Is the Pope Lawrentian (or Merely a Heretic)?

Pope Francis wearing a large 

D. H. Lawrence pendant necklace

 

D. H. Lawrence famously declared that there was no real battle between himself and the Catholic Church because, when it came to the religious fundamentals, he was in close accord. Thus, for example, he believes in a single almighty God, in esoteric doctrine, and in the power of a priest who has been initiated into the latter to grant absolution [1].    

 

Having said that, Lawrence also believes that whilst Jesus is undoubtedly a Son of God, he is not, however, the only Son of God - and this, actually, does put him in in direct conflict with the central Christian teaching that acceptance of Christ is the sole means of salvation and knowing God. For as Jesus himself said (according to the Gospel of John):

 

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me [2].

 

Or at least, this used to be the central teaching - but no longer for Pope Francis, it seems ... For yesterday, the Bishop of Rome concluded his three-day visit to Singapore by declaring that All religions are a path to God [3].

 

Such pluralism makes one wonder whether the Pope is actually a Lawrentian: for like Lawrence, he seems to believe that there are many saviours (with others still to come), so that "the great Church of the future" will recognise that men "are saved variously, in various lands, in various climes, in various centuries" [4]. 

 

I'm not a Catholic, but, if I were, I'd find this pretty outrageous; for here is the visible head of the Church not only calling for interfaith dialogue but essentially saying that not even Jesus can declare himself to be the way for all men and that - to paraphrase Lawrence - it is disastrous for any religion to assert itself above all others. 

 

That's heresy, is it not? 

 

Of course, the present Pope has a record for this kind of thing; even lending his support in 2019 to the placing of a South American pagan idol inside a church in Rome [5], and so I suppose nothing should surprise us. 

 

As I'm not a Catholic or a Christian of any other kind, however, this isn't really a great concern to me. Indeed, as a reader of Lawrence, I'm inclined to agree with Ramón, that every people should "'substantiate their own mysteries'" [6] and "'speak with the tongues of their own blood'" [7].

     

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'There is no real battle ...', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), Appendix I: Fragmentary writings, p. 385.

 

[2] John 14:6 (KJV). 

 

[3]  The Pope was quoted in the article 'All faiths lead to God: New controversy as Pope preaches religious pluralism on final day of tour', in The Catholic Herald (13 September 13, 2024): click here. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'There is no real battle ...', Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, p. 385.

 

[5] See the post entitled 'On the Desecration of Altars and the Return of Strange Idols' (25 October 2019): click here.  

[6] D. H. Lawrence, The Plumed Serpent, ed. L. D. Clark (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 427.

[7] Ibid., p. 248.

 

 

On the Crowning and Beheading of the Virgin Mary

Crowning - a sculpture of the Virgin Mary by Esther Strauss

Photo: St. Mary's Cathedral / Franz Wurzinger

 

 

I.

 

As a rule, I wouldn't normally support the vandalism or destruction of an artwork.

 

But I'm tempted to make an exception in the case of a sculpture by Esther Krauss [1] depicting the Virgin Mary giving birth and displayed in a cathedral in the Austrian city of Linz as part of an installation concerned with issues around women's roles and gender equality.

 

I'm not a Catholic and I don't think the work blasphemous or abominable. 

 

But it is undeniably obscene and its installation was deliberately designed in order to provoke - as the vicar for education, art and culture in the Linz diocese openly confessed [2] - so perhaps no surprise then that someone who takes their faith seriously and found the work grossly objectionable should take action.

 

 

II.

 

It's probably an age thing, but one grows increasingly weary of militants such as Ms. Krauss masquerading as artists who seem to believe their political convictions allow them to disregard the religious or cultural sensibilities of others. 

 

Arguing that whilst most works depicting the Blessed Mother have been made by men - and therefore often serve patriarchal interests - Krauss goes on to say that her intention was simply to emphasise the materiality of giving birth. 

 

For Krauss, removing the head from her sculpture was an act of brutal violence and "an expression of the fact that there are still people who question women's right to their own bodies" [3]. Ironically employing phallologocentric language, she has called for very firm measures to be taken and the police are now investigating.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] On her personal website - click here - Esther Strauß describes herself as a performance artist and writer, who, above all, loves to carry out light-hearted experiments; such as sleeping for a night on Anna Freud's couch at the Sigmund Freud Museum in London, or digging up the grave of her grandfather with her bare hands and then stripping naked so that she might cover herself with the excavated soil and mud. 

 

[2] Please give a slow handclap to the Rev. Johann Hintermaier. 

 

[3] Strauss was quoted in a Vatican City Associated Press report that was published in The Guardian (2 July 2024): click here. 

 

 

Commemoratio omnium fidelium defunctorum: A Post for All Souls' Day in Memory of My Mother

Traditionally, candles are used on All Souls' Day to provide 

light for the poor souls languishing in purgatorial darkness.

 

 

All Soul's Day is a day of prayer and remembrance for those who have departed this world but failed to make it straight into heaven; i.e., those poor souls who find themselves hanging about in that afterlife destination known as purgatory [1].

 

To be clear, these people are men and women of faith; they are not evil-doers who are ultimately bound for hell. Nevertheless, due perhaps to the taint of venial sin, or having failed to fully atone for past transgressions, they require some form of spiritual cleansing before they can ascend unto that place inhabited by angels and saints. 

 

The Church - and when I say the Church I mean the Catholic Church - teaches that this purification of souls in purgatory can be assisted by the actions of the living (thus the call to commemoration) and I like the idea that just as the dead can look on and help us, so too can we help them and, indeed, have a duty to be kind and generous to the departed. 

 

It's wrong for the dead to haunt the living and to resent their happiness; but it's also wrong of the living to curse the dead and deny them their entry into the highest place where they will know the gladness of death (which some believe to be oneness with God and others think of as oblivion). 

 

D. H. Lawrence was often respectful and tender towards the dead in his late poetry. He asks us, for example, to show pity towards the dead that were ousted out of life, but are not yet ready to make the final journey and so linger in the shadows like outcast dogs on the margins of heaven [2].            

 

In a very beautiful poem entitled 'All Souls Day', Lawrence writes:

 

 

Be kind, oh be kind to your dead

and give them a little encouragement

and help them to build their little ship of death.

For the soul has a long, long journey after death

to the sweet home of pure oblivion.

Each needs a little ship, a little ship

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey

Oh, from your heart

provide for your dead once more, equip them

like departing mariners, lovingly. [3]

Ultimately, it is our love and warm memories which purify the souls of the dead; the compassion of still-living hearts that helps them on "to the fathomless deeps ahead, far, far from the grey shores of marginal existence" [4].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although many people confuse and conflate the terms, purgatory is not limbo and whilst the former is Church doctrine, the latter isn't - despite the fact that many Catholics believed in it and wrote about it, including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. 

      Whilst purgatory is reserved for souls ultimately bound for heaven, limbo was believed to be the final destination for the souls of babies that had died without being baptised. In other words, a kind of posthumous neonatal unit either on the edge of hell or the lip of heaven. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI requested that Church theologians reconsider this idea and argued that the truly Christian thing to do was to pray that God's mercy be shown to all deceased babies.     

      As for purgatory, it's probably best to think of it as a state of being or condition of the soul, rather than a place. That way, one can avoid having to try and give coordinates as to its location. This seems to be the line that is presently taken by the Church.  

      Readers who are interested in this subject may like to see Diana Walsh Pasulka's book Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture, (Oxford University Press, 2014). 

 

[2] See Lawrence's poem 'The Houseless Dead' in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 635-36. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'All Souls Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 635. 

      I read this poem in full at my mother's funeral service in February of this year: click here.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'After All Saints Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 637. 

 

This post is also in memory of Felisa Martinez and Angeliki Thanassa.   

Apple Maggots

Apple with maggot linocut by linocutboy

on tumblr.com

 

 

I. 

 

In a short piece of fragmentary writing, D. H. Lawrence laughably declares himself to be a good Catholic at heart; one who believes in an all-overshadowing God, recognises the divinity of Jesus, and accepts the authority of the Church, including "the power of the priest to grant absolution" [1].

 

On the religious fundamentals, says Lawrence, there is no real battle between himself and Christianity and no major breach between himself and the Church of Rome. 

 

Only, of course, there is: for whilst acknowledging the divinity of Christ, Lawrence also insists that Jesus is not, however, the only Son of God; that there are in fact many saviours and to teach otherwise is disastrous and hateful. 

 

Now, I'm no theologian, but I'm pretty sure that the idea of Christ as the one and only true path to God is crucial to Christianity's brand identity and its exclusivity. And that to deny this is heresy, is it not? Lawrence would immediately - and rightly by the terms and conditions of membership - be excommunicated from the faith were he in fact a Catholic (which he wasn't).                

 

 

II. 

 

Ultimately, queer and quirky individuals such as Lawrence require their independence above all else; they are isolated outsiders who instinctively shun all attachments, reject all dogma, and question all authority - even their own: Never trust the artist. Trust the tale [2].

 

Nietzsche calls such individuals free spirits and rightly points out how they are highly unsuitable as members of any kind of political party or faith-based organisation [3]. For just as they eat their way in to the body of such, so too do they quickly (and destructively) consume their way through it and out the other side. They can't help it. It's their nature - they're like apple maggots. 

 

Now, without claiming to be a free spirit in the mould of Nietzsche and Lawrence, I've often wondered why it is that I could never quite fit in or join in with others; could never belong to a group or society or movement, with the exception of punk, which, of course, was always a loose association of odd-bods and weirdos who came together on the basis of hating everyone else even more than they despised one another and which had no rules and only one imperative - do it yourself: Don't be told what you want / Don't be told what you need [4].    

 

Notes

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'There is no real battle ...', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), Appendix I: Fragmentary writings, p. 385. 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Final Version (1923), 'The Spirit of Place', p. 14.  

[3] See Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Vol. I., Pt. 9. §579.  

[4] Sex Pistols, 'God Save the Queen', (Virgin Records, 1977). 

 

 

This post is dedicated to the the free-spirited feminist Afiya S. Zia.

Michel Tournier on Education 2: Erotic Religiosity

It is not enough to love the young; 

they must know that they are loved - St. Don Bosco

 

 

I. 

 

I closed part one of this post [click here] mourning the fact that only rarely in an age of remote learning do teachers and their students form those close bonds that were common when education was about initiation in the old aristocratic sense of the term (i.e. becoming a good human being and member of society), rather than instruction in the modern bourgeois sense (i.e., becoming someone with the skills and knowledge valued by employers).

 

Perhaps, I tentatively suggested, we need to radically rethink the question of education and reintroduce an element of erotic religiosity back into the classroom; whether this be modelled on classical Greek lines, Loyola's order of Jesuits, or even upon Lawrentian lines in terms of the democracy of touch, is something that would obviously have to be discussed carefully and at length [a].

 

 

II.

 

The French writer Michel Tournier seems to favour the Catholic model, if only because this is the one with which he is most familiar. 

 

In his autobiography [b], he tells us that the two schools that occupy a special place in his memory among the dozen or so he attended in the course of a "chaotic scholastic career" [47], were both religious institutions; Saint Erembert's in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Saint Francis's School in Alençon. Each were far more successful than their secular counterparts "in preserving the initiatory aspects of education" [47].

 

Tournier explains what it was about Catholicism that particularly appealed to his youthful self and how this inclined him in later years towards the study of philosophy:

 

"The Catholic religion, with its rituals, holy days, theology, and mythology, served as a marvelous emotional counterweight to mathematics and the natural sciences, a counterweight without which the child or adolescent is afflicted by a sense of dryness and aridity. In any case, I cannot separate my memory of the theology [...] from the sumptuousness of ritual. Dunce that I was, I found in religious history and catechism an anticipation of what I later discovered in metaphysics: concrete speculation inextricably intertwined with powerful and brilliant imagery. For metaphysics is nothing other than the rigour of mathematics wedded to the richness of poetry." [47]   

Not that Tournier was smitten with other aspects of Catholicism: "I had little use for the bludgeon of dogma or for the zombie-like obedience and faith of the humble." [47] This is probably why he became a novelist and not a priest. He appreciated the fact that the Church initiated the child into a world that was both spiritual and sensual; a world that granted access to all - not just members of the nobility - to poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Alas, the institutionalised clergy also has another face, hideous, hypocritical, and hateful ...

"Having lost its temporal power, the Church signed on as handmaiden to the most constricted, conservative element of the bourgeoisie, whose interests and ideas it ardently adopted as its own. It continued to draw its teachings from the Gospel, but from the words of the Pharisees rather than those of Jesus. In other words, it began to preach respect for social hierarchies, money, and power as well as hatred of sexuality." [48-49] 

For Tournier, it's simple: in teaching a false morality (conservative and anti-erotic), the Church cannot possibly initiate the young into the good life. In a manner similar to D. H. Lawrence, he dreams of a Jesus fully resurrected in the flesh:

 

"Fear of the flesh has made the crucifix - a corpse nailed to two pieces of wood - the centre of Catholic worship in preference to all other Christian symbols [...] The Church has resolutely set its face against the dogma of resurrection in the flesh and attempts to ignore the fact that whenever Jesus encountered sexuality - even in the antisocial forms of prostitution and adultery - he defended it against the wrath of the Pharisees. [...] Prudes are ugly and impute their own ugliness to love, but when they spit on it, they spit on themselves. Loved and celebrated in those we love, the flesh is as radiant as that of Jesus on Mount Tabor." [49-50] [c]

 

Tournier continues:

 

"Sumptuous, subtle, and erotic - such is the initiatory Church of which I dream when I think back on how my childhood might have been. I thank my stars that the Church that actually raised me only partially betrayed that ideal." [50]

 

Sadly, those days are now remote - Tournier was born almost a hundred years ago (in 1924) - and secular education has pretty much triumphed:

 

"The revolution begun by the men of the Enlightenment is now complete. Emotional bonds, personal and possibly erotic relationships, pose no further danger of polluting the aseptic atmosphere of the classroom. Education, cleansed of every last vestige of initiation, has been reduced to nothing more than a dispenser of useful and saleable knowledge. Already computers are taking the place of teachers [...]" [50]     

But still the heart beats and the flesh quivers ... And tomorrow is another day ...

 

Notes

 

[a] I am aware of the danger that initiation can collapse into indoctrination and that models of pedagogy that flirt with ideals of pederasty can often serve as an apologetics for the sexual abuse of minors. In replacing modern teachers with tutors and mentors who care about more than exam results, we don't want to end up appointing orgres to the classroom (or even dangerous women like Miss Brodie). 

      On the other hand, if you banish the warm and magical aspect of education entirely from the official curriculum and prohibit all forms of amorous relations in the classroom, then you can be certain they will develop elsewhere and often in guises you wouldn't anticipate.    

         

[b] Michel Tournier, The Wind Spirit, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, (Collins, 1989). All page references given in the post refer to this work. 

 

[c] As Deleuze notes: "A certain number of 'visionaries' have opposed Christ as an amorous person to Christianity as a mortuary enterprise." See 'Nietzsche and St. Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos', in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco, (Verso, 1998), p. 37.