The Critical Need for Institutional Thinking

“Civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery. At his birth he is sewed in swaddling clothes; at this death he is nailed in a coffin. So long as he keeps his human shape, he is enchained by our institutions.”  – Rousseau

Institutions, in the modern period, have gained the reputation of purveyors of oppression, restriction, and normative binding. Really, discussion around institutions today revolves around ideas of ‘institutional racism’, anachronistic modes of thought, and criticisms of how the past continues to inhibit progress for today’s society. Yet, we seldom consider the benefits we have gained from these inherited structures, and further how we may continue to live in excellence in accord with them.

Man inherently derives his identity from an institution, be it his church, school, profession, or even  sport. In essence, an institution is the binding of tradition, mission, and purpose to a field of habit. We often decry lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. for their collective manner of action; they seem to act very much alike despite only sharing a profession. But these attributes are ingrained into the persona of their field. A lawyer acts like a lawyer because he has been taught by lawyers and mimics his predecessors in law. A lawyer derives his identity from the sanctity and purpose of the law, invoking figures like Cicero and Aristotle, while clerically thinking of the policy of circumstance. In fact, the idea of a lawyer, though seemingly off-putting in character to most, helps bind delinquent lawyers to a greater form of behavior in representing their field. One may think of Saul Goodman in contrast to his stereotypical lawyer brother, Chuck McGill.

To think institutionally is to first inherit an institution, with its customs, tradition, history, figures, and mission and carry its legacy forward so future generations may not be deprived of the value it has provided. The benefit of such a system of thought is that we are not divorced, in arrogance, from our ancestors nor are our progeny disinherited from the long system of reason which our society has built. Institutional thought drives us to esteem our tradition and act in a manner befitting it, rising above immediate temptations for the sake of our lineage. It is the sort of mode of habit that keeps the world running. Institutional thinkers kept our Church active and able in times of disheartening war and peril; they maintained Japan functioning in the wake of utter defeat in World War II; bankers and clerks aided the Western world function despite being overwhelmed by the black death. It is the “business as usual” model that maintains stability and some form of certainty in the face of absolute fear and turmoil.

In today’s academic schools, we are rather imbued with “critical thinking” skills, prized for its skeptic and ‘rational’ analysis. Often, to think critically is to criticize everything inherited and take nothing as a guarantee. But people do not function like that. We live with assumptions. No skeptic wakes up and devotes his day to analyzing all he eats and all his relationships. He does not question that the world is still turning, that the police will come when needed, that the law of gravity persists, etc. Rather, it is habit that allows us to live our lives efficiently, and habit can only be made with the assumption that there is some consistency in the world. These helpful habits are related to the institutions that operate our world. For example, we as Americans live with the assumption that there is a definable law, a functioning grid, and a trust that we can lend our fellow Americans. So called “critical thinkers” are more preoccupied with questioning our assumptions about everything: is the US really under the rule of law? Can we really trust our neighbors? Does religion really help improve man? Is capitalism fair? Exceptions and circumstances are constantly used by these sophists as justification to undermine every institution that has aided the survival and betterment of man.These questions are useful, but they have their time, place, and certainly must be in respect to the institution rather than in malice.

Yet, institutional thinking does not ask you to receive everything faithfully and blindly, as may be presumed. Rather, what you inherit must be innovated with faithfulness to those who came before and those that will come after you. As Sir William Slim put it, “[t]radition does not mean that you never do anything new, but that you will never fall below the standard of courage and conduct handed down to you. Then tradition, far from being handcuffs to cramp your action, will be a handrail to guide and steady you in rough places.”

Post Scriptum, I wish I were wise enough to have figured these ideas out for myself, but unfortunately not. A great deal of this article is a paraphrase of Hugh Heclo’s exceptional piece: “Thinking Institutionally”, from the Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions. I exhort everyone who finds a modicum of inspiration from this argument to check it out.

References 

Heclo, Hugh, 'Thinking Institutionally', in Sarah A. Binder, R. A. W. Rhodes, and Bert A. Rockman (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (2008; online edn, Oxford Academic, 2 Sept. 2009), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199548460.003.0037, accessed 1 Apr. 2024.

The Review Reviews: More than a Milestone: Mania Offers Rich Food for Theological Thought

This spring, Alternate College Theatre performed its first-ever original musical: Mania, a dark comedy written by Blake Sheridan of the class of 2024. Sheridan also stars as Billy Higgins, a father who offers to coach a struggling boys’ soccer team mostly so he can antagonize a rival coach, his old enemy Bruce (Frank Amuso). At their first match, passive-aggressive conflict builds between the families of each team, culminating when the referee (Max Coté) reveals himself to be a damned soul involved in a type of spiritual pyramid scheme, releases hallucinogens over the playing field, and encourages the characters to murder each other.

If that sounds dark, it is. It’s also very funny. I’m quick to see a clichéd gag approaching and have sometimes felt vicarious embarrassment for less-than-original “comedies,” but Mania’s humor consistently surprised me and evoked genuine laughter throughout. Acting, directing, and production were all excellent. What most interested me about Mania, though, was its engagement with religion. As a dilettante art critic, I consume film and literature reviews regularly, and in this process I’ve sometimes heard Christian critics praise a work for exploring “the absence of God.” I never quite understood this sentiment. Granted that such an exploration doesn’t make art bad, why would it inherently be a point in the art’s favor? Perhaps the highest praise I can give for Mania is that I finally understand what those critics were getting at.

It would be easy to construe Mania as anti-religious, or at least nihilistic. The storyline is quite brutal at times, and there aren’t any clear rays of grace. Petty grudges spiral into violence. A dead character (Connor Morine) who, though past the age of reason, seems too young to have committed mortal sins is unambiguously shown in hell (or at least an afterlife that’s enthusiastically marketing itself as such). The antagonist runs gleefully through the show without seeming to receive any comeuppance, and nobody else has a happy ending. By the time one of the characters (Hillary Boadu) protests her Christianity and expresses the belief that God will rescue her, we’ve seen enough of the show’s world to be doubtful of this prediction, and in any case, her treatment of others to that point has been far from an example of Christian virtue.

Yet though I’m usually quite attuned to digs at religion in media, I never felt that Mania was goading me. Part of this was due to it demonstrating a clearer understanding of Christian theology than most supernatural fiction. Seeing an afterlife cashing in on pop-culture images of hell, one character remarks that it doesn’t look too bad — whereupon the referee explains, quite rightly, that the chief torment is not physical punishment but decay of the soul. While most supernatural fiction tends to portray demons as ordinary bogeymen with an end goal to frighten or kill people, Mania’s referee is far more orthodox, striving to corrupt characters and noting that he doesn’t benefit by directly killing them himself. (The referee isn’t a demon, but he serves one.) It helps that, though many stories which try to subvert Christianity portray the demonic as a positive and misunderstood force, Mania never paints its antagonist as anything but villainous; and while the pious characters come in for their share of satire, the script is ultimately even-handed in its distribution of both criticism and understanding to all characters.

I have suggested that Mania explores the absence of God. What particularly intrigues me is how this theme is handled. In a purely nihilistic production, the absence of an ultimate good would be taken for granted, and it’s unlikely the villains would be couched in religious terms because religion would simply be irrelevant. Yet Mania’s referee explicitly engages with Christian typology. He relates a conversation he purportedly had with Satan and frequently switches from speech to cant, evoking — especially given the musical’s debut at a Jesuit university — a priest celebrating Mass. Both of these behaviors challenge the reading that God is simply nonexistent in Mania’s world. Satan’s very identity implies opposition; if God doesn’t exist, whom did Satan rebel against? Why? If religion is irrelevant, why does the referee satirize liturgical language instead of, say, royal addresses or terms-and-conditions disclaimers? These things do not negate God’s absence in Mania, but the negative space becomes a paradoxical presence, suggesting the necessity of God by drawing our attention to what’s missing.

At rare moments, other characters indicate that the bleak world of Mania is not the status quo. Near the beginning of Act II, the referee explains to the deceased young character whom I previously mentioned that he avoids the torments of hell by tempting other souls to damnation. After the vicious conflicts and self-serving behavior of Act I, one might reasonably expect the dead player to want in on the scheme. Instead, he protests, “But that’s immoral!” Much closer to the show’s end, another character (Erin Ledwith) defiantly asserts that the referee won’t get away with his crimes. The villain laughs it off, but this sense of justice should give us pause. None of the preceding events encourage the idea that Mania’s world is just; indeed, the character speaks these words bitterly amidst a field of bodies. So from where does she derive her knowledge of how things are “supposed” to be?

The story’s status as a theatrical comedy is relevant here, I think. More than any other medium, theater draws attention to its artificiality. Sets are disassembled before the audience’s eyes; dead characters get up and walk offstage at scene changes; and, of course, all of the actors reappear together for bows at the end, dispelling the illusion of enmity between them. Mania particularly embraces its fictionality when, near the climax, the referee directly addresses the audience members to mock them for their silence and stillness. As we should expect from a dark comedy, which invites us to laugh at things that would be unpleasant in real life, Mania frequently reminds us that the story is a secondary world, not the primary one, and should be engaged with as such. Perhaps this is how the characters dimly know, despite lack of evidence in their own world, what morality and justice should look like. Their world cannot exist independently but requires our world’s rules for a foundation, even when those rules are internally defied. Or perhaps Mania is simply making a point about reality. Even in our world, we sometimes know what the ideal should look like despite lacking an experiential foundation for that understanding. From where do we derive this knowledge?

My ultimate conclusion is thus. Mania is, I think, doing something complex with its religious themes. It does not make assertions about God’s status in our world. Rather, it posits a hypothetical world in which God is conspicuously absent, then asks us to contemplate that world. What would existence there be like? What would happen to morality? Does that world even make sense? Mania provides no easy answers, but it suggests — by illustrating evil as dependent on a higher good to flout, by challenging whether reality can be unjust unless there exists some external standard of justice — that the questions are more complex than one might think.

As a Catholic, I also appreciate Mania’s exploration of the absence of God for another reason. Mania debuted on Thursday, March 21st — almost exactly one week before Good Friday, when Catholics are asked to reflect on the crucifixion and death of God. We should not gloss over the existential horror those ideas should provoke. Yet it can be hard to internalize in the modern day, when Easter is familiar and we are used to happier holidays. At the end of this Lent, I appreciated the chance to (lightly, humorously) stare into the void and ponder what the world would be like without an omnibenevolent foundation.

I would ordinarily finish this review by stating whether I’d recommend the show to others, offering qualifications for those who might find the material intense, and exhorting the rest of the target audience to see it. (Here’s a litmus test: if you can see the funny side of a character attempting to kill somebody with a modified t-shirt cannon, Mania is for you.) Unfortunately, Mania has had its full run at Holy Cross, and while I’d highly recommend it to all readers, there is no news yet of where one might catch it in the future. So I shall close with this recommendation: watch the careers of those involved in Mania. There was a lot of talent on display in this production, and I would not be surprised to see it bear more fruit in the years to come. With luck, the future will bring more unique offerings from students involved in every aspect of Mania’s production.

Overall grade: A

A Reflection on Graduation

Unsurprisingly, I anticipate the end of the semester with mixed emotions. This time of the year always brings fatigue, a frazzled emotional state, and the eagerness for rest. As a graduating senior, I look forward to starting a new chapter in my life as I leave with my bachelor’s degree. Yet my readiness for the summer is tempered by sadness at departing Holy Cross permanently. Alas, such is the way of life’s great changes. I doubt I am the only member of the graduating class to feel this way.

Closing out my brief but vivid tenure at the Fenwick Review, I wanted to take the opportunity to share some thoughts I’d recently had on the nature of graduation. I will not attempt to erase the melancholic aspects of transition. Not only is that feat beyond my writing ability, I don’t think it would even be healthy. Yet as someone who believes there is no human experience which cannot be enriched by philosophical consideration, I hope that my reflection will, without negating the emotional reality of graduation, offer some consolation to those who share my conflicted feelings and some entertainment to those who don’t.

Over the last semester, I have increasingly been confronted by a novel emotion. It should not be confused with pride in others, but like pride, it’s connected to times I’ve seen my friends, acquaintances, and unknown peers come into their own. These last months have been especially rich in opportunities for Holy Cross students to show off their talents. As I write this, the Fenwick Scholar presentation and academic conference are a few days away, and seniors in the honors program are completing their theses. Music majors have been giving their end of the year recitals over the last few weeks. We had one theatrical production last month and are in the middle of another now. The dance ensemble performed for a full theater on April 12th. Battle of the Bands was held on the 20th. And in general, I witness my friends take on new responsibilities as they prepare for new jobs, new internships, or whatever comes after undergraduate education in the case of other ’24 students. These are the times I’ve recently seen my peers flourish as individuals. Perhaps you have your own examples from sports, or service work, or something else.

I have said that the emotion connected to these experiences is not mere pride. Pride in others is a familiar emotion that I’ve had throughout my life. This emotion is newer, and it relates to the fact that the people in question are now burgeoning adults obtaining independence in the world — and, for the first time, substantially affecting the world with their actions. I think it is easiest to explain the feeling with a quotation:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.”— C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Lewis was ultimately referring to human status after death with his descriptions of worship-worthy or horrifying creatures. Yet, as his final sentence indicates, humans are in the process of transforming themselves into these during their lifetimes. In Catholic thought, the process of becoming a saint is usually associated with moral practices, and indeed, I would agree that whether one acts rightly is the most important part of a person’s identity. But idiosyncrasies in personality and talent are also major parts of our ultimate identities. We remember saints not just because of their moral examples, but because of the unique flavors their personalities and lifestyles gave to the meaning of sainthood. I often cite the example of Joan of Arc, whose biography proved so compelling that she inspired Mark Twain, a man famously hostile to organized Christianity, to write a reverent fictionalization of her life.

My emotional response to the recent actions of my peers is, I think, a type of awe. Like it or not, we are all, right now, in the process of shaping our immortal forms — either giving ourselves more dimensions and growing closer to being fully formed human beings, or turning into one-dimensional self-parodies as we give up in the struggle. When I see other students growing in their talents, using them to liven the world, and becoming truly unique in the degree and/or application of their abilities, I have a glimpse of the divine figures they have the potential to become. It is a wondrous thing and a privilege to be able to see other humans in this process. These moments are some of what I treasure most from my time at Holy Cross.

Graduation can be a melancholic time as seniors leave their friends to join other communities. I will not dispute that. But the view of human life as a metamorphic process contextualizes the transition somewhat. It is by setting out that we are able to complete what we have begun at college, coming fully into our own and finishing the process of turning ourselves into masterworks of creation. Thus, while we acknowledge the sadness of this time, let us also see it as a time for amazement. This commencement may prove to be the genesis of, in Lewis’s words, “gods and goddesses.”

Am I my Brother’s Keeper?

In the biblical account of creation, the Lord forms the world and all it possesses, appointing man over his creation with the single mandate to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Shortly thereafter, the first descendants of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, enter into a quarrel resulting in the death of Abel. As the Lord perused the world, He asked Cain, “where is Abel your brother” to which Cain replied, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” God’s response is not a binary yes or no, rather the Lord chose to respond, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” We are often confronted with the same question when considering intervening in another’s life: am I my brother’s keeper? Modern values would argue that individual autonomy is one of the highest regards of life. That we should rarely, if ever, intervene in another’s free will, even for their own sake. But we should consider God’s retort more thoroughly. God chose to reveal to Cain that there are higher responsibilities we owe to each other. While there is a clear distinction between murder and allowing someone to continue to engage destructive habits, we are also complicit in their results. In an eloquent manner, God confirmed, “yes, you are our brother’s keeper.”

There is a popular anecdote of when Margaret Mead, a famed 20th-century anthropologist, was asked when she thought civilization first began. Mead responded that civilization began with the first healing of a human femur; the first time a man was brought back from a death sentence, through the aid of his tribe, marked when man became less animal and more human. Mead’s response held with Rousseau’s concept of a society; the social contract that brings society into being is a pledge, and the society remains in existence as a pledged group. To live in a society is to pledge yourself to the aid of another. It is not simply living adjacent to each other, but also forfeiting yourself to them when in need. We are led by a ‘general social will’ to act for the benefit of our social good. Simply by living in this society, we pledge ourselves to it and its values, accepting to live by its customs and traditions. And since our society is one led by a Christian understanding of the world, we are under an even greater obligation to one another.

The prime example of Christian morality is, of course, Jesus Christ. Throughout his life, death, and resurrection, Christ provided not only for our salvation, but also the right example on how we ought to live. One of Christ’s most well-known teachings is certainly “the golden rule” —do unto others as you would have them do unto you– which mandates a baseline of obligation we have to each other. But other examples abound in which Christ taught us that we have a greater obligation to others than to ourselves. Examples such as the parable of the Good Samaritan in which the only good man was the one that stopped to help, the parable of the talents which symbolized that we are obligated to use our God-given gifts for His glory, and the supreme example of Christ being martyred for our sake. To live for others is the highest calling a Christian is subject to. Our school’s motto calls us to live as “men and women for others.” To live in a Christian society is to be obligated to help others. 

Our responsibility is easily enough argued, but the case becomes foggy when applied to specific circumstances. Yet the same principles endure; we have a responsibility to our fellow man throughout our lives. Even in cases where the recipient rejects aid, we are under the greatest commandment to give our every effort to them. Consider the case of suicide: no reasonable person would argue that, if possible, one should not step in to prevent another’s death, even when expressly denied. Thankfully, we still live in a society in which our mandate is clear. And so, the maxim to be our brother’s keeper obliges us to consider intervening when  a person is engaging in destructive habits such as drug abuse, extreme risk, or negligent behavior. Our responsibility is still the same if we truly live as if we love our neighbor. Our response should of course be measured and tactful to express our sincerity but leaving no room for excuse when we come before the throne of God and must answer for our actions.

So with this view in mind we must consider where we fall short in society. It becomes clear that we owe protection to the innocent and marginalized, those who have no advocate, and to the poor and displaced. At times, we must even give advice to our brothers who are falling short of their potential. We must also consider how we may help those who are unable to help themselves, such as those suffering from a drug addiction.  Lastly, with respect to politics, we must resist corrupt actors who harm our society’s moral and physical well-being. To live as men and women for others, we are obligated to denounce lies, for that is the root of harm, and to take action for the welfare of our society, even if it requires some sacrifice on our behalf. 

“And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)

Is Taylor Swift a Deep State Psyop?

As is the answer with most wild headlines that end with a question mark, no.

If you have not heard this most recent right-wing conspiracy theory on the internet about the machinations of the “uniparty” establishment or left-wing Marxist hordes, consider yourself lucky. Unfortunately, as a conservative who regularly absorbs conservative news media, this is only the latest in a steady diet of right-wing punditry describing purported intrigues by the Democratic and RINO cabal holding the reins of power in the United States. In much of the conservative news world, it could not possibly be the case that a female artist who writes relatable songs to young girls and women with sufficiently catchy melodies could become extraordinarily popular and that she might hold liberal views similar to most culturally prominent figures in American society.  Instead, it must be a conspiracy by the Biden administration and the puppet masters in Washington D.C. to artificially raise her popularity, rig the outcome of the Super Bowl, and therefore increase their support among young adult voters so they can finally enact their post-modern, culturally-Marxist, critical-race, open-border, climate-cult, LGBTQ+, anti-American, globalist, liberal, communist, effeminate revolution.

Why does the right love to construct such elaborate webs of lunacy? Certainly, the left has its own conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Donald Trump was a Russian agent. And some so-called conspiracy theories are proven to be likely or even positively true, such as the Wuhan lab leak theory. But the right seems to have a particular appetite for conspiracy theories that range from the fringe white-supremacist fears of replacement to the more mainstream acceptance on the right that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. While there are many reasons for the popularity of these theories on the right, a principal cause of this issue is the online conservative news sphere itself.

It is no secret that with the rise of social media, news media has become increasingly polarized as internet users sort themselves into algorithmically determined information silos that confirm and deepen their already-held beliefs. This new medium of news has impacted both the viewers and producers. While allowing an unprecedented degree of freedom in the public square, social media still contains incentives that push online pundits to either extreme views or intellectual dishonesty. By rewarding content that makes dramatic claims and strikes users’ strongest feelings, often manifested in negative emotions such as anger, social media has incentivized the publication of dramatic yet implausible claims.

Beyond this, online news pundits are implicitly encouraged to appeal to their audience’s tastes and reinforce their opinions to ensure the continuation and growth of viewers. The free market of the internet with low barriers to access and therefore a high number of competitors has led news creators to increasingly tailor their content to a small piece of the market. Many online news creators on the right are, unwittingly or not, captured by their audience and encouraged to produce content further and further detached from wider society, ironically resulting in the same issue that many conservatives have held with traditional news media.

This social media algorithmic pressure is impacting political polarization on all sides, yet as a conservative, I feel that I first must comment on my “own side,” whatever that truly means in this chaotic political atmosphere. The Republican Party since the rise of Trump has been increasingly anti-institutional, and there are many fair reasons for this instinct as Trump arose out of the genuine grievances caused by elite institutions’ blind spots. But this distrust has collapsed into a black hole of delusional cynicism for many on the online right, as any claims by the federal government, academics, business leaders, or cultural tastemakers are immediately regarded with not just distrust, but with an assumption that the absolute reverse is true. Taylor Swift’s popularity in singing songs about her relationships is actually a manufactured public image, including her relationship with Travis Kelce, to win Biden a second term. And Donald Trump could not be such a loud and abrasive figure as to cause many voters in 2020 to choose who they viewed as the boring candidate, Biden; rather, Biden and the Democratic Party masterminded the rigging of voting machines and used fake ballots to prevent the MAGA wave. Online media personalities on the right have become numerous, and judging by the fact that many have entertained ridiculous conspiracy theories such as the most recent one about Taylor Swift, it can only be concluded that a good number are no different than many other social media influencers who are addicted to acquiring wealth and internet fame.

None of this is said out of hatred of conservative values or as an attempt to delegitimize different points of disagreement within the broader right. There are significant differences in social, foreign, and fiscal policy on the conservative side of the aisle that need to be debated. More importantly, some of the biggest questions of our time need a coherent conservative answer to counter some of the false arguments made by those on the other side of the political spectrum. When our society is debating the value of the free market, the validity of equality of opportunity, and the definition of gender, there is no time to play games and fight invisible enemies as many on the online right seem to prefer. There are serious issues facing this nation, and they require serious answers.

Ultimately, this most recent bizarre headline is a reminder to stay grounded and think honestly, having open discussions with others. When politics is relegated to online echo chambers, the ridiculous beliefs that win social media arguments might have a chance of coming into real life, with unpleasant consequences. Rather, disconnecting from social media and connecting with authentic communities, such as our college community, gives us a chance to move forward together. Conservatives need to do better.

The Handmaid's Tale Has Arrived

To many Americans, the release of The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu and the inauguration of President Trump in 2017 perfectly coincided. These Americans, mostly progressive college-educated white women, believed that the plot of the Hulu drama series, based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, perfectly resembled the potential dangers of a conservative presidency, which could eventually usher in a Protestant theonomy and patriarchal dystopia. 

These fears were exacerbated by Atwood and the series’ cast and producers, including Holy Cross alumna Ann Dowd ‘78, who has argued that the show’s dystopia “is happening” under Trump’s presidency, and that the United States is “a heck of a lot closer” now then when the series began production in 2016 [1]. These nonsensical fears are still parrotted by television hosts like Sunny Hostin who recently said that a hypothetical Trump/Haley ticket would somehow actualize The Handmaid’s Tale, members of Congress, and feminist activists nationwide who larp as handmaids in the quintessential red costume to protest various conservative causes [2].

While the American left is still neurotic over the potential actualization of a fictitious television series that is grounded in a fundamentally heterodox vision of Christian and conservative sexual ethics (there is no orthodox Christian denomination that supports sex slavery, polygamy, or the subjugation of women), there are still some reasons to think that a version of The Handmaid’s Tale has arrived, but not by the people or in the way that you would expect.

The world of The Handmaid’s Tale is contemporaneous with reality. In this fictional world, the United States has been violently overthrown by a fanatical religious sect that rearranges the social order in the newly formed Republic of Gilead. In this newly formed nation, which is mainly concerned with increasing the nation’s birth rate, new hierarchical social classes have been installed. The leaders of the regime are the commanders and their wives, who are mostly infertile women. They exercise dominance over the rest of the social classes, especially the handmaids. These handmaids, fertile women who have deviated from the norms of Gilead, are forcibly required to breed children for commanders and their wives. These children, the offspring of the commander and the handmaid, will never know their true mother, as she will be moved to a new home to be impregnated by another commander. 

The horror of this regime is obvious to every person; however, there is a similarly odious practice happening today in the United States using relatively similar methods– commercial surrogacy. Commercial surrogacy is the process by which a woman gestates and delivers another’s baby for a fee. The surrogate mother is merely a vessel for carrying and delivering the child, and after the birth she has no contact with the child. While there are some large differences between the handmaids and surrogate mothers, they are both viewed by the “true parents” as merely commercial and sexual vessels that are able to give them the greatest pleasure, a child that they mold. 

The surrogate mother, like the handmaid, carries the child in her womb for nine months where the child knows her voice, grows in her body, and is both physically and spiritually connected to her very being. She becomes the child’s mother, and her body and mind naturally operate as if the child is her own.

The legal parents of the child, the only parents that the child of surrogate mothers will ever know, believe that they are somehow the true parents of the child. They believe that this is their child, and that they are owed a child purely because of their desire for one. This is evident in the most important and horrific action in The Handmaid’s Tale: the ceremony, the ritualistic service in which the handmaid is raped. In this ceremony, the handmaid lies between the wives’ legs while the commander rapes her in order for the wife to believe that, in some deeper way, her husband is impregnating her rather than the handmaid surrogate. 

In our own world, the process is much more sanitized, but the result is the same. In one recent example posted on the Instagram page of Men Having Babies, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to helping gay men through the surrogacy process, a couple from San Diego commented that their new daughter, Donatella, was given that name as she was “given from heaven” to them [3]. However, that objectively is not true. Donatella was not given from heaven, but rather her prenatal development is purely a product of medical intervention. She was created because her legal parents, like the commanders and their wives, believed that they were owed a child through whatever means necessary, including renting a woman’s womb and using her to gestate and deliver a child that she will never know. Donatella is a product of their own means, desire, and will rather than a gift freely given to them from above.

So, the question still remains: why has a sanitized version of The Handmaid’s Tale been pushed onto society by the same people, progressive whites, who have for eight years incessantly moaned about the dangers of a similar regime? The answer, like in The Handmaid’s Tale, is a product of bad theology. 

While the ruling class in Gilead had a fundamentally heterodox vision of Christian morality and law, as they implemented a bizarre quasi-version of the judicial laws of the Mosaic law mixed with bad exegetical interpretations of Genesis, the progressive vision that blesses surrogacy engages in a similar theological undertaking. This theological view places the highest good in the universe not on an infinite and supreme personal God who properly orders every aspect of the universe, but rather it places the highest good on oneself and one’s desires. This hedonistic and egotistical theological view places one’s personal pleasure over the life and well-being of one’s legal children. 

The beneficiaries of surrogacy, those who buy the child, make the moral decision that their desires outweigh the good of the child. The surrogacy process almost immediately rips the child from the only mother that they ever know inflicting a primordial wound that will most likely never heal, commodifies reproduction and human life, and creates a society in which people are viewed as commercial and sexual vessels rather than individuals created for love [4]. The theological worldview that sanctions surrogacy as a positive good for society inherently devalues human life itself. The law, the primary moral teacher for a society, must correct this grave error by outlawing this practice. Ann Dowd ‘78 is right, we are more than “a heck of a lot closer” to The Handmaid’s Tale than ever before. We are currently living in our own hedonistic progressive Gilead, and we, like the handmaids, must make sure that is overthrown.

Endnotes 

[1] John Gage, “‘This is happening’: Producer and actress with ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ think show is turning into real life,” Washington Examiner, June 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/1735228/this-is-happening-producer-and-actress-with-the-handmaids-tale-think-the-show-is-turning-into-real-life/.  

[2] Greta Bjornson, “Sunny Hostin Paints A Bleak Picture Of A Donald Trump and Nikki Haley Ticket on ‘The View,’” Decider, January 22, 2024, https://decider.com/2024/01/22/sunny-hostin-bleak-donald-trump-nikki-haley-ticket-the-view-handmaids-tale/.

[3]  Men Having Babies @menhavingbabies, “#throwback to November 2020…,” Instagram photo, December 28, 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/C1ZiKnhMRoy/.

[4] Verrier, Nancy. The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. Gateway Press, 2003.

How the Humanities Died

In his 1954 inaugural lecture as the first chair and professor of “Medieval and Renaissance English” at Cambridge, C.S. Lewis says that, though it is not within his power to treat the whole field, “this appointed area must primarily appear as a specimen of something far larger, something which had already begun when the Iliad was composed and was still almost unimpaired when Waterloo was fought…I shall be unable to talk to you about my particular region without constantly treating things which neither began with the Middle Ages nor ended with the end of the Renaissance. In this way I shall be forced to present to you a great deal of what can only be described as Old European, or Old Western, culture” [1]. I think C.S. Lewis would lament the absence of this “Old Western culture” in many Holy Cross humanities classrooms. In many of our literature classes, students emerge uneducated on the culture and history out of which classic pieces of writing were produced. Instead, they emerge with knowledge of how to manipulate these works to fit their own purposes. I hope to offer my opinion as a student of English and Spanish literature, informed by the thoughts of C.S. Lewis, as to why it seems plausible that the humanities are declining and criticized for not being serious areas of study.

My first reason is that many teachers and students have lost the ability to relate to the past. As a result, we miss the invaluable opportunity that literature gives us to engross ourselves in a different world and a different mentality. One example of our disconnect is our failure to understand the religiosity of our predecessors. Lewis notes: “Christians and Pagans had much more in common with each other than either has with a post-Christian. The gap between those who worship different gods is not so wide as that between those who worship and those who do not” [2]. The post-Christian character of many academics makes it difficult for them to pick up on religious references in classic pieces of literature which in turn diminishes their students’ understanding of the material. Jeffrey Knapp, author of Shakespeare’s Tribe, mentions: “On the level of practical criticism, secularist readings of Renaissance plays have failed to explain some of the most prominent recurring plots, themes, and character types in the plays, or even to notice the existence of such recurrences” [3]. We speak a different language now; we quickly pass over Shakespeare’s many references to Doomsday because we have lost the sense of its gravity and meaning, a meaning that Christians throughout the ages would have understood. Because of this lost sensibility, we begin to lose access to the mind of Shakespeare.

As a result of our ruptured relationship with the past, many classes attempt to discuss pieces of classic literature from a time period distinct from our own through the use of modern critical lenses without teaching much about the traditions and cultures from which these pieces emerged.

Some have preserved this lost art. To illustrate what I mean, I will cite an example from a class with a professor who has maintained this ability to have a healthy relationship with the past. In my class Shakespeare’s Contemporaries, the professor posed a question to the class: “Who has thought today: am I going to Heaven or Hell?” The class was silent. He responded, “The Elizabethans thought about that every day.” Through a jarring question, we were transported to a time distinct from our own. However, this class was an exception. In many other classes, we would have focused on class struggles, perception of women, questions of identity and sexuality, etc. Accordingly, we would likely have brought modern presumptions into our study of history’s best literature so that we were no longer studying history or literature at all but learning how to manipulate the material to fit our own agendas.

Learning about and immersing ourselves in the past does not enslave us to it. Lewis argues, “I think no class of men are less enslaved to the past than historians. The unhistorical are usually, without knowing it, enslaved to a fairly recent past” [4]. I think we as students are becoming bound to a fairly recent past by only learning to work with modern presumptions. I fear that our literary education is equipping us with the ability to perform one, low-level party trick: do shallow, unhistorical criticism of great literature. This subjectivity and infinite malleability diminishes the seriousness of the humanities: we become the stereotype of literature majors who do not have to do work (because reading our own opinions into literature does not often require reading the literature), who go to class and just talk about their feelings, and who write nonsense, and as long as the professor agrees with our nonsense, we get an A. 

The seriousness of the humanities is regained when we remember that reading great pieces of literature and immersing ourselves in the ideas of great authors enrich our minds. By applying various modern critical lenses onto literature and reading our own ideas into it, “we are so busy doing things with the work that we give it too little chance to work on us. Thus increasingly we meet only ourselves"[5]. I think we would do well to follow Lewis’s advice and, when studying literature from the Old Western tradition, to immerse ourselves in this tradition: “Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.” [6]. Then we can escape the danger of meeting only ourselves, and maybe then we can meet people like Cervantes and Shakespeare.

Endnotes 

[1] C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 11-12.

[2] Ibid., p.5.

[3] Jeffrey Knapp, Shakespeare’s Tribe (University of Chicago Press, 2012), p.2.

[4] Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, p.4.

[5] Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 85.

[6] Ibid., p.19.

A Response to "Enough is Enough"

January 3, 2024

To the Editors of the Fenwick Review:

I must respectfully but forcefully express my dissent from Thomas Gangemi’s argument in the October issue of the FR that the U.S. should end its aid to Ukraine “in the name of peace.” Contrary to Mr. Gangemi, the American people have a great stake in preventing Vladimir Putin’s attempted conquest of Ukraine, just as the U.S. and its Western allies had in stopping Adolf Hitler’s militarization of the Rhineland and seizure of Austria and Czechoslovakia in the 1930’s. The immediate result of British appeasement of Hitler’s demands at the 1938 Munich conference, justified by prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous boast that the agreement had brought “peace in our time,” was Hitler’s invasion of Poland, initiating what Chamberlain’s successor Winston Churchill called “the unnecessary war,” World War II, which brought about the deaths of tens of millions in Europe alone, including the Holocaust and the devastation of much of Europe. (Indirectly, it also instigated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, resulting in millions more deaths.)

Contrary to Mr. Gangemi, it makes no difference whether the cruel dictator Putin justifies his aggression by some ideology other than “atheist-communism” (in his case, pure imperialistic nationalism). (Nor have I any notion of what Gangemi means by saying that the U.S. has itself been engaged in such a project itself “for decades.”) Not only the Nazi precedent, but any study of world history, will demonstrate that trying to slake imperialistic aggressors’ appetite for conquest by abject surrender only increases their desire for more. And contrary to Gangemi, not only is Ukraine not a “corrupt country” on a scale in any way comparable to Putin’s Russia, the scare-quotes he uses to refer to Putin’s “unjust” assault – apparently because Ukraine somehow provoked the dictator by seeking membership in NATO, a defensive alliance – are entirely unjustified. Every day Russia continues to launch missile attacks on civilian populations throughout Ukraine, in violation of all the laws of war, the teachings of Christianity and Judaism, and the principles of elementary humanity. 

Also contrary to Mr. Gangemi, nobody justifies American assistance to Ukraine on the ground that “Russia and her people” are “inherently evil.” In fact, Putin’s war is widely unpopular among the Russian people themselves, especially those who have lost family members in the battle to enhance the despot’s quest for glory. The people of Ukraine are fighting simply to preserve their independence and their democracy against subjugation to one of the world’s most brutal tyrannies. To compare Ukraine’s heroic leader Zelensky to Putin on the unsubstantiated ground that “no actor in this affair is completely blameless” violates the most elementary principles of morality and truth – in direct contradiction to the Christian teachings that Gangemi professes to follow. 

Though Thomas Gangemi is an excellent student (as I know from having had the good fortune to teach him last year), he would greatly benefit, as would all of today’s students, from a more thorough, unbiased study of political, diplomatic, and military history. 

Sincerely,

David Lewis Schaefer

Professor Emeritus of Political Science

and Faculty Adviser Emeritus 

to the Fenwick Review