Orthodoxy

"I am the man who with utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before."

Perhaps no other book has had a profound impact on the formation of my faith than Chesterton's masterpiece, Orthodoxy (1908). Attempting to conjure up his own heretical faith, Chesterton -- that master of paradox -- discovered that as he "had put the last touches to it," his adventurous and wholly original religion was indeed orthodox Christianity. And so this delightful Christian classic of apologetics implores the reader to awaken to the mysterious joy of the ancient Faith.


Chesterton argues that people have a spiritual need for both adventure and security, which is essentially a tenuous balance between imagination and reason. This need is not pathological, but is necessary for sanity. 

This need is only satisfied, Chesterton argues, by accepting the Christian worldview, even with its outrageous claims of the Incarnate Word. According to Chesterton, "Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery, you create morbidity. Therefore, accepting Christianity is not only a matter of faith; it is reasonable.

And what about modern claims that orthodox Christianity is boring and repressive? According to Chesterton, speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe is simply a foolish habit. "There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity; and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad." Thus, as the madness of modernity attests to itself with its holocausts, world wars, and nuclear bombs, its claims of a utopian triumph here on earth ultimately crumbles into madness and despair.

During my journey of faith and intellect, and before I had arrived at Rome, I had never considered liberalism - or modernism, for that matter -- to be a worthwhile philosophy. Alas, the mysteriousness and joyfulness of orthodox Christianity, as fulfilled in all things in the Holy Roman Catholic Church, shone too brightly too be ignored; and its utter sanity ultimately drew me in.

Aldens

A man cannot make a pair of shoes rightly unless he do it in a devout manner.

- Thomas Carlyle

Russell Kirk's Six Canons of Conservative Thought

1. Belief that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience, forging an eternal chain of right and duty which links great and obscure, living and dead. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.
2. Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of traditional life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and equalitarianism and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.
3. Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes. The only true equality is moral equality; all other attempts at leveling lead to despair, if enforced by positive legislation. Society longs for leadership, and if a people destroy natural distinctions among men, presently Buonaparte fills the vacuum.
4. Persuasion that freedom and prosperity are inseparably connected, and that economic leveling is not economic progress.
5. Faith in prescription and distrust of "sophisters and calculators." Man must put a control upon his will and his appetite, for conservatives know man to be governed more by emotion than by reason. Tradition and sound prejudice checks upon man's anarchic impulse.
6. Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progre

Hymn of Love by St Francis Xavier

My God, I love Thee, not because
I hope for heaven thereby;
Nor yet since they who love Thee not
Must burn eternally.
Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me
...Upon the Cross embrace;
For me didst bear the nails and spear,
And manifold disgrace;
And griefs and torments numberless,
And sweat of agony;
E’en death itself; and all for one
Who was Thine enemy.
Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,
Should I not love Thee well,
Not for the sake of winning heaven,
Or of escaping hell;
Not with the hope of gaining aught,
Not seeking a reward;
But as Thyself hast loved me,
O ever-loving Lord?
E’en so I love Thee, and will love,
And in Thy praise will sing,
Solely because Thou art my God,
And my eternal King.

Thanks to James Hitchcock for passing this along.

The Education of Henry Adams

The education he received bore little relation to the education he needed.

Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918) found himself torn between two ages: an America bound by republican virtue and the dawn of the twentieth century. Born into a family of presidents and statesmen, Adams' aristocratic sensibilities are profoundly shaken by the increasingly centralized power of the federal government as well as the rapid advance in science and technology. He eventually realizes that his traditional education was insufficient in preparing him for the age of automobiles and machines; as a result, self-education was needed to grasp the new principles of a technologically advanced society.

Upon reading his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, I was most interested in his somber outlook on the passing of Christianity into the darkness of moral relativism. Although a self-proclaimed faithless agnostic, Adams realized that what was Good, Beautiful, and True in the world was inevitably based in religion, particularly Catholicism. During a trip to France to study the great cathedral of Chartres, Adams felt his soul yearn for something beyond his settled understanding, but he could not latch on to something he clearly saw was fading away. And as mankind hurtled toward a century of mass murder and nuclear bombs, Adams looked back upon Christianity and wondered what had gone amiss:

The Virgin herself never looked so winning -- so One -- as in this scandalous failure of her Grace. To what purpose had she existed, if, after nineteen hundred years, the world was bloodier than when she was born? The stupendous failure of Christianity tortured history. The effort for Unity could not be a partial success; even alternating Unity resolved itself into meaningless motion at last.

What was this life all about? Adams wondered. Today our world is remarkable in that it is both highly centralized under collectivist democracy yet atomized to the point where humans have never felt so alone. Or, as Walker Percy says, lost in the cosmos.

The Impossible Return

I have made, like Lazarus, the impossible return.

Escaping from Cell Block 1138, I am now writing from a rebel base nowhere near the Hoth System, and far away from the watchful eyes of Darth Tyrannicus.

Not sure if Lazarus had any thing to live for (I think Christ raised him from the dead more to make a point to his disciples than anything else), but Benjamin Franklin once said:

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.

 How about a little both, Dr. Franklin?