Safe but Unsaved
Are Our Souls Still "Tenable" After Covid?
At least once a year our town's biweekly newspaper carries another edifying story. Last summer there was one about a group of Christian volunteers just returned from Central America, where they had sunk a well and taught the villagers about pathogens in dirty water. The story was illustrated with a photo of children frolicking in silvery liquid gushing from a spigot. Even the most hard-bitten cynic might be warmed by this palpable good.
But what if the article had reported that the volunteers had also proffered the "living water" that Christ spoke of at Jacob's well? What if they had instructed the ignorant not just about physical hygiene—how to avoid contamination from the microbes in the H2O—but about the spiritual contagion of sin? Would their mission still have enjoyed universal approval? Or would their "Bible thumping" have been felt to be an adulteration of a clear corporal good with something ulterior? Maybe those well-drillers had their hooks out, angling with attached strings for converts.
An Untoward Prominence
Pope Francis could be cited in support of the suspicion that spiritual works are somehow in conflict with Christ's command to minister to material needs. Early in his pontificate, he warned a young woman who'd sought counsel on winning over a friend to the faith: "It (proselytism) is the strongest poison . . . the Church is not a soccer team that goes around seeking fans." Did the youthful missionary flame survive that dousing, or was it reduced to a smoldering wick? This disposal of the Great Commission—to convert and baptize all nations—must have startled the young woman. But perhaps it shouldn't have.
The Francis way is not to speak as a spiritual director to the individual soul on the "peripheries" of post-Christian culture. Throughout this pope's pontificate, global issues like sustainability, mass migration, and climate change have taken on an untoward prominence. Francis has instructed the ignorant and counseled the doubtful about structural sins, especially those against the planet. His Pontifical Academy for Life issued a statement in July 2020, blaming the Covid-19 pandemic on humanity's "sins against the earth." In Laudato Si', and at the 2016 World Day of Creation, Francis proposed "care of creation" as "a new work of mercy."
The United Nations' Secretary-General, António Guterres, found that the pope's concern for climate change and sustainable development "coincide with the core values" of the UN charter. Melinda Gates, a pro-choice Catholic, commended the pontiff's leadership on the environment, while hoping to "change his mind" on women's reproductive issues. Pope Francis seemed open to such dialogue. In 2020 he granted Ms. Gates a private audience.
Bill and Melinda Gates shared (before their divorce) a foundation, not a church. Their focus on the health of bodies, even when such care entails fetal death via "women's health" programs, didn't conflict with their philanthropic goals. The Evangelist's admonition—It is the spirit that quickens; the flesh profits nothing (John 6:63)—doesn't lend itself to inclusion in an NGO mission statement.
The Un-souled Self
Bodies can be weighed, probed, and imaged with an MRI or CT scan, but, so far, even the most sophisticated device has failed to detect a soul. John Henry Newman thought it better to perish in agony than to sully said entity with a venial sin. What would neuroscience make of such a view? At the end of the twentieth century, Tom Wolfe summed up that discipline's "discoveries" for us laymen. He gave his essay a blunt title: "Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died." As with Mark Twain's quip about the rumor of his own demise, Tom Wolfe's post-mortem may be greatly exaggerated. But if the soul isn't dead, many salvation-by-works prelates seem to have reached a compromise with the coroner. The soul still lives, but it is on life support.
Like Nietzsche's "God is dead" pronouncement, neuro-science's conclusion may have import for how man experiences his un-souled self. Even deniers inattentive to the latest findings live in a world that defers to the magisterium of science. Elite postulates don't stay in the lab, or in the ivory tower; they sometimes seep out, like chlorine gas, affecting the lower levels. With the retreat of this mysterious soul, the disenchanted human animal is prone to fixate on what remains—the bodily state, its pleasures and pains.
Peter Maurice is a retired teacher of French, English, and humanities, at all levels from elementary through university. He is the recipient of several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. His writing has appeared in The Wanderer, Chronicles, Touchstone, Crisis, New Oxford Review, and Gilbert magazines.
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