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The Calvinist belief regarding the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is that it is an act of remembrance, as directed by Jesus, of the Last Supper: "Do this in memory of me." The Lutheran and Anglican communion services entail the belief that Christ is truly present in the proceedings. A member of a Reformed Church might regard the Catholic and Orthodox conception of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, in the actual bread and wine, as absurd but if she were to look kindly on this belief she might bear in mind Plato's concept of the 'noble lie'. The insistence on transubstantiation, though perhaps technically untrue, creates an increased sense of genuine reverence towards the Lord's Supper, a definite feature of Catholic and Orthodox Masses, and is therefore perhaps 'valid' even if not 'true' in a narrow sense. If I were to complete a charity walk, perhaps raising money for the Moderator's appeal, I might well find the experience spiritually uplifting. Or to climb a mountain simply because 'it was there' might also be a spiritual 'high'. Years ago we visited a relative who was living in Westport, just at the foot of Croagh Patrick - the 'Reek'. And we climbed it, for a lark, on the spur of the moment. The sense that this climb was a spiritual event was largely due to the fact that it was a recognised place of pilgrimage. By whom it was recognised was not really the issue. But it wasn't just 'us' as we climbed who did the recognising but the consensus through the centuries that created this recognition. If 'nobody at all' ever recognised or remembered recognising the mountain as a place of pilgrimage it would not be a sacred place but the fact that this consensus exists, that to climb the Reek is a prayer act, then there was a real, objective, sense that the Reek itself was sacred. Perhaps this might point to a blurring between Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of the 'real presence'. Subjective consensus tends towards the creation of the objective existence of a fact. Liberality, that is, open mindedness, tolerance of others and their views and the ability to learn from others, may well be a virtue but liberalism, in a narrow sense, is a more problematic idea. Liberalism is a difficult concept to define. It involves the idea of the autonomous individual who engages in rational free choice, the idea that what is common in humanity transcends cultural differences and that political and social progress is the norm in human societies and is ongoing. An American Supreme Court judge has defined liberty as follows - "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, founded his school of thought, rationalism - the idea that knowledge is derived from the exercise of reason - with the axiom "I think therefore I am," pointing to the self-evident truth of this statement and built on this using the laws of logic. Pascal critiqued Descartes as follows - "the heart has reasons that reason knows not." Strict rational thought can be relied upon to derive mathematical and geometrical truths, but only those. A more correct term for this would be logical thought, and there is no pure reason other than strict logic. In ordinary lived existence the rational merges with the emotional, one is not clearly differentiated from the other. And what is considered rational or reasonable in one culture may not be considered so in another. Reason itself has a culturally relative element and it is as dangerous to deny the non-rational part of our nature as to be overwhelmed by it. The idea that we are autonomous individuals is surely one mainly found among wealthy westerners. Interdependence is the norm in human societies and only extreme wealth can create the illusion that this is not so. Regardless of the culturally relative nature of reason the freedom of choice is limited by the actual choices available to the individual in any particular society. Even if the range of choices is created by human action any individual is born into a society that is already up and running. Changes in cultural norms do not occur simply at the whim of the individual. The seeming march of progress may simply be the advance of secular materialism and largely pointless growth economics. The concept of autonomy is allied to what is considered to be the virtue of 'personal responsibility: perhaps a misuse of language here. To behave 'responsibly' behoves everyone almost by definition. However the term 'personal responsibility' usually occurs linguistically when one individual is demanding behaviour change of another or attempting to inflict guilt on another. Responsible behaviour has a culturally relative element and is situated within a particular culture. But what of personal responsibility? One wag claimed that Jean Paul Sartre had accepted full responsibility for the outbreak of World War II. The question is "where does one's influence end?" Croagh Patrick 'as' place of worship rather than 'as' a high point in the landscape is a genuine reality even if it is a social reality. And the religious element here is really a side issue. Croke Park is not simply a 'sports stadium'. The Abby Road mug I bought at a stall just to the right of that zebra crossing is not just a drinking vessel. It is right and fitting for a Unitarian to stand apart from the crowd when appropriate, to dissent, to refuse to conform. However to be autonomous and, to a large degree, narrowly rational, is to seek to live in a world that has been desecrated, that has become devoid of the sacred. Does one seek then to impose this conception of reality on others? When everything in reality is stripped of all but its weight, shape and colour, or its chemical composition, everything is reduced to commodities of varying financial worth. "How is it possible for someone to own land?" a Native American is said to have asked. "There are viable gold reserves in Croagh Patrick," said someone else.
Brendan Burke MA(Phil) |