Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. Healer for a Broken Time

 

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, the Capuchin priest who carried the wounds of the crucified Christ, embodied truths that have been stridently denied by many who would tell us how to think and what to disbelieve during these times of overwhelming power and overwhelming impotence. This remarkable man bore witness to the essential truth carried in the Christian understanding of the Incarnation, of the human embodiment of the living Christ. As one who bore the stigmata, the five wounds of the crucified Jesus, Padre Pio projected historical truth. He shares this witness with others such as Saint Francis of Assisi, Therese Neumann and more recently, Filipino visionary and mystic  Emma de Guzman, each of whose lives has challenged the illusory certainty of what has been deemed the limits of the possible.

We pride ourselves on the cogency of the scientific knowledge and understanding that have enabled us to crack apart both atoms and atolls, leave flags and footprints on the moon, and map the structure of cellular DNA and viral RNA. This same pride has decreed that only through such methods as those sanctioned by science can we arrive at Truth. But despite our declared certainties, there is much within human experience that continues to defy scientific interpretation.

Sixty years ago, historian of science Thomas Kuhn described how our ways of thinking can become so constrained that we summarily dismiss or disallow all facts that do not conform to the paradigm through which we interpret the world and our view of how the world should be. Kuhn describes how the progressive accumulation of "anomalies" that do not fit in to our preconceived theories can force a complete re-evaluation of the paradigm or model through which phenomena are understood and interpreted. According to Kuhn, this process underlies the periodic revolutions that transform scientific understanding.

There is no shortage of "anomalous" manifestations in the world. There is much that occurs in the experiences of many that simply cannot be accommodated by a materialistic and rationalistic view of reality.

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina first received the stigmata, or the marks of the crucified Christ on his hands, feet, and chest when he was in his twenties. As a novice and young monk, he had engaged in a number of ascetic disciplines. His self-mortifications were, even according to his teachers and companions, considered to be extreme. Within the history of Christian asceticism, there have been many who, after the death of Jesus, exerted themselves in ways other than by prayer and fasting. The spiritual traditions of every culture acknowledge the transformative power of intense ascetic discipline. Yet there are some who would consider them to be severe aberrations of spirituality. Russian Religious Philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev was highly critical of much within the Christian ascetic traditions. [1]

He was particularly scathing in his attitude to the phenomenon of stigmatisation, which was first made manifest in the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Berdyaev writes:

"Eastern Christian mysticism is not interested in the life on this earth of Jesus Christ or in the idea of imitating his passions. The idea of stigmata is likewise foreign to it. . . Such phenomena as stigmata are unacceptable to Eastern thought. Nor do disease and suffering play such an important part as they do in Catholic mysticism." [2]

Berdyaev's curt dismissal of what is, in truth, a providential gift and in the case of many stigmatists, a willing participation in the sufferings of Jesus as a conscious act of co-redemption, is questionable. As self-nominated spokesman for the Eastern churches, Berdyaev may have deemed stigmata as "unacceptable" but this does not alter the fact that they are a part of spiritual reality. In the case of Padre Pio, the stigmata are a re-presentation of the truths lived and the miracles performed by Jesus during his time on the earth re-manifested in human form for the benefit of many. The influence of Padre Pio has transformed the lives of numerous individuals both during and beyond the confines of his earthly life. His presence and his action showed him to be a man of immense spiritual power and attainment. Padre Pio has clearly walked a path reserved for but few souls on the earth. [3]

The early letters of Padre Pio to his two spiritual directors explicitly reveal the extent to which his spiritual practices brought him into contact with demonic forces that literally made his life hell. [4] For Padre Pio, the inhabitants of hell worlds were not the imaginative projections of an inflamed consciousness, but actual presences with whom he actively contended. Padre Pio perseveringly and unflinchingly pursued a path that he had unexpectedly entered as a young man, a path that reached an extraordinary culmination that he could never have fully anticipated. Throughout his life, Padre Pio lived within the graces and powers associated with the stigmata, while paradoxically experiencing indescribable physical pain and torment.

Padre Pio's life completely overturned the modernist denial of the miraculous and the numinous. He lived the impossible. The way in which he acquired the stigmata of Christ Jesus resonates strongly with the experiences of Saint Francis of Assisi, and would test the imagination of even the most adventurous writer of fantasy. He possessed in great measure many of the siddhi, or perfections described in the yogic literature of India. Within his own tradition, these were understood as Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Such capabilities included bilocation (the ability to be in two places at one time), visions, ecstasies, the ability to read the minds of others, the mediation of healing, radiant luminosity, and the emanation of sublime fragrances. Yet he never claimed these powers as his own. He was truly a great priest of Jesus who lived a life of dedicated service and humility.

His mission was also marked by extraordinary works. The creation of the Casa Solievo Della Sofferenza, a large hospital constructed in San Giovanni Rotondo during the 1950s was driven largely by Padre Pio from within the confines of his monastery. Despite his accomplishments in both the spiritual and material worlds, Padre Pio claimed no exalted status, but even to the end,  expressed a surprising uncertainty about his own relationship with the Divine. His biographer C. Bernard Ruffin comments:

Incredibly, Padre Pio at times seemed to doubt that he was in a state of grace. "You have respect for me," he told a friend, "because you do not know me. I am the greatest sinner on this earth." Complaining that every good intention was marred by vanity and pride, he insisted, "I am not good. I do not know why this habit of Saint Francis, which I wear so unworthily, does not jump off me. . . .  Pray for me that I might become good." [5]

This extraordinary comment was made towards the close of his life. Yet even as a young man, a year after he had received the stigmata in 1918, he confided to his spiritual advisor: "I doubt at times whether I myself even possess the grace of God." [6] Such reflections cast the reality of relativity into sharp relief. Padre Pio clearly held many deep insights that elude most of us. He may have been so conscious of the nature of perfection that the minor weaknesses with which every one of us contend in the course of our daily lives became, for him, a source of anxiety and self-recrimination. Perhaps the self-expectation of those who have truly transcended human limitation and who fully inhabit spiritual reality is beyond anything we can comprehend. His own reflections in such matters may serve to awaken us to the folly of complacency and the danger of self-satisfaction in considering one's own relationship to the Divine.

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina represents yet another remarkable enigma born of Italian Catholic spirituality. His life has served to reaffirm the deeper values of love, healing and transformation carried by deep Christianity during this broken time of materialism, nihilism and abuse that subvert and deny the essential truths taught and lived by Jesus of Nazareth.

Notes

1. Nicolas Berdyaev (1939): Spirit and Reality (trans. George Reavey), Geoffrey Bles, The Centenary Press, London. See especially Chapter IV: "The Aim of Asceticism" pp. 69-93
2. Ibid., pp. 141-142
3. The meaning of the life of Padre Pio cannot be encompassed simply by knowing his story or the range of his spiritual gifts. It is only in the context on his day-to-day influence on the lives who knew him and loved him that one can begin to form a coherent understanding of the man and his mission. the reminiscences of those who were close to him will provide far more light than any formal examination of the many available histories and commentaries. For one such account, see: https://lavianuminosa.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-presence-of-transcendent-giuseppe.html
4. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. Letters, Volume I. Correspondence with his Spiritual Directors (1910-1922), Edizioni Padre Pio di Pietrelcina, San Giovanni Rotondo, 2012. Accounts of Padre Pio's early encounters begin very early in the exchange of letters with his directors, the first intimations being recorded in his letter to Padre Benedetto on 6th July 1910. (p. 211) Numerous highly graphic accounts of his experiences follow throughout the 12-year period of correspondence.5. C. Bernard Ruffin (1991): Padre Pio. The True Story, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, Huntington, Indiana, p. 373
6. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Letters, Vol. I, (op. cit.), p. 1284

Vincent Di Stefano D.O., M.H.Sc.
March 2014
Revised September 2021

A Prayer for Healers

by Padre Pio da Pietrelcina

O divine healer of bodies and of souls, Lord Jesus, Redeemer, who during your life on the earth cared for those who were afflicted and healed them with a touch of your all-powerful hand, we who are called to the difficult mission of healing adore you and recognise in you our sublime model and source of strength.

May you ever guide our minds, our hearts and our hands so that we may deserve the praise and honour bestowed by the Holy Spirit upon our vocation.

May there awaken within us a growing awareness of our role as your collaborators in the protection and the development of humanity, and of our role as instruments of your divine mercy.

Illuminate our intelligence in the pursuit of an understanding of the pain and difficulties caused by the numerous afflictions that can assail our bodies until, by skillfully availing ourselves of the findings of science, the causes of sickness no longer remain hidden to us. By your grace, may we be neither deceived nor mistaken regarding the nature of our patients' symptoms, but with sure judgement, select the best remedies or treatments that have been made available through your Divine Providence.

Fill our hearts with your love and help us to recognise your own self within our patients, particularly those who are most wounded and helpless. May we respond to the trust that they have placed in us with the utmost care and energy.

Imitating the example you have set for us, may we be parental in our concern, sincere in our advice, diligent in our ministrations, strangers to deception, and wise in our discernment of the mystery of suffering and of death. Above all, may we be constant in our defense of your sacred law of respect for all life against the assaults of our self-serving and perverse instincts.

As healers who give glory to your name, we vow that our activities will be continually guided by moral righteousness and that our lives will honour the laws of morality.

Finally, grant that we ourselves, through the Christian conduct of our lives and the just practice of our profession, may one day be worthy to hear from your lips the blessed words that you have promised to those who have ministered to you in the form of those who are in need: "Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." (Matt. 26, 34)

May it be so !

Original Italian Version

O Medico divino delle anime e dei corpi, Redentore Gesù, che durante la tua vita mortale prediligesti gli infermi, risanandoli col tocco della tua mano onnipotente, noi, chiamati all’ardua missione di medici, ti adoriamo e riconosciamo in te il nostro eccelso modello e sostegno.

Mente, cuore e mano siano sempre da te guidati in modo da meritare la lode e l’onore che lo Spirito Santo ascrive al nostro ufficio.

Accresci in noi la consapevolezza di essere in qualche modo collaboratori tuoi nella difesa e nello sviluppo delle umane creature, e strumenti della tua misericordia.

Illumina le nostre intelligenze nell’aspro cimento contro le innumerevoli infermità dei corpi, affinchè, avvalendoci rettamente della scienza e dei suoi progressi, non ci siano occulte le cause dei mali, né ci traggano in inganno i loro sintomi, ma con sicuro giudizio possiamo indicare i rimedi dalla tua Provvidenza disposti.

Dilata i nostri cuori col tuo amore, sicché, ravvisando te stesso negli infermi, particolarmente nei più derelitti, rispondiamo con indefessa sollecitudine alla fiducia che essi ripongono in noi.

Fa che, imitando il tuo esempio, siamo paterni nel compatire, sinceri nel consigliare, solerti nel curare, alieni dall’illudere, soavi nel preannunciare il mistero del dolore e della morte; soprattutto che siamo fermi nel difendere la tua santa legge del rispetto alla vita, contro gli assalti dell’egoismo e dei perversi istinti.

Come medici che ci gloriamo del tuo nome, promettiamo che la nostra attività si muoverà costantemente nell’osservanza dell’ordine morale e sotto l’impero delle sue leggi.

Concedici, infine, che noi stessi, per la condotta cristiana della vita ed il retto esercizion della professione, meritiamo un giorno di ascoltare dalle tue labbra la beatificante sentenza, promessa a coloro che ti visitarono infermo nei fratelli: “Venite, o benedetti del Padre mio, prendete possesso del regno per voi preparato” (Matt. 25,34).

Cosi sia!

"Pray, Hope and Don't Worry"

A documentary examining the life of Padre Pio



RELATED POSTS

1. In the Presence of the Transcendent. Giuseppe Caccioppoli and Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

The meaning of the life of Padre Pio cannot be fully encompassed by knowing his story or the range of his spiritual gifts. It is only in the context of his day-to-day influence on the lives of those who knew him and loved him that one can begin to form a coherent understanding of the man and of his mission. The reminiscences and stories of those who were close to him will provide far more light than any formal examination of the many available histories and commentaries that attempt to describe his life and detail his attributes. One such story is offered by Giuseppe Caccioppoli, a spiritual son of Padre Pio.

Countering Gravity

 

Gustav Dore La Selva Oscura (~1860)

The contemporary immanentism that has rejected metaphysics has effectively shut the door to the supernatural. Religion consists of far more than blind belief or a civilising system of ethics. Although part of the religious sensibility may find expression in a realisation that "the world is charged with the grandeur of God", as the poet/priest Gerard Manley Hopkins reminded us, religion effectively seeks to re-connect us to a continuity that transcends our transient material embodiment.

 

Dealing with inertia remains one of life’s more difficult tasks. Both Yoga philosophy and Samkhya identify inertia as one of the constitutive principles of life and materiality. Tamas, or the tendency to darkness, gravity, or inertia is nominated as one of the three gunas, the three principles that condition phenomenality. The other two are rajas, the principle of energy, movement, and activity, and sattva, the principle of radiance, coherence, and stillness.

 

There are no equivalent frames within the Western understanding, though the elemental system of Empedocles with its four principles of earth, fire, water and air - and their association with melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic and sanguine temperaments - offer some parallels. Though largely hidden in conventional thought, the Samkhyan and the Empedoclean systems remain deeply imbedded in the psyche of both India and Europe and have served as deeply influential philosophic and interpretive principles for over two thousand years.

 

Such experiences as writer’s block or intentional paralysis partake of tamas on the one hand, and melancholia or phlegmatism on the other. There is, of course, much more at play in any attempt to describe - let alone understand - why we are as we are, why our tendencies incline in one direction rather than another, why we are disposed to one particular style rather than another. But a mindfulness of such maps or frames can be as useful as any psychological system or theory in navigating life’s inevitable - and occasionally protracted - impasses.

 

The Samkhya/Yoga system is probably more accessible than the Western traditional frame. It remains a living tradition with an articulated and accessible methodology - yoga practice. On the other hand, our contemporary Western mindset has effectively severed itself from its earlier historic roots in the wake of post-enlightenment “reforms.” Our own systems of psychological interpretation now range from the pragmatics of behaviourism with its near-complete abdication of mind, through the at-times insightful, but prescriptive, constrictive, and ultimately delimiting categories of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, to the mythically and mystically-charged analytical psychology of Carl Jung.

 

There are many explanatory systems available, but what life calls us to do is to move with the river, to engage with the constant flow of change given to us at moment-to-moment, situation-to-situation, and day-to-day levels. This is the shifting ground from which meaning, discernment, direction and purpose are to be derived in any given life. This does not mean that we are to obsessively swim with or against the current or - as Paracelsus put it 500 years ago - be consumed by our dailiness, although there is much to be said about burning as cleanly as a candle. Periods of silence and reflection can help cultivate the necessary presence of mind to remain centred even while the outer maelstrom rages.

 

Stepping into Nowhere

 

In a remarkable historic inversion, to actively seek out the meaning, the direction and the purpose of any given life now goes against the dominant cultural grain. The very notions of meaning and purpose have themselves been subverted by the secular and scientistic enblandments of postmodernism. I gave some small voice to this recent turn of mind a couple of years ago:

 

The forces that govern secular modernity have long sought to strip the world of its numinous essences. The miraculous has been relegated to the domain of superstitious folly while religion has been deemed an archaic and outmoded institution suitable only for the weak and feeble-minded. Christianity has, for many, become a faded repository of fundamentalisms that serve only to obstruct and impede the progression of "enlightened" liberal thought. Many of the rituals and practices that continue to serve those who remain within the fold of Christianity are seen as merely symbolic at best and deluded at worst. [1]

 

I find it curious to have been drawn deeper into such considerations through the passing years while many of my fellow travellers seem to either drift contentedly or rush frenetically from one day to the next benumbed by or in denial of what inevitably awaits. The reality of our mortality does not need to be front and centre of our awareness, but its very actuality would seem to call for some reflection on the whys, the whences and the wherefores. Meditation on death is an essential aspect of Buddhist practice. The final words of the Hail Mary prayer, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death, bring its reality to mind with each pass. In the recitation of a single rosary, one comes to acknowledge the transient nature of this life 50 times.

 

The tamasic way has become curiously emblematic of contemporary life. Within our incessant busyness, we are more often than not passive, distracted spectators in the midst of our endless engagements. Our days are often consumed by the ephemeral and the inconsequential. Both effort and sustained discipline are avoided unless they are for the purposes of augmenting one’s own power or status. Our cultural style becomes increasingly provisionary, where everything is provided for us, while we are urged to sit back and simply enjoy it. Such passivity does little for our capacity to discern. Both Nietzsche in his hubris and Heidegger in his disdain foresaw a time when technological “progress” would void the collective mind, and provide the means whereby the many would be willingly herded by those who would call the day.

 

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor views this as a “loss of freedom.” He writes:

 

But there has been another kind of loss of freedom, which has also been widely discussed, most memorably by Alexis de Tocqueville. A society in which people end up as the kind of individuals who are ‘enclosed in their own hearts’ is one where few will want to participate actively in self-government. They will prefer to stay at home and enjoy the satisfactions of private life, so long as the government of the day produces the means to these satisfactions and distributes them widely. [2]

 

So, what has been lost here? And at what cost? My thoughts run dry in the face of the immensity of both questions.

 

Re-orienting

 

Such considerations do, however, bring to mind a comment offered by John Caputo, one of the more prominent architects of American Death-of-God theology, during a lecture in Belfast in 2015.[3] At the close of his presentation, Caputo spoke about the sinking of the Titanic and recalled that while the ship was slowly foundering, the four members of the on-board string quartet held their composure perfectly and continued to perform while most of those around them became increasingly panic-stricken. Caputo commented: “What the hell would they do that for? They should have been running like hell to get off that ship! They kept playing the music!” He went on to describe this as an “unconditional affirmation of what is taking place in the moment of utter unthinkable tragedy . . . to which they add their music.” Answering his earlier question, he went on: “At a deeper level, it seems to me it is the very act of religion.”

 

Caputo has here reduced “the very act of religion” to sheer immanence and participation in what is immediately at hand. Religion here has somehow become a form of stoic resignation, a performance of one’s duty, a simple fulfilment of one’s allotted task in the face of chaos and uncertainty. Yet as Charles Taylor noted in a lecture at the Berkley Center at Georgetown University in 2008, “Religion is not a single thing.”[4] Taylor, despite his own immanentist disposition, is perhaps here alluding to the inescapably transcendental dimension of religion and religious experience.

 

Etymologically, the word religion derives from re-ligare, to re-tie, to re-unite, to re-connect. This clearly implies a pre-existing state of separation, a state of being disconnected from something deeply essential. In Caputo’s sense of religion, that from which one is separated is the immanent, the immediate circumstances in which one finds oneself situated. Caputo’s frame is totally within the physical. The metaphysical is dismissed as an uncertain conjecture. Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God is accepted as a statement of the way things are.

 

The metaphysical position abides more in trust than in certainty. Etymologically, the term points to what is beyond the physical, the material, the immediate. The metaphysical is inherently ungraspable. As the first two lines of the Tao De Ching declare: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.” The eternal and the immediate are as conceptual poles. Yet one of the many aspects of religion, of re-ligare, is the resolution of these opposites. As Blake sang in his Auguries of Innocence:

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour . . .

 

That to which we are to be re-tied, re-united, re-connected is beyond any simple - or complex - formulation but is rather the work of a life. The curious thing is that for some, this is a necessary and inescapable quest, while for others, it is a non-existent human construct, das Opium des Volkes, as Karl Marx put it in 1843.

 

Yet what Caputo may perhaps be offering is a metaphor of our present circumstances. We are living in an apocalyptic moment that has been growing for decades – if not centuries. The ship is going down and many know that to be the case. The band is keeping time, composed and collected even in midst of escalating and unavoidable danger. Caputo calls for composure and measure as a religious act even while all narratives, meanings, opinions and interpretations are thrown to the wind and as the forces of dissolution become increasingly evident in every human and environmental theatre imaginable.

 

This brings to mind a story I once heard about an incident that occurred during the Hokkaido earthquake of 2003. It concerns a traveller who was on the first floor of the Hokkaido airport lounge at the moment when the earthquake struck. People immediately started running everywhere in an attempt to get out of the building. In the midst of the pandemonium, the traveller was transfixed by the movements of an impeccably dressed businessman sitting opposite him. The businessman calmly put aside his brief-case, assumed a cross-legged position on the floor, and entered a deeply meditative state. The traveller simply watched him. When the building eventually stopped shaking, the businessman stood up, picked up his brief case, nodded to the traveller, and walked away.

 

According to Caputo’s frame, this too might be described as “the very act of religion.” But it is not the full picture, although it may reflect one of the possible consequences of living beyond the physical, of cultivating the less accessible aspects of mind, of attaining some small measure of equanimity in the face of apparent chaos. Religion involves more than simply remaining calm. Jesus sweated blood in Gethsemane knowing that Jewish and Roman guards were on their way to bind him and drag him to the courts of Annas and Caiphas. He asked to be delivered of the cup before him, yet fully accepted the fate called upon him by a mindless crowd urged on by their leaders.

 

Religion may indeed be seen as an act, but not in the sense that Caputo suggests. It is certainly an act of affirmation, but what is affirmed is not of this world. As the life of Jesus revealed, and as was further revealed many times after his death and resurrection as told in the Acts of the Apostles, the essence or “the very act of religion” is a sustained openness to the possibility of the irruption of a transcendental reality into our otherwise mundane dailiness. Jesus was not simply a persuasive speaker or rhetorician. In his presence, things were not as one normally expects them to be. Devils would take flight. The lost, the lame, and the blind would be found and healed. The seemingly impossible was made manifest at every turn. And this supernatural dimension has been maintained throughout the intervening centuries by the living presence of God and his intercessory manifestations in the lives of the saints ranging from St. Francis of Assisi to Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.

 

The contemporary immanentism that has rejected metaphysics as an archaic artefact of simpler times has effectively shut the door to the supernatural. Religion consists of far more than blind belief, stoic immanence, or a civilising system of ethics. Although part of the religious sensibility may find expression in a realisation that the world is charged with the grandeur of God, as the poet/priest Gerard Manley Hopkins reminded us, religion effectively seeks to re-connect us to a continuity that transcends our transient material embodiment. In this task, it is probably more helpful to draw upon the experiences of those who participate intimately in such realities, than those who would summarily dismiss the possibility of such experiences.

 

Vincent Di Stefano M.H.Sc., D.O., N.D.

Inverloch, January 2021

---

[1] http://lavianuminosa.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-presence-of-transcendent-giuseppe.html

[2] Charles Taylor, 1991, The Ethics of Authenticity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. p. 9

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2nq8baHDFY&t=909s. Caputo recounts the experience that led him to reflect further on the Titanic and the fate of its passengers at ~ 19m. 15s. 

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m95ck7A2Ooc. Taylor makes this comment in response to a question from the audience at 1h. 08m. 

Faith, Hope, and the Catholicism of Alasdair MacIntyre

For a committed writer, the act of writing is an essential part of one’s day. Regardless of whether the currents are flowing or not, the work is to be done, the thought is to be activated, the presence of the muse is to be beckoned, if not implored. And yet the dryness, the aridity is as an ever-present shadow, if not in the foreground, then lying in wait between sessions, within sessions, beyond sessions. Committed dailiness is also integral to the life of the musician, the artist, the philosopher. One’s instrument is to be coaxed to expression daily.

 

This commitment is not limited to exterior acts. Our characters are not ready-made, but are shaped and reshaped throughout life. Even the barest measure of self-reflection reveals that we err, that we sin, that we do things in ways that cause regret, that we can do better than we do. So how are we to become free of error, to be done with sinning, to give what is truly needed in each situation, to do as well as can be done?

 

Philosophies, theologies, and moralities can be constructed around such considerations. There is human agency on the one hand. We may find ourselves in favourable or in adverse circumstances, and we can act and react in ways that either further or hinder our situation. On the other hand, we may feel ourselves to be acted upon by forces over which we have no control at all. Safe passage is not a given. Our acts will sometimes be fruitful, but at other times serve only to embroil us further. What is it to perceive clearly? To know when to act? When to desist? What are the foundations of right thought, of right action? Where are the fonts of wisdom?

 

A consistent thread that emerges in all traditions that address this problem is agreement on the need for daily reflection, for daily renewal. Once one is committed to examining, to testing the possibility of transforming one’s life, to developing discernment and skill in judgment, then the question of method arises. How is such needed change to be realised? Yet there is more at work here than mere method.

 

Beyond the immediate, there remains always the end towards which one aspires. Is it to live one’s earthly life well and to take one’s leave well-reconciled? But what is it to live well? And to what are we to be reconciled? All of this rests on more than simply doing things better. What traces are to be left of our own lives? What of our effects on the lives of others? What is the Kingdom of Heaven? Are we called to attain the Kingdom of Heaven? Are we to call the Kingdom of Heaven to earth? Can we call the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, or is this something beyond human agency? Such questions call for answers, yet the answers cannot be simply given. We can, however, learn to trust.

 

Perhaps we must ultimately learn to trust if we are to somehow escape the circularity of trying to think our way through that which lies beyond thought.

THE CURIOUS JOURNEY OF ALASDAIR MACINTYRE

In his latter decades, the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre gave such questions much thought, and in the process arrived at a position that is decidedly against the grain. As a young man during the 1950s, MacIntyre was a committed Marxist thinker and an active member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He served as an editor of the journal International Socialism from 1960 until 1968, seeing within Marxist ideas a possible means for not only understanding the human dilemma, but of securing social and economic justice for the many. Though born into a Scottish Presbyterian household, he became an outspoken atheist during the 1960s.

Karl Marx’s position on religion is both explicit and hostile. Marx wrote in 1843:

“[T]he criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism. . .

 

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. . .

 

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. . .

 

The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.” [1]  

Political events in eastern Europe during the 1950s disabused MacIntyre of his youthful embrace of Marxist dogma. He quit his membership of the Communist Party after the devastating Soviet response to the Hungarian uprising in 1956 in which thousands of Hungarians died and hundreds of thousands fled as refugees.

 

As his enthusiasm for Marxist thought began to wane, he immersed himself in an intense study of Christian theologians and intellectuals. His long-standing Aristotelian affinities found a new home in the intricate but well-ordered labyrinth detailed in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Such inquiries ultimately led to his conversion to the Catholic faith when he was in his fifties. Catholicism and its underlying principles thereafter became integral to MacIntyre’s philosophical position.

 

This peculiar path to faith seems strangely appropriate for one of MacIntyre’s temperament and disposition. His entry into the Catholic church followed an intense philosophical engagement with one of the greatest Catholic thinkers whose method was grounded in a deep explication of Aristotle’s ideas. St. Thomas Aquinas’s spirituality consisted, however, in more than a reformulation of Aristotelian ethics. As a young man in his twenties, Aquinas had studied under Albertus Magnus whose writings on antimony and other minerals reveal him to have had a deep knowledge of European alchemy. The young Aquinas may well have participated in the illuminated life-world of his teacher and mentor, and his later work would have been informed as much by his experience of a spiritually charged reality as by rational intellection. No surprise that Aquinas continues to be remembered as the Angelic Doctor.

FROM MARX TO JESUS

MacIntyre delivered a lecture entitled Catholic Instead of What? at the University of Notre Dame in November 2012. [2] He was 83 years of age at the time. It was impressively clear during his presentation that deep and sustained thinking throughout his life has not done him any harm.

 

In this lecture, MacIntyre affirmed his commitment to Catholicism and the centrality of Revelation, particularly as mediated by Jesus in the Gospels, in his view of the world. He thereby placed himself at odds with most of his colleagues within the academic establishment. Early in the lecture, he stated:

“To be a Catholic here and now is to reject, among other things, the claims of any version of scientific naturalism. . .  Scientific naturalists are atheists, since no finding of physics, chemistry, or biology provides them with anything like a good reason for asserting that God exists. . . To study nature as physicists, chemists, and biologists study it is already to have excluded God from the possible objects of inquiry.”

Language simply fails. God is not and can never be an object of inquiry. Yet in this comment, MacIntyre has starkly nominated the philosophical position of the scientific project, even though many who are deeply engaged in it and who identify themselves as Catholic appear unfazed by the contradiction of being committed to both faith and scientific naturalism.

MacIntyre’s Catholicism seems to have been won by dint of the logical coherence of Aquinas’s method tempered by a personal acceptance of the Christian revelation. Yet his sense of Jesus remains highly abstracted. It does not appear to be based on the experiential reality made manifest in the lives of St. Francis of Assisi or Padre Pio of Pietrelcina - both of whom carried the marks of the crucified Christ - or of the many saints throughout history who claim to have engaged mentally and materially with the person of Jesus. Such experiences are abundantly described in the writings of Teresa of Avila, Faustina Kawalska, and Alexandrina da Costa among others. MacIntyre’s Jesus is second-handed through such interpreters as Geza Vermes who writes of the Jewish Jesus, J.D. Crossam who describes the egalitarian, peasant Jesus, Albert Schweitzer who addresses the eschatological Jesus, and the historicised Jesus reconstructed by Anglican bishop N.T. Wright. Regarding these various representations of Jesus, MacIntyre asks:

 

“In which Jesus are we to believe? Among these contenders, only the last [that of N.T. Wright] is recognisable as the Jesus of whom the Catholic church speaks, or rather, the Jesus who speaks to us through the Catholic church.” 

 

MacIntyre at least acknowledges the fact that the Jesus of which the Catholic church speaks actually speaks through the Catholic church itself and through its saints - those chosen by Jesus to carry the message of his living truth to those in this world. Curiously, MacIntyre strongly inclines towards the image of Jesus presented by N.T. Wright despite the fact that Wright himself has not been shy in declaring his soft hostility towards Catholicism. Not only is Wright intellectually opposed to the notion of Purgatory, but he has little time for Marian devotion. In a presentation given in Edinburgh in 2003, Wright made his position completely clear:

 

“I am horrified at some of the recent Anglican/Roman statements, for instance, and on things like the Papacy, purgatory, and the cult of saints (especially Mary). I am as protestant as the next person, for (I take it) good Pauline reasons. But justification by faith tells me that if my Roman neighbour believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead then he or she is a brother or sister, however much I believe them muddled, even dangerously so, on other matters.” [3]

Even though the notions of Revelation and Faith figure prominently in MacIntyre’s stated position, the world somehow seems to win out in the end. Does the old Presbyterian in him still have the last word? Has the old Marxist really been shaken off? Perhaps there is something suggested here about the tenacity of old complexes despite our strongest attempts to put them behind us.

On the other hand, what does come through in MacIntyre’s presentation is a complete acceptance of the promise held in Catholicism, the promise of passage beyond any given life, beyond time and matter, beyond the fallenness of the human condition. This is the sustaining hope that overcomes the emptiness of the atheistic vision within which we somehow take on material form, spend our days running the gauntlet of life’s perplexities and ultimate meaninglessness, only to dissolve back into the elements that formed us when we breathe our last.

OF DEEPER HOPE

The role of Hope is central for MacIntyre. He states:

“The stories that Catholics tell about their own lives, and about those of others, are stories of fallenness, but not of hopelessness, and this because those stories presuppose the truth of the biblical narrative – are intelligible only in terms of the biblical narrative. This is a hope that is centred beyond the confines of our given life. This is a hope founded on trust in the reality of Jesus and the truth of his message as presented in the Gospels and in the teachings of his saints and prophets.”

Li Zhisui, the doctor who attended Mao Zedong during his final sickness offers a less ample view of hope and its nature. He reports the following:

“I went over to Mao’s bed. He saw me and said ‘Dr. Li, do you think there’s any hope for me?' I knew very well that there was no hope at all, but I couldn’t say that to a patient. I said, ‘There’s hope. We’re still trying.’ He looked very bad when I spoke. After, it seems his face got a little colour. I felt his pulse which seemed a little better too. Suddenly I felt that there was no more strength in his hand. His hand dropped. I saw his eyes were closed. Then I looked at the electrocardiogram. The waves had become a straight line. In other words, his heart had stopped. All was finished." [4] 

For one fully grounded in the historical materialism outlined by Marx and Engels, and for one fully committed to atheism, the only hope that can be envisioned is one based in human existence. There is simply nothing beyond one’s final breath. As Li Zhisui said, all was finished. Yet from the perspective taken by MacIntyre and many others, death is not an ending, but a source of hope, a promise, an anticipation, a new beginning.

Mao’s revolution did away with the outer cultural forms and the social structures that were integral to China for several millennia. It also discarded and disregarded much that was integral to the Chinese psyche. The Taoist understanding is emblematic of Chinese thought. It infused and continues to infuse the lives of Taoist recluses, Confucian scholars and many throughout China who have managed to avoid or escape the progressivist technocratic treadmill imposed in recent decades. Much has also been transmitted through the Buddhist tradition and incorporated into deeper Chinese cultural understandings. And the Catholic missionary monks who have been active in China since the 7^th century have quietly made their own mark.

 

In all of these traditions, hope is not something that is summarily extinguished by death. For both Taoist and Buddhist, death offers the means whereby one’s circumstances may be improved through a more favourable re-birth. In the Catholic vision, unless one damns oneself through obstinacy, wilfulness, and a conscious choice of evil over good, after death one enters a different mode of being wherein one undergoes a period of purgation before attaining the beatific vision in which we come to apprehend our creator in eternity. This belief, and for some, this certainty is the source of hope that provides a sense of purpose, of continuity and of fulfilment for what may be only shadowy presentiments while yet we are in the world.

 

If one cares to look sufficiently into the lives of those who have transcended human limitation - the saints, the sages, the prophets, and the magi of every culture - it is clear that there is far more to the picture than that which has been corralled into the constricted and self-limited world of materiality and rational agency. This is a questing that can never be resolved by disputation and argumentation, but only through experience, grace, trust and an openness to that which is above and beyond one’s own powers and one’s own will. 

CATHOLIC INSTEAD OF WHAT?

Below is a video recording of the lecture given by Alasdair MacIntyre at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture in November 2012.

NOTES

 

1. Introduction to “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” Available online at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm (emphases in original)

 

2. Video of the presentation is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjYLM1lw47Q&t=1s and a full transcript is available at: https://chamberscreek.net/library/macintyre/macintyre2012catholic.html 

 

3. https://ntwrightpage.com/files/2016/05/Wright_New_Perspectives.pdf. See p. 19

 

4. This anecdote is recounted from 1h 47m 40s to 1h 49m in the second part of a two-part documentary of the revolutionary transformation of China between 1911 and 1976. It can be accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJyoX_vrlns

Vincent Di Stefano M.H.Sc., D.O., N.D.

Inverloch, July 2020