one body, and engaged in dialogue with other religious traditions.

What would be the basis of unity in such a church?  Could it not be the simple formula of St. Paul: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father of all”?  The latter forms of doctrine and discipline in the different churches were “developments” of Christian faith, and there is little hope of uniting the different churches on the basis of such developments. The essence of Christian faith is expressed in the simple formula of the early Church — “Jesus is the Lord,” of which St. Paul wrote that “no one can say Jesus is the Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

It is, then, the faith in God as Father, in Jesus as the Lord, in the Holy Spirit as the witness to the Lordship of Christ, which would be the common faith of all Christians, and the sacrament of Baptism in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit which would be the visible sign of their unity. The sharing in a common Eucharist would be the sign of the love which unites the disciples of Christ in their common faith and hope.

My first choice for a post under the category “Wisdom from Authors We Love” will be the 1980 foreword to Bede Griffiths’ The Golden String, originally written in 1954. Although a short piece, it would be rather lengthy in this forum, so I will simply quote a series of excerpts periodically. As you already know, my study of Griffiths is partly responsible for my current thought on interreligious dialogue from a Catholic point of view. He was a student and lifelong friend of C.S. Lewis, as I’ve said many times, who went to India to build a Christian monastery in the Hindu ashram style and is the founder of the Wisdom Christianity movement. This series is not so much meant to inflame more controversy as it is to spark a depth of thought and hopefully provide some insight as to where I’m coming from. I hope you enjoy.                                                  

It is now twenty-five years since The Golden String was written and nearly fifty years since the experiences which I have recorded took place. During this time a great many changes have taken place in my own life, in the Church and in the world. In my own life the most important event has been my coming to India, which has changed my outlook both on the monastic life and on the Church and on the world. When I wrote The Golden String the boundaries both of the Church and of the monastic life and their relation to the world seemed to be fairly fixed, but since the Second Vatican Council the whole perspective has changed. The Roman Church has opened itself to the other Christian Churches, to other religions and to the secular world in a way which has created a new situation and established a new relationship. In a sense these changes had been prepared in my case by the Biblical, the Liturgical and the Ecumenical movements, which had shaped my thought when I was writing The Golden String.

But Vatican Two has carried these movements further than I would ever have expected. Biblical criticism, Catholic and Protestant alike, has advanced to a point where we have to see the whole Biblical revelation in a new light. The Liturgical movement, by the introduction of the venacular instead of the traditional Latin, has opened the Roman Church to other cultural traditions in a way which must gradually change the very structure of the Church. The Ecumenical movement, by opening to other religions, has brought the Church into contact with other religious traditions in a way which is producing a radical change in the relation of Christianity to other religions.                                                                                                        

The most radical change which has taken place has been in the understanding of the temporal and historical character of the Bible and the Church. The Bible, instead of being regarded as a fixed and final revelation of God to man, is seen as a historic process in which the Word of God is being revealed under changing historical conditions, shaped by the historical, psychological and cultural circumstances of a particular people, and Jesus himself has to be seen as the Word of God “made flesh” under the conditions of a particular historical situation. In the same way the dogmas of the Christian faith can no longer be regarded as fixed and final statements of Christian faith, but as expressions of Christian faith, guided by the Holy Spirit, but always conditioned by historical circumstances and capable of ever new expression.

Christian theology has developed so far under the influence of Greek and Roman thought and in terms of European culture. It is only now that we are beginning to see the possibility of a Christian faith interpreted in the light of Asian and African experience, leading to a new understanding of the Church in the light of other religious traditions. It is obvious that the place of the Roman Church, which has been the guardian of Greco-Roman tradition, will be modified. The old system of Roman Catholicism with its uniform liturgy, theology and canon law has already passed away and a new understanding of the Church as a communion of churches, united in faith and charity but with a diversity of liturgies and theologies, is now accepted.

“Individualism and socialism are in truth not antagonistic but correlative. Where the domain of the one principle ends that of the other begins. And although the motto Laissez faire has been taken as the watchword of an individualism that tends to anarchism, and so-called free traders have made “the law of supply and demand” a stench in the nostrils of men alive to social injustice, there is in free trade nothing that conflicts with a rational socialism. On the contrary, we have but to carry out the free-trade principle to its logical conclusions to see that it brings us to such socialism.”

Henry George – “Protection or Free Trade”

I’ve added a new category called “Wisdom from Authors We Love.” My thought is that we can all share bits and pieces, with comments, from books we’re reading or have read under this heading. Also, I wanted to point out this category making feature on this blog. It’s especially helpful if you want to publish a serious of posts on a single subject over a long period of time and/or want to have others contribute on the same subject. Years later we will be able to click on the category and sort out all the blog postings under that category. So feel free to create new categories as you see fit.

And since I have a few minutes more to write I’ll begin with some wisdom from the American philosopher Henry George, writing against nineteenth century progressivism in his most famous work Progress and Poverty:

It cannot be said of the Hindoo and of the Chinaman, as it may be said of the savage, that our superiority is the result of a longer education; that we are, as it were, the grown men of nature, while they are the children. The Hindoos and the Chinese were civilized when we were savages. They had great cities, highly organized and powerful governments, literatures, philosophies, polished manners, considerable division of labor, large commerce, and elaborate arts, when our ancestors were wandering barbarians, living in huts and skin tents, not a whit further advanced than the American Indians. While we have progressed from the savage state to Nineteenth Century civilization, they have stood still. If progress be the result of fixed laws, inevitable and eternal, which impel men forward, how shall we account for this?

But it is not merely these arrested civilizations that the current theory of development fails to account for. It is not merely that men have gone so far on the path of progress and then stopped; it is that men have gone far on the path of progress and then gone back. It is not merely an isolated case that thus confronts the theory – it is the universal rule. Every civilization that the world has yet seen has had its period of vigorous growth, of arrest and stagnation; its decline and fall.

George is often criticized for his utopian philosophy, for too much hope for the way things could be if only. But the popular view of his day was a blind progressivism. An idea that science and reason had set in motion an unstoppable linear progression toward an ever better world. Compared with this George is the pragmatic realist. He his wise enough to see that the progressive is not progressive enough. There is no evolutionary impulse driving man forward but rather a long history of progress and regression. THAT is the general rule. The truly progressive civilization, as George will later point out, is the one that retains the Hebraic version of equality, freedom, and justice for all men.

Many defend the idea of a mechanized progression by appealing to greed and Adam Smith. George writes, “We are apt to assume that greed is the strongest of human motives, … that the fear of punishment is necessary to keep men honest – that selfish intersts are always stronger than general interests. Nothing could be further from the truth. Carlyle (?) somewhere says that poverty is the hell of which the modern Englishman is most afraid. And he is right. Poverty is the open-mouthed, relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough. The Vedas declare no truer thing than when the wise crow Bushanda tells the eagle bearer of Vishnu that the keenest pain is in poverty. For poverty is not merely deprivation; it means shame, degradation; the earing of the most sensitive parts of our moral and mental nature as with hot irons, the denial of the stongest impulses and the sweetest affections; the wrenching of the most vital nerves.”

George continues to reason that “From this hell of poverty, it is but natural that men should make every escape.” It then comes naturally that the rule of modern man is summed up in the popular phrase of his day “Get money – honestly, if you can, but at any rate get money!”

No, greed is not what powers the mechanized progression of capitalism. Rather it is the fear of poverty, and in George’s view this base progressivism so popular in his day should be reformed into a truly Progressive state based on justice, freedom, and equality for all men – one in which man would reap the full fruit of his labor and few would fear the cold hand of poverty.