The Contextualist

2006-06-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

I recently spoke with two people with a great interest in music, including church music, who told me that they had read that the Pope had just banned guitar masses and outlawed modern music in the Church. After doing some research, I sent them this message:

I suspected that the popular press coverage of Pope Benedict's recently expressed views on liturgical music was probably not entirely accurate. My quick internet research suggests that I was correct.

First, let me show you the article from the Telegraph in London (a version of which is probably the one that Sara saw) that, starting with the Headline, makes the Pope look like he is about to start a new inquisition into guitar masses and excommunicate exponents of modern music :

Silence modern music in church, says Pope
By Malcolm Moore in Rome
(Filed: 27/06/2006)
The Pope has demanded an end to electric guitars and modern music in church and a return to traditional choirs.
The Catholic Church has been experimenting with new ways of holding Mass to try to attract more people. The recital of Mass set to guitars has grown in popularity in Italy; in Spain it has been set to flamenco music; and in the United States the Electric Prunes produced a "psychedelic" album called Mass in F Minor.
However, the use of guitars and tambourines has irritated the Pope, who loves classical music. "It is possible to modernize holy music," the Pope said, at a concert conducted by Domenico Bartolucci the director of music at the Sistine Chapel. "But it should not happen outside the traditional path of Gregorian chants or sacred polyphonic choral music."
His comments prompted the newspaper La Stampa to compare him with Pope Pius X, who denounced faddish classical and baroque compositions and reinstated Gregorian chants in 1903.
The Pope's supporters argue that the music played during Mass is a vital part of the communion between worshippers and God, and that medieval church music, with the liturgy, creates the correct ambience for perceiving God's mystery.
Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, the Archbishop of Ravenna, said:"Mass is the presence of Christ and the music adds so much more when the harmony allows the mind to transcend the concrete to the divine."
But Cardinal Carlo Furno, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, said it was "better to have guitars on the altar and rock and roll Masses than empty churches". The use of modern music was a "sign of the vitality of the faith".
The argument is part of a wider debate about the Latin Mass, restricted in the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s because it was seen to be putting worshippers off going to Church.
The Pope believes that if Latin Masses are reintroduced, more Catholics will learn the words to the Gregorian chants that he advocates.

OK. Now , lets compare the Telegraph's account with what he said as reported in the Catholic News Service (which is for the Catholic lay audience with a normal level of interest in the subject):

POPE-MUSIC Jun-27-2006 (260 words) xxxi
Pope says new liturgical music need not ignore older church music
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The latest musical compositions of the 89-year-old former director of the Sistine Chapel Choir demonstrate how new liturgical music can be created without ignoring the centuries of church music that came before it, Pope Benedict XVI said.
In the Sistine Chapel June 24, Msgr. Domenico Bartolucci, who directed the Sistine choir from 1956 to 1997, offered Pope Benedict and a select few a taste of his music and the music of the 16th-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
The pieces included a special song of prayers for Pope Benedict that Msgr. Bartolucci composed shortly after the pope's election in 2005.
After the performance, Pope Benedict said that having Palestrina's music and Msgr. Bartolucci's music on the same program "confirms the conviction that sacred polyphony, particularly that of the so-called Roman school, is a heritage to preserve with care, to keep alive and to be made known."
The entire church should be able to hear that type of music, he said, because it is part of the church's "invaluable spiritual, artistic and cultural patrimony."
Pope Benedict said, "An authentic updating of sacred music cannot take place except in the wake of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony."
The pope said that in music, as in art and architecture, the church promotes and supports "new expressive means without denying the past -- the history of the human spirit -- which is also the story of its dialogue with God."

After comparing the two articles one need not wonder why Catholics are starting to think that they (and especially their leaders) do not always get a fair shake in the press these days. As you will note from the second article, it is not 'modern' music that the Pope objects to--he applauds the new piece written for the occasion--rather he takes issue with certain types of music as being inappropriate for liturgical pieces. "Promoting new expressive means without denying the past" would, apparently, have been a bit too subtle a thesis for the Telegraph.

Next is yet another article on this subject with a more detailed analysis of the approach of this Pope, written for those who are obviously highly interested in the subject of Catholic Church Music (and know quite a lot about Vatican politics and who is "in" and who is "out"). As one can see, its perspective is that the Pope is not out to "demand an end" (or issue a ban), but to lead by example:

A Change of Tune in the Vatican – And Not Only in the Secretariat of State. Bertone takes Sodano’s place. But an important shift is also taking place in liturgical music. The way was pointed out by a concert with the pope in the Sistine Chapel, conducted by maestro Bartolucci
by Sandro Magister
ROMA, June 27, 2006 – Step by step, Benedict XVI is impressing a new form and a new style on the governance of the universal Church.
Recent days were marked by the announcement of a change in the secretary of state: from Angelo Sodano to Tarcisio Bertone.
But another event orchestrated by pope Joseph Ratzinger is of no less importance: the concert conducted in the Sistine Chapel, on Saturday, June 24, by maestro monsignor Domenico Bartolucci.
With this concert, Benedict XVI has symbolically restored the Sistine Chapel to its true maestro. Because the famous chapel is not only the sacred place decorated with the frescoes of Michelangelo, it also gives the name to the choir that for centuries has accompanied the pontifical liturgies.
Maestro Bartolucci was named the "perpetual" director, the director for life, of the Sistine Chapel by Pius XII in 1959. Under this and later popes, he was an outstanding interpreter of the liturgical music founded upon Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony. But after a long period of opposition, in 1997 he was dismissed and replaced by a choirmaster thought to be more fitting for the "popular" music dear to John Paul II.
Bartolucci’s replacement was the finishing stroke of the almost complete elimination of Gregorian chant and polyphony as desired by the authors of the postconciliar liturgical reform.
The person responsible for Bartolucci’s removal in 1997 was the master of pontifical ceremonies, Piero Marini, still in service with Benedict XVI although close to his own dismissal. Marini brought in monsignor Giuseppe Liberto as head of the Sistine Chapel, having noticed and appreciated his work as music director during John Paul II’s visits to Sicily. It was easy to get pope Karol Wojtyla’s permission for the maneuver.
At the time, the only significant figure in the Roman curia who came to Bartolucci’s defense was Ratzinger, for reasons that were both musical and liturgical, as he explained in essays and books.
His positions then were isolated. But with his election as pope, Ratzinger immediately indicated his intention to proceed, in the liturgical and musical field, with what he calls "the reform of the reform."
This was clear from the inaugural Mass of his pontificate in St. Peter’s Square, the celebration of which was distinguished by a classical style that had been overshadowed in the mass rituals of his predecessor.
It was clear from one of his first changes in the Roman curia, when he replaced the secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship.
In the areas of liturgy and music, Benedict XVI knows that decrees from the authorities are not enough. His intention is that of reeducating more than issuing orders. The concert by maestro Bartolucci in the Sistine Chapel is one of these teaching moments that the pope wants to leave a mark.
In the concert, Bartolucci masterfully executed an offertory, two motets, and a "Credo" by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, the prince of sacred Roman polyphonic music and maestro of the Sistine Chapel until the end of the 1500’s.
But he also executed some of his own compositions: three motets, an antiphon, a hymn, and an "Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto," composed in 2005 after Ratzinger’s election as pope.
The juxtaposition of ancient and modern polyphony was not a casual one. Speaking at the end of the concert, Benedict XVI noted:
"All of the selections we have listened to – and especially in their entirety, where the 16th and 20th centuries stand parallel – agree in confirming the conviction that sacred polyphony, in particular that of what is called the ‘Roman school’, constitutes a heritage that should be preserved with care, kept alive, and made better known, for the benefit not only of the scholars and specialists, but of the ecclesial community as a whole. [...] An authentic updating of sacred music can take place only in the lineage of the great tradition of the past, of Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony."
Before this, maestro Bartolucci had addressed Benedict XVI:
"Most blessed Father, we all know the great love of Your Holiness for the liturgy, and thus for sacred music. Music is the art that has benefited the liturgy of the Church most of all: the space for the choir represented its cradle, thanks to which the Church was able to form the language that we admire today. The most beautiful examples that the faith of past centuries has left to us and which we must keep alive are Gregorian chant and polyphony: these require a constant practice capable of enlivening and animating divine worship."
Among the prelates of the Roman curia present at the concert were Marini and Liberto. But Benedict XVI’s attention was entirely dedicated to maestro Bartolucci – a vigorous 89 years old, – his choir, and the superb quality of their performances.
The pope defined these as "a vehicle of evangelization," but he doesn’t want them to remain simply the matter of concerts, but rather that they should again animate and adorn the liturgies. Beginning with the pontifical liturgies.
This is the road ahead. By restoring the Sistine Chapel to maestro Bartolucci, Benedict XVI has pointed it out in an unmistakable way.

If you have made it this far, and are willing to go deeper still, for a yet more detailed understanding of what the Pope thinks, the following lengthy article suggests why--love him or hate him--you cannot gainsay the careful, thoughtful and learned approach that Pope Benedict took towards this issue in several lengthy essays on the subject (written over the last 20 years) that are summarized in the article. I was struck, among other things, about this important statement about the arts:

"Music, after all, has the power to bring people together. . . . Yes, art is elemental. Reason alone as it’s expressed in the sciences can’t be man’s complete answer to reality, and it can’t express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man."

He also comments: "This means that musical expression is part of the proper human response to God’s self-revelation. . . .Mere speech, mere silence, mere action are not enough"

The author of the article also adds the following interesting comment: "The Cardinal wryly observes that, in a multicultural society, such an insistence on the vernacular [i.e. excluding Latin hymns from the modern Mass] has about as much logic to it as the demand for a hand-shaking, on-speaking-terms community does in an age of increased mobility. Harnoncourt notes that "The traditional, so-called ‘Latin Mass’ always had Aramaic (Amen, Alleluia, Hosanna, Maran atha) and Greek (Kyrie, Trisagion) parts, and the sermon was usually given in the vernacular. Real life is not acquainted with stylistic unity and perfection; on the contrary, where something is really alive, formal and stylistic variety will occur . . ., and the unity is an organic one"

The bottom line for the former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, is that music which is part of the liturgy must serve a theological purpose, should be appropriate for that purpose, and should connect with the history and tradition of the Church. While I admit I am biased, I would argue that regardless of ones views about any particular conclusion he reaches, from the Catholic point of view, the Pope has his priorities straight--his job is to have music serve the Church and promote the Catholic vision of the sacred, not the other way around. (And I still haven't seen him say a bad word about guitars.)

Cardinal Ratzinger on Liturgical Music,
by Michael J. Miller
(Reprinted from the July 2000 HPR)
In an article entitled "Liturgie und Kirchenmusik" published in 1986 in Communio, Cardinal Ratzinger referred to the incompatibility between rock music and the liturgy of the Church. A storm of progressive protest ensued, most of it aimed at the messenger instead of arguing to the contrary. How can a theologian judge modern music? What right does a Curia official have to say how today’s young people should participate in the Liturgy? Implicit in the controversy was the hackneyed caricature of Ratzinger as the "Teutonic academician turned doctrinal watchdog."
A revisionist view became necessary in 1996 with the publication of another book-length interview with the Cardinal (this time by German journalist Peter Seewald), because the second Ratzinger Report began with eighty pages of biographical information. His Eminence, we learn, is only human after all. Reminiscing about his childhood in Bavaria, Cardinal Ratzinger admits that music (especially Mozart) had a major role in his family life. "Music, after all, has the power to bring people together. . . . Yes, art is elemental. Reason alone as it’s expressed in the sciences can’t be man’s complete answer to reality, and it can’t express everything that man can, wants to, and has to express. I think God built this into man." 1
Being an intellectual does not disqualify one from commenting upon either music or liturgy, provided one recognizes the limits of rational discourse. As Cardinal Ratzinger himself put it, theologians "cannot enter into musical discussions per se, but they can nonetheless ask where the seams are, so to speak, that link faith and art." 2
What follows is a summary of three articles by Cardinal Ratzinger on liturgical music which appeared in German journals during the years 1986-1994 and were reprinted in English as part of the anthology, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today. 3The essays were written for different occasions, but they follow the same pattern: the author contrasts a problematic theory or a pernicious trend with the true theology of the liturgy, and from that draws conclusions as to the proper place of music in the liturgy and suggests guidelines for practical applications.
A) The cultural challenge vs. the biblical culture of Faith
(“‘Sing Artistically for God’: Biblical Directives for Church Music," pp. 94-110.)
"Since church music is faith that has become a form of culture, it necessarily shares in the current problematic nature of the relationship between Church and culture" (94). This relationship was in crisis during the Renaissance and the Reformation, but as of the Enlightenment, secular culture "emancipated" itself from the faith: they went their separate ways and have drifted further apart ever since.
Since the seventeenth century the Church has seen the Caecilian reform of sacred music, the rediscovery of Gregorian chant, and the renewal of polyphonic church music. Nevertheless, as a result of cultural dislocations, "we are at a loss as to how faith can and should express itself culturally in the present age" (95).
The picture from the culture’s side is bleak. In the absence of religion, art becomes groundless aestheticism with neither direction nor purpose. Music in particular has split into two worlds: pop (a manufactured commodity) and rationally constructed high-brow music (an elite, degenerate form of "classical" music). A middle ground remains: "a staying at home in the familiar music that preceded such divisions, touched the person as a whole and is still capable of doing this even today. . . . Church music mostly settles in this middle ground" (95).
Many are the calls for the Church to dialogue with culture today, but few imagine the talks as being bilateral. You can’t expect the Church to subject herself to modern culture, which, having lost its religious base, is in a never-ending process of self-doubt. Culture, too, must question itself radically and be opened to a cure, a reconciliation with religion.
Are there any biblical directives for the path that church music should take? Cardinal Ratzinger narrows the question: "Can we find one biblical text that sums up the way Holy Scripture sees the connection between music and faith" (96)?
The Bible contains its own hymnal: "the Psalter, born from the practice of singing and playing musical instruments during worship." Furthermore this practical tradition contains "essential elements of a theory of music in faith and for faith." Within the Old Testament, the Psalter is like a bridge between the Law and the Prophets; it also serves as a bridge connecting the two Testaments. From the earliest days of the Church, the psalms are prayed and sung as hymns to Christ, the Son of David the psalmist. "Christ himself thus becomes the choir director who teaches us the new song and gives the Church the tone and the way in which she can praise God appropriately and blend into the heavenly liturgy" (97).
Cardinal Ratzinger selects one psalm verse which appears throughout the history of theological reflection on church music. Psalm 47:7 (in some numberings Psalm 46 and/or the eighth verse) exhorts us to "Sing praises with a psalm" (RSV). The Hebrew word maskil is variously rendered in modern translations as "an inspired song" (M. Buber, German) or as playing "with all your skill" (Jerusalem Bible, French), or as singing "artfully" (in a version approved by the Italian Bishops Conference).
The ancient translations of the Church also shed light on the subject. "The Septuagint, which became the Old Testament of Christianity, wrote psalate synetos, which we might translate as: ‘. . . Sing with under-standing’—in both senses of the word: that you yourselves understand it and that it is understandable" (97). Of course this involves more than a merely rational act; we are to sing "in a way worthy of and appropriate to the spirit, disciplined and pure" (98). St. Jerome’s rendering is along the same lines: psallite sapienter. Sapientia means more than understanding; "[it] also denotes an integration of the entire human person . . . with all the dimensions of his or her existence." Just as the gift of wisdom integrates knowledge and experience with the requirements of Divine Law, so the singing of the inspired psalms involves the human person, body and soul, with all its faculties, in divine worship.
The first word of the verse, "Sing praises with a psalm," in Hebrew zamir, is also laden with history. "The emphasis is on articulated singing, a singing with reference to a text, which is instrumentally supported, as a rule" (98-99). In stark contrast to the orgiastic cult music of the pagans, zamir refers to "logoslike" music, "which incorporates a word or wordlike event it has received and responds to it in praise or petitions, in thanksgiving or lament." The Septuagint Bible chose psallein as its translation, giving a new, culturally conditioned meaning to a Greek word that previously had meant only to play a stringed instrument, but never to sing.
From this word study, Cardinal Ratzinger draws several conclusions about possible biblical directives for music in the Church.
1) The command, "Sing to the Lord," runs through all of Scripture as part of the call to worship and glorify God. "This means that musical expression is part of the proper human response to God’s self-revelation. . . .Mere speech, mere silence, mere action are not enough" (100).
2) There is no such thing as a faith completely undetermined by culture, which could then be inculturated any way you like. "The faith decision as such entails a cultural decision; . . . Faith itself creates culture and does not just carry it along like a piece of clothing. . . . This cultural given . . . is capable of encountering other contemporary cultures. . . . This ability to exchange and flourish also finds its expression in the ever-recurring imperative, ‘Sing to the Lord a new song.’” The Christological interpretation of the psalms is a particularly dramatic example of this capacity for development in what is an irrevocable and fundamental cultural form (101).
3) The various meanings to be found in the second word of our psalm verse range between the two translations sapienter and cum arte. Singing in accordance with wisdom implies a word-oriented art, which is not concerned merely with intelligibility but "stands under the primacy of logos" and makes demands upon our highest moral and spiritual powers. The second translation, artfully, tells us that encountering God challenges a person to respond to the best of his or her abilities. God gave Moses detailed specifications for the tabernacle; artistic endeavor in the book of Exodus is portrayed as a participation in God’s creativity (103).
The New Testament, by both frequent citation and explicit command, takes up the psalm tradition as an integral part of its own teaching and worship. "When you come together, each one has a hymn [Gk: psalmon], a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification" (1 Cor. 14:26). To the early Church the psalm appeared as a gift of the Spirit. The epistles also give evidence of exalted Christological hymns newly composed in Greek. By the second century, however, as a precaution after the musical innovations of the Gnostic sect, the Church reduced liturgical music to the Psalter. "The theology of the Psalter sufficed and set the standard in terms of content, but also . . . the way of making music specified by the Psalter became the musical model of emerging Christendom" (104). To put it in a less scholarly way, revelation was complete with the end of the apostolic age, and the divinely inspired hymns found in Sacred Scripture were sufficient for the Church’s worship.
In light of the foregoing discussion, both "pop" music and the music of elitist aesthetes are unsuitable for divine worship. The latter, proclaiming art to be "for art’s sake" and for no other purpose, elevates the composer to the level of a "pure creator." "According to Christian faith, however, it belongs to the essence of human beings that they come from God’s ‘art’. . . and as perceivers can think and view God’s creative ideas with him and translate them into the visible and the audible" (106).
On the other hand, hasn’t the Church’s liturgical music always drawn on popular music to renew itself? Isn’t "pop" music just what the Church needs in order to "relate" with contemporary culture? Cardinal Ratzinger recommends "treading carefully" in this area (107-108). In the past folk music was the expression of a clearly defined community held together by language, history and a way of life. Springing from fundamental human experience, it conveyed a truth, however naive the form may have been. Pop music, in contrast, is a standardized product of mass society, a function of supply and demand. The 20 th-century composer Paul Hindemith called the constant presence of such noise "brainwashing," and C. M. Johansson claims that hearing it gradually makes us incapable of listening attentively: "we become musically comatose. . . . This medium kills the message" (p. 108 cf. footnote 19).
Cardinal Ratzinger insists that the faith must not be trivialized in the name of inculturating it. Today we do not have to limit church music so strictly to chanting of the psalms, because we have "an infinitely larger trove" of good liturgical music to draw on. But to hold the line against the onslaught of misguided attempts to import "modern" musical forms into the liturgy requires "the courage of asceticism, the courage to contradict. Only from such courage can new creativity arise" (109).
B) The sociological challenge vs. true Christian anthropology
("The Image of the World and of Human Beings in the Liturgy and Its Expression in Church Music" pp. 111-127.)
"Conversation with God transcends the boundaries of human speech" (111); therefore it calls on music, both vocal and instrumental, for help.
After the Second Vatican Council there were disputes over the right form of music in worship. The initial clashes were between pastoral expediency ("We worship in the ver-nacular now . . .") and musicians who maintained that their traditional repertoire had intrinsic and pastoral value. The question underlying such differences of opinion then was: how do we apply liturgical directives? More recently, a second wave of controversy has been "pushing the questions forward, as far as the foundations themselves." The issue has become: what is liturgical action in the first place, what are its anthropological and theological foundations?
Symptomatic of the new thinking is the Nuovo Dizionario di Liturgica (1984), article on canto e musica. It declares the starting point of liturgy to be the gathering of two or three in the name of Christ (Matt. 18:20). This sounds harmless enough, but it gains revolutionary momentum when the verse is isolated and pitted against the entire liturgical tradition. Such a definition places the group before the Church and brings "autonomous" individuals into conflict with an "authoritarian" institution. "It is evident that with the adoption of sociological language the prior adoption of its evaluations has also occurred" (113). New music good; old music bad! Gregorian chant and Palestrina are seen as "tutelary gods" for those in power who, threatened by cultural change, cling to an ancient repertoire.
Cardinal Ratzinger turns the hermeneutic of suspicion back on the liturgical theorists. "There is of course not only an idolization of sociology at work here but also a complete separation of the New Testament from the history of the Church" (114). The notion, that the Church has been in decline since Jesus began it, is a familiar Enlightenment myth, which ultimately becomes an excuse for cut-and-paste editions of the Bible (like Jeffer-son’s) or the Marxist texts of the Missa Nicaraguensis sung in the 1980s.
What are the new and better ideas of the liturgical experts? They insist on two basic values: "The ‘primary value’ of a renewed liturgy is, we are told, ‘the full and authentic action of all persons.’” The people of God proclaims its identity in song. The second value judgment follows: music is the power that brings about cohesiveness within the group. Celebration, ergo, becomes creativity; the "how" becomes more important than the "what."
Condensed in this way, the argument reads like a lampoon. Yet Ratzinger’s full analysis of the effects of modern "scientific" sociology upon liturgical music is trenchant. "I would not be speaking of all this in so much detail if I thought that such ideas were attributable to only a few theoreticians" (115). It is all too common that "so-called creativity, the active participation of all present, and the relationship to a group in which everyone is acquainted with and speaks to everyone else" are mistaken for the real categories of the conciliar understanding of liturgy.
The philosophical basis of this sociological "take" on liturgy is the view that power opposes freedom. This assigns, a priori, a negative quality to the concept of "institution" and reduces the object of hope from Paschal redemption to social progress. Herein lies the "tragic paradox" of this trend in liturgical reform: the institutional Church is seen as a hindrance to "freedom," yet liturgy without the Church is a self-contradiction. "Here it has been forgotten that the liturgy should be the opus Dei in which God himself first acts and we become redeemed people precisely through his action. [If] the group celebrates itself . . . it is celebrating nothing at all since it is no cause for celebration" (117).
In actuality, the Church is the communio sanctorum of all places and all times (118). Romano Guardini has elaborated upon the momentous consequences of realizing that the communion of saints (and not the Base Community) is the true subject of the liturgy. The Church’s liturgy has an objective and positive character, because it lives in three ontological dimensions: cosmos, history and mystery. Liturgy has a cosmic dimension because as believers we do not create it, but participate in something greater that transcends us all. As a result of its historic dimension, it develops as a living thing while maintaining its identity (cf. the discussion of biblical culture, above). Finally, liturgy’s dimension of mystery means that we do not initiate the liturgical event; rather, it originates in a call and a divine act of love, to which our response is obedience.
This vantage point is of great importance for the artistic questions involved in preparing liturgical music. The music of emancipation is inconsistent with true liturgy. Furthermore, "creativity" that ignores the creaturely status of man "is by its very nature absurd and untrue since humans can only be themselves through receptivity and participation." The real human condition is that we stand in need of a redemption which human effort cannot bring about.
Our faith is Logocentric, and so must our worship be (Cf. logike latreia Rom. 12:1). "The ‘Word’ to which Christian worship refers is first of all not a text, but a living reality: a God . . . who communicates himself by becoming a human being. This incarnation is the sacred tent, the focal point of all worship which looks at the glory of God and gives him honor" (121).
"Liturgical music is a result of the claim and the dynamics of the Word’s incarnation. . . . Faith becoming music is a part of the process of the Word becoming flesh" (122). At the same time (one might say: in counterpoint), the flesh becomes "logocized" or spiritualized, restoring harmony to postlapsarian creation. "Wood and brass turn into tone; the unconscious and the unsolved become ordered and meaningful sound."
Our Incarnate Lord, who was raised up on the cross, raised up our fallen human nature. Western music, from Gregorian chant through Renaissance polyphony to Bruckner and beyond, lives from this great synthesis "of spirit, intuition and sensuous sound. . . . [T]heliturgical music of the Church must be subject to that integration of the human state which appears before us in incarnational faith" (124).
Practically speaking, the prerequisites for sacred music include "awe, receptivity and a humility that is prepared to serve by participating in the greatness which has already gone before" (125). Furthermore, the Church has posted road signs: the great liturgical texts (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) and the references in her official documents to Gregorian chant and Palestrina as models providing orientation.
C) The "postconciliar" challenge vs. the cosmic liturgy
(“‘In the Presence of the Angels I Will Sing Your Praise’; The Regensburg Tradition and the Reform of the Liturgy," pp. 128-146.)
The point of departure of this essay is a description of the medieval frescoes in the crypt of the monastery of Marienberg in South Tyrol. "The real focal point is the Majestas Domini, the risen Lord lifted up on high, who is seen at the same time and above all as the one returning, the one already coming in the Eucharist. . . . Liturgy is anticipated Parousia. . . ." (129).
Indeed, St. Benedict, in his Rule, reminds his monks of Psalm 138:1: "In the presence of the angels I will sing to you," and admonishes them, "Let us reflect on how we should be in the presence of God and the angels, and when we sing let us stand in such a way that our hearts are in tune with our voices." Cardinal Ratzinger goes on to explain, "The liturgy is not a thing the monks create. It is already there before them. It is entering into the liturgy of the heavens that has always been taking place." This is the clear mean-ing of the frescoes.
Sadly, this "already, but not yet" character of the earthly liturgy has been obscured lately by a preoccupation with a liturgical reform that is "already" with us but has "not yet" overcome the old Tridentine order. According to this strange perspective, "a chasm separates the history of the Church into two irreconcilable worlds: the preconciliar and the postconciliar" (130).
Cardinal Ratzinger’s brother served as choirmaster in the Regensburg cathedral from 1964 to 1994. When he began, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II had not yet been implemented. The music at Regensburg Cathedral realized in an exemplary way the artistic standards expressed in the motu proprio of Pius X, "Tra le sollecitudini" of November 22, 1903. As bishop of Mantua and patriarch of Venice, Pius X had opposed the operatic style of church music prevalent in Italy. "Insisting on chant as the truly liturgical music was for him part of a larger reform program that was concerned with restoring to worship its purity and dignity and shaping it according to its own inner claim" (131).
Another historical note helps to narrow the chasm between pre- and post-conciliar. Sacrosanctum Concilium, in laying the foundations for reform, constructed a large framework permitting a variety of actualizations. "The reform itself was then shaped by a post-conciliar commission and cannot in its concrete details simply be credited to the Council." The history of liturgy is always marked by the tension between continuity and renewal; in the twentieth century the real tension has not been between tired tradition and radical reform, but rather between two stages of reform.
The Cardinal warns that "the dualistic historical view of a pre- and postconciliar world" leads to notions that call the very essence of liturgy into question. One example of this exaggerated "either-or" is the idea that the priest alone was the celebrant of the liturgy before the Council, but now it is the assembled congregation. This implies that the congregation determines what happens in the liturgy. But the priest never had the right to decide arbitrarily what was to be done in the liturgy. It was a "rite," that is, an objective form of the Church’s corporate prayer (132).
The new Catechism, on the other hand, sums up the best insights of the Liturgical Movement. Liturgy means "service in the name of / on behalf of the people." But "the People of God is not simply there, as the Germans, French, Italians, or other peoples are; it comes into being again and again only through the service of the Son and by his lifting us into the community of God which we cannot enter on our own. . . . Every liturgical celebration is an action of Christ the priest and his Body which is the Church (p. 134; cf. CCC 1069-1070)."
Cardinal Ratzinger does not mince words. "Liturgy presupposes . . . that the heavens have been opened. . . . If the heavens are not open, then whatever liturgy was is reduced to role playing and, in the end, to a trivial pursuit of congregational self-fulfillment in which nothing really happens. The decisive factor, therefore, is the primacy of Christology" (133).
We must resolutely defend ourselves against "postconciliar" efforts to assign an absolute value to the "community." In the liturgy, the priest acts in persona Christi. The Catechism discusses the role of the congregation also, significantly in the chapter on the Holy Spirit: "The liturgical assembly derives its unity from the ‘communion of the Holy Spirit’ who gathers the children of God into the one Body of Christ.’ This assembly transcends racial, cultural, social—indeed, all human affinities. The assembly should prepare itself to encounter its Lord and to become ‘a people well-disposed’” (CCC 1097, 1098).
What significance does this Catholic understanding of liturgy have for church music? The Council’s reform was aimed at counteracting modern individualism and the moralism connected with it, so that the dimension of mystery in liturgy could reappear, its cosmic character which embraces heaven and earth (p. 135; cf. SC 8). For Christians, the Logos orients our worship towards the historical origin of faith, preserved for us in Scripture and Tradition. Church music should not be a performance on the occasion of worship, but is to be liturgy itself, "a harmonizing with the choir of the angels and saints." Gregorian chant and classic polyphonic music are ordered to the mystery in liturgy and to its Logos-character, as well as to its bond to the historical world. They furnish us with a norm which does not exclude new musical forms, but which guides us more surely toward what lies on the horizon.
Attention to the essence of liturgy clarifies the question concerning the place of music in liturgy. You might say, "As liturgy goes, so goes musica sacra." Philipp Harnoncourt has put it this way: "Jews and Christians agree with one another that their singing and music-making point to heaven, or rather that these come from heaven or are learned from heaven" (137). Cardinal Ratzinger elaborates: "Faith comes from listening to God’s word. But wherever God’s word is translated into human words there remains a surplus of the unspoken and unspeakable which calls us to silence—into a silence that in the end lets the unspeakable become song and also calls on the voices of the cosmos for help so that the unspoken may become audible."
Because church music comes from the Word—both as expression of the Truth and response to a call—its character must correspond to the words in which the Logos has expressed himself. Hence not all music is appropriate for liturgical use: "By its nature such music must be different from music that is supposed to lead to rhythmic ecstasy, stupefying anesthetization, sensual excitement, or the dissolution of the ego in Nirvana, to name just a few possibilities" (138). St. Cyp-rian’s treatise on the Lord’s Prayer offers a useful guideline: "Discipline, which includes tranquility and awe, belongs to the words and posture of praying." 4It should also belong to sacred song.
Cardinal Ratzinger quickly dismisses two other specious demands of the "new" liturgists. Some, mistaking external busyness for "active participation," would veto the use of the choir as intruding between the congregation and the liturgical action. But the choir is part of the community and its singing legitimately represents the prayer assembly. The concept of representation, of standing in for another, affects all levels of religious reality, including worship, and is a fundamental category of the Christian faith.
Another commonly heard "postconciliar" objection is a "fanaticism about vernacular," even to the point of forbidding chant and hymns in Latin. The Cardinal wryly observes that, in a multicultural society, such an insistence on the vernacular has about as much logic to it as the demand for a hand-shaking, on-speaking-terms community does in an age of increased mobility. Harnoncourt notes that "The traditional, so-called ‘Latin Mass’ always had Aramaic (Amen, Alleluia, Hosanna, Maran atha) and Greek (Kyrie, Trisagion) parts, and the sermon was usually given in the vernacular. Real life is not acquainted with stylistic unity and perfection; on the contrary, where something is really alive, formal and stylistic variety will occur . . ., and the unity is an organic one" (140).
In concluding his talk, Cardinal Ratzinger commends the departing cathedral choirmaster for striving "to manage continuity in development and development in continuity" during the theological and liturgical upheavals since the Council, "so that the liturgy in the Regensburg cathedral kept its dignity and excellence and remained transparent to the cosmic liturgy of the Logos in the unity of the whole Church without taking on a museum-like character" (140). He also expresses the hope that true reform will "flourish in the spirit of the Second Vatican Coun-cil—reform that is not discontinuity and destruction but purification and growth to a new maturation and a new fullness" (146).
In each of the articles just summarized, Cardinal Ratzinger responds to a specialized, academic-sounding challenge to the traditional Catholic understanding of the liturgy by considering the issue from a wider, ultimately theological perspective. To multiculturalist demands he replies with a reminder that Catholic faith and worship are rooted in a historical religion and thus are part and parcel of a specific cultural tradition. When the sociological gauntlet is thrown down, he arms himself with the insights of a comprehensive Christian anthropology. The notion that Vatican II divides Church history into a reactionary past and a glorious future is gently corrected with evidence that the reform of the liturgy has been the ongoing work of a century and more.
This technique of "taking the broader perspective" is evident in the very arrangement of essays in the anthology, A New Song for the Lord. The articles on liturgical music are grouped with one on church architecture at the end of Part II, preceded by an essay on "The Resurrection as the Foundation of the Christian Liturgy" (explaining Sunday as a Little Easter and the new Sabbath). Part I of the book, "Jesus Christ, Center of Faith and Foundation of Our Hope," treats more fundamental questions of Christology, catechesis and the true understanding of power in the Church. The essays are cogently argued and can be read independently, yet taken together they offer an almost systematic, theological treatise on the liturgy.
We have grown accustomed to hearing famous professors weigh in with expert commentary, each presenting his own abstruse "take" on a given issue. Not so when Cardinal Ratzinger writes about the liturgy or sacred music. The themes and arguments in his essays on liturgical music recur throughout his works, because he is writing about the lifeblood of the Mystical Body and the atmosphere that baptized souls breathe in their life of grace.
A few random examples illustrate this consistency. In Co-Workers of the Truth, a selection from Cardinal Ratzinger’s writings arranged as meditations for each day of the year, there are (besides excerpts from the articles summarized above) two other readings concerning sacred music:
"The first Christmas carol of history . . . had no human origins—Saint Luke records it as the song of the angels who were the evangelists of the holy night: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth among men, those with whom he is pleased, those of good will. This song sets a standard. . . . Peaceamong men results from God’s glory. Those who are concerned about the human race and its well-being have to be concerned about God’s glory first of all . . ., [which] is not some private concern . . . [but] a public affair."
"Three great symbols dominate the liturgy of this night of the Resurrection: light [the Paschal candle], water and ‘the new song,’ that is, the Alleluia. . . . Granted, we shall notsing this new song in its fullness until we are in the ‘new world,’ until God calls us by a ‘new name’ (Rev. 2:17), until everything has been made new. But we are permitted to anticipate something of this [beatific] newness in the great joy of the Easter vigil." 5
When arguing about the liturgy, one runs the risk of abstracting, of prescinding from the mystery. Cardinal Ratzinger’s well-reasoned essays on sacred music bring to mind vividly the fact that the liturgy is, after all, divine.
NOTES
1. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium (an interview with Peter Seewald, translated by Adrian Walker), Ignatius, San Francisco, 1997, p. 47.
2. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today (translated by Martha M. Matesich), The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 1997, p. 96.
3. The Crossroad Publishing Company, 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017. In this summary, the actual title of each article is given after a descriptive heading in bold. Page numbers for citations are included in the text.
4. St. Cyprian, De oratione dominica, 4.
5. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year (edited by Sr. Irene Grassl, translated by Sr. Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. and Rev. Lothar Krauth), Ignatius, San Francisco, 1992. The readings cited are for December 29 (pp. 408-409) and April 14 (pp. 123-124).
Mr. Michael J. Miller is a translator for Ignatius Press and a free-lance writer. His articles have been published in Faith and Reason, Catholic World Report and the Month. His last article in HPR appeared in March 1999.
(Reprinted from the July 2000 HPR)

2005-06-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

There have been several articles in the Wall Street Journal or from Journal columnists, that have made similar points about the arts to those set forth in my recent blog entries. Whether this is due to my developing a grasp of the obvious, surfing a critical tide, or just being lucky, I do not venture to say. Terry Teachout has an article that was in a shorter form in the Journal and longer form here, about politics in theatre.

In Museums: Why Should We Care? by Philippe de Montebello, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in The Wall Street Journal, Leisure & Arts Section
Wednesday, June 1, 2005, we have the following comments, which I take to be a ringing endorsement of the theory that what we think of as "the Arts" should be an effort to focus on excellence:

But in attempting to answer the question "why should be care?" I'd like to
suggest a final, more broadly significant lesson. It is mankind's
awe-inspiring ability, time and again, to surpass itself. What this means
is that no matter how bleak the times we may live in, we cannot wholly
despair of the human condition.
Thus, when he looks around his museum and seeks a reason to care about its value, he falls back upon the following:
My question is: Who made these things? The answer: We did, our species
did. Isn't that reason enough to maintain our faith in humankind?
Especially when you consider that wars, massacres and nature's indiscriminate
destructive forces have occurred throughout recorded history, and always will,
and that through it all, men and women of genius have managed to give us their
vision of the moment, at the highest level of inspiration. What we learn
is that no matter the degree of chaos and adversity surrounding him, man has
shown his capability to excel, to surpass. That is the ultimate assurance
of renewal and survival. And it is one of the great lessons of the art
museum.

In additon, Jay Nordlinger, in National Review On-Line had the following interesting observations:

You may know of Joseph Horowitz, who makes a living saying
that classical music is dying, or dead, in America, thanks mainly to the
stupidity of this culture. You’ll never go broke proclaiming the death of
classical music — they’ve done it in every generation for centuries now.
There’s
always a willing audience. As Charles Rosen, the scholar-pianist,
once wrote,
“The death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing
tradition.”
You’ll love this — it reads like a parody that one of us
might
have written, in a particularly unkind mood. In The New Statesman,
Horowitz
published a piece titled “Classical Music in America: An Oxymoron?”
(Europeans
would love to think so. In reality, these are boom times for
classical music in
America. But you can’t spoil these people’s treasured
line.) Horowitz
writes,
With the re-election of George W. Bush, many
Americans found
themselves asking questions about the future of American
democracy: about the
impact of money and of political machination, and about
the power of both to
sway an electorate already addicted to fast-food news
and talk radio.
Considered as an experiment in the democratisation of high
culture,
classical music in America restates these questions.
The
indulged and
uninquisitive American electorate [!] is paralleled by
classical music audiences
that ask for little and give little back. A
tangible acuity of knowing attention
still found in Berlin or Budapest is no
longer much encountered in New
York.
Yeah, right. As I say, some people
aren’t open to persuasion, or
reason. They have a great investment —
primarily an emotional one — in the
belief that America is inhospitable to
music. In the meantime, there is a
cornucopia of music around them: more
orchestras, opera companies, chamber
festivals, etc., than ever before. More
musicians, more presenting
organizations, than ever before. More recordings
than ever before. (But, true,
the big labels are going bust, as well they
should, for all their
errors.)
Gary Graffman, the pianist and longtime
director of the Curtis
Institute of Music, has wearily tried to puncture the
myth of classical music’s
death, or ill health. He was forced to title one
speech “Dead Again” — for
classical music is always “dead,” even as it
lives, or thrives.
The myth will
never die, but neither will music,
thank goodness. In some areas, we’re hurting,
for no age is a perfect one.
The recital is in trouble — largely because of the
explosion of chamber
music — and music education, in primary and secondary
schools, is not what
it should be. This is so even though schools have more
money than ever
before in our history. It’s a question of priorities, not
resources.
Anyway . . .
Oh, and, by the way, you’ll hear people wail over
“the
graying of the audience.” There’s no one but old people in the audience!
This, too, you hear in every generation. It has always been thus, and ever
will
be.
For those more than ordinarily interested, I have a long
examination of
this question in a New Criterion book, Lengthened
Shadows: America and Its Institutions in the Twenty-first Century.

2005-05-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the supposed death of classical music PART IV

Politics and Ideology As noted in Part I, there is nothing illegitmate about the insight that art, including music, has a political component. This was true of a Mozart opera such as The Marriage of Figaro, with its lampoon of artistocratic mores and behavior, much of Verdi's work, which was a significant boon to Italian Natiionalist sentiment, works of Beehtoven, Copland, etc. Of course, earlier music that was intended for the glory of God can now be read as 'political' if one wishes to conflate religion and politics ( although I would not; they are two distinct spheres; the fact that one's religious beliefs or worldview have an impact on one's political beliefs does not make them the same). Having conceded the point, however, it strikes me that the political component of classical music was of a different kind than that which we have today. Ironicly enough, it appears to me that it was at a far higher level of abstraction on the political side, while the detail focused on the human. On the other hand, political expression in music today seems far more particularistic, focused on specific contermporay events, while the human element is what is abstracted. This, I think, is an artistic mistake. What artists do most compellingly is analyze what they know well, which is usually other human beings and the circumstances of their lives and interactions with their enviornment. Their political views tend to be two dimensional, hackneyed, strident and overly-emotional (those trained and experienced in politics tend to be more artistic politicians and those trained and experienced in music tend to be more artistic musicians). A greater emphasis on telling human stories in an insightful, three dimensional and deeply felt way through music will, I would argue, provide a far better result, with the political dimension as part of a broader background. When we have an increasing amount of artistic time and energy expended on performances about President Bush, the Iraq War, or particular causes of the moment that focus squrely on issues and talking points, I think we get little in the way of good art and lots in the way of amateur politics. Human stories against the backdrop of contemporary events might produce far better results. It also seems obvious that by politicizing art in the sense that I am discussing, the audience is not only frustrated but disappointed. Most people come to the theatre or the concert hall for something other than a political rally, or to affirm to one another their ideological point of view. Rather, they come for an artistic experience which is achieved through a totally different medium than they can experience on cable news. Similarly, because there is a dominance of a single point of view in the arts world today ( a very left liberal perspective ) there tends to be a cloying conformity in the ideology that infroms modern music. The fact that the perspective is from the left does not make it any less smoothering or disdainful of other perspectives when it was largely from the right. Conformity is conformity; the fact that confromity comes in the pose of rebellion from the status quo only introduces an appropriate element of irony to this postmodern condition. For this reason, I suspect, the most interesting new trends will probably be conservative ones, as the true rebels of the new generation will bridle at the postmodernist conformity of the old. There is already a revival going on in early music, with its profoundly religious component, and a classical revival may not be far behind. What will be intersting to see is how the leaders of the now "old school" of moderns and post-moderns will look down on, and seek to thwart the ambitions of the neo-classicists and neo-romantics and neo-medeivalists, as they see their triumphs undermined and their legacy challenged. Of course, this will mean what survives the assault will be particularly compelling and exciting, and therefore popular, which gives me hope for the future.

2005-05-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the supposed death of classical music PART III

3. Pessimism as life's guiding philosophy If you believe that life is a cruel joke and that daily existence is absurdity on the road to despair, chances are you will tend to view the glass as half full and emptying fast. Consequently, if you are an artist, or a critic or an observer trained in this manner of thinking (as sadly so many of our artists, critics and observers have been trained in modern universities, conservatories and think tanks) it is no wonder that things look bleak for classical music, the arts and culture. Furthermore, your work will reflect that outlook--your songs will be depressing, your theatre will make you suicidal and your criticisms will drive you to drugs or drink. The best classical music today is written for the movies, where composers, despite whatever they have learned, are forced to write for shows that actually have more to say than life is an empty, barren way station on the journey to nothingness ( I like these travel metaphors, as you can tell). And people like this music! Does that mean that it is schlock? Only if the definition of good modern music is only that which is depressing and despairing and I think a moments reflection tells us that such a definition is unsustainable. Indeed, like anything else, cheerful (or at least not depressing) music can be bad or good. And some of it is very good indeed, which is why more and more orchestras play movie music. It is easy to be pessimistic about the future of classical music and the arts when you are pessimistic about everything. Once you embrace the notion that life can be good, that human beings for all their faults, can be responsible for enduring achievements and great nobility, even without embracing the ultimate optimism of religious faith, not only can you cheer up, but you can also start to think that there can be a future for classical music. But, if you think that its death is imminent, than wishing can truly make it so.

2005-05-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the Supposed Death of Classical Music Part II

2. The Cult of the New. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, modern artists seem to have an overwhelming fear of the past in any guise or permutation. Thus, the guiding principal of modern classical music is not classicist at all, but novelty. The result is an obscure ethos that is divorced from many of the principals that have made classical music attractive--melody, harmony, structure and drama. Clearly each new era of composition brought new ideas to the table, but at least the casual observer sees continuity as well as change. The movement toward atonality, aggressive dissonance and a rejection of melody and lyricism has alienated even the limited existing audiences of classical music lovers, let alone potential newcomers. Without exciting new classical music, there is not enough "buzz" and life in the classical music world. Retrospective, reissues and remembrances create a mummified world. Premieres, exciting projects--even if they are great failures--generate interest and enthusiasm. For classical music to become healthy--which it can--it needs modern work that is less concerned about being "new" and more concerned about being transcendent. After all, the work will be "new" by definition--short of plagiarism, every composer leaves his or her own mark. And artists should not be modest--they need to dare to do great things, not merely fill some safe academic niche.

2005-05-05T09:40:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on the supposed death of classical music PART I

Much continues to be said in the arts world on the health of classical music and the forces that seem to be killing it. The latter include competition from popular culture, a lack of government support, a failure of education, the death of classical radio and a general lack of interest among young people. While reasonable arguments have been constructed for the view that classical music and other "high art" such as opera, are being destroyed from without, my own sense is that there is a more compelling argument to be made that they are being destroyed from within. In other words, the classical arts world is not being killed, it is committing suicide.

I believe that the ongoing effort of the classical arts world to poison itself can be seen in the following phenomenon:

1. A crisis of confidence. The classical world is suffering with a terrible self-image in the minds of too many of the people who should be its strongest supporters.
First among these are academics and intellectuals. Sadly, the modern academic world by and large seems to have taken some reasonable insights, such as the permeability of the boundaries between high and low culture, the fact that there are class and economic influences on art, the fact that art can have political significance, the fact that artists are people and therefore suffer from human imperfections despite having prodigious talent ( e.g. Wagner was an anti-Semite ), and pushes them to the logical extreme, that there can be no intrinsic value in art, that all art is political, that high art was merely a method to repress the lower classes, etc. As a result, those who might be expected to have a love for classical art ( warts and all ) instead have developed a passion for focusing solely on its imperfections, or the imperfections of the times in which it was created, rather than celebrating its achievements. Rather than concluding, as I believe it is appropriate to do, that the greatness of art is that it transcends the pettiness of the times in which it is created and the personal failings of those who created it. Rather than marveling that flawed people, living in times in which ignorance and cruelty often seems to overwhelm all else, find the capacity to create things that are moving, beautiful to the senses and touch some inner place that we may not have previously experienced, they focus solely on the context in which the work is created and refuse to acknowledge the transcendence of the work--or even that transcendence is possible. Further, they seek to elevate the least of our achievements to the level of art and thus deprive the term of its meaning. Hence, a urinal can be said to be art if it is contextualized in a museum, because art is dependent upon its context for its definition. To paraphrase my daughter Diana, the Mona Lisa would be art even if it were hung in a bathroom, and a urinal is not art even if hung in the gallery of the Louvre. In saying this I do not mean to disparage the beauty or value of everyday things ( after all, I believe air conditioning to be one of the seminal advances of mankind ), but not every well done thing is at the level that we require to call it art. Those things which we as people make fall on a continum in terms of beauty and aesthetic appeal; in that sense, all is art. But most things fall on the lower or middle side of the continum--it is only the truly exemplary that we call "art", just as only the finest lawyers are called great, or the best doctors, or the best athletes. Each practices their "art" but only a few do it so well that we point to them and say "This level of practice is worth celebrating and remembering." This is why we have a hall of fame and it is why we have museums. It is not to celebrate the mediocre (which is not to say there is not a time and a place to celebrate when the common place achieves occasional greatness) nor to celebrate equivalencies--we have other disciplines and ethics to do that (one man one vote does not mean that all musical compositions were created equal); it is to celebrate excellence. Todays intellectuals and academics seem to think that while they are each excellent, everyone else is relatively the same. A moments reflection tells us that the two thoughts are incompatible. We all recognize degrees of excellence among those we deal with and common sense tells us that similar degrees of excellence exist in all human institutions and pursuits. The arts are no difference. That is not to say that it is not hard to identify criteria or to make valid comparisons across or among different genres. But the difficulty of a task does not necessarily make it impossible.

2005-02-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. I have always loved the movie of the same name; I have also said that I thought that it was a very religious, and in many ways, very Catholic movie. I am pleased that I do not need to spell out my argument, because a Catholic Professor of Theology at Notre Dame has already done so:

Phil’s Shadow
Michael P. Foley on the Lessons of Groundhog Day

Last December the New York Times ran an intriguing article about a Museum of Modern Art movie series on film and faith. What attracted the Times to the series was not its pageant of grave Swedish cinema but its opening feature, the 1993 romantic comedy Groundhog Day. The curators, polling “critics in the literary, religious and film worlds,” found that the movie “came up so many times that there was actually a squabble over who would write about it in the retrospective’s catalog.”
The movie, the article went on to observe, “has become a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in Groundhog Day a reflection of their own spiritual messages.” A professor at NYU shows it in her classes to illustrate the doctrine of samsara (the endless cycle of rebirth Buddhists seek to escape), while a rabbi in Greenwich Village sees the film as hinging on mitvahs (good deeds). Wiccans like it because February 2nd is one of the year’s four “great sabbats,” while the Falun Dafa sect uses the movie as a lesson in spiritual advancement.
Deciphering which, if any, of these interpretations is correct is no easy task, especially since the director and co-writer of the film, Harold Ramis, has ambiguous religious beliefs (he is an agnostic raised Jewish and married to a Buddhist). The commentators also seem wedded to a single hermeneutical lens, forcing them to ignore contradictory data.
A more fruitful approach, I suggest, would involve following all of the clues, clues that lead not only to religion but also to the great conversation of philosophy. Once we do so, Groundhog Day may be seen for what it is: a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim’s Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos.
Typical Modern
Groundhog Day is the story of Phil Connors, an obnoxious weatherman at a Pittsburgh TV station who must cover the celebration of Groundhog Day in rural Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Phil (masterfully played by Bill Murray) is egotistical, career-driven, and contemptuous of his fellow man. “People are morons,” he tells his producer Rita, played by an adorable Andie MacDowell. “People like blood sausage.” Phil, in other words, is the typical product of modernity, the bourgeois man who lives for himself in the midst of others. Rita describes him—and us—well by quoting Sir Walter Scott’s “There Breathes the Man”:
The wretch, concentred all in self,Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust, from whence he sprung,Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.
By refusing to die to himself, Phil and those like him are doomed to die doubly, triply, innumerably.
The Punxsutawney celebration of Groundhog Day culminates with the town elders consulting a real woodchuck, also named Phil, about the next six weeks. The groundhog sees his shadow, an omen that more winter is to come.
Connors cannot wait to return to Pittsburgh, but trapped by a blizzard (which he failed to predict), he and the crew must stay another night in Punxsutawney. When he awakes the next morning, Phil discovers to his dismay that it is February 2nd—again. The same thing happens the next day, and the next. For reasons that are never made clear, Phil is condemned to live Groundhog Day over and over.
Phil’s situation is unique, yet the movie hints that it is not unrelated to our own quotidian lives. Commiserating with two locals over beers, Phil asks, “What would you do if every day was the same, and nothing you did ever mattered?” The men’s faces grow solemn, and one of them finally belches, “That about sums it up for me.” Phil’s preternatural plight bears a twin resemblance to ours: first, as a symbol for the Fall, with its “doubly dying” estrangement from God and return to the vile dust from whence we sprang; and second, as a symbol for life in the wake of postmodern philosophy.
For the great father of this philosophy is Nietzsche, and the idea that frightened him most was the “the eternal recurrence of the same,” i.e., that even the superior human being must bear the same dreary existence an infinite number of times. Like us, Phil is the modern man who must now confront the hardship of postlapsarian life on the one hand and the metaphysical meaninglessness of postmodern thought on the other.
Indeed, Phil’s various reactions to his enslavement read like the history of philosophy in reverse. Phil is shocked at his own impotence, so much faith had he put in his meteorological training. (“I make the weather!” he tells an unconvinced state trooper.) Phone lines and automobiles prove useless, as do his visits to a doctor and a therapist. All of the Enlightenment’s societal buttresses—technology, natural science, and social science—collapse under the weight of a problem outside the parameters of space and time.
Failure & Happiness
Once Phil realizes that in his Nietzschean quagmire there are no consequences to his actions, he also experiences modern philosophy’s liberation from any sense of eternal justice. “I am not going to play by their rules any longer,” he gleefully announces. His reaction epitomizes Glaucon’s argument in Plato’s Republic. Remove the fear of punishment, Glaucon argued, and the righteous will behave no differently than the wicked. Nineteen hundred years later, Machiavelli, arguably the father of modern philosophy, elevated this view to a philosophical principle.
And Phil embodies it perfectly: Once he learns that he can get away with anything he wants, he becomes Machiavelli’s prince. He unhesitatingly steals money from a bank, cold-cocks a life insurance agent, and seduces an attractive woman.
To Phil’s surprise, however, this life of instant gratification proves unfulfilling, leading him to set his sights on Rita, his beautiful and wholesome co-worker. The name “Rita,” I contend, tells us something about the role she plays in Phil’s life. Rita is short for Margarita, the Latin word for “pearl.” To Phil, Rita is the pearl of great price. We know from Matthew’s Gospel that this pearl is the kingdom of Heaven, but it may also be appropriate to think of it as happiness, since, according to Aristotle, happiness is that towards which everything in our life is ordered.
And so the overriding question of the story becomes clear: What will it take to attain true happiness? What will it take to buy the pearl?
Phil’s initial attempts to win Rita again betray his Machiavellian instincts. Machiavelli contended that it is better for a prince to appear to be virtuous—which fosters in others a gullible trust—than to be virtuous, which hamstrings his actions. And so Phil goes to extraordinary lengths to learn about Rita’s aspirations and then to feign the same. (The logic here is also Hegelian: Injustice is justified in the name of historical progress.) Yet the ruse never works; each night ends with Phil receiving a slap in the face rather than acquiescence to his overtures. The pearl of happiness, it turns out, cannot be bought with counterfeit money.
Phil’s failures lead to despair. At the end of his rope, he now commits suicide—over and over. Yet no matter how often he jumps off buildings or electrocutes himself, he stills wakes up to another Groundhog Day. His poignant awareness of his emptiness recalls the chilling line from St. Augustine’s Confessions: “I went far from you, my God, and I became to myself a wasteland.” Liberation from the divine law initially sounds thrilling, but such freedom proves to be not only hollow, but self-squandering annihilation. As Phil says, “I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore.”
And so Phil, with nowhere else to go, unconsciously turns from modern philosophy, with its “concentred” individualism, to ancient philosophy, with its praise of the just life as the best way to live. Phil begins pursuing excellence (which in Greek is the same word as virtue), not for any ulterior motive but because he enjoys it. In good Aristotelian fashion, he cultivates moral virtues (e.g., saving a choking victim), intellectual virtues (reading Chekhov), and a proficiency in the arts (playing the piano). And thus Phil starts to become happy, for he is now fulfilling the conditions of happiness identified by the moralists of antiquity: knowing, doing, and loving the good.
Not God
One can also argue that there is a theological dimension to Phil’s transformation. Part of his conversion involves recognizing that there is a God and he is not it. Like most moderns, Phil thinks of himself as (in Freud’s immortal phrasing) “a prosthetic god,” someone who “makes the weather” through his mastery of science. Later, after his unsuccessful suicides, he tries to convince Rita that he is a god, a claim she rejects on account of her “twelve years of Catholic school” (this is the only time in the movie a religion is explicitly mentioned).
But Phil’s conviction evaporates once he is forced to acknowledge the inevitable death of an old beggar whose life he repeatedly tries to save. In the final scene of this subplot, he is kneeling down, vainly administering CPR to the man, when he stops and plaintively looks heavenward. And in an unrelated moment, he indirectly acknowledges God as Creator by reciting the verse, “Only God can make a tree.” God alone, Phil learns, is the Lord of life and death.
And then there is the pearl. On what ends up being the cycle’s last day, Rita is mesmerized by Phil’s now luminous character. As the first item for sale at a fund-raising event in which eligible bachelors are auctioned to the highest bidder, Phil generates tremendous interest from the town’s ladies, but Rita grandly outbids them all by offering the contents of her checking account. In a happy peripety, rather than Phil buying the pearl with everything he has, the pearl buys him with everything she has.
Like grace, Rita comes to Phil as a freely given gift; like the kingdom of Heaven, she confers on him an ineffable bliss. Rita’s purchase of Phil is literally a redemption or buying back from the slave block. (As she coos to him later, “You’re mine; I own you.”)
It is only after this redemption that Phil—and Rita—wake up the following day to February 3rd. The seemingly endless recurrence of the same has been broken by a love born of virtue, and the couple is now free to live happily ever after. (Because the cycle is broken by the consummation of love and desire rather than the abandonment of it, the story cannot be seen as an allegory for Eastern religious thought. And because this “eternal” recurrence is terminated by love and classical virtue, it is a refutation rather than an endorsement of Nietzsche.)
Though Phil and Rita’s romance is essential to the plot, it is not, however, the only gauge of progress. Throughout the movie, the groundhog seems to function as Phil’s nonhuman doppelganger. Both are weathermen and they share the same name. Phil suspects a link but wrongly concludes that as long as Phil the groundhog sees his shadow, he will be doomed to relive February 2nd. (This initiates a tragicomic incident in which he kills himself and the groundhog.) But what we eventually come to realize is that it is not Phil the groundhog’s shadow that proves crucial, it is Phil the man’s. As long as Phil wakes up in the morning and sees his shadow, there will be for him more winter, more of the same. But if he awakes without a shadow, he will be given spring, new life.
What is Phil Connors’s “shadow”? It is his vices, his bad habits and sinful ways that detract from and diminish his God-given goodness. The equation of shadow with vice is apposite, since both are, in St. Augustine’s terms, a privation: Shadows are a privation of light, and evil and vice are a privation of the good. Significantly, when one of the townies hears Phil Connors’s name, he teases him with the admonition, “Watch out for your shadow there, pal!” And significantly, the townie’s name is Gus—short, of course, for Augustine.
I should add, though, that the movie is not perfect. Rita’s final “redemption” of Phil, for instance, results in their sleeping together the next morning. (Call it the incense that had to be thrown on the Hollywood fire.) Also, despite promising hints, Phil’s turn to God is underdeveloped and falls short of a full religious conversion.
Purifying the Ground
Nonetheless, Groundhog Day exemplifies genuine pro-gress, from the nadir of contemporary thought to the apex of classical philosophy, from depravity to virtue, from wretchedness to happiness. And perhaps more interestingly, the movie taps into a Christian symbol of which its makers were no doubt unaware.
February 2nd in the liturgical calendar is the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, the feast that commemorates the presentation of her Son in the Temple 40 days after his birth. It was on this occasion that the aged Simeon declared the infant Jesus a “light for the revelation of the gentiles.” Traditionally, candles are blessed on the feast, with a prayer that “just as visible fire dispels the shadows of the night, so may invisible fire, that is, the brightness of the Holy Spirit, free us from the blindness of every vice.”
Simeon’s prophecy led to a folk belief that the weather of February 2nd had a prognostic value. If the sun shone for the greater part of the day, there would be 40 more days of winter, but if the skies were overcast, there would be an early spring. The badger was added later in Germany, but the Germans who emigrated to Pennsylvania could only find what native Americans in the area called a wojak, or woodchuck. Since the Indians considered the groundhog a wise animal, it seemed only natural to appoint him, as we learn in the movie, “Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators.”
The ground of Groundhog Day, in other words, is Catholic. And just as our secular celebration of the day unwittingly echoes a deeper truth about the Light revealed to the gentiles, so too does the movie unwittingly point the way back to that truth. And who knows, perhaps Rita, with her twelve years of Catholic school, knew this all along.
Michael P. Foley currently teaches in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. The New York Times article to which he refers is Alex Kuczynski’s “Groundhog Almighty,” December 7, 2003.

2004-12-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

Cheers, Cheers for Old Notre Dame! Well, apparently not. It seems that Notre Dame broke precedent by firing a coach 3 years into a 5 year contract, which is not entirely consistent with the school's past standards of holding contracts not quite sacred, but certainly inviolable. To make matters worse, they did so in the hopes of hiring the hot coach of the moment, Urban Meyer, only to discover that he went to Florida. It seems that Florida offered twice as much money ( $2 million, not merely $1,000,000) and is much more willing to accept students with academic achievement well below the bulk of the incoming class.

All this has caused much heartache at ND and much tut-tutting from the media and fans. While the contextual is a true blue Michigan fan, an arch-rival of Notre Dame, I nonetheless have a feeling for the school. It was the only other undergraduate school that I applied to and it was kind enough to accept me. However, like many a would be athlete (which I was surely not ) I had no desire to take calculus. I went to Michigan, kept my Catholic faith ( going to Notre Dame sadly did not help on that score for most of the people I know who went there ) and was very happy with my choice. I think God took the contrarian position in helping me with this decision. In any event, I would say that Notre Dame is in a difficult spot. While the school has now achieved close to Ivy League admission standards, it also has much of its identity tied up in football. Hiring a good coach is important, but having great athletes is a prerequisite to success at the elite level to which ND aspires and which it has largely maintained until the last 10 years or so. Since there are only so many great athletes, and many of them are not great students, it is hard for Notre Dame to continue to attract enough of them. Forty years ago, you did not need to be an elite student to go to Notre Dame, just a great football player. While there were many fine students at the school, there were plenty of folks just getting by. However, the school's rise to academic prominence has created a problem. While much the same is true at Michigan, being a large, public university, it has plenty of room to fit athletes and others who may go on to distinguished, or at least honorable careers, into such places as the education school or the school of kinesiology. Notre Dame is a small school, is far more homogeneous and is determined to keep its athletes on the same track as the bulk of its other students. Something has got to give. Notre Dame could go the Ivy League route, and turn football into an afterthought. But unlike Harvard or Yale, would Notre Dame be the same? The famous "subway alumni" of Notre Dame cannot remember the average SAT of the entering freshmen class, but they do know the date of the last National Championship. Michigan would still be a great school without football, but the tradition of the game and the school's success unite the alumni and past and present students in a way that nothing else can. This is even more true of Notre Dame. So, my answer to Notre Dame's coaching dilemna? Spend more time creating a niche where athletes can come and succeed academically while still learning something worthwhile and preparing for the non-sports future that 99% of them have ( no need to go the Ohio State route and make a joke of things ) before searching for a coach. I doubt if the gipper was in the top 1% of his high school class or that the 4 Horsemen had great SAT scores. Being a great athlete is a unique skill and having a few of them on campus need not be an embarassment if one is honest about the process and they are given an opportunity to succeed with meaningful classes that do not, for example, necessarily included calculus. After all, some of us with terrible 40 yard dash times still did OK without it.

2004-12-05T17:02:00.000-08:00

Inspired by my daughter and son-in-law, I have posted a Christmas list on Amazon.com. I have to say that this is a wonderful idea, since it avoids the embarasssment of saying what kinds of presents I might like--namely, books or cds or dvds that are greeted with derisive laughter and comments such as "No one could possibly want THAT!" or "You are the most boring person I know." Now those who see my list can still think these thoughts, but I will be spared the embarassment of having to hear them. And, after everyone has had a good laugh, in a sober moment, realizing that it is much easier to point, click and go to checkout on the web than actually go to a store, people may even buy these presents for me. Then, I will have the last laugh!

2004-11-12T15:51:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything for some time; with the election, work and other activities, there has been little time for blogging. However,its time to get back online,and I look forward to posting again.

2004-07-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

Have we committed blunders and miscalculations in Iraq? Probably. But as Victor Davis Hanson points out, they appear to have been fewer and far less costly than those in World War II. ( Surely one could say the same about the Civil War as well--think Fredericksburg or Cold Harbor--attacks on entrenched troops in the open field with virtualy no chance for success and horrifying casualties as a result). Readhis effort to put things in historical perspective; something the Contextualist always appreciates.

2004-07-09T06:26:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article ( straight from suburban Detroit, no less, well within the Contextualist's sphere of influence!)about the lack of doctrinal understanding among "religious teens". The author suggests that it is a product of the moral relativism and general philosophical drift found in most of our schools and in society as a whole. I suspect, based on my own experience in Catholic schools as a student, teacher, parent and member of an Education Commission, it is also reflective of the unwillingness of religious schools to teach doctrine or express traditional religious views with conviction. Since Vatican II, there seems to be a reluctance to embrace such doctrines as the Resurrection, for example, with something more than embarrassed silence, for fear of offending the more scientifically minded populace or looking like a "fanatic." The Incarnate Baby of belief in absolute truth seems to be getting thrown out with the bathwater of intolerance. The Gospels paint a picture of Jesus who was totally committed to absolute truth and yet completely loving and compassionate and forgiving. Still, He never hesitated for a second to condemn evil wherever found and by whomever expressed ( frequently, by those wonderful disciples, who's humanity gives us such great examples of people who are filled with flaws and yet managed to triumph over them ). The fact that he always let people freely choose whether or not to believe never obscured the stark fact of absolute choice--you are either with Me, or against Me. Jesus did not believe in triagulation. We need to continue to pass our beliefs down to our children without diluting them with the passing fancies of pop culture. Otherwise, we will see the triumph of those who would like to see Christianity reduced to the Da Vinci Code.

2004-07-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

2004-07-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine often refers to a place where those of like mind gather together to review and pass judgment on the faults and flaws of others as "the room with no mirrors". While my friend is Jewish, he would readily accede to the wisdom of the Gospel verse that we see the mote in the eye of our neighbor and miss the beam in our own.

The New York Times seems to have found a reviewer for two recent books who must spend a good deal of time in the room with no mirrors. The review is of two recent political books, one is Robert Reich's Reason, and the other is by two British writers for the Economist on the conservative movement in America.

The review, Ted Widmer, who is the head of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown,Md. ( not to be confused with the Kenneth Starr Center!) finds Reich's book congenial, praising it as an "appealing effort" that is "engagingly written, earnest and hopeful." Having seen Professor Reich on TV, this seems not unlikely. Professor Reich always seems dapper, articulate and likeable, if not always completely persuasive. Less convincing, however, is Widmer's praise of the sections reflecting Reich's skills as a "gifted moralist" which he states, "argue against the double standard of conservatives who voice exaggerated moral outrage over selective issues like gay marriage but never speak out on corporate corruption, insane CEO salaries and the politics of personal destruction."

I can shed no real light on the difference between mere "moral outrage" and "exaggerated moral outrage", other than to suggest that it is an arresting expression that may be intended to suggest a false, hypocritical or disproportionate degree of outrage ( perhaps all three ), and which seems to assume that moral outrage is not appropriate on "issues like gay marriage" but is with respect to corporate corruption, "insane CEO salaries" and the "politics of personal destruction". This is a puzzling grouping, however.

I have not heard any conservatives speak out in favor of corporate corruption. I do think conservatives tend to fear that for many liberals, corporate corruption covers such sins as earning a profit or perhaps "putting business ahead of people", which might be a bit "overbroad" as constitutional lawyers like to say. Thus, they usually cede the floor to the populists and self-proclaimed "friends of the little guy" when it comes time to bash the latest real or imagined corporate outrage. I think most conservatives are as hard as most liberals on clear cut cases of wrongdoing of any stripe. I also think that liberals are as guilty as conservatives when it comes to cheating their employers or employees, cutting corners or misbehaving. This has far more to do with our common humanity than our political divisions.

I suppose "insane CEO salaries" are distasteful since they are by definition "insane" (although I would like to leave a potential exception for anyone that wants to pay me an "insane CEO salary", just in case). Unfortunately, arriving at definitions of this sort is not easy. I have read of a number of CEO salaries that strike me as unreasonably high--one might say the same for a number of salaries of professional athletes as well--but the moral outrage would need to be bolstered by evidence of bribery, or cronyism or the like, to be fully justified. Sometimes the "salaries" are really the result of tremendous stock performance, and CEO's are usually big shareholders. In many cases they seem to be more a function of foolish management, market anomalies, or someone's dumb luck. Don't get me wrong; I think there is an important moral dimension in the workplace and the CEO who gets a big bonus merely for laying off lots of people should ask him or herself some serious questions, but I think rarely are things that simple and most conservatives are skeptical about drawing conclusions about the irrationality of the marketplace. Capitalism has many flaws, and we have a moral obligation to try to address them, but this type of an issue is not necessarily straightforward.

As to the politics of personal destruction, here is where we get to the room with no mirrors. I see no shortage of personal attacks by those on the left to counterbalance those on the right. Bill Clinton railed against the attacks made on him--but I did not see him, or Hillary, spring to the defense of Bob Packwood. Nor do I see "mainstream" democrats denouncing the personal attacks on Bush, Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas and many others. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and others are biting critics and might benefit form a bit more circumspection, but I would just as easily make the same case with Paul Krugman or Bob Herbert or Maureen Dowd. History may judge one of them as the next Jonathan Swift...Clearly some of them will be judged as not so swift.

On the other hand, the gay marriage issue impinges on thousands of years of religious tradition and touches deeply and sincerely held personal beliefs. Regardless of whether one agrees with those views, it seems more than unfair to suggest that their depth of feeling is exaggerated. I think that it has become impossible for many, particularly deeply secular academics with cultivated Enlightenment sensibilities, to understand that many people--perhaps a majority in those country--are thoroughly convinced that there is a reality beyond life on earth and that religious matters are more important to them than anything else. To the extent that they do understand this, I think it scares them; perhaps it is because they believe that it means the average religious American is too close to the average religious Islamofacist. If that is so, I think it bespeaks the inability to draw distinctions that a too facile relativism blurs.

Widmer's inability to see that what marches under the flag of liberalism is not all Reason, leads him to make the incredible statement that "Instead of 'Reason', which the left already has too much of, the Democrats need a book titled 'Brass Knuckles". Washington College must truly be in an ivory tower. Has Mr. Widmer not heard of MoveOn.Org? Or listened to Howard Dean or the Jeremiads of the person formerly known as Al Gore? Or seen the outpouring of affection for Michael Moore even from those who note that his work is , at a minimum, deeply flawed. The left seems to feel no compunction at labeling their political opponents as murderers, fascists,racists, soulless, greedy, and stupid. Above all, conservatives are hypocritical. (This was, of course, the cardinal sin of the 60's and he surefire response to "exaggerated moral outrage" on any issue; however, the fact that we often fail to live up to the standards that we preach does not make either the standards or the preachers wrong.) It seems to me that the brass knuckles--not to mention the lead pipes and the knives--have been out and in use for some time.

2004-06-28T17:41:00.000-07:00

Independence day in Iraq. Iraqi bloggers respond Some of the comments are very touching. While there were many serious reasons to have either opposed, or had misgivings about, commencing the war in Iraq, the present fury now that we see the results defies good sense.

The principal combat operations in the war--which were the most dangerous for both the great mass of American troops and Iraqis, both military and civilian--ended in a matter of weeks, with far fewer casualties than most had reason to suspect and enormously fewer than the worst case estimates. For example, even near the end, there were those who predicted that Baghdad would be another Stalingrad. Now that means casualties in the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS among fighting men alone, plus a city entirely laid waste. The actual result was a few dozen American casualties and perhaps a few thousand overall. Similarly, there was reason to fear an environmental disaster, as in Kuwait, with oil wells aflame. It didn't happen. There was reason to fear civil war. It didn't happen. Now, it appears, amazingly considering all that they have been through, that massive majorities of Iraqis are showing a willingness to participate in comparatively multi-party, multi-ethnic democratic government. This seems to happening at the local level in most cities in Iraq, and the new government is doing surprisingly well at the national level. The ongoing violence seems to represent the actions of perhaps 2-5% of the country and includes substantial outside intervention by terrorist and extremist groups. The thought of giving in to these fanatics who murder innocent bystanders and anyone who stands up to them is appalling. It is as if the United States should have allowed the Mafia to take over the country, or the gangs to take over Los Angeles, or the battles against the narcos in Columbia should be abandoned. Millions and millions of Iraqis now have an unprecedented degree of freedom and an opportunity to build a decent life for their children.

Had the war not happened, Saddam would still be murdrering opponents at an estimated rate of 35,000 per year, sanctions might still be in place which seem to have worked great hardship for little result, the oil for food racket would be continuing with Saddam skimming off most of the money for new palaces, while the bribe givers and the corrupt in the west were rewarded, and American troops would still be patrolling the no fly zone to protect the Kurds from another genocidal onslaught,and bases in Saudi Arabia to provide "containment". Not to mention that Saddam's payments to families to promote suicide bombing would have continued, together with his shelter of various terrorists and thugs. There was ample evidence that his program to produce weapons of mass destruction was in an R&D mode and ready to be ramped back up once he felt the moment was right; he would have continued his purchases of missiles from North Korea ( despite being forbidden to do so); and who knows how many years of further indoctrination into hatred of the west, Jews and non-Baathists would have been on the horizon for Iraq's children? Libya would be continuing as a rogue state, not giving up its weapons program and moving in a more benign direction. Syria and, especially, Iran would be even more emboldened than they are now; the same for North Korea. Blackmailers and dictatorial regimes do not respond to subtle diplomacy and endless dialog. They agree to pacify their foes and then cheat on every agreement. They respect and respond only to strength and the perception that it may be brought to bear against them. Only then can diplomacy do its good work.

Why should America, England and over two dozen other states be ashamed that they ended the latter state of affairs and created hope for the future? That the UN did not endorse the war is unfortunate, but the events of the last dozen years tell us that the UN is in serious need of restructuring. The UN did not approve of the war in Kosovo, it did not intervene in Rawanda, it is not now dealing with the Sudan. It leaves the most corrupt and ruthless states in charge of commissions on human rights. It is riddled with corruption and has become a bureaucracy that is comfortable only with the status quo and seems incapable of dealing with the serious humanitarian and political issues facing the world. Sadly, the French and Russian opposition to the war in Iraq can largely be traced to cozy oil contracts with Saddam, a desire on the part of France to return the glories that died on the killing fields of Verdun and are unlikely to return in a vastly changed world, and a concern that America is too powerful and needs to be reined in, which is not entirely illegitimate but was grossly misplaced in this context.

Yes, American troops are still in Iraq and still at risk. But they are also still in Bosnia, where all reports suggests that the UN is failed abysmally to make any progress in improving political and economic conditions. In five years, Iraq could potentially be enjoying a renaissance; it is hard to see how there is a possibility of that in Bosnia. Further, American troops are still in South Korea, nearly fifty years after the armistice. American troops are still in Germany nearly sixty years after VE day. By what standard can the current situation in Iraq be deemed a failure? Surely not Vietnam, where we had troops for a dozen years and endured sixty times the casualties.

Every life lost in war is a tragedy. Every act of violence is regrettable. But allowing the world to be in thrall to terrorists and madmen is intensely dangerous. Not every circumstance will allow, or call for, the end to every dictatorial and murderous regime. But sometimes the cumulation of problems calls for or even compels action. When the result is as relatively successful as the war in Iraq, we should be grateful for the result rather than indulging in an orgy of self-doubt or, worse, self-flagellation.

2004-06-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

The news media is studied for bias and the answer based on this study supports with hard data and objective methodology what many of us believe: that there is an extraordinarily large bias toward liberal views. The media cite a hugely disproportionate number of liberal and left wing think tanks as authoritative, objective sources, without disclosing the well-known bias of the group. This is, of course, why what many of us believe is liberal to left thinking, is considered "mainstream" by the media--the media conciously or unconciously is oblivious to the agendas of the groups they cite as representing objective opinion.

2004-06-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Classical music is alive and well--it is all a matter of where you look. There is a view that what we think of as "classical music"--something that can plainly be linked with the works of composers such as Mozart, Beethoven or Tchaikovsky, no longer exists. It does seem to be the case that the music that wins academic and institutional prizes, The Pulitzer, for example, is music that very few people of heard and that ( dare I say it ) even fewer people like. Atonality, a disregard for melody and a preference for the "shocking" or the "challenging" seem to be the things that get the respect of the academic musical establishment and the elite critical community.

However, history tells us that these are the last groups that we should look to in order to find out what is great music. Verdi was told that he was not good enough for the conservatory in Milan. The Viennese establishment found Mozart not to their liking. Rossini wrote works that were unabashedly intended to be popular--he was a hard-working guy that churned out operas at a frantic pace in order to pay the bills, and Mozart wrote at breakneck speed not just because he could, but because he needed to keep his creditors at bay ( like a lot of artists he and his wife had a fondness for living in the style to which they desired to become accustomed). They needed to find an audience that liked their work and would pay enough to keep it coming.

Unfortunately, over the last several generations, there has been a prevailing view in the arts that is shockingly,grotesquely elitist. I am not talking about the dominance of the wealthy when it comes to symphonies orchestras or opera companies, although there may be a degree of relationship in the sense that only the wealthy can support that which is not popular. Rather, I am talking about the apparent fact that there seems to be complete disdain for public opinion with regard to new "classical" music. Coupe this with the overblown romanticism that makes a fetish out of the lone, misunderstood "artist" who must struggle in the face of the world's failure to understand him ( hey, who doesn't have this problem?), and you have a recipe for a cult of obscuranticism that defines itself by its unpopularity.

I am not suggesting that music should not challenge us, or move in new directions or be provocative. Of course. But we should not confuse these things with what is sufficient to create good and especially great music. If music does not touch and move people, it is worthless--mere technical effort which may be interesting, but is not of lasting merit.

Music needs to reach and move and speak to its audience, otherwise it is just notes on a piece of paper. New works that cannot find an audience that gets excited about them are failures.

It seems to me that the lesson of history is that great new works will probably emerge out of popular culture, just as this article suggests. Music from the movies has found an enthusiastic response from audiences worldwide. Music form Broadway, such as in Les Miz, Miss Saigon and, yes, Phantom of the Opera, has more in common with Rossini and Verdi than most of the contemporary operas that survive only with massive subsidies.

Music and the arts must touch a substantial mass of people who wish to actively support them--by going to shows, buying cds, buying scores and learning them, to thrive.

2004-06-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

on the difficulties that Arts Organizations are having with respect to financial support,the New York Times reports. The thrust of the report certainly seems correct to me; based on the Contextualist's experience on the board of an Arts board, it is more difficult than it was five years ago to find corporate support and governmental support for the Arts. On the other hand, I am not entirely satisfied with the analysis of why this is so and what the prescription for the problem should be.To be successful, Arts groups need to be outward looking as well as having an artistic vision. After all, a vision that appeals only to those who have it is narcisssim. As in everything else, balance, a willingness to listen to others and to respect their views, and a decent regard for the opinions of the public, are virtures, not vices. Without such virtues, it is hard for any organization to expect others to give it money with no strings attached and no reasonable expectations for what the money will produce.

2004-06-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

Comment on the Contextualist! Due to an error in settings, before now you had to be a registered user to comment on the Contextualist. No More! Now anyone can share their thoughts with the Contextualist. I look forward to hearing from you.

2004-06-08T06:44:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts today on the media. First, much of the news media is obsessed with covering political and civic affairs as if life was a sporting event. Is Bush up or down in the polls? Does Kerry have the right team in his corner? How will this issue "play"? And most significantly, what will happen next? No doubt this is the result of the news media seeing itself as another competitor for the entertainment dollar. If the goal is to sell newspapers, or to improve ratings, the method seems to focus on meeting a desire to appeal to the lesser, rather than the better, angels of our nature.

Second, there seems to be more speculation about what is to come than reporting about what has taken place. One can only wonder how this came to be. It is as if reporting the news has been replaced by gazing into the Magic 8 Ball. Is this what they teach in journalism school? Or is it merely another example of the narcissism of the baby boom generation--we will show you how smart we are by predicting the future, rather than tediously explaining the present.

Third, and notwithstanding the less than outstanding predictive abilities of media commentators, there also seems to be an obsession with second guessing. Certainly it is easier to criticize after the fact than it is to offer constructive insight before decisions need to be made.

I would also suggest two points that may be worth noting in terms of how at these trends came about. One, most liberal arts university trained people of the last thirty years ( which now includes most reporters, fewer and fewer of whom simply work their way up through the ranks ) learned the academic approach of detachment. Problems are viewed from the outside, as it were, almost as if the observer was visiting in a time machine and would soon be safely transported back to their true reality. Thus foreign affairs are viewed with as much detachment as a sporting event; the great events of the day are transformed into a game played for our amusement. It is fun to predict what will happen next on the gridiron or the hardcourt--we all have an opinion on which team will win and why.

While detachment has great merit from a scholarly perspective, it has great danger for the press and the political classes. The essence of public life has always been thought to be engagement, not detachment. It is those who weigh in with solutions to problems that have earned the greatest credibility. Furthermore, the academic standard--which emphasizes both the pursuit of perfection and the importance of the new and the novel--is a dangerous one. No one would get out of bed in the morning if they were obliged to make perfect decisions on even the simplest of issues given our lack of information, the competing interests we deal with even in our own narrow spheres and our own physical and mental frailties. The press, and the "experts" that it forever quotes, seem entirely caught up in this ironic, detached perspective. Should we not awake and realize that irony, detachment and post-hoc analysis are far less than half of what is needed to deal with a dangerous world, many of who's members have no use whatsoever for reflection of any kind?

Two, we have developed a culture where we have all been inculcated with an immense fear of being proven wrong. To some extent that is the doing of lawyers ( my own profession ) who have been relentless in pressing theories of fault to their logical extreme. A mistake is now perceived to be a basis for civil, criminal and moral liability. Hence, the responsibility for error is to be avoided at all costs. This fits in well with both a bureaucratic mentality and academic hindsight. To act, and especially to lead, is to be wrong--a lot. Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt were all wrong on countless occasions, often at the cost of the lives of thousands of their countrymen. Yet they persisted in acting and they knew that success was not to be measured by simple mathematics, but that it was getting the big things right, most of the time, that mattered. Their reflection was food for action and engagement, not an end unto itself.

My concern is that this disjunction, between the life of reflection offered by the academy, and the life of action of those who are involved in public affairs,is dangerous. We need both reflection and action. It cannot be an either or proposition. If the academy continues to drift ever further away from the world of events, we will all be the poorer for it.

2004-06-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

The last 10 years has seen the steady decline of classical music on the radio. The Texaco Opera sponsorship has ended. On National Public Radio (NPR, one hears mostly newstalk. I think most of us have simply assumed that this was simply a result of inevitable forces, operating outside our control. However, Andrew Freguson in the Weekly Standard has come forward with a remarkable piece of reportage. His comments are reminiscent of a book of mine on the end of the Roman Empire in the West--the Roman Empire didn't just die, it was assassinated ( The Fall of the Roman Empire, the Military Explanation, by Arthur Ferrill) Says Mr. Ferguson, classical music on public radio didn't just die, like Caesar, it was killed with a thousand cuts by trusted Brutus' who believed the public interest is better served by being popular with a broad market than serving an otherwise undereserved constituency with nowhere else to turn. For those of us who love the arts, this could be a terrible loss. Classical music on the radio was avaiable to all who were interested at no cost (other than a few cents per taxpayer); the best opera, the finest recordings, passionate afficianados passing on their love of their art forms, were all there for a current and a future generation. Now we have...opinion. All Things Considered, Ill take the music.

2004-06-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of D-Day and my plan, which I have followed with indifferent success for the last 20 years, is to watch my favorite movie, The Longest Day. The movie is based on the brilliant book by Cornelius Ryan, written in the early 60's and based on various first person accounts from participants on all sides, American, British,Canadian, French and German, the book was a pathbreaking attempt to understand this event from all sides, something that is taken for granted today, where, if anything, there is too much emphasis on understanding and empathizing with the point of view of those we are whom we are fighting. Up to this point, American readers basically read about events ( which were only 20 years past, and thus fresher in the mind than Vietnam is to today's Baby Boomers ) from an American perspective. Later, one would be able to read translations of exclusively German accounts of the war, such as Invasion! They're Coming, by Paul Carell, which is worth reading, as is his two volume set on the Russian Front, Hitler Moves East and Scorched Earth (Most still appear to be available)( although don't look for a "fair and balanced" account of German behavior, since it focuses almost solely on the military picture and ignores the social/political context). Ryan wrote some additional world war two books that fully repay the investment of time spent in reading them, A Bridge Too Far ( which was also made into a very good movie ) and The Last Battle--dealing with the fall of Berlin . Ryan's books may be found here. For a contemporary work that is the culmination of his approach, see John Keegan's Six Armies in Normandy.

When Saving Private Ryan was released, The Longest Day was typically disparaged as an unrealistic and dated epic of a jingoistic past. This verdict can only be based on a failure to have watched the movie. While technically brilliant, and a harrowing recreation of the actual landing fo the American troops on Omaha Beach, Ryan is actually the more conventional war movie. The story is fiction, its focus is exclusively American and on a small group of "types" of soldiers. This is not to disparage the film in the least; it is moving and superbly done, but a much different type of movie.

The Longest Day, on the other hand, takes on the vastly more difficult task of trying to be factually correct ( in the essentials ), telling real stories of real people, identified by name, and showing virtually the entire battle, from the period immediately before the invasion is launched, through the securing of the beachhead. It shows with remarkable balance the British, Canadian and Free French efforts on Sword, Gold and Juno Beaches ( one of the greatest, most remarkable scenes in the movie is the battle for the Casino in Caen ), the contribution of resistance fighters, glimpses of the local French residents caught up in the invasion and having the homes blown up around them, the reaction of the Germans to the invasion and their efforts to repulse it, as well as the huge American effort. It shows the air force, navy, paratroops, gliders, rangers and even the two Luftwaffe pilots who made a token attack. Never has such a complex battle been shown in better overview than this one. There is a mix of levels of control from high command to individual private. In comparison, another brilliant movie, Gettysburg, shows a huge, but somewhat less far-flung battle in a much more truncated version. That the movie does all this in three hours is amazing.

There are a huge number of famous actors in the movie. Frankly, to me this is one of the few drawbacks. Had the cast been made up of relative unknowns, the historical verisimilitude would seem even higher. It is not as if the stars do not play their roles well, however; rather, when you see John Wayne, Richard Burton or Henry Fonda, you are reminded this is a movie. When you see some of the lesser known international stars, you think you are there watching the events unfold. On the other hand, without the stars, I'm sure the movie would never have been made. I am grateful that so many wanted to participate, leaving us with this remarkable way to understand visually in a limited, but nonetheless compelling way, what this event must have been like.

This is a movie that must be seen in widescreen to be appreciated. There are so many technically remarkable scenes that it is hard to recall them all. Some of those that stand out for me, in addition to the battle for the casino mentioned earlier are: the two Luftwaffe planes strafing Utah beach; the nuns marching through shellfire to set up a field hospital for the wounded; a German soldier on his mule carrying milk caught up in the shelling before the beaches are stormed; the paratroopers landing in the middle of St. Marie Englese and suffering horrifying losses while the townspeople watch in fear and bewilderment.

For those who think the movie fails to understand the horror and ambiguity of war, notice the American rangers machine gunning Germans trying to surrender because they don't understand what they are saying; Richard Burton's character with his leg stitched together with safety pins; an American paratrooper loaded with ammunition floating from the sky into a burning building;a reloading German rifle mistaken for a "cricket signal" or even the German generals puzzled soliloquy in which he wonders which side God is on. There is less gore on the screen than one would see today, but there is no lack of understanding of the grisly business being engaged in.

The "fog of war" is captured as well. An American and German patrol walk within a few feet of one another in the middle of the night, neither grasping that they are passing the enemy; a German officer on the beach screaming at his superior that if he does not believe the invasion has arrived he should come down and see for himself.

Ryan's book and this movie demonstrates the astonishing power of simply trying to convey the facts of what happened, without following formulas about focusing on just a few characters and changing their stories for dramatic effect.

Proving that they still can make 'em like they used to is the new A&E movie on Eisehower and the invasion , which makes an excellent prequel to the Longest Day. There is a little overlap ( such as the scene in which Eisenhower makes the decision that the invasion will go forward despite the weather ), but not a lot. Seeing both films together gives one a remarkably good understanding of events.

Perhaps someday someone will intercut Ike, The Longest Day and the first 25 minutes of Saving Private Ryan into one seamless movie ( I'm sure that someone with the right skills and DVD equipment will be able to do it themselves once the Ike movie is out on DVD). Then, for an investment of about 6 hours, one can experience the events of 60 years ago with God-like omnisience at every level, and better understand the immensity of the debt that we owed to literally millions of ordinary men and women who rose to extraordinary levels in the face an immense evil that was nonetheless served by cunning, determined and tenacious men and women, some of whom embraced the sickness and the rest who were unable or unwilling to abandon it.

2004-06-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

It is never too early to start thinking about the upcoming season of UMS--the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor. Some wonderful events are coming. We are excited about the return of the song series, the strong theatre program and the broad range of interesting international artists. Check out the UMS web site, and review Ken Fischer's overview of the upcoming season

2004-06-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

Is the boomer generation insincere about everything other than its love of self? This provocative article suggests that it is.

2004-06-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

Peggy "what we have here is a failure to have something to communicate" Noonan Peggy goes to Ivy League graduations and comes away with the same empty feeling that she gets when listening to John Kerry say things which he may or may not believe for reasons that he seems unable or unwilling to explain. It's almost enough to make her take up smoking like Ike

2004-06-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

The inimitable John Keegan, in a June 1 article in the Telegaph ( you will need to do a search )one of our finest living military historians, provides a bit of perspective on the current situation in Iraq.Keegan

2004-05-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Mr Contextualist and Mrs. Momswisdom wrote the following letter to the Governor, their state representative and senator, the House Republican Caucus and the Ann Arbor News. The News published an edited version of the letter on Friday, June 4.

> We were extremely concerned to read that HB 5527, passed by the House of Representatives on May 19th, decimated our state's already small Arts and Culture Grants by $10,000,000. If enacted, this would leave our state with a $1.7 million Arts budget, which would be among the lowest in the nation.
>
> While we are strongly in favor of sensible expense reduction, this particular action is both short-sighted and unsound. It has been well established that Arts spending produces an 8 to 1 return in revenue generation. Furthermore, our museums, symphonies, musical societies and other groups are vital to the quality of life in this state.
>
> Last year the Arts Budget was slashed by half. While other states discussed similar measures, only a few actually passed such drastic cuts. It is sad and disturbing that we chose to align ourselves with the few states that felt that their already miniscule commitments to the Arts should bear a disproportionate share of the budget cutting burden.
>
> Arts spending in this state has not funded controversial events that push the envelope of good taste or that are overtly political. Rather they have had a vital educational and informational role. A failure to maintain the already small level of Arts funding will endanger our receipt of Federal grant money and it will be a repudiation of the leading role that this state has had in the artistic and cultural life of our nation. We already have to overcome our rustbelt reputation; let us not add to that the stigma of a state that disdains the artistic and the cultural. If Michigan is to have a renaissance, how can it occur without those things by which a renaissance is defined--art, culture and learning

2004-05-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

There is an article worth reading in the Wall Street Journal written by a Nobel Peace Prize winner from East Timor today. Mr. Ramos Horta writes:

"Some may accuse me of being more of a warmonger than a Nobel laureate, but I stand ready to face my critics. It is always easier to say no to war, even at the price of appeasement. But being politically correct means leaving the innocent to suffer the world over, from Phnom Penh to Baghdad. And that is what those who would cut and run from Iraq risk doing."

To attempt to be a person of faith, guided by the principles of love of God and neighbor, and to support military action is always an anguishing choice. To do nothing in the face of evil is plainly wrong. It is our obligation to pray that good prevails, to act in a way that supports that which is good, and to use our gifts of reason and sense to divine the best way to conduct ourselves, as individuals and members of larger communities.

One often hears comparisons of the United States to the Roman Empire these days. I do not find the analogy too compelling. The Rome we imagine--that of the early to middle imperial period, say 10B C to 250 AD, was a pagan empire, animated by both virtues and vices quite different from our own. More apt to me would be a comparison to the Byzantine Empire. It was a Christian empire, although, of course, its politics were not always consonant with Christian ideals as we would understand them today. But despite the bad rap it has received from Crusaders ( who sacked Constantinople at one point ) and Enlightenment historians ( who found its religious zeal and somewhat mystical ways repellent in many respects ) the parallels are interesting and, perhaps, instructive. It preferred its triumphs in foreign affairs to be diplomatic, not military; it was a learned and sophisticated culture; its success in war tended to emanate from technology ( Greek Fire ) and skill, not mass or brute force, and it wrestled with the fact that large parts of its citizenry withdrew from civic affairs, including the defense of the state, for philosophical and religious reasons. When Constantinople finally fell to the Turks, it was defended by a small band of troops led by the emperor. Supposedly, some 5000 men, perhaps enough to have made the difference in holding the City's powerful fortifications, chose to pray in the Church of the Holy Wisdom ( Hagia Sophia ) rather than participate in the battle. When the walls were breached, they were slaughtered, just as the defenders of the city had been.

Nonetheless, I have often wondered who made the wiser decision. While it seems to me that the choice I probably would have made would have been to join the defense of the city, I cannot say that those who chose to stay and pray in the Church were wrong. For the Christian, each action had its positive and negative consequences; each its arguments for and against. I would say, however, that those today who do not believe that the walls of the city need to be manned, so that those who would destroy our civilization are kept at bay, need to provide an explanation of the course they would take, and why. In an increasingly secular world, where the focus is solely on utilitarian concerns, if people do not think we should be on the barricades or in church praying, in the face of the threats we face, we are entitled to ask, what do they think we should be doing?

2004-05-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

Keeping in mind the observation that those things which are immediate and urgent but less important tend to upstage the less urgent but more important, I want to focus my first comment on the theological--clearly the most important, but alas, rarely perceived to be the most urgent, perspective. The Contextualist believes that it is essential to look for the longer view. While a wit, disparaging the merit of long term thinking, correctly observed that "in the long run we are all dead", the theologian might respond, "exactly my point".

The Contextualist recently undertook as a Lenten exercise reading the four Gospels from beginning to end, a chapter or so a day. Thus far, only Mark and Luke have been completed, and I am now moving on to Acts, on the theory that Luke and Acts of the Apostles--or Luke's Gospel and Luke's Acts--make a coherent whole. (Also, I have never read Acts in its entirety, only bits and pieces, and the older I get the more important it seems to me to make up for this lack of knowledge.)

While reading the Gospels, I have followed the plan of reading a commentary on each chapter. This has been an easy task because of the outstanding guide provided by Raymond E. Brown's book An Introduction to The New Testament. The late Father Brown was not only an accomplished scholar but he is also the epitome of the fair-minded commentator. His work carefully and sympathetically addresses concerns and issues raised by others, weighs them judiciously, and forthrightly responds with well-considered conclusions. While he might be derided as an orthodox thinker by those who believe that revisionism is synonymous with truth, his orthodoxy is always arrived at after a careful and fair-minded review of the evidence. His bias is towards erring on the side of tradition and a sense of historical continuity. Since these are the very biases embraced by the Contextualist, their soundness seems self-evident.

In addition to Brown's commentary, I had the good fortune to pick up a book entitled Possessions and the Life of Faith, by John Gillman, which I managed to devour during a plane flight to Orlando. The book, a slim volume, focuses on the issue of wealth, which is clearly a central concern of Luke's Gospel and of Acts. It appears likely that the early Christian community for which Luke wrote wrestled intensively with the issue of possessions, disparities of wealth, and their meaning for those seeking to embrace "the Way". Accordingly, the theological thrust of the Gospel highlights this issue, including comments by Jesus and material that did not find its way into the other three Gospels. I think this helps explain some of the differences in the Gospels. Since each community and author tended to view and understand the message of Jesus through the prism of its own experience, certain parables and sayings resonated differently with one than the other.

Gillman points out that Luke's point with respect to wealth--and every other aspect of life separate from the way of life preached by Jesus--is that one is to be "single-hearted." Everything is subordinate to love of God and love of neighbor. Anything that separates a person from that essential and all encompassing focus is a problem.

Finally, Gillman also points out an interesting translation of the term "the flesh", as in the temptations of the flesh, etc. He suggests that a more accurate translation is closer to a word like "self-reliance" or, perhaps, "self-centeredness", Surely that is the temptation of our time as well as that of Paul--that we rely on ourselves and seek to respond to our own impulses, rather than to look to a source of ultimate truth outside ourselves. Truly, the Divine is the ultimate context.

2004-05-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to The Contextualist.

The purpose of this Blog is to post musings on Law, Politics, the Arts, Theology, and other items of interest.

This blog is called the Contextualist because its purpose is to place events within their larger context. That is, rather than focusing on the immediate and the apparent, it seeks to find the historical relationships and larger meanings of events.