Position Papers - April 2018

Number 518 April 2018 €3 · £2.50 · $4

A review of Catholic affairs

Women in the Church

CATHERINE KAVANAGH MARY LEWIS REV. DOMINIC MCGRATTAN

The readings for Film review: Eastertide Downsizing PAT HANRATTY

BISHOP BARRON

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Number 518 · April 2018

Editorial

by Rev. Gavan Jennings

In Passing: Black Panther

by Michael Kirke

Then and now

by Tim O’Sullivan

Women in the Catholic Church

by Catherine Kavanagh

The Catholic Church: An Empire of Misogyny?

by Mary Lewis

Another kind of feminism

by Rev. Dominic McGrattan

The readings for Eastertide

by Pat Hanratty

Film Review: Downsizing

by Bishop Robert Barron

Editor: Assistant editors: Subscription manager: Secretary: Design:

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Rev. Gavan Jennings Michael Kirke, Pat Hanratty, Brenda McGann Liam Ó hAlmhain Dick Kearns Eblana Solutions

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Editorial

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his month our lead story is “Women in the Church”. I originally intended to use the title “Is the Church Misogynistic?” but I backtracked partly because it sounded a bit negative, but mostly because the criticism that the Church – “Mother Church” – is misogynistic seems to me to border on the absurd. Nobody will deny that individual men can be so, just as individual women can hate men; our human nature is fallen after all, and in Genesis the previously harmonious relationship between men and women is portrayed as the first victim of Original Sin. But since the claim that the Church is misogynistic has recently been aired it does need examination, and so we have included three articles on the matter this month. Of course much more could be said on the matter and if you would like to read up more you could look up Erika Bachiochi’s Women, Sex, and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching (Pauline Books & Media, 2010), or Christopher Kaczor’s The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction about Catholicism (Ignatius Press, 2012), in particular the section entitled: “The Church Hates Women: The Myth of Catholic Misogyny”.

Another very interesting writer and speaker on the topic of women and the Church is Sr Prudence Allen, a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission. Sister Prudence’s work focuses in particular on women philosophers and on the philosophical concept of womanhood. You can find some of talks on YouTube.

I would like to use this Editorial to revisit the cover story of the March issue of Position Papers, namely the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. That topic garnered a lot of interest and feedback. Some people said that they’d never heard of him and they were grateful for the introduction. Others – the great Peterson fans – were delighted to see Position Papers joining the fan club. There were others, however, who voiced a word of caution, pointing out that not everything in Jordan Peterson is compatible with the Faith, and (on mature reflection) I share their concerns. There are, to my mind, three

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caveats which should be borne in mind when reading (or watching) Peterson. They concern things – we could call them tendencies – in his thought which are at odds with a Catholic understanding of religion.

Firstly, Peterson’s approach to Sacred Scripture is problematic. While he is doing trojan work mining Biblical texts for their psychological wealth, he does so as one would approach any text of mythology i.e. without faith in its historical character. He certainly considers Sacred Scripture as a work of great wisdom, and as “the foundational document for Western civilisation” which is now largely overlooked by intellectuals, and he taps into it in an admirable way. For a Christian, however, this approach is still “reductive” i.e. it brackets out the most important fact that revelation is a supernatural initiative of God. In other words the Bible is not the product of human, but of divine wisdom. Bishop Barron warns against this “Gnosticizing tendency”: In a word, I have the same concern about Peterson that I have about both Campbell and Jung, namely, the Gnosticizing tendency to read Biblical religion purely psychologically and philosophically and not at all historically. No Christian should be surprised that the Scriptures can be profitably read through psychological and philosophical lenses, but at the same time, every Christian has to accept the fact that the God of the Bible is not simply a principle or an abstraction, but rather a living God who acts in history. (www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/02/27/the-jordanpeterson-phenomenon).

Thomas V. Mirus has also pointed out the danger in this approach to Sacred Scripture, saying that it runs the danger of falling into dishonesty: The most immediately obvious pitfall of this approach is that any attempt to make the Bible accessible to those who do not believe in its central truths will necessarily be reductive. Peterson realizes this to an extent, but makes a problematic distinction between

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literal truth and “tool truth”, that is, something that may not be literally true but has good results when we stake our lives on it as though it were true (this is Peterson’s notion of belief, and the sense in which he calls himself a Christian). Putting aside the philosophical problems with this, and the way it ultimately guts Scripture of its primary incarnate, personal meaning, this sort of therapeutic approach runs the risk of dishonesty, for if one thinks something is not true but behaves as though it is, one is being dishonest (“Dangerous ideas at Google and the pain of Jordan Peterson” in Catholic culture.org).

A second caveat is in the area of Peterson’s excessive commitment to individualism. The totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, of Stalin’s USSR, of Hitler’s Germany, and of the Khmer Rouge appear to be the driving force behind the incredible passion with which Peterson speaks against our own lurching towards some kind of totalitarian system built on gender ideology. His is probably the clearest voice on the planet at the moment in its opposition to the suppression of basic freedoms in the name of politically correct views of gender. At the same time, however, his way of approaching the problem has probably swung too much towards the individual and away from the communal. For him – perhaps evidence of his Protestant upbringing – “religion is about individual development”.

For a Catholic religion is about the development of a people – the people of God. This is a point well made by Brandon McGinley in a recent article in the Catholic Herald entitled “What is a Catholic to make of Jordan Peterson?” There he writes of Peterson, that He does not see, however, how it is precisely Enlightenment individualism that has dissolved the bonds of charity, solidarity and authority that made Christianity a living tradition…. And if, God willing, the Church is to baptise Jordan Peterson the man, let us pray that the grace of the sacrament washes away his commitment to individualism and replaces it with an integrated

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view of the human person, striving not for the greatness of alpha status in a world of brutes but for the greatness of communion with the God who is love.

The third and final caveat should be placed alongside Peterson’s tendency to reduce religion to morality (again perhaps a relic of his Protestant upbringing). For him “religious systems are about how we ought to act, and these arose in a quasi evolutionary manner”; “scientific truth tells you what things are, but genuine religious truth tells you how to act”. In this way, for Peterson, religious truths “are not true, in way of scientific truth, but ‘meta true’ or ‘hyper true’”. This is also quite problematic and potentially reductive of religion to moralism.

Peterson’s reduction of truth to “scientific truth” (facts) and “religious truth” (significant for action) is too simplistic. There is a whole metaphysical worldview underlying Christianity without which moral action would make no sense (and indeed would be impossible). This is a metaphysics of a creator God whose creative work is the work of love and wisdom; it is the metaphysics of the creative logos – the second person of the Trinity – entering into the drama of human history at a real moment in time.

Christianity, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ, even if He does not reveal Himself to us as clearly and irresistibly as he did to Paul in making him the Apostle of the Gentiles. We can also encounter Christ in reading Holy Scripture, in prayer, and in the liturgical life of the Church – touch Christ’s heart and feel that Christ touches ours. And it is only in this personal relationship with Christ, in this meeting with the Risen One, that we are truly Christian” (Address, Sept. 3, 2008).

I would like to finish by extending my condolences to our Subscriptions Manager, Liam Ó hAlmhain on the recent death of his wife Brighid.

Please remember Brighid and her family in your prayers. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dílis.

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In Passing: Black Panther

by Michael Kirke

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great deal of what was written about Black Panther when it appeared in cinemas a few months ago seems to suggest a significance far beyond its value as a work of entertainment – or even art.

There is undoubtedly something extraordinary about it. There is also however, on two fronts, something about it which nags: on the entertainment front, when one gets used to the wonderful African settings and the cast of talented native African and African American actors which the story demands, there is little about it to separate from the rest of Marvel’s universe; on a deeper level it is its familiar ideological tropes, however,

that may mostly undermine the film.

Is Black Panther just one more barrage of cannon fire from the legions of Social Justice Warriors or is it more than that? A writer in America magazine, a solid SJW ally, says this is the movie Hollywood – and America – needs. On the other side of the divide Tom Slater in the contrarian Spiked.com complains that it just represents one more example of culture’s enslavement by politics.

“Superhero films are, let’s not forget, mainly for kids. That some political commentators seem to be discussing Wakanda (the idyllic fictional country at

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the heart of this Marvel artefact) as if it’s a real nation shows how ethereal, how obsessed with surface issues, how trivial, in fact, so much of supposedly radical politics now is.”

Vibranium crashes into the fictional country of Wakanda, giving its people access to a powerful resource found nowhere else on Earth. With the cultural and technological developments made possible by the Vibranium deposits, Wakanda is able to escape the brutality of the slave trade and European colonial expansion.

By the twentieth century, Wakanda is the most sophisticated and technologically advanced country on the planet, but also the most isolated. The montage ends with a young Prince T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) asking his father, “And yet we still hide? Why?”

This is not a review of the movie. Setting aside the sense that a political statement is being hammered home, you will enjoy it. The observations which follow are less about Black Panther and more an expression of uneasiness of what it and other elements of our culture may tell us about the path on which we, as human beings, now find ourselves.

In a good and admiring review of the film in the Times Literary Supplement, Ladee Hubbard, an award winning African-American writer from Louisiana, sets the political context for the film.

It is a timely question given our particular cultural moment, as a lot of people seem to be asking themselves the same thing. The Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements are both predicated on the desire to bring long-standing abuse out of the shadows where they have existed “in hiding” for far too long. At the same time, the growth of white supremacist groups emboldened by the

Black Panther opens with an animated montage that dramatizes an alternative and fantastic African history.

Millions of years ago a meteor composed of the fictional metal

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Trump presidency seems to suggest that racists in America are increasingly asking themselves why they hide as well. The film does not directly engage any of these current conflicts yet it responds through the very effort to rise above them, and silence them with awe. A month after President Trump suggested that Africa was a collection of “shithole countries”, the film presents a ravishing vision of a glorious future, predicated on the revelation of the often unacknowledged achievements of the African past, as well as the energy and ingenuity of the African present. Black Panther also offers the unprecedented spectacle of a blockbuster action film with a black director and almost all-black cast. The representation of women in the movie is especially powerful, providing multiple iconic images of black women who are simultaneously strong, brilliant and unquestionably beautiful.

Instead of giving a clear answer to the question of why we hide the film presents a stunning vision of what has

been kept hidden for far too long: strong, regal, intelligent African men and women as warriors, scientists and queens.

There is no doubt but that we now live in a world where popular culture – and a great deal of the higher stuff as well – is undoubtedly in thrall to political correctness. When does genuine political concern stray into the corrupting thing that is political correctness? It is not a clear line. The annual round of award events for the entertainment industry has ceased to have any real reliability as a guide to artistic merit. Instead they serve as a guide to the periodic shockwaves prompted by the revelation of the faux or real outrages trending on social and mainstream media. Indeed they are spoiled for choice when it comes to things to be outraged by. When award ceremonies are not infected with outrage, they are used to compensate for the shortcomings of past ceremonies. It is all pretty tiresome. The spectacular drop in viewer ratings for the most recent Oscar and other award

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ceremonies seem to suggest that I’m not the only one getting tired of it all.

been preoccupied by social and political issues. Consider the work of Victor Hugo (Les Miserables), Charles Dickens (Hard Times), Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness), to name but three.

The critical consensus so far seems to be that Black Panther is a significant work of art.

What it certainly seems to be is a work of ideology. That is no bad thing in itself. Ideologies should be judged on their merits, their correspondence with truth and justice and nothing else. Probably the worst of all ideologies is the ideology of “no ideology”.

The real problem is deeper and it is a problem which is manifested in contemporary culture across a whole range of issues. It is the problem of our descent into chaos caused by the utter fragmentation of our consciousness of what it is to be human. If there is a problem with the ideology permeating a phenomenon like Black Panther, it is that it is a symptom of this same fragmentation.

Tom Slater asks that culture be liberated from politics. But the underlying problem is not really that political viewpoints emerge in art. Great art has frequently

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The preoccupations which increasingly seem to dominate our culture today – in the broadest sense of that word culture – are race, gender, religion, entitlement and equality. Our engagement with all these issues is ostensibly to seek some semblance of social justice for the oppressed or for those perceived as oppressed.

Our efforts however, in many cases, seem to go in the opposite direction and all we achieve is a state of war rather than peace and real justice. The common thread which runs through all of them is a pursuit of identity. Each separate identity which is asserted then seems to have to pit itself against other identities in order to create and vindicate itself.

For movements which purport to be inclusive, this is an incredibly divisive process and ultimately cannot but lead to chaos.

The implicit ideology underlying an artefact like Black Panther is that one race, a race which in one part of the world – which we generally call the West – has been viciously

oppressed for centuries, is in fact a race superior to all others.

It preaches this lightly and with some humour – but it still preaches.

Twentieth century Irish nationalism was a symptom of just such an ideology. One of the many tragedies of Irish history was the opportunity which was lost when an outward looking Celtic consciousness which had been beautifully woven together and fostered by the poets, playwrights and novelists of the literary revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was cruelly corrupted by a narrow nationalist ideology. This nationalism defined Irishness as a crude “not other” identity, that is, “not British”. This, for most of that century, crippled the Irish popular imagination and at its most extreme boundary generated a hatred of that “other”.

The illusion which fed that hatred was that the injustices experienced by the oppressed in the past – and even in the

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present – were at source racially driven. Race – if it is meaningful at all – is a neutral amoral force. Racism, on the contrary, is a personal sin, personally driven by a flawed morality. The source of all injustice is ultimately in the individual human heart. The solution to all injustice, institutional or otherwise, must be sought in the same place – the human heart. In the Irish context the moral evolution of the heart and soul of W.E. Gladstone, one of the “others”, is an example of how such a journey might be made. The tragedy of his failure is an indictment of the divisiveness of narrow nationalism. Narrow racism is even more heinous.

But it is not the sin of a race. It is a personal sin, of which only persons and not a race is culpable.

fragmentation will begin. What has to be done to prevent it?

The solution is in the recognition and the reinforcement of the truth and beauty inherent in the very fact of being human. Setting in opposition to each other the differences which distinguish one from the other is a path to destruction. Setting man and woman against each other as representatives of patriarchies or matriarchies is a poisonous process. Setting people of one colour against those of another is not only poisonous but also utterly stupid.

Is Black Panther just another symptom of the cancer of identity politics currently and increasingly afflicting our culture and our global community?

Colonialism, imperialism and racism, with a sprinkling of feminism seem to be the contexts around which the underlying ideology of Black Panther revolves. Colonialism and imperialism are endemic conditions which infect all human societies. As the ages

When a people and its culture loses the sense of its core universal humanity, for whatever reason, often provoked by the injustices inflicted by people in one group on those in another, then the risk is that this process of

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progress the first two of these uninvited guests just change their colour, chameleon-like, and continue to worm their way through our world.

But railing against them is about as futile as railing against the weather. Like the poor, they have always been with us and always will be. Like the weather they can be hot or cold, violent or temperate. Like the weather they can both wreak destruction or help cultivate the earth. Just as we find ways to protect ourselves against the weather, with these forces of human nature we have to find ways of taming and managing them.

But unlike the inanimate forces behind weather, the animate phenomena which mankind generates – good, bad or ugly – are rooted in the soul. Their impact on the societies which humans create and inhabit come back eventually to individual human acts. All human acts, as we know, have the capacity to be good, bad or indifferent. In our lives each one of us can do good or evil.

Empires and colonialism

provide ample evidence of our capacity for both. Mother Teresa of Calcutta would probably never have found herself in India if the British had not been there before her.

Writing of the phenomenon of empires in history, John Darwin in his book on the British Empire, Unfinished Empire, notes that Few subjects in history evoke stronger opinions than the making of empire. Indeed, some historians of empire still feel obliged to proclaim their moral revulsion against it, in case writing about empire might be thought to endorse it.

Others like to convey the impression that writing against empire is an act of great courage: as if its agents lie in wait to exact their revenge or an enraged ‘imperialist’ public will inflict martyrdom on them. These are harmless, if rather amusing, conceits. But they reveal something interesting: that for all the ink spilt on their deeds and misdeeds, empires remain

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rather mysterious, realms of myth and misconception.

This view denies to the actors whose thoughts and deeds we trace more than the barest autonomy, since they are trapped in a thought-world that determines their motives and rules their behaviour. It treats the subjects of empire as passive victims of fate, without freedom of action or the cultural space in which to preserve or enhance their own rituals, belief-systems or customary practices. It imagines the contact between rulers and ruled as a closed bilateral encounter, sealed off from the influence of regional, continental or global exchange.

This is partly the result of thinking in monoliths. ‘Empire’ is a grand word. But behind its facade (in every place and time) stood a mass of individuals, a network of lobbies, a mountain of hopes: for careers, fortunes, religious salvation or just physical safety. Empires were not made by faceless committees making grand calculations, nor by the ‘irresistible’ pressures of economics or ideology. They had to be made by men (and women) whose actions were shaped by motives and morals no less confused and demanding than those that govern us now.

He complains that these misconceptions lead to a history in stereotypes; to a cut-anddried narrative in which the interests of rulers and ruled are posed as stark opposites, without the ambiguity and uncertainty which define most human behaviour. Darwin points out that,

We need to ask ourselves if Black Panther contributes to this stereotype or helps us to escape from it. On the answer to that question may depend how we judge, regardless of its artistic merit, the political validity of its underlying ideology.

What will ultimately get us to the root of this malaise and deal with the cancer that is racism – and all other afflictions emanating from the illusion

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that any human being is essentially superior to another?

Perhaps it is only the truth of these words which will cut through and shred the lie behind those illusions, and then repair the fragments of our humanity to wholeness: “I will announce the decree of the Lord: the Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you this day.’” (Psalm II). The power of the truth of those sacred words has moved men and women throughout history to cut through prejudice, greed, deceit and rapine. We might ask ourselves if all this heightened identity conflict is not the result of the loss of our sense of our core

humanity, the true basis of our identity as created beings? We might also reflect on the fact that this fragmenting conflict is a phenomenon generated within western culture and its propagation has not a little of the odour of imperialism and colonialism about it, perhaps the latest manifestation of those perpetually meddling twins.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Kirke is a freelance writer, a regular contributor to Position Papers, and a widely read blogger at Garvan Hill (www.garvan.wordpress.com). His views can be responded to at mjgkirke@gmail.com.

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Then and now

by Tim O’Sullivan

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ast February in the Irish Times, under the heading ‘we have come a long way since the 1983 abortion vote’, the respected UCD historian, Diarmaid Ferriter, offered some reflections on the 1983 referendum in Ireland on the pro-life amendment.

His opening paragraphs quoted a well-known sound bite by journalist Gene Kerrigan about the referendum, ‘the moral civil war’ and journalist Eamonn McCann’s dictum that ‘abortion is as Irish as the little green shamrock’. Ferriter also drew on Kerrigan’s trenchant critique in Magill magazine of ‘the rabid accusations, the political speeches from the pulpit, the poison pen letters, the threatening phone

calls, the attacks on the media’. In short, Prof Ferriter argued, the referendum was toxic and divisive and combined ‘denial’ of reality, ‘hypocrisy’, ‘abstract arguments’ and ‘righteous moralising’.

‘Coming a long way’ apparently meant that we Irish are now interested in ‘evidence and personal testimony’ – though on one side of the debate only - and have come to accept abortion as an ‘Irish reality requiring an Irish response.’

The national media took an overwhelmingly negative approach to the 1983 referendum at the time and since. However, it does not seem unreasonable to expect a somewhat greater sense of perspective, balance and indeed

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originality from a prominent historian. We are living in unusual times when historians rely so heavily on tendentious journalistic accounts of our recent past. Any fair analysis of 1983 should reflect on the context of abortion law and practice in other countries in the 1970s and 1980s, on the way debate on abortion has been closed down in countries with ‘liberal’ abortion laws and indeed on the legal rights of the unborn – surely an issue of some importance and not just an obscure ‘abstract argument.’

Ferriter began his article by mentioning Thomas Hesketh’s account of that referendum, The Second Partitioning of Ireland?

(Brandsma Books, 1990) Although he referred to this book, it was not to reflect on any of its findings but only to quote its colourful title. Prof Ferriter failed to note that, unlike the journalists he mentioned, Hesketh offered a scrupulously fair and balanced account of the arguments on both sides of the amendment campaign.

accurate to say that it revealed more than caused divisions. Any abusiveness on the pro-life side of the debate was wrong, and it is important never to forget that our opponents in political debates are human beings and fellow-citizens who merit our full respect. At the same time, any fair account of the 1983 referendum should also acknowledge that there were extremely caustic/virulent descriptions in the media of the proposed amendment and its supporters and that the national media spoke with one voice on the issue to a disturbing extent.

Important issues do cause or reveal division and this is not necessarily a bad thing, provided that differences are articulated respectfully. As a grassroots supporter of the 1983 referendum, I remember vigorous but respectful debates at my trade union branch and in my workplace.

It’s true that the 1983 referendum was divisive but it is more

The overwhelming orthodoxy in the media and in academic publications since 1983 has been that the Pro-Life or Eighth Amendment was a political con trick with little real public

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support. In spite of this orthodoxy, and indeed of relentless propaganda about the alleged iniquities of the amendment over the last thirtyfive years, there is likely to be a very substantial vote in favour of retention of the amendment in the forthcoming referendum. In other words, there is a much deeper level of support for the amendment than has been generally acknowledged in the media or in academic accounts.

Whether that will be a majority or minority vote remains to be seen.

Moreover, given that the Supreme Court has decided in March that the unborn have no Constitutional rights beyond those acknowledged in the Eighth Amendment, this certainly would seem to reinforce the argument made in 1983 that the Amendment was vitally necessary for the unborn and for those who care about their rights.

abortion law in other countries.

The implicit argument seemed to be that ‘conservative’ Ireland was out of step with our more ‘liberal’ neighbours. What the programme failed to note, however, was that one important difference between Ireland and other countries was that, unlike many other peoples, the Irish were consulted in 1983 about the abortion issue.

If we are now facing into a referendum on abortion, it is precisely because the passage of the Eighth Amendment ensured that we in Ireland must be consulted on this life-and-death issue. If, however, we repeal the Amendment, the chances of being consulted again on the substantive issue are likely to be slim indeed.

The holding of a referendum offers the public an opportunity to reflect, and to have their say, on this deeply important issue.

Earlier this year, the RTÉ radio Drivetime programme offered its listeners a brief overview of

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim O’Sullivan has degrees in arts and social policy and taught healthcare policy at third level.

He is a regular contributor to Position Papers.

Women in the Catholic Church

by Catherine Kavanagh

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ecent comments accusing the Catholic Church of being “a virus of misogyny” in the world today, have provoked a good deal of reaction. Clearly, they were intended to do that, but one has to ask if that kind of reaction is really the most helpful form of discussion.

Rather than a battle of contradictions, it would surely be better to ask what the role of women in the Church should be, what it has been, or whether we need to talk about a specific role for women in the first place.

These recent accusations of misogyny within the Church looked simply angry, seeming essentially to be a reaction to a circumstance found to be irritating. Regardless of the

rights and wrongs of the situation, surely one does one’s cause no favours by apparently reacting to annoyance in a purely personal manner?

The substantive issue however, remains: what of women in the Church? Is she guilty of misogyny? Misogyny means the hatred of women: does the Church hate women? On the surface of it, this is a strange accusation. From its origins, women clearly played a very important role in the Church: Christ had female disciples; Mary Magdalen (whatever recent films may claim) was widely admired as the “Apostle to the Apostles” – that is not a modern title, but one coming

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down to us from centuries of Church history, and of course Christ’s mother, Mary, the Blessed Mother, was revered above all the Apostles. The important part played by women in establishing the early Church is noted several times in the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters of St Paul. As the Church expanded and attracted the hostile attention of the authorities in doing so, women distinguished themselves alongside men in their courage in facing martyrdom: the Acts of Perpetua and Felicity from the third century North African Church contain several references to their outstanding courage, which amazed the onlookers – especially in the case of Felicity, nothing more than a little slave girl, but equal to her mistress Perpetua in the terrible glory of martyrdom. Another slave girl, Blandina, martyred at Lyons about thirty years earlier (177), was also noted for her courage.

These female saints and martyrs were honoured as the men were:St Cecilia and St Agnes are as much a part of the history of the local Church in Rome as the great St Laurence. Indeed, a tour

of the Roman churches introduces one to a great many female saints, almost more powerful in their iconography than the male saints: one church in Rome has an altarpiece in which there are no men present at all, and this was not done merely to make a point.

With the Peace of the Church in 315, new forms of Christian life developed, eremitical life and monastic life, and women were likewise prominent there: St Macrina in the Eastern Church and St Scholastica in the West were both noted practitioners of monastic life. It is important to note that the seclusion of monastic life is not a form of keeping women behind closed doors, as some recent publications ignorantly claim.

The hermit, male or female, has a particular vocation to leave the world and its attractions behind in order to find God. Monastic life in common developed as a way of safeguarding that refuge from the world in the search for God. The Orders that attracted the strongest candidates, Carthusians and Cistercians, were also the most silent and

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secluded. In the twelfth century, the extraordinary figure of St Hildegarde of Bingen emerges: theologian, philosopher, poet mystic and a really remarkable composer. Of course one cannot do justice to her achievements in a short article like this, but, given the topic under discussion, the point to note is the fact that Hildegarde developed her astonishing gifts within the Church, in her Benedictine monastery at Bingen. They provided her with the education and resources she needed to bring her gifts to fruition. Nor does she turn around at some later stage and claim that she could have been even more of a contender if the rules had been different. She is not thinking about being a contender, she is thinking about God. As the Middle Ages progressed, the number of gifted female saints who found within the Church what they needed increases. The Rhineland developed what almost amounts to a school of female theology across different Orders, Benedictine, Cistercian, Beguine and Dominican, including St

Elizabeth of Schonau, St Mechtilde of Magdeburg, St Mechtilde of Hackeborn and others. The great Dominican theologians, Henry of Suso and Johannes Tauler, directed a good deal of their best efforts to their interaction with nuns. The sermons and letters they left, and the texts of the nuns themselves, indicate that this was a very serious engagement indeed. In Italy, later in the fourteenth century, we find the great figure of St Catherine of Siena, one of the great reformers of the Church – although when people are talking admiringly about St Thomas More and Erasmus in their role as reformers a couple of centuries later, St Catherine rarely gets a mention. Perhaps this is something on which we could work‌ Catherine had to plough her own furrow: her vocation was neither marriage nor enclosed religious life, and she became a Dominican Tertiary in the end, a process of vocational discernment in which she was helped and defended by the Dominicans of Siena. They took her very seriously, which is a lot more than the secular powers at

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Siena were prepared to do – at least initially. She was a great mystic and writer, and is a Doctor of the Church.

With the sixteenth century came the Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation.

Again, women played a major role in that: the foundation of the Discalced (barefoot) Carmelite Order by St Teresa of Avila was an extremely important element in the Counter Reformation. St Teresa revived monastic life within the Carmelite Order for both men and women, taking her inspiration from the hermits of Mount Carmel, who had lived there in one way or another since the time of the prophet Elijah – in fact, Elijah is one of the patrons of the Carmelite Order, both branches. She was not the first woman to found an Order for both men and women – in the fourteenth century, St Bridget of Sweden, one of the Patron Saints of Europe, had founded the Bridgettines, who up to the Reformation had a great double monastery at Syon in England. St Teresa wrote extensively about the spiritual

life and contemplative prayer, and, again, she is a Doctor of the Church. Almost every church you go into in Spain will have a statue or indeed an altarpiece of St Teresa in a very prominent position. Clearly, in the popular imagination, she is one of the most important people in Spanish history – but she is a Saint of the Catholic Church.

The sixteenth century also saw the foundation of religious orders dedicated to the education of women for the first time: St Angela Merici’s Ursulines and Mary Ward’s Sisters of Loreto. In fact, the education of women seems to have been largely a Catholic idea from the outset. Interestingly, although the Renaissance introduced Europe to all sorts of new ideas coming from the ancient Greek and Roman sources at that time being rediscovered, one area in which it represented at times a backward move was in fact the position of women. In its revival of Paganism, in certain respects, it also revived some of the more brutal pagan ideas about women, their inferiority,

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weakness and insufficiency, ideas which we find echoed in some of the otherwise notable products of the Renaissance, such as the great poet John Milton. The scholar Régine Pernoud noted that, in the Middle Ages, the Queens of France were consecrated alongside the Kings, so that they could rule in their own right, as Blanche of Castile, the mother of St Louis, did for several years in the thirteenth century, but after the Renaissance they were not, so that Anne of Austria was simply regent in the seventeenth century, largely under the direction of Mazarin.

The seventeenth century also saw the foundation of the Daughters of Charity by St Louise de Marillac and St Vincent de Paul. This was a new step in the possibilities open to women, since the Daughters of Charity were not enclosed, Sisters rather than nuns, and, unlike women as a whole at that time, they went out without male companionship to care for the poor in Paris. Again, they were not thinking of their own rights, but about Christ’s poor

and how best to care for them.

In the eighteenth century there was another new departure, the appointment of Maria Anagni to the Chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at the University of Bologna, by Pope Benedict XIV, the first woman ever to hold a University Chair.

The first woman ever to hold a University Chair was appointed to it by the Pope.

During the nineteenth century, the role of the active Orders increased enormously, and Ireland played a very significant role in that. Nano Nagle founded the Presentation Sisters for the education of women, Venerable Mother Mary Aikenhead founded the Sisters of Charity, important in the care of the sick.

Mother Mary is notable as having been the very first person to found a hospice for the dying, at Harold’s Cross. The Hospice movement is now a world wide phenomenon, and of course others have been involved in that too, but it is interesting to note that it began with a Sister, an Irish woman fully committed to the teaching of the Church.

Mother Catherine McAuley

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founded the Sisters of Mercy, who contributed enormously to the development of modern nursing; their model of “careful nursing” (on which Dr. Therese Meehan has done so much work) was largely adopted by Florence Nightingale, who came to know them during her work at Crimea, and admired them greatly.

Nightingale became a very good friend of some of the Sisters, and always thought of Roman Catholic religious sisters as having opened new ways for women to flourish, to the great benefit of society. Probably the most influential Catholic in the latter half of the twentieth century was Mother Teresa of Calcutta – well known to the readers of Position Papers, I would think!

Why, given the prominence of women in the Church throughout the centuries, does the Church now find itself accused of misogyny? Practically speaking, misogyny could mean two things: it could mean refusing to acknowledge that women are different from men and that this difference has a value, and then reproaching

them for not being men. This is largely what constitutes misogyny historically speaking: women are reproached with physical weakness, with excessive sensitivity, with simply being different. Or misogyny could mean refusing to acknowledge that there is no difference between men and women, and therefore treating women as different, and this is largely what it has come to mean these days.

There is a blank refusal in the modern world to acknowledge any real difference between men and women – the body is simply dismissed as irrelevant – and any attempt to disagree with that is shot down as misogynistic. Modernity views people in functional terms, which is why the vulnerable are increasingly under attack, since they don’t function so well, and functionally speaking, other than child-bearing which we can now manipulate, there need be no difference between men and women. But this reduction of people to their instrumental function is essentially an abuse, since a person is worth far more

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than their mere economic function, and once we start considering the person as a whole, we have to include the body. The Church has always maintained and continues to maintain that men and women are different, that this difference is a positive thing, and her teaching reflects that. But this is clearly at odds with the secular mentality, and in the drive to impose a baldly functional model of philosophical anthropology, obviously she will come under attack. This is not to deny that mistakes, and bad ones, have been made, and need to be faced. But the Church has not been worse than the secular world in this respect, and certainly Christian culture has

been far better for women than almost any other: recent attempts in popular entertainment to assert otherwise have had to revert to mythologised versions of the Dark Ages, having little or no historical truth. The question we have to ask is: which is the more fulfilling view of humanity?

Which, over the centuries, has yielded the better outcome – for both men and women?

ABOUT THE
 AUTHOR Catherine Kavanagh is Senior Lecturer in the

Department of Philosophy at Mary Immaculate College. She has held the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Fellowship in Early Medieval Thought in the School of Classics, UCD and worked at the SocietĂ Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino, Florence. She has served a term as President of the Irish Philosophical Society. She has held the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences Postdoctoral Fellowship in Humanities at the School of Classics, UCD.

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The Catholic Church: An Empire of Misogyny?

by Mary Lewis

F

ormer Irish President Mary McAleese recently excoriated the Catholic Church as an “Empire of Misogyny.” The lack of women in leadership roles within the church and the lack of strong role models for women to look up to within the Church, led her to make this accusation.

Since her denunciation, the media has been awash with reaction, including a poll by Liberal.ie which concluded that 80% of Irish people agreed with her. I for one – an Irish Catholic woman, wife, mother and barrister and more recently a student of theology, disagree.

Leadership The earthly leader of the Catholic Church is the Pope and he has always been male. Well, why couldn’t a female be a Pope, a bishop or even a mere priest?

That misses the point, earthly leaders, whether male or female, are nothing before Christ the King. Christ selected twelve apostles, all of whom were male.

That cannot just be glossed over.

“Christ Jesus, who although God, …emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:5-9).

Christ, who instituted the male priesthood, is our guide on all

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things including who is called to be a priest. Above all, Christ came to serve, even though He is all powerful. He did not “cling to his equality with God,” (Phil2:5-9) so mere human beings should not seek self-aggrandisement either.

Instead we must be obedient to His will.

This apostolic tradition of a male only priesthood must be followed, if we are to be true to Christ’s name. The sacrifice made by those men called to be priests, is analogous to the sacrifice Christ made for the Church- his bride. This nuptial meaning remains important, perhaps more so nowadays, when the meaning of marriage is under scrutiny and even attack.

Role Models As for female role models in the church, it is amazing that Mary McAleese has failed to notice the dozens of women saints the Church venerates daily- starting with Mary the Mother of God, whose name she shares. Our Lady was chosen by God as mother of Christ. She accepted

with humility the greatest role a human being has ever been offered. Without Our Lady’s assent, Christ would not have been born and there would have been no sacrifice by Christ in His Passion and Resurrection, much less a priesthood. Essentially the Catholic church would not have existed without her. No woman should feel belittled or inferior because of Christ’s selection of men for priesthood any more than a man should resent not being selected as mother of God. There are many Catholic women who have led extraordinary lives in the Church. I can quickly think of three who were around during Mary McAleese’s lifetime: Firstly, Mother Angelica who founded a global television network for evangelization on a shoestring.

Secondly St Teresa of Kolkata (Mother Teresa) who is widely revered for her love and care for the poorest and most neglected and who had an ability to inspire and influence world leaders as well as the ordinary person in the pew. Her own personal struggles in her faith have been an encouragement to many to

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persevere when struggles arise, as they always do in life. Thirdly St Katharine Drexel was a wealthy heiress who set up a religious community of sisters serving the Native American and African communities in particular in the United States.

She was an educationalist and missionary with an immense love for the Eucharist.

Going back some centuries to the fourteenth century, the great Dominican Saint- St Catherine of Siena was a mystic, philosopher and theologian. She is now regarded as a Doctor of the Church. She travelled widely throughout Europe including to Avignon where she met Pope Gregory XI and is credited with

having prevailed upon him to return to Rome from his exile in Avignon.

The truth is that seeking leadership should not be the primary goal for any Catholic, male or female. Rather we should emulate St John the Baptist’s advice: “He (Christ) must increase that I may decrease.” (John 3:30) This message is easily forgotten nowadays, possibly because “Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing.” (The Power of Silence Cardinal Robert Sarah, p.

74(2017)).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Lewis qualified as a barrister in 1988, followed by a Masters in Law. She initially worked in the public sector and subsequently in private practice for 14 years, before taking a career break to look after her family. She is a qualified mediator and currently studies theology at the School of Annunciation, having recently achieved a diploma in the New Evangelization.

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Another kind of feminism

by Rev. Dominic McGrattan

O

n New Year’s Day, 1972, our family changed forever. My sister was born.

After nine months of carrying her, hoping for another girl after four boys in a row, a healthy, beautiful baby girl was placed in my Mum’s arms. All of the knitting and crocheting in pink hadn’t been in vain.

For the other children, the arrival of a sister was met with jubilation, not least by the eldest child, a girl, who’d feared she was destined to grow in a family dominated by men. Her dresses and dolls were to have a new lease of life.

From the instant Mum looked into her eyes, she knew my sister was no ordinary baby. She was different, special. She had Down’s Syndrome.

It was five days before doctors met with Mum and Dad to discuss with them how special their little girl really was.

In the meantime, and amidst a tumult of emotions, they decided on a name.

Throughout the Bible, we learn the significance of naming something. To name something calls it out of the abyss of nothingness to give it its place in the created order.

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To name a human being is to acknowledge that they are not something, but rather someone.

Not a foetus, but a person. It marks them as unique and special in the eyes of God. It speaks of their unfathomable sacredness as created and loved by the God of life.

beyond ourselves in ways we never imagined possible.

Unlike my other siblings – even Mum and Dad – who knew of a world before Mary Katrina, I came along later. Mary Katrina has always been in my life and I cannot conceive of a world without her.

Unlike the rest of her children, Mum insisted that my sister have two names, that of our beloved grandmother Mary, and Katrina, after her own name Catherine.

It was as if she knew, by dint of her maternal instinct, that one name could never capture the mystery of Mary Katrina’s being.

Only two names would do.

Imagine my horror, then, when I learned that as many as nine out of ten babies diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome in the UK do not survive beyond their mother’s womb. Nine out of ten special babies are not given the chance to live because a choice is made to end their lives before they breathe their first.

That statistic makes me sad. Sad that we live in a world where a baby, like my sister once was, may not have the chance to live and grow into the kind of beautiful, gifted and unique woman my sister has become.

From the moment she breathed her first, Mary Katrina turned our family’s world upside down, or perhaps better, she put it the right way up.

Like the gift of every child, she has brought us love and laughter, tears and drama. She’s given us insights on the world no ordinary person could. She’s made demands of us to go

Sad that our society values less the authentic, pro-life choices of brave and courageous women like my Mum. And sad too that a group of children once

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marginalised and hidden away have been ushered closer to full participation in ordinary human life, only to be ushered out again.

what it would be like to live in a world without Down’s.

The roll-out of screening to women whose babies are at high risk of Down’s means there’s a distinct possibility that, in the near future, the only children born with the condition are those whose parents have explicitly chosen that fate.

Iceland boasts that it has eradicated Down’s Syndrome. It is a hollow boast. Because of a combination of pre-natal screening and aggressive “genetic counselling”, babies with a Down’s diagnosis are almost always aborted.

Denmark, France and the United States don’t fare much better when it comes to making women like my Mum and sister welcome.

Back in 2004, comedian and actress, Sally Phillips gave birth to a baby boy, Olly. It came as a shock when doctors informed her that Olly had Down’s.

Screening hadn’t picked up the condition.

Last year, in a moving documentary for the BBC, Phillips shared her story.

Mindful of the trend to abort babies like Olly, she speculated

“And that has ethical implications,” says Phillips, ‘as to whether the government supports the costs of raising a person with Down’s or not because it’s kind of: “It’s your bed, lie in it.”

She was shocked to find that not everyone she encountered believed people were born equal.

Instead, “We are working out the value, the cost of a person…. Is there a point where we become too expensive to look after?”

The tragedy is that people are no longer interested in the things people with Down’s Syndrome can do, and do better. A child with Down’s may not hope to go to Oxford or Cambridge, but this

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is not the only metric of achievement.

become a cold house for women like my Mum and sister?

In other ways, they far outstrip the rest of us. They relate to people, they’re funny, they’re comfortable in their own bodies.

Or will it recommit itself to policies that responsibly protect and advance the interests of mothers and children, both before and after birth?

Because they are thoroughly uninhibited, they break the ice between families and neighbours, bringing communities closer together.

Their unique way of seeing the world upends convention and challenges prejudice.

It remains to be seen.

As I write this, today is International Women’s Day. In this centenary year of the Suffragette Movement, feminists across the world are redoubling their efforts in the cause of gender equality.

On any reckoning, people with Down’s are not problems to be solved, but vital contributors.

In a few weeks, the people of the Irish Republic, whose founding document vows to cherish all its children, will go to the polls over the Eighth Amendment.

Will they vote to remove the constitutional protection of unborn babies and open the way for abortion on demand, pitting mother against child? Will Ireland go the way of other “civilised” nations like Iceland, Denmark and the UK and

Canada’s charismatic prime minister, Justin Trudeau, urges us to challenge the culture of sexism by raising our boys as feminists.

I agree. Boys and men should be feminists. I too am a feminist.

Though I suspect my kind of feminism is rather different.

Trudeau’s feminism, like that of most liberals, is pro-abortion. It looks like one extended apology for the wrongs of men. Its bounds are drawn narrowly so

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as to exclude women like my Mum and sister. It is misogyny by another name.

And it has become so absolutist as to impose thought control, requiring teenagers seeking summer jobs to take a proabortion oath because “at the core of Canada’s domestic and foreign policy is sexual and reproductive rights”. How liberal!

It is a feminism inspired by women like the Virgin Mary, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day and Eunice Kennedy. And countless women like my Mum and sister.

They have transcended the bounds placed on them by men, and feminists, to do more than most to change the world for the better. They have earned the right to disagree about what true feminism requires.

My brand of feminism is unapologetically and consistently pro-life. For me, much like my Church, there is a continuity in championing the poor, the marginalised and the oppressed and protecting unborn human life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fr Dominic McGrattan is a priest of the Diocese of Down and Connor. He is currently pursuing postgraduate studies in theology at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He was previously curate in St Patrick’s Parish, Belfast, and chaplain to the Mater Infirmorum Hospital, Belfast.

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The readings for Eastertide

by Pat Hanratty

T

he readings in the weekdays following Easter include some I particularly love. From Easter Monday to the eve of Pentecost Sunday, we are taken through most of the Acts of the Apostles, beginning with Peter addressing the crowd in Jerusalem. What a contrast we see here between the Peter who boldly declares the truth about Jesus, His death and Resurrection and the Peter who denied Him three times seven weeks earlier, and who, along with the other apostles, hid in the Upper Room through fear until the Holy Spirit came down upon them. Peter and the other apostles are witnesses to the Resurrection, and, as such,

fearless in pursuit of spreading the Good News.

As well as their being fearless, through the words and actions of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit is seen as being mightily effective – 3,000 being added to their number on Day 1 (cf. Acts 2, 41).

And what was their message: one of repentance, baptism and salvation, and the warning to “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” (Acts 2, 40). One might say – then as now!

The scene that appears in the first reading of the Wednesday of Easter Week is a real gem.

Peter and John are going up to the Temple and a beggar,

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crippled from birth, sees them and begs for alms from them.

Even allowing for the fact that Jesus had sent twelve and later seventy-two disciples on a mission that included working miracles, the certainty of Peter’s approach to the beggar is striking:

us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts, 4, 19-20).

“I have neither silver nor gold, but I will give you what I have: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, walk!”

Such assuredness was indeed brave – another way of saying it was that the Holy Spirit made it clear to Peter that the man would indeed walk. In fact, he not only walked, but was “jumping and praising God” (Acts 3, 8). It obviously caused quite a commotion, indeed, it led to the apostles being apprehended by the authorities and imprisoned and subsequently being warned never to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. Peter and John’s answer to that is worth quoting: “Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for

From the first time I came across these brave and inspirational words, probably in RE class in 5th Year in the mid 1960s, and for many decades, I would never have imagined that in an Ireland that had emerged as a free nation after a long struggle, I would feel that there was any danger of not being free to speak the truth freely about Jesus Christ and his teachings.

Yet in today’s Ireland, anyone presenting His teaching about marriage and the family, to give an example, is bound to kowtow to aberrations that have been introduced, and one is left to face ridicule or derision at best, and possibly further sanction, from the ever present thought police of the new orthodoxy. We must pray earnestly for the church leaders of the coming decades, who will have to face much more than just derision, that they will have the faith and courage of the apostles.

The Gospel readings of Easter Week contain even more

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nuggets. I love the one that is read on the Wednesday after Easter, which tells the story of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. These men had been disciples but they had lost all hope on seeing Jesus crucified, to the extent that, although they heard the stories of the women claiming to have found Jesus alive, they were not able to get their heads around the possibility of Jesus being alive.

Then,

What was that something? Was it that they weren’t as familiar with Jesus as some, e.g. the Twelve? Or was it simply that their faith wasn’t up to it? Either way, Jesus is using their predicament to teach us all an example, indeed the truth of His resurrection.

“….Jesus walked by their side, but something prevented them from recognizing him.” (Luke 24, 15-16.)

As we know, Jesus leads them on, then explains how the scriptures referred to Him, and so captures their attention that when they reach their village, they constrain him to stay: “it is evening and the day is far spent” (Luke 24, 29.) They still had no idea who the stranger in their midst was – that epic moment

35

came when Jesus was sitting at table with them and he broke bread: “And their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” (Luke 24, 31.)

hightail it back to Jerusalem to meet the other disciples who, of course, already knew that the Lord had risen.

The scene is wonderfully captured in the 1602 painting, Supper at Emmaus, by Caravaggio, which for me was the high point of the National Gallery of Ireland’s exhibition, Beyond Caravaggio, last year. It shows the utter amazement when it finally dawns on the two men that they have Jesus in their midst.

Of course, Jesus disappears from their sight at this stage, but the effect on our two friends is that they drop everything and

We can all relate to these men – we can lose our appreciation that Jesus is always near, even at this exciting Liturgical time.

Many people have the custom of going to Mass on the weekdays of Lent and that is wonderful, but, in the days after Easter, there are some real jewels in the readings: I’ve only mentioned a few but they are a taste of the many lovely surprises in store for those take up the habit of going to Mass daily after Easter, or even of reading a Gospel e.g. that of Luke and/or the Acts of the Apostles.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pat Hanratty taught Science/Chemistry in Tallaght Community School from its inception in 1972 until he retired in 2010. He was the school's first Transition Year Co-ordinator and for four years he had the role of home School Community Liaison Officer.

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Film review Downsizing

by Bishop Robert Barron (Spoiler Alert!)

W

hen I saw the trailer for Alexander Payne’s new film, Downsizing, I thought the movie would be a light-hearted farce, relying principally on visual gags. In point of fact, the jokes based on the contrast between regular-size people and their five-inch tall counterparts are surprisingly rare. Most of the film deals with events within the world of the downsized – so everything seems more or less normal. And when I took in the opening scenes, and heard a lot of talk about protecting the environment and the dangers of overpopulation, I thought that Downsizing would be a

37

propaganda piece for left-wing causes. Here I was surprised again, for the film amounts, I will argue, to a not-so-subtle critique of that ideology.

Downsizing opens in a Norwegian lab where a group of scientists are testing an experimental technique to reduce animals in size. It soon becomes clear that the purpose of these endeavors is to apply the technology to human beings. The most dramatic scene in the film is the moment when the team presents a fiveinch person to a lecture hall of astounded researchers and journalists. We then flash forward several years to discover that downsizing has

become a popular trend, though the majority of people undergo the procedure for financial rather than piously environmental reasons. It appears that the dollar goes much further when you have tiny clothes, your nutritional needs are those of a mouse, and you live in a doll’s house.

At this point, we meet Paul Safranek (played by a rather pudgy-looking Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig in a surprisingly sober turn), who have decided to take the plunge. But on the fateful day, Paul goes through with it, while Audrey chickens out, leaving Paul stranded in the land of the tiny. Compelled by his wife’s treachery to divorce, Paul finds himself out of his mansion and stuck in a nowhere-job and a small apartment. Just as he hits bottom (literally lying in a stupor on the floor of a friend’s apartment after a night of debauchery), he spies Ngoc Lan Tran (wonderfully incarnated

by Hong Chau), a noble Vietnamese activist who had been forcibly downsized by her

government and who now does menial labor, cleaning the homes of the wealthy. Despite the loss of a leg, Ngoc has devoted herself, in her spare time, to the care of an army of the underclass of the small, who live in a sprawling slum.

When she discovers that Paul has some basic medical training, she presses him into service, bringing him to suffering person after suffering person, compelling him to come out of himself. Carrying a Bible and attending enthusiastic religious services, Ngoc is unembarrassedly a Christian, and it is unmistakable that her faith informs her dedication to those in need.

By an odd plot twist (I won’t bore you with the details), Paul and Ngoc travel to Norway to commune with Dr Jorgen Asbjørnsen, the scientist who developed the downsizing technology, and the original commune of the small, who are living like a band of hippies along the shores of a picturesque fjord. They soon discover that this community, convinced that environmental

38

pollution will render the surface of the earth uninhabitable, has actually resolved to retreat to a subterranean world that they have constructed. Beguiled by their romanticism and dedication, Paul decides to go with the community and he leaves the tearful Ngoc behind.

But then, just as the entrance to the tunnel is about to be blown permanently shut, Paul races out and embraces his beloved.

The two of them then return to the States and Paul gives himself over to Ngoc’s work of service for the suffering poor.

A film of social commentary?

You bet, but not the social commentary I was expecting. Is there a better symbol for the downsizing that is currently happening in Europe than the shrinking and disappearance of that original colony of the small? For the past roughly fifty years, the West in general, but Europe in particular, has been experiencing a population implosion, the number of births way below replacement level in England, France, Holland, and Germany. This has been

39

prompted, of course, by a number of factors, but certainly one of them is a conviction that human beings are just bad for the planet, using up too many resources, raping the environment, etc. Wouldn’t it be best, many seem to think, if the human race just shrank down and went away? Downsizing gives dramatic expression to this conviction and, not so subtly, makes fun of it. I laughed out loud when, at the climactic moment of Paul’s escape, the camera pulls back and reveals the “blowing” of the door as a tiny pebble falling about two inches to the ground. Talk about going out, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Contrasted to this despairing retreat is the vibrant compassion exemplified by Ngoc. She too sees the world as a painful place, but her resolution is not to retreat but to address the pain through love. And it cannot be accidental that the Vietnamese woman’s Christian faith is clearly emphasized, while no one on the European side

exhibits the slightest interest in religion. In point of fact, it is precisely religious faith that will awaken courage and compassion, and it is precisely the lack of faith that conduces, by a short road, to spiritual and psychological exhaustion – both in the individual and in a culture.

I applaud Downsizing for making this contrast clear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This article first appeared at: www.wordonfire.org.

Bishop Robert Barron is an author, speaker, theologian, and founder of Word on Fire, a global media ministry.

This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of the editors.

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