How to Base Historical Consciousness

From the nursery, by learning a language and attending to what people say, we move into a world mediated by meaning and motivated by value. But are the meanings true and are the values worthy of man?
So the history master is very keen on Agincourt, 1415, and on the excellence of the archers, and the message gets across that war is a good thing, especially if at the cost of 200 lives you slaughter 5000 Frenchmen. But from a Christian perspective this is a lamentable affray between Christian and Christian. The values being inculcated are not sound.
What then are sound values, and how does one find them? If one did find them would they mean the emasculation of man, so that never would he draw the longbow or pull the trigger? In the quest for genuine values ones personal authenticity is at stake. One finds, for example, over the use of force there is a considerable clash of position, ‘a dialectic’, and that the preparedness to use nuclear weapons on cities or dum-dum (explosive) bullets against terrorists means that our establishment has departed from just war theory and from human developments. A clash of values poses problems for conduct. Confucius said, ‘if you disagree with the government, change your country’. I sense that today that advice is not possible for many. In ones living, though, one has to consistently show forth the values one has come to recognise as vital.
Man’s own self, his sense of what he ought to care about, is caught up in his understanding of the world. That world might be cosmological (Babylonian, Ptolemaic, Evolutionary) but a considerable complexity gets added in to ones understanding of the world when one realises that the world of man is historical as well as cosmological. The self too gets correspondingly complex especially as our first formation in the way of meanings and values comes from parents and teachers who themselves are considerably shaped up by history. We take our first identity as well as our name from our background.
As a man leaves his parents and joins himself to his wife so a young person, whether consciously or not, faces a considerable challenge in finding their own way in the wide world. This may result in a considerable falling out and falling silent going on with parents when children are in their late teens. The resources for this great journey may be very limited. There is what they are studying which may be very mechano-morphic. There is the peer group which may be equally lost. In the process of achievement of independence a great deal in the way of faith and morals may be lost.
In a sort of clarification by contrast, I find myself thinking about the Franks who fearless in battle, combined the faith with their martial courage and did a great deal to promote Western Christendom, an achievement symbolised by the crowning of Charlemagne as Emperor on Christmas Day 800AD. Gibbon ascribed the energy of the tribal people to their purity of morals. They got married without worrying about property conditions or earning capacity. They stayed faithful or the male was not able to attend the assemblies where things were decided. They had children and needed action to feed them. The fault they had was not being keen about manual labour! What one sees here is that the vital values informing the community are challenging and informing the individual at every stage.
It is worth noticing here the public nature of religion. It is not just what a person does with their privacy. It shapes up the people, whether they are feeling pious or not. Trollop’s Dr. Thorne is disgusted by the grace said at the Duke of Omnium’s table for most of the people aren’t paying any attention. What Dr. Thorne does not notice is that those present are being reminded that they are Christian, despite their egoistic concerns.
Emile Durkheim, the sociologist, thinks that man cannot really avoid religion which reinforces the basic commitments in a society. But perhaps today one moves from home where there are commitments to school where there are commitments into a sort of unsocial world of higher studies, and then perhaps to a rather narrow corporate world with its own ideology. So, perhaps, our adult life is marked with a relative ‘anomie’, a term derived from Greek, which Durkheim used to describe the individual sense of isolation which can drive a person to despair. What perhaps is happening is that corporate ideologies are taking over from religions and providing a somewhat limited meaning to human life, for so long as a person remains with the corporation. This looks like a sort of breakdown of wider society and therewith of religion.
If religion is so utterly related to society the problem of religious differences becomes problematic, for they would appear to indicate so many different societies living in the same terrain. Today the solution might be thought to have a sheerly secular state. What is required of members is spelt out by the dogmas of political correctness. There are realities to be dealt with and values to be espoused but they are consistently this worldly. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently declared that it would not be the end of the world if the Anglican Church were disestablished. It might though be the end of England or Britain feeling that it was a Christian country.
As the world one lives in gets broader, the religion that can express everything needs to get more catholic. Different elements need to enter the admix. I gather that when Vikings became Christian they still said prayers to Thor when they went to sea. In the course of time those prayers would need to be picked up and rewritten with theological orthodoxy. The old prayers were meeting an exigency of the human spirit, the danger of the sea, the need for protection. This exigency still needs to be met, so long as men go to sea in small boats. Similarly there may be ‘Anglican’ expressions of faith which would need incorporating in a wider unity. It is up to the Anglicans to express what they are. Similarly though there might be English Catholic insights of importance for the wider Church, perhaps the interdependence of laity and clergy.
As one recognises the power of historical consciousness I find myself fearful that values around the sanctity of life get eroded. We already see this with modern, mass destructive warfare, with abortion and in certain old Christian countries, Euthanasia. This could then be extended to certain undesirable types. Contraception and indeed permissiveness are related. If one is referring here to the ‘de-ontological Natural Law’ does one in fact recognise this law and that it is binding without also recognising God? If the whole of reality is just made up of bodies, from sub atomic particles through billiard balls to man – the corpuscular idea – then would there be any reason to recognise the disorder of homosexual acts? True heterosexuality is the norm for having children, but if one does not want children, is there any reason beyond aesthetics for denying physical expression to homosexual affection?
I recall Bishop Grant saying that people would not recognise the wrongness of abortion unless they were converted to God. I suspect that this is true of the de-ontological natural law in toto. Also it is helpful to notice that we don’t arrive in the world with a de-ontological theory: rather we are dealing here with a true theory which is historically conditioned. So it was Salamanca in the sixteenth century which gave us the now neglected rules about the ‘just war’.
Recognising ‘de-ontological values’ is a matter of recognising that God’s will is expressed in his marvellous design. Some churches have slipped here when it comes to contraception, so the matter needs to be more clearly put. It is important to note too that not all values are deontological, for some are revealed, the necessity of baptism for example or the indissolubility and sacramentality of marriage between Christians.
If Durkheim is right and religion is the cement of order in society then it would seem that where there is a very strong business culture there needs too to be a very strong religious culture. I recall Alsace, full of churches and palaces where Popes came from. Despite this history, the Church is relatively moribund compared with the business culture around the vines. I took a businessman out to lunch – he was a good Catholic, but had several colleagues around - so when I said grace I got the impression he was embarrassed.