September 26, 2009 at 1:13 P.M. I am in receipt of a notice indicating that my Yahoo settings have changed. My e-mail cannot be accessed at Yahoo. As a result, I will not return to that site. My Amazon account was similarly hacked into. I went through the usual war to get to this site. I will go to public computers at new locations later today, then I will return to this computer. I surmise that this is part of the licensed "frustration inducement" effort from New Jersey. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "North Bergen, New Jersey is the Home of La Cosa Nostra.")
New arrests are expected soon in New Jersey. Good luck with the IRS and FBI, fellas! Don't forget to dress warmly, cool weather is coming.
August 30, 2009 at 9:39 A.M. Several "errors" were inserted by New Jersey's hackers overnight. Images are blocked at this site, access to MSN is obstructed, no web sites can be safely visited by me on this computer. Several corrections of this text have been made on more than one occasion. Cybercrime and harassment continues on a daily basis. ("Is Paul Bergrin, Esq. an Ethical New Jersey Lawyer?" and "Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct Unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey.")
Hide your children from politicians and judges in New Jersey.
August 27, 2009 at 12:00 Noon -- Written under adverse and noisy conditions. "Errors" will be inserted in this essay on a regular basis, cyberattacks have intensified lately. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?")
James Wood, "God in the Quad," in The New Yorker, August 31, 2009, at p. 75.
Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), $25.00. (More like $27.00 at Barnes & Noble. Eagleton has to pay for that summer home in Ibiza.)
C.S. Lewis, The Seeing Eye: Selected Essays From Christian Reflections (New York: Ballantine, 1967), pp. 99-112.
Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain (New York & London: Harcourt Brace, 1946), pp. 166-225.
A recent New Yorker "blesses" us with the wisdom of Harvard "don" James Wood concerning the subject of God, God's critics, and the new atheism by way of what purports to be a review of Terry Eagleton's recent book. Has Mr. Wood read that book? I doubt that he has read it.
Eagleton's book is a compilation based on his Gifford Lectures delivered at Yale University. Eagleton was delighted (to the point of experiencing sexual and non-sexual orgasms) at being invited to provide these talks to eager students in a nation Eagleton has dismissed as "greedy and cruel" -- except, of course, when it offers large sums of money to British academics to lecture on the new atheism.
"I love Americans!" Mr. Eagleton was quoted as saying when informed of the fee that he would receive for these talks. ("Why Terry Eagleton Hates Americans.")
Mr. Wood looks on with envy. Professor Wood shares his philosophical meditations with readers of this prestigious publication who know even less philosophy than does Mr. Wood. Perhaps Mr. Wood will give next year's Gifford Lectures. You scratch my back, and I'll vote for your tenure application. This article is a disappointment to the extent that it has much to say on the subject of God's "existence," as it is couched with qualifications in the passive voice and third as well as first person: "I am inclined to think that Gould had a point." (p. 75.)
What does that mean, Jim? Are religious persons "idiots" (like Debbie Poritz and Stuart Rabner of New Jersey) as you suggested in your first article on the same subject for this magazine? ("Is this atheism's moment?") Or have the new atheists gone too far? I suspect that Jimbo's view of the matter is best captured in a sentence that escaped his pen exactly as the British acquired their empire -- "in a fit of absent-mindedness":
"Since belief in God is clearly MADNESS, the new atheists must scrabble around for quasi-biological explanations of this stubborn malady." (p. 75.) (emphasis added)
Among those mentally-ill or insane persons burdened with this so-called "malady," we must include "scrabblers" like Simone Weil, Malcolm Muggeridge, C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and about 90% of the population of the planet who remain unenlightened, as do I, by the new atheists. We sufferers from this "malady" (if we are religious) will persevere in our life's journeys. To his credit, Mr. Wood grudgingly admits:
"The new atheists do not speak to the millions of people whose form of religion is far from the embodied certainties of contemporary literalism, and who aren't inclined to submit to the mad mullahs and the fanatical ministers. Indeed, it is a settled assumption of this kind of atheism that there are no intelligent religious believers (the philosopher Daniel Dennett has advocated that non-believers call themselves 'brights' -- the better, I suppose, to contrast with dullard philosophers like Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, or the late Leszek Kolakowski), and that any working scientist who professes to believe in God is probably lying ..." (p. 75.) (emphasis added!)
As one of the semi-intelligent agnostics and "pseudo-intellectuals" who is much more respectful of religious believers than either the new atheists or Mr. Wood "appear to be" (as Mr. Wood would express it), I am dismayed at discovering James Wood's curious reasoning prominently displayed in The New Yorker. "Oddly, despite God's general discrediting," Mr. Wood tells us, "theology is thriving." (p. 76.) It sure is, kid.
These paragraphs by Mr. Wood shine with the earnest wrongheadedness and dull lack of comprehension associated with the wooden prose of Mathew Alper. For example, I direct readers with strong stomachs to Mathew Alper, The "God" Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God (New York: Rogue Press, 2001).
Would Mr. Alper participate in or condone censorship? I wonder whether Mr. Alper has visited my sites in order to criticize my writings under a pseudonym?
Here's a little theology for you, James. Do you think that a person is using the concept of God properly if he or she is under the impression that God has been "discredited"? I have my doubts on that subject. ("Is it rational to believe in God?") How does Mr. Wood's statement concerning the "madness" of believers jive with this little chestnut:
"What is most repellent about the new atheism is its intolerant certainty; it is always noon in Dawkins's world, and the sun of science and liberal positivism is shining brassily, casting no shadows." (p. 76.)
Eagleton's intelligent comments on religion and profound criticisms of the new atheists (I have only glanced at his book in the bookstore) is a whole lot better than the "drek" in the new atheist category (Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins are all best known and admired, appropriately, for their non-religious writings).
In an important recent book, theologian and philosopher Mark Johnson refers to these popular writers as the "undergraduate atheists." As a former undergraduate atheist, I concur. Mr. Alper is a high school atheist.
What pisses me off about many of the lobotomized morons who have debated me on these issues is not their "disagreement" with my expressed opinions nor their dismissals of the entire history of philosophy because "it's not science, duh!" I don't give a shit whether you agree with me about anything. I am "O.K." with your choice to be a moron. I object to people censoring my writings or suppressing books that they are incapable of understanding. Am I being "over sensitive"? I don't think so. I am not overly sensitive, only rational and well-informed on this issue. Any more inserted "errors," gentlemen? Ladies of all genders are invited to disagree with my views, but not to alter my writings. Sam Harris is not a writer to emulate for his philosophical acumen, even if we admire his knowledge of science.
Eagleton has understood the meanings of religious writings and their necessary connection to our aesthetic and moral lives. Christ speaks to us today (metaphor) of politics and revolution as well as poverty and wealth. Eagleton is "shining brassily" in this book and in his earlier works on aesthetics, which are not unrelated to the new theology. Eagleton is a theologian of liberation. Eagleton's book-length essay on Marxism and Marxist aesthetics is highly recommended. I have only read 6 of Eagleton's books. Hence, I may not know Eagleton's work as well as Mr. Wood does in his profound English-studies kind of a way.
The offensive and patronizing accusation by Mr. Wood that Eagleton's "religiousness, like a limp, has become more pronounced," (p. 76.) is not overly bothersome, I am sure, to a man who recognizes what Mr. Wood does not. ("Pieta" and "God is Texting Me!")
I wonder whether Mr. Wood has read my short stories? Was this comment intended as an insult? ("David Denby is Not Amused.")
Eagleton recognizes the lesson and instruction in the scriptures of the great religions that we must stand with the poor and afflicted masses of humanity, choosing to share in the suffering and anger at injustices that torture our fellow human beings, many of whom are far less fortunate than Mr. Wood and less inclined to indulge in Harvard (or is it Yale?) easy chair ironies about plague or famine. Do you agree, Mr. Alper? Do you really have a Ph.D., Mr. Alper? Diploma mill?
I am happy for anyone who has been fortunate enough to attend one of the world's great universities. It takes a whole lot of effort from many family members to get young people to those schools, usually that effort is exerted when the young graduate is a child, and some luck does not hurt. Many brilliant people will not get to any university because they are too busy trying to survive. I am thrilled that I attended graduate school at a fine Catholic university and was admitted to a Ph.D. program at NYU. I was lucky to go anywhere. However, my discipline in reading about a book every two days, my four languages, my intense studies are a matter of personal choice. No school is responsible for my mind, such as it is. Also, I am not intimidated by anyone in discussions of these issues at (what I am assured) is my advanced old age of 50. Got it? Mr. Alper, you have the choice of weapons. I can only hope that further censorship and cybercrime will not be one of those weapons.
Billions of us are hungry, sick, tormented by separation from loved-ones, exploited, violated, raped and denied our due recognition in this world, whereas mediocre talents (like Mr. Wood or myself, perhaps, you decide) are absurdly privileged. Eagleton recognizes himself as among the ridiculously fortunate; Mr. Wood does not. Eagleton feels himself called to share in the misery and pain of his neighbors; Mr. Wood will be spending the summer on the beach at Long Island or some place like it. Whether you call yourself "Wood," "Halper," or "Alper" -- the lack of reading shows.
I prefer the company of Terry Eagleton to that of Mr. Wood (based on this article) -- even if Eagleton purchases that house in Ibiza -- because Eagleton cannot help standing with his less fortunate neighbors by feeling their anger, pain at cruelty, insults, sleights along with non-recognition and articulating that anger for them or all of us. Eagleton knows, as I do, that many of the world's simplest people have more interesting things to say about religion, politics, revolution than we are likely to read in Mr. Wood's forthcoming essays in The New Yorker. No doubt it is because some of us who are not members of New York's "media club" have interesting things to say that we are censored and our writings are suppressed. ("Why Terry Eagleton Does Not Like Americans" and "How Censorship Works in America.")
Mr. Wood, who has just received from me and Terry Eagleton (for no tuition cost!) the benefits of the sort of instruction that he provides to readers of The New Yorker magazine and Harvard students, complains that the anti-atheists, presumably, "accuse atheists of wanting to murder an overliteral God, while they themselves keep alive a rarefied God whom no one, other than them, actually believes in." (p. 78.) "Them"? Who them? This guy is an English professor? at Harvard?
Does Mr. Wood mean that "no one other than they" actually believes in this God? If so, then Mr. Wood is not only afflicted with a tin ear for the English language -- and poor syntax -- but mistaken concerning the merits of his claim. I suggest that Mr. Wood say three Our Fathers and sin no more.
The God highly intelligent and sane persons accept is a moral force -- or overwhelming love -- that allows for sharing with others and enduring heinous sufferings in Auschwitz and places like it. I regard such a God as anything but trivial or laughable. There is no belief in the supernatural required in my kind of religion or in faiths that I respect -- not in religious beliefs and practices that I admire -- only recognition is required of the love that we feel, if we are persons, for others, especially for the afflicted among us. Like truth, for Michel Foucault, religion and God are things of this world. If you wish to dispense with the word "God" and speak of love, that's fine by me.
A capacity for feeling is, indeed, crucial to an appreciation of religious sensibility and ecstasy. Feelings are disappearing from what appear to be human lives, along with any appreciation of why they are needed to cope with life's losses and pain as well as the confrontation with evil and death.
If the word "God" is what bothers you, as I say, then just speak of love as compassion. This is anything but vague or unclear as a belief or set of secular values. This empowering love is God. This is the dream, articulated by Dr. King as well as many others, for all human societies, the dream of which Senator Edward Kennedy spoke to a naive or foolish nineteen year-old college student that I was: " ... and the dream shall never die."
This is a summary of what religions amount to, as a life-lesson communicated in the archetypal language of poetry or symbolism, from which they are inseparable. For a professor of literature at Harvard University to imagine that God is a mythical Old Testament figure and nothing more or that a phenomenon like religious belief is "silly" or "outdated" (Richard Dawkins) is hard to take seriously. This is the sort of simplistic view of such matters attributed to fundamentalists -- at the other extreme of the spectrum -- such as Mullah Omar of the Taliban. Qualifications aside, this is what Mr. Wood "seems" to be saying. I find it difficult to believe that James Wood wrote every word in this essay. I say this as someone who read, enjoyed, and admired Mr. Wood's first novel which certainly was not mediocre. James Wood, The Book Against God (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), p. 171:
"What interests me is your certainty, ... It's one thing to say that the world is a horrid place -- if indeed it is -- but it's another to say, 'Ergo God doesn't exist.' I'm not sure you can make that leap. I mean, if you suddenly lived in a world without any pain at all, would you then say to yourself, 'This is such a happy world that I am convinced that God does exist'? I don't think so. Arguments from design are always a bad idea, whether practised by believers or atheists, and that's what you're doing."
Mr. Wood "appears" much more reasonable and profound (through his literary characters in a novel) than in these unfortunate articles in The New Yorker. Is there an editor to blame for this catastrophe? What happened to this once extraordinary magazine? (See the fothcoming essay: "Atheists in Disneyworld.") You can't shake off this kind of argument or criticism by inserting an "error" in my essays or altering the spelling of a name. This would be a good time to insert another "error," Mr. Alper or Mr. Wood, or Mr./Ms. X.
Mr. Wood must know better than the criticisms that he articulates from a suitable ironic distance so that his friends in Cambridge will not be shocked at his expression of anything but aloofness from the religious delusions of the unwashed masses. I am one of the unwashed masses. Hence, I will be blunt: Although I am not religious, I am deeply respectful of religion and certain that love is what life is about. Does that make me a "fool" to Mr. Wood? I am sure that it does. This does not greatly trouble me, as I have not attended Harvard University. I am not likely to do so. "Never say never." I've heard about a great hamburger place in Boston.
"Salvation is not so much about saving our souls as 'a question of feeding the hungry, welcoming the immigrants, visiting the sick, and protecting the poor, orphaned and widowed from the violence of the rich.' ..." (p. 77.)
Is it possible that Mr. Wood does not realize that this has ALWAYS been how genuinely religious persons see themselves as "saving their souls"? Salvation is a moral concept that is and must be other-regarding, like love. You save your soul only when your concern is not about saving your soul, but at the suffering of the other. Those of us who have experienced torture, denigration, insulting condescension, censorship and suppressions of speech in America, humiliations and much worse from the likes of Mr. Wood and his ilk -- or whoever wrote these offending passages -- derive comfort from realizing all that such persons will never know because they cannot experience true powerlessness and utter misery or despair in this world. There may be a response to the existence of evil in this observation. Love is what remains when everything else is taken from you.
We simple folks (this is non-Harvard irony) are enriched by such knowledge, even when it is painful. We pity them, the James Woods of this world. Yes, there are many of them. As a deaf person cannot understand a symphony so Mr. Wood will never "get" religion. I am truly sorry for him. Let us pray for him, if we are religious persons, so that "God will fill his soul with understanding." Eventually, like all of us, Mr. Wood will certainly come to know suffering and death. Maybe religious ideas will seem more interesting at such a difficult hour:
"We are saved, [Eagleton writes,] 'not by a special apparatus known as religion, but by the quality of our everyday relations with one another.' ..." (p. 77.)
That is the "bottom-line" in religion, Jim, our non-supernatural relations with one another:
"Heaven is not really about a world to come but about the transformation of the world we have." (p. 77.)
Same thing. The transformation of the world we have is the world to come. Wood's mention of Wittgenstein is confused and pointless. The difficulties raised concerning the concept of God are dealt with, easily, by Thomas Merton in The Seven Story Mountain or C.S. Lewis in The Seeing Eye. Here is Merton drawing on the metaphysics of John Dun Scotus ("Erigena"):
" ... the word is aesitas. [Absolute] In this one word, which can be applied to God alone, and which expresses His most characteristic attribute, I discovered an entirely new concept of God -- a concept which showed me at once that the belief of Catholics was by no means the vague and rather superstitious hangover from an unscientific age that I had believed it to be. On the contrary, here was a notion of God that was at the same time deep, precise, simple and accurate and, what is more, charged with implications which I could not even appreciate, but which I could at least dimly estimate, even with my own lack of philosophical training." (p. 172.) ("'The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review.")
"The monastery is a school -- a school in which we learn from God how to be happy. Our happiness consists in sharing the happiness of God, the perfection of His unlimited freedom, [this is true love,] the perfection of His love." (p. 372.) ("The Soldier and the Ballerina" and "Beauty and the Beast.")
I will quote C.S. Lewis, who provides a warning for Dick Cheney and his "co-religionists" on the Right, as William F. Buckely, Jr. used to say:
" ... the disease that will certainly end our species (and, in my view, damn our souls) if it is not crushed [is] the fatal superstition that men can create values, that a community can choose its ideology as men choose their clothes. [Do we choose our science? Do we create the reality revealed by science?] Everyone is indignant when he hears the Germans define justice as that which is to the interest of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will. Unless there is some objective standard of good, over-arching Germans, Japanese and OURSELVES alike whether any of us obey it or no, then of course the Germans are as competent to create their ideology as we are to create ours. If 'good' and 'better' are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology [power?] of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than one another." (p. 101.)
Our moralities choose us. The moment we object that, say, 9/11 is an evil event (which it is) we have entered the moral domain and are engaged in theological speculation. I suggest that we cannot avoid doing so. The only issue is whether we will do so, engage in valuing, rationally or irrationally. This need to valorize exists not because we are all insane or suffering from a malady, as psychobabblers -- who are often insane and suffering from a malady -- would have it. Religion is needed to make sense of our inescapable moral lives. Valuing involves us, necessarily, with what we may call God. ("Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Is this atheism's moment?")
I urge philosophically-minded readers to turn to Dieter Heinrich's elegant essays examining Kant's aesthetics and rights theory. We cannot remain persons if we are denied a spiritual and ethical as well as aesthetic component in our lives. What is meant by religion is highly elastic and can include art, eros, philosophy or social meliorism. Anything that is a giving of the self to others can be religious, including love-making. Copulation (not the same thing as love-making) and eating regularly, purchasing expensive things and driving large cars will not be enough for us, if we are persons. This may even be true at Harvard University's English Department.
James Wood gets a "C" for his efforts in this essay. Try harder next time, James. Any more cyberattacks and defacements from Trenton or its "employees"?
Friday, August 28, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
No Internet Access, More Cybercrime!
September 30, 2009 at 5:40 P.M. Numerous essays were damaged overnight. There was quite a struggle earlier today to make corrections. This is usually a good sign that new indictments will be handed down in New Jersey. ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Senator Bob Says -- 'Xanadu and You are Perfect Together!'") "El Bobo" Menendez has lots of problems these days. This would be a good time for more inserted "errors."
August 27, 2009 at 7:49 P.M. An attempt to review my essay "America's Holocaust" was prevented by attacks on my security system. Cubanoid racism. I was forced to reboot my computer, again. I am writing these words from a public computer. Rumors of pending arrests in New Jersey can neither be confirmed nor denied -- at this time. Joe ("The Enforcer") Doria, Esq.? Payback for Ms. Brown? Or part of the Xanadu disaster? How about Anthony Suarez, Esq. for New Jersey Attorney General?
August 27, 2009 at 10:20 A.M. An irremovable notice purporting to come from my security provider has appeared on my screen informing me of "updates." This is strange since I have an automatic live update service. I make use of it every day. Apparently, as a result of this attack against my security system, I am unable to back-up files. This usually means that defacements of writings may be expected. I will continue to struggle. ("'Che': A Movie Review" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
August 26, 2009 at 8:32 P.M. Access to the Internet was obstructed all day. I am now in a position to post the comment below.
Scott Shane & Mark Mazzetti, "Records Show Strict Rules For C.I.A. Interrogations: Details of Harsh Treatment Were Overseen by Managers, Lawyers and Doctors," in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A1. (The photos of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln have been blocked, probably by American public officials, access to the Internet from my home is denied to me.)
"The Torture Papers," (Editorial) in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A22. (" ... lawless and morally repugnant detention policies" OVERSEEN by American physicians, lawyers and politicians.")
David Kociniewski, "New Jersey Prosecutor Who Got Loan From Christie Quits," in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A18. (Ms. Brown -- unlike Anthony Suarez, Esq. -- resigned her office as the Democrat-Mafia machine in New Jersey "spends millions on negative attacks and play down and dirty in order to win ...")
August 26, 2009 at 9:45 A.M. I am, once again, denied access to the Internet as part of New Jersey's harassment, censorship, and silencing effort. I will do my best to find a public computer to post a warning about what has happened to me today. Censorship may happen to you. I will attempt to post this essay, part of which appeared under the title "The Long Goodbye" on a prior occasion when Trenton's state-sanctioned censorship obstructed my Internet access. If only I were a corporation -- a fictitious person with lots of money -- then my "free speech" rights would be respected.
I do not believe that China or Cuba would be worse in their treatment of writers expressing opinions than the people responsible for these tactics that are used against a person who has experienced psychological torture, financial guerrilla warfare, theft, many kinds of rape and other assaults. The control panel at the bottom of my computer is gone, after restarting my computer. Scans are impossible because updating is impossible. If I mention "Fidel Castro" new attacks are directed at my writings. Therefore, I will make it a point to mention Fidel Castro even if I happen to disagree with him. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")
Liu Xiaobo -- a Chinese dissident possibly facing criminal charges -- has not been raped, beaten, abused during his period of incarceration. He is subjected to the same legal process as other alleged offenders. A report has been prepared by police investigation. Prosecutors have the right to reject or accept a recommendation to proceed against the accused who will be notified of charges, if any, and have an opportunity to respond. Liu Xiaobo may be released, after pre-trial detention, if charges are not filed or dismissed. By any rational standard, this person is vastly better off than America's detainees and many alleged offenders in this country subjected to "secret" proceedings and psychological torture for decades. Keith Bradsher, "China: Police Send Report on Dissident," in The New York Times, December 10, 2009, at p. A20.
I express my concern and solidarity for Mr. Liu and his family members together with the hope that this gentleman may be returned to his family soon.
To speak to me of "ethics" under these circumstances, as these torture tactics continue and provide a spectacle for an audience that knows them to be criminal and unconstitutional, is absurd. YOU are the criminals, not me. I will not stop writing. I will not alter my opinions. I will continue to post writings on-line. I will not be intimidated by anyone. Your ignorance and shameful inadequacies in losing debates with me will not be changed. You will not become any smarter or any less mistaken in your views if you silence me. Philosophical and legal controversies are not settled by violence or brutality, nor by censorship. You cannot beat up ideas.
Something frightening is on display in this theater of human cruelty and intolerance of dissent. This is not the country described in America's Constitution nor in our self-presentation to the world. This is harmful to me, personally, but it is vastly more wounding to America's Constitution and to the U.S. Senate, also scary for every artist or dissident struggling to think and create his or her work in this environment. Ironically, the pattern is now clear as, almost a year ago, the same brutal censorship was implemented. America is not a Banana Republic, as I have said many times, controversial opinions may and should be expressed. Disagreements are welcome; censorship is not. ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")
The world no longer believes America's claims concerning freedom of speech and conscience. What follows was written almost a year ago today. These tactics did not work then; they will not work now. How does a Jew become Mengele, Terry Tuchin? How does a Jew become Eichman, Stuart Rabner? How can you be a part of this cybercrime and call yourself a decent human being, let alone an attorney? Whatever your ethnicity, race, sexual-orientation and whatever you feel about me -- these crimes should trouble you. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
It is a beautiful morning in New York. Later I will walk in the city. I felt that I should try to post these words, as a farewell of sorts. I am unable to access the Internet or my sites, again. I cannot -- as of 10:40 A.M. on August 7, 2008 -- communicate my opinions and feelings at my home computer. I will search for another computer beginning today. I suspect an illegal interference with my cable service provider, an illegal network, and other nefarious disruption of my communication efforts. What else is new?
August 21, 2008 at 11:12 P.M. Images were blocked earlier today. I do not know whether I can post images at Critique. I will try again to do so. If I am unable to attach images to these essays, then I will provide links in order for readers to view the images that I wish to associate with these essays. I will struggle to continue writing no matter what new obstacles come my way. ("Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
Yesterday, once again, several of my essays were damaged, some have been altered on so many occasions that it is now impossible for me to estimate the number of times when I have been forced to make corrections. The goal of this process, which I have experienced for years and documented extensively, is to crush the spirit of a human being. The destruction of a life and mind is a means of controlling a person by transforming him into something that is less than human. After all of his tortures, Winston Smith's greatest performance was the sincere love of Big Brother. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
The mega-societies in which we live -- I am sure that the phenomenon that I describe and endure, every day, is bigger than any one country -- constrain the human spirit in order for public authority to become pervasive and total. The aim of postmodernist governments is to replace God in the human scale of values. To argue that such an ambition is unethical or evil is absurd because, we are told, governments define the scope of good and evil. When government is in bed with organized crime -- as in New Jersey -- things are even worse. China is Switzerland by comparison with New Jersey. (See "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
"Right and wrong is relative to power." There is no love. No goodness. No justice. "Money is the meaning of life." These things have been said to me by American attorneys, judges, officials. The same persons sworn to uphold freedom of speech, privacy rights, democracy are responsible for censoring a tortured dissident and intellectual whose greatest offense is to think and speak of the collective loss of our "souls." "There's no such thing as the soul," I am told. It is still my only crime to think and speak freely. Are you one of my torturers? Your silence is complicity in atrocity. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
My words are written in sand. My essays may be destroyed at any time. Each morning dozens of "errors" are inserted in writings that I have struggled to compose, with great care, sometimes for hours and days, weeks and months. The energy and resources devoted to the infliction of suffering on a person whose unforgivable crime is independence of thought and opinions as well as righteous anger at the pains of injustice reveals the depravities of power together with some people's sick need to dominate others. I understand what people in other countries mean by "imperialistic" policies aimed at denying independence and enslaving people. I will not accept enslavement or intellectual colonization. I will not endure or live with philosophical slavery. I will struggle against the embargo placed on my life.
Does this explain the pointless hostility between the U.S. and Cuba? A small nation's insistence on independence? This appetite for domination is enhanced by our newest technologies of sadism. I have no privacy when reading on-line or writing my works. Do you speak to me of ethics, Stuart Rabner? ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.") Please see Emma Graves Fitzsimmons, "4 Teenagers Charged in Youth's Beating Death," in The New York Times, September 29, 2009, at p. A27. (The culprits videotaped their exploits, perhaps as part of a class assignment in psychology.)
This is not a situation that the Chief Justice of a state riddled with legal and political corruption -- where violations of the First Amendment made possible by state action are a daily reality -- can afford to ignore or continue to cover-up. Perpetuation of gross injustice, corrupt, biased legal proceedings in so-called "ethics matters" undermines the credibility of New Jersey courts and judges in all matters. No legal system can tolerate this sort of criticism, made publicly, which sinks into the marrows of the courts and undermines all actions by that system's tainted judges.
My pain is greatest when I think of the harm to the American Constitution resulting from sanctioned government censorship. The experience of torture (I believe) at the hands of Cuban-American Fascists protected by the American legal system and its corrupt managers (in violation of the U.S. Constitution), together with American attorneys, is a graduate education in the politics of the real world. Far from discouraging or destroying my values, this nightmare has confirmed my sense of their urgency and truth. Winston Smith's greatest achievement would be to persuade Big Brother to love human freedom, respecting the DIGNITY of men and women by demonstrating that -- even when faced with enormous pain in Orwell's room 101 -- we may still affirm our humanity by asking that the worst be done to us and not to our loved-ones, while insisting on dignity, pride, and the reality of goodness. I will continue to point out to New Jersey's power-structure: This is what you are. This is what you have become. ("Babalu and Free Speech Too!" and "More Problems for Menendez -- Tapes!")
If Terry Tuchin will not respond to my requests, then perhaps Stacy Tuchin, M.D. of Paramus, New Jersey will respond to my requests for information. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")
If I am in a prison cell and torture chamber -- if I cannot exit this hell of censorship and insults -- then I will insist on my right to love a few persons freely (publicly), to think and speak as I deem best, to accept no injustice without struggle, refusing to deny what I know is true: 2 + 2 = 4. It has been said: "... man tends to achieve his being inasmuch as he develops love and reason. We could say that man is able to love and reason" -- both are forms of communication, languages -- "because he is, but also and conversely, that he is" because he is "capable of reasoning and loving." (Eric Fromm) Please see: "Is it rational to believe in God?" (As of December, 2009 this essay concerning the rationality of deism has been vandalized and censored, again.)
To deny speech, words and the ability to communicate to a person, suppressing and destroying his writings and books, deeply injuring him (deliberately!) -- for years -- in an effort at conditioning, is to dehumanize and enslave a person -- really everyone in society. Naturally, this may be less true of laboratory rats. However, since I am not a laboratory rat, I feel pretty certain that it is true of me. No alleged claim of offense concerning my statements in The Da Vinci Code essay-review justifies censorship in a free society. My statement concerning Christ and St. John was a quotation from a celebrated and unchallenged scholarly work.
Your hatred of gays in Hudson County does not alter the truth in that statement or in my position. You cannot beat up values. You cannot change truth through censorship. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.") I am not threatened or intimidated by the PROMISE to describe me as a "homosexual." Call me anything you like. ("Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism.")
"This is what many of the great philosophers, mystics, and theologians of the East and West have believed. For all of them there is within man [and woman] a spiritual reality that is born precisely because he can know himself and others, and that is a part of [human] life itself."
Eric Fromm & Ramon Xirau, eds., The Nature of Man: A Reader (New York: McMillan, 1968), pp. 9-10. ("Is this atheism's moment?")
We "pseudo-intellectuals" (I have been dismissed in such terms) hope to compensate for our ordinary minds with wide reading and scholarship, without any loss of originality. Perhaps respect can no longer be expected by Americans from their government officials. However, respect is still demanded by the American people -- and all others in the world -- as the first ingredient of political association. This respect is guaranteed to all persons under the American Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Human dignity and respect are not gifts of the State. My rights are not negotiable because they are "inherent" in my humanity. My freedom and rights are part of what I am, not merely things that I have. ("What is 'Homeland Security'?" and "Habeas Corpus," then Meditatio ad Malum et Caritas.)
My computer has been battered, repaired several times, subjected to a relentless assault. My security system has been disabled and made ineffective. My t.v. signal is regularly obstructed. But then, much the same may be said of me. I have been violated and severely damaged. My psychic "security system" has been under attack for many years, injured beyond repair perhaps. I may be denied the means to write -- like a man whose oxygen supply is cut off -- in order that "experts" may observe one person's fascinating death throes and spiritual suffering. Is it interesting for you? Can you learn from my torments? (Again: "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
Do I still live in America? What happened to the U.S. Constitution? Inducing anxiety and stress, threats to family and one's peace of mind, can force a person into himself, imprisoning the "subject" in silence. Silence and apathy are the co-conspirators of illegitimate power, as are secrecy and surveillance, economic threats and pressures. I have decided after 21 years of torture and theft against me -- noise fills my room again -- to reaffirm my commitment to this struggle to think and speak freely, ALWAYS, in opposition to all attempts to control, discipline, coopt, subjectivate or manipulate the human mind and spirit by reducing human beings to the status of things. "Objects." ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")
My daily encounter with torturers is an immersion in a barrel of shit -- the shit of Cuban-American Fascism, racism, homophobia, and ethnic hatred protected and sanctioned by government in one poisonous American jurisdiction run by the mafia, New Jersey. I hope it is only one American "jerseydiction." ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
October 29, 2009 at 4:55 P.M. "Errors" inserted in this essay since this morning have now been corrected.
For any Jewish person to lend him- or herself to such evil, after the events of the twentieth century, is tragic and discouraging. It saddens me to know that such horror is possible. I am not a slave. I am not a laboratory animal. I will not "accept" or "adjust to" such a diminished moral status. I love all of my family members -- equally. Whatever pain I feel, I will do my best to shelter all of you from my sufferings. This is especially true of one woman who needs to know that she cannot lose my love. I will love you no matter what cost I have to pay for that love. I am absolutely unconcerned with whether New Jersey's soiled judiciary "approves" of my loves, ideas, values, or opinions.
My ability to communicate may be taken from me at any time. It has been taken from me in the past at irregular intervals, illegally. It was taken away from me today, despite the provisions of the First Amendment. I cannot avoid expressing my disgust and dismay at the actions of so many members of the Cuban-American community and their friends, at corrupt judges and tribunals in the Garden State, for what they have made of the gift that is the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, what this document says about human freedom and equality for every person under a government of limited powers cannot be destroyed or made untrue by anyone. ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")
What have we become that we remain indifferent to the public torments of any person? How can I believe in America after what I have experienced? It is my American independence that tells me that what I have suffered is evil. God (or love) is beyond the control of laws and men, as are the fundamental ethical and spiritual freedoms of human beings. This includes (I believe) the equal, spiritual love among gay men and lesbian women. If I am beaten or censored for saying this, I will repeat it -- same-sex and heterosexual love are equally "holy" (if you wish to use that word) and deserve identical public respect under our laws. You are invited to disagree with me, not to silence or censor me. Censorship from public officials (or their agents) is a criminal violation of civil rights:
"We cannot give up on utopian hope or socialism. We cannot give up on progress. They are not less apt in light of what we know about the bad side of human nature. They are more necessary."
" ... To accept the world as it (more or less) is, is to help to prolong a state of grave danger. This world, accomodating and countenancing too much of what is not to be tolerated -- plain, persistent injustice, stark, avoidable human suffering -- is a world very receptive to present and future atrocity, a world overpopulated with bystanders. It is one in which the idea is harder and harder to resist that just anything may be done to people while others look on; and there be no consequence. As long as the situation lasts, it degrades the moral culture of the planet. It poisons the conscience of humankind."
Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference (New York & London: Verso, 1998), p. 120.
"Would you have helped Catherine 'Kitty' Genovese?" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'"
August 27, 2009 at 7:49 P.M. An attempt to review my essay "America's Holocaust" was prevented by attacks on my security system. Cubanoid racism. I was forced to reboot my computer, again. I am writing these words from a public computer. Rumors of pending arrests in New Jersey can neither be confirmed nor denied -- at this time. Joe ("The Enforcer") Doria, Esq.? Payback for Ms. Brown? Or part of the Xanadu disaster? How about Anthony Suarez, Esq. for New Jersey Attorney General?
August 27, 2009 at 10:20 A.M. An irremovable notice purporting to come from my security provider has appeared on my screen informing me of "updates." This is strange since I have an automatic live update service. I make use of it every day. Apparently, as a result of this attack against my security system, I am unable to back-up files. This usually means that defacements of writings may be expected. I will continue to struggle. ("'Che': A Movie Review" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
August 26, 2009 at 8:32 P.M. Access to the Internet was obstructed all day. I am now in a position to post the comment below.
Scott Shane & Mark Mazzetti, "Records Show Strict Rules For C.I.A. Interrogations: Details of Harsh Treatment Were Overseen by Managers, Lawyers and Doctors," in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A1. (The photos of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln have been blocked, probably by American public officials, access to the Internet from my home is denied to me.)
"The Torture Papers," (Editorial) in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A22. (" ... lawless and morally repugnant detention policies" OVERSEEN by American physicians, lawyers and politicians.")
David Kociniewski, "New Jersey Prosecutor Who Got Loan From Christie Quits," in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A18. (Ms. Brown -- unlike Anthony Suarez, Esq. -- resigned her office as the Democrat-Mafia machine in New Jersey "spends millions on negative attacks and play down and dirty in order to win ...")
August 26, 2009 at 9:45 A.M. I am, once again, denied access to the Internet as part of New Jersey's harassment, censorship, and silencing effort. I will do my best to find a public computer to post a warning about what has happened to me today. Censorship may happen to you. I will attempt to post this essay, part of which appeared under the title "The Long Goodbye" on a prior occasion when Trenton's state-sanctioned censorship obstructed my Internet access. If only I were a corporation -- a fictitious person with lots of money -- then my "free speech" rights would be respected.
I do not believe that China or Cuba would be worse in their treatment of writers expressing opinions than the people responsible for these tactics that are used against a person who has experienced psychological torture, financial guerrilla warfare, theft, many kinds of rape and other assaults. The control panel at the bottom of my computer is gone, after restarting my computer. Scans are impossible because updating is impossible. If I mention "Fidel Castro" new attacks are directed at my writings. Therefore, I will make it a point to mention Fidel Castro even if I happen to disagree with him. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")
Liu Xiaobo -- a Chinese dissident possibly facing criminal charges -- has not been raped, beaten, abused during his period of incarceration. He is subjected to the same legal process as other alleged offenders. A report has been prepared by police investigation. Prosecutors have the right to reject or accept a recommendation to proceed against the accused who will be notified of charges, if any, and have an opportunity to respond. Liu Xiaobo may be released, after pre-trial detention, if charges are not filed or dismissed. By any rational standard, this person is vastly better off than America's detainees and many alleged offenders in this country subjected to "secret" proceedings and psychological torture for decades. Keith Bradsher, "China: Police Send Report on Dissident," in The New York Times, December 10, 2009, at p. A20.
I express my concern and solidarity for Mr. Liu and his family members together with the hope that this gentleman may be returned to his family soon.
To speak to me of "ethics" under these circumstances, as these torture tactics continue and provide a spectacle for an audience that knows them to be criminal and unconstitutional, is absurd. YOU are the criminals, not me. I will not stop writing. I will not alter my opinions. I will continue to post writings on-line. I will not be intimidated by anyone. Your ignorance and shameful inadequacies in losing debates with me will not be changed. You will not become any smarter or any less mistaken in your views if you silence me. Philosophical and legal controversies are not settled by violence or brutality, nor by censorship. You cannot beat up ideas.
Something frightening is on display in this theater of human cruelty and intolerance of dissent. This is not the country described in America's Constitution nor in our self-presentation to the world. This is harmful to me, personally, but it is vastly more wounding to America's Constitution and to the U.S. Senate, also scary for every artist or dissident struggling to think and create his or her work in this environment. Ironically, the pattern is now clear as, almost a year ago, the same brutal censorship was implemented. America is not a Banana Republic, as I have said many times, controversial opinions may and should be expressed. Disagreements are welcome; censorship is not. ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")
The world no longer believes America's claims concerning freedom of speech and conscience. What follows was written almost a year ago today. These tactics did not work then; they will not work now. How does a Jew become Mengele, Terry Tuchin? How does a Jew become Eichman, Stuart Rabner? How can you be a part of this cybercrime and call yourself a decent human being, let alone an attorney? Whatever your ethnicity, race, sexual-orientation and whatever you feel about me -- these crimes should trouble you. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
It is a beautiful morning in New York. Later I will walk in the city. I felt that I should try to post these words, as a farewell of sorts. I am unable to access the Internet or my sites, again. I cannot -- as of 10:40 A.M. on August 7, 2008 -- communicate my opinions and feelings at my home computer. I will search for another computer beginning today. I suspect an illegal interference with my cable service provider, an illegal network, and other nefarious disruption of my communication efforts. What else is new?
August 21, 2008 at 11:12 P.M. Images were blocked earlier today. I do not know whether I can post images at Critique. I will try again to do so. If I am unable to attach images to these essays, then I will provide links in order for readers to view the images that I wish to associate with these essays. I will struggle to continue writing no matter what new obstacles come my way. ("Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
Yesterday, once again, several of my essays were damaged, some have been altered on so many occasions that it is now impossible for me to estimate the number of times when I have been forced to make corrections. The goal of this process, which I have experienced for years and documented extensively, is to crush the spirit of a human being. The destruction of a life and mind is a means of controlling a person by transforming him into something that is less than human. After all of his tortures, Winston Smith's greatest performance was the sincere love of Big Brother. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
The mega-societies in which we live -- I am sure that the phenomenon that I describe and endure, every day, is bigger than any one country -- constrain the human spirit in order for public authority to become pervasive and total. The aim of postmodernist governments is to replace God in the human scale of values. To argue that such an ambition is unethical or evil is absurd because, we are told, governments define the scope of good and evil. When government is in bed with organized crime -- as in New Jersey -- things are even worse. China is Switzerland by comparison with New Jersey. (See "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
"Right and wrong is relative to power." There is no love. No goodness. No justice. "Money is the meaning of life." These things have been said to me by American attorneys, judges, officials. The same persons sworn to uphold freedom of speech, privacy rights, democracy are responsible for censoring a tortured dissident and intellectual whose greatest offense is to think and speak of the collective loss of our "souls." "There's no such thing as the soul," I am told. It is still my only crime to think and speak freely. Are you one of my torturers? Your silence is complicity in atrocity. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
My words are written in sand. My essays may be destroyed at any time. Each morning dozens of "errors" are inserted in writings that I have struggled to compose, with great care, sometimes for hours and days, weeks and months. The energy and resources devoted to the infliction of suffering on a person whose unforgivable crime is independence of thought and opinions as well as righteous anger at the pains of injustice reveals the depravities of power together with some people's sick need to dominate others. I understand what people in other countries mean by "imperialistic" policies aimed at denying independence and enslaving people. I will not accept enslavement or intellectual colonization. I will not endure or live with philosophical slavery. I will struggle against the embargo placed on my life.
Does this explain the pointless hostility between the U.S. and Cuba? A small nation's insistence on independence? This appetite for domination is enhanced by our newest technologies of sadism. I have no privacy when reading on-line or writing my works. Do you speak to me of ethics, Stuart Rabner? ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.") Please see Emma Graves Fitzsimmons, "4 Teenagers Charged in Youth's Beating Death," in The New York Times, September 29, 2009, at p. A27. (The culprits videotaped their exploits, perhaps as part of a class assignment in psychology.)
This is not a situation that the Chief Justice of a state riddled with legal and political corruption -- where violations of the First Amendment made possible by state action are a daily reality -- can afford to ignore or continue to cover-up. Perpetuation of gross injustice, corrupt, biased legal proceedings in so-called "ethics matters" undermines the credibility of New Jersey courts and judges in all matters. No legal system can tolerate this sort of criticism, made publicly, which sinks into the marrows of the courts and undermines all actions by that system's tainted judges.
My pain is greatest when I think of the harm to the American Constitution resulting from sanctioned government censorship. The experience of torture (I believe) at the hands of Cuban-American Fascists protected by the American legal system and its corrupt managers (in violation of the U.S. Constitution), together with American attorneys, is a graduate education in the politics of the real world. Far from discouraging or destroying my values, this nightmare has confirmed my sense of their urgency and truth. Winston Smith's greatest achievement would be to persuade Big Brother to love human freedom, respecting the DIGNITY of men and women by demonstrating that -- even when faced with enormous pain in Orwell's room 101 -- we may still affirm our humanity by asking that the worst be done to us and not to our loved-ones, while insisting on dignity, pride, and the reality of goodness. I will continue to point out to New Jersey's power-structure: This is what you are. This is what you have become. ("Babalu and Free Speech Too!" and "More Problems for Menendez -- Tapes!")
If Terry Tuchin will not respond to my requests, then perhaps Stacy Tuchin, M.D. of Paramus, New Jersey will respond to my requests for information. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")
If I am in a prison cell and torture chamber -- if I cannot exit this hell of censorship and insults -- then I will insist on my right to love a few persons freely (publicly), to think and speak as I deem best, to accept no injustice without struggle, refusing to deny what I know is true: 2 + 2 = 4. It has been said: "... man tends to achieve his being inasmuch as he develops love and reason. We could say that man is able to love and reason" -- both are forms of communication, languages -- "because he is, but also and conversely, that he is" because he is "capable of reasoning and loving." (Eric Fromm) Please see: "Is it rational to believe in God?" (As of December, 2009 this essay concerning the rationality of deism has been vandalized and censored, again.)
To deny speech, words and the ability to communicate to a person, suppressing and destroying his writings and books, deeply injuring him (deliberately!) -- for years -- in an effort at conditioning, is to dehumanize and enslave a person -- really everyone in society. Naturally, this may be less true of laboratory rats. However, since I am not a laboratory rat, I feel pretty certain that it is true of me. No alleged claim of offense concerning my statements in The Da Vinci Code essay-review justifies censorship in a free society. My statement concerning Christ and St. John was a quotation from a celebrated and unchallenged scholarly work.
Your hatred of gays in Hudson County does not alter the truth in that statement or in my position. You cannot beat up values. You cannot change truth through censorship. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.") I am not threatened or intimidated by the PROMISE to describe me as a "homosexual." Call me anything you like. ("Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism.")
"This is what many of the great philosophers, mystics, and theologians of the East and West have believed. For all of them there is within man [and woman] a spiritual reality that is born precisely because he can know himself and others, and that is a part of [human] life itself."
Eric Fromm & Ramon Xirau, eds., The Nature of Man: A Reader (New York: McMillan, 1968), pp. 9-10. ("Is this atheism's moment?")
We "pseudo-intellectuals" (I have been dismissed in such terms) hope to compensate for our ordinary minds with wide reading and scholarship, without any loss of originality. Perhaps respect can no longer be expected by Americans from their government officials. However, respect is still demanded by the American people -- and all others in the world -- as the first ingredient of political association. This respect is guaranteed to all persons under the American Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Human dignity and respect are not gifts of the State. My rights are not negotiable because they are "inherent" in my humanity. My freedom and rights are part of what I am, not merely things that I have. ("What is 'Homeland Security'?" and "Habeas Corpus," then Meditatio ad Malum et Caritas.)
My computer has been battered, repaired several times, subjected to a relentless assault. My security system has been disabled and made ineffective. My t.v. signal is regularly obstructed. But then, much the same may be said of me. I have been violated and severely damaged. My psychic "security system" has been under attack for many years, injured beyond repair perhaps. I may be denied the means to write -- like a man whose oxygen supply is cut off -- in order that "experts" may observe one person's fascinating death throes and spiritual suffering. Is it interesting for you? Can you learn from my torments? (Again: "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
Do I still live in America? What happened to the U.S. Constitution? Inducing anxiety and stress, threats to family and one's peace of mind, can force a person into himself, imprisoning the "subject" in silence. Silence and apathy are the co-conspirators of illegitimate power, as are secrecy and surveillance, economic threats and pressures. I have decided after 21 years of torture and theft against me -- noise fills my room again -- to reaffirm my commitment to this struggle to think and speak freely, ALWAYS, in opposition to all attempts to control, discipline, coopt, subjectivate or manipulate the human mind and spirit by reducing human beings to the status of things. "Objects." ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")
My daily encounter with torturers is an immersion in a barrel of shit -- the shit of Cuban-American Fascism, racism, homophobia, and ethnic hatred protected and sanctioned by government in one poisonous American jurisdiction run by the mafia, New Jersey. I hope it is only one American "jerseydiction." ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
October 29, 2009 at 4:55 P.M. "Errors" inserted in this essay since this morning have now been corrected.
For any Jewish person to lend him- or herself to such evil, after the events of the twentieth century, is tragic and discouraging. It saddens me to know that such horror is possible. I am not a slave. I am not a laboratory animal. I will not "accept" or "adjust to" such a diminished moral status. I love all of my family members -- equally. Whatever pain I feel, I will do my best to shelter all of you from my sufferings. This is especially true of one woman who needs to know that she cannot lose my love. I will love you no matter what cost I have to pay for that love. I am absolutely unconcerned with whether New Jersey's soiled judiciary "approves" of my loves, ideas, values, or opinions.
My ability to communicate may be taken from me at any time. It has been taken from me in the past at irregular intervals, illegally. It was taken away from me today, despite the provisions of the First Amendment. I cannot avoid expressing my disgust and dismay at the actions of so many members of the Cuban-American community and their friends, at corrupt judges and tribunals in the Garden State, for what they have made of the gift that is the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, what this document says about human freedom and equality for every person under a government of limited powers cannot be destroyed or made untrue by anyone. ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")
What have we become that we remain indifferent to the public torments of any person? How can I believe in America after what I have experienced? It is my American independence that tells me that what I have suffered is evil. God (or love) is beyond the control of laws and men, as are the fundamental ethical and spiritual freedoms of human beings. This includes (I believe) the equal, spiritual love among gay men and lesbian women. If I am beaten or censored for saying this, I will repeat it -- same-sex and heterosexual love are equally "holy" (if you wish to use that word) and deserve identical public respect under our laws. You are invited to disagree with me, not to silence or censor me. Censorship from public officials (or their agents) is a criminal violation of civil rights:
"We cannot give up on utopian hope or socialism. We cannot give up on progress. They are not less apt in light of what we know about the bad side of human nature. They are more necessary."
" ... To accept the world as it (more or less) is, is to help to prolong a state of grave danger. This world, accomodating and countenancing too much of what is not to be tolerated -- plain, persistent injustice, stark, avoidable human suffering -- is a world very receptive to present and future atrocity, a world overpopulated with bystanders. It is one in which the idea is harder and harder to resist that just anything may be done to people while others look on; and there be no consequence. As long as the situation lasts, it degrades the moral culture of the planet. It poisons the conscience of humankind."
Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference (New York & London: Verso, 1998), p. 120.
"Would you have helped Catherine 'Kitty' Genovese?" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'"
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
"The Two Marys": Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.
August 26, 2009 at 4:45 P.M. My Internet connection from my home computer is obstructed. I am posting this notice from a public computer. I will try to continue writing from public computers. None of my opinions have changed. Please see, "Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State." I cannot say whether, where, or when I will write again. I will try to restore my home Internet connection.
June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor, 1977).
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1979).
Reynolds Price, Three Gospels (New York: Touchstone, 1996).
Cynthia Freeland, "The Women Who Loved Jesus: Suffering and the Traditional Feminine Role," in Jorge J.E. Gracia, ed., Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), p. 151.
James Lawler, "God and Man Separated No More: Hegel Overcomes the Unhappy Consciousness of Gibson's Christianity," in Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy, at p. 62.
Raymond Plant, Hegel (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 18.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York & London, 1990 & 1999), pp. 18-33 (especially, "Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary, and Beyond").
H.D., Pilate's Wife (New York: New Directions, 2000), (original date of manuscript, 1929).
Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos (New York & London: Penguin, 2005).
Errol E. Harris, The Reality of Time (New York: SUNY, 1988).
I am unable to post images in my blog today, but I refuse to be silenced. As I type these words, I have no idea whether they will find their way on to the blog/group or disappear into the electronic ether. My refusal to alter my opinions or to refrain from expressing them is only confirmed and reinforced by these encounters with hackers, viruses and spyware. I have lost count of my passwords at this point. I am running a scan right now, though it doesn't seem to do much good. It helps me to think that it is always the fifteenth round when I log in and try to write something. My recently posted short story, "God is Texting Me!" was altered overnight. I believe that I have made all necessary corrections, for now.
I can't be intimidated at this stage in my life. I am weirdly unafraid of anything and determined to persist in my struggle. I hope to face people who have harmed me -- along with many others -- also to find someone I love. I may not succeed in my effort to do these things. I promise you that, if I don't succeed, I will at least die trying to do them.
My review of The Da Vinci Code has generated a lot of controversy, including responses from persons who think of that novel as a kind of Gospel. Frightening. I am considering whether to include a revised and expanded version of the review in my forthcoming essay collection, which will make a lovely Christmas gift for one and all. Regrettably, my book will not be sent to online book-sellers. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
I wish to reaffirm my commitment to the sanctity of same-sex love and equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. You cannot beat up ideas. You do not prevail in discussions by censoring or suppressing the speech of adversaries. My quotations from Professor Boswell's book concerning Christ and St. John remain accurate. The continuing experience of censorship and violations of privacy is deeply painful to me, personally, but much more wounding to the Constitution of the United States of America. Someday, all of us will enjoy freedom of expression in America. ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me,'" then "American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles.")
Readers have expressed an interest in my comment concerning the "two Marys." Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of Jesus are aspects of the "eternal feminine" in Christianity that are always in relation. They should be seen to constitute a kind of dialectic. A stupid misreading of this idea is to believe that I am suggesting something like a crude Freudian dichotomy between madonna and whore, the mother/prostitute bifurcation appropriately detested by feminists. Some feminists' solution is to create an even more crude division between "good" (feminine) and "evil" (masculine), as evidenced by several responses to my essay-review of The Da Vinci Code.
Take a look at your son, if you have one, then tell me that every male child is inherently evil by virtue of his genitals, then explain -- in your next breath -- why it is wrong to judge women on the basis of their reproductive equipment. Such ludicrous forms of knee-jerk, sophomoric "femi-Nazism" are as loathsome as the sexism and misogyny they oppose. In fact, hatred of men is a kind of sexism.
The relation between the two "Marys" (I am told that "Maria" is too "ethnic") in Christian symbolism (there is no such thing as "symbology") is temporal as well as thematic. It is an attempt to articulate -- in the language of archetypes and images -- the idea that a woman's identity encompasses roles governed by the "biological clock" as well as culture, not to mention freedom or choice in reacting to or interpreting those roles, with love. What do those roles mean today? Wife? Mother? Daughter?
The crucifixion depicts a man suffering on the cross; but there is another crucifixion, usually unappreciated, taking place at the foot of the man on the cross. It is the suffering of women depicted in a mother's pain at the agony of a son, who is dying before her eyes; and a woman's pain at the suffering of a man she loves, from whom she is parted and whose extreme agony she knows very well -- since she is also LIVING IT -- and she has no choice about sharing in this agony. Among the sufferings of women forming traditional subjects in mythology and folklore is the absence of choice, powerlessness, the struggle against fate. I urge you to visit the Smithsonian Institute to see Leonardo's "Ginevra Di Benci." I will never regret or relent in my commitment to the women I love. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina" and "God is Texting Me!")
It is essential to woman's love, especially, that what happens to the beloved also happens to oneself. "Christianity thus advocates," Cynthia Freeland suggests, "typically female behaviors of caring, love, [empathy,] ... and compassion." The point being made by Professor Freeland is metaphorical. She is alluding to what is done by women, mostly, in our world, which is healing and repairing our moral wounds. Professor Freeland is also appealing to what is female in everyone, a quality that recognizes this need to comfort and care for others. The ritual of washing the feet at Easter is symbolic of this traditionally powerless role for women and others deemed "like" women, which is morally empowering for persons in such positions, who shall "inherit the earth." ("'The Reader': A Movie Review" and see the duality between Susan Sarandon's and Kate Winslet's characters, which are really one woman, in "Romance and Cigarettes.")
I invite you to read my short stories "The Soldier and the Ballerina" and "Pieta," then consider which character in each story is playing a more feminine role? Don't be fooled by what French critics describe as a literary character's "costume." ("The Taming of Somebody" and "Beauty and the Beast.")
See the faces of mothers whose sons return in body bags from war; look at the wives and sisters of those dead soldiers. Do they not suffer just as much or more than those wounded or dying men? I think so. Notice how those women cling to one another. Now I ask that you read my essay: "What is it like to be tortured?" How does a Jew become Mengele, Terry Tuchin? How can anyone bring about such suffering because it is "interesting" or because you can "learn from it" or for a "fee"? ("What is it like to be tortured?")
The two "Marys" are made one by embodying women's pains in this world at the sufferings of men they love, which adds to their own sufferings, in a way that no man's pain for a wife or mother equals. It works the other way too: Men hurt when women they love suffer. I can attest to that. Yet it is women who seem to have a special aptitude for suffering in this world since they are (usually) burdened with greater poverty and much less power than men.
Among important philosophers, the recent writings of Martha Nussbaum should be mentioned because she is concerned with these questions regarding the feminization of war and poverty. The part of me that suffers or hurts "for" others -- I know that this is paradoxical -- is feminine. Think of child-birth, joy at pain in giving life to another, an experience which is reflective of the ultimate paradox in all human life. The joy and sweetness we experience is always, partly, a result of life's fleeting character and the pain of loss in life.
Feminine identity is essentially relational, social, communal (Hegel); masculine identity is more individualistic, alienated, autonomous (Kant). These identities are choices or options for everyone. They are cultural phenomena and not necessarily biological. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory," see also an essay which has been vandalized many times, "'Shoot 'Em Up": A Movie Review" as well as "'Holy Smoke': A Movie Review.")
This feminine aspect of "empathetic imagination" is also found in most men, including those who are unaware of it. Empathy is a feminine attribute: by hurting "for" others, men can find their feminine sides more easily. This takes courage. Admitting to such feelings takes even more courage for heterosexual men in sexist societies. These archetypal representations of feminine and masculine forms of suffering are within each of us. To divide the world into one good and another bad gender is to live in a highly simplistic and false setting. Worse, to deny half of your nature is to maim your own sensibilities and affective capacities.
"Female" is a concept equal to many things, including the unity of love and death in the paradox of identity as self-giving: Kenosis. ("'The American': A Movie Review.")
"Were not the Hegelians justified," writes Donald McKinnon, "in construing the Noli me Tangere of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalene in the record of the fourth Gospel as a concrete mythical expression of the demand that Christians discard the bondage of a false attachment to the details of a particular history, and adhere within themselves to a way of life which they must realize in circumstances altogether strange to those who first listened to Jesus?"
A woman's identity includes roles as lover and wife, mother and matriarch at different points in a life's journey. Identity for a woman is inclusive of eros, caritas, filia on a daily basis. Hence, what or who a woman is must be more complex and much more intersubjective than identity for a man.
Every woman you know will be both "Marys" -- the Magdalene and Virgin -- every day (at different moments) and, certainly, over her lifetime. These are points on a spectrum. The analogy to "acting" a role in life, Shakespeare's great metaphor, should be obvious. ("What you will ..." and "Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
The Hegelian "reaching-out" to others as social identity (Stillichkeit) can result in absorption of the other (masculine domination) or celebration of otherness (feminine pluralism). Both are human and universal. Which option do you like? ("'The French Lieutenant's Woman': A Review Essay" and "'Holy Smoke': A Movie Review.")
Women are the keepers of lived-time. Bergson's "time as duration" is a woman. Women weaving the texts of our lives is a common motif in world mythology: Woman is language-giver, time-keeper, nurturer and healer, companion at birth and death. Philosophical explorations of the concept of time have been better at recording time's feminine identity as opposed to scientific discussions of time's reduction to what is objectively discussable. Contrast Brian Greene, "The Frozen River," in The Fabric of the Cosmos (New York & London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 127-142 with Errol E. Harris, "Biological Time," in The Reality of Time (New York: SUNY, 1988), pp. 61-79. (Not surprisingly, the hour glass is a universal symbol of the womb and 9 month cycle of gestation.) ("A Review of the T.V. Show 'Alice.'")
Love the women in your life. Surprise her with a gift or a rose, make her laugh, sprinkle a little stardust into her evening. And don't forget to get the toilet paper and throw out the garbage while you're at it. And don't be home too late.
June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor, 1977).
Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1979).
Reynolds Price, Three Gospels (New York: Touchstone, 1996).
Cynthia Freeland, "The Women Who Loved Jesus: Suffering and the Traditional Feminine Role," in Jorge J.E. Gracia, ed., Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), p. 151.
James Lawler, "God and Man Separated No More: Hegel Overcomes the Unhappy Consciousness of Gibson's Christianity," in Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy, at p. 62.
Raymond Plant, Hegel (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 18.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York & London, 1990 & 1999), pp. 18-33 (especially, "Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary, and Beyond").
H.D., Pilate's Wife (New York: New Directions, 2000), (original date of manuscript, 1929).
Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos (New York & London: Penguin, 2005).
Errol E. Harris, The Reality of Time (New York: SUNY, 1988).
I am unable to post images in my blog today, but I refuse to be silenced. As I type these words, I have no idea whether they will find their way on to the blog/group or disappear into the electronic ether. My refusal to alter my opinions or to refrain from expressing them is only confirmed and reinforced by these encounters with hackers, viruses and spyware. I have lost count of my passwords at this point. I am running a scan right now, though it doesn't seem to do much good. It helps me to think that it is always the fifteenth round when I log in and try to write something. My recently posted short story, "God is Texting Me!" was altered overnight. I believe that I have made all necessary corrections, for now.
I can't be intimidated at this stage in my life. I am weirdly unafraid of anything and determined to persist in my struggle. I hope to face people who have harmed me -- along with many others -- also to find someone I love. I may not succeed in my effort to do these things. I promise you that, if I don't succeed, I will at least die trying to do them.
My review of The Da Vinci Code has generated a lot of controversy, including responses from persons who think of that novel as a kind of Gospel. Frightening. I am considering whether to include a revised and expanded version of the review in my forthcoming essay collection, which will make a lovely Christmas gift for one and all. Regrettably, my book will not be sent to online book-sellers. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
I wish to reaffirm my commitment to the sanctity of same-sex love and equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. You cannot beat up ideas. You do not prevail in discussions by censoring or suppressing the speech of adversaries. My quotations from Professor Boswell's book concerning Christ and St. John remain accurate. The continuing experience of censorship and violations of privacy is deeply painful to me, personally, but much more wounding to the Constitution of the United States of America. Someday, all of us will enjoy freedom of expression in America. ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me,'" then "American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles.")
Readers have expressed an interest in my comment concerning the "two Marys." Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of Jesus are aspects of the "eternal feminine" in Christianity that are always in relation. They should be seen to constitute a kind of dialectic. A stupid misreading of this idea is to believe that I am suggesting something like a crude Freudian dichotomy between madonna and whore, the mother/prostitute bifurcation appropriately detested by feminists. Some feminists' solution is to create an even more crude division between "good" (feminine) and "evil" (masculine), as evidenced by several responses to my essay-review of The Da Vinci Code.
Take a look at your son, if you have one, then tell me that every male child is inherently evil by virtue of his genitals, then explain -- in your next breath -- why it is wrong to judge women on the basis of their reproductive equipment. Such ludicrous forms of knee-jerk, sophomoric "femi-Nazism" are as loathsome as the sexism and misogyny they oppose. In fact, hatred of men is a kind of sexism.
The relation between the two "Marys" (I am told that "Maria" is too "ethnic") in Christian symbolism (there is no such thing as "symbology") is temporal as well as thematic. It is an attempt to articulate -- in the language of archetypes and images -- the idea that a woman's identity encompasses roles governed by the "biological clock" as well as culture, not to mention freedom or choice in reacting to or interpreting those roles, with love. What do those roles mean today? Wife? Mother? Daughter?
The crucifixion depicts a man suffering on the cross; but there is another crucifixion, usually unappreciated, taking place at the foot of the man on the cross. It is the suffering of women depicted in a mother's pain at the agony of a son, who is dying before her eyes; and a woman's pain at the suffering of a man she loves, from whom she is parted and whose extreme agony she knows very well -- since she is also LIVING IT -- and she has no choice about sharing in this agony. Among the sufferings of women forming traditional subjects in mythology and folklore is the absence of choice, powerlessness, the struggle against fate. I urge you to visit the Smithsonian Institute to see Leonardo's "Ginevra Di Benci." I will never regret or relent in my commitment to the women I love. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina" and "God is Texting Me!")
It is essential to woman's love, especially, that what happens to the beloved also happens to oneself. "Christianity thus advocates," Cynthia Freeland suggests, "typically female behaviors of caring, love, [empathy,] ... and compassion." The point being made by Professor Freeland is metaphorical. She is alluding to what is done by women, mostly, in our world, which is healing and repairing our moral wounds. Professor Freeland is also appealing to what is female in everyone, a quality that recognizes this need to comfort and care for others. The ritual of washing the feet at Easter is symbolic of this traditionally powerless role for women and others deemed "like" women, which is morally empowering for persons in such positions, who shall "inherit the earth." ("'The Reader': A Movie Review" and see the duality between Susan Sarandon's and Kate Winslet's characters, which are really one woman, in "Romance and Cigarettes.")
I invite you to read my short stories "The Soldier and the Ballerina" and "Pieta," then consider which character in each story is playing a more feminine role? Don't be fooled by what French critics describe as a literary character's "costume." ("The Taming of Somebody" and "Beauty and the Beast.")
See the faces of mothers whose sons return in body bags from war; look at the wives and sisters of those dead soldiers. Do they not suffer just as much or more than those wounded or dying men? I think so. Notice how those women cling to one another. Now I ask that you read my essay: "What is it like to be tortured?" How does a Jew become Mengele, Terry Tuchin? How can anyone bring about such suffering because it is "interesting" or because you can "learn from it" or for a "fee"? ("What is it like to be tortured?")
The two "Marys" are made one by embodying women's pains in this world at the sufferings of men they love, which adds to their own sufferings, in a way that no man's pain for a wife or mother equals. It works the other way too: Men hurt when women they love suffer. I can attest to that. Yet it is women who seem to have a special aptitude for suffering in this world since they are (usually) burdened with greater poverty and much less power than men.
Among important philosophers, the recent writings of Martha Nussbaum should be mentioned because she is concerned with these questions regarding the feminization of war and poverty. The part of me that suffers or hurts "for" others -- I know that this is paradoxical -- is feminine. Think of child-birth, joy at pain in giving life to another, an experience which is reflective of the ultimate paradox in all human life. The joy and sweetness we experience is always, partly, a result of life's fleeting character and the pain of loss in life.
Feminine identity is essentially relational, social, communal (Hegel); masculine identity is more individualistic, alienated, autonomous (Kant). These identities are choices or options for everyone. They are cultural phenomena and not necessarily biological. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory," see also an essay which has been vandalized many times, "'Shoot 'Em Up": A Movie Review" as well as "'Holy Smoke': A Movie Review.")
This feminine aspect of "empathetic imagination" is also found in most men, including those who are unaware of it. Empathy is a feminine attribute: by hurting "for" others, men can find their feminine sides more easily. This takes courage. Admitting to such feelings takes even more courage for heterosexual men in sexist societies. These archetypal representations of feminine and masculine forms of suffering are within each of us. To divide the world into one good and another bad gender is to live in a highly simplistic and false setting. Worse, to deny half of your nature is to maim your own sensibilities and affective capacities.
"Female" is a concept equal to many things, including the unity of love and death in the paradox of identity as self-giving: Kenosis. ("'The American': A Movie Review.")
"Were not the Hegelians justified," writes Donald McKinnon, "in construing the Noli me Tangere of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalene in the record of the fourth Gospel as a concrete mythical expression of the demand that Christians discard the bondage of a false attachment to the details of a particular history, and adhere within themselves to a way of life which they must realize in circumstances altogether strange to those who first listened to Jesus?"
A woman's identity includes roles as lover and wife, mother and matriarch at different points in a life's journey. Identity for a woman is inclusive of eros, caritas, filia on a daily basis. Hence, what or who a woman is must be more complex and much more intersubjective than identity for a man.
Every woman you know will be both "Marys" -- the Magdalene and Virgin -- every day (at different moments) and, certainly, over her lifetime. These are points on a spectrum. The analogy to "acting" a role in life, Shakespeare's great metaphor, should be obvious. ("What you will ..." and "Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
The Hegelian "reaching-out" to others as social identity (Stillichkeit) can result in absorption of the other (masculine domination) or celebration of otherness (feminine pluralism). Both are human and universal. Which option do you like? ("'The French Lieutenant's Woman': A Review Essay" and "'Holy Smoke': A Movie Review.")
Women are the keepers of lived-time. Bergson's "time as duration" is a woman. Women weaving the texts of our lives is a common motif in world mythology: Woman is language-giver, time-keeper, nurturer and healer, companion at birth and death. Philosophical explorations of the concept of time have been better at recording time's feminine identity as opposed to scientific discussions of time's reduction to what is objectively discussable. Contrast Brian Greene, "The Frozen River," in The Fabric of the Cosmos (New York & London: Penguin, 2005), pp. 127-142 with Errol E. Harris, "Biological Time," in The Reality of Time (New York: SUNY, 1988), pp. 61-79. (Not surprisingly, the hour glass is a universal symbol of the womb and 9 month cycle of gestation.) ("A Review of the T.V. Show 'Alice.'")
Love the women in your life. Surprise her with a gift or a rose, make her laugh, sprinkle a little stardust into her evening. And don't forget to get the toilet paper and throw out the garbage while you're at it. And don't be home too late.
Monday, August 24, 2009
"The Da Vinci Code": A Review Essay.
October 24, 2010 at 9:14 A.M. Two letters were altered in essays, other "errors" may have been inserted in writings with the goal of maximizing "frustration-inducement." I have done my best to correct all inserted "errors," often the identical corrections have been made dozens of times in this work.
July 28, 2010 at 4:17 P.M. I am shocked to discover "errors" inserted by hackers in a number of my essays. I can only hope to have made all necessary corrections.
August 24, 2009 at 10:43 A.M. This essay has received more than the usual number of attacks, defacements, and blocking of images. This may have to do with hatred of the Church. The Pope would say: "Pray for them." I will revise this work to correct errors inserted in it. I will attempt to attach an image to this essay-review, once again, then I will await further tampering and alterations, so as to make the same corrections once more. I am blocking:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N4359.MSN/B218937... (NJ)
New errors have, indeed, been discovered which were not found in my earlier versions of this essay. I will make the corrections again.
November 30, 2007 at 11:39 A.M. I received a call from 303-395-2345 and blocked:
http://view.atcmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90xWBCBRB00110msn/direct;wi.728;hi.90/01 (NJ, OAE?)
More "errors" added and corrections made. November 2, 2008 at 9:38 P.M. This is actually better than I expected. I will wait overnight to re-post the essay, since several essays were vandalized today. More will probably be damaged tonight. My daughter is also experiencing difficulties with her lap top, for some reason. She complains of stomach pains. I am sure this is coincidental. I will continue to struggle.
People who hate Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and those who love it have had their say. No minds have been changed. Even a movie starring Tom Hanks -- who is upstaged by the city of Paris -- is now part of the Code experience. Mr. Brown's reviews have not been great, especially among scholars. Mr. Brown is making a lot of money and probably does not care very much what university professors think. I don't blame him.
The novel is standard pop entertainment which does not merit much commentary. Mr. Brown has laced his potboiler with allusions to scholarly works, bizarre criticisms of the Catholic Church, allegations of a conspiracy to suppress the "truth" about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, woven an allegory concerning the quest for the Holy Grail into his plot and made a number of controversial historical and philosophical claims, not to mention allegations concerning the "meaning" of several great works of art by Leonardo and others. All of this literary game-playing is just kind of thrown into a very thin text and mixed together. It is difficult to know where to begin to impose order on Brown's chaos. When it comes to the history of art, "Leonardo" is kind of like Elvis in Las Vegas -- you only need a first name.
I will first summarize the plot and Brown's most important symbolism, without giving away too much, in case someone has not yet read his book. Then I will examine some of Brown's theological claims and charges against the Church (which are mostly ludicrous); next, I will focus on Brown's interpretive claims concerning famous works of art and various texts; finally, I will say a word or two about the role of Mary Magdalene and women in Christianity.
Dan Brown is no theologian. He is not a historian, mythologist, nor a philosopher. Brown's book is pulp fiction and no more. Do NOT take it seriously. Incidentally, the name Mary the Magdalene or Magdelen is a subject of dispute among historians. If you are interested in the themes inadequately or incompetently explored in The Da Vinci Code -- which are certainly important and fascinating to me -- then there are many fine novels available where you will find them better discussed and more accurately analyzed.
My suggestions for those who are interested in the feminine principle or "sacred feminine" and in literary explorations of this theme today, is to read A.S. Byatt's novels, especially The Game (New York: Vintage, 1992). Also, Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding (London: Picador, 1990). Gore Vidal's Julian (New York: Random House, 1962) will guide you through the first centuries of Christianity, so will Anthony Burgess in The Kingdom of the Wicked (New York: Arbor House, 1985). I strongly recommend a book that I have read only in parts because it is difficult to find: Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Random House, 1976) and Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In The Wake of the Goddess: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformations of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 32-44 (women-goddesses as the collective source of intellectual and artistic life).
Those who are more philosophically inclined should consult Robert C. Solomon, Love, Emotion, Myth and Metaphor (New York: Prometheus, 1990) and Robert C. Solomon & Kathleen M. Higgins, The Philosophy of Erotic Love (Kansas: University of Kansas, 1991). On the Grail myth, see Emma Jung & Marie-Louise Von Franz, The Grail Legend (Coventure, 1986); and compare Anne Barring & Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess (London: Viking, 1991), with Robert Graves, The White Goddess (which I can not find on my shelves), also Lindsay Clarke's retelling of Parzival (London: Thorsons, 2001).
For historians, you can not do better than Professor Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988) on the gnostic texts and women's role(s) in early Christianity. Also, take a look at Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Notice A.S. Byatt's use of "serpents" as phallic (evil?) metaphors, then Iris Murdoch and Mircea Eliade on "Sacred and Profane Loves." (See also Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited.) Finally, Louis Mackey's "Eros Into Logos: The Rhetoric of Courtly Love," in The Philosophy of Erotic Love, p. 336 is a must. Irving Singer's second volume in his massive work The Nature of Love should be compared with Denis De Rougemont's Love in the Western World.
Woman or the feminine principle in Jungian analytical psychology is the "other self" that opens the door to the personal and collective subconscious, equally, usually one woman or a duality of women perform this role and not just for individuals, also for entire cultures. Maria Luisa Von Franz, "The Anima: The Woman Within," in Carl Jung: Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell, 1964), pp. 195-196, then Walter Pater, "Mona Lisa" in Harold Bloom, ed., Selected Writings of Walter Pater (New York: New American Library, 1974), pp. 31-52 (Mona Lisa is "our muse ... mistress of unity in being") and Kenneth Clark, "Mona Lisa," in Leonardo da Vinci (London: Penguin, 1963), pp. 110-113. ( "Mona Lisa is one of those works of art which each generation must reinterpret.") Please see my essay, "Arthur Schopenhauer and The Metaphysics of Art."
For an ironic destruction of Brown's claims, see Sigmund Freud's Leonardo Da Vinci (New York: Vintage, 1947), pp. 76-77 suggesting that Mona Lisa captures the duality of women when, as now appears likely, the work is partly a self-portrait of the artist. Freud's difficulties with Leonardo's "androgynous nature" and the impossibility of fitting this awesome genius within Freud's homophobic and sexist view of life was a source of perplexity for the good Viennese doctor who misperceived the duality that Leonardo wished to depict. Maybe Freud could have used some therapy. Sherwin B. Nuland, Leonardo Da Vinci (London: Phoenix, 2000), pp. 59-81 (The lowdown on "The Last Supper.") Still the standard work, according to Mr. Nuland, on Leonardo's mind is Edward McCurdy's The Mind of Leonardo Da Vinci (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928) and I am currently completing Robert Payne's Leonardo (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1978), pp. 194-204 ("The Importunities of Isabella De Este").
Mythologically and psychologically, Joseph Campbell's "The Mythology of Love," in Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam, 1972), at p. 152 is a work to which I will refer later in this essay. Augustine and Plato are the classic sources in this area, then Shakespeare and (sadly) Freud's essay, again, on Leonardo Da Vinci should be looked at, though Jung is much better on these issues. Hans Urs Von Balthazar in Love Alone is Credible (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1961), p. 56 speaks of "absolute love," which is represented in feminine terms in the form of the Holy Spirit (one symbolic meaning of spread wings as embrace is clear):
"The plausibility of God's love does not become apparent through any comparative reduction to what man has always already understood as love; rather, it is illuminated only by the self-interpreting revelation-form of love itself. And this form is so majestic that we are led to adore it from a reverent distance whenever we perceive it, [like a "great lady,"] even if it does not explicitly command us to do so."
The association of perfect love with the distant lady of Platonic adoration in courtly romances is not difficult to trace, neither is the emergence in the twelfth century of the cult of the Virgin Mary. To get a full blast of the power of feminine love and the "sacred feminine" in Christianity, I suggest that you stand, as I did, before the rose window at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I promise you that, as the sun shines through the centuries-old stained glass, very early in the morning, you will understand the centrality of feminine as well as masculine representations of divine love in Christianity. Augustine, then Pico Della Mirandola, and the Florentine Neo-Platonists at the home of Lorenzo de Medici ("Il Magnifico") -- where the young Michelangelo absorbed this Platonism -- should be mentioned. Hence, Michelangelo's "Pieta" (both the early high Renaissance and late Mannerist version of this image) are works shaped by Platonism. Michelangelo's "Mary" is Woman, the ancient goddess of the Mediterrenean world, who remains ageless and eternally loving. (My short story "Pieta" touches on many of these themes.)
I. The Da Vinci Code: Rose and Cross.
A. The Plot.
"Robert Langdon" is a "symbologist" (there is no such thing, by the way) at Harvard University, who is lecturing in Paris. He is brought to the Louvre to find that a colleague "Jack Sauniere" is murdered, but has left a number of clues to a mystery which the novel will seek to unravel. The murder victim has arranged himself in the form of Leonardo's drawing of "The Vitruvian Man," which is mistakenly described as a representation of the masculine subjection to the feminine, as a clue to goddess worship, or some such nonsense. (See pp. 38-39.)
Sauniere has also found time to write invisible clues on a number of Leonardo's masterpieces, while bleeding to death very painfully. Brown's discussion of the meaning of Leonardo's naming of the "Mona Lisa," incidentally, is rendered ludicrous by the fact that this was not Leonardo's name for the painting, but Vasari's much later title for the work. (See pp. 129-131.) For Leonardo, the portrait was called "La Gioconda." No, this is not to be confused with Ponchielli's Opera, Gioconda. (Like "Enzo," I am now singing "Ciello e' Mar.")
It is doubtful that Leonardo would have called this partial self-portrait "Mona Lisa," since the work is much more obviously a religious work and a form of veiled autobiography as well as a philosophical essay. For Leonardo, the distant lady of Platonic adoration was a young man called "Salai" and (sometimes) Saleri, but not Mozart's nemesis, "Salieri." Emil Moller, "Salai und Leonardo Da Vinci," in Jarbuch der kunst historichen Sammlungen in Wien (1928), pp. 139-161. This work is avaliable in German and French. For those who prefer to have others do the legwork, try Charles Nicholl's recent massive biography that explores this crucial relationship. Salai is Mary/Mary Magdalene for Leonardo Da Vinci. Any person who earns that sort of love is welcome, since it is the love itself that is "holy." Next, try Shakespeare's Sonnets. (Look at the face of Leonardo's "Bacchus" and then at the smile of Mona Lisa.)
Narrative plausibility has been lost in The Da Vinci Code for the sake of allegory. And the allegory is not so hot either. The five pointed star has any number of symbolic interpretations, usually having to do with universal harmony. It is a distant cousin of China's Ying/Yang symbol. The deeper meaning of Leonardo's drawing I will leave for later in this review.
"Sophie Neveu" is a grandaughter of the murdered man. She is the intended recipient of several of his clues, also serving as the "Babe" found in every guy's action novel, which is strange in a supposedly feminist work. I would have preferred Irene Jacob in the movie, but that's just me. Mr. Brown obviously wants to make some money and has a little fantasy of his own going on. He clearly loves the idea of teaching a beautiful French ingenue all about the Grail myth by displaying his own vast erudition, which is (regrettably) non-existent.
"Oh, Dan ... You are sooo smart." These words, when spoken by -- let us, say, Juliet Binoche or Julie Delpy, maybe Irene Jacob or Emmanuelle Beart -- definitely can make your evening special. I am with you on that, Dan. Unfortunately, it is the kind of thing that rarely happened to me when I was very young. Women I met in discos rarely wished to discuss, say, Kant's derivation of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The reference here is to the Grail quest of legend: Sauniere is "Amfortas" (dead this time, not just wounded), Sophie is "La Belle Dame" of courtly romance, and Robert is the "knight of sound heart," who proves as much in answering his teacher's ("Philemon's"?) questions. By answering these questions, Robert finds a path through the forest. The result of all this madness is the alleged association of the Grail with the historical person of Mary Magdalene, strangely identified as the feminine principle and inheritor of the goddess myth (what happened to the Virgin Mary?), wife of Jesus and source of woman's power, neglected by the, allegedly, "evil" Catholic Church. ("Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.")
The two Marys are actually aspects of a single set of relations associated with femininity that are always in balance or interaction. See again Marina Warner's work on "transformations" and her book, Alone of All of Her Sex. Compare Leonardo's drawing of "The Virgin with St. Anne" with Vidal's Two Sisters. Da Vinci returned to the theme of the Virgin and St. Anne on several occasions, not only in his painting of the "Virgin of the Rocks," but also in numerous drawings where the image of the Virgin and young Christ/Apollo/Bacchus are overlaid. The central image of Christ in the last supper may be superimposed on Leonardo's drawings of the Virgin with surprising results, a point not seen or noted by Mr. Brown. (See Kenneth Clark above, also Charles Nichols' recent biography of Leonardo, again, which I enjoyed at the cafe at Barnes and Noble just before returning the book to the shelf.)
Instructive in pursuing this discussion concerning feminine duality or ambiguity is A.S. Byatt's transformation of "Melusina" in Possession for obvious feminist purposes and (less obvious, but much more interesting) erotic goals. The myth of the "serpent"-woman dates, at least, from the seventeenth century. For those who are curious, you cannot do better than Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blond: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994), pp. 4-9.
Opus Dei's albino monk (there is no order of Opus Dei monks, folks, so you can relax!) is running around assassinating people in the novel. Supposedly, this is because the Church does not wish this information about Mary Magdalene to get out. Meanwhile, the Church has made these texts available to scholars for years and will be placing many of them on line, free of charge, for students. Others are available in libraries around the world, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, who happens to be Saint Mary Magdalene, whether or not she was a prostitute.
Was she a prostitute or wasn't she? "Only her hairdresser knows for sure," as an old t.v. commercial used to say. I have news for you: It is irrelevant to her status as a Saint in Catholicism. Jesus felt great love for this woman, who is described in any number of the gnostic texts as "the beloved Apostle," and placed his trust in her. Magdalene played a leading role in the early years of the Church, as explained by Elaine Pagels and others. Jesus has rightly been called the first great feminist, though "Eve" deserves that honor. Mary Magdalene, along with many women, discharged priestly functions in the first years of Christianity, a point which is made by Professor Pagels. We even had a "Pope Joan." Some scholars describe Mary Magdalene as the first Pope.
Many of the women posing for nudes and as saints in Renaissance pantings and in later epochs, especially in Venice, happened to be prostitutes. It is entirely possible that worshippers in many of the great churches in Europe have been admiring and adoring some of the best whores of sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy. I don't blame them at all. Titian is having a chuckle right about now. ("'The American': A Movie Review.")
I am confident that women will return to leadership roles in the Church soon, probably in less than a century. I may even live to see another woman sit on the Thrown of Peter. See Nancy M. Malone, Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003), pp. 149-179. Ms. Malone led me to Elizabeth Johnson's theological writings -- which I have only glanced at, since her book is not cheap at $27.00! -- but her works are recommended, especially to those with some training in philosophy and theology. For a discussion of the feminine in our understanding of divinity, see Professor Johnson's She Who Is.
I believe that Professor Johnson (Fordham) is a religious person. She is highly talented and learned, exceptionally philosophically adept -- based on what I have seen and read of her book -- providing readers with an exploration of divinity, as feminine, within the Catholic tradition and beyond. Peter Stanford, The Legend of Pope Joan: In Search of the Truth (New York: Berkeley Books, 2000), pp. 84-98. (Eroticism and homosexual love in the Church of the Middle Ages.) Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992). (Why your mother was right.)
Robert and Sophie figure out all of these clues, discover Mary's final resting place and (in the movie, anyway, over a three minute "close up") find "the" Grail. I figured out how the plot would unfold around page 90. This novel is, to use medieval Latin, shlock. In the words of St. Woody of Allen, "Yes, but they'll definitely sell a lot of books!" True, Woody, unfortunately there are people who will take this novel seriously. Don't, boys and girls, it's just fun and games. There is not a shred of evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married, had children, or ever lived in Connecticut while driving a station wagon to bingo games on Saturday night. ("'Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")
Despite the angry resistance to this assertion, there is no such thing as "symbology." The Da Vinci Deception (Pennsylvania: Ascension Press, 2006), p. 17 points out: "... there is no academic discipline known as symbology." There are semiotics and semiology. Symbols are only one kind of sign, so that a discipline called "semiotics" includes what Langdon calls "symbology." These terms and academic fields are confused by Mr. Brown, who also is not too clear on the meaning of "hermeneutics." Try Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and A Theory of Semiotics.
Next, the issue of characters' names is always important in reading literature. Robert "Langdon" may refer to "langue d'oc" or the southern French kingdom (anybody seen the "Merovingian?") where troubadors invented the twelfth century courtly romances "inspiring" this novel. Lancelot and Parzifal hover in the background of this character's persona. While you're at it, look up the "Carolingian" dynasty and the "Cathars." Forget Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Try this baby: Leopold Von Ranke, History of the Popes: Their Church and State, Three Volumes (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966), Volumes I & II, up to Leo X. (Lots of gay sex in the Medieval clergy.) Either "Parsifal" or "Parsival" is hunky-dory.
"Sophie Neveu" is the "New Wisdom" meant to replace the "Good News" of the Canonical Gospels. The Da Vinci Code is supposed to be a new Gospel? Lots of luck, Dan. There are so many historical errors that a quite lengthy essay might be devoted merely to listing them. Why bother? I plan to concentrate on two colossal blunders of substantive interpretation or understanding that undermine this work as anything other than pop entertainment. This method of criticism is hermeneutic in the true meaning of the word.
First, I examine the antihistorical blunder of interpreting ancient texts and symbols -- dating from the first century of the Christian era (or earlier) -- in terms of themes, meanings and canons of construction associated with the courtly romances of the late medieval era, around the thirteenth century. Second, I point to Brown's failure to appreciate the theological significance or meaning of the Grail myth in terms of a Christian universe of metaphors and theological principles communicated to a mostly illiterate population, by means of symbols, just as the first stirrings of the Renaissance began to be felt. Brown fails to grasp both the theological purposes of the Grail story and its historical significance. The crucial work at this point is Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle Ages.
Finally, a return to Brown's sources is wise for serious students, Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 64-67 notes the difference between the Gnostic texts and later Gospels concerning the role of women. Jesus is represented in the earliest texts of Christianity as speaking most closely and respectfully to Mary Magdalene, something which the other apostles could not accept: "But if the saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed, to reject her?" (Gospel of Thomas)
This selection of Magdalene as the "beloved apostle" and Peter as "fisher of men" has been interpreted as a division of power between masculine and feminine personas, as EQUALS, in the governance of the Christian Church. Later institutional judgments and political calculations -- especially, in the 4th century Council of Nicea -- altered this dynamic by disempowering women, who immediately regained power, indirectly, both in the medieval world when women were among the few educated "thinkers" (Hildegard of Bherens) and power-brokers, as well as in the early Renaissance when women were tough negotiators for kingdoms and wealth.
The Medici women ruled through their men, until dispensing with them by means of a little poison now and then. Some things never change. After all, it was "Catharina" of the Medici clan (at age fifteen) who developed an amorous interest in Michelangelo, insisting to the skeptics that the young man had some talent. History seems to confirm her opinions as sound.
B. Rose and Cross.
Mr. Brown also fails to understand the protean quality of great symbols. Like great art, symbols have different meanings in alternative chronological and cultural settings. In fact, symbols are found in most great art. These symbols resonate with meanings that multiply down through the centuries. They are not a treasure map or a police report pointing to one specific meaning or location, but explosions of associations delivering archetypal wisdom to the human psyche. Among the richest such symbols -- for me, the very richest -- are the "cross and rose," which are connected to Hebrew theology (rose is a distant cousin of the five pointed star) and also to pagan mythology and Mithraic mysteries. Symbolic communication, again, was vital in the medieval world since the bulk of the population was illiterate:
"God gave man two sources of knowledge, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. Behind each are hidden meanings to be searched out; the universe is a vast cryptogram to be decoded. The history of Job's sufferings, for example, has, on the surface, a value as a great human story; secondly, it prefigures Christ's death; and thirdly, it represents the trials of the Christian soul. All that is red reminds artist and writer of the blood of Jesus, every stream brings a remembrance of rebirth through baptism, fishermen lowering their nets remind men of their redemption, the crab walking sideways makes one think of the fraudulent, and the Pelican, which was supposed to nourish its young with its own blood, was the analogue of Christ. There was no end to this type of symbolism inside the mind of the Middle Ages."
Frederick B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages: An Historical Survey A.D. 200-1500 (Chicago: Phoenix, 1980), p. 377; and C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (New York: Oxford, 1958), pp. 112-157 ("The Romance of the Rose"). One of the great errors by commentators and a myth among contemporary "educated" persons is the so-called body-hating and antierotic quality of Catholicism. There is a turning away from the flesh in one Catholic interpretation of Platonism, but there is also a spiritualized eroticism which is expressed through the body. Reservations concerning lust are not relevant to the celebration of eros, as in Bernini's depiction of "St. Teresa in Ecstasy," which has always been identified with the approach to God.
The great British scholar and writer Desmond Stewart in The Foreigner: A Search for the First Century Jesus, traces Jesus (at least in terms of myth) to Africa, specifically, Egypt, and connects the "myth of the Christ" to Platonism. Anthony Burgess, "Christography," in But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen? (New York: McGraw Hill, 1986), pp. 30-32. ("Desmond Stewart" will be changed to "Desmond Morris" by hackers on a regular basis -- knock yourselves out.)
The letters of Abelard and Heloise may be helpful on this matter of Christ and Platonic "Eros." Many mystics describe the approach to divinity as akin to orgasmic bliss -- for instance, St. John of the Cross or St. Teresa of Avila, whose pre-Freudian imagery concerning the angel who visited her "with a long golden spear which penetrated her" is pretty explicit. St. John of the Cross is unaware of writing highly erotic literature in describing his ascent from the "dark night of the soul." Some of the filthiest imagery is found in the unconsciously erotic writings of Christian celibates. The erotic power and hidden images in the letters of Heloise to Abelard are as devastating as the highly charged prose of the most lurid and explicit writers of the twentieth century:
"You know, my beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the manner in which I lost you." (Heloise to Abelard!)
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (London; Penguin, 1974), p. 113.
Symbolizing becomes a prominent feature of Western literature, once again, in the nineteenth century with Romanticism and French symbolist poetry, see Frank Kermode, Romantic Image (London: Routledge, 1957) and Michael Roberts, T.E. Hulme (Manchester: Carcanet, 1982). Symbols operate at a deeper than conscious level and feature in all great cinema. Spielberg's A.I. is a mythic text that deserves to be included with the great religious narratives of our history. To do justice to that film you will need to spend weeks studying the history of art, mythology, political philosophy, psychology of children, fairy tales and much more. In addition to Hinduism, A.I. is Spielberg's Catholic masterpiece. I am aware that Steven Spielberg is Jewish.
The influence of this form of symbolic thinking and communication can be found in the great surrealists, from Salvador Dali to Jean Cocteau. "Transmogrification" or "syncretism" points to the universality of religious themes or concerns. It does not undermine religious faith. A reading of Joseph Campbell would have helped Brown to write a better book. There is a wealth of scholarship concerning Cuban and Brazilian "Santeria" that is also relevant to these issues. The blending of pagan and Christian themes ("love/death") is one obvious example of "layering" in mythic narratives. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
Science lovers should note that this concern on the part of Catholic monks, mostly, to "read the book of nature" during the late medieval period led to the methods and interests of the Italian Quatrocentro and to the rebirth of humanism, a new secularism, and the scientific revolution, not to mention a little thing called "Capitalism." The Grail is only very superficially interpreted as concerned with any single woman or historical figure, since it is too powerful a myth in Western Civilization for such a reading to be plausible. It is about much more complex and profound themes of a theological and philosophical nature rooted in Christianity and Judaism, also older than both of those religions. Africa gave birth to many of these themes. For example, the myths of feminine divinity are found in ancient Egypt, where Isis holds the dying Osiris (as Mary will hold Jesus), also in many works of art that have survived from antiquity. I regret that racists may be upset to learn this historical fact. Actually, I don't mind upsetting racists. You may wish to insert another "error" right about now.
These images and archetypes form the background for "seminal" discussions of love among ancient philosophers, such as the dialectic in Plato's Symposium. There is a lineage from Isis to Socrates' philosophical partner "Diotima," but also from this Greek figure's theory of love to the Virgin Mary by way of Pauline Christianity, then Augustine and Neo-Platonism. A multi-year conversation about love and civilization beginning with the ancients and culminating with the so-called "death of eros" in our time is a complete education in the humanities and human sciences. These themes recur not only in later Christianity, also in Judaism, notably in Cabala (Campbell's spelling). Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Middlemore, 1944), then John Hall, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York: MacMillan , 1994). (Harold Bloom's essay on kaballah is highly recommended to Jews and non-Jews.)
The "Jewish Jesus" is the interpretation of Jesus in light of the Jewish people's hope and idealization -- in a later post-exilic setting -- of an Annointed one or Messiah, who appeared or was sought as "symbol of unity and fulfillment of Scriptures," to compensate for the many sufferings and tragedies of Israel. Jaroslav Pelikan states bluntly, in Jesus Through the Centuries (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 11: "... Jesus was a Jew." Those who are under the impression that Jesus was, say, Belgian, are simply mistaken. I always recommend reading the books of theologians who get in trouble with the Catholic Church. Inevitably, these are the reigning theologians a generation after their troubles. For example, on Cristology, see Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World (London: SCM, 1980) and Hans Kung, Christianity: Its Essence and History (London: SCM, 1995). Joseph Campbell explains a more interesting difficulty:
"In Christian hermeneutics the crucifixion of the Savior had always presented a great problem; for Jesus according to Christian belief, accepted death voluntarily. Why? In Abelard's view ... it was an act of willing self-immolation in love, intended to invoke in response the return of mankind's love from worldly concerns to God. ... " ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
This leads to a startling claim:
"Indeed, the very idea of a descent of God into the world in love to invoke, in return, man's love to God, ... [leads to the insight that] as mankind yearns for the grace of God, so God [yearns] for the hommage [or love] of mankind, the two yearnings being reciprocal." ("Pieta.")
Myths to Live By, p. 158. ("Is this atheism's moment?")
The union of Christ with his "bride," the Church -- of the Holy Spirit with Her suffering children, humanity -- is symbolized by the Grail. The Grail is the place of transcendence, beyond opposites: male or female, young or old, good or evil. The Grail is the "unity of the Holy Spirit." This worship of the feminine -- as unity or nurturing care in the form of the Virgin Mary -- is a Medieval idea, based on Hellenistic Platonism, which would have seemed strange to Jesus. Jesus was closer to the mystics of Judaism and classical thinkers for whom sex was not a source of guilt or "displaced." The worship of the feminine in most other cultures is explicitly erotic. Catholicism makes eros a symbolic feature of feminine images of the Virgin Mary who is usually represented as youthful as well as maternal.
There are similar figures to Jesus in the history of Judaism, i.e., the Bel Shemtov and other distinguished mystical rabbis who taught by example, mostly figures emerging in the Hebrew Enlightenment of the eighteenth century among Ashkenazi jewry. If you do not like the fact that Jesus was certainly a Jew, too bad.
This key phrase with crucial "loving" overtones ("in the unity of the Holy Spirit") is still spoken in celebrating the Catholic mass. The phrase points to the homecoming of humanity in, with, and to God, which is ultimate self-realization. Integration of feminine and masculine, human and divine with love is "Being." This is the so-called "Christianizing of Eros." To be is to be with others in a loving manner of self-realization. Now take another look at Da Vinci's drawing of "The Vitruvian Man." What do you think the drawing is saying about the UNITY of human and divine? You have forty minutes. The real title of Da Vinci's drawing is "in the unity of the Holy Spirit."
The "meaning" of the great Christian symbols is the unity of the rose (feminine) and cross (masculine) in the person or Being of Christ, who transcends all opposites. God is beyond gender. Such a transcendence is LOVE, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus tells his puzzled Apostles: "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you ... and you do not see it."
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of being with God which is symbolized by the Grail. Loving someone is that state of being with God. Biologists tell us that all human embryos begin as both masculine and feminine in posse. (Potentiality) One theological interpretation of this fact is that we return to a state beyond gender in coming home to God/Love. Please read my essay "Judith Butler and Gender Theory" and "Pieta." Both of those works have been subjected to a great deal of vandalism, along with this essay. Judith Butler will be astonished to learn that she is one of our best Catholic theologians. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")
"The Grail finds you," Sophie says, echoing Wolfram Von Eschenbach medieval author of "Parzival." Unfortunately, neither Dan Brown nor his character, Sophie, understands what this means. It means that you already have the Grail. You had it from birth. It is within you. It is called LOVE. Von Eschenbach's purpose, as Campbell explains, was to dramatize the fulfillment of human nature for which we hope: "... the achievement of that supreme spiritual goal of which the grail [sic.] was the medieval symbol."
To search outside of yourself for the Grail, as an object or person, is a doomed venture. The Grail is your love directed towards others. By finding love within yourself, you will discover (by creating) love in the world. This finding of love within yourself is your encounter with what you may call "God."
II. Defending the Catholic Church.
It has become fashionable to attack Catholic institutions and the Vatican as evil. The Vatican is a human institution, which readily admits to fallibility -- as does the Pope -- on all earthly or political matters. I am not claiming to be a good Catholic, by the way. I am not in any official capacity with any Catholic organization. Yet I find these attacks on Catholicism as well as the Church increasingly irrational and annoying. The Pope -- no Pope -- condones child molestation by anyone.
It is in terms of the Vatican's attitudes to women and outdated notions of gender that criticism should be taken seriously by this Pope and his successors. To deem "instant excommunication" appropriate for anyone who ordains a woman as a priest is to seek to excommunicate Christ who clearly held Mary Magdalene in this priestly regard. Given the hesitation in excommunicating priests charged with child molestation this official harshness towards women is offensive and absurd.
The "doctrine of infallibility" has to do with narrow issues of faith in Catholic theology, which is rarely invoked, and never about political or administrative matters in which Church officials may be involved. There are some bad priests. There are some bad anything you like -- dentists, cab drivers, plumbers, all have been known to be both good and not-so-good. Only lawyers are universally admired for their moral beauties.
The Vatican is an institution doing charitable work in many places in the world, caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, serving and educating children and young people who, otherwise, may not be educated. I am one of the recipients of Catholic schooling. However, the Pope certainly should not be held responsible for my disturbing opinions. In many instances, the Church is doing these valuable services free of charge. The Vatican is not the source of evil in the world. The Pope's recent visit to Auschwitz (where many Christians also died) is part of a continuing effort at reconciliation and love directed at the Jewish people, whose suffering and history must be shared. Priests can be mistaken about moral issues, like any of us. There are some vicious and bizarre anti-Catholic attacks in this novel and contemporary society:
"What about those who look at the cruelty in the world and say, where is God today? Those who look at the Church scandals and ask, who ARE these men who claim to speak the truth about Christ and yet lie to cover-up the sexual abuse of children by their own priests? ... What happens ... if persuasive scientific evidence comes out that the church's version of the Christ story is inaccurate, and that the greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever SOLD." (p. 288.)
These words are spoken by Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, but they clearly meet with Mr. Brown's approval. Similar comments are scattered throughout the text. To refer in these terms to the leadership of any religious group in America would be shocking. Somehow it is permissible to refer to Catholics or the Vatican in these terms, which disproves many of these allegations, since the Church has not ordered a fatwa against Dan Brown. The Church only points out that Brown is mistaken and that his book is not exactly Shakespeare. I agree on both counts. Scriptures are not an accountant's statement of assets and liabilities. "Accuracy" in discerning the message contained in these sacred texts is a more subtle and profound process of interpretation. ("Incoherence in 'The New Yorker'" and "Is this atheism's moment?")
I wish to deal with these charges in detail. First, "where is God today?" This is an issue debated, at length by Catholic theologians, by Christians and non-Christians. As Kierkegaard noted, when you ask this question, you are already revealing an obsession and concern with God suggesting that you cannot avoid the problem of faith. If you reject God, then you are making a theological judgment. You are involved with God, even in rejecting Him. If you despair, says Kierkegaard, that is excellent because it means you are very close to Him. "Why despair? Are you missing something or someone?" Kierkegaard poses these annoying questions. Guess who it might be that you are missing? We love other human beings, in Catholic teaching, because we see God within them. (See again my story "Pieta.") What do you think Holy Communion symbolizes?
Yes, some priests have committed sexual offenses and the Church has disciplined them and cooperated with the authorities in seeing them punished. Also, millions have been paid for compensation of injured persons in civil suits, often (tragically) at the cost of the Church's charitable work. You have said NOTHING about Catholicism by pointing to individuals who are flawed in the Church. There are no "unflawed" persons, not even in radical political movements where atheism is a trendy opinion and people munch on tofu at lunch time as they peruse The Village Voice.
If only New Jersey's Supreme Court and legal system were as concerned to do the ethically and legally correct thing as the Vatican, I might receive recognition of my injuries and appropriate apologies. Instead, I am afraid that we can expect more vandalism of these writings and censorship. I believe the number of hits at these blogs has now passed 100,000. MSN has not closed, mysteriously enough, although I still cannot reach my sites. How curious?
I am an agnostic, in the sense of not believing in a personal God with a white beard floating around in heaven. I am also a democratic socialist (so are many Catholics). I do not read Scriptures as literal accounts of anything. To do that, to read religious texts as police reports, is to diminish those texts. Not all religious persons are fundamentalists. Not everyone who recognizes the importance of human spirituality is ignorant or foolish. I think it is foolish to deny human spirituality. What the word and imagery associated with the concept of "God" points to is the awesome mystery of love. The ambiguity in great religious texts is deliberate in many cases because they are invitations to interpret that are respectful of human freedom.
There is no possible evidence that can show that religious stories are false because categories of empirical, historical, literal truth and falsehood are irrelevant to religious texts. Such texts are concerned with meaning and moral truth, as well as life-wisdom. Religion is a symbolic language-structure connected to the release of universal archetypal wisdom, which (if denied in ancient forms and texts) will reveal itself in science or commerce, in all other aspects of life, because it is fundamental to humans, like the morality to which it is allied. You cannot eradicate religion, which "re-connects" (re ligare) people with their nation, species, universe and (for believers) with God.
Now I am going to shock Catholics. It makes no difference if Jesus "married" (how do you define "marriage"?) Mary Magdalene, whom he obviously loved. The truth that Jesus intended to communicate, I believe, he succeeded in communicating. That truth is concerned with love and meaning for everyone. It is deeply rooted in Hebrew culture and history. The Christian Scriptures tell us, in every line, that Jesus is a Jew. If you see Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," the Aramaic word for God is "Abba," which means "father" and links "Jeshua" (Jesus) to an ancient Hebrew tradition associating God with a loving (but stern) father. Yes, I know the Freudians are salivating. Ignore them. Hence, anti-semitism is hatred of Jesus. None of this precludes us from sending Bernie Madoff to prison for theft by deception.
Religious truth is so powerful, psychologically, that it can only be conveyed by means of symbols. Pay attention to the symbols in the scriptures. Read them as important and meaningful poetry. The best I can do to approximate the ethical and spiritual truth at the center of Christianity is to recall the image of the Grail, as individuation or moral self-realization in unity with others, or full humanity. Now take another look at Spielberg's A.I.
In "The Spirit of Christianity," Hegel concludes that "love heals all wounds [because it] is the only solution to the severing of the human being into warring aspects." Most of us are fragmented, divided against ourselves and from one another, body from soul or spirit, masculine from feminine, material striving from happiness, desire from consumption, sex from love. We yearn for integration and meaning through purposefulness. That meaning and purpose that we desire is, and can only be, love. It is love which reconciles us to one another -- even to our enemies -- by not allowing us to do to them what they have done to us. I don't want to deface anyone's writings nor to rape or steal from others. I leave such things to members of the bar in New Jersey. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
It is only love that allows us to embrace the alienated parts of ourselves, or others who are similarly alienated -- poor people, AIDS victims, old and mentally ill people, our own baser selves. Love allows all that is lost in life -- every person we love who is separated from us -- to be recovered, or returned to us. It is love alone which restores life to itself. With love, fate is reconciled. The Christian ethics of love I know is true and important. I find a similar message in Judaism and Islam, also in other world religions and in secular ethics. The message is that, with love, "everything we look upon is blessed." ("Beauty and the Beast.") Hegel says:
"... the stings of conscience are blunted and the evil spirit is expelled from the deed." This reconciliation is Holderlin's "rose in the cross." Hyperion (1797-91). Furthermore: "Love which becomes Spirit makes all members of a living whole [community,] the life that animates that whole must have a wider definition, -- it must be a life which comprehends even death itself. Pain, disharmony, evil, must be seen to be incapable of breaking through the all-embracing unity, and even to be themselves the means of realizing it. Unreason itself must find a place, were it only a place to annihilate itself, under the universal rule of reason, which impartially rains its fertilising showers upon the evil and the good, and stimulates each in turn to show what is in it; since just in this impartiality lies the security for the triumph of good." (Hegel, Das Leben Jesu.)
With the appearance of the awesome scholarship displayed by Yale University's Professor John Boswell, it is very difficult for anyone (including the Vatican) to argue that sexual-orientation has any bearing on this message of love or that "marriage" is a sacrament that should be denied to same-sex couples by persons claiming to remain faithful to the Christian texts. Marriage is the community of erotic love. "Eros" is an aspect of divinity and its expression, for example, in the sentimental representation of "an older Christ and youthful St. John [that] is strongly evocative of the tradition of passionate friendship common among the monastic clergy of the Middle Ages" -- to say nothing of the various gay Popes in our history -- "and romanticized earlier by writers like Saint Aelred of Rievaulx." John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago & London: University of Chicago, 1980), p. 202. (If Mr. Rubio in Miami is, in fact, a homosexual -- as so many people say -- then he should be free to come out of the closet without being affected in his political ambitions by his sexual-orientation, or even to marry the person of his choice.)
From the iconography of St. Sebastian to Christ and St. John, to many other representations, it becomes clear to art historians and theologians that same-sex love and all love is not only "o.k." in terms of religious teachings in Christianity, but (I suggest) love is what Christianity is all about. Inserting "errors" in this essay will not change this reality. Ultimate self-realization is only possible in community, through love, where each PERSON becomes him- or herself, through self-discovery in the Other. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" and "Is there a gay marriage right?")
You cannot deny the erotic nature of a person at one moment, then exchange the sign of peace and recognition that we are taught the Catholic mass is concerned to establish. Recognition and the sign of peace means that we must welcome our gay and lesbian "brothers and sisters" to the Community of the Faith. St. John teaches us: "You must see and love God in your brother and sister ..." Please welcome gay and lesbian Catholics to the St. Patrick's Day festivities, in your families and friendships, not to mention in parades down Fifth Avenue. None of this precludes us from sending a lesbian who steals public funds to prison. ("Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'')
This message of inclusion and unity is symbolized in the shared absorption of "the Body of Christ." The Church is no prude, but it rightly dismisses pagan sex cults (Brown messes up his discussion of "Hieros Gamos") because they limit their focus to the sexual act, allegedly, as opposed to its spiritual meaning. Sex is not always love-making. Love-making is always a spiritual act. This is true regardless of sexual-orientation. Love-making is reverential, a kind of prayer. Sex is very nice; love-making is much greater. Love is finding the Grail. You do not need to decipher a bizarre code. You do not need to fly to Paris. Although it sure would be nice to do so! You do not have to worry about albino monks. The Kingdom of Heaven is right here and now. The Grail is looking for you. All you have to do is to be. I hope that you will be.
July 28, 2010 at 4:17 P.M. I am shocked to discover "errors" inserted by hackers in a number of my essays. I can only hope to have made all necessary corrections.
August 24, 2009 at 10:43 A.M. This essay has received more than the usual number of attacks, defacements, and blocking of images. This may have to do with hatred of the Church. The Pope would say: "Pray for them." I will revise this work to correct errors inserted in it. I will attempt to attach an image to this essay-review, once again, then I will await further tampering and alterations, so as to make the same corrections once more. I am blocking:
http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N4359.MSN/B218937... (NJ)
New errors have, indeed, been discovered which were not found in my earlier versions of this essay. I will make the corrections again.
November 30, 2007 at 11:39 A.M. I received a call from 303-395-2345 and blocked:
http://view.atcmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90xWBCBRB00110msn/direct;wi.728;hi.90/01 (NJ, OAE?)
More "errors" added and corrections made. November 2, 2008 at 9:38 P.M. This is actually better than I expected. I will wait overnight to re-post the essay, since several essays were vandalized today. More will probably be damaged tonight. My daughter is also experiencing difficulties with her lap top, for some reason. She complains of stomach pains. I am sure this is coincidental. I will continue to struggle.
People who hate Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and those who love it have had their say. No minds have been changed. Even a movie starring Tom Hanks -- who is upstaged by the city of Paris -- is now part of the Code experience. Mr. Brown's reviews have not been great, especially among scholars. Mr. Brown is making a lot of money and probably does not care very much what university professors think. I don't blame him.
The novel is standard pop entertainment which does not merit much commentary. Mr. Brown has laced his potboiler with allusions to scholarly works, bizarre criticisms of the Catholic Church, allegations of a conspiracy to suppress the "truth" about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, woven an allegory concerning the quest for the Holy Grail into his plot and made a number of controversial historical and philosophical claims, not to mention allegations concerning the "meaning" of several great works of art by Leonardo and others. All of this literary game-playing is just kind of thrown into a very thin text and mixed together. It is difficult to know where to begin to impose order on Brown's chaos. When it comes to the history of art, "Leonardo" is kind of like Elvis in Las Vegas -- you only need a first name.
I will first summarize the plot and Brown's most important symbolism, without giving away too much, in case someone has not yet read his book. Then I will examine some of Brown's theological claims and charges against the Church (which are mostly ludicrous); next, I will focus on Brown's interpretive claims concerning famous works of art and various texts; finally, I will say a word or two about the role of Mary Magdalene and women in Christianity.
Dan Brown is no theologian. He is not a historian, mythologist, nor a philosopher. Brown's book is pulp fiction and no more. Do NOT take it seriously. Incidentally, the name Mary the Magdalene or Magdelen is a subject of dispute among historians. If you are interested in the themes inadequately or incompetently explored in The Da Vinci Code -- which are certainly important and fascinating to me -- then there are many fine novels available where you will find them better discussed and more accurately analyzed.
My suggestions for those who are interested in the feminine principle or "sacred feminine" and in literary explorations of this theme today, is to read A.S. Byatt's novels, especially The Game (New York: Vintage, 1992). Also, Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding (London: Picador, 1990). Gore Vidal's Julian (New York: Random House, 1962) will guide you through the first centuries of Christianity, so will Anthony Burgess in The Kingdom of the Wicked (New York: Arbor House, 1985). I strongly recommend a book that I have read only in parts because it is difficult to find: Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Random House, 1976) and Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In The Wake of the Goddess: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformations of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 32-44 (women-goddesses as the collective source of intellectual and artistic life).
Those who are more philosophically inclined should consult Robert C. Solomon, Love, Emotion, Myth and Metaphor (New York: Prometheus, 1990) and Robert C. Solomon & Kathleen M. Higgins, The Philosophy of Erotic Love (Kansas: University of Kansas, 1991). On the Grail myth, see Emma Jung & Marie-Louise Von Franz, The Grail Legend (Coventure, 1986); and compare Anne Barring & Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess (London: Viking, 1991), with Robert Graves, The White Goddess (which I can not find on my shelves), also Lindsay Clarke's retelling of Parzival (London: Thorsons, 2001).
For historians, you can not do better than Professor Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988) on the gnostic texts and women's role(s) in early Christianity. Also, take a look at Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Notice A.S. Byatt's use of "serpents" as phallic (evil?) metaphors, then Iris Murdoch and Mircea Eliade on "Sacred and Profane Loves." (See also Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited.) Finally, Louis Mackey's "Eros Into Logos: The Rhetoric of Courtly Love," in The Philosophy of Erotic Love, p. 336 is a must. Irving Singer's second volume in his massive work The Nature of Love should be compared with Denis De Rougemont's Love in the Western World.
Woman or the feminine principle in Jungian analytical psychology is the "other self" that opens the door to the personal and collective subconscious, equally, usually one woman or a duality of women perform this role and not just for individuals, also for entire cultures. Maria Luisa Von Franz, "The Anima: The Woman Within," in Carl Jung: Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell, 1964), pp. 195-196, then Walter Pater, "Mona Lisa" in Harold Bloom, ed., Selected Writings of Walter Pater (New York: New American Library, 1974), pp. 31-52 (Mona Lisa is "our muse ... mistress of unity in being") and Kenneth Clark, "Mona Lisa," in Leonardo da Vinci (London: Penguin, 1963), pp. 110-113. ( "Mona Lisa is one of those works of art which each generation must reinterpret.") Please see my essay, "Arthur Schopenhauer and The Metaphysics of Art."
For an ironic destruction of Brown's claims, see Sigmund Freud's Leonardo Da Vinci (New York: Vintage, 1947), pp. 76-77 suggesting that Mona Lisa captures the duality of women when, as now appears likely, the work is partly a self-portrait of the artist. Freud's difficulties with Leonardo's "androgynous nature" and the impossibility of fitting this awesome genius within Freud's homophobic and sexist view of life was a source of perplexity for the good Viennese doctor who misperceived the duality that Leonardo wished to depict. Maybe Freud could have used some therapy. Sherwin B. Nuland, Leonardo Da Vinci (London: Phoenix, 2000), pp. 59-81 (The lowdown on "The Last Supper.") Still the standard work, according to Mr. Nuland, on Leonardo's mind is Edward McCurdy's The Mind of Leonardo Da Vinci (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928) and I am currently completing Robert Payne's Leonardo (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1978), pp. 194-204 ("The Importunities of Isabella De Este").
Mythologically and psychologically, Joseph Campbell's "The Mythology of Love," in Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam, 1972), at p. 152 is a work to which I will refer later in this essay. Augustine and Plato are the classic sources in this area, then Shakespeare and (sadly) Freud's essay, again, on Leonardo Da Vinci should be looked at, though Jung is much better on these issues. Hans Urs Von Balthazar in Love Alone is Credible (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1961), p. 56 speaks of "absolute love," which is represented in feminine terms in the form of the Holy Spirit (one symbolic meaning of spread wings as embrace is clear):
"The plausibility of God's love does not become apparent through any comparative reduction to what man has always already understood as love; rather, it is illuminated only by the self-interpreting revelation-form of love itself. And this form is so majestic that we are led to adore it from a reverent distance whenever we perceive it, [like a "great lady,"] even if it does not explicitly command us to do so."
The association of perfect love with the distant lady of Platonic adoration in courtly romances is not difficult to trace, neither is the emergence in the twelfth century of the cult of the Virgin Mary. To get a full blast of the power of feminine love and the "sacred feminine" in Christianity, I suggest that you stand, as I did, before the rose window at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I promise you that, as the sun shines through the centuries-old stained glass, very early in the morning, you will understand the centrality of feminine as well as masculine representations of divine love in Christianity. Augustine, then Pico Della Mirandola, and the Florentine Neo-Platonists at the home of Lorenzo de Medici ("Il Magnifico") -- where the young Michelangelo absorbed this Platonism -- should be mentioned. Hence, Michelangelo's "Pieta" (both the early high Renaissance and late Mannerist version of this image) are works shaped by Platonism. Michelangelo's "Mary" is Woman, the ancient goddess of the Mediterrenean world, who remains ageless and eternally loving. (My short story "Pieta" touches on many of these themes.)
I. The Da Vinci Code: Rose and Cross.
A. The Plot.
"Robert Langdon" is a "symbologist" (there is no such thing, by the way) at Harvard University, who is lecturing in Paris. He is brought to the Louvre to find that a colleague "Jack Sauniere" is murdered, but has left a number of clues to a mystery which the novel will seek to unravel. The murder victim has arranged himself in the form of Leonardo's drawing of "The Vitruvian Man," which is mistakenly described as a representation of the masculine subjection to the feminine, as a clue to goddess worship, or some such nonsense. (See pp. 38-39.)
Sauniere has also found time to write invisible clues on a number of Leonardo's masterpieces, while bleeding to death very painfully. Brown's discussion of the meaning of Leonardo's naming of the "Mona Lisa," incidentally, is rendered ludicrous by the fact that this was not Leonardo's name for the painting, but Vasari's much later title for the work. (See pp. 129-131.) For Leonardo, the portrait was called "La Gioconda." No, this is not to be confused with Ponchielli's Opera, Gioconda. (Like "Enzo," I am now singing "Ciello e' Mar.")
It is doubtful that Leonardo would have called this partial self-portrait "Mona Lisa," since the work is much more obviously a religious work and a form of veiled autobiography as well as a philosophical essay. For Leonardo, the distant lady of Platonic adoration was a young man called "Salai" and (sometimes) Saleri, but not Mozart's nemesis, "Salieri." Emil Moller, "Salai und Leonardo Da Vinci," in Jarbuch der kunst historichen Sammlungen in Wien (1928), pp. 139-161. This work is avaliable in German and French. For those who prefer to have others do the legwork, try Charles Nicholl's recent massive biography that explores this crucial relationship. Salai is Mary/Mary Magdalene for Leonardo Da Vinci. Any person who earns that sort of love is welcome, since it is the love itself that is "holy." Next, try Shakespeare's Sonnets. (Look at the face of Leonardo's "Bacchus" and then at the smile of Mona Lisa.)
Narrative plausibility has been lost in The Da Vinci Code for the sake of allegory. And the allegory is not so hot either. The five pointed star has any number of symbolic interpretations, usually having to do with universal harmony. It is a distant cousin of China's Ying/Yang symbol. The deeper meaning of Leonardo's drawing I will leave for later in this review.
"Sophie Neveu" is a grandaughter of the murdered man. She is the intended recipient of several of his clues, also serving as the "Babe" found in every guy's action novel, which is strange in a supposedly feminist work. I would have preferred Irene Jacob in the movie, but that's just me. Mr. Brown obviously wants to make some money and has a little fantasy of his own going on. He clearly loves the idea of teaching a beautiful French ingenue all about the Grail myth by displaying his own vast erudition, which is (regrettably) non-existent.
"Oh, Dan ... You are sooo smart." These words, when spoken by -- let us, say, Juliet Binoche or Julie Delpy, maybe Irene Jacob or Emmanuelle Beart -- definitely can make your evening special. I am with you on that, Dan. Unfortunately, it is the kind of thing that rarely happened to me when I was very young. Women I met in discos rarely wished to discuss, say, Kant's derivation of the categories in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The reference here is to the Grail quest of legend: Sauniere is "Amfortas" (dead this time, not just wounded), Sophie is "La Belle Dame" of courtly romance, and Robert is the "knight of sound heart," who proves as much in answering his teacher's ("Philemon's"?) questions. By answering these questions, Robert finds a path through the forest. The result of all this madness is the alleged association of the Grail with the historical person of Mary Magdalene, strangely identified as the feminine principle and inheritor of the goddess myth (what happened to the Virgin Mary?), wife of Jesus and source of woman's power, neglected by the, allegedly, "evil" Catholic Church. ("Duality in Christian Feminine Identity.")
The two Marys are actually aspects of a single set of relations associated with femininity that are always in balance or interaction. See again Marina Warner's work on "transformations" and her book, Alone of All of Her Sex. Compare Leonardo's drawing of "The Virgin with St. Anne" with Vidal's Two Sisters. Da Vinci returned to the theme of the Virgin and St. Anne on several occasions, not only in his painting of the "Virgin of the Rocks," but also in numerous drawings where the image of the Virgin and young Christ/Apollo/Bacchus are overlaid. The central image of Christ in the last supper may be superimposed on Leonardo's drawings of the Virgin with surprising results, a point not seen or noted by Mr. Brown. (See Kenneth Clark above, also Charles Nichols' recent biography of Leonardo, again, which I enjoyed at the cafe at Barnes and Noble just before returning the book to the shelf.)
Instructive in pursuing this discussion concerning feminine duality or ambiguity is A.S. Byatt's transformation of "Melusina" in Possession for obvious feminist purposes and (less obvious, but much more interesting) erotic goals. The myth of the "serpent"-woman dates, at least, from the seventeenth century. For those who are curious, you cannot do better than Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blond: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994), pp. 4-9.
Opus Dei's albino monk (there is no order of Opus Dei monks, folks, so you can relax!) is running around assassinating people in the novel. Supposedly, this is because the Church does not wish this information about Mary Magdalene to get out. Meanwhile, the Church has made these texts available to scholars for years and will be placing many of them on line, free of charge, for students. Others are available in libraries around the world, including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, who happens to be Saint Mary Magdalene, whether or not she was a prostitute.
Was she a prostitute or wasn't she? "Only her hairdresser knows for sure," as an old t.v. commercial used to say. I have news for you: It is irrelevant to her status as a Saint in Catholicism. Jesus felt great love for this woman, who is described in any number of the gnostic texts as "the beloved Apostle," and placed his trust in her. Magdalene played a leading role in the early years of the Church, as explained by Elaine Pagels and others. Jesus has rightly been called the first great feminist, though "Eve" deserves that honor. Mary Magdalene, along with many women, discharged priestly functions in the first years of Christianity, a point which is made by Professor Pagels. We even had a "Pope Joan." Some scholars describe Mary Magdalene as the first Pope.
Many of the women posing for nudes and as saints in Renaissance pantings and in later epochs, especially in Venice, happened to be prostitutes. It is entirely possible that worshippers in many of the great churches in Europe have been admiring and adoring some of the best whores of sixteenth and seventeenth century Italy. I don't blame them at all. Titian is having a chuckle right about now. ("'The American': A Movie Review.")
I am confident that women will return to leadership roles in the Church soon, probably in less than a century. I may even live to see another woman sit on the Thrown of Peter. See Nancy M. Malone, Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003), pp. 149-179. Ms. Malone led me to Elizabeth Johnson's theological writings -- which I have only glanced at, since her book is not cheap at $27.00! -- but her works are recommended, especially to those with some training in philosophy and theology. For a discussion of the feminine in our understanding of divinity, see Professor Johnson's She Who Is.
I believe that Professor Johnson (Fordham) is a religious person. She is highly talented and learned, exceptionally philosophically adept -- based on what I have seen and read of her book -- providing readers with an exploration of divinity, as feminine, within the Catholic tradition and beyond. Peter Stanford, The Legend of Pope Joan: In Search of the Truth (New York: Berkeley Books, 2000), pp. 84-98. (Eroticism and homosexual love in the Church of the Middle Ages.) Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992). (Why your mother was right.)
Robert and Sophie figure out all of these clues, discover Mary's final resting place and (in the movie, anyway, over a three minute "close up") find "the" Grail. I figured out how the plot would unfold around page 90. This novel is, to use medieval Latin, shlock. In the words of St. Woody of Allen, "Yes, but they'll definitely sell a lot of books!" True, Woody, unfortunately there are people who will take this novel seriously. Don't, boys and girls, it's just fun and games. There is not a shred of evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married, had children, or ever lived in Connecticut while driving a station wagon to bingo games on Saturday night. ("'Revolutionary Road': A Movie Review.")
Despite the angry resistance to this assertion, there is no such thing as "symbology." The Da Vinci Deception (Pennsylvania: Ascension Press, 2006), p. 17 points out: "... there is no academic discipline known as symbology." There are semiotics and semiology. Symbols are only one kind of sign, so that a discipline called "semiotics" includes what Langdon calls "symbology." These terms and academic fields are confused by Mr. Brown, who also is not too clear on the meaning of "hermeneutics." Try Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and A Theory of Semiotics.
Next, the issue of characters' names is always important in reading literature. Robert "Langdon" may refer to "langue d'oc" or the southern French kingdom (anybody seen the "Merovingian?") where troubadors invented the twelfth century courtly romances "inspiring" this novel. Lancelot and Parzifal hover in the background of this character's persona. While you're at it, look up the "Carolingian" dynasty and the "Cathars." Forget Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Try this baby: Leopold Von Ranke, History of the Popes: Their Church and State, Three Volumes (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966), Volumes I & II, up to Leo X. (Lots of gay sex in the Medieval clergy.) Either "Parsifal" or "Parsival" is hunky-dory.
"Sophie Neveu" is the "New Wisdom" meant to replace the "Good News" of the Canonical Gospels. The Da Vinci Code is supposed to be a new Gospel? Lots of luck, Dan. There are so many historical errors that a quite lengthy essay might be devoted merely to listing them. Why bother? I plan to concentrate on two colossal blunders of substantive interpretation or understanding that undermine this work as anything other than pop entertainment. This method of criticism is hermeneutic in the true meaning of the word.
First, I examine the antihistorical blunder of interpreting ancient texts and symbols -- dating from the first century of the Christian era (or earlier) -- in terms of themes, meanings and canons of construction associated with the courtly romances of the late medieval era, around the thirteenth century. Second, I point to Brown's failure to appreciate the theological significance or meaning of the Grail myth in terms of a Christian universe of metaphors and theological principles communicated to a mostly illiterate population, by means of symbols, just as the first stirrings of the Renaissance began to be felt. Brown fails to grasp both the theological purposes of the Grail story and its historical significance. The crucial work at this point is Huizinga's The Waning of the Middle Ages.
Finally, a return to Brown's sources is wise for serious students, Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 64-67 notes the difference between the Gnostic texts and later Gospels concerning the role of women. Jesus is represented in the earliest texts of Christianity as speaking most closely and respectfully to Mary Magdalene, something which the other apostles could not accept: "But if the saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed, to reject her?" (Gospel of Thomas)
This selection of Magdalene as the "beloved apostle" and Peter as "fisher of men" has been interpreted as a division of power between masculine and feminine personas, as EQUALS, in the governance of the Christian Church. Later institutional judgments and political calculations -- especially, in the 4th century Council of Nicea -- altered this dynamic by disempowering women, who immediately regained power, indirectly, both in the medieval world when women were among the few educated "thinkers" (Hildegard of Bherens) and power-brokers, as well as in the early Renaissance when women were tough negotiators for kingdoms and wealth.
The Medici women ruled through their men, until dispensing with them by means of a little poison now and then. Some things never change. After all, it was "Catharina" of the Medici clan (at age fifteen) who developed an amorous interest in Michelangelo, insisting to the skeptics that the young man had some talent. History seems to confirm her opinions as sound.
B. Rose and Cross.
Mr. Brown also fails to understand the protean quality of great symbols. Like great art, symbols have different meanings in alternative chronological and cultural settings. In fact, symbols are found in most great art. These symbols resonate with meanings that multiply down through the centuries. They are not a treasure map or a police report pointing to one specific meaning or location, but explosions of associations delivering archetypal wisdom to the human psyche. Among the richest such symbols -- for me, the very richest -- are the "cross and rose," which are connected to Hebrew theology (rose is a distant cousin of the five pointed star) and also to pagan mythology and Mithraic mysteries. Symbolic communication, again, was vital in the medieval world since the bulk of the population was illiterate:
"God gave man two sources of knowledge, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. Behind each are hidden meanings to be searched out; the universe is a vast cryptogram to be decoded. The history of Job's sufferings, for example, has, on the surface, a value as a great human story; secondly, it prefigures Christ's death; and thirdly, it represents the trials of the Christian soul. All that is red reminds artist and writer of the blood of Jesus, every stream brings a remembrance of rebirth through baptism, fishermen lowering their nets remind men of their redemption, the crab walking sideways makes one think of the fraudulent, and the Pelican, which was supposed to nourish its young with its own blood, was the analogue of Christ. There was no end to this type of symbolism inside the mind of the Middle Ages."
Frederick B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages: An Historical Survey A.D. 200-1500 (Chicago: Phoenix, 1980), p. 377; and C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (New York: Oxford, 1958), pp. 112-157 ("The Romance of the Rose"). One of the great errors by commentators and a myth among contemporary "educated" persons is the so-called body-hating and antierotic quality of Catholicism. There is a turning away from the flesh in one Catholic interpretation of Platonism, but there is also a spiritualized eroticism which is expressed through the body. Reservations concerning lust are not relevant to the celebration of eros, as in Bernini's depiction of "St. Teresa in Ecstasy," which has always been identified with the approach to God.
The great British scholar and writer Desmond Stewart in The Foreigner: A Search for the First Century Jesus, traces Jesus (at least in terms of myth) to Africa, specifically, Egypt, and connects the "myth of the Christ" to Platonism. Anthony Burgess, "Christography," in But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen? (New York: McGraw Hill, 1986), pp. 30-32. ("Desmond Stewart" will be changed to "Desmond Morris" by hackers on a regular basis -- knock yourselves out.)
The letters of Abelard and Heloise may be helpful on this matter of Christ and Platonic "Eros." Many mystics describe the approach to divinity as akin to orgasmic bliss -- for instance, St. John of the Cross or St. Teresa of Avila, whose pre-Freudian imagery concerning the angel who visited her "with a long golden spear which penetrated her" is pretty explicit. St. John of the Cross is unaware of writing highly erotic literature in describing his ascent from the "dark night of the soul." Some of the filthiest imagery is found in the unconsciously erotic writings of Christian celibates. The erotic power and hidden images in the letters of Heloise to Abelard are as devastating as the highly charged prose of the most lurid and explicit writers of the twentieth century:
"You know, my beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the manner in which I lost you." (Heloise to Abelard!)
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (London; Penguin, 1974), p. 113.
Symbolizing becomes a prominent feature of Western literature, once again, in the nineteenth century with Romanticism and French symbolist poetry, see Frank Kermode, Romantic Image (London: Routledge, 1957) and Michael Roberts, T.E. Hulme (Manchester: Carcanet, 1982). Symbols operate at a deeper than conscious level and feature in all great cinema. Spielberg's A.I. is a mythic text that deserves to be included with the great religious narratives of our history. To do justice to that film you will need to spend weeks studying the history of art, mythology, political philosophy, psychology of children, fairy tales and much more. In addition to Hinduism, A.I. is Spielberg's Catholic masterpiece. I am aware that Steven Spielberg is Jewish.
The influence of this form of symbolic thinking and communication can be found in the great surrealists, from Salvador Dali to Jean Cocteau. "Transmogrification" or "syncretism" points to the universality of religious themes or concerns. It does not undermine religious faith. A reading of Joseph Campbell would have helped Brown to write a better book. There is a wealth of scholarship concerning Cuban and Brazilian "Santeria" that is also relevant to these issues. The blending of pagan and Christian themes ("love/death") is one obvious example of "layering" in mythic narratives. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
Science lovers should note that this concern on the part of Catholic monks, mostly, to "read the book of nature" during the late medieval period led to the methods and interests of the Italian Quatrocentro and to the rebirth of humanism, a new secularism, and the scientific revolution, not to mention a little thing called "Capitalism." The Grail is only very superficially interpreted as concerned with any single woman or historical figure, since it is too powerful a myth in Western Civilization for such a reading to be plausible. It is about much more complex and profound themes of a theological and philosophical nature rooted in Christianity and Judaism, also older than both of those religions. Africa gave birth to many of these themes. For example, the myths of feminine divinity are found in ancient Egypt, where Isis holds the dying Osiris (as Mary will hold Jesus), also in many works of art that have survived from antiquity. I regret that racists may be upset to learn this historical fact. Actually, I don't mind upsetting racists. You may wish to insert another "error" right about now.
These images and archetypes form the background for "seminal" discussions of love among ancient philosophers, such as the dialectic in Plato's Symposium. There is a lineage from Isis to Socrates' philosophical partner "Diotima," but also from this Greek figure's theory of love to the Virgin Mary by way of Pauline Christianity, then Augustine and Neo-Platonism. A multi-year conversation about love and civilization beginning with the ancients and culminating with the so-called "death of eros" in our time is a complete education in the humanities and human sciences. These themes recur not only in later Christianity, also in Judaism, notably in Cabala (Campbell's spelling). Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: Middlemore, 1944), then John Hall, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York: MacMillan , 1994). (Harold Bloom's essay on kaballah is highly recommended to Jews and non-Jews.)
The "Jewish Jesus" is the interpretation of Jesus in light of the Jewish people's hope and idealization -- in a later post-exilic setting -- of an Annointed one or Messiah, who appeared or was sought as "symbol of unity and fulfillment of Scriptures," to compensate for the many sufferings and tragedies of Israel. Jaroslav Pelikan states bluntly, in Jesus Through the Centuries (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 11: "... Jesus was a Jew." Those who are under the impression that Jesus was, say, Belgian, are simply mistaken. I always recommend reading the books of theologians who get in trouble with the Catholic Church. Inevitably, these are the reigning theologians a generation after their troubles. For example, on Cristology, see Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World (London: SCM, 1980) and Hans Kung, Christianity: Its Essence and History (London: SCM, 1995). Joseph Campbell explains a more interesting difficulty:
"In Christian hermeneutics the crucifixion of the Savior had always presented a great problem; for Jesus according to Christian belief, accepted death voluntarily. Why? In Abelard's view ... it was an act of willing self-immolation in love, intended to invoke in response the return of mankind's love from worldly concerns to God. ... " ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
This leads to a startling claim:
"Indeed, the very idea of a descent of God into the world in love to invoke, in return, man's love to God, ... [leads to the insight that] as mankind yearns for the grace of God, so God [yearns] for the hommage [or love] of mankind, the two yearnings being reciprocal." ("Pieta.")
Myths to Live By, p. 158. ("Is this atheism's moment?")
The union of Christ with his "bride," the Church -- of the Holy Spirit with Her suffering children, humanity -- is symbolized by the Grail. The Grail is the place of transcendence, beyond opposites: male or female, young or old, good or evil. The Grail is the "unity of the Holy Spirit." This worship of the feminine -- as unity or nurturing care in the form of the Virgin Mary -- is a Medieval idea, based on Hellenistic Platonism, which would have seemed strange to Jesus. Jesus was closer to the mystics of Judaism and classical thinkers for whom sex was not a source of guilt or "displaced." The worship of the feminine in most other cultures is explicitly erotic. Catholicism makes eros a symbolic feature of feminine images of the Virgin Mary who is usually represented as youthful as well as maternal.
There are similar figures to Jesus in the history of Judaism, i.e., the Bel Shemtov and other distinguished mystical rabbis who taught by example, mostly figures emerging in the Hebrew Enlightenment of the eighteenth century among Ashkenazi jewry. If you do not like the fact that Jesus was certainly a Jew, too bad.
This key phrase with crucial "loving" overtones ("in the unity of the Holy Spirit") is still spoken in celebrating the Catholic mass. The phrase points to the homecoming of humanity in, with, and to God, which is ultimate self-realization. Integration of feminine and masculine, human and divine with love is "Being." This is the so-called "Christianizing of Eros." To be is to be with others in a loving manner of self-realization. Now take another look at Da Vinci's drawing of "The Vitruvian Man." What do you think the drawing is saying about the UNITY of human and divine? You have forty minutes. The real title of Da Vinci's drawing is "in the unity of the Holy Spirit."
The "meaning" of the great Christian symbols is the unity of the rose (feminine) and cross (masculine) in the person or Being of Christ, who transcends all opposites. God is beyond gender. Such a transcendence is LOVE, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus tells his puzzled Apostles: "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you ... and you do not see it."
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but a state of being with God which is symbolized by the Grail. Loving someone is that state of being with God. Biologists tell us that all human embryos begin as both masculine and feminine in posse. (Potentiality) One theological interpretation of this fact is that we return to a state beyond gender in coming home to God/Love. Please read my essay "Judith Butler and Gender Theory" and "Pieta." Both of those works have been subjected to a great deal of vandalism, along with this essay. Judith Butler will be astonished to learn that she is one of our best Catholic theologians. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory.")
"The Grail finds you," Sophie says, echoing Wolfram Von Eschenbach medieval author of "Parzival." Unfortunately, neither Dan Brown nor his character, Sophie, understands what this means. It means that you already have the Grail. You had it from birth. It is within you. It is called LOVE. Von Eschenbach's purpose, as Campbell explains, was to dramatize the fulfillment of human nature for which we hope: "... the achievement of that supreme spiritual goal of which the grail [sic.] was the medieval symbol."
To search outside of yourself for the Grail, as an object or person, is a doomed venture. The Grail is your love directed towards others. By finding love within yourself, you will discover (by creating) love in the world. This finding of love within yourself is your encounter with what you may call "God."
II. Defending the Catholic Church.
It has become fashionable to attack Catholic institutions and the Vatican as evil. The Vatican is a human institution, which readily admits to fallibility -- as does the Pope -- on all earthly or political matters. I am not claiming to be a good Catholic, by the way. I am not in any official capacity with any Catholic organization. Yet I find these attacks on Catholicism as well as the Church increasingly irrational and annoying. The Pope -- no Pope -- condones child molestation by anyone.
It is in terms of the Vatican's attitudes to women and outdated notions of gender that criticism should be taken seriously by this Pope and his successors. To deem "instant excommunication" appropriate for anyone who ordains a woman as a priest is to seek to excommunicate Christ who clearly held Mary Magdalene in this priestly regard. Given the hesitation in excommunicating priests charged with child molestation this official harshness towards women is offensive and absurd.
The "doctrine of infallibility" has to do with narrow issues of faith in Catholic theology, which is rarely invoked, and never about political or administrative matters in which Church officials may be involved. There are some bad priests. There are some bad anything you like -- dentists, cab drivers, plumbers, all have been known to be both good and not-so-good. Only lawyers are universally admired for their moral beauties.
The Vatican is an institution doing charitable work in many places in the world, caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, serving and educating children and young people who, otherwise, may not be educated. I am one of the recipients of Catholic schooling. However, the Pope certainly should not be held responsible for my disturbing opinions. In many instances, the Church is doing these valuable services free of charge. The Vatican is not the source of evil in the world. The Pope's recent visit to Auschwitz (where many Christians also died) is part of a continuing effort at reconciliation and love directed at the Jewish people, whose suffering and history must be shared. Priests can be mistaken about moral issues, like any of us. There are some vicious and bizarre anti-Catholic attacks in this novel and contemporary society:
"What about those who look at the cruelty in the world and say, where is God today? Those who look at the Church scandals and ask, who ARE these men who claim to speak the truth about Christ and yet lie to cover-up the sexual abuse of children by their own priests? ... What happens ... if persuasive scientific evidence comes out that the church's version of the Christ story is inaccurate, and that the greatest story ever told is, in fact, the greatest story ever SOLD." (p. 288.)
These words are spoken by Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, but they clearly meet with Mr. Brown's approval. Similar comments are scattered throughout the text. To refer in these terms to the leadership of any religious group in America would be shocking. Somehow it is permissible to refer to Catholics or the Vatican in these terms, which disproves many of these allegations, since the Church has not ordered a fatwa against Dan Brown. The Church only points out that Brown is mistaken and that his book is not exactly Shakespeare. I agree on both counts. Scriptures are not an accountant's statement of assets and liabilities. "Accuracy" in discerning the message contained in these sacred texts is a more subtle and profound process of interpretation. ("Incoherence in 'The New Yorker'" and "Is this atheism's moment?")
I wish to deal with these charges in detail. First, "where is God today?" This is an issue debated, at length by Catholic theologians, by Christians and non-Christians. As Kierkegaard noted, when you ask this question, you are already revealing an obsession and concern with God suggesting that you cannot avoid the problem of faith. If you reject God, then you are making a theological judgment. You are involved with God, even in rejecting Him. If you despair, says Kierkegaard, that is excellent because it means you are very close to Him. "Why despair? Are you missing something or someone?" Kierkegaard poses these annoying questions. Guess who it might be that you are missing? We love other human beings, in Catholic teaching, because we see God within them. (See again my story "Pieta.") What do you think Holy Communion symbolizes?
Yes, some priests have committed sexual offenses and the Church has disciplined them and cooperated with the authorities in seeing them punished. Also, millions have been paid for compensation of injured persons in civil suits, often (tragically) at the cost of the Church's charitable work. You have said NOTHING about Catholicism by pointing to individuals who are flawed in the Church. There are no "unflawed" persons, not even in radical political movements where atheism is a trendy opinion and people munch on tofu at lunch time as they peruse The Village Voice.
If only New Jersey's Supreme Court and legal system were as concerned to do the ethically and legally correct thing as the Vatican, I might receive recognition of my injuries and appropriate apologies. Instead, I am afraid that we can expect more vandalism of these writings and censorship. I believe the number of hits at these blogs has now passed 100,000. MSN has not closed, mysteriously enough, although I still cannot reach my sites. How curious?
I am an agnostic, in the sense of not believing in a personal God with a white beard floating around in heaven. I am also a democratic socialist (so are many Catholics). I do not read Scriptures as literal accounts of anything. To do that, to read religious texts as police reports, is to diminish those texts. Not all religious persons are fundamentalists. Not everyone who recognizes the importance of human spirituality is ignorant or foolish. I think it is foolish to deny human spirituality. What the word and imagery associated with the concept of "God" points to is the awesome mystery of love. The ambiguity in great religious texts is deliberate in many cases because they are invitations to interpret that are respectful of human freedom.
There is no possible evidence that can show that religious stories are false because categories of empirical, historical, literal truth and falsehood are irrelevant to religious texts. Such texts are concerned with meaning and moral truth, as well as life-wisdom. Religion is a symbolic language-structure connected to the release of universal archetypal wisdom, which (if denied in ancient forms and texts) will reveal itself in science or commerce, in all other aspects of life, because it is fundamental to humans, like the morality to which it is allied. You cannot eradicate religion, which "re-connects" (re ligare) people with their nation, species, universe and (for believers) with God.
Now I am going to shock Catholics. It makes no difference if Jesus "married" (how do you define "marriage"?) Mary Magdalene, whom he obviously loved. The truth that Jesus intended to communicate, I believe, he succeeded in communicating. That truth is concerned with love and meaning for everyone. It is deeply rooted in Hebrew culture and history. The Christian Scriptures tell us, in every line, that Jesus is a Jew. If you see Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," the Aramaic word for God is "Abba," which means "father" and links "Jeshua" (Jesus) to an ancient Hebrew tradition associating God with a loving (but stern) father. Yes, I know the Freudians are salivating. Ignore them. Hence, anti-semitism is hatred of Jesus. None of this precludes us from sending Bernie Madoff to prison for theft by deception.
Religious truth is so powerful, psychologically, that it can only be conveyed by means of symbols. Pay attention to the symbols in the scriptures. Read them as important and meaningful poetry. The best I can do to approximate the ethical and spiritual truth at the center of Christianity is to recall the image of the Grail, as individuation or moral self-realization in unity with others, or full humanity. Now take another look at Spielberg's A.I.
In "The Spirit of Christianity," Hegel concludes that "love heals all wounds [because it] is the only solution to the severing of the human being into warring aspects." Most of us are fragmented, divided against ourselves and from one another, body from soul or spirit, masculine from feminine, material striving from happiness, desire from consumption, sex from love. We yearn for integration and meaning through purposefulness. That meaning and purpose that we desire is, and can only be, love. It is love which reconciles us to one another -- even to our enemies -- by not allowing us to do to them what they have done to us. I don't want to deface anyone's writings nor to rape or steal from others. I leave such things to members of the bar in New Jersey. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
It is only love that allows us to embrace the alienated parts of ourselves, or others who are similarly alienated -- poor people, AIDS victims, old and mentally ill people, our own baser selves. Love allows all that is lost in life -- every person we love who is separated from us -- to be recovered, or returned to us. It is love alone which restores life to itself. With love, fate is reconciled. The Christian ethics of love I know is true and important. I find a similar message in Judaism and Islam, also in other world religions and in secular ethics. The message is that, with love, "everything we look upon is blessed." ("Beauty and the Beast.") Hegel says:
"... the stings of conscience are blunted and the evil spirit is expelled from the deed." This reconciliation is Holderlin's "rose in the cross." Hyperion (1797-91). Furthermore: "Love which becomes Spirit makes all members of a living whole [community,] the life that animates that whole must have a wider definition, -- it must be a life which comprehends even death itself. Pain, disharmony, evil, must be seen to be incapable of breaking through the all-embracing unity, and even to be themselves the means of realizing it. Unreason itself must find a place, were it only a place to annihilate itself, under the universal rule of reason, which impartially rains its fertilising showers upon the evil and the good, and stimulates each in turn to show what is in it; since just in this impartiality lies the security for the triumph of good." (Hegel, Das Leben Jesu.)
With the appearance of the awesome scholarship displayed by Yale University's Professor John Boswell, it is very difficult for anyone (including the Vatican) to argue that sexual-orientation has any bearing on this message of love or that "marriage" is a sacrament that should be denied to same-sex couples by persons claiming to remain faithful to the Christian texts. Marriage is the community of erotic love. "Eros" is an aspect of divinity and its expression, for example, in the sentimental representation of "an older Christ and youthful St. John [that] is strongly evocative of the tradition of passionate friendship common among the monastic clergy of the Middle Ages" -- to say nothing of the various gay Popes in our history -- "and romanticized earlier by writers like Saint Aelred of Rievaulx." John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago & London: University of Chicago, 1980), p. 202. (If Mr. Rubio in Miami is, in fact, a homosexual -- as so many people say -- then he should be free to come out of the closet without being affected in his political ambitions by his sexual-orientation, or even to marry the person of his choice.)
From the iconography of St. Sebastian to Christ and St. John, to many other representations, it becomes clear to art historians and theologians that same-sex love and all love is not only "o.k." in terms of religious teachings in Christianity, but (I suggest) love is what Christianity is all about. Inserting "errors" in this essay will not change this reality. Ultimate self-realization is only possible in community, through love, where each PERSON becomes him- or herself, through self-discovery in the Other. ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" and "Is there a gay marriage right?")
You cannot deny the erotic nature of a person at one moment, then exchange the sign of peace and recognition that we are taught the Catholic mass is concerned to establish. Recognition and the sign of peace means that we must welcome our gay and lesbian "brothers and sisters" to the Community of the Faith. St. John teaches us: "You must see and love God in your brother and sister ..." Please welcome gay and lesbian Catholics to the St. Patrick's Day festivities, in your families and friendships, not to mention in parades down Fifth Avenue. None of this precludes us from sending a lesbian who steals public funds to prison. ("Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'')
This message of inclusion and unity is symbolized in the shared absorption of "the Body of Christ." The Church is no prude, but it rightly dismisses pagan sex cults (Brown messes up his discussion of "Hieros Gamos") because they limit their focus to the sexual act, allegedly, as opposed to its spiritual meaning. Sex is not always love-making. Love-making is always a spiritual act. This is true regardless of sexual-orientation. Love-making is reverential, a kind of prayer. Sex is very nice; love-making is much greater. Love is finding the Grail. You do not need to decipher a bizarre code. You do not need to fly to Paris. Although it sure would be nice to do so! You do not have to worry about albino monks. The Kingdom of Heaven is right here and now. The Grail is looking for you. All you have to do is to be. I hope that you will be.
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