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Cardinal Newman Catechist
Consultants — 20th August, 2017 — HANDOUTS n. 151
“Clear, brief and easily assimilated by all”
Silence, Humility, Faith, Hope,
Charity: Speak
Sequels to Handouts n. 58, “Shonky” and to Handouts n. 150, “Christ conquers Confusion
and Corruption”
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as a  PDF
CARDINAL SARAH hopes the readers of his book, The
Power of Silence, Against the Dictatorship of Noise, will thereby
grow in humility (see p.
17).
Hence
the aptness of the Litany of Humility quoted by Nicolas
Diat in the Introduction. It is from Cardinal Merry del Val (1865-1930),
who recited it daily after Mass. He was Vatican Secretary of State to
Pope St Pius X. See text below.
“Speak only when it is more necessary to speak than to be
silent,” said St John Chrysostom.
ON SALE NOW
The Power of Silence
Against the Dictatorship of Noise
by Robert Cardinal Sarah with Nicolas Diat
Ignatius Press 2017, translated from
the French by Michael I. Miller 2016, 217 pp $28.95
HONESTY AND GENEROSITY
In
The Screwtape Letters (1942), C.S. Lewis says we should not, as
we might with other virtues, seek humility directly, lest we fall into
the sin of pride over our small successes and thereby negate them.
Lewis
says the secret of humility is to seek the virtues of Honesty and
Generosity. Their convergence will make us humble without our knowing it.
Thus
senior devil, Screwtape, writes to Wormwood, who is
assigned to inveigle his “patient” to Hell:-
Your patient has become humble; have
you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to
us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of
humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and
smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove! I’m being
humble”, and almost immediately pride — pride at his own humility — will
appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of
pride, make him proud of his attempt — and so on, through as many stages
as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense
of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh and go to
bed.
By this virtue, as by all the
others, our Enemy [i.e. Christ] wants to turn the man’s attention away
from self to Him, and to the man’s neighbours... The Enemy wants to bring
the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in
die world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without
being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he
would be if it had been done by another.
The Screwtape Letters is dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien who at that time (1942) was writing The
Lord of the Rings, a book about Good and Evil. Much
humility is displayed by its noble characters and much
pride by its evil ones. Many make their own
application to Christ and the Devil. See below.
Christ
and Our Lady are humble (Matthew
11:29, Luke 1:48) and
it is basic for repentance and faith (Mark 1:15).
Litany of Humility
by Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val
O
Jesus, meek and humble of heart,
Make
my heart like yours.
From
self-will, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being esteemed,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being loved,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being extolled,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being honoured,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being praised,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being preferred
to others, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being consulted,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being approved,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire to be understood,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire to be visited,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being humiliated,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being despised,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of suffering rebukes,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being calumniated,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being forgotten,
deliver me, O Lord.
From
the fear of being ridiculed, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being suspected,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being wronged,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being abandoned,
deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being refused,
deliver me, O Lord.
That others may be loved more than
I,
Lord,
grant me the grace to desire it.
That
others may be esteemed more than I,
Lord,
grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease,
Lord, grant me the grace to desire
it.
That others may be chosen and I set
aside,
Lord, grant me the grace to desire
it.
That others may be praised and I go
unnoticed,
Lord, grant me the grace to desire
it.
That
others may be preferred to me in everything,
Lord, grant me the grace to desire
it.
That
others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I
should,
Lord, grant me the grace to desire
it.
At
being unknown and poor, Lord, I want to rejoice.
At being deprived of the natural
perfections of body and mind, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When people do not think of me,
Lord, I want to rejoice. When they assign to me the meanest tasks, Lord,
I want to rejoice. When they do not even deign to make use of me, Lord, I
want to rejoice.
When they never ask my opinion,
Lord, I want to rejoice. When they leave me at the lowest place, Lord, I
want to rejoice. When they never compliment me, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When they blame me in season and out of season, Lord, I want to rejoice.
Blessed
are those who suffer persecution for justice’ sake, For theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew
5:3)
Lewis and Tolkien
C.S.
Lewis was a convert from atheism to Anglican Christianity. J.R.R.
Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR), was a childhood
convert to Catholicism, later a daily communicant, always
counter-cultural, never “politically correct”, and a Christian cultural
leader.
NO SITUATION ETHICS, no New Morality
Tolkien’s
background theme is the battle of good against evil. And
that it is never right to do evil as a means to achieve a good
end (cf. Romans
3:8):
Eomer: “How shall a man judge what
to do in such times?”
Aragorn: “As he ever has judged. Good
and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing
among Elves and Dwarves and another among men. It is a man’s part
to discern them...”
LOTR
vol. 2, bk 3, ch. 2
NOT ALLEGORY
Tolkien
insistent that his epic was not allegory but had applicability
(see his Introduction to LOTR).
In
allegory, an author dominates the reader’s mind and imagination, but
applicability leaves the reader free to make his own applications. And
readers of The Lord of the Rings do just that. They range from
Gold Coast hippies through to very devout Catholics like Tolkien himself.
A
few of our Separated Brethren opposed LOTR as a rival to the Bible,
instead of reading it as a persuasive parable supportive of the whole
Bible.
APPLICABILITY of Tolkien’s “parables”
Leading
characters like heroic Frodo, Gandalf and Aragorn enrich us with glimpses
of Christ, and thereby can help us grow in humility, faith, hope and
charity:-
·
Gandalf the Prophet, who guides by his wisdom.
·
Frodo, priest-like, offering himself for others.
·
Aragorn the King, the true and virtuous.
Free will is a central theme. The greatest evil is the lust for
power, to dominate other free creatures.
There
are the incorruptible Elrond and Galadriel and less noble characters like
Theorden and Denethor.
Diabolical
characters are Sauron ‘Lord of the Rings’ and his Nine
Ringwraiths led by the Witch-King of Angmar. They lead retinues of ores,
wargs, trolls, and corrupted men, plus the increasingly corrupted wizard Saruman
and enigmatic hobbit-like Gollum, corrupted by
his own vices and by Sauron’s evil Ring. He perishes in seizing the Ring
for himself.
On
the good side are other vital characters like Sam Gamgee, Legolas the
Elf, Gimli the Dwarf, Tom Bombadil, Treebeard the Ent, Barliman Buttibur,
Eomer, Eowyn, Arwen Evenstar, Faramir “less self- regarding than [his
brother] Boromir”, and always looming ‘in the front of the background’,
Bilbo, from the preliminary saga of The Hobbit..
Fortunately
for the reader, the author introduces this imaginary world of feigned
history only gradually, so that one can cope with its multitude of
characters. This can hardly be said of his Silmarillion and its
bewildering pedigrees of the Yalar.
Frodo is aghast at the prospect, that the
mission to destroy the Ring seems to devolve on him:
I wish it need not have happened it
my tune.
Gandalf the Wizard guides him to humble acceptance: So do all who
live to see such tunes. But it is not for them to decide. All we have to
do is to decide what to do with the time that is given us.
This
is one of many veiled references to God Who, in The Silmarillion,
is named as Eru and Illuvatar.
Theorden, King of Rohan, has had his mind slowly poisoned, and his
will to resist evil weakened, by heeding Wormtongue, a spy planted by
Saruman. But he is humble enough to be rescued by Gandalf, and then
fights evil heroically even unto death.
Saruman himself was head of the Order of Wizards and of the Council
against Sauron. He betrayed the sacred cause of all free creatures, not
by surrendering to Sauron, but by setting himself up as a rival, while
“pride and anger were consuming him”.
He
gazed into one of the seven Palantiri, ‘the Seeing Stones’ — a prophecy
of mobile phones not invented when Tolkien wrote. These Palantirs had
enabled the Free Creatures of Middle Earth to communicate by sight and
sound in a defence pact against Sauron. But Sauron captured a Palantir
and used it to weaken the will of the virtuous to resist.
SAURON, Dark Lord of Mordor, was not evil in
the beginning but became so under Morgoth who, as Melchor, had rebelled
against God. They are totally without humility. Morgoth reminds many of
Lucifer, who became Satan; and Sauron of the Beast, the infamous “666”. Remember,
this is not allegory: but the reader is left free to apply it to his own
understanding of things. The lies of Melchor, Mighty and Accursed,
Morgoth Bauglir, Power of Terror and of Hate, are a seed that does not
die and cannot be destroyed, and continues to bear evil fruit even unto
the latest days.
Denethor, Steward of Gondor, a mightier lord than Theorden, is only a
viceroy, but lacks the humility to step down when the true King of Gondor
arrives.
He
let himself be engloomed into evil by Sauron’s insinuations via another
Palantir. He was not totally corrupted, but damaged, impotent in the face
of evil, radiating gloom and defeatism, sneering at Gandalf, refusing
help and committing suicide.
LISTEN TO GOD in silence and humility
READ rather than view The Lord of the
Rings. Reading
allows inner listening to God’s promptings. Read Tolkien’s Tree and
Leaf to contrast literature with drama and to link fantasy and
Scripture.
And
a final word from two Cardinals:
Never less alone than when alone
[i.e. with God].
Blessed
John Henry Newman
The virtue of silence does not mean
we should never speak... [The Christian] should be silent when it
is not necessary to speak, and he should speak when necessity or charity
requires it.
Cardinal
Sarah (page 239)
Father James Tierney
© The Rev. B.J.H. Tierney. Handouts
are free and may be copied for any non-profit teaching purpose.
However, donations to defray costs are welcome and should be made to the
publisher and distributor, the Cardinal Newman Faith Resources Inc. PO
Box 359, St Marys NSW 1790; phone 02 9673 2235; fax 02 9623 3181 email <fr@eardinalnewman.com.au>
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