Cultivating the Soil

 In a reflection on Mending the Soil, Abbott Philip Anderson of Clear Creek quotes John Senior whose centenary was last year:

Culture, as in “agriculture,” is the cultivation of the soil from which men grow. To determine proper methods, we must have a clear idea of the crop. “What is man?” the Penny Catechism asks, and answers: “A creature made in the image and likeness of God, to know, love and serve Him.” Culture, therefore, clearly has this simple end, no matter how complex or difficult the means. Our happiness consists in a perfection that is no mere endless hedonistic whoosh through space and time, but the achievement of that definite love and knowledge which is final and complete. All the paraphernalia of our lives, intellectual, moral, social, psychological, and physical, has this end: Christian culture is the cultivation of saints ( John Senior, The Death of Christian Culture (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978), p. 8).

With the perspective of the monk who works the not-entirely-ideal land of Oklahoma, he talks about the balance involved in preparing the soil for the seeds.   You will grow impoverished plants, not flourishing ones, if you start from impoverished or unbalanced soil. 

He asks:

How good is the current balance in the human soil, from which we live as rational beings meant by God for high purposes? These things ebb and flow along the centuries, of course, but it now appears quite certain that over the past fifty years there has been an excess of “alkaline” (solubility) in our human soil, perhaps in reaction to the higher acidity (rigor) of other epochs. 

The solution, he says, is not to fall into polarization, still less a queasy expediency of an unreal middle ground (my words, not his) but

Rather it is all about returning to the true Catholic balance of things, both in the secular sphere, and, more importantly, in terms of the daily life of the Church.

  I'm starting to read through Newman's Development of Doctrine essay, which is lucidly written but slow going because every paragraph has a whole train of thought behind it.   Famously, Newman compares the development of doctrine to the growth of a live thing -- he uses the example of an oak from an acorn.    There is a mystery here, of course,  because even the simplest of living things is mysterious.   There is a sort of generative code inherent in its structure -- talking about the oak in particular now -- but how it grows may be influenced by its environment, events etc.   Newman notes that doctrine doesn't develop in an unchanging vacuum; it is expressed in response very often to crises and challenges, as well as by means of great Doctors and Teachers.

And dogmas of the Church are never two-dimensional -- as he points out, taking any one aspect -- say, the Divine nature of the Son -- can become a heresy as soon as it is taken out of its relation to other doctrines:

Moreover the statements of a particular father or doctor may certainly be of a most important character; but one divine is not equal to a Catena. We must have a whole doctrine stated by a whole Church. The Catholic Truth in question is made up of a number of separate propositions, each of which, if maintained to the exclusion of the rest, is a heresy. 

This is convincing to me because it echoes what I see in daily life -- that if holidays are good, that doesn't mean every day should be a holiday; if you love someone, that does not mean either giving them everything or giving them nothing; if a dozen math practice problems are helpful, that doesn't mean that ten dozen will be better; and so on forever.   

Most things are a balance.    And of course, just as the Abbot said, a balance is not the mushy middle ground, a kind of quantitative average of the two extremes!