Reading Into the Church

ic ^ | August 1, 2009 | Deal W. Hudson

[Tax-chick]

“In This House of Brede” by Rumer Godden

A deacon in our parish in Oklahoma had a Catholic bookstore, and I often had him order books for me, or he would just order things he thought I’d like and tell me to come get them. One day, I ran in (kids in the van) to pick up a Scott Hahn book, and as he was ringing it up, I said, “If reading made you perfect, I’d be it!” He said, “Yeah, me too. See you round the Big House!”

He meant Mass the next day, but we went out of town for the weekend, and he died very suddenly before the next time we attended Mass at St. Benedict’s. I figure if I don’t blow it, I’ll see him in the library of the “Big House” eventually ;-).

[Steelfish]

Thanks, that was a truly gripping story!

[Nosterrex]

I’ve read many of his books. I appreciate his apologetics on the Moral Law, and his “The Abolition of Man” is probably my favorite. While I was at Cambridge, I met a few of his students, although I was not a member of Lewis’ college. Lewis is your typical “broad and hazy” Anglican layman when it comes to theology. He is a gifted writer and philosopher. This helps explain his popularity among a broad spectrum of theological beliefs. Although Lewis was friends with a number of Roman Catholics, he was liturgically somewhere between Evangelicalism and Methodism.

[Molly K.]

I read “Four Witnesses” by Rod Bennett.

It was very good and deserves more than just your one single mention.
So I’ll be the second person to recommend it.

[AnAmericanMother]

As an adult, I came at him not from the apologetics but from his professional work - the Oxford History volume, The Discarded Image, and the lectures that became A Preface to Paradise Lost. Those works are (of necessity) more Catholic in tone, even the last because he was looking more at the influences on Milton than Milton's own religious philosophy.

But how you can say he is on the Evangelical/Methodist continuum perplexes me. What Evangelical or Methodist did you ever meet that believed in either Purgatory or the Real Presence? My dear grandfather-in-law was a Methodist minister, and either of those doctrines would have curled his hair. And Lewis as an Evangelical is about as likely as Anthony Trollope as one. I would think the shadowy Presbyterianism of the Church of Ireland a far more likely influence on his Anglicanism (especially after reading The Pilgrim's Regress).

[Nosterrex]

First of all, I don’t believe that he actually believed in purgatory although he did mention it in one of his books. His last book was written with a totally pagan context, and yet I don’t believe that he was promoting paganism. I think that people read way too much in his fictional writings. I went to Fitzwilliam College at Cambridge and later to St.Chad college in Durham, which is a college for Anglican priests. There are many Anglicans, especially the Anglo-Catholics, that believe in transubstantiation and purgatory. I have also known Anglicans that were strict Calvinist and would not be caught dead in a cathedral. You have to understand that Anglicanism is so theologically broad that you can believe anything that you want. I know of an Anglican priest in Northumbria that is an atheist. Anglicans group themselves according to their liturgical practices: the low and lazy, broad and hazy, and high and crazy. The low church group reminds me of a typical Methodist worship service. From what his former students told me, he preferred worshiping in the chapel at Magdelene than the Cathedral. Magdelene was a sort of low church college. Lewis did find the cathedral at Durham inspiring, and it is. There is nothing like worshiping in a thousand year old Romanesque Cathedral. Sadly, only a handful of people are there on Sunday. I’m not even Anglican, and I never missed evensong or Sunday service.

[AnAmericanMother]

OK, I found the actual quote. It isn't in a fictional work.

"Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to him?

I believe in Purgatory.

Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the 'Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory' as that Romish doctrine had then become.....

The right view returns magnificently in Newman's DREAM. There, if I remember it rightly, the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer 'With its darkness to affront that light'. Religion has claimed Purgatory.

Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, 'It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy'? Should we not reply, 'With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleaned first.' 'It may hurt, you know' - 'Even so, sir.'

I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering. Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation. I can well believe that people neither much worse nor much better than I will suffer less than I or more. . . . The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.

My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice will say, 'Rinse your mouth out with this.' This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But . . . it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed."

- Letters to Malcolm, ch. 20

You can see that despite his reflexive horror for the "Romish" targets of the Reformers, he is undoubtedly believing in the doctrine as taught (rather than the perversions of that doctrine that exercised the Reformers).

As for the "pagan", are you talking about Til We Have Faces? It's only pagan in the sense that any English student educated in Lewis's generation was steeped in Classical paganism - until P.P.E. came in.

I myself was a sixth-generation Anglican (my ggg grandfather was baptized at St. Giles Cripplegate) until they drove us away with their antics. The Anglican low-middle-high political solution worked fine until the atheists and radical leftists took over the church. (That low-and-lazy, middle-and-hazy, high-and-crazy quote is one of my dad's favorites! We were 'high' not to say ultramontane, or as dad also says, 'up in the rafters with the bats'.)

Maybe American Methodists are different, but I don't think so. I never mistook a Low Church service in England for a Methodist meeting. Around here there's no mistaking the difference -- John Wesley early in his life was pastor of a church in Georgia, Christ Church Frederica. It's your typical Southern 'low church' Episcopal parish - no smells, no bells, heavy on the preaching and light on the ceremony. When we were still Piskies we attended regularly while visiting my parents, who live there.

Now there's a huge Methodist conference center, Epworth, just down the road, I'm sure they put it there because of the association with Wesley. The tour buses loaded with Methodist pilgrims come through regularly and stop at the church. If their arrival happens to coincide with Morning Prayer they always come in and sit at the back. We just HAD to laugh because they were completely nonplussed at what was going on and couldn't understand why Wesley's church was holding some kind of weird non-Methodist service.

[Nosterrex]

You are right. I stand corrected. Even so, that does not make him a Roman Catholic. There are many Anglicans that believe in purgatory, but that does not make them Roman Catholic. I will say this. Based upon Lewis’ book, “God in the Dock,” he would probably be Roman Catholic today. The Anglican church’s ordination of women to the Holy Ministry would have pushed him out of the Anglican communion.

Thanks for setting me straight on Lewis’ belief in purgatory.

[AnAmericanMother]

Oh, no, you could never reasonably expect a man born in 1898 in Belfast to become an actual Catholic! My only point was that he held Catholic beliefs, I was not contending that he was an actual convert. What was it he said about meeting Tolkien - that he had been warned never to trust a Papist or a philologist, and Tolkien was both . . . .

Lewis would have had kittens over what the Anglicans/ Episcopalians have become. He was already sufficiently horrified at the early warning signs such as Honest to God - I remember the controversy over that one myself. He was definitely opposed to the ordination of women (typical Lewis quip went something along the lines of - if you've got a problem with your neighbor, wouldn't you rather deal with the man of the house? And, ladies, when your husband is dealing with the neighbors, don't you think he's too easy on them? In fact, a bit of an Appeaser?)

While he might have become Orthodox, from a social/cultural point of view that would be difficult for an Englishman so maybe he would have become Catholic. But I don't know. That early upbringing is hard to overcome.

I think that one of the great attractions of Lewis is that he is so much the via media not only of Anglicanism but Christianity generally, that everybody - of whatever denomination - can find some point on which to claim him as their own. Except of course for the way-out extreme fundamentalist folks you find in certain corners of the web who claim he's a Satanist . . . .

[Nosterrex]

I agree with you. Lewis seems to be on a spiritual pilgrimage. He goes from atheism to theism to Christianity. I have no idea where he would eventually end up if he were alive today. I have a couple of friends that go gaga over Lewis. Steve Mueller, who now teaches at Christ, Irvine, did his dissertation on Lewis’s Christology. I was at his oral defense, and the question about Lewis’ belief in purgatory never came up. I wish that I had known about this, for I would have asked him about it.

[AnAmericanMother]

I have always been a Lewis fan, but more of his fiction on the one hand (I received the Narnia series as a boxed set for a Christmas gift when I was 5 or 6 - still have it) and his professional output on the other, than his apologetics. I think Lewis put it quite well when he said that it's easier to deal with those big religious and philosophical problems fictionally - 'past watchful dragons' were his words.

I took my undergraduate degree in history but had an awful lot of English Lit (my university didn't 'do' minors) and when I got into Lewis's volume of the Oxford History of English Lit I was completely amazed at the scope and depth of his reading and knowledge. But it's really not surprising - I mean, a Triple First is usually an indication that a man has got it together academically.

I don't know about you, but I always think of good questions to ask long after the opportunity has passed . . . not academically speaking of course but in the courtroom, which was my day job for years. Defending a dissertation probably has something of the feel of standing at the podium in an appellate court and getting peppered with questions from the bench. (Thankfully there was no requirement for an oral defense of my thesis -- THAT would have not been fun at the time. It would be fun now - of course I could have done a much better job of writing it now - education is wasted on the young.)