Why a Catholic Should Study Eastern Religion

How do I love God and not a product? This is a very important question for those of us who live in the modern West, we who are deprived of organic culture and saturated in a materialist outlook. Those who are not content with what the world gives them are unfortunately by necessity forced to ground themselves in something of their own choosing: religion, philosophy, lifestyle etc. The problem this creates in the Catholic realm is that of a devotion to certain positions (liberal, traditional), schools (Thomistic, Nouvelle Theologie), or forms of liturgical praxis. As long as one assents to certain propositions of a system they have all they need, what goes along with this is usually a strong sentimental attachment to things that accidentally go along with the system, anything else is suspect or downright anathema.

These points of view are elegantly marketed to us in the form of religious products, and it seems like we have to subscribe to one of these endlessly multiplying products in order to be a “good” Catholic. We are no longer just consumers of goods, but now ideas and lifestyles are advertised and consumed in the same manner. Every package seems to think that it’s got it all. I think this phenomenon is inevitable in our individually driven society, but it’s a view that I think can be broken out of slowly.

Chant in its Natural Environment

 

Religious chanting is an event, therefore the music only fully conveys its power in the context of the divine services they are appointed for. It is best heard by listening to those who really live within it, complete with all the mistakes, coughs, hoarseness, and movement around the choir.

Covid-19 and Advertising

Fuck that.

Billboards – and other forms of large scale intrusive advertising – are disturbing as is, but plastering the typical Covid-19 slogans and shibboleths on them makes things exponentially worse. Modern advertising is a form of psychological violence; it is no secret that the ads that populate the screens that dominate our daily lives have been meticulously designed by psychologists to have a powerful effect upon the viewer. Having lived in a digital environment my entire life there is no doubt that the images and slogans of advertising have had a profound impact on my psyche, it is only in the past few years that I’ve developed a healthy aversion to this sort of manipulation. Which brings me to the present situation of our sterilized world, I think one of the things that the Chinavirus situation can illuminate for us is the power that advertisements have over belief.

I’ve been inclined to think that the powerful nature of advertising is the most immediate cause of the Covid hysteria and resultant changes in way of life and worldview among the population. Here the slogans and advertising serve no other purpose but to implant a set of dogmatic beliefs into the masses, and it is astonishing how readily this has been assimilated. It’s like normal advertising but on the steroid of fear. And the new sterile way of viewing the world has been prioritized over what were once more fundamental concepts like family, religion, and social norms. Now our neighbours are the enemy if they profess a different creed. I suppose this is not the first time a new radical set of beliefs has been successfully implanted into the masses through media, but now it has been done so well that there is not even any real resistance to these ideas. In a detached, historical way of looking at things it is interesting to see this in action; but in reality it’s just fucking depressing. (A great analysis of the Covidian worldview is found here on Cosmos Crouched.)

Lastly, there is no doubt in my mind that slogans like “stay home” and “stay safe” do nothing but produce a pathetic society. Living in safety is no life at all. I can’t think of a lower goal for a society or an individual than simply being “safe.” A life worth living must be dangerous, nothing is more antithetical to the human spirit than sterility and confinement.  

Against Beer and Bacon Theology

What is Beer and Bacon Theology? Well it's certainly not a concise set of propositions, a coherent system, or thought of one man or specific group, it is instead based on a general inchoate mentality towards the use of base pleasures, specifically alcohol. The attitude I take issue with is one that I’ve personally encountered having been around very conscious Catholics and institutions for a few years now. The most concrete example I can think of is that of people who put a caricature of Chesterton and Belloc at the heart of their thinking; they seek to divinize the pleasures of food and especially drink, I term this view Beer and Bacon Theology, or, as a Catholic Answers article put it, Theology of the Bottle.

While I haven’t found anything these people say that is explicitly objectionable – their statements on the virtues of eating and drinking are always qualified by admonitions against drunkenness and excess – there is still something troubling to me about the way they approach alcohol, and the mentality that they are fostering amidst the Catholic culture. On the surface Beer and Bacon Theology seems to breed merely a pretentiousness surrounding drinking with its insistence on high quality and decorum, but deeper than that is something that seems to me truly disordered and corrosive to the culture.

A Thought

 A conversation doesn’t have to be about anything meaningful to be meaningful.