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Sunday, March 25, 2007
Fran’s Sunday Ruminations: Christianity And The Internet
About two years ago, I wrote about the New Communities that had arisen to fill our need for connectedness and security in this age of extreme geographical mobility. I noted that the impulse to form and swaddle oneself in such communities had both positive and negative aspects, but that they were the sort most readily formed and maintained against the vagaries of our geographical movements and familial brittleness. And yes, I did include religious affiliations in that survey, albeit in passing.
It's time to go deeper.
Our churches don't serve us as well as they once did. There are many reasons for this, most notable among them being the weakness of our bonds with them. We move around a great deal, which is of course a weakening factor. Also, ours is an aggressively secular, materialistic age, whose principal currents of thought and practice compete powerfully with religious observances and spiritual yearnings. Third and perhaps most important of the three, parishioners involve themselves less with their geographical parishes than previously in American history, and pastors, mindful of the fragility of the bonds that tie the parishioner to his parish, hesitate to press us to improve upon it.
Parish involvement, when it clashes with individualistic imperatives and desires, comes off second best more often than not.
It might seem difficult to see anything good in this, but as I mentioned in the essay linked above, our need for community is such that what we shed with one hand, we'll most likely replace with the other. Since Americans are experiencing a wide-spectrum rediscovery of the value of the Christian faith, it's consistent that Internet organs such as BeliefNet should be enjoying a great surge in participation. Thus, the "community of the heart" that is Christian allegiance has moved in large measure from a geographical binding to one formed from pure communications. It's possible that in doing so, it will become stronger than ever before.
Why do I say this? Because a community formed voluntarily, by individuals who've sought one another out according to their shared convictions, and which owes nothing to incidental factors such as physical proximity, depends upon nothing that can be torn out from under it. It's a unique sort of parish, though, admittedly, it can make singing in the same key and distributing Communion a trifle problematic.
Even one such as myself, who is strongly bound to his geographical parish -- St. Louis de Montfort in Sound Beach, if you simply must know -- draws great sustenance from the steadily rising phenomenon of Internet-modulated Christianity. It's possible that without the sustenance I receive from Christian friends far away, whose faces I know only from JPEGs and whose voices I might never hear, I would be unable to maintain my faith against the assault of my doubts.
What's that? You're astonished to hear that I experience doubt? The great Francis W. Porretto, Certified Galactic Intellect and self-anointed Pontiff-icator to the World Wide Web, knows the taste of doubt?? As my sainted father used to say, the Krauts have captured Omaha! (Well, in point of fact, he'd usually throw a few extra words in there, being a Navy man and all, but you get the idea.)
But of course. Everyone who lives with faith also lives with doubt. Read on.
In C. S. Lewis's Perelandra, the middle book of his Space Trilogy, his protagonist Elwin Ransom returns from his adventure on Venus in a condition that seems somewhat contradictory: physically magnificent in all ways, except for a cut on his heel that bleeds continuously and never heals:
"How are you both?" he said. "You're looking rather knocked up."
I was silent for a moment, astonished at the form which had risen from that narrow house -- almost a new Ransom, glowing with health and rounded with muscle and seemingly ten years younger. In the old days he had been beginning to show a few grey hairs; but now the beard which swept his chest was pure gold.
"Hullo, you've cut your foot," said Humphrey; and I now saw that Ransom was bleeding from the heel....
"How do you think he is?"
"Tip-top general. But I don't quite like that heel. He says the haemorrhage has been going on for a long time."
The wound was inflicted by the teeth of Edward Weston, the physicist who had cracked the secret of interplanetary travel, used it to ravage (in a small way) the elder races of Mars, and thereafter traveled to Venus with unformed intentions and a poisoned seed of spiritual yearning germinating within him. Weston had voluntarily surrendered his will to "the bent eldil," Lewis's allegorical persona for Lucifer, and had contended with Ransom intellectually, spiritually, and physically over the allegiances and destinies of the Adam and Eve figures of Venus. Ultimately, Ransom was compelled to kill him. The power that shepherded Venus, the eldil Perelandra, saw to it that all Ransom's wounds were healed except the bite to his heel, which he bore for the rest of his life.
That wound transforms Ransom into a semi-invalid, dependent upon care rendered by others, all of his physical gifts neutralized. That Hideous Strength, the concluding novel of the Space Trilogy, gives us Ransom the mage, spiritual Director and strategist-Pendragon of Logres, the mystical Christian society that stands between Britain's conquest by totalitarian villainy and its deliverance. He never again stands or walks without the use of a crutch or support from the arm of an allegiant.
Lewis might not have had a particular reason for inflicting that unhealable wound upon his hero. Nevertheless, it was well done -- indeed, it was absolutely essential. Without it, Ransom would have been too perfect, too obviously a match for any dark force that might dare to challenge him. The brilliance and purity of his faith would cast down any foul thing that drew near.
I see the heel wound as emblematic of that which every man, especially every Christian, must struggle with lifelong: the ineradicability of doubt. We see Ransom wrestle with his doubt repeatedly in Perelandra, and again, most dramatically, in That Hideous Strength:
[Merlinus] glanced at the Director's face as he spoke and then, as if startled by what he saw there, leaned sharply forward.
"Does your wound pain you?" he asked.
Ransom shook his head. "No," he said, "it is not the wound. We have terrible things to talk of."
The big man stirred uneasily.
"Sir," Merlinus said in a deeper and softer voice, "I could take all the anguish from your heel as though I were wiping it out with a sponge. Give me but seven days to go in and out and up and down and to and fro, to renew old acquaintance. These fields and I, this wood and I, have much to say to one another."
As he said this, he was leaning forward so that his face and the bear's were almost side by side, and it almost looked as if those two might have been engaged in some sort of furry and grunted conversation. The druid's face had a strangely animal appearance: not sensual nor fierce but full of the patient, unarguing sagacity of a beast. Ransom's, meanwhile, was full of torment....
"Through me," said Merlin, "you can suck up from the Earth oblivion of all pains."
"Silence," said the Director sharply. He had been sinking down into the cushions of the sofa with his head drooping a little toward his chest. Now he suddenly sat bolt upright. The magician started and straightened himself likewise. The air of the room was cleared. Even the bear opened its eyes again.
"No," said the Director. "God's glory, do you think you were dug out of the earth to give me a plaster for my heel? We have drugs that could cheat the pain as well as your earth-magic or better, if it were not my business to bear it to the end. I will hear no more of that. Do you understand me?"
Lewis understood quite as well as Homer, and far better than Vergil, that a hero must have at least one serious vulnerability. To free Ransom of his wound, and the doubt it symbolized, would have been dramatically and spiritually fatal to the Space Trilogy. It would have transformed the story from a struggle by a fallible, doubt-hobbled man against an enemy that might not be wholly evil, into a cartoonish crusade led by an angel clothed in human flesh.
But angels are not permitted to wear the flesh...and men are forbidden to pose as angels.
Given that the very nature of faith makes our doubts ineradicable, we seek sustenance for our faith wherever we can find it. The most abundant source of such sustenance is in one another. It comes in a multitude of flavors. As with chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, each of us reaches for the one best suited to his tastes.
There are many who doubt the importance of religious observances: regular attendance at Mass, frequent recourse to Confession, the observance of the seasonal rituals and holy days of obligation, and so forth. If one is tightly bound to a physical parish community, these things will come naturally -- one's friends and neighbors will all be doing them, and to remain aloof would make one feel a fool and an outcast. But without such a bond, one can draw something equivalent from one's Internet parish, simply by conversation and narration. If Smith, Jones and Davis are all deep in their Lenten observances, then Blake, who converses with each of them daily, will be reminded of the timeliness and value of these things, and will perform them in his turn.
There are many who might neglect to pray regularly, except, once again, for the reminders of the power and importance of prayer that come from one's Internet parish, and from significant lay preachers such as The Anchoress. Equally important is regular reflection upon the relevance of Christian belief to the problems of our material world, something that can hardly be done properly if done alone. Conversation with other Christians is all but essential to this enterprise; again, valuable "standing" sources of such are provided by sites such as North Western Winds and Catholic Pillow Fight.
Perhaps most important of all, in these times when our intercourse with our physical neighbors is growing ever less, merely to be reminded that we're not alone as Christians -- that one doesn't have to suspect oneself irrational or deluded to follow Christ -- is invaluable. This is particularly the case for the very intelligent, who are likely to be under a lot of pressure to harmonize their ratiocinative powers and respect for objective evidence with their belief in propositions which can neither be proved nor disproved. It's the Richard Dawkinses, the Daniel Dennetts, and the Sam Harrises that get all the air time and column-inches; he who gets no sustenance from the companionship of other intelligent Christians might easily fall victim to the scorn such militant anti-theists pour forth. But their attempt to water the germ of doubt depends almost entirely upon their ability to transform their contempt for us into embarrassment felt by ourselves -- a process that can be thwarted by regular conversation with other intelligent and thoughtful believers.
The Internet, in sum, is potentially a great benefit to Christians, and to Christianity in general. Much of that potential is being realized as we speak. There are aspects to the thing that I hardly have enough time to explore; for example, the value of cross-denominational conversation in rectifying misunderstandings and building upon our shared doctrinal core. Though digital communications is merely a modality, rather than a wholly new form of human intercourse, it is nevertheless the dominant technological motif of our age, which is also experiencing a rebirth of Christian faith. It is particularly delightful that that motif should synergize so nicely with Christ's command to "go and teach all nations"...including ourselves.
This essay is dedicated, with love, to Liz Pavek, a dear friend and a true sister in Christ. God bless and keep you, Liz.
And may God bless and keep you all.
Comments
G.K. Chesterton would have pointed out that the local congregation is far more universal and broad than the global (internet) congregation, since at the local congregation you must worship alongside the people whom God has chosen for you to live next to, while on the Internet you choose your own companions—thereby guaranteeing a narrow slice of ideology and temperment compatible with your own.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/25/2007 at 03:24 PMMost humbling, Fran. I am, for once, rendered speechless. Thank you and God bless you richly.
Posted by Liz on 03/25/2007 at 03:32 PMYour faith is fine and not in question. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to have a little outside affirmation.
Posted by og on 03/25/2007 at 04:35 PMGreat post as always, Francis. Thank you kindly for the link (which needs a fix, but that’s being picky). I don’t know how you manage to post so steadily, but I am envious.
Posted by Curt on 03/25/2007 at 06:16 PMI linked to your article from The Thinking Blogger Award - A Gift and a Curse.
You have been tagged.
Posted by bernie on 03/26/2007 at 04:39 AMThe internet Catholic community has certainly been a blessing to my faith. I will be joining the Catholic Church this Easter, something that would never have been possible had I not found the explicitly intellectual and Catholic writing of people such as Mr. Porretto. Indeed, I would most likely still be wondering unhappily in the deep forrest of Christian Denominationism.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/26/2007 at 11:32 AMSo wonderful to hear from your Francis. I mentioned you too in the Thinking Blog Awards. You do fine work. It is glorious when the words flow through and you just “know” they are right.
God bless you and your family.
Posted by Beach Girl on 03/26/2007 at 03:44 PM
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