By Anthony Esolen
In one of the great ironies of linguistic history, the English word bedlam, which suggests frenzy, madness, chaos, and noise, comes from what was then the common British pronunciation of the sacred name Bethlehem, at the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, a monastery dedicated in 1402 to house and treat lunatics.
From there we have “Tom o’ Bedlam,” the name that Edgar adopts in King Lear in his disguise as a madman; first to escape from the ministers of the law who pursue him, unjustly, as a traitor to England and to his father, the Duke of Gloucester, but second to remain close to the action, so that he can do everything possible for justice, for his father, and for his country.
Because the truly mad are those souls devoured by ambition, while the faithful and loyal are called fools.
How does one preach the word of God to the mad? How does one preach it in Bedlam? Because everyone in Bedlam is going to be affected by the tic. If everyone around you is shouting, you too will be carried away to shout, even if only so that they hear you; but over time it can become habitual.
If everyone around you is howling at the moon, gathering in packs to raise their hearts, their eyes, and their hollow throats toward that satellite, you are likely to glance there too, and perhaps join the howl, at first because you want to meet the madmen where they are, but finally because you too end up falling in love with the howling.
I pose the question because Bedlam is where we are: a political, social, educational, and religious Bedlam of distraction in the most literal sense, like that of someone condemned to death by horses tearing him apart by pulling his limbs in opposite directions.
Allow me to illustrate. Bishop Robert Barron points out that the Somali welfare scam in Minnesota is a crime against the needy. With a moderate estimate, $1,000 has been stolen from every man, woman, and child in the state. He doesn’t launch into a diatribe about it, because he has more important things to do. But for that, I have seen him accused of being as evil as a Vichy collaborator with the Nazis.
Now, that, frankly, is not healthy. Whatever one’s opinion may be on how American immigration laws should be (I still haven’t heard anyone suggest any specific amendment to the laws in question), it is extravagant to draw any equivalence between American immigration agents and the Gestapo.
And as for an American Kristallnacht, those bricks that break the windows of businesses during “mostly peaceful” protests do not bear the fingerprints of the police.
Nor is it “Nazism” to say that schoolchildren should be taught, above all, to feel proud of their country and their culture, of what remains of it after the floods of mass media. That is part of the virtue of piety, required by the commandment: “Honor your father and your mother.”
I hope that Italian schoolchildren are taught the glories of their artistic and literary heritage, and I would be deeply disappointed to learn that it is no longer so.
It was not Matteo Ricci who demanded that the Chinese despise their ancestors. It was the communist Mao Tse-Tung. Bishop Barron also recalled this when he gently criticized a rather noisy but somewhat foolish congresswoman who seemed to insist that material goods were all that really mattered to people. Because, at bottom, the Marxist, along with too many secularists who consider themselves conservatives, really believes that man lives by bread alone.
But we need to step away from the madness. Bedlam, even for sinful and stunned humanity, is not a normal state of affairs.
I appeal to this rule: if political division leads you to break charity with a Christian brother, if you take pleasure in knowing that such a person has done or said something wrong, if you are eager to magnify his wickedness instead of interpreting it in a less condemnatory light, if you are the Eternal Ophthalmologist, so eager to remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye that you enjoy gouging it out completely, then you are committing a sin against the first commandment, and politics has become your strange god.
Turn back, O man.
I don’t mean that we should be indifferent to moral evil. The Church does not allow a variety of beliefs regarding abortion or the perversion of grave sexual sins like adultery and sodomy.
If a priest preaches the opposite, ipso facto he has broken communion; he should know better. Laypeople are in another category. We must make allowances for confusion, ignorance, well-intentioned but misapplied good intentions, personal moral compromise, and weakness, and so on.
The application of moral principles, on the other hand, often does allow for a range of possibilities. If someone says that, other things being equal, a married man with children deserves, by distributive justice and according to Catholic social doctrine, first consideration in employment, I doubt that today he would find many allies. However, Pope Leo XIII takes it for granted; so does that left-wing conservative, G.K. Chesterton.
If Catholics of one type can dissent on this matter and appeal to prudence and the balancing of a variety of goods, then surely Catholics of another type can do so when it comes to the much more nebulous issue of immigration.
But, in general, we must keep in mind where we are: Bedlam.
And how does one preach to the inhabitants of Bedlam? Understand the language, but don’t speak it. Spend some time on a mountain. Present yourself for the simple daily works of charity. Invite the madman to leave his pen from time to time. Read old books. Teach them to others. Whistle a cheerful tune.
Pray and consider that, if you are going to be a fool sometimes—and you will be—it’s better to be one who first laughs at himself.
About the author:
Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. Among his books are Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, and Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and most recently The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. He is a distinguished professor at Thales College. Be sure to visit his new website, Word and Song.