Catholic Thought discussion
Chaput, Things Worth Dying For
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Chapters 1 & 2
JMJ. Two points to start us:* Consumerist individualism and lack of sacrifice in modernity—“to make sacred”
The loss of the common good will be an important theme in this book. Liberalism has failed to preserve the public space for our republic, for we disagree on the basic definition of most things. We need to encounter each other, but we’ve forgotten how to do that. Consumerism individualism has made us all economic objects who treat each other as obstacles and inconveniences.
* Jesus thought we all were worth dying for—even us sinners. This is beautiful. When I read this, I think it’s one of the most important takeaways of the first 2 chapters. Jesus thought we were worth dying for, even though we are sinners.
This is my first time reading this author. I am pleasantly surprised to find it so accessible.
Without realizing I would be reading this book during the Easter season, my Lenten reading was the book "Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Lenten Devotional" by Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP. In two months, I turn 60 so I am seeing the humor in the themes of my reading of late. Is God telling me something? ;-) There's so much to unpack in these first two chapters. As I'm reading, my initial thoughts were more focused on the secular society and the associated problems as pointed out above by Peej. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't internalize this because I find the book is challenging me. It's easy to criticize our society and we should be aware of the problems. But how do I respond to what I encounter in this world? The question on page 17 that caused me to pause and drew me interiorly was "What do we love more than life?" because that is what reveals what is worth dying for and, to the other quote, "the things worth living for". My children came to mind almost immediately. My husband too but he's older than me so there's that. (Sorry, just a bit of humor on a very serious topic.)
Going a step further in the answer to that question, I thought of the martyrs who died for the Faith. When challenged they stood firm and gave their lives, some in very tortuous suffering, because of their love for Jesus Christ and his Church. St Maximilian Kolbe is a good example of giving his life for someone he didn't know but saw as a brother in Christ. I have an ancestor on my mother's side, a Catholic priest executed during the French Revolution, who could have saved his life by escaping to Switzerland. Yet he refused to go because he wanted to continue to bring the sacraments to his people during a vile time in French history. He knew he was at risk of death by guillotine and yet for him the people he served were worth dying for.
So I asked myself, "Am I willing to die for love of Jesus Christ and his people?" The thought scares me because of my awareness of my weaknesses and shortcomings. But the good Archbishop gives assurance with the following quote: "...martyrs do not bear witness to their own moral strength as remarkable men and women. They point instead to the relentless love God has for each of us in Jesus Christ." And this underscores the importance of hope because Archbishop Emeritus also says, "...our hope lies not in our own strength but in the unrelenting fidelity of God's love."
The challenge then becomes, if one identifies what is worth dying for does one's life reflect that? Does my life, do my choices reflect what is worth dying for?
Catherine wrote: "Without realizing I would be reading this book during the Easter season, my Lenten reading was the book "Remember Your Death: Memento Mori Lenten Devotional" by Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, FSP. ..."Thank you! A poignant thought.
Thoughts on Chapter 1:Something I've been pondering over the last few years amid all the confusion in and out of the Catholic Church, all the arguments, Catholics vs non-Catholics, Catholics vs Catholics... is the need for us to really know our faith if we still don't, and to hold on to the truths, or rather the Truth.
We will need to cling to what we've always known, what we've learned in Scripture and through tradition, the truths written in our bodies and our hearts and souls.
Whereas for the serious Christians death has always been a reality, its inevitability hit us even harder when COVID came. We have been forced to face our own mortality and those of our loved ones to a greater degree perhaps than we had before COVID. There may be fear of the unknown, but somehow there is also greater clarity, like a distillation of who we are, what we are, what we believe in.
It seems to be a common theme in the books I've read the past couple of years -- Benedict Option, Live Not By Lies, The Four Last Things, A Severe Mercy, Life of Christ, etc: what life means, what death means, what being a believer means. Of course it could also be that I'm getting old and feeling my age. 🤪
The memory of the faithful,like that of Mary, should overflow with the wondrous things done by God. Evangelii Gaudium #142
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The first chapter divides into four sections. Here are the connecting links as I surmise for each of the sections.
(1) Memory—History—Tradition—Dedication to Faith—Disconnect with the Modern World
(2) What is Worth Dying For—Family—Friendship—Honor—Evil—Martyrdom—Life—Prudence vs Cowardice.
(3) The Natural Loves—St. Polycarp’s Martyrdom—Are We Willing to Do the Same—Recent Martyrs—Can Luke Warm Moderns Have the Faith to Face Martyrdom—In the Natural Loves We Find Grace—Modern World Has Weakened the Bonds Which Provide Grace.
(4) The Memory of a Religion/People Give Purpose to Life—Moderns Look at the Past as a Created Ideology—In Contrast, Man Needs “A Compulsive Value” of His Past—Christ’s Willingness to Die for Us—Simone Weil: “The Destruction of the Past is the Greatest of All Crimes—An Outline of the Book.
Now looking at the building blocks of each section, let me propose a summary point for each section.
(1) There is a difference in mindset between the old world and the modern world, and that difference can be located to the dearness of memory and one’s past.
(2) What is worth dying for? The four natural loves: family, friendship, honor, and integrity, and the modern world has allowed a certain evil to spread that weakens these loves.
(3) Christians in the past have been willing to die for these loves. Some Christians today in less modern societies still die for these loves. Are we in the modern world able to rise to this level of faith?
(4) The problem with the modern world is the breaking of bonds with our past, the destruction of our history, and perhaps even more important than that of historical facts, the destruction of our memory.
Now one could take the summary points of each section as more overarching inferences to reach a chapter wide conclusive point. Let me do so.
Having established the link of memory of the past with that of the integrity of being, having suggested that the modern world has weakened the bonds to our memory, the Archbishop asks the question of whether we modern Catholics are able to suffer and even accept martyrdom for that integrity of being. I think this particular sentence in the second section of chapter one points to the theme of the book: “The self-love proper for a Christian includes the love of personal honor, the kind that comes from living with integrity in a world that would have us betray our convictions (p. 13). “Integrity of being” is the concept that Chaput uses to sum up all that is vital in ourselves, our faith, our family, our friends, and our past.
Now here’s me opining on what I’ve just delineated. Archbishop Chaput is spot on. For years I’ve opined on the disintegration of culture in our modern world, but I’ve never fully conceptualized it as a disintegration of the personal integrity, and, perhaps by extension, cultural integrity. Integrity of being is what is at stake in the modern world. How can we have an integrated person when the past is forgotten, or ridiculed, or, even worse seen, as something of other, something not of ourselves?
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That's a great analysis!
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"Anyone who has truly known God can never be cured of him."It is impossible to loose your faith when you have sincerely accepted, or known, God. To know God is to study the faith in a sufficient manner to reveal all the inner symmetries and consistencies that are not apparent to those who only do it superficially or seek emotional rewards, as St. John of the Cross taught us in our last read, Dark Night of the Soul. No arguments from without, no matter how sophisticated or clever can undermine the conviction.
When we open our hearts to God, his love gets revealed to us in such sweetness we want to hold on to it. So we seek to be in his presence always, and we share his love with everyone, even if they are not aware of it. We just do.
I am not sure that I see such a strong division between the pre-modern and the post-modern world regarding integrity. The pre-modern world had numerous examples of both personal and social vice, both individuals who clearly violated the values of their Christian heritage and societies that did the same. And it had numerous examples of saints, of martyrs who died with integrity for deeply held beliefs and people of generous virtue who lived day and day out for what they believed. But, I also know that I do not have as critical an opinion of the larger world as some others may. When I saw the selfless way that nnurses and doctors and other personnel sacrificed their lives during the past year of COVID, so many dying as they cared for infected patients, I saw individuals who were willing in very concrete ways to die for what they believed.I find that the thought of dying for someone I love or something I value does not frighten me as long as I don't have to suffer. It is the thought of suffering that makes me weak. I don't fear death. I do fear pain. And I think that extends to psychological pain. I find that living consistently for what I value, forgiving 70X7 times, loving the enemy and doing good to those who persicute me, considering the needs of others before my own desires, accepting humiliation for the sake of the Gospel or failure and rejection because in weakness Christ is strong, that all of this and so much more I can't sustain day in and day out over the long haul. I can rise to brief moments of grace, but I don't sustain it.
Two quotes from Manny's comment: His quote from the book: “The self-love proper for a Christian includes the love of personal honor, the kind that comes from living with integrity in a world that would have us betray our convictions (p. 13)"
and Manny's closing words:
For years I’ve opined on the disintegration of culture in our modern world, but I’ve never fully conceptualized it as a disintegration of the personal integrity, and, perhaps by extension, cultural integrity. Integrity of being is what is at stake in the modern world...
I can't say how much I agree. I still get surprised - and I'm in my 60s - when I discover how many people don't live with personal integrity. And despite my lifelong adherence to integrity, I've never been tested with the threat of losing my earthly life over it. How would I respond? Would I fail, so unlike the "Christian men beheaded on a Libyan beach" (pg 14)? I'm afraid to ask myself, for fear of the answer. I shy from interpersonal conflict on even the mundane.
So Archbishop Chaput's words drew me in from the start. This is also my first time reading the Archbishop. I felt at home immediately. From sentences that made me self-reflect: "Cowardice is very good at hiding behind prudence" (pg 13) to ones that made me thankful I'm staying the course: "Love can never involve accepting or joining in the evil of others." (pg 13)
I'm heartened by his words that even in our mediocrity, nothing can part us from God's love "if we turn to him with an open and humble heart" (pg 15, in italicized words) and by his encouragement to live our part in the big picture with energy and fire.
And that was just Chapter 1 ! Chapter 2's comparison of death in the Old and New Testaments was eye-opening. It made me grateful for the healthy attitude toward death I saw in all four of my immigrant grandparents. The perspective carried through the generations. When I cared for my father in his final days last year, I saw that he wasn't afraid. He said he was ready and was "curious to meet spirit." (He was a deeply religious man who in his youth had wanted to be a priest. Family finances prevented him from entering high school seminary at age 13.)
But as the Archbishop reminds us page 41: modern liberal societies are "mute on any transcendent meaning to life" and silent about death's meaning. The effect "is to undermine the bonds of community by diminishing the gravity of a universally shared and intense experience. It thus cripples any shared sense of purpose that might rightly require a person to sacrifice in society's service." So true and so sad.
I'm heartened by the reminder on page 43 of what the Gospels offer us. "Christians believe that death is not just the end of pain but the beginning of an endless joy, not just the loosening of burdens but a new start of endless intimacy with a loving God." Amen to that. I'm not ready to encounter death, but when the inevitable day draws near, I hope I remember God will be near at hand.
Gerri said, "I'm heartened by the reminder on page 43 of what the Gospels offer us. "Christians believe that death is not just the end of pain but the beginning of an endless joy, not just the loosening of burdens but a new start of endless intimacy with a loving God."A very important point. And that promise, I think, is more than the Israelites had when they repeatedly "committed sin in the sight of the Lord." They did not, as we do, have a clear vision of what comes after death, and reading the Bible piecemeal, as many of us Catholics have been doing, I don't think we have a clear concept of how the Israelites imagined their afterlife. Sheol is a (excuse the pun) shady vision at best. No wonder the chief priests couldn't agree on the idea of resurrection--how do you reconcile the dismal imaginings of an afterlife in the Psalms or in the book of Ecclesiastes with the visions of Daniel? Or reconcile the Jews' expectations of a Messiah who would crush their enemies and triumphantly assume Kingship of the whole world with the "suffering servant" of Isaiah (and in the Psalms as well)? No wonder the apostles were perplexed when Jesus predicted His death and resurrections, and wondered what was supposed to happen after the "three days"
We may still puzzle over what it really means when we hear that Jesus has conquered death, especially when people still die all around us. The very wise Archbishop has given us much to ponder in this chapter, especially here:
"The death of Jesus is the moment when Life itself enters into death." Wow.
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Your last paragraph reminded me of the famous Flannery O'Connor quote: "She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.” ;) I always get a kick out of that. But I'm with you. I don't want to suffer either.
As to your main point, it is possible we in retrospect romanticize the past. The past certainly wasn't perfect. However the demographics of broken families, sense of alienation (a common theme in the literature of the last hundred years), a lack of connection or feeling of significance, and of course the loss of faith and connection to a transcendence reveals a difference between the modern and the pre-modern. From TS Eliot's "The Waste Land" on, modern artists have identified a hollowness in the modern human being and their condition. Archbishop Chaput's "lack of integrity" perhaps is not specific enough to pinpoint the problem (if indeed it can be pinpointed) but is general enough to capture all aspects of this difference. You're probably a rare person - on either the conservative or liberal side of things - to think there is no difference.
I thought I would add to the discussion a couple of the parts that struck me in the first two chapters. He personally challenged me when I got to where he says “cowardice is very good at hiding behind prudence...no person of integrity betrays his or her convictions; mouthing lies we know to be lies murders us inwardly...Love can never involve accepting or joining in the evil of others” This challenged me greatly and struck me between the eyes because at my workplace (which is a soybean oil refinery) personal integrity certainly is not at the top of the list for values, no less moral personal integrity. I find these words of his are a start warning to me. But to be honest I’ve struggled greatly with many different things regarding what it looks like for me to live a life of a True Christian in a world and culture that doesn’t seem to even know itself. I found hope in his words when he recalled Christ died for every one of us, even us sinners, but I still struggle greatly to know what it looks like for me in the daily grind to hope in his love and live in his love.
I was further struck when he was speaking of how “As a culture, we seem to float in a fluid world of limitless choice.” And how “This can seem like a blessing, but it often turns out to be a curse. That’s because only a life without weight, without substance, can float.” This gave me a small sense of hope as I have felt only a feeling of great moral weight upon me in recent years. However, I am also perplexed on how to deal with this moral weight. I come from a broken family, my parents divorced about 8 years ago and the weight of it has nearly crushed me and my siblings. Ive pondered the consequences of that event many times and I struggle on a daily basis to understand how to find healing and bridge gaps in broken relationships, no less to find a meaningful vision for my own future. There are very few voices within the catholic community that seem to give me a meaningful sense of vision for the future, and Chaput is one of them. He doesn’t sugarcoat things, he lays the stark reality against the redeeming cross of Christ. I am looking forward to reading the rest of this book, though I know it will continue to challenge me. I ask for anyone who is willing in this discussion thread to keep me in your prayers as I am searching for a healing path forward for myself. Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread, I enjoy reading others comments.
This book by Charles Chaput (pronounced Chapew according to a good friend), is making me think. I am reading this book on Kindle and have highlighted many worthy quotes to remember.
As we read through the chapters, I will share what I have highlighted and the highlights can be found here:
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/55987...
Manny, I did a poor job of expressing myself. I did not mean to imply that there are no differences between the pre and post modern culture. Modern people do have a different world view than pre modern people. The social ills in the post modern world are different than the predominent social ills in the pre modern world. I just don't think that our age has a monopoly on personal vice or social sin or that we have a fewer proportion of virtuous lives. Divorce may have been rare in the Middle Ages, but this might not have been due to greater loyalty, but rather to economic and social forces. Abuse of women and children was rarely prevented by social forces and so there was a far higher proportion of family members enduring various forms of abuse 600 years ago than there is in most Western cultures today because society removes many abused children from homes and abused women have supports to leave their situation. So, yes, there are differences between pre and post modern cultures and peoples. I simply think that there are great examples of integrity in every era and great examples of serious sin in every era. Personally, I don't think I face more difficulty in following the mandates of the Gospel than did those who lived 5 or 7 centuries before me. Maybe I am lucky or maybe an earlier age was that much more virtuous. But reading of the clergy abuses in Catherine of Siena's age and of the prevolence of violence has not convinced me that any time did not face serious challenges to discipleship, just different challenges. My great grandmother had a saying that if all the crosses in the world were put in a pile and we were permitted to pick the cross we were most willing to carry, we would pick our own cross. By extrapolation, if I could see the pros and cons of living the Christian life faced by every generation, I think I would pick my time because God has put me in the time and place with th eunique crosses and challenges best suited to me.
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Irene, what is your basis for saying this? I do not doubt there has been abuse forever, but to claim there was more than today, and that there were fewer protections for victims I find risky without proof.
There must be a correlation between anonymity and opportunity for abuse. For now I am going by common sense.
Before the industrial revolution and the anonymity of large cities (safe a few) people lived in small communities where everyone knew everyone. Even cities were small, often only 3,000 to 4,000 inhabitants. Families usually lived several generations under one roof. There was far less privacy for individuals than there is today. These conditions don't foster sustained abuse, to the contrary, potential victims are better protected. If a man slaps his kids around or his wife, there are witnesses, what's more, the entire community knows and half of these folks you are related to in some form. The abuser doesn't have the same impunity, may even be much restrained, for he cannot hide in the anonymity of a large apartment complex or sprawling bedroom "community."
Sean wrote: "I thought I would add to the discussion a couple of the parts that struck me in the first two chapters. He personally challenged me when I got to where he says “cowardice is very good at hiding beh..."Sean, thank you for your contribution. I am praying for you.
This quote also struck me--how much am I hiding behind prudence on a daily basis? In this time of mission and new evangelization, what is cowardice and what is strategy? What is enough on a daily basis?
I struggle with these things because I know I am a sinner. My story is not the same as yours, but I understand your concerns.
Kerstin, I am basing my claim on a number of factors. One, it was legal to beat one's wife and children until relatively recently. If the legal code permits physical violence against spouse or child, then it is unlikely that the surrounding community would find the behavior problematic. Rather, it would indicate that the community saw physical violence against wife or child as acceptable which means that it is less likely that anyone would intervene. Sexual abuse of a spouse was not believed possible until very recently in the legal mind-set. Also, psychological or emotional abuse is a modern concept. If a community does not even recognize these, it is unlikely that the community would try to stop it. Two, Contemporary societies that have less access to modern Western ideology have high incidents of violence against women and children. Three. In Western post modern cultures, we know that spousal and child abuse is most prevalent in localities with minimal safeguards for their protection, where women do not feel that they have the resources to leave the abuse. There is no evidence of a point in the historical record where this shifted, when women who lacked means of self support left abusive marriages in any significant numbers. Since women in pre-modern cultures lacked the right to own property or work outside the home, it is hard to imagine how they could have survived financially had they left an abusive marriage. Further, laws favored the father in custody issues in pre-modern cultures. If a woman feared an abusive man, she would have had the added disinsentive of leaving her children with someone who was abusive. Four. We know from religious and other texts that divorce was viewed as shameful in pre-modern Christian cultures. Because of the tight knit dynamic of many of these communities, shame had more currency than it does for post-modern cultures. Although it is possible that the town drunk that beats his wife might be confronted by her brothers, we also know from more contemporary close knit communities that it is just as likely that those brothers do not see it as a problem. If the woman grew up in an alcoholic family, if her father used physical force to discipline her mother or forced her mother to have sex, then where or when would she learn that this is even abusive. Domestic violence was certainly not preached against from the pulpit or anywhere else. And where would her brothers have learned that their sister's situation was wrong? Although the written record of the common person does not extend too far, we do know that as far back as it does go, physical force against those of lesser rank was not considered inappropriate. Since wives were inferior to their husbands, children to their parents, servants to their masters, what we now name as abusive behavior was regarded as normative. We don't have to look back too far to see this. I recall watching episodes of "I Love Lucy" where Ricky spanked Lucy, putting her over his knee, when she got herself into trouble. This was a loving couple. But no one in my middle class modern world questioned if a husband had a right to spank his wife. But it would have been inconceivable for a wife to spank her husband as if he were a child. And, although we don't have much record of common people's life prior to wide spread literacy, we do enough literary works which depict violence in domestic settings to indicate that it was a part of life. Five. Victim shame is a common psychological phenomonon. Sexually abused children are able to hide it within their family; mothers often don't know that their child is being sexually abused by a close relative. If such shame is strong enough today after all the public education, that even a young child can hide it within the walls of a single house, it is likely that abused wives and children would know how to hide it from neighbors. Even in the closest set of neighbors, people tend to look the other way. And, although many people lived in villages, the extended family compound that is seen in traditional Chinese families or some Arabic cultures did not survive as long in the West. Family homes may have been separated by some small plot of land. But even where people live in multi-family units, people are reluctant to intervene in domestic disputes. Domestic violence calls are the most dangerous for contemporary cops. People would have learned early not to confront a violent, angry neighbor.Sorry, this is far from the book. I did not mean my comment above to be controversial. I need to be more careful in my postings when they don't mirror the common wisdom of the group.
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I don't think you did a poor job. I understood and I even addressed it as saying we may romanticize the past. We agree. The pasts - plural - have their own dysfunctions. I think what you're missing is that Chaput - and many others who point out the dysfunctions of the modern world, especially Pope Benedict XVI - as something distinct from the past. We're not talking about the crosses that all people bear or the evils that all people have to overcome. Never before has the notion of the absence of the transcendence been so upon western culture. Never before has relativism over come the foundational Truths of western culture. Never before in what was once considered "Christendom" has its own followers deconstructed - and I use that word specifically - its own values to what Pope Benedict calls pathological. Never before a has western culture faced the potential of the dissolution of Christianity itself. The demise of Christianity across western culture - perhaps more so in Europe than the US, but we're catching up - has never been so breathtaking. Every year there are worse statistics. Yes evil people did evil things across all times, but the type of dysfunction western culture is facing are unique and probably existential.
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I am reading this book on Kindle and have highlighted many worthy quotes to remember.
As we read t..."
Celia that is helpful. It's one of the advantages of reading an ebook. If I ever need to quote the book, I'm going to see if you highlighted it first before I type it out. ;)
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Sean, I will certainly pray for you. I have to believe there are Catholic groups out there to help. Here is one I found online for children of divorced:
https://rainbows.org/about-us
I don't know your age. That one looks like it's for younger than I imagine you to be, but they may help your siblings. Do a search for "catholic groups for children of divorced parents." There must be something there. You can also ask your pastor at your parish. But I have also found that joining any Catholic lay group helps people psychologically. The group Communion and Liberation attracts a lot of young adults. Here's their website: https://english.clonline.org/cl Of course there is Knights of Columbus too.
You might consider joining a lay order. They are a little more demanding than a group but can be fulfilling. I'm a lay Dominican.
A lot depends on what is available in your vicinity. I hope this helps. Let me know in a private message if there is anything else I can do.
Manny wrote: "Irene wrote: "Manny, I did a poor job of expressing myself. I did not mean to imply that there are no differences between the pre and post modern culture. Modern people do have a different world vi..."Let's use this book to remain hopeful. We know that the gates of hell shall never prevail against the Church and the Body of Christ. Based on reading so far, Archbishop Chaput is building us up, reminding us to seek what's worth dying for.
I think we can easily use this as a bridge to connect with others, many of them not Christian, who are suffering in our society due to the lack of the transcendent. But they don't know it yet.
Indeed, and I think the Archbishop would agree, our largest challenge isn't atheism--it is responding to those we encounter in our lives who thirst for God, but don't know how or why to respond.
Perhaps I am bringing my own melancholy to the book but the weight of the thing is almost too much to bear.Adding to the discussion thus far, regarding modernity and pre-modernity... we in the 2021 West have quite literally solved all corporeal problems. And we have nothing. This seems to be the sad call of Chaput.
I recall the old children's song... There's a hole in the bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza....
Liza always has a perfectly sensible and logical solution to Henry's problem. But in the end, all the sense and all the logic leave Henry with an empty bucket and the same original problem.
We live in a Liza world with Henry problems. And nobody seems to care.
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Adding to the discussion thus far, regarding modernity and pre-modernity... we in the 20..."
I believe that the human condition has never changed, from Homer and the Greek Tragedies to today. I do not believe in the utopian notion that we live in a more enlightened age. As with every generation, vices are to be found everywhere and virtues are in short supply. And what are they? Vices are ultimately a failure to love, and virtues are the manifestations of love. I firmly believe that when I act lovingly I receive much love back. It is reciprocal. If I touch others, Praise be to God! For it is He who made that heart receptive, not me.
Like Sean and Peej, the line regarding prudence and cowardice was yet another that caused me to stop and think. I work in big tech where relativism abounds and people are pretty vocal with their beliefs, political and otherwise. I feel like I'm frequently faced with conversations where I have to decide how to respond versus keeping quiet. There have been occasions where I've started a sentence with, "As a Catholic..." but it's typically after I've had to stop to weigh the merit of saying something versus not. I fear being a coward. We're the Church Militant and I don't always feel like I live up to that. What does that even look like in this day and age?
In the end, this is why we pray for the gifts of the Holy Spirit (which I know I don't do enough of!) because it's the only way one can have the wisdom, understanding, knowledge, fortitude, counsel, piety, and fear of God to handle what comes our way. I don't know about all of you but I constantly struggle with trusting and surrendering to God in spite of His giving us the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete as our Divine Assistant!
In spite of all my ruminating about these heavy topics, Chaput throws in the quote from Dom Philippe Dupont towards the end of Chapter 2 that I think sums up our lives here on earth rather simplistically:
"Our existence must be a novitiate for eternity."
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"Our existence must be a novitiate for eternity.""
I love that quote!
Kerstin wrote: "I believe that the human condition has never changed"Well, human nature hasn't changed but the human condition has certainly changed. Radically so. For many at least.
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(1) Death as a mystery—Ancients honoring of the dead—Modernity’s trivialization of death—Contrast toward death of the modern vs. pre-modern—The Meaning of life that can be drawn from the approaches.
(2) Scripture teaches us about death—Death from Sin (Genesis)—Death without God’s Relationship (Psalms)—Death without hope (Ecclesiastes)—Live for Today.
(3) Scripture’s alternative teaching on death—Death will be swallowed up forever (Isaiah)—The dead awakening (Daniel)—God Victorious over death—Jesus as means to that victory—Lazarus—Gethsemane—Crucifixion—Descent into hell—Resurrection.
(4) Ancients understood rhythm of creation through death—modernity sees no transcendence in death—Gospel offers death with meaning & transcendence—Cistercian Monk’s approach to death—Meeting death with hope.
So now if I try to draw a culminating point of each subsection, I come up with this.
(1) “How a culture deals with death, reveals how it thinks about the meaning of life and the nature of the human person” (p31).
(2) One theological concept of death in the Old Testament is that death is the end of life, so live for today.
(3) A competing theological concept of death in the Old Testament is the prefiguring of the defeat of death and that fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ.
(4) Many today have chosen to trivialize death, but the Christian approach is that of the Cistercian monks.
Rolling the themes of the four subsections into an overarching point of the chapter, I would articulate it this way: “How a culture deals with death, reveals how it thinks about the meaning of life and the nature of the human person,” and the Cistercian monks deal with it best.
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Well, human nature hasn't changed but the human condition has certainly changed. Radically so. For many at least."
I understand what you're saying.
I used the term 'human condition' in a specific way, Wikipedia summarizes it nicely,
"all of the characteristics and key events that compose the essentials of human existence, including birth, growth, emotion, aspiration, conflict, and mortality. This is a very broad topic which has been and continues to be pondered and analyzed from many perspectives, including those of religion, philosophy, history, art, literature, anthropology, psychology, and biology."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_c...
Manny, Yes, I did not acknowledge tjat there are very unique qualities of the current post modern world that are antithetical to the Gospel. Relativism is certainly a new way of seeing reality. I don't disagree with the characteristics of this age. I suppose where I break is with the perception that I often hear that these qualities make this a more evil age. I suppose I lose sight of the forest for the trees. I hear the naming of specific social ills and I immediately think of social ills that were more prominent in another age. But, you are certainly correct that we face unique challenges in living out the Gospel.
Manny wrote: "So let me break down chapter two in the same fashion I did with chapter one. Chapter two also is comprised of four subsections. Here’s how I identified Chaput’s train of thought in each subsection...."I was struck by Chaput's description of the memorial in Britain that looks like a tomb to the new 9/11 memorial. His suggestion is that Americans tend to ignore death or hide it.
After living in Washington, DC for 6 years, I realized the sheer amount of war memorials in the city. There are many public sculptures, but I don't think there are any stark reminders of death present in them.
Have any of you observed a direct public reference to death in your day-to-day lives, besides those in the Church and its ministries?
I do see this at former battlefields, such as Gettysburg.
Manny asks, "Have any of you observed a direct public reference to death in your day-to-day lives, besides those in the Church and its ministries?"I have observed many on our business travels, not just the statues but monuments, where names are named, memorializing the soldiers, police officers,(these are on the grounds of nearly every city government) and lately the first responders (some in my mother's hometown of West, Texas), who have died defending the rest of us. I think of the memorial in Oklahoma City for those who died in the bombing, and Kennedy's assassination site in downtown Dallas. These are just in Texas and other southern states we've traveled in.
I have seen a number of communities that create spontaneous memorials to recent victims of violent crimes or deadly accidents with candles and flowers and pictures and memoriabilia at the site. These are usually short term monuments, but they are a public recognition of death. Some have turned into a perminent commemoration. My high school created a perminent memorial to students who died while still enrolled.
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I agree. I don't think there is more evil in this age than in the past. In romanticizing the past we tend to ignore a lot of good institutions that have been set up, such as the medical system. I think the evil of today is disconcerting for to reasons. (1) It's here with us now, so it's right in front of us. (2) The loss of faith across swaths of the population is unprecedented since Christianity won over the Roman Empire.
Just between me and you and the hundreds that may read this, I would not prefer to live in a previous age.
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Manny wrote: "Yes, that comment from the Archbishop about modernity trivializing death doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. Some do, but for the most part most people don't."Americans especially honor the armed services and soldiers for their sacrifices. That's something that most agree on--some sense of duty and sacrifice for the nation through volunteering for military service. The archbishop doesn't address this American respect for the military, though I understand what he is trying to say.
Do we have any type of civilian honor, duty, or sense of sacrifice? When we're not fighting wars, do we care for our brothers and sisters simply because they're fellow citizens? Do we welcome immigrants to our shores because of a notion of duty based on our history of immigration and our immense common wealth?
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I'm going to have to think about this. I have a feeling we're missing something here. Here are some thoughts:
For one, death is not nearly as public anymore. It used to be that a person who lost a loved one was publicly in mourning. You wore black for some months, even a year in some cases, and after some time you were in half-mourning. There were also customs of having a black hat band (in the days when everyone wore hats) or men wore a black band on the sleeve. Not so long ago if you attended a funeral you wore black, no exceptions. We are so much less formal today - a loss of culture and cultural refinement, really - that in this case, in how we present ourselves, we have trivialized death. What's more, a grieving person who actually follows tradition, wears black longer than others deem appropriate, gets ridiculed or their mental state gets questioned, as if it is not permissible to give expression to one's loss and grieving.
Lets look at hearses. Still recognizable, but you can't see the coffin. Look at hearses from just a few decades ago. The glass was never tinted, you could see the coffin. And going back further, the coffin was prominently shown. People showed deference when a hearse and funeral procession went by, and out in the country this still happens. folks stop their cars, remove their hats. In all the years we lived in suburbia, I don't recall ever seeing a funeral procession go by - let alone traffic stopping.
I think the pandemic has broken through our denial of death. A hundred years from now, the picture of Queen Elizabeth II, dressed in black with head bowed, sitting alone at her husband’s funeral, will be one of the most iconic images of our time.
I’m not disagreeing with you, Kerstin. I think Queen Elizabeth’s actions were a somber reminder of the loss of culture to which you rightly referred.
Kerstin wrote: "Manny wrote: "Yes, that comment from the Archbishop about modernity trivializing death doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. Some do, but for the most part most people don't."I'm going to have to th..."
I think you're getting somewhere with the loss of formality. We have really lost a sense of decorum, as there are no real defined, formal requirements for events that are truly and fundamentally human. It comes down to personal choices more and more, and if certain rules are instituted, it sometimes is derided as bigotry or unjust judgement.
I do think that our current Western society lives with death less in front of them than did people 500 or 1,000 years ago. But I am not sure if it is a chicken or egg question. I wonder if we spend less time looking at death because we spend less time threatened by death until we are elderly. Our life expectancy has climbed dramatically due to modern medicine and better nutrition. Safety measures in many professions means that fewer people die in work place accidents than they did a century ago. Childhood diseases, child birth, so many ordinary life moments that snatched people out of life, no longer do so on the scale they used to. And more and more people make their final journey to death in a hospital or nursing home setting instead of the family home. Death does not touch the average person as consistently or regularly as it did our ancesters. I suspect when death was a daily reality, people had a greater need to reconcile themselves to its inevitability. Now that most of us anticipate that we will live into our senior years, there is not the same psychic need to make peace with death. At the same time, we still need to mourn, to find a way to keep living after someone close has left this world. We are seeing a booming business in memorial jewlery and art.
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I'm going to have to th..."
Good points Kerstin. By me I've seen wakes go from three days down to two and now one and since Covid none. And I have pictures of funeral processions in my small old world Italian town my family came from. It was certainly more ceremonious than the ones I've experienced here.
Maybe there is something to it, but I still don't think it's a major symptom. There are greater symptoms that point to a problem with modernity.
I'm wondering how the hospice workers have been affected by CoVid. We've lost several friends during this long lockdown, and not been able to attend any services for them, though most have not passed from CoVid. I think the cruelest part of this lockdown is that too many people are dying alone. When our mothers were in hospice, we were with them as much as we could be, and that helped us through the grief. My husband felt privileged to have been with her, reading prayers to her from a book her pastor had given us, at the moment she passed away. I felt blessed to have planned, with my brother's help, the kind of funeral that Mom wanted, as we had talked about her wishes ahead of time. It pains me that we have not been able to have those conversations with our own children, and we should. I am glad this is the year of St. Joseph, patron of a happy death. For Christians, death should be embraced as a welcome and natural event but fear gets in the way, doesn't it?
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The idea of forgetting one’s past and traditions really struck a chord in me. It is what links us with our heritage and therefore builds our identity. Societies and cultures grow. To forget is to be cut off from the roots and stem of our being. It’s a wonderful place for the Archbishop to start the book.
I loved the personal touches that embellish the work. His retirement, his dioceses, his parents, the family mortuary business, and the small Kansas town upbringing. I’ve only gone a few chapters in, so I don’t know if he expands on them. I hope he does.
Prudence versus cowardice. “Cowardice is very good at hiding behind prudence.” As others have stated, I too sometimes shrink from expressing my faith. Less so now that I’m older, but it still happens.
Perhaps the central theme of the entire book: “The self-love proper for a Christian includes the love of personal honor, the kind that comes from living with integrity in a world that would have us betray our convictions.” Great quote.
“Fear of martyrdom is the start of an honest appraisal of our own spiritual mediocrity…So we should ponder this fear more deeply, rather than repressing it, as we so often do.” That is worthy of deep contemplation.
“There can be no concordat between the Christian understanding of human identity, dignity, and sexuality and the contempt directed at our beliefs by so much of the emerging culture.” No there cannot be, and I would say is the central political struggle for Catholics today. But why does he say “emerging culture”? This In the 1960s one could say it was the “emerging culture.” That’s sixty years ago. Not only is it no longer just emerging, but it’s established, dominant, and tyrannical.
I enjoyed the exegesis of the two Biblical traditions of looking at death. I had never realized that, though it’s quite evident Judaism is lacking of a full notion of the afterlife. I hope the Archbishop will do more exegesis. He seems like a good teacher.
The trivialization of death versus the deep respect for death. I’m torn on whether I fully agree on this. My father passed away while on an EKG where we let nature take its course. We waited in the room while the beats slowed and finally stopped. It was gut wrenching and I nearly burst into tears when they did, even though I knew that was what was coming. Once he passed his body took on a different perception. It became holy where moments before it was not. We gave him a proper wake and burial. Family and friends came. It wasn’t trivial.
I have to get Nicolas Diat’s book. It sounds profound.
I've returned to the Archbishop to help me figure out my own disconnect between romanticizing the past and cringing about the present. Many commenters made important points about society past/present. I'm guilty of sometimes donning rose-colored glasses about the past. Irene's comments reminded me of a glitch in my warm childhood memories. More than once, my parents or other surrounding neighbors called police about the family whose apartment adjoined ours in Brooklyn. The mother viciously beat her son on a regular basis. (I suspect she abused her husband, too.) Police could do nothing other than stop the immediate crisis. No laws existed. I remember because my 6-year-old self asked my parents why the beatings kept happening. That was 55-60 years ago, not centuries ago. Many things about modern society are positives.
Then why do I worry about today and what I see ahead?
Archbishop Chaput on page 19 mentions how "scholar and skeptic J.H.Plumb considered the past a created ideology. Yet even he, the Archbishop points out, had "respect for the legacy of Jews and Christians" whose believers " 'gave a new significance to life.' " (page 20).
Jesus, his times, his beliefs, and his teachings weren't created. They were/are real and if everyone truly followed His teachings, wouldn't it solve many (all?) the ills of society (and have done so in the past)?
On page 22, the Archbishop quotes Simone Weil about the destruction of the past being a crime. He then says:
Along with all its achievements, the world we've built ensnares us today in a permanent present, a narcotic cocoon of distractions and appetites, here and now. It erases our past. It makes us forget."
His next line is also in italics in the book: It steals the memory of who we are as Christians and why we're in the world. And there, I think, is my answer.
On a side note, I know we're getting ready to move into Chapters 3 and 4. As time permits, I'd be curious to hear younger members' comments about the past, particularly early- and mid-century America. To some of us, it's like yesterday due to lived experience and being around others who came before. To others, it's as foreign as the 19th century is to me. I'm fascinated by how our perspectives may differ.
I've had a busy week so this is my first chance to chime in.This is the third of Archbishop Chaput's books that I've read and I always find him to be very engaging and concise, which is very helpful since he's always dealing with heady topics.
The Archbishop's discussion of memory in chapter one is fascinating to me on multiple levels. His immediate reference to the differences between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem hits because I had the chance to visit the Holy Land 9 years ago and you can't take a step in or around The Holy City without kicking something that's historical and weighted with meaning. Probably the most telling thing is that the only experience I had of Tel Aviv in my 10 days there was getting to the airport to fly home.
Similarly, the discussion of philosophy and memory resonates. When the archbishop says "Socrates didn't 'study' wisdom. He pursued it as the framework of his life. He loved it as a friend," I think back to my own journey to deeper faith life and discerning my vocation.
This ties in with Gerri's comment at 49 above. Even though I was baptized a Catholic as an infant, I grew up mostly attending a Protestant church where my mother had grown up. My senior year in high school, I read The Divine Comedy for the first time and came to the seemingly obvious realization that Christian history begins before 1517. After that, I began reading Patristic authors like they were going out of style (which they kind of are) and so tapped into this wealth of memory which I had barely brushed against in school. And I think that type of thing is really what Archbishop Chaput is trying to point to. We're disconnected from our identity because we don't have this exposure to foundational thought. We learn history as facts, we don't have a philosophical conversation with the people who helped to shape the beliefs that we take for granted.
A secular example of this is in American schooling. I got a hold of some of my grandfather's grade school textbooks several years ago and read through them. Of particular interest to me was his eighth grade English textbook. My grandfather was born in 1917 and in 1930ish he was reading things like Daniel Webster's Speech at the Dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument, George Washington's Farewell Address, Longfellow's poem The Courtship of Miles Standish, selections from Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, things I wouldn't read until I was in college. The point of the English course he took in middle school was as much to teach the rudiments of English grammar as it was to teach the basic republican attitudes which attune one to his duties as a citizen.
Chapter two's discussion of our attitudes toward death I think plays into that as well. I know this has caused some heated back and forth, but I think by and large as a culture we don't want to think about death as a real thing, which is why it is so much more traumatic when something happens to draw our attention to it. I saw this when I took Clinical Pastoral Education a couple of years ago. In order for a family to really be with a loved one while he or she is dying, a conscious decision has to be made to go to the hospital and stay there. People don't generally die at home and so it is easy for the family to simply let the hospital, nursing home, or hospice handle things and just worry about getting everyone together for the funeral. Especially when people have a more secular mindset and don't want to confront the reality of their own mortality, there is an attitude of wanting to go on as if nothing has happened, barely even allowing the person who has lost the ability to grieve.
Catholic Thought
Books mentioned in this topic
The Courtship Of Miles Standish (other topics)Dark Night of the Soul (other topics)
Things Worth Dying For: Thoughts on a Life Worth Living (other topics)
I have been a long admirer of Archbishop Chaput and have read some of his books and many of his articles and speeches. His abiding faith, his love for the Church and our Judeo-Christian heritage, and his command of theology, history, and philosophy, permeates everything he writes about. To anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure yet, I hope you will enjoy reading this book.
I will only give brief introductions to the chapters – hopefully capturing their essence - leaving most of the content for the discussion and your reactions.
If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem
Archbishop Chaput opens the book with a comparison of the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Tel Aviv is a new city, young and vibrant, yet without mooring in history. Jerusalem, in contrast, is so steeped in history, every brick and stone tells its own story deep into the past. We all are people born into history, what came before us has shaped us, how we shape the present, and how we along with our ancestors shape the future. But this is only a partial picture. We “are yearning to touch the supernatural, the hunger to be in the presence of the eternal, is buried in human nature. Places of deep significance, steeped in sacred and historical meaning, draw us in.
Here is, in my estimation, the most significant quote from this opening chapter, and I assume encapsulates the entire book,
Gentle Into That Goodnight
In our secular society we tend to hide death. As Christians the fear of death is transformed by the Resurrection. ”Our existence, writes Archbishop Chaput, must be a novitiate for eternity.”