General humanity is...what's the word, almost tribal, Geographically as well as culturally. People tend to look down on "outsiders" or people who are "different", and we get that a lot in our Catholic "tribalism" as well. In the western world, with our Roman rite, etc., we tend to think that we can only associate or relate to western or Roman ideas and culture. The Sacra Cor guys turn that around, and especially Paul. They believe that eastern culture is not inconsistent with western ideas and vice versa. You can have a japanese katana and a scottish claymore hanging next to each other, or you can switch from aikido to broadswords in the same breath. The Chivalric ideals of the West are not opposed to the customs of the East. We Catholics have a lot to look back at in history. Saint Francis Xavier started his ministry in the orient by trying to "westernize" the Eastern Catholics. He later realized his mistakes, and learns that we need to integrate the culture into Catholicism to become truly "universal". Find the elements of the culture which are consistent with the Christian message, the Gospel, and you don't have to change anything. Another example is the Great Western Schism between the Orthodox and the Catholics. Both sides were rather "elitist". The church HAD to be either Western or Eastern, it couldn't be both.
The Sacra Cor guys seemed to realize this, and even though they didn't always agree on everything (some were pseudo-revolutionaries, which was commented on by Fish). We see this especially in The Midnight Dancers when Paul tells Colonel Durham that he doesn't believe in the whole Eastern Western divide, that there's good in both, and in particular, in the field of medicine. Paul was interested in acupuncture as well as Western methods. He would try to use both in his practice when he was a doctor.
Anyway, both the eastern and the western cultures contain persons who desire God and Eternal Life, and wherever you have that, you have a common goal.
Look forward to next post: Music: a Catholic Listener
--Paul
2 comments:
Does this have anything to do with easties and westies?
It certainly could take on that connotation. We could be the beginning of the reunion of the East and the West.
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