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Christ the King and Merriment -- Part II

God bless ye merry gentlemen, and merry ladies!

"What gave St. Francis his extraordinary personal power was this; that from the Pope to the beggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robber crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was really interested in him; in his own inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and taken seriously, and not merely added to the spoils of some social policy or the names in some clerical document." ---- G.K. Chesterton in St. Francis of Assisi

With Christmas, everything is changed. All that we hold dear emanates from the babe of Bethlehem, including our cherished American belief that all men are created equal, enshrined in our founding and foundational document, the Declaration of Independence. The creche is the cradle of civilization. Christmas is the bedrock of all human rights, and it is more; it is also the beginning of brotherhood, of understanding and compassion, of universal acceptance.

"It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves," writes Chesterton in The Everlasting Man. "There could be and were people bearing that legal title, until the Church was strong enough to weed them out, but there could be no more of the pagan repose in the mere advantage to the state of keeping it a servile state. Individuals became important, in a sense in which no instruments can be important. A man could not be a means to an end, at any rate to any other man's end."

More than two millenia after the first Christmas, we tend to take for granted the mystery and the miracle of this holy day, a gift wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. The almighty Creator has deigned to become the most helpless of creatures. The Infinite is an infant, true God and true man. "What child is this?...This, this is Christ the King!" The wonder and merriment of Christmas is a new dawn dispelling the darkness. The babe of Bethlehem, the son of Mary, is also the Son of God, radiating not only light, but warmth.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (Jn3:16) Christ the King is also our most dear and affectionate Friend. He is passionately interested in each one of us, without exception; he values us, listens to us, and takes us seriously -- and he never gives up on us, never withdraws his magnificent mercy. This is what St. Francis of Assisi knew to his delight; this is what he imitated; and this is what inspired him, in 1223, to establish the first creche in celebration of Christmas.

Today in America there are those who want to bar the creche, the Nativity of Jesus, from the Public Square, to banish the babe of Bethlehem to the outer fringes of our towns, to obscurity, in effect to outlaw the public celebration Christmas. These are the Secularists, who have no use for God, and they are well on their way to pulling off a most cunning subterfuge, undermining the Constitution to make it meaningless, and ultimately remaking America into an ugly caricature of itself. By media deception, by academic indoctrination, by judicial decree, the Secularists are subverting our democracy and degrading our way of life by discarding the Christian principles that form the historic basis of America, that are essential and intrinsic to our very identity.

In a nation of Christian people, founded on Christian principles, only the Christians are left out. It is indeed a twisted trick. All voices are heard, all views tolerated, all religions respected, all cultures celebrated -- except for those of Christianity. By default, the de facto religion of our country is becoming more and more the self-righteous religion of Secularism, with its strict orthodoxy and strident intolerance. Already advanced in harassing Christians -- interrupting us from the national discourse, blocking us from the government, keeping us from the culture -- the Secularists are preparing to persecute us, making it a hate crime to oppose the beliefs and virtues of Secularism. In their rage against Christ the King and his followers, the Secularists would not only exclude the babe of Bethlehem, they would force him into exile.

Without Christ, however, the rational becomes irrational, the natural becomes unnatural, the human becomes inhuman. Compassion becomes killing, freedom becomes debauchery, and opportunity becomes greed. Without Christ, respect for the individual degenerates into selfishness, and the community disintegrates into callous indifference. Without Christ, marriage is not marriage, a family is not a family, and America is not America.

As Mark Shea writes, in a column tellingly entitled, "Worlds in Collision," (Crisis magazine; July/August 2002; www.CrisisMagazine.com): "The problem is this: On a purely empirical basis, there is nothing less obvious than the cherished American dogma, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.' For in plain fact, nothing could be less self-evident. Some people are strong, others weak. Some are bright, others stupid. Some good-looking, some ugly. Some healthy, some sickly. Indeed, nothing about the inherent equality of all human beings was obvious to a thinker like Aristotle, precisely because Aristotle was simply going by 'hard, cold facts and observable evidence.' On the basis of these, he concluded that some people were 'natural slaves.'"

Or as Chesterton puts it, in What I Saw in America, 1922, "The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that all men are created equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." (see the American Chesterton Society at www.chesterton.org)

Aristotle justified slavery by his belief that all men are not created equal, that some men are inferior to other men; and in this belief he was following the lead of Plato, whose proposed exceptionally brutal rules for the treatment of slaves, according to Rodney Stark in his 2003 book, For the Glory of God. "Plato did not believe that becoming a slave was simply a matter of bad luck;" writes Stark, "rather, in his view, nature creates a 'slavish people' lacking the mental capacity for virtue or culture, and fit only to serve. Because slaves have no souls, 'they have no human rights,' and masters can treat them as they will." As for Aristotle, he wrote, in Politics, what is the antithesis to Christmas: "From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule."

At least the men who lived before the coming of Christ the King, before Christmas, may well have been doing the best that they could to follow truth and goodness and beauty, like the Wise Men who followed the star to Bethlehem. Chesterton writes of these three philosophers, men of science and reason who rejoiced when they found Jesus, and fell down and worshipped him, "They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato."

What of the men of the so-called Enlightenment, in the 1600s and 1700s, most of whom favored the revival of slavery? They were the ideological heirs to the secular humanists of the Renaissance (as opposed to the Catholic humanists, such as St. Thomas More); in turn they are the ideological ancestors to the Secularists of today. With unrestrained confidence in the power of human reason, the "Enlightenment" revolted against Christ the King and ultimately usurped his throne in the French Revolution of 1789, a violent overthrow that was only partially reversed, with massive repercussions down to our own day. The virulent strain of secularism so pervasive in the "Enlightenment," with frequent outbreaks of anti-Christianity, has been transmitted with tenacity to the Secularists of our day.

"It would please many contemporary scholars if the moral arguments for abolition had been a product of the 'Enlightenment,'" writes Stark. The truth is, however, "a virtual Who's Who of 'Enlightenment' figures fully accepted slavery. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704) 'openly sanctioned human bondage' -- Locke invested in the Atlantic slave trade. Voltaire (1694-1778) wrote a nasty comment concerning Christians profiting from slavery, but he supported the slave trade and believed in the inferiority of Africans."

Another supporter of slavery was Edmund Burke, "who dismissed abolitionists as religious fanatics." Though some of the figures of the Enlightenment did oppose slavery, "most accepted slavery as a normal part of the human condition," writes Stark. "It was not philosophers or secular intellectuals who assembled the moral indictment of slavery, but the very people they held in such contempt: men and women having intense Christian faith, who opposed slavery because it was a sin."

Slavery is, according to the French historian, Regine Pernoud, "perhaps the most profound temptation of humanity." In about the year 400, in the waning days of the Roman Empire, a devout Catholic woman named Melania the Younger, who had inherited vast estates in the province of north Africa, and her husband, Pinian, both of them saints (Feast day: December 31), gave this spacious land to their slaves, numbering more than one thousand, along with their freedom. "In the movement for the liberation of slaves," writes Pernoud, "Melania's influence was concrete and certain."

So it was that, by faith in Christ the King, the immense mountain of slavery was gradually thrown into the sea changes of history by the collective actions of Catholics over several centuries -- this voluntary movement aided by Church councils that, according to Pernoud, "never ceased to enact measures to make the fate of slaves more human and gradually to have them recognized as human beings." And so it is a historical fact, though one that is almost always overlooked by the experts, that this momentous achievement of ending slavery was accomplished during the days of Christendom, which are dismissively termed the "Middle Ages" by some detractors of the Catholic Church, and derisively termed the "Dark Ages" by others even more antagonistic.

"Therefore," writes Pernoud, "we have to conclude that during this reputedly brutal period perhaps the greatest change in social history occurred: the slave, who had been a thing, became a person...." (see her books: Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths (1977) and Women in the Days of the Cathedrals (1989) -- both republished by Ignatius Press: www.ignatius.com)

It is also a historical fact that slavery returned as Christendom began to deteriorate due to defections from Christ the King, with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The ages of faith condemned slavery; the ages of reason condoned it. Even when Catholics were complicit in the return of slavery, it was over the clear objections of the popes; influenced by their secular neighbors, the children of the Church had come to think that they were too sophisticated to listen to the Holy Father.

Pernoud writes that this amazing emancipation of the slave in the days of Christendom has been little noted by historians, and that the reversion to slavery during the Renaissance should have caught their attention, prompting them to inquire as to why the slave had disappeared in the first place. The institution of slavery, she writes, "could not long survive the spread of the gospel." Conversely, the abolition of slavery, it seems, could not long survive the neglect of the gospel.

The Declaration of Independence is half right: It is true that all men are created equal, but this truth is not self-evident. The equality of man, that is of all men and women, is a revelation of Christ the King. It is a gift of Christmas. Christ the King says that his kingdom is not of this world, and that he has come to bear witness to the truth. He grants to us a generous measure of autonomy in governing ourselves, but he will not cede to us authority regarding the truths of human rights. He knows that if our rights are not guaranteed by God, it is only a matter of time before they are taken away by man, whether by the whim of a cruel dictator or the mood of a democratic majority.

Christ the King and Merriment -- Part I

"I have said that St. Francis deliberately did not see the wood for the trees. It is even more true that he deliberately did not see the mob for the men. What distinguishes this very genuine democrat from any mere demagogue is that he neither either deceived or was deceived by the illusion of mass-suggestion. Whatever his taste in monsters, he never saw before him a many-headed beast. He only saw the image of God multiplied but never monotonous. He honoured all men; that is, he not only loved but respected them all." ------ G.K. Chesterton in St. Francis of Assisi


The greatest social reform you probably never heard of, perhaps the greatest social reform ever, was directly due to the beneficent reign of Christ the King, whose feast is the grand finale to the Catholic liturgical calendar, celebrated this year on November 26. This great social reform, all-but-miraculous, was the abolition of slavery in the land of Christendom; the tale is told by Chesterton: how the slave found love and respect, dignity and freedom, in Europe, as he progressed from servant to serf to farmer. The slave emerged as a man, and a man not only possessing the hope of heaven, but also owning a parcel of land in the here-and-now...his own piece of the land of Christendom, blessed by the reign of God, blessed by the Son of God.

"At the beginning of the Dark Ages the great pagan cosmopolitan society now grown Christian was as much a slave state as old South Carolina," wrote Chesterton, in A Short History of England (1917). "By the fourteenth century it was almost as much a state of peasant proprietors as modern France. No laws had been passed against slavery; no dogmas even had condemned it by definition; no war had been waged against it, no new race or ruling caste had repudiated it; but it was gone."

A little further on in this chapter, which is appropriately entitled, "The Meaning of Merry England," Chesterton writes a line of great wonder, which not only explains the inspiration for the emancipation, but also is essential to the understanding of merriment, that great characteristic of Christendom, which in our day has mostly been dissipated, if not perverted: "The Catholic type of Christianity was not merely an element, it was a climate; and in that climate the slave would not grow."

This line was the inspiration for a short essay I wrote as part of my application to the graduate theology school of Christendom College (Notre Dame Graduate School), an essay titled, Theology and the Catholic Climate, which begins: "With a nod to Chesterton, I believe that Catholicism is a climate, and the best of climates for holiness and happiness, conducive to liberty and community, dignity and humility, productivity and festivity."

This is the climate inspired by Christ the King, and the first fruit of this climate, a fruit personified by people like St. Francis of Assisi, a hero of the land of Christendom, is that all men are created equal, each of us unrepeatable and irreplaceable, worthy of genuine love and respect. In the heart of Christ Jesus, there is no distinction in worth between Jew and Gentile, man and woman, free and slave (cf.Gal 3:23-29) -- nor between white and black, management and labor, born or unborn. There are no mistakes or accidents, no throwaways or disposables, no rejects or recalls. Each and every one of us is a special somebody, a priceless treasure, loved by Jesus immeasurably and intimately. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.... I have loved you with an everlasting love...." (Jer1:5,31:3)

This King does not call us servants, but friends, and he lays down his life for his friends. He never gives up on us, either, no matter how sinful we might be or how useless we might feel. Indeed, his mercies never come to an end. As St. Therese wrote, in Story of a Soul, "I repeat, full of confidence, the publican's humble prayer. Most of all I imitate the conduct of Magdalene; her astonishing or rather her loving audacity which charms the heart of Jesus also attracts my own. Yes, I feel it; even though I had on my conscience all the sins that can be committed, I would go, my heart broken with sorrow, and throw myself into Jesus' arms, for I know how much he loves the prodigal child who returns to Him." (cf.Lk15:11-32)

Again to borrow from Chesterton: Christ the King, the Everlasting Man, is also the Everyman, the New Man, the Second Adam. There is a "great paradox," wrote Chesterton, "by which he spoke of his whole humanity as in some way collectively and representatively human; calling himself simply the Son of Man; that is, in effect, calling himself simply Man." Pope Benedict XVI writes, in his encyclical letter, God is Love, of the description given by Christ the King of the Last Judgement -- "in which love becomes the criterion for the definitive decision about a human life's worth or lack thereof. Jesus identifies himself with those in need, with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and those in prison. 'As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me' (Mt 25:40). Love of God and love of neighbor have become one: in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself, and in Jesus we find God."(#15)

Christ the King is also the Good Samaritan (Lk10:25-37), and he calls each of us to go and do the same. According to the pope, in this parable Jesus is teaching that the meaning of "neighbor" is no longer restricted to the people of one's country or one's community. "The limit is now abolished," writes Benedict. "Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is my neighbor. The concept of 'neighbor' is now universalized, yet it remains concrete. Despite being extended to all mankind it is not reduced to a generic, abstract, and undemanding expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment here and now."

Before the days of Christ the King, the individual counted for very little, if anything, in the eyes of the pagan king, according to Chesterton, and for that matter, counted for very little in the eyes of the pagan democrat. In The Everlasting Man, he writes of the significance of "the dark giant called Slavery" that cast such a long, bleak shadow in the ancient world: "It stands for one fundamental fact about all antiquity before Christ; something to be assumed from first to last. It is the insignificance of the individual before the State. It was as true of the most democratic City State in Hellas as of any despotism in Babylon. It is one of the signs of this spirit that a whole class of individuals could be insignificant or even invisible."

Christ the King inaugurates a much different reign: "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them.... But I am among you as one who serves."(Lk:22:25-27) Not one of us is invisible, or even insignificant: "Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered."(Lk12:7) Our King, Our God, is also our most affectionate friend. "Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."(Rev3:20)

(In Part II: Christ the King and the Declaration of Independence. Christ the King is not only compatible with the liberties we cherish as Americans, he is necessary for those liberties to be given their fullest meaning and to endure in their purity and goodness. Our allegiance to America is not compromised by our allegiance to Christ the King, rather it is enhanced. God bless America!)

An uncompromising vote for the Abolition of the unfettered "Right to Choose"

Letter to the Editor
Dixie Times
Election eve, November 1860

I don't have a good word for Uncle Tom's Cabin. That book is all sentimental and sensational, befuddling the emotions of impressionable sorts, stirring up a lot of fool people to stick their noses where they don't belong. It's a slap against the good people of the South, God-fearing and law-abiding folks who know enough to tend to their own business and not bother other folks tending to theirs.

Slavery is an American institution. Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. I know my Constitution, and it counts the slave as only three-fifths of a man when it comes to figuring state taxes or representation in the House of Representatives. The slave ain't a person same as whites. The Supreme Court said so in 1857 about the slave Dred Scott. Slaves aren't included in the Constitution, they don't have rights -- that's what the Supreme Court said. And that's the law of the land.

The problem is with those crazy abolitionists, fanatics like that John Brown, who got what he deserved at Harper's Ferry. Them abolitionists don't got nothing better to do than to poke their noses into other folks' lives. Why they even steal our slaves and run them up north on what they call the underground railroad. Those slaves are our property -- hard-earned -- and nobody has the right to steal my property! And what's the government doing but talking?

Then those abolitionists get all hot and bothered about how we southerners treat our slaves. What do they know about it? Why, we southerners are the best thing that ever happened to the darkie. We civilized them and taught them Christian ways. We feed 'em and clothe 'em and put 'em up at night, caring for them like the children that they are. What would the darkie do if he were free? They aren't fit for living outside the plantation. They'd be lost on their own, and miserable. Do those ranting and raving abolitionists ever think of that?

Another thing: No Yankee has the right to interfere in a man's private life. That's in the Constitution, and so, too, is a man's right to his own religion, to interpret the Holy Bible as he sees fit. Didn't Paul tell slaves to obey their masters, and didn't he send the runaway slave Onesimus back to his master Philemon? This is a private matter between a man and God, a sacred thing, and that's American!

Well, that's about all I have to say, except that my ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War for the freedom to live as they choose. The South was built on slavery, and it'll die without it. I've got a good Christian wife and children to support. No northerner is going to put me to ruin, or tell me how to run my life.

If Abraham Lincoln is elected president, that's the last straw. The South would never have joined the Union without slavery, and we'll leave the Union to keep slavery. If we have to, we'll fight!

Sincerely,
A Southern Gentleman


footnote: This is a fictional letter, which is meant to have a ring of truth, and a measure of relevance, for today. To me, the abortion mills are akin to the plantations, while the pregnancy-help centers are akin to the underground railroad. To me, slavery -- denying the right to liberty -- or abortion -- denying the right to life -- aren't just any issue; they are fundamental rights necessary for the right to the pursuit of happiness.
Societies are defined -- indeed, they rise and fall -- by their commitment to honoring each and every human, especially the weak and the poor, who are so easily marginalized, so often hidden. When we fail in our sacred and civic duties to love the lost and the lonely, we ourselves become lost and lonely. As soon as we neglect to care for just one human, we begin to lose our humanity.
Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address of 1865, explicitly identified slavery as the cause of the Civil War, and also said: "Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'"
May God have mercy on us!

Audrey

Enjoy :)

A Feast to Our Lady of Merriment

"Merry does not mean drunk, or uproarious, or frivolous. It means that a man is light-hearted, that his mind is at ease, that he is in a good humour, that he is ready to share a bit of fun with his neighbours. There is humility in the word, and innocence, and comradeship.
"And such a frame of mind as that is not to be secured, by grown-up people, through a continuous whirl of excitements, or a long course of dissipations. It comes from within."
Father Ronald Knox in Captive Flames

I humbly but heartily propose a new title for Mary, an additional appellation, which is, Our Lady of Merriment. What is more, I propose a new feast day for Mary as Our Lady of Merriment, and that this day be September 22, one week after the day of Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady calls us to penance, but I believe she also calls us to merriment. If we partake of true merriment -- light-heartedness, innocent fun, jovial camaraderie -- enjoying the good gifts of God, then we will be less likely to turn to false merriment -- to frenetic pursuits and vapid distractions, to greed and drunkenness and promiscuity, to darkness and despair.

True merriment is the interplay of sacrifice and joy, pain and pleasure, surrender and fulfillment. It is fasting and feasting, not one or the other. It is both living in the moment and living for eternity. There is meaning to merriment, just as there is meaning to sorrow. True merriment is giving, sharing; false merriment is grasping, groping. Merriment nurtures lasting friendships, not flimsy alliances. Merriment is the highest form of happiness, for merriment is not haphazard or happenstance; it is not lost by mishaps; it never leaves one hapless. False merriment is one-night stands and hangovers and regrets; true merriment, in good times and bad, is secure, satisfying, enduring -- ultimately, everlasting!

The English convert Father Ronald Knox, in Captive Flames: on selected saints and Christian heroes (republished by Ignatius Press), writes of St. George, the patron saint of England, that the connection between the saint and the country seems rather faint, that is except for an old phrase, "Saint George for merry England!" and also the saint's popular placement over the doors of inns, the sign of "The George and Dragon." Knox wrote, "In that most essentially English of our institutions, the country inn, our national Saint does seem to have come to his own. He has passed, somehow, into that tradition of hearty good-fellowship, of beef-eating and beer-drinking jollity, of which Chaucer first hymned the praises and Dickens wrote the epitaph."

Knox, writing in the days between the world wars, 1919 to 1939, says not only that England is no longer merry, but that England will not be merry until it is Catholic, until it returns to the Catholic faith that England held close for centuries before the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic faith that made England what it truly is, what it should be, that made England merry. "The more England becomes Catholic, the more English she will become," says Knox.

"A country cannot be merry while it forgets God," he says. "And a country cannot be merry for long, or with safety, if it tries to be Christian without being Catholic.... For these non-Catholic Christianities -- why, I do not know, but as a matter of observation it is true -- always go hand-in-hand with some kind of Puritanism that interferes with man's innocent enjoyments. Sometimes they want to make us all into teetotallers, sometimes they are out against boxing, or racing, or the stage; sometimes they insist that we shall sit indoors all Sunday afternoon and go to sleep. Wherever Protestant opinion really rules a country, you always find legislation of one sort or another which is designed to stop people being merry." (In the 1600s, for example, the puritans of England and colonial New England actually outlawed Christmas; for more on this, see the update to my post of September 8, "An Ode to Our Lady of Merriment.)

Knox writes -- remember, it is sometime between 1919-1939 -- that a rich and powerful Protestant minority still had a tight puritan grip on America (for example, I think of Prohibition), but that Protestantism had already lost its grip on England. "And when Protestantism does lose its grip, a reaction sets in," says Knox, "a reaction against Puritanism, which instead of making people merry makes them dissolute." The description that Knox gives of the dissolute England of his day, though his references now seem quaint, is fascinating for its uncanny resemblance to the dissolute America of our day, an America which has passed from puritanism to paganism with only a passing glance at the merry medium of Catholicism:

"Merry England -- do we talk much about 'merry England' now?" asks Knox. "If you open your morning paper, and cast your eye down the news -- strikes, divorce actions, murders, unemployment statistics, grave warnings to the public, and similar matters that chiefly occupy its pages -- is merry the first word that rises to your lips?

"Oh, I know, we are gay, we are frivolous, we hurl ourselves into our pleasures. No expense can be too heavy for producing a film, for putting on a revue, for hiring a football professional. We dance all night, and play tennis all day -- those of us who have the leisure. But is there not something suspicious about this feverish gaiety of ours, about these demands for a brighter London, this dreary cry for the unsexing of women, these lurid posters that herald our public amusements?

"Does not our laughter ring rather hollow, as if we were making merry not because we feel light-hearted, but because we want to forget the anxieties that are weighing us down? Our industries, our trade, our empire, our birth-rate, our morals -- do they encourage merriment? Our poetry, our clever novels, our art -- do they reflect a mood of happiness? Our expert critics, do they bid us believe that all is well with England? Is our gaiety real, or is it a smile painted on the face of a corpse?"

It is my belief that for true merriment we need Mary -- Queen of Heaven and Earth, Mother of God, and, I propose, Our Lady of Merriment. It is Mary who exclaimed with much merriment, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is might has done great things for me, and holy is his name."