Issue 01 EAster 2020

The Lamp
A C AT H O L I C JO U R N A L O F L I T E R AT U R E , S C I E N C E , T H E F I N E A RT S , E TC .

02 The publisher on our antecedents, who ended up in debt-

ors’ prison 04 Feuilleton 07 Brass Rubbings: P. J. Smith on a
Hoosier parish 09 The Jungle: Brandon McGinley on prison
and grace 14 J. D. Vance on Mamaw and becoming Catholic
21 Michael Hamill on how to talk about the pope 25 Urban
Hannon on how to become a radical 29 Monica Costa on
Andrea Dworkin 35 The editor on Captain Nemo 40 B. D.
McClay on frauds 42 R.J. Stove on the letters of Cole Porter
44 Eve Tushnet on cinema 46 Appreciations: Peter Hitchens
on Cranmer and the Ordinariate 48 Nunc dimittis: Susannah
Black on the Habsburgs, fleeing Vienna, and coronavirus.

ISSN 2690-5736 $17.00

Wenn im Unendlichen dasselbe
Sich wiederholend ewig fließt,
Das tausendfältige Gewölbe
Sich kräftig ineinander schließt,
Strömt Lebenslust aus allen Dingen,
Dem kleinsten wie dem größten Stern
Und alles Drängen, alles Ringen
Ist ewige Ruh in Gott dem Herrn.

And while throughout the self-same motion

Repeated on forever flows,
The thousandfold o’er arching ocean
Its strong embrace around all throws;
Streams through all things the joy of living;
The least star thrilleth fond accord;
And all their crowding, all their striving
Is endless rest in God the Lord.

Goethe

This issue is dedicated

to the memory of
Father Richard Eldred
2 The Lamp

ABOUT
THE LAMP
The Lamp was founded in 1846 by Thomas Earnshaw Bradley, who would go on to
edit many issues of the magazine from his cell in a debtors’ prison. His was among the
first Catholic magazines in the English-speaking world, and it sold for only a penny
(a fifth of the price of its earliest competitor, the Tablet, which has survived). There
were very few subjects on which The Lamp did not publish articles, for Bradley was
of the opinion that whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good
report, from the invention of the telegraph to the latest fiction, really belonged to
the Church.
It was later purchased by Martha Lockhart, the daughter of a Tory Member of
Parliament who distinguished himself during the administration of Pitt and a rela-
tion of John Gibson Lockhart, the most amusing writer of negative book reviews
in the history of our language. (Does anyone now read his Life of his father-in-law,
Sir Walter Scott, a work once held in the same esteem as Boswell?) Martha, a devout
Anglican who attended cathedral services twice a day, was received into the Church
under the influence of her son, William, the great friend and disciple of St. John Hen-
ry Newman whose conversion would occasion the latter’s famous “Parting of Friends”
sermon. William was later ordained priest and became one of the most distinguished
contributors to his mother’s magazine, which employed many poor young Catho-
lics who were trained in the art of printing and paid honorable wages. Another il-
lustrious contributor was Wilfrid Meynell, the eccentric biographer of Disraeli and
friend of Cardinal Manning whose political enthusiasms included Irish Home Rule
and Georgist land reform and who had the great fortune to discover the poet Francis
Thompson. Meynell and his wife, Alice, were well-known entertainers whose house
guests included Robert Browning, Stevenson, William Ernest Henley, George Mer-
edith, Yeats, and Chesterton. Alice, who as a young woman had led her parents and
siblings to the faith, had the misfortune of getting to know Coventry Patmore, who
became infatuated with her, leading to the end of their friendship; she nevertheless
wrote the very fair-minded entry on Patmore that appears in the old Catholic Encyclo-
pedia. An anthology of her verse and prose writings was edited and introduced by (of
all people) Vita Sackville-West. Their daughter Viola, one of eight, would later found
the Nonesuch Press.
We cannot claim similarly interesting connections or antecedents. One of us is a
journalist, the other a business professional. What we share is an admixture of curiosity
and horror at the idea that in a country of some seventy million Catholics—numbers
that would have terrified the Thomas Nashes of the second-to-last century, who be-
lieved the republic was only a few Irish immigrants away from papal despotism—there
are no Catholic magazines. This statement of fact will come as a surprise to some. We
acknowledge that there exist diocesan bulletins which are bound in a tabloid format,
various newspapers and agencies that report on ecclesiastical goings-on, and a hand-
ful of ostensibly Catholic periodicals that routinely publish screeds in favor of wom- The original The Lamp
en’s “ordination,” apologias for abortion, and other subjects that cannot accurately be magazine, 1852
 Easter 2020 3

discussed in polite company. But this is not what we mean by a Catholic magazine.
What we mean instead is something that is Catholic, which is to say unabashedly
orthodox, and a magazine in the old-fashioned sense: witty, urbane, not pompous or
shrill, full of serious reporting, insightful opinions, and worthwhile coverage of art
and literature.
We are as bored of Catholic defenses of Hayek and anti-papal ranting as we
are of Thomas Merton and worker priests. We reject the progressive left, the
libertarian-conservative right, and the neoliberal consensus of atomization, spolia-
tion, rootlessness, and mindless entertainment into which both of the former are
rapidly being subsumed. We are not nostalgists hankering over a mythical “moment
before” when it was supposedly possible to reconcile the Church to the world. (We
aren’t wacky neo-medievalists dreaming of the Shire either!) Nor, finally, are we call-
ing for a “retreat” from politics, an idea we consider incoherent. We are concerned
with the world as it exists now and with the future that lies before us. We are attempt-
ing something at once radical and painfully obvious: to approach questions of public
import as if what the Church has consistently taught were actually true. We do not
pretend to know what an authentically Catholic response to the crises of postmodern
liberalism would look like. But we do know the following:

• Catholics are no longer faced, as we were during the Cold War, with a choice
in world affairs between a liberal democratic capitalism that tolerates the
exercise of faith and an authoritarian atheistic communism.
• Faith in the Cold War-era Western liberal consensus and its global post-1989
neoliberal successor is crumbling around the world.
• The post-war conservative movement in the United States has not turned
back the clock a single minute and has succeeded only in gradually lowering
marginal tax rates as same-sex marriage became law in all fifty states.
• Proceduralist arguments about freedom of worship, expression, and assembly
and originalist constitutional gambits have been of no avail to social conserva-
tives faced with a progressive opposition playing by a different set of rules.
• Business interests have aided and abetted the decline of morals and the rise of
obscenity and irreligion at every turn. This is not incidental or accidental but
integral to the operation of globalized capitalism, which is oriented toward an
endless cycle of innovation, disruption, destruction, and replacement.
• Neither major political party in the United States even attempts to speak to the
full range of Catholic teaching on issues ranging from the just wage and the
harmonious cooperation of classes to the rights of the unborn and the evil of
contraception.

As if all of that were not gloomy enough, we observe that that it comes amid the worst
crisis in the modern history of the Church, the heresy, apostasy, and indifferentism
of the last half century. Strange to say, we feel more sanguine about the latter than
we do concerning the related but ultimately less consequential crisis of the American
Catholic political and social imagination. Our Lord promised St. Peter that the gates
of hell would never ultimately prevail against His Church; He issued, so far as we are
aware, no similar guarantee that an alliance of sophists, economists, and calculators
with antinomians and dilettantes would not all but destroy American Catholic intel-
Publisher lectual life, which indeed has already happened. It is, in fact, likely in the foreseeable
William Borman
future that Catholic discourse in this country will continue to decline in spite—or
Editor rather more likely—because of our efforts.
Matthew Walther Who knows? In any case, we are delighted to publish an inaugural issue that
Kapellmeister features everything from Brandon McGinley’s profile of a man who spent thirty
William Marshner years serving an unjust prison sentence (pg.9) and J. D. Vance’s moving account of his
conversion (pg.14) to our editor’s musings about giant squids (pg.35) and a reflection
The Lamp is published
by the Three Societies by Susannah Black on the coronavirus epidemic (pg.48). Our contributors include
Foundation, a nonprofit Catholics of all ages, political views, and backgrounds, with a wide range of opin-
organization based in ions (and even liturgical preferences)—that is to say, men and women who differ
Three Rivers, Michigan.
in everything save for their fidelity to the immutable Deposit of the Faith handed
www.thelampmagazine.com down to us by the Holy Apostles—and one pillar of the Church of England.
4 The Lamp
> F E U I L L ETO N
c A priest once introduced the Cardinal’s Annual Ap-
peal (in what diocese it does not matter) as follows:
“Well, today we have to talk about the Cardinal’s Ap-
peal. Not the most exciting subject. You might say
it happens every year. Of course, you might say the
same thing about Easter. But one is the Resurrection
of Our Lord and one is, well, the Cardinal’s Appeal.”
c If the Bible disappeared overnight, would any-
body notice? It sometimes seems as if the answer is
no. We are not quite as flippant as a friend of ours
who once quipped that the Bible is one of St. Jerome’s
now-forgotten bestsellers, not nearly as well known
as the Apologiae contra Rufinum. But we do believe that
for all practical purposes the Vulgate was and remains
the definitive version of Holy Writ and find it slightly
terrifying that the average Catholic does not realize
that the so-called Nova Vulgata promulgated in 1979
is a pastiche, and a somewhat fanciful one at that, not
unlike the free-and-easy Latin translations of Hebrew
and Greek that children did as exercises in Milton’s
time. Meanwhile, we are wondering: Is it even possi-
ble to purchase an edition of the Clementine Vulgate
newer than that of 1946?
c Microcosmographie, or a Peece of the World discov-
ered, in Essayes and Characters is a curious little book
by John Earle, the English translator of the Eikon Basi-
like. One of us recently acquired an edition edited by
Sir Israel Gollancz and published by Dent in 1899. As
far as we are aware it has not since been printed. As its
subtitle suggests, the Microcosmographie is made up of
short essays devoted to various types and occupations. To
a smoker, Earle writes, tobacco “is meat, drink, and
clothes,” a remarkably neat description that would
likely earn the assent of non-smokers as well. He puts
in a good word for bar-room chatters (“the dregs of
wit, yet mingled with good drink may have some
relish”). He is harder on what we would now call an
agnostic (“A man guiltier of credulity than he is taken
to be; for it is out of his belief of every thing, that he
fully believes nothing”), a lawyer (“We can call him no
great author, yet he writes very much”), and a critic
(“one that has spelled over a great many books, and his
observation is the orthography”). Also memorable are
his descriptions of a slow but perfunctory student (“a
kind of alchymist or persecutor of nature, that would
change the dull lead of his brain into finer metal, with
success many times as unprosperous, or at least not
+
quitting the cost, to wit, of his own oil and candles”),
a cook (“The kitchen is his hell, and he the devil in it,
where his meat and he fry together”), and a drunk (“a
blind man with eyes, and a cripple with legs on”).
c It is never too early to start thinking about this
year’s gardens. St. Bernard calls Our Blessed Mother
“the violet of humility.”
c The American Dialect Society has announced its
word of the decade: the singular “they.” Needless to
say we oppose this innovation. (Do not bore us with
quotations purporting to show that it was once em-
ployed by the author of a little-read medieval allego-
ry or by Trollope when he was writing two hundred
words per minute.) This is not least because these days
it is frequently used in cases in which the sex of the
subject could only be masculine or feminine—e.g.,
when referring to a priest. This is sloppiness, not
sensitivity. Instead we are inclined to recommend
the middle course adopted by, among others, Justice
Samuel Alito of the Supreme Court, who employs
the cumbersome but grammatical “he or she” when
he wants a generic singular. Still: “For the vision of a
novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, be-
cause behind his characters and apart from them must
stand something stable to which he relates them; spe-
cialised because since he is a single person with one
sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe
with conviction are strictly limited.” Who’s afraid of
Virginia Woolf? Modern grammarians, it seems.
c Speaking of end-of-decade lists, we wonder how
many people (including the compilers) have actually
listened to some of the records that have appeared in
articles with titles like “The Best 200 Albums of the
2000s.” We cannot say exactly how many pop albums
released in the last ten years we have heard all the way
through, but between our editor and publisher the
number could safely be counted on one hand. Can
readers guess which of the following are actual titles
considered among the best of the previous decade
and which are inventions?
• Mister Sociable, The big can for the plumbers
• Ratking, So It Goes
• Huerco S., For Those of You Who Have Never (and
Also Those Who Have)
 Easter 2020 5

c Our editor’s children have constantly shifting

• Popcaan, Where We Come From
tastes and preferences when it comes to bedtime read-
• Lead Ted, SeaAyEmPeeBeeEeElEl
ing. But they never seem to get tired of “The Wolf and
• I’m Still Brianna, Two, Three, Four Kitten
the Seven Little Kids”:
• Fennesz, Agora
There was once upon a time an old goat who had
• Mrs Good of Cornwall, Ol Campbell
seven little kids, and loved them with all the love of
• Mild Kid Chris, Chess
a mother for her children. One day she wanted to
• Nicolas Jaar, Space Is Only Noise
go into the forest and fetch some food. So she called
• Les Shoes, Master of Japan
all seven to her and said, “Dear children, I have to go
• The 1975: I like it when you sleep…
into the forest. Be on your guard against the wolf. If
• The Love of Forks, Mackenzie
he comes in, he will devour you all—skin, hair, and
• Tierra Whack, Whack World
everything. The wretch often disguises himself, but
• Parquet Courts, po
you will know him at once by his rough voice and his
• BeeSea, I is Brave (And Don’t You Forget It)
black feet.”
• Rocky Better Have My Shoe, Anthonyastic
The kids said, “Dear mother, we will take good care
• Pallbearer, Foundations of Burden
of ourselves. You may go away without any anxiety.”
• Foursfour, Smoking For The Big Banana
Then the old one bleated, and went on her way with
• Bunday Monday, Bundy Monday
an easy mind.
• Tots Brave, Don’t Talk to Me About Love, yaz?
It was not long before some one knocked at the
• Noname, Room 25
house-door and called, “Open the door, dear children,
• Ultra-Anthony Goes Flip, They Were Good Love
your mother is here, and has brought something back
• Amen Dunes, Freedom
with her for each of you.” But the little kids knew that
it was the wolf, by the rough voice.
“We will not open the door,” cried they, “you are
c We promise that we did buy some new music dur-
not our mother. She has a soft, pleasant voice, but
ing the last decade. One favorite was Víkingur Ólafs-
your voice is rough. You are the wolf.”
son’s recent anthology of Bach transcriptions.
Then the wolf went away to a shopkeeper and
bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this and
made his voice soft with it. Then he came back,
c We find ourselves returning to this remarkable
knocked at the door of the house, and called, “Open
passage from Pope Francis’s homily of December 1:
the door, dear children, your mother is here and has
“One lives for things, no longer knowing what for;
brought something back with her for each of you.”
one has many goods but no longer does good; houses
But the wolf had laid his black paws against the
are filled with things but emptied of children. This is
window, and the children saw them and cried, “We
the drama of today: houses full of things but empty of
will not open the door. Our mother has not black feet
children, the demographic winter that we are suffer-
like you. You are the wolf.”
ing. Time is thrown away for pastimes, but there is
Then the wolf ran to a baker and said, “I have hurt
no time for God or for others. And when you live for
my feet, rub some dough over them for me. And when
things, things are never enough.”
the baker had rubbed his feet over, he ran to the mill-
This translation no longer appears on the Vatican
er and said, “Strew some white meal over my feet for
website. We do not know why it was edited, or by
me.” The miller thought to himself, the wolf wants to
whom, or when. The new version retains the sense,
deceive someone, and refused; but the wolf said, “If
but it is far less eloequent (“Therefore people live on
you will not do it, I will devour you.” Then the miller
things and no longer know what they live for; they
was afraid, and made his paws white for him.
have so many possessions but no longer do good”).
So now the wretch went for the third time to the
A glance at the Italian original suggests that the first
house-door, knocked at it, and said, “Open the door
version, in addition to being better English, was more
for me, children, your dear little mother has come
faithful to the Holy Father’s words and style. It would
home, and has brought every one of you something
be interesting to know what vandal was responsible
back from the forest with her.”
for this instance of what is known as “stealth editing.”
The little kids cried, “First show us your paws that
we may know if you are our dear little mother.”
Then he put his paws in through the window, and
c We have never been entirely sure what Voltaire
when the kids saw that they were white, they believed
meant when he wrote “Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait
that all he said was true, and opened the door. But who
l’inventer.” (If he had read St. Anselm, he would know
should come in but the wolf. The kids were terrified
that this is in fact a very clever argument for God’s
and wanted to hide themselves. One sprang under
existence.)
the table, the second into the bed, the third into the
stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth into the
6 The Lamp

cupboard, the sixth under the washing-bowl, and the And when he got to the well and stooped over the
seventh into the clock-case. But the wolf found them water to drink, the heavy stones made him fall in, and
all, and used no great ceremony; one after the other he had to drown miserably.
he swallowed them down his throat. The youngest, When the seven kids saw that, they came running
who was in the clock-case, was the only one he did to the spot and cried aloud, “The wolf is dead, the wolf
not find. When the wolf had satisfied his appetite he is dead,” and danced for joy round about the well with
took himself off, laid himself down under a tree in the their mother.
green meadow outside, and began to sleep. We like this story because we think that it is true.
Soon afterwards the old goat came home again Those of us who have done our best to live as faith-
from the forest. Ah, what a sight she saw there. The ful Catholics in the last fifty years are like the kids,
house-door stood wide open. The table, chairs, and though perhaps a few who had the benefit of conven-
benches were thrown down, the washing-bowl lay ient clock-cases nearby (and the knowledge of how
broken to pieces, and the quilts and pillows were to get inside them) were not swallowed. We all long
pulled off the bed. She sought her children, but they equally for the loving embrace of our true Mother.
were nowhere to be found. She called them one after
another by name, but no one answered.
At last, when she came to the youngest, a soft voice c Back to Earle for a moment. His description of an
cried, “Dear Mother, I am in the clock-case.” She took antiquary is worth giving in full:
the kid out, and it told her that the wolf had come and
He is a man strangly thrifty of time past, and an ene-
had eaten all the others. Then you may imagine how
my indeed to his maw, whence he fetches out many
she wept over her poor children.
things when they are now all rotten and stinking. He
At length in her grief she went out, and the young-
is one that hath that unnatural disease to be enam-
est kid ran with her. When they came to the meadow,
oured of old age and wrinkles, and loves all things (as
there lay the wolf by the tree and snored so loud that
Dutchmen do cheese,) the better for being mouldy
the branches shook. She looked at him on every side
and worm-eaten. He is of our religion, because we
and saw that something was moving and struggling in
say it is most antient; and yet a broken statue would
his gorged belly. Ah, heavens, she thought, is it pos-
almost make him an idolater. A great admirer he is
sible that my poor children whom he has swallowed
of the rust of old monuments, and reads only those
down for his supper, can be still alive?
characters, where time hath eaten out the letters. He
Then the kid had to run home and fetch scissors,
will go you forty miles to see a saint’s well or a ruined
and a needle and thread and the goat cut open the
abbey; and there be but a cross or stone foot-stool in
monster’s stomach, and hardly had she made one cut,
the way, he’ll be considering it so long, till he forget
than one little kid thrust its head out, and when she
his journey. His estate consists much in shekels, and
cut farther, all six sprang out one after another, and
Roman coins; and he hath more pictures of Cæsar,
were all still alive, and had suffered no injury what-
than James or Elizabeth. Beggars cozen him with
ever, for in his greediness the monster had swallowed
musty things which they have raked from dunghills,
them down whole.
and he preserves their rags for precious relicks. He
What rejoicing there was! They embraced their
loves no library, but where there are more spiders
dear mother, and jumped like a sailor at his wedding.
volumes than authors, and looks with great admira-
The mother, however, said, “Now go and look for
tion on the antique work of cobwebs. Printed books
some big stones, and we will fill the wicked beast’s
he contemns, as a novelty of this latter age, but a
stomach with them while he is still asleep.” Then the
manuscript he pores on everlastingly, especially if
seven kids dragged the stones thither with all speed,
the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a pa-
and put as many of them into his stomach as they
renthesis between every syllable. He would give all
could get in, and the mother sewed him up again in
the books in his study (which are rarities all,) for one
the greatest haste, so that he was not aware of any-
of the old Roman binding, or six lines of Tully in
thing and never once stirred.
his own hand. His chamber is hung commonly with
When the wolf at length had had his fill of sleep,
strange beasts skins, and is a kind of charnel-house
he got on his legs, and as the stones in his stomach
of bones extraordinary; and his discourse upon
made him very thirsty, he wanted to go to a well to
them, if you will hear him, shall last longer. His very
drink. But when he began to walk and move about,
attire is that which is the eldest out of fashion, and
the stones in his stomach knocked against each other
you may pick a criticism out of his breeches. He nev-
and rattled. Then cried he:
er looks upon himself till he is grey-haired, and then
“What rumbles and tumbles he is pleased with his own antiquity. His grave does
Against my poor bones? not fright him, for he has been used to sepulchers,
I thought ‘twas six kids, and he likes death the better, because it gathers him
But it feels like big stones.” to his fathers.
 Easter 2020
BRASS RUBBINGS
MATERIAL WITNESS
BY P. J. S M I T H
A Jesuit priest I know who spent some time in Indiana
describes it as one of the most balkanized places he
has visited. Distances of a few dozen miles hide the
sorts of cultural gulfs you write poems about. This is
especially true in matters of religion. There are Catho-
lic strongholds in southern Indiana. Jasper, in Dubois
County, is famous for its German Catholic roots. Ev-
ansville and Terre Haute also have strong Catholic
communities. Bedford, in Lawrence County, howev-
er, is not one of those places.
At one point, Bedford was a Baptist town. There
used to be vibrant mainline congregations—Presby-
terians, Methodists. They still exist, but one has the
sense that a single bad flu season would just about do
them in. Even the Baptists aren’t what they once were.
There was a nasty split in the First Baptist Church
about twenty years ago, though the breakaway group
came back after their congregation saw the demo-
graphic writing on the financial wall. Then there is
the familiar social dimension of churchgoing. This
or that church will get popular for whatever reason.
And some of those congregations even believe specif-
ic things. When I was a kid, it was the First Assembly
of God. Today I think it’s the First Church of God.
Don’t ask me what the difference is.
It is believed that there were Catholics in Law-
rence County as early as 1835. It was not until about
1850, however, that Mass was regularly said there. Fa-
ther Patrick Murphy, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in
Martin County and a trustee of Indiana University,
said Mass once a month or so at various houses in the
county and at the courthouse. The other sacraments
required getting word to a priest in New Albany. Fa-
ther Murphy kept this up until 1859, when he was
replaced by the colorful Father Louis Neyron. Father
Neyron claimed to have been a surgeon in Napoleon’s
army, journeying as far as Moscow with the Emper-
or before ultimately being captured at Waterloo. No
doubt dismayed by Bonaparte’s meteoric fall, Doctor
Neyron decided to chuck in the military life for the
priesthood.
If the legend is true—and it probably isn’t, but
that’s another story—Catholics in southern Indiana
owe much to Kutuzov and Wellington. Dr. Neyron be-
came Father Neyron and answered the call of Bishop
Simon Bruté, coming to Indiana in 1835. Succeeding
Father Murphy, who may fairly be called the Apos-
tle of Lawrence County, was no doubt difficult. But
Father Neyron managed as well as anyone, probably
7
because he could tend to the spiritual and medical
needs of his flock. Indeed, even Protestants availed
themselves of Father Neyron’s services, which he
provided to all without asking fees. Father Neyron
moved on in his turn, becoming one of the earliest
professors at the University of Notre Dame. Father Jo-
seph O’Reilley of Greencastle and Father Philip Doyle
from North Vernon succeeded Father Murphy, too.
It was Father Doyle who proposed building an actual
church in 1864.
Acting on Father Doyle’s advice, the Catholics of
Bedford bought a lot on what is now I Street in Bed-
ford and laid a foundation. Then the Catholics of Bed-
ford got lucky in a roundabout way. The Methodists in
Bedford decided to buy the old Presbyterian Church,
then located at what is now the intersection of K and
Fourteenth Streets. The Presbyterians moved to the
intersection of L and Sixteenth. The Methodists then
offered their old church building—located next door
to the lot previously purchased—to the Catholics. By
now Father C. John Mougin was priest in Bedford and
he negotiated a shrewd trade: the Methodists could
have five hundred dollars plus the building materials
purchased for the Catholic church if the Catholics
could have the old Methodist building. Deal done. In
addition to Kutuzov and Wellington, Catholics in Bed-
ford must count John Wesley among their benefactors.
The Catholics in Bedford had a church without
the arduous building project promised when they
bought the lot. Father Doyle came back for the dedi-
cation, bringing his whole choir from North Vernon,
no easy task on the rugged roads of the day. On June
26, 1865, Father Mougin baptized Angelina Tyree,
the first child in the building’s history. By and large,
however, the life of the parish of St. Vincent de Paul
continued as it had since the days of Father Murphy.
A succession of priests came through town and said
Mass and dispensed the sacraments. Mission work was
still an integral part of their activity in the area. As
late as 1879, when Father John Unverzagt came to Bed-
ford, he had to journey as far as Bloomfield, in Greene
County, and Stinesville, in Monroe County, to minis-
ter to the Catholics there.
In 1887, Father Matthias H. Bogeman became pas-
tor of St. Vincent de Paul. It is hard to imagine a priest
like Father Bogeman today. Born in Franklin County
in 1860, he was ordained in 1885 and given care of St.
Charles Borromeo in Bloomington and surrounding
areas. In addition to his clerical attainments, he was
8 The Lamp
an accomplished architect. It is said he designed Kirk-
wood Hall on the campus of Indiana University and
the Monroe County Courthouse in Bloomington. Nat-
urally, by 1893, Father Bogeman designed a beautiful
new church for Bedford.
One important thing to remember about Bedford
is that it has historically been a center of limestone
production in the United States. The reason why
everyone’s water is unbelievably hard and everyone’s
basement is more or less damp is that Bedford is situ-
ated on top of an enormous deposit of Oolitic lime-
stone. It’s the sort of white-gray stone that looks es-
pecially impressive on a monumental scale. You have
probably seen this limestone before, since the Empire
State Building and the Pentagon are both built out
of it. As the quarries took off, Italians and Germans
came to town to work in them. The quarries, which
were still doing big business in the 1970s, form the
backdrop for the iconic cycling movie, Breaking Away,
which has nothing to do with St. Vincent de Paul.
The cost for Bogeman’s church was twenty-two
thousand dollars in 1893. The Catholics of Bedford
pulled together, donating not only money but also
labor to the demolition of the church purchased in
1864 and the construction of the new building. The
altars of the church were carved by men who would
later hear Mass said at those altars. The Communion
rail was carved by men who would later communicate
at that rail. The font was carved by men whose chil-
dren and grandchildren would be baptized in it.
Just as it had nearly thirty years previously, luck
intervened. While Father Bogeman was planning his
great church in Bedford, the great Columbian Expo-
sition was taking place on the shores of Lake Michi-
gan. At this great fair, some fine Belgian stained-glass
windows were exhibited. Just the sort of windows Fa-
ther Bogeman needed for his new church. Funds were
raised for twelve large windows at the price of three
hundred dollars a piece and twenty three smaller win-
dows. The new church was dedicated on July 24, 1894,
almost thirty years to the day since the church bought
from the Methodists was dedicated. Father Bogeman
sang a high Mass and Bishop Silas Chatard confirmed
thirty nine children. It is this building that stands
today.
This concrete connection between the people of
the parish and the building no doubt spared St. Vin-
cent the fate of so many churches in the wake of the
Second Vatican Council. The descendants and rela-
tives of the men and women who paid for and actu-
ally built the altars, the Communion rail, and other
fixtures of the church were still in the congregation
when a young priest proposed getting with the time
and renovating the old building. I was once told by
my grandfather, then a congregant, that one of the
worthies of the parish told the young priest that he
could take out the stone Communion rail if he want-
ed. “But Father,” he added, “please be careful with it.
You won’t always be pastor here, and we might want
to put it back after you’re gone.” It never moved
an inch.
St. Paul writes in the Epistle to the Hebrews that
we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. In
his commentary on the letter, Aquinas tells us that
this cloud of witnesses, the saints, glorifies God in
word and deed. They are an example to us, set before
us for our consolation. Aquinas connects this to St.
James’s Epistle, in which the labors and patience of
the prophets are proposed, and to St. Augustine’s con-
fident admonition that the Holy Spirit speaks in the
deeds of the saints. I do not know whether any of the
men who built St. Vincent de Paul are saints. I hope
and pray all of them are. They, too, are witnesses of
a kind.
P. J. Smith is the editor of Semiduplex.
 Easter 2020 9

It’s the first time Jeffrey Cristina has walked down

Dresden Way in more than forty years. He walks past
empty lots where his family’s homes once stood, past
THE St. Kieran, the Victorian red-brick parish church—
JUNGLE now, like so many other Rust Belt churches, condos—
where he and his siblings went to Mass. He walks past
the spot on the asphalt, long since paved over, where
he and his girlfriend carved their declaration of love,
to the retaining wall where, on December 10, 1975, the
neighborhood tough asked him to help collect a debt.
He continues on, going half a block to Butler
Street, the main drag in Lawrenceville, to the road
he would walk down to swim in the Allegheny River.
He goes past the bar, a time capsule from the seven-
ties, wrapped in weathered dark brown paneling and
ornamented with CONLEY’S in green neon and a St.
Patrick’s Day Pabst Blue Ribbon sign in the window.
He stops at 5222 Butler where, according to the Com-
monwealth of Pennsylvania, on December 10, 1975, he
was responsible for the murder of eighty-two-year-old
Frank Slazinski.
This address, like the rest of Lawrenceville (except
Conley’s), has been spruced up in recent years. Its
north wall, previously shared with another in a long

HOME
line of rowhouses, is now exposed and adorned with
a handsome mural of Old Glory. While its upper two
floors remain residential, in keeping with best practic-
es for neighborhood renewal its first floor is home to
a business, the Butterwood Bake Consortium, which
looks like something out of The Great British Bake-Off.
Whether the owners of the Butterwood know that
their shop occupies the first-floor apartment where
a man was murdered, I can’t say. Memory in Law-
renceville is complicated. So many of the gentrified
homes and businesses maintain aspects of the neigh-
borhood’s grim and grimy past, but they do so largely
as an affectation, an attempt to capture the market for
Rust Belt chic. But living in Lawrenceville in 1975, es-
pecially as a newcomer, and especially as a teenage boy
of a single mother, was not about embracing an aes-
thetic; it was about making daily choices to survive.
Jeffrey Cristina was born on October 26, 1958,
to Elsie Rose and Andrew “Tony” Cristina. Elsie left
home to marry when, according to a report compiled
by Jeff’s federal public defender, “her father tried to
get into bed with her.”
Isolated from her family, Elsie was now bound to
Tony, sacramentally and socially, though not always
financially. Tony’s income was inconsistent: Through
the sixties he worked intermittent construction jobs,
often coming home only on the weekends, but his
preferred way to make money was boxing. Under
the name Tony Christy, he amassed twenty-nine sanc-
tioned bouts, including nineteen in his 1959-1961 hey-
day. He touched the big leagues on July 20, 1960, at the
BY BRANDON McGINLEY old Chicago Stadium, with its six-keyboard pipe or-
gan and reputation for mania. A Brooklyn kid, Roland
Kellem, who fought a dozen bouts at Madison Square
10 The Lamp
Garden in his career, laid him out in five rounds. Tony
never again fought outside the state, save for a 1964
comeback knockout of a rookie across the Ohio River
in Steubenville.
Whether he was in the ring or the bar or the home,
Tony liked to punch things. “I was scared to death of
my dad,” Jeff recalls, though it was his eldest brother,
who dared to protect the younger siblings, who ex-
perienced the worst of their father’s rage. Tony’s pe-
riods of financial dependence on Elsie only made mat-
ters worse, as the necessity of her income made the
level of control he craved impossible. He had to drive
her to work where she would stay, out of his home
and his sight, for hours. Or sometimes he would re-
fuse to take her to work, and she would be fired, and
the family would run out of money, and she would
take a new job, and the cycle would begin again.
Tony and Elsie had five children, three sons and
two daughters, of whom Jeff was the youngest son
and the second youngest overall, besides Angie. The
family’s living situation was never steady or ortho-
dox. For the first few years of Jeff’s life, they lived in
what was then “the country,” now the paved-over Saw
Mill Run Valley. They found something like stability
in a home with Tony’s mother and younger brother
in the south Pittsburgh neighborhood of Brookline.
On Lamarido Street, the Cristinas stood out.
Unlike Lawrenceville, Brookline has never really
changed: a working- to middle-class quasi-suburb, sep-
arated from the city’s industrialized floodplains by a
tall and leafy ridge, it was home to quiet, respectable
families. Tony Cristina probably wasn’t the only hus-
band to walk down the cobblestones of Capital Ave-
nue into the West Liberty Valley, drink angrily at the
Mineshaft bar, then stumble back up the steep slope
to pulverize his family. But this violence was much
less common, on the eve of the collapse of the steel
industry, in Brookline than in other neighborhoods.
The stability of these surroundings kept Jeff and
his siblings afloat when all the adults left. First it was
Elsie, who had to stab Tony with a kitchen knife to
escape her home; she never lived with him again, and
trusted that her mother-in-law could keep the kids
safe. Then Tony went to Florida to find himself. Then
his mother and brother moved out, too, leaving the
five Cristina children, aged nine to nineteen, alone on
Lamarido Street. Jeff would walk Angie to a friend’s
house to sleep at night, then pick her up to walk her
to school.
Elsie had relatives in Lawrenceville, and so once
Tony was out of the state she made plans to reunite
her family. She rented a house in a narrow lot on Dres-
den Way, a few doors down from her brother, and all
the children followed. In Pittsburgh, the alleys, always
named “Way,” that run parallel to residential streets
are usually fronted by garages and backyards; Law-
renceville is one of the few neighborhoods with hous-
es on the alleys, abutting neighbors on three sides. De-
pending on the prevailing economic conditions, the
effect is either a charming or a choking density.
Pittsburgh’s rivers form a sideways Y, with the Al-
legheny coming from the northeast and the Monon-
gahela from the southeast. Lawrenceville spans much
of the south riverfront of the Allegheny, hugging its
left bank for more than two miles. It is the only city
neighborhood to comprise three separate wards, and
in current toponymy it is reckoned as three distinct
neighborhoods: Lower, Central, and Upper. But in the
early seventies, there were only the ward numbers—
Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth—and everything depended
on them.
The Sixth Ward spans from Doughboy Square, the
inbound terminus of Butler Street near Thirty-Fourth
Street where a representation of a young World War
One soldier stands, to Fourtieth Street and the Arse-
nal Middle School, named for the Allegheny Arsenal
that exploded in the worst civilian disaster of the Civ-
il War. The Ninth Ward, the downtown of Lawrence-
ville, picks up at Fourtieth and goes to Fifty-First
Street, including the expansive Allegheny Cemetery.
And the Tenth Ward, always the grittiest, goes to the
end of the residential district at Fifty-Seventh Street,
then along another half-mile of riverfront industry to
the Sixty-Second Street Bridge.
For the boys and young men of Lawrenceville,
these arbitrary political borders took on an enchant-
ed quality. The geography gave a mystical purpose to
their lives as the market creatively destroyed their
future security: In 1974, employment in the Ameri-
can steel industry was already down twenty percent
from its peak, and it would drop another fifty percent
in the next decade. It was a smaller and stupider ver-
sion of the Balkans—the owner of a landmark Tenth
Ward pub once said that marrying someone from the
Ninth “was considered outside your species”—with
no stakes and entirely legendary grievances.
Jeff Cristina quickly learned the ropes. He was a
Tenth Ward kid assigned to the Sixth Ward Arsenal
Middle School. In between lay the Ninth, a minefield
of gangs and freelance toughs who, Jeff remembers
vividly, “would know you ain’t from Ninth Ward and
would jump on you and beat you up.” This is exactly
what happened his first four days at Arsenal, where he
had shown up late in the spring of eighth grade, and
the school agreed to truncate his school year so that
he could get a fresh start in high school.
It worked. While the Cristina home remained cha-
otic, with Elsie working a day and a night job and the
older children getting in and out of trouble before
eventually leaving altogether—one to a wife, one to
family in the suburbs, and one to Tony in Florida—
Jeff found stability at Peabody High School. He made
a friend, Bud, with whom he would navigate the al-
leys and go swimming in the murky Allegheny. And
he had a girlfriend, Cathy, whom he planned to marry
after graduating.
 Easter 2020
When Jeffrey Cristina was processed into the
Pennsylvania state prison system at the age of
eighteen, he measured five feet, three inches, and
one-hundred twenty pounds. His varsity jacket was a
boys’ extra-large. Even on his compact frame, his head
is small and his features tight and mousy. But he was
from a “family of fighters,” and it showed in his pos-
ture, his manner, his countenance. After all, this small
teenager was the man of the house in a place where a
man’s strength was the only authority the roving boys
respected. As long as the family was new and unaffili-
ated with a gang, they were easy marks: Boys regularly
smashed Elsie’s windshield and harassed young An-
gie. And so Jeff made halting overtures to the Tenth
Ward’s masters, James “Red” Phillips and his deputy,
Billy Pirozzi, in an attempt to ingratiate his family
while keeping his distance from too much trouble.
On December 10, 1975, Jeff was sitting on a retain-
ing wall on Dresden Way when Billy Pirozzi sidled up
to him with a proposal: He needed a lookout while
he entered an empty apartment to collect on a debt.
After a little cajoling, Jeff agreed—though he immedi-
ately felt uneasy as they walked not into another al-
ley or up the hill into the thicket of small houses but
down to the wide and public Butler Street. And then
when the door to 5222 Butler was locked, Jeff again
thought about begging off, but the potential benefits
of this one little favor for Elsie and Angie flooded his
reason.
At Billy’s direction, Jeff cautiously kicked the door,
and the bottom panel fell in. He slid his small body
inside, opened the door, and waited in the vestibule
while Billy did his business. He saw Angie in the street
and gestured wildly for her to go away. Then, to his
surprise, he heard yelling, a crack, a thud. He ran, wor-
ried what Billy might think but more worried about
what he’d heard and seen. Billy later emerged with
cash and a television—a heavy load in 1975—leaving
behind distinctive foot and fingerprints.
Sometime after this—accounts differ on when ex-
actly—Billy returned to 5222 Butler, this time in the
submissive role with Red Phillips. Whether Red want-
ed to finish off the heist, Frank Slazinski, or both is
impossible to say. What is nearly certain is that Red
landed the blows that resulted, four days later, in Slaz-
inski’s death.
This was too much even for Lawrenceville, and the
Pittsburgh Police swarmed the Tenth Ward and Pea-
body High School looking for answers and a scalp. It
became clear to the cops that Jeff, Billy, and Red had
all participated in some way in burglarizing Slazinski,
and so they brought in all three. A prisoner’s dilem-
ma too complicated for Law & Order ensued. It seems
that Jeff and Billy attempted to forge an alliance that
would have included Red, but he aced the polygraph
and issued threats against Billy’s sisters. Billy’s story
then replaced Red with Jeff as the ringleader and as-
sailant, and Jeff’s confused attempts to coordinate
11
accounts with Billy now looked like guilt. Both were
charged with second-degree murder, which then car-
ried a life sentence without parole in Pennsylvania.
On the day before the June trial, the district attor-
ney offered Jeff a deal: Plead to third-degree murder
and be sent to the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center
until the age of twenty-one. Elsie wanted him to take
the deal, but Tony had come up from Florida amidst
the crisis, and no son of his was going to be a patsy.
Tony berated Jeff and Elsie in the presence of their
attorney, who had been willing to take the plea to
Judge John O’Brien with only Elsie’s consent. But Jeff
could not resist his father; he rejected the deal and,
despite conflicting evidence and incomprehensible
testimony from Billy, was convicted of second-degree
murder. Billy got six years for third-degree murder, of
which he served two years.
Judge O’Brien never forgot Tony Cristina’s infuri-
ating intransigence, and never gave Jeffrey a second
chance. A year later, moved by conscience and the
increasingly psychopathic behavior of Red Phillips,
Billy Pirozzi signed and notarized the following
statement:
I William Pirozzi, at this time would like to make
a true confussion of the fact that I William Pirozzi
was at the seen of the murder of which I have been
convitced of, and that Jeffrey Cristina, was not at the
seen of the crime of which he has been convicted
of… I have tryed in the pass to establish this fact, but
the court’s just neglected my statement, and due to
the fact that Jeffrey Cristina has been found guilty
of something that he did not do, I fine it hard to
see a man go to prison for a crime that he did not
coment. I feel sorry for the fact that a man has to
pay for something that he did not do. I would like
for it to be known that Jeffrey Cristina did not have
nothing to do with the murder in which he has been
convicted of…for I am the individual to blame, and I
confess to the fact that Jeffrey Cristina did not have
nothing to do with the murder of which he has been
convicted of.
Respectfully your’s
William Pirozzi
Jeff’s lawyer begged for a new trial, but this would
require Billy to be brought up on perjury charges
for the testimony that convicted Jeff. Judge O’Brien
had no interest in bringing Billy Pirozzi back into his
courtroom, and no interest in retrying the murder
case. There would be no new trial, and Jeffrey Cristina
was processed into the State Correctional Institution
at Camp Hill on May 16, 1977.
The Cristinas were Catholics, but they were not
a Catholic family. In Brookline, the clan belonged
to Our Lady of Loreto, a parish which had just been
established to accommodate the neighborhood’s
growth, but languished for its entire lifespan in a ren-
12 The Lamp
ovated but bland school chapel. Tony never went to
Mass, while Elsie required that the kids attend Mass
and catechism but only occasionally joined them. She
quizzed her children about the readings to ensure
they were fulfilling their duty.
In Lawrenceville they could nearly see the majes-
tic St. Kieran from the Dresden Way house. There,
Jeffrey was confirmed under the name Michael, an
appropriate patronage against the assaults of the dev-
il. In nearly every Pittsburgh neighborhood, even in
the mid-seventies the parish was the center of not just
liturgical but social life. Jeff’s family was attached only
loosely to this world.
Jeff entered the Camp Hill prison with a minimal
relationship with Christ and several legitimate griev-
ances: against his father, against Billy and Red, against
Judge O’Brien, and against a society that had discard-
ed him. That bitterness lingered for decades, and he
knows that it kept him from embracing the Cross.
Even so, there was a preternatural discipline and
peacefulness in the way Jeff acclimated to prison. He
channeled whatever brutishness he inherited from
Tony into developing his small frame, and only a few
years into his term he became the Eastern Pennsylva-
nia prison powerlifting champion in his weight class.
When three days of riots required the state police to
storm Camp Hill like an enemy stronghold, Jeff kept
his hands clean. When he was sent to California while
the Commonwealth reconfigured its prison system,
officials required that he affiliate with a gang as part
of their inmate management procedure; he refused to
join an extant group and instead formed “the Pennsyl-
vania Boys” with his fellow transferees.
When he returned to Pennsylvania, he was eventu-
ally settled closer to home: the State Correctional In-
stitution at Somerset, in the picturesque Laurel High-
lands in the southwest of the state. There are prisons
where the walls obscure all views of nature and free-
dom; S.C.I.-Somerset is not one of them. Situated in a
valley glade, the men can watch the seasons pass in the
turning of the hillside forests.
He credits a fellow inmate, James, and the minister
assigned to Somerset, Deacon Pat, for bringing him
back to the Church. But it’s what he says offhand that
reveals who is really responsible: He loved Eucharistic
adoration. That hour of stillness and presence, amid
the din and dehumanization of prison life, was more
valuable than any collection of words and arguments
could ever be. He started going to Mass again.
In the mid-nineties, when Jeff was fully reintegrat-
ed into the Body of Christ, only a half dozen men at-
tended the Sunday Masses offered in the utilitarian,
but not unlovely, prison chapel. Since then, in part
due to Jeff’s evangelical efforts, that number has in-
creased at least tenfold. The liturgical ministry, in-
cluding a music ensemble, at S.C.I.-Somerset is at least
as organized as any suburban parish—entirely on the
initiative of the Catholic inmates.
On March 25, 1993, the Commonwealth of Penn-
sylvania’s Board of Pardons unanimously recom-
mended that Jeffrey Cristina have his sentence com-
muted by the governor. On June 14, 1993, Bob Casey,
Sr., underwent a rare and risky heart-lung transplant
for the treatment of hereditary amyloidosis, a protein
disorder that usually kills within a few years of onset.
On October 6, 1994, Reginald McFadden was arrested
in Rockland County, New York, for the murder of one
woman and the kidnapping, repeated rape, and mur-
der of a second woman. How these three events fit to-
gether determined the next two decades of Jeff’s life.
Casey was not stingy with his commutations.
But, like other nonessential business, the documents
would often languish on his desk. His pace slowed in
1993 as he managed his condition, then stopped en-
tirely for six months as he convalesced after the trans-
plant. When he returned to work, the commutations
trickled in, including one for Reginald McFadden.
McFadden had been sentenced at the age of six-
teen to life in prison for the murder of an elderly
woman. His prison record was mixed, but the in-
formation that reached the Parole Board was over-
whelmingly positive—including his pacifying role
in the Camp Hill riots. On a four-to-one vote the
board recommended his release, and Casey approved
it in early 1994. After confusion about the timeline
and conditions of release, McFadden was delivered
to well-meaning volunteer custodians in New York,
where he immediately murdered three people.
Mark Singel was Bob Casey’s lieutenant, and he
was running to succeed his boss in the governor’s
mansion. He was also, as lieutenant governor, the
head of the commonwealth’s Parole Board, where he
had voted to release McFadden. Casey stopped ap-
proving commutations, and Singel lost the election to
Tom Ridge, a Republican, who tirelessly exploited the
debacle. In January 1995, on his second day in office,
Ridge denied Jeffrey Cristina’s commutation, and he
never got to the governor’s desk again.
This was an angry time for Jeff, even though, he
says looking back, “I never thought I’d never get
out”—a hope that was essential even when it wasn’t
rational. He would return to the sacraments in the
years following this disappointment, an order of
events whose meaning is not lost on him. The bit-
terness of that setback has long faded, and so he can
regard those years with clear eyes and wonder if he
“would’ve been ready, religion-wise,” for freedom.
Jeff continued to pursue legal recourse, and
twenty-one years later an entirely new path opened to
him. In Montgomery v. Louisiana, the United States Su-
preme Court ruled that its previous decision, Miller v.
Alabama, declaring mandatory juvenile life sentences
unconstitutional, must be made retroactive. Every ju-
venile lifer in America would have to be resentenced.
And Jeffrey Cristina, with his nearly forty years of
misconduct-free incarceration, with his thousands of
 Easter 2020 13

hours of education and mentoring, with his leading intoxicating and frightening, but there wasn’t. Forty
role in a thriving prison ministry, would be Pennsyl- years is a long time.
vania’s test case. It’s said, and it’s true, that prison ages a man. But
The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office in other ways the experience results in a kind of emo-
tried to frustrate Jeff’s resentencing in both legal and tional cryostasis, with the psyche preserved as it was
media maneuvers, including a letter to the Pittsburgh upon entering. Jeff Cristina feels like a twenty-year-old
Post-Gazette that repeated old lies about Jeff’s role in man with a sixty-year-old body, like he should be look-
the killing. But the county judge was sympathetic ing forward to life landmarks—career, marriage, chil-
and apologetic at resentencing: He wanted to release dren—that are part of a past that never was. I don’t
Jeff immediately, but state law required that the life know if he will ever be able, or if it is possible, to knit
“tail” be retained from the original sentence. Now in together two lives lived forty years apart.
prison for “twenty years to life,” Jeff applied for pa- The Cristina clan remains a constant, bound by
role, which was quickly granted. He stepped out of blood shared and shed. Jeff lives with and cares for
S.C.I.-Somerset in street clothes—a 2008 Steelers AFC Elsie, who moved a dozen miles up the Allegheny to a
Championship sweatshirt and a Penguins knit cap— modest and well-kept home in Creighton, an old river
on December 4, 2016. town two blocks wide by four blocks long. She had a
Jeff’s entire extended family was waiting for him. bedroom waiting for her youngest boy, with a teddy
His mother and his siblings and his nieces and neph- bear on the quilt and a crucifix above the headboard.
ews had come to see him so regularly that the school They have opened their home to other parolees who
cafeteria-like visitors’ room had come to feel like a need a place to live and friends to vouch for them.
family parlor. But now they could see him and talk to And they go to Mass together—Elsie started going
him on their own terms. again when Jeff came home—a quarter-mile down the
Tony wasn’t there. He had died of hard living fif- road at Holy Family Church.
teen years before, but through letters and visits he “Eventually you have to decide your purpose,” Jeff
and his youngest son had reconciled. Jeff had seen says about surviving four decades in prison. A glori-
enough brokenness in Brookline and Lawrenceville ous purpose needn’t be a glamorous one.
and Camp Hill and Somerset to come to be able to
understand his father’s—his own abuse at the hands Brandon McGinley is a writer in Pittsburgh.
of his own drunk father, his lifelong struggle to feel
at peace anywhere and at any time. Jeff mourned the
man who was most responsible for his losing four
decades of freedom more tenderly than Tony, or any-
one, would have expected.
Jeff will always struggle with what he calls the
“jail mentality”—emotions calloused by witnessing
so much everyday cruelty and initiative sapped by
decades of trained deference. He describes watching
dumbly as his nephew wrangled with a leaky toilet,
waiting to be asked (or told) to help before stepping
in. Three years on, he still hesitates to pick food off a
restaurant menu, though he no longer habitually de-
fers to the choices of his fellow diners.
Jeff’s life, unlike those of so many other parolees,
was given immediate order by an inmate friend who
got him a job helping make deliveries for the Pennsyl-
vania Macaroni Company, one of the city’s premier
food importers and wholesalers. There’s a pipeline of
ex-cons to Penn Mac, by way of the improbably-named
Rob Ferrari; if the corporal works of mercy are look-
ing to expand, employing the convicted should get a
hard look.
These days, Pittsburgh’s trendiest restaurants are
on Butler Street, so Jeff found himself back in Law-
renceville from time to time. He was always worried
someone would recognize him, but instead he recog-
nized someone: Cathy, his high-school belle, now a
crossing guard and a widow. The idea that there might
be something inextinguishable between the two was
14 The Lamp
A P O LO G I A
HOW I JOINED
the RESISTANCE
I often wonder what my grandmother—Mamaw, as I
called her—would have thought about her grandson
becoming Catholic. We used to argue about religion
constantly. She was a woman of deep, but completely
de-institutionalized, faith. She loved Billy Graham and
Donald Ison, a preacher from her home in southeast-
ern Kentucky. But she loathed “organized religion.”
She often wondered aloud how the simple message of
sin, redemption, and grace had given way to the tele-
vangelists on our early 1990s Ohio TV screen. “These
people are all crooks and perverts,” she told me. “All
they want is money.” But she watched them anyway,
and they were the closest she usually came to regular
church service, at least in Ohio. Unless she was back
home in Kentucky, she rarely attended church. And if
she did, it was usually to satisfy my early adolescent
quest for some attachment to Christianity besides the
700 Club.
Like many poor people, Mamaw rarely voted, see-
ing electoral politics as fundamentally corrupt. She
liked F.D.R., Harry S. Truman, and that was about it.
Unsurprisingly, a woman whose only political heroes
had been dead for decades didn’t like politics as a mat-
ter of course and cared even less for the political drift
of modern Protestantism. My first real exposure to an
institutional church would come later, through my fa-
ther’s large pentecostal congregation in southwestern
Ohio. But I knew a few things about Catholicism well
before then. I knew that Catholics worshipped Mary.
I knew they rejected the legitimacy of Scripture.
And I knew that the Antichrist—or at least, the An-
tichrists’s spiritual adviser—would be a Catholic. Or,
at the time, I would have said, “is” a Catholic—as I felt
pretty confident that the Antichrist walked among us.
Mamaw seemed not to care much about Catho-
lics. Her younger daughter had married one, and she
thought him a good man. She felt their way of wor-
shipping was rather formal and peculiar, but what mat-
tered to her was Jesus. Revelation 18 may have been
about Catholics, and it may have been about some-
thing else. But the Catholic she knew cared about Je-
sus, and that was all right with her.
BY J. D. VA N C E
Still, Mamaw looms so large in my mind—she still,
more than a decade after her death, is the person to
whom I most feel indebted. Without her, I wouldn’t
be here. And the uncomfortable fact is that the Christ
of the Catholic Church always seemed a little different
from the Jesus I’d grown up with. A little too stodgy,
too formal. Sallman’s famous portrait of Christ hung
upstairs near my bedroom, and that’s how I encoun-
tered him: personal and kind, but a little forlorn. The
Christ of Catholicism floated high above you, as a
grown man or a baby, wreathed in beams of light and
crowned like a king. There is no way to avoid the dis-
comfort a woman like Mamaw felt with that kind of a
Christ. The Catholic Jesus was a majestic deity, and we
had little interest in majestic deities because we wer-
en’t a majestic people.
This was the most significant hangup I encoun-
tered after I began to think about becoming Catholic.
I could think myself out of most standard objections.
Catholics didn’t, it turned out, worship Mary. Their
acceptance of both scriptural and traditional authori-
ty slowly appeared to me as wisdom, as I watched too
many of my friends struggle with what a given pas-
sage of Scripture could possibly mean. I even began to
acquire a sense that Catholicism possessed a historical
continuity with the Church Fathers—indeed, with
Christ Himself—that the unchurched religion of my
upbringing couldn’t match. Yet I couldn’t shake the
feeling that if I converted I would no longer be my
grandmother’s grandson. So for many years I occu-
pied the uncomfortable territory between curiosity
about Catholicism and mistrust.
I got there in a pretty conventional way. I joined
the Marines after high school, like so many of my
peers—indeed, the only other 2003 high-school grad-
uate on my block also enlisted in the Marines. I left for
Iraq in 2005, a young idealist committed to spreading
democracy and liberalism to the backward nations of
the world. I returned in 2006, skeptical of the war and
the ideology that underpinned it. Mamaw was dead,
and without a church or anything to anchor me to
the faith of my youth, I slid from devout to nominal,
 Easter 2020
and then to something very much less. By the time
I left the Marines in 2007 and began college at The
Ohio State University, I read Christopher Hitchens
and Sam Harris, and called myself an atheist.
I won’t belabor the story of how I got there, be-
cause it is both conventional and boring. A lot of it
had to do with a feeling of irrelevance: increasingly,
the religious leaders I turned to tended to argue that
if you prayed hard enough and believed hard enough,
God would reward your faith with earthly riches. But
I knew many people who believed and prayed a lot
without any riches to show for it. But there are two
insights worth reflecting from that phase in my life,
as they both presaged an intellectual awakening not
long ago that ultimately led me back to Christ. The
first is that, for an upwardly mobile poor kid from a
rough family, atheism leads to an undeniable famil-
ial and cultural rupture. To be an atheist is to be no
longer of the community that made you who you
were. For so long, I hid my unbelief from my fami-
ly—and not because any of them would have cared
very much. Very few of family members attended
church, but everyone believed in something rather
than nothing.
There were ways of compensating for this, and
one of those (at least for me) was a brief flirtation
with libertarianism. To lose my faith was to lose my
cultural conservatism, and in a world that was grow-
ing increasingly aligned with the Republican party,
my ideological response took the form of overcom-
pensation: having lost my cultural conservatism, I
would become even more economically conservative.
The irony, of course, is that it was the economic pro-
gram of the Republican party that least interested
my family—none of them cared how much the Bush
administration slashed tax rates for billionaires. The
G.O.P. became a kind of totem—I attached myself to
it ever more strongly because it gave me some com-
mon ground with my family. And the most respect-
able way to do so among my new college friends
was through a dogged commitment to neoliberal
economic orthodoxy. Tax breaks and Social Security
cuts were socially acceptable ways to be conservative
among the American elite.
The second insight is that my abandonment of
religion was more cultural than intellectual. There
were ways in which I found my religion difficult to
square with science as it came to me. I’ve never been
a classical Darwinist, for instance, for reasons David
Gelernter has outlined in his excellent new book. But
evolutionary theory in some form struck me as plausi-
ble, and though I consumed Tornado in a Junkyard and
every other work of Young Earth Creationism, I even-
tually got to the point where I couldn’t square my un-
derstanding of biology with what my church told me
I had to believe. I was never so committed to Young
Earth Creationism that I felt I had to choose between
biology and Genesis. But the tension between a scien-
15
tific account of our origin and the biblical account I’d
absorbed made it easier to discard my faith.
And the truth is that I discarded it for the simplest
of reasons: the madness of crowds. Much of my new
atheism came down to a desire for social acceptance
among American elites. I spent so much of my time
around a different type of people with a different set
of priorities that I couldn’t help but absorb some of
their preferences. I became interested in secularism
just as my attention turned to my separation from
the Marines and my impending transition to col-
lege. I knew how the educated tended to feel about
religion: at best, provincial and stupid; at worst, evil.
Echoing Hitchens, I began to think and then eventu-
ally to say things like: “The Christian cosmos is more
like North Korea than America, and I know where I’d
like to live.” I was fitting in to my new caste, in deed
and emotion. I am embarrassed to admit this, but the
truth often reflects poorly on its subject.
And if I can say something in my defense: it wasn’t
exactly conscious. I didn’t think to myself, “I am not
going to be a Christian because Christians are rubes
and I want to plant myself firmly in the meritocratic
master class.” Socialization operates in more subtle,
but more powerful ways. My son is two, and he has in
the last six months—just as his social intelligence has
skyrocketed—transitioned from ripping our German
Shepherd’s fur out to hugging and kissing him glee-
fully. Part of that comes from the joy of giving and
receiving affections from man’s best friend. But part
of it comes from the fact that my wife and I grimace
and complain when he tortures the dog but coo and
laugh when he loves on it. He responds to us much as
I responded to the educated caste to which I slowly
gained exposure. In college, very few of my friends
and even fewer of my professors had any sort of re-
ligious faith. Secularism may not have been a prereq-
uisite to join the elites, but it sure made things easier.
Of course, if you had told me this when I was
twenty four, I would have protested vigorously. I
would have quoted not just Hitchens, but Russell and
Ayer. I would have told you all the ways in which C.S.
Lewis was a moron whose arguments could only hold
water against third-rate intellects. I’d watch Ravi Zach-
arias just to note the problems in his arguments, lest a
better-read Christian deploy those arguments against
me. I prided myself on an ability to overwhelm the
opposition with my logic. There was an arrogance at
the heart of my worldview, emotionally and intellec-
tually. But I comforted myself with an appeal to a phi-
losopher whose atheism-cum-libertarianism told me
everything I wanted to hear: Ayn Rand. Great, smart
men were only arrogant if they were wrong, and I was
anything but that.
But there were seeds of doubt, one planted in
the mind, and the other in the heart. The former I
encountered during a mid-level philosophy course
at Ohio State. We had read a famous written debate
16 The Lamp
between Antony Flew, R.M. Hare, and Basil Mitch-
ell. Flew, an atheist (though he later recanted) argues
that theological utterances—like “God loves man”—
are fundamentally unfalsifiable, and thus meaning-
less. Because believers won’t let a fact count against
their faith, their views aren’t really claims about the
world. This certainly spoke to my experience of what
believers say when faced with apparent difficulties.
Confronted with unspeakable tragedy? “The Lord
works in mysterious ways.” In the face of loneliness
and desperation? “God still loves you.” If real, obvious
challenges to these sentiments were processed and
then ignored by the faithful, then their faith must be
pretty hollow. Our class spent the most time discuss-
ing Flew’s opening volley, and the response by Hare—
which, essentially, concedes Flew’s point but argues
that religious feelings are meaningful and potentially
true nonetheless.
Basil Mitchell’s response received less attention in
class, but his words remain among the most powerful
I’ve ever read. I have thought about them constantly
since. He begins with a parable about a wartime sol-
dier in occupied territory who meets a “Stranger.” The
soldier is so taken with the Stranger that he believes
he is the leader of the resistance.
Sometimes the Stranger is seen helping members of
the resistance, and the partisan is grateful and says
to his friends, “He is on our side.” Sometimes he is
seen in the uniform of the police handing over pa-
triots to the occupying power. On these occasions
his friends murmur against him: but the partisan
still says, “He is on our side.” He still believes that,
in spite of appearances, the Stranger did not deceive
him. Sometimes he asks the Stranger for help and
receives it. He is then thankful. Sometimes he asks
and does not receive it. Then he says, “The Stranger
knows best.” Sometimes his friends, in exasperation,
say, “Well, what would he have to do for you to ad-
mit that you were wrong and that he is not on our
side?” But the partisan refuses to answer. He will not
consent to put the Stranger to the test. And some-
times his friends complain, “Well, if that’s what you
mean by his being on our side, the sooner he goes
over to the other side the better.” The partisan of the
parable does not allow anything to count decisively
against the proposition “The Stranger is on our side.”
This is because he has committed himself to trust
the Stranger. But he of course recognizes that the
Stranger’s ambiguous behaviour does count against
what he believes about him. It is precisely this situa-
tion which constitutes the trial of his faith.
At the time, I tried my best to dismiss Mitchell’s re-
sponse. Flew had described the faith I’d discarded
perfectly. But Mitchell articulated a faith that I had
never encountered personally. Doubt was unaccept-
able. I had thought that the proper response to a
trial of faith was to suppress it and pretend it never
happened. But here was Mitchell, conceding that the
brokenness of the world and our individual tribula-
tions did, in fact, count against the existence of God.
But not definitively. I would eventually conclude that
Mitchell had won the philosophical debate years be-
fore I realized how much his humility in the face of
doubt affected my own faith.
As I advanced through our educational hier-
archy—moving on from Ohio State to Yale Law
School—I began to worry that my assimilation into
elite culture came at a high cost. My sister once told
me that the song that made her think of me was “Sim-
ple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Though I had fallen in
love, I found that the emotional demons of my child-
hood made it hard to be the type of partner I’d always
wanted to be. My Randian arrogance about my own
ability melted away when confronted with the reali-
zation that an obsession with achievement would fail
to produce the achievement that mattered most to me
for so much of my life: a happy, thriving family.
I had immersed myself in the logic of the meritoc-
racy and found it deeply unsatisfying. And I began to
wonder: were all these worldly markers of success ac-
tually making me a better person? I had traded virtue
for achievement and found the latter wanting. But the
woman I wanted to marry cared little whether I ob-
tained a Supreme Court clerkship. She just wanted me
to be a good person.
It’s possible, of course, to overstate our own inad-
equacies. I never cheated on my would-be spouse. I
never became violent with her. But there was a voice
in my head that demanded better of me: that I put
her interests above my own; that I master my temper
for her sake as much as for mine. And I began to re-
alize that this voice, wherever it came from, was not
the same one that compelled me to climb as high as
I could up our ladder of meritocracy. It came from
somewhere more ancient, and more grounded—it
required reflection about where I came from rather
than cultural divorce from it.
As I considered these twin desires—for success
and character—and how they conflicted (and didn’t),
I came across a meditation from Saint Augustine on
Genesis. I had been a fan of Augustine since a polit-
ical theorist in college assigned City of God. But his
thoughts on Genesis spoke to me, and are worth re-
producing at length:
In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vi-
sion, even in such as we may find treated in Holy
Scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes
possible without prejudice to the faith we have re-
ceived. In such a case, we should not rush in head-
long and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if
further progress in the search of truth justly under-
mines this position, we too fall with it. That would
be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture
but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to
 Easter 2020 17

Around the same time, I attended a talk at our law

ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to
school with Peter Thiel. This was 2011, and Thiel was a
that of Sacred Scripture.
well-known venture capitalist but hardly a household
Let us suppose that in explaining the words, “And
name. He would later blurb my book and become a
God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and light was made,”
good friend, but I had no idea what to expect at the
(Gn 1, 3), one man thinks that it was material light
time. He spoke first in personal terms: arguing that we
that was made, and another that it was spiritual. As to
were increasingly tracked into cutthroat professional
the actual existence of “spiritual light” in a spiritual
competitions. We would compete for appellate clerk-
creature, our faith leaves no doubt; as to the exist-
ships, and then Supreme Court clerkships. We would
ence of material light, celestial or supercelestial, even
compete for jobs at elite law firms, and then for part-
existing before the heavens, a light which could have
nerships at those same places. At each juncture, he
been followed by night, there will be nothing in such
said, our jobs would offer longer work hours, social
a supposition contrary to the faith until un-erring
alienation from our peers, and work whose prestige
truth gives the lie to it. And if that should happen,
would fail to make up for its meaninglessness. He also
this teaching was never in Holy Scripture but was an
argued that his own world of Silicon Valley spent too
opinion proposed by man in his ignorance.
little time on the technological breakthroughs that
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something
made life better—those in biology, energy, and trans-
about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements
portation—and too much on things like software and
of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars
mobile phones. Everyone could now tweet at each
and even their size and relative positions, about the
other, or post photos on Facebook, but it took longer
predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles
to travel to Europe, we had no cure for cognitive de-
of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of an-
cline and dementia, and our energy use increasingly
imals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowl-
dirtied the planet. He saw these two trends—elite
edge he holds to as being certain from reason and
professionals trapped in hypercompetitive jobs, and
experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing
the technological stagnation of society—as connect-
for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the
ed. If technological innovation were actually driving
meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these
real prosperity, our elites wouldn’t feel increasingly
topics; and we should take all means to prevent such
competitive with one another over a dwindling num-
an embarrassing situation, in which people show up
ber of prestigious outcomes.
vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
Peter’s talk remains the most significant moment
The shame is not so much that an ignorant individu-
of my time at Yale Law School. He articulated a feel-
al is derided, but that people outside the household
ing that had until then remained unformed: that I
of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions,
was obsessed with achievement in se—not as an end
and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation
to something meaningful, but to win a social compet­
we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized
ition. My worry that I had prioritized striving over
and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Chris-
character took on a heightened significance: striving
tian mistaken in a field which they themselves know
for what? I didn’t even know why I cared about the
well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions
things I cared about. I fancied myself educated, en-
about our books, how are they going to believe
lightened, and especially wise about the ways of the
those books in matters concerning the resurrection
world—at least compared with most of the people
of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the king-
from my hometown. Yet I was obsessed with obtain-
dom of heaven, when they think their pages are full
ing professional credentials—a clerkship with a feder-
of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have
al judge and then an associate position at a prestigious
learnt from experience and the light of reason?
firm—that I didn’t understand. I hated my limited
I couldn’t stop thinking about how I would have re- exposure to legal practice. I looked to the future, and
acted to this passage when I was a kid: If someone realized that I’d been running a desperate race where
had made the very same argument to me when I was the first prize was a job I hated.
seventeen, I would have called him a heretic. This was I began immediately planning for a career outside
an accommodation to science, the kind that someone the law, which is why I spent less than two years af-
like Bill Maher rightly mocked contemporary mod- ter graduation as a practicing attorney. But Peter left
erate Christians for indulging. Yet here was a person me with one more thing: he was possibly the smart-
telling us sixteen hundred years ago that my own est person I’d ever met, but he was also a Christian.
approach to Genesis was arrogance—the kind that He defied the social template I had constructed—that
might turn a person from his faith. dumb people were Christians and smart ones atheists.
This, it turned out, was a little too on the nose, I began to wonder where his religious belief came
and the first crack in my proverbial armor. I began from, which led me to René Girard, the French phi-
circulating the quote among friends—believers and losopher whom he apparently studied under at Stan-
nonbelievers alike, and I thought about it constantly. ford. Girard’s thought is rich enough that any effort
18 The Lamp
to summarize will fail to do the man justice. His theo-
ry of mimetic rivalry—that we tend to compete over
the things that other people want—spoke directly to
some of the pressures I experienced at Yale. But it was
his related theory of the scapegoat—and what it re-
vealed about Christianity—that made me reconsider
my faith.
One of Girard’s central insights is that human
civilizations are often, perhaps even always, founded
on a “scapegoat myth”—an act of violence commit-
ted against someone who has wronged the broader
community, retold as a sort of origin story for the
community.
Girard points out that Romulus and Remus are,
like Christ, divine children, and, like Moses, placed in
a river basket to save them from a jealous king. There
was a time when I bristled at such comparisons, wor-
ried than any seeming lack of originality on the part
of Scripture meant that it couldn’t be true. This is a
common rhetorical device of the New Atheists: point
to some creation story—like the flood narrative in
the Epic of Gilgamesh—as evidence that the sacred au-
thors have plagiarized their story from some earlier
civilization. It reasonably follows that if the biblical
story is lifted from somewhere else, the version in the
Bible may not be the Word of God after all.
But Girard rejects this inference, and leans into
the similarities between biblical stories and those
from other civilizations. To Girard, the Christian sto-
ry contains a crucial difference—a difference that re-
veals something “hidden since the foundation of the
world.” In the Christian telling, the ultimate scape-
goat has not wronged the civilization; the civiliza-
tion has wronged him. The victim of the madness of
crowds is, as Christ was, infintely powerful—able to
prevent his own murder—and perfectly innocent—
undeserving of the rage and violence of the crowd. In
Christ, we see our efforts to shift blame and our own
inadequacies onto a victim for what they are: a moral
failing, projected violently upon someone else. Christ
is the scapegoat who reveals our imperfections, and
forces us to look at our own flaws rather than blame
our society’s chosen victims.
People come to truth in different ways, and I’m
sure some will find this account unsatisfying. But in
2013, it captured so well the psychology of my genera-
tion, especially its most privileged inhabitants. Mired
in the swamp of social media, we identified a scape-
goat and digitally pounced. We were keyboard war-
riors, unloading on people via Facebook and Twitter,
blind to our own problems. We fought over jobs we
didn’t actually want while pretending we didn’t fight
for them at all. And the end result for me, at least,
was that I had lost the language of virtue. I felt more
shame over failing in a law school exam than I did
about losing my temper with my girlfriend.
That all had to change. It was time to stop scapego-
ating and focus on what I could do to improve things.
These very personal reflections on faith, con-
formity, and virtue coincided with a writing project
that would eventually become a very public success:
Hillbilly Elegy, the hybrid book of memoir-social
commentary I published in 2016. I look back on ear-
lier drafts of the book, and realize just how much I
changed from 2013 to 2015: I started the book angry,
resentful of my mother, especially, and confident in
my own abilities. I finished it a little humbled, and
very unsure about what to do to “solve” so many of
our social problems. And the answer I landed on, as
unsatisfactory then as it is now, is that you can’t ac-
tually “solve” our social problems. The best you can
hope for is to reduce them or to blunt their effects.
I noticed during my research that many of those
social problems came from behavior for which social
scientists and policy experts had a different vocabu-
lary. On the right, the conversation often turned to
“culture” and “personal responsibility”—the ways in
which individuals or communities held back their
own progress. And though it seemed obvious to me
that there was something dysfunctional about some
of the places in which I’d grown up, the discourse on
the right seemed a little heartless. It failed to account
for the fact that destructive behaviors were almost al-
ways tragedies with terrible consequences. It is one
thing to wag your finger at another person for failing
to act a certain way, but it is something else to feel the
weight of the misery that comes from those actions.
The left’s intellectuals focused much more on the
structural and external problems facing families like
mine—the difficulty in finding jobs and the lack of
funding for certain types of resources. And while I
agreed that more resources were often necessary, there
seemed to me a sense in which our most destructive
behaviors persisted—even flourished—in times of
material comfort. The economic left was often more
compassionate, but theirs was a kind of compassion—
devoid of any expectation—that reeked of giving up.
A compassion that assumes a person is disadvantaged
to the point of hopelessness is like sympathy for a zoo
animal, and I had no use for it.
And as I reflected on these competing views of the
world, and the wisdom and shortcomings of each, I
felt desperate for a worldview that understood our
bad behavior as simultaneously social and individu-
al, structural and moral; that recognized that we are
products of our environment; that we have a respon-
sibility to change that environment, but that we are
still moral beings with individual duties; one that
could speak against rising rates of divorce and addic-
tion, not as sanitized conclusions about their negative
social externalities, but with moral outrage. And I re-
alized, eventually, that I had already been exposed to
that worldview: it was my Mamaw’s Christianity. And
the name it gave for the behaviors I had seen destroy
lives and communities was “sin.” I remembered one
of my least favorite passages from Scripture, Num-
 Easter 2020 19

bers 14:18, in a new light: “The LORD is slow to anger, It was the best criticism of our modern age I’d ever
abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet read. A society oriented entirely towards consump-
he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes tion and pleasure, spurning duty and virtue. Not
the children for the sin of the parents to the third and long after I first read these words, my friend Oren
fourth generation.” Cass published a book arguing that American policy
A decade ago, I took this as evidence of a vengeful, makers have focused far too much on promoting
irrational God. Yet who could look at the statistics consumption as opposed to productivity, or some
on what our early twenty-first-century culture and other measure of wellbeing. The reaction—criticiz-
politics had wrought—the misery, the rising suicide ing Oren for daring to push policies that might lower
rates, the “deaths of despair” in the richest country consumption—almost proved the argument. “Yes,” I
on earth, and doubt that the sins of parents had any found myself saying, “Oren’s preferred policies might
effect on their children? reduce per-capita consumption. But that’s precisely
And here, again, the words of Saint Augustine ech- the point: our society is more than the sum of its eco-
oed from a millennium and a half earlier, articulating nomic statistics. If people die sooner in the midst of
a truth I had felt for a long time but hadn’t spoken. historic levels of consumption, then perhaps our fo-
This is a passage from City of God, where Augustine cus on consumption is misguided.”
summarizes the debauchery of Rome’s ruling class: And indeed it was this insight, more than any
other, that ultimately led not just to Christianity,
This is our concern, that every man be able to in-
but to Catholicism. Despite my Mamaw’s unfamili-
crease his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigali-
arity with the liturgy, the Roman and Italian cultural
ties, and so that the powerful may subject the weak
influences, and the foreign pope, I slowly began to
for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich
see Catholicism as the closest expression of her kind
for a living, and that under their protection they
of Christanity: obsessed with virtue, but cognizant
may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity; and let the rich
of the fact that virtue is formed in the context of a
abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to
broader community; sympathetic with the meek and
their pride. Let the people applaud not those who
poor of the world without treating them primarily as
protect their interests, but those who provide them
victims; protective of children and families and with
with pleasure. Let no severe duty be commanded, no
the things necessary to ensure they thrive. And above
impurity forbidden. Let kings estimate their pros-
all: a faith centered around a Christ who demands
perity, not by the righteousness, but by the servility
perfection of us even as He loves unconditionally and
of their subjects. Let the provinces stand loyal to the
forgives easily.
kings, not as moral guides, but as lords of their pos-
It was this insight that took me from a few infor-
sessions and purveyors of their pleasures; not with a
mal conversations with a couple of Dominican friars
hearty reverence, but a crooked and servile fear. Let
to a more serious period of study with one in particu-
the laws take cognizance rather of the injury done to
lar. I almost wish it hadn’t been so gradual—that there
another man’s property, than of that done to one’s
had been an “aha!” moment that made me realize I just
own person. If a man be a nuisance to his neighbor,
had to become Catholic. There were some weird coin-
or injure his property, family, or person, let him be
cidences that hastened my decision. One came about
actionable; but in his own affairs let everyone with
a year ago, at a conference I attended with largely con-
impunity do what he will in company with his own
servative intellectuals. Late at night, at the hotel bar,
family, and with those who willingly join him. Let
I questioned a conservative Catholic writer about his
there be a plentiful supply of public prostitutes for
criticism of the pope. (My growing view is that too
every one who wishes to use them, but specially for
many American Catholics have failed to show proper
those who are too poor to keep one for their private
deference to the papacy, treating the pope as a politi-
use. Let there be erected houses of the largest and
cal figure to be criticized or praised according to their
most ornate description: in these let there be provid-
whims.) While he admitted that some Catholics went
ed the most sumptuous banquets, where every one
too far, he defended his more measured approach,
who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit,
when suddenly a wine glass seemed to leap from a sta-
dissipate. Let there be everywhere heard the rustling
ble place behind the bar and crashed on the floor in
of dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the the-
front of us. We both stared at each other in silence
atre; let a succession of the most cruel and the most
for a bit, a little startled by what we’d just seen, before
voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excite-
ending our conversation abruptly and excusing our-
ment. If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him
selves to turn in for the night.
be branded as a public enemy; and if any attempt to
Another took place in Washington, D.C., during
modify or put an end to it let him be silenced, ban-
a particularly grueling week of travel. I hadn’t seen
ished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned the true
my family in a few days, and hadn’t even had the
gods, who procure for the people this condition of
time to call my toddler on the phone. In moments
things, and preserve it when once possessed.
like this, I sometimes listen to a beautiful setting of
20 The Lamp
of a psalm performed during Pope Francis’s visit to
Georgia in 2016 by an Orthodox choir. I listened to
it on the train from New York to Washington, where
I knew a Dominican friar whom I decided to ask to
coffee. He invited me to visit his community, where I
heard the friars chanting, apparently, the same psalm.
Now, I know it’s easy to make the skeptic’s case: J.D.
watched a video of a priest chanting a Bible verse, and
then he emailed a member of a religious order who
later chanted the same thing. But to quote Samuel L.
Jackson from Pulp Fiction: “You’re judging this shit the
wrong way. I mean, it could be that God stopped the
bullets, or He changed Coke to Pepsi, He found my
f—g car keys. You don’t judge shit like this based on
merit. Now, whether or not what we experienced was
an ‘according to Hoyle’ miracle is insignificant. What
is significant is that I felt the touch of God.”
So yes, during little moments over the last few
years, I’ve felt the touch of God. As much as it would
make for a better story, I cannot say that any of these
things made me stand up and say, “It’s time to con-
vert.” The move was more incremental. I became
convinced that Mamaw would accept Catholic theol-
ogy even if its cultural trappings made her feel uneasy.
There were the words of Saint Augustine and Girard
and the example of my Uncle Dan, who married into
our family but demonstrated Christian virtue more
thoroughly than any person I’d met. There were good
friends who made me see that I didn’t need to aban-
don my reason before I approached the altar. I came
eventually to believe that the teachings of the Catho-
lic Church were true, but it happened slowly and un-
evenly.
There were things that made it harder, even after
I’d made up my mind. The sexual abuse crisis made me
wonder whether joining the Church meant subject-
ing my child to an institution that cared more for its
own reputation than the protection of its members.
Working through these feelings delayed my conver-
sion for at least a few months. There was a concern
that it would be unfair to my wife: she hadn’t married
a Catholic, and I felt like I was throwing her into it.
But from the beginning, she supported my decision,
so I can’t blame the delay on her.
I was received into the Catholic Church on a beau-
tiful day in mid-August, in a private ceremony not far
from my house. I woke up on the day of my recep-
tion a little apprehensive, worried that I was making a
big mistake. For all of my doubts about how Mamaw
might have reacted, it was one of her favorite phras-
es that I heard, in her voice, ringing in my ears that
morning: “Time to shit or get off the pot.”
I was baptized, and I received my first Commun-
ion. I found it all very beautiful, though I should admit
that I still felt uneasy about something so far removed
from my youthful churchgoing experiences. Much
of my family came to support me. My two-year-old
son—one of my favorite parts about the Church is
that it encourages parents to bring their kids—
chomped on a lot of Goldfish crackers. At the end of
it, the Dominican friars who welcomed me hosted my
friends and family for coffee and doughnuts.
I try to keep a little humility about how little I
know, and how inadequate a Christian I really am. I
am most comfortable engaging with people around
ideas. If you can’t read something and debate it, I’ve
always been a little less interested. But the Church
isn’t just about ideas and Saint Augustine, whom I
chose as my patron. It’s about the heart, as well, and
the community of believers. It’s about going to Mass
and receiving the Sacraments, even when it’s difficult
or awkward to do so. It’s about so many things that
I’m ignorant of, and the process of becoming less ig-
norant over time.
My wife has said that the business of converting
to Catholicism—studying and thinking about it—
was “good for you.” And I came, eventually, to see
that she was right, at least in some cosmic sense. I
realized that there was a part of me—the best part—
that took its cues from Catholicism. It was the part
of me that demanded that I treat my son with pa-
tience, and made me feel terrible when I failed. That
demanded that I moderate my temper with everyone,
but especially my family. That demanded that I care
more about how I rated as a husband and father than
as an income earner. That demanded that I sacrifice
professional prestige for the interests of family. That
demanded that I let go of grudges, and forgive even
those who wronged me. As Saint Paul says in his Epis-
tle to the Philippians: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are honest, what-
soever things are just, whatsoever things are pure,
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are
of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be
any praise, think on these things.” It was the Catho-
lic part of my heart and mind that demanded that I
think on the things that actually mattered. And if I
wanted that part of me to be nurtured and to grow, I
needed to do more than read the occasional book of
theology or reflect on my own shortcomings. I need-
ed to pray more, to participate in the sacramental life
of the Church, to confess and to repent publicly, no
matter how awkward that might be. And I needed
grace. I needed, in other words, to become Catholic,
not merely to think about it.
J. D. Vance is the New York Times
bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy.
 Easter 2020 21

How should people talk about the Holy Father? To

H I STO R I A ECC L E S I A ST I C A
start with, I think non-Catholics should say whatev-
er they want about the pope, and I think Catholics
should say what they believe to be true. But I don’t
care what non-Catholics say about him. They have no
reason to treat him as somebody special. If they tell
the truth it has the added benefit of letting Catholics
know what others think about their religion. I think
there are a fair number of Catholics who think the

WHAT
world has a respect for Catholicism that does not ex-
ist, and we’re all better off knowing the truth.
I think Catholics should be free to say what they
really think. We can tell each other what we think is

WE
true, but I don’t think Catholics should talk about the
pope the way people mad at Trump talk about him. I
don’t like Catholics talking about the Holy Father in
a contemptuous way—the way that liberal Catholics

TALK
usually talked about the pope more or less continu-
ously from 1968 until the election of Pope Francis.
Lots of Catholics talk about the Holy Father like
that, as if he’s some stranger to them, as if part of his

ABOUT
job is to meet their expectations. Let’s assume that the
Holy Father said something puzzling, how should you
react? Should you say something that suggests that
you are separate from him and his words? Make sure

WHEN
that everybody knows that, although you’re Catholic,
you’d never say something like that? Or should you
wince, and pray and hope that the Holy Father can fix
it? If he were to say something really bizarre and inex-

WE
plicable would it be like some politician you don’t like
saying it? Or would it be like your father?
Now it is possible for people to disagree with the
Holy Father without being like that. I think it is hard

TALK
to criticize a pope while being both respectful and
right. It’s easier with historical perspective. I can say
it was a mistake for Pope Alexander VI to help his
son, Cesare Borgia, conquer Italy, especially with all

ABOUT
the atrocities. And I think it would have been perfect-
ly proper for a good Catholic in 1500 to oppose this,
and to speak against it. (Machiavelli, though, thought
it was a good idea.)

THE
Well, that shows I can do it, but that one was just
too easy. I’ll try again with a little less historical per-
spective. Let’s see whether I can criticize, in a correct
and respectful manner, any of the popes of the last

POPE
seventy-five years.
Pius XII was an intelligent, learned, and energetic
man. He spoke ten languages. When he was pope he
made many decisions himself. He carefully controlled
many things in the Church, more than any pope has
BY MICHAEL HAMILL ever done, maybe more than any other pope would
have been capable of doing.
During his papacy the modernists were working
in secret to win adherents among priests and theolo-
gians. Every year they were a little stronger than the
year before. Pius very closely controlled the work
of the Holy Office, and I think because of that other
means of fighting heresy fell into disuse. A bishop or
22 The Lamp
theologian isn’t going to criticize another theologian
if he knows the pope is supervising an investigation
of that theologian. A prominent teacher who was
teaching something questionable wouldn’t be crit-
icized because it was assumed that if he was doing
it in public Rome knew about it and Rome allowed
it. So the normal ways of dealing with error fell into
disuse. These means were needed in the 1960s when
there were heretical theologians in every newspaper,
magazine, and college, and they were not used. The
heretics were not publicly opposed.
So can I criticize Pius for over-centralizing so
much in the Church, including dealing with hereti-
cal teaching? I don’t think I can. Certainly some bad
things happened because of the over-centralization,
but during this pontificate it was very important that
there be no mistakes. The times were so critical. Di-
etrich von Hildebrand, Jacques Maritain, and Saint
Josemaría Escrivá were suspected of error. A wrong
decision in their cases would have been disastrous. All
three were important in holding things together in
the 1960s and 1970s. Pius may have known that mak-
ing so many decisions himself was not the ideal way
for the pope to preside over the Church, but he also
may have known that the times were so critical that
it was the right thing for him to keep everything un-
der such tight personal control. So I have no criticism
of Pius.
Saint John XXIII is sometimes criticized with the
word “imprudent,” by people who say he didn’t real-
ize how delicate the Church was. The Church couldn’t
handle the pope running around saying, “Throw open
the windows.” I’ve read that even using the word “ag-
giornamento” was imprudent. And it’s often argued
that ecumenical councils should only be called when
there is a pressing need for them, and in the absence
of one Pope John shouldn’t have called Vatican II.
Again, I don’t know. I know that Vatican I had
never been closed, only adjourned, and having an ec-
umenical council not open but not quite closed either
isn’t the way things are supposed to be. The first Vati-
can Council was not closed because it hadn’t finished
its work. Vatican II issued documents that addressed
questions that the fathers of Vatican I intended to
address but did not. They had to leave Rome because
of its impending conquest by Garibaldi. I think 1962
was a better time for the council than any time after
1962. Every year the modernists were stronger and
stronger, in the seminaries, among priests and reli-
gious. They worked in secret and that suited them.
Their power and influence steadily increased during
the years after 1910. It was hard to contain the mod-
ernists when they emerged into the light of day af-
ter the council. If a council had not met until 1972
or 1982 they would have been that much stronger. I
do not think a council was required for their emer-
gence. Maybe the council forced their hand and they
stopped being secretive prematurely.
Eventually there would have been a council to
close Vatican I and to deal with the issues left unad-
dressed, and the later it came, the harder it would have
been for the Church. A lot of trouble came after the
council, but I don’t think it was caused by the council.
It was caused by the modernism that was living and
growing in the Church leading up to the council. The
Church wasn’t “delicate” for any reason but that. Ag-
giornamento and the council brought the modernists
out of hiding, and fooled them into thinking this was
their moment, their chance to take over. It wasn’t. But
if they had stayed in hiding longer, things might well
have been worse.
If I were to criticize Saint Paul VI for anything,
it would be his deference to elite opinion. But who
knows, maybe he was right. Maybe right then an
all-out push against the zeitgeist would have broken
the Church, maybe into many pieces. He succeeded,
mostly, in keeping in the Church the people who
would have supported the all-out push, and he did it
without a schism.
If you don’t remember the 1960s you may not
know how strong that zeitgeist was, how convinced
people were that everything was going to change,
that big changes were necessary and inevitable and
fighting against change was evil. For example, in the
United States abortion was so thoroughly rejected in
1963 that Planned Parenthood said it was against abor-
tion, and in 1973 the Supreme Court imposed unre-
stricted abortion on the whole country. I think Paul
had a harder task than any other pope I’m familiar
with. People, especially intellectuals and those invest-
ed with temporal authority, demanded change, big
change, and people in general were convinced that
this was at the very least inevitable and most likely
good. People in authority in the Church were in the
forefront of demanding this change.
Paul did not strongly resist this call for change, ex-
cept when he had to do so. During Vatican II things
were not that bad. Everybody knew there was a fac-
tion pressing for change. But everybody also knew
that there was an opposing faction who thought
the essentials had to be preserved. After the council,
though, the liberals were able to sell people on the
idea that their side had won, and that everything was
going to change and we were going to make up new
doctrines as we went along. For three years that idea
gained increasing strength. In June 1968 Paul issued
the Credo of the People of God. After that liberals
could still say everything changed, but they, and peo-
ple who paid attention to Paul, knew that the pope did
not agree. They pretended that Paul’s Credo (which
Archbishop Lefebvre praised) changed nothing, but
they were wrong. Their opponents had something to
cite that said even after Vatican II the Catholic faith
remained the Catholic faith. Jacques Maritain suggest-
ed the Credo to Pope Paul, and he wrote its first draft.
What the world wanted from Paul more than an-
 Easter 2020
ything else was, of course, contraception. Obviously
he could not give in, could not teach error, and did
not. In the reaction to Humanae vitae we can see
what may have happened if he had refused change on
everything. Almost no one stood with Paul: a few scat-
tered bishops, a few isolated, unpublicized intellec-
tuals. The bishops of Canada formally voted against
Humanae vitae. Paul got through this crisis without a
schism, but what if the crises had kept coming? Paul
bent to the prevailing winds a lot. He did not inter-
fere very much with the liberals who had structural
power the Church, but how much progress could he
make acting alone, with allies who were both few and
ambivalent?
And Paul did not just get the right answer in Hu-
manae vitae. He wrote a prophetic document. I think
the teaching of Humanae vitae is infallible. That means
that I do not think Paul could have written some-
thing coming to the contrary conclusion. He did not
have to say anything, though. If he had been silent, it
would have been a disaster. Frank Sheed used to ask,
assuming the pope were infallible in algebra, and he
were given an algebra test with one hundred ques-
tions, what is the minimum number he would get
right? The answer is zero. If he were infallible in al-
gebra, he could not work a problem and get a wrong
answer. He could, though, not answer at all. Infallibil-
ity is not inspiration. Popes can’t teach error, but they
are not guaranteed inspiration to say the right thing
at the right time.
The times were revolutionary. The Church was
Satan’s special target. Paul had few allies among the
bishops and prominent priests, and fewer among
intellectuals and academics. I think Paul did mirac-
ulously well in leading the Church under the worst
circumstances.
There is an area in which I think Paul did err. He
did not entrust the reform of the liturgy to the right
people, and I think the result is a new Mass that is not
what it should be. There was, however, an enormous
demand for a revised liturgy at the time. It may be
that leaders in revolutionary times should just pre-
tend that the demand for revolution does not exist.
This may be a good policy, but leaders don’t seem to
think so. Revolutionary times change everyone, even
if it does not seem as if they should in retrospect. But
what if Paul had turned over the job of revising the lit-
urgy to faithful priests? I think we would have gotten
something like the 1912 Anglo-Catholic English Mis-
sal. I think it would have been a better missal, but it
would have made the campaign to suppress the tradi-
tional Latin Mass more powerful. Perhaps there never
would have been the demand for it that we have now.
As far as I know neither I nor anyone else has any
criticism of John Paul I.
Liberals and some other critics of Saint John Paul
II complain that he was not a good administrator.
There is some element of truth in this, but the bigger
23
truth is that when you’re doing one thing you’re not
doing another. He looked beyond Rome and in do-
ing so he overlooked problems in Rome. But I think
what he did in the world was much more important
than what he didn’t do in Rome. And if you don’t re-
member how bad things were before him, it’s hard to
appreciate how much he accomplished while bitterly
opposed by modernists every step of the way.
Under Benedict XVI I remember complaints that
he wrote books about Jesus when he should have been
doing something else, something that would have to-
tally ended the power of liberals in the Church. I was
never impressed with the argument. Pope Benedict’s
teaching, in his talks, in his official documents, and
in his books, is a gift to the Church that will last for a
long time. He did so much to fix the Church’s attitude
toward liturgy. That gift is going to last too. And he
could have done much more administratively in the
Church if he had had more help, with bishops willing
to help him the way he helped John Paul. If there were
some way for him to have ended modernism, I wish
he would have ended it, but I do not think that is go-
ing to happen by papal decree.
I do not have an analogy for how we should talk
about the pope other than our families. We are clos-
er to our parents than we are to the pope, but the
analogy applies, I think. People say bad things about
their families in public to non-relatives, but I think
that is impious. I think the most common justifica-
tion for talking about the pope with contempt is that
he deserves it. He has an important job, and he is not
doing it right. Fathers have an important job in the
family, too, and they don’t do it perfectly. I have been
edified by people speaking respectfully of fathers who
have not done all of the things they perhaps should
have done—and certainly failed to meet the Ameri-
can upper-middle-class standard for soccer game at-
tendance. If a father’s role could be quantified, say
on a scale of one hundred, respectful speech from a
son whose father failed three quarters of the time is a
great thing to hear.
That does not mean lying. There is no requirement
to compliment your father, or the pope, with false-
hoods. There are people who speak about the pope
as if everything he does is exactly what he should be
doing, and every criticism improper. I find it hard
to believe that they believe what they say. I suspect
that they do not really think the pope is right about
everything, but think they have a duty to pretend
that he is. One thing about avoiding speaking about
the pope with contempt is that you get to quote him
when he says something you might like, for example,
comparing an abortionist to a hit man.
The opposite is more common, though. The peo-
ple who say really bad things about the pope justify it
by saying they think he is doing a bad job. That is the
standard for speaking disrespectfully of a professional
athlete or coach. In our sports culture if he’s being
24 The Lamp
paid twenty eight million dollars a year and he does
something wrong, there is no limit to the abuse he re-
ceives. I do not even think this attitude is right when
it comes to sports, but suppose I did: the pope is not
some athlete. If your father does something wrong,
something seriously, hurtfully wrong, contempt and
invective do not automatically become appropriate.
The pope is more like your father than your team’s
third baseman or the coach who was hired to get you
back into championship contention, more like your
father than the president no one you know voted for.
I think our problem comes from a sense of en-
titlement. We tell ourselves that we should have a
Church without major problems, that we should
have a Church in which it can be safely assumed that
every bishop is a faithful orthodox Catholic try-
ing to do his best. It happens, however, that some-
times the Church is for centuries infected with one
heresy or another, and we are living in bad times. I
think the sense of being entitled to a placid Church
is much like the sense of being entitled to a father
who shows up for soccer games and is not at work
at nine o’clock at night. Surely it is better to have a
father who can check all the boxes for a list of what
upper-middle-class fathers should be doing, but a fail-
ure in that regard does not justify contempt. We saw
this sense of entitlement when that atheist Eugenio
Scalfari said that—years ago—the pope said he did
not believe in the divinity of Christ. Lots of people
said things like, “He needs to unequivocally state that
he believes Jesus Christ is God.” He did not have to do
so. It sounded to me like a fourteen-year-old telling
her mother, “You have to let me go to this.” Maybe
the mother should, but she does not have to. You can
think it was imprudent for the pope to have talked
to Scalfari more than once. You can think it was im-
prudent the first time. But the pope does not have
to contradict somebody who insists that he really did
say something years ago but that the information has
somehow been secret until now. I would not have to
contradict somebody under those circumstances. I do
not see any good coming from the pope going over
what he said to Scalfari years ago, what he meant, and
what he really believes.
If we have a special duty toward the pope, one that
resembles the duty of filial piety, it is because we are
in some way related to him. St. John Henry Newman
wrote to the Duke of Norfolk, “I assent to that which
the Pope propounds in faith and morals, but it must
be him speaking officially, personally and immediate-
ly, and not any one else.” He was speaking of infalli-
bility, which is not my topic, but I follow that rule.
We have special duties to the people with whom we
have special relationships, not to people with whom
we have no particular relationship. We do not have to
speak with special care about our father’s drug dealer
or our mother’s boyfriend. I do not feel a special duty
to everyone on the payroll in Rome, even if they say
they are acting in the pope’s interests and know his
unspoken thoughts.
Father Hugh Somerville-Knapman has written
about the pope’s “self-appointed and self-serving” de-
fenders, those who “advocate what it is said the pope
thinks but has never quite said: that civilly remarried
divorcees should receive Holy Communion.” These
people say the pope is hinting that I am supposed to
believe that, too. If the pope wants me to take that
seriously, though, he is going to have to say it.
I do not know the pope’s unspoken thoughts. I do
not think very highly of the people who say they do,
but what if a pope does have unorthodox opinions?
He is, then, the most unfortunate of men. A pope can
believe heresy, but he can’t teach it. But how pathetic
such a pope would be. How could you do anything
but feel sorry for him?
I think we can say whatever we think is true with-
out contempt. In the family we certainly can say what
we think to our brothers and sisters about our par-
ents, and in that situation we are likely to use language
that would sound disrespectful to an outsider. But if
we are going to speak freely, and we are angry, some-
times we are going to be actually disrespectful. To use
the family analogy one more time, the son should not
insult the father, but it is not outrageous, when he
does insult him, to think that he spoke angrily out of
pain; even if it was the wrong thing to do, it does not
mean that the father is without fault in the dispute.
The Church is not like the world. Even outside the
Church, other people are our neighbors, but we are
related to the people in the Church. And we’re more
related to some than others. Saint Thomas Aquinas
asks “Whether piety extends to particular human in-
dividuals?” and “Should the duties of piety be omitted
for the sake of religion?” Thomas means by piety the
due respect we have for our country and our parents.
We owe something like that duty to particular human
individuals in the Church, among them, I think, our
pastor, our bishop, and the pope.
I for one am against omitting the duties of piety
for the sake of religion.
Michael Hamill writes from Philadelphia.
 Easter 2020
HOW TO
BE A
RADICAL
BY U R BA N H A N N O N
ack in my undergraduate days,
some friends and I came across a
collection of Ivy League lightbulb
jokes, published by an on-campus
blog. Each one opened with the
classic, “How many students from
[insert school here] does it take to change a light-
bulb?” And they answered by capitalizing on some
common stereotype of each of the various Ivies.
For Harvard it was, “One, he holds the lightbulb
and the world revolves around him.” For Princeton:
“Two, one to stir the martinis and one to call the
electrician.” The best was probably Yale’s—answer:
“None, New Haven looks better in the dark.” But the
self-deprecatory Columbia response was priceless:
“Seventy-six students: One to change the lightbulb,
fifty to protest the lightbulb’s right not to change,
and twenty-five to hold a counter-protest.” Anyone
who will venture out onto the Columbia quad dur-
ing his lunch break will learn how accurate, and how
pathetic, is that characterization.
I mention my own alma mater’s embarrassing in-
fatuation with protests because the subject of this es-
say is how to be a radical, and I want to be clear from
the outset that the Columbia protest-counter-protest
game is the furthest thing from what I have in mind.
I hate to rain on the parade of angry activists along
College Walk, but the truth is there is nothing radi-
cal about their bitter stalemate by the sundial.
The good news is that the Church can do better
than Columbia’s protesters, and my purpose is to
gesture towards how. Happily these days we Catho-
lics have the chance to be genuinely radical—hap-
pily, that is, not because there is any great value in
nonconformity as such, but because otherwise the
standard options on offer all look pretty sad (im-
agine being excited about this next presidential
25
election…). Given the truth and richness of our own
Catholic intellectual tradition on the one hand, and
its utter alienation from the culture in which we live
on the other, today we Catholics can offer a real al-
ternative to the world’s cacophony—to what Alas-
dair MacIntyre has called “the white noise of plural-
ism”—if only we will resist the too-easy urge to take
sides in those petty fights.
Confession time: I am about to do something
that I despise. I hate it when writers do etymologies.
Honestly, why not just open with, “According to
Merriam-Webster…”? Or worse: “In today’s first read-
ing…”? It makes me want to slump forward in my
seat into what P.G. Wodehouse might have described
as a sudden somersault of sleep. So I’ll keep it brief,
I promise. We get the word “radical” from radix, the
Latin for, literally, “root”—but of course, the Latins
were hyper-concrete where we English speakers
would tend to opt for abstractions, so “origin” and
“ground” and “basis” get the point across too.
To be radical, then, in the sense that I am after,
is to return all the way back to the source of an ar-
gument, to dig all the way down to its foundation.
To go with the Latinate metaphor, we are radical
when we refuse to follow a particular tree along the
course of its growth and development, because we
think that it has been planted in the wrong place all
along. Ditching the metaphor: We refuse to accept
a dispute as it has been presented to us, because we
know that by then far too much has been presumed
already. This, I want to suggest to you, is the stance
that we Catholics ought to take towards practical-
ly all the debates going on around us today. Rath-
er than taking sides, we need to step back, see what
the sides have in common, and, most probably, take
sides against that.
Borrowing from Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas
26 The Lamp
had an aphorism that sums this all up rather nicely:
Eadem est scientia oppositorum—that is, “The knowl-
edge of opposites is the same knowledge.” In other
words, every contradiction reveals a more funda-
mental commonality. For in order to contradict one
another, rival parties need to agree about what it
is they are disagreeing about. What the one asserts
must be precisely the same thing that the other de-
nies, or else there is no contradiction at all. Their
“A” and “not A” must be based upon the same “A.”
Hence, every conflict necessarily will take place in
a context—a shared context. Put it this way: To do
battle, the contenders will have to have some com-
mon ground to stand on and fight over. Every dis-
agreement, therefore, is built upon a deeper, prior
agreement. Eadem est scientia oppositorum.
It follows from all of this that the simplest way to
contradict someone, the way that requires the least
imagination and insight, is to dichotomize, to assert
the exact opposite of his position. My enemy says
“X,” so I counter right away with a loud and clear
“Not X!” However, as I intend to argue in these pag-
es, this easiest way to oppose someone is indeed too
easy. While it makes picking a fight very simple, un-
fortunately, in our circumstances, it makes winning
that fight all but impossible.
What I am proposing, then, is that we Catholics
should not be too quick these days to disagree with
our cultural opponents, at least in any straightfor-
ward way. For disagreement is like a mirror. When
we let them pick a fight with us on their terms, we
let them turn us into simply their inverse image,
which is going to be just as distorted as the original.
A wench’s reflection is no lovelier to behold than the
wench herself. Eadem est scientia oppositorum.
I am grateful to the Yale theologian Denys Turner
for glossing this Aristotelian maxim throughout his
academic career. But I would commend to you espe-
cially Turner’s treatment of the Pseudo-Denys’ apo-
phatic masterpiece The Mystical Theology in his own
apophatic masterpiece The Darkness of God. In that
book, Turner lays out the mystical strategy of the
Pseudo-Denys, that mysterious fifth-century Syrian
disciple of Plotinus—if you will: the Saint Augustine
of the East.
As Turner explains, the Pseudo-Denys elevates his
mind towards God in prayer, by ascending intellec-
tually the hierarchical ladder of being. Following the
example of Sacred Scripture, and moving transcend-
ently from base physical things all the way up to
the spiritual summit of creation, the Pseudo-Denys
methodologically applies to God the names of each
of the things God has made. He asserts a divine
name, negates that divine name with its contrary,
and then transcendently negates the negation: “God
is light,” “God is darkness,” “God is a brilliant dark-
ness.” In other words, Denys names God, only in the
next instant to lose his grasp on that name due to
its dialectical tension with the next one up the list,
until eventually even those dialectics themselves fall
away, and he enters with Moses into the cloud of Ex-
odus, the cloud of liturgical incense—the cloud of
unknowing, to be shamelessly anachronistic about
it. “Hence, as we move from complexity to simplic-
ity,” says Turner, “from the multiplicity of creatures
to the oneness of their cause, from differentiation to
lack of differentiation, we must encounter, and then
transcend the last differentiation of all: the difference
itself between similarity and difference.”
What’s the point of this crash course in mystical
theology? Simply this: For us Catholics to be radi-
cal, in the Dionysian sense that I am after, is for us
transcendently to oppose oppositions themselves.
Specifically, we must oppose the oppositions that
constitute our culture’s own in-house disagreements
today. We Catholics do not share enough in com-
mon with our fellows’ worldview to take their reso-
lutions for granted, so we cannot simply adopt a pro
or con position. Instead, under the patronage of the
Pseudo-Denys, we must rise above the conflicts we
see all around us, in order that we may see over them
to the truth that they obscure.
Let’s put our radical thesis another way. In order
to play a game, the contenders, however much they
may focus on their division and hostility, still at least
have to be playing by the same set of rules, or else
they are not contenders against one another at all.
But the warning for us is that all games were not
created equal, and not all rules are conducive to fair
play. When we Catholics allow the world to dictate
the terms of a debate to us, effectively what we are
doing is agreeing to play their game by their rules.
The problem is, even when truth is on our side, that
is a game we often have to lose. “The gates of hell
shall not prevail against it” presumes that we are not
letting hell decide what it would mean to prevail.
We cannot beat the world in an argument that
has been rigged in its favor, which is the only kind
of argument that can be had when we uncritically
employ the world’s own distorted concepts and cate-
gories. Yet no matter how many times we have tried
anyway and lost—and, just in case you haven’t been
keeping count, our record in this ill-conceived “cul-
ture war” is terrible—like the gambling addict at the
blackjack table, somehow we never learn our lesson.
In our daily struggle with acedia, usually we are far
too eager to dissipate ourselves into any distraction,
into any Twitter debate, into any game at all, and we
let our enthusiasm get the better of us over and over
again. It is time to walk away from the table.
In practice what this means is that we cannot sim-
ply deny the falsehoods being proclaimed all around
us. Denial is too easy, and it concedes way too much.
To deny an assertion is already to have accepted its
formulation, to have accepted the quid est (what it is),
and simply to squabble over the utrum est (whether it
 Easter 2020
is). It’s not unlike giving an answer to the question,
“Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” If in his
frantic excitement all the accused husband can see
are the two preset “yes” and “no” options, then he’ll
grab onto the better one as fast as he can, when what
he should have done is questioned the question. Sim-
ilarly, a denial of the culture’s claims is an implicit
agreement with the culture’s account of what we are
fighting over. And to be blunt, if you agree with our
enemies today about what it is we disagree about,
you are as foolish as the self-accused wife-beater.
Consider abortion. Assertion: “Unborn children
don’t have a right to life, but women do have a right
to defend their own autonomy by killing them.”
And the corresponding denial: “Unborn children do
have a right to life, and women do not have a right
to defend their own autonomy by killing them.”
Shouting this at the top of their lungs has been the
pro-life movement’s modus operandi for decades. And
it is exceedingly stupid.
How so? Here’s a lesson from my law school days:
“Rights” are claims to the most basic level of concern
that one individual can demand from any other in-
dividual, even a total stranger. Historically, a “right”
was for when a random passerby’s horse got spooked
and broke your fence. To think that this is the lev-
el of care required of parents for their children is
horrifying, and insisting on it is not conducive to
ending abortion. By looking at the unborn child as
an individual rights bearer, rather than as the young
son of this mother and father, the pro-life movement
plays into the same anti-familial anthropology that
made abortion seem viable in the first place. Basing
everything upon a “right to life” merely reinforces
the individualist, voluntarist premises whose fatal
conclusion we are trying to deny.
Now when the question is posed, “May a moth-
er kill her unborn baby?” the pro-choicers say,
“Yes because he’s violating her autonomy,” and the
pro-lifers say, “No because that would violate his
autonomy,” when what we should say is, “Are you
insane? They aren’t autonomous! She’s his mom! She
has to love and nurture him with everything she’s
got, and he has to let her form him and love her right
back. That’s who they are. Stop talking about moth-
ers and sons as though they were accidental business
associates or less. He is bone of your bones and flesh
of your flesh! Love him! Killing him is unthinkable,
not because he has rights against you, but because he
is yours.” But unfortunately, the pro-life movement
is too caught up in this rights language to step back
and see the more complete Catholic understanding
of the thing, which, by situating our moral precepts
within a metaphysical and social context in which
they actually make sense, could offer a far more at-
tractive answer to the culture of death.
Zooming back out: The point is that we cannot
assume that the way the world’s arguments typically
27
are set forth will be sound. As heated as they often
can be, really these are intramural contests that take
all of the interesting points of contention for grant-
ed. In a culture as depraved as ours, we can almost
guarantee that the in-vogue way of conceptualizing
a given issue is going to be confused and unhelpful.
Entering into those debates uncritically, by simply
adopting one of the equal-and-opposite default posi-
tions, is just going to entangle us in that confusion
and, in the long run, obscure the Church’s radical
alternative.
Another example—and one on which I have
spilled a lot of ink elsewhere—is the issue of same-sex
lust. I’ll be honest with you: Here our collective fail-
ure to be radical breaks my heart, because this is a
case where real Catholic doctrine is so much more
consoling and sensible than anything else being pro-
posed today. But instead, rather than playing Christ
to the woman at the well, our “conservatives” seem
determined to act the part of her self-satisfied detrac-
tors. Once again, we are wasting our breath unthink-
ingly denying the claims of liberalism, without ever
considering whether we ought instead to attack the
categories that make these claims appear intelligible
in the first place.
There are different angles at which we could cut
into this mess, but let’s start here: Sexual orientation
is a myth. It simply is not real. The tidy psychological
binary between “heterosexuals” and “homosexuals”
is just one of many stupid inventions bequeathed to
us by the nineteenth century, and it is long past time
to trash it. Honestly, this is all just a bad reduction-
ist sham. The notion that which sex someone would
rather rub up against reveals some essential aspect
of his personality is impoverishing, and the belief
that these two nice and neat categories of gay and
straight are adequate for describing anyone’s messy
experience of sexual desire is ridiculously naïve
(thus the infinite expansion of the LGBT acronym).
Yet by now we are so used to this bizarre conceptual
scheme that we never bother to notice just how for-
mally arbitrary and empirically oversimplified and
historically anomalous it is. For the sake of chastity
and sanity, we need to move on.
In both its conservative heteronormative and its
progressivist gay-rights varieties, the lie of sexual
orientation is completely foreign to our Catholic
tradition and—as too few moral theologians have
noticed—totally incompatible with it. Once again,
we perceive the inadequacy of simply attaching a
negative sign to the claims of the culture. Eadem est
scientia oppositorum. Our sad confused libertine con-
temporaries tell us every day, “Being a homosexual is
normal and just as good as being a heterosexual, and
therefore sodomy is fine.” Cue the myopic contrari-
an conservatives, who strain their extra-deep voices
as they scream back, “Nuh-uh! Being a homosexual is
abnormal and is way worse than being a heterosexu-
28 The Lamp
al, and therefore sodomy is evil.” And then I rend my
scapular in excruciating frustration.
Let’s be clear: Sodomy is indeed evil—and so is the
allegedly “normal,” “healthy” practice of self-abuse,
where the loveable other is dispensed with altogeth-
er (not that I would consider ranking mortal sins to
be all too useful an enterprise—without the precious
Blood of Christ, they all lead to the same place). The
evil of sodomy, however, has absolutely nothing to
do with the relative values of gayness and straight-
ness, because neither of those things is real any-
way (sorry Straight Pride Paraders). Sodomy is not
wrong because it springs from a distasteful psycho-
logical condition, but because it lustfully thwarts the
rational-animal purpose of sex: children. “Homosex-
uality” has nothing to do with it, nor has “heterosex-
uality” anything to do with the ethical goodness of
marital relations. It’s as if conservative Christians to-
day think that an aesthetic attraction to the opposite
sex is some kind of moral accomplishment. Stupid!
The truth is that there is no such thing as a ho-
mosexual, any more than there is such a thing as a
heterosexual. There are just people. There are just
men and women, confused and lonely and fallen and
beautiful. There are no categories to hide behind. It’s
just us. No masks, my friends. Just you and me.
In light of this, the message that we Catholics
should be proclaiming to those who sometimes
struggle with lustful passions towards their own sex
is not, “Oh, so you’re one of those people with ob-
jectively disordered desires, a member of that group
whose temptations are really unseemly.” (Note the
implicit not-so-subtle addendum: “unlike mine.”)
“Well, as long as you never fall into sin and let us
hermetically seal you off from the rest of us with this
nice technical-sounding label and don’t make us un-
comfortable with too much talk about this unattrac-
tive tendency of yours, then we welcome you with
loving arms.” Right . . .
What we should say instead is this: “So you’re
tempted in this way on occasion? Sorry about that,
man. Life’s a vale of tears. But frankly I wouldn’t
worry too much about it. If you could only see how
each of us is tempted on a daily basis, you wouldn’t
be so embarrassed. And that’s all okay, because our
hope isn’t in us anyway. Saint Therese said that she
would not fear even if she were the greatest sinner
in the world, even if she had committed every single
sin in the book, because her confidence had nothing
to do with her own merit and everything to do with
God’s goodness. In His Church, we are all fallen.
Mysteriously, this is the story He’s telling. So there is
nothing especially different about you or me or an-
yone. We’re all in the same boat, and that boat is the
Barque of Peter. We’re just a bunch of sinners trying
to love our way to heaven together. But for the grace
of God go I, every single day. So come join our ranks.
Fight with us for chastity and charity. Check into the
field hospital. We’re in this one together, friend, and
we love you—period.”
That is what a pastoral approach to same-sex at-
traction looks like: not puritanical squeamishness,
not condescending philanthropy, and not lustful
indulgence, but chaste spiritual friendship—having
the humility and the self-knowledge to tear down
the polite “heterosexual” façade and identify with
your brothers and sisters. It’s costly. It’s worth it.
And, by the way, it is the only adequate answer to
that heart-wrenching line in the Obergefell opinion:
“Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lone-
ly person might call out only to find no one there.”
Now granted, that’s a bad philosophy of marriage,
but it’s a very good confession of a deep human fear
that, if we’re man enough to admit it, all of us have
known. We need to be ready to comfort one another
out of this fear, out of this loneliness—not with car-
nal sin, but rather with the serene, vulnerable love
of Christ: “I am with you always. Be not afraid. I call
you friend.”
Let’s leave this example on the ground, and fly
back up to twenty thousand feet. These days our
Catholic pop apologists are fond of bragging about
what they like to call the Catholic “both/and.” And
fair enough: Sometimes the Church has affirmed
the motivating concerns of both of two warring fac-
tions—but only materially and secundum quid. For-
mally and per se, it’s really less of a Catholic “both/
and” and more of a Catholic “Ugh, what the hell
are you two talking about?” Think about it: If the
Church tells two interlocutors that, in their zealous
conflict against one another, in fact they are both
correct, what she effectively is telling them is that
they each have such a poor grasp on their own cher-
ished position that they don’t even understand its
basic entailments. If she harmonizes two apparently
contradictory principles, she does that by taking a
page from the Pseudo-Denys and transcending the
limited and obscuring vantage point that both inter-
locutors share in common.
How do we do that in practice? Here’s how to be a
radical, distilled into a method: Before we Catholics
start fighting over answers in the deadlocked stand-
offs all around us today, we first need to step back and
try to discern whatever the question is that is implic-
itly being asked in each case. Next, in the light of our
luminous tradition, we need to evaluate that ques-
tion as it had been posed, and most likely critique
it and even reformulate it completely. Then we can
set about answering that better question. And finally
we can use that new and probably radical-sounding
answer to understand why the original, poorly for-
mulated version of the question had to lead to such
a bitter and irresolvable stalemate in the first place.
Our part as Catholics, I am arguing, is not to answer
the world’s questions; it’s to attack them.
I want to make explicit that I am not so much
 Easter 2020
arguing here for particular resolutions, no matter
how much I may approve of them, but for a general
stance. My purpose is not really for you to finish this
essay agreeing with me about abortion or same-sex
lust or anything else, but rather for you to walk away
having situated yourself intellectually within the
Church rather than the world. This is not so much
about specific conclusions as it is about attention to
the premises—especially the implicit premises—that
get us there. I want your mind to be freed to think
beyond, and against, the default dichotomies du jour.
Allow me to conclude with one last etymology,
ANDREA
DWORKIN,
RENAISSANCE
WOMAN
BY M O N I C A CO STA
n The eXile, a Vice-like and now
defunct magazine from the
days when anyone knew who
Matt Taibbi was, the poet and
self-styled war nerd John Dolan
once referred to Andrea Dworkin
as the only American feminist who believed “you’d
actually have to live out the philosophy.” Most fem-
inists who came of age in the sexual revolution,
Dolan insinuated, engaged in a little performative
college lesbianism for “street cred,” then defected to
the “cool dudes.” Dworkin didn’t do this, but she also
didn’t live out her vocally avowed lesbianism. Her
thirty-one-year relationship with her husband, John
Stoltenberg, was continent. Stoltenberg maintained
relationships with men throughout the marriage,
but Dworkin refused dalliances with women, feeling
29
because at this point it doesn’t much matter if you
fall asleep. In his excellent essay on “The ‘Intellec-
tual’ and the Church,” Josef Pieper vindicates my
summons to be a radical when he reminds us, “By
the way, the source of the word ‘nonconformity’ is
Scripture: Nolite conformari huic saeculo, ‘And be not
conformed to this world’!” Even for radicals, there is
something comforting about having the Holy Ghost
in your footnotes.
Urban Hannon’s writing has appeared in First
Things, Aleteia, and other publications.
like she wasn’t good enough to have them. What is
one to make of this? Dolan comes close to the truth
when he concludes
Dworkin didn’t know a thing about her audience.
Didn’t know they were talking career and fun when
she was talking sacrifice, martyrdom. It’s no acci-
dent her heroine was Joan of Arc. Dworkin was a
Catholic without knowing it, an old-time Catholic
who never suspected it of herself.
One could not read her first book, Woman Hat-
ing, from 1974 and draw this conclusion. It is an
ill-informed screed against medieval Christianity, re-
plete with lurid descriptions of what Dworkin calls
“the Dark Ages,” meaning the first sixteen centuries
after Christ, characterized, she says, primarily by
the burning of witches. It proposes that an apocry-
30 The Lamp
phal bishop “whose favorite concubine was his own
daughter by a nun of Épinal” was the norm in the
medieval Church. Nearly half the book is taken up
by a fantastical account of a vast counterconspiracy
of witches, whose membership included almost all
medieval women, which preserved pre-Christian
paganism intact until the final persecutions of early
modernity. The Malleus Maleficarum, a papally con-
demned text which Dworkin imaginatively believes
to have been the official “Constitution” of the ear-
ly modern Church, could not have painted a more
absurd picture. Dworkin puts the final touches on
the fantasy by describing, and endorsing, sacraments
of group sex and infant cannibalism every Witches’
Sabbath.
Raised in secular Jewish bohemia and exten-
sively read in nineteenth-century French and
twentieth-century American literature, yet never
having encountered a book more religious in na-
ture than Plato’s Symposium, Dworkin’s mistake was
to believe that there was a better sexual liberation
out there. Parroting the post-Freudian theory of
the soixante-huitards, she even closed Woman Hat-
ing with the assertion that the “destruction of the
incest taboo is essential to the development of coop-
erative human community.” She soon learned from
this mistake. In 2002 she described a primary-school
teacher who raped and exploited her till she walked
out to sea, hoping to drown. “I became antisuicide,”
Dworkin wrote. “It took me longer—far too long—
to become antipedophilic.” One turning point was
a youthful obsession with Allen Ginsberg, who be-
came an early mentor. Dworkin followed her idol
like a puppy, begging him to shine his intellectual
light on her, until she realized that his membership
in the North American Man/Boy Love Association
was no abstract political statement but a concrete ex-
pression of his desire to rape children. After she be-
gan to share this realization with their social circle,
Ginsberg followed her as assiduously as she had him,
harassing her in the hope that she’d shut up. “When
he died,” she wrote, “he stopped.”
By Intercourse, published in 1983, Dworkin had
grown out of her naïve belief in the other, untaint-
ed sexual revolution. One of the only references to
the possibility of intercourse without domination is
embedded in Dworkin’s paraphrase of Saint Augus-
tine, that “honest sinner and honest utopian,” who
proposed that Adam and Eve had “intercourse based
on harmony, not lust.” This is also her utopia, and
she now knew (but didn’t want to admit) that the
Fall had indeed foreclosed it. Intercourse puts the
problem in the title, and there are only two possible
responses to it: chapter six, “Virginity,” and chap-
ter seven, “Occupation/Collaboration.” Of the two,
virginity is the superior state. Most of chapter six
is about Saint Joan of Arc, who achieved “freedom
from the real meaning of being female” in the purity
of her soldiering. “She saw angels and was visited by
saints,” two saints in particular, Catherine of Alex-
andria and Margaret of Antioch. Dworkin sees fit to
tell the story of each saint in her own right. Both
were summoned before pagan rulers, the Emperor
Maxentius and the governor Olybrius, who offered
them the position of official mistress if only they
would renounce their faith. They refused and were
tortured to death. In the Middle Ages, no longer the
“Dark Ages” in Dworkin’s parlance:
The narrative details were so familiar that an evil
and stupid person was even referred to, in the
common parlance, as an “Olybrius.” Women were
named after these saints and celebrated name days.
These saints were figures of mass adoration in sto-
ries of adventure, romance, and heroism. There was
an elaborate and epic imagery in the churches to
communicate visually the drama and scale of their
bravery and martyrdom.
Now that Saint Joan, who wore men’s clothing only
because she refused to be raped, has also been raised
to the altars, secular scholars wish to discredit her.
Her defiance and defense of her purity are “trivial-
ized as a sexual kink, more style than substance, at
most an interesting wrinkle in a psychosexual trag-
edy of a girl who wanted to be a boy and came to
a bad end.” For this Dworkin will not stand. Joan
died defending her virginity. Dworkin does not
mean the literal preservation of the hymen, which,
she guesses, Joan probably lost riding horses, and
she also does not mean escaping penetration by a
man. Unlike most Catholic historians, Dworkin
speculates that Joan was raped at the end. Like all
Catholics, Dworkin knows that a virgin who has
been raped is still a virgin. But Joan died for the only
right that matters, the right not to be degraded by
the world. By this stage in her writing career, Dwor-
kin is mature and self-aware enough to understand
that her elevation of the holy virgo/virago smells
of incense. Saint Ambrose, she admits, wrote that
a faithful woman “progresses to perfect manhood,
to the measure of adulthood of Christ,” and indeed
Dworkin cannot describe Joan’s virtue in anything
but masculine terms. Saint Joan “incarnated virtue in
its original meaning: strength or manliness.” On one
level, Dworkin may believe that she is referring to
the Maid’s martial prowess. But what about when,
as Dworkin tells us, Saint Catherine won debates
against the fifty best pagan orators in Alexandria?
What about when Saint Margaret crushed the devil
under her foot twice, once when he appeared as a
dragon and once as a man? Might not all God’s vir-
gins be as exceptional as Joan?
In some ways, Dworkin reminds us, these women
had it easier than those who chose the “easy” route
of occupation or collaboration: in other words, mar-
riage. Sophia Tolstoy had to live with a husband,
 Easter 2020
Count Leo, who thought sex was “horrid, shame-
ful, and painful” but forced it on her even when she
begged him to stop, otherwise ignoring her, not even
helping out with their thirteen children. He wrote a
novella, The Kreutzer Sonata, about a man who like-
wise finds intercourse repulsive, believing that he
can escape it by killing his wife, which he does. Only
then is he struck with the realization that his wife
had been a person like himself. Perhaps Dworkin
correctly intuited that for the utopian-millenarian
Tolstoy this was the secret truth of marriage. It is
certainly the truth of marriage for Dworkin.
Intercourse is full of bad husbands, mostly literary
but some historical. A rabbi’s wife in an Isaac Bashe-
vis Singer story puts aside an ascetic, sexless husband
only to discover that her new husband hosts orgies
in their home. The wife of a Don DeLillo protagonist
is compelled to read him pornography aloud. Legis-
lators in Florida refuse to criminalize marital rape.
Sometimes the women are complicit. A character in
Tennessee Williams’s play The Rose Tattoo fantasiz-
es about getting a tattoo to match that of her way-
ward husband’s mistress, and after his death mourns
their lovemaking with a passion that spills over into
religious fanaticism. Stella wants Stanley’s “animal
passion” and pays for it. This false consciousness
of wanting men and men’s sex, whether marital or
extramarital, leads a parade of women, from Emma
Bovary to Lucy Westenra, to their doom. As Dwork-
in puts it in Our Blood, marriage is founded on rap-
ine, in the sense of abduction, and also on rape, but
this is all the more true of medieval courtly love, and
of all other kinds of adultery. Dworkin may not have
said that all sex was rape, but concrete examples of
a sexual alternative disappear from her writing one
by one. Pedophilia having been first abandoned as a
dead end, then having reappeared as the worst and
most hideous sin in the male repertoire, sodomy be-
tween men emerges in Intercourse as a viable out. The
word “lesbian” does not appear.
Marriage founded on rape? This is redolent of
evolutionary psychology or of Freud’s primal horde.
If Christianity permits us to imagine cavemen drag-
ging their brides from the parental cave by their
hair, this is not the most archaic state of man. Adam
and Eve were already tranquilly, beatifically married
when they disobeyed God. Adam only started giv-
ing Eve a hard time after their expulsion from Eden.
“Thou shalt be under thy husband’s power,” God ad-
vises Eve, “and he shall have dominion over thee.”
Adam is sentenced to “labor and toil,” and both are
made mortal. Although marriage is the most archaic
state of man, it is not, in Christianity, his final state.
Christ in the Gospel informs us that in heaven and
on the restored earth the saints will have no truck
with marriage. Marriage is a contingent necessity
of life on earth, but those who sacrifice it to live as
virgins, men and women, are living portents of the
31
kingdom of the saints. Married women must serve
out the sentence of Eve, but nuns receive a taste of
terrestrial heaven. If this were all Christianity had
to say about marriage, one could be forgiven for
labeling Dworkin a crypto-Christian thinker, per-
haps a nun with no mercy for the sinners outside
the grille. But Christ’s incarnation and death for our
sins also changed the nature of marriage. Man and
woman were given back a little of their prelapsar-
ian friendship and equality. Although virginity was
the surer path, and sexless or Josephite marriage was
recommended, a married man who loved his wife as
Christ loved the Church might find his way to heav-
en. Dworkin never found a way to articulate the pos-
sibility of male self-sacrifice, which is why she only
found her way into half a Josephite marriage, one
in which she lived without sex but her husband did
not. She did not sacrifice all friendship in marriage.
Although her husband was unfaithful, he carries on
her anti-pornography work today.
If Dworkin was not quite a medieval Christian,
whether a millenarian heretic or a monastic chauvin-
ist, what was she? My answer is that she was a Re-
naissance Christian, not yet a Protestant but human-
ist, someone very much like Juan Luis Vives, one of
Europe’s pioneers of education for lay women. Born
in Valencia in 1493, Vives’s family was ethnically Jew-
ish, and several of his family members were tried and
convicted of relapsing into the ancestral faith, in-
cluding Vives’s own father, who was executed when
Vives was young. Vives left mainland Spain at the age
of seventeen, establishing himself as a professor at
Louvain in the Southern Netherlands, which were,
however, Spanish possessions and still fervently
Catholic. Vives was a Catholic all his life and an out-
spoken critic of Luther. He was a friend of Catherine
of Aragon, Europe’s first female ambassador before
she became Queen of England, and the head tutor of
her daughter, the future Queen Mary I. During his
time in England, Vives established the humanities
curriculum of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and
submitted recommendations to the crown for fur-
ther university reform. The college still honors his
memory, although it scrubs away that of his faith.
He remained in England until 1527, when Henry
VIII first imprisoned, then expelled him for cam-
paigning against the royal divorce. He spent the rest
of his life publishing pedagogy handbooks, Catholic
apologetics, political tracts pleading for greater state
assistance to the urban poor, and essays in biblical
philology. He died in Flanders in 1540, about half a
decade after his greatest friends, Erasmus and Saint
Thomas More.
Queen Catherine wanted the best humanist ed-
ucation for her daughter and picked Vives less as a
fellow Spaniard than as one of the most illustrious
living representatives of the new learning. Like
Erasmus and More, Vives wished to reintroduce Pla-
32 The Lamp

to into a European academy he thought was over-

stuffed with scholastic followers of Aristotle. All
three believed, like Plato, that women were as ready
learners as men, and that virtue and education were
synonymous. (This was not the normal view, but nei-
ther was it as exceptional as those who share the ear-
ly Dworkin’s delusions about the Middle Ages might
imagine.) Female monasticism was on the decline in
the sixteenth century. While reforms had begun in
the male orders, the convents lagged behind. The
great Spanish reformer Saint Teresa of Avila was an
eight-year-old girl when Vives published his Educa-
tion of a Christian Woman in 1523. Such Female Latin
authors such as Saint Hildegard of Bingen, let alone
Catherine of Alexandria and other orators, were re-
ceding into distant memory. On the other hand, ed-
ucation for the upper-class laity was broadening and
deepening. Although medieval monarchs were not
illiterate and often composed poetry in the vernac-
ular, humanism raised expectations for what a royal
education should look like. Henry VIII, as a young
king, was known as a great Catholic apologist in
his own right, famously publishing the Assertio Sep-
tem Sacramentorum, a response to Luther’s charges
against the papacy, in 1521. But neither Erasmus nor
Vives was convinced that women’s learning could
equal or rival that of men until they met the extraor-
dinary daughters of Thomas More, classicists and
translators in their own right thanks to the pains-
taking efforts of their father. Vives was fresh from a
visit to the More household when he began to com-
pose the Education of a Christian Woman, admitting
freely that the experience had broadened his idea of
the ideal female curriculum, admitting rhetoric and
oratory despite an inclination to prefer silence in
women.
The Education of a Christian Woman was dedicat-
ed to Princess Mary, then seven years old. Its con-
tradictions are numerous. Its pedagogy is obviously
for laywomen (successive chapters are dedicated to
maidens, wives, and widows) and nuns are scarcely
mentioned, but occasionally Vives will remember
to extol the superior merits of virginity. Human-
ist commitments frequently lead Vives into an un-
questioning acceptance of classical and otherwise
pre-Christian misogyny. Its praise of female suicide,
such as that of the raped Lucretia or the sati of Indian
widows, is barely qualified and never by an explana-
tion of its status as an unspeakable sin in Christianity.
Erasmus, whose own satire was notoriously Rabelai-
sian on the woman question, read the Education and
told Vives to tone down the misogyny. What would
Vives’s wife think about all this? Vives was unable to
accept the criticism, and the mutual admiration so-
ciety never recovered. Yet the Education is nonethe-
less a pioneering work of pedagogy and a polemic in
favor of universal female education. Every educated
woman, Vives writes, will be virtuous, because edu-
 Easter 2020
cation is education in principles. A handful of Greek
courtesans do not make a counterexample, and their
education was anyway shallow. Sappho was truly ed-
ucated, but she was not promiscuous with men or
women: her affairs are sensationalist fabrications.
The Sibyls, priestesses of Apollo and Juno (the best
of a bad lot of gods), and the Vestals were all edu-
cated virgins. Even a misogynist like Martial could
recommend Sulpicia’s book against male adultery
to his men friends. While men will respect a chaste
woman more than an unchaste woman, the differ-
ence is even more pronounced with a virgin. Even
the worst of men respect a virgin. The Greek gods,
Vives writes in a moment of relative clarity on the
ancients, would have made ghastly people. Yet even
they respected the virgin scholar Minerva and called
the virgin Cybele their great mother.
Not content with enticing women into virginity,
Vives proceeds to scare it into them. A huge list of
historical honor killings follows. An Athenian gov-
ernor had an unchaste daughter torn to pieces by a
mad horse. Pontius Aufedanius killed his daughter
for allowing a slave to pimp her. A centurion killed
his daughter simply because he had learned of the
decemvir’s plans to rape her. In medieval Spain, a set
of brothers waited until their sister had given birth
to her illegitimate child, then stabbed her to death.
Vives recalls from his own childhood an incident in
which three village girls strangled a fourth when
they caught her engaged in public sex. Lucretia com-
mitted her own honor killing, although Vives finally
remembers to warn against imitating her:
History is full of such examples, as is the common
experience of life. It is not to be marveled at that
such things are done by parents and close friends
and that feelings of affection are suddenly changed
into the most violent hatred, since these young
women themselves, victims of a detestable and
savage love, casting away all filial piety from their
hearts, have shown hatred for their parents, sib-
lings, even their children, not merely friends and
relatives.
The victims of honor killings brought it on them-
selves. No woman who has illicit sex with a man can
ever be safe. It is the ultimate antisocial act. Vives
is not secular enough to believe that male adultery
is forgivable or does not exist, as his classical mod-
els mostly did. He praises Job’s resolve in remaining
faithful to a verbally abusive wife. But women al-
ways pay the price. Even if women succeed in evad-
ing their family members’ supervision or obtaining
their complicity, men often kill their girlfriends and
mistresses. The marginal, uncertain status of the
women makes such crimes far more common than
uxoricide.
Although virgins are the best role models for all
women, a chaste married woman will enjoy similar
33
respect in the eyes of the world. But women should
not marry because it is the received and respect-
able thing to do. No woman should ever marry an
abusive man. Some women do this because they are
themselves gamblers and drunkards and attracted to
similar personalities, but frequently women marry a
wanton because they pass through life in a dissocia-
tive state and cannot imagine anyone being admira-
ble or worthy of love. Both situations Vives force-
fully condemns. A woman who marries a man who
abuses her may as well marry an animal. The same
goes for criminals. If he had heard Lana Del Rey
singing about her addiction to elderly, bemulleted
crack dealers, Vives would have brought her to trial
for bestiality. (So would Dworkin.) Nor should wom-
en tolerate abuse from any other man. The response
to sexual harassment should always be to leave the
room. There is no guarantee in marriage, however
prudently chosen. Sometimes a woman will marry a
sociopath unawares. Justina, the most virtuous and
eligible woman in Rome, was the victim of an ar-
ranged marriage to such a man. He killed her on her
wedding night in a fit of senseless rage at her beauty.
Marriage may prove disappointing even if the hus-
band is not morally deficient. Vives relates at length
the story of his in-laws, Clara Cervent and Bernard
Valdaura. Bernard was sick all his life (Vives appears
to take a sort of glee in describing the graphic turn
for the worse his condition took when he caught the
pox on top of the chronic illnesses) and Clara took
it upon herself to nurse him, although she brought
to the household many servants to whom she could
have delegated the work. It took Bernard decades
to die.
These are also the kinds of stories which fill up
Dworkin’s 1983 Right-Wing Women. Marabel Morgan
(of The Total Woman, Total Joy, and The Total Wom-
an Cookbook fame) is castigated for an “awful, silly,
terrible book in which she claims that women must
exist for their husbands, do sex and be sex for their
husbands.” Even Vives never went that far. Although
the passage’s placement in Education gives it the
taste of an afterthought, Vives does insist that the
very best married women, like Mary before them,
convinced their husbands to forego marital sex en-
tirely. The ones who leave uncooperative husbands
to join convents (one of the only real mentions of
nuns in the book) receive even higher praise. In
Right-Wing Women, Dworkin finds intimations of
domestic violence, rationalized away, in Anita Bry-
ant’s memoirs. Married men file out to watch a
snuff film in which a young South American wom-
an is disemboweled. Norman Mailer, himself mar-
ried, writes that all women want to be murdered.
Depressed housewives are drugged to the gills and
their husbands often find their attenuated state of
consciousness sexy. Marriage is servitude to a man,
and Protestant quislings like Morgan and Bryant are
34 The Lamp
the only ones honest enough to admit it. Likewise,
Vives takes the biblical warning that a married wom-
an will serve her husband more than she can serve
Christ as normative rather than descriptive. Even
going to daily Mass can constitute an abdication of
spousal duty. Better to pray at home. The sexualized,
unremitting obedience Dworkin identifies in Protes-
tant marriage manuals is absent from Vives’s Educa-
tion. The general rule of female obedience is applied,
then riddled with exceptions and qualifications. A
dim-witted husband must be led to obey like a child.
Initial wifely obedience builds trust, which can lead
to reciprocal husbandly obedience, as happened in
the case of Themistocles, who came to obey his wife
Archippa “in practically everything.” Themistocles
was the most powerful man in Athens, but Archippa,
a right-wing woman Dworkin would have hated, was
the brains behind the operation.
Although she never became comfortable with
bourgeois marriage, by the ’80s it widely pointed
out that Dworkin was writing the right-wing paeans
to virginity that she thought she hated. Her testi-
mony before the Reagan-era Meese Commission on
pornography made the alliance with the Christian
right official, and her support for Linda Lovelace’s
decision to go public about her abuse incidentally
midwived the latter’s return to Jesus. As early as 1983,
Dworkin was aware of her image, sarcastically call-
ing sex-positive feminists “too deep, too radical, too
taboo for conventional, conforming, ladylike, virgin-
al me.” She didn’t really buy that image of herself,
and Dorothy Fortenberry of La Croix International
hit on the reason when she wrote about Dworkin’s
lifelong disappointment “that she did not, could not”
live like Rimbaud and Baudelaire “because she was a
woman.” Dworkin imprisoned herself in bohemia all
her life; her books are full of reference points likely
to be familiar and agreeable to bohemians. Dworkin
wanted all her life to be a famous bohemian male,
like Norman Mailer or Jim Morrison, and even if
presented with Christ or St. Francis of Assissi as role
models might not have found them exciting enough.
Few male saints waged war as readily as Joan of Arc.
It would be wrong, however, to see Dworkin
purely as a relic of Sixties boomerdom, an equal and
opposite reaction to the soixante-huitard scumbags
who started a worldwide movement because the kill-
joys running Paris Nanterre University wouldn’t let
them into the women’s dorms. It would be the same
mistake as dismissing Vives as another Renaissance
humanist drunk on classical misogyny, although
many such men existed. Both writers lived through
eras, the Renaissance and the American countercul-
ture, when it was fashionable to wallow in sin, and
both did so with gusto, rhetorically if not actually.
Anyone who has read Pascal or Dante will recognize
the pattern. The author descends gleefully into the
chaos at the bottom of the slippery slope onto which
a person can be pushed by just one peccadillo, show-
ing off the brave new world awaiting all rulebreakers
until long after the reader starts begging for mercy.
Mercy is mostly foreclosed. When the author comes
up for air, it is usually to showcase instances of ex-
traordinary virtue or to plead with God Himself. Re-
pentant sinners like St. Augustine or St. Pelagia get
edged out. The wages of sin is death, and death does
not dilly-dally. An odor of Jansenism hangs around
this model of the world, and we must affirm against
it that forgiveness does exist and that we must find
it also in ourselves. Not every woman who has extra-
marital sex will be murdered by her lover before she
can repent. But many such women will be murdered.
(So will many virgins.) What distinguishes Dworkin
and Vives from Tolstoy and Flaubert, who show, not
without considerable sadism, that one sin can end a
woman’s life, is that the Anti-Sex League does come
up for air. Dworkin and Vives were Platonists with-
out being utopians, deeply invested in the power of
education to change the world by rescuing us, male
and female alike, from the prevailing bestial state.
More than wanting to fight, Dworkin wanted to
know. She refused to be one of those “proud, pro-sex,
liberated Cosmo intellectuals” because she wanted to
be a real intellectual, even if it also meant joining
the ranks of the “Lesbian-Feminist-Vegetarians for
Jesus.” Vives wanted women to be real intellectuals
too. He could imagine nothing more terrible than
living with a wife he did not respect (though this
may have been his own fate). Why can’t they all be
like the More girls? Dworkin would have agreed. In
her memoir, she reflected, echoing Saint Augustine,
on the unreality of evil. “All the worst immoralities
are but one,” she wrote, “a single sin of human noth-
ingness and stupidity.” God, conversely, represented
for her the plenitude of knowledge. “I think the best
gift on dying,” she wrote, “would be if God gave one
that second between life and death in which to know
everything all at once, all that one ever wanted to
know.” Let us pray that it was granted.
Monica Costa teaches college in the South.

ARTS and LETTERS
KALE-
FLAVORED
SMOKE
Jules Verne (translated, edited, and
introduced by William Butcher)
T W E N T Y T H O U SA N D
L E AG U E S U N D E R T H E S E A S
Oxford University Press,
pp.464, $12.95
By Matthew Walther
I no longer have the thing, which
was enscribed in cursive (pink
marker) with my mother’s Chris-
tian and maiden names, nor does
it seem likely, after years of inter-
mittent searching, that I shall find
another one like it. But I have still
got some of the others, including
Tom Sawyer, in which my uncle has
scribbled just below his older sis-
ter, once again in marker (orange),
and some old Dell Yearlings. If
those covers, with their clean lines
and monochrome borders and that
magnificent horse in his little circu-
lar habitat—immaculately circum-
scribed but also somehow infinite,
like a more wholesome version of
the old Mobil Gas pegasus—do not
make you close your eyes with holy
dread, I am not going to dismiss
Easter 2020
you as insensate; I might wonder,
though.
But about it: So far as I know it
is the first book I ever read silent-
ly to myself. I do not know how it
happened or why or when. I very
much doubt that I actually started
reading it at the beginning or that
I made it through till the end. All
I know is that one night, lying in
the same bed in which I either had
or would go on to swallow a quar-
ter and eat Play-Doh, I suddenly
become a we and we came up from
the water and took a boat to the
shore of some remote island and
went in search of rare shells and
were about to be taken alive and
eaten by five or six hundred can-
nibals. (The ever-present threat of
anthropophagy deserves its place
in the list of things which, rath-
er disappointingly, prove not to
factor much into life’s daily reali-
ties, alongside lava, space, swords,
spears, halberds, and other antique
implements of war, robots that do
things other than produce unem-
ployment, treasure—as opposed to
money or even jewelry—and maps
leading to the former.) The cov-
er naturally depicted The Famous
Squid Incident (worst indie folk
debut of 2007?), but to this day the
hunting expedition looms larger in
my imagination.
That copy was replaced long
ago by a sturdy little black paper-
35
back with a learned introduction.
(Thus was I was initiated into
such solemn mysteries as the dif-
ference between the English and
French definition of a league and
the names of the various luxury
watercraft Jules Verne purchased
with his huge and well-deserved
earnings.) Along with an old Tor
Classics (yes!) Three Musketeers in
a delightfully bowlderized trans-
lation (own name in what I fan-
cied was “French”-looking cursive,
faintish pencil) and Kim, it has
been placed by my wife on a kind
of household Index librorum prohib-
itorum, certain books that I am not
allowed to pick up when I have to
write or pretend to know how to
fix something because there will be
no putting them down once they
are opened. I am nothing if not a
legalist. This new O.U.P. paperback
is not technically proscribed. It is
even, absurdly, work.
The first thing one notices is
that oddly insistent terminal s. It
does not matter how many times
one has been reminded—by people
whose French is even worse than
ours—that the “sous” in Vingt mille
lieues sous les mers refers to a dis-
tance traveled beneath the ocean’s
surface rather than to depth, and
that, in any case, going twenty
thousand leagues—French ones
or English—straight down would
take you well beyond the center
36
of the earth (whence we have also,
of course, traveled with Profes-
sor Verne): It still looks odd, like
“Kyiv,” or “Hammurabi’s Code” (as
opposed to the familiar genitive
construction).
That is not all. Connoisseurs of
good-bad translators’ English will
miss “signalized” in the famous
opening sentence, rejected by Wil-
liam Butcher (omen?) more than
two decades ago in favor of the
plainer “marked.” In the very next
line, too, we are spared the “Not to
mention rumors,” which always
looks as if it is going to end with-
out the main verb that scuttles in
dirtily, without apologizing. After
that, though, things start to go
sous. Who could possibly prefer
The businessmen, ship-owners,
sea-captains, skippers, and
master-mariners of Europe and
America, the naval officers from
every country, and finally the
various national governments
on both continents—all became
extremely worried about the
matter.
to
Merchants, common sailors,
captains of vessels, skippers, both
of Europe and America, naval
officers of all countries, and the
Governments of several states on
the two continents, were deeply
interested in the matter.
with its idiomatic dropping of the
definite article, its antique capital
G, its (to a child’s ears) pleasingly
oldy-timey reference to “states”
rather than countries? And, with-
out daring to ask myself what
Verne himself wrote, I can only say
that “extremely worried” is what
your mom is when you come in
too late from hunting bats with
your great-grandmother’s old golf
clubs; “deeply interested” is how
grizzled late-nineteenth-century
naval men, captains of vessels in
their fine navy coats and beautiful-
ly polished brass buttons, sitting
with their pipes in studies lined
with maps and charts and instru-
ments of improbable origin and
The Lamp
impossible complexity, feel about
“the matter,” whatever it might be.
As it turns out, “the matter” is,
from that sentence on, about as
absorbing as anything ever writ-
ten. It is a testament to Verne’s
abilities that when we discover ear-
ly on that instead of either some
quasi-sentient geological anoma-
ly—a reef that is alive and moves
of its own accord into the path of
ships!—or a monster of unimag-
inable size and power, the great
menace to international maritime
affairs is simply another vessel, it
does not feel like a letdown. I have
in my time entertained a number
of highbrow theories about why
this is the case, all of which I have
come around to rejecting in fa-
vor of a much simpler one—viz.,
that the voyage of the Nautilus
combines at least two well-nigh
universal childhood aspirations:
building and occupying some kind
of secluded fort or redoubt, from
the confines of which adult expe-
rience and its mingled horrors and
delights can be both rejected and
discreetly explored, and naming
the world, which Aronnax and his
fellow submarine voyagers are able
to do with something approaching
the joy of Adam beholding crea-
tion for the very first time.
I find myself wanting to claim
that Twenty Thousand Leagues is not
one of those “good bad books” that
we enjoy in spite of its style and
other formal qualities. (It is worth
remembering that Sand, Gauti-
er, and Barthes numbered among
Verne’s greatest admirers.) One can
think of few novels mainly associ-
ated with children in which more
passages of purely descriptive inter-
est abound. Calling these “purple
patches” would be an understate-
ment. When Verne wants to tell
us what something looks like he
makes sure that he has at least half a
page of unoccupied beach in front
of him and builds castles out of
novelty rainbow-colored sand that
would have had Nabokov (another
great fan) reaching enviously for
his thesaurus. Part of the delight of
revisiting this book is the chance
to luxuriate in the sheer beauty of
words whose definitions are most-
ly unknown to me: “meandrines,”
“caryophyllidae,” “zooantharaiae,”
“lepisachanthae,” “dactylopteridae,”
“monocentridae,” “tintoreas,” “mo-
nocanthidean.” Surely no author in
the French or any other language
author has ever been half as elo-
quent on the not obviously prom-
ising subjects of ooze and seaweed.
Poor John Updike would have
killed to have written lines like
The white corollas moved back
into their red sheaths, the flow-
ers went out before my eyes, and
the bush changed into a block of
stony nipples.
The best way I can think of ex-
plaining the book to people who
have only seen the Disney movie or
read one of the less tonally faithful
abridgements in childhood is that
it is the sort of thing Sir Thomas
Browne might have written if, in
between cataloguing whale genitals
and revising his spiritual autobiog-
raphy, he had deigned to give us a
pastoral romance. Like Browne,
whose chapter headings—“Of the
pissing of Toads, of the stone in
their head, and of the generation of
Frogs”—do not prepare you for the
random felicities that will appear
under them, Verne makes even the
disgusting beautiful because he rep-
resents it faithfully (nerds cf. ST Ia
q. 39 ad. 2). Like Browne’s, Verne’s
fascination with the created order
is the product of an explicitly reli-

gious imagination, albeit a hetero-
dox one, an awe-based epistemolo-
gy that is, or should be, the starting
point for scientists and philoso-
phers as well as prose poets:
All the products of the vegeta-
ble kingdom were only lightly
attached to the ground. Devoid
of roots, indifferent to the
fixed points they were tied to,
whether sand, shells, tests, or
pebbles, they merely needed
them as a point of contact,
not for life. These plants were
self-propagating, and the essence
of their existence was in the
water that bore them and nour-
ished them. Most of them did
not produce leaves but lamellas
of fantastic shapes, although
limited to a narrow range of
colours: only pink, cirimson,
green, olive, fawn, and brown . . .
Padinae pavoni in fans seeming
to implore the breeze, scarlet
rose-tangles, laminaria extend-
ing their edible young shoots,
threadlike flexuous Nerocystis
opening out to reach a height
of 15 metres, clumps of acetabu-
lums with stems growing from
the top, and many other pelagic
plants, all without flowers.
I come here to praise Verne, not to
bury him at sea or otherwise, but
I would be lying if I said that I had
no idea where Dan Brown got the
notion that interrupting a narra-
tive with barely altered snippets
from reference books (“The name
Sargaso comes from the Spanish
sargazo, meaning ‘sea-wrack.’”) was
a good thing to do in an adven-
ture story. Nor is Verne, despite
his reputation, particularly good at
action scenes, especially when they
involve human beings. Here is how
we are actually introduced to the
giant squid:
It was a squid of colossal dimen-
sion, eight metres in length. It
moved backwards at extreme
velocity as it headed towards
the Nautilus. It was staring with
its enormous fixed eyes of a
sea-green hue. Not only were
Easter 2020
its eight arms, or rather legs,
implanted on its head, thus
giving these animals the name of
cephalopods, but were twice as
big as its body and writhing like
the Furies’ hair. We could dis-
tinctly see the 250 suckers in the
form of hemispherical capsules
on the insides of the tentacles.
Sometimes these suckers were
placed on the salon’s windows
and stuck there. The monster’s
mouth—a horny beak like a par-
rot’s—was opening and closing
vertically. Its tongue emerged os-
cillating from this pair of shears,
and was also made of a horny
substance, itself equipped with
several rows of sharp teeth. What
a freak of nature: a bird’s beak
on a mollusc! Its body, cylindri-
cal but swollen in the middle,
formed a fleshy mass that had to
weigh 20 to 25 tons.
This is bad, and for a lot of reasons.
One is simply that even if the read-
er is willing to grant Aronnax and
companions the remarkable faculty
of intantananeously determining
the precise lengths and weights and
suction organ capacities of mon-
sters that are about to eat them
without so much as a rounding er-
ror, the fact of their being shared
with us either in metric or impe-
rial units tends to interfere with
our ability to concentrate on such
trivialities as as being horrified or
thrilled and wondering how our
heroes will possibly make it out
alive. Lovecraft was in many ways
an atrocious prose stylist, but it’s
hard to imagine one of his narrators
casually interrupting his and our
sublime apprehension of ultimate
evil to inform us that Cxaxukluth
weighed eight hundred stone and
ten. For all I know all that muck
here about counting the suckers—
did he use his fingers, I wonder?—
is just there to distract us from
questions even deadlier to Verne’s
ostensible narrative ambitions,
such as how Aronnax can even see
the eyes of a creature that we have
just been told is moving very rap-
idly backwards. Nor does it help
37
matters much when, having gone
into so much detail about mass and
velocity and so on, he glosses the
actual death of an unnamed crew
member with: “A strong smell of
musk filled the atmosphere. It was
horrible.” It certainly is.
Something similar happens at
what is almost certainly the novel’s
climax, when Professor Aronnax
has decided that it is finally time to
confront Captain Nemo about his
recent acts of maritime terrorism
(and maybe even, you know, leave
the ship):
There was no time to hesitate,
even were Captain Nemo to
surge up before me. I carefully
opened my door. And yet it
seemed that as it moved on
its hinges, it made a frighten-
ing sound. Perhaps the sound
existed only in my imagination!
I crawled forward through the
dark gangways of the Nautilus,
stopping after each step to com-
press the beatings of my heart.
I arrived at the angled door
to the salon. I slowly opened it.
The room was plunged in deep
darkness. The chords of the
organ were still faintly echoing.
Captain Nemo was there. He did
not see me. I think that even in
full flight he would not have no-
ticed me, so much did his ecstasy
absorb him.
I dragged myself across the
carpet, avoiding the slightest
contact whose sound might have
betrayed my presence. It took
me five minutes to reach the far
door leading into the library.
Without turning to the French
for possible clues, I find myself
wondering, among other things,
1) whether non-sliding doors can
in fact move on things other than
hinges, 2) whether a person who
says he is crawling can actually stop
after each “step,” 3) whether a per-
son who is (once again) crawling re-
ally is capable of doing so without
“making the slightest contact” with
anything, including the carpet he
is on top of, whether he makes a
sound or not, 4) whether Aron-
38
nax on his hands and knees moves
at the pace of one of his favorite
molluscs or the ship has actually
grown so large that it takes five
minutes even while crawling to go
what until this point appeared to
be a very short distance. Perhaps
these and other shortcomings exist
only in my imagination!
A writer like Conan Doyle or
Buchan, neither of whom would
have dreamed of attempting an-
ything half as difficult as the ma-
rine life catalogues in these pages,
would have made easy work of
such a scene. Besides, in the pres-
ent edition we are assured over
and over again in the notes and
introduction that much of the al-
legedly biological content here is
in any case wrong, that Verne was
bad at Latin and didn’t know the
difference between a polyp and
an octopus, that he forgets where
certain islands should be and spells
various names incorrectly, that he
sometimes mixes up words—e.g.,
crécerelles (“kestrels”) and crécelles
(“rattles”)—and sometimes invents
them, not only for made-up plac-
es and technologies but when he
wants to say something like “un-
covered” (déponté), that he dips
freely between giving time accord-
ing to the Greenwich and Paris
meridians, and that he didn’t even
know how long a league really is!
(I for one cannot see how Sixteen
Thousand Six Hundred and Sixty Sev-
en Leagues Under the Sea would have
been a better title.)
This is not to suggest that
Butcher, who does triple duty here
as translator, editor, and annotator,
is what his name might suggest.
He’s just someone who, unlike his
distinguished predecessors Lewis
Page Mercier (a Masonic chaplain,
naturally) and Anon., knows the
difference between New Caledonia
and Scotland. In a hundred small
places one can spot him improving,
if not on Verne, then on previous
Englishers, giving us “his good lady
wife” where Anon. had, coldly, “his
wife.” Not uniformly, though: I for
one will miss “cork jackets,” which
is the best Mercier could do with
The Lamp
scaphandre. The idea of Aronnax
et al. milling around the bottom
of the Pacific in a kind of air-tight
spacesuit made by Carhartt is just
too delightful to abandon (yes, I
realize “cork jacket” is an antique
name for life vest); if you can im-
agine it too, congratulations upon
entering the mental universe some
of us oldsters have inhabited since
the Clinton administration.
This is the part where I grum-
ble about what the kids are read-
ing these days. I must confess that
I am not entirely unfamiliar with
the series of novels that might be
described as “Tom Brown’s School
Days if the title character dabbled a
bit in the occult and was constant-
ly being asked by Lord Melbourne
to save the realm, in addition to
the usual games, jokes, rivalries.”
The last time I was in a Barnes and
Noble there was a whole section
devoted to “Teen Paranormal Ro-
mance,” which sounds very much
like a crime in most common-law
jurisdictions; between that and a
thousand undistinguished rewrites
of Go Ask Alice that differ from
the original only in their authors’
agenda of convincing youths that
whatever has replaced LSD in the
new version is in fact good, I im-
agine we can exhaust their ho-
rizons, assuming they don’t just
watch videos of people taking
orange headphones out of boxes.
Having recently passed the Wein-
berg threshold for confidence my-
self, I should just say I don’t know
and it’s not worth asking.
But I think I can say with con-
fidence that the anti-heroes have
been going steadily downhill. So
you enjoy “graphic” novels about
guys in suits? Cool. We had an un-
dersea Garibaldi-cum-Tesla with a
mean Ted Kaczynski streak, a pol-
yglot aristocratic guerilla warrior
whose vast non-scientific inter-
ests range from gourmet cooking
to opera to Baroque painting. It
is worth pointing out here that
unlike so many once-established
children’s classics, Twenty Thousand
Leagues passes all the woke tests
save for the one about women hav-
ing a conversation that concerns
something other than a male ac-
quaintance (for the very simple rea-
son that there is not, as far as I can
recall, a single female character in
it). Otherwise, though: A bunch of
unmarried white dudes—the smart
guy who has actually done the read-
ing, the patient guy who gets along
with everbody and doesn’t con-
tribute much, the badass, slightly
raunchy guy spoiling for a fight,
the really edgy political guy with
mystique—having conversations
about nothing important amid a
vaguely nautical backdrop? Sounds
like a new dirtbag left podcast.
When it comes to the other
characters, well, let’s be real: Aron-
nax, even graded on a generous
science fiction narrator curve, is a
bit of a drip. I get that he is very
keen on marine biology and that
Stockholm syndrome is an actual
widely attested phenomenon, but
you would think that he would
take just slightly more umbrage
at being told that he has to spend
the rest of his life eating kale in a
mobile aquarium because his new
best friend is obsessed with pri-
vacy. Also: he talks like this: “The
fellow was thirty years old, and his
age was to his master’s as fifteen
is to twenty. May I be excused for
saying in this way that I was forty.”
You may not, Professor. Meanwhile
Conseil, the “fellow” in question,
is your typical Man Friday / Sam
Gamgee / C-3PO trusty servant
who addresses everyone in the
third person (“‘As monsieur pleas-
es,’ he replied calmly”) and, since all
the cooking and cleaning are taken
care of by Nemo’s mysterious crew,
seems to exist largely for the pur-
pose of joyfully reciting the Latin
names of various fish. Ned Land is
more interesting. For one thing,
he is Canadian, which to Ameri-
can readers connotes bad beer and
hockey and an oddly sound nation-
al banking system, but to Verne
evidently means some kind of Jim
Webb “Born Fighting” type: “burly,
more than six feet tall, muscular,
grave, silent, sometimes aggres-
sive, and very bad-tempered when

contradicted.” Practically the first
thing he does upon finding him-
self imprisoned on the Nautilus is
to remind his companions that
he still has his Bowie knife. (This,
in case you were wondering, is “a
broad-bladed knife that an Amer-
ican always carries with him.” Al-
ways!) Land never doubts for a
moment that the mysterious entity
is a whale and that he is going to
kill it; when it turns out to be made
of metal, he does not change his
mind. He likes harpooning things
and eating them, has “almost unbe-
lievable manual dexterity,” and is
the only member of our trio who
seems even remotely to mind the
fact that they are being held cap-
tive by a terrorist. Otherwise, apart
from the comparatively brief cam-
eos by the crew of the U.S. Abraham
Lincoln early on, there are no other
named characters here. Even the
guy who gets killed by the squid is
unknown to Aronnax.
In addition to all the things I
have mentioned above Verne is
guilty of numberless absurdities,
some of them frankly painful. I
have, for example, always won-
dered about the provenance of the
mysterious “seaweed rich in nico-
tine” from which Captain Nemo
makes his cigars. How is it possible
for them to smoke onboard—he
tells Aronnax, a confirmed addict,
that he should feel free to do so
as often as he likes—even though
there is no mention of any kind of
air filtration system and they often
go days and even weeks without re-
turning to the surface? Hell, even
the Navy doesn’t allow submarine
smoking anymore. Could it be that
Verne, in the course of spinning his
yarn, found himself thinking that
a life aboard a ship that afforded
its passengers so many pleasures—
friendship, philosophic conversa-
tion, tasteful interior design, good
food, a massive library and picture
gallery, and almost daily oppor-
tunities for scientific discovery—
would still be unbearable without
tobacco, or something like it any-
way, in virtually unlimited quanti-
ties? The mind reels, in a delightful
Easter 2020
upward spiraling direction, reek-
ing of kale-flavored smoke.
Unfortunately this barely
scratches the underwater surface.
I can do no better here than quote
Butcher, who himself relies upon
a similar catalogue made by Jean
Gagneux (apparently the dean of
Verne studies):
Why are the Scotia’s passengers
having “lunch” at 4:17 p.m.? How
do you “push” someone along
when he is floating “motionless
on his back, with arms folded
and legs extended”? How do
people stay dry on a platform
only three feet above the sea?
How is Aronnax able to describe
his own facial expressions? How
does the Nautilus manage to
remain motionless in the depths
using juts its inclined planes
and the thrust of its propeller?
Why does lightning strike fish,
and not the much larger metal
submarine? What happens to the
fragile displays in the salon when
the submarine lists dramatically
or collides with objects? How
are pitching and rolling avoided?
Why do Nemo’s apartments
take up so much space, when
his twenty crew members have
a living space of 5 by 2 metres?
How can a boat that two men are
able to remove carry ten people
or ship “one or two tonnes” of
water? How does “an unbearable
sulphurous smell” reach 60 feet
down? If Nemo loves the sea so
much, why does he avoid contact
with sea water? . . . How does the
sun shine brightly at 100 metres
depth, and how does it produce
a rainbow underwater? How
does Aronnax hear rain 300
metres down? How does Nemo
extract sodium from salt water,
which requires a temperature of
3,000°C? How does a compass
work inside a metal hull? How
does an 8-metre wide cylinder
resist a pressure of 1,600 atmos-
pheres? How do you reverse a
submarine at 20 knots through
a narrow ice-tunnel? Does the
16,000-metre rise in four minutes
39
not equal to more than 120 knots
What about the bends? What
happens to the inclined planes
when the submarine goes clean
through the ship? And finally,
where are the toilets?
I laughed till I cried. But it would
be unfair if I failed to end with
something that matters much more
than the not exactly remote possi-
bility that Verne never once con-
sidered the question of where and
when his characters would relieve
themselves (even if he did consid-
er roughly eighty other irrelevant
things per printed page):
As for fish, they were numer-
ous and often remarkable. The
following were brought in
most frequently by the nets
of the Nautilus: rays, amongst
them lymma with oval bodies
of a dull red colour and irreg-
ular blue spots, recognizable
from their twin serrated stings;
Forsskal’s stingrays with silvery
backs; whip-tailed stingrays
with dotted tails; bockats, huge
two-metre-long cloaks undulat-
ing through the water; totally
toothles aodons, which are a
sort of cartilaginous fish closely
related to the shark; dromedary
Ostracea, whose hump ends in
a curved sting a foot and a half
long; ophidians, which are actu-
ally moray eels with silver tails,
blue backs, and brown pectorals
bordered in grey; fiatolae, species
of strommateids zigzagged with
narrow golden stripped and
decked out in the three colours
of France; 40-centimetre-long
gourami blennies; superb scads
with seven transversal bands of
a fine black fint, blue and yellow
fins, and gold and silver scales,
snooks; oriflamme mullets with
yellow heads; parrot fish, wrass-
es, triggerfish, gobies, etc., and a
thousand other fish found in the
oceans we had already visited.
I cried, simpliciter. I am crying now.
Matthew Walther is editor of
The Lamp.
40
FULFILL-
MENT’S
DESOLATE
ATTIC
Adam Sisman
T H E P RO F E S S O R A N D
T H E PA R S O N
A Story of Desire, Deceit,
and Defrocking
Counterpoint, pp.256, $26.00
By B. D. McClay
It’s important to believe in your-
self, at least if you want to be a
successful con man. You need to
believe in others, too. Finally, it’s
important to be honest. As Mike,
a con man in David Mamet’s mov-
ie House of Games explains to a
curious psychologist: “It’s called a
confidence game. Why? Because
you give me your confidence? No.
Because I give you mine.” This mo-
ment of disclosure is a con, too.
Anna Delvey and Elizabeth
Holmes, two high-level grifters
of recent memory, both failures,
combined this self-belief with this
openly given confidence. When
the cons were over, they were scru-
tinized for the things that should
have been the tell—bad hair,
mostly. But ultimately they were
successful both because, generally
speaking, we trust other people to
tell us the truth and because when
somebody is offering us some-
thing, we take it. The essence of the
con is that most people are a com-
bination of innocent and venial.
Can you believe in yourself
too much? One only really knows
the story of con men who are not
successful and thus are exposed,
sometimes repeatedly. A truly suc-
cessful con, such as selling bottled
water, exists on another level en-
tirely. Debatably, the most taken-in
The Lamp
mark of Elizabeth Holmes was
herself. Maybe the oddest image
from the collapse of Theranos,
her blood-testing start-up, is of
her wandering the labs with her
un-house-trained husky, Balto, in-
forming everyone that Balto was,
in fact, a wolf. Image-obsessed as
she was, it is unclear to me whether
Holmes always lied, or if she had,
instead, cultivated an internal real-
ity to which the world around her
simply failed to respond. Perhaps
one ought to believe in oneself
against the odds, but not against
reality—another lesson from House
of Games, which ends with the psy-
chologist, at last unraveling the
con, shooting Mike dead and thus
firmly, definitively, bringing their
interactions into truthful territory.
Not every con hopes to acquire
money or fame. There are people
who fake diseases, freely confess
to crimes they did not commit,
pour vast resources and time into
writing entirely fake pieces of jour-
nalism, or place themselves at the
scene of a historical trauma. The
career of Robert Parkin Peters, the
subject of Adam Sisman’s new biog-
raphy, can be handily summed up
by the book’s prologue, in which
Sisman lists various details from
Peters’s death certificate—occupa-
tion, date of birth, and presumed
age—and then drily informs us
that “none of these details was
true.” Peters did not want money,
did not want fame, and he did not
want forgiveness or the chance to
reform when those things were
on offer. He wanted status and he
wanted to have always had it. Spe-
cifically, he wanted academic status
and the priesthood. One of these
he had never had and one had been
taken away from him.
Sisman was introduced to Peters
in the course of researching his bi-
ography of Hugh Trevor-Roper,
discovering that Trevor-Roper had
kept a fairly extensive file on this
obscure figure from 1958, when
they met for the first and only time,
until 1983 (when Trevor-Roper,
publicly duped by a forgery of Hit-
ler’s diaries, may have lost his taste
for following cons). It turned out,
however, that Trevor-Roper was
not the only person to have kept
such a file. In fact, many people
who had encountered Peters had
also kept track of his movements
afterward. Sisman’s book draws on
their efforts, as well as his own.
As Sisman’s own book demon-
strates, to record his behavior, dif-
ficult enough to do on its own, is
the only way to try to understand
a serial liar of Peters’s ability. “I re-
alised early on in the process,” Sis-
man writes, “that Peters could only
be known from the outside: his in-
ner thoughts and feelings were hid-
den. . . . It seemed to me likely that
he barely knew himself.”
Peters was a serial monogamist
whose marriages (at least seven,
possibly eight) were sometimes in
fact simply bigamist (at one point
he claimed that he was impotent
and thus none of the marriages
counted); he consistently rep-
resented himself as an ordained
member of the Anglican clergy, and
sometimes (much less successfully)
as a Catholic priest; and, finally, he
desperately wished to be an aca-
demic and respected among schol-
ars. Through no fault of Sisman’s,
keeping track of all the ways in
which Peters is lying and to whom
is not always easy, particularly after
one has finished the book.
In point of fact, Peters had been
an Anglican priest for a little less
than a year, at which point his
faculties were “inhibited,” and he
was expelled from the clergy in
1955, three years before he met
Trevor-Roper. However, his official
status never seems to have influ-
enced his behavior; in the eighties
he lived for a time in South Africa
and seems to have served as a cler-
gyman there. (Sisman records that
he was dismissed from one post in
South Africa “for incompetence
and incitement of racial and ecu-
menical tensions. To be dismissed
for inciting racial tensions in
apartheid-era South Africa . . . was a
striking achievement.”)
It was his persistent faking of
academic credentials, however, that

troubled Trevor-Roper. Had Peters
been content to live in bigamy, or
as a priest, Trevor-Roper probably
would have simply collected his
goings-on and not felt any need to
interfere. When Peters eventually
acquired a mentor who wished to
rehabilitate him, Trevor-Roper de-
spised the man as “sanctimonious”
and “a great ninny.” The rehabilita-
tion didn’t take; Peters went on to
start first one failed, unaccredited
school, and then another, slightly
more successful. But Peters never
made a lot of money off of these
ventures, and while he seems to
have been a nasty and abusive em-
ployer, the book does not suggest
that what was being taught there
was bogus or useless.
Academia relies on the idea
that the people within its domain,
ultimately, are telling the truth.
You prove you are a truth-teller
by offering your credentials at the
door. False statements can, with
care, be successful at entering into
the stream of citation and thus ac-
quiring the status of truth. Take,
for instance, the rather infamous
case of the meeting of Fyodor
Dostoevsky and Charles Dickens,
which has circulated as true since
2002 and which seems to have
probably been a fabrication from
an academic who felt embittered
and overlooked, and who had
manufactured similar cases to em-
barrass people he felt had slighted
him. But even true statements can
be transformed into free-floating
falsehoods simply by being altered
through repetition and scholarly
games of telephone.
Thus in Peters we encounter a
con man whose ultimate aim seems
to have been access to a different
kind of con. The scholarship that
he managed to produce was bor-
ing and inessential, but not false,
though had he managed to stay in
one place long enough it is certain-
ly possible he would have turned to
fabrication. But what Trevor-Roper
objected to in Peters so strongly at
same time seems to have been his
least harmful lie: to be a colorless
and uninteresting academic. And
Easter 2020
perhaps that is the most puzzling
aspect of a thoroughly puzzling
man. Why lie so much for so little?
Serial liars invite identification.
This is one aspect of the con, but
it is also how they are understood
in retrospect: usual human bad-
ness, blown up to fantastic size. In
many cases, I find this disrespectful
to the amount of work a successful
con artist has to put into a con, not
to mention the cynicism that they
have to bring to their relation-
ships. Nonetheless, in the case of
Peters, distinguished not only by
the quantity of his lies but by what
seems to have been a genuine sin-
cerity about their content, it seems
true. In his behavior he is both baf-
fling and intimately familiar.
To say this is not to downplay the
trail of damage he left in his wake.
To pick one point among many,
every marriage he solemnized was,
as Sisman puts it, “unlawful.” His
sincere conviction that he should
nonetheless get to preside at nup-
tials and otherwise perform priest-
ly duties does not really mitigate
the chaos into which he threw var-
ious people’s private lives—people
who would never know him and
could not even correctly be said to
have been conned by him. This is
to say nothing of Peters’s own mar-
riages, the one child he left behind
him, or the people he convinced
to take classes for worthless cre-
dentials.
But deception may be one of
the trickiest of sins simply because
it is not always easy to know who it
is who is lying, or to whom their lie
is ultimately told. The Act of Con-
trition tacked up in a confessional
near me involves the promise that
I “firmly resolve, with the help of
your grace, to do penance, to sin
no more, and to avoid whatever
leads me to sin.” Do I mean this? I
41
do, but it’s also true that I make this
act knowing it is pretty likely that
I will not only sin again but that I
will probably sin again in the exact
way that sent me to the confession-
al in the first place. If I show up to
confession the next day, and the
next day, and the next day, having
committed identical sins each time,
I am in something like Peters’s po-
sition. And much as I’d like to pres-
ent that as a thought experiment, it
isn’t entirely. To resolve to change
is to make a declaration about your
future behavior that you cannot
substantiate in the moment no mat-
ter how genuine your intention
might be.
There’s something about Peters
I find oddly affecting. It wasn’t that
he just needed a break—he got
them. It wasn’t that he just need-
ed someone to believe in him—if
nothing else, it didn’t get wives
one through seven much. He cer-
tainly does not seem to have been a
lovable trickster, becoming vicious
whenever he seemed to get the up-
per hand. But something about his
desperate attempts to make himself
over by mere declaration alone, his
need to have been always already
credentialed and respected, the
fundamental smallness of his ambi-
tions, the rubber-ball quality with
which he responded to setback and
discovery—all this is, if not lovable
exactly, too familiar to reject.
“I lied, I tricked, but I re-
mained faithful to God,” Peters
told the Sunday Pictorial, shortly
after he had been found out by
Trevor-Roper that first time. In
wife number four, however, he
“had found the first REAL thing
in [his life],” and they would start
again “overseas, without lies, with-
out fraud.” Nothing came of this.
But who’s to say that, speaking to
the paper, in his heart of hearts, Pe-
ters was doing anything but telling
the truth? If there is any lesson to
be learned from the con, perhaps it
is only that the truth can be its own
sort of lie.
B. D. McClay is a senior editor at
the Hedgehog Review.
42
DOWN IN
THE DUMPS
ON THE
NINETIETH
FLOOR
Cliff Eisen and
Dominic McHugh (editors)
THE LETTERS OF
CO L E P O RT E R
Yale University Press,
pp.672, $35.00
By R.J. Stove
Being accorded the Collected Let-
ters treatment reinforces the
reputations of certain artists; it
largely destroys the reputations
of certain others. In the first cat-
egory rests Evelyn Waugh, who
gave so generously of himself to
all but the most tiresome cranks
that his correspondence would still
be worth reading even if the rest
of his oeuvre had vanished. In the
second category rests Philip Lar-
kin, whose own correspondence
first saw print in 1992 and, far from
enriching public appreciation of
his verses, made such appreciation
almost an act of defiance. Readers
who dutifully endured Larkin’s
epistolary narratives—continuing
almost until his final illness—of
frantic onanism and sex-shop ad-
diction found it hard to persist
thereafter in ascribing to the poet
moral authority.
Somewhere between these two
extremes dwell, it turns out, Cole
Porter’s letters. They cannot leave
the author’s good name perma-
nently soiled, as Larkin’s do. But
no more can they provide unex-
pected literary delights, as the
best of Waugh’s do. Hence, per-
haps, the fact that only now have
they reached publication in bulk,
The Lamp
though Porter has been fifty-six
years dead. They abound in gossipy
references which depend so much
upon editorial annotations to be
intelligible that the result consti-
tutes a de facto biography in itself.
Both editors, despite being based
in England (Dominic McHugh is
an academic in Sheffield, Cliff Eis-
en in London), exhibit an archival
diligence more readily associated
with America than with Britain.
Their labors notwithstanding, Por-
ter’s essence remains elusive. A var-
iant of the epigram attributed to
Oscar Levant becomes applicable:
the phony tinsel of Porter’s pub-
licity legends has been stripped off,
leaving the real tinsel behind. One
suspects that the single-word en-
comia which the dustjacket sports
from Michael Feinstein and Kevin
Kline—respectively “Revelatory”
and “Perfect”—are the products
of more than usually ingenious
abridgement by Yale’s copyeditors.
Mythmaking began almost
from the start of Porter’s artis-
tic existence, when his alarming
mother shaved two years off his
birthdate, crediting him with hav-
ing been born in 1893 rather than
in 1891, that his youthful brilliance
might shine all the brighter. Well
into middle age, he displayed the
unappealing—some would be
blunt enough to say creepy—hab-
it of referring to his mother by
her given name: she is the “Katy”
whom his letters so often cite. She
seems to have been the sole per-
son who ever moved him to fear.
As late as March 1948 he is found
entangled in demands for unpaid
tax ($100,000—the equivalent of
$1,042,000 now—through income
from the recent Night and Day
movie alone) and admitting to his
accountant (and cousin) Harvey
Cole the extent to which he still,
approaching sixty, depended upon
maternal largesse.
Very little went consistently
right for Porter once “Katy” had
died in 1952. Thereafter—despite
such late successes as Silk Stockings
and High Society—his physical and
mental health, always delicate after
a 1937 riding accident in which he
suffered compound fractures to
both his legs, became worse. Am-
putation of the legs might have
helped in the long run, and would
certainly have limited the pain
which he suffered, but for two dec-
ades he refused to countenance any
such thing. (In 1958 he did consent
to having his right leg removed:
too late for any benefit.) Earlier, he
had combined his hedonism with a
singularly intense work ethic. His
boast of having written no fewer
than three hundred songs during
his Yale days appears to have been
truthful. But with “Katy” no longer
around to provide even the hint of
a restraining influence, the high
life became higher and higher.
Porter’s devoted secretary Made-
line P. Smith—whom he always,
in his letters, addressed as “Mrs.
Smith or “Mrs. S.”—submitted to
hotel management in Philadel-
phia (whither Porter had gone for
Can-Can’s staging) a diktat itemiz-
ing “Mr. Cole Porter’s needs,” these
to be in place before his arrival.
They included enough crockery
and cutlery to keep Downton Ab-
bey’s servants on double shifts,
but also
2 large bottles of Witch Hazel
3 Bromo Selzer dispenser
2 Large Eno Fruit Salts
2 large Phillips Milk of Magnesia
1 large Nivea Skin Oil
2 1-1b Anhydrous Lanolin
2 4-oz Noxema Shaving Cream
6 Aromettes—assorted scents
1 carton pocket Kleenex
1 Carter’s Little Liver powder

2 Roger Gallet White Pomade
1 Carton Gillette Red Razor
Blades—20 pkg. size
1 pint Alcohol—90% proof …
Etc., etc., etc. It all reads like the sort
of imperious and abstruse wish-list
that High Society’s own Tracy Sa-
mantha Lord would have imposed
on Philadelphia’s hired help. Per-
haps twenty-first-century divas
are equally inordinate in their de-
mands. But none of those divas can
boast one-fiftieth of Porter’s satiric
gift, and it is sad to see here his own
capacity for satire falling into such
obvious abeyance.
Which, away from his
work-desk, it quite often did.
Much of this book consists of
Porter’s notes and telegrams to
agents, lawyers, creative colleagues,
actors, actresses, and journalists:
bread-and-butter communica-
tions, in other words. He associ-
ated so completely with “the rich
rich”—his own phrase—that he
would have found avoidance of
name-dropping impossible even if
he had considered it desirable. Two
randomly-selected pages covering
1932’s events mention Irving Ber-
lin (who wrote to Porter “I am mad
about ‘Night and Day,’”), George
Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Richard
Rodgers, Clare Boothe Luce, Fred
Astaire, Gertrude Lawrence, and the
London impresario C.B. Cochran,
whose manner of death echoes
some of Porter’s more venomous
lyrics. (The seventy-nine-year-old
Cochran, so arthritic as to be al-
most incapable of moving in his
bathtub, screamed with pain when
the unexpectedly hot water scald-
ed him; his wife, mistaking his
anguished cries for bursts of joy-
ous singing, did not think to in-
tervene.) Elsewhere Porter is more
casual about his dealings with Ethel
Merman, Noël Coward, and Orson
Welles than the rest of us would be
about our dealings with pest exter-
minators.
Such hobnobbing did not im-
part to him any serious amount of
psychic toughness when adversity
struck. Two of his most cherished
Easter 2020
friends, Sam and Bella Spewack,
made the error of seeming insuffi-
ciently deferential in their intro-
duction to the published edition
of Kiss Me, Kate. Their prose’s ref-
erence to Porter’s “wonderful mu-
sic and lyrics” did not prevent the
thin-skinned creator from resort-
ing to icy legalese:
I have your letter of November
18, 1953. Naturally I accept your
word that you had no desire to
hurt me … I assume that you will
instruct Knopf that no other
edition of the book will be pub-
lished without my approval of
any reference to me.
When Coward enjoyed a hit with
Quadrille, Porter took gleeful pride
in observing that this comedy had
opened “to unanimous panning by
the London critics.” “Panning” is
not a word that could fittingly be
applied to the newspaper reviews
of Porter which Eisen and McHugh
quote. Journalists who discussed
Porter seldom if ever failed to be
civil; when they offered praise, they
did so heartily; when they offered
criticism of a particular show,
they did so regretfully. (A typical
instance: “Cole Porter’s songs for
Miss Merman [in Du Barry Was A
Lady] are not quite as effective as
usual.”) Even Porter’s warmest ad-
mirers found themselves wonder-
ing, during and after the Second
World War, whether their hero
might have passed his peak. Many
a musical of his from that post-Du
Barry, post-Panama-Hattie period—
You’ll Never Get Rich; Let’s Face It;
Something to Shout About; Mexican
Hayride; Around the World; The Pi-
rate—boiled down to one or two
beloved numbers, until Kiss Me,
Kate announced the return of Por-
ter’s genius over an entire evening’s
span. Since as early as 1939 Porter
told the New York Herald Tribune
that “one really big hit song is all
any show should have,” there can
be no avoiding the suspicion that
he later tried to make a virtue of
necessity.
The good side of Porter’s touch-
iness over (genuine or imagined)
43
reproaches was his habitual reti-
cence concerning a private life
which had, as Churchill might have
put it, a good deal to be reticent
about. The émigré Russian dancer
and poet Boris Kochno, fresh from
his affairs with Sergei Diaghilev
and Karol Szymanowski, became
Porter’s lover during the 1920s.
Few suspected the existence of this
relationship until after Kochno’s
death, aged eighty-six, in 1990. Por-
ter’s surviving missives to Kochno,
all in French, indicate a furious
craving that he seldom hinted at
anywhere else. Eisen and McHugh
are scathing as to the veracity of
Kochno’s own two subsequent ac-
counts (which they call “anodyne
and self-serving”) of his affair; their
chronology is garbled, and they
“can only be considered fabrica-
tions.” Beyond dispute is Porter’s
devotion to his wife Linda, née Lee,
formerly Thomas, the divorced,
astonishingly beautiful ex-wife of
the New York Morning Telegraph
proprietor Edward Russell Thom-
as. “Always true to you, darling,
in my fashion” sums up Porter
as husband, just as it sums up the
contemporaneous union of Harold
Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West.
When long-standing heart disease
ended Linda’s life in 1954, Cole’s
telegram to the Pulitzer-winning
director Abe Burrows and the lat-
ter’s wife Carin indicates, by its
very terseness, his stony grief:
“LINDA DIED TODAY. PLEASE NO
FLOWERS. COLE.” (Flowers came
afterward: the Linda Porter Rose
was, at Cole’s instigation, named
in her honor via the Bobbink and
Atkins nursery.)
After the 1958 surgery, those
closest to Porter retained high
hopes for his rapid convalescence.
One report ran: “He is now doing
so nicely, that we want to keep him
improving and hasten the day when
he can leave the hospital.” Such op-
timism did not last long. His 1936
line “Down in the depths on the
ninetieth floor” became less a par-
adox than a prophecy. Sam Stark,
a jeweler friend of long standing,
fretted to Madeline Smith: “Confi-
44
dentially I am very worried about
him as he seems very depressed …
His mind seems to be far away and
although he is always the usual gra-
cious host, I know him too well for
him to fool me.” Electroshock ther-
apy, which he underwent several
times for his increasing melancho-
lia, brought him no benefit. Eisen
and McHugh refer bleakly to the
post-operative Porter’s “imploding
social life.” Madeline Smith confid-
ed in Stark with touching candor:
I understand only too well how
almost impossible it is to strike a
responsive note, or to reach him
[Porter] at all. I regret so much
that he has not the strength that
comes in time of need, of a bol-
stering religion. Even a Buddhist,
a Seven [sic] Day Adventist, a
Jehova’s [sic] Witness, any thing
to take the place of “just noth-
ing.” Without faith—one is like a
stained glass window in the dark.
Since the 1958 operation Porter had
been, he complained, only “half
a man.” He never wrote another
song. At one point, near the end,
Mrs. Smith heard him ask: “How
am I going to meet my God?” But
his final religious views, if any, are
unclear. They comprise yet another
riddle in Porter’s life.
“You would pluck out the heart
of my mystery”: thus Hamlet’s
complaint to Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, with an obvious al-
lusion—unmistakable for Shake-
speare’s contemporaries—to bodi-
ly parts of the Elizabethan Catholic
martyrs being likewise “pluck[ed]
out” by Tyburn’s hangman. Simi-
larly ruthless attempts to gain en-
lightenment from eviscerating Por-
ter are equally futile.
Why, for example, did Porter
(not, it is fair to suggest, one of
nature’s swashbuckling militarists)
insist that he had fought in the
French Foreign Legion? “There is
no concrete evidence to back up
his assertion,” Eisen and McHugh
remark; but it might not have been
an outright lie, since the Legion’s
website does include someone of
that name in its list of members at
The Lamp
the relevant period. Why, again,
did Porter become a composition
student (as it seems he did) at Par-
is’s Schola Cantorum? Not an obvi-
ous move for anybody with dreams
of Broadway triumphs. History,
moreover, does not relate how the
Schola Cantorum’s director—Vin-
cent d’Indy, most intransigently
stern of Catholic monarchists—re-
acted to the man who would give
the world “Let’s Misbehave,” not
to mention “Love for Sale.” With
the enforced leisure of his final
years, Porter might have solved
these enigmas; but he chose not
to do so, and perhaps had become
too forgetful even to attempt an-
swers. At any rate, his will to live
had faded long before, on October
15, 1964, he drifted into “the still of
the night.”
R. J. Stove is the author of César
Franck: His Life and Times and
has been a contributing editor
at the American Conservative
since 2004.
DISCO
INFERNO
D I V I N E LOV E
Not rated, select theaters
By Eve Tushnet
Divine Love, the new film from the
Brazilian writer and director Ga-
briel Mascaro, is a scathing com-
mentary on Christian idolatry of
the family—right up until it suc-
cumbs to the same limited imagina-
tion it satirizes.
Love opens at a disco/mega-
church, where worshippers lift
their hands in ecstasy as neon spot-
lights cut through the fog-machine
incense. In the dark, facing one
another in the God-drunk crowd,
a couple embraces. This is 2027.
“Brazil had changed,” a confident
child’s voiceover tells us. “The most
important celebration in the coun-
try was no longer Carnival. It was
the party of Supreme Love.”
The love to which Brazil has
now dedicated itself is marital,
procreative love. The beaches are
filled with men in Speedos—and
women in burkinis. Gates like met-
al detectors guard the entrances to
many public buildings, and women
who pass through are scanned to
determine their marital and repro-
ductive status. One character finds
out that she’s pregnant only when
the red lights flash above her head
to warn that she hasn’t “registered”
her unborn child yet.
Some of the details here are un-
clear—the whiff of eugenics which
floats through the movie never
quite intersects with the plot; the
film’s central invention, the evan-
gelical sect Divine Love, seems to
be at once the majority religion
and a small-time storefront church
a half-step from culthood. But the
film is a neon-drenched, misty,
smoky, glassy attempt to work the
same satirical ground as The Lobster
(2015). That film, in which anyone
who couldn’t find a romantic part-
ner fast enough got turned into an
animal, used bleak comedy to show
a society in which singlehood is
tragedy. There’s only one real kind
of love in the world of The Lobster,
and without love no one can live.
The Lobster notably avoided re-
ligion. Its celibate rebels formed
a quasi-monastic underground,
where sex and romance were for-
bidden rather than mandatory, but
the possibility that religion itself
might provide some alternative
form of love never arose. God’s
love won’t save you from the cara-
pace and the claws.
Divine Love, because it’s about
Christians, is a lot more sensual; its
church is fun. The nightclub/wor-
ship scenes offer, as the voiceover
says, “redemption of the body.”
What else has any clubber ever
sought?
Our central worshiper, Joana
(Dira Paes), works in the divorce

bureaucracy. She’s a subversive. Al-
though the country is officially sec-
ular, Joana’s Christian convictions
drive her to do everything in her
power to persuade her clients to
stay together. When she succeeds,
she receives notes and packages
from grateful couples. When she
fails, she gets called in to her super-
visor’s office.
Joana’s frequently seen through
glass, slightly warped: Now we see as
in a mirror, dimly. When she con-
fronts her loneliness, in a scene
evoking baptism, she collapses in
tears. Her sorrow comes from the
fact that she and her husband hav-
en’t been able to conceive a child.
Their Christianity—“The family
above all else. Radical, free, and so
secret”—offers them no comfort.
Joana’s pastor can offer the usual
kind of thing that pastors say in
the face of suffering (“If you want
an answer, God will ask you a ques-
tion”) but he can’t deny that she
isn’t fulfilling her life’s purpose.
Divine Love is a weird colli-
sion of consumer good, group
therapy, and pagan sex magic.
The pastor offers drive-thru spiri­
tual direction; after the Bible
readings, the lovers of God do
some extremely explicitly-filmed
partner-swapping. (Both the actors
and the audience should have been
spared this. The extended, graphic
sex scenes add nothing to the film
except a reminder that there are
worse things than burkinis.) And
yet at the heart of this creepy, sad
disco televangelism lie intense and
desperate longings. Joana yearns
for a child. Her unfulfilled longing
has distorted her marriage, and
turned her religion into an attempt
to earn God’s favor through good
works. She walks around inside her
optimistic, fun faith, carrying her
despair.
Up to this point the film is
pointed, if pretty lugubrious for an
ostensible comedy. Joana’s sobbing
in the baptismal waters progresses
to flinging the water over her body
in a kind of self-flagellation. The
child voiceover starts to seem too
complacently knowledgeable, even
Easter 2020
smug. What once seemed to free
her now seems like a cruel joke.
And then the Messiah is born.
The Messiah—our knowledgeable
child—is a miracle, though not
because his mother is a virgin.
The Messiah’s potential adoptive
father abandons the family. (Now-
adays we find it harder to imagine
Joseph’s silent self-surrender than
Mary’s strength.) The Messiah’s
family circumstances rebuke the
conservatives of 2027 Brazil, who
view out-of-wedlock children as
inferior. Overall, however, Divine
Love does less to challenge the
family-idolatry of its titular sect
than The Lobster—and far less than
the Gospels.
The movie has to keep saying “the
Messiah” instead of “Jesus.” (I’m not
entirely sure His Name is ever spo-
ken.) If we were reminded of Jesus,
we might be reminded of His vir-
gin death, His proclamation that
there is no love greater than laying
down one’s life for one’s friends.
Virginity and friendship are equal-
ly unimagined here. The child re-
deems our bodies—being a parent
is still the only way to love not just
another creature, but God.
In real-life Brazil, as in America,
the birth rate is below replacement
and falling. Marriage and parenting
have declined; and yet we are not
replacing them with celibacy. Cel-
ibacy too has declined—celibacy
understood not simply as the ab-
sence of sex, but as the dedication
45
of one’s body, through sexual re-
nunciation, to God alone. We are
so deep into a “celibacy recession”
that even Catholics rarely hear that
celibacy is witness, celibacy may
open you to ecstatic union with
God, celibacy is hope within mar-
tyrdom and a spitting in the face of
death. The redemption of our bod-
ies has already been accomplished.
Divine Love is a haunting film,
unsparing in its depiction of a
contemporary Christianity which
seamlessly blends entertainment,
ecstasy, self-improvement, and
worship. Its undercurrent of anger
comes in part from its religious
sincerity: There’s a reason we get
to hear so many specific, precise-
ly chosen Bible passages. A man
reads from I Cor. 13, the passage
we all know from so many Chris-
tian weddings—and it twists in
the gut, because the people in this
movie think it’s only for weddings.
It isn’t just that they’ve forgotten I
Cor. 7. It’s that the love in which
we imitate Christ has been restrict-
ed to married parents, and then,
even in the film’s subversive twist,
to an unmarried parent. And, un-
like literally everything Jesus did,
this new Messiah’s birth brings the
kind of placid domestic happiness
contemporary Christians long for.
No film can imagine celibacy
without imagining an uncondi-
tional surrender of one’s right to
pursue this happiness. As joyful,
ecstatic, or even happy as celi-
bates may be, there is something
stripped and cataclysmic in our
trust. In proclaiming that the King-
dom of God is at hand, we witness
the apocalyptic transformation of
all the goods of this life. But no
hint of cataclysm shadows Divine
Love’s cute nursery ending. The
movie carefully plucks the sword
from its Mary’s heart.
Eve Tushnet is the editor of
Christ’s Body, Christ’s
Wounds: Staying Catholic
When You’ve Been Hurt
in the Church, recently
published by Cascade Books.
46
A P P R EC I AT I O N S
CRANMER
By Peter Hitchens
One of the most lasting effects of
my long (and long ago) years as a
homicidal Bolshevik is that I now
really cannot stand sectarianism.
It is fortunate for the world that
Marxists waste so much of their
time on fighting each other. They
would have done even more dam-
age if they were less keen on huge
doctrinal quarrels about tiny
things. Which Fourth Internation-
al is the true Fourth International?
What is the difference between a
deformed and a degenerated work-
ers’ state? Was the Soviet atom
bomb a force for progress? Over
such things, fingers jabbed, voices
rose to screaming pitch, friend-
ships broke, organizations split.
You may be a comrade of all those
folks, as the song goes. But you
ain’t no comrade of mine. For all
of us, I suspect the best possible
sect would have been one in which
we were entirely right and entirely
alone—a Red Army of One.
In the same way, it would sure-
ly be better for the world if Chris-
tians spent less time attacking each
other, and more on attacking, or
at least resisting, the Devil and All
His Works. And where would you
expect Beelzebub to be busier than
in the Church itself? So when, af-
ter long vicissitudes of unbelief
and mistaken belief, and simple
confusion mingled with panic, I
settled with a sigh on the lovingly
embroidered cushions in the worn
oak pew behind the crumbling pil-
lar in my nearest Anglican cathe-
dral, the last thing I ever wanted
The Lamp
to do was to tell anyone else what
to believe. Couldn’t I just listen to
the Magnificat—“He hath scattered
the proud in the imagination of
their hearts”—and the Nunc Dim-
ittis—“Lord, now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace”—and
heartily endorse the minister as
he pointed out that “There is none
other that fighteth for us, but only
thou, O God.” Wasn’t it enough to
join in with “Lighten our darkness,
we beseech thee O Lord, and by
thy great mercy defend us from all
perils and dangers of this night,”
possibly the most perfect prayer
devised by sinful man? It was all
I could do to work out what I be-
lieved myself. My form of Christi-
anity, vague and inclusive, rarely
if ever intransigent, feeble in the
eyes of more enthusiastic persons,
might have some very appealing
characteristics. But it was my expe-
rience that other people liked oth-
er things. Sometimes—a problem
which made my insides shrivel—
they sought to press their differing
ideas on me. I fled quietly. But I did
not close my mind. I made occa-
sional expeditions to other forms
of worship, and into the world of
other sorts of believers, and didn’t
take to them. I am sure others did
the same.
But it did seem a pity to me
that Roman Catholic tradition-
alists who I saw as my allies in so
many things often did not even
know about the glories of the 1662
Prayer Book and the mysterious,
haunting Coverdale Psalms which
lie unexplored in the back of it. It
wasn’t that I hoped to seduce them
into Anglicanism. I simply don’t. It
was more that this was a beauty so
profound and so important to me
that I wished they could share it.
It seemed to me to lead upwards,
like a certain well-worn staircase
in Canterbury Cathedral, of which
I am fond, towards the Throne of
the Heavenly Grace, to which we
all direct our footsteps. In fact I
have often suspected the words
of the Prayer Book were carefully
chosen to be accessible and kind to
those of the Old Faith in England,
who found themselves compelled
by the Elizabethan settlement to
worship in reformed churches.
And, since the Roman Catho-
lic Church had eventually decided
to allow services in the vernacu-
lar, what a shame it was that the
translators were not influenced
by the beautiful Englishing of the
Mass which Cranmer achieved in
the 1550s. Say what you like about
doctrine and order, but the poet-
ic power is astonishing, as W. H.
Auden—who knew a thing or two
about poetry—specifically noted
when he condemned the Church
of England’s attempts to get rid of
this heritage in five fierce words:
“Why spit on your luck?” But
Rome’s liturgists weren’t influ-
enced by it. Nor, increasingly, was
the Anglican church itself. In Eng-
land, the United States, and the rest
of the Anglosphere, new prayers,
psalms and Bibles were introduced,
more or less by force, and the old
ones hurled rather brutally into
the nearest dumpster. The mod-
ern prayers of both churches are
banal, tin-eared, fit for a world of
concrete, plastic, and chrome. It
has been a constant battle for An-
glicans to save the old prayers and
services from total abolition. They
still survive, to some extent, most-
ly in cathedral worship which (in
my view not accidentally) is one of
the few areas of the Church of Eng-
land where congregations are now
growing and flourishing.
Does it matter? I’d argue that
it does. Words alone may provide
explanation. But it is poetry which
provides understanding. It is also
poetry which burns the words
into the memory so that when,
trembling, and with dim eyes and
straining ears we approach our
ends, we have something left in
our hearts to see us through the
dark passage that we must all en-
ter. When we go abroad we seek
to learn at least enough of the
language to be polite. How much
more so, when we go into eterni-
ty to have a smattering of the sort
of thing we may encounter there,
if all goes well. Much of Cranmer’s

sixteenth-century Prayer Book is
so astonishingly beautiful on first
acquaintance that there is a case for
claiming that it was itself divinely
inspired.
So here, in an age of gloom, is
a small cause for joy. The Personal
Ordinariate of St. Peter set up by
Pope Benedict to make former An-
glicans feel more at home in the Ro-
man Catholic Church has opened a
small, low door in the wall between
these two separate worlds.
In some Catholic churches,
Cranmer’s poetry, and Tyndale’s
Psalms can now lawfully be heard
and read. Several new publica-
tions—St. Gregory’s Prayer Book (Ig-
natius Press), the Customary of Our
Lady of Walsingham (Canterbury
Press), and Morning and Evening
Prayer (Walsingham Publishing)—
quietly reunite the two streams
of love and worship that diverged
so long ago. And quite right too.
I think that in a similar spirit sev-
eral Anglican churches and college
chapels have once again heard the
ancient words of the Mass floating
up into their equally ancient arch-
es, in the recent years since we have
all discovered how much we actu-
ally have in common. So why not
have some traffic the other way?
In both cases, these prayers have in
fact found their way home again.
The Anglican prayers will easily
settle themselves in the minds of
Catholics, who are entirely pre-
pared for them by everything they
already know. Much of the Prayer
Book is straight out of the old mo-
nastic cycle, which has almost en-
tirely vanished from public view in
the Church which gave it birth but
which continues in the Anglican
services of Morning and Evening
Prayer. I suspect that many of the
details of it originate in the old
English Sarum Rite going back at
least to the eleventh century. In
England, there was stripping of al-
tars and smashing of glass and im-
ages, and many good things were
irrecoverably lost. But there was
plenty of quiet resistance to these
things as well (which is why so
much survives).
Easter 2020
There was also, deep down, a
continuity that was just as impor-
tant as the great changes of the
Reformation. I find it very moving
that the prayers of the 1550s have
survived long enough to be rein-
troduced to the tradition that gave
them birth in the first place. Even
where they are not simple, beauti-
ful statements of what we all ought
to believe (as they mostly are), they
are cleverly ambiguous so as not to
place too much strain on anyone’s
conscience.
But I am especially pleased that
the Prayer of Humble Access, one
of the most moving parts of the
Anglican Lord’s Supper, has now
begun to be used in some Catho-
lic churches. After a while, I think
some Catholics will not want to be
without it. It steals into the mind
by repetition. It has a very gentle
sound. But considered carefully, it
must be one of the most powerful
petitions ever devised. It runs:
We do not presume to come to
this thy Table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteous-
ness, but in thy manifold and
great mercies. We are not worthy
so much as to gather up the
crumbs under thy Table. But
thou art the same Lord, whose
property is always to have mercy:
Grant us therefore, gracious
Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy
dear Son Jesus Christ, and to
drink his blood, that our sinful
bodies may be made clean by
his body, and our souls washed
through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell
in him, and he in us.
It also contains that persistent
element of almost all Cranmer’s
work, a real recognition of person-
al unworthiness. Knowing what
we know of Cranmer, many may
say that he had good reason to feel
unworthy. But surely that is a good
thing in any priest or minister, or
in any Christian. This feeling is
also embedded in his stately gen-
eral thanksgiving and in many of
the collects which are small jewels
of devotion, of which that for the
47
Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity
shines out particularly strongly:
“O God, forasmuch as without
thee we are not able to please thee;
mercifully grant, that thy Holy
Spirit may in all things direct and
rule our hearts.”
I would hope that anybody who
has got this far in the Book of Com-
mon Prayer might also look at the
marriage and burial services, the
one the constitution of private life
and the other an uncompromising
but triumphant verbal challenge to
the triumph of death, both perhaps
too powerful for most modern ears.
But persist even further, past the
Catechism and the Forms of Prayer
to Be Used at Sea (“O Almighty God,
Sovereign Commander of all the
world, in whose hand is power and
might which none is able to with-
stand . . .”) and you will find the Cov-
erdale Psalter, the last survival in
general use of the sixteenth-century
English Bible that Queen Elizabeth
would have known.
Sometimes the revisions are
better. The Twenty-Third Psalm
is one of these. But more often
they have lost a small but impor-
tant something. For example, we
would all be poorer if the Cover-
dale version of the One-Hundred
Twenty-Seventh Psalm (“It is but
lost labour that ye haste to rise
up early, and so late take rest, and
eat the bread of carefulness”) were
to vanish, leaving behind only the
1611 revision (“It is vain for you to
rise up early, to sit up late, to eat
the bread of sorrows”).
There is more fire and sorrow in
it, more bitterness and anger, more
mystery, more of a feeling of reach-
ing directly into the deep past, full
of warnings which we no longer
even notice, let alone heed. That is
the point of old things. They tell
us what we would otherwise for-
get and in many cases what we no
longer wish to know, but ought to
know. Let us have more old things,
and more poetry, while we can.
Peter Hitchens is
a columnist for
The Mail on Sunday.
48
PESTSÄULEN
NUNC
DIMITTIS
Vienna’s good at plague. Walking
down the Graben towards Café
Hawelka, on March 10, the first day
I was there, I was struck by what
looked like an exuberant flame of
white stone and brass, a monument
of some kind, obviously Baroque,
just about as Baroque as you can
get, in fact, without being made
out of pink marble or draped in
lace. It had three main faces, each
with a shield on it: “Deo Patri Cre-
atori,” read the one towards me. I
walked around to the other sides:
“Deo Filio Redemptori,” and “Deo
Spiritui Sanctificatori.” Between
two of the main faces, there was an-
other plaque:
Tibi Inquam Sanctissimae ac
Individuae Trinitati, Ego Leopol-
dus, Humilis Servus Tuus Gratias
Ago Quas Possum Maximas Pro
Aversa Anno MDCLXXIX. Per
Summam Benignitatem Tuam ab
Hac Urbe Et Austriae Provincia
Dirae Pestis Lue Atque In
Perpetuam Debitae Gratitudinis
Tesseram Praesens Monumen-
tum Demississime Consecro
That was the day we heard that Karl
von Habsburg, Leopold’s heir, had
tested positive for coronavirus.
Vienna was my last stop on a
seven-week-long trip: my flight
back to the States was already
booked from there, so I hadn’t been
able to leave directly from London,
which was my previous port of
call. But Just Getting Home was the
priority. At the Hawelka, I ordered
an Einspänner, espresso with huge
amounts of whipped cream on it.
Legend has it that it was original-
ly for fiacre drivers: the whipped
cream served as a little lid, keeping
the warm espresso from spilling. I
was on a deadline, but before I got
going on my piece I rebooked my
Norwegian Air flight to the ear-
liest available alternative, on the
fifteenth.
I had many visits planned: with
The Lamp
a member of an Anabaptist com-
munity called the Bruderhof who
had moved with his family to
start a new body in Retz, with the
support of Cardinal Schönborn;
with various friends of Frederic
Morton, the historian I was there
to profile for City Journal; with
Pater Edmund Waldstein of Heili-
genkreuz.
Of course it was all off—all ex-
cept for lunch with Pater Edmund
the next day in an increasingly qui-
et city ahead of the inevitable bor-
der closing.
And the next morning I got an
email: my Sunday flight had been
cancelled. And then came the an-
nouncement: on Sunday at mid-
night, Austria was indeed closing
its borders.
“Look,” Pater Edmund said at
lunch, “it’s not a problem. Just
stay at Heiligenkreuz.” We were
drinking white wine spritzers at
a restaurant run by Jesuits. He
was supremely relaxed, hanging
his hat and coat on the hooks by
the door—in Vienna you do not
drape your coat over the back of
your chair.
I don’t think I started crying.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, absolutely, you’d
be welcome. You finished? Okay,
we’re going to Karlskirche.”
There was the pink marble: it
out-Baroqued Leopold’s plague
column. The church was built by
Charles VI, his heir and Maria Ther-
esia’s father, also an offering, in
thanks for the city’s survival of the
last great plague, in 1712. Pater Ed-
mund took me inside and prayed
for God to send his angels to pro-
tect us—all of us.
I called my mother. “Are they
Augustinian monks? Charles
thinks very highly of the Augus-
tinians.” (This was not Charles VI,
but rather her friend Charles, now
living in Romania, who was trying
to calm her down and explain to
by
S U SA N N A H
B L AC K
her that Austria was probably one
of the safest places to be during a
global pandemic.) I told her that
Heiligenkreuz was Cistercian and
that the monks had survived a lot
of plagues in nine hundred years.
She wanted me to check in with the
American embassy.
That was Friday. I searched one
more time and found a flight leav-
ing Saturday evening. That morn-
ing I walked the two miles down
Währinger Straße, past the Volk-
soper, closed for the duration, to
the Innere Stadt, to Café Central.
You don’t stroll down boulevards
in quarantine; you don’t go to cof-
feehouses. And Café Central itself
would be closing as of midnight
on Sunday as well: the strange
waxwork of Peter Altenberg
must now be sitting by himself,
the top-hatted maître d’ and the
distinguished-looking waiters on
furlough.
I’m in New York City now.
We haven’t reached the peak yet,
and you who are reading this will
know more than I who am writing
it what will happen. I, like you, like
the rest of the world, am waiting
for what’s next, trying to prepare,
trying to take care of those I can in
ways I can, trying to keep my head.
And praying a lot.
New York doesn’t know what
Vienna does: that God preserves cit-
ies from the plague; He gets them
through. It’s a thing He does: one
of his trademarks. When, if it pleas-
es Him, Café Central re-opens (and
the Landtmann, and the Hawelka,
and I’m sitting there again drink-
ing Einspänners and trying to meet
a deadline, those places will also be
monuments to the faithfulness of
the God who will have preserved
us through this time of pestilence,
as He has preserved our fathers.
Susannah Black is a writer and
editor of Plough Quarterly and
Mere Orthodoxy.
It would be boorish for us to conclude this issue
without a word of thanks to everyone who has
helped to make The Lamp possible. Even, indeed
perhaps especially in a country in which sharing
videos of yourself playing Gameboy is a lucrative
career path, founding a print magazine that will
rely neither upon advertising revenue nor upon
sinecures from partisan interests is a quixotic
business venture. We are grateful to the follow-
ing persons for their generous support: Nicho-
las Cotta, Teaghan Grayson, Anthony Zamarro,
Michael Davis, Lauren Gustainis, Anthony and
Amanda Piccirillo, Andrew Junker, Justin Redem-
er, Matthew Carli, Helen Andrews, Nathan Payne,
T. Casey, Francis Wilson, Paul Schumann, Gerald
Russello, Nic Rowan, Fr. Brendon Laroche, Chris-
topher McCaffery, Silica McMeans, Jacob Simon,
Matthew Heimiller, Patrick Hoelscher, Kevin Gal-
lagher, John Clark, Noah Cloud, Justin Bullock,
Steve Larkin, Patrick Smith, Ryan Peabody, Cul-
len Baldwin, Jared Woodard, Aaron Morey, Kevin
Nowell, Matthew Gerken, Philip Quirk, Joey
Belleza, Pedro José Izquierdo, Jeffrey Pojanowski
(45-14!), Fr. Aleksandr Schrenk, Brandon McGin-
ley, Tommy Ryan, Jeremy Marshall, Andrew
Quinn, Robin Fennelly, Patrick Brennan, Joshua
Buursma, Jonathan Culbreath, Joe Barnas, Eric Pe-
terson, Ellen Finan, Harrison Lemke, Andy Hart-
zell, J.J. Ladouceur, Tomas Diaz, Michael Carper,
Blake Seitz, Megan Wenerstrom, Jordan Bloom,
Ernesto Malavé, Patrick Button, Scott Loudder,
Thomas Lippert, Charles Lehman, Ben Bristor,
Hunter Lantzman, Julian Assele, Andrew Kloster,
Elliot Kaufman, Andrew Carpenter, Gregg Hint-
erschied, Austin Worth, Adrian and Yun Soo Ver-
meule, Nicholas Rokitka, Taylor Patrick O’Neill,
Joe Gehret, Jose and Addie Mena, Adam Burch,
Zach Gluckow, Ryan Hammill, Justin Groth,
Nicholas Giardina, Bea C. Cuasay, Carol Zeitler,
Timothy McLeod, Derek George, Michael and
Rebecca Ennis-Villarreal, John Wehner, Christo-
pher Rupar, Timothy Wainwright, Robert Shak-
lovitz, Paul Schultz, John Paul LaBouff, Ahmaud
Templeton, Barb Denny, Meredith Hartley, Mark
Jakubik, Michael Kugel, Alexi and Leah Sargeant,
Aaron Burns, Michelle Guzman, Kevin Morrissey,
John Vecchione, Caleb Whitmer, Thomas Pink,
Andrew Childress, Keenan Lynch, Reid Cover,
Dwight Lindley, David Moses, Rob Brown, Kyle
Karches, Julia Block, Chris Fisher, Kevin Jacobs,
John Rae, Rose Folsom, Christopher Landry,
James Rogerson, Nandan Mani Ratnam, Robin
Baldocchi, Joseph Natali, Christian Conway, Matt
Korger, Andy Elder, Matthew Goddard, Caleb and
Gabby Orr, Paige Hazzan, Richard Torpin, Peter
Medd, Vera Hough, Garrett Robinson, Andrew
Tsavaris, Jake Neu, James Christiansen, Michelle
Bentivegna, Tom Kelly, Charles Stiegler, Karen
Abbott, Dean Austin, James Kabala, Andrew
Hudgens, Brandon and Rebecca Eubank, John
Koontz, Michael Morris, Nicholas Bartulovic, Da-
vid Smith, Vincent DeVendra, Sebastian Ekberg,
Connor Grubaugh, Raymond Nassif, Benjamin
Ekman, Winston van Staveren, Paul Hartyánsz-
ky, Ian Aston, Joe Thursday, José Zeron, Enrique
Cervantes, Thomas Zwilling, Shawn Cooper, John
Goerke, William Klimon, Mike McCall, Rob Cor-
zine, Christian Matozzo, Christopher and Maria
Grizzetti, Andrew Ferguson, Meredith Hartley,
Matt Himes, Mark Priolo, C.C. Pecknold, Joseph
Shaw, Michael Kalata, James Miller, Patrick Alles,
Grayson Murphy, William McAloon, Sean Feely,
Sean Roberts, Max Gruber, Michael Gerardi, M.
Conrad, Nick Corrado, Kyle Waters, John Hall,
Brian Saxton, Christopher Roberts, James Eng-
lert, Jared Schumacher, Michael and Molly West,
Samuel Paulsson, Tricia Stevenson, Micah Mead-
owcroft, Ross Douthat, Bria Sandford, Luke No-
lan, Firas Modad, Matthew Paul, Joseph Bolding,
Matthew Presley, Daniel Dreger, Thomas Togh-
ramadjian, Thomas Balliett, Luma Simms, Peter
Kwasniewski, “Rakish Stubbs,” Alex Goldsmith,
Richard Katerndahl, Sean Domencic, James Calla-
han, Scott Mastel, Lucas and Kerri Barkley, Rus-
sell Wardlow, Onsi Kamel, Scott Morton, Martin
W., Russell Wardlow, Thomas Johnson, Greg Vra-
na, Daniel Kalenak, Richard Yoder, Annie Rex,
Anthony Maritato, Clark Ingram, Daniel West,
Gavin Byrnes, Rachel Enders, Lawrence Barker,
Robert and Christine Wyllie, Joe Slama, M. Gaz-
zoli, Monica Klem, Spencer Brainard, and whatev-
er wags donated under the names of “Felix Bieder-
man,” “Michelle Goldberg,” and “Baron Corvo”
respectively. We would also like to give special
thanks to Father William Dailey, Tim Courtney,
Gladden Pappin, Kyle Peterson, Matthew Conti-
netti, Michael Brendan Dougherty, Ben Frumin,
Nico Laurella, Wlady Pleszczynski, and the late
Raymond Ventre. We would like finally to thank
our families.