Catholic Thought discussion
Chaput, Things Worth Dying For
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Chapters 9 & Afterword
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(1) Imagine Your Funeral—Candor—The Four Last Things—Royal Road—Quo Vadis—Pilgrim’s Progress—End of the Journey—Death.
(2) Only God Knows Another Person’s Soul—Being Judged After Death—Particular Judgement—Divine Judgement—Purgation—Purgatory—Justice Demands Resolution.
(3) Doctor Faustus—Hell—Scientism Leads to Delusion—Satan—The Reality of Hell—Building Hell on Earth—God Does Not Abandon Us.
(4) Heaven—Love—Vladimir Solovyov—Learning to Love God More than Our Appetites—Jesus is the Face of God—Beauty Projects to the Divine—Love That Moves the Sun—The Hound of Heaven—Heaven is Real.
Next a summing statement of each of the sections.
(1) “The sheer honesty of pondering one’s death forces a person to consider what matters, to choose a path, to focus on the direction and meaning of his or her life, and to treat others accordingly” (p. 203).
(2) The thought of being judged by a just God who knows us better than ourselves is or should be terrifying.
(3) “We become what we choose and do” (p. 216). God gives us the freedom to choose the hell we want to live in, and justice demands it.
(4) Heaven is the fulfillment of love, “the home of love,” and the desire of God of our end.
To summarize the chapter then we could articulate it as thus. The Catholic tradition teaches us that the four last things cannot be avoided and must be contemplated to complete a successful journey to our everlasting home.
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"Jesus is the Face of God." We need to come back to this every moment of every day. Mercy is the fulfillment of justice, and it is going beyond it. God is mercy. While the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the love of God is the end of wisdom. The beatific vision, the encounter of love and mercy of God in the face of the person of Jesus Christ, must be our final end.
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This is another memorable statement to remember. God will not go against our will, and we choose where we'll ultimately end up.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremen_...
Kerstin, years ago my husband and I were in Germany and visited the city of Ulm. In the center of the city was a not-that-beautiful but still impressive Lutheran cathedral. Our hosts told us that during WWII allied planes were told to avoid Ulm, because its cathedral was the tallest in the world. I don’t know if that is still the case, however.
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Oh wow, Frances! I don't know if I ever mentioned this here, but I grew up in Ulm, or rather, outside in a small town. I did go to college prep school in the city.
Yes, the cathedral is still the highest church steeple in the world at 161m, and the inside is rather bare, but it still has some very impressive artwork that survived the protestant iconoclasts, such as the centuries old stained glass windows, wood carved choir seating, and stone masonry. It is said many of the side altars were not destroyed but are now in other churches in the surrounding area.
Ulm was heavily bombed during WWII, though they did have the order to avoid the cathedral. 80% of the city was destroyed. We lost 9 family members during those attacks.
https://media2.trover.com/T/5c4f15695...
https://img.locationscout.net/images/...
Schmerzensmann - Man of Sorrows
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
Images of the wood-carved choir seating - the grimaces and "unsavory" carvings are on the underside of the choir seats. As you clap them down, they face downward toward hell
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ulm+chorges...
When I was in 11th grade the textbook we used for French class was designed to not only teach the students the French Language, but also about French history and culture. Chapter 2 or 3 was about the Early Middle Ages, and specifically the founding of the Carolingian Empire and the literary selection was the climactic battle from La Chanson du Roland which Archbishop Caput discusses.
Thank you so much, Kerstin. I am very sorry about the losses in your family. The stories told to the world are often at variance with the actual facts on the ground, aren’t they?I didn’t go into the cathedral and so truly appreciate the pictures you provided here. I remember Ulm as having a small town feel. Would that be right? And the people we met spoke excellent English. I never imagined that, years later, I would meet a lovely woman from Ulm (you) who would tell me about her city.
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Those are beautiful pictures Kerstin. Thanks. May your family members who perished there rest in peace.
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(1) Journey’s End—Relationship Between Faith, Hope, and Charity—Friendship—Philia vs. Agape—Candor in Friendship.
(2) Friend—Old Testament Friendships—New Testament Friendships—To Lay Down One’s Life for One’s Friends.
(3) Memory—Memory as a Burden—The Future—Henri de Lubac—Love is Stronger than Death—My Job is to Save My Soul—The Good We Do In Life is Not Wasted—Our Lives Matter.
Only three sections in the Afterword. Here’s how I summarize each section.
(1) “The true and highest form of friendship, for Aristotle, is that of good persons who resemble and reinforce each other in virtue” (p. 229).
(2) Friendship is the highest form of love and is ultimately derived from God, especially through Jesus Christ.
(3) Our lives matter when we give of ourselves and our love.
Finally the summing of the Afterword can be articulated by this quote.
“The crowning achievement of the Christian life is a community animated and ruled by agape (unselfish love) because of the free and generous philia (friendship-love) of its members’ (p. 234).
Kerstin, I'm so sorry for the loss of your family members. People not directly involved in something rarely understand the full picture of any earthly upheaval, whether taking place around us in our own time or handed down to us as carefully crafted history.In a way, I feel that's true of everything, good as well as bad, past as well as present. And that makes Archbishop Chaput's closing words even more meaningful to me. I starred this paragraph:
"We rarely see the full effects of the good we do in this life. So much of what we do seems a tangle of frustrations and failures. We don't see - on this side of the tapestry - the pattern of meaning that our faith weaves. But one day we'll stand on the other side. And on that day, we'll see the beauty that God has allowed us to add to the great story of his creation, the richness we've added to the lives of our family and friends, the mark for the better we've left on the world, and the revelation of his love that goes from age to age no matter how good or bad the times."
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Thank you Gerri, and everyone who expressed sympathy. It is a story among many I grew up with, often repeated at family gatherings. No family in Germany was spared for at their family gatherings similar stories were and are told.
Here is an uplifting story: A neighbor of ours was one of five brothers, and all of them were drafted. Miraculously all of them survived the war, and they credited the protection of the Virgin Mary to their survival. As a thank you and a testament to their deep devotion they built a small chapel outside the village at the entrance of a woods. The brothers, I imagine, are no longer with us, but the chapel still stands. A few years ago we went back there to see it, still kept in good repair, with devotional pictures and rosaries adorning the walls.
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Thus it was an exasperated Hugo Dyson, the Tolkien friend, committed Christian, and distinguished Shakespeare scholar, who finally, and famously, blurted out, Oh no, not another [expletive] elf!”
Hahaha, that’s exactly how I feel about Lord of the Rings. The elves and dwarfs and hobbits and wizards and orcs and all others fantastical creatures all seem silly after a while. I know many of you are Lord of the Rings fans, and I did enjoy the book, but it’s a bit much.
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LOL, I don't dislike the book. But I don't consider it the greatest epic since Homer. ;)
I’m coping, Manny, thank you. J.R.R. Tolkien, you probably know, intensely disliked The Chronicles of Narnia, written by his best friend.Wouldn’t you have loved to have been able to sit in at meetings of the Inklings?
Mannysaid, "The elves and dwarfs and hobbits and wizards and orcs and all others fantastical creatures all seem silly after a while. I know many of you are Lord of the Rings fans, and I did enjoy the book, but it’s a bit much."I loved LOTR when I read it fresh out of college. Watched the movie when it came out, and was definitely not captivated. Seemed like the war scenes dragged on and on and very little elf relief. I know I need to revisit the books, but instead I've been reading some of the marginal Tolkein stories and the place and people names are too much to keep up with, and midway through I can't remember who is elf and who is people. Something there was too much. I didn't have this problem with LOTR and I love reading fantasies based on medieval type worlds (Jeff Wheeler's books are my most recent guilty pleasure, but he isn't Catholic.) So, Manny, I understand how you feel.
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It is funny, oh no, another elf!
Though there is something deeply satisfying reading 'The Lord of the Rings'. It wouldn't have the resonance it has if the narrative were lacking. We live in a dis-enchanted age where mystics and dreamers have become highly suspect, and I think Tolkien boldly challenges the utilitarian world-view.
I may have mentioned this before, but there is a wonderful documentary called "The Fantasy Makers", and it goes into the history of the genre and its Christian roots with the stories of George MacDonald and his successors including the Inklings. For anyone who has access, I think FORMED still has it. Other streaming services have it as well, though there may be a fee. It is a little long but well worth watching, the sort of program to cozy up with on a rainy Sunday.
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Would I? with probably a million other adoring fans, lol!
This actually brings us back to Archbishop Chaput and his last chapter on friendship. The Inklings over a number of years nurtured philia at its best.
As possibly the only person in Catholic Thought who never read Chronicles of Narnia, I'm relieved to learn Tolkien was no fan. But I, ahem, fell asleep during the first LOTR movie and never attempted the others. I did read the books when younger. But after The Hobbit, I found myself racing through the LOTR books just so I'd be done. I learned that I don't gravitate toward fantasy books.And,Kerstin, that's a touching story about the chapel. It sounds like a beautiful and holy place.
Thank you, Kerstin, for the tip, and thank you for sharing your very moving family story. I'm from the generation whose dads spent two years fighting in Europe and Africa, and our dads did not have much to say about the worst of it. Most of what I remember from my father was positive stories about the people he met and the children who would gather around the soldiers hoping for some gum or candy. But I did travel to England, and before I left Dad reminisced about his time spent in Stratford, and told me to look for this and that. I spent most of the day taking pictures of the places he'd mentioned, and had a precious afternoon sharing them with him when I returned. He passed away the following year.
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"But it's only the perversity of our age, C.S. Lewis said, that sees an erotic subtext in every close friendship between two men or two women. In exaggerating the importance of eros, modern culture not only ruins eros by vulgarizing its beauty and rendering it just another, if pleasant, bodily function. It also degrades and impoverishes every other form of love."
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Yes, and I can imagine siting at a pub drinking a beer and giving Hugo Dyson a high five when said that. ;)
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It is. Everyone that has a close friend of same sex is accused of a being a closet homosexual.
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Well, this is all a very appropriate conversation for Memorial Day.
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I'm reading it now with my son. Funny you should say that Gerri. The other day I just posted on my blog "Books I Wished I Had Read Earlier." It's a top ten list of books I wished I had read more than twenty years ago. The Narnia Chronicles is the #1. If anyone is interested on that list, it's here:
https://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot....
Peter Kreeft has several excellent videos on the Christian themes in Lord of the Rings. Thank you, Manny, for sharing your list. I love the title of your blog.
Manny, perhaps I'm a little slow on the uptake, but was there any particular reason why, in message 26, you mentioned that you could imagine sitting in a pub and giving Hugh Dyson -- out of all the members of the Inklings -- a high five?
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Oh giving him a high five when he said “not another [expletive] elf!”
I'm heading over to your blog, Manny. Maybe I will end up reading The Narnia Chonicles after all!
Manny, you have such a wonderful sense of humor! Your choice of words reminded me of a poem by another Catholic writer who, like Lewis and Tolkien, believed in fairy tales, and in honor of cherished friendship, also raised his cup:" Though giant rains put out the sun,
Here I stand for a sign.
Though earth be filled with waters dark,
My cup is filled with wine.
Tell to the trembling priests that here
Under the deluge rod,
One nameless, tattered, broken man
Stood up, and drank to God."
-- G.K. Chesterton, "The Deluge"
Gerri, I may be mistaken, but I believe that Netflix is producing a completely new version of the Narnia Chronicles for future release. (And Manny, so you won't be left out: Amazon Prime Video will release its all new series on Lord of the Rings this fall.)
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Thanks Frances. And that's a lovely poem by Chesterton.
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Thanks for your comment at my blog. I replied to it there. I think you would love Narnia. And they are easy reads. As for The Moviegoer, you could nominate it for the next fiction read. We're nominating this week. Over here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
So far only one nomination.
Peej wrote: ""Jesus is the Face of God." We need to come back to this every moment of every day. Mercy is the fulfillment of justice, and it is going beyond it. God is mercy. While the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the love of God is the end of wisdom. The beatific vision, the encounter of love and mercy of God in the face of the person of Jesus Christ, must be our final end."
That is beautifully stated, Peej. During Lent, I used a devotional in which I meditated on my own death. As I thought of my own fear of death, I had to ask myself, what is there to fear? I was so focused on what I was leaving that I hadn't meditated on what I'd be going to, God willing! The beatific vision! Now that is something to meditate on!
Manny wrote: "I really found this little digression in the Afterword to be hilarious and from my point of view spot on. Abp Chaput is speaking on the friendship of the Inklings: Tolkien, Lewis, and Hugo Dyson. ..."Manny, I can't tell you how many times someone has recommended a book or movie in the fantasy genre and I've said, "Thanks but no thanks." If there isn't a recognizable geographic location and the characters involved are not homo sapiens, no thank you. It's why I haven't read "Lord of the Rings" and have only read Lewis' "The Magician's Nephew". I'm with Dyson! No orcs or elves please!
Kerstin, thank you for sharing your personal experience in Ulm. How tragic to lose 9 family members and to learn of the destruction of the city. I looked at the links and the pictures are so impressive. I would love to live in Europe for a few years to just explore the beauty of the architecture.
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I can't say I am a huge fantasy fan. I do like good stories, and both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia are really good stories. I got more interested in the genre once I began to understand that it originated with fairy tales and ancient poems such as Beowulf. Probably like most I always thought of fairy tales as children's stories, but originally they were meant for adults with all sorts of symbolism and social commentary packed into them. Over time we've sanitized them so that they are suitable for kids.
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(1) 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.
(2) “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.
(3) Sarcasm and scientism, has led to a cultural nihilism that has deprived society of its moral coherence and deprived of what truly matters in life.
(4) Though God has revealed Himself, modern man in rejecting God has replaced Him with idols.
(5) The modern nation state, with its administrative bureaucracy, does not inspire the love and sacrifice for one’s nation as in previous generations.
(6) Since the French Revolution to the present, ideologies have rested on the notion of perfecting human society and has had catastrophic consequences. All these ideologies fail because they either fail to take the love that stems from God as its operating mode or reject that love outright.
(7) The modern family is in decline because of four main factors, and we need to repair the family by putting into proper perspective human sexuality and marriage.
(8) Most laity, priests, and the Archbishop himself love the Catholic Church and want to make it holier.
(9) The Catholic tradition teaches us that the four last things cannot be avoided and must be contemplated to complete a successful journey to our everlasting home.
(A) “The crowning achievement of the Christian life is a community animated and ruled by agape (unselfish love) because of the free and generous philia (friendship-love) of its members”
What I find is a subtle pattern of a journey, sometimes with diversions, but mostly with a focused trajectory. It starts from a question—are modern Catholics able to suffer and even accept martyrdom for their integrity of being? Chaput then shows us first what constitutes proper acceptance of such willingness as seen in the ancestral values of the Cistercian monks. From there he then identifies the root illness of modernity, culminating in the decline of the modern family. He then takes some sort of assessment of the current state of the Church, which, of course, is the home and guide of Catholics. And finally the Archbishop ends with the four last things and the nature of Christian friendship. It strikes me that the Archbishop never actually answers his question: Are contemporary Catholics willing to suffer and die for what they believe? Unless I missed it, I think it’s left as an open question.
But I do think in the two last movements of the book, one individualistic and one communal, Chaput provides his accumulated wisdom as to how to build this internal integrity. The first of these movements—meditating on the four last things—is an act that builds internal strength, that integrity of being he is questioning. Every individual is faced with death, judgement, and the fate of his soul in either hell or heaven. It is an individual destiny which comes from individual choices along one’s journey to the end. The Archbishop seems to be saying, focus on these four last things and you will build that integrity of being that will give you the fortitude to be a martyr if that choice comes upon you.
The second of the last movements is friendship, a communal act that in effect builds the integrity of the Catholic community. Through friendship we build a community, a society, a nation, and a universal Church. Through friendship we build a tradition, a culture, a city, a nation, a history, a memory, and that Holy Land we hold dear in our hearts. Through friendship we build what we are willing to suffer and die for. I don’t know if the Archbishop is optimistic—sometimes he seems exasperated with the current state of things—but he is pouring out his heart as to how to right the ship of society.
If the Archbishop is not optimistic for this generation, his optimism for the future and for God’s people is unquestioned. After his exhortation to build friendships and “to make the world a better place in the light of the Gospel,” he concludes with this vision.
We rarely see the full effects of the good we do in this life. So much of what we do seems a tangle of frustrations and failures. We don’t see—on this side of the tapestry—the pattern of meaning that our faith weaves. But one day we’ll stand on the other side. And on that day, we’ll see the beauty that God has allowed us to add to the great story of creation, the richness we’ve added to the lives of our family and friends, the mark for the better we’ve left the world, and the revelation of his love that goes from age to age no matter how good or bad the times. We are each an unrepeatable, infinitely treasured part of the story. (p. 239-40)
Perhaps one would have wanted a wrap up at the end to pull all the threads together. Chaput doesn’t give it to us at the end, but it’s there in the beginning. Once you are done with the book, re-read the first chapter. It pulls it all together. Perhaps this little paragraph sums up everything:
Love is demanding. It draws us outside ourselves. The more we love, the greater our willingness to sacrifice. When we know, honestly, what we’re willing to sacrifice for, even to die for, we can see the true nature of our loves. And that tells us who we really are. (p. 9)
This is a fine and sober book that comes from a loving heart.
Thanks so much, Manny. It was a privilege to receive this book. I think it was very thoughtful of you to comment on Archbishop Chaput’s beautiful character.
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Thank you, Manny! Once again, an awesome and thoughtful (and thought-provoking) analysis of this very thoughtful (and thought-provoking) book. I am late to the party again, still nearly--very nearly--finished, but I may just add one thought: I don't think he meant to give an answer, or even suggest one. But the idea that love in all its forms must govern our choices of what we are living and dying for is implicit throughout this book. I believe we are meant to turn his insights back upon ourselves, and thereby, perhaps, become stronger in our faith and more ready to face those four last things.
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Yes, I would say that is right.
Catholic Thought
Books mentioned in this topic
The Lord of the Rings (other topics)The Chronicles of Narnia (other topics)
Beowulf (other topics)
The Song of Roland (other topics)
We are on a journey, hopefully, to heaven. A journey implies that there is an end goal one wishes to achieve. Part of this journey is the contemplation of the “four last things”, death, judgment, hell, and heaven. Where we end up largely depends on our free will, do we choose to live and die in accordance of a loving God or not.
Afterword: On Friendship
There are different forms of love. Archbishop Chaput concentrates on the much overlooked form of friendship-love or philia. Our personal friendship with Christ, our living out and imparting onto the next generation on what it means to be a friend of Christ will ultimately change the world – even if we don’t see the full fruits in this life.