Literary Giants Literary Catholics (2 page)

Throughout history, the Faith has been sustained by, and has built upon, each of these pillars. Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas and other giants of the Church have laid the philosophical and theological foundations upon which Christendom has towered above superstition and heresy, creating an edifice of Reason in a world of error. Numerous other saints have lived lives of heroic virtue and self-sacrificial love, showing that there is a living, loving alternative to all the vice and hatred with which humanity has inflicted itself. Similarly, numerous writers, artists, architects and composers have created works of beauty as a reflection of their love for God—and, through the gift they have been given, of God’s love for them.

It is in the last of these three spheres of apologetics, the apologetics of Beauty, that I have found my own vocation, and it has become my aim, indeed my passion, to evangelize the culture through the power of culture itself.

In recent years, with the possible exception of Mel Gibson’s film
The Passion of the Christ
, the greatest opportunity to evangelize the culture through the power of culture itself has been the release of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings
. As the author of
Tolkien: Man and Myth
and as the editor of
Tolkien: A Celebration
, both of which were published before the release of Jackson’s movie, I found myself in the privileged position of being able to surf the wave of Tolkien enthusiasm that followed in the wake of the release of each of the films in the trilogy. In spite of the efforts of Jackson and others to play down the importance of the Catholic dimension of Tolkien’s masterpiece, I found myself giving talks on the Catholicism of
The Lord of the Rings
to audiences from all four corners of the United States, not to mention Canada, England, Germany, Portugal and South Africa. I have spoken to very large student audiences at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and several state universities. How else in this agnostic-infested age could an avowed Catholic give a lecture at a secular institution on Catholic theology to a captive, and for the most part captivated, audience? Although very few of those in attendance would have dreamed of attending a lecture on “The Theology of the Catholic Church”, they were happy to attend a lecture entitled “Tolkien: Truth and Myth” at which they received unadulterated Catholic theology. Such is the power of art to evangelize.

In the knowledge that art has an enormous power to win souls for Christ, it has been my desire to play a part in the nurturing of a Catholic cultural revival in the twenty-first century to parallel the revival that characterized the first half of the last century. With this in mind, I am honored to be coeditor of a Catholic cultural journal, the
Saint Austin Review
, or
StAR
, which aims to act as a catalyst for such a revival in Christian culture. Launched in England in September 2001,
StAR
represents a unique voice in the world of Catholic publications, and my work on the journal is truly a labor of love.

Currently I find myself embroiled on the front line of the culture war as a result of the publication of my new book,
The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde
. My research revealed, among other things, that Wilde had a lifelong love affair with the Catholic Church and that he considered his descent into homosexuality as his “pathology”. Having recovered from his homosexual “sickness”, Wilde finally succumbed to the true love of his life when he was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed. This hard evidence, combined with the orthodox Christian morality of the vast majority of his work, destroys the popular image of Wilde as a gay icon or as a pioneer of sexual (that is, homosexual) liberation. Needless to say, this unmasking of their idol has led many homosexuals to question their attitude toward Wilde; it may also, one may hope, lead some of them to question their attitude toward homosexuality itself. Either way, the book is receiving considerable attention in the homosexual media and has given me the opportunity to discuss the whole issue of Wilde’s moral position at public debates on Wilde in both London and San Francisco. Once again, as with Tolkien, the successful application of cultural apologetics reaches audiences who would never dream of attending an overtly Catholic meeting. May such encounters prove catalytic and fruitful!

In these sad but exciting times, apologists of every shade should unite in the battle to win a doubting world to the timeless truth. Many years ago, in even sadder and even more exciting times, the Jesuit martyr Saint Edmund Campion stated defiantly that he would never recoil from his efforts to convert the English nation back to the faith of their fathers, “come rack, come rope”. Campion’s example speaks to us across the abyss of the centuries. He was a great and indomitable apologist who should perhaps be adopted as a model and patron of apologists everywhere. These days, in our hedonistic anti-culture of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll”, the barbarism is more likely to find expression in rock and rape than in rack and rope. The enemy is, however, the same. His name is Legion. We might not face the martyrdom suffered by Saint Edmund Campion (though who knows what awaits future generations of Catholics if the totalitarian tide of intolerant “toleration” continues to rise), but we can be as dauntless as was he in our efforts to win our faithless or erring brothers and sisters back to the faith of their fathers. Another English Jesuit, Saint Robert Southwell, wrote some of the finest poetry of the Elizabethan age in an effort to woo his fellow countrymen back to the Faith. He too was martyred, but not before his verse had captivated the nation and not before it had influenced the work of a certain William Shakespeare. As such, Southwell should stand alongside Campion as the model and patron of apologists, particularly for those who choose cultural apologetics as their means to win souls for Christ. As with other Christian writers, before and since, Southwell employed the beauty of language as a means of conveying the beauty of the Faith. Today, four centuries after his heroic death, his poetry shines forth as a lucid testament to the truth for which he died.

     Let folly praise that fancy loves, I praise and love that Child

     Whose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand no deed defiled.

     I praise him most, I love him best, all praise and love is his,

     While him I love, in him I live, and cannot live amiss.

     Love’s sweetest mark, laud’s highest theme, man’s most desired light,

     To love him life, to leave him death, to live in him delight.

     He mine by gift, I his by debt, thus each to other due,

     First friend he was, best friend he is, all times will try him true.

In Campion’s and Southwell’s day, the Catholic faith was illegal. Today, in our own darkened age, it is no longer illegal but is considered illegitimate. It is, however, in the very midst of this darkness that beauty enlightens the gloom. Great art. Great music. Great literature. They are all great weapons. Giotto, Raphael, Michelangelo, Fra Angelico. Weapons! William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Anton Bruckner, Arvo Part. Weapons! Dante, Shakespeare, Hopkins, Tolkien, Waugh. Weapons! We might live in a land of exile and a valley of tears, but we are not lost. The whole unfolding of human history might be, as Tolkien called it, a “Long Defeat with only occasional glimpses of final victory”, but we remain undefeated. Even in the Long Defeat there is the promise of victory. We
are
not lost and we
have
not lost. Nor are we left undefended. Christ brings us a Sword—the Sword of Truth. It is a magic sword. It has three razor-sharp edges: the cutting edge of Reason; the cutting edge of Love; and the cutting edge of Beauty. (Saint John will, I trust, grant me the literary license!) No, we are not defenseless. We have been given the weapons we need. All we need is to use them well. And to return to our rustic Irishman, he is right to muse that he wouldn’t start from here. We have wandered a long way from Eden in the years since our first parents’ first sin. No, indeed, we wouldn’t have wanted to start from here. But here is where we are, and Home is closer than we realize.

PART ONE

TRADITION AND CONVERSION

I

_____

A
NYONE WISHING TO UNDERSTAND
the relationship between tradition and conversion is confronted at the very outset with an inescapable paradox. Tradition, of its very nature, requires the tacit acceptance by those in the present of the ideas, beliefs and customs of the past. Tradition seems to require conformity. Conversion, on the other hand, requires the conscious rejection of the ideas, beliefs and customs that have been tacitly accepted in the past in order to embrace the creed to which one is converting in the present. Conversion seems to require nonconformity. Yet, in spite of this apparent contradiction, tradition and conversion are far from mutually exclusive. On the contrary, and as we shall see, they are ultimately in harmony.

A paradox, as G. K. Chesterton never tired of reminding us, is not simply a contradiction, but only an
apparent
contradiction signifying a deeper unity. At its deepest level, every conversion is not merely a rejection of a tradition to which one had previously subscribed but is, at the same time, the acceptance of another tradition that seems to make more sense than the one rejected. Conversion is, therefore, the acceptance of a tradition perceived as authentic in contradistinction to one perceived as false.

This is not simply a question of semantics. Since the Reformation, the received tradition of the majority of people in non-Catholic countries has been at loggerheads with the authentic tradition of the Church. In consequence, every conversion to Catholicism is a conscious rejection of the traditions of the non-Catholic majority in favor of the traditions of a minority. It is the rejection of prevailing fashion in the name of providential faith. As such, and contrary to the assumptions of many “progressive” thinkers, authentic tradition’s relationship with the modern world is both radical and revolutionary. It is radical in the sense that it counters the accretions of post-Reformation tradition in order to remain in communion with the roots of Christendom, that is, the apostolic tradition of the Church. It is revolutionary in the sense that it seeks the repentance of post-Reformation society and its return to the faith of its fathers. All revolution, properly and radically understood, requires a
return
by definition. It is this understanding of the word that Chesterton must have had in mind when he wrote that evolution is what happens when everyone is asleep, whereas revolution is what happens when everyone is awake. Many so-called revolutions in the past have been, in reality, either iconoclastic revolts against the status quo or else violent reformations of it. Neither are revolutionary in the true sense of the word. True revolution requires a return to basic truths, a return to authentic tradition. This revolution, in individuals and societies alike, is normally called conversion. Thus, authentic tradition and conversion are seen to be in sublime harmony.

Writing of the Victorians, Chesterton spoke of “the abrupt abyss of the things they do not know”. This “abrupt abyss” was the result of chronological snobbery, the assumption, at least implicitly, that the age in which the Victorians lived was more advanced and enlightened than any preceding era in history. With unquestioning faith in the concept of inexorable progress, the Victorians equated the wisdom of the ages with the superstition of the past. Thus, medievalism was mere barbarism, scholastic philosophy was dismissed as being little more than an obsession with counting angels on the point of a needle, and the holy sacrifice of the Mass was mere hocus-pocus.

The poetic counterstance to this cold rationalism and its supercilious religious scepticism emerged several decades before the dawn of the Victorian era with the publication in 1798 of
Lyrical Ballads
, coedited by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In this ground-breaking volume, which served as the
de facto
manifesto of the romantic movement in England, the poets asserted their faith in the integrity of the human soul and derided the spiritual sterility of the sceptical philosophers. Coleridge and Wordsworth both embraced Christianity, and Coleridge, in particular, became an outspoken champion of religious orthodoxy.

In “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” there were early glimpses of Coleridge’s later orthodoxy in the Marian invocation at the beginning of Part V:

     Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,

     Beloved from pole to pole!

     To Mary Queen the praise be given!

     She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,

     That slid into my soul.

In this, as in his beautiful translation of “The Virgin’s Cradle Hymn”, a short Latin verse he had discovered in a Catholic village in Germany, Coleridge was seeking a purer vision of Christianity untainted and untarnished by the embryonic scepticism of the more puritanical of the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century. His defense of orthodoxy in both poetry and prose was an earnest endeavor to bridge the “abrupt abyss” of the age in which he was living. In the course of his life’s pilgrimage, his journey in faith, he had scaled the schism of sects and the chasm of secularism to rediscover the wonders of Christendom.

     I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,

     Loving the God that made me!

Coleridge was one of the first “moderns” to cast aside the “progressive” traditions of the post-Enlightenment in order to rediscover the authentic traditions of the Church. He would by no means be the last. In many respects he blazed a trail that many others would follow.

The year before Coleridge died, the Oxford movement was born. Those at the forefront of this traditionalist revolution in the Anglican church—Keble, Pusey, Newman and others—were inheritors of Coleridge’s orthodox mantle and shared his desire for a purer Catholic vision of Christianity beyond the fogs of puritanism. Nowhere was the plaintive cry of the Oxford movement heard so starkly as in the opening lines of a hymn by John Mason Neale: