Catholic Truth, Girard, & Hope

A succinct, valuable model of the threat of Islamist aggression is offered by Lorenzo Vidino in this Israel Hasbara Committee abstract, The Tripartite Threat of Radical Islam to Europe.

But some readers of René Girard's mimetic theory may wonder why dwell on what might seem to be a one-sided rebuttal of Islam, when the Christian faith contains manifold evidence of similar aggression, hubris, and retributive violence? Isn't the denigration of Islam blindly siding with one collective character in a vast, global mimetic rivalry?

It is tempting in light of the analytical psychology of the great C. G. Jung to fall into a dualism when it comes to what Girard calls a mimetic rivalry on a planetary scale. So much of the twentieth century in the West, consciously or unconsciously, fell into the ditch of thinking that there IS no good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, yes vs. no. There is only the need to come to grips with the rejected "other", my "shadow", that I must become conscious of and integrate into my life that it may become "whole".

Using this template, the natural, indeed beneficial thing to do is accept Islam, integrate it into the lop-sided Judeo-Christian world view. This way, as Jung might say, the unconscious "fish" of Christianity will evolve and grow far past its inadequate god image to a new state of wholeness for all mankind.

Except ... Girard developed a theory (it far surpasses a mere hypothesis) that not only blows away the mystifications of Jung's psychologizing, but unmasks its unwitting worship of the human instincts -- archetypes -- as a re-paganization of the world just as surely as did the Nazi thugs and occultists that he (once) admired.

Girard's mimetic theory does not do away with the Magisterium of the Catholic Church; it keenly serves, substantiates, and opens its relevance to a world in desperate need of its truth. Mimetic theory blows away both the toxic fumes of Nietzsche's ubermensch pipe dreams and secularist foolishness of trying to live in a religious vacuum in perpetuity. Girard's theory shows Islam to have one foot firmly planted in the originary scene of the primitive Sacred and the other advancing its myths, rituals, and prohibitions in service to a religare -- a "binding back" -- to the Prophet and the purported dictates of his god.

Hope will come not in tying one's aspirations in this conflict to political solutions, nor to finding some way to gain the kind of unified spirit that is found in Islam. We are in the West feel that we are in the position of Our Lord's disciples in the boat on the Sea of Galilee with high winds and waves. Or perhaps sequestered in the Upper Room before the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

But this is not the historical truth. We live in a post-Resurrection, post-Pentecostal world. We enjoy full benefits of lives of Sacraments, Magisterium, and Grace. Shall we not better stay near to Peter's Barque, defending her with legitimate defense, and chivalry, and keeping to the old ways (that are ever new) of faith, hope, and charity?

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice
Now ye need not fear the grave:
Peace! Peace!
Jesus Christ was born to save
Calls you one and calls you all
To gain His everlasting hall
Christ was born to save!
Christ was born to save!