December One

24 Days until Christmas. I wish I had an advent calendar. I know Green&Black's does one with lovely chocs. Next year I'll get one. And hang it beside the door. Growing up (which makes it sound - horribly - as though I've grown up), we always had ours in the sunroom. Advent calendars and doors are somehow welded together in my mind.

As it's December, I suppose atheism is as good topic as any. I'm touched that Benedict has agreed to meet Muslim leaders to discuss common ground - he was, it's reported, particularly impressed with the insistence in the letter on the 'twofold commandment to love God and one's neighbour'. Well, it really is time that someone pointed that out to most of us. I'm equally confused, however, by his latest encyclical, in which he turns his vitriol from other religions to atheists.

Not content with even the Guardian's upstanding reportage, I spent some time doing a bit of light research while sitting at the desk waiting patiently for inquisitive minds. I do love the Catholic church for their records - truly, it's amazing what they are willing to commit to print. There is learning there; nothing can exist for that long without some kind of progression, I suppose - progress all the more startling considering that in Humanis Generis (1950), Pius XII thought it necessary to remind his flock that
"if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians" (sec. 20).

But I digress - and return to the latest encyclical, Spe Salvi.

I'm really rather intrigued with Benedict's repeated insistence on the 'performative' nature of the Christian message (secs. 2, 4, 10 for example). But that's another digression. I do find myself nodding in agreement with Benedict's point regarding how the 'political conditions of the kingdom of reason and freedom [are]...ill defined': 'reason and freedom seem to guarantee by themselves, by virtue of their intrinsic goodness, a new and perfect human community' (sec. 18). Dalton Trumbo said it better in Johnny Got His Gun (a new edition of this has been published - go, gentle reader, and read): freedom is just a word. Sure, so is 'reason'. For that matter, so is 'faith' or 'hope'. I want to be convinced by - or willing to believe in - Benedict's discussion of human freedom (secs. 23-25). It is striking and rather eloquent - indeed, it stands out from the rest of the document in eloquence, which some of his prose lacks. I'm not, however, because the Church has forgotten, in spite of Benedict's belief in the performativity of the Gospel, that their own actions - their performances of doctine, instances of praxis - make it clear that the 'freedom' espoused is too narrow, too rigidly defined. Too broad a definition of 'freedom' or 'reason' doesn't actually seem to be a problem for the RC church. By human, read 'white, Christian, heterosexual male'; by freedom, read, 'to live as a white, Christian, heterosexual male'.

I'm curious however about his tacit insistence on the schism between 'science' and 'love'. Indeed, it seems to me that he does not clarify these terms anymore than the professors of 'freedom' and 'reason' explain their terms. Earlier in the document, Benedict's ideas put me in mind of Curtis White's essay in Harper's, 'The Idols of Evironmentalism', which I've already blogged about here. It feels as though this initial separation between 'science' and 'love' marshalls atheists and Christian believers into opposing sides by section 42.

It is one thing to critique pure reason for providing no more, if no less, certainty than faith; it is another to lump together science, reason, and atheism as bulwarks against the felicitous performance of the Christian message of hope.

But let me end with love and Saint Augustine: 'Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good' (In epistulam Ioannis ad Parth). How unbounded a vision does this offer of the potential of human goodness? How opposite from the 'love' that reads this and finds in it justification for cruelty, tyranny, and punishment.