The powers of the soul; the will of God or individual will?
In the First Exercise of the Spiritual Exercises (paras. 45-54), St. Ignatius of Loyola speaks of the “three powers of the soul”: memory, understanding, and will. He borrowed these triplets from St. Thomas Aquinas who knew them from Augustine’s De Trinitatae. Augustine looked for the presence of the Holy Trinity in our person and proposed memory, understanding, and will as one example. Aquinas followed Augustine but described the triplets as powers. Men and women who have prayed with the Spiritual Exercises know that Ignatius ends the retreat with these three powers as part of the Suscipe:
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.
The foundational point is to use our powers of discernment to know God’s will because God’s will is true, good, beautiful, and provides a real home. God’s desire is our deepest desire: love. God loves us all infinitely. Any discerning Christian uses his observations, faith, and reason to know his deepest desire and to know the guidance that comes from the Holy Spirit to fulfill that desire. Our temporal desires are never completely fulfilled, but our eternal desire is to be one with God into eternity. To see the face of God. Scripture is replete with references to this desire, e.g., “My heart has said of you, ‘Seek his face’” (Psa 27:8).
Today, postmodernists emphasize individual will when making choices and place their will before memory (observations), understanding, and God’s will. Knowingly or unknowingly, they reject reason following the influence of postmodern philosophers’ social-linguistic constructs (e.g., “non-binary”) and want others to accept their nominal cultural war views and words as normative because of their reason. The postmodernists have rejected any universal reason. There is no reason except their individual life choices based on individualism and emotivism. But God did not set creation in motion and then step away, and Jesus said he would never abandon us.
Invested Catholics hold to their tradition, and their understanding remains reasonable. Catholics can value their emotions and feelings but, unlike the primacy of emotions in postmodernism, Catholics first turn to their reason (understanding). In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius warned against the use of emotions in discernment because they were easily manipulated by the Evil One (Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Rules for the Discernment of Spirits I and II, Paras. 313-336).
The postmodernist’s emotional rejection of anything like a Catholic perspective has contributed to the divisiveness they continually deplore. They are far more ideological than any conservative Catholic who attends Mass and knows the Catholic Catechism. In recent years, destructive marches, public name-calling, and attacks against the freedom to speak have stymied civil discourse, which weakens the social fabric and consequently threatens the common good. Higher education has also promoted ideological thinking, restricted academic freedom, and squelched the freedom of speech.
Mediating institutions with diverse membership, like labor unions, have a responsibility to allow all voices to be heard. The union members, particularly Catholic members, also have a responsibility to invest themselves in their union’s governance, evaluate and judge its political efforts, and monitor its social vision. Labor unions are the most democratic institutions in the U.S. because of the federal regulations and personnel who monitor their governance and financial integrity.
But the smoke of postmodernism is a cultural phenomenon that has entered the house of labor. Philosopher Stephen Hicks argues that postmodernists have made everything political, and they are a far-Left political block.i While socialism has failed, the postmodernist still has the feeling that socialism is the answer to the world’s problems. It is an emotionally compulsive stance despite the historical atrocities of Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and most recently Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. Even though socialism has consistently become corrupted and failed across the globe, postmodernists stubbornly know in their hearts it is correct.
For example, the far-Left is demanding human sexuality programs in schools as a means of political socialization which further supports a lock-step demand for conformity to the LGBTQ+ agenda. They want to rob the rights of parents to be their children’s first teachers and guardians.
Philosopher Stephen Hicks succinctly describes how feelings dominate postmodernism.
…we can, as the postmodernists will prefer, turn to our feelings and follow them. If we then ask what our core feelings are, we connect with the answers from the past century’s dominant theories of human nature. From Kierkegaard and Heidegger, we learn that our emotional core is a deep sense of dread and guilt. From Marx, we feel a deep sense of alienation, victimization, and rage. From Nietzsche, we discover a deep need for power. From Freud, we uncover the urgings of dark and aggressive sexuality. Dread, guilt, rage, power, and lust constitute the center of the postmodern emotional universe.ii
A postmodern formation
In the early 2000s, I attended a West Coast meeting of the United Association for Labor Education (UALE). I went because of my academic interest in work and labor relations and my family’s history of labor union membership. The disappointing moment for me occurred when “gay sexual liberation” became a topic of the conference plenary. A visiting Australian labor activist spoke of homosexual activism in the Australian labor movement, and then she led the attendees in the chant: “Ten percent is not enough—recruit, recruit.”
The chant had a double meaning. Labor union membership was a little over 10% of the U.S. workforce at the time, but given the focus of her talk, she also believed 10% of the U.S. population was same-sex attracted and that wasn’t enough. The UALE members needed to “recruit.” Alfred Kinsey reported in the late 1950s that 10% of the U.S. population was homosexual, and the percentage became a rallying point for gay activists. His poor sampling and analysis were heavily skewed to reach the 10% figure, and the figure is now discredited.
Some labor union researchers and others associated with the labor movement attended the conference, but academics and their students predominated. I shared my concern with one of the conference conveners, and after having an article submission that questioned the labor movements’ promotion of gay activism rejected for “moralizing,” I never went back.
The bread-and-butter economic issues of wages, benefits, and working conditions remained at the core of workers’ lives, but labor intellectuals challenged marriage and the family, the vital cell of society in Catholic social teaching. Some American unions enabled by cultural activists had become a platform for the rage, power, guilt, lust, and dread of a special interest group. Today the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association are socializing children and one can honestly say, recruiting them into identity politics. The UALE receives funds from the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers.
The intellectual left adjusts Marxism: From capital to technological
In the 1960s, U.S. labor unions and their supporters turned to efforts for equal rights and eschewed the more broadly framed Marxian view of oppression, the professed catalyst for the Marxian revolution. Although inequalities (e.g., ethnic, racial, and sexual) occurred in the U.S. capitalist society (as in every society), by and large, the American workers’ basic needs were met and their families had a future.iii
For example, causes like genderism, pay equity, racial justice, and affordable housing, had more resonance with people than Karl Marx’s views on alienation, class division, and class warfare. The revolutionary proletariat never materialized and probably never will. The great majority of Americans in the 20th century rejected socialism and communism. Since U.S. workers were prospering and God-given freedom was preserved, Marx’s prediction of an international revolution spawned by the working class never occurred.
Some members of the intellectual left recognized the limits of Marxism and believed more instinctive and self-directed desires needed to play a greater role within social theory. The idea of an ultimate revolt of an international proletariat was set aside.iv Marx’s philosophical and historical reasoning were not enough for social change. Recall that Chairman Mao forced upon the Chinese a cultural revolution—its culture had to change (and tens of millions people died).
By philosophical and historical reasoning, Marx concluded that the revolution achieved through proletarian consciousness and action and the collapse of the capitalist system were inevitable. However, a generation after Marx, the Italian communist, and journalist Antonio Gramsci concluded, that first, Italy’s oppressed needed to win a War of Position in Italy and then a War of Maneuver. The War of Position was the war over the cultural hegemonyv of the bourgeoisie. They had set the Italian social and cultural rules.vi
The War of Position required the education and formation of a proletarian culture, a culture of the have-nots socialized to think differently. In Gramsci’s mind, when the proletariat reached the point of a well-prepared, critical mass, they would take power and then establish their socialist socio-economic structured society (the War of Maneuver).
The War of Position was in contrast to Marx’s dialectical and historical materialism. For Gramsci, it was a matter of educating and organizing where the people were (in their experience) rather than where Marxists theoretically wanted them to be. This is the manner by which postmodern critical theory has gained its status in the United States today. It is a means of gaining power over time by socializing others in the “truth” of postmodern subjectivism and relativism. The media and corporate America have inhaled this smoke as well.
In the early 20th century, Italy had a multiparty democracy, a relatively small industrial workforce, and a large peasant population. In Gramsci’s experience and reflection, every country was unique, and therefore no deterministic path to communism existed. Gramsci’s less rational and softer cultural alternative impressed the members of the Frankfurt School of philosophers/critical theorists. The Frankfurt School included Mark Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, and others.
Without an international revolution on the horizon, these Hegelian and Marxian social critics turned towards a critique of the instrumental rationality found in Western countries and now globally. In their assessment, technological developments were reifying the world, making everything simply a thing. Everything was bought or sold and cared for or abused. Aren’t workers (salaries) an expense in accounting? If a business owner can dispense of that expense, he will. Fewer workers mean lower expenses and artificial intelligence and robotics already replace workers. Currently, the Writers Guild of America strike is pointing this out. Artificial Intelligence can decrease the cost of entertainment for the customer, and increase profits for owners. Despite the bugs of driverless vehicles, many of us will see a driverless trucking industry. How should we respond to such change? Max Weber identified this seemingly unstoppable force of instrumental rationality not only in work but across every aspect of our lives.
T.W. Adorno also believed that both people and nature aspired to something better than advanced capitalism—socialism. Herbert Marcuse, author of One-Dimensional Man and a significant intellectual resource for the New Left, anticipated a dialectic between capitalism and the natural environment that would lead to “expressions of the human needs for peace, beauty, meaning, and love.”vii This sounds a lot like the ’67 Summer of Love, and Marcuse had a strong influence on that generation, including Angela Davis and Abbie Hoffman, radical icons from the 60s and 70s who I recall. Marcuse went beyond criticism of capitalism, to criticize a form of progress that was an attempt to conquer nature itself.viii
Horkheimer wrote that technical power dominated nature. The only way out of the potential global disaster was to help humanity become one with nature, a unifying of the subject and object in theory and praxis. It was a rejection of instrumental rationality; it was a new rationality.ix This critical theory understanding was to nurture a critical consciousness for our communal self-preservation.
The members of the Frankfurt School did not discern with God, but solely with a human reason that post-Enlightenment figures like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud rejected. Professor Andrew Feenberg writes:
The romantic critique is right to challenge a rationalism that blindly submits everything to markets and technology, but it goes too far when it rejects reason as such. Indeed, reason has self-critical and self-corrective potentials. This is the argument of the Frankfurt School’s critique of rationality. The Frankfurt School hopes to construct a coherent basis for a critical theory of modernity out of the flawed inheritance of the Enlightenment.x
Adorno and Horkheimer also criticized the New Left of the 20th century for narcissism and reification. Marcuse even encouraged this new generation of activists “to base its actions on theory and solidarity rather than wishful thinking and impulse.”xi
Postmodernists discern without God
Postmodernism is wordsmithing, persuasion, and rhetoric—modern sophism—because the subject and his or her identity are not limited by any objectively true world or its Creator. Anything a person says or does can become acceptable with the right rhetoric.xii This is why you see a plus sign at the end of LBGTQ+. The postmodernists are the commensurate skeptics because they prefer their will to God’s will. There is no surrendering to a Higher Power until a person hits rock bottom and recognizes that only God is his savior.
Technology and postmodern rhetoric are attempting to make being a male or female a choice rather than a fact. But God wants us to help others and not enable them. Along these lines of thought, Catholics should not encourage people to make sins into virtues. When this occurs, St. Ignatius says the Evil One is providing a false consolation.
If postmodernist priests and religious men and women continue to press the present sexual/political agenda of “continuum” and “fluidity,” the Church will have a priesthood devoid of heterosexual men, even fewer religious women, and emptier pews. Pride cultural activists inside and outside of the Church (and in higher education) accuse critics of being bigots, homophobes, or self-loathing homosexuals. These are red herring attacks to smear Christian men and women who think with faith and reason. Since when does accepting and promoting Church teaching make a person phobic? The Church needs less postmodern word-smithing and greater fidelity.
Postmodernists, just like labor and community organizers, are about change—but change does not always equate with the good. So, no matter the speed and demands of this era, change requires sound judgment. Otherwise, mistakes in judgment will lead to painful results. Discernment with memory, understanding, and will are foundational, and the Suscipe is the path. Catholic unionists and their supporters need to take up their cross and actively participate in efforts for the common good. In this effort, Ignatius tells us to think with the Church and discern with our God who loves us. Take, Lord, and Receive…
Happy Labor Day!
Endnotes:
i Hicks, Stephen R. C. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition) (p. 32). Ockham’s Razor. Kindle Edition.
ii Ibid., p. 95-96
iii Ibid., p. 166.
iv Ibid., p. 172.
v Gramsci, Antonio. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935 (p. 348-349). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.
vi Ibid., p. 329-341
vii Feenberg, Andrew. The Philosophy Of Praxis: Marx, Lukács And The Frankfurt School (p. 155). Verso Books. Kindle Edition.
viii Ibid., p. 156.
ix Ibid., p. 161
x Ibid., p. 173
xi Ibid., p. 173
xii Ibid., p. 167.
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A happy and peaceful Labor Day to all who work with their hands, to all who work outside or underground or in high places, to the skilled and unskilled, your work is valuable.
Once my mother got a union school teacher job, we no longer needed my father’s business to support our family. My father still worked us children thirteen to fourteen hours a day, six and a half days a week, with no days off. My father took, and squandered on his business, half of my mother’s union salary, which we had to live on.
The enslavement that US President Abraham Lincoln suffered as a child, is still very present in America today. Pray that US enslaved children receive access to union memberships for their protection against today’s, very present, American child slavery.
https://www.facebook.com/AbrahamLincolnSeries/videos/1791624947733072
The 5R Catholics (reactionary, radical, rigid, rebellious, rightist (right wing conservative)) was highlighted by Pope Francis in his open forum with his brother Jesuits in Portugal last month as inordinately “fixated with sins below the waist” while “if you exploited workers, if you lied or cheated, it didn’t matter.” On this Labor Day, CWR which is one of the mouthpieces of the 5R Catholic faction is notably giving this muted note by this essay about labor. It is generally silent about the Social Teachings of the Church or specifically on the continued union busting campaign of big employers like Starbucks, Amazon and Walmart, while it can get so loud about pelvic issues like for example: abortion, contraception, homosexuality, etc. The Pope’s wholistic balance in proclaiming Catholic truth between sexual and social issues (against the 5Rs’ fixation solely with pelvic issues) on this Labor Day brings me to the first two verses of God’s Word from Isaiah 10 which is the study chapter of my parish Bible Study today: “Woe to those who enact unjust laws. They deprive the poor of justice and deny the rights of the needy among my people. They prey on widows and take advantage of orphans.”
Those are your best arguments for what you what justice you want to propel? It amounts to no witness at all. Why divide the good others are doing in order to advance something else you have yet to develop yourself!
And CWR speaks on the whole range of issues in the public square, besides.
“It is generally silent about the Social Teachings of the Church…”
Not accurate, as regular CWR readers will recognize.
“…while it can get so loud about pelvic issues…”
As opposed to the dominant culture, itself formed and largely controlled by big government, big business, and big media, which hardly ever mentions “pelvic issues”? The term “pelvic issues” it itself an obviously clue that someone simply doesn’t get that sexual morality is itself a matter of justice and the common good. To give just three of many possible examples, as articulated on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church:
If you simply wanted CWR to have more pieces on, say, economic justice, I would appreciate the thought. But you appear to be annoyed, even self-righteously so, that CWR runs pieces in defense of the Church’s teaching on anthropology, the common good, marriage, family, sexuality, etc. Oddly enough, when I criticize outlets such as National Catholic Reporter, it’s not because they tend to focus more on “social justice” issues, but because they overtly undermine and oppose the Church’s clear teaching on marriage, sexuality, etc.
Finally, yes, Scripture speaks a great deal about justice for the poor. It also speaks, from Genesis to The Apocalypse, even more, against idolatry and immorality, with St. Paul even emphasizing how closely intertwined are the two: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Col 3:5). Who, really, can doubt the need to continue proclaiming that truth?
Thank you, Mr. Olson, for this quick reply. My point is that it is imperative as the Pope shows the way that we Catholics have a balanced and wholistic grasp of our faith and of reality, especially of the scope of our public engagement flowing from our Catholic faith. Of course, we should shout and point out the immorality, quoting Pope Francis, of the “sins below the waist,” as we often partake of here in CWR. I’m concerned about the imbalance such that CWR gets subdued like today on Labor Day, “if you exploited workers, if you lied or cheated, it didn’t matter.”
Good thinking, Pope Francis the Louder!
We nefarious 2C Catholics (Catholic Catholics) are not to be trusted.
You just know that we don’t all floss after every meal, and some of us have even been known to wear light-colored suits after Labor Day.
These facts alone indicate that sexual sins aren’t really sinful at all.
Right. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. 🙄
Frank – You’re funny. Do you write your own material?
BTW – I am a retired union laborer, and I’m still in the union – 55 years and counting.
Addendum – there is a VAST difference between private unions, such as the Laborers Union, and public unions, such as the teacher’s union.
Very true, miles apart.
Fr, Schultze, your excellently written article is very detailed in what modern unionism is, and very helpful to my understanding as a practicing Catholic, possessing and understanding the Catechism of the Church.
I was excited throughout the article to perhaos forward it to family members who have openly subscribed to the modernist anti-Catholic agenda fully embracing staunch Unionism as their “religion” although they were raised in the same Faith as myself. However, the end of the article basically suggests a return to Chiurch teaching on the subject of providing for the common good—without going into the extreme detail as in the previous paragraphs of the entire essay. My thought is this: that those potential readers that may be Unionized over Catechized, have a NEED to KNOW what EXACTLY the Church thinking IS on the exact same subjects as described in the article regarding “their side of the modernist-Union coin”….leaving the reader to ponder (should they not be a practicing Catholic nor own a Catechism) as to what precisely the other side of the coin actually IS. I am thinking perhaps a Part 2 sequel to your indepth essay be in the works, please? For obviously not all readers who NEED to KNOW are actually rightly formed in this matter…and to ‘Whom else will they go’ to get correctly educated in the specific details apropos to the article? In essence, for the readers who do not know: they, we, need the ‘rest of the story’ otherwise, in my humble opinion, your article changes no one’s mind on the matter, until & unless they can see the alternative spelled out in the exact same detail. Thank you, however, for a most informative article! I look forward to a Part 2….
The right to form unions, strike, and so on are indeed recognized by the Catholic Church, but for too many people, especially the “social justice wimps” on the Left, there is an immoral presumption that such rights bestow righteousness and moral legitimacy to various actions and demands of unions when oftentimes such are clearly not the case.
For instance, the right to strike does not guarantee that X strike is based on legitimate reasons. Moreover, any strike that seeks to increase wages must do so based on all relevant factors, and if increased wages can only come about by imposing layoffs on others, and the current wages are morally just, such a strike contains elements of injustice toward others that the unions support. And if a company is indeed paying just wages already, it has the right to refuse the demands of striking workers seeking higher wages without being judged as violating Catholic principles of justice even though many will render such an unjust condemnation of the company.
Another area where unions act with extreme injustice is when they prevent others from taking jobs while they are on strike and not performing jobs they agreed to do. Sometimes, they even excuse violence toward others who are willing to replace striking workers, and this excuse occasionally includes flat out murder of someone who dares to cross a falsely presumed “Holy Picket Line.” This form of barbarous injustice has been going on for years, but if a union is so sure that its claims are legitimate, and that X company would be harmed by not having the union workers at work, they should accept that others are free to take their positions that they have volunteered to step away from based on the presumption that such workers will not provide the quality of work the striking workers had provided. Instead, unions unjustly deny the freedom of others to take their workers’ places because they want to immorally compel actions that they otherwise would not be able to compel. Replacement workers at the very least call into question the high and mighty claims of unions that they are being treated unfairly, but such a reality needs to be taken into consideration for objective justice to prevail. Immoral unions try to prevent such things that may expose a serious weakness in their claims, once again based on the false presumption that their claim for higher wages is just, and that others who may take their places at lower wages than what the unions demand are willing to be treated unjustly,…but this may not be the case…just because the unions say so.
To all good CWR readers: if you have been in the camp of assuming that all union claims for higher wages and striking for same are automatically justifiable, I urge you to apply all principles of Catholic morality to determine if such are indeed the case, or if the actions are unjust and should not be supported.
Today, most if not all unions in the US are led by left-wing oriented people, and they get involved with supporting left-wing politicians and left-wing causes. Some force all potential workers to join their unions if they wish to work for X company, and they collect union dues to support politicians and political causes that many workers find morally objectionable. Some unions who permit their workers to opt out of some objectionable funding are acting justly in this respect, but how can it possibly be just for those unions to insist that all must pay to a general fund to be used as the union leaders decide even when such funds go to objectively immoral practices and individuals that many workers do not support and do not want their funds supporting?
Father Schultze gives us an illuminating treatment of the turn of modern communist socialism from Marxist class warfare, to Antonio Gramsci’s more appreciably humane “war of position”, followed by war of maneuver, which is what’s occurring today.
Previously aware of Gramsci’s radical, well received revision of communism by communists, he was said to be influenced by the Renaissance era humanists, among who are Michel de Montaigne, Petrarch, Lorenzo de Medici, Machiavelli, Boccaccio. At the time I wondered whether his taking to the thought of men, primarily Catholics, that there was a more Christian tone in his ideology. Gramsci however was known to be atheistic, anti religion. A surprise anecdote on Gramsci appeared in an article by John Allen Jr:
“For Gramsci, that meant above all replacing Christianity with a Marxist-inspired form of spirituality – combining, in his view, the enlightened critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism with some of the specifically anti-Catholic thought of the Protestant Reformation.
Archbishop Luigi de Magistris, who preceded Stafford as Major Penitentiary of the Vatican, asserted this week during an interview on Vatican Radio that Gramsci returned to the Catholic Church on his deathbed, receiving the sacraments and kissing a small image of the child Jesus. De Magistris insisted that as death neared, Gramsci abandoned these intellectual theories to return to the Church’s embrace. ‘He had an image of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus in his room,’ de Magistris said. ‘During his final illness, the sisters of the clinic where he stayed brought him an image of the Child Jesus, and Gramsci kissed it. Gramsci died with the sacraments. He returned to the faith of his infancy,’ de Magistris said. ‘Some in the Communist world prefer not to talk about it, but it’s true'” (November 25, 2008 John Allen Jr. National Catholic Reporter).
If true, who knows what anonymous intercessory prayers by some person, or group of nuns somewhere was what elicited Our Lord’s saving grace. Our prayers and sacrifices for the conversion of sinners do work.
Yes, to memory, intellect, and will.
But, the intellect doesn’t work without the memory…
So, why is it that key elements of synodism eliminate (a) memory of the innate Natural Law (and moral absolutes), and (b) memory of the “hierarchical communion” of the perennial Catholic Church (Lumen Gentium, Ch. 3, plus the clarifying Explanatory Note)?
So, how does conglomerate synodality differ, if at all, from the Marcuse generation of amnesiac postmodernism? Yes, to the Holy Ghost (butt, not to ghost writers), as already at Pentecost(!); but something too about integrity of thought:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the RENEWAL OF YOUR MIND…” (Rom 12:2). At this late date, how to unscramble the omelet…omnivorous synodism “aggregated, compiled, and synthesized”?
Instead of soles “walking together,” souls waking together?
Very grateful for Fr. Schultz’s essay. He is well versed in this area and deserves to be heard…and more, needs to be heard in a segment of Catholic thought that is often neglect by contemporary theologians.