Future Catholicisms

(St Peter's Cathedral, Lancaster.)

There is:

a Jerusalem Catholic Church in Poul Anderson's Technic History;

a Neocatholic Church in Anderson's For Love And Glory;

a Reform Catholic Church in Anderson's Starfarers;

a Reformed Catholic Church on Wunderland in Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's "The Hall of the Mountain King";

an Imperial Church, recognizably Catholic, in Pournelle's CoDominium future history.

Anderson and Pournelle present the inner thoughts and points of view of characters who subscribe to their future versions of Catholicism whereas Pournelle & Stirling, at least in the passage to which I refer, merely mention that there is a Reformed Catholic church in a town among the Jotun Mountains. Nevertheless, this is enough to establish the existence of such a Church.

"The Hall of the Mountain King" is an installment of the Man-Kzin Wars sub-series of Larry Niven's Known Space future history. Thus, this single reference establishes the existence of a Reformed Catholic Church in the Known Space timeline. This denomination may never be referred to again. Alternatively, some contributor to the series could build a story around it. How was the Church "reformed"? Might a kzinti Kdaptist, believing that God made Man in His image, seek admittance to a Terrestrial religion? Etc. See here.

Religions Real Or Fictional II

Starfarers, 7.

(I have just been out to our Zen group and back.)

Before eating, Captain Nansen pauses for those who want to bless the meal.

Being nominally Reform Catholic, he crosses himself as does Ruszek.

Zeyd bows his head.

Mokoena folds her hands, looks down and whispers.

Yu and Sundaram become meditative.

Kilbirnie, Brent, Dayan and Cleland wait respectfully.

That is everyone on board accounted for.

(I have heard a Buddhist equivalent of "grace before meals" but have not committed it to memory.)

A very strong unifying factor in society is that, except for a few sectarians, everyone attends weddings and funerals of friends and colleagues irrespective of denomination or tradition. The crew accept that, in different circumstances, they would attend a Reform Catholic church for their captain's wedding or funeral - but what practices will they find on Earth after ten thousand years? (This question is answered later in the novel.)

"We Can Never Return Home"

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

"Napery rested snowy beneath a gleam of tableware." (p. 58)

I have read Starfarers twice before, the second time to blog about it as now. However, I do not remember noticing this to me odd word before. Anderson's texts bear close study. Sometimes the meaning of a word is clear from its context but not always and at other times a meaning guessed from the context is wrong.

We learn of another future denomination: Reform Catholic. In the Technic History, the Jerusalem Catholic Church could be the Roman Catholic Church with its headquarters moved (back) to Jerusalem but "Reform Catholics" must have made some break from Roman Catholicism. With this single phrase, Anderson informs us that the fictitious timeline contains entire congregations who are represented to us by just one of the characters.

"'We can never return home. When we come back to Earth [after ten thousand years], we will necessarily come as foreigners, immigrants.'" (p. 59)

That first sentence sounds familiar and is obviously intended to echo an established saying. We cannot return to the home that we remember because it and, more importantly, we have changed in our absence. Science fiction can show us a group of characters returning to the Solar System after ten thousand years...

What Endures?

Poul Anderson, Starfarers (New York, 1999).

As Envoy returns to Earth, its crew detect that interstellar travel from Earth is sharply declining. Captain Nansen, "...nominally a Reform Catholic..." (p. 58), remarks:

"'...the Church taught that someday time also will have a stop.'" (p. 428)

By speaking in the past tense, he seems to assume that, after so many millennia, the Church will no longer exist. This assumption turns out to be correct. The six surviving Envoy crew members include the last Jew, Christian and Muslim.

I was taught that the Catholic Church would last until the end of time. This was contradicted by sf stories in which mankind survives into the remote future when, although there are diverse sects, none of them are descended from any religions known to us. St Paul's teaching was not that the Church would survive through all those millennia but that Christ would return when he, Paul, had completed his mission to the Gentiles. When some converts had died and others then asked Paul why the return had been delayed, he replied that Christ would indeed return soon at which point dead believers would be raised and those who were still alive, possibly including himself and his correspondents, would meet with them in the air, thus writing the passage that generated the Rapture idea.

The idea that the Church as an institution would endure through many future millennia must have arisen after the first generation of Christians had died - although some then expected Christ's return at the end of the first millennium.

Traditions

The People Of The Wind, V.

Like the Bible and Shakespeare, Poul Anderson's works cover every issue. We can discuss what Anderson's characters or, less often, what Anderson himself thinks about an issue. His two main values are freedom and diversity. David Falkayn wanted only elbow room when he colonized Avalon. This is one character's opinion but it is safe to say that it is also a view that the author shared. 

Sometimes we can quote a passage and use it to hang our own opinions on - as with the Bible and Shakespeare - but everyone can do this. What do we think of "traditions"?

"Tradition determined what constituted a choth, though this was a tradition that slowly changed itself, as every living usage must." (p. 496)

There is no unchanging tradition. A received tradition can be conserved, reinterpreted, reformed or rejected. However, conservatives conserve their idea of the tradition in changed circumstances. Thus, on two counts, the tradition is no longer what it had been. To reinterpret is to reject conservative interpretations. Reinterpretation can be reform under a different name. To reform is, obviously, to change. To reject is to be influenced by whatever is rejected. Catholic free thinkers are different from Protestant free thinkers! Atheism is not one thing. Jains, who have always believed in uncreated, beginningless matter and transmigrating souls are different from Europeans who have gone through the process of rejecting Biblical monotheism.

Revolutionaries have traditions. They look for precedents in historical revolutions.

"The King is dead. Long live the King!" expresses social continuity. "The office of King is abolished. Long live the Republic!" also expresses continuity of an ordered society.

Apparently, Ythrian choths have corresponded to every kind of human social organization and more.

Nothing New?

"The House of Sorrows."

"The Zarathustrans study their holy writ but add nothing new." (p. 86)

Religious and ideological groups can try to read only their own authoritative texts but no one lives in a hermetically sealed universe. To study any text thoroughly, it is necessary to write about it. That is already to add something new. Some scholars will write with more imagination and originality than others. There will be disagreements. Some will write about how to apply their received teachings to new situations. Some will try to refute false and heretical beliefs and thus will write about those beliefs. (I once heard Catholic doctrines in a televised Free Presbyterian sermon.) To conserve a tradition is to conserve (an understanding of) that tradition but in changed conditions. To reform a tradition is to reject a conservative interpretation. To reject a tradition is to be influenced by what is rejected. Thus, all responses involve both change and continuity.

There are times when children are taught to read only so that they can read the Bible. However, as soon as they can read the Bible, they can also read anything else: Darwin, Marx, Freud etc. Writing both preserves and subverts traditions.

A Midsummer Tempest VIII

More rhyming dialogue, missed earlier, in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975):

" 'Climb down to earth, now; do not seek to flee. I've longer legs than you, 'tis plain to see.' "

and, immediately below that:

" 'I reckon here's where we change trains, my loard'...'A moment, pray. I'll further look inboard.' " (p. 76)

- and that is followed by rhymes that I did quote earlier. I might find a few more before I finish rereading. But the main point is that much of the dialogue is prose disguised as verse, most of it not rhyming but "blank." If I may re-arrange an earlier exchange, on pages 12-14:

"Your Highness, cast your melancholy off,
"You'll find enjoyment and surcease from strife.
"The household staff and others you may meet
"Are under oath to breathe no word of you,
"And known to me for their trustworthiness.
"And thus, by day, though guarded, wander free
"About these grounds. I dare not let you ride.
"I would I did. I'm eager in the hunt,
"And you will like my horses and my hounds.
"But you can fish, play ball, do what you wish.
"I hear you are of philosophic bent.
"Well so am I. Make use of any books.
"Do you play chess? I'm not so bad at that.
"At night, I fear, you must be locked away
"In your apartment, high in yonder tower.
"But 'twill be furnished with the tools of art -
"They say you draw and etch delightfully -
"And you'll have access likewise to the roof.
"There often I beguile a sleepless night
"By tracking moon and stars across the sky.
"Come too! I'll show you mysteries in heaven
"And maybe they'll convert you to the truth."

"That lies not in your sour and canting creed."

"Were you not raised a Calvinist, my lord?"

"I try to be a proper Protestant,
"Yet not cast off what's good from olden time.
"I'd lifer hear a service that a rant;
"I do not think my Romish friends are damned,
"Nor that 'tis right to persecute the Jews;
"I'd hang no helpless granny for a witch.
"That day we captured Lichfield, I was glad
"To let its staunch defenders leave with honours.
"But when we entered the cathedral close
"And saw what desolation had been wrought
"On ancient lovely halidoms - Enough."

"There goes a daybreak wide across the world,
"Which causes pretty stars to flee our sight.
"But oh, those stars were shining infamous
"Within that chamber which a tyrant kept.
"'Tis pity that you fight for fading night."

"I grant that James was not the best of kings -"

"He was the worst...and followed Gloriana.
"Harsh taxes to maintain a wastrel court,
"Oppression of a rising merchant class
"In whom the seeds of England's greatness lie,
"And rural rule by backward-looking squires:
"Such was the legacy that Charles disowned not.
"And worse, his Queen herself is Catholic;
"The Papists get an easy tolerance;
"The Church of England stays unpurified.
"Small wonder, then, that free-souled men demand,
"Through Parliament, long-overdue reform."

"I am no judge of that - I'm merely loyal.
"And yet - you people prate so much of freedom -
"How free are they? No lord looks after them.
"You're free to let them go in beggary
"Across the gashed and smoky land you'd make."

"I thought your Highness a philosopher
"Who also cultivates mechanic arts."

"Well, that I do. I like a good machine."

"What think you of our late-invented cars
"Which run by steam and draw a train behind?"

"They've been too rare for me to more than glimpse,
"And railway builders all seem Puritan.
"We captured one such...locomotive, is it?
"Near Shrewsbury, upon that single line
"That leads into the West. I did admire it,
"But had no time from war to really look."

"I love them as I do my hunting horses.
"The morrow is the truest freight they bear.
"To date, they are but small, as well as few,
"Scarce faster than a beast although untiring.
"They mainly carry wagon loads of coal
"To feed the hungry engines in the mills
"And manufacturies of cloth and hardware
"Which men like me are building ever more of -
"You may not understand what we are doing
"From such few glimpses as you got by chance.
"But you - but men now live who'll see the day
"When this whole island is enwebbed with rails
"And locomotives like Behemoth's self
"Haul every freight, plus civil passengers,
"And troops, and guns in time of war - a day
"When power does not grow from birth or sword
"But out of mills and furnaces."

On antisemitism, mentioned here, I have read, but would need to confirm, that Cromwell welcomed Jews to England and that some Jews investigated his ancestry to see if he might be the Messiah.