It is an honour to deliver this address today. I stand before you as an Australian national and a subject of the British crown. It is not however entirely surprising that you should have a “kangaroo” to deliver a commencement address since Australians and Americans have fought together in every major world conflict over the last century, including the first and the second world wars, the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, the two gulf wars of 1990 and 2003, and most recently, the war in Afghanistan.
Further, American and Australian Catholics have been working together for several decades to contend with the implosion of the Christian culture that was the glue that held the whole of Western civilisation together. This Christian culture as it spread across the length and breadth of Europe and the British Isles reached its zenith in the thirteenth century in a social reality we now call Christendom.
I assume that those who founded this college chose the name “Christendom” since they were seeking to pass on the intellectual treasure of this civilisation. In his famous Letter to Charlemagne, the Benedictine monk Alcuin of York, when invited to set up a school in the Carolingian Court in the 8th century, wrote:
It may be that a new Athens will arise in France, and an Athens fairer than of old, for our Athens, ennobled by the teaching of Christ, will surpass the wisdom of [Plato’s] Academy. The old Athens had only the teachings of Plato to instruct it, yet even so it flourished by the seven liberal arts. But our Athens will be enriched by the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit and will therefore surpass all the dignity of earthly wisdom.
I imagine that the founders of this Christendom had something similar in mind, except the comparison would not have been with the Academy of Plato, but with the many great Catholic institutions of higher education that lost their soul in the intellectual and moral chaos of the 1960s.
The times in which the civilisation of Christendom emerged were very similar to our own. It was an era of collapse and an era of new beginnings. As the Roman Imperium imploded settlements of Christians gathered around the Benedictine monasteries that were to become the cradle of Christendom.
Speaking of the Age of St. Augustine, from the middle of the 4th to the middle of the 5th century, Christopher Dawson wrote:
All the vast development of material prosperity and external display had no spiritual purpose behind it. Its ultimate end was the satisfaction of corporate selfishness. The religious element in ancient culture, which had been the inspiration of civic patriotism in the fifth and sixth centuries BC, had almost disappeared from the cosmopolitan civilisation of the imperial age. The temples and the gods remained, but they had lost their spiritual significance and had become little more than an ornamental appendage to public life and an occasion for civic ceremonial.1
Dawson then goes on to summarise St. Augustine’s description of the mentality that underpinned this imploding culture in his famous The City of God:
[The dominant attitude was] Let the laws protect the rights of property and leave men’s morals alone. Let there be plenty of public prostitutes for whosoever wants them, above all for those who cannot afford to keep mistresses of their own. Let there be gorgeous palaces and sumptuous banquets, where anybody can play and drink and gorge himself…Let the man who dislikes these pleasures be regarded as a public enemy, and if he tries to interfere with them, let the mob be freed to hound him to death. But as for the rulers who devote themselves to giving the people a good time, let them be treated as gods and worshipped accordingly. Only let them take care that neither war nor plague not any other calamity may interfere with this reign of prosperity.2
All of this sounds very familiar. Today we are told that the state should be morally neutral, except in practice this means it punishes those who refuse to affirm the so-called lifestyle choices of those at war with the teachings of Christ. We have even lived through a plague and witnessed the idolatry of the state, that is, the treatment of politicians and health department bureaucrats as if they were our saviours. Something like this world of the fifth century is the world you graduates are entering. So what can you do?
My first piece of advice is to understand that you have been born into a cosmic battle from which there is no escape – neutrality is not an option – you will either stand for Christ or help to open the field for those who are organised against him. Every human life has a theo-dramatic quality and what matters in the end is not our income, property portfolio or zip code, but our courage in the heat of the battle, the friendships we make in the crucible of the drama, and the love our hearts impart to friends, families and enemies alike.
I recently witnessed a social situation where a young man who was trying to keep his head down in a seminary governed by people for whom it is forever 1968, was outed, so to speak, by his pious relatives. They turned up to the seminary and acted as if everyone there, especially the seminary staff, would all be fans of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I commiserated with him and said, “your cover is completely blown” and he replied, “it’s okay, they can’t fight love”. He was not ashamed of his relatives – though none of them could spell Schillebeeckx if their life depended upon it. They would never have heard of Karl Rahner or Walter Kasper, or any of the other popular theological luminaries of the past half century, but they could all say the rosary in more than one language and the authenticity of their faith and their love for their son, grandson, brother and nephew was palpable. It’s a good principle to remember – no matter how many orcs or dementors you encounter “they can’t fight love”.
For those of you with musical interests you will know that the theme of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” is the choice between love and power. This is also a central theme of the Book of Genesis. The choice between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is a choice between a life driven by love and a life driven by the will to power. Those who choose the will to power not only want this option for themselves, they want to force it onto everyone because they know, even if only implicitly, that they can’t fight love.
As Christians we already know how the battle will end. St. Augustine described the Cross as a mousetrap set for the devil. There is a famous painting located in the Cloisters in New York City, known as the Mérode triptych. It shows St. Joseph at his carpenter’s bench building a mousetrap and this is thought by some scholars to be a reference to St. Augustine’s metaphor. The devil thought he had defeated Christ with the crucifixion, but paradoxically the crucifixion was Christ’s defeat of the devil. The power that the devil retains after the crucifixion is limited and we are told that ultimately the immaculate heart of Mary will triumph and that the serpent will be crushed under her feet. It’s an image to keep in mind when all is looking bleak.
One of the best metaphors I have heard to explain the state of the cosmic battle after the crucifixion is that given to me by Bishop Robert Barron. He said, it’s like being in the Second World War after the Normandy landings. Once the Allied forces, including American, Canadian, British, and Australian forces, landed on the beaches of France in June 1944, there was no possibility that the Nazis could win the war. However they kept offering resistance and men still had to fight all the way to the bunker in Berlin where Adolf Hitler committed suicide.
When I ask myself the question, why did Christ not complete the defeat of the devil on the Cross, why did he leave us with a certain amount of fighting still to be done, the only answer I can give is that he wants us to enjoy friendship with him in heaven, and this would not be possible if we had not played at least a small role in his battle. Anyone who has had an experience of fighting an array of evil forces will know that there is a high-level of comradery achieved along the way. The kinds of friendships made in such battles are stronger than anything created from simply sharing a hobby with someone. People who share favourite composers or favourite football or hockey teams can easily become friends, but it’s not the same level of friendship as those who have stood together against what St. Paul called the powers and the principalities. I therefore think that Christ is allowing us to do some of the mopping up work so that when we meet him in heaven we can meet as fellow veterans.
So having now welcomed you as fellow officers into what one Catholic poet described as the “Wars of Love”, let me return to the theme of Christendom and its high Catholic culture.
Since you are now graduates of Christendom College this means that you are not the kind of people whose cultural horizons are limited by whatever is fashionable in Hollywood. You will understand that a Catholic culture is built upon truth and goodness and beauty, not woke ideology, virtue signalling self-promotion, or narcissistic glamour.
The late Fr Benedict Groeschel argued that each of us tends to have a primary attraction to one of these transcendental properties of being – for some people it is truth, for others goodness or beauty. We should aspire to be interested in all three but at different times in life one or other of these may be easier for us to appreciate. A consequence of this is that there is no one size fits all spirituality and no one approach to evangelisation that will trump all others. In the life of the Church there are many different gifts and charisms. Hans Urs von Balthasar explained this fact by suggesting that the people who surrounded Christ during his life on earth represent different “spiritual types” in the Church each with their own missions. For example, the mission of St. John the beloved apostle was to live a contemplative life of prayer, while the mission of St. James was to defend the deposit of the faith from corruption as it is passed down from one generation to the next. Because of this plurality of charisms and missions there are many different ecclesial movements. The Church can therefore be compared to a symphony with the different sections of the symphony made of people with different charisms, all following the same score written by Christ himself.
A second piece of advice I would like to give you is that whatever your own particular charism and mission it will be of help to you to know something of the magisterial teachings of St. John Paul II and the works of Joseph Ratzinger who became Benedict XVI. I am assuming that most of you were born at the very end of the pontificate of St. John Paul II or during the early years of the pontificate of Benedict. The intellectual leadership of these two pontiffs was on such a scale that I believe both will come to be recognised as Doctors of the Church, that is, saints whose specific contribution was to resolve theological crises.
With his catechesis on human love, marketed as a theology of the body, St. John Paul II responded to the crisis in sexual morality, and in his vast bibliography, first as a theology professor, then as the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and then finally as pope, Joseph Ratzinger addressed the crisis in fundamental theology. As you would be aware the contemporary crises in the Church have been caused to a large degree by the fact that the field of fundamental theology, or what we may call the field of the basic building blocks of theology, is an intellectual war zone. When we look at our understanding of the relationships between faith and reason, nature and grace, scripture and tradition, history and ontology, the papacy and the episcopacy, moral theology and dogmatic theology, sacramental theology and theological anthropology, to list but a few such building blocks, there is no unity of agreement among the theologians. This is like having the foundations of a house eroded to such a degree that the house itself is unstable.
However in the books and essays of Ratzinger/Benedict you will find his suggestions about how to repair these foundations, how to understand the critical couplets of scripture and tradition, history and ontology, and so on. The theology of Ratzinger is needed because German philosophers over the last three centuries raised issues that had never been considered in patristic or medieval times and we cannot simply put our heads in the sand like an ostrich and ignore the issues they have raised. As a child of the German Academy Ratzinger well understood the issues and dealt with them as a faithful son of Catholic Bavaria. Whatever you perceive to be your individual missions you will need to be across this intellectual territory, and no doubt your studies here have already opened the gates to this treasury for you.
For this your parents and grandparents and godparents and other guardians need to be congratulated. I doubt very much that many of you would be here if your parents were not the kind of people who sat you in front of the EWTN children’s programs and purchased books from publishers like Ignatius Press. Certainly I would not be standing here were it not for Ignatius Press sending its book catalogues to Australia and were it not for the Venerable Fulton Sheen’s homilies arriving in Australia on what we called “cassette tapes” – a kind of pre-historic podcast.
If you are here then the chances are that your parents and grandparents had a very strong moral and intellectual compass to survive the era of post-Conciliar confusion and that they had their own heroes of the faith like Bishop Sheen to guide them through it. My congratulations to them and also to the Faculty and staff of Christendom College who have similarly preferred the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to the fashions of the zeitgeist. As Ratzinger said, the Church is not a haberdashery shop that updates her windows with each new fashion season to lure in more customers.
Another discovery of my youth that helped to sustain my faith was the writing of Fr. James V. Schall, SJ. Fr Schall was for several decades a Professor of Political Philosophy at Georgetown University. Such was his popularity that a journalist wrote that students enrol at Georgetown simply to major in Schall. I understand that Fr Schall’s library came to Christendom after his death in 2019. For those of you who are interested in politics and especially the relationship between Christian revelation and political theory, the works of Fr Schall offer a masterclass on this subject.
Speaking of good Jesuits, the French Cardinal Jean Daniélou said that ‘the real measure of history is not to be sought in the level of technical attainment, but in the more or less effective production of personalities, which represent the highest things we know in the mundane realm’. Each one of you is a personality forged by the faith of Christian centuries. My hope for you as you enter the world at large is that you will carry with you a little of the high Catholic culture that once made the nations of Europe great, and that the United States, the country of the Knights of Columbus, will become all the stronger for your lives of service.
Finally, in this context of the importance of the United States, I was very privileged to attend Cardinal Pell’s last dinner party four days before his untimely death. It occurred in Rome on the night of Pope Benedict’s funeral. Those who were present describe it as the White Martyrs dinner since the two cardinals who were present – Cardinal George Pell and Cardinal Joseph Zen – had both been unjustly imprisoned. At the white martyr’s dinner Cardinal Pell said that there was hope for the Church to recover from her current crisis ‘if the Americans hold firm’.
So, my final piece of advice is: hold firm to the faith of Christian centuries, don’t be intimidated, and make lots of friends along the way! Remember that you have spiritual brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, including Africa where the bishops are renowned for their leonine courage, Latin America, where many young Catholics of your generation understand, after decades of social experiments, that Marxism never brings freedom, in Australia and the other islands of the South Pacific that lie under the Southern Cross where the cultural challenges are very similar to your own, and in what remains of old Catholic Europe, the first Christendom, where heroic families are again nestling around Benedictine monasteries and relying on the splendor of the Benedictine liturgies to inspire the next generation of Catholic leaders. They will be standing with you shoulder to shoulder in the battles, the fun and the friendships that lie ahead.
May God bless you all, your friends, your family and your teachers.
Professor Tracey Rowland
St. John Paul II Chair of Theology
University of Notre Dame (Australia)
Endnotes:
1 Christopher Dawson, “St. Augustine and His Age”, in A Monument to St. Augustine, (New York: The Dial Press, 1930), p. 21.
2 Christopher Dawson, ‘St. Augustine and his Age”, p. 22
• Video of the Commencement address:
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In part of her excellent encouragement to the Christendom graduates, Tracy Rowland counsels finding each of us to find our personal place in the SYMPHONY of truth, goodness and beauty; and transcending the relativism of the world, and the amnesiac clericalism of the moment, to tap into the depth and breadth and PERMANENCE of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
She also points to Cardinal DANIELOU, who guides us away from the siren call of ideological and neutral “globalism” and toward an embracing and non-individualist personalism. From his writing: “There is nobody more English than Shakespeare and no one more universal; none more Italian than Dante and no one more universal; none more French than Racine and no one more universal” (“Prayer as a Political Problem,” New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967).
And about loneliness in our current post-conciliar confusion and in a cockeyed world, well, St. Paul reminds us that as members of the Mystical body of Christ we have the privilege of putting up with a lot of stuff rather than not—that is, not being left out. CHRIST, at least, does not leave us out…
So, if I may—and as one whose two decades of formal education did not include Catholic schools and universities—retain sufficient humility and maturity, both, to not get disoriented when leaving the very fortunate and fostering environment of Christendom College. With ROWLAND, read and read well. Stay fully engaged, and in touch with each other, and expand your real friendships. And grow personally in your prayerful and Eucharistic life.
It’s good to know that we are not alone.
The Normandy landings were 1944, not 1945.
Thank you. It has been corrected.
This speech should be called: My suicidal attitude. It’s simply inadmissible, as if the author actually believes in Sacred Tradition! She is an affront to the personal magisterium of Pope Francis!
“At the white martyr’s dinner Cardinal Pell said that there was hope for the Church to recover from her current crisis ‘if the Americans hold firm’.”
My thinking is that Rowland was referring to that small group of traditionalist, observant Catholics who accept the full deposit of Faith and put it into practice in their daily lives. This is a distinct minority among those who say they’re “Catholic” (the Biden’s, Pelosi’s and abortion-approving Catholics).
These are a minority who refuse to accept the Zeitgeist promoted by our current Vatican, the governments in Washington and most European capitals; the zeitgeist promoted by Hollywood, Wall Street, Madison Avenue and Big Media. These are the Catholics – a very small minority – who are willing to die on the cross of Truth. And, so, maybe Bergoglio was right – the Catholics to whom he was referring ARE suicidal except that it’s not suicide if you’re willing to die for what Christ taught because, in the Church’s understanding, it’s called martyrdom. It was the battle fought by those Catholics in the Vendee in late 18th c. France whom we are proud to call”suicidal/martyrs.”
About the Vendee, Warren Carroll (the founder and first president of Christendom College), richly offers ground-level details about the Vendee as part of the layered wickedness of a fallen world—but also the heroism and what might be the rest of the whole story:
“…there was one part of France that was immune to the Revolutionary Emperor’s magic: the unshakably Catholic Vendee. The embers of its heroic past resistance to the French Revolution still smoldered there. In mid-May [1815] they were fanned into flame by the return of the Revolutionary Emperor. Napoleon had taken substantial forces from his new army to put down the revolt. Since the Battle of Waterloo was so closely contested (“the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life,” as Wellington later put it), these troops who were not there but in the Vendee could have been decisive. Very few histories even mention this second, critical uprising in the Vendee” (“A History of Christendom: vol. 5—The Revolution against Christendom,” Christendom Press, 2005, p. 417, with footnotes).
Thank you, Peter, for embellishing my reference to the Vendean Revolt in the war being waged against Christ.
“You will understand that a Catholic culture is built upon truth and goodness and beauty, not woke ideology, virtue signalling self-promotion, or narcissistic glamour” (Tracey Rowland).
A realization like the Trinity. As Rowland quotes Fr Groeschel’s wisdom that each of us pursues [is attracted to] one, we might add that each transcendental property of being cannot be realized without the others. An equivalence to three persons, one God. True beauty speaks to what is good. As in art as in the sciences and the pursuit of knowledge, the theme that runs through Rowland’s richly articulated Address.
It is worthwhile to delve into the meaning of Robert Campin’s masterpiece, which occupies a significant place in Josephine iconography. “St. Joseph at his carpenter’s bench building a mousetrap.” The connection to St. Augustine is not negligible, commented an apostle of St. Joseph (+ 2020), Father T. Stramare.
However, the imposing prominence of St. Joseph’s figure in the panel dedicated to him, and especially the dual connection both to the central Annunciation painting and to the matrimonial context clearly indicated in the left panel and at the origin of the triptych, suggests a more profound interpretation. This interpretation guides us, as my dear friend and priest continued, to the understanding of St. Joseph’s cooperation in the mystery of the Redemption.
Joseph is not actually working directly on building a trap; he is drilling a piece of wood, aiming to make something that seems intended to conceal, to defend—a kind of “grate,” similar to the one serving as a firescreen in front of the fireplace in the central scene. The same idea of a “grate” can also be seen in the ornamentation of the bench used by St. Joseph and in the bench placed behind the Virgin; this motif is present in the window of the Annunciation chamber as well. The connection between the two “rooms,” that of Mary and that of Joseph, is intentional, considering also the clear symbolism of the Passion contained in the tiny figure of Jesus (behind the angel’s wings, towards the two round windows) lying on the cross. It thus becomes evident that the artist wants to link the “clamor” of the mystery of the Incarnation with its human “silence,” a theme so dear to the Holy Fathers. The plan of Redemption, in fact, was realized apparently “in a human way,” leaving faith with the role of “seeing” in it the work of God.
In other words, during his earthly life, Jesus wanted to conceal his divinity, presenting himself as a man among men. Joseph’s marriage to Mary was effectively the “veil (velamen),” the equivalent of a “grate,” intended by God to hide the mystery of the Incarnation.
The Triptych relates the marriage of the commissioner with that of Mary and Joseph, but it emphasizes their uniqueness. Though “separately,” Mary and Joseph lived under the same roof, giving the public, that is, the people, the impression of being like other married couples. This is the “trap” displayed on the balcony, well in the open on a special support. Upon closer inspection, the object displayed does not resemble so much a mousetrap, like the one on the workbench, but rather a sofa-bed: everyone was supposed to think of it as a “normal” marriage. Joseph’s paternity is part of the incarnation plan.
To the murmur: “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?”, Chrysostom responds: “It is clear that they did not yet know his miraculous birth. For this reason, they still consider him the son of Joseph. And yet Jesus does not correct them nor say: ‘I am not the son of Joseph’; not because he was Joseph’s son, but because they could not yet understand his miraculous birth (admirabilem illud partum). If they could not yet understand his birth according to the flesh, much less that ineffable and superior one. If he did not reveal what was more humble, much less would he have said the other things. Certainly, it was an obstacle for them that he was born from a humble father (ex vili patre); yet he did not reveal it, lest removing one obstacle another might arise. But what does he answer to those murmurers? ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’ (John 6:44).” It was, therefore, in God’s will that Joseph’s paternity should hide that of God. It was a “velamen” necessary for the incarnation: “Admire especially this, that the Son, the genuine Son of God existing without beginning, endured being called the son of David, to make you a son of God; he endured having a servant for a father (passus est se patrem habere servum) to give you, a servant, the Lord.”
Thank you, Dr. Rowland, for this wonderful article. I am connected by our mutual friendship with Monsignor Melina, who holds you in very high regard. He has been my teacher, my great teacher.
Wonderful unpacking of the language of art…
Renaissance painting grew out of Medieval imagery partly by replacing stylized symbols with more nuanced symbols (no more halos), partly by visual metaphor, and largely by earthbound visual perspective–as from the earthbound vantage point of the viewer located in time and in space.
Some additional proposals:
the two windows in the upper left–the two divine and human natures of Christ, with (as Paolo notes) the the passion of Christ fixed to the cross between them? The two windows in the background perspective behind Mary—the Old and New Testaments, with the second more open to the future than is the first, and both aligned with the central and symbolic candle flame of the Holy Spirit on the table?
The more distant background behind Mary’s windows is the blue sky of eternity, while the background to Joseph’s windows (third panel) still depict the workaday world?
The two candle holders on the fireplace, one with a candle and one without—again, the New Testament foreshadowed by and fulfilling the Old, but still needing and not in any way discarding the prophecies?
The round table, itself, at the center of the composition—the world, with the angel at the one heavenly side and Mary and the Incarnation at the other? The two open books—the Old Testament on the table and the New Testament in Mary’s lap? The two lilies on the table—the purity of Mary together with the chastity of Joseph?
Mary resting on blue (the cushions) but now robed in red—a familiar portrayal of the favored creature in blue as receiving Christ in red (while the divinity of Christ, when shown, is always robed in red and then taking on the creaturely and Marian blue)?
Mary’s knee projecting and even radiating forward from the picture plane—bearing Christ within, and perhaps recalling the Christmas star? And then the not-superfluous white cloth suspended on the back wall, and separated from the Christmas star and Incarnation by the intervening round table—is this the seamless garment of a suspended Christ at Calvary?
And what, too, are we to think of the kettle suspended visually over the angel’s head?
The code language of north European Renaissance art: goodness, truth, and beauty…
Well done.
And very true. For some people it really is perpetually 1968. Or 1970-something.
It feels like that era just won’t go away.
Let us uncage and unleash all the gattopardos so nobody would be able to say anything about them “boxed-in” or “suicide” or “cling”; and then too the total homosexualista House of Cards could never stand a chance, because gattopardos would be wild.
Other suggestions available to me paolo, are more attractive to me than your own and more meaningful. Joseph’s paternity is not hidden from our Lord but perfectly given to them in the Hand of God through the arrangements in the Holy Family. His paternity among other things is available to our Lady in the Divine plan which she is studying and which is buttressed in the Annunciation, “Do not be afraid O highly favoured!” I would not be surprised to find that there is no balcony, as they would not put a divan on the balcony to “not attract attention”. Some structure is foregrounded in the square outside there, perhaps a common well sitting in a shade giving a downward view to the eye and artistic depth for the rest of the city.
In my suggestion box, there is no mousetrap, there is a tool that is used to finish wooden screws and Joseph is at work extracting raw forms that will be applied into the tool to be shaped and cleaned. The other tools serve the same purposes. Everything going on in their home was the constant unfolding of the special revelation for which they were made. The screws were both necessary in Joseph’s craft and trade and his unique inheritance.
The heavenly intimation of the cross in the upper left of our Lady’s panel, is their abiding faith with the Lord Himself present to them to confirm them.
I am hopeful, after reading this outstanding post and responses, that many who have been sleeping in Gethsemane will awake from their slumber and that The Immaculate Heart Of Mary will restore Peace in Christ’s Church, as a Faithful Pope , Consecrates Russia To Our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), The Lord And Giver Of Life, exactly as Our Blessed Mother requested.
Only Good can come from that, that which is True and Beautiful.
More from this author/speaker, please.
Yes, indeed.
A sterling Commencement Address, from a sterling Catholic.