Not just the Catholic world, but the whole world benefits greatly from the “voice” of Anthony Esolen and the special instruction he bequeaths to humanity in the numerous writings he has produced during our times. He is a member of the English faculty at Providence College in Rhode Island, but we can easily see through his publications that his understanding of reality stretches far beyond the study of literature. Unfortunately, he has received some backlash at his school for professing his worldview; however, we cannot naïvely act surprised at this.
What Esolen has said and continues to say is important. He coherently points out all of the social problems in the world, while celebrating the true, good, and beautiful things that ought to be highlighted. Like a true prophet, he adequately reads the signs of the times to inform our lives and culture on the right direction in which we should head. Moreover, he does this in intelligent, creative, and attractive ways, as any talented writer would. I have yet to come away from any of his writings unedified and recognize that it would be quite a misfortune for Christians today to go without hearing his voice.
To assist others in connecting with his work, here are some of my favorite thoughts from Esolen found in his various writings:
- “The secular ideologue is a religious fanatic without religion.”
— “The Monk and the Ideologue”, Crisis Magazine, November 9, 2016.
In this article, Esolen masterfully juxtaposes scenes of monks in a monastery and the plight of a worshipper of an ideology to highlight the similarities and differences between the two. Esolen points out that, like one who gives up everything for God, the ideologue too wraps his or her whole life and worldview around one thing, sacrificing whatever is necessary to live out the framework deemed true. However, unlike the monk, an ideologue will even sacrifice charity.
2. “Scripture continually warns us against judging in our own case; against taking the path that seems good to us. For the heart of man is deceitful from his youth – who can fathom it?”
—”The Curious Unseriousness of All Our Moral Debates”, LifeSiteNews, March 31, 2015
Esolen writes an obituary-esque lamentation of the loss of right sense in handling moral choices. He points out how little weight we give these highly important decisions and that we allow feelings or appearances too much weight in our decisions.
3. “From 962 (the crowning of Otto the Great as Holy Roman Emperor) to 1321 (the Death of Dante), Europe enjoyed one of the most magnificent flourishing of culture the world has seen.”
— The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, p. 131.
In this book, Esolen sets the record straight on the proper view of history, resurrecting the true understanding that the Middle Ages were much brighter and beneficial for humanity than many contemporaries may admit. He goes on in this quote’s chapter to show how “Medieval Europe’s creativity and vitality makes our age look sluggish and drab.” Furthermore, in the next quote he shows the significance that the Medieval Cathedral silently manifested:
4. “Forget that the church was the heart of that common life, and that the people dwelt in the shadow and the reflected gleam of these places of beauty. Neglect to imagine what it was to “own,” with the rest of your townsmen, a structure that pierced the skies with its grandeur, yet that also welcomed you in; and that stood an eloquent witness when you were born, when you were married, when you had children, and when you died. What is astonishing, what we find hard to fathom now, is that those common people were the ones who built the churches.”
— ibid. p. 140.
The truth of what life in the Middle Ages was like, that is so easily ignored or downplayed while being scoffed at by many today, is pleasantly relayed by Esolen. One of the best parts of this book is the four pages he spends bringing to light just how extraordinary the Cathedrals are. And what is forgotten is more than the detail, the symbolism, and genius architecture — it is the fact that these masterpieces which functioned as centers for worship were built at a time when it is now said mankind was barely surviving.
5. “No one can decree what a word will signify for those who hear it, or even what it must signify for himself. That’s not how words work. Nor is it how symbolic actions work—actions that are, whether we admit it or not, significant. I put my hand in my pocket; it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe I’m searching for my car keys. Maybe my hand is cold. But if I’m holding a woman by the hand, that means something, the meaning is public, and it’s not ours to determine.”
— “The Sexual Revolution and Its Victims (Part Two)“, Crisis Magazine, October 23, 2012.
In this second part to a two-part release, Professor Esolen unleashes the correct understanding of the effects of human words and deeds. In this case, Esolen is showing how the Sexual Revolution has destroyed lives; in fact, each part of this two-piece writing shares the story of a victim of the revolution known by the author. He implies that no matter how private we think our sins are, they certainly affect those around us in our bad example. Furthermore, all sin is an exercise of choosing to serve one’s self over others. Therefore, the more we sin, the more selfish we become, which is going to detrimentally affect those around us and society at large.
Being unafraid to speak on the tough controversial subjects might have a part in the pushback Esolen has received as of late, but this tenacity to preach the truth out of season is a virtue that would be more refreshing to see increased in the Catholic teachers, preachers, and writers of today. Esolen’s example, both in content and style, is one to be imitated.
Furthermore, we should keep him and others receiving similar treatment in our prayers so that justice is done, or that Christ’s consolation may help them overcome resistance, and that all may prosper from the Truth of our Faith to become the saints we are meant to be. Of course, this will be easier with a correct understanding of reality, a picture that Esolen paints wonderfully.
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Image: The Federalist
7 thoughts on “We need the voice of Anthony Esolen”
“ But if I’m holding a woman by the hand, that means something,…”
Yes, the sexual revolution adversely altered lives; all revolutions do. They happen because unseen forces
at work must eventually burst through a bubble and splatter all over the place. When God was thunking up mankind he had already worked out the 10 commands, a full 20% of which had to do with marriage … not cohabitation or fornication but the symbolic and (granted) physical and metaphysical union of two people.
This revolution also signaled the end of what had been going on under the covers long before Christianity.
The church’s sexual scandal outed in the 20th century was a wink-wink, don’t dare say a word, open secret long before cathedrals. Cloistered humans do not check their libido at the door of the monastery. Young boys and novices who were handed over to the church for clerical grooming have always been prey to deviancy. Before the revolution, the church married more gays to straights then ever imagined; now it doesn’t happen at all. It stopped because the pressures that Victorian like societies exacted on people to either get married or become religious didn’t hold sway anymore, people were free to say, I’m different. Those who feared making a
lifelong commitment (marriage) no longer had to suppress their sexuality – of course, they had to deal with the entanglement and consequences of their choices and some paid dearly. Many others who waited eventually got centered and found some like soul who too learned about intimacy in fits and starts. They may have fooled around on their boy and girl friends but it didn’t apply to those who had wives or husbands – God had to say ‘thou shalt not’ twice to that crowd. If the sheer numbers of married were clocked to reveal how many crossed the line on that 9th commandment there wouldn’t be a thumb drive big enough to record it all. Irresponsible intimacy is always wrong; marriage is no guarantee. So before you go dissing Woodstock think about our first parents who hid themselves after figuring out they were naked – and ask yourself, what was that all about.
I am always surprised by our refusal to believe that people ever lived in ways that we have dismissed. Human nature remains the same, wherever you go, but human behavior does not; a Mennonite farming community raising a barn is not a Nazi parade. Here is a fact. Before the invention of the Pill, almost every American child was born within wedlock; more than 95 percent. That can only have happened if most people at most times agreed that sex outside of marriage was wrong. Even men who did not care much for the moral law would have been ashamed to take as a wife a girl who had been with other men already. I can direct you to a book by a LIBERAL doctor in the 1950’s, speaking to boys and telling them that fornication is unmanly, unworthy of them; as it certainly was. What you say about our first parents is hardly to the point, since the Sexual Revolution is based upon a denial of that original sin, as if we were always and everywhere to be trusted in our impulses. “Suppression”? I don’t think you have really begun to consider that the sexual revolution is better described as dissipation, with ensuing ennui and cynicism. It is why contemporary actors and actresses have such a hard time feigning erotic attraction, rather than mere epidermal excitation; they are burnt out before they hit the age of twenty. I believe that married Christian men and women who have followed the moral law would have a great big belly laugh over the idea that they have “suppressed” anything.
” …almost every American child was born within wedlock; more than 95 percent.”
And from these Ozzie and Harriett perfect family god fearing homes came the open and
future fornicators, apparently straight (turned gay) sons and daughters who rebelled against
… what ? … the underbelly of an allusion. If this once, near perfect picture that your caricature
describes was all there needed to be in your Norman Rockwell world why did it happen at all ?
It was in place since the turn of the century and had plenty of time to set in stone. My point
about 20% of the Law being devoted to the right way to live suggests a danger inherent in
the very nature of the right way to live as opposed to living outside it. I agree the pill was an
unnatural outcome of science that did much more harm than good – but it doesn’t speak to the
issues I’ve raised. And this thing about Adam and Eve IS all about sex. The symbolism and
narrative point to the simple fact that our first ‘parents’ brought DEATH into the world by their
act of disobedience. You can only do that by having sex, by being a co-creator of life :the fig leaves alone are not so much a metaphor for sexual shame but its consequences. But then again, in reality, we descended from trees to subdue the land. The ‘garden’ story was there to decipher at a much later age, when the obvious became apparent. The problems you relate
came about when mankind took off those fig leaves to unlock the mysteries of that Tree and
whether you’re in its shade or outside its crown the mode of using this gift is a moot point.
Why would men be ashamed to marry a girl who’d been with other men? Also, were women ashamed to marry a man who’d been with other women? Is there something shameful about both but there were too few male virgins to go around, or is it the paternity question, or something else? I’ve wondered this before. (FYI I’ve never been with a man, nor will I until I’m married – God help me so – so don’t think I’m arguing with you like that, I’m just wondering.)
Thank you, Marie, for your temperate and intelligent question. Here’s what I see, from my knowledge of what people were reading, what advice priests and ministers gave, what my parents have told me, and what indirect testimony is given by the extremely low out-of-wedlock birth rates in the US, before the invention of the Pill:
1. The large majority of women who took their religious faith at all seriously went to the altar as virgins. They did not fornicate.
2. Most of the rest were not promiscuous. That is, they might have given in once or twice, but nothing regular — or else they soon would have been carrying a child.
3. Somewhat fewer men went to the altar as virgins. I am told that some women even expected their new husbands to have some “experience,” but that was not the case with women who were seriously religious.
4. We can explain 3, and the expectations surrounding what men would do or not do, by the disparity between the sexes as regards childbirth. This is now not to think in terms of faith or the moral law, but to think as a crude utilitarian. If you manage to inspire 96 percent of your women with the ideal of chastity, but only half of the men, you will still not have the big social problems of widespread unwed motherhood and children growing up without fathers. That is because, of course, your next generation is determined by the women and not by the men. By contrast, if you inspire 96 percent of your men with the ideal of chastity, but only half of the women, you’re done for, because one man can get an indefinite number of women pregnant in any given year.
5. If we change the virtue, we can see this disjunction in expectations in a different light. Suppose you manage to inspire 96 percent of your women with the ideal of physical courage, but only half of the men. You are done for. The next clan or tribe is going to wipe you out. But if you inspire 96 percent of your men with the ideal of courage, but only half of the women, you are going to be fine. The next clan or tribe is not going to go near you, or if they do, they will pay for it dearly….
6. Both men and women accepted the rightness of the moral law regarding sex. That is, both believed that fornication was wrong, was “bad,” and the only question was whether they were going to behave as bad men or bad women.
That makes sense. Chastity was more expected of and practiced by women, so men could and did expect it of their wives.
And I think you could take your chastity/courage parallel a little farther, and guess that as men would be ashamed to marry a loose woman, women would be ashamed to marry a cowardly man. I listened to a sermon recorded in the 1950s, in which the preacher said that it would be *ridiculous* to expect a woman to marry a coward. ANY other vice, eh, but cowardice… any woman would be disgusted by the idea of marrying a coward!
If I may interject, Marie, your response to Tony’s perception was something I
was going to bring up but please understand the once patrimonial world that
prevailed before the onset of … blended families. In Jesus’ time it was more
than glaring and I take my stand on this overall issue based on His encounter
at the well of a ‘loose’ woman who declared, when asked, that she had no
husband. Jesus, knew she had seven husbands indicating that her fornication,
her disrespect for the temple of her body led her to sleep with men for one
purpose or another, however, he rightfully did not impute the sin of adultery
since in fact she had never been married. Jesus never took on the men who
sullied their wives in adultery or those who used woman for pleasure. It
was understood by that society that Eve’s almost unforgivable act of
deceiving Adam almost always led to exoneration as far as sins of the flesh.