I really enjoyed this week’s readings. And let me be the first to say that I have come full circle on my opinion of C. S. Lewis. I like you, Jack, and I don’t even care if you smoke. See him over there scribbling away? Writing some great stuff, I bet. Like what he was writing this week.
For a change, we stayed in the same book for a whole week so it was easy to stay on track. And Jack kept us focused with the following chapters: 2. The “Cardinal Virtues,” 3. Social Morality, 4. Morality and Psychoanalysis, 5. Sexual Morality.
Jack covers a lot of ground and before we go any further I just want to reiterate that I was wrong about Mr. Lewis. The book started off like a bottle of formula, and I was wailing like a little baby. But now? Jack is slinging some serious hash, folks. You probably won’t see ideas like those in these chapters anywhere else, except in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
From the Cardinal Virtues of Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude through his assessment of Christian thought regarding sexual morality, it all jibes with the Church’s teachings. Oh, not with contemporary society, not by a long shot. But isn't that the point? Lewis writes about all of the main ideas that all Christians agreed on up until WWII, when he put this together.
Isn’t it ironic that many of the ideas set-in-stone in these chapters are coming unglued everywhere in many mainline Protestant churches today? I found myself cheering Jack on as he writes,
The job is really on us, on the laymen. The application of Christian principles, say, to trade unionism or education, must come from Christian trade unionists and Christian schoolmasters: just as Christian literature comes from Christian novelists and dramatists—not from the bench of bishops getting together and trying to write plays and novels in their spare time.
From his thoughts on achieving a truly Christian Society and his jab at our debt-laced economic models (which came close to imploding, again, back in 2008) to his manhandling of Freudian psychoanalysis and his old-fashioned, very Catholic take on sexual morality, it was green lights all the way, for me at least.
But what about you folks? What are your thoughts and take-aways from this week’s readings? I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite quotes from this week’s section and then turn it over to you.
All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take.
Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls "busybodies."
I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.
A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian.
. . . when Freud is talking about how to cure neurotics he is speaking as a specialist on his own subject, but when he goes on to talk general philosophy he is speaking as an amateur.
Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.
. . . you and I, for the last twenty years, have been fed all day long on good solid lies about sex.
They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess.
I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that the centre of Christian morality is not here. If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual.
From 1920 until 2010, is more like 90 years now, Jack. Take it away, club members. You have the floor.
Next week we read Book III, Chapters 6, 7, and 8
