A friend of mine forwarded me an article that he was particularly excited about. Here’s an excerpt:

SILENCE MODERN MUSIC IN CHURCH, SAYS POPE
By Malcolm Moore in Rome (Filed: 27/06/2006)

The Pope has demanded an end to electric guitars and modern music in church and a return to traditional choirs… the use of guitars and tambourines has irritated the Pope, who loves classical music. "It is possible to modernise holy music," the Pope said, at a concert conducted by Domenico Bartolucci the director of music at the Sistine Chapel. "But it should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music."

That’s from the Telegraph, a UK newspaper. Now part of me shared my friend’s excitement at the headline: has Benedict XVI at last issued the motu proprio prohibiting drum fills, rain sticks, and Ed Bolduc? Has Oregon Catholic Press been canonically suppressed?

But I fear that this is just terrible journalism. My suspicions began at the phrase, “the use of guitars and tambourines has irritated the Pope, who loves classical music.” Such a subjective analysis—as if a mere clash of personal preferences was the real story here—tells us much about the journalist’s categories of thought. It does not begin to tell us what actually happened in the Sistine Chapel last Sunday night.

(Imagine: Pope Benedict stands up in one of the most beautiful churches in Rome after a majestic, two hour concert of sacred polyphony, both classic and modern, and says, “The use of guitars and tambourines in liturgical music is, like, really irritating to me. I mean, I really love classical music.”)

I checked the Vatican Information Service’s English language report on the same event.
Of course the Pope didn’t say a word about electric guitars and tambourines. It is silly to imagine this consummately graceful and dignified Pope stooping to rant about guitars and drums at parish masses. (The very ungraceful and undignified ranting about the same will continue to be handled by me and my wife each week after Sunday Mass, thank you very much.)

What the Pope actually said was this:

CONCERT IN HONOR OF THE HOLY FATHER
VATICAN CITY, JUN 24, 2006 (VIS) -

This evening, the Pope attended a concert of sacred music in the Sistine Chapel, presented in his honor by the Domenico Bartolucci Foundation, directed by Msgr. Domenico Bartolucci…
"All the pieces we have heard," the Holy Father continued, "and especially their arrangement - with the sixteenth and twentieth centuries running in parallel - go to confirm the conviction that sacred polyphony, and especially that of the so-called 'Roman School,' is a legacy to be carefully preserved, kept alive and propagated, for the benefit not only of scholars and enthusiasts, but of all the ecclesial community for which it constitutes a priceless spiritual, artistic and cultural heritage…A true 'aggiornamento' of sacred music cannot be achieved except by following the great traditions of the past, of Gregorian chants and sacred polyphony. For this reason, in the musical field as in that of other forms of art, the ecclesial community has always promoted and sustained those who seek new forms of expression without rejecting the past, the history of the human spirit, which is also the history of its dialogue with God."

That’s more like it. What the Pope has actually said is a very positive statement about what in sacred music is good and worthy of living transmission. The only negative formulation to be found in his words is “don’t reject Christian history”, which, as a double negative (“don’t negate”) is essentially a positive statement.

It is clear that Benedict XVI continues to challenge the faithful to think critically, historically, and theologically about the music being made at them in Sunday masses throughout the Western world. But I have found that perpetrators and lovers of guitar-and-drums pop-worship do tend to get aggravated and defensive when challenged to respond honestly and intelligently to such reflections. Like the author of the Telegraph article, they project their own irrationalistic bombast upon the figure of the Pope, conjuring up a fearsome inquisitorial spectre, who, standing meaningfully in front of the Sistine Chapel’s “Last Judgment” fresco, pounds the butt end of his crosier on the marble floor and shouts, “SILENCE MODERN MUSIC IN CHURCH!”

The Pope who wrote such a beautiful and intelligent book as The Spirit of the Liturgy is never going to do that. (I, who have written nothing, just might.)

Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of Deculturation

It is possible to get all the way through a respectable university education without ever hearing of Eric Voegelin (1901-1985). Like another notable German-speaking intellectual refugee from Nazism, namely, Leo Strauss, Voegelin built his reputation upon the writing and teaching he did at American universities. Like Strauss’s, Voegelin’s answer to the failures of 20th century thought re-presented the wisdom of the classic Platonic-Aristotelian thought for three generations of American intellectuals.

Unlike Leo Strauss, though, Voegelin owes no popularity to the efforts of self-styled “disciples” to spread his influence. You can’t find Voegelin’s books on the shelves at Barnes and Noble, and that probably has something to do with the fact that his students did not self-consciously promote the teachings of their guru. It probably has more to do with the fact that Voegelin’s thought was much less friendly to classical liberalism and its heroes than Strauss’s. (One recalls Strauss’s arguments of four decades endeavoring to paint such thinkers Socrates, Machiavelli, and Spinoza all as agreeable anti-totalitarian liberals, which rather suited the tastes of 20th century American anti-totalitarian liberalism.)

A late essay of Voegelin’s called “On Classical Studies” (1972) provides an excellent and accessible introduction to some of the major themes of his thought. The point of the essay is to illustrate how what Voegelin calls the “deculturation” of the modern West—what he argues is a mixture of the ancient Gnostic heresy and various forms of the libido dominandi—has ruined our ability to understand the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, as it has indeed ruined everything. Since the apparatus of modern thought is broken, it is unable to comprehend the most important truths about the ancients—which are about the truths held by the ancients--, even as modern science has made secondary aspects of ancient life better understood now than ever before.

Voegelin starts this essay by “properly” defining classical studies in the words of Friedrich August Wolff: (1759-1824): “the study of man’s nature as it has become manifest in the Greeks.” The very conditions of modernity have rendered such a definition ridiculous, he writes, for “the man who manifested his nature in the Greek language has become the subject matter of specialized histories…Classical studies are reduced to enclaves in vast institutions of higher learning in which the study of man’s nature does not rank high in the concerns of man.” (256)*

The heart of the essay is a succinct enumeration of the ways in which, according to Voegelin, the findings of the “Platonic-Aristotelian...science of the nature of man” are in conflict with the opinions of modernity, “even more than with the Sophistic of their times”. The nine-point list deserves quoting at length:

1. Classic: There is a nature of man, a definite structure of existence that puts limits on perfectibility. Modern: The nature of man can be changed, either through historical evolution or through revolutionary action, so that a perfect realm of freedom can be established in history.

2. Classic: Philosophy is the endeavor to advance from opinion (doxa) about the order of man and society to science (episteme); the philosopher is not a philodoxer. Modern: No science in such matters is possible, only opinion; everybody is entitled to his opinions; we have a pluralist society.

3. Classic: Society is man written large. Modern: Man is society written small.

4. Classic: Man exists in erotic tension towards the divine ground of his existence. Modern: He doesn’t, for I don’t; and I’m the measure man.

5. Classic: Man is disturbed by the question of the ground; by nature he is a questioner (aporein) and seeker (zetein) for the whence, the where to, and the why of his existence…Modern: Such questions are otiose (Comte); don’t ask them, be a socialist man (Marx); questions to which the sciences of world-immanent things can give no answer are senseless, they are Scheinprobleme (neopositivism).

6. Classic: The feeling of existential unrest, the desire to know, the feeling of being moved to question, the questioning and seeking itself, the direction of the questioning toward the ground that moves to be sought, the recognition of the divine ground as the mover, are the experiential complex, the pathos, in which the reality of divine-human participation (metalepsis) becomes luminous…Modern: the modern responses to this central issue change with the “climate of opinion”.

7. Classic: Education is the art of periagoge, of turning around (Plato). Modern: Education is the art of adjusting people so solidly to the climate of opinion prevalent at the time that they feel no “desire to know.” Education is the art of preventing people from acquiring the knowledge that would enable them to articulate the questions of existence. Education is the art of pressuring young people into a state of alienation that will result in either quiet despair or aggressive militancy.

8. Classic: The process in which metaleptic reality becomes conscious and noetically articulate is the process in which the nature of man becomes luminous to itself as the life of reason. Man is the zoon noun echon. Modern: Reason is instrumental reason. There is no such thing as a noetic rationality of man.

9. Classic: Through the life of reason (bios theoretikos) man realizes his freedom. Modern: Plato and Aristotle were fascists. The life of reason is a fascist enterprise. (258-260)

It is more than thirty years old, but Voegelin’s summary of the oppressive dogmatic opinions of modernity is not seriously dated by any of its contents. One might change the vocabulary a bit: no one calls Aristotle a “fascist” anymore. (I am told, however, that “hegemonist” is what people say in graduate school now. The irrationalist opprobrium is the same.)

If anything, the truth of Voegelin’s insights is more visible today after three decades of development. The frightening prospect of “human perfectibility” through biotechnology really isn’t any more frightening than previous doctrines of perfectibility through progressivist liberal-pragmatism or global Communism, which is not to say that it isn’t frightening. It is the same anti-classical axiom: the nature of man can be changed, which is the same as to say that there is no nature of man.

And that opinion is what makes “classical studies” utterly meaningless to modernity. For if there is no such thing as man’s nature, what is there to study that was uniquely manifested in the Greeks? Grain merchants’ inventory lists? Indo-European liquid consonant development?

Voegelin illustrates the near-impossibility of leading young minds in their current climate of opinion to discover the insights of classic Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy:

In the mid-1960s I gave a course in classical politics at a major university. All went well as long as the students believed they were offered the customary fare of information on Plato’s “opinions”. An uproar ensued when they found out that philosophy of politics was to be taken seriously as a science. The idea that some propositions concerning the order of man and society were to be accepted as true, others to be rejected as false, came as a shock; they had never heard of such a thing before. A few actually walked out of the course; but the majority, I am glad to report, stayed on, they became enchanted by Plato, and at the end they profusely expressed their gratitude to have at last learned of an alternative to the drivel of opinions they were routinely fed. (261)

It is heartening to read of Voegelin’s success in helping these students to turn around (periagoge); the idea that there is truth in political philosophy remains radically contrary to our current climate of opinion. But I wonder if in a class of undergraduates at a major university of 40 years later there would be anyone who would care enough to cause an uproar and walk out. Have 40 years of educational deculturation taken us even farther than Voegelin could imagine—past “quiet despair” and “aggressive militancy” into something totally new: the dogmatic slumber of complete epistemological apathy and agnosis?


(* All citations are from The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, v. 12: Published Essays 1966-1985, edited by Ellis Sandoz and published in 1990 by Louisiana State University Press.)

Low Pressure Storm System Moves across Border—Without Papers

Seeking a better life, many meteorological phenomena enter US illegally


On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, a large undocumented air mass crossed the border into south-central Arizona, bringing dust storms and scattered rain to the Tucson area. This latest illegal border crossing comes amidst rancorous Washington debate about immigration reform.

Meteorology professor Dirk Birnbaum of the University of Arizona explained that such border crossings by Mexican weather are becoming more common.

“Every year, countless air masses, dust devils, and even cold fronts cross into California, Arizona, and the whole American southwest,” he said. “They are fleeing meteorological stagnation in Mexico.” What of recent efforts to secure American borders against these illegals? “Spending on border patrol operations has tripled in Arizona in the last ten years,” said Prof. Birnbaum, “yet the impact on the day to day border crossings by weather systems has been negligible. They are going to come whether we like it or not.”

State Sen. Raul Gonzales-Nimbus (D, Tucson) addressed a rally for immigrant rights in front of the State Capitol on Wednesday morning. Gonzales-Nimbus has been one of the leading advocates for reformed weather policy he calls “fair and respectful”--and that critics call amnesty.

“For years, hard working low-pressure systems have come into this country penniless, and without possessions,” said the senator before a crowd of nearly 5,000 supporters and a barometric pressure of 30.27” and falling. “These are decent meteorological phenomena who want nothing more than a chance to drop a little rain on the high country and possibly dissipate over New Mexico. Sí se puede.” He also decried the unfairness of current immigration law, which he said doesn’t even allow atmospheric events to apply for temporary residency, let alone green cards or citizenship.

But Joanie MacInerny of Yuma, a self-described “outpost commander” for her local chapter of the Arizona Minutemen, doesn’t buy the senator’s rhetoric. “These weather systems are lawbreakers, plain and simple,” she said, seated in the driver’s seat of her 1978 Jeep Comanche parked in the blazing desert sun, cradling a 12-guage shotgun. “We will report all undocumented border crossings to the border patrol, though we will not use deadly force, unless it is to defend our own property.” She displayed a 500-yard spool of barbed wire that she and her rancher husband Jim were planning to string out along the perimeter of their Yuma ranch, though she admitted that it would take a wall “50,000 feet tall to keep them off of my land.”

Forecasters expected Wednesday’s low-pressure system to bring falling temps to the Prescott area overnight, and then to get a job washing dishes at the Cheesecake Factory.

Tips for job applicants

When filling out a job application, it is important to be honest and direct.
For example, when a prospective employer asks you, "What is your favorite book and why?", you should answer from the heart, like the following candidate:

My favorite book is Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. As a child, it was a book that I could relate to.

This is a model to be imitated. Such candor gives your employer a vivid picture of your wide-ranging interests and the depth of your own intellectual and spiritual formation. This kind of response also possesses the virtue of brevity, which in this context shows great respect for the prospective employer. It says, "I'm not the kind of person who is going to waste your time."

Especially if such responses are submitted before an interview is granted.

Yesterday afternoon I heard a radio journalist covering the continuing crack-up in the American Episcopal church. In particular, the journalist was reporting on the muddle of the denomination's approving a temporary "prudential moratorium" on the election of any more actively homosexual bishops.

Gay and Lesbian interest groups in the denomination are shocked by the "Columbus Compromise", the journalist reported. He paraphrased the words of one Rev. Susan Russell, leader of "Integrity", a GL activist group in the church:

"Not only has the Episcopal church failed the gospel, she said, but they have failed Gays and Lesbians too."


The reporter's words mean something: the sentence connotes that "failing Gays and Lesbians" is the more grievous of the two failures. Either that's exactly what Rev. Russell meant to say--in which case, we should be grateful for her honesty, and wish that other progressives would be so forthright; or that's the mind of the reporter expressing its inability to comprehend any possible meaning to the words "failing the gospel", and its assumption that such a phrase is meaningless to news listeners, for whom the second "failure" is the only real and newsworthy event here.

Et cognoscetis veritatem et veritas liberabit vos.