The nineteenth century seems to have been a time of special abundance for people with mad schemes for Explaining Everything, or Planning Utopia, or otherwise Knowing It All. In the United States and Europe, there seemed to be no end of philosophers, prophets, and dreamers with New Revelations, Grand Plans, and Big Ideas. New communities sprang up all over the place, eager to create the New Jerusalem on earth. There were Shakers, Zoarites, Rappites, Icarians, and members of utopian groups like the Oneida community, the Amana community, and the Aurora community. By the eve of the Civil War, utopianism had involved at least 100,000 persons in the U.S. (a number far larger in proportion to the population at that time). It was a time in which things like this could appeal to a significant number of people as Cutting Edge Thought:
Based on the doctrines of French reformer Charles Fourier, some 88 communes known as “phalanxes” made for the biggest single total of any U.S. utopian movement during the mid-19th century. Like many visionary leaders, Fourier was something of a fanatic. His dream of the “regeneration of the human body” to occur after 400 years of utopian living included a marvelous versatile tail, which he styled the “harmony arm,” describing it thus: “It extends to the length of 144 vertebrae from the [regenerated human’s] coccyx and is carried on the shoulder, rising to twice its owner’s height, having at its extremity a tiny hand whose fingers are as strong as an eagle’s claws, the index and pinky being lengthened and the middle fingers stubby, with an extremely elongated thumb and retractile talons like a lion’s. When a man endowed with the harmony arm swims, it makes him swift as a fish. He streaks to the ocean floor where in a twinkling he sets out and fastens all manner of nets and traps for seafood. Back on dry land, the same man leaps by means of this marvelous limb into a lofty tree to pick fruit from its topmost branches. The harmony arm also serves as a rudder to steer balloons, and when playing musical instruments it doubles one’s manual dexterity. When making a long distance jump, the harmony arm shoots out in a spiral which at least triples ones’ normal momentum. It also cushions the shock of landing by two-thirds. One spins it into a cone, which slows the body’s fall by forming a parachute. If a mason is working atop a steeple, his harmony arm protects him from falling by wrapping itself round his body while at the same time leaving him the use of both hands as well as the harmony hand.
The harmony arm is also a natural weapon, as redoubtable as it is industrious, placing an unarmed man on an equal footing with the most dangerous beast. (Its superiority if furnished with a sword may be readily imagined!) We might well ask why God did not favor our race with such a useful limb. The answer is simply that terrestrial humanity would destroy itself overnight if provided with this weapon. It may be objected that we will be exempt from such dangers when we pass into the state of Harmony. The observation is correct; it is nonetheless true that we were fated to live through several thousands of years of Discord during which God must needs refuse us the harmony arm. It will be ours only upon passing into the state of Compound Harmony, which is to begin after 16 generations of Simple Harmony—about 400 years hence.( American Folklore and Legend, Jane Polley, ed. (Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest Association, 1978), p. 211)
We laugh—today. But that’s only because this particular piece of philosophical looniness died out and became a museum piece for us to marvel at. The problem is that many of the thinkers, prophets, and dreamers of the nineteenth century did not die out. Instead, they worked steadily and diligently to bring about their visions, and to destroy the greatest obstacle to their fulfillment— the revelation of Jesus Christ and the truth about the dignity and origins of the human person.
Who were some of these thinkers, prophets, and dreamers? Space forbids us to discuss them all and we cannot go into great detail. But a cursory survey should at least include the following.
Ludwig Feuerbach and Auguste Comte
Ludwig Feuerbach and Auguste Comte believed it possible to create a secular utopia based on the worship of man. Feuerbach retained a tenuous connection with Christianity, but redefined it virtually out of existence. The biblical God was to be replaced with a god who affirmed us in our okayness and awakened us to the reality that we humans are the fullness of the Godhead. For Comte, there was a further refinement:
His new God—Humanity—consisted only in those human beings who made a positive contribution to their society. Feuerbach’s new God replaced the fictitious Divinity that caused men to become alienated from the better part of themselves. Comte’s new deity replaced the God of Christianity, which was a necessary historical stepping-stone to the new supreme being—”Le Grand Être”— (“The Great Being,” or Humanity). (Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker, Architects of the Culture of Death (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 135–136)
Like so many nineteenth-century thinkers, Comte seemed to see diagrams better than faces. He rejected Christianity because it took the person more seriously than the system or the collective. He regarded Christianity’s incorrigible insistence on the individual person as the image of God as “Christian egoism,” an “egoism” that took its cue from the “absolute egoism” of God.( Ibid., 137) Rather than submitting themselves to the General Will of the collective, Christians sought salvation through a relationship with a God that they believed to transcend humanity. So, like Jesus, Comte insisted they could not serve two masters, except he demanded they serve humanity, not God. To his credit, he retained enough of his humanity to advocate the establishment of his utopia by persuasion and love. But his systemis so out oftouch with reality that it effectively boils down to a very complex way of saying, “I love humanity. It’s just people I can’t stand.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer lacked Feuerbach’s and Comte’s rosy optimism about the coming apotheosis of humanity. He believed not love but will was the fundamental reality behind the universe. For Schopenhauer, life was basically a power struggle in which the “blind will” was all there was. For him . . .
Nature is the result, not of a benevolent, designing deity, but a blind, meaningless dance of physical forces and mindless chance. If we may leap ahead to our own time, he saw Nature as it appears to famed Darwinist Richard Dawkins: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pointless indifference.” (Ibid., 31)
Schopenhauer, however, did not regard the universe as merely indifferent. It was out to get us:
We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses. And the road from one to the other too goes, in regard to our well-being and enjoyment of life, steadily downhill: happily dreaming childhood, exultant youth, toil-filled years of manhood, infirm and often wretched old age, the torment of the last illness and finally the throes of death—does it not look as if existence were an error the consequences of which gradually grow more manifest?( Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Classics, 1970), 51–54)
Charles Darwin
It will be noted that Schopenhauer’s philosophy sounds a great deal like Charles Darwin’s in that both insist that man is, to quote one classic definition, “the result of a purposeless and materialistic process that did not have him in mind.”( G. G. Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution (New York: New American Library Mentor Book, 1953), 179) According to Darwin and his many proponents, man was nothing other than the result of a mindless interaction of matter and energy whereby those traits best adapted to survival were passed on while those species that lacked advantageous traits were killed off by natural selection. No loving Creator was involved, just the random accident of matter and energy.
However, it will also be noted that Schopenhauer died in 1860, the year after Darwin published his Origin of Species. So Schopenhauer is not deriving his atheism from some new scientific discovery disproving the existence of a Creator God. Rather, he demonstrates he was living in an age whose elites were already ripe to hear that nature, not God, was the basic principle of our existence. Darwin simply lent (or seemed to lend) scientific credibility to that fundamentally metaphysical judgment. Darwin, more than any other thinker in the nineteenth century, gave force to the idea that human beings were not creatures made in the image and likeness of God, but were instead simply unusually clever pieces of meat whose brains, heart, and body and soul were as much the result of a series of accidents as the shape of a pig’s nose. In the words of his disciple, Ernst Haeckel, the “modern science of evolution has shown that there never was any such creation, but that the universe is eternal and the law of substance all-ruling.” Accordingly, “the myth of the conception and birth of Jesus Christ is mere fiction, and is at the same stage of superstition as a hundred other myths of other religions.”(Ernst Haeckel, The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy, trans. Joseph McCabe (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1905), 63–64) For, according to Haeckel, when Darwin “shattered the dogma of anthropocentrism” by allegedly showing human beings to be as much a product of chance as every other species on earth, he smashed the “boundless presumption of conceited man [that] has misled him into making himself ‘the image of God,’ claiming an ‘eternal life’ for his ephemeral personality.”(Ernst Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Harper, 1900), 15)
And these are only the beginning. We will look at some more of the philosophical currents of the 19th Century next time--in order to see what the Immaculate Conception was pitted against.
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Feuerbach was also crucial to Marx’ work. Marx was persuaded that Feuerbach had accomplished the ‘critique’ of religion, permitting Marx to posit what was to his mind [and that of many others] a convincing metaphysic of pure materialism. He built on the work of Feuerbach, which he felt to be a good start, but incomplete.
“Feuerbach starts off from the fact of religious self-estrangement, of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world, and a secular one. His work consists of resolving the religious world into its secular basis.”—from Marx’ 11 theses on Feuerbach, thesis 4.
“Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man.” —from thesis 6 of same.
The Popes tried to warn us:
“Syllabus of Errors”- http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm
11. The Church not only ought never to pass judgment on philosophy, but ought to tolerate the errors of philosophy, leaving it to correct itself.—Dec. 21, 1863.
15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.—Allocution “Maxima quidem,” June 9, 1862; Damnatio “Multiplices inter,” June 10, 1851.
Mark Shea, How dare you make the connection of Our Blessed Mother and her immaculate conception with lunatics’ philosophies. You need to resign from this claimed Catholic media ASAP. Your smearing campaign of the Virgin Most Pure and everlasting, and Mother of the human race is egregious and purposed to smear the Roman Catholic Church and what she teaches.
Mark’s on your side, Joe, your Christian anger is misplaced. However, - mother of the human race? Care to describe what you’re talking about?
“Mark Shea, How dare you make the connection of Our Blessed Mother and her immaculate conception with lunatics’ philosophies”
Joe, what gives you the impression that Mr. Shea is likening our Blessed Mother to these deceived and deranged philosophers? In the final sentence of this piece he says that these men are “pitted against” the Blessed Virgin Mary and that he will explore this further in his next article. Here him out - Mr. Shea is a wonderful and articulate defender of the Catholic Church.
May God Bless You.
Please forgive me, Mark,I know I sound like a broken record, but in my consideration, that is perfectly acceptable to approbations of the Catholic Church, I learned more by reading The Mystical City of God by Venerable Mother Mary of Agreda than apparently all of the brains of the Nineteenth Century combined, and I suspect it is much more accurate.
Joe:
Why do you suppose that, after I have spent weeks arguing for the Immaculate Conception, I would suddenly attack Our Lady? Take your finger off the trigger, cool off, and hear me out.
“The nineteenth century seems to have been a time of special abundance for people with mad schemes for ... Knowing It All.” With all due respect, the world has never before seen the special abundance for people with mad schemes for Knowing It All that has emerged with the Internet. I now yield the floor to the other commenters, who will prove this beyond any reasonable doubt.
It might be fun to have a harmony arm, at least for a while. The Borg should have installed a cyber harmony arm on Picard.
@Joe : Thank you so much, I needed that laugh today. The idea of Mark Shea, after decades of being a Catholic apologist and midway through a series on the Immaculate Conception, suddenly converting to Fourierism and attacking Catholicism, with NOBODY at the National Catholic Register realizing what was going on and letting him publish an anti-Catholic libel on their site is absolutely hilarious.
And the beauty of the thing is that whether you were only pretending to completely miss the point or actually completely missing the point doesn’t make your message any less hilarious. Though if you were being serious I suggest you seek help. Fast.
Thibaud:
You have to admit that whole “harmony arm” thing is an awfully tempting trade-off for the eternal bliss of heaven. :)
Mark Shea, I do not understand why you believe the readers’ lives will be enhanced with the knowledge of they who war against the divine and the supernatural especially when I view the statistics of the ‘dying religion’.
See: http://cara.georgetown.Edu/CARAServices/requestedchurchstats.html
The decline of the Catholic faith is shocking!
I question why anyone would labor to define and explain the deranged brains of they who obviously hated the Church Christ established and all that Holy Mother the Church teaches. Valuable space was lost updating readers on the thinking of those who have no good end in sight with their insanities.
Our Blessed Mother and Virgin Everlasting is instrumental in the salvation of all souls that God wills to live on this earth. In this age of materialism and forgetfulness of eternal truths, we need Our Mother to assist us and to guide us towards what we must do in order to live in eternity praising and worshiping our Heavenly Father. I’ll stick with this one point, Mark Shea.
Zeke, There has been a lot written on Our Blessed Mother, the Mother of us all. I won’t do justice with this post but this is one scripture that relates to her Divine Motherhood of the human race:
When Jesus said to St. John just before expiring on the Cross, “Behold, thy mother!” (Jn 19:27), Jesus gave His Mother to all.
Suggested books and pamphlets:
THE FOOT OF THE CROSS
Fr. Faber. Describes Our Lady’s Seven Sorrows, relating them to our own spiritual life. Tells why God permitted her sorrows, and describes the immensity of them.
MARY, MOTHER OF DIVINE GRACE
Rohellec. It would be a mockery to think to repay the Incarnation and Crucifixion of Our Lord by a once-repeated expression of thanks. The only adequate return for what Our Lord has done for us must lie in living for Him. The very blood as it flows unceasingly in our veins must thank Him for the unceasing flow of His divine life in our souls. Likewise, from none of our renderings of thanks must Mary be omitted. She was part of the Incarnation, of the offering on Calvary. As Mother of Grace Himself, Mary is privileged to hold the Fountain of Grace for the whole human race. The Holy Virgin, leaning on Her Son, labored together with Him in amassing the treasures of supernatural life; she works together with Him still in giving to the redeemed, soul by soul, moment by moment, the benefits of the merits of Calvary. As you read this book, the question of Mary’s role as Mediatrix of all Graces will unfold in simple beauty and bring you through her work as the Co-Redemptress of the world.
UNDER MARY’S MANTLE
Benedictine Sisters. A beautiful book describing the wonderful, maternal protection of the Blessed Virgin for her children. Teaches the reader to trust and love Mary, for she will never fail those who are devoted to her. Even her beloved ones in Purgatory are sure to find refuge under her loving mantle of protection.
TO JESUS THROUGH MARY
A small but informative pamphlet on St. Louis Marie de Montfort’s aspect of “true” devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and how it leads us to Jesus.
“Mark Shea, I do not understand…”
Very true, Joe. Still and all, I think it important for my readers to have some sense of the falsehoods the Immaculate Conception opposes, just as I think it imporant to know what Arius taught if we are to grasp what the Council of Nicaea was defending, or to know what the Judaizer were saying if we are to understand what the Council of Jerusalem was about. Instead of holing up in a Fortress, you should consider the possibility that not everybody can see why the Immaculate Conception matters, Joe. Those of us who are trying to help people see that it does are not the enemy. Nor are those trying to understand. Or do you not *want* to catechize and evangelize those who are not holed up in your Fortress with you, Joe?
Joe:
Let me first mention that I’m thankful to hear of your dedication to Our Lady and to Holy Mother Church. You need not have anything to fear from Mark Shea. He’s very much on your side but you really need to cast off this “siege mentality” and stop being so pessimistic about the state of the church and about your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Have a little more hope.
I can understand the struggles of living in a country where secular society is often indifferent if not outright hostile to the Church and indeed it is our duty to fight back but it can also blind you from seeing the positive growth of the Church elsewhere in the world like Africa and Asia. I can partially confirm that this is true because I live Singapore and grew up in Malaysia and where I’m from the pews at Mass are always full at every weekend service. I don’t know how you concluded that ours is a “dying religion” from the statistics you provided. If you saw the global stats like I did you’d have noticed the numbers haven’t changed much. The Church is dying? I don’t think so. Is she persecuted? Yes, as she has always been since her founding.
Finally, not everyone who tries to understand what our opponents think are tempting sin or doing something wholly unbeneficial. As Mark has mentioned, how do think the Church fought against heresy in the past if she hadn’t understood these philosophies of her opponents and attacked them for what it was. It would be like a slap in the face of St Augustine, St Dominic, St Thomas Aquinas and many other intellectual saints if you were to deny the value in understanding how our opponents think. Again, have more faith in those that God has chosen to defend our faith.
I hope you understand what I’m trying to say here. May the peace and joy of the Lord be with you Joe.
Mark, this series is perhaps your best work.
I will say there is one redeeming thing about Comte and his work: He maintained throughout his life that there were intrinsic laws and rules that governed humanity and human nature, and he set out to determine what those laws and rules were through careful study of society using the scientific method (sociology). Of course, he rejected the already known Truth about humanity, and the moral laws with which we are to operate, all of which have been faithfully maintained in Holy Mother Church.
How in charity it could be conceived that what Mr. Shea was writing here was a willful attempt on his part to diminish Catholic teaching in any way is slightly stunning to me.
More charity, brothers and sisters, in our reading, and in our judging, please, if possible. And more patience.
As has been pointed out already, the attack on knowledge per se evidenced here is obscurantist in nature. One does not learn about the thoughts of others solely in order to emulate their errors. And even those in error often can teach us, if we have the humility to admit the limitations on our own abilities to know and understand. God hides wisdom in many places we do not suspect.
Mark Shea, respectfully, allow me to once again explain why I find your column offensive.
1. 95% of your introduction is dedicated to explaining the minds of heretics. If one needs to know about heretical minds, let them seek it outside of National Catholic Register. Your column is similar to the claimed Catholic college and universities that give the platform and the microphone to pro-abortion Marxist/communist politicians.
2. In church history councils were called and Pontifical pronouncements were made to combat heresies in order to define truth that always existed. These needed Councils and Pontifical teachings proclaimed revelation absent of excessive details of lunatics.
3. Aren’t you at risk to lead readers into evil temptation giving information unrelated to faith and morals amidst the enormous shortage of properly formed Catholic consciences? How can one acquire holiness and a good final end studying lunatics’ minds?
May you give consideration to these points. Thank you, Mark Shea.
Joe:
And I repeat, this entry is part of an entire series of articles defending the Immaculate Conception. In order to understand what the IC is defending, it is necessary to understand what it is defending against. Sensible people can understand this.
Joe:
If one wants to know the mind of the magesterium, let him consult his catechism.
The magesterium, in coming to its conclusions, responds to the issues of the day. There is great value in understanding the background against which the magesterium teaches the Church. The magesterium itself considers this factor whenever it wants to understand itself, whether in the present or in the past.
The magesterium therefore requires ordinary human knowledge in order to carry out its divine office. Any knowledge may be misused or lead others astray; nevertheless the Church doesn’t cower from it.
You accuse Mark of spreading knowledge. You don’t even say that what Mark is saying is wrong, just that he is spreading knowledge that you think might be dangerous to some souls. But this is knowledge which is important to those that want to increase their understanding of the magesterium. And that is something they should want to do and should do if they can.
If you are one of those for which it is dangerous then you should stick to your catechism, but you have no right to insist that Mark be only a catechism, too.
Darren, Thank you for your reasoning. Over all, I believe I grasp what you are trying to say, but I challenge your reasoning in the fact that the explosion of the faith in Asia and in Africa is not due to a missionary spirit. The missionary spirit has been replaced with ecumenism in order to stop the persecution. There is only one race that is currently persecuting the church because we have stopped praying for their conversion and the other race we no longer pray for their conversion is persecuting in a subtle manner.
Facts are very disturbing things, Darren, but they must be exposed and confronted. What has changed from within that has caused the exodus out of the American church Mark Shea came into? The “lights are going out in Europe” also.
It is imperative to consider the time period of the data and to consider what has led to the implosion of the American church shown in the chart of the cara.georgetown.Edu site. Yet, none of us needed to see this data to be convinced of the church’s continuing diminishment. We must ask what are the causes of Catholic brokenness and what created the confounding of millions of Catholic people? None can deny the future is bleak for the American Church.
You say I have a ‘siege mentality’. Have you read the book, “Holy Siege” by Kenneth A. Briggs a protestant? It’s a collection of interviews done in 1986 to 1987 of people within the church at various capacities who explain to Mr. Briggs how the many changes affecting the church are creating difficult challenges. Must I be more explicit?
Zeke, you asked about ‘the mother of the human race’. I’m copying this from the chapter “Our Mother”, #173.2 page 519, from the book “Divine Intimacy, Meditations on the Interior Life for Every Day of The Liturgical Year” by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.
“..While Jesus was dying in the midst of the most atrocious torments, His loving Heart was preparing a truly exquisite gift for us. On earth, His dearest possession had been His Mother; now He would leave her to us as a most precious inheritance. “Behold thy Mother” (John 19:27), He said to St. John, thus giving her to the Apostle who, at that moment, represented the whole human race……
Mary saved our souls together with Jesus, for as He was offering Himself in sacrifice for us, Mary was offering Him, her Son, as the divine Victim for our redemption. As co-redemptrix, she procured the life of grace for us; therefore, she is the women who in the supernatural order gives us life : she is our Mother…Because it has cost her so much to give us birth, she very rightly desires us to live as her true children, worthy of the life of grace, which flows from the pierced side of her Jesus and from her maternal heart, pierced by the sword of sorrow.”
Go ahead now Joe, tell us why you think the seat of Peter is empty too, so we can see how you are building up Holy Mother Church.
All of this is fascinating. Understanding the minds of those who have lost their way IS enlightening.
Your comments always confirm for me how those on the extreme left and those on the extreme right end up holding hands around the back, in their mutual efforts to destroy and deface the Church.
Joe: As a pre- and post- Second Vatican Council observer, I have to agree the the decline of the faith especially in America is indeed shocking. When I converted to the Catholic Church in 1949,the evangelization of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was at a peak in America through his TV show,
Life is Worth Living, much to Uncle Miltie’s regret. He became my life-long mentor. All Catholics then believed in the Real Presence, and from their spiritual attitude and attire, you knew they believed Jesus was there. Now estimates indicate that only 25 percent are actually practicing Catholics that still believe. That is a travesty to say the least, and there is no overt indication this problem is being addressed in the year of faith. The only solution that makes sense to me is to return Communion only on the tongue from consecrated hands, and I know what dissidents will say to that. What a pity.
*This* thread is about the Immaculate Conception, not about nostalgia for Bp. Sheen, or communion in the hand, or Joe’s prophecies of doom, or how wrong the Second Vatican Council was in the view of self-appointed combox bishops. Future divergences from the topic will be deleted.
In the end times, Our Blessed Mother and Virgin Everlasting will crush the head of the serpent. She who was preserved from all sin announced that Redemption is at hand. She is the first one redeemed by her divine Son. Our Lady’s origin is wrapped in silence and her life speaks of the wonder of her amazing humility as Co-Redemptrix. These things we will not find in Sacred Scripture. To Jesus through Mary.
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