By happy constellation I
discovered an American Library in France, supplying (free) books I couldn’t
pack because of the austere weight requirements of Norwegian Air. This library was
formed by books left behind by American GIs stationed in postwar France, so it’s
heavy on authors popular at mid-century: Graham Greene, Thomas Merton, Norman
Vincent Peale, and—land, ho!—C.S. Lewis, whose English Literature in the 16th Century I had never read
before. As usual, the lucidity of his thought and the clarity of his
communication are astonishing. His introduction, a historical essay setting the
scene, should probably be published as a standalone short book. It shares a lot
of the themes in The Discarded Image,
Studies in Words, and several essays
in the Selected Literary Essays
edited by Walter Hooper.
Needless to say, it’s an awesome
essay, spurring lots of thoughts and actually prompting me to write. I urge you
all to find a copy.
At the moment I mainly want to
share a musing from a section of the introduction where he describes the early English
Puritans (not gloomy ascetics but avant-garde intellectuals; he compares them
to Marxists in his day). He begins by sketching the “experience” of the
Reformation shared by the Puritans and the broader Anglican group, and his
description of the way in which purely theological issues got entangled in
quite different matters suggested a connection to certain controversies in the
Catholic literary circles today. Here’s a short excerpt; you’re coming in just
as Lewis has led us from Luther’s early cloudless dismissal of works to the
totems of the faith/works controversy ending up in popular comedies:
“The real reason why any reference to faith and works (or merit) is sure of a response in the theatre is that this topic touches men’s pockets: one of the seats of laughter[:]…he who cries up merit…is probably going to ask for money…. And he who cries up faith…is probably going to refuse money…. Shakespeare uses either jibe impartially.”
“The process whereby ‘faith and works’ become a stock gag in the commercial theatre is characteristic of that whole tragic farce which we call the history of the Reformation. The theological questions really at issue have no significance except on a certain level, a high level, of the spiritual life; they could have been fruitfully debated only between mature and saintly disputants in close privacy and at boundless leisure…. In fact, however, these questions were raised at a moment when they immediately became embittered and entangled with a whole complex of matters theologically irrelevant, and therefore attracted the fatal attention both of government and the mob. When once this had happened, Europe’s chance to come through unscathed was lost. It was as if men were set to conduct a metaphysical argument at a fair, in competition or (worse still) forced collaboration with the cheapjacks and the round-abouts, under the eyes of an armed and vigilant police force who frequently changed sides.” (37)
(Side comment: have you ever met
an author so artful in inventing the perfect analogies?). Any-hoo, this
description of a “tragic farce” put me in mind of a lot of headlines I’ve seen,
sighed, and ignored recently that have sprouted up around Amoris Laetitia and
Fr. Martin’s new book. (Not to mention the identical process which I’m reading
in the archives of the religious schism that occurred during—and helped shape—the
French Revolution). A tricky properly theological question arises (even if not
from properly theological seeds) which could “be fruitfully debated between
mature and saintly disputants in close privacy and at boundless leisure.” Instead
because the questions are tied to principles of authority and jurisdiction, generations
of articles proliferate from Catholic journalists who share with their secular
fellows the chief skills and values of their craft—namely, irony, cleverness,
the smugness of having secured one’s position above the fray and so preserved
oneself from being taken in. (I grow sick of irony—in our newspapers, our supposedly
“fresh” Netflix shows and podcasts and NPR programs). And “below” this level of
the venues reserved for commentators who’ve mastered the ironic art, the myriad
militant blogs and internet newspapers of the various camps put up their standards
and banners and raise the call to arms.
Is genuine conversation, genuine
disputatio, possible? Of course. Perhaps the more pertinent question is, Is
there a way to prevent the various habits of our literary cultures, which seem
perversely co-ordinated toward Babel, from causing grave harm to the Bride of
Christ?
