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The New York Sun
August 4, 2005 Thursday
Reality Reinterpreted
By MEGHAN CLYNE
To anyone not under a blackout during this spring's papal transition,
the commentariat's frustration with John Paul II and Benedict XVI was
manifest and alarming. Denounced as hard-liners, the pontiffs were
branded out of touch on such matters as bioethics, sexual morality,
and religious tolerance. The Church was urged to get with the times
(or the Times). In order to accommodate "reality," Catholics were
told they should, in effect, cease to be Catholics.
But what's peddled as "reality" these days is bunk, according to
Vigen Guroian. A professor of theology and ethics at Loyola College
in Baltimore, Mr. Guroian urges a restoration of true humanity - one
defined not by polls and lab reports, but by "the moral imagination,"
Edmund Burke's term for the source of all our civilizing traditions.
In "Rallying the Really Human Things" (ISI Books, 241 pages, $25),
Mr. Guroian traces the futility and bankruptcy of contemporary
culture to godlessness and anthropocentrism, which he pins on a
failure in education. Parents and teachers, he writes, "treat fact
as god, event as illusion, individual as datum, person as chimera,
norm as relative value, and human nature as social construct."
The result? Timeless questions surrounding sexuality and love are
reduced to the effectiveness of condoms as measured by x, y, or z
study; a baby is worth his weight in stem cells; and a woman's life
may be taken if enough doctors testify that she is in a "persistent
vegetative state."
Human existence has become so desiccated partly because these parents
and educators have yielded their instructive responsibilities to
"The Great Stereopticon," as Richard Weaver called the bombardment
of here-and-now information unleashed by the television age, all the
more potent more than 50 years later thanks to the Internet. Cable
news and blogs feed endless spin to hungry minds without planting
them in any sort of historical, cultural, intellectual, or moral
context. It is that context Mr. Guroian seeks to restore.
He does this primarily by bearing witness to what its absence has
wrought. Much - perhaps too much - is made of the "culture wars." But
the struggle to keep alive the means of human exceptionalism -
principally, God - is rarely a well-publicized clash of swords. The
real assault on the moral imagination is more subtle, more sustained,
waged along unobserved fronts.
Mr. Guroian documents, for example, the vacuity of modern education.
Colleges graduate careerist men and women who are slaves to their
trades, unappreciative of life's spiritual and intellectual riches.
The capacity for reflection, and an education in the full range of
human feeling, does not decorate these lives, which are dedicated to
bottom lines.
Mr. Guroian, as a college instructor, reserves special ire
for his fellow professors, who he believes are complicit in the
self-destructive behavior - from binge drinking to hookups - that
defines modern collegiate life, particularly for young women. The
sexual revolution tore away the social norms that once veiled female
virtue. As casual intercourse became itself the norm, women could
no longer protect themselves from male aggression by invoking moral
standards.
Instead, "reality" is now invoked against them. Those who remain
chaste are met with ridicule or scorn, told they will have to change
their ways if they ever hope to land a mate. The "reality" is that
the competition is more than willing to oblige. Yet even if giving
into one's passions is now perfectly acceptable, it is not therefore
admirable. What sets man apart is his mastery over his passions, his
capacity to recognize and obey a higher authority than his pheromones.
Mr. Guroian is calling for a restored valuation of this
self-discipline, and a whole lot of other things that are difficult
- and that may seem artificial and antiquated now - in the name of
reweaving what Burke called "the decent drapery of life ...
necessary to cover the defects of our own naked shivering nature."
That call is not issued out of a Quixotic desire to mask ugly truths
with fictional niceties. Rather, it is the realization that man's
transcendence of his biological condition through God is the Truth
of human existence.
How that reweaving should proceed, unfortunately, is less than
clear from this book. Mr. Guroian's critique is a little too
far-reaching: His collection of essays is ambitious, ranging
in subject matter from dogma to gay marriage to President Bush's
rhetoric to Armenian nationalism. A tighter focus might have led to
more specific prescriptions. The West is rotting from the inside;
Christian orthodoxy is essential to saving it. Beyond that, however,
few specifics are given.
That this book is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
signals its target audience: young people, particularly college
students, who are likely to be of a sympathetic, conservative
mind-set. If Mr. Guroian does not explain how young people are to
convert others to their point of view, it may be because they will
never be able to. Rather, these young readers will, someday, have
children of their own, onto whom they can pass an appreciation of
"the really human things." In this respect, Mr. Guroian's chapter
on Chrysostom and cultivating the Christian family may be the most
useful of his book. It directs readers toward the means by which they
are best able to restore humanity to public life: the faithful family.
August 4, 2005 Thursday
Reality Reinterpreted
By MEGHAN CLYNE
To anyone not under a blackout during this spring's papal transition,
the commentariat's frustration with John Paul II and Benedict XVI was
manifest and alarming. Denounced as hard-liners, the pontiffs were
branded out of touch on such matters as bioethics, sexual morality,
and religious tolerance. The Church was urged to get with the times
(or the Times). In order to accommodate "reality," Catholics were
told they should, in effect, cease to be Catholics.
But what's peddled as "reality" these days is bunk, according to
Vigen Guroian. A professor of theology and ethics at Loyola College
in Baltimore, Mr. Guroian urges a restoration of true humanity - one
defined not by polls and lab reports, but by "the moral imagination,"
Edmund Burke's term for the source of all our civilizing traditions.
In "Rallying the Really Human Things" (ISI Books, 241 pages, $25),
Mr. Guroian traces the futility and bankruptcy of contemporary
culture to godlessness and anthropocentrism, which he pins on a
failure in education. Parents and teachers, he writes, "treat fact
as god, event as illusion, individual as datum, person as chimera,
norm as relative value, and human nature as social construct."
The result? Timeless questions surrounding sexuality and love are
reduced to the effectiveness of condoms as measured by x, y, or z
study; a baby is worth his weight in stem cells; and a woman's life
may be taken if enough doctors testify that she is in a "persistent
vegetative state."
Human existence has become so desiccated partly because these parents
and educators have yielded their instructive responsibilities to
"The Great Stereopticon," as Richard Weaver called the bombardment
of here-and-now information unleashed by the television age, all the
more potent more than 50 years later thanks to the Internet. Cable
news and blogs feed endless spin to hungry minds without planting
them in any sort of historical, cultural, intellectual, or moral
context. It is that context Mr. Guroian seeks to restore.
He does this primarily by bearing witness to what its absence has
wrought. Much - perhaps too much - is made of the "culture wars." But
the struggle to keep alive the means of human exceptionalism -
principally, God - is rarely a well-publicized clash of swords. The
real assault on the moral imagination is more subtle, more sustained,
waged along unobserved fronts.
Mr. Guroian documents, for example, the vacuity of modern education.
Colleges graduate careerist men and women who are slaves to their
trades, unappreciative of life's spiritual and intellectual riches.
The capacity for reflection, and an education in the full range of
human feeling, does not decorate these lives, which are dedicated to
bottom lines.
Mr. Guroian, as a college instructor, reserves special ire
for his fellow professors, who he believes are complicit in the
self-destructive behavior - from binge drinking to hookups - that
defines modern collegiate life, particularly for young women. The
sexual revolution tore away the social norms that once veiled female
virtue. As casual intercourse became itself the norm, women could
no longer protect themselves from male aggression by invoking moral
standards.
Instead, "reality" is now invoked against them. Those who remain
chaste are met with ridicule or scorn, told they will have to change
their ways if they ever hope to land a mate. The "reality" is that
the competition is more than willing to oblige. Yet even if giving
into one's passions is now perfectly acceptable, it is not therefore
admirable. What sets man apart is his mastery over his passions, his
capacity to recognize and obey a higher authority than his pheromones.
Mr. Guroian is calling for a restored valuation of this
self-discipline, and a whole lot of other things that are difficult
- and that may seem artificial and antiquated now - in the name of
reweaving what Burke called "the decent drapery of life ...
necessary to cover the defects of our own naked shivering nature."
That call is not issued out of a Quixotic desire to mask ugly truths
with fictional niceties. Rather, it is the realization that man's
transcendence of his biological condition through God is the Truth
of human existence.
How that reweaving should proceed, unfortunately, is less than
clear from this book. Mr. Guroian's critique is a little too
far-reaching: His collection of essays is ambitious, ranging
in subject matter from dogma to gay marriage to President Bush's
rhetoric to Armenian nationalism. A tighter focus might have led to
more specific prescriptions. The West is rotting from the inside;
Christian orthodoxy is essential to saving it. Beyond that, however,
few specifics are given.
That this book is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
signals its target audience: young people, particularly college
students, who are likely to be of a sympathetic, conservative
mind-set. If Mr. Guroian does not explain how young people are to
convert others to their point of view, it may be because they will
never be able to. Rather, these young readers will, someday, have
children of their own, onto whom they can pass an appreciation of
"the really human things." In this respect, Mr. Guroian's chapter
on Chrysostom and cultivating the Christian family may be the most
useful of his book. It directs readers toward the means by which they
are best able to restore humanity to public life: the faithful family.