Tom Shakely Culture

Vatican II’s fruits

Nathan Israel Smolin shared this recently and I’m sharing it here because it’s a convincing perspective on Christianity’s enduring characteristics:

You know, say what you will about the post-Vatican 2 Catholic Church, but any era of the Church that could produce Lumen Gentium, the writings of Pope St. John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church can’t exactly be a dark age.

I have no real doubt that in a century, Catholics will still be reading all of these things, and finding them very important and foundational. They’ll probably also, frankly, be hearing some version of the NO Mass. I doubt *anyone* will remember who Hans Kung was, though.

Most eras of the Church are judged in retrospect, not by their conflicts or failings, their heretics or worldly clerics, but by their Saints and Doctors–because these latter have fruits that endure for centuries & forever. That makes it hard to judge any time while it’s going on

Probably the silliest thing self-described Traditionalists do is complain about the Fruits of Vatican 2 & insist on judging it immediately by those fruits. If it comes to that, what were the Fruits of the Council of Nicaea in the same timeframe?

Externally, the main effect of the Council of Nicaea was to put the Church into the power of the Imperial office, which would immediately betray it. Inside the Church, within a decade of Nicaea there were pitched battles between Christian factions in the streets of major cities.

I’m not saying Vatican 2 is as important as Nicaea; but the truth is, the 4th and 5th centuries defined the Church for the next millennium through the Doctors & Councils. But it was also the time of the worst internal conflicts ever, heresies, & massive schisms that still endure.

We marvel at Augustine’s faith; no one really cares about the Donatists who for most of his life had much more power & numbers in North Africa, let alone the vast flock of semi-pagans delaying baptism til death he preached to.

We can read Pope Leo the Great’s Christology, and be inspired by it. We don’t have to read Eutychius, or worry about the loss of the Patriarchate of Alexandria to Schism. We can read Basil the Great, & skip all the brilliant & politically influential Arian Bishops he argued with.

Anyway, I don’t pretend to know how the past fifty years will be seen in the Church. But I’m sure future Catholics will be reading & judging it by its great saints & doctors & documents, & mostly ignoring & forgetting all the things we spend our time worrying & fighting about.

Tom Shakely Causes

John Henry Newman’s room

K.V. Turley writes on the experience of visiting John Henry Newman’s room:

To stand in the room of a saint is quite something. Such was my privilege the other day when the door to the room of John Henry Newman was unlocked and I was bid enter.

There, before me, was the desk at which Blessed John Henry had written letters, sermons and books, all of which are still pored over by scholars today, and no doubt shall be in the years and decades to come. There were his books and his papers; upon the walls his pictures, mostly religious, and, pasted on a wooden cupboard, there was still the trace of a Victorian newspaper. Newman was wont to decorate his cabinet doors with cuttings from newspapers and journals.

There was something else though.

The room is partitioned. Behind the thin wall that separates the two parts of the room there stands an altar. Upon it, there is the Crucifix and candles yet that Newman used when he offered Mass there. On the wall above the altar there also hangs a portrait of St. Francis de Sales, the French spiritual father of this most English of Englishmen. To the left, there is a built-in cupboard holding vestments. They all still hang there: green, red, white, rose, black. It is as if they are about to be lifted out and worn once more. It is as if, at any moment, a footstep will be heard, and before our eyes will come the man who lived and worked in this room: Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, Prince of the Church, but above all, a priest of God offering the Holy Sacrifice each day to the Glory of God and for forgiveness of sins. More than 100 years later, the room retains something of the air of the sanctity of its former occupant. No one else has lived or worked here since Newman, and no one else ever shall. It stands still as if John Henry Newman has just stepped out for a moment, and is due back very soon. Perhaps, in a way, that is how a Christian death should feel – a passing, not an ending, before a never-ending reunion.

There is another ‘death’ in this room though. It is the room itself. The Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory call this room of Newman’s “ the Dying Room.”

My guide pointed to the ceiling. In the corner of the room where two external walls join, there were large ominous cracks on display. Recent structural survey reports indicate that these cracks, far from being superficial, are the outward manifestation of serious interior decay. In the vernacular: Newman’s room is crumbling to dust.

Many will have seen Newman’s room, and the equally impressive library, at the Birmingham Oratory. Some may recall how Pope Benedict XVI, on his visit to the United Kingdom in 2010, visited this room and its adjacent library. There are many pictures online recording this occasion when one saintly scholar visited the room of another. One can only imagine what might have passed through the mind of Pope Benedict when he beheld the room of Blessed John Henry still as intact, at least superficially, as in the late 1800s. One can almost visualize Pope and Blessed sitting at the table in the center of the room lost in the enjoyment of discoursing upon weighty theological matters.

But the room is ‘dying.’

The Birmingham Oratory is seeking patrons able to help conserve that simple and remarkable space. K.V. Turley adds:

When men, whether in the world of science or theology, history or philosophy seemed intent on rejecting God, here was a man who dared to engage his reason so as to understand better his faith. In doing so, Newman created something in the world of ideas that has not only grown in significance since but also seen off many of his then contemporaries and their modish theories. …

A strange prayer perhaps, but a prayer nonetheless: let his rooms be preserved and, thereby, with them, his memory as a man as rational as he was holy.

When I was in London for the Olympics in 2012 we attended mass at Brompton Oratory, which has a small space of honor and devotion to John Henry Newman. Having first encountered his writing when I was still at Penn State, and then seeing his place of honor in this English church, was a special thing; one of those moments where so much experience that has been “in your head” suddenly came rushing into this particular place and in this particular moment. An experience of concrete reality.

Tom Shakely Causes

Franciscan Brothers of Peace

Jessica Trygstad reports on the Franciscan Brothers of Peace and their missionary work alongside torture survivors:

The Franciscan Brothers of Peace have housed male international victims of torture since the 1990s — about 70 to date, said Brother Conrad Richardson, who serves as the brothers’ community leader. Describing their apostolate as “doing whatever needs to be done,” Brother Richardson said the 12 brothers provide room and board and fulfill other tangible needs — climate-appropriate clothing, food, monthly mass transit passes and phone cards. Multicultural artwork hangs on the walls of their friary, and their kitchen is stocked with ethnic foods to help give their guests a sense of home.

“All are received as Christ,” Brother Richardson said. “Residents who live here, they know that they’re welcome to join us for any meals we have and even to join us in prayer as they like.”

The men come to the U.S. through various means. A former resident, Brother Richardson said, was a stowaway on a ship and found enough food and water to survive the journey. Another man from Iraq had served in a high-ranking military position under Saddam Hussein. He escaped through bribery. The information the brothers garner about their guests is confidential; through the men’s social workers and lawyers, the brothers only know pertinent information and what the men are willing to share, per the Center for Victims of Torture’s policies.

Knowing at least some English, most of the men were well educated and held good jobs in their home countries, giving them the wherewithal to help mobilize people, thus making them targets of their oppressive governments. …

He said a “beautiful aspect” of sharing their home with people of different faiths has been the unity they’ve found through common respect, pointing to their Muslim guests’ admiration of Mary and Jesus. The brothers try to reciprocate that respect. Brother Richardson recalled the time a Muslim guest asked one of the brothers about getting a prayer rug to use for his required prayer times throughout the day. When the brother supplied one, the man held it to his chest and tried to keep his composure.

“He said to us, ‘I have experienced peace here that I have hardly experienced even among my people,’” Brother Richardson recalled, “and that he would be buried with this rug, the gift that was given.”

Complementing the brothers’ ministry, Sarah’s Oasis, a ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in St. Paul, serves female victims of torture.

Br. Conrad Richardson and the Franciscan Brothers of Peace are good and remarkable men. I know Br. Conrad as a friend and as a Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network board member, and we talked about this work when he was visiting Philadelphia last month. I can’t imagine bearing the emotional and spiritual weight of this work day to day, and so I admire Br. Conrad and his missionaries all the more.

Tom Shakely Life

Easter

Happy Easter! I celebrated Easter Vigil mass last night with my brothers. Seven passages from scripture are read at Easter Vigil, along with the usual Easter customs of affirming one’s baptismal promises. We are weak, we are frail, we are made for the eternal.

In his homily, Msgr. Thomas Flanagan noted that it’s Easter, not Christmas, that is the most central point in the calendar, and that celebrations of the Nativity weren’t particularly widespread until the 200s. That makes sense, but it’s not a history I was familiar with.

Fr. George Rutler, pastor of St. Michael’s in New York, reflects:

We know directly from Saint Paul that Greek philosophers thought the Resurrection was a curious absurdity. Politicians more pragmatically feared that it would upset the whole social order. One of the earliest Christian “apologists,” or explainers, was Saint Justin Martyr who tried to persuade the emperor Antoninus Pius that Christianity is the fulfillment of the best intuitions of classical philosophers like Socrates and Plato.

Justin was reared in an erudite pagan family in Samaria, in the land of Israel just about one lifetime from the Resurrection. Justin studied hard and accepted Christ as his Savior, probably in Ephesus, and then set up his own philosophical school in Rome to explain the sound logic of the Divine Logos. Refusing to worship the Roman gods, and threatened with torture by the Prefect Rusticus, he said: “You can kill us, but you cannot hurt us.” Then he was beheaded.

Fast forward almost exactly a thousand years, and another philosopher, Bernard of Chartres, also admired the best of the Greek philosophers and coined the phrase “We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” There had been long centuries without much effort to explain the mystery of the Resurrection with luminous intelligence. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton would describe himself the same way. Being intellectual dwarfs may sound pessimistic, but there was also optimism in the fact that, lifted on the shoulders of giants, they could see even farther than the giants themselves. In witness to that, less than fifty years after Bernard died, building began on the great cathedral of Chartres. The magnificent rose window in the south transept depicts the evangelists as small men on the shoulders of the tall prophets. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are closer to Christ in the center of the window, than Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel who lift them up, seeing in fact what the prophets had longed for in hope.

The Risen Christ is neither a ghost nor a mere mortal. Ancient philosophies could be vague about things supernatural, and ancient cults could be distant from personal conduct. The Resurrection unites ethics and worship. The famous letter of an anonymous contemporary of Justin Martyr, meant to be read by the emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that the way Christians live “has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines.”

The Resurrection was the greatest event in history, and unlike other events that affect life in subsequent generations in different degrees by sequential cause and effect, the Resurrection is a living force for all time, making Christ present both objectively in the Sacraments, and personally in those who accept him. Thus, indifference to the Resurrection is not an option. The future life of each one of us depends on a willingness to be saved from eternal death.

And in another New York-themed Easter thing, here’s a 1956 shot of the Financial District that someone shared yesterday:

Snopes explains:

The image is real and was taken shortly before Easter in 1956. One newspaper, the Oxnard Press-Courier, published the photo on 31 March 1956 with the following caption: “Huge crosses, formed by lighted windows, blaze above New York’s skyline as part of an Easter display in Manhattan’s financial district. This scene, photographed from the roof of the Municipal Building, features 150-foot-high crosses in the City Services Co., City Bank Farmers Trust Co., and the Forty Wall Street Corp. buildings. (United Press Telephoto)”

Intentionally (I assume) those buildings seem to mirror the three crucifixions at Calvary.

Tom Shakely Causes

Jesus isn’t tame

Glenn T. Stanton writes:

Christians around the world have recently begun one of the most important seasons in the liturgical calendar: Lent. As we prepare for the Passion and Resurrection of our Savior, it’s a good time to consider Him in His fullness. He is indeed the comforting, welcoming Prince of Peace. But Jesus also demonstrated a less gentle side, one that too many of us are not terribly comfortable with. It is important that we know and appreciate the not-just-meek-and-mild Jesus as we sojourn through Lent this year. …

There are two truths about Jesus that seem to be at odds with the modern Christian understanding. First, the God-Man, unbound by time, held a decidedly ancient and “unenlightened” view of the world. Second, He regularly hurt folks’ feelings and didn’t apologize for it. The tender Lamb of God is also a fierce lion.

Let’s start with the first point. In this scientific age, we think it’s silly to believe that an actual devil, demons, and hell exist. But Jesus is old-school. He spoke of a literal Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, Jonah in the belly of the great fish, and the destruction of Sodom—all as actual fact. He talks quite often in the Gospels about Satan and demonic possession. Doing exorcisms was all in a day’s work. He once dropped a bomb on a group of everyday folks, declaring that they were not the children of Abraham, but “of your father the devil.” That’s rough stuff, telling folks they’re sons of the devil. He spoke this way because He believed it.

Second, Jesus believed in the reality of sin, the need for repentance, and a real hell where people weep and gnash their teeth. He spoke of these things regularly, and not conceptually or metaphorically. He personalized this bad news for actual people in vibrant ways. He likened some folks to weeds and said He would “send His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace,” where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

He explains how the final judgment will work. One group, those who do His will, will be welcomed into His Kingdom. To the other, He will say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” If we were Jesus’s tour manager, we might be inclined to remind Him that honey attracts more flies. He would remind us that He’s got this, only doing what His Father does.

Jesus is not shy about telling us that He can be a harsh judge. He came into the world to judge and is eager (eager!) to cast fire upon the earth. It wasn’t only the hypocritical religious leaders of the day who received this message. He warned some everyday folks that if they didn’t repent, they would all perish in unspeakable ways.

The Scriptures conclude in St. John’s Revelation with an extremely distressing Jesus. He’s downright frightening. John, who once rested upon the Savior’s breast and was given care over Our Lord’s mother, encounters Jesus again some years later. It isn’t a happy reunion. John falls as if dead before the Jesus whose eyes are fire. From the Prince of Peace’s mouth comes a massive and mighty sword with razor edges, with which He will strike down the nations. Revelation Jesus, the very same tender baby Jesus of the manger, is fierce beyond description.

Jesus Christ wasn’t a tame spiritual philosopher, but rather claimed relationship with the creator of all things. Unlike other spiritual teachers or philosophers or gurus, he is someone who must be dealt with.

Tom Shakely Community

How Catholic churches spend money

Villanova’s Center for the Study of Church Management produced a great look at Catholic Church budgets about a decade ago:

A recently released 2010 survey conducted by the Cooperative Congregations Studies Partnership (CCSP), a multi-faith group of religious researchers and faith leaders representing over 25 faith groups, had some interesting findings in that regard. The survey included data from a national sample of 390 Catholic parishes. The average annual budget of the parishes in the sample was $566,564. They spent about 39 percent of their budget on salaries and benefits, 26 percent on buildings and operations, 13 percent on program support (such as religious education or youth groups), 12 percent on mission and charity (including diocesan assessments) and 10 percent on other expenditures. The CCSP found that among the Catholic parishes in their sample:

39.7 percent thought that their parish’s financial health was in good or excellent condition in 2010, while 42.9 percent believed that to have been the case for their parish in 2005. 56.8 percent indicated that their income had declined during the recession; 19.6 percent found no significant change; 13.2 percent of the parishes in the sample saw income decrease at first and then rebound; and 10.5 percent realized an increase in parish income during the recession.

The largest piece of the financial pie at parishes is the cost of staff; that 39 percent for salaries and benefits. This is where the drop-off in religious vocations and brothers and nuns has born out as a catastrophic wound to church infrastructure. All these people we now have to pay to administer the life of a community.

And I wonder how much of that 39 percent is due to parishes hiring or maintaining staff positions out of a misplaced feeling of charity. Let’s bring Susan on board, she’s been out of work for a while. We could have her… type up the weekly bulletin. I once worked with a few Catholic churches where I was told this was basically one of their financial drains thanks to the sort of kindness of the pastor.

From the looks of these numbers, most areas seem about as slim as they can get: 12 percent on mission/charity work, 13 percent on program support, etc. That 39 percent still looks pretty fat.

Any tool that can allow a parish to further reduce staff will probably be welcome, pretty much as soon as possible. Ideally that would mean vocations, but for the foreseeable future that probably means software.

Tom Shakely Culture

False infinities

Pope Benedict XVI in August 2012 reflected on the human instinct to want to live forever, to become infinite in some sense, to escape the limits of our creatureliness and our embodied and finite existence:

“Psalm 63 helps us to enter into the heart of [the matter]: ‘O God, my God, for you I long at break of day; my soul thirsts for you, my body pines for you, like a dry land without water.’ Not only my soul, but even every fiber of my flesh is made to find … its fulfillment in God. And this tension cannot be erased from man’s heart: even when he rejects or denies God, the thirst for the Infinite that abides in man does not disappear. Instead, he begins a desperate and sterile search for ‘false infinities’ that can satisfy him at least for the moment.”

A few years ago I was sitting out on Market Street in Old City, Philadelphia with a friend of mine, and we were talking about sin. How can we talk about sin to someone who doesn’t accept it as making any sense, as referring to any real or concrete thing?

I attempt that by describing sin as those moments where I’m essentially being dishonest with myself, moments when I choose not to live in a way that’s consistent with the story of “Who Tom is” that was meant to be told. In those moments we rob the world of something that was meant to be, to borrow and differently apply an idea from Michael Novak. It’s in sin that, to some degree, I try vainly to be infinite. That is, a moment of sin is a moment where I’m lying to myself in saying, “I can do all of the things that I desire to do, from moment to moment, and can be every ‘version’ of myself that I want to exist, forever, and that’s a reasonable way to live.” In this, I’m trying to live out an infinite number of versions of my own life. I’m trying to live out an infinite number of “Toms”—one Tom that lives this way, one Tom that lives that way, one Tom that says this, one Tom that does that, etc.

The recognition of sin as a reality, and the sense to call ourselves hypocrites, both stem from the reality that even while Christians believe we were made for an experience of the infinite in God as the creator and essence of all things, we ourselves are not infinite, and only a hypocrite could try to live out what Benedict XVI calls “false infinities” without at least the consequence of being a bastard, if not ultimately facing to metaphysical account.

Tom Shakely Culture

Fides et Ratio

Saint John Paul the Great’s Fides at Ratio turns 20 this year. It’s described by Wikipedia in this way: It “posits that faith and reason are not only compatible, but essential together. Faith without reason, [John Paul II] argues, leads to superstition. Reason without faith, he argues, leads to nihilism and relativism.” Chaput explains the way Fides et Ratio calls everyone to keep an open mind to the metaphysical aspects of life:

Fides et Ratio is a hymn to the transcendent aspirations of human reason. The aim of any true philosophy, it notes, should be to find the unity of truth in all things, an understanding of the whole. This demands an engagement with the classical discipline we call “metaphysics,” which men still study in preparing for the priesthood.

Metaphysics is an exotic word for a very basic subject: the study of the deep truths and harmonies built into the world. Why, for example, does the world exist? Is matter—material reality—all that there is? Or is there something more? Is there a common human nature? What should we make of the many distinct kinds of things that exist in the world, the sheer givenness of their existence, and their goodness and beauty? How should we understand the human person as a distinct sort of reality? After all, a human person has unique abilities. Man is the creature who can know not only physical things, but even himself and others. Man can perceive the truth, goodness, and beauty in things. He’s a creature animated by questions of ultimate meaning, including whether God exists.

Fides et Ratio argues that any culture that ignores man’s ultimate metaphysical questions locks itself in a false and empty immanence. It can no longer approach the question of God. And by this very fact, it will scar the inner life of the human person. As John Paul notes, “Christian Revelation is the true lodestar of men and women as they strive to make their way amid the pressures of an immanentist habit of mind and the constrictions of a technocratic logic.” This message is strikingly contemporary. Our modern universities typically avoid God as a serious subject of inquiry. Without God, or at least some sense of a higher order or meaning to nature, the dignity of the human person is little more than folklore, the residue of pre-Darwinian beliefs. God and the soul are in exile. And that’s because classical philosophy is in exile, to the detriment of genuine learning.

Fides et Ratio also confronts the crisis of truth within the Catholic Church herself. Catholic theology studies the mystery of God revealed in Jesus Christ. This truth is made known to us by the Holy Spirit. It’s not one we come to know by our own natural powers. But good theology depends upon vigorous philosophy, at least in this sense: We can’t think correctly about God’s revelation unless we cultivate a reasonable philosophical attitude toward God, the world, and other human persons.

The benefits of a vigorous cultivation of both philosophy and theology flow both ways. The rigor of philosophical reason, as Benedict XVI said, purifies religion. It prevents religious faith from lapsing into superstition. Theology, in turn, helps philosophers to cultivate an attitude of openness and accountability to all of reality. Far from being anti-intellectual, Catholic theology raises the expectations for human reason. Everything we can come to know is part of the created order and therefore “friendly” to the authentic revelation of God.

Philosophy in the Catholic tradition pays special attention to the ways we speak about God “analogically” from comparison with creatures. The created world around us exists and is good. So, too, God exists and is good—but in an infinitely higher and incomprehensible way. So when God reveals himself to us as the Holy Trinity, he is simultaneously the God of revelation and the God of natural reason, the God of the Bible and the God of the philosophers.

This way of thinking about the harmony of faith and reason is central to the Catholic tradition, from Church Fathers such as Justin and Augustine to medievals such as Bonaventure and Aquinas down to modern Catholic councils, both at Vatican I and Vatican II. This harmony is expressed in the opening lines of Fides et Ratio: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”

In 2015, we inscribed the phrase Fides et Ratio onto the gravestone of John and Marion Shakely, my grandparents. We did this for two reasons. First, to allude to the marriage of my grandfather’s familial Protestantism and my grandmother’s familial Catholicism and in so doing to recognize the healing of Christian divisions. And second, specifically to recognize John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio encyclical, for speaking clearly to a world too ready to think that the particular and complex problems of any particular historical moment are somehow without precedent, and that an authentic, robust faith and reason together can be those “wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” beyond the particulars of any specific and finite generation.

Tom Shakely Life

Ash Wednesday

“Have mercy on me, O God!” In the category of the transcendent:

This piece is Psalm 51, but first set to music by Allegri around 1630. It is one of the finest and most popular examples of renaissance polyphony. It is often heard in Churches of the apostolic Christian tradition on Ash Wednesday, immediately following Shrove (or pancake) Tuesday, marking Christ’s return to Jerusalem. Beautifully performed here by The Sixteen, listen out for the simplicity, humility and reverence.

Tom Shakely Culture

Saint Francis, the realist

I’m reading G.K. Chesteron’s “Saint Francis of Assisi”, and this section on Saint Francis’s love of nature is conveyed in a sort of fullness:

Saint Francis was not a lover of nature. Properly understood, a lover of nature was precisely what he was not. The phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental pantheism. In the romantic period of literature, in the age of Byron and Scott, it was easy enough to imagine that a hermit in the ruins of a chapel (preferably by moonlight) might find peace and a mild pleasure in the harmony of solemn forests and silent stars, while he pondered over some scroll or illuminated volume, about the liturgical nature of which the author was a little vague. In short, the hermit might love nature as a background. Now for Saint Francis nothing was ever in the background. We might say that his mind had no background, except perhaps that divine darkness out of which the divine love had called up every coloured creature one by one. He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. A bird went by him like an arrow; something with a story and a purpose, though it was a purpose of life and not a purpose of death. A bush could stop him like a brigand; and indeed he was as ready to welcome the brigand as the bush.

In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. Saint Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man. But he did not want to stand against a piece of stage scenery used merely as a background, and inscribed in a general fashion: “Scene; a wood.” In this sense we might say that he was too dramatic for the drama. The scenery would have come to life in his comedies; the walls would really have spoken like Snout the Tinker and the trees would really have come walking to Dunsinane. Everything would have been in the foreground; and in that sense in the footlights. Everything would be in every sense a character. This is the quality in which, as a poet, he is the very opposite of a pantheist. He did not call nature his mother; he called a particular donkey his brother or a particular sparrow his sister. If he had called a pelican his aunt or an elephant his uncle as he might possibly have done, he would still have meant that they were particular creatures assigned by their Creator to particular places; not mere expressions of the evolutionary energy of things.

That is where his mysticism is so close to the common sense of the child. A child has no difficulty about understanding that God made the dog and the cat; though he is well aware that the making of dogs and cats out of nothing is a mysterious process beyond his own imagination. But no child would understand what you meant if you mixed up the dog and the cat and everything else into one monster with myriad legs and called it nature. The child would resolutely refuse to make head or tail of any such animal. Saint Francis was a mystic, but he believed in mysticism and not in mystification. As a mystic he was the mortal enemy of all those mystics who melt away the edges of things and dissolve an entity into its environment. He was a mystic of the daylight and the darkness; but not a mystic of the twilight. He was the very contrary of that sort of oriental visionary who is only a mystic because he is too much of a sceptic to be a materialist. Saint Francis was emphatically a realist…

“Saint Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man.”