Death of the Son, Episode IX: Dinner with a Murderer

Death of the Son, Episode IX

Dinner with a Murderer

[Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five; Episode Six; Episode Seven; Episode Eight; Episode Nine] 

[This episode concludes the serial novel 'Death of the Son.' Until the sequel!]

They were back in the cool of the Imperial Palace, walking through the endless marbled corridors: Theodotus, the eunuch of Constantine, and a single soldier. 

The men in front of him showed no concern; the eunuch sauntered slowly, swinging his hips theatrically from side to side, and even the soldier slouched as he walked. Again and again, Theodotus had to abruptly slow his pace to keep from bumping into them; and each time he did, he gripped the dagger stowed at his waist, making sure it did not jostle or fall. He could not fail now through impatience; too much was at stake. 

In a few minutes, he told himself. I am going to have dinner with the Emperor Constantine. Then I will kill him. 

But somehow, none of it seemed real; he was in a dream, sleeplessly wandering the corridors of the haunted palace. Any moment now, the dead Empress would emerge from a doorway and speak to him again. "For my children," she had said, her mouth dripping blood. But where were her children? He shook himself, and nearly stumbled into the eunuch in front of him again; then nearly did so again as the eunuch stopped completely, then turned slowly to face him. 

Theodotus looked around; they were in front of a small door in the corridor. As he watched, the eunuch gestured him, with a complex, flourishing wave, to enter. Steeling himself, he stepped inside.

But he was only in a small storeroom, lit with a single, wavering oil lamp. The eunuch tittered, covering his mouth with one hand. "Did you really think we would take you to see the Emperor looking like that?" His thin hand traced its way across Theodotus' dirty black tunic, stained with blood. "Here's what's going to happen; I'll leave, and you'll put this on. Then we'll go to the Augustus." One hand touched Theodotus in the chest, while the other gestured towards an ornate silver-and-black assemblage set in the corner. "And you should really clean yourself up while you're at it," he added, gesturing to a bowl of water and a brush beside it. "You clerics...no sense of propriety." He shifted his hand to touch Theodotus on the arm, then shut the door, leaving Theodotus to dress in the flickering darkness.

As he reached for the robe, a stray memory flickered to life: the first time he had put on his deacon's robes, in the little sacristy of the cathedral in Antioch, just before his ordination. Those robes had been linen; these were silk, and the crosses were woven of real silver. He put on the heavy tunic, then the chlamys, clasping it with a golden broach. Apart from the crosses and the richness of the fabric, it might have been a military cloak; a reminiscence cemented as he reached down and slid the pugilo into the leather belt, under the chlamys, fastening the clasps just as he remembered.

But which was he, the soldier or the deacon? Or was he somehow both? 

He shook these thoughts away, and stepped out of the room to find the eunuch and soldier lounging against the wall opposite, laughing together. The eunuch looked him up and down, then stepped over and began adjusting small parts of his robes, pulling out a part there, tucking it in here, and clucking gently to himself all the while. As his hand strayed toward the belt, Theodotus grabbed him roughly. "Enough," he said. "Take me to Constantine."

The eunuch tittered again. "Why, deacon..." he said. "I don't know what you've heard about eunuchs, but...I have standards." He withdrew his hand. "And you didn't even touch the brush...well, the Emperor has no one to blame but himself. Very well. Come." His sauntering air gave way to sudden brusqueness, and he was away, walking faster this time, and gesturing impatiently for Theodotus and the soldier to follow. 

The soldier brought up the rear this time, his armor clattering as he walked; Theodotus barely suppressed the urge to seize the dagger at his waist. The corridors were nearly empty now, as bishops and courtiers dined and rested from the effort of the morning's assembly; but here and there slaves moved silently about, cleaning and carrying out small errands. A slave holding a large tray pressed himself against a wall just in time to avoid the eunuch, who was racing forward with small steps and did not slow his pace or look at him. As they passed by, Theodotus glanced at the slave: it was the German, Flavius. Theodotus felt the man's eyes narrow, and for a second saw reflected in them the strange scene he must be: the unkempt appearance, the rich robes, the soldier and the eunuch and the deacon.

Then Flavius had disappeared again, and abruptly they were there, outside the large, ornate door of what was obviously a dining room. The eunuch stopped, and gestured Theodotus forward. "Go on," he said, frowning. "The Emperor's been in a mood all day...I'm not going in there. And if he complains about your appearance..." The eunuch raised his hands in mock frustration. Theodotus, though, needed no reminder; he had already wrenched open the door a small crack and stepped through.

The Council of Nicaea: A Historical Explainer

 The Council of Nicaea: A Historical Explainer

This year is, among other things, the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Ecumenical commemorations have already begun, focusing for the most part on the dual institutions of the Papacy and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople--institutions both deeply entwined, though in different and somewhat ironic ways, with the event. 

Later this year, two men will meet in Nicaea: Pope Leo XIV-- an American born in Chicago who spent his ministry in Peru, places that none of the bishops at Nicaea had ever heard of, but the latest sitter on what was already in the fourth century the ancient and venerable seat of the bishop of the Church of Rome, and Patriarch Bartholomew--an ethnic Greek whose see was, at the time of Nicaea, a minor suffragan of Heraclea, who today presides over a tiny, purely vestigial Christian flock in what was, in the 4th century, the population heartland of Christianity, but which now resides within the borders of an ethnic nation-state named after Central Asian nomads and populated by the largely secularized followers of Islam, a Christian offshoot that would emerge centuries later from a portion of the world that nearly all the bishops of Nicaea would have regarded as a minor scrap of territory stuck rather awkwardly between two great Empires. These two men will no doubt issue appropriate statements of fraternity and commemoration for what both traditions they represent regard as the first Ecumenical Council of the undivided Christian Church of the first millennium. 

Accompanying these commemorations will come many, many explanations by the popular press the world around, designed to communicate to ordinary folks from America to Siberia to India and back again just what the Council of Nicaea is, anyway, and why it's important enough to make the Chicagoan Pope go all the way to Turkey. Alas, the popular press being what it is, the vast majority of these explanations will be wrong. This event will also be accompanied, no doubt, by many intelligent and intellectual explanations of just what the Council of Nicaea is, in podcasts, tweets, blueskys and the like: and as is frequently the case, these will be even more wrong. 

Hence, to get out ahead of these takes, I wanted to issue, as a scholar who has published an academic volume among other things on Nicaea and its context and legacy, a brief explainer on the historical event of the Council of Nicaea. This will be a deliberately broad take, deliberately designed to skirt most controversial scholarly questions; but nevertheless unavoidably based on my own opinions and scholarly judgments. 

As such, I am confident it will contain a great deal of information that will come as a surprise to most moderately-informed people, and an even higher percentage of information that both ordinary, good people and wicked take-having intellectuals have never heard of. I hope it will prove both informative and reasonably diverting.

Death of the Son, Episode IX: Flight and Fight

Death of the Son, Episode IX

Flight and Fight

[Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five; Episode Six; Episode Seven; Episode Eight] 

Theodotus followed two black-robed slaves through a whirling, dissolving mass of white-clad bishops, priests, and deacons, mailclad soldiers, togaed Senators, and robed officials of every type. The sense of chaos in the vast space of the Basilica of Galerius was overwhelming, and entirely different from the rigid order that had unified the assembly only a few moments before.

Something has happened, Theodotus knew; and so did all the other powerful men racing to leave, pushing and shoving and maneuvering around each other like frightened animals. 

But what had happened? The powerful Spanish bishop Hosius, favored advisor of the Emperor for years, had delivered a speech to Constantine's face that had in some way challenged or upset him; he had announced his imminent departure back to Spain; and the Emperor had suddenly left, ending the assembly hours before it had been expected. This was not a crisis of state in any typical sense: but it was nevertheless clearly a crisis.

One of the two slaves behind him touched his arm, steering him slightly around a knot of worried-looking Imperial officials, wearing Phrygian caps and whispering in agitated voices. One of them shot him an angry look, as if to say: What have you Christians done this time?

Theodotus fought simultaneous impulses to laugh and freeze in terror. What have we done?

Future Political Trends: A Study

Future Political Trends: A Study

For roughly the past six months, I have been repeatedly mentioning, in my posts on this blog, my intention to write up something about current and future political trends. I have not done so for a number of reasons, including (in no particular order) disinterest, boredom, anger, disgust, Lent, Easter, the death of Pope Francis, the election of Pope Leo, my desire to write short stories, a school field trip, my birthday, and the onset of spring. Central to my delays, however, has been the fundamental grimness of the topic itself.

Another thing that happened in the interval, however, was Easter; which is, properly considered, the only thing that has ever really happened. It struck me, on Easter night, that Easter is, perhaps, the best standpoint from which to consider present political realities. It is certainly the best standpoint from which to consider the sweep of human history and human life as a whole. 

In any case, I firmly believe that eternal novelties like Easter are a much better means of understanding than the faded abstractions of political and economic ideology that dominate so much of discourse. 

As Chesterton said in the Daily Herald, quite rightly, political ideologies and analyses nearly always lag at least a half-century behind actual political systems. In the 1910s, he pointed out how profoundly unsuited the 18th and 19th century categories of Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, and the like were for the era of syndicalism and great strikes and great states and secret societies and global warfare. In a similar vein, but even more so, the categories that we use for unraveling the tangled events of our time are practically all hoary 20th century abstractions such as Fascism, Naziism, Communism, Totalitarianism, Authoritarianism, and the like--when they are not the same, even more faded 19th century abstractions such as Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy, Liberalism, and so forth. 

I would suggest that one of the greatest threats to our political life today, a threat that has again and again allowed evils to burgeon and flourish undetected, is simply the enormous gap between reality and our ability to analyze it. This may seem a rather distant and abstract threat, but is in reality among the most practical causes of the practical evils of our time. The year 2025 does not lack for crimes and tyrants--but it does profoundly, I am tempted to say unprecedentedly, lack for both practical recognition of these evils and practical efforts to counter them. And a foremost reason for this lack, I increasingly think, is simply that people cannot understand these evils, cannot recognize them, frequently do not even seem to notice them, because they happen to fall into gaps in their abstract, categorical understanding of such things. 

For some bizarre reason, the real estate developer, media mogul, and brand icon Donald Trump continues to be analyzed, again and again and at ever greater length and with ever greater portentous seriousness by ever more prestigious intellectuals, entirely by comparison with a mid-20th century Italian movement of ex-socialist, WW1-veteran-populated paramilitary squads turned revanchist dictatorship. Like any historical comparison, there are certainly truths to be drawn from this one--but the gap between reality and analytical abstraction is, nevertheless, so vast that nearly the whole of Trump's actual ideology and program and even legitimate crimes can be, and have been, and continue to be buried within. 

Nevertheless, in carrying out an analysis of present trends, and their likely future results, I would like to be absolutely clear about what I am doing, and why. I am not a historicist, let alone a historical fatalist: I do not believe in memetics, or Hegelian dialectics, or progress. When I speak of trends, I am speaking ultimately of either ideas or habits residing in the actual intellects and wills of actual people: ideas and habits which exercise great power over those people's actions, but never fully determine them. 

People can and do reject ideas they have held, especially when they are ideas that they have never consciously understood, but only passively absorbed from their environments. People can and do change their habits, including habits that have become deeply engrained in their minds and hearts and wills over many years. 

On the most abstract level, I consider history to be first and foremost the study of human actions and the motivations behind them; so that the fundamental historical question is not merely the positivistic query of "What happened?," but the much more intrusive demands "What did they do?" and "Why did they do it?"

What is true for historical actions writ large is even more true for the subset of human actions that make up political systems past and present. Governing, particularly in the modern world, is a highly complex and technical set of actions attempting to shape and respond to constantly shifting conditions. Still, it always depends first and foremost on conscious, considered human action; and conscious, considered human action depends first and foremost on rational ideas and goals. 

Yet people are not always, or perhaps even often, aware of the ideas and goals underlying their own actions, let alone the broader social conditions and trends to which they are responding. It is for this reason, above all, that this kind of analysis is useful. As anyone knows who has ever tried to change a deeply-engrained idea or habit, one of the most important steps is often merely recognizing the actual ideas one unconsciously holds, and the actual habits that one unconsciously possesses. Only then, as a rule, can one then set out to change them.

Hence, while I am engaged in this essay in modestly claiming to understand contemporary trends and their likely future impacts, I am not engaged in actually trying to predict the future. To do so would be to fall under the curse of Chesterton's game of Cheat the Prophet: the game whereby smart people predict the future by extending current trends indefinitely, and the human race thwarts them by the simple expedient of going and doing something else. In this post, I am quite self-consciously teeing up to play a round of this game with the human race, providing them with a helpful listing of the trends they will need to know about in order to defy them. In this, I heartily encourage the human race to cheat me: nay, I demand it. That is, in fact, the entire point of this exercise. If all my predictions are vindicated, I will be deeply, profoundly disappointed in you all.

Of course, the trends I discuss below are not uniformly positive or negative. Some are in my judgment evil, some few are good, some are, in themselves, merely neutral. Nonetheless, my modest claim is merely that if we wish to exercise some control over our collective destinies, it is helpful to know what is happening: only then can we choose to aid what is good, to resist what is evil, and, hopefully and above all, to repent and seek the good. This is my exhortation.

Pope Francis (1936-2025)

Pope Francis (1936-2025)

Of all the tasks a writer may attempt, evaluating a Pope is perhaps the hardest. The Papacy, as I have tried to emphasize elsewhere, is above all a personal and historical institution: it incarnates the messy, human side of the Faith. It is not a thing suited to pristine abstractions, even doctrinal abstractions. 

A Pope is first and foremost a human person; which is to say, an individual substance of a rational nature; which is to say, an entity defined and constituted by numerous relations, personal and familial and social and cultural. A Pope, though, is a person whose relations have been radically extended in a way that is, in a genuine sense, supernatural; who relates to others throughout the world in ways that go beyond the ordinarily human into the realm of the sacramental and the eternal. A Pope's relations encompass the whole world, and enter into practically every realm of human life and interaction, from the familial to the cultural to the political to the diplomatic to the economic to the mass-media and back again. 

Because of this, there is almost an infinity of ways one can analyze an individual Pope and pontificate. There are, at the very least, as many modes of analysis as there are people in the world. Historical analyses are no more valid, in themselves, than the simplest personal anecdote; and this, in turn, does not take away from the most inchoate sense a person may have of the state of the Church, the world, or a life, and the impact of the Pope on that. Popes cannot be understood solely in ideological and political terms: but for all that, they are legitimately political figures who may well have much to do with the triumph or defeat, success or failure, of particular ideologies and political parties and movements. They are international diplomats, with a unique ability to intercede between nations; and they are judges, presiding over the world's largest non-state justice system, and administrators, presiding over the world's largest non-state charitable organization and the world's oldest continuous bureaucracy. And then, of course, they are Fathers, and Shepherds, and intercessors before God, and the rulers of the rulers of this age, and poor sinners who will one day stand with us all before the judgment seat of God. 

Popes can be evaluated legitimately based on any of these things; and in all of them, their records are likely to show normal human inconsistencies, as well as the influence of their own personalities, historical events and conflicts, their advisors and subordinates, and the bureaucratic, political, and religious systems in which they participate. 

There are, to be frank, a lot of terrible takes on Pope Francis, takes that are ignorant or mendacious or malicious or outright stupid. Most of them fail, like most journalistic writing today, simply by imposing a simplistic, highly-colored narrative, based primarily on mass-media symbols, partisan conflicts, bullshit pseudo-intellectualism, and/or private emotion, onto this vast network of relationships and acts. All such takes, without exception, are false. Pope Francis was not the Progressive Pope; he was not the Dictator Pope; he did not preside over the Catholic Church's irreversible decline; he was not a plotter dedicated to power at all costs; he was not a Trumpian revolutionary; he was not a frustrated liberal; he was not the last humane figure in a world gone mad; he was not the death blow of the Imperial Papacy, or Vatican 2, or progressive Catholicism, or the End of History, or anything else. As they have since the very beginning of his pontificate, the soi-disant intellectuals of our frankly pathetic intellectual-cum-journalistic culture continue to lie. 

I don't want to add to these takes; I wish, in fact to denounce them, and will by the end of this essay. 

There are also, of course, any number of encomia, religious and secular, appropriate to the passing of such a significant figure, reflecting on his accomplishments, his character, and the positive personal impact on all of the above on many persons. The present essay also does not belong to this genre. As will become clear, a significant portion of this essay consists of reflections on Francis' weaknesses and limitations as a Pontiff, and the conflicts by which his Papacy was marked. I loved Francis very much, and tried my best to make others love him; but as Chesterton pointed out long ago, it is always dangerous merely to whitewash the weaknesses of any person, since it is often on such weaknesses that a proper understanding of their strengths depends. 

For my own small part, then, I will be proceeding primarily from an abstract, historical perspective, supplementing such analysis with thoughts on Francis as a person and his importance for the Catholic Church of the 21st century. Though I will make a number of comments and preliminary conclusions, the principle intended utility of this essay is to provide various frameworks and contexts through which, I think, Francis can be fruitfully considered: and in which he should be considered, at greater length, by others. I will not attempt a true theological evaluation of Francis, let alone attempt to conclude what his narrative meaning is for all of history for all time.

This is, then, by no means a "definitive take" on Francis; it is not intended to, nor could it, detract from any genuine perspective on the Pope. 

What Went Wrong? Hitchcock's Vertigo, Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, and Gene Wolfe's Peace

What Went Wrong?

Hitchcock's Vertigo, Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, and Gene Wolfe's Peace

"What went wrong? That is the question, and not 'To be or not to be.'"

-Gene Wolfe, Peace (1975)

These are times when nearly everyone in America is engaged, it seems to me, in asking one question: what went wrong? 

This is not, I should say, a question confined to either Right or Left on our soi-disant political spectrum.  Trumpists think about nearly nothing about went wrong under Biden, and Obama, and since Harry Truman; and, increasingly, about what has gone wrong and is going wrong under Trump. Progressives, looking at their electoral defeats, looking at Trump's America, ask themselves virtually the same question. Leftists, social conservatives, Distributists, Communists, Integralists--even the tiniest sub-factions of American politics seem to spend more time analyzing how things have gone wrong than how they might possibly go right. 

Yet for all that, virtually no one, it seems to me, actually tries to answer the question in any comprehensive or philosophical or even historically satisfactory way. People produce, say, accounts of ways in which government has gotten less efficient; or how regulations have impeded economic growth; or, at best, how cultural movements or technological developments have caused kids to be less happy or art to be less good. These are all, though, from my perspective, so many discussions of symptoms rather than diseases, of effects rather than causes. 

To understand any human phenomenon, no matter how technical, one must understand human motivation and action. And considered in that light, apparent oppositions frequently conceal unities, and apparent triumphs already hold the seeds of their own downfalls. Most fundamentally of all, one cannot solve a problem until one has recognized what the problem is; nor can one undo a mistake until one understands what the mistake actually was. 

In my next post (probably), I will write about the more political and social side of this question. Today, though, I want to write about three works of art that are, in my mind, at least, connected by precisely their attention to more hidden and human seeds of harm and destruction, the ways in which these seeds grow and unfold, and the destruction they wreak when full-grown. All three films are in at least some sense tragedies; and hence all pose the same basic question of their characters' downfalls: what went wrong? 

Poem: If You Had Said No

If You Had Said No

If you had said no

the burning Archangel

would have offered no rebuke

(he had not been sent

as for the priest

to humble pride

but to exalt humility)

he would have bowed

his crowned head

in silence

and in silence turned

and walked away

his rainbow plumage

receding in the endless distance

forever

in the courts of heaven

a hush would have fallen

on the cosmic powers

the cherubim

turn their thousand eyes

away from the earth

and the stars

take up

a new song

the celestial spheres

sigh like strings

in perpetual, cyclical

mourning

(for one can neither mourn nor desire

the impossible—

but what was possible

can be mourned and longed for

in remembrance

forever)

a quiet

would have fallen

upon the earth

the grass and the trees

clothe themselves

as in winter

with dimness

the burning desire

would go out

of the heart of things

no more of blood

in the dying leaves

no more of fire

in the blooming rose

the moths

would no longer

seek the flame

the leaves would have

no voice in the wind

the trees would have no eyes

and there would be no face

in the dark forest

the sons of men

would cease from

the ancient rites

of winter and springtime

they would make

no war

for immortal glory

the daughters of men

would be fair only

desired only

possessed only

there would be no light

in their eyes

no gleam of gold

fire earth moonlight

in their tresses

they would bear their children

in silence

with no wild hope

in the pain and blood

the birds

would not sing more sweetly

in their presence

nor would the fire burn brighter

there would be no roses

in them

at all

the littleness

of their children

would have no

greatness

in it

bread would be

only bread

wine only wine

and the blood of men

only like the blood of cattle