We’ve decided that the reason Monsignor Ronald Knox, the
third member of the Chesterton-Sheen-Knox Reason Triumvirate, has been pretty
much brushed aside is that he was a trifle too . . . we’ll say “sarcastic” at
times. “Unvarnished” or “uncomfortable” would
be a better and probably more descriptive way of putting it, but whatever you
call it, those intellectual zingers that Knox kept inserting into his writing
seem to make people uneasy, and don’t give them anything to distort or twist
all out of shape so they can misrepresent his thought.
This is not the case with Chesterton and the American
Chesterton, or (if you prefer) Sheen and the English Sheen. Chesterton was witty, clever, and
extraordinarily . . . “poetic” is the word that comes to mind, suggested by a
Prominent Chestertonian. Sheen was
witty, clever, and extraordinarily spiritual.
This allows people to slap the “mystic” label on Chesterton,
allowing them to sidestep all the “difficult sayings” about common sense and
reason. Given Chesterton’s views on what
most people mean by the term “mysticism,” this is probably causing him to
writhe in embarrassment, humiliation, and frustration in whatever area of the
afterlife he inhabits.
Similarly, people focus on Sheen’s spirituality to the
exclusion of his profound philosophical thought, meaning common sense and
reason. We actually had someone react in
a most unsheenly, er, unseemly fashion when we said something to the effect
that CESJ, not being a Catholic or even a religious organization, is interested
in Sheen for his social thought.
White-lipped with rage, this devoted follower of Sheen informed us
coldly that Sheen’s spirituality is the only
thing that matters. Too bad Sheen didn’t
agree.
Anyway, our point today is that excluding reason from the
discussion and focusing on faith and charity, as Knox claimed “enthusiasts” do,
pretty much destroys any hope of establishing and maintaining any form of
justice, especially social justice. This
is because “enthusiasm” as Knox defined it (an excess of charity that threatens
unity) generally precludes the ability to organize and work to reform the
institutions of the common good that is the hallmark and distinguishing
characteristic of social justice.
This makes sense. If
you’re continually excluding people from associating with you for reasons of insufficient
faith, charity, hope, or anything else, and deeming them unworthy of rights,
whether life, liberty, or property, you’re going to have one heck of a hard
time organizing with those people to effect necessary systemic changes through
acts of social justice.
As Knox pointed out, the problem with the “enthusiast” is
that he or she thinks that only those deemed “godly” by those doing the judging
(i.e., the “enthusiast”) have legal
rights. Everyone else is dog food and
must be cast into the outer darkness, preferably with wailing and gnashing of
teeth.
In consequence, the whole of the natural law and the concept
of inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property are abolished in favor of
moral relativism, even nihilism, as Heinrich Rommen explained in his book on
the natural law. This is, in fact, what
every pope since Pius IX has identified as the single greatest danger to
Catholic doctrine and common sense in the world, the replacement of objective
reason with subjective faith in one’s self and one’s opinion, what Chesterton
called “the inner light” or “the god within.”
Ironically, this is also what the Catholic Church warns
against in its “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church”:
142. The
natural law, which is the law of God, cannot be annulled by human sinfulness [Cf.
Saint Augustine, Confessions, 2, 4, 9: PL 32, 678: “Furtum certe punit
lex tua, Domine, et lex scripta in cordibus hominum, quam ne ipsa quidem delet
iniquitas”.]. It lays the indispensable moral foundation for building the human
community and for establishing the civil law that draws its consequences of a
concrete and contingent nature from the principles of the natural law [Cf. Catechism
of the Catholic Church, 1959.]. If the perception of the universality of
the moral law is dimmed, people cannot build a true and lasting communion with
others, because when a correspondence between truth and good is lacking,
“whether culpably or not, our acts damage the communion of persons, to the
detriment of each” [John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor,
51: AAS 85 (1993), 1175.]. Only freedom rooted in a common nature, in
fact, can make all men responsible and enable them to justify public morality.
Those who proclaim themselves to be the sole measure of realities and of truth
cannot live peacefully in society with their fellow men and cooperate with them
[Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 19-20: AAS
87 (1995), 421-424.].
The bottom line? How
can you possibly organize in social justice if you “cannot live peacefully in
society with [your] fellow men and cooperate with them,” or are always bending
on principle or giving in to expedience?
