174 Chapter 13
WHY IT WAS WORTHWHILE
All arguments, from 'Design' or otherwise, whose roots are a
dehistoricized cosmology, by their fundamental intellectual
commitments simply reinforce the division of the cosmos into the
necessary and the arbitrary, and thereby of necessity put any 'God' that
is not necessary or arbitrary into Mr. Minsky's middle box. How could
present day Catholic theology, in any of its variants, possibly refute a
charge that is merely the final implication of its own basic intellectual
commitments?
Catholics need to begin to realize that the most devastating words
the New Class can say against Catholicism are the very words that
condemn the New Class itself to slavery in Cause and Chance. No
doubt there will be many New Class men who will find it inconvenient
to acknowledge this, but it's still true. Even more, until Catholics
genuinely begin to realize and to say out loud that the New Class is
right, and that Catholics too completely share the New Class fate of
slavery in Cause and Chance, the evangelization of the New Class can
scarcely begin, for 'evangelizing' the New Class does not mean
anything more than offering them, in and through the free liturgical
mediation of the faith of his Bride, the Cross of the Lord who "emptied
himself" completely into our very real slavery, into our genuinely
fallen Real World of fate and time and death.
Until Catholics start taking the intellectual responsibility that can
only be theirs, they will remain in the position of 'responding' to this
horrifying cry of the New Class against its fate as if it were a threat to
the faith, and help neither the New Class nor Catholics by doing so.
Thus, although the New Class cry prompts Catholics to love the
New Class, to be with it in its agony, and to continually offer it the
Eucharist, the sole "medicine of immortality," that cry is devastating
against present day Catholic thought, precisely because Catholic
thought's own fundamental intellectual commitments don't allow it to
hear the cry as a cry, but only as an intellectual challenge, part of the
'Battle of the Time-less Frameworks.' What's more, Catholic thought
loses the 'battle.'
The New Class contends that its refusal of the middle box (the box
containing 'beliefs' such as in 'free will' and 'Catholicism'), is its choice
for the real, whatever the consequences to "cheerfulness and mental
peace." That this refusal is a choice for the real is substantiated by the
abundant fruit which flows from that choice -- fruit not available from
those who 'believe.'
To 'win' this 'battle,' then, Catholic thought is in the position of
denying that the New Class has produced and is producing good fruit,
yet, at the same time, Catholics, just like everyone else, use those fruits
every day.
[ Cause ]
[ ]
[ Chance ]
N.B. This is an html-ized copy of a page from the pdf file, The Knucklehead's Guide to Covenantal Theology.