an open letter on the open mind

Irish Jesuit Province

An Open Letter on the Open MindAuthor(s): Riobard Ó FarachainSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 64, No. 756 (Jun., 1936), pp. 380-389Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513953 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:07

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Jesuit Province is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Irish Monthly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.199 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 05:07:08 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ijp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513953?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


380

An Open Letter on the Open Mind

MY DEAR MICHAEL,

Pardon my tardy reply to your letter written after the abrupt suspension of our wrangle on Liberal Capitalism. It is tardy because I have tried to make it exhaustive. I accept

with relief your fervent assurance that my " brick-bat about 'fool's ideas 'left you quite calm and unshaken ";because, first,

brick-bats have no place in high controversy; because, secondly, they are enduringly useless missles against well-set haystacks.

Your adroit attempt to make a corner in the trust of your fellow-man I will be wily enough to foil, friend. I, too, believe that there is a wealth of goodness in man: unlike you, it would

appear, I believe that man's goodness was wounded: that, in

the words of a very old and, some would say, risible doctrine: " Original Sin has left in us a strong inclination tQ evil." Put

differently: you believe in self-perfectible man; I believe in God

perfectible man. That is why you would have absolute freedom of thought, speech, action, and-in the field of commerce which

we particularly considered-freedom of competition. You believe that success is due almost without qualificution to force

of character and industry; and that the man who is crushed out

deserves all he gets. I, teasing out the logic of my first position, think that, left to themselves, some men will use inatural superi ority of mind and body for their own interests, without let or

hindrance from justice, charity, pity or other moral considera

tion; that this would necessarily result, and in our day has

restilted, in a monopoly of the instruments of persuasion, intimi



OPEN LETTER ON OPEN MIND 381

dation and coercion by a handful of oligarchs; that this condition is an audacious bouleversment of the Divine planning of man's life in a productive earth, and an insufferable affront to the fundamental equality in dignity of all men as beings with intellec tual, hence imperishable, souls. I deduce the necessity of fron tiers to individual liberty.

Your incisive (and wholly admirable) analysis of myself, and of the difference between you and me, compels my attention. I am, you are so good as to enlighten me, " intellectually emotional." You credit me with the great perspicacity of seeing that this is a contradiction in terms. At least, since you say it, I see that it is.

You declare it, notwithstanding, true. There are then terms that escape the law of logic that, for a statement to be true, its parts must be wholly compatible with one another. I am, further, " fanatical "-my outlook is necessarily narrow-if it it expanded it would offend against some rule or regulation-my ideas are the outcome of a temperament sufficiently narrow and superstitious and bigoted to tolerate them. I would dwell on these words chosen by you with such loving care for exactitude, and distil the precious essence of the wisdom they contain.

" Fanatical "; i.e., extravagant in my opinions, particularly in matters of religion. That must be left by till I am coached

better. A word, though: my religious beliefs-I have no

"opinions on important matters of religion-are those of Catholics. "My outlook is necessarily narrow." That is, the outlook of a Catholic is etc. " If it expanded it would offend against some rule or regulation "-presumably of the Catholic

discipline.

I own myself puzzled. And it is painful to me to falter in my mining for the gold of your wisdom. " NecessarTily narrow" '

-"' offend against so-me rule or regulation ": you would say



882 T"HE IRISH MONTHLY

that the Catholic approach to truth or the acceptance of Catholic dogma make ine.vitable a narrowness of outlook on life.

What are the sources of the beliefs of the Catholic?

(1) The application of reason to iabserved natural phenomena. From this are concluded many things fundamental to religion, e.g., the existence of one God, the immortality of the human soul.

(2) The acceptance, justified by long sifting of the evidence, of the genuineness of a body of writing (the Old and New Testaments) and tradition.

(8) The acceptance of their integral content as the direct communication of God to the whole race of men.

(4) The acceptance, resting on abundant and diverse evidential proofs, of the claim of Jesus Christ to be God.

(5) The acceptance, resting on much evidence, of the Catholic Church as the society which Christ founded to teach His Gospel.

(6) The consequent acceptance of all its teaching as infallible. Its Founder guaranteed its immunity from error. Its Founder can do all things. Ergo.

(7) The application of reason, aided by prayer and grace, to

this body of infallible doctrine, that its implications may be fully drawn out. (Dogmatic theology.)

(8) The application of reason and defined doctrine to Scripture and tradition on matters not settled infallibly.

(9) That application of the Principles of the Faith to problems of thought or behaviour in a given set of circumstances.

(10) The application of the natural reason, aided by grace and

dedication, to the problems of the special sciences: the solution



OPEN LETTER ON OPEN MINYD 383

of these according to the principles of the sciences themselves, which principles, however, are the discovery of philosophy which is itself sui generis dependent on the judgment of theology.

In brief, the Catholic approach to truth consists in

(l) The use of reason;

(2) The exercise of Faith, which is not reason but is based on reason and whose matter is conformed to reason ;

(3) The application of reason, under the light oD Faith, to matters not settled by authority.

is there anything in these modes of truth-seeking that neces sarily narrows the outlook on life?

In the use of reason? If so., then the outlook of all men is necessarily narrow.

In the exercise of Faith? Scarcely: the believing of things we cannot ourselves verify,

for one reason or another, on authority we have ourselves judged valid, is a daily practice in our acquiring of knowledge.

In the effect on his vision of the particular tenets of the Catholic ?

Surely not: the doctrine of the Trinity, of the Real Presence, of the Mystical Body, of the Hypostatic Union, all of these may be in your eyes tragic or pathetic fallacies: but they cannot seem trivial, or unintelligent; they cannot seem to hold low dignity of spiritual content. I say you may (if you can put Aquinas out of court) call them delusions; but you must swear them so, the

most sublime delusions that ever gained fealty from the mind of

man. If these are delusions, then indeed man's mind is great, for he has sired a beauty reality cannot parallel.

In their effect, you press me.



884 THE IRISH MONTHLY

Their effect on me is to make me see, not only a visible world,

but, surrounding it, permeating it, maintaining and transcending it, a viewless, impalpable world of timeless clayless beings; to see

myself in this world and in that, of them both and for the second

destined. Again illusion? But again not narrowing. Their effects on men through ages I serenely request you to

discover: In Philosophy their effect was the absorption in, and trans

figuration by, the catholic mind of Christianity, of the two great Greek systems: the Platonic which, impinging on Revelation in the first phrase of the Johannine Gospel, permeated St. Paul, and the Pseudo-Denys; and, stabilised in the writings of St.

Augustine, received in the thirteenth century, the second time, its check in the rediscovered Stagirite; this latter, the second, found its Augustine in the Angelic Doctor, whose Summa Theologica remains the supreme effort of human speculation. Into one or other of these two wide streams many original and

profound minds have poured their fecundity: Athanasius, Jerome, Basil, Gregory Nanziansen, Bernard of Clairvaux, John Chrysostom, Scotus Eriugena, Albertus Magnus, Bonaventura, Cajetan, Suarez, Bellarmine, Bossuet, Newman. If these were narrow, then where and what is breadth?

But in art, perhaps?

Yes! The Sistine Chapel, the Cathedral of Chartres, Gregorian Chant, the Divina Commedia, the Vision of Piers Plowman are potent proofs of narrowed minds.

But in social life perhaps? Yes! The abolition of slavery, the foundation of hospitals,

the ennobling of family life, the laws against usury, the missions

to the lepers.

Is there, finally, in the application of reason, under the light




of Faith, to questions not settled by authority, anything that necessarily narrows me?

Al ! here we have the edge that sunders us. You are inde fatigable in labelling me " biassed," " incapable of independent judgment," because I profess the Catholic faith. You vaunt yourself " open-minded." Let us probe this bias and this open

mind. When I approach a question of principle or of behaviour, i.e.,

of what is right to be thought or done, I bring to it a system of

interlocking principles according to which, consistency demands, my decision must be made. In that foreshadowing of my deci

sion, in its issue from already held convictions, you see prejudice. You say that, when you tackle the same problem, you consider it

according to no previously held convictions, but submit it to the

sole scrutiny of reason directly applied.

My retort, which I will expand, is in substance this: Your

open mind is an unreal phantasm a thing " Of imagination all

compact." No problenm can be resolved without previous admission of

principles. With the. most fundamental problems you need no

more than these: that the evidence of your senses is trustworthy; that the conclusions of right reason are trustworthy. But in granting these you give a charter to philosophy. In beginning the study of the special sciences-physics, pdlitics, psychology,

etc.-you must admit the principles peculiar to them. If you

tackle an advanced problem in any of these sciences you must assume the preceding problems to have been correctly solved by certain answers. For example, if I am criticising an actor's use of gesture in a certain play, I must know what I conceive

the purpose of acting to be, and what, in my opinion, is the place of gesture in the actor's attainment of his purpose.




There is another observation to be made : every activity of man is conducted according to the demands of the end of the activity : every art and every science has its mode of functioning prescribed by that at which it aims. But the sum of all human activities, human activity as such, have a single end-inevitably, since

man is one, not many. Thus the ends of particular activities must subserve the fully human end: and the activities in the departments of life must serve the final end in serving the mediate ends. The artist, the scientist, the labourer each is only part of the man: then they must not act in their spheres in a way pro scribed by their nature as men. Briefly: All work must acord

with morality. Which is the art of living so as to attain your final end. Which is living rationally.

To sum up; In deciding a particular, and not elementary problem, I must admit (1) the principles on which all thinking rests, (2) the principles of the special department in which the problem is posited, (3) the principles of morality and their rela tion to the department and to the modes of functioning native to it. Until two people are agreed on all these they cannot discuss any problem. To that very considerable extent, then, the open mind is a delusion.

Suppose, though, that the principles we have enumerated are common to them both and that neither of them is committed, by previous resolution of the problem, to a particular decision, then to maintain a certain belief on it before discussion would be to act with prejudice. To wait until reason has teased it out would be to show an open miind.

What, now, are our respective positions with regard to these precise meanings of bias and open mind? You assume, rather less than consciously, certain answers to big problems, which have been agreed to so long by the peoaple whose language we speak




that their artistic, social and religious productions are rooted in them: the assumption of these answers, if you are logical, will decide your answers to new problems. But the answers may not be known to you beforehand; and their necessity will be hidden from you by your half-unconsciousness of your assumptions. This generates belief in your open mind.

Now I hold a certain body of principles consciously. I know their origin, their relation one to another, and that their necessary issue have been revealed minutely by others who hold them. I am prepared to prove the rationality of those principles and their consistency with one another. I am prepared to discuss particular problems, but my answers to them will be conditioned by my principles if I am logical. Further, and this is important, I will very often know well in advance what is the correct answer to the problem. That leaves me free to find the correct process of reasoning from principles to conclusion. Without my knowledge of the answer I would be free, also, to proceed to the wrong con clusion. And yet it is this inevitability of my answer that you call bias. Suppose someone denied Einstein the freedom to discuss the result of dividing sixty-three by nine because he already knew, as a mathematician, that the answer was seven?

The position is that I belong to a body that has already con

sidered most of the problems of man as man. She, tells me the

answers, and I believe them because I am convinced that she

knows. You belong to a body of people, or are an individual, who

have, or has, not yet considered many of these problems: there

fore you begin to discuss them without knowing the answers.

There is the difference between us.

Harking back to your indictment : the epithet " fanatical " is, I submit, inapplicable to the Catholic as such. There are many




of the dogmas of the Faith that must indeed appear wildly, crazily extravagant to those outside it. So, indeed, did Christ's promise

c' The bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world "-appear to the Jews. " How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" But Christ cared little how fanatical they thought

His teaching. Instead of abating the strangeness of His declara tion, already iterated many times, He reaffirmed it with power and vehemence:

"Amen Amen, I say unto you: except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you shall not have life in you . . ." and soon, against the bewildered incredulity of his scandalised hearers, who found it " a hard saying," asking " Who could bear it? " he maintained : " The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you that believe not."

There you have the model, and the history in epitome, of the intransigent teaching Church. Let me ask you a question. Is not the very strangeness, the breath-taking unexpectedness of Catholic doctrine a proof of its authenticity? Assuming that God has spoken to His rational creature, is it thinkable that He would reveal aught but the unthinkable? When the veil in the Temple is rent from the Holy of Holies do you expect to see your face in the looking-glass? What kind of religion is it that has no mnysteries? And, remember, a mystery, though by nature undiscoverable by reason, cannot be shown to contravene reason.

I have known many people who, reared as Catholics, aposta sised from their Faith: I have never found one who did so after

reaching a full, real apprehension of its tenets, its spirit, its history. I have found, instead, misunderstanding of root doctrines, plain, crde ignorance of its history-which includes the making of Europe and its culture-the confusion of the




Church with its unworthy members; none of which crassnesses the most anti-Catholic Continental would own to and consider himself educated. Just one example and one test of the justice of my arraignment: you have, in my hearing, confused charity with almsgiving-this is the example; the test is: will you write down on paper a statement of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility?

And if you would obliterate the effect on you of the Penal Laws, and understand that the Catholic Church is no old con

temptible pleading for your benignty, study the Roman liturgy, or read any Papal document. There you will find serene con

sciousness of unique and pillared majesty, of a life against which the strife of the gates of hell is vanity, and of a record of service by human intellects that is matchless in the story of the earth.

And with these remarks on your letter I leave you,

Always your well-wisher,

RIOBARD 0 FARACHAIN.



an open letter on the open mind

Documents