Future Heresies: A Thought Experiment

Future Heresies: A Thought Experiment

The following post will most likely interest very few people; but, well, it interests me. 

I have spent a great deal of time and energy studying the history of Christian and Catholic doctrine; and have even published a scholarly volume on the subject. There are a number of interesting facets or aspects of such a study: one, which is absolutely central to any serious contemporary Christian theology, may be called the theory of development, or more precisely theories of development, encompassing all the various attempts, from Antiquity to the present day, to understand theoretically the mix of continuity and change visible in Christian doctrine over time, its causes, and its results. These theories have spanned the entire range from naive to absurd to self-contradictory to insightful and back again; and to have a real theology, in any sense, it is necessary to operate on the basis of some such schema, if only implicitly: and to have a rational, explicit, truthful theology, it is necessary to have a rational, explicit, truthful theory of development.

However, that is not what I am going to be talking about in this post, at least not directly. Rather, what I have been trying to develop, based on my studies, here and elsewhere, is what I might call a theory of deformation, or perhaps (with a nod to Whip It) a theory of devolution.

This is, however, to put the matter somewhat dramatically, as well as somewhat polemically. The more basic truth is that Christianity as such, not to mention Catholicism, embodies a highly particular metaphysics, ethics, philosophy, ethics, history, and way of living, and that there are few, if any, things in human life that it does not in some way touch on or incorporate into its grand synthesis. 

For precisely this reason, however, Catholicism necessarily overlaps withareas of human life also dealt with by more human and secular and historical sciences and philosophies and cultures and politics. It not only covers the same ground as them, but frequently addresses the same concepts, even uses the same words. It typically does so, however, in very different ways, ways that are opaque, confusing, and often even offensive to many people, and which are therefore highly susceptible to being reinterpreted entirely in light of their more common usages.

To take only one instance, the use of the term nature in Catholic Christology necessarily overlaps to some limited extent with the uses made of this concept in science, philosophy, genetics, ethics, etc, of our own or indeed any historical society--but for all that, the concept of nature used in Catholic Christology is highly different than that used in any contemporary domain. To simply take the Christological sense of nature and insert into a discussion of, say, ecology would produce nonsense; while to take the contemporary ecological sense of nature and insert it into Christology might produce nonsense, but might also produce something a great deal more like a heresy.

This framing, however, is a bit more abstract than is necessary. I do not think, really, that most historical or contemporary heresies arise from mere confusion of the technical language of Catholicism with the technical language of contemporaneous science or philosophy. This has been, in the past, a common way of interpreting historical heresies; and it usually produces historiography (and heresiography) that is overly schematic and conceptually muddled. 

As a matter of fact, in most cases technical domains, so long as they remain technical and specific, remain to that extent open to broader domains of philosophy and metaphysics and theology, or more precisely subordinate to them in the sense that they deal with more particular matters that can and should and to an extent even must be integrated with broader domains: and to the extent this is true, engagements between technical domains and theology, so long as they are done skillfully, can produce positive fruit in both domains. 

Rather, what usually happens in regards to serious deformations of Catholic doctrine, I think, is quite a bit more subtle than this, and much harder to resolve simply with reference to mere definitions.

Most people do not study technical fields; but most people do live in societies, in communities, and in institutions. And these societies, communities, and institutions, explicitly or implicitly, run off of and embed and embody and incarnate particular views of the world, particular anthropologies, particular practical ethical goals and conceptions of the good. And it is these, in particular, that most directly and frequently clash with the overarching, holistic ethics and metaphysics of Catholicism; and which most frequently and impactfully lead to reinterpretations and deformations of Catholic belief and practice.

To take only one example, my scholarly book (AVAILABLE NOW!) focuses in part on the complex conceptual and practical clash between the implicit and explicit views of God, man, person, nature, equality, hierarchy, etc, found in the world of Late Imperial politics and Late Antique Christianity: and the various ways in which this led to radical reinterpretations of Imperial politics in terms of Christianity, and of Christianity in terms of Imperial politics. This is, of course, by no means a simplistic one-way affair, without ambiguity.

Still, if one accepts the basic framework above, it becomes clear that something like this has happened again and again in the history of the Catholic Church; and, considered soberly, to some degree must happen, in every age, place, institution, culture, and time. For, after all, the truth, even considered qua abstract and universal, must be concretely and particularly received and understood in every age, by every person: and for it to be understood, it must be related to existing stores of knowledge, culture, terminology, and so on. And if it is possible for this to be done well, in a way faithful to the essential meaning of Christian revelation, subordinating earthly knowledge to divine revelation, it is also possible, and intrinsically a great deal more likely, to be done badly.

And more interestingly, all this must happen here and now, and in the future: and must be, to some degree, predictable and understandable, even where said deformations are only implicit or only incipient. 

Here, then, is the ambitious and likely ludicrous "thought experiment" I wish to engage in this post: namely, to see if I can to some extent predict, to some extent extend, and to some extent make explicit the implicit deformations of core Catholic doctrines created by, or likely to be created by, our contemporary institutions and social systems. In so doing, I wish to be clear that I am using the term "heresy" only in a colloquial sense, as a helpful abstraction, and that I am in no way attempting to preempt Church authority, define a canonical crime, and/or accuse anyone of being a formal heretic deprived of divine grace and/or liable to ecclesiastical sanction. Similarly, in dealing with the below "heresies," I am in no way predicting, even theoretically, that anyone in particular will ever explicitly argue for the positions laid out below, let alone turn them into widespread theological or popular or religious movements. I am merely postulating that the following deformations of Catholic belief do exist or will exist, explicitly or implicitly, to vastly varying degrees, in the lives and thoughts and arguments of Catholics: and as such, will have, to vastly varying degrees, negative effects.

For my next blog post, most likely, I will be examining what I think are the emerging political principles likely to govern global and American politics over the next several decades. Before doing that, though, I wish to preserve the proper hierarchical order of things, and deal first with the higher domain of theology, before proceeding to lesser matters. 

Death of the Son, Episode Five: Imperatrix, Dominus, Episcopus

Death of the Son, Episode Five:

Imperatrix, Dominus, Episcopus

[Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four]

When his vision cleared, he found himself outside, standing on the brow of a low hill, looking down into what he recognized as a chariot-racing course, surrounded by gleaming white marble stands larger than any he had ever seen. The stone glistened in the sunlight, nearly blinding him. 

Forcing himself to tear his eyes away, he looked around. Hosius was by his side, watching him with an expressionless face.

"I..." Theodotus was momentarily taken aback. "I did not know we would be leaving the Palace."

"You thought Helena stayed in the Palace?" Hosius seemed to consider that for a moment. His voice, when he spoke, was slower than before. "No, no...not the mother of Constantine. Her son built her a palace of her own, to the Southeast, in the gardens." He paused, seemingly lost in thought: but his eyes did not leave Theodotus' face.

"You are from the East; you know that Emperors have not stayed in Rome for centuries. Even Constantine has been here only...twice? Three times in ten years? But he has given Rome to his mother as her own." His lip twisted, seemingly involuntarily, but his face did not change otherwise. "Many have wondered at this: that Constantine, who loves his mother so deeply and so publicly, should keep her so far him--that he should wander like a soldier, from Trier to Arles, Nicomedia to Seleucia, and leave Rome, the Mother of the Empire, only to his mother."

Theodotus was finding it harder to regain his composure than he had expected, with his eyes still adjusting to the light and the grandeur of Rome before him. Also I have eaten nothing since rising, and it must be nearly noon. 

Is this a test?

But he had little time to reflect on this possibility, for Hosius was still speaking, slowly and reflectively and with the subtle intonation of an orator, a preacher: and still with his eyes fixed on Theodotus' face, ignoring the splendors of the City.

"Some say it is because of Helena's piety, because of the tombs of the Apostles and the holy virgins and martyrs. Others that it is for Helena's pride, to pay her wounded dignity back for the years of suffering and shame his father caused her. Or perhaps for her fear, to keep her far from the son who reminds her so much of that father--above all in his anger. And finally there are those who say that it is the son who is afraid, and keeps away from the mother, for what reason only those who know his heart can say. I once thought myself one of these, but now...?" He sighed suddenly, a forceful release of air, and for a moment lowered his eyes before raising them again to Theodotus.

But Theodotus' own eyes and mind had begun to adjust; and he realized abruptly that these words were not just a test: they were also a confession, like the confessions he had received from so many criminals in court. Eustathius told him I am sent by God to discover guilt; and so he is revealing his guilt to me.

"But if the son is an enigma, so too is the mother. Who can say anything about Helena that is true?" Hosius' lip twisted again, and for the first time he chuckled humorlessly. "I cannot even say where she is from. An innkeeper's daughter, they say: but from Asia? Greece? Illyria, like his father? Savage Britain? I have heard all these, but never a word from Helena herself.  Even her name is a mask: 'the Greek woman,' of whom there are hundreds in every city in the Empire. Even in Spain...and yet her statues are everywhere, in all the splendors of the first Helena, and the number of cities named after her rises with each day."

He sighed again, but this time more slowly, and sadly, not taking his eyes off the deacon at his side.

"But now her home is Rome, and she stays here, mostly, in her palace, in her gardens with the holy virgins and the priests and bishops and ascetics who visit her and pray with her. I myself have visited many times, and thought myself in a house of prayer. But now...I doubt myself...I doubt everything. Was it a house of prayer, of ascesis that I visited, or only a house of luxury in disguise? Or perhaps a refuge, for a hunted woman? Or a prison?"

Hosius' face now was no longer a neutral mask; it was openly anguished.

"It is strange, is it not? In all the times I have seen her, in all our conversations on holy things, I never thought to ask her these questions." He shook his head with decision, and his face cleared. "Eustathius is right. We bishops of these dwindling times, coddled by luxury, are so easily swayed by talk of God, cosmos and ousia, theoria and ascent. When men speak such words to us, we believe them, we think they have seen the very face of God, and we remain ignorant of all else they do, ignorant of their hearts. The Holy Martyrs of the great times knew better; they knew that in the final balance, the heart of man is a ravening wolf, and our task is to draw its teeth."

Finally, Hosius tore his eyes away, and for the first time looked down at the circus. His face, abruptly, broke into a smile.

"The circus maximus. Where Nero burned Christians alive to light his games. This is a holy city, and in it sins will not remain buried long."

Column 04/25/2023: Apophaticism, Incarnation, Bythos: A Response to Timothy Troutner's "Five Theses on Apophaticism"

Apophaticism, Incarnation, Bythos: A Response to Timothy Troutner's "Five Theses on Apophaticism"

Once upon a time, there was a bottomless abyss of unformed, undefined, unrelated infinity.

Once upon a time, there was a single, absolutely solitary, absolutely unrelated, and so absolutely sovereign will.

Once upon a time, there was a Father and his Son.

What is God? 

Is God something?

Is God nothing?

An acquaintance of mine, Timothy Troutner, a theology graduate student at Notre Dame, has recently published "Five Theses on Apophaticism," a distillation of his dissertation in which he issues a public challenge to what he sees as a troubling trend in modern theology by which a kind of apophaticism has come to assume a "systematic, total, and regulative" governance of Christian theological doctrine. I could not possibly hope to do justice to his overall thesis, particularly in its treatment of various specific modern academic-theological trends and actors. I am not familiar with or embedded in the world of modern academic theology; I am, I think, quite familiar with the world of ancient philosophy and theology in general and Trinitarian controversy in particular, about which I am in the process of publishing a monograph. It is from this perspective, then, that I write, and which will shape my focus in responding to Troutner's theses.

Before I begin, I would direct my readers to two recent pieces I have written that lay some of the foundations for this discussion: my argument about Trinitarian theology and its relationship with ancient Platonic debates, and my attempt to summarize Hilary of Poitier's doctrine of divine equality. As will become clear, I think these articles are related to Troutner's points in several ways. For the broader points made here, I would ask readers to consult Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, Zlatko Plese's excellent scholarship on Gnosticism, and eventually my forthcoming monograph.

To quickly sum up my responses to Troutner below: while Troutner does appear to be in certain ways unfair to Patristic and Scholastic treatments of apophaticism, I think his argument does highlight a perennial danger for Christian theology, which to a large extent modern academic theology has not avoided, and helps us in setting some limits for apophaticism as a concept. My main critique, as will become clear, is that he seems to concede far too much to his modern apophaticists even in conceptualizing an escape from them, and thus produces a construal of the Trinity that I find very hard to accept.

Column 03/11/2023: The Trinitarian Controversy as the Culmination of Ancient Platonism

The Trinitarian Controversy as the Culmination of Ancient Platonism

Recently, while engaged in scholarly work, I suddenly had a moment of revelation where I felt, for the first time, that I understood ancient Platonism and how Christian Trinitarianism both arose out of and resolved the conflicts within it. It was frankly an incredible high, which has since faded into the common light of day, but I am now attempting to relive it by trying in labored fashion to express what I saw then.

What follows is best understood as "pseudo-scholarship": arising out of my academic research, but written quickly in a slapdash fashion without references, to sum up my own reflections on many, many hours of reading and research on these topics.

So: here goes.

Column 02/25/2023: Benedict XVI, 1927-2022

 Benedict XVI, 1927-2022

I have been meaning to write this essay since the death of Benedict XVI. I am just now getting to it.

Lots of light and heat have been released into the world by reactions to his death. Many people, inspired in most cases with much more genuine and personal emotion than my own, have written and spoken many things. With few exceptions, these have followed the trajectory of the generally-accepted understandings (and misunderstandings) of his life, and reactions thereto. 

I don't wish to add to these reactions. This is for a few reasons, mostly coming down to my own lack of personal stake. Benedict was the Pope when I became Catholic; but only for about a year and a half. I have a lot of respect and a certain degree of affection for this paralyzingly shy academic lover of classical music, cats, and Orange Fanta, but nothing like the personal devotion or hatred that inspire many others. Likewise, as a convert and a historian, my investment in the internal mass-media and ideological and cultural conflicts within contemporary Western Catholicism is more remote than most. 

I wanted to write something about Benedict XVI after his death, then, not to prove any particular ideological point or express any profound emotion, but simply to note and express my own recognition and cognizance of an enormous, epochal figure in the history of the Catholic Church.

Column 12/03/2022: Orthodox Schism, Orthodox War

Orthodox Schism, Orthodox War 

I have written a great deal on this blog before over the Orthodox Schism between Moscow and Constantinople, which was for several years one of the biggest Christian news stories in the world and one of the least reported on or discussed. In the last year, however, this story has mutated in ways that would have been impossible to predict, entirely because of the war between Russia and Ukraine. 

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about in regards to an "Orthodox Schism," I suggest you go and read this helpful explainer I wrote at the time of the initial break).

Put simply, the war has transformed the schism and now looks to extend it so far that global Orthodoxy is now perhaps on the verge of dissolution.

As I chronicled here, the early years of the Schism--once the OCU had been formed and Moscow had broken all communion and ties with Constantinople--featured increasingly extreme and increasingly ineffective efforts by Moscow to gain the allegiance and support of other autocephalous churches in the presumed hope of some form of sanction or excommunication of the Patriarch of Constantinople. After the general failure of these efforts and increasing successes by Constantinople in getting autocephalous churches to recognize and enter into communion with the OCU, Moscow shifted tactics decisively towards aggression and attempts to divide the other churches from within. 

Even in the first phase, Churches that entered into communion with the OCU saw the ROC break off all ties with them--increasingly, though, Moscow began to aim at internal division of these Churches, selectively breaking communion with some bishops while retaining others. This culminated in the decision in January of this year to create an entirely new schismatic offshoot of the Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria under Russian control--an act without precedent in modern Orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, however, while Moscow had largely failed in its efforts to gain the support of other autocephalous churches out of Eastern Europe, it had succeeded within Ukraine to a much greater degree than most observers would have predicted. The new independent, Constantinople-sanctioned "Orthodox Church of Ukraine" had suffered from significant growing pains, including problems caused by its relatively young and inexperienced leadership, the loss of its main political sponsor Petro Poroshenko, disappointment with the merely metropolitan and not Patriarchal status granted by Constantinople, and a painful internal schism that drew away many adherents. The old Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, meanwhile, had reasserted itself strongly thanks to its seasoned episcopal leadership, the loyalty of its believers, and a massive infusion of cash from Moscow, challenging the transfer of parishes, making the government step back from open support for the OCU, and rapidly building new parish buildings to replace their losses.

By earlier this year, then, the Schism seemed to be cementing a new longterm status quo, ending in what was more or less a draw on the initial terms of the conflict. Constantinople had succeeded in retaining its position as primary leader and point of contact for most autocephalous churches, fending off the clumsy Russian attempts to claim the status of alternative leader of global Orthodoxy; the ROC, meanwhile, had succeeded in retaining the key dioceses and parishes in Ukraine necessary for it to continue being the dominant force by population in Orthodoxy. Both had suffered significant losses--Constantinople in the loss of its ability to speak for and act in relation to the roughly half of all Orthodox believers in the ROC and in the dividing and diminishment of already-weak autocephalous Churches in the Middle East and Africa and Europe, Moscow in the halving of its parishes and population in Ukraine and the loss of positive contacts with most of the rest of global Orthodoxy--but both had retained the things most essential to their continuing existence. So it seemed it would proceed for the foreseeable future.

Then, of course, the Russian government invaded Ukraine.

Column 11/22/2022: An Apologia for American Evangelicism

An Apologia for American Evangelicism

There is a great need for narratives of the present and recent past that are not simply based on mass media or partisan politics.

The problem with most narratives of the recent past is that they are typically based on nothing--neither small-scale empirical experience reflected upon over time nor large-scale rational analysis of trends over time--and they are even more typically driven by unexpressed, hidden external goals: to win elections, get back at family members, salvage projects, denounce enemies, win arguments, and/or "own the libs."  Direct experience, even anecdotal experience, is extraordinarily valuable--so that in that way at least recent history is the ideal kind of historiography--but it becomes far more valuable when reflected upon and placed into a broader context, and not merely thrown into a blender with "other stuff" and served cold as one soggy inedible mass.

Economic history has made something of a comeback over the last decade, as incoherent, disorganized Leftism and increasingly organized Labor have had a general resurgence. It is still very much needed, however, and still very much not the norm. Religious history remains much rarer, and is just as much needed.

The history of American Evangelicism will prove, I think, to be one of the most important accounts for understanding the last roughly fifty years of American political and social history. But that history will have to leap over many high hurdles to make it into existence. At the present moment, accounts and analyses of Evangelicism are not wanting, but mostly come from (1) the crowing hatred of its partisan enemies, who have never understood it but have been growing ever more enraged by being defeated by it for so many decades, (2) the disdain and contempt of its natural enemies, the upper classes, the academics, the intellectuals, who always despised it but understand it now no better than they did in the '80s, and finally (3) its own former adherents, the "exvangelicals," who hate it and blame it as only disappointed sectarians can, for many genuine sins, but also for falling short of their current sectarian causes and failing to establish the utopia they were promised.

Evangelicism is, to say the least, no longer popular. Not only that, but it is increasingly, oddly obscured in the public and political world and mass media, as though it were entirely a thing of the past--except for among the exvangelicals, who speak of it like John Birchers of the United Nations, trying to constantly warn everyone of its crimes and its conspiratorial plots and its sole responsibility for all the problems of the world.

Yet for all that, it is simply true that the Evangelical movement was one of the most important religious and cultural and political events in America since WW2--and that things would have been, would be, very different without it.

This essay, then, is, if not an apologia in a strong sense, simply a basic, analytical theory of Evangelicism that places its nature in a broader context, and so works against accounts of it as a bizarre, uniquely wicked aberration. 

Column 08/13/22: Death of the Son (EP 1)

Death of the Son (EP 1)

[A mathematician friend recently challenged me to do something which he wanted to do but couldn't but which he claimed I could: namely to write, with some minimal degree of historical and especially character verisimilitude, a murder mystery set in the 4th century AD. Since I can't resist such a challenge or such flattery, since my writing time is limited, since I've never tried writing fiction in installments before and since the whimsical Dickensian/Flash-Gordon-y quality of such a format appeals to me, especially for a self-consciously pulpy genre pot-boiler like a 4th century murder mystery, I decided to do it in installments in this column. The next installment will come at some later point (definitely not next week); and who knows how many there will be?]

He stood in the dusty sand of the arena, shaded (but barely) by the brick wall beneath the stands, as they led the day's victims forward: ten men, women, and children, clothed (but barely), stony-eyed and defiant. When they reached the center of the arena, where the black-clad carnificines shuffled nervously, they and their guards alike stood fast, turned, and waited, their eyes fixed to a point above his head.

After only a few moments, the chief guard (not a centurion or even the leader of a cohort, but a mere auxiliary commander, and a German) nodded, then drew his long spatha from its sheathe as theatrically as he could manage, rounded on the prisoners, and grasped the first victim firmly by the arm.

The crowd in the arena seemed to have been holding its breath, and now released it. It was a young woman, thirty at most, but pale and thin, with long, dark hair and dark eyes that stood out of her face,

In that one moment, the mood in the arena had shifted, subtly but definitely.

Many different things drew men (and women, and children) to the arena on days like today, just as many different spirits animated the magistrates that presided over such displays. One could always tell, however, absolutely and infallibly, what kind of familiar spirit would preside on that particular day by the first victim chosen. 

If the magistrate was congenitally reluctant about his task (and this was becoming increasingly common, as the angry Imperial missives read aloud almost daily in the piazza testified), the first victim would be a strong, hale man, otherwise undesirable, perhaps (many in the crowd, he knew, would say), not a real Christian, a real believer at all, but just a criminal. He, of course, knew like the magistrates that the matter was hardly that simple: Christian and criminal were by no means mutually exclusive categories, and it was always possible to find some margin of Christians diverging from the Way or doomed criminals succumbing to the allure of a sudden conversion and dramatic death. Such events rarely drew large crowds; by this point in the Campaign, even the magistrates knew that the audience would be mostly pious Christians who felt duty-bound (and safe) enough to support their weaker brethren.

If the magistrate was weak, insecure, afraid of both his task and his superiors, the first victim would be a young man, a child, really, or an old man near death--anyone who looked both weak and fearful enough to resist badly and die quickly. He had seen magistrates break down and cry at a denunciation from a strong victim, or even flee in terror from the arena; and then ever after preside over the torture of no one but small boys and elders so decrepit that their voices could not be heard from the stands and they died at the first bodily shock. These events drew the largest consistent crowds, for reasons he could not be sure of; at first, he had though it was merely perversion, such as drew a small, determined crowd of devotees to the regular executions, but had gradually realized that such crowds were in essence as fearful as their masters.

The truly fanatical among the Imperial service, as well as the truly bureaucratically committed, the truly insane, and the true careerist climbers (groups not easily distinguished) naturally targeted the leadership, intellectual and official, of the Church, always beginning with the bishop, or if not he, then his right-hand priest, or if not he, certainly some important layman in Imperial service, some brilliant intellectual from a school of philosophers, to test their mettle in open conflict, descending into the arena themselves to argue with their victims and offer salvation up to the very moment of death. There were few of such magistrates, and fewer every day; either because by now, after a long, failed Campaign, they had been rewarded by Diocletian and Dia with promotion, or because they had been driven from office by the hatred of the people.

When a magistrate selected a young woman as the first victim of the day, though, it could mean only one thing; and the crowd knew it as well as he. There were no more cheers, no more hum of regular activity and happy anticipation, and as he looked up towards the stands he could see the largest section of the already small crowd (the crowds had been smaller every day...) filing slowly towards the exits. Those that remained were either ashamed, shifting their feet and not looking at their neighbors, or wild-eyed and beyond shame; one old woman sitting far off by herself, certainly a Christian, perhaps a relative of one of the condemned, was quietly weeping. 

Young, female victims produced shame and, eventually, sympathy; if they showed any endurance at all, lasted at all longer than the minimum expected (and crowds always underestimated with women), it would be seen by the crowd as a defeat and a humiliation for them, the magistrate, the Emperors, and the Jovian Kingdom itself. Mixed into a larger crowd of victims, women could draw little attention; but put first, they showed nothing other than the personal desires of the magistrate. He could almost see him, the Logistes himself, looking as he always did, his eyes bulging, his thin hair plastered to his face, sweating with the heat, rubbing his hands together again and again as though to protect them from the cold.

It was then that he what he had felt it so many times before, what he had felt on every such day since the Campaign had begun: a wave of overpowering, deafening shame, washing over his whole body, making his hands shake, his knees buckle, his teeth chew bitterly at his tongue, his eyes close, burying him in darkness. How much longer, my Lord...?

He was no longer by the wall, now, but dressed in the garb of a carnifex, and looking into the eyes of the young woman. She opened her mouth to speak--

"Theodotus."

For a moment after he had woken up, he did not know where, or even who, he was. His first emotion was confusion, and his first thought, absurdly, that is not my name. As he always did when he woke, though, his first action, before even thought, was to bring his hand up to his face, to his right eye and the empty socket from which it had been plucked many years before. 

Yes, he thought, as he caressed it with his fingers, yes, I am he.

With that, as it always did, memory and will returned to him. His eyes snapped open, and he rolled out of his cot.

Silence: An Exercise in Film Criticism and Cultural Jeremiad

Note: Every possible kind of spoiler exists herein. Proceed at your own risk.

The elusive, controversial American Catholic filmmaker Martin Scorcese spent roughly thirty years trying to adapt Silence, a novel by the equally elusive and controversial Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo. After momentous efforts and many false starts, the film was finally released last year, to general bemusement and a box office take of roughly 16 million (on a 40 million budget). The film’s distributors, perhaps hoping to avoid controversy, promoted the film very little, and released it only in a heavily limited number of theaters for a very short run. The film was ignored by all major cinematic awards, garnering no Golden Globe nominations and only one Academy Award nomination (for best cinematography), which it did not win. Although it had its vociferous defenders, including most top film critics, it also garnered its share of controversy and vicious criticism, from a number of very different sources. For all intents and purposes, the film sank like a stone, leaving few ripples in its wake.

Still, I saw it, and I also followed the buzz surrounding the film fairly closely; and I found both the film and the responses it provoked almost equally fascinating. I read the novel the film is based on a number of years ago, and, as with Scorsese it has stayed with me ever since; and this in turn inspired me to read a moderate amount about the historical situations that inspired the novel, as well as other works of its author, Shusaku Endo. I also come at both film and novel from the perspective of a practicing Catholic who studies intellectual history academically and also (while by no means being an expert) reads a great deal of Catholic theology, present and (mostly) past. All this has given me, I think, a perspective on film and book different from the average American. It is my basic contention, then, that the film, being what it is, has a great deal to tell us about the perspectives and basic orientations of the people who watched it. And this in turn has a great deal to tell us about the current state of our society.

A Brief History of Church-State Relations Over the Last Two Thousand Years

This is a (relatively) brief outline of Church-State relations, mostly just the big phases and conflicts, focusing on the West and on the Papacy, from my own perspective, based on my own reading, and for my own purposes:

The birth of Christianity coincides almost perfectly with the divinization of the Roman Emperor. By means of the new Imperial cult, the Emperor was treated as divine or quasi-divine, and the cult of his sacred person and authority quickly became one of the basic cores of Roman and Imperial identity. The Roman Empire, as embodied by the quasi-divine Emperor, was, by this understanding, absolutely sovereign, and not capable of being challenged from the standpoint of divinity, since it was itself, in a very real sense, divine--it also had, naturally, absolute power over religious matters, funding cults and temples and regulating them for its own purposes. Even prior to the Empire, of course, civic and religious life were generally indistinguishable, with political and religious offices and authority going together in most cases.

Christians in the first centuries, though, had a complex relationship with this Imperial ideology. On the one hand, they consistently refused to pay the Emperor divine (or even pseudo-divine) honors, which was one of the primary reasons why they were persecuted. On the other hand, Christians labored to present themselves as good citizens, loyal to the Empire and especially to the Emperor himself--and they sometimes even appealed to the Emperor for internal dispute resolutions, or for aid against local persecution (most persecutions of Christians were local rather than Imperial). As the Church expanded, though, it took on more and more the status of a "society within a society," even an "Empire within an Empire"--the Church as a highly organized institution, shadowing the Roman Empire in all its major cities, participating in its intellectual life and utilizing its infrastructure, but with its own authorities totally separate from, and frequently opposed to, the general public authorities and ideologies. A bishop was a public figure, to be sure, but he was not a civic one--and he represented, in his person, a set of ideas radically different from those animating the state at large. He and the Imperial governor were not likely to get along.

Tales From the Papal Crypt: Pope Martin, Enemy of the State

Pope Martin I

"The police would not allow the holy man to land, though he was suffering severe pain.  Instead they went ashore themselves and rested in comfort.  However, the priests of the locality and all the faithful sent gifts in no small quantity of things that might be useful to him.  But the police brutally tore these gifts from the people's hands in the presence of the Pope himself, cursing and swearing the while.  Anyone who brought the Pope small gifts was chased away after being insulted and beaten, with the warning:

'Whoever wishes well to this man is an enemy of the state.'"

-eyewitness account by a companion of Pope Martin I

To begin our tale, let us first proceed to its ending.  In AD 655, somewhere in a little, isolated town on the edge of the Crimean Sea, Pope Martin died.  The exact cause of his death is not known; based on the available evidence, he was suffering at the least from chronic malnutrition, physical and psychological abuse, conditions of extreme cold and privation, and many untreated medical ailments.  Most likely, his death did not cause much of a stir for either the Imperial officials set to watch him or the local townspeople; after all, his death had been the general idea of sending him into exile there in the first place.  The town of Cherson was well used to hosting political prisoners, and the Imperial police well used to hastening their deaths.

Yet there is a good reason to begin at the end with Pope Martin; for his death is, at least statistically, the most notable thing about him.  Pope Martin is the last Pope to this day to be venerated as a martyr by the Catholic Church.  Popes since then have died in office, and some have even been murdered; but Martin is the last who is considered to have been killed in odium fidei--that is, in hatred of the Catholic Faith, the Church, and Christ himself.  This is no small accolade.

The first Pope to be martyred, was, of course, St. Peter himself--and the last is St. Martin.  No small accomplishment, that.