(10:42 AM) | Anonymous:

Ceremonial uncleanness, Kit-kats, Benedict XVI, dying for your faith and excommunication...

I find the best way to read this blog is by manner of slow cogitation on some of the themes, more often than not, thrown up by those who comment. Also, I have to ignore an awful lot of the dross - Adam's focus on nose-picking some time back could only be excused on account of its anti-gnostic focus on the body. Likewise, I tend to let the whole Lenin/lefty slant pass me by. I rather mourn Mutabilitie's passing if she has left, since sifting the good stuff from the dross is a whole part of "belonging" to this community.

One theme in particular has struck me as particularly noteworthy, and that is whether we (that is, those of us who have a faith, and presumably a Christian faith) have a faith worth dying for. Kotsko declines to declare what such a faith might look like. I also lay my cards on the table and admit that I don't know either. However, I'm not sure that martyrdom can be planned for, and it seems that whether one had a "faith worth dying for" is decided after one's death, rather than before. Also, most of the people (probably women) who do won't ever be recognised, that's for sure. However, I also want to question some of the terms of the debate. I wonder what it might mean to "have" a faith, since faith is something I can never claim to posess. It all comes down to "damn it, they baptised me, and thank God I'm not a Jewish male...." To "have" a faith would be rather like admitting to "having" a female body. It's not an addition, but a part of the whole. It's just "a body", and to admit to having one is an odd claim. Further, having a faith seems to imply that somewhere out there is an entity known as "non-faith" or if it is not an entity, then at least an absence of faith. Thus, to admit to having a faith seems to me to akin to admitting to some kind of secular sphere outside of faith. I cannot claim to "have faith", but I can claim to know myself as created and therefore human.

At the moment, I'm supposed to be working on an essay for my ritual module. I've become fascinated with themes in Mary Douglas' work, particularly those on boundaries and purity, but I still remain somewhat sceptical of the claims made by sociology and anthropology. I am told that it all comes down (again) to the Barthian issue with understanding philosophy (or maybe the rest of the humanities) as an alternative source for knowledge of God. Try as I might, I can never get past the analogia entis problem. Thus, I confess to being Barthian. I may not be a very good Barthian. Indeed, lots of people say that Barth caved in on the whole Mozart issue. Whether he did or whether he didn't, I'm not convinced of any thorough change of mind... I think that philosophy (let's leave aside some of the more dubious humanities) does say something genuinely different from theology, (and I'm not going to go any further than Aquinas in Question 1, and admit that philosophy might know something vaguely shadowy about God). Ultimately, however, I think that theology is what matters. Theology matters because bodies matter, and you can't talk God without talking body. Bodies matter because Christ became human. The whole thing is Christological. I don't want to close down the question though. Closing down the question in a pre-emptive manner is something that catholic Anglicans are not too good at. It reminds me of the debate about who can "have" Paul. Paul, whether we like it or not, is a public body, just like Christ. If Christ did become human, then perhaps it is possible to study humans and discover something of God. I just think that that "something" will not really be philosophy's discovery. Thus, you can see, like Kotsko, I want the wedding cake, but I also want the chocolate cake, and I want to eat them both. And when I've eaten them, I will deny that they really were two separate cakes. Anyhow, I struggle to see the lesser humanities, (leaving aside philosophy as it has a different pedigree) in any other way than as theology dis-incarnate. Consequently, one might have thought that I'd be fruitful in turning up work that pits John Milbank and Mary Douglas against one another, or at least makes them uncomfortable bed fellows. The problem is that nobody has written anything. I suppose I want to make it my contention that "ritual theorists" are doing something different from some liturgists. The problem is that it doesn't seem a very interesting thing to write an essay about. I mean, who really cares?

I'm very pleased with Kotsko at the moment, since he threw me off of his blog posting list for inactivity. I should have remembered that this blog is a jealous blog. I kind of view it as akin to excommunication for failure to speak out on the matter of "injustice". Thus, this blog represents a better form of disciplined practice than I expected. To his detriment, I didn't have to do any other penance than fill in the wretched "profile" again, but then that's what one has come to expect from pleasant Jungian post-Vatican 2 blog owners. (Don't know whether Kotsko is a good enough Marxist to object to ownership...) And there's an answer to that whole pleasant priest thing. It is this. When Christianity is part of a cultural remnant, it will spawn priests who are cultural left-overs, who are just enough a part of the previous generation to consider that being a priest is a worthy calling, like being a banker. The problem is that somewhere between 1970 and 1990, it seems that Christianity started to be seen as something one "did", rather than something that one "was". It's the problem of the voluntary option again. The voluntary option allowed Christianity to pick up the whole "counter-cultural" motif. This sort of idea is displayed by journals like First Things. It is certainly demonstrated in the election of Benedict XVI. It is also something of a display of Hauerwasianism (whom as astute readers know, I align myself alongside). Following on from such movements, one begins to get the counter-cultural priests. Mark my words, we will see a growing conservativism because "liberal" Christianity (or Judaism or Islam) is so indistinguishable from "culture" as to not be worth bothering about. That "culture", "sociality", "bodily", "religion" can be so separated is a mark of catholic decline. The answer to it is seen by many playing the pew numbers game. Why the hell would anyone go to Church to discover that one should be nice to one's neighbours? The whole point is that the whole "faith" thing (whose existence I have critiqued above) will come to be seen as "being set apart". Maybe this is marked by a decline in Jesuit vocations. Culture will be given over, given up as corrupt and materialistic. The problem, of course, is that the voluntary option Christianity does not free itself from the market. And thus, we don't have a faith worth dying for.

We do have luxury Kit-Kats though, and as part of the stereotype younger generation who only care about fleeting pleasure, and non-Fair Trade chocolate, I think we should be happy about that.

PS - I think Jesus broke the Niddah rules by touching the "unclean" woman. I don't know how politically correct that view is. For the last few years, since the "Jewish Jesus" school became fashionable (and I think they're in large part right), one is supposed to see Jesus as Torah faithful. My guess is that maybe he was part of a less strict Jewish sect on this one, but at least in some people's books, it makes him unclean. Kotsko, as a ceremonially unclean person, you'll be (very possibly) eating a sinless ceremonially unclean (since the two concepts are entirely separable) body. Basically, you're in good company.

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