28 October 2007
EDWARD R.F. SHEEHAN – Outline of remarks on Cardinal Galsworthy at Book Circle, St Paul’s, Cambridge, 30 October 2007
Recognition of Jerome Maryon & special guests. Rev David Murphy example of calls from all sorts of places in the world. Minor cult book, word of mouth etc.
In many respects my novel was inspired by Evelyn Waugh, the British novelist and the acknowledged greatest master of English prose in the 20th Century. When he had finished writing his war trilogy Sword of Honour, he observed that subconsciously “I had done something quite outside my original intention. I had written an obituary of the RC Church in England as it had existed for many centuries … a document of Catholic usage of my youth.” Likewise in many ways Cardinal Galsworthy is a meditation on, and lamentation for, the disappearance of the Church I grew up in. Waugh lamented especially the suppression of the Latin Mass, for which the English martyrs such as St Edmund Campion in Elizabethan times mounted to the gallows.
My experience w Waugh. Politics joke. Of course W a political reactionary, which I am not and which CG was not. Of course the author must not be identified completely with the protagonist in this novel, I’m not nearly so harsh, but will you forgive me if – throughout much of these remarks – I hide behind the character of CG.
Models of the Church.
Toward the end of my novel, CG writes that “Even as the world changed, the [Slav] Pope, [John Paul II, obviously], and I were fanatical in our resolve that the Roman Church should remain the same, a steady flame of permanence in every raging human storm, or (in the ancient image) the impregnable Rock of Ages. To that purpose we reaffirmed the authority of Rome throughout the Church, nor did we bother to be dainty as we went about it.” Expanding upon this point, I wrote an opinion piece in the BG in August 1998, and in it I said, “… [QUOTE FROM BG] ….”
But there are other models of the Church. The Church in the Netherlands, which I visited for a major US magazine in 1971. Under the cloak of Vatican Council II, every previous article of faith and morals was put into question and a new Church of sorts was being invented. Describe the Dutch Church of that era. .Total chaos. “Jesus Christ was a saint like Che Guevara” etc. The predatory priest in CG whom CG has dismissed – would that in real life other bishops in the US Church had done likewise. In the Netherlands today, many regrets….
Models of the Church. The Anglican/Episcopal Church today. In many ways similar to the Dutch Church that CG wrote of and that I observed firsthand in 1971. It is being torn apart and according to many Anglicans themselves it is committing suicide. Relate ES experience with Dr Rowan Williams, Abb of Canterbury in Jerusalem at St George’s Cathedral in 2004. African archbishops. What he said to me and what Africans said. Dr Gene Robinson of N.H. etc Abp Williams a tormented figure. Inclusion argument etc – reinterpretation of Scripture. I shall return later to this theme.
But these models of the Church do not relate only to matters of sexual ethics. On pp 390 & 391 of CG, my protagonist engages in a sharp exchange with illustrious members of the American military establishment who protest that the US sells arms throughout the world only “to defend democracy.” He tells them, “if I believed that, I’d believe anything. In the marketing of death, more & more of these machines – the most primitive and the most sophisticated – are being produced by American industry. Cheap Hughes helicopters for soft targets, expensive laser-guided missiles for hard targets, on and on.” The US arms trade, like that of other Western nations and Russia, “chills the soul…. The Pope calls all arms traffic-kers ‘tools of Satan.’”
Which brings us by extrapolation to the Iraq war. In 1992 my conversation with US Amb to the Holy See Thomas Melady re the Gulf War of 1991. JPII’s anger. And that was a war much easier to justify than the Iraq war of 2003.
In his 2003 State of the World address, JPII declared his vehement opposition to the impending US invasion of Iraq by stating “No to war! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity.” Sent a Cardinal Nuncio to Pres B to express his opposition to war; said it was up to UN to resolve the international conflict through diplomacy, and that a unilateral US aggression would be “a crime against peace and a violation of international law.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, then the guardian of Catholic doctrine and the future Pope Benedict XVI, stated that the future American aggression could never be absolved under the Thomistic theory of the just war. Nature of modern weapons. Seamless ethic of life.
Like CG my own experience in the Arab Muslim word – foreseeing the consequences, increasing terrorism, creating a curse vs US for generations, etc. Explain personal experience in Arab Muslim world as diplomat and writer for NYT etc – and expand a bit on this point.
Models of the Church. Conservative US Catholic thinkers on war, which they enthusiastically endorsed. Name some? What were they thinking? JPII’s anger against them – back of his hand in Rome etc. New Middle East of Neoconservatives. “Shock and Awe” of US assault on Baghdad – not a very Xtian image. War fervor – even NYT & WP caught up – exp. Catholic conservatives not as bad as US Evangelicals and their twisted Christian imagery and rhetoric – explain. But bad enough. Vs abortion, same sex marriage etc, but either silent or stridently in favor of war, confusing US patriotism with Catholicism, ignoring massive protests of both Xtians and secularists in Italy, UK, France and rest of Eur vs war. Unitarian Universalist colleague last time – cafeteria Catholics? I dare not say – but an egregious moral failure. Moreover as Catholics we must face the fact that much of the present militarized US foreign policy is gravely immoral if not evil.
Admirable exception – Pat Buchanan. His explanation re conservative Catholics and Magisterium – JPII not speaking ex cathedra etc. His opposition to war and prophetic insights etc. But then, in the pulpits of the American Church, in the sermons notable mostly for their mediocrity – “Jesus loves you, love your neighbor” etc, and not much more – one rarely hears of the marvelous and eminently progressive modern papal social doctrines on the Third World, the international arms traffic, & unjust wars, etc.
Models of the Church. Locally, we have such righteous prophets as James Carroll to tell us what the Church should be like. To his credit, vs Iraq war, but – review the history of his opinions. Suppress much of New Testament etc, accept abortion, homosexual practice, same sex marriage. His model – Church does not possess the truth – she is seeking the truth. An echo of the French philosopher Henri Bergson: God is not, He is becoming. Catholicism would cease to be what it is; the Church would cease to be herself. Whatever he advocates, it is not Catholicism. No thanks: not a Church I would wish to belong to.
And may I ask you, as I hide again behind my character & CG would ask you, would the world truly be better off – would the Church be better off – if the prescriptions of James C and, worse, the editorial pages of the BG & NYT were put into universal practice: abortion on demand, condoms for high school and even middle school students, same sex marriage?
Of course there is until now a flaw in my presentation. Until now I have hardly mentioned the abuse scandal that has plagued the American Church and esp the Archdiocese of B. I agree with former Mayor & Amb to H.S. Raymond Flynn that because of the scandal the Church, esp. in this area, has lost much of her moral authority, though slowly perhaps under Cardinal O’Malley she is beginning to regain it. Expand a little.
Models of the Church. In the end, we ought to ask, as CG would, which model should we accept? After much reflection, I can only answer that we should accept the model of the Magisterium offered by JPII and his successor B. XVI. They offer of course the ideal, and since we are all of us are sinners it is most difficult to accept or live the ideal, but the Church has always been compassionate in her understanding of human weakness, so there it is.
The great English Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc once wrote that “the Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith.” Alas, this is no longer true. Europe has become almost totally secular, forgetting or ignoring the glories of its Christian past. When I lived in France, for nearly nine years, the magnificent cathedrals there had become mostly museums, frequented not by the faithful but by hurried tourists. The English novelist Martin Amis recently stated that “We have outgrown Christianity.”
That statement I contest. And we may be sure that whatever happens the Roman Church will not go the way of the Dutch Church or the Anglican/Episcopal communion. Rather we must take solace, as CG would, in the words of B. XVI during his recent visit to Austria, when he spoke of the crisis of Europe and the West. “If truth does not exist for man, then neither can he ultimately distinguish between good and evil. The wonderful discoveries of science can open up significant possibilities for the benefit of mankind. But also they can pose a terrible threat, involving the destruction of man and the world. We need truth. We do not despise other religions, nor are we arrogantly absolutizing our own ideas or lapsing into intolerance.”
Basic body of belief. Today in secular society, B. XVI suggested, we must become a creative minority of nonconformists. CG, were he real, might have written that speech.