Good morning! Or if you read this later... good afternoon and good evening! (Truman Show reference).
I'm back at home in Florida (finally not feeling cold any more). While I was on the road, I re-read a great book. I'm mentoring a young adult who went through the Truth and Beauty immersion experience in Rome (more on that below). This student had chosen to read this book, on my recommendation, and so I read it again so that I will be able to discuss it.
The book is: Out of the Silent Planet - the first book in CS Lewis' "Space Trilogy."
Anything by CS Lewis is always worth reading more than once, but especially the ones that have allegory in them - you always get more out of it the second time around. In this case, I think that I read it the first time simply as a sci-fi story, and I DO love stories about space travel that were written before anyone had actually traveled in space, or before we knew what the surface of Mars looks like. There is so much more room for speculative description, and Lewis is THE master at that.
But of course this is one of his allegorical stories as well. And in that sense, the Space Trilogy is prophetic - the faith vs. science debate was already raging, of course, in the mid-twentieth century, and it was already apparent that many people were not only choosing to trust science over religion, they were making science into a religion that would replace religion.
And Lewis sees where all that was going, and the third book in the series could have been written as an insider's indictment of twenty-first century academia. In any case, I won't get into the details of the allegory, but Lewis can see that it's not just about science vs religion, it's science vs morality, and he calls out the hypocrisy of a supposed altruism of science (for the good of humanity) that allows for the willingness to sacrifice individual humans for the cause (and he didn't even have abortion in mind yet). In this way, Lewis anticipates the question posed in the Star Trek films - the needs of the one vs the needs of the many - and if you answer that question by saying that you can kill some for the greater good of the species (or the environment), you have sold the soul of collective humanity. It's all summed up in a comment made at the end of the book, where the tension between science and faith is referred to as a tension between space versus heaven.
So I highly recommend the Space Trilogy - the first two books are short, and actually make a great intro to CS Lewis if you haven't read anything by him (though of course so does the Narnia series).
Regarding the Truth and Beauty Project. This is an immersion experience for young adults, focusing on art as a way into spirituality, that is, spiritual growth by making the connection between truth and beauty. It takes place in Rome, and it's run by my friends John and Ashley Norohna. If you know of any young adults who might be interested in this program, they are accepting applications for the next session right now - check it out, or send your young adults to:
Here's a short (about a minute) video I took going around the Holy Column in the church of Santa Prassede. This is the column that Jesus was tied to when he was scourged by Pontius Pilate. They don't always have the barrier down, so you usually don't get to see it from all the way around. I wanted to get video of the whole thing all the way around because I ran across a note in an ancient document that said that those who made a pilgrimage (at that time to the Holy Land, since it was still in Jerusalem) could visit the Holy Column, and could see marks left from the hands of Jesus where he gripped it as he was being whipped. I assume that this is pious legend, but I figured since the column has that dark & light marble, maybe there's a place where the dark parts look like hands. I did not see it, but if you do, let me know!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
My voice was still recovering from a bad cold, so not sounding my best, but this was a great conversation about pilgrimage, for the Jubilee year - more of this coming in other interviews! (FYI, I think I was the third of three guests that day, so you will have to fast forward to find me)
It seems that one way or another we need to talk about different kinds, or different levels of heresy. What I have been calling heresy vs. heterodoxy, others call heresy on fundamental doctrines vs. heresy on less fundamental doctrines. In other words, Heresy with a capital H (over fundamental doctrines like the Trinity and christology) are the kinds of heresies that move one outside the boundaries of what Christianity is, and that's because the very definition of Christianity is defined according to these fundamental doctrines. To refuse to sign the Creed at the Council of Nicaea in 325, or the Council of Constantinople in 381 - and indeed to reject any of the contents of the Creed today - means that a person is NOT a Christian.
So are the non-chalcedonians, such as the miaphysites (including St. Gregory of Narek, and today's Coptic Christians) - are they heretics? Well, like it is with a lot of things, that depends on your definition of heresy. If you include in your definition of ...
As promised, I thought that this would be a good discussion starter here in the community - this is from a conversation I had with my producer at Catholic Culture, around the podcast episodes on St. Gregory of Narek. If you've listened to the first episode on St. Gregory, you know that he is the first and only Doctor of the Church who was not Catholic! What are we to make of this? How do we explain it? Well, it was within the context of me trying to explain it that two really fundamental questions came up, and had to be hashed out between me and my producer. The first question - and this was surprising, given that we had a whole series on The Heresies - the first question is: What is a heresy? And how you answer that has serious implications for the second question, which is: What is the Universal Church? And that has serious implications for ecumenical dialogue, not to mention how we think about our fellow Christians who are not Catholic. So let's take the first question first (and here's ...
