Leaving Filson Hall after his medieval England class, Bryce had an hour before his scheduled appointment with Father Miller, the Catholic campus chaplain. He knew that, now that the dust-up about the demonstrations seemed to have been resolved, he would be called upon by his friends to resume the discussions about his contention that those without a religion were incomplete. Therefore, he spent most of the hour between three and four rehearsing his arguments. Since his turn-around during his senior year in high school, Bryce had done a great deal of reading in the areas generally called philosophy and theology, and so was better prepared than most. It seemed to him that most people his age, and probably most people throughout their lives, go along with the general climate of opinion around them without thinking very much about where their ideas and values come from. He did not find that satisfactory. Bryce had always been one to ask questions, unlike his brother Chip.
Because he had read extensively, and because he had thought about what he read, Bryce felt confident that the ideas he expressed in his exchanges with his friends were based on fact, and not a mere matter of opinion. He recalled being pulled up short in a class during his senior year when another student had responded to a question from the teacher with the statement, “Well, that’s my opinion.” The teacher had replied, “If you have nothing on which to base your opinion, it would be better if you kept it to yourself.” Thinking about that, it made sense. The consensus among so many seemed to be that each person was entitled to his or her opinion, and all opinions were more or less equal. That seemed to be what some of his friends here at the University were saying. But that incident two years ago had led to Bryce’s conviction that all opinions were not equal. An opinion based on nothing more than the absorbed culture around one is no better than no opinion at all. It was, he considered, a negative example of Socrates’ statement, as quoted in The Apology, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Bryce told himself that he had examined his life. During his senior year in high school, and during his freshman year here at the University, he had given considerable thought to the meaning of life, and what was important and what not. This had not been mere reflection, but extensive reading as well.
It was with considerable satisfaction, then, that he developed the questions he put to Jason the other day. In all his readings, he had come upon no answer to those questions which he found both logically sound and reflective of real life as he had experienced it. He rehearsed his arguments. If there is no transcendent, creator God, then on what do we base out ideas of good and evil? If there is no objective standard, but all ideas of good and evil are subjective, then why should one person agree to go along with another person’s ideas, even if the other ‘person’ was society at large? The most common answers from the secularists seemed to be either that it would be nice if everyone got along, a purely emotional response, or something along the lines that if you don’t go along with the standards of society, you get thrown into jail, a response based on violence. Neither seemed to have any logic behind it. Jason spoke of the common good, but if there is no objective definition of good, then why should I as an individual care what other people think is for the common good? If Jason is correct, and there is no objective meaning to the universe, then if I get pissed off with life and decide to end it, why not go out with a bang, and get that automatic weapon and take out as many others as possible at the same time? Nothing he had heard or read adequately answered those questions, assuming death was the end, and there was no judgement, heaven, or hell. The answers seemed to boil down to the nineteenth century English public school response: it’s simply not done. Adequate for the superficial.
Bryce felt kind of smug as he approached the Newman Center and his hour with Father Miller.
After an exchange with Patricia Murphy, with references to their meeting on the quad earlier that day, and the Administration’s concession of everything asked for with respect to the suspended students, Bryce entered Father Miller’s office buoyed by his certainties and successes.
“Well, Bryce, you seem to be in a good mood today,” the priest greeted him.
“Yes, Father. I think I’ve got the bad guys on the run,” he responded.
“Oh? How is that?” Father Miller asked.
“Well, the school administration collapsed entirely on the matter of the unjustly suspended students, and, I’m happy to say, I had a hand in that. It was me,” he ungrammatically asserted, “who raised the question about the students’ records, and saw to it that any negative comments were removed. I’m still amazed that the Administration gave in so completely, but I sure am not going to reject what we’ve gained. Now we need to push for a resolution of the matter of the attack on Peter Boyington.
“But, I’ve got to admit, that I’m even more pleased that none of my friends have been able to answer the objections I’ve raised to the secularist stand on morality, or at least public order,” Bryce boasted.
“How so?” Father Miller enquired.
“People seem to think that whatever is generally accepted is a sufficient base for social order, but we know that whatever is generally accepted can conflict with the truths of religion. So we need logic or reason, not just going along with the crowd. To me, the really telling argument is that if there is no God, then there is no objective standard of right and wrong, good and evil. And if there is no objective standard, then all out ideas are subjective, and one idea is no better than another. Maybe it suits most people to accept the standards adopted by society at large, but if I don’t accept them, how can anyone say I’m wrong? So, I can do whatever I think I can get away with, and still have what I guess we can call a clear conscience, although I’m not sure the concept of conscience makes sense without God. The example I used is this: if I decide life’s not worth living any more, and I’m going to kill myself, why not go out with a bang, and take as many people with me as I can?” Bryce summarized.
“There do seem to be people who think that way,” Father Miller agreed. “We read about them in the news from time to time. But I don’t think this will convince your friends.”
“No? Why not?” Bryce asked.
“You and I agree that there is a creator God, who by his very existence as creator establishes certain standards which apply to everyone, right?”
“Yes, sure,” Bryce said.
“And those standards are kind of summarized in the Ten Commandments,” Father added.
“Yeah,” Bryce cautiously agreed, “although that needs added explanation.”
“True, but my point is, we accept this because we are believers. We believe in a creator God and an objective standard of right and wrong. Can we prove this is objectively true to those who do not share our faith?” his spiritual advisor challenged Bryce.
“Well, sure. I mean, it makes sense. It’s logical,” Bryce declared. “That’s exactly where I’m going with my friends.”
“Let us consider logic for a moment. The great organizer of rational discourse, Aristotle, provided us with the Organon, his works on logic. But if you study it, it become apparent that, like geometry, logic is a process, not a content. It works provided we agree on the initial assumptions about what is real. If we begin with a different set of initial assumptions, we can be totally logical, and still come up with completely different answers to important questions,” the priest pointed out.
“Are you saying there is no way we can arrive at objective truth?” Bruce asked with some astonishment.
“It’s like geometry, as I said. There are axioms, or assumptions, or what seems obvious, as our starting points. So, you arriving at logical conclusions is admirable, but only convincing to those who share your starting assumptions. Now, how can we tell whether our starting assumptions are valid?” Father challenged him.
Bryce chewed on that for a couple of minutes before answering. “I guess some things are just so obvious we have to accept them as true,” he said.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Father Miller asked, seemingly out of the blue.
“Uh, well, I’m not sure. Off the cuff, I’d have to say no,” Bryce replied.
“But lots of people do. I believe I saw some kind of survey which said that about a third of the US population claimed to have had some kind of experience connected to ghosts,” Father Miller said.
“What’s the point?” Bryce asked, feeling defensive.
“The point is, we tend to assume as our starting points our own experiences. It is our experiences which provide us with those starting assumptions about what is real and what is not, and only then can we apply logic to what we do with those experiences or assumptions,” his advisor told Bryce.
“But, what if what I seem to experience is completely contrary to reason?” Bryce protested.
“Two things occur to me, Bryce. One, by what standard are you saying something is contrary to reason? And two, what if your experience is completely different from someone else’s on the same subject?” the priest challenged him.
‘Contrary to reason seems pretty obvious,” Bryce asserted. “Surely reason and logic are pretty much the same. If someone makes a statement that flies in the face of what everyone knows to be true, then it’s contrary to reason.”
“I think you just undermined your previous argument, Bryce. Didn’t you say that what everyone assumed to be so was not necessarily so?”
“I’m confused,” Bryce admitted. “Can’t we be sure of anything?”
“Let me remind you of a couple of things which I am sure you already know. The first Vatican Council, in Dei filius, the other doctrinal decree, not the one everyone remembers about papal infallibility, told us that reason was a valid source of truth about the temporal, or material world, but that revelation was necessary when it comes to the spiritual or immaterial world. In addition, one of the tenets of the Faith, with which I am sure you are familiar, is the doctrine of original sin. Now, tell me, Bryce, how does this apply to what we’ve been discussing?”
“Original sin? As I understand it, this is the teaching that humans are not equal to God. That was the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden, wanting to be like God. So, humans are limited and prone to error, unlike God. We are, as I told someone recently, a flawed species. We are not perfect,” Bryce declared.
“Very good. So, we cannot arrive at absolute truth on our own. Because we are less than perfect, there will always be an element of uncertainty in what we work out on our own. In particular, this applies to things beyond the usual human experience. I remind you of the lines from Hamlet:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
That’s very sound theology. Reason alone will not be able to answer all our questions. That’s why a loving God gave us revelation, and the Church as the guardian of that revelation.”
“But, Father, you seem to be saying that there is no way to convince people who do not already believe. In that case, there is no sense to missionary activity, and no chance of conversion,” Bryce flipped out.
“Whoa! Don’t go to extremes, Bryce,” Father Miller reined him in. “Missionary activity and conversion are not based entirely, or even primarily, on logic, or reason, or philosophy. In the vast majority of cases, both in what we might think of as the stereotypical missionary setting, somewhere in Africa or India, or in what is actually the more common setting, the rectory in New York or San Francisco, the reasons most converts give for their decision to join the Church is the example of others. You are being too narrow, too cerebral, and not just about conversion. Remember the quotation from Hamlet. Philosophy, or reason, is limited or incomplete, but that does not mean that all our experience of reality is invalid. Those people who claim some experience of ghosts have had an experience of reality which reason cannot explain. That does not mean it was not a real experience. Efforts to pass it off as a psychological aberration are just a cop out on the part of people like you who refuse to accept anything they cannot fit into their preconceived notions of reality. We cannot confine reality to what we fallible and imperfect humans can understand, given our present level of knowledge.”
“I’m struggling with this, Father,” Bryce admitted.
“Do you remember that, last year, when we were having our weekly meetings, I recommended to you an essay by John Henry Newman entitled ‘The Development of Christian Doctrine’”?
“Um, kind of?” Bryce replied.
“And did you read it?” Father Miller asked.
“I honestly don’t remember. I read a lot at that time, when I was trying to work out how I could be both Catholic and gay,” Bryce said in his defense.
“Then you cannot say you have considered all the possibilities, even from a purely logical position,” his spiritual advisor replied. “The future Cardinal Newman wrote that God reveals his truths to us gradually, as we are prepared to accept them. Not everything was handed down on Mount Sinai, or delivered in the Sermon on the Mount, or revealed on the first Pentecost. How long did it take the Church to realize that the Gospel was incompatible with human slavery? Nothing revealed in the past need be rejected, but we can elaborate and interpret those truths in light of new information. Consider the advances made in scriptural studies since the Inquisition condemned the heliocentric solar system as ‘contrary to reason and sacred scripture.’
“You have expressed yourself in the past as an admirer of G.K. Chesterton. I cannot recall the source just now, although I think it was in one of his essays written during World War I, but Chesterton wrote something like, ‘the young are always narrow, but the old are sometimes broad.’ You, Bryce Winslow, are young and narrow. Do you know the meaning of the word ‘sophomore’?”
Bryce grimaced. He remembered Dr. Belzi mentioning that recently. “I seem to recall that it means half wise and half foolish,” he mumbled.
“Correct. Now, you asked me to be your spiritual advisor specifically in order to keep you in touch with reality. Please note that nothing I have said today refutes any of the specific positions you have taken. I am not telling you your ideas, your beliefs, are wrong. But I am telling you that you need to consider something more than pure logic in dealing with reality. You need to remember the contingent, limited nature of human reason. And there’s something more.”
Bryce sighed. “I’m not sure I can take anything more.”
“You can, and you will. You came in here not too long ago concerned about the sin of pride. I advised you then that God was warning you about falling into that sin. I advise you now to do an examination of conscience, and pay attention to how much of your argument with your friends is based on a genuine desire to convince them of the truth, and how much on showing off your mental gymnastics,” Father Miller admonished.
“Ouch,” Bryce responded.
“One final consideration, Bryce. I’m glad you have these good friends. But if you continue to badger them, essentially implying that they are less intelligent than you, then they will not remain your friends for long,” the priest told him.
“That hit home, Father. One of the points I made with Jason yesterday was that I resented the implied opinion that those of us who believed were less intelligent than those who did not. I guess it works both ways,” Bryce admitted.
“Okay, Bryce. I removed the kid gloves today, because it seemed to me you needed taking down a peg. I think you are mature enough to take this in the manner in which it was intended. You are intelligent, and I admire your dedication to the Faith, so I hope this all has a salutary effect,” Father Miller said as they prepared to wrap up.
“I cannot honestly say I enjoyed it today, Father. But you have certainly given me a lot to think about. I guess I did ask for it when I asked you to keep me in touch with reality. At this point, all I can say is that I will honestly consider what you’ve said, and I will pray over it. I admit I’m kind of upset at the moment,” Bryce admitted.
“But you will be back in two weeks?” the priest checked to be sure.
“Yes, I’ll be back,” Bryce affirmed.
As they parted, another student appeared for a session with the chaplain. Bryce thought his advisor looked tired.
When he left the chaplain’s office, Bryce went into the Newman chapel nearby. It was not a place he would have chosen under other circumstances, as it was too modern and made too many concessions to passing fads, but he needed some time alone with God.
Bryce prayed. He was upset as a result of his recent session with Father Miller. He had everything worked out, but Father seemed to be saying it was seriously flawed. He needed help in sorting that out. As he often did when seeking divine assistance, Bryce attempted to clear his mind of distractions. He knew the danger of imposing his own ideas and pretending they were God’s ideas. He had dismissed with something like disdain those who said they did not need the Church, but could communicate with God in the privacy of their own rooms. He did not want to be a practitioner of that kind of egotism which identified one’s own thoughts and desires with God’s thoughts and desires. He knew it was good spirituality to make one’s own thoughts and desires conform to God’s, and not the other way around. And so he genuinely attempted to clear his mind of all distractions, and open himself to anything God had to say to him. In this way, he prayed for guidance.
As he prayed, a passage from the Gospels came to him. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Was he judging others by his approach? Was he, as Father Miller implied, saying that those who disagreed with him were in some way his inferiors? Spiritually? Intellectually?
Bryce thought about that and decided he needed to be more inclusive, broader in his approach, more or less in line with the statement from Chesterton implying he was too narrow, too certain that only his approach was correct. He had certainly witnessed that more than enough with such fanatics as Marjory Banks in one direction, or his brother Chip in another.
Then an even more basic commandment came to him. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Bryce felt certain the Greek here was agape, the kind of disinterested love which genuinely desired the good of the other. Was he really concerned about the good of his friends, or, as Father suggested, was he more interested in scoring debating points? A serious consideration led him to exonerate himself from the worst accusations. Yes, we was genuinely concerned about the good of his friends, and especially of Damon. But, he had to admit, he also enjoyed his moments of triumph when his friends were unable to refute his assertions. But then, the commandment did not enjoin renouncing his own satisfactions. The ‘as thyself’ part certainly left open the possibility of pleasing oneself without sinning, as long as the neighbor was kept in mind.
Where had he gone wrong? By this point, Bryce was no longer denying that he had gone wrong somewhere. Going over his session with his spiritual advisor, Bryce honed in on two considerations. He was too narrow in his approach, not considering other ways of seeing the same issues. And he needed to pay more attention to how he presented his ideas. What was the saying? The medium is the message. This criticism said nothing about the validity of his ideas, but rather how he was trying to get them across. Father had warned him, if he came across the wrong way, he not only stood a good chance of failing to convince his friends, but also the possibility of losing them as friends. He definitely did not want that.
At that point in his musings, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Pulling it out, he found it was Damon.
“Yeah?”
“Are you coming home any time today?” Damon asked.
Bryce laughed. “Yeah. I just had some thinking to do. I’m on my way.”
“Good. I’d hate for my culinary efforts to go to waste,” Damon admonished him.