In Search of a New 'Epistemological Paradigm'.

It's over two months since I last posted, during which time Alec has been struggling on to get the famous electric drive made and fitted. I myself spent a little over three weeks in Nazaré in May. I return on July 9th in the hope that the Anna M's long sojourn there is finally coming to an end, and she may even possibly be able to return to the Shannon Estuary this year. We are actually contemplating establishing our administrative HQ in this shed of our John's:-

    In the month of May, our grandson David married Danielle from California, having met while they were both studying in Galway. They had a tremendous wedding here in Carrigaholt, a real village affair with the dances in barns. Now they are in America, which is fine, but what I would like to see is our little community here achieve a thriving economic base that is useful, relevent, interesting and fun, and may attract some of the rising generation to live here. Perhaps I should try, once again, to elucidate my ideas of  'community', to use that much over-worked and ill-defined term.

    Fiona and I came to the West of Ireland half a century ago, as refugees from a society which had lost its spiritual roots and which sought to fill the resultant void largely with various forms of individualistic consumerism. Some people attempt to fill this void with a return to nationalism, which is even less appealing! Was it possible that Catholic Christianity could really find the grace of spiritual renewal? Well, it still hangs in here, with an age-old tradition of community living that could be said to reach back to the fairy rings or raths that abound round about, and from which our townland takes  the name Rahona, or Una's Rath. I cannot think of any better way to prepare for the coming storms than to build self-sufficiency and community right here, though it has to be said there is a terrible lot of work to be done before such aspirations could be widely described convincing and widely applicable.

    Occasionally I feel the need to look around and see how other attempts are faring. In such a spirit, I betook myself to a day of encounter organised by EcocongregationIreland at An Tairseach in the Dominican Convent at Wicklow, on the day of the summer solstice. I was rewarded with a very fine lunch from the produce of their own farm and garden, but we were there to reflect on how our response to Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si', was getting on. The answer seems to be that in the tumultuous decade since it was published, our faith communities do not seem to have got far beyond 'actions to help pollinators', recycling, tidy-towns etc. This is all very well, but hardly responds adequately to the challenge implied, for instance, in para 107 of the encyclical:- 'It can be said that many problems of today's world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society' !

    Why is it so difficult to bridge the gulf between theory and practice? I find myself taking issue with the way the theory is presented, on all kinds of levels. The subtitle of Laudato Si' is On Care For Our Common Home. The trouble is that so many people, perhaps everyone in some way, do not feel 'at home' in this world at all; hence, when their attempts to do so fail as they so often do, they tend to become discouraged, bored, dejected, disillusioned and in the end downright nihilistic and destructive.  As for those communists who set about establishing an earthly paradise, how terrible were the results! It is impossible to care for that which one does not love, but how does one get to love life and be at peace in this troubled and transient existence?

    When I was a boy, we Catholics used to say a prayer to Our Lady, 'Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, Hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of they womb, Jesus....'  One heard a lot less of this exile in a valley of tears once the sixties and the Second Vatican Council got into their stride, but the sad fact is that nobody really got any happier as a result of the overdose of optimism; quite the contrary in fact.

    When one looks around to see who has really brought more happiness and beauty into the world, not to mention peace and harmony with Nature, one finds a curious paradox.  It is those whose hearts are set on the hidden world, the Great Beyond, who are most likely to bring beauty into the world, in the forms of little hints, reflections and gleams of that Other Reality. Yet it was a mighty thing to rediscover that Beyond as after all the actual goal of our earthly pilgrimage, the harvest that is being prepared against the end of time, as Jesus set out in his parables. We recall St Paul's stunning words in Romans,8,22 - 'From the beginning till now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth.'

    It turned out that it was not impossible to reconcile faith in God with science. Behind this sea-change in attitude, behind Laudato Si' and also as acknowledged by the Dominican sisters at An Tairsach in the booklet I was given the other day about their efforts, entitled 'In Communion with the Sacred Universe', there looms the presence of Teilhard de Chardin, - the 'first person in modern times in the West to attempt a synthesis of science and religion'. However, we didn't even get to say a prayer to the Holy Spirit to enlighten our Day of Encounter. The only prayer we did get was one of thanksgiving to 'Our Mother the Sun', since it was the summer solstice. Some people, in rediscovering the holiness of the cosmos, seem to have gone a full circle and reverted to worshiping the Sun! (If they must assign that celestial body a gender, they might however run with any language I know of... le soleil, el sol....!)

    There remains the problem of that radical discontinuity which besets our human condition, leaving us alienated from our inner selves and bedeviling our rather pathetic attempts at community and genuine stewardship. Something seems to have gone wrong, and one might have thought that humanity had discovered that making gods out of Nature does not work very well. We are alienated from Nature, each other, and God. The resulting crisis seems to get more acute with every passing year. 

    Teilhard never really got his head around Original Sin; it was the main reason why the Jesuit authorities suppressed his work for a number of years; indeed I witnessed the havoc caused by his ideas, which bear some bit of the responsibility for the destruction of the once great monastery at Downside in England. Perhaps the Pope might help by spelling out the problems with 'the method and aims of science and technology' as 'an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society'?  How is it to be distinguished from the Science that Teilhard and Christian environmentalists purport to have reconciled with their Faith?  We witness the effects of that idolatrous paradigm, which I label Scientism, not just in the management of the environmental crisis, but also in the repeated attempts to achieve 'peace and justice' with weapons of mass destruction. In the  Covid affair, it has been said that we witnessed the death of science, in the abject failure of the official response of the 'men of science', while genuine scientific debate was stifled. 

    This reflects the intriguing sympathy which is liable to spring up between those who oppose the official narratives, for whatever reason, and however muddled they may or may not be. Exactly what is this commonality between them? It is hardly a matter of religion or ideology, though it does call for some pretty fundmental detachment from official narratives, the 'legacy media' and even mainstream education. A common thread is the rejection of the attitude that claims to address our problems with methods of command and control, that in the era of artificial intelligence threaten to escalate into an horrendous global totalitarianism.  Commitment to personal autonomy and responsibility is a rational response, as is a willingness to improvise and experiment as one eschews the tyranny and over-specialisation of 'experts'.  

    When such rebels do succeed in working together, the difficulties of doing so may be overcome by a remarkable fellowship which springs up between them. We may indeed even encounter Jesus in our brothers and sisters, and through him, the Father. The Dominican sisters are on the right track with their leaning into both community and self-sufficiency, but, like all of us moderns, surely need to get a better grasp of the collision  between creation and our fallen nature. The current crisis of science, which demonstrates that collision so clearly, perhaps provides the key to really getting to grips with our other problems!

    I hope my old boat can provide an example; doing fun things, rebuilding on an old foundation, with limited resources; not starting from a grand and flashy plan, but working prayerfully and cheerfully with whoever shows up and the materials that come to hand.  I may say the greenhouse that I've just built in the month of June was made in a similar spirit. It certainly makes one realise the power of the greenhouse effect! It will be a tragedy if the environmental movement becomes another victim of scientism. There are little ways available on all sides for us to respond effectively to the Holy Spirit, but to do so we have to break out of the dictats of that 'epistemological paradigm'  of command and control!

Back aboard 9th July