Pope Francis Pro Mundum:
An Interpretation of Amoris Laetitia through Brideshead
Revisited
Introduction
After months of tense anticipation
and the work of two meetings of the Synod of Bishops, Pope Francis finally released
his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia
last Friday. His Exhortation “On Love and the Family” had me think about a
particular family that I have known for a number of years now.
I have known this family since we first became acquainted during my days in college and I have often thought of them and referred back to them in the years since. This family is the Marchmain Family, the fictional aristocratic British family depicted by Evelyn Waugh in his 1944 novel Brideshead Revisited.
I have known this family since we first became acquainted during my days in college and I have often thought of them and referred back to them in the years since. This family is the Marchmain Family, the fictional aristocratic British family depicted by Evelyn Waugh in his 1944 novel Brideshead Revisited.
Before anyone accuses me of insanity
for considering myself acquainted with a fictional family, those who have any
familiarity with Waugh’s story will realize how understandable this is. The
Marchmain Family is relatable, they are a “family for all seasons” in the sense
that they are like all other families. The Marchmains transcend time and
culture. They are a family of saints and sinners and their triumphs and
tragedies are the triumphs and tragedies of so many other families. There are
countless lessons that we can learn from their successes and mistakes.
Even now when I think of my own
family, when I think of my friends, when I think of life in my parish, I wonder
how various characters from Brideshead
Revisited would act in various situations. If I’m describing a person to a
friend who is a Brideshead initiate,
I can always relate them to at least one of the novel’s characters: “She talks
like Lady Marchmain” or “He drinks like Sebastian” or (dare I say it) “He
reminds me of Anthony Blanche.” Even in my ministry as a priest, I have experienced
brief shining moments when Brideshead is
more than a novel: in a meeting with an engaged couple, when the tabernacle is
empty on Good Friday, and of course when the Last Rites are administered at the
bedside of someone who is surrounded by their family.
I hope that all of these reflections
serve to show how captivating the characters in this one novel are. Like the novel’s
protagonist, Charles Ryder, who is swept up in the drama of the Marchmain family,
I too am enthralled by them and think back to them often. The Marchmains are in
many ways a living family. Or at least I had always thought that they were. The
pontificate of Pope Francis and now the release of Amoris Laetitia have increasingly worried me that in our current
age, the Marchmains no longer have anything worthwhile to teach us.
Paradise Lost and Regained
Brideshead
Revisited consists of the memories of Charles Ryder who, during the Second
World War, is an officer in the British army. The primary focus of his memories
is his engagement with the Marchmain family between the two World Wars. Charles
is introduced to the family and their stately home through Sebastian Flyte, a
fellow-student at Oxford University. Sebastian is the younger son of Lord and
Lady Marchmain. In many ways, the Marchmain family is an anomaly to Charles and
to the entire British establishment. They are an aristocratic Catholic family
in a thoroughly Protestant kingdom. The peculiarity of their practices (visits
to the Blessed Sacrament in their chapel, frequent discussions of religion) is
one of the reasons that Charles, an agnostic, is initially dazzled by them.
However, behind the veneer of a
beautiful, pietistic home, are many of the same obstacles faced by all other
families. While Lady Marchmain was from a Catholic family, Lord Marchmain
converted so that they could be married. “You have brought back my family to
the faith of their ancestors,” he said to his wife in the early days of their
relationship.[1]
Lord and Lady Marchmain eventually raise four children in the faith, two boys and
two girls. However, after a number of years in an unhappy marriage, Lord
Marchmain leaves his wife and children, eventually settling in Venice to live
with his Italian mistress Cara. While Lord Marchmain still sees his children
when they choose to visit him in Venice, he is essentially banished from
British society while Lady Marchmain remains at Brideshead, attempting to
instill a Catholic faith and piety in the hearts of her children.
While Lord and Lady Marchmain’s
eldest son (Bridey) and youngest daughter (Cordelia) appear to have inherited
the piety of their mother, their two middle children (Sebastian and Julia) are
the greatest cause of sorrow to Lady Marchmain. While the novel is discrete in
describing Sebastian’s disordered affections, it is obvious that these
affections have been directed toward Charles and numerous other male characters
throughout the novel. These affections are mirrored by his almost childlike
persona. Unable to come to terms with these disordered affections, he
increasingly turns to bouts of heavy drinking. Eventually, like his father
before, he abandons Lady Marchmain and Brideshead for North Africa.
Sebastian’s drinking eventually
takes a toll on his health. He is taken in by a Catholic monastery in Tunisia
and serves there as something of an under-porter. The last we hear from
Sebastian, he is said to have become very religious, still struggling with his
alcoholism, but able to find comfort and solace in his Catholicism. “I’ve seen
others like him, and I believe they are very near and dear to God,” says
Cordelia.[2]
She even foresees her brother’s eventual death in the care of the monks of the
monastery: “Then one morning, after one of his drinking bouts, he’ll be picked
up at the gate dying, and show by a mere flicker of the eyelid that he is
conscious when they give him the last sacraments. It’s not such a bad way of
getting through one’s life.”[3]
Julia manages to match Sebastian’s
dissolute lifestyle through her own acts of intransigence. She eventually plans
to marry Rex Mottram, a Protestant Canadian, who has managed to gain a seat in
the House of Commons. It is this relationship with Rex that marks Julia’s
descent into chronic sin. Julia learns that Rex may be carrying on an affair
with a mistress. She thinks that if they become engaged, this can put an end to
the affair. When it doesn’t, she then begins to reason that if she is going to
keep Rex from being unfaithful, she will have to offer sexual gratification to
her fiancé before they are married. Julia justifies this in her own mind and
presents the proposition to a priest: “Surely, Father, it can’t be wrong to
commit a small sin myself in order to keep him from a much worse one?”[4]
The Jesuit responds in the negative and suggests that she make her confession.
It is this moment, when Julia does not receive what she wants, that she turns
against the faith: “‘No, thank you,’ she said, as though refusing the offer of
something in a shop. ‘I don’t think I want to today,’ and walked angrily home.
From that moment she shut her mind against her religion.”[5]
During their engagement, Rex agrees
to receive instruction so that he can convert to Catholicism. However, matters
are exasperated when it is revealed that Rex was previously married and
divorced in Canada. Rex does not understand how this can be an impediment to a
prospective marriage to Julia and he sees no difference between his divorce and
the granting of an annulment. When it is obvious that nothing can be done with
only a few weeks before the wedding, Julia and Rex agree to marry in a
Protestant ceremony, separating themselves from Catholic society and the
Marchmain family. Julia’s intransigence reaches its peak as she voices a modern
refusal to recognize objective sin: “I don’t believe these priests know
everything. I don’t believe in hell for things like that. I don’t know that I
believe in it for anything.”[6]
All
of this is recounted by Charles, who will not see Julia again ten years. By this
time Lady Marchmain has died; and when Charles and Julia are reunited, it is
obvious that both of them are unhappy in their respective marriages. An affair
begins between the two of them and it eventually becomes a public matter to the
extent that both of them begin to consider divorce so that they can marry each
other. When it is revealed that Julia’s older brother Bridey has managed to
find a woman to be engaged to, Julia suggests inviting her to Brideshead.
However, Bridey says that he cannot invite his fiancée Beryl because of her
strict Catholic faith and the offense that Julia’s irregular situation could
cause: “You must understand that Beryl is a woman of strict Catholic
principles,” he says, “I couldn’t possibly bring her here. It is a matter of
indifference whether you choose to live in sin with Rex or Charles or both – I
have always avoided inquiry into the details of your ménage – but in no case would Beryl consent to be your guest.”[7]
Such a severe revelation causes Julia to leave the room in tears. “There was
nothing she should object to,” Bridey says of Julia, “I was merely stating a
fact well known to her.”[8]
The drama of the moment is
heightened when it is announced that Lord Marchmain will be returning to
England with Cara so that he can spend his years of declining health at
Brideshead. When it becomes apparent that Lord Marchmain is approaching death,
the family calls on Father Mackay, the local priest, to visit Brideshead. Lord
Marchmain announces to Father Mackay that he hasn’t been a practicing Catholic
in twenty-five years and Father Mackay politely leaves. As Lord Marchmain’s
condition worsens, the priest returns again. There is a debate in the family as
to whether Father Mackay should attempt to administer Last Rites or if Lord
Marchmain’s years as a “scoffer” should be honored. “Christ came to call, not
the righteous,” Father Mackay explains, “but sinners to repentance.”[9]
By this time, Lord Marchmain’s
condition has deteriorated to such an extent that he is barely conscious.
Father Mackay ministers to him, praying with him and encouraging him to ask
God’s forgiveness for his sins. He suggests that, if he is able to, Lord
Marchmain should make some sign to show that he is sorry for his sins. Father
Mackay then anoints Lord Marchmain. At this moment, Charles, the self-professed
agnostic, says that he felt a longing for Lord Marchmain to make a sign of
sorrow for his sins. Then, Lord Marchmain, even in his weakened condition, is
able to raise his right hand, and after twenty-five years of lapsed faith,
makes the Sign of the Cross as a sign of his contrition.
Charles recognizes the magnitude of
such a seemingly small sign: “Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not
a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me
from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.”[10]
This is the moment that changes Charles’ life. After such a grace-filled moment
of repentance and redemption, both Charles and Julia realize that they cannot
marry each other. Charles asks her what she will do. “Just go on – alone” Julia
explains, “You know the whole of me. You know I’m not one for a life of
mourning. I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again.
But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from his
mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without him.”[11]
Julia realizes that God’s mercy can be extended even to her, but God requires a
sign of contrition: “[I]t may be a private bargain between me and God, that if
I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, he won’t quite
despair of me in the end.”[12] Charles
is able to accept this because he too has changed. He has witnessed the working
of God’s mercy and now knows that it is something that he too can receive.
The novel concludes with Charles
serving in the army during the Second World War. He finds himself quartered at
Brideshead and prays a visit to the chapel. While in the chapel, he offers a
prayer. It is then that we know that Charles has turned away from his agnostic
beliefs. He hasn’t only returned to the Anglicanism of his childhood, but he
has been converted to Catholicism, saying “a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned
form of words.”[13]
It is in this faith that he has found comfort; and while he and Julia cannot
have a relationship with each other, he has found peace because now he is able
to have a relationship with God. “You’re looking unusually cheerful today,”
says one of the officers to Charles after his visit to the chapel.[14] It
is this that God gives us if we are willing to give ourselves to Him: unusual
cheerfulness, a cheerfulness and joy that overcomes all moments of anxiety,
pain, and frustration.
Brideshead
Revisited vs. Amoris Laetitia
The reason Amoris Laetitia has led me to think of the Marchmain family is
because of a frightening revelation. Are the moral and religious questions
addressed in Brideshead Revisited relevant
in the world of Amoris Laetitia? In
many ways the document does much to undermine objective truth and absolute
values. Julia attempts to do the same thing when she rationalizes an unchaste
relationship with her fiancée to keep him from having an affair. “I’m rescuing
a fallen man for a chance,” Julia reasoned, “I’m saving Rex from mortal sin.”[15] Thus,
Julia’s thoughts seem to mirror the pope’s: “a small step in the midst of great
human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears
outwardly in order, but moves through the day without confronting great
difficulties.”[16]
Such reasoning smacks of gradualism just as Julia thought that she could
“commit a small sin” in order to save Rex “from a much worse one.”
If they were alive today, would
Julia and Charles have had to part ways? Amoris
Laetitia offers alternatives: “Because of forms of conditioning and
mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin –
which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living
in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity,
while receiving the Church’s help to this end.”[17]
Couldn’t Julia and Charles have spoken with Father MacKay in the internal forum
for the sake of contributing to the “formation of a correct judgment”?[18]
Even the idea of living as brother
and sister seems to be impossible in this modern age. While Julia explains to
Charles that she plans to “[j]ust go on – alone” this is not a sad revelation
because she is finally able to receive God’s mercy and to return to a right
relationship with Him. However Amoris
Laetitia makes it seem that “going on alone” or abstaining from sexual
intercourse is impossible in 2016. Pope Francis explains that “many people,
knowing and accepting the possibility of living ‘as brothers and sisters’ which
the Church offers them, point out that if certain expressions of intimacy are
lacking, ‘it often happens that faithfulness is endangered and the good of the
children suffers.’”[19]
In the age of Brideshead, one didn’t
die if they abstained from sexual intimacy. Apparently, in this sex-obsessed
age, it is impossible for one to live without it.
A Twitch Upon the Thread
If Brideshead Revisited reminds us of anything, it reminds us that
salvation isn’t cheap. Salvation requires a response. It requires some sort of a
sign that one desires it and is willing to do whatever it takes to purchase this
pearl of great price.[20]
Even a small sign (such as Lord Marchmain’s Sign of the Cross) can carry with
it an immeasurable amount of weight. Even a small sign can be as powerful as
the “veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.” That is because such a
sign indicates a person’s willingness to recognize their errors and to do
whatever is necessary to return to a right relationship with God.
The world of Amoris Laetitia sees everyone as being fine just the way they are.
The development and growth that the Marchmain family experienced throughout the
course of Brideshead Revisited was
seemingly unnecessary. Apparently the Marchmain family should have continued to
enable Sebastian; Julia didn’t have to worry about “living in sin” with Rex;
Lord Marchmain had nothing to apologize for; Julia and Charles could have
followed a path of discernment with their local pastor; and Charles should
never have had to convert to Catholicism.
Perhaps I am being a little too
harsh though. There is at least one character that Pope Francis would say
needed to change: Lady Marchmain. The poor matriarch of her family led her
future husband to convert to Catholicism. In a similar way, she attempted to
lead her children along a faithful path only to see her hopes dashed
constantly. But even in her sorrow and grief she never gave up hope and she
never stopped praying each day for those closest to her. She knew that the
faith which she handed on to her children offered the most immediate
possibility for salvation. By the novel’s end she is vindicated with the return
of Julia and Sebastian to the Catholic faith. She is even vindicated with
Charles’ conversion since it was she who had pressed the need for his
conversion years earlier: “‘We must make a Catholic of Charles,’ Lady Marchmain
said, and we had many little talks together during my visits when she
delicately steered the subject into a holy quarter.”[21]
Unfortunately, the pope would probably consider Lady Marchmain to be a narrow,
rigid monster who is concerned only about the letter of the law. Perhaps he
would even mimic the condemnation that Sebastian’s friend, Anthony Blanche,
levels against her in the novel: “She sucks their blood.”[22]
Ultimately, the main characters of Brideshead Revsitied find their way on
the path to redemption. No doubt it is a path of many twists and turns. It is a
path that demands a response, a decided yes or no. It is not a path to be
discerned. Our Lord will come to us at a moment that we may not expect. Will we
take His yoke upon our shoulders and learn from Him[23]
or will we depart from him sorrowfully like the rich young man?[24]
Each of the characters in Brideshead
Revisited is presented with a moment for conversion. It is in that moment
that they recognize the working of God’s grace. Cordelia, the youngest of the
Marchmain children, knows that her siblings cannot be lost forever. “I caught
him,” she quotes G.K. Chesterton, “with an unseen hook and an invisible line
which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to
bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”[25]
Cordelia knows that those of faith
will always be open to the working of God in their lives. God has them on His
thread and one day, even in an instant, He can call them back to Himself. But
they must be willing to participate in this supernatural “twitch upon the
thread.” Unfortunately, the essence of Amoris
Laetitia and Pope Francis’ theology is a Nietzschean attempt to naturalize
God and to pull His thread toward us, forcing Him to submit to and approbate the
wiles and intransigence of human sin. The way of God in Brideshead Revisited brings us unusual cheerfulness which can never
be extinguished. The way of man in Amoris
Laetitia further entrenches us in the miry modern clay of misery,
emptiness, and unfulfillment. Quo vadis?
[1] Waugh, Evelyn. 2012. Brideshead Revisited. New York: Black
Bay, 254.
[2] Ibid,, 354.
[3]
Ibid,, 355.
[4] Ibid,, 216.
[5] Ibid,, 217.
[6] Ibid,, 226.
[7] Ibid,, 327.
[8] Ibid,, 328.
[9] Ibid,, 388.
[10] Ibid,, 390.
[11]
Ibid,, 392.
[12] Ibid,, 393.
[13] Ibid,, 402.
[14] Ibid,, 402.
[15] Ibid,, 215.
[16] Evangelii Gaudium, 44.
[17] Amoris Laetitia, 305.
[18] AL, 300.
[19] AL Footnote, 329.
[20] Matthew 13:46.
[21] Waugh, 142.
[22] Ibid., 60.
[23] Matthew 11:29.
[24] Mark 10:22.
[25] Waugh, 254.
