‘I am not mad, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking the sober truth” (Acts of the Apostles 26:24–25). Thus responded St Paul to Festus when charged ‘your learning is driving you mad.’ James Schall sees that same tension between “the sober truth” and “great learning” driving us mad, as at the heart of the reception of revelation among the learned. Schall sees both tragedy and amusement as characterising the coming together of that which he seeks to portray through his collection of essays, “the mind that is Catholic.”
The Mind That Is Catholic brings together a retrospective collection of essays from one whose literary oeuvre spans the disciplines of theology and philosophy: the concerns of warfare, the beauty of friendship, the nature of the Trinity, are among the themes he has considered in the course of his career. The breadth of his reading is displayed in the disparity of works mentioned and digested, from the Greek philosophers to the medieval theologians, and incorporating some of the great figures of literature in the English language. It is this that Schall sees as symptomatic of the Catholic mind: a mind that seeks the whole and leaves nothing out. So his work seeks to construct the geography of his own thought through a long career, and to allow this geography to display the kind of mind that is truly Catholic. While Schall points out that the term “Christian” would be synonymous here, he wishes to use the term “Catholic” to capture the universality of the reality with which the human mind is challenged.
The ‘mind that is Catholic’ therefore seeks to recognise a consistency between the concrete evidence of reason and the definite facts of revelation. It seeks to see these two sources of its thought belonging together in a fruitful manner rather than remaining necessarily irreconcilable. At the same time it wishes both reason and revelation to remain what each is in itself. Each can usefully profit from the other, and it is in their ultimate cohesion that the truth is found, this truth being the highest object of the mind that is Catholic.
The essays gathered together in this book and divided into seven sub-sections are a raucous scramble through the various issues and problems that will fascinate the Catholic mind. Schall offers a quirky style and vision, at times marked with a ponderous sobriety while at others with a probing humour. It is with great command of imagery that he makes pertinent points. This is a mind that is fascinated by many things and one that has a clear vision of the coherence of reality when seen in a full light. In all areas of his thought, Schall is guided by faith, and wants that to remain his guide when he approaches literary, philosophical or political things.
It is a book of thinking actively, or ‘thinking in action,’ and so rather than describe the Catholic mind, Schall gives the reader practical experience of that mind at work, willing to be enthralled by God and all his creation. Schall seeks in every place for kindred minds, and finds one in C.S. Lewis: “Though C.S. Lewis was not Catholic, I think his mind was.” This is not to suggest that C.S. Lewis was a closeted Catholic afraid to renounce his Anglicanism. It is rather to suggest something about Lewis’ thinking. An example is taken from The Magician's Nephew. The fruit gives immortality, but since the witch took the fruit in the wrong way, Polly considers that the witch could not be immortal. Yet exactly the opposite is the case, while the witch suffers another kind of punishment. Aslan explains to Digory and Polly: “When we take something good in the wrong way, the fruit is good, but those who take it loathe it ever after.” So it is for the witch, Aslan continues. She has won her heart's desire, unwearying strength and length of days like a goddess, “but length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery, and already she begins to know it. All get what they want: they do not always like it.”
Schall highlights the Catholic truth contained in this literature: “When what we choose is not according to what we are, not according to the order of things, we eventually find that we do not like what we choose. We do not really want it. What we are is not best explained to us by what we think we are or what we choose to make ourselves to be presupposing only ourselves.” For Schall it is clear that no matter what we wish to make of ourselves or how we conduct our lives we have been created as free in our wills. The punishment for sin, for the wrong use of that will, is not external pain inflicted upon us by God or some other external being, but is the internal awareness that we get what we choose. Throughout this delightful book, many examples are offered to call us to a profound thesis: “that all of our lives, when we come to recount them, are themselves a retelling of this same story, the story of what we choose.” It is what we choose that defines our eternal existence, whether we consider our own thoughts and wishes to be most real, or whether we ultimately choose what is.
Above all, Schall seeks to show that the Catholic mind is one grounded in a solid realism about real being. The Catholic mind can only seek truth, it can only hold to truth where is its destiny, from whatever source that comes. Schall has sought that truth in common sense, in reasoned argument, and in divine revelation. This work is a celebration of that journey in thought, a journey not yet completed. It is packed with profundity, humour and sober realism. It is the product of one whose mind is sharp, perceptive, challenging, alive, and above all, Catholic.
