There is a story about an American tourist somewhere in the wilds of
rural Ireland. He is hopelessly lost. Desperate for reorientation, he is
relieved to see a rustic Irishman, sitting on a fence and sucking a
straw. This man has probably lived here all his life, the American
thinks to himself, he will surely be able to help. ‘Excuse me,’ he
asks, ‘how do I get to Limerick?’ The Irishman looks at him for a while
and sucks pensively on his straw. ‘If I were you,’ he replies, ‘I
wouldn’t start from here.’
Although one can obviously sympathise with the irate
frustration that our lost American must have felt at the unhelpfulness
of such a response, there is more than a modicum of wisdom in the
Irishman’s reply. Indeed, if the characters are changed, the whole
story takes on something of the nature of a parable. Instead of an
American tourist, imagine that the hopelessly lost individual is the
present writer, and that the rustic Irishman is St Patrick in disguise.
The year is 1978 and I am in the northern Irish city of Londonderry. I
am there because, as an angry seventeen-year-old, I have become
involved with the Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland and
with a white supremacist organization in England. I am angry. I am
bitter. I am bigoted. I hate Catholicism and all that it stands for
(although, of course, I have no real idea what it really stands for,
only what my prejudiced presumption believes that it stands for).
Shortly afterwards I will join the Orange Order, an anti-Catholic
secret society, as a further statement of my Ulster ‘loyalism’ and
anti-Catholicism. During this visit to Londonderry I take part in a day
and a night of rioting during which petrol bombs are thrown and shops
are looted – all in the name of anti-Catholicism. It is then, at least
in the mystical fancy of my imagination, that I meet the rustic
Irishman who is really St Patrick in disguise. ‘I am lost,’ I say to
him (though I am so lost that I don’t even know that I am lost), ‘how
do I find my way Home?’ ‘If I were you,’ the saintly Irishman replies,
‘I wouldn’t start from here’.
Wise words indeed, though at the time they would
have fallen on deaf ears. Deaf, dumb and blind, I had a long way to go.
The long and winding road that would lead, eventually, eleven years
later, to the loving arms of Christ and His Church would be paved with
the works of great Catholic apologists such as Newman, Chesterton and
Belloc. Newman’s masterful Apologia and his equally masterful autobiographical novel, Loss and Gain; Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man and The Well and the Shallows;
and Belloc’s stridently militant exposition of the ‘Europe of the
Faith’ – each of these were signposts on my path from homelessness to
Home. There were of course others. Karl Adam’s The Spirit of Catholicism, Archbishop Sheehan’s Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Father Copleston’s St. Thomas Aquinas
etc. I am, therefore, deeply indebted to the great apologists and, in
consequence, retain the strongest admiration for those who continue the
work of apologetics in our day. I hope and pray that the great work
being done by This Rock and Catholic Answers will bring about a bumper harvest akin to that which was reaped by these great apologists of the past.
Although my own approach to evangelisation is
somewhat different, I share the same desire to win souls for Christ as
do Karl Keating, Tim Ryland and Jerry Usher. I would, in fact, call
myself an apologist, albeit an apologist of a different ilk. I would
say that I am a cultural apologist, one who desires to win converts
through the communicating power of culture.
Perhaps a short theological aside will serve as a useful explanation of
how cultural apologetics is both different from, and yet akin to, the
more conventional field of apologetics. Truth is trinitarian. It
consists of the interconnected and mystically unified power of Reason,
Love and Beauty. As with the Trinity itself, the three, though truly
distinct, are one. Reason, properly understood, is Beauty; Beauty,
properly apprehended, is Reason; both are transcended by, and are
expressions of, Love. And, of course, Reason, Love and Beauty are
enshrined in, and are encapsulated by, the Godhead. Indeed, they have
their raison d’etre and their consummation in the Godhead.
Remove Love and Reason from the sphere of aesthetics and you remove
Beauty also. You get ugliness instead. Even a cursory glance at most
modern ‘art’ will illustrate the negation of Beauty in most of today’s
‘culture’. Once this theological understanding of the trinitarian
nature of Truth is perceived, it follows that the whole science of
apologetics can be seen in this light. Most mainstream apologetics can
be seen as the apologetics of Reason; the defence of the Faith and the
winning of converts through the means of a dialogue with the ‘rational’
and its sundry manifestations. On the other hand, the lives of the
saints, such as the witness of Mother Theresa, can be seen as the
apologetics of Love; the defence of the Faith and the winning of
converts through the living example of a life lived in Love. Finally,
the defence of the Faith and the winning of converts through the power
of the beautiful can be called cultural apologetics or the apologetics
of Beauty. Throughout history, the Faith has been sustained by, and has
built upon, each of these pillars. St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas and
other giants of the Church have laid the philosophical and theological
foundations upon which Christendom has towered above superstition and
heresy, creating an edifice of Reason in a world of error. Numerous
other saints have lived lives of heroic virtue and self-sacrificial
love showing that there is a living, loving alternative to all the vice
and hatred with which humanity has afflicted itself. Similarly numerous
writers, artists, architects and composers have created works of beauty
as a reflection of their love for God – and, through the gift they have
been given, of God’s love for them.
It is in the last of these three spheres of
apologetics that I have found my own vocation and it has become my aim,
indeed my passion, to evangelise the culture through the power of
culture itself.
In recent years, with the possible exception of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ,
the greatest opportunity to evangelise the culture through the power of
culture itself has been the release of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation
of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. As author of Tolkien: Man and Myth and as editor of Tolkien: A Celebration,
both of which were published before the release of Jackson’s movie, I
found myself in the privileged position of being able to surf the wave
of Tolkien enthusiasm that followed in the wake of the release of each
of the films in the trilogy. In spite of the efforts of Jackson et al
to play down the importance of the Catholic dimension of Tolkien’s
masterpiece I found myself giving talks on the Catholicism of The Lord of the Rings to
audiences from all four corners of the United States, not to mention
Canada, England, Germany, Portugal and South Africa. I have spoken to
very large student audiences at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and
several state universities. How else in this agnostic-infested age
could an avowed Catholic give alecture at a secular institution on
Catholic theology to a captive, and for the most part captivated,
audience? Although very few of those in attendance would have dreamed
of attending a lecture on ‘The Theology of the Catholic Church’, they
were happy to attend a lecture entitled ‘Tolkien: Truth & Myth’ at
which they received unadulterated Catholic theology. Such is the power
of art to evangelise.
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