By David Warren
Edgar Allan Poe mentioned three things in relation to the Earthly Paradise, or perhaps it was four; I do not claim to be an expert on Poe. But as far as I recall, they were: life in the open air, the love of a good woman, and the creation of some original form of beauty.
These seemed to me at the time (I was a teenager and not yet consciously Christian) a useful list, provided I could choose the place, the girl, and the art.
Of course, the place would include the season of the year, with its temperature, precipitation, and wind speed, since I come from Canada, where it can be impressively cold, damp, and windy, and very uncomfortable if one is not dressed appropriately.
There are other considerations and, as the reader will immediately see, many are not the work of man. Other men may also have divergent opinions. Fights over Paradise can, unfortunately, break out easily; indeed, even fights over what we are dreaming of.
It is difficult to maintain a laissez-faire attitude toward Paradise.
This was never a Christian strategy, however. Nor is it a Christian practice to enjoy the good and suffer the evil. Nature provides this service, which is integrated into our own physiology, just as it was integrated into that of dogs and mayflies.
A short distance from death—and usually right up until just before it—we have some moral control over our own behavior, and through family and friends, a slight influence over the behavior of others. But it is through politics that we form the illusion that we can snatch from God a greater share of decision-making when we disagree with Him.
At the end, however, we may not be consulted about our own destiny. Is the world unjust?
We have a gunfighter culture, as one discovers by paying attention to “the media.” This gives us the illusion that every armed person (or “empowered” person) has the means to change history, even more than with the vote.
It is an illusion because the consequence of a murder—whether as a crime or on the scale of a war—can rarely be anticipated.
All the “time travel and shoot Hitler” scenarios I have heard over the years shared this easily overlooked characteristic: each one of them is astonishingly naive. For all one knows, you may have just made the Nazi party more efficient by getting rid of its main liability.
And, therefore, you would have helped the Axis to win the war.
The Catholic Church has long known that interventions in politics work this way. Those who think that a single clever move, or even a sequence of them, can improve our lives, or even bring Paradise, are, we KNOW, the enemies of prudence.
Instead, things improve when men and women stop being bad and, instead, become good. As a result, we have wisely directed our creative energies to recording and celebrating the saints, beginning, of course, with the Holy Jesus.
The “drawback” of this is not immediately evident, or rather, it is itself an illusion. It is true that our economy might languish if everyone became a saint, and one might foresee other unfortunate statistical correlations.
But these, in turn, would be the occasions for more holy acts, and perhaps even some miracles. Readers are advised, however, not to expect any specific miracle. (After all, I am not a politician).
Wisdom and prudence generally warn us against doing anything that causes a change. It is as the estimable Fr. Frederick William Faber (1814-1863) said. He famously declared, though perhaps apocryphally, to be against all change, including Change for the Better.
This blessed Oratorian expressly opposed innovations in theology and liturgy, and pointed out that among the majestic qualities of God was his immutability. Fr. Faber also partook of the divine goodness, which is why it is safe to follow him.
But in recalling the creation of man in the image of God, we must consider the masculinity of God.
And when thinking prudently, we must remember that prudence has multiple aspects. One must consider what the consequence might be if one acts in the indicated way, but also what will happen if one does not act in that way.
In other words, sometimes one must act. And, within the Christian tradition, one must occasionally show a sign of masculinity.
This was more or less understood this way through the generations that preceded modernity. “We” Christians may have walked wrongly, or clumsily, God knows, in various occasions. But we did not have a doctrine that opposed doing absolutely nothing.
In my view, the Church would be mismanaged if it were used to equip soldiers, except for our spiritual battles. It should not be in our competence to massacre people. But that does not exempt us, as it did not exempt Christ, from the obligation of combativeness.
I have been thinking about Iran, since it has been much in the news lately. How could the Church be more combative in Iran?
Fundamentally, she could read in the news itself that Persians and other Iranians are converting from Islam to Christianity, among other religions, in an unprecedented way.
This is happening soul by soul, Cor ad cor ad cor loquitur, and seems to be occurring almost in defiance of our pacifist clergy.
In fact, if we were curious, among the ten thousand killed by the duodeciman regime there is a large number of Christian converts, and we do not know how many Christian saints.
Perhaps this is a subject for a masculine investigation; and to the extremes that the United States would go to rescue or even recover the body of an aviator, we as Catholics should be going to the aid of living Christians.
This means risking lives; and risking them means that we may lose some. But in the face of the pure fact of our immortality, there is no reason to hesitate.
It is not our job to flaunt our indifference, nor to make fashionable calls for peace. It is simply shameful that the agents of the Church shrink from their commitments.
About the author
David Warren is a former editor of the Idler magazine and columnist in Canadian newspapers. He has extensive experience in the Near and Far East. His blog, Essays in Idleness, is now at: davidwarrenonline.com.