ELOQUENTIA APRIL 2016
VOLUME 3, NO. 2 OCTOBER 2017
TheJournal of theChavagnesStudium
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Quo vadis, homo? Tr anshumanism, Tr ansgender and the 'Gay r ites' of Antinous
TABLE OF CONTENTS El o q uent ia
O c t o ber 2017
Editor ial
Conference R epor t
3
16
Ferdi McDermott introducesthe theme of thisissue and givesnews of recent activitiesat the Studium.
In the French summer sunshine, about forty people enjoyed the Studium summer conference this year.
R iviera R epor t
9 Q uo vadis, hum ane?
An annual event in La Londe les Maures, France, the Pro Civitate Dei conference isalso great fun ... T r ibute to Father M ilw ard
4 Professor Agnieska Lekka-Kowalik of the Catholic University of Lublin revealsthe many dangerousaspectsand assumptionsof transhumanism.
Child abuse 2.0
T he Gay R ites of A ntinous
12
T he pace of legislative change around issuesof homosexuality growsfaster and faster. It reminds the writer of the court of the Fr Peter Milward, a holy priest Emperor Hadrian. and dedicated scholar of literature, died thisyear. He wasa great friend to Chavagnes. A M iracle at Fatim a
14
T he Catholicism of Shakespeare
10
Father Peter Milward, who died recently, exploresthe spirituality of England'sgreatest dramatist.
7 Dr David Daintree arguesthat deprivingconfused children of their natural puberty isa form of child abuse.
19 A centenary on, the late Dr Peter Hodgson exploresthe miracle of the sun at Fatima from a scientist's perspective.
Eloquentia is the online publication of the Chavagnes Studium Copyright Chavagnes Studium, 2017. "Chavagnes Studium est une association de la loi de 1901, déclarée au Rectorat de Nantes en tant qu? établissement d? enseignement supérieur hors contrat, en conformité avec le Code de L?Education Article L731."
EDITORIAL Ferdi M cDermott
"If yo u c a n k eep yo ur h ea d w h en a l l a bo ut yo u a r e l o sing t h eir s a nd bl a ming it o n yo u ..."
W
e are living at a time when humankind as the image of God is being annihilated.? T hus spoke Pope Francis to the Polish bishops last year as he addressed the issue of gender theory, adding that ?thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation?.
What if we don't care to take that journey? What if we agree with the Pope that this is a journey towards some kind of annihilation? Can we stop the train and get off? T here are signs that man is already looking for the emergency stop button; one hopes and prays, with all the confidence the Lord enjoins, that we will find that stop button before we destroy ourselves utterly.
Every day our newspapers drag up new horrors or the threat of them: genetic editing, cloning, men bearing children, head transplants, cybersex. Everywhere the human body and soul are under attack. ... In this issue of Eloquentia, we discuss the sobering topics of transhumanism, transgender and the creeping homosexualism that everywhere rears its head in new legislation, in the media, in education and even within the Church.
T H IS LAST ACADEM IC YEAR has been another interesting one for the Studium: we had four three young men engaged in broad and intense study of our liberal arts certificate programme including a series of study visits abroad to Italy, Spain and the U K, as well as travels here in France.
We address especially the ways in which every attack on the dignity of God's creation is an attack on God H imself; as man seeks increasingly to skew his original nature, he risks the tragedy of obscuring the immanence of the Creator within H is creation. T he war against human nature is also a war against God: "we are living in an age of sin against God the Creator? Benedict X VI apparently told Pope Francis. T he transhumanism discussed in Professor Lekka-Kowalik's article is the nightmarish unfolding of the utopian ideas of thinkers such as Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, who posited almost a century ago that man was inexorably evolving towards an "O mega point", not unlike the Buddhist nirvana ... there is in this idea the assumption that our bodies and souls are not the beautiful creation finished by God, tarnished by sin and yet wondrously dignified by the incarnation; indeed individual bodies and souls matter little in this view. What matters is the journey of mankind towards a future of pure energy ... a future that could even be described as post-human.
We have also created links with the U niversity of La R ioja in Spain and with the John Paul II Catholic U niversity of Lublin in Poland. FROM SEPT EM BER 2018 our new students will spend an extended study session in Poland, exploring the basics of Philosophy in the prestigious Catholic U niversity of Lublin, where St John Paul II was a professor for many years. T he launch of our full BA programme in September 2018 will provide an offer unique in Europe: a Catholic liberal arts degree at the service of the new evangelisation; a formation that will give young people a solid academic foundation in the humanities from which to begin with added confidence their adult Catholic lives. O VER T H E SU M M ER we hosted our second international inter-disciplinary conference, with the theme of "M ary and M artyrdom" (see photo above.) We were delighted to welcome back to Chavagnes many of the friends we made at last year's conference. T he proceedings of the conferences of 2016 and 2017 will be combined in a single volume and published within the next few months. For regular updates of what we are doing, please visit our website: www.chavagnes.org/studium
QUO VADIS, HUMANE? T ranshumanism
is more and more present in contemporary culture, although it is not easy to answer the question of what this relatively new phenomenon is: An ideology? A cultural trend? A social movement? A philosophy? A political project? An interdisciplinary research program? A new utopia? O r maybe is it rather the case that transhumanism in some way encompasses all the mentioned categories? At the core of transhumanism, there obviously is a protest against the human condition and the biological, mental or social limitations it involves, as well as the belief that such limitations may be overcome by techno-scienti?c progress. In the ?Preamble? to the Transhumanist M anifesto published on the Singularity Weblog we read: ?Intelligence wants to be free but everywhere it is in chains. It is imprisoned by biology and its inevitable scarcity.?1 T hus the aim of transhumanists is to liberate intelligence from these chains, which will allegedly enable intelligence to move, to interact and to evolve. T he authors of the manifesto have indeed formulated the crucial theses of transhumanism, namely: biology is not the essence of humanity; the human being is a step in the evolution process rather than its culmination; the human being is not an entity, but a process; one is not born human, but may become human. Biological evolution is believed by them to be perpetual but slow, and described as ?inefficient, blind and dangerous.?2 As such, it is contrasted with technical evolution, considered as more efficient, quicker and better designed. T herefore the authors of the manifesto formulate the following postulate: ?To ensure the best chances of survival, take
T RANSHUMAN ISM undermines everything we ever thought we knew about man. But it also undermineshis specificdignity. "We advocate the well- being of all sentience, including hum ans, non- hum an anim als, and any future ar ti?cial intellects, m odi?ed life for m s, or other intelligences to w hich technological and scienti?c advance m ay give r ise." T he Transhumanist Declaration
control of our own destiny and to be free, we must master evolution.?3 T he manifesto concludes with an urgent appeal: ?Transhumanists of the world unite? we have immortality to gain and only biology to lose.?4 T he Transhumanist Declaration,5 adopted in 2009 by the Board of the H umanity+, an international nonprofit organization which advocates ethical use of technology to expand human capacities, claims that the humanity?s potential still remains mostly unrealized and that the human potential may be expanded by overcoming the processes of aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth. Transhumanists believe their priority tasks to be ?the reduction of existential risks, and development of means for the preservation of life and health, the alleviation of grave suffering, and the improvement of human foresight and wisdom.?6 H owever, they simultaneously admit that their vision entails serious risks, in particular that of the new technologies being misused, and stress the necessity of the effort to prevent such situations. T hey hope to develop a social order in which ?responsible decisions can be implemented?7 and stress that policy making ought to be guided by a responsible and inclusive moral vision respecting autonomy and individual rights, and advocating solidarity with? and concern for? the interests and dignity of all people around the globe. At the same time the Declaration states: ?We advocate the well-being of all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects, modified life forms, or other intelligences to which technological and scientific advance may give rise,?8 and it opts for a wide use of the techniques that may be developed to assist memory, concentration,
By Professor Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik, Professor of the Methdology of Science and Director of the John Paul II Institute at the CatholicUniversity of Lublin (KUL) and member of the ChavagnesStudium International Advisory Board. An earlier version of thisarticle appeared in KUL'sphilosophical journal ETHOS. It is reproduced with permission. and mental energy, as well as life extension therapies, reproductive choice technologies, cryonics procedures and the like. T hus under close scrutiny transhumanism turns out to be a large-scale project that aims at modifying human beings and transforming human society. Indeed, it is another project in which the concept of salvation is replaced with that of happiness conceived of as well-being and satisfaction with life quality. H owever, so far in history none of the social programs undertaken in order to provide universal happiness has turned out successful: life satisfaction always fades away in the face of suffering, poverty or frustration stemming from the unrealized expectations. When commenting on such attempts to ?redeem? the world, Joseph R atzinger wrote: ?T he man hungry for happiness had to insist all the more on being able to have, now and unconditionally, whatever he wanted; yet the more barriers he tore down, the more considerable the remaining ones became for him. T he comparison with the greater happiness of someone else who had nevertheless not deserved it more increasingly became a gloomy shadow that darkened even what had been attained; only complete equality could present itself as hope, and of course it could take its measure only from the most sublime possibilities, for only there could be supplied what was so missing to oneself.?9 T he only path to provide full equality for all persons and to maximize their potentialities and desires appeared to be the alliance of all the disadvantaged which assumed the shape of ?a moral duty of exciting proportions?10 that should find its culmination in communism. Today, however, it is common knowledge that the consequences of that project, which promised equal happiness to everyone, turned out disastrous. Transhumanism offers precisely the kind of equality communism promised. T he wide appeal of transhumanism results from its ambition to make the perennial dream of living in the ?Fortunate Isles?
come true,11 as well as from the hope it incites that a place which is free of suffering and where life is meaningful may be actually possible. Christians believe such a reality to be that of H eaven, which, however, one may enter only after death. Transhumanism, conversely, seems to be offering a possibility to create the Fortunate Isles ?here and now?(or in a more or less immediate future) by way of transforming both the human being and the world with the use of scientific and technological means. Yet, even if the technoscienti?c progress should ensure that every human being might enjoy a life free of suffering, the meaningfulness of such a life would still remain problematic, since the meaning, or the sense, of life does not result from the progress accomplished in the domains of science or technology. In his Protrepticus, Aristotle claims that the Isles of the Blessed are a place where there can be no use of and no profit from anything. T he only activities possible there are intellectual life and philosophical theorizing.12 But even philosophical inquiries and philosophical disputes might not be sufficient for an everlasting life to be worth living. In his poem A Request for the Fortunate Isles, the Polish poet Konstanty Ildefons Ga?czy?ski expressed his wish: ?Show me immense waters and calm waters, / let me hear the stars talk on the green tree branches / show me a kaleidoscope of butterflies, make the hearts of butterflies draw near and fondle them, / with your love let your quiet thoughts bend over the waters.?13 Another Polish poet, Cyprian N orwid, in turn proclaimed: ?O f the things of this world only two will remain, / Two only: poetry and goodness ... and nothing else.?14 T hese two poetic visions are very different from the hopes cherished by the transhumanists. T hus one might ask: W ill goodness and love preserve their significance in the transhumanist world? O r will an individual be doomed to loneliness in such a place?
In his poem Justice Rev. Jan Twardowski observed that ?if we were all equally endowed / no one would need anyone else.?15 While the transhumanist project does not focus on providing everyone with the same goods or qualities, it nevertheless promises that in its world one may have whatever one wants. M oreover, transhumanists wish to secure happiness for everyone, also for post-human beings which may come into existence as a result of the techno-scienti?c progress. Yet, it is dif?cult to determine in what the happiness, or well-being, of the particular human and post-human beings might consist, since any conception of the welfare of a being presupposes a knowledge of who (or what) the given being is. H owever, transhumanism demonstrates practical non-essentialism: since it rejects the existence of any ?essence? of the human being, or human nature, one may expect that it will consequently question also the ?essence? of the post-human beings. Despite all the doubts concerning the transhumanist project, it must not be considered as pure speculation of dreamers, another ?armchair philosophy? or a science ? ction idea. In today?s world we witness a growing importance of transhumanist institutions, such as associations (e.g. T he World Transhumanist Association, currently the H umanity+ organization, or T he Extropy Institute) and think-tanks (e.g. T he Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies), as well as journals (e.g. T he Journal of Evolution and Technology), Internet blogs and portals (e.g. http://transhumanblog.com/ and https://www.singularityweblog. com/). Transhumanist literature is gaining popularity and transhumanist movies are made; transhumanist congresses and conferences on transhumanism are organized; scientist books for and against transhumanism are published (some of which have been reviewed in the present volume). U niversity courses devoted to transhumanism are developed; institutes and university chairs to study the future of humankind are founded (e.g. T he Future of H umanity Institute run by N ick Bostrom, one of the leading promoters of transhumanism, at the U niversity of O xford). Singularity U niversity in the Silicon Valley is an educational institution which has included transhumanist goals in its mission. N ot infrequently are transhumanists commissioned by governments to prepare various expert reports.16 Research projects on the technologies which may contribute to the success of the transhumanist postulates are financed by powerful corporations as well as by the powers that be, and they bring impressive results. T he very ? rst move that will make it possible to carry out in practice the transhumanist postulate ?to master evolution? is
precisely critical reflection on transhumanism. W ithout it, without having understood what, or who, the human being is and what is his, or her, ultimate destination, it would be rather difficult to direct the evolution. H owever, does the fact that transhumanism denies the existence of any human nature mean that there is actually no ?truth? about the human being? If the only possible ?truth? is to be constituted by our own (optional) projects of ourselves and of the world, ?then the world is nothing more than ?the material for praxis,??17 and the only justifiable limit of human freedom is feasibility. But is it not rather the human nature that has ? due to its inner normative dimension ? so far determined the moral limits of the modifications and ameliorations of the human being? Cardinal R atzinger issues a warning: ?T he freedom to produce, unchecked by truth, means the dictatorship of ends in a world devoid of truth and thus enslaves man while appearing to set him free.?18 1 ?A Transhumanist Manifesto,? https://www.singularityweblog.com/a-transhumanist-manifesto/. 2 Ibidem. 3 Ibidem. 4 Ibidem. 5 See ?Transhumanist Declaration,? http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-declaration/. 6 Ibidem. 7 Ibidem. 8 Ibidem. 9 Joseph R a t z i n g e r (Pope Benedict XVI), ?The Salvation of Man? This-Worldly and Christian,? in Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Fundamental Speeches From Five Decades (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 82. 10 Ibidem, 83. 11 According to the Greek mythology, the Fortunate Isles, or the Isles of the Blessed (Makárôn Nesoi), are a resting place for the souls of heroes and virtuous men. 12 See A r i s t o t l e, Protrepticus, B43, in Anton-Hermann Chroust, Protrepticus: A Reconstruction (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), 18. 13 Konstanty Ildefons G a ?c z y ? s k i, Pro?ba o wyspy szcz??liwe, in Konstanty Ildefons Ga?czy?ski, Dzie?a, vol. 1, Poezje, Part 1 (Warszawa: Czytelnik, 1979), 150. Translation mine. 14 Cyprian N o r w i d, Letter to Bronislaw Z., quoted after George Gömöri, Cyprian Norwid (Woodbridge, Connecticut: Twayne Publishers, 1974), 63. 15 Jan T w a r d o w s k i, Justice, transl. by Anna Mioduchowska and Myrna Garanis, in Jan Twardowski, Kiedy mówisz. When You Say, transl. by Stanis?aw Bara?czak et al., selected and edited by Aleksandra Iwanowska (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2000), 39. 16 See e.g. Nick B o s t r o m, Anders S a n d b e r g, The Future of Identity: Report Commissioned by the UK?s Government Of? ce for Science, http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/future-of-identity.pdf. 17 Joseph R a t z i n g e r, ?Interpretation, Contemplation, Action: Considerations on the Task of a Catholic Academy,? Communio 13, no. 2 (1986): 145. 18 Joseph Cardinal R a t z i n g e r, The Nature and Mission of Theology: Essays in Orient Theology in Today?s Debates, transl. by Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), .
CHILD ABUSE 2.0 O pinio n
Radical gender ideology is merely a legalised form of child abuse D A V I D D A I N T R EE I once heard a panelist on Q & A say she?d had an abortion and didn?t ?give a rat?s arse? about the destroyed fetus. I often think of that brutally frank opinion and wonder if it truly represents her character. Was she as tough as she sounded? Surely something must press her buttons ? the plight of whales, perhaps, or pygmy possums? You don?t have to be a psychologist to know that de-humanising something is the first step to take if you want to destroy it. An army instructor at bayonet practice has no interest in reminding his recruits of the loveable personal qualities and happy home lives of their potential victims. It?s just a matter of sticking it up them, no questions asked. So today most people don?t want to think about unborn babies. ?Fetuses? is a far more comfortable word. Even though we now know that such fetuses, at least in the later stages of their development, are sentient creatures, we prefer to pretend otherwise. O ut of sight out of mind. Breaking down the barrier between fact and imagination is a pernicious fruit of the relativism that nowadays corrupts so much of our thinking. Relativism - the denial of absolute truths - makes it possible for us
to hold, simultaneously, dramatically contradictory opinions. Examples are abundant: vegetarians who wear leather, socialists who trade in shares and rental properties, pacifists who support regimes dedicated to the annihilation of Israel, atheists who despise Christianity but speak admiringly of Islamic, H indu or Aboriginal spirituality. Like the Q ueen of H earts, some people really can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. And perhaps the most extraordinary of all are the people who are justifiably angry about child sexual abuse yet are indifferent to, or even enthusiastic about, radical proposals to provide specific and detailed sex education to very young children in our schools. Imposing adult concepts on pre-pubescent school students and exposing them to unsettling ideas such as gender
ma n o r a nima l ? self-selection causes confusion and anxiety. It is not only irresponsible and inappropriate, it is abusive. M eanwhile it?s springtime, and in garden and farmyard M other N ature is going about her lawful occasions with increased gusto. Sexuality is rampant. Living creatures of every kind - furry, scaly or feathered - are coupling as if there were no tomorrow. Apparently there?s no uncertainty in our garden about gender identity, either. R umours of gay roosters and effeminate bulls belong to the world of humour rather than the real-life roost or stud. Sex is entirely a matter of physical characteristics. Surprisingly, the very people who insist that human beings are a mere subspecies in the animal kingdom, a kind of a blip on the continuum of evolution, a destructive breed with no better claim to life than any
other animal, are the same people who implicitly believe in human exceptionalism. H ermaphroditism is rare in nature, and human nature is no exception. But advocates of early sexual education hold that humans can uniquely experience a sexual ambiguity unknown in other species. So we are a special creation then, are we? Such an opinion is completely inconsistent with prevailing doctrines about animal rights, but why let truth and logic interfere with a good story? O nly in our species, according to them, can males be trapped in female bodies, or females in male. And this is what they want to tell our children. T he consequence will be disturbed and unhappy kids who are fed simple solutions (?yes, I can be someone else!?) and prematurely eroticised by older people, just as an earlier generation was eroticised by the beguiling soft porn of magazines such as Dolly and Girlfriend. As a result of this mode of thinking, unprecedented numbers of young people are now questioning their gender and even seeking radical surgical remedies. O f course there are genuinely compelling cases of fundamental sexual dysphoria, but they are relatively rare, andit is irresponsible in the extreme to offer re-alignment of sexual identity as a general alternative to better understanding and appreciating the diversity of the gender to which nature has assigned each of us. All boys have a gentler feminine side to their nature: son, don?t be ashamed of it, let it out, be the person you want to be. Changing your sex, even if that were truly possible, is a step too far ? and a betrayal of the range of potentialities in your own nature. Any discussion of sexual identity must lead to the linked ideas implicit in the push for same-sex marriage. To date 21 nations have legalised it: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, H olland, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, M exico, N ew Z ealand, N orway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the U K, the U SA and U ruguay. By no means coincidentally, preoccupation with issues of subjective sexual identification seems to have peaked in recent years in the same countries. T he list exposes an interesting fact. T hey are all, without exception, Christian countries. Few if any have practising Christian majorities nowadays, but all have their origins in the Western Christian culture. Why this should be so is open to question, but there is nothing coincidental about it. Some gay activists will
resent such an assertion bitterly, but the most obvious reason is that Christianity more than any other religion has traditions of free enquiry, pity and mercy. Even when faith fades, these habits of the spirit live on. When our politicians urge us to be ?on the right side of history?(preposterous phrase!) they are apparently unaware that they are treading a Western-oriented and exclusively post-Christian pathway, and that most of the world?s nations have no enthusiasm for such an agenda. We?re dreaming if we think otherwise. T here is a huge irony in all this. Activists who have a passion for radically reconstructing society by transmogrifying marriage and uncoupling gender identity from physical characteristics against the practical experience of humanity generally have a loathing of Christianity, even if they have learned to be discreet in expressing it. Yet it is only in post-Christian (or sub-Christian, as I would prefer to say) cultures that such impulses have taken root. T he Christian ideals of marriage monogamy, romantic love, and its beautiful associations ? are the envy of the world. For many, sadly, they are objects to be smashed. Let Robbie Burns have the last word: ?O wad some Pow?r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An?foolish notion? ? Dr David Daintree is Director of the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies, Hobart, Australia. He was previously President of Campion College, the Liberal arts College in Sydney. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Chavagnes Studium. T his article appeared in an earlier version in the Spectator, Australia. Visit http://daviddaintree.blogspot.com for more information of David'sactivities.
RIVIERA REFLECTIONS Th e Pr o Civ it at e D ei Summer Sc h o o l 2017: A W eek of Civ il isat io n, Tr ut h a nd t h e M oder n A g e. By Jame Battye, student at the Studium. 'Where an altar isfound, here civilisation exists.? - T he Count in Joseph de M aistre, Lessoireesde Saint-Petersbourg(1821)1
As the welcome heat of Summer graces Chavagnes and the boys bask in the golden sun, so the auditors of the annual Pro Civitate Dei Summer School convene in an early June only matched in glory by the resplendent surroundings of the French R iviera. Such an opportunity is seldom unseized by the likes of us members of the C H AVAGN ES ST U DIU M , so off Jake, Alexis and I went in search of new intellectual horizons, new conversational aphorisms and, most importantly, an enriched outlook on the role of young Catholics in an increasingly hostile modern age. T his we received in generous measure with the welcome addition of an insight into the strangely restorative qualities of the evening aperitif. T he central notions of duty to the Faith and, to use one of Aristotle?s expressions, in ?holding firm?1 in an age of open and seemingly unprecedented attacks on the Church were applied to a number of historical and contemporary contexts in a series of stimulating talks conducted by a number of leading Catholic intellectuals in the fields of political science, Classics, H istory, Philosophy and T heology. T he talks ranged from discussions of the flourishing of medieval monasticism to analyses of the role of vestigial
structures and gender theory, and the problems which have arisen in interpretations of liturgical reform and the re-evaluation of tradition, particularly in recent years. T he talks accompanied the daily Sacrifice of H oly M ass, which was also preceded daily by Prime and succeeded by Vespers and Compline, reminding us that our efforts are always exerted in devotion ad maiorem Dei gloriam and of our duty to focus all manner of daily action upon liturgy and upon worship. O n a personal note, after participating in the programme, making friends and forging new memories, I can say with a considerable degree of security that I have emerged from the conference with an enlightened (no irony intended) understanding of my duties as a young Catholic, not merely in the immediate future, but in the Longue durĂŠe. N ew affronts to the Faith warrant greater commitment to the tenets of Church teaching; to the upholding of our Western Civilisation; to the preservation of truth. For us in the Studium, the Pro Civitate Dei Summer School in La Londe les M aures certainly equipped us with the sense of duty necessary in seeing it through. O ur most sincere thanks to the Faculty and Staff of Pro Civitate Dei, in particular, to M atthew M enendez, Dr. Gladden J. Pappin, Dr. Justin Stover, M r. Gerhard Eger and Fr. Carlos H amel for their tireless efforts in organising a truly splendid week.
1. Aristotle, T he Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Terence Irwin, 2nd Edition, H ackett, 2000; a text we have studied extensively with M r. Jonathan Battye as part of this year?s Studium course. If you are interested in thisannual event, contact usat the Studium and we will put you in touch with the organisers.
THE CATHOLICISM OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS Pet er M ilwa r d SJ here is a strange enigma hanging over the plays and personality of England?s greatest poet and dramatist. Was the dramatist really W illiam Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, as most people assume? O r was he someone else, according to one or other theory of authorship? And in any case, what kind of a man was he who wrote such plays and poems of genius? And what was his attitude to the many problems facing the Englishmen of his time, not the least of which was the religious problem.
T
All the same, little as we know about the dramatist himself, there is no lack of biographies about him. T hese, however, consist largely of background information; but as they approach his personality, they become increasingly vague and conjectural. Assuming the identity of the dramatist to be W illiam Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, we have few more facts about him than those of his
birth, marriage and death, together with the similar facts about his parents and children. T here are also a few legal documents relating to him, in which his name is mentioned. O therwise, we only have his writings, the plays and the poems; and of these, the plays are strangely impersonal, while the poems, for all their personality, leave us all the more baffled about their biographical relevance. Even when we turn to the historical background, under the last of the Tudors, Elizabeth I (1558-1603), and the first of the Stuarts, James I (1603-1625), we find the situation strangely murky in the matter of most importance, the religious problem. T his problem goes back to the decision of H enry VIII to reject the authority of Rome concerning the matter of his divorce, and so effectively to establish a new Church of England with himself as its head. H e went on to dissolve all the monasteries of his kingdom, over 600 of
them, partly to enrich himself, partly to buy the support of the gentry for the religious changes he was setting afoot. T hen, after a period of fluctuation between the Protestant policy of his son Edward VI and the Catholic policy of his daughter M ary, it was under his other daughter Elizabeth that the Church of England was finally established ? as Protestant in all places of authority, but Catholic in sympathy among large sections of the lesser clergy and the people. In the course of her reign, moreover, there also appears a contrast between the more radical of the Protestants known as ?Puritans? and the more heroic of the Catholics who were ready to suffer for their religion and were known as ?Recusants? for their refusal to attend the new English services. All this is clear enough in such general terms. But now the question arises as to how Shakespeare fits into this pattern of religion in Elizabethan England. H ow far did he go along
with all these religious changes? O r to what extent did he disagree with them ? whether as a Puritan, considering that they failed to go far enough, or as a Recusant, or at least a Church-Papist (as secret Catholic sympathisers were called), lamenting the changes? From the little that is known of his biography, it is hard to tell; but from what we know of both his parents, there are certain indications that they both had to suffer for the old faith. In the 1580s the family of his mother, M ary Arden, had to endure the inquisition of the local Puritan magistrate, Sir T homas Lucy, concerning the Somerville plot to kill the Q ueen (as Somerville was connected by marriage with the Ardens). About the same time we find Shakespeare?s father John increasingly troubled by financial and legal difficulties, till he appears on a list of recusants in 1592 while pleading fear ?of process for debt?. Such facts may well be interpreted in a Catholic
sense, while falling short of certainty; but even so, they tell us little about the allegiance of the dramatist himself, at least in his subsequent career on the stage. Anyhow, leaving aside the vexed questions of biography, what, it may be asked, may be learnt from the plays? T hey are charged with topical references, enabling editors to decide on the probable dates of their composition and/or first performance. O nly, it seems, the dramatist for the most part avoids mention of the religious controversies that were still occupying the minds of his contemporaries, whether between Catholic and Protestant, or between Anglican and Puritan. T his avoidance may well have been because such mention was too dangerous, seeing how closely connected were religion and politics in that age ? especially if there was any sign of sympathy with the old faith, which the Elizabethan government under Lord Burghley was bent on supressing. T here are indeed a few references to these controversies that have been detected in the plays, but they are mostly of a non-committal nature. T hus M ercutio?s exclamation on being mortally pierced by Tybalt?s rapier in Romeo and Juliet (iii.1), ?A plague o? both your houses!?; H elena?s lament in A M idsummer N ight?s Dream (iii.2) at the way ?truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!?; H amlet?s criticism of his mother for having committed ?such a deed as . . . sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words? (iii.4); Lucio?s remark in M easure for M easure (i.2), ?Grace is
grace, despite of all controversy? ? in so far as they may well be applied to the religious controversies of the time, seem to imply a distaste for such controversy on the part of the dramatist, coupled with a high regard for ?sweet religion?. Still, it need not mean that Shakespeare was adopting an attitude of sitting on the fence, avoiding any commitment to either side. All it means is that he was unable, from the nature of his situation, to express his commitment in an open manner.
Av o id ing a nac h r o nism ... In approaching particular plays, however, we have to be careful not to think in terms of the twentieth century, in which religion is free, but of the sixteenth century, when there was no such freedom in Elizabethan England. In the time of Shakespeare, all Englishmen were bound by law to be Anglican, to attend the new English service according to the Book of Common Prayer, and to recognise the Q ueen, not the Pope, as supreme governor of the Church in England ? or else suffer the severe penalties determined by law. T hus the Elizabethan Church, so far from being a via media of wise toleration between the fanatical extremes of Popery and Puritanism, was a persecuting Church as well against the Papists as against the Puritans ? and perhaps chiefly against the former, as the latter at least accepted the Q ueen as supreme governor of the Church. H ence if Shakespeare was other than a conforming member of the Anglican Church, and
especially if he sympathized with the Catholic recusants, he was obliged to keep his religious opinions to himself; or if he expressed them, it could only be done in disguise, at a remove from his real meaning. In this meaning he might well have exclaimed, in the words of H amlet, ?But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!? (i.2). In this meaning he might well have identified himself with the fantastical Duke in M easure for M easure, of whom Lucio remarks that ?H is givings out were of an infinite distance/ From his true-meant design? (i.4). In this meaning his speeches may well have been designed to hit the thoughts of sympathizers in his audience who could, as Lennox tells another Lord in M acbeth (iii.6), ?interpret further.? N o doubt, there were Puritan recusants, who refused to conform to the established Church. T hey were the Brownists, followers of Robert Browne, and other separatists, who were eventually driven into exile for their non-conformity in the Low Countries; and eventually some of them made their way to N ew England. But in his plays Shakespeare has little to say in their favour: rather ?Puritan? is mostly a word of ridicule in them, though he is less of a Puritan-baiter than his friend and colleague, Ben Jonson (who was for a time an open recusant, in the Catholic sense). As for the Brownists, we have the well-known asseveration of Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth N ight (iii.2), ?I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician? ? in which one may discern the dramatist?s own feelings
with regard both to Brownists and to politicians. O n the other hand, in contrast to the frequent mention of Puritans, there are in the plays only two references to Papists: one in the related form of ?Popish?, where it is put into the mouth of the villain Aaron the M oor in Titus Andronicus (v.l), with implicit praise of Lucius? ?religious conscience?; and the other in All?s Well T hat Ends Well (i.3), where the Clown?s mention of ?old Poysam the papist? is immediately criticized by the Countess as ?foul-mouthed and calumnious?. At least, in this contrast we may suspect the direction in which the dramatist?s sympathies lie. W ith all this in mind, we may now turn to a representative number of plays for more precise examination, in view not so much of occasional expressions that may be interpreted in one way or another, as of their prevailing tendency ? if at a level beneath what is obvious to any audience. In this sense, the plays may not unfairly be regarded as parables, as George H erbert says in ?Jordan?, ?Catching the sense at two removes?, or as the clown Launce tells his counterpart in Two Gentlemen of Verona (ii.4), ?T hou shalt never get such a secret from me but by a parable.? Peter Milward, a renowned literary scholar and Jesuit priest, passed away this summer, aged 92. He was a member of the International Advisory Board of the Chavagnes Studium. T his article is extracted from the Preface of Fr Milward's"T he Catholicism of Shakespeare's Plays", shortly to be republished by Chavagnes.
BY FERDI M CDERMOTT "A N T IN OU S, WH O
WAS ALI VE BU T LAT ELY , AN D WH OM ALL WER E PROM PT , T H ROU GH FEAR , TO WOR SH I P AS A GOD , T H OU GH T H EY KN EW BOT H WH O H E WAS AN D WH AT WAS H IS OR IGIN ."
JU ST IN M ART YR , Apologia (c.150)
THE GAY RITES OF ANTINOUS
Antinous the god: public domain images from the Louvre and the Vatican museums.
In t h e Emper o r 's c o ur t ,it seems ev er yo ne w il l h av e t o bow d ow n ... our years ago, left-wingers in France accused the opponents of gay marriage of not being 'straight' with their arguments. T hey are not putting their cards on the table, the socialists say.
F
And now the same arguments are being rehearsed in Australia. But those criticisms cut both ways. And the social reformers are hiding even more. T he transformation of birth certificates so as to include Parent A and Parent B, and the school textbooks that will follow on in order to promote the idea to children in primary schools, will have the effect of imposing a minority view about marriage and family on the majority. Schools will have to promote the excellence of the new arrangements, and little ones who say "but I have a mummy and a daddy" will be told to shut up. It will no longer be possible for the child's mother and father to be
publicly recognised as such. Acknowledging the fact of a mother and father will be become something banished to the private sphere. (And since 4th August 2017, in France, we have a new law that will forbid and punish by fines and compulsory re-education for those who say the wrong thing, if it can be construed as hate speech, even in private conversation!) Discovering that new friends also come from a traditional family will be the kind of nice surprise one gets when one finds out they share the same religion or went to the same kind of school. But in this brave new world one never asks outright ... T hat would be rude. And soon, asking a guy if he ever had a mum and dad could soon verge on the illegal. References in schools (including children's stories) and public documents, to mothers and fathers will have to be modified so as to be freed from 'homophobia'. All of this is already underway ...
T he idea that one should be able to marry whomsoever one choses is a powerful one. But the problem is that once one accepts that there should be no limits on marriage, why not follow the argument through? If a man loves two women and they love him then perhaps one should not seem to fall into bigamophobia (and what about the M uslims, with all their wives?). If it is all about sexual orientation then perhaps we need to be fair to bisexuals too; they are , after all, much more commonplace than homosexuals, and yet even more persecuted and marginalised by society; no marriage for them ... a rich and successful businessman who wants to marry an energetic young man from the office plus a warm, caring and elegant lady to be the mother of his children finds no comfort in the new social reforms ... but he no doubt will, if he can just hang on a few more years. Because once
polygamy is opened up in order to be fair to M uslims, then bisexual marriage will have to come next in order to satisfy the sleeping giant of the bisexual minority (or will we discover that it's a majority?) Promoting three-way bisexual marriage would even have the effect of solving the problem of where two women or two men will get the new baby from. N o need for surrogate mothers or expensive medical treatment ... It is all just a slippery slope into anarchy. And the custody battles in divorce cases will be so intractable that we will in the end just have to leave the children at the mercy of the adults fighting over them, or doing worse to them ... what about the fact that the age of legally informed consent to sexual relations is dropping everywhere like a stone, and that judges are increasingly refusing to sentence couples for incest. It will
WHO WAS ANTINOUS? not be long before the momentum gathers to legalise incestuous gay marriage (is it morally any worse, after all?) and perhaps even incestuous heterosexual marriage, and certainly the legal situation of adolescent children is going to become increasingly problematic; if 13 and 14-year-old children in countries such as Spain and Germany can legally have sexual relationships with an adult, then what happens if they campaign for the right to marry? T here would certainly be plenty of demand, and not just from M uslim men looking for traditional child brides. So, opposition to gay marriage is also opposition to an enormous and barely veiled agenda of social reform that is gaining enough momentum to keep Pandora's box open for decades to come, until such time as our families and relationships are in the biggest mess they have ever been in since Adam and Eve. Talking about this in public, and in my job as a teacher, is going to get harder and harder. In 130AD, after the death of Antinous, the beautiful Bythinian youth who was a lover of the Emperor H adrian, the boy was deified by Imperial decree and anyone refusing to worship him risked demotion or dismissal from court. Soon, I fear, we will all be worshiping the beautiful Antinous if we want to stay out of jail. Who dares stand up to the Emperor?
At h an asiu s, Bishop of Alexandria (c.295-c.373): Apologia Contra ArianosPart III, ch. 5, ยง230 "And such a one is the new God Antinous, that was the Emperor H adrian's minion and the slave of his unlawful pleasures; a wretch, whom those that worshipped in obedience to the Emperor's command, and for fear of his vengeance, knew and confessed to be a man, and not a good or deserving man neither, but a sordid and loathsome instrument of his master's lust. T his shameless and scandalous boy died in Egypt when the court was there; and forthwith his Imperial M ajesty issued out an order or edict strictly requiring and commanding his loving subjects to acknowledge his departed page a deity and to pay him his quota of divine reverences and honours as such: a resolution and act which did more effectually publish and testify to the world how entirely the Emperor's unnatural passion survived the foul object of it; and how much his master was devoted to his memory, than it recorded his own crime and condemnation, immortalised his infamy and shame, and bequeathed to mankind a lasting and notorious specimen of the true origin and extraction of all idolatry."
Clem en t of Alexan dr ia (c.150-c.211): Protrepticus(Exhortation to the Greeks) (c.190) I V "Another new deity was added to the number with great religious pomp in Egypt, and was near being so in Greece by the king of the Romans [H adrian], who deified Antinous [in 130CE], whom he loved as Z eus loved Ganymede, and whose beauty was of a very rare order: for lust is not easily restrained, destitute as it is of fear; and men now observe the sacred nights of Antinous, the shameful character of which the lover who spent them with him knew well. Why reckon him among the gods, who is honoured on account of uncleanness? And why do you command him to be lamented as a son? And why should you enlarge on his beauty? Beauty blighted by vice is loathsome. Do not play the tyrant, O man, over beauty, nor offer foul insult to youth in its bloom. Keep beauty pure, that it may be truly fair. Be king over beauty, not its tyrant. Remain free, and then I shall acknowledge thy beauty, because thou hast kept its image pure: then will I worship that true beauty which is the archetype of all who are beautiful. T here is a tomb of the beloved boy (eromenos). A temple of this Antinous and a city [Antinoรถpolis]. For just as temples are held in reverence, so also are sepulchres, and pyramids, and mausoleums, and labyrinths, which are temples of the dead, as the others are sepulchres of the gods. As teacher on this point, I shall produce to you the Sibyl prophetess:- 'N ot the oracular lie of Phoebus, Whom silly men called God, and falsely termed Prophet; But the oracles of the great God, who was not made by men's hands, Like dumb idols of Sculptured stone.' "
PETER MILWARD SJ 1935-2017 OBITUARY BY FERDI M CDERMOTT
Peter M ilward was born in London in 1925, studied at W imbledon College 1933-43, entered the Society of Jesus 1943, then from 1947-50 he studied philosophy at H eythrop College in O xford, were he regularly attended the lectures of C. S. Lewis and the meetings of the Socratic Club. H e went on to read Classics and English literature at Campion H all, O xford, 1950-54, the went to Japan in 1954, where he studied Japanese, then theology at St. M ary?s college, Tokyo (faculty of theology, Sophia U niversity), 1954-61, having been ordained priest in 1960. H e then began teaching in the department of English Literature, Sophia U niversity, from 1962. Specializing in Shakespearean drama, he published his first book, An Introduction to Shakespeare?s Plays, in 1964, followed by Christian T hemes in English Literature, 1967. After further research at the Shakespeare Institute, Birmingham, 1965-66, he published Shakespeare?s Religious Background, 1973; and as a result of subsequent research at the H untington Library, California, he went on to publish two volumes of Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age and the Jacobean Age in 1977 and 1978. Besides being vice-chairman of the Renaissance Institute of Sophia U niversity, he was editor of ?Renaissance M onographs? and of the Japanese Renaissance Sรถsho;
and with the opening of the Renaissance Centre in the new library of Sophia U niversity in 1984, he was appointed its first director. H e also published books on G.M . H opkins and T.S. Eliot, as well as many volumes of essays for Japanese students. Father Peter M ilward was a faithful supporter of Chavagnes and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Studium. O ver the more than twenty years I had the privilege of knowing and working with him I knew him to be a generous, kind and faithful priest, and a patient and inspiring teacher, ever respectful of his students. In the manner of St Francis X avier, his humble and authentic witness to the Gospel brought many young Japanese closer to Christ. H e died, aged 92, on 16th August 2017. M ay his kindly, priestly soul rest in peace. N ote: T he Preface of Fr M ilward's book T he Catholicism of Shakespeare's Plays (St Austin Press, London 1997, 2000) is reproduced in this issue. Chavagnes Studium Press plans to issue a new edition of this work in the near future.
www.chavagnes.org for Real Catholic education
Applicat ion s open n ow f or Sept em ber 2018. Fin an cial assist an ce available.
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MARY AND MARTYDOM R ef l ec t io ns o n t h e 2017 St ud ium Summer Co nf er enc e n late July I joined the College Chaplain, Fr M ark Lawler, in driving from the N orth of England all the way to Chavagnes. We set out a week before the Conference in order to make ready for the arrival of the conference goers. Stopping along the way at the beautiful shrine of Lisieux. I had invited a couple of friends to the Conference this year (one a priest, one a layman), so was anxious that they enjoyed the event. I needn?t have worried. M eeting up with many attendees who had been there last year, as well as new faces, made for a sociable and interesting few days. Somehow, the atmospheric setting of the College and its surroundings in the rural VendĂŠe lends itself naturally to charm and spirituality.
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Fr Simon H enry
M ary and M artydom may seem a slightly obscure topic and not necessarily one pointing to joyful exuberance but the speakers rose to the challenge and provided us with much stimulating discussion and food for thought. It also enabled the liturgies of M ass and the O ffice to focus on She who is M other of us all and so provide a fitting and beautiful mantle in which to envelope our prayers during the week. T he theme enabled each of the speakers to bring forth particular insights from their differing areas of speciality. T hus we learnt much of Fr Faber in general from Father Sebastian Jones, Cong O rat. as he unravelled the ?T he M arian Devotion of Father Frederick W illiam Faber? for us.
ARTICLE HEADLINE Left and above: variousscenesfrom the Conference. Below: Caravaggio?s "Madonna and Child with Saint Anne"
So too we threaded through the millennia in M r Gerhart Eger?s presentation of ?T he Sufferings of M ary in the Liturgy?. M r Eger, a lecturer at M aison de Formation St Alberto H urtado in the south of France, has a masterful knowledge of the intricacies of liturgical history and managed to bring it alive for us in charting the development of this theme through the daily devotion of the ages. College Chaplain Fr M ark Lawler, who is engaged on a Doctorate on Chesterton, presented us with ?Seven Swords: T he Virgin M ary in the Poetry of G.K. Chesterton?. Chesterton is always a treat and to hear his poetry brought alive with Fr Lawler?s infectious enthusiasm doubly so. N ot so much an impression of Chesterton but the very embodiment of his spirit! Take an obscure painting, set the drama of the political and religious milieu in which it was painted and proceed to open up the fascinating riches of its detail and composition and you have a revelation manifested by Fr Leo Daley expounding the depths of Caravaggio?s "M adonna and Child with Saint Anne" , painted between 1605 and 8 April 1606. It was commissioned by the Confraternity of Sant' Anna dei Palafrenieri, (the Grooms of the Vatican Palace) to hang as an altarpiece in the new St Peter?s Basilica. Due to Caravaggio?s choice of a well known courtesan as the model for O ur Lady and the political intrigue?s of the papal court, it remained there for but a few days (apparently, so many of Rome?s great and good recognised the model that she couldn?t stay as an altarpiece!) H owever, that shouldn?t take away
from the stunning spiritual significance and subtlety of theology that Caravaggio was able to portray in composing Christ and the Virgin treading simultaneously on the serpent of heresy, watched by the Virgin's mother, St. Anne, who was the patron saint of the Palafrenieri. It was a privilege to behold the revelation of one of Caravaggio?s masterpieces, so I hope that Fr Daley will be back next year to further enlighten us. During the week we had the pleasure of singing the Little office of O ur Lady. A task made easier by the fact that it stays more or less the same each day. A task also made light by the tutorship of M r Anthony Dickinson in ?A liturgy for laymen: A study of the Little O ffice of the Blessed Virgin M ary? giving us an historical and spiritual understanding of this once ubiquitous lay devotion. We chanted some of the O ffice in the charming chapel at the college gates dedicated to the memory of Father Baudouin (one of three chapels on the site) built over the place of the Venerable Fr Baudouin's house, who founded the college, in 1802. Which brings us to the local setting of the Vendée and its fascinating Catholic history. T his was elaborated by M r Louis M abille who revealed the sufferings of the ?T he martyrs of the Vendée? to us and further brought to life by a visit to Le Château de la Chabotterie, (a castle and museum dedicated to the Vendée counter-revolution). We also visited M ont des Alouettes. A hill on which once stood eight windmills but where just two now remain. T hese were used during the Vendée wars
to signal enemy movements. T here is a chapel on the site as well, commemorating those who fell defending the Vendée for K ing and Faith. I want to say a "small chapel" for such it is and yet it is also rather grandiose, especially the entrance portal. I was kindly invited to celebrate M ass there, which was very moving. Some passers by were rather taken aback to find M issa Cantata, complete with choir and servers, taking place in their midst. M y thanks to all the Conference-goers for their fellowship, to the speakers for their insights and to the staff and students of the college for all their work in giving us a delightful ?time out? from the daily round.
Peter H odgson, 1928- 2008 T he late Dr Peter H odgson was a world-renowned nuclear physicist who taught at O xford for 40 years. A Feloow of Corpus Christi college and of the institute of Physics. H e was also President of the Secretariat for Scientific Q uestions of Pax Romana, and served as a Consultant to the Pontifical Council for Culture. H e was a founder member of the Chavagnes International College International Advisory Board. H e passed away aged 80 in 2008. M ay he rest in peace. H is book T he Roots of Science and its Fruits, a collection of essays from which the review on the next page is extracted, will be brough back into print by the Chavagnes Studium in early 2018. T he following article is reproduced to mark the centenary of the apparitionsat Fatima thisyear.
A M IR ACLE AT FAT IM A *Review of God and the Sun at Fatima by Stanley L. Jaki. Real View Books, 1999.
Peter H odgson O n 13 M ay 1917 three young shepherd children, Lucia Santos (aged 10) and her two cousins Francisco M arto (8) and Jacinta M arto (7), saw a lady dressed in luminous white near a holm oak tree in the northernmost part of the Cova da Iria, a field near Aljustrel, a hamlet near the village of Fatima in Portugal. T he lady told them to recite the Rosary daily and to return on the 13th of the month for the next five months. O n the 13th of June about 70 people joined them, and on 13 July about two thousand. Each time the lady appeared at noon, accompanied by a sudden breeze, thunder and lightning and a small cloud over the holm oak. In July a luminous globe glided from east to west across the Cova towards the holm oak. O n this latter occasion Lucia begged the lady to produce a miracle so that people would believe her message. Alarmed by this outbreak of religiosity, a local official kidnapped the children on the 13 August, when the next appearance was expected and put them in the local jail. T his enraged the crowd of about 5000 who had gathered on that day, and they forced him to release the children. O n 19 August the lady appeared to the children in a nearby grazing area, and promised a miracle on 13 O ctober. O n 13 September about ten thousand people went to the Cova da Ira and saw a luminous globe move across the sky from east to west. In early O ctober there were intense expectations of a miracle on the 13th. A well-known journalist Avelino de Almeida wrote an article that was published on that day saying that the whole fiasco would soon be exposed when the predicted miracle did not occur. O n the 13th O ctober about 70,000 people made their way, mostly on foot but some in oxcarts and automobiles, to the Cova da Iria. During the morning there was torrential rain, turning the ground into a sea of mud. At noon the children arrived and the rain suddenly
stopped. Lucia told the crowd to look at the sun, and they saw that the clouds had parted to reveal the sun as a silvery grey disc that could be observed directly, like the moon, without damage to the eyes. T he sun began to rotate, throwing off shafts of coloured light like a Catherine wheel. T hree times it danced and zigzagged towards the earth. T he crowd was terrified, thinking that the end of the world had come, and they dropped to their knees a in the mud and prayed for mercy. T hen after about ten minutes the sun returned to its normal place and brightness. T he same phenomena was also seen by some people in nearby villages. What on earth are we to make of this story? T he Church authorities were wisely sceptical and forbade the priests to go near the Cova da Iria on that day. H owever they failed in their duty to establish the facts by making a systematic collection of eyewitness accounts, especially by enlisting the aid of experienced scientists. N evertheless there were many recorded accounts, including those immediately published in the national newspapers by journalists like Almeida who had come to the Cova da Iria to see what would happen. T hese accounts, taken together, are sufficient to establish beyond doubt what the people saw, although careful scientific questioning would probably have revealed more details. O nce the facts are established we can ask what really happened, and whether it was indeed a miracle. Could it have been a collective hallucination? T his seems very unlikely because no one expected the promised miracle to involve the sun, and there were thousands of witnesses, some very sceptical, including many in nearby villages. Did the sun really dance? T his possibility can be excluded because of the size of the sun and the laws of dynamics. God is indeed all-powerful, but He cannot contradict H imself. Any such motion of the sun would have been observed by astronomical observatories all over the world, and it was not. We thus conclude that the apparent motion of the sun was a local meteorological phenomenon. Could it have been a very rare but
nonetheless purely natural phenomenon? In certain circumstances it is known that very remarkable meteorological phenomena can occur due to the many different forms that can be taken by ice crystals. H owever what was seen at Fatima does not in the least resemble the known effects attributable to ice crystals. Perhaps some eddies in the atmosphere produced lenses of air of different refractive indices that could enlarge the sun's image. All this is extremely unlikely, but nevertheless it cannot be stared with certainty that we know enough about meteorology to exclude a natural explanation. T he Church has never declared the phenomenon to be miraculous, and will probably never do so. H owever,the additional fact that this very rare phenomenon took place at a time and place specified three months in advance certainly indicates that it was a miracle. What is even less well-known than the miracle itself is the key importance of Fatima for the history of Europe. Portugal at that time was controlled by an intensely anti-clerical Government that had confiscated Church property, closed Catholic schools, banned religious instruction and forced the patriarch of Lisbon to leave his see. Lenin had earmarked Portugal as the first State to fall under Communist control. W ith Portugal in Communist hands, Spain would surely follow, and then France and eventually the whole of Europe would become Communist. T his was a very real possibility in view of the strength of Communism in Spain and France. T he very day after the 13th O ctober, there were new elections, and the anti-clerical candidates lost in regions around Fatima. In a few months the people of Portugal turned against the anti-clerical regime, and it was ousted by a coup. If this had not happened, the whole history of Europe might well have been very different. T here is a vast literature on Fatima, but now the whole story has been told in great detail with scientific objectivity and full respect for the essential and established facts. For a short biography of Peter Hodgson , who died in 2008, see the previouspage.
Eur o pe a nd t h e Fa it h
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