Rama P. Coomaraswamy, A Brief for Sedevacantism, (full text)

“To adhere to a false Bishop of Rome is to be out of communion with the Church.” (St. Cyprian)


In the discussion that follows there is no intention of binding anyone’s conscience. Nor is it claimed that there are no other ways of explaining the current chaos that has its roots in Rome. However, what is attempted is to show that the sedevacantist position is both logical and based on sound Catholic principles.

The sedevacantist position makes no attempt to define the nature of the post-conciliar popes - be they “usurpers” or “anti-popes.” What it states is that the Chair of Peter is at this point in time empty - the Chair however continues to exist as it always will - but that the commands of those who are supposedly sitting in this Chair are without authority. To those who are horrified by the idea of sedevacantism, and who proclaim their conviction in the legitimacy of the present hierarchy, one can with sadness only say, “if he (and the bishops in union with him) are true popes, then obey them.” It makes no sense for those who loudly proclaim JP II is a true pope, to complain about the New Mass or some teaching of Vatican II. Such is simply not Catholic. Rather, they must embrace with love all his teachings and actions and extend every effort to fulfill his expectations.

What is important above all, is the need for one to remain Catholic, for on this rests the hope of our salvation.

Catholics know or should know that they owe obedience and subjection to the Pope when he is functioning as Pope. As Gueranger said, He is the “universal pastor whom none can disobey without disobeying God himself.” (Liturgical Year, Nov. 23.) Similarly Pius IX tells us “we must obey the Apostolic See, not only with respect to faith, but even with respect to discipline. Anyone who denies this is a heretic. Anyone who recognizes this and doggedly refuses to obey him is worthy of anathema.” (Apostolic Letter Quae in patriarhatu) .One could provide other authoritative quotes, such as Denzinger 1608, but the principle is so well accepted that such would be redundant.

The reason for this is easy to understand. Once a Pope has been elected and has accepted this function, he is “one hierarchical person with our Lord.” That is to say, he becomes Christ’s representative or Vicar on earth. Of him it can be said, “He who hears you hears me.”Since he is speaking or functioning in unity with Christ, it is clear that the charism of infallibility resides with him (and by extension with those in unity with him). This has always been the case, though because it was disputed - especially after Pius IX promulgated his Syllabus of Errors- it had to be made explicit at Vatican I. It should be clear that this infallibility does not reside in a pope’s every statement or action, but only with those within his function as Pope. Hence the importance of clearly delineating these functions.

There are two ways of doing this. One is to follow the rulings of Vatican I which affirmed the infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium and declared that when the pope speaks on matters of faith and morals in such a way that it is clear that he intends to instruct the Catholic faithful, he is infallible. The other is to look at the function of the Pope in terms of his Triple authority, namely Teaching, Governing and Sanctifying. We will discuss each of these in turn.

With regard to his teaching function, this is usually expressed as the Magisterium (from the Latin Magister or teacher). Now there is currently considerable confusion about what constitutes the Magisterium and one or two doctrinal points have to be clear.

1) There is only one Magisterium, though it may be given expression as “Ordinary” or as “Extraordinary.” Both are equally true. Both are protected by the same charism of infallibility. It is not necessary that the Church or anyone at all agree with the Pope for this charism to apply. (This principle was changed at Vatican II under the name of “collegiality” which teaches that the bishops must agree with the pope.) Normally, the agreement of the hierarchy with the Pope extends his infallibility to them, but should they teach differently than the pope, they are on their own. This is the meaning of the phrase, “The Pope and those in union with him.”

2) There are those who like Michael Davies hold that the Ordinary Magisterium can contain error. This is an heretical position, and clearly if such were the case, then we would have no assurance that the Magisterium was a source of infallible truth.[1] 3) The idea that a reigning Pope can change what a previous Pope has established. This is of course true of disciplines such as rules for fasting, but it could never be true of Doctrine for the simple reason that Truth cannot change and the Holy Spirit cannot contradict Himself. Thus St. Paul tells us that even if an angel from heaven were to teach us some other doctrine than what he taught, it would not be true.

With regard to the pope’s teaching function: When the Pope teaches on matters of Faith and Morals in such a way that it is clear that he intends to instruct the Catholic faithful, he is infallible. This may be through the Ordinary or the Extraordinary Magisterium. How do we know that he intends to instruct the faithful? By the manner of expression, such as Encyclical letters, by approval of Conciliar documents, by pronouncements to the world at large (urbs et orbe - to the city of Rome and the world), or in any other manner that makes this clear.

Let us examine some of the teachings which Catholics “faithful to the present Pope” implicitly accept. Both Paul VI and J-P II have told us that the documents of Vatican II are the “supreme form of the ordinary Magisterium,” and that we owe them our intellectual assent. When Archbishop Lefebvre wished to be free to “interpret” them "in accordance with tradition,” Paul VI told him that he was usurping his papal function, and if any interpretation was necessary, he would do it. And so it is that those who recognize the authority of the post-Conciliar popes must give their intellectual assent to all these documents contain. Now quite apart from their terrible ambiguity, these documents contain a host of theological errors. (One must not be deluded by such phrases as “theological error.” In the context of doctrine, this means they contain lies, and their promulgation with supposed magisterial authority is spitting in the face of Christ for Christ is the Truth - the phrase may seem harsh, but this is what happened during His passion.) Those who wish to “pick and choose” what they will give their assent to, are in fact playing the Protestant game. But that is not all. They must also accept the socialist ideation and evolutionary thinking that pervades the post-Conciliar Church which has its delineation both in these documents and in the various Encyclical and other statements made by JP-II. What is more, they must agree with his opinion that the United Nations is the “hope of the world,” and above all with his Apokostastic views that all men are saved - indeed, saved from the moment of their conception.

Some will argue that they know nothing of all these heresies Without judging anyone’s individual culpability, it should be remembered that none of us know every aspect of the Magisterium. However, our attitude is one of accepting all the Magisterium contains, whether or not we know some matter which may not impact on our life. There is certainly enough evidence that something is wrong for people who take their religious seriously, to investigate and study the contents of the documents of Vatican II. Moreover, the Pope’s Encyclicals are not promulgated without the intent that they should be read and studied. Those who are capable and who refuse to study what is being taught in the name of Christ are simply indifferent, or deliberately hiding their head in the sand. One wonders how indifferent they will be at the Final Judgement.

Governance is often combined with Sanctification as both depend upon what is called the power of Jurisdiction. Both are closely tied to what is called the “Apostolic Succession.” Without a valid Apostolic Succession the authority for governance and the power of confecting the Sacraments is absent. With regard to governance, it is often forgotten that at one time the popes were heads of state (and still are since the Vatican City is an independent state).. The purpose of governance is the salvation of souls and the obligation that falls upon the Pope (and those in union with him) is the fostering a social order that has the true goods of mankind in mind. The former is well explained by Boniface VIII put it:

“We are taught by evangelical words that in this power of his are two swords, namely spiritual and temporal... Therefore each is in the power of the Church, that is, a spiritual and a material sword. But the latter, indeed, must be exercised for the Church, the former by the Church. The former (by the hand) of the priest, the latter by the hand of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest.” (Denzinger 469)

Formerly the Church owned large tracts of land in Italy and was fully responsible for its administration. These of course have long since been taken away from her. But the principle that the Church had the right to direct the civil power has been repeatedly demonstrated throughout history, though the civil powers have for several hundred years refused to acknowledge such. Following upon Vatican II Paul VI told those few countries such as Spain and Argentina who still had in their constitution the statement that they were “Catholic,” that such was no longer acceptable. He insisted that they remove such phraseology from their constitutions. He made it clear that the new Church was no longer going to interfere in the political sphere of nations in a Catholic manner. Again, we have the bland acceptance of Socialist ideas, despite the fact that Leo XIII and Pius IX clearly taught that it is impossible for a Catholic to be a socialist. This of course is part of the program aimed at bringing the Church into the modern world as a participant, and hence it is not surprising that JP II should tell the United Nations that “you are the hope of the world.” And this in a speech in which he didn’t even mention the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Sanctification is also tied to the power of Jurisdiction, and covers every aspect of religion, above all the Sacraments. Now, everyone who is not blind or deaf knows that all the Sacraments have been changed. Many arguments are raised as the validity of the new Sacraments, but without going into these in detail, no one questions but that they are “doubtful.” Without a valid Apostolic Succession, there can be no valid priesthood, and hence however correctly Mass or the other Sacraments are administered, they are invalid. Anyone can say the words, but without the power conveyed by Ordination and or Consecration, nothing is effected. Now for all practical purposes the post-Conciliar Church has rendered the Apostolic Succession invalid. Pius XII in a de fide statement specified what was required in the form and matter for the passing on of this power. (Such had not previously been necessary as no one questioned it). The new rites for consecrating bishops have only one word in common with what Pius XII specified as essential, namely “et” meaning and. This makes all the bishops and in turn their ordinands (priests) at least dubious - and it is a principle of sacramental theology that a dubious sacrament is no sacrament at all, and indeed Catholics are forbidden to partake of doubtful Sacraments. A Tridentine Mass properly said by a priest improperly ordained effects nothing. And beyond this, even the most beautifully performed Novus Ordo Mass remains at least doubtful for three simple reasons (apart from the doubtful ordination of the priest-president).: 1) the words of Christ have been changed[2]; and 2) the Novus Ordo is tied to the definition in paragraph 7 of the General Instruction which provides the rubrics and understanding for saying it; and 3) there is no true sacrifice. (Those who doubt all this should read the General Instruction which accompanies this rite). It should be stressed however that the invalidating of the consecration of bishops is in many ways more serious than the issue of the Mass, for a properly ordained priest can always go back to the true Mass, but a priest without valid orders is in a much more difficult position.

Many will claim that they know nothing of all this, and so they continue to accept all the changes - be they doctrinal or ritual without question. But once again, it is almost impossible for people not to know that something has drastically changed in their religion. One has only to enter a post-Conciliar Church to become aware that the tabernacle has been moved and the altar turned into a table. Anyone who sees priest-presidents saying funeral masses in white and shaking hands with relatives of the deceased without ablution - i.e., when his hands have presumably just touched the body of our Lord - should wonder what is going on. If religion is of any importance in our lives - and it should be the most important thing in our lives, surely it behooves us to investigate what is happening. Our failure to do so, especially when they have been pointed out to us, is culpable.

There is of course a mystery in all this. Christ could have stopped His Crucifixion, but within the divine economy, it was necessary that he suffer on the Cross. In a sense His Church is also being Crucified. He could stop it if He wished. But the Crucifixion of His Church is also within the providence of God. One must remember that the Catholic Faith is not dependant on the structure of the Church as it exists today. An entirely different structure existed during the first three hundred years of its existence. Yes there was a pope and there were bishops and priests. But it was an underground Church. During the English Reformation the Church again became an underground organization, at least in England. It is clear that the post-Conciliar Church is in the process of self-destruction. Such may well be what will once again happen.

In stating that one is a sedevacantist, much more than the status of the post-Conciliar popes is involved. The pope is not alone in all this, and truly it is the Pope “and the bishops (if such they are) in union with him.” The reality is that the present Church organization is simply not Catholic and hence is to be rejected - its pseudo Sacraments and its false doctrines.

One must be careful of how things are worded. To say that the Church as we know it is dead is not to say that the Church is dead. The Church which is the body of Christ, the presence of Christ in this world, can never die. The Truth can be obscured, but never destroyed. Christ will not leave us orphans. We have legitimate bishops and priests - not many, but in sufficient numbers. It is incumbent on us to seek them out and support them in any way we can. In all that is going on, there is nothing that stops us from being Catholic, but to be Catholic demands a great deal of work and effort on our part. And Perhaps - here I would ask that my presumption be forgiven - this is what our Lord really wants - namely that we put forth this very effort. The salvation of our souls may well depend upon it.

Notes:

[1] Davies argues that only what was once determined can be relied on. This implies that the Magisterium is dead and that no true pope can explain or determine issues that may not have previously required explication.

[2] Not necessarily in the Latin, though even in Latin the context is altered - and how often is it said in Latin.

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Rama P. Coomaraswamy, Philosophia Perennis And The Sensus Catholicus, (full text)

“The wise man will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, and will be occupied in the prophets...”
(Ecclesiastes 39: 1-5)

It is generally assumed that there is no room within Christianity for accepting the concept of Sanatana Dharma, or what in the west has been called philosophia perennis or priscorium. This Sophia perennis, to use a phrase preferred by Wolfgang Smith holds that certain metaphysical truths, and hence access to a knowledge of the divine, have always been available throughout history and are to be found within the framework of every valid religious tradition.

First of all it should be clear that such a concept in no way contradicts the principle Extra eclesia nulla salus - that outside the Church there is no salvation. If one understands this principle in the way the Church has always understood it, one accepts the fact that there are individuals who, as Saint Pius X put it, belong to the soul of the Church. Such individuals are “invincibly ignorant” of the manifest Church, and certainly before the coming of Christ, the ark of salvation had to take other forms.

It is also necessary to consider history, not as a progressive advance from primitive times to the present “enlightened” era but more realistically as a continuous degeneration from a former golden age. Adam’s fall from paradise is a paradigm for understanding the present situation. God did not abandon His creation and Adam found regeneration, and is indeed considered by the Church to be a saint. In ancient days, saving revelation, in accordance with man’s more “direct” apprehension of truth, was appropriately more “simple. With each succeeding “fall,” God provided more stringent requirements for man to follow if he sought to reverse the process of degeneration, until the time of Moses when the rules required encompassed every aspect of life. This is well reflected in the Sacrifice of Abel, followed by that of Abraham, and finally by that established through the medium of Moses. Yet throughout all this we have the Sacrifice of Melchisedech, renewed once again in Christ.

Such an attitude is not a carte blanche for every religion that comes down the pike. If salvation is possible outside of the formal structure of the Church, as must have been the case at least before the coming of Christ, one must remember that one cannot be saved by error. It is Truth alone that saves. And so it follows that salvation comes to us by the Divine Logos which Logos exists and existed from the beginning of time, for “in the beginning was the Word.” [1]

The early Church fathers were faced with the plethora of old religious forms which were degenerate in the extreme. They followed one of two courses. They either declared that Christianity had the fullness of the Truth and that therefore there was no need to look elsewhere, or they held that all truth, no matter where it was found, belonged to the integrity of the Faith, and was therefore to be accepted, absorbed, and embraced. As St. Thomas Aquinas said, quoting St. Ambrose, “all truth, no matter where it is found, has the Holy Spirit for its author.” In a similar manner, St. Jerome all but adopted the Buddha’s life story and Christianized it as we have in the hagiographical account of.St Josephat.

Catholic Saints have recognized this reality throughout the centuries. St. Justus referred to Heraclitus as “a Christian before Christ,” and Eckhart spoke of an ancient sage in the following terms: “One of our most ancient philosophers who found the truth long, long before God’s birth ere ever there was a Christian faith at all as it is now.” St. Thomas of Villenova taught the same doctrine: “Our religion is from the beginning of the world. A great Christian was Abraham; a great Christian was Moses; so also David and all the patriarchs. They adored the same God, believed the same mysteries and expected the same resurrection and judgment. They had the same precepts, manners, affections, desires, thoughts, and modes of life; so that if you saw Abraham, and Moses, and David with Peter and Andrew and Augustine and Jerome, you would observe, in all essential things, a perfect identity.” [2] One could multiply such quotations but such serves no purpose as long as the principles are understood.

Against this we seemingly have Augustine’s retraction which he wrote at the end of his life in an attempt to correct any misunderstanding that his works might lead to. This Retraction runs as follows: “The very thing that is now called the Christian religion was not wanting among the ancients from the beginning of the human race, until Christ came in the flesh, after which the true religion, which had already existed, began to be called ‘Christian.’ [3]

A closer examination of this retraction however requires an understanding of its reference. The earlier statement occurs in a passage of De Vera Religione (X.19) wherein Augustine explains that “the soul, crushed by the sins which envelope it, would be unable to rise towards the divine realities unless there was found within the human sphere something which would allow man to rise from the earthly life, and to renew in himself the image of God. For this reason God, in his infinite mercy, has established a temporal means by which men may be recalled to their original perfection, and by which God comes to the help of each particular individual and of the human race.” St. Augustine then adds: “That is in our times the Christian religion, to know and to follow which is the most secure and certain salvation.”

In passing it should be noted that Augustine speaks of the “human race,” and not just of the Jewish religion with which of course Christianity has a very close connections. Again, St Justin stated: “God is the Word of whom the whole human race are partakers, and those who lived according to Reason are Christians even though accounted atheists.” He included in these, not only Heraclitus, but also Socrates and Abraham.

It was this last sentence that Augustine wished to clarify, explaining that in his retraction he had made use of the term “Christian religion” but had failed to express the reality which lies behind the name. To quote him again, “It is said according to this name, not in accord with the thing itself, of which is the name.” . To make this even clearer Augustine adds: “When, in fact, following the resurrection and ascension into heaven, the Apostles began to preach and many persons came to believe, it was among the people of Antioch - so it is written - that the disciples were first called Christians. This is the reason why I said, ‘That is in our times the Christian religion’; not because in earlier times it did not exist, but because in later times this name was accepted.”

And so it is that it is possible for a Catholic to hold to the position usually described as “perennial or universal philosophy.” The only requirement is that he hold to it as a Catholic who accepts all the teachings of the Church as encompassed in the traditional Magisterium, and this for the simple reason that if one steps outside the Magisterium and entertains one’s own personal opinion as being “true,” one contradicts all that the sanatana dharma holds sacred. [4]

All this has little to do with the false ecumenism that seems to pervade the atmosphere in our days, an ecumenism that would accept not only Protestantism, but every new age deviation imaginable on - as Vatican II puts it - “on an equal footing.” This ecumenical outreach often extends itself to Eastern religions where those responsible have little true knowledge and understanding. For example, many will speak of the Trinity in Hinduism as being represented by the exclamation of sat chit ananda - which is perhaps best translated as being, knowledge and bliss - names of God equivalent in Islam to qudrah, hikmah and rahmah.. The Hindu Trinity of Powers consists of the solar Father above, a fiery Son on earth (whence he ascends to heaven), and the Gale of their common spiration. St. Frances of Sales warned against those who speak of other religions without adequate knowledge, and indeed, even for those familiar with their own theological terminology (which is rare among current scholars), would have difficulty in understanding ways of expression foreign to their intellectual world. [5]

And so it is that we as faithful Christians can, and indeed must accept the idea of a sophia perennis. Wisdom has always been there, it is Christ, the Word made flesh who opens the door and the Church which gives us access to it.

II

An important consequence follows from the above principles. If there is indeed truths to be found in other religions, these truths may serve to clarify some of the obscurities we encounter within our own. In the words of Thomas Aquinas, they can become “extrinsic and probable proofs” of the truths of Christianity. With this in mind, I offer in what follows a study by Ananda Coomaraswamy on a passage in Isaiah: “there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom and of understanding...”


The Tree Of Jesse And Oriental Parallels [6]


The chapter on this subject in Arthur Watson’s admirable and long awaited monograph on the Early Iconography of the Tree of Jesse (Oxford, 1934) is of particular interest. Let me say in the first place that although the formula appears rather suddenly in Christian art in the eleventh century, I have no wish to demonstrate or even to argue for an Indian or otherwise specifically Oriental origin at that time, my view being rather that we have a single example of the many close parallels between mediaeval Christian and Oriental thought and symbolism which are best understood by an ultimate derivation of both from a common source (of which our earliest knowledge is, perhaps, Sumerian); diversities of formulation representing as it were the dialects of one spiritual tradition common to humanity [7]. From this point of views there is no difficulty in assimilating Isaiah XI, 1-3 to the Vedic texts cited in my “Tree of Jesse and Indian Parallels or Sources” (Art Bulletin, Vol. XI) [8] without suggesting any derivation of one text from the other. In just the same way Exodus XIV corresponds to Rg. Veda III, 33 and VII, 18 (in both cases the chosen people cross the Waters in chariots, the waters lending themselves to easy passage, while the enemy attempting to follow is destroyed by the returning torrent); and Genesis, 1, 2 especially as understood by some mediaeval writers, e.g. Ulrich Emngelberti “the Spirit of God moves over the Waters warming (fovens) and forming all things, [9] with Aitareya Aranyaka, II, 4, 3 “He glowed upon the Waters and from the Waters that were set aglow a form was born,” and ib. II, 2, 1, “He who glows is the Spiritus.” Parallels of this sort could be indefinitely multiplied and cannot be accidental.
Certain of the problems can be very profitably envisaged from this point of view. We hold for example that the Vedic Tree proceeding from the navel of Varuna (deity preeminently of the waters), the Mahabharata conception of the Birth of Brahma (and corresponding iconography, the lotus rising from the navel of Narayana, who rests in and upon the Waters), and the Bazaklik representation (in which the lotus-Tree rises directly from the Waters) [10] are all true parallels of the Tree of Jesse, which presents an analogous range of variations and if none of the latter (unless possibly Watson’s Pl. II, which in any case exhibits “the tree as having a deeper root than Jesse himself”) shows the Waters, the same applies to the Burmese representation (Watson’s Pl.. XXXIX) and some others where there is no express indication of the underlying Waters. Needless to say that the Waters stand for potentiality as distinguished from act, and it makes little difference whether the roots of the Tree are represented as outspread in the Waters themselves, or in a Ground, whether anthropomorphic or otherwise, that rests upon or in the Waters; in either case, both Ground and Waters are to be understood. The variety in formulation in this respect appears already in the Rg.Veda; in I, 182, 7 “the Tree stands in the midst of the Flood” (this corresponds to the Haoma-tree that is in the midst of Vourukasha, where the kar-fish swims, in Zoroastrian tradition, Bundahis XVIII, Yusna XLII, 4, etc.); in I, 24, 7 “its Ground is above,” its oriflames or branches tending downwards, upari budhna here, and urdhva mula in Katha Up., VI, 1 corresponding to Boccacio’s “Genealogical Tree of the Gods” in celum versa, radice cited by Watson, p. 45, and to the Zohar passage at the beginning of the section Beha Alotheka, “Now the Tree of Life extends from above downwards, and it is the Sun which illuminates all.” Again in the Gupta representation at Deogarth the stem of the lotus that supports Brahma is not directly connected with the navel of Narayana. But rises behind him, and this often happens in the representations of the Tree of Jesse. Still, the connection of the root with the navel is, even correct formulation, and this will be evident, if we reflect that the “stem” after all represents the fruition of the “seed” of Jesse, as is especially evident when the Tree becomes a veritable genealogy, and that the navel according to all ancient traditions both Western and Eastern is the progenitive center and a center in every sense of the word, and as such the starting point of manifestation.

The common significance of the Occidental and Oriental trees becomes most evident when we recall that the rose and the lotus are equivalent symbols, and observe that the Christian virga, often hermeneutically assimilated to “virgo,” is identified with the Virgin as being the ground of the divine manifestation, just as in Oriental art the lotus is the earth or ground of any such manifestation. When in Western art there are doves on the branches (as in the Dijon MS. Illustration cited by Kingsley Porter, Art Bulletin, VII, p. 10, Note 2, cf. the mosaic cross in the fault of the apse of S. Clemente in Rome, where the doves are set in the shaft and arms of the cross which rises from a flower provided with proliferating branches like those of the Jesse Tree) this corresponds exactly to Rg. Veda, I, 164, 21 “There the Fairwings (angels) chant their share of aeviternity,” Brhadaranyaka Up., IV, 3,2 where “The Swan, the Golden Person, by the Spirit wards His lower nest,” and Dante, Paradiso, XVIII, 110, “power that is form unto the nests.”

Enough has been said, I think, to prove that the fundamental ideologies underlying the Eastern and Western representations are the same; and where borrowing is improbable, and independent origin unlikely because of the complexity of the symbol itself, the theory of an ultimately common source can hardly be avoided. Mr. Watson remarks that “The difficulty in establishing a relationship between Oriental trees and the Tree of Jesse is that, although we may find striking parallels, it is difficult or impossible to demonstrate connecting links” (p. 65). The same difficulty presents itself if we try to connect Isaiah XI, i-3 with the late mediaeval iconography by documentary links. As to this, we can only say with Andrae (? Berlin 1933, p. 66) that in fact “a formal symbol can remain alive not only for millennia, but... it can spring into life again after an interruption of thousands of years”; and add that, while a symbol as such can survive mechanically in traditional arts for an indefinite period, the transmission of symbols together with that of their metaphysical significance belongs for the most part to oral and initiatory teachings which by their very nature leave no documentary traces; and it is just because of this that symbols and their interpretation so often seem to emerge or reemerge simultaneously at some given moment or in some given place as if from nowhere. In the present case it is not impossible that the transmission of a doctrine of the Tree of Jesse had taken place in Kabbalistic circles; the Zohar (e.g. Vo. V, pp. 203,221; in the Simon and Sperling version) is often most informative as to the Tree of Life or Tres of Life and Death, and that the former is above the latter may be compared with the Bazaklik representation, in which the lotus grounds of the mundane and heavenly levels of being are distinguished by position in the same sense.

The present note is not a review of Watson’s monograph and cannot pretend to do justice to it as a whole. Nevertheless, in connection with the Chapter entitled “References in Literature to Relevant Imagery,” it seems worth while to cite from St. Bernard, De Adventu Domini, II, 4 “From these passages I think it now manifest what is the stem proceeding from the root of Jesse, and what is the flower on which reposeth the Holy Spirit. For the Virgin Mother of God is the stem, her Son the flower... O Virgin! Stem of the highest, to what a summit thou liftest on high thy holiness! Even to Him that sitteth on the throne, even to the Lord in His majesty.... O true tree... O true tree of life, which alone was worthy to bear the fruit of salvation!” As St. Bernard died A.D. 1153, and the passages cited being taken from a sermon suggest that the theme cannot have been one altogether unfamiliar when the sermon was preached, the text is undoubtedly pertinent to the problem of the iconography; and one may suspect that a thorough search of the patristic literature would yield more material of the same sort. An although of later date, reference may be made to Ecklhart’s sermon No. LXI in the Evans version, in which he says “Our philosophers teach that the sun draws the flowers out of the roots through the stem, timelessly wellnigh and too subtly for any eye to follow... Jesse means a fire and a burning; it signifies the ground of divine love and also the ground of the soul. Out of this ground the rod grows, i.e. in the purest and highest; it shoots up out of this virgin soil at the breaking forth of the Son. Upon the rod opens a flower, the flower of the Holy Ghost.” That “Jesse means a fire” evidently rests upon some hermeneutic etymology, and one would like to know its source; in any case, there results an assimilation to the Burning Bush, which is a form of the Tree of Life, and for which there are also Oriental parallels. I may be noted that in the Vysehred MS (Watson, p. 83) the rubus igneus of Moses virgula Aaron, porta clausa of Ezekiel, and virgula Jessa are shown on two contiguous pages, and as Watson comments “It is clear that these four subjects have been put together on account of a community of significance.”


[1] If it is argued that Christ’s descent into “hell” allowed for their salvation, this is only to say that all salvation comes through the Word, which is indeed Christ. As St. Clement of Alexandria taught, Christ himself is Wisdom, and that it was his working that showed itself in the [Old Testament] prophets., and that the same wisdom was taught to the Apostles while He was present in the flesh. Jean Borella puts it well: Christianity being the religion ofChrist, is by that very fact the religion of Gnosis (Wisdom) Incarnate, since the Word is the Gnosis of the Father. Now this Gnosis Incarnate is also the preeminent spiritual way: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”Jean Borella, The Gnosis with a True Name in The Secret of the Christian Way. SUNY, 2001T

[2] De. Nat. Virg. Mar. III

[3] This material is taken from an article by Stephen Cross entitled St. Augustine and the perennial Philosophy published in Avaloka, Vol VI, Nos 1&2, 1992 (ISBN0890-5541)

[4] The question of the “infallible” nature of the Magisterium has currently been called into question. However, as Leo XIII stated, for the Magisterium to contradict itself is to declare that Christ has taught error. Clearly however, one can point to many statements with seemingly Magisterial authority currently being promulgated that contradicts prior Magisterial teachings. I discuss this in some detail in an article on my web page Coomaraswamy-catholic-writings.com.

[5] These failings are by no means limited to Christianity. Moslems frequently accuse Christianity of being polytheistic because of their belief in the Trinity, and Hinduism is frequently described as such which is in fact absurd.

[6] Originally published in Parnassus, Vol. VI, No. 8, January, 1935.pp. 18-19.(Slightly edited)

[7] As an example of this AKC offers the following in a footnote. Natya Sastra, II, 5 (Indian 4th Century) “All the activities of the angels, whether at home in their own places or abroad in the breaths of life, are intellectually emanated; those of men are put forth by conscious effort; therefore it is that the works to be done by men are defined in detail,” with (1) Plotinus, Enneads, IVC, 3, 18 “Souls in the Supreme operate without reasoning... all their acts must fall into place by sheer force of their nature,” (2) Gregory, Moral. II, “Angels do not go abroad in such a manner as to lose the delights of inward contemplation,” (3) St. Thomas, Sum Theol.,m I. Q. 112 a. 1. Ad 3 “We give ourselves to action through the sensitive faculties, the action of angel, on the contrary regulates his exterior actions by the intellectual operation alone, “ (4) Eckhart I, 5, “Man requires many instruments for his external works; much preparation is needed ere he can bring them forth as he has imagined them... More exalted are the angels, who need less means for their works and have fewer images.”

[8] In the Mahabharata (ii, 272, 44 and xii, 207, 13) “As soon as that Eternal Being [Narayana] concentrated thought upon a New Creation of the Universe a lotus flower immediately came into existence from His navel and the four-faced Brahma came forth from that navel-lotus.” Narayana is the supreme deity of the later Vedic period and is effectively identical with Brahma. Bearing this in mind, we can recognize the tradition already in the Rg. Veda (x, 82, 5): “Prior to the sky, prior to this earth, prior to the living gods, what is that germ which the waters held first and in which all the gods existed? The waters held that same germ in which all the gods exist/or find themselves; on the navel of the Unborn stood that in which all beings stood.” Further, in the Athara Veda (x, 7, 38) we have a description of Brahma as “a great Yaksa” in the midst of creation, lying upon the sea in penance, therein are set whatever gods there are, like the branches of a tre round about a trunk.” The conception of a tree of life rooted in Brahma recurs also in the Katha Upanishad (vi,1): “This eternal fig tree! That [root] is indeed the Pure. That is Brahma.” It occurs again in a somewhat different way in the Bhagavad Gita (xv, 1-3). That our tree of life, in which all beings are set, should be rooted in a naval, whether of Brahma, Narayana, or Jesse is significant.

[9] De Pulchro, part of the Summa de Bono, see Gramann in Sitz. Bayer, Akad. Wiss. Phil. Kl., 1926 Abb. 5, p. 82. Ulrich Engelbert of Strassbrg died A.D. 1277

[10] It is worth nothing that the two dragons kn otted about the “waist” of the fasces, vajra, or “thunderbolt” which in the Bazaklik representation divides the upper from the lower range (and corresponds to the Vedic skamba and Gnostic sthauros that at once divides and connects Heaven and Earth) are reminiscent of the paired dragons or nagas that guard the Tree of Life in a well-known Indus Valley seal, often reproduced, e.g. in my History of Indian and Indonesian Art, Fig. 6, cf Fig 243 in Grunwedel’s Altbuddhistische Kultstatten in Chinesich-Turkistan. Parallels in Greek mythology will readily suggest themselves.

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Rama P. Coomaraswamy, Feminism And The Veiling Of Women, (full text)

“Every woman who prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoreth her head.” (Cor. 11:5).

“There is neither male or female, for ye are one in Christ.” (Gal. 3:28)

There is considerable resistance, even among so-called traditional Catholics, to women covering their heads in Church, or to use the more common phrase, to women wearing veils. Now, the veiling of woman is an Apostolic command (I Cor, XI:4-16), and hence the attitude of a faithful Catholic is one which accepts Apostolic injunctions without question.

Let it be clear from the start that the idea that Paul was only accommodating himself to Jewish or middle eastern practice and that therefore such restrictions no longer apply, is a totally modernist concept. Tertullian specifically states that this command applies “everywhere and always.”

St. Paul provides us with two reasons for this practice. The first is that “the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man… the man indeed ought not to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man, for the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man.” The second reason, perhaps less explicit, is that a woman should have a cover over her head (‘power’ being an alternate word for ‘cover’) “because of the angels.”

The first reason seemingly speaks to the subordinate role of women. Paul however is not concerned with the sexes as such, but rather with higher realities of which men and women are reflections. As Claude Chavasse explains: “the sexes signify eternal varities, and for that reason they must illustrate the qualities of direction and submission. It is not because Paul is a ‘typical oriental’ that he says ‘the head of the woman is the man,’ but because she is the type of the Church and he of Christ. …just as the Church should have no Head but Christ, so the woman should have no head but her husband.” The church fathers in discussing this issue make it clear that this “subordination” in no way implies that women are inferior to men or in any way limited in their relationship to God. Paul himself says that “in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.” However, within the social relationship, reflecting the relationship of the Church to Christ, she does have a subordinate position. As Ambrosiaster says “Although man and woman are of the same substance, the man has relational priority because he is the head of the woman. He is greater than she is by cause and order, but not by substance. Woman is the glory of man, but there is an enormous distance between that and being the glory of God.” Severian of Gabala, another early father is even more explicit: “what we are talking about here is not nature but a relationship.”

Under normal conditions the majority of women live within the married state. The family is in fact the building block of any healthy society. Those imbued with socialist ideation – conscious or unconscious – no longer consider the family as a norm and whatever loyalties they have are more oriented towards the government, which encourages single parent “families,” same sex “marriages,” homosexuality and a host of parallel agendas. But for the Catholic, the family unit remains the norm, and to understand the proper status of women in the married state we should turn once again to St. Paul, who speaks to this in Chapter 5 of his letter to the Ephesians:

“For the Church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be to their husbands in all thing. Husbands love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it: that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life. …so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife, loveth himself… This is a great sacrament.” I am fully aware that feminists dislike this passage because it speaks of obedience. Yet, under normal circumstances the father is head of the family. In this he reflects the priest who is “father” to the community, and both in turn reflect God who is “our Father in Heaven.” The father of the family is spiritually responsible for those under his care, and following the teaching of Our Lord, he can say: “if you love me you will obey my commandments.” He is of course himself under the obligation of obedience to Christ. He rules the family by “divine right,” – “right” being an older word for “law.” If he rules by other than divine right, that is, if he institutes his own private rules for those of God, he becomes a tyrant. If indeed the head of the family is to pattern his behavior after Christ, the woman should have little trouble in giving him obedience. The end result of such a relationship is that the family itself becomes a mini-Church, or a Nazareth in which the children can grow up “subject” to their parents as Jesus was to Mary and Joseph. St. Paul tells us in the next sentence that children are obliged to obey their parents. It will be argued that this is a rather “idealized” picture, but if the normal has become only an idealized picture in our age, this is indeed a tragedy, the fruits of which we see all around us.

The feminist agenda holds that women and men are equal. It is the subordinate role that rankers the modernist woman. Now clearly justice requires that working women should have equality in the workplace. There is no justification for paying women less or making them work longer hours for the same pay as men. But this in no way militates against the Pauline precept. The feminist attitude is not entirely modern. St. Chrysostom commented in the fourth century that “a woman does not acquire a man’s dignity by having her head uncovered but rather loses her own. Her shame and reproach thus derive from her desire to be like a man as well as from her actions” (Homilies on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, 25.4). He likens the situation to a governor approaching a king without the symbols of his office, and holds that a woman in covering her head in church is approaching God with the symbol of her office. For those in religion, the same subordinate role requires their obedience both to the rule and to the superior who is spiritually speaking, Christ. If there is “rebellion” in the family, there is even greater rebellion in the orders, and this very often starting with the superiors who are themselves refusing obedience to Christ.

All this does not deny that women are of the same substance as man, but rather gives expression to a relationship between them. As Ambrosiaster says, “man is the head of the woman. He is greater than she is by cause and order, but not by substance. Woman is the glory of man, but there is an enormous distance between that and being the glory of God.” (Commentary on Paul’s Epistles). Augustine further comments that “it is not as though one part of humanity belongs to God as its author and another to darkness, as some claim. Rather the part that has the power of ruling and the part that is ruled are both from God” (Against the Manicheans 3.26.40).

The idea of obedience is of course not without its difficulties. Paul stresses this with regard to marriage. It is often forgot that if obedience is incumbent upon the wife, it is also incumbent upon the husband to be Christ-like. Like a king who rules by divine right - that is by God’s laws, so also the husband must rule as an alter Christus. If he were to rule by his own law, he would in fact be a despot. If then the husband is truly Christ-like, than obedience becomes a blessing.

What is frequently not realized is that it is far better, as St. Bernard says, to live under obedience than to be placed in command. Of course we are all under obedience to Christ, but as is true in any organization, Obedience flows from the “top,” through a hierarchy of authorities to those below. Obedience is not blind and can never be used to command what is sinful. One must always understand what one is obeying.

Feminists like to proclaim that God is a woman. In this claim they point to an important fact, namely that the male–female polarity has its origin in God and not in man. Why it is that God, who in his Absoluteness is without gender, is nevertheless rendered in creation as masculine, while Nature - that is Natura Naturans Creatrix is referred to as feminine. Let us consider the act of creation. In God Essence and Nature are united. In creation there is a division between Essence and Nature, Heaven from Earth, and subject from object. Nature then “recedes from likeness to God, yet even insofar as it has being in this wise, it retains a certain likeness to the divine being” (Summa Theol 1.14.11 ad 3). Henceforth Essence is the Creator and active power, Nature, the means of creation and passive recipient of form. “Nature as being that by which the generator generates” (Damascene, De fide orthodoxa 1.18). The relationship between man to woman is a likeness to the relationship between Essence and Nature, and marriage is a symbol and reflection of the identification of Essence and Nature in divinis. This same relationship is repeated in the course of our everyday functioning.

God then, who in His essence is neither male nor female, contains within His essence the archetypes of Absoluteness and Infinititude. In manifestation these archetypes separate. (In Taoist terms into Yin and Yang ) His absoluteness becomes the masculine or “active” pole and His infinitude the feminine or “passive” pole. Thus in Genesis we read that “the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters” – the waters symbolizing the “all possibility” of creation, and metaphysically understood as representing the Blessed Mother of whom it is said “I was set up from eternity and of old before the earth was made.” Hence, as an Eastern text puts it, “all creation is feminine relative to God.” The masculine reflects the absolute nature of God and hence justice, rigor and majesty. The feminine reflects the infinite nature of God which is seen as reflected in the qualities of mercy, generosity and beauty, in indeed in the infinitude of all creation. It is precisely this quality of infinitude that manifests itself in mercy and generosity that makes the women’s function of giving birth and nurturing so central to her fulfillment. Those who deny this would do well to consider the struggles many single women face as they approach the menopause – a sort of recognition that they have let one of the most important aspects of their womanly nature slip by unfulfilled. So many have succumbed to the idea of a “career” without in fact recognizing that the majority of careers open to them are little more than becoming factory workers or secretaries – hardly vocations such as truly utilize all their creative faculties. (Of course, men are also limited in attaining truly vocational forms of employment.)

There is yet another level that reflects this relationship – in every human being, be he biologically male or female. Every individual is constructed, as it were, of three components – Spirit, psyche (which includes our thinking processes and opinions) and body. Now the Spirit is considered masculine and the psyche and body (often considered as the “psycho-physical”) is considered female. The later of course is meant to be subordinate to the higher, which is to say the Spirit of God that dwells within every individual. Such is incorporated in the myths of every nation. St. George was only able to free the princess or psyche after he had slain the dragon. And it was the kiss of the golden prince that released Snow white from her somnolent state – the result of her partaking of the poisoned apple. Hero and Heroine are two selves - duo sunt in homine - immanent Spirit (ASoul of the soul,@ Athis self= immortal Self@) and individual soul or self: Eros and Psyche, or metaphysically speaking, Male and Female. These two, cohabitant Inner and Outer Man are at war with one another, and there can be no peace between them until the victory has been won and the soul, or self, this AI,@ submits. It is not without reason that the Heroine is so often described as haughty, disdainful, and “orgelleuse.” Philo and Rumi repeatedly equate this soul, our lesser self, with the Dragon, and it is this soul that we are told to Ahate@ if we would be disciples of the Sun of Men. The myth of the Loathly Bride survives in St. Bonaventura=s prediction of Christ=s Marriage to the Church: AChrist will present his Bride, whom he loved in her baseness and all her foulness, glorious with his own glory, without spot or wrinkle.@

Eckhart places the following admonition in the mouth of his spiritual daughter “I know very well that women can never come into heaven; they have to become men first. It is to be understood like this. They must perform manly deeds and must have manly hearts with full strength so that they may resist themselves in all sinful things

According to Matthias Scheeben, Marriage ranks as a Sacrament because it is a figure of the union between God and the Church, and as a consequence, of the union also between God and the soul. The importance of this relationship is explained by Scotus Erigina:


"The woman is the rational soul [anima], whose husband [literally vir or 'man' (with the connotation of 'active power') not maritus or conjunx] is understood to be the animus, which is variously named now intellect [intellectus], now mind [mens], now animus and often even spirit [spiritus]. This is the husband of whom the Apostle speaks "the head of the woman is the man, the head of the man is Christ, the head of Christ is God." I other words, the head of the anima is the intellectus, and the head of the intellectus is Christ. Such is the natural order of the human creature. The soul must be submitted to the rule of the mind, the mind to Christ, and thereby the whole being is submitted through Christ to God the Father... Spirit revolves perpetually about God and is therefore well named the husband and guide of the other parts of the soul, since between it and its creator no creature is interposed. Reason in turn revolves around the knowledge and causes of created things, and whatever spirit receives through eternal contemplation it transmits to reason and reason commends to memory. The third part of the soul is interior sense, which is subordinate to reason as the faculty which is superior to it, and by means of reason is also subordinate to spirit. Finally, below the interior sense in the natural order is the exterior sense, through which the whole soul nourishes and rules the fivefold bodily senses and animates the whole body. Since, therefore, reason can receive nothing of the gifts from on high unless through her husband, the spirit, which holds the chief place of all nature, the woman or anima is rightly ordered to call her husband or intellectus with whom and by whom she may drink spiritual gifts and without whom she may in no wise participate in gifts from on high. For this reason Jesus says to her, 'Call your husband, come hither.' Do not have the presumption to come to me without your husband. For, if the intellect is absent, one may not ascend to the heights of theology, nor participate in spiritual gifts." ”

Similarly, Meister Eckhart teaches in his commentary on the Scriptural passage “Happy is the man that dwells in wisdom”:

“I have often said there are two powers in the soul: One is the man and one is the woman. The power in the soul that one calls the man is the highest power of the soul in which God shines bare; for into this power nothing enters but God, and this power is continually in God. And so if a person were to take all things in this power he would take them not as they are things, but as they are in God. Therefore a person should dwell continually in this power because all things are alike in this power. This is why that person is happy who dwells continually in this power; he dwells continuously in God. That we may dwell continually in God, may we receive the help of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”

There is yet another reason why women are veiled, and that is that every soul is, at least potentially, the bride of Christ. "To love God, " says St. Bernard, "is to be married to Him. Happy the soul who rejoices in this chaste and blessed embrace which is naught else than pure and holy love.” While this is as true for man as for woman, in the relationship that exists between them, it is the woman who most clearly gives witness to this potentiality. And as such, like a bride, she should be veiled

Again, beauty, a quality that women manifest, is of a mysterious nature, for it is itself a reflection of that super-essential quality most clearly seen in the Blessed Virgin and ultimately having its origin in God. But Beauty is appropriately veiled, for its real nature is hidden and we see but its remote reflection in the female form. The veiling of women then is not a denigrating imposition placed on them by men, but rather reflects their own intrinsic glory as mothers, daughters and brides of Christ.

The model then is nothing less than the Blessed Virgin for she manifests all these varied levels and qualities to the fullest possible degree. While she was highly educated (having studied in the Temple from the ages of 3 to 12), and while she often functioned outside the confines of her home, she in many ways remained “hidden.” She only spoke seven times in Scripture and always in an attitude that bespoke humility and submission to her role. In this there is a mysterious quality that in fact, every woman has – a quality that requires veiling that both protects and hides. This is why in traditional iconography she is always portrayed with her head covered. Just as the Blessed Mother is the mother, daughter and bride of Christ, so also every woman is potentially the same. And brides are to be veiled in public. In traditional representation of Our Lady she is almost always depicted as veiled. Women who accept the practice of veiling then are assuming to themselves the virtues of the Blessed Virgin, who of course is both the daughter, wife and mother of Our Lord. To reject the veil is to state, consciously or unconsciously that one has no desire to follow the pattern established by Our Lady.



The second reason Paul gives is “because of the angels.” Cornelius Lapide comments: “the literal sense is that women ought to have a covering on the head out of reverence to the angels; not because angels have a body, and can be provoked to lust, as Justin, Clement, and Tertullian thought – this is an error – but because angels are witnesses of the honest modesty or the immodesty of women, as also of their obedience or disobediences. Dennis the Carthusian further points out that in church, especially during Mass, angels are present, and just as veiling reflects the proper attitude of women before God, for they are potentially brides of Christ, so also they should be veiled before His angels, (Chrysostom, Theophylact, Theodoret), Sts. Thomas, Anselm, and Clement understand by “angels” good and holy men. Ambrose, Anselm and St. Thomas take it to mean priests and Bishops who in Rev. ii are called angels, and who might be provoked to lust by the beauty of women with uncovered heads.”


At this point, let us consider the exact words of Paul: “Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head - it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a woman will not veil herself, then, she should cut of her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.) That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels. (Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman; for a woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves; is it proper for woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him. But if a woman has long hair, it is her pride. For her hair is given to her for covering. If any one is disposed to be contentious, we recognize no other practice, nor do the churches of God.” (I Cor. XI: 4-16}

The commentary on this passage provided by the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture is of great help: “The difference between men and women lies not in their nature, but in their relationship (Chrysostom, Severian of Gabala). Woman is the glory of man, but there is an enormous distance between that and the glory of God (Ambrosiaster). A man who approaches the throne of God should wear the symbols of his office, which in this case is represented by having his head uncovered (Chrysostom). Just as God has nobody over him in all creation, so man has no one over him in the natural world. But woman lives under the protection of man (Saverian). The relation of man and woman to God makes all the difference in understanding their relation to each other (Ambrosiaster, Chrysostom). Being covered is a mark of voluntary subjection (Ambrosiaster), calling the woman to be humble and preserve her virtue (Tertullian, Chrysostom). Since woman is the glory of man, it is shameful for a woman to desire to be like a man (Chrysostom). In the Genesis narrative man precedes woman in the order of their creation (Epiphanius, Theodoret of Cyr). The woman was created with gifts of serving, the man with gifts of ordering (Theodoret of Cyr). Paul appears to be not confining his instruction about hair to a particular plae and time (Tertullian). He appealed to church tradition (Chrysostom), to nature (Ambrosiaster, Ambrose) and to the argument from general consent of reasonable people in these matters (Chrysostom). Since hair is potentially erotic, it can play into temptation (Pelagius). Natural hair is preferred to deceptive wigs (Clement of Alexandria)” .

To avoid the confusion raised by the term “prophesizing” it should be noted that this term is used in several places in Scripture (Chron 30:1; Sam. 10:10) to denote “giving praise to God.” St. Paul forbids women to speak or take a public role in the assembly, so in what way can she “prophesy”? The fathers interpret this as directing women to sing those parts of the service in which everyone sings. Similarly, where woman are said to require veils because of the Angels, most of the Fathers interpret Angels as priests and bishops.


Some of the Fathers point to the fact that man has priority in creation: Indeed, “woman was created after man and for man, to be his helpmate, to serve him and not vice versa” (Theodoret of Cyr). Cornrelius Lapide further comments on the statement that “woman is the glory of the man “ ”Women was made of man to his glory, as his workmanship and image; therefore she is subject to him, and should be veiled as a token of subordination. The woman, like the man, is endowed with a rational soul, with intellect, will, memory, liberty, and is equally with the man, capable of every degree of wisdom, grace, and glory. The woman, therefore, is the image of the man, but only improperly; for the woman as regards the rational soul, is man’s equal, and both man and woman have been made in the image of God, but the woman was made from the man, after him, and is inferior to him. Hence the Apostle does not say that “the woman is the image of the man,” but only “the woman is the glory of the man.”(Commentary on Corinthians).

It was and still is the Jewish custom for men to cover their heads when praying and clearly Paul is in no way accommodating himself to such practice. The Church father explain the reason that man’s head is uncovered by teaching that during the Old Dispensation, Christ was hidden, but now He is clearly visible. Others point to the crown of thorns that Christ bore to the Cross without any other head covering. “For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, inasmuch as he is the image and glory of God.” Man, being the image of the glory of God, or the glorious image of God, in whom the majesty and power of God shines forth most clearly. He is placed on the topmost step in nature, and is as it were God’s vice-regent, ruling everything. which of course includes members of his family. Thus it is that Tertullian calls the veil “the burden of their humility,” and St. Chrysostom “the sign of submission.” Clearly then, the veil may be a sign of humility and subjection, but it is also a badge of honor.

In conclusion, it is worth noting that in the majority of traditional societies, while women are instructed to take efforts to please their husbands, efforts to be attractive to others is frowned upon. Head covering is therefore seen as an important aspect of modesty and Christ Himself said “let your modesty appear before men“ (Phil. 4:5). It is only in the privacy of the home, in the presence of the family and close friends, that the head is uncovered. Long before the coming of Christ head coverings were used by women in Judea, Troy, Rome, Arabia and Sparta. Valarius Maximus relates the sever punishment inflected by C. Sulpicius on his wife: he divorced her because he had found her out of doors with uncovered head. Tertullian tells us that “the gentile women of Arabia will rise up and judge us, for they cover not only the head, but also the whole face.” Similarly, “among Jewish women, so customary is it to wear a head-covering that they may be known by it.” (de Vel Virg.) The practice of covering the head in Islamic society is also based on the injunction to be modest. Not all Islamic lands demand the burka, and many use the hijab or simple head covering so often seen in the West. Finally, within Christiandom we see this same principle in the marriage ceremony where the bride to be is veiled until the priest declares her status as a married women. Only then is the veil lifted before the husband. The mystery of the woman’s beauty is reserved for the husband and the home.

A remnant of this attitude prevailed in the west for many years, and up until about 40 years ago women rarely were seen outside the home without a hat – and indeed with hats to which were attached short veils. Currently, modesty in dress, especially among the younger generation, seems to be a relic of the past and many it would seem have the same attitude about covering of their heads in church.

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Rama Coomaraswamy, The Fundamental Nature Of The Conflict Between Modern And Traditional Man, (full text)

“Science has remained an anti-intellectual movement based on naive faith.” Alfred North Whitehead.
 
Is often said that there is an irreconcilable conflict between Religion and Science. Unfortuntely, such a characterization falsifies the issues. The conflict is not between Religion and Science, but between the attitudes and beliefs of "traditional" man and his "modern" counterpart. The confusion arises because the latter, with little if any justification, like to consider himself "scientific".
 
In the following discussion I shall characterize “modern man”, be he scientist, philosopher, politician or theologian, as holding to certain specific attitudes. Dominant among these is the idea that evolution is a law of nature, that man has "evolved" from some primitive state to his present advanced condition, and that this "progression" will continue indefinitely. Beyond this modern man's outlook can be characterized by such terms as "scienticist", "rationalistic”, "liberal", "democratic", "humanistic", ”relativistic,” "egalitarian", and "self-determined". Despite the fact that these labels are subject to a variety of interpretations and may at times even be antagonistic to each other, they have a certain substratum, in common. I shall summarize these four the sake of discussion as 1) Evolutionist and Progressive; 2) Anthropocentric, 3) Lacking any sense of or need for the sacred, and 4) ignorant of all metaphysical principles.
 
As opposed to these, the traditional viewpoint is Theocentric. It is based on the principle of a “fall” from a state of grace in which man directly communicated with God, the need and gift of a Revelation by which means man can return to his primordial and sacred condition, and a metaphysic which explains the nature of God, Truth, Reality and the very essence of man. The traditional position can be said to look back to a "Golden Age" when the gods and angels lived among us, while the Modern attitude necessarily looks ahead to a future and man-made Utopia. Not only our spiritual lives, but also our view of the world we live in, our politics and our sociology, will be influenced by which of these two sets of principles we adhere to. It is impossible for these two attitudes not to find themselves in conflict. At stake are two radically different views of man, his nature and his destiny. It is this conflict which is at the heart of this symposium and in many ways at the heart of the problems faced by the Catholic Church since Vatican II.
 
Before proceeding it is essential that we define our frames of reference. Consider science. This is defined as "a branch of study concerned with the observation and classification of 'facts". Science deals with measurable phenomena. Its laws resume past experience and its closest approximation to truth is by means of statistical averages. Such a methodology can never establish absolute or objective certainties but only predict that what has happened in the past will probably occur in the future. When the scientist departs from the measurable, when he reasons or speculates about the facts he has gathered, he defines the results as a "working hypothesis" or a "theory". As more facts become known, theories are modified and even radically changed. The conclusions of science are never stable, but rather can be described as a constantly changing "consensus". They are “objective" only in so far as they can be quantitatively demonstrated, but they are never 'universal' in the sense that they are absolute or applicable throughout time and space. Those who doubt this have but to look at the innumerable and rapidly changing cosmological theories proposed for our consideration over the last 50 years. Needles to say, those who adhere to the traditional viewpoint can have no argument with measurable fact.
 
Faith, properly understood, also deals with facts, though not of a measurable or quantitative order. By Faith traditional man understands the conformity of the intelligence and the will to a body of Revealed truths given him as a deposit "in principio" and are transmitted through the medium of TRADITION. His adherence to a given RELIGION "binds” him to them. Faith is belief when the volitive element predominates over the intellectual; it is knowledge when the intellectual element predominates over the volitive. This explains why it includes both the character of fervor and certitude. However strongly we my feel about what we believe - and feelings have their legitimate role to play - such truths are objective because they can neither change nor be contradicted by reason; they are universal because being true, they apply always and everywhere. They are not held “blindly”' for their acceptance or rejection depends, not on how we “feel”, but on the use of our intellect and will.
 
Unfortunately modern man sees science, not as a specialized kind of knowledge about the material world we live in, but as an almost “mystical” concept encompassing his most cherished convictions; his belief in evolution, progress, and that all reality is subjective, measurable, and centered on man qua man. For him, what science cannot measure and explain with its limited methodology simply doesn't exist - all that is knowable is encompassed within its aegis. For modern man the scientist has replaced the priest, and when he speaks - even if it be outside the realm of his competence - his words are imbued with quasi-divine authority. Everything modern man believes in, be it hygiene, socialism or modern psychology, is described as "scientific", an adjective which seemingly endows its subject with the quality of truth and objectivity. It is to Science that we are directed in seeking a solution to our every problem. Modern man often proclaims his belief in science, and well he should, for science, or rather scienticism, has become his religion. He accepts its fuzzy “dogmas,” not because they are rational or intellectually compelling, but because he feels they are true. Such a faith is “visceral” and “blind”. It defies definition and can be described as an “immenantist awareness finding its source in the subconscious".
 
For modern man, faith - be it in scienticim or religion - is always bears this character. It is never the acceptance of a given body of doctrine, bur rather a hazy "feeling" that is personal, individualistic and subjective. William, James well perceived this in describing religion as the “feelings, acts and experiences of individual men as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine”. “Experiential” is the popular phrase. Given this premise and our egalitarian prejudices, everybody's faith is considered personal, and of equal value. But if such is the case, how can one speak, of universal truths that we are free to accept or reject? Other problems follow: if our beliefs as to what is right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust are also rooted in the subconscious, how can we speak in a rational manner of building a better world or of converting our concept of “justice” into social or economic practice? Such a view of Faith of course demands great tolerance and the only way to avoid chaos in the public domain, is to accept those elements of belief which the majority of individuals agree upon and to relegate everything else to the private realm.
 
Traditional man, placing science in a hierarchal relationship to the totality of truth, sees no conflict between what is demonstrable by measurement and what he knows from Revelation. His attitude towards the “modern scientistic outlook” with its claim to the totality of truth and its refusal to recognize any moral master is however quite another matter. In no way can he give his assent to irrational postulates such as progress, evolution and the perfectibility of man qua man ideas which have their origin in man's collective subconscious rather than in God. If any conflict exists, it is not between science and faith properly understood, but between modern and traditional attitudes.
 
Many religious leaders would resolve this conflict by means of an “Aggiornamento” - that is, by blending the latest scientific ideas with religious values. Let us consider some of the consequences of such an attempt. The first step required for bringing religion “up to date” is the acceptance of the idea that our beliefs are subjective and have their origins in the subconscious. On the religious level this allows man to dream of uniting all the various “ecclesiastical communities” into a single body. Gone will be the conflicts based on man's adherence to strict doctrinal formulations. Everyone's faith becomes respected as equally valid, and once some common ground is found, mankind can get on with the task of building a better world. Modern day Catholics are perfectly free to describe their faith as “experiential”, or as a “dialogue with God”. Indeed, as Andrew Greeley's study pointed out, "46% of bishops and 69%. of priests hold that faith is “primarily an encounter with God RATHER than an assent to a coherent set of defined truths.”
 
Far more illustrative of the search for an aggiornamento is the modern Church's Magisterial acceptance of evolution and progress. So pervasive are these concepts that many of us have been convinced that, unless religion accepts them it cannot survive. Yet as I hope to show, they are as unscientific as they are untheological. If we believe in them, it is not because they are demonstrable fact, not because they are Revelation, not because they are rational, not because one iota of evidence has ever been presented in their favor, but because we feel they must be true. Their acceptance demands a visceral commitment, a blind and totally modernist faith. Let us examine them in greater detail.
 

The Transformist Illusion
  
Evolution and Progress are two sides of the same coin. According to these ideas not only is man at the apogee of a long evolutionary process, but evolution itself is a fundamental law of nature. By this I mean that Evolution as a concept is not limited to the biological realm, but manifests itself in every aspect of life. After all, if man Himself is a product of evolution, if man's mind is but highly organized matter than all man is involved with, all that has resulted from his efforts, must reflect the evolutionary process. It follows that the “forces” of evolution - called “progress” and “historical determinism” by others - must play a dominant if not totally controlling role in our political, sociological, cultural and “spiritual” development. Thus it is that mankind is still developing and advancing towards some higher condition wherein all men will be united (“globalization”) and where strife and conflict will be eliminated and a “new humanism” achieved. If religion is to remain a relevant force (quod absit), it must also take cognizance of such advances and adapt itself to them. As Paul VI said, “if the world changes, should not religion also change... the order to which Christianity tends is not static, but an order in continual evolution towards a higher form.” All this is a far cry from St. Albert the Great’s dictum: “there is progress of the faithful in the faith, but never progress of the faith in the faithful.”
 
 
I have tied the idea of “progress” to evolution. I assume we can all agree that by “progress” we are not talking about the development of better mouse-traps or rather we are concerned with the "advancement" of mankind towards some higher state. In point of fact, the idea of "progress", used in this sense, pre-dated Darwin by decades if not by centuries. One finds it used during the English Reformation where the "Recussants" - those who refused to abandon the Catholic faith - were described as "backward", while those who accepted the "established" state-enforced religion - were “progressive". The concept was further developed during the so-called “age of enlightenment” when people like Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot dreamed of creating a perfect society without God. Kant embraced it in his “Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan,” a text in which he taught that history followed predetermined laws and revealed what be called “a regular stream or tendency” which demonstrated a “natural purpose” which would end in a “Universal civil society.” Spencer spoke of the “law of progress” and defined evolution as “a change from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity through continuous differentiations and integrations.” He went on to teach that ”he operation of evolution is absolutely universal... Whether it be in the development of the earth, in the development of life upon its surface, in the development of society, of government, of manufactures, of language, of literature, science, art, this same advance from the simple to the complex, through successive differentiations, holds uniformly...” Hegel taught that humanity was driven ceaselessly upwards by an all-powerful, all-rational “It”, and that the path of the ascent was an eternal, immutable, predestined, zigzag - his thesis and antithesis - always resulting in a higher synthesis. Evolutionary theory developed as a result of applying these ideas to biology. It provided a "scientific" basis for man's belief in progress and found ready acceptance in a world that sought to free itself from all divine sanction. From the time of Darwin, progress and evolution have become almost interchangeable terms that are mutually supportive and pervasive
influences in our lives. As an editorial in the L'Osservatore Romano states: “no one today any longer believes in tradition, but rather in rational progress. Tradition today appears as something that has been bypassed by history. Progress on the other hand presents itself as an authentic promise inborn in the very soul of man” (Mar. 3, 1977)
 
 
Many of these ideas are incorporated into the documents of Vatican II. Consider such statements as “The human race has passed from, a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic evolutionary one... To a certain extent the human intellect is also broadening its dominion over time... bringing men hope of improved self-knowledge... Recent psychological research explains human activity more profoundly. Historical studies make a signal contribution to bringing men to see things in their changeable and evolutionary aspects... Thanks to the experience of past ages, the progress of the sciences, and the treasures hidden in the various forms of human culture, the nature of man himself is more clearly revealed and new roads to truth are opened... Thus we are witnesses to the birth of a new humanism, one in which man is defined first of all by his responsibility towards his brothers and towards history... Little by little, a more universal form of human culture is developing, one which will promote and express the unity of the human race...” In a similar manner the Pontifical Academy of Science under the sponsorship of John Paul II informs us that “Masses of evidence render the application of the concept of evolution to man and the other primates beyond serious dispute”, and he himself has stated that “all the observations concerning the development of life lead to a conclusion: the evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to determine the mechanism, presents an internal finality... a finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge... (General Audience, July 10, 1985).
 
 
Just What Is Evolution?
  
Evolution holds that at a certain point in time disparate atoms combined to form complex molecules, and these in turn to form a living cell. Step wise, through a series of processes such as natural selection, the survival of the fittest, genetic alterations, sexual attraction, chance, or whatever, these developed into still higher forms of life to form the various phylogenetic strains and species. Algae became fishes, fishes crawled out of the sea to become lizards and eventually dinosaurs, these in turn climbed trees and became birds. Finally, one of these various evolutionary ancestors developed into apes, hominids and man. Implicit in this theory is that even human consciousness is derived from matter - indeed, that it is a particularly refined or “evolved” form of matter. You have all heard of the prince who kissed the frog and turned her into a fairy princess. Well evolution tells us this is what happened.
 
Evolution is not science. Not one of its postulates have ever been observed, much less measured. Scientists have placed all the elements found in living matter into every conceivable solvent and subjected the resulting "soup" to every conceivable stimulus without creating, life. Hardly surprising, for as Professor Haldane has pointed out, “the simplest living cell contains between ten thousand and ten million distinct chemical substances, more than the number of biochemists in the world”. Turning to the fossil record we find it demonstrates in an indisputable manner that every species arose de novo, and those that are still surviving have in no way changed since their first appearance. Not one transitional form - otherwise known as “missing links” - between two species has ever been found. No less a person than 'Thomas Huxley has admitted that the fossil record negates evolutionary theory because “it either shows no evidence for such modifications or demonstrates that such modifications have been very slight”. Genetic theory confirms the fixity of species. Despite the fact that generations of flies and flees have been subjected to radiation, ultra-violet light, and God knows what else, they have remained and still are flies and flees. And so I repeat, Evolution is not scientific fact. It is only a 'theory" which attempts to explain how certain measurable and observable facts - the fossil record and the wide variety of living forms - hang together. What is extraordinary is that so many scientists accept as fact a theory which violates the very foundations of their discipline. Science teaches us that what is greater cannot come out of what is less. Evolution teaches that the contrary has repeatedly occurred and is still occurring - indeed that what is mind and spirit comes out of matter. Science tells us the earth is running down, but evolution tells us it is running up. Science teaches us that nothing happens by chance. Evolution postulates a series of extraordinary chance events and ignores the fact that “chance,” when used in this sense, is nothing but the expression of our ignorance of the causes involved. It goes even further and proclaims that an evolution based on chance events is the Ultimate Cause, the Alpha and the Omega of reality. Mathematical theory tells us that the possibility of one evolutionary step occurring is so remote as to be impossible - as Prof. Sir Frederick Hoyle, the Cambridge astrophysicist states, “the likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 naughts after it!... a number big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution...” - but evolution tells us it has happened Yes indeed, as Dr. W..R. Thompson, the director of the Institute of Scientific Research in Ottawa said, “the success of Darwinism is accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity... when men of science flock, together to defend a doctrine which they are not even capable of scientifically defining, much less demonstrating... we find ourselves in a most abnormal and undesirable situation.” I challenge anyone one of you to show me one piece of evidential proof in favor of evolution. As Yves Delage, Sorbonne Professor of Zoology states “I readily admit there is no absolutely definite evidence that such a thing as Evolution has ever taken place.” It may surprise you that many eminent scientists who remain atheists have completely abandoned evolutionary theory because, as Jean Postand has said, “the world postulated by transformism is a fairy world, phatasmagoric and surrealistic.” Others of course, continue to believe in it with what is truly a blind and modernist faith. Yves Delage, quoted above, tells us that despite the lack of proof, “I believe evolution to be just as certain as if it had been objectively proved”.

And so we see that Evolution is not scientific and has to be accepted with “faith”. Perhaps, after all, its proper locus is theology. Let us then consider the stance of the Church. Prior to Vatican II Evolution was discussed, but never officially sanctioned. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church, along with the majority of orthodox theologians like Billot and Garrigou-Lagrange clearly rejected it. Despite this I readily concede that many Catholics were evolutionists. By and large these can be divided into two groups, those who believed evolution to be a fact and in order to save their belief in God, argued that He did His creating through the evolutionary process. Typical of such ideation is Teilhard de Chardin. The second group - typified by Mivart, Leroy, Duchesne, Loisy and Bergert - all condemned Modernists - held that man's body was a product of evolution, and that God, at some point in history, infused this soul-less body with a soul.
 
Whatever view of theistic evolution one takes, one is faced with irresolvable dilemmas. Those who hold to the Tielhardian view tell us that at some point in time man made an “evolutionary jump” to consciousness and assure us that either matter is spirit or spirit is matter. Those that hold to the mitigated view must explain to us why God suddenly decided to work outside of the evolutionary process and what happened to the other "humans" who were not ensouled? Perhaps they are still wandering around in some undiscovered jungle. And why does the body not continue to live when we “die” and give up our souls? The absurdity of living “soulless” humans was clearly demonstrated by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Albert the Great and innumerable other doctors of the Church. Other religions are equally clear on this issue. And so we see that belief in evolution requires not only a blind and modernist faith, but also the rejection of reason. As Karl Stern, a well-known psychiatrist tells us: “"such a view of cosmogenesis is crazy. And I do not mean crazy in the sense of slangy invective but rather in the technical meaning of psychotic. Indeed such a view has much in common with certain aspects of schizophrenic thinking.” Evolution is in fact pure and simple superstition. Consider the definition of this term:
 
“an irrational abject state of mind proceeding from ignorance, unreasoning fear of the unknown or mysterious morbid scrupulosity, a belief in magic or chance, or the like; misdirected or unenlightened religion or interpretation of nature... a fixed irrational idea, a notion maintained in
spite of evidence to the contrary...”
 
 
The Background To Evolutionary Thought
 
Evolution was a "cockle" sowed on well prepared ground. A brief review will help to make this clear. While nothing under the sun is new, we shall initiate our sad tale with William of Ockham. Born in 1290, Ockhm is one of the earliest of those who misunderstood the nature of the soul. He not only denied free will, he also denied that the Intellect was capable of forming universal concepts. He and his followers _ usually labeled “nominalists” - claimed that all ideas were really images, that is, impressions on the imagination originating in sensual perception. The error - it is one shared by virtually all modern “philosophers” and psychologists - is that nominalists confound the individualized image of the imagination with the concept or idea which resides in the Intellect. According to St. Thomas, the difference between images and ideas consists in the fact that images are representations of things in their singularity, particularity and concreteness, whereas ideas are representations of things in their universality. Despite his denial of “universals,” Ockam continued to believe in God. But he held such belief to have no objective character and the nature of his faith was “blind”. I would ask you to remember Faith requires our assent to what the intellect tells us is Truth and it is the nature of this faculty to “see.” The acceptance of nominalism precludes such “vision” and inevitably results in a bifurcation between what can be observed and measured, and what is believed. It is but a short step to envisioning the measurable as the totality of reality, and the relegating of concepts such as the “good” and the “beautiful” - to say nothing of Revelation - concepts beyond measurement and hence seen as having no objective measurable reality - to the realm of private and subjective convictions where they become whatever we feel or want them to be. It is not surprising that Ockham lived his life in rebellion against the Church and died, as far as we know, without the consolation of her sacraments.

Man, by his very nature seeks to know the truth, the nature and purpose of his existence. Nominalism, precludes this possibility. Denying the intellect, it denies that man can abstract from, the things of this world and penetrate their underlying reality; being dependent upon phenomena, its only certainties are statistical approximations. Obviously experiential knowledge has its place and function, but once it is declared to be the only legitimate source of knowledge, man is deprived of the absolute and has no access to the nature of his being. Metaphysics is destroyed, sacred knowledge is nullified, and man is forced to turn from Revelation and Intellection to individualism and rationalism. Cut off from is “above”, He must turn to what is “below”. It was Descartes who epitomized this deviation in his Cogito ergo sum. The individual consciousness of the thinking subject (or more precisely, his ephemeral ego) was proclaimed to be the source of all reality and truth; the knowing subject - man - was henceforth bound to the realm of reason as applied to phenomena and separated from both Intellection and Revelation. It is a short step from this to the radical doubt of Hume and the agnosticim of Kant.
 
Having accepted the nominalist position scientists soon began to consider the physical universe - the measurable world - as the totality of reality. All else was relegated to an ontological limbo. This, as Dr. Wolfgang Smith has pointed out, is not a scientific discovery, but a metaphysical assumption. Having taken this step man increasingly saw the phenomenological world, not as a reflection of God's beauty and goodness, but as a mechanical clock. As Kepler (1571-1630), speaking for his age said, "just as the eye was made to see colors, and the ear to hear sounds, so the human mind was made to understand, not whatever you please, but quantity. Rene Decartes (1596_1650) gave this new vision articulated form. The mechanical world was made up entirely of "res extensa". He of course still admitted to the "res cogitans", but those who followed after him rapidly imprisoned this within a ventricle of the brain - the Newtonian sensorium - and then eliminated it in toto. In the modern world, the 'res extensa" or to use the Newtonian phrase, “matter", is all that is left.
 
The “age of enlightenment”, sought to fit man within this schema. Man, cut off from, Revelation and Intellection was reduced to an autonomous entity - one ultimately “self-detemined” and independent of God. And so we have the Masonic-Rousseauan concept of man whose “dignity” lies in his “independence” - he is his own authority and he creates his own culture. Pari-passu with this we have a new concept of society, one based on “social contract” where the will of the majority “democratically” legislates morality. The “Rights of Man” are proclaimed to the exclusion of the “Rights of God”. The world is promised a new Utopia in which everyone will be Free, Equal and Brothers, a world which, thanks to science and progress, will be so perfect that no will any longer have any need, to be good. Such a compendium of ill thought out ideas is often termed humanism” - an absurd term for man "independent of his supernatural nature" can never be integrally human. Needless to say, the Church opposed the deviations. One of her strongest arguments was that God created the world and entrusted her with its governance. And then what happened? Evolutionary theory came along as “chance-sent” gift providing humanists and their ilk, with the sanction of “science”. If mankind accepted its postulates, who needed God and who needed the Church? It is not surprising that Masons, Marxists and Modernists did everything in their power to spread this new “devil's Gospel”.
 
 
The Nominalist Basis Of Rationalism Andscientific Methodology
  
Nominalism lays the ground for man's aberrant view of nature and science. Its denial of universals allows him, to deny specificity to nature's creation. There is no such thing as a given species conforming to an archetype in the mind of God; rather all creation is seen as as phenomenon where one species blends with another in an evolutionary continuum.
 
Moderns consider reason to be the highest human faculty, but insist that reason can only be applied to measurable fact and so-called “experience.” This is the essential nature of both scientific methodology and rationalism. As opposed to this, traditional teaching holds that Reason is a discursive faculty which requires both correct premises and proper logic to come to a valid conclusion. Truth does not depend on reason but rather, reveals itself and becomes explicit with the help of reason. Thus we do not say something is true because it is logical, but rather that it is logical because it is true. This presupposes a still higher faculty capable of judging whether the conclusions of reason are true. Modern “philosophers” attempt to get around this problem, by speaking of “rational principles”, but forget that principles can never be derived from discursive logic. Reason cannot prove its own validity, for principles must be grasped intuitively or supra rationally. As Aristotle said, “one does not demonstrate principles, but one perceives directly the truth thereof.” To make use of scholastic terminology, it is the pure intellect which is the habitus principorum, while reason is only the habitus conclusionum. Man then possesses reason and with it language, only because, unlike animals, he has access in principle to supra-rational vision. It is this supra-rational vision, Intellection or insight, that gives man, not only judgment, but certitude in his own existence as a being, and confidence in the functional capacity of reason. Intellection is a kind of “Seeing” and not a conclusion, and it is this that opens to man the possibility of metaphysical certitude. This is why Boethius said that a man who thinks he is an animal that reasons has forgotten who he is. Now reason, which is a reflection of this higher Intellect, can receive its content - that which it reasons about - from above and from below, from within and from without. It can receive its premises from Revelation or the senses, from intellection or the subconscious. These various sources, either individually or in combination provide the reason with its “food” and any attempt to exclude one or more of them is arbitrary and irrational.
 
Above all Nominalism allows man to believe his higher faculties are given him, for the study of phenomena and nothing else. He forgets that the wonders of nature are given him that by their study he can awaken his intellect and know his Creator. If the Nominalists are correct, man has no higher intellect; reason or logic are unexplainable and can only be applied to measurable phenomena and so-called “experience” - our emotions and feelings. The net result of such a limited viewpoint is a “scientific methodology” which promises, given time, to explain everything, and a truncated “rationalism”, such as the French Revolution idolized. What does not fall within this aegis is declared to be either “unreal” or of unknowable. Out goes Revelation, Intellection and by definition, metaphysics. Man is reduced to a rational animal that can measure and feel, but never know. Ockham's much vaunted razor cut our metaphysical throats.
  
Modern man sees himself as made in the image of some primitive protozoa. In order to fit human intelligence into the evolutionary stream, the spirit is reduced to mind, the mind to brain, and the brain in turn to anatomical structures. Thinking is but a “neuro-chemical” process, or as the evolutionist Wilson says, “an epiphenomenon of the neuronal machinery of the brain,” which man will be able to alter and/or improve as his understanding grows. The net result is that modern psychologists - Freud Adler, From, Maslow and Rogers are all evolutionists - tell us intelligence consists of reason, the ability to deal with abstractions, the capacity to learn and the ability to handle new situations. Now reason apart - and enormous amounts of energy are extended in an attempt to prove animals reason - all these are abilities are found in the lower forms of life. Hence it is not surprising to find Darwin telling us that “animals have an intellect of different proportions,” and that man’s “intellectual faculties have been mainly and gradually perfected through natural selection...” It is but a small step between the ability of a bird to build a nest or to follow the stars in his migratory flights, and that of man to hold a hammer. Similarly we are told that man’s motivations and beliefs have their origin in his “sub-conscious,” best defined as a cess-pool of evolutionary memory. Again we are told that man’s ultimate motives are a search for security, pleasure, or what they call “sell activation” through the meeting of “meta-needs.” Truth is what is true for the individual; beauty what gives us pleasure; and love the fulfilling of “biological urges”. At the cost of denying both logic and experience, all that is qualitative in man is declared to be genetically determined and is reduced to the measurable and thus to matter. Everything falls within this aegis. Rousseau held that savage man progressed to “civilized” man. Huxley gave this progression his scientific blessing. “Nature's great progression is from the formless to the formed - from the inorganic to the organic - from, blind force to conscious intellect and will.” If one can accept these premises then it is easy to be persuaded that man is but a higher form of matter and that Superman is on the way. Those who think otherwise are dismissed as dreamers - as if matter could dream - who for all their efforts produce nothing materially beneficial.
 
Implicit in evolutionary theory is that man has no free will. As Huxley says, “the fundamental proposition of Evolution is that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed”. After all, how can something - notice, I do not say “someone” - which is the product of rigid laws, laws which still control its future development, and which has no freedom, to step outside the evolutionary process, - how can this “something” be responsible? Here one comes upon another conundrum, and one interestingly enough shared by Socialists for whom evolution takes the form of “historical determinism.” If man's life is determined by evolution or by history, how can he be “free”. Yet both evolutionists and historical determinists proclaim man free to help the process on its way towards perfection or utopia. And how can evolutionary/historically determined man sin? Again, he sins only in opposing these very forces. Consistency and rationality are not required of a blind modernist faith.
 
But it may be asked, do evolutionists live in the real world? Surely, in the practical order, every individual sees himself as a being who is responsible for his acts, who knows, wills and loves, not with the seeming obsequiousness of tame beasts, but with devotion and self-sacrifice; a rational creature who can conceptualize and discriminate between what is true and false, good and evil, right and wrong. To admit this is to say man has the certitude of his own consciousness and being and that he is more than matter. Certain consequences inevitably follow. To say love is to say knowledge for one cannot love what one does not know. To say know is to admit of truth, for one cannot know what is false, but only that it is false. (Admittedly intelligence can be wrong by the falseness of its content, but then it is wrong as thought and not as knowledge; to speak of a false knowledge would be as absurd as to speak of a blind vision or a undark night.) And to say love, knowledge and truth is to say something immeasurable, something of the spirit. These faculties pertain to the “heart” - not the physiological organ which bears this name by analogy - but to the very core of our being - what theologians call the soul. Man who knows and loves, and has the certitude of his own consciousness and being, cannot be reduced - to chemical and physical elements - elements which are in reality only concepts of his own mind imposed upon the natural domain. Either man loves the poor because he sees in them an alter Christus, or he loves the poor because the evolutionary course of his genetic development leaves him no alternative. If one chooses the latter then one cannot criticize those who hate the poor, much less those who exploit then,.
 
Mention must be made of man’s evolutionary destiny, for as Huxley tells us, “the destiny of man has been made clear by evolutionary biology... man can now see himself as the sole agent of further evolutionary advance on this planet, and one of the few possible instruments of progress in the universe at large”. Eventually with the help of evolutionary theory man will solve the problem of evil. Alfred Russel Wallace gives us further details. As a result of evolution “each one will work out his own happiness in relation to his fellows; a perfect freedom of action will be maintained; compulsory government will have died away as unnecessary ... mankind will have discovered that it was only required of them to develope the capacities of their higher nature in order to convert this earth... into as bright a paradise s ever haunted the dreams of seer or poet.” And thus we see point “omega” on the way.
 
Ignored by evolutionary theory is the fact that the intellect and the will - what traditional theologians call the soul - is a non-material or spiritual substance, and that this intellect can remove itself from the evolutionary stream and reflect upon that stream. Ignored
is the fact that the intellect can know its own being (self consciousness), can make judgements, can arrive at certitude, and can know God. Ignored is the fact that the body without the soul is no longer a living person and that man - both body and soul - is made in the image of God. Ignored is the doctrine of Synteresis and the fact that God can dwell within the human soul. Ignored is the fact that love resides in the will and that the will is free - free to reject the truth as well as accept it. Ignored is the fact that man voided of his intellectual functions - “Independent of his supernatural character” - can never be integrally human. Ignored is the fact that man’s rejection of the truth is a fall from his high estate, a “departure from order,” and a sin. Evolution, like modern psychology, allows us the freedom, to damn our souls with serenity.
  
 
The Religious Consequences Of A Belief In Evolution
  
Professor Jastrow of Princeton University stated “either life was placed here by the Creator, or it evolved out of non-living molecules in accordance with the laws of chemistry and physics. There is no third way; it rest have been one or another”. Children brought up on an evolutionary diet from infancy almost invariably accept the first alternative. They are easily convinced - or should I say “brain washed into thinking that, as the Encyclopedia Britanica says: “Darwin did two things: he showed that evolution was a fact contradicting scriptural legends of creation and that its cause, natural selection, was automatic with no room for divine guidance or design”. No wonder then that in a recent poll 46.9 % of the people quarried stated that they did not go to Church because they believed in evolution.
 
Those that argue God works through evolution must tell us what kind of God would choose to work “by chance” to create man and or why God had at some point in history to go outside the evolutionary process to create a soul. Again what kind of God would use “natural selection” to achieve his ends. Natural selection - the law of the claw - proposes that the ill or otherwise unfit should be denied existence in favor of the stronger and perhaps more brutal forms of life. But if such is the case, how dare evolutionary man interfere to help the lame and the weak. Charity finds no place in such a scheme. An evolutionary God, a God who set the process going and then left it to work itself out, is not a personal God, nor one who can answer our prayers. As Julian Huxley said, “any view of God as a personal being is becoming frankly untenable... man's knowledge has left no room in the universe for such an idea. Creation of earth and stars, plants, animals and man - Darwin swept the last vestiges of that into the wastepaper basket of outworn imaginations, already piled high with the debris of earlier ages”.
 
Catholics have a particular problem with evolution, even in its mitigated or “theological” forms. They are obliged by faith to accept the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Listen to the statement of Vatican I:
 
“If anyone does not admit that the world and everything in it, both spiritual and material, have been produced intheir entire substance by God out of nothing, let him be anathema.”
  
In a similar manner, evolutionary theory implicitly denies the doctrines of original sin, the fall of man, the need for a Redeemer and for our redemption, the Immaculate Conception, the function of reason and the possibility of man’s sanctification.
 
Those who would blend their religious beliefs faith with evolutionary theory must accept the consequences. A belief in evolution and progress inevitably carries in its train 1) a belief that man qua man is perfectible with out reference to his supernatural nature; 2) that man has no higher nature or capability than that which has evolved from matter; 3) that man, having no intellect, can neither know himself nor his Creator, can make no valid judgments and can never accept the existence of absolute truths; 4) that man has no free will and hence can neither sin nor have a “fallen nature”"; 5) that man has no need for a Redeemer and is the source of his own redemption; 6) given time society will perfect itself to the point where man will no longer have to be good; 7) that all valid knowledge must be attained through the so-called scientific methodology, and that what cannot be measured has no reality; 8) that religion must constantly adapt itself to the latest stage of evolution and progress and that only by reading the “signs of the times” can man know what God wishes for us; and 9) that the main purpose of religion is to help man on his evolutionary way. If we accept the evolutionary hypothesis as true, the human phenomenon - man's ability to love, to know, to will and to be responsible - is inexplicable.

It is not traditional religion, but evolution and progress that are the opiates of modern man. There is no real conflict between science and faith as such, but an irreconcilable conflict between those who accept traditional values and those who blindly believe in the “transformist illusion” on which the so-called “modern scienticist outlook” is built. Those who dream of helping mankind or building a better world would be well advised to reexamine their promises, for there can be no valid action outside of truth and no possible salvation - either worldly or other-worldly apart from, a return to traditional values.

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