Comments for Belloc’s Infamous Phrase at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 13 out of 13 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Thu, 23 May 2013 00:01:28 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8677 Fr. Dulles also fretted about this phrase of Belloc's. Yet one cannot escape the FACT that Our Lord appeared in a particular country at a particular time and spoke a particular language. - Gabriel Austin Wed, 26 Oct 2011 07:17:49 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8599 Finally, the Catholic faith always requires profound refusal to conform to the un-Christian culture where it is preached, whether this be 1st century Judea, pagan Greece, pagan Europe, pagan Africa, pagan Japan, and now, the neo-pagan West. - Chris in Maryland Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:12:05 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8597 It also seems plain wrong to assert that Christianity is not "of the West." Ancient Greece is part of The West, and it is a plain fact that the Church expanded first and foremost throughout the Greek part of the Roman Empire, and that the theology of the Church was aided immensely by the access and application of Aristotle's philosophy, which was part of the Greek endowment to the Church. And The New Testament tells us that The Lord directed Paul's missionary expedition into the west, versus the east, and with faith in the Word, we can only conclude that this was part of The Divine Plan. Therefore we should be extremely careful about how we assess the Hellenic legacy of The Church, because her very survival depended on her incubation there, and the apex of her cultural expression is found in the west, and the intellectual equipment to grapple with heresy comes from the west. So while the west is not the horizon of the Church, it is the place where The Church grew from infancy to adulthood. The Church may travel and flourish beyond those bounds, but it can not and should not deny its own heritage. - Chris in Maryland Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:18:24 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8595 To drpence: While it is certainly true that Catholicism transcends space and time, it seems contradictory to say that seeing the Church through its Hellenic lens is a "formless spatio-temporal reference." In fact, whether one prefers or not the western manifestation of The Church, it seems an undisputable fact, and has been so, that the primary form of the Church manifested on earth has been in the spatial-temporal footprint of The Roman Empire, i.e., THE WEST. Father Schall did not assert, as you imply, that Jesus is a man formed by THE WEST. Rather, Schall, like other Catholic intellectuals, see the West, and other parts of the World, as being IMPACTED by CHRIST. That the west is formed by The Church, and then, by tradition, that the universal Church is formed by the western manifestation of the Church, seems simply to acknowledge the incarnational nature of the Church in history. - Chris in Maryland Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:13:16 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8578 Fr Schall is a great Catholic and classicist. But his Athenian bias is showing. Europe was founded on Christianity but Christianity is not of the "West". From Plato to NATO by David Gress is an excellent corrective of the "Grand Narrative" which has overplayed the role of Greek philosophers and intellectuals in the story of even European civilization. Gress asserts that Roman piety and military order,as well as the Germanic contribution of military vigor and liberty are lost in the story of the West told by post WWI and WWII college intellectuals. Gress doesn't explore the the even more startling blindness to Catholic Spain displayed by so many atheist philosophers of a "Western story". Fr Schall is no atheist but his speech rises from a lifelong dialogue in the faculty room. Neither Christ nor Jerusalem can be seen as one among many of the heroic men and great cities providing the building blocks of the WEST. The God of nature and history is obfuscated in the praise of a direction(the West) as surely as He is diminished in the praise or animus toward a time segment(modernity). God created Adam(and all of humanity) and sent his Son as the second Adam who through the Church and the nations would complete the story of world history in the categories of salvation history. The Church and the nations are the public communal categories which tell this tale the best. We treat Belloc with the piety that is his due if we do not ask of his most time bound sayings an eternal significance. Catholic political thinkers especially must escape such formless spatiotemporal references to portray an order of men, nations, the Church and Divine Providence. That is a much more realistic set of categories which correspond better with Fr Schall's lifelong insistence that political philosophy by Catholics be marked by realism. - drpence Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:58:46 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8564 To mydogoreo et al: Precisely right about the "Euro" versus "Europe." The Catholic moment now is whether Catholics in Europe and the U.S. will listen and obey Jesus and evangelize their own contryman, or whether we will shrink when faced with the conformist leviathan, and nestle into our comfy, customized post-V2 shells, and kid ourselves that we are obeying Jesus by simply holding on to the seed of faith we have. "When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?" - Chris in Maryland Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:25:30 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8562 To JSmitty, Howard et al: It is helpful to distinguish that the Church's claim that reason is universal is not a claim about the nature of cultures, but a claim about the nature of Man. In other words, its ontological, not sociological. Where cultures have long-ago (Islam) or more recently (The West) rejected reason, per Pope Benedict's assessment in his Regensburg Lecture, etc, etc, then the missionary command becomes one of penetrating through the cultural shell to the Human Heart. Hence, the dynamics of Shusaku Endo's must-read book "Silence," about trying to convert souls trapped in a suffocating conformance-driven culture. - Chris in Maryland Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:13:13 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8557 Yes, Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe. Now what? In a time when really the Euro is the faith and the faith is the Euro, who needs God? The self-sufficient Europeans are doing such a great job without Him. With their chins up and their knees stiff, they will march into oblivion with their fists in the air. Unless... - mydogoreo Wed, 19 Oct 2011 04:31:14 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8555 TeaPot562 I would be more concerned about “the children of Muslim immigrants,” were it not for the extent that those children (especially women) embrace European and, implicitly, Christian values. The president of the Muslim women’s movement, Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Sluts nor Door-mats) Sihen Habchi, in a forceful attack on “multiculturalism” has demanded, “No more justifications of our oppression in the name of the right to be different and of respect toward those who force us to bow our heads” Rachida Dati, herself a Muslim and former French Minister of Justice told the National Assembly that “The Republic is alone capable of uniting men and women of different origins, colours and religions around the principles of tolerance, liberty, solidarity and laïcité, making the Republic truly one and indivisible.” Likewise, Fadela Amara, another Muslim and Secretary of State for Urban Policies has declared that “For this generation, the crucial issues are laïcité, gender equality and gender desegregation, based upon living together in harmony throughout the world, and not only in France.” Nor are these lonely or isolated voices. - Michael Paterson-Seymour Wed, 19 Oct 2011 02:55:04 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8546 In recent centuries, the boundary between Europe and Asia has been taken as several bodies of water - the Aegean and Black Seas and the Caspian, then extending up the Ural Mountains. By no coincidence, the "European" side of this boundary was deemed mostly Christian. Since the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and Napoleon, the Christian content became more cultural and less observed. In Germany and Austria, a minority of the population would be considered regular church-goers, whether Catholic or Lutheran. The imprisonment and murder of clergy in the 1938-1945 period was another factor reducing the observant Christian portion of the population. Similarly, Russian practice of Christianity, Orthodox and otherwise, was hampered by the Communist rulers of 1918-1990. If Europe has ceased to accept intellectually the virtues which flow from Christian thought, their culture will be submerged by the children of Muslim immigrants with their much higher (than nominal Christians) birth rates. TeaPot562 - TeaPot562 Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:41:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8545 If Aquinas "baptized" Aristotle, I wonder who will "baptize" Confucius -- and what heights Chinese civilization might reach afterwards. @jsmitty I'm not sure what you mean about "the assumptions of old Christendom". If you mean things like the idea that the Roman Empire would endure forever, that mistake was noticed long ago. If you mean things like the dogmas about the Holy Trinity and the two natures of Christ, there have always been heretics who have denied them. - Howard Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:48:55 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8544 As many as 100-200 million Christians in China. Chinese govt. estimates including the underground churches are around 25 million. Granted that their figures are likely to greatly under report the true number, 100-200 million or over 15% of the population, seems a little on the high side, no? Also, I am sympathetic to your claim that reason is universal. But to date, one would have to concede that the claim is a philosophical a priori one on your part, rather than one empirically demonstrable. We have yet to see the collapse of Islam... or Buddhism or Hinduism for that matter despite the fact that some of the tenets of those religions seem unreasonable. Thus far, all those religions seem to be holding their own despite more and more contacts with the West. And we do not know enough yet about non-European branches of Christianity to know how many of the assumptions of old Christendom will prove to be really simply outgrowths of Western cultural assumptions and not universal truths that all men embrace. We might be in for a surprise or two on this score, as the center of gravity of the Church continues to shift away from Europe and toward the third world. You might prove to be right....but I'm not fully convinced yet. - jsmitty Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:16:31 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/bellocs-infamous-phrase.html#comment-8543 Well and truly said. "Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe" is no more controversial than "The sun rises in the east" or "Mexico's western border is the Pacific Ocean." One may disapprove of the fact that the sun rises in the east, but the objective reality remains. - Mack Hall Tue, 18 Oct 2011 06:24:30 +0100