About
By Joseph R. Wood
But first a note from Robert Royal: As Professor Wood lucidly explains today, the choice of path - between a desire for comfort and doing what's right - is not new. And in several ways the stakes are even clearer now. Which reminds me that we're well into our finding campaign now. And I need to urge more of you to choose what's right and support our work. There are no guarantees for a venture like The Catholic Thing. No endowment, no government grants, no assurances about the morrow. All we have is you. Please, if you're here, you know why you're here. Just do it. Support TCT. Today.
Now for today's column...
Much is already being written at the moment about AI and the suitable Catholic response to it. So this column will not be about AI.
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov has been driven, by his revulsion to evil in the world, to "rebellion" against God, and perhaps to the edge of insanity. He has written a poem, "The Grand Inquisitor," which he recounts to his brother, the devout (if perhaps a bit naïve) Alyosha.
The poem is set "in Spain, in Seville, in the most horrible time of the Inquisition, when fires blazed every day to the glory of God." Ivan does not admire Western rationalism and science, nor the Roman Church.
After centuries of pleading from Christians, Christ has appeared in Seville, and he is immediately recognized by all. "All" includes the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor, the aged Jesuit responsible for determining which heretics will be turned over to civil authorities for immolation. Just after Christ had raised a girl from the dead on the steps of the Seville cathedral, the Grand Inquisitor orders his arrest and confinement.
Ivan paints the people of Seville as "so tamed, submissive, and tremblingly obedient to his will" that the Grand Inquisitor can lead the Savior to prison without protest. He enjoys a totalitarian grip on the people, who will not oppose him even in the presence of the One they know to be Christ.
The Inquisitor proceeds to interrogate his prisoner, though the interrogation turns out to be a monologue of recrimination aimed at the silent man of sorrows. "You may as well not come at all now, or at least don't interfere with us for the time being."
The Inquisitor's case against Christ centers around the question of human freedom and our capacity to endure it. Christ, claims the Inquisitor, often said that he wanted to make men free. "But we have finally finished this work in your name. For fifteen hundred years we have been at pains over this freedom, but now it is finished and well finished." The Inquisitor doesn't want any disruptions to his work, not even from the One in whose name he conducts it.
"These people [in Seville] are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet." He and his colleagues "have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy."
Such is the usual trade-off proposed by totalitarians: hand us your freedom, and we'll secure your happiness in peace and safety.
This happiness does not consist in the Aristotelian and Catholic understanding of the human telos as contemplation of the divine, an activity of soul in accord with virtue. It's rather a version of pleasure-seeking, with material needs met and no need for difficult choices. No inconvenience, just pacified ease and comfort.
The Inquisitor sees in the three temptations of Christ "three questions [in which] everything was so precisely divined and foretold, and has proved to be so completely true, that to add to them or subtract anything from them is impossible." In answering those questions as He did, Christ chose freedom over obedience to the "dread and intelligent spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-being."
But in offering such a possibility of freedom to humanity, Christ erred, charges the Inquisitor. He greatly ove...
But first a note from Robert Royal: As Professor Wood lucidly explains today, the choice of path - between a desire for comfort and doing what's right - is not new. And in several ways the stakes are even clearer now. Which reminds me that we're well into our finding campaign now. And I need to urge more of you to choose what's right and support our work. There are no guarantees for a venture like The Catholic Thing. No endowment, no government grants, no assurances about the morrow. All we have is you. Please, if you're here, you know why you're here. Just do it. Support TCT. Today.
Now for today's column...
Much is already being written at the moment about AI and the suitable Catholic response to it. So this column will not be about AI.
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov has been driven, by his revulsion to evil in the world, to "rebellion" against God, and perhaps to the edge of insanity. He has written a poem, "The Grand Inquisitor," which he recounts to his brother, the devout (if perhaps a bit naïve) Alyosha.
The poem is set "in Spain, in Seville, in the most horrible time of the Inquisition, when fires blazed every day to the glory of God." Ivan does not admire Western rationalism and science, nor the Roman Church.
After centuries of pleading from Christians, Christ has appeared in Seville, and he is immediately recognized by all. "All" includes the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor, the aged Jesuit responsible for determining which heretics will be turned over to civil authorities for immolation. Just after Christ had raised a girl from the dead on the steps of the Seville cathedral, the Grand Inquisitor orders his arrest and confinement.
Ivan paints the people of Seville as "so tamed, submissive, and tremblingly obedient to his will" that the Grand Inquisitor can lead the Savior to prison without protest. He enjoys a totalitarian grip on the people, who will not oppose him even in the presence of the One they know to be Christ.
The Inquisitor proceeds to interrogate his prisoner, though the interrogation turns out to be a monologue of recrimination aimed at the silent man of sorrows. "You may as well not come at all now, or at least don't interfere with us for the time being."
The Inquisitor's case against Christ centers around the question of human freedom and our capacity to endure it. Christ, claims the Inquisitor, often said that he wanted to make men free. "But we have finally finished this work in your name. For fifteen hundred years we have been at pains over this freedom, but now it is finished and well finished." The Inquisitor doesn't want any disruptions to his work, not even from the One in whose name he conducts it.
"These people [in Seville] are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it at our feet." He and his colleagues "have finally overcome freedom, and have done so in order to make people happy."
Such is the usual trade-off proposed by totalitarians: hand us your freedom, and we'll secure your happiness in peace and safety.
This happiness does not consist in the Aristotelian and Catholic understanding of the human telos as contemplation of the divine, an activity of soul in accord with virtue. It's rather a version of pleasure-seeking, with material needs met and no need for difficult choices. No inconvenience, just pacified ease and comfort.
The Inquisitor sees in the three temptations of Christ "three questions [in which] everything was so precisely divined and foretold, and has proved to be so completely true, that to add to them or subtract anything from them is impossible." In answering those questions as He did, Christ chose freedom over obedience to the "dread and intelligent spirit, the spirit of self-destruction and non-being."
But in offering such a possibility of freedom to humanity, Christ erred, charges the Inquisitor. He greatly ove...