Remembering Christopher Dawson: Who are you?

by Brad Birzer

Yesterday was Christopher Dawson’s birthday. Well, it would’ve been. Arriving in this world in 1889, he died a happy and joyous death in 1970. Born into a blessedly happy and interesting Victorian family and raised in the idyllic and heady atmosphere of the short-lived Edwardian period, Dawson witnessed the horror of the world descending into almost complete madness during and after the Great War.

What did the West believe, Dawson asked over and over again during the aftermath of World War I? Progress, progressivism, and progressives were heretical, he claimed, promising those things promised only by the one God and only available in the next world, the world of eternity. The liberals and the progressives, he noted, really didn’t distinguish one thing from another, and each promised nothing but unreality while doing so with beautiful rhetoric. Many of the western world bought into such hollow promises.

In 1909, at the age of 20, Dawson had received a vision from God—or, so Dawson believed—inviting him to spend his life writing a history of world culture. Truly Catholic, it must embrace all of the cultures of the world, providing a universal understanding of the human person. Though Dawson consented to Roman Catholicism in 1913, he joined the Church formally at St. Aloysius in Oxford the following year. His mother never forgave him for this.

It’s not clear the Dawson ever forgave himself either. That is, he believed throughout his life that he never did enough for God; no matter how much he read, wrote, thought, and spoke, he simply could not live up to what he believed God had asked of him. Anxious by design and even more anxious by habit, Dawson spent a lifetime battling (rarely successfully) insomnia, depression, panic attacks, and paranoia.

Still, from any perspective, he accomplished an astounding amount in terms of ideas and writing.

No man, I think it is fair to write, analyzed and understood the horrors of the twentieth-century ideologues more than did Dawson. As a culture, we have almost completely forgotten this great thinker, though remnants of us here and there do what we can to keep his memory alive. In a sense, this is as it should be. Well, perhaps not as it should be, but understandably as it is. Dawson knew as early as the 1930s that the western world had lost its appreciation for two things that helped form our very beings: 1) the notion of struggle; and 2) the power of serious ideas, defended and honed in open discussion. As the twentieth-century regressed, Dawson argued, the western population would become increasingly comfortable with soft tyrannies. The iron brutalities and Naziism and Bolshevism had offended the peoples of the West, not so much because of the expansion of government but because of the manner in which it was done. Dawson argued during his life that a population poorly educated (the liberal arts are, for all intents and purposes dead) would almost always accept the free milk clinic and social welfare in all areas of life as long as it was not stamped on the face by the boot of a Gestapo or KGB agent.

As Dawson viewed it, a population lacking a liberal education and, consequently, unable to see behind and beyond the immediate to the larger things of this world and the next, remained a slave to the moment, temporarily as well as materially. The average person will take everything the Nazi or the Communist offers, as long as its not done with the brute violence offered by either the German or Russian experience.

During his lifetime, Dawson saw the fall of the National Socialists, and he assumed the Soviet Union would also collapse at some point.

Still, if humanity had lost the praise for and understanding of the dignity of the human person through the loss of proper education and serious religion, new ideologies would arise quickly and, perhaps, subtly. Most likely, these would be softer, more palatable ideologies, but they would arise nonetheless. With the meanings of words becoming subjective in the twentieth century, antique and profound terms such as human, liberty, dignity, freedom, etc. would have their essences ripped from them, the words remaining as hollow men, ready to be defined by the first assertive person who comes along.

Could any of this be fought, Dawson asked? So much depends, he noted, on one thing. Do you know you are? Do you know and understand your citizenship—to the powers here and now, and, more importantly, to the City beyond?

Happy Birthday, Mr. Dawson. You struggled in every aspect of your life. I assume trains of white robed martyrs now sing your praises.

Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for OUR Russell Kirk, 1957

In 1957, St. John's University (New York City--not to be confused with the colleges in Annapolis and Santa Fe) awarded Russell Kirk a Doctorate of Humane Letters.

The New York Times reported on the speech Kirk (then, holding a position in the political science department at Long Island University) delivered.  I'm not convinced that the summation offered by the reporter is correct, but let's hope the quotes are accurate.

The teaching of ‘enduring values’ was called yesterday the true end of a university by Dr. Russell Kirk.   

He deplored the pursuit of more trivial goals by some American institutions of higher learning, ‘which are often unworthy of the name.’   

Dr. Kirk, author and research Professor of Political Science at Long Island University, spoke of the meaning of a university and of higher learning at the eighty-seventh commencement of St. John’s University in Queens.  He said detractors of lasting standards who applied the same norms to men and creatures ‘do not have the slightest notion of the norms by which we come to know the law divinely decreed for man’s self-government.’  Comprehension of standards that elevate humanity, he observed, is the only part of a university’s training that ‘will survive the tooth of time.’  

In this light, he maintained, the study of the humanities should be undertaken in their ‘full and native vigor,’ which will produce a temperate man because he has a disciplined mind.  Asserting that through the study of great thoughts, the lives of great men, theology, philosophy and history the humane person is formed, he went on: ‘The humane person is a conformist not to fads and foibles and appetites of the hour but to eternal truths.  The university enjoins conformity to truth and declares that the truth about human nature has long been known to wise men, who have apprehended human norms.’ . . . . 

[A Doctor of Humane Letters] was given to Dr. Kirk, who was cited for ‘cogently exposing the errors of confused liberalism and corrosive radicalism.’

Two years later, the university awarded a similar doctorate to Christopher Dawson.

[“St. John’s Hears University Role,” NYT (June 17, 1957), pg. 21.]

Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?

By Julie Robison

Last Tuesday evening, I saw ‘Of Gods and Men’ at the only theater in Cincinnati showing the excellent French film, based on a 1995 true story. There were only three other people in the theater with me, and none of them cried like I did during the latter half of the movie. The monks’ triumphs over their own desires, and their overpowering love of God through darkness and desert, brought true grace to flow in a desperate situation.

"love is eternal hope" --five stars, see it.

‘Of Gods and Men’ is about a small group of Trappist monks who live in Algeria, serving a mostly Muslim village by providing health care and friendship. Their very familiarity with the people is what prompts more disruption in the community when radical Muslim terrorists begin inflicting terror and killing Croatians, Muslim women not wearing the burqa, and those who protested against their regime. The scene of Christmas night, the fateful night when the terrorists went to the monastery, showed the true caliber of the monks. In an effort to reach common ground, one monk referenced the Qu’ran to remind the leader that Christians and Muslims are brothers under one God, not enemies.

The monastery’s relationship with the government was significantly less cordial, and the “might makes right” attitude pervades the actions of the overly aggressive military force against the peaceful monks. When one monk prays over the body of one of the Muslim terrorists whom he is being forced to identify, the disrespect for the dead and human life is evident through the passive-aggressive anger of the government official. It cannot be surprising, then, that the monks’ lives were not respected either.

It is no coincidence, in my mind at least, that Osama Bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011. In the Roman Catholic Church, May 1 was Divine Mercy Sunday—and who can be more in need of God’s divine mercy than the mastermind behind the ruthless attack on September 11, 2001, affecting thousands of souls? The celebrations of the man’s death prompted P. Fredrico Lombardi, the Director of the Holy See Press Office, to release this statement:

Manners in a Mob Mentality

by Julie Robison

The Wall Street Journal reported that "A frenzied mob incensed by a Quran-burning ceremony in Florida overran the United Nations office in northern Afghanistan's largest city on Friday, killing at least seven foreigners and several Afghans, U.N. and Afghan officials said. The attack was the most deadly for the U.N. in Afghanistan. Friday's death toll in Mazar-e-Sharif exceeded that of the October 2009 Taliban assault that killed eight people at a U.N. guest house in Kabul."

Gentle Readers, Miss Manners would like to pose a question: Do you think burning a Qu'ran in America is comparable to yelling "FIRE!" in a theater?

Terry Jones, a preacher in Florida, burned another religion's sacred book on March 20. He put the Qu'ran on trial (which, as an inanimate object, I am sure it did a stellar job defending itself) and then sentenced it to death by burning. Jones burned; Muslims learned... nothing. Cue the "Death to America" chants! Five days later, two Christians were killed; and that was only the beginning of the overseas retribution.

Quote of the Day: Christopher Dawson, The Beginnings of Western Culture

The beginnings of Western culture are to be found in the new spiritual community which arose from the ruins of the Roman Empire owing to the conversion of the Northern barbarians to the Christian faith.  The Christian Church inherited the traditions of the Empire. It came to the barbarians as the bearer of a higher civilization, endowed with the prestige of Roman law and the authority of the Roman name. The breakdown of the political organization of the Roman Empire had left a great void which no barbarian king or general could fill, and this void was filled by the Church as the teacher and law-giver of the new peoples. The Latin Fathers––Ambrose, Augustine, Leo and Gregory––were in a real sense the fathers of Western culture, since it was only in so far as the different peoples of the West were incorporated in the spiritual community of Christendom that they acquired a common culture. It is this, above all, that distinguishes the Western development from that of other world civilizations. (Religion and the Rise of Western Culture)

Increasing Persecution of Christians

by Bradley J. Birzer

While North African and Middle Eastern Christians have long suffered at the hands of Muslims, the last six or so months seem to have been especially brutal. 

Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that Obama unilaterally decided (from Brazil of all places) to take sides in the Libyan Civil War, but he’s made no mention of the persecuted Christians throughout the same region of the world? 

Some recent headlines and links:

From Reuters today--Ethiopian Christians attacked: http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2011/03/24/ethiopias-religious-divides-flare-up-in-muslim-attacks-on-christians/

From Fox, late February of this year--Egyptian military attacks Coptic monasteries:

http://nation.foxnews.com/egypt/2011/02/28/egyptian-forces-attack-coptic-monastery

What about the fact (oh, those pesky facts) that the Egyptian army destroyed those monasteries armed with weapons stamped “Made in America,” paid for by U.S. taxpayers?

Or, how about this: no westerner ever expects to read headlines such as “Christians destroy Mosque” or “Radical Christians Attack Muslims”? 

Ah, Islam. . . . bringing the world closer to the Apocalypse, one step at a time since 622AD.

They're Not Going to Catch Us. We're on a Mission from God.

by Julie Robison

It was a cold night. My good friend Karen and I were driving back to campus after a quick trip to Ann Arbor for a special viewing of "The Human Experience," the first full-length film of Grassroots Films, the Brooklyn-based company which also produced the phenomenal “God in the Streets of New York City” and “Fishers of Men.” It was a school night. We both had class early the next morning. We were both so on fire.

I told Karen about my family and our love of home, but how I had been discerning becoming a missionary after college in Belfast, Ireland, to help foster peace and ecumenism between warring Roman Catholics and Protestants. Then Karen spoke: she was thinking about becoming a nun.*

I was surprised, and then I wasn’t. I pressed her for more information, ecstatic for my friend. I was the first person she told. She was worried about her family, especially her sister Anna, who is one of her best friends. They had often talked about living close once they were married, so they could raise their kids together. But when Karen talked about realizing her vocation, her whole face lit up. Her love of the Lord is apparent to all who know Karen; the joy she was finding and the peace she experienced in accepting God’s will can be unsettling to those unversed in complete surrender.

It almost goes without saying the level of bemusement Catholics experience when some non-Catholics talk about nuns tends to be high and in the laughable region. Apparently all nuns go around in their habits and whack people with rulers they have hidden in their sleeves. They look like Penguins (cue the ‘Blues Brothers’). They are all sexually repressed and mean.

Last week, however, those misconceptions were beautifully dispelled when NPR published a story on the Nashville Dominicans. One read of “For These Young Nuns, Habits Are The New Radical” was cause for a shout of "Te Deum!";  multiple reads was known to cause Catholics to hum "Sanctus" for the rest of the day. This article is possibly one of the first non-scathing articles about the Catholic Church from the mainstream news arena in years, and could even be seen as a deep nod to the success of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI's efforts for the New Evangelization via public radio.

Christian Humanists Rage Against the Machine

By Bradley Birzer

[This was a originally a talk I gave at Piety Hill, Mecosta, Michigan, in March 2003.  Some of it is dated, but only a little bit.  And, I've even softened some of my views regarding the Reformation and modern liberalism.  But, overall, I'm happy with this talk.  

It was intended to be a celebration of the Christian Humanist (and especially Kirk) love and pursuit of all things Incarnation-al as opposed to the maddening rule by the will or wills of men.  It seems appropriate to post it as the liturgical calendar opens the celebration of the birth of the Incarnate Word.  

Merry Christmas to all readers of the Imaginative Conservative, and thank you for helping us grow so profoundly in 2010.] 

*****

The nineteenth century witnessed the flourishing of progressivist thought: in social relations, political relations, religion, and biology.  Everything was evolving, or so it seemed, for the better.  Smiles were more frequent, as the blessings of modernity were entangling everything, East to West, West to East.  Life just kept getting happier, and the citizens of the world were becoming one, homogenized, contented mass.  In a word, according to men such as H.G. Wells, it would soon be “utopian.”

It was all a lie. 

The Blissful Burden of Proof

by Julie Robison

The summer I spent in Washington, D.C. was a huge learning experience for me, especially outside my internship. I went to Philly for a conference and met a guy who also happened to be in D.C. for the summer. When we got back, he invited me out to dinner with a couple of his friends. I remember God coming up in the conversation, for some really random reason. They went around the table: Agnostic, Atheist, Agnostic. Then came me: Roman Catholic! I mostly listened, making a few comments when appropriate, but felt out of my element. All three did not grow up with any type of formal religious education or upbringing (unlike my own), but, knowing that did help me understand their thought processes better.

At my internship, religion would weave its way into the discussion as well. I didn't need to bring it up-- people would ask me what I thought, which is among the highest compliments one can bestow on another. My cold little office had frequent visitors who liked to chat with me about politics, government, their day, music, growing-up and "the good old days" and yes- even religion. People knew I was Roman Catholic through general conversation, and thus confided in me: my editor was Jewish; the letters editor minored in Religion in college but aligned his beliefs closer to Christopher Hitchens'; the managing editor was a traditional Catholic; one of the editorial writers was Episcopalian but married to a Catholic; even the (now former) VP of editorial once felt the need to explain himself to me- how he grew up Catholic and fell away- how he wanted to get married- how he wanted to have kids- how, yes he was dating someone, but had never met the One.

For all my conversations, I'll never, ever, ever, concede to the notion that there is no proof for the existence of God.

This post was inspired by an article in Sunday’s WSJ, "A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I Am An Atheist" by British Comedian Ricky Gervais. It was shared via two friends of mine, both Atheists, and "liked" over 32,000 times, which I admit troubles me deeply.

The Grotesque Iconography of Lady Gaga

by Julie Robison

This Sunday marks the fourth week of Advent; in a week, it will be the feast of the birth of our Lord. My mother has been blasting Christmas music. In between choir boys singing "Silent Night" and Bing Crosby, the radio DJ, told his audience that the number one performer of 2010 is Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga is more than a manufacturer of pop music and catchy tunes. She came into the music scene two years ago, infecting the senses and causing a strong urge to move it-move it with her first single, "Just Dance"-- closely followed by more hits: "Poker Face," "Paparazzi" and "Telephone" (with Beyonce). She has become, in the most secular use of the term, an icon. Her image is a mosaic: outrageous, loud, provocative, creative and unabashedly out there.

Just to get an idea of how culturally embedded Lady Gaga is, let's use the technology litmus test. Of her 21 uploaded videos on YouTube, the lowest viewed video has over 1 million clicks and her highest is over 319 million (the music video for "Bad Romance"). At present, the LadyGagaVevo channel has 342, 426 subscribers and over a billion total upload views. She has over 7 million followers on Twitter and almost 25 million people "like" her on Facebook.

Now let's compare Lady Gaga's popularity to, say, the Roman Catholic Church, who has over a billion members worldwide. The Vatican has its own channel on YouTube. It has 900 uploaded videos, mostly excerpts of speeches by Pope Benedict XVI, translated by a voice over. The most viewed video has over 105 thousand views; the lowest has a few hundred. The Vatican joined YouTube on November 21, 2005 but only has 26, 392 subscribers. On Twitter and Facebook, its fans and followers are collectively below 12,000.

The Old Republic, Part II

By Bradley J. Birzer


Continued from: http://www.imaginativeconservative.org/2010/10/old-republic-part-i.html

As Cicero watched his own republic descend into chaos and madness, he recorded as quickly as he could the most important aspects of the Roman Republic, preserved if not in temporal reality, than in poetry, history, and memory.


Famously, he wrote (quoted by our patron Winston often):

Ancestral morality provided outstanding men, and great men preserved the morality of old and the institutions of our ancestors. But our own time, having inherited the commonwealth like a wonderful picture that had faded over time, not only has failed to renew its original colors but has not even taken the trouble to preserve at least its shape and outlines. What remains of the morals of antiquity, upon which Ennius said that the Roman state stood? We see that they are so outworn in oblivion that they are not only not cherished but are now unknown. What am I sot say about the men? The morals themselves have passed away through a shortage of men; and we must not only render an account of such an evil, but in a sense we must defend ourselves like people being tried for a capital crime. It is because of our vices, not because of some bad luck, that we preserve the commonwealth in name alone but have long ago lost its substance. [Cicero, On the Commonwealth, Book 5; Cambridge Texts]

Christian Humanism in Our Schools

by Tony Williams

I really enjoyed reading the excellent essay by Brittany Baldwin on Hillsdale College and the incomparable job that it does “educating for liberty.”  Through my participation in teacher seminars at the Hillsdale College Center for Teacher Excellence directed by the brilliant Dr. David Bobb, I became acquainted with the love of permanent things through rigorous discussion and study of primary sources in a liberal education that is occurring among students at Hillsdale and teachers at the Hillsdale CTE. 

I am also honored and privileged to be teaching at a diocesan Catholic high school in Virginia that is pursuing the same mission of a liberal Christian humanist education within the boundaries of the Roman Catholic faith and tradition.  I have come to appreciate that fact not merely by reading the school’s mission statement or classroom syllabi but through daily experience with the students, parents, faculty, and administrators of the school. 

The Challenge of Pileus

Jason Sorens, an editor of the website, Pileus, has offered a challenge to thinking conservatives.  Essentially, he claims such a beast is rarer than rare.  His post is worth reading.


http://pileusblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/atheists-are-just-smarter/

Time, Compacted: The Importance of Winston Elliott

Yesterday, on the third floor of a west Houston office building, I had the opportunity--well the blessing, really--of being with some truly wonderful persons, discussing one of my favorite books, Russell Kirk's Prospects for Conservatives. The roll call of participants: Father Donald Silvio Nesti, John Hittinger, John Rocha, Clint Brand, Bob Stacey, Glenn Davis, John Creech, Susanna Dukopil, Brittany Baldwin, Brian Hildebrand, and, our ever gracious hosts, Barbara and Winston Elliott. Houston's finest, to be sure. We analyzed Kirk's 1954 work for six solid hours, and we did so with wit, wisdom, appreciation, and, for the most part, budding hope for what such a book still means, even in a culture imbued with imperial decadence.

Yesterday was also a time of joyous celebration as the leader of this little platoon and remnant, Winston Elliott, reached the half-century mark. No man I know possesses the classical virtue of fortitude in more abundance than does Winston. For two thirds of his life--in a variety of causes, all ultimately leading to the One cause, that of the reestablishment and reformation of Christendom--Winston has fought relentlessly. He has fought with meaning. He has fought with purpose.  He has fought well.